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ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE
BOARD OF REGENTS OF
THE SMITHSONIAN
INSTITUTION
SHOWING THE
OPERATIONS, EXPENDITURES, AND
CONDITION OF THE INSTITUTION
FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30
ees
(Publication 3034 )
UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 1930
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FROM THE
SECRETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
SUBMITTING
THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE
INSTITUTION FOR THE YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 1929
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
Washington, November 26, 1929.
To the Congress of the United States:
In accordance with section 5593 of the Revised Statutes of the
United States, I have the honor, in behalf of the Board of Regents,
to submit to Congress the annual report of the operations, expendi-
tures, and condition of the Smithsonian Institution for the year
ended June 30, 1929. I have the honor to be,
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
C. G. Asgor, Secretary.
Ill
init
sae
CON TEES
IST ODNOMICIAIS Meee See Le © 2 hee ea, Spe hea ae ae are
ive SMC HSOnIa MMS GU t LOI seg Seles ps eee te Ete
Outstandingievents Obthesyear! = ye — a oe 2 eh ae ge ee ea
aheTestabusbime mh lees ree ohn ee a ok eee eed
sivep Board votsRegente = ees — bese srys se eer oe eae I el ye ai
1 NSPS GE gap ag ey a Mp l BNEEN AES
Ma therssoteenerall imterestey soe ele oe eee eek eS Le
DTU OVE ECS ESN) IAN GE Rope I Al BA A ll ath) s “PS? SORE UT
Guit. of art,.collection of John Gellatly 5202 2. un.
Division of Hadiation and Organisms. 22 00. gos elo e es
Rx plora ions amd held sworn kes apy cue ley tn) 2 cee ernie ye ee res
Cooperative ethnological and archeological investigations -_-_~_-_-
RUIOIIC ATLOMS Huey 2 4) Sa op ae ae eee ee ia ee ee 2 eee
1 Asp] YE a Ec PH OG ASN LE a a PE
Goyvernmentally supported. pranchesso-2- 25222525. 20 seen eee ees
ING OT er UsVH Se Uti seta canals See epee ay ec Sug ye SI ye le
dt’ DUPE OE Bh Bs ih |STAN ee eo Pa De Ne CI
Hire ers GratlletayanO tag AUat ieee ees ek Spec eee eee SR gs ee
SUICCAU Oly AMIOTICA EuDONGIOSY. c= eyo ee ok ee ee
Taner rclo male exe lnssi epee eee ae reed re ems 0 eth sae epee eet we
National’ ZOolOg I Galh air Rete nee a yee hee ied ie ee a
IAS LEO PMV SICAL O DRE VE LOY Uses ee Mel ee i Se pa
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature_____._....__-_---_--
1s SEES eT EY A pee ea, MSS Se A Dare MONONA A cet RR De i 68
Appendix 1. Report on the United States National Museum__.___-_---.
2. Report on the National Gallery of Art.o2-.......2-..=--
J ReDOLDIOn the: Brees Galleny Of ATGnea ee. eee ae eee
4. Report on the Bureau of American Ethnology -----__------
5. Report on the International Exchanges_______.___._------
6. Report on the National Zoological Park_....._._._._..-..---
7. Report on the Astrophysical Observatory __.....----------
8. Report on the Division of Radiation and Organisms- - - - ---
9. Report on the International Catalogue of Scientific Litera-
LOR RepoOLtonuhe library] soso ae Se ee oe eee eee
[deep oni Ont pulbliGa trom see ete ee ee ere oe ls ee eee eis
12. Subscribers to James Smithson Memorial Edition of the
Smithsonian Scientific Series_________ Ie A i Faget Neel iL
Report of the executive committee of the Board of Regents______------
ipsoceedings of the Board of Regents.i220 500 boo ee ee ee eee
GENERAL APPENDIX
The physics of the universe, by Sir James Jeans_____.___._.__-----------
Counting the stars and some conclusions, by Frederick H. Seares_-_-_-_-- ~~
fhedingering. dryad by Paul Ru Hleyls- 2G jy ee ee lee
+[n part governmentally supported.
VI CONTENTS
What is light? by Arthur H. Compton
Artificial cold,’ by Gordon Biyilkes): (eee iy We ee
Photosyrthesis; by &. CO: Caizaly: ae ee ee
Newly discovered chemical elements, by N. M. Bligh__________________
Synthetic perfumes, by H. Stanley Redgrove__________________-__.-.-
Xcraying tie carta, Dy Reginald A. Waly sae et Se see ee
Extinction and extermination, by T."P. Tolmachofi__-~_ == == == 222
The Gulf Stream and its problems, by H. A. Marmer_________________-
hemmystery Ollite, "by. G. Domnane = tee tee a eee ee
The transition from live to dead: the nature of filtrable viruses, by A. E.
ROY C ODE ore ee ea me cece ae a ge hee
Heritable variations, their production by X rays, and their relation to
EV OMIELOWS iy tly ie Vee ot ee ae ee ek ne ean
Social parasitism in birds, by Herbert Friedmann____________________-
iow Imsectacily.) by IRS Be SMOG eG rAsS so. oe ee = fe Ne eae ne ee ere os og
Giimate and miprations oye. (©. Curva. ee ayer eae een Anim Cond
Ur of the Chaldees: more royal tombs, by C. Leonard Woolley________-
The population of ancient America, by H. J. Spinden__________________
The aborigines of the ancient island of Hispaniola, by Herbert W. Krieger_
The beginning of the mechanical transport era in America, by Carl W.
J DILET a 029 0 OMS a a ae ena cs odlecs Acacia emntahales = sina jrn siya Sy bebe Wee wee, 2).
The servant in the house; a brief history of the sewing machine, by Fred-
CELE il leppal Bey 10, ope Rea e p St e Steee e p Skg ie D, Saenh det
Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (1843-1928), by Bailey Willis__________-
iBideyo INOPuchiy by Sinionmmlexnerss: os Me eee ene ee ee
Page
215
229
237
245
253
261
269
285
309
323
345
363
383
423
437
451
473
507
559
585
595
LIST OF PLATES
Counting the stars (Seares):
JEANS yoy d lee ran orale alas Rata eae sp mg iy Mp 2 tlh pA pelt eg enchant Pte LY 2
What is light? (Compton):
JPA Heyayh 1] tay mask aes TO va ae ie OO ay Cea ee er
Artificial cold (Wilkes):
LEVEY Gi) Aen al eee ee Ne UCLA Ok So SPA
Ur of the Chaldees (Woolley):
TEAS rays j Iba I feb A ede ey ae aa dll steepn ooh, «pall any Weare Reena
Abrogines of Hispaniola (Krieger):
2AM HaPeyesa le=PA7 (A I een pS Doe ee ee eee eee,
Beginning of mechanical transport (Mitman):
TELA Ges ili) chain nnarr cae mnet.. Feomun hal SEVEN Umer nee ar eee LENE Ne
Jedi ets, VOTO ete a8 Ss ol) CET Rh eh sm a EN On a TE
Pistest Ges ye ke Pees ee pl Pee ie Dee 8 ae
LEAL aretey ‘WL 7p ies ee Some ebm peed Pv ape PO Me ie Sa Ne
IPL CES et Ace ears eh 4 oe yer ee ae ee arate) Ue ae OS
History of sewing machine (Lewton):
Sed BAGG H GS Y st Least senate A a Rs i i er wat eg be fed ee ca EAN Mec g
Chamberlin (Willis) :
Noguchi (Flexner):
Gemeinde ein eee 2
th ee a ot
ES Tu at
WA ROLY FE
ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE SMITHSONIAN
INSTITUTION FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1929
SUBJECTS
1. Annual report of the secretary, giving an account of the opera-
tions and condition of the Institution for the year ending June 30,
1929, with statistics of exchanges, etc.
2. Report of the executive committee of the Board of Regents,
exhibiting the financial affairs of the Institution, including a state-
ment of the Smithsonian fund, and receipts and expenditures for
the year ending June 30, 1929.
3. Proceedings of the Board of Regents for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1929.
4. General appendix, comprising a selection of miscellaneous
memoirs of interest to collaborators and correspondents of the Insti-
tution, teachers, and others engaged in the promotion of knowledge.
These memoirs relate chiefly to the calendar year 1929.
Ix
THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
June 30, 1929
Presiding officer ex officio.—HERBERT Hoover, President of the United States.
Chancellor.—WILLIAM Howarp Tart, Chief Justice of the United States.
Members of the Institution:
HERBERT Hoover, President of the United States.
CHARLES CurTIS, Vice President of the United States.
Witt1am Howarp Tart, Chief Justice of the United States.
Henry L. STIMSON, Secretary of State.
ANDREW W. MELLON, Secretary of the Treasury.
JAMES W. Goon, Secretary of War.
Witi1aAm D. MitcHELL, Attorney General.
Water FI’. Brown, Postmaster General.
CHARLES FrRANcIS ADAMs, Secretary of the Navy.
Ray LYMAN WIxbour, Secretary of the Interior.
ARTHUR M. Hype, Secretary of Agriculture.
Ropert P. Lamont, Secretary of Commerce.
JAMES JOHN Davis, Secretary of Labor.
Regents of the Institution:
WILLIAM Howarp Tart, Chief Justice of the United States, Chancellor.
CHARLES CuRTIS, Vice President of the United States.
RrEED Smoot, Member of the Senate.
JOSEPH T. Rosprinson, Member of the Senate.
CLAUDE A. SwaNSoNn, Member of the Senate.
ALBERT JOHNSON, Member of the House of Representatives.
R. WaLTon Moore, Member of the House of Representatives.
WALTER H. Newton, Member of the House of Representatives.
Rogert 8. BRooKkines, citizen of Missouri.
IRwiIn B. LAUGHLIN, citizen of Pennsylvania.
Freperic A. DreLano, citizen of Washington, D. C.
DwicHTt W. Morrow, citizen of New Jersey.
CHARLES Evans Hugues, citizen of New York.
JOHN C. MrERRIAM, citizen of Washington, D. C.
Executive committee—FrRrEDERIC A. DELANO, R. WALTON Moore, JoHN C.
MERRIAM.
Secretary. CHARLES G. ABBOT.
Assistant Secretary.—ALEXANDER WETMORE.
Chief Clerk.—Harry W. Dorsey.
Treasurer and disbursing agent.—NIcHOLAS W. DORSEY.
Editor —WeExsSTER P. TRUE.
Librarian.—WiLiiaAM L. CorpBin.
Appointment ‘clerk —JamEs G. TRAYLOR.
Property clerk.—JAMES H. HI.
1 Resigned June 30, 1929; Hon. Robert Luce appointed on July 1, 1929, to succeed him.
XI
XII ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
NATIONAL MUSEUM
Assistant Secretary (in charge).—ALEXANDER WETMORE.
Administrative assistant to the Secretary.—WILLIAM DE C. RAVENEL.
Head curators.—WALTER HovueH, LEONHARD STEJNEGER, GEORGE P. MERRILL.
OCurators.—Pavut Bartscu, Ray S. BaAssteR, THEODORE T. Betote, AusTIn H.
CLARK, FRANK W. CLARKE, FREDERICK V. CovILLE, CHARLES W. GILMORE,
WaLterR HoucH, LELAND O. Howarp, ALES HrpriéKa, Nei~ M. Jupp, HERBERT
W. Kriecer, FrepertcK L. Lewron, Grorce P. MeRRILy, GERRIT S. MIvirr, Jr.,
CARL W. MITMAN, WALDO L. SCHMITT, LZONHARD STEJNEGER.
Associate curators —JoHN M. ALpRrics, CHEesTrR G. GILBERT, HLLSwoRTH P.
Kine, Wittiam R. Maxon, CHARLES HW. REssER, CHARLES W. RICHMOND,
Davin WHITE.
Ohief of correspondence and documents.—HERBERT S. BRYANT.
Disbursing agent.—NIcHOLAS W. DORSEY.
Superintendent of buildings and labor—J AMES S. GOLDSMITH.
Editor—Marcus BENJAMIN.
Assistant Librarian.—IsaBEL L. TOWNER.
Photographer —ARTHUR J. OLMSTED.
Property cierk.—WiLLIAM A. KNOWLES.
Engineer—CLaAYToN R. DENMARK.
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Director.—WILLIAM H. HOLMES.
FREER GALLERY OF ART
Curator—JOHN HELLERTON LODGE.
Associate curator —CaRL WHITING BISHOP.
Assistant curator.—GRACE DUNHAM GUEST.
Associate-—KATHARINE NASH RHOADES.
Superintendent.—JOHN Bunpy.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
Chief —MATTHEW W. STIRLING.
Ethnologist’—JoHN P. Harrineton, JOHN N. B. HEwITt, Francts LA FLESCHE,
TRUMAN MICHELSON, JOHN R. SWANTON.
Archeologist —FRANK H. H. Roserts, Jr.
Editor.—StTANLEY SEARLES.
Librarian.—E.ia LEARY.
Tilustrator.—Dr LANCEY GILL.
INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES
Secretary (in charge).—CHARLES G. ABBOT.
Ohief clerk.—CoaTEes W. SHOEMAKER.
NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK
Director —WILLIAM M. MANN.
Assistant director—ARTHUR B. BAKER.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY XIII
ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY
Director.—CHARLES G. ABBOT.
Research assistant.—FREDERICK Hi. Fow 1s, Jr.
Research assistant.—LoyaL B. ALDRICH.
DIVISION OF RADIATION AND ORGANISMS
Research associate in charge.—FREDERICK S. BRACKETT.
Consulting plant physiologist—BHarL S. JOHNSTON.
Research assistant.—LELAND B. CLARK.
REGIONAL BUREAU FOR THE UNITED STATES, INTERNATIONAL
CATALOGUE OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE
Assisiant in charge—LkronaRgp C. GUNNELL
PTCA OA HE
fa eng
iol
MSS) veo
REPORT
OF THE
SECRETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN
INSTITUTION
C. G. ABBoT
FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1929
To the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution:
GENTLEMEN: I have the honor to submit herewith my report show-
ing the activities and condition of the Smithsonian Institution and
the Government bureaus under its administrative charge during the
fiscal year ended June 30, 1929. The first 22 pages contain a summary
account of the affairs of the Institution. Appendixes 1 to 11 give
more detailed reports of the operations of the United States National
Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Freer Gallery of Art, the
Bureau of American Ethnology, the International Exchanges, the
National Zoological Park, the Astrophysical Observatory, the Divi-
sion of Radiation and Organisms, the United States Regional Bureau
of the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, the Smith-
sonian library, and of the publications issued under the direction of
the Institution; and Appendix 12 contains a list of subscribers up to
November 15, 1929, to the James Smithson Memorial Edition of the
Smithsonian Scientific Series.
THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
OUTSTANDING EVENTS OF THE YEAR
The year has been gratifyingly and unexpectedly rich in progress.
Among many items of importance it is even hard to select the great-
est. The National Government and many friends of the Institution
have added materially to its income——Mr. John Gellatly, of New
York, has made the gift of his extensive collection comprising classic
American and European paintings, outstanding specimens of jew-
ellers’ art, tapestries, furniture, and oriental art, valued altogether
at several million dollars, to the Smithsonian for eventual exhibition
in the National Gallery—A new department, the Division of Radia-
tion and Organisms, has been added to the research laboratories of
1
2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the Institution, and already has made notable headway under Dr.
F. S. Brackett, its director, in its preparation to add fundamental
data to our knowledge of the dependence on radiation of the growth
of plants and the health of animals and human beings. In “onnec-
tion with this division, four rooms in the basement and four in the
flag tower of the Smithsonian Building, heretofore of little value,
have been fitted for laboratories and offices, and much modern labora-
tory furniture and apparatus have been purchased.—Four volumes
of the 12-volume set entitled “Smithsonian Scientific Series ” have
been issued by the publishers in beautiful form. Many expressions
of pleased appreciation have been received from subscribers, and the
royalties to the Institution, as author, to be used for promoting re-
search and publication, have exceeded anticipation. The remaining
eight volumes of the series are far advanced in preparation, and will
be at least equally as interesting and beautiful as those already
issued.—Many expeditions of excellent accomplishment have gone
forth from the National Museum, the Bureau of American Ethnology,
the Astrophysical Observatory, and the Freer Gallery to remote quar-
ters of the earth—Numerous monographs and original research
articles have been published, embodying valuable results of observa-
tion.—By cooperation with the War Department the military exhibits
in the National Museum have been entirely rearranged. Along with
this have gone other extensive improvements in the exhibitions.—
Under the act of 1928, by which Congress appropriated $20,000 to
promote cooperative investigations in ethnology and archeology in
the several States to be expended at the discretion of the Smithsonian,
allotments totaling over $9,000 have been made for projects in 10
different States.—Great progress has been made in the improvement
of the hbrary.—A new building for birds, believed to be the best
for this purpose in the whole world, has been added to the equip-
ment of the National Zoological Park. Congress has gratifyingly
made provision for a new reptile house equally well designed—All
of these and many other matters of scarcely less interest will be men-
tioned in more detail in the pages which immediately follow, as well
as in the special reports of the different branches of the Institution.
THE ESTABLISHMENT
The Smithsonian Institution was created by act of Congress in
1846, according to the terms of the will of James Smithson, of Eng-
land, who, in 1826, bequeathed his property to the United States of
America “to found at Washington, under the name of the Smith-
sonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of
knowledge among men.” In receiving the property and accepting
the trust, Congress determined that the Federal Government was
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 3
without authority to administer the trust directly, and therefore
constituted an “establishment ” whose statutory members are “ the
President, the Vice President, the Chief Justice, and the heads of the
executive departments.”
THE BOARD OF REGENTS
The affairs of the Institution are administered by a Board of
Regents whose membership consists of “the Vice President, the
Chief Justice, three members of the Senate, and three Members of
the House of Representatives, together with six other persons other
than Members of Congress, two of whom shall be resident in the
city of Washington and the other four shall be inhabitants of some
State, but no two of them the same State.” One of the Regents is
elected chancellor by the board; in the past the selection has fallen
upon the Vice President or the Chief Justice; and a suitable person
is chosen by the Regents as Secretary of the Institution, who is also
secretary of the Board of Regents, and the executive officer directly
in charge of the Institution’s activities.
The only change occurring in the personnel of the board during
the year was the termination of the Vice Presidency of General
Dawes, and the succession of Charles Curtis, March 4, 1929.
The roll of the Regents at the close of the fiscal year was as fol-
lows: William H. Taft, Chief Justice of the United States, chan-
cellor; Charles Curtis, Vice President of the United States; mem-
bers from the Senate, Reed Smoot, Joseph T. Robinson, Claude A.
Swanson; members from the House of Representatives, Albert John-
son, R. Walton Moore, Walter H. Newton;! citizen members, Robert
S. Brookings, Missouri; Irwin B. Laughlin, Pennsylvania; Frederic
A. Delano, Washington, D. C.; Dwight W. Morrow, New Jersey;
Charles Evans Hughes, New York; and John C. Merriam, Wash-
ington, D. C.
FINANCES
The permanent investments of the Institution consist of the fol-
lowing:
Total endowment for general or specific purposes (exclusive of
reer MUNUS LE eee Wien iaIy ns baat ery woah fie alldereres $1, 648, 389. 45
Itemized as follows:
Deposited in the Treasury of the United States, as provided by
1 Resigned June 30, 1929; Hon. Robert Luce, of Massachusetts, appointed on July 1,
1929, to succeed him.
82322—30——2
4
Deposited in the consolidated fund:
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Miscellaneous securities, ete., either purchased or acquired
by gift; cost or value at date acquired
Springer, Frank, fund for researches, etc. (bonds)
Walcott, Charles D. and Mary Vaux, fund for researches, ete.
(stocks)
Younger, Helen Walcott, fund (real-estate notes and stock
held in trust)
STO Geil een eS Pa a eh aah So Ne ee te
$557,056. 95
30, 000. 00
11, 520. 00
49, 812. 50
1, 648, 389. 45
The invested funds of the Institution are described as follows:
United Consoli- | Separ
Fong Tretgey | dated fund funds” | Total
AST OTE TTATNC pW sy LR ews Oe A oe $14, 000. 00 | $48, 678.65 |_...-.-.--_- $62, 678. 65
Bacon. Virginia euray. LUNG) ea een eee ee ene een aateares Garsgeraa cree ree 65, 494. 44
Baird bucy Merdund bss 25. ese See ees ae eee aes WOT SH 22s Sete ae oe 1, 978. 22
Ganfields@olleetion find.) 9-2 3 See sa ee ea OF Onde sn aaa 49, 270. 77
Cascysylhonias iy und see eese = ne eee ene eee nee DZL2s Sou eso se ee 3, 212. 83
Chamberlain fandss 3 225-8 Se eels eh a eee S SGnGh1e 50) 42 Ps 36, 811. 50
Min GOWANeM tn Ge ee oan ene ee ee en ees (RRC Dee) | eae 61, 427. 74
Mabelifund)s 5-62. 2s oe Bocce Stee See eee eases OOS OCH |= ser see | Cees oe 500. 00
TR CHE MD One HT eee te ee se | as Cee ey eee ee. See '58259:.50)\| 22 es 2252 5, 259. 50
Hfamiltonefunds 202.228 <a fo ee eee 2, 500. 00 20580. Meee aes 3, 026. 85
TONY At ALOLIMO UT Cee eee ne ee See eee tte 1 5808 Obs Sen- = eee oe = 1, 580. 95
Hodgkins fund:
Gonoral s22 =< eas tgs ce ie Se 116 OD0800))|) 989204010) | Siena onan 155, 204. 10
Specific so. vre nee ont oe eee nearest oe naee TODS OOO 00" Ce aaa 3 ae es 100, 000. 00
pighes sy orucey ind. sae eeere see eee nee eee eee 7866.) 12) ||. 5 ets 282 17, 856. 12
Miver, @atherineWrttndass= sees = 8 ane eee eee PLUUGY PL BRI meena eee eee 20, 672. 33
Pell Comeliawuivingston, tune ss=-2 2s ee == aaa e |S eean ener BLOGs OIE eon eres 3, 156. 10
Poore, Lucy T. and George W., fund--_-~------------ 265670. 00)|| 929, 220:470)\|-== se 22s 55, 890. 73
Reid, Addison Ri funds 2 2222 2h ee ee 10,0003 OO); 10,569.23) (Sa e eee oes 22, 569. 23
Rhees fund_-_-__- ppp hg Leh thE Sea ag Shs he He 590. 00 (PES B Bye tae ae oe De 1, 208. 33
Ropbling fin Gee enns es cy fa eee whe ee heey 2) A T67 2O8593 1 2. see ee = 157, 758. 93
Sanford, George vH., fund 2052-25 ee 1, 100. 00 1163588) aac eee 2, 263. 88
Smithson fed ee eS ek eee ER ngs ee ae 727, 640. 00 DBO (bees ek eee S 729, 235. 75
Sprlngersehinarikes fin dss 2 nese ae SR ae) Bo ee ae See eee ens $30, 000. 00 30, 000. 00
Walcott,.@harles D) and Many Vaux, fund—- 2...) eo 11, 520. 00 11, 520. 00
Younvers Helen Walcot; Unde sass ae en ee ee a eo te 49, 812. 50 49, 812. 50
TNO tale obs ee ee ce a ee er oa ee 1, 000, 000. 00 | 557,056.95 | 91,332. 50 | 1, 648, 389. 45
The Institution gratefully acknowledges gifts from the following
donors:
Dr. W. lL. Abbott, for further contribution for archeological explorations
in Dominican Republic and for expeditions to Haiti and Santo Domingo.
Mr. Francis B. Atkinson, for general endowment fund of the Institution.
Carnegie Corporation, for expenses of exhibition of Ranger paintings.
I. M. Casanowicz, estate of, for general endowment fund of the Institution.
Mrs. Laura Welsh Casey, further contribution to the Thomas Lincoln Casey
fund, for researches in Coleoptera.
Hon. Charles G. Dawes, for search in Spain for valuable ancient documents.
Mr. Fairfax Harrison, for general endowment fund of the Institution.
Hon. Irwin B. Laughlin, for general endowment fund of the Institution.
Mr. Dean Mathey, for general endowment fund of the Institution.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 5
Missouri Historical Society, for further studies of the language of the Osage
Indians.
Research Corporation, further contribution for research in radiation.
Rockefeller Foundation, for research in radiation by Dr. Anders K. Angstrém.
Mr. John A. Roebling, further contribution for researches in solar radiation
and study of world weather records.
Stanco (Inc.), for botanical expedition to Peru.
Messrs. E. H. Siegler and C. H. Popenoe, for valuable patents covering
insecticide.
Freer Gallery of Art.—The invested funds of the Freer bequest are
classified as follows:
Court ,angd, crounds, fundiesc3 len eros? ite oth hans stegersts $574, 524. 12
Court and grounds maintenance fundies oo eo 148, 112. 53
SUT oie op ra GG UP ok BE tS RAR ee Pl NT Se PERRIER «01 596, 301. 18
Residuary legacy. 2—~ 2. pa eee’ a irre sei 1 ery rs eee es 8 0, 917, 116. 19
Motel 2 ee ee ee a a 5, 236, 054. 02
The practice of depositing on time in local trust companies and
banks such revenues as may be spared temporarily has been contin-
ued during the past year, and interest on these deposits has amounted
to $5,631.82.
Cash balances, receipts and disbursements during the fiscal year?
Cash epalance onvhandedune*sO; 1928. a ee a $238, 369. 41
Receipts :
Cash from invested endowments and from miscel-
laneous sources for general use of the Insti-
GUE LO 2 eae ee eet Roan se ig a Pin ate, pep eeerre Bee yarn) $61, 309. 56
Cash for increase of endowments for specific use. 3, 000. 00
Cash for increase of endowments for general use_ 6, 535. 00
Cash gifts for specific use (not to be invested)____ 50, 111. 01
Cash received ag royalties from sales of Smith-
sonian Sctentific Series 22 — ers ee 14, 454. 01
Cash gain from sale, ete., of securities (to be
aT THESES (3) es ieee cee Le ates Lk ORR Uy Ree 22, 944. 95
Cash income from endowments for specific use
other than Freer endowment, and from miscel-
TANCOUS SOUNCES) = 262 8ese 6a 82, 425, 70
Total receipts other than Freer endowment______________ 240, 780. 22
Cash income from Freer endowment:
income from investments 282, 435.13
Gain from sale, ete, of securities (to be
IMIVESTS!) eee Bese be OA ee Te ieee eye 940, 476. SO
——_———— 1, 222, 911. 93
1, 702, 061. 57
2This statement does not include Government appropriations under the administrative
charge of the Institution.
* Under resolution of the Board of Regents three-fourths of this income is credited to
the permanent endowment fund of the Institution and one-fourth is made expendable for
general purposes.
6
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Disbursements :
General work of the Institution—
Buildings—care, repair, and alteration_____- $11, 564. 59
Kurniture and fixtures.) 2 746. 06
General administration, .--.—-5--- == so 20, 652. 66
1810) ¢2h a ee ee ee ee 3, 006. 55
Publications (comprising preparation, print-
ine. and GistribUbiGn) —=-=— = ee 16, 865. 75
Researches and explorations.____________---~- 13, 707. 11
International Wxchanges=———2-- = ss %, 921, 67
—_—_——— _ $74, 464. 39
Funds for specific use other than Freer endow-
ment—
Investments made from gifts, from gain from
sales, ete., of securities, and from savings on
ATR CORTON 0 i Ey race A MO a 51, 860. 45
Other expenditures, consisting largely of re-
search work, travel, inerease and care of
special collections, etc., from income of en-
dowment funds and cash gifts for specific
UT SE see te AE ERLE Re yt eS Re nites 2S 118, 498. 06
———————._ 165, 358. 51
Freer endowment—
Operating expenses of gallery, salaries, pur-
chases of art objects, field expenses, etec____ 287, 679. 63
Investments made from gain from sale, etc.,
of securities and from income___------~_~ 957, 564. 76
——___——_ 1, 245, 244. 39
Balance) June sO) OOO ee ee es Ses Se 216, 994. 28
1, 702, 061. 57
Recapitulation of receipts, exclusive of Freer funds
Cash balance Gn phand SUN sO ODS soe a ee ae eee ee $238, 369. 41
Receipts :
General uses—
Kor addition ico endowment. 222 22a. eer $25, 254. 99
Reserved! as. imcomesere win ee 64, 923. 06
a 90, 178. 05
Specific uses—
Accretions to endowment__---__---__------- 18, 065. 47
Gifts for specific use (not to be invested)_--- 50,111.01
Cash income from endowments for addition
EO CT OW TNT CM Da eae 6, 258. 39
Cash income from endowments and from
other sources for conducting researches,
CXPLlOTATLONS (CLC, 282 Se eee Ee el ae 76, 172. 31
——_—___—__ 150, 602. 18
Total receipts, exclusive of Freer funds__--_--_---- 240, 780. 23
#Includes salaries of secretary and certain others.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
Statement of endowment funds
Specific pur-
General pur- | poses other | Freer endow-
poses than Freer ment
endowment
Hndowment, Junelso; 192863 {Te le ers eee $995, 632.81 | $598,668.69 | $4, 268, 244. 26
Increase trom. income. witts, etc. or ee 21, 347. 69 8, 742. 89 5, 671. 62
Increase from gain from sales, etce.-..---------------------- 4, 443. 21 16, 366. 66 951, 893. 14
Increase from stoekidividends- £2 LkiGs ys Lave see ok 962. 04 2, 225. 46 10, 245. 00
Endowment, June 30} 19202-2055 = es sere 1, 022, 385. 75 626, 003. 70 5, 236, 054. 02
The following appropriations were made by Congress for the
Government bureaus under the administrative charge of the Smith-
sonian Institution for the fiscal year 1929:
SACS RAT OXPCUSCGe Pica a eee a ee Le ee $32, 500. 00
LRSM ACTOS Obra ee 48, 208. 00
ANSEHEN ES H dled DELON ON (Gy s-0 eee eee ee 60, 300. 00
Cooperative: ethuolosical researches. = 2-2 =- =e aaa eee eee 20, 000. 00
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature___________-_-_-_ 7, 460. 00
Asirophiysicalni@ bserviator yes ete See Ses rere Sere ee eae 33, 200. 00
National Museum:
Harniturepands fixtures. 2.22 slp ae ee $29, 560. 00
EL eaten Serre ML Oc Gr ee ee ee ee 84, 040. 00
Preservation Ol COMCCLIONS net 502, 546. 00
Buildine! repairs)2 2 seo eee) Oe ie ee eee 17, 730. 00
Safeguarding dome of rotunda, Natural History
ESTP NR 9 os Ee AN Dee BA ete Se Re een 80, 000. 00
BUS OV RS a a eg oe 2, 000. 00
TER OST Eg Spt eco Are EE SP NE eS ROR Sa ESE 450. 00
—————-___ 716, 326. 00
NationalaGalleny yor eAa ts te: tae We eh rs ee ee ee 31, 168. 00
National Zoolovicalhjeark = OF iy Mie Eis ee as SEs 182, 050. 00
National Zoological Park, building for birds--..- + _-___-_-_- 30, 000. 00
Perini wand qin dial eee cee oe Pe Lae ee es ee 95, 000. 00
YTD ere eM cp OP RYE MT PL et A ep RP 1, 256, 212. 0C
MATTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST
FINANCIAL
Several new features have been introduced by the treasurer, Mr.
N. W. Dorsey, and by the executive committee of the Board of
Regents in their financial reports. Returns from royalties on the
Smithsonian Scientific Series appear for the first time. Reported
for six months, only, these amount to nearly $15,000. The Regents
have directed that one-fourth of all sums to be received from such
royalties shall be treated as income, the remainder as endowment.
5 Work done under direction of Supervising Architect and funds disbursed by U. S.
Treasury.
8 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Tt was felt that the immediate application of a quarter of these funds
to research would better promote progress and attract greater inter-
est among friends of the Institution than would the assignment of
the entire proceeds of royalties to the permanent endowment of the
Institution.
Tables have been prepared showing the condition and objects of
the many special funds and showing the increases in general and
special endowment from time to time during the history of the
Smithsonian. Certain funds of fairly general application had been
allowed to accumulate for a good many years. The chief of the
Bureau of Ethnology having reported the critical emergency to eth-
nology which inheres in the imminent decease of the last surviving
members of certain Indian tribes, the secretary directed that of the
annual income of the said funds, an amount totaling about $3,500
should be devoted for several years to collecting this vanishing
knowledge.
In accord with the recommendations of the Institution’s financial
advisers, Messrs. Scudder, Stevens, and Clark, of New York, and
with the approval of the permanent committee of the Board of
Regents, a considerable part of the endowment has been held for
several years in the stocks of widely diversified and well-established
companies and in short-term bonds. In this way the Institution has
been able to share in the prosperity of our country and has enjoyed
a considerable appreciation of its funds.
Especial mention is due the cooperation of the Research Corpora-
tion of New York, whose grants of funds have helped greatly to
establish the new Division of Radiation and Organisms.
GIFT OF ART COLLECTION OF JOHN GELLATLY
The most important art collection to be received by the Institution
since the Freer gift came during the year from Mr. John Gellatly,
of New York City. The collection, valued at several million dollars,
comprises more than 100 works of American art, some choice Euro-
pean paintings, and large collections of glass, jewels, tapestries,
oriental specimens, and other valuable material, all provided with
beautiful cases: Mr. Gellatly’s offer was considered by the National
Gallery of Art Commission and its acceptance highly recommended
to the Smithsonian Regents. The Regents acted favorably upon the
recommendation, and subsequently Congress passed the following
joint resolution, approved by the President on June 6, 1929:
Whereas Mr. John Gellatly has offered to the Nation his art collection for
eventual permanent exhibition in the National Gallery of Art under the adminis-
tration of the Smithsonian Institution; and
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 9
Whereas the National Gallery of Art Commission has recommended to the
Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution the acceptance of this collec-
tion on account of its high merit; and
Whereas the said Board of Regents have approved in principle this recom-
mendation: Therefore be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United Siates
of America in Congress assembled, That the Smithsonian Institution is re-
quested to convey suitable acknowledgment to the donor, and is authorized to
include in its estimates of appropriations such sums as may be needful for
the preservation and maintenance of the collection.
By the terms of the deed of gift the collection is the property of the
Smithsonian Institution in trust for exhibition in the National Gal-
lery of Art. It will remain in the Heckscher Building in New York
City, where it is now housed, for four years. It is hoped that by
the end of that period the National Gallery of Art will have a suit-
able building and the collection can then be transferred to
Washington.
DIVISION OF RADIATION AND ORGANISMS
In the early history of the Smithsonian Institution its operations
were well rounded. The natural history sciences and the physical
sciences shared nearly equally in its work. Of late years only in the
Astrophysical Observatory, and to a minor extent in chemical in-
vestigations in the Department of Geology of the National Museum,
have the physical sciences been represented in the Institution’s re-
searches. However, the work of the Astrophysical Observatory has
developed a body of experience in the measurement of radiation and
of heat, and a collection of large pieces of optical apparatus, which,
combined, comprise a unique preparation for research on the rela-
tions of radiation to life.
It is therefore with unusual satisfaction that I record the establish-
ment on May 1, 1929, of the Division of Radiation and Organisms.
The staff is at present composed of Dr. F. S. Brackett, research
associate in charge; Dr. E. 8. Johnston, consulting plant physiologist ;
Mr. L. B. Clark, research assistant; and Miss V. P. Stanley, stenog-
rapher and laboratory assistant. With these cooperate the staff of
the Astrophysical Observatory. Offices have been made available by
remodeling the flag tower of the Smithsonian Building and installing
an elevator, and laboratories are being constructed and equipped in
the basement. These include plant-growth chambers, spectrograph
and photometer rooms, a physical laboratory accommodating infra-
red spectroscopes, a chemical laboratory, and a glass-blowing room.
At the close of the year work was nearly completed on the prepara-
tion of these laboratories and general equipment and special apparatus
were being arranged for.
10 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Investigations upon living organisms will at first be confined to the
growth of plants under rigidly controlled physical and chemical
conditions, the control extending to soil, gases, temperature, humid-
ity, and intensity and color of light. General biological problems
will be attacked through spectroscopic investigations of the compli-
cated molecules which are a part of living organisms; that is, a study
of the radiation arising from the internal vibrations of the molecules
themselves. The work will be done in close cooperation with the
Fixed Nitrogen Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture, as
well as with men of diverse training in the biological sciences, so that
modern specialization may be taken advantage of in these studies on
the border line of several sciences.
EXPLORATIONS AND FIELD WORK
The field expeditions sent out under the administration or coopera-
tion of the Institution as an important part of its program in the
increase of knowledge numbered 29 during the year. They pertained
chiefly to anthropology, geology, biology, and astrophysics, and many
thousands of specimens and much valuable information resulted from
them. Preliminary illustrated accounts of the work appeared in the
annual exploration” pamphlet issued by the Institution, and brief
notices of many of the expeditions will be found in the reports of
certain of the bureaus under Smithsonian direction, appended hereto.
The Institution is able to bear the expense of but a very small propor-
tion of the explorations, the rest being supported by cooperative ar-
rangements with other governmental and scientific establishments and
private individuals. .
The year’s expeditions visited such widely scattered regions as
China, Alaska, Canada, Labrador, Haiti, Cuba, Honduras, various
European countries, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and the Philippines,
besides 15 States in this country. Among the more extended expedi-
tions may be mentioned Dr. Paul Bartsch’s molluscan work in Cuba;
investigations of the ancient Eskimo culture of northwestern Alaska,
by Dr. A. Hrdlicka and Mr. Henry B. Collins; the joint zoological
and archeological expedition of Messrs. Miller and Krieger to the
Dominican Republic and Mr. Arthur J. Poole’s exploration of
Haitian caves; the zoological collecting of the Rev. David C.
Graham and the Freer Gallery’s archeological work under Mr. Carl
W. Bishop in China; and the botanical explorations in Honduras by
Mr. Paul C. Standley.
COOPERATIVE ETHNOLOGICAL AND ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS
As stated in my last report, Congress in 1928 passed an act au-
thorizing the appropriation of $20,000 for cooperative ethnological
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY ei
and archeological investigations, the Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution being designated to pass upon the merit of the proposed
work and to make available from the money so appropriated a sum
equal to that provided by any State, educational institution, or
scientific organization in the United States, such sum not to exceed
$2,000 in any one State in any one year. The direction of the work
and the division of the result thereof was also placed under the
Secretary of th he Smithsonian. During the past year 16 allotments
for cooperative projects have been approved as follows:
1928
June 19. State archeologist of Tennessee, to conduct archeological investigations
in the Great Smoky Mountains, $500.
July 16. Indiana Historical Bureau, to make an archeological survey of the
southeast portion of the State of Indiana, together with the excava-
tion of a typical mound, $900.
Nov. 12. Oklahoma Historical Society, for excavation of a group of mounds of
the true Mound Builder type in the northern part of Le Flore County,
Okla., $1,000.
Nov. 20. University of California, to conduct ethnological investigations among
the Yuma and Kamia Indians of southern California, $200.
Nov. 20. University of California, to conduct ethnological investigations among
the Yokuts and Western Mono of San Joaquin Valley and southern
Sierra Nevada, $200.
Noy. 26. University of Chicago, to excavate a series of mounds near Quincy, IlL.,
$1,000.
Nov. 28. University of Washington, to make a study of the Lummi Indians near
Bellingham, Wash., $100.
1929
Apr. 12. University of California, for an investigation of the Nisenan or Southern
Maidu of north central California, $300.
Apr. 12. University of California, for an investigation of the culture of the
Kawaiisu of south central California, $250.
Apr. 12. University of California, for an intensive study of the basketry art of
the Indians of northwestern California, $250.
Apr. 12. University of Michigan, to conduct an archeological survey of Muskegon
and Marquette River Valleys, $500.
June 12. Colorado State Historical Society, to conduct archeological reconnais-
sance and excavations in Montezuma County. Colo., $1,200.
June 12. Logan Museum (Beloit, Wis.), to conduct archeological excavations in
supposed Arikara sites, $500.
June 12. San Diego Museum. to conduct archeological investigations and exca-
vations in western San Diego County, Calif., $800.
June 12. Yale University, to conduct studies of Indian music, $500.
June 27. Indiana Historical Bureau, to continue archeological survey of the State
of Indiana, $1,000.
PUBLICATIONS
Partly through its very extensive correspondence, but chiefly
through its publications, the Institution carries on its program of
diffusion of knowledge. All of its 11 distinct series are scientific in
12 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
character, except the catalogues of the National Gallery of Art. Two
of its less technical publications, namely, the Smithsonian Annual
Report and the annual Smithsonian Explorations and Field Work
pamphlet, are intended primarily for the general reader who is
interested in the progress of science. All of its publications are dis-
tributed free to a large list of libraries and scientific and educational
institutions throughout the world. A limited number of copies of
papers in the Miscellaneous Collections series are held for sale at cost
price.
The Annual Reports of the Smithsonian Institution are perhaps
its most widely known series. Printed each year as a general ap-
pendix to these reports is a selection of about 30 articles chosen from
the periodical literature of the world or specially contributed to illus-
trate in a readable and authoritative manner the advances in all
branches of science for the year. For example, in the report for
1928 the following three typical articles appear:
New Results on Cosmic Rays, by R. A. Millikan and G. H.
Cameron.
The Controversy Over Human “Missing Links,” by Gerrit S.
Miller, jr.
Communication Among Insects, by N. E. McIndoo.
The Institution published during the past year a total of 128 vol-
umes and pamphlets; and 197,573 copies of Smithsonian publica-
tions were distributed, including 26,709 volumes and separates of the
Smithsonian Annual Reports, 31,121 volumes and separates of the
Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 3,773 Smithsonian Special
Publications, 115,128 publications of the National Museum, and
20,112 publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology. More
detailed information regarding the publications is given in the report
of the editor of the Institution, Appendix 11.
SMITHSONIAN SCIENTIFIC SERIES
As a means of augmenting its income for researches and publica-
tions, the Institution entered into an agreement in 1928 with the
Smithsonian Institution Series (Inc.) of New York to publish a
set of 12 volumes to be known as the Smithsonian Scientific Series,
under the editorship of the secretary. These volumes, prepared at
the Institution, present in popular form, profusely illustrated, the
scientific activities of the Smithsonian and the wealth of natural-
history material in the National Museum and Zoological Park. The
sale of the series is entirely in the hands of the New York publishers,
the Institution appearing only in the capacity of author.
The first four volumes appeared during the year and were dis-
tributed to the subscribers to the James Smithson Memorial Edition
————
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 13
whose names will be found in Appendix 12. These volumes were
as follows:
1. The Smithsonian Institution, by Webster Prentiss True.
2. The Sun and the Welfare of Man, by Charles Greeley Abbot.
8. Minerals from Earth and Sky. Part I, The Story of Meteorites, by George
P. Merrill. Part Il, Gems and Gem Minerals, by William F. Foshag.
4, The North American Indians. An account of the American Indians north
of Mexico, compiled from the original sources, by Rose A. Palmer.
The remaining eight volumes are in press or well advanced in
preparation and will be issued in course of the calendar year 1930.
LIBRARY
The Smithsonian library is made up of 10 divisional and 36 sec-
tional libraries. The former include the Smithsonian deposit in the
Library of Congress, which is the main lbrary of the Institution,
the Smithsonian office library, the Langley aeronautical library, and
the seven libraries of the bureaus under direction of the Institution.
The sectional libraries are smaller units maintained in the offices of
members of the staff for use in connection with their work. The
library as a whole comprises about 800,000 volumes, pamphlets, and
charts. Accessions for the year included 7,244 volumes and 7,627
pamphlets and charts, a total of 14,871 items.
Three important changes took place in the library during the
year: The library of the Bureau of American Ethnology, previously
an independent library, was made a division of the Smithsonian
library; a new divisional library was organized for the recently
established Division of Radiation and Organisms of the Institution ;
and the technological library was made a part of the National
Museum library.
The outstanding gift of the year was the Harriman Alaskan
library, brought together by Dr. W. H. Dall and presented by Mrs.
Edward H. Harriman. Other important gifts include 1,000 publi-
cations from Mr. Herbert A. Gill, 500 books and periodicals on
photography from Mr. A. B. Stebbins, and 1,500 publications of the
Philosophical Society of Washington from the society itself.
Items of notable progress in the reorganization of the lbrary
under the direction of the librarian will be found in Appendix 10.
GOVERNMENTALLY SUPPORTED BRANCHES
There have grown up under the initiative of the Smithsonian
Institution and at large expense of its private funds numerous en-
terprises which have become public necessities. Of these, seven, by
direction of Congress, are still administered by the Institution,
though almost entirely supported by governmental appropriations.
14 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
These are: The National Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the
Bureau of American Ethnology, the National Zoological Park, the
Bureau of International Exchanges, the Astrophysical Observatory,
and the Regional Bureau of the International Catalogue of Scien-
tific Literature. Besides these the Smithsonian administers the
Freer Gallery of Art, the gift of Charles L. Freer to the Institution
in trust for the American people.
NATIONAL MUSEUM
Of the governmental branches of the Institution the most impor-
tant is the National Museum. On the one hand its exhibitions en-
tertain and instruct visitors, young and old, from all parts of our
country and the world. On the other it is the repository of an
enormous number of specimens of fauna, flora, geology, mineralogy,
history, ethnology, and archeology, representing not only the United
States but other regions, including the great oceans. These collec-
tions in many instances can no longer be duplicated, owing to the
changed conditions now existing. They form a rich basis for re-
search, valuable both for utilities and for pure science. The duty also
devolves on us of continuing explorations and collecting, especially
where the conditions tend toward the early loss of opportunities now
available. Only in this way can the interests of the future be
protected.
The appropriations for the maintenance of the Museum totaled
$748,024, an increase of $97,064 over the preceding year. A large
part of this increase was provided for much-needed adjustment in
the salaries of the Museum staff, including a revision of the sched-
ules of the various grades and a one-rate increase for employees
who had attained proper efficiency ratings. Although the effect
of this increase in salaries was immediately apparent in improved
morale, the Museum salary rates are still below the average for
similar organizations in the Government service, and it is urgently
hoped that provision may be made for a further one-rate advance.
The question of additions to the personnel is of growing impor-
tance, as in several divisions there are no assistants in training to
carry on the work when the older men are gone, and for certain col-
lections of scientific material there is no specialist in charge. The
acute housing needs of the Museum include additional wings on
the Natural History Building to relieve the present overcrowded
condition and a more adequate and modern building to replace the
old Arts and Industries Building, constructed nearly 50 years ago
and entirely unsuited to present requirements.
The collections have been increased during the year by the addi-
tion of 545,191 specimens, by far the largest part of these coming
to the department of biology. Gifts to schools numbered 3,258
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 15
specimens, and 23,326 were sent out in exchange to other organiza-
tions and individuals. Loans to scientific workers totaled 33,723
specimens.
The department of anthropology received a large collection, gath-
ered by Mr. H. B. Collins, jr., from islands off the coast of Alaska,
of ivory and bone implements illustrative of Eskimo culture from
very early times to the period of Russian exploration. A series
of objects representing the ethnology of the Nigerian and Gold
Coast in Africa was presented by Mr. C. C. Roberts and another
from the region of the Belgian Kongo was given by the Rev. Ellen
I. Burk.
In biology there was received the valuable collection of mammals,
birds, and insects bequeathed by the late Col. Wirt Robinson, and
large series of birds and plants obtained in hitherto unrepresented
areas of western China by Dr. Joseph F. Rock, presented by the
National Geographic Society. Through the continued work of
Dr. David C. Graham large collections of biological material from
western China were received, and Mr. EK. C. Leonard collected large
series of plants in Haiti through the financial assistance of Dr.
W.L. Abbott. The division of mammals received a complete skeleton
of an adult sperm whale, the gift of Mr. Ippei Yokoyama, president
of the Oriental Whaling Co. Nearly 200,000 land shells were col-
lected in Cuba by Dr. Paul Bartsch, under the Walter Rathbone
Bacon Traveling Scholarship.
In the department of geology a meteoric iron weighing 1,060
pounds, from New Mexico, was purchased through the Roebling
Fund. The mineral collections were enriched under the same fund
by the addition of a large mass of pegmatite from Maine, a nugget
of platinum weighing 17.274 ounces from South America, and a cut
gem of benitoite weighing 7.67 carats, the largest known cut
stone of this material. Through the Chamberlain Fund a number
of interesting specimens were added to the gem collection. Among
additions to the fossil collections may be mentioned remains of
dinosaurs of several species brought by Mr. C. W. Gilmore from
Montana, and specimens of Pleistocene mammals collected by Doctor
Gidley in Florida.
The arts and industries department received many valuable addi-
tions, including three early types of Winton automobiles, one of
the engines of the Army airplane Question Mark, which remained in
the air nearly seven days, and an exhibit illustrating the entire
process of shoemaking by machinery. The most important accession
in the division of history was a silk dress worn by Martha Washing-
ton, received as a permanent loan from Mrs. Morris Whitridge.
The usual large number of field expeditions were taken part in
by the Museum; these will be found described briefly in the report on
16 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the Museum, Appendix 1. Work on safeguarding the dome above
the rotunda was completed on May 14, 1929, the work being per-
formed under direction of the engineers in the office of the Super-
vising Architect, Treasury Department. The auditorium and lec-
ture rooms were used during the year for 125 meetings, covering a
wide range of scientific and other activities. Visitors to the Museum
for the year totaled 1,929,625, a large increase over the previous
year. Hight volumes and 61 smaller papers were published, and
115,128 copies of Museum publications were distributed during the
year.
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
The outstanding event of the year was the gift by Mr. John
Gellatly of his important art collection mentioned in detail else-
where in this report. Other than this, but few accessions came to
the gallery, owing to the complete exhaustion of available space and
the fact that no provision has yet been made for the erection of a
new building.
The eighth annual meeting of the gallery commission was held
December 11, 1928. At a special meeting held in April, 1929, the
commission recommended to the Smithsonian Regents the accept-
ance of the Gellatly collection. At this meeting also the chairman,
Mr. Gari Melchers, announced that the Carnegie Corporation had
granted $1,000 for the purpose of assembling the art works so far
purchased under the Ranger fund for temporary exhibition in the
National Gallery. It is intended to hold the exhibition during
December, 1929.
Six special exhibitions were held in the gallery, including a group
of four portraits by M. L. Theo Dubé; a collection of paintings
of the Gothic cathedrals of France, by Pieter van Veen; an exhibit
of early American miniatures, by Edward Greene Malbone; 42
water-color paintings of scenes and figure subjects in India, by
William Spencer Bagdatopoulos; a collection of paintings of Arctic
and Antarctic scenes and character studies by Frank Wilbert Stokes;
and an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by American negro
artists.
FREER GALLERY OF ART*
The year’s additions to the collection by purchase include exam-
ples of early Persian and Egyptian bookbinding; Chinese bronzes;
Syrian glass; Persian, Turkish, and Egyptian manuscripts; Chinese,
Japanese, Indian, and Persian paintings; Chinese, Persian, and west
Asian pottery; and Chinese silver.
6 The Government’s expense in connection with the Freer Gallery of Art consists mainly
in the care of the building and certain other custodial matters. Other expenses are paid
from the Freer endowment funds.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 137
The total attendance for the year was 116,303, of which number
2,101 came to the offices for general information, to study the build-
ing and methods, to see objects in storage, or for other purposes.
Ten classes were given instruction in the study rooms and twelve
groups were given docent service in the galleries.
Gratifying progress has been made in the work of the field service.
Dr. C. Li, of the field staff, was given every assistance by the Chinese
Government in carrying on important archeological excavations in
the Province of Honan. Political conditions in China have improved
steadily during the year, and it may be confidently expected that
the Freer Gallery’s work in the field may now be carried on without
interruption of any kind.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
On August 1, 1928, Mr. Matthew W. Stirling assumed the office of
chief of the Rena succeeding Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, who retired
earlier in the year.
The work of the bureau for the year covered widespread ethno-
logical and archeological investigations relating to numerous Indian
tribes. Mr. Stirling completed a survey of an interesting group of
_ mounds in the vicinity of Tampa Bay, Fla., selecting a large mound
at Palma Sola as a site for later intensive excavation. Doctor
Swanton continued work on the Timucua dictionary, and Doctor
Michelson renewed his researches among the Algonquian tribes of
Oklahoma and the Fox Indians of Iowa. Mr. Harrington completed
his report on the Taos of New Mexico and studied the Karuk of
California. Doctor Roberts brought to completion his archeological
work along the Piedra River in Colorado, uncovering 50 houses of
the prehistoric Pueblo peoples, and prepared a report covering the
investigation. Later in the year he began excavations at a site In east-
ern Arizona, revealing eight pit houses occupied by Basket Maker III
and Pueblo I peoples. Mr. Hewitt continued his ethnological work
among the Iroquois, and Doctor La Flesche revised the manuscript of
his Osage dictionary. Miss Densmore studied the music of various
tribes in Wisconsin.
The bureau published three annual reports, with accompanying
papers, and five bulletins. A total of 20,112 bureau publications
were distributed during the year.
INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGES
The number of packages of publications handled during the year
was 620,485, a large increase over the number handled during the
previous year. The total weight of the packages was 621,373 pounds,
also an increase. These totals include both the packages sent abroad
and those received for distribution in this country.
18 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The total number of sets of United States governmental documents
forwarded to foreign depositories remains at 105, but those sent to
Latvia and Rumania have been increased from partial to full sets,
and in several countries the location of the depository has been
changed. The daily issue of the Congressional Record is now ex-
changed with 101 foreign establishments.
NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK
The total number of animals added to the collections during the
year was 479, including an unusual number of gifts of valuable
specimens, while 541 were lost through death, return of animals,
and exchange, leaving the number on hand at the close of the year
at 2.211. These represent 579 species of mammals, birds, reptiles,
and batrachians. Because of the restrictions of exhibition space, no
attempt has been made to enlarge the collection for the present,
effort being concentrated on selecting through exchange and pur-
chase only choice and especially desirable species. As a result, the
collection is now unusually rich in rare and interesting forms.
The most spectacular addition of the year, and in fact of many
years, was N’Gi, the gorilla purchased with money. remaining from
the Smithsonian-Chrysler expedition funds. On the first Sunday»
that he was shown at the park, despite the fact that it was a cold
day, over 40,000 people came to see him. For the year the attend-
ance reached a total of 2,528,710, a considerable increase over the
preceding year. This total included 497 classes of students, aggre-
gating 30,886 individuals.
Work on the exterior of the new bird house, built last year, was
completed, including the construction of outdoor cages and the lay-
ing out of an attractive approach to the building. The roofs of sev-
eral of the older buildings were repaired, and many of the bridle
paths in the park were altered after consultation with those inter-
ested in riding.
Congress has appropriated $220,000 for the construction of a
reptile house, which for years has been badly needed. In order to
insure the best and most modern building for the exhibition of rep-
tiles and batrachians, the Smithsonian Institution from its private
funds sent the director of the park and Mr. A. L. Harris, municipal
architect, to Europe to study the zoological parks of foreign cities.
Twenty zoos were visited, and through the courtesy of those in
charge many valuable ideas were obtained which will be used in the
preliminary plans for the new reptile house.
Of the several additional buildings needed for the proper develop-
ment of the National Zoo the most urgent is an exhibition building
for apes, lemurs, and small mammals. For the small mammals,
which include some of the most interesting of all animals, there are
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 19
at present practically no suitable quarters, and the great apes, of
which the park has a valuble collection, are now so housed that it is
often impossible for visitors to see them. Tentative plans for a mod-
ern, hygienic building to remedy this situation have been prepared,
the estimated cost being $225,000.
ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY
The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, through its field sta-
tions on Table Mountain, Calif., and Mount Montezuma, Chile, and
the cooperating National Geographic Society station on Mount Bruk-
karos, South West Africa, has continued the exact measurement of
the intensity of the radiation of the sun as it is at mean solar dis-
tance outside the earth’s atmosphere. The California and the Chile
observations, having reached definitive status, now concur within nar-
row limits in their determination of the sun’s variation. ‘The Monte-
zuma values of the solar constant are published by the Weather
Bureau on the Washington daily weather map.
Further investigations have apparently confirmed three definite
periodicities previously noticed in the solar variation of approxi-
mately 11, 15, and 26 months.
At the Mount Wilson, Calif., station, Doctor Abbot and Mr.
Freeman repeated with richer results the bolometric determination
of positions of solar and terrestrial absorption lines and bands in
the infra-red solar spectrum, which formed the main subject of Vol-
ume I of the Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory. Another
research carried through at Mount Wilson was the observation of the
distribution of energy in the spectra of 18 stars and of the planets
Mars and Jupiter, accomplished by Doctor Abbot, with the aid of
Doctor Adams, of the Mount Wilson Observatory, using the 100-
inch telescope and a sensitive radiometer.
Preparation of the text of Volume V of the Annals, to contain the
numerous observations since 1920, was begun during the year, and
it is hoped that the volume will be ready for publication in the
fiscal year 1931.
INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE
Publication of the International Catalogue was suspended in 1922
because of lack of financial support, but the United States bureau,
conforming with an agreement made with other bureaus, has con-
tinued to keep records of current scientific periodicals and to do other
necessary work in order that actual indexing may be resumed when
reorganization of the catalogue becomes possible. Expenses have
been kept at the absolute minimum consistent with maintaining the
bureau intact.
82322—30——3
20 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The assistant in charge of the bureau has during the year drawn
up a detailed plan whereby the work of the catalogue could be re-
organized and publication resumed. The initial capital required
under this plan would be $75,000 for equipping a printing plant and
maintaining the central bureau for one year. After the first year
the enterprise would again be self-supporting through the sale of
the catalogue to subscribers. At the close of the past year the assist-
ant in charge was in correspondence regarding the plan with Prof.
Henry E. Armstrong, F. R. S., chairman of the executive committee,
in whom the 1922 Brussels Convention vested authority to consider
and propose plans for resuming publication.
NECROLOGY
ROBERT RIDGWAY
Robert Ridgway, curator of birds, died at Olney, Ill., March 25,
1929. He was born at Mount Carmel, Il., July 2, 1850, and was early
attracted to natural-history subjects. When a boy of 14 years he
came to the attention of Professor Baird, who later secured for him
the position of naturalist on the fortieth parallel survey under Clar-
ence King. He went to San Francisco via Panama in May, 1867, and
spent three years in the field. He prepared a report on the collec-
tions made by him, which was published in 1877. In the meantime,
Professor Baird had projected a work on birds in conjunction with
Dr. Thomas M. Brewer, and Mr. Ridgway was engaged to provide the
technical descriptions. This work, the History of North American
Birds, was published in three large volumes in 1874 and covered the
land birds only. In 1884 the two volumes on water birds appeared,
completing a memorable undertaking.
Mr. Ridgway was employed at intervals by the Smithsonian In-
stitution up to 1874, when he was designated as ornithologist, a posi-
tion he held under varying titles to July 1, 1880, when he became
curator of birds, and continued under this title until the date of his
death. He was a very busy worker, devoted to his subject, and spent
little time in recreation. His first published note appeared in the
American Naturalist, in 1869, and from that date to the present his
communications were frequent, amounting to well over 500 titles in
all, exclusive of his more pretentious works. In 1886 he published
a Nomenclature of Colors which was quickly adopted by naturalists
and became the standard for descriptive work, to be replaced only
by the same author’s Color Standards and Color Nomenclature issued
in 1912. In 1887 his Manual of North American Birds made its
appearance, followed by a second edition in 1896.
For many years Mr. Ridgway had been collecting material and
data for a technical treatise on the birds of North and Middle Amer-
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY elit
ica, a work that Professor Baird had in mind years ago, and when
authorized by the late Doctor Goode to produce such a work he
was well prepared. From 1901 to 1919 eight parts of this work,
Bulletin No. 50 of the United States National Museum, were issued,
and he was engaged on the manuscript of the ninth and tenth parts
at the time of his death.
In recognition of the quality of his work he received many honors
from scientific societies both at home and abroad. Some years ago
he was granted the Walker Grand Prize, issued by the Boston Society
of Natural History, the Daniel Giraud Elliot gold medal, and the
William Brewster medal and prize. He was a member or honorary
member of various ornithological societies, the Zoological Society of
London, the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and
others.
Mr. Ridgway was keenly interested in field work, and made many
trips to various parts of Illinois and Indiana. He visited Florida
in three successive years (1895-1897), accompanied the Harriman
Alaska expedition in 1899, and made two collecting trips to Costa
Rica, 1904 and 1908.
EUGENE AMANDUS SCHWARZ
Kugene Amandus Schwarz, custodian of coleoptera in the Na-
tional Museum, died October 15, 1928. He was born in Liegnitz,
Silesia, April 21, 1844, and came to America in 1872, taking up
work with Hagen at Cambridge, Mass. In 1874 he accompanied his
friend and pupil, H. G. Hubbard, to Detroit, where they founded
the Detroit Scientific Association and started an entomological
museum. In this year he spent several months collecting insects in
Florida, the first of a long series of collecting expeditions that con-
tinued throughout his life. In 1878 he came to the Department of
Agriculture, where he remained until his death. In 1898 he was
appointed custodian of coleoptera in the National Museum, and here
he introduced better standards of care and arrangement. Besides
the extensive collection made by Hubbard and himself he secured for
the Museum many other important collections, and he started and
actively promoted the formation of a collection of coleoptera larvae,
which has since grown to be probably the largest in the world.
Doctor Schwarz was very modest and self-effacing, but during the
last 40 years his fame as a man of great learning slowly spread
among the entomologists of this country until it became generally
recognized. He always willingly placed his unlimited knowledge
and experience at the disposal of the younger generations. His
bibliography contains nearly 400 titles, mainly on coleoptera.
22 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
HARRISON GRAY DYAR
Harrison Gray Dyar, custodian of lepidoptera in the National
Museum, died January 21, 1929. Doctor Dyar was born in New
York, February 14, 1866, and was educated at the Massachusetts In-
stitute of Technology and Columbia University. He came to the
Museum in 1897 and his term of service amounted, therefore, to more
than 30 years. During nearly all of this time he was a volunteer
and unpaid worker, but for a few years he was on the staff of the
Bureau of Entomology.
Doctor Dyar was one of the authors of the large monograph of
the mosquitoes of North America published nearly 20 years ago by
the Carnegie Institution, and he continued from that time to be the
principal specialist in the group in the western hemisphere. The
monograph having been out of print for some time he completed
quite recently a new work on the mosquitoes of both North and South
America, which was published last year by the Carnegie Institution
in one large volume. He gave much attention to the early stages of
the mosquitoes, so that his classification covered these in a very
unusual degree.
In 1917 Doctor Dyar gave to the Museum his entire collection of
insects, numbering some 35,000 specimens. As a result of his labors
the National Museum has one of the largest collections of mosquitoes
in the world and probably by far the largest one in larval stages and
in mounted specimens of genitalia,
JOHN DONNELL SMITH
John Donnell Smith, for many years honorary associate in
botany, Smithsonian Institution, died December 2, 1928. Captain
Smith was born in Baltimore June 5, 1829, and at the time of his
death was the oldest living graduate of Yale University. Aside
from distinguished service in the public welfare, his interest centered
m the botany of Central America, in which field he was an acknowl-
edged authority. In the course of his studies he had built up an
extensive library and an herbarium of over 100,000 specimens, which
were presented to the Smithsonian Institution several years ago. In
the death of Captain Smith the world has lost a scientist of note and
the Smithsonian Institution a distinguished friend and patron.
APPENDIX 1
REPORT ON THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the con-
dition and operations of the United States National Museum for the
fiscal year ended June 30, 1929:
The total appropriations for the maintenance of the Naticnal
Museum for this period amounted to $748,024, an increase of $97,064
over the appropriations for the year 1928. Of this increase it is
gratifying to record that a large part was provided for much-needed
adjustment in the salaries paid to the Museum staff. This adjustment
came partly through the operation of the Welch Act regulating gov-
ernmental salaries in general, under which there was a revision of the
schedules of the various grades, and partly through allowance by the
Congress of additional funds to permit a 1-rate increase under the
provisions of the reclassification act for those employees who had
attained the proper efficiency ratings. An increase of $3,000 pro-
vided for additional storage facilities for the steadily increasing
study collections. The addition of three employees, namely, an
engineer, a fireman, and an elevator conductor, required for the
adequate operation of the heating and lighting plant and for the
proper maintenance of elevator service, necessitated $3,840 more.
There was added also the new position of assistant curator in the
division of mammals, where assistance was urgently required. An
allowance of $1,200 provided for the purchase of uniforms for guards
and elevator conductors on day duty in our buildings. An increase
of $4,610 under the item for building repairs covered an additional
painter, the purchase of further paint materials, and allotment for
replacement of cement work on the private roadways leading ts the
east service entrance of the Natural History Building. The sum of
$500 was added to the appropriation for the purchase of books for
the Museum libraries and $2,500 to the allotment for printing and
binding for the Museum.
In the first deficiency act for the fiscal year 1928 there was pro-
vision of $80,000 for safeguarding the dome of the rotunda of the
Natural History Building, the work to be performed under the
direction and supervision of the Supervising Architect, Treasury
Department, and the money to be available until June 80, 1929.
23
24 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The increase in salaries has been most gratifying and has brought
needed relief in economic situation for many Museum employees.
The effect of this betterment has been immediate in increased morale
in an organization whose employees have always been constantly
devoted to its best interests. To consider this matter further, it may
be pointed out that the reclassification act at present calls for advance
in salary until the average salaries paid under the various grades
reach the average fixed by law for these grades. At the present time
the majority of Museum employees stand at the second salary rate in
their respective grades, permitting an advance of one more step ac-
cording to the provision of the reclassification act. As the salary
rates are still below the average for similar organizations in the
Government service, it is urgently desired that further provision for
this 1-rate advance be made. The present moneys in the various
appropriations above the salary roll do not permit these advances.
Should this additional amount be made available the salary status
under the different appropriations will be rendered more or less stable
without necessity for further considerable increases in salary allot-
ment under present circumstances. There will remain only the need
of adjustment of classification in some instances and the additions of
new personnel required in many cases. It is earnestly hoped that
the promotions required may be made in the fiscal year 1931.
The question of further additions to personnel remains one of
importance, as there is a growing necessity for further workers both
on the scientific staff and on the clerical force. Relief has been
obtained in some instances, particularly in two divisions where
assistants have been provided for the older men now in charge, with
the intention that they may be in training to carry on when the
older members are gone. Several cases of this kind remain still to
be cared for, and there are in addition certain collections for which
the Museum now has no specialist in charge. At the present time
it is necessary to employ for short periods temporary cataloguers,
typists, and laborers to assist in the regular work. ‘These persons
should be available on the permanent staff, since the work is spe-
cialized and requires considerable training for adequate and proper
performance. This training it is not possible to give during a period
of temporary appointment.
In the annual report for last year attention was called to the neces-
sity for further space to house the steadily growing collections which
increase annually in spite of efforts to eliminate material that is not
required for permanent preservation. The whole collection forms a
valuable part of the riches of our National Government—a part
that will increase steadily in value because each year more and more
objects become impossible to duplicate through the destruction by
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 25
our advancing civilization of an increasing number of natural forms.
Proper provision must be made to secure everything of importance
obtainable while there is yet opportunity.
Needs for housing in the National Museum, as outlined last year,
include additional wings on the Natural History Building to pro-
vide for relief from the present congestion, which in many cases is
now acute. Of equal importance and necessity is more adequate pro-
vision for the collections in arts and industries at present housed in
the old National Museum Building, which when constructed in 1881
was adequate for the needs of those days, but which is not designed in
a manner commensurate with present requirements. This building
should be replaced by another much larger structure that will pro-
vide proper housing for the objects in this collection. These have
great importance to the American Nation as a record of industrial
development, commerce, and engineering in all its lines. The series
of Patent Office models alone, representing the basic principles from
which our important economic advances have grown, is of itself of
sufficient importance to warrant the proposed building. With these,
coupled with related historic objects of all kinds drawn from other
sources, it results that the national collections contain materials that
can not be duplicated in any other museum of the kind in the country
or in the world. With provision being made for industrial museums
in other sections of the country we should prepare at once for more
adequate housing for the national collections of this kind in
Washington.
The collections of history at present are placed in part in the
Natural History Building and in part in the building given over
principally to arts and industries. The historical materials concern
persons and events of supreme importance to our Nation, since they
treat of the very birth, growth, and expansion of our country. As
such they are of absorbing interest to every patriotic American and
should be displayed to the fullest advantage. At the present time
the limits of space are such that many interesting objects can not be
placed on public display and it is necessary at times to decline
materials that should be accepted, because of lack of proper facilities
for their preservation.
Preparation of plans and other necessary arrangements for housing
space will require considerable time. With our need now acute the
preliminaries necessary before actual construction may be begun.
should not be postponed. The present interest of the public demands
prompt action in these matters.
The steadily growing attendance in the Museum halls is in itself
sufficient indication of the interest of the American public in the
Cee wae
26 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
National Museum and its collections. More adequate housing
facilities can not but add to this interest and will assist in making
Washington even more attractive to the hundreds of thousands of
our countrymen who journey each year to visit the seat of government
of our great Nation.
COLLECTIONS
Additions to the collections of the National Museum during the
fiscal year have reached the large total of 545,191 separate objects, by
far the greater part of these coming to the department of biology.
This increment, while not quite equal to that of last year, is on a
parity with that received in the last few years. The collections of the
National Museum are now universally recognized as of such great
value and importance as to draw to them donations of the most valu-
able kind in the form of collections gathered under private or other
auspices which it is desired to place where they will have assurance
of proper care and permanent preservation. Recognition that in the
National Museum there may be found these conditions is highly
gratifying. Material of various kinds sent for examination and
report during the year amounted to 1,314 lots, including many thous-
ands of separate things. Gifts to schools and other educational insti-
tutions included 3,258 specimens, while in exchange with other
scientific organizations and individuals there were sent out 23,326
specimens, these being duplicate materials for which others were
received in return. Loans of all kinds to scientific workers outside
of Washington included 33,723 specimens, many of them highly
valuable.
Following isa digest of the more important accessions for the year
in the various departments and divisions of the Museum.
Anthropology.—An expedition under direction of Henry B. Col-
lins, jr., to St. Lawrence Island in Bering Sea, including work on
the islet of Punuk, brought the largest selection of historical-archeo-
logical materials ever obtained by the Museum in one season from
the Bering Sea area. In it are found many hundreds of ivory and
bone implements illustrative of the culture of the Eskimo from very
early times down to the period of Russian exploration. The carvings
shown are of three distinct types, indicating as many cultural stages
in the development of the people who made them. The entire collec-
tion is one almost without parallel in our history and will be of great
importance in elucidating the period of habitation at the village sites
represented.
Among other valuable collections there has come a series represent-
ing the ethnology of the Nigerian and Gold Coast in Africa, the gift
of C. C. Roberts. <A further collection from Africa of considerable
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 27
importance in ethnology is one from the region of the Belgian Congo
received as a gift from the Rev. Ellen I. Burk.
There was received also a number of miscellaneous materials
secured by Dr. David C. Graham in connection with his work in
western China, principally in the Province of Szechwan.
An exchange of specimens with A. S. Kenyon, of Melbourne, Aus-
tralia, brought a miscellaneous collection of decorative art work on
wood, stone, and shell, and in basketry, as well as stone and wooden
message sticks and an assortment of throwing sticks, including
decorated boomerangs.
Archeological materials include an old type of reed basket from a
rock shelter in Russell County, Ky., secured by purchase; flint and
stone implements and bone and copper beads presented by Mr.
Charles Beckman, from various sites along the Columbia River in
Washington; and a series of stone implements collected by Dr.
Walter Hough, head curator, in the vicinity of Abilene, Tex.
Among Old World specimens there may be mentioned a series of
nearly 500 that come from the work of Dr. George Grant Mac-
Curdy, director of the American School of Prehistoric Research,
from localities in Dordogne, France, received as a loan from the
Archeological Society of Washington. Skulls and skeletons of
ancient Eskimo from the Collins collection on St. Lawrence Island
form one of the most important additions to the division of physical
anthropology in this department. There were received also 10 masks
taken from living Labrador Eskimo, obtained in exchange from
Prof. V. Suk, of the University of Brno, Moravia.
Biology.—Noteworthy among receipts in this department have
been the highly valuable collections of mammals, birds, and insects
left to the Museum by bequest by the late Col. Wirt Robinson, long
a valued contributor to the Institution. There may be mentioned
also large collections of birds and plants obtained by Dr. Joseph F.
Rock in western China from areas previously unrepresented in our
halls, which were received as a gift from the National Geographic
Society, under whose auspices the field work was performed.
Excellent collections from western China in many branches of
biology, principally in birds, mammals, insects, crustaceans, and
fishes, were obtained through the continued efforts of Dr. David C.
Graham, who has long been a resident in the Province of Szechwan,
and who has been most assiduous in obtaining representatives of the
fauna in that area for the National Museum. From farther south,
in Siam, there were obtained large and valuable series of mammals,
birds, reptiles, insects, mollusks, and miscellaneous invertebrates col-
lected through the efforts of Dr. Hugh M. Smith, honorary curator
in zoology on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution, who is now
28 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
fisheries advisor to the King of Siam. The material obtained this
year, supplementing that mentioned in previous reports, has included
a number of forms, particularly in birds, that have been new to
science.
Collections from Haiti, through the financial assistance of Dr.
W. L. Abbott, have included large series of plants from the north-
western part of that country secured by E. C. Leonard, of the division
of plants, in the prosecution of his field studies cae a flora of the
island. At the same time there were obtained further collections of
bones of extinct animals from cave deposits through the field re-
searches of A. J. Poole and W. M. Perrygo, of the Museum staff, who,
in addition, collected series of birds and aapiies to supplement niki
collections in these same fields. Doctor Abbott further presented an
excellent collection of Siamese mammals which were obtained during
an expedition under his auspices.
One of the most valuable accessions in the division of mammals
has been the complete skeleton of an adult sperm whale, presented
by Mr. Ippei Yokoyama, president of the Oriental Whaling Co.,
through the interest of Prof. Chiyomatsu Ishikawa. It was brought
to this country under the direction of the Japanese ambassador, the
Hon. Katsuji Debuchi. Another accession in this division consisted
of 27 mammal skulls from India, received as a gift from Gen. Wiliam
Mitchell.
Under the Bradshaw Hall Swales fund the division of birds secured
by purchase 45 specimens of species not previously represented in its
series. Through the Smithsonian Institution there were obtained by
purchase from J. A. Reis, jr., 177 skeletons of birds from Cameroon,
numbering about 116 species, a valuabie addition to the skeleton col-
lection. Eggs of the California condor, a bird nearly extinct in the
wild state, were obtained from the National Zoological Park.
Dr. Homer W. Smith, of New York City, presented specimens of
the lung fishes of Africa.
One of the important accessions in the division of insects has
been a collection of Lepidoptera received as a permanent deposit
from the Brooklyn Museum, which included more than 66,000 speci-
mens, with types of about 650 species.
The division of mollusks obtained about 200,000 land shells from
Cuba, collected by Dr. Paul Bartsch, traveling under the Walter
Rathbone Bacon Traveling Scholarship.
Geology—tThe meteorite collection has secured through purchase
under the Roebling fund an iron weighing 1,060 pounds from the
Zui Mountains south of Grant, N. Mex. A smaller specimen of the
same type, also purchased from the Roebling fund, was secured from
Red River County, Tex., while a third came from near Lawrence,
Kans.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 29
Through the income of the Roebling fund the mineral collections
have grown in a highly gratifying manner during the past fiscal
year. A striking addition to the exhibit series is a large mass of
pegmatite from Newry, Me. Another purchase of importance was
that of a nugget of platinum weighing 17.274 ounces from South
America. There may be mentioned further a cut gem of benitoite,
weighing 7.67 carats, being the largest known cut stone of this
mineral.
Through the Chamberlain fund there have come to the gem col-
lection a carved statuette of rose quartz, a Chinese carving of tourma-
line, a yellow topaz weighing 34 carats, a cameo of Hungarian opal,
and a cut gem of pollucite.
Fossil materials include large lots of invertebrates obtained by
exchange, gift, and collection, among them three rare star fishes and
five crinoids from the Ordovician of Minnesota, purchased under the
Springer fund. From field work by Mr. C. W. Gilmore in Montana
there have come remains of dinosaurs of several species previously
not in the Museum, and there may be mentioned also specimens of
Pleistocene mammals collected by Doctor Gidley in Florida.
Aris and industries —vV aluable additions in this department have
included three early types of Winton automobiles; one of the engines
of the Army aircraft Question Mark used during an endurance test
that continued nearly seven days; and a working model of the tele-
phone transmitter and receiver obtained from the American Tele-
phone & Telegraph Co.
A horse-drawn brougham, a fine example of the work of the famous
nineteenth-century coach builder, Healey, of New York, was presented
by Mr. William P. Eno, an interesting object in this day of motor
transport.
An exhibition now being organized dealing with mechanical power
has received a number of accessions, among them an electrically op-
erated model of the original Pearl Street electric power station in
New York City.
In the division of textiles a number of manufacturers have con-
tinued their cooperation through the contribution of exhibition ma-
terial of modern textiles. An interesting exhibit received from the
United Shoe Machinery Corporation illustrates the entire range of
shoemaking by machinery.
An important addition to the section of photography was the first
portrait taken on an autochrome plate by the inventor of the process,
Antoine Lumiére. Four photographs donated by Philip P. Quayle,
of the Peters Cartridge Co., of bullets fired from a gun, record
the bullet in silhouette, and a representation of the sound waves
produced,
30 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
History.—The most important accession in this division was a silk
dress worn by Mrs. Martha Washington, received as a permanent loan
from Mrs. Morris Whitridge in memory of her sister, Miss Sallie
Pinkerton Mackenzie. This has been installed in its proper place in
the series of dresses of the mistresses of the White House shown in
the costumes collection.
For the military collections there was obtained a series of uniforms
owned and used by Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, United States Army,
from 1898 to 1921, presented by Mrs. Leonard Wood. ‘The naval col-
lections received a model of the schooner Hannah, of Marblehead,
the first armed vessel to sail at public expense during the War of the
Revolution.
Through the cooperation of the American Numismatic Association
a number of valuable additions were made as loans to the numismatic
collection. These included 133 specimens from many countries. ‘The
Bureau of the Mint, United States Treasury Department, continued
its cooperation in building up this collection by the transfer of 85
coins struck by the United States Mint in 1928, as ‘well as other
specimens.
The philatelic collection was increased by 5,775 specimens, of which
the greater part was received from the International Bureau of the
Universal Postal Union at Berne, Switzerland, through the Post
Office Department.
REORGANIZATION OF THE MILITARY EXHIBITS
The military exhibits concerned with the World War, assembled
after the close of that conflict, through necessity of available space
were installed originally in widely separated halls—in part in the
Natural History Building and in part in the Arts and Industries
Building on the opposite side of the Smithsonian Park. These
exhibits, whose assembling was possible only through the interested
cooperation of the War Department, for years have been an attractive
subject to large numbers of our visitors. For sometime past ways
and means for a better coordinated installation of this material have
been under consideration. The War Department, taking renewed
helpful interest in these exhibits, in 1928 appointed Maj. Louis A.
O’Donnell, United States Army, to cooperate with the Museum au-
thorities in the preparation of plans for their better display. On
September 28, 1928, the War Department further announced an ad-
visory committee to assist Major O’Donnell by consultation and co-
operation as follows: Lieut. Col. Harry B. Jordan, General Staff
Corps; Lieut. Col. Paul D. Bunker, Coast Artillery Corps; Maj. John
W. Lang, Infantry; Maj. Marion O. French, General Staff Corps;
and Capt. Edwin M. Scott, Quartermaster Corps. Through plans de-
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 31
vised by Major O’Donnell and approved by the assistant secretary,
certain material was returned to the War Department as no longer
needed for exhibition, an artillery park was arranged in the open on
ground belonging to the Smithsonian Institution, the military collec-
tions were concentrated in one connected series in the Arts and
Industries Building with the majority of the other historical collec-
tions, and definite arrangements were made for building up all the
military collections along agreed lines.
In connection with the assembling of these military exhibits in ~
the Arts and Industries Building there was required reorganization
of part of the display in the divisions of mineral and mechanical
technology and the transfer to the Natural History Building of the
lace collections. All this has been accomplished and installation
made of a considerable part of the military material. Work on the
rest is progressing and will be continued along the plans definitely
outlined. <A part of the contemplated display will necessitate assist-
ance in the way of additional funds, which it is hoped may be pro-
vided without too great delay.
The actual process of transfering the military collections from
one building to the other began about April 1, 1929, and was a
task of considerable magnitude, as it necessitated the transfer of
materials covering approximately 22,000 square feet of floor space.
The greater part of the work was accomplished by the staff of the
division of history with the Museum labor force. The War Depart-
ment cooperated measurably by the detail of five enlisted men and
a truck to aid in the transfer.
This brief review of what has been accomplished will serve as
partial acknowledgment of the great assistance rendered by Major
O’Donnell during his connection with the Museum. On June 15
Major O’Donnell was transferred to other duties and was succeeded
by Lieut. Col. Arthur Hixson, United States Army, as representative
of the War Department.
EXPLORATION AND FIELD WORK
Various researches in the field have been carried on under the dif-
ferent departments of the Museum, principally through funds pro-
vided by the Smithsonian Institution through its private income or
through the contributions of friends interested in certain projects.
Limited assistance in a few instances has been given from the annual
appropriation for the Nationai Museum but this aid has comprised
only a small part of the total amounts utilized, by far the greater part
of which have been obtained from other sources. Additional money
- for such investigations is an urgent need that should be given atten-
tion. Comparatively small sums are sufficient for most of the Mu-
a2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
seum’s projects, so that much good may be accomplished with slight
outlay. A brief account of field activities of the present year
follows:
During the spring of 1929 Dr. Walter Hough carried on archeo-
logical studies in west central Texas with a view to extending the
known Pueblo or pre-Pueblo culture areas. In the same region
he uncovered evidence relative to aboriginal man’s early history.
From January to May, 1929, through the interest of Dr. W. L. Ab-
bott, Herbert W. Krieger continued archeological investigations in
’ the northern part of the Dominican Republic. The immediate cul-
ture problem that occupied his attention was to determine whether
the area anciently occupied by the Ciguayan Indians of Samana
extended as far west as the valley of the Rio Yaque del Norte. A
second problem was the attempt to extend the area known to have
been anciently occupied by the pre-Ciguayan cave dwellers of the
northern Dominican Republic. Results appear to indicate that the
pre-Ciguayans had occupied the entire island, but that the Ciguayan
Indians never reached as far west as the Yaque River. The work
included further reconnaissance along the north shore of the Samana
Peninsula and the collection of biological material from former
Indian village sites for the department of biology.
Henry B. Collins, jr., was in the field from July to October, 1928,
engaged in investigations of the ancient Bering Sea culture on the
islands of Punuk and St. Lawrence, with the aim of tracing early
chapters in the history of western Eskimo culture. Material collected
shows that there are three stages through which the art of St. Law-
rence Island may be traced. An earlier stage, found only on the
northern and western parts of the island on deeply patinated objects,
consists of gracefully delineated straight and curved lines; an inter-
mediate stage is simpler in design; while the third, the well-known
modern and simplified art, is found at all recent sites. At Cape
Prince of Wales nothing of any real antiquity was found. Results
generally suggest a direct Asiatic source rather than a local cultural
development for the well-known Eskimo arts. In May, 1929, Mr.
Collins again left for field work to continue through the summer in
the Bering Sea region. Dr. Ale’ Hrdlitka also proceeded to Alaska
to continue his studies on early Eskimo anthropology.
Mr. Neil M. Judd was in Arizona during the summer of 1929,
engaged in preparation of reports covering the 1920-1927 Pueblo
Bonito explorations of the National Geographic Society, and super-
vising the society’s 1929 beam expedition. This latter had for its ob-
ject the collection of timbers from pre-Spanish Pueblo villages that
will aid in completing a tree-ring chronology by means of which it is
believed that absolute dates may be determined for many of our .
southwestern ruins.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 33
At the end of May, 1928, Paul Bartsch, curator of mollusks, travel-
ing under the Walter Rathbone Bacon Scholarship, began the faunal
study of certain groups of land and fresh-water mollusks of the West
Indies, the work for that season being prosecuted in Cuba, where he
was assisted materially by Dr. Carlos de la Torre, president emeritus
of the University of Habana. During four months Doctor Bartsch
covered thoroughly all of the Provinces of Cuba, except that of
Oriente, collecting over a quarter of a million specimens of mollusks,
including large numbers of new races and species from places hitherto
unexplored. The rainy season was chosen for this field work in spite
of its discomforts, for it is at this time that land mollusks are most
active. The collections obtained will yield much information bearing
on problems of distribution, both present and past, and will throw
light on the derivation of the molluscan fauna of the Antilles. Inci-
dentally, Doctor Bartsch secured for the Museum important collec-
tions of birds, insects, batrachians, mammals, and crustacea.
Through the interest of Dr. W. L. Abbott, A. J. Poole, aid in the
division of mammals, and W. M. Perrygo, of the taxidermist force,
traveled in Haiti for a period of about four months, working the
caves of Haiti proper and those of the island of Gonave for extinct
animal bones. In addition to cavern exploration an important part
of the work was the collection of birds to supplement distributional
data already available, and there were obtained also mammals,
mostly bats, as well as fishes, reptiles, marine invertebrates, mollusks,
insects, and miscellaneous ethnological and anthropological materials.
One of the important expeditions undertaken during the year by
friends of the Museum was that of the auxiliary yacht Mary Pinchot
to the South Seas under the leadership of the Hon. Gifford Pinchot.
The vessel left New York City in April for a cruise of about 10
months, with Dr. A. K. Fisher, of the Biological Survey, as natural-
ist, to obtain material desired for the National Museum. In the
collections made in the first few weeks there have been received a
skull of the little-known long-beaked porpoise Prodelphinus plagio-
don and 10 forms of birds new to the Museum collections. Further
shipments of important material are expected as the cruise continues.
Dr. Joseph F. Rock, traveling under the auspices of the National
Geographic Society, visited the Kingdom of Muli, or Mili, in south-
western Szechwan, China, as well as adjacent parts of the Province
of Yunnan, exploring also to the northwest of Muli in the hitherto
unvisited snow range of Konka Risonquemba, rising to a height of
25,000 feet, and mountains to the east and northeast. From this
work there have been obtained important collections of birds and
plants, the specimens coming to the Nationai Museum through the
gift of the National Geographic Society.
34 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Dr. Hugh M. Smith, in the course of fisheries investigations in
Siam, visited the northern part of that country in November and
December of 1928 and made hurried collections on Doi Angka and
Doi Sutep, two previously unexplored peaks of the Khun Tan
Mountains. Material secured has been of particular interest and
has resulted in the discovery of new and rare species, among them
seven new forms of birds.
Dr. David C. Graham continued work in the vicinity of Suifu,
in the Province of Szechwan, China, and in July, 1928, set out on
a journey to Ningyuenfu, by way of Yachow, spending about two
months on the trip. Though bandits threatened at most of the
interesting points, many valuable specimens were obtained.
During brief field investigations into the hosts of certain para-
sites in Virginia and North Carolina, Dr. H. E. Ewing, of the
Bureau of Entomology, was accompanied by C. S. East, of the pre-
parator staff, who collected a small series of birds for skeletons.
Dr. J. M. Aldrich, of the division of insects, began work in May,
1929, on type specimens of diptera in the British Museum, and later
did some collecting of northern insects, principally diptera, in Nor-
way and Sweden.
Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt and C. R. Shoemaker, in the course of an
examination of the crustacean fauna of the region about the United
States Bureau of Fisheries station at Beaufort, N. C., secured more
than 1,800 specimens of marine invertebrates. Mr. J. O. Maloney, by
invitation of Mr. Copley Amory, was detailed for part of the sum-
mer of 1928 to proceed to Canada in continuation of the biological
survey of Mr. Amory’s estate on the north shore of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, near the Matamek River. Doctor Bartsch visited the
Marine Biological Laboratory at the Tortugas, Fla., from August
17 to August 30, 1928, in connection with work on the crossbreeding
of Cerions, an investigation carried on in cooperation with the
Carnegie Institution of Washington. While at the Tortugas Doctor
Bartsch spent a day under water with the diving hood and the
undersea camera going over fields photographed formerly in order
io have a continuous record of life on the reefs.
From December, 1928, to the latter part of May, 1929, Mr. E. C.
Leonard was engaged in botanical field work in northwestern Haiti,
through the generous support of Dr. W. L. Abbott. Large collec-
tions (nearly 15,000 specimens) were obtained, which will be of very
material assistance in making known the flora of Hispaniola, a proj-
ect upon which Mr. Leonard has been engaged for several years.
During the last three months of the fiscal year Mr. E. P. Killip, ac-
companied by Mr. A. E. Smith and Mr. W. J. Dennis, honorary
collaborators, has prosecuted botanical explorations in eastern Peru
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 35
and adjacent regions. Reports from the field indicate that a large
amount of herbarium material is being obtained that will be exceed-
ingly valuable in current studies of the flora of western South
America.
In July and August, 1928, Dr. A. S. Hitchcock, custodian of
grasses, visited Newfoundland and Labrador for the purpose of
studying and collecting grasses. A large illustrative series of speci-
mens and much useful information regarding the range of species
in these little-explored regions were obtained. Mr. Jason R. Swallen,
assistant in the grass herbarium, spent the summer of 1928 in field
work in the southwestern United States. Many of the rarer grasses
were collected, as well as other material relating to current studies.
Dr. George P. Merrill, head curator of the Department of Geology,
was detailed in September, 1928, to visit various mineral localities in
the New England States. He first worked at the pegmatite deposits
at Newry, Me., where the fine block of material mentioned elsewhere
in this report was obtained. The historically interesting gem locality
at Paris Hill was next given attention; then various localities in New
Hampshire, all of exceptional interest. Following this, the feldspar
prospects at Bellows Falls, Vt., were examined. The acquisition of
the feldspar vein at Newry, Me., was considered to have more than
compensated for the trip.
The explorations of Dr. W. F. Foshag were still under way at the
close of the year. He reports interesting collections, particularly
some borate minerals from various localities in southern California
and Nevada. A part of this material has reached the Museum, but
the recording will go over until the entire collection is received.
Messrs. James Benn and B. O. Reberholt were on several occasions
detailed to collect geological specimens in adjacent localities in Mary-
land and Virginia where desirable materials could be obtained.
Stratigraphic studies of the Cambrian as developed in the larger
mountain range of Wyoming were the main object of an expedition
in 1928 by C. E. Resser. Nearly three months were spent in this
investigation, in the course of which several mountain ranges were
explored. Collections of fossils were limited, the rocks in many
cases being of such shallow-water origin that the fossils have been
destroyed. Much valuable information relating to stratigraphy was
obtained.
Since the field exploration undertaken by C. W. Gilmore and his
party in the Two Medicine formation in Montana extended well into
the present year, but brief mention was made of it in last year’s
report. The expedition, which was in the field from May 12 to July
15, 1928, covered the Bad Land areas along the Milk and Two Medi-
cine Rivers, on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Considerable
82322304
36 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
success attended the work, the collections being sufficient in scope
to be fairly representative of the fauna of the formation. The mate-
rial as a whole is a most important addition to our series, in which
practically all of the forms found were previously unrepresented.
Scientifically it will be of interest, not only for the new species
found, but for its decided contribution to the meager knowledge of
the fauna of the formation, placing this on a basis that will permit
of its comprehensive comparison with other Upper Cretaceous
formations of contiguous areas.
Upon completion of the above work Mr. Gilmore visited the Bear
Creek Coal Field in southern Montana for the purpose of securing
some of the Paleocene mammal remains occurring in the Eagle Mine
at that place. Lack of time prevented search being made for these
minute fossils on the ground, but 400 pounds of the fossil-bearing
matrix were boxed and shipped to the Museum.
In the early spring of 1929 work was again taken up at Mel-
bourne, Fla., by Dr. J. W. Gidley, in continuation of the project
relative to the presence of early man in Florida. About six weeks
were spent in this work, for which generous financial assistance was
furnished by Mr. Childs Frick. Again important evidence was
gathered indicating the presence of man in Florida contemporaneous
with an extinct fauna of the Pleistocene, while the mammal remains
obtained will be useful in determining the exact phase of the Pleisto-
cene represented—a still unsettled part of the general problem under
investigation. In this connection it may be mentioned that assistance
is being rendered by Dr. Thomas Barbour, of the Museum of Com-
parative Zodlogy, in continuing collecting activities in this area. The
material thus obtained is being placed at the disposal of Doctor
Gidley for study.
Almost at the end of the fiscal year Doctor Gidley was detailed
to visit fossil-bearing beds discovered by a United States Geological
Survey party at points in Idaho. Since operations had hardly
begun at the close of the year, a statement regarding them will go
over until next year.
In cooperation with the Peabody Museum of Yale University,
Mr. N. H. Boss was detailed late in March, 1929, to engage in further
exploration of a cave in New Mexico where a giant ground sloth was
found last year, as well as to search other similar caves in the region.
Following these operations, Mr. Boss joined Mr. Gilmore in an ex-
pedition to the San Juan Basin, N. Mex., to collect dinosaur and
other vertebrate remains. As this work is expected to continue into
the next fiscal year, no detailed report on either expedition will be
given at this time.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 37
Mr. Remington Kellogg and Norman H. Boss continued explora-
tions of the Miocene along Chesapeake Bay from time to time. At
little expense to the Museum, various fossil cetacean remains were
added to the collection.
BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT
Usual repairs have been required to keep the buildings housing
the national collections in proper condition during the year. In
the Natural History Building exterior woodwork in the east court
was painted; the walls and ceilings in 24 rooms on the ground and
third floors were repainted, a necessary renovation that has been
postponed for years and now must be completed in order to properly
protect the surfaces in question. A section of concrete roadway op-
posite the east wing was renewed and temporary repair work was
done on the roadways of the north entrance and on the west side of
the building. The need for planting shrubbery to relieve the barren-
ness of the approach to the north entrance of this building has long
been felt, so that it is pleasant to report that in the fall of 1928,
through cooperation of the Office of Public Buildings and Public
Parks, two beds of evergreens were planted, one on either side of the
drive, greatly improving the appearance of this side of the building.
Work on safeguarding the dome above the rotunda began on Sep-
tember 12, 1928, and was finally completed on May 14, 1929, the
work being performed under the efficient direction of the engineers
in the Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Depart-
ment. Two great bands of steel were placed around the four huge
piers that support the dome, one at the level of the floor of the
attic and one near the tops of the piers and ceiling above. Between
them steel beams were installed extending vertically from band to
band behind the piers, with a series of screw jacks between the beams
and the piers proper. Tension was placed on these jacks in such
a way as to bring even strain all around, holding the piers from any
possibility of spreading at the top. The delicate operation of ad-
justing the screw jacks, which required nearly three weeks for com-
pletion, was performed with the cooperation of a corps of engineers
from the Bureau of Standards. Work of cleaning the stone surfaces
in the rotunda and the painting necessary following the work out-
lined above was still in progress at the close of the fiscal year. The
rotunda has been closed to the public since December 1, 1927, but will
be opened early in the next fiscal year. In the Arts and Industries
Building the café at the west entrance was remodeled, walls and
ceilings in various rooms were painted, and necessary refinishing on
exterior surfaces was carried on so far as was practicable.
38 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
In the herbarium hall in the Smithsonian Building cork carpet was
laid on the floors, and exposed floors were painted, together with the
walls and ceilings in various other rooms. An old stone walk on the
south side of the building in bad condition was replaced by concrete.
Grills were installed in window openings on the north and south sides
in the new gallery of the herbarium hall.
The roof of the aircraft building was painted, as well as the exte-
rior of the south shed.
The power plant was in operation from September 30, 1928, until
May 28, 1929. The consumption of coal was 3,361 tons, an amount
slightly less than that used in 1928. The average cost of coal was
$5.36 per ton, somewhat less than that for last year. The Steamboat
Inspection Service of the United States examined the boilers during
the summer and reported them in good condition. The elevators
have been regularly inspected by the District of Columbia inspector.
The total electric current produced amounted to 648,863 kilowatt-
hours, manufactured at a cost of 1.89 cents per kilowatt-hour, includ-
ing interest on the plant, depreciation, repair, and material. The
amount of electric current produced represents approximately an
increase of 45,000 kilowatt-hours over any previous year. Demands
for electric current are steadily increasing and further provision is
required to be made before long for this current since our plant is
now practically at the maximum peak of production. The ice plant
manufactured 409 tons of ice at an average cost of $1.80 per ton,
which is at a cost considerably less than for the past year due to
the fact that there has been very little need for repairs.
During the year 30 exhibition cases and bases, 179 pieces of storage,
laboratory and other furniture, and 1,476 drawers of various kinds
were added, practically all of these being manufactured in our shops.
MEETINGS AND RECEPTIONS
The lecture rooms and auditorium of the National Museum dur-
ing the present year were used for 125 meetings, covering a wide
range of activities.. Government agencies that utilized these facili-
ties for hearings, meetings, lectures, and other special occasions
included the Forest Service, the Bureau of Fisheries, the Geological
Survey, the Public Health Service, and the Extension Service of
the United States Department of Agriculture. The Forest Service
arranged a series of addresses during the year on various matters
connected with their work.
Scientific societies that met regularly in the auditorium or small
lecture room included the Entomological Society of Washington,
the Society for Philosophical Inquiry, the Anthropological Society
of Washington, the American Horticultural Society, and the Hel-
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 39
minthological Society. Meetings were held also by the Washing-
ton Society of Engineers, the Wild Flower Preservation Society,
the Potomac Garden Club, the Biological Society of Washington,
the Botanical Society of Washington, the Aero Club of Washington,
and the Vivarium Society. The National Association of Retired
Federal Employees held regular meetings through the year, as
did various groups of Boy Scouts for special addresses.
On February 22 there was a patriotic meeting under the auspices
of the Masonic Clubs of the District of Columbia, addressed by
Congressman C. A. Woodrum, of Virginia, on George Washington,
with music furnished by the Masonic band. Groups of pupils from
the public schools, Divisions I to [X, were addressed on May 28 by
Dr. H. A. Smith, of the Department of Agriculture, on the pro-
tection of forests. On May 29 the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the
United States, Federal Post No. 824, United States Department of
Agriculture, held memorial services in the auditorium. Groups of
students from Howard University were convened for special ad-
dresses on medical subjects on several occasions.
The biennial conference of the Division of Scientific Inquiry of
the Bureau of Fisheries of the United States Department of Com-
merce took place from January 2 to 5, inclusive. The fiftieth
anniversary celebration of the Geological Survey, United States
Department of the Interior, was held on March 21.
The sixth National Oratorical Contest took place on April 25; and
the fifth annual National Spelling Bee on May 21, the first prize being
won by Miss Virginia Hogan, representing the Omaha World Herald.
The Public Health Service, United States Treasury Department, held
the twenty-seventh annual conference of State and Territorial health
officers on June 3-4.
Boy scout executives of the scout councils held their third regional
scout seminar on October 22-23. The third regional scout executive
seminar of the Boy Scouts of America came on January 14. On
January 30 the Early Birds, an organization interested in aeronautics,
convened for an illustrated lecture.
A memorial meeting was held October 16 to commemorate the serv-
ices to science of the late Dr. Eugene A. Schwarz. A memorial meet-
ing came also on March 26 in commemoration of the life and work
of the late Dr. Robert Ridgway, curator of birds in the United States
National Museum.
An exhibit of the work of students in the department of architec-
ture of George Washington University was held from April 21 to
May 6. From May 15 to 27 there was displayed an exhibition by
negro artists, assembled under the auspices of the Harmon Founda-
tion and shown under the patronage of the committee on race reletions
of the Washington Federation of Churches,
40 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
MISCELLANEOUS
The exhibition halls of the National Museum were open during the
year on week days from 9 a. m. to 4.30 p. m., and in addition the
Natural History Building, the Arts and Industries Building, and the
Smithsonian Building were opened Sunday afternoon from 1.30 to
4.30. All buildings were closed on the day before Christmas, Christ-
mas Day, New Year’s Day, and Inauguration Day. On Saturday,
March 2, by special request of the committee in charge of inaugural
arrangements, all buildings were held open until 5 p. m. to allow
persons assembled for the inaugural ceremonies a better opportunity
to view the exhibits. The flags on all buildings were flown at half-
mast on March 26, 1929, out of respect to the late Marshal Foch,
and on Memorial Day, May 30, from 8.30 a. m. until noon.
Visitors to the Museum during the year totaled 1,929,625 persons,
an increase of more than half a million over the previous year, an
indication of the increasing interest of all Americans in the Capital
City, and of the attractions found in the exhibitions of the National
Museum by the traveling public. Attendance in the several buildings
of the National Museum was recorded as follows: Smithsonian Insti-
tution, 277,295; Arts and Industries, 868,952; Natural History, 650,-
815; Aircraft, 182,563. The average daily attendance for week days
was 5,175 and for Sunday 6,330. The latter figure is a definite
indication of the public desire for the opening of our exhibits on
Sunday afternoons.
During the year the Museum published eight separate volumes
and 61 miscellaneous papers, while the distribution of literature
amounted to 115,128 copies of its various books and pamphlets.
Additions to the Museum library included 2,247 volumes and 748
pamphlets obtained partly by exchange, partly by donation, and in
small part by purchase from the modest sums available for that
purpose. The library of the National Museum, as separate from that
of the Smithsonian Institution proper, has now 74,562 volumes and
107,629 pamphlets. Though many of the accessions for the present
year, as usual, came through exchanges of publications, there may be
noted the gift of 1,000 volumes, pamphlets, and manuscripts of a
miscellaneous character from Mr. Herbert A. Gill, of Washington,
D. C., these pertaining in large part to the work of the late Dr.
Theodore Gill, at one time librarian and associate in zoology of the
Smithsonian Institution. Five hundred books and periodicals on
photography, both American and British, some of them old and rare,
came from Mr. A. B. Stebbins, of Canisteo, N. Y. The first four
volumes of the Smithsonian Scientific Series, Patrons’ edition, were
presented by the Smithsonian Institution. Thirty publications were
given by the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 41
The Museum maintains 36 sectional libraries in connection with its
various scientific divisions. The library during the year made sub-
stantial progress in organization and increased efficiency along the
lines of a program of development initiated five years ago.
Dr. J. A. Stevenson, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, United
States Department of Agriculture, was given honorary appointment
as custodian of the C. G. Lloyd mycological collection. Mr. Albert
C. Smith and Mr. W. T. Dennis, who accompanied Mr. E. P. Killip
on a botanical expedition to Peru, were given honorary appointments
as collaborators in the division of plants. In the division of insects
the interest and valuable aid of Mr. J. T. Barnes were recognized by
his appointment to the honorary position of collaborator in the
section of lepidoptera.
Mr. Conrad V. Morton and Mr. Egbert H. Walker were appointed
aids in the division of plants. Dr. Remington Kellogg was made
assistant curator in the division of mammals by transfer from the
Biological Survey, United States Department of Agriculture, this
position being one newly established this year. Mr. Frank A. Taylor,
in the division of mineral and mechanical technology, was advanced
from aid to assistant curator. Miss Ethel A. L. Lacy was appointed
librarian in immediate charge of the accessions department of the
library. Mr. W. L. Brown was advanced to the position of chief taxi-
dermist, with general oversight of the work of the taxidermy shop.
Two employees left the service through the operation of the retire-
ment act—William H. Kimball, finance clerk, after a total Govern-
ment service of about 46 years, nearly 45 of which were in the Na-
tional Museum, and Robert Stokes, laborer, on June 11, 1929, after a
service of 28 years.
The Museum lost through death during the year six of its active
workers and four members of its honorary scientific staff. Dr.
Robert Ridgway, curator of birds, died March 25, 1929. Capt. John
Donnell Smith, associate in botany, died on December 2, 1928. Dr.
KE. A. Schwarz, custodian of coleoptera, died on October 15, 1928.
Dr. Harrison G. Dyar, custodian of lepidoptera, died January 21,
1929. Mr. H. K. Harring, custodian of rotatoria, died on December
19, 1928. Other losses by death included Mr. Charles E. Mirguet,
taxidermist, on February 20, 1929; Mrs. E. Bennett Decker, clerk-
illustrator, August 29, 1929; Eustance S. Brannon, watchman, on
September 30, 1928; Frank Smith, laborer, on November 16, 1928;
and William T. Murray, laborer, on June 9, 1929.
Respectfully submitted.
ALEXANDER WETMORE,
Assistant Secretary.
Dr. Cuartres G. AxBgor,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 2
REPORT ON THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Sir: I have the honor to submit herewith a report on the activities
of the National Gallery of Art for the fiscal year ending June 30,
1929.
The year is made notable by the gift of an important collection
of art works by Mr. John Gellatly, of New York. Through the
instrumentality of Mr. Gari Melchers, chairman of the Gallery Com-
mission, the donor indicated his desire, certain conditions being
complied with, to present to the Nation for permanent assignment to
the National Gallery of Art his collection of art works, comprising
more than 100 choice examples of American painting in oil and water
colors, large collections of jewelry, tapestries, glassware, and other art
works, having an estimated value of several millions of dollars.
After a preliminary hearing before the executive committee of the
Board of Regents of the Institution, Mr. Frederic A. Delano, Hon.
Reed Smoot, and Dr. John C. Merriam, a special meeting of the
gallery commission was called April 13, 1929, to consider the offer.
After hearing in some detail of the collection offered, of the condi-
tions imposed by the donor, and the responsibilities necessarily as-
sumed by the Institution and the Nation, acceptance was recom-
mended to the Board of Regents. Subsequently the Congress
passed a joint resolution which was approved by the President, June
6, 1929, authorizing the Institution to convey appropriate acknowl-
edgments to Mr. Gellatly and to include in its estimates sums neces-
sary for the accommodation and maintenance of the collection. The
collection is at present installed in the Heckscher Building in New
York City, where it is to remain for four years. <A portfolio of
45 plates illustrating the collection was subsequently presented by
Mr. Gellatly to the Institution and assigned by Secretary Abbot to
the care of the National Gallery.
THE GALLERY COMMISSION
The eighth annual meeting of the gallery commission was held in
the Regents’ room of the Institution at 10.380 a. m., December 11,
1928. The members present were Messrs. James E. Fraser, J. H.
42
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 43
Gest, John E. Lodge, Charles Moore, James Parmelee, E. C. Tarbeil,
W. H. Holmes, and C. G. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian Insti-
tution. In the absence of the chairman of the commission, Mr. Gari
Melchers, Mr. Charles Moore was elected temporary chairman.
The minutes of the previous annual meeting were read and ap-
proved, followed by the reading and approval of the secretary’s
report on the activities of the gallery for the year.
The committee on resolutions on the death of Dr. Charles Doo-
little Walcott, Secretary of the Institution, appointed at the annual
meeting of December 6, 1927, presented the following, which was
adopted :
Whereas the National Gallery of Art Commission of the Smithsonian Insti-
tution, having learned of the death on February 9, 1927, of Dr. Charles D.
Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and ex officio a member of
this commission, has adopted the following resolution :
Resolved, That we here record our profound sorrow at the passing of this
distinguished man of science, whose achievements as the head of the Smith-
sonian Institution expanded its renown and added greatly to the sum of human
knowledge; but particularly are we desirous of expressing our sense of the
loss of one who was also keenly alive to the importance of developing the art
side of, the Institution’s activities, and to whose foresight is due the establish-
ment of this commission as a means of insuring a high stardard of excellence
for the art works acquired by the National Gallery of Art.
Resolved, That these resolutions be incorporated in the present annual report
of the commission to the Board of Regents and that a copy of them be trans-
mitted by the Secretary of the commission to the family of Doctor Walcott.
Dr. C. G. ABBOT,
Dr. W. H. HoLMEs,
Committee.
The chairman asked Mr. Lodge in regard to the relationship of
the Freer Gallery to the National Gallery, and Mr. Lodge explained
that, as he understood it, Mr. Freer had desired that his gift should
be regarded as a branch of the National Gallery, to be separately
provided for and installed.
The chairman called attention to a project advocated by persons
interested in the promotion of American art, which project favors
the establishment of a fund to be devoted to the aid of young, prom-
ising artists. The suggestion was favorably commented upon and
the feasibility of securing support of the undertaking was discussed
at some length. The cheivan was authorized to alee the matter up
with such persons and institutions as he might find sympathetic.
THE HENRY WARD RANGER FUND
The paintings purchased during the year by the council of the
National Academy of Design as provided by the Henry Ward Ranger
44 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
bequest are as follows, including the names of the institutions to
which they have been assigned:
Title Artist Date of purchase Assignment
69. South Dakota Evening__| Jes W. Schlaikjer_._.._____ December, 1928 _| Vassar College, Poughkeep-
sie, N. Y.
“Onebitth akes-=2225--25-5- HdgariPay ne. 9221s ee eee Gomes as tes The James Lee Memorial
Academy of Arts, Mem-
phis, Tenn.
71. The Harvest Moon-_---- Charles Melville Dewey--| January, 1929___| Not reported.
72. The Golden Hour-_-__-__-_- George Elmer Browne....- March, 1929_____ Michigan State College of
Agriculture and Applied
Sciences, East Lansing,
Mich.
(jy AM eG is ybha doen eye eae Ernest L. Blumenschein, |__-__ (6 Ko eer at The Brooklyn Institute of
N. A. Arts and Sciences, Brook-
lyn, N. Y.
74. Hemlock Grove____----- Emil Carlsen, N. A--..-_-|----- (oleh a Ges Femee5t 4 The Portland Society of Art,
Portland, Me.
75. Summer Plumes-_-_-_._--- Gustave) Cimiotties 22 snes GosALiae Ts The Newark Museum Asso
ciation, Newark, N. J.
7O.tushinesleetee. =) 2. e Malcolm Humphreys-----|_--.- Golsseeeeaere Not reported.
The paintings purchased from the Ranger fund during the last
fiscal year and unassigned at its close (1927-28) have subsequently
been assigned as follows:
63. Cypripedia, by Sergeant Kendall, N. A.; to the California Palace of the
Legion of Honor, San Francisco, Calif.
The project of assembling the Ranger purchases thus far made for
temporary exhibition in the National Gallery of Art has been con-
sidered from time to time, but action has been delayed, due to the
lack of funds requisite for expenses of packing and shipping. At
the special meeting of the commission, held April 13, 1929, Mr. Gari
Melchers, chairman, made the welcome announcement that the Car-
negie Corporation of New York had generously allowed $1,000 for
this purpose. It was deemed advisable by members of the commis-
sion present to hold the exhibition not later than December 1, 1929,
and Secretary Abbot volunteered to take up at once the necessary cor-
respondence with the National Academy of Design and with the
several institutions holding the works.
SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS HELD IN THE GALLERY
Six loan exhibits of art works added greatly to the interest of the
year’s activities; these, briefly summarized, are as follows:
PORTRAITS BY M. L. THEO DUBE
Four portraits by the distinguished French painter, M. L. Theo
Dubé, membre Societaire de la Société des Artistes Francais, were
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 45
exhibited in the middle room of the gallery from November 16 to
December 14, 1928. The group included two compositions—A
Tramp and Coquetry, and portraits of President Woodrow Wilson,
1913, and Senator Mascurand, of France.
GOTHIC CATHEDRALS OF FRANCE
A noteworthy collection of paintings of the Gothic cathedrals of
France, 27 in number, by Pieter van Veen, Dutch-American painter,
was exhibited under the patronage of his excellency the French am-
bassador in Washington, the Hon. Paul Claudel, from December 8
to 31. A printed illustrated catalogue of the collection was supplied
by the artist and cards of invitation were issued for a special view
on December 8.
MINIATURES BY EDWARD GREENH MALBONE
A very important exhibit of early American miniatures, the life
work of Edward Greene Malbone (1770-1807), was shown in the
middle room of the gallery from February 23 to April 21, 1929.
Cards of invitation to the opening were issued. The collection was
assembled as the result of extensive correspondence and appeal and
arranged for exhibition by Mr. Ruel P. Tolman, curator of graphic
arts in the National Museum. Mr. Tolman prepared also the illus-
trated catalogue supplied by the gallery.
WATER-COLOR PAINTINGS OF INDIA
A collection of 42 masterly water-color paintings by William
Spencer Bagdatopoulos, English painter and etcher, of scenes and
figure subjects in India, was shown in the northeast room of the
gallery February 15 to March 15, 1929. A catalogue of the collec-
tion was furnished by the artist.
ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC SCENES AND CHARACTER STUDIES
On March 2 the gallery received and placed on view in the south
room an important collection of paintings by Frank Wilbert Stokes.
Mr. Stokes is probably the only person who has visited and painted
in both polar regions. His collection is the fruit of four separate
expeditions and numbers 500 works covering a wide range of subject
matter. ‘The selections forwarded and placed on view in the gallery
comprise 17 landscapes, 10 portrait studies of Eskimo, and 10 minor
landscape studies. Mr. Stokes’s work has the full approval of Com-
mander R. E. Byrd, United States Navy, with whom he visited the
scenes and people portrayed. The collection remains on view at the
close of the year.
46 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
PAINTING AND SCULPTURE BY AMERICAN NEGRO ARTISTS
An exhibition of 64 paintings and several pieces of sculpture, the
work of American negro artists, was shown in the foyer of the
museum from May 16 to 27, 1929. This collection was shown in New
York City in connection with the annual William E. Harmon awards
for distinguished achievement among negroes. It was brought to
Washington under the patronage of the committee on race relations
of the Washington Federation of Churches and under the immediate
supervision of Dr. Anson Phelps Stokes, canon of Washington
Cathedral, chairman of the committee, and Dr. Emmett J. Scott, sec-
retary-treasurer of Howard University, secretary. Invitation cards
were issued by the gallery and a catalogue of the collection was sup-
_ plied by the committee.
REINSTALLATION OF COLLECTIONS
The two-feathered Serpent Column models, the mutilated originals
of which are still in place in the portal of the Pyramid Temple known
as the “ Castillo,” or castle, in Chichen Itza, Yucatan, were removed
from the lobby to the second floor, thus taking their place with the
archeological collections to which they pertain. The space at the east
end of the lobby thus made vacant is now occupied by the handsome
mantelpiece and fireplace, by Richardson, transferred to the Museum
when the residence of Benjamin H. Warder was dismantled in 1924.
THE ALFRED DUANE PELL COLLECTION
In April, 1929, a large portion of the Alfred Duane Pell collection
which, due to lack of space in the National Gallery, had been installed
ou ane in the Arts and Industries Building, was transferred to
the Pell alcove at the north end of the gallery. ie series of busts of
Sévres biscuit ware belonging to the collection, remains for the pres-
ent in the Arts and Tmeiuceries Building. A eheloen: of this mate-
rial, 996 numbers, was compiled by Miss Helen A. Olmsted, of the
Ree tenest of ies and industries, National Museum, under the
expert supervision of Dr. S. W. aoe
ART WORKS RECEIVED DURING THE YEAR
Accessions of art works by the Smithsonian Institution, subject to
transfer to the National Gallery on approval of the advisory com-
mittee of the National Gallery of Art Commission, are as follows:
Portrait bust in bronze of the Hon. Elihu Root, by James Earle
Fraser, N. A. A replica of the bust made for the Carnegie Corpora-
tion of New York. (Donor not ascertained.)
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 47
Four specimens of modern Japanese cloisonné; gift of Seth B.
Robinson, jr., and T. Dudley Robinson, of New York City.
The John Gellatly collection of art objects, presented to the Nation
for eventual assignment to the National Gallery of Art. Accepted
by Congress under a joint resolution approved by the President on
June 6, 1929. This collection is now housed in the Heckscher
Building, 730 Fifth Avenue, New York City, where it is to remain for
four years, becoming then available for transfer to the gallery.
LOANS ACCEPTED BY THE GALLERY
A painting entitled “ Mist in Kanab Canyon, Utah,” by Thomas
Moran, 1892; lent by Mrs. Bessie B. Croffut, Washington, D. C.
A painting entitled “A Rainy Day,” by Peter Moran; lent by the
Misses Grandin, Washington, D. C.
Two paintings by Gilbert Stuart—portrait of Thomas Amory, of
Boston, and portrait of George A. Otis; lent by Mrs. O. H. Ernst
and Miss Helen Amory Ernst, of Washington, D. C.
Portrait bust in marble of Mrs. Nicholas Longworth, by Moses W.
Dykaar; lent by the sculptor.
Portrait bust in bronze of Hon. Wade H. Ellis, by Joseph Anthony
Atchison; leit by the sculptor.
Three paintings by old masters—Madonna and Child, by Alonzo
Cano (1601-1667) ; The Madonna, by Carlo Dulci (1616-1686) ; and
Saint with Book, by Giuseppe Ribera (Spagnoletto) (1588-1656) ;
lent by Mr. and Mrs. Maxim Karolik, Washington, D. C.
Portrait of Mrs. Charles Eames, by Gambardella; lent by Mrs.
Alistair Gordon Cumming, Washington, D. C.
DISTRIBUTIONS
Two landscape models by G. C. Curtis, sculptor, 1902, showing
the park scheme of the city of Washington, lent to the gallery in 1917
by the National Commission of Fine Arts, were withdrawn by the
commission through Mr. H. P. Caemmerer, secretary and executive
officer.
The collection of paintings, landscapes, colonial mansions, etc.,
by John Ross Key, originally received January 15, 1927, as a tem-
porary exhibit by the artist’s widow, and retained at her request
and the request of certain Members of Congress, in order that it
might be available for inspection by a suggested congressional com-
mittee, was withdrawn by Mrs. John Ross Key April 25, 1929.
The painting Love and Life, by George Frederick Watts, a gift
of the artist to the American people in 1893 and shown at the World’s
Columbian Exposition at Chicago, accepted by act of Congress July
23, 1894, and transferred from the White House to the National
48 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Gallery March 21, 1921, was recalled to the White House by Presi-
dent Herbert Hoover on March 11, 1929, where it has an honored
place in his study.
An early painting by George Inness, lent to the gallery by Col.
Henry C. Davis, United States Marine Corps, was withdrawn by
Mrs. Davis, his widow, of Coronado, Calif.
An Italian masterpiece, The Immaculate Conception with the
Mirror, by Murillo, lent to the gallery by Mr. DeWitt V. Hutchins
on April 28, 1928, was withdrawn by Mr. Hutchins and shipped by
his order to Thomas J. Kerr, New York City, on June 24, 1929.
The portrait bust in plaster of President James Monroe, by Mrs.
Margaret French Cresson, was withdrawn by the sculptor.
The portrait of Surg. Bailey Washington, jr., United States
Navy, (1787-1854), by an artist unknown, was withdrawn by Mr.
John Washington Davidge upon order from the owner, Miss Alice M.
Reading, of Reading, Calif.
LOANS BY THE GALLERY
At the request of Mrs. Herbert Hoover, two paintings belonging
to the William T. Evans collection of contemporary American paint-
ings—The Flume, Opalescent River, Adirondacks, by Alexander
Wyant, and Castle Creek Canyon, South Dakota, by Frank De
Haven—were lent to the White House, for temporary embellishment
of the state dining room, on May 23, 1929.
MISCELLANEOUS
Four large ebonized kensington cases of the gem type have been
added to the gallery furnishings; these are for the accommodation
of that portion of the Alfred Duane Pell collection recently trans-
ferred from the Arts and Industries Building. Four No. 500 “ win-
dow spot reflectors” have been installed in the skylight over the
middle room of the gallery for the better lighting of the art works
on dark days.
LIBRARY
The gallery library has been increased by gift, purchase, and sub-
scription in volumes, pamphlets, periodicals, ete.
A gift made possible through a fund in Yale University estab-
lished by Canon Anson Phelps Stokes, consisting of a set of 14 etch-
ings made for the Yale University Press by Louis Orr, entitled
“ Ports of America,” was added to the library pending other assign-
ment when the various departments of the gallery are more fully
established.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 49
PUBLICATIONS
Hoitmes, W. H. Report on the National Gallery of Art for the year ending
June 30, 1928. Appendix 2, report of the secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution for the year ending June 30, 1928, pp. 52-62.
Catalogue of A Group of Original Paintings of the Gothie Cathedrals of
France, by Pieter van Veen, on view in the National Gallery, Natural History
Building, United States National Museum, December 8 to December 31, 1928.
Under the patronage of his excellency the French ambassador, Hon. Paul
Claudel. Washington, 1928; 6 pp.; 2 plates.
Catalogue of A Collection of Water-Color Paintings of India, by W. S.
Bagdatopoulos, on view in the National Gallery of Art, United States
National Museum Building, February 15 to March 15, 1929. Washington,
1929, 4 pp.
Catalogue of Miniatures and Other Works, by Edward Greene Malbone, 1777-
1807. February 23—April 21, 1929. Washington, 1929, 21 pp.; 5 plates.
Catalogue of An Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by American Negro
Artists, at the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
D.C. May 16—-May 29, 1929. Washington, 1929; 15 pp.; 11 illustrations.
Respectfully submitted.
W. H. Hotness, Director.
Dr. C. G. Axsort,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 3
REPORT ON THE FREER GALLERY OF ART
Sir: I have the honor to submit the ninth annual report on the
Freer Gallery of Art for the year ending June 30, 1929:
THE COLLECTIONS
Additions to the collections by purchase are as follows:
29.4.
29.17.
29.18.
29.19.
29.8.
29.63.
BOOKBINDING
Persian, sixteenth-seventeenth century. Turkish school. Red leather,
with decorations in stamped arabesques on gold.
. Egyptian, fifteenth century. Brown leather, decorated in blind and gold
tooling.
Egyptian, fourteenth century. Dark-brown leather, decorated in blind and
gold tooling.
Egyptian, fifteenth century. Red leather, decorated in blind and gold
tooling.
Persian, sixteenth century. Light-brown leather, lined with rose-red
leather. Decorations in blind and gold tooling, and in stamped ara-
besques on gold and blue grounds.
BRONZE
Chinese, sixth century or earlier. Period of the Six Dynasties. A large
mirror, the back decorated with engraved silhouettes of gold and silver
set in lacquer.
Chinese, seventh-tenth century. T’ang period. A mirror with phoenix
and running animal figures in relief on the back.
Chinese, sixth-seventh century. Sui period. A mirror with formalized
design of palmettes in circles in relief on the back.
Chinese, third century B. C.(?). Han period or earlier. A sword, with
ornamental designs inlaid in gold on the pommel, and in gold and
turquoise on the guard, while both sides of the blade carry inscriptions,
also inlaid in gold.
GLASS
Syrian, thirteenth-fourteenth century. A pilgrim bottle, of transparent
blown glass, decorated with polychrome enamels and gold.
MANUSCRIPTS
Persian, seventeenth century. By Kemal ad-Din. A page of calligraphy
in four colors on a pinkish-cream paper. Ornaments of floral ara-
besques on a gold ground. Signed.
50
29.64.
29.65.
29.66.
29.67.
29.1.
29.2.
29.3.
29.76.
29.25,
29.46.
29.75.
29.77.
29.78.
29.79.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 51
Persian, seventeenth century. By Kemal ad-Din. A page of calligraphy
in three colors on a pinkish-cream paper. Ornaments of floral ara-
besques on grounds of gold and blue.
Persian, seventeenth century. A page of calligraphy in three colors on
blue paper with a floral ornament in gold.
Turkish, sixteenth century. A page. of nastalig script in white on a green
ground. The writing is cut from paper and mounted. Ornamental
band in colors and gold.
Turkish, sixteenth century. A page of nastaliq script in white on a blue
ground. The writing is cut from paper and mounted. Ornamental
band in colors and gold.
. North African, sixteenth century. Two sheets of parchment (from a
book) with Maghribi writing on both sides in brown and blue. Orna-
ments in gold and color.
. Persian, eleventh-twelfth century. A sheet of paper (from a book) with
Kufie script on both sides in black, red, and gold. Page ornaments
in gold and black.
. Hgyptian(?), eighth-ninth century(?). A sheet of parchment (from a
book) with Kujic script on both sides in black and red. Ornaments
in gold, black, and red.
. Egyptian(?), eighth-ninth century(?). A sheet of parchment (from a
book) with Kufie script on both sides in black and red.
. Egyptian, thirteenth century. A frontispiece of a Koran with naskh
script in black on paper. Borders, medallions, and small ornaments in
gold and black.
. Egyptian, thirteenth century. A frontispiece of a Koran with naskh
script in black on paper. Borders, medallions, and small ornaments
in gold and black.
PAINTING
Chinese, dated in correspondence with A. D. 797. A fragment of a
Buddist seripture from Tun-huang, with figures of Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas. In colors on paper.
Japanese, eleventh century. Fujiwara Buddhist. Hdérdkakwu Mandara:
The Buddha and attendant divinities. In color and gold on silk;
mounted as a panel.
Indian, seventeenth century. Mughal. A prince and an ascetic. In colors
and gold on paper.
Indian, seventeenth century. A pilgrim and an ascetic in conversation.
In delicate color on paper.
Persian, thirteenth century. Mongol school. Twenty-two illustrations
on loose leaves of a Shah Namah, rencered in colors, black, gold, and
Silver (oxydized).
Persian, sixteenth-seventeenth century. Turkish school. A court scene.
in bright colors and gold on paper.
Persian, about 1600. Shih ’Abbias school, in the style of Yusuf. A man
playing on a lute. In full color and gold on paper.
Persian, seventeenth century. Two pheasants. In full color and gold
on paper.
Persian, middle fifteenth century. Timurid school. A warrior of Timtr.
Drawn in black and slight tint, with ornamental details in gold.
82322—30
5
52 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
29.80. Indian, early seventeenth century. Mughal, time of Jahangir. A love
scene. In colors and gold on paper.
29.81. Indian, middle seventeenth century. Mughal, time of Shah Jahan.
Portrait of Asalat Khan. In white, black, color, and gold on paper.
POTTERY
29.6. Chinese, T’ang dynasty. A cylindrical jar with ribbed sides and three
stump feet, glazed in blue outside and in yellow inside.
29.7. Chinese, Sung dynasty. Chtin ware. A fiowerpot with 12 lobed sides
and festooned rim; glazed in deep strawberry-red and blue.
29.12. Chinese, Sung dynasty. Chien ware (Honan type). A covered jar,
glazed in black with a painted ornament in metaliic brown.
29.13. Chinese, Sung dynasty. Tzt chou ware. A vase with trumpet-formed
mouth, with a floral ornament in black on a white ground.
29.14. Chinese, Sung dynasty. Ying ching ware. A covered box, glazed in
pale greenish-blue, with a stamped phoenix design on the cover in
slight relief. *
29.15. Chinese, T’ang dynasty. A figure of a dog, biting at one leg, seated on
a hollow base; glazed in white with a mingled overflow of blue and
yellow.
29.9. Persian, eleventh—thirteenth century. Rhages. A jug with a bottle
neck, painted with fisure designs, over glaze, in blue, green, black, and
yellow.
29.10. Persian, eleventh—thirteenth century. Rhages. A jug with a wide cylin-
drical neck, glazed in white, and decorated in applied relief outlined
with red, with other adornments of red, green, and blue enamels and
gold.
2911. West Asian. Rakka. A plate, glazed in white, with a sphinx figure in
slight relief, enameled in green, dark blue, and brown.
SILVER
29.5. Chinese, ninth century. T’ang dynasty. <A covered box, with a delicate
floral design engraved upon it.
29.16. Chinese, ninth century. ‘T’ang dynasty. A cup with a delicate floral
design engrayed upon the outside.
Curatorial work within the collection included documentary study
of Chinese and Japanese inscriptions on several new purchases and
on various objects already included in the collection. Many objects
have been submitted for an expert opinion upon them or for trans-
lation of their Chinese, Japanese, or Tibetan inscriptions. The total
number of such reports covers 681 objects and 56 photographs and
tracings. The collection known as “A gold treasure of the late
Roman period,” a group of Byzantine objects of the fourth to sixth
century, has been catalogued, and the collection of antique glass,
which was listed in the Freer inventory, 8. I. 189, as “ Egyptian
glass,” has been classified for the first time and duly catalogued.
This collection contains 1,271 manufactured objects, ranging from
vases of several inches in height to minute beads and embracing
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 53
many types of early glass from Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere. In
addition to these there are 80 small rods used in the making of
mosaics, and 44 shells, probably from ancient graves and used as
amulets, making a total of 1,395 objects. In this work the curator
had the assistance of Dr. Gustavus A. Eisen, author of Glass, New
York, 1927.
Repairs tending to the preservation of objects in the collection
have been completed as follows:
(1) Resurfacing:
2 oil paintings by Whistler.
(2) Remounting:
1 Japanese screen.
1 Japanese panel.
2 Chinese makimono.
1 Chinese panel.
(8) Mending of breaks:
17 pieces of Chinese bronze.
pieces of Chinese jade.
pieces of Chinese pottery.
pieces of Egyptian glass.
piece of Hgyptian bronze.
piece of Korean pottery.
piece of Japanese pottery.
2 pieces of Chinese stone sculpture.
et et EL OO Or
These pieces were broken when purchased and have ‘been put in
condition for the first time.
Changes in exhibition during the year have involved 106 different
objects, itemized as follows:
25 Chinese bronzes.
6 Chinese paintings.
2 Chinese stone sculptures.
28 Chinese pottery.
6 Japanese screens.
5 Japanese paintings.
15 Near Eastern pottery.
19 Near Hastern paintings.
THE LIBRARY
During the year there have been added to the main library 231
volumes and to the library of the field staff 114, making a total of
845 volumes; 41 unbound periodicals and 129 pamphlets to the main
library and 53 periodicals and 62 pamphlets to the field hbrary,
making totals of 94 periodicals and 191 pamphlets. Thirty-four vol-
umes of Aokka were rebound and 9 other volumes. The field library
sent 39 volumes to the bindery. A list of new accessions to the
library, in its two divisions, accompanies this report as Appendix A,
Parts I and II (not printed).
54 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
REPRODUCTIONS AND PAMPHLETS
Two hundred and eighty-one new negatives of objects have been
made. Of these, 139 were made for registration photographs and 142
in response to special orders. The total number of reproductions
available, either as carbon photographs or as negatives from which
prints can be made upon request, is now 2,689.
Three hundred and forty-two lantern slides have also been added
to the collection, making a total of 829 available for study and for
sale.
The total numbers of sales of reproductions, at cost price, are as
follows: Photographs, 2,156; post cards, 18,834; lantern slides, 60;
negatives, 5. Two hundred and eighty-five lantern slides have been
loaned for lecture purposes.
Of booklets issued by the gallery, the following number were sold
at cost price:
BR. 'G: A. pamphlets. 22222. --2225 25-2 Se 2 ee ee ee 148
Synopsis.o£ History folders)... 2- 2455 ht eee ie 8 eee ee 154
Mist of American paintings... een SS ee ee eee 69
Annotateds@utlines' of Study=2.. 2-880 See ee te eae eee 21
Gallery. books... 2. 2) 3. oe a PERE he Bese Eo Soe 277
Moor: plans=.-2 22. 2-4 Bk ee een Ofek 28 ee ee 17
BUILDING
The shop has been occupied constantly with the usual repair work,
the making of stands, frames, and easels for exhibition galleries, and
of furniture and equipment for the building. A detailed report of
shopwork, including painting, accompanies this report as Appendix
C (not printed).
ATTENDANCE
The gallery has been open every day, with the exception of Mon-
days, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day, from 9 until 4.30 o’clock.
The total attendance for the year was 116,303. The aggregate Sun-
day attendance was 41,411, with an average Sunday attendance of
796. The week-day attendance amounted to 74,892, with an average
of 290. Of the 2,101 visitors who came to the offices, 207 came for
general information, 20 to study the building and museum methods,
54 to submit objects for examination, 327 to see objects in storage,
166 to study in the library, 75 to see the facsimiles of the Washing-
ton Manuscripts, 7 to make photographs and sketches in the exhibi-
tion galleries, 17 to make tracings from illustrated books in the
library, and 228 to purchase photographs. Ten classes, in groups
ranging in number from 3 to 15, were given instruction in the study
rooms, and 12 groups ranging from 1 to 40 persons were given docent
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 5d
service in the galleries. On November 19, 1928, Mr. Bishop lectured
in the auditorium on The Development of Chinese Arts, with lan-
tern-slide illustrations, before an audience composed of the art sec-
tion of the Twentieth Century Club and the department of fine
arts of the District Federation of Women’s Clubs.
FIELD WORK
The work of the field staff has been carried on during the past
year without interruption, in this country as well as in China, and
gratifying progress has been made in both.
The labor involved has now reached very considerable portions
and, is steadily growing in amount. In addition to that of a routine .
nature, it has come to include the handling of a large correspondence
with individuals and organizations in this country and abroad, the
writing of articles and the delivering of lectures designed to pro-
mote an intelligent interest in the civilizations of the Far East, and
the maintenance of a cordial understanding with the Chinese Gov-
ernment. Negotiations with the latter’s National Research Institute
have been brought to a highly satisfactory conclusion and have
already borne abundant fruit. The plan inaugurated by the Amer-
ican Council of Learned Societies for the undertaking of a world-
wide survey of the resources at present available for the prosecution
of Far Eastern research has also received active assistance from
our field staff and is to be put in execution in the near future.
Every effort has likewise been made to bring our field brary of
reference, with its books, periodicals, pamphlets, clippings, photo-
graphs, maps, etc., to a high state of efficiency and usefulness. The
labor devoted to this task has already amply justified itself.
Dr. C. Li, of our field staff, who was in this country last summer,
returned to China in the autumn by way of Europe, Egypt, and
India. As a direct result of our understanding with the Chinese
Government the latter extended to him on his arrival every assist-
ance in the planning and prosecution of important archeological
excavations in the Province of Honan, one of the principal centers
of the archaic Chinese civilization of the protohistoric period. A
full report of his finds during the past spring is awaited with inter-
est and should throw much new light on a hitherto dark page of
culture history.
It is highly gratifying to note that political conditions in China
have undergone a steady improvement during the past year. AJ
present indications appear to unite in justifying the confident ex-
pectation that our work in the field will be carried on without inter-
ference or interruption of any kind.
56 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
During the winter season Mr. Bishop gave the following lectures,
in addition to that mentioned above:
Archeological Research in China, before the Cosmos Club, Washington,
October 22.
Exploring and Excavating in China, at the Museum of the University of
Pennsylvania, January 19.
The Bronze Age in China, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
on February 9.
Travels in China, at the Chevy Chase School, Chevy Chase, Md., March 3.
An account of the activities of our field staff, briefly outlined
above, is given in detail in Appendix B, submitted herewith (not
printed).
: PERSONNEL
Mr. Archibald G. Wenley, field assistant, arrived from Paris,
France, on September 21, and spent a few days at the gallery before
going to Japan. The past eight months he has been stationed at
Kyoto.
Dr. Chi Li arrived in Peking on November 21 and has since been
engaged in archeological research.
Mr. Y. Kinoshita, of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, worked at
the gallery from January 14 to June 27 on the preservation of
oriental paintings.
Mr. S. Mikami, of New York, worked at the gallery in three
periods between March 25 and June 27 on repairs to various objects
of jade, bronze, stone, glass, and pottery.
Dr. G. A. Eisen, of New York, spent two weeks in April at the
gallery, classifying the collection of ancient glass.
Respectfully submitted.
J. EK. Lopes,
Curator, Freer Gallery of Art.
Dr. C. G. Asgor,
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 4
REPORT ON THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
Str: I have the honor to submit the following report on the field
researches, office work, and other operations of the Bureau of Ameri-
can Kthnology during the fiscal year ended {une 30, 1929, conducted
in accordance with the act of Congress approved May 16,1928. The
act referred to contains the following item:
American ethnology: For continuing ethnological researches among the
American Indians and the natives of Hawaii, the excavation and preservation
of archeologic remains under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution, in.
cluding necessary employees, the preparation of manuscript, drawings, and illus
trations, the purchase of books and periodicals, and traveling expenses, $60,300
Mr. M. W. Stirling entered upon his duties as chief of the bureau
August 1, 1928, succeeding Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, who retired
January 15, 1928.
During the months of September and October Mr. Stirling worked
with a group of Acoma Indians who were visiting Washington and
secured from them in as complete form as possible the origin and
migration myth of that very conservative tribe. This myth not only
describes the emergence of the first human beings from the under-
world but also explains the origin and functions of the pantheon of
demigods and heroes connected with the legend. The myth likewise
explains the origin and function of the clans and the medicine societies
and the reason for the many ceremonies practiced. In connection
with this work phonographic records were made of 66 songs, many
of which have been transcribed by Miss Frances Densmore, as de-
scribed in her report. This information fills an important gap in
our knowledge of the oldest inhabited pueblo in the United States.
Mr. Stirling spent the months of March and April in Florida,
where a survey was made of the mounds in the vicinity of Tampa
Bay. An interesting discovery was made of a series of mounds
composed of mixed sand and shell, constructed at a distance of about
4 miles inland, parallel to the shore, and in each instance directly
back of a large shell mound located on the salt water. Preliminary
excavations were made at Cockroach Point, Palma Sola, and Safety
Harbor. The shell mound at Cockroach Point is the largest on the
west coast of Florida and is composed entirely of shell and bone,
refuse from the meals of the Indians who formerly occupied the
57
58 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
site. Collections of shells and bones were made in the different levels
of the mound, together with human artifacts associated with them,
with a view to establishing a culture sequence.
The site at Safety Harbor was determined to be of the same
culture as that excavated at Weeden Island during the winters of
1923 and 1924.
The large sand mound at Palma Sola proved to be of exceptional
interest and was selected as a site for intensive excavation next
winter,
During the latter part of April Mr. Stirling visited Chicago for
the purpose of delivering lectures before the Geographic Society of
Chicago and the anthropologists of Chicago and vicinity. From
Chicago he went to Memphis, Tenn., where he attended the meeting
of the Tennessee Academy of Sciences and addressed the society at
their annual banquet. Proceeding from Memphis to Macon, Ga.,
he visited the large mounds on the site of Old Ocmulgee Town, tra-
ditional founding place of the Creek Confederacy.
During the third week in May Mr. Stirling attended the con-
ference of Mid-Western Archeologists, which was held at St. Louis
under the auspices of the National Research Council, and as repre-
sentative of this body went to Montgomery, Ala., to deliver an ad-
dress at the unveiling of a monument by the Alabama Anthropologi-
cal Society on the site of old Tukabatchi.
He also attended the meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in New York in December, 1928, as repre-
sentative of the United States Government.
Dr. John R. Swanton, ethnologist, was engaged during the year in
completing the proof reading of his bulletin on the Myths and Tales
of the Southeast, which has been released for publication.
Considerable material was added to his manuscript paper entitled
“Source Material for Choctaw Ethnology.” Part of this was col-
lected from the archives of the State Department of Archives and
History at Jackson, Miss., and some from the eastern Choctaw at
Philadelphia, Miss., in July, 1928. Also, a great deal more work
was devoted to the projected tribal map of aboriginal North America
north of Mexico and to the accompanying text, including the in-
corporation of some valuable notes furnished by Mr. Diamond
Jenness, chief of the division of anthropology of the Geological
Survey of Canada.
Work was continued throughout the year on the Timucua diction-
ary which, in spite of the elimination of a large number of cards on
account of closer classification and the correction of errors, still fills
14 trays.
Shortly after July, 1928, Dr. Truman Michelson, ethnologist, left
Washington to renew his research among the Algonquian Tribes of
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 59
Oklahoma. He first studied the linguistics, sociology, and physical
anthropology of the Kickapoo. Kickapoo in certain respects is very
important linguistically. While working on Arapaho he was able
to formulate many phonetic shifts of complexity. Even so, the
amount of vocabulary that can be proved to be Algonquian is very
small. The grammatical structure is, however, fundamentally Algon-
quian. It is also true that there are a few traits which are dis-
tinctly un-Algonquian; for example, the order of words.
The first week in August Doctor Michelson went to Tama, Iowa,
to renew his work among the Foxes. He there restored phonetically
some texts previously obtained in the current syllabic script and
worked out some translations. He also obtained some grammatical
notes on these texts. Some new Fox syllabic texts were collected
and new and important ethnological data were obtained.
Doctor Michelson returned to Washington in September. He cor-
rected proofs of Bulletin 89, Observations on the Thunder Dance of
the Bear Gens of the Fox Indians, and prepared for publication by
the bureau a memoir entitled “ Notes on the Great Sacred Pack of the
Thunder Gens of the Fox Indians.” Early in June Doctor Michelson
left for Oklahoma, where he obtained more Kickapoo linguistic notes,
further elucidating the relation of Kickapoo to Fox. From this it
appears that; Kickapoo diverges more widely in idiom than hitherto
suspected. He also secured some Kickapoo texts in the current
syllabic script and obtained new data on social organization. Some
brief Shawnee linguistic notes were collected. These show that while
Shawnee is in certain respects very important for a correct under-
standing of Fox phonology, as a whole it is not as archaic. It is also
now clear that Shawnee is further removed from Sauk and Kickapoo
than he had previously surmised. Doctor Michelson witnessed sev-
eral Kickapoo dances and attended a Shawnee ball game.
In June, 1929, Mr. John P. Harrington, ethnologist, completed his
report on the Taos Indians, who inhabit a large pueblo on an eastern
affluent of the Rio Grande in north-central New Mexico. These are
the northernmost of the New Mexico Pueblo Indians and are
peculiarly interesting because of the long intimate relations they
have had with the Jicarilla Apaches, Utes, Comanches, and other
tribes of Great Plains culture. During the period of Spanish
domination in New Mexico the Taos had to play the double and dif-
ficult rdle, because of their frontier position, of persuading the
Spanish that they were really on their side, and the Plains Indians
that they were really on theirs. The relations with the Plains
Indians existed far back in Taos history and amounted at times to the
incorporation of large bodies of these Indians in the blood which went
to make up the present-day Taos. And there is a still more remote
60 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
and fundamental connection with one group of Plains Indians,
namely, the Kiowa. The Taos language, which was the language of
one of the ancient groups which contributed to the composition of
Taos, has been determined to be a dialect of Kiowa, which seems to
indicate that this contingent of the Taos population at least, like the
Kiowas themselves, once lived in the northern region of the Rocky
Mountains, probably in what is now Canada.
Grasping still another opportunity to check the old and new
information on this region, studies on the related Karuk Indians of
the central Klamath River region of California were resumed during
field work on the coast and were continued throughout the year,
resulting in an accumulation of carefully analyzed material, a large
part of which is now ready for publication. The work consists of
many divisions of information, including the grammar of the lan-
guage, its sounds, its peculiar musical intonations, and the system of
long and short consonants and vowels; the history of the tribe, which
remained intact and unspoiled up to 1850; the census, with the peculiar
old personal names; the villages, which were strung out along the
river and its tributary creeks; the construction of the living houses
and sweat houses, and the description of all the manufactures, and
the process of making the objects, all in Indian; the social life, an
organization without chiefs; the great festivals and the various
dances; feuds, wars, and peace making; sucking and herb doctors,
and the sources of their power; medicine formulas and myths, all in
the language, for any other record of them would be inadequate.
This information is accompanied by photographs and phonograph
records and is rapidly approaching completion for publication as a
report of the bureau.
Early in June Mr. Harrington went to Chaco Canyon, N. Mex.,
for the purpose of making further study of the Pueblo Indian lan-
guages, notably the relation of Zuni and Keresan to the newly
discovered Kiowan family. Cooperating with students of the Uni-
versity of New Mexico attending the university summer school being
held at Chaco Canyon under the joint auspices of the State University
and the School of American Research, a minute comparison was
made of the Taos and Zufi languages, resulting in the discovery of
the genetic relationship of these two languages, a relationship which
ean be traced through hundreds of words of similar sound and
identical construction, which was long ago hinted at by the discovery
of such words as lana, big, and papa, older brother, which are the
same in sound and meaning in both languages. About 200 kymo-
eraph tracings were made. Similar genetically related words and
features were also discovered in the Keresan language. Cooperating
in this work were Miss Sara Goddard, Miss Clara Leibold, Miss Anna
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 61
Risser, Miss Janet Tietjens, Miss Winifred Stamm, Mr. Reginald
Fisher, and several other students. The results are ready for publi-
cation, including the kymographic alphabet, which is mounted and
ready for the engraver.
The months of July and August, 1928, were spent by Dr. F. H. H.
Roberts, jr., archeologist, in completing archeological investiga-
tions along the Piedra River in southwestern Colorado. During
that time the remains of 50 houses belonging to the first period
of the prehistoric Pueblo peoples were excavated and examined.
As a result of those researches it was possible to determine a 3-stage
chronoldgical development of the house types in the district as well
as to postulate very definite reconstructions of the dwellings. An
additional discovery was that in the arrangement of the structures
the builders had developed the prototype of the unit house which
was the characteristic building of the following stage, the Pueblo II |
period. Besides the work in house remains, a number of burial
mounds were explored and many skeletons and objects of the mate-
rial culture of the people were obtained. The latter include a large
number. and variety of pottery specimens, many of which repre-
sent an entirely new feature in the ceramic industry, bone and
stone implements, and ornaments. The work as a whole gives a
clear-cut picture of the life and conditions prevailing at a time
of instability and disturbance due to an influx of new peoples, with
its attendant cultural transition.
On the completion of the work along the Piedra River one week
was spent in a reconnaissance of the Governador district in north-
ern New Mexico. The Governador region includes the Governador,
Burns, La Jara, and Frances Canyons. The latter are of special
archeological and ethnological interest, because it was to that sec-
tion that a large group of the Pueblo Indians from the Jemez
villages fled after they had been disastrously defeated in the Battle
of San Diego Canyon during the month of June, 1696, by Spanish
forces engaged in the reconquest of the Southwest. The ruins of
the dwellings built by the refugees are in a good state of preserva-
tion and furnish excellent information on the methods and styles of
house building prevalent at that time. At the close of the Gov-
ernador explorations Doctor Roberts returned to Washington, reach-
ing there the middle of September.
During the autumn illustrations were prepared to accompany a
manuscript entitled “ Recent Archeological Developments in the
Vicinity of El Paso, Tex.,” which was published in January, 1929,
as volume 81, No. 7, of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections.
Proof of another paper entitled “Shabik’eshchee Village, A Late
Basket Maker Site in the Chaco Canyon, New Mexico,” was corrected,
62 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
and this appeared in June, 1929, as Bulletin 92 of the Bureau of
American Ethnology.
Considerable time was spent in the laboratory of the division of
American archeology of the United States National Museum in
working over the collection made during the excavations along the
Piedra River. <A portion of this work included the restoration, from
fragments found in the various houses, of a number of unusually
fine culinary and storage jars and a series of decorated bowls.
From January to June a 545-page manuscript on the work in
southwestern Colorado was prepared. Accompanying this report
are 40 text figures drawn by Doctor Roberts. The figures include 64
drawings, consisting of maps of the San Juan archeological area
and the Piedra district, outlines of the various village and house
groups, restorations of the different forms of dwellings, details in
building construction, outline groups of pottery forms, and designs
from decorated ceramic containers.
On May 11, 1929, Doctor Roberts left Washington for Denver,
Colo., where one week was spent in studying museum specimens.
From Denver he proceeded to Gallup, N. Mex., where he outfitted
for work in the region of the Long H Ranch, eastern Arizona, 45
miles from the Pueblo of Zuni. After conducting a reconnaissance
a site was chosen on the Long H Ranch, 1 mile northwest of the
ranch buildings, and a series of excavations started. As work pro-
gressed it was found that the site was one which had been occupied by
Basket Maker III and Pueblo I peoples and that it showed the transi-
tion from the one period to the other. At the end of June, eight fine
examples of pit houses had been uncovered. Excellent data on the
type and character of this form of structure were obtained and sev-
eral new features in the method of house grouping were observed.
The burial mounds of three house clusters were examined and 30
interments exhumed. The latter were accompanied by mortuary
offerings of pottery; bone and shell implements; shell beads, brace-
lets, and pendants; and turquoise ornaments. With the various ob-
jects found in the houses the total number of specimens reaches 300.
The work has furnished valuable information on a little-known phase
of the prehistoric sedentary cultures of the Southwest.
During the year Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, ethnologist, continued his
studies on the Iroquois. In 1900 and immediately subsequent years
Mr. Hewitt undertook seriously to record in native texts the extant
rituals, ordinances, and laws pertaining to the institutions and struc-
ture of the League or Confederation of the Five (later Six) Tribes
or Nations of the Iroquois of New York State. At that time there
were still living two or three men among the Iroquois of Canada
who grasped more or less fully the intent and purpose of the various
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 63
institutions of this league, and Mr. Hewitt had then acquired a
conversational knowledge of the two languages in which these rituals,
ordinances, and laws were chiefly expressed, to wit, the Mohawk and
the Onondaga. The use of the Cayuga, Oneida, and Seneca was
exceptional.
From these men Mr. Hewitt obtained standard texts in the native
tongues of the informants. The death of two of these informants
made a study of the material furnished by them difficult. Resort
was had then to other less noted informants in these matters, and
there was obtained a large number of versions of portions of the
standard texts already mentioned, which disclosed views and state-
ments which it seemed impossible to harmonize with those appearing
in the standard texts. It was imperative that the value of these dis-
cordant statements should be ascertained where possible and that
palpable omissions from the standard texts should be utilized. The
task was to ascertain in these analytical studies what was transmitted
tradition and what was the personal opinion of the informant, unwit-
tingly expressed.
This work of comparison was undertaken to secure the best possible
translations, interlinear and free, of the several native texts thus
studied. The texts of the Installation Chant, the Eulogy of the
Founders, of the Traditional Biography of Deganawida which de-
scribes in great detail the years of difficult work which had to be done
to establish the League of the Five Tribes of the Iroquois in the Stone
Age of America, and also the native text of the Requickening Address
of Installation, were subjected to this kind of study.
Mr. Hewitt represented the Smithsonian Institution on the United
States Geographic Board. In addition to attending the meetings, he
spent about three days in researches for the executive committee.
As custodian of manuscripts of the bureau, Mr. Hewitt did some
classificatory linguistic work on new items acquired.
Mr. Hewitt left Washington on May 6, 1929, to continue his
studies among the Iroquoian Tribes dwelling in Canada and in the
State of New York. His work consisted chiefly in literal and free
translation of formal native diction embodying legislative, rituslis-
tic, and forensic thought; and also in the coordination of divergent
traditional statements of traditionally historical events, in eliminat-
ing the incongruous, and in conserving the congruous. He secured 15
parcels of wampum strings, severally bearing the name of one of
the burdens of the ritual, the Requickening Address of Installation.
Dr. Francis Le Flesche, ethnologist, during the last fiscal year
completed Wa-sha’-be A-thi", an Osage war ceremony, composed of
270 pages of manuscript, with diagrams and illustrations; also the
Wa’-wa-tho", a ceremony pertaining to the peace pipes, composed
64 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of 129 pages of manuscript, with illustrations. In this paper is a
full and detailed description of the discoidal pipes, ancient and
modern, found in the Eastern States, many of which may be found
in the various museums.
With the assistance of Mrs. Grace D. Woodburn, he has revised
the work on the Osage Dictionary. There are approximately 19,000
words of the Osage language in common use among the tribe with
English equivalent; about 17,000 English words with Osage tran-
scriptions are given. The words, with their meanings, can not be
given positively, but a clear idea of usage has been made. About 35
illustrations have been completed for this work.
SPECIAL RESEARCHES
The study of Indian music has been continued during the past
year by Miss Frances Densmore, a collaborator of the bureau.
Material has been submitted on the songs of the Menominee, Winne-
bago, Pawnee, Yuma, Acoma, and the Indians living on the Fraser,
Thompson, and Squamish Rivers in British Columbia; also on a small
group of songs recorded at Anvik, Alaska, and obtained through
the courtesy of Rev. John W. Chapman. A comparison of the songs
in this wide territory has been important in the development of the
research.
Kight manuscripts have been submitted with the following titles:
“Menominee Songs of Pleasure, Dances, and Manabus Legends”;
“Songs of Indians Living on the Fraser, Thompson, and Squamish
Rivers in British Columbia”; “ Origin Song of the Dice Game and
Other Winnebago Songs”; “ Winnebago Songs Connected with the
Recent War ”; and 17 analytical tables comparing Pawnee with songs
previously analyzed; “ Winnebago Songs Connected with Legends,
Games, and Dances”; “ Acoma Songs of the Flower Dance and Corn
Dance”; “Acoma Songs Used in Treating the Sick and Other
Acoma Songs”; and “A Comparison Between Yuma, Acoma, and
Alaskan Indian Songs,” with 18 tables of analysis of Yuma songs.
The number of songs transcribed and analyzed is 117, and a large
number of dictaphone song records were studied without transcrip-
tion. Miss Densmore corrected the proof of her book on Papago Music
and the galleys of Pawnee Music; the final work of preparing the
Pawnee material for publication was also done during this year.
A large amount of work was done upon the preparation of Menomi-
nee and Yuma material for publications. Catalogue numbers have
been assigned to all transcribed songs, except the Acoma, the highest
catalogue number in her series being 1848.
During August and September, 1928, a field trip was made to
the Winnebago and Menominee Tribes in Wisconsin. A large dance,
continuing three days, was held by the Winnebago near Black River
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 65
Falls. This dance was witnessed, as well as numerous incidents of
life in the camp, and about 50 photographs were taken.
At the conclusion of this gathering Miss Densmore went to
Keshena, Wis., for further work among the Menominee. The manu-
script already prepared was read to reliable members of the tribe and
details were added. An interesting opportunity for seeing Menomi-
nee dances was afforded by the annual Indian fair which continued
four days. Among the old dances presented were those in imitation
of the fish, frog, crawfish, rabbit, partridge, and owl. The songs
of these dances, together with their action and origin, were recorded.
The Manabus legend concerning the first death was obtained, to-
gether with its songs, and the work included the recording of other
old material.
A drum-presentation ceremonial dance, commonly called a dream
dance, was held at the native village of Zoar on September 2 to 5.
This was attended each day and closely observed, Miss Densmore
remaining 10 hours beside the dance circle on the third day of the
ceremony. Many photographs were taken.
On September 14 Miss Densmore proceeded to ‘Tomah, Wis., and
resumed her study of Winnebago music. Additional songs of the
war-bundle feast, also called the winter feast, were recorded, together
with several old legends and their songs, and the origin of the bowl-
and-dice game, with its song. The legend of this game origin had
previously been obtained among the Menominee. Numerous photo-
graphs were taken, and two drumming sticks were obtained, one
being decorated with otter fur and used a generation ago by the
leader at the drum.
During October, 1928, Miss Densmore went to Washington, D. C.,
and recorded 27 Acoma songs from Philip Sanche, who, with several
Acoma Indians, was engaged in work for the chief of the Bureau
of American Ethnology. A larger number of Acoma songs had
previously been recorded for the chief of the bureau and these records
were studied, 16 being transcribed as representative examples.
EDITORIAL WORK AND PUBLICATIONS
The editing of the publications of the bureau was continued
through the year by Mr. Stanley Searles, editor, assisted by Mrs.
Frances §. Nichols, editorial assistant. The status of the publica-
tions is presented in the following summary:
PUBLICATIONS ISSUED
Forty-first Annual Report. Accompanying papers: Coiled Basketry in British
Columbia and Surrounding Region (Boas, assisted by Haeberlin, Teit, and
Roberts) ; Two Prehistoric Villages in Middle Tenuessee (Myer). 626 pp
137 pls. 200 figs. 1 pocket map.
c
66 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Forty-third Annual Report. Accompanying papers: The Osage Tribe: Two
Versions of the Child-naming Rite (La Flesche) ; Wawenock Myth Texts from
Maine (Speck) ; Native Tribes and Dialects of Connecticut, a Mohegan-Pequot
Diary (Speck) ; Picuris Children’s Stories (Harrington and Roberts) ; Iro-
quoian Cosmology—Second Part (Hewitt). 828 pp. 44 pls. 9 figs.
Forty-fourth Annual Report. Accompanying papers: Exploration of the Burton
Mound at Santa Barbara, Calif. (Harrington) ; Social and Religious Beliefs
and Usages of the Chickasaw Indians (Swanton); Uses of Plants by the
Chippewa Indians (Densmore); Archeological Investigations—II (Fowke).
55d pp. 98 pls. 16 figs.
Bulletin 84. Vocabulary of the Kiowa Language (Harrington). 255 pp. 1 fig.
Bulletin 86. Chippewa Customs (Densmore). 204 pp. 90 pls. 27 figs.
Bulletin 87. Notes on the Buffalo-head Dance of the Thunder Gens of the Fox
Indians (Michelson). 94 pp. 1 fig.
Bulletin 89. Observations on the Thunder Dance of the Bear Gens of the Fox
Indians (Michelson). 78‘pp. 1 fig.
Bulletin 92. Shabik’ eshchee Village: A Late Basket Maker Site in the Chaco
Canyon, New Mexico (Roberts). 164 pp. 31 pls. 382 figs.
PUBLICATIONS IN PRESS
Forty-fifth Annual Report. Accompanying papers: The Salishan Tribes of the
Western Plateaus (Teit, edited by Boas); Tattooing and Face and Body
Painting of the Thompson Indians, British Columbia (Teit, edited by Boas) ;
The Ethnobotany of the Thompson Indians of British Columbia (Teit, edited
by Steedman) ; The Osage Tribe: Rite of the Wa-xo’-be (La Fliesche).
Bulletin 88. Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians (Swanton).
Bulletin 90. Papago Musie (Densmore).
Bulletin 91. Additional Studies of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the
Guiana Indians, with special reference to those of Southeastern British
Guiana (Roth).
Bulletin 98. Pawnee Music (Densmore).
DISTRIBUTION OF PUBLICATIONS
The distribution of the publications of the bureau has been con-
tinued under the charge of Miss Helen Munroe, assisted by Miss
Emma B. Powers. Publications were distributed as follows:
Report? volumes, and Separates ge Ai. Wee NN EE eee ee 7, 605
Bulletins; andr (geparategei uma ego tock cet ier Ee ee 11, 890
Contributions to North American Ethnology________________----_---__ 34
Miscellaneous) spublications)s 2 Yaeiin 1120 kere, ed A ee 583
MO tA utes oa eee Ey EAL alee a ES, SD cer DOE 20, 112
This is an increase of 10,986 publications distributed, due to the
fact that five more publications were distributed to the mailing list
than in the previous year. The mailing list, after revision during
the year, stands at 1,642.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Following is a summary of work accomplished in the illustration
branch of the bureau under the supervision of Mr. De Lancey Gill,
illustrator :
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 67
Photographs retouched and lettered and drawings made ready for
COTA TVR eR ee Soe dE a eget edad Wid on ieee 874
Drawings prepared, including maps, diagrams, ete___________-________ 53
Hn ravers pProoks eriticized miss tes. ett Senttalned ils Sa rayon Th 690
Printed editions of colored plates examined at Government Printing
OPTIC CEE eee ee eee eee we eee ee PBS ee meer 23, 000
@orrespondeneesattiended, t02 2-2 ee ee ee eee 125
Photographie laboratory work by Dr. A. J. Olmsted, National Museum,
in cooperation with the Bureau of American Ethnology:
TINO EU GI CS ee ree tes ct Se ea 8 a fre EE A SAN Rs So eR 143
PES SIT Us ee tare ne en Sa re ey Nn eee Oa oy a ee 275
Himes tdeveloped fron held "exposiress-22 522242. 2e6 2a wee eee 12
LIBRARY
The reference library has continued under the care of Miss Ella
Leary, librarian, assisted by Mr. Thomas Blackwell. The library
consists of 28,512 volumes, about 16,377 pamphlets, and several
thousand unbound periodicals. During the year 591 books were
accessioned, of which 112 were acquired by purchase and 479 by gift
and exchange; also 200 pamphlets and 4,100 serials, chiefly the pub-
lications of learned societies, were received and recorded, of which
only 112 were obtained by purchase, the remainder being received
through exchange. The catalogue was increased by the addition of
1,400 cards. Many books were loaned to other libraries in Wash-
ington. In addition to the constant drafts on the library of the
bureau, requisition was made on the Library of Congress during the
year for an aggregate of 200 volumes for official use, and in turn the
bureau library was frequently consulted by officers of other Govern-
ment establishments, as well as by students not connected with the
Smithsonian Institution.
While many volumes are still without binding, the condition of
the library in this respect has greatly improved during the last few
years; 431 volumes were bound during the year.
COLLECTIONS
100,592. Several thousand anthropological specimens and small collections of
mammals, plants, mollusks, and minerals from various localities in Alaska,
secured by Henry B. Collins, jr., during 1928. (3,730 specimens. )-
102,768. Small collection of archeological objects gathered by Charles T. Earle
at an aboriginal camp site at Shaws Point, Fla. (26 specimens.)
102,769. Two textile fragments collected in the Canyon de Chelly, Ariz., by
Dr. W. H. Spinks. (2 specimens.)
102,896. Collection of 61 ethnological specimens secured from the Hupa In-
dians of California by E. G. Johnson. (61 specimens.) ha
103,344. Two specimens of sheet mica collected from unidentified mounds in
Ohio by the late Dr. B. H. Davis and presented to the bureau by Miss Betsey
B. Davis. (2 specimens.)
$2322—-30-——_6
68 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
103,964. Pair of charms used by the Karuk Indians of northern California to
ward off pains and bewitchments. Made by Mrs. Phoebe Maddux, of the
Karuk Tribe. (2 specimens.)
105,865. Collection of ethnological objects gathered from the Hupa Indians
of California by HE. G. Johnson and purchased from him by the bureau.
(27 specimens. )
PROPERTY
Office equipment was purchased to the amount of $292.70.
MISCELLANEOUS
The correspondence and other clerical work of the office has been
conducted by Miss May S. Clark, clerk to the chief, assisted by Mr.
Anthony W. Wilding, assistant clerk. Miss Mae W. Tucker, stenog-
rapher, assisted Dr. John R. Swanton in his work of compiling a
dictionary of the Atakapa and compiled two catalogues of the manu-
scripts in the archives of the bureau—one arranged according to
author and the other numerically. Mrs. Frances S. Nichols assisted
the editor.
During the course of the year information was furnished by mem-
bers of the staff in reply to numerous inquiries concerning the North
American Indian peoples, both past and present, and the Mexican
peoples of the prehistoric and early historic periods to the south.
Various specimens sent to the bureau were identified and data on
them furnished for their owners.
Personnel_—Mr. M. W. Stirling was appointed chief of the bureau
August 1, 1928. Dr. J. Walter Fewkes retired as associate anthro-
pologist of the bureau November 14, 1928.
Respectfully submitted.
M. W. Srirune, Chief.
Dr. C. G. AxBsor,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 5
REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE SERVICE
Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the opera-
tions of the International Exchange Service during the fiscal year
ending June 30, 1929:
The appropriation made by Congress for the support of the Ex-
change Service for 1929 was $50,355, an increase of $3,500 over the
amount for the preceding year. Of this increase, $2,147 was pro-
vided for in a deficiency bill to cover the additional sum required to
meet the provisions of the Welch Act amending the classification act
of 1923, $1,000 to meet the extra cost for freight, and $353 to ad-
vance to the next step in their respective grades those of the employees
of the exchange office eligible for promotion.
The total number of packages handled was 620,485, an increase of
78,262 over the previous year. ‘This is the second largest increase in
the number of packages passing through the service in any one year
since its organization in 1850. ‘The greatest increase in packages was
in 1927, when it was over 100,000. The total weight of the packages
handled was 621,373 pounds, an increase of 27,252.
The number and weight of the packages of different classes are
given in the following table:
Packages Weight
Sent |Received| Sent | Received
Pounds | Pounds
United States parliamentary documents sent abroad_._______-- 239, 096 \\oH2- zee OD) A404 | Bex ces ee ie! =
Publications received in return for parliamentary documents__-|--..------ SATBN| _Detee eae 23, 051
United States departmental documents sent abroad_____-._---_ 183;676;|besss- see 152, 6964)=2- 222-222
Publications received in return for departmental documents____|--_.------ O698 it see ae ees 23, 671
Miscellaneous scientific and literary publications sent abroad_-_| 139,520 |.__....-___ 2165780) |zonee=e ee
Miscellaneous scientific and literary publications received
from abroad for distribution in the United States._...._...___|.------__- \eneG; S22) |P=aeee== 102, 766
TS ch a ee a ne Ee eS 562, 192 58, 293 | 471, 885 149, 488
GHAI) WOE oe ese ce secces cones saab Te Ses SSS 620, 485 621, 373
Tt will be observed from the above table that many more pack-
ages are sent abroad than are received, yet the disparity is not as
great as appears from the figures. Packages sent abroad in many
69
70 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
instances contain only a single publication, while those received in
return often comprise several volumes. Furthermore, a number of
foreign correspondents forward their publications directly to their
destinations in this country by mail.
During the year there were shipped abroad 2,823 boxes, a decrease
of 49 from the number sent last year, although the total weight of
the consignments shipped to foreign countries was practically the
same for the two years. Of the total number of boxes shipped
abroad 604 contained full sets of United States official documents
IVE YEAR PERIOD
1850 te ISH
EacH CoLumN Equal To 200,000 Pounps
Ra EL Wd a al a ee A
feos Severs HOE OAL SU aaee tote SIN | a el eel
1960 b 1864+ aa i
hi
1965 te 1869 HH
fae ba
1975 ts 1879 HERE a
TON gC MESS
este | | Lt |
1890 1894
1895 G 1894 hal EES ea Ae
1900 ta 1904 Da A a
1905 G 1909 egal see ae
1910 & (91¥ En ac a les) tex)
15 & 1919 Spt
1926 t 1924 a a ats ES Yea on [eae ERE
Ps Fe a
fis oe
z I 452 YS5
lige 2461 SIF
1945 b 1929
Ficurp 1.—Diagram showing the relative weight of packages transmitted through the
International Exchange Service between the years 1850 and 1929, divided into periods
of five years each
for foreign depositories and 2,219 included departmental and other
publications for the depositories of partial sets and for miscellaneous
establishments and individuals.
In addition to the forwarding of consignments to foreign ex-
change agencies in boxes, it is necessary, for the reasons given in
previous reports, to mail a number of packages directly to their
destinations. There were forwarded in this manner during the
year 60,856 packages.
The number of boxes sent to each foreign country is given in the
following table:
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
71
Consignments of exchanges forwarded to foreign countries
Country Nombes Country Banibes
“Argentina S20 2. oan Seve et tet Sk Gat |\wikeat yin 8 2< me _eeeneee i: ads esa eb oh 11
ATS ETIG Se See oa eer ne eae e aera twee ee 58 | MG@xiCO-2<22.. camas'secccas eneoctaasthcte se 11
PES 00 eee ee ee 649) Netherland s2eiino2s eon senn eae 85
15) of: A | cece eee ©) CEE eee Bee eee eee 40' |) New: South Wialesi2ccb2 <<- Ses see oaks 37
Bulgarians. 22 (ha Sed Be ee Eee fn. DHisNew,neelanG=s<22225 52-5 a ee 26
British Colontest: si. tipi sie 148) MINOGW Ay sto seeee one ees aoe 55
Wandda est oe Be en co eee 6 445 )\, Palestin@-2-<. 222: ee se bse ee a ee 106
(GLE tan ie ERR SRN NR RE a DRAM CEES 2 se Bae ao res eee 21
Ching Sate: AUT errr oes Gig MP oland sect Ohler 45
Polomblae=seLee tages ondt oh 2 \EPortapgall. 25.2244. 2eq27-t astlascesd_2 24
(CORE eye = — es ee ee 29) <@wmeensiand 24-0. 5-25 ee eels 31
CONT Ys ob ets snd ik See eet | Ta | Rammanighs 22 SPA AL Te 28e See eet 24
@vechosloyakisursss-2422se~- sen ceteeue ee G40 WHRTISS geeeeees os ee ee Ses eee 133
Deri sr ks eee eer ee Paes 49\\\\"SouthvAustralia==2-c2s=s _ Sue ee ee 25
LO ag 0 ae ee ee ee ee TREN) FSO oe eee S 38
TRC) at ER ea a a ee ee eee SoS Wed On=—e 22256 2a ee eee a 69
(RUST se ee ANSE EL ee Ls 147) Switzerland: 2-2°2+ -4e2. 27s Seek 77
LONE CS 58 es ee ee oe ed a 174:,||, Pasmania-s. 4-225 sa be LE eee oe 23
ISeroiany ee se aoe sae ae ete eee en S800||)Darkeyzess Se... So tae ee. Se Ree ns 11
Great Britain and Ireland.._____.-_-___-- 382 || Union of South Africa.._.......---..--.- 36
(CMG See ee oe Se ee ee Sone | Ay || Uruguay. aoe ee ee eae 20
1B RENT Ana a a ee a a eet ak Va SU RVOUOZUGIAS tate na ane cee cee ee ae 21
IOV AUTaS EES SEES ee. Soe 2 | Wictorids. 22 foes. NIE eee ot 51
SERTIM Gary 2 ees 8 she ote 2 hey Se ae ek 35i/\| Western Australias-<--5.22 523 eee oe 23
TTR IE: eae Ba te EA edloa ie esa ih esiey emperors baal ROSIGWIAten oa eee hee eee ee ee 16
Tt aliges ee PEEP os ee YE ES 102
Japan eeeewes ase kc eee Bele ee 87 Motel si sf nto cose oe 2, 823
For many years prior to 1926 the interchange of publications be-
tween China and the United States was conducted under the direc-
tion of the Shanghai Bureau of Foreign Affairs. The Chinese Bu-
reau of Exchanges was under the direction of the Ministry of Edu-
cation at Peking from May, 1926, to June, 1928, when operations
were suspended owing to the reorganization of the Chinese Govern-
ment. The Metropolitan Library, in which was then deposited the
full series of United States governmental documents sent to China,
temporarily took over the work of the bureau. The exchange work
was carried on by that library until February, 1929, when a com-
munication was received from the National Research Institute, 205
Avenue du Roi Albert, Shanghai, stating that the Nationalist Govern-
ment had transferred the Bureau of International Exchanges from
Peking to Shanghai and had placed the bureau under its direction.
Shipments therefore have been made in care of the National Re-
search Institute since March, 1929.
In June, 1925, the Egyptian Government, which had not at that
time become a party to the Brussels convention, discontinued its
exchange bureau in the Government Publications Office, and it was
necessary to send packages intended for correspondents in Egypt
directly to their destinations by mail. In June, 1927, as stated in the
v2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
report for that year, the Egyptian Government formally adhered
to the Brussels convention and established as its agency the Bureau
of Publications under the Ministry of Finances at Cairo. Complete
arrangements for the taking over of the exchange work by that
bureau, however, were not perfected until September, 1928, when
shipments in boxes to Egypt were resumed. |
A few days after the close of the fiscal year the Government
printer of South Australia advised the Institution that his Govern-
ment, at the invitation of the League of Nations, had established
under his direction the South Australian Government Exchanges
Bureau to take over the exchange work conducted for many years by
the Public Library of South Australia.
FOREIGN DEPOSITORIES OF GOVERNMENTAL DOCUMENTS
There has been no increase in the number of sets of United States
governmental documents forwarded to foreign depositories, the total
number being 105. However, there has been a change in the number
of depositories of the full and partial sets, two of the latter, those
for Latvia and Rumania, having been increased to full sets. The
number of full sets, therefore, is now 62 and partial sets 48.
At the request of the German Government the depository of Amer-
ican official documents has been changed from the Deutsche Reichs-
tags-Bibliothek to the Reichstauschstelle im Reichsministerium des
Innern, Berlin.
The partial set depository in Guatemala has been changed from
the Secretary to the Government to the Secretaria de Relaciones Ex-
teriores de la Republica de Guatemala; and the depository in Hon-
duras from the Secretary of the Government to Ministerio de Rela-
ciones Exteriores.
The depository of the full set of governmental documents sent to
Italy has been changed from the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio
Emanuele to the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, Viale del Re,
Rome.
The Nationalist Government of China has changed the depository
of United States official documents in that country from the Metro-
politan Library in Peking to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at
Nanking.
A list of the foreign depositories is given below:
DEPOSITORIES OF FULL SETS
ARGENTINA: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Buenos Aires.
Buenos Arres: Biblioteca de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La
Plata. (Depository of the Province of Buenos Aires.)
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY tS
AUSTRALIA: Library of the Commonwealth Parliament, Canberra.
New SoutH WALES: Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney.
QUEENSLAND: Parliamentary Library, Brisbane.
SoutH AUSTRALIA: Parliamentary Library, Adelaide.
TASMANIA: Parliamentary Library, Hobart.
Victorta: Public Library of Victoria, Melbourne.
WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Public Library of Western Australia, Perth.
AUSTRIA: Bundesamt ftir Statistik, Schwarzenbergstrasse 5, Vienna I.
Bexicium: Bibliothéque Royale, Brussels.
Brazit: Bibliotheca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro.
CANADA: Library of Parliament, Ottawa.
MANITOBA: Provincial Library, Winnipeg.
OnrTaArio: Legislative Library, Toronto.
QugEBEC: Library of the Legislature of the Province of Quebec, Quebec.
CHILE: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional, Santiago.
CHINA: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nanking.
CoLtomBIA: Biblioteca Nacional, Bogota.
Costa Rica: Oficina de Deposito y Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, San
José. .
Cupa: Secretaria de Estado (Asuntos Generales y Canje Internacional),
Habana.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Bibliothéque de l’ Assemblée Nationale, Prague.
DENMARK: Kongelige Bibliotheket, Copenhagen.
EXcypt: Bureau des Publications, Ministére des Finances, Cairo.
EstTonra: Riigiraamatukogu (State Library), Tallinn (Reval).
FRANCE: Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris.
Paris: Préfecture de la Seine.
GERMANY: Reichstauschstelle im Reichsministerium des Innern, Berlin © 2.
BavEN: Universitiits-Bibliothek, Freiburg. (Depository of the State of
Baden.)
Bavaria: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.
Prussia: Preussische Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, N. W. 7.
Saxony: Sichsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden—N. 6.
WouRTEMBERG: Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart.
GREAT BRITAIN:
ENGLAND: British Museum, London.
Guascow: City Librarian, Mitchell Library, Glasgow.
Lonpon: London School of Economics and Political Scienee. (Depository
of the London County Council.)
GREECE: Bibliotheque Nationale, Athens.
Hungary: Hungarian House of Delegates, Budapest.
InpIA: Imperial Library, Calcutta.
IrisH Free Stare: National Library of Ireland, Dublin.
IraLty: Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, Rome.
JAPAN: Imperial Library of Japan, Tokyo.
Latvia: Bibliothéque d’Etat, Riga.
Mexico: Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico, D. F.
NETHERLANDS: Royal Library, The Hague.
NEW ZEALAND: General Assembly Library, Wellington.
NORTHERN IRELAND: Ministry of Finance, Belfast.
Norway: Universitets-Bibliotek, Oslo. (Depository of the Government of
Norway.)
74 ANNUAL REPORT’ SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Peru: Biblioteca Nacional, Lima.
PoLAND: Bibliothéque du Ministére des Affaires Htrangéres, Warsaw.
PortugaL: Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon.
Rumania: Academia Romana, Bucharest.
Russr1a: Shipments temporarily suspended.
Spain: Servicio del Cambio Internacional de Publicaciones, Cuerpo Faculta-
tivo de Archiveros, Bibliotecarios y Arquedlogos, Madrid.
SWEDEN: Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm.
SWITZERLAND: Bibliotheque Centrale Fédérale, Berne.
SWITZERLAND: Library of the League of Nations, Geneva.
TURKEY: Ministére de l’Instruction Publique, Angora.
Union oF SoutH Arrica: State Library, Pretoria, Transvaal.
Urucuay: Oficina de Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, Montevideo.
VENEZUELA: Biblioteca Nacional, Caracas.
Yugos.tavia: Ministére de l’Hdueation, Belgrade.
DEPOSITORIES OF PARTIAL SETS
AUSTRIA:
VIENNA: Wiener Magistrat.
Boutvia: Ministerio de Colonizacién y Agricultura, La Paz.
BRAZIL:
Minas GerasEs: Directoria Geral de Estatistica em Minas, Bello Horizonte,
Minas Geraes.
Rio DE JANEIRO: Bibliotheca da ASsemblea Legislativa do Estado, Nictheroy.
CANADA:
ALBERTA: Provincial Library, Edmonton.
BRITISH COLUMBIA: Legislative Library, Victoria.
NEw Brunswick: Legislative Library, Fredericton.
Nova Scotra: Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia, Halifax.
Prince Epwarp Istanp: Legislative Library, Charlottetown.
SASKATCHEWAN: Government Library, Regina.
BRITISH GUIANA: Government Secretary’s Office, Georgetown, Demerara.
BULGARIA: Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Sofia.
Cryton: Colonial Secretary’s Office (Record Department of the Library),
Colombo.
Danzic: Stadtbibliothek, Free City of Danzig.
DoMINICAN ReEpPuBLIc: Biblioteca del Senado, Santo Domingo.
Hovuapor: Biblioteca Nacional, Quito.
FINLAND: Parliamentary Library, Helsingfors.
FRANCE:
ALSACE-LORRAINE: Bibliothéque Universitaire et Régionale de Strasbourg,
Strasbourg.
GERMANY: ;
BREMEN: Senatskommission fiir Reichs- und Auswiirtige Angelegenheiten.
Hamsure: Senatskommission fiir Reichs- und Auswiirtige Angelegenheiten.
Hesse: Landesbibliothek, Darmstadt.
LUseck: President of the Senate.
THURINGIA: Rothenberg-Bibliothek, Landesuniversitit, Jena.
GUATEMALA: Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores de la Repfiblica de Guate-
mala.
Hartt: Secrétaire d’Etat des Relations Extérieures, Port au Prince.
HoNpvuRAS: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Tegucigalpa.
Ionnanp: National Library, Reykjavik.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 75
INDIA:
BomsBay: Undersecretary to the Government of Bombay, General Depart-
ment, Bombay.
Burma: Secretary to the Government of Burma, Education Department,
Rangoon.
Mapras: Chief Secretary to the Government of Madras, Public Depart-
ment, Madras. é.
UNITED PROVINCES oF AGRA AND OUDH: University of Allahabad, Allahabad.
JAMAICA: Colonial Secretary, Kingston.
LIBERIA: Department of State, Monrovia.
LirHUANIA: Ministére des Affaires Htrangéres, Kaunas (Kovyno).
LourENco Marquez: Government Library, Lourengo Marquez.
Matta: Minister for the Treasury, Valetta.
NEWFOUNDLAND: Colonial Secretary, St. John’s.
NICARAGUA: Superintendente de Archivos Nacionales, Managua.
PANAMA: Secretaria de Relaciones Hxteriores, Panama.
ParaGuay: Seccién Canje Internacional de Publicaciones del Ministerio de
Relaciones Exteriores, Estrella 563, Asunci6n.
SALVADOR: Ministerio de Relaciones Hxteriores, San Salvador.
Sram: Department of Foreign Affairs, Bangkok.
Straits SETTLEMENTS: Colonial Secretary, Singapore.
INTERPARLIAMENTARY EXCHANGE OF OFFICIAL JOURNAL
The total number of establishments to which the daily issue of the
Congressional Record is forwarded is 101, the same as last year.
The second convention concluded at Brussels in March, 1886, pro-
vided not only for the immediate exchange of the official journal but
for the parliamentary annals and documents as well. Heretofore,
however, the countries taking part in this interparliamentary
exchange have restricted it to the official journal. During the year
the French Chamber of Deputies, to which the Congressional Record
has been forwarded for some time, proposed to this Government that
the full provisions of the convention be entered into between France
and the United States. This proposal was accepted, and there is
now forwarded to the French Chamber direct by mail, immediately
upon publication, the bills, reports, documents, and slip laws of
both the Senate and House of Representatives.
There is given below a complete list of the countries now taking
part in the immediate exchange, together with the names of the
establishments to which the Record is forwarded:
DEPOSITORIES OF CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
ARGENTINA :
Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional, Buenos Aires.
Camara de Diputados, Oficina de Informacién Parlamentaria, Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires: Biblioteca del Senado de la Provincia de Buenos Aires,
‘La Plata.
76 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
AUSTRALIA :
Library of the Commonwealth Parliament, Canberra.
New South Wales: Library of Parliament of New South Wales, Sydney.
Queensland: Chief Secretary’s Office, Brisbane.
Western Australia: Library of Parliament of Western Australia, Perth.
AustTrIA: Bibliothek des Nationalrates, Vienna I.
BELGIUM: Bibliothéque de la Chambre des Représentants, Brussels.
Botiv1A: Biblioteca del H. Congreso Nacional, La Paz.
BRAZIL :
Bibliotheca do Congresso Nacional, Rio de Janeiro.
Amazonas: Archivo, Bibliotheca e Imprensa Publica, Mandéos.
Bahia: Governador do Hstado de Bahia, Sao Salvador.
Espirito Santo: Presidencia do Hstado do Espirito Santo, Victoria.
Sao Paulo: Diario Official do Estado de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo.
Sergipe: Director da Imprensa Official, Aracaju, Estado de Sergipe.
CANADA:
Library of Parliament, Ottawa.
Clerk of the Senate, Houses of Parliament, Ottawa.
CHINA: Metropolitan Library, Pei Hai, Peking.
Costa Rica: Oficina de Depésito y Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, San
José.
CUBA:
Biblioteca de la Camara de Representantes, Habana.
Biblioteca del Senado, Habana.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Bibliothéque de Assemblée Nationale, Prague.
Danzig: Stadtbibliothek, Danzig.
DENMARK: Rigsdagens Bureau, Copenhagen.
DomINIcAN ReEpustic: Biblioteca del Senado, Santo Domingo.
DutcH Hast Indies: Volksraad von Nederlandsch-Indié, Batavia, Java.
Heyer: Bureau des Publications, Ministére des Finances, Cairo.
EstTontA: Riigiraamatukogu (State Library), Tallinn (Reval).
FRANCE:
Chambre des Députés, Service de l’Information Parlementaire Htrangére,
Paris.
Bibliothéque du Sénat, au Palais du Luxembourg, Paris.
GERMANY:
Deutsche Reichstags-Bibliothek, Berlin, N. W. 7.
Anhalt: Anhaltische Landesbiicherei, Dessau.
Baden: Universitits-Bibliothek, Heidelberg.
Braunschweig: Bibliothek des Braunschweigischen Staatsministeriums,
Braunschweig.
Mecklenburg-Schwerin: Staatsministerium, Schwerin.
Mecklenburg-Strelitz: Finanzdepartement des Staatsministeriums, Neu-
strelitz.
Oldenburg: Oldenburgisches Staatsministerium, Oldenburg i. O.
Prussia: Bibliothek des Abgeordnetenhauses, Prinz-Albrechtstrasse 4,
Berlin, S. W. 11.
Schaumburg-Lippe: Schaumburg-Lippische Landesregierung, Biicheburg.
GIBRALTAR: Gibraltar Garrison Library Committee, Gibraltar.
GREAT BRITAIN: Library of the Foreign Office, London.
GREECE: Library of Parliament, Athens.
GUATEMALA: Archivo General del Gobierno, Guatemala.
Harit: Secrétaire d’Etat des Relations Extérieures, Port-au-Prince.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY Gi
Honpuras: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional, Tegucigalpa.
Huncary: Bibliothek des Abgeordnetenhauses, Budapest.
Inp1IA: Legislative Department, Simla.
Iraq: Chamber of Deputies, Baghdad, Iraq (Mesopotamia).
Tpaty
Biblioteca del Senato del Regno, Rome.
Biblioteca della Camera dei Deputati, Rome.
IrisH Free STATE: Dail Hireann, Dublin.
Latvia: Library of the Saeima, Riga.
LiseriA: Department of State, Monrovia.
Mexico: Secretaria de la Camara de Diputados, Mexico, D. F.
Aguascalientes: Gobernador del Hstado de Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes.
Campeche: Gobernador del Estado de Campeche, Campeche.
Chiapas: Gobernador del Estado de Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutierrez,
Chihuahua: Gobernador del Estado de Chihuahua, Chihuahua.
Coahuila: Periddico Oficial del Hstado de Coahuila, Palacio de Gobierno,
Saltillo.
Colima: Gobernador del Estado de Colima, Colima.
Durango: Gobernador Constitucional del Estado de Durango, Durango.
Guanajuato: Secretaria General de Gobierno del Hstado, Guanajuato.
Guerrero: Gobernador del Hstado de Guerrero, Chilpancingo.
Jalisco: Biblioteca del Estado, Guadalajara.
Lower California: Gobernador del Distrito Norte, Mexicali, B. C., Mexico.
Mexico: Gaceta del Gobierno, Toluca, Mexico.
Michoacin: Secretaria General de Gobierno del Hstado de Michoacin,
Morelia.
Morelos: Palacio de Gobierno, Cuernavaca.
Nayarit: Gobernador de Nayarit, Tepic.
Nuevo Le6én: Biblioteca del Estado, Monterey.
Oaxaca: Periddico Oficial, Palacio de Gobierno, Oaxaca.
Puebla: Secretario General de Gobierno, Zaragoza.
Queretaro: Secretaria General de Gobierno, Seccién de Archivo, Queretaro.
San Luis Potosi: Congreso del Estado, San Luis Potosi.
Sinaloa: Gobernador del Estado de Sinaloa, Culiacan.
Sonora: Gobernador del Estado de Sonora, Hermosillo.
Tabasco: Secretaria General de Gobierno, Seccién 3a, Ramo de Prensa,
Villahermosa.
Tamaulipas: Secretaria General de Gobierno, Victoria.
Tlaxcala: Secretaria de Gobierno del Estado, Tlaxcala.
Vera Cruz: Gobernador del Estado de Vera Cruz, Departamento de
Gobernacion y Justicia, Jalapa.
Yucatin: Gobernador del Estado de Yucatin, Mérida, Yucatan.
New ZEALAND: General Assembly Library, Wellington.
Norway: Storthingets Bibliothek, Oslo.
Prru: Camara de Diputados, Congreso Nacional, Lima.
PoLAND: Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Warsaw.
PORTUGAL: Biblioteca do Congresso da Republica, Lisbon.
RUMANIA:
Bibliothéque de la Chambre des Députés, Bucharest.
Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Bucharest.
SPAIN:
Biblioteca de la Asamblea Nacional, Madrid.
Barcelona: Biblioteca de la Comision Permanente Provincial de Barcelona,
Barcelona.
78 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
SWITZERLAND:
Bibliothéque de l’Assemblée Fédérale Suisse, Berne.
Library of the League of Nations, Geneva.
SYRIA:
Ministére des Finances de la République Libanaise, Service du Matériel,
Beirut.
Governor of the State of Alaouites, Lattaquié.
TurRKEY: Turkish Grand National Assembly, Angora.
UNION oF SoutTH AFRICA:
Library of Parliament, Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope.
State Library, Pretoria, Transvaal.
Urucuay: Biblioteca de la Cimara de Representantes, Montevideo.
VENEZUELA: Cimara de Diputados, Congreso Nacional, Caracas.
YueosLavia: Library of the Skupshtina, Belgrade.
FOREIGN EXCHANGE AGENCIES
South Australia has changed its exchange bureau from the Public
Library at Adelaide to the Government Printing and Stationery
Office, the name of the new bureau being the South Australian Gov-
ernment Exchanges Bureau.
The Austrian exchange agency, formerly the Bundesamt fiir Sta-
tistik, is now Internationale Austauschstelle, Bundeskanzleramt, Her-
rengasse 23, Vienna I.
The Nationalist Government of China has transferred its Bureau
of International Exchange from Peking to Shanghai and made the
bureau a part of the National Research Institute.
A list of the foreign exchange bureaus or agencies is given below.
Most of those agencies forward consignments to the Smithsonian In-
stitution for distribution in the United States.
LIST OF EXCHANGE AGENCIES
ALGERIA, via France.
ANGOLA, via Portugal.
ARGENTINA: Comision Protectora de Bibliotecas Populares, Calle Cordoba 931,
Buenos Aires.
Austria: Internationale Austauschstelle, Bundeskanzleramt, Herrengasse 23.
Vienna I.
AzoRES, via Portugal.
BeLcium: Service Belge des Echanges Internationaux, Rue des Longs-Chariots,
46, Brussels.
Bortvr1A: Oficina Nacional de Estadistica, La Paz.
Brazit: Servicio de Permutacdes Internacionaes, Bibliotheca Nacional, Rio de
Janeiro.
BritisH Cotonirs: Crown Agents for the Colonies, London.
BritisH GuiaANA: Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society, Georgetown.
British Honpuras: Colonial Secretary, Belize.
Butearta: Institutions Scientifiques de S. M. le Roi de Bulgarie, Sofia.
CaNARY ISLANDS, via Spain.
CHILE: Servicio de Canjes Internacionales, Biblioteca Nacional, Santiago.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 79
CHINA: Bureau of International Exchange, National Research Institute, 205
Avenue du Roi Albert, Shanghai.
CoLoMBIA: Oficina de Canjes Internacionales y Reparto, Biblioteca Nacional,
Bogota.
Costa Rica: Oficina de Depésito y Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, San
José.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Service Tchécoslovaque des Echanges Internationaux, Biblio-
théque de l’Assemblée Nationale, Prague 1-79.
Danzig: Amt fiir den Internationalen Schriftenaustausch der Freien Stadt
Danzig, Stadtbibliothek, Danzig.
DENMARK: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Copenhagen.
DutcH GUIANA: Surinaamsche Koloniale Bibliotheek, Paramaribo.
Hcuapor: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Quito.
Eeypr: Bureau des Publications, Ministére des Finances, Cairo.
Estonia: Riigiraamatukogu (State Library), Tallinn (Reval).
FINLAND: Delegation of the Scientific Societies of Finland, Helsingfors.
France: Service Francais des Echanges Internationaux, 110 Rue de Grenelle,
Paris.
GERMANY: Amerika-Institut, Universititstrasse 8, Berlin, N. W. 7.
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND: Messrs. Wheldon & Wesley, 2, 3, and 4 Arthur
St., New Oxford St., London W. C. 2.
GREECE: Bibliothéque Nationale, Athens.
GREENLAND, via Denmark.
GUATEMALA: Instituto Nacional de Varones, Guatemala.
Hartr: Secerétaire d’Etat des Relations Extérieures, Port-au-Prince.
Honpuras: Biblioteca Nacional, Tegucigalpa.
Huneary: Hungarian Libraries Board, Budapest, IV.
ICELAND, via Denmark.
InDIA: Superintendent of Stationery, Bombay.
ITaty: R. Ufficio degil Scambi Internazionali, Ministero della Pubblica Istru-
zione, Rome.
JAMAICA: Institute of Jamaica, Kingston.
JAPAN: Imperial Library of Japan, Tokyo.
JAVA, via Netherlands.
KorkeEA: Government General, Seoul.
Latvia: Service des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque d’Etat de Lettonie,
Riga.
LIBERIA: Bureau of Exchanges, Department of State, Monrovia.
LITHUANIA: Sent by mail.
LouRENCO MARQUEZ, via Portugal.
LUXEMBURG, via Belgium.
MADAGASCAR, via France.
MApEIRA, via Portugal.
MOZAMBIQUE, via Portugal.
NETHERLANDS: International Exchange Bureau of the Netherlands, Royal
Library, The Hague.
New SoutH WALES: Public Library of New South Wales, Sydney.
New ZEALAND: Dominion Museum, Wellington.
NicaRaGua: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Managua.
Norway: Universitets-Bibliotek, Oslo.
PALESTINE: Hebrew University Library, Jerusalem.
PANAMA: Sent by mail.
PARAGUAY: Seccién Canje Internacional de Publicaciones del Ministerio de
Relaciones Exteriores, Hstrella 563, Asuncion.
80 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Peru: Oficina de Reparto, Depésito y Canje Internacional de Publicaciones,
Ministerio de Fomento, Lima.
Potanp: Service Polonais des Kchanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque du Minis-
tére des Affaires Etrangéres, Warsaw.
PortuGAL: Seccaio de Trocas Internacionaes, Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon.
QUEENSLAND: Bureau of Exchanges of International Publications, Chief Secre-
tary’s Department, Brisbane.
RUMANIA: Bureau des Hchanges Internationaux, Institut Météorologique Cen-
tral, Bucharest.
Russia: Academy of Sciences, Leningrad.
Satvapor: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, San Salvador.
Stam: Department of Foreign Affairs, Bangkol:.
SoutH AvusTRALIA: South Australian Government Exchanges Bureau, Govern-
ment Printing and Stationery Office, Adelaide.
Spain: Servicio del Cambio Internacional de Publicaciones, Cuerpo Faculta-
tivo de Archiveros, Bibliotecarios y Arqueélogos, Madrid.
SUMATRA, via Netherlands.
SWEDEN: Kongliga Svenska Vetenskaps Akademien, Stockhoim.
SWITZERLAND: Service Suisse des Echanges Internationaux, Bibliothéque Cen-
trale Fédérale, Berne.
Syria: American University of Beirut.
TASMANIA: Secretary to the Premier, Hobart.
TRINIDAD: Royal Victoria Institute of Trinidad and Tobago, Port-of-Spain.
TUNIS, via France.
TURKEY: Robert College, Constantinople.
UNION oF SoutH AFRiIcA: Government Printing Works, Pretoria, Transvaal.
Urueuay: Oficina de Canje Internacional de Publicaciones, Montevideo.
VENEZUELA: Biblioteca Nacional, Caracas.
VicrorIA: Public Library of Victoria, Melbourne.
WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Public Library of Western Australia, Perth.
YuGosLaviA: Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Belgrade.
Respectfully submitted.
C. W. SHOEMAKER,
Chief Clerk, International Exchange Service.
Dr. Cuartes G. Apsor,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 6
REPORT ON THE NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK
Sm: I have the honor to submit the following report on the opera-
tions of the National Zoological Park for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1929:
The appropriation made by Congress for the regular maintenance
of the park was $182,050, and there was the usual allotment of $300
for printing and binding and an additional appropriation of $18,500
to cover the increase in salaries of the personnel under the Welch
Act.
ACCESSIONS
Gifts—The park this year has been the recipient of an unusual
number of gifts of valuable animals. Notable among these are the
several shipments of birds and animals obtained through Dr. H. C.
Kellers, United States Navy, who was on duty with the Marines in
Nicaragua. The animals were brought to Washington on a trans-
port through the courtesy of the Navy Department. The speci-
mens included large groups of spider monkeys, capuchins, and
coatimundis; a flock of 6 sulphur-breasted toucans; a pair of curas-
sows, many parrots, and several unusual birds and small mammals.
Dr. D. W. May sent from Porto Rico two rhinoceros iguanas, an
unusual species in captivity. One specimen is doing well and:
promises to survive. Through Mr. Henry W. O’Malley, United
States Commissioner of Fisheries, the park received a trio of north-
ern fur seals from the Pribilof Islands, a species very rare in col-
lections. From the New Zealand Government were received a pair
of black swans and a pair of the rare paradise ducks. The New
York Zoological Society sent a Prince Rudolph’s blue bird of
paradise and a Lawes’s 6-plumed bird of paradise, part of the collec-
tion obtained by Mr. Crandall on the society’s New Guinea expedi-
tion. Mrs. Emily C. Chadbourne presented a great black cockatoo;
Mr. Harvey S. Firestone, jr., a potto from Liberia; Mr. J. F. Goldsby
four Canada geese; and Mr. Richard Gordon six blue geese.
The most spectacular addition to the zoo in many years has been
N’Gi, the gorilla. The animal was purchased with money remaining
from the Smithsonian-Chrysler expedition funds. He weighed 40
pounds on arrival and has been the greatest attraction the zoo has
81
82 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
ever had. There were 40,000 visitors the first Sunday he was here,
despite the coldness of the weather, and the following Sunday there
were 20,000 more. Up to the present time he has been doing well
and the officials of the park hope to keep him for a long time.
The officers of the United States Coast Guard patrol boat Marion,
while engaged in survey work in Davis Straits, captured and brought
to the zoo “ Marian,” a fine polar-bear cub. This is an especially
valuable addition, because the other polar bears are now very aged.
A pair of Sitka deer presented by Mrs. Guy C. Chapin, Karheen,
Alaska, through Mr. H. W. Terhune, of the Alaska Game Commis-
sion, are the first representatives of their species in the collection for
many years.
The park is indebted to the office of the Chief Coordinator, which
on numerous occasions has handled imports of animals and greatly
facilitated the work of the park in getting them.
DONORS
Mrs. Anne Archbold, Washington, D. C., kinkajou.
Mr. Harry Bachrach, Washington, D. C., raccoon.
Mrs. Lena Bergland, Washington, D. C., grizzly coated cebus.
Mr. J. S. C. Boswell, Alexandria, Va., 7 snakes.
Mr. H. C. Breeden, Florida, raccoon.
Dr. Ira BE. Briggs, Washington, D. C., alligator.
Mr. James F. Burgess, Washington, D. C., opossum.
Mr. Andrew J. Campbell, Washington, D. C., white-nosed guenon.
Mrs. BE. C. Chadbourne, Washington, D. C., great black cockatoo,
Mrs. Guy C. Chapin, Karheen, Alaska, 2 Sitka deer.
Mr. Walter P. Chrysler, New York City, gorilla.
Mr. F. GC. Craighead, Washington, D. C., 3 barred owls.
Mrs. N. M. Crowell, Washington, D. C., blue-headed parrot.
Dr. W. T. Dey, United States’ Navy, two chachalacas.
Mrs: W. J. Donovan, Washington, D. C., Texas armadillo.
Mr. A. A. Doolittle, Washington, D. C., king snake.
Mr. C. S. Fesser, Chevy Chase, Md., opossum.
Mr. Harvey S. Firestone, jr., Akron, Ohio, Bosman’s potto.
Mr. J. F. Goldsby, Polson, Mont., 4 Canada geese.
Mrs. T. M. Goodwin, Scottsville, Va., white-throated capuchin.
Mr. Richard Gordon, Abbeville, La., 6 blue geese.
Mr. E. Hanson, Washington, D. C., coatimundi.
Mr. T. B. Henry, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 4 scaled pigeons.
Mr. C. A. Higgins, Washington, D. C., green parrakeet.
President Hoover, White House, alligator.
Horne’s Zoological Arena Co., Kansas City, Mo., lion.
Mr. J. B. Jones, Smithfield, Va., bald eagle.
Mr. Ellis Joseph, New York City, Humboldt’s woolly monkey.
Mr. C. H. Keller, Washington, D. C., opossum.
Mr. William Kemble, Boston, Mass., white-faced capuchin.
Mr. Samuel Kress, Port Limon, Costa Rica, 3-toed sloth.
Mr. E. H. Lewis, Catalina Island, Calif,, 6 valley quail, 4 mountain quail
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 83
Mrs. Mary Lincoln, Washington, D. C., canary.
Mr. M. C. Marseglia, Washington, D. C., canary.
Mr. D. W. May, Mayaguez, Porto Rico, 2 rhinoceros iguanas.
Mrs. McFarland, Hellier, Ky., golden eagle.
Mr. E. B. McLean, Washington, D. C., coatimundi.
Mrs. E. B. McLean, Washington, D. C., sooty mangabey.
Mrs. Elinor Messler, Miami, Fla., coatimundi.
Mrs. Mitchell, Washington, D. C., sooty mangabey.
Mr. M. C. Musgrave, Phoenix, Ariz., Gila monster,
New York Zoological Society, New York City, Prince Rudolph’s blue bird of
paradise, Lawes’s 6-plumed bird of paradise.
New Zealand Government, 2 black swans, 1 pair paradise ducks, through
J. Langridge.
Mrs. E. E. Patterson, Melbourne, Fla., diamond rattlesnake.
Mr. Harry A. Peters, Ballston, Va., Philippine macaque.
Policemen of seventh precinct, Washington, D. C., 9-banded armadillo.
Mr. Freeman Pollack, Washington, D. C., hog-nosed snake.
Mrs. W. L. Sherman, Washington, D. C., gray coatimundi.
Mr. J. W. Stohlman, Washington, D. C., great horned owl.
Mrs. C. F. Spradling, Athens, Tenn., banded rattlesnake, coot.
Mr. C. G. Taylor, Parksville, N. Y., Canada porcupine.
Mr. Frank Temple, Hyattsville, Md., 2 red-tailed hawks.
United States Bureau of Fisheries, through Mr. Henry O’MaUey, 7 Pribilof
Island finches, 3 northern fur seals.
United States Coast Guard, New London, Conn., polar bear.
United States Marine Corps, through Dr. H. C. Kellers, United States Navy,
8 margays, 2 kinkajous, 10 gray coatimundis, collared peccary, 3 speckled
agoutis, 14 gray spider monkeys, 6 white-throated capuchins, caracara, 10 red-
faced paroquets, 2 small green paroquets, 6 sulphur-breasted toucans, 2 curas-
sows, 2 crab-eating raccoons, 45 tovi paroquets, gallinule, red-eared paroquet,
13 yellow-naped parrots, 4 opossums, tree opossum, 3 Petz’ paroquets, troupial.
Mr. L. W. Walker, Hugo, Colo., 2 coyotes, 2 white-necked ravens, 2 burrowing
owls.
Mrs. Mildred F. Williams, Washington, D. C., West Indian troupial.
Bobby Woods, Washington, D. C., black snake.
Mr. W. B. Wynkoop, Washington, D. C:, Philippine monkey.
Births —There were 58 mammals born and 41 birds hatched in the
park during the year. These included the following:
Japanese macaque _______________ 1 LOING TC xtte ee e ee nee ene ene Seana 1
Li aS Se ee ee A ATs oe en WO 3
PSO pam epeeioms reeset ek we Sil FATMETICHMNG like se syne ee ey 1
Neumann's eenet. ou 2 | "Red: deere ta: severe ee) das eae aa 2
CCQ O Mees eee hae a MOG Minlengeer: 2 8 Neate. 7 ANA iA nets al
1 DUET a ROU Relea ee 3: | SBarasin cigs ee eee Le ee 1
\AVIKG] LOYOvE aaa Sal sheteetns. on a Party eee eran 4° Japanese. deere 222s ee me
NVC NOS Sstete! SA n= a0 2 rly Axl ¥ Wallowa Geers. 25 iste 8) Jae 4
PRIMER CAT DISQM= =e DA || Brera Okino lac igor ribet ees Senn ee ee 2
lira Gi ray tial] Ojos ee HN Pa PS a ge 1
SIGHS ES eC RU Leena ee er Li pO anagd Ht SOOSE: arekteegs Voupete nen Pe t
Rocky Mountain sheep___________ 3 | White-cheeked goose_____________ 7
MOU Orso 2 Aare ee ae ZN ONTEIL (OT OT ee. oe ey a a ily
ANY CG ENG SE er eee ft) Sil verpg wllyosies § yet ul tcue. eleeis Sure ki 18
84 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The pair of lions presented to President Coolidge by the mayor
and citizens of Johannesburg produced four cubs. The parents are
still young and promise to become magnificent animals.
Each of the two pairs of leopards caught as adults by the Smith-
sonian-Chrysler expedition have bred both this year and last. The
wart hogs last year gave birth to five young, which died, but this
year four young were born and are thriving.
Purchase and exchange-—Among the more important specimens
acquired by purchase and exchange have been a cheetah, to replace
a pair lost last year; a pair of Kuropean wild boars, which have since
bred; a lot of 14 lories; a pair of Orinoco geese; four species of tree
ducks for the great flight cage in the bird house; a pair of Spix
macaws; and two Kea parrots. As the available quarters are lm-
ited and crowded, there have been purchased only especially desirable
species.
Removals.—Losses by death included one gibbon, which died of
pneumonia; a rhinoceros hornbill; a striped hyena, which lved in
the park from May 1, 1918, to September 27, 1928; a Malay tapir,
which was received September 13, 1921, and died September 29, 1928;
a red kangaroo, received in June, 1912, and died November 8, 1928.
Post-mortem examinations were made in most cases by the patho-
logical division of the Bureau of Animal Industry. The following
list shows the results of the autopsies:
CAUSES OF DEATH
MAMMALS
Marsupialia : Enteritis, 1; gastroenteritis, 1.
Carnivora: Pneumonia, 3; congestion of lungs, 1; enteritis, 4; gastroenteritis, 3; in-
ternal hemorrhage, 1; goiter, 1; accident, 1; no cause found, 1.
Pinnipedia: Gastritis, 1.
Primates: Pneumonia, 3; tuberculosis, 1; gastroenteritis, 1; hepatitis, 2; intestinal
parasites, 1.
Artiodactyla : Pneumonia, 1; intestinal obstruction, 1; difficult parturition, 2; old age,
2; no cause found, 1.
Perissodactyla: Accident, 1.
Edentata: No cause found, 1.
BIRDS
Casuariiformes: Aspergillosis, 1.
Ciconiiformes: Tuberculosis, 1; congestion of lungs, 1; enteritis, 1.
Anseriformes: Congestion of lungs, 1.
Psittaciformes: Enteritis, 1; no cause found, 1.
Coraciiformes: Gastroenteritis, 1.
Passeriformes: Aspergillosis, 1.
ANIMALS IN THE COLLECTION JUNE 30, 1929
MAMMALS
MARSUPIALIA
Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) ____-...- 8 | Great red kangaroo (Macropus rufus)_..------- 1
Flying phalanger (Petaurus breviceps)._----... 2 | Wombat (Phascolomys mitchelli)_........----- 1
Brush-tailed rock wallaby (Petrogale penicil-
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
CARNIVORA
Kadiak bear (Ursus middendorffi).-...-..-.---- 2 | Mexican kinkajou (Potos flavus aztecus)__.____- 1
Alaska Peninsula bear (Ursus gyas) ----------- Ari Pavan haynes OAT OUT) ee ee 1
Kidder’s bear (Ursus kidderi)............------ 2p Skunk" @ephitisntona) see eee ee ek es 3
European bear (Ursus arctos)---.....---------- Sh} Wolverine: (Guloiliuscs) eee a ee ee ee 3
Grizzly bear (Ursus horribilis)_...........-__-- 1 | American badger (Taridea americana) __-___--- 2
Apache grizzly (Ursus apache) __...-.--------- 1 | Ratel (Mellivora capensis) __..__......_--_-___- 1
Himalayan bear (Selenarctos thibetanus)__--.._- i | Florida otter (Lutra canadensis vaga)_-.-.._-__- 1
Black bear (EHuarcios americanus)_......--.---- 4 | Palm civet (Paradorurus hermaphroditus)___--- 1
Cinnamon bear (Hwarctos americanus cinna- Binturong (Arctictis binturong) _...----.---_---- 1
TL DICTTD a a a eS ee eee ae 4 | Egyptian mongoose (Herpestes ichnewmon).--. 1
Glacier bear (Huarctos emmonsii) __.....---_--- 1 | Aard-wolf (Proteles cristatus)__............_-.-- 1
Sun bear (Helarctos malayanus)...-....-------- 1 | East African spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta
Polar bear (Thalarctos maritimus)_.....-.------ 3 GENMANG TIS) eRe ee SOE Ry Tie ae Ue 1
Mingo(Canis dingo) A238 s 4 = ae ee 2 | Brown hyena (Hyxna brunnea)__---_.--.--.-_- 2
Gray wolt (Canisimubilus).22. 2 sts ook 7 | African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) __....------ 1
Wovoten(Canislatrans) seo sue ak ed (| Lalor! Cel isile0) eee Se eee TS PS Ane 10
Albino coyote (Canis latrans)_.........-------- iy |: Bengalitizer(helistigris) us xe ne ee Bae 1
California coyote (Canis ochropus).....-.------ 1 | Manchurian tiger (Felis tigris longipilis) ______- 3
Hybrid coyote (Canis latrans-rufus) ._...----_- 4 | Black leopard (Felis pardus)_.-.._..._________- Tt
Black-backed jackal (Thos mesomelas) _-_------ 1 | East African leopard (Felis pardus suahelicus). 9
Heditox, (Vulpes suloa)zooe a ees ie Se Servalt CHelistserpa)) eae ee ee ee 1
Silver-black fox (Vulpes fulva)..........------- 1 | East African serval (Felis capensis hindei)-...-- 2
European fox (Vulpes vulpes).......----------- ly Ocelot’ Chelistpandalis) =o ee eee 2
at fox. (Valpesipelar) pete see Yb es 1 | Brazilian ocelot (Felis pardalis brasiliensis) ____- 1
Gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus)_-.-_--_---- 3 | Mexican puma (Jelis azteca)..--._..._..______- 3
Cacomistle (Bassariscus astutus)_.......------- 2 | Indian caracal (Lynz caracal) _______._--..-_--- 1
Raccoon (Procyon lotor) -_..--------------2---- 15 | Abyssinian caracal (Lynz caracal nubica) - ._-_- 1
Florida raccoon (Procyon lotor elucus)_..------- 2) | Bay lynx Chyna ruyius)s ees oe ee 3
Gray coatimundi (Nasuwa narica).___---------- 9 | Bailey’s lynx (Lynz baileyi)_..-___..__..._-___- 1
Kein ka jous (0108 flavus) aan nee eee ee ae 5 | Clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa)_......._--- 1
PINNIPEDIA
California sea-lion (Zalophus californianus).... 3 | Leopard seal (Phoca richardii var.) _____._---_-- 2
Northern fur seal (Callotaria alascana) ._.-.---- 2 | Harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) _..........----_..- 1
RODENTIA
Woodchuck (Marmota monaz).......---------- 5 | Anubis baboon (Papio cynocephalus)__-_------ 6
Prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) _..-.------- 11 | Hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas) -.------ 1
Albino squirrel (Sciwrus carolinensis) __.------- 2) ly Mlandrilll (am osphine) asses ee 3
American beaver (Castor canadensis) __...-__-_- 2 |) Drill (apioilencoppeirs) ssa ee 1
East African porcupine (Hystriz galeata) -______ 2 | Moor monkey (Cynopithecus maurus) _-------- 3
South African porcupine (Hystriz africx-aus- Black ape (Cynopithecus niger) _....-.--.-_-_-- 1
EICLLES) Repel Nine: mehr wers then eM be ol! Bate eed yl 1 | Barbary ape (Simia sylvanus)__....__...-_.---- 2
Malay porcupine (Acanthion brachyurum)_.-... 2 | Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata)____-__--_- 4
Central American paca (Cuniculus paca vir- Brown macaque (Macaca arctoides)._.-...._--- 2
CSL TL 8) 5-1 lss eae lo th Upiieedatlh te aaty Dy 2b ppc 3 | Pig-tailed monkey (Macaca nemestrina) _-.__-- 1
Trinidad agouti (Dasyprocta rubrata).__------- 6 | Burmese macaque (Macaca andamenensis)_... 1
Speckled agouti (Dasyprocta punctata)__._-.--- 2 | Rhesus monkey (Macaca rhesus) _.......-_---- 12
Guinea pig (Cavia porcellus)_....---_---.------ 10 | Philippine macaque (Macaca syrichta) _.--._--- 3
Capybara (Hydrocherus hydrochzris)---.-_--__ 1 | Javan macaque (Macaca mordaz) __-.-..----.-- 5
Sooty mangabey (Cercocebus fuliginosus)-..-.-- 5
LAGOMORPHA Green guenon (Lasiopyga callitrichus)...-----_- 2
Domestic rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) __-_- 10 | Vervet (Lasiopyga pygerythra)..-....--.------- 1
Johnston’s vervet (Lasiopyga pygerythra jonn-
PRIMATES stoni) APATITE ARVN Y plot bade vomblae 2
Zanzibar lemur (Galago garnetti)_.......-----_- 1 | Mozambique monkey (Lasiopyga sp.)--__.---- 2
Red-fronted lemur (Lemur rufifrons)..------__ 1 | Sykes’ guenon (Lasiopyga albigularis)_._..__-_- 5
Black lemur (Lemur macaco) .-.-..-.--.-----_- 1 | Mona guenon (Lasiopyga mona) _---__-_-____-_- 2
Douroucouli (Aotus trivirgatus) _-.....-._.--__- 1 | De Brazza’s guenon (Lasiopyga brazzz)__.----- 1
Gray spider monkey (Afeles geoffroyi) ___-----. 4 | Lesser white-nosed guenon (Lasiopyga petau-
Humboldt’s woolly monkey (Lagothrir hum- TASER) DL sd lob SISAL ADT OAL Oat ORL f
GOLACL) mene nen RN SN CO ma Me Cain bd Ale 1 | Gray gibbon (Hylobates leuciscus)_-_-..--.--_-
White-throated capuchin (Cebus capucinus)_-.. 8 Chimpanzee (Pan satyrus).._.....-...-----_--
Weeping capuchin (Cebus apella)_..-._..---_-- 2 | Orang-utan (Pongo pygmzus) ___-.-.-..---___-
Chacma (Papio porcarius)................-.--- 2) eGrorillan (Goran gorilla) eee enn eee ee
86
ARTIODACTYLA
Witldiboar (Susiscrofd) sess eee eee ee
Wart hog (Phacocherus xthiopicus) __..--------
River hog (Potamocherus africanus)...--------
Collared peceary (Pecari angulatus)_-...._--__-
Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) _._-
Pigmy hippopotamus (Cheropsis liberiensis) __-
Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus)_-.--_._-_-
Arabian camel (Camelus dromedarius)_._-----_-
Guanaco (Lama huanachus)_-=.....---.-------
Near ieyy CP 770 LL TIGL ge ee ee eye a
Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus)___._--_--------_-
Fallow deer (Dama dama) ____-_-.-.-.-------=-
White fallow deer (Dama dama) ____-_--_------
Atxisideer\(Azis' arig) oo. ews ee ee ke
Hog deer (Hyelaphus porcinus)____-.-----------
Barasingha (Rucervus duvaucelii)__....-.-_----
Burmese deer (Rucervus eldii)_.___...-.--------
Japanese deer (Sika nippon) _-.....------------
Red deer (Cervus elaphus)_-...__._--____-_--=-
Kashmir deer (Cervus hanglu)_...-.---.--------
Bedford deer (Cervus xanthopygus)__-_---_- ae
American elk (Cervus canadensis) _-..._----_-_-
Costa Rican deer (Qdocoileus sp.)_..-.---------
Guatemala deer (Odocoileus sp.)__-..-------__-
Mule deer (Odocoilews hemionus)__...-.--------
Sitka deer (Odocoileus colwmbianus sitkensis) ---
Brindled gnu (Connochxtes tawrinus)___-_.----
White-bearded gnu (Connochxtes taurinus
CBee TLL TATE ) aD ST RS ae Pi:
Lechwe (Onotragus leche) _........-------------
Inyala (Tragelaphus angasi)__...___-_-------_-
Greater kudu (Strepsiceros strepsiceros) __.-_-.-
STRUTHIONIFORMES
South African ostrich (Struthio australis) _.._._-
Somaliland ostrich (Struthio molybdophanes) - --
Nubian ostrich (Struthio camelus)__.....-------
, RHEIFORMES
Rhea: Ceheaiamericana) sete es eee
CASUARUFORMES
Single-wattled cassowary (Casuwarius uwniappen-
diculatus) 22. Navieiats wee Eanoanaie se
Sclater’s cassowary (Casuarius philipi)........-
Cassowary (Casuarius sp.)_.--..---------------
Emu (Dromiceius novxhollandix) _.......--.---
CICONIIFORMES
American white pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhyn-
European white pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus)
Roseate pelican (Pelecanus roseus)..--.--------
Australian pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus) -_.
Brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis)_.._-----
California brown pelican (Pelecanus californicus)
Florida cormorant (Phalacrocoraz auritus flori-
Brandt’s cormorant (Phalacrocoraz penicillatus)
Snake bird (Anhinga anhinga) _-..---.---------
Great white heron (Ardea occidentalis) __.__...-
Great blue heron (Ardea herodias)_.--...-------
Hybrid great blue and white heron (Ardea hero-
dias-occidentalis).-____________-- EEO MOORE
Goliath heron (Ardea goliath) ......-_.-----_---
Reed buck (Reduwnca bohor)..-.-.-.---.-------- 1
| East African impalla (42pyceros melampus suara) 2
7 Indian antelope (Antilope cervicapra) _.-------- 1
1 Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus)_-_-___-------- 2
3 Mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus) ___----- 2
2 Tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus)__.-...---.------- 8
1 Allpinesibex (Capra iber) eae: tt ee en ee 2
1 Aoudad (Ammotragus lervia)____-_-__--__----_- 4
1 Rocky Mountain sheep (Ovis canadensis) ___-_- 12
2 Mouflon (Ovis europz#us) ___-_.-.-------_---_.- 6
7 Greenland musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus wardi)... 1
4 ZebuiCBor indicus) 2222-02 ees eee i
14 Yak (Poéphagus grunniens)___.__._-.---------. 7
1 American bison (Bison bison)_..._..----------- 15
1 Anoa (Anoa depressicornis) .._._..._-.----_-__- 1
5 Indian buffalo (Bubalus bubalis)___....-_------ 3
6 South African buffalo (Synceros caffer)...-.-_-- 1
1 PERISSODACTYLA
10 Brazilian tapir (Tapirus terrestris) _.....-.-__.- 1
4 Baird’s tapir (Tapirella bairdii) _.._.......___-. 1
“ | Mongolian horse (Hquus przewalskii) __....-.-- 2
5 Mountain zebra (Hquus zebra)_-.___..--_-----. 2
5 Chapman’s zebra (Equus quagga chapmani)__.. 2
g Zebra-horse hybrid (Hquus grevyi-caballus) .___- 1
1 Zebra-ass hybrid (Hguwus grevyi-asinus)__-..-_-. 1
2 PROBOSCIDEA
1 Abyssinian elephant (Loxodonta africana oryo-
ti) SESS. eee en AE Bay sere _ ee ee if
2 | Sumatran elephant (Zlephas swmatranus)_----- 1
; XENARTHRA
1 | Armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus)_--..-----.-- 1
BIRDS
Black-crowned night heron (Vycticorar nycti-
2 COFOLINEVIUS)- 2 Swe sees eee ee ee 91
1 Boatbill (Cochlearius cochlearius)_.-.....--_---. 3
iT White-necked stork (Dissura episcopus)-_-._.... 1
Indian adjutant (Leptoptilus dwbius).-....___-- 2
Shoe-bill (Balzniceps rez) 2.22222 oh ec ne sce e 1
1 Wood ibis (Mycteria americana) ___--....------- 1
Sacred ibis (Threskiornis xthiopicus) _._...-__--- 1
Black-headed ibis (Threskiornis melanocephalus) 3
Whiteibis(Guarcialia) eee eee if
1 | Scarlet ibis (@wara rwbra)__-_.-_-2.-2--22--- 22. 3
1 European flamingo (Phenicopterus roseus)__--- 1
: ANSERIFORMES
Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)_..-..------------ 26
Black duck (Anas rubripes) _....-....-.-.------ 7
Australian black duck (Anas superciliosa) -___- 1
9 Gadwall (Chawlelasmus streperus)_---..-.--_-_- 12
2 | European widgeon (Mareca penelope) ..-------- 3
1 | Baldpate (Mareca americana)...-----.__-.-.-_- 9
2 | Green-winged teal (Netlion carolinense) _._-.__. 3
5 | European teal (Nettion crecca) _..-------------- 4
5 | Baikal teal (Netiion formoswm) _.....---------- 5
Blue-winged teal (Querguedula discors)__-______ 1
2 | Garganey (Querquedula querquedula)_...----.-- 6
ih Paradise duck (Casarca variegata).-......_-..-- 2
3 | Shoveller (Spatula clypeata)....-...-...---.--- 1
Ieee intelli Ciaplacaceuta) ieee eee ae re il
2 | Bahama pintail (Dajila bahamensis) _._--.----- 3
African pintail (Dajfila erythrorhyncha) _.---.-_- 2
Teh] Wood duck(CAizeponsa) =e eee 7
1 | Mandarin duck (Dendronessa galericulata) __... 7
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
Canvasback (Marila valisineria) _......--..----
European pochard (Marila ferina) _.-.-.-------
Redhead (Marila americana) ...---------------
Tufted duck (Marila fuligula)_.-......-.--_---
Lesser scaup duck (Marila affinis) _.....-..----
Greater scaup duck (Marila marila)_.._---.---
Rosy-billed pochard (Metopiana peposaca).----
Egyptian goose (Chenaloper zgyptiacus) ___----
Hawaiian goose (Nesochen sendvicensis)____-_--
Blue goose (Chen cxrulescens)_.-...------------
White-fronted goose (Anser altifrons).....-...-
American white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons
gambeliy Raye ee Se seo eee eS
IBGanyeoosesCA Ns ety ODGlis) = sean etree ee
Pink-footed goose (Anser brachyrhynchus) _-_----
Chinese goose (Cygnopsis cygnoides)_.....------
Orinoco goose (Chenaloper jubata)__.....-.-._--
Bar-headed goose (Hulabeia indica) ._._.._-----
Canada goose (Branta canadensis) __..-.-------
Hutchins’s goose (Branta canadensis hutchinsii) -
White-cheeked goose (Branta canadensis occi-
GENLALIS) 2 OSE Ae NSA 1 OLE! BDL
Cackling goose (Branta canadensis minima) ____
Brant (Branta bernicla glaucogastra)__-..._-_---
Barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis)__.....-------
Emperor goose (Philacte canagica)__....._.__---
Spur-winged goose (Plectropterus gambensis) _.-
Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata).......------
Black-bellied tree duck (Dendrocygna autumn-
White-faced tree duck (Dendrocygna viduata) __-
Gray-breasted tree duck (Dendrocygna discolor) -
West Indian tree duck (Dendrocygna arborea) _-
Eyton’s tree duck (Dendrocygna eytoni)__.._---
Mute swan (Cygnus gibbus)___-.._.....---------
Whistling swan (Cygnus columbianus)___-..---
Black swan (Chenopis atrata)_..._...-----_----
FALCONIFORMES
Condor (Wultur oryphs) 222 sess2ces222 2:
California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) __-
Turkey vulture (Cathartes aura)_.....___--.---
Black vulture (Coragyps urwbu) .--------------
King vulture (Sarcoramphus papa) .-----------
Secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius) _._____-
Griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus)..........----.---
Ruppell’s vulture (Gyps rueppelli)......--__---
Northern eared -vultures---~- 252-222
African black vulture (Torgos tracheliotus) - ___.
Cinereous vulture (A7gypius monachus) --------
White-headed vulture (Trigonoceps occipitalis) -
Caracara (Polyborus cheriway)......-----------
Wedge-tailed eagle (Uroaétus audaz)__-_---_-_-_-
Golden eagle (Aquila chrysaétos) __-.....-.-_---
Tawny eagle (Aquila rapar)._.._..-.----------
Bald eagle (Halizxetus leucocephalus leucoceph-
Alaskan bald eagle (Halizctus leucocephalus
Glargcanius) soe SA ete net te LS freien’ Ten epant. 2
Red-tailed hawk (Buteo borealis) __...-...-----
Broad-winged hawk (Buteo platypterus) ___._--
East African chanting goshawk (Melieraz poli-
Opbersis)| = Le kinases Heh) sey ht eae ie Swe ey ys
Sparrow hawk (Falco sparverius) .........-----
Osprey (Pandion haliaétus carolinensis) ...-.---
GALLIFORMES
Panama curassow (Craz panamensis) _....-----
Mexican curassow (Craz globicera) _.....-------
Spix’s wattled curassow (Craz globulosa)_..__--
Razor-billed curassow (Mitu mitu)-_.-....------
Crested guan (Penelope boliviana)..--.---------
Chestnut-winged guan (Ortalis garrula)_.._----
Chachalaca (Ortalis vetula)_..............------
Vulturine guinea fowl (Acryllium oulturinum) -
Reichenow’s helmeted guinea fowl (Numida
TALTOUE TEACH ENOU’) on eee ae
PeafowliClavotcristats) 22a ee
Albino peafowl] (Pavo cristatus) _......-_-------
Javan jungle fowl (Gallus varius)__._.---------
| Argus pheasant (Argus giganteus)_-.-_-.-------
Silver pheasant (Gennzus nycthemerus)_..-_---
Edward’s pheasant (Gennzus edwardsi)--------
Golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus) ....----
Lady Ambherst’s pheasant (Chrysolophus am-
REV Stilt) hotest eee eee an ee
Ring-necked pheasant (Phasianus torquatus) ---
Migratory quail (Coturniz coturnix)_....__-----
Pigmy quail (Ercalfactoria chinensis) _-.-_-_---.
Valley quail (Lophortyz californica vallicola)__.-
Sealed quail (Callipepla squamata)_.-..-_------
Crowned wood partridge (Rollulus cristatus)---
GRUIFORMES
Florida gallinule (Gallinula chloropus galeata) _-
Purple gallinule (Jonornis martinicus).-...-_---
East Indian gallinule (Porphyrio calvus)-.-_---
Pukeko (Porphyrio stanleyi)......---------.---
Black-tailed moor hen (Microtribonyz ventralis) _
American coot (Fulica americana)_.._...------
African moor hon (Fulica cristata) --___.-------
African black crake (Limnocraz flavirostra) -___-
Lesser rail (Hypotznidia philippensis).___-.-_--
South Island weka rail (Ocydromus australis) - -
Sandhill crane (Megalornis mexicana)_._.------
Little brown crane (Megalornis canadensis) - ---
White-necked crane (Megalornis leucauchen) ---
Indian white crane (Megalornis lewcogeranus) .-
Lilford’s crane (Megalornis lilfordi)__....__----
Australian crane (Mathewsena rubicunda).-___-
Demoiselle crane (Anthropoides virgo) __-------
West African crowned crane (Balearica pavo-
East African crowned crane (Balearica regu-
lorumigibbericeps) ene eee ee
Common trumpeter (Psophia crepitans) ___-.--
Green-winged trumpeter (Psophia viridis) __.__-
Kagu (Rhynochetos jubatus)._..-.---.----------
CHARADRIIFORMES
Ruff (Philomachus pugnaz)...-..--------------
South American stone plover (@dicnemus bis-
triatusivoci{er) 2.2 2soeis: Speke) ease el
Pacific gull (Gabianuws pacificus)___..------.---
Great black-backed gull (Larus marinus) ------
Western gull (Larus occidentalis)_........------
Herring gull (Larus argentatus)._......---.----
Silver gull (Larus novxehollandiz) ......--------
Laughing gull (Larus atricilla)_.......-.-------
Victoria crowned pigeon (Goura victoria) .___---
Nicobar pigeon (Calenas nicobarica) _-.-.------
Bronze-wing pigeon (Phaps chalcoptera)_--._---
88
Bleeding-heart dove (Gallicolumba luzonica) --.
Wood pigeon (Columba palumbus)-.-.---------
Sealed pigeon (Columba squamosa)-..----------
Triangular spotted pigeon (Columba guinea) __-
Fiji Island pigeon (Janthenas vitiensis) -.------
Mourning dove (Zenaidura macroura carolinen-
Mexican dove (Zenaidura graysoni)._._..------
White-fronted dove (Leptotila fulviventris bra-
(TA aye NY ee Se EE eae ee ae
Necklace dove (Spilopelia tigrina).----..-.-----
Emerald-spotted dove (Turtur chalcospilos) -_.-.
Ringed turtledove (Streptopelia risoria) __-_-.--
East African ring-necked dove (Streptopelia
CONCOLA TODO) Pee ae a ee et ea
Masai mourning dove (Streptopelia decipiens
DEN SDICULLALA) ere ee a Sa a
Zebra dove (Geopelia striata).._..-.-------------
Bar-shouldered dove (Geopelia humeralis)..----
Cape masked dove (Gna capensis) .-.---------
Inca dove (Scardafella inca)..........---.------
Cuban ground dove (Chxmepelia passerina
OfLQDIGG) aia py 5 Se Bie he Bee
Pacific fruit pigeon (Globicera pacifica)__.._----
Bronze fruit pigeon (Muscadivores 2nea)_.-----
PSITTACIFORMES
Keeai(Neston moravilis) eae ee ee
Violet-necked lory (Hos variegata)_...----------
Forsten’s lorikeet (Trichoglossus forsteni)..._---
Great black cockatoo (Microglossus aterrimus) -
Roseate cockatoo (Kakatoe roseicapilla) .-.-----
Bare-eyed cockatoo (Kakaloe gymnopis)_._-.---
Leadbeater’s cockatoo (Aakatoe leadbeateri)__--
White cockatoo (Kakatoe alba)......-----------
Sulphur-crested cockatoo (Kakatoe galerita)..___
Great, red-crested cockatoo (Kakatoe moluccen-
Red and blue and yellow macaw (Ara macao)-___
Illiger’s macaw (Ara maracana)_.-..-.---------
Spix’s macaw (Cyanopsitiacus spizi).....-..---
Hyacinthine macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacin-
JULIUS) ees ee ee NCL) a Se oles
Blue-winged conure (Pyrrhura picta)-..-..-----
Nanday paroquet (Nandayus nenday)..._.-----
Gray-breasted paroquet (Myopsitta monachus) -
Petz’s paroquet (Hupsittula canicularis).-.._.--
Golden-crowned paroquet (Hupsitiula aurea) --
Weddell’s paroquet (Hupsittula weddellii) _____
Golden paroquet (Brotogeris chrysosema)-_.__---
Tovi paroquet (Brotogeris jugularis)..........-_
Yellow-naped parrot (Amazona auropalliata) __
Mealy parrot (Amazona farinosa)_.__----____--
Orange-winged parrot (Amazona amazonica)..-
Blue-fronted parrot (Amazona xstiva).....-...-
Red-crowned parrot (Amazona viridigenalis) _ __
Double-yellow-head parrot (Amazona oratriz)_.
Yellow-headed parrot (Amazona ochrocephala) .
Panama parrot (Amazona panamensis) ..__-_--
Festive parrot (Amazona festiva).........-.___-
Lesser white-fronted parrot (Amazona albi-
frONS RANG) Aw ARNE yp ied el bara
Santo Domingo parrot (Amazona ventralis) ___-
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Cuban parrot (Amazona leucocephala)...._2__-
Maximilian’s parrot (Pionus mazimiliani)..-__-
Dusky parrot (Pionus fuscus)__.......-----_--
Blue-headed parrot (Pionus menstruus)..---._-
Amazonian caique (Pionites ranthomera).-_---.
Hawk-head parrot (Deroptyus accipitrinus) ..
Yellow-fronted parrot (Poicephalus flavifrons)__
East African brown parrot (Poicephalus meyeri
matschicl) sis 5-2 Nees 2 eo hee Ee ates
Congo parrot (Poicephalus gulielm?)_...-.---_--
Greater vasa parrot (Coracopsis vasa) __.-...---
Red-faced love-bird (Agapornis pullaria)...__--
Gray-headed love-bird (Agapornis madagascari-
. Yellow-collared love-bird (Agapornis personata).
Fischer’s love-bird (Agapornis fischeri)...__-_---
Nyassa love-bird (Agapornis lilianx)_..._.._.--
Blue-crowned hanging paroquet (Loriculus
Galgulus) 2.2. te ee ee earn. Diese
Blue-bonnet paroquet (Psephotus hxmator-
Pennant’s paroquet (Platycercus elegans) ___---
Rosella paroquet (Platycercus eximius).....----
Crimson-winged paroquet (Aprosmictus ery-
ERTODCET US) S22 Cae eee ea
Ring-necked paroquet (Conurus torquatus) _..._
Nepalese paroquet (Conurus nepalensis) _..----
Long-tailed paroquet (Conurus longicauda) __--
Blossom-head paroquet (Conurus cyanocephala) -
Grass paroquet (Melopsitiacus undulatus) _-.---
CUCULiIFORMES
Donaldson’s turaco (Turacus donaldsoni) __.__-
Long-tailed cuckoo (fudynamis honorata)_..._-
CORACIFORMES
Jackson’s hornbill (Lophoceros jacsoni)_.___.--
Red-beaked hornbill (Lophoceros erythro-
TRU NCH US) eo See Nt eee
White-browed hornbill (Anvthracoceros ma-
LOY GNILS) sak oor ech ee pe ee ae
Plicated hornbill (2thytidocercs plicatus).......-
Keel-billed toncan (Ramphastos piscivorus)---.-
Ariel toucan (Ramphastos ariel)..-.-..---------
Emin Pasha’s barbet (Trachyphonus emini)...-
Barred ow] (Striz varia varia)........----------
Florida barred ow) (Striz varia alleni)_..__.-..-
Snowy ow! (Nyctea nyctea)_......-.---.-_--_--
Sereech owl (Ocusigsio) aoe ee
Great horned owl (Bubo virginianus)_--._.-.---
Hagleiowl) (Buhoibulo) pes ee
American barn owl (Tvyfe alba pratincola)___---
African barn owl (7véo alba affinis).._.....---.
PASSERIFORMES
Red-billed hill-tit (Liothriz lutews)....--.---.--
Black-gorgetead laughing thrush (@arrular
PECLON GUIS) 5 = 4 SS EI
White-cheeked bulbul (Molpastes leucogenys)_-
Black-headed bulbul (Molpastes hxmorrhous).-
White-eared bulbul (Otocompsa leucotis) ______-
Red-eared bulbul (Otocompsa jocosa).......--.-
Piping crow-shrike (Gymnorhina tibicen)_____-
White-necked raven (Corvultur albicollis) -_._.-
American raven (Corous corax sinuatus)....----
Australian crow (Corvus coronoides)........--_-
American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)__.-...-
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
White-breasted crow (Corvus albus)-...-.-------
Red bird of paradise (Paradisea sanguinea) -__.-
Prince Rudolph’s blue bird of paradise (Para-
GiSOhmMs TULOLDA nee ene ene
Lawes’ bird of paradise (Parotia lawesi)_-._-.--
American magpie (Pica pica hudsonia)._-_-----
Red-billed blue magpie ( Urocissa occipitalis) __.
Yucatan jay (Cissilopha yucatanica) __.--------
Blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) __....-.----------
Green jay (Xanthoura luruosa) ___-------------
Pileated jay (Cyanocoraz pileatus) __..---------
Blue honey-creeper (Cyanerpes cyaneus) -------
Blue-winged tanager (Tanagra cyanoptera)-_-._--
Blue tanager (Thraupis cana).....-------------
Giant whydah (Diatropura progne) -__---------
Paradise whydah (Steganura paradisea)_-___---
Shaft-tailed whydah (Tetrenura regia) _-___----
Red-crowned bishop bird (Pyromelana sylva-
Black-winged coral-billed weaver (Teztor niger
MY UESL) eee ern eee eas We eeerre re eS
Madagascar weaver (Foudia madagascariensis) _
Black-headed weaver (Hyphanturgus nigriceps) .
Southern masked weaver finch (Quelea sangui-
SUT OSURISETILE EMI) eae ae nemo see nea aeS en oS
Emin’s scaly-headed finch (Sporopipes frontalis
Orange-cheeked waxbill (Hstrilda melpoda) _____
Rosy-rumped waxbill (Hstrilda rhodopygia) ----
Blue-headed blue waxbill (Urzginthus bengalus
CYONOCERNGIUS) casa 28 ces ton ROD a eee STK
East African fire-throated finch (Pytilia kirki) -
Strawberry finch (Amandava amandava) _------
Nutmeg finch (Munia punctulata)_._--_.-.----
White-headed nun (Munia maja).....---------
Black-headed nun (Munia atricapilla).._...._-
Chestnut-breasted finch (Munia castanei-
{EO TTD as aee E 5
Java finch (Munia oryzivora) __..-.------------
Masked grass finch (Poéphila personata) ._____-
Diamond finch (Steganopleura guttata)......_.-
Zebra finch (Texniopygia castanotis)._.....-...-
Cutthroat finch (Amadina fasciata) _........_--
Tanganyika cutthroat finch (Amadina fasciata
Mlerunieni): 22 sateen. Bs eee ST
Red-headed finch (Amadina erythrocephala) -__-
Yellow-headed marshbird (Agelaius icteroce-
DIELS) eae = Neer ee: ety SS SOE 1 ee a
Australian gray jumper (Struthidea cinerea) ___-
European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)......_-__-
Shining starling (Lamprocoraz metallicus)..___-
Southern glossy starling (Lamprocolius pestis) __
Crested starling (Galeopsar salvadorii)..._..___-
White-capped starling (Heteropsar albicapillus) -
Indian mynah (Acridotheres tristis)..._.....__--
Crested mynah (thiopsar cristatellus)..____-
Malay grackle (Gracula javana)___.-__-_---_---
Bar-jawed troupia (Gymnomystaz melanicterus)_
West Indian troupial (Icterus icterws)_.._-____-
Hooded oriole (Icterus cucullatus)._......-_----
Yellow-tailed oriole (Icterus mesomelas)._._._--
Purple grackle (Quiscalus quiscula)....._---_--
Greenfinch (Chloris chloris)._._......--.--------
Yellowhammer (Hmberiza citrinella).._.----_--
House finch (Carpodacus mezicanus frontalis) - -
San Lucas house finch (Carpodacus mezicanus
PULDERTIE TIALS) UA ee a ety eS Ome
Canary) (Serinus canarius)_2 20-22 foie ee
Little yellow serin (Serinus icterus) ._......----
Gray singing finch (Serinus leucopygius)_____--
White-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis)-
San Diego song sparrow (Melospiza melodia
COOMETI) 5c TRONS. BESS 2 BST PAE
Coastal pale-bellied sparrow (Passer griseus
SUL CLICILS ee as ed Ae eee ee nd a Se
Saffron finch (Sicalis flaveola)__..-___----------
Guiana blue grosbeak (Cyanocompsacyanoides) -
Chinese grosbeak (Hophona migratoria sower-
REPTILES
Alligator (Alligator mississipiensis)_.........-_-
Broad-nosed crocodile (Osteolemus tetraspis) __
Horned toad (Phrynosoma cornutum) _-_---.---
Gila monster (Heloderma suspectwm)__....-----
Beaded lizard (Heloderma horridwm) _--_-------
Scaly-tailed lizard ( Uromastiz hardwicki)___.._-
Green lizard (Lacerta viridis)__...-......---_---
Egyptian monitor (Varanus niloticus) __-_.._--
West Indian Iguana (Cyclura cornuta)_....--_-
Affican'sand-boa/Ghrur) sss=s-2=see aso eee
Indian.sand-boaiQhryt) s-sen 2 — ee ae eee
Ball'python\ (Pythonwregius) ae 22 non en eee eee
Rock python (Python molurus)-_.--------------
Regal python (Python reticulatus)__.-._-....___-
African python (Python sebz)_---.....---------
Anaconda (Hunectes murinus) _....-..---------
Dog-headed boa (Corallus caninus) .._-.-------
Black snake (Coluber constrictor)....--.--------
Corn snake (Elaphe guitata) --.....-..--.------
Chicken snake (Elaphe 4-lineatus) ---...-------
Pine snake (Pituophis melanoluecus) -..-.------
King snake (Lampropeltis getulus) .._.-.-------
Hog-nosed snake (Heterodon platyrhinos)____---
Water snake (Natriz sipedon) _._-.-..--------.-
Black-necked spitting cobra (Naja nigricollis) __
Copperhead (Agkistrodon mokasen) __.---------
Florida rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus) -----
Western diamond rattlesnake (Crotalus atror)_-
Banded rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus)-..--...-
Snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina).-..------
Florida snapping turtle (Chelydra osceola)_-----
African snake-necked terrapin (Pelomedusa
GUC OLD) So eas aie Sc eee
Australian snake-necked terrapin (Chelodina
longicollis) Siar Sees abe Cbs £53) 2 Ree S50
Musk turile (Sternotherus odoratus)--.-.-------
Mexican musk turtle (Kinosternon sonoriense) -
South American musk turtle (Kinosternon
SCOP TLOUIES) es ee IB le ae ae
Pennsylvania musk turtle (Kinosternon subru-
Wood turtle (Clemmys insculpta) _-_....-------
Leprous terrapin (Clemmys leprosa)_..-._.-----
Blanding’s terrapin (Hmys blandingii) --_----_-
European pond turtle (Hmys orbicularis).___._-
South American terrapin (Nicoria pwnctularia)
Reeves turtle (Geoclemys reevesi)__......_--.----
Loochoo turtle (@eoemyda spengleri) ___.-._----
90 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Painted turtle (Chrysemys picta)--.------------ 2 | Berlandier’s tortoise (Testudo berlandieri)___-- 1
Western painted turtle (Chrysemys belli)__----- 1 | Soft-shelled tortoise (Testudo loveridgei)...---- 8
Gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) -------- 1 | Chicken turtle (Deirochelys reticularia)_.-.---- 1
Duncan Island tortoise (Testudo ephippium).. 3
Indefatigable Island tortoise (Testudo portert).. 1 Bee eas
Albermarle Island tortoise (Testwdo vicina)_._. 2 | African smooth-clawed frog (Xenopus mulleri). 28
Angulated tortoise (Testudo angulata)_.------- 1 | Giant salamander (Megalobatrachus japonicus). 2
Leopard tortoise (Testudo pardalis)_-._-------- 6 | Horned frog (Ceratophrys cornuta)------------- 2
Agassiz’s tortoise (Testudo agassizii).-_._.----- 1 | Marbled newt (Triton marmorata)-_...----.--- 2
Statement of the collection
Reptiles
Mam- .
Birds | andba- | Total
mals trachians
Presented 2. 22= 535 See hese Es obese cesses - 222 S22 eee 82 136 12 230
BOTT eee ee eee See es oe as Se Se es bE eee 58 Zl eee 99
Receivedtiniexchan gee stesso" ons s2ossne ceo ee eos cee ee ane 13 bi) eases ees 68
IPurchascd® ee eee ene eee eae Jee eee nee ade esos naa s= 17 43 20 80
(O) oye (cy oe) Rene geet eA OR ES ee a hm ly ae Shes 1 2
Total see se ees Ee ee eae eon sa eeas eee 171 275 33 479
SUMMARY
NGC aOVS SPO OY Cyd OE 0K Uae fab Uae We a 2 Pe ecient a AS ei eee Fy PAIR
Accessions’ during the years =. 2 wae een eee 479
Total animalsMhbanGdledi tae: trees 22 8 oe ee ee 2, (oe
Deduct loss (by death, return of animals, and exchange) —~-__-__________ 541
Pesala
Status of collection
Species | Individuals
Vie ria Ls SS Re ee ee ee ce en ah ee 174 §23
BINS Se eee en ae eee nee an ee ae cen oscce ws acne calc eeeee aa eee 343 1, 461
Reppilesiand' Datrachiguss-s=+esess" ese. hase oe See ee 62 227
FRO CE See ee nee re ee nee een Coren en nee ns Sue ieee A Se 579 2, 211
It is planned to erect the reptile house on the site of the old bird
house, and this necessitates the razing of the old building, which has
been used up to now as a storage house for animals and birds for
which there were no other quarters. The destruction of this building
will reduce the exhibition space so much that no attempt has been
made to enlarge the collection, but rather to select, as replacements
for animals and birds that have been lost, only especially desirable
species. The result has been that the collection is unusually rich in
rare and interesting forms. Exchanges of numerous common species
for one or two rarities have been made. These exchanges have been
advantageous in reducing congestion as well as improving the quality
of the collection.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY Ol
VISITORS
The estimated attendance as recorded in the daily reports of the
park shows considerable increase over the preceding year and in-
cluded visitors from every State in the Union.
Attendance by months was as follows:
1928 1929
Afiihie Saye see Wee: & yes i see eee 236: Of | Tannanyes ea bs © 0) See, bs 64, 650
UNV DC] ee ee See ee 1968200 i MeDEUat === ee 105, 700
Septembers= 2. =k a as Assy SiO) INGhRe lt ee 366, 500
CLODCT See et Aa C1 L545 0 la. 0) eh eS ar egnebe eeeeeeriobe — Beta ot 295, 339
INGVeCHIA PR as naan ee (or OoOn |: Miaiya= = eae Sein Se ee ee 275, 350
December 2s |< ses ak 2 1S4 SOO} |h dunes 2s See eae 248, 750
Motalstor, year =e = 2, 528, 710
The attendance of organized classes of students was 30,886 from
497 different schools.
IMPROVEMENTS
During the year the work on the exterior of the bird house has been
completed, outdoor cages have been constructed, and an attractive
approach made to the building. Snow guards have been put on the
skylights and the area in the rear of the building has been paved.
In connection with this house it was necessary to lay 285 feet of pipe
to a culvert.
The lion house and the antelope house have had their roofs recov-
ered, in part with asphalt shingles, and also new gutters installed.
It was also necessary during the year to put plastic coating on the
roof of the hay shed, the old elephant house, the old bird house, the
zebra house, the property house, and the buffalo shed. One of the
cages at the old bear yard has been renovated. The office has been
painted and redecorated for the first time in 26 years.
Having received a number of suggestions in regard to the bridle
paths throughout the park, several consultations were held with those
interested in riding and their suggestions followed out as closely as
possible in altering these paths.
An appropriation of $220,000 has been made for the construction of
a reptile house during the fiscal year 1930, and considerable work
has been done on planning this building, which will, when completed,
enable us to extend the collection to include reptiles, batrachians, and
insects. This building will fill a very great need at the park.
In connection with the construction of the reptile house, the Smith-
sonian Institution, from its private funds, sent the director of the
park and Mr. A. L. Harris, municipal architect, to Europe to study
certain zoos. Special attention was given to the planning and con-
struction of reptile houses, but other features were studied and much
92 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
information obtained which will be valuable in the development of
our own ZOO.
In all, 20 zoos were visited, in the following cities: London, Han-
over, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Halle, Vi-
enna, Budapest, Munich, Nuremberg, Frankfort, Cologne, Dussel-
dorf, Elberfeld, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Stellingen.
In London we attended the centenary of the London Zoo, where a
notable group of zoologists, including many continental and some
American delegates, were gathered. They were entertained by the
London Zoological Society at a meeting and later at a memorable
dinner in the Zoological Gardens. In all of the zoos visited we were
shown the greatest courtesy and given much friendly aid, and by
working together on the steamer on the return trip much time was
saved in getting together preliminary plans for the reptile house.
It is interesting to note that we did not see in Europe a single zoo
that impressed us unfavorably. They are all thriving institutions
and in nearly all of them new buildings are being added. The col-
lections invariably were excellent.
NEEDS OF THE ZOO
The most urgent need at the present time is an exhibition building
for apes, lemurs, and small mammals. ‘There, are now almost no
quarters for small mammals. These come into the zoo sometimes in
great numbers as gifts and include some of the most interesting of
all animals. The few that it is possible to exhibit are quartered un-
satisfactorily in the monkey house. The great apes, of which the
park has a valuable collection, are so placed that it is often impossible
for visitors to see them, whereas in a new building they would be
housed in modern hygienic quarters, away from the other monkeys
and chance of infection. Tentative plans for such a building have
been made, and the cost is estimated at $225,000. This building, like
the new reptile house, will provide facilities for exhibiting groups
of animals for which up to now there has been no place at all.
In our entire building program, which includes besides the above
building a pachyderm house, an antelope, buffalo, and wild-cattle
house, the completion of the bird house, and the addition of various
open-air cages, we are asking only for equipment that practically
all modern zoos already possess—simply the necessary facilities of a
modern zoological park.
Respectfully submitted.
W. M. Mann, Director.
Dr. CHartes G. ABsor,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 7
REPORT ON THE ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY
Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the activi-
ties of the Astrophysical Observatory for the fiscal year ended June
30, 1929:
PLANT AND OBJECTS
This observatory operates regularly the central station at Wash-
ington and two field stations for observing solar radiation on Table
Mountain, Calif., and Mount Montezuma, Chile. By arrangement
with the National Geographic Society, the director of the observatory
has charge of the cooperating solar radiation station of the society
on Mount Brukkaros, South West Africa. In addition, the observa-
tory controls a station on Mount Wilson, Calif., where occasional
expeditions are sent for special investigations.
The principal aim of the observatory is the exact measurement of
the intensity of the radiation of the sun asit is at mean solar distance
outside the earth’s atmosphere. This is ordinarily called the solar
constant of radiation, but the observations of past years by this
observatory have proved it variable. As all life as well as the weather
depends on solar radiation, the observatory has undertaken the con-
tinued measurement of solar variation on all available days. These
measurements have now continued all the year round for 11 years,
but should continue at least 11 years more to cover the Hale 22.6-year
solar cycle. In addition to this principal object, the observatory
undertakes spectroscopic researches on radiation and absorption of
atmospheric constituents, radiation of special substances such as
water vapor, ozone, carbonic-acid gas, liquid water and others, and
the radiation of the other stars as well as of the sun.
WORK AT WASHINGTON
Continuous series of solar observations having been made as
hitherto at several field stations on desert mountains in distant lands,
these observations have been critically studied and prepared for
publication at Washington. Several new investigations based on
these observations have been made and published and we have carried
93
94 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
on the preparation and standardization of apparatus. Details
follow.
(a) Periodicities in solar variation.—Observations at Montezuma,
in Chile, had been reduced to a consistent and definitive system several
years since. This system requires no computations beyond those
which the observers make regularly in the field. Telegrams in code
are received daily from Montezuma, and when decoded are communi-
cated to the United States Weather Bureau, which publishes on the
Washington daily weather map the solar constant value observed 24
hours previously at Montezuma.
In November, 1928, Doctor Abbot assembled the monthly mean
solar constant values of 101 consecutive months ending with October,
1928, and plotted them in the form of a curve. This curve Dr.
Dayton C. Miller, of Cleveland, was kind enough to analyze by means
of his ingenious and accurate machine, so as to bring out the first 30
harmonic constituents, which, combined, approximately represent the
original curve.
From a previous analysis of 77 months, made in 1926, it had
appeared that periods of about 26, 15, and 11 months and the sub-
multiples of these periods were all the periods under 26 months that
seemed to have continuous existence in the solar variation. Accord-
ingly, the interval of 101 months had been purposely chosen as nearly
a common multiple, so that if these periods were still persistent they
might be brought out as approximately the fourth, the seventh, and
the ninth harmonics, with their overtones.
Figure 2 shows the result of this analysis. The zigzag line A
represents the original monthly mean of observations, and the 30
sinuous curves below are the harmonics. Until a longer interval of
observation shall be available for analysis, it is not considered desir- +
able to discuss periodicities longer than ae months. The reader
will perceive that if we therefore neglect the march of the first,
second, and third harmonics, the fourth, its overtones the eighth,
twelfth, and sixteenth; the seventh, its overtones the fourteenth,
twenty-first, and twenty-eighth; and the ninth and its approximate
overtones the nineteenth and twenty-seventh are really the most
prominent features, whereas some of the other harmonics, such as
the fifth, sixth, tenth, eleventh, thirteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth,
twentieth, twenty-fourth, twenty-sixth, and twenty-ninth, not in-
cluded in these three series of overtones, nearly vanish. Indeed,
apart from those named in connection with the fourth, the seventh,
and the ninth, only the twelfth, fifteenth, twenty-third, and twenty-
fifth seem to be of appreciable significance. This suggests that the
third and its overtones may also have real significance. It is of great
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
Fieurn 2.—Periodicities in solar variation
95
96 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
interest to note that the periods corresponding to the fourth, the
seventh, and the ninth harmonics, which we find so well marked in
solar variation, have also been particularly noted by students of
the march of weather and crop phenomena.
Assuming that the harmonics from the fourth to the thirtieth
represent all the real regular periodicities in the variation of solar
radiation, the curve B, at the foot of the diagram, which is their
summation, represents the march of this periodic part of solar varia-
tion. Continuing it to cover the years 1929, 1930, and 1931, we are
led to anticipate features of uncommon interest in the march of solar
variation in the period just approaching. It will, indeed, be exceed-
ingly interesting to see to what degree this forecast is verified.
(6) Reduction of Table Mountain observations——Observations at
‘Table Mountain, Calif., which have continued since December, 1925,
have been critically studied at great length during the past year by
Mr. Fowle and the computers. Mr. Fowle has considered that the
results might be affected by three variable atmospheric elements—
the water vapor, the haze, and the ozone which occurs in the very
high atmosphere. It was easy to arrange the data in groups corre-
sponding to gradual increase of quantities of atmospheric water vapor,
for this vapor is readily measured and expressed as total precipitable
water by Fowle’s method which he worked out from spectroscopic
study in the laboratory many years ago. By such statistical ar-
rangement, corrections for precipitable water were sought to be
obtained.
However, there is one obstacle depending on the contemporaneous
real variability of the sun which hinders immediate estimation of
water-vapor influence. True, this solar variability might have been
eliminated by employing the definitive results of Montezuma, but we
avoided this procedure, since, in the opinion of some, it might not
have left the Table Mountain observations fully independent. Ac-
cordingly, the solar variation was roughly estimated from Table
Mountain pyrheliometry alone, after the method referred to in my
report for 1926, page 116. Allowance was thus made for the solar
variation before determining the water-vapor effect.
When these steps had been taken it became clear that a sudden
increase of the Table Mountain solar constant values had been indi-
cated about August 12, 1927. This change of scale continued with
apparently increasing departures thereafter. No parallel result hav-
ing been noted at Montezuma, every contributary element of the
measurements at Table Mountain was investigated to learn the
source of the discrepancy. It was soon found that the change was
due to a large change in the scale of pyranometer measurements of
the brightness of the sky near the sun. Yet redeterminations of the
constants of the pyranometer itself by observing solar radiation with
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 97
it gave excellent agreement with previous values. Very numerous
experiments and comparisons were made at Table Mountain in the
effort to trace the cause of the discrepancy. These were without
result until September, 1928, when Doctor Abbot visited the station
and observed that portions of the vestibule of the instrument had
become shiny by handling. Hence sunlight in addition to sky light
was reaching the sensitive measuring strip. By reblackening the
limiting diaphragm nearly all of this error was removed.
It was now necessary to perform a great mass of statistical com-
puting in order to determine the magnitude of the pyranometer
error at different dates. Fortunately, an error of 20 per cent in
pyranometry makes but 1 per cent error in the solar constant, so
that no great accuracy of determining the error was required. Hence
it appeared sufficient to collect all the pyranometer values of each
month, arranging them in orders of atmospheric humidity, air-mass,
and pyrheliometer value, and to compare the mean pyranometer
values of corresponding months in successive years, as well as the
values in nearly identical sky conditions throughout each year.
It soon became clear that no change in the instrument had occurred
prior to early August, 1927. At that time there had been many ex-
perimental comparisons involving handling of the vestibule, which
had done the damage and led to the sudden change. Afterwards
many more comparisons were made to find the trouble, and these had
ageravated it. After much work it became possible to determine a
set of sufficiently exact corrections to the pyranometry of 1927 and
1928 suitable to each of the 13 months during which they were needed.
These studies were made on Table Mountain observations exclu-
sively, so that they introduced no element of dependence on
Montezuma.
To prevent a future mischance of this kind, imperative orders were
issued to all stations as to the handling of instruments, and standard
instruments, for comparison purposes only, were added to the equip-
ment, with instructions to make fairly frequent comparisons between
these and the instruments in use.
(c) Atmospheric ozone—Mr. Fowle, having become impressed
that the variations recently investigated by Dobson in the quantity
of atmospheric ozone might very possibly affect the observed solar
constant, made a fruitful investigation of the absorption of ozone in
the yellow and green of the solar spectrum.’ He found that this
absorption, though small, is clearly and quantitatively indicated by
means of the atmospheric transmission coefficients obtained in the
application of the fundamental long method of solar constant de-
termination invented by Langley. As we frequently employ this
1 Published in Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. 81, No. 11, 1929.
98 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
method at all stations as a check on the short method in daily use,
Fowle was able to determine the atmospheric ozone at Calama, Mon-
tezuma, Harqua Hala, and Table Mountain on very many occasions
since the year 1920.
Tt proved, harmoniously to what Dobson had found, that the ozone
above Mount Montezuma is meager and nearly invariable in quan-
tity, but that above Harqua Hala and Table Mountain it is much more
plentiful and very variable. Having compared the variations of
monthly mean ozone values with the ‘Table Mountain observations of
corresponding variations of solar constant values, Mr. Fowle found
a strone correlation between them. As the yearly march of the
monthly mean ozone values at these northern stations appears to be
a terrestrial phenomenon, a fact entirely harmonious to those well
established by Dobson, it seemed entirely legitimate to introduce a
solar constant correction, statistically determined, to allow for ozone
in much the same way as for water vapor, for the Harqua Hala
values.
(d) Concordant results of Table Mountain and Montezuma.—tThis
having been done, and the water-vapor and haziness corrections hav-
ing been applied, it was found that the absolutely independent final
values of the solar constant determined at two stations 4,000 miles
apart (viz, Table Mountain, 7,500 feet high, in California, and Monte-
zuma, 9,000 feet high, in Chile) march with gratifying accord. For
the ratios of the values determined at the two stations show no ap-
preciable indication of a yearly range, although winter at the one
station corresponds with summer at the other. Furthermore, the
total range. of straggle of nine-tenths of the datly ratios of these
independent values does not exceed 1.1 per cent. 'This involves the
conclusion that the total range of accidental error at a single station
seldom exceeds 0.8 per cent, and therefore the probable value of the
accidental determination of a single day at one station is less than
0.3 per cent. This being so, we are prepared to expect that both
stations, though wholly independent, must concur within narrow
limits in their determination of the sun’s variation.
(e) Preparation of Volume V of the Annals.—With this gratify-
ing conclusion reached in the final discussion of the results of two
independent solar observing stations remote from each other, a point
seems to be reached where it is proper to publish Volume V of the
Annals of the Astrophysical Observatory, to contain the numerous
observations obtained since the year 1920. Doctor Abbot has been
engaged on the preparation of this text, and it is hoped that the
volume will be ready to publish in the fiscal year ending June, 1931,
thus including a full decade of observations.
(f) Other work at Washington.—As usual, many instruments have
ween constructed at Washington for research purposes. These in-
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 99
clude a number of silver-disk pyrheliometers, prepared at the expense
of the private funds of the Institution, but standardized against the
standard instruments of the Astrophysical Observatory, and sold at
cost to research institutions of various lands.
Mr. Aldrich has assumed charge of the instrument making and
standardizing. He has also continued work on the fruitful investi-
gation of the radiation and cooling of the human body, referred to
last year. In addition he has assisted in reducing solar-constant ob-
servations, and has attended to the considerable correspondence on
physical and astronomical matters.
FIELD WORK
(a) At Mount Wilson, Calif.—Doctor Abbot spent the months of
July, August, and part of September, 1928, at Mount Wilson, Calif.,
where he was assisted by Mr. Freeman. Besides improving the solar
cooker to greatly increased efficiency, two considerable researches
were carried through. The first of these is the repetition of the
bolometric determination of positions of solar and terrestrial absorp-
tion lines and bands in the infra-red solar spectrum. This had
formed the main subject of Volume I of the Annals of the Astro-
physical Observatory. As photography has not as yet reached far
beyond the extreme red of the spectrum, the best means of observing
these interesting lines and bands of the infra-red lies in measuring
the cooling which attends them. For this purpose a welli-dispersed
spectrum is caused to march slowly over a sensitive linear bolometer
strip, and a continuous curve indicating its temperature is auto-
matically recorded. As the bolometer strip falls into each successive
one of the lines of the spectrum, a nick comes in the curve.
Three approximately 60° flint-glass prisms in tandem were used to
disperse the solar rays, and long-focus mirrors to collimate and focus
the spectrum. Five photographic plates, each 60 centimeters long,
were required to cover the spectrum from “A” in the red to “2”
in the infra-red. Mr. Freeman did most of the final observing, and
also measured the plates. Over 1,200 lines and bands of absorption
were discovered, where only about 550 had been found in the earlier
investigation published in 1900. A paper on this new work has been
published as volume 82, No. 1, of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous
Collections.
The other research carried through was the observation of the
distribution of energy in the spectra of 18 stars and of the planets
Mars and Jupiter. This was accomplished by Doctor Abbot with
the aid of Doctor Adams, of Mount Wilson Observatory, employing
the 100-inch telescope and a sensitive radiometer.
Greatly increased sensitiveness had been hoped for by substituting
hydrogen for air, and an excessively light and small radiometer
82322—30——8
100 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
system, built up with house flies’ wings, for the somewhat larger
mica-vane instrument employed by Doctor Abbot in 1923. With
these improvements it was hoped that stars of the fourth or even
fifth magnitude would be observable. These hopes were not alto-
gether realized. The sensitiveness was potentially attained, but,
unfortunately, could not be made available during the time of the
experiments because a persistent slight charge of electricity which
could not be removed created a governing field, which reduced the
time of single swing of the system from about 10 seconds to only
1.5 seconds during the experiments. On this account the deflections
in the stellar spectra were regrettably small. Nevertheless, with the
special observing scale which had been devised, very satisfactory
resulis were reached, and in one case on a star of only 3.8 magnitude.
These observations have been published in the Astrophysical Journal
for May, 1929.
(6) Montezuma station—During the autumn of 1928 the appara-
tus at Montezuma seemed to grow insensitive, so that a critical in-
spection appeared necessary. By the generous financial assistance of
Mr. John A. Roebling, it was possible to send Mr. Aldrich to Chile.
This expedition occupied him from January to March, 1929. He
rebuilt the galvanometer and repaired and adjusted other instru-
ments until everything was im satisfactory condition. Excellent
results have been coming in regularly of the Montezuma observa-
tions on the solar constant of radiation. These are published daily
by the United States Weather Bureau.
(ec) Table Mountain station—The unfortunate trouble with the
pyranometer at Table Mountain has already been described. Not-
withstanding this, the results as now reduced seem satisfactory and
are very numerous. Indeed, on several occasions Table Mountain
has furnished consecutive daily runs of solar-constant determina-
tions exceeding 50 days and once exceeding 70 days.
The Dobson ozone apparatus, owned by the Smithsonian and
formerly in use at Montezuma. was returned to England for re-
adjustment by Doctor Dobson. It was reinstalled at Table Mountain
in the autumn of 1928 and daily determinations of atmospheric ozone
have been made with it whenever possible since then. These measure-
ments show in contrast with those formerly made at Montezuma
about as much ozone in the higher atmosphere above California as
has been found in Europe. Also, in contrast with Montezuma and
in harmony with Europe, they show a decidedly variable quantity of
ozone from day to day and from month to month. These ozone
determinations will be continued at Table Mountain indefinitely.
(@) Mount Brukkaros—The National Geographic station on
Mount Brukkaros, South West Africa, which cooperates with Mon-
tezuma and Table Mountain in the daily observation of the solar
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 101
constant of radiation, has continued regular observations and has
sent to Washington a large collection of records. These will be
statistically and critically studied and prepared for publication.
As the observers, Messrs. Hoover and Greeley, have been three
years in this African field, arrangements have been made for Messrs.
Sordahl and Froiland to relieve them in August, 1929.
PERSON NEL
At the stations Mr. A. F. Moore has continued in charge at Table
Mountain and Mr. H. H. Zodtner at Montezuma. Mr. Moore was
assisted mainly by Mr. L. O. Sordahl, and after his departure, in
June, 1929, by Dr. W. Weniger. Mr. Zodtner was assisted until
April 1 by Mr. M. K. Baughman and after his resignation by Mr.
C. P. Butler.
At Washington the force has remained unchanged, with three
exceptions. Mrs. A. M. Bond resigned as computor on February 5,
1929. She was succeeded on February 18 by Miss M. Denoyer. Mr.
H. B. Freeman, formerly in charge of Montezuma station, assisted at
Mount Wilson and at Washington until May 1, 1929, when he ob-
tained a transfer to the laboratories of the National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics at Langley Field, Va.
SUMMARY
The year has been notable for the satisfactory continuation at field
stations of observations for the study of the variability of the sun;
for the satisfactory completion of the critical statistical investigation
of the results obtained at Table Mountain, so that hereafter Table
Mountain observations may be definitively reduced by field observers;
for the excellent accord found between definitive results of Table
Mountain and Montezuma (stations 4,000 miles apart in opposite
hemispheres) in their indications of solar variability; for the appar-
ent confirmation of three definite periodicities of approximately 11,
15, and 26 months in solar variation; for the discovery of a new
method of measuring the atmospheric ozone and its influence on
solar-constant observations; for the repetition of a former investiga-
tion of solar and terrestrial absorption lines and bands in the solar
spectrum, but with nearly threefold richer results; and for the
observation of the distribution of energy in the spectra of 18 stars
and two planets.
Respectfully submitted.
C. G. Apgor,
Director, Astrophysical Observatory.
Tue SECRETARY,
Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 8
REPORT ON THE DIVISION OF RADIATION AND
ORGANISMS
Smr: I have the honor to report the initial development of the
new Division of Radiation and Organisms entered upon May 1, 1929.
The purpose of this division is to undertake those investigations of,
or directly related to, living organisms wherein radiation enters as
an important factor. Through the development of a thoroughly
equipped physical and chemical laboratory wherein the spectro-
scopic side is most emphasized, investigations of biological problems
can be undertaken more effectively than has generally been possible.
Through the cooperation of men of diverse training in the funda-
mental, as well as the immediate biological sciences, it is hoped to
secure the fullest advantage of modern specialization, which gener-
ally, on the contrary, presents a formidable handicap to work in
border line fields.
The program of investigations falls into two main divisions:
I. Direct investigation upon living organisms.
II. Fundamental investigations related to biological problems.
1. Molecular structure investigations.
2. Photochemical investigations.
Direct investigations upon living organisms will, for the present,
be concerned with the growth of plants under rigidly controlled physi-
cal and chemical conditions. Soil will be replaced by nutrient solu-
tions of known constitution. The gases supplied to the plants will
be of known and controlled amounts. Not only the temperature and
humidity but the intensity and color of the light is to be measured
and varied during the experiments. :
Understanding of biological problems is greatly hampered by the
lack of knowledge of the structure of the more complicated mole-
cules which are a part of living organisms, and by a lack of knowl-
edge of even the simpler chemical reactions brought about, or con-
tributed to, by radiant energy. The most promising possibility for
adding to our knowledge of molecular structure is offered by spec-
troscopic investigations; that is, through the study of the radiation
arising from the internal vibrations of the molecules themselves.
The study of photochemical phenomena requires both spectroscopic
and chemical equipment.
102
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 103
All these investigations in common require a spectroscopic labora-
tory supported by both physical and chemical departments.
LABORATORIES
Space in the basement of the west wing of the Smithsonian Build-
ing, previously used for storage, is being renovated and equipped for
laboratory purposes. Because of the very heavy walls, and the
fact that the rooms are partially under ground, this space is pecu-
liarly suited to the purpose, owing to its evenness of temperature.
A large room on the north side will accommodate the plant-growth
chambers, spectrographs, and photometer rooms. Adjoining, a small
room will serve as dark room and enlarging room. Two smaller
rooms on the south side of the wing complete the assignment of space.
One of these is to be a physical laboratory accommodating infra-red
recording spectroscopes and general manipulative equipment. The
other of the smaller rooms has heen subdivided, the larger portion to
serve as a chemical laboratory and the smaller as a glass-blowing
room.
The renovation of these rooms, subdivision, extension of plumbing,
and construction of the very heavy electrical arteries required for
the artificial illumination of the plants has been ably carried out by
the National Museum personnel.
EQUIPMENT
The purchase of general equipment is nearing completion. Plans
have been drawn up for a preconditioning chamber and construction
has been begun. Drawings have been made for the actual growth
chambers and bids are under consideration. Special apparatus for
the construction of radiation-detecting devices is being made. Grat-
ings for spectroscopic investigations are being purchased from the
Johns Hopkins University. Much of the equipment formerly used
in the infra-red investigation of Langley, Abbot, and Fowle will be
used for the molecular-structure investigations through the courtesy
of the Astrophysical Observatory.
FINANCIAL
The major portion of the expense for the coming year, approxi-
mating $20,000, will be cared for by means of grants from the Re-
search Corporation. Of this sum approximately $12,000 will be
spent upon salaries and the remaining $8,000 upon equipment. As
the work develops it is hoped that it will so commend itself that
larger means may become available.
104 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
ORGANIZATION
Personnel.—The present personnel is as follows:
Research associate, Dr. F. S. Brackett.
Consulting plant physiologist, Dr. E. S. Johnston.
Research assistant, L. B. Clark.
Stenographer and laboratory assistant, Miss V. P. Stanley.
Dr. F. S. Brackett took charge of this work under Doctor Abbot’s
direction May 1, his experience being chiefly physical and, more par-
ticularly, spectroscopic. Through the cordial cooperation of the agri-
cultural experiment station of the University of Maryland, Dr. E. 8.
Johnston is directing the biological aspects of the investigation. In
all this work the technical aspects involved in the development of new
equipment will play a very important part. For this work the serv-
ices of Mr. L. B. Clark have been secured, whose varied experience
peculiarly fits him for such an undertaking.
Cooperation.—During some months previous to the initiation of
this work in the Smithsonian, Doctor Brackett directed the develop-
ment of several lines of research in the Fixed Nitrogen Laboratory
closely related to those to be undertaken in this division. This work
is being carried on by that laboratory now, in very close cooperation
with the Smithsonian.
Respectfully submitted.
F. 8S. Bracxert,
Research Associate in Charge.
Dr. C. G. ABsor,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 9
REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL CATALOGUE OF
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE
Sir: I have the honor to submit herewith the following report on
the operations of the United States Regional Bureau of the Inter-
national Catalogue of Scientific Literature for the fiscal year ended
June 30, 1929:
Continuing the policy of keeping the expenditures of the bureau
at a minimum until actual publication is resumed, the work here
has consisted mainly in keeping necessary records of current scien-
tific publications, preparing data for a revised list of journals, and
other necessary routine matters, so that the actual work of indexing
may be taken up by a full force as soon as reorganization of the
enterprise is possible.
The gross expenditure for the year was $5,060.75 out of the appro-
priation of $7,460.
At the international convention of the International Catalogue
of Scientific Literature held in Brussels July 22-24, 1922, the dele-
gates officially representing the countries taking part in the enter-
prise anticipated that financial conditions would allow resumption
of publication of the catalogue as soon as the financial chaos then
existing should become stabilized. Looking forward to this event,
they resolved to keep the organization alive by agreeing to con-
tinue the work of their regional bureaus so far as possible until
financial support could be obtained. In Europe money to promote
such scientific enterprises is still unobtainable; therefore, it appears
that if this great bibliographical service is to be resumed aid must
be extended from the United States, and that the time has come
for this country to take the lead, not only in outlining a definite
scheme for reorganization but in suggesting a possible means of
obtaining necessary financial support. As a preliminary step this
bureau has been in communication with Prof. Henry E. Armstrong,
I’. R. S., chairman of the executive committee, in whom the Brussels
convention vested authority to consider and propose plans for resum-
ing publication. In a letter on July 6, 1929, the writer stated:
I know, of course, how hard pressed all foreign countries have been finan-
cially, but the sums involved are so small and the results aimed at so valuable
105
106 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
and so greatly needed that I can not but believe that if some definite and
concerted move is made now we can reorganize and renew this great work.
In his reply Professor Armstrong reflects the financial despondency
of Europe but goes on to say:
I wish it were possible to restart the International Catalogue, but I am
bound to confess that I see no immediate prospect of doing so. Still, I would
prophesy that it must again come into being—the idea was too grand and the
proof obtained that the enterprise was entirely feasible too complete for it to
remain an act unaccomplished. If the nations are ever to unite it must be
in the field of natural science before anything else.
An outline of the present situation is briefly this: Publication of
the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature began in 1901,
when 33 of the leading countries of the world cooperated by estab-
lishing regional bureaus and furnishing to the central bureau in
London classified index references to the scientific literature of their
respective regions and further agreed to subscribe to a sufficient
number of sets of the catalogue to support the central bureau and
pay the cost of printing. Beginning with the literature of 1901, 17
volumes were published annually until the last volume of the four-
teenth annual issue, indexing the literature of 1914, was published
in 1922, making a total of 238 volumes, together with several extra
volumes containing lists of journals and classification schedules.
The regional bureaus were supported locally, in most cases, by
direct governmental grants, while the central bureau derived its sole
support from the income received from subscribers to the catalogue,
the price of which was equivalent to $85 per year for the complete set
of 17 volumes. Just prior to the war central bureau receipts and
expenditures approximately balanced, but after war began printing
costs doubled, and it was therefore necessary to suspend publication
in 1922.
The Royal Society of London acted as financial sponsor of the
enterprise from the beginning, aided on several occasions by dona-
tions from other sources after war began.
The need of the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature
is obvious, as no publication ever existed so broad in scope or
exhaustive in treatment and none has since taken its place.
The various abstract journals do not meet the need of libraries as
reference aids, as they overlap their respective fields and in aggre-
gate are too bulky, expensive, and dissimilar in plan to serve as
general works of reference. Abstract journals serve the immediate
need of specialists but do not meet the requirements of lbrarians or
general students.
Before outlining a scheme for reorganization and improvement
for the future, a retrospect of the work may be considered and defects
noted in order that they may be eliminated in the future.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 107
The organization was started on very limited and borrowed cap-
ital, which greatly added to the cost of production, as it was neces-
sary to have all printing done by private firms. The cost of sub-
scription, $85 per year, placed the work beyond the means of many
small libraries and individual workers. It was originally intended
to make the several volumes yearbooks of their respective fields, and
much of the value and use of the work was lost owing to the fact
that many of the volumes were delayed in their publication. This
vital defect may be remedied by having editing and publishing done
by the same organization. To accomplish this, it will be necessary
to own a printing plant designed and equipped solely for this pur-
pose. This will make possible continuous and prompt printing at
a minimum cost and so reduce the cost that it will be possible to
offer the catalogue to subscribers for $50 per set instead of $85, if
an edition of 1,000 sets can be sold.
Estimates of the cost of equipping and operating a suitable print-
ing plant have been made by several printers and publishers in this
country and by the two leading manufacturers of typesetting ma-
chines. These estimates were almost identical, and from them it
appears that a suitably equipped plant can be installed for less than
$30,000, in which, when properly manned, a catalogue aggregating
10,000 pages a year can be published for $17,500 in an edition of
1,000. This sum includes cost of labor, paper, repairs, and inci-
dentals. To this sum must be added $15,000 for the annual expenses
of the central bureau for one year with which to pay rent and the
executive and editorial staffs and, say $12,500 as a liberal reserve to
meet incidental and unforeseen expenses which always occur in be-
ginning any new enterprise. It thus appears that the money needed
is—
For installing and equipping the printing plant_____________________ $30, 000
Expenses for printing and publishing for one year____________ $17, 500
Maintenance of central bureau for one year__________________ 15, 000
Allowance for unforeseen incidentals_____________-_»____ 12, 500
45, 000
Motalveapitals mecded stor frst Yeats... sts eee eee ee eee 75, 000
After the first year, to continue the work would cost approximately
$35,000 per year, leaving a margin of $15,000 per year between the
cost of production and the estimated receipts if the total edition of
1,000 copies can be sold. This amount, together with sums derived
from the first year sales already included in the estimates, could be
made a sinking fund with which to repay donors.
Should publication be resumed it is expected that a demand for the
first 14 annual issues will arise, and as there is a large supply of
them now at the central bureau, money received from this source
108 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
may be used to repay the Royal Society of London for the sums
advanced for their publication.
The necessary steps to be taken leading to reorganization and
resumption of publication appear to be the following:
(1) Preparation by the existing executive committee of a definite course and
detailed plan of reorganization and operation.
(2) Obtaining promises of cooperation from the various regional bureaus to
again furnish the necessary data for the catalogue.
(3) Canvassing possible fields for subscriptions and the necessary financial aid.
Obviously, capital is essential before any actual work can be begun,
but definite plans may be prepared by those now vested with au-
thority to act, and when this part of the work has progressed suffi-
ciently to be able to submit a definite and concise prospectus to
subscribers and possible donors it is proposed to solicit support from
both.
Respectfully submitted.
Leonarp C. GUNNELL,
Assistant in Charge.
Dr. Cuartes G. Apzor,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 10
REPORT ON THE LIBRARY
Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the ac-
tivities of the library of the Smithsonian Institution for the fiscal
year ended June 30, 1929:
THE LIBRARY
The Smithsonian library, or, speaking in terms that accord more
exactly with the recent reorganization of the library, the Smithsonian
library system, is made up of 10 divisional and 36 sectional libraries.
The former consist of the Smithsonian deposit in the Library of
Congress, which is the main library of the Institution; the library
of the United States National Museum; the Smithsonian office
library; the Langley aeronautical library; the radiation and
organisms library; and the libraries of the Astrophysical Observa-
tory, the Bureau of American Ethnology, the National Gallery of
Art, the Freer Gallery of Art, and the National Zoological Park.
The sectional libraries are the immediate working tools of the curators
in the National Museum. These 46 libraries taken together, in-
cluding the collections not yet catalogued, comprise about 800,000
volumes, pamphlets, and charts. Although they contain thousands
of publications on history, philosophy, literature, and the fine arts,
they are largely scientific and technological in character, among them
being many society and serial publications. Not only is this great
collection an invaluable instrument in the work of the Institution
and the Government, but it is freely available both to scholars and
to the public generally for research purposes.
The composition of the Smithsonian library underwent several
important changes during the past year. The library of the Bureau
of American Ethnology became a division of the library; the library
of radiation and organisms, designed for the use of a new branch of
Smithsonian activity, was organized as a divisional library; and the
technological library was made a part of the library of the National
Museum.
THE STAFF
Early in the year the second position of assistant librarian--that
of chief of the accessions department—was established and ‘was filled
109
110 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
by the appointment of Miss Ethel A. L. Lacy, a graduate of the Uni-
versity of Michigan, who had had many years of experience in the
library of the Department of Agriculture and the Detroit Public
Library.
Mrs. Hope Hanna Simmons was given a permanent position as
junior library assistant and was placed in charge of the reading and
reference room in the Arts and Industries Building.
Miss Agnes Auth, minor library assistant, after 10 years of faith-
ful service in the library, was appointed to a higher position in the
disbursing office of the Institution.
Mr. Herschel Chappell, assistant messenger, was advanced to a
position in the office of the chief clerk. He was succeeded by Mr.
William Oliver Grant.
Several members of the staff were granted brief periods of leave
for travel and study. Miss Elisabeth Hobbs spent some weeks in
England, and Miss Mary D. Ashton in Oregon, while Miss Ruth
Wenger attended advanced courses in library science at the University
of California.
In the course of the year the following persons were employed
temporarily: Miss Helen V. Barnes, Mr. Alan Blanchard, Mr. Dale
Hawarth, Mr. Thomas Hickok, Mr. John Paschall, Mrs. M. Landon
Reed, Miss Jeannette Seiler, Mrs. Hope H. Simmons, and Mr. Clyde
Williams.
EXCHANGE OF PUBLICATIONS
Nearly all of the publications currently received by the various
libraries in the Smithsonian system are sent by editors of journals and
by learned institutions and societies throughout the world in exchange
for the publications of the Institution and its branches. This ex-
change has been, from the early days of the Institution, the chief
means of increasing its library, and has brought to it a wealth of
scientific material. This has come partly by mail, but mainly through
the International Exchange Service, which is administered by the
Institution.
During the last fiscal year the Smithsonian library received 30,502
packages, of one or more publications each. After the packages had
been opened the items were entered, stamped, and sent to the proper
divisions and sections of the hbrary, but chiefly to the Smithsonian
deposit in the Library of Congress and the library of the United
States National Museum. Most of the 1,316 letters and the thousands
of acknowledgments written by the library during the year had to
do with this exchange of publications. Exchange relations were
taken up with many new societies and with many old societies for
new publications.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 111
Among the items received were dissertations from the universities
of Berlin, Bern, Breslau, Bonn, Cornell, Erlangen, Freiberg, Giessen,
Halle, Helsingfors, Johns Hopkins, Kiel, Leipzig, Louvain, Neu-
chatel, Pennsylvania, Rostock, Strasbourg, Tubingen, Utrecht, Wurz-
burg, and Ziirich; and from technical schools at Berlin, Bonn,
Braunschweig, Darmstadt, Dresden, Freiberg, Karlsruhe, and
Ziirich.
GIFTS
The outstanding gift of the year was that of the Harriman Alaskan
library. This is the collection relating to Alaska and the Arctic
regions made by Dr. William H. Dall, late curator in the National
Museum, who for nearly a lifetime was a student of the regions of
the north. It consists of approximately 1,100 volumes and pamph-
lets, together with 30 or more scrapbooks of letters and newspaper
clippings. It is rich in works on exploration and discovery, and
contains many rare items, including a file of the Alaska Herald from
1868 to 1875. The library was purchased and presented to the Insti-
tution by Mrs. Edward H. Harriman, whose husband, it will be re-
membered, made possible by his generosity the famous Harriman
expedition to Alaska in 1899, in which Doctor Dall and other scien-
tists from the Smithsonian Institution and the Washington Academy
of Sciences took a leading part, and the results of which the Insti-
tution published later in a monumental work. The library will be
made available for reference at the earliest possible moment.
Also prominent among the gifts were these: 1,000 publications and
manuscripts of a miscellaneous character, from Mr. Herbert A. Gill,
of Washington, D. C., brother of the late Dr. Theodore Gill, at one
time librarian and associate in zoology at the Smithsonian Institu-
tion; 500 books and periodicals on photography, from Mr. A. B.
Stebbins, of Canisteo, N. Y.; two sets of the first four volumes of the
Smithsonian Scientific Series, Patrons’ Edition, from the Smithsonian
Institution ; several hundred scientific publications, many in continua-
tion of series already given, from the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the Hygienic Laboratory, and the Geo-
physical Laboratory; and about 1,500 publications of the Philo-
sophical Society of Washington, from the society itself, to be used for
completing sets in the library, for exchange, or for free distribution.
Many other gifts were received, including copies of the following:
The phototype edition of Codex Argenteus Upsaliensis, recently
issued by the Royal University of Upsala in order to celebrate its
four hundred and fiftieth anniversary, from the University; Inner-
most Asia—a detailed report, in four volumes, of explorations in
Central Asia, Kan-su, and Eastern Iran, carried out and described
under the orders of H. M. Indian Government by Sir Aurel Stein,
AetD ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of the Indian Archaeological Survey—presented by the secretary to
the High Commissioner for India; North American Wild Flowers,
volume 4, by Mary Vaux Walcott, from the artist-author; A Link
with Magellan, being a chart of the East Indies, C. 1522, in the pos-
session of Boies Penrose, from Mr. Penrose; Enthronement of the
One Hundred Twenty-fourth Emperor of Japan, from the Japan
Advertiser, Tokyo; and Metropolitan Museum Color-prints, series
1-8, with several other publications, from the Metropolitan Museum
of Art.
Among donors on the staff of the Institution and its branches were
Dr. Charles G. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian, and Dr. William
H. Holmes, director of the National Gallery of Art, who, as in previ-
ous years, were generous contributors of publications of different
kinds; Dr. Charles W. Richmond, who gave many volumes, some
quite rare, chiefly on ornithology; and Miss Mary J. Rathbun, whose
gifts during the year increased her total gifts to the hbrary to more
than 200 pieces, exclusive of her own publications. Still other gifts
came from Assistant Secretary Wetmore, Mr. W. de C. Ravenel, Dr.
R. S. Bassler, Dr. F. W. Clarke, Mr. Paul Garber, Dr. J. W. Gidley,
Mr. A. J. Olmsted, Mr. J. H. Riley, Miss Louise A. Rosenbusch, Dr.
Waldo L. Schmitt, and Mr. Ralph Smith.
OFFICE LIBRARY
The office library, which is made up of the publications of the
Institution and its branches, various sets of society publications, the
art-room collection, the employees’ library, and many works of refer-
ence, some of which are in the reference room in the Smithsonian
Building and the rest in other parts of the library or in the admin-
istrative offices of the Institution, is one of the most used of the
libraries in the Smithsonian system. Especially is this true of the
employees’ collection, which is now shelved in the reading room of
the Arts and Industries Building. The usefulness of this collection
was greatly increased during the last year by generous loans of cur-
rent works of general literature from the Library of Congress.
These loans were so much appreciated by the Smithsonian staff that
it is hoped they will become a permanent feature in the cooperation
of the two institutions. To the office library were added 144 vol-
umes and 16 pamphlets. The binding of volumes for the library,
which had been discontinued for several years for lack of funds, was
resumed and 41 volumes were bound.
SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT
The Smithsonian deposit in the Library of Congress is the largest
and most important unit in the Smithsonian library system, number-
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 113
ing about 500,000 volumes, pamphlets, and charts, besides many vol-
umes awaiting completion. This collection, which began with the
founding of the Institution in 1846, was housed in the Smithsonian
Building until 1866. In that year it had grown to 40,000 volumes,
and was, by permission of Congress, deposited in the Library of Con-
gress. Since that time it has been steadily increased by additions
from the Institution. While it is somewhat general in character, its
interest is mainly scientific, and it is rich in serial publications and
monographs, and especially in the reports, proceedings, and trans-
actions of the learned societies and institutions of the world, being
one of the foremost collections of its kind. Although, of course, dis-
tributed throughout the Library of Congress according to classifica-
tion, the deposit is, because of its prevailingly scientific nature,
chiefly in the Smithsonian division, which was established in 1900
to take care of the scientific publications both of the deposit and of
the Library of Congress.
During the last fiscal year the Institution sent to the deposit 19,003
publications, comprising 3,569 volumes, 9,506 parts of volumes, 5,616
pamphlets, and 312 charts. Documents of foreign governments,
largely statistical in character, to the number of about 4,000, were
also forwarded, without being stamped or entered, to the document
division of the Library of Congress. Among the items sent to the
deposit were 1,110 volumes in Japanese on education, several hun-
dred in Russian on various subjects, and 56 in Turkish. The last
had been presented to the Institution many years before by H. I. M.
the Sultan Abdul-Hamid II. Among them, too, were 4,729 dis-
sertations from 30 universities and technical schools at home and
abroad. The publications also included a large number intended for
use in building up reserve sets. Some of these were taken from the
duplicates in the Smithsonian Building, which have lately been made
available; others from the publications recently given to the Insti-
tution by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
It is particularly pleasing to report that, as the result of the re-
organization of the accessions department of the library, nearly
twice as many volumes and parts were obtained in response to
requests from the deposit as were obtained the year before.
NATIONAL MUSEUM LIBRARY
The library of the United States National Museum, which consists,
_ in the main, of works on natural history and mechanical and min-
eral technology, is housed partly in the Natural History Building
and partly in the Arts and Industries Building. In addition to the
two main collections it includes 36 smaller collections, which are the
sectional libraries of the curators. The library contains 74,562 vol-
114 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
umes and 107,629 pamphlets. It was increased during the past year
by 2,247 volumes and 748 pamphlets. Some of the additions came
by purchase and gift, but most by exchange.
The current work was kept up as usual, but often by a depleted
force. The staff entered 9,759 parts of periodicals, catalogued 1,422
volumes and pamphlets, and had 1,831 volumes bound. They sent
to the sectional libraries 5,518 publications and loaned to the curators
and their assistants 4,793, of which 2,163 were borrowed from the
Library of Congress and 271 elsewhere. They returned 2,336 books
to the Library of Congress and 299 to other libraries. About 200
publications were loaned to Government libraries and to libraries
outside of Washington. Among the latter were those of the Ameri-
can Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Museum, Field Museum,
Department of Agriculture of Canada, E. I. du Pont de Nemours
& Co. Experimental Station, and the following colleges and universi-
ties: Buffalo, California, Goucher, Minnesota, and Princeton. One
loan to the Field Museum consisted of a duplicate set, in 43 volumes,
of Linnaea, Berlin, 1825-1882, and was made on semipermanent
charge. It was the third loan of the kind during the last three years,
the others having been made to Johns Hopkins University and the
University of Chicago. All three were for the furthering of special-
ized scientific research, in keeping with the general purpose of the
Museum, as a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, of increas-
ing and diffusing knowledge.
About as many publications as usual were consulted in the library.
But there was a marked growth in the reference and informational
service rendered by the staff, not only to the scientists of the In-
stitution and to investigators from different departments of the
Government, but to scholars generally and to inquirers throughout
the country. In this connection special attention should be called
to the growing importance, both to the employees of the Smith-
sonian Institution and its branches and to the visiting public, of the
recently reorganized reading and reference room, with its loan and
information desk, in the Arts and Industries Building. In the
course of the year the assistant in charge, besides performing her
other duties, recorded 700 visitors, answered more than 200 inquiries
for information, some involving a good deal of research, and loaned
nearly 3,000 books and periodicals.
Because of the amount and urgency of the current work and the
smallness of the staff, only a little time was found during the year
for the further revision of the catalogue, the completing of the
shelf list, or the solving of the major problems that are calling for
attention in the sectional libraries. Time was found, however, for
supplying many of the publications needed by these libraries, pre-
‘REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 115
paring their volumes for binding, and doing several other pieces of
work for them, notably in the sections of botany, geology, and mam-
mals. These libraries number 36, and are as follows:
Administration. Marine invertebrates.
Administrative assistant’s office. Mechanical technology.
American archeology. Medicine.
Anthropology. Minerals.
Biology. Mineral technology.
Birds. Mollusks.
Botany. Old World archeology.
Echinoderms. Organic chemistry.
Editor’s office. Paleobotany.
Ethnology. Photography.
Fishes. Physical anthropology.
Foods. Property clerk’s office.
Geology. Reptiles and batrachians,
Graphic arts. Superintendent’s office.
History. Taxidermy.
Insects. Textiles.
Invertebrate paleontology. Vertebrate paleontology.
Mammals. Wood technology.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY LIBRARY
During the year the library of the Bureau of American Ethnology
became a division of the Smithsonian library. This collection con-
sists almost exclusively of works on anthropology, particularly those
pertaining to the American aborigines, covering especially the lin-
guistics, history, archeology, myths, religion, arts, sociology, and
general culture of the American Indian. The library also has files of
manuscript material, photographs, and Indian vocabularies. It was
increased during the last year by 591 volumes and 200 pamphlets, and
now contains 28,512 volumes and 16,377 pamphlets. The staff pre-
pared 418 volumes for binding, and made considerable progress to-
ward providing Library of Congress cards for the catalogue.
ASTROPHYSICAL OBSERVATORY LIBRARY
The library of the Astrophysical Observatory, which is kept partly
in the observatory and partly in the main hall of the Smithsonian
Building, is an important instrument in the astrophysical and mete-
orological work of the Institution, being of particular value just now
in connection with its researches in solar radiation. It consists of
8,868 volumes and 2,949 pamphlets, of which 101 volumes and 224
pamphlets were added during the last year. The number of volumes
bound was 64.
§2322—30 9
116 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
RADIATION AND ORGANISMS LIBRARY
Late in the year a new division of the Smithsonian library was
established to meet the needs of the Institution’s work in radiation
and organisms. A list of the significant books and periodicals in the
field was prepared, in cooperation with the chief of the bureau, and
effort will be made immediately to obtain, by exchange or purchase,
those that can not be borrowed from other units of the library.
LANGLEY AERONAUTICAL LIBRARY
The Langley aeronautical library, while consisting of only 1,697
volumes and 838 pamphlets, is one of the most prominent divisions
of the Smithsonian library, as it contains many rare items, includ-
ing complete files of the early aeronautical magazines. Some of
these were in the original collection as it came from Samuel Pierpont
Langley, the third secretary of the Institution, in whose memory the
library was named. Others were among the publications given since
by Alexander Graham Bell, Octave Chanute, and James Means. The
library also has a large number of photographs, letters, and news-
paper clippings. It is consulted continually by experts from the de-
partments of the Government, from the embassies in Washington,
and from aeronautical and other organizations in different parts of
the country. The library was increased during the past year by 85
volumes and 138 pamphlets. The new catalogue, which had been
begun the year before, was finished and the collection labeled and
rearranged.
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART LIBRARY
The library of the National Gallery of Art, which for the present
is housed, with the gallery, in the Natural History Building, com-
prises 1,001 volumes and 1,106 pamphlets, chiefly on the art of the
United States and Europe. The collection has been chosen with
great care and has been slowly increased as funds and space per-
mitted, with a view to becoming the nucleus of a much larger and
more representative working library when the special building now
in prospect for the gallery is provided. During the last year 153
volumes and 82 pamphlets were added to the collection and 33 vol-
umes were bound. Most of the accessions came, as usual, by purchase
and exchange, but many came by gift, notably from Dr. William H.
Holmes, director of the gallery.
FREER GALLERY OF ART LIBRARY
The library of the Freer Gallery of Art concerns itself almost
entirely with the interests represented by the collections of art ob-
jects pertaining to the arts and cultures of the Far East, India,
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 117
Persia, and the nearer East; by the life and works of James McNeill
Whistler and of certain other American painters whose pictures are
owned by the gallery ; and, further, to a limited extent, by the Biblical
manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries, which, as the possession
of the Freer Gallery, are known as the Washington Manuscripts.
It contains many works in the Chinese and Japanese languages,
some of which are very rare, and thus supplements for research pur-
poses the oriental division of the Library of Congress. During the
year just closed the library was increased by 345 volumes and 191
pamphlets. Of these, 114 volumes were added to the collection
designed for the use of the field staff of the gallery. This collection
now numbers about 814 volumes and 500 pamphlets, while the main
library totals 4,269 volumes and 2,769 pamphlets. Two of the note-
worthy accessions were Sir Aurel Stein’s Innermost Asia and a copy
of the Codex Argenteus Upsaliensis, the latter of which was received
as a gift by the Smithsonian Institution from the University of
Upsala and assigned to the library of the gallery as a fitting addition
to the Biblical material already on its shelves. Among the visitors
there was the usual large number of readers and students, some of
whom came to study the facsimiles of the Washington Manuscripts,
and others to make drawings or tracings from material in the library.
The number of volumes bound was 82.
NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK LIBRARY
The library of the National Zoological Park, which is kept in the
administration building at the park, is the immediate working col-
lection of the director and his assistants. It consists of about 1,209
volumes and 400 pamphlets, chiefly on animals and the care of them.
The number of accessions for the year was 9 volumes and 100 pam-
phlets, and of volumes bound, 5.
SUMMARY OF ACCESSIONS
The accessions for the year may be summarized as follows:
Pam-
Library Volumes pleia Total
charts
Astrophysical Observatogy ie sachet he eh 101 224 325
Brreawrop-Aunericansh ihn olog ys 05 20-652 ee ee ee ee 591 200 791
Kreer Gallery of Art... tae t Se Mood oi hota ebb Bk ae 345 191 536
Hanelovsaeronantical 421-8 se 8. foo Bee on oe kee Lee ne Ee 85 138 223
INaitonaliGallenvoeAtiee sen a ae | aa Se eer ot Fal 153 82 235
National Zoological! Park £23272 Eg SP eae | 9 100 109
RAGiAtionM@ncOreanisms® 4-6 eee Sh ER ee ee eee en eS ee SE te eae ede eu
Pmiphsonism deposit, uibrary Of Congress. —- 22-2 baa see ee ek | 3, 569 5, 928 9, 497
BING HSONIAN OLCOs te nee en Ro te pee Se ee ey EL als 144 16 160
United States! National IVinserrm sie ons ae ie i ee a 2, 247 748 2, 995
ETC | ae meee RO ANE EU Mere I Tete paella oar Nea DS Ute acer es ayy 7, 244 7, 627 14, 871
|
118 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The estimated number of volumes, pamphlets, and charts in the
Smithsonian library on June 30, 1929, was as follows:
Volumes: bee 20) ee ee Sa 8 ee ee eS ees a ee 563, 106
Pamphlets ngs oth were retin hier eeile so an UR Se Ee a eae eee 180, 475
OND AS MAE Reh Agee Or ORO If ME Re op CCB MG RS ys SI a ae ee el 24, 972
Hs LO) st een ee ee et teas Senate pei aa eae: A ata Ne oe le eel a) eine Yeats 768, 553
This number does not include the many thousands of volumes in
the library still uncatalogued or awaiting completion.
THE UNION CATALOGUE
Considerable progress was made during the year on the union
catalogue of the libraries in the Smithsonian system, and that, too,
despite the fact that the catalogue department was very much under-
manned. In addition to doing the current work in the different
libraries, the staff finished cataloguing the Langley aeronautical col-
lection. It will next take up the John Donnell Smith and Watts
de Peyster collections. It will also make a special effort to com-
plete the shelf list in the library of the National Museum. The fol-
lowing statistics show the work of the year in detail:
IVA LUTE TT Sie Salts ANN oT eee oat te een ee a ge eR TE 2, 199
Volumes “recaltalo suede 22 22s 22 oe ae Ae AALS LEE ee 907
pamphlets; cataloguedi =i. eae ok sed eh aes) _ Ue ee Se 2, 080
Pamphiletsiwrecatalog ue dase See a ee oe ee ee 3, 676
Charts catalogued ewe se sis SU DU a 316
Chartstrecataloguedsetetiyes sole oe Nees eh bo Sythe el Loe’ Pees Ee Oe 2
Typedycards dddeduto;catalo0guest == ee eee eee 8, 490
library of Congress), cards added to catalogues === eee 22, 961.
PHYSICAL CONDITION AND EQUIPMENT
Mention was made in the librarian’s last report of the improved
physical condition and equipment of the reading room in the Arts
and Industries Building. Since that report appeared there has
been a similar improvement in two other units of the library. In
the Natural History Building the three rooms used for library
purposes were painted, new lights and ventilators were installed, a
cork runner was laid the full length of the reference and stack rooms,
and the two large awkward reading tables were converted into four
attractive small ones. In the Smithsonian Building the five library
rooms were painted and new shades provided for the windows, and
several ranges of steel shelving were purchased for the catalogue
room.
SPECIAL ACTIVITIES
Among the special activities of the year several should be men-
tioned.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 119
Further progress was made in organizing the scientific material
in the west stacks of the main building, so that by the close of the
year most of it was in order. The finishing of this long, difficult
task will greatly facilitate the exchange work of the library. Already
many hundreds of publications have been found that were needed
by sets in the various libraries of the Institution.
As a result of the work in the west stacks about 1,900 publica-
tions of a miscellaneous character, many in Japanese and Russian,
were sent to the Smithsonian deposit and the document division of
the Library of Congress.
The work of selecting from the Smithsonian duplicates items to
be used in exchange with other libraries for material needed by the
Institution was considerably advanced. In this connection 2,400
publications were sent to Harvard University and 2,900 to Yale.
Other sendings will soon be made to Chicago University, Catholic
University, and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.
Nearly 1,800 publications of State geological surveys were as-
sembled from various unorganized collections in the Smithsonian
Building and the Arts and Industries Building and many of them
used toward completing sets in the library. Those not needed will
be offered to the library of the Geological Survey.
About 10,000 publications of State agricultural experiment sta-
tions, which had been received and shelved by the library for many
years, but which had little to do with the work of the Institution or
its branches, were given to the library of the Department of Agri-
culture.
A collection of 667 reprints was sorted according to subject and
distributed to the curators concerned.
The cards of the Wistar Institute were filed to date, and the Con-
cilium Bibliographicum cards pertaining to mammals were deposited
in the section of mammals.
The popular and semipopular material that, pending final dis-
posal, had been stored in the basement of the Smithsonian Build-
ing, was transferred to a special building on the grounds of the
Astrophysical Observatory and arranged.
The work of reorganizing the east stacks of the main building was
begun, to make room for the growth of the reference department of
the Institution and of the library of the Bureau of American
Ethnology.
Special attention was given by the accessions department to the
want cards from the Smithsonian deposit and the library of the
National Museum, with the result that the correspondence based
upon them will be brought up to date within a few weeks.
120 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
CONCLUSION
Finally, it is gratifying to report that the special allotment of
$500 for expenses, made the past year for the first time, enabled
the library to purchase important books, periodicals, and equip-
ment for the office library that it could not otherwise have ob-
tained. During the year to come the amount that will be available
for books and periodicals for the Museum will be increased by
$500. This will be pleasant news to the curators, who have been
waiting patiently for the time when it would be possible for the
library to get more of the publications essential to their work that
can not be secured by exchange.
Among the needs of the library the most urgent is that of funds
to establish permanent positions for two more cataloguers, another
library assistant, a correspondence clerk, a stenographer, a typist,
and another messenger. It is hoped that at least several of these
positions can be provided for by the close of the next fiscal year, in
order that the unfinished tasks that the library has inherited from
the past, its current work, which is increasing steadily, and its new
projects, may be expedited.
Respectfully submitted.
Wituiam L. Corsrn,
Librarian.
Dr. Cuartes G. ABsBort,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
SP PH NOEX 11
REPORT ON THE PUBLICATIONS
Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the pub-
lications of the Smithsonian Institution and the Government bureaus
under its administrative charge during the year ending June 380, 1929:
The Institution proper published during the year 16 papers in
the series of Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 1 annual report,
and pamphlet copies of the 27 articles contained in the report ap-
pendix, and 5 special publications. The Bureau of American Eth-
nology published 3 annual reports and 5 bulletins. The United
States National Museum issued 1 annual report, 2 volumes of pro-
ceedings, 4 complete bulletins, 1 part of a bulletin, 2 parts in the
series Contributions from the United States National Herbarium,
and 59 separates from the proceedings.
Of these publications there were distributed during the year
197,573 copies, which included 64 volumes and separates of the
Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 31,121 volumes and sep-
arates of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 26,709 volumes
and separates of the Smithsonian annual reports, 3,773 Smithsonian
special publications, 115,128 volumes and separates of the various
series of the National Museum publications, 20,112 publications of
the Bureau of American Ethnology, 177 publications of the National
Gallery of Art, 47 volumes of the Annals of the Astrophysical Ob-
servatory, 16 reports of the Harriman Alaska expedition, and 352
reports of the American Historical Association.
SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS
Of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, volume 73, 2 papers
were issued; volume 75, 1 paper and title-page, table of contents, and
index; and of volume 81, 13 papers, as follows:
VOLUME 73
No. 5. Opinions Rendered by the International Commission on Zoological
Nomenclature. Opinions 98 to 104. September 19, 1928. 28 pp. (Publ. 2973.)
No. 6. Opinions Rendered by the International Commission on Zoological
Nomenclature. Opinions 105 to 114. June 8, 1929. 26 pp. ((Publ. 3016.)
121
122 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
VOLUME 75
No. 5. Cambrian Geology and Paleontology, V. No. 5. Pre-Devonian Paleozoic
Formations of the Cordilleran Provinces of Canada. By Charles D. Walcott.
September 14, 1928. Pp. 175-868, pls. 26-108, text figs. 24-35.
Title-page, table of contents and index. (Publ. 2976.)
VOLUME 81
No. 1. Mexican Mosses Collected by Brother Arséne Brouard—II. By I.
Thériot. August 15, 1928. 26 pp., 9 text figs. (Publ. 2966.)
No. 2. Cambrian Fossils from the Mohave Desert. By Charles HE. Resser.
July 5, 1928. 10 pp.,3 pls. (Publ. 2970.)
No. 3. Morphology and Evolution of the Insect Head and Its Appendages. By
R. E. Snodgrass. November 20, 1928. 158 pp., 57 text figs. (Publ. 2971.)
No. 4. Drawing by Jacques Lemoyne De Morgues of Saturioua, a Timucua
Chief in Florida, 1564. By David I. Bushnell. August 23, 1928. 9 pp., 1 pl., 1
text fig. (Publ. 2972.)
No. 5. The Relations Between the Smithsonian Institution and the Wright
Brothers. By Charles G. Abbot. September 29, 1928. 27 pp. (Publ. 2977.)
No. 6. A Study of Body Radiation. By L. B. Aldrich. December 1, 1928.
54 pp., 9 text figs. (Publ. 2980.)
No. 7. Recent’ Archeological Developments in the Vicinity of El Paso, Tex.
By Frank H. H. Roberts, jr. January 25, 1929. 14 pp., 5 pls., 8 text figs.
(Publ. 3009.)
No. 8. Parasites and the Aid They Give in Problems of Taxonomy, Geographical
Distribution, and Paleogeography. By Maynard M. Metcalf. February 28, 1929.
86 pp. (Publ. 3010.)
No. 9. A Second Collection of Mammals from Caves Near St. Michel, Haiti.
By Gerrit S. Miller, jr. March 30, 1929. 30 pp., 10 pls. (Publ. 3012.)
No. 10. Tropisms and Sense Organs of Lepidoptera. By N. HE. MclIndoo.
April 4, 1929. 59 pp., 16 text figs. (Publ. 3013.)
No. 11. Atmospheric Ozone: Its Relation to Some Solar and Terrestrial
Phenomena. By Frederick E. Fowle. March 18, 1929. 27 pp., 18 text figs.
(Publ. 3014.)
No. 12. Archeological Investigations in the Taos Valley, N. Mex., during 1920.
By J. A. Jeancon. June 11, 1929. 29 pp., 15 pls., 14 text figs. (Publ. 3015.)
No. 13. Descriptions of Four New Forms of Birds from Hispaniola. By Alex-
ander Wetmore. May 15, 1929. 4 pp. (Publ. 3021.)
SMITHSONIAN ANNUAL REPORTS
Report for 1927.—The complete volume of the Annual Report of
the Board of Regents for 1927 was received from the Public Printer
in October, 1928.
Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution showing
operations, expenditures, and condition of the Institution for the year ending
June 30, 1927. xii+580 pp., 99 pls., 44 text figs. (Publ. 2927.)
The appendix contained the following papers:
The Accomplishments of Modern Astronomy, by C. G Abbot.
Recent Developments of Cosmical Physics, by J. H. Jeans.
The Evolution of Twentieth-Century Physics, by Robert A. Millikan.
Isaac Newton, by Prof. Albert Hinstein.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 123
The Nucleus of the Atom, by J. A. Crowther
The Centenary of Augustin Fresnel, by H. M. Antoniadi.
Soaring Flight, by Wolfgang Klemperer.
The Coming of the New Coal Age, by Edwin E. Slosson.
Is the Earth Growing Old? By Josef Felix Pompeckj.
Geological Climates, by W. B Scott.
The Geologic Romance of the Finger Lakes, by Prof. Herman F. Fairchild.
Fossil Marine Faunas as Indicators of Climatic Conditions, by Edwin Kirk.
Paleontology and Human Relations, by Stuart Weller.
At the North Pole, by Lincoln Hilsworth.
Bird Banding in America, by Frederick C. Lincoln.
The Distribution of Fresh-water Fishes, by David Starr Jordan.
The Mind of an Insect, by R. HE. Snodgrass.
The Evidence Bearing on Man’s Evolution, by AleS Hrdlitka.
The Origins of the Chinese Civilization, by Henri Maspero.
Archeology in China, by Liang Chi-Chao.
Indian Villages of Southeast Alaska, by Herbert W. Krieger.
The Interpretation of Aboriginal Mounds by Means of Creek Indian Customs,
by John R. Swanton.
Friederich Kurz, Artist-Explorer, by David I. Bushnell, jr.
Note on the Principles and Process of X-Ray Examination of Paintings, by
Alan Burroughs.
The Lengthening of Human Life in Retrospect and Prospect, by Irving Fisher.
Charles Doolittle Walcott, by George Otis Smith.
William Healey Dall, by C. Hart Merriam.
feport for 1928.—The report of the executive committee and pro.
ceedings of the Board of Regents of the Institution and the report
of the secretary, both forming parts of the annual report of the
Board of Regents to Corgress, were issued in December, 1928.
Report of the executive committee and’ proceedings of the Board of Regents of
the Smithsonian Institution for the year ending June 30, 1928. 14 pp. (Publ.
2979.)
Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for the year ending June
30, 1928. 147 pp. (Publ. 2978.)
The general appendix to this report, which was in press at the
close of the year, contains the following papers:
The Wider Aspects of Cosmogony, by J. H. Jeans.
The Stars in Action, by Alfred H. Joy.
Island Galaxies, by A. Vibert Douglas.
Astronomical Telescopes, by F. G. Pease.
New Results on Cosmic Rays, by R. A. Millikan and G. H. Cameron.
Three Centuries of Natural Philosophy, by W. F. G. Swann.
The Hypothesis of Continental Displacement, by C. Schuchert.
On Continental Fragmentation and the Geologie Bearing of the Moon’s Sur-
ficial Features, by Joseph Barrell.
The “‘ Craters of the Moon” in Idaho, by H. T. Stearns,
The Oldest Known Petrified Forest, by W. Goldring.
Water Divining, by J. W. Gregory.
Some Problems of Polar Geography, by R. N. Rudmose Brown.
Birds of the Past in North America, by Alexander Wetmore.
124 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Mammalogy and the Smithsonian Institution, by Gerrit S. Miller, jr.
The Controversy Over Human “ Missing Links,” by Gerrit S. Miller, jr.
What is known of the Migrations of Some of the Whalebone Whales, by
Remington Kellogg.
Ecology of the Red Squirrel, by A. Brooker Klugh.
Adventures of a Naturalist in the Ceylon Jungle, by Casey A. Wood.
Communication Among Insects, by N. E. MeIndoo.
Our Insect Instrumentalists and Their Musical Technique, by H. A. Allard.
The Neanderthal Phase of Man, by AleS Hrdlicka.
Indian Costumes in the United States National Museum, by H. W. Krieger.
Mounds and Other Ancient Earthworks of the United States, by David I.
Bushnell, jr.
Geocronology, by Gerard de Geer.
The Physiology of the Ductless Glands, by N. B. Taylor.
Arrhenius Memorial Lecture, by Sir James Walker.
Theodore William Richards, by Gregory P. Baxter,
, SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS
Explorations and Field Work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1928. March
22, 1929. 198 pp., 173 text figs. (Publ. 3011.)
Classified list of Smithsonian Publications Available for Distribution, May 20,
1929. Compiled by Helen Munroe, 29 pp. (Publ. 3020.)
World Weather Records—Errata. By H. Helm Clayton. To accompany Smith-
sonian Miscellaneous Collections, volume 79. May 29, 1929. 28 pp. (Publ.
3019. )
REPRINTS
Handbook of the National Aircraft Collection. By Paul Edward Garber. Sec-
ond edition, November, 1928. 32 pp., numerous illustrations.
Smithsonian Physical Tables. By Frederick E. Fowle. Seventh revised edition,
fourth reprint, February 26, 1929. 458 pp. (Publ. 2589.)
Smithsonian Geographical Tables, By R. 8S. Woodward. Third edition, second
reprint, August 17, 1929. 182 pp. (Publ. 854.)
PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
The editorial work of tlie National Museum is in the hands of Dr.
Marcus Benjamin. During the year ending June 30, 1929, the
Museum published 1 annual report, 2 volumes of proceedings, 4 com-
plete bulletins, 1 part of a bulletin, 2 parts in the series Contribu-
tions from the United States National Herbarium, and 59 separates
from the proceedings.
The issues of the bulletin were as follows:
Bulletin 100. Contributions to the Biology of the Philippine Archipelago and
Adjacent Regions.
Volume 1. Papers on collections gathered by the Albatross, Philippine Bxpedi-
tion, 1907-1910.
Volume 8. The Fishes of the Series Capriformes, Ephippiformes, and Squami-
pennes, Collected by the United States Bureau of Fisheries Steamer Albatross,
Chiefly in Philippine Seas and Adjacent Waters. By Henry W. Fowler and
Barton A. Bean.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 125
Bulletin 104. The Foraminifera of the Atlantic Ocean. Part 6. Miliolidae,
Opthalmidiidae and Fischerinidae. By Joseph Augustine Cushman.
Bulletin 145. A Revision of the North American Species of Buprestid Beetles
belonging to the Genus Agrilus. By W. S. Fisher.
Bulletin 146. Life Histories of North American Shore Birds. Order Limicolae
(Part 2). By Arthur Cleveland Bent.
The issues of the Contributions from the United States National
Herbarium were as follows:
Volume 26, part 3. Costa Rican Mosses collected by Paul C. Standley in 1924-
1926. By Edwin B. Bartram.
Volume 28, part 1. The North American Species of Paspalum. By Agnes
Chase.
Of the separates from the proceedings, 4 were from volume 73, 26
from volume 74, 25 from volume 75, and 4 from volume 76.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY
The editorial work has continued under the direction of the editor,
Mr. Stanley Searles.
During the year three annual reports and five bulletins were issued.
Yorty-first Annual Report. Accompanying papers: Coiled Basketry in British
Columbia and Surrounding Region (Boas, assisted by Haeberlin, Teit, and
Roberts) ; Two Prehistoric Villages in Middle Tennessee (Myer). 626 pp.,
137 pls., 200 figs., 1 pocket map.
Forty-third Annual Report. Accompanying papers: The Osage Tribe; Two
Versions of the Child-naming Rite (La Flesche) ; Wawenock Myth Texts
from Maine (Speck) ; Native Tribes and Dialects of Connecticut, a Mohegan-
Pequot Diary (Speck); Picuris Children’s Stories (Harrington and Rob-
erts) ; Iroquoian Cosmology—Second Part (Hewitt). 828 pp., 44 pls., 9 figs.
Forty-fourth Annual Report. Accompanying papers: Exploration of the
Burton Mound at Santa Barbara, California (Harrington) ; Social and Reli-
gious Beliefs and Usages of the Chickasaw Indians (Swanton); Uses of
Plants by the Chippewa Indians (Densmore) ; Archeological Investigations—
II (Fowke). 555 pp., 98 pls., 16 figs.
Bulletin 84. Vocabulary of the Kiowa Language (Harrington). 255 pp., 1 fig.
Bulletin 86. Chippewa Customs (Densmore). 204 pp., 90 pls., 27 figs.
Bulletin 87. Notes on the Buffalo-head Dance of the Thunder Gens of the Fox
Indians (Michelson). 94 pp., 1 fig.
Bulletin 89. Observations on the Thunder Dance of the Bear Gens of the Fox
Indians (Michelson). 73 pp., 1 fig.
Bulletin 92. Shabik’eshchee Village: A Late Basket Maker Site in the Chaco
Canyon, New Mexico (Roberts). 164 pp., 31 pls., 32 figs.
Publications in press are as follows:
Forty-fifth Annual Report. Accompanying papers: The Salishan Tribes of the
Western Plateaus (Teit, edited by Boas); Tatooing and Face and Body
Painting of the Thompson Indians, British Columbia (Teit, edited by Boas) ;
The Ethnobotany of the Thompson Indians of British Columbia (Teit, edited
by Steedman) ; The Osage Tribe; Rite of the Wa-xo-be (La Flesche).
Bulletin 88. Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians (Swanton).
Bulletin 90. Papago Music (Densmore).
126 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Bulletin 91. Additional Studies of the Arts, Crafts, and Customs of the Guiana
Indians, with special reference to those of Southeastern British Guiana
(Roth).
Bulletin 98. Pawnee Music (Densmore).
REPORT OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
The annual reports of the American Historical Association are
transmitted by the association to the Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution and are communicated by him to Congress, as provided
by the act of incorporation of the association.
The annual report for 1923 and the supplemental volume to the
report for 1924 were issued during the year.
REPORT OF THE NATIONAL SOCIETY, DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION
The manuscript of the Thirty-first Annual Report of the National
Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, was transmitted to
Congress, in accordance with the law, December 6, 1928.
ALLOTMENTS FOR PRINTING
The congressional allotments for the printing of the Smithsonian
Report to Congress and the various publications of the Government
bureaus under the administration of the Institution were virtually
used up at the close of the year. The appropriation for the coming
year ending June 30, 1930, totals $95,000, allotted as follows:
Annual report to the Congress of the Board of Regents of the Smith-
sonian’ Institution Y2sa 0) Lites SAO Si) SEO Re) See ae earl ie Be ee $11, 500
National Museum lias Says k Ne te 2 DO 0 Rs Se 46, 500
Bureauor Americans thnology=.2 S2aeoks 1 See 1 eee ee ees 28, 300
National Gallery of Art 2 222-2 ee ee eee 500
International? Hxehanges: £222 2 ie Car gG Nek CRE ee ie Ue Ee ee Fe 300
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature________.___________-_- 100
National Zoological Park* 2) 21) Cah LUN LEE EOIE SMa A eT ae 300
Astrophysical Observatoryre——— == = — = — a Ee ae 0) 500
Annual report of the American Historical Association_____---_-__-_____ 7, 000
SMITHSONIAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PRINTING AND PUBLICATION
The editor has continued to serve as secretary of the Smithsonian
advisory committee on printing and publication, to which are re-
ferred for consideration and recommendation all manuscripts offered
to the Institution and its branches. The committee also considers
matters of publication policy. Eight meetings were held during the
year and 136 manuscripts acted upon. The membership at the close
of the year was as follows: Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, head curator
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 127
of biology, National Museum, chairman; Dr. George P. Merrill, head
curator of geology, National Museum; Mr. M. W. Stirling, chief,
Bureau of American Ethnology; Dr. William M. Mann, director,
National Zoological Park; Mr. W. P. True, editor of the Institution,
secretary; Dr. Marcus Benjamin, editor of the National Museum;
and Mr. Stanley Searles, editor of the Bureau of American
Ethnology.
Respectfully submitted.
W. P. True, Editor.
Dr. Cuartes G. Appzor,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution.
APPENDIX 12
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS TO JAMES SMITHSON MEMORIAL
EDITION, SMITHSONIAN SCIENTIFIC SERIES?
Mr. Harry T. Abernathy,
Kansas City, Mo.
Mr. Edward E. B. Adams,
New York, N. Y.
Miss Mary Barclay Adams,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Eugene E. Ailes,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John EH. Aldred,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. J. Henry Alexandre,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Walter H. Alford,
Kenosha, Wis.
Mr. Frederic W. Allen,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Rayford W. Alley,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. HE. G. Ames,
Seattle, Wash.
Mr. George S. Amory.
New York, N. Y.
Mr. E. A. Anderson,
Naugatuck, Conn.
Mr. John Anderson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Wendell W. Anderson,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. W. J. Anderson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. W. 8. Andrews,
Syracuse, N. Y.
Mr. Hugh D. Auchincloss,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Charles F. Ayer,
New. York, N. Y.
Mr. Richard B. Ayer,
New York, N. Y..-
Mr. Jules S. Bache,
New York, N. Y.
Mr.
George W. Bacon,
New York, N. Y.
. Franklin Baker, jr.,
Hoboken, N. J.
. Charles F. Baldwin,
Appleton, Wis.
. William D. Baldwin,
New York, N. Y.
. Howard P. Ballantyne,
Detroit, Mich.
. Louis Bamberger,
Newark, N. J.
. Joseph Bancroft,
Wilmington, Del.
. David Bandler,
New York, N. Y.
. Edward J. Barber,
New York, N. Y.
. Thomas Barbour,
Cambridge, Mass.
. J. S. Barnes,
New York, N. Y.
. Charles M. Barnett,
New York, N. Y.
. Austin D. Barney,
Hartford, Conn.
. Grant S. Barnhart,
Washington, D. C.
r. William S. Barstow,
New York, N. Y.
. W. H. Barthold,
New York, N. Y.
. Philip G. Bartlett,
New York, N. Y.
. Charles H. Bascom,
St. Louis, Mo.
. Harvey Bates, jr.,
Indianapolis, Ind.
Hon. Walter EH. Batterson,
1 List brought up to date as of Nov, 15, 1929.
128
Hartford, Conn.
REPORT
Mr. Oliver G. Bauman,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Armistead Keith Baylor,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. J. N. Beckley,
Rochester, N. Y.
Mr. Barton A. Bean, jr.,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Dr. A. J. Beller,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. La Monte J. Belnap,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Alfred M. Best,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John P. Bickell,
Toronto, Canada.
Mr. Edwin Binney,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Charles E. Birge,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Clarence R. Bitting,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. James Madison Blackwell,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. Hmmons Blaine,
Chicago, Ill.
Mrs. David H. Blair,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Samuel Shipley Blood,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. Elizabeth B. Blossom,
Cleveland, Ohio.
Mr. Albert Blum,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Sidney Blumenthal,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Samuel T. Bodine,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. W. E. Boeing,
Seattle, Wash.
Mr. Lucius M. Boomer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. L. C. Bootes,
Jackson, Mich.
Mr. C. Jackson Booth,
Hull, Quebec, Canada.
Mr. Edward F. Bosson,
Hartford, Conn.
Mr. Samuel H. Bowman, jr.,
Minneapolis, Minn.
Mrs. John C. Boyd,
Washington, D. C.
OF THE SECRETARY 129
Mr. A. R. M. Boyle,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. F. W. Bradley,
San Francisco, Calif.
Mr. EF. W. Braun,
Los Angeles, Calif.
Mr. Bradford Brinton,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Henry Platt Bristol,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Robert 8S. Brookings,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Gerald Brooks,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Donaldson Brown,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. H. F. Brown,
Wilmington, Del.
Mr. Hays R. Browning,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Otto Brunenmeister, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. W. Gerald Bryant,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. Albert Buchman,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Britton I. Budd,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Lawrence D. Buhl,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. F. Kingsbury Bull,
Litchfield, Conn.
Mr. Perey Bullard,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. W. Douglas Burden,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Frederick John Burghard,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. Stevenson Burke,
Cleveland, Ohio.
Mr. Eric Burkman,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Gordon W. Burnham,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. J. S. Burnside,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Hon. Martin Burrell, P
Ottawa, Canada.
Mr. Smith P. Burton, jr.,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. F. S. Byram (2 subscriptions),
Philadelphia, Pa.
130 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Mr. James D. Callery,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Mr. Jasper A. Campbell, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John T. Campbell,
Norfolk, Va.
Mr. William Candler,
Atlanta, Ga.
Mr. Albert H. Canfield,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. William C. Cannon,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Martin Cantine,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. George W. Carnrick,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. James H. Carter,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John J. Carty,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. George Cary,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Theodore W. Case,
Auburn, N. Y.
Mr. Thomas E. Casey,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Charles A. Cass,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. E. Crane Chadbourne,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Harry Chandler,
Los Angeles, Calif.
Mr. Charles M. Chapin,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. C. Merrill Chapin, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. S. B. Chapin, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. A. Wallace Chauncey,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Starling W. Childs,
INewn Work: IN? Y.
Mr. George H. Chisholm,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. F. Edwin Church,
__ New York, N. Y.
Dr. A. Schuyler Clark,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Eli P. Clark,
Los Angeles, Calif:
Mr. George H. Clark,
Rochester, N. Y.
Mr. Ray Clark,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Robert Sterling Clark,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. W. A. Clark, ITI,
Los Angeles, Calif.
Mr. John L. Clawson,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Oliver M. Clifford,
St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. George I. Cochran,
Los Angeles, Calif.
Miss Ella S. Coe,
Litchfield, Conn.
Mr. C. W. Floyd Coffin,
New York, N. Y.
Dr. Wallace P. Cohoe,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John N. Cole,
New York, N. Y.
Dr. Philip G. Cole,
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Mr. Viott Myers Cole,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Philip S. Collins,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Martin Conboy,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. W. L. Conwell,
New York, N. Y.
Prof. Thomas F. Cooke,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. T. J. Coolidge,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Edward F. Coombs,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Howard Coonley,
Boston, Mass.
Mrs. Q. F. Coonley,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Dudley Martindale Cooper,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. W. S. Corby,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Fred D. Corey,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. John W. Cowper,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Alexander M. Crane,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Clinton H. Crane,
New York, N. Y.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
Mr. Gifford B. Crary,
Binghamton, N. Y.
Mr. William Nelson Cromwell,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Franklin M. Crosby,
Minneapolis, Minn.
Mr. J. W. Cross,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Miquel Cruchaga,
Paris, France.
Mr. HB. A. Cudahy, jr.,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. J. S. Cullinan,
Houston, Tex.
Mr. Victor M. Cutter,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. C. Suydam Cutting,
New York, N. Y.
Cuyamel Fruit Co.,
New Orleans, La.
Mr. Charles E. Dalrymple,
Newark, N. J.
Mr. U. de B. Daly,
St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. Ernest B. Dane,
Boston, Mass.
Dr. Frank EH. Darling,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Mr. Daniel Darrow,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Louis R. Davidson,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Sefior Don Carlos G. Davila,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Basil H. Davis,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Edgar B. Davis,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. James Sherlock Davis,
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Mrs. T. B. Davis,
Rock Island, Ill.
Mr. Frederie A. Delano,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. William Adams Delano,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Frank L. D’Elia,
Jersey City, N. J.
Mr. George Denégre,
New Orleans, La.
Mr. A. C. Deuel,
Niagara Falls, N. Y.
Mr. Fairman R. Dick,
New York, N. Y.
82322—30——_10
Mr. Albert H. Dickinson,
Kansas City, Mo.
Mr. Hunt T. Dickinson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Milton S. Dillon,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Fitz Eugene Dixon,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr SsCsDobbpsijr,
Atlanta, Ga.
Mr. Frank P. Doherty,
Los Angeles, Calif.
Mr. L. W. Dommerich,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. James P. Donahue,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Robert Donner,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Dr. A. G. Doughty,
Ottawa, Canada.
Mr. Robert Douglas,
Rochester, N. Y.
Dr. George S. Drake,
St. Louis, Mo. ~
Mr. Dow H. Drukker,
Passaic, N. J.
Mr. Frank A. Dudley,
Niagara Falls, N. Y.
Mr. Caleb C. Dula,
New York, N. Y:
Mr. A. BH. Duncan,
Baltimore, Md.
Mrs. Jessie D. Dunlap,
Toronto, Canada.
Mr. Eugene EH. du Pont,
Wilmington, Del.
Mr. Henry B. du Pont,
Wilmington, Del.
Mr. Irenee du Pont,
Wilmington, Del.
Mrs. J. Coleman du Pont,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Lammot du Pont,
Wilmington, Del.
Mr. S. Hallock du Pont,
Wilmington, Del.
Mr. Arthur S. Dwight,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Herbert T. Dyett,
Rome, N. Y.
Mr. Chaffee Earle,
Los Angeles, Calif.
Mr. Thomas T. Eason,
Enid, Okla.
131
132 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Lady Eaton, Miss Catherine Farrar,
Toronto, Canada. Paterson, N. J.
Dr. George J. Eckel, Mr. James A. Farrell,
Buffalo, N. Y. New York, N. Y.
Mr. George H. Eddy, Mr. George R. Fearing,
Kenosha, Wis. Boston, Mass.
Mr. James G. Eddy, Mr. L. F. Fedders,
Seattle, Wash. Buffalo, N. Y.
Hon. Gordon C. Edwards, Mr. Edwin C. Feigenspan,
Ottawa, Canada. Newark, N. J.
Mr. Louis J. Ehret (2 subscriptions), Mr. Orestes Ferrara,
New York, N. Y. Washington, D. C.
Mr. Otto M. Hidlitz, Mr. John E. N. Figved,
New York, N. Y. Milwaukee, Wis.
Mr. Arturo M. Elias, Dr. Mark E. Finley,
New York, N. Y. Washington, D. C.
Mr. George Adams Ellis, Mr. Thomas W. Finucane,
New York, N. Y. Rochester, N. Y.
Mr. Duncan Steuart Ellsworth, Mr. Harvey S. Firestone,
New York, N. Y. Akron, Ohio.
Mr. Albert C. Elser, Mr. Alfred J. Fisher,
Milwaukee, Wis. Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Charles T. Fisher,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Edward F. Fisher (2 subscrip-
tions),
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Frank C. Fisher,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Fred J. Fisher,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Lawrence P. Fisher,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. William A. Fisher,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. B. F. Fitch,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. George W. Ely,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. James Radford English,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William Phelps Eno,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. W. H. Erhart,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Joseph Errington,
Toronto, Canada.
Mr. W. H. Eshbaugh,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Nathaniel I. Evens,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Edward A. Everett, Mr. W. W. Flowers,
Long Island City, N. Y. New York, N. Y.
Mr. George A. Hyer, Mr. Oscar G. Foellinger,
New York, N. Y. Fort Wayne, Ind.
Mr. Charles 8S. Eytinge, Mr. R. W. Foote,
New York, N. Y. New Haven, Conn.
Mr. Hberhard Faber, Mr. John B. Ford, jr.,
New York, N. Y. Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Frank J. Fahey, Mr. S. W. Fordyce,
Boston, Mass. St. Louis, Mo.
Mrs. Gibson Fahnestock, Mr. Oswald Fowler,
Washington, D. C. New York, N. Y.
Mr. Douglas Fairbanks, Mr. Richard L. Fox,
Hollywood, Calif. Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Arthur W. Fairchild, Mr. Charles B. Francis,
Milwaukee, Wis. St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. Herman W. Falk. Mr. Clayton HK. Freeman,
Milwaukee, Wis. New York, N. Y.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 133
Mrs. Emma B. French,
Manchester, N. Y.
Mr. Herbert G. French,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
Mr. Robert E. Friend,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Mr. John Hemming Fry,
New York, N. Y.
Dr. L. A. Fuerstenau,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Dr. Eugene Fuller,
Seattle, Wash.
Mr. Frederick J. Fuller,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. George F. Fuller,
Worcester, Mass.
Mr. Walter D. Fuller,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. William Shirley Fulton,
Waterbury, Conn.
Judge Arthur G. Gallagher,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Frank de Ganahl,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John W. Garrett,
Baltimore, Md.
Mr. Paul Willard Garrett,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. James L. Gartner,
Tulsa, Okla.
Mr. A. O. Gates,
New Haven, Conn.
Mr. Charles R. Gay,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. C. P. Gearon,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Stanley L. Gedney, jr.,
East Orange, N. J.
Mr. Paulino Gerli,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. James L. Gerry,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William P. Gest,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mrs. Milton E. Getz,
Beverly Hills, Calif.
Mrs. John H. Gibbons,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Edward EH. Gillen,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Mr. Michael Gioe, sr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Charles F. Glore,
Chicago, Ill.
Hon. Guy D. Goff,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Richard J. Goodman,
Hartford, Conn.
Mr. Edward S. Goodwin,
Hartford, Conn.
Mr. Jose BH. Gorrin,
Habana, Cuba.
Mr. Osmer N. Gorton,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Chauncey P. Goss, jr.,
Waterbury, Conn,
| Mr. Edward O. Goss,
Waterbury, Conn.
Mr. George A. Goss,
Waterbury, Conn.
Mr. John H. Goss,
Waterbury, Conn.
Mr. Lyttleton B. P. Gould,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William B. Gourley,
Paterson, N. J.
Mr. S. C. Graham,
Los Angeles, Calif.
Mr. Alfred E. Green,
Hollywood, Calif.
Mr. George F. Green,
Danbury, Conn.
Mr. Lincoln Green,
Washington, D. C.
Dr. Louis 8. Greene,
Washington, D. C.
Dr. James C. Greenway,
New Haven, Conn.
Mr. David L. Grey,
St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. John Gribbell (5 subscriptions),
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. B. J. Grigsby,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. George B. Grinnell,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. Minnie Tillou Grippin,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. B. Howell Griswold, jr.,
Baltimore, Md.
Mr. Edgar J. Griswold,
New York, N. Y.
Grosvenor Library,
Buffalo, N. Y.
(Presented by Mr. Ansley Wilcox, Mr.
William Schoellkopf, Mr. H. W. Wolcott,
Mr. Percy G. Lapey, Mr. Edward L. Jelli-
nek, Buffalo, N, Y.)
134
Mr.
Allen D. Gutchess,
Toledo, Ohio.
. Charles W. Guttzeit,
New York, N. Y.
. Robert EH. Hackett,
Milwaukee, Wis.
*. Fred H. Haggerson,
New York, N. Y.
. Robert L. Hague,
New York, N. Y.
. Edward A. Halbleib,
Rochester, N. Y.
. Mayer L. Halff,
New York, N. Y.
«eK geal,
New York, N. Y.
r, William A, Hamann,
New York, N. Y.
. Joseph G. Hamblen, jr.,
Detroit, Mich.
r, Chauncey J. Hamlin,
Buffalo, N. Y.
r, J. E. Hammell,
Toronto, Canada.
. John Hays Hammond,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. C. E. Hancock,
Syracuse, N. Y.
Dr. Walter S. Harban,
Washington, D. C.
. W. Albert Harbison,
New York, N. Y.
. Acheson A. Harden,
Passaic, N. J.
. John R. Hardin,
Newark, N. J.
. Louis A. Harding,
Buffalo, N. Y.
. Franklin Hardinge,
Chicago, Ill.
r. J. B. Hardon,
Boston, Mass.
. Huntington R. Hardwick,
Boston, Mass.
. Anton G. Hardy,
New York, N. Y.
. D. W. Hardy,
New York, N. Y.
. Bruce H. Hariton,
Tulsa, Okla.
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Mr. Rawson B. Harmon,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Henry Harnischfeger,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Dr. James T. Harrington,
Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
Mr. Gordon L. Harris,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William Harris,
Totawa, N. J.
Mr. Alfred Hart,
Waterbury, Conn.
Mr. Barton Haselton,
Rome, N. Y.
Mr. Philip H. Haselton,
New York, N. Y.
Dr. F. R. Haussling,
Newark, N. J.
Mr. Horace Havemeyer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Elmer H: Havens,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Dr. George Waller Hawley,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. Samuel W. Hayes,
Oklahoma City, Okla.
Mr. George Hearst,
San Francisco, Calif.
Mr. Roy W. Hemingway,
Auburn, N. Y.
Mr. F. R. Henderson,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. A. Barton Hepburn,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Henry Herbermann,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Milton S. Hershey,
Hershey, Pa.
Mr. Jean Hersholt,
Beverly Hills, Calif.
Mrs. Sallie A. Hert,
Louisville, Ky.
Mr. Reginald Hess,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Francis Lee Higginson,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. C. A. Hight,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Joseph H. Himes,
Washington, D. C.
REPORT OF
Mr. Edward Hines,
Chicago, Il.
Mr. Lewis A. Hird,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Arthur L. Hobson,
Boston, Mass.
Mrs. Grace Whitney Hoff,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Albert L. Hoffman,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Samuel V. Hoffman,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William F. Hoffman,
Newark, N. J.
Mrs. Edward Holbrook,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Joshua B. Holden,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. William J. Holliday,
Indianapolis, Ind.
Mr. Edward J. Holmes,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. George E. Holmes,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. W. R. G. Holt,
Montreal, Canada.
Mr. Ernest Hopkinson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Louis J. Horowitz,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John S. A. Hosford,
New York, N. Y.
Miss Marie O. Hotchkiss,
Hast River, Conn.
Mr. W. Deering Howe,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Allen G. Hoyt,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Richard F. Hoyt,
New York, N. Y.
Hon. Charles E. Hughes,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Felix T. Hughes,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. Margarita Cress Hunt,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Frederick H. Hurdman,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. BE. F. Hutton,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. R. J. H. Hutton,
Buffalo, N. Y.
THE SECRETARY 135
Mr. William Dunn Hutton,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. A. F. Hyde,
New York, N. Y.
Dr. Edmund W. Ill,
Newark, N. J.
Mr. Charles H. Innes,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Samuel Insull,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Robert F. Irwin, jr.,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Henry H. Jackson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Stanley P. Jadwin,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Alfred W. Jenkins,
New York, N. Y.
Miss Mary E. Jenkins,
Syracuse, N. Y.
Mr. Ulysses S. Jenkins,
Chicago, Ill.
Mrs. Mary L. Jennings,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. BE. J. Johnson,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Eldridge R. Johnson,
Camden, N. J.
Mr. James A. Johnson,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Robert McK. Jones,
St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. Stephen R. Jones,
New York, N. Y.
Miss Grace Jordan,
Peekskill, N. Y.
Mr. R. J. Jowsey,
Toronto, Canada.
Mr. George H. Judd,
Washington, D. C.
Miss Katherine Judge,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Gilbert W. Kahn,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Otto H. Kahn,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Henry J. Kaltenbach,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Foxhall P. Keene,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Russell M. Keith,
Cleveland, Ohio.
136
r, Arthur M. Kelley,
Bayshore, L. I., N. Y.
. Foster Kennedy,
New York, N. Y.
. A. Atwater Kent,
Philadelphia, Pa.
. Marshall R. Kernochan,
Tuxedo Park, N. Y.
. C. C. Kerr,
New York, N. Y.
r. W. W. Kineaid,
Niagara Falls, N. Y.
. Willey Lyon Kingsley,
Rome, N. Y.
r. W. Ruloff Kip,
New York, N. Y.
. William F. Kip,
New York, N. Y.
. Gustavus T. Kirby,
New York, N. Y.
. Edward H. Kirschbaum,
Waterbury, Conn.
. Benjamin Kittinger,
Buffalo, N. Y.
. John K. Kline,
Green Bay, Wis.
*. Joseph F. Knapp,
New York, N. Y.
. Harry French Knight,
St. Louis, Mo.
. W. W. Knight,
Toledo, Ohio.
. Seymour H. Knox,
Buffalo, N. Y.
. Philip A. Koehring,
Milwaukee, Wis.
. Walter F. Koken,
St. Louis, Mo.
. Edward L. Koons,
Buffalo, N. Y.
. J. N. Korhumel,
Cicero, Ill.
. Harry G. Kosch,
New York, N. Y.
. Frederick J. Koster,
San Francisco, Calif.
. de Lancey Kountze,
New York, N. Y.
. J. L. Kraft,
Chicago, Ill.
. Shepard Krech,
New York, N. Y.
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Mrs. Anna BH. Kresge,
Detroit; Mich.
Mr. Stanley S. Kresge (3 subscrip-
tions),
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Arthur W. Kretschmar,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. L. Kuehn,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Mr. Gerard Kuehne,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Felix Lake,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. H. C. Lakin, 9
New York, N. Y. j
Mr. R. P. Lamont, ay
Chicago, III.
Mrs. Marshall Langhorne,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Henry G. Lapham,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Sylvester P. Larkin,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Irwin B. Laughlin,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Eugene B. Lawson,
Tulsa, Okla.
Mr. John §S. Leahy,
St. Louis, Mo.
Mrs. L. A. Lefevre,
Vancouver, British Columbia.
Mr. Erich E. Lehsten,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William H. Leland,
Worcester, Mass.
Miss Isobel Lenman (2 subscriptions),
Washington, D. C.
Mr. C. H. LeRoy,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William Leslie,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. Frank Letts,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. William E. Levis,
Alton, Ill.
Mr. Edwin C. Lewis,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Henry Lewis,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Samuel A. Lewisohn,
New York, N. Y.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
Louis K. Liggett,
Boston, Mass.
Josiah K, Lilly,
Indianapolis, Ind.
Josiah K, Lilly, jr.,
Indianapolis, Ind.
Mrs. Robert T. Lincoln,
Mr.
Mr.
Washington, D. C.
John S. Linen,
New York, N. Y.
James Duane Livingston
New York, N. Y.
)
Mr. Horatio G. Lloyd,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. S. D. Locke,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. Ray Long,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Frank Lord,
New York, N. Y.
. James Taber Loree,
Albany, N. Y.
. Harl P. Lothrop,
Buffalo, N. Y.
. Charles H. Lotte,
Paterson, N. J.
. KX. W. Lovejoy,
Rochester, N. Y.
. Horace Lowry,
Minneapolis, Minn.
. C. T. Ludington,
Philadelphia, Pa.
. Charles W. Luke,
New York, N. Y.
. G. R. Lyman,
New York, N. Y.
. James Lynah,
Detroit, Mich.
. Grant S. Macartney,
St. Paul, Minn.
- Norman E. Mack,
Buffalo, N. Y.
- Malcolm S. Mackay,
New York, N. Y.
. Carleton Macy,
New York, N. Y.
'. Clifford D. Mallory,
New York, N. Y.
. W. EH. Mallory,
Danbury, Conn.
. Peter J. Maloney, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Judge Francis X. Mancusco,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Clayton Mark,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. John Markle,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Lawrence M. Marks,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Howard C. Marmon,
Indianapolis, Ind.
Mr. Walter C. Marmon,
Indianapolis, Ind.
Mr. M. Lee Marshall,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Richard H. Marshall,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Bradley Martin,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Darwin D. Martin,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. John C. Martin,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Dr. Philip Marvel, sr.,
Atlantie City, N. J.
Mr. George Grant Mason,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. J. W. Mason,
San Francisco, Calif.
Mr. B. A. Massee,
Chicago, I.
Mr. Gordon M. Mather,
Toledo, Ohio.
Mrs. Grace H. Mather,
Cleveland, Ohio.
Mrs. G. E. Matthies,
Seymour, Conn.
Miss Katherine Matthies,
Seymour, Conn.
Mr. C. H. Matthiessen, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Frank Matthiessen,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. William L. Mauran,
Providence, R. I.
Mr. Howard W. Maxwell, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Ambrose Farroll McCabe,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Ormond William McClave,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Kenner McConnell,
Columbus, Ohio.
137
138 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Mr. James D. McCormack, Mr. Edward G. Miner, H
Vancouver, British Columbia. Rochester, N. Y.
Mr. Cyrus H. McCormick, Mrs. Ff. B. Miner,
Chicago, Ill. Flint, Mich.
Mr. Leander McCormick-Goodhart, Mr. John J. Mitchell,
Washington, D. C. Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Alex W. McCoy, Mr. Leeds Mitchell,
Ponca City, Okla. Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Henry Forbes McCreery, Mr. Roscoe R. Mitchell,
New York, N. Y. Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Hubert McDonnell, Mr. T. E. Mitten,
New York, N. Y. Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Frank H. McGraw, Mr. J. A. Moffett,
New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y.
Mr. James H. McGraw, Mr. Joseph A. Moller,
New York, INe Xe New York, INE WA
Mr. Sumner T. McKnight, Mr. Jay R. Monroe,
Minneapolis, Minn. Orange, N. J.
Mr. R. 8. McLaughlin, Mr. Henry E. Montgomery,
Ontario, Canada. Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Marrs McLean,
Beaumont, Tex.
Mr. William L. McLean,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Clifford L. MeMillen,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Mr. Andrew W. Mellon,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Louis Mendelssohn,
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. William Moore,
Detroit, Mich,
Mr. Adelbert Moot,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mrs. James Dudley Morgan,
Chevy Chase, Md.
Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan (2 subscrip-
tions),
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Buckingham P. Merriman, MRS IONE AN moe.
Waterbury, Conn. EY HOS Hak a .
Miss Ethel Douglas Merritt, Mrs. AUES Grippin Morris,
Wvnahineten enh iG. Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. William B. Mershon, Mr. W. Cullen Pee
Saginaw, Mich. New York, N. Y.
Mr. A. H. Mertzanoff, wis lay Fa RUS
New York, N. Y. New) Mork, ul)
Col. Herman A. Metz, Mr. Samuel Mundheim,
New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y.
Mr. Cord Meyer, Mr. Frank C. Munson,
New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y.
Mr. Devereux Milburn, Mr. C. Haywood Murphy,
New York, N. Y. Detroit, Mich.
Mr. C. Wilbur Miller, Mr. Henry A. Murray,
Baltimore, Md. New York, N. Y.
Mr. Ernest B. Miller, Premier Benito Mussolini,
Baltimore, Md. Rome, Italy.
Mr. John J. Miller, Mr. Harold Nathan,
Washington, D. C. New York, N. Y.
Dr. S. M. Milliken, National Gallery of Art,
New York, N. Y. Washington, D. C.
Mr. Ogden L. Mills, National Library of Wales,
New York, N. Y. Wales.
Mr.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
John S. Newberry,
Detroit, Mich.
Hon. Truman H. Newberry,
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Detroit, Mich.
Waldo Newcomer,
Baltimore, Md.
F. T. Nicholson,
New York, N. Y.
William BH. Nickerson,
Boston, Mass.
John B. Niven,
New York, N. Y.
Aaron EH. Norman,
New York, N. Y.
George W. Norris,
Philadelphia, Pa.
', Harry Oakes,
Ontario, Canada.
. J. J. O’Brien,
Chicago, Ill.
. Lyle H. Olson,
New York, N. Y.
. John Omwake,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
1 We ONeill,
Arkon, Ohio.
. James L. O’Neill,
New York, N. Y.
. Joseph E. Otis,
Chicago, Ill.
. Roy H. Ott,
New York, N. Y.
. Arthur Newton Pack,
Washington, D. C.
. John F. Palmer,
Pawhuska, Okla.
. Charles A. Parcells,
Detroit, Mich.
. Karle W. Parcells,
Detroit, Mich.
. George Pariot,
New York, N. Y.
. Dale M. Parker,
New York, N. Y.
. Henry Herbert Parmelee,
Paterson, N. J.
. James Parmelee,
Washington, D. C.
. Reginald H. Parsons,
Seattle, Wash.
. William D. Patten,
New York, N. Y.
. Stephen Paul,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Charles S. Payson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Max H. Peiler,
Hartford, Conn.
Mr. Howland H. Pell,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Charles Pfeiffer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Gustavus A. Pfeiffer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Knox B. Phagan,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Leopold Philipp,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Ellis L. Phillips,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Rowley W. Phillips,
Waterbury, Conn.
Mrs. Thomas W. Phillips,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Howard Phipps,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. H. M. Pierce,
Wilmington, Del.
Mr. Robert L. Pierrepont,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William S. Pilling,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Townsend Pinkney,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Bayard F. Pope,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Frederick J. Pope,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Joseph F. Porter,
Kansas City, Mo.
Mr. Joseph W. Powdrell,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Herbert L. Pratt,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. John T. Pratt,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Sydney I. Prescott,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William Cooper Procter,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
Mr. Thomas E. Proctor, 2d,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Ralph Pulitzer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Percy R. Pyne, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Ernest E. Quantrell,
New York, N. Y.
139
140 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Mr. Edgar M. Queeny,
St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. Gershom T. Randall,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. de Lancey Rankine,
Niagara Falls, N. Y.
Mr. John J. Raskob,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William F. Raskob,
Wilmington, Del.
Mr. Duncan H. Read,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Harle H. Reynolds,
Chicago, Il.
Mr. Harrison G. Reynolds,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Edwin T. Rice,
New “Vorlk,/ Ne Ye:
Mr. Neil W. Rice,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. S. Willson Richards,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. HE. Ridgeway,
Chicago, III.
Mr. Harry G. Rieger,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Charles E. Riley,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Arthur W. Rinke,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. Anita Bell Ritter,
Washington, D. C.
Dr. William C. Rives,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Walter B. Robb,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Owen F. Roberts,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Irving EH. Robertson,
Toronto, Canada.
Mr. William A. Rockefeller,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. John A. Roebling,
Bernardsville, N. J.
Mr. Charles H. Roemer,
Paterson, N. J.
Mr. Saul H. Rogers,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William H. Rollinson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Irving I. Rosenbaum,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Edward L. Rossiter,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Stanley A. Russell,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William Hamilton Russell,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. John Rutherford,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. W. R. Sampson,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Henry Gansevoort Sanford,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Harold A. Sands,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. James Savage,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Homer E. Sawyer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Michael A. Seatuorchio,
Jersey City, N. J.
Mr. Bernhard K. Schaefer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. H. W. Schaefer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Herrman A. Schatz,
Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
Mr. William N. Schill,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. George Schmidt, jr.,
Hlizabeth, N. J.
Mr. L. O. Schmidt,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Daniel Schnakenberg,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Henry Schniewind,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Alfred H. Schoellkopf,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. J. F. Schoellkopf, jr.,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Paul A. Schoellkopf,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Sherman W. Scofield,
Cleveland, Ohio.
Mrs ACI SCOtE,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William Keith Scott,
Los Angeles, Calif.
Mr. William E. Scripps, _
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Harold H. Seaman,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Mr. Frank A. Seiberling,
Akron, Ohio.
Mr. Walter Seligman,
New York, N. Y.
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
Mr. Jere A. Sexton,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John C. Shaffer,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Richard Sharpe,
Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Mr. G. Howland Shaw,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Robert Alfred Shaw,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Edward W. Sheldon,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Harry E. Sheldon,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Mrs. Charles R. Shepard,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Frank P. Shepard,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Roger B. Shepard,
St. Paul, Minn.
Mr. Robert W. Sherwin,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. Paula W. Siedenburg,
Greenwich, Conn.
Mr. HE. H. H. Simmons,
New York, N. Y.
’ Mrs. Frances G. Simmons,
Greenwich, Conn.
Mr. Z. G. Simmons, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Robert EH. Simon,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. F. H. Sisson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Louis Sloss,
San Francisco, Calif.
Mr. Andrew R. Smith,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. E. A. Cappelan Smith,
New York, N. Y.
Dr. Edward W. Smith,
Meriden, Conn.
Mr. Frank Hill Smith,
Dayton, Ohio.
Mr. Glenn J. Smith,
Tulsa, Okla.
Mr. Julian C. Smith,
Montreal, Canada.
Mr. W. Hinckle Smith,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Winfred L. Smith,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. W. T. Sampson Smith,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. F. L. Smithe,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John S. Snelham,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Sidney H. Sonn,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. T. H. Soren,
Hartford, Conn.
Mr. Henry P. Spafard,
Hartford, Conn.
Maj. Lorillard Spencer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr, John R. Sproul,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Col. W. C. Spruance,
Wilmington, Del.
Dr. Edward H. Squibb,
Brooklyn, N. Y.
141
Mr. Andrew Squire (2 Subscriptions),
Cleveland, Ohio.
Mr. Pierpont Langley Stackpole,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. William Hyde Stalker,
Toledo, Ohio.
Dr. A. Camp Stanley,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. H. J. L. Stark,
Orange, Tex.
Mr. Walter R. Steiner,
Hartford, Conn.
Mr. R. S. Sterling,
Houston, Tex.
Mr. Morris Stern,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Mr. Joseph BH. Sterrett,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Aron Steuer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Francis K. Stevens,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. J. Crawford Stevens,
White Plains, N: Y.
Mr. John P. Stevens,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Walther A. Stiefel,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Philip Stockton,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Robert G. Stone,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. James J. Storrow, jr.,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. D. H. Strachan,
New York, N. Y.
142 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Mr. Robert A. Stranahan,
Toledo, Ohio.
Mr. Silas H. Strawn,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Alvah G. Strong,
Rochester, N.. Y.
Mrs. Hattie M. Strong,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Walter A. Strong,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. W. G. Stuber,
Rochester, N. Y.
Mr. Clement Studebaker, jr.,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Ernest Sturm,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Charles L. Sturtevant,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Samuel B. Sutphin,
Indianapolis, Ind.
Mr. R. O. Sweezey,
Montreal, Canada.
Countess Laszlo Szechenyi,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. Edgar W. Tait,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Mr. Ralph L. Talbot,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. Gerard P. Tameling,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Edmund C. Tarbell,
New Castle, N. H.
Mr. Charles H. Taylor,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Harden F. Taylor,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Myron C. Taylor,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Daniel G. Tenney,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Alton T. Terrell,
Ansonia, Conn.
Mr. Arthur Van Rensselear Thompson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. George W. Thompson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. John R. Thompson, jr.,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. Ralph E. Thompson,
Boston, Mass.
Mrs. William Reed Thompson,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Mr. 8S. C. Thomson,
New York, N. Y.
Made Covihorn,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Francis B. Thorne,
New York, N. Y.
Dr. Edward C. Tillman,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Charles H. Titchener,
Binghamton, N. Y.
Mr. Frederick M. Tobin,
Rochester, N. Y.
Mr. Roy EH. Tomlinson,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Charles H. Tompkins,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. John H. Towne,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. J. Barton Townsend,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Dr. Raynham Townshend,
New Haven, Conn.
Mr. Ernest B. Tracy,
New York, N. Y.
Dr. William Howard Treat,
Derby, Conn.
Mr. J. C. Trees,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Gen. Harry C. Trexler,
Allentown, Pa.
Mr. George F. Trommer,
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Mr. Albert O. Trostel,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Mr. Calvin Truesdale,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Regino Truffin,
Habana, Cuba.
Mr. Carll Tucker,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Herbert G. Tully,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. George Tyson,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Ernest Uehlinger,
New York, N. Y.
University of Buffalo,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Robert M. Thompson (2 subscrip-
tions), - (Presented by Mr. Jesse R. Porter, es
John C. Trefts, Mr. J. G. Jackson, Mr.
New York, N. Y. Taylor, and Mr. August Keiser.)
REPORT OF THE SECRETARY
Mr. Alvin Untermyer,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. George P. Urban,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. George Urquhart,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Ray A. Van Clief,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Frederick W. Vanderbilt,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William H. Vanderbilt,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. S. H. Vandergrift,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. H. A. Van Norman,
Los Angeles, Calif.,
Mr. John A. Vassilaros,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. S. M. Vauclain,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Albert L. Vits,
Manitowoc, Wis.
Mr. Ludwig Vogelstein,
New York, N. Y.
Mrs. James W. Wadsworth, jr.,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. George E. Waesche,
New York, N. Y.
Major Ennalls Waggaman,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. N. Erik Wahlberg,
Kenosha, Wis.
Mr. Sidney S. Walcott,
Buffalo, N. Y.
Mr. Elisha Walker,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Harrington E. Walker (2 subscrip-
tions),
Detroit, Mich.
Mr. Mahlon B. Wallace,
St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. Thomas J. Walsh,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. C. O. Wanvig,
Milwaukee, Wis.
Mrs. Herbert Ward,
London, England.
Mr. Bayard Warren,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. W. Vv. A. Waterman,
Albany, N. Y.
Mr. Horton Watkins,
St. Louis, Mo.
Mr. James 8. Watson,
Rochester, N. Y.
Mr. Thomas John Watson,
New York, N. Y.
Dr. W. Lee Weadon,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. Niel A. Weathers,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. George T. Webb,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. William X. Weed,
White Plains, N. Y.
Mr. J. Borton Weeks,
Chester, Pa.
Mrs. Laura R. Wells,
Washington, D. C.
Mr. George S. West,
Boston, Mass.
Mr. Richard Wetherill,
Chester, Pa.
Mr. F. O. Wetmore,
Chicago, Ill.
Mr. John W. Wheeler, jr.,
Bridgeport, Conn.
Mr. Albert C. Whitaker,
Wheeling, W. Va.
Mr. Harry C. Whitaker,
Wheeling, W. Va.
Mr. F. Edson White,
Chicago, Ill.
Col. Frank White,
Chattanooga, Tenn.
Mr. Lazarus White,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Thomas W. White,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Norman de R. Whitehouse,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. W. R. Whiteside,
Tulsa, Okla.
Mr. George A. Whiting,
Neenah, Wis.
Mr. George Whitney,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Howard F. Whitney, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Matthew P. Whittall,
Worcester, Mass.
Mr. Philip J. Wickser,
Buffalo, N. Y.
143
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
. Edward Wigglesworth,
Boston, Mass.
. Milo W. Wilder, jr.,
Newark, N. J.
*, Howard L. Wilkins,
Washington, D. C.
. Blair 8. Williams,
New York, N. Y.
. Charles B. Williams,
New York, N. Y.
. George M. Williams,
Indianapolis, Ind.
*. J. Ferrand Williams,
Detroit, Mich.
. William H. Williams,
New York, N. Y.
. Luther M. R. Willis,
Baltimore, Md.
. Joseph Wilshire,
New York, N. Y.
. John G. Wilshusen,
New York, N. Y.
’, James T. Wilson,
Kenosha, Wis.
*, John G. Winant,
Coneord, N. H.
r, William E. Winchester,
New York, N. Y.
. George A. Winsor,
New York, N. Y.
. Benjamin Wood,
New York, N. Y.
Mr.
Chalmers Wood,
New York, N. Y.
*. Howard O. Wood, jr.,
New York, N. Y.
. Charles H. Woodhull,
Washington, D. C.
. Frank A. Woods,
Holyoke, Mass.,
*, George C. Woolf,
New York, N. Y.
. Clarence M. Woolley,
New York, N. Y.
r, Beverly Lyon Worden,
New York, N. Y.
. George F. Wright,
Worcester, Mass.
. Max Wulfsohn,
New York, N. Y.
*, Rudolph H. Wurlitzer,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
*. Thomas N. Wynne,
Indianapolis, Ind.
. James Wyper,
Hartford, Conn.
. Frederic L. Yeager,
New York, N. Y.
*, Fred W. Young,
Boston, Mass.
*, Christian B. Zabriskie,
New York, N. Y.
. Robert P. Zobel,
New York, N. Y.
REPORT OF,,.[HE .EXECUTIVE,.,COMMITTEE ..ORy. THE
BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTI-
TUTION FOR THE YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 1929
To the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution:
Your executive committee respectfully submits the following re-
port in relation to the funds of the Smithsonian Institution to-
gether with a statement of the appropriations by Congress for the
Government bureaus in the administrative charge of the Institution.
SMITHSONIAN ENDOWMENT FUND
The original bequest of James Smithson was £104,960 8 shillings
6 pence—$508,318.46. Refunds of money expended in prosecu-
tion of the claim, freights, insurance, etc., together with pay-
ment into the fund of the sum of £5,015 which had been with-
held during the lifetime of Madame de la Batut, brought the
fund! to-the amount Of: BeO ak eee ea REATAEE SER ARR) Sant Oe $550, 000. 00
Since the original bequest the Institution has received gifts
from various sources, the income from which may be used for
the general work of the Institution to the amount of________-- 259, 184. 39
Total original endowments for general purposes__________ 809, 184. 39
Capital gains from investment of savings from income__________ 207, 796. 11
Capital gains from sales, stock dividends, ete__-_______________ 5, 405. 25
Present total of endowment for general purposes_______- 1, 022, 385. 75
The Institution holds also a number of endowment gifts the income
of each being restricted to specific use. These are invested and
stand on the books of the Institution as follows:
Bacon, Virginia Purdy, fund, for a traveling scholarship to in-
vestigate fauna of countries other than the United States____ $50, 000. 00
Baird, Lucy H., fund, for creating a memorial to Secretary Baird_, 1, 000. 00
Canfield collection fund, for increase and care of the Canfield col-
HLS CUT OTD Os, TIM TT Chel 1 Se cay see eee Me BE As DI ce ges 46, 232. 86
Casey, Thomas L., fund, for maintenance of Casey collection and
promotion of researches relating to Coleoptera_______________ 3, 000. 00
Chamberlain, Frances Lea, fund, for increase and promotion of
Isaac Lea collections of gems and mollusks___________-______ 35, 000. 00
Hodgkins fund, specific, for increase and diffusion of more exact
knowledge in regard to nature and properties of atmospheric air_ 100, 000. 00
Hughes, Bruce, fund, to found Hughes alcove----_---_-----_--- 9, 021. 93
145
146 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Myer, Catherine Walden, fund, for purchase of first-class works
of art for the use of and benefit of the National Gallery of Art__ $18, 267. 91
Pell, Cornelia Livingston, fund, for maintenance of Alfred Duane
Pell COUMSCELOI Ee eS Se ar Nee ee es 3, 000. 00
Poore, Lucy T. and George W., fund, for general use of the Insti-
tution when principal amounts to the sum of $250,000__-_-----_ 24, 5384. 92
Reid, Addison T., fund, for founding chair in biology in memory
OL ASH er MTS eae bed FET eee dE a ee 9, 494. 50
Roebling fund, for care, improvement, and increase of Roebling
Collection Of PMmINneal Saw kena ee ee ee ee ne ee 150, 000. 00
Springer, Frank, fund, for care, etc., of Springer collection and
THY GP Gh ype Medd loet LN AUNLSUe OIC OeE Momo es ONES) OE LN ie se ae ee 30, 000. 00
Walcott, Charles D., and Mary Vaux, research fund, for develop-
ment of geological and paleontological studies and publishing
TESUDES: MERC OL oes eee aie sage pore aan ace eae ek 11, 520. 00
Younger Helen Walcott, sung helade ini GS has ee 49, 812. 50
Total original endowments for specific purposes other
Chany Weer ve a Oyyrry Ciba Se ae ee ae eee aren 540, 884. 62
Capital gains from investment of sayings from income__________ 65, 586. 11
Capital gains from stock dividends, sales, ete., of Securities______ 19, 532. 97
Excluding Freer endowment, total present endowment for
SDECIAC WPULDOSCS-s2 et a aed a ee al ed 626, 003. 70
Freer Gallery of Art fund, for expenses of gallery J
(original endowment) qe eee $1, 958, 591. 42
Capital gains from investment of savings from
ATU OTC ak yo its og a elt oe al tl ht Ea 398, 778. 71
Capital gains from stock dividends, sales, ete.,
Of SCCURIGICSH S00 pent a ke 2, 878, 683. 89
Total Freer endowment for specific purposes____________ 5, 236, 054. 02
Total endowment for specific purposes_______-_____---___ 5, 862, 057. 72
SUMMARY
Invested endowment for general purposes__-__-________________ 1, 022, 385. 75
Invested endowment for specific purposes other than Freer
end OWwInentotac ye RN Ee eee 626, 003. 70
Total invested endowment other than Freer endowment____ 1, 648, 389. 45
Freer invested endowment for specific purposes_-___--------__ 5, 236, 054. 02
Total investedend owment.4A see Swe eee 6, 884, 443. 47
Classification of investments
Deposited in the United States Treasury at 6 per cent per annum,
as authorized in United States Revised Statutes, section 5591_ $1, 000, 000. 00
Invested in approved securities as follows:
Investments other than Freer endowment—
Baa 6 Spates en rte posse eg mate wi hn wee fe Toole GUE OO
FSH OC ese io ad aa ellen ict 264, 988. 45
Real estate first-mortgage notes_________ 21, 500. 00
—_ 648, 389. 45
Total investments other than Freer endowment__-__--- 1, 648, 389. 45
REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 147
Invested in approved securities—Continued.
Investments of Freer endowment—
Bondst&200 ta). Tess tare ot $2, 785, 000. 34
Sto@k suis 2 oo) 8 a a ee De a 2, 360, 553. 68
Real estate first-mortgage notes_________ 90, 500. 00
—________——. $5, 236, 054. 02
Ota INVES CNUs see eke ke eee Se eee 6, 884, 443. 47
Income from investments for present year
On $1,000,000 deposited in United States Treasury at 6 per cent__ $60, 000. 00
On $648,389.45 invested in stocks and bonds other than Freer en-
aowmentate4 sdasperxcentia. 2.) Sas tere Oe Fo Se 30, 582. 77
Total income other than Freer endowment___--------__-- 90, 582. 77
FREER ENDOWMENT
On $5,236,054.02 invested in stocks, bonds, ete., at about 5.39
jae ree CYS 01 we ee eee ar EE ee ae ee ee eee 282, 435. 138
Nota ancomecfr OMe iV CS LIN ELIS ae m= a ee eee care eer een 373, 017. 90
Statement of the annual income of the Institution from all sources *
Wash balance on handy june 305 1928s. en eee $238, 369. 41
Receipts :
Cash from invested endowments and from mis-
cellaneous sources for general use of the
TOUS ETE Oa a tl een nent lt ne Spt $61, 309. 56
Cash for increase of endowments for specific
UT SS Co pee ers Fe Se a ee ee 3, 000. 00
Cash for increase of endowments for general
TT SS es aa eS i ee 6, 535. 00
Cash gifts for specific use (not to be invested)_ 50,111. 01
Cash received as royalties from sales of Smith-
SOMIAMISCIEILINCISCLLCS = eee 14, 454. 01
Cash gain from sale, ete., of securities (to be
ANIVIESTEC)) Rees eee ee ee 22, 944. 95
Cash income from endowments for specific use
other than Freer endowment, and from mis-
SEllaneGUs. SOULCCS==— 2-2 Le to eee. 82, 425. 70
Total receipts other than Freer endowment___-------_-_ 240, 780. 23
Cash income from Freer endowment—
Income from"investments22 2-2 se Fee 282, 435. 13
Gain from sale, ete., of securities (to be
TUT SIS) HELO Uy oS oc a pa eet ca 940, 476. 80
1, 222, 911. 93
A EY cee [= aR ORNS Bid SORE ae MOEN eb I ie Wh BS RN Pew 1, 702, 061. 57
1This statement does not include Government appropriations under the administrative
charge of the Institution.
2Under resolution of the Board of Regents, three-fourths of this income is credited
to the permanent endowment fund of the Institution and one-fourth is made expendable
for general purposes,
§2322—30——11
148 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Disbursements:
General work of the Institution—
Buildings—care, repair, and alteration____ $11, 564. 59
Hurnitureyan da xtures] 2s ee 746. 06
General administration *________--________ 20, 652. 66
J DID OF EW ah pecans eget ts ema en Mee NI St 3, 006. 55
Publications (comprising preparation, print-
Ing, And | GIStEID Ubon) S22 ee eee 16, 865. 75
Researches and explorations______-___-___ 13.40%, 11
International exchanges_2- =) 22ers 7, 921. 67
Funds for specific use other than Freer endow-
ment—
Investments made from gifts, from gain
from sales, etc., of securities, and from
Savings on incomes sass eee 51, 860. 45
Other expenditures, consisting largely of re-
search work, travel, increase and care of
special collections, etc., from income of
endowment funds and eash gifts for
SDE CHIC USC Soe Sees eee ee pee 113, 498. 06
Freer endowment—
Operating expenses of gallery, salaries,
purchases of art objects, field expenses,
Git cient ee ae NY oe, at ae 287, 679. 63
Investments made from gain from sale, etc.,
of securities and from income___-------- 957, 564. 76
Expenditures for researches in pure science, explorations, care,
study of collections, etc.
Expenditures from general endowment:
J eTUNOVN Ges E01 dys} sks ae ORES pve a Set Nei bi CL Je aia eae A lctahl $16, 865. 75
Researches and explorations__________________ 13, 707. 11
Expenditures from funds devoted to specific purposes:
Researches and explorations, ete_______________. $67, 955. 19
Care, increase and study of special collections___ 18, 078. 97
1 2 005 DV GESY Bric) 0 peers pe ay a em alr UEC gS yO a POS 16, 829. 59
Purchase of specialalibraryos eee ae 3, 500. 00
Eg Seo [ SA aS PrP RN ERD PtP MOAI all Wome SOMME! 2
®* This includes salaries of the secretary and certain others
$74, 464 39
165, 358. 51
1, 245, 244. 39
216, 994. 28
1, 702, 061. 57
increase, and
$30, 572. 86
106, 363. 75
136, 936. 61
REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
149
Table showing growth of endowment funds of the Smithsonian Institution
Year
Endowment for
general work
of the Institu-
tion, being orig-
inal Smithson
bequest, gifts
from other
Endowment
for specifie re-
searches, etc.,
including in-
vested savings
Freer gift for
construction of
Freer Gallery
of Art Building |i
sources, and in- of income
vested savings
of income
S702 000K O04 eee eae
802, 000. 00 $101, 000. 00
852, 000. 00 101, 000. 00
877, 000. 00 102, 000. 00
885, 807. 58 111, 692. 42
885, 807. 58 116, 692. 42
886, 084. 02 143, 515. 98
887. 607. 08 160, 527. 30
887, 830. 00 164, 304. 38
2 883, 867. 00 176, 157. 38
884, 305. 00 190, 489. 38
884, 747. 00 198, 149. 02
884, 933. 74 272, 538. 31
886, 107. 14 291, 858. 14
886, 246. 14 306, 524. 14
886, 373. 31 319, 973. 19
886, 769. 73 338, 136. 77
886, 830. 13 342, 876. 37
886, 877. 79 498, 401. 96
929, 068. 21 665, 233. 29
51, 022, 385. 75 626, 003. 70
Freer bequest
for operation of
Freer Gallery
of Art,
neluding sala-
ries, care, etc.
$1, 253, 004. 75
1, 842, 144. 75
4 3, 296, 574. 75
3, 401, 355. 42
3, 459, 705. 34
3, 714, 361. 23
4, 171, 880. 61
4, 268, 244. 26
5, 236, 054. 02
1 Original endowment plus income from savings during these years.
2 Loss on account of bonds reduced on books from par to market value. !
3 Cash from sale of 2,000 shares of Parke, Davis & Co. stock, including dividends, and interest on gift
of $1,000,000.
‘In this year Parke, Davis & Co. declared 100 per cent stock dividend.
5 Increase largely from funds transferred from specific endowment column and income released for genera
work of the Institution.
BALANCE SHEET OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, JUNE 30, 1929
ASSETS
Stocks and bonds at acquirement value:
CWonsolVe ated’ frum Ce ee ee $557, 056. 95
Freer, bequest... .-.--____.__/ - ae ee 5, 236, 054. 02
Springer’ um Wl oe ee eee 30, 000. 00
VWWeICOLE TE ce Aes eesi sine y ese see nee en ee 11, 520. 00
Younger -fund2n. =) 0000 J00 . Le Ge 49, $12. 50
Ue-S-Ereasury-.depositiz= 82 200 Dit: 1 Be ae oe
Miscellaneous, principally funds advanced for printing publica-
tions and field expenses (to be repaid) —_-___-__-_____________-
Cash:
Funds in U. 8. Treasury and in banks__-______ $216, 394. 28
Onghand for petty transacvionsa2e-= = 600. 00
LIABILITIES
Freer bequest, capital accounts:
Couch aAnadr SLOun GS. Lun set ecceeeen seem eee enE ee $574, 524. 12
Court and grounds maintenance fund________ 148, 112. 53
Guarralio raphe ltt has ye ee tt ee fey 596, 301. 18
Residuanyaestatestunde sae. sae ee ee 3, 917, 116. 19
Consolidated; fund capital accountss 22 ee ee
Springer fund seanitaliec: 22.2 2 ve De ee eee
AVY 7s! CO tyre CLS SAT a ee SE ee a
VOUN Serre hUna Ge FC eT ed a = es a cee a ge
WS breasuryageposit} capitals. 2 eee ee
Freer bequest, current accounts:
Court andssrounds fund = 22 eee 58, 042. 28
Court and grounds maintenance fund__________ 10, 311. 88
COUR G Teoma ee Ee ee oe Bee 27, 984. 66
Residuanrys estate undeetee se eee 57, 367. 52
SS POESH TD Tee Ch STATS TNT 64 CG UU TN pee
WM Cea HR TOG POU h RMR Cot ae 8 ee es A
VAGUE TH VaLG ELD eta VECO UM ey es
Miscellaneous cash accounts held by the Institution for the most
PATS POT SP COTE Cs TAS Cs se EE
$5, 884, 443. 47
1, 000, 000. 00
36, 527. 11
216, 994. 28
7, 137, 964. 86
$5, 236, 054. 02
557, 056. 95
30, 000. 00
11, 520. 00
49, 812. 50
1, 000, 000. 00
153, 706. 34
849. 93
1, 365. 00
217. 50
97, 382. 62
7, 137, 964. 86
All payments are made by check, signed by the secretary of the
Institution, on the Treasurer of the United States, and
all revenues
are deposited to the credit of the same account. In many instances
deposits are placed in bank for convenience of collection and later are
withdrawn in round amounts and deposited in the Treasury.
150
REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 151
The practice of investing temporarily idle funds in time deposits
has proven satisfactory. During the year the interest derived from
this source, together with similar items, has resulted in a total of
$5,631.82.
The foregoing report relates only to the private funds of the Smith-
sonian Institution. The following is a statement of the congres-
sional appropriations for the past 10 years, for the support of the
several governmental branches under the administrative control of
the Institution and of appropriations for other special purposes
during that period.
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
152
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REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 153
The report of the audit of the Smithsonian private funds is printed
below.
OcTOBER 2, 1929.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, BOARD OF REGENTS,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.
Sirs: We have examined the accounts and vouchers of the Smithsonian Insti-
tution for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1929, and certify the balance of cash
on hand June 30, 1929, to be $216,994.28.
The vouchers representing payments from the Smithsonian income during
the year, each of which bears the approval of the secretary or, in his absence,
of the acting secretary, and a certificate that the materials and services charged
were applied to the purposes of the Institution, have been examined in con-
nection with the books of the Institution and agree with them.
Respectfully submitted.
Capital AvupIT Co.,
WILLIAM L. YAEGER,
Certified Public Accountant.
Respectfully submitted.
Frepertc A. DELANo,
R. Watton Moore,
J. C. Merriam,
Executive Committee.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION FOR THE FISCAL YEAR
ENDED JUNE: (3071929
ANNUAL MEETING DECEMBER 13, 1928
Present: Chief Justice Wiliam H. Taft, chancellor, in the chair;
Vice President Charles G. Dawes, Senator Joseph T. Robinson,
Representative Albert Johnson, Representative R. Walton Moore,
Representative Walter H. Newton, Mr. Frederic A. Delano, Hon.
Irwin B. Laughlin, Hon. Dwight W. Morrow, Hon. Charles E.
Hughes, Dr. John C. Merriam, and the secretary, Dr. C. G. Abbot.
Dr. Alexander Wetmore, assistant secretary, was also present.
Mr. Delano offered the following resolution, which was adopted:
Resolved, That the income of the Institution for the fiscal year ending June
30, 1930, be appropriated for the service of the Institution, to be expended
by the secretary, with the advice of the executive committee, with full dis-
cretion on the part of the secretary as to items.
The secretary presented his printed annual report, and then
touched briefly upon a number of important matters that he con-
sidered worthy of the board’s attention.
The annual report of the National Gallery of Art Commission was
presented, and the following resolution was adopted:
Resolved, That the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution hereby
approves the recommendation of the National Gallery of Art Commission that
Daniel Chester French, John EB. Lodge, James Parmelee, and Edward W. Red-
field be reelected as members of the commission for the ensuing term of four
years, their present terms having expired.
Mr. Delano presented a statement regarding the lands occupied
by the Institution and regarding its financial needs.
After a full discussion of the matter of an insecticide patent pre
sented to the Institution, the board referred it to the permanent
committee for consideration.
The Secretary announced the receipt of $3,500 from Mrs. E. H.
Harriman, to be applied to the purchase of the William Healey Dall
library for presentation to the Institution under the title “ The
Harriman Alaskan Library,” and the following resolution was
adopted:
Resolved, That the thanks of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian
Institution be conveyed to Mrs. E. H. Harriman for her generous gift of $3,500
for the purchase of the library of the late Dr. William Healey Dall and its
presentation to the Institution under the title ‘‘ The Harriman Alaskan Library.”
154
PROCEEDINGS OF THE REGENTS 155
MEETING OF FEBRUARY 14, 1929
Present: Chief Justice William H. Taft, chancellor, in the chair;
Vice President Charles G. Dawes, Senator Reed Smoot, Senator
Joseph T. Robinson, Senator Claude A. Swanson, Representative
R. Walton Moore, Mr. Frederic A. Delano, Mr. Irwin B. Laughlin,
and the secretary, Dr. C. G. Abbot. Dr. Alexander Wetmore, assist-
ant secretary, was also present.
The Secretary announced that the President had approved the
joint resolution of Congress reappointing Mr. Delano and Mr.
Laughlin as citizen regents for the ensuing statutory term of six
years from January 22, 1929.
The Secretary submitted a list of gifts made to the Institution
since the last meeting.
Mr. Delano brought up the matter of the proposed contract
transferring to the Research Corporation the promotion of the in-
secticide patent presented to the Institution. Under the terms of the
contract, the Research Corporation assumes complete responsibility
for the commercial development of the patent, the Institution re-
ceiving a fixed percentage of the returns as royalty. After a full dis-
cussion the board voted to approve the contract.
Assistant Secretary Wetmore presented a tentative program for
necessary additional buildings for the Smithsonian Institution.
SPECIAL MEETING OF MAY 7, 1929
Present: Chief Justice William H. Taft, chancellor, in the chair;
Senator Reed Smoot, Senator Joseph T. Robinson, Representative
R. Walton Moore, Mr. Robert S. Brookings, Mr. Frederic <A.
Delano, Mr. Irwin B. Laughlin, Dr. John C. Merriam, and the
secretary, Dr. C. G. Abbot. Dr. Alexander Wetmore, assistant
secretary, was also present.
The secretary announced that on March 4 last Mr. Dawes auto-
matically ceased to be a regent by the expiration of his term as
Vice President, and that upon his inauguration, Vice President
Charles Curtis became a regent ex officio. The secretary added that
on April 26 the Vice President had appointed Senator Claude A.
Swanson as a regent to succeed himself.
The secretary reported on the progress made in issuing the vol-
umes of the Smithsonian Scientific Series, exhibiting copies of the
first four volumes of the James Smithson Memorial Edition, and
stating that the publishers were presenting a complete set of this
edition to the Institution.
The secretary brought up the offer of the art collection of Mr. John
Gellatly, which had been made through Mr. Gari Melchers, chair-
man of the National Gallery of Art Commission, and which had
156 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
been favorably considered both by the permanent committee and
by the commission.
After discussion the following resolutions were adopted:
Resolved, That on the basis of the recommendation of the National Gallery
of Art Commission expressed through the resolution adopted April 18, 1929, the
Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution have examined the offer of Mr.
John Gellatly relating to the proposed gift of his art collection as expressed in
letters to Mr. Gari Melchers, chairman of the National Gallery of Art Commis-
sion, under dates of March 27 and March 30, 1929, and the board approves
in principle the acceptance of this offer. The secretary is hereby requested to
convey to Mr. Gellatly the sense of appreciation with which the board learns
of this generous offer.
Resolved, That the board hereby refers the furtherance of the matter to the
permanent committee with full power to act.
Senator Robinson, on behalf of the legal committee on the Freer
will and gift, submitted its report on the interpretation of the terms
of the Freer will.
GENERAL APPENDIX
TO THE
SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1929
157
ap Fctocy cievey an eeu bai &
syn i ch a ASN
ron), Sento datin iE eal BE ghey ayer
Aoietialye: the, adcentnrete ni thle often. boul mba
eae dy aie tes, MATE: CMe Bate
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ADVERTISEMENT
The object of the GrnERAL APPENDIX to the Annual Report of the
Smithsonian Institution is to furnish brief accounts of scientific dis-
covery in particular directions; reports of investigations made by
collaborators of the Institution; and memoirs of a general character
or on special topics that are of interest or value to the numerous
correspondents of the Institution.
It has been a prominent object of the Board of Regents of the
Smithsonian Institution from a very early date to enrich the annual
report required of them by law with memoirs illustrating the more
remarkable and important developments in physical and biological
discovery, as well as showing the general character of the operations
of the Institution; and, during the greater part of its history, this
purpose has been carried out largely by the publication of such papers
as would possess an interest to all attracted by scientific progress.
In 1880, induced in part by the discontinuance of an annual sum-
mary of progress which for 30 years previously had been issued by
well-known private publishing firms, the secretary had a series of
abstracts prepared by competent collaborators, showing concisely the
prominent features of recent scientific progress in astronomy, geol-
ogy, meteorology, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology,
and anthropology. This latter plan was continued, though not alto-
gether satisfactorily, down to and including the year 1888.
In the report for 1889 a return was made to the earlier method of
presenting a miscellaneous selection of papers (some of them origi-
nal) embracing a considerable range of scientific investigation and
discussion. This method has been continued in the present report
for 1929.
159
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THE PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE’
By Sir JamMes JEAns, Sec. R. S.
The ancients were for the most part content to regard the universe
as a theatre which had been specially constructed for the drama of
human life. Men, and even the gods that man had created in his
own image, came, lived, and disappeared after strutting their tiny
hour upon a stage to which the eternal hills and the unchanging
heavens formed a permanent background. While some thought
was given to the birth of the universe, and its creation or emergence
from chaos, very few thought of it as living its life and passing from
birth to death in the same way as a man or a tree passes from birth to
death.
In modern times the idea of secular change crept into the picture.
Geologists began to study the earth as a changing structure, and
astronomers to give thought to the evolution of the stars, recognizing
them as bodies which are born, live their lives of gradual change, and
finally die. But the ultimate constituents of the universe, the atoms,
were still supposed to be immune from change. The hypothesis
that all matter consisted of permanent, indivisible, and unchangeable
atoms, which had been advanced so far back as the fifth century
B. C. by Leucippus and Democritus, remained practically unshaken
until the end of the nineteenth century. The ageing of the universe
was supposed to amount to nothing more than a rearrangement of
indestructible units which were themselves incapable of any sort of
change or decay. Like a child’s box of wooden bricks, the atoms
made many buildings in turn.
ATOMIC CHANGES
Then Crookes, Lenard, and, above all, Sir J. J. Thomson, began
to break up the atom. The bricks of the universe which had been
deemed unbreakable for more than 2,000 years were suddenly shown
to be very susceptible to having fragments chipped off; a milestone
was reached in 1895, when Sir. J. J. Thomson showed that these
1 The first Henry Herbert Wills Memorial Lecture of the University of Bristol, delivered at the University
on Oct. 30. Reprinted by permission from Supplement to Nature, Nov. 3, 1928.
161
162 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
fragments were identical, no matter what type of atom they came
from; they were of equal mass, and they carried equal negative charges
of electricity, and so were called electrons. Two years later, Lorentz’s
explanation of the newly discovered Zeeman effect provided evidence
that the moving parts in atomic interiors were precisely similar
electrons.
The series of researches so initiated were, after a few years, coordi-
nated in the Rutherford view of atomic structure, which supposed the
chemical properties and nature of the atom to reside in an excessively
minute central nucleus carrying a positive charge of electricity,
about which the negatively charged electrons described wide orbits.
By clearing a space around the central nucleus, and so preventing other
atoms from coming too near, these electronic orbits gave size to the
atom. The volume of space kept clear by the electrons is enormously
greater than the total volume of the electrons; roughly, the ratio of
volumes is that of the battlefield to the bullets. The atom, with a
radius of about 2 107° cm., has about 100,000 times the dimensions,
and so about 10 times the volume, of a single electron, of which the
radius is about 2107 cm. In all probability the nucleus is even
smaller than the electrons. The number of orbital electrons in an
atom is called the atomic number of the atom; it ranges from unity in
hydrogen, the lightest and simplest of atoms, to 92 in uranium, which
is the most massive and complex atom known.
Simultaneously with this, physical science was discovering that
the nuclei themselves were neither permanent nor indestructible.
In 1896, Becquerel had found that uranium salts had the remark-
able property, as it then appeared, of spontaneously affecting pho-
tographic plates in their vicinity. This observation led to the dis-
covery of a new property of matter, namely, radioactivity, and all
the results obtained in the next few years were coordinated in the
hypothesis of spontaneous disintegration advanced by Rutherford
and Soddy in 1903, according to which radioactivity indicates a
spontaneous break-up of the atomic nuclei. So far from the atoms
being permanent and indestructible, their very nuclei were now seen
to crumble away with the mere lapse of time, so that what was once
the nucleus of a uranium atom was transformed, after sufficient time,
into the nucleus of a lead atom, and eight a-particles, which are the
nuclei of helium atoms. Radiation is given off in the process, the
radiation that affected Becquerel’s photographic plates, and so led
to the detection of the radioactive property of matter.
With the unimportant exceptions of potassium and rubidium, the
property of radioactivity occurs only in the most complex and mas-
sive of atoms, being indeed limited to those of atomic numbers above
83. Yet, although the lighter atoms are not liable to spontaneous
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 163
disintegration in the same way as the heavy radioactive atoms, the
nuclei of these also are of composite structure, and can be broken up
by artificial means. In 1920, Rutherford succeeded in breaking up
the nuclei of atoms of oxygen and nitrogen by bombarding them with
swiftly moving a-particles.
The success of this experiment led to the hypothesis, which has
not yet been established beyond all possibility of doubt, that the
whole universe is built up of only two kinds of ultimate bricks, namely,
electrons and protons. Each proton carries a positive charge which
is exactly equal in amount to the negative charge carried by an
electron. The protons are supposed to be identical with the nucleus
of the hydrogen atom; all other nuclei are supposed to consist of
closely packed structures of protons and electrons.
In addition to containing material electrons and protons, the atom
contains yet a third ingredient, namely, electromagnetic energy.
Modern electromagnetic theory shows that all radiation carries mass
about with it, one gram of mass being associated with 9 x 10” ergs or
2.15 X10 calories of radiation. As a*necessary consequence, any
substance which is emitting radiation must also be losing mass; the
spontaneous disintegration of any radioactive substance involves a
spontaneous decrease of weight. The ultimate fate of a gram of
uranium may be expressed by the equation:
0.8653 gm. lead.
1 gram uranium =j0.1345 gm. helium.
0.0002 gm. radiation.
Stated in a very general form, the phenomenon of radioactivity
may be described as a transformation of material mass into radiation
or, to put it slightly differently, as the liberation of radiation by the
destruction of material mass. Where 4,000 gm. of matter originally
existed, only 3,999 gm. now remain, the remaining gram having
gone off in the form of radiation.
Yet, the 3,999 gm. of lead and helium contain precisely the same
protons and electrons as the original 4,000 gm. of uranium; we may
then. say that the 4,000 gm. of uranium ‘consisted of these electrons
and protons together with 1 gm. of bottled-up electromagnetic
energy which has since escaped in the form of radiation.
So far as terrestrial experience goes, this dissolution of mass into
radiation is entirely a one-way process. Terrestrial rocks provide
abundant evidence of uranium having continuously broken up into
lead, helium, and radiation for the past thousand million years or more,
but there is no evidence of the converse process ever having occurred.
We must suppose that there is less uranium on earth to-day than there
was yesterday, and that by to-morrow there will be still less. As a
consequence, the earth each day radiates away a little more heat than
82322—30——12
164 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
it receives from the sun, and its mass continually diminishes. Accord-
ing to Jeffreys ? the outward flow of radiation just inside the earth’s
surface is about 1.9 X 10-° calorie per sq. cm. per second, all but about
13 per cent of which arises from radioactive disintegration of the sub- -
stance of the earth. We can calculate from this that radioactive dis-
integration causes the earth’s mass to diminish at the rate of rather
less than an ounce a minute; at this rate, terrestrial atoms are unbot-
tling their energy and pouring it into space in the form of radiation.
On earth at least the stream flows ever in the same direction; complex
atoms giving place to simple, and mass changing into radiation. It
is natural to ask whether a study of the physics of the universe reveals
these processes as part only of a closed cycle, so that the wastage
which we see in progress on earth is made good elsewhere. We stand
on the banks of a river and watch its current ever carrying water out
to sea, but we know that this water is in due course transformed into
clouds and rain which replenish the river. Is the physical universe a
similar cyclic system, or ought we rather to compare it to a stream
which, having no source of replenishment, must cease flowing after it
has spent itself? To answer these questions we must attempt first to
trace our terrestrial stream back to its source.
THE ORIGIN OF TERRESTRIAL RADIUM AND URANIUM
Radioactive atoms are of many kinds, but all have in common the
property of spontaneous disintegration. The period of time required
for this disintegration to occur varies enormously, some types of atoms
having long lives of thousands of millions of years, while others have
short lives of years, days, hours, or seconds, the most ephemeral of all
being actinium-A, with an average life of only 0.002 second. Let us
take uranium and radium as being typical of the two classes.
Spontaneous disintegration reduces any store of radium to half in
1,580 years, so that if a whole earth were built of pure radium only
a single atom would be left after a quarter of a million years. Since
the earth is many millions of years old, we may be confident that every
atom of radium now on earth was born on earth. Soddy, Boltwood,
and others have investigated the ancestry of radium. Its direct par-
ent is found to be ionium, and it traces its descent back through uran-
ium-X to uranium itself.
On the other hand, it takes 5,000,000,000 years for a store of
uranium to diminish to half. As the earth was born out of the sun some
2,000,000,000 years ago, the greater part of any uranium it may have
brought with it out of the sun would still be in existence. As we have
no evidence of any uranium being born on earth, and as no parent
substance is known out of which uranium could be born, it is reason-
2“ The Earth,” p. 83.
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 165
able to regard the earth’s present store of uranium as the remains of
a supply it originally brought out of the sun. An initial store of about
10° gm. would suffice.
This uranium can not have existed from all time for the average life
of a uranium atom is only about 7,000,000,000 years. How, then, did
it come into being? Was it created in the sun, or did the sun, like the
earth, start life with a supply which has continually diminished, and
is destined ultimately to vanish entirely?
The answer to this question must of course depend on the age we
assign to the sun, and an attempt to fix this takes us rather far afield.
THE AGES OF THE SUN AND STARS
In a classical paper published in 1878, Clerk Maxwell studied the
behavior of a gas whose molecules were supposed to be massive points
repelling one another with a force which varied inversely as the fifth
power of the distance. There was no possibility of direct collision,
since the molecules were supposed to be of infinitesimal size, but as
each molecule threaded its way through its fellows, pairs occasionally
approached so close as to influence one another’s motion much as a
direct collision would have done. At each such encounter a transfer
of energy took place, the general tendency being towards equalizing
energies: the molecule with the greater energy of motion was ever
being slowed down, and that with the lesser energy speeded up. If
the molecules were of different weights, their continued encounters
tended to bring about a state in which heavy and light molecules all
moved with the same energy, the lighter molecules making up for the
smallness of their mass by the rapidity of their motion.
It was no new discovery that the molecules of a gas tended to assume
such a state. This had been known for some years, but Maxwell’s
investigation gave a means of calculating the time required to bring
about this final state of equipartition of energy. Maxwell calculated
a time, which he called the time of relaxation, such that all deviations
from the final state of equipartition of energy were reduced to 1/e
(37 per cent) of their original value in this time. For ordinary air it is
found to be about a second.
10?
Maxwell’s massive points, repelling according to the inverse fifth
power of the distance, do not form a particularly good model of a gas,
but on changing the law of a force to an attraction varying as the
inverse square of the distance (the law of gravitation), we obtain an
absolutely realistic model of the stars, the diameter of the stars being
so small in comparison with their mean distances apart that the possi-
bility of direct collisions may be ignored entirely. Just as Maxwell
calculated the time of relaxation for his ideal gas, we can calculate it
166 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
for a collection of massive points, having the masses and mean dis-
tances of the stars and attracting according to the law of gravitation.
It proves to be of the order of millions of millions of years. After inter-
acting on one another for a certain number, then, of millions of millions
of years, the stars must attain to a final state of equipartition of energy
in which the average energy of all types of stars is the same, regardless
of their mass.
So far back as 1911, Halm had suspected an approximation to equal-
ity in the energies of massive and light stars, and suggested that the
velocities of the stars, like those of the molecules of a gas, might con-
form to the law of equipartition of energy. A more exhaustive inves-
tigation by Seares in 1922 showed the supposed approximation to be
real. Table I shows the average total velocity (C) obtained for stars
of different types having different mean masses.
Everywhere, except in its first two lines, the table reveals a marked
approximation to equality of energy of motion. The last 10 lines
show a range of 10 to 1 in mass, but the average deviation of energy
from the mean is only 9 percent. This equality of energy can only be
attributed to the gravitational interaction of the stars. For if it were
produced by any physical agency, such as pressure of radiation,
bombardment by molecules, atoms or high-speed electrons, this agency,
as the last column of the table shows, would have to be in thermody-
namical equilibrium with matter at a temperature of the order of
2x10” degrees. Since no such temperatures are known in nature,
we must conclude that the observed equality of energy is the result of
gravitational interactions extending over millions of millions of years.
The stars must, then, have an age of this order of magnitude.
Other lines of astronomical investigation lead to the same conclusion;
I will limit myself toone. A number of stars are ‘‘binary,”’ consisting
of two distinct masses which travel through space in double harness,
describing closed orbits about one another because neither can escape
from the gravitational hold of its companion. The single stars we
have just discussed may appropriately be compared to monatomic
molecules, but these binary stars must be compared to diatomic
molecules. Energy can reside in their orbital motion as well as in
their motion through space. Again we find that endless gravita-
tional encounters must result in equipartition of energy, both from
star to star and also between the different motions of which each
binary system is capable. Further, when this final state is reached,
the eccentricities of the elliptic orbits must be distributed over all
values from e=0 to e=1 in such a way that all values of e’ are equally
probable.
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 167
TaBLE I.—Equipartition of energy in stellar motions
M M Mean fone
ean mass, ean ve- sponding
Type of star M locity, C 1 MC? tempera-
ay ture
Spectral type: | °
Per IIe YWCAIR COs INRA ATTATe: | 19.8108 | 14.8X105| 1.9510] 1.0108
Ja iis Se ee ee Se as eee aero | 12.9 15.8 1. 62 0.8
EA ISS) BAS eRe EAS eS Ee eS 2. S332 12.1 24.5 3. 63 1.8
JAGR OSS LP See ee ee | 10.0 202 3. 72 1.8
PA eee ee een an Oe ees LEAS SRA ES OY ek 8.0 29.9 3.55 ey,
JON SOS WE Sa SF AEE OREO eee er eyes aan TOE 5.0 35.9 3. 24 1.6
NG OL fees Sales OPE 9 2 ae a a NS SL ei 3 eae aa 47.9 3. 65 Mey/
(CINE 3 Se ea es 2S 5 eS Ee eee ees. 1 20 64. 6 4.07 2.0
GBR Ee ee ee re eee oe ee eee ee ee AS 1.5 77.6 4. 57 Dae
LRG) eas SN Ee a eee ere ee ae 1.4 79.4 4. 27 2.1
SAG iy 3 Medan 2 RR dee wins Meee ee Tee DO BE Eo Ye 1.2 74.1 3.39 IE Ye
AG Vt REISS hoe ry as Oh See ae eee 1.2 77.6 3. 55 Lesh
This final law of distribution of eccentricity of orbit is independent
of the size of the orbit, but the time of relaxation which measures the
rate of approach to this final state is not. For the eccentricity of
orbit is a differential effect, arising from the difference of the gravita-
tional pulls of a passing star on the two components of the binary, and
when these components are close together the passing star can get no
erip on the orbit. For visual binaries, in which the components are
usually hundreds of millions of miles apart, the “time of relaxation’’ is
again millions of millions of years, but it is a hundred times as great as
this for the far more compact spectroscopic binaries.
The following table, compiled from material given by Aitken,
shows the observed distribution of eccentricities:
TasLe II].—The approach to equipartition of energy in binary orbits
Siam, | Obemret ec
aan F number o umber in
Eccentricity of orbit ai visual bi- | final state
aries naries
4
(1) 0) 01d eee DEC Se Bien 9 5 SN ge See a ee eee 78 U 6
COP HSNO sc ts ee eee 18 18 18
PASC OO: Gore nn eee eee ee eee eee ee oe 16 28 30
IWS RO Us eee eee Sete ee a ee eee ae 6 11 42
OS io i OLESE Ere. O08 8 ee be eee ee epee ne) Shes. seer oe 1 4 54
As we should anticipate, the spectroscopic binaries show no
approach to the final state; most of them retain the low eccentricity
of orbit with which they start life. The visual binaries show a good
approach up to an eccentricity of about 0.6, but not beyond. The
deficiency of orbits of high eccentricity may mean that gravitational
forces have not had sufficient time to produce the highest eccentricities
of all, but part, and perhaps all, of the deficiency must be ascribed to
the observational difficulty of detecting orbits of high eccentricity.
Clearly, however, the study both of orbital motions and of motions
through space points to gravitational action extending over millions
168 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of millions of years. In each case there is an exception to “ prove the
rule’. Inthe former case, it is provided by the spectroscopic binaries
which are so compact that their constituents can defy the pulling-
apart action of gravitation; in the latter case it is provided by the
B-type stars which are so massive, possibly also so young, that the
gravitational forces from lesser stars have not greatly affected their
motion.
This and other lines of evidence, when discussed in detail, agree in
suggesting that the general age of the stars is probably between five
and ten million million years. It may even be possible to fix the age
of the sun within the narrower limits of seven and eight million
million years.
THE ORIGIN OF SOLAR URANIUM ‘
We now have all the data for discussing the origin of the radioactive
atoms in the sun and stars. Thorium, the longest-lived of all radio-
active substances, is reduced to half its original amount after 15,000,-
000,000 years of spontaneous disintegration. A mass of pure thorium
equal to the sun (2 X 10** gm.) would be reduced to a single atom within
three million million years. For uranium, with a half-value period of
5,000,000,000 years, the corresponding time is less than a million
million years. When the earth was born the sun’s age was greater
than either of these times, so that the earth’s portion of radioactive
matter must have been generated during the sun’s life in the sun
itself.
The only possible escape from this conclusion would seem to lie in
the supposition that the lives of atoms of uranium and thorium are in
some way enormously prolonged by intense heat and fierce bombard-
ment such as occur in the sun’s interior. We can not absolutely rule
such a possibility out, but it is difficult to see any single consideration
which could be adduced in its favor from the side either of experi-
mental or of theoretical physics, and, in the present state of our
knowledge, it would seem reasonable to disregard it.
Assuming that these atoms were born in the sun, the problem of
the manner of their birth takes us to the very heart of present-day
theoretical physics.
Let us consider, in some detail, two processes which occur on
earth: The change of atomic make-up through a readjustment of
electrons, and the change of nuclear make-up through spontaneous
disintegration.
At first sight the two processes seem very dissimilar. The radio-
active transformation of the nucleus is spontaneous, in the sense
that nothing that we can do either expedites or hinders it. Each
atom of uranium carries its own future history written inside it. It
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 169
lives its appointed life serenely undisturbed by external accidents of
heat or pressure; when its hour strikes it will cease to exist as
uranium and will proceed to disintegrate into lead, helium, and
radiation. Its nucleus slips back to a state of lower energy, the lost
energy being put in evidence as emitted radiation. On the other hand
the change produced in ordinary atoms by electronic rearrangement
is extremely susceptible to external physical conditions. Every
spectroscopist knows how to chip off one, two, or even three electrons
from the atom at will. Nevertheless, as was first made clear in a
remarkable paper which Einstein published in 1917,° the difference
is merely one of degree and not of kind.
The electrons in an atom are free to move from one orbit to another,
and as the various possible orbits have different energies, the atom
constitutes, to some extent, a reservoir of energy. For example,
the hydrogen atom consists of a single proton as central nucleus,
and a single electron revolving round it. According to Bohr’s
theory, the electron can revolve in orbits whose diameters (or major
axes) are proportional to the squares of the natural numbers, 1, 4,
9, 16, 25, ... The differences of energy between the various
orbits are easily calculated; for example, the smallest two orbits
differ in energy by 16107" erg. If we add 16X10-” erg of energy
to an atom in which the electron is describing the smallest orbit of
all, it crosses over to the next orbit, absorbing the 16 x 10~” erg in the
process and so becoming temporarily a reservoir of energy holding
16x10-" erg. If the atom is disturbed, it may of course discharge
the energy at any time, or it may absorb still more energy and so
increase its store. But if it is left entirely undisturbed, the electron
must, after a certain time, lapse back spontaneously to its original
smaller orbit. If it were not so, Planck’s well-established law of
black-body radiation could not be true. In this process the atom
ejects 16X10-” erg of energy in the form of radiation and, as a
consequence, experiences a diminution of mass to the extent of
1.8<X10-” gm. Thus a collection of hydrogen atoms in which the
electrons describe orbits larger than the smallest possible is similar
to a collection of uranium atoms in that the atoms spontaneously
lapse back to their states of lower energy as a result merely of the
passage of time, losing mass and emitting radiation in the process.
We have spoken of adding 16 10-” erg of energy to a hydrogen
atom in its state of lowest energy. We can not of course do this
simply by pouring miscellaneous energy on the atom, and expecting
it to drink it up. The hydrogen atom only accepts energy which is
offered it in the form of radiation of precisely the right wave length;
it treats all other radiation with complete indifference. Every atom
3 Phys. Zeitsch., vol. 48, p. 122, 1917.
170 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
is selective in the sense in which a penny-in-the-slot machine is selec-
tive; if we pour radiation of the wrong frequency on to an atom we may
reproduce the comedy of the millionaire whose total wealth will not
procure him a box of matches because he has not a loose penny, or we
may reproduce the tragedy of the child who can not obtain a slab of
chocolate because its hoarded wealth consists of farthings and half-
pence, but we shall not disturb the hydrogen atom.
This selective action of the atom on radiation is put in evidence in
a variety of ways, but is perhups most simply shown in the spectra of
the stars. Light of all wave lengths streams out from the hot interior
of a star and bombards the atoms which form its atmosphere. These
atoms drink up that radiation which is of precisely the right wave
length, but have no interaction of any kind with the rest, with the
result that the radiation which is finally emitted from the star is
deficient in just these particular wave lengths. This is shown by the
star showing an absorption spectrum of fine lines. As the atoms in the
star’s atmosphere absorb this radiation they move to orbits of higher
energy, but in course of time they lapse back to their old orbits, and
in doing so emit energy in the form of radiation of precisely these same
wave lengths. This does not, as might at first be thought, exactly
neutralize the absorption of radiation, because the absorbed radiation
was all traveling outwards, whereas the emitted radiation travels in
all directions at random. Thus, if we view the atmosphere tangen-
tially, as we can do with the sun’s atmosphere at a total eclipse, we
observe the same spectrum, no longer as an absorption but as an
emission spectrum; it no longer consists of dark, but of bright lines—
the ‘‘flash”’ spectrum.
Any atom, or indeed any other electrical structure, will select the
radiation of suitable wave length from all the radiation which falls on
it, and use the energy of this radiation in rearranging its electron
orbits. The amount of energy e that the atom absorbs is connected
with the wave length \ of the radiation by the quantum relation
e\=hC, where h is Planck’s constant (6.55 X 10-* erg sec.), and C
is the velocity of light. The quantity ¢ of energy given by this relation
is called the “quantum” of light of wave length \, and the wave lengths
of the radiation which any electrical structure selects are determined
by the condition that the corresponding quantum of energy shall
just suffice to shift its electrons from one orbit to another. Radiation
will also be absorbed if its quantum provide sufficient energy to tear
the electron out of the atom altogether, and set it traveling through
space as a tree electron. All radiation of which the wave length is
less than a certain critical limit fulfils this latter condition.
The more compact an electrical structure is, the greater the energy
necessary to disturb it; and the greater the quantum of energy e,
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 171
the shorter the wave length of the corresponding radiation. It follows
that a very compact structure can only be disturbed by radiation of
very short wave length.
As a rough working guide we may say that any structure will only
be disturbed by radiation whose wave length is less than 860 times the
dimensions of the structure. The energy needed to separate two
electric charges +¢ and —e, at a distance r apart, is e?/r, and, in general,
the energy needed to rearrange or break up a structure of electrons
and protons of linear dimensions 7 will be comparable with this.
If \ is the wave length of the requisite radiation, the energy made
available by the absorption of this radiation is the quantum AC/X.
Combining this with the circumstance that the value of h is very
approximately 860 ¢?/C, we find that the requisite wave length of
radiation is about 860 times the dimensions of the structure to be
broken up. In brief, the reason why blue light affects photographic
plates, while red light does not, is that the wave length of blue light is
less, and that of red light is greater, than 860 times the diameter of
the molecule of silver nitrate; we must get below the 860-limit before
anything begins to happen.
The wave length of the light emitted by an atom when it dis-
charges its reservoir of energy is precisely the same as that of the
light absorbed when it originally stored up this energy, for as the
two quanta of energy are the same, the corresponding wave lengths
are the same. It follows that the light emitted by any electrical
structure will have a wave length of about 860 times the dimensions
of the structure. For example, ordinary visible light has a wave
length equal to about 860 atomic diameters.
Atomic nuclei, like the atoms themselves, are structures of positive
and negative electrical charges, and so ought to behave similarly
with respect to the radiation falling uponthem. The radiation which
the atomic nuclei emit, and consequently also that which they are
prepared to absorb, is, however, of far shorter wave length than
that emitted or absorbed by complete atoms. Ellis and others have
found, for example, that the radiation which is emitted during the
disintegration of radium-B has wave lengths of 3.52, 4.20, 4.80,
5.13, and 23 X 10-"cm. These wave lengths are only about a hun-
dred-thousandth part of those of visible light. The reason is, of
course, that the nucleus has only about a hundred-thousandth part
the dimensions of the atom.
Since the wave length of the radiation absorbed or emitted by an
atom is inversely proportional to the quantum of energy, it follows
that the quantum of energy needed to work the atomic nucleus is
about 100,000 times as great as that needed to work the atom. If
172 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
we compare the hydrogen atom to a penny-in-the-slot machine, nothing
less than 500-pound notes will work the radioactive nuclei.
Yet radiation of the wave lengths just mentioned ought to be just
as effective in rearranging the nucleus of radium-B as that of the
longer wave length is effective in rearranging the hydrogen atom.
At least such radiation ought to precipitate the disintegration of
radium-B. Whether it could ever be effective in forming radium-B
out of radium-C and atoms of helium (or a- and @-particles) is a
somewhat different question; possibly other conditions of which
nothing is known must be fulfilled in addition to the presence of
radiation of the appropriate wave length.
Probably also the radioactive nuclei, like those of nitrogen and
oxygen, could be broken up by a sufficiently intense bombardment,
although the experimental evidence on this point is not very definite.
If so, each bombarding particle would have to bring to the attack
energy equal at least to that of one quantum of the radiation in
question, and this requires it to move with an enormously high
velocity.
In passing, we may notice that processes of the general type we
have just been discussing form the hope of those modern alchemists
who aspire to obtain gold by the transmutation of other metals. In
its widest form, their ambition is to combine the electrons and protons
of base metals with the third atomic ingredient, namely, electromag-
netic energy, so as to form atoms of gold. Any success they may
achieve will probably result in a gain of knowledge to abstract science
rather than of wealth to themselves, since one of the ingredients they
must necessarily use, namely, energy or radiation, is so expensive as
to render the final product excessively costly. It would need at least
an appreciable fraction of an ounce of energy to produce an ounce of
gold, and with electric power at even a farthing per unit, energy
and radiation cost 11,000,000 pounds per ounce. Whatever the
gold standard may have to fear on the political side, it would appear
to be thoroughly impregnable on the side of physics and chem-
istry.
Every wave length of radiation has a definite temperature associated
with it, namely, the temperature at which radiation of this particular
wave length is most abundant. We recognize this when we speak of
a red heat or a white heat, and, although we do not do so, we might
quite legitimately speak in the same way of an ultra-violet heat or an
X-ray heat. The wave length and the associated temperature are
connected through the well-known relation:
AT =0.2885 cm. degree
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 173
When this particular temperature begins to be approached, but not
before, radiation of the wave length in question becomes abundant;
at temperatures well below this it is quite inappreciable.
We have seen that radiation of short wave length is needed to break
up an electric structure of small dimensions, and as we now see that
short wave lengths are associated with high temperatures, it appears
that the smaller a structure is, the greater the heat needed to break it
up. Oncombining the relation just given between 7 and ) with that
implied in the rough law of the ‘‘860 limit,” it appears that a structure
of dimensions 7 cm. will begin to be broken up by temperature radia-
tion when the temperature first approaches 1/3000r. Atoms, for
example, whose general dimensions are of the order of 10~§ cm., begin
to be broken up when the temperature approaches 30,000°; nuclei,
whose general dimensions are of the order of 10~' em., must remain
unaffected until the temperature approaches 3,000,000,000°.
To take a more precise instance, yellow light of wave length 6000A
is specially associated with the temperature 4,800°. At temperatures
well below this there is no yellow light except such as is artificially
created. Stars, and all other bodies, at a temperature of about
4,800°, are of a yellowish color and show lines in the yellow region of
their spectrum. These lines occur because yellow light removes the
outermost electron from the atoms of calcium and similar elements.
When a temperature of 4,800° begins to be approached, but not before,
rearrangements of the electrons in the calcium atom begin to occur.
This temperature is not approached on earth (except in the electric
are and other artificial conditions) so that terrestrial calcium atoms in
general are at rest in their states of lowest energy. Einstein’s paper
of 1917 showed it to be a necessary deduction from Planck’s law of
black-body radiation that a collection of calcium atoms in other states
would behave precisely like atoms of radioactive substances to the
extent of spontaneously slipping back to states of lower energy.
Just as calcium atoms in the cool temperatures of the earth simulate
the behavior of radioactive atoms, so radioactive nuclei, if raised to a
sufficiently high temperature, would simulate the behavior of calcium
atoms in the hot atmosphere of a star. The shortest wave length of
radiation emitted in the transformation of uranium is about 0.5 X
10- cm., and this corresponds to a temperature of 5,800,000,000°.
When some such temperaiure begins to be approached, but not before,
the constituents of the radioactive nuclei begin to rearrange themselves
just as the constituents of the calcium atom do when a temperature of
4,800° is approached.
We must probably suppose that rearrangements can also be effected
by bombarding the electric structure with material particles. If so,
174 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the temperature at which bombardment by electrons, nuclei, or mole-
cules would first begin to be effective is precisely the same as that at
which radiation of the effective wave length would first begin to be
appreciable; the two processes begin at the same temperature.
TasBLE III.—The mechanical effects of radiation
Wave lengths (cm.) Natureot Effect on atom Temper a 5 (degrees Where found
7,500 X10-8 to 3,750X10-8_| V.siblelight_| Disturbs outermost | 3,850 to 7,700_____------_- Stellar atmos-
electrons. pheres.
2D0<10-2tonl0 Bs eraysene-— Disturbs inner elec- | 115,000 to 29,000,000______ Stellar interiors.
trons.
OORT Corl Og) eee ee Soft y rays__| Strip off allornearly | 58,000,000 to 290,000,000__| Central regions
all electrons. of dense stars.
41 Opts. Sew oe La y rays of ra-| Disturbs nuclear ar- | 720,000,000_________-_____
dium-B. rangement.
OAT Ot rte. . enas 23 2 hardest iq) bicw= tts We i) wea ean ae 5,800; 000:00022 es ee
rays.
BB GOR 19 4 Pee (eee ee Building of helium | 64,000,000,000____________
atom out of hydro-
gen.
ZT Oat Sa ee ek OFT Highly-pene-| Disintegrates nuclei_| 150,000,000,000___________
trating ra-
diation.
W3rCUO rie se (cone Annihilation or crea-| 2,300,000,000,000____..-
tion of proton and
accompanying elec-
tron.
1 See added item on p. 179.
We have seen, then, that the apparent difference between the behav-
ior of the calcium atom and of the uranium nucleus reduces, in theory,
to a mere difference of temperature, although in practice the difference
is all the difference between 5,000° and 5,000,000,000°. The lower
temperature is approached or exceeded in the atmospheres of most
stars, so that the calcium atom is continually rearranging itself in
these atmospheres, as is shown by the presence of the H and K lines
of calcium in most stellar spectra. It is unlikely that the higher tem-
perature is approached anywhere in the universe, although exceptions,
arising from our ignorance rather than our knowledge, must possibly
be made in favor of the centers of certain ‘“‘white-dwarf” stars and
of the spiral nebule. Apart from these, no place is known hot enough
to have any appreciable effect on the transformation, either by syn-
thesis or by disintegration, of the radioactive elements, and we must
conclude that they behave everywhere in the same spontaneous fatal-
istic way that they do on earth; nowhere is there sufficiently intense
heat to cause them to vary their conduct.
Thus solar uranium, which, as we have already seen, must have been
born in the sun, can scarcely have been born out of the synthesis of
lighter elements, and so must have criginated out of the disintegration
of heavier elements. The position with respect to solar uranium is
precisely analogous to that we have already reached in respect of
terrestrial radium, but there is the outstanding difference that we
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 175
know the ancestry of terrestrial radium, whereas we do not know that
of solar uranium. But ancestry there must be, so that we are led
directly to the conjecture that the sun must have contained, and pre-
sumably must still contain, atoms of atomic weight greater than that
of uranium; astronomical evidence leads independently to the same
conclusion. We are led to contemplate terrestrial uranium merely as
the present generation of an ancestry that extends we know not how
_far back. The complete series of chemical elements contains elements
of greater atomic weight than uranium, but all such have, to the best
of our knowledge, vanished from the earth, as uranium also is destined
to do in time.
Table III above shows the wave lengths of the radiation necessary
to effect various atomic transformations. The last two columns show
the corresponding temperatures, and the places, so far as we know,
where this temperature is to be found. In places where the temper-
ature is far below that mentioned in the last column but one, the trans-
formation in question can not be affected by heat, and so can only
occur spontaneously. Thus it is entirely a one-way process. The
available radiation Js not of the right wave length to work the atomic
slot machine, so that the atoms, absorbing no energy from the sur-
rounding radiation, are continually slipping back into states of lower
energy, if such exist; they continually transform their mass into radia-
tion, while the converse transformation of radiation into mass can
not occur.
For the sake of completeness, the table has been extended so as to
include certain other phenomena, not so far discussed, to which we
now turn.
THE ANNIHILATION OF MATTER
Every square centimeter of the sun’s surface discharges radiation
out into space at the rate of about 1,500 calories a second, from which
we can calculate that the sun’s total mass is diminishing at about
250,000,000 tons a minute. Whereas the flow of mass from the earth’s
surface, a total loss of about an ounce a minute, is about equal to the
flow of water from a dripping tap, the flow of mass from the sun’s sur-
face is about 650 times the flow of water over Niagara. Many stars
lose mass even more rapidly; S. Doradus loses mass at the rate of about
200,000,000 Niagaras. The earth’s loss of mass is readily explained
in terms of radioactive disintegration, but this fails entirely to explain
the enormously greater loss experienced by the sun. Furthermore,
the earth’s loss of mass is probably, replaced many times over by falls
of meteors and cosmic dust, but no one has ever suspected or suggested
any source of replenishment of the masses of the sun and stars which
is at all comparable with their known loss.
176 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Thus the sun’s loss of mass is cumulative and has in all probability
gone on at its present, or at an even greater, rate throughout the
whole of its vast age of some seven million million years. Indeed,
astronomical evidence makes it fairly certain that younger stars
radiate more energetically than older stars. When allowance is
made for this, it is found that the sun must have radiated many
times its present mass during its life of seven million million years;
it must have been many times as massive at birth as it is now, and of
every ton it originally contained only a few hundredweight remain
to-day. Since no form of radioactive disintegration with which
we are acquainted results in such a diminution of mass as this, we
are forced to suppose that something still more fundamental is respon-
sible for the sun’s diminution of mass and emission of radiation.
Of each thousand atoms that the sun contained at its birth only a
few dozen remain to-day, and we can only conclude that all the rest
have been annihilated and their mass set free in the form of radiation.
This transformation of atoms into radiation, although unknown to
terrestrial physics, must clearly be one of the fundamental physical
processes of the universe. .
THE UNIVERSE AS A HEAT-ENGINE
General thermodynamical theory shows that every natural system
tends to move toward a final state of maximum entropy by steps
such that, statistically speaking, the entropy imcreases with every
step. In calculating this entropy, classical thermodynamics regarded
the chemical atoms as indivisible, indestructible, and immutible;
the system consisted merely of permanent atoms and energy, and
maximum entropy was attained when this energy was partitioned
between the kinetic and potential energies of the atoms and the energy
of radiation traveling freely through space, in such a way that no
possible redistribution could make the entropy greater.
Modern knowledge shows this scheme of thermodynamics to be
totally inadequate. So far from atoms being the eternal unchange-
able bricks of the universe, modern science finds them subject not
only to constant change, but also to total destruction. Not only do
their nuclei change their retinue of attendant electrons, but they them-
selves both crumble away into simpler nuclei, and dissolve entirely
into radiation. Furthermore, energy can reside in other forms than
those just enumerated; it can be used, stored, and transformed in
changing electron orbits inside the atom, in breaking up atoms,
in rearranging and breaking up the atomic nuclei and so transmuting
the elements; it can be liberated by the complete annihilation of mat-
ter. Neither total energy nor total mass is any longer constant; the
conservation both of mass and of energy has disappeared from
physics, and only a kind of sum of the two is conserved.
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 177
THE END OF THE UNIVERSE
The final state of the universe must be such that the entropy can
not be increased even by transmuting the elements or changing atoms
into radiation. It could, of course, be calculated readily enough
if the necessary new and enlarged scheme of thermodynamics were
available, but competing schemes are in the field. The Bose-Ein-
stein scheme leads to one result, the Fermi-Dirac scheme to another;
the results on both schemes have been worked out by Jordan.‘
The two schemes lead to the same result in one particular limiting
case, and this limiting case happens to give a wonderfully close ap-
proximation to the state of the universe asa whole. The limiting case
is that in which space is almost empty of matter, a specification
which sounds like nonsense until we find some common standard by
which an amount of matter may be compared with an amount of
space. If we measure an amount of matter by the amount of space
it occupies, then the “‘emptiness”’ of space is one of the commonplaces
both of modern physics and of modern astronomy. It is not merely
a question of the emptiness of the atom, which has already been no-
ticed. Hubble® has estimated that if all the matter within about
100,000,000 light-years of the sun were uniformly spread out, it
would have a mean density of the order of only about 107*! gm. per
cubic centimeter, so that even the very empty atoms would be at
several thousand million times their diameters apart.
We can express this emptiness of space in a more fundamental
manner. The energy set free by the total annihilation of 1 gm.
of matter is equal to C? or 9X10” ergs, so that the total annihila-
tion of all the matter of the universe, assuming an average density
of 10-*! gm. per cubic centimeter, would only provide an energy-
density of 9X10-" ergs per cubic centimeter, which would raise
the temperature of space from absolute zero to about 10° abs. The
emptiness of space is indicated by the lowness of this temperature
in comparison with the temperatures, as shown in Table III, which
are necessary to effect atomic and subatomic changes. If we make
the approximation of neglecting 10° in comparison with the temper-
ature of 2,200,000,000,000° which corresponds to the annihilation
or creation of electrons and protons, the various schemes of statis-
tical mechanics give the same result for the number of electrons and
protons left undissolved into radiation. Independently of the size
of the universe, the dominating factor in this number is e ”°!”7;
and as the index of the exponential is the ratio of the two tempera-
tures just considered, the number is entirely negligible. Thus the
final state of maximum entropy is one in which every atom has
4 Zeitsch. f. Physik., 41, 711; 1927.
5 Astrophys. Journ., 64, 368; 1926.
178 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
dissolved away into radiation, or at least every atom which is capable
of so doing. This conclusion must, I think, be admitted quite
independently of any particular scheme of statistical mechanics.
The approximation that space is empty may be stated in the alter-
native form that the extent of space is enormously great; space,
regarded as a receptacle for radiant energy, isa bottomless pit. In the
terminology of the older mechanics, space has so many degrees of
freedom that there can be no thermodynamical equilibrium so long
as any energy is concentrated in matter. In more modern language,
there are so many phase-cells associated with detached radiation,
that the chance of any energy being found elsewhere is negligible.
The road by which the universe travels to this final state is dis-
closed by Table III. The last column is seen to contain entries
only in its upper half; the temperatures necessary to effect the
processes dealt with in lower half of the table are so high that, to
the best of our knowledge, they are not to be found anywhere in
the universe. When these latter processes occur, then, they are
everywhere spontaneous; they are unaffected by the actual tem-
peratures, and so absorb no radiation. Thus, the transformation,
‘‘mass —-—> radiation,’’ occurs everywhere, and the reverse transforma-
tion nowhere. There can be no creation of matter out of radiation,
and no reconstruction of radio-active atoms which have once broken
up. The fabric of the universe weathers, crumbles, and dissolves
with age, and no restoration or reconstruction is possible. The
second law of thermodynamics compels the material universe to move
ever in the same direction along the same road, a road which ends
only in death and annihilation.
THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE
The end of this road is more easily disconcerned than its beginning.
The atoms which are now annihilating themselves to provide the
light and heat of the stars clearly can not have existed as atoms
from all time; they must have begun to exist at some time not infinite-
ly remote, and this leads us to contemplate a definite event, or series
of events, or continuous process, of creation of matter. If we want
a naturalistic interpretation of this creation, we may imagine radiant
energy of any wave length less than 1.3X10-" cm. being poured
into empty space; such radiation might conceivably crystallize into
electrons and protons, and finally form atoms. If we want a con-
crete picture, we may think of the finger of God agitating the ether.
We may avoid this sort of crude imagery by insisting on space, time,
and matter being treated together and inseparably as a single system,
so that it becomes meaningless to speak of space and time as existing
at all before matter existed. Such a view is consonant not only
with ancient metaphysical theories, but also with the modern theory
of relativity. The universe becomes a finite picture whose dimen-
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 179
sions are a certain amount of space and a certain amount of time;
the protons and electrons are the streaks of paint which define the
picture against its space-time background. Traveling as far back
in time as we can brings us not to the creation of the picture, but
to its edge, and the origin of the picture lies as much outside the pic-
ture as the artist is outside his canvas. On this view, discussing
the creation of the universe in terms of time and space is like trying
to discover the artist and the action of painting by going to the
edge of the picture. This brings us very near to those philosophical
systems which regard the universe as a thought in the mind of its
Creator, and so reduce all discussion of material creation to futility.
Both these points of view are impregnable, but so also is that of
the plain man who, recognizing that it is impossible for the human
mind to comprehend the full plan of the universe, decides that his
own efforts shall stop this side of the creation of matter.
ATOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS
The transformation of uranium into lead and helium involves a
drop of energy, but in the lighter elements the energy-change is in
the reverse direction. Four atoms of hydrogen are more, not less,
massive than an atom of helium, so that their energy-content is
ereater. Thus helium can never disintegrate spontaneously into
hydrogen, although four atoms of hydrogen might spontaneously
unite to form an atom of helium. They could not unite other than
spontaneously, except possibly as a rare accident, since the tempera-
ture of transformation, 64,000,000,000°, is higher than occurs in the
universe. Whether they ever unite even spontaneously remains an
open question on which opinions differ. Millikan at one time
suggested this process as the origin of the highly penetrating radiation
which bombards the earth from outer space, but recent observations
rule this interpretation out; the observed wave length of the radiation
is too short, so that the radiation must originate in something more
fundamental even than the transformation of hydrogen into helium.
Whether any such process can be found, short of the complete
annihilation of matter, remains to be seen; personally, I feel doubtful:
[Added October 7, 1929. Since the foregoing was written, Klein and Nishina
have worked out a very complete mathematical theory of the absorption of
radiation. According to this theory, the observed absorption of the highly-
penetrating radiation indicates a wave-length of almost exactly 1.310—¥® cms.
for its most penetrating part. Thus this part, at least, would seem to originate
directly in the annihilation of protons and their accompanying electrons.]
[Added January 29, 1930. The theory of Klein and Nishina has now been tested
by Gray, Stoner and others, and is found to fit observation almost exactly. In
view of this, it is exceedingly difficult to attribute the most penetrating radiation
to any other source than annihilation of protons and electrons.]
Millikan has recently suggested that this radiation may result
from electrons and protons falling together and forming atoms in
82322—30—_13
180 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
regions outside the stars. As a collection of oppositely charged
particles could not remain uncombined for long, he postulates a
continual creation of protons and electrons out of the stray radiation
of the stars; matter is continually being annihilated in the interior
of the stars, and re-created outside them. This gives a cyclic universe
which might go on for ever.
Like all other cyclic universes, however, it clashes with the second
law of thermodynamics. A universe which is not in a state of
Maximum entropy moves irreversibly along the path of increasing
entropy and so can not be cyclic; one which is already in such a
state must be macroscopically dead, and so can not be cyclic in any
sense perceptible to us. Indeed, it is easy to find the exact spot at
which Millikan’s concept comes into confiict with the second law of
thermodynamics; it is that we can not have protons and electrons
transformed into radiation at a high temperature and then have the
process reversed at a lower temperature.
Some may not regard this as a fatal objection to the scheme in
question. All our discussion has been based on the supposition
that the laws of physics remain valid at enormously high tempera-
tures and under conditions entirely outside our experience. Conse-
quently, all our conclusions can be avoided, and everything can be
put back in the melting pot, by the single hypothesis that the laws
which govern matter out in space differ from those which govern
matter on earth. Yet we have only found it necessary to assume the
simplest and most fundamental of physical laws, namely, the second
law of thermodynamics and the broad general principles of the
quantum theory; and it is hard to imagine that such wide laws fail
outside our laboratories. The obvious path of scientific progress
would seem to lie in the direction of inquiring what consequences are
involved in supposing these laws to be of universal scope, and then
testing these consequences against the ascertained facts of observa-
tional astronomy. So far as present indications go, astronomy, so far
from challenging these consequences, goes half-way out to meet them.
. Apart from transitory rearrangements of atomic electrons, the
fundamental changes in atoms consist in transitions to states of lower
energy. Under the classical electrodynamics, an electron describing
a circular orbit of radius r about a charge F lost energy at a rate
3, °a2C/r* (Larmor’s formula), and this caused the radius r to decrease
at a calculable rate; the charges inevitably and spontaneously fell
towards one another. The quantum mechanics replaced this steady
fall by a sequence of sudden drops, but according to Bohr’s corres-
pondence principle the rate of fall remains statistically the same, at
any rate so long as the orbits are large, as on the classical electro-
dynamics; that is to say, the sum of the radii of the orbits of a whole
crowd of atoms decreases through spontaneous jumps at just the same
PHYSICS OF THE UNIVERSE—JEANS 181
rate as though their motion was governed by the old mechanics. The
spontaneous degradation of energy we have had under consideration
is now seen to be the natural extension into quantum territory of that
implied in Larmor’s classical formula. Had it not been for this de-
gradation of energy, the atoms would have been perpetual motion
machines; Larmor’s formula prohibited that. The quantum theory
seemed at first to remove the prohibition and reconstitute the atom a
perpetual motion machine. Then came Einstein’s famous paper of
1917, which made it clear that even under the quantum theory per-
petual motion was banned; spontaneous degradation of energy was
shown to be implied in Planck’s formula for black-body radiation.
Once again, then, perpetual motion disappears from physics, aad the
grit in the bearings, which ultimately brings the machine to rest, is the
natural quantum theory analogue of that which would have brought
the machine to rest in the classical electrodynamics. Long ago we
used to call it the interaction between matter and ether.
There appears to be one exception. The classical electrodynamics
ruled out perpetual motion machines entirely. The new physics also
rules them out, but permits the conspicuous exception of atoms in
their state of lowest energy; these can go on in perpetual motion to
all eternity, because there is no state of lower energy to which they
can drop.
Is this exception real or is it only apparent? In a sense a state of
still lower energy is reached when the electric charges, let us say of
the hydrogen atom, fall into one another and the atom dissolves into
radiation. We could remove the apparent exception from the new
physics, and dismiss perpetual motion machines entirely from science,
by supposing that after moving for a certain very long time in its
state of lowest energy the hydrogen atom dissolved spontaneously
into radiation. This might be dismissed as mere idle speculation were
it not that the most fundamental physical process in the universe as
a whole appears to be precisely this spontaneous dissolution of atoms
into radiation.
If this kind of spontaneous dissolution should prove to be the true
mechanism of the transformation of astronomical matter into radia-
tion, then clearly bare nuclei and free electrons must be free from
annihilation. ‘Thus the conjecture may claim some support from the
circumstance that the ‘‘white dwarf” stars, in which the atoms are
broken up completely, or almost completely, into their constituent
nuclei and electrons, emit exceedingly little radiation; their sub-
stance would seem to be immune from annihilation. If the conjec-
ture should ultimately prove its claim to acceptance, the main physical
processes of the universe could all be included in one comprehensive
generalization, and the speck of radium which we watch in the spin-
thariscope would symbolize all the happenings of the physics of the
universe.
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COUNTING THE STARS AND SOME CONCLUSIONS!
By Freprrick H. SEARES
Assistant Director, Mount Wilson Observatory, Carnegie Institution of Washington
[With 4 plates]
I
INTRODUCTION
Counting stars is not unlike counting people or sheep or pebbles on
the seashore. The astronomer’s difficulties are not in the counting,
but rather in knowing when the counting must start and stop. With
patience these difficulties may be overcome, but the conclusions to be
drawn from the numbers of stars counted are a more delicate mat-
ter; some are indisputable, others less certain, still others highly
speculative.
First of all, we are concerned with a census of the sky; and just as
the census taker enumerates people in different ways—according to
residence, race, occupation, for example—so the astronomer may
count his stars differently; but, whatever the manner of counting, it
has always the purpose of learning how the stars are scattered through-
out space and how the great system which they form is constructed.
To keep clear of complexities and survey only the broad struc-
tural features of the system, he counts, at the start, in only two ways;
to learn fundamental things, he considers characteristics which them-
selves are fundamentally different. At first, therefore, he observes
only the direction of a star in the sky and its brightness as seen with
the telescope. All other features in which stars differ, such as size,
color, mass, motion, are left for subsequent study. It is as though
the census taker were to count people according to their ages and the
places in which they live, disregarding all other possible groupings,
such as height, race, and occupation.
1 Reprinted by permission, with minor changes, from Publications of the Astronomical Society of the
Pacific, vol. 40, pp. 303-331, 1928. An address delivered before the Pacific Division of the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science, at the Pomona meeting, June 14, 1928. A detailed account of the
investigations here described, which were undertaken in part with the cooperation and assistance of Prof.
P.J. van Rhijn of the Kapteyn Astronomical Laboratory at Groningen, and of Miss Mary Joyner and
Miss Myrtle Richmond of the computing division of the Mount Wilson Observatory, may be found in Mt.
Wilson Contributions, Nos. 301, 346, and 347.
183
184 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The sky has no naturally marked boundaries within which the stars
may be counted and intercompared; but as far as direction is con-
cerned, it is easy to find how many stars there are, say per square
degree of the sky, in different parts of the heavens. The counting
of stars according to brightness, however, is another matter.
The practical difficulty, as already stated, lies in recognizing the
limits of brightness within which the stars are to be counted. To
overcome this, a scale of brightness is required, with which individual
stars may be matched to determine their light; for example, a sequence
of stars, progressing by known steps, from the most brilliant in the sky
to the faintest seen in our telescopes. Whatever the procedure
adopted, it is essential that the unit of measurement be known in terms
of the intensity of star light, because the intensity of the light re-
ceived by the eye depends partly on the distances of the stars, and
distances we wish very much to know. Initially, no such scale
existed, and one had to be constructed.
The earliest records of the brightness of stars, which go back 1,800
years to the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy, represent rough eye
estimates, expressed in a unit called a magnitude. To the brightest
stars Ptolemy assigned the first magnitude; to those just visible to the
unaided eye, the sixth magnitude; and to stars of intermediate bright-
ness, magnitudes 2,3,4,and 5. When the invention of the telescope
brought fainter stars into view, Ptolemy’s scale was extended, still by
simple eye estimates. Atlength, about a century ago, instruments for
measuring the intensity of a star’s light were devised, and then for
the first time the physical equivalent of the unit of magnitude became
clear. At this point it must be noted that magnitude is a measure
of visual sensation—a very different thing from the intensity of the
light which produces the sensation. On measurement it turned out
that the intensity of Ptolemy’s first-magnitude stars was about one
hundred times that of stars of the sixth magnitude, and for conven-
ience the simple relation thus approximately satisfied by Ptolemy’s
magnitudes was adopted as a precise definition of the unit of magni-
tude. As now used, therefore, the unit is such that a difference of five
magnitudes corresponds exactly to a ratio of 100 to 1 in the intensities,
whence a difference in brightness of one magnitude is equivalent to an
intensity ratio of 2.512. A further detail is the beginning, or zero
point of the scale of magnitudes, which must be the same everywhere
in the sky, if the measures of brightness in different parts of the heay-
ens are to be comparable. Again for convenience, the zero point
adopted was such that the precisely defined magnitudes agree as
closely as possible with the old values obtained by eye estimates.
Note now how this definition applies to faint stars. It means that
a sixth-magnitude star is one hundred times as intense as one of the
eleventh magnitude, and hence, that the first-magnitude star, as
COUNTING THE STARS—SEARES 185
compared with the eleventh, is 100100 or 10,000 times as intense;
if we extend the scale downward another 10 magnitudes, which brings
us to the practicable working limit of large modern telescopes, the
intensity ratio takes on another factor of 10,000, and we have for the
interval of 20 magnitudes a ratio of 100,000,000 to 1. The light of
a first-magnitude star is thus 100,000,000 times as intense as that of a
star of the twenty-first magnitude. The numbers involved are to
each other about as the distance separating California from New
York is to a length of two inches.
The construction of the magnitude scale therefore requires the
ultimate comparison of sources of light differimg by an enormous
ratio; in part, the undertaking is analogous to finding how many
times a length of two inches is contained in a distance of about 3,000
miles, without having even a foot rule or an engineer’s chain to start
the measurement. Actually the photometric probleni is far the more
troublesome, for the unavoidable error in measuring the intensity of
a light is much greater, proportionally, than that involved in measur-
ing a length. Indeed it is so much the more difficult that, although
the concept and definition of the magnitude scale have been clear
enough for many years, it is only recently that some approach to
practical realization has been made in the attempt to fix standard
limits of brightness within which the stars may be counted.
Before turning to the results of counting, the impossibility of
counting all the stars must be noted. The whole sky over, about
6,000 stars may be seen without a telescope; but among the fainter
stars the numbers run into millions and hundreds of millions. For
these even the simplest enumeration would be impossible, whereas
much more than simple enumeration is required. In order to specify
the group with which any star is to be counted, the scale of magni-
tudes must be applied to the star to measure its brightness, much as a
‘yardstick might be applied to a man to determine his height. Only
when this has been done can it be said that the star belongs with those
whose magnitudes are between, say, 10.0 and 10.5. But measure-
ments of brightness take time. At Potsdam Miiller and Kempf
spent 19 years in deriving the magnitudes of 14,000 stars. At Mount
Wilson we have measured some 70,000 stars; but even with modern
photographic methods, the labor involved represents the continuous
occupation of several people for a number of years.
To avoid a task that could never be ended, we follow the plan first
used for the star gauges of the Herschels and count only stars in
representative regions of the sky. We deal with samples of stars,
just as the census taker, if pressed for time, might count the inhabit-
ants of only every other block, or perhaps of every fifth block, of a
great city like New York, and still arrive at useful conclusions about
the population of the city as a whole. In any such restriction of
186 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the counting the samples must really represent the whole, a condition
satisfied in practice by counting regions uniformly distributed over
the sky, and, by using areas that are not too small. In general,
much smaller areas may be used in counting faint stars than for stars
of moderate brightness. Thus, for the very faint stars counted at
Mount Wilson the sample regions are so small that their total area
is less than a thousandth part of the sky. Notwithstanding the gen-
eral sufficiency of small sample regions, it must not be supposed that
the resulting counts are free from statistical irregularities. They are
not; but those present are chiefly of a local character, and may be
smoothed out by averaging the counts in several neighboring regions.
II
THE GENERAL FORM OF THE STELLAR SYSTEM
From these general considerations, we turn to some of the results
of counting, noting at once an important conclusion which follows,
not from the actual numbers of stars counted, but from the size of
the sample regions which is sufficient for the counting. If counts
covering a total area of only a thousandth of the whole sky give
useful information, then the stellar system must possess much struc-
tural unity and regularity. Otherwise, small sample regions chosen
at random could not reveal as they do the underlying structural
features of the system.
The first peculiarity to be noted in the counts themselves is the
extraordinary rapidity with which the numbers of stars increase as
we pass to fainter and fainter limits of brightness. Four photographs
of the same region (pl. 1), exposed just long enough to show stars
brighter than the twelfth, fifteenth, eighteenth, and twentieth magni-
tudes, respectively, are perhaps as impressive as the numbers them-
selves.
Another peculiarity is that the stars are most numerous in the
Milky Way and decrease in numbers as we count in regions more and
more distant, in either direction, from this cloud-like band which
encircles the sky. This also is well shown by photographs (pl. 2)
which record stars to the same limit of brightness in the two regions,
one in the Milky Way itself, the other far distant therefrom. The
phenomenon is so striking, and the changes in the numbers on the
two sides of the Milky Way are so similar, that it suggests, as it
did to Sir William Herschel, a symmetrical arrangement of the stars
about the plane passing through the Milky Way clouds. The regu-
larity of the system already inferred from the sufficiency of small
sample regions as an indication of stellar distribution thus becomes
the regularity of a symmetrical arrangement in which the Milky
Way stands out as the framework of the system.
COUNTING THE STARS—SEARES 187
TasBLe I.—Mean distribution of stars
[Number of stars per square degree brighter than photographic magnitude m at different distances from
the Milky Way]
Galactic latitude
Galactic
m concen-
0° 30° 60° 90° eee
al | i al a) 2 seed Vn eee a ARS 0. 0156 0. 00741 0. 00514 0. 00452 3.5
SIO Pla lik ta. sed ee Pu oyna 0. 0449 0. 0214 0. 0148 0. 0130 3.4
Giyl Diaai Oe laa Did Mat iA ea ald 0. 128 0. 0614 0. 0421 0. 0372 3.4
BOD 25) TO EOE 2 PN eg a LE 0. 361 0.173 0.118 0. 103 3.6
7h esessgensy SES te ew dal a Relator 1.01 0. 482 0. 325 0, 278 3.6
SEO GS ee NE Ph TE ET Teh OE eee 2. 81 1.31 0. SAL 0. 723 3.9
TID. (is Seapine AEs a sh ye die Bi Ui ee deo 7.71 3. 49 2, 23 1,81 4.3
1st e ett. et pitine. i 20.8 9. 06 5. 47 4, 33 4.8
TIP ees yh Soe oh DIL Ne i llc 55.6 22.7 12.8 9. 89 5.6
FETE pa eer tp ey a Sele yo: MOD Re StRON EE £ 146 54.4 28. 6 21.4 6.8
TM, (Os gy alee, J 2 acl lie ad ail 371 125 61.0 44.3 8.4
US Oe ae ene See: pereneere Oe 910 272 123 87.1 10.4
UG ( Dap oh eal ied pale ien lab wad| 2, 140 561 WONG 163 13.2
170BI AAS At fe oa gay ean 4, 780 1, 090 | 428 288 16.6
Hy Wis gece eh lta cal UR Ma eed naling 10, 200 1, 990 733 482 21
TOTO SNE aS CUE OE ae BEAL 20, 800 3, 440 1,190 769 27
Fri) Uae Seana ah gel aac, Bl yh I Te 40, 100 5, 620 | 1,820 1, 160 34
ZiGO SAU Fe 2 WT od Py FEE YES 73, 600 8, 690 2, 650 1, 670 44
To study these phenomena more closely it is customary to average
for each limit of brightness all the counts in the Milky Way and tabu-
late the results; then, similarly, to average and tabulate the counts
along circles parallel to the Milky Way, on either side and separated
from it by intervals? of 5° or 10°. The result is a “mean distribu-
tion table” (Table I). The numbers in the first column are the mag-
nitude limits to which the stars are counted; those in the second, the
average numbers of stars per square degree in the Milky Way brighter
than the successive limits, while the following columns give similar
averages for circles parallel to the Milky Way in latitudes 30°, 60°, and
90°.3
Table I recognizes the symmetrical arrangement of stars on the
two sides of the Milky Way in that it applies to either side, and,
in fact, is the average of the counts in the two halves of the sky.
It shows the rapid increase in the numbers of stars with increasing
magnitude, the general crowding of the stars toward the Milky
Way, and now, a third peculiarity, namely, that the crowding is much
greater for faint stars than for bright ones and increases regularly
with the limiting brightness. This is revealed by the numbers in
the last column, which are the ratios of the average counts for latitudes
0° and 90°. Thus the first line of the table shows three and five-
tenths times as many stars in the Milky Way as at latitude 90°;
2 Angular distances measured on the sky perpendicular to the great circle through the Milky Way clouds
(the galactic circle) are called galactic latitudes. Angular distances measured along the galactic circle
from a certain starting-point are galacticlongitudes. ‘These coordinates are analogous to terrestrial latitude
and longitudes used to define the position of points on the earth.
3 For convenience the logarithms of the numbers, rather than numbers themselves, are often tabulated.
One square degree is equivalent to about five times the area of the skyjcovered by the sun or the full moon.
For brevity Table I gives results for only four values of the galactic latitude. A more extended table
may be found in Mt. Wilson Contr. No. 301 (Table XVII) or in Contr. No. 346 (Table XIV).
188 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
but for the much fainter limit in the last line, the ratio is more than
40 to 1.
The general crowding of stars toward the Milky Way has been
known since the time of the Herschels, but the relatively great con-
centration shown by the faint stars, although long suspected, was
first definitely established only a dozen years ago by counts made at
Mount Wilson. That so conspicuous a feature of the distribution
could remain long in doubt illustrates the uncertainty attached to
the magnitude scale then available. This, it was feared, might be
affected by an error depending on distance from the Milky Way, which
would modify the relative numbers of stars counted in the Milky
Way and elsewhere, and hence render any estimate of the concentra-
tion uncertain.
Let us now try to picture what these peculiarities in the counts of
stars mean. Table I shows that each extension of the counts over an
additional magnitude increases the total number of stars visible in
any direction from two to three times. The exact increase is import-
ant and is therefore shown in Table II in detail for different parts of
the sky. The quantities in this table are nothing but the ratios of
the numbers standing above each other in Table I. Thus from the
second column of Table I, 0.0449/0.0156 =2.88; 0.0128/0.0449 =2.85,
etc. The several quotients 2.88, 2.85, etc., appear in succession in
the second column of Table II, while similar ratios for other parts of
the sky are in the remaining columns. ‘These ratios vary smoothly
over the sky, and range from about 3 for bright stars near the Milky
Way to 1.4 for faint stars at 90° distance from the galactic circle.
TABLE II.—Star ratios
[Factors by which total numbers of stars counted to limiting
magnitude m are multiplied when the counts are extended
one magnitude]
Galactic latitude
™
0° 30° 60° 90°
ay 2. 88 2. 89 2. 87 2. 88
ae 2. 85 2. 86 2. 85 2. 85
ao 2. 82 2. 82 2. 81 2.77
8. 0 2. 80 2.78 Psi Ri) 2. 70
0 2.77 2.72 2. 68 2. 60
we 2. 75 2. 67 2. 56 2. 50
a 2.70 2. 59 2. 45 2. 39
UG 2. 67 2. 50 2. 34 2.29
eH 2. 62 2. 40 2, 23 2.17
0 2. 55 2. 29 2.13 2.07
ae 2. 46 2. 18 2. 02 1.97
tg 2. 35 2. 06 1.91 1.87
16.0 2. 93 1.94 1.81 1.77
z2.0 2. 13 1.83 171 1.68
en 2. 04 1.73 1.62 1. 60
oad 1.93 1. 64 1.540 151
20.0 1. 84 1.55 45 1.43
i
COUNTING THE STARS—SEARES 189
The rapid increase in the numbers of stars with increasing magnitude
recalls the old problem of the cost of shoeing the horse, with a penny
for the first nail, two for the second, four for the third, and so on.
Doubling the cost for each successive nail runs the total into an incred-
ible sum; but with the stars, as shown by Table II, the numbers,
on the whole, are rather more than doubled each time an additional
magnitude is counted. No wonder the total is great:
To illustrate further the meaning of Table II, imagine a small
stellar system in which the individual stars are candles, all alike and
equally spaced, we ourselves being at the center of the system. With
the eye alone we should be unable to see candles beyond a certain
distance, because the light reaching the eye would be too faint to
produce a visual sensation. A telescope, however, would bring some
of them into view; and for the purpose let us choose an instrument just
powerful enough to reveal candles exactly one magnitude fainter than
the faintest’seen without the telescope. The relation between inten-
sity and brightness which defines the unit of magnitude tells us that
such a telescope would penetrate about one and six-tenths times
farther into space than the unaided eye. Now let us count all the
candles visible from our central station, both with and without the
telescope. ‘The numbers will be those contained in the two spheres
whose radii are to each other as 1 to 1.6, and, since the candles are
everywhere equally spaced, their ratio will be equal to that of the
volumes of the two spheres, or very nearly 4 to 1. Under the condi-
tions supposed, we must therefore expect that extending the counts
of candles by one magnitude would multiply the number visible by 4.
Now, since the star ratios of Table II nowhere equal this theoretical
value and, for the most part, are far below it, there must be some
essential difference between the real stellar system and the miniature
system of candles. Candles, to be sure, are not stars; but for the
moment that is not an essential difference. Stars, on the other hand,
may not all be of the same candlepower, as the candles are. In fact,
they are not; but it can be shown that this also is not the explanation.
Again, some of the distant stars may be hidden by haze and dust
scattered throughout space. This certainly would reduce the ratios
of the numbers counted and actually may have some effect on their
values; but the presence of absorbing material seems at most to be a
local phenomenon, and can not be the complete explanation. The
only other significant factor is a possible lack of uniformity in the
spacing of the stars, and this indeed is where the difference lies.
Uniform spacing means a factor of 4; but if the stars should thin out
with increasing distance from our station in space, the numbers of
faint stars would be less than we should otherwise find, and the ratios
from magnitude to magnitude would necessarily be less than 4. The
converse is equally true, and since in the stellar system the increase
190 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
is less than fourfold when the counts are extended by a magnitude,
the stars must thin out with increasing distance from the point of
observation; further, the more the factor drops below 4, the faster
does the thinning out take place.
Consider now more in detail the ratios in Table IT, and first, those
in the second column, corresponding to directions toward the Milky
Way. From what has been said it follows that the brightest of
these stars thin out with increasing distance, while the faint stars,
which, as a whole, are at much greater distances, thin out even more
rapidly. Consider now the last column, referring to the direction
perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way. Here the ratios are
generally smaller than those standing opposite them in the second
column, which leads to the important conclusion that the stars in
this direction not only thin out, but thin out very much faster than
they do toward the Milky Way.
The statement that the stars thin out spate increasing distance often
rouses the feeling of an implied contradiction with the rapidly in-
creasing numbers of Table I. Discrimination as to what is meant
sets the matter straight, however. The conclusion that the stars thin
out means only that the number of stars per unit volume decreases
with increasing distance; while the total number of stars counted
depends on the density, it also depends on how many units of volume
are included. Thus in the case of the candles, the extension of the
counts by one magnitude gives a total which includes all the candles
in a volume four times that which the eye alone can survey. The
additional volume made accessible by the extension is therefore three
times that already known to the unaided eye; the density of candles
in the added volume might therefore drop to one-third that near the
center of the collection and the total number visible would still be
doubled by extending the counts.
In brief, therefore, Table II indicates that the stars of our system
are not equally scattered in space, but thin out in all directions with
increasing distance from the point at which we make our observations,
least rapidly in directions toward the Milky Way and fastest in a
direction perpendicular to its plane.
The table also suggests another inference with respect to the stellar
system in that the ratios steadily decrease as the magnitude limit is
extended downward. If this decrease continues for stars beyond the
reach of existing telescopes, the ratios themselves must eventually
become zero. Hence for some low limit of brightness no more stars
will be added when we attempt to extend the counts to a still lower
limit; the total number of stars in the system is therefore limited.
The evidence afforded by star counts alone does not fully establish
this inference as a fact, for the counts do not indicate with certainty
the relations among fainter and still undiscovered stars; the extra-
COUNTING THE STARS—SEARES 191
polation is too great. The conclusion itself, however, is well founded,
but the proof comes from evidence other than star counts. This
being the case, we may accept the conclusion and thus arrive at the
certain result that the numbers in Table II would eventually become
zero were the table sufficiently extended.
If the limiting magnitude for which this occurs were accurately
known, we should be able to estimate with fair approximation the
total number of stars in the system. As it is, we know that such
a limit exists, but the only guide to its value is the rate of decrease
in the ratios of Table II. This rate is slow, and as the ratios for the
faintest stars known are still rather large, the magnitudes for which
they become zero, in different directions in the sky, are very uncertain.
Any attempt to learn the total number of stars in the system by
extrapolating Table II can therefore lead only to the roughest sort
of an estimate. About a thousand million stars are within reach of
the 100-inch reflector. If the invisible stars behave as those acces-
sible to observation would lead us to expect, the total number in
the system must be some thirty times greater, or of the order of
30,000,000,000. The uncertainty of this result is illustrated by the
fact that the estimated total in the direction of the Milky Way is
about seventy times the number of stars actually counted.
The stellar system thus appears to be a limited collection includ-
ing many thousand million stars; as a first approximation it may
be thought of as having the form of a much-flattened swarm of bees,
with the densest part of the swarm at the center. The rate at which
the stars thin out in different directions shows that the greatest
extent of the system is in the direction of the Milky Way and equal
to some six or seven times its thickness. The actual linear dimen-
sions are very uncertain. Indeed they lie outside the conclusions
that may be derived from star counts alone; but for completeness it
may be added that two or three lines of evidence suggest values of two
to three hundred thousand light years for the diameter in the plane
of the Milky Way, although even larger values are by no means
excluded. The gradual thinning out of the stars probably means
that no sharply marked boundary exists, just as none exists for the
upper limit of the earth’s atmosphere. Star counts, supplemented
by other information, do tell us, however, something about the
distance at which the number of stars per unit of volume drops to
a given value, say to 1 per cent of what it is in our own neighborhood.
Thus we should probably have to travel out in the direction of the
Milky Way at least 30,000 light years, on the average, before we
reached the point at which the stars had thinned out to this extent.
In the direction perpendicular to the Milky Way the distance would
be much less—perhaps 4,000 or 5,000 light years.
192 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
III
ECCENTRIC LOCATION OF THE SUN—DIRECTION OF THE CENTER
The symmetry found in the distribution of stars on opposite sides
of the Milky Way shows that the sun and its planets must be close
to the plane passing through the Milky Way and the center of the
system; but it does not follow that they are close to the central
point of the system. The mean distribution table (Table I) was
prepared chiefly as a means of studying how the stars crowd together
toward the Milky Way. In order to smooth out local irregularities
in distribution as much as possible, counts all around the sky in the
Milky Way, and in circles parallel to the Milky Way, were combined
into single averages, one for each latitude; further, the results for
the two halves of the sky were also averaged. This procedure was
well suited to the purpose then in view, and led to the conclusions
already stated. But now we must see if the averaging process has
concealed anything of importance.
This inquiry has point because it is known that the stars are not
equally numerous in all parts of the Milky Way. The irregularity
meant is not the rapid fluctuation in numbers shown by the cloud-like
erouping of stars, but a more fundamental difference revealed by the
exceptional size and richness of the star clouds in the general direction
of Sagittarius as compared with those in the opposite part of the sky.
Because of this difference, it has often been suggested that the solar
system may indeed be at some distance from the central point of the
system. If so, slow progressive changes should appear in the counts
along the Milky Way, and in fact, along any parallel circle, up to a
high galactic latitude. We therefore turn again to the original counts
in order to see whether they show any such change when these circles
are followed around the sky.
In studying the crowding of stars toward the Milky Way, we con-
centrated attention on this one feature of the distribution by dealing
with the average of the counts in all longitudes. This eliminated any
influence arising from the possible progressive change with longitude
in which we are now interested. And now we avoid any disturbance
which might arise from the crowding toward the Milky Way by com-
paring only counts of stars in the same latitude, and, of course, to the
same limit of brightness. A simple procedure is to compare, for a
given latitude, the number of stars actually counted in each region
with the average number for the whole circuit of the sky, and then
to see whether the differences show any progressive variation.
Finally, to test the results we may make independent comparisons for
several different latitudes and for a number of limits of brightness.
Figure 1 illustrates the results for the stars brighter than the six-
teenth magnitude, in general for every 10° up to latitude 70° on either
COUNTING THE STARS—SEARES 193
300° 360°
=
BS
a!
a
he
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2
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i
4
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FIGURE 1.—Deviations of the observed numbers ofstarsin different parts of the sky from the average numbers
shown in Table I. The stars here considered are brighter than magnitude 16.0; the general similarity in
the curves for all galactic latitudes (figures on the left), with low points around longitudes 120° to 160°
(figures at top), and high points around 300° to 350°, indicates that the center of the system of these stars
is in longitude 319°
194. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
side of the Milky Way. Similar diagrams, showing very similar curves,
were also prepared for limiting magnitudes 9.0, 11.0, 13.5, and 18.0.
Positions along the Milky Way, or along one of the parallel circles
identified by the galactic latitudes on the left of the diagram, are indi-
cated by longitudes at the top, measured from a standard meridian,
just as in the case of longitudes on the earth. Portions of curves which
lie above the horizontal axes mean that the observed numbers of stars
in the corresponding regions of the sky are greater than the average
number for the whole circuit; points below the axes represent observed
numbers which are less than the average.
In spite of numerous irregularities, most of the curves show a gen-
eral similarity in that in longitudes 240° to 360°, and on to 60°, they
lie above their respective axes, while in longitudes 60° to 240° they
drop below. This general statement disregards a conspicuous drop
in the curves for low latitudes near longitude 360°. This irregularity
must be disregarded, for it represents the great rift between the two
branches of the Milky Way, where the number of stars counted is not
representative of those probably present. There, we have reason to
believe, great numbers of stars are blotted out by obscuring clouds of
dust and nebulous material.
With allowance for this anomaly, a systematic departure from the
average numbers of stars is c early revealed in the counts, which can
be traced to a great distance from the Milky Way. Figure 1 shows
that in all latitudes we have counted the largest number of stars in
the same general longitude, the smallest in the opposite longitude.
The longitudes of the richest regions found by a numerical discussion
of the data run as in Table III.
TaBLeE III
Latitvdes. oe. Uleeoe Oe 209 S02 402 b0gerG02 70.
Taneae 303 301 298 301 307 334 336 299 277 north of M. W.
a Waa iba: 317 3828 328 332 331 345 354 340 south of M. W.
These numbers are by no means equal; indeed they range over a
good many degrees, especially in high latitudes. But it must be
remembered that the stars are not distributed with exact uniformity
and that local and purely random irregularities tend to obscure any
structural feature, however important, when we attempt to trace that
feature in limited portions of the data. In the present instance the
individual longitudes cluster around a mean value of 319°; with an
average departure of 15°. Loca! deviations from uniformity in the
distribution fully account for the scatter in the individual values,
whence we conclude that we have brought to light something funda-
mental in the arrangement of stars in space. The importance of the
phenomenon becomes clear only when we translate the deviations in
longitude into numbers; then we find that nearly five times as many
COUNTING THE STARS—SEARES 195
stars are visible in the direction of longitude 319° as in the opposite
direction.
The accordance of the results in Table III, the progressive change
in the curves of Figure 1 with longitude, and the fact that they
flatten out with increasing distance from the Milky Way, all indicate
that we are really at some distance from the center of the flattened
system of stars. Indeed, we do not hesitate to accept this as a valid
explanation. of the phenomena. The direction of the center itself
must of course agree with that in which the stars are most numerous,
and is therefore to be looked for near longitude 319°, in Sagittarius,
where, as already noted, the richest star clouds are found.
It is natural to ask next how far we are from the center; but
this turns out to be a very difficult question, not yet fully settled.
The attempt to answer it has, however, brought to light new features
of stellar distribution to which we now turn our attention.
IV
DEPENDENCE OF CENTER AND SECONDARY GALAXY ON LIMIT-
ING MAGNITUDE OF COUNTS .
Since the curves for the other magnitude limits have the general
appearance of those for the sixteenth magnitude shown in Figure 1,
they support the conclusion that the sun and planets are not at the
center of the stellar system. The results for the direction of the cen-
ter are remarkable, however, in that the mean longitude as found from
the different series of curves is not constant, but shows a large pro-
gressive change with limiting magnitude. Thus for stars brighter
than the ninth magnitude, the center seems to be in longitude 270°;
as we extend the counts to fainter limits, the direction changes slowly
but regularly along the Milky Way some 50° toward the east, until
for the eighteenth magnitude we find it about where, a moment ago,
we thought it actually to be located.
It is probable that the true center is indeed very nearly in this
direction, and that its apparent dependence on magnitude arises from
some peculiarity in the distribution of the brighter stars. When we
consider counts which include only bright stars, this peculiarity
asserts itself and spoils our calculation; when we add the faint stars,
however, which are vastly more numerous than the bright ones, the
peculiarity, whatever it may be, has little influence on the general dis-
tribution, and we find very nearly the true direction.
This conclusion is strengthened by considering a feature of the
curves of Figure 1 which is not to be traced with the eye alone, but
which appears clearly and consistently when we deal with the num-
bers themselves. It consists in a small difference between curves for
the same latitude on opposite sides of the Milky Way of the kind to
be expected were the stars symmetrically distributed not with respect
823223014
196 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
to the Milky Way, but about a plane slightly inclined thereto. Thus
far we have thought of the stars as all tending to crowd toward the
Milky Way; but now apparently we must admit that some of them
cluster about another circle, a little tilted with respect to the Milky
Way. Since we sometimes speak of the Milky Way itself as the gal-
axy, we call this new circle the secondary galaxy.
The small differences existing between curves for equal and opposite
latitudes may be used to compute the amount and the direction of the
tilt of the secondary galaxy; and since several pairs of curves are
available for each limiting magnitude, a number of independent solu-
tions may be made, the accordance of which will test the reality of the
results. Since the existence of a secondary galaxy modifies slightly
the longitudes already found for the center of the system, these must
be redetermined when the position of the secondary galaxy is calcu-
lated. The complete results for limiting magnitude 16 are shown in
Table IV.
TABLE IV
npibadel:. 2s stk. Jeayared o° | 5° | 10° | 20° | 30° | 40° | 50° | 60° | 70° eereees
Longitude of center__._____- 303 | 310 317 318 324 332 341 334 322 + 9°
DT aI RE OA NC ATL I SORA Suga a Eh ge : 4, il Sh | P0596 zp il
icongitidorofitilt ase sea ene 362 | 357 | 358 | 352 | 329 | 368 | 392 | 367 +12
Here again, the agreement in values derived from different latitudes
is all that can be expected. The mean for the tilt is 4°, in longitude
357°, with a scatter in the individual values so small as to leave no
doubt as to the general result.
When we extend the calculation to other limiting magnitudes,
however, we find that the secondary galaxy is no more a fixed thing
than is the direction of the center of the system, and, like the direction
of the center, depends on the limit of brightness to which the stars
have been counted. From counts to the eighteenth magnitude we
find a secondary galaxy which deviates but little from the Milky
Way; and had we counts to the twenty-first or twenty-second magni-
tude, we should probably find practical coincidence. Counts to other
limits show, however, a very appreciable departure and a progressive
change in the position of the secondary galaxy, which attains its
greatest inclination to the Milky Way when only bright stars are
included in the calculation. Figure 2 illustrates the results found
from the Mount Wilson counts, and some by other observers from
other data, plotted to show the changes in the direction of the center
(L) and in the position of the secondary galaxy (p, tilt of plane;
Ly, direction of tilt).
These calculations afford opportunity for a closer comparison
of the numbers of stars on opposite sides of the Milky Way. Ex-
COUNTING THE STARS—SEARES 197
pressed as a ratio of the numbers on the north side to the numbers on
the south, the results run as follows:
Limiting magnitude -______-_- Beran a0 ile 18. 5 16. 0 18. 0
Ratio, north ‘to*south== 22 er 0. 67 OFS OF 0. 98 OT
Here again is a change with limiting brightness. Counting only
to the ninth magnitude, we find 50 per cent more stars in the southern
half of the sky than in the northern. As fainter stars are added, the
excess decreases and disappears near the sixteenth magnitude.
From there on the numbers in the two halves of the sky are sensibly
equal. Moreover, the ratios for individual zones in equal latitudes,
pe
EA fe lc i a int it
a st] AS ls ip Yo jul Loo! oid siefon |
1 eg OU I a Ab
il ees el Rp
bh age
150
FIGURE 2.—L is the longitude of the center of the stellar system as derived from stars brighter than
various limits of magnitude; p and Lo are the tilt with respect to the Milky Way, and the direction
of the tilt of the circles (secondary galaxy) about which the stars are symmetrically situated and
toward which they tend to crowd
north and south, show a similar sequence of values; hence, although
the distribution of bright stars in latitude is notably asymmetrical,
that of faint stars is very symmetrical.
MW,
THE LOCAL SYSTEM
The probable explanation of these changes with magnitude is
suggested by following the curves of Figure 2 back to about the sixth
magnitude, for there we come to figures with which we are familiar in
another connection, Immediately surrounding us in space is a large
198 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
collection of very hot, massive stars, mostly brighter than the sixth
magnitude, having very conspicuous lines of helium in their spectra.
These bright helium stars lie close to the Milky Way and constitute a
local cluster, very much flattened—so much so, in fact, that the cluster
is little more than a thin sheet of stars, extending out a thousand light
years or so in the general direction of the Milky Way. ‘The sun and
planets lie a little outside the thin layer of stars, and at a distance of
about 300 light years from the center of the collection. The direction
of the center is in longitude 236°; the tilt of the plane about which
the helium stars cluster is 12°, in longitude 160°. ‘These figures are
nearly those shown by Figure 2 for the center of the system and for
the position of the secondary galaxy derived from counts of all kinds of
stars to the sixth magnitude. The agreement is too close to be
simply coincidence, and we conclude that most, if not all, of the stars
brighter than the sixth magnitude bear some close relation to the local
cluster of helium stars. That the bright helium stars do form a
localized cluster is easily recognized from their physical characteristics,
which cause them to stand out from their neighbors as a unit. Since
the stars brighter than the sixth magnitude, as a whole, are symmetri-
cally distributed about the same plane as the helium stars, the infer-
ence is that most of them belong to that cluster, and that together
they constitute a local system of which the helium stars are only the
nucleus.
Apparently, therefore, we must amplify our picture of the stellar
system by supposing that a secondary aggregation of stars—the local
system—exists within the larger system. The local system lies near
the plane of symmetry of the larger system, but at a great distance
from the central point. Like the larger system, it is flattened; its
plane of symmetry is tilted 12° to that of the larger system. We our-
selves are within the local system, 300 light years from its center
situated in longitude 236°; the far more distant center of the larger
system seems to be in longitude 325°, a little to the east of that indi-
cated by the stars brighter than the eighteenth magnitude.
Looking out on the sky, we see the intermingled stars of both
systems. When we count the stars to the sixth magnitude only,
we deal chiefly with those of the local system, and hence find them
crowding toward the secondary galaxy marked by the thin stratum of
bright helium stars; the center appears to be in longitude 236°, because
that is the direction of the center of the local system. When we
extend the counts to a fainter limit, we add many stars belonging to
the larger system, and thus introduce the characteristics of that
system. The resulting distribution is not that of either system alone,
but something in between; the secondary galaxy is less inclined to the
Milky Way, while the direction of the center has shifted a little east-
ward along the Milky Way toward that of the larger system. But
COUNTING THE STARS—SEARES 199
when we count to a very faint limit, we include such enormous numbers
of stars belonging to the larger system that the local system has no
appreciable influence on the observed distribution; the stars crowd
toward the great fundamental plane of the Milky Way, and the center
appears in its true direction toward Sagittarius, in longitude 325°.
Finally, if we suppose the local system to be a little to the south of
the plane through the Milky Way clouds, and the sun almost exactly
in this plane, we account for the relative numbers of stars on opposite
sides of the Milky Way—an excess of bright stars to the south, and an
equal division of faint stars between the two halves of the sky.
The star counts even tell us something about the size of the local
system, for both Figure 2 and the relative numbers of stars north and
south of the Milky Way (p. 197) show that the influence of this system
can be traced down to about the sixteenth magnitude. From this
circumstance alone it seems likely that we should still find stars be-
longing to the local system at a distance of 10,000 light years from the
sun. Other features of Figure 2, supplemented by other information,
indicate that the members of the local system are to be counted by
many millions, and that they comprise something like three-fourths
of all the stars in our immediate neighborhood in space; the larger
system would thus contribute only a fourth of the total stellar popula-
tion near the sun.
The dominating influence of the local system may be shown very
simply by examining star counts in another way. In studying the
numbers of stars added by extending the counts downward, magnitude
after magnitude, the results in different longitudes, as already ex-
plained, were averaged. To gain a general idea of how stars are
scattered throughout space, we ignored the fact that we might not be
at the center of the system, and were led by the ratios in Table II to
conclusions which likened the stellar system to a much-flattened swarm
of bees, thinning out in numbers from the center toward the edge.
Now, however, we know that we are far from the center of the swarm;
and it seems likely that were we to proceed in the direction of that
point, we might find the stars crowding together, while in the opposite
direction we should find them thinning out even more rapidly than
the average counts indicate. This at least would be the expectation
were it not for the presence of the local system.
When we turn again to the original counts to see how those in
different directions along the Milky Way increase in numbers as we
add fainter and fainter stars, we find that they build up much faster
in the direction of the center than toward the opposite point in the
sky, but not nearly fast enough to indicate any crowding of stars as
the center is approached. On the contrary, the ratios are such that,
as we leave our neighborhood in space, the stars must begin to thin
out almost at once, whatever the direction in which we proceed out-
200 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
ward; they thin out least rapidly when we move toward the center,
faster when we travel in the opposite direction, and fastest of all
when we proceed toward the poles of the Milky Way. The signifi-
cant detail is the behavior in the direction of the center of the larger
system, which turns out to be just the opposite of that to be expected
were the local system not present. We thus conclude, not only
that a local system exists, but that it dominates the situation to such
an extent that the characteristic distribution within the larger
system which we expected to find is totally obscured. How completely
this is the case is illustrated by the uppermost curve of Figure 3,
which shows the numbers of stars per unit volume at different dis-
tances from the sun in two different directions, one (left) toward
the center of the larger system, the other (right) in the direction
diametrically opposite. Distances of points on the curve above the
bottom of the diagram represent numbers of stars. Even toward
the center, the stars thin out so rapidly that at 2,000 parsecs (6,500
has ede TIN Ne fecal etal at
Ai ll i es et Ree Ss ale a al
10000 5000 0 5000 10000 PARSECS
FIGURE 3.—Variation in the number of stars per unit volume at different distances from the sun (figures at
bottom) in the direction of the center of the stellar system (toward the left) and in the opposite direction.
The upper curve includes all stars together. This can be resolved into two other curves, one, nearly
symmetrical, representing the local system, and another representing the larger system. Distances in
parsecs may be expressed in light years by multiplying by 3.26
light years) the density is only one-half that near the sun, while at
5,000 parsecs (16,250 light years) it is only one-fifth. The great
concentration of density near the sun represents the influence of the
local system.
However we approach the matter, therefore, the larger system, in
our Own vicinity at least, seems to sink into a position of relative
unimportance, and, when we attempt to learn more about it, we
meet with great difficulties.
VA
SEPARATION OF THE LOCAL AND LARGER SYSTEMS
To proceed, we must try to get rid of the local system by removing
its members from our counts. This is a hazardous undertaking,
because, in general, we can not specify the system to which any given
star belongs; and we are thus obliged to make an assumption, namely,
COUNTING THE STARS-——SEARES 201
that the local system is symmetrical about a central point, or at
least that it is not highly asymmetrical. Stated in another way,
though rather crudely, we suppose that the point within the local
system where the stars are thickest is not far from its geometrical
center. Such an assumption is not without inherent probability, for
most aggregations of stars seen in the sky possess a rough symmetry
of this kind; and within the local cluster itself, in the nucleus of
helium stars, we find evidence of its presence.
The operations involved in separating the local and larger systems
are illustrated by Figure 3, where, as already explained, the upper-
most curve represents the variation in-the number of stars per unit
volume in the direction of the center and of the point diametrically
opposite. From the densities corresponding to this curve we must
subtract those contributed by the local system. By the assumption
just made, these will be represented by a curve, nearly symmetrical,
having a maximum coinciding closely with the sun. The size and
shape of the curve are not otherwise specified, and the choice of a
definite form is beset with uncertainty. Nevertheless, certain
guiding principles may be laid down: Thus, the central density of
the local system, represented by the height of the maximum of the
symmetrical curve, must be greater than some minimum value;
otherwise, after the local system has been removed, the region of
maximum density in the larger system will remain near the sun,
which is at variance with all our ideas as to the structure of the
system. On the other hand, the central density of the local system
can not exceed a certain amount without leaving in the larger system,
close to the,sun, a region of abnormally low density. Finally, the
relation between density and size in the local system must be such
that the change in density in the larger system revealed by removing
the adopted local system is everywhere smooth.
The result of the analysis is shown by the two component curves
in Figure 3. Under the circumstances described we should scarcely
expect more than a qualitative indication of relations; nevertheless,
the central density and the diameter thus found for the local system
are in general numerical agreement with the results derived from
Figure 2, namely, a density of three-fourths the total near the sun
and a diameter of six or eight thousand parsecs. Further, the curve
for the larger system shows an increase in the density in the direction
of the center, as we should expect, but, surprisingly enough, the stars
seem to reach their highest concentration at a distance of only 3,000
to 6,000 light years, according to the degree of asymmetry admitted
in the local system.
The position of this maximum must be far short of the geometrical
center of the system; and even where thickest, the concentration
of stars is only about one-half that at the center of the local system.
202 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Regarded as the dominant portion of so vast a collection as the larger
system, the region of maximum stellar concentration is not an impres-
sive feature; and our instinct for symmetrical arrangements in the
heavens makes us reluctant to accept this off-sided aggregation as
the nucleus of the larger system, or the very unsymmetrical curve
of Figure 3 as an indication of how the stars in this system are dis-
tributed.
Vil
THE ANALOGY WITH SPIRAL NEBULA
At first sight it seems difficult to reconcile the improbabilities thus
brought to ight with the symmetry for which we instinctively look.
Nevertheless, we are not without helpful suggestions. The trend
of cosmological thought in recent years has been in the direction of
analogies between the stellar system and the great spiral nebule
like Messier 33 or Messier 101 (pl. 3). In form, there is close resem-
blance. In both cases the outline in the principal plane is roughly
circular; and, seen edge-on (pl. 4 a, b, c), the spirals show the flat-
tened contour found in our own system. Further, photographs
made at Mount Wilson by Hubble with the 100-inch reflector (pl. 4)
show that at least some of these nebule are gigantic systems of stars,
composed of different classes of objects—diffuse nebulosity, nove,
Cepheid variables, and ordinary giant stars of different spectral
types, which, class for class, correspond to those of the system about
us; and, finally, that the nebuls, if not actually as large as the stellar
system, are nevertheless of the same general order of dimensions.
Seen broadside (pl. 3), the curving arms of the spirals, with their
irregular knots and condensations of stars, lack the smoothness of
distribution that counts in our own system seem to suggest; but it
requires little imagination to realize that were we situated in the cen-
tral plane of a spiral like Messier 33, we should find the scattered
aggregations of stars blending into an encircling band of Milky Way
clouds, with irregularities perhaps no greater than those in the star
clouds of our own galaxy. Again, the conspicuously bright central
condensation which is characteristic of the spirals makes us wonder
if the cosmological analogy is complete, for thus far we have looked
in vain in.our own system for anything resembling a dominant cen-
tral nucleus. But even this seemingly well-marked exception falls
into line when the position of the observer is properly credited es
its influence on appearances.
With the examples of edge-on spirals (pl. 4) before us, imagine
ourselves again within one of these objects, at some distance from the
center, with our eyes turned toward the nucleus. Does it seem
likely that we should then see the central condensation? Apparently
not, at least not the brightest portion at the very center. Even
COUNTING THE STARS—SEARES 203
casual inspection of Plate 4 a, b, c, reveals the dark broken band extend-
ing the length of the images which is a conspicuous feature of almost
every edge-on spiral that we know. This band consists of obscuring
clouds of nebulous material, dark ordinarily, unless illuminated or
stimulated to shine by some external source, and invisible, unless
outlined by projection on a background of stars or luminous cloud.
Photographs of spirals inclined to the line of sight suggest that these
dark clouds extend well in toward the central condensation, and would
blot out, in part at least, the bright central region from our imagined
point of observation. The chances are, too, that above and below
the dark clouds, in the general direction of the center, we might see
outlying aggregations of stars, strewn nearly parallel to the plane of
the nebula. The Milky Way of the nebula would then appear split
for part of its length into two branches by a great rift, like that which
in our own system extends from Cygnus in the north to Circinus far
down in the southern heavens. We know that much obscuring
material is scattered over the galactic plane among our own stars,
and that the dark, almost starless region between the two branches of
the Milky Way is probably a thick pall of cloud. The direction of the
center of the system cuts into this cloud, and it has been suggested
that but for the cloud we should see something comparable with the
central condensation of the spirals. The off-sided concentration of
stars which, as a central nucleus, seemed so out of harmony with the
vastness and grandeur of the system, would then represent the crowd-
ing of the stars naturally to be expected toward the center, modified
and ultimately suppressed by the obscuring clouds, long before the
center is reached. ;
The asymmetry of distribution is further accentuated by the fact
that the curve for the larger system shown in Figure 3 has been derived
from counts made, not in the exact direction of the center, but in the
branches of the Milky Way immediately above and below the central
point. For a system perfectly symmetrical about its center, the
distribution of density along lines thus inclined to the principal plane
would necessarily be unsymmetrical; the maximum density would be
less than at the center, and less distant than the central point.
Finally, the position of the maximum may also be influenced by one
of the local aggregations of stars which the Milky Way structure, as
well as the appearance of the spirals, suggests as lying scattered over
the galactic plane.
When invoked to explain the peculiarities of stellar distribution,
the well-known analogies between spirals and our own system answer
very well; but, unfortunately, they leave us still in doubt as to our
exact location within the larger system. The presence of obscuring
material means that star counts probably can never remove that
doubt. For the present we can only accept Shapley’s estimate
204 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
based on the distribution of the globular clusters, which places the
center of the system at a distance of 50,000 to 60,000 light years iu the
direction of longitude 325°. The close agreement of the longitude with
that found from star counts supports the belief that the clusters also
correctly indicate the distance to the center. If the diameter of the
system may be regarded as of the order of two or three hundred
thousand light years, as suggested above, we should then find ourselves
something like half-way out toward the edge of the system.
But where does the local system, which so dominates the situation
about us, fit into the picture? It is, perhaps, only an exceptionally
large aggregation of stars similar to those scattered along the arms
of the spiral nebule; or it may be a more or less independent organiza-
tion of stars entangled within the larger system—instances of the close
juxtaposition of two spirals, for example, are not unknown; but per-
haps the only safe conclusion at present is that a local system of un-
expected richness and size exists. The members of this system are
numerous enough to impress something of their own characteristics
on the distribution of the stars as a whole down to a low limit of
brightness, and are therefore certainly to be counted by millions.
In so large a collection it is natural to expect stellar luminosities and
spectral types similar to those in the larger systems. This being the
case, the surprisingly large dimensions found for the local system
follow as a matter of course.
In closing, a word of caution is to be added: The picture drawn of
the stellar system is only a sketch in broad outlines. Conclusions
based solely on star counts may be regarded as reliable, for it is
probable that the counts rest on a sound photometric system; struc-
tural features derived from analogies with spiral nebule are less
certain but still probable; estimates of dimensions and distances
are uncertain, and, in some instances, possibly not even of the right
order of magnitude. . Above all, it must not be forgotten that practi-
cally all the conclusions formulated depend on a study of but two
characteristics of the stars—the numbers seen in different directions
in the sky and the totals down to different limits of brightness. This
restriction accounts in part for the lack of detail in the picture;
at the same time it may mean that results which now seem well
established will require modification and readjustment when other
stellar characteristics have been intensively studied.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Seares PLATE 1
PHOTOGRAPHS WITH INCREASING LENGTH OF EXPOSURE OF A SMALL FIELD
ABOUT 7 AURIGAE
Illustrating the rapid increase in numbers of stars with decreasing brightness. The faintest stars
shown are approximately of the twelfth, fifteenth, eighteenth, and twentieth magnitude.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Seares PLAGE. 2
1. SELECTED AREA 56, 80° DISTANT FROM THE MILKY WAY
2. SELECTED AREA 40, IN THE MILKY WAyY ITSELF
Photographs of two fields of the same size, both showing stars to the eighteenth magnitude,
The photographs illustrate the great concentration of faint stars in low galactic latitudes.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Seares PLATE 3
1. MESSIER 101 IN URSA MAJOR
2. MESSIER 33 IN TRIANGULUM
Examples of spiral nebulae seen broadside; photographed with the 60-inch reflector. Both nebulae are
well resolved into stars and show dark clouds of obscuring material intermingled with the stars and with
clouds of luminous nebulosity.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Seares PLATE 4
1. TYPICAL SPIRAL NEBULAE SEEN EDGE ON
a, HV 24 Comae Berenices; b, N. G. C. 5746, Virgo; c, HV 19 Andromedae; photographed
with the 60-inch reflector. In outline the nebulae resemble the flattened watch-shaped
form of our own system. Dark obscuring clouds lying close to the central plane of the
nebulae are conspicuous in each.
2. OUTLYING REGIONS OF M 31, PHOTOGRAPHED BY HUBBLE WITH
THE 100-INCH REFLECTOR
Parts of the nebula which on smaller-scale photographs appear as knots or condensations
are here fully resolved into stars.
a
b
THE LINGERING DRYAD!
By Paut R. Heri
U.S. Bureau of Standards
There is an every day test which we all instinctively apply when we
are in doubt whether a certain thing is alive. We watch for it to
move. This is a test as old as humanity, though as we now apply it
we introduce a logical refinement which was lacking in other days.
Absence of motion, now as then, indicates absence of life, but the mere
observation of motion does not always suggest to modern thought the
presence of life. A sheet of paper may be rustled by an invisible
breeze; stormy waves may arise in the ocean; the ground beneath our
feet may tremble and split open; yet we of to-day see in such phe-
nomena no reason for assuming life as a cause.
Not so with the ancients. To them motion invariably suggested
life, directly or indirectly involved. The sheet of paper, of course,
was not alive, but the wind was the breath of Molus. The stormy sea
was the direct physical result of the wrathful strokes of Neptune’s
trident, and the heaving earth, by the same token, gave evidence of
the displeasure of Poseidon, the earth-shaker.
While the mythology of the ancients contained much that we now
regard as childish and ridiculous, there is also to be found in it that
which we must still recognize as beautiful, such as the myth of the
dryad.
The dryad was a treenymph. Every tree had its protecting spirit
who was born with the tree, lived in or near it in intimate association,
watching over its growth, and who died when the tree fell. The
dryad was thus a personification of the life of the tree, and the con-
nection between nymph and tree was far more intimate than was the
case with the deities dominating sea or wind. Because of this pecul-
iarly intimate relation the tree possessed life which the sea did not,
though Neptune inhabited its depths, and which the wind did not,
though set in motion by olus.
The men of old, it seems drew very much the same distinction that
we do when we speak of living and nonliving substances. Water,
1 Presidential Address before the Philosophical Society of Washington, Jan. 5, 1929. Reprinted by per-
mission from Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, vol. 19, No. 4, Feb. 19, 1929,
205
206 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
they observed, never grew old or died, but a tree was obviously a
living thing, almost one of us, growing, reproducing its kind, and
eventually dying. And as the ancients had difficulty in forming an
idea of life without an animating personality there arose naturally
the concept of the inseparable tree nymph.
Human thinking from the first has been frankly anthropomorphic,
Only in modern times has there been any notable effort to cast out
anthropomorphism from our philosophy, and this struggle has not yet
resulted in victory. Even we of to-day, with hereditary habits of
thought heavy upon us, find the concept of impersonal, physical causes
drab and unsatisfying, and we spell Nature with a capital N. The
dryad lingers.
In the chemistry of other days we find an interesting case of the
persistence of this mode of thought. The old alchemists knew that
wine by boiling lost its intoxicating power. Because they could see
nothing escaping they said that the ‘‘spirit of wine” had found its
abode too hot for it, and had taken its departure. Cassio used no
figure of speech when he apostrophized the ‘‘invisible spirit of wine”
by which he had been so disastrously possessed of the devil, and the
name ‘‘spirit”’ as applied to alcohol is still in common use.
With the advance of knowledge it was found that many other
phenomena beside intoxication owed their causes, not to spirits or
devils, but to inanimate, prosaic chemical compounds. So strong,
however, is heredity that the dryad, instead of disappearing from
human thinking, merely changed her form and retreated under fire to
a position of advantage across a natural barrier, where she long
remained in safety.
It was many years before this barrier was crossed. The dividing line
between organic and inorganic substances was a sharp one in the
eighteenth century, and from her safe refuge in the domain of organic
chemistry the dryad long watched her baffled foes. The older chem-
ists divided the province of their science in two by a water-tight parti-
tion. All compounds with which they were acquainted could be
analyzed or broken down into their elements, but not all of them could
be built up again by human skill. Water might be formed from its
constituents, but not sugar or starch; yet these latter substances were
daily synthesized in the laboratory of Nature, in the tissues of animal
or vegetable matter; and because they were never known to occur
in mineral or inorganic matter, substances of this type were called
from their origin, organic compounds.
Years of experience had given rise to the belief that there existed
between these two classes of bodies a difference in kind rather than
in degree, and that there was some reason not understood why organic
compounds could not be synthesized artifically. This unknown reason
was given a name; it was called the ‘‘vital force.”
THE LINGERING DRYAD—-HEYL 207
It often happens that when the unknown is named it appears as if it
were more than half explained. The vital force once named soon came
to be a familiar concept. It was held to be resident in living matter,
whether animal or vegetable, much like the dryad in the tree. It was
believed to differ in kind from the chemical and physical forces that
governed the formation of inorganic compounds. Under the influence
of this vital force it was believed that all the chemical reactions of
living matter took place, and it was even supposed to govern the
decompositions that occurred after death.
The belief in a vital force of this nature was universal among eigh-
teenth century chemists, even Berzelius being found among its adher-
ents. The vital force seems to have been regarded with something like
the awe inspired by the supernatural, and it was well into the nine-
teenth century before its hold on men’s minds began to relax.
The past year, 1928, marked the century of an epoch in human
thought, for it was just 100 years since the doctrine of a vital force
received its logical death blow. In 1828 Wohler succeeded in produc-
ing by laboratory methods the first organic compound. This was urea,
which he prepared by simply heating an inorganic compound, ammo-
nium cyanate, containing the same elements as urea, namely carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, and in the same proportions.
This was a body blow at the dryad, but she died hard. Her devoted
adherents rallied to her support and explained away Wohler’s result in
various fashions. In this they were aided by the fact that for years
this synthesis stood alone, suggesting that there was something excep-
tional about it. Some said that this proved merely that a mistake had
been made; that urea was not really an organic substance, but occupied
a place halfway between the organic and inorganic kingdoms. Others
argued curiously that the carbon of the cyanate retained some trace or
memory of the vital force which had ruled it when it had previously
been a part of some organic compound. But in time other syntheses
were achieved in such numbers that the accumulated evidence became
overwhelming, and it was finally recognized that organic chemistry
was only complicated inorganic chemistry, and that the difference
between the two was one not of kind, but of degree of complexity.
We have said that the dryad died hard. As a matter of fact she did
not die at all—she emigrated. Dispossessed by the advancing frontier
of knowledge from the domain of organic chemistry which had so long
afforded her a refuge, she retreated under fire into a less understood
region beyond—into the biological sciences. Here the complexity of
phenomena was (and still is) so great that among the shadows the
dryad still finds a retreat.
Biologists of to-day are divided into two camps—vitalists and
mechanists. Between them a conflict rages, and the fate of the dryad
still hangs in the balance. The vitalists argue that whatever may
208 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
have been the case in the past we have now, by the progress of our
knowledge reached a dividing line which really marks a difference in
kind; that there have been brought to light in the realm of biology
phenomena of such a nature that they are not explainable by ordinary
chemical or physical principles; that it is necessary to assume a
principle peculiar to living matter (in other words, a ‘‘vital force’’)
to explain them. Let us select what is perhaps an extreme case
in illustration.
Food taken into the stomach of man and other animals is digested
by means of the gastric juice. Some of this food is meat (all of it in
the case of certain animals), muscular tissue like that of the stomach
itself. The question naturally arises why the gastric juice does not
digest also the wall of the stomach. Is it not like trying to dissolve a
piece of zinc in acid contained in a zinc vessel?
It is not easy to answer this question. It can not be due in any way
to mastication, for if a piece of meat is swallowed without chewing, the
stomach will eventually digest it. It can not be argued that cooking
accounts for the difference, for this is an art practiced by man alone,
and is a comparatively late acquisition on his part. And in the face
of the use of tripe as an article of food it can not be that the stomach
contains a protective substance which other muscular tissue does not
possess.
There seems to be no difference between the stomach and the food
other than that the stomach is alive and the food dead, whatever this
may mean; and even this explanation is hard pushed by the fact that
the food of carnivorous animals under natural conditions usually
reaches the stomach of the captor in a very short time after the death
of the prey, an interval measurable almost in seconds.
By considerations such as these the controversy between the vitalist
and the mechanist is kept alive. The vitalist maintains that between
the phenomena of the living and the nonliving there is a difference in
kind, not merely in degree. Just what this difference may be he is not
prepared to say, but he maintains its existence. The mechanist,
on the other hand, says that exactly the same arguments have been
advanced in the past in connection with problems that seemed just’as
insoluble, and that these arguments have finally been disposed of by
the progress of our knowledge. Differences in kind, once regarded as
numerous in Nature, have slowly and steadily been resolved into
differences in degree. Sharp lines of demarcation have been wiped out
until the line between the living and the nonliving is perhaps the only
one left. Such diverse phenomena as those of electricity and light
have been found to be closely akin; man himself has been shown to be
one with the rest of animated Nature; and if the past is any guide to
the future, it seems that even this last sharp line will some day dis-
appear also.
THE LINGERING DRYAD—HEYL 209
Perhaps the vitalist himself may not realize it, but to the student of
the philosophy of history this vague ‘‘difference in kind’”’ suggests the
last lingering trace of what was once a dryad. As acloudlet dwindles
and disappears in the beams of the sun, so the dryad has shrunk to a
mere wisp of vapor, which with a little more light seems destined to
disappear forever.
But now that we have finished pointing out the mote that is in the
biologist’s eye, let us examine our own clarity of vision. Are we
physical scientists in any measure responsible for the lingering of the
dryad?
By the latter half of the nineteenth century physical theory had
become a well knit, sharply crystallized and self-sufficient body of
doctrine. While it was recognized fully and generally that much was
as yet unknown, it was felt quite as generally that what had been
established would, with perhaps a little amendment and modification,
stand forever. The physical theory of the last century was much
admired by its devotees, upon whom it reacted in turn to the extent of
making them at times a bit dogmatic. If there was a conflict between
physics and a sister science, physics must be right.
The classical instance of this attitude is the famous controversy
over the age of the earth, between the physicists on the one hand and
the geologists and biologists on the other. Perhaps nothing in the
annals of nineteenth century physics made such an impression upon
the sister sciences. This controversy lasted for 33 years with unabated
vigor, and was not finally settled until the discovery of radioactive
substances. :
In 1862, upon the basis of the laws of the conduction of heat as laid
down by Fourier, Kelvin calculated that the time that had elapsed
since the earth had solidified from a molten state could not be less than
20,000,000 or more than 400,000,000 years. He admitted that
rather wide limits were necessary, but was inclined to attach more
weight to the lower figure than to the higher. In this he was con-
firmed by a similar calculation made by Helmholtz of the age of the
sun.
At this estimate biologists and geologists stood aghast. The pros-
pect of having to pack into a paltry 400,000,000 years the whole
progress of organic evolution from amceba to man seemed to biologists
unreasonable. And with the geologists the situation was still worse.
It was generally recognized that a very long period of time must have
elapsed after solidification before life of the most primitive form made
its appearance, and this period, in addition to that required by evolu-
tion, must be made to fit Kelvin’s Procrustean bed. Moreover, it was
felt by geologists that such a view involved a return to eighteenth
century ideas, from which geology was just beginning to emerge.
210 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Prior to the nineteenth century geological thought was of the
catastrophic school. It was held that natural forces were more active
and powerful in past geological ages than they now are; that great
convulsions of Nature had riven the crust asunder into valleys and
elevated other portions into mountains. By the middle of the nine-
teenth century the opposte, or uniformitarian school of thought had
achieved the ascendency, largely through the influence of the geologist
Lyell. On this view it was held that geological processes had never
differed seriously from those of the present day. As a consequence of
this doctrine an immense antiquity was required for the earliest
geological strata, and with this almost unlimited time at their disposal
biologists felt unhampered.
Then came Kelvin’s bombshell. Protest and appeal were not lack-
ing, but Kelvin was inexorable. Physics, he said, could grant no
more, and physics held the power of the purse of time.
The widespread and long-continued interest in this controversy is
evidenced by the many letters published on the subject in ‘‘ Nature”’
from January to April, 1895. As proof of the fact that Kelvin did
not stand alone in this matter it is of interest to note that not a single
physicist failed to support him in theory, though there was a general
feeling that perhaps his limits might be widened somewhat. The
discussion was finally summed up by its initiator, Prof. John Perry,
who expressed the opinion that the upper limit assigned by Kelvin
might perhaps be multiplied by four. But this concession brought
about no rapprochement. The two sides were not near enough to
dicker. :
A few years later the deadlock was finally resolved by the discovery
of radioactivity. This new and totally unexpected source of terrestrial
heat nullified Kelvin’s fundamental postulate, and allowed as much
time as the most extreme views could require.
Rightly or wrongly, this celebrated case had an unfortunate effect
upon interscientific relations. The biologists in particular felt that
the character of their problems and the evidence for their conclusions
were not appreciated by the physicists. ‘The impression was gained.
that physics was for some reason incompetent to treat of biological
questions, and that the life sciences required for their complete discus-
sion and development something that was not and could not be found
in physical theory. It may scarcely be doubted, I think, that this
impression of the inadequacy of physics went far toward strengthening
and prolonging the life of the vitalistic hypothesis.
But, to be fair, we must recognize that the vitalism of to-day is not
that of a century ago. To use a term borrowed from mineralogy,
it is but a pseudomorph of its predecessor, cast in the mold of the
older form and simulating its outward shape, but inwardly of a differ-
ent composition. The neovitalist of to-day disclaims utterly anything
THE LINGERING DRYAD—HEYL 211
savoring of the occult or the supernatural; short of this, he is ready to
accept any adequate explanation of life. He maintains, however,
with equal firmness that even modern physical theory lacks something
necessary to explain vital phenomena; that no interplay of atoms,
however complicated, can account for the simplest manifestation of
life. In brief, the vitalist looks outward for the explanation of life;
the mechanist looks inward.
The attitude of the mechanist is, for the present, largely one of
faith and hope rather than sight. He admits that modern physical
theory affords no explanation of life, and that there is no reason to
believe we are any nearer a solution now than we were a century
ago. But, encouraged by precedent, he holds steadily his faith that
some new and unexpected discovery may at any time clear our
vision as radioactivity clarified that of our predecessors. And he
is confident that when the solution of this mystery is reached it will
be found to be internal rather than external.
But while we are waiting for something of this kind to happen,
may we by any chance find some foreshadowing of a possible com-
mon ground in existing physical theory?
Let us imagine, if we can, some one whose physical experience has
been limited to solids and who is ignorant of molecules and atoms.
The latter will not be so difficult when we remember that it has not
been so very long ago that we were all ignorant of any subatomic
structure. Matter, to our supposed observer, is continuous and
infinitely divisible without alteration in its properties; its structure is
perfectly uniform to the last conceivable degree. Suppose further
that he observes for the first time the melting of a solid. That which
would probably impress him most in this process would be its abrupt-
ness, its sharp initiation. By continual influx of heat the solid suffers
a Steady rise of temperature, which seems as though it might continue
indefinitely as long as heat is supplied. But suddenly, without warn-
ing or apparent cause, a critical point isreached. Though the influx
of heat is not halted the temperature stops rising. A new effect is
seen, different in kind from any phenomenon known in solids. We
say that the body is undergoing a change of state and is becoming a
liquid. In this new state new laws govern its behavior; new proper-
ties are evident, differing in kind, not in degree, from those of solids.
Our unsophisticated observer might well wonder at this curious
behavior; but should we, from our superior knowledge attempt to tell
him that this difference in appearance and behavior is not a matter of
composition or outside forces, but of internal structure, we might
find him rather incredulous.
“No,” he might say. ‘‘Something has happened to stop the rise of
temperature. There has been an introduction of a new factor into
the situation. You speak of structural difference. I do not under-
82322—30——_15
22 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
stand you. The structure of a solid, as I am familiar with it, could
not be more simple than it is—continuous, infinitely divisible, uni-
form throughout, with no shade of difference anywhere upon which
to build up an explanation. No; we must look outside for the cause
of this change. Liquid phenomena are not expressible in terms of the
properties of solids. He who maintains that they are is a mechanist.”’
In this belief he might be confirmed if he pushed the heating of the
liquid far enough. At a second critical point, again unheralded and
without apparent reason, the liquid begins to boil, and the resulting
gas exhibits a new set of phenomena, differing in kind from anything
to be found in either solids or liquids. The new phenomena in this
case depart even more widely from those of the other states than was
the case at the first critical point.
To us, with our knowledge of molecules, the explanation of these
critical points and different states is comparatively simple and inter-
nal. Itis true that the phenomena of one state are not to be expressed
in terms of the properties of another; the behavior of gases can not be
deduced from the laws of elastic solids or of incompressible liquids.
The solution does not lie in a line joining one state to another, but goes
back from each state to the common basis of molecular structure
underlying all states, something of which our observer is yet to become
aware. And until a similar common ground for the phenomena of
living and nonliving matter is recognized there must be a difference
of opinion between the vitalist and the mechanist.
What this common basis may be we can not as yet surmise. It
remains for some new discovery to open our eyes. It must be some-
thing deeper and more fundamental than molecules or atoms. In so
far the vitalist is right; and in so far as he maintains that the mere
interplay of atoms contains the key to the mystery, the mechanist is
wrong. But such a common basis, underlying and forming part of
nonliving as well as living matter, would be an internal factor, and
it is for such a factor that the mechanist is looking.
The parallel here suggested is worth pushing farther. The past
history of Nature has been one of change, of growth, of that develop-
ment which we call evolution. Her future, if hindsight is to be
trusted, will carry this evolution onward to a consummation of which
we can as yet form no conception. Nature, we may say, has been
steadily warming up to her work since the beginning of things. And
in this warming up process we may distinguish several critical stages,
strangely suggestive of the different states of matter.
The first of these critical points was reached millions of years ago,
when life first made its appearance, a totally new phenomenon super-
imposed upon inanimate Nature. For untold ages life was impossible
on the earth, but eventually, when conditions allowed, life appeared,
no one knows how. With its appearance a new order of things was
THE LINGERING DRYAD—HEYL 213
introduced, and phenomena not to be found in inorganic Nature began
to show themselves. With the advent of the organic, new motives of
action are recognizable, and new combinations are possible. The
vitalist explains this by bringing in a mysterious something from the
outside; the mechanist is persuaded that matter in acquiring life has
not ceased to be a conservative system; only in its behavior is it
transformed.
Moreover, this transformation has not been complete. Living and
nohliving matter exist side by side and will probably continue to do so.
The physicist would call this the coexistence of two phases at one
temperature, like a mixture of ice and water at the freezing point,
each following its own laws and exhibiting its own characteristic
properties under the same environment.
We may, perhaps, by poetic license think of the first beginnings of
life as feeling strange and lonely in the midst of the nonliving matter
surrounding them, so different in properties, in behavior. And
perhaps we may imagine that the works and ways of nonliving matter
occasionally grated on the sensibilities of the living, and called forth
the protest: ‘Why are you so mechanical? Why not show a little
flexibility occasionally?’ But this protest, we may imagine, was
wasted. “It is my ancient way,’ replied nonliving Nature. ‘‘the
way I did for millions of years before you newcomers appeared upon
the scene. J can not mend my case. Why not do as I do and be
sociable?”
But this is just what living matter will not do. Like white men in
the Tropics, it maintains its standard of living among an overwhelming
majority of an inferior grade of civilization.
Millions of years have passed. Life is no longer a newcomer, a
feeble colony, but has waxed mighty, and has become the outstanding
feature of the earth’s surface. And now we have reached a second
critical point. Life has attained such a degree of complexity that
a new set of phenomena is beginning to make its appearance, some-
thing different in kind from anything that has been before; as dif-
ferent in its turn as was life itself compared to inanimate matter;
something superimposed upon life as life of old was superimposed
upon the nonliving. And it is, appropriately enough, in man, the
highest type of life, the flower of creation, the peak of evolution,
“the heir of all the ages in the foremost rank of time,” that this new
thing first makes itself manifest—a moral sense, an ethical feeling,
which often finds itself as much a stranger in its environment as life
must have felt among the crystals and colloids among which it began
its existence. Jf we must find a single word to express this new quality
let us call it “Soul.”
Within us is developing a new thing, as wonderful as life itself and
no less rich in possibilities. Life in its turn has brought forth some-
214 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
thing of a higher order, transcending itself, as it once transcended
nonliving matter. And that this new thing has elected to make its
appearance in and through us, the highest of Nature’s children, what
is more reasonable? Do men gather figs of thistles?
But here the vitalist takes his last stand. ‘I know,” says he,
“that past history points your way; that one step after another, I
have been forced to give ground. I, who once held that no one but
God could make an organic compound, have lived to see it done by
high-school students. You mechanists, on the other hand, have
pressed steadily forward. But beware lest, flushed with success and
intoxicated with power, you attempt too much and achieve your own
downfall. What you tell me now goes beyond all bounds of credence.
Am I to understand that all that makes a man, his ethics, his poetry,
his music, his aspirations, his ideals, are from within? Are these, too,
of the earth, earthy? Never! ‘These, at last, must come from with-
out. Can ideals rise higher than their source?”’
Of the earth, earthy! But why should there be anything mean or
unworthy about that which comes from within rather than from
without? Is the macrocosm essentially nobler than the microcosm?
True, tradition runs that way. Man at different times has set his
gods in the most inaccessible places, on the summit of Mount Olympus,
or across the rainbow bridge in Asgard; but the greatest idealist that
our race has produced broke with this tradition when he said: ‘‘The
kingdom of God is within you.”
And perhaps it may be true that ideals can rise higher than their
apparent source. Just as every great genius had parents of less than
his own ability, who yet in some mysterious way endowed him with
more than they themselves possessed, so Nature has produced within
us something without precedent in the life history of the earth. And
as a parent watches with pride a child who gives early promise of
outdistancing his elders, so Mother Nature may be watching us.
What is this new thing which Nature has brought forth, and with
the development of which we have been intrusted? No man can say,
but it is a fair inference that it will go far. Life has gone far from a
tiny speck of protoplasm; who knows to what lengths this new thing,
this mind, this soul, if you will, may carry us? For it doth not yet
appear what we shall be.
WHAT IS LIGHT?
By Artuur H. Compron
[With 5 plates]
As long ago as the seventeenth century, Newton defended the view
that light consists of streams of little particles, shot with tremendous
speed from a candle or the sun or any other source of light. At the
dawn of the nineteenth century, however, experiments were performed
which were thought to give positive evidence that light consists of
waves. Maxwell interpreted them as electromagnetic waves, and in
such terms we have ever since been explaining light rays, X rays, and
radio rays. We have measured the length of the waves, their fre-
quency and other characteristics, and have felt that we know them
intimately. Recently, however, a group of electrical effects of light
has been discovered for which the idea of light waves suggests no
explanation, but whose interpretation is obvious according to a
modified form of Newton’s old theory of light projectiles.
REVIEW OF THE VARIOUS ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATIONS
When the physicist speaks of light he thinks not only of those radia-
tions which affect the eye. He refers rather to a wide range of radia-
tions, similar to visible light in essential nature, but differing in the
quality described variously by the terms color, wave length, or fre-
quency.
At one end of this series of radiations are the wireless, or radio
rays, with which in recent years we have become so familiar.
Measured in terms of the length of a wave, electric waves extend
from many miles in length down through the radio waves of say 300
meters, to the very short waves resulting from tiny sparks, which may
be no more than a tenth of a millimeter in length. These rays over-
lap in wave length the longest heat waves radiated by hot bodies, and
may be detected and measured by the same instruments. A familiar
source of such heat rays is the reflector type of electric heater, the
kind that warms one side of us in a chilly room. The greater part of
these heat rays are intermediate in wave length between the shortest
electric waves and visible light. Such a heater, however, glows a dull
red, showing that its rays extend into the visible region.
215
Y
216 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Ordinary visible light is well represented by the radiation from a
carbon arc. If its rays are passed through a prism, they are spread
into a spectrum of many colors, from red to violet, which the prism
has separated from each other. Beyond the red end of the spectrum
lie the heat rays. Indeed if we should place a radiometer just beyond
the red end of the spectrum, we should find it strongly affected by
the heat rays from the arc. The question arises, are there similar
radiations beyond the violet which we are unable to see? *
If a fluorescent screen of platinum barium cyanide is brought up,
we notice a brilliant green glow extending far beyond the violet light
visible on the ordinary screen. Evidently our failure to see light in
this region is not because there is no light, but because our eyes are
insensitive to rays of this type. The fluorescent screen changes their
color so that we can see them. ‘These are the ultra-violet rays, of
X- RAYS
CATHODE ELECTRONS
FIGURE 1.—Coolidge X-ray tube. Electrons shot from the cathode against the target produce these
X rays, which are light of very short wave length
which we have heard so much recently in connection with summer
sunshine and prevention of rickets.
As one goes farther into the ultra-violet the rays become rapidly
absorbed by air, and can be studied only in a vacuum. But at still
shorter wave lengths the rays are again less readily absorbed as we
approach the region of X rays. A high-tension transformer shoots
the electrons at high speed from the hot wire cathode against the tung-
sten target and there X rays are emitted (fig. 1). It is like shooting
a rapid-fire gun at a steel plate. The bullets represent the electrons
shot from the cathode, and the noise resulting when the bullets bang
against the plate represents the X rays.
Just as in the case of ultra-violet light, these X rays do not affect
our eyes. Their existence can, however, be shown by placing in
their path the same screen as was used to detect the ultra-violet rays.
WHAT IS LIGHT?—COMPTON AW
That these rays are of the same nature as light is shown by the fact
that we have found it possible to reflect and refract them, to polarize
and diffract them. They are indeed light of ten thousand times
shorter wave length.
One of the most important properties of X rays is their ability to
ionize air and make it electrically conducting. Such ionization can
also be produced by the gamma rays from radium. Whereas, how-
ever, X rays may be half absorbed in an inch of water, it takes a foot
of water to absorb half of the gamma rays from radium, correspond-
ing to the much shorter wave length of the radioactive rays.
But the end is not yet. There exists a kind of highly penetrating
radiation which is especially prominent at high altitudes, and is sup-
posed to come from some source outside the earth. These cosmic rays,
as they are called, will penetrate 10 or 20 feet of water before they are
Flectric or Radio Rays tent Ultra- Gamma
L 7)
( —SSSSS—SS==_=4 ——_______
Broadcasting Heat Rays X-rays Cosmic
B Ra
. Complete Spectrum of Electromagnetic Radiation, 1929 (estate
FIGURE 2.—Complete spectrum of electromagnetic radiation on a logarithmic scale. Visible light is
only a small but very important part of this spectrum
half absorbed. It is possible that these rays are like cathode rays,
rather than X rays, though they are usually thought to be of the latter
type.
In Figure 2 we see graphically how these different rays are related
to each other. At the extreme left I have arbitrarily started the
spectrum at a wave length of 18 kilometers, which is the wave length
of certain trans-Atlantic wireless signals. There is no reason why
longer waves could not be produced if desired. The electric waves
continue in an unbroken spectrum down to 0.1 mm., rays recently
studied at Cleveland by the late Doctor Nichols and Mr. Tear. Over-
lapping these electric rays are the heat waves, which have been ob-
served from about 0.03 ecm. to 0.00003 cm., including the whole of the
visible region. The heat rays in turn are overlapped by the ultra-
violet rays, produced by electric discharges; and these reach well into
the region described as X rays. Beyond these are in turn the gamma
rays and the cosmic rays. Thus over a range of wave lengths of from
2X107-" cm. to 210° cm. there is found to be a continuous spectrum
of radiations, of which visible light occupies only a very narrow band.
The great breadth of this wave-length range will perhaps be better
appreciated if we expand the scale until the wave of a cosmic ray has a
length equal to the thickness of a post card. The longest wireless
wave would on this scale extend from here to the nearest fixed star.
218 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
When the physicist speaks of light, he refers to all the radiations
included in this vast range. We believe that they are all the same
kind of thing, and that anything which may be said about the nature
of the rays in one part of this region is equally true of the rest.
LIGHT CONSISTS OF WAVES
There are many ways in which light acts like a wave in an elastic
medium. Such elastic waves move with a speed which is the same for
all wave lengths and all intensities, just as does light. Waves, like
light rays, can be reflected and refracted. The polarization of light
is a property characteristic of the transverse waves in an elastic solid.
It is true that if one examines the constancy of the speed of light in
detail, difficulties arise; for it is found that its speed is the same rela-
tive to an observer no matter how fast the observer is going. This
would not be true if light were a wave in an ordinary elastic medium.
Maxwell’s identification of light as electromagnetic waves, however,
removes this difficulty.
The crucial test for the existence of waves, however, has always been
that of diffraction and interference. Imagine a row of pebbles dropped
into a pond at the same instant. The effect would be similar to that
shown in Plate 1, Figure1. In this figure we picture a series of waves
passing through a succession of openings in a grid. After passing
through, the crests of the emerging wavelets recombine to form a new
wave going straight ahead. But in addition, the wavelet just emerg-
ing from one opening may combine with the first wave from the next
opening, the second from the next, and so on, forming a new wave
front inclined at a definite angle to the first. The angle between these
two waves, as will be seen from this diagram, is determined by the dis-
tance between successive waves, i. e., the wave length, and by the
distance between successive openings in the grid. The figure at the
right shows how the emergent wave may combine with the second wave
from the adjacent opening, the fourth from the second opening, and so
on, and form a wave front propagated at a larger angle.
That such a variety of wave formation is not purely imaginary is
shown in Plate 1, Figure 2, which is a photograph of ripples on the sur-
face of mercury, taken after they have passed through a comblike
grid. Notice how one group of waves combines to form a wave front
going straight ahead. But in addition, on either side of the central
beam, we find two beams forming where the paths from successive
openings in the grid differ by one wave length. Out at a large angle
we see even the second order of the diffracted beam.
If we were unable to see the separate waves, but knew the kind of
erid through which the béam of ripples had passed, not only could we
say that this is the way the beam should be split up if it consists of
waves, but we could even tell what the wave length of the ripples must
be in order to give these particular angles between the diffracted beams.
WHAT IS LIGHT?—COMPTON 219
The same experiment may be performed with a beam of light. In
Plate 2, Figure 1, is shown a set of some 200 vertical lines. If these
lines are photographed onto a lantern slide, they form a grid through
which a beam of light may be made to pass. The upper part of
Plate 2, Figure 2, shows a beam of light projected onto a photographic
plate. The middle part of the figure shows the same beam of light,
but this time projected through such a lantern slide grid having about
100 lines to theinch. The original spot of light is now split into three,
a bright one in the center, the direct ray, and a diffracted ray on either
side. It is just as in the case of the mercury ripples passing through
the grid.
If this is really a case of the diffraction of waves, as we have sup-
posed, if a grating with lines closer together is used, the separation
between the diffracted images should be correspondingly greater.
The lower part of Plate 2, Figure 2, shows our beam of light projected
this time through a grid photographed with about 300 lines to the
inch. The separation of the diffracted beams is now much greater.
GRATING
FIGURE 3.—Apparatus for diffracting X rays from a ruled reflection grating
When these diffracted images are thrown on a screen, one can see that
their outer edges are red and their inner edges blue. This means that
red light is of the greater wave length. In fact we could easily, from
this experiment, tell what the wave length of light is—the distance
from the central image to the diffracted image is to the distance from
the grating to the screen as the wave length of the light is to the dis-
tance between the lines on the grating. When one carries through
the calculation, he finds that the wave length of light is about one
fifty-thousandth of an inch.
If we can rely on such a test, light must consist of waves.
Diffraction of X rays.—Precisely similar experiments can, however,
be done with X rays. In place of a projection lantern we must,
however, use an X-ray tube and a pair of slits as shown in Figure 38.
The lantern slide with the lines on it is replaced by a polished mirror
on which lines are ruled 50 to the millimeter. The resulting photo-
eraph is shown in Plate 2, Figure 3. When the ruled mirror is with-
220 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
drawn we have the single vertical line D. With the grating in place
we see a bright central reflected image O with companions on either
side. Thus X rays can also be diffracted, and must therefore, like
light, consist of waves.
LIGHT CONSISTS OF PARTICLES
For a hundred years no one had seriously questioned the truth of the
wave theory. In 1900, however, Planck published the results of a
long study of the problem of the radiation of heat and light from a hot
body. This difficult theoretical study, which has stood the test of
time, showed that if a body when heated is to become first red hot,
then yellow, and then white, the oscillators in it which are giving out
the radiation must not radiate continuously as the electromagnetic
theory would demand. They must rather radiate suddenly little
portions of energy. The amount of energy in each portion must
further, according to Planck, be proportional to the frequency.
This is the origin of the celebrated ‘‘quantum”’ theory.
On account of the difficult character of the reasoning involved in
Planck’s argument, his conclusions carried weight only among those
who were especially interested in theoretical physics. Among these
was Einstein, who called attention to the fact that Planck’s con-
clusions would fit exactly with the view that the radiation was not
emitted in waves at all, but as little particles, each possessing a por-
tion of energy proportional to the frequency of the Sea as
Planck had assumed.
Einstein and the photoelectric effect—An opportunity to apply this
idea was afforded by the photoelectric effect. It is found that when
light, as from an arc, falls upon certain metals, such as zinc or sodium,
a current of negative electricity in the form of electrons escapes from
the metallic surface. This photoelectric effect is especially promi-
nent with X rays, for these rays eject electrons from all sorts of sub-
stances. In Plate 3, Figure 1, is shown one of C. T. R. Wilson’s
photographs of the trails left by electrons ejected by X rays passing
through air and a sheet of copper. These electrons, shot out of the
air and the metal by the action of the X rays, are the X-ray photo-
electrons.
The most remarkable property of these photoelectrons is the speed
at which they move. We have seen, as in Figure 4, that X rays are
the waves produced when the cathode electrons bombard a metal
target inside the X-ray tube. Let us suppose that a cathode electron
strikes the target at a speed of a hundred thousand miles a second
(they move tremendously fast). The resulting X ray, after passing
through the walls of the X-ray tube and perhaps a block of wood, may
eject a photoelectron from a metal plate placed on the far side. The
speed of this photoelectron is then found to be almost as great as
that of the original cathode electron.
WHAT IS LIGHT?—-COMPTON 221
The surprising nature of this phenomenon may be illustrated by
considering a similar event with water waves. Imagine two diving
boards on opposite sides of a wide pond. A boy dives from one board
into the water with a splash which sends ripples out over the pool.
By the time they reach the second boy, who is swimming in the water
beside the other diving board some distance away, these ripples are
much too small to notice. We should be greatly surprised if these
insignificant ripples should lift the second swimmer bodily from the
water and set him on his diving board.
If, however, it is impossible for a water ripple to do such a thing it
is just as impossible for an ether ripple, sent out when an electron dives
CATHODE PHOTO-
ELEGTRONS
FIGURE 4,—The speed of the photoelectrons éjected from the metal plate at P is almost as great as the
speed of the cathode electrons which produce the X rays at the target T
into the target of an X-ray tube, to jerk an electron out of a second
piece of metal with a speed equal to that of the first electron.
It was considerations of this kind which showed to Einstein the
futility of trying to account for the photoelectric effect on the basis of
waves. He saw, however, that this effect might be explained if light
and X rays consist of particles. These particles are now commonly
called ‘“‘ photons.” The picture of the X-ray experiment on this
view would be that when the electron strikes the target of an X-ray
tube, its energy of motion is transformed into a photon, that is, a
particle of X rays which goes with the speed of light to the second piece
222, ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of metal. Here the photon gives up its energy to one of the electrons
of which the metal is composed, and throws it out with an energy
of motion equal to that of the first electron.
In this way Einstein was able to account in a very satisfactory
way for the phenomenon of the ejection of electrons by light and
X rays.
How X rays are scattered—KEKven more direct evidence that light
consists of particles has come from a study of scattered X rays.
If a piece of paper is held in the light of a lamp, the paper scatters
hight from the lamp into our eyes. In the same way, if the lamp were
an X-ray tube, the paper would scatter X rays into our eyes. If
light and X rays are waves, scattered X rays are like an echo. When
one whistles in front of a wall, the echo comes back with the same
pitch as the original sound. This must be so, for each wave of the
sound is reflected from the wall, as many waves return as strike, and
the frequency or pitch of the echoed wave is the same as that of the
original wave. In the case of scattered X rays, the echo should simi-
larly be thrown back by the electrons in the scattering material,
and should likewise have the same pitch or frequency as the incident
rays.
We can measure the pitch, or what amounts to the same thing, the
wave length of a beam of scattered X rays, using the apparatus shown
in Plate 3, Figure 2. Rays from the target T of the X-ray tube were
scattered by a block of carbon at R, and the wave length of the echoed
rays was measured by an X-ray spectrometer. By swinging the X-
ray tube in line with the slits, it was possible to get a direct com-
parison with the wave length of the original rays.
Plate 4, Figure 1, shows the result of the experiment. Above is
plotted the spectrum of the original X-ray beam. Below is shown the
spectrum of the X rays scattered in three different directions. A part
of the scattered rays is of the original wave length; but, as you see,
most of the rays are increased in wave length. This would corres-
pond to a lower pitch for the echo than for the original sound.
As we have seen, this change in wave length is contrary to the
predictions of the wave theory. If we take Hinstein’s idea of X-ray
particles, however, we find a simple explanation of the effect. On this
view, we may suppose that each photon of the scattered X rays is
deflected by a single electron, Figure 5. Picture a golf ball bouncing
from a football. A part of the golf ball’s energy is spent in setting
the football in motion. Thus the golf ball bounces off having less
energy than when it struck. In the same way the electron from which
the X-ray photon bounces will recoil, taking part of the photon’s
energy, and the deflected photon will have less energy than before it
struck the electron. This reduction in energy of the X-ray photon
corresponds, according to Planck’s original quantum theory, to a
WHAT IS LIGHT?—COMPTON 223
decrease in frequency of the scattered X rays, just as the experiments
show. In fact, the theory is so definite that it is possible to calculate
just how great a change in frequency should occur, and the calculation
is found to correspond accurately with the experiments.
Trailing a photon.—lIf this explanation is the correct one it should,
however, be possible to find the electrons which recoil from the impact
of the X-ray particles. Before this theory of the origin of scattered
X rays was suggested, no such recoiling electrons had ever been
noticed. Within a few months after its proposal, however, C. T. R.
Wilson succeeded in photographing the tracks left when electrons in
INCIDENT QUANTUM
FIGURE 5.—Recoil of an electron. When an incident X-ray photon glances from an electron, the
electron recoils from the impact, taking part of the photon’s energy
air recoil from the X rays which they scatter. Plate 4, Figure 2,
shows one of his typical photographs. The X rays here are going
from left to right. At top and bottom will be seen the long trails
left by two photoelectrons, which as we have seen take up the whole
energy of a photon. In between are a number of shorter trails, all
with their tails toward the X-ray tube. These are the electrons
which have been struck by flying X-ray photons. Some have been
struck squarely, and are knocked straight ahead. Others have
received only a glancing blow, and have recoiled at an angle. Thus
we have observed not only the loss in energy of the deflected photons,
224 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
as shown by the lowering in pitch of the X-ray echo, but we have
found also the recoiling electrons from which the photons have
bounced.
In order, however, to satisfy ourselves by a crucial test whether
X rays act like particles, an experiment was devised which should
enable us to follow the path of the photon after it has been deflected
by an electron. In Figure 6 we see at the left what we may call the
X-ray gun, which shoots a few X rays through a cloud-expansion
chamber. In this chamber is photographed the trail of every electron
set in motion by the X rays. So feeble a beam of X rays is used that
on the average only one or two recoil electrons will appear at a time.
Let us suppose, as in the figure, that the electron struck by the
X-ray particle recoils downward. This must mean that the X-ray
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FIGURE 6.—Diagram of an experiment in which one observes both the recoiling electron and the
direction in which the deflected photon proceeds
particle has been deflected upward toward A. If this X ray should
strike another electron before it leaves the chamber, this event must
occur at some point along the line OA. It can not occur on the same
side as the recoil electron. If, however, the X ray is a wave, spreading
in all directions, there is no more reason why the second electron
associated with the scattered ray should appear at A than at B. A
series of photographs which shows the relation between the direction
of recoil of the scattering electron R and the location of the second
electron struck by the scattered X ray, thus affords a crucial test
between the conceptions of X rays as spreading waves and X rays as
particles.
From a large number of photographs taken in this manner it has
become evident that an X ray is scattered in a definite direction,
WHAT IS LIGHT?—COMPTON 225
like a particle. But if X rays, so also all the rest of the family of
electromagnetic radiations. It would thus seem that by these ex-
periments Kinstein’s notion of light as made up of particles is estab-
lished.
THE PARADOX OF WAVES AND PARTICLES
We thus seem to have satisfactory proof from our interference and
diffraction experiments that light consists of waves. The photo-
electric and scattering experiments afford equally satisfactory evi-
dence that light consists of particles. How can these two apparently
conflicting concepts be reconciled?
Electron waves.—Before attempting to answer this question let us
notice that this dilemma applies not only to radiation but also in
other fundamental fields of physics. When the evidence was growing
strong that radiation, which we had always thought of as waves, had
also the properties of particles, L. de Broglie asked, may it not then
be possible that electrons, which we know as particles, may have the
properties of waves? An extension of Planck and Einstein’s quantum
theory enabled him to calculate what the wave length corresponding
to a moving electron should be. In photographs like Plate 3, Figure
1, and Plate 4, Figure 2, we have ocular evidence that electrons are
very real particles indeed. Nevertheless, De Brogle’s suggestion
was promptly subjected to experimental test by Davisson and Germer
at New York, and later by Thomson, Rupp, Kickuchi, and others.
Let us consider Thomson’s experiments, which are typical of them
all. Our crucial evidence for the wave character of light was the fact
that light could be diffracted by a grating of lines ruled on glass.
X rays were diffracted in the same way; but before this had been
shown possible, it was found that X rays could be diffracted by
the regularly arranged atoms in a crystal. The layers of atoms took
the place of the lines ruled on glass. Plate 5, Figure 1, shows how this
experiment has been done by Hull, at Schenectady. X rays pass
through a pair of diaphragms and a mass of powdered crystals placed
at C, and strike a photographic plate at P. Rays diffracted by the
layers of atoms in the crystal strike at such points as P,, P., etc.,
giving rise to a series of rings about the center. Ifamass of powdered
aluminum crystals is placed at C, Hull obtains the photograph shown
in Plate 5, Figure 2. You see the central image, and around it the
diffraction rings. It was this crystal diffraction that first gave con-
vineing evidence that X rays, like light, consist of waves.
G. P. Thomson has performed a precisely similar experiment with
electrons. The X-ray beam in the last slide was replaced by a beam
of cathode electrons, and gold leaf took the place of the aluminum.
The resulting photograph is shown in Plate 5, Figure 3. Though it
226 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
is not quite as sharp as the photograph taken with the X rays, we can
see distinctly the central image, and several rings of diffracted elec-
trons. If Plate 5, Figure 2, demonstrated the wave character of X
rays, does not Plate 5, Figure 3, prove equally definitely the wave
character of electrons?
We are thus faced with the fact that the fundamental things in
nature, matter, and radiation, present to us a dual aspect. In certain
ways they act like particles, in others like waves. The experiments
tell us that we must seize both horns of the dilemma.
A SUGGESTED SOLUTION
During the last year or two there has gradually developed a solution
of this puzzle, which though at first rather difficult to grasp, seems to be
free from logical contradictions and essentially capable of describing
the phenomena which our experiments reveal. A mere mention of
some of the names connected with this development will suggest some-
thing of the complexities through which the theory has gradually
gone. There are Duane, Slater, and Swann in this country, De
Broglie in France, Heisenberg and Schrédinger in Germany, Bohr in
Denmark, Dirac in England, among others, who have contributed to
the growth of this explanation.
The point of departure of this theory is the mathematical proof
that the dynamics of a particle may be expressed in terms of the pro-
pagation of a group of waves. That is, the particle may be replaced
by a wave train—the two, so far as their motion is concerned, may be
made mathematically equivalent. The motion of a particle such as
an electron or a photon in a straight line is represented by a plane
wave. The wave length is determined by the momentum of the
particle, and the length of the train of waves by the precision with
which the momentum is known. In the case of the photon, this
wave may be taken as the ordinary electromagnetic wave. The
wave corresponding to the moving electron is called by the name of
its inventor, a De Broglie wave.
Consider, for example, the deflection of a photon by an electron on
this basis, that is, the scattering of an X ray. The incident photon
is represented by a train of plane electromagnetic waves. The recoil-
ing electron is likewise represented by a train of plane De Broglie waves
propagated in the direction of recoil. These electron waves form a
kind of grating by which the incident electromagnetic waves are
diffracted. The diffracted waves represent in turn the deflected
photon. They are increased in wave length by the diffraction because
the grating is receding, resulting in a Doppler effect.
In this solution of the problem we note that before we could deter-
mine the direction in which the X ray was to be deflected, it was
necessary to know the direction of recoil of the electron. In this
WHAT IS LIGHT?—COMPTON Dot
respect the solution is indeterminate; but its indeterminateness cor-
responds to an indeterminateness in the experiment itself. There is
no way of performing the experiment so as to make the electron recoil
in a definite direction as a result of an encounter with a photon. It is
a beauty of the theory that it is determinate only where the experi-
ment itself is determinate, and leaves arbitrary those parameters
which the experiment is incapable of defining.
It is not usually possible to describe the motion of either a beam of
light or a beam of electrons without introducing both the concepts of
particles and waves. There are certain localized regions in which at a
certain moment energy exists, and this may be taken as a definition
of what we mean by a particle. Butin predicting where these localized
positions are to be at a later instant, a consideration of the propaga-
tion of the corresponding waves is usually our most satisfactory mode
of attack.
Attention should be called to the fact that the electromagnetic
waves and the De Broglie waves are according to this theory waves of
probability. Consider as an example the diffraction pattern of a beam
of light or of electrons, reflected from a ruled grating, and falling on
a photographic plate. In the intense portion of the diffraction pattern
there is a high probability that a grain of the photographic plate will be
affected. In corpuscular language, there is a high probability that a
photon or electron, as the case may be, will strike this portion of the
plate. Where the diffraction pattern is of zero intensity, the proba-
bility of a particle striking is zero, and the plate is unaffected. Thus
there is a high probability that a photon will be present where the
‘intensity’ of an electromagnetic wave is great, and a lesser prob-
ability where this ‘‘intensity”’ is smaller.
It is a corollary that the energy of the radiation lies in the photons,
and not in the waves. For we mean by energy the ability to do work,
and we find that when radiation does anything it acts in particles.
In this connection it may be noted that this wave-mechanics
theory does not enable us to locate a photon or an electron definitely
except at the instant at which it does something. When it activates
a grain on a photographic plate, or ionizes an atom which may be
observed in a cloud expansion chamber, we can say that the particle
was at that point at the instant of the event. But in between such
events the particle can not be definitely located. Some positions
are more probable than others, in proportion as the corresponding
wave is more intense in these positions. But there is no definite
position that can be assigned to the particle in between its actions
on other particles. Thus it becomes meaningless to attempt to
assign any definite path to a particle. It is like assigning a definite
path to a ray of light: The more sharply we try to define it by narrow
slits, the more widely the ray is spread by diffraction.
§2322—80——16
228 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
If it were possible to photograph instantaneously the photons in
an intense beam of light, we might expect them to have somewhat
the appearance of Figure 7. Where the electric field of the correspond-
ing electromagnetic wave is a maximum, there will be a maximum
density of distribution of the photons. There is, however, this
defect with our picture, that there seems to be no possible way in
which we can experimentally locate the individual photons within
the wave. Our picture must thus be considered to be a purely imag-
inary one. It will, however, serve to indicate that the conceptions
of waves and particles are not irreconcilable.
Perhaps enough has been said to show that by grasping both
horns it has been found possible to overcome the dilemma. Though
no simple picture has been invented affording a mechanical model
of a light ray, by combining the notions of waves and particles a
FIGURE 7.—Waves of photons. The curve represents a continuous electromagnetic wave; below the
curve the wave is represented as successive sheets of photons
logically consistent theory has been devised which seems essentially
capable of accounting for the properties of light as we know them.
Radio rays, heat rays, visible and ultra-violet light, all are thus
different varieties of light. We find from experiments on diffraction
and interference that light consists of waves. The photoelectric
effect and the scattering of X rays give equally convincing reasons
for believing that light consists of particles. For centuries it has
been supposed that the two conceptions are contradictory. Goaded
on, however, by obstinate experiments, we seem to have found a
way out. We continue to think of light propagated as electromag-
netic waves; but whenever the light does something, it does it as
photons. Light is thus in some respects similar to waves and in
others to particles, but can not be identified completely with either.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Compton
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THE DIRECTION OF THE X RAYS
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Compton PLATE 5
1. HULL’S ARRANGEMENT FOR DIFFRACTING A BEAM OF X RAYS BY A
MASS OF POWDERED CRYSTALS
2 3
2. THE DIFFRACTION PATTERN PRODUCED WHEN A BEAM OF X RAYS
TRAVERSES A MASS OF ALUMINUM CRYSTALS. (HULL)
3. THE DIFFRACTION PATTERN PRODUCED WHEN A BEAM OF ELECTRONS
TRAVERSES A MASS OF GOLD CRYSTALS. (G. P. THOMSON)
ARTIFICIAL COLD !
By Gorpon B. WILKEs
[With 3 plates]
The appearance of refrigerating machinery for domestic use has
created among laymen an abiding interest in the mechanical methods
of artificial cooling. Domestic refrigeration of one kind or another
is here to stay and it is probable that an extensive development of
cooling and ventilating machinery for the home is just around the
corner. Already many of our theaters and public halls have installed
devices for cooling the air during the warm months, and only ashort
time ago a combined heating and air cooling unit was advertised for
private residences. If the temperature of our living quarters drops
8° or 10° to around 60° F., we feel uncomfortable and start the heating
system; but if a warm day arrives in summer with a temperature
20° or 30° above 70° F., we are uncomfortable because we have had
no easy means of cooling the air. I can see no reason why, during
the next few years, it will not become a rather common practice in
the more expensive homes to have some means of cooling the air in
summer as well as a means of heating it to a comfortable temperature
during winter.
Some fifty-odd years ago, Lord Kelvm (Sir Wiliam Thomson)
demonstrated, by means of a simple lecture-table experiment, that
the sensation of cold was a purely relative matter. He placed three
basins of water on the table: one hot, one ice cold, and the third at
room temperature. Placing his right hand in the hot water and his
left in the cold water for a few moments, he quickly transferred both
hands to the basin with water at room temperature. In attempting
to describe the sensation he was forced to conclude that either his
left hand or his right hand was deceiving him, for the water felt cold
to his right and warm to his left hand. Since, therefore, the sensation
of cold is largely a relative matter, we shall assume for our purposes
that cold signifies any temperature below 70° F., ordinary room tem-
perature. Let us also agree to understand that all of the temperatures
referred to are in degrees on the Fahrenheit scale, the one we use for
most work outside the laboratory.
1 Reprinted by permission from The Technology Review, March, 1929, 999
230 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Primitive man found that an over supply of meat from a success-
ful hunt could be preserved for a longer period of time if he kept it
in an underground cavern, a well, or in the water from a spring or
other relatively cool place. In a temperate climate like that in
New England, the temperature of the air may vary as much as 40° in
a day and as much as 100° throughout the year. The daily variation
affects underground temperatures only to a slight extent at a depth
of 2 or 3 feet, while the annual variation is lost at a depth of 25 to
50 feet. There the temperature remains practically constant through-
out the year and usually approximates the average yearly tempera-
ture of the surface. For this reason, water from deep wells usually
has a temperature that is the same throughout the year; similarly,
spring water is at almost constant temperature because this water
comes from a considerable depth below the ground surface. Anyone
who has had the opportunity to visit caves in different seasons, nearly
always finds them warm in winter and cool in summer. This and
the common method of placing water pipes a few feet underground
to prevent freezing in cold weather, illustrate the fact that the
variation in air temperature soon disappears at a sufficient depth
underground.
Nearly everyone is familiar with the use of ice and salt to produce
temperatures low enough to freeze ice cream. If ice and salt are
mixed in proper proportions, it is not difficult to produce a tempera-
ture of 0° F., and by using calcium chloride in place of salt, con-
siderably lower temperatures may be attained. There are many
other substances that may be used with ice to produce temperatures
below the freezing point of water, such as ammonium nitrate, alcohol,
hydrochloric acid, and so on. The use of niter (potassium nitrate)
with snow or ice has long been known. As early as 1550 it is said
the Roman nobles cooled their wines by snow and niter.
In temperate climates, ice has for many years been used to produce
low temperatures. Its melting point is 32° F. which represents the
lowest temperature that one can expect to reach with the use of ice
alone, but the ordinary domestic ice box is more frequently in the
neighborhood of 50° F. as a recent survey of a large number of
refrigerators determined. Despite the enormous sales of electrical
and gas-heated refrigerators In recent years, ice will continue to
be used, probably in somewhat lesser quantities, for many years to
come, because of the low cost and the lack of many minor troubles
that are bound to arise from any mechanical unit.
The cooling effect of evaporation has been utilized for centuries
by the peoples living in hot, dry climates who store their drinking
water in porous earthenware jars. Moisture oozes through the walls
to the outside of the vessel where it evaporates, the effect of which is
sufficient to lower the temperature of the water from 10° to 20°
ARTIFICIAL COLD—-WILKES eau
below that of the surrounding air. This simple primitive expedient,
strangely enough, contains the germ of the principle upon which are
based all of the mechanical refrigeration systems now in domestic
use. The. principle is this: that evaporation—or what is the same
thing, the transition from the liquid to the vapor state—requires a
large amount of heat energy, which must be supplied by the liquid
itself or the immediate surroundings. If one is boiling water, most
of the heat energy comes from the heated air around the vessel and
the air is thereby cooled. If water is evaporating from the surface of
an earthenware water jar, the heat comes from the vessel and the
surrounding air, both of which are cooled in the process.
One must also recognize the fact that the temperature at which
a liquid boils (its ‘‘boiling point’”’) depends upon the pressure. With
the atmospheric pressure as it is at sea level, water boils at approxi-
mately 212° F., but if the pressure be increased twenty times, the
boiling point is increased to about 417° F. If the pressure be suffici-
ently lowered, one can make water boil at room temperature or even
at 32°, the ordinary freezing point.
This we can readily demonstrate on the lecture table by repeating
what is known as Leslie’s Experiment. If we place some water at
room temperature in a thermos bottle and reduce the pressure until
the water boils, heat will be drawn from the remaining water (since
little can come from the surroundings) and it will become cooler.
Then if we continue to reduce the pressure in order to keep the
water boiling, it will soon reach a temperature of 32° F. and some of
the water will be converted into ice, inasmuch as water does not nor-
mally exist in the liquid state at a temperature below 32° F.
The boiling points of all other liquids vary with the pressure and
consequently all that has been said in regard te water applies equally
well to ammonia, sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and so on; only,
of course, the temperature-pressure conditions may be very different
from those of water. This principle of cooling by evaporation or
boiling of various liquids is, as I have already mentioned, the founda-
tion upon which nearly all of our refrigerating machines are con-
structed.
Refrigerating units for home use are, in general, of two different
types—those using a small electrically driven pump, the compression
type, and those using heat generated by a gas or kerosene oil burner,
the absorption type. The operating principle of each is simple, the
former particularly so. A suitable liquid (called the refrigerant)
such as ammonia, sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, methyl chloride,
or ethyl chloride, is placed in the cooling coil inside the refrigerator
cabinet, where it is made to “boil” by having the pressure upon it
reduced with the motor-driven pump. This pump receives the vapor
from the coil at low pressure, compresses it, and passes it along to
232 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
either an air-cooled or a water-cooled condenser. The compressing
of the vapor increases its temperature so that when it reaches the
condenser the high pressure and the cooling action of the condenser
are enough to liquefy it. The liquid refrigerant is then directed back
into the cooling coil in the refrigerator, and the cycle is repeated.
Electrical refrigeration is very similar to a steam heating plant in a
private residence. There water is boiled over the fire box and the
steam or water vapor carried by pipes to radiators where on con-
densing it gives up heat to the room. The condensed steam then
returns to the boiler where the cycle is repeated. In other words, the
boiling of the water keeps the boiler relatively cool and thus acts as a
refrigerating system for the boiler that would otherwise become
very hot. Heat is transferred from the boiler to the radiators in
steam heating, while in electrical refrigeration, heat is transferred
from the refrigerator to the condenser coils in much the same way.
In steam heating, the water is made to boil by the addition of heat,
while in electrical refrigeration the liquid is made to boil by the
reduction in pressure caused by the pump.
The Audiffren unit, the first entirely self-contained machine, is
interesting. It was invented by a French priest, Abbé Audiffren,
some 25 years ago, and placed on a commercial basis in this country
in 1911. The unit resembles a large dumb-bell, with one ball, con-
taining the compressor, revolving in cooling water and with the other
ball used as an expansion or cooling chamber. ‘This latter ball can
be immersed in brine or water for cooling purposes. The unit is
charged with a mixture of sulphur dioxide and lubricating oil at the
factory, which is sufficient for many years’ use. The photograph
(pl. 2, fig. 1) shows one of the original French machines that was sent
to the Heat Measurements Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in the summer of 1911. This particular machine has
been in intermittent service for the past 18 years, operating per-
fectly, and it has never been opened for inspection or repairs.
“Refrigeration by heat’? makes an interesting slogan, but the
layman rarely understands the principles back of the absorption
method of refrigeration, although more than 50 years ago small
domestic refrigeration units using this principle were sold to the
public. Cold water absorbs enormous quantities of ammonia gas,
but if a solution of ammonia and water be heated much of the am-
monia can be driven out of solution. Ferdinand Carré, many years
ago, used two containers connected by a pipe, in one of which a strong
solution of ammonia and water was placed. Adding heat to this
solution by means of a charcoal fire, the ammonia was driven out
and as the other container was kept cool by immersing it in water,
the ammonia gas would condense there in increasing quantities until
most of the ammonia was evolved. Now, if the weak solution were
ARTIFICIAL COLD—WILKES 22a
cooled, the ammonia would be reabsorbed, thus reducing the pressure
on the other chamber so that the ammonia liquid boiled, producing
a considerable cooling effect. This type of machine is still being sold
and if one is willing to heat the unit for about an hour each day with
kerosene or gas, it will keep a refrigerator at a useful temperature for
the preservation of food.
This same principle has been developed by many manufacturers
so that there are large commercial machines using this process as a
means of continuous refrigeration. There are also several domestic
refrigerators using this principle with gas as the form of fuel for
heating; one of these machines, in fact, operates without a single
moving part, except for the thermostat control of the gas valve.
Another important principle of cooling is the Joule-Thompson
Effect or the cooling of a gas by expansion from a high to a low
pressure. If the gas can be made to do work while expanding, a
still greater cooling effect will be produced and the economy of
operation will be increased, since the gas in expanding can be made
to help compress the incoming gas. There are some refrigerating
machines based upon this principle, using air as the refrigerant.
Carbon dioxide is a by-product of many industries and conse-
quently is an inexpensive gas. It is usually sold in the liquid form
under a pressure of about 850 pounds per square inch. Nearly all
substances can exist in three different states, solid, liquid, or gaseous,
provided the temperature and pressure conditions are suitable. If
sufficient heat is added to solid iron, it can be converted into the
liquid state, and if the temperature could be raised still higher a point
would be reached where it would be converted into iron vapor. We
are all familiar with the three states of water, such as steam, water,
and ice; and within the past 50 years we have learned that the so-
called permanent gases can be converted to liquids or even solids,
provided the temperature is sufficiently low and the pressure is
suitable. Now, if a cylinder of liquid carbon dioxide under 850
pounds per square inch pressure is inverted so that when the valve
is opened only liquid will escape, you will find that there is a great
cooling effect, due to the vaporization of the liquid, since carbon
dioxide can not exist as a liquid at room temperature and under
atmospheric pressure. This cooling effect is so great that some of
the escaping liquid is cooled to such a temperature that it can no
longer exist as a liquid, but is converted to the solid state or carbon
dioxide snow. If a strong cloth bag is tied over the outlet from the
tank, the gas will pass through the bag but the solid or snow can be
collected. This snow is at a temperature of 109° F. below zero and
for many years has been used as a cooling agent in laboratory work.
The snow itself sublimes or goes directly from the solid to the gaseous
state under atmospheric pressure and does not make very good ther-
234 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
mal contact with materials that one wishes to cool; consequently, it
is frequently mixed with alcohol or ether to overcome this disad-
vantage of poor contact.
Within the last few years methods have been devised to use this
carbon dioxide snow industrially. The snow as formed above can be
compressed in hydraulic presses so as to form a dense, hard cake with
a specific gravity of about 1.1 or slightly heavier than water. This
dense snow or ‘‘dry ice,’’ as it is called, because it goes directly into a
gas from the solid, is being used to a considerable extent for packing
ice cream or frozen fish where the temperature must be kept consid-
erably below the freezing point. One large manufacturer of ice cream
in Cambridge, Mass., is shipping 75 per cent of his ice cream packed
in carbon dioxide snow rather than with the old salt and ice mixture.
One gallon of ice cream is placed in a corrugated cardboard box and
then a small paper bag is placed on top containing from one to two
pounds of ‘‘dry ice,” depending upon the atmospheric temperature.
This will keep the ice cream in excellent condition for from six to
eight hours, and there are many obvious advantages, such as less
bulk to the containers, inexpensive containers that can be discarded,
thus saving a collection trip, and no wet mixture of salt and ice
required.
Ice cream can be shipped long distances by this method and frozen
fish have remained in freight cars for over five days without attention
when packed with this material. It has been recently stated that in
shipping ice cream from Philadelphia to New York City, 200 pounds
of ‘dry ice”’ at from 5 to 10 cents per pound has replaced 3,000 pounds
of water ice and 600 pounds of salt. In this case 3,400 pounds of extra
freight is avoided besides the other advantages. Dry ice lasts excep-
tionally well even when exposed to a temperature of 70° F. Recently
a 25-pound cake was left on the lecture table for 24 hours exposed to
room temperature and even after that period of time 2 or 3 pounds
were still left. When packed in insulated containers, it will, of
course, last longer. It is reported that a New York apartment house
is using it in all its refrigerators.
Another recent use of carbon dioxide snow is the carbon dioxide
snow fire extinguisher. This is merely a tank of liquid carbon
dioxide under pressure with a hose and nozzle connected so that when
the valve is opened, carbon dioxide gas and snow will be delivered
from the nozzle. This extinguisher is particularly effective on
electrical fires, such as generators or telephone switchboards, because
it will not conduct electricity and does not injure the electrical
apparatus. It is also very effective on gasoline or oil fires. Since
the gas is much heavier than air, the fire is smothered and the
extremely low temperature of the snow cools the burning material
below the ignition temperature.
ARTIFICIAL COLD—-WILKES Pape
If air is compressed to some 3,000 pounds per square inch and then
allowed to expand to atmospheric pressure, it is cooled approximately
50°F. With the aid of a regenerative coil, this cooled, expanded air can
be forced into close contact with the high-pressure air, thus cooling the
high-pressure air. If this process is continued, a point will soon be
reached where the cooling effect will cause some of the escaping air to
be cooled to the liquefaction temperature and liquid air can be col-
lected at the bottom of the expansion coil. For some time after the
discovery of the method of producing liquid air, the material was
largely for laboratory use only, but now the commercial use has
increased to such an extent that there is scarcely a large-sized city
that does not have at least one liquid-air plant in operation. In the
modern plants, the expanding air operates a compressor, thus increas-
ing the efficiency over the earlier laboratory methods.
Air contains roughly 20 per cent oxygen and 80 per cent nitrogen,
but the boiling point of nitrogen is 320° F. below zero while oxygen
boils at only 297° F. below zero. Due to this difference in boiling
temperatures the nitrogen tends to vaporize first and it is possible to
separate these two substances by fractional distillation in much the
same way as gasoline is separated from crude oil, but no external
heat is required to boil liquid air because the normal boiling point is
about 310° F. below zero.
Liquid air is also used in high-vacuum work and is used for the
production of helium from natural gasin Texas. A prominent mining
engineer states that 90 per cent of the explosive work in the mines in
Mexico is carried out with liquid oxygen as the explosive rather than
gun powder. If blotting paper is rolled up and saturated with liquid
oxygen and then tamped into a drilled hole, it can be ignited electri-
cally and an explosion similar to that of gunpowder will result.
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Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Wilkes PLATE 3
1. A MODERN KEROSENE HEATED ABSORPTION PROCESS UNIT. THE BLACK
BALL IS PLACED WITHIN THE CABINET
2. PROFESSOR WILKES WITH THE ELABORATE LECTURE-TABLE DEMONST RA-
TION HE ARRANGED FOR A POPULAR SCIENCE LECTURE
PHOTOSYNTHESIS '
By ©. CO. DALY, Cr Back, fh. te. Ss
Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Liverpool
‘ —
There is no process within the confines of chemistry which is of
ereater interest and importance than that by means of which the
living plant prepares the food on which its life and growth depend.
This food consists of starch and sugars, together grouped under the
general name of carbohydrates, and of certain nitrogen-containing
compounds known as proteins. The material from which the plant
starts is carbonic acid, or a solution of carbon dioxide, which it
obtains from the air, in water which it obtains through its roots
from the soil. From this substance alone the plant is able to prepare
its supply of carbohydrates, and it is true to say that this chemical
process is the fundamental basis of the whole of terrestrial life.
This may truly be asserted because the production of the proteins
is very closely associated with it and the initial stage is common to
the two.
The formation of carbohydrates from carbonic acid when ex-
pressed by a chemical equation looks simple enough. There is no
doubt that the first product of the process that can be recognized in
the plant is a simple sugar, and thus the equation can be written
6H,.CO, = GASEROR == 60,
where the simple carbohydrate is either glucose or fructose. These
simple sugars undergo condensation immediately they are formed to
give cane sugar or one of the starches, and these changes can readily
be written as simple chemical equations.
The mechanism by means of which the plant achieves the syn-
thesis of these complex compounds from carbonic acid has long been
a mystery to chemists and to botanists. It is known that the agency
used by the plant to effect its purpose is sunlight, and thus the term
photosynthesis has been applied to the operation. It is also known
that the plant makes use of certain pigments, such as chlorophyll,
1 Presented at the weekly evening meeting of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Feb. 3, 1928. Re-
printed by permission of the Royal Institution.
237
238 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
and it is to these that the color of the leaves is due. The mystery
of it all lay in the fact that no one knew what actually takes place,
and, indeed, the more chemists and botanists explored, the more
puzzling did the problem seem to be.
Perhaps the most puzzling fact of all is that the plant only makes
use of sunlight, when all our previous knowledge of light reactions
leads us to believe that such light is quite incapable of inducing
photosynthesis. This may readily be understood if the amount of
energy involved in the synthesis is considered. It has been proved
experimentally that in order to synthesize 1 gram molecule (180
grams) of glucose or fructose there must be supplied to the carbonic
acid a minimum quantity of energy equal to 673,800 ‘Calories.
While it is known that the plant manages in some way to absorb
the necessary energy in the form of light, the physicist tells us that
it can not directly absorb enough energy from sunlight. Thus the
photosynthesis can be brought about by red light of the wave length
660uu when the energy directly absorbed can only be 260,000 calories
which is far below the minimum quantity required.
The experience gained from the ordinary reactions of photo-
chemistry leads to the belief that if it is required to convert carbonic
acid into sugars by means of light alone, it will be necessary to use
ultra-violet light which is absorbed by carbonic acid, that is to say,
light of wave length 210uy. It is obvious from this that some un-
known factor is operating in vital photosynthesis.
In any endeavor to elucidate the mystery, it is evident that the
first line of inquiry must be to study the action of the short wave
ultra-violet ight upon carbonic acid. This was first investigated by
Moore and Webster in 1913, who found no evidence of any reaction
taking place. They found, however, that in the presence of cer-
tain catalysts, such as colloidal iron hydroxide, small quantities of
formaldehyde were produced. Since these results appeared to be at
variance with general experience in photochemical investigations,
they were again examined some years later in Liverpool, and it was
then found that when a stream of carbon dioxide was passed through
water irradiated by the light from a quartz mercury lamp, small
quantities of formaldehyde were produced. ‘This result seemed to be
very satisfactory, since the formaldehyde could be looked upon as an
intermediate stage on the way to carbohydrates, especially in view of
the fact that Moore and Webster had proved that formaldehyde was
converted by light into substance, with properties similar to the
simple sugars.
Our observations were criticized by Porter and Ramsperger, who
stated that if rigid precautions were taken to guard against the pres-
ence of every trace of impurity, no formaldehyde was produced. The
suggestion was implied by them that the origin of the formaldehyde
PHOTOSYNTHESIS—BALY 239
was to be found in some unknown impurity. There is, however, an
alternative possibility, and one which is more in keeping with the
known facts of the natural photosynthesis in the living leaf. There
is no doubt that in this reaction the carbonic acid is converted
directly into carbohydrates and that formaldehyde as such is not
produced, and it seemed that the most probable explanation of the
discrepancy between our results and those of Porter and Ramsperger
was that the action of the ultra-violet light is to establish a photo-
chemical equilibrium.
6H,CO,;—C;H205+ 60s,
which reverts to carbonic acid again in the dark. In the presence
of oxidizable impurities a small amount of carbohydrates will be
formed, which will be photochemically decomposed to formaldehyde.
This decomposition of all the carbohydrates by means of ultra-violet
light is well known.
There is no need to give here the details of the experiments which
were carried out to test this view, and it is sufficient to say that con-
clusive proof was obtained of the reality of the equilibrium; that is to
say, carbohydrates were found to be present jn the solution during
irradiation by ultra-violet light, and these vanished very quickly
after the irradiation was stopped.
This gave us at once a starting point, because it seems evident
that if a harmless inorganic reducing agent were added to the soiu-
tion, carbohydrates should be formed in quantity on exposure to
the ultra-violet light. Such a reducing agent is ferrous bicarbonate,
and great hopes were raised when it was found that a saturated
solution of this compound, which was completely colorless when
prepared, gave a copious precipitate of ferric oxide on exposure to
ultra-violet light. It was evident that the oxidation took place by
reason of the oxygen in the carbohydrate equilibrium in accordance
with the equation
4Fe (HCO;). a5 O, = 2Fe,0, Si 4H.O ai 8CO,
and indeed it was found that on evaporation of the exposed solution
a simple sugar was obtained. The quantity produced was very
disappointing and far less than was anticipated, and the conclusion
was forced upon us that some unknown factor was taking part in the
process.
During many unsuccessful endeavors to improve the yield of the
carbohydrates, it was noticed that the ferric oxide was not produced
in the body of the solution, but only on the walls of the quartz con-
taining vessels and on the surface of the iron rods used to make the
bicarbonate. This led us to suspect that the surface was a determin-
ing factor, and we at once changed the experimental method so as to
240 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
increase the surface as much as possible. In order to secure this a
suspension of pure aluminium powder in water maintained by a
stream of carbon dioxide, was exposed to ultra-violet light. Increased
yields of carbohydrates were at once obtained, but it was also found
that the best yields were obtained when the aluminium powder had
been allowed to coat itself with hydroxide by remaining in contact
with the water before the exposure to light. This latter observation
very materially changed our ideas, since it established the fact that
the surface phenomenon is of far greater importance than the re-
ducing action, and indeed raised the question as to whether the latter
plays any réle at all in the process.
In order finally to decide this question an aqueous suspension of
pure and freshly prepared aluminium hydroxide, maintained by a
stream of carbon dioxide, was exposed to ultra-violet light. There
was obtained after filtration and evaporation of the solution a quantity
of carbohydrates equal in weight to that produced when aluminium
powder was used. This conclusively proved the fundamental signifi-
cance of the rdle played by the surface, and at the same time the
reducing action was found to be entirely unnecessary. Identical
results were obtained with other powders, such as aluminium, zinc,
and magnesium carbonates.
During the course of these experiments it occurred to one of my
students (Dr. W. E. Stephen) that if a green powder were used in place
of the white ones the photosynthesis might take place in visible light,
the green color being suggested by the green color of the plant-
pigment chlorophyll. This was found actually to be the case, since
a suspension of nickel carbonate maintained by a stream of carbon
dioxide in water, on exposure to the light from an ordinary tungsten
filament lamp, gave a larger yield of carbohydrates than any of the
white powders in ultra-violet light. We soon found that there was
no especial virtue in the green color, and that equally good results
were given by pink cobalt carbonate.
Apart from the interest which accrues from the fact that the
photosynthesis is thus achieved in a way which shows a real analogy
with the natural phenomenon, the method with a colored surface
and visible light has the very material advantage in that the danger
of photochemical decomposition by ultra-violet light is completely
eliminated, with the result that the products are obtained in a purer
state.
From the above description of the direct photosynthesis of carbo-
hydrates from carbonic acid in the laboratory several points arise
which require discussion and explanation. In the first place it may
be stated that the most rigid control experiments which we could
devise have definitely established the fact that the carbohydrates
are not due to the presence of impurities.
PHOTOSYNTHESIS—BALY 241
One of the greatest difficulties met with in this work was the
preparation of the various materials used for the surfaces, since it is
absolutely essential that these be completely free from any trace of
alkali. It is well known that when metallic hydroxides and carbon-
ates are precipitated they tend to absorb the alkali, and the removal
of this is extraordinarily troublesome. The absence of any alkaline
reaction in the filtrate after the powder has been boiled with water
is no criterion of purity, and the only satisfactory method is to pass
carbon dioxide into a suspension of the powder in water for two
hours in the dark, and the filtrate after concentration must yield no
weighable quantity of alkaline carbonate.
It was frequently found that the carbonates of nickel and cobalt,
even when completely freed from alkali, were entirely ineffective in
promoting photosynthesis. These can, however, be activated either
by heating to 120° or by exposure in thin layers to ultra-violet light,
and this fact afforded a very convincing method of carrying out
controls. A quantity of one of these inactive powders gives no trace
of carbohydrates when exposed to visible light in the manner de-
scribed. The same sample of powder when activated and used in
the same apparatus, with the same water, the same light, and carbon
dioxide from the same source, gives a good yield of carbohydrates.
So, once and for all, is all doubt removed as to the possible effect
of impurities.
For the benefit of those who may wish to repeat these experiments,
it may be stated that more recently it has been found possible to
prepare nickel carbonate by a new method which is free from the
objections characteristic of its precipitation by means of alkali
carbonate. A solution of carbonic acid in conductivity water is
electrolyzed, the electrodes being made of nickel plates. The current
is taken from a 220-volt circuit, and sufficient resistance is intercalated
to reduce the current density to from 1 or 2 amperes per square
decimeter. The electrolyte is cooled by glass coils through which a
stream of water is maintained. With electrodes 190 square centi-
meters in area it is possible to prepare 30 grams of pure carbonate in
24 hours. The carbonate should be collected every day by filtration,
and it is advisable to clean the electrodes with emery paper every
third day.
To sum up the results, so far as they have been described, it has
been found possible in the laboratory to produce carbohydrates
directly from carbonic acid by a process which is physically similar
to that of the living plant. The essential difficulty in our under-
standing of the natural photosynthesis has been solved, namely the
use of visible light as the agent in a process which the elementary
laws of photochemistry taught us to believe could only be achieved
242 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
by means of ultra-violet light. As so often happens the explanation
when found is very simple. The great amount of energy required to
convert the carbonic acid into carbohydrates is supplied to it in two
portions, one by the surface and the other by the visible light.
Nothing has as yet been said of the actual carbohydrates which
have been photosynthesized in the laboratory. Although as yet our
information is still meager, there is no doubt that the photosynthetic
sirup is a mixture containing glucose or fructose, or both. There
are also present more complex carbohydrates, which can be resolved
to the simple sugars by the action of dilute acid. The analogy with
the products of natural photosynthesis is too close to be passed by
without comment.
Although it has not as yet been possible to carry out a complete
analysis of this sirup, owing to the difficulty of preparing a sufficiently
large amount, interesting information has been gained from the
investigation of the sugar sirup obtained by the action of light upon
formaldehyde solution. This has been pursued during the last three
years. We owe a debt of gratitude to Sir James Irvine for the
signal help he has given us in this work. He himself was the first,
in association with Doctor Francis, to prove that glucose is one of the
substances actually produced. By oxidation of the sugars to the
acids by means of bromine, and the crystallization of the salts of
these with brucine, cinchonine, and quinine, we have obtained
d-gluconic and also d-erythronic acids. This not only confirms
Irvine and Francis in their proof of glucose, but it also proves that
fructose is formed just as in the living plant. In addition to that,
there is produced a mixture of complex acids which afford convincing
evidence of the synthesis of complex carbohydrates.
Although it may be thought that the use of formaldehyde as the
starting point takes away something from the interest, yet it must be
remembered that it makes but little difference whether in actual fact
we start from carbonic acid or formaldehyde. Without doubt the
first substance, transiently formed in either case, is the same, namely,
activated formaldehyde which polymerizes to the sugars.
The similarity between the vital and the laboratory processes is
not confined to the fact that the products from the two are the same.
Botanists tell us that in the living plant the photosynthesis takes
place on a surface, so also is a surface necessary in the laboratory.
It has been found possible to compare the quantities of carbohydrates
synthesized for equal areas exposed to light in the case of living
leaves and the glass vessels of the laboratory. These quantities are
about the same. Some plants produce more and other produce less
than we are able to synthesize. This similarity may be emphasized,
because surely Dame Nature in the living leaf has produced the best
machine she could for her purpose of food production for her children
of the vegetable kingdom.
PHOTOSYNTHESIS—BALY 243
There is yet another striking feature which is common to the
two, photosynthesis in vivo and in vitro. The light must not be too
strong in either, for if it is too strong then harmful results at once
supervene. This is due to the poisoning of the surface by the
oxygen which is set free. In both cases this poisoning slowly rights
itself, and in both the synthesis must not proceed at a greater rate
than that of the recovery of the surface from its poisoning.
In fine, so far as we have been able to carry the investigations,
the processes in the living plant and in the laboratory show most
striking resemblance, not only in the compounds which are formed,
but in every feature which is characteristic of either of them.
For my own part I would go further than this, because I believe
that these experimental results help us to gain some understanding of
the chemistry of life, the chemistry which is so different from that of
man’s achievements with his test tube, flask, and beaker. Within the
‘confines of vital chemistry reactions take place which are so far
outside our own experimental experience that it came to be believed
by many that they were under the control of a mysterious force, to
which the name of vis vitalis was given. One of these processes has
been touched upon to-night, the condensation of the simple sugars,
glucose and fructose, to form cane sugar, starch, and inulin. No one
has yet succeeded in effecting these syntheses in his laboratory, but
it would seem that something of that nature takes place in our
photosynthesis. Why then is it that even this step forward has
been gained?
The one lesson that we have gained from photosynthesis is that
the definitive factor is the very large amount of energy which must
be supplied to the carbonic acid before the synthesis of the simple
sugars takes place. The means of supplying that energy do not
concern the argument. The synthesis proceeds at an energy level
which is far higher than is the case in the reactions of ordinary
chemistry, and the sugars are formed at that high energy level. I
myself believe that the condensation reactions to give the more
complex carbohydrates are those which are characteristic of the
simple sugars when they exist at the high energy level. The reason
why no one has succeeded up till now in inducing these reactions
to take place is because no one has hitherto been able to supply the
large energy Increment necessary.
I myself believe that we find in this the key which unlocks the
door of vital chemistry, and that the chemistry of all life is one
of high energy, our laboratory experience being confined to the
chemistry of low energy. From this viewpoint I see a wondrous
vista unfold itself, wherein new understanding, new hopes, and new
possibilities reveal themselves. Health and vitality must essentially
depend on the high energy level being maintained; any lowering of
$2322—30——_17
244 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
that level will lead to poor health and weak vitality. Knowledge
comes to us of the means whereby the high level may be kept un-
impaired. The most important sources from which we can absorb
high energy are fresh food and ultra-violet light. From the one we
learn the necessity of the rapid distribution of our food supply before
its high energy is lost, from the other we gain a real understanding
of the benefits of ultra-violet light therapy, and, more important still,
of the dangers of its misuse. We gain an insight into the chemistry
of vitamins, which in the light of our new knowledge reveal them-
selves as stores of high energy, bottled sunshine so to speak, which
yield their energy to restore and maintain the vitality of decadent
tissues. A vision thus comes to us of a new chemistry with limits
far flung beyond those which constrain our knowledge of to-day, a
chemistry which will embrace and coordinate not only the properties
of inanimate matter upon this earth, not only the wondrous mecha-
nism of the life of man in health and in disease, but in addition the
stupendous marvels of the birth and growth of the worlds outside
our own. From those who would decry this as a mere speculation I
beg forgiveness, and plead that speculation based on sure experi-
mental fact is the life blood of true scientific research.
NEWLY DISCOVERED CHEMICAL ELEMENTS!
By N. M. Buiau, A. R. C. Se.; A. I. C.
The discovery of a new chemical element can hardly, with scien-
tific knowledge at its present advanced stage, be regarded as a fun-
damental or epoch-making achievement, nor indeed as one exerting
a revolutionary influence on scientific thought as a whole. Never-
theless, the fact that four new elements have been discovered within
the last six years, and that they have been found to take their place
in the accepted scheme of chemical classification patiently evolved
with advancing knowledge, is a matter of considerable satisfaction
and importance, and one liable to receive less than its due share of
attention and recognition. It happens that occasionally an out-
standing scientific discovery is made as the result of chance, as was
to some extent the case with Réntgen radiations; or again, a perfectly
obvious line of research may, in some inexplicable way, be entirely
overlooked over a long period of years. The opportunity is at length
recognized by some astute investigator who, following the line of
reasoning to its logical conclusion, adds an important result or dis-
covery to the annals of science. As an example of such may be men-
tioned the isolation of argon and the rare gases of the atmosphere by
Rayleigh and Ramsay, who happily developed the work of Caven-
dish over a century previously. In the majority of cases, however,
the achievements of science have been the result of carefully and
logically following up a lengthy train of reasoning and research, in
which due regard is paid to contemporary advances“and modifica-
tions of thought, and to a skillful coordination of progressive theory
and improved practical technique. In such a category may be placed
the recent discoveries of new chemical elements, which it is pro-
posed to consider shortly in the light of the foregoing remarks.
A periodic classification of the known chemical elements had grad-
ually been evolved, in which, however, there were numerous and fully
recognized difficulties, not the least of which were certain anomalies
and irregularities in the values of the atomic weights of the elements,
1 Reprinted, with minor changes, by permission of the editor of Scientia, from Scientia, Internationa
Review of Scientific Synthesis, vol. XLIII, No. CXII-4, Apr. 1, 1928. Publishers, G. E. Stechert and
Co., New York.
245
246 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
and the difficulty of satisfactorily accommodating the rare earth group
of metals. Some 16 years ago the science of chemistry, primarily
concerned as it is with the elements which form the basis of its studies
was, in one important respect, somewhat in the dark, in spite of the
periodic table, as regards a matter of primary importance, the total
number of elements possible in the scheme of nature. As its name
implies the classification was largely guided by the natural recur-
rence of periodic chemical and physical properties of the elements.
Full credit is due to Mendeleef for his remarkable prediction of the
‘‘eka’”’? elements, though this depended on analogies suggested by _
the table, and lacked definite mathematical support such as was
to be supplied by the discovery about to be reviewed.
In 1913 a young English scientist, H. G. Moseley, developed a
study of the X-ray spectra of the elements in the light of the nuclear
theory of the atom advanced in 1911. According to this theory,
which is now firmly established, the elements are regarded as consist-
ing of a central positively charged nucleus around which rotate elec-
trons or negative electrical particles, in definite orbits. The suc-
cessive elements are built up by the addition of an increasing number
of.orbital electrons accompanied by a more complex development of
the nucleus. Starting from hydrogen as unity, having one orbital
electron, the elements can be arranged in order of increasing number of
orbital electrons, and to each successive element an ordinal number
can be assigned. These numbers are termed atomic numbers, and
Moseley found a simple numerical relation between these numbers
and the frequency of the characteristic line in the X-ray spectrum of
any particular element. This epoch-making discovery threw a flood
of light on the problem of classifying the elements; atomic weights
were now displaced from their position of importance by the still
more fundamental atomic numbers, to which the former were found
to be approximately proportional. He thus corrected those instances
in the periodic table in which it was known that the properties of
certain pairs of elements demanded that their positions should be
interchanged, a course which could not be reconciled with their
arrangement in order of increasing atomic weight. Laborious re-
searches, e. g. in the case of iodine and tellurium, had in the past been
conducted under the impression that the accepted atomic weights
were inaccurate, and the application of Moseley’s discovery cleared
away the difficulty.
The attendant difficulty of fractional atomic weights was cleared
up at about the same time by the work of Soddy and later Aston on
isotopes, which were shown to be elements existing in two or more
chemically inseparable forms having the same atomic number, but
slightly different atomic weights, the varying proportions of these
forms accounting for the fractional atomic weights as determined
NEW CHEMICAL ELEMENTS—BLIGH 247
chemically. Moseley’s relation revealed gaps in the sequence of
atomic numbers as determined by spectroscopic data, and these gaps
indicated undiscovered elements, agreeing in every case with those
predicted by the periodic table, but with the addition of a gap No. 61
among the rare earths. Moreover the relation actually made it
possible to calculate in advance the line frequency for the undis-
covered elements, and thus provided a most definite means of testing
the claim of any newly discovered substance to be regarded as a miss-
ing element, and of identifying its nature and position. The definite
utility of this principle will be noted in a subsequent section of this
survey. At this time (1913-14) gaps in the table indicated missing
elements as follows: 43 and 75, analogues of manganese; 61, a rare earth
element; 85, a halogen; 87, an alkali metal, and an element 91. Mose-
ley assumed that 72 was filled by celtium, which as will subsequently
be seen was not the case. According to the work of Soddy, Hahn, and
Meitner (1918), 91 is considered to be filled by a radioactive product,
protoactinium, in the actinium series. Moseley’s principle served to
settle the total number of possible elements with a finality which
would never have been possible from a classification built only on
analogies and chemical properties; the fact that the latter more
indefinite method had overlooked only one element was therefore
quite fortuitous. The rare earth group of metals, besides being
difficult of separation, contained in itself no conclusive indication of
the number of elements which it contained so that Moseley’s work
settled, in this respect, a troublesome difficulty. It has tobe recorded
with regret that Moseley met his death at Gallipoli in 1915 at the
early age of 28 years. His name has, however, an assured place for
all time among the pioneers of scientific progress.
further stage in the advance of chemical theory has now been
surveyed; the disputed difficulties of the periodic scheme have been
adjusted in keeping with general developments; an advance has been
made, but the work of past decades has not been pulled down to be
reconstructed on other lines, rather have the discordant features of
this work been gently adjusted to the scheme of nature now more
clearly revealed. The next stage shows a further striking develop-
ment in this direction, and is supplied by Bohr’s application of the
quantum theory to atomic structure. As yet there was no indication
as to whether elements of higher atomic number than uranium (92)
might possibly exist, nor was there any developed and supported
scheme for the arrangement of electrons in their orbits, nor any
fundamental explanation of the well defined periodic groups of
elements, or of the existence of the rare earth group. Bohr defined
according to quantum principles the orbits in which electrons should
be free to move, and evolved a scheme of electron grouping in accord-
ance with the recurrence of periodic properties, in which the rare
248 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
earths found a natural and essential place. It was moreover shown
that for no a priori reason could uranium be regarded as the final
element of the table, but that a continuation of the scheme of electron
grouping allowed a theoretical conclusion with an element of atomic
number 118. The whole work was supported by, and coordinated
with the extensive and weighty evidence of spectroscopic research.
The application of Bohr’s quantum orbit development scheme made
it clear that the element of atomic number 72 could not be a rare
earth metal celtium as was originally supposed, but must be an
undiscovered higher analogue of zirconium and titanium, likely to
exist in ores of these metals, while on the chemical side this was sup-.
ported by the fact that discordant values of the atomic weight of
titanium pointed to the presence of minute traces of an undiscovered
analogue. This view was soon brilliantly and completely confirmed
by the discovery of hafnium by Coster and Hevesy in zirconium
minerals in 1923. The lines in the X-ray spectrum of the new element
were found to be well defined; the amount of metal present was quite
appreciable and easily separated from the rare earths, all in agreement
with theoretical considerations.
Special interest has always been attached to the fact that the
periodic table had indicated an undiscovered halogen and an alkali
metal. Moseley’s scheme confirmed gaps for atomic numbers 85 and
87 corresponding respectively to these elements, and it was somewhat
surprising that elements of two such well-defined and distinctive
groups should have so long eluded discovery. Among elements of
this region, however, a further factor demanded attention, that of radio-
activity. Under what conditions might these two elements be reason-
ably expected to exist? According to their place in the table and also
from their atomic numbers, they occupied alternate positions among
the most characteristically radioactive elements. Moreover potassium
and rubidium had long been known to exhibit a faint radioactivity,
although extensive work on them had failed to reveal the presence of
any higher analogues to explain this phenomenon. Suggestions were
forthcoming in connection therewith; Loring proposed the view that
elements of low atomic number may be regarded as having absorbed
corpuscular radiation, and an intermediate stage in which an element
absorbs radiation and emits it radioactively suggests itself to account
for the observed radioactivity of potassium and rubidium, without the
apparent accumulation of any radioactive product. On the other
hand, Hahn discussed the possibility of 85 and 87 occurring in the
subsidiary disintegration series of one of the radioactive elements;
but little evidence can be advanced in support of such a view. He
and also Hevesy independently tried to detect 87 by a study of the
disintegration of mesothorium-2, but in neither case was any con-
clusive result obtained.
NEW CHEMICAL ELEMENTS—BLIGH 249
Although superfically it might appear curious that a discovery of
note should be made independently and simultaneously, as occasionally
happens, by two or more investigators, actually this is by no means
remarkable since coordinated practical and theoretical progress is
likely to suggest a line of investigation to more than one experimenter,
each of whom would refrain from publishing a report of his work until
he had amply confirmed it and satisfied himself as to its success.
This is well illustrated by subsequent developments in the present
sphere of thought, for a marked impetus had been given by Moseley’s
law to the problem of isolating the remaining elements; the energy of
experimenters had been conserved and directed into channels offering
reasonable prospect of success; no longer was the search to be pursued
under the guidance of only meager principles, effort was not to be
dissipated in the attempted isolation of elements which could have no
existence. From such considerations is the greatness of Moseley’s
work realized.
Further gaps in the atomic number sequence of known elements
indicated two undiscovered analogues of manganese, numbers 43 and
75. Obviously these should be sought in manganese minerals and
could be expected to be present only in extremely minute quantities.
At least three groups of investigators are known from published results
to have been engaged in this search. The discovery of the two
elements was first announced in 1925 by three German chemists,
Noddack, Tacke, and Berg as a result of what appeared to be a parti-
_cularly well-organized piece of research, using platinum ores and the
mineral columbite as starting materials. A curious reticence has,
however, been observed by these same authors in supporting their
results, and in replying to certain criticisms which have been made.
Special attention is therefore due to the work of Druce and Loring in
England, and DolejSek and Heyrovsky at Prague. The two English
workers were engaged in searching for possible elements of higher
atomic number than 92, by an examination of the impurities in pure and
commercial manganese products, and their X-ray spectrum photo-
graphs amply demonstrate and confirm the presence of 75. The
method employed consisted in the chemical removal of contaminating
heavy metals, and the subjection of the purified product to X-ray
analysis. The lines obtained and supported by previous calculation
gave definite indication of 75 (dwi-manganese) and in addition there
were less definite or less well-defined lines, pointing to 87 (eka-cesium)
the missing alkali metal, and to 85 (eka-iodine) the missing halogen;
very faint but inconclusive indication of 93 was also obtained. The
fact that the new element was detected even in ‘‘pure’”’ manganese
sulphate, and had until then escaped observation in so common a
material points to the extreme sensitivity of the X-ray analysis method
employed, and to a high technique in measuring and interpreting the
250 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
spectral lines. Owing to the ease with which the lines are masked by
those of contaminating elements, a careful preliminary separation of
these elements was necessary, and for the same reason it was found
more satisfactory to use ‘‘pure’’ manganese salts than the mineral
pyrolusite, even though the former contained a far smaller percentage
of the elements sought than the latter commercial ore. This consider-
ation has been quoted to throw some doubt on the spectroscopic
evidence of the German workers, whose preliminary separation
does not appear to have been sufficiently complete.
Successful support and confirmation of the work of Druce and
Loring, as well as further illustration of the use of perfected experi-
mental method, is afforded by the work of the two Czech scientists,
who had invented an improved type of electrolysis apparatus termed
“the dropping-mercury cathode,” for which several important advan-
tages are claimed over the normal type of apparatus. It has a more
extensive range of utility, permits work to a much greater degree of
precision, and used in conjunction with a device termed “a polaro-
graph,” photographs a permanent automatic record in the form of
potential curves, of the electrolytic reaction. A study of the curves
gives definite indication of the deposition of minute traces of a particu-
lar product. By the use of this apparatus, DolejSek and Heyrovsky
obtained indications of elements 43 and 75. The latter was confirmed
by subsequent X-ray analysis, although evidence of 43 was inconclusive.
The materials used and the results obtained agree completely with the
work of Druce and Loring and afford valuable independent confir- .
mation and support.
The latest element whose discovery was announced in 1926 was
the previously discussed rare-earth metal 61. This has been detected
by Harris, Yntema, and Hopkins in America.
The discovery is of special interest as the group of rare-earth ele-
ments lying between lanthanum (57) and lutecium (71) is now known
to be complete. The group finds a natural place in Bohr’s generalized
table of elements, and is beautifully explained in his quantum orbit
development scheme. As long ago as 1902 Brauner suggested the
probability of a missing element between samarium and neodymium
as the difference in atomic weight between these two elements is greater
than that between their neighbors. He showed also that a study of
the periodicity of the hydrides indicated a missing element, according
to the scheme CsH. Ba H,. La H3;. CH,. Pr H;. Nd H». (XH).
The main difficulty encountered in this group has been the selec-
tion of a satisfactory and efficient means of separation, and the method
employed was repeated fractional crystallizations of the double mag-
nesium bromate instead of the usual procedure by means of the double
magnesium nitrate. The element was confirmed by its absorption
spectrum band, which would be masked unless the preliminary separa-
NEW CHEMICAL ELEMENTS—BLIGH 951
tion had been efficient, hence the importance of selecting a double
salt whose solubility should differ appreciably from that of the corre-
sponding salt of associated members of the group. A further confirm-
ation was supplied by the line frequencies obtained from the X-ray
spectrum of the product. Since this work has been published an
announcement has been made that two Italian scientists have been
engaged since 1922 on the problem of detecting and isolating 61 in
rare earth minerals, using repeated fractional crystallizations as a
means of separation. A thorough examination of the absorption and
emission spectrum of the product obtained was in progress when the
report of the American chemists appeared. The latter have proposed
illinium as the name of the new element. As yet, of course, very little
experimental information is available as to the properties of the newly
discovered elements. An extensive field of work remains to be covered
in devising simpler and improved methods of isolation followed by a
detailed study of chemical and physical properties, and possible prac-
tical uses and applications. Many of the rarest and most sparsely
distributed elements have been found to possess peculiar properties
suiting them to special applications. This may similarly be the case
with the new substances giving them an importance distinct from
their academic interest.
As the whole problem stands at present, the definite indication and
discovery of 85 and 87, as well as any of atomic number higher than
92 has still to be accomplished. There can be little doubt that further
applications and refinements of the lines of research which have been
reviewed above will at an early date bring this important and interest-
ing line of work to a conclusion.
\
sy , Ma dee ty
SYNTHETIC PERFUMES!
By H. Stanuey Reperove, B.S8c., A. I. C.
The science of chemistry has invaded almost every department
of daily life, without the man in the street being at all cognizant
of the debt he owes to it. Nor is it realized how many common
domestic operations, like cooking a dinner, for example, really
consist in causing a number of more or less complicated chemical
reactions to take place in the materials employed. By the man
in the street and the housewife in the kitchen, ‘‘chemicals’’ are
thought to be substances of a nature quite distinct from the things
they daily handle and to be chiefly characterized by the possession
of a ‘‘nasty smell.”
There is, indeed, an important difference between the ‘‘substances”’
of the chemist and the raw products of nature, whether of animal,
vegetable or mineral origin; and it is very germane to the present
study to ask, Wherein does this difference lie? ‘The answer is that
chemical substances are ‘‘pure.’’ It is true that when we seek to
define what is meant by “purity” certain philosophical difficulties
crop up, as Ostwald pointed out many years ago, and a long dis-
cussion could be entered into on the question, for example, whether
solutions are chemical compounds or merely mixtures. For prac-
tical purposes, however, ‘‘purity’”’ is well understood to denote
obedience to the stoichiometric laws. A pure substance, moreover,
possesses certain peculiar physical properties, such as a constant
boiling point.
No doubt very few chemical substances ordinarily sold as pure
are realy pure, it being, indeed, extraordinarily difficult to obtain
an absclutely pure substance. But chemistry—shall I say?—strives
after purity and attains very nearly to it.
On the other-hand, nature’s products are never pure; they are
invariably mixtures, and usually very complex ones, taxing the skill
of the analytical chemist to unravel the riddle of their composition.
The application of the term “impure” to the products of nature,
it will be understood, carries with it no implication of inferiority,
1 Reprinted by permission from Science Progress, July, 1929.
253
254 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
which the man in the street, borrowing from the use of the word
in the moral sphere, attaches to it when it is applied in the domain
of material things. As a matter of fact, the ‘‘impurities’”’ present
in natural products often enhance their value judged from human
standpoints. Thus, from a purely chemical point of view, the trace
of cholesterol in cod-liver oil is an impurity, the trace of ergosterol
an impurity in the cholesterol, and the trace of vitamin D an impurity
in the ergosterol. It is just this last impurity, however, which makes
cod-liver oil so valuable a preventive of rickets.
I take another illustration more cognate to the subject of synthetic
perfumes. The natural perfume material of jasmine has been
pretty completely analyzed. It consists mainly of benzyl acetate,
a substance easily synthesized from toluene. Now, benzyl acetate
has a pleasant odor, reminding one very strongly of that of jasmine
flowers; but it is certainly very inferior to this. The natural jasmine
odor owes its perfection to the presence of other odorous bodies in
association with the benzyl acetate, of which the most important
are benzyl alcohol, linalol, linalyl acetate, methyl anthranilate, indole,
and a ketonic body called ‘‘jasmone.’’
In the cases of many pleasantly odorous plants, the main constit-
uent of the natural otto is known, as well as the chemical composition
of the main ‘‘impurities,”’ or, if the word seems a misnomer, let us
say “subsidiary substances.’’ Nowadays, it is usually a short step
from the discovery of the chemical composition of a substance to
its synthetic production, and, in many cases, these substances have
been synthetically prepared. One can say, practically as a general
rule, that the odor of the main substance gives a crude representation
of the natural perfume of a flower. This odor is much improved by
the addition of suitable proportions of the subsidiary substances.
It still, however, almost invariably falls short of perfection; the
reason being that there are further “impurities” present in most
minute traces in the natural otto, which chemical analysis has failed
to identify, but whose odors play their part in producing the a ea
of the flower.
Two important points emerge; first, the fact that eile ole
small amounts of certain substances are capable of exciting the
sense of smell, and may by their presence or otherwise modify the
odor of a perfume; and, secondly, the fact that substances| whose
odors are unpleasant in a pure state may develop a pleasant fragrance
in a state of extreme dilution and play an essential part in imptoving,
from an esthetic point of view, the fragrance of a perfume. Indole,
present in the natural otto of the jasmine, is a casein point. Skatole,
whose odor is one of the most unpleasant conceivable, affords an
even more striking instance, since, used in tiny traces, this substance
is distinctly valuable in compounding certain perfumes.
————
SYNTHETIC PERFUMES—REDGROVE 255
Synthetic perfumes have been criticized as having “coarse”
odors. It will be appreciated that this coarseness may arise, not
because of any positive property of the preparation, but because it
lacks some of the essential ‘‘impurities.”” This explains why the
growth of the synthetic perfume industry has not killed the natural
perfume industry. Indeed, the effect has been quite the opposite, and
the two industries are closely linked together. Chemical research
has enabled many of the substances which are responsible for the sweet
odors of flowers to be produced at a relatively low cost by synthetic
means. Perfect perfumes, however, can not be made with synthetic
materials alone; to produce quite satisfactory results a proportion of
the necessary ‘impurities’? must be introduced by mixing with the
artificial product a small amount of the natural one. The consequent
cheapening in the cost of perfumes has resulted in a big increase in the
demand for them to the benefit of both sides of the perfume industry.
Some analogies can be drawn between the aniline dye industry and
that of synthetic perfumes. We must not, however, fall into the
error of the man in the street, who seems to imagine that every
chemical product comes from coal-tar. Certainly many synthetic
perfume materials do, though some of the most important are made
from raw products of a quite different nature.
In this connection the question arises, Where is the line to be drawn
between a natural product and an artificial one? Essential oils
obtained from plants by steam distillation are classed as natural
products; but 1t would be rash to assume that no chemical changes
whateve take place as a result of this operation. In the case, for
example, of bitter almonds, it is well known that the essential oil is
presentin the kernels of the nuts, not as such, but in the form of a
glucosice, amygdalin, which has first to be decomposed, the agent for
effectiny this decomposition, emulsin, being also provided by the
kernels
It seems reasonable, however, to class the products of such opera-
tions 1s steam distillation, and extraction with fats (enfleurage) or
with 1eutral solvents like petroleum ether, as essentially “natural
produ:ts,” those obtained by the two latter processes having indeed
specia claims to be so considered, as their odors exactly represent
those >f the flowers from which they are derived.
By means of fractional distillation and, in some cases, by taking
advaitage of the property possessed by aldehydes of forming crystal-
line ompounds with sodium bi-sulphite, certain of the constituents of
essenial oils can be isolated in a state of purity. Such products,
usualy called ‘‘natural isolates,” are, of course, in no sense ‘‘syn-
theti’’; but they may very well be classed with the substances of
syntletic origin inasmuch as they are ‘‘pure.”” The oils distilled from
certan species of grasses belonging to the genus Cymbopogon are
256 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
especially useful owing to their cheapness. Thus, from lemon-grass
oil, distilled from C. citratus and especially C. fleruosus, the important
alcohol, citral, is isolated. Palmarosa oil, distilled from C. martini,
constitutes the main source for the isolation of the alcohol, geraniol,
one of the constituents of otto of roses. Citronella oil, distilled from
CO. nardus, provides a further source of this alcohol. The aldehyde,
citronellal, is also isolated from this oil. Another very important
natural isolate is the phenol-ether, eugenol, obtained from oil of cloves.
In some instances these ‘‘natural isolates’’ provide starting points for
the synthetic production of other important odorous substances, of
which examples will be mentioned later.
So far I have written as though the one object of synthetic chemistry,
as applied to perfumery, was the production by artificial means of the
various constituents of floral ottos, in order that by mixing these
together a chemically-exact replica of each and every|otto might
thereby be obtained. This is certainly one objective; but it by no
means exhausts the field of research and practical achievement.
In some instances, such as that of otto of roses, chemistry has admi-
rably succeeded in its task, though, even so, the synthetic »tto suffers
from the imperfection common to all such preparations, and, for the
production of a scent which is unmistakably that of the rote, a small
proportion of natural material must be added, preferably thatiobtained
by enfleurage, or by the extraction of roses with petroleum ejher.
Speaking generally, however, it may be said, in referenc? to this
task, that chemistry, while so far not always successful in solving the
problem, has done more than this. In some instances, natiral per-
fume materials have up to date eluded analysis, and ther exact
chemical composition remains unknown. This is the case wth am-
bergris, an important perfume of animal origin; or, to take an itstance
of a plant perfume, the exact constitution of the camphojaceous
alcohol which is the main constituent of oil of patchouli still eRe
mysterious. \
These are only two instances out of many, and much rejearch
remains to be done before it will be possible to say that the pefume
of plants has yielded up its last secret. In some cases, however, in
which it has not yet been possible to prepare synthetically a subitance
identical with the natural product, research has ultimated » the
discovery of substances resembling this product in odor with asuffi-
cient degree of exactitude to take its place, to a greater or esser
extent, in the art of perfumery. |
An important example is provided by musk, the exact chenical
composition of which is doubtful, though the main odorous prin-
ciple would appear to be a methyl-cyclo-penta-decanone. Sereral
synthetic ‘‘musks’’ have been prepared, exhaling the deligntful
fragrance of this exquisite perfume, which can be obtained far hore
|
\
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SYNTHETIC PERFUMES—REDGROVE 257
cheaply than genuine musk and which have, to a considerable extent,
replaced it save in the most costly perfumes. These artificial musks
consist of nitro-aromatic compounds and bear no chemical relation-
ship to natural musk whatever. The best is probably that known
as ‘‘Musk Ambrette,” which is a nitrated butyl-meta-cresol-methy]-
ether. Other imitation musks are provided by ‘‘Musk Ketone”
(di-nitro-butyl-meta-xylyl-methyl-ketone) and ‘‘Musk Xylene’’ (tri-
nitro-butyl-meta-xylene). The first artificial musk of commercial
importance, it is interesting to note, was discovered accidentally
by Baur so far back as 1888.
Moreover, in addition to producing imitations of some natural
perfume materials and chemically exact replicas of others, chemistry
has enriched the art of perfumery, with a whole multitude of odorous
substances by means of which not only can the odor of flowers be
imitated whose natural ottos it has not been found practicable to
extract, but innumerable new nuances of fragrance can be produced.
It would be easy to fill pages with a bare catalogue of the chemical
products whose odors render them of value in the making of scent.
Many of shese are very complex bodies, difficult to prepare and
consequenily of a costly nature, which are only employed in minute
quantities for producing certain particular bouquets and “‘parfums
de fantaise.”’ It will be more interesting to restrict our attention
to some of the commoner synthetic products which are of everyday
use in tle confection of perfumes.
One ¢ the first synthetic products to be used in perfumery was
nitro-bazene, or ‘‘oil of mirbane.’’ In the chapter devoted to
‘‘Matesals used in Perfumery,” in his The Book of Perfumes, pub-
lished i 1867, Rimmel wrote: ‘‘The artificial series comprises all the
various flavors produced by chemical combinations. Of these the
most «tensively used in perfumery is the nitro-benzene, usually
called mirbane, or artificial essence of almonds. * * * Artificial
essences of lemon and cinnamon have also been produced, but have not
been Irought to sufficient perfection to be available for practical use.’’
Ii vas not a very auspicious beginning; for, not only is the odor
of ucro-benzene very crude, but the substance is poisonous, and
doe not occur in the essential oil of bitter almonds. However, it
wanot long before real synthetic oil of bitter almonds, benzaldehyde,
male its appearance, and nowadays the use of this substance, which
is xtensively synthesized from toluene, either by direct oxidation
ory chlorination followed by treatment with caustic soda, has very
lazely replaced the use of the natural oil both for perfumery purposes
ail for flavoring confectionery, etc., nitro-benzene being only em-
piyed to-day for scenting the cheapest and most inferior brands of
sap.
258 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Benzyl acetate has already been mentioned as the main consti-
tuent of the natural otto of jasmine. This is merely one of an enorm-
ous number of synthetically prepared esters which are valnable in
perfumery, compounds belonging to this type often having agreeable
odors. Certain of the esters of salicylic acid and cinnamic acid are
particularly useful. Methyl salicylate is well known under the name
of ‘oil of wintergreen.”” Amy! salicylate has a very pleasant odor,
resembling that of certain species of orchids. It is extensively em-
ployed in making artificial orchid and clover perfumes. Some of the
esters of cinnamic acid are well adapted for perfuming face powders.
The flavor of vanilla is one universally liked. The odor of the
natural product, the dried and cured fruits of Vanilla planifolia and
allied species of orchids, is almost entirely due to the aldehyde, vanil-
lin, the synthetic production of which is one of the great triumphs
of synthetic perfume chemistry. Nowadays, the use of synthetic
vanillin has largely replaced that of natural vanilla bothias a flavor-
ing agent and, especially, in perfumery. The substance js made by
several processes, in England from oil of cloves, on the Continent
from guaiacol. Added to a perfume, vanillin gives a quality of
sweetness and softness. Moreover, it possesses good fixative powers,
serving to retard the evaporation of more volatile ingredieits.
The synthesis from clove oil is of particular interest. The essential
oil of cloves consists very largely of eugenol, which substance, as
already mentioned, can be easily isolated from it. On tnatment
with caustic potash, eugenol undergoes an isomeric change, yielding
iso-eugenol, itself a valuable perfume material, which foms the
basis of most artificial carnation scents. On careful oxidation,
iso-eugenol passes into vanillin. |
Safrol, obtained as a by-product in the separation of camphor
from camphor oil, undergoes similar reactions, being convered by
treatment with caustic potash into the isomeric iso-safrol, vhich,
when cautiously oxidized, yields the aldehyde, piperonal. Ths sub-
stance, better known as ‘‘heliotropine,”’ exhales a delicious olor of
heliotrope, in the flowers of which plant it probably occurs ascpm-
panied by vanillin and other substances of an odorous charter.
It is much employed in perfumery, being especially useful on accant
of its low price. |
Another very inexpensive and agreeable artificial perfume mateial
is terpineol, which is manufactured from turpentine. This terpne
alcohol has an odor resembling that of the lilac, and, being very reis-
tant to the action of alkalies, is particularly adapted for scenting sos
and hair washes, for which purpose it is extensively employed.
A newer synthetic product, which enables a more exact imitation f
the rather sharp odor of lilac blossoms to be obtained, is phenyl-pr-
pionic aldehyde.
SYNTHETIC PERFUMES—REDGROVE 259
The odor of new-mown hay is very attractive and characteristic.
Synthetic chemistry enables scents exhaling this fragrance to be easily
prepared. The odor of new-mown hay is almost entirely due to cou-
marin, which occurs in Anthoxanthum odoratum (sweet vernal grass)
and other plants. Itis also the chief odorous principle of tonka beans,
an extract of which was the chief material at one time used for making
perfumes having odors of the new-mown hay type. Nowadays cou-
marin is prepared synthetically on a large scale, not only for the pur-
pose of making these perfumes, but also for use with many other
types of perfume materials as a fixative. It is often mixed with van-
illin for the various purposes for which the latter substance is employed.
The synthesis of coumarin from phenol is particularly interesting.
The phenol can first be converted into saliclic aldehyde, which yields
coumarin by the action of acetic anhydride and sodium acetate. Sali-
cylic aldehyde, itself, has some applications in perfumery. Its odor
resembles that of meadow sweet, in which plant it actually occurs.
In Persia, and elsewhere in the East, the odor of the rose is held in
the highest esteem, and many readers may be inclined to agree with
those easterns who consider otto of roses to afford the finest of all per-
fumes. Nevertheless, as was recognized years ago, the odor of the
otto, obtained by steam distillation, falls short of that of the flower
itself. For long the reason for this remained a mystery. But modern
chemistry solved the riddle and supplied the means of remedying the
defect. The cause is due to the fact that one of the constituents of the
natural otto, phenyl ethyl alcohol, is rather soluble in water and is,
therefore, washed out of the oil in the process of manufacture, being
obtained almost entirely in the rose water. Phenyl ethyl alcohol is
now made synthetically by the reduction of esters of phenyl acetic
acid; and by its aid very good synthetic rose ottos can be made.
Other essential ingredients include the alcohols, geraniol and citronellol.
The first, as already mentioned, is isolated from the cheap oils of citro-
nella and palmarosa; the second is made by the reduction of citronellal
isolated from the first of these two oils.
Another product obtained from citronella also calls for mention on
account of its importance. This is hydroxy-citronellal, a substance
which provides a good example of those synthetic products which
enable the fragrances of flowers to be very exactly imitated, the extrac-
tion of whose natural ottos has not been found practicable. Hydroxy-
citronellal is obtained by the hydration of citronellal, and is used for
making scents exhaling odors resembling those of lily-of-the-valley
(muguet), cyclamen, lilac, and lime-tree blossoms.
There are those who would give pride of place to the sweet violet
amongst flowers of pleasant odor. Certainly scents exhaling the fra-
grance of this lovely little flower, which was so highly esteemed by the
ancient Greeks, are exceedingly popular to-day, and can be quite
82322—30——18
260 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
cheaply obtained, thanks to synthetic chemistry. Except in the case
of the most expensive, they contain no perfume material obtained
from the violet itself, except, perhaps, a small proportion of the extract
of violet leaves, added to give freshness to the odor.
Prior to the discovery of ‘‘synthetic violet,” the preparation of sat-
isfactory violet perfumes was a very difficult proposition, owing to the
fact that the flowers contain only microscopic amounts of perfume
material. The odor of the violet is a rare one in nature, orris-root and
cassie (Acacia farnesiana) being about the only available natural
sources from which a tolerable substitute for the violet can be ob-
tained.
An investigation by Tiemann and Kriiger of the constitution of the
oil of orris-root revealed the fact that its odor is almost entirely due to
a ketone, which was christened “‘irone.’”’ These chemists prepared an
isomer of this substance by condensing citral with acetone. By heat-
ing this substance with dilute sulphuric acid in the presence of a little
glycerol, it was hoped that an isomeric change would take place result-
ing in the formation of irone. An isomeric change did take place; but
the product was not irone, since synthesized by a different process. It
was a substance, to be named “‘ionone,”’ with an intense odor of violets,
much nearer to that of the flower than the anticipated irone. ©
Nowadays, ionone is the basic material of all violet perfumes, and is
one of the most important synthetic products in the art of perfumery.
Actually it is not a chemical individual, but a mixture of two isomers.
These can be separated. ‘Their odors are not identical, and each has
its several uses in the manufacture of various types of violet scents.
Another very important synthetic product employed in the confec-
tion of these and other perfumes is methyl heptine carbonate, which,
used in minute quantities, gives that note of “‘freshness”’ so character-
istic of the fragrance of sweet violets.
The list of synthetic materials used in perfumery could be extended
indefinitely. But enough has been said to indicate how important a
branch of chemistry the preparation of synthetic perfumes is. The
average Hnglishman, perhaps, is apt to think of perfumery as a rather
frivolous subject. Actually, not only great technical skill and artistic
sensibility are required for the confection of a fine perfume, but often
years of scientific research have gone to the making of it. Every year
brings forth new discoveries, more and more new substances, syntheti-
cally prepared, being added to the number of materials available for
use by the perfume artist. As the mass of material accumulates, it
may be hoped that we approach nearer to the solution of the problem
of the relation between odor and chemical constitution, and to that
of the even more inscrutable puzzle of why certain classes of odors are
pleasant, others unpleasant, to the olfactory nerves of human beings.
X-RAYING THE EARTH!
a By Reainautp A. Daty
Reality is never skin-deep. The true nature of the earth and its
full wealth of hidden treasures can not be argued from the visible
rocks, the rocks upon which we live and out of which we make our
living. The face of the earth, with its upstanding continents and
depressed ocean deeps, its vast ornament of plateau and mountain
chain, is molded by structure and process in hidden depths.
During the nineteenth century the geologists, a mere handful among
the world’s workers, studied the rocks at the surface, the accessible
skin of the globe. They established many principal points in our
planet’s history. While with the astronomers space was deepening,
a million years became for the rock men the unit of time with which
to outline earth’s dramatic story. Thus, incidentally, the way was
opened for the doctrine of organic evolution, demanding hundreds of
millions of years, to become secured science rather than mere specula-
tion. The first, main jobs of the geologist were to map the exposures
of the rocks at the surface of the earth’s skin or “‘crust,”’ to distinguish
the kinds and relative ages of the rocks, and, in general, to gather
the many facts that must be accounted for in the final explanation
of continent, ocean, plateau, and mountain range. Yet the century
closed without having revealed definite origins for these and for
many smaller details of the earth’s surface and ‘‘crust.’’ With in-
creasing clearness geologists became convinced, however, that the
main secret of highland and lowland, dry land and deep ocean,
Himalaya and Mediterranean, barren rock and ore-bearing rock,
must be sought in the invisible, the deep underground of the earth.
The nineteenth century bequeathed to the twentieth an outstand-
ing responsibility—to invent and use new methods of exploring the
earth’s body far beyond the reach of direct penetration by the geol-
ogist’s eye or by mine and bore hole. What is the nature of the
materials below the visible rocks? How are those materials arranged?
What energies are stored in the globe, ready to do geological work
when the occasion comes? Where is the earth’s body strong, truly
1 Reprinted by permission from the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Oct. 18, 1928, pai
262 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
solid, able to bear loads indefinitely? Where is it weak, so weak as
to permit movements of the material horizontally and vertically,
under the urge of moderate internal pressures?
These questions represent fundamentals of the new earth-lore,
already rapidly growing in our own century as investigators continue
to employ new methods of research. The problems are largely mat-
ters for the physicist, but an unusual kind of physicist, one who makes
experiments, like any of his fellows, but keeps thinking of a whole
planet. He is an earth physicist, a ‘‘geophysicist.’”’ The interpre-
tation of messages from the earth’s interior demands all the resources
of ordinary physics and of extraordinary mathematics. The geo-
physicist is of a noble company, all of whom are reading messages
from the untouchable reality of things. The inwardness of things—
atoms, crystals, mountains, planets, stars, nebulas, universes—is the
quarry of these hunters of genius and Promethean boldness. The
unseen atom has been shown to be no less miraculous than the invisible
interior of sun or star. And now, lately, the inner earth as a whole is
the gripping subject of research for some of the intellectual giants of
our time. To a considerable extent the methods used by all these
students of the invisible, the essence of each problem, are in principle
the same.
The feature common to most of the productive methods is the use
of waves, vibrations, rhythmic motions. From the interior of star
or nebula come light waves, heat waves, and whole troops of different
unfelt waves. Each of these waves, whatever its nature, radiates
through the “ether.” With the speed of light, each rushes along
lines that are always perpendicular to the front of the wave. These
lines are the wave paths or “rays” of the astrophysicist. In the
exploration of the universe of stars, he uses light rays, actinic rays,
heat rays, and cosmic rays of less familiar kinds. The exquisite
internal architecture of crystals is being rapidly revealed with X rays.
The atom is becoming understood through its radiant effects and
through experimental tests with external rays.
So it is with the new study of the earth; its profounder exploration
is possible by means of waves, which may be of either natural or arti-
ficial origin. Waves extremely short, as measured from “crest” to
“‘erest,”’ are the X rays, used in learning the atomic architecture of
crystals. The somewhat longer waves of light tell us about the nature
of stars. The still longer sound waves are now used to give the depths
of the invisible ocean floor. ‘‘Radio”’ waves, yet longer, are telling
the aerologists much about the nature of the inaccessible, upper
atmosphere. For the study of the earth’s skin, to the depth of a
score of miles or so, the controlled shocks by artificial explosives,
which give elastic waves longer than even “radio” waves, are used.
Longest of all are the elastic waves set going when the hammer of
X-RAYING THE EARTH—DALY 263
the deadly earthquake strikes. Man is learning to harness for his
inquiring use the very wrath of the earth; the tremblings of our
vibrant globe are used to “‘X-ray”’ the deep interior.
When with his hands one bends a stick until it breaks, the sudden
snap sends vibrations, often painful, along muscle, bone, and nerve of
the arms. The “strain” of the stick is relieved by fracture, and the
elastic energy accumulated in the stick during the bending is largely
converted into the energy of wave motion. In a somewhat similar
way the rocks of the earth’s crust have been, and now are being,
strained; every day, somewhere, they are snapping and sending out
elastic waves from one or more centers. The passage of these waves
in the earth we call an earthquake, a seismic disturbance.
Each heavy shock creates waves of several kinds. The kind which
travels fastest is like a sound wave; it is propagated by the alternation
of compression and rarefaction in the rocks. The particles of the
rocks here vibrate to and fro, in the direction of wave motion, that
is, along the wave path or wave “ray.’’ Waves of this type, techni-
cally called longitudinal waves, can pass from rock into the fluid of
ocean, lake, or atmosphere, and if the vibrations are frequent and
energetic enough, are heard with the unaided ear. Somewhat slower
is a second kind of wave which follows nearly the same path in the
rocks, but is distinguished by the fact that now the rock particles
vibrate at right angles to the direction of propagation. Waves of the
second type, called transverse waves, are analogous to waves of
light. Unlike the latter, however, the transverse seismic waves are
propagated in solids only and can not pass through a liquid or gas.
These two kinds of waves, longitudinal and transverse, each radiat-
ing from the center of shock, correspond after a fashion to the X rays
used by the surgeon for exploring the deep inside of the human body.
Similarly, the deep inside of the earth is being explored with the two
kinds of seismic (earthquake) waves, waves whose diverging paths, or
“rays, plunge right down into the vast interior of the globe and
emerge, with their messages, thousands of miles from the center of
shock. The longitudinal waves emerge even at the antipodes.
A major earthquake has enormous energy. At and near the center
of shock it shatters the works of man and may rupture the very hills
and mountain sides. As each wave front spreads into the earth, the
intensity of the vibration falls very rapidly, so that not many hun-
dreds of miles from the center the heaviest shock can not be felt by a
human being. Much less can he, at the ‘‘other side” of the globe,
feel the impact of a wave which has plunged to a depth of a thousand
miles or more and emerges under his feet.
In order to watch and time accurately each wave, as its ray emerges
on the ‘‘other side,’ highly sensitive instruments are used. These
wonderful instruments, called seismographs, magnify the motion of the
264 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
vibrating rock and give a written record, or “‘graph,” of that motion.
They form the main equipment of seismographic stations. The
mechanical or photographic record of a distant shock is the seismo-
gram, a kind of hieroglyphic message from the mysterious heart of the
planet. Each seismogram from a strong earthquake is a long, com-
plex curve traced up and down on the registering paper of the seis-
mograph. Usually the impulses of the longitudinal and transverse
waves are evident to the expert seismologist, but in every case he
finds represented much more than these two simple kinds of motion.
He sees, in fact, a whole train of waves, which came racing out of the
earth, often for much more than an hour after the first impulse was
registered. A generation ago, most of the complex message could not
be read. Then seismologists bethought themselves of a Rosetta
stone.
Observation and theory soon showed that earthquake waves are
closely analogous to the familiar waves of sound and light. Like
these, the seismic rays are reflected and refracted at surfaces between
different kinds of material. Seismic rays, during their passage through
the earth, are broken up and dispersed, just as the sun’s light is
‘dispersed, in prism or rain drop, to make the glory of the rainbow.
Seismic rays are diffracted, just as light rays are diffracted, at the
interfaces of contrasted materials. As sound travels faster in water
than in air, faster in rock than in either, so seismic waves travel faster
in some kinds of rock than in other kinds. Long study of sound and
light has led to the discovery of the laws of wave motion, and these
have made increasingly clear the meaning of seismograms. The
analogy with sound and light is the Rosetta stone.
The discovery of the famous original enabled Napoleon’s experts to
begin the reading of Egypt’s ancient literature. In like manner the
seismologists, using the difficult but manageable Greek of modern
physics, are beginning the task of making earthquakes tell the nature
of the earth’s interior and translating into significant speech the
hieroglyphics written by the seismograph. It is a long task, requiring
high intelligence and the patient accumulation of earthquake data
from all parts of the globe, from ocean basin as well as from continent.
The work is only just begun; yet the results already obtained are of
supreme interest to the philosopher, to the geologist, and to the pro-
ducer of petroleum, metals, and other materials from the rocks.
For here, too, the man of pure science, the seismologist, ‘‘fussing
with experiments of no use to anyone,’’ has proved to be another
goose that has laid a golden egg. The methods developed by the
worker in another ‘‘pure”’ science, seismology, are now, with the help
of artificial earthquakes, locating structures that lead to hidden deposits
of oil. So, millions are to be saved in the cost of bore holes, and new
oil, probably by the hundreds of millions of barrels, will be added to
X-RAYING THE EARTH—DALY 265
the world supply. With electrical, magnetic, and gravitational
methods—all products of the ‘“‘unpractical”’ man of ‘‘pure’’ science—
valuable indications of hidden metal-bearing ores are secured, and
the expense of exploration by bore holes and shafts is greatly reduced.
Seismological methods promise to be adaptable to this kind of detec-
tive work. Conquering the difficulties that still remain, future
research should make this branch of geophysics, even in the search
after metals, pay for its upkeep many times over.
The depths of the ocean are now being quickly and accurately
measured by the echo of sound waves from the bottom of the sea.
This method, incomparably more rapid and less expensive than the
old one by sounding line, is based on a principle fundamental in
seismology. With variation of detail, ‘‘sonic’’ sounding, the use of
waves reflected from underlying rock, is employed to measure the
thickness of glaciers.
Thus, the Hintereisferner glacier of the Alps has recently been
proved to be 830 feet thick in the middle. When, with the similar
use of explosion shocks and the seismograph, the thickness of the
Antarctic and Greenland ice caps are measured, we shall have precious
data for guiding thought on the conditions of North America and
Europe during the glacial period. Furthermore, we could then esti-
mate how far the sea level was everywhere lowered when the water
of these ice caps was abstracted from the ocean and piled up, solid,
on the land.
But from depths far greater than glacier floor, ocean floor, or
mineral deposit, come the messages from nature’s earthquakes.
A few illustrations of success in detecting the anatomy of a planet
will show the real majesty of the questions and answers that already
inspire the all-too-few workers in the new science of geophysics.
One of the outstanding seismological discoveries of recent years is
the shelled character of our planet. At the center, and outward to
a little more than one-half of its radius, the earth is homogeneous in
high degree. This so-called ‘‘core”’ is surrounded by successive shells
or layers of material. Each shell, out to a level about 30 miles from
the surface, is relatively homogeneous, and its material differs from
that of the shell above or below, as well as from the material of the
central core. The contacts between the shells and between the deep-
est shell and the core are technically called ‘‘ discontinuities.”
The discontinuity, or break of material, at the surface of the core
is one of the most remarkable of all. It is located at a level about
1,500 miles below the earth’s surface, nearly 2,500 miles from its
center. A second principal break, found only under the continents
and larger islands—and thus representing only parts of a complete
earth shell—is situated at the average depth of about 30 miles,
Other discontinuities, limiting complete shells of the earth’s body,
266 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
have been reported at depths of about 75 miles, 250 miles, 750 miles,
and 1,100 miles. All of these four breaks require further study.
Their estimated depths may be somewhat changed, and other dis-
continuities may be discovered, but it is already clear in a general
way how the earth is constituted—layer on layer. There is good
evidence that the core and layers described are composed of matter
which increases in density as the depth increases. Hence, so far as
the great body of the earthis concerned, itis built stable, and convective
overturn with catastrophe to life seems impossible.
The velocity of the longitudinal wave in the earth’s core has been
measured. The value obtained is appropriate to that of the metallic
iron of the meteorites. However, the velocity is lower than that
expected if the core iron were crystalline and solid, like the iron of our
museum meteorites. The velocity of the longitudinal wave suggests,
rather, that the core iron is fluid. In agreement with this conclusion,
the slower, transverse wave seems not to be propagated through the
core; we have learned that the transverse wave can not persist in a
fluid. If further research corroborates this tentative deduction by
seismologists, a whole set of new, fascinating problems is opened up.
One question is that of temperature. The pressure on the core iron
ranges from 15,000,000 to 50,000,000 pounds to the square inch.
Under such colossal pressures the iron can be fluid only on the con-
dition that the temperature of the core is enormously high—at tens of
thousands of degrees centigrade. Both pressure and temperature are
far beyond the range of the experimental laboratory. The physical
state of the core iron can not as yet be described. Is it a liquid, a gas,
or iron in a “‘state’’ unknown to physics? The conditions of the
earth’s core are starlike. From their study can physicists of the
future tell us something more of the true nature of the stars? If they
can, they will be pretty sure, incidentally, to shed new light on the
structure and life story of the atoms; for the secret of the star and the
secret of the atom are proving to be part of a single problem, the ulti-
mate nature of matter.
Again, if the core is fluid, it is infinitely weak. It can offer no
permanent resistance to forces which tend to distort the earth’s body.
Hence other questions for future research: Is this mobility of the
earth’s core important in the explanation of the slow upheavings and
down-sinkings of great areas of the earth’s ‘‘crust’’? Is the sensitive
core involved even in the tumult of mountain building? No one can
now tell, but speculate we must, for it is to-day’s speculation that
leads to to-morrow’s science.
The exact nature of the earth shells overlying the core and totaling
1,500 miles in thickness, is another problem for the future. Pre-
sumably, the deepest of these shells is a more rigid, because cooler,
chemical equivalent of the ‘‘fluid”’ core, but it is not yet clear how
X-RAYING THE EARTH—DALY 267
thicl. this more rigid ‘‘iron’’ may be. The published conclusions as to
the composition and precise thicknesses of the still higher shells are un-
certain and demand further testing. Yet the principle that the earth is
layered seems proved once for all and leads to an apparently inescap-
able and highly significant conclusion: The shell structure of the earth
seems to defy explanation unless it be assumed that our planet was
formerly molten. It must have been fluid enough to stratify itself by
gravity. The ‘‘heavier’”’ materials sank toward the center, the
‘“‘lichter’? materials rose toward the surface, and the whole mass
finally arranged itself as layers or shells, with the very dense iron in
the central region. It seems necessary to assume primitive fluidity
right to the surface, and, further, to assume that the earth was thus
fluid after practically all of its substance had been collected in the
planet-making process. This general deduction must control future
research on the cosmogonic problem—the origin of the earth and its
brothers and sisters of the solar system. The earth was born in
fervent heat and in the beginning was fervently hot, even at the
surface.
While telling us much about the heart of the earth, the seismogram is
still more authoritative and eloquent concerning the uppermost
layers of the globe. By studying the instrumental records of the
reflections, refractions, accelerations, and retardations of earthquake
waves, seismologists have found that the continental rocks reach
downwards about 30 miles. At that level there is a rather abrupt
change to a world-circling shell of a quite different nature. The
dominant rock of the continents is granite. According to the facts of
geology, as of seismology, the underlying shell or substratum is the
heavier, dark-colored basalt, and is apparently the source of this
commonest of lavas and the primary seat of all volcanic energies.
The depth of the continental rock, so determined from the writing
of the longitudinal and transverse waves on seismographs, is con-
firmed by study of a different kind of vibrations which come pouring
into the station still later than the transverse wave. This third
division of a typical seismogram is written by a long train of oscilla-
tions, corresponding to what are called surface waves, because they
faithfully follow the great curve of the earth’s rocky skin. Surface
waves are the strongest of all the vibrations recorded by distant earth-
quakes. They are caused by the reflection of the longitudinal and
transverse waves as these, coming from the interior, impinge at low
angles upon the contact of rock with ocean water and of rock with the
air. That contact acts like the wall of a gigantic whispering gallery.
From the character and velocities of the surface waves, expert seis-
mologists have corroborated the evidence, won from the longitudinal
and transverse waves, concerning the nature and depth of the conti-
nental rock.
2968 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
But the surface waves inform us also about the kind of rock imme-
diately beneath the deep oceans, whose waters hide from view about
two-thirds of the solid surface of the whole earth. The measured
velocities of the surface waves show that the earth’s skin beneath
the deep oceans is crystallized basalt. Thus the material forming
an earth shell directly beneath the continents is continuous with,
and chemically identical with, the surface rock under the deep sea.
Granite, the principal rock of the continents, is a relatively light
rock. Basalt, the essential rock beneath the oceans, is relatively
heavy. It is for this reason that the continents float high on the
earth’s body; they are pressed up by the surrounding, heavy, solid
basalt, much as icebergs are pressed up by the denser water of the sea.
This is why we have dry land, with its endless importance for man and
organic life in general.
Seismology tells us why our home is stable, in spite of mighty
forces which tend to level the earth’s crust and drown us all. We
may confidently expect also that this continued “X-raying”’ of the
outer earth will furnish new information as to the reason why moun-
tains stand so high and are able to keep their heads in the clouds, far
above the general level of the continents. And to geophysics, espe-
cially to seismology, we look for new help in finding out the conditions
for the earth’s periodic revolutions when mountain chains were born
and sea-bottoms became the pinnacles of the world.
EXTINCTION AND EXTERMINATION ?
By I. P. Totmacuorr
EXAMPLES OF EXTINCTION AND THEIR USUAL EXPLANATIONS
GENERAL STATEMENT
The extinction of species, genera, families, orders, classes, and even
phyla and complete faunas, is a phenomenon well known to paleontol-
ogists and biologists, and it is ‘‘so common that this has come to be
looked upon as the normal course of evolution.’””? Some well-
known typical examples of this phenomenon are the extinction of the
trilobites at the end of the Paleozoic era, of the ammonites and the
gigantic reptiles in the Mesozoic era, of the mammoth at the dawn of
human history, and of the sea cow of Bering Strait in the eighteenth
century. Although it is so common, extinction is, in its essentials or
causes, very little known, or even quite unknown. The examples of
extinction just cited have been explained in different ways, but all the
explanations, some of which are very detailed, can not withstand
criticism.
THE TRILOBITES
The extinction of the trilobites has been attributed to the rise of the
cephalopods and the fishlike animals in early Paleozoic time, and of the
true fishes in Devonian time. These animals undoubtedly fed on the
trilobites and forced them from the dominion of the early seas, ulti-
mately contributing to their complete extinction, but we know that
extermination which is brought about solely by the development of a
higher or stronger type of life can happen only under exceptional con-
ditions. Usually the smaller and weaker animals have time to make
compensating adjustments to avoid extermination. We know, for
instance, that the eggs and the young of fish are an easy prey of their
many enemies and are destroyed in immense numbers. The chance
of survival of an egg of the ling, for example, is 1 in 14,000,000. Yet
the ling is not dying out, at least not under natural conditions, but,
1 Reprinted by permission from the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Dec. 30, 1928.
2W.R. Gregory, Two views on the origin of man. Science, vol. lxv. No. 1695, p. 602, 1927.
§ Charles Schuchert, Historical geology, pp. 210 and 324.
4R.S. Lull, Organic evolution, p. 103.
269
270 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
like many another fish, it offsets its unavoidable loss by a greater pro-
duction of eggs. Carnivorous animals and their prey inhabit the same
territory for an indefinite time, but a balance in their proportionate
numbers is maintained.
As a matter of fact, the organic world of the present time, both of
animals and plants, in sea and on land, maintains a balance so perfect
that it is brought to our attention only when disturbed by the inter-
vention of man. As between two animals, this balance operates for
the benefit of both, for the extermination of the weaker by the stronger
would mean the destruction of the source of food of the stronger, re-
sulting in its extermination also. If the Silurian and Devonian fishes
could have completely exterminated the trilobites, they would prob-
ably have doomed their own existence. Moreover, the extinction of
the trilobites was not catastrophic; it was in operation during the
Silurian period, when their decline is first noticeable, and it continued
through the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, or, speaking in terms
of years, through many decades of millions of years—a time long enough
to permit the establishment and maintenance of the natural balance.
Then, also, the details of their dying out do not support the explana-
tion given. In Silurian time the number of individual trilobites was
abundant, but the number of genera and species as compared with
those in the Cambrian and Ordovician had been greatly reduced.
Moreover, they developed a number of features, such as spines, pro-
tuberances, and enlargements of parts, which primarily serve, no
doubt, as protective devices,® but some of which, by their extreme
enlargement, eventually lost their protective value. The enlarge-
ment of certain features was common to many extinct animals, and it
might be considered a proof of their racial old age.” It appears to be
a result of the heroic efforts of a race to maintain an organic stock that
is losing its vitality. Such efforts were made by the trilobites mil-
lions of years before they were serioulsy menaced by their enemies.
These peculiar features of organization were not the results of the
attack of the fishes, but were due to causes within the trilobites them-
selves. The trilobites may have disappeared only because as a race
they had become old, had lost their vitality, and were unable to estab-
lish and maintain the natural balance.
THE MESOZOIC REPTILES
Nor can the extinction of Mesozoic reptiles and gigantic dinosaurs
be explained satisfactorily. The animals dominated the earth more
completely than do the mammals of to-day, and certainly they had
5 Charles Schuchert, Historical geology, p. 210.
6 Idem, p. 271.
7Idem, p. 11.
8 Idem, p. 210.
EXTINCTION AND EXTERMINATION—TOLMACHOFF OT
no enemies outside of their own stock, such as menaced the trilobites.
The low mentality of the herbivorous species was confronted with
the similar low mentality of their carnivorous enemies. Reference
to the simultaneous existence of more intelligent archaic mammals
is not significant, for these small, weak animals used their higher
inteligence or cunning to protect themselves from their enemies
rather than to harm these gigantic reptiles, much less to cause their
extinction. In fact, in the opinion of many paleontologists the rela-
tions were exactly opposite—that is, the mammalian evolution was
handicapped by the domination of reptiles, forming ‘‘an overwhelm-
ing check against which these small creatures could not contend.’’®
In the opinion of Osborn, only the dying out of the large reptiles
‘prepared the way for the evolution of the mammals.”’!° The
extinction of the gigantic land reptiles has also been explained as a
consequence of a change of climate. The cooling of the climate and
the obliteration of their homes in the swamps bordering the inland
seas might have had a disastrous effect on the large beasts of Creta-
ceous time," provided that this change had taken place rapidly; but,
in the usual slow course of geological processes, dinosaurs had plenty of
time to migrate to more favorable regions or to become adapted to
new conditions.
It has been said that the climatic changes that contribute to the
extinction of one race at the same time contribute to the evolution
of another.’ It might therefore be supposed that some dinosaurs
would have survived, even if the main stock had been completely
destroyed. In the opinion of Lull, ‘‘one of the most inexplicable of
events is the dramatic extinction of this mighty race.” Con-
cerning sauropods he writes: ‘“‘We know of no reason, other than
racial old age or a restriction of their peculiar habitat, for their
extinction.’’ '* As has just been explained, the restriction of habitat
can not be considered an effective cause. Especially is this true in
relation to the reptiles that lived in ‘‘the most constant of all organic
habitats,’ ® the sea, where climatic conditions would necessarily
have been much less noticeable and the animals could have adapted
themselves to new conditions more readily than on land. But the
Mesozoic reptiles, in the sea as well as on the land, died out completely
It may be that their low mentality, which may be compared to that
of the present-day fishes, was not so great a handicap as the corre-
spondingly low mentality of the land reptiles.
9R.S. Lull, Organic evolution, p. 547.
10 H. F. Osborn, The age of mammals, p. 97.
11 Charles Schuchert, Historical geology, p. 497.
12 R.S8. Lull, Organic evolution, p. 690.
13 Tdem, p. 531.
14 Idem, p. 517.
‘8 Charles Schuchert, Historical geology, p. 7.
272 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The Mesozoic land reptiles, although differing in all other respects
from the trilobites, had many features in common with them that
led to extinction. Exaggeration of different parts of the bodily
structure; extraordinary size in these reptiles, which attained the
possible limit of size for a land animal; inharmonious development
of different parts of the body; development of spines surpassing
imagination in form, size, and abundance—all these features in the
Mesozoic land reptiles, as in the trilobites, point to the senility of a
race preceding its extinction. And in the reptiles, as in the trilobites,
these features appeared as special devices to meet real needs, but all
of them eventually became so much exaggerated as to become handi-
caps. <A good example is that gigantic spiniferous animal the Stego-
saurus, which was developed as a special senile side branch and
died out without issue.!® Specialization aiming at some end may
become overspecialization. As now used, the term overspecializa-
tion generally implies the idea of a tendency toward extinction.
Overspecialization leads to extinction, according to Gregory;1
“extreme specialization may become a cause of extinction,” says
Osborn.’ Wieland, writing of the extinction of the dinosaurs,
explains it by saying that ‘“‘the growth forces and the responses to
environment were no longer in adjustment,’ !® a condition that is
practically equivalent to overspecialization.
We thus reach the same conclusion concerning the Mesozoic
reptiles that we reached concerning the trilobites—that before their
final extinction they had lost their vital racial force and were unable
to maintain that natural balance which was especially necessary to
adapt them to a change in environment.
THE AMMONITES
The most mysterious event of this kind is the extinction of the am-
monites in the Mesozoic era. They had been declining rapidly during
late Triassic time, but they recovered in Liassic time and increased in
numbers and in varieties of form so great that in the Jurassic and Cre-
taceous periods the seas were swarming with them. However, in the
Cretaceous period the ammonites suffered complete extinction. The
periodic appearance and disappearance of the ammonites has been com-
pared with the corresponding appearance and disappearance of the sea
reptiles by which they are supposed to have been exterminated. But
with the ammonites as with the trilobites, such an extermination could
not have gone on through a number of geological periods, a time long
enough for a normal vigorous stock to establish a balance. ‘There are
18 R.S. Lull, Organic evolution, p. 524.
7 W. K. Gregory, Two views on the origin of man. Science, Vol. LXV, No. 1695, p. 602, 1927.
18 H. F. Osborn, The age of mammals, p. 84.
1G. R. Wieland, Dinosaur extinction. American Naturalist, Vol. LIX, No. 665, pp. 557-565.
EXTINCTION AND EXTERMINATION—TOLMACHOFF 273
also a number of objections to the theory that the ammonites were
completely destroyed by reptiles. Many Cretaceous ammonites were
deep-sea forms, which were inaccessible to reptiles. It is also worthy
of note that the squids, upon which Jurassic reptiles fed,” survived
the ammonites, although they could have been more easily extermi-
nated than the ammonites.
In the history of the ammonites we see a remarkable phenomenon.
The stock declined twice. The first time it was vigorous enough to
escape extinction and to develop to a degree unsurpassed in the history
of animal life; but the second time, in the Cretaceous period, it reached
senility and died out. Overspecialization, such as exaggeration of
parts, was expressed in the Cretaceous ammonites no less clearly than
in the trilobites and in the Mesozoic reptiles. ‘‘ Their doom was fore-
shadowed in the uncoiling, the unnatural twisting of the shells, and
the straight baculites.”?! Nothing similar is known of the Triassic
ammonites, all of which had the typical ammonite shape, worked out
through millions of generations. This race also died out only because
of some inner cause or causes. It was unable to establish and keep
the natural balance and was doomed to extinction.
Though these examples of the extinction of large ancient groups of
animals are, perhaps, the most typical and most widely known, the
number of examples of extinction could be increased a hundredfold.
In addition to those already cited, there are a few isolated extinct
forms having some aberrant structure, which appeared only for a short
geological time, and which, being doomed to extinction from the begin-
ning, vanished without descendants. Such were Lyttonia of the
brachiopods and Helicoprion of the fishes. These forms, being highly
specialized, showed sharp deviation from the standard of their group,
which foretold for them ‘‘a relatively brief career.”” At the same
time the special features of these aberrant creatures were probably of
great biological importance, because, in spite of their short life, some
of them were of widespread geographical distribution. However, they
left no issie, because a ‘‘highly adapted or specialized form becomes
stereotyped and incapable of racial change.” Their extinction may
therefore be parallel to that of the large groups already considered.
The examples here cited include two species that became extinct
during the period of human history under fairly well-known conditions,
and their extinction therefore has none of the mystery that is con-
nected with the extinction of Paleozoic and Mesozoic forms.
20 Charles Schuchert, Historical geology, p.476.
21Tdem, p. 576.
22R.S. Lull, Organic evolution, p. 220.
23 Tdem, p. 293.
274 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
THE MAMMOTH
The first of these species is the mammoth, which once occupied
large areas in Europe, Asia, and North America in numbers probably
comparable to those of the American bison. Primitive man, who was
well acquainted with the mammoth, has left us true pictures of this
animal. Although he used the mammoth for food, it is doubtful
whether he was eager to hunt this huge and dangerous beast, especially
as he had at his disposal a great variety of game that was more easily
obtained. He could occasionally kill a mammoth that had plunged
into a bog, fallen into a pit, or had otherwise become entrapped, but,
as has often been suggested, he certainly did not hunt it so much as
to exterminate it. The extinction of the mammoth has been explained
as a result of defects in its organization or of changes in climate. A
critical review of these explanations shows that the references to the
defects of organization of the mammoth are either erroneous or deal
with unimportant features, and explanations of extinction by a change
in climate are of little significance, because the mammoth was wonder-
fully adapted to the physicogeographical conditions, including the
climate, under which it lived and died out. The extinction of the
mammoth is therefore no less mysterious than the extinction of the
trilobites, the ammonites, and the Mesozoic reptiles. But the mam-
moth, like all animals doomed to extinction, became highly specialized
or even overspecialized. The extreme complexity of the teeth of the
Siberian mammoth,” which has been considered an adaptation to the
harsh vegetation of the north, but which was probably an expression
of extreme specialization, was accompanied by peculiarly constructed
tusks and by 4-toed feet. The feet of other elephants are 5-toed,
although in some species, especially in the African elephant, they show
a tendency toward the reduction of the lateral digits of the hind foot.”
During its long existence in an Arctic climate the mammoth also devel-
oped a number of features as a protection against cold. Each of these
features is highly specialized or even overspecialized. It may there-
fore be suggested that the mammoth, having, like other extinct animals
lost racial vitality, was doomed to extinction, owing to overspecializa-
tion, and was therefore unable to maintain the natural balance.
STELLER’S SEA COW
Another example of the recent extinction of a species is seen in the
history of Steller’s sea cow. Discovered living near the shores of
islands in Bering Strait by the Bering expedition in 1741, it was com-
pletely exterminated during the next few years.” It was extermi-
2% R.S. Lull, Organic evolution, p. 602.
25 Tdem, p. 580.
2A. Th. Middendorff, Reise in den dussersten Norden and osten Sibiriens, Bd. IV, Th. 2, S. 841.
EXTINCTION AND EXTERMINATION—-TOLMACHOFF 21D
nated by man in a very short time, we might say instantaneously, in
a catastrophic way. But even as to this animal we are not quite
certain as to the real cause of extinction. It inhabited a small area in
numbers that apparently formed a remnant of a species that was once
abundant. Its propagation had doubtless been greatly impaired and
its body was highly specialized with respect to its environment. It
was probably already well advanced toward extinction and the Bering
expedition only accelerated its end.
EXTINCTION AND EXTERMINATION DISTINGUISHED
In connection with the extinction of Steller’s sea cow, exterminated
by man, let us consider the difference between extinction and exter-
mination. The words are often used indiscriminately, the lack of dis-
crimination ‘causing some confusion in the consideration of this ques-
tion. Extermination is the killing by man, by other animals, or by a
change of climate, flood, or any other outside agent—all directly or
indirectly affecting an individual or group of individuals. Extinction
is a dying out; and the word applies to a species or to any other larger
or smaller taxonomic group. If the word is used in referring to a
group of individuals, as to a number of animals of the same species
living in .a forest, on an island, or in some other restricted area, its
meaning would be limited geographically. With many species extinc-
tion is the passive reaction of the organism against several different
destructive agents, and the extinction of the species may be due to
extermination. Some papers on extinction deal only with extermi-
nation. A good example is a paper by Osborn, ‘‘The causes of extinc-
tion of mammalia,’”’ 7” in which the numerous possible causes of exter-
mination of mammals are considered in great detail. The difference
between these phenomena has been emphasized in an article by Smith
Woodward. In his words, ‘‘ Local extinction, or the disappearance of
a group of restricted geographical range, may be explained by acci-
dents of many kinds, but contemporaneous universal extinction of
widely spread groups, which are apparently not affected by any new
competitors, is not so easily understood.” ** He does not try to ex-
plain ‘‘the universal extinction” except in connection with the old
age of a race. His ‘‘local extinction” and “general extinction” cor-
respond exactly to extermination and extinction as both these words
have been used in the present paper.
Extermination that might affect two species, one a prolific group
and the other a group already in process of extinction, if it were to go
on incessantly, would produce the same result in both species—both
would become extinct. If, however, extermination were checked, the
27 American Naturalist, Vol. xl, pp. 769-795, 829-859, 1906.
2% A. Smith Woodward, Address of the President to the Geological Section of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science. Science, Vol. xxx, p. 327, 1909.
82322—30——19
276 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
first species would be able to recover and make good its losses, whereas
the second would continue to die out and sooner or later would be-
come extinct. The fur seals of Bering Sea were nearly exterminated
through reckless hunting by American, Japanese, and Russian trap-
pers. A special convention held by representatives of the three
countries resulted in the formulation of laws that restricted the
slaughter of this valuable animal and checked its extermination.
A contrast to the preservation of the fur seal is seen in the fate of
the bison in Russia. <A last remnant, a herd of a few hundred of these
animals, which had been once widely distributed in eastern Europe,
lived in the southwestern part of European Russia, in the so-called
Beloveshskaya Pushcha, a virgin forest covering some hundred of
square miles. The animals were living in a reservation protected by
strict legal regulations and were seldom disturbed, for the Pushcha was
a wilderness and could be visited only by special permission, which
was difficult to obtain. The animals were unmolested except during
the rare hunting trips of the Czar, when few were killed. Further
protection was given them against wild carnivorous animals and
against hunger in winter, when supplies of hay were distributed to
different parts of the forest. In spite of all these precautions the
animals were slowly dying out, not only because of a gradual decrease
in their number, but because the percentage of bulls among the young
was abnormally large. Their complete extinction, which was ap-
proaching, was accelerated during the World War by the wild hunts of
German officers at the time of the German occupation of this part of
Russia. Some Russian scientists suppose that their extinction is due
to too close interbreeding among animals of the same herd, but it may
have been a result of natural senility of the race. The number of
bison of eastern Europe was reduced to a single herd and the extinc-
tion of the animals was incessantly and surely approaching in spite of
all the protection given them.
A sharp contrast to the fate of the Russian bison is seen in that of
the American bison, a close relative of the European, which was nearly
exterminated by the white man after he invaded North America, A
few hundred of these animals that had found protection in reservations
of the United States and Canada proved to be very prolific. They
have increased to a number so large that it has become necessary to
kill many of them to avoid overcrowding the reservations. The
extinction of these animals by extermination has been easily stopped
by the protection given them. The difference between the fate of
the American and the European bison is due to the fact that the Amer-
ican bison was of a prolific race; its vital forces are preserved, even
though it suffered closer interbreeding than the European bison, which
belonged to a race that was already in process of extinction.
EXTINCTION AND EXTERMINATION—TOLMACHOFF 21%
A study of the extinction of animals in historical and recent time
affords us no better understanding of this phenomenon than the study
of the extinction of animals in Paleozoic and Mesozoic time. Some
animals are doomed to destruction as a race; others of the same kind
are capable of prolific propagation, although there is no apparent
difference in their organization or in their environment.
In the forms considered above, old and new alike, we find high spe-
cialization in all species or groups of species which are doomed to
extinction. Extinction is evidently dependent on some inner de-
ficiency, although it is usually accompanied by high perfection in cer-
tain features—by far-reaching specialization.
INDIVIDUAL AND RACIAL INTERESTS
GENERAL STATEMENT
The preservation of an individual and of a species does not invari-
ably follow the same law or principle. We can even say that the
interest of the individual and of the species may be directly opposite.
The mechanism of evolution insures the extermination of the weak and
the poorly adapted, and in animal breeding a rational elimination
may be applied with good results to the race. In fish culture, for
example, a few pike are usually placed in the pool at a certain time to
devour the undersized fish and to create better feeding conditions for
the larger and stronger fish. This practice is followed in the interest
of the species.
On the other hand, some action that might be favorable to the indi-
vidual may be destructive to the race. Birth control, for example, is
practiced in the interest of the individual, but if it should be applied
widely and constantly, it would bring about the extinction of the
human race. The destruction of the race would thus result from
action undertaken for the benefit of the individual.
INSTINCT OF SELF-PRESERVATION CONTROLLING THE INTERESTS OF THE
INDIVIDUAL
The instinct of self-preservation protects an organism against ex-
termination; but parental and sexual instincts care for the race. The
violation of the law of self-preservation may mean suffering varying in
intensity according to the degree of violation and in its extreme form
(suicide) causing death. Against this suffering and possible death
every living creature maintains a struggle thoughout its life, a struggle
supported and directed by the instinct of self-preservation, which has
been developed during countless generations. The violation of this
instinct by self-destruction is rare among the lower animals and
it is abnormal among human beings, although the instinct of self-
preservation may be sacrificed to the stronger tendency arising from
the instinct governing the preservation of the species or the race.
278 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
PARENTAL AND SEXUAL INSTINCTS WORK FOR THE PRESERVATION OF
THE RACE
General statement—The desire to preserve the species does not
appeal to the individual so strongly as the instinct of self-preservation,
because its effect lies beyond the period of individual existence and
covers unborn generations. Reaction against events endangering a
species is therefore not so immediate as reaction against events en-
dangering the individual. The instincts governing the preservation of
species are therefore less comprehensible and may seem mysterious.
The parental and sexual instincts insure the preservation of a race, and
although they differ in different groups of animals and among
different individuals of the same group, they are usually more powerful
than the instinct of self-preservation.
Parental instinct—The parental instinct is developed to extreme
perfection in the insects. A large part of the life of many adult insects
is devoted to work done in the interest of future generations, such as
that of seeking protected places in which to raise the young and provid-
ing them food. No breeder has so many cares for his stock nor plans
so carefully for future conditions. This instinct is also possessed by
fishes, whose well-known seasonal migrations from the sea into rivers
and upstream, in spite of rapids and waterfalls, are made for no other
purpose than to find good breeding grounds for the next generation.
So devoted are they to their task that, in spite of their loss of strength
in traveling upstream, they do not stop for food, but completely dis-
regard the instinct of self-preservation, and after having accom-
plished their aim they perish.
The parental instinct appears to be the very foundation of human
society. Such institutions as marriage and the family, on which
human society is based, have originated for the sake of future genera-
tions. Care for children is still a leading motive in the life of com-
munities, among barbarous tribes as well as among highly cultured
nations. With rare exceptions, fathers and mothers are ready to
sacrifice their lives for the sake of their endangered children. We
thus observe that in human society, just as among fishes and insects,
the instinct of self-preservation retreats before the parental instinct.
Sexual instinct.—The sexual instinct among all animals is stronger
and more mysterious than the parental instinct. The most striking
examples are found among the insects, in which the sexual instinct
manifests itself in different and in extremely peculiar forms. Among
the bees, for example, the sexual instinct serves exclusively the inter-
ests of the community. The male and female bee mate only once,
and after the mating the male, being mortally mutilated, dies imme-
diately. The other male bees, the drones, whose possible usefulness to
the community is ended by that mating, are tolerated only until the
EXTINCTION AND EXTERMINATION—-TOLMACHOFF 279
honey harvest season is nearly at is end, and are then mercilessly
killed and cast out by the workers. This hecatomb after the act of
reproduction and the later care of the eggs and young by the asexual
bees involves complete neglect of individual interests, the sexual
instinct becoming a communal affair.
Among spiders the female may attack and devour the male after
mating. The male, knowing well his possible fate, is not deterred
from mating by the instinct of self-preservation. During mating the
female mantis often gnaws the head of the male, who neither offers real
resistance nor tries to escape. Among copepoda some males are so
different from the females that it is difficult to identify them as mem-
bers of the same species. They are much smaller and, roughly speak-
ing, consist of a sack filled with sperms, living as a parasite attached
to the reproductive organs of the female. Here the individuality of
the male is completely sacrified to sexual interests and reproduction.
Among the higher animals, human beings not excepted, the sexual
instinct is very strong, although its effects are not always recognized
or understood. The sexual instinct is a powerful motive of many
human actions. Three-fourths or more of the crimes committed and
a large percentage of the suicides are directly or indirectly chargeable
toit. The life of an individual is often sacrificed to what is termed sex
appeal. History has preserved many stories of beautiful queens who
had their temporary lovers put to death. Some of these men realized
that they would pay with their lives for a short felicity; but, led by the
sex appeal, they were willing to ignore the instinct of self-preserva-
tion. When a present-day suitor expresses his willingness to pay for
sexual favors with his life, he unconsciously reverts to conditions in
former days, when such an affair was serious and might have grave
consequences.
These few examples, which could be multiplied indefinitely, show
that not everything which is beneficial or pernicious for the individual
is such for the preservation*of the race, and vice versa. The impor-
tance of this fact has never been sufficiently appreciated. Most
paleontologists and biologists who have attempted to explain the
extinction of a race have sought causes that affect the individual and
have cited these causes in explaining the extinction of a species. It is
not surprising that such explanations could not withstand criticism
and were usually complete failures.
INDIVIDUAL AND RACIAL LIFE
METABOLISM CONTROLLING THE EXISTENCE OF THE ORGANISM
The existence of an individual is dependent on its ability to find food
and transform it into body tissues by means of very complicated
processes known as metabolism. If the metabolism of an animal is
280 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
wrong, it becomes sick, and if the defect is not corrected the animal
dies. Every individual, after living for a time that differs greatly for
different animals, but that is of more or less the same duration for
every species, will unavoidably be affected by defects of metabolism
and will die a so-called natural death.
POWER OF REPRODUCTION CONTROLLING THE PRESERVATION OF A RACE
The preservation of a race is dependent on the ability of the organ-
isms composing it to reproduce. Usually this ability is conjoined
with the physical development of the individual, which may be divided
into three stages. The first stage is the period of greatest growth,
when the income of the body is much greater than its expenditure.
The stage continues until physical maturity is reached, when some
kind of equilibrium between income and expenditure is established,
which is maintained throughout the reproductive period. With the
passing of the period of reproduction metabolism decreases and the
individual gradually loses vitality. This general statement may not
be correct for every organism or race, but as the expression of a gen-
eral principle it may be sufficiently correct.
DECREASE OF REPRODUCTION IN HIGHER AND MORE SPECIALIZED
ANIMALS
The relation between reproduction and individual life is not
invariably so simple. For no apparent reason a strong, healthy
individual may be incapable of reproduction. The power of repro-
duction also may not be completely lost; it may be only decreased,
as it is when the number of births is small, or when the percentage
of male births in a species or race is much higher than that of female
births. This phenomenon may be considered the beginning of
sterility. We do not know the real cause of sterility that is not
produced by some evident abnormalitys It has been suggested that
insanity provokes sterility in the fourth generation. Too close
interbreeding may gradually develop into sterility, and if the stock
is not reinvigorated with new blood it will bring about the complete
extinction of a race, though the correctness of this statement has been
questioned or denied by some biologists. It has been observed that
in the first generation interbreeding gives offspring of high grade.
In this way a breed of setters of high quality, but of short longevity,
was obtained. The breed began to die out so quickly that the breeder
witnessed the gradual extinction of his product.
Sterility, even in its first stage, in no way shows a low degree of
advancement of a species. Indeed, prolification may decrease with
advancement, either through a diminishing number of offspring or
an increasing period of gestation and maturity. Man has the rather
EXTINCTION AND EXTERMINATION—TOLMACHOFF 281
doubtful distinction of being one of the least prolific of animals.
It is also suggested that the higher human races are less prolific than
the lower ones, and that a higher standard of living is usually accom-
panied by a lower birth rate, which is not compensated by a corres-
pondingly low death rate. The very common dying out of low human
races that bear only a few children does not invalidate this statement,
because this phenomenon is due to certain special causes. The
prolification of the lower animals is enormous. According to Huxley’s
estimate, the descendants of a single green fly, if all of them survived
and multiplied, would at the end of one summer outnumber the
population of China. Common house flies would in the same time
occupy a space of about a quarter of a million cubic feet, allowing
200,000 to a cubic foot.® These examples are by no means extreme.
In comparison with them we find an example no less striking—that
of the elephant, which begins to breed at the age of thirty years and
bas a period of gestation of nearly two years.
We do not know why high specialization and perfect adaptation
to certain conditions is accompanied by complete sterility or by a
decrease of fecundity, which is, probably, the first stage of sterility.
We can only suggest that sterility has developed slowly and gradually,
and that in the animal kingdom it begins with unconscious weakening
of the sexual instinct. Animals whose physical and psychic forces
are given over to a certain aim, such as the achievement of a certain
adaptation, have not the same energy to expend in perpetuating the
race as those whose energies are not thus expended. In succeeding
generations this transfer of energy could gradually provoke a degrada-
tion of the reproductive organs, very slight at first, by dulling the
sexual instinct. These changes would be going on simultaneously
with the final and fatal result, the loss of the power of reproduction.
DECREASE OF REPRODUCTION IN HIGHLY SPECIALIZED PLANTS
Unhappily, we are not able to discover why sterility affects some
individuals that are apparently in perfect physical condition. In the
solution of this problem we get much more informationfrom the
study of plants. A great number of highly specialized cultivated
plants seldom or never produce seeds and have to be propagated by
cuttings. A well-known example is the garden rose. Few cultivated
varieties of the banana * or the sugar cane produce seed.** The
sweet potato (Batatus edulis) has been preserved only through culti-
vation.22. Through cultivation, also, the common potato (Solanum
tuberosum) is gradually losing its power to produce seed. Bailey
29R.S. Lu, Organic evolution, p. 104.
30 A. De Candolle, Origin of cultivated plants, p. 307,
31 Idem, p. 156.
32 Tdem, p. 33.
282 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
says: “In the potato, as tuber production has increased, seed pro-
duction has decreased. Now potatoes do not produce bolls as freely
as they did years ago.” ** So-called seedless fruits belong to the same
category. Some of these highly specialized plants, if left without the
attention of a gardener, would perhaps restore their lost power of
producing seed, and they would at the same time lose their acquired
artificial qualities; but most of them would soon become extinct, if it
were not for the intervention of man.
OBSERVATIONS ON PLANTS APPLIED TO ANIMALS
The observation of highly specialized plants helps us to explain
tentatively the alterations that are going on in highly specialized
animals and that decrease their productivity. The parts affected are
the genital organs, or, to speak more correctly, perhaps, the genital
glands, the secretions of which may more or less decrease or cease
entirely, like the production of seed ceases in highly specialized plants.
Animals as individuals would not be harmed by this loss; they might
even be benefited by the transfer of energy to other parts of the body,
but for the preservation of a race the Joss would be fatal. On the
other hand, the specialization of certain parts of the animal body to
form reproductive or genital organs diminishes prolification. In the
lower organisms reproduction goes on by the fission of the whole
body. In the Infusoria such fission may even be produced mechan-
ically by skillful dissection. But the evolution of the animal king-
dom is paralleled by a decrease in prolification. Most of the mem-
bers of a colony of Coelenterata may lose entirely the power of repro-
duction, which has become a function of certain specialized individ-
uals. In other animals reproduction through fission occurs only by
budding in certain parts of the body. The origin of the genital
glands of the higher animals may be traced to budding, but in greatly
modified and highly specialized form, a form that is easily subject to
the influence of many exterior and interior agencies. All the varia-
tions in the reproduction of different animals and in their fertility
must be considered in connection with the structure, function, and
alteration of these important parts of every animal that has a some-
what high systematic position.
By all these considerations we are able not only to explain extinc-
tion brought about by the great specialization and accompanying
sterility of organisms, but to understand the origin of those peculiar
structures that paleontologists consider indications of the old age of
a race. Some kinds of specialization that affect the reproductive
powers of a race may not cause immediate sterility, but may produce
3 L. H. Bailey, Plant-breeding, p. 225. The writer feels greatly indebted to Dr. O. E. Jennings for all
the information concerning cultivated plants,
EXTINCTION AND EXTERMINATION—_-TOLMACHOFF 283
a gradual decrease in prolification. Such specialization releases
energy, which is used to achieve further specialization and to increase
structural variability, or to develop structures that may be beyond
present needs. The energy that had been devoted to reproduction
seems to have been diverted to the multiplication of alterations of
bodily structure. When we consider the spines on the valves of a
Productus; the rich ornamentation, the ribs, spines, and tubercles
on the shells of ammonites; the peculiar armor and forbidding spines
of the Stegosaurus; the antlers of the extinct great Irish stag; the
gigantic but not correspondingly advantageous size of the Diplodocus,
and other similar forms, we can only conclude that all these extremely
developed features represent an unnecessary excess of structure and
waste of energy. Extravagance of structure decreases the reproduc-
tive ability of a race and diminishes its resistance to extermination,
although at the same time the race may appear to be well prepared
for the struggle for existence—a fact that makes its extinction inex-
plicable and mysterious.
Complete sterility is not the only condition determining the extinc-
tion of a race, and it was doubtless attained only in a few extinct
races, but partial sterility, or the decrease of reproductive power be-
yond certain limits, is probably the axis on which the whole process
of extinction revolves and is, perhaps, the main or only cause of this
mysterious phenomenon.
The relation between the extinction of a race and its fertility has been
very little considered by naturalists. Merriam suggests ** that dimin-
ished reproduction induced by low temperature would be a barrier to
the geographical distribution of a certain race and would contribute
to its extinction; but if the race had preserved its structural flexibiliity—
in other words, if it had not been overspecialized and its productive
ability were normal—it would gradually become adapted to new
conditions and survive them.
HIGH SPECIALIZATION AND INCREASED FERTILITY OF PARASITES
We know of only one class of animals, the parasites, in which close
adaptation to the immediate environment, causing an unavoidably
great overspecialization, has been accompanied by increased fertility.
However, this apparent exception only supports the view here ad-
vanced. In parasites the specialization is degenerative. They lose
the organs of locomotion, and the special senses and the nervous
system accordingly degenerates. The external skeleton becomes
simpler or is entirely lost. Reduction of the vegetative organs, such
as those of respiration and circulation, of the alimentary canal, and
of the digestive glands is common. These organs therefore be-
34H. F. Osborn, The age of mammals, p. 504.
38 R. S. Lull, Organic evolution, p. 266.
284 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
come of very little use, and the energy that is used by other animals
in the specialization of bodily parts is in parasites freed and given over
to reproduction, resulting in the preservation of the race. Conse-
quently the genital organs of parasites are greatly enlarged, and all
parasites are very prolific.
CONCLUSIONS
Owing to extinction, the normal course of evolution has been inter-
rupted innumerable times. There is no line of evolution to which
this statement would not apply. Races have been preserved not by
means of their most brilliant representatives, for great achievements
cause some deficiency of vital racial force, but rather through mediocre
individuals. We are even able to establish an empiric law that
“the upwelling of future organic rulers begins in unobtrusive small
forms,’’ *° or, as expressed by Cope, in the ‘“‘survival of the unspecial-
ized,’’ because, as he states, the highly developed or greatly special-
ized types of one geologic period are not the parents of the types of
succeeding periods.*”
Especially important and interesting in this respect are those per-
sistent types that have gone through a number of geological periods
without great alterations in structure. Their evolution has been
arrested,®® and in recompense they have received a longevity that
seems to approach immortality.
36 Charles Schuchert, Historical geology, p. 449.
87 [dem, p. 450,
388 Rudolph Ruedemann, Paleontology of arrested evolution. New York State Museum Bulletin,
No, 196, pp. 107-184, 1918.
THE GULF STREAM AND ITS PROBLEMS!
By H. A. MarmMER
U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey
Maury’s The Physical Geography of the Sea, which appeared in
1855, is frequently referred to as the first textbook of modern oceanog-
raphy. In that work the author devotes the first chapter to the
Gulf Stream, introducing it thus:
There is ariver in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the
mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water,
while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is
in the Arctic Seas. Itis the Gulf Stream. There is in the world no other such
majestic flow of waters. Its current is more rapid than the Mississippi or the
Amazon?
Even in matters scientific, customs change. It is altogether un-
likely that an oceanographer nowadays would speak of the Gulf
Stream as rhetorically as did Maury. ‘The magnitude of this current,
however, is such that even later students make use of superlatives in
describing it. The most comprehensive investigation of the Gulf
Stream was carried out between the years 1885 and 1889 by Lieut.
(later Rear Admiral) J. E. Pillsbury, United States Navy, while at-
tached to the Coast and Geodetic Survey. And when he came to write
up the results of his observations and studies he described it as “‘the
grandest and most mighty * * * terrestrial phenomenon.’ ®
Of all the currents that make up the systems of oceanic circulation,
the Gulf Stream has received the greatest amount of study and is the
best known. Its discovery, or more accurately the first notice on rec-
ord, came shortly after the discovery of the new world. Early in
March of 1513, Ponce de Leon set sail from Porto Rico with three
ships on a voyage of exploration. Setting a northwesterly course the
expedition discovered Florida, a landing being made on the eastern
coast somewhere in the general vicinity of Cape Canaveral. Sailing
southerly then they encountered on April 22, as related in a chronicle
of the expedition, ‘‘a current such that, although they had a great
1 Reprinted by permission from the Geographical Review, July, 1929.
2M. fF. Maury: The Physical Geography of the Sea, p. 25, New York, 1855.
tJ. E. Pillsbury: The Gulf Stream: Methods of the Investigation, and Results of the Research, Appen-
dix No. 10 of Rep. of the Supt. of the Coast and Geodetic Survey for 1890, pp. 459-620, Washington,
D. C., 1891; reference on p. 472.
285
286 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
wind, they could not proceed forward, but backward, and it seemed
that they were proceeding well; and in the end it was known that it
was in such wise the current which was more powerful than the
wind.” * Thus was the Gulf Stream first noted.
Apparently the Spaniards soon learned that this northerly flowing
current was not merely a local current but one of wide extent; for
six years later, when Antonio de Alaminos set out for Spain from Vera
Cruz, he sailed northward with the Gulf Stream for a number of
days before turning east toward Europe. This same Alaminos was
pilot of Ponce de Leon’s expedition of 1513 when the Gulf Stream was
first noted. It is therefore quite proper to credit the discovery of
the Gulf Stream to Alaminos.
EARLIEST GULF STREAM CHART
For two and a half centuries following its discovery the growth of
knowledge regarding the Gulf Stream was slow. The story is told
in detail by Kohl * and more briefly by Pillsbury. During this period,
to be sure, the mariner, and more especially the whaler, became
acquainted with the Gulf Stream throughout the greater part of its
course. Much of this information, however, was kept as a professional
secret, and it was not until after the middle of the eighteenth century
that the course of the current was depicted on a chart. The story of
how this came about is not without interest, especially as it illustrates
nicely the effect of the Gulf Stream on navigation.
About 1770, complaint was made to the London officials that the
English packets which came to New York took about two weeks longer
in crossing than did the Rhode Island merchant ships which put in
at Naragansett Bay ports. Benjamin Franklin, being in London at
the time, was consulted about the matter. To quote his own words:
It appearing strange to me that there should be such a difference between two
places, scarce a day’s run asunder * * * JI could not but think the fact
misunderstood or misrepresented. There happened then to be in London a
Nantucket sea captain of my acquaintance, to whom I communicated the affair.
He told me he believed the fact might be true; but the difference was owing to
this, that the Rhode Island captains were acquainted with the Gulf Stream,
which those of the English packets were not * * * When the winds are
but light, he added, they are carried ‘back by the current more than they are
forwarded by the wind * * * J then observed that it was a pity no notice
was taken of this current upon the charts, and requested him to mark it out for
me, which he readily complied with, adding directions for avoiding it in sailing
from Europe to North America.®
4L. D. Scisco: The Track of Ponce de Leon in 1513, Bull. Amer. Geogr. Soc., Vol. 45, pp. 721-735, 1913;
reference on p. 725.
5J. G. Kohl: Geschichte des Golfstroms und seiner Erforschung von den iltesten Zeiten bis auf den
grossen amerikanischen Biirgerkrieg, pp. 1-114, Bremen, 1868.
6 A letter from Dr. Benjamin Franklin, to Mr. Alphonsus le Roy, Member of Several Academies, at
Paris: Containing Sundry Maritime Observations, Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., Vol. 2, pp. 294-329, 1786;
reference on pp. 314-815.
THE GULF STREAM—MARMER 287
Franklin goes on to relate that he had the information engraved
“fon the old chart of the Atlantic, at Mount and Page’s, Tower-hill;
and copies were sent down to Falmouth for the captains of the packets
who slighted it however; but it is since printed in France, of which
edition I hereto annex a copy.” (Fig. 1.)
As evidenced by Franklin’s letter in the Transactions of the Ameri-
can Philosophical Society, the Gulf Stream towards the end of the
eighteenth century became a subject of scientific investigation and
discussion. Franklin himself made observations on the temperature
of the sea water during a number of voyages and noted with regard to
the Gulf Stream “‘that it js always warmer than the sea on each side
of it.” By the middle‘of the nineteenth century, when systematic
|
Eskimiux’s br A 5
mers
= Poupard , ew (peer
=F cae oupar Sealp
SS —
FIGURE 1,—Franklin’s chart of the Gulf Stream
observations were begun, a fund of information had been gathered
from navigators’ logs and from the observations of scientifically
minded travelers. ?
SYSTEMATIC OBSERVATIONS
Systematic observations in the Gulf Stream were begun in 1845 by
the Coast Survey under the superintendency of Alexander Dallas
Bache, a great grandson of Franklin. At different times up to the
year 1889 specially equipped vessels were detailed for the work, the
results being published as appendixes to the annual reports of the
Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the last one being
288 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
that by Pillsbury cited in footnote 3. In passing, it is to be noted
that this systematic work was confined almost wholly to the Gulf
Stream along the coast of the United States.
The published material on the Gulf Stream is extensive. Here
it will be sufficient to direct attention only to the more authoritative
recent work. Kriimmel, in what is still the standard treatise on
oceanography,’ gives a brief but critical summary of the hydrographic
features of the Gulf Stream as developed to the end of the first decade
of the present century, and Schott ® brings the discussion up to the
present time. And, while dealing with but a restricted part of the
Gulf Stream, Wiist’s study ® should be mentioned here because it
represents a successful attempt to correlate and elucidate the phenom-
ena involved in the Gulf Stream by means of mathematical, or more
accurately perhaps, dynamical methods.
It is customary to trace the last remnant of the Gulf Stream into
the Arctic waters north of Norway. From its place of origin in the
Gulf of Mexico, therefore, this current traverses a route of more than
6,000 miles. But it is not as a “river in the ocean” that it mani-
fests itself throughout its course. The phenomena presented are
much more involved, and the stream is to be regarded rather as a
complex system of currents than as a single current. We may arrive
at an understanding of the nature of the forces and factors involved
by a brief consideration of jts characteristics in the region in which it
has been most carefully studied.
THE CURRENT IN THE STRAITS OF FLORIDA
It is in its first reach, through the Straits of Florida, that the
characterists of the Gulf Stream are most marked. Here its waters
have the highest temperature and salinity and the swiftest flow. And
because it is here confined within a restricted channel it lends itself
more readily to investigation. Observations have here been made
across a number of sections; and with this stretch, too, Wiist’s study
mentioned above is concerned.
Figure 2, which is adapted from Coast and Geodetic Survey Chart
1007, visualizes the hydrographic features of the Gulf Stream for the
first 400 miles of its course. The region where the Gulf of Mexico
narrows to form the channel between Florida Keys and Cuba may be
regarded as the head of the Gulf Stream. Here the width of its
channel is 95 nautical miles. Eastward the channel becomes nar-
rower, reaching its least width in the so-called narrows, abreast of
Cape Florida, where it is but half its original width. From here it
widens somewhat until it meets the open sea north of Little Bahama
Bank.
T Otto Kriimmel: Handbuch der Ozeanographie, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1907-1911.
§ Gerhard Schott: Geographie des Atlantischen Ozeans, 2nd edit., pp. 180-205, Hamburg, 1926.
§Georg Wiist: Florida und Antillenstrom, Veréffentl. Inst. fiir Meereskunde, No. 12, Berlin, 1924.
THE GULF STREAM—MARMER 289
While the chart shows that in its first reach the Gulf Stream flows
between banks like a river, it is to be noted that this channel is in two
respects markedly different from that of a river. In a river, as a
rule, the channel increases in width from head to mouth. But in the
Sccucitsusucsucstiscsactsiscnsnseasdvavasccacsual
(Adapted from U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Chart 1007)
ie.
t
AG.
a
xX
A” Ne
ap
4
VR
ie’,
we
Bewini
t
nes
~~
a
falc!
fae
ais
8
is}
Biniyat -_
g ie
E : i
e 8 @b eg *
z UP Sui ihn et
(=) hoes 3 m4
{Fin ye cs
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a Eaeoer
g
FiGuRE 2.—Hydrographic features of the Gulf Stream within the Straits of Florida.
af
1012,
Gulf Stream, as we have just seen, the width of the channel decreases
seawards. Furthermore, a river deepens as it goes seaward; an
examination of the chart, however, shows that the channel of the Gulf
290 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Stream becomes shallower asit goesseaward. Atits head, asshown in
Figure 2, the stream shows depths of a thousand fathoms or more;
but the depths gradually decrease, and when the channel approaches
the sea the greatest depth is but little more than 400 fathoms.
Nautical charts are issued primarily for the mariner, to whom the
shoal areas are critical. Hence in hydrographic surveys, as a rule,
shoal areas are much more closely developed than areas of deep water.
So that it may be assumed that the relief of the bottom of the Straits
of Florida is indicated only in its larger features on the chart. It is
quite likely that a detailed hydrographic survey of the straits would
bring out interesting local features that now are masked.
Throughout the whole stretch of 400 miles shown in Figure 2,
the Gulf Stream flows with considerable velocity. It is clear, how-
ever, that the whole mass of water is not moving with a uniform
velocity. Confining our atten-
tion for the present to the velocity
of the current at the surface we
find at its head, say abreast of
Habana, the velocity in the axis
of the stream (shown by arrows
in fig. 2) to be about 2% nautical
miles per hour, or 2% knots on
the average. Seaward, the veloc-
ity increases gradually as the
cross-sectional area of the stream
decreases until abreast of Cape
Florida the velocity becomes
about 3 knots. As we shall see
Figure 3.—Velocity of Gulf Stream within Straits later, the current is subject to
anes i variations; and it is therefore to
be emphasized that the velocities given above are approximate average
or normal velocities.
With regard to the current within the depths of the Gulf Stream the
observational data are in general fragmentary. Pillsbury during his
investigation carried out several series of current observations in the
Straits of Florida, but these were generally confined to depths less than
1,000 feet. From these observations and from general considerations
it is known that the swiftest thread of the current lies in the axis of the
stream, just below the surface, and from ere the velocity decreases
with increasing depth. In the axis of the Gulf Stream, off Habana,
Pillsbury found the current setting easterly with a velocity of a knot
at a depth of 130 fathoms.
Within the narrows of the strait, abreast of Cape Florida, the
velocity distribution may be considered relatively well known. Figure
3, adapted from Wiist, shows the velocity distribution across the section
Nautical Miles
THE GEOGR. REVIEW, JULY, 1929
THE GULF STREAM—MARMER 291
just south of Cape Florida. In constructing the velocity curves Wiist
made use of Pillsbury’s observations; and for the deeper parts, for
which no observations are at hand, he derived the necessary data from
a consideration of the temperature and salinity observations, which
here extend from the surface to the bottom.
Within the Straits of Florida the Gulf Stream is generally pictured
as a swiftly moving stream with but little variation in velocity from
surface to bottom. Figure 3 shows, however, that only within a layer
of about 200 fathoms (1,200 feet) does the velocity exceed 1 knot.
Moreover, near the bottom, Pillsbury found the current setting south-
erly, that is, in a direction opposite to that of the mainstream. This
was taken to indicate a southerly flowing current, deriving perhaps
from the Labrador Current. It appears, however, that it is more
reasonably to be ascribed to eddies brought about by the upward-
sloping bottom within the Straits of Florida.
With the details of the velocity distribution known, it becomes
possible to compute the volume of water discharged by the Gulf Stream
through the Straits of Florida. A rough estimate is easily made
from Figure 3. In round numbers the channel eastward of Cape
Florida has a width of 42 (geographical) miles and an average depth
of 2,000 feet, or approximately one-third of a mile. This gives the
area of the cross section here as 14 square miles. In round numbers,
also, the velocity of the current through this section may be taken
as 1 knot. Each hour, therefore, the Gulf Stream carries 14 cubic
miles of water past this section into the sea. Since a geographical
mile has a length of 6,080 feet and a cubic foot of sea water weighs
approximately 64 pounds, we find that each hour the Gulf Stream
catries 100 billion tons of water past Cape Florida into the sea.
The above calculation is clearly no more than a rough estimate;
but it demonstrates that the hourly volume of the Gulf Stream is to
be reckoned in scores of billions of tons. On the basis of his observa-
vations Pillsbury calculated the hourly volume of the Gulf Stream
through the Straits of Florida as 90 billion tons. More recently
Wiist, on the basis of data furnished by the observations and amplified
by dynamical considerations, derived for this volume 89.96 cubic
kilometers, or 14.1 cubic miles, which equals 101% billion tons. In
round numbers we may therefore take the average hourly volume of
the Gulf Stream through the Straits of Florida to be 100 billion tons.
We may perhaps appreciate better the enormous volume of water
that the Gulf Stream pours into the sea by comparing it with the
volume discharged by the Mississippi River, which drains more than
40 per cent of the area of continental United States. On the average
the Mississippi discharges about 664,000 cubic feet of water into the
Gulf of Mexico each second. At extreme flood stage this volume
becomes multiplied about threefold, mounting to about 1,800,000
8$2322—30——_20
292 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
cubic feet per second.’© On converting these figures into cubic (geo-
graphical) miles per hour they become, respectively, 0.01 and 0.03
cubic mile. The 14 cubic miles which the Gulf Stream hourly pours
into the sea is thus more than 1,000 times the average discharge and
very nearly 500 times the extreme flood discharge of the Mississippi.
THE WATER WITHIN THE STRAITS OF FLORIDA
With regard to the water poured so prodigally by the Gulf Stream
into the sea through the Straits of Florida, the generally accepted
notion is that it is of an unusually high temperature from top to
bottom. Figure 4 shows the temperature of the water, in degrees
Fahrenheit, across the section in the straits from Cape Florida east-
ward. This is adapted from Wiist, who made use of observations
taken in May, 1878, and in
ae Neues ees March, 1914. Since, in general,
the sea in the Northern Hemi-
sphere is coldest in February
and warmest in August, it may
be taken that the temperatures
shown in Figure 3 are approxi-
mately average temperatures.
Obviously the Gulf Stream in
the straits is not a homogeneous
body of warmwater. At the sur-
face, in the center of the channel,
the temperature is about 80°, and
at the bottom it is 45° or even
FIGURE 4.—Temperature of Gulf Stream waters less. The fall in temperature is
within Straits of Florida 5 c
fairly rapid, a temperature of 50°
being attained at about 200 fathoms, so that only a relatively shallow
layer of the water is warm.
Figure 3 brings to light the fact that for any given depth the
water on the eastern side of the channel is considerably warmer than
that on the western. Thus at a depth of 100 fathoms the water on the
Florida side of the straits has a temperature of about 50°, while on
the Bahama side the temperature is about 70°. Furthermore, while
the change in temperature with depth is approximately uniform on the
Bahama side, it is decidedly not uniform on the Florida side, where a
rapid change of 20° in temperature takes place between the depths
of 50 and 100 fathoms. As regards temperature therefore, the water
of the Gulf Stream is decidedly not homogeneous.
The prevailing conception of the Gulf Stream as an unusually warm
body of water can be shown as erroneous from another point of view,
J. L. Greenleaf: The Hydrology of the Mississippi, Amer. Journ. of Sci., Ser. 4. Vo}. 2, pp. 29-46 1896;
reference on p. 42.
THE GULF STREAM—MARMER 293
namely, by comparison with other bodies of water in the same latitude,
for example, with the Sargasso Sea. The surface waters of the Gulf
Stream in the Straits of Florida have about the same temperature as
the surface waters of the Sargasso Sea. But within the depths the
Sargasso Sea is much warmer. At a depth of 200 fathoms the tem-
perature of thelatter is between 60° and 65°," while in the Gulf Stream
at that depth the temperature, as shown by Figure 4, averages
about 55°.
With regard to other characteristics there is a like tendency to
overrate the waters of the Gulf Stream. Highly saline these waters
are, but not exceptionally so. On the customary salinity scale, in
which each unit represents one part of salt in a thousand parts of
water, the surface waters within the straits have a salinity of about
36. Below the surface the salinity increases gradually until a maxi-
mum of 3644 is reached at a depth of about 100 fathoms, after which
the salinity decreases to about 35 at 300 fathoms, which salinity
is then maintained to the bottom. In round numbers we may take the
salinity of the waters within the straits as a whole to be 36. Compared
to the average salinity of 34%4, which is accepted as the figure for the
sea as a whole, the water within the straits is highly saline; but
toward its eastern end the Sargasso Sea is more saline, having a
salinity of 37% on the surface and of about 36 at a depth of 300
fathoms. In depth of color and transparency, the waters in the
Sargasso Sea likewise exceed those of the Gulf Stream.
In general, however, the Gulf Stream as it issues into the sea
through the Straits of Florida may be characterized as a swift, highly
saline current of blue water whose upper stratum is composed of
warm water.
UNION WITH THE ANTILLES CURRENT
On issuing into the sea north of Little Bahama Bank the Gulf
Stream loses the relatively great velocity which characterized it
within the straits. From 3% knots along the axis within the narrows
of the straits, there is a gradual decrease to a velocity of about 2
knots off St. Augustine, Fla., in latitude 30° N. Here the Gulf Stream
is joined by the Antilles Current, which flows northwesterly along the
open ocean side of the West Indies before uniting with the Gulf
Stream.
North of the thirtieth parallel of latitude, therefore, the Gulf
Stream is a current to which two branches have contributed. It is no
longer merely a continuation of the current that flows through the
Straits of Florida. The latter current, for distinction, is frequently
referred to as the Florida Current. As to the relative importance of
the two branches of the Gulf Stream widely varying opinions have been
11 Schott, op. cit., Pl. XIV, following p. 144
294. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
entertained. Formerly it was thought that the Antilles Current
furnished both the greater quantity of water as well as the greater
quantity of heat transported by the Gulf Stream. Kriimmel, for
example, credits the Antilles Current with contributing about 234
times as much water and heat as the Florida Current. Wiist’s study of
the question, however, makes it appear that the réles of the two cur-
rents must be reversed; for he finds on the basis of later data, that the
Florida Current contributes about twice as much water and heat as the
Antilles Current. ,
The Antilles Current, like the Florida Current, carries warm, highly
saline water of clear indigo blue. The union of the two currents gives
rise to a broad current possessing about the same characteristics as
the Gulf Stream within the straits except that the velocity is much
reduced. The combined current, under the influence of the deflecting
force of the earth’s rotation and the easterly trending coast line, turns
more and more easterly, so that off the coast of Georgia the Gulf
Stream bears northeast, maintaining this general direction past Cape
Hatteras.
THE AXIS OF THE STREAM
From within the straits the axis of the Gulf Stream runs approxi-
mately parallel with the 100-fathom curve as far as Cape Hatteras, a
distance of about 800 geographical miles. Since this stretch of coast
line sweeps northward in a sharper curve than does the 100-fathom
line, the axis lies at varying distances from the shore. Within the
straits it is about 10 miles offshore; in the bight off the coast of Georgia
this distance is about 100 miles; and at Cape Hatteras it is about 35
miles. In Figure 5 the axis is shown as compiled from Coast and
Geodetic Survey Charts 1007 and 1001 and Hydrographic Office
Chart 1411. On these charts the axis bears the following legends:
‘‘approximate axis of maximum strength’? (Chart 1001); ‘‘approxi-
mate location of axis of Gulf Stream’ (Chart 1007); ‘‘mean position
of axis of Gulf Stream” (Chart 1411).
Even with a qualifying phrase directing attention to the fact
that its location is only approximate, the axis of the Gulf Stream as it
appears on a chart tends to convey a sense of definiteness and precision
wholly at variance with the observed facts. The channel of the Gulf
Stream is so wide and is characterized by so many irregularities that
the simple flow postulated can be but the roughest approximation.
Strictly, we should distinguish between the temperature axis and
the velocity axis of the Gulf Stream. The earlier systematic observa-
tions on the Gulf Stream dealt with the temperature of the water
rather than with its motion. Hence the axis was taken to be the
line along which the highest temperatures obtained. Later, the axis
was taken to mark the line of greatest velocity. Ordinarily it is
THE GULF STREAM—MARMER . 985
39
se)
=)
mot eee 7 SETS
As :
C Canaveral ;
ME. PROVIDENCE CHAN
RBS
ae I
Nae 7] oe
BSSCERSSSTS TERT R TOES SS SSS VESE eS CP SSPE S SASS SS SOR SSSEERa
int * Muni SS dS I
80° 1S
FIGURE 5.—The axis of the Gulf Stream. The dotted line represents the 100-fathom line
296 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
assumed that the two axes coincide; but this is by no means certain,
and only systematic observations over a considerable period can solve
this problem.
LATERAL BOUNDARIES
Within the straits the lateral boundaries of the Gulf Stream can
be fixed with considerable precision. But when the stream issues into
the sea, how are these boundaries to be determined? On the west-
ern side, to be sure, it is not difficult to define limits, since the waters
of the stream differ in color, temperature, salinity, and flow from
the inshore coastal waters. But on the east the Antilles Current
comes to reinforce the Gulf Stream, so that its waters here merge
gradually with the waters of the open Atlantic. In terms of color,
temperature, and salinity it would be difficult to define the eastern
limits of the Gulf Stream. With regard to direction of flow, however,
we may fix the limits to include all the water flowing parallel to the
axis. These limits vary with the seasons and with changing condi-
tions of wind and weather. Furthermore, our knowledge of currents
in the open sea is not yet sufficient to enable us to fix such limits with
precision. Nevertheless, from such charts of the currents of the
Atlantic as Schott’s ” and Meyer’s ® we may arrive at some approxi-
mately accurate estimate of the lateral extent of the Gulf Stream.
It has generally been taken that the inner edge of the Gulf Stream,
from its outfall into the sea to Cape Hatteras, is defined by the 100-
fathom curve. But recent observations by the Coast and Geodetic
Survey indicate that it lies closer inshore. Systematic current obser-
vations made on board Diamond Shoals Light Vessel, which is anchor-
ed in 30 fathoms of water off the coast of North Carolina about 14
miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, give an average surface current
here of 0.4 knot setting N. 58° E., which proves that along this stretch
of the coast the inner edge of the Gulf Stream lies nearer the 20-
fathom curve than the 100-fathom curve. Taking the inner limit
of the Gulf Stream as far as Cape Hatteras to be defined by the
50-fathom curve, and the outer edge to be defined by a line along which
the current is still approximately parallel to the axis of the Gulf
Stream, the width of the stream northward of its outfall is as follows:
Off Cape Canaveral, about 70 miles; off the coast of Georgia after
its union with the Antilles Current, about 150 miles; off Cape Hat-
teras about 200 miles.
CONFLICT WITH THE LABRADOR CURRENT
The region off Cape Hatteras has been called the ‘‘delta” of the
Gulf Stream, for here the widespreading current separates into a
12 Schott, op. cit., Pl. XV, following p. 144.
13H. H. F. Meyer: Die Oberflichenstrémungen des Atlantischen Ozeans im Februar, Veréffentl.Inst.
fiir Meereskunde, No. 11, Berlin, 1923,
THE GULF STREAM—MARMER 297
number of bands. This is most clearly evidenced by the juxtaposi-
tion of warm and cold bands of water of varying widths. This feature
is also noted below Cape Hatteras but not in so marked a degree.
North of Cape Hatteras the Gulf Stream flows with a velocity
averaging a little less than a knot, turning more and more eastward
under the combined effects of the deflecting force of the earth’s rota-
tion and the eastwardly trending coast line, until the region of the
Grand Bank of Newfoundland is reached. Here it comes into conflict
with the southerly flowing Labrador Current which carries cold water
of relatively low salinity.
THE COLD WALL
At an early stage of the investigations it was found that on its
western or inner side the Gulf Stream was separated from the coastal
waters by a zone of rapidly falling temperature, to which the term
“‘cold wall” was applied. It is most clearly marked north of Cape
Hatteras but extends, more or less well defined, from the straits to
the Banks of Newfoundland. The abrupt change in the temperature
of the waters separated by the cold wall is frequently very striking.
Ward refers to an occasion in 1922 when the U. S. Coast Guard cutter
Tampa, which is about 240 feet long, was placed directly across the
cold wall, and the temperature of the sea at the bow was found to be
34° while at the stern it was 56°.4
In the vicinity of the Banks of Newfoundland the cold wall rep-
resents the dividing line between the warm waters of the Gulf Stream
and the cold waters of the Labrador Current; and it seemed reasona-
ble to invoke the cold waters of this current in explaining the existence
of the cold wall and the relatively low temperatures of the coastal
waters to the southward and westward. It was largely on this account
that the waters of the Labrador Current were assumed to flow all
along the eastern coast of the United States.
Recent observations, however, do not bear out this explanation.
Current observation on various light vessels along the Atlantic coast
of the United States made in recent years by the Coast and Geodetic
Survey give no evidence of a predominant southerly movement of the
water along the coast. From the observations made by the Inter-
national Ice Patrol, Smith concludes that there is no southwest flow
of the Labrador Current across the Great Bank, but that it “‘turns
sharply, between parallels 42 and 43 and meridians 51 and 52, to flow
easterly, parallel with the Gulf Stream.’ In his study of the Gulf
of Maine, Bigelow gave careful consideration to this question. His
4 R. DeC. Ward: A Cruise with the International Ice Patrol, Geogr. Rev., vol. 14, pp. 50-61; 1924. ref-
erence on p. 54.
16 Edward H. Smith: Oceanographic Summary, in ‘‘ International Ice Observation and Ice Patrol Service
in the North Atlantic Ocean, Season of 1922,” U.S. Coast Guard Bull. No. 10, pp. 93-97; Washington, 1923,
reference on p. 97.
298 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
conclusion is that he has “no hesitation, therefore, in definitely asssert-
ing that the Labrador Current does not reach, much less skirt, the
coast of North America, from Nova Scotia southward, as a regular
event.’’'®
Several agencies appear to be responsible for the cooler coastal
waters along the eastern coast of the United States. In the first place
into this area the rivers bring their drainage waters from the land,
these waters being for the greater part of the year much colder than the
open ocean waters. Another contributory cause is the deflection by
the earth’s rotation of cold water from the Gulf of St. Lawrence
against the American coast. Then, too, the coastal waters are closer
6
Stability of Current
¢———— over 15%
Velocity of Current
@emee over | knot
is fy — |
FIGURE 6.—Surface currents of the North Atlantic Ocean
to the low winter temperatures of the land and are thus made colder
than the open ocean waters. A further cause is found in the winds,
which along the coast of the United States are prevailingly from the
land. ‘This tends to drive the warmer surface water seaward, its place
being taken by the cooler subsurface waters.
THE NORTH ATLANTIC DRIFT
When we come to a study of the horizontal circulation of the North
Atlantic Ocean we find a complex system of interrelated currents, as is
evident from a glance at Figure 6. In this figure, which is adapted
16 H. B. Bigelow: Physical Oceanography of the Gulf of Maine, U. S. Bur. of Fisheries, Doc. No. 969,
p. 828, Washington, 1927. See also H. B. Bigelow: Exploration of the waters of the Gulf of Maine, Geogr.
Rev., Vol. 18, pp. 282-260, 1928.
THE GULF STREAM—MARMER 299
from Schott, three characteristics of the currents are indicated. The
direction of the current at any point isshown by the direction of the
arrow at that point; the strength of the current or its velocity is in-
dicated by the width of the arrow; and the stability of the current is
indicated by the length of the arrow. The stability of the current at
any point is expressed as a percentage and is a measure of the constancy
of direction of the current at that point. The derivation of the
numerical value of the stability involves technical details !? which
need not detain us here.
In a very real sense the circulation indicated by Figure 5 constitutes
a single-current system; for a movement of the water at any point
implies corresponding movements and return currents at other points,
all these movements together forming a system of circulation. How-
ever, the large area covered by the North Atlantic Ocean and more
particularly the different characteristics of the moving masses of
water as regards temperature, salinity, and velocity make it convenient
to designate various parts of the system by distinctive names, as for
example the North Equatorial Current or Canary Current.
Starting at any given point various circuits may be traced on a
current chart. ‘The one which, under the name of Gulf Stream, we
have followed from the Straits of Florida as far as the Banks of
Newfoundland may be traced further eastward and northeastward
to the coastal waters of northwestern Europe, as shown in Figure 6.
Shall this current circuit from the eastern coast of the United States
to northwestern Europe be designated by the single name Gulf Stream?
Or shall we limit the name Gulf Stream to the stretch from the Straits
to the Banks of Newfoundland, since in this stretch the characteristics
of the current are much the same? If it is the northeasterly transport
of warm water across the Atlantic that one has in mind, a single name
like Gulf Stream or North Atlantic Current has many advantages. If,
however, the causes and details of the movement of the water are
being studied, the phenomena are more clearly apprehended by ~
giving the current eastward of the Banks of Newfoundland some such
name as Gulf Stream Drift or North Atlantic Drift. It is a slow cur-
rent, the velocity averaging less than half a knot, and its movement
is due in large part to the westerly winds which prevail over this
stretch of the ocean.
The validity of the conception underlying the representation of
the movement of the waters in the Gulf Stream and in the North
Atlantic Drift by current charts like Figure 7 has been assailed in
recent years by Dr. E. Le Danois. In a paper published in 1924
he elaborates the thesis that the movement of the waters of the
7 Kriimmel, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 441.
18K. Le Danois: Etude hydrologique de l’Atlantique-Nord, Annales Inst. Oceanographique, Vol. 1
(N.8.), pp. 1-52 ,1924,
300 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
North Atlantic consists of two currents—a circumpolar current and
an equatorial current—and various so-called transgressions, by which
name he denominates slow periodic movements of the water of the
nature of long-period tidal movements. The Gulf Stream in parti-
cular he reduces to a mixture of the equatorial current with the
tidal current from the Gulf of Mexico, which tidal current he men-
tions as being violent. ‘‘This tidal current—the true Gulf Stream—
is compelled to move into the open sea by the presence of the last
waters of the Labrador Current which skirt the coast of the United
States”? (p. 19).
Now there are data at hand, as we shall see later, which completely
disprove the existence of violent tidal currents in the Gulf of Mexico.
Moreover, in characterizing the current in the Straits of Florida as a
tidal current Le Danois must have in mind something quite different
from what is commonly understood by the term, namely, a periodic
forward and backward movement of the water with a period of half
adayoraday. And in invoking the presence of the Labrador Current
along the coast of the United States he surely does not strengthen his
case; for, as we have seen, the view that the Labrador Current
reaches the coast of the United States is no longer tenable.
The reality of the movement of the water from the lower latitudes
of the western North Atlantic to the higher latitudes of the eastern
THE GULF STREAM—-MARMER 301
North Atlantic is not only evidenced by a chart of the currents but
is also clearly indicated by the temperature of the surface waters.
In Figure 7 the isotherms of the surface waters of the North Atlantic
are shown for each five degrees Fahrenheit. The northerly sweep of
the isotherms in the eastern North Atlantic points clearly to the
existence of a current moving easterly and northerly across this
oceanic basin.
CAUSES OF THE GULF STREAM
Ocean currents may arise from any one or more of a number of
causes. Some of these causes reside within the sea itself, others
originate without. Differences in level between two regions of an
ocean basin, brought about by whatever agencies, will result in a
surface current from the higher to the lower level. Differences in
density, whether arising from difference in temperature or in salinity
or both, will bring about a subsurface current from and a return sur-
face current to the region of greater density. Differences in atmos-
pheric pressure between two regions will, in the same way, bring in
their train a subsurface current from and a return surface current
to the region of greater pressure. And in the wind we have at once
the most obvious and the most familiar of the agencies that bring
about ocean currents.
In a current traversing so long a course as that of the Gulf Stream
it is plain that all the agencies enumerated above enter as factors.
Clearly, too, the relative importance of the different agencies must
vary in different parts of the course. But various problems of an
hydrodynamic character must yet be solved before a numerical
evaluation of the relative importance of the agencies concerned in the
movement oi the Gulf Stream is possible.
A century and a half ago Franklin thought that the Gulf Stream
‘as probably generated by the great accumulation of water on the
eastern coast of America between the tropics, by the trade winds
which constantly blow there.’”’? And in the trade winds, which bring
about a westerly flow of the waters in the equatorial regions of the
Atlantic Ocean, is still found the primary cause of the Gulf Stream.
As appears from Figure 6, the waters of the South Equatorial Current
are the first to strike the coast, the greater part being directed north-
westward into the Caribbean Sea where they reinforce the flow of
the North Equatorial Current. From the Caribbean the combined
flow comes into the Gulf of Mexico whence it issues as the Gulf
Stream into the Straits of Florida.
Now while the Gulf Stream is traced to the trade winds, the stream
is not a wind or drift current as are the North and South Equatorial
Currents. The accumulation of water resulting from the trade winds
brings about a gradient current. This means that a higher level of
302 $ ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the water must obtain in the Gulf of Mexico than out in the open sea
north of the Straits of Florida. Agassiz quotes Hilgard as regarding
the Gulf of Mexico ‘‘as an immense hydrostatic reservoir rising to
the height of more than 3 feet above the general oceanic level, and
from this supply comes the Gulf Stream, which passes out through
the Straits * * * the only opening left for its exit.”1® Andina
footnote he adds, ‘‘By a most careful series of levels, run from Sandy
Hook and the mouth of the Mississippi River to St. Louis, it was
discovered that the Atlantic Ocean at the first point is 40 inches lower
than the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi.” In a
paper published in 1914 Hepworth states, ‘‘As regards the Gulf
Stream, and its causation, it was found by the officers of the United
States Coast Survey that the Atlantic Ocean at Sandy Hook was 3
to 4 feet lower than the waters of the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth
of the Mississippi.’’ 7°
It should be remembered that leveling of even the highest precision
is subject to instrumental errors which, while very small for moderate
distances, may become relatively large between widely separated
points. More recent results reduce very much the difference in level
between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and bring to light the
fact that this is a highly involved matter. Avers recently studied
this question in connection with the broader question of the deviations
of local sea level from a level surface.* His results, which are based
on the best available data, may be summarized as follows: From
Galveston, Texas, to Cedar Keys, on the west coast of Florida, the
level of the Gulf slopes downward, the difference between the two
places being 0.43 foot. The level of the Gulf at Cedar Keys is 0.36
foot higher than the level of the Atlantic Ocean at St. Augustine on the
eastern coast of Florida. But from St. Augustine northward there is
an upward slope of sea level all along the Atlantic coast of the United
States; so that in the vicinity of Sandy Hook sea level is actually
0.62 foot higher than at St. Augustine and but 0.16 foot below the
Gulf level at Galveston.
This upward slope of sea level along the Atlantic coast of the United
States does not necessarily mean that the Gulf Stream is moving
uphill. For the main body of the Gulf Stream is a number of miles off
the coast, and there may well be a downward slope of sea level out-
ward from the coast. The question of sea level itself is one compli-
cated by many factors, and the exact determination of the difference
in level between the Gulf and the open sea bristles with numerous
unsolved problems.
19 Alexander Agassiz: Three Cruises of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Steamer ‘‘ Blake’’
Vol. 1, p. 249, Boston and New York, 1888.
20M. W. Campbell Hepworth: The Gulf Stream, Geogr. Journ., Vol. 44, pp. 429-452 and 534-553, 1914;
reference on p. 435. ©
21H. G. Avers: A study of the Variation of Mean Sea-Level from a Level Surface, Bull. Natl. Research
Council, No. 61 (=Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union, 1927), pp. 56-58, Washington, 1927.
THE GULF STREAM—MARMER 303
FLUCTUATIONS OF THE GULF STREAM
The Gulf Stream manifestly must be subject to fluctuations as
regards location, velocity, and temperature. Heavy winds will not
only carry its waters into regions which at other times it does not
invade but will also accelerate or retard its velocity. Variations in
barometric pressure likewise will bring about fluctuations in the move-
ment of the waters of the stream. Seasonal variations in temperature
in the regions through which it flows will be reflected in somewhat
similar seasonal variations in the temperature of its waters. A further
cause for its fluctuation is found in the fluctuations of the currents
which feed it or which, like the Labrador Current, come into conflict
with it.
Fluctuations in the velocity of the Gulf Stream are noted by Pills-
bury. He refers to an occasion, while he was at anchor in the Straits
of Florida, when the velocity of the current at the surface increased
from 3.3 knots to 4.6 knots in less than an hour. He speaks, too, of
‘a regular daily variation in velocity which amounts in some instances
to nearly 24 knots” (p. 546). This regular daily variation he regarded
as of the nature of a tidal effect. His observations were later sub-
jected to harmonic analysis by Harris, who found the principal con-
stituent of the tidal current to have a velocity of less than a quarter
of a knot.” The tidal current in the Straits of Florida is therefore
of negligible velocity, and the fluctuations noted by Pillsbury are
undoubtedly irregularities which accompany the flow of water in
large masses.
Pillsbury was also of the opinion that, in addition to this so-called
regular daily variation and to fluctuations arising from changes in
wind and weather, the Gulf Stream within the Straits of Florida was
subject to periodic monthly variations in both temperature and
velocity which depend on the declination of the moon. The observa-
tions are not, however, sufficiently extensive to settle this question
definitely. The reality of such variations is still in question, and it
would not be at all surprising if further investigation should disprove
any such relationship.
In a paper before the American Meteorological Society on Tem-
perature Variations in the Gulf Stream in the Straits of Florida,
1917-1921,7 Hazel V. Miller presented the results of a study of
several thousand readings of surface-water temperature made by
observers on the Key West-Habana car ferries across the Straits of
Florida for the 4-year period 1917-1921. The temperature was
found to range from a minimum of about 76° in January to about 86°
2 R.A. Harris: Manual! of Tides, Part V: Currents, Shallow-Water Tides, Meteorological Tides, and
Miscellaneous Matters, U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Rep. for the Year Ending June 30, 1907, Appen-
dix 6, pp. 231-545 Washington, 1907; reference on pp. 411-412.
23 Abstract in Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., Vol. 7, pp. 87-88, 1926.
304 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
in September, while variations of as much as 4° from week to week
under the influence of a strong wind were noted. A comparison of
weekly temperatures with winds brought out clearly immediate and
persisting effects of the wind as regards both direction and velocity.
From the nature of the agencies concerned, fluctuations from day
to day in the flow and temperature of the Gulf Stream may be taken
for granted. Seasonal variations likewise are unquestionable, as are
smaller fluctuations from year to year. Vilhelm Pettersson studied
the temperature data derived from ships’ logs, covering the Gulf
Stream up to latitude 33° N., for the 14-year period 1900-1913. He
found that the temperature of the surface waters varies from year to
year, generally by less than 1° but sometimes by more than a degree.”*
Whether these yearly variations are, in large or small part, of a periodic
nature is at the present time, for lack of sufficient data, an open
question.
The difficulties involved in securing systematic observations on
the temperature and flow of the Gulf Stream to determine the nature
and extent of its fluctuations are obvious. The observations recorded
in navigators’ log books furnish valuable information, but such
observations are not sufficient of themselves. More hopeful is the
slowly growing use of sea-water thermographs aboard ships. From
the records furnished by these instruments definite information
regarding fluctuations in the temperature of the Gulf Stream waters
should result.
In the light of the preceding considerations the question of whether
there has been any permanent change in the course or in the temper-
ature of the Gulf Stream since it has been known to civilized man, may
be answered shortly. Manifestly, without extensive observations
which would permit comparisons, no categorical answer can be given.
But it is clear that any decided change in an ocean current of the
magnitude of the Gulf Stream can come only as the result of extensive
changes in such features as the bottom of the ocean, the configuration
of the coast line, or the prevailing winds. Since no such extensive
changes appear to have taken place, it is highly improbable that any
decided change in the course of the Gulf Stream has occurred since
it has become known.
CLIMATIC EFFECTS
A host of problems lie covered by the question of the climatic
effects of the Gulf Stream. That its warm waters have an ameliorat-
ing effect on the lands near which they flow is a strongly held opinion;
*V. I. Pettersson: Etude de la statistique hydrographique du Bulletin Atlantique du Conseil Inter-
national pour l’Exploration de la Mer, Svenska Hydrogr.-Biol. Komm. Skrifter, Hydrografi I (N.S.),
p. 4, 1926.
THE GULF STREAM—MARMER 305
and now and again schemes are seriously proposed to change the course
of the Stream with a view to moderating the winter climate of our
Northeastern States.
A moment’s consideration is sufficient to show that the direct
influence of the Gulf Stream on the climate of the greater part of the
eastern coast of the United States is altogether negligible. For, aside
from latitude, our climate depends mostly on the direction from which
the winds come and the force with which they blow. In winter the
winds along the northeastern coast of the United States are prevailingly
from the northwest, that is from the land. Hence the warm waters
of the Gulf Stream lying several hundred miles to the leeward can in
no way moderate our winter climate.
These considerations are sufficient also to prove the absurdity
of the proposals for changing the course of the Gulf Stream in the
interests of a more equable climate. Furthermore, the forces that
give rise to the Gulf Stream are of such magnitude that they are not
yet amenable to control by man. But even if the Gulf Stream could
be brought nearer our shores, the climate could be moderated only if
the winter winds could be made to blow from the south or the south-
east.
Indeed, there are good reasons for believing that if the Gulf Stream
were to shift closer to the coast the climate of our Northeastern States
would become more extreme rather than moderated—colder and more
stormy in winter, hotter and more humidinsummer. For, with warm
air near the coast in winter, a greater flow of air from the northwest
would result, bringing severer storms and colder weather. In summer,
the winds along the coast are more or less sea breezes, bringing the
cooler air from the sea to moderate the heat. With warmer air nearer
shore, the sea breezes would become weaker and less frequent, thus
giving wider scope for the hot land winds.
While the moderating effect of the Gulf Stream on the climate of
North America is negligible, there is no question as to its beneficent
effects on the climate of northwestern Europe. Scandinavia and
southeastern Greenland face each other across the intervening waters
of the Atlantic Ocean along the same parallels of latitude. Contrast
the populous and prosperous lands of the one with the bleak and
inhospitable shores of the other!
It is to be observed that the tempering influence of the Gulf Stream
on the climate of northwestern Europe is effected through the agency
of winds. In winter the winds are there prevailingly from the south-
west. Blowing over the relatively warm water which the Gulf Stream
(using the term as embracing also the North Atlantic Drift) has
brought to the northeastern rim of the Atlantic, they carry warm air
onto the coast. It is through this mechanism that the heat exchange
306 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
in winter between the Gulf Stream and the air of northwestern Europe
takes place.
How great the influence of the Gulf Stream on the climate of north-
western Europe is, becomes evident from the fact that the average
temperature for the month of January in northern Norway is about 45°
above the January temperature normal for that latitude.” Hammer-
fest, on the north coast of Norway in latitude 70° 40’ N.—well within
the Arctic Circle—is an important harbor and sea-fishing center dur-
ing the winter, while the port of Riga, about 800 miles farther south is
obstructed by ice throughout the season.
Since the climate of northwestern Europe is so strongly influenced
by the Gulf Stream, should not fluctuations in the latter find reflection
in changes in the climatic conditions of this region? At first glance
the differences in temperature of the Gulf Stream from year to year—
something like 1°—might appear insignificant in such a connection.
But the fact is not to be overlooked that the capacity of water for
heat is so great that when a given volume of water gives off the heat
represented by a fall of 1° in temperature, a mass of air more than
3,000 times that volume will have its temperature raised 1°.
A direct attack on this problem is difficult because of the lack
of systematic observations on the temperature and flow of the Gulf
Stream. Otto Pettersson studied the temperature variations of the
water at several places along the Norwegian coast and found that these
variations were reflected by corresponding variations in various cli-
matic phenomena.” The problem clearly is a complicated.one involv-
ine the question of the mutual interaction of ocean and atmosphere.
A considerable literature has grown up around this, which is sum-
marized by Helland-Hansen and Nansen.”
One phase of this problem links with the question of long-range
weather forecasts. It is a long circuit that is traversed by the Gulf
Stream from.its place of orgin in the subtropical regions to the coasts
of northwestern Europe. How long a period intervenes between
fluctuations in the stream and the resultant climatic effects in Europe?
This problem, too, can not yet be attacked directly, because of the lack
of systematic observations. Such investigations as have been made
show this to be a promising field. Thus Otto Pettersson found that
the date when spring plowing could commence near Upsala depended
on the temperature of the water of the Atlantic off the coast of Norway
about two months previous. Vilhelm Pettersson found that the sum-
25 J. W. Sandstrém: Uber den Einfluss des Golfstromes auf die Winter-temperatur in Europe Meteorol.
Zeitschr., Vol. 43, pp. 401-411 1926; reference on p. 401.
26 Otto Pettersson: Uber die Reziehungen zwischen hydrographischen und metorologischen Phinomenen,
Meteorol. Zeitschr., Vol. 13, pp. 285-318, 1896.
27 Bjorn Helland-Hansen and Fridtjof Nansen: Temperature Variations in the North Atlantic Ocean
and in the Atmosphere, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 70, No. 4, pp. 26-51, Washington, 1920.
THE GULF STREAM—-MARMER 307
mer temperature of the water in the region between Newfoundland and
Ireland gave an indication of the rainfall in Ireland and Great Britain
in the following year.
Obviously the problem of unraveling the relationship between
changes in the Gulf Stream and weather conditions several months
hence is not a simple one. Climatic conditions in any given region of
the North Atlantic result from the interplay of a number of factors.
Similarly, the temperature of the stream at any given time is brought
about by the interaction of a number of agencies. Nevertheless it
appears that in the study of the fluctuations of the Gulf Stream lies
the possibliity of long-range weather forecasts for a considerable part
of Kurope.
82322—30——21
THE MYSTERY OF LIFE!
By F. G. Donnan, F. R. 8.
During the last 40 years the sciences of physics and chemistry
have made tremendous strides. The physicochemical world has
been analyzed into three components—electrons, protons, and the
electromagnetic field with its streams of radiant energy. Concur-
rently with these advances astronomy has progressed to an extent
undreamed of 40 years ago. The distances, sizes, masses, tempera-
tures, and even the constitutions of far-distant stars have been ascer-
tained and compared. The evolution of the almost inconceivably
distant nebule and their condensation into stars and star clusters
have been unraveled with a skill and knowledge that would have
been deemed superhuman a hundred years ago. Amidst the vast
cosmos thus disclosed to the mind of man, our sun winds its modest
way, aN unimportant star, old in years and approaching death.
Once upon a time, so the astronomers tell us, its surface was rippled
by the gravitational pull of a passing star, and the ripples becoming
waves, broke and splashed off. Some drops of this glowing spray,
held by the sun’s attraction in revolving orbits, cooled down and
became the planets of our solar system. Our own planet, the earth,
gradually acquired a solid crust. Then the water vapor in its atmos-
phere began to condense, and produced oceans, lakes and rivers as
the temperature sank. It is probably at least a thousand million
years since the earth acquired a solid crust of rock. During that
period living beings, plants and animals, have appeared, and, as
the story of the rocks tells us, have developed by degrees from small
and lowly ancestors. The last product of this development is the mind
of man. What a strange story! On the cool surface of this little
planet, warmed by the rays of a declining star, stands the small
company of life. One with the green meadows and the flowers, the
birds and the fishes and the beasts, man with all his kith and kin
counts for but an infinitesimal fraction of the surface of the earth, and
yet it is the mind of man that has penetrated the cosmos and dis-
covered the distant stars and nebule. Truly we may say that life
1 Evening discourse before the British Association for the Advancement of Science at the Glasgow Meet-
ing, 1928. Reprinted by permission of the association.
309
310 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
is the great mystery and the study of life the greatest study of all.
The understanding of the phenomena of life will surely be the crowning
glory of science, toward which all our present chemical and physical
knowledge forms but the preliminary steps.
Observing the apparent freedom, spontaneity and, indeed, way-
wardness of many forms of life, we are at first lost in amazement. Is
this thing we call life some strange and magical intruder, some source
of lawless and spontaneous action, some fallen angel from an unknown
and inconceivable universe? That is indeed the question we have to
examine, and we may begin our examination in a general way by
inquiring whether living things are subject to the laws of energy that
control the mass phenomena of the inanimate world. The first of
these laws, known as the law of the conservation of energy, says that
work or energy can only be produced at the expense of some other
form, and that there are definite rates of equivalence or exchange
between the appearing and disappearing forms of energy. In a closed
system we can make up a balance sheet, and we find that the algebraic
sum of the increases and decreases, allowing, of course, for the fixed
rates of exchange, is zero. That was one of the great discoveries of
the nineteenth century. The physiologists have found that living
beings form no exception to this law. If we put a guinea pig or a man
into a nutrition calorimeter, measure the work and heat produced and
the energy values of the food taken in and the materials given out, we
find our balance sheet correct. The living being neither destroys nor
creates energy. One part of the apparent freedom or spontaneity of
which I spoke is gone. Energy-producing action must be paid for by
energy consumed. The living being does not break the, rules of
exchange that govern the markets of the nonliving and the dead.
Another great discovery of the nineteenth century, the so-called
second law of thermodynamics, restricts the direction of energy
transformations. Thus a large tank of hot water at an even tempera-
ture will not be found to cool itself and the disappearing heat energy
to appear as the kinetic energy of a revolving flywheel or as the
increased potential energy of a raised mass of metal, no other changes
of any sort having taken place. Such a transformation need not,
however, in any way conflict with the law of conservation. Unco-
ordinated energy in statistical equilibrium, i. e., of even potential,
does not spontaneously transform itself into coordinated energy.
Now it would be a discovery of tremendous importance if plants or
animals were found to be exceptions to this rule. But, so far as is
known, the facts of biology and physiology seem to show that living
beings, just like inanimate things, conform to the second law. They
do not live and act in an environment which is in perfect physical and
chemical equilibrium. It is the nonequilibrium, the free or available
energy of the environment which is the sole source of their life and
o
MYSTERY OF LIFE—DONNAN 311
‘activity. A steam engine moves and does work because the coal and
oxygen are not in equilibrium, just as an animal lives and acts be-
cause its food and oxygen are not in equilibrium. As Bayliss has so
finely put it, equilibrium is death. The chief source of life and
activity on this planet arises from the fact that the cool surface of the’
earth is constantly bathed in a flood of high-temperature light. If
radiation in thermal equilibrium with the average temperature of the
earth’s crust were the only radiant energy present, practically all life
as we know it would cease, for then the chlorophyll of the green plants
would cease to assimilate carbonic acid and convert it into sugar and
starch. The photochemical assimilation of the green plant is a fact of
supreme importance in the economy of life. This transformation of
carbonic acid and water into starch and oxygen represents an increase
of free energy, since the starch and oxygen tend naturally to react
together and give carbonic acid and water. Such an increase in free
energy would be impossible if there existed no compensating running
down or degradation of energy. But this running down or fall in
potential is provided by the difference in temperature between the
surface of the sun and the surface of the earth, a difference of some
five or six thousand degrees. All living things live and act by utilizing
some form of nonequilibrium or free energy in their environment.
The living cell acts as an energy transformer, running some of the free
energy of its environment down to a lower level of potential and
simultaneously building some up to a higher level of potential. The
nitrifying bacteria investigated by Winogradsky and recently by
Meyerhof utilize the free energy of ammonia plus oxygen. By
burning the ammonia to nitrous or nitric acid they are enabled to
assimilate carbonic acid and convert it into sugar or protein. Other
bacteria utilize the free energy of sulphuretted hydrogen plus oxygen.
Fungi and anerobic bacteria utilize the free energy available when
complex organic compounds pass into simpler chemical compounds.
The close study of these energy exchanges and transformations is
becoming a very important branch of cellular physiology, and in the
hands of Warburg and Meyerhof in Germany and of A. V. Hill in
England—to mention only a few eminent names—has already yielded
results of the greatest value and importance. It would be a great
thing if one of these investigators were to find a case where the second
law of thermodynamics broke down. Up to the present, however, it
appears that all these energy transformations of the living cell conform
with the second law as it applies to the inanimate world. Thus
another part of the apparent freedom or spontaneity of life, of which
I spoke before, disappears. A living being is not a magical source of
free energy or spontaneous action. Its life and activity are ruled and
controlled by the amount and nature of the free energy, the physical
or chemical nonequilibrium, in its immediate environment, and it
312 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
lives and acts by virtue of this. The cells of a human brain continue
to act because the blood stream brings to them chemical free energy
in the form of sugar and oxygen. Stop the stream for a second and
consciousness vanishes. Without that sugar and oxygen there could
be no thought, no sweet sonnets of a Shakespeare, no joy, and no
SOITOW.
To say, however, that the tide of life ebbs and flows within the limits
fixed by the laws of energy, and that living beings are in this respect no
higher and no lower than the dead things around us is not to resolve
the mystery. Consider for a moment a few of the phenomena exhib-
ited by living things. The fertilization of the ovum, the growth of the
embryo, the growth of the complete individual, the harmonious organ-
ization of the individual, the phenomena of inheritance, of memory,
of adaptation, of evolution. Viewing these phenomena in the light of
the facts known to physics and chemistry, it is little wonder that some
modern philosophers have followed in the steps of certain older ones
and seen in the phenomena of life the operation of some strange and
unknown vital force, some ‘‘entelechy,’”’ some expanding vital impulse;
or at least some new and undiscovered form of ‘‘biotic”’ or ‘“‘nervous”’
energy. It is difficult to resist the comparison of the developing
embryo with the building of a house to the plans of an invisible archi-
tect. Growth and development seem to proceed on a definite plan
and apparently purposeful adaptation confronts us at many stages of
life. How can the differential equations of physics or the laws of
physical chemistry attempt to explain or describe such strange and
apparently marvelous phenomena? ‘The answer to this question was
given more than 50 years ago by the great French physiologist, Claude
Bernard. We must patiently proceed, he said, by the method of gen-
eral physiology. This is the fundamental biological science toward
which all others converge. Its method consists in determining the
elementary condition of the phenomena of life. We must decompose
or analyze the great mass phenomena of life into their elementary unit
or constituent phenomena. That was the great answer given by
Claude Bernard. It is worthy of a Newton or an Einstein. It
sounded the clarion note of a new era of biological science. To-day
general physiology in its application of physics, chemistry, and physical
chemistry to the operations of the living cell is the fundamental science
of life. Patiently pursued, and step by step, it is unraveling the mys-
tery. The late Professor Bayliss was one of the greatest of the pioneer
successors of Claude Bernard in England. Another of the greatest
ones was Jacques Loeb in America, whose death we all so deeply de-
plore. Although it is always invidious to mention the names of living
men, it is good to think that in England to-day we possess three of the
ereatest living exponents of general physiology, namely, Barcroft, Hill,
and Hopkins, while in America the great work of Jacques Loeb is
MYSTERY OF LIFE—DONNAN als
carried on by distinguished men of the high caliber of Lawrence Hen-
derson, Osterhout, and van Slyke. In Germany we have such great
names as Meyerhof, Warburg, Bechhold, and Héber, to mention only
afew. What are these men attempting? Just what Claude Bernard
set out in his program, namely, by a patient, exact, and quantita-
tive application of the facts and laws of physics and chemistry to the
elementary phenomena of life, gradually to arrive at a synthesis and
understanding of the whole. That was precisely how Newton was
able to determine the motions of celestial objects, namely, by going
back to the elementary or fundamental law of gravitation. Through
fine analysis to synthesis is indeed the only true scientific method. I
do not mean that general physiology in the pursuit of its studies will
not discover many things as yet unknown tous. The future findings of
this science might be as strange to the investigators of to-day as the
relativity theory of Einstein and Minkowsky was to the physicists of a
few years ago. What I do mean is that the future discoveries and
explanations of general physiology will be continuous and homologous
with the science of to-day. Should, indeed, a new form of energy, “a
vitalistic nervous energy,” be discovered, as predicted by the eminent
Italian philosopher, Eugenio Rignano, it will be no twilight will-o’-the-
wisp, no elusive entelechy or shadowy vital impulse, but an addition to
our knowledge of a character permitting of exact measurement and of
exact expression by means of mathematical equations.
To give you the barest outline of the progress made by general
physiology since the death of Claude Bernard 50 years ago (his statue,
together with that of Marcellin Berthelot, stands in front of the
Collége de France) would require at least a hundred lectures and the
encyclopedic knowledge of a Bayliss. Permit me, however, to
mention one or two examples, and those with all brevity. The chem-
istry and energy changes of muscle have been discovered recently by
Meyerhof in Germany and by A. V. Hill and Hopkins in England.
When the muscle tissue contracts and does work it derives the nec-
essary free energy, not from oxidation, which is not quick enough,
but from the rapid exothermic conversion of the carbohydrate glyco-
gen into lactic acid. When the fatigued muscle recovers it recharges
its store of free energy; that is to say, by oxidizing or burning some of
the carbohydrate, it reconverts the lactic acid into glycogen. Thus
in the recovery stage we have the coupled reactions of exothermic oxida-
tion and endothermic conversion of lactic acid into glycogen. Every-
thing proceeds according to the laws of physics and chemistry. The
story of the mode of action and recovery of the muscle cells forms
one of the most fascinating chapters of general physiology. Here we
see one of the elementary phenomena of life already to a great extent
analyzed and elucidated. How this would have rejoiced the heart of
Claude Bernard! That is one of the examples which I wished to
314 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
mention. Another is what I may call the blood equilibrium. The
red blood cells are inclosed in a membrane which does not allow the
hemoglobin to escape, and only permits the passage of inorganic
anions, though water and oxygen can pass freely in and out. Between
the red cells and the external blood plasma in which they are sub-
merged there exists a whole series of delicate exchange equilibria, such
as water or osmotic equilibrium, ion-distribution equilibria, etc. The
entrance of oxygen, which combines with the hemoglobin, converts
it into a stronger acid and ejects carbonic acid from the bicarbonate
ions within the cell. Any disturbance of one of these equilibria
produces compensating changes in the others. The whole series of
equilibria can be written down in a set of precise mathematical equa-
tions. Thus two of the most important elementary phenomena of
many forms of life, namely, respiration and the exchanges of the red
blood cells, have been analyzed, subjected to exact measurement
and described by exact mathematical equations. The laws of physics
and chemistry have again been found to hold good. The beautiful
story of this blood equilibrium we owe to the labor of many dis-
tinguished physiologists, but chiefly to Lawrence Henderson and van
Slyke in America and to A. V. Hill and Barcroft in England. That
is the second example I wished to mention. These two will suffice for
my present purpose. What is the lesson to be drawn from them? No
less than that the elementary phenomena of life are deterministic, that
is to say, that events compensate or succeed each other just as in the
physicochemical world of inanimate things, and that their compensa-
tions and successions can be exactly measured and expressed in the
form of precise mathematical equations. Determinism exists just as
much or, if you please, just as little, in the elementary phenomena of
the living asin those of the nonliving systems familiar to physics and
chemistry. Claude Bernard maintained that this was so. To the
imperishable luster of his name be it said that 50 years of exact
research have borne witness to the truth of his faith. Do not mis-
understand me here. True science should have no dogmas. It would
have been a wonderful and a fine thing if recent research in general
physiology had led to a nondeterministic sequence of phenomena in the
elementary condition of life. During the last 15 years theoretical
physics, which has been undergoing a period of unexampled and
daring advance, has dropped many a hint of the existence of appar-
ently nondeterministic systems. The audacious springs of the electron
within the atom from one energy level to another have often appeared
to be ruled by considerations of relative probability rather than by any
exact determinism in the ordinary sense of this word. But we can not
as yet be sure of anything in modern theoretical physics. Just as
we now hear little of the jumping frog of Calaveras County, so modern
wave mechanics has overwhelmed the discontinuously jumping elec-
MYSTERY OF LIFE—DONNAN 315
tron, and seems to offer more promise of determinism than did that
uneasy ghost. Thus determinism in the rigorous sense of the word is
no infallible dogma of science. It would not be surprising if it did
not exist in the minute phenomena of the world, since the apparent
determinism of events on a greater scale is often only the result of a
very high degree of statistical probability. Be that as it may, the
investigations of general physiology, so far pursued, indicate that the
elementary phenomena of life are quite as fully deterministic as
phenomena on a corresponding scale of magnitude in the inanimate
physicochemical world.
Let us now make the daring supposition that general physiology,
following the lead of Claude Bernard, has eventually succeeded in
quantitatively analyzing every side and every aspect of the elementary
condition of life. Would such a supposedly complete and quantitative
analysis give us a synthesis of life? That is one of the most funda-
mental and difficult questions of biological science. A living being is
a dynamically organized individual, all the parts of which work har-
moniously together for the well-being of the whole organism. The
whole appears to us as something essentially greater than the sum
total of its parts. This aspect of the living individual was fully recog-
nized by Claude Bernard. It has been emphasized recently by General
Smuts in his remarkable book on Holism and Evolution. Life, as
seen by General Smuts, is constantly engaged in developing wholes,
that is to say, organized individualities. We may indeed learn how
the regulative and integrating action of the nervous system, so beauti-
fully and thoroughly investigated by that great physiologist, Sir
Charles Sherrington, serves to organize and unite together in a har-
monious whole the varied activities of acomplex multicellular animal.
We may learn, too, how those chemical substances, the hormones,
discovered by Bayliss and Starling, are secreted by the ductless glands
and, circulating in the miliew intérveur of an animal, act as powerful
means for harmoniously regulating and controlling the growth and
other activities of the various organs and tissues. Nevertheless, in
spite of these great discoveries, the harmonious and dynamic correla-
tion of the various organs and tissues of a living organism ever con-
fronts us as one of the great mysteries of life. In an inanimate physico-
chemical system we think, if we know the situations, modes of action
and interrelations of the component parts, whether particles or waves
(or both), together with the boundary conditions of the system, that
we have effected a complete synthesis of the whole. Though very
crudely expressed, some such view as that lies at the basis of the New-
tonian philosophy which rules our thought in the inanimate physico-
chemical world. Is the organized dynamical unity of a living organ-
ism something fundamentally new and different? Confronted by a
problem of this order of difficulty, it behooves us to be patient and to
316 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
await the future progress of scientific research. Perhaps if we could
actually witness and follow out the varied motions and activities of
a single complex chemical molecule in a reacting medium we might
find something not so very different from life. Or perhaps the organic
unity of a living organism requires for its understanding some such
explosion of human thought and inspiration as that which occurred
when Einstein and Minkowsky discovered the true relations of what
we call space and time. We may, however, be sure of this. The under-
standing, when it comes, will consist in something that permits of
exact measurement and of precise expression in mathematical form,
even though for the latter purpose a new form of mathematics may
have to be invented.
Leibnitz once remarked that ‘‘the machines of nature, that is to say,
living bodies, are still machines in their smallest parts ad infinitum.”
Anatomy and histology have progressively disclosed the structure of
living things. Histology has revealed to us the cell with its nucleus
and cytoplasm as the apparently fundamental unit of all the organs
and tissues of a living being. What is contained within the membrane
of a living cell? Here we approach the inner citadel of the mystery of
life. If we can analyze and understand this, the first great problem—
perhaps the only real problem—of general physiology will have been
solved. The study of the nature and behavior of the living cell and
of unicellular organisms is the true task of biology to-day.
The living cell contains a system known as protoplasm, though as
yet no one can define what protoplasm is. One of the fundamental
components of this system is the class of chemical substances known
as proteins, and each type of cell in each species of organism contains
one or more proteins which are peculiar to it. Important components
of the protoplasmic system are water and the chiorides, bicarbonates
and phosphates of sodium, potassium, and calcium. Other sub-
stances are also present, especially those mysterious bodies known as
enzymes, which catalyze the various chemical actions occurring
within the cell. Strange to say, the living cell contains within itself
the seeds of death, namely those so-called autolytic enzymes, which
are capable of hydrolyzing and breaking down the protein components
of the protoplasm. So long, however, as the cell continues to live,
these autolytic enzymes do not act. What a strange thing! The
harpies of death sleep in every unit of our living bodies, but as long
as life is there their wings are bound and their devouring mouths
are closed.
This protoplasmic system exists in what is known as the colloid
state. Roughly speaking, this means that it exists as a rather
fluid sort of jelly. There is something extraordinarily significant in
this colloid state of the protoplasmic system, though no one as yet
eansay what it really means. Recollecting the statement of Leibnitz,
MYSTERY OF LIFE—DONNAN 317
one may be sure that the protoplasmic system of the cell constitutes
a wonderful sort of machine. There must exist some very curious
inner structure where the protein molecules are marshaled and arrayed
as long mobile chains or columns. The molecular army within the
cell is ready for quick and organized action and is in a state, during
life, of constant activity. Oxidation, assimilation and the rejection
of waste products are always going on. ‘The living cell is constantly
exchanging energy and materials with its environment. The appar-
ently stationary equilibrium is in reality a kinetic or dynamic equilib-
rium. But there is a great mystery here. Deprive your motor car
of petrol or of oxygen and the engine stops. Yes, but it doesn’t die,
it does not begin at once to go to pieces. Deprive the living cell of
oxygen or food and it dies and begins at once to go to pieces. The
autolytic enzymes begin to hydrolyze and break down the dead
protoplasm. Why is this? What is cellular death? The atoms and
the molecules and ions are still there. Meyerhof has shown that
the energy content of living protein is no greater than that of dead
protein. Has some ghostly entelechy or vital impulse escaped
unobserved? Now it is just here, at the very gate between life and
death, that the English physiologist, A. V. Hill, is on the eve of a
discovery of astounding importance, if indeed he has not already
made it. It appears from his work on nonmedullated nerve cells
and on muscle that the organized structure of these cells is a chemo-
dynamic structure which requires oxygen, and therefore oxidation,
to preserve it. The organization, the molecular structure, is always
tending to run down, to approach biochemical chaos and disorgani-
zation. It requires constant oxidation to preserve the peculiar
organization or organized molecular structure of a living cell. The
life machine is therefore totally unlike our ordinary mechanical
machines. Its structure and organization are not static. They are
in reality dynamic equilibria, which depend on oxidation for their
very existence. The living cell is like a battery which is constantly
running down, and which requires constant oxidation to keep it
charged. It is perhaps a little premature at the present moment to
say how far these results will prove to be general. Personally, I
believe that they are of great importance and generality, and that
for the first time in the history of science we begin, perhaps as yet a
little dimly, to understand the difference between life and death,
and therefore the very meaning of life itself. Life is a dynamic
molecular organization kept going and preserved by oxygen and
oxidation. Death is the natural irreversible breakdown of this
structure, always present and only warded off by the structure-
preserving action of oxidation.
The last great problem which I shall venture to consider in this
brief sketch concerns the origin of life. It might indeed be argued
318 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
with much justice that such considerations are so far beyond the
present stage of science that they are entirely without value. That,
I think, is a bad argument and a worse philosophy. But, in any
case, a dealer in mysteries is entitled to carry on his dealings as far
and as best he may.
There appear to be two schools of thought in speculations of this
character. The late Professor Arrhenius supported the theory or
doctrine of Panspermia, according to which life is as old and as
fundamental as inanimate matter. Its germs or spores are supposed
on this view to be scattered through the universe and to have reached
our planet quite accidentally. You will remember that Lord Kelvin
suggested they were carried here on meteorites. But against this
idea the objection has been urged that meteorites in passing through
our atmosphere get exceedingly hot through friction with the air.
Arrhenius brought forward the very ingenious idea that the motion
in and distribution through space of these germs or spores were
caused by the pressure of light, which in the case of very minute
bodies can overcome the attraction of gravitation, as is often seen
in the tails of comets. Many objections have been brought against
this theory of Panspermia. It has been argued that either the cold
of interstellar space or the ultra-violet light which pervades it would
be sufficient to kill such living germs or spores. Certainly ultra-
violet light is a very powerful germicide, though many spores can
withstand very low temperatures for long periods of time. Perhaps
the chief objection to this doctrine of Panspermia is that it is a hopeless
one. Not only does it close the door to thought and research, but it
introduces a permanent dualism into science and so prejudges an
important philosophical issue.
If the living has arisen on this planet from what we regard as the
nonliving, then various extremely interesting points arise. It is
already pretty certain that it originated, if at all, in the primeval
ocean, since the inorganic salts present in the circulating fluids of
animals correspond in nature and relative amounts to what we have
good reason to believe was the composition of the ocean some hundred
million years ago. The image of Aphrodite rising from the sea is
therefore not without scientific justification. We have seen that life
requires for its existence a certain amount of free energy or nonequi-
librium in the environment. In the early atmosphere there was plenty
of carbon dioxide, and probably also some oxygen, though nothing like
so much as at present. Volcanic action would provide plenty of
oxidizable substances, such, for example, as ammonia or sulphuretted
hydrogen. As we have seen previously, certain bacteria could
therefore, in all probability, have lived and assimilated carbon dioxide,
producing organic substances such as sugar and proteins. This argu-
ment, though very interesting from the point of view of Panspermia,
MYSTERY OF LIFE—-DONNAN 319
has a serious flaw in it from the present point of view, since the bodies
of these bacteria would necessarily contain the complicated organic
proteins of the protoplasm. When the earth cooled down to a tem-
perature compatible with life, it is probable that the ocean contained
little, if any, of such organic substances or their simpler organic
components. There was likewise no chlorophyll present to achieve
the photochemical assimilation of carbon dioxide. Hence the neces-
sity of considering how organic substances could have arisen by
degrees in a primeval ocean originally containing only inorganic con-
stituents. The late Prof. Benjamin Moore took up this question and
endeavored to prove that colloidal iron oxide in the presence of light,
moisture, and carbon dioxide, could produce formaldehyde, a sub-
stance from which sugar can be derived. This work of Moore’s has
been actively taken up and developed by Professor Baly in recent years.
He has conclusively proved that, in the presence of light, moisture, and
carbon dioxide, formaldehyde and sugar can be produced at the surface
of certain colored inorganic compounds, such as nickel carbonate. We
may therefore conclude that the production of the necessary organic
substances in the primeval ocean offers no insuperable obstacle to
science. But there is still a very great difficulty in the way, a difficulty
that was pointed out by Professor Japp, I think, at a former meet-
ing of the British association in Dover. The protein components
of the protoplasmic system are optically active substances. As is well
known, such optically active substances, i. e., those which rotate
the plane of polarization of polarized light, are molecularly asymmetric
and always exist in two forms, a dextrorotatory and a levorotatory
form. Both these forms possess equal energies, and so their forma-
tions in a chemical reaction are equally probable. As a matter of
fact, chemical reaction always produces these two forms in equal
quantities, and so the resulting mixture is optically inactive. How,
then, did the optically active protein of the first protoplasm arise?
In spite of many attempts to employ plane or circularly polarized
light for this purpose, chemists have not, so far as I know, succeeded
in producing an asymmetric synthesis, i. e., a production of the
dextrorotatory or levorotatory form, starting from optically inactive,
that is to say, symmetrical substances. The nut which Professor Japp
asked us to crack has turned out to be a very hard one, though there
is little reason to doubt that it will be cracked sooner or later. Even
were this accomplished, very formidable difficulties still remain, for
we have to imagine the production of the dynamically organized and
regulated structure of living protoplasm. Professor Guye of Geneva
has in recent years offered some very interesting considerations
concerning this difficult problem. According to the statistical
theory of probability, if we wait long enough, anything that is pos-
sible, no matter how improbable, will happen. All the ordinary
320 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
events of life happen frequently because they are very probable,
whilst the improbable things happen on an average relatively rarely.
The celebrated problem of the ‘“‘typewriting monkeys” may be
cited as an example. If six monkeys were set before six typewriters
and allowed to hit the keys at their own sweet will, how long would it
be before they produced—by mere chance—all the written books in
the British Museum? It would be a very long, but not an infinitely
long, time.
Now the second law of thermodynamics, to the scrutiny of which we
subjected the phenomena of life, is purely a law of statistical proba-
bility. The odds against Mr. Home, the celebrated medium of former
days, levitating without any compensating work or energy effect, are
enormously heavy. The uncoordinated energy in and around Mr.
Home might indeed spontaneously convert a part of itself into the
coordinated energy of Mr. Home rising majestically into the air, but
the safe odds against that happening are simply terrific. The ordi-
nary large-scale happenings of the world, with which we are so familiar,
are simply events where the odds on are gigantically enormous. The
coming down of Mr. Home with a bump is an event on which we
could safely bet, with an assurance of success quite unknown in racing
or roulette. The theory of probability tells us that there always exist
fluctuations from the most probable event. In the physicochemical
world of atoms, molecules, and waves these fluctuations are ordinarily
imperceptible, owing to the enormous number of individuals con-
cerned. In very small regions of space, however, these fluctuations
become important, and the second law of thermodynamics ceases to
run. We have seen that the structure of living protoplasm is extra-
ordinarily fine and delicate. Do events happen here which are to be
classed as molecular fluctuations, or even as individual molecular
events, rather than as the mass probabilities which have led men to
formulate the second law? Something of that sort was probably in
the mind of Helmholtz when he doubted the application of this law to
the phenomena of life, owing to the fineness of the structures involved.
The reasoning of Guye bears rather on the origin of life. Is the spon-
taneous birth of a minute living organism, he asks, simply a very rare
event, an exceedingly improbable fluctuation from the average?
This is a fascinating point of view, but it possesses one drawback.
What is there to stabilize and fix this rare event when it occurs?
Guye has himself realized this difficulty, but it may not be an insur-
mountable one. Such rare fluctuations may occasionally cause matter
and energy to arrive at peculiar critical states where and whence the
curve of happening, the world space-time line, starts out on a different
path, and a new adventure arises in the hidden microcosmos.
If life has sprung from the nonliving, its earliest forms must have
been (or must be?) excessively minute. We must look for these, if
MYSTERY OF LIFE—DONNAN BAL
anywhere, in those queer things that the bacteriologists call the
‘‘filtrable viruses.”? These are living bacteria so exceedingly small
that not only are they invisible in the finest microscopes, but they pass
easily through the minute pores of a Chamberland porcelain filter.
D’Herelle has recently discovered the occurrence in certain bacterial
cultures of what he calls the ‘‘bacteriophage.’’ These seem to be
excessively minute organisms which can hydrolyze certain ordinary
bacteria. They constitute an extremely fine and filtrable ‘virus.’
Quite recently Bechhold and Villa, in the Institute for Colloid
Research at Frankfurt, have devised a new and ingenious method
whereby these minute organisms can be rendered visible and measured.
The process consists in depositing gold on them, strengthening up
these gilded individuals as one enlarges the silver particles in an
insufficiently exposed negative, and obtaining as end result a sort of
metallic skeleton of the original organism. It appears that the
individuals of D’Herelle’s bacteriophage are small disks whose diam-
eter lies between 35 wu and 100 wy. Now the diameter of an ordi-
nary chemical molecule is of the order of 1 wy,i. e., one-millionth of a
millimeter. Colloid particles are much bigger than that. If it be
proved beyond all doubt that they are really living organisms, then the
individuals of D’Herelle’s bacteriophage are comparable in size with
known colloid aggregates of nonliving matter. This result gives rise
to strange hopes. If we can find a complete continuity of dimensions
between the living and the nonliving, is there really any point where
we can say that here is life and there is no life? That would be a dar-
ing and perhaps a dangerous theme to dwell on at the present time.
But where there is hope there is a possibility of research. And who
will set a limit to the discoveries that are possible to science in the
future?
I hope no reader of this meager sketch of mine will call me a mate-
rialist ora mechanist. All I have endeavored to show, however briefly
and inadequately, is that the sincere and honest men who are advanc-
ing science whether in the region of life or death are those who measure
accurately, reason logically, and express the results of their measure-
ments in precise mathematical form. A hundred or a thousand years
from now mathematics may have developed far beyond the extremest
point of our present-day concepts. The technique of experimental
science at that future date may be something undreamed of at the
present time. But the advance will be continuous, conformal, and
homologous with the thought and reasoning of to-day. The mystery
of life will still remain. The facts and theories of science are more
mysterious at the present time than they were in the days of Aristotle.
Science, truly understood, is not the death, but the birth, of mystery,
awe, and reverence.
roe, ee
supa
ae ttel
125)
“t
THE TRANSITION FROM LIVE TO DEAD: THE NATURE OF
FILTRABLE VIRUSES ?
By A. E. Boycott, D. M.
Rutherford was an example of the danger and folly of cultivating thoughts and
reading books to which he was not equal. It is all very well that remarkable
persons should occupy themselves with exalted subjects which are out of the
ordinary road, but we who are not remarkable make a very great mistake if we
have anything to do with them.—W. Hate Wuits, preface to the second edition
of The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford.
Pathologists are such practical people that I feel that I am straining
the privilege of a presidential address about as far as it will go in
attempting to discuss such a topic as the relation between things
which we call alive and things which we call dead. But, though we
seldom have opportunities of talking about them, we all have our
speculative moments when we wonder about things in general and try
to put together some sort of lay figure on which we can hang the facts
which interest us and-see how they fit, and I should like to take this
chance of getting rid of some of my own imaginings and sketching the
Jemima on which they seem to look fairly presentable. And I do this
in a gathering of pathologists because a good deal of light is thrown
on the whole question of ‘‘live” and ‘‘dead”’ by the “‘filtrable viruses,”
‘“acents,” ‘“‘bacteriophages,” and what not, in which we have been so
much interested in recent years.
I do not propose to enter at length on the old controversy between
vitalism and mechanism. Pathologists might with advantage have
taken a greater share in it than they have, for it would take a hardened
mechanician to maintain his faith in face of our daily experience of
repair adaptation and all the other purposive compensations for injury
of which the body is so abundantly capable. Unfortunately our
facts have not been widely known to those who have felt inclined to
discuss the question. As far as I can see, the attempt to ‘‘explain life
by chemistry and physics” has completely failed. It was thought at
‘one time that if only the microscope could be made to magnify
1 President’s address, section of pathology, Royal Society of Medicine. Reprinted by permission from
the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, November, 1928. Published also, abridged and revised,
in supplement to Nature, Jan. 19, 1929.
82322—30——_22 323
324 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
enough, we should see life going on; the present contempt for histol-
ogy is, I suppose, a sort of revenge on the wretched limitations of the
instrument. Hope was then transferred to biochemistry, which has
done just what the microscope did—it has helped us enormously to
understand the mechanisms of live things and not at all to explain
life; let us hope that it will not sink to the same degraded position.
But if vitalism has had the best of the argument, it has not led to a
very profitable or a very satisfactory position. Vitalism is often
mysticism, and (which is why mechanism has been so popular) any
dualistic interpretation of the world is always repugnant to natural
human instincts. But it is possible to escape dualism in another way,
and I suggest that the vitalistic controversy in anything like the form
it has taken during the last 40 years is out of date, that instead of
emphasizing the differences between live and dead things we should
make as much as we can of their similarities, and that instead of divid-
ing the world into two distinct categories we should regard it as being
made up of one series of units with properties which differ more in
degree than in kind. This is not the mechanistic view, for we come to
it, not by explaining live things by dead things, but by realizing that
the characteristics of live organisms appear also in dead matter. While
we have been waiting for life to be explained in terms of chemistry
and physics, a good deal has been done toward stating chemistry and
physics in terms of life. Of course, no ‘‘explanation” of either live or
dead has been given; the behavior of an atom is just as mysterious as
the behavior of a wasp, and neither ‘‘explains” the other any more
than a trypanosome explains a whale. But it is something of a
comfort if we can believe that at bottom they both behave in much
the same way; we can have one lay figure instead of two, and if its
coat and trousers are not made of exactly the same stuff we may find
them in reasonable harmony with one another.
Picking up such rumors as he might of what is going on in other
lines than his own, every biologist must have been struck by the
curious familiarity of several of the conceptions which in this century
have gone to start the revolution in atomic physics which has pulled
the universe in pieces and has perhaps not yet quite succeeded in
putting it together again. The ideas are familiar because they were
originally biological—derived from the study of live things and applied
to their explanation. Let me illustrate what I mean by some
examples.
(a) It is one of the characteristics of life that it is exhibited by
discrete units which we know as organisms. As Powell White says, .
there is no such thing as living matter, there are only live organisms,
and in so far as they are alive 0.1 cow or 1.35 cabbage are impossi-
bilities. The enterprising surgeon could, of course, easily make some-
thing which was structurally about three-quarters of a cow, and I
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—BOYCOTT 325
dare say, even less, but what was left after he had done with it would
be either a cow or not a cow—its essential cowness can not be other
than integral. The live world is made up of such discontinuous
pieces; so, we now learn, is the dead world. The notion that all
matter is particulate is of immemorial antiquity, and as we go further .
in its ultimate analysis we come always to particles of ever-decreasing
size; fractional atomic weights are as impossible as fractional animals;
the quantum theory tells us that energy is also parceled out in bits;
light consists of particles and, though the ether dies hard, the belief
that there is anywhere a continuum—something without a grained
structure—has been almost entirely abandoned. Discontinuities—in
the structure of atoms and in the sizes of the stars—are now as char-
acteristic of the dead world-as of the live.
(6) When Rutherford and Soddy made people believe that one
element really could be derived from another, they did for dead
things what Darwin had done for live things; indeed they did rather
more, for they backed their proposal with experimental proof which
neither Darwin nor anyone else had produced in the biological sphere.
In neither instance was the idea wholly new; suggestions of various
kinds had adumbrated the change. ‘Evolution’ was originally
used in reference to the cosmos, but it was from zoology and botany
that it spread through the descriptions of all human experience
before it was applied to what had been supposed to be the ultimate
verities of matter. And now, neglecting the time factor, chemical
elements are not necessarily more stable than zoological species.
For practical purposes lead is lead and a dog is a dog, but now we
have to apply to both the reservation that they have not always been
so, and can not be trusted to be so indefinitely in the future.
The disintegration of the radioactive elements takes place auto-
matically: it can not be started, stopped, controlled, or modified;
its progress is simply a question of the lapse of time. The modes by
which organic evolution has been supposed to take place are beyond
our discussion, but it is not impossible that it follows the same plan.
Osborn and other experts hold that the course of any evolutionary
sequence of animals is predetermined from the beginning; this
“‘orthogenesis’’ may be interfered with by circumstances and oppor-
tunities, for live organisms are obviously liable to meet conditions in
this world which they can not resist, and which may deflect them
from a predestined track or bring them to an end altogether; dead
elements meet their difficulties elsewhere in the universe.
(c) The classification of the eleménts which have developed by this
evolutionary process recalls the familiar schemes of botanists and
zoologists which show at once the affinities of animals and plants to
one another and (though here there is of course a certain amount of
guess work) their phylogenetic relationships. Animals were originally
326 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
classified by characters which we now believe to be largely immaterial—
size, shape, habitat, and any other obvious features; Mr. Gladstone
thought whales were fishes and bats birds, and plenty of people still
suspect a slowworm of being a snake. About 150 years ago compara-
- tive anatomy began to get them into more natural groups, and evolu-
tion added the criterion of descent in determining the system which
prevails at present. Much the same has happened in classifying the
elements into something better than a series of arbitrary pigeonholes.
Their discovery was the first step, much more difficult than the
apprehension of animal species. The progress of chemistry then
showed that they fell into groups akin to vital genera or families or
phyla (we can not guess at what level the analogy is closest), and the
discovery of inorganic evolution and isotopes has brought their
relationships to a suggestively biological position. Atomic weights
are no longer of any great importance; what matters in classifying
an element is its atomic number which determines its position in the
periodic table and is a summary of its comparative anatomy and a
clue to its history. An element (e. g., lead) may arise by more than
one line of descent, which is what a biologist would call ‘“‘evolution by
convergence.’ The isotopes into which Aston has dissected many of
the elements correspond to the groups of closely allied species which
embarrass the systematist and with which bacteriologists are familiar
enough. Perhapsif they had sugar reactions or could be agglutinated,
or indeed had a few more perceptible characters of any sort they
might be easier to distinguish.
(dq) If a man and a bicycle are smashed up together in a common
catastrophe, the man mends himself, the bicycle does not. This
capacity of self-repair 1s one of the greatest characteristics of live
organisms; indeed, if one wishes to define shortly the subject matter
of pathology I doubt if one can do it better than by saying that it
is the study of how organisms resist and repair injury. They repair
themselves in two ways. In the larger, more complicated animals
we find very highly developed a capacity for individual repair which
we see daily in the post-mortem room and experience continually
in our own persons; it is so common that we are not impressed by it
as much as we should be. Simpler things, such as bacteria, have
little of this power of personal repair; indeed, I doubt whether a uni-
cellular organism under natural conditions can effectively repair and
recover from a substantial injury any more than can the individual
cells of higher animals. But they achieve the same ends by other
means, and owing to their numerical abundance and their high capac-
ity for reproduction they can allow the injured individual to perish
and readily replace him with a new one. Individually or racially,
therefore, organisms repair themselves. Atoms seem to be able to
do the same. All gross matter is made up of atoms, each of which
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—BOYCOTT 327
has a definite structure according to its species; as nucleus there are
so many hydrogen atoms with their attendant electrons and outside
are so many planetary electrons. Electrons are continually being
detached from atoms by various means, e. g., whenever electrical
energy is manifested. Presumably an atom of, e. g., iron which
has lost an electron is no longer of its normal nature and substance,
i. e., it has ceased to be perfect iron, and such a process would in the
end lead to the iron becoming manifestly something which was
not iron unless some restorative process was at work. It seems clear
that injured atoms must be able to pick up electrons from some-
where to replace those which have been lost, a method of individual
repair which appears to be efficient enough.
(e) Another of the great characteristics of live things is their
variability. Any measurable quantity of any organism varies, and
the values are distributed in some mode akin to the normal curve.
Crookes suggested long ago that atoms vary in a similar way, Karl
Pearson has imagined a world where contingency replaces cause and
effect, and Donnan has emphasized that our chemical and physical
constants are statistical, derived from the measurement of an infinite
number of individuals, and summarizing, perhaps, the average values
of a variable population. If biological measurements were made on the
same scale, zoology and botany and even pathology might be ‘“‘exact
sciences” too. When we say that the atomic weight of one of the
chlorines is 35, or that the mass of the hydrogen atom is 1.650 x 10 —*
germ., it may tell us no more about the individual atoms than a
statement that the height of the members of this section of the
Royal Society of Medicine was 5 feet 8 inches would give us a view
of the range of sizes which we represent. Whether atoms and mole-
cules vary like organisms, therefore, we do not know—nor is it easy
to imagine how we could find out. The possibilities of variation
evidently become greater as structure becomes more complex—as
we go, that is, from electrons to elaborate chemical compounds.
(f) Cane sugar boiled with dilute hydrochloric acid is progressively
hydrolyzed till practically none of it is left. Analysis of the course of
the reaction shows that (say) one-fifth of the original quantity is
decomposed in the first five minutes, one-fifth of what remains in the
next five minutes, one-fifth of what remains in the next five minutes,
and so on until the amount left is inappreciable. This strange be-
havior is accounted for by assuming that the molecules of cane sugar
go through some sort of regular rhythmical change, so that at any
moment only a certain proportion of them are susceptible to the action
of the water at the instigation of the acid. There is, I believe, no other
justification for the assumption than that it fits the facts, and it can not
fail to remind us of the rhythmical alternations of rest and activity
which are common, perhaps universal, in live organisms. If, as Chick
328 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
has shown, bacteria sometimes succumb to heat or disinfectants on the
same kind of plan, it is legitimate to say that they behave like the
molecules of cane sugar. But it is equally correct to say that the
molecules of cane sugar behave like bacteria. We can not tell which
_ is imitating the other; all we see is that the behavior of both is sim-
ilar. The conduct of the bacilli could hardly have been predicted
from a knowledge of what happened to the cane sugar. The natural
supposition would have been that the molecules of which each bacil-
lus was made up would have been destroyed logarithmically, so that
the death point of all the bacilli would have been reached simultane-
ously—a reflection which illustrates particularly clearly the consid-
erable truth that the discrete unit which is comparable with the mole-
cule of cane sugar is the whole bacillus and not one of its constituent
molecules.
Now, I do not want to push these analogies between atoms and
organisms too far, nor indeed to claim more than that they are sug-
gestive to an imagination which is not afraid to have its wilder
moments. Atoms are very much smaller, and necessarily of much
simpler structure and functions, and one would no more expect to
find in them all the qualities-of organisms fully developed than one
would look for all that goes to make a human being in the tubercle
bacillus. However, it is only because we are used to it that we
accept, without emotion, the idea that an amceba is analogous to an
elephant; it must have been an amazing notion when it was new.
There are two general objections which will probably occur at once
to most biologists: (1) That dead elements do not show the multi-
plying reproduction characteristic of organisms; (2) that organic
evolution on the whole progresses from the simple toward the com-
plex, whereas what I have called the evolution of the elements proceeds
uniformly in the opposite direction. The two difficulties are rather
closely related.
Organic reproduction does two things: It produces a fresh version
of the old organism and it gives an opportunity for numerical increase;
its final effect is to leave organisms very much where they were.
Each foxglove plant in my garden goes to immense trouble to produce
about 500,000 seeds, and the wasps toil earnestly all the summer to
increase from 1 to about 1,000. But next year there will be just
about as many wasps’ nests as this and just about as many self-
sown foxglove plants. Darwin taught us the qualitative importance
of this superabundance, but, quantitatively, it is made use of only if
conditions alter; it then enables organisms to fill up any gap in the
environment. If my wife interferes with the natural competition
among the young foxgloves we may have more or less than last year;
the vacant spaces in Bloomsbury have given us more willow herb
than we had before the houses were pulled down, and when some phil-
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—BOYCOTT 329
anthropist enables the university to put up Dr. Maxwell Garnett’s
skyscraper we shall have less; we make a gap for bacilli in our cul-
ture tubes and they multiply as they never did outside. Man alters
his own circumstances. These catastrophic alterations in numbers are
flaring examples which attract attention. Slower secular changes
in environment have the same effect, some sorts increase, others
diminish, and on the whole there may be a tendency for a few large
organisms to be replaced by many small ones. But, taking the facts
as a whole, the capacity for reproduction does not result in more
organisms than there were before; it merely enables them to adapt
themselves to varying conditions. If organisms were less complicated,
more stable and enduring, less easily injured, and if natural selection
turned out to be a fact of experience without perceptible significance,
the reproduction of organisms in general might be reduced to the level
at which it runs in men in England to-day—numbers are just main-
tained. And if they lived longer it might be a still less important
feature of their activities; an elephant does not bother about repro-
duction till it is 40 years old or thereabouts, a bacillus does it at an
age of about 25 minutes. It will, however, need a vast increase in
longevity if any approximation is to be made to the position in the
dead world as we see it on this earth. It is indeed possible that there
is here a real qualitative distinction between live and dead, but it
seems more likely that the difference is one of mechanism rather than
result, and, as we learn from biology, it is results rather than mecha-
nisms which areimportant. With increasing complexity we get dimin-
ishing stability, which is presumably why there is no known element
heavier or with a more elaborate structure than uranium. Units
which are more complex can not maintain themselves without the
periodical remaking which we call reproduction; those which are
less complex do not reproduce, because they have no need to do so.
There is no reason to suppose that anything so like organisms as
to deserve the same name exists anywhere in the universe except on
the earth; as far as live things are concerned there is no need to look
further. But we can not confine our speculations about dead things
within the same limits. The stars are made of much the same ele-
ments as the earth, and material transfers take place in both directions;
meteorites come and nearly all the hydrogen and methane which
arises from the decomposition of cellulose by bacteria and strepto-
thrix flies off to celestial bodies which are dense enough to secure
their permanent adherence. The relevant habitat of the elements is
therefore the universe and, taking this into consideration, it is not
altogether clear that something like reproduction does not go on in
dead things.
Though the elements seem inert and stable enough here and nothing
much happens to them except the slow decomposition of those which
330 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
are, in our environment, radioactive, in the immense heat of the
stars atoms not only come to pieces and are dissociated into protons
and electrons, but their basic structure is destroyed, positive and
negative electrons fall into one another, and matter is converted into
radiation. In the heavens the elements disintegrate more com-
pletely than a dead cat does on earth, and unless there is somewhere
some reconstruction the cosmos is coming to a material end. Lodge
and Millikan think that in the depths of interstellar space, under
conditions of intense cold, energy may once again become matter,
radiation be reconverted into electrons which in their turn are recom-
bined again into atoms, and so the various elements are reproduced;
Jeans doubts any such regeneration. The duty of a pathologist
does not call upon him to interpose his private judgment in so nice
and important a controversy, and it would be impudent to say more
than that some such process would enable us to have a comfortable
faith in the maintenance of the material universe. If reconstitution
is shown to take place, one can not help thinking of the nitrogen
cycle, and how it was once held as certain (J was taught it as a student)
that combined nitrogen was continually and irretrievably leaving the
live world which must therefore inevitably come to an end; we had
not appreciated nitrifying bacteria and attached more importance
to academic argument than to Moses’s directions for fallowing arable
land.
If the elements do go through such a cycle, it is possible that what
we call their ‘‘evolution”’ is more analogous to the death and repro-
duction of organisms than to the progressive appearance of more
complex forms. Very little of the cycle takes place in our own par-
ticular corner of the universe, to which the organismal cycle is limited,
and it is conditioned by very different circumstances of time and
space, but it has much the same result in that it leaves things where
they were. Protozoa are the better for reconstitution without multi-
plication; perhaps atoms are too. On the other hand, the recon-
stituted atoms may easily be of different species from those out of
whose débris they have been built up, and under conditions where
any reconstitution can occur it is possible that atoms are made which
are more complex than any of which we have direct knowledge.
Perhaps, too, the inorganic cycle is more nearly parallel to the appear-
ance, progressive evolution, and final disappearance of a group of
animal forms which some writers have imagined to be the birth,
growth, and death of an organism drawn out on an extended scale.
I do not know.
Such are some of the ideas familiar in biology which have appeared
in the explanations of our experience of what is not alive. As Ihave
stated them, they are to some extent inconsistent with one another
and they lead to no certain conclusion; they furnish, however, an
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—BOYCOTT 331
assemblage of concurring and converging probabilities which encour-
age one to think it possible that things which are alive and things
which are not alive constitute in effect one series, beginning with
hydrogen atoms and reaching up to man, and perhaps on to angels,
not arranged in a continuous linear succession but on a scheme
resembling the phylogenetic line of the animal kingdom. The units
(or ‘‘wholes”? as Smuts would call them) which make up the series
are of progressively increasing complexity, structural and functional,
and must be compared against one another as they stand, irrespec-
tive of their composition. A hydrogen atom, a molecule of albumin,
a bacillus, a dog are comparable as such, and it is not necessarily of
any moment that hydrogen is the basic stuff of all matter, that pro-
teids are essential constituents of all live organisms, or that a mam-
mal is made up of many bits, each of which is more or less like a
unicellular organism; in no case is the behavior of the more complex
whole simply the sum of the behavior of its constituents. Such a
view satisfies our natural antipathy to a dualistic explanation of the
universe and makes the old controversy about vitalism and mecha-
nism largely unnecessary. It tells us nothing about the nature of
life; by indicating that organisms are analogous to elements, it en-
courages us to think of life as being as insoluble as gravitation, to give
up the attempt to make out what it is and, as Lovatt Evans recom-
mends, to spend our time more fruitfully in studying its phenomena.
If you like to be paradoxical, you can say that live things are dead,
or if you prefer it, that dead things are alive. Both at bottom have
much the same characters, and it is unlikely that any sharp distinc-
tion between them can be drawn.
We pose to ourselves the question: Is the bacteriophage (or Gye’s
cancer agent, or the virus of plant mosaic, or any other ‘‘virus’’)
alive or dead? in the belief that we are asking a crucial question to
which there is a definite obtainable answer which would solve our
troubles. In doing so we put up one of those false antitheses which
so often lead us astray. The difficulty in most scientific work lies
in framing the questions rather than in finding the answers, and by
the time we are in a position to know what the crucial question really
is we have generally pretty well got the answer. In this case “live
or dead” is a stupid question because it does not exhaust the possi-
bilities. Our general notion of the structure of the universe leads us
to expect that we shall meet with things that are not so live as a sun-
flower and not so dead as a brick, and a consideration of what we
know about “‘filtrable viruses” and similar ‘‘agents” brings us to the
conclusion that they represent part of this intermediate group. Let
us see how far they conform with what are, in ordinary language,
admittably ‘“‘live” and ‘‘dead.”
332 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Size —Kssentially they are very small though just how small it is
impossible to say. They must be ultimately particulate because all
matter is so arranged, and from the readiness with which they are
adsorbed on to appropriate surfaces the particles are presumably much
larger than the molecules of simple salts. Passage through filters
with pores of different sizes turns out to be a complicated and dubious
method of measurement, and the effects of centrifugalization may
depend more on the specific gravity than the size of the particles.
They are invisible, and ultramicroscopy shows nothing in the infec-
tive blood of polyhedral caterpillar disease, at least down to 50up
(and probably down to 15uu), which qualitatively and quantitatively
can not be seen in normal blood. Levaditi says (in error according to
Bedson) that herpes virus goes through membranes which hold back
complement and tetanus toxin; it is possible to concentrate solu-
tions of hemoglobin in the centrifuge. Taking one thing with another
and reckoning that some viruses are doubtless larger than others, an
average diameter of about 25 uy (0.025 uw) seems a reasonable assump-
tion, about o the diameter of the smallest bacillus, about the same
size as the colloidal aggregates of dissolved hemoglobin and with
room for 200 to 400 proteid molecules.
Now it is characteristic of all groups of animals and plants that they
have upper and lower limits of size.2 There is no mammal, fish,
mollusk, or insect which is not perceptible to the bare eye any more
than there is any bacillus which can be seen without a magnifying glass.
It is also in a general way true that there is nothing which has the
properties which we commonly associate with bacteria which is not
at some stage in its life visible with the highest powers of the ordinary
microscope or en masse in culture, though of course, if rules of this
kind were too absolute, they would imply a more anthropomorphic
world than most people nowadays are prepared to flatter themselves
with.
Frank bacteria and protozoa may have minute phases: Leishman
showed long ago that the spirochete of African relapsing fever might
in the tick be invisible and filtrable and we can not reject the evidence
that even the tubercle bacillus may exist in a similar state. But no
definite bacillus is known which is much smaller than pneumosintes,
and it seems likely that at a diameter of something like 0.25 p (250 py),
i. e., somewhere about the limit of direct microscopic vision, there is a
break in the series which runs continuously downward from the larg-
est bacilli (which would be visible to the naked eye if they were 20
times as big as they are) just as the series of mammals stops at a weight
of about 5 grams and the series of beetles at a length of about 0.5 mm.
The largest Bacillus megaterium is some 25,000 times the bulk of Dial-
2 See the table in Animal Biology, by J. B. S. Haldane and J. Huxley 1927 276, and Contributions to
Medical and Biological Research (Osler Memorial), 1919, i, 226,
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—BOYCOTT 300
ister pneumosintes, which is a relative difference of the same order as
that between a pigmy shrew and a big man or between a laboratory
guinea pig and a large elephant. D. pneumosintes is about 400 times
the bulk of what we imagine to be an average virus, and if there are no
large viruses (the organism of cattle pleuropneumonia being prob-
ably bacillary) there may be more than seems at first sight in our
definition of the agents we are discussing, by the facts that they
can not be seen and that they will pass through filters with very small
holes—a system of classification which has often been laughed at,
though it could be applied well enough to many animal groups.
Composition.—A diameter of 0.025 » does not give much room or
many facilities for complicated vital actions. We do not know what
occupies that tiny bulk; we do not even know that viruses are mainly
proteid. There would be room for a larger number of simpler mole-
cules though it is doubtful whether in any simulacrum of life this
would compensate for the absence of the unique combination of
chemical flexibility and physical stability which proteids possess and
without which, as far as we know, “‘life’’ does not exist. The anti-
genic quality of viruses is our only evidence that they contain proteid.
Clinically and experimentally they confer a resistance to reinfection
which is, in comparison with antibacterial immunities, singularly
intense and durable, and is associated with antiviral properties in the
blood serum. As against this we have, (1) that antiviral serum con-
tains only a simple neutralizing principle like an antitoxin (and pos-
sibly not actually effective in vitro) and has no specific agglutinin
precipitin or (this is very doubtful) complement-fixing immune body;
(2) that it is doubtful (though hardly, I think more than that at
present) whether it is still true to say that all antigens are proteid
in nature; (3) that substances like diphtheria toxin and the substance
which Murphy has separated from the Rous sarcoma seem to be pro-
teids of rather a special and simple kind. Another point which may
be germane is that the dose of virus used for infection makes much less
difference in the result than it often does with bacteria. The infective
units are evidently present in enormous numbers in, e. g., the vesicle
fluid in foot-and-mouth disease which may be diluted 1 in 10,000,000
and still carry on infection. There is a minimum infecting dose,
which shows that infection is due to something definite and not to
magic, but once this is passed the rate at which the resultant illness
develops and the degree to which it reaches are not much affected by
giving 1,000 or 10,000 times asmuch. The big doses of bacteria which
are often administered to animals contain bacterial substance by whole
milligrams by which the symptons and course of the infection may be
greatly influenced. The absence of such poisoning effects with large
doses of virus may, of course, be due to the small quantity of virus
substance which is given, but it quite possibly follows from its quality.
334 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
There is indeed no evidence that viruses contain or produce poisonous
substances as do so many bacteria.
We can not, therefore, affirm that viruses differ radically in com-
position from, e. g., the typhoid baccillus—nor that they donot. We
probably have no business to make an assumption either way.
Metabolism.—The attempts which have been made to demonstrate
the production of carbon dioxide by viruses have failed, but the quanti-
ties involved are small and the technical difficulties large, so that we
can not regard the evidence as conclusive. It seems, however, that
if they have any respiratory exchange it must be at a much slower rate
per infective dose than that of ordinary bacteria.
Stability and resistance to harmful agents —Some viruses at any rate
can retain their activity in vitro for several years. Some bacterio-
phages endure for a long time in bacteria-free filtrates; the Rous tumor
virus can be kept almost indefinitely in dried tumor tissue. Others
are more labile and are difficult to keep over a period of days. There
is much the same variability as there is with bacteria and bacterial
toxins; viruses as a class are not characteristically unstable, evanescent
things.
A good deal has been made from time to time of their resistance to
heat and protoplasmic poisons. Here again the results are very
various and differ with the sort of virus and the conditions of experi-
ment; there are uo general rules. But there are a remarkable number
of instances of viruses which have resisted temperatures up to 75° C.,
and treatment with chloroform, alcohol, ether, toluol, phenol, acids,
alkalies, and so forth. Formalin destroys many of them quickly,
which is curious, for its action in coagulating proteids is much slower
than that of alcohol, which they often resist. As a whole they are
certainly more resistant than vegetative bacteria, but it is not certain
that they differ markedly from bacterial spores. In several parti-
culars this resistance recalls that of enzymes, and their peculiarities
may be another reason for suspecting that they are not made of quite
ordinary proteids. There is nothing in their size per se which should
protect them.
Capacity for independent life and multiplication —There is no con-
vincing evidence that any virus has grown and multiplied in artificial
culture, though successes have been reported, and the observations
of the Maitlands on vaccinia are difficult to explain away; they would
have been more impressive if animal cells could have been kept out of
the medium altogether. Living cells are in all cases necessary, which
may be supplied by living bacteria, living animals or plants or tissue
cultures. That they really do multiply under these conditions seems
beyond question; indefinite serial passage of an infective virus (e. g.,
foot-and-mouth disease) through experimental animals (e. g., guinea
pigs), indefinite subculture of the bacteriophage, quantitative tissue
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—-BOYCOTT . 335
culture of the Rous agent—indeed all the evidence we have is con-
clusive on that point. Viruses are certainly not enzymes. Apart
from living cells they may for a long time survive, i. e., remain in
such a state that, on altering the conditions, they can give rise to their
characteristic effect—vaccinia, a sarcoma, bacteriolysis, etc. But
there is no evidence that they multiply under these conditions, and
multiplication at the expense of the environment is probably regarded
by most of us as the most important criterion of life.
For their multiplication, young growing cells are especially suitable,
and it may be quite necessary. The bacteriophage multiplies only
with the multiplication of the associated bacteria, and vaccinia,
herpes, Rous sarcoma, etc., develop and multiply especially in con-
nection with the growth of cells which results from local injury.
Cell injury and cell growth are so intimately related that I know of no
case where cell growth can certainly be excluded, but at present we
can not be quite certain that it is necessary. It seems also to be true
that viruses multiply only in the course of the production of their
specific effect.
But though the fact of multiplication is plain, it is by no means
proved that it is effected in the way which is familiar in bacteria and
living organisms generally. We put in so much virus and we get out
more: We have no evidence, nor, I think, the right to assume, that
the particles which we get out are the direct descendants of those
we put in.
It may be that these facts are best explained by supposing that
viruses are obligatory intracellular parasites, and that the difficulty
of cultivating them on artificial media will be solved when we can
imitate sufficiently closely the essential features of the intracellular
environment; pathogenic protozoa were not cultivated at the first
trial. Very few bacteria live inside animal cells, and it is perhaps
significant that those that do (e. g., Brucella abortus and Bactervum
tularense) are among the smallest of the group. Viruses have, of
course, not been seen inside cells, but their dependence on living cells,
and the considerable regularity with which their presence is indicated
by cytoplasmic and intranuclear “‘bodies”’ (some of them of specifi-
cally characteristic appearances) make it quite likely that such a
position is their natural habitat, in which they multiply and from
which they spread, as they do, to other places, liquids, and secretions.
This habitat might have something to do with the peculiarities of
their immunological relations. Living within cells it is perhaps
unnecessary for them to produce any definite toxins; mechanical
disorganization of the cellular anatomy might well be the effective
cause of the injuries they produce. The general symptoms of infec-
tions (headache, fever, prostration) are caused, as in bacterial infec-
tions, mostly by substances derived from the injured cells of the host,
336 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
and these would also account for part at any rate of any local inflam-
matory response.
Such an explanation would do quite well for the viruses that accom-
pany infectious diseases and would cover the facts for the bacterio-
phage. But phenomena are known which are surely more or less
analogous, and which it is hardly possible to regard as due to parasites
of any kind.
There is, for instance, the agent which induces cells to become
malignant, indicated years ago by the Imperial Cancer Research
Fund (Haaland and Russell) when they showed that close contiguity
with malignant epithelial cells might cause normal connective tissue
to grow into a transplantable sarcoma—one of the great discoveries
of pathology. People had known that they met with tumors occa-
sionally which seemed to be mixtures of carcinoma and sarcoma;
they knew, too, that the cells at the edge of small epitheliomas looked
as if they were being transformed and were on the way to become
malignant, though the prevalence of a curious dogma to the effect
that this could not really be so generally prevented them talking
aboutit. The experimental mouse work explained these appearances;
without it they could have carried no serious inference that cancer
cells might influence normal cells towards malignancy. Unless we
suppose that tumor cells pervert neighboring normal cells by argu-
ment, persuasion, example, or some other sort of immaterial com-
munication, we naturally assume that some substance passes out
from the one to affect the other. All attempts to demonstrate this
substance in dead tumor cells or in extracts of them uniformly failed
until Rous came across his fowl sarcoma and showed that it could
be transmitted indefinitely from bird to bird by dried dead cells or
by filtrates which contained nothing that could be seen or cultivated.
This particular tumor produces the substance in a form so stable that
it can be examined and played with when it is detached from live cells.
With most transplantable tumors it is present in such small amounts,
or more likely in such a labile unstable form that its clear demon-
stration is not possible; the carcinoma-sarcoma experiment comes
off only with a minority of ‘mouse carcinomas. Gye has shown that
its activity may be modified, enhanced, or depressed, by various
conditions, which helps to explain the difficulties and apparent incon-
sistencies which are met with in its experimental investigation.
But a fair number of tumors have now been transmitted by filtrates,
and there is, I think, no reason to doubt that the production of this
carcinogenic substance is a common property of all malignant growths.
We believe that all pathogenic bacteria, or at any rate all the larger
ones, produce extracellular toxins; there is no other way in which they
can injure the tissues. But in many instances they are so unstable
that it is at the best difficult to demonstrate their presence apart
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—--BOYCOTT 337
from the bodies of the bacilli, and impossible to investigate them in
detail. Nor should we, I think, be too shy of drawing general con-
clusions from such specially easy and demonstrative examples as
Providence has provided for our learning and pushes under our noses,
till even our stupidity is bound to take notice; diphtheria and tetanus
for toxins, the guinea pig’s peculiar bronchial musculature for ana-
phylaxis, mice and tar for tumors, radium are such signposts; the
Rous tumor is another,
Another analogous phenomenon takes us, I think, a step further.
The products of autolysis of dead cells in the body, in suitable con-
centration, stimulate tissue growth. It is a beautiful self-regulating
mechanism in which the amount of stimulus is proportionate to the
amount of cell destruction, and therefore to the amount of cell growth
required, and it is obviously of the highest importance for survival—
a far more potent factor in selection and evolution than any disease
has ever been. As it normally operates in healing our cut fingers,
the final result is simply the restoration of the cells which were de-
stroyed. But if the normal restraint exercised by neighboring tissues
is evaded and use made of tissue cultures, the products of autolysis
or metabolism (in the form of extracts of tissues, tumors, or embryos)
stimulate growth indefinitely and a much larger quantity of tissue
may be obtained than we started with. From the autolysis of this a
larger amount of stimulating substance may be obtained, and there
seems no reason why this process of multiplication should have any
limit. Normal tissues in the physical isolation of tissue cultures are as
immortal as malignant tissues in their physiological isolation from the
rest of the body.
No one would, I think, pretend that these products of autolysis
are alive in any ordinary sense of the word. They have not received
nearly as much attention as they deserve, but they are probably of
relatively simple and discoverable constitutions. Yet applied to cells
they cause growth, and in so doing potentially increase their own
quantity; this is very much what the Rous agent does. ‘There are,
too, these further minor similarities: The Rous agent stimulates one
particular type of cell (white fibrous connective tissue) to malignancy,
some extracts of normal tissues stimulate fibroblasts in tissue culture
while others act specially in epithelial cells; the activity of the Rous
agent may be encouraged or depressed by the simultaneous presence
of other tissue extracts, some tissue extracts inhibit growth instead of
encouraging it.
But the chief importance of the analogy is, I think, in throwing
light on the nature and origin of the Rous virus. If we agree to put
the products of autolysis in the category ‘‘dead,’”’ by what difference
are we to separate the Rous virus as being ‘‘alive”? It can not be
»
338 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
cultivated apart from live cells, it multiplies only under conditions
where its specific activity is displayed, its inactivation by chloroform
and other protoplasmic poisons does not take it nearer life than are
toxins or enzymes or indeed simple metallic catalysts, and its reten-
tion of activity after the drastic methods of purification recently
described by Murphy seems to definitely exclude it from “live.” As
to its origin, all the evidence seems to concur in indicating that the
Rous virus arises de novo in each tumor. There is no epidemio-
logical evidence that cancer comes into the body from outside;
everything we know supports the classical view that it is a local
autochthonous disease. Most of the experimental work with the
virus has started with an actual tumor, and it is therefore just possible
that an agent might be carried along through the whole series which
originated somewhere else than in a tumor. But experimental
sarcomas produced by embryo extract and indol, arsenic, or tar have
been transmitted by filtrates, and if others have failed to reproduce
Carrel’s results I would only remark that in a question like this one
positive experiment is worth more than a great many negative ones.
Epitheliomas are easily produced in mice by tar and in men by
chronic irritation, and if we believe that all malignant tumors contain
more or'less of a carcinogenic agent akin to the Rous virus, it follows
that we can with a considerable degree of certainty stimulate normal
tissues to produce virus. It is, therefore, not very remarkable that
Murphy, Leitch, and Brebner have at any rate occasionally demon-
strated a carcinogenic agent in preparations of normal tissues (testes,
pancreas, and embryo plus placental extract).
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Rous virus arises in
the tumor. There is no doubt that it is a means by which a tumor
may be experimentally dispersed through any number of available
animals, and it is apparently responsible for some, at any rate, of the
metastases which occur in the course of the natural disease. But
there is no evidence that such a virus ever naturally causes a fresh
tumor, and we learn the important lesson that the means by which a
disease is propagated may not be the same as that by which it was
originally started. .
This consideration becomes particularly interesting when we try to
bring a frankly infectious disease such as foot-and-mouth disease, mea-
sles, or smallpox into comparison. Brought up as we all have been in
the heyday of bacteriology, it is a little difficult for us to get an unprej-
udiced view of the situation. Because an agent is constantly asso-
ciated with and, as we believe, is the cause of a disease very similar
to others which we feel assured are caused by bacteria, we naturally
assume that its natural history is more or less similar to that of bac-
teria. We might have been in a better position to take a just view of
the facts if we had lived in prebacteriological days, or if we could put
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—BOYCOTT 339
on some of the complexion of Charles Creighton’s outlook and do our
best to imitate his learning and industry.
The chief way in which the virus of, e. g., foot-and-mouth disease
differs from the Rous agent, and, going, a step further back, from the
products of autolysis (or metabolism) which stimulate growth, is that
it seems to spread about pretty easily from one individual to another;
chiefly, I think, from the parallel of bacteria we take this to imply
the possibility of independent life and probably independent multi-
plication. But we have no direct evidence of this; all we know is
that, like the Rous agent, it can be deliberately dispersed through any
number of individuals indefinitely, and that it multiplies only when
and where it produces its specific effect. The blister which is deter-
mined on the foot of an inoculated guinea pig by slight local injury
is preeminently the place in the body where the virus is found in the
largest amount, and, trying to be as open-minded as we can, we must
allow that this may be due either to the lesion being produced where
the agent is present in greatest quantity, or to the agent being pro-
duced in greatest quantity where the lesion is. You may say that
if the guinea pig is inoculated with a filtrate, 1. e., with nothing but
virus, the lesion must be due to the virus. No doubt that is in a
general way true, but it does not follow that the whole of what we
call the lesion is due to the immediate and direct action of the virus.
Local effects at the site of inoculation (Gf they occur) prove nothing;
they may well be determined by the concomitant injury. Putting
aside all bacteriological analogy, we have no proof that the particles
of virus which we get out of the lesion are directly descended from
those we put in. In other words, we have to reopen the question
which most of us regard as settled: Is the agent the cause of the disease
or is the disease the cause of the agent? Another stupid antithesis,
for the alternatives are not mutually exclusive; both might be true.
From the time when Pasteur first began to persuade the world that
microorganisms might be something more important and effective
than microscopical curiosities, there have never been wanting noncon-
formists who have held that microbes were the result rather than the
cause of putrefaction, fermentation, and disease. It is very dif_fi-
cult—indeed, it seems impossible—to believe in this thesis in respect of
bacteria which can be shown to have an independent life by cultivation
and which can be inoculated into an animal with the production of a
definite disease (e. g., tuberculosis); the bacteria which we get out of
the experimental lesion may without undue credulity be supposed to
be the direct descendants of those which we have put in to produce it.
But, as Hamer and Crookshank remind us, we have quite possibly
gone too far in identifying a “‘disease”’ with its accompanying microbe
and ‘defining diseases in terms of what we believe to be their causative
agents. If it is sound to do this (as it’certainly appears to be) with
$2322—30——23
340 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
some epidemic diseases, it does not follow that the method can prop-
erly be applied to allof them. After all ‘‘similarity’’ between diseases
is hable to be superficial; most of the clinical symptoms of infections
are due to the reaction of the body, and on a priori grounds one
would expect resemblance between diseases of quite diverse etiology.
I conclude, therefore, that we have to admit the possibility that, as in
the Rous sarcoma, the viruses which we associate with certain
diseases are not their original causes though they may be the means by
which they are propagated and carried on.
You will probably say—and I think with a good deal of justifi-
cation—that it is contrary to all common sense to suggest seriously
that the viruses of diseases like smallpox, measles, or rabies arise
anew in each infected person. And it may indeed be nonsense. It
is evidently more conformable with our general experience and with
the epidemiological dogma to which we subscribe to lay stress on the
definite way in which each case can be traced to a preceding case and
that to another, and so on, explaining such examples of apparently
spontaneous origin as we meet with by carriers and the imperfections
of our data rather than by the concurrence of a favorable epidemic
constitution of the atmosphere. With that point of view I quite
agree; the evidence that in an epidemic something is passed on from
one case to the next seems extremely strong. But at the same time I
can not altogether get rid of the uneasy suspicions which intrude when
I think of, e. g., foot-and-mouth disease, distemper, or labial herpes.
Distemper seems to be everywhere where there are susceptible
animals, and if the stock of dogs at Mill Hill can be kept free from it
indefinitely it will be a point of much more than technical interest.
As to foot-and-mouth disease, in which no material connection be-
tween one outbreak and another can be discovered, I think that the
unbiased man in the street would say that the facts showed either that
the virus was universally dispersed, possibly in some common animal
(such as the hedgehog *) other than the cow, or that the disease was
continually beginning afresh. Labial herpes seems in much the same
position. Epidemics may be found by ransacking the literature but
they are certainly not common. Not only has herpes no connection
with itself but it has a definite association with other diseases—pneu-
monia and severe catarrhs; its possible relation to human encephalitis
does not help us—both are blind men. It is possible that the virus is
an offshoot from the pneumococcus, though when Perdrau looked for
it in pneumonic lungs he found instead another “‘agent’”’ which could
be transmitted through rabbits in series.
3 Mr. Charles Oldham tells me that at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century
churchwardens in Hertfordshire put as high a price (4d.) on the head of a hedgehog as on that of a polecat.
*“Urchins’”’ were supposed to do something to cows which diminished the yield of milk and this was trans-
lated into a belief, still extant, that they sucked the cow’s udders when they were lying down. Such ex-
penses were not lightly incurred in those days,
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—-BOYCOTT 341
I daresay, however, that some simple explanation will be found
for these epidemiological difficulties and that any suspicions that
we may have about the origin of these viruses will be allayed. Viruses
can remain dormant in live animals for a long time and carriers might
be activated by a variety of incidents. But what are we to make
of such a phenomenon as Virus III? Virus III is made manifest
by inoculating a filtrate of an emulsion of a rabbit’s testis into the
testis of another rabbit. Ths procedure is sometimes followed by
an inflammatory reaction and the production of intranuclear “bodies,”
and if this inflamed testis is emulsified and the filtrate inoculated
into another fresh rabbit the inflammatory condition is reproduced;
thereafter the ‘‘disease’’ can be carried on indefinitely. It is not
fatal, and after his attack has subsided a rabbit is refractory to
further inoculations and his blood serum can prevent infection with
active virus. If we knew nothing of bacteriology, should we not
conclude that the virus had been generated by our procedures from
the tissues of the normal testis? The only evidence to the contrary
is analogy, and the slender fact that the phenomenon comes off
more easily in New York than in London rabbits. I do not know
how many people have tried similar experiments with other appar-
ently normal tissues; if they had been positive we should certainly
have heard about them; Leitch’s, Brebner’s, and Murphy’s successes
with sarcoma have already been mentioned, and _bacteriolysins
transmissible in series have been extracted from normal organs.
It might be expected that what we know of immunity to these
viruses would throw some light on their origin and nature, but as a
matter of fact it does not seem to give us much help; as far as it goes,
it is perhaps against their autochthonous origin. Two points are
certainly clear. In susceptibility to reinoculation and in the neutral-
izing properties of the blood-serum, the immune reactions are at
least as sharply specific as they are with most bacteria; some viruses
show immunological races as bacteria do. The facts of natural
immunity are also very similar; a virus may affect one, two, or several
species of host and have special affinities for certain tissues. We
might use this analogy, and the general proposition that immune
reactions occur only if the antigen and the reacting animal are of
different species, to argue that viruses must come from outside the
affected animal, and to say, e. g., that if virus III originates from
rabbit tissues it ought not to stimulate a rabbit to an antiresponse
as it does. The argument seems to be rather a strong one, but it
is not conclusive. It is easy to suppose that the virus, whatever
its origin, would not have on it the stamp of complete rabbitness;
considering its size and its other peculiarities it would perhaps be
rather remarkable if it had. We know, too, now that the general
immunological rule about specific differences and specific identities
342 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
has many exceptions. The lens of the rabbit’s eye is antigenic to
the rabbit and in common with such preteids as casein and egg
albumin it is not species specific; a mother reacts to the blood cor-
puscles of her foetus if they happen to belong to a different blood
group; the development of one tar cancer makes all the rest ofa
mouse’s skin refractory to the development of another, though
whether the resistance is to the mouse’s own malignant tissues or
to a virus which has developed in them we do not know. One can
hardly, then, I think, be sure that a virus has an extraneous origin
because an animal treats it as an antigen.
Whatever filtrable virus we look at we meet with the same difficul-
ties. A good many people are willing to believe that the bacteriophage
is generated by its bacillus—which is probably the truth. And they
would explain the way in which each bacteriophage more or less fits its
own bacillus by its having originated from that bacillus. Others see in
their multiplicity evidence that bacteriophages are really live organ-
isms with the characteristic variability and adaptability. Itis perhaps
more than a coincidence that it is in another group of plants that the
same difficulty has arisen: the agents of plant mosaic diseases have
never been found apart from affected plants; they have not been
cultivated; no one can be sure whether there is one virus or many
viruses. lysozyme is another phenomenon about which one would
like to know more. It is widely distributed in animals and plants and
is abundant in egg white; withstands drying, alcohol, chloroform,
etc.; acts on dead as well as live bacteria, and would pass for an
enzyme were it not increased in amount by dissolving Micrococcus
lysodeikticus. Such multiplication during the exhibition of its activity
seems to connect it with the viruses, but Fleming says that it can not
be carried on by serial cultures.
If viruses do originate in tissue cells, what are we to imagine that
they are? Béchamp’s ghost would answer ‘“‘microzymes, as I told you
70 years ago.”” Altmann would say bioblasts, others micelle and even
mitochondria, and all the people who have imagined that cells are
made up of much smaller essential elementary live particles would see
in the present development the fulfillment of their prophecies. They
can not all have been exactly right; bioblasts are quite big, and mito-
chondria (which some have supposed to be symbiotic organisms) are
also visible, and not only to the elect. But it may well be that they
were making as shrewd guesses at the truth as Prout did when he
suggested that all elements were ultimately compounded of hydrogen.
Till Harrison did it we had not suspected that the cells of warm-blooded
animals could be cultivated in vitro. If they can live and multiply,
divorced from their proper community, is it altogether impossible that
parts of cells might have something of a separate existence also just as
electrons may operate apart from atoms? Granting that they might
FILTRABLE VIRUSES—BOYCOTT 343
why should they have such injurious effects? To which there are two
answers: First, we apprehend only such disembodied parts of cells as
produce some definite effect which we can observe, and, as it happens
we have perceived only those which do damage; second, believing as
the fundamental proposition of morbid anatomy that structure and
function go hand in hand, we should naturally expect such gross aber-
ration of structure to result in such a departure from the normal course
of function as, in this so nicely adapted world, would manifest itself
as injurious.
What to make of all this confused mass of facts and speculation I do
not know. We seem to have a fairly definite group of things which,
(a) are very small; (6) can multiply; (c) have no independent life; (d)
are of uncertain origin. Of their multiplication we know that the
association of live cells is necessary, and that it occurs when the specific
effect of the agent is manifested; we do not know that direct multipli-
cation is possible at all. Of their origin, we have strong grounds for
thinking that some are derived from live cells and we can not exclude
this ancestry for any of them. They seem, too, to form a series:
(1) The growth-promoting substances from tissues show indirect mul-
tiplication but make no other suggestion of life; (2) lysozyme would
pass for an enzyme except that it can multiply; (3) the Rous agent
and the bacteriophage arise repeatedly in malignant tumors and bac-
teria, respectively, and may be in some sense alive, but they are not
independent species of animals or plants; (4) the pathogenic viruses
represent a further step toward being wholly alive. Taking one thing
with another, I am inclined to think that they are both the cause and
the result of their diseases as Sanfelice suggested for epithelioma con-
tagiosum. Somehow or other a virus arises in an animal or plant and
by its action on the tissues causes them to produce more of itself. Some
viruses (e. g., smallpox) acquire a considerable capacity of spreading
from infected to normal individuals and the majority of cases of the
disease are so caused; the virus is on the way toward independence.
Others (e. g., herpes) have little or no power of dispersion and most
cases are due to the virus arising de novo under the appropriate stimu-
lus (whatever that may be). You may say that if that is so it is
strange that one case of herpes is so like another and that epidemic
virus diseases are so uniform in their characters and so “‘true to type.’
It is, indeed, rather curious, but the circumstances which lead to the
generation of a virus are presumably often repeating themselves, the
possibilities of parts of cells having a separate existence are very likely
limited, and after all the specific characters of infectious diseases are
not always very sharply defined. However, these are difficulties which
I am not prepared to solve; my object has been to ask questions rather
than to answer them.
I have made no attempt to acknowledge the many sources, printed
and verbal, from which I have derived facts and ideas.
Su. tay =
LASRIOT St
HERITABLE VARIATIONS, THEIR PRODUCTION BY
X RAYS AND THEIR RELATION TO EVOLUTION’!
By H. J. MULLER
University of Texas
Biological evolution is composed of a succession of individual vari-
ations, which, being heritable, become accumulated to form an in-
creasingly complex living fabric. The long-disputed questions con-
cerning the method of evolution can therefore be decided only through
a study of the mechanism whereby these individual variations are
produced. What is needed here is more precise and analytical data
regarding the nature of those differences which distinguish one gener-
ation of individuals from its predecessors, and which they in turn tend
to transmit as a heritage to their descendants. We must not remain
content to view evolution from afar, but must view close up, as through
a microscope, the transitions now occuring out of which the evolution-
ary story is pieced together. The science which essays this study is
““oenetics.””
THE FUNCTION OF THE GENE
During the present century genetics, building upon the earlier dis-
coveries of Mendel, has practically solved the problem of the method of
inheritance of the differences referred to, once they have arisen. All
modern genetic work converges to show that the heritable differences
between parent and offspring, between sister and sister, in fact between
any organisms which can be crossed, have their basis in differences in
minute self-reproducing bodies called the genes, located in the nucleus
of every cell. The genes themselves are too small to be separately
visible, but hundreds or thousands of them are linked together into
strings, and these strings of genes, together probably with some access-
ory material, are large enough to be seen through the microscope by
the cytologist; they constitute the sausage-shaped bodies called chro-
mosomes. We know that, ordinarily, each individual gene in a string
is different from every other gene in the same string, and has its own
distinctive réle to play in the incomparably complicated economy of
1 Based on an article in the Scientific Monthly, December, 1929; here printed by permission of that
ournal,
345
346 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the cell. Moreover, the genes in different chromosomes are different
from one another, except in the case of homologous or twin chromo-
somes, 7. e., the corresponding chromosomes which each cell of an
individual received from the father and from the mother of the indi-
vidual, respectively. To match each chromosome that was derived
from your father, every cell of you has in it also a similar chromo-
some (though not necessarily quite identical) derived from your
mother, so that it contains in all two complete sets of chromosomes
and hence two complete sets of genes. The proper functioning of the
cell during its life depends upon the proper cooperative functioning of
its thousands of different genes. One complete set of genes would
ordinarily be enough for this, but two sets are provided so that new
combinations of the characteristics of different ancestors may be tried
out.
Each given gene in the cell must of course have its own specific
chemical composition, differing from gene to gene, though there is, no
doubt, a chemical relationship between all genes. As yet, however,
we have no knowledge as to what the chemical composition of any
individual gene, or of genes as a group, is. Whatever it is, we can
not escape the fact that the different genes, through differing chemical
reactions with other substances in the cell, produce by-products
which have a very profound influence upon the properties of the pro-
toplasm. And through the combined influences of all the chemical
products of the thousands of different genes in a cell, meeting one an-
other in the common protoplasm and then interacting in devious ways
to form further products again, the exact form and physical and chem-
ical characteristics of all parts of the cell that contains those genes
will be determined, for any given set of outer conditions. Changing
conditions external to the cell will, of course, change the properties of
the protoplasm, too, but what form and behavior it can and will show
for a given set of outer conditions depends primarily upon what
genes it has. Since the body of a man or other animal, or a plant, is
made up of its cells, and the form and other properties of that body
depend upon the properties of these constituent cells—their form, the
way they fit together and work—it is evident that, less directly but
no less surely than in the case of the individual cells, the character-
istics of the whole body depend upon the nature of the genes in the
individual cells.
These individual cells of the body have, during the development of
the embryo, been derived from an original fertilized-egg cell, through
a succession of cell divisions in the course of each of which every
chromosome and every gene present in the dividing cell also divided
in half, one half of every chromosome and gene then entering one of the
two daughter cells and the other half entering the other daughter
cell. Between divisions the chromosomes and genes usually had a
HERITABLE VARIATIONS—-MULLER 347
chance to grow back to their original size. Thus it results that every
cell of the body has the same kinds and numbers of chromosomes and
genes as the fertilized egg had, and as every other cell in the body has.
The original two sets of genes of the fertilized egg—one set received
from the sperm of the father, the other similar set derived from
what the egg of the mother contained before fertilization—are still
both present in every cell of you. But these two sets of genes of the
fertilized egg were all, and more, that were needed to result in a
complete man. We see, then, that every single cell of you in the
skin, the brain, or anywhere else, contains the makings of a complete
man or woman, and that you are in this sense wrapped up within
yourself many trillion fold. Not each cell may grow up into an entire
man, of course, but must remain content to do its specialized share,
even though it has a full cargo of genes, because its structure and
activities are limited and regulated in various ways through the
mutual influences received from the other cells in the body. The
various cells of different organs developed differently from one another
because, though possessing the same genes, they found themselves in
different situations subject to different influences from the start.
Only the egg and sperm cells then may eventually realize anything
like their full potentialities.
All this explanation, somewhat off the main theme, will serve to
furnish some notion of how the characteristics, in fact the entire sub-
stance, of any human or other living being depend upon its genes,
acting in a chemically coordinated fashion. So complicated is the
manner in which the products of the different genes react with one
anothrr that no final product and no characteristic of the adult body
is due to any one specific gene, but in the production of every organ,
tissue, or characteristic, numerous genes take part. Nevertheless, if
one individual differs from another individual in regard to just one
of the genes that do take part, it will be seen that the given character-
istic in the two individuals will be different, and so, conversely, a differ-
ence between two individuals in regard to a certain characteristic,
let us say eye color, may be due to a difference between just two given
genes in them rather than other genes. We may then call these for
short the genes ‘“‘for brown” and “for blue” eyes, respectively, while
remembering that really in both individuals many other genes are
present also which are helping to produce the exact eye colorations
seen, but that these other genes happen to be alike in the two individ-
uals in question, and therefore are not causing this particular differ-
ence between this brown eye and this blue eye.
By studying the characteristics that appear among the descendants
in later generations, after individuals differing in regard to one or more
genes have crossed together, the definite Mendelian laws and the laws
of linkage, governing the handing down of genes from one generation
348 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
to another, have been determined, and they are found to have a practi-
cally universal validity. There is no use attempting here to formulate
in deta these rules and their working out. Most of modern genetics
has been occupied with tracing down these ‘“‘facts.’”’? They relate
essentially to the method of transmission, to later generations, of gene
differences that are already found to exist between individuals. They
show the universality of these differences, their comparative perman-
ence, and their recombining capabilities (as when a man derived, sev-
eral generations back, from a mixture of European and Indian blood
exhibits the coloration of the European and the broad face of the
Indian). But they leave untouched what now becomes the major
question—how do such differences originate in the first place? What
is the origin of variations?
THE FINDING THAT THE GENES MUTATE
A hitherto rather incidental, yet very important part of modern
genetics has had to do with this latter problem. It has been discovered
definitely that such differences do arise, de novo, asit were. That is,
not all the gene differences now existing in a population have existed
in it from the beginning. New differences are continually arising
somehow, and the differences now existing have undoubtedly arisen
in the past in a manner similar to these.
Each gene difference arises suddenly and full fledged, though we
may not be aware of it at once. Thus, in a population of gray-
colored mice, suddenly in a certain cell of one individual, one of the
genes whose cooperation is necessary for the production of the gray
color undergoes a change into a gene of different composition that
tends, in its interaction with the other genes for color, to produce
a yellow tinge instead of gray. In this single cell, however, the
change will not be observed by us. But if this cell, or one of the cells
derived from it, happens to be a germ cell, an offspring individual
may be formed in the next generation, all of whose cells may carry
this new gene. Then if the new gene is dominant (as it happens to
be in the case of yellow and gray in mice) to the old gene for gray
which the offspring has received from its other parent, the coat of the
new animal will be yellow, and we will see that a mutation has
occurred. But if the new gene had been recessive (i. ¢., ?/ the gray was
dominant) the offspring would have appeared gray like its parents
and we should not have been aware of the mutation. ‘The new gene
might persist none the less, and be inherited by generation after
eeneration in invisible fashion, being meanwhile ‘“‘dominated over”
by the gray from the other parent. If in a later generationtwo
descendants both of which cerried the mutated gene happened to
mate together, an egg with the yellow might become fertilized by a
sperm also carrying yellow, neither, therefore, carrying the dominant
HERITABLE VARIATIONS—MULLER 349
gray, and from such a union a visibly yellow offspring would emerge
for the first time. A mutation, when recessive, may accordingly
fail to manifest itself for many generations, or may never have a
chance to show itself at all, before the line of individuals carrying it
becomes extinguished. (It has been shown by Fisher that most
mutations must meet this mute inglorious fate.)
The new gene, once it has arisen, is ordinarily as stable as the old.
The change is definite and fixed, obviously of a chemical nature.
Once it has occurred we have a new mutant gene which will either
spread throughout the population or be killed off, according as the
individuals which carry it reproduce more offspring or fewer. The
effects of mutations are of course as varied as the gene differences
which are found to occur within populations, since these gene dif-
ferences originated by mutation. Some gene differences, some muta-
tions, produce large and startling effects, like growing a leg on a
fly’s forehead. Some affect the whole body in practically all its
parts, others change two or three characters, others apparently but
one. But the less conspicuous changes, the insignificant effects that
are easily overlooked, or that even, in many individuals, quite overlap
the normal type, seem at least as apt to occur as do the pyrotechnical
varieties. Hvidence is not lacking that physiological changes, and
changes that can only be detected physicochemically, are probably
as frequent as changes in visible structures, but geneticists have till
now had to have a predominantly morphological training, and anyhow,
the morphological is easier to see and deal with. It would be absurd
and scholastic to try to classify mutations according to the nature
of their effects. A mutation can do practically anything that life
can do—or at least a little of it, for life is built out of mutations.
THE RANDOMNESS OF MUTATIONS
The statement just made does not necessarily mean, however,
_ that the average mutation does very much in the furthering of life.
The vast majority of observed mutations are positively detrimental,
and handicap the individual less or more in the struggle for sur-
vival and reproduction. In fact, as Altenburg and I showed in some
studies on the fruit fly, Drosophila, in 1919, by far the greater number
of detectable mutations in it are actually lethal; their effect is to kill
the animal before it becomes adult (though of course their effect
may be prevented if they are recessive and if the dominant normal
gene has been received by the individual from its other parent).
Evidence is accumulating that the same situation probably holds
true in other forms of life. Now this is just what we should expect,
and did expect, on the basis of the theory that a mutation is a chemical
change in a gene, occurring at random, as it were, that is, without
reference to the effect that would be produced, a-teleologically,
350 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Suppose you prod the works of a watch at random—bring about some
alterations in ignorance of the effect it may have? Are you likely
to make it a better-running watch? A change, purely accidental in
this sense, wrought in any complicated organization, is more likely
to injure or wreck than to improve that organization for the specific
function (in the case of life, multiplication) which it subserves. But,
unless the organization has reached its absolute maximum of efficiency
already, there will still remain some changes, and therefore some
random changes, that will help. And so, occasionally, when your
watch has stopped or is running poorly, you may knook it, prod it,
or drop it, and find that, by the lucky replacement of a cog, or the
displacement of a sand grain, it starts up merrily again. We shall
return to this topic later. Meanwhile, we stand on our data: Despite
the staggering complexity of adaptation in living things, the vast
majority of mutations are, as is to be expected, antiadaptive.
It will not suffice, however, simply to call the changes “‘ accidental.”
An accident is something whose cause was independent of something
you are interested in, but every accident has its cause just the same.
And so we return again to our perennial question: What is the cause
of mutations? Evidently, we may now say, not any outer or inner
tendency toward perfection of the life force, but that does not help
us very much, scientifically. The mutations whose origination has
been known to geneticists have been on the whole very scattered and
sporadic, so that little of definite information could be obtained by
collecting these observations concerning the conditions which may
have been contributary to their occurrence. The trouble was that
mutations having a conspicuous visible effect are so very rare anyway
that one does not find enough in any one experiment to count. How-
ever, the very negativeness of this result, and the varied character of
the mutations as they did occur, suggested that their occurrence had
little or no relation to the ordinary variables of the environment.
Altenburg and I, in the work previously alluded to, undertook a
more systematic test of the possible effectiveness of temperature,
by using a technique by which we could count the occurrence of
lethal mutations, since we found these arose so much oftener as to be
countable. We obtained results indicating, though not proving, that
a rise in temperature causes a slight increase in mutation frequency,
just as it hastens chemical reactions. Though we now suspect that the
difference may really have been due to a slight difference in the amount
of radiation occurring in the two groups of cultures, warmer and cooler,
respectively, later evidence seemed to substantiate it. At best, the
result scarcely goes far enough to afford a workable handle for the
study of the phenomenon, since the numbers obtained even here are
so trifling in response to the great expenditure of technical effort nec-
essary. In addition to this work, efforts have been by no means
HERITABLE VARIATIONS—MULLER 351
lacking, on the part of numerous investigators, to find the cause,
or a cause, of visible mutations, by trying all sorts of maltreatments
in the attempt to produce such changes. In the course of this work,
animals and plants have been drugged, poisoned, intoxicated, ether-
ized, illuminated, kept in darkness, half smothered, painted inside and
out, whirled ’round and ’round, shaken violently, vaccinated, muti-
lated, educated, and treated with everything except affection, from
generation to generation. But their genes seemed to remain oblivious,
and they could not be distracted into making any obvious mistake in
the reproduction of daughter genes just like themselves. The new
genes were exact duplicates of the old ones, showing no demonstrable
mutations, or at most such a scattering few as might have occurred
anyhow.
Either the technique used for finding the mutations was inadequate,
or the treatments had little or no effect upon the composition of the
genes, or both, and I am inclined to think the latter is correct. And
yet mutations certainly do happen, even though rarely. In the
examination of over 20,000,000 fruit flies, not specially maltreated,
over 400 mutations have been found. These mutations must have
causes. What then can the causes be? What subtle conditions are
they, apparently so independent even of violent injury and of other
drastic and obvious changes in the physiological or pathological state
of the organism? In going over the data on mutational occurrences
in Drosophila the present writer reported in 1920 the finding of evi-
dence that in this fly, when a mutation occurred in a given gene of a
cell, not only did the hundreds or thousands of genes of other kinds in
that cell remain unchanged, but even the twin gene of the other set
in the same cell—i. e., the originally identical gene that the individual
had received from its other parent—remained unchanged also.
Here, then, are two genes of identical chemical composition, lying
very close to one another in the same cell—on the average less than
a thousandth of a millimeter apart—and one of them, but not its
duplicate, is caused to mutate. Neither do the identical genes in
neighboring cells mutate. Evidence for this same kind of occurrence
has been adduced in other organisms. Why do not the same cordi-
tions, acting on the same materials, produce everywhere the
same results? If events in this sphere are apparently so indeter-
ministic, is it any wonder that we could not in our previous trials,
by the application of definite conditions, produce definite mutational
results?
In view of these accumulating findings, the conclusion seemed to me
to become increasingly probable, not that mutations were causeless
or expressions of ‘‘the natural cussedness of things,” or of the devil,
but that, as Troland had suggested prior to the finding of this evidence,
they were not ordinarily due directly to gross or molar causes, but
302 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
must be regarded as the results of ultramicroscopic accidents—events
too far removed in fineness to be readily susceptible of any exact
control on our part. In other words, an appeal was made to the
newly found world of the little which the old-line biologist and phi-
losopher do not always take sufficiently into consideration.
The genes are not only protected by a cell membrane but by a
nuclear membrane inside of that, and possibly again by a chromosomal
envelope of some kind; they may be well shielded, therefore, from the
reach of many poisonous substances and unusual products of metabo-
lism. They can not, however, escape the interplay of the helter-
skelter molecular, atomic, and electronic motions that are continually
taking place both within and around them, on the part of the substances
of which they and their neighbor molecules are naturally composed.
Nor can they escape the buffeting action of the electromagnetic
stresses and strains occurring through space in the field in which they
lieimmersed. These various exchanges of energy are not, it is evident,
ordinarily consequential enough, or the energy is not directed in
sufficiently telling ways, so to distort a gene as to change its composi-
tion permanently. Occasionally, however, such a change does occur,
and subsequent generations tell the tale.
X RAYS A CAUSE OF MUTATIONS
If this general conception of mutation is valid we must regard it as
merely a kind of placing of the problem; we should not yet know just
which were ordinarily the critical processes concerned, still less the
exact steps involved. The conception carries with it, however,
suggestions for further experimental investigation. For among the
agents of an ultramicroscopically random character, that can strike
willy-nilly through living things, causing drastic atomic changes here
and passing everything by unaltered there—not a ten thousandth
of a millimeter away, there stand preeminently the X or y ray and its
accomplice, the speeding electron.
There is nothing in protoplasm which can effectually stop the pas-
sage of X rays or the related waves of shorter wave length—gamma
and cosmic rays. For the most part, in a cell, the rays will pass
through; but at isolated, unpredictable spots, depending upon
unknown “chance” details of energy configurations, a definite
portion, a “‘quantum”’ of the rays will be held up, and the energy thus
absorbed will issue forth in a hurtling electron, shot out of the atom
that stood in the way of the radiation. The atom will be changed
thereby, and hence the molecule in which it lies may undergo a change
in its chemical composition. But for every atom thus directly changed °
there are hundreds of other atoms changed indirectly. For the
electron, shot out like a bullet (except far faster), tears its path through
hundreds of atoms that happen to lie in its way, leaving in its wake a
HERITABLE VARIATIONS—-MULLER 353
trail of havoc before it is finally stopped. In this process, many of the
atoms through which the electron tears have one or more of their
own electrons torn out or dislodged from their proper places; this
change in the structure of the atoms often causes them to undergo
new chemical unions or disunions that in turn alter the composition of
the molecules in which the atoms lay. If a gene is a molecule, then,
with properties depending upon its chemical composition, it can be
shot and altered by the electrons resulting from the absorption of
X rays or rays of shorter wave length. The only question would be,
can enough mutations be caused in this way to be detectable by our
present methods with doses of rays small enough not to kill or steri-
lize the treated organism?
With these points in mind, the author undertook in the fall of 1926
a series of experiments designed to test the question at issue. The
fruit fly, Drosophila, was used since it is so easily and rapidly bred in
large numbers and since it rendered possible the employment of
special genetic technique for the finding of mutations, that had been
elaborated in the course of my previous work on linkage and mutation
in this organism. It would take us too far afield here to examine
this technique in detail. Stocks of flies had been made up containing
in given combinations certain genes with conspicuous effects which
would serve to notify the investigator that the chromosome under
consideration was present. On making given crosses of these stocks
with other stocks various combinations of characteristics would be
expected in the first and following generations. If flies with some
particular expected combination were, however, absent from a given
culture, it would mean that a mutation had occurred that had given
rise to a lethal gene—one that had killed the flies containing it before
they had a chance to hatch. By noting which combinations were
missing, it could be deduced what chromosome of the fly the lethal was
in, and at what place in the chromosome it lay. On the other hand,
mutant genes having visible instead of lethal effects would be detect-
able through the appearance of the visible variations, and these too
could be traced to their chromosome position through studies of the
nature and frequency of the combinations in which they appeared.
Mutant genes that were recessive to the normal type, however—and
most mutations are recessive—would not have a chance to be seen or
found until the second or third generation of offspring subsequent to
their origination. The reason why recessive mutations are not
evident at once has been explained previously.
In these experiments the adult flies—in some cases the males, in
other cases the females—were placed in gelatin capsules and subjected
to doses of X rays so strong as to produce partial sterility, though the
other functions of the flies are not noticeably disturbed by a dose
354 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
several times stronger than used here. The treated flies were then
bred to untreated mates, and at the same time numerous control
matings of the same genetic type were carried on for comparison,
consisting of untreated males crossed by untreated females. Thou-
sands of cultures were used in this and subsequent experiments, in
order, if possible, to settle the matter beyond any doubt.
The results in these experiments were startling and unequivocal.
To the toiling pilgrim after plodding through the long and weary
deserts of changelessness, here indeed was the promised land of
mutations. All types of mutations, large and small, ugly and beauti-
ful, burst upon the gaze. Fles with bulging eyes or with flat or
dented eyes, flies with white, purple, yellow, or brown eyes, or with
no eyes at all; flies with curly hair, with ruffled hair, with parted hair,
with fine and with coarse hair, and bald flies; flies with swollen
antenns, or extra antenne, or legs in place of antenne; flies with
broad wings, with narrow wings, with upturned wings, with down-
turned wings, with outstreched wings, with truncated wings, with
split wings, with spotted wings, with bloated wings, and with vir-
tually no wings at all. Big flies and little ones, dark ones and light
ones, active and sluggish ones, fertile and sterile ones, long-lived and
short-lived ones. Flies that preferred to stay on the ground, flies
that did not care about the light, flies that had a mixture of sex
characters, flies that were especially sensitive to warm weather.
They were a motley throng. Whathad happened? The roots of life—
the genes—had indeed been struck, and had yielded.
It must not be supposed that all the above types appeared congre-
gated together in one family. The vast majority of the offspring that
hatched still appeared quite normal, and it was only by raking through
our thousands of cultures that all these types were found. But what
a difference from the normal frequency of mutation, which is so pain-
fully low! By checking up with the small numbers of mutants found
in the numerous untreated or control cultures, which were bred in
parallel, it was found that the heaviest treatment had increased the
frequency of mutation about 150 times; that is, an increase of 15,000
per cent. ‘
SIMILARITY OF THE X RAY TO THE NATURAL MUTATIONS
These mutations were obviously of the same general nature as the
spontaneous mutations that occur without X-ray treatment. This
was shown by the fact that in many cases changes had been produced
which were undoubtedly identical with spontaneous variations which
had been found in the previous history of the Drosophila work; the
effects in these cases appeared identical in every particular and the
method of inheritance, the position of the gene concerned in the
chromosome was found to be the same. In fact, in the chromo-
HERITABLE VARIATIONS—MULLER 355
some which has been subjected to the most intensive study (the X-
chromosome) the majority of all the well-known mutations that had
previously been found by the dozen or so active investigators in the
course of 15 years, now were found to have arisen over again in the
cultures of X-rayed flies here. Besides these reappearances there were
of course many new types also, more new types than old, but it
should be remembered in this connection that new types are con-
tinually being found, though with far lesser frequency, in the untreated
material also.
The new types of mutations, like the old, conformed in their general
expression and mode of inheritance to certain general principles,
which I had previously observed to hold in the case of the mutations
occurring in untreated material. One of these principles was that the
great majority of the mutations of X ray as well as of natural origin
are recessive to the normal type, despite the presence of a rather small
minority of dominants. Thus the techniquej‘of in breeding through
a number of generations in order to find the mutations, was found to
be justified. It may be remarked here that if human beings are
affected by X rays in the same way as flies, we can not expect to find
much evidence of a mutational effect of X rays on them from data
derived only from the first, or even the first, second, and third human
generations, and such a negative result will therefore by no means
indicate a lack of significant genetic effect.
The second principle observed was that the X-ray mutations, like
the natural ones, included both inconspicuous as well as conspicuous
changes, changes of slight or almost impreceptible degree as well as
striking changes of structure or quality, and changes that registered
their effect, so far as could be determined, only in slight lowerings of
the general vitality, as well as those that were more graphically de-
seribable. If anything, the more easily overlooked effects were the
more frequent.
A third principle noted was that most of the X-ray mutations were
in some way detrimental to the animal in living its life—they were
steps in the wrong direction in the struggle for existence. This find-
ing has already been discussed in the case of the natural mutations,
and it has been explained that this is just what is to be expected, on the
whole, of changes that occur at random, accidentally, by ‘‘chance’””—
I care not what term you wish to use to describe the idea that they
occur without reference to their consequences, unadaptively, and
hence are more likely to be ‘“‘wrong” than ‘‘right”’ changes, just be-
cause there are more wrong roads than right roads to follow, and
because, as is well known, the right road is apt to be the narrower.
In the case of the X-ray mutations it is easily seen that, if the change
occurs as I have pictured it, it must occur accidentally, without refer-
ence to the possible advantage or disadvantage it would confer,
$2322—380——24
356 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
since the shooting electrons let loose by the X rays are coursing
helter-skelter through the cell, quite blindly, and are just as apt to
hit one gene as another, to strike it either on its left or its right side,
through its heart or its appendix, so to speak, and so will cause one
change or another indiscriminately. We have in the X-ray muta-
tions, then, a group of variations which seem necessarily to be random,
and hence would necessarily be mostly detrimental. In view of
this, it is interesting to compare with them in this respect the natural
mutations, and to note that, so far as our evidence goes, the natural
mutations have, on the average, every bit as much tendency to be
detrimental as the X-ray mutations have. The obvious conclusion
is that the natural mutations too are random changes, in the same
sense that the X-ray mutations are.
As in the studies on natural mutations, so too among our artificial
ones, the great majority were lethal—they killed the fly before it
ever hatched except where there was a normal gene from the other
parent to dominate over the lethal and save the fly’s life, so that it
could be bred and the transmission of the lethal studied. The changes
in wings, eyes, etc., previously mentioned were only the exceptional
visible changes, culled from out of a great mass of lethals. Thus,
although the great majority of the offspring of X-rayed flies that
lived looked normal, many of them carried, hidden by the domi-
nant normal gene, a recessive lethal gene. And if we count up all
these lethals we find that the majority of the offspring of heavily
X-rayed flies are not really normal in their genes after all, for some-
thing over 50 per cent of them contained some kind of lethal mutation
that would not work its destruction until a still later generation.
This, too, deserves being considered in its bearing on X-ray effects
in the case of human beings. Now, previous studies of Altenburg
and myself on natural mutations have shown that among them too,
although the total frequency of mutations is so much smaller, never-
theless the number of lethals is just as large, relatively to the number
of other, visible mutations which occur naturally, as it is among the
X-ray mutations. As the lethals differ from the others, after all,
merely in being more detrimental, this result simply means again
that natural mutations are just as apt to be very detrimental, 1. e.,
lethal, as are X-ray mutations, thus confirming what I have called
the “accidental” character of the natural mutations.
The descendants of the X-rayed flies have been bred through many
subsequent generations. It has been found that, where a gene was not
caused to mutate in the first place, it will not show a subsequent
tendency to mutate, without further treatment, i. e., there is no
perceptible after-effect on the genes that escaped an immediate hit.
On the other hand, those genes that were hit and mutated now breed
true to their new type, which in the great majority of cases gives
HERITABLE VARIATIONS—-MULLER 3 We
evidence of being as stable as the original type was before treatment.
We now have in the laboratory various mutant races of flies, derived
from our earlier X-ray experiments, which have passed through
something like 75 or more generations since the time the mutation
took place, and there has been no sign in them of any tendency to
revert back to the originally normal condition. They have their own,
new norm; they are real, new varieties. The new forms are perma-
nent, in so far as the word permanent may be applied legitimately to
living things. When crossed to other forms, the new differences obey
the same laws of Mendelian and chromosomal inheritance as do the
gene differences existing between natural varieties.
THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GENETIC EFFECT OF
RADIATION
It might perhaps be contended in some quarters that while the
artificial mutations may be similar in some respects to natural ones,
and even identical with some natural ones, yet they may not be
similar to those particular natural mutations which may be termed
‘‘progressive’’?; the mutant genes resulting from which survive,
multiply, and thus become a part of the heritage of an evolving species.
Such claiments would hold that the X-ray action is necessarily
destructive, causing only loss and injury, and that thus it can work
only harm, or at least can cause no indefinite amount of progress in
organization. Such a contention would rest upon a misconception of
the action of the X ray, for it can be shown that the speeding electron
is capable of imparting. energy to other atoms through which it goes,
and that the resulting chemical changes may be of a synthetic char-
acter as well as otherwise. However, since we can not analyze
chemically the real nature of the changes involved in the production of
mutations by X rays, empirical evidence on the question at issue is
called for, and that is what we have been trying to obtain.
It is evident, as my wife has suggested, that if the change induced by
X ray from, say, a gene designated as large A, to a mutant gene of
different composition, designated as small a, has really involved a
destructive process or a loss, then the opposite change, from small a to
large A, must, conversely, involve a constructive process or a gain,
With this question in mind, Prof. J. T. Patterson and I have been
engaged in some extensive irradiation experiments involving par-
ticular characters. The character which we have used most is the
recessive mutant character termed ‘‘forked bristles” (f) as compared
with the dominant normal straight bristles (F). The evidence is now
positive and convincing that the X rays not only induce the muta-
tion of straight bristles to the recessive forked, but also the precisely
opposite type of change, namely, forked bristles to the dominant
straight, and abundant controls have shown that it is really the X
358 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
rays which are the inducing agent. Similar but less extensive findings
have been made in the case of the mutant character called ‘‘scute”’
and its normal alternative, ‘‘nonscute.’’? The mutations arising as
a result of X-raying are, therefore, not merely destructive changes, not
merely losses. If some are losses, others, then, are gains. Doubtless,
as in the case of most chemical reactions, most mutations too are
changes involving substitutions and rearrangements, rather than mere
losses or gains.
It should be mentioned that, in addition to the changes in indivi-
dual genes which X rays bring about, they also cause—with consider-
able frequency, as Altenburg and I have shown—breakages of entire
chromosomes or strings of genes, accompanied by reattachments of
the broken-off fragments to different chromosomes or to the chromo-
some-remainder from which they were broken, at a point different
from that of before. The rearrangements of genes thus resulting
can be analyzed by breeding tests, and at the same time checked up
by studies of the chromosomes as seen through the microscope, an
undertaking which Dr. Painter and I have been cooperatively
engaged upon during the past two years. In this way we have
obtained light on the structure and behavior of the genes and chromo-
somes from a new angle, though space does not permit me to touch
upon these results now.’ There is evidence that such rearrangements
of chromosome parts, as well as mutations in individual genes, have
occurred during the course of natural evolution.
The question may now be raised, To what extent can all these
results be regarded as mere curiosities, effects confined to the mature
sperm-cells of the fruit fly, and of little significance elsewhere? In
this connection, it may first be pointed out that my results on the
fruit fly were promptly confirmed by Weinstein, working at Columbia
University, and later by others (Hanson, Patterson, Harris, Oliver)
at this laboratory, and more recently by Serebrovsky and his col-
leagues in Russia and by Doctor and Mrs. Timofeéff-Ressovsky in
Berlin. In my own work, the treatments were not confined to sperm
cells, but were also applied to the females, and it was found that
both the mature eggs and the immature female germ cells (oogonia)
were susceptible to the mutation effect. Harris has recently extended
the finding to the immature germ cells of the adult male. Patterson
has found that the early germ cells of both male and female larve
2 Since the above was written, two papers have appeared by Timofeéff-Ressovsky, describing various
cases of the induction, by X rays, of mutations in each of two opposite directions.
3 The production of such changes in chromosome structure by means of X rays has been confirmed by
Weinstein and later by Serebrovsky by means of breeding tests on Drosophila. By means of cytological
analysis, Goodspeed and Olson have found similar effects in tobacco, and so have Blakeslee and his asso-
ciatesin the Jimson weed. The work of the present author and his colleagues, in studying such changes
in Drosophila by means of breeding tests and cytological analysis combined, has recently been repeated
in an elaborate manner by Dobzhansky, with results that are for the most part in striking agreement with
those that had been announced by us.
HERITABLE VARIATIONS—-MULLER 359
are likewise susceptible, and also the larval somatic cells. The
latter finding, which has recently been announced also by Timofeéfl-
Ressovsky, opens up a whole realm of interesting possibilities in the
production of mutant areas of the adult body, derived from cells of
the treated embryo—such effects as might result, for instance, in an
individual with eyes of different colors, or with parts of the same eye
different. Casteel has been making an anatomical analysis of these
latter effects through microscopic sections of the eye. The produc-
tion of mutations by X rays is thus a general effect for Drosophila,
obtainable in all kinds of cells in that organism. What, now, of the
production of the effect on other organisms?
I need not, perhaps, remind the general reader of the fact that all
the principles of heredity so far discovered in the fruit fly—the favorite
experimental object of many modern geneticists—have proved appli-
cable to animals and plants in general. It is more to the point to
mention that investigators elsewhere, working on other organisms,
have now reported results of the same kind as those now in question.
Thus Stadler, at the University of Missouri, was independently
attempting to induce gene mutations in barley and in corn by means
of X rays and radium at the same time that I was doing my first
experiments along these lines on flies, and he has found indubitable
evidence of the production of gene mutations in monocotyledonous
plants by both of these means. Following my work on flies, P. W.
and A. R. Whiting have obtained positive results by the use of X rays
on wasps. Blakeslee, Buchholtz, and the others of this group have
a mass of interesting mutation results from X rays and radium applied
to the Jimson weed, Datura, that extend the findings concerning lethal
as well as visible mutations to dicotyledonous plants. With these so
widely separated bits of the living world sampled and all responding
positively, it is a reckless critic who still would cast a doubt as to the
probable generality of the phenomenon.
Radium rays, like X rays, produce mutations, as has been shown
by Hanson and by Stadler. This is because they, too, being short
wave length high-frequency electromagnetic waves of great energy
content, release high-speed electrons, and the cosmic rays, which are
still more extreme in these respects, and so release electrons of still
higher speed, must necessarily act likewise. For, as Hanson has
shown in experiments with radium, the number of mutations produced
depends simply on the number of electrons released and the speed and
distance they travel (i. e., the total energy of ionization), regardless of
the source of the electrons. Oliver too, in experiments with X rays
in our laboratory, has obtained evidence that the number of mutations
produced is directly proportional to the dosage of radiation used,
and Stadler’s work points in the same direction. This being true,
there being no evidence of a minimal or ‘‘threshold” dosage, we are
360 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
forced to conclude that the minute amounts of natural radiation
present almost everywhere in nature, most of it of terrestrial origin,
due to the radium and other radioactive substances on earth (some
inside the organism), and a smaller part of it of cosmic origin, appar-
ently derived from the diffuse and distant factories of matter—all this
natural radiation must be producing some mutations in the living
things on the earth. These mutations must be very scattered and
very infrequent in proportion to the total nonmutated population,
just because the amount of natural short wave length radiation is
very small in any given case, but, considering the extent of the earth
and the multiplicity of living things, the total number of mutations
so produced per year must be very considerable. It can, therefore,
scarcely be denied that in this factor we have found at least one of
the natural causes of mutation, and hence of evolution.
How important is this cause relatively? Is it the sole cause of
evolution? We do not yet know. Returning to the investigation
of the possible effectiveness of poisons and influences other than X
rays I have during the past two years tried out a number of drastic
treatments, using a refined genetic technique similar to that in the X-
ray experiments, which would have allowed of the detection of lethals
and other mutations with far greater ease, and therefore in greate1
abundance, than in the inconclusive experiments of the past. In-
cluded among the treatments were heavy doses of manganese and of
lead salts, which had been claimed by J. W. H. Harrison (on the
basis of what appeared to me genetically unconvincing data) to pro-
duce visible mutations in butterflies. There was also included a repe-
tition of the experiments recently reported by Morgan, Sturtevant,
and Bridges, who suspected that they had been able to cause visible
mutations in red-eyed flies by injuring their eyes with a hot needle, an
operation which was followed by a release of the optic pigment and its
distribution throughout the body.‘ Our trials of all these and other
agencies have given negative results, and it is becoming a question
where to stop.
On the other hand, it is true that other conditions, internal and per-
haps also external, accompanying the X-ray treatment, may somehow
affect the sensitivity of the cells to that treatment. Thus Stadler
finds that the sprouting cells of seedlings have mutations produced in
them in much greater abundance by a given dose of X rays, than the
dormant cells of seeds d », though some mutations are produced in both.
On the other hand, both Hanson and Harris, working independently,
find that the genes of growing immature germ cells are far less sensitive
to the mutating effect of radium or X rays than are the dormant
4 They announce that they have recently been elaborating upon this work by similar tests on flies with
other eye colors, and by artificial injection of substances derived from the eyes. Guyer, who originated
these methods in experiments with rabbits, had claimed positive results from them in his material.
HERITABLE VARIATIONS—MULLER 361
genes in mature spermatozoa. I find that the genes in the sperma-
tozoa of the adult male are also more sensitive than those in the germ
cells of the female, or than those in the germ cells of the larval male.
There seems to be more difference in their sensitivity to the gene-
rearranging effect of the rays than in their sensitivity to the transmut-
ing effect on individual genes. The activity of metabolism however,
varied by starving, and by feeding and mating the female, had no
perceptible influence in my experiments, and, as both Stadler and I
have found independently on barley and flies, respectively, extremes of
heat or cold applied at the time of treatment have little or no effect.
Thus the work on the physiology of mutation-production is opening
up, though as yet in a very empirical stage. And meanwhile, X rays
and their relatives remain the only prime cause of mutations yet
known. Whether radiation furnishes the exclusive motive power of
evolution can eventually be ascertained definitely, through pains-
taking quantitative determinations of the mutation frequencies
existing in the presence of measured minute amounts of radiation.
As stated in some previous publications from our laboratory, we have
experiments projected which we hope will test this question in flies.
Since, however, mutations in general bear all the earmarks of the
X-ray mutations, then, even if not all of them have actually been
produced by radiation, it seems legitimate to use the readily obtain-
able X-ray (radium, etc.) mutations as the handle by which to study
them. These X-ray mutations are certainly accidental, being produced
by ultramicroscopic events not individually controllable, that take
place without reference to the outcome or the advantage for the organ-
ism. The natural mutations—some of which we know must be due to
radiation—are on the average equally as detrimental, and are of thesame
general nature, so far as their effects are concerned, as the X-ray muta-
tions. Can we then escape the conclusion that they are accidental in
the same sense, and that specific mutations are therefore not dictated
by any ‘‘adaptive reactions” or other specific responses of the organ-
ism to climate, or to any other features of its mode of hfe?
Due, then, to the tremendously magnified effect which each tiny
gene can produce, through the processes of growth and development,
we have amolar indeterminism, in the origination of genetic variations,
resulting from an ultramicroscopic determinism. (We will not quarrel
here about whether or not a Heisenbergian “principle of uncertainty ”’
lies beneath the latter in turn.) But now ‘natural selection” sets
to work, weeding out the many disadvantageous mutants here, allow-
ing the multiplication of the few advantageous mutants there, until
again from all the maze of variants we have organization returning,
advancing, and so, as a statistical consequence, there results a kind of
higher molar determinism, finally governing many features of the
actual evolution of the species. Thus we are sometimes furnished
362 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
with such regular sequences of forms as seen in the gradual modifica-
tion of the horse’s foot, or in the shells of some mollusks, where a
knowledge of one part of the series enables us pretty closely to com-
pute the rest.
THE TASK AHEAD
The biologist should, however, not be content to stop with such gen-
eralities. The real problems of the generation of new living things
are only commencing to open up. The occurrence of the individual
variations, although ‘‘accidental”’’ in the sense previously explained,
nevertheless is subject to a mechanism, our knowledge of which is as
yet in its most elementary stage. Moreover, the biologist of broader
view realizes that there never has been any one objective in the course
of evolution, and that every creature, including man, is only on pro-
bation, and may eventually give way before another in which a more
advantageous succession of mutations happens to come along. The
vast majority of species, in fact, have perished along the way, and only
a relatively few survive, through change, to form the continuing
thread of life that branches out again.
Man, however, is now the first creature in the world to have this
advantage: he has reached some understanding of this process of
evolution in which he has hitherto been caught and blown about, and
with understanding there frequently comes some measure of control.
He can now produce mutations for the first time, and I have no doubt
he will soon experiment with this knowledge and in time by its means
greatly improve and alter the forms and functionings of those domes-
tic animals and plants which he has taken under his care. Look at
the motley shapes of flies that have been made in the laboratory and
you will more readily appreciate the possibilities thus presented.
Despite these advantages we are to-day almost as far as ever
from producing to order the exact mutations which we want. Enough,
for the plants and animals, simply to produce a great many mutations
and then take our choice, as nature has done in a far slower and more
halting fashion. But the research must go on. Man must eventu-
ally take his own fate into his own hands, biologically as well as other-
wise, and not be content to remain in his most essential respect, the
catspaw of natural forces, to be fashioned, played with, and cast
aside. If we have had a billion years of evolution behind us, and we
have advanced from something like an ameba to something like a
man, then in the many millions of years which are still in store for
our world why may we not be able to make a further great advance,
perhaps far greater even than this, because under our own increasingly
intelligent guidance?
SOCIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS '
By Heresert FriepMANN
Curator, Division of Birds, U. S. National Museum
If one were to enumerate the main features characteristic of birds,
the chances are that the habit of nest-building would be among the
first to be mentioned. This indicates in no uncertain fashion the
universality of this habit in this large group of vertebrates, and in
turn, this very universality immediately focuses our attention on
those relatively few species that neither build nests nor care for their
eggs or young. These birds lay their eggs in occupied nests of other
species, to whose care they are left, and because of this habit are,
for want of a better term, said to be parasitic. The habit is not true
parasitism in the real biological sense, and may be called social or
breeding parasitism. Few problems in the study of animal behavior
have aroused more interest for a longer period of time, and from
Aristotle to the present time there is an unbroken series of attempts to
explain the origin of this peculiar habit. In the early days of biological
science this question was limited to a single species, the well-known
European cuckoo, Cuculus conorus, and it was of this bird that
Aristotle wrote, ending his discourse with the cautious sentence,
‘People say that they have been eyewitnesses of these things.”
Since his time a great many individuals have also claimed to have
been eyewitnesses of these and similar things, but it is only within
the last century that accuracy and precision have been brought into
play in these observations and the facts separated from the interpre-
tations. Less than two centuries ago it was found that many cuckoos
in Asia were also parasitic, but the habit was still supposed to be
confined to the one family of birds.
In the early days of the last century it was discovered that the
cuckoos were not the only birds with parasitic breeding habits, and
that the cowbird of North America, Molothrus ater, a bird belonging
to an entirely different order, also exhibited this remarkable mode of
reproduction. Later, workers in southern South America found that
1 Reprinted by permission, with slight omissions, from The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. ILI, No,
4, December, 1928,
363
364 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
some of the neotropical cowbirds were likewise parasitic, and observers
in Africa announced that the habit was also found in some of the
honey guides. Quite recently a few of the African weaverbirds were
shown to be parasitic, and just a few years ago a South American
duck, Heteronetta atricapilla, was found to possess this habit as well.
At present, this manner of reproduction is known to occur in five
widely separated and distantly related families of birds—the cuckoos
(Cuculidae), the hang nests (Icteridae), to which group the cowbirds
belong, the weaverbirds (Ploceidae), the honey guides (Indicatoridae),
and the ducks (Anatidae). Of the cuckoos about 70 species are
known to be parasitic; of the hangnests, only the cowbirds and the
rice grackle, half a dozen species in all; of the weavers, only 3; of the
honey guides, all the species of whose breeding habits we have any
knowledge, less than half a dozen; and of the ducks, a single species.
The entire number of parasitic species forms but a mere handful out
of the thousands of kinds of birds known to science.
As the number of birds known to be parasitic increased, interest in
the subject increased accordingly, and an enormous literature grew
up around the problem. The number of theories brought forth to
account for the origin of the habit became almost as great as the num-
ber of writers on the subject. Before adding still another to the long
list of theories, we may at this point examine the evidence and ma-
terial available. In order to make the problem more approachable
we may limit it for the present to one group of birds—the cowbirds.
THE COWBIRDS
The term cowbirds as used in this paper includes the true cowbirds
(genera Agelaioides, Molothrus, and Tangavius) and the rice grackle
(Cassidiz). The latter is in reality nothing but a large edition of
Tangavius, although it is not generally called a cowbird. The genus
Agelaioides, restricted to Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil,
is the oldest and most primitive of the cowbirds. It contains two
closely related species, A. badius of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uru-
guay, and A. fringillarius, a pale representative form in eastern Brazil.
The former is the one that is now well known and will be called the
bay-winged cowbird in this paper. The genus Molothrus contains the
most typical cowbirds—three species with many races—M. rufo-
axillaris of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay; M. bonariensis of
South America from Patagonia to Panama; and M. ater of North
America, from the highlands of central Mexico to the region of Lake
Athabaska, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. M. rufo-azillaris
will be referred to as the screaming cowbird, M. bonariensis as the
shiny cowbird, and M. ater as the North American cowbird. The
genus Tangavius contains one species known in life and one known
only from four skins preserved in the American Museum of Natural
SOCIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS—-FRIEDMANN 365
History in New York and the Museum fiir Naturkunde in Berlin.
The former species is T. aeneus, the red-eyed cowbird, the latter is
T. armenti, Arment’s cowbird.
Before taking up the reproductive habits of the different species it
is necessary to form a mental picture of their phylogenetic relation-
ships, so that we shall be able to fit the habits into the genealogical
tree of the group. There is not space available here to present all
the evidence, of which there are several independent lines; a mere
diagrammatic outline will have to suffice.
3. Tangavius—Cassidiz.
1. A. badius—2. M. rufo-azillaris
3. M. bonariensis—M. ater.
This scheme of relationship is supported by geographical (distri-
butional) data, as well as by various lines of biological data such as
coloration, song, migration, and courtship display.
BREEDING HABITS OF THE COWBIRDS
The bay-winged cowbird is in every way the most primitive
species of the group and probably represents the original condition
of the ancestral cowbird stock. It is nonmigratory, and is strictly
monogamous. It winters in flocks, and early in spring the indi-
viduals leave the flock in pairs. There is no courtship display of
any sort. The pairs then wander about looking for old or empty
nests, but frequently fight with other birds for possession of occupied
nests, usually with the result that the bay wings succeed in ousting
the builders and usurp the nests, throwing out any eggs or young
that may happen to be present. The birds then breed in these
nests, taking care of their eggs and young as do ordinary birds.
If no old or occupied nests are available the birds build for them-
selves and construct very creditable nests, indicating that they still
possess the nest-building instinct but bring it into action only as a
last resource, when all other means fail them. However, even when
(as in most cases) they take over old nests, they do a certain amount
of nest building—repairing or adding to the lining, enlarging the
entrance in the case of domed nests, rearranging small twigs on the
outside, etc. Then, after the nests are renovated or completed, as
the case may be, the females lay their eggs, usually five in number,
and begin incubating, and rear their young as do most normal nesting
kinds of birds.
The screaming cowbird is apparently a direct evolutionary off-
spring of the bay-winged stock. In the adult stage the plumages
of the two species are very different, but the young (juvenal) birds
are exactly alike, both having the coloration of the bay-winged
cowbird. Like the bay wing, the screaming cowbird is nonmigra-
366 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
tory. It is, if anything, even more strictly monogamous, as it is
found in pairs all year round, even in the middle of the Argentine
winter. So closely are the members of each pair united to each other
that it is quite the exception to see a single individual at any time.
On a few occasions I have found single birds or groups of three, but
in an overwhelming majority of the cases the birds were in twos.
Like the bay-winged cowbird, it is a very late breeder, the season
for eggs being from December to the end of February for these
two species, whereas most small birds in Argentina breed from Sep-
tember to January, and the geographical and ecological ranges of
the two species are entirely coincident. The eggs and young of the
two are practically identical, but the eggs can-.be told apart with
considerable certainty by one who has studied them intently. The
screaming cowbird is, however, parasitic in its breeding habits and
confines its parasitic attentions to one species, the bay-winged
cowbird.
It is interesting to note, in passing, the ironical aspect of this
situation. As far as the available evidence indicates, the main
factor coincident with the late breeding of the bay-winged cowbird
is the abundance and availability of nests built and since deserted
by other species. In other words, there seems to be some correlation
between the apparent dislike for nest-building on the part of the
bay wing, and its late breeding season. By breeding late it avoids
the task of building. The screaming cowbird also is a late breeder
but is parasitic, and inasmuch as no other birds are breeding so late
in the season, the bay wing automatically becomes the chief, if not
the only, victim. In this way additional work devolves upon the
species that originally adopted a late laying season to avoid work.
The shiny cowbird is a far more widely ranging species than either
of the two already mentioned, and occurs from Patagonia to southern
Darien (Panama), while the bay-wing and the screaming cowbirds
are found only in the northern part of Argentina, Uruguay, southern
Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia. It is migratory in the southern part
of its range and is less monogamous than either of the other two species
found in South America. In general it tends toward monogamy, but
in localities where it is very numerous its sexual relations seem unable
to maintain themselves unchanged in the face of the pressure of popu-
lation numbers and the birds become more or less promiscuous, or
possibly polyandrous, in their mating habits. This species (and also
the screaming cowbird) has a very different type of courtship display
and song, differing in this respect from the most primitive species of
the group. The shiny cowbird presents a new feature, that of a
differential sex ratio, the males being much in excess of the females,
while in the first two species the sexes are about equal in numbers.
This excess of males almost seems a result of the parasitic habit, as it
SOGIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS—FRIEDMANN 367
allows for a numerical increase of the species without too great an
increase in egg-producing individuals. If too many eggs were pro-
duced, too few of the natural foster parents would be able to bring up
any of their own young and thereby provide an adequate supply of
victims for the succeeding seasons. The numerical status of the
parasite depends very largely on those of the common host species.
The shiny cowbird is an early-breeding species and is parasitic on a
great variety of small birds; in fact, almost all the small birds breeding
in the range of this cowbird are probably parasitized. Over 100
species have been found caring for its eggs or young.
The North American cowbird is very similar in its habits to the
shiny cowbird. In song, courtship display, relative number of the
sexes, sexual relations and lack of specificity of host species, the two
are very similar. However, the shiny cowbird has the parasitic
habit less well developed and wastes large quantities of its eggs, either
by laying them on the ground and leaving them there or by laying too
many eggs in one nest or in deserted nests, ete. The North American
bird is more efficient in the disposition of its eggs, and wastes relatively
very few of them. About two hundred species of small birds are
known to be parasitized by this cowbird.
The red-eyed cowbird represents another branch of the cowbird
tree and is more similar to the screaming cowbird than to any other.
It is parasitic on several species, usually birds of genera fairly closely
related to itself, such as Jcterus. The males somewhat outnumber the
females, and in general the relations of the sexes are similar to the
condition in the North American cowbird.
THE BREEDING AREA
One other topic demands our attention before we can piece together
the various bits of evidence offered by the different species of cowbirds.
This is the matter of the individual breeding area or territory. Howard
(32) has shown that normally each pair of birds establishes an individ-
ual breeding area within the confines of which they tolerate no others
of their own species. The size of the territory in most cases seems to
depend on the abundance and availability of food for the young.
As arule (in by far the greatest number of instances) the males establish
the territories and wait there for the arrival of the females. The
females then choose the exact site of the nest within the territories
of their respective mates. The establishment of the territory is
primarily the business of the male, and his main task during the early
part of the breeding season seems to be the defense and maintainance
of the territory. The territory seems more fundamental than the
nest in the complex of instincts of the male.
It follows that the sexual relations of the birds (i. e., monogamy
versus promiscuity, etc.) depend largely on their territorial relations,
368 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
and inasmuch as these two are intimately bound up with the mode of
reproduction, we may profitably examine the territorial situation in
the cowbirds.
In the bay-winged cowbird the problem is somewhat simpler than
in the others, as each pair has its nest and is thereby tied down to a
definite area. However, instead of the usual procedure, we find the
reverse is followed. The wintering flocks break up into pairs in the
spring, and the pairs of birds go about looking, not for territories, but
for nests. They will fight with the builders, if need be, to gain posses-
sion of the nest, or else will quietly occupy an uncontested one. Then
the territory is extended radially around the nest, instead of the nest
site being chosen within the territory as in normal birds.
This altered conception of the breeding territory manifests itself
in the defense of that territory. Instead of being the basic thing, the
area becomes secondary to the nest and its defense is correspondingly
weakened or lessened. This weakening of the defense opens an easy
path to a distorted type of sexual relations, such as promiscuity or
polyandry.
The territorial situation in the case of the next species, the screaming
cowbird, is of interest in that it presents a rather unusual state of
affairs, although superficially it seems quite ordinary. This species,
as already noted, pairs off early in the season but does not begin to
breed until nearly midsummer (January and February). Neverthe-
less, quite early in the spring it establishes its territories, often as
early as the first week in October. Sometimes the period elapsing
between the time of territorial establishment and the actual inception
of egg-laying amounts to two or even nearly three months. Yet
during all this time each pair maintains its particular sphere of influ-
ence. Pairs from adjacent territories do not join or mix promiscuously
although they do sometimes form temporary groups of four to six
birds in neutral feeding areas. Having no nests to care for or young
to provide with food, why should these birds establish territories and
stay in them day after day, sometimes for nearly a quarter of a year,
without making any use of them? One would hardly expect a non-
parasitic species endowed with strong, fully developed parental
instincts to limit its individual liberty of action for so long a time
merely in anticipation of, and preparation for, its reproductive
activities. The goldfinch of North America (Astragalinus tristis)
breeds at the same relative season (reversed) as the screaming cow-
bird, but the flocks of the former do not break up for pairing and
breeding purposes until about a month before egg-laying commences.
Furthermore, not only do they have to establish territories and procure
mates in this month but also to build nests, which the screaming
cowbird never does. The late breeding of the goldfinch is doubtless
an adaptation to seasonal food supply but in the screaming cowbird
SOCIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS—-FRIEDMANN 369
it seems an old habit phylogenetically derived from the ancestral
stock, of which the bay-winged species is the surviving member.
Food supply can not explain why the bay-wing and the present species
breed so late in the season, as the food of the young of both these
birds is the same as that of the young shiny cowbird, which is an early-
breeding bird. However, the bay-wing breeds late because it habit-
ually breeds in old nests of woodhewers (Anumbius and Synallazis)
and ovenbirds (Furnarius). Late in the season there are plenty of
these nests available, while earlier they are fewer in number, most
are occupied by the builders, and the cowbirds would have to fight for
them. The greater ease and certainty with which these nests could
be obtained later in the season probably was largely responsible for
the postponement of the breeding season in the bay-winged cowbird.
The present bird, the screaming cowbird, shows in several ways that
it is an offshoot from the bay-wing stock, and its habit of breeding
very late is doubtless due to a similar tardiness of reproductive season
in the stock from which it evolved.
DESERTION OF BREEDING TERRITORIES
The late breeding coupled with fairly early establishment of
“territories”? which remain unused for a considerable length of time
has brought about a very interesting condition in the screaming
cowbird, namely, not infrequent desertion of territories before egg
laying commences, with the subsequent establishment of new terri-
tories later as the reproductive urge becomes more imminent. In
this connection the following observations, taken from my book, are
of interest.
In Concepcién district, Tucum4n, Argentina, I watched several
pairs of screaming cowbirds whose territories were more or less
adjacent. As the season wore on I found that one pair forsook its
territory and disappeared. The male of this pair was identifiable
by an extreme harshness in his notes. He and his mate were well
nigh inseparable. I never saw either bird alone or more than a couple
of feet away from the other, even when feeding on neutral ground.
The desertion of this territory took place between the 22d and 24th
of November. On December 2 I was surprised to find the same male
securely established in a new territory about a mile away. With
him constantly was a female, just as before. Whether or not it was
the same female I could not say, but of the identity of the male I
had no doubt. The old territory of this male was occupied by a
new pair of birds four days after it was deserted by the first pair.
From this it would hardly seem possible that the ‘fitness’ of this
territory had in some way been lessened to the extent of causing
the original pair of tenants to desert it. It was possible that the
*
370 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
female of the original pair had died and the male had deserted on
that account. In order to test this I shot the females of three pairs
on three near-by, and, to me, well-known territories. In none of
these cases did the males desert; they remained and soon found other
mates. I can attribute this desertion to no cause other than the
diminishing potency of the territorial instinct with the passing of
time between the establishment and the utilization of the territory
in question. Another bit of evidence in this connection was gathered
at the height of the breeding season of the species (January) at Santa
Elena in Entre Rios, eastern Argentina. I was studying a bay-
winged cowbird’s nest, making daily notes of everything concerned
with it. On January 8, 1924, I noted that a pair of screaming cow-
birds flew into the tree in which the nest was and stayed around in
the near-by branches but were kept away from the nest by the bay
wings. Suddenly another pair of screaming cowbirds flew into the
tree and joined the first pair. A minute later the second pair (the
newly arrived birds) flew over to the nest and were chased back by
the bay-wings. They flew back to the first pair and a little while
later both pairs flew off together, screaming as they flew. It seemed
that in this case one of the two pairs of screaming cowbirds was
encroaching on a nest in the territory of the other. The birds being
strictly monogamous, only one pair would occur in any one territory,
and the other pair must have just recently come in. Screaming cow-
birds were not very plentiful in that district, and there was plenty
of land available for the other pair to use. There were also plenty of
bay wings scattered over the country. This looked as though the
second pair had not yet established themselves in a breeding terri-
tory although it was very late in the season. It is hardly possible
that this pair had not attempted to do so before; it seems likely that
they were birds that had deserted a territory and were not yet settled
in a new one.
POPULATION PRESSURE AS A MODIFIER OF BREEDING HABITS
In the case of the shiny cowbird, the numercial abundance of the
species usually modifies or hides the true state of affairs. The sexual
and territorial relations of this species are easily overridden by the
pressure of population, resulting in undue competition for breeding
areas. In this species the factors influencing the extent of the in-
dividual territories are not associated directly with the food supply,
but with the abundance of nests in which to deposit the eggs. The
denser the small-bird population, the smaller the territory of each
cowbird. Where the cowbirds are very abundant the territories as
such become almost impossible of definition and demarkation. The
results of a protracted study of this species indicate the following
iacts. In areas where the: birds. are not’extremely abundant, they
SOCIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS—-FRIEDMANN 371
pair off regularly and each pair has its own territory. In places
where the cowbird population is great, the birds still pair off, but
inasmuch as they make no pretense of protecting the territory other
individuals filter in, remain there a day or so and then pass on.
Consequently it is more usual to see several of these birds together
(with the males predominating in number) than to see them in groups
of twos. The following observations, taken from my book (23), will
illustrate this point. I watched a certain pair of shiny cowbirds,
whose territory I knew, every day for several weeks. The female
laid the first egg in a nest of a Chingolo song sparrow (Brachyspiza
capensis) on October 25.
I was surprised, however, to find that another female cowbird also laid in this
nest on the same date. It looked as though the male was constant in its territorial
relations but that females came and went promiscuously. However, in the next
few days I found that the same female had laid an egg in each of four chingolo
nests in this territory, including nest No.1. The eggs were laid at intervals of one
day, but at the same time, each day I kept finding eggs of other female cowbirds
in nests where they certainly were not the day before. Thus in nest 1 no less than
four different female cowbirds deposited one egg each, two of them removing (or
apparently removing) one of the eggs already in the nest. In nest No. 2, eggs
were deposited by two different cowbirds; nest No. 3 contained eggs of two
different cowbirds; nest No. 4 contained only 1 cowbird egg. Allin all I judged,
by the size, color, marking, and texture of the eggs as well as by the date of deposi-
tion that no less than six different females had deposited eggs in nests within the
limits of this particular territory. However, the important point is that one bird,
which I shall call the real mate of the male whose territory is under discussion,
laid an egg in each of the four nests, or four eggs in all, while of the other five
females using these nests, four laid but one egg apiece and the other laid two.
Furthermore the two eggs laid by the last bird were laid four days apart. This
means either that this particular female wandered about from one territory to
another or else that it laid during the interval in nests in this territory which I
never found.
Nevertheless, in spite of all this confusing data the total evidence leads me to
believe that the shiny cowbird is chiefly monogamous and each mated female
sticks to one territory but that both the sexual and territorial relations are so
weak as to be very easily modified or sometimes even destroyed by conditions,
particularly by the unnatural, increased density of cowbird population per given
area around cultivated districts. Of course this frequently results in what seems
to be sexual promiscuity and does destroy, in great measure, the ‘‘territory,”’ in
the sense that that particular area is no longer the domain of only one female but
has become the happy hunting grounds of all that may care to make use of it.
The same is largely true for the North American species, Molothrus ater.
One more point needs to be discussed here. The males outnumber the females
to the same extent as they doin M. ater of North America—about 3 males to every
2 females. Assuming that every breeding female has a mate and but one mate,
there would be still one-third of the males without mates and consequently with-
out any means of satisfying their sexual desires. If several males having no
“territories” or ‘‘spheres of influence” joined in the pursuit of the same female,
disaster to the race would undoubtedly ensue. But each male (except in the case
of the yearling birds that begin breeding very late) has his own territory and there
he awaits the coming of a mate. The greater the number of cowbirds to a given
82322—30-——25
ole ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
area, the greater is the competition for territories with the result that the terri-
tories are smaller than elsewhere where the cowbirds are fewer. The smaller each
territory the less assurance a female has of a requisite number of nests in which to
lay, and so what probably bappens is this: After utilizing all the available nests in
the territory of any one male she passes on to that of the next. If that territory is
already occupied by a female, the newcomer finds the available nest supply inade-
quate and passes on still further afield. Often she may leave an egg or even two in
a certain territory before passing on. Inasmuch as there are at least 50 per cent
more males than females, it means that after each female has exhausted the
“territory ’’ of her particular male she still has half as much more coming to her in
other pldces. This arrangement not only gives all the females a fairly equal
chance to lay the maximum number of eggs but it also brings about a state of
affairs wherein cach male can find satisfaction in the appeasement of its sexual
desire. However, this state of affairs can hardly be called polyandry for, although
in the course of a season each female may have several mates, she has only one at
a time and only onein aterritory. Most monogamous birds change mates with
each brood and yet no one would call the females polyandrous, the males pelyg-
amous, or the species promiscuous. In the cowbirds, if the birds were originally
more than one brooded, the broods have been merged in adaptation to the
parasitic habit. One would be more justified in calling the males polygamous as
they have intercourse with some of the wandering females while still mated
themselves. Yet the male does not leave his territory to collect a harem but
takes what comes his way, and not having any concept of parental instinct can
hardly be accused of polygamy. There is a great difference between this and a
nonparasitic species wherein the male has a paternal interest in two nests simul-
taneously.
In fact if the females did not wander further afield after exhausting the possibili-
ties of the territories of their respective mates, at least one-third of the males
would not be able to appease their sexua! desires without forsaking their territories
and intruding into those of other males. The loyalty of each male to his territory
is not to be thought of as ‘‘virtuous”’ in any way [Yor the biology of ‘‘ virtue” see
any of the pseudo-scientific sentimental nature writers], but is due to the fact that
he would have nothing to gain by wandering.
So then, it seems that the shiny cowbird is monogamous, under normal con-
ditions, but where artificial conditions have caused a great, unnatural increase of
the species, the inherent instinct is not strong enough to stand unmodified against
the increased competition, and frequently is modified so extensively as to belie its
original status.
The sexual and territorial relations in the North American cowbird
are practically the same as in the preceding species, except that they
are usually less violently modified, as the birds are not so crowded.
In a general way this is also true of the red-eyed cowbird, but in the
latter species the numbers are usually low enough so that the birds
have sufficiently large territories to avoid competition, and monogamy
is more easily observed. it is only fair to say that less is known of the
habits of this species than of any of the others, but for our purposes
it is relatively unimportant, as it is off the main line of cowbird
descent.
HOW DID THE PARASITIC HABIT COME ABOUT?
Before utilizing the above data in the formulation of an explanatory
theory it may be well to present and comment on the leading current
SOCIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS——FRIEDMANN 3(3
hypotheses. The first to be considered is that the source of the
parasitic habit is to be sought in the polyandrous condition which all
parasitic birds were supposed to exhibit. Pycraft (40) and Fulton
(24) are among the best known exponents of this view. While it is
possible (though not probable) that some parasitic cuckoos may be
polyandrous, the cowbirds are certainly more or less monogamous,
and such promiscuity as occurs is more likely to be a result than a
cause of the parasitic habit. Vidua macroura, a parasitic African
weaverbird is also monogamous, and Chance (13) writes of the
European cuckoo that “* * * whether cuckoos are polygamous,
polyandrous, or promiscuous is a very open question. I am inclined
to the beef that they are, at least often, promiscuous. I should not,
however, lightly dismiss the theory that some pair as normal birds
* * *” Fulton admits that the question of polyandry and para-
sitism is all in a circle and that it ishard tosay which came first. He
inclines to the view that polyandry causes parasitism. In the cow-
birds the circle is still open and there can be no question that parasit-
ism is not caused by polyandry.
The best theory advanced as yet, and one which my studies tend to
support in part, at least, is that of Prof. F. H. Herrick. This writer
studied the cyclical instincts of birds and found that not infrequently
the cycle is interrupted by various causes which result in a general
lack of harmony between its successive parts. He suggested that the
parasitic habit may have originated from a lack of attunement of the
egg-laying and the nest-building instincts which resulted in the eggs
being ready for disposition before a nest was ready for them. His
theory was based largely on a study of the black-billed cuckoo,
Coccyzus erythrophthalmus, and a comparison of its life history with
that of the European cuckoo, Cuculus canorus, which, of course, is
parasitic, while the former is not.
He found that of all the perturbations which are apt to arise at
almost any step in the cyclical sequence of instincts the commonest
was a failure in the “‘adjustment of nest building to the time of egg
laying,” and it was at this point that he suggested the parasitic habit
took its rise.
“The door is thus opened wide to parasitism in its initial stage,
whenever the acceleration of egg laying or the retardation of the
building instinct becomes common, with or without irregularity in
the egg-laying intervals.’’ He applied this idea to both the cuckoos
and the cowbirds and probably would have extended it to cover the
parasitic weavers and honey-guides as well had he known of them at
the time. He writes that ‘‘Parasitism could never succeed as a
general practice on a large scale, and the facc that it is a specialty of
two families of birds shows that it is probably correlated with a
peculiarity which they possess in common. This is to be found in a
374 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
change in the rhythms of the reproductive activities, leading to a
change of instincts * * *. As to the ‘why of this problem’
that is, why has the normal rhythm of the reproductive cycle been
disturbed * * * nothing is certainly known * * *.”’ (Her-
rick, 30),
The first writer to see that one explanation would not serve for
all the different groups of parasitic birds was G. M. Allen. In the
chapter on parasitic birds in his admirable book (1) he discusses all
the parasitic groups in a general way and ends by saying that one
must be prepared to find that the parasitic habit has been acquired
in more than one way, and independently in the different groups
exhibiting this habit. Wisely refraining from offering an explanation
of parasitism, he suggests several ‘‘possible ways of origin.”” One
of the possibilities is that parasitism may have arisen from the
occasional laying of eggs in strange nests by birds that are very
sensitive to the ovarian stimulus provided by the sight of a nest
with eggs resembling their own. This is substantiated by experi-
mental evidence collected by Craig, who found that in doves ovula-
tion could be induced by comparable stimuli. In the case of the
flicker [Colaptes auratus] ‘“ * * * the presence of a nest egg
seems to encourage them to keep on laying as if to attain a number
whose contact stimulus would satisfy the brooding instinct. It may
be that in the case of those ducks whose eggs seem so often to be
laid promiscuously in nests of their neighbors, the mere sight of a
nest with eggs resembling their own may act as a stimulus inducing
them to add to the number” (1). Chance’s field observations on the
European cuckoo are more or less in accord with this idea as he believes
that the sight of her victims building their nests acts as a stimulus to
ovulation so that the female parasite has an egg ready to be laid five
or six days later. This is also true of some of the cowbirds.
However, I can not agree with this suggestion as a possible origin
of the parasitic habit unless it be accompanied or preceded by a
marked reduction in the attachment of the bird to its own nest.
Even if the sight of eggs in strange nests stimulated egg production
in a bird that was not parasitic, its natural instincts would associate
the resulting eggs with its own nest and the bird would probably
lay them there, unless, as I said above, its attachment to its nest
were greatly diminished. Then, too, after it has laid the proper
number of eggs, ‘‘whose contact stimulus would satisfy’’ its brooding
instinct, it would normally begin to incubate and stop laying. If
its nest attachment were subnormal in strength, the bird might then
wander about to some extent and, on receiving more visual stimuli
might revert to egg-laying. However in such a case, its own eggs
would have a lessened chance of survival.
SOCIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS—-FRIEDMANN 375
Another possibility suggested is that if a bird got into the habit
of breeding in old nests of other birds, 1t would be easy
* * * to imagine that the bird might not discriminate between a newly
completed nest and one recently abandoned. The result would be that if the
intruder laid in the new nest, its rightful owners would resent the intrusion and
prevent the repetition of the act, even though they had themselves to bring up
the unwelcome addition. It is likely, too, that the greater abundance of new
than of deserted nests would favor the frequency of such mistakes until the para-
sitic habit would have become established.
This suggestion seems well founded and possesses the virtue of
being simple. However, even in this case, the actual origin of the
parasitic habit is not explained. A possible method of evolution of
the parasitic habit is suggested but no indication is given as to why
the birds, if repulsed at a new nest, do not continue nest hunting until
they find an unoccupied one. Furthermore, birds that breed in old
nests of other species do not normally lay the first egg on the same
day that they first occupy the nest, but usually the possession of a
nest seems to provide the stimulus necessary for egg production.
From this it follows that if a bird of such breeding habits did try to
occupy a new nest it would either be repulsed by the owners before it
had a chance to lay, or by the time it did lay an egg, the owners
would have forsaken the nest, leaving the new occupant to care for its
egos, Just as if it had originally gone to an old nest to breed.
In order to explain the origin of the parasitic habit we must first
decide whether it is the result of a change from a normal nesting habit
or whether it is a phylogenetically original one. Ali the evidence
derived from a study not only of the cowbirds, but of birds in general,
points unmistakably to the conclusion that parasitism is an acquired
habit and not an original one. It is inconceivable to think of a long
line of parasitic birds having no origin in normal nesting types.
Again, for the evidence behind this statement I must refer the reader
to my book (23) as space does not permit of its inclusion here. It seems
entirely safe and justifiable, then, to assume that parasitism was not
the original condition in the cowbird stock. The problem, then, is
not whether the cowbirds were or were not always parasitic, but how
they lost their original habits and acquired their present ones.
LOSS OF PROTECTING INSTINCTS AS A FACTOR IN THE ORIGIN
OF PARASITISM
To quote again from my book:
We have seen that all five species of cowbirds establish breeding territories and
that the distinctness or the definiteness of the territory is most pronounced in the
most primitive, nonparasitic, bay wing, while it is least definite, and at times,
almost imaginary, in the shiny cowbird and the North American Molothrus. In
the bay wing, and its offshoot, the screaming cowbird, the birds are practically
always strictly monogamous and only one pair is to be found in a given territory.
376 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
In the other two species, where the parasitic habits are better developed, the
territories are distinct chiefly in districts where the species are not abnormally
numerous; but where they are unnaturally abundant, the territorial instincts are
not strong enough to stand unmodified against the pressure of cowbird population.
Distinctness of terrritory depends on the amount of what may be called ‘territorial
protection” displayed by the male. In most birds the male establishes a breeding,
territory and protects it from the inroads of other males of its own species.
The female sometimes has this instinct as well. In the parasitic cowbirds we
see that the birds have still retained the territorial desire but have lost most of
the instinet to protect their breeding areas. The original factor involved in this
loss is the reversal of the usual method of territoriai acquisition in the most primi-
tive of the cowbirds. We have seen that birds, usually the males, establish their
territories, and then choose a nesting site somewhere within that territory. The
bay-winged cowbirds, however, reverse this process. They leave the winter flocks
in pairs and, instead of staking out their ‘‘claims’’ they look for old or even new
nests in which to breed. They fight for these nests if necessary, and when once
in occupation, they extend the territory radially around the nest. In this way
the territory, instead of being the primary consideration, becomes 2 matter of
only secondary importance and with this reduction of its significance, the instinct
to defend it is correspondingly lessened. In this way the amount of “territorial
protection”’ displayed by the male is decreased and in the more recent, parasitic
species, where the protecting instincts are further reduced, the territory of any
one male is very apt to be invaded by other males of its own species.
Furthermore, in the bay-winged cowbird, we have seen that the female has lost
most of her protecting instinct and seems to spend most of what she has before lay-
ing her eggs, after which the eggs are largely dependent on the male for protection.
The female is always quite bold and fearless when away from the nest, but very
shy and nervous when incubating. Apparently she has the instinct to conceal her
eggs in anest, usually not of her own building, but has very little desire to protect
them once they are laid. If not for the protection of the male (and very fearless
he is), she would probably be unable to care for her eggs, and if the male should
lose his protecting instinct the result would be that the female would have the
instinet to lay (or conceal) her eggs in nests but not to care for them (or protect
them). This would open an easy path to parasitism. If we reexamine the habits
and instincts of other cowbirds we find that this 1s exectly what has happened.
The males have lost their protecting instincts and we find that the loss is more com-
plete in M. ater and M. bonariensis than in M. rufo-azillaris. The very fact that
we still find these somewhat obscure, but yet real, stages in the loss of the protect-
ing instincts, only serves to emphasize the downward path these instincts have
taken. So then, it may be said that the immediate cause of the origin of the para-
sitic habit in the cowbirds was the loss of the protecting instinct of the male. The
fact that the female, still earlier in the history of the group, lost most of her pro-
tecting instincts can not be called a causitive factor because as long as the male
retained his instincts of defense, as in the bay-winged cowbird to-day, the birds
were not parasitic. What caused the almost complete loss of these instincts in the
male we can not definitely say, but the factor which started the weakening, and
finally brought about their destruction was the reversal of the territorial and nest-
ing habits. When the territory became of only secondary importance the impulse
to protect it was correspondingly weakened. At the risk of seeming paradoxical
it might almost be said that the fact that the ancestral cowbirds cared more about
the nest than the territory had much to do with the origin of the parasitic habit.
The complex of reproductive instincts became unbalanced and eventually collapsed.
In other words, the birds were more interested in a secondary than a primary
consideration with the result that the former suffered much more than the latter
SOCIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS-—FRIEDMANN 377
Fortunately we have a clue to the way in which the male lost his protecting
instinct. In order to fully appreciate its significance it is necessary to digress for
a moment and consider the evolution of the screaming cowbird from the bay-wing
stock. As already indicated in a previous section the screaming cowbird is obvi-
ously 2 direct offshoot of the stock of which the bay-winged cowbird is the living
example. The range of the screzming cowbird is wholly contained within that of
the bay wing and in general the habitat or type of country occupied by the two
species is the same. I always found both species in the same type of environment.
It seems then that there could have been no geographical or ecological isolation
in this case to preserve and differentiate the budding form which in its present
state we call the screaming cowbird. Consequently the isolation necessary to
preserve the distinctness of the newly arisen species must have been physiological.
The physiological isolation was probably that of differential breeding seasons.
Probably the original rufo-azillaris was an early breeding bird (badzus is a later
breeder). Although rufo-azillaris to-day is a late breeder, the facts that its court-
ship season comes early in the spring, and that it establishes its territories very
early, point to the conclusion that it once was an early breeding bird as bonariensis
and ater are to-day. Inasmuch as the bay wing is nonparasitic and inasmuch as
the screaming cowbird is a direct offshoot of this stock, it seems probable that
originally the latter species was also nonparasitic. In other words, the change
between the normal and the parasitic mode of reproduction occurred within the
racial history of M. rufo-azillaris. Assuming that in most ways the original habits
of the screaming cowbird were similar to those of the bay wing, we should expect
that the birds tried to breed in nests of ovenbirds, wood hewers, etc., but tried to
do so early in the season. As elsewhere indicated, the struggle for nests is much
greater early in the season than later on, and the screaming cowbird, handicapped
hereditarily by a weakened territorial instinct, probably could not succeed in this
struggle. We have seen that sometimes screaming cowbirds establish territories
in the spring, occupy them for considerable periods, and then desert them with-
out ever having utilized them. This indicates very strongly that the weakened
territorial instinct of the male is often insufficient to maintain its influence long
enough to ‘‘make connections”? with the somewhat more vernal development of
the egg-laying instincts of the female. In this lack of attunement between the
territorial instincts of the male and the egg-laying instincts of the female the para-
sitic habit probably had its origin. This lack of attunement seems to have been
caused by the diminution of the protecting territorial instincts of the male and
this diminution seems in turn to have been started by the reversal of the territorial
and nest-building instincts in the stock from which the screaming cowbird evolved.
So much, then, for the cowbirds. In the other groups of parasitic
birds, other factors seem to have been instrumental in bringing about
the parasitic breeding habit. Too little is definitely known of their
biology to attempt an explanation, but probably the habit arose dif-
ferently in each of the five families containing parasitic species.
HOST SPECIFICITY IN THE CUCKOOS
In the cuckoos, we have one clue which indicates that territory had
little to do with the inception of parasitism. This is furnished by
the peculiar feature of host specificity shown by some of the species,
especially in Europe and Asia, but to a lesser extent in Africa and
Australia as well. In the classic case of the European cuckoo,
Cuculus canorus canorus, it is now well established that generally each
378 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
female deposits all her eggs in nests of a single species. That is, one
cuckoo may parasitize only meadow pipits, another may lay its eggs
only in nests of hedge sparrows, while still another may victimize
reed warblers exclusively. Each individual has its own particular
species of victim to which it generally limits its attention. The
species Cuculus canorus canorus lays its eggs in the nests of a great
number of different kinds of birds, but each individual tends to use
the nest of but one kind. The parasitic habit in Cuculus canorus
canorus may therefore be said to be characterized by indiwidual host
specificity. In the Indo-Malayan region there are a great many
genera and species of parasitic cuckoos, some of which have carried
this specificity to an extreme with the result that the great majority
if not all, of the eggs are laid in nests of a single species or group of
allied species. Thus the Indian koel, Hudynamis honorata, lays its
eges wholly in nests of crows and jays. In British India it victimizes
the Indian crow, Corvus splendens, and the jungle crow, Corvus
macrorhynchus; in Burma it foists its eggs upon the Burmese crow,
Corvus insolens, and the Burmese jay, Pica sericea; in southern China
the victim is the starling, Graculipica nigricollis. In large districts
in its range practically all the individual koels victimize the same
species of bird. In other words, within each of these districts the
individual host specificity of each individual koel is the same as that of
every other one, and taking into consideration the entire range of the
species the number of host species is so small and the species so closely
related that the individual host specificities of all the koels are very
similar. The parasitic habit in Hudynamis honorata may therefore be
said to be characterized by specific host specificity.
The development of specific from individual host specificity may
readily be accounted for by natural selection operating under con-
ditions which would tend to emphasize the value of small differences.
Thus, in the case of Hudynamis honorata the bird (and its egg) is too
large to be successful with small fosterers. The crows are everywhere
common and their nests open and plainly visible and the birds (and
their eggs) fairly close in size to the koels. An abundant, accessible
group of species being everywhere available, the individual koels
having crows as their individually specific hosts would rapidly increase
and gradually eliminate their less successful fellows that depended on
more precarious and more uncertain specific hosts. In time the entire
membership of the species Hudynamis honorata would be composed of
individuals parasitic on crows.
During the course of my field work in Africa I found that the various
parasitic cuckoos were ecologically isolated from each other to a
very considerable extent, i. e., one species lived in dense forest, an-
other in open country, and among species of different genera living in
the same type of country, one species restricted its parasitism to open,
SUCIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS—-FRIEDMANN 379
arboreal nests, while others laid only in domed nests either in low
trees, or on the ground. The ecological factors affecting the ranges
and habitats of the various parasitic cuckoos necessarily limit the
number of host species available to each species of cuckoo. In the
tropics the number of species and of individual birds is very large and
the resulting struggle for existence more intense than in the more
lenient regions to the north and south. As a result of the keeness of
the competition we find that similarity in habits survives side by side
where those habits do not affect the samespecies. Thatis,ahabitsuch
as the parasitic one could survive far more easily in many species in
the same region if they did not conflict with each other than if all
were parasitic on the same group of host species. So then, in the
bushveldt of Africa we find that the little golden cuckoos, Lampro-
morpha, victimize weaver birds, grass warblers, and a few other
types of birds, chiefly limiting their attention to the weavers and
Oisticolas. Most (almost all) of their victims build domed or covered
nests, some of them on the ground. In the same districts we find
that the crested cuckoos, Clamator, confine their visitations to open,
arboreal nests such as the golden cuckoos never molest. However,
with a fair number of species to choose from there is no environmental
reason why a certain individual parasite should further limit its range
of activities by tending toward extreme host specificity. It is not
of any particular obvious benefit to the parasite to be still further
restricted in this way.
The only way to arrive at a proper understanding of the way in
which host specificities might have begun is to study individual birds
as well as species. In working on the reproductive habits of birds one
of the first things to be determined is the extent and definiteness of
the individual breeding territories. Chance and others have done
this for the European cuckoo, Cuculus canorus canorus, with splendid
results. In the case of the African species of parasitic cuckoos I
found that all of them establish definite breeding territories to which
they adhere during the egg-laying season. The males of some species,
such as Lampromorpha caprius, Chrysococcyx cupreus, and Cuculus
solitarius, are very faithful to their territories. The breeding territory
in the case of a parasitic bird is based not upon a sufficiency of food
for the young but upon an adequacy of nests for the eggs. As stated
above the small golden cuckoos parasitize weaver birds (Ploceus,
Hyphantornis, Otyphantes, etc.) very frequently. A great many
species of these weavers are arboreal and build their nests in large
colonies, often as many as a hundred or more nests in a single tree.
I found that in several cases a pair of didric cuckoos, Lampromorpha
caprius, had established their territories around trees containing
colonies of weavers and in at least four cases the territories were
entirely restricted to single trees. These weaver colonies very seldom
380 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
contain more than a single species of weaver, at least in my experience.
in such cases the individual cuckoos, by restricting their territories to
single trees, automatically limit their parasitism to single species.
These weaver colonies are very common all over the African continent
south of the Sahara and the didric cuckoos are also common and wide-
spread. Therefore it seems very likely that individual host specific-
ities are being formed in many individual cuckoos in the way just
mentioned.
It is impossible to imagine any cuckoo as originally going around
the countryside, inspecting various kinds of nests, making notes of
the dietetics of the different species, and then repairing to its favorite
perch to cogitate upon its researches and finally decide to limit itself
to any one of them. Specificities must have originated without
premeditation and survived because they were convenient. The
fact that not all parasitic cuckoos are specific indicates that some
never went through any such experience as the didric cuckoo is sub-
ject to. Host specificity is decidedly convenient to a didric cuckoo
fortunate enough to have within its territory a whole colony of suit-
able nests. Their territorial instincts of defense, like those of most
parasitic species, are faulty and if they had to wander far afield in
their search for nests the chances are they would not be able to keep
any territory for themselves. That is what seems to have taken
place in the Indian koel, Hudynamis honorata. In this species indi-
vidual territories as such seem nonexistent any more. Baker (5)
writes that the koel, ‘‘“* * * sets all cuckoo laws in defiance;
many birds breed in the same area and even in the same tree; and
as many as 11 have been taken together.”’
The important point in all this for our immediate purpose is that
the development of host specificities seems to depend on the strict
adherence to individual breeding areas. This indicates that with
the development of the parasitic habit in the cuckoos there was no
coincidental diminution of the reality of the territory such as we
find in the cowbirds.
The evolution of the habit in different groups of birds in widely
separated parts of the world is one of the most notable examples
of parallel development in the great group of birds.
LIST OF LITERATURE
(1) ALLEN, GLoveR M. 1925. Birds and their attributes. Pp. 198-216.
(2) AUDUBON, JoHN JAMES. 1842. Birds of America, Vol. 4, pp. 18-22.
(3) Banger, E. C. Stuart. 1907. The odlogy of Indian parasitic cuckoos,
pts. 1, 2,3. Journ. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., Vol. 17, pp. 72-83, 351-374,
678-696.
1913. The evolution of adaptation in parasitic cuckoos’ eggs.
Ibis, 10th series, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 384-398.
(4)
SOCIAL PARASITISM IN BIRDS—-FRIEDMANN 381
(5) Baker, E.C. 1922. Cuckoos; some theories about the birds and their
eggs. Bull. Brit. Orn. Club, celxvii, Vol. 42, pp. 93-112.
1923. Cuckoos’ eggs and evolution. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond.,
Vol. 19, pp. 277-295.
(7) Batpamus, E. 1853. Neue Beitrige zur Fortpflanzungsgeschichte des
europaischen Kueckuks. Naumania, Vol. 3, p. 307.
(8) Barrett, C. L. 1906. The origin and development of the parasitical
habits in Cuculidae. Emu, Vol. 6, pp. 55-60.
(9) Barrows, W. B. 1883. Birds of the lower Uruguay. Bull. Nut. Orn.
Club, Vol. 8, pp. 133-134.
(10) BenpireE, Cnaries E. 1893. The cowbirds. Rep. U. S. Nat. Mus.,
pp. 587-624.
(11) Cuancr, Epcar P. 1916. Observations on the cuckoo. Brit. Birds,
Vol. 12, No. 8, pp. 182-184.
(6)
(12) . 1919. Observations on the cuckoo. Brit. Birds, Vol. 18, No. 4,
pp. 90-95.
(13) 1922. The Cuckoo’s secret.
(14) Cours, Exnurorr. 1874. Birds of the Northwest: A handbook of the
ornithology of the region drained by the Missouri River and its tribu-
taries. Dept. of the Inierior, U. S. Geol. Surv. Terr. Mise. Pubi. No. 3,
pp. 164, 180-186.
(15) Crare, W. 1913. The stimulus and the inhibition of ovulation in birds
and mammals. Journ. Animal Behavior, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 215-221.
(16) Evans, A. H. 1922. Notes on the life history of Cuculus canorus, with
exhibition of eggs. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., Vol. pt. 1, pp. 197-199.
(17) FrrepmMann, Herpert. 1925. Notes on the birds observed in the lower
Rio Grande Valley of Texas during May, 1924. Auk, Vol. 42, No. 4,
pp. 5387-554.
(18) —. 1927. Testicular asymmetry and sex ratio in birds. Biol. Bull.,
Vol. 52, No. 3, pp. 197-207.
(19) —. 1927. Notes on some Argentine birds. Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool.,
Vol. 68, No. 4, pp. 220-227.
(20) 1927. A revision of the classification of the cowbirds. Auk, Vol.
44, No. 4, pp. 495-507.
(21) . 1927. A case of apparently adaptive acceleration of embryonic
growth rate in birds. Biol. Bull., Vol. 53, No. 5, pp. 343-345.
(22) 1928. The origin of host specificity in the parasitic habit in the
Cuculidae. Auk, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 33-38.
(23) 1929. The Cowbirds: A study in the biology of social parasitism.
C. C. Thomas Co., Springfield, Il.
(24) Futon, Rospert. 1903. The kohoperoa or koekoea, long-tailed cuckoo,
(Urodynamis taitensis): An account of its habits, etc., etc. Trans. New
Zealand Inst., Vol. 36, pp. 113-148.
(25) Guocger, C. W. L. 1854. Das geschlechtliche Erhaltniss bei den nicht
selbst brutenden Végeln. Journ. f. Ornith., Vol. 2, pp. 137-143.
(26) GRINNELL, JosePH. 1909. A new cowbird of the genus Molothrus, with a
note on the probable genetic relationship of the North American forms.
Univ. Calif. Pub. Zool., Vol. 5, pp. 275-281.
(27) Herrick, Francis Hoparr. 1907. Analysis of cyclical instincts of birds.
Science, Vol. 25, p. 725.
1907. The blending and overlap of instincts. Science, Vol. 25,
p. 781.
29)
1910. Instinct and intelligence in birds. Pop. Sci. Monthly, pp.
532-558, 82-97, 122-141
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Herrick, Francis Hopart. 1910. Life and behavior of the cuckoo.
Journ. Exp. Zool., Vol. 9, pp. 171-2338.
. 1911. Nests and nest-building in birds. Journ. Animal Behavior,
Vol. 1, pp. 159-162, 244-277, 336-373.
Howarp, H. Exrot. 1920. Territory in bird life.
Hupson, Witt1aM Henry. 1920. Birds of La Plata, Vol. 1, pp. 69-115.
JourpaAIn, F. C. R. 1925. A study of parasitism in the cuckoo. Proc.
Zool. Soe. London, pp. 639-667.
LEVERKUAN, PAuL. 1891. Fremde Hier im Nest, Kin Beitrag zur Biologie
der Vogel. pp. 1-4.
Lors, JAcguEs. 1918. Forced movements, tropisms, and animal conduct.
Chap. 18, pp. 156-164.
MEIKELJOHN, R. F. 1917. Some reflections on the breeding habits of the
cuckoo (Cuculus canorus). Ibis, 10th series, Vol. 5, pp. 186-223.
Miuuer, Leo. 1917. Field notes on Molothrus. Bull. Am. Mus. Nat.
Hist., 1917, pp. 579-592.
PEARL, RayMOND. 1914. Studies on the physiology of reproduction in the
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Bull 50, U. S. Nat. Mus., pp. 202-212.
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HOW INSECTS FLY
By R. E. Snoperass
Bureau of Entomology, United States Department of Agriculture
A particular interest attaches to the study of the wings of insects,
because, in some respects, they act more after the manner of human
inventions for aerial locomotion than do the wings of any other flying
creature. Though man has never been successful in equipping him-
self with wings, and has largely given up the hope of acquiring them,
he has succeeded in making machines that will fly; and, whether his
craft is lighter than air or heavier than air, its driving mechanism is
a set of rotating blades, the nearest counterparts of which in the
animal world are the rapidly whirring wings of certain insects.
It is impossible, however, to draw any close comparison between
the structure of man-made machines and that of animal mechanisms.
There are fundamental principles of physics, or of mechanics, or,
rather there are fundamental truths of nature, which physicists have
discovered and mechanics make use of, that give the possibility of
locomotion both to animals and to machines; but the means by
which these principles have been employed may differ widely. Man’s
chief idea for producing motion, by other means than his own or
another creature’s muscles, is to make something turn around. The
windmill, the water wheel, the engine wheel, the propeller, all depend
for their effect on continuous rotary movement of one part on another.
The animal, by the very nature of its structure, is debarred from the
use of separate elements in its motor devices, the parts of its body are
continuous and can be merely flexible on one another; at best, there-
fore, they can attain only a partial rotary movement. The source
of intrinsic movement in animals is always a contractile tissue, in
most cases a muscle. But a muscle pulls in only one direction; it
does not expand except as it is opposed by some other force acting in
the opposite direction. Hence, muscles usually occur in antagonistic
pairs. In insects, however, the counteraction against muscle contrac-
tion is often produced by elasticity in the skeletal element to which
the muscle is attached. The mechanical principle employed in nearly
all animal mechanisms, therefore, is that of the lever without other
elaborations. Hydraulics, however, plays an important part in the
movements of the alimentary canal, and in the locomotion of soft-
bodied animals.
383
384 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The wings of insects are organs swi generis, which is to say, there is
nothing else exactly like them. In fact, it may be claimed that insects
are the only animals that possess true wings. The wings of a bird,
or the wings of a bat are merely the fore legs of the animal made over
for purposes of flying; the flying fishes glide through the air on their
pectoral fins, but these organs also are the fore limbs, which were
modified primarily for swimming; the flying mammals are equipped
with folds of skin along the sides of the body, which enable them to
extend their leaps from one tree to another, but such dermal expan-
sions are parachutes rather than organs of true flight.
I, THE ORIGIN OF INSECT WINGS
Insects are among the oldest of all animals that have living repre-
sentatives on the earth to-day. Their earliest fossil remains that have
been found occur in the rocks of the geologic period commonly known
as the Carboniferous, which, according to present methods of calcu-
lating past time, may have been laid down as long ago as 300,000,000
years. Mammals, birds, and flewering plants did not then exist, and
such reptiles and amphibians as were contemporaneous with the
Carboniferous insects were quite different creatures from their
modern relatives. Vegetation, however, was abundant, and there
were forests of tall trees, though both the trees and the plants of the
undergrowth had more the appearance of ferns than of any of our
modern kinds of plants, except the few species directly descended from
Carboniferous ancestors. The Carboniferous forests flourished prin-
cipally in swampy districts and around the edges of lagoons, where, as
a result of the subsidence of the land, masses of sodden débris and
fallen tree trunks accumulated through long ages, and have produced
most of our present deposits of coal.
The conditions of the Carboniferous swamp forests were favorable
to two classes of insects, namely, insects adapted to living in the forests
themselves, and others adapted to unhindered flight over open
stretches of water. A review of the known Carboniferous insects
shows that these two types actually predominated, or almost exclu-
sively made up the insect fauna of the forests and swamps of that
time. The insects of the first class consisted principally of roaches
(fig. 1); those of the second class comprise dragon flies, May fly like
insects, and insects of an extinct group known as the Paleodicty-
optera (fig. 2 A). It is very doubtful, however, that the insects
known from the Carboniferous rocks represent anything like the
variety of insect forms that existed at the time these rocks were laid
down, for there were large areas of open country on both continents
where many species may have flourished whose remains have not been
preserved.
HOW INSECTS FLY—-SNODGRASS 385
The remarkable thing about the Carboniferous insects is not that
they existed in great abundance at so remote a period, but that they
differed comparatively little from modern insects. Of course, ento-
FicurE 1.—Carboniferous roaches. A, Asemoblatta mazona (fromm Handlirsch after
Scudder); B, Phylloblatia carbonaria (from Handlirsch)
mologists find many characters that separate the Paleodictyoptera
and their associates from their modern relatives, but the distinctive
features have to do mostly with details of the wing venation. All the
FIGURE 2.—Paleozoic insects with paranotal lobes (pnl) on the prothorax. A, Stenodictya lobata,
one of the Paleodictyoptera (from Brongniart); B, Lemmatophora typica, a primitive stone fly
(from Tillyard)
Carboniferous insects so far discovered had two pairs of well-developed
wings, the structure of which is so nearly like that of the wings of
present-day insects that only a specialist would discover the dif-
386 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
ferences. In bodily form and structure there was nothing to dis-
tinguish a Carboniferous insect from one of its modern descendants;
the oldest species known had a head, a thorax, and an abdomen, with
four wings and six legs carried by the thorax.
One important conclusion, therefore, that we must draw from a
study of the Carboniferous insects is that they do not by any means
represent the primitive ancestors of insects. Having already fully
developed wings, the Carboniferous insects themselves must have been
evolved during millions of years preceding their time from wingless
forms of which we have no record. Any attempt to explain the genesis
of insect wings, then, must be purely con-
jectural, but we may arrive at a fairly sat-
isfactory conclusion concerning their origin
by a study of the wings themselves and the
thoracic segments that support them. In
one feature, however, some of the ancient
insects do give us a slight clew to the pos-
sible nature of the primitive wings, as we
shall see presently.
The wings of all modern insects are car-
ried by the second and third segments of
the thorax. Strueturally they are flat out-
growths of the lateral edges of the back
plates of these segments. In their develop-
ment they begin as flat pads or pouchlike
outgrowths of the body wall, the two layers
of which eventually come together and form |
the upper and lower surfaces of the mature
wing. Semitubular thickenings of the op-
posed surfaces give rise to the veins. The
canals of the veins represent, therefore, the
remnants of the original wing cavity, and
FIoURE 3.—A suggestion of the pos: they contain the trachee, nerves, and blood
sible structure of a primitive in- of the wings.
Fe aie tev aa Among the Carboniferous insects there
of the back plates of the thoracic gre frequently found species which have
rae a pair of small, flat lobes resembling the
developing wing pads, which extend laterally from the margins of the
firstsegment of the thorax, or prothorax. (Fig.2A,B,pni.) These pro-
thoracic lobes suggest, therefore, that the wings have been evolved from
similar lobes on the mesothorax and metathorax. There is no evidence
to suggest the improbable view that insects ever had three pairs of
fully developed wings used for flight; but we may assume that three
pairs of flaps, or paranotal lobes as they have been termed, forming a
series of overlapping plates on each side of the thorax (fig. 3),
HOW INSECTS FLY—-SNODGRASS 387
could have served some important function. The idea that comes
most easily to the imagination is that the fanlike extensions of the
body wall constituted a glider apparatus, enabling its possessor to
sail downward from elevated positions, or perhaps from one elevation
to another, as do the modern fiying squirrels with their parachute-
like folds of skin stretched between the legs on the sides of the body.
Something of the possibilities of a sailing or gliding insect may be
demonstrated with a model cut from a piece of thin cardboard ac-
cording to the pattern of Figure 4, and given a proper ballast by
attaching a weight beneath. When passively released from any altitude
the cardboard model drops straight down; when
given a forward impulse, however, it can be
made to sail downward with a graceful for-
ward glide extending a distance varying with
the height from which it is projected. The
ballast is most important; it may be a crum-
pled piece of sheet lead held on with a pin or
thread, but it must have just a certain weight,
determined by clipping it down to the most
effective size, and it must be attached beneath
a point near the center of the thorax.
From the performance of this model we may
conclude that two conditions are essential to
make gliding possible, aside from the posses-
sion of aglider apparatus. The first condition
demands that the center of gravity be in the
region of the body supporting the glider lobes;
the second, that the creature must have the
ability to project itself into the air. We would
draw the inference, therefore, that insects
equipped with glider lobes, if the lobes were
confined to the thorax, had slender abdomens
and carried the weight of their viscera more FI602£ 4 Outline of a mode
A i A that can be made, when prop-
evenly distributed in the body than do many _ erly ballasted, to show some-
of the more specialized insects of the present ide SUE anise Baa
time, and furthermore, that the gliding in-
sects had well-developed legs which enabled them to run swiftly off
the end of a support, or to launch themselves into the air by a
vigorous leap. Many of the modern grasshoppers do not depart
far from this primitive mode of flight, except in that they combine
an excellent pair of saltatorial legs with a pair of expansive sails that
can perform also, in a weak manner, as organs of true flight.
The question always arises, or is deliberately brought up to embar-
rass every speculation in evolution, as to how organs could have been
82322—30-——-26
388 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
evolved in their earlier stages when they were too small to serve any
specific function; and if we can not answer this question it is taken to
invalidate the assumption implied by the theory. Certainly, para-
notal lobes on the thorax could not have had any locomotory function
until they were large enough to serve as gliders. And yet, many
modern insects have lateral extensions of the back plate of the
prothorax, such as occur frequently in the beetles, which appear to
be of no particular use to their possessors, and in some species of
mantids the back plate of the prothorax is expanded into a large, flat
shield. (Fig.5.) Utility probably guides the course of an organ’s
evolution, but it does not necessarily determine its inception. Speci-
fic structures may develop for no practical reason at all. Some writers
have supposed that the paranotal lobes of insects served first as gills
ae we for breathing in the water but this
theory must assume that insects had
an aquatic stage in their phylogeny, of
which there is no evidence.
There are existing to-day certain
small insects, known as the Apterygota
because they not only lack wings but
they contain no evidence in their body
structure of being descended from
winged ancestors. They are appar-
ently direct descendants of the un-
known, primitive, wingless progenitors
of all the insects. Indirectly the Ap-
terygota furnish evidence of the evolu-
‘ \ tion of wings in the winged insects, or
Fictre 5A mantis from Ecuador with Fterygota, from paranotal lobes. The
large lateral extensions of the back plate Pterygota are characterized by a special
of the prothorax é 3
type of structure in the plates forming
the lateral, or pleural, walls of the thoracic segments, the pleural struc-
ture being essentially the same in the wingless prothorax as in the two
wing-bearing segments. In the Apterygota the corresponding plates
are quite different from those of the winged insects, and differ much in
the several apterygote families. We must conclude, therefore, that
the peculiar structure of the pleural walls of the thoracic segments in
the Pterygota, and their basic uniformity in the three segments of the
thorax means that the walls of these segments once served a common
purpose. This purpose evidently was the support of a pair of para-
notal lobes on each thoracic segment. (Fig. 6.) The lack of pleural
plates in the lateral walls of the abdominal segments similar to those
of the thorax suggests that paranotal lobes of the abdomen, if present,
never reached a size of functional importance.
HOW INSECTS FLY
SNODGRASS 389
Il. STRUCTURE OF THE WINGS
It is a long way from immovable paranotal lobes to fully devel-
oped wings capable of sustained flight. In the first step toward the
status of wings, the paranotal lobes of insects had simultaneously to
become flexible at their bases and to acquire a motor mechanism
that would impart to them the movements necessary in organs of
flight. Flight, it must be observed, is not to be accomplished by a
mere up-and-down flapping of a pair of flat appendages; as will be
explained later, in order to generate forward motion, wings must be
capable not only of movements in a vertical direction, but also of
some degree of anterior and posterior movement accompanied by a
partial rotation on their long axes. The mechanism of an insect’s
wings, therefore, must be such as to produce at least the movements
necessary for progression in the air. Insects that fly most efficiently,
however, have evolved an apparatus capable also of controlled
flight, of sidewise
flight, of rearward
flight, and of hover-
ing. Finally, to this
equipment most in-
sects have added a
special mechanism
for folding the wings
horizontally over the
body when not in FIGURE 6.—Theoretical, diagrammatic cross section through a thoracic
use. segment of a hypothetical insect with paranotal, or glider, lobes in
: : place of wings. DMcl, Dorsal longitudinal, intersegmental muscles;
Winged insects L, base of leg; Pi, pleuron; pnl, paranotal lobe; S, sternum
may be divided in-
to those that keep the wings extended straight out at the sides when at
rest, or which merely close them vertically over the back, and those that
fold the wings horizontally over the body. Among modern insects, the
first group is represented by the dragon flies (figs. 7,8) and the May flies
(fig.9); the second includes most of the other insects. Inthe Paleozoic
era, the insects that did not fold the wings included the dragon flies and
May flies of that time, and also the members of the Paleodictyoptera,
so far as can be judged from their fossil remains. These insects were
inhabitants of the open, watery spaces, and probably used their legs
principally for perching; they had no occasion for crawling about in
places where spread wings would be an encumbrance to their move-
ments. Their general habits were evidently similar to those of the
modern May flies and dragon flies, and in their younger stages they
probably lived in the water as do at present the members of these two
groups of insects. The ancient insects that folded their wings hori-
zontally over the back when not in use included the roaches and
390 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
various forms that appear to be representative of several other
modern orders of wing-folding insects. The roaches at least were
inhabitants of the forests, adapted to living in the matted vegeta-
tional débris of the forest floor, on the scaly-barked trees, or between
the bases of their frondlike leaves.
The dragon flies belong to the order Odonata, but there are two
distinct suborders of them. One suborder, known as the Anisoptera,
includes the ordinary large species, or true dragon flies (fig. 7), which,
when at rest, keep the wings spread straight out at the sides of the body.
The other suborder is the Zygoptera and includes species generally
smaller in size which, when at rest, fold the wings over the back with
‘
Le
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‘s
+
2
“
“
\?
A
?
J
v
2
Kowe
. ea)
uae $ \
ar £ doses
Ae
FIGURE 7.—Dragon flies of the suborder Anisoptera. When the insects are perched the wings are
held horizontally at right angles to the body
the dorsal surfaces together. (Fig. 8.) Members of the Zygoptera
are sometimes distinguished as damsel flies; most of them are rather
weak creatures with long, slim abdomens and slender wings narrowed
at the bases. They are comparatively feeble fliers and are easily
caught. The true dragon flies of the suborder Anisoptera are sub-
divided into two families, the Libellulidae and the Aeschnidae. The
libellulids are the common dragon flies seen about streams and pools,
where they perch on the ends of twigs from which they dart out on
vigorous short flights in pursuit of some small passing insect. The
aeschnids include those large species that we used to call Devil’s
darning needles. They are most efficient fliers, being seldom seen to
alight anywhere as they go skimming above the surface of the water,
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 391
and they often make long excursions inland, appearing in places where
a dragon fly is least expected. So agile are they on the wing that the
collector must sometimes resort to the gun and bird shot to procure
specimens of them.
The May flies are members of the order Ephemerida. ‘They are
mostly fragile, short-lived creatures in the adult stage, and when at
rest fold the wings straight up over the back with the dorsal surfaces
together. (Fig. 9.)
All other modern winged insects, with a few exceptions such as the
butterflies, fold the wings posteriorly and horizontally over the body
when they are not
in use. This man-
ner of folding the
wings may be dis-
tinguished as flexion.
It is quite different
from the other, in
which the extended
wings are merely
brought together
vertically over the
back, and it involves
the presence of a
special mechanism
of flexion which the
dragon flies and May
flies do not possess.
Since the wing-
flexor apparatus has
very evidently been
added to that which
produces the move-
ments of flight, it
is usually supposed
that the insects Ficure 8.—Dragon flies of the suborder Zygoptera, called damsel flies,
é which, when at rest, fold the wings in a vertical plane over the back
which do not flex the (Ischnura cervula, from Kennedy)
wings are descend-
ants of a more primitive group of ancestral insects than are thoze which
flex the wings. The fundamental structure of the wings we might sus-
pect, therefore, would be best preserved in the wings of the dragon flies
and May flies; but it is certain that these insects, though of relatively
primitive origin, have developed many specialized characters of their
own. Particularly is this true of the dragon flies. The structure of a
“‘peneralized’’ wing, then, is to be judged rather from’ the ensemble
of the wing characters in all insects than from a study of the wings of
any particular group of insects.
392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The general wing mechanism, including the muscles that generate
and regulate the wing movements, will be described in following sec-
tions. To understand how the motor elements give the essential
movements of flight to the wings, it will be necessary first to know
something of the structure of the wings themselves and the details of
their connections with the body. The principal features of the wings
are the veins, the articulation to the body, the flexor apparatus, and
the differentiation of the wing area into special regions in insects that
flex the wings.
The wing veons.—The wings of adult insects are thin, membranous
extensions of the body wall strengthened by the riblike thickenings
known as veins. (Fig. 10.) The principal veins of each wing spring
from the wing base and branch in varying degrees in the distal parts
of the wing. The work of many entomologists has shown that, under-
lying the great diversity of vein pattern in the numerous groups of
insects, there is evidently one fundamental plan of wing venation.
All winged insects, therefore, would appear to be derived from one
primitive stock
that evolved the
paranotal lobes in-
to movable organs
of flight.
The system of
ff | a naming the prin-
xe) <a cipal veins now
a Ex. commonly adopted,
pout g with a few altera-
tions, by nearly all
FIGURE 9.—A May fly, a member of the order Ephemerida. Whenat @€nN tomologists is
rest the wings are folded vertically over the back th at w ork e d out
by Comstock and Needham, shown diagrammatically in Figure 10 A.
The first vein is the costa (C); it usually forms the anterior margin of
the wing, but sometimes it is submarginal. The second vein is the
subcosta (Sc), typically forked into two short branches. The third
vein is the radius (R), usually the strongest vein of the wing; distally
it forks near the middle of the wing, and the posterior prong (fs)
breaks up into four branches. The fourth vein is the media (WM),
forked dichotomously into four principal branches. The fifth vein is
the cubitus (Ow), with two branches. The rest of the wing veins,
according to the Comstock-Needham system of vein nomenclature,
are the anal veins, distinguished as the first anal (1A), second anal
(2A), ete.
There are certain objections to including all the veins posterior to
the cubitus under the one term ‘‘anal.’’ In the first place, the so-
called first anal is found to be in some cases a basal branch of the cub-
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 393
itus, and for this reason Tillyard (1919) has renamed it the second
branch of the cubitus, and Karny (1925) terms it the cubital sector.
In other insects, however, the same vein apparently has no basal
connections in the adult wing, and the writer (1929), for convenience,
has called it the second cubitus. (Fig. 10 B, 2Cu.) In any case, this
vein has no relationship with the other so-called anal veins; the latter
F:GURE 10.—The veins and articular sclerites of the wing of an insect that folds the wings hori-
zontally over the back. A, Diagram of a wing with the veins named according to the Com-
stock-Needham system; 1A, 24, first and second anal veins; C, costa; Cu, cubitus; Cu, Cus,
branches of cubitus; h, humeral cross vein; M, media; M;-Ms;, branches of media; m-cu,
medio-cubital cross vein; m-m, median cross vein; F, radius; R., radial sector; Ri-Ks,
branches of radius; r, radial cross vein; Sc, subcosta; Sci-Sc2, branches of subcosta. B,
Nomenclature of the veins and articular sclerites used in this paper; 1. AT, 2Az, 3Az, 4 Az,
first, second, third, and fourth axillary sclerites; 1Cu, first cubitus (Cu of A); 2Cu, second
cubitus (1A of A); HP, humeral plate; jf, jugai fold, plica jugalis; Jw, jugal region; / V, first
vannal vein (2A of A); 2 V-n V, second to last vannal veins; tg, rudiment of tegula; Va, vena
arcuata; Vc, vena cardinalis; of, vannal fold, plica vannalis
(tig. 10 A, 2A, 3A, etc.) constitute a natural group of veins in the
posterior part of the wing associated with the third articular sclerite
of the wing base (B, 3Az). Since the wing area supported by these
veins is often expanded into a large, fanlike region, the writer (1929)
has suggested calling the veins of this region the vannal veins (Latin
394 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
vannus, a fan), distinguishing them individually as the first vannal
(fig. 10 B, 1V), second vannal (2V), etc.
The innermost part of the wing proximal to the region of the vannal
veins is often differentiated as a lobe or a distinct part of the wing
designated by Martynov (1925) the jugal region because in the fore
wing it sometimes bears a small lobe, or jugum, serving to yoke the
fore and hind wings together. In this region there is sometimes a
network of irregular veins, but again the jugal region may contain
one or two quite definite veins, named the vena arcuata (fig. 10 B, Va)
and vena cardinalis (Vc) by Martynov.
The area of the wing containing the veins may be thus divided, es-
pecially in the wing-flexing insects, into three regions. The first is
the prevannal region, or remigium, the second is the vannal region,
the third the jugal region. (Fig. 14.) The remigium and the vannus
are often separated by a vannal fold, or plica vannalis (fig. 10 B, ¢f),
while the vannal and jugal regions are separated by a jugal fold, or
plica jugalis (Gf). The vannal fold, however, is sometimes doubly
plicate, and a secondary vein, the vena dividens (fig. 15 B, Vd), then
lies between the two lines of plication. This concept of the structure
of the posterior part of the wing will at least serve for purposes of
description in the present paper, but it is possible that a more com-
prehensive study of the wing in generalized insects will reveal that we
do not yet understand the true homologies of the veins in the post-
cubital region.
All the veins of the wing are subject to secondary forking and to
union by cross veins. In some orders of insects the cross-veins are so
numerous that the whole venational pattern becomes a close network
of veins and cross veins. (Figs. 7, 8,9.) Ordinarily, however, there
is a definite number of cross veins having specific locations as indicated
in the diagram. (Fig. 10 A.)
Articulation of the wings.—The simplest structure in the articular
parts of the wing is that shown by the dragon flies and May flies,
since the wings of these insects are adapted to movements of flight
only, and, as a consequence, possess only the flight mechanism. In
the wings of insects that flex the wings, there is superadded to the
apparatus of flight a mechanism for folding the wings. The dragon
flies and May flies are commonly regarded as being descendants of a
more primitive ancestral stock than that of the wing-fiexing insects;
but the question as to whether their articular mechanism is primitive,
or derived from a more complicated mechanism, will not be discussed
here. The dragon fly wing base may be taken as a starting point in
a descriptive sequence, however, because of its simplicity.
Each wing of a dragon fly is attached to the body by two large basal
plates. (Fig. 11 A.) The first plate we may call the humeral plate
(HP), the second the avzillary plate (AvP). The humeral plate,
SNODGRASS 395
HOW INSECTS FLY
though as large as the other, bears only the first vein of the wing
(OC), which has a small, intermediary piece (c) atits base. The axillary
j
(gas
5
SS@Q
e
WAL) cw
A
|
A
L
|
r
|
<
Fe eeee et eres | nen ees ate gece eB
‘A
Ficure 11.—Basal structure of wing of a dragon fly and a May fly, insects that do not flex the
wings posteriorly over the back. A, Basal part of forewing of a dragon fly (Anaz junius); a,
detached plate of tergum; AzP, axillary plate; C, costa; c, small sclerite at base of costa; HP,
humeral plate; M1, media; R, radius; Sc, subcosta; 7, tergum. 8B, Basal part of forewing of
a May fly; Az, axillary region corresponding with axillary plate of dragon fly’s wing (AzP o
A); other lettering as on A
plate carries the four basal shafts of the other wing veins, which are
all directly attached to it. The humeral plate is hinged to the anterior
396 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
half of the lateral edge of the tergum, or back plate (7), of the segment
supporting the wings, or sometimes to a distinct sclerite (a) of the
tergum. The axillary plate is articulated to the posterior half of the
lateral tergal margin opposite a deep membranous area of the latter.
The wing base is supported from below by the wing process of the
pleural wall of the segment, one branch of it articulating with the
humeral plate, another with the axillary plate.
The basal plates of the dragon fly’s wing turn up and down on the
fulcral arms when the wings are lifted or depressed. The two plates,
however, are slightly movable on each other, and, since the costal vein
(C) is doubly hinged to the humeral plate by the small intermediary
piece (c) at its base, the costal area of the wing can be quite freely
deflected independent of the rest of the wing area, which is solidly
supported on the axillary plate by the veins attached to the latter.
The May flies, or Ephemerida, are the only other order of modern
insects that do not flex the wings. At first sight the base of the
May fly’s wing (fig. 11 B) appears to have little in common with that of
the dragon fly (A). On closer inspection, however, it is seen that the
chief difference consists of a great reduction in size of the humeral
plate (HP), and a breaking up of the region of the axillary plate (AzP)
into a number of irregular sclerotizations. The humeral plate (HP)
becomes a small sclerite on the anterior margin of the wing base inter-
mediating between the base of the costal vein (C) and a small lobe of
the dorsal wall of the segment supporting the wing. The small
plates of the axillary region (Ax) in the May fly suggest, as we shall
presently see, the definite sclerites of the flexor mechanism in insects
that fold the wings horizontally over the back.
In all insects that flex the wings, the major part of the wing base
is occupied by a number of small sclerites which lie between the edge
of the supporting tergum and the proximal ends of the veins. These
axillary sclerites, or avillaries (fig. 12), have definite and constant
relations not only to the tergum and the veins, but also to one another,
though they vary much in details of form, and certain pieces are
sometimes lacking. Three sclerites, however, are practically always
present (1Az, 2Az, 3Ax), and in some insects there is a fourth (fig.
10 B, 4Az), while at least one or two accessory plates (fig. 12, m, m’)
are usually associated with the more constant sclerites. The humeral
plate of the wing base is generally small (HP), and may be absent,
but it is often relatively large though never attaining the size it has
in the wing of a dragon fly (fig. 11 A, HP). When the humeral
plate is present the costal vein (C) is associated with it. The other
veins are related to the sclerites of the true axillary region.
The axillary sclerites have in general the following characteristics
and relationships: The first axillary (fig. 12, 1 Ax) lies next to the
body in the anterior part of the axillary region of the wing base, and is
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 397
articulated by a longitudinal hinge to the edge of the tergum (7). Its
anterior end is curved outward and usually is connected with the base
of the subcostal vein (Sc). The second axillary (2Az) lies distal to the
first, and is obliquely hinged to the outer edge of the latter. This scle-
rite is the pivotal plate of the wing base since its ventral surface rests
upon the pleural wing process. (Fig. 13, WP.) The radial vein
(fig. 12, R) is flexibly attached to its outer end, and the point of union
(d) constitutes the principal hinge of the anterior part of the wing with
the axillary elements. The third axillary (3 Az) lies posterior to the
other two with its long axis transverse. Its proximal end articulates
ee ons
i | \ \ ‘
PNP AxC 3Ax jf SO a cs
FIGURE 12.—Diagram of basal structure of wing in wing-flexing insects. ANP, Anterior notal
wing process; 1 Az, 2 Az, 3.Arz, first, second, and third axillaries; AzC, axillary cord; 5, articula-
tion of third axillary with tergum; df, basal fold of wing, plica basalis; C, costa; c, distal end
of third axillary; 1Cu, first cubitus; 2Cu, second cubitus; D, flexor muscle; d, articulation of
radius with second axillary; e, articulation of subcosta with first axillary; f, articulation of third
axillary with second axillary; HP, humeral plate; jf, jugal fold of wing, plica jugalis; Ju, jugal
region; M, media; m, proximal median plate; m’, distal median plate; n V, last vannal vein;
PNP, posterior notal wing process; R, radius; Rm, remigial part of wing; Sc, subcosta; 7,
tergum; tg, rudiment of tegula; V, vannal part of wing; 1V, 2 V-n V, first to last vannal veins;
vf, vannal fold of wing, plica vannalis
. . . . e
with the tergum, and its distal extremity supports the bases_of the
posterior group of wing veins (V). A process on the basal part of the
third axillary gives insertion to a muscle (D) which arises on the lateral
wall of the segment. The third axillary and its muscle constitute
the motor elements in the flexor mechanism of the wing. When a
fourth azillary is present it intervenes between the base of the third
and the tergum. In the distal part of the axillary region there are
usually on’e or more accessory median plates (m, m’) associated with
the bases of the median and cubital veins. The median plates are
more variable than the well-defined axillaries; the proximal one (m)
is usually attached to the distal part of the third axillary.
398 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Since the wing is a double-walled fold projecting from the body, its
basal part (fig.12) is two-layered, one layer being continuous with the
tergal wall of the segment, the other with the pleural wall. The axil-
lary sclerites are contained in this articular region. On the humeral
angle of the Jatter is a small lobe (¢g), in some insects developed into a
scale overlapping the wing base, and known as the tegula. The pos-
terior part of the wing base is membranous, and its posterior border is
thickened and corrugated, giving the appearance of a marginal liga-
ment, or azillary cord
(AzC), continued
from the posterior
angle of the tergum
a varying distance
into the posterior
margin of the wing.
The ventral sup-
portof the wingis the
same in all insects,
consisting of the
pleural wing process
(fig. 18, WP) which
rises from the pleural
wall of the segment
and forms a fulerum
for the wing base.
Tn insects that have
axillary sclerites, the
second axillary (2Az)
rests directly upon
the wing process.
Lying in the mem-
brane beneath the
FIGURE 13.—Diagram of the pleural elements of the wing mechanism, re ‘
left side of a segment. a, Membranous connection of basalar sclerite W1N2 base, anterior
ey with anterior angle of wing base; Aph, Se Calns phragma; Ax, and posterior to the
ventral plate of second axillary; 6, membranous connection of subalar
sclerite (Sa) with second axillary (2Az); Ba, basalare; Cz, coxa; EH, fulcrum, are usually
pleural muscle of basalare; M!’, coxal muscle of basalare; M’’, coxal BY a
muscle of subalare; PIS, pleural suture; PN, postnotum; Pph, pos- two sclerites (Ba, Sa)
terior phragma; Sa, subalare; W, base of wing, elevated; WP, pleura intimately associated
LP Tu eA with the wing. The
first is the basalare (Ba), the second the subalare (Sa). Both sclerites
are derived, not from the wing, but from the upper edge of the pleural
wall, and in some adult insects the basalare remains as a partly detached
lobe of the latter. These two epipleural plates are important elements
of the wing mechanism, for, as we shall see, they form insertion points
for twolarge wing muscles. The basalare is connected by a ligamentous
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 399
thickening (a) of the membrane beneath the wing base with the humeral
angle of the wing; the subalare is similarly connected (6) with the second
axillary sclerite.
The wing regions—The wings of all insects are more or less asym-
metrical in form; not only is the front margin of each wing always of
a different contour from the hind margin, but the pattern of the ante-
rior veins never matches that of the posterior veins. There is a tend-
ency for the anterior veins to become crowded toward the forward
margin in such a manner as to give rigidity to the front half of the wing
while the posterior veins are more widely spaced, allowing of a flexibil-
ity in the rear half of the wing. This arrangement of the veins,
together with the antero-posterior difference in the form of the wing,
is clearly an adaptation for giving greater efficiency to the wings as
organs of forward flight, notwithstanding the fact that many insects
can fly backward and sidewise. As a result of the functional differ-
ences In the parts of the wing, the wing area becomes differentiated
a a bt
/
/ \
jf vf
FIGURE 14.—Principal wing regions in insects that flex the wings. a-b, Base
of axillary region; Az, axillary region; bf, basal fold of wing, plica basalis; c,
apex of axillary region; d, point of articulation of radia vein with second axil-
lary (see fig. 12); jf, jugal fold, plica jugalis; Ju, jugal region; Rm, remigium,
remigial region; V, vannus, vannal region; vf, vannal fold, plica vannalis
structurally into several regions. The wing regions are particularly
well defined in insects that flex the wings, because the wing fold-
ing could not be allowed to interfere with the function of flying, and,
therefore, the adaptations for flexing have to follow the structural plan
primarily laid down for purposes of flight.
We have already seen that there is at the base of each wing an
axillary region, represented by the second plate of the dragon fly’s
wing (fig. 11 A, AvP), which becomes broken up into a number of
definite axillary sclerites in the wing-flexing insects (fig. 12). The
region of the axillary sclerites has in general the form of a scalene
triangle (fig. 14, Av) with its base (a—b) against the body and its
longer side anterior to the apex (c). The base of the triangle is the
hinge of the wing with the body; the apex represents the distal end of
the third axillary sclerite (fig. 12, 3Az), which carries the bases of the
vannal veins; the point d on the anterior side of the triangle (fig. 14)
400 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
marks the articulation of the radial vein (fig. 12, R) with the second
axillary sclerite (2Ar). The rdle that the axillary triangle plays in the
folding of the wing will be discussed in Section IV of this paper.
The area of the wing distal to the axillary region comprises the three
parts of the wing separated by the vannal and jugal folds (fig. 10 B,
vf, 7f), when these folds are present. The area anterior to the vannal
fold (fig. 14, Rm), containing the costal, subcostal, radial, medial, and
cubital veins (fig. 10 B), is the part of the wing chiefly productive of the
movements of flight, since it is directly affected by the motor-wing
: B
FIGURE 15.—The wings of a grasshopper (Dissosteira carolina). A, Left fore-
wing. B, Left hind wing. Lettering ason Figure 10B, The great fan of
the hind wing posterior to the vannal fold (af) is possibly the combined
vannal and jugal regions
muscles. This part of the wing, therefore, we may term the remigial
area of the wing (Latin :emigium, an oar). The region between the
vannal and jugal folds is the part of the wing here termed the vannus,
or vannal region (fig. 14, V), though ordinarily called the anal region.
The vannal veins typically spread out like the ribs of a fan, and, as we
have seen, their bases are associated with, or supported by, the distal
end of the third axillary sclerite. (Fig. 10B.) In some insects the
vannus becomes so large, as in the hind wings of grasshoppers and
katydids (fig. 15 B), that it forms an efficient gliding surface which
HOW INSECTS FLY—-SNODGRASS 401
enables the insects to sail through the air with comparatively little
movement of the wings. Proximal to the vannus is the jugal region
(fig. 14, Ju), usually a small membranous area or lobe at the base of
the wing, but sometimes much enlarged (fig. 16).
Ill. THE WING MUSCLES
The musculature of an insect’s wing is very simple, considering the
nature of the wing movements and the fine adjustments of the latter
that the muscles are able to produce. The effect of the muscles on the
wings depends largely on the manner in which the wings are attached
to the body and on the details of structure in the wings themselves.
In the majority of insects, all the movements of the wings are
accomplished by five principal pairs, or paired sets, of muscles in each
wing segment. Anatomically the wing muscles belong to three
groups, namely, dorsal longitudinal muscles, tergo-sternal muscles, and
pleural muscles. Considering the manner in which they effect move-
Ct+Se+R,
. ~~
>——s
ee Sr
/ 5
Ju Lif
FIGURE 16.—Hind wing ofa blister beetle (Hpicauia marginata), showing the large
jugal region (Ju)
ment in the wings, however, they are usually classed as ‘indirect wing
muscles’? and ‘‘direct wing muscles,’’ the first class being the dorsal
and tergo-sternal muscles, the second the pleural muscles. Function-
ally, each of the five sets of muscles must be considered individually.
If the wings of insects originated, as we have supposed, from
movable flaps of the body wall extending laterally from the edges of
the back plates of the body (fig. 6), they had primarily at their dis-
posal for motor purposes only the muscles of the body segments
supporting them. These muscles comprised the longitudinal inter-
segmental muscles, and possibly dorsoventral intrasegmental muscles.
The dorsal longitudinal muscles, by pulling lengthwise on the back-
plates, could arch these plates upward between the two ends in each
segment. Thus, considering that the wing lobes were extensions of
the’terga, and were supported near their bases on the upper edges of
the pleural walls of the segment, each lobe could be given a downward
movement by an upward flexure of the tergum just as a pump handle
402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
might be lowered by raising the piston. All modern insects, with a
few exceptions, produce the downstroke of the wings at least in part
by the contraction of the dorsal thoracic muscles. (Fig. 17 C, A.)
In response to the new function thus thrust upon them, these muscles
in the two wing-bearing segments have become greatly enlarged.
(Fig. 18,81, 112.) The elevation of the wings, on the other hand (fig.
17 A), involves a depression of the back plate (7) of the wing-support-
ing segment, and this is accomplished by a contraction of the ver-
tical, or tergo-sternal, muscles of the segment (C), just as the
pump handle might be raised
by pulling down on the pis-
ton. Itisa question wheth-
er the tergo-sternal muscles
of the wing-bearing seg-
ments were a part of the
primitive musculature of the
segments, or whether they
are specially acquired, wing
muscles; but, whatever their
origin, they are always very
large in the two segments
(mesothorax and metatho-
rax) that carry the wings
(fig. 18, 83, 84, 113), while
they are either absent or
doubtfully represented in
other segments of the body.
The segmental muscles
FIGURE 17.—Diagrams suggesting the indirect action of that move the wings owe
the segmental muscles on the wings, and the torsion of their efficiency to the fact
the wings in flight, anterior view. A, The wings ele- - : :
vated on pleural wing processes (WP) by depression of that each wing 1s pivoted a
terguim (T) caused by contraction of tergo-sternal mus- ghort, distance beyond its
cles (C); hind margins of wings deflected. B, C, The
wings depressed by an elevation of tergum caused by base on a strong fulcrum of
contraction of dorsal longitudinal muscles (A); hind the lateral wall of the seg-
margins of wings elevated ent (Fig. 17A, WP.) The
degree of movement in the back plate, or tergum (7’), of the segment
necessary to produce the up-and-down strokes of the wings is very
small. In freshly killed specimens of flies and bees the wings respond
instantly to the least downward pressure on the back of the segment,
or to a gentle lengthwise compression of the thorax.
True flight, as we have already observed, is not to be accomplished
by mere upstrokes and downstrokes of the wings. Each wing must
ne ve a propeller movement in order to produce motion through the
r; the plane of the wing must dip forward and downward with each
s
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 403
downstroke (fig. 17 C), and must then reverse itself during the up-
stroke (A). The ability of the insect wing to make these compound
movements depends in part upon the interrelations of the articular
sclerites, and in part on the structure of the wing itself. The anterior
crowding of the principal wing veins stiffens the forward part of the
wing and leaves the expanded posterior area relatively weak and flex-
ible. When the wing is depressed, therefore, its posterior part turns
upward (fig. 17 C) as a result of the increased air pressure below, and
and thus gives a forward thrust to the wing, with the result that the
Set
ete Sel, Dees : Selg PNs
\ VTP \ N
D2, 20pnaSs. | SAR Meu 124
FIGURE 18.—Muscles in the right half of the wing-bearing segments of a grasshopper (Dis-
sesteira) as seen from the median plane of the body. 8/ .112, The longitudinal dorsal
muscles which, by contraction, arch the terga plates upward and thereby depress the
wings; 83, 84, and 113, the tergo-sternal depressors of the tergal plates, which indirectly
elevate the wings. The other muscles are muscles of the legs and of the sterna
anterior margin goes downward and forward. For the same reasons
the counterstroke has a reverse movement (A).
It is possible that the structure of the wing and its automatic re-
sponse to air pressure enabled the primitive winged insects to fly by
means of the dorsal and tergo-sternal segmental musculature alone.
Nearly all modern insects, however, have powerful adjuncts to the
primitive motor mechanism of the wings in the pleural muscles that
affect directly the movements of each wing. ‘These so-called “direct’’
wing muscles (fig. 19, H, M’, M’’) are inserted in adult insects
either immediately on the wing bases or on the small sclerites
beneath the wings (figs. 13, 19, Ba, Sa) or, in some cases, on a lobe
of the lateral wall of the segment; they have their origins, in nearly
82822—30——27
404 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
all cases, on the pleura and on the basal segments, or coxe, of the legs
(fig. 19, Or). In the young of insects that resemble the adults in bodily
form, however, these same muscles are inserted on the dorsal edges
of the lateral walls of the wing-bearing segments. It appears highly
probable, therefore, that the coxal basalar and subalar wing muscles
of adult insects are in origin leg muscles that have been given over to
the service of the wings. The function of these muscles will be more
particularly described in
the following section.
The muscle of the basalar
sclerite arising on the coxa
(fig. 19, AZ’) is usually sup-
plemented by a branch or a
second muscle (#) arising
on the lateral wall of the
segment, or on the sternum.
The basalar sclerite, as we
have seen, is intimately at-
tached tothe humeral angle
of the wing base by a
thickening (a) of the inter-
vening membrane. The
subalar muscle (fig. 19, 14’’)
is always a large muscle,
and, through the attach-
ment (6) of the subalar sele-
rite with the second axillary
sclerite of the wing base
(2Azr) it pulls downward on
the base of the wing imme-
FiguRE 19.—The pleural wing muscles of the mesothorax diately behind the fuleral
of a grasshopper (Dissosteira), inner view of right side. support (WP).
a, Membranous connection of basalar selerites (Ba) with :
humeral angle of wing base; 2Az, dorsal plate of second In the dragon flies the
axillary; 3Az, third axillary; b, connection of subalare (Sa) homologues of the basalar
with second axillary; Ba, basalar sclerites; c, ventral plate of an d su b al ar muscles of
second axillary; Cr, coxa; D, flexor muscle of wing; E, pleu- 4 i
ral basalar muscle; M’, coxo-basalar muscle; M!’’, coxo-sub- other insects are inserted
le; 1 idge; Sa yalare; tg, rudimen ns a ”
alar muscle; PUR, pleural ridge; Sa, subalare; tg, rudiment by str ong tendons
of tegula; W2, mesothoracic wing, turned upward z
that are attached directly
on the wing bases, the first on the humeral plate (fig. 11 A, HP)
the second on the axillary plate (AvP). Furthermore, the ven-
tral ends of these muscles in the dragon flies take their origin on the
lower edge of the pleural wall of the segment, their bases evidently
having been transferred from the coxa to the body wall. In the flies
(Diptera) the base of the subalar muscle has undergone a similar
transposition.
«
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 405
The fifth set of wing muscles are the wing flexors. The flexor of
each wing is usually a small muscle, or a group of small muscles (fig.
19, D), the fibers of which have their origin on the pleural wall of the
segment and are inserted directly on the third axillary sclerite of the
wing base (fig. 12, 3Az). The flexor muscles are present in nearly all
insects, including the dragon flies which do not fold the wings; in
insects having a special flexor mechanism in the wing base they appear
to accomplish the entire movement of flexion.
Various other small muscles are often associated with the wings;
they arise on the upper parts of the pleural walls of the wing-bearing
segments and are inserted either on the tergum near the wings or
directly on the wing bases. Since these muscles are not of constant
occurrence and differ in different groups of insects, they need not be
considered in a general discussion.
IV. THE WING MOVEMENTS
The motions of insects’ wings fall into two distinct categories;
those of one include the movements of flight, those of the second
embrace the movements of flexion and extension. The flight move-
ments are common to all winged insects; the movements of flexion
and extension pertain only to insects that fold the wings horizontally
over the back when not in use.
The movements of flight —The movements of the wings that make
flight possible consist of an wpsiroke, a downstroke, a forward movement,
a rearward movement, and a partial rotation of each wing on its long axis.
It was formerly supposed that the torsion of the wings, including
the horizontal and rotary movements, is entirely the result of air
pressure on the wings as they are vibrated in a vertical direction.
This idea was elaborated particularly by Marey (1874). There is
no doubt that the wings do respond by a differential action in their
planes to air pressure alone. It has been shown by Bull (1904a)
that the wing of a dragon fly attached to a vibratory apparatus in a
vacuum jar takes on the rotary movement automatically when air
is admitted. Later, however, Bull (1910) observed that the stump
from which a wing has been severed in a living insect is deflected
forward with the downstroke and takes a reverse position during
the upstroke. It is now conceded by students of the insect wing
mechanism that the movements of the wing, though in part auto-
matically possible by air pressure, are all produced, or at least
augmented, by the action of the wing muscles. Directive move-
ments of the wings, it must be observed, are only possible through
muscular and nervous control.
The upstroke of the wing, as we have seen, is produced by the
simple device of depressing the back plate, or tergum, of the segment
bearing the wings( fig. 17 A), the action being the result of a contrac-
406 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
tion of the vertical, tergo-sternal muscles (figs. 17 A, 20, C). The
mechanism of the upstroke, therefore, is that of a lever of the first
class, the fulerum being the pleural wing process (WP) upon which
the base of the wing rests. The tergo-sternal muscles are often
large and powerful, suggesting that the upstroke of the wings is an
important contributant to the force of flight.
The downstroke of the wings is not the work of a single set of
muscles. It results in part from the restoration of the dorsal curva-
ture of the back by the contraction of the dorsal longitudinal muscles
(fig. 17 C, 20, A; fig. 18, 87, 112), which are the segmental antag-
onists of the tergosternal muscles; but probably an important effector
of the wing depres-
sion in most insects
is the posterior pleu-
ral muscle (figs. 13,
19, M”) inserted on
the subalar sclerite
(Sa). The subalar
sclerite, as we have
seen, is in immediate
connection with the
second axillary of
the wing base (2Az),
and a pull upon the
subalar muscle
strongly depresses
the wing.
The forward and
rearward move-
ments of the wing
Veg | Sa
| ‘ss
iH
| mi \ sss >
/
FIGURE 20.—Diagram of the ‘‘direct”” and ‘‘indirect’”’ wing muscles in Se atlicellt
left half ofa segment, anterior view. A, Section of longitudinal dorsal during 1g t are of
muscle (‘‘indirect’’ depressor of the wings); a, membranous connection gmall extent, but of
of basalare (Ba) with base of wing; Ba, basalare; C, tergo-sternal : . d
muscle (“‘indirect’’ elevator of the wing); Cz, coxa; M7’, coxo-basalar 41 uch importance.
muscle (‘‘direct’’ pronator-extensor of the wing); Pl, pleuron; S, ster- They evidently are
num; 7’, tergum; W, wing; WP, pleural wing process
produced by the an-
terior and posterior pleural muscles (figs. 13, 19, #, M’, and M’’)
pulling on the wing base, respectively before and behind the pleural
fulerum (WP).
The rotation of the wing on its long axis accompanies the anterior
and posterior movements, and is produced by the same muscles,
namely, the muscles of the basalar and subalar sclerites. The first
(fig. 20, 1M’) pulling downward on the basalare (Ba) turns this sclerite
inward on the upper edge of the pleuron (Pl), and the connection
(a) of the basalare with the humeral angle of the wing base deflects
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 407
the anterior part of the wing as it turns it slightly forward. The
mechanism of deflection, including the basalar sclerite and its muscle,
has been called the pronator apparatus of the wing. The movement
of pronation accompanies the depression of the wing. (Fig. 17 C.)
The reverse movement, or the deflection of the posterior part of the
wing accompanying the upstroke (fig. 17 C), is probably caused
mostly by air pressure on the expanded, flexible posterior area of the
wing surface, but it is likely that the tension of the posterior pleural
muscle (figs. 13, 19, M’’), pulling on the second axillary sclerite poste-
rior to the fulcrum, contributes to the posterior deflection of the wing
during the upstroke.
The motion of each wing in flight is, then, the resultant of its several
elemental movements. During the downstroke the wing goes from
above downward and forward; its anterior margin is deflected and
its posterior area turns upward. (Fig.17 C.) During the upstroke,
the wing goes upward and backward, and its postersor surface is
deflected (A).
By comparing the movements of an insect’s wings in motion with
the action of the blades of an airplane propeller, it will be seen that
there is a similarity between the two. The planes of the propeller
blades are so turned that each blade in rotating to the right cuts
downward through the air with a forward slant, while on the left it
goes upward with a rearward slant. The edge of the blade that
opposes the air, moreover, is beveled in such a manner that it lies in
the plane of rotation. The insect wing differs from the propeller
blade in that, by its flexibility, it can successively adapt the different
parts of its surface to the same changes in relative position during an
up-and-down movement that the rigid propeller blade assumes in
revolution. The mechanical effect produced by the two instruments
is the same, as we shall see in the next section of this paper.
As a result of the compound movements of the vibrating insect
wing, the tip of the wing, if the insect is held stationary, describes a
curve having the form of a figure 8. This fact has long been known;
it was first demonstrated visibly by Marey (1869, 1874) who attached
bits of gold leaf to the wing tips of a wasp and observed the luminous
figures described when a beam of strong light was thrown on the
vibrating wings. The movements of the wings have since been studied
more accurately, however, by mechanical devices in which the vibrat-
ing tips are allowed to touch lightly the surface of a moving sheet of
smoked paper, thus inscribing a record of their movements which can
be more carefully examined. The most successful studies of this kind
are those of Ritter (1911) who constructed an apparatus that would
rapidly slide a small board covered with blackened paper past a
blowfly secured in such a position that the tip of a vibrating wing
408 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
would record its motions on the paper. Figure 21 shows two of the
curves obtained by Ritter with this apparatus when the head of the
fly was directed opposite the movement of the sliding board. The
lines of these tracings, therefore, may be taken to show the track
described by the wing tips in normal forward flight. Instead of
making a figure 8, the wings of a fly in motion describe a series of
open loops in which the downstroke takes the form of an italic curve
inclined from above downward and forward, while the reverse stroke
goes from below upward and posteriorly. The distance between
the loops will depend on the speed at which the insect flies. The
rotary movement of the wings is most accentuated in swift-flying
insects, such as the dragon flies, bees, and flies, which have relatively
FG
=a
FIGURE 21.—Curves described by the tip of a blowfly’s wing in flight. Tracings
made by the tip of the wing ofa fly held stationary with the head directed toward
the movement of the recording surface. (From Ritter, 1911)
narrow wings; in slower-flying insects with broad wings, such as the
grasshoppers and butterflies, the up-and-down movement is the
principal one.
That the movements of animals, including the flight of insects,
could be studied from series of moving-picture photographs was
first demonstrated by Marey (1901). With more improved methods,
von Lendenfeld (1903), Bull (1904), and Voss (1914) have obtained
cinematographic records giving a convincing demonstration of the
nature of the insect wing movements in flight. Voss made calula-
tions from his serial pictures of the number of wing strokes a second in
many species of insects. However, much of interest might yet be
done by this method of research.
The rapidity of the wing movements varies greatly in different
insects. The first statements concerning the rate of vibration of insect
wings are those of Landois (1867) deduced from observations on the
pitch of the sound made by insects in flight. Landois thus estimated
that the house fly makes 352 wing strokes a second, a bumblebee 220,
HOW INSECTS FLY—-SNODGRASS 409
and the honeybee 440 when at its best, though when tired its hum indi-
cates a wing speed of only 330 beats asecond. By the same test, the
mosquito, it is said, must make as high as 600 wing beats a second.
The wing movements have been studied also with mechanical appa-
ratus and from serial photographs. The records of different investi-
gators differ considerably, but it must be recognized that experimental
results give at best only the rate at which the insect moved its wings
under the conditions of the experiment; it is well known that most
insects can vary the speed of their normal flight within wide limits.
Marey (1869a) obtained graphic records of the wing beats on a revolv-
ing cylinder, and he gives 330 wing strokes a second for the house fly,
240 for a bumblebee, 190 for the honeybee, 110 for a wasp, 28 for a
dragon fly, and 9 for the cabbage butterfly. Voss (1914), however,
calculating the rate of the wing motion from series of moving-picture
photographs, obtained in most cases lower figures; the honeybee, by
his test, making 180 to 203 wing strokes a second, the house fly from
180 to 197, the mosquito from 278 to 307, while various other insects
have mostly a slower rate. In general, it may be said, the flies and
bees have the highest rate of wing movement; most other insects, by
comparison, being slow of flight and correspondingly slow in wing
motion. The lowest records of wing speed are found among the
butterflies and moths, the cabbage butterfly making at best about 9
strokes a second, and some of the noctuid moths about 40; the sphinx
moths, on the other hand, are swift flyers and move the wings at a
high rate of speed. Thereader may find summarized statements on
the recorded rates of the wing strokes in insects given by Voss (1914)
and by Prochnow (1921-1924).
The movements of flexion and extension.—The movements by which
the wings are folded after flight, or extended preliminary to flight, are
executed too rapidly to be observed closely in a living insect; but the
action of a wing and the operation of the flexor mechanism can be well
studied in freshly killed specimens. A grasshopper, a bee, a fly, or
most any insect sufficiently large will answer the purpose, but the
grasshopper, or particularly the scorpion fly, Panorpa, will be found to
be a very suitable subject. If the wing of a fresh specimen is slowly
folded posteriorly over the back and then brought forward into the
position of flight, the accompanying movements of the articular
sclerites on one another can be observed, and from their action the
probable working of the flexor mechanism in the living insect can be
deduced.
First we must look again at the plan of the general wing structure.
(Figs. 14, 22 A.) The region of the articular sclerites, or axillaries,
forms @ triangle at the base of the wing (Az) with its apex (c) sup-
porting the base of the vannal region (V). When the distal parts of
the wing are well differentiated, the vannus is usually separated from
410 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the remigium (2m) by a vannal fold, or plica (vf), and the jugal lobe
(Ju) is separated from the vannus by a jugal plica Vf). The axillary
sclerites are highly variable in form in different insects, but their
relationships to one another and to the bases of the veins are constant.
The articulation of the radial vein (fig. 12, R) with the second axillary
(2Ar) lies at the point d on the anterior side of the axillary triangle
(fig. 22A). The edge of the triangle between this point and the apex
(c) is formed by the line of flexion, or plica basalis (bf), between the
median plates of the wing base (fig. 12, m, m’), or between the cor-
responding areas if the plates are obsolete or absent. The third
axillary sclerite (fig. 12, 3Azx) is the crucial piece of the flexor mech-
anism. Typically it is essentially Y-shaped, the two prongs being
the arms of the mesal part hinged by their tips (f, b) between the
second axillary and a posterior process of the tergum, with the flexor
muscle (2) inserted in the crotch, while the stalk is the distal arm, the
end of which is closely associated with the bases of the vannal veins
(1V, 2V) at the apex of the axillary triangle. (Fig. 22 A, c.)
When the muscles that keep the wing extended are relaxed, the
wing automatically turns a little posteriorly, and a prominent convex
fold is formed along the oblique plica basalis (fig. 12, bf) at the base
of the medio-cubital field of the wing, which is between the two median
plates (m, m’) when these plates are present. At the same time, the
third axillary sclerite (3Az) is revolved upward on its basal hinge, or
hinges (6, f), until the insertion point of its muscle (D) lies dorsal and
slightly mesad to the axis of the hinge. The muscle, which arises on
the inner wall of the pleuron below the wing base (fig. 19, D), thus
acquires an effective purchase on the third axillary, and, by contrac-
tion, it evidently now continues the revolution of the sclerite, turning
the outer end of the latter (fig. 12, c) dorsally, mesally, and forward,
until the sclerite is completely inverted and reversed in position.
Concomitant with the movement of the third axillary, the first median
plate (m), which is usually attached to the latter, turns to a vertical
position between its hinge with the second axillary (2Az) and its
hinge with the second median plate (m’), or with the base of the medio-
cubital area of the wing, and this line of flexion (6f) is swung inward
posteriorly until it takes an oblique position extending from in front
posteriorly and mesally, overlapping the posterior part of the second
axillary.
The movements of the third axillary and the attached median plate
(m), caused by the contraction of the flexor muscle (D), bring about
the flexion of the wing and incidentally whatever folding the wing
surface undergoes during flexion» The mesal revolution of the third
axillary directly lifts the base of the vannal region of the wing asso-
ciated with the end of its distal arm, and brings it to a mesal position
against the side of the body. At the same time, the upward revolu-
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 411
tion of the first median plate (m) on the second axillary (2Az), and
the consequent inward swing of the posterior end of the plica basalis
(bf) between the two median plates (m, m’) turns both the medio-
FIGURE 22,—Diagrams illustrating the flexion of a wing. A, The extended wing,
showing folds and regions named on Figure 14; B, the partly flexed wing, showing
the basal folding along the plica basalis (bf), and the jugal region lapped beneath
the vannu_ along the jugal fold; C, a fully flexed wing in which the entire axillary
region is turned vertically on its base (a—b); the vannus is elevated by the apex (c)
of the axillary region and turned horizontally against the body; the remigium,
turned posteriorly on the point d (see fig. 12), slopes downward and laterally on
the flexure at the vannal fold
cubital and vannal areas of the wing posteriorly. The costo-radial
area necessarily follows, turning posteriorly on the hinge of the radius
(d) with the second axillary, and on that of the subcosta (e) with the
412 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
first axillary. As the posterior edge of the wing comes against the
side of the body, the jugal lobe (Jw) is deflected and turned beneath
the vannus along the line of the jugal plica (jf). If a vannal plica
(vf) is present, the remigial region is usually turned downward during
the flexion of the wing; but many insects, such as the flies and bees,
keep both the remigium and the vannus in a horizontal plane.
The final pull of the flexor muscle is apparently expended on the
general wing base, for, in many insects, when the wing is fully flexed,
the second axillary is turned into a nearly longitudinal position and is
brought close to the side of the back by a vertical revolution of the
first axillary on its hinge with the tergum. Thus, in the typical,
fully flexed condition of the wing, the first axillary (fig. 12, 1Az)
stands in a vertical plane on the edge of the tergum; the second axillary
(2Ax), supported by the first, hes horizontally close to the body;
the first median plate (m) either stands vertically from the outer edge
of the second axillary, or it is inclined mesally and overlaps the latter;
the second median plate (m’), or the base of the medio-cubital wing
area, lies horizontally but makes a sharp fold along the hinge line
(bf) with the first median plate, the fold crossing the wing base obliquely
from the base of the radial vein posteriorly and medially; the third
axillary is completely inverted with its apex (c) directed mesally and
forward.” Flexion of the wing does not alter the position of the first
and second axillaries in some insects; but the revolution of the third
axillary is invariable, showing that it is the motion produced in this
sclerite by its muscle, and the consequent folding in the parts immedi-
ately affected by its movements, that bring about the rotation of the
distal parts of the wing on the basal elements, which constitutes
flexion.
The automatic nature of the complicated movements of the wing
folding, resulting from the pull of a single muscle, may be roughly
demonstrated with a piece of stiff paper cut and creased along the
lines of Figure 22 A, but leaving an extension to the left for support.
Lifting the apex (c) of the axillary triangle, and revolving it on the
base (a—b) to the left (B), will turn the vannal region of the model
(V) posteriorly and deflex the remigial part (Rm). If the apex (c)
is finally turned mesad of the base line (C), the distal parts of the paper
model will take positions quite comparable with those of the parts in
a wing of similar form flexed and folded by the revolution of the third
axillary sclerite. The details of interaction between the sclerites of
the axillary region, and the folding of the latter upon itself, can not,
of course, be duplicated unless the entire mechanism is reproduced.
A well-constructed model of the base of an insect’s wing, made on a
large scale, would enable us to understand more accurately the working
of the flexor mechanism, and, incidentally, it should be an excellent
object for museum display.
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 413
The flexing of the wing becomes a still more complicated process if
the vannal region is particularly enlarged. In some of the Orthoptera,
including most of the cockroaches, the grasshoppers, and the crickets,
and in some other insects, the vannus of each hind wing is so much
expanded (fig. 15 B) that, when the wing is flexed, it must be plaited
and folded up like a fan (fig. 23 B) in order to give space for the rest of
the wing. In wings that are plaited during flexion there may be, as
in the hind wing of a grasshopper, two lines of folding between the
remigium and the vannus with a dividing vein, or vena dividens,
between them. (Fig. 15B, Vd.) The folding and plaiting of the fully
flexed wings of a grasshopper are shown in Figure 23. ‘The narrower
See PON Mara
NX \ P a7
2Cu.>s eay f
“
~
FicuRE 23.—Cross sections through the folded wings of a grasshopper (Dissosteira)
A, Cross section through the wings and the abdomen; the forewings, or tegmina
(W2), when closed, form a compartment over the back (7) in which are folded the
large hind wings (W3); B, cross section of the right hind wing, posterior view,
showing the many plaits of the vannal region ( V) which is folded like a fan. Let-
tering as on Figure 15
forewings, or tegmina (A, W,), overlap each other to form a rooflike
covering with steeply sloping sides completely inclosing and protect-
ing the more delicate hind wings (W;) folded beneath them.
The extension of the wing involves a reversal of the movements of
flexion. The flexor muscle must first relax. A contraction then of the
‘anterior pleural muscles (figs. 13, 19, Z, 14’), pulling on the humeral
angle of the wing base, may extend the wing directly, though the action
of these muscles in this capacity is often difficult to demonstrate in a
‘dead specimen. With insects in which the second axillary sclerite is
elevated on the outer edge of the first axillary in the fully flexed wing,
it is clear that the wing may be extended by the downward pull of the
posterior pleural muscle (1/’) on the second axillary, for a pressure on
this sclerite at once restores all the axillary elements to a horizontal
414 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
plane and thereby spreads the wing. Some insects may be seen to
extend the wings deliberately before taking flight, but with most
species flight is practically simultaneous with the wing expansion.
Y... EP LIGaT.
A rotating electric fan throws out a current of air because its inertia
is greater than the resistance of the air. An airplane moves through
the air because the force of its inertia is less than the force of the air
pressure created by its revolving propeller. In other words, any
object that can create a current in the surrounding medium, if held
stationary, will move itself through the medium contrary to the direc-
tion of the potential current if the force of the latter is greater than the
inertia of the object. Motion is the result of the difference in density,
or pressure, in the medium created by the propeller mechanism on
opposite sides of it; the object moves toward the region of lowered
pressure.
Flight by any heavier-than-air machine or animal that does not
depend on currents or rising columns of air requires a mechanism
capable not only of producing a forward motion, but also of creating a
lifting force sufficient to overcome the pull of gravity. Soaring birds
and gliding planes keep themselves aloft after the manner of a kite;
the extent of their area that they oppose to the air sustains them on the
air pressure created beneath. The ordinary airplane is driven only
forward by the direct action of its propeller; it is lifted by the areas of
decreased pressure created above its slanting wings by the force of its
forward motion. With most insects the area of the wings is far too
small, in proportion to the size and weight of the insect’s body, to have
much value as a planing surface, and, moreover, the wings are the
active elements in the motor mechanism. A small-winged insect,
therefore, can neither soar in the manner of the larger birds, nor can it
sustain itself in the way the moving airplane does. The wings of
insects must furnish not only the driving power, but a lifting force as
well, which is to say, the movement of the wings must create a region
of lowered pressure both before and above the body of the insect.
An interesting and instructive study of the effect of the wing move-
ments of insects on the surrounding air has been made by Demoll
(1918). By means of a simple apparatus consisting of a frame with
several horizontal cross bars on which were suspended rows of fine
owl feathers, Demoll was able to demonstrate the direction of the
air currents created by the wings in vibration when the insect itself
is held stationary. The lightness of the feathers made the latter
delicately responsive to any disturbance of the air in their immediate
vicinity, and thus the air currents set up by the whirring wings of an
insect, secured by the body in such manner that the wing movements
would not be hindered, were registered in the displacement of the
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS Ald
feathers. Experimenting in this way with insects of different orders,
Demoll found that the currents of air drawn toward a stationary insect
by the vibrations of its wings come not only from in front, but also
from above, from the sides, and from below, and that the currents
given off are all thrown out to the rearward. (Fig. 24.) The strength
of the currents, how-
ever, is not the same |
from all directions, !
asisindicated by the ‘
relative thickness of |
the arrows in the {
diagrams. The air u | iF ies
is drawn toward the ie ar J AOQU eines
i)
insect most strongly Erieita bh aheiay
from before and oe Sata ay omiod
above the anterior | Releenuens EE oA i <u neon
part of the body; yf
the outgoing cur- hea fared
rents are strongest 4 Phe
in a horizontal or Al en 3 ’
slightly downward
direction. Most of
the oncoming cur-
rents, therefore, are
turned to the rear in
the neighborhood of rants vghadt
the insect’s body, and s
condensedinasmall > Cor ghee
region behind it.
If the insect is
free to move, the
mechanical effect of
the vibrating wings
on the air will be the
same as when the
insect is held sta-
tionary ; but, instead B
of moving the alr, FIGURE 24.—Diagrams showing the currents of air created by the vibrat-
or instead of moving ing wings of an insect held stationary. The thickness of the arrows
; indicates the relative strength of the currents. (From Demoll, 1918.)
the air to the same A, Lateral view, showing currents in the median vertica plane; B
extent as before, the dorsal view, showing currents in the horizontal plane
greater part of the wing force will propel the insect through the air
opposite the direction of the air currents created when the insect is
secured. The fact that the vibrating wings produce air currents does
not mean that the insect will be carried along on the currents of its
416 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
own production; in terms of mechanics, as we have seen, the direc-
tion from which a current of air is drawn by a stationary object is
the direction of lowered pressure, while the opposite is that of
increased pressure. According to the observations of Demoll, there-
fore, when an insect launches itself into the air and starts the
vibration of its wings, there is at once created before it and above
it a region of decreased pressure, and the convergence of all the
currents behind produces here a region of greatly increased pressure.
The lowered pressure above counteracts the weight of the insect;
the increased pressure behind drives the insect forward into the
low-pressure region in front. Thus, Demoll points out, while the
soaring bird, with large outstretched wings practically stationary,
rests upon the air, the flying insect, with small but rapidly moving
wings, is suspended in the air. The bird, a glider plane, or a kite is
borne up by increase of pressure below; the insect, on the other hand, is
sucked up into the air and held suspended by the partial vacuum
that its wings create above it. The flying mechanism of the insect,
therefore, is comparable with that of a helicopter airplane, except
that in the insect the wings neatly combine the function of two sets
of propellers working at right angles to each other. If both pro-
pellers of a bi-motored airplane were directed forward and upward,
the machine would resemble an insect—if it could fly. The body
weight of an insect is so distributed that the center of gravity lies
behind the wing bases, usually at the base of the abdomen.. (See
Demoll, 1918.)
The driving force of the insect’s wing movements probably depends
upon the angle at which the wing surfaces cut the air. Slow-flying
insects with broad wings, such as the butterflies and grasshoppers,
keep the wing surfaces almost horizontal and fly more in the manner
of small birds with comparatively few strokes of the wings in any
unit of time. Some of the large swallowtail butterflies even soar
for short distances with the wings held stationary. The more swiftly
flying insects, however, having narrow wings, turn the wing surfaces
more nearly vertical with each stroke, whether up or down, but as
Ritter (1911) says, ‘‘the insect flies fastest when the downstroke
approaches a vertical direction,’’ because the greater the speed the
more the curve of the upstroke is drawn forward in the direction of
flight.
The speed of insect flight may be very high, considering the small
size of insects. Demoll (1918) gives a table of the rate at which
different species fly, obtained by setting individuals at liberty in a
room lighted by one window and recording the time in which they:
flew direct from the dark side of the room to the light. Among the
swiftest flying insects, according to this test, are the hawk moths
(Sphingidae), a horsefly (Tabanus bovinus), and the dragon flies.
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 417
The hawk moths made a speed up to 15 meters a second, followed
closely by Tabanus bovinus going at a rate of 14 meters. A dragon
fly (Libellula depressa), doing ordinarily 4 meters a second, can
make 6 to 10 meters in the same time when fiying rapidly. A house
fly travels from 2 to 2.8 meters a second; a bumblebee (Bombus)
from 3 to 5. The honeybee, Demoll says, when flying unladen from
the hive, has a speed of 3.7 meters a second, but on the return, if
loaded with pollen, its speed is cut down to 2.5 meters for the same
unit of time. The pollen load of the bee, according to Demoll, weighs
about 20 milligrams, which is approximately 30 per cent of the body
weight of the bee.
The ability merely to progress through the air is not efficient
flight. The smaller grasshoppers leap into the air and sustain them-
selves for some distance by movements of the wings, but they have
small power of directing their course after they leave the ground.
Some of the migratory locusts ascend to great heights and go long
distances on the wing, but they are probably dependent largely on
the wind for transportation. The Carolina locust is a better flyer,
but its course on the wing, though more or less directive, appears
to be rather haphazard. Real flight involves the ability to steer a
definite course, and to turn this way or that as exigencies demand.
By this test the majority of insects are expert flyers, and we need
only observe a dragon fly foraging for smaller insects over the water,
one of the smaller horseflies dodging the ineffectual counter strokes
of its intended victim, or a hawk moth poised in the air as it extracts
the nectar from the depths of a corolla, to realize how adroitly insects
can make use of their wings in controlling their flight.
Insects are not provided with rudders. There is little evidence
that they use their bodies or their legs to direct or alter their course
while in the air. Stellwaag (1916), who has made a special study of
the steering powers of insects, points out that if directive flight were
accomplished by movements of the legs or the abdomen, these move-
ments could be detected in the more slowly fiying species, whereas,
in fact, no such movements are either visible by close inspection or
can be detected by mechanical devices. Shadowgraphs of flying
insects, he says, record no alteration in the position of the body or of
the legs during a change in the direction of flight. Observations on
insects held in a pair of tweezers and turned at various angles also
failed to show compensatory movements in the body or appendages.
Finally, Stellwaag resorted to experimentation on living insects
impaled on slender pins thrust vertically through the thorax. Insects
thus secured vibrate the wings as in flight and revolve to the right or
the left on the axis of the pin, whether the latter is held vertical or
inclined, but the turning is never accompanied by movements of the
418 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
legs or abdomen. Steering, therefore, Stellwaag ccncludes, is evi-
dently accomplished by a differential action in the wings themselves.
With the insects held on pins, it is possible to observe the action of
the wings directly; and to make the wing movements more evident
Stellwaag employed the method used by Marey of attaching bits of
gold leaf to the wing tips and throwing a strong light on them while
in motion. In many cases, he says, not only the plane of the wings is
seen to be altered as the insects revolves itself on the pin, but there
is also visible a change in the amplitude of the wing strokes on one
side or the other. Frem these experiments it is evident that the
flying insect must control the direction of its flight after the manner of
a rower in a boat, who, in the absence of a helmsman, keeps to his
course or alters it by changes in the manipulation of the oars.
The muscles of the insect concerned in the differential action of the
wings must be the pleural muscles of the alar segments, which are
those of the basalar and subalar sclerites (fig. 19, H, M’, and M”),
since these muscles alone have specific connections with the wings.
The longitudinal and vertical muscles of the wing-bearing segments,
though potent effectors of wimg movements, can not unequally
distribute their influence between the two sides of a segment.
It is not surprising that insects should be experts on the wing, con-
sidering that they have been flying for several hundred million years,
but still we are inclined to marvel when we see them perform feats that
are as yet quite impossible for our newly developed, heavier-than-air
flying machines. In addition to their ability to steer themselves
adroitly in forward flight, many insects can go into reverse gear and
fly directly backward without altering the position of their bodies, and,
moreover, they have also some mechanism of adjustment by which
they can fly sidewise, either to the right or left, at right angles to the
body axis. The dragon flies are particularly adept in these modes of
fight, but many of the smaller insects, such as the flies and bees, are
quite equal to the dragon flies in being able to dart suddenly to the side
or rearward while the head still points in the direction of the arrested
forward flight. Reversed and lateral flying is probably controlled also
by the pleural muscles of the flight mechanism, which alone can give
an altered or differential action to the wings; but it is remarkable that
organs so evidently fashioned for forward flight, as are the wings of
insects, can function efficiently for producing motion in other direc-
tions.
Still another feat that many insects perform on the wing with seem-
ing ease is hovering. Keeping the wings in rapid movement, the insect
remains without other motion suspended at one point in the air, even
maintaining its position’ the face of a slight breeze. Presumably, in
hovering, the wings are vibrated approximately in a horizontal plane,
thus creating a region of decreased air pressure above the body ut not
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 419
before it. The rate of the wing movements then must be just suffi-
cient to create a balance with the pull of gravity. <A drift on air
currents must be counteracted by compensatory changes in the angle
of the wing vibrations.
An interesting illustration showing the course taken by a honeybee
or by a drone fly approaching a group of flowers is given by Stell-
waag. (Fig. 25.) The insect arrives head on, arrests its flight and
swings to the night or left still headed toward the flowers; next, it
circles about in ordinary forward flight, making a closer approach;
now, perhaps, it hovers, again zigzags sideways, and finally goes direct
to a particular blossom.
Considering how adept are insects on the wing, it seems certain that
they must have a highly developed ‘“‘sense”’ of equilibrium. And yet,
among the numerous and diverse sense organs with which insects are
known to be equipped, organs to which might be assigned a static
function, or the control of balance, have been found in very few cases,
and principally in
certain small forms
(Phylloxera) with x
limited powers of oe
flight. Lacking evi-
dence of the exist-
ence of organs of
ss.4 3
equilibrium gen- rage abe
fot
erally distributed
in insects, we might
suppose that the Ber eee:
maintenance of bal- sbi
ance during flight is
an automatic reac-
tion through the
sense of sight. The writer has found, however, that a large swallowtail
butterfly (Papilio polyxenes) is able to fly well after having its eyes
thoroughly blackened with a mixture of glue and powdered charcoal
until it no longer reacts to light in a room. (The normal butterfly
goes at once to a window.) An individual thus blindfolded fluttered
about aimlessly in a room with three windows on one side, though
before, when liberated, it flew directly to a window. Taken out of
doors it immediately flew upward in widening circles, finally going
high over the roof of a two-story house and disappearing over the tops
of trees beyond. Clearly this insect did not require the use of its
eyes to keep itself in the proper position for flying. Another individ-
ual of the same species was able to fly in the normal way when its entire
head was cut off, though, after the manner of insects lacking a brain,
it had no inclination to do so, except when artificially stimulated.
When thrown into the air, it fell straight down, but the sudden con-
82322—30——_28
Ow.
aS
FIGURE 25.—The course taken by a honeybee (A) and a drone fly (8B):
approaching a flower. (From Stellwaag, 1916)
420 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
tact with the ground stimulated it to make a short flight, during which
it was well able to keep its balance. When at rest, it held the wings
folded above the back in the usual fashion, though the body tilted
somewhat to one side, a result of the loss of ‘‘tonus”’ in the muscles
always shown by decerebrated insects.
TEXT REFERENCES AND A LIST OF THE MORE IMPORTANT
PAPERS ON THE MECHANISM OF INSECT FLIGHT
Amans, P. C. (1883, 1884). Essai sur le vol des insectes. Rev. Sci. Nat., Sér. 8,
2: 469-490; 3: 121-139, pls. 3-4.
(1885). Comparisons des organes du vol dans la série animale. Ann.
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AXENFELD, D. (1911). Locomozione aerea degli insetti. Boll. R. Accad. Medica
de Roma, 37: 123-136, 7 figs.
BELLESME, J. DE (1879). Sur une function de direction dans le vol des insectes.
C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, 89: 980-983.
Buuu, L. (1904). La chronophotographie des mouvements rapides. Bull. Soc.
Philomath., Paris, 9th sér., 6: 192-199, 9 figs.
(1904a), Mécanisme du mouvement de l’aile des insects. C. R. Acad.
Sci., Paris, 188: 590—592.
(1909). Recherches sur le vol de V’insecte. C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, 149:
942-944,
(1910). Sur les inclinaisons de l’aile de l’insecte pendant le vol. C. R.
Acad. Sci., Paris, 18@: 129-131.
Comstock, J. H. (1918). The wings of insects. 430 pp., 427 figs. Ithaca, N. Y.
Crampton, G. C. (1916). The phylogenetic origin and the nature of the wings
of insects according to the paranotal theory. Journ. New York Ent. Soc., 24:
1-39, pls. 1, 2.
DeEmoLL, R. (1918). Der Flug der Insekten und der Végel, 67 pp., 18 figs., 5
pls. Jena.
Haupt, H. (1929). Die Mechanik des Zikadenfliigels und ihre Bedeutung fir
den Flug. Zeitschr. wiss. Insektenbiologie, 24: 73-78, 5 figs.
Horr, W. (1919). Der Flug der Insekten und der Végel. Naturwissenschaften,
3: 159-162.
Karny, H. H. (1925). Einiges tiber die Gryllacrisarten des Typus IV. Zeztschr.
wiss. Zool., 125: 35-54, 9 figs.
Lanpois, H. (1867). Die Ton- und Stimmapparate der Insekten in anatomisch-
physiologischer und akustischer Beziehung. Zeitschr. wiss. Zool., 17: 105-184,
pls. 10, 11.
LENDENFELD, R. von (1881). Der Flug der Libellen. Sitz. Ber. Akad. Wiss.,
Wien, Math.-Natur., 83: Abth. I: 289-376, pls. 1-7.
(1903). Beitrag zum Studium des Fluges der Insekten mit Hilfe der
Momentphotographie. Biol. Centrlbl., 23: 227-232, 1 pl.
Marey, E. J. (1869). Mémoire sur le vol des insectes et des oiseaux. Ann. Sci.
Nat., Sér. 5, Zool., 12: 49-150, 42 figs.
(18692). Recherches sur le méchanisme du vol des insectes. Journ.
Anat. Physiol., 6: 19-36, 337-348.
(1872). Second mémoire sur le vol des insectes et des oiseaux. Ann.
Sci. Nat., Paris, Sér. 5, Zool., 15: art. 13, 62 pp., 23 figs.
(1874). Animal mechanism: a treatise on terrestrial and aerial locomotion.
283 pp., 117 figs. Internat. Sci. Series, New York.
HOW INSECTS FLY—SNODGRASS 421
Marey, EH. J. (1891). Levoldes insectes étudié par la photochronographie. C. R.
Acad. Sct., Paris, 113: 15-18, 1 fig.
Marrrnoy, A. B. (1925). Uber zwei Grundtypen der Fligel bei den Insekten
und ihre Evolution. Zeztschr. morph. Oekol., Tiere, 4: 465-501, 24 figs.
PreTTicRrEeW, J. B. (1891). Animal locomotion, or walking, swimming, and
flying. 264 pp., 1380 figs., London.
Pifron, H. (1927). De la loi qui relie la surface des ailes au poids des individus
dans une méme espéce animale, et de quelques problémes concernant le vol
des inseetes. C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, 184: 239-241.
PortiER, P., et pe Rorruays (1926). Recherches sur la charge supportée par
les ailes des Lépidoptéres de diverses familles. C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, 183:
1126-1128. .
Pousane, G. A. (1884). Note sur les attitudes des insectes pendant le vol. Ann.
Soc. Ent. France, Sér. 6, 4: 197-200, pl. 8.
Procunow, O. (1921-1924). Mechanik des Insektenfluges. In Schréder’s
Handbuch der Entomologie, Chapter 9, 534-569, 28 figs.
Ritter, W. (1911). The flying apparatus of the blow-fly. Smithsonian Mis-
cellaneous Collections, 56: No. 12, 76 pp., 19 pls.
Snoperass, R. E. (1929). The thoracic mechanism of a grasshopper, and its
antecedents. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 82, No. 2, 111 pp., 54 figs.
STELLWAAG, F. (1910). Bau und Mechanik des Flug-Apparates der Biene.
Zeitschr. wiss. Zool., 95: 518-550, pls. 19, 20.
— (1914). Der Flugapparat der Lamellicornier. Zeitschr. wiss. Zool., 108:
359-429, pls. 11-14.
(1916). Wie steuern die Insekten wihrend des Fluges? Biol. Zentralbl.,
36: 30-44, 9 figs.
TituyarpD, H. J. (1919). The panorpid complex. Pt. 3, the wing-venation.
Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. W., 44: 533-718, pls. 31-35.
Voss, F. (1913, 1914). Vergleichende Untersuchungen tiber die Flugwerkzeuge
der Insekten. Verh. Deut. Zool. Gesell., 23: 118-142, 4 figs.; 24: 59-90, pls.
12.
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CLIMATE AND MIGRATIONS !
By J. C. Curry
In separate favoured regions various kinds of men set out to domesticate and
master the gifts and forces around them: to “live well,’’ in the old Greek phrase,
under the given conditions of their home, or failing this, to seek and make a new
one: in either event, to comply as well as to command; to conquer Nature by
observance of her laws.
J. L. Myres.
In this wonderful century when discoveries and inventions have
followed fast on one another’s heels man seems to look dazed and
half comprehendingly at the works of his own hands. So that there
are some who say that he is on the brink of new and more wonderful
mastery over: nature; others that there are no more discoveries to
make; and others again who wish to cry halt, and ask hopelessly,
for 10 years’ rest from the innovations and disturbances which scienti-
fic inquiry is bringing into their world.
For more than five centuries man’s progress has been almost unin-
terrupted in every direction. During these centuries nature has
been strangely quiet; and man has ceased to be frightened of ‘‘ por-
tents” and ‘‘visitations.’”’ He has taken advantage of this long quiet
period to accumulate knowledge, nearly sufficient, perhaps to enable
him to be the ‘‘ master of his destiny,’ when next nature rouses herself
to such a mood as swept the Roman world into utter ruin. Nearly
sufficient, perhaps; but there is still much work to be done before
compliance with nature’s laws can be wholly intelligent.
It is only possible here to sketch the main outline of the inquiry,
concerning man and his environment, most relevant to this issue.
The sole justification for so crude a sketch is the hope of suggesting new
points of departure for others.
In 1903 the Carnegie Institute of Washington appointed Mr.
Ellsworth Huntington to assist Professor Davies of Harvard Univer-
sity in the physiographic work of an expedition into Central Asia.
The results of this and of subsequent expeditions were embodied in an
account published by Mr. Huntington in 1907.2, The great interest
of his work lies in his presentment of the evidence concerning the rela-
tions between the human race and its physical environment; of that
Reprinted by permission from Antiquity, a quarterly review of Archsology, September, 1928.
‘The Pulse of Asia.
423
424 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
concerning the changes in that environment through changes of climate
during historic times; and in his treatment of the subject of the effects
of these changes on its history.
Briefly stated his main argument is that there is evidence of the
recurrence of changes of climate in Central Asia during historic times,
’ EUROPE.» CENTRAL ASIA
FIGURE 1
Mal
bi
f
4]
ft: mM
and that some measure of these changes is furnished by the variations
in the level of the Caspian Sea. The evidence as to the variations in
the climatic conditions of other places in Asia confirms that concerning
tbe variations in the level of the Caspian. He maintains that, while
CLIMATE AND MIGRATION—-CURRY 425
many of the facts might be explained in individual cases by other
theories than that of a simultaneous change of climate over a wide area
no other theory explains all the facts. A comparison of physiographic,
historical and archeological data from Russian Turkestan, Chinese
Turkestan, Persia, Seistan, Baluchistan and from the area draining
into the Caspian Sea shows that all lines of evidence agree in proving
that pulsations of climate, corresponding in time and character, have
been common to all these countries. The lakes and rivers throughout
the whole of this region have waxed and waned simultaneously more
than once since the first records of Herodotus. In his time the Cas-
pian stood at a level more than 150 feet higher than it does at the
present day. In the time of Alexander it embraced the Sea of Aral,
and the Oxus and Jaxartes then entered it. This latter statement is
made on the authority of a survey conducted under the orders of
Alexander and his generals. To admit the possibility of this it is neces-
sary to suppose that its level was 150 feet higher than it is at present.
From the figures given by Strabo (20 a. p.) 1t is concluded that at that
time the level was from 85 to 100 feet higher than now. In his days
the trade route from India to Europe led along the banks of the Oxus,
and crossed the Caspian to the mouth of the Cyrus river. Four hun-
dred years later the trade route was diverted from the Oxus to Aboskun
in the southeast corner of the sea. About this time the level of the sea
was lower than it is now. Walls were built at Aboskun and at
Darbend, on the opposite coast, ‘‘as a bulwark against the migratory
Huns.”’ At the former place the line of the wall can now be traced,
below water, at a distance of 18 miles from the shore. At Baku and
at other places are ruins of submerged buildings dating either from
the fifth or the twelfth centuries. ‘There are several strands at vary-
ing heights along the southern shores of the Caspian, among the most
clearly marked of which are those 600, 250 and 150 feet above the
present level.
Their weak development shows that, as a rule, the sea did not
stand at any one level for along time. The state of their preservation
shows that they are of very recent origin.
The most significant feature of the climatic curve of the Caspian
Sea is that it is applicable to the whole of western and central Asia.
At a distance of 1,000 miles to the east in the Tianshan mountains
there are remains of irrigation channels at a level where there is now
frost in midsummer and so much moisture that, if agriculture were
possible under such conditions, irrigation would be unnecessary. Two
thousand miles to the west in Armenia, in the lake of Gyoljuk, the
stone houses of a village are standing 20 to 30 feet below its surface.
Local records indicate that they were built about 500 a. p.
A survey of six distinct basins, viz., Gyoljuk, the Caspian, the
Seistan Lakes, Lop Nor, Turfan, and Kashmir (the latter being south
426 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of the Himalayas), proves that a great change took place in the early
centuries of the Christian era.
‘The only hypothesis which will fit all the facts is that of a change
of climate in the direction of greater aridity throughout these regions.
Except in Kashmir the change brought disaster. Scores of once
prosperous oases were abandoned for lack of water. The inhabitants
were driven away in waves of migration to confound the civilized world.
A rainfall of 20 inches a year in Australia has been estimated to
make it possible to keep 600 sheep to the square mile. A drop to 13
inches reduces the number to 100; and 10 inches is sufficient for only
10 sheep. A gradual decrease of rainfall in the steppes of Asia would
naturally lead to migrations of pastoral nomads from the drier regions
to those which offer pasturage for their flocks and herds. As the
steppes became drier northern and central Europe were, after a long
period of blighting cold, becoming warmer and more and more habita-
ble. History records the coming of horde after horde. Nothing
could stay them. Rome and Roman civilization fell before them.
Before we can properly estimate the influence of climatic changes
upon history, it is necessary to investigate the nature of those changes,
both as to duration and origin, as well as to determine the reasons for
supposing that climate varies uniformly over wide areas.
Scientists have recognized two chief types of climatic change.
The first is that of the glacial periods; the second is that of the 36-year
cycle discussed by Bruckner, Clough, and others. There is good
reason to believe that the latter is applicable to the whole surface of
the globe. During a cycle there are two extremes, at one of which the
climate of continental regions is to a greater extent cool and wet, with
a lower barometric pressure and relatively frequent storms for a series
of years; at the other it is comparatively warm and dry, with higher
pressure and fewer storms. These phenomena are most pronounced
in mid-continental regions, decline towards the coasts, and are
sometimes reversed in maritime regions. The extremes of low
temperature follow periods of maximum solar activity as indicated
by the number of sun spots and the rapidity with which they are
formed. The periods of heaviest rainfall follow those of lowest
temperature at intervals of a few years. The other extremes are
characterized by diminished solar activity followed by higher tempera-
tures and, a little later, by scarcity of rainfall. The cycles have been
traced back by Clough to about 300 4. p., but only the data of the last
century can be accepted as approximately accurate. During that
time, it may be noted, neither the extremes of heat nor of cold have
shown any tendency to increase in intensity.
The Bruckner cycles appear to differ from those of the glacial
periods only in degree and regularity. The effects upon glaciers,
rivers and lakes are of precisely the same nature; and the distribution
CLIMATE AND MIGRATION—-CURRY 427
of the two appears to be identical so far as the continents are concerned.
Both are world-wide phenomena. The changes of climate which have
been discussed above as found by Huntington to have taken place in
Central Asia are, he claims, similar in nature to both the Bruckner
and the glacial cycles, and lie between them in intensity. In his opin-
ion it is reasonable to suppose that the three types of climatic change
are of the same nature, are of the same solar origin, and are of equally
wide distribution. This may be true, but he does not adduce sufficient
evidence to justify the acceptance of these hypotheses, either asregards
the nature or origin of his third type.
From the above précis of the work of Ellsworth Huntington it
will be clear that an examination of historical, and perhaps prehistori-
cal, data should yield further results.
Professor Myres, Wykeham professor of ancient history at Oxford,
in an authoritative sketch of the dawn of history * remarks:
The Arabian desert is one of the earth’s great reservoirs of men. Much of it,
indeed, is usually uninhabitable; but its surface, gently sloping eastward till it
dips into the Persian Gulf, is much more diversified than the Libyan desert by
hollows which are moist enough for grass * * * When the supply of moisture
is at its maximum, Arabia can therefore breed and support vast masses of pastoral
folk, each with its wealth of sheep and goats, its rigid patriarchal society, its
ill-defined orbit within which it claims first bite of the grass and first draught
from the wells, which it believes its forefathers opened. But if moisture fails,
as there seems reason to believe that it does from time to time, in large pulsations
of climatic change, man and his flocks must either escape or perish. Fortunately,
escape is easy; the tribes are always on the move; and the drought spreads but
gradually.
In connection with the distribution of the Indo-European languages
he says (p. 195):
Their wide geographical range, from our own islands to northern India, and
from south Persia to Norway, is nevertheless limited enough to suggest that the
whole group stands in somewhat the same relation to the northern grassland, as
the Semitic languages to that of Arabia. Though the Indo-European languages
differ far more widely from one another than even the most distinct among the
Semitic group, they all possess a recognizable type of grammatical structure, and
a small stock of words common to them all, for the numerals, family relationships,
parts of the body, certain animals and plants * * * It is still generally
believed, in spite of much discouraging experience in detail, that from this primi- |
tive vocabulary it is possible to discover something of the conditions of life in
regions where a common ancestor of all these languages was spoken; and when we
find it generally admitted, (1) that the domestic animals of this ‘‘ Indo-European
home” included the horse, cow, and pig, as well as sheep, goat, and dog, and that
the cow was the most honored of all; (2) that these societies, though mainly
pastoral, were not nomad, but had homes and some agriculture; that they used
both plow and cart, had a considerable list of names for trees, and some experi-
ence of the simplest forms of trade; (3) that the social structure was patriarchal,
and that the patriarchal households lived in large loosely federated groups under
elected chiefs; we are probably not far wrong in regarding the first users of this
3 The Dawn of History, p. 104. Home University Library (Butterworth, reprint 1927).
il
428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
type of speech as having inhabited some part, perhaps many contiguous parts,
of the parkland country which fringes these steppes, and as having spread in a
long period of slow development; accelerated from time to time by drought, and
migrations caused by drought. Some drifted in moister periods in the direction
of the treeless steppe, losing or confusing their vocabulary for forestry and
farming; others, in dry spells, further into the forests, with corresponding forget-
fulness of their more pastoral habits. Much recent controversy over details
would have been avoided if it had been realized earlier by students of these
languages that the geographical régime of all grassland regions is liable to these
periodic changes; and that the immediate effect of such change is either to alter
the mode of life of the inhabitants till it suits their new surroundings, or else to
drive them out into regions where they still can live in the ancestral way.
Professor Myres describes the grassland area to which he refers as
consisting of two great reservoirs in hour-glass form, fringed by forest
or desert, one extending for 1,500 miles from the Carpathians to Oren-
burg, the other for 1,000 miles from that point to the high ground of
Elburz or of Tianshan. In northern and central Europe, where the
rainfall is distributed fairly evenly throughout the year, grassland gives
place to scrubland, and the latter passes into that deciduous forest
which once reached without intermission from the Atlantic to beyond
the Urals.
Ellsworth Huntington and Professor Myres have thus traced the
sonnection between changes of climate and certain historical events.
The propositions which they have established suggest a detailed
analysis of the material dealing with historical events of this type.
This analysis yields the following results:
In the centuries immediately preceding the year 2000 B. C. the
first great movement of the steppe peoples foreshadowed the modern
world. The Canaanites poured out of Arabia, and the Hyksos, the
shepherd kings, crossed the mountain ranges through Persia and
Palestine into Egypt.* The Hyksos brought the horse. It was pre-
viously unknown in Arabia and in Egypt. At this time Egypt, the
Aegean, Mesopotamia, and southern Arabia were the centers of civili-
zation.
Tartar nomads must have inhabited the steppes of Europe and
Asia, and early users of the ‘‘Indo-European”’ speech the surrounding
forest and parklands of the two continents. The Alpine race occupied
the mountain zone from the Western Alps to the Pamirs; and the
Mediterranean race, described by Professor Sergi, the shores of that
sea. The Caspian Sea and all the lakes and marshes of Europe and
Asia were larger than they are now, glaciers were more numerous and
extended further into the valleys. The rainfall was generally heavier,
and regions now steppe were then forest clad, while some tracts which
are now desert provided good pasturage.
‘Phe so-called Median Wall (from the Euphrates to the Tigris) was probably built at this period. Pro-
fessor Myres states that it is certainly elder than the Median conquest, and that its object clearly was to
keep out nomads. :
CLIMATE AND MIGRATION—-CURRY 499
The next great movement was one of agricultural as well as of
nomadic peoples. Between 1600 and 1300 B. C. the Aramaean nomads
from Arabia entered Mesopotamia, the Indo-European agriculturalists
entered India and Persia, Indo-Europeans for the first time came into
contact with Syria (witness the Tel-el-Amarna correspondence), the
Hittites entered Asia Minor, the Achaeans settled in Greece. During
this period and actually between 1400 and 1350 B. C., Minoan civili-
zation suffered a devastating blow. It may be suggested that the Iron
Age began in the Mediterranean somewhere about the fifteenth and
fourteenth centuries B. C. It was probably introduced as a result of
migrations from Europe north of the mountain zone.
A third important period of migration is dated between 1000 and
600 B. C. During these centuries the Celtic movements are traceable
along the north of the mountain ranges from the Italian Alps to the
shores of the Caspian. The Cimmerian section disturbed by pressure
from the Scythians crossed into Asia Minor by Darbend. They or
other migratory tribes were responsible for the disappearance of the
Hittite State which had been a leading power for several centuries.
The Dorians pressed into Greece and caused nearly three centuries of
chaos there. The Medes overran Persia.
Shortly after 200 B. C. a fourth period of disturbance and migration
began, when a tribe of nomads (probably Turki by race), known to the
Chinese as the Hiung-nu, defeated the Yueb-chi, who occupied the
Province of Kan-suh. The Yueh-chi in turn attacked and dispossessed
the Saka, or Scythians, who then oecupied the steppes north of the
Jaxartes. The Yueh-chi began to settle in Bactria about 70 B. C., and
the Saka passed on into India and settled in the Punjab, Kathiawar,
and Gujerat. At the same time Persia was overrun by nomadic
Turanians. Toward the end of the second century B. C., Germanic
hordes threatened Gaul and Italy. Their advance was only stemmed,
after special exertions, by the organized might of the Roman arms.
A fifth period, involving a most serious check to the growth of civili-
zation south of the mountain zone, falls between 250 and 650 A. D.
About 250 A. D. a series of catastrophes occurred in India, Greece, and
Italy. The Kushan kingdoms in northern India and the Andhra
dynasty in the south of the peninsula were extinguished as the result
of barbarian migrations. Simultaneously, the Goths pressed into
Greece and took Athens by storm. Their inroads continued in spite
of a crushing defeat in 269 A. D.
All along its frontiers the Roman Empire was hard-pressed during
the latter half of the third century. Franks and Alemanni roamed
through Gaul, Saxons plundered the coasts. A hundred years later
a stream of Huns, separating from that which filled the valley of the
Oxus and later overflowed into Persia and India, poured into eastern
Europe (about 375 A. D.) driving the Goths to the south of the Danube
430 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
and displacing the tribes in Germany. The Roman Empire was
divided in 395 A. D. The Goths were settled in Moesia about 390
A. D. The Western Empire succumbed to the Germans, who after
inundating Gaul, Britain, Spain, and the North African Province
seized the imperial diadem in 476 A. D. The Hunnish Empire in
Europe was broken up about 460 A. D. by fresh swarms of immi-
grants from Asia.
Almost in the same year the Huns poured into India and over-
whelmed the kingdoms of the north. About 456 A. D. the Sassanian
dynasty of Persia built the walls at Darbend and at Aboskun (men-
tioned already as now being below the level of the Caspian) as a
defence against the nomads. They were able by this means to avoid
their fate for a time, but by 484 A. D. all resistance had ceased.
The sixth and last period is that of the eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth centuries, in the first of which the ‘‘ wild Magyar horsemen”’
were restless in Europe. During the thirteenth century swarm after
swarm of Mongols poured into Europe and into India.
The dates marking the duration of the fourth, fifth, and sixth of
these periods are matters of exact historical record. Those of the
first, second, and third are fixed less finally by historical evidence, by
tradition, and as a result of archeological investigation in both con-
tinents and in Egypt and the Aegean. Each period lasted from about
three to nearly four centuries; and the intervening periods were of a
similar duration. During the intervening periods civilized and
organized states were developed in some or all of the regions south of
the mountain zone.
Between the first and second migratory periods the Theban dynas-
ties reorganized Egypt and founded the ‘‘New Empire.”’ Minoan
civilization dominated the Aegean. The Canaanites settled down in
prosperous communities in Palestine and Syria, and the Assyrian
power grew steadily in Mesopotamia.
Between the second and third periods the Aryans developed the
Vedic civilization of India, the Hittite state grew up in Asia Minor.
Hgypt, Judea, and Mesopotamia were all prosperous. This was the
Achaean age of Homer.
After the third migratory period civilization burst suddenly into
full flower along the southern slopes of the mountain chain, in India,
in Persia, in Asia Minor, in Greece, and in Italy. In each case it
occurred after a fusion of the ‘‘Aryan”’ or ‘‘Indo-European,”’ races
with the earlier inhabitants and in a climate suitable to agriculture and
to a ‘“‘high stage of development of the Indo-European.”
After the fourth migratory period India, Persia, and Greece
suffered a relative decline, and Italy was preeminently the center of
civilization. The countries north of the mountain zone were begin-
ning to develop under Roman influence.
CLIMATE AND MIGRATION—CURRY 431
After the fifth, most disastrous period, modern Europe begins to
emerge from the chaos of the Dark Ages. After the sixth and last
irruption from the steppes the Renaissance ushers in the present age.
Taking the periods after 600 B. C. as being more precisely dated,
it is clear that each complete climatic cycle had an average duration
of approximately 640 years. The years 1170 A. D., 530 A. D., and
100 B. C. indicate the crests of the waves of migration and drought.
Proceeding further back, if the same figure held good the next three
crests would be represented by the years 750 B. C., 1390 B. C., and
2030 B. C.; and these dates accord with the general estimate of the
duration of the first three migratory periods as indicated in previous
paragraphs. It may, therefore, be inferred for the present that these
dates provide a measuring rod for the history of the 2,500 years
preceding ourera. An attempt has been made to represent the histor-
ical movements in graph D on page 432.
An analysis of physiographic and of historical data leads then to
the following conclusions:
(1) A regular succession of climatic cycles approximately 640
years in duration, each including on the average something like
300 years of increasing aridity, has produced 4 series of alternating
periods of migration and consolidation in Europe and Asia, where
the effects can be traced between the years 2300 B. C. and 1600 A. D.
(2) These periods of migration have also been periods of internal
decay in civilized states and among settled communities. This would,
a priori, be expected to result from unsettled and particularly de-
teriorating conditions of climate causing deterioration in the agri-
cultural and commercial conditions under which the people of such
communities lived.
It may be deduced that the periods of consolidation would ne-
cessarily be such that conditions were relatively ‘‘settled”’ in every
respect; that is to say, when at the most very slight variations of
climate occurred.
(3) Physiographic conditions generally (c. f. the graph and other
evidence relating to the levels of the Caspian Sea) prove that, taking
the period of the last 7000 years as a whole, there has been a large-
scale but very gradual tendency towards desiccation.
From this it may be inferred that the 300-year periods of migration
have been of such a nature that this general primary tendency has been
accelerated by secondary conditions, and that the 300-year periods of
consolidation have been of such a nature that the corresponding
secondary conditions have served more or less closely to counteract
this general tendency.
This general tendency is reflected in history by a tendency for
the centers of civilization to move gradually away from the equator.
Prior to 1000 B. C. conditions were most favorable to physical and
432 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
intellectual well-being in the region of the thirtieth degree of latitude
(Egypt and Babylonia); from 600 to 300 B. C. between the thirty-fifth
and fortieth degrees (Greece); from 300 B. C. to 400 A. D. between the
“2440
~2400
—2300 — 2300
—2200 — 2200
—2100 —— 2
~200070%° “seabed
—1300 — 1900
—1!800 -1810 — 1800
—1700 — 1700
—1600 2; — 1600
—1500 { == S00
—1400-350 my — 1400
BRIRPo ‘oD —~ £300
orad -1170 — -—— 1200
—!100 ) — 1100
—1000 ae — 1000 e)
— 900 i —- $00
— 800 \ —— S00
er ard Bi B — 700
— 600 ‘ — 600
= S00 } ~—5320 — 500
00 — 400
— 300 : —— {300
= soho) ay fs — 200 =
— #00 ¢ — 100
AD ' ‘- >
OO iLO Nas -— moGs eRe
— z00 Mt — 200 ab
— 300 ) — 30
— 400 a — 400
— 500_s30 t — 500
— 600 — 600
— 700 =——4 700
— g00 750 — 800
— 900 — 9300
—!000 — i000
—1100 — 1!00 >
—1200 "70 — 1200 &
—1300 — 1300
—1400 -1390 — 1400
—1500 — 1500
—1600 — 1600
—1700 — 1700
—1 800-1810 — i800
—1900 — 14900
0 2) w >
FIGURE 2.—A, From Brooks’ “‘ Eurasia,’ Figure 38in Climate Through the Ages. B, From Brooks’
““Western Asia,’’ Figure 35, in Climate Through the Ages. (A and B by permission of the author and
Messrs. Ernest Benn, Ltd.) C, Pearson’s graph from the Geological Magazine, 1901. D, Graph repre
senting historical fluctuations; the ‘‘crest’’ line represents periods of stability and settlement, and the
“trough”’ line periods of disturbance and migration. In A, B, and C the dotted lines are inserted to in-
dicate the divergence of Brooks’ and Pearson’s graphs from the 640-year cycles
fortieth and forty-fifth degrees (Rome); from 800 to 100 A. D.
between the forty-fiftb and fiftieth degrees (France and northern
Italy); and finally after 1000 A. D. between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth
CLIMATE AND MIGRATION—CURRY 433
degrees (England, northern France and Germany). After 400 A. D.
no clearly defined distinction can be made. Italy, Spain, France,
England and Germany can all claim to have been pre-eminent in
different ways at different times; but the general tendency for the best
conditions to move northwards is undeniable.
The year 1840 should have marked a wave crest of migration,
of desiccation, and of a low level of the Caspian Sea. A marked drop
in this level did occur about 1820, but it was evidently not connected
with any cause sufficient to bring about disaster in the steppes or a
very serious economic upheaval. From the generally ‘‘settled”
conditions of the last 200 years it follows that either the primary or
the secondary cause of desiccation, or both, have ceased to exercise
their former influence.
Following Huntington’s conclusion that the changes which now
appear as 640-year cycles lie midway between Bruckner’s and the
glacial cycles in intensity, the causes of change referred to above as
primary must be regarded as being connected with the last glacial
cycle.®
The geographical and historical evidence in favor of the existence
of°a 640-year cycle is inconclusive and incomplete in the absence of
any explanation of its cause or causes. The alternating periods of
migration and consolidation are, however, so clearly marked that their
existence can hardly be a matter of controversy, apart from the
question of periodicity. The connection between droughts and migra-
tions has been recently discussed both by H. Peake and C. E. P.
Brooks. Their work shows that there is need for the treatment in
greater detail of the historical evidence, both as regards the migrations
of the steppe peoples and deterioration in the more highly organized
states.
The fact that conditions have been so settled for nearly 600 years,
(since the migrations of the Mongol period), has led to these questions
being regarded as of academic or even merely ‘‘bookish” interest.
It is, however, possible that changes may occur again on a scale
similar to those which destroyed the civilizations of the past. Some
such change as that which brought new peoples into Italy, Greece,
Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Persia, and India between 1600 B. C. and
1300 B. C. might again take place suddenly and transform the world
in the life-time of our own or the next generation. Such considera-
tions indicate that these questions, being, at least, of potential im-
portance in high politics, deserve greater attention than they have
§ Other evidence bearing on the nature of these primary and secondary causes of change is, possibly, to be
found in such facts as that the level of the Caspian was much lower during the fifth drought than it is now:
that this drought, judging by the historical evidence, appears to present a triple wave crest: that the fourth
and sixth droughts had much less serious effects than the third and fifth: and that the effects of the later
droughts were comparatively unimportant in Arabia,
434 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
received. If man is to be master of his destiny, to ‘“‘live well’’, and
‘‘to conquer nature by observance of her laws’’, these are the secrets
which he has now to learn.
The problem at this moment seems to offer two main lines of
attack—to find the causes of the alternate (300-year) periods of —
migration and consolidation, and to determine the chronology and
causes of the glacial periods. Both solutions are for the present
veiled in obscurity.
The conclusions so far reached suggest an examination of all
phenomena likely to be related throughout the whole field of scientific
inquiry, and primarily in those branches of knowledge classified as
geology and meteorology.
In the sciences concerned with the study of past events, in geology,
paleo-climatology and archeology, as in history, a clear arrangement
of the facts 1s impossible without a standard for the measurement. of
time. The need for such a standard has long been felt by geologists.
Nearly a century ago they sought the aid of the astronomers in an
attempt to give definition to geological time. No solution has been
found on those lines. In Climate Through the Ages, Brooks elucidates
many of the phenomena connected with the great glaciations, but*he
shows that questions of chronology are still in doubt. One possible
factor in the equation, which is still unknown in spite of observations
dating from Ptolemy’s time, is the variation in the obliquity of the
ecliptic. If more were known about the periods, extent, and nature
of this variation, and its exact relation, if any, to changes of climate,
we should be nearer a solution of the questions connected with the
passing of the last glaciation, and the progress from paleolithic to
neolithic civilization which accompanied it. Assuming that the
“primary tendency”’ for civilization to move away from the equator
is connected with the glacial cycle, we should be nearer to under-
standing whether and when the centers of civilization are likely to
pass south again.
Similarly it is tempting to hope that the inference of a 640-year
cycle may be supplemented by evidence as to its origin. If it were
established, it would facilitate the study of future, as well as of
archeological, problems.
Whether this inference of a regular periodicity is true or not,
the fact of the occurrence of long periods of drought and disturbance
on the one hand, and of climatically and economically ‘“‘settled”’
conditions on the other is susceptible of scientific explanation. The
problem will be solved eventually, if only because a knowledge of
all the factors will make it possible to foresee and provide for future
catastrophes.
The main factors as known at present appear to be variations in
the position and intensity of the north temperate storm belt and in
CLIMATE AND MIGRATION—CURRY 435
the direction taken by depressions as they move eastwards across
Europe and Asia. According to Brooks it has been found that the
area in which annual rainfall variations have a positive correlation
extends only a short distance north and south, but for many hundreds
of miles across Europe into Asia. This is the area whose rainfall
influences the migrations from the Steppes. Ellsworth Huntington
has partially established correlation with other parts of the world,
but the evidence in that respect is not yet complete. In view of
recent work proving, among other things, relations between varia-
tions in the Indian monsoon and rainfall in Africa and South America,
it seems probable that factors sufficiently powerful to cause the great
droughts on the Steppes could not but be world-wide in their effects.
Huntington has suggested a gradual northward movement of the
storm belt corresponding with, and connected with, the movement
of civilization in the same direction.
H. W. Pearson, in the Geological Magazine, 1901, suggested that
the evidence of the raised beaches proved the existence of a regular
cycle of oscillations of sea level. He considered that this cycle had
had a period of 640 years in recent times, and one of 500 years about
the time of the Christian era. He appears to have connected these
oscillations—perhaps as a guess, for he gives no reasons—with the
swing of the magnetic needle. If his theory is correct it would
appear to involve the synchronization of increasing glaciation at the
poles with scanty rainfall on the steppes, and vice versa. The evi-
dence has not been fully examined. The position is thus obscure; but
the time seems ripe for fresh discoveries.
When so many guesses have been made perhaps one more may
be permitted. It is generally felt that there is something lacking in
the Darwinian view of the origin (and extinction) of species, and
that some simple explanation may have been overlooked. Is this not
because the problem is considered as if environment were not con-
stantly changing all over the world? The evidence now under con-
sideration shows that from time to time forest areas become steppe,
and steppe areas desert, and vice versa. Where an area of one kind
is, as it were, an ‘‘island”’ surrounded by areas of other kinds, slight
changes of climate may lead to the extinction within that area of a
species, and consequently, where the change of climate persists, to the
permanent modification of another species which had partially
depended on it for subsistence.
Change and response to change provide the setting of the greatest
of all dramas, the drama of man’s ascent toward the crisis where, in
virtue of his intellect, he seeks to master those natural forces to which
he once attributed divinity.
82322—380——_29
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UR OF THE CHALDEES: MORE ROYAL TOMBS !
By C. Lronarp WooLuEy
[With 17 plates]
STRATIFICATION
The first month of our new season at Ur has not indeed produced
treasures to eclipse those of last winter, when we discovered the
tombs of the ancient kings with their wealth of gold and their array
of human victims, but it has brought us, together with many objects
of first-class importance, more information about the ritual of those
royal funerals.
All over the cemetery the upper levels have been disturbed by
the grave diggers of a later period and in half of the area worked
by us during November grave robbers, house builders, and layers
of drains had made havoc of the site, but in the other half conditions
were simpler and it was possible to observe as never before the
vertical relations between successive strata; factors which elsewhere
had vanished altogether or survived only as isolated and meaningless
fragments we could here connect into a scheme. Here the evidence
of the whole strongly corroborates the chronological scheme sug-
gested by me two years ago; the Sargonid graves are clearly distin-
guished by the types of pottery and weapons, etc., the first dynasty
graves come close to these in level and have often been disturbed by
them, and then after a comparatively barren stratum come those
of the early series with their distinctive furniture. Certain modi-
fications of my previous arguments are enforced by observations
made under better conditions, but the main thesis seems to hold
good.
One grave which I would assign to the latter part of the early
period contained an object of very great value for comparative
dating—a complete painted clay vase of the later Jemdet Nasr
type. This is the only example of this ware yet encountered by us.
It must be an importation at a time when Sumerian pottery was
exclusively monochrome and it appears to support the view I have
1 Reprinted by permission from The Museum Journal, Museum of the University of Pennsylvania,
March, 1929.
437
438 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
already put forward that the Jemdet Nasr ware is northern and
Akkadian, not Sumerian, and that in the north its manufacture
continued until the native Akkadian culture had been swamped
by the Sumerian, i. e., until the rise of the first dynasty of Erech
if not until that of the first dynasty of Ur. At any rate it must
mean that the Jemdet Nasr culture, though earlier, is not much
earlier that that of our first series of graves.
FIRST SHAFT: DEATH PIT WITH 40 BODIES
Last year we recovered the ground plan of a king’s grave; this
year we have traced the sections of such graves and they are hardly less
illuminating. The first clue was given by the discovery, not very
deep down, of a layer of reeds extending up to the mud brick walls
of what seemed to be a small room. The reeds were removed and
under them, crushed to fragments by the weight of the soil, were
innumerable clay pots, animal bones, and several human skeletons,
all lying on a floor of beaten clay. It was easy to recognize that these
things had been buried from the outset, were in fact an underground
votive deposit, and that the building which contained them was a
subterranean building; closer examination showed behind the walls an
earth face cut at a gentle slope, so that the building lay in a vertical
shaft. The theory arose that at the bottom of that shaft there
would be a royal tomb and that when the king had been buried and
his retainers duly slaughtered around him and the earth thrown
back above their bodies then at intervals votive offerings would be
laid in with the earth and at a certain stage the filling in of the shaft
would be stopped and a chamber or chambers would be constructed in
it to receive the last offerings; then more earth would be poured in
and perhaps a superstructure in the form of a funerary chapel would
complete the whole. So much for the theory; in fact we have dug
down some 20 feet below the layer of pots, finding every now and then
a fresh group of offerings or a subsidiary burial, and at the bottom
we have found not indeed the tomb chamber of the king, which
must lie under the mass of soil not yet excavated, but the ‘‘death
pit’? inseparable from it; in this open part of the shaft measuring
less than 20 feet by 10, there are crowded, more or less in ordered
rows, the bodies of 39 women and 1 man.
SECOND SHAFT: SEAL OF MES-KALAM-DUG
Another shaft opened more sensationally with a wooden box in
which were two daggers with gold blades and gold-studded handles
and a cylinder seal inscribed ‘‘Mes-kalam-dug the King,” a relative,
one must suppose, of that prince Mes-kalam-dug whose gold helmet
was the glory of our last season. As the previous grave has produced
the seal of a woman bearing the title ‘‘Dam-kalam-dug’’—‘‘the
UR OF THE CHALDEES—WOOLLEY 439
wife of the good land’’—it must be supposed that ‘‘kalam-dug”’ is
part either of a title or of a family name. Immediately below this
came a coffin burial with stone and copper vessels and a mass of clay
vessels extending over the whole brick building which was now found
to occupy the pit; then more layers of votive pots and more subsidiary
burials, all separated by floors of beaten clay or by strata of clean
earth. There followed a long blank which made us fear that we
might have lost the clue, but the shaft continued; in opposite corners
of it there appeared heaps of wood ash and, lower down, clay cooking
pots and animal bones, the relics of a funeral feast or sacrifice made
in the pit itself. The reason for the fires being precisely at the level
at which they were found soon became obvious, for half way between
them were found lumps of limestone set in clay mortar which spread
outwards and downwards until from a border of carefully smoothed
clay there rose intact the stone roof of a domed subterranean chamber,
corbel-built of limestone rubble set in clay mortar; a little above
the springers, holes through the masonry containing remains of wood
showed that a solid centering had been employed for the construction
of the central part of the dome, the stones being laid in position over a
heap of light earth and straw carried by beams and matting. On
the flat space round the dome funeral fires had been lit and had
burnt for some time before the shaft was filled in for the construc-
tion of the subterranean building higher up. With the ashes of the
fire were mixed animal bones.
The domed building had been constructed at one end of a pit dug
at the bottom of the main shaft, three of its walls being against the
pit’s sides and one, in which was the door, open to the court reserved
in the prolongation of the shaft; this door had been blocked with
large stones. Apart from a certain amount of natural subsidence,
walls, dome, and door were intact, though the latter was very difficult
to detect, so closely did its blocking resemble the rough wall face,
while the shifting of stones had disguised the outlines of the doorway.
Through the beam holes it was possible to see that the floor was
covered with some object of paneled wood, through the decayed
remains of which protruded several large copper vessels and one of
gold.
Considering how elaborate the tomb structure was, the contents
were simple. Below the woodwork, which seemsto have beenacanopy,
there lay six bodies of which four were servants or soldiers, men
distinguished only by the wearing of copper daggers, and one appar-
ently a maid servant; the sixth body, laid out in the center, was
that of a woman wearing a wreath of gold beech leaves and another
of ring pendants strung on carnelians, gold earrings, finger rings,
necklaces of gold and carnelian, gold hair ribbons, and a frontlet
decorated with a star rosette and secured by long gold wires; on the
440 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
breast was a carnelian-headed gold pin of the bent type not hitherto
found in precious metal, and a gold cylinder seal having two registers
of design in one of which is shown a banquet and in the other musicians
playing on harps and other instruments; by the hands was a fluted
gold tumbler much like that found in Queen Shub-ad’s grave but not
quite equal to it in quality. The bodies rested on a floor of mud
bricks and smooth clay; this was curved so as to present the appear-
ance of a vault and gave out a hollow sound when hit; it. was therefore
lifted, and below it was found a stratum of broken pottery and a
very large vertical drain, which, however, only went down some 50 cen-
timeters into the soil; below it there seemed to be the original débris
in which the early graves are dug. The excavation of the tomb is
not finished, as the court in front of the door of the domed chamber
has yet to be cleared: Further work should throw more light upon
what are the most completely preserved though not the richest of
the royal graves, but already we have evidence of a much more
complicated ritual than could be deduced from last year’s results.
PRIVATE GRAVES
Of the private graves one of the best was that of a very young child
perhaps 8 or 4 years old. Besides a set of stone vases the little shaft
contained a group of miniature vessels in silver and on the body were
miniature gold pins, while on the head was a miniature wreath of
gold beech leaves, another of gold rings, and one with pendants of
gold, lapis, and carnelian. Another child’s grave contained a fine
head ornament, a chain of triple beads in gold, lapis, and carnelian,
with a large gold roundel of cloisonné work and two others of wire
filigree. A woman’s grave produced, together with many other
objects, the remains of a harp similar in type to that of Queen Shub-ad
though simpler in character, in that it had no animal’s head and was
decorated with silver instead of gold; a very important feature was
that the woman wore on her head, as well as the normal beech leaf
and ring wreaths, a diadem decorated as was the second diadem of
Queen Shub-ad, with pomegranates and figures of animals in gold
over a bitumen core; the workmanship is much inferior, but the paral-
lel is very striking.
A very interesting discovery was that of another harp. Two holes
in the soil were noticed by a workman and after examination were
filled by me with plaster; the earth was then cut away and more
plaster work was done where the decay of woodwork had left hollows.
The result was a complete cast of a wooden harp decorated with a
copper head of a bull. Further clearing exposed the remains of the
actual gut strings, mere hairlines of fibrous white dust but, even in
the photograph, perfectly clear as the 10 strings of the instrument.
It was the more interesting as this is a harp not of the type of that
UR OF THE CHALDEES—WOOLLEY 44]
found in Shub-ad’s grave but resembling those figured on the shell
plaque from the gold bull’s head found last year and on the ‘‘stand-
ard,” having the strings attached by tying (not by metal keys) to a
horizontal beam.
The grave with the ruined harp of the type of Shub-ad’s also pro-
duced a silver bowl, unfortunately in very bad condition, decorated
with a design of wild goats in repoussé work walking over mountains
represented in the conventional way by engraved lines; this is the
first example that we have found of this technique in silver. Another
technical novelty was given by the imprint on mud of a piece of
wooden furniture, itself completely decayed, decorated with engraved
designs (the engraved lines filled with color as in the case of shell
plagues) and with carving in low relief; the possibility of ever finding
the actual wooden. objects preserved is so small that evidence of their
character is the more interesting.
An alabaster lamp with a figure of a man-headed bull carved in
relief on its base shows a variant from the type given by a similar
but later lamp found last season. Perhaps our best object is a copper
sculpture in the round of a human head with bull’s ears and horns,
probably a unique piece; this was found loose in the soil, not asso-
ciated with any grave, and its use is also uncertain.
THIRD SHAFT: HARPS AND RAM STATUES
In one part of the work there had been for a long time signs which
seemed to portend a royal tomb and at last the pickmen detected the
shelving sides of an ancient pit-shaft. As the filling of this was re-
moved we found that only one end of the shaft lay within the area
at present being cleared, the rest ran on under the 25 feet of earth
where as yet no digging had been done, so that for the moment we
could clear no more than a section of a shaft whose total area must
remain unknown. ‘The rim of a very large copper vessel was the
first thing to be found, then another appeared next to it, and then
the black stain of decayed wood; very careful clearing laid bare the
wheels of a wagon, a perfect impression of a thing which had itself
long since vanished, but on the soil could be distinctly seen the grain
of the different planks of which the wheel was made, the curve of the
rim and the stump of the axle; in front of it, in the part which we
could excavate, lay the skeletons of two asses and a groom and
amongst the bones the line of silver and lapis lazuli beads which had
decorated the reins; it was just such a wagon as we had found in the
king’s grave last season.
The mud floor on which the wagon stood had been covered with
matting and toward the sides of the shaft this rose steeply up as if
in the center it had sunk beneath the weight of the wagon and its
team. That could only have happened if the soil beneath them was
442 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
soft and had recently been disturbed, so we dug down by the side of
them and discovered some three feet below, the skeletons of other
animals, sheep and cattle, a collection of copper vases and weapons,
and the bones of aman. Here was a novel feature; the bodies of the
victims and the offerings had been placed in the grave pit, earth had
been heaped above them and stamped down and mats laid over the
top, and thereafter the wagon had been driven in and the slaughter
of beasts and of grooms had been a later act in the burial tragedy.
It was probable that the wagon stood immediately in front of the
entrance to the shaft, so digging was continued behind it and the
sloping earth side was traced back for some distance; but to our surprise
this proved to be the side not of a narrow passage ramp but of a pit
some 25 feet square, a ‘‘death pit” larger than any we have yet encoun-
tered, and the whole of this is covered with the bodies of human victims
laid out in ordered rows. For more than a week we have been at work
clearing the last 9 inches or a foot that covered the floor of the shaft
and a third of the space still remains to be examined, but already we
have listed 45 bodies, of which 39 are women and 6 are doubtful.
And the riches of them are astonishing. In the king’s grave last
year we found nine court ladies wearing headdresses of gold and semi-
precious stones; here there are already 34 such, and for the most part
far more splendid—the best only less remarkable than the headdress
of Queen Shub-ad herself, gold hair ribbons, wreaths of gold leaves
and flowers of colored inlay, pins of silver or gold, necklaces of gold
and lapis row upon row, a wonderful group of regalia. Nor are these
all the contents of the pit. In one corner there lay folded up on
the top of the bodies a sort of canopy whose ridgepole was dec-
orated with bands of gold and colored mosaic over silver and the
uprights were of silver with copper heads in the form of spear
points hafted with gold, while shell rings held up the hangings. In
another corner were harps. Of one the sounding box was decorated
with broad bands of mosaic, the upright beams encrusted with shell,
lapis lazuli, and red stone between bands of gold, the top bar plated
with silver; in front of the sounding box was a magnificent head of a
bearded bull in gold and below this shell plaques with designs picked
outinred and black. Asecond instrument of the same type was entirely
in silver relieved only by a simple inlay in white and blue and by the
shell plaques beneath the silver cow’s head in front of the sounding
box. Below these was found a third harp of a different sort; the body,
made of silver, was shaped rather like a boat with a high stern to form
the back upright; the front upright was supported by a silver statue
of a stag nearly 2 feet high whose front feet rest in a crook of the stem
of a plant, made of copper, the long arrowlike leaves of which rise up
on each side level with the horns. An exactly similar figure of a stag
but made of copper and mounted on a square copper base lay alongside.
UR OF THE CHALDEES—WOOLLEY 443
Possibly it was the decoration of yet a fourth harp the body and up-
rights of which had been of wood, now decayed; unfortunately the
copper too was terribly perished, and though we succeeded in lifting it,
it can never be more than the wreckage of itself, whereas the silver
animals, though crushed, are on the whole very well preserved.
Another corner of the pit yielded two objects absolutely unique in
our experience—a pair of statues in the round of rampant rams. The
heads and legs of the beasts are of gold, the horns and the long hair
over the shoulders are of lapis lazuli, and the fleece over the rest of the
body is of white shell, each tuft carved separately; the belly is of
silver. The animal is reared right up on its hind legs, so standing 20
inches high. On either side of it are tall plants whose stems, leaves,
and large rosettelike flowers are of gold, and to the stems of these the
front legs of the ram are tied with silver bands. The composition is
precisely that to which we have been accustomed by the engravings on
shell plaques, but here we have it executed in the round, on a large
scale and in precious materials; the workmanship is admirable and the
color scheme is most striking. Baroque as they are, these gay statues
seem to be rather of the school of Benvenuto than products of early
Sumerian art as we should have imagined it. It should be added that
they are to be judged not as free art but applied, for a socket above the.
shoulders of each ram shows that they were really the supports for some
article of furniture or ornament which has disappeared, leaving no more
trace of itself; whatever it was, it was a very gorgeous object.
The ‘‘death pit” has still to be cleared of its remaining gold. In
the meantime we are digging down from the modern surface in the
hopes of finding beneath it the actual tomb to which this should be the
introduction.
THE GREAT STONE TOMB
With the clearing of the ‘“‘death pit’’ we finished up the area se-
lected for the first stage of our season’s dig. The number of graves
dug this season already exceeds 350, and the small objects from them
have been excellent. Starting on a fresh section of the graveyard we
obtained from the outset a piece of interesting information. Below
the mud-brick Temenos Wall of Nebuchadnezzar, which we had to
cut away, there lay private houses of the little known Kassite period
(ca. 1700-1200 B. c.), proving that Nebuchadnezzar did not simply
follow tradition but enlarged the sacred area of the city, probably so
as to include new temples of his own founding. These buildings,
and the brick tombs which lay beneath their floors, had disturbed the
upper levels of the older cemetery, but in spite of this the ordinary
graves of the Sargonid age (c. 2700 B. c.) produced, as we dug deeper,
their accustomed harvest of gold and silver ornaments, stone vases,
and copper weapons, and those of the first dynasty of Ur, 500 years
older and lying lower down in the soil, were not less rich. Much
444 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
more important was a royal tomb which underlay the rest. It was
a single building measuring 42 feet by 26, built throughout of un-
hewn limestone; it contained four chambers, two small central rooms
roofed with ring domes and two long flanking rooms with corbel vaults,
all communicating with each other by arched doorways: Inside, the
roughness of the walls was disguised by a smooth cement plaster, and
the same plaster was used for the floors. The tomb is indeed an under-
ground house, and this fact throws new light on the beliefs of the oldest
Sumerians and should explain why the dead king was accompanied
by such a crowd of courtiers and domestics—his life was to continue
in surroundings as like as might be to those of this world. Of the
servants and court attendants there remained in this case little but
scattered bones, for ages ago robbers had broken through the roof
of the tomb and made a clean sweep of its contents. Some of the neck-
laces torn from the bodies had broken, and the floors were littered
with lapis lazuli and gold beads, two silver lamps lay overlooked in a
corner, there was a broken sceptre of mosaic work with gold bands
decorated with figures in relief; but the great treasures which the
tomb must have contained had vanished. It was a disappointment
of course, but we had the satisfaction of having found the tomb
_ itself, a first-class monument of this early age. How much the robbers
had actually taken one can only guess, for not all the royal graves
were as rich as Queen Shub-ad’s; we have just laid bare one ‘‘death
pit”’ in which the ranked bodies were all quite poorly attired, with a
few silver ornaments in the place of gold; but the pit rewarded us
well, for against its edge stood a harp with a particularly fine calf’s
head modeled in copper and on the front of the sounding box a panel
of mosaic work with human figures in shell set against a background
of lapis lazuli, the technique of the wonderful ‘‘standard”’ discovered
last season.
DEEPER LEVEL AND OLDEST TABLETS
Here, too, another discovery was made. The graves are all dug
down into a vast rubbish heap which sloped down from the walls of
the earliest Sumerian settlement to the marsh or river out of which it
rose, and the bottom of this particular “death pit” just touched a
stratum of rubbish, necessarily very much older than itself, wherein
lay multitudinous nodules of dark-colored clay; many were shape-
less, but amongst them were written tablets and clay jar-stoppers
bearing the impressions of archaic seals. Not so old as the picto-
graphic tablets of Kish, which we may expect to parallel from the
deeper rubbish strata of Ur, these documents carry us back to a period
in the city’s existence not yet illustrated by any other class of objects
except crude figurines in clay of animals and men from which it
would have been impossible to deduce the level of culture attained at
the time.
UR OF THE CHALDEES—WOOLLEY 445
LIMITS OF THE CEMETERY: THE PREHISTORIC CITY
The excavation of the ancient cemetery came to an end early in
February and it was characteristic of the site that the very last
grave discovered should be the richest of its period yet brought to
light. It was of the Sargonid age, about 2650 B. c., and was that of
a man, judging from the number of copper weapons placed at the
head and along the side of the wooden coffin in which were the crumb-
ling bones; amongst them were three of the largest spears that the
cemetery had produced and with them a number of copper vessels,
some unusually large, and a copper tray made to imitate basket-work
and piled with bowls and vases of novel forms. Six gold fillets
adorned the head of the man and round his neck were three strings of
beads of gold and colored stone, agate, carnelian, jasper, chalcedony,
and sard, stones which are rarely found before the time of Sargon of
Akkad. On the wrists were four heavy bangles of gold and four of
silver, and on the fingers were gold rings; by these lay two engraved
cylinder seals of lapis lazuli capped with gold, and from one of the
strings of beads hung a gold amulet in the form of a standing goat
exquisitely modeled in the round, a real gem of miniature sculpture.
Having exhausted the graves in the area selected for this season’s
work we proceeded to dig down beneath them for relics of the older
civilization represented by the great rubbish heaps in which the
graves are set. In a stratum of this rubbish which is late in com-
parison with much that hes beneath it but very much earlier than
the oldest graves, we were fortunate enough to find in a ruined house
(for at one time the primitive settlement overflowed its normal
limits and houses were constructed on the slope of the town’s refuse
dump) some 200 tablets written in a very archaic script, one of the
oldest forms of writing known in Mesopotamia.
Meanwhile work on the other side of the excavated area proved
the northwest limits of the cemetery also. Our work here produced
no graves but either stratified rubbish or superimposed house remains
according as the limits of the early town fluctuated in times of
ereater or less expansion. Near the surface we came on a pavement
of plano-convex bricks which could be dated as not later than 3000
B. Cc. and we dug down through successive floor levels to a depth of
8 meters below this, by which time we were finding very early seal
impressions on clay and pottery, painted or otherwise decorated,
of types elsewhere occurring only below the 10-foot bed of clay
which I have regarded as a relic of the flood. For the full working
out of the earliest history of Ur excavations on a large scale ought to
be undertaken either at this spot or a little to the northwest of it.
With regard to the ancient cemetery lying on the slope below the
walls of the settlement, we now know its width and further excava-
446 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
tion of its length in either direction (probably little remains to be
done to the northeast) can be carried on economically and with
proper knowledge.
THE WALLS OF UR
Thoroughly to work out this prehistoric site was a task far too
big to be tackled at the close of aseason. Content for the moment
with the very important preliminary results which we had obtained,
we turned our attention during the last 10 days to the city wall,
again with the idea not of complete excavation but of securing infor-
mation which would enable us to draw up programs for future digging.
The results were immediate and surprising.
The spot chosen was on the northeast side, just behind the expe
dition house.
Two days’ work sufficed to produce the real town wall which
has a total width of more than 28 meters and is still standing more
than 8 meters high. We were able in the few days that remained of
the season to follow it in both directions for a distance of over a hun-
dred meters and to establish something of its character and history.
Apart from a few literary references to its building and destruc-
tion we knew nothing about the wall. More than this, very little is
known at all about Sumerian defenses, seeing that no expedition has
yet undertaken the heavy task of clearing the circuit of an ancient
town. .
At Ur, the center of the site is surrounded by a ring of mounds,
not continuous, for whereas in some parts they stand high and pre-
sent on the outside an abruptly sloping face, in others they sink to
the level of the plain or are so confused by adjoining mounds as to lose
all character. But even from the ground something in the nature of
an outline to the inner city detaches itself from the tangle of slopes
and hillocks, and an air photograph shows much more clearly what
can only be the defenses of the town. The inclosure is an irregular
oval about three-quarters of a mile long by half a mile wide; outside
it the suburbs stretch for miles, inside it, like the citadel inside the
bailey, lies the sacred area wherein most of our excavation has been
done; within the inclosure levels average higher than outside and it
is reasonable to suppose that it represents the oldest settlement;
certainly it remained throughout history the administrative and
religious center.
The fortifications of the city were, naturally enough, repaired
or reorganized a number of times; the earliest work that we have
found dates to the third dynasty of Ur and is probably due to the
founder of the dynasty, Ur-Engur (2300 B. c.), who explicitly claims
its construction; we have reconstructions and additions by kings of
Larsa (circ. 2000 B.C.), by Kuri-Galzu of Babylon (1400 B.C.), and
by a later king whom we have not yet identified. Ur-Engur’s wall
UR OF THE CHALDEES—WOOLLEY 447
seems to have consisted of two parts, a lower wall of crude mud brick
and an upper wall of burnt brick of which, in the section cleared by
us, nothing at all remains. But the mud-brick wall is an amazing
structure. It stood some 26 feet high, its back vertical, its outer
face sloped back at an angle of 45 degrees, and at its base it measured
not less than 75 feet in thickness! Really it served the purpose of an
earth rampart along the top of which ran the wall proper, but it was
itself built entirely of bricks carefully laid. Behind it the floor level
was raised about 12 feet above that of the plain outside, though
whether this was continuous over the city area or was in the nature of
a platform backed against the wall we can not yet say; judging from
surface indications the former would seem to be the case. The sloped
mud face of the wall must have suffered badly from weather and it was
twice reinforced with revetments which added another 18 feet to the
wall’s thickness; the authorship of these is still uncertain, but the first
addition may well have been due to the Larsa kings, part of whose
superstructure is well preserved. In their time the levels inside the wall
had risen almost to the top of Ur-Engur’s mud brick. So far as the
inner face of this showed, they revetted it with burnt brick and set up
along the top of it a continuous row of buildings which served a double
purpose; they were at once the burnt-brick wall crowning the rampart
and living accommodations for citizens or officials, for their inner
ground plan is exactly that of the private houses excavated by us on
the other side of the Temenos; in spite of their position and the fact
that they are built to a general plan with bricks bearing royal stamps,
there is nothing military about them. One is reminded of Rahab who
dwelt upon the wall of Jericho and of some medieval city like Aleppo
where the solid masonry of the ramparts rises up to merge insensibly
into the flimsy window-broken backs of private houses.
We know that after a revolt against Babylon the “great walls of
Ur” were destroyed by Hammurabi’s son in about 1870 B.C. Then,
and in the course of the next 450 years, even the lines of the super-
structure must have vanished, for we find a. great gate passage of
Kuri-Galzu running athwart everything. It was strongly built with
burnt bricks, a large proportion of which bear his name, but everything
else of his work has been destroyed by a later building, a fort lying
inside the wall and probably (though our work has not gone far
enough to prove this) flanking one of the city gates. Only the mud-
brick substructures of this are left together with the burnt-brick
facing of its outer wall on the northeast, but the foundations show
that it was extraordinarily massive, even the inner walls being never
less than 13 feet thick. Notwithstanding this it appears to have been
considered insufficient for the city’s safety, for close to it on the
northeast, just outside the lines of the old wall, we have exposed the
greater part of a second external fort obviously of the same date
448 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
though also of unknown authorship. It is a rectangle with double
gateways leading to a central court; the walls of burnt brick are
over 20 feet thick; it seems to be such a tower as we might expect to
find guarding the entry to the town.
Under the floors of the Larsa superstructure there were many
tombs of the period, and later graves, mostly of Neo-Babylonian
date, were found higher up; these produced a good deal of glazed
pottery and a few other objects. From one room we recovered a
collection of tablets, apparently business documents in envelopes,
of Larsa date; the packing of a drain yielded an unusual object in
the form of a fragment of a large stone jar bearing an inscription of
Dungi; and in the foundations of the late fort was found a small
female head carved in the round from gray stone, with inlaid eyes,
very much in the style of the marble head with inlaid eyes discov-
ered three years ago, but smaller and not quite so good.
If we clear the whole circuit of the walled town, as we ought to
do, we shall not only have a very wonderful monument—our present
work shows that—but for the first time we shall obtain an adequate
picture of the system of military defence employed by the great
builders of Sumer.
GREAT COURT OF THE TEMPLE
Work on the Nannar Temple has been of a very different sort and
deals with much later dates. On Mr. Mallowan’s arrival on Decem-
ber 10, I engaged a fresh gang of 50 men and put them in his charge
for the clearing of the chambers along the front of the temple, the
courtyard of which we had cleared last season.
The general character of the building was already known from
surface clearing; our object this year was to trace the details of its
history, and in this we have been eminently successful. Vague
fragments of wall were unearthed which belong to about 3,000 B.C.
and tell of a temple of the moon god lying at the foot of a smaller
and an older ziggurat than that which we see to-day. Ur-Engur
built the present ziggurat and laid the foundations of the great
temple to the patron deity of his city; the sanctuary lay against
the northwest side of the tower, the huge outer court formed a lower
platform whose containing walls covered a much wider area than the
old temple. Ur-Engur did not live to finish his work, and his son
Dungi built the superstructure, the pylon gateway at the entrance of
the temple and the range of chambers which surrounded the court-
yard on whose pavement stood the altars or bases of his father and
himself and, in time, of his son Bur-Sin. After the downfall of the
splendid third dynasty of Ur a king of Isin filled up half the courtyard
with a massive brick structure whose meaning is not yet clear to us,
and a later ruler, Sin-Idinnam of Larsa (c. 2000 B. C.) blocked the
UR OF THE CHALDEES—WOOLLEY 449
court still further with a base whose foundations go down to prehis-
toric levels. But these were minor changes; it was left for the EKlamite
king Warad-Sin to remodel the whole temple. He enlarged the build-
ing in three directions, putting up a new retaining wall for the terrace
outside the old wall the stump of which was buried under the floor of
his chambers, and the whole of the exterior and the wall of the court-
yard facing the entrance were enriched with half-columns and recesses
of burnt and crude brick. Five hundred years later what remained
above the ground of Warad-Sin’s work was dismantled and on its
foundations Kuri-Galzu II of Babylon (c. 1400 B. C.) set up a plainer
replica of the Elamite temple; much of the existing building is due to
him. Apart from minor details, such as the repaving of the court by
another Babylonian king about 1180 B. C. and the raising of its level
by the Assyrian governor Sin-Balatsu-Ikbi in the seventh century, the
temple retained its character until the time of Nebuchadnezzar (600
B. C.). He built two new sanctuaries on the ziggurat terrace, raised
the pavement of the great court virtually tothe same level and added
to the pylon gateway by bringing it forward into the court, with side
doors to the northeast range of chambers which he masked by a cur-
tain wall. The rooms cleared so far have not produced any tablets;
two inscribed door sockets have been found but the best object is
one which has no real connection with the present building, a lime-
stone mace head with figures of man-headed bulls in relief and an
inscription, unfortunately much defaced, which may refer to a king
of Mari and certainly belongs to about that period.
Thus we can now trace through its long life of 2,500 years the vicis-
situdes of the greatest temple of Ur, and with its excavation have
practically finished our work in this part of the city.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley PLATE 1
PAINTED POT OF THE JEMDET NAST TYPE
PLATE 2
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley
THE GOLD DAGGER BLADES OF KING MES-KALAM-DUG
LASa7 AHL NO N3eaS 38 NVD SONINLS AHL “WHOS AHL NI T1ILS dyVH AHL AO LSVD YSLSV1d
€ 3ALV1d 42][90\— "676 | ‘qaodayy ueIuosyzIUIG
AIEISIA 3YV ONIYSALNAD YO4 SHIOH Wvag ‘VSOL “D ‘d AO ANOG ANOLS AHL 4O NMOUD AHL ONIYVAID
42][00\\—"676 | *yaoday ueiuosyzIWig
NSISSAG 3SSNOdayY HLIM 1IMOG YAATIS
42j]90\— "676 | ‘qaodayy ueruosyyIWIG
G A1V1d
PLATE 6
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley
LU, WlZASYe)
ALABASTER LAMP.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley PLATE 7
COPPER HEAD OF A HORNED GOD WITH EYES AND EYEBROWS INLAID. U. 11798
PLATE 8
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley
w
re
z=
<
a
KE
te.
Ww
PLAN OF THE DEATH PIT SHOWING BODIES AND OBJECTS IN POSITION, THE
HARPS ON THE LEFT, THE STATUES OF RAMS IN THE UPPER RIGHT
PLATE 9
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley
GROUP OF HARPS IN POSITION
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley JOGA 7/(0)
THE GOLD BULL’S HEAD FROM THE FIRST HARP
Z ON ‘dyVH YSATIS SHL
LL 3ALW1d A2][004\—"676| ‘Odey ueruosy {WIG
AAOSEV NAAaS 3YV OVLS YaddOD V AO SNIVWSAY SHL “SVLS V SHO SANLVLS V HLIM dYyVH YAATIS AHL
cl ALV1d A2][20\—"6Z6 | qaoday ueluosyIWG
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—-Woolley PLATE 13
THE RAM CAUGHT IN A THICKET. FRONT VIEW. COMPOSITE FIGURE IN THE
ROUND OF GOLD, SILVER, AND SHELL
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley PEATE 14
THE SECOND RAM, SEEN IN PROFILE IN THE GROUND
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley PEATE to
1. SHEEL IINEAY. SUMERIAN GHIER
WITH AX, HELMET, AND FALSE
BEARD
2. LIMESTONE MACE HEAD. U. 11678
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley PEATE lo
é “ =
O em ae
(ee 4
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t }
Pan
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a CENTS
SHELL INLAY BELOW A HARP
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Woolley RPAtTiE 1e7,
LARGE STONE TOMB. FIRST ROOM BEFORE REMOVAL OF THE. VAULT
THE POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA!
By H. J. SprinpEN
Peabody Museum, Harvard University
[With 1 plate]
What is the Indian population in America to-day, and is it in-
creasing or decreasing? Was it as large in 1492 as it is now or as it
had been in some earlier period of New World history? These
questions I hope to answer not so much with statistics as with sug-
gestive considerations. Indeed, exact figures are not available even
for the proportion of Indian blood in the present population of America
‘and it is obvious that the speculative factor must become larger and
larger as we pass back through the centuries.
PRESENT INDIAN POPULATION
The present Indian population in the New World is much larger
than most persons might imagine from their knowledge of conditions
north of Mexico. For Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and the United
States the number is less than 400,000, with considerable admixture
of foreign blood for which a proportional discount must be made.
For the United States the most reliable count of Indians was the
census of 1910, which found 265,683 individuals. Of this number
150,053 were full bloods, and the others mixed bloods with a distinct
leaning toward white. The census of 1920 showed a reduction of
21,246 from the figures for the preceding decade. The counts made
by the Bureau of Indian Affairs differ widely from those of the general
census, since in some cases persons with one sixty-fourth part Indian
blood are called Indians. Also the tribal rolls used by the bureau,
in spite of various purgings, carry a large number of negro “‘freed-
men’? who may or may not have old American blood. For 1920 the
aboriginal population according to the bureau was 336,379, or 91,942
in excess of the census of that year. Fluctuations, explained mainly
by reorganization of the rolls, are apparent in the following totals
for different years:
TOS se SeAL Fy Wak ES SLO PTLA ALES AL Ss Ses Balaton et Sey 243, 299
1 S17 tha LS iy Saget SI AR a BUG) O40 1 *1OOO2 sh 201 be whan 22k iene 270, 540
|) 5 ne en oa4, 064" | 9262220602 Shoo eae 349, 964
1 Reprinted by permission from The Geographical Review, vol. 18, No. 4, 1928.
82322—30——30 451
452 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Probably the Indian strain in the United States, counting propor-
tional values only, is equivalent to about 200,000 individuals of pure
blood, with claims of recent increase unjustified. The Navajo and
one or two other tribes have more than held their own, but except for
these a general decrease is indicated.
What a difference when we turn to Mexico! There the census of
1900 found a total of 13,605,819 inhabitants, classified as 19 per cent
whites, 38 per cent Indian, and 43 per cent mixed bloods. The census
of 1910 gave the total as 15,160,369, but by 1920 this had receded to
14,234,852, perhaps as a result of civil war and emigration. It is
difficult even to estimate the proportion of Indian blood in the total
population of Mexico, since classification is formed on the language
basis. The statistical Indian is one who speaks an Indian language,
generally to the exclusion of Spanish.
We have one excellent study of a special region, the Valley of
Teotihuacin, which was made by the Department of Anthropology
of the Mexican Federal Government.” The total population of the
Valley of Teotihuac4n is 8,330, of which 6,825 are of local origin, 1,477
come from other districts of Mexico, 10 are foreigners, and 18 unclas-
sified. In the matter of race 5,657 are Indians, 2,137 are mixed bloods
and 536 are whites. But of the total, 7,860 speak Spanish, 448 both
Indian and Spanish, while 7 speak only an aboriginal tongue. The
proportion of Indian blood in this instance is almost 80 per cent; but
whether or not this proportion would hold true of all Mexico is
another question.
Indian community life and language are preserved in many regions —
of Mexico to a much greater extent than in the Valley of Teotihuacdén.
The statistics on native tongues are not reliable, but according to the
census of 1900 they are spoken by 3,971,434 individuals. Playing
safely within the estimates of several observers but remembering the
high proportion of Indians who have lost their native speech, we con-
clude that the Indian blood in Mexico is equivalent to a pure popula-
tion of at least 10,000,000 souls.’
Other Central American and South American countries where the
Indian forms a very high percentage of the total population are
Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and
Bolivia. Elsewhere the proportion is always considerable even in the
cases of Argentina and Chile, which fail to make adequate return in
their censuses of such Indian blood as does survive among accultured
aborigines.
2 Manuel Gamio: La poplacion del valle de Teotihuacin * * * 2 vols. in 3, Department of Anthro-
pology, Mexico, 1922; Reference in Vol. 1, Pl. II and pp. xxii-xxiv. In the English summary, “‘Introduc-
tion, synthesis and conclusions of the work, The Population of the Valley of Teotihuacin”’ reference is Pl.
III and pp. xxi-xxiii.
3 If the ‘mixed race”’ classification of the Mexican census be taken as half Indian we have nearly 70 per
cent for the total of Indian blood, but it is obviously more than half Indian.
POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA—SPINDEN 453
Always making allowance for mixed bloods at proportionate value,
we summarize thus:
NorthyAmerica northtorMexicou so Seti tae. air ay cet eee 350, 000
ih (ESTES) as Re pe ROR ee ES 7 NEAR ae SA PES, oe TOO Se 10, 000, 000
CentralvAmlericas } Sees e 2 MEN APS AT EE PS Fel Oi A 2 ORV 2, 500, 000
Colombiasand Venezuela. 2. SG. «om ee ee 3, 000, 000
Beuador, Perry, andy boluviges soe) amet 2 BOM oy os Te ee 6, 000, 000
Bran Paraguay. Urueuay., and, GUlanas ec Mek SAN Is | 2e 4, 000, 000
PLE PST CA ANON Tes ao AINE MEET) LPT NS es SEL MEE Ly. 200, 000
WES trlimclies aie ret eyeses. - Eispatuta tN IE ag he aly gos CM A om Biyori eS oe
26, 050, 000
This gives a conservative minimum of 26,000,000 for the red race
at the present time.*’ We now look into the past and consider the
evidences of population, first at the coming of Kuropeans, and then on
more ancient levels of the native civilizations.
THE DEPOPULATION OF THE WEST INDIES
In the West Indies hardly a drop of the old American blood can
now be found. Indeed, the Spaniards had scarcely set foot on the
teeming islands before the native population melted away. Santo
Domingo was colonized in 1493, Porto Rico and Jamaica in 1509,
and Cuba in 1511. Las Casas in his famous ‘‘Brief Relation” says in
regard to Porto Rico and Jamaica’: ‘‘ Whereas there were more than
3,000,000 souls, whom we saw in Hispaniola, there are to-day, not
200 of the native population left.” He was writing no later than
1542. Elsewhere Las Casas places the population of Porto Rico
at 800,000 and that of Santo Domingo at 3,000,000. These are doubt-
less extravagant estimates. However, on the basis of personal surveys
of many archeological sites in Porto Rico, I postulate a population of at
least 100,000. Santo Domingo, a much larger island, is archeologic-
ally almost unknown; but, since characteristic remains of the ancient
Taino culture® extend from Porto Rico across Santo Domingo to the
eastern end of Cuba, the total population of the Taino nation may
easily have been a million. Itis clear that Cuba, except for the region
4 Karl Sapper in ‘‘Die Zahl und die Volksdichte der indianischen Bevélkerung in Amerika von der
Conquista und in der Gegenwart” (Proc. 21st Internatl. Congr. Americanists held at The Hague, Aug.
12-16, 1924, Part I, pp. 95-104) estimates the present (1910) Indian population of America at between 15 and
16 millions and that at the end of the fiftenth century at between 40 and 50 millions. The paper issummary
in form and undocumented. Sir Harry Johnston in ‘‘The Negro in the New World’’(1910) estimates at
“20,855,000 hybrids between the white and the Amerindian” and ‘‘16,000,000 of pure-blood Amerindian and
Eskimo” in the New World (p. 484.)
$F. A. MacNutt: Bartholomew de Las Casas, His Life, His Apostolate, and His Writings, p. 316, New
York, 1909.
6 J. W. Fewkes: The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands, 25th Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer
Ethnol. 1903-04, pp. 3-296, Washington, 1907. M. R. Harrington: Cuba before Columbus, Part I, Vol. 1
(Indian Notes and Monographs, Mise. Ser., No 17), Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation,
New York, 1921.
454 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
about Cape Maisi, was scantily peopled. Jamaica and the Lesser
Antilles offer considerable evidence of ancient human habitation but
not of a kind permitting even a rough estimate of numbers.
IMPORTED DISEASES AS A FACTOR IN DEPOPULATION
Even if we take Las Casas’ estimates at one-tenth their values, the
eradication of the natives in a generation is difficult enough to explain.
This could not have been accomplished by wholesale slaughter with
the sword, considering the available forest cover and mountain
retreats, but it might have been accomplished by epidemics of new
diseases which searched out native villages far beyond the Spanish
lines. Early mortality among the Indians is mentioned by Oviedo and
other chroniclers. It seems that the so-called colonization of Santo
Domingo was first of all a gold rush, with the natives suddenly exposed
to a host of new diseases and to a condition of slavery under a hetero-
geneous and undisciplined mob. While starvation and these new
diseases were probably the most active agents of sudden decrease in
population, nevertheless the situation was commanded by a policy of
frightfulness which caused a social collapse so complete that even the
victors nearly perished of famine. The Spaniards gave no thought to
planting crops, intent only on a fevered turning over of the ground
in search of the yellow metal.
Devastating diseases pretty clearly of New World origin are syphilis
and yellow fever.’ To the first of these the agricultural Indians,
especially those of Peru, Mexico, and the West Indies, had developed
considerable immunity. Yellow fever was endemic in the Atlantic
lowlands of Mexico and Central America, occasionally invading the
highlands.
Europeans unloaded upon American Indians a tremendous burden
of new infections for which the latter had not the slightest immunity.
Perhaps smallpox comes first as an introduced plague and measles
second, this latter malady being very deadly for the red man. But
in the tropics the debilitation and mortality resulting from the
introduction of malaria in three types and hookworm in two are
heavy factors. There have been great epidemics of several other dis-
eases, including Asiatic cholera. In recent years trachoma has been
a burden among many tribes. High mortality among the aborigines
has generally followed the opening up of new territories by the white
men.
The small number of serious forms of disease in pre-Columbian
America is explained first by the independence of New World civiliza-
7 Anthropologists have long insisted that syphilis was of New World origin, but the medical world after
disputing the evidence is now accepting it. The case for the American origin of yellow fever is equally
strong. This disease was implanted in Africa by slave traders, and some medical opinion now leans incon-
sistently to Africa as its cradle land (H. J. Spinden: Yellow Fever—First and Last, World’s Work, Vol.
43, pp. 169-181, 1921).
tions. We mustpic-
ture the tenuous con-
nection between the
hemispheres, con-
sisting of nomads
passing via Siberia
and Alaska, as in-
sufficient for the
transmission of such
pathological organ-
isms as might al-
ready have attacked
the thicker settle-
ments of the Old
World. Further-
more, few gregari-
ous animals were
brought under do-
mestication in
America to prove
new sources of ma-
levolent infection.
THE TEN PLAGUES
OF NEW SPAIN
In Mexico the
Spaniards struck
sharply and deeply,
while illusion of
their divinity and
magic power still
obsessed the aborigi-
nal populace. Nev-
ertheless, they might
easily have failed if
reinforcements of
invisible parasites
had not come up in
time. Between the
retreat of Noche
Triste and the final
taking of Tenochti-
tlansmallpox fought
most valiantly on
POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA—-SPINDEN 455
ME OLD WORLD NEW WORLD
ees EUROPE EGYPT MESOPOTAMIA CHINA PUEBLO MEXICO MAYA PERU
ALT
1000
uw
le}
¢ (2)
Recorded Histor.
Exact Chronolo
Exact Chronolo
Exact Chronology
ND Ss ;
CACAO. MAN
N
N
N
N
ON
=N
SN
DAN
oN
Sh
N
QS
SN
Ch
SN
SN
=N
&N
N
SN
SN
SIN
SN
SN
SN
SN
aN
SN
SN
s\
N
SN
GN
SN
AN
Ny
N
N
Archaic {Ancon shell heaps) *
S
Dynastic Lists
iii iii ooo
.
AAUGRATION OF Mise
D STONE TOOL?
THE GEQGR REVIEW, OCT. 1928
FiGuRE 1.—Chronological and economic diagram of the parallelism be-
tween Oldand New World civilization which presents insummary form
some of the facts bearing on the question of the population of ancient
America. Note that the stratigraphic series of Europe is only carried
back to the horizon of polished Celts. Before this come the Mesolithic
and Paleolithic series which are not represented in the New World
456 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the side of the invaders and finally turned the battle definitely in
favor of Christianity.
Friar Toribio de Benevente, commonly called Motolinia, arrived at
Vera Cruz in May, 1524, and his “History of the Indians of New
Spain” was finished in 1541.8 He draws a tremendous picture of
events and conditions which reduced the native population by com-
paring Ten Plagues of New Spain with the biblical Ten Plagues of
Egypt. I can not give the gist of depopulation better than by using
the words of this priest:
God smote and chastized this land and those who found themselves in it, natives
as well as strangers, with 10 burdensome plagues.
The first was smallpox, and it commenced in this manner. Hernando Cortes
was captain and governor when Captain Panfilo de Narvaez disembarked here,
and in one of his ships came a negro suffering from smallpox, a disease never before
seen in this land. Then this New Spain was full of people to the extreme and as
the smallpox began to catch among the Indians there was so great a malady and
pestilence among them everywhere that in most of the provinces over half of the
people died and in others scarcely less.
Eleven years later came a Spaniard with measles which passed from him to
the Indians * * * and many died.
Motolinia then gives other “ plagues,’’ the second being the heavy
mortality at the taking of Tenochtitlan; the third, the famine whick
resulted from the widespread warfare; the fourth, the abuses of over-
seers in the towns given in vassalage; the fifth, the heavy tributes;
the sixth, the tremendous abuses in connection with the mines; the
seventh, the construction of Mexico City by forced labor; the eighth,
the traffic in branded slaves; the ninth, the abuses of transportation
with Indians as human beasts of burden; and the tenth, the factional
warfare among the Spaniards themselves with Indians bearing the
brunt of fighting.
The charges of Motolinia were those of a contemporary witness,
and they are borne out by legal papers against Cortes, Alvarado,
etc., and by such native documents as the Codex Kingsborough.
The juggernaut drama was reénacted in Colombia and Peru.
ON THE RECOVERY OF INDIAN POPULATIONS
The great and sudden falling off in the Indian population during
epochs of conquest must be considered in relation to increase or
recovery, which in some regions has been notable. In the United
States perhaps the most remarkable case of increase over early num-
bers is that of the Navajo. This tribe secured sheep, became pastoral
8 (Fray) Toribio de Benavente o Motolin{ia: Historia de los Indios de la Nueva Espafia, pp. 13-14, Barce-
lona, 1914. For another important reference on depopulation see Juan Lopez de Velasco: Geografia y
descripcion universal de las Indias: Recopilada por el cosm6grafo-cronista Juan Lopez de Velasco desde el
ano de 1571 al de 1574, publicada por el primera vez en el Boletin dela Sociedad Geogr&fica de Madrid, con
adiciones 6 illustraciones, por Don Justo Zaragoza, p. 26, Madrid, 1894,
POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA—SPINDEN 457
without much modification of their original wandering life, and in two
centuries quadrupled without admixture of foreign blood.
In Mexico also there has been a rapid increase from low records
of the Spanish régime, as may be seen by comparing the figures col-
lected by Humboldt® with those of today. For 1803 the German
traveler makes the population of Mexico 5,837,100; classified as 18
per cent white, 60 per cent Indian, and 22 per cent mixed. The area
covered is not exactly the same as that of today; but the state of
Chiapas, then counted with Guatemala, serves to counterbalance
parts of the Southwest which now belong to the United States. The
increase is about 150 per cent in 125 years, and the Indian part of the
population seems to hold its own proportionally or perhaps to gain if
we eliminate immigrants. The Maya territory in the peninsula of
Yucatan is an exception to the general advance. Humboldt gives
the population of the political district of Mérida (which seems to
have included Campeche) as 465,800 and that of Valladolid as 476,400,
making a total of 942,020 for the Mexican proportion of the peninsula.””
This may have been an overestimate, but a very great falling off
resulted from the terrible War of the Castes precipitated by the
sending of several shiploads of Maya Indians to Cuba as slaves. This
war broke out in 1848 and resulted in abandonment by white land-
owners of much of eastern and central Yucatan. Parts afterwards
pacified were never able to retrieve the earlier prosperity.
Of Guatemala in 1778 Juarros" says:
The larger and principal part of these lands was captured by Capt. D. Pedro de
Alvarado in the year 1524 and following. In that time these countries were much
more populated than at present since according to the count made by order of
His Majesty in the year 1778 this kingdom has no more than 797,214 inhabitants;
while in the time of its conquest its inhabitants were innumerable, so much so.
that they comprised more than 30 nations.
But the Guatemala of Juarros covered all the territory between
Mexico and Panama and even included the present Mexican State of
Chiapas. Now this area supports about 6,000,000 inhabitants.
While part of this total is covered by immigration, a very great in-
crease is generally to be noted for Indians living agricultural lives in
open country. I have elsewhere given the present Indian population
of Central America in round numbers as 2,500,000. A missionary
living on the populous Guatemalan highlands estimates that there
are at present 750,000 Indians speaking native languages and main-
taining parts, at least, of the ancient culture. These are ranked as
* Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne (Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland, Part
III), 2 vols, and atlas, Paris, 1811; reference in Vol. i, pp. 152 et seq.
10 Ibid, p. 155.
11 Domingo Juarros: Compendio de la historia de la ciudad de Guatemala (2 vols., Guatemala 1808-18),
Vol.i, p.8; English transl. by J. Baily: A Statistical and Commercial History of the Kingdom of Gua-
tamala in Spanish America, p. 10, London, 1823.
458 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
peons; and some 300,000 of them are compelled to migrate to the
unhealthy coffee regions of the coast for part of the year—a necessity
which has resulted in heavy mortality. Others serve as burden-
bearers to escape the classification of forced labor. It is possible to
demonstrate from the detailed statistics in the surveys of Velasco,
Juarros, etc., that the Central American Indians have remarkable
vitality in recovering population losses.
We need not follow much farther the statistical record of recovery
of Indian populations from the lows reached after the incoming of
Europeans. The Indian survival in the West Indies is negligible,”
but it happens that about 5,000 so-called black Caribs, former residents
of St. Vincent, were dumped in 1793 on the then deserted island of
Ruatan by the English for trafficking with the French. They were
strongly intermixed with negroes, and to-day their descendants might
be taken for negroes were it not that they talk and live like Caribs.
This people now number about 30,000 souls; and their villages stretch
from Stann Creek, British Honduras, to Carib Town, Nicaragua.
Evidences of recovery must be taken in conjunction with other
evidences of continuing decrease. For instance, the Xicaque, Paya,
Sumo, Guatuso, etc., in Central America are fast approaching extinc-
tion, and the same holds true of natives of the Putumayo in Colombia
who are now concentrated in missions. Similar concentrations in
California, Central America, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Chile long since
led to complete extinction of many tribes. In Brazil the aborigines
suffered heavily in the recent rubber trade, while in Tierra del Fuego
sheepmen went so far as to put a bounty on their heads. It seems
that sporadic increase still falls short of restoring the Indian popula-
tion at the advent of the whites. But another matter awaits discus-
sion, namely, crests of population in pre-Columbian times.
POPULATION PEAKS UNDER INDIAN CIVILIZATION
The highest civilization of the New World was that of the Mayas,
whose great and numerous ruins of stone and mortar exist in a region
of rain forests now practically uninhabited. Here we are dealing with
a people who invented writing and mathematics in addition to archi-
tecture and who left dated records of their achievements on stone
monuments which enable us to restore the chronological framework
of history. It now appears certain that the Mayas were living in
the humid lands at least as early as 613 B. C., when their day count
was inaugurated.” This means that several arid-land plants, includ-
ing maize and beans, had already been adjusted to wet conditions.
12 Culin describes a settlement in eastern Cuba which still contains a little Indian blood (Stewart
Culin: The Indians of Cuba, Bull. Univ. of Pennsylvania Free Museum of Sci., and Art, vol. 3, pp. 185-
226, 1902).
13H, J. Spinden: The Reduction of Mayan Dates, Papers Peabody Museum of Amer. Archaeology
and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol.6, No.4, Cambridge, Mass., 1924.
POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA—SPINDEN 459
The earliest ‘‘contemporary ” date found (on the Tuxtla statuette) is 98
B. C., and the peak of the urban civilization of what is called the First
Empire falls between 300 and 600 A. D.
But by 630 A. D. every one of the great cities had been abandoned.
This abandonment may have begun about the middle of the sixth
century of our era, judging from the latest dates at several cities.
Speculation has been rife concerning its causes. Huntington’ has
developed a theory of climatic change, which does not seem to meet
the known facts; and
Cook has argued that
Ue Re
the Central American ba
savanas are exhausted
agricultural lands.'® .
But the barren savan-
as respond to geologi-
%0 [\
cal conditions without
evidence of having been
farmed. Moreover, the
dates show that cities
located on the rich flood
plain of the Usumacinta
were abandoned at the
same time as cities on
the shallow-soiled plain
of Petén. Warfare does
not seem to have been
highly developed, for
none of the early Maya
cities are fortified. San-
itation affords the best
explanation, and it hap-
pens that yellow fever 2 seek} 2000), MILES
had its most likely place 129 99
of origin in Central FIGURE 2.—Distribution of agriculture in the New World in pre-
Am eri ca 16 Columbian times. Numbers have reference to agriculture: 1, In
e arid regions of considerable altitude, mostly with irrigation; 2,
Yucatan and in fact under humid lowland conditions; 3, under temperate conditions
the whole area of the
Mayas is a welter of hewn stone and rubble constructions of the most
massive character. Yet during the prolific First Empire the Mayas
were entirely unacquainted with metals. We must picture them
30
4 Ellsworth Huntington: The Climatic Factor as Illustrated in Arid America, Carnegie Instn. Publ.
No. 192, Washington, 1914.
15 Discussed by S. G. Morley in ‘‘ The Inscriptions at Copan,’’ Carnegie Instn. Publ. No. 219, pp. 452-457,
Washington, 1920.
16 The Books of Chilam Balam, Maya chronicles, record pre-Spanish visitations of yellow fever under the
name xekik, ‘“‘blood vomit.”
460 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
cutting and carving stone with stone tools and carrying the ma-
terial on their backs or dragging it over the ground from quarry
to structure. It is an astonishing fact that there is no evidence
of the mechanical use of the wheel in connection with traction
anywhere in the New World on any cultural level. Human labor
of the most strenuous sort was called for, and the vast accumula-
tions have therefore an important bearing on population. An-
other fact that has often been overlooked is that the Mayas, lack-
ing the help of draft animals, were also spared the expense. They
ie eas tiie % ' aif
14 DNe (+
MAYAN FIRST EMPIRE SITES
Statute Miles
100 50 0 Tere)
36 94 92 90 OB ie GEOOR. REVIEW, OCT. 192
FIGURE 3.—Map showing sites of ruins of the First Mayan Empire. Scale, 1: 16,000,000
were not forced to divide their supply of vegetable food or the land
available for cultivation with hungry brutes far less economical than
human beings.
I have elsewhere presented the theory that American agriculture
was distributed on two distinct planes corresponding to economic
development, first, of the arid lands and secondly, of wet lands, both
in tropical regions, and that temperate moist-land development was
POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA—SPINDEN 461
dependent upon the second plane of distribution.” In general this
follows Harshberger’s botanical evidence on the dissemination of
maize.® In Mexico and Central America there is a safe priority of
several thousand years for arid-land agriculture, and some of the
plants domesticated under the régime of irrigation spread to the very
limits of the New World agricultural area. The staple plants were
modified to meet humid conditions probably under the stimulus of a
pressure of population on food supply which induced farmers to
MAYAN SECOND EMPIRE SITES
Statute Miles
50 0
aa
Figure 4.—Map showing sites of ruins of the Second Mayan Empire with the high development in
northern Yucatan
invade the wet forests. On the other hand, the new plants domesti-
cated in humid habitats had only a restricted distribution and were
never developed to meet dry conditions; witness cacao, manioc, and
pineapples. Perhaps the most widely distributed plants of the wet
lands were sweet potatoes and peanuts, both capable of being grown in
temperate regions.
11H. J. Spinden: The Origin and Distribution of Agriculture in America, Proc. 19th Internat]. Congr.
of Americanists, Held at Washington, Dec. 27-31, 1915, pp. 269-276, Washington, 1917.
18 J. W. Harshberger: Maize: A Botanical and Economic Study, Contr. Bot. Lab. Univ. of Pennsyl-
vania, Vol. 1, No. 2, Philadelphia, 1893.
462 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
It appears that the dry-land culture of Mexico and Central America,
traced by the vestiges of archaic art, spread first of all through arid
lands into our Southwestern States and into western and northern
parts of South America. Then the adaptation to the forest zone in the
Mayan area took place, and the great economic success of this led to
the conquest of forest areas elsewhere in Mexico and Central America,
parts of South America, and the West Indies. We know from their
calendar, etc., that the Mayas were established in rainy regions as
early as the seventh century before Christ. If we grant an original
seed population of 8,000, a peak of 8,000,000 is found after 10 dou-
blings. This is not excessive for 1,200 years of undisturbed social evolu-
tion, and indeed it appears that the strongly urban conditions of the
sixth century of our era demand an even greater number. From the
archeological evidence the region of the First Empire appears to have
been one of the most densely peopled parts of the world.
THE TOLTEC PEAK
The Mayan First Empire suddenly crumbled; and, considering the
involved urban life in a far from friendly habitat we must imagine
that this collapse resulted in tremendous mortality. Ranks of society
were reformed, however, and a second minor peak was reached in the
much drier region of northern Yucatan about 1200 A. D., coincid-
ing with the activities of the Toltec kings who conquered Chichen
Itza in 1191 A. D. At this time on the highlands of Mexico a strong
urbanization movement was taking place. It seems to have begun
among peoples near the Mayas, namely the Olmeca, the Zapoteca,
the Totonacs, etc., who lived in rather wet territory of southern and
eastern Mexico, and among the Chorotega on the Caribbean coast
lands to the south. But the Toltecs of the Valley of Mexico got the
upper hand and under Huetzin, [huitemalli, and Quetzalcoatl formed
a great empire of trade and tribute over the sedentary nations as far
south as Nicaragua. The stimulus to population on the highlands of
Mexico—doubtless high and fairly stable for many centuries—came
from imported food. We have seen that the Valley of Teotihuacan
has a population of 8,330. Gamio says as regards its ancient popula-
tion:
The extension and importance of pre-Spanish settlements in this region, vestiges
of which still exist, allow us to estimate their total population to have been ten or
twenty times as great as the present one, and possibly even greater * * *
There is no doubt that the definite downfall of the Teotihuacan civilization was the
cause of numerous migrations from the valley; yet centuries later, when the region
was conquered and came under the rule of the kingdom of Tezcuco, the population
was still numerous, as may be gathered by the number of tributary settlements
cited in history.
1 Gamio: op. cit.
POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA—SPINDEN 463
Many persons are familiar with the tremendous pyramids of the
Sun and the Moon at Teotihuacan and the great structure called the
Citadel. The volume of the pyramid of the Sun has been estimated
at 1,290,000 cubic yards, and its weight at about 3,000,000 tons. But
the famous pyramid of Cholula, which seems to have been constructed
in a comparatively short period by desciples of Quetzalcoatl in the
thirteenth century, is three times as large, with a total estimated
weight of nearly 10,000,000 tons. The vast terracings of Xochicalco
are scarcely less impressive evidence of human labor demanding dense
population. In 1927, I explored ascantily peopled section south of the
city of Vera Cruz and found tremendous earthworks of the Olmeca.
Then there are Monte Alban of the Zapoteca and many other vast
remains of pre-Columbian Mexico and Guatemala. The evidence indi-
cates that population on the Toltec level (1000-1200 A. D.) was much
greater than when Cortes arrived in 1519 A. D. The Toltec Empire
collapsed in the second decade of the thirteenth century with civil war,
starvation, and disease as the designated causes.
ANCIENT INDIAN POPULATION NORTH OF MEXICO
Estimates of the ancient Indian population for the area of the
United States and Canada have not been based on archeological evi-
dence so much as on indications during some early stage of European
contact. A most complete study of this area by James Mooney has
recently been published as a posthumous work.” The total number
of Indians for American north of Mexico at the advent of the whites is
here estimated at 1,150,000, divided as follows: United States 846,000
Canada 220,000; Alaska 72,000; and Greenland 10,000.
Mooney’s figures seem overconservative for the large part of the
United States ,and yet they are lowered in detail by several writers
on special fields. The densest settlement existed in California and
along the Pacific coast as far north as Alaska. All the tribes of this
area were on a preagricultural plane of life which was’ not widely
nomadic, thanks to a fair food supply consisting of acorns, various wild
root crops, and salmon. That these preagricultural people should
have established themselves in much greater density than the central
and eastern Indians of the United States who possessed agriculture
seems inexplicable unless, as we surmise, the western population was
near its crest when whites arrived while the central and eastern
population was already depleted.
Mooney’s total for California is 260,000 souls, following the figures
of C. Hart Merriam based on mission statistics. Kroeber *! reduces
the population of the State for the year 1770 to 133,000. To-day it
20 The Aboriginal Population of America North of Mexico, Smithsonian Mise. Coll., Vol. 80, No. 7,
Washington, 1928.
21 A, L. Kroeber: Handbook of the Indians of California, Bull. 78, Bur. Amer. Ethnol., pp. 880-891, Wash-
ington, 1925.
464 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
is only 15,000 indicating a decrease of 89 per cent from the smaller
estimate. Even if we accept Kroeber’s reduction the density of
Indian population in California remains nearly four times that of
the rest of the United States.
The nonagricultural Indians of America have had more difficulty
meeting the competition of the whites than the agricultural Indians
except those bearing the full brunt of early colonization. Their old
food supply has been cut off, and violent readjustments in their
mode of life have been accompanied by a rising death rate. Along
the Pacific coast the salmon runs have been depleted by commercial
fisheries; elsewhere wild game has been killed off, including the great
herds of buffalo on the plains; while on the plateau natural gardens
of camas and other edible roots have yielded to the white man’s wheat-
fields. Besides suffering these economic losses the nonagricultural
Indians in general have been more warlike, or at least more given to
resisting injustice, and have invoked their own extermination. In
the case of California many tribes fell under missionary control;
among these the percentage of survival is very low. Indian mortality
in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho has also greatly exceeded the
birth rate since the advent of the whites, the population figures for
1780 being 89,300 and for 1907 only 15,431. British Columbia and
southern Alaska show nearly as bad a record.
These nonagricultural western summaries will now be contrasted
with eastern agricultural ones for tribes distributed in a continuous
area from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlan-
tic to considerably beyond the Mississippi and well up the Missouri.
The purely nomadic buffalo-hunting tribes of the Great Plains are
marginal and are eliminated from the tabulation as well as all Cana-
dian tribes except the few that practiced agriculture. The dates at
the left in the following table give the eras at which Mooney calcu-
lates the population.
1600. New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania-_---_- 55, 600
1600. Maryland, Delaware, the Virginias, and the Carolinas______-_--~- 52, 200
1650. Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, most of Lou-
isiana and! part Of ATKansas) 2 20 skew 2 oe ope wie Aneel 114, 400
1650. Agricultural tribes of the Central States 3____.______.___.____- 40, 300
1696. Agricultural tribes of the Southern Plains________._._____--___-- 12, 900
1780. Agricultural tribes of the Northern Plains____________----_---- 38, 000
1600. Agricultural tribes of southern Canada_.____.-........------ 35, 300
348, 700
This eastern agricultural area covers about 1,375,000 square miles
of territory, and the figures of Mooney give one person to four square
22 Swanton, who edits Mooney’s work, reduces these figures by about 18,000 mostly on estimates of the
Creek and Chickasaw.
23 T exclude the Ojibwa as nonagricultural until recent times. Some of the other tribes are only partly
agricultural.
POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA—SPINDEN 465
miles. To-day this same area, resting heavily in the matter of food on
Indian plants,“ supports a population of something like 90,000,000
individuals.
THE PROBLEM OF THE MOUNDS
Now the mute evidence of the mound culture existing in the cen-
tral part of this eastern agricultural area attests rather dense popula-
tion over a considerable interval of time. Mooney’s data show that
at the epoch of white settlement Ohio” and West Virginia were prac-
tically deserted and that the region of the mounds had in general a
scantier population than the surrounding territory. Contrary to
early theory it has now been demonstrated that the mounds were
built by the ancestors of existing tribes and that some of them are of
no great age, since they contain objects of European manufacture.
What is the answer to this riddle? I believe that the conditions can
best be explained on the theory that diseases of European origin intro-
duced by fleeing natives from the West Indies or by Spanish explorers,
such as Ponce de Leon, swept up through the mound area several
generations before the establishment of the English and French colo-
nies. But the culture of the mound builders was already decadent,
and its peak must doubtless be placed several centuries before
Columbus.
Shetrone * says of ancient Ohio:
Perhaps no equal area in the world contains so many prehistoric earthworks
as the territory comprised within the state of Ohio. The * * * recently
published Archeological Atlas of Ohio locates a total of 5,396 prehistoric sites of the
various classes. Of these, 3,513 are mounds proper, 587 enclosures and fortifica-
tions, 354 village sites, 39 cemeteries, 5 effigy mounds, 17 petroglyphs or pictured
rocks, and 35 rock shelters or shelter caves. Besides these, 190 flint quarries and
many individual burials, some graves, and other sites are located.
Some of the mounds are of large size, and their construction repre-
sents much labor. The largest mound of all is that at Cahokia op-
posite St. Louis, but the De Soto mound in Arkansas and the Etawah
mound in Georgia are impressive constructions. The Cahokia mound
is 1,080 feet long, 710 feet wide, and 100 feet high, and covers 16 acres.
The volume has been calculated at 21,690,000 cubic feet. But it is
only one out of many manifestations of high population in a restricted
district.
In Mooney’s estimate we are asked to believe that only about
150,000 Indians dwelt in the mound area at the advent of the whites.
% About four-sevenths of the agricultural production of the United States (farm values) are in economic
plants domesticated by the American Indian and taken over by the white man.
2% The Erie nation had been destroyed in 1656 by the Iroquois, and after that for half a century Ohio was
uninhabited.
26 H. C. Shetrone: The Indianin Ohio, Ohio Archaeol. and Hist. Quart., pp. 274-510, Vol. 27, 1928; references
on pp. 467-468,
466 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
This may be true if the advent is placed at 1610 A. D. instead of
1492 A.D. Also the abundant remains have been explained by imag-
ining a small population existing for a very long time. But evidences
of art and the law of population increase do not justify such dilation.
It is at least seen that the concept of mounds for temple foundations
can not live when generations after generations are called upon to
build the substructure of the temple. Rather it seems that the eastern
agricultural area must once have supported several millions and that
a haleyon period a century or two before the arrival of Columbus
was ended by war and the pressure of wild tribes.
THE CASE OF PECOS
In the Pueblo area abundant evidence points to an ancient régime
of agriculture following an introduction of maize, beans, etc. from
Mexico on the culture levels known as Basket Makers II and III.
Strangely enough, the earliest finds come from a small region far
removed from the Mexican border,” while on the following culture
levels called Pueblo I and II the geographical expansion of small-
town remains reaches its greatest extent towards the northwest.
Pueblo III is the time level of large towns formed by consolidations
of small ones, and there is a withdrawal from the northwest towards
the south, without, however, any great change in the total area cov-
ered. In this brilliant period the population of the Southwest reached
its maximum, and trade with Mexico was developed. The Pueblo
outposts were then in the State of Chihuahua, and the Toltec outposts
were close by in Durango. Pueblo art and ceremony gained new ele-
ments from their Mexican correspondents. This vitalizing contact
doubtless ceased with the fall of the Toltec empire in 1220, and it is
a remarkable fact that a collapse in the Southwest closely paralleled
the collapse in Mexico. In part this must be explained by the raiding
activity of nomadic tribes; but, whatever the causes, the area occupied
by the village Indians shrank suddenly to about the present meager
limits. There must have been a sharp decrease in numbers over the
total area of the Southwest, and this decrease seems to have continued
till comparatively recent times. At least many villages have been
abandoned, and two languages, the Tano and Piro, have become
extinct.
A population curve for the pueblo of Pecos has been constructed
by E. A. Hooton on the basis of burials associated with pottery, which
reaches a peak at about 5,000.8 In general the results obtained are
in agreement with the archeological evidence in the number of rooms
27 See, for example, A. V. Kidder: An Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archeology, Published
for the Dept. of Archaeology, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. Papers of the Southwestern Expedition,
No 1, New Haven, 1924.
% Manuscript on Skeletal Remains at Pecos, to be published in the same series as reference 24.
POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA—SPINDEN 467
occupied at different times. We seem to have here a population curve
jn which the rise is explained by social and economic efficiencies and
the fall by decreasing agricultural returns, by disease introduced by
Europeans, and lastly by savage warfare intensified after the horse
had made long raids possible.
SOUTH AMERICAN ARID-LAND CIVILIZATION
In South America the agricultural civilizations are more ancient
in the arid and open regions of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, etc., than in
the wet forested regions of the Guianas and Brazil; but fluctuations
and displacements of population are more marked in the wet country
for reasons that are not far to seek.
The earlier series of Central American economic plants must have
reached Peru during the Archaic period a thousand years or more
t ° 109 200 300 KILOS
: : pre
Na sy MNU2 ite) oO 1co 200 MILES
wt
FIGURE 5.—Development of Pueblo culture. The left-hand map shows the nucleus of Pueblo culture;
dotted line, region of Basket Maker II; dashed line, Basket Maker III; solid line, Pueblo I. The
right-hand map shows the expansion and contraction of Pueblo culture; dotted line, Pueblo II; dashed
line, Pueblo III; solid line, region occupied at the conquest; modern Pueblos are shown by dots
before the time of Christ. Under the fairly stable but inelastic condi-
tions of desert-land farming a practical balance between population
and food supply may well have been reached on the basis of these
plants and maintained with little change for many centuries. One
frequently hears the opinion expressed that the agricultural terraces,
or andenes, of Peru indicate a greater population in the past than now
exists. But these terraces are still used in rotation; and, while im-
pressive monuments for conservation, they do not, in fact, retrieve
much acreage.
There was on the Peruvian highlands a great use of the indigenous
potato, which may have been gathered anciently as a wild root crop.
82322—30——31
468 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
It is an important question whether the Andean tuber actually ante-
dates maize, beans, and squashes in Peruvian cultivation; probably
not, however, since the shell heaps of Ancon,”? quite outside the natural
habitat of the potato, nevertheless yield evidences of sedentary
agricultural life earlier than proto-Nascan remains, likewise near
the coast; and these in turn antedate the classical remains at Tia-
huanaco on the plateau. The use of the potato extended from Chile
into western Venezuela along the Andean ridges.
In spite of various shiftings in the centers of empire*® the population
of Peru seems to have maintained itself without cataclysmic breaks
before the coming of the Spaniards. There were, to be sure, certain
peaks of artistry which may or may not correspond to peaks of
population. It is my opinion that extensions of civilizing influences
from Central into South America will be found to correspond roughly
with the Maya and Toltec culture crests, i. e. 400-600 A. D. and
1000-1200 A. D. The evidence of these streams of influence is seen
more clearly in the wet-land cultures than the dry but may be noted
in the art of Chavin and Recuay and more fully still at Puruh4 in
Ecuador.*!
There is no reason to believe that the rapid growth of Inca power
entailed great wastage of life. Indeed, the improved economic
condition which followed the building of roads and the opening up
of new provinces may actually have brought about an increase in
numbers, at least making it easier to relieve famines. One thing is
evident enough: The Peruvian conquests were made in regions where
sedentary agricultural life had long since been established. Archeo-
logical stratifications in Ecuador*® on the one hand and in Argentina*®
on the other prove this.
Perhaps density of population in the region covered by the Peru-
vian empire reached its apogee under Huayna Capac, the eleventh
Inca (1470-1525). But the arrival of Pizarro in 1532, in conjunction
with the fratricidal triumph of Atahualpa, was a stroke of doom.
There was surely a tremendous falling off among the Indians of Peru
after the Spanish occupation—the dire result of repressive measures,
2% Max Uhle: Die Muschelhiigel von Ancon, Peru, Proc. 18th Internat]. Congr. Americanists Held at
London, 1912, pp. 22-45, 1913.
30 See for instance P. A. Means: An Outline of the Culture-Sequence in the Andean Area, Proc. 19th
Internat]. Congr. Americanists Held at Washington, Dec. 27-31, 1915, pp. 236-252, Washington, 1917.
J. C. Tello: Introduccién a la historia antigua del Peru, Lima, 1922,and various papers in Inca, Lima,
1923—.
Stratigraphic and stylistic studies are among papers by A. L. Kroeber, W. D. Strong, Max Uhle, and
A. H. Gayton in Univ. of California Publs. in Amer. Archaeol. and Ethnol., Vol. 21, Nos. 1-8, 1924-1927,
and see also the paper on The Uhle Pottery Collection from Nasca, by A.H. Gayton and A. L. Kroeber,
ibid., Vol. 24, No. 1, 1927.
31 Jacinto Jijon y Caamafio: Puruh4, Bol. Acad. Nacl. de Hist. Quito, Vol. 3, 1922, and succeeding
volumes.
82 Jijon y Caamani, op. cit.
8% Bric Boman: Los ensayos de establecer una cronologia prehispénica en la region Diaguita (RepGblica
Argentina), Bol. Acad. Nacl. de Hist., Quito, Vol. 6, pp. 1-27, 1923.
POPULATION OF ANCIENT AMERICA—SPINDEN 469
slavery, starvation, and disease. The adjudication of numbers for
an era of 1525, when the eleventh Inca died without knowledge of
the coming collapse of his great empire, can not be made now; but it
is not impossible that in many regions of Peru, Bolivia, and Equador
the Indian has about retrieved his former situation as regards numbers.
SOUTH AMERICAN CENTERS OF WET-LAND CULTURE
These general observations on the stability of arid-land civilizations
do not hold true of certain rather brilliant but restricted cultures of
Colombia and Ecuador which flourished in humid lands and which
had pretty clearly fallen into decay before the arrival of European
marauders; nor do they hold true of ancient centers of wet-land civili-
zation in Venezuela and Brazil, located farther to the east. In Colom-
bia and Ecuador, I refer more especially to the Zenu, who occupied
territory east of the Gulf of Uruba; to the Quimbaya,** who held the
middle valley of the Cauca; to the nameless people who built the stone
monuments of San Augustin *° on the headwaters of the Magdalena;
and to other tribes, whose very designations are doubtful but who
once ruled the Pacific coast of Colombia and Ecuador from Choco to
Manta. An outlying contemporary center was that of the Tairona
on the flanks of the Santa Marta Mountains in eastern Colombia,
recently described by Mason.*®
These form an interesting chain of localities where the humid
tropics were temporarily conquered after the manner of the Mayas.
The economic and social interrelations of these localities are found
on the historical levels of Mayan and especially Chorotegan develop-
ments, or safely within the Christian era. The special contribution
of these South American States was in metal working according to a
technique which was afterwards imitated in Mexico, namely, a kind
of filigree jewelry made by the lost wax process. Since no examples
of this jewelry or any other objects of metal occur at the First Empire
sites of the Mayas, while numerous specimens, some being clearly of
Colombian manufacture, are found in Northern Yucatan in deposits
of about 1200 A. D., the conclusion is that the characteristic art of
the southern centers flourished broadly from 500 to 1300 A. D. with
activity in trading during the last two or three centuries of this period.
‘4 Ernesto Restrepo Tirado: Los Quimbayas, a décimo octavo Congreso Internacional de Americanistas:
que se reunira en Londres en Mayo de 1912, Edicion oficial, 66 pp., Bogota, 1912.
Eduard Seler: Die Quimbaya und ihre Nachbarn, Gesammelte Ablandl., Berlin, Vol. 5, pp. 63-76, 1915.
From Globus, Vol. 64, pp. 242-248, 1893.
35 K. T. Preuss: Bericht iiber meine archiologischen und ethnologischen Forschungsreisen in Kolumbien,
Zeitschr. fiir Ethnologie, Vol. 52-53, pp. 89-128, 1920-21. ‘‘Ausgrabungen in der Gegend von San Agustin’”
covers pp. 91-105.
Idem: Die Ausstrahlungen der San Augustin-Kultur in Amerika, Zeitschr. fiir Ethnologie, Vol. 59, pp.
111-112, 1927.
36 J, Alden Mason: Archeological Researches in the Region of Santa Marta, Colombia, Compte-Rendu
Congrés Internat]. des Américanistes, 21st Session, 2nd Part ,at Géteburg, 1924, pp. 159-166, Géteburg Mu-
Seum, 1925.
470 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
In addition to metal work there are other important interconti-
nental changes in technology and design, regarding which space does
not permit elaboration. But the important bearing of these archeo-
logical indications is on the question of ancient population of the wet
tropics below the intensively developed Mayan territory. For, if
civilization had a long time to run in such environment, it must surely
have resulted in dense settlements.
The best evidence that civilization did have a fairly long life in
certain parts of humid South America is seen from the fact that a
high culture existed about the mouth of the Amazon which had disap-
peared before the arrival of the whites. The archeological bond be-
tween Central America, Venezuela, and the lower Amazonas is first
found on the Archaic level corresponding to an early distribution of
the maize complex.” But eastern Brazil became the center of new
agricultural developments. Manioc, sweet potatoes, pineapples,
etc., seem to have been domesticated here and distributed towards
the west. The high culture attributed to the Arawack and Tupi
tribes was broken down by the raiding Caribs, and the beginning of
the West Indian occupation may correspond roughly with the end of
the Amazonian civilization. Some of the tribes moved out over
the Antilles, and others pushed down along the coast of Brazil. But
there are other evidences that the Amazonian use of jade and several
religious concepts displayed in art must be placed at the earliest about
1000 A. D. This leaves, however, a long enough interval after the
introduction of agriculture on the Archaic horizon to account for
high populations.
CONCLUSIONS
1. The present equivalent of the Indian blood in the New World
is in excess of 25,000,000 individuals.
2. There are fewer Indians to-day than at the coming of Europeans.
3. Various ancient peaks are indicated by the archeological record
in different parts of the New World. The first high population level
was reached in Central America and Mexico during the First Empire
of the Mayas (with greatest density about 550 A. D.), and a second
one of much greater extent obtained during the florescence of the
Toltecs.
4. The chronological evidence indicates the greatest aboriginal
population of America about 1200 A. D., this being a halcyon epoch
of far-flung trade at the maximum expansion of wet-land cultures.
The numbers of the red race may then have amounted to two or three
times the present numbers, or say 50,000,000 to 75,000,000 souls.
37 Female fetishes of fertility reach from Mexico to the island of Marajoin the mouth of the Amazon. For
a brief presentation of the evidence see my ‘‘Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America,’’ pub-
lished as a handbook by the American Museum of Natural History, 3rd edition, 1928.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Spind:
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CENTRAL AMERICA
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5. Fluctuations have been much more evident in humid lands,
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6. The greatest factor in depopulation has been disease in epidemic
form.
NOTE ON THE RAINFALL MAP
In compiling this map use has been made of official statistics where available
(including the United States Weather Bureau’s West Indian and Caribbean
Service, Oliver L. Fassig in charge) and standard references such as Hann’s
‘‘ Handbuch der Klimatologie”’ and Supan’s “‘ Die Verteilung des Niederschlags,”’
Petermanns Mitt. Erginzungsheft No. 124, 1898. Also of the following:
Alfred Merz: Beitrige zur Klimatologie und Hydrographie Mittelamerikas,
Leipzig, 1907.
M. W. Harrington: Central American Rainfall, Bull. Philos. Soc. Washington,
Vol. 18,1895-1899, pp. 1-30, Washington, 1900.
W. W. Reed: Climatological Data for Central America, Monthly Weather Rev.,
Vol. 51, pp. 1383-141, Washington, 1923.
Paul Heidke: Regenmessungen aus Guatemala, Deutsche Ubersee. Meteorol.
Beobachtungen, No. 23, pp. A 26-30, Deutsche Seewarte, Hamburg, 1922.
Karl Sapper: Grundziige der physikalischen Geographie von Guatemala, Peter-
manns Mitt. Erginzungsheft No. 113, 1894.
Karl Sapper: Verteilungen des Regenfalls in nérdlichen Mittelamerika (map).
Petermanns Mitt., Vol. 48, Pl. 10, 1897.
Karl Sapper: Die Alta Verapaz (Guatemala), Mitt. Geogr. Gesell. in Hamburg,
Vol. 17, pp. 78-214, 1901.
Eckhard Lottermoser: Die Ergebnisse der Temperatur-Beobachtungen in Sal-
vador und Siid-Guatemala, Mitt. Geogr. Gesell. in Hamburg, Vol. 24, pp. 31-84,
1909.
Eckhard Lottermoser: Die Regenverhdltnisse Mittelamerikas mit besonderer
Beriiksichtigung von Salvador und Siid-Guatemala, inang. Diss., ‘Tubingen,
1911.
A. P. Davis: Hydrography of Nicaragua. Twentieth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol.
Survey, 1898-99, Part IV, Hydrography, pp. 563-637, Washington, 1900.
Rainfall records kept by commercial corporations and private individuals,
mostly unpublished, including: records from the United Fruit Co. (Tela Railroad,
Truxillo Railroad, ete.) in Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama; the
Cuyamel Fruit Co. (Cortes Development Co., etc.) in Honduras and Nicaragua;
Vaccaro Brothers (Suiza Planting Co., etc.) in Honduras; Schlubach, Sapper &
Co., Guatemala; Spencer Richardson, Las Cafias, Matagalpa, Nicaragua; from
stations on the Salvador Railway Co.; from mines of Charles Butters, Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua; and Minor C. Keith, Guatemala and Costa Rica, etc.
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THE ABORIGINES OF THE ANCIENT ISLAND OF
HISPANIOLA
By Hrerpert W. KRIEGER
United States National Museum
(With 27 plates)
HISTORICAL NOTES
The island of Hispaniola, anciently known as Haiti to its abori-
ginal inhabitants, is occupied jointly by the Dominican Republic
and the Republic of Haiti. The island is the second largest of the
West Indies and lies between the islands of Cuba and Jamaica on
the west and Porto Rico on the east. Its area is approximately that
of Ireland, and due to its varied topography a wide range of tropical
climate prevails in different portions of the island. Broad valleys
alternate with towering mountain ranges, culminating, in the Cibao,
in Mount Tina with a reputed elevation of 3,140 meters.
The humid climate of the eastern valleys varies with almost sinis-
ter stretches of desert in the western third of the island. The lower
Yuna River Valley in the east is a good example of dense tropical
vegetation growing under humid climatic conditions, while the arid
hills of the north central part of the island west of Santiago de los
Caballeros mark the beginning of tropical thorn forests.
The northeastern part of the island is traversed from west to east
by the Cordillera Setentrional which terminates on the west in the
Silla de Caballo range near Monte Cristi on the north coast. Parallel-
ing this range is the larger axial Cordillera Central known as the
the Cibao. The fertile valley lying between these ranges extends
from the Atlantic coast west of Monte Cristi to the Gulf of Samana
on the east. It is drained by two of the largest rivers on the island,
the Rio Yaque del Norte which empties itself into Manzanillo Bay on
the north coast, and the Yuna River which flows eastward into
Samana Bay.
Most of the cacao and tobacco grown in the island comes from the
eastern portion of this valley, while farther west the valley is semi-
arid. ‘The lower portion of this valley, or great central plain, anciently
known as the Vega (meadow), was the most densely populated section
473
474 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of the island before the conquest. A coastal plain extends back from
the Caribbean as much as 50 miles along the entire southeastern
coast almost to the Haitian border. Here are located several of the
large sugar estates.
The north coast is largely given to the production of honey, while
coffee is produced almost exclusively in the western portion of the
island, which is occupied by the Republic of Haiti. Cattle raising
has proved a profitable industry to the Spanish settlers of the interior
uplands and semiarid areas of the west, but the greater part of the
Dominican side of the island is still undeveloped. Tropical fruits,
such as plantains, bananas, pineapples, coconuts, limes, lemons,
and oranges, mangoes, breadfruit, and tropical root and tuber crops
such as yams, sweet potatoes, yucca (cassava), yautia, and others,
thrive in the more humid areas, where they have been introduced
by aboriginal or European immigrants.
The first permanent settlement by Europeans in the New World is
commonly said to be Isabela, on the north coast about 40 kilometers
west of the city of Puerto Plata. This settlement, founded by
Columbus in December, 1493, is really the second to be established
in America, as a colony had been founded by Columbus near Cape
Haitien, on the north coast of Haiti, a year earlier, shortly after one
of his vessels had been wrecked on Christmas eve, 1492. Neither
this earlier settlement, known as La Navidad, nor Isabela became
permanent colonies, although Isabela continued to exist as the Spanish
capital of the New World for seven years until it was voluntarily
abandoned in favor of a settlement at the mouth of the Ozama River.
This new settlement on the south coast had been established in 1496
because of its proximity to a newly discovered gold field. The present-
day city of Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic,
developed from this settlement and is therefore entitled to the honor of
being the first permanent settlement by Europeans in America. The
unfortunate La Navided colony was wiped out by the Indians within
a few months of its establishment, under circumstances not definitely
known. Its downfall was instigated by the Indian cacique of the
Cibao, Caonabo, but was hastened by the dissolute conduct of the
first colonists themselves. |
The ruins of Isabela are still in existence and continue to arouse a
romantic interest not shared by other outposts and colonies established
by Columbus. Visitors have carried away much of the stone from the
walls, and the destruction wrought by time is such that very little
remains to make the site recognizable as the walled city it once was.
In a letter to Washington Irving, published in 1859 in The Life and
Voyages of Christopher Columbus, T. S. Heneken gives the following
interesting description of the ruins as they existed nearly a cen-
tury ago.
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—-KRIEGER 475
Isabela at the present day is quite overgrown with forest, in the midst of which
are still to be seen partly standing, the pillars of the church, some remains of the
king’s storehouses, and part of the residence of Columbus, all built of hewn stone.
The small fortress is also a prominent ruin; and a little north of it is a circular
pillar about 10 feet high and as much in diameter, of solid masonry, nearly entire;
which appears to have had a wooden gallery or battlement round the top for
the convenience of room, and in the center of which was placed the flagstaff.
Having discovered the remains of an iron clamp imbedded in the stone, which
served to secure the flagstaff itself, I tore it out, and now consign to you this curi-
ous relic of the first foothold of civilization in the New World, after it has been
exposed to the elements nearly 350 years.
This letter does not adequately describe the ruins as they exist
to-day, when scarcely a stone remains in position on the walls,
although the plan of the settlement is roughly visible in the piles of
stones and the intervening forest growth. The site is readily acces-
sible by automobile from Puerto Plata by way of Bajabonico and
Blanco.
During his first voyage to the New World Columbus first heard
of the island of Haiti while cruising westward along the north shore
of Cuba. Lucayan Indians from the island of ‘‘Guanahani’” (one
of the Bahamas), where Columbus had first landed, accompanied
him as interpreters and guides on the inter-island voyage which
followed. As their speech was Arawakan, a language understood
throughout the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles, their services
were of great value. They informed Columbus that land existed
on the southwest, northwest, and the southeast. They obviously
referred to the islands of the Greater Antilles and to Florida.
Their repeated reference to a land lying to the east as being rich
in gold influenced Columbus to turn about and to sail his caravels
eastward. The high mountains of the island of Haiti were soon seen
looming in the distance. The Lucayan guides now assured Columbus
that the land sighted was inhabited by cannibals, while the land
itself was referred to as Bohio, the meaning of which has been vari-
ously interpreted.
The island of Haiti was also referred to as Quisqueya—that is, the
mainland. The native Arawakan term Aiti or Haiti, appears also
to have been generally applied to the island by natives speaking the
Arawak language. Haiti signifies mountainous country or high land,
and in this sense the term was also applied to a subprovince of eastern
Magua (a native province). The native name Cuba became Juana
to the Spanish, and the island of Boriquen was renamed Porto Rico.
Haiti gradually became known by the same name which the Spanish
had given to their capital city, namely, Santo Domingo. Columbus
had previously renamed the island Espanola. This term was later
corrupted into Hispaniola. Modern practice is to again use the native
term Haiti when referring to the entire island but to apply the term
4
476 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Santo Domingo when referring to that portion of the island occupied
by the Dominican Republic.
More than a month elapsed from the time that Columbus first
landed at Cape St. Nicholas, the extreme northwestern point of
Haiti, until he had completed exploration of the 400 miles of its north-
ern coast and entered the Bay of Samana, in January, 1493. In
the meantime one of his caravels, the Santa Maria, had been wrecked
near Cape Haitien, and he had founded a settlement for the crew of
his wrecked vessel near by, using wreckage from the ship as building
material for the fort and storehouse. A large native village located a
short distance inland from the scene of the shipwreck was the residence
of Goacanagaric, the cacique of the northern province of Marien.
Goacanagaric soon became the friendly adviser of Columbus and the
lifelong friend of the Spanish invaders. The location of Goacanagaric’s
village, known by the name of Guarico, was but a short distance from
the beach, where the village of Petit Anse now stands, about 2 miles
southeast of Cape Haitien.
Goacanagaric told Columbus that Caribs had frequently made
attacks on his people and had carried away captives. When on raiding
expeditions, the Caribs were armed with bows and arrows. The
offer of Columbus to protect the people of Goacanagaric from the
invasions of the Caribs was enthusiastically received. Fear of the
Caribs formed the basis of a lasting friendship between Goacanagaric
and Columbus. At the island of Tortuga, not far off the Haitian
coast and the village of Guarico, the Spanish had seen evidence of
the presence of the roving Carib. Later, as Columbus sailed eastward
and approached the Lesser Aptilles, additional evidence was discovered
of the presence of the Carib in Santo Domingo.
When Columbus with his two remaining ships, the Pinia and the
Nina, rounded Cape Cabron and anchored in Samana Bay on January
13, 1493, he encountered Indians as hostile as the natives of the north-
western coast under Goacanagaric had been friendly. The captain
of the Pinta, Martin Pinzon, had taken four native men and two
girls from the vicinity of Porto Caballo on the northeastern coast
aboard the Pinta to be sold later as slavesin Spain. When Columbus
discovered what had been done he made restitution and returned the
captives to their village with gifts, but the news of the capture had
preceded them. The easily hostile Indians of northeastern Santo
Domingo and of Samana Peninsula, known as Ciguayos because of
their custom of not cutting their hair, simply anticipated a raid from
the Spanish resembling that with which they were familiar from the
Caribs.
Columbus thought that as the Ciguayans were hostile and appeared
quite different from the peaceful subjects of his friend Goacanagaric
of the northwest coast of the island, they must be representatives of
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—KRIEGER 477
the dreaded Carib. An Indian was induced to come aboard the
Nia where it was anchored in Samana Bay. This Indian intimated
that the island of Carib (Porto Rico) lay to the east. Columbus gave
several presents to the Indian, among which were two pieces of red
and green cloth and some small glass beads, and sent him ashore.
When approaching the shore in the ship’s boat more than 50 armed
Indians were discovered lurking in ambush in the thickets. The
Indian who had been aboard the Nifia persuaded them to come from
ambush and to lay down their weapons, but they soon took alarm
and showed fight. The boat’s crew defended themselves and wounded
two of the natives. This hostile encounter, the first armed conflict
between Indians of the New World and Europeans, occurred on Sunday,
January 14, 1493. The following day the Indians returned in large
numbers with their cacique Mayobanex and his three attendants.
Columbus invited them to lunch with him on honey and ship’s biscuit.
Mayobanex presented Columbus with a necklace of shell beads, and
on his arrival at the ship Columbus gave him and his attendants red
caps and bits of cloth and beads. When Mayobanex returned to his
village on the north shore of Samana Peninsula near the mouth of the
San Juan River, he sent to Columbus by messenger a ‘‘coronet”’
of gold.
Because of the hostile attack of the Ciguayan Indians with their
bows and arrows, Columbus named the small bay where he lay at
anchor the Bay of Arrows. Tradition places this bay a short distance
east of the town of Santa Barbara de Samana, on the north shore of
Samana Bay. The inlet is still called ‘‘Golfo de las Flechas”’ or the
Bay of Arrows.
The costume of the Ciguayan Indians of Samana was negligible.
The hair was worn long and tied in a tuft incased in a bag decorated
with parrot feathers and hanging from the back of the head, giving an
effect ‘‘as the women of Spain wear it.’”’ No mention is made in the
literature of a headdress of feathers arranged vertically in the form of
a half crown wherein each feather is attached at the base of the quill
to a woven band, a form of feather headdress characteristic of the
Carib and Arawak of Venezuela and Guiana.
Columbus took with him to Spain four young male Ciguayans who
were to serve as guides to the islands occupied by the Caribs. The
Ciguayans themselves have been called Caribs erroneously because of
certain peculiarities in speech and dress. Their name of ‘‘Ciguay”’
applies to their custom of not cutting their hair, which contrasted
with the practice observed by other Arawak groups on the island of
Hispaniola who cut their hair. South American Arawaks, like the
Ciguayans of Samana, did not cut their hair.
On his second voyage to the New World, Columbus again touched
on the shores of the island of Hispaniola on November 12, of the same
478 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
year. He found the natives of southeastern Santo Domingo—that
is, of the native Province of Higuey—as hostile as had been the
Ciguayans, and, like them, also threatening to bind the Spanish with
ropes. Also, at La Navidad, Columbus found two dead Spaniards
bound with native ropes.
During his second voyage Columbus began the practice of sending
natives of the island to Spain to be sold into slavery. Tribute was
exacted from the remainder. The tribute was to be in gold, but an
arroba of cotton—that is, 25 pounds—was later substituted as the
amount of tribute to be collected quarterly from all adults over 14
years of age. As cotton was not grown throughout the islands, and as
it was practically impossible to obtain gold elsewhere except in the
central mountains of Cibao, service was accepted instead of gold or
cotton. This was the beginning of the so-called repartimiento, later to
be expanded into the encomienda system, under which natives of the
conquered island were divided among the Spanish soldiery for admin-
istrative purposes, principally for the collecting of tribute. Under
this arrangement the Indian population of the island rapidly declined.
It is probable that to-day not ene pure-blood descendant survives of
the comparatively dense native population living on the island at the
time of the discovery. The population at that time has been estimated
at approximately 1,000,000. In the year 1507, according to Spanish
records, 60,000 remained, while in 1533, 600 natives, supposed to
constitute the remainder of the native population, were given lands at
Boya. Jefferys writes there were but 100 natives still living in
Haiti in 1730, but he estimates the number of survivors in 1550 as
4,000. To offset this rapid decline in workers for the mines and
plantations, consignments of African slaves were brought to the island
as early as 1508.
The island also gained an unsavory reputation from the fact that
Spanish pirates used the island as a base and preyed on the French,
Dutch, and British shipping. The long speedy boats used in this
piracy were called fly-bote or freibote and their crews were known as
freiboters, freebooters, or filibusters. The French and British united
to suppress these pirates or freebooters and established a base on St.
Christopher Island and later on the island of Tortuga, a small island
north of Cape Haitien, Haiti. Frequent incursions were made into
the northern parts of Haiti for the purpose of killing cattle. Those
engaged in this activity became known as buccaneers, from boucan,
the spit on which they cooked their meat.
From Tortuga, the French gained a permanent foothold cn the west-
ern end of the island, now the Republic of Haiti. The activities of the
French in bringing slaves from Africa soon exceeded the Spanish;
their methods became harsher and more exacting than those of the
easy-going Spanish planters on the Santo Domingo, or eastern side of
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—KRIEGER 479
the island. To-day the population of the Dominican Republic which
occupies the eastern three-fourths of the island, the territory once
held by the Spanish, is estimated at somewhat less than a million
with no color line drawn between the descendants of former Spanish
colonists or slaves. Haiti, as a republic, occupies the western end of
the island and has a population of nearly 3,000,000. The French
element formerly present in this so-called ‘‘ Black Republic” has entire-
ly vanished.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Bartholomew de Las Casas is the apostle of the decline of the native
population and the principal accuser of Spanish misrule. Of all his
numerous writings, the two most important for the study of West
Indian ethnology are the Historia General and the Historia Apolo-
getica de las Indias. Las Casas tells us that he began this latter work
in 1527 while living in the Dominican monastery near Puerto Plata.
The several publications of the Hakluyt Society are useful in study-
ing early historical contacts as well as the ethnology of the historic
tribes. Select Letters of Christopher Columbus were published by
the society in 1847; included is the famous letter of Doctor Chanca
describing the second voyage of Columbus. Girolamo Benzoni’s His-
tory of the New World was translated and published by the Hakluyt
Society in 1857. The ethnological observations of Benzoni are first-
hand, as he spent 14 years in Haiti, beginning in 1541. Benzonilived
the simple life while in Haiti even to the extent of making his own cas-
sava bread. The Journal of the First Voyage of Christopher Colum-
bus, published by the Hakluyt Society in English in 1893, gives a de-
tailed first-hand account of the admiral’s contacts with the natives of
Haiti. This work and the narrative of Ferdinand Columbus written
in the nature of a biography of Christopher Columbus are particu-
larly useful with regard to the study of the ethnology of the island
at the time of the discovery.
The narratives collected in Churchhill’s Voyages and Travels
include a unique and excellent description of the religious life, magical
practices, traditions, and social life of the Indians of the Vega, or
great central valley, and of the Ciguayans of the northern Cordillera.
This monograph was written by Friar Ramon Pane, a Franciscan
monk who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage and was
detailed by him to describe native religious and ceremonial life.
Peter Martyr’s Eight Decades, or De Orbe Novo, is best available
in Francis Augustus MacNutt’s translation from the Latin and
appears in two volumes. The first Decade was published in 1511
and is drawn from accounts and observations of Andreas Moralis, who
had been sent by Governor Ovando, the second successor of Columbus
as governor of the island, to explore the interior. Much of Martyr’s
work is pure gossip, for he admits that everyone who had been to the
480 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Indies visited him. So far as he follows Moralis, Martyr’s account
appears to be authentic.
The Natural History of the Indies, published by Oviedo in 1526, is
perhaps cited more frequently than any other work pertaining to
early history and ethnology of Haiti and Santo Domingo. Oviedo
lived in Santo Domingo shortly after Moralis explored the interior of
the island. A French edition of Oviedo’s work was published in
Paris in 1556. Jefferys in his Natural and Civil History, published
in London in the year 1760, follows Oviedo’s description of aboriginal
customs. Another borrower from Oviedo is Charlevoix, whose
Historia de l’Isle Espagnole appeared in 1730. Charlevoix’s map of
the island of Haiti showing the location of the country occupied by the
several aboriginal groups and giving the names of the various caciques
is particularly useful.
EARLY TRAVEL AND TRADE ROUTES
The West Indian archipelago extends from Florida to South Amer-
ica in the form of a crescent, a distance of 1,600 miles. The northern
islands of this archipelago were known as the Lucayan Islands to the
aboriginal Arawak population. These islands are now known as the
Bahamas. They are built up of a low-lying coralline formation like
that of Florida, which is but 60 miles distant from the nearest island
of the group. Yucatan Peninsula is twice that distance from the
western end of Cuba. On the South American end, one of the islands
known as the Lesser Antilles, namely Grenada, is 80 miles from
Trinidad, which lies just off the coast of Venezuela. At neither of its
outlying points, therefore, are the West Indies at all remote from the
continental mainland of North or South America. The physical
basis for the early culture and tribal migrations in the West Indies lies
in the proximity of island land masses, also in the favorable north-
westerly currents in the Caribbean.
The delta of the Orinoco River empties itself into the Gulf of Paria
on the Venezuelan coast, which is in part inclosed by the large island
of Trinidad. Tobago, of the Lesser Antilles, is separated from Trini-
dad by only 25 miles of water. The Orinoco discharges its water
through 20 distributaries covering 160 miles of South American coast
directly facing the Lesser Antilles. It is therefore likely that a South
American canoe culture, developed by the coast Carib and Arawak
groups, reached the Greater Antilles by way of the smaller and more
proximate Lesser Antilles. Dislodged groups followed the outgoing
current of the Orinoco in their dugout canoes, paddled their way along
the leeward side of the island chain, and gradually approached the
large islands of Porto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, and perhaps Jamaica. In
this northwestward migration wind and ocean currents were favorable
factors.
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—-KRIEGER 481
After leaving the South American coast, when returning to Santo
Domingo on his third voyage, Columbus discovered the strong west-
erly direction of the Caribbean current. Lying to at night, as he
feared he might strike shoal water or reefs if he engaged in night sail-
ing, he found to his dismay that the drift to the northwest was astonish-
ing. Even when making allowance for this westerly drift, he first
sighted the Dominican coast near the island of Beata, 150 miles west
of the mouth of the Ozama River and the city of Santo Domingo,
which he had desired to approach direct.
A recent study of shell heaps and kitchen middens on the islands
of Aruba, Curagao, and Bonaire, by De Jong, discloses strong confirm-
atory evidence of direct culture migration between these islands,
which lie just off the Venezuelan coast of South America, and Santo
Domingo. Kitchen middens, recently excavated in the Silla de
Caballo Mountains of northern Santo Domingo, revealed literally
thousands of objects more or less fragmentary but astonishingly
similar to those described by De Jong from Curagao. It is possible
that some of the early culture diffusion from the South American
mainland to the Antilles, particularly to the island of Jamaica, was
along this direct route.
Columbus found the Lesser Antilles in possession of the Carib
Indians. They had but recently displaced an earlier Arawakan
group and perhaps one or two other, more primitive, nonagricultural
peoples like the Ciboney of Haiti and Cuba. The warlike character-
istics of the Carib contrasted strongly with the peaceful Arawak, who
were primarily tillers of the soil. It is evident, though as yet not
clearly demonstrated, that the lacustrine and maritime tribes, who
were occupied principally with fishing and hunting, and who were in
possession of the Lesser and Greater Antilles even before the arrival of
the Arawaks, are to be identified with the prehistoric and historic
tribes of identical culture who occupied the Gulf and Caribbean
littoral respectively of North and of South America. An example of
this primitive culture group is the Warrau, a coast tribe occupying the
delta of the Orinoco River and related linguistically neither to the
Awawak nor to the Carib, who occupied the bulk of the Guiana coast
of South America southeast of Venezuela and who ranged far into the
interior of the South American Continent.
At the time of the discovery, Indian sailors ventured into the open
waters of the Atlantic and the Caribbean in their dugout canoes.
These canoes varied in size, but each possessed the common quality
of having been cut from a single tree trunk. Columbus wrote that
‘the dugout canoes of Haiti were of solid wood, narrow, and not unlike
our double-banked boats in length and shape, but swifter.’”? Caribs
of the Lesser Antilles were in the habit of sailing to Porto Rico to
482 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
obtain boat building material, as the trees growing in the Lesser
Antilles were not suitable for canoes. Carib raiders were engaged in
raiding the north coast of Hispaniola in search for Arawak victims for
their cannibalistic practices, but also for Arawak women, whom they
took with them into captivity. Mona Passage separating Porto
Rico from Santo Domingo was frequently crossed by Arawak sailors,
Mona Island, in mid-channel, affording a convenient shelter.
Fire-killed trees were felled by firing. The trunks were gouged
out with beveled shell celts or with stone axes after alternate proc-
esses of burning and charring to loosen the wooden fiber to be
removed. The width of beam was increased by inserting thwarts
or transverse beams of wood. A unique invention was the building
up of the gunwales with a plaited bulwark of sticks and reeds knitted
together with vines and pitched with gum. Herrera describes the
canoes as ‘‘boats made of one piece of timber, square at the ends
like trays, deeper than the canoes, the sides raised with canes, daubed
over with bitumen.” Use of cotton sails and awnings, decorative
designs in paint and carving, all were traits making the West Indian
dugout canoe a highly developed invention. Paddles rather than
sails were the ordinary means of propulsion. A long paddle having
a crutch-shape handle was generally employed. Long voyages were
not infrequent. For instance, three Lucayan Islanders escaped from
Santo Domingo and the bonds of Spanish slavery and attempted
to sail back to the Bahamas. They were recaptured when they
had practically completed their journey of more than 100 miles.
Bailing was accomplished with a calabash; also by rocking the boat.
The large native vessel, supposedly Mayan, encountered by Colum-
bus during his fourth voyage, when off the coast of Guatemala, was
engaged in a trading expedition, but no adequate evidence has ever
been presented that such trading vessels from the Central American
mainland ever reached the coast of Santo Domingo or even Cuba,
or that materials such as it carried for trading purposes ever were
seen by Spanish explorers in the Greater Antilles. Neither were
aboriginal Jamaicans willing to sail their canoes northward across
the strong Caribbean current to the southern coast of Santo Domingo.
A single Indian was picked up by Columbus during his first voyage
while sailing from Tortuga Island to the northern coast of Haiti, a
comparatively short distance.
Another instance or two might be cited from the Journal of
Columbus. During his first voyage he found individual Indians
paddling their dugout canoes from one of the Lucayan Islands to the
other. For provisions such sailors carried cassava bread and a
calabash of water.
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—KRIEGER 483
CULTURE DIFFUSION IN THE WEST INDIES
The connection of the island Arawak with the tribes of Florida was
essentially one of trade and provisioning. Transference of decorative
designs, therefore, was incidental to trade contracts. Peter Martyr
mentions a species of tree in the Lucayan Islands where many pigeons
nest. Indians from Florida came to catch these pigeons and carried
boatloads back with them. In Guanahani, the Indians knew of a
land lying northwest of the Bahamas; also in Cuba, natives knew of
a land mass on the north. Just what relationship existed in the
making of coonti flour in native Florida and of cassava flour in the
Greater Antilles remains uncertain. Methods employed in the pro-
duction of the root flour are similar and the stages of bread manu-
facture are somewhat parallel. In Florida, roots of several varieties
(Zamia floridiana, and Smilax, sp.) were chopped, pounded, and
washed. Here, however, the fact must be recorded that while in
Florida the washing was done to extract the desirable portions of
the roots, washing of the cassava (Manihot edulis) was necessary to
remove the undesirable or poisonous portions of the roots.
Doctor Swanton, on the authority of linguistic relationship, sug-
gests that the sweet potato may have been introduced from the West
Indies. It is probable, however, that both maize and sweet potatoes
were cultivated on the mainland of both North America and South
America before any direct culture or tribal migration occurred between
the West Indies and Florida. Hernando Fontaneda, a Spaniard
who was wrecked on the Florida coast and captured by the Calusa
Indians, lived with them from 1552 to 1560. He is authority for the
statement that Indians from Cuba used to come to Florida searching
for the mythical fountain of youth. These Indians came in such
numbers that the chief Caloosa assigned them a particular village in
which they might live, at the same time informing them their quest
was useless. We do not know the location of this village. This
account of a village of Cuban Arawak immigrants living in Calusa
territory in southwestern Florida is, indeed, recent enough to be
historical, although the migration may have been prehistoric. In
general, the culture of the island Arawak, and Caribs as well, is
South American in origin and, in a general way, in content, while
the Floridian tribes, including the Calusa, were influenced from the
north far more than they ever were from casual or even regular
trading contacts with the Antillean aborigines.
It is in agriculture that the essentially South American culture
elements reappear throughout the native provinces of Haiti. Rela-
tionship of the historical tribes is with the agricultural peoples of the
tropical lowlands of Venezuela and Guiana. Antillean tribes had
retained or borrowed the elements of cassava culture from tribes of
82322—30——32
484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
northeast South America where it continues characteristic of the area.
The making of bread from the yucca or cassava root (Manihot
edulis), and the production of vinegar from its juices, used as a
seasoning for the pepper pot, was introduced from South American
lowlands. In the West Indies the culture of the yucca was subjected
to environmental changes. The extensive use of maize in Santo
Domingo supplies, however, evidence of a culture influence from the
upland areas of Colombia and regions west of the tropical lowlands of
Venezuela. The absence of active trade with Yucatan and with
Mexico at the time of the discovery is evidence that theories of
Mexican influences of a direct nature may be entirely discarded.
Pottery was brought to the Greater Antilles and there developed
into artistic forms not known in the pristine home of the island
Arawak. Stoneworking became especially developed in Porto Rico
and in Haiti and in certain of the islands of the Lesser Antilles where
suitable stone for working was to be obtained. This art, however,
appears not to spring from any South American focus of Arawak
culture. Itis rather a special growth, strangely parallel with Mexican
and Central American examples. The same observation may be
made with regard to decorative forms in pottery. It is probable that
tropical South America in its eastern lowland reaches and the Antilles
each received their original culture impulse from Central American
sources by way of Colombia; but the West Indies, not being repressive
areas like the overpowering forests of South America, witnessed a
local development in agriculture, pottery, and in stoneworking
surpassing that of the tribes remaining in Venezuelan and related
land areas.
Culture development in the Greater Antilles does not express
itself so much in an additional number of culture elements as in
local embellishments of form. This is especially noticeable in
pottery and in the sculptor’s arts as applied to religious motives.
It is possible, too, that Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Rico were subjected
to influences in pottery production from North America. The hand-
molded anthropomorphic and zoomorphic heads and figurines in clay
are essentially West Indian in form but Central American in origin,
their nearest prototypes being the anthropomorphic figurines on
ancient unpainted ware from Panama. Unpainted archaic pottery
was brought with the island Arawak from South America and many
later developments have stimulated the production of pottery in the
Antilles along original lines embodying new forms.
Griddles of earthenware for baking cassava are South American,
even with regard to their circular slightly concave form, while the
typical North American stone mortar (metate) for the grinding of
corn is greatly modified in the West Indian culture complex. A
tendency toward a conventionalized treatment of realistic models of
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—-KRIEGER 485
animals and bird heads indicates presumably a long period of isolated
development of forms and shaping technic.
The presence of closed stone collars within the areas of the Antilles
and Central America, also the manufacture of stools of stone with
sculptured anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurine carvings, the
presence of axially drilled tubular stone beads, the weaving of cotton
cloth, the wearing of a woman’s garment similar to Central American
patterns, and, above all, the molding of archaic clay figurines in
anthropomorphic and zoomorphic designs—all these indicate a remote
influence from Central America entirely distinct from a more direct
Mayan influence from Yucatan, which apparently did not occur. If
connection had existed with the Mayan area, artifacts from western
Cuba would have revealed such connection. It must not be over-
looked, however, that maize and cotton were two important culture
plants in Yucatan asin Cuba and Santo Domingo. Cotton yarns and
cotton cloth entered native trade extensively in the Greater Antilles
and cotton products were some of the first objects offered the Spanish
in trade for the much coveted hawk’s bells which were made of a
copper alloy. Guarionex, cacique of the Magua Province (Vega),
offered to plant cornfields extending from one end of the great central
valley to the other, that is, from sea to sea, and to present the har-
vested crops to the Spanish as tribute in lieu of gold. Cotton was also
extensively grown, if we are to believe the statement that an arroba,
or 25 pounds of cotton, could be collected as tribute from each adult
at periodic intervals.
HISTORICAL DISTRIBUTION OF NATIVE POPULATION
At the time of the discovery the Arawak Indians of Haiti and Santo
Domingo were grouped in more or less well-defined geographical areas
under rulers locally known to the aborigines as caciques. ‘There were
caciques of many degrees of social and political influence, varying in
power according to their functions and the number of villages under
their control. Caciques were the leaders and advisers of their people
and appear to have united political, social, and religious leadership
under one head. Some of the lesser caciques were merely medicine
men or shamans; others wielded a powerful sway over large sections
of the island. There were five principal native provinces, each under
the control of a cacique, who controlled in turn many lesser caciques.
The cacique over a village ordered the routine of daily life and assigned
to individuals such duties as pertained to communal hunting, fishing,
and tillage of the soil; they also presided at religious ceremonies.
The cacique of a Province appears to have been a ‘‘rex inter pares”’
with magnified powers in time of danger or war. Fewkes says that
‘fas a rule each village seems to have had a chieftain or patriarchal
head of the clans composing it, whose house was larger than the other
486 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
houses and contained the idols belonging to the families. In addi-
tion to the household of the cacique, consisting of his wives and im-
mediate relations, a prehistoric village ordinarily contained also men,
women, and children of more distant kinship.”’
Of the five leading caciques at the time of the discovery only one,
Goacanagaric, who ruled over the Province of Marien, on the north
coast, west of the Rio Yaque del Norte, remained friendly toward
the Spanish. Marien extended from Cape Nicolas, on the extreme
northwest, to the vicinity of Monte Cristi at the mouth of the Yaque
River. The Province extended inland to the arid regions of the head-
waters of the upper Yaque and the southern slopes of the Cordillera
Setentrional.
The ‘‘inland empire”’ of the island, the great central plain traversed
by the Yaque and Yuna Rivers, known as the Province of Magua,
was under the cacique Guarionex. This Province included the cen-
tral and best portions of the Cibao Valley, the so-called Vega Real,
also the southern alope of the Cordillera Setentrional. On the south
the Province was bounded by the Cordillera Central. The Valley of
the Cibao, the ‘‘Vega Real,’’ was the most densely populated region
of aboriginal Haiti. The deep loamy soil received ample rainfall and
facilitated an intensive development of agriculture. The interior
section of the valley has two periods of heavy rainfall, one in Novem-
ber, the other in the spring. The western portion of the great central
plain is arid and thorn forests begin west of the present-day interior
town of Santiago de los Cabelleros. On the north coast, the Province
of Magua extended as far west as Monte Cristi, while in the moun-
tains of the north it was joined by the territory of the Ciguayans.
Maguana included the central mountains, the Cordillera Central,
and the lands along the south coast of the island from the Ozama
River to the lake region in Azua, near the present Haitian-Dominican
boundary. This Province included the valley of the Artibonite
(Hattibonito) River and included generally some of the most fertile
lands of the Cibao. It was from this Province that came rumors of
gold mines so rich as to arouse the passion of the Spanish colonists.
The cacique at the time of the discovery was Caonabo, an immigrant
from the island of Carib (Porto Rico), as it was known to the
aborigines.
Xaragua Province formed the southwestern Province of the island.
It was bounded on the north in part by Maguana and Marien, and
on the east by Maguana. It included most of the western coast with
the projecting southwestern peninsula. The inner side of the Gulf of
Xaragua, now known as the Gulf of Gonaive, and the surrounding
dry flat land were developed on an extensive scale through the con-
struction of irrigation canals. Cotton was produced in compara-
tively large quantities, considering the relatively unclothed condition
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—KRIEGER 487
of the natives. Xaragua was considered by the Spanish the richest
and best-developed native Province of the island. Its cacique at the
time of the discovery was Behechio, who, with his sister Anacaona,
offered to pay the ‘tribute exacted in produce instead of gold. Ana-
caona was the widow of the cacique Caonabo, who died a prisoner of
the Spanish on board a vessel taking him to Spain for trial for insur-
rection against Spanish rule, also for instigating the uprising against
the colony at La Navidad.
After the death of Behechio his sister, Anacaona, inherited the
right to govern the Province of Xaragua. On one occasion when the
Lord Lieutenant (Adelantado) Bartholomew, the brother of Columbus,
visited the town where these caciques resided, he was presented with
14 carved wooden seats (duhos), 60 earthenware vessels, and 4 rolls of
woven cotton. Cassava bread in sufficient quantity to relieve the
hunger of the Spanish then in the island was supplied and a small
vessel was filled with the gifts of these Indian rulers.
The term Guaccairima was sometimes applied to Xaragua and
referred principally to the southwestern peninsula. Gonave Island,
situated a few miles from the west coast, was noted for the excellence
of its native wood carving, and the islanders carried on a trade with
the Indian villages of the Haitian mainland.
The native Province of Higuey in southeastern Santo Domingo
offers difficulty in the defining of its aboriginal boundaries. It
probably included all of southeastern Haiti south of the Bay of Sam-
ana, the Yuna River, and the Cordillera Central, and east of the
Ozama River. In his De Orbe Novo, Peter Martyr names the eastern
Province of Higuey with the term Caizimu which is supposed to have
extended from Cape Engano on the east to the capital city, Santo
Domingo, on the southeast. The northern border of this province
of Martyr’s was marked by precipitous mountains which on account
of their steepness bore the name of Haiti. An interesting observa-
tion regarding Martyr’s classification of native Provinces is that he
agrees with other early Spanish chroniclers in placing Xamana
(Samana) as a subprovince within the Province of Huhabo (Magua)
and not as a subprovince of Caizimu (Higuey). He also agrees with
other less verbose writers in saying that the language of Huhabo,
that is, of Magua which included Samana, differed from that spoken
elsewhere in the island.
Las Casas speaks of Cotubanama as cacique of Higuey Province.
Other writers, referring to periods subsequent to the decade of the
discovery, speak of Cayacoa and of the female cacique Higuanama.
In giving this historical reference to tribal and provincial groupings
for the period following the discovery, which is drawn from the
literature of the day, it is not assumed that a static condition of
affairs existed throughout the island. Personal ascendancy of
488 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
strong characters such as the cacique Caonabo, and the increase or
decrease of population in different parts of the island served to make
social and political conditions subject to sudden change. It is to
be assumed that the influence of the warlike Caribs and the intro-
duction of new weapons which they brought with them were added
factors making for social change. Improvements in native agricul-
ture, as irrigation in Naragua, and the growing of maize in the Vega
accelerated culture advance on the part of sedentary agriculturists.
Differences in speech easily developed between the hunters living in
the mountains, as the Ciguayans of Samana Peninsula and of the
Cordillera Setentrional on the one hand, and the subjects of Guarionex
who lived by agriculture in the Cibao Valley. The Ciguayans were a
mountain folk and spoke a dialect not readily understood by the
valley folk. The historical method of collecting observations of
contemporary Spanish writers must be supplemented with archeologi-
cal studies of cultural remains to arrive at any understanding of
culture sequence on the island. Archeological methods alone can
explain the many crude artifacts of stone, shell, or bone embedded
in middens throughout the island as being either pre-Arawak or as
belonging to an early stage of Arawak culture antedating the develop-
ment of agriculture.
Within historic times the aboriginal population of the West Indies
has included two linguistic stocks, the Carib and the Arawak. The
Arawak were in possession of the entire island of Haiti but differed
remarkably in their culture activities in various parts. The Caribs
were encroaching on Arawakan settlements along the north coast,
but had never penetrated the interior. How long a period of occu-
pancy by the Arawak had elapsed prior to the advent of the Spanish
remains an unsolved problem. A still more engrossing problem is the
question of a pre-Arawakan population.
That the Arawak population had been preceded by an earlier
less-developed folk culturally has been reported by Spanish writers
and is confirmed apparently by archeological excavations on Cuba
and Haiti. Vague reports by Las Casas, Oviedo, and others tell of a
primitive people existing in southwestern Haiti. Moralis wrote that
in the mountains of western Haiti there existed wild men without
fixed abode, without a language (sic), and not given to the practice
of agriculture. Oviedo wrote that a cave population in western
Haiti was not subdued until 1504. The researches of Wiliam Gabb
in 1869-1871 in the vicinity of Samana Bay appear to establish the
presence of culture stratification in certain caves. This discovery was
verified and amplified by expeditions from the United States National
Museum in 1928 and 1929, but the question is still unsolved as to
whether this stratification reveals a pre-Arawak population as having
frequented the caves, or whether it merely points to a rather marked
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—KRIEGER 489
local variation within the Arawak culture horizon from the stand-
point of time sequence and culture lag.
Martyr wrote in his De Orbe Novo that a cave population similar
to the Guanahatabeyes, ‘“‘Ciboneys,” also mentioned by Velasquez,
had lived on the southwestern peninsula of Haiti. Martyr relates
that ‘‘it is said there is a savanna district in the most westerly Prov-
ince of Guaccairima (Xaragua) inhabited by people who only live
in caverns and eat nothing but the products of the forest. They have
never been civilized nor had any intercourse with any other races of
men. They live, so it is said, as people did in the golden age, without
fixed homes or crops or culture; neither do they have a definite lan-
guage. They are seen from time to time, but it has never been possible
to capture one, for if, whenever they come they see anybody other
than natives approaching them, they escape with the celerity of a deer.”
Las Casas lived in the villages of the extreme southwestern portion
of the island in the Province of Xaragua. He did not see the cave
dwellers described by other writers, but reported the population of
Xaragua (the present Haitian Province of Jeremie) as resembling in
its culture the Higuey Indians of Santo Domingo. He mentions the
Ciboneys as being a primitive group living in the mountains of the
interior and as not given to the practice of agriculture as were the
natives of the central valleys and coastal plains.
It is possible that Arawak immigrants had subjugated these earlier
people. Las Casas believed this to be the case when he wrote,
referring, however, to the natives of Cuba, that the “servants sub-
jugated by the invaders from Haiti were known as Ciboneyes.”’
These Ciboneyes of western Cuba spoke a language that Columbus’s
interpreters from the Lucayan Islands could not understand.
Caves were used by the island Arawak, however, for various pur-
poses such as temporary dwelling places, as ceremonial chambers for
expression of religious cult, as burial vaults, and for shelter from their
enemies, also doubtless for several other purposes. Spanish writers
observed that fishermen occupying the small islands off the coasts of
Cuba and Haiti were subjects of the superior Taino (Arawak) but
that they did not live in caves.
HABITATIONS
The dwellings of the aboriginal Haitians resemble those of the more
highly developed tribes of tropical South America. The dwellings
of the Seminole Indians of Florida, also those of the Florida key
fishing tribes, were of the same type and were not like the pile dwell-
ings of the Warrau of the Orinoco River delta, which represent a
more specialized building technic. Isolated remains of pile dwellings
have been recovered in Cuba by Cosculluela and on Key Marco,
Florida, by Cushing.
490 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Natives of Haiti developed two types of house architecture. In
one type a circle of poles was forced into the earth, each pole separated
from the others by intervals of a meter or two. Between these pcoles
were lashed split grommets of lianas covered perhaps with palm
spathes as in the modern Dominican country habitation. Transverse
beams resting on the upright poles supported the roof beams which
converged to a conical peak. A thatch of grass or palm spathe rested
on transverse slats covering the converging rafters. A center pole
extended from the apex of the roof to the center of the floor of the
hut.
A larger type of structure was the rectangular habitation of the
cacique constructed of the same materials. Instead of a conical roof,
a ridgepole extended from one end of the roof to the other. A lean-to
extended from the roof of the main structure in the form of an open
porch, such as may still be seen in country districts. No record
exists in the literature of wattled mud walis such as are built in the
arid sections of northern Santo Domingo and in Haiti.
The furniture of a native hut was meager. Domestic require-
ments came first and included earthenware vessels, calabashes, cassava
working implements, perhaps also grinding stones for triturating
maize, earthenware griddles for baking bread, seats of carved wood
rarely, but always the hammocks of woven cotton. The hammock
was chair, bed, couch, and cradle as well. Hammocks were slung out
of doors on the porch. In colder weather they were slung inside the
house, while a fire was kindled underneath. Sleeping on the ground
was also common, for which an improvised bed of piantain leaves was
prepared. Hammocks were of two kinds. The woven hammock was
essentially a piece of woven cotton cloth, while the netted hammock
had a framework to hold open the looped netting.
Duhos or seats of carved wood were graded according to the rank
of the user. Important men sat on artistically carved wooden
stools. Stools of stone and those of carved wood were to be found
in the houses of caciques. Simple wooden stools were of the gener-
alized South and Central American type in which a concave seat,
provided with four short legs were cut from the solid. A step beyond
this and still a common form was the concave undecorated seat with
an anthropomorphic or zoomorphic figurine carved from the front
end of the seat, while a stumpy tail projected from the rear or was
entirely lacking. The elaborately carved, paneled, and inlaid seat
with an arched tail section or back rest and elaborate head carving
was reserved for ceremonial use at religious festivals. The legged
stone seats with concave backs resemble a form.of mealing stones,
although the latter has a larger surface but has only three legs,
while the much smaller seats of stone have four stumpy legs. The
mealing stone here described had, like the stone seat, figurine heads
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—-KRIEGER 491
similar to those from Costa Rica. No data exists for comparison
regarding the construction of seats from the Venezuelan coast or
from Paria.
WEAPONS
Bows used by the Arawak of Santo Domingo and of Haiti were
like those of the Carib, in that they were very long and fashioned
from the heartwood. Their clubs were like those from the Guiana
coast of South America, having a truncated, bulbous end section,
while the entire weapon was polished. Their method of fighting
with ropes resembles that of the Velez of Colombia. The custom of
binding prisoners with ropes was general throughout the island.
When Columbus landed at Guanahani he found the inhabitants
armed with wooden spears, the tips of which were hardened in the
fire or tipped with the spine or tooth of a fish. Similar weapons
were used by the Haitians. Although bows and arrows were in
general use throughout aboriginal Haiti at the time of the discovery,
no bows were found by the Spanish in Cuba, Jamaica, or in the
Bahama Islands. Slender reed arrows were fashioned with a hard-
wood foreshaft tipped with a fishbone or bone splinter. There
appears to have been no general use of poison by the natives of Haiti,
although the Ciguayans of northeastern Santo Domingo and the
natives of Higuey in southeast Santo Domingo dipped their arrows
in a vegetable poison from the sap of the manzanillo tree (Hippo-
mane mancinella).
Frequent mention is made in the literature regarding native use
of darts with reed shafts and fire-hardened wooden points. No men-
tion is made, however, of spear or dart throwers. No record exists
of their recovery through archeological methods. It must therefore
be assumed that the spear thrower like the blow gun was unknown
and foreign to the weapon complex of the island Arawak. The
“dart” and the fire-hardened javelin are apparently one and the
same weapon although somewhat differently described by different
Spanish observers.
A variety of the war club was the heavy sword club “‘macana”’
of the Haitian aborigines. The weapon was of heavy hardwood,
flat and blunted at the edges. It was said to be more than an inch
in thickness throughout.
No defensive weapons or armor were used north of the Venezuelan
coast. Columbus saw a native canoe off the coast of Trinidad, the
erew of which were armed with bows and were in possession of shields.
Trinidad, however, lies close to the mainland of South America and
the obvious conclusion is that the shield had not yet advanced
beyond the island of Trinidad, while the Carib had already introduced
the bow into Porto Rico and eastern Haiti.
492 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
FOOD RESOURCES, AGRICULTURE, HUNTING, AND FISHING
Food supply of the natives varied in accordance with the food-
collecting habits of the various groups. Investigations by the writer
of this article established a wide range of food resources for the several
sites explored and kitchen middens excavated. The former occupants
of the caves on the south shore of Samana Bay were primarily collect-
ors of shellfish, snakes, rodents, fish, bats, worms, birds, or whatever
natural produce came to hand, while kitchen middens at the sites of
former open villages revealed a greater abundance of bird, fish, and
animal bones. The small variety of conch known as the Strombus
pugilis Linnaeus and the mandibles of several varieties of crabs were
most frequent in the cave deposits, which in several instances reach
a depth of 9 feet in those portions of the caves, usually near the en-
trances, which were obviously devoted to culinary purposes. Small
mammal and turtle bones along with much other fragmentary evi-
dence of aboriginal food resources, such as shellfish, predominate in
the middens near the sites of former habitations.
Dr. W. L. Abbott found a species of small mammal, a jutia
(Plagiodontia hylaewm) still living in the forested lowlands of the south
shore of Samana Bay, near Jovero, although the several forms of
small mammal life still in existence at the time of the discovery in
Haiti and in Santo Domingo soon became practically extinct after
the arrival of the Spanish, the disruption of native culture, and the
introduction of slavery.
In general, it may be asserted that fishing rather than hunting was
the chief ally of native agriculture along the coast, while in the interior
agriculture alone supplied the staple food resources. Large planta-
tions of food crops were observed at the time of the discovery in the
drier areas where irrigation was utilized. Planting of calabash and
fruit trees was extensive.
Benzoni in his History of the New World says that bread was made
from maize and from cassava (yucca). Women wet the grain in the
evening with cold water. The following morning the grain was
triturated between two stones. The resulting meal was mixed or
kneaded with water, and then shaped into round or oblong loaves.
The loaves were then placed on flat or concave earthenware griddles
and baked. This bread was supposed to be eaten while fresh.
Another form of bread was made by cooking finely triturated corn
meal, shaped into small loaves, in a pipkin over a slow fire. The
Spanish loathed cassava bread but were compelled to eat it as the
cultivation of maize was limited.
Benzoni’s statements relative to maize culture in Haiti are explicit.
The ground was not otherwise prepared for planting except by burn-
ing off the forest growth and then planting corn in the ashes. A
small hole was made in the soil, three or four grains inserted, and
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—-KRIEGER 493
covered over. Planting was repeated during the year in favored
locations. Irrigation was resorted to in Xaragua, where trenches
have been observed.
The digging stick was used in planting maize. The soaked kernels
to be sown were carried suspended from the neck in a woven bag.
The Arawak farmer made his plantings in a cleared fleld in the forest.
The savannas were unavailable because of the grasses and tangled root
masses which would smother the newly planted crop.
Like the cassava, yams and sweet potatoes were cultivated in
mounds while maize was grown in hills separated by the distance of
a pace.
Hunting was limited by the absence of large mammals. Jutias were
hunted by burning the grass to drive them out. Communal drives
were organized in the dry season. Clubs were used as hunting weap-
ons, and the small dumb dog was employed. These dogs themselves
were eaten and considered a delicacy next to theiguana. The iguana
was stewed over a slow fire. An earthenware chafing dish made to fit
the size of the iguana was a local development in ceramics.
Raw food was also consumed in the form of underdone or raw fish,
while worms and grubs removed from rotting wood were eaten un-
_ cooked.
Native ingenuity was developed in perfecting accessories for hunt-
ing and fishing. Fish corralsof closely driven piling were set in lagoons
and shallow coves and new fishing gear was developed distinct from
that of the river tribes of the South American tropical lowlands. Fish-
hooks of clamshells carved much in the form of aboriginal shell fish-
hooks from California were uncovered by the Museum expedition
while excavating a kitchen midden at Boca del Infierno, one of the
caves on the south shore of Samana Bay. When fishing, uninhabited
coasts were visited, as were also the small islands off the mainland of
Haiti. Large drawnets of finely woven cotton are known from the
island, but the use of fish poisons was undeveloped. The presence of
net weights, notched bilaterally but otherwise unworked are to be
noted at all village sites not too far removed from the coast. These
sinkers vary greatly in size and occur in quantity.
Other examples of native inventiveness peculiar to the food-getting
habits of the island Arawak of Santo Domingo might be mentioned.
A development in fishing technic was the use of the sucker fish
(remora). The powerful sucker developed on the upper side of the
head is naturally adapted by this species of fish to attach itself to other
fish. This was observed by the Indians who then captured a remora
alive, tied a cord to it, and then allowed it to escape until it became
attached to a large fish or turtle by means of its sucker. Both fish
were then drawn into the canoe, the captured fish disengaged and the
remora again set free to attach itself to another fish.
494 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Parrots were commonly held in captivity and were freely bartered;
they were also offered to the Spanish as objects of trade. <A pecul-
iar development of the decoy is worthy of mention here. A native
equipped with a captive parrot, a noose, and an ambush of straw or
grass would climb to the branches of a tree near a thicket frequented
by flocks of wild parrots. When he touched the parrot’s head, it
cried out and attracted another parrot. The noose was then slipped
over the head of the inquisitive parrot, its neck wrung, and the bird
let fall to the ground.
IMPLEMENTS AND DECORATIVE OBJECTS OF SHELL AND BONE
In southwestern Florida, picks, celts, and utensils or implements of
varied description were fashioned from species of the Busycon, in
aboriginal Haiti, varieties of the Strombus were similarly employed.
Objects of personal adornment, amulets and pendants, fetishes or
zemis, necklaces and beads, all were worked from varieties of shell of
the conch, clam, and other bivalve or univalves.
The presence of conch-shell bowls, plates, or utensils and imple-
ments of any description has been characterized as pre-Arawak,
and has been attributed to the ‘‘Ciboney” in Cuba. Shell heaps
and kitchen middens in Santo Domingan caves and deposits in open
village sites reveal great quantities of such implements. A disturbing
element is the invariable juxtaposition of crude and well-fashioned
shell utensils and implements in the open village sites when no evi-
dence of culture stratification appears to the careful investigator.
Another problematical factor is the relationship existing between the
undoubtedly Arawak pottery and the crude stone objects occurring
in the same level of the midden. It has also been observed that
objects of shell or of coral occur most frequently in those kitchen
middens and former Arawak village sites nearest the seacoasts where
suitable stone for shaping into celts and other implements can not be
obtained. It is true that many objects of aboriginal provenience
found their way into native barter and so traveled a long way from
the place of their manufacture, but ordinarily objects of shell were
utilized when stone was not available, also when, as in sites near the
coast, there was a superabundance of shell available.
It may be assumed for sake of an available hypothesis that the
cave culture of Samana Bay in eastern Santo Domingo where imple-
ments and utensils of shell predominate to the practical exclusion
of manufactured objects of pottery and stone, was developed by a
pre-Arawak people. The Arawak type of culture in Porto Rico and
in eastern Haiti is characterized by additional, more sophisticated
objects of material culture, such as axes and celts of polished stone,
painted and unpainted pottery characterized by applied figurine
heads and geometrical, incised decorative designs; and generally,
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—KRIEGER 495
by a conventionalized decorative and religious art displayed on media
of shell, bone, stone, earthenware, gold, and wood. On careful count
and analysis, more and better-made implements, utensils, and other
objects fashioned from conch and other species of shell may be
recovered from any Arawak village site in Hispaniola, if situated
within 20 or 30 kilometers of the coast, than can be obtained from
middens within caves supposedly occupied at one time by some
pre-Arawak people. Implements as well as utensils whether shaped
from stone or shell are rare in the cave deposits. The middens
consist practically entirely of vast quantities of shells of conch and
other mollusks, that have been either roasted or boiled, shattered,
or otherwise opened to extract the meat of the mollusk. In lesser
quantity are to be found bones and carapaces of turtle, and the
bones or scales of fish. Mammal bones are least in number. Lay-
ers of ash and of charcoal are thick where the location of a prim-
itive hearth surrounded with stones used in connection with the prep-
aration of food indicates the center of activities in the life of the
aboriginal troglodytes.
One type of implement was found to be fairly abundant in the cave
deposits of Samana, namely, small picks crudely shaped from the
outer lip of the conch (Strombus pugilis). These picks were useful
in extracting the mollusk from its shell. Although an improvised
implement, it is difficult to produce, as it must be struck off with a
single blow.
A much larger pick was recovered in considerable numbers from
various Arawak sites near the northern coast of Santo Domingo.
This type of pick was shaped from the worked rib of the West Indian
manatee or sea cow (Trichechus manatus) and has an excavated hafting
groove at its center.
Gouges and beveled celts cut from the shell of the large conch
(Strombus gigas) are characteristic of the Arawak of Hispaniola.
These implements were useful in dressing wooden stools and in round-
ing out canoes after they had been charred by fire. Small tubular
pestles were also cut from the rib of the sea cow (the West Indian
mermaid of Columbus).
Decorative art in shell is best illustrated in the form of amulets,
pendants, beads, and the small carved personal totems, gods, or so-
called zemis. Perforated oliva, ultimus, and bulla shells were used
as beads and in necklaces. Both transverse and lengthwise perfora-
tions arecommon. This type of shell bead is characteristic of Arawa-
kan culture throughout the Greater Antilles. Perforations are uni-
formly made with a saw or grinding tool and rarely by drilling.
Shell pendants take on various forms. Some of them are purely
decorative, others are undoubtedly amuletic and are referred to as
zemis, still others are just ornaments. Pierced and unpierced gorgets
496 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of worked conch shell occur in much the same manner as found in
middens in Curacao and other islands off the Venezuelan coast.
Many of these discoidal objects of worked shell are unperforated,
others show a bilateral drilling. Zoomorphic figurines are cut in
intaglio from the solid, cameo-fashion, like the discoidal shell gorgets
of Tennessee and other southeastern States. The carved figure of
the frog and of the turtle frequently occurs as an excellent example of
aboriginal art in shell.
ZEMIS
Swallowing sticks of bone or shell are an adjunct to the religious
ceremonialism of the Arawak of Porto Rico and of Haiti. An example
of this form of religious art is the worked section of a manatee rib.
which has been shaped somewhat like a spoon handle with flat, plain
surfaces tapered to a truncated end section but surmounted at the
thick end with the carved anthropomorphic figurine of an aboriginal
god.
A form of zemi common to the Greater Antilles is a zoomorphic
figurine carved from the shell of a conch and fashioned without arms,
while legs are represented as flexed under an erect body. A marked
triangular elevation with deeply incised borders appears at the
lower abdominal section. The head is devoid of representations of
facial features, except for the prominent snout region, and a high
protruberance at the back of the head. A deeply incised groove
separates the leg sections from one another and from the triangular
abdominal projection or apron. This form of zemi is representative
of the archaic and is protean in design. Most of the smaller zemis,
whether fashioned from shell, bone, wood, or stone, have two bicon-
ical perforations at the back of the head for suspension.
The amuletic zemis seem to have been for the most part of stone,
in the form of small anthropomorphic figures. They conform in
detail to the general features of the corresponding type of zemi fash-
ioned from shell.
Aside from personally owned totemic creations of zemis, there were
communal gods, the property of the village. These were kept in the
house belonging to the village cacique, built a little distance from the
rest of the settlement. Here, too, was an artistically carved wooden
table made “‘like a dish”’ on which was the powdered tobacco later to
be laid on the head of the village zemi. The carved cave stalagmites
representing zemis were the center of ceremonies associated with the
religious life of the village.
Not all ceremonies connected with native religion were held in
caves as the following description will show. Ramon Pane describes
a religious ceremony associated with agriculture and fertility rites
somewhat as follows. The cacique appointed a day for the celebra-
tion and announced it through his messengers. The people assembled
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—-KRIEGER 497
decorated appropriately in paint and feathers. This applied not only
to the men, as the women were also given to painting their bodies.
All had their arms, and legs from the knees down, covered with orna-
ments of shell which rattled as they moved. The cacique entered the
zemi house where the shamans were preparing the zemi and sat down
on a stool at the entrance. He then began beating the extended
lateral surface of a hollowed wooden drum which was as long as a
man’s arm and resembled a calabash with along neck. Another form
had H-shape and rectangular holes cut bilaterally through the thin
wooden walls. Oviedo described such drums as making a ‘‘bad
noise. ”’
After purging themselves by vomiting produced by thrusting a
swallowing stick of carved manatee rib down their throats, the
villagers began a ceremonial chanting while squatting before the zemi.
Women appeared carrying baskets of bread, which was first offered to
the zemi and then distributed among the celebrants, who carried the
portions back to their huts as a powerful amulet against hurricanes
and other disasters. The singing of ‘‘arietos,’’ epics in honor of the
cacique and his ancestors, occurred both on this occasion and at other
social gatherings. The musical maraca, a closed hollow reed or
wooden cylinder pierced transversely with wooden rods against
which pebbles were shaken in rhythm accompanied the recital of the
arietos. There is no reference in the literature to the aboriginal use in
Haiti of flutes and of pan’s-pipes as in South America beyond the
Amazon.
Not all zemis or aboriginal deities were of the sort described in the
ceremony. Fewkes classifies the several forms thus: ‘‘The name was
apparently applied to anything supposed to have magic power. The
dead or the spirits of the dead were called by the same term. The
designation applied both to the magic power of the sky, the earth, the
sun, and the moon, as well as to the tutelary ancestors of clans.
Zemis were represented symbolically by several objects, among which
may be mentioned (1) stone or wooden images, (2) images of cotton
and other fabrics inclosing bones, (3) prepared skulls, (4) masks,
(5) frontal amulets, (6) pictures and decorations of the body.”
CLOTHING AND WEAVING
The Indians of Haiti possessed but little clothing, although skillful
weavers of cotton cloth. In the more advanced districts a distinction
between women’s skirts according to the rank of the wearer was
made, the typical garment of this description reaching from the
waist to mid-thigh. The Lucayans of the Bahamas, and the male
population of the Greater Antilles generally went entirely nude.
Both sexes wore ornamental bandages on upper arms, below the
498 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
knees, and at the ankle. The legs of women were swathed with cotton
bandages from ankle to the knee. Similar ornamental bandages are
still worn in southeastern Panama by the Chocé Indians. Presence of
such cotton bandages is represented on a wooden zemi figurine
now in the National Museum.
Spindle whorls of burned clay are frequently recovered from
middens near former village sites throughout the island, while netting
tools, awls, and needles of bone indicate the extensive use of woven
cotton yarns. No adequate description of the loom used by the abo-
rigines of Haiti is available, but Ferdinand Columbus writes that a
different form of the loom was observed by the Spanish in Cuba. Itis
therefore possible to infer that the Haitian form was the typical South
American Arawak type, while the Cuban form showed Mexican
influence.
The finding of earthenware disks, grooved, and otherwise covered
with incised designs of a geometrical nature has been reported from
many aboriginal village sites in Haiti. The use made of such ob-
jects remains problematical. They may have been used as stamps
for applying paint for bodily decoration, or they may have seen use in
applying decorative designs on cloth. It is more probable that they
are gaming disks. Tubular disks of earthenware decorated with
carefully incised geometrical designs are more definitely identified as
stamps for applying designs to pottery vessels before firing.
Hammocks, both of the netted and woven varieties constitute a
striking example of textile development among a people who wore
little clothing and possessed little cloth, although retaining a South
American weaving technic brought with them to the island from the
mainland.
USES OF STONE
Aboriginal Haitians did not use stone architecturally. There are
few fixed works, other than shell heaps and large middens near the
sites of their former villages. The circle of stone bowlders like that
at San Juan, first described by Schomburgk, occurs elsewhere through-
out the island, although its appearance is infrequent. The circle of
granite stones at San Juan, each from 25 to 50 pounds in weight,
are placed close together in the form of a circle, having a circumference
of about one-half mile. Fewkes considered such structures as courts
for use in playing ball, for ceremonial dances, and for performing
rites in honor of the dead. The stone circle near Dajabon on the
headwaters of the Chaquey River is similar in construction to the
one at San Juan but is much smaller in its dimensions.
Minor objects of carved stone devoted to ceremonial use surpass
in elaboration of design corresponding Mexican forms which are
entirely lacking in South American Arawakan art. The stone collars,
zemis, and stone masks are the most interesting forms of art in stone
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—-KRIEGER 499
to be noted. Stone collars are oval in shape, while Mexican analogues
are mostly open and at the same time display unrelated phases of
symbolic art. Haitian forms are skillfully fashioned and incorporate
in their larger examples decorative panels of anthropomorphie fig-
urines similar to rim decorations and handle lugs of earthenware
vessels.
The more utilitarian objects shaped from stone are less skillfully
fashioned. Decorative pestle heads are scarcely characteristic of
the island, although they occur infrequently in anthropometric forms.
Undecorated pestles are more common as are also the undecorated
oval and oblong triturating stones which were shaped by pecking and
crumbling.
The stone celt of the almond or petaloid variety occurs as a sym-
metrically pecked ground and polished celt throughout the entire
island. Another form of polished greenstone celt with uniform,
slender, oval section and straight cutting edge has an equally wide
distribution in Haiti.
Monolithic stone axes are of rare occurrence, although their
distribution extends throughout the Greater Antilles. They repre-
sent a translation in stone of a form of hafting employed by the
island Arawak in mounting their polished petaloid stone celts with
wooden-handle hafts. The tapered body of the stone celt was inserted
through an opening cut through the bulbous basal section of a wooden
haft. Notching or grooving for attachment of a handle haft occurs
more rarely in Santo Domingo. A few double-bitted axes having
notched edges and illustrating this form of hafting were recovered by
the Museum expedition at Petite Saline near Monte Cristi. The
grooved ax of the North American mainland is foreign to the island
culture, although the lyre-shape Carib form occurs sporadically in
Haiti.
Oviedo’s description of the hafting of a notched double-bitted
stone ax is illuminating. The haft was first cut to the required
length and split from the bulbous end. The thin stone blade was
then inserted in the cleft and followed with a tight sewing of lana
splints encircling the haft to hold the blade and to prevent the split
from advancing.
Implements of chipped stone are of rare occurrence. Absence of
suitable varieties of stone, the use of bone projectile points, and the
development of a grinding and crumbling technic account in part for
the almost entire lack of stone chipping in the Greater Antilles.
Surfaces of stone implements were generally finished by grinding,
flaking being less common, although flaked implements, spalls, and
cores occur in the cave middens of Samana of identical shapes as the
flaked stone knives and perforators from village sites along the northern
Dominican coast near Monte Cristi. As mentioned, an occasional
82322—30——33
500 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
perforating point shaped by chipping, or rechipped stone forms of
other description occur in middens throughout the island. Impro-
vised stone implements and tools, such as hammerstones, and many
forms of flaked tools as perforators, drills, knives, and scrapers, are
common to the island-culture complex. Polished pebbles of unknown
use abound.
USES OF GOLD AND OF METAL ALLOYS
Metal was scarce in the West Indies. Gold was worked by the
natives of Haiti into thin plates, which were fashioned by them into
objects of personal adornment or amulets, and were frequently
interwoven in belts of cotton fabric or cemented into the peculiar
visor masks either as a complete covering or merely as eyes, nose,
and ears. Hammering of gold between two smooth or polished
stones was developed by the island Arawak as a metal-working
technic after they had arrived in the Greater Antilles, as there is no
gold in the Lesser Antilles except what has been introduced through
the agency of primitive barter. Arawak and Carib were unacquainted
with tools of metal. Neither did they understand the use of the
blowpipe or of a flame for casting or fusing metal. Clay molds
for casting were likewise unknown.
The metal technic of Mexico and Central America was for the
most part more advanced than was that of the island Arawak,
although gold leaf and sheet gold were employed in aboriginal Panama
and elsewhere in the production of tubular beads and other decora-
tive objects. Beads of solid gold like those from Florida are not
found in the Antilles. Gold was apparently always worked into
thin plates by the island Arawak and worn either round the neck,
suspended from the nose, ears, or breast, or worked into a kind of
turban or “‘crown”’ covering the head. Crescent-shaped plates were
suspended from the neck after the fashion of North American Indians.
In 1494 Columbus observed on the south coast of Jamaica a cacique
and his wife, each bedecked with earrings of greenstone from which
dangled discoidal plates of gold.
Columbus was given some metal-pointed spears on the island of
Haiti, which on analysis showed gold, copper, and silver alloy.
This alloy of gold and copper ‘‘guanin”’ or ‘‘pale gold” was reported
by the Ciguayans of Samana as coming to them through barter from
the island of Carib (Porto Rico). When these natives informed
Columbus that pale gold and ‘‘tuob” (gold without alloy) came to
them from the east they probably told the truth, as the term applied
to gold elsewhere on the island of Haiti was ‘‘caona,” a term they did
not understand when used by the Indian guides Columbus had
brought with him from the Lucayan Islands.
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—KRIEGER 501
A spatula-shaped object of copper ailoy was recovered from a
midden at Anadel near Samana by the writer. It is impossible to
determine its aboriginal use. It is 4 inches in length and tapers
from a flattened basal section to a sharp point. The flattened
discoidal basal section shows the method of shaping to have been by
hammering. Similar spatulas of metal alloy and of native proveni-
ence are in the archeological collection of the United States National
Museum from Bolivia, Ecuador, and elsewhere from the highlands of
northwestern South America.
Lucayans informed Columbus that gold came to them from the
south; Cubans said it came to them from the east; while the Parians
of the Venezuelan coast claimed they obtained their gold from other
tribes living on the mainland west of the Paria Peninsula. At
Cumana, on the mainland, natives knew of Porto Rican and Haitian
gold. Itis therefore probable that aboriginal barter in gold extended
throughout the Antilles from Florida to Venezuela.
Three objects of hammered thin gold plate were recovered by the
writer from a midden near Monte Cristi by sieving; the objects
were excavated from a depth of 18 inches. Two of the pieces are
from the same midden and were found at a distance of a few feet
from one another, while the third was obtained from another midden
on the opposite side of the village site. Each of the three objects is
of the thickness of paper and showed under the glass numerous
marks or hammering and bits of gold leaf compressed into the lateral
surfaces or folded back at the edges and smoothed by hammering.
Two of the objects are plain, while the third is a fragment and has
fragmentary decorative designs, two of the lateral edges having been
carelessly cut off, leaving only two of the original straight edges at
right angles. The decorative design is crude when contrasted with the
best efforts of the aboriginal potter or the worker in stone, but com-
pares favorably with designs scratched or incised on the so-called
scarified earthenware from northern Santo Domingo. Freehand
curvilinear and straight line etchings, punctations, concentric circles,
and dots constitute the media of design. The object is perforated and
has seen secondary use as a pendant, although it is impossible from its
present fragmentary nature to determine the original use. The
decorative design is bilateral. This effect is obtained through alter-
nate bilateral impressions with a blunt knife on the obverse and
reverse surfaces. Thus, a series of five concentrically etched lines in
the upper portion of the figure have been traced three on one lateral
surface and two on the intervening spaces of the opposite surface.
The soft metal is thus forced into sharply defined ridges and grooves.
The same technic is carried out in shaping the remaining figures
appearing in the design. Circle and dot designs representing eyes
have usually three concentric circles, surrounding a central puncta-
502 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
tion; two of the circles are etched on one surface, while the third is
spaced between the two but impressed from the opposite surface.
A study of the decorative designs on shell, wood, terra cotta, and
other objects of aboriginal provenience from Haiti and Santo Domingo
reveals many similar circle and dot, angular spur, and concentric
circle designs, also terminal line etchings and punctations.
POTTERY,
The making of earthenware forms in the New World is generally
coincident with the cultivation of maize and cassava (yucca). Another
pottery making area is the extreme northwest coast of North America
where the Eskimo have developed a pottery associated in form and
technic with Siberian forms. The Alaska-Siberian pottery area is
characterized by a technic in which the vessel is worked from a solid
mass of clay and then fired by simply placing over a fire as in use.
Throughout most of the pottery making area of North and South
America, with the exception mentioned, the vessel is built up by a
process of coiling. The coil method was used by the aborigines of
southeastern United States and of the lowland areas of tropical South
America as well.
In the West Indies, pottery was fashioned by coiling, molding being
resorted to in shaping the symbolic decorative designs and the repre-
sentative figurine heads which were luted onto the sides of vessels
as handle lugs. Quite a large variation in surface coloring was ob-
tained through the application of slips, mineral and vegetable (biza)
paints before firing, or by afterwards washing with kaolin. The paints
and slips applied before firing are fixed while the white of the kaolin
is readily removed by washing the vessel in water. Many of the color
distinctions are accompanied with differences in the paste, smoothness
of finish, decorative design and, to a lesser degree, in form. On the
basis of several combinations of these characteristics we may speak of
(a) unpainted ware; (6) painted ware. The unpainted ware may again
be classified as terra cotta or as black incised, while the painted ware
readily falls under the classification suggested by the coloring of the
inner and outer walls as red, white, salmon, maroon, and polychrome.
It will be noted that this classification of the pottery of the West
Indian Island Arawak is less complex than is that invented by Holmes,
MacCurdy, and others in describing the ancient pottery of Panama and
Central America.
It has frequently been asserted that pottery made by the Caribs
was superior to that fashioned by the island Arawak with respect to
firing, slips and paints, paste, and surface finish. We now have a
more comprehensive knowledge of aboriginal pottery forms from
Haiti and find the statement no longer adequate. If we include the
polychrome fragments from Porto Rico, we must now give aboriginal
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—-KRIEGER 503
pottery from Haiti and Porto Rico a position superior to that of the
Carib from the Lesser Antilles. This applies only to the painted
ware which is less common than the unpainted ware.
In the aboriginal pottery from Santo Domingo and Haiti, tempering
materials are uniformly of small particles of steatite, sand, and
pebbles, and occasionally ashes or fragments of potsherds.
Pottery forms are less ornate and varied in detail than are corre-
sponding forms from Central America, but are more developed than
those recovered from the coast of Venezuela. Bottoms are flat or
slightly concave, without support flanges, legs or rings. This char-
acteristic at once distinguishes West Indian Arawak ceramics from
Central American forms, and to a lesser extent from Carib forms in the
Lesser Antilles. Then, the large globular urns or general utility
vessels from tropical South American tribes are lacking, most of the
Haitian forms being fairly thin walled and small in size, although the
terra cotta group has a coarse paste and is frequently thick walled.
Food pots are like those from Guiana and Venezuela, oval to hemi-
spherical, with straight or in-or-out curving margins. <A characteristic
type is the shallow flat-bottomed bowl with large circumference and
incurved margin. Two unique forms may be seen in (a) the rectangu-
lar vessel with raised rim sections alternating with correspondingly
depressed rim areas; and (b) the oblong, boat-shaped vessel with its
depressed lateral margins but elevated end sectors surmounted with
outward gazing figurine heads.
The unique development of West Indian ceramics is especially
marked in its decorative designs. Decoration is ordinarily attained
by incised lines or by applying molded figures in relief. Few of the
zoomorphiec figurine heads, so characteristic of the West Indian
potter’s art, are cut in intaglio. Another characteristic is that the
figurines are freehand moldings unlike the stamped Mexican ana-
logues. Ordinarily, the figurine head is luted onto the vessel bilater-
ally near its margin, but figurines characteristic of the red painted
ware are incorporated in the body of the vessel. Raised surfaces
constituting zoomorphic designs and forming an extension of the
body of the bowl, are shaped from the same coils, with the head of the
animal extending from the margin on one side of the vessel and the
tail projecting on the opposite side.
The knobbed pottery belongs to the same painted red ware and
apparently has a wide distribution in Porto Rico, Santo Domingo, and
Jamaica. Describing pottery forms from the Cueva de Las Golon-
drinas, near Manati, in Porto Rico, Fewkes writes: “One of the
specimens has two solid knobs on the rim; another is perforated just
below similar knobs.”? <A similar type of pottery embellishment
occurs on boat-shaped funerary vessels from caves near Kingston,
Jamaica. In the Jamaican forms, three buttons or knobs are in
504 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
series at the raised ends of the oblong boat-shaped vessels. Another
design is in the form of a crescent-shaped ribbon of clay surrounding a
central knob. This Jamaican red ware, like that from Porto Rico and
Santo Domingo has very thin but well fired walls. No characteristi-
cally Arawakan molded zoomorphic figurine heads appear in this
group. A double-compartment bowl of painted red ware, with a dark
brown slip on its inner surface was excavated by the writer at San Juan
on the north coast of Samana Peninsula, along with many other similar
fragmentary or complete vessels—similar as to firing, red slip or
paint, form, and decoration. The walls of this and of other well-
fired vessels of the painted red ware are thinner than are those of other
pottery groups, the nearest approach being the unpainted, incised
black ware. The introduction of a central diaphragm separating the
vessel into two oval compartments is unique. The luted ribbons of
clay, placed bilaterally in vertical positions on the outer walls near the
margin, place this vessel within the classification of the knobbed or
incorporative decorated pottery which always comes within the
painted red ware group. Similar pottery has been reported from the
Cauca River valley of Colombia.
Earthenware water bottles with regularly formed necks occur in
Haiti and Santo Domingo. Similar Peruvian forms are known.
The specialized neck form is surmounted with a knobbed or bulbous
rim. Occasionally the bulbous enlargement of the rim entirely
replaces the decorative figurines which are usually luted on as decora-
tive embellishments of the lower neck sector. This later form of water
bottle, sightly resembling a double gourd, but without other decora-
tive designs, usually belongs to the painted white ware. Occasion-
ally the paint is merely kaolin, but ordinarily the creamy white paint
is well worked into the smoothly polished surface. The white painted
ware is usually further distinguished by a creamy white or gray
eranular paste, distinct from the black loamy clay paste character-
istic of most of the earthenware from the island. In form, the water
bottle is spherical, having been shaped by coiling and hand modeling,
aided with a calabash fragment or conch shell spatula.
The effigy canteen from Central America is occasionally duplicated
in finds from Haitian kitchen middens. This form is distinct from
the usual in Haitian earthenware forms in that the facial features of
the effigy or figurine head are luted on to the body of the vessel which
is itself incorporated in the design as the figurine head. This form of
effigy canteen occurs on the Gulf coast of Florida, also in Mississippi,
Alabama, and in Louisiana.
A punctate decorative design, resembling forms from Florida and
the Gulf coast, appears as a common type of decorative design on the
north coast and in western parts of the island. More or less deeply
incised pits are regularly excavated in series of from one to six or more
ABORIGINES OF HISPANIOLA—KRIEGER 505
lines entirely encircling the vessel above the shoulder. This archaic
design pattern appears on South American earthenware vessels from
Venezuela and Colombia. Other survivals of archaic decorative
design are several forms of applied eye molding so well described by
Spinden from Mexico. An applied ribbon of clay resembling a coffee
bean is the more common form. <A mere depression, or gouged out
area, also a central punctation or node surrounded with an applied
ribbon of clay, are other characteristic forms of eye representation.
The banded punctate embellishments appear frequently on the painted
ware, principally red, or maroon, while the archaic forms of eye repre-
sentation appear on unpainted ware.
A decorative panel of incised lines on the incurved shoulder ridge
of earthenware vessels is a common method of applying a decorative
design employed by the aboriginal Haitian potter. Both vertical and
horizontal lines are incised alternately in series. The lines are reg-
ularly terminated with rounded pits made in freehand. Scarified
decorative designs are frequently produced by scratching the walls of
the vessel with hachure figures before firing. The lines are roughly
parallel and shallow, and appear without the terminal pits. Another
form of cross hachure is produced by molding the vessel on a basketry
base. When the basket is removed, the reticulated imprint of the
fabric remains. Cross hachure and incised linear designs terminated
with pits appear as embellishments oftenest on the black incised,
unpainted ware.
Characteristic media of artistic expression, then, in the decorative
designs embellishing aboriginal Haitian pottery are three: First,
application of paints or slips in white, salmon, red, maroon, and
polychrome paints; second, application of geometric designs in incised
paneling, including series of straight lines, curves, circles, open and
closed spirals; third, luting on to the body of the vessel applied
anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurine heads, or the incorporation
of the extended body of the vessel as a portion of the design in effigy
canteens and on the incurved shoulder of painted red ware bowls.
Incised paneled designs and applied relief figures are freely used in
combination, the plain knobbed or zoomorphic figurine heads being
mounted near the rim of the vessel, on the incurved shoulder of which
appear geometric incised embellishments. The terminal pit occurs
in conjunction with straight lines and incomplete circles, while the
incised or applied circle appears with a centrally excavated pit or
punctation in relief.
The simplicity of the freehand technic employed in shaping the
molded figurine head is remarkable because of its effectiveness.
Many of the clay heads are clearly intended to represent frogs,
snakes, turtles, iguanas, or lizards; birds such as the parrot, owl,
pelican, and others; and mammals as the jutia and sea cow. Others
506 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
are more conventionalized representations of the so-called monkey
type. In this type, the upper and lower parts are molded to stand out
in relief while the central portion is depressed. Horizontally incised
lines of different lengths are cut transversely and are terminated with
the characteristic shallow punctation.
Some of the anthropomorphic figurines are plainly caricatures,
a few appear to be portrait models in clay. Headdress forms are
particularly striking. The turban, as on the archaic figurines from
Mexico, and other forms of headdresses and hair coiffures, are
characteristic.
Generally it is impossible to recognize the species of zoomorphic
figurine modeled in clay, because of the conventional distortions and
omissions. Undoubtedly, some of the figurine heads are intended
to represent zemis belonging to an individual or family. Convention-
alized presentations bespeak an old and deeply rooted culture, not
necessarily a high culture, but one thriving throughout a long period
of time in comparative isolation. It is possible that the personages
or creatures represented are in part ceremonial and belong to the social
and religious life of the tribe, not necessarily bearing any definite
relationship to animal forms.
PLATE 1
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger
aed
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Wy ReeY OE
are ine Dy i is tee
CHARLEVOIX’S MAP OF THE ABORIGINAL PROVINCES OF HAITI AND SANTO DOMINGO, PUBLISHED IN 1730
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PEATE 2
— seal
1. THE ‘‘GOBIERNO ’’ OR GOVERNMENT BUILDING AT PUERTO PLATA FACING
THE PLAZA
2. ON THE MONTE LLANO SUGAR ESTATE, PUERTO PLATA
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 3
1. THE MOUND IN THE FOREGROUND IS THE VILLAGE SITE AT SAN JUAN IN
SAMANA PROVINCE AFTER EXCAVATION
The thatched houses shown are typical of Samana. Walls are not surfaced with clay as elsewhere
in Santo Domingo.
2. AT WORK EXCAVATING THE SAN JUAN SITE, SAMANA PROVINCE
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE
1. A SHELL MOUND AND KITCHEN MIDDEN AT
SAN JUAN, SAMANA PROVINCE
2. LARGE HEAPS OF CORAL SHELLS (STROMBUS
PUGILIS) WERE LEFT ON THE FLOOR OF CAVES ON
THE SOUTH SHORE OF SAMANA BAY. SAN GA-
BRIEL CAVE IN SAMANA PROVINCE
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 5
17
PAINTINGS OF BIRDS, FISH, A LIZARD, AND OTHER ANIMAL LIFE ON WALLS
OF ‘‘CUEVA DEL TEMPLO,’’ SOUTH SHORE OF SAMANA BAY, SAMANA
PROVINCE
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 6
PAINTED HUMAN FIGURINES AND SYMBOLIC DESIGNS ON THE WALLS OF THE
““CUEVA DEL TEMPLO,’’ A CAVE ON THE SOUTH SHORE OF SAMANA BAY,
PROVINCE OF SAMANA
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 7
MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTS
Perforated bone needles and a bodkin, on upper left; an earthenware spindle whorl, upper right;
chipped stone objects, at center; two fishhooks of shell with points broken, on lower left; tubular
and celt-shape stone pendants, on lower right. Monte Christi Province.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 8
FRAGMENTS OF LARGE MOLLUSK SHELLS, PERHAPS USED AS PLATES OR
OTHERWISE IN THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF
THE SAMANA CAVES. SAMANA PROVINCE
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 9
FLAKED OBJECTS OF CHERT AND GREENSTONE USED AS KNIVES,
PERFORATORS, SAWS, ETC., BY THE ABORIGINAL CAVE DWELLERS
OF SAMANA PROVINCE
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 10
TUBULAR AND DISCOIDAL BEADS OF JADEITE, CALCITE, AND MARBLE; ALSO
OF BIRD LEG BONE AND OF MOLLUSK SHELL, PRINCIPALLY CONCH.
SAMANA, MONTE CRISTI, AND OTHER PROVINCES
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger L/sons, il
A SWALLOWING STICK FASHIONED FROM A RIB OF THE MANATEE
This object was inserted in the throat to produce vomiting preparatory to purification rites
associated with Taino religion.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 12
ZEMIS CARVED FROM STONE, SHELL, WOOD, AND BONE. FROM VARIOUS
PARTS OF SANTO DOMINGO
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 13
ZEMIS OR AMULETS CARVED FROM STONE AND BONE
The pestle-shaped object at the lower left is from the ribofa manatee. All from the northern portion
of Santo Domingo,
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PAE
the
2
THIS SMALL ZEMI WAS RECOVERED FROM A MIDDEN AT ANADEL,
IN SAMANA PROVINCE. IT IS CARVED FROM WOOD
2. A ZEMI REMARKABLE FOR ITS FORM. WHEN RECUMBENT IT
RESEMBLES THE FROG; UPRIGHT, IT BECOMES A HUMAN EFFIGY.
FASHIONED FROM SHELL. SAMANA PROVINCE
14
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 15
1. DISCOIDAL EARTHENWARE FORMS USED PERHAPS AS STAMPS OR _ IN
GAMING. SAMANA PROVINCE
2. DISCOIDAL AND TUBULAR EARTHENWARE OBJECTS OF INDETERMINATE
USE. MONTE CRISTI PROVINCE
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 16
PERFORATE AND IMPERFORATE SHELL GORGETS AND DISCOIDAL OBJECTS
Qe Sirlaiye
The figurine cut from the shell disk at UPPeE left is probably that of a monkey. Monte Christi
rovince,
‘OSUIMIOG 0JURY Jo YeMVly
alf] JO UBY} JeYIBI SO[[IJUV Tasso] oq} JO qiuBH IY} Jo oIYSTAIOJOBIBYO 91V WOTYSV] SIU} UL PeAOOIS Saxe oU0jg “YYZ oY} WO xv oY} BUIYBIODIP SOUT] Poyoje PelapUBET BY} VION
AONIAO’d ILSIYD ALNOW WOdsA SAXY ANOLS GHAOOYNDH AO SAdAL
Loa EV ale 1939113J—'676| ‘qaoday uvtuosyziwiG
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 18
TYPES OF ANIMAL REPRESENTATIONS ON RIMS AND HANDLE LUGS OF
EARTHENWARE VESSELS
Some of these appear as distortions due to the limitations of space and to the conventiona Jmodeling
of the figurines.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 19
2
1. THIS TYPE OF EARTHENWARE VESSEL WITH ITS DECORA-
TIVE PANEL OF INCISED LINES TERMINATING IN SHALLOW
PITS RELIEVED WITH TWO OPPOSITELY PLACED MODELED
CLAY EFFIGY HEADS IS CHARACTERISTIC OF TAINO
POTTERY. SAMANA PROVINCE
2. THE USE OF PAINT ON TAINO VESSELS IS RARE. THIS VASE
PLAINLY SHOWS PATCHES OF RED PAINT. OTHER COLORS
FOUND ONLY INFREQUENTLY ARE WHITE, SALMON, MAROON,
AND, RARELY, POLYCHROME. SANTIAGO PROVINCE
ASNIAOYd VNVNVS “N3CGCIW NVYNF NVS SHL 30 TSAR AWVS SAHL WOYS STISSSSA SYVMNAHLYVA SO SSdAl 3FSYHL
Og ALV1d J9591IJ—"676| “Wodey ueruosyzWiG
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PPAnEeZa
AN IGUANA, A DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE, AND AN OWL FIGURINE AS APPLIED
DECORATIVE EMBELLISHMENTS ON EARTHENWARE VESSELS. MONTE
CRISTI PROVINCE
FAONIAOYd ILSIND ALNOW ‘SGQVAH ADISaSq FYVMNAHLYVA NI SAYNLVOIEVD
19331133— "676 | “‘qaodayy uetuOsYy WIG
ec ALVW1d
AONIAOYd ILSIND ALNOW WOYS AYSALLOd AO SLINSAWSVeESA “SWHOS GYIg GQal1aqoWw
193911J—' 676 | ‘qaodayy uetuosy}IWIG
€¢ ALV1d
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 24
2
1. COLLECTION OF ANDRES SOCIAS, OBTAINED FROM VIL-
LAGE SITES EAST OF THE RIO YAQUE DEL NORTE IN
MONTE CRISTI PROVINCE. THE LARGE OBLONG STONE
OBJECTS ARE CASSAVA GRATERS WHILE MOST OF THE
SMALL, OVAL, FLAT STONES ARE MANOS
2. TYPES OF EARTHENWARE VESSELS FROM MONTE CRISTI
PROVINCE. THE LARGE WATER BOTTLE IN CENTER IS
GRAY WARE AND HAS A WHITE KAOLIN SLIP
BONIAOY’d ILSIYD ALNOW ‘“SN9SISSGQ IWNOILNSANOD OS1V ‘AGOG NVYVWNH 3SHL AO DNITSAGOW SILSIITWSAYN DNIMOHS SWHOY AYA1LLOd
G2 ALV1d 19391IY—"676| ‘J1oday ueruosyyiwIG
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 26
FORMS OF INCISED AND RELIEVED DECORATIVE DESIGN ON EARTHENWARE
VESSELS. MONTE CRISTI PROVINCE
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Krieger PLATE 27
TYPES OF MODELED HEADDRESSES ON CLAY FIGURINE HEADS. MONTE
CRISTI PROVINCE
Mal
THE BEGINNING OF THE MECHANICAL TRANSPORT
ERA IN AMERICA
By Caru W. Mirman
Curator, Divisions of Mineral and Mechanical Technology, United States
National Museum
[With 24 plates]
I. HOW MAN CAME TO KNOW STEAM
Many centuries before the word steam was ever used, learned
Egyptians knew that heat, whether from the sun or a man-made
fire, could produce motion of fluids or vapors contained in closed ves-
sels. Before the Israelites escaped from Egypt there was at least
one Kgyptian statue of a god, that of Memnon, which on sunny
days, so report says, uttered sounds like the notes of a harp. This
mystified the worshipers and drew members from other sects until
the priests of a rival belief succeeded in exposing the trick. Extend-
ing vertically from a water filled cavity within the statue was a
small pipe with a tiny opening at the top near the mouth, fashioned
like an organ pipe. When the sun shone it heated the water and the
resulting movement of air up the pipe and out of the mouth produced
the sounds heard. The speaking god was a mere hot-air calliope.
The science of those times was in the hands of the priests but as
the secret of their grip over the people lay in mystery, they were
careful to keep their discoveries to themselves. Consequently, if
they knew anything about steam we have no record of it. Alex-
ander’s conquest of Egypt, however, brought in a new attitude toward
knowledge. Her kings became patrons of the arts and sciences;
the court of Alexandria became a school of philosophy where the
learned of many countries gathered. In the hope of obtaining
. royal favor the philosophers put their knowledge into books. It
is in the publications of one of them, Hero by name, that the oldest
printed record of man’s knowledge of steam is found. Hero, who
lived sometime between 150 B. C. and 50 A. D., wrote a volume on
pneumatics in which for the first time he discussed the several proper-
ties of steam and described a number of mechanical contrivances, some
507
508 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of his own invention and others probably of Roman origin,® which
made use of its power. The best known of these mechanisms is a
form of steam turbine called ‘“‘aeolipile,” but the book describes
also how steam was used to open and close temple doors, transfer
liquids from one vessel to another, and support hollow balls in mid-
air on a column of steam. None of these devices had any practical
use. They were the toy of the philosopher and the tool of the mystic,
each of whom considered that it lessened his dignity to explain,
FIGURE 1.—Opening temple doors 100 B.c. Fire on the altar heats and expands the air
beneath and drives water into the bucket. The bucket descends, turns the columns and
opens the doors. When the fire goes out, the air is condensed and the water is syphoned
back to the sphere. The counterbalance then falls and closes the doors
let alone suggest, practical uses to the masses. Nothing, therefore,
came of their findings.
Shortly after Hero’s time Alexandria fell into Roman hands and a
court of victorious soldiers replaced the court of the philosophers.
Science fell into disrepute in its most powerful stronghold. Fourteen
centuries passed before men again turned in large numbers to the
study of the world of nature. During all this time there appears to
have been nothing written on steam.
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 509
On the revival of learning in Europe at least five Italian philoso-
phers translated Hero’s book, but with one exception they were
indifferent to practical mechanics. Baptista Porta, a mathematician
of Naples, in his translation and commentary, however, did suggest,
by drawings and descriptions, apparatus for using steam to raise
water, and Italian architects, keenly alert for means of effecting foun-
tain displays then in vogue for villa gardens, were the first to attempt
practical applications of the idea. This happened about the middle
of the sixteenth century. Italy set the architectural style for Europe
in that period, and Solomon de Caus, a French architect and engineer,
while in Italy for ideas, became interested in the steam-operated
fountain. On his return to France he began experimenting and both
talked and wrote about the possibilities of steam, advancing a proposi-
tion for utilizing high-pressure steam. His enthusiasm seems to have
broken down the last objection to experimentation and during the
succeeding 100 years philosophers, the clergy, and engineers all over
Europe were intensely busy.
The Italian chemist, Branca, used a jet of high-pressure steam to
turn a paddle wheel. Kircher, a Jesuit and teacher of philosophy at
Rome, designed a fountain and forced the water by steam pressure to
unusual heights. The English bishop Wilkins, a brother-in-law of
Oliver Cromwell, made many and varied experiments with aeolipiles
and even advanced steam propositions in his sermons.
These experimenters had just about reached the limit of possible
developments with the resources at hand when, around 1650, two dis-
coveries were made which, although they had nothing to do with
steam directly, had a very important bearing on the subsequent devel-
opment of the steam engine. They were the inventions of the mercury
barometer by the Italian, Torrecelli, a pupil of Galileo, and of the air
pump by Von Guericke, the burgomaster of Magdeburg, Germany.
By the former it was definitely proved that the atmosphere had
weight and by the latter that air could be excluded at will from a
closed vessel so as to obtain a vacuum. Von Guericke went further
and rigged up a vertical cylinder with a piston, connecting the latter
by a cord and overhead pulley to a weight. He then exhausted the
air under the piston with his air pump and immediately the piston
moved downward, lifting the weight.
Thirty years more passed and then Huygens, the Dutch astrono-
mer, improved on Von Guericke’s idea and obtained a vacuum under a
piston without an air pump. He fitted up a cylinder with nonreturn
valves and exploded gunpowder under the piston. Most of the gases
escaped but as the quantity remaining in the cylinder cooled a vacuum
was created and the piston went down just as with Von Guericke.
Both of these experiments demonstrated that the weight of the air
was capable of doing mechanical work. In 1690 Papin, a French
510 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
engineer, showed how steam could be used to obtain the vacuum. He
also invented the safety valve and proposed to apply steam to draw
water from mines, to shoot bullets from cannon, to propel boats,
and to do many other things. He did not construct any practical
Wi
anes
¥
5 Za ,
pUvUacagracereorosgease
prose ryoonsdaecraients
While a wasteful method, the idea was later modified and resulted in the modern steam turbine
Pf,
inn
\:
power.
é
eB (Crs
ee
= 2S
FIGURE 2.—Branca’s steam engine, 1629 A.D. Giovanni Branca, an Italian chemist, suggested a device such as this for using steam to produce
engines, however, and came no nearer than his predecessors to solving
the problem of making the piston move up and down continuously,
Necessity produced the next invention. England was experiencing
more and more trouble keeping water out of her coal mines. The
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 51ll
pumps had been increased in size, gradually, until toward the close
of the seventeenth century the largest which man or beast could pro-
ficiently handle were being used. Here then was a definite need for
more power. Hero, Porta, De Caus, Huygens, and Papin had con-
tributed all the rudiments for a power machine which simply awaited
the touch of some mechanical magician to form a complete structure.
That touch was given in 1698 by Capt. Thomas Savery. He was an
English coal-mine owner and operator. In the year cited, he con-
structed and patented a machine for raising water ‘“‘by the impellent
force of fire.’ This represents the first attempt to utilize fuel as a
practical means of doing mechanical work. His engine was not in
actual service, however, because no one knew how to make boilers
and pipes strong enough to resist the steam pressure necessary to raise
the water from the deeper mines.
But before discouragement could set in, Thomas Newcomen, an
ironmonger and blacksmith of Dartmouth, England, came forward in
1712 with his atmospheric steam engine, one of the most remarkable
inventions of any age or time. From this, the growth of the modern
steam engine is definitely traced. Newcomen had the same old ver-
tical cylinder and piston but he injected cold water into the cylinder
to condense the steam, and added a valve gear which enabled the
engine to keep up its motion as long as steam was provided. Then
began the age of steam and the steam engine, for the later develop-
ments of which the world is indebted to Watt, Evans, Corliss, De
Laval, Parsons, and many others.
Il. HOW THE STEAM ENGINE CAME TO AMERICA
Newcomen had no trouble getting orders for his engines after he had
demonstrated what they could do. He employed additional help
both to make and erect them. One of his best erection engineers
was Joseph Hornblower, who assisted him when he installed one of
his first engines in Staffordshire. Hornblower had two sons, Jona-
than and Josiah, both of whom followed in their father’s footsteps
as engineers and were engaged with him, about 1748, in constructing
Newcomen ‘‘fire engines.”
One day Jonathan received word to come to London to meet the local
agent of an American colonist. The result of this meeting was that
the Hornblowers consented to build and erect an engine at the copper
mine of Col. John Schuyler in New Jersey. Schuyler’s mine at Beile-
ville, near Newark, was the only one in the colonies and from it ore
had been shipped to England for 25 years or more. With the lower-
ing of the mine shaft water came in in such quantities as to tax the
pumps to their limit. In this connection Benjamin Franklin wrote
to a friend in February, 1750: ‘I know of but one valuable copper
mine in this country, which is that of Schuyler’s, in the Jerseys. This
512 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
yields good copper, and has turned out vast wealth to the owners.
I was at it last fall, but they were not then at work. The water has
grown too hard for them, and they waited for a fire engine from Eng-
land to drain their pits. J suppose they will have that at work next;
it costs them £1,000.” As a matter of fact the engine cost three
times this amount by the time it was erected.
Four years or more passed before the completion of the engine.
When it was shipped Josiah Hornblower, then about 25 years old, went
Vhe ENGINE yer Key: ng Males Sarthe CROWES ade : ly Fire
Ss
H.Beightlon dliie.tpt7
FIGURE 3.—Newcomen atmospheric engine. Introduced about 1712 and the first to embody on a
practical scale some important features of the reciprocating steam engine. The original of this illus-
tration was discovered in 1925 and indicates that as early as 1717 the engine had been improved by
adding the automatic valve gearing perfected by Henry Beighton. (Courtesy of the Newcomen
Society)
with it. America’s first steam engine and power engineer landed in
New York about September 9, 1753. ‘‘To cash pd. for 7 days, cart-
ing ye engine & boards to ye mine”’ is an item in the account books
under the date of September 25, 1753. Then, with the engine in
pieces at the mine, Josiah had his first opportunity to consider the
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 513
job ahead. It is perhaps a wonder that he did not take the first
boat back to England. There was no skilled help for him to call on,
no one who had the slightest idea of steam-engine construction.
Accordingly he had to instruct as the work progressed. This all
took time, and 18 months or more passed before the engine was ready
to be steamed up early in the spring of 1755.
On this eventful day, when the first steam engine in America was
to be set in motion, an interested group of colonists came to the mine.
They saw standing on the very edge of the shaft an odd looking stone
building, shingle-roofed, some 20 to 30 feet square and 30 feet high.
Sticking out through one wall and over the mine opening was a heavy
beam terminating in
a vertical arc, like an
enormous carpenter’s
hammer with the
claw sticking up-
wards holding be-
tween its prongs a
pump rod which dis-
appeared down into
the mine. Entering
the engine house, the
visitors beheld aroar-
ing furnace and over
it a spherical copper
boiler 10 feet in di-
ameter, partly in-
closed in brickwork.
Looking higher, they
saw directly over the
boiler and connected
to it by a short pipe, Bion eons ae
a huge cast-iron cyl- Figure 4,—Josiah Hornblower, 1729-1809. The pioneer in the ta of
inder, 3 feet in diam- SE Tan
eter and 8 feet high, supported on heavy wooden beams, stretching
across and anchored into the building walls. Still higher rose the
piston rod, connected by links to another huge claw hammer on the
inner end of the same heavy beam that the visitors first observed.
Near the cylinder, but several feet above it, they saw a small water
tank from the bottom of which descended a small pipe with two
branches, one going over the top and the other into the bottom of
the cylinder, the first to form a water seal between the piston and
cylinder wall to hold in the steam, and the second to supply condens-
514 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
ing water. Lastly their eyes rested on a series of ropes and valve
handles on a board within easy reach from the floor.
The fluttering of the safety valve showed that steam wasup. Josiah
Hornblower took his place at the control board, undoubtedly nerv-
ous because of the importance of the occasion, and yet with confidence
opened the steam valve between the boiler and the cylinder. Steam
rushed in filling the cylinder. Another handle was turned and water
from the overhead tank spurted into it, condensing the steam and
creating a vacuum. All this time the piston remained still at the top
of the cylinder. Now, however, atmospheric pressure bore down on the
piston head, forcing it downward and pulling with it the inner end of
the bie walking beam and raising the pump rod attached to the other
end outside. Hornblower had so skillfully calculated the weight of the
pump rod and water to be
pumped at one end of the beam
and the weight of the piston and
air pressure at the other end
that the weight of the air was
just a little more than enough
to lift the water from the mine.
Other handles were then turned,
steam again entered the cylin-
der and the pumprod descended
by its own weight into the mine,
pulling up the piston to its first
position. Again steam was
FIGURE 5.—Hornblower family seal. Thisillustrates the d d d 4 i e
building which housed the Newcomen engine built in CONGensed an own went the
Enna by Heep Hombiowsrand waved bYTiss2 piston and up went the pump
Arlington, N.J. (Courtesy of the Delawareand Hud- rod. So it kept going, 10 to
oe 12 strokes a minute and lifting
10 gallons of water with each stroke. And so America’s first steam
engine was put in operation.
Hornblower’s task was now successfully accomplished and he could
have returned to England. Two things deterred him, however—the
memory of the bad trip over and, more particularly, an interest in a
very attractive girl of Belleville. Instead of going home he decided to
accept Colonel Schuyler’s offer of the superintendency of the mine and
thereupon married Miss Kingsland. He operated the mine for 5 years
then leased it from the owner for 14. He had rather indifferent success
in operating it by himself so that when the power house burned down
and greatly damaged the engine in 1768, the mine was abandoned.
Hornblower then turned to civic affairs, became a member of the New
Jersey Assembly and later an influential member of the Continental
Congress. In 1793 another attempt was made to operate the Schuyler
mine, and Hornblower again put the engine into shape. But the effort
PLATE 1
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Mitman
~
mre tg
ceteticetin T te
ae
Courtesy of the New Science Museum, London
NEWCOMEN ENGINE IN FAIRBOTTOM VALLEY, LANCASHIRE, ENGLAND
ed to the man in the
)
Note its size as comp:
rated until 1827.
r.
50 and op
75
right-hand lower corne
The engine is said to have been
Photograph taken about 1860.
(pure -O eps[o Aq Suyuied v molg) “ed ‘VIydlepelyd 7B JoATY oVMe[oC of} UO opBUL SBA UO}}BI}SUOUMEP attqnd styL
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‘OD souBINSUT [B}UGUTZUOD 94} Jo A8aqINOD
¢ aLVid uewl}t|\j— 6761 ‘qaoday ueruosy yg
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 515
met with indifferent success, and around 1800 the engine was dis-
mantled and its parts scattered. Years later the cylinder was found
and cut in two by aman in need of a short length of pipe. The upper
half not used was eventually obtained by the New Jersey Historical
Association, which organization in 1889 presented it to the United
States National Museum where it has been carefully preserved ever
since.
III. STEAMBOAT PIONEERING
The Newcomen engine at Schuyler’s mine failed to create any great
amount of public comment or excitement. Its only use was to pump
water and there was no other mine in the colonies requiring such a
contrivance. In 1774, however, the common council of New York
City, faced with the problem of increasing the city’s water supply,
accepted the proposal of an English engineer, Christopher Colles, to
build a reservoir and install a Newcomen-type steam engine to pump
the water. An engine was purchased in England and erected in 1776
but its capacity proved too small. Then the war came on and caused
the whole enterprise to be abandoned.
Meanwhile, the colonies continued to spread up and down the Atlan-
tic coast and along the navigable rivers which flowed into the ocean.
Communities sprang up inland. Improved communications both for
purposes of commerce and for the political unity of the federation
became a necessity. Along the coast it was as yet out of the question
to travel very extensively overland so that practically all intercourse
was had by sailing vessel, a very slow agency. To go inland meant
to go upstream.
Amongst those who appreciated the seriousness of these conditions
and gaveof histimeand money in an effort to better them was William
Henry, the famous gunsmith, financier, and patriot of Lancaster, Pa.
He believed that steam power could be used to operate a boat upstream
and to prove his contention, he built an engine and stern-wheel boat
in 1763 and tried it on the Conestoga Creek at Lancaster. The trials
were unsuccessful as were those with a second and improved model.
Henry made no further attempt after this because, as he remarked to
a friend, ‘‘I am doubtful whether such a machine would find favor
with the public, as every one considers it impracticable to make a boat
move against wind and tide.’”’ Henry, however, must be credited as
the first person in the United States to apply steam to propel a boat.
Twenty years later, two men working independently again brought to
public attention almost simultaneously boats propelled by steam.
These men were John Fitch in Pennsylvania and James Rumsey in
Virginia.
JOHN FITCH
John Fitch had reached his twelfth year when Hornblower got the
Newcomen engine going in New Jersey. He had had a month or
8$2322—30——_34
516 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
two of schooling each winter since he was four and he much preferred
reading and arithmetic to helping on his father’s farm at East Windsor,
Conn. By the time he was 13 he had progressed so far in mathe-
matics that his schoolmaster told him ‘‘he could learn him no farther
in arithmetic but would learn him in surveying.”’ Fitch accordingly
learned what he could of this profession and while he did not follow it
up immediately it kept him from starving later in life. He had
never been in robust health nor had he much physical endurance, so
in his seventeenth year his father, somewhat disappointed, decided
that he would either have to go to sea or learn a trade. One trip
along the coast in a
sloop decided Fitch
against sailoring.
He tried the other
alternative, becom-
ing a watchmaker’s
apprentice. Unfor-
tunately, the two
masters for whom he
worked were averse
to instructing their
apprentices and af-
ter five years’ effort
Fitch gave up, al-
most as ignorant of
watchmaking as
when he began.
From this time on
until he died, every
undertaking that
Fitch attempted
went wrong sooner
or later. He went
into the potash bus-
iness and his part-
ner absconded with all the funds; he married but the clash of natures
proved too much for him and he abandoned his wife and children
within two years; he tried button making in Trenton and the factory
burned down; while surveying in Kentucky he was captured and held
prisoner by Indians. After considerable hardship and suffering he
was released and made his way to Buck’s County, Pa. Here, in 1785
at the age of 42 he began his work on steamboats. From what he
wrote later, the idea of utilizing steam force in any manner seems
never to have occurred to him before this and he began his experi-
FIGURE 6.—John Fitch, 1743-1798. First to build and operate a man-
carrying steamboat in America
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 517
ments presumably with no information as to what had already been
done with steam.
Between April and August of that year Fitch tried a number of
schemes for propelling boats—endless chain, side and stern paddle
wheels and screw propeller. He built four models equipped with a
steam engine and one or another of the propelling devices and operated
them successfully on a little stream near Davisville, Pa. The boiler
was an iron kettle, the propelling machinery was made of brass and
the paddle wheels of wood. By autumn he had spent all of his
money. He determined to ask the assistance of the Continental
Congress, then in session in New York. He presented his petition
backed with commendatory letters from such men as Doctor Ewing,
provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and Doctor Smith, provost
of Princeton, but no action was taken. Quite discouraged he went
back to Philadelphia and presented one of his models and a description
of his invention to the American Philosophical Society. This time
he received moral support but still no money. He then undertook
to raise money through the sale of maps which he had drawn and
engraved of the ‘‘northwest parts of the United States,” posting a
bond with Patrick Henry as an earnest of his good intentions. By
setting aside one-half of the subscription price, a French crown,
a little money was secured but hardly enough to build a full-sized
boat such as he hoped to construct. He next turned to State legis-
latures for help and special privileges. The first approached, that of
New Jersey, on March 18, 1786, granted him the exclusive right for
14 years to build and operate steamboats on all the waters of the
State. Armed with this talking point, Fitch succeeded then in
organizing a steamboat company composed of prominent Philadel-
phians, and with the money advanced by the stockholders plus what
he had derived from the sale of his maps, he began work in Phila-
delphia. A steam skiff was tried out July 27, 1786, and a 45-foot
boat begun shortly after. With the help of his friend, Harry Voight,
who designed the steam boiler, he worked steadily on it for over a
year, receiving his reward when a successful trial trip with the two
aboard was made on August 22, 1787, on the Delaware River.
Twelve large wooden paddles, six in tandem fashion along each side
of the boat, alternately dipping into and drawing out of the water
much as the Indian paddled his canoe, propelled the boat at a speed
of 3 miles an hour up and down the river. The up and down motion
of the engine piston was converted into the peculiar motion of the
paddles through sprockets, chains, and cranks. The engine operated
on the Newcomen principle, including the injection of cold water’
into the cylinder to obtain the vacuum, but the cylinder and boiler
were placed side by side in the boat rather than one on top of the
other, as Newcomen arranged his engines.
518 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The Federal Constitutional Convention, then in session at Philadel-
phia, had adjourned on this memorable afternoon so that its members
might witness the experiment. They lined the water front cheering
Fitch as he steamed past. Some even got a ride in the boat,
amongst them Chief Justice Ellsworth of Connecticut.
Proud and happy as he was for having accomplished what every-
one believed impossible and for being the first person in the United
States to build and successfully operate a man-carrying steamboat,
Fitch was disappointed with the boat’s speed and immediately went
to work on another one. He continued also to petition neighboring
States for exclusive privileges such as New Jersey had granted him,
and before the close of 1787, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and
Virginia had acceded to his request. How he managed to keep body
and soul alive no one knows. He prevailed upon each member of his
company to agree to a 30 dollar assessment to permit him to go on
with the new boat which he completed in the summer of 1788. This
boat measured 60 feet and was propelled by a paddle wheel at the
stern turned by a small steam engine having a 12-inch cylinder. The
trial trip of this boat, made in July of that year, was from Philadelphia
to Burlington, N. J., a distance of 20 miles upstream, the greatest
distance ever made by asteamboat up to that time. Fitch made many
round trips in the course of the next few months. On one of these, his
boat carried 30 passengers. Even with this load it made the trip up
to Burlington in three hours and ten minutes.
While it is quite easy to imagine that the people who saw Fitch’s
boats might have looked upon his first one as a mere accident and his
second but a little more than that, it is hard to understand their con-
tinued indifference after his third boat, larger than the others, was
put into regular service on the Delaware River in 1790, and its schedule
of sailings advertised in the Philadelphia daily newspapers. The Fed-
eral Congress at least had a change of heart, granting him a patent on
August 26, 1791, for a term of 14 years, the original document having
been signed by George Washington and by the commissioners Thomas
Jefferson, Henry Knox, and John Randolph. Later on in the same
year, the French Government likewise granted him a patent protect-
ing his invention for 15 years. For many years the original of this
French patent has been on public exhibition in the National Museum.
Fitch’s desire for improvement in his steamboats was insatiable and
given the opportunity, he would no doubt have made better boats.
Unfortunately, neither the general public nor the Government could
see the future of steam navigation even in the face of Fitch’s accom-
plishments. He had the vision, but like many inventors before and
since, he stood alone. The more he talked about the wonderful
opportunities of this new mode of travel the more firmly convinced
everyone became that he was really crazy.
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 519
After a fourth boat, which he began in 1791 and appropriately
named Perseverance was almost completely destroyed by a violent
storm at Philadelphia, Fitch’s stockholders became totally discouraged
and declined to advance any more money. In desperation he went
to France, but in spite of the fact that he had a French patent for
his steamboat the trip proved fruitless. Working his way as acommon
sailor, he returned to Boston destitute and worn. A brother-in-law
found him there, brought him back to East Windsor, and took care
of him for two years or more.
While a surveyor in Kentucky, Fitch had acquired some land at
Bardstown and about 1797 he decided to return to Kentucky and
claim it. On the way he stopped in New York long enough to try
just once more to arouse interest in his invention. He built a small
steamboat capable of carrying four people and operated it on Collect
Pond, which once existed just off Broadway near City Hall. Again
his efforts were in vain, and wholly discouraged he moved on to Ken-
tucky. In 1798 he died, leaving a written request that he be buried on
the shores of the Ohio so that he might repose ‘‘ where the song of the
boatmen would enliven the stillness of my resting place, and the music
of the steam engine soothe my spirit.”
Before he died Fitch prepared his own memoir, including an account
of his experiments in steam, and bequeathed it to Franklin Institute
at Philadelphia. It is the writing of a discouraged man whose moods,
however, fluctuated as he went along. Near the beginning he wrote,
‘“‘T know of nothing so perplexing and vexatious to a man of feelings,
as a turbulent Wife and Steam Boat building. I experienced the
former and quit in season, and had I been in my right sences I should
undoubtedly have treated the latter in the same manner, but for one
to be teised with Both, he must be looked upon as the most unfor-
tunate man of this world.’ He closed the memoir with this, ‘‘The
day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches
from my invention, but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can
do anything worthy of attention.” Just nine years later that reward
came to Robert Fulton.
JAMES RUMSEY
The history of invention abounds with cases in which an inventor
publicly presents his new idea, only to have others come forward with
claims of priority to the invention. In most cases such claims have
turned out to be based on nothing more substantial than a vague idea.
James Rumsey, however, publicly demonstrated his independently
conceived and worked-out idea of a steamboat on December 3, 1787,
operating it on the Potomac River at Shepardstown, W. Va. This
was just a little over three months after Fitch successfully demon-
strated his Indian paddle steamboat at Philadelphia, so that while
520 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
priority seems to belong indisputably to Fitch, Rumsey deserves
credit for independent and almost simultaneous invention. Rumsey
was forced to make his demonstration to substantiate his claim of
priority, which he had made just a month before in a petition to the
Virginia Legislature asking for the repeal of the exclusive privileges
which had been granted on November 7 to Fitch. A year later the
committee appointed to consider Rumsey’s petition reported a bill
repealing Fitch’s grant, but it was defeated in the House of Represen-
tatives, thus substantiating Fitch.
Rumsey came originally from Maryland, entering the world on his
father’s farm at Bohemia Manor, Cecil County, in the same year
(1743) that Fitch was born. He attended the country school near his
home and became quite interested in mechanics and when he was
through school he immediately learned carpentry and blacksmithing.
Later on he tried his hand as a millwright but neither in this nor in
his other trades was he much of a success, for he was constantly put-
tering around trying to perfect mechanical contrivances of one sort or
another, and worked at his trades only enough to keep from starving.
After the Revolutionary War, in which he served, he settled on the
banks of the Potomac River at Bath, Berkeley County, Va., which is
now Berkeley Springs, W. Va. With a partner he opened a general
merchandise store, and, also because of his general mechanical ability,
served as a bath tender, for even as long ago as 1780 Bath or Berkeley
Springs was quite a health resort.
In spite of himself, however, Rumsey could not resist the tempta-
tion to tinker. It was not long before he left the store business entirely
to his partner and spent most of his time working by himself. He
maintained the utmost secrecy about his work and when asked what
he was doing he answered vaguely with an air of mystery so that he
became known locally as ‘‘Crazy Rumsey.”’ He was, however, by no
means as crazy as people thought.
For many years the problem of inland transportation had the atten-
tion of all progressive colonists. Long after the first settlements
were established along the Susquehanna, Schuylkill, and Potomac
Rivers and beyond the Alleghenies, the settlers continued dependent
almost wholly on goods sent from the colonies along the eastern coast.
Decent roads did not exist and nearly all commerce went by river.
All manner of boats were developed for hauling freight, but the most
common was a heavy keel boat or ‘‘Durham” boat, which resembled
a scow with a freight car perched in the middle. A running board
stretched the whole length of each side of the boat. On this the crew
walked from bow to stern pushing with their shoulders on poles set
in the bottom of the river. The expense of carrying freight ‘‘west”’
in this way proved tremendous. It required a crew of anywhere from
4 to 10 men to pole one of these boats, their wages and living expenses
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—-MITMAN 521
had to be paid, the distance covered in a day was small, and the
amountof cargo carried was hardly noticeable.
Rumsey knew all this, for the Potomac River, on which he lived,
served as one of the main waterways west. He knew also that General |
Washington was greatly interested, because of his large holdings in
the Ohio Company organized by his half brothers Lawrence and Augus-
tine, to which he had fallen heir. This company owned large land
areas in the Northwest Territory and engaged in the fur trade.
Sometime in the early summer of 1784, therefore, Rumsey wrote
Washington that he had perfected an idea for mechanically propel-
ling boats upstream, and invited him to stop over at Bath the next
time he came that way to witness a demonstration of a working model
of the scheme. Washington accepted the invitation and on Septem-
ber 5, 1784, Rumsey showed him his model, but only after the General
had promised not to divulge the principle involved. In his diary, on
September 6, 1784, Washington wrote, ‘‘The model and its operation
upon the water, which had been made to run pretty swift, not only
convinced me of what I had before thought next to, if not quite
impracticable, but that it might be the greatest possible utility in
inland navigation; and in rapid currents. What adds vastly to the
value of the discovery, is the simplicity of its works; as they may be
made by a common boat builder or carpenter, and kept in order as
easy as a plow or any common implement of husbandry on a farm.”
This was Rumsey’s first boat. It was pushed by mechanically
operated poles, but the power used was not steam.
Encouraged by Washington’s evident enthusiasm, Rumsey worked
on his model for several months more and then abandoned it when
another idea, that of using the force of steam, came to him. He
again wrote to Washington on March 10, 1785, “‘I have taken the
greatest pains to perfect another kind of boat, upon the principles I
mentioned to you at Richmond in November last * * *.” He
refrained from telling what the principle was, for fear of having it
stolen, but it involved pumping a stream of water, under pressure,
out through the stern of a boat below the water line, the reactive force
resulting causing the boat to move forward. It was a boat thus
propelled that Rumsey used in his first public trial in 1787, mentioned
earlier.
Alone and behind locked doors, Rumsey experimented with his new
scheme off and on, throughout the spring of 1785. He could not
spend all of his time on it, however, for he was in charge of operations
for a company that had just been formed by Washington to improve
the navigation of the Potomac. About May thenewscame to him that
Fitch had started experimenting with steamboats and he knew then
for the first time that he had a rival and that he would have to hurry.
He decided to build a full-sized boat and hired a local mechanic,
522 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Joseph Barns, to help him. He felt too, that now more than ever
before it was imperative to do everything in secret, and having obtained
Barns’ cooperation in this, the latter was set to work building the boat.
When it was completed in September, Rumsey sent him to Baltimore
and Frederickstown, Md., to have the steam cylinder, boiler, and other
machine parts cast and made. By the time these were completed win-
ter had set in forcing the temporary abandonment of the work.
Evidently Rumsey wrote to Washington from time to time telling
him of his progress. Like Fitch, he had no money to speak of, but
with Washington’s indorsement of his project he believed that obtain-
ing funds would be the least of his troubles. Washington gave him
a real scare in a letter written in January, 1786. After advising him
to place his boat before the public as soon as possible, he told Rumsey
that “‘many people, in guessing at your plans, have come very near
the truth, and one who has something of a similar nature to offer to
the public, wanted a certificate from me that it was different from
yours.”’ Rumsey felt sure that the person referred to was Fitch.
Soon after the ice went out of the river in the spring Rumsey and
Barns secretly tried out the new boat, but so many of the machine
parts were defective that the experiment failed. Throughout that
year they worked on it, changing the machinery, devising a new
boiler, and trying out other ideas that came to them. Another secret
trial was made in December, 1786, but no better results were obtained
and then, to cap the climax, one December night drifting ice carried
the boat away. Rumsey recovered it but both boat and machinery
had suffered such damage that they could not be gotten ready for
another trial before September, 1787. This time the boat moved
by the force of steam against the river current with a speed of about
2miles an hour. Though the machinery proved far from satisfactory,
Rumsey took great encouragement. With Barns’ help he put the
machinery into the best possible shape and staged a public demonstra-
tion on December 3, 1787. This turned out to be the best trial made.
It gave the people from Bath and Shepardstown their first opportunity
to see what Rumsey had been doing.
As mentioned earlier, the boat was moved by forcing water out of
the stern. Rumsey’s outfit to do this consisted of a steam boiler, a
cylinder, and a pump, all in the forward part of the boat, the boiler
nearest the bow. The cylinder and pump were bolted together, one
on top of the other—the pump underneath—with the pump plunger
and piston having acommonrod. Steam was used only in thecylinder
under the piston where it was treated the Newcomen way, making an
atmospheric steam engine. The pump had two openings, one to
admit river water through a pipe coming up through the bottom of
the boat, and the other connected to a pipe or “trunk,” as Rumsey
called it, running back along the bottom of the boat through the stern.
PLATE 3
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Mitman
JAMES RUMSEY, 1743-1792
Designer and builder of the second man-carrying steamboat in America.
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Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Mitman PLATE 5
JOHN STEVENS, 1749-1838
The leading pioneer of his day in transportation, a genius with steam ,and the builder of
both steamboats and locomotives.
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Oh dk PLT OVE.
ROBERT FULTON. 1765-1815
Artist and engineer, and designer of the steamboat
Clermont. The voyage of this vessel from New
York to Albany and return in 1807 made steam
navigation a commercial fact.
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MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 523
Thus with each up-and-down stroke of the piston the pump plunger
followed suit and alternately sucked in water through the bottom and
forced it out at the stern, causing the boat to move ahead.
By this time Rumsey had used up all his money and set about
first to secure exclusive rights from the various State assemblies and
then to try to organize a company. Everywhere he went, however,
he found not only that Fitch had preceded him, but also that many
people were rather skeptical about him and his work. He began to
realize the injury he had brought upon himself by doing his experi-
mental work secretly. In 1788, however, he succeeded in forming
with a group of Philadelphians the Rumseian Society to further his
schemes and in May of that year the society sent him to England,
thus leaving the United States to Fitch. He took out two patents
in London and had a boat built which was tried out on the Thames in
the autumn of 1792. Just how successful this trial was is not known.
Rumsey continued experimenting into December, when with hardly
any warning, he had a stroke of apoplexy and died on December 23,
1792, only 49 years old. Where he died or was buried in London is not
definitely known. His perseverance in the face of all sorts of ridicule
won for him the honor of being the second man in the United States
to successfully propel a boat by steam power. Years afterward the
Kentucky Legislature presented a gold medal to Rumsey’s son in com-
memoration of his father’s service.
Regrettable as were the tragic deaths of America’s first two steam-
boat pioneers, their work was not in vain. They were looked upon
by the majority as nuisances and victims of “‘steam mania,” yet their
efforts impressed a few serious-minded persons sufficiently to insure
the continuance of experiment. Without them the successful steam-
boat would not have been an accomplished fact so soon.
JOHN STEVENS
Col. John Stevens owed his interest in steam power to John Fitch.
While driving along the banks of the Delaware River near Burlington,
in 1788, he saw Fitch’s steamboat pass up the river against the tide.
He followed the boat to its landing, where he got aboard and examined
the engine and propelling paddles carefully. From that hour he
became an unwearied experimenter in the application of steam power.
Fortunately, too, he had ample private means so that he could afford
to experiment.
Stevens was born in New York City in 1749, the son of John
Stevens, distinguished for his public service in the New Jersey Colony.
After graduation from King’s College (now Columbia University),
in 1768, young Stevens took up the study of law but never practiced.
He served in the Revolution as colonel ofjhis own regiment until
New Jersey called him to act as treasurer of that Colony. During
524 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the succeeding fifty-odd years Stevens lived in New York and on his
estate across the Hudson in Hoboken. At the latter place he carried
on all his experimental work with steam.
It will be recalled that in 1786 New Jersey had given Fitch a 14-
year exclusive privilege to make and operate steamboats in the State.
Stevens first petitioned the State legislature in 1788 for permission
to place a steam engine on board a boat for experimental purposes.
He then undertook an intensive study of the whole subject of steam,
devoting upwards of two years to it until he had thoroughly familiar
ized himself with both its history and its practical applications.
Stevens took out his first steamboat patents in 1792. They called for
the propelling of vessels by a steam engine modified from the original
steam pumps of Captain Savery, of England. During the succeeding
six years he made many experiments on different modes of propulsion
by steam, but, like Fitch and Rumsey, he was hampered by lack of
facilities, both in men of mechanical ability and in tools.
In this connection Nicholas Roosevelt, another New Yorker, seems
to have been the first man to engage in machine work in the United
States. In 1794 he, with two partners, purchased 6 acres of land at
Belleville, N. J., from Josiah Hornblower and erected a foundry and
machine shop there. But the work they were able to do seems pitiful
to us now. For instance, the city authorities of Philadelphia in 1800
sent them a steam cylinder in two sections, each 38% inches in diameter
and 3% feet long to be bored. This was for use in the Boulton &
Watt steam pumping engine, which Philadelphia had imported from
England several years before for the city water pumping plant.
Roosevelt started work with his boring machine operated by water
power on April 9. Two men were in attendance day and night,
‘one almost living in the cylinder,” and the job was completed four
and one-half months later. Had they had the handling and machine-
tool equipment of 1929 the cylinder could have been bored in 24
hours.
Stevens’ absorption in steam experiments seems to have been
rather contagious, infecting particularly his brother-in-law, Robert
R. Livingston, one of the richest men of his time and chancellor of
New York State. He apparently fought it off as long as he could but
finally succumbed in 1798, when he acquired Fitch’s New York State
rights to steam navigation. He wanted to build a steamboat immedi-
ately, and had more or less made up his mind to order a steam engine
from James Watt in England, but Stevens and Roosevelt who were asso-
ciated with him, dissuaded him from doing that, and instead prevailed
upon him to let Roosevelt build the engine at his shop in Belleville.
Roosevelt at that time had in his employ two Englishmen, John Small-
wood and John Hewitt, the former a machinist and the latter a drafts-
man and patternmaker, who had been sent to Philadelphia by Boulton
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 525
& Watt to erect their pumping engine and who, like Hornblower,
decided to stay in America. With the knowledge of steam engines
possessed by these two and with the help of a German, named Rohde,
who could make castings, Roosevelt felt pretty confident that he
could build an engine for Livingston’s boat. And so he did. The
boat, 60 feet long, with a 20-inch cylinder and 2-foot stroke, made her
trial trip in October, 1798, but it was not successful in spite of the
fact that the steam engine used had all of Watt’s wonderful improve-
ments. The fault lay in the propelling mechanism suggested by
Livingston. The next year another experiment was tried, this time
from a plan of Stevens for a set of paddles in the stern with a crank
motion, driving the boat forward as they rose and fell. With Small-
wood, Rohde, Hewitt, and Stevens aboard, the boat steamed down
the Passaic River from Belleville to New York and back, but the
mechanism shook the boat so terrifically that this plan had to be
abandoned.
By this time Livingston’s ardor had cooled somewhat, for the
experiments had failed to meet the terms of the franchise granted him
by New York State relative to speed. He dropped out and shortly
afterward went to Paris as United States minister to France. Stevens,
however, was more determined than ever to solve the difficulties.
He designed and built a rotary steam engine to be used with a screw
propeller. He placed this combination in a little 25-foot boat in the
summer of 1802, and used it occasionally in crossing the Hudson
between New York and Hoboken. About this boat Stevens wrote: .
“She occasionally kept going until cold weather stopped us. When
the engine was in the best of order, her velocity was about 4 miles
an hour.’’ The engine, while very simple, was hard to keep steam-
tight. That winter Stevens resorted again to the reciprocating engine.
Stevens had by this time made himself probably the best engineer
in America. Early in 1802 he designed, built, and sold to the Man-
hattan Co., proprietor of the waterworks of New York City, a Watt
type steam engine for operating the water pump worked up to that
time by horses. Engine and pump handled 500,000 gallons of water
every 24 hours. Yet his studies and experiments with steam extend-
ing over a period of 20 years had not produced a really successful
steamboat. The obstacle consisted undoubtedly in the lack of tools
and metal-working equipment. His 1802 experiment showed great
promise, however, and in 1804 with the help of his 17-year-old son
Robert, he launched and successfully navigated in New York Harbor
the first twin-screw-propellered steamboat, operated by a_high-
pressure, reciprocating steam engine and multitubular boiler, both of
his own design. The boat was a small one, hardly more than 25 feet
in length. In its trips back and forth across the Hudson it attracted
much attention.
526 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Dr. James Renwick, who was at that time professor) of natural
philosophy at Columbia University, in telling of:the time he saw the
boat, wrote: ‘‘We went to walk in the Battery. As we entered the
gate from Broadway we saw what we in those daysconsidered a crowd
running toward the river. On inquiring the cause we were informed
that Jack Stevens was going over to Hoboken in a queer sort of boat.
On reaching the bulkhead we saw lying against it a vessel about the
size of a Whitehall rowboat in which was a small engine, but there was
no visible means of propulsion. The vessel was speedily under way,
my late much-valued friend, Commodore Stevens, acting as cock-
swain; and I presume the smutty-looking personage who fulfilled the
duties of engineer, fireman, and crew, was his more practical brother,
Robert L. Stevens.’ The engine, boiler, and propellers of this
historic steamboat still exist. Stevens Institute at Hoboken, founded
by Colonel Stevens’ son Edwin, took care of ther until 1893, when
they were presented to the National Museum, where they have been
carefully maintained and exhibited ever since.
Stevens had now designed and built four types of steam engines—
the steam pump after Savery, the Watt type with separate condenser,
a rotary, and a high-pressure, noncondensing type. With all of them
he had tried to propel boats. All were crude affairs and none could
be said to have given convincing proof of the feasibility of steam
navigation. He knew his engines were crude and he had the money to
pay for the best, but steam-engine building did not exist in America
. as a trade until after 1800 and did not amount to much for some years
thereafter. Stevens, however, decided to try once more and in 1806
began the construction of a large boat, 103 feet long, rigged with two
masts and sails. It was equipped with a crosshead steam engine,
with two condensing cylinders 16 inches in diameter and with 3-foot
stroke. The boiler, set in brickwork in the bottom of the boat, con-
sisted of a cylindrical shell with one return flue. The engine, in turn,
operated a pair of side paddle wheels. Colonel Stevens had the
Phoenix, as the boat was called, ready for trial in 1807, but no sooner
was it afloat than it was debarred because of the monopoly granted by
the State of New York to Livingston and Fulton for steamboat service
on the waters of New York. Stevens decided to send the Phoeniz to
Philadelphia. In June, 1808, with his son Robert in command, the
Phoenix made the trip by way of Sandy Hook and Cape May, the
first sea voyage ever made by a steam vessel. On her passage she
encountered a storm which damaged her somewhat and compelled her
to seek shelter in Barnegat Bay. After reaching Philadelphia, how-
ever, the boat ran as a packet for six years on the Delaware River
between Philadelphia and Trenton, and was finally wrecked at
Trenton.
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 527
The performance of the Phoenix ought certainly to have brought
to Colonel Stevens the greatest acclaim of his career, but, unfortu-
nately, the feat was undertaken too late. As has often been the case
before and since his time, public fancy rested at the moment on another
(Robert Fulton) and so the accomplishments of the Phoenix passed
almost unnoticed. One can not help but believe, considering Stevens’s
knowledge, ability, and wealth, that had he so wished he could have
established at an early date a practical and commercially successful
steamboat service, but his ambition was to make it a purely American
colonial undertaking and he refused to purchase any foreign engines or
other equipment.
Discouragement does not seem to have had a place in Stevens’s
makeup. He continued with his experiments although hampered
somewhat by Fulton’s monopoly. His years prevented him from
taking as active a part as formerly, but he had in his son Robert an
admirable successor. Robert Stevens soon became the foremost
marine and railroad engineer in the United States. Within three
years, in 1811, father and son had built a steam ferryboat and laid the
foundation for the present extensive ferry system between New York
and New Jersey. Thereafter and until his death at the age of 89
Colonel Stevens devoted the major part of his time and energy in
fighting for the establishment of railways against canals, in the
attainment of which his influence ranked high.
&
ROBERT FULTON
When Chancellor Livingston sailed for France to take up his duties
as United States minister, he no doubt believed that he was leaving
his interest in steamboats behind him. As a matter of fact his new
post was to see that interest greatly increased, for shortly after his
arrival in France he met Robert Fulton. From that meeting great
results flowed.
Fulton was born in Little Britain, Lancaster County, Pa., in 1765.
He displayed no more than the normal boy’s interest in mechanics
while in school but showed a marked aptitude in drawing. By the
time he was 21 he had made quite a name for himself as a portrait
painter. On the advice of a group of interested Philadelphians, in
whose city he had lived and worked for a number of years, he went to
England in 1786 to study under the patronage of Benjamin West, a
noted Philadelphia artist then living in London. Through West,
Fulton met many prominent people amongst whom were the Duke of
Bridgewater and the Earl of Stanhope. Their interest in and dis-
cussions of engineering problems of the day so influenced Fulton that
before long he, too, began thinking, studying, and talking of inland
navigation and canal systems and forgot about his portrait work.
528 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Fourteen years passed during which he was engrossed in experiments
on submarine and torpedo inventions, in the hope of improving on the
work begun in the United States during the Revolution by David
Bushnell. Most of these 14 years were spent in Paris where Fulton
hved with another American, Joel Barlow. It was there he met
Robert Livingston, the new American minister. One can well imag-
ine that before long the two were comparing notes on their several
experiences with inland navigation problems, from which presum-
ably came a revival of interest in steamboats. They became close
friends and Fulton later on married Livingston’s niece.
At all events, from his own personal knowledge of what English and
French engineers as well as Rumsey had attempted in steam naviga-
tion, and after studying the drawings of Fitch’s French patent, which
he borrowed from Alfred Vail, the American consul, Fulton, with the
help of Joel Barlow, who designed the boiler, built a steamboat in the
spring of 1803. When he tried it out on the Seine, the hull unfor-
tunately could not stand the weight of the machinery and it broke in
two. Undaunted, Fulton immediately undertook the building of
another boat, this time 66 feet long, and haditready for trial in August
of 1803, but it moved so slowly as to be altogether a failure. Having
heard of William Symington’s successful steamboat, Charlotte Dundas,
which was put in operation in 1802 on the Forth and Clyde Canal,
Fulton went to England in 1804, and obtained permission to make
drawings of all of Symington’s machinery. He proposed to’go back to
the United States to build a steamboat there and he wanted to have all
possible data to take with him. In addition he began the movement
to raise the ban then in force prohibiting the export of Boulton &
Watt steam engines, for from his experiments he realized that his
chances for success rested a great deal on the engine he should use, and
Watt engines were then the best made. With the help of his in-
fluential friends, he succeeded in having the embargo raised. In
1806 he returned to New York with an engine and late in that year
began the construction of the Clermont. Under his supervision the
hull was built by Charles Brown, a shipbuilder of New York, the
Boulton & Watt engine was put in place, and the whole made ready
for its trial trip on August 7, 1807.
Fulton, a few friends, and mechanics, and six passengers were on
board. An incredulous and jeering crowd gathered on shore as the
boat cast loose at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. ‘Bring us back a chip
of the North Pole” and similar facetious remarks could be heard by
those on board as the nose of the Clermont was pointed north and up
the Hudson. But, as the boat kept right on her way the attitude of
those on shore gradually changed and great was the scramble for hats
thrown high in the air by the cheering and no longer jeering mass.
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 529
Fulton’s skill in selecting and combining the best mechanical equip-
ment developed from the ideas of the foremost inventors of England,
France, and America gave to the world the first practical and com-
mercially successful steamboat. The Clermont’s trip to Albany and
return completely changed public opinion of the possibilities of steam
navigation, and those who a few years before clamored for the main-
tenance of the old order of things were wondering a few years after
how in the world one got along without steamboats. Fulton is to be
honored for this achievement but not for the invention of the steam-
boat, a claim he personally never made.
IV. LOCOMOTIVE AND RAILWAY EQUIPMENT PIONEERS
Advocating steam railroads for the United States was a most heart-
breaking experience for their first champions, Oliver Evans and John
Stevens. Beginning in 1786 and for thirty-odd years thereafter,
Evans hammered away in support of railroads on everyone from the
members of the Federal Government on down, without having any
apparent effect on anyone. He lost patience toward the end, espe-
cially when he saw that public sentiment tended toward the develop-
ment of canals to augment highways, and in a public statement
sarcastically wrote: ‘‘When we reflect upon the obstinate opposition
that has been made by a great majority to every step toward improve-
ment; from bad roads to turnpikes, from turnpike to canal, from canal
to railways for horse carriages, it is too much to expect the monstrous
leap from bad roads to railways for steam carriages at once. One step
in a generation is all we can hope for. If the present shall adopt
canals, the next may try the railways with horses, and the third
generation use the steam carriage.’’ Unfortunately he died without the
satisfaction of knowing that the seed he planted and helped to cultivate
erew and bore fruit.
OLIVER EVANS
Just prior to the time that Stevens took up the problem of steam
navigation; in fact, about the time that Fitch was drawing fascinated
groups to the banks of the Delaware as his boat steamed by, a fourth,
and the youngest of the pioneer inventors in steam, began to attract
real attention in Philadelphia. Unlike his three contemporaries who
“lived and talked steamboats,” Evans talked steam carriages. He
never had the money to build one, but he did become America’s
first manufacturer of practical steam engines, introducing high-
pressure types which by their lightness and cheapness were ideally
suited to the needs of the simple colonial industries.
Evans was born in 1755 near Newport, Del., where his father
was a farmer of moderate means and of respectable standing. He
530 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
attended school until he was 14 years old and then was apprenticed
to a wheelwright or wagonmaker. Being much of a student he let
no opportunity pass to acquire knowledge such as the books of the
time afforded, devouring them by the light of a fire of wood shavings
when denied candlelight by his illiterate and stingy master. As
early as 1772, when only 17 years old, he had begun thinking of
possible ways of moving wagons by other means than animal power.
(s
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FIGURE 7.—Oliver Evans, 1755-1819. Ardent champion of steam locomotion and
founder of America’s steam-engine industry
He was about to give up such ideas as unsolvable problems when
his brother told him what some neighboring blacksmith’s boys had
done. They had stopped up the touchhole of a gun barrel, put in
some water, rammed down a tight wad, and putting the breech in
the blacksmith’s fire were able to generate steam so that the gun
discharged with a report like that of gunpowder.
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 531
To Evans, unacquainted with Huygens’ experiment, this sug-
gested a new source of power. He worked long in an effort to apply
it and was again about to give up, when by chance a book describing
the Newcomen atmospheric steam engine fell into his hands. Read-
ing this revived his hopes somewhat, for he learned something definite
of the properties of steam, and it gave him also some encouragement
as to the merit of his idea of applying the expansive force of steam
directly to move the piston. He even ventured to talk about steam
power, but soon learned that it was rather unhealthy for anyone,
least of all an insignificant apprentice, to talk openly about such
absurdities.
For the next 8 or 10 years Evans tried his hand at different jobs,
constantly looking for a chance to create some mechanical device
to replace manual labor. At one time he did design a machine for
pricking holes in leather to hold the teeth of a wool carder, but his
big opportunity came in 1782, when his two older brothers who were
millers, suggested that he join them in building a new flour mill
near his home. It took four or five years to build, but when done
the new mill was the only one in the country equipped with elevators,
conveyors, drills, and a “hopper boy,” all of Evans’ design, for the
mechanical handling of the grain, meal, and flour. With this equip-
ment the mill could be operated by one man instead of the four
who were needed in the old-fashioned mills.
Confident that his ship would soon come in, and even before the
mill was finished, Evans petitioned the Legislatures of Pennsylvania
and Maryland for exclusive rights on his flour-mill improvements,
and also (it took a lot of courage to add this) to use steam wagons
on the roads of the States. Pennsylvania granted the flour-mill
rights in 1786 but made no reference to the petition for steam-wagon
rights. The following year Maryland granted both requests, stating
with regard to the steam wagon that “it would doubtless do no
good, but certainly could do no harm.” With these grants Evans
and his brothers started out hopefully to sell their flour-mill machin-
ery, but not a single miller in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware
or Virginia would have anything to do with “such rattle traps.”
This was most disheartening to Evans for it meant delay in taking
up steam-wagon experiments, but for the next year or two, while
his brothers ran the mill, Evans continued pestering millers to buy
his equipment, and was finally rewarded with one order from the
Ellicotts in Maryland, whose mills were located in what is now Elli-
cott City.
Taking his share of the profits from this installation, Evans moved
to Philadelphia about 1790, and for the succeeding 10 years or more
lived a hand-to-mouth existence, selling an occasional bit of flour-
mill machinery and supplies. He even wrote a book called the
82322—30——_25
032 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
‘Millwright and Miller’s Guide,” but its sales did not cover the cost
of publication. All this time, too, he tried, but without success, to
induce someone to advance him the necessary capital to build an
experimental traction engine. In 1801, poor as he was, he began
work using his own limited funds.
Before the engine was completed Evans concluded that as its
principle (a high-pressure type) differed from any of those then in
use, it might be worth while to make some other application of it
than to a tractor. So he began on a small stationary steam engine,
and had it running in the winter of 1801. With it he ground plaster
of Paris, then used as a fertilizer, grinding 12 tons in 24 hours. He
also used it to saw marble. To build it had cost him $3,700 but he
got the money back very shortly when he received an order for an
engine to be used to drive a steamboat on the Mississippi River at
New Orleans. Evans delivered the engine in due time. While
awaiting installation in the boat it was used to saw lumber. It ran
thus for a year without failure, when an incendiary fire, believed to
have been the work of hand sawyers whose business had been injured
by the engine, destroyed the lumber mill. Ten years later, however,
the engine was reconditioned and used to drive a cotton press. It
never served the original purpose for which it was purchased.
As things were now looking brighter for Evans, he opened up a
shop in Philadelphia, as a regular engine builder, and was probably
the first in the United States to make a specialty of this work. One
of his first big jobs was an order from the Philadelphia Board of
Health for the building of a steam dredge to clean the docks of the
city. He completed it about July, 1805, and as his shop was a mile
and a half from the Schuylkill River where the dredge was to be
launched, Evans put wheels under the scow, and by means of a series
of belts between the engine and wheels, transported it under its own
power to the river. Evans called the dredge Oruktor Amphibolos,
or amphibious digger. Before launching it he drove the machine
around Center Square during several days, and, through advertise-
ments in the daily papers, invited anyone to visit the square and
inspect the machine. He charged each visitor 25 cents, one-half
of which he applied to his inventive work and the other half gave to
his men. This was the first steam-operated vehicle in the United
States.
Two years later Evans established the Mars Works, announcing
himself as an iron founder and steam engineer, and directed it until
his sudden death in 1819, at which time at least 50 of his engines
were in use in many eastern States. Death, however, robbed him
of the realization of his most cherished ambition.
The most logical field for a road locomotive in Evans’s day was in
hauling freight to Pittsburgh. To haul 100 barrels of flour from
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1. STEVENS’S LOCOMOTIVE DEMONSTRATION, 1825
To prove that steam locomotion was feasible, Stevens built an experimental] locomotive and operated
it on a circular track laid on the lower lawn of his estate, Castle Point, Hoboken, N. J.
Courtesy of Stevens Institute of Technology
2. REPRODUCTION OF STEVENS’S LOCOMOTIVE
This operative copy was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. in 1928 and run over a circular track
laid on the Athletic field of Stevens Institute, Hoboken, N. J.
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MATTHIAS W. BALDWIN, 1814-1866
Builder of the first successful American-built locomotive in Pennsylvania, ‘‘Old Ironsides,”’
1832, and founder of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, Pa.
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MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 533
Philadelphia to Columbia, on the Susquehanna River, required
five of the customary Conestoga wagons with five horses each and
73 hours’ time. Evans proposed at one time to one of the freighting
companies to do the same thing with one traction engine in 48 hours.
But no one in that company or any other paid the slightest attention
to him. In his disappointment he wrote in 1812 an Address to the
People of the United States in which appeared the following: ‘‘The
time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam
engines from one city to another almost as fast as birds fly, 15 to 20
miles an hour. Passing through the air with such velocity changing
the scenes in such rapid succession will be the most exhilarating, de-
lightful exercise. A carriage will set out from Washington in the
morning and the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at
Philadelphia, and sup at New York the same day.
“To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be laid * * *
made of wood or iron, on smooth paths of broken stone or gravel with
a rail to guide the carriages so that they may pass each other in dif-
ferent directions and travel by night as well as by day; and the pas-
sengers will sleep in these stages as comfortably as they do now in
steam stage boats. * * * and it will come to pass that the mem-
ory of those sordid and wicked wretches who oppose such improve-
ments will be execrated by every good man, as they ought to be now.”
Whether Evans would have been successful with his road engine no
one can say, but one can not help but admire his determination, as
well as the courage with which he expressed his convictions.
Stevens outlived Evans almost 20 years, but Evans’s death brought
to a close the first period of American invention in steam. Fitch, the
surveyor, Rumsey, the millwright, and Stevens, the lawyer-engineer,
deliberately chose one of the most difficult problems in steam-power
application. They knew, however, that better transportation was
the greatest need of the colonies at that time and devoted their lives
in an effort to bring that about. For their efforts and sacrifices the
nation owes them much honor. Evans chose to experiment with
locomotion on land, but, failing in this, founded America’s stationary
steam engine industry and pointed the way for the industrial use of
steam power. He did much to allay the fears of high-pressure steam
and gave to the milling industry, in principle, the system of mechan-
ically handling grain and flour. ‘‘Wherever the steam mill resounds
with the hum of industry, whether grinding flouron * * * the
Schuylkill, or cutting logs in Oregon, there you find a monument to
the memory of Oliver Evans.”
JOHN STEVENS
John Stevens eventually had better luck in his fight for railroads
than did Evans. When he heard in 1811 that the commission ap-
534 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
pointed by the New York State Legislature to study and recommend
a method to improve the existing overland transportation system had
suggested the building of the Erie Canal, he denounced the plan vigor- —
ously in a printed pamphlet and strongly urged a railroad. He did
not then make much of an impression, however, especially as the
canal recommendation had come from three such prominent men as
De Witt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris, and his own brother-in-law,
Robert Livingston. In 1812 he followed his pamphlet with a similar
proposal to Congress but with no better results. In 1815, when New
Jersey gave him authority to build a railroad to connect New York
and Philadelphia, he could not get the necessary financial help to con-
struct it. Refusing to be discouraged, Stevens turned to Pennsyl-
vania and succeeded in convincing Horace Binney and Stephen
Girard, two prominent Philadelphians, of the feasibility of railroads.
In 1819 the three petitioned the Pennsylvania Legislature for a rail-
road charter for a road between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. This
was granted four years later, but for a State-owned road between
Philadelphia and Columbia. The three incorporators, however, did
not possess the $600,000 estimated as necessary to build it, nor could
they entice any money from anyone else. Their continual conver-
sations and discussions about railroads had another effect, however,
in that it brought about in 1824 the organization in Philadelphia of the
Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements in
the Commonwealth. This society immediately dispatched William
Strickland, “& civil engineer, to England to study and report on rail-
ways and locomotives. The encouraging fact in this move, especially
to Stevens, was that Strickland had instructions to find out how rail-
roads and locomotives were built, not whether they were of any value,
showing that the idea of railroads had begun to take root.
Stevens next sought to stir up public interest and activity in behalf
of railroads. The placid acceptance of the pack horse and stage-
coach grated on him, and his exasperation knew no bounds when he
read in newspapers such statements as this: “I see what will be the
effect of it; that it will set the whole world a-gadding. Twenty miles
an hour, sir! Why, you will not be able to keep an apprentice boy
at his work! Every Saturday evening he must have a trip to Ohio to
spend a Sunday with his sweetheart. It will encourage flightiness
of intellect. All conceptions will be exaggerated by the magnificent
notions of distance. Only a hundred miles off! Tut, nonsense, Ill
step across, madam, and bring you your fan.’”’ As a step in practical
advertising, Stevens in 1825, when he was 76 years old, designed a
steam locomotive and operated it on a circular track on his estate at
Hoboken. Of course the number of people who actually saw this
first locomotive was limited, but these were enthusiastic, and their
account as well as the newspaper stories of the demonstrations had a
MITMAN 535
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT
very beneficial effect in modifying the antagonistic attitude toward
steam transportation.
Compared to modern locomotives Stevens’s was indeed queer look-
ing. Instead of being propelled by the tractive force of the driving
wheels, as is the method to-day, this first locomotive was moved by
means of a large gear wheel engaging a toothed rack placed on the
ties between the rails; and to keep it from running off the track—
for the wheels had no flanges—little horizontal friction rollers fixed
to posts like table legs on the underside of the chassis pressed and
rolled along the inner vertical face of the wooden beams used for
rails. Steam for the small horizontal engine was generated in an
upright multitubular boiler, also designed by Stevens. This part
is all that remains of America’s first locomotive and is now to be
seen in the National Museum.
Stevens hoped that his locomotive might be used on the proposed
State-owned Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, but legislators had
not fully made up their minds that a boiler and engine on wheels were
a good substitute for horses. When, however, Strickland came back
from England later on in that same year and submitted his wonderful
pictorial report of railroad and locomotive activities over there,
railroad opposition began to totter and a new age in America opened.
On April 4, 1827, the Delaware & Hudson Co. directed its chief engi-
neer to survey and locate a railroad route to connect its canal and
coal mines; on April 24, 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co.
came into existence; and the Charleston & Hamburg Canal & Rail-
road Co. was formed May 12, 1828, at Charleston, S. C. The Dela-
ware & Hudson Co. sent Horatio Allen to England on January 24,
1828, to purchase rails and four locomotives. The first of these, the
Stourbridge Lion, arrived in New York May 13, 1829, but after two
trials, the first on August 8, 1829, on a 6-mile track out of Honesdale,
it was set aside and never used again. Sixty years later its boiler,
one cylinder, and the four iron wheel tires, all that remained of the
locomotive which made the first run on a railroad built for traffic in
the Western Hemisphere, were deposited in the National Museum.
Finally and before 1830 rolled around, Peter Cooper, in order to
demonstrate the feasibility of steam locomotives to the stockholders
of the Baltimore & Ohio Co., built and successfully operated a little
locomotive on the company’s tracks outside of Baltimore. The
engine, called Tom Thumb, for it was no bigger than a hand car,
and Cooper himself, had but one embarassing moment. That came
when a horse and car beat Tom Thumb and car in a 13-mile race from
Ellicott City to Baltimore.
The organization of the Camden & Amboy Railroad on April 28,1830,
five years after he had received the State rights, must have given great
satisfaction to John Stevens. This was the first railroad in the State
of New Jersey and the first link in the Pennsylvania Railroad chain.
536 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Two of the company’s first officers, the president and treasurer,
were Stevens’s own sons, Robert and Edwin. By October, 1830,
Robert was on his way to England to order a locomotive and iron
rails, and about a year later, on November 12, 1831, the locomotive
John Bull was put into service at Bordentown, N. J. After some-
thing over 50 years of service the John Bull was retired with fitting
ceremonies. Since then it has rested in the National Museum,
honored as the oldest complete locomotive in America.
For a few years following the organization of the first railroad
companies, the chief topic for discussion in their meetings was the
question of motive power. Stockholders were by no means as thor-
oughly convinced that steam power ought to be used as were Stevens
and Cooper. Horse-drawn cars were employed and also horse-power
treadmill cars. A horse treadmill car hauling 24 passengers won a
$500 prize offered by the stockholders of the Charleston & Hamburg
Railroad in 1829. Cars equipped with a mast and sail were tried
on both the Charleston & Hamburg and the Baltimore & Ohio.
But when the news came from England in 1829 of the wonderful
performances of George Stephenson’s steam locomotive Rocket, all
doubts as to this new motive agent were soon removed. The steam
train came into its own.
Shortly after this time Robert Stevens forestalled a possible loss
of this new confidence, which the inevitable failure of wooden rails
might have brought on, when he perfected, had rolled in England,
and introduced in America the iron rail. Adopting the T-rail then
popular in England, he added the base and produced a rail that has
remained almost unchanged in design to this day. He also designed
the hook-headed spike, which is substantially the railroad spike of
to-day; the iron tongue which has been developed into the modern
fish plate; and the bolt and nuts to complete the joint. These
improvements laid the essential ground work on which to build the
new industry sucessfully.
LOCOMOTIVES
Who was to build the locomotives? That question had to be
answered at once. Several of the wealthier companies had purchased
locomotives in England but the cost of this was prohibitive. What
the United States had at that time in the way of machine shops
were principally forges, wheel, and millwright shops. In the large
cities, so-called foundries did all sorts of jobbing in metals, while
other shops specialized in machinery repair work, mostly of steam-
boat engines. Of these the most prominent in 1830 was the West
Point Foundry in New York, and to this concern the railroad pioneers
haturally turned. Out of this shop came the first American-built
locomotives—the Best Friend and West Point, used on the Charleston
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 537
& Hamburg Railroad in 1830 and 1831, respectively, and the Dewitt
Clinton, sucessfully operated on the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad,
the forerunner of the New York Central system, in 1831. The
foundry owners, however, did not regard locomotive building as a
very promising business, and after completing two or three additional
engines, declined further orders.
Meanwhile, as agitation in favor of railroad building intensified,
small machine shop owners, watchmakers, and even a United States
topographical engineer all dabbled in locomotive construction.
Their first big chance to show what they could do came in 1831 when
the Baltimore & Ohio offered a premium of $4,000 for a locomotive
that would pull 15 tons at a speed of 15 milesan hour. Five would-be
locomotive builders entered the competition: Johnson, a machinist
of Baltimore, in whose shop Peter Cooper assembled the Tom Thumb;
James, a mechanical genius of New York, who is said to have invented
the link motion for locomotives; Davis and Gardner, a watchmaker-
machinist combination of York, Pa.; Costell, a watchmaker of
Philadelphia; and Childs, also a watchmaker of Philadelphia. Davis
and Gardner won with their locomotive York, and Davis became
manager of the Baltimore & Ohio shops shortly afterwards. Three
years later he was killed, when one of his locomotives overturned
while on a trial run from Washington to Baltimore. Of Costell,
Childs, and Johnson, nothing further was heard after their first
venture.
Besides these somewhat casual experimentalists there were others
who organized shops specifically for locomotive building. Many
soon passed out of the picture, but a sound beginning toward an Ameri-
can locomotive works was made when Col. Stephen Long of the United
States Corps of Topographical Engineers and Jonathan Knight,
first chief engineer of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, obtained a
charter in 1830 from Pennsylvania for the American Steam Carriage
Co. When Long’s locomotive proved a dismal failure this company
came to a premature end, but it was resuscitated two years later as
Long & Norris, and operated successfully for many years. In fact
it was the admirable performance of Norris’s locomotives in England
and on the Continent in the 1850’s that first established an interna-
tional reputation for American locomotives generally.
MATTHIAS W. BALDWIN
Matthias W. Baldwin, the founder of the Baldwin Locomotive
Works at Philadelphia, was also drawn into the locomotive industry
in this period and in a rather unusual way. Though he had been a
jeweler and silversmith by trade from the age of 16, in 1830 he formed
a partnership with a machinist for manufacturing bookbinder’s tools
and calico printing cylinders. For the firm’s use Baldwin had built a
steam engine which was both unique in design and most efficient for
538 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
its day, and which had attracted quite a lot of attention, especially
from other manufacturers in Philadelphia. This might have con-
stituted his sole achievement in steam engineering had it not been
for Franklin Peale, the proprietor of the Philadelphia Museum. Peale
wanted a working model of a locomotive and train to exhibit in the
museum. He knew of the admirable work that Baldwin had done
with his steam engine, and after much pleading succeeded in getting
the latter’s promise to make the model for him. Baldwin’s acquaint-
ance with locomotives was limited to pictures and descriptions of
Stephenson’s Rocket and other English locomotives. He obtained
permission to examine the various parts of the John Bull, which had
arrived unassembled at Bordentown, N. J. Armed with these data
he set to work and had the model operating under its own steam on
April 25, 1831.
Again Baldwin returned to the making of tools for bookbinding,
but within a short while he was requested to build a full-sized locomo-
tive, this time by the officers of the newly organized Philadelphia,
Germantown & Norristown Railroad Co. They had seen his model
in the museum and were so pleased with it that they were determined
to have Baldwin build a full-sized machine for them. He had an
anxious time with this attempt, however, due mainly to the lack of
proper equipment and tools. For instance, to bore the steam cylinders
all he had was a chisel fixed in a block of wood and turned by hand.
Blacksmiths able to weld iron bars over 114 inches in thickness were
rare. Baldwin stuck to it, however, and Old Ironsides was tried out
on November 23, 1832. After three days’ trial it was put in regular
service on the railroad and continued in use for over 10 years. The
railroad officials were greatly pleased with this new accession, treated
it most tenderly and kept it home on rainy days. Their first news-
paper advertisements giving the train schedules stated that the
locomotive ‘‘will depart daily when the weather is fair” but that
‘the cars drawn by horses will depart when the weather is not fair.”
Baldwin, on the other hand, had had enough of locomotives and re-
marked to one of his friends, ‘‘ This is our last locomotive.”
It looked as if there would be as much diversity in design of locomo-
tives in America as there had been in marine engines up to that time.
No American locomotive had set the fashion as Stephenson’s Rocket
had in England and Europe generally. All five locomotives entered
in the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad competition had scarcely one point
of resemblance among them. Cooper’s Tom Thumb had an upright
boiler, as did the Best Friend, but the boiler on the West Point was
horizontal. Old Ironsides was a four-wheeled engine, had a horizontal
boiler, and was modeled essentially on the English practice of that
day, but the South Carolina, designed by Horatio Allen, chief engineer
of the Charleston & Hamburg road, was a kind of Siamese twin, with
two horizontal boilers joined stern to stern.
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 539
In the midst of this confusion Baldwin undertook his second loco-
motive. In spite of his intentions to stay away from locomotives,
the subject fascinated him so much that when E. L. Miller came to
him with an order to build a locomotive for the Charleston & Hamburg
Railroad, he accepted immediately. In the period between the com-
pletion of Old Ironsides and the receipt of this order Baldwin had
spent a good deal of time and thought on locomotives, and had
examined another English engine, the Robert Fulton, placed on the
Mohawk & Hudson Railroad in 1832.
He was particularly impressed with the alteration made on this
locomotive by John B. Jervis, chief engineer of the Mohawk, in the
substitution of a four-wheeled swiveling truck for the original two
front wheels. So, when the opportunity came to build another loco-
motive Baldwin adopted this design. He also incorporated some
improvements of his own, such as the half crank. But in the main
he simply combined old forms in a shape that produced the best loco-
motive then built. It had a boiler that anyone could understand and
that any boilermaker could repair a valve motion which was not a
mystery, arunning gear of combined strength and simplicity, and a
pair of cylinders firmly attached between smoke box and frame. Sim-
plicity was his prime object and with the completion of the E. L.
Miller as it was called, on February 18, 1834, a national type of loco-
motive was established from which the American locomotive of to-day
has come.
Thereafter Baldwin remained in the locomotive business, spending
his time in perfecting improvements not only in engine design, but
also in manufacturing methods. At the time of his death in 1866 his
company had built over a thousand locomotives, and there was left
to his successors one of the greatest industrial establishments ever
built by the genius and enterprise of one man.
TRAIN BRAKES AND COUPLERS
The first five years of the railroad era saw an increase in tracks laid
from 23 miles in 1830 to over 1,000 in 1835. To build locomotives
and passenger and freight cars to keep pace with such leaps was no
easy task. So intent were the builders on turning out satisfactory
engines—locomotives that could be depended on to move and pull the
cars——that little or no attention was paid to the problem of stopping
them»
This minor matter was left in the beginning to the ingenuity of
crews. Some of the schemes devised were ludicrous enough. On one
or two of the railroads, as a train approached a stopping point the
fireman opened the safety valve and the hiss of the escaping steam
(the whistle had not yet been invented) warned everybody at the
station to stand by. The engineer closed the throttle and coasted
540 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
sometimes as far as a half mile from the station. As the locomotive
and cars drew up to the waiting platform all hands there took hold,
dug their heels in the ground and held on till a dead stop resulted.
An adaptation of the ordinary wagon brake with wooden brake shoes
followed soon after, and a brakeman was added to the crew, who when
the time came for brakes, dropped a horizontal lever out of its notch
at the end of a car and stood on it. This scheme worked fairly well
until locomotive builders, in response to the demand of industrialists
for faster freight service, designed speedier machines, capable of run-
ning not 15 but 30 and sometimes 40 miles an hour. About this time,
too, four-wheeled car trucks came into use and the combination of
speed and additional wheels was just too much for the old lever brake.
By anumber of stages it was replaced by a hand wheel to operate iron
shoe brakes applied to both trucks of a car. If cars were properly
coupled, a brakeman could work two adjoining cars by simply stepping
from one platform to the other. This was so far ahead of all previous
devices that the railroads spent thousands of dollars to equip their
rolling stock, hoping thereby to-reduce the number of train wrecks,
both of freight and passenger trains, which were increasing at an
appalling rate.
It is a matter of regrettable history that the man who invented this
new braking system, Willard J. Nichols, never received a penny of
reward. He was a car-shop foreman on the Hartford & New Haven,
now part of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. Like
many other railroad men he had been trying for years to devise some
better form of brake, and when he finally perfected his idea he applied
it to some of the cars of his employer. He did not patent his product
so that others appropriated its valuable features, and obtained patents
in their own names. To them went the money paid by the railroads.
This was the type of brake generally used in the fifties and sixties.
With one brakeman to each two cars a train could be brought to a stop
from a running speed in about half a mile. But, as traffic on the pre-
vailing single-track roads became more congested, many were the
collisions, accompanied in many instances with large losses of life and
property. The public naturally blamed the railroads. The railroads,
in turn, pinned the responsibility partly on the brakes, and were about
convinced that nothing in the way of a real improvement could be
devised, when a young New York State Yankee came forth with his air
brake system. ;
GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE
George Westinghouse was born October 6, 1846, in Central Bridge,
N. Y., a little village not very far from Schenectady. His father
although born and bred a farmer, was at that time engaged in a small
way in manufacturing a thrashing machine containing improvements
of his own invention, as well as his patented winnowing machine and
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—-MITMAN 541
endless chain horsepower. He prospered in this undertaking and when
George was 10 years old he transferred the business to Schenectady,
where better facilities were to be had. From all accounts George
much preferred playing with the gag or tinkering in his father’s
plant to going to school. His father, in an endeavor to direct his
interests in some definite channel, offered to pay him for any of his
time spent in the plant, provided it was devoted to some specific
undertaking having to do with the business, but this had no appeal.
If he was going in the shop at all, he wanted freedom to work on his
own conceptions—mostly mechanical toys—and that is usually what
he did.
At 17 George enlisted for the balance of the Civil War, first in the
Army, and then in the Navy-as an acting third assistant engineer.
He returned home in the summer of 1865, and that autumn entered
the sophomore class of Union College at Schenectady, chiefly because
it was his father’s wish. But he could not get interested in the classics
or languages, his whole concern being with things mechanical. After
a 3-months’ trial, both his father and the college president decided
there was no use insisting any longer on a college career for George,
and he went to work for his father.
While making a business trip he observed the laborious way in which
derailed railroad cars were put back on the track. Obviously there
existed a market for a device to replace cars more expeditiously.
Within a short time he had patented his car replacer. When his
father refused to engage in its manufacture because it was foreign to
his line of work, George interested two Schenectady men in it. A
partnership was formed with Westinghouse as salesman. Manufac-
turers in Troy, New York City, and Pompton, N. J., were engaged to
manufacture the replacer as well as a new railroad frog Westinghouse
had invented, and for a year or more he traveled about selling these
devices. On one of his trips in 1867, he was an eyewitness of a head-
on collision of freight trains, and that led him to experiment with
brake mechanisms.
Many American and European inventors were working on this very
problem; all sorts of schemes had been patented and some tried.
One idea common to all was to obtain continuous braking action,
controlled, if possible, by the engineer. Westinghouse thought a long
chain running the full length of the train, to which all the brakes were
connected, might do. He was surprised, however, to find that such
a system was just then to be tried on one of the large railroads out of
Chicago. In this, a windlass on the locomotive turned by a grooved
wheel engaging the flange of one of the drivers, wound up the chain.
The inventor of this system explained everything to young Westing-
house, and when the latter dropped a hint that he was thinking of a
braking’ scheme, he was told, ‘You are throwing away your time,
542 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
young man. I went all over the ground before completing my inven-
tion, and my patents are broad enough to cover everything.”” This
did not deter Westinghouse, however. It seemed to him that to
draw the chain taut by a steam engine piston would be better than a
windlass, but he quickly realized that a locomotive with room for a
cylinder and piston large enough to take up the chain slack of a 20-car
train did not exist. Like other inventors working on the same prob-
lem, he considered individual steam cylinders for the brake gearing of
each car, only to discard the plan as unfeasible. He could not help
feeling, however, that the idea of each car having its own brake-
actuating mechanism was the correct one, if only some other form of
energy than man or steam power could be found. He did find it in
a most unexpected way.
To help a young lady through ieee school he had subscribed to
amagazine called ‘‘ The Living Age.”’ The first number he received con-
tained an account of the boring of the Mount Cenis Tunnel through
the Alps, and told of the use of rock drills operated by compressed air.
What caught Westinghouse’s attention was the fact that the air was
transmitted through pipes a distance of 3,000 feet without any appre-
ciable loss in effectiveness, and he knew then that compressed air
was the energy he should use for his brake. |
From this time on things moved rapidly. Every waking moment
was given to working out the air-brake system. ‘The desertion of his
car-replacer partners forced him to go to Pittsburgh to find another
manufacturer. When he found one who would make the replacer, and
take him on as a salesman, he filed acaveat on his air-brake system with
the Patent Office in Washington. After that, in discussion with rail-
road men about the car replacer, he also talked air brake. It was an
uphill fight lasting a good many months. He had no money to speak
of so that he had to find some one to subsidize the manufacture of one
outfit in order that he might equip a train and give a demonstration.
After many vicissitudes, including the paying of a hundred dollars to
have an expert tell him his invention was good for nothing, the
superintendent of the division of the Panhandle Railroad extending
from Pittsburgh to Steubenville, Ohio, agreed to give the brake a trial
and he found a manufacturer in Pittsburgh who would make the
equipment.
A locomotive and four passenger cars were fitted up soon afterward,
and one day in September, 1868, the train pulled out of the Pittsburgh
station, the cars filled with invited guests. It got under way quickly
and was speeding along at 30 miles an hour when suddenly every one
heard the grating sound of the brakes, suffered a violent jar, and the
train stopped. Rubbing their shins and pushing dents out of their
hats, the passengers limped out of the cars in time to see that the
cow-catcher of the engine was just about 4 feet away from a man
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 543
sprawled between the tracks, and the engineer in the act of helping the
man to his feet, unhurt. Westinghouse could not have hoped for a
more convincing demonstration than this, and was elated. After a
subsequent demonstration made with a Pennsylvania Railroad train,
which traveled all over the East and Middle West, Westinghouse was
granted his first patent of the air brake on April 13, 1869. Shortly
thereafter he organized a company in Pittsburgh and began the
manufacture of his brake.
Soon on many trains compressed air did the work of the brakeman’s
muscles, the air flowing through a pipe from a tank on the locomotive,
going to a little cylinder on each car, and moving a piston in and out to
apply or release the brakes. Troubles developed, however. The
brakes on the last cars of a train did not work as soon as those nearer the
locomotive because it took longer for the air to reach them; and again,
when the air pipe line was accidently uncoupled, the air supply to all
of the cars back of the uncoupled point was cut off and the brakes
would not operate at all. Westinghouse corrected all of this with his
clever invention of the ‘‘triple valve”? which he patented March 5,
1872. With this little device, and an air tank added to each car,
Westinghouse made the little cylinder and piston apply the brakes
when the air supply from the locomotive was cut off. No matter how
it happened—whether the engineer reduced the air intentionally, or
there was an air leak in the pipe line, or cars broke apart—the instant
the air pressure was reduced the brakes were applied on every car.
A 10-car passenger train could now be stopped when going at a speed
of 20 miles an hour in 166 feet, whereas the same train with hand
brakes required 764 feet.
This was so much better than the straight air brake which Westing-
house first perfected that it was not long before passenger trains were
all equipped. Not so with freight trains, however. They were of
much greater length and of very much greater rolling weight, and it
was 15 years after the ‘‘triple valve” was invented before the auto-
matic air brake was generally recommended and adopted for freight
cars. This came about only after Westinghouse with his improved
automatic air brake, still with the triple valve, succeeded in applying
the brakes throughout a 50-car train in two seconds. This same
system, improved in detail to take care of the modern heavy locomo-
tive and rolling stock, is in use to-day.
Westinghouse had passed 40 when the air brake was finally adopted
for all railroads. He had devoted fully 20 years of his life to bring
this about, perfecting and patenting many of the improvements him-
self. The Patent Office model of one of these, made in 1879, forms an
interesting part of the railway collections in the National Museum.
About 1890 he added electric-power equipment manufacture to the
activities of his well-established organization, and in the succeeding
544 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
25 years up to his death in 1914, built up the great Westinghouse
enterprise still prominently identified with the electrical industry.
The perfection of the air brake removed one great source of danger
that menaced railroad travelers as well as train crews, but there still
remained another, that of coupling cars in a train. The first cars
used on the railroads were simply stagecoaches equipped with flanged
wheels and coupled together with a kind of hook-and-eye arrangement.
These were followed by regularly designed cars with heavy wooden
crosspieces at each end to serve as bumpers and to hold the coupling
arrangement. In later developments some form of cross member to
serve as a bumper was retained, but instead of hooking cars together
at these crosspieces, a long iron bar called a drawbar was devised and
secured to the under side of the car some distance back of the ends.
The free end of this drawbar was split in two horizontally, and a hole
bored vertically through the two halves. ‘To couple cars there were
provided heavy iron links about a foot long and iron pins, and it was
the job of the brakeman as cars came together to guide the link into
the split end of the drawbar, and then drop the pin down the hole in
the latter to hold the link. The clearance between cars was not great,
and almost daily came reports of the injury or death of brakemen in
doing this work. The years saw the development of a great variety
of automatic coupling mechanisms, all of which gave way when all
railroads adopted that of Janney in principle.
ELI H. JANNEY
Eh Hamilton Janney was born in Loudoun County, Va., November
12, 1831. From the country schools near his home he entered
Cazenovia Seminary, at Cazenovia, N. Y., and returned on gradua-
tion to the Virginia farm. With the outbreak of the Civil War he
enlisted in the Confederate Army and served throughout that struggle
as field quartermaster, first on the staff of Gen. Robert E. Lee and then
with General Longstreet, rising to the rank of major.
The war left Janney practically penniless. He gave up his farm,
moved with his family to a little home just outside of Alexandria, Va.,
and found employment as a clerk in a dry-goods store there. Without
any special mechanical training or experience he was yet an ingenious
fellow, and the problem of coupling freight trains intrigued him. The
extensive freight yards in Alexandria accounted almost daily for injury
to a brakeman so that the problem naturally attracted his attention.
Happening one day to hook the four fingers of each hand together it
flashed into Janney’s mind that this involuntary action might be the
clue to the solution of the coupling problem. He began immediately
to whittle out small wooden models, working at night most of the time.
The deeper he got into the subject the more he learned of the host
of conditions that had to be considered, such as simplicity, ease of
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Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Mitman PEATE 18
GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE, 1846-1914
Inventor of the air brake. Founder and organizer of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing
Co., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Mitman PLATE 19
ELI H. JANNEY, 1831-1912
Inventor of the automatic coupler for railroad cars now universally used on the
railroads of North America,
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Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Mitman
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MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 545
operation, strength of parts, cheapness of manufacture, and the like.
Hight years passed during which he converted the clutching fingers
idea into a workable mechanism of cold steel and applied for a patent.
It was granted April 29, 1873.
Janney was in no position to go into the manufacture of the coupler
nor had he any market for it, but with the help of friends he succeeded
in making several in a local foundry and having them tried out on the
old Loudoun & Hampshire Railroad. They gave full satisfaction in
this test, but as Janney soon realized, this was not sufficient to attract
the attention of the great railroad companies. Car-coupler inventions
and inventors then were the bane of the railroad officials’ existence and
Janney, after a few discouraging experiences with them struck out on
another tack. For 10 years he went from one iron founder to another
with his coupler, improved year by year, until he found one in Pitts-
burgh who had sufficient faith in it to undertake its manufacture at his
own expense and try to introduce it, paying Janney a royalty. Be-
cause of his perseverance he finally induced the Pennsylvania Rail-
road to permit the equipping of 100 cars with the coupler. Again
the test proved successful.
By this time, however, coupler patents were numbered by the thou-
sands. ‘The most likely ones were in trial use and each had its cham-
pions among railroad men. All realized that for the betterment of
the service some one form of coupler should be adopted by all railroads,
but no agreement could be reached as to which one. Then, too, vari-
ous cliques had been organized on different railroads in the interest of
some patent, and in such cases arguments addressed to them were
generally wasted. Things went along in this chaotic way for a number
of years and until public indignation and the stimulus of legislation in
several States and in Congress compelled railroad officers to give seri-
ous attention to the subject. The burden of making a selection fell
to the Master Car Builders’ Association, composed of officers of rail-
road companies who were in charge of car construction, A special
track was laid outside of Buffalo, N. Y., in 1887, having all conceivable
sorts of curves, bumps, and hollows, and every coupler maker was
invited to submit his device for test.
The Janney coupler came through with flying colors and was recom-
mended for general adoption by the association. To insure the carry-
ing out of this recommendation completely, Janney magnanimously
relinquished his rights to that part of his patent bearing on the unique
curvature of the coupler jaw, so that this essential part could be made
by every manufacturer. From that time on, anyone desiring to make
couplers simply applied to the Master Car Builders’ Association for
drawings and specifications and Janney’s invention became known
universally as the M. C. B. To-day every railroad car in the United
546 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
States, Canada, and Mexico must be equipped with the M. C. B. or
Janney coupler.
Until the time of his death, in 1912, Janney was constantly experi-
menting and devising improvements for the coupler, particularly for
passenger cars. For years, even after his royalties ceased, he had
expert mechanics in his private employ, he visualizing his ideas in little
wooden models carved with a pen knife and they converting them into
finished models of wood and metal. One of each of these form most
interesting and valuable accessions in the railroad exhibits in the Na-
tional Museum. With them isa third model of the coupler improve-
ment devised and patented by Janney’s son Robert. The latter grew
up with couplers all about him and eventually became associated with
one of the large coupler manufacturers, continuing in this special field
until his death in 1923.
V. THE BIRTH OF THE TROLLEY CAR
For 20 years prior to his election as first Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution, Joseph Henry engaged in electrical researches, first at
the Albany Academy, where he was professor of mathematics and
physics from 1827 to 1833, and then at Princeton University, where
he held the chair of professor of natural philosophy from 1833 to
1846. Early in his teaching career Henry used apparatus of his
own construction to illustrate electromagnetic reactions. In 1825
William Sturgeon, of England, had made the first efficient electro-
magnet, capable of sustaining 9 pounds, to illustrate the relationship
of the earth’s magnetism to battery currents. Beginning where
Sturgeon left off, Henry developed fundamental principles and laws
upon which the modern science of electromagnetism rests. He was
the first to insulate wire for the magnetic coil; he invented the
‘““spool” or ‘‘bobbin”’ winding; he discovered the necessary law of
proportion between the electromotive force in the battery and the
resistance of the magnet. He thus worked out for the first time
the differing functions of two entirely different kinds of electro-
magnets, the one surrounded by numerous coils of no great length,
the other surrounded by a continuous coil of very great length. The
former revolutionized the feeble electromagnet of Sturgeon, and by
it Henry was able to lift 3,500 pounds, as compared to Sturgeon’s
maximum lift of 9 pounds. The latter was entirely Henry’s inven-
tion and made possible for the first time the transmission of a current
over a great distance with little loss. Every electrical dynamo or
motor now uses the electromagnet in practically the form in which
Henry left it in 1829.
Joseph Henry’s concern was the discovery of truth, not the apph-
cation of his discoveries. The officers of the Penfield Iron Works,
at Crown Point, N. Y., however, prevailed upon him to make them
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN O47 |
_asmall electromagnet shortly after his announcement of 1831. They
wanted it to magnetize the iron teeth of a machine which they used
to separate magnetic iron particles from refuse in iron ore. Occasion-
ally after the magnet was received at Crown Point it was made to
perform various stunts, such as holding a 100-pound anvil, for the
rm
i)
\
FIGURE 8.—Thomas Davenport, 1802-1851. The village blacksmith of Brandon,
Vt., whose electric motor invention of Feb. 25, 1837, was the first of its kind in
America
benefit of the villagers. In consequence its fame spread and the
Crown Point “galvanic magnet” mystery became the chief topic of
conversation for miles around.
THOMAS DAVENPORT
Twenty miles from Crown Point, in Brandon, Vt., Thomas Daven-
port, a blacksmith, and a studious one, and his friend Orange Smalley
82322—30——36
548 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
.
chanced to hear the wonderful tale of the magnet. It was especially
interesting to them for they had planned a lecture tour on scientific
subjects illustrated by experiments and they were looking for good
features to add to their repertory. Davenport traveled to Crown
Point to see the magnet, but without success. Again in December,
1833, he went to Crown Point to purchase iron, and this time he
saw the magnet and was given an exhibition of its powers.
The first question that came into Davenport’s mind concerned
the probable effect on the magnet if the current supply were alter-
nately made and broken. He asked if he might try it. When per-
mission was refused he used the $18 he had brought along to buy
iron and purchased the magnet instead. He now answered his
question himself, finding that as rapidly as he could make and break
the current supply the magnet was charged and discharged. He
realized at once that here was an available source of power. Forget-
ful that his wife and children depended on his blacksmithing for
their daily bread, he and Smalley began experiments to develop a
machine employing electromagnetism as a power agent.
In spite of his wide scientific reading Davenport was not a sub-
scriber to Silliman’s American Journal of Science and, therefore, was
not aware of just what had been done up to that time by others. The
same year (1831) that Henry amazed the world with his electro-
magnet improvements he published another paper commencing with
these words: ‘‘I have lately succeeded in producing motion in a little
machine by a power which I believe has never before been applied
in mechanics—by magnetic attraction and repulsion. Not much
importance, however, is attached to the invention, since the article,
in its preseat state can only be considered a philosophical toy; al-
though in the progress of discovery and invention it is not impossible
that the same principle, or some modification of it on a more extended
scale, may hereafter be applied to some useful purpose.” That
“philosophical toy’? now forms one of the valuable objects in the
electrical collections of the National Museum. In the Annals of
Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemistry for 1834, T. Edmondson, jr.,
of Baltimore, Md., published the first account of his apparatus to pro-
duce continuous rotary motion by the agency of an electromagnet.
Ignorant of these efforts, Davenport and Smalley worked the greater
part of 1834. They started with a permanently magnetized bar sup-
ported at its center like a magnetic needle. By placing an electro-
magnet approximately at the edge of the circle described by the mag-
net and then breaking the circuit by hand at properly timed intervals,
they found that they could keep the bar in continuous rotation.
From this they progressed, machine by machine, until by December
they completed one of 12 permanent magnets and 2 electromagnets
connected through a form of commutator consisting of wires dipping
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 549
into mercury cups to an electric battery, the whole contrivance con-
stituting unquestionably a complete embodiment of the principles of
the modern electric motor, and it revolved at a rate of speed far exceed-
ing their fondest hopes.
While Davenport felt satisfied that he had something unusual, he
wanted the opinion of a higher authority, so in January, 1835, he
tramped to Middlebury College in Vermont, to show his machine to
the professor of natural philosophy there. The latter was so struck
with it that he urged Davenport to patent the idea and even drafted
the specifications for him. While much elated and appreciative of
this assistance, Davenport felt that he could improve the machine.
In addition he was almost destitute. So he returned home and began
another machine. This time he concentrated on the make and break
or commutator mechanism, and by May, 1835, he substituted for
the mercury cups Insulated segments on the lower part of the wheel
shaft, which were rubbed by contact springs made of flattened wire.
The result was most gratifying and now appears to be the earliest
instance of the use of the modern electric commutator.
Davenport now felt ready to go to Washington for his patent.
Friends and neighbors gave him the money for his expenses. On the
advice of the Middlebury College professor he went first to Albany
and called on Amos Eaton of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. This
authority was likewise greatly impressed with the machine and ad-
vised his showing it to Professor Henry at Princeton. Henry was
delighted when he saw the model in operation, and with the courtesy
which he invariably exhibited toward deserving inventors, cautioned
Davenport to refrain from attempting large-scale experiments which,
if they failed, would not only mar Davenport’s credit as an inventor,
but also stigmatize the electromagnetic engine as a humbug. He
gave him a certificate in which he spoke highly of the novelty and
originality of the invention. Also just before Davenport left he gave
him the shock of his life by showing him his own little electromagnetic
seesaw engine. This was Davenport’s first intimation that anyone
prior to himself had even conceived the possibility of producing motive
power by electromagnetism. On Henry’s advice Davenport next
stopped in Philadelphia and operated the machine for Alexander
Bache, professor of natural philosophy at the University of Pennsyl-
vania, and also for a large group of men assembled at the Franklin
Institute. From there he went on to Washington, only to find to his
dismay, that he hadn’t enough money left to pay both for the prep-
aration of his patent application and his carfare home. Dispirited
and despondent he retraced his steps, sold his machine on the way to
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for $30, and returned to Brandon in
no happy frame of mind, fully resolved to abandon what his friends
called ‘‘visionary schemes.”
550 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Professor Eaton at Rensselaer had other ideas, however. He
published an account of Davenport’s machine in a Troy paper. Other
papers copied it and there followed all manner of critical comments
implying trickery and the like. Eaton determined to give a lecture at
which Davenport himself would appear and demonstrate his machine.
Hopelessly in debt, the inventor was in no mood for further experi-
ments with the invention which had ruined him, but he eventually
succumbed to Eaton’s pleadings and admonitions. He determined
to construct an entirely new machine adapted to railway locomotive
purposes. By working night and day he completed it in time to
appear with Eaton at his public lecture in the court house at Troy
on the night of October 14, 1835. A large and for the most part
sympathetic audience listened patiently to Eaton’s discourse but
when Davenport appeared and set his little model in motion on the
judge’s bench the applause was intense. Many must have realized
that they were witnessing the first demonstration in history of
transportation by electricity. What the audience saw was a sort
of minature merry-go-round, 24 inches in diameter, with a little
electric motor revolving horizontally. Through little gears it drove
round and round on the circular track a 3-wheeled framework to
which the motor was fastened. 'The wheel framework was pivoted
at the center of the merry-go-round, where on a little platform was
also the zine-plate battery from which wires extended to different
points of the motor.
The reception he had received inspired Davenport with confidence
that he would be able to secure the necessary capital to patent his
invention, and to build full-sized machines. His first partner’s
enthusiasm soon dwindled. Then he joined Ransom Cook who
furnished the money to build new and always more powerful models
and to give exhibitions throughout New England. Presumably the
partners were able to sell their old models as improved ones were
built, for one of them, a working model of the electric railway made
about 1836, came into the possession of the Troy Female Seminary.
Many years later it was presented to the American Institute of
Electrical Engineers, which in turn presented it to the National
Museum in 1898. Since then it has been on exhibition in the Museum’s
engineering section.
The year 1835 and almost the whole of 1836 passed without any
material success in the way of electric motor or railway business.
Davenport had been able to raise enough money to build a model of
his electric motor and make application for a patent, but the Patent
Office fire of December 15, 1836, destroyed both the model and all
of the papers relating to his application. With Cook’s help he tried
again, submitting another model, and this time received his patent
on February 25, 1837. For years the model was kept in the Patent
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 551
Office, but since 1908 it has formed one of the interesting objects
of the electrical collections in the National Museum. Just a few
months after receiving this patent, Davenport and Cook were hypno-
tized by the soft words of a New York ‘‘promoter”’ to form a joint
stock company to exploit the patent. A year later they found them-
selves minus $5,000 of their own money which they had spent in
experiments and in the construction of progressively more practical
motors, and the promoter gone.
Cook gave up in disgust, and Davenport, again alone, tried for four
or five years longer to maintain public interest, in the hope of finding
capital to establish an electric-motor factory. He sent a representa-
tive to England and France to obtain patents, and also to exhibit
both his motor and railway; he undertook to publish a technical
journal called ‘“‘The Electro-magnet and Mechanic’s Intelligencer,”
printing the paper on a press operated by one of his motors. After
two or three issues he gave that up. Finally, early in 1848, his nervous
system enfeebled by so many years of incessant toil and anxiety and
lack of proper nourishment gave way under the strain and he became
dangerously ill. He recovered, but his constitution was permanently
impaired, and after residing two or three years longer at Brandon,
he retired to a small farm in Salisbury, Vt., where he passed the few
remaining years of his life, dying July 6, 1851, just 49 years old.
Like Fitch and Rumsey, Davenport was ahead of his time. The
steam engine and locomotive were just coming into their own in the
public regard and conditions had not yet arisen demanding other
forms of power. Asa matter of fact, more than 30 years passed after
Davenport’s death before either the electric motor or the electric
railway became actualities. When they did they were Davenport’s
ideas with incidental improvements.
VI. THE COMING OF THE AUTOMOBILE
The year that James Watt obtained his important steam engine
patent (1769) a French Army engineer, Nicholas Joseph Cugnot,
built and operated his third steam carriage. It was really a tractor
and was used for a short time to pull heavy artillery. This was the
world’s first successful self-propelled vehicle on common roads. In
1784 one of Watt’s representatives, William Murdock, made a small
working model of a high-pressure steam carriage which performed
very well. As a result he tried to have Boulton & Watt go into the
manufacture of steam carriages, but Watt would have none of it.
In a letter to Boulton in 1786 he wrote: ‘‘I am extremely sorry that
William still busies himself with the steam carriage. In one of my
specifications (patent) I have secured it as well as words could do it
according to my ideas of it; * * * J have still the same opinions
concerning it that I had; but to prevent as much as possible more fruit-
as ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
less argument about it, I have one of some size under hand, and am
resolved to try if God will work a miracle in favor of these carriages.
I shall in some future letter send you the words of my specification
on that subject. In the meantime I wish William could be brought
to do as we do, to mind the business in hand, and let such as Syming-
ton and Sadler throw away their time and money hunting shadows.”
These remonstrances seem to have had the desired effect of bringing
Murdock to abandon his ideas, but for over a hundred years there-
after, first in Europe and later in the United States, inventors
designed and built steam carriages, wagons, and coaches. Each
succeeding decade showed improvements in this mode of locomotion
over the preceding one until it seemed a foregone conclusion that
steam would displace the horse as the motive power on highways.
Meanwhile, however, a number of other inventors were quietly
experimenting with another form of power—exploding gases in an
engine cylinder. Way back in 1678 the Dutch astronomer, Huygens,
had attempted this, using gunpowder, and in 1794 an English inven-
tor, R. Street, had obtained a patent on an explosive engine using
gases distilled from turpentine. Five years later a French mechanic,
Le Bon, invented a similar engine using street-lighting gas and an
electric spark to ignite it. After that an increasing number of indi-
viduals took up the task of devising a practical engine of this type.
In the United States, Stuart Perry, of New York, patented his ideas
of such engines between 1844 and 1846. They included both the air
and water cooled types and used turpentine gases as fuel. Alfred
Drake, a Philadelphia physician, patented an ‘‘ignition-gas engine”
in 1855, exhibited a full-sized one at the American Institute Fair in
New York that year, and even advertised engines for sale. It is not
known whether any of these were actually ordered or put into service.
The succeeding decade saw even more rapid progress. In 1860
Jean Joseph EK. Lenoir in France designed, patented, and built the
first practical gas engine, for which he was decorated by the Academy
of Sciences. That invention set on foot in Europe a prosperous
industry building gas engines. They burned street gas and took
the place of stationary steam engines. Little or no thought was given
to the possibility of adapting the new gas engines to road vehicles.
But with the unexpected discovery in the United States of an ample
quantity of a preferable fuel, the new industry was brought up short,
changed direction, and headed for the conquest of the open road.
Col. Edwin L. Drake had succeeded in 1859 in drilling an oil well
near Titusville, Pa., and tapping a petroleum reservoir from which
flowed 1,000 barrels of oil a day. It had been known for some time
that petroleum contained light liquid fuels which were even more
practical than gas for an engine, but there was so little petroleum
available that its use received but little attention. Drake’s success
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—-MITMAN 553
changed all this. The first oil boom began and daily new wells came
in, yielding additional thousands of barrels of oil. The last stumbling
block to the development of an oil engine had been removed and
inventors buckled down to the task.
George Brayton in Boston, with almost 20 years’ study of and
experiment with explosives back of him, devised and patented his oil
engine in 1874. In 1876 N. A. Otto, of Cologne, Germany, obtained
his American patent for the 4-cycle gasoline engine—the type now
universally used for automobiles. George B. Selden, of Rochester,
N. Y., filed his application for a patent on a gasoline-engined horse-
less carriage in 1879, using a Brayton typeengine. Gottlieb Daimler,
of Germany, produced the first lightweight, high-speed gasoline engine
around 1883, and on March 4, 1887, harnessed it to wheels and success-
fully ran the first gasoline-propelled vehicle.
Daimler’s accomplishment proved a revelation of the possibilities
in highway transportation. Soon others were following his lead:
Benz in Germany; Napier, Lancaster, Royce, and Austin in England;
and Peugeot, De Dion, Renault, Bollee, Panhard, and Levassor in
France. Before yielding to others, Panhard and Levassor evolved
the present-day automobile, the chassis separate from the body; the
engine placed upright and in front under a hood; the clutch and
transmission gears back of the engine; and chain drive to the rear
wheels. Except for the Substitution of shaft for chain drive their
design of 1895 is practically the same as that of the automobile of 1929.
Americans were by no means asleep during these stirring times in
Europe and were only a little behind their foreign contemporaries in
building and successfully running gasoline vehicles. Although Selden
was the first to announce publicly his intentions in this direction by
applying for a patent, he spent his time in juggling the application
and keeping it alive in the Patent Office for 16 years and did not con-
struct a single machine during this time.
Two middle westerners, on the other hand, Charles EK. Duryea and
Elwood G. Haynes, went at the problem the other way round—build-
ing machines first—and it was the successful performance of Duryea’s
cars, followed almost immediately by those of Haynes, that made the
gasoline automobile a reality to the people of the United States. The
manufacture and.sale of their first machines mark the beginning of
the great American automobile industry.
CHARLES E. DURYEA
On his father’s farm, 4 miles from Canton, Ill., Duryea was born
December 15, 1861. His boyhood came just at the time when ma-
chinery was being rapidly adopted for farm use so that he became
quite familiar with a wide variety of mechanical devices. Transpor-
tation had always fascinated him, however, and almost as soon as he
554 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
learned to read he obtained what books and magazines he could on
the subject. When in his teens, velocipedes came into vogue and
from descriptions In some magazines he built one out of old carriage
wheels. <A short while after that he went to what was known as a
seminary, and for his graduation thesis in 1882 he chose the subject
‘Rapid transit,’’ discussing transportation on land, on water, and in
the air.
Duryea taught school for a year and then tried his hand at the
carpenter and millwright trades for a while. Later he went to St.
Louis and got a job in a bicycle-repair shop. Three years later he
was selling bicycles of his own design and made by several manufac-
turers. He continued in the bicycle business for over 10 years both
in St. Louis and in Washington, D. C., and as a side line, was a h-
censed steam engineer. He helped a Washington inventor con-
struct a steam bicycle and tricycle, but he could not work up much
enthusiasm for these because of another type of engine which he had
seen. At the Ohio State Fair at Columbus in 1886 he had had an
exhibit of his bicycles. Next to his stand a gasoline engine had been
exhibited, the first he had ever seen. It was a clumsy affair weighing
about a ton, although only developing 2 horsepower. The carbu-
retor consisted of a tin tank larger than a wash boiler stuffed with
excelsior. Duryea felt that in time this engine would be refined into
a more portable unit. Nor did he have long to wait, for that same
year he read of Daimler’s newly patented light-weight engine. By
1891 he concluded that the public would be ready to buy horseless
carriages as soon as he could make them.
That summer he went to Springfield, Mass., where the Ames
Manufacturing Co. was making bicycles for him, and while the plant
was shut down in August began some gasoline-engine experiments.
Daimler engines were then available in the United States but they
seemed too big and heavy for Duryea’s purpose. While his brother
Franklin, a toolmaker for the Ames Co., conducted the experiments,
Charles, with a pencil figured and sketched and sketched and figured
for the rest of the year on a design for a gasoline buggy. Atlast he
employed an artist to make two pictures of the contraption, based on
his descriptions and sketches.
Armed with these pictures, Duryea set out to raise money to build
the machine. Luckily he found a man in Springfield willing to risk
some of his, so Duryea set to work early in 1892. First he hired
a draftsman to make detailed drawings of the various parts. Then
he let contracts to make the parts. He rented the second floor of a
machine shop in March. He purchased and brought to the shop a
lady’s phaeton, with top, regulation oil lamps, whip socket, and so on.
Assembling began as soon as the parts started to come in. With the
completion of each unit for the buggy it was tested and any changes
MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—MITMAN 555
thought desirable were made, but by September 12, 1892, it was so
nearly completed that the engine was cranked up and the machine
operated on the shop floor to find out ‘‘how powerfully it pulled.”
When fully assembled the next month, test runs were made in an
empty lot adjoining the shop and also on the streets of Springfield at
night when there were less horses to scare.
While the carriage did not stall, the engine proved disappointingly
low in power, so that shortly after these October trials the machine
was taken back into the shop, the engine torn out, and a new one
started. Duryea felt, too, that heavier parts were needed about the
rest of the vehicle so he dismantled the whole during the winter and
started a second one immediately. Following the same design as the
first, the second carriage was finished late in the summer of 1893
and successfully tried out on the road in September of that year.
Thirty years later this same machine came to light in a barn in
Springfield, Mass., covered with dirt, its metal parts thick with rust,
and its leather dashboard stiff and hard. The National Museum
was immediately notified and, disheveled as it is, it now proudly heads
the line of historic automobiles there.
The successful demonstrations of these first horseless carriages
did not suffice to cause the public to sell its horses and rush pell-mell
to Duryea with orders. Oats were still too cheap. Duryea also
realized after seeing a Daimler car and an electric vehicle at the
World’s Fair in Chicago, that he had aimed too low in putting out
a machine to sell for $500, so he and his brother began immediately
on a third, this time a ‘‘quality”’ car.
As with the earlier carriages, this one went through much pre-
liminary experimenting with engines, transmissions, electric ignition,
and the like, but eventually, in March, 1895, a 2-cylinder, pneumatic-
tired buggy was on the road. It was immediately turned over to a
promoter who used it almost daily during that sprig and summer in
attempts to seduce capital to start an automobile business. Even
with this green driver it never failed once. It had some of the features
of the modern automobile such as a water-cooled engine with water
pump, a bevel-gear transmission with three speeds forward and
reverse, electric ignition, and, like the preceding cars, it had a rigid
front axle with steering knuckles at the ends. It was steered by a
tiller handle, the up-and-down motion of which changed the speeds—
‘fone hand control.”
On Thanksgiving Day, 1895, America’s first automobile race took
place, the run being over snowy roads from Chicago to Waukegan, a
distance of 52 miles. Duryea entered this same machine and won
the race and the money prize. It was the only car in the race (the
others were foreign makes or electrics) to cover the distance without
being pushed and to return to its garage the same day.
556 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
In the meantime the Duryea Motor Wagon Co. had been organized
in Springfield Mass., and during the winter of 1895-96 13 motor
carriages were built and sold—the first automobiles to be regularly
made for sale in the United States. Thus the great ambition of
America’s pioneer automobile manufacturer, Charles E. Duryea,
became an accomplished fact.
ELWOOD G. HAYNES
If an automobile could have been purchased anywhere in the
United States in 1890, it is more than likely that Elwood Haynes
would never have had the notion of building one. He was engaged
in the production of oil and gas and his duties obliged him to travel
constantly with a horse and buggy. He wanted a faster conveyance
and could not find one, so he undertook to make one for himself.
Haynes was born in Portland, Ind., on October 14, 1857. When he
was 14—that experimental age—someone gave him a book on chem-
istry. What he subsequently read fascinated him to such an extent
that he tried to carry out some of the experiments described and with
the crude apparatus he could devise he made oxygen gas, hydro-
cloric acid, and a few other things. That serious play gave the first
clue to his ingenuity; it started him on an inventive career; and it
brought about the decision to make chemistry and metallurgy his
life work.
Haynes prepared for college and entered Worcester Polytechnic
Institute at Worcester, Mass., in 1877. His thesis on graduation
dealt with The Effect of Tungsten on Iron and Steel. He returned
home, but three years later he enlisted in a postgraduate course at
Johns Hopkins University in chemistry and metallurgy. A year
later he became the science teacher in the Eastern Indiana Normal
School at his home in Portland and taught for three years. Just
about that time the natural gas and oil business began to boom around
Portland. Haynes joined the new industry and from 1889 to 1892 he
served as manager of the Portland Natural Gas & Oil Co. Visiting
the company’s wells by horse and buggy proved too slow for him and
led him to seek a speedier substitute.
Haynes considered three possible sources of power—steam, elec-
tricity, and gasoline. He soon eliminated the first two. No machine
shop existed in Greentown, Ind., and no facilities of any kind for
building a machine, so that he was restricted to the drawing of a few
sketches of possible mechanisms. In 1892, however, he moved to
Kokomo, and soon afterward made some rough sketches of a self-
propelled vehicle. In the fall of 1893 Haynes bought a single-cylinder,
1-horsepower gasoline engine, made by the Sintz Gas Engine Co. of
Grand Rapids, Mich. Next, after much deliberation and examination
of various styles of carriages, he purchased a single buggy body as
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MECHANICAL TRANSPORT—-MITMAN 557
being best suited for his proposed vehicle. He had considered the
problem of putting together the two units which he had already pur-
chased into a workable whole, and had his plans rather completely
worked out before deciding in which of the machine shops of Kokomo
he would have the work done. But late in the autumn he made
financial arrangements with Elmer Apperson, proprietor of the River-
side Machine Works, to do the work. Haynes stood alone in having
faith in the successful development of his idea, and it was only upon
his assuming full responsibility for the success or failure of the ma-
chine that Apperson would take on the job.
His first disappointment came when he realized that the heavy
vibration: of the engine was far more than the buggy he had bought
could stand and that a special framework would have to be constructed.
Accordingly a hollow square of steel tubing was made and the buggy
seat, floor, and dash secured to it. The rear cross member of the
square constituted the rear axle and the engine was swung within the
square and just in front of the axle. By means of sprocket chains the
engine power was transmitted to a countershaft forward beneath the
seat and from there back to the rear wheels by another set of chains.
As the work progressed, Apperson and his brother Edgar, a bicycle-
repair man, became more and more interested in the machine and
numerous suggestions made by them pertaining to the mechanical
arrangement as well as the mode of construction were incorporated.
A flat rectangular gasoline tank was installed under the floorboards,
while the water tank for.cooling found a place under the seat cushion
with a small rubber hose connecting it to the engine. The machine
had no radiator. The engine was started by cranking from the side,
the crank being poked between spokes of the right rear wheel.
By the Ist of July, 1894, the machine stood ready for the finishing
touches. It had solid rubber-tired wire wheels and a tiller handle
steering mechanism. On July 4 Haynes decided to give it a road
test. Word got out about his plans and so many people crowded
around the Apperson shop when the much talked-of horseless car-
riage was pushed into the street that Haynes decided to hold his test
outside of the city. A horse-drawn carriage pulled the machine 3 or
4 miles out into the country. For safety’s sake the faithful horse was
first driven some distance to the rear. Then they cranked the engine,
Haynes and Apperson got aboard, Haynes threw in the friction
clutch, and the horseless buggy moved forward out Pumpkinvine
Pike. Fora mile and a half two delighted men ‘‘flew”’ at an estimated
speed of 6 or 7 miles an hour, then turned the machine around and
drove all the way into town and to Haynes’ house without a stop.
Haynes now had the horseless carriage he had been looking for
since 1890. He abandoned the gas business and busied himself about
the commercial possibilities of this new transportation agent. Haynes
558 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
entered his car in the Chicago auto race of 1895 and drove it there
for the meet. Though he did not win the race he did get a prize of
$150 for having the best-balanced motor of any of the machines
there. In 1898 he organized the Haynes-Apperson Automobile Go.,
and built 50 cars that year in spite of the warnings of advisors that
the horseless carriage was only a plaything for the wealthy. After
four years as president of this company he became president of the
Haynes Automobile Co., serving in this capacity for a number of
years but eventually retiring to resume his work in metallurgy. In
this field he continued actively until his death in 1926. Even when
president of the automobile company, Haynes gave his main atten-
tion to the metallurgical side of the industry. He was a pioneer in
the introduction of nickel, steel, and aluminum in engine construction
and also was much interested in the improvement of the carburetor.
For upwards of 16 years Haynes cherished his first horseless car-
riage but in 1910 he reluctantly parted with it to the National Mu-
seum where it now stands second in the line of America’s pioneer
automobiles.
SUMMARY
Approximately 2,000 years elapsed between the time that steam was
first brought to man’s attention by the philosopher, Hero, and the
time that it was put to practical use. Then began the industrial rey-
olution and in one-tenth of the time since, the world has reached its
present high plane of mechanical civilization. In England, the
economic necessity of removing water from her coal mines stimulated
inventive action, while the need of better transportation facilities to
hold together a vast territory to be, was the spur in America.
To-day two-fifths of the railroad plants in the world are within
the boundaries of the United States as well as four-fifths of the world’s
motor cars—facts which indicate the vast extent to which the people
of America use transportation.
THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE: A BRIEF HISTORY OF
THE SEWING MACHINE
By Freperick L. Lewron
Curator, Division of Textiles, United States National Museum
rt
[With 8 plates]
THE SONG OF THE SHIRT
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread,—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt;
And still with a voice of dolorous pitech—
Would that its tone could reach the rich!—
She sang this ‘‘Song of the Shirt!’’
—Tuomas Hoop.
WHY THE SEWING MACHINE WAS INVENTED
The sewing machine, like most important inventions, was the
result of the needs of its time and was thought out and brought into
practical reality when the demand became acute for more speed and
increased production in the manufacture of garments. The poverty
of England’s seamstresses as told in Hood’s The Song of the Shirt, the
need of uniforms for clothing the army in France, and the periodically
sudden needs for garments by the whale fishermen of New Bedford
and other New England fishing ports, all were reflected in attempts
to improve upon sewing by hand. When these various attempts did
appear they attracted but little attention at first except from those
who feared their means of earning a living would be taken from them
if a machine to sew would become a possibility. The machines of
Barthelemy Thimonnier engaged in sewing uniforms for the army in
France were destroyed by a mob, and the development of what
promised to be America’s first practical machine (that of Walter
Hunt in 1834) was laid aside for fear of taking the bread out of the
mouths of the seamstresses.
Even though sewing machines formed one of the most interesting
exhibits at the ‘‘great exhibition” in the Crystal Palace at London
559
560 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
in 1851, the important part they were to play in the life of the people
of the whole world was so little appreciated that no mention was made
of them in the long list of achievements discussed by writers of the
time. A series of reviews and essays under the general title of Gifts
of Science to Industry, which appeared in the London Times during
the progress of the ‘‘great exhibition”’ in 1851, discuss the outstanding
achievements of the times as shown at the exhibition but make no
mention of the sewing machine.
While the first idea of a sewing machine appeared in England the
credit for producing the first practical machine belongs to Americans.
The possibility of sewing by machinery was practically demonstrated
over 100 years ago; but it required the combined efforts of a genera-
tion of inventors to improve the sewing machine so as to make it
really a labor-saving instrument. Its history is a record of rapid
advancement in mechanical movements and combinations of devices,
which had apparently never been thought of until the close of the
eighteenth century. While a great many people have contributed,
by their powers of invention, to the present perfection of the sewing
machine, and are therefore entitled to due honor and praise for the
results of these labors, still the names of Thomas Saint, Barthelemy
Thimonnier, Walter Hunt, Elias Howe, jr., Allen B. Wilson, Isaac
Merrit Singer, and James EH. A. Gibbs, must always be recognized as
those of men in whose minds the idea of a sewing machine was first
conceived in anything like the form in which it has been preserved
until now, and whose early crude productions contained any of those
features that have been found to be essential after so many years of
improvement and progress.
The fascinating story of the invention of this most useful household
servant is best told by revealing a few incidents in the lives of several
of these great inventive geniuses who contributed most to make ma-
chine sewing practicable. Thimonnier, Hunt, Howe, Wilson, Singer,
and Gibbs—among the thousands who have spent months and years
of effort to improve upon the hand method of sewing, these six stand
out as shining stars of great brilliance in a firmament already bright
with hosts of others.
THOMAS SAINT
The idea of a machine that would use a needle and thread for the
purpose of sewing together two or more pieces of cloth or leather
after the manner in which this had been done by human hands for
thousands of years appears to have been first thought out by an
Englishman, Thomas Saint, who in 1790 received a patent for a
machine for sewing leather. His drawings show certain features
which are essential to the sewing machines used to-day, but so far
as known Saint’s idea was not put to any practical use by him.
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON 561
BARTHELEMY THIMONNIER
Thirty-five years later, a poor French tailor, entirely ignorant of the
principles of mechanics, became so absorbed with the idea of produc-
ing a machine to sew the seams of garments, that he spent four years
endeavoring to make it sew, only working at his trade enough to
obtain for his family the barest necessities of life. He worked alone
and in secret and so neglected his business that he was looked upon as
little more than crazy. By 1829 he had mastered the mechanical
difficulties and had produced a sewing machine which made the chain
stitch by means of a hooked needle like a crochet needle. The next
year he was given a patent on his machine and soon attracted the
attention of a skillful engineer who took Thimonnier and his machine
to Paris. By 1831 he had made so much progress that he was made a
member of a prominent clothing firm and had 80ofhis sewing machines
at work upon uniforms for the French troops. But the tailors looked
upon the new invention as a dangerous competition and an infuriated
mob smashed every machine they could find, forcing the inventor
to flee for his life. We see poor Thimonnier trudging homeward from
Paris with his sewing machine on his back and exhibiting it as a
curiosity for a living. Later he tried to provide for his family by selling
handmade wooden machines for $10 each. He kept on trying to
perfect his machine and by 1845 he had so improved it that he was
able to sew at the rate of 200 stitches per minute. At this time he
obtained the help of a friend named Magnin to manufacture the ma-
chines, and he soon had a machine capable of sewing all kinds of fabrics
from fine muslin to leather. The revolution of 1848 put a stop to his
sewing-machine business and Thimonnier went to England for a short
time. Together with Magnin he secured a patent for his machine in
England in 1849 and the next year the United States granted him one,
but by this time other inventors had entered the field with more
practical machines.
Thimonnier sent his machine to the Universal Exhibition in London
in 1851, but through a mistake it was not seen by the judges and no
attention was paid toit. This greatly discouraged him and although
he continued to work with his machine for a few years his lifelong
struggle had exhausted him and he died in poverty in 1857, aged 64
years. When we see Thimonnier’s lifelong effort and bitter struggles
continued in spite of so many failures, we must believe that the man
was possessed of more than an ordinary share of energy and persever-
ance, and that his failure to popularize his machine was due to the
times in which he lived and the people among whom he sought to
introduce it. In one sense his life was a total failure, for he reaped
none of the wealth which was showered upon many of the pioneers in
the sewing-machine trade; but before he died he had the realization
562 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of his lifelong dream—that of seeing the sewing machine recognized as
one of the most efficient labor-saving inventions of our civilization and
its manufacture and sale a prosperous business.
WALTER HUNT
About the time that Thimonnier had so developed his invention
that 80 of his machines were sewing for the French Army, an inven-
tive Quaker genius in New York City was turning his attention to a
sewing machine. This man, Walter Hunt, was then 39 years old and
already had to his credit a number of useful inventions such as
a flax-spinning machine, a knife sharpener, gong bells, a yarn twister,
the first stove to burn hard coal, etc. From 1835 to the year 1859,
when he died, Hunt had invented a greater number and a greater
diversity of fundamental original ideas than any known man of his
time, which in their original or some modified form are in use to-day.
Among his inventions of this period were the following: Machinery
for making nails and rivets, ice plows, velocipedes, a revolver, a re-
peating rifle, metallic cartridges, conical bullets, paraffin candles,
a street-sweeping machine, a student lamp, paper collars, and the
safety pins which mothers find so indispensable in the nursery. His
friend J. R. Chapin, a draughtsman, who prepared many drawings
to accompany Hunt’s application for patents, says of the safety pin,
that 1t was thought out, a model made of an old piece of wire, and the
idea sold for $400, all within the space of three hours, in order to
pay a debt of $15 which Hunt owed him.
In addition to possessing a marvelously original and inventive turn
of mind, Hunt was a diligent student and had an extensive acquaint-
ance with the mechanical and scientific literature of his time. Some-
where between the years 1832 and 1834, Walter Hunt made in his
shop on Amos Street, New York City, a machine “‘for sewing, stitch-
ing, and seaming cloth.” This first machine was quite successful,
so that others like it were built by the inventor assisted by his brother,
Adoniram.
Many samples of cloth were sewn by these machines, and friends
and neighbors of the inventor came to see them work. While Hunt’s
machine could not be made to do curved or angular work, nor sew
a continuous seam for more than a few inches without removing and
readjusting the cloth, it was capable of doing certain classes of work
with speed and accuracy and to that extent must be regarded as a
practical success, even though it was still incapable of the general
adaptation which sewing machines afterwards attained. Walter
Hunt’s invention, however, contained nearly all the essential parts
of the best modern machines. He used an eye-pointed needle, moved
by a vibrating arm, working in combination with a shuttle carrying
a second thread so as to make an interlocked stitch fully as well as
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON 563
it is done by our present improved machines. The cloth feed was
no doubt imperfect, which thus made the machine of little practical
value, but for all that it was a step in the right direction, and was
undoubtedly the pioneer of the present sewing machine, and far
in advance of anything which had been done before it.
In 1834, Hunt had sold a half interest in his machine to George
A. Arrowsmith, a blacksmith, who conducted the Globe Stove Works
on Gold Street, New York City, and was the employer of Walter
Hunt’s brother, Adoniram F. Hunt. At the request of Arrow-
smith, Adoniram built a second machine of wood according to Walter’s
plans which so impressed Arrowsmith with its value that he bought
the other half interest in the invention from Walter Hunt, with the
intention of developing it, Hunt agreeing to assist him in preparing
drawings for the securing of a patent. Financial difficulties, the
opposition on religious and moral grounds of friends of the hosts of
hand sewers, who would thus be deprived of a means of livelihood,
and the realization of the size of the undertaking comprised in manu-
facturing and selling such a machine, discouraged Arrowsmith from
doing anything with his purchase from Hunt. In the meantime, in
1835, Arrowsmith, who had business interests in Baltimore, sent
Adoniram Hunt there. Adoniram took with him his sewing machine
and demonstrated it to his friend, Joel Johnson, with whom he was
staying. The next year he writes to Johnson: “I made that sewing
machine that I had at your house work to a charm,” and adds that
he desires to build a stronger machine, all of iron.
In 1838, Walter Hunt suggested to his daughter Caroline, then a
girl about 15 years of age, that she engage in the business of manu-
facturing corsets with the aid of the sewing machine made by him.
After discussing the matter with older women, experienced in the
business, Miss Caroline declined to go into the business and use the
new invention to perform the difficult heavy stitching required, for
the sole reason that the introduction of such a machine would be
injurious to the interests of hand sewers, and would be very unpopular.
The invention appears to have dropped completely out of sight
until the successful introduction of sewing machines drew attention
to it some 15 years later, when a search for the old machines resulted
in the discovery of essential parts of both of the Hunt machines in a
garret in Gold Street, New York City, where they had been thrown
among a lot of rubbish recovered from a fire.
Hunt himself, like most inventors, was then working on other ideas
and was satisfied that he had invented, built, and put into practical
operation, a machine capable of doing mechanical sewing with speed
and precision, and having sold the invention—as he had many
others—for a mere trifle, felt at that time no further urge to manu-
facture it. He later bought back from Arrowsmith his entire interest
82322—380——_37
564 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
in the invention and in 1853 built a third machine after his original
plans, for the demonstration of his principles of sewing in a famous
suit for infringement of patent rights. It was characteristic of him
that he was all the time too much occupied with turning out new
inventions to pay any attention to the development of the old, or to
make the necessary efforts toward securing for himself a fair share of
the profits derived from them. It was his misfortune that although
he was a great inventor who could conceive ideas and mold them
into practical shape, he was otherwise as simple as a child and lacked
sufficient business sense to lead to success. He usually made his
contracts in a loose and careless manner, was reckless and extrava-
gant in spending and always in want of money, so that his inventions
were usually sold before they were patented. Hunt’s machine was
undoubtedly the pioneer of the present sewing machine. It was his
misfortune that his brain was too full of other and later inventions
to admit of his pursuing this one to a successful development and
that he did not reap his share of the splendid rewards which were
showered so lavishly upon others. Let us not for that reason deprive
him of what he is justly entitled to claim, the credit of having been
the inventor of the first sewing machine which contained all the ele-
ments of practical and commercial success.
ELIAS HOWH, JR.
How often it is that a chance remark falls upon receptive ears other
than those to which the remark was addressed, and brings forth
astonishing results. In Boston, in 1839, an undersized, curly-headed
youth of 20, gravely listening to an argument over the operation of a
knitting machine between two men and his employer in a machine
shop, heard the latter say: ‘‘What are you bothering with a knitting
machine for? Why don’t you make a sewing machine’’? ‘It can’t
be done,” said one. ‘‘Oh, yes it can,” said the owner of the shop; “‘I
can make a sewing machine myself.” ‘Well, you do it, Davis,” said
the other, ‘“‘and J’ll insure you an independent fortune.” The
emphatic assurance of the well-dressed, prosperous-looking speaker
that a fortune was in store for the man who should invent a sewing
machine greatly impressed the shy farm boy unused to city ways, who
had already amused himself with inventing some slight improvements
of appliances in the machine shop where he worked as an apprentice.
There were other reasons, too, why such a trifling conversation should
remain in his mind, for steady labor was not to his liking, and a kind of
lameness which he had had since his birth frequently made his tasks
painful.
He was not very proficient in his trade of machinist and not inclined
to put forth much exertion. He was, however, of a thoughtful turn
of mind and the conversation he had heard over the value of a sewing
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON 565
machine set him to watching the process of sewing as performed by
hand, and to wonder if there was a way to accomplish it by machinery.
This youth, Elias Howe, jr., born on his father’s farm at Spencer,
Mass., in 1819, had his attention directed at an early age to mechanics.
There were a grist mill, a saw mill, and a shingle-cutting machine on the
home place, but all of these and the farm together barely sufficed for
the needs of the family of eight children.
When but 6 years old, Elias Howe worked with his brothers and
sisters at sticking wire teeth into strips of leather to make cards used in
the spinning of cotton. After ‘living out” for a year with a farmer in
the neighborhood, he returned home to work in the mills there until
he was 16. Then he obtained a learner’s place in a factory in Lowell,
Mass., making cotton machinery, until the financial panic of 1837
closed the shop and forced him to look for work again. Finally he
found work in the shop of Ari Davis, an ingenious mechanic, where
occurred the conversation already related.
When Howe was 21, and still a journeyman machinist, earning $9 a
week, he married and before long there were three children to be fed
and clothed out of his weekly wage. About the year 1843, the pres-
sure of poverty and the fatiguing nature of his work, forced him to
make earnest attempts to invent the machine which he had heard
four years before would bring an independent fortune to the inventor.
He wasted many precious months in endeavoring to copy the motions
of his wife’s arm when sewing, using a double-pointed needle with the
eye in the middle. One day the idea came to him of using two
threads and forming a stitch with the aid of ashuttle. By October, 1844,
he had constructed a model which convinced him that he had a
machine which would really sew. At this time he set up a lathe and a
few tools in the garret of his father’s house at Cambridge, Mass., and
brought his family to the house, giving up his job as journeyman
mechanic. He had his invention worked out in his head but these
ideas could only really be tested by the construction of an accurately
working model of metal. He was desperately poor and could barely
provide the necessities of life for his family.
The money needed to purchase the raw materials for a working
model that would put into concrete form his mental picture of a
wonderful machine seemed beyond his reach. His earnestness, how-
ever, convinced a friend and former schoolmate, George Fisher, then
a coal and wood dealer in Cambridge, of the feasibility of his project,
and a partnership was drawn up for bringing Howe’s invention into
use.
By its terms George Fisher was to board Elias Howe and his
family while Khas was making the model of his machine in Fisher’s
garret as a workshop, was to provide money for material and tools
to the extent of $500, and in return was to be the owner of one-half
966 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
of the patent if the machine proved patentable. In December, 1844,
the Howe family moved into Fisher’s house and the shop was set
up in the small, low garret. With the idea of his machine clearly in
his mind and undisturbed by- the need of daily laboring elsewhere to
feed his family, Howe worked steadily on during the winter and by
April, 1845, had sewed a seam on his machine. In July of that year
he sewed on his model machine all the seams of two suits of wool
clothes, one suit for George Fisher and one for himself.
This pioneer of the millions of sewing machines made since July,
1845, after crossing the ocean many times, and having been used
as an irrefutable witness in many courts, can now be seen in the
United States National Museum, at Washington, D. C., where it
has been deposited by the grandson of Elias Howe, jr.
When Howe had finished his machine he found that his next
problem was to convince others that it could sew and do the work as
well as that performed by hand. Accordingly, he took his little
machine to the Quincy Hall Clothing Manufactory in Boston and
offered to sew up any seam that might be brought to him. for two
weeks he sat daily in one of the rooms demonstrating his invention
and finally challenged five of the swiftest seamtresses in the establish-
ment to sew arace with the machine. Ten seams of equal length were
prepared for sewing, one each was given to the five girls and the other
five to be laid by the machine. The umpire testified that the five
girls were the fastest sewers that could be found and that they sewed
as fast as they could; Howe’s machine, however, finished the five
seams a little sooner than the five girls finished their five, and the
work done by the machine was declared to be the neatest and strongest.
In spite of this and similar demonstrations no one gave Howe an order
for a sewing machine. When pressed for reasons some said they
were afraid it would ruin all the hand sewers by throwing them out
of work, some objected because the machine would not make the whole
garment, others said the cost of the machine was too high as a large
shirt maker would have to have 30 or 40 of them. Howe was not
discouraged by these objections and set about to get his invention
patented. He again shut himself up in George Fisher’s garret for
three or four months to make another machine for deposit in the
United States Patent Office, as the patent laws then required. Late
in the summer of 1846, a beautiful model and the required papers
were ready for the Patent Office, and Elias and George took them
to Washington. This model, Howe’s second machine, is also ex-
hibited in the National Museum, alongside of his original machine.
It is a better made machine and shows several changes in unimportant
parts. As soon as the patent was issued on September 10, 1846,
Howe and his partner returned to Cambridge.
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON 567
Without the enthusiasm of the inventor or the love given by him
to his brain child, George Fisher became thoroughly discouraged.
He had boarded the inventor and his family for nearly two years,
had furnished the money needed to purchase the tools and materials
for making the two sewing machines, he had met the expense of
obtaining the patent and the trip of Howe and himself to Washington,
representing in all an outlay of practically $2,000. Since no orders
had been received from either garment makers or tailors for machines,
Fisher did not see the slightest probability of the machine becoming
profitable and regarded his advances of cash as a dead loss.
Elias Howe moved back to his father’s house and the partnership
with Fisher was practically at an end. But the inventor did not
lose faith and decided to try to induce manufacturers in England
to take up his invention. With a loan from his father, a third
machine was made which Elias’ brother, Amasa B. Howe, took
with him to London in the steerage of a sailing packet. After a
number of discouragements he made the acquaintance of William
Thomas in his shop in Cheapside. This man claimed to employ
5,000 persons in the manufacture of corsets, umbrellas, valises, and
shoes, and after studying the machine agreed to buy it. According
to terms of this very one-sided bargain, Amasa Howe sold to William
Thomas for £250 the machine he had brought with him from America
(the third machine built by Elias Howe), and the right to use as
many more in his own business as he wished. William Thomas
proposed further to engage the inventor to adapt his machine to the
making of corsets at a salary of £3 a week, and agreed to furnish
workshop, tools, and materials. There was also an understanding
that Thomas was to patent the invention in England and was to pay
Howe £3 for every machine sold under the English patent. Thomas
did patent Howe’s invention but instead of paying him the promised
royalty he collected for himself a tribute on all the sewing machines
made in England, or imported into England, during the life of his
patent. Elias Howe later estimated that the investment of £250
yielded Thomas a profit of a million dollars.
Amasa Howe returned to Cambridge, Mass., with Thomas’ offer
which Elias Howe reluctantly accepted, as there seemed no prospect
of the sewing machine attracting attention in America, and the £250
were absorbed immediately by the needs of his family.
The brothers set sail for London, February 5, 1847, cooking their
own provisions in the steerage. Elias took with him his precious
first machine and his patent papers. William Thomas provided, as
agreed, a shop and tools and advanced the passage money for the
wife and three children of Elias Howe to join him in England.
After eight months of hard work the inventor succeeded in adapting
his machine to the requirements of Thomas’ business when the latter
568 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
began to make working conditions intolerable for Howe. The
American resented his treatment which resulted in William Thomas
discharging Klas Howe from his employment. A stranger in London,
with a sick wife and three small children to support and no employ-
ment in sight was the disheartening predicament in which Howe now
found himself. Through a chance acquaintance, a coach maker
named Charles Inglis, he hired a small room for a workshop and
with a few borrowed tools began to build his fourth sewing machine.
He soon saw that he must reduce expenses or leave his machine
unfinished, and decided to send his family home while he could,
trusting that the machine’he was building would provide the means
for him to follow them.
He was so poor that he had to pledge some of his clothing to obtain
a few shillings necessary to hire a cab to take his sick wife to the ship
on the stormy night of her departure. After three or four months of
hard labor his machine was finished and he looked for a customer.
Finally a man was found who offered £5 for the machine if he could
have time in paying for it. Howe was obliged to accept the offer and
took the man’s note for £5. His friend Inglis found a purchaser for
the note at £4. In order to pay up his debts and pay his expenses
back to America, Howe pawned his precious first machine and the
patent papers from the United States Patent Office. To save cartage
he took his baggage to the ship in a handcart and again took passage
in the steerage along with his friend Charles Inglis.
Elias Howe landed in New York in April, 1849, after an absence from
America of two years, with but half a crown in his pocket. Nearly
four years had passed since the finishing of his first sewing machine
and the small piece of silver was all he had to show for his work on
that invention. He and his friend went to a cheap emigrant boarding
house and looked for work in the machine shops, which he fortu-
nately soon found. When news reached him that his wife was dying
of consumption he did not have the money for the journey to Cam-
bridge, but with the help of $10 from his father he was able to reach
his wife’s bedside before she passed away. In spite of his natural
gaiety of disposition he was greatly downcast and looked like a man
who had passed through a long and severe illness. However, he was
now among friends who looked after his children and he was soon
at work again as a journeyman machinist at regular weekly wages.
It is seldom that a man who makes a great invention is able to
educate the public into using it. Neither Elias Howe, nor his friend
George Fisher, could succeed in selling a machine which cost from
$200 to $300 to build, and upon which the tailors looked with
contempt or dread. Howe found to his surprise upon returning
home from his experiences in London, that the sewing machine
had become celebrated, though his part in its invention appeared
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON 569
to have been forgotten. Several ingenious mechanics who had
seen the Howe machine, or who had read of a machine for
sewing, had turned their attention to inventing in the same field
and sewing machines were being carried around the country
and exhibited as a curiosity. Several machines made in Boston had
been sold to manufacturers and were daily in operation. Howe found
that these machines all infringed his patent rights by using devices
which he had combined and patented. Though he was very poor the
thought of all the suffering he and his family had endured while
trying to introduce his invention determined him not to submit
while others robbed him of his rights, and he began to prepare for war
against the infringers. The first step was to get back from England
his precious first machine and his patent papers. During the summer
of 1849, the $100 necessary to redeem them was raised and intrusted
to a friend who was going to London. The machine and papers were
located, redeemed from pawn and returned to Howe within a few
months. Howe wrote to the infringers of his patent, warning them
to stop their manufacture and offering to sell them licenses to continue
the use of his devices. All but one seemed willing to accept his
proposition but that one pursuaded the others to resist and Howe was
was soon forced to return to the courts for redress. With his father’s
help he began a suit, but soon discovered that money was required
beyond the means of a poor journeyman mechanic. He endeavored
to arouse the interest of George Fisher, who was still the owner of a
half interest in the patent, but Fisher had had enough of the sewing
machine and would not advance any more money. He was willing
to sell his half of the patent for what it had cost him up to that time,
and Howe looked around for someone to buy out Fisher’s interest.
In February, 1851, George S. Jackson, Daniel C. Johnson, and
William E. Whiting became joint owners with Howe of his patent
rights, and helped him to procure witnesses in the furtherance of
numerous suits. The next year a Massachusetts man named George
W. Bliss was persuaded to advance the money needed to carry on the
suits for infrmgement. This was done as a speculation, but so weak
was his faith that he required as security against loss a mortgage upon
the farm of the elder Howe. Elias’s long-suffering parent again came
to his rescue and the deal was completed.
While the suits were being carried on, Elias Howe found time to
again engage in making sewing machines. Near the end of 1850 he
was in New York looking after the construction of 14 of his machines
in a shop on Gold Street, near which he opened a small office. Several
machines were sold to a bootmaker in Worcester, several others were
operated by garment manufacturers on Broadway, and one of the
machines was exhibited at the fair held in the Castle Garden in Octo-
ber, 1851.
570 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The infringers of Howe’s patent were men of small means and could
not put up much fight, but in August, 1850, Howe crossed swords
with a man capable of carrying on a much more vigorous warfare
than they. This man was Isaac Merrit Singer.
ISAAC MERRIT SINGER
This part of our story also begins in a machine shop in Boston.
Lerow & Blodgett had patented a sewing machine on October 2, 1849,
the peculiar feature of which was that the shuttle was driven entirely
around a circle at each stitch. It was in some ways an improvement
on the Howe machine, but the circular movement of the shuttle took
a twist out of the thread at every revolution and the machine was
hard to keep in running order. Several of these machines had been
brought for repairs to the shop of Orson C. Phelps in Boston, where
in August, 1850, their operation was watched by Isaac M. Singer who
had shortly before patented a wood-carving machine. With the
experience of a practical machinist, Singer criticized the clumsy work-
ing of the sewing machine, and when Phelps asked him how the defects
could be overcome, Singer promptly said: ‘‘Instead of the shuttle going
around in a circle I would have it move to and froin a straight line,
and in place of the needle bar pushing a curved needle horizontally I
would have a straight needle and make it work up and down this way.”’
Phelps assured him that if he could make a practical sewing machine
he would make more money from it than from his carving machine.
A recent boiler explosion in New York City had wrecked the machine
shop where Singer’s carving machine was being built and his machine
was utterly destroyed. He was without funds to rebuild it and abso-
lute poverty stared him in the face. The remarks of Phelps set him
thinking and after considering the matter overnight he became satis-
fied that he could make the thing work. The next day Singer showed
Phelps and George B. Zieber, a machinist working in the shop, a rough
sketch of the machine he proposed to build. It contained a table to
support the cloth horizontally, instead of a feed bar from which it was
suspended vertically as in the Blodgett machine, a vertical presser foot
to hold the cloth down against the upward stroke of the needle, and an
arm to hold the presser foot and vertical needle-holding bar in posi-
tion over the table. The story continues as told by Mr. Singer him-
self in a statement made during the progress of some litigation in
which he was at one time engaged.
I explained to them how the work was to be fed over the table and under
the presser foot by a wheel having short pins on its periphery projecting through
a slot in the table, so that the work would be automatically caught, fed, and freed
from the pins, in place of attaching and detaching the work to and from the
baster plate by hand as was necessary in the Blodgett machine.
Phelps and Zieber were satisfied that it would work. Ihadnomoney. Zieber
offered $40 to build a model machine. Phelps offered his best endeavors to
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON 571
carry out my plan and make the model in his shop; if successful we were to share
equally. I worked at it day and night, sleeping but 3 or 4 hours a day out of the
24, and eating generally but once a day, as I knew I must make it for the $40
or not get it at all.
The machine was completed in 11 days. About 9 o’clock in the evening we
got the parts together and tried it; it did not sew; the workmen exhausted with
almost unremitting work, pronounced it a failure and left me one by one.
Zieber held the lamp, and I continued to try the machine, but anxiety and
incessant work had made me nervous and I could not get tight stitches. Sick
at heart, about midnight, we started for our hotel. On the way we sat down
on a pile of boards, and Zieber mentioned that the loose loops of thread were
on the upper side of the cloth. It flashed upon me that we had forgot to adjust
the tension on the needle thread. We went back, adjusted the tension, tried
the machine, sewed five stitches perfectly and the thread snapped, but that
was enough. At 3 o’clock the next day the machine was finished. I took it
to New York and employed Mr. Charles M. Keller to patent it. It was used
as a model in the application for the patent, the extension of which is now asked.
Starting with a borrowed capital of $40, this poor mechanic found
that he was pursuing a difficult road. Discouragements and dis-
appointments met him at every turn. Persons who had bought
sewing machines on the strength of inventors’ statements had been
obliged to throw them aside as useless, so every man who pretended
to have a real practical machine was considered an imposter. Singer
found to his sorrow that whoever attempted to bring out a sewing
machine was confronted with all the consequences of previous
failures.
Blodgett, whose rotary shuttle machine had been the means of
directing Singer’s inventive powers to the field of mechanical sewing,
told Singer that he was a tailor by trade and knew more about sewing
than Singer possibly could. He advised Singer to give up the attempt
to manufacture sewing machines and sell territorial rights instead,
since even though the Blodgett machine had been the leading one
on the market he felt assured that ‘‘sewing machines would never
come into use.” Three factories which he had established to use
his sewing machines had failed. In spite of this kind of advice from
all sides, this undaunted mechanic struggled on, fighting poverty,
determined to force the public to recognize the fact that a practical
sewing machine had actually been made. He borrowed a few hundred
dollars from friends to enable him to manufacture machines in Boston,
where, with Phelps and Zieber, he began work under the firm name
of I. M. Singer & Co. The firm was gaining the attention of the
public, when a new and formidable obstacle appeared. The news
that Singer had made a machine that would actually do continuous
stitching, the most conspicuous defect in the Howe machine, soon
brought Elias Howe, jr., to his door with a demand that he pay
$25,000 for infringement of the Howe patent, or quit the sewing-
machine business. It did not take long for a man who had recently
borrowed $40 to start his business, to decline the payment of $25,000
572 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
tribute, but neither was Singer disposed to give up his hard-won
advantage without a fight. He soon found himself burdened with
litigation which threatened to ruin him. About this time Singer
secured the help of an acute legal mind in the person of Edward
Clark, of New York, whose ability as a financier was hardly less marked.
Although he contributed no money, Clark became an equal partner
in the firm of I. M. Singer & Co., Phelps having been bought out
some time before. Later Singer and Clark bought out Zieber.
Singer’s success in developing a practical machine had encouraged
other inventors and a number of other machines were brought out,
some of them only obvious attempts at slight improvements on the
Howe machine, but a number were fundamental inventions of a new
type. Howe’s patent of 1846, for the time being, made him a complete
master of the situation and for several years he sued infringers right
and left. The sewing-machine manufacturers, with the exception of
the Singer Company, yielded to Howe and were carrying on their
business under his licenses without interruption. I. M. Singer &
Co. had resisted him single-handed from the very beginning, setting
up in justification of their right to manufacture sewing machines, the
claims of Walter Hunt, the New York inventor, that he had made a
sewing machine, using an eye-pointed needle and a shuttle to form the
lock stitch, previous to the year 1834. As Walter Hunt was unable to
produce a complete machine made at that time and admitted that he
had failed to apply for a patent on his invention, the courts decided
that it was never completed in the sense of the patent law and there-
fore did not anticipate the patent granted to Howe. I. M. Singer &
Co. submitted to the order of the court, for much damage was being
done to their business by the competition of manufacturers who were
working uninterruptedly under licenses from Howe, and in July, 1854,
took out a license under the Howe patent, paying him $15,000 in
settlement for royalties on machines made and sold prior to that time.
The decision of the court sustaining Howe’s claims was made nine
years after the completion of his first machine, and after eight years
of the first term of his patent had expired. The patent, however, had
been so little productive of revenue that Howe was able, in spite of the
cost of the numerous suits for infringement he had started, upon the
the death of his partner, George Bliss, to buy his half interest, and thus
became, for the first time, the sole owner of his patent. This occurred
just when it was about to yield an enormous revenue. His success in
his suit against the Singer Co. made it easy to enforce his legal rights
against others. In 1860 he obtained an extension of his patent for
seven years, and though he again applied for another extension in
1867, claiming that he had received only $1,185,000, and that because
of its value to the public he should receive at least $150,000,000, his
second extension of the patent was denied.
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON ‘ 573
The copartnership of Singer and Clark was continued until 1863,
when a corporation was formed to continue the business. Singer with-
drew from active work, receiving 40 per cent of the stock of the new
company, and left America to make his home in Europe. Upon his
death, 12 years later, his estate was appraised at $13,000,000.
Singer’s original patent model is preserved in the National Museum.
This type of machine, in use for many years, required less modification
than any one of the earlier makes of sewing machines.
Isaac Singer was the first to furnish the people with a successfully
operating and practical sewing machine. After the introduction of the
Singer machine other inventors, with patents of earlier date, were
forced to alter their machines to meet the approval of the public.
ALLEN BENJAMIN WILSON
One of the ablest of the early inventors in the field of mechanical
sewing, and by far the most original, was Allen B. Wilson. This
ingenious young man completed a practical sewing machine early in
the year 1849 without ever having seen one and without having any
knowledge of the work of Elias Howe, who was then in London.
In 1847, Allen Wilson, at 20 years of age, was working as a journey-
man cabinetmaker in Adrian, Mich., far removed from any possible
contact with the sewing-machine inventors of New England, when the
idea first came to him of making a machine to sew. In a letter to a
friend he describes his poverty at this time and the difficulties under
which he worked. ‘‘I was in needy circumstances, earning but little
more than enough to board and clothe me. I was taken sick early in
the spring of 1847, with fever and ague, which greatly reduced me;
I have never fully recovered from it.”’
Wilson had first begun the development of a needle and shuttle
machine, but instead of using a shuttle pointed at one end and moving
back and forth in a straight line, as had both Howe and Singer, he
made a shuttle pointed at both ends and which moved in a curved
path, forming a stitch at each forward and backward stroke. Before
he had been granted this patent he was threatened with a lawsuit by
the unscrupulous owners of an interest in another machine having a
2-pointed shuttle, unless he would convey to them half his interest
in his patent when issued. Having no money to defend his right,
and his partner, Mr. Chapin, being unwilling to advance any more,
he consented to a compromise. About this time Allen Wilson made
the acquaintance of Nathaniel Wheeler, a manufacturer of buckles
and other small metal wares at Watertown, Conn. Mr. Wheeler
saw Wilson’s sewing machine in New York City, and made a contract
with the firm controlling the patent to build 500 machines for them.
He also engaged Wilson to go with him to Watertown to perfect the
machine and superintend its manufacture. In the meantime, Allen
574. ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Wilson had thought out the plan of a substitute for the shuttle, the
rotary hook, a marvelous piece of ingenuity. He showed Mr. Wheeler
his model, who became so convinced of its merits that he determined
to develop the new machine and leave Wilson’s first shuttle machine
to those who, by fraud, had become the owners of it. This last firm
possessed neither the mechanical nor business ability to put it prop-
erly on the market, and in a few years the original patent was
purchased by the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Co.
Wilson now bent all his efforts to improving his rotary hook which
was a new departure from all previous ideas of sewing, and was de-
scribed in his second patent, issued on August 12, 1851. It is a
remarkable coincidence that on the same date a patent was granted
to Isaac M. Singer for his first machine, which, with its improvements,
was for many years the most formidable competitor of the Wheeler &
Wilson machine.
Wheeler, Wilson & Co. at once began the manufacture of the new
machines. The sewing machines which had been previously patented
and sold to the public were so difficult to operate and so impractica-
ble that there was much distrust of all such devices and but few were
willing to even try them. With the assistance of his wife to operate
the machine, Wilson demonstrated to O. E. Winchester, later the
head of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., but at that time a large
manufacturer of shirts in New Haven, Conn.., its ability to neatly and
rapidly make a shirt. Mr. Winchester was so agreeably surprised
with the quality of the work that he agreed to take some machines on
trial. In the same way machines were left for trial in Troy, N. Y.,
Boston, and Philadelphia. Soon the business was on a substantial
basis and in October, 1853, a stock company was formed under the
name of the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Co.
Wilson’s fourth patent, the universally used 4-motion feed, was
issued on December 19, 1854. ‘This, with the rotary hook and the
stationary circular disk bobbin, the subjects of his second and third
patents in 1851 and 1852, completed the essential features of Wilson’s
machine, original and fundamentally different from all other machines
known at that time.
The first crude models, whittled out of mahogany by Allen B.
Wilson between 1847 and 1849, which clearly show the development of
his ideas, and the original models deposited in the Patent Office
establishing the claims made in his first three patents, are now pre-
served in the National Museum. The model representing the third
patent, that of June 15, 1852, is a beautifully made, compact little
machine, weighing but 6) pounds, and contrasting greatly with the
clumsy, heavy Singer models of that time which weigh over 55 pounds.
Having applied his inventive genius to starting the business, Mr.
Wilson was at his own request, upon the reorganization of the firm
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON 575
in 1853, released from active service or further responsibility for the
company. His ill health, and the effects of his early struggles and a
keenly sensitive nervous temperament made it desirable for him to be
relieved of the daily routine of the business. During his leisure he
found time to explore other fields of invention, among which were
cotton-picking machines, photography, and illuminating gases.
Wilson did not receive a proper reward for his great inventions, es-
pecially when this is compared with the earnings of Howe and Singer,
whose inventions were mechanically much inferior. In his petition
to Congress in 1874 for a second extension of his three patents, he
stated that he had not received more than his expenses during the
14-year term of his original patent and that because of his poverty he
had been compelled to sell a half interest in his patent for $200.
He also stated that for the 7-year term of the extension of his patent
he had only received $137,000. These statements were verified by his
original partner.
JAMES EDWARD ALLEN GIBBS
The invention of the first practical single chain-stitch sewing
machine came about through the curiosity of a young native Virginian
having a mechanical turn of mind. James Gibbs had been helping
his father build wool-carding machines, but the burning of his father’s
mill and the competition of large factories led him to turn to carpenter-
ing to provide for his family. It was in 1855 that his attention was
first attracted to sewing machines by seeing a plain woodcut of a
Grover and Baker machine in a newspaper advertisement. This
picture showed only the upper part of the machine which left the
course of the needle and the manipulation of the thread under the
cloth a mystery. There was nothing in the cut to show that more
than one thread was used and it at once excited his curiosity to know
how the thing could possibly sew. His effort to solve the puzzle is
best told in his own words:
As I was then living in a very out of the way place, far from railroads and public
conveyances of all kinds, modern improvements seldom reached our locality, and
not being likely to have my curiosity satisfied otherwise, I set to work to see what
I could learn from the woodcut, which was not accompanied by any description.
I first discovered that the needle was attached to a needle arm, and consequently
could not pass entirely through the material, but must retreat through the same
hole by which it entered. From this I saw that I could not make a stitch similar
to handwork, but must have some other mode of fastening the thread on the under-
side, and among other possible methods of doing this, the chain stitch occurred to
me as a likely means of accomplishing the end. I next endeavored to discover
how this stitch was or could be made, and from the woodcut I saw that the driving
shaft which had the driving wheel on the outer end, passed along under the cloth
plate of the machine. I knew thatthe mechanism which made the stitch must be
connected with and actuated by this driving shaft. After studying the position
and relations of the needle and shaft with each other, I conceived the idea of the
576 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
revolving hook on the end of the shaft, which might take hold of the thread and
manipulate it into a chain stitch. My ideas were, of course, very crude and indefi-
nite, but it will be seen that I then had the correct conception of the invention
afterwards embodied in my machine.
Having no further interest in view than to satisfy his curiosity as
to how sewing by machinery could be done he gave the matter no
further attention or thought until January, 1856. Then while on a
visit to his father in Rockbridge County, Va., he happened to go
into a tailor’s shop where there was a Singer sewing machine working
on the shuttle principle. He was much impressed with the ability
of that machine, but thought it entirely too heavy, complicated, and
cumbersome, and also that the price was exorbitant. He then set
to work in earnest to produce a more simple, cheap, and useful
machine. His family was dependent upon his daily labor for support,
so that Gibbs had very little time to spare for experiments, and could
work on his invention only at nights and in bad weather. He was
at a great disadvantage for want of tools and materials, having to
make his own needles and parts of wood. By the end of April, 1856,
he had so far completed his model as to interest his employers in
his invention and induce them to furnish the money necessary to
patent it and develop the machine. Gibbs then came to Washington,
where he examined the models in the Patent Office and some of the
sewing machines then on the market. He took his machine to
Philadelphia and showed it to James Willcox, who was then engaged
in building models of new inventions. Mr. Willcox and his son
Charles were favorably impressed with the invention and it was
arranged that Gibbs and Charles Willcox should work together in
developing any possible improvements, using for this purpose a small
room in rear of the shop. After taking out some minor patents he
obtained his most important one on June 2, 1857. The original
models of these early efforts are preserved in the National Museum.
This association with James Willcox led to the formation of the Will-
cox & Gibbs Sewing Machine Co., which has certainly done its share
in the development of the sewing machine art.
During the Civil War, Gibbs was in sympathy with the South,
while his partner Willcox supported the North. Owing to poor
health, Gibbs took no active part in the fighting, occupying him-
self in the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. At the close of
the war he called on James Willcox at Philadelphia and was shown by
his faithful partner that his interests had not suffered during his
absence.
Raised among the hills of the Shenandoah Valley, James E. A.
Gibbs never forgot his love for Virginia and after he became pros-
perous, he bought a farm in his native county, where he lived the
latter part of his life.
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON vie
WILLIAM O. GROVER
Something of the origin of another and still different type of sewing
machine which was developed about the time of the Wilson and
Singer machines forms a necessary part of our story. This was the
double-locked chain-stitch machine invented by William O. Grover,
a Boston tailor. Though the machines which he had seen were not
very practical he came to the conclusion that the sewing machine
was going to revolutionize the tailoring trade, and in 1849 began to
experiment with the-idea of making an improved stitch. One plan
was to invent a machine which would take its thread directly from
the spools and do away with the need of rewinding the under thread
upon bobbins. After a great deal of experimenting he finally dis-
covered that two pieces of cloth could be united by two threads
interlocking with each other in a succession of slip knots, but the
building of a machine to do this proved to be a very difficult task.
It is remarkable that during his experiments he did not discover the
single thread chain stitch, later worked out by Gibbs, as up to this
time this stitch had not been heard of by any sewing-machine inven-
torsin America. It is probable that, working on the assumption that
it was absolutely necessary to use two threads, the idea of using one
thread could not find room to develop in his brain.
Grover’s patent was issued, February 11, 1851, and the original
model is shown in the collection of sewing machines in the National
Museum. Mr. Grover associated with himself in the development of
the business another Boston tailor, William E. Baker, and upon a
reorganization of the company soon after under the name of the
Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Co., took into the firm Jacob
Weatherill, mechanic, and Orlando B. Potter, lawyer. This company
built in Boston a most complete factory for the production of the
machines. Mr. Potter, the president of the company, had, through
his ability as an attorney, secured a one-third interest in the business
without an investment at the start, and now obtained patents for
Grover’s inventions and managed all the lawsuits brought against
the company. He was the promoter of the first trust of any promi-
nence formed anywhere. It was known as the ‘‘sewing-machine
trust,” or more popularly, the ‘“‘combination.”
THE SEWING MACHINE COMBINATION
The celebrated suit between Elias Howe, jr., and I. M. Singer & Co.,
was decided by Judge Sprague of Massachusetts in the year 1854,
a verdict being rendered in favor of Howe. This verdict was of the
greatest importance, for it covered the use of an eye-pointed needle
in a sewing machine. Howe’s success in the suit against Singer was
followed soon after by a verdict against the Wheeler & Wilson Co.,
578 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
Grover & Baker Co., and other infringers of Howe’s patent. These
decisions put Howe in absolute control of the sewing-machine business
and he made arrangements with the various companies to pay him
$25 for every machine sold. From this enormous royalty he derived
a large revenue for some time. However, Howe did not have entirely
easy sailing, and more legal battles took place. While none of the
other inventors’ machines could sew without using the eye-pointed
needle, patented by Howe, the latter’s machines were in many ways so
badly handicapped, especially by his slow and clumsy method of feed-
ing the cloth, that they were of no practical use. When he attempted
to improve his machine so as to overcome these defects, Howe got
into further litigation with I. M. Singer & Co., the Wheeler & Wilson
Co., and the Grover & Baker Co., for infringing mechanical patents
which were owned by them. The quarrels over patent rights were by
no means confined to Howe, as each individual company was suing
all of the others on one claim or another. Finally, Orlando B.
Potter, president of the Grover & Baker Co., conceived the idea of
combining the various interests and pooling all the patents covering
the essential features, which would enable them to control the sewing-
machine industry, instead of continually fighting and trying to devour
one another. He pointed out that while Howe and the three large
companies then suing one another controlled all the basic patents,
the pending lawsuits if carried to a conclusion, might be disastrous
to all of them. His argument was convincing and thus was formed
the ‘‘combination”’ which for several years was the terror of all
unlicensed manufacturers. Besides Howe, the three companies which
were parties to the combination, I. M. Singer & Co., the Wheeler &
Wilson Co., and the Grover & Baker Co., had all begun business
about the same time, and the main patents under which they were
working had been granted between November 12, 1850, and August 12,
1851.
At first Howe did not take very kindly to the idea of the combination
as he felt that he had the most to lose by joining it. He insisted as
one of the conditions of his coming into the plan that at least 24
licenses to manufacture sewing machines be issued. By the terms
of the agreement he was to share equally with the other three parties
in the profits of the combination, and in addition was to receive a
royalty of $5 for each machine sold in the United States, and $1 for
each machine exported.
It is estimated that Howe received in the form of royalties as the
result of this agreement not less than $2,000,000 from the business
of the combination.
The three other concerns contributed their various patents to
the combination, and the price for a license to manufacture was set
at $15 per machine, with the condition that no license could be
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON 579
granted without the consent of all four parties. It was also agreed
that a portion of the license fees was to be reserved as a fund out
of which to pay the cost of prosecuting infringers.
This arrangement enabled manufacturers to continue making
machines by the payment of only one license fee to the combination,
and anyone who had a good machine that was not an offensive
imitation of that of some other licensed manufacturer was granted a
license. There was no pooling of any other interest in the combina-
tion excepting that of patents; each company retained the right to
make a certain machine and aimed to so improve and perfect its
own particular machine that it would be selected instead of others.
The most important patents contributed to the combination were
the following:
1. The combination of the grooved, eye-pointed needle and a shuttle, by
Elias Howe, jr.
2. The 4-motion feeding mechanism, by Allen B. Wilson.
3. The continuous wheel feed, the yielding presser foot, and the heart-shaped
cam as applied to moving the needle bar, by Isaac M. Singer.
4, The basic patent covering a needle moving vertically above a horizontal
work plate, a yielding presser resting on the work, and a ‘‘perpetual”’ or con-
tinuous feeding device, which had been issued to John Bachelder on May 8, 1849,
and afterwards purchased by Singer and his partner Clark.
The Grover & Baker Co., controlled several patents of importance
which were contributed to the combination, but its most important
claim for admission was the fact that Mr. Potter had promoted the
scheme.
When Howe’s patent was renewed in 1860 the general license fee
was reduced from $15 to $7, and Howe’s special royalty from $5 to $1.
The combination continued in existence with Howe as a member
until the expiration of the extended term of his patent in 1867, and
was then continued by the other members until 1877, when the
John Bachelder patent expired. This patent had been twice extended,
so that it ran for 28 years. The fundamental principles of the sewing
machine were now no longer controlled by any one, the beneficial open
competition of the smaller manufacturers was made possible, and an
enormous reduction of prices resulted. Many important and radical
improvements appeared in quick succession, which greatly multiplied
the usefulness of the sewing machine.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE PIONEER INVENTORS
Leaving for the time these accounts of the struggles of pioneer
inventors in the field of mechanical sewing to prove the practicability
of their ideas, let us see what were the real achievements of these men.
While the drawings of Saint’s sewing machine, which was patented
in England in 1790, show the overhanging arm, the up and down
movement of the needle, the horizontal bed or plate to support the
82322—30——38
580 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
sewing, and a continuous thread, it is doubtful if any but the experi-
mental machine was ever made, so that nothing was done by this
inventor toward making his invention useful to mankind.
To Barthelemy Thimonnier, however, belongs the credit for having
been the first to put the sewing machine to practical and public use.
While his machine, patented in France in 1830, adopted some of the
features of Saint’s machine, Thimonnier put his machine to a practical
and useful purpose, and had it not been for the opposition of the very
class of people who have since been benefited by it he would undoubt-
edly have found profit in the enterprise.
To Walter Hunt belongs the honor of having invented the needle
with the eye in the point and having first combined the shuttle and
the eye-pointed needle to make the lock stitch; and this was as early
as 1832, or shortly thereafter, while Thimonnier had only just suc-
ceeded in sewing with a machine, nor can this honor be taken away
from Hunt because he neglected to pursue his invention and introduce
the sewing machine to the world.
To Elias Howe must be given the credit for the first introduction of
the sewing machine to the prominent position which it now occupies.
There is no denying the fact that it was due to his persistency that
most of the principles of good sewing were demonstrated by his patent.
As one writer has expressed it: ‘‘With inventive abilities inferior to
those of Walter Hunt he (Howe) had an adaptness to follow out a
single object persistently, and he reaped the field.” The combina-
tion of an eye-pointed needle and shuttle using two continuous threads
to produce a lock stitch was a feature of the embroidering machine
invented by John Fisher in England in 1844, but the English had
never improved upon the idea nor had even applied it to a machine to
do ordinary sewing prior to the sale of Howe’s third machine to William
Thomas for use in his corset factory. Although the eye-pointed
needle was invented by Hunt and used by him in 1834, and was
patented in England in 1841 as part of a glove-stitching machine
using the chain stitch, nevertheless Howe’s machine was the first
to be patented anywhere having a needle with the eye in the point
which carried a continuous thread and made a lock stitch.
Howe’s machine was capable of sewing a seam well but it must
be admitted that the machine was far from perfect. As constructed
it could never have come into use as a labor-saving machine for
family use, for it could not sew anything but straight seams, and such
seams could not be longer than the baster plate.
Of all the pioneers of sewing machine invention Allen B. Wilson
was decidedly the most original in his ideas. His devices were unique
and lasting in their usefulness. No sewing-machine device except
the eye in the point of the needle has come into such universal use as
his 4-motion roughened-surface feed. The vast majority of the sew-
THE SEWING MACHINE—LEWTON 581
ing machines made in the world to-day use the 4-motion feed. It was
one of the strongest patents of.those held by the famous sewing ma-
chine combination, and enabled that famous monopoly to defy all
comers until its expiration.
When Wilson found that the idea of a double-pointed shuttle,
although original with him and used in his first patent, was claimed
by the owners of a patent granted to John A. Bradshaw in 1848, he
applied his inventive genius to discover another way to sew. These
efforts resulted in the development of the revolving hook for forming
a lock stitch between an upper and a lower thread, an invention
involving the use of entirely different mechanical principles. While
the shuttle system of sewing has been arranged and changed in a
thousand different ways, the revolving hook system remains in prin-
ciple the same as Allen B. Wilson devised and left it. He not only
contributed to the history of the sewing machine one of the most
important devices common to all systems of machine sewing, but
he was the author of a separate and entirely original system of his own.
A proof of the fundamental importance of Wilson’s contributions is
seen by the fact that a sewing machine embodying the form and
principles used in the first type of machine manufactured by the
Wheeler & Wilson Co. in 1852 is made and used by its successor to-
day—77 years later.
To Isaac Singer should be given the credit for developing the first
real practical sewing machine for domestic use. While the yielding
vertical presser foot to hold the work on the work table, which is in
universal use to-day, and the development of the wheel feed, an
important feature of some special machines for factory use, were
contributed by Singer in his first machine, his real service was in
bringing the sewing machine into general use. When the competition
of Singer’s machine began to be felt, inventors of machines of an
earlier date were compelled to modify their inventions and adapt them
to meet practical conditions and to please the public. Later Singer
himself was compelled to do the same thing and changed materially
the heavy cumbersome form of his earlier type to meet the competition
of the smaller, lighter, and easier running Wheeler & Wilson machine.
The principles of William Grover’s double-thread chain-stitch
machine, while no longer used in the present-day sewing machines
built for domestic sewing, are very extensively employed in the
machines built for all kinds of manufacturing purposes, especially
those for making underwear, garments, sewing bags, and shoes.
THE SEWING MACHINE IN THE EARLY DAYS
The early efforts to construct a machine to take the place of the
human arm and fingers were met with the indifference of the general
public, but certain groups of workers with the needle saw in these
582 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
inventions a menace to their crafts, and endeavored to destroy them
wherever they appeared. Another portion of the public was amused
at the claims made for the freak “‘ Yankee” machines and were curious
enough to pay good money to see the “contraptions” exhibited in
side shows.
One of Barthelemy Thimonnier’s wooden machines was sent by
him from France to his friend Charles Magnin in England to be
shown at the Crystal Palace Exhibition held in London in 1851. It
was exhibited by Magnin in his own name and received no notice
whatever. ‘There were exhibited at the Crystal Palace at the same
time several English so-called sewing machines and one American
machine, which had been patented by Morey and Johnson of Boston
on February 6, 1849. While no notice was taken by English writers
on science or technology of the few clumsy instruments catalogued as
sewing machines which were shown at the “great exhibition of the
world’s industry,’ these machines did attract the attention of an
astonished reporter for an important Italian newspaper. The
following paragraph is a translation from an article in the Giornale di
Roma, giving its readers a brief summary of American eccentricities
in the Crystal Palace:
A little further on you stop before a small brass machine, about the size of a
quart bottle; you fancy it is a meat roaster; not at all. Ha! ha! It is a tailor!
Yes, a veritable stitcher. Present a piece of cloth to it; suddenly it becomes
agitated, it twists about, screams audibly—a pair of scissors are projected forth—
the cloth is cut; a needle set to work, and lo and behold, the process of sewing
goes on with feverish activity, and before you have taken three steps a pair
of inexpressibles are thrown down at your feet, and the impatient machine,
all fretting and fuming, seems to expect a second piece of cloth at your hands.
Take care, however, as you pass along, that this most industrious of all possible
machines does not lay hold of your cloak or greatcoat; if it touches even the
hem of the garment it is enough—it is appropriated, the scissors are whipped
out, and with its accustomed intelligence the machine sets to work, and in a twin-
kling another pair is produced of that article of attire, for which the English
have as yet been able to discover no name in their most comprehensive vocabulary.
In the United States in the meantime more serious attention was
being paid to the new inventions which promised so well to lessen the
labor of the needleworkers. The early issues of the Scientific Ameri-
can devoted considerable space to a description of each new sewing
machine that appeared. From the issue of July 17, 1852, which told
of the achievements of Allen B. Wilson, the following prophecy is
quoted:
* * * When we look at the progress made in sewing machines, we expect
them to create a social revolution, for a good housewife will sew a fine shirt,
doing all the seams in fine stitching, by one of Wilson’s little machines in a single
hour. The time thus saved to wives, tailors, and seamstresses of every descrip-
tion is of incalculable importance, for it will allow them to devote their atten-
tion to other things, during the time which used to be taken up with dull seam
sewing. Young ladies will have more time to devote to ornamental work (it
THE SEWING MACHINE--LEWTON 583
would be better for them all if they did more of it), and families in which there
are a number of children, which require a continual stitching, stitching, in making
and mending from morning till night, will yet be blessed by the improved sewing
machine.
The sewing machine is but on the threshold of its career; it is but partially
known and applied in our country. Private families know nothing about its
use, and shoemakers and saddlers have not yet tested its benefits. Mr. Wilson
informs us that he is about to make one that will sew boots and shoes with a rapid-
ity that will astonish all the sons of St. Crispin. We suppose that, in a few years,
we shall all be wearing shirts, coats, boots, and shoes—the whole habiliments
of the genus homo—stitched and completed by the sewing machine. We sup-
pose there are now fully 200 sewing machines in operation in New York City.
CHANGING CONDITIONS OF LATER TIMES
The effects on the economic life of the people and changes wrought
in the home due largely to the invention and development of the
sewing machine have been the theme of many addresses. The
following quotation from an address made by Robert S. Taylor
before the Patent Centennial Celebration in Washington, April 10,
1891, will serve as an example:
It is too soon yet to estimate the full effect of the sewing machine upon human
life and destiny. It ushered in an epoch of cheap clothes, which means better
clothes for the masses, more warmth, more cleanliness, more comfort. * * *
The indirect consequences of the invention of the sewing machine reach farthest
beyond our ken. Time was when half the human race were occupied chiefly in
making clothes. When the machines took that avocation away from them they
turned to otheremployments. The invasion of all occupations by women and the
sweeping changes which have taken place in their relations to the law, society, and
business can be ascribed in large measure to the sewing machine.
The report of the United States Centennial Commission of the
International Exhibition held in Philadelphia, 1876, contains an
exhaustive account of the development of the type of sewing ma-
chines used in the homes of the people, the family sewing machines.
An article of the same scope was prepared for the committee on awards
of the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago, 1893. In
this but little is said concerning improvements made in machines of
the family type between 1876 and 18938, but it describes the great
strides made in developing factory machines for special purposes.
In spite of the widespread equipping of American homes with
electric labor-saving devices, which now include the electrically
driven sewing machine, the removal of so many domestic industries
from homes to factories is having its effect on this ‘‘servant in the
house.”
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Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Lewton PLATE 1
WALTER HUNT
Photographed from a daguerreotype in the possession of his great-grandson, Clinton N. Hunt.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Lewton PEATE ee.
ELIAS HOWE, JR.
Photographed from the oil painting presented to the United States National Museum by his grandson,
Elias Howe Stockwell.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Lewton PLATE 3
Weaae- 2) a7 LG ER
ISAAC MERRIT SINGER
Photographed from a charcoal drawing in the offices of the Singer Manufacturing Co., Elizabethport,
L
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Lewton PLATE 4
ALLEN BENJAMIN WILSON
Photographed from a drawing in the offices of the Singer Manufacturing Co., Bridgeport, Conn.;
formerly owned by the Wheeler & Wilson Mamufacturing Co.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Lewton PEATE SS
ORIGINAL SEWING MACHINE
Made by Elias Howe, jr., in 1845, and taken by him to England to interest manufacturers in his
invention,
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Lewton PLATE 6
ORIGINAL MODEL OF UNITED STATES PATENT No. 8294, ISSUED TO ISAAC M.
SINGER, AUGUST 12, 1851
PEATE: 7
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Lewton
Uireon
/
ILLUSTRATION OF SINGER SEWING MACHINE PUBLISHED IN 1853
“OOIAVP SUTP99J-YJO[D UONOUI-f SNOW] SIY SULApOquia ‘yueIvd PAYA S,WOSTI AA
eG8l “Gl ANN “NOSTIM “G@ NAT1VY OL GANSSI ‘1vy06 ON LN3LVd SALVLS GALINM AO TSGOW AVNIDINO
8 3ALV1d u0jMa]—'676| ‘qaodayy ueluosyjIWwiG
Smithsonian Report, 1929.— Willis PLATE 1
THOMAS CHROWDER CHAMBERLIN, 1843-1928
THOMAS CHROWDER CHAMBERLIN (1843-1928)!
By BaItLey WILLIS
[With 1 plate]
Aristotle, 322 B. C.; Copernicus, 1543 A. D.; Galileo, 1642; Newton, 1727;
Laplace, 1827; Darwin, 1882; Chamberlin, 1928.
The names of great original thinkers are milestones along the path
of exploration that penetrates the domain of the unknown. Cham-
berlin’s is the latest. He has led into new realms where for a while
others will survey and establish monuments, but whence also another,
some great follower of his example, will again strike out in search of
knowledge.
He was a great master of research. Few among living investigators
have demonstrated equal capacity for inquiry. Very few indeed have
sustained equal flights of constructive imagination yet kept in touch
with the realities. None, in preparing for such flights, has more
thoroughly utilized the resources of advancing science or more rigor-
ously tested the records of altitudes attained.
Chamberlin fortunately lived during an epoch when the sciences
were growing vigorously. He kept abreast of them. He was no fol-
lower. Neither was he an egotistical leader. Cooperating closely with
competent companions, he advanced always with strong support. In
the group of coworkers his was the mind that conceived the campaign
against misconceptions. His also was the ingenuity which suggested
critical tests of every new concept. That leadership was his because
of his superior capacities: Initiative, independence, and insight. Yet
the least experienced of his company received considerate attention
and generous appreciation for any valid contribution.
Born at Mattoon, Ill., September 25, 1843, Thomas Chrowder
Chamberlin was 85 at his death, at Chicago, November 15, 1928. He
was of large build, a vigorous, genial, generous personality.
From his father, who practiced farming during six days and preached
biblical philosophy every seventh day, Thomas appears to have in-
1 Reprinted by permission from Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, vol. 40, No. 1, March, 1929
Bibliography omitted.
585
586 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
herited his intellectual capacity. He himself said: ‘‘I was brought up
in theological philosophy, but it was not Calvinistic predestination.
Individuality, personality, responsibility are so strongly ingrained in
me that I can not get rid of them.’”’ Evidently the father, like the son,
was, within his own sphere, an independent, earnest, forceful thinker.
That he outgrew that restricted sphere of religious tradition, Cham-
berlin attributed largely to his environment as a boy. In a note on
“little things” in his life he comments humorously on the fact that
his birthplace was on the Shelbyville moraine, an intimation of his
future interest in glaciation. More seriously he describes the influence
of all outdoors upon the growing farmer’s boy.
The most fascinating things of those days—to a boy of naturalistic bent—
were the migrations of the birds, the spring migration in particular. The prairies
were usually burnt over in the fall and so were often black and bleak during winter
when not covered with snow, but as the spring advanced the grass began to make
them grey and green, the buttercups and violets began to give them color, and
then birds in uncounted flocks came from the south, fed upon them, and passed
on. Blackness and bleakness gave place to color and life. No poor soul born in
these days of plowed fields and wire fences ever sees sights like those.
A limestone quarry, which he worked with his brothers for stone
for the house that replaced an older log cabin, introduced the boy to
rocks and also to ‘‘snails’”’ and ‘‘snakes”’ (‘‘Trenton”’ fossils). Having
been taught Genesis in its most literal terms, he found in these vestiges
of creation no questions except as to how the great snakes (orthocera-
tites) got down between the layers.
To the prairie ‘‘the skies came down equally on all sides”’ and
the boy lived in the center. He watched the northern lights and
looked for shootings stars. He grew alert, but not yet inquisitive or
inquisitorial.
In strong contrast with the untrammeled outlook of his natural
environment, was the limited scholasticism of his school training.
Chamberlin’s reaction was characteristic. When still a college boy,
but taking his first examination for a teacher’s certificate, he encoun-
tered the gymnastic problem: “If the third of 6 is 3, what would the
fourth of 20 be?”’ The desired answer might have been an arithmeti-
cal calculation which would have shown that a fourth of 20 is 7,
but the young student at once refused the fallacy. He replied:
The fourth of 20 is 5 under any and all circumstances and is not affected by
any erroneous supposition that may be made in respect to a third of 6.
Late in life he answered the question with a more explicit expression
of his attitude toward false postulates, saying:
If the third of 6 is 3 and if the whole universe were running on that crazy basis
what might be the crazy proportion of the fourth of 20?
His conviction was profound that the universe had not been created
by a crazy creator, and his antagonism to ‘‘crazy’’ assumptions
CHAMBERLIN—-WILLIS 587
became intensified as the years passed. He had little patience with
‘“‘denatured”’ theories. He held that
The greatest genius is probably a genius for seeing the realities of things—all
the essential realities of actual problems.
Chamberlin himself possessed that genius in very high degree and he
developed it conscientiously, always endeavoring to make his analysis
of the realities as complete as possible. He thus advanced, step by
step, far beyond the range of less daring minds, and with some
incurred the charge of being unduly speculative because they did not
realize how clearly he saw the facts. But even though he himself
strove to make a complete analysis, he welcomed suggestions cordially.
Three weeks before he died he wrote a fellow geologist who had thought
to strengthen a point in the two solar families: “I hasten to acknowl-
edge your contribution.” He scorned pettiness and was incapable of
appropriating another’s thought unacknowledged.
Chamberlin was a teacher. His progress from the position of
principal of the Delavan High School (1866-1868) to the “‘settee”’ of
natural sciences at the State Normal School at Whitewater (1869-1872),
thence to the professorship of geology at Beloit (1873-1882), to Colum-
bian University (1885-1887), and to Chicago University (1892-1919)
was the natural evolution of a career of teaching for which he was
peculiarly fitted. It was interrupted from 1887 to 1892 by his
service as president of the University of Wisconsin. But the admin-
istrative office had little attraction for a mind that cared nothing for
authority and was devoted to the acquisition and diffusion of knowl-
edge. Once when tendered the directorship of the United States
Geological Survey he responded that he had come to consider alterna-
tive views too habitually to act satisfactorily as an executive, who
must often decide ‘‘yes”’ or “no” in doubtful cases.
The teacher and the investigator went hand in hand. The embryo
of his thinking on geology is found in the suggestions of his environ-
ment as a boy. His intellectual force was inborn, but the work it
was to do was determined by the puzzling and tantalizing, because
unexplained, facts: “snails” and ‘“snakes’”’ in the rocks, the migra-
tion of birds, the aurora borealis, the stars, all outdoors. His reaction
to the stimulus was characteristically demonstrated when he dismissed
the formal classes of the Delavan High School on a throbbing spring
day to “go out to see if we can find things in nature worth knowing
and thinking about.”
Entering into official relations as assistant geologist on the Wiscon-
sin Survey (1873-1876), Chamberlin was not given one of the preferred
districts containing iron or lead, but was assigned to the economically
barren southeastern quarter of the State. The rocks were the well
known Paleozoic strata and they were deeply covered by glacial
drift. The bald simplicity of the apparent problems might well have
588 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
produced an intellectual chill, but Chamberlin’s logical insight
penetrated the superficial appearances and discovered the deeper
question. Back of the drift phenomena was a mysterious cause of
climatic change. To discover it became his main purpose, and the
search conducted him through an investigation of the origin of the
atmosphere to a theory of the evolution of the solar system.
Led by him with an intellectual leadership that has never been
questioned, a group of able geologists has analyzed the drift sheets of
North America, mapped their extent and detailed structure, and
contributed a thorough understanding of the Pleistocene record. It is
a great contribution. It demanded capacity for intimate and dis-
criminating observation of differences where others saw sameness—for
careful and alternative interpretation on the basis of process, stage,
and environment, for balanced judgment and impartial testing of
probabilities. It called for those qualities which Chamberlin already
possessed to a high degree but which he was to train to even more
difficult tasks.
As the complexity of the glacial periods became more evident, the
enigma of the cause grew more impressive. No satisfactory solution
had been proposed, as appeared on testing the current theories by
the accumulating facts. None was possible under the accepted
doctrine of atmospheric evolution from the steaming envelope of a
molten globe to the present life-giving air. The enigma deepened
and broadened as the eager but patient student searched not only
geology but all allied sciences for clues.
He gives Tyndall credit for the suggestion that led him to consider
the relation between climatic conditions and the constitution of the
atmosphere. The proportion of carbonic acid appeared to be a
critical factor. The variables involved in its variation were found by
Chamberlin to link geological, chemical, and biological processes in
cycles of mutual reactions. The antiquity of recurrent climatic
changes turned the investigation back from the Pleistocene to the
pre-Cambrian glaciations, and thus to the origin of the atmosphere.
The inquirer could not pause there. The atmosphere of a molten
earthindeed suggested tremendous possibilities, but they were not com-
patible with the facts of terrestrial history, so far as we can read it.
The progress of knowledge had pushed a possible molten state of the
earth even further back into vague traditional stages of creation.
Contrary to all that he had been taught, Chamberlin found himself
obliged to consider alternative hypotheses that might be consistent
with a less spectacular evolution, and he was forced to examine
critically the very foundations of the geologic faith of that day.
He described his early work on theories of the genesis of the earth as
resembling the exploration of an old mine to find what of value was
left in the outworked leads and to discover what promising veins
CHAMBERLIN—WILLIS 589
might have been overlooked. The exploration occupied a number of
years, demanded infinite patience, suspension of judgment, critical
acumen, continuous self-instruction in the related branches of physics,
chemistry, and celestial mechanics. Only a disciplined mind, trained
absolutely to subordinate self-opinion to fact could have sustained
the effort. If the example of Darwin was not consciously recognized,
it was nevertheless paralleled.
Chamberlin recognized that terrestrial evolution is a dynamic
process. Energy and force are vital, matter and environment simply
important. This is the physicist’s view, more rarely the geologist’s.
The dynamics of the globe are planetary dynamics. This is the as-
tronomer’s field, the geologist’s only in the sense that ‘‘astronomy is
the foreign department of geology.”
Chamberlin’s exploration thus reached into the realms of physics
and astronomy. His powers of inductive reasoning did not fail him
there, but he was not prepared to apply the methods of higher mathe-
matics to research, as is commonly done in those sciences. He
required associates to aid in testing hypotheses.
It does not appear that his environment developed favorable
associations prior to his entrance into the faculty of Chicago University
(1892). While at Columbian he was occupied with the more strictly
geologic problems of Pleistocene classification. His associates,
Gilbert, Dutton, and other fellow geologists, thought in the narrower
field of terrestrial processes, and he with them. He was one of a group
of similar thinkers similarly equipped. At Chicago it was different.
In that newly organized faculty were leaders in related sciences, and
among the students there appeared from time to time competent
aids eager to work with the master of research.
Two men stand out as Chamberlin’s chief associates: Rollin D.
Salisbury and Forest R. Moulton. In different fields each one con-
tributed materially to his work. Salisbury, a student at Beloit,
devoted himself loyally throughout his whole career to supporting
Chamberlin. He worked with his chief in glacial geology, in the
organization and conduct of the department of geology at Chicago,
and in the editorial work on the Journal of Geology, which they
founded. He collaborated in the preparation of their comprehensive
Manual of Geology, of which he wrote important sections. He was
more than a helpful assistant in innumerable subsidiary tasks of
administration, and he ranked high as a teacher. It was for Cham-
berlin a great good fortune to have drawn to himself a spirit so loyal,
a collaborator so competent, a fellow teacher so superior as Salisbury.
Moulton brought to the cooperation with Chamberlin the resources
of a mathematician and an astronomer. He was much younger than
Chamberlin, and during their association developed from a young
instructor to a mature scientist. In their research the method of
590 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
multiple hypotheses controlled. Their objective was a tenable hypoth-
esis of the origin of the planetary system. They examined all the
hypotheses that occupied the field and devised many others, both
comprehensive and subsidiary. Chamberlin’s constructive mind
grouped facts, originated explanations, suggested tests. He reasoned
by ‘‘naturalistic logic.’”’? Moulton’s analytical genius checked Cham-
berlin’s concepts against the principles of celestial mechanics, and
applied critical mathematical tests to the dynamical consequences. In
their discussions each always maintained independence of judgment.
When agreements were reached it was only on convincing proof.
Even so, agreement between Chamberlin and Moulton was not
regarded by them as demonstration. An hypothesis was abandoned
only when it was clearly inconsistent with known facts or laws.
All hypotheses that withstood the tests of the realities were carried on
as possible working material. Yet after 25 years of research only one
hypothesis of planetary genesis, the planetesimal, survived.
The gaseous group of genetic hypotheses represented by the theory
of Laplace failed because the kinetic energy of gases would not permit
the assembling of the actual planets by gravitation, as postulated,
and the observed moments of momentum of revolution could not have
been attained. The meteoritic hypotheses failed similarly to with-
stand Moulton’s incisive studies of their dynamical implications.
Having failed to find a solution of their problem in the general con-
cepts relating to the movements and attractions of stellar bodies,
Chamberlin and Moulton turned their attention to the specific
peculiarities of the solar system, in the hope of finding in them a
suggestion of the conditions to which they owed their evolution.
The orderly arrangement of the planets nearly in a common plane of
orbits, the distribution of masses, which contrasts extraordinarily
with the distribution of moments of momentum, the directions of
rotation of the planets, and many minor peculiarities were critically
studied. They suggested that two bodies had been concerned in the
birth of the planets from the sun—the sun itself and a visiting star.
This hint was developed constructively by Chamberlin and mathe-
matically by Moulton, until the possibilities of a dynamical encounter
had been traversed and that which seemed best to suit the actual
facts of the solar system had been isolated from the general possibili-
ties. This conception and demonstration belong entirely to Chamber-
lin and Moulton; they constitute a great original contribution in the
field of celestial mechanics.
Directing his attention specifically to the evolution of the earth
Chamberlin postulated the eruption of its mass from the sun as a
result of the enormous expulsive activities of the sun, stimulated by
the attraction of the passing star. This concept he has described as
“‘the soul of the planetesimal theory.”
CHAMBERLIN—WILLIS 591
A mass of gas expelled from the pressure and temperature of the
sun into the vacuum and cold of space presents dynamical problems
which divide physicists. Would it assemble in response to its own
gravitation and form a molten globe? or would it be dispersed by
the kinetic energy of the gas? Chamberlin and Moulton approached
the question as a sequel to their investigations of the Laplacian and
related gaseous assemblages. They had demonstrated the ineffici-
ency of gravitation and the effectiveness of kinetic dispersion. They
were forced to recognize that the mass would become a swarm of
minute solid bodies which would swing into orbits about the sun and
would thus become “‘planetesimals.”” The real problem was to account
for the fact that the planetesimals had assembled, that each swarm
had become a planet.
The problem is not one which yields to mathematical analysis unless
it be stripped of inherent complexities and simplified to suit an imagi-
nary case. Chamberlin analyzed it logically. He grasped the com-
plexity of cyclonic motion in the sun, the compressive action of the
tidal effect, the dominance of the expulsive force, the drag effect
upon the bolt, and the consequent resemblance of the mass to a
rolling cloud. He reasoned the transformation of the billowing bolt
into the orbital swarm, in consequence of the attraction of the passing
star, the formation of a heavy core, and the gradual growth of the
earth by the infall of planetesimals.
He first published these views in 1903-04 in reports to the Carnegie
Institution of Washington on research in fundamental Problems of
Geology. He embodied them in more popular form in the Origin of
the Earth, 1916. It was characteristic that to the end of his life he
continued to pursue studies designed to test, modify, or perfect
theories of the origin of the earth, including the Planetesimal. In 1926
he said concerning the latter:
For 25 years I have tested every hypothesis of the genesis of the earth of which
I could learn or which I could conceive. One and one only has withstood every
critical test. Do you think I am justified in thinking it probably true?
In this attitude of mind he took up the review of his book, the Origin
of the Earth, when it was to go to its fifth printing. The year was 1925;
he was 82. With the wisdom of a veteran but with the courage of
youth, he critically revised his earlier postulates—not to prove but to
test them—and he came upon “‘a lion in the path.’”’ He had met lions
before, such as the doctrine that the rotation of planets, if they were
formed from solid accretions, should be backward instead of forward.
For a long time that lion had barred the way from the field of gaseous
origins to that of the planetesimals, but he had been shown to present a
false front. Was this new lion more formidable?
The difficulty lay in the fact that the rotation of a cyclonic bolt must
be around the axis of the bolt as it left the sun and would therefore be
592 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
directed almost at right angles (67%°) to the actual direction of rota-
tion of the earth. Here was a dynamic contradiction of crucial
significance, but, as Chamberlin said: ‘‘There was nothing to do but
to go right at it.’ A shift of the axis of rotation was indicated. Toa
mind seeking catastrophic effects some violent accident might have
been suggested, but neither the experience of the student nor the
mechanics of the planetary system was consistent with such an assump-
tion. The rotation of the earth had long been attributed to innumera-
ble minute impulses. Similar minute but unsymmetrical impulses
due to the infalling planetesimals, and the’ eccentricity of density
which is apparent in the full-grown earth might have caused a creep-
ing of the axis of rotation during the growth of the globe. The sugges-
tion was put to the test of mathematical study and found sound.
Thus the lion was overcome.
This illustrates one of the lessons to be learned from Chamberlin’s
researches; namely, the value attaching to small effects recurring per-
sistently during the ages. His capacity to detect causes of this nature
grew out of the constant effort to keep in touch with the realities, all
the realities.
Chamberlin’s great contributions to science relate to the two ex-
treme stages of the evolution of the earth: The formation of the planet
and the subsequent history of its atmosphere. His research also
traversed all intermediate phases of terrestrial history, and he cast a
long look ahead. He bopefully forecast the evolution of man to higher
and higher possibilities, without limitation of time or intellectual
development. He himself set the example, advancing far—and
beckoning.
The following is a summary of important events in connection with
Professor Chamberlin’s career:
Place and date of birth: Mattoon, Ill., September 25, 1843.
Occupation: Professor (Emeritus) of Geology, University of Chicago. Re-
search Associate, Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Education and degrees: A. B., Beloit College, 1866, A. M., 1869; graduate,
science, University of Michigan, 1868-69; Ph. D., University of Michigan and
Wisconsin, 1882; LL. D., University of Michigan, Beloit College, and Columbian
University, 1887, University of Wisconsin, 1904, Toronto University, 1913;
Se. D., University of Illinois, 1905, University of Wisconsin, 1920.
Marriage and children: Married Alma Isabel Wilson, 1867 (deceased). One
son, Rollin Thomas Chamberlin.
Chief Publications: Geology of Wisconsin; Treatise on Geology (with R. D.
Salisbury), 1906; The Origin of the Earth, 1916. Numerous scientific and educa-
tional articles. Editor of the Journal of Geology.
Public offices, commissions, or positions of honor or trust:
On Wisconsin Geological Survey, 1873-1882, first assistant, later director.
Special commission to study the state of scientific education in China, 1908-9.
Trustee, Beloit College.
Commissioner, Illinois Geological Survey, until 1919.
Consulting geologist, United States Geological Survey, 1908.
CHAMBERLIN—WILLIS 593
Research associate, Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Honors or decorations conferred:
Medal for geological publications, Paris Exposition of 1878.
Medal for geological publications, Paris Exposition of 1893.
Helen Culver medal of the Geographic Society of Chicago.
Bust of Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin presented to the University of Chicago,
February 7, 1903, ‘‘in recognition of the eminent services of Professor Chamberlin
to the science of geology.”
Portrait of Professor Chamberlin presented to the University of Chicago on
June 11, 1918.
Hayden medal awarded by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia,
for distinguished work in geology, 1920.
Penrose medal, Society of Economic Geologists, 1924.
Penrose medal, Geological Society of America, 1927.
Membership in technical, scientific, or professional societies:
Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters (president, 1885-1887).
Geological Society of America (president, 1895).
Chicago Academy of Science (president for 18 years, 1897-1915).
Illinois Academy of Science (president, 1907).
American Association for the Advancement of Science (president, 1908-9).
National Academy of Sciences.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston.
Geological Society of Washington.
Philosophical Society of Washington.
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
Correspondent of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Corresponding member, British Association for the Advancement of Science
Corresponding member, Geological Society of Edinburgh.
Corresponding member, Geological Society of London.
Corresponding member, Geological Society of Sweden.
Corresponding member, Geological Society of Belgium.
Corresponding member, New York Academy of Science.
Sigma Xi.
Phi Beta Kappa.
Professional or business record:
1866-1868. Principal Delavan High School.
1869-1872. Professor of natural science, State Normal School, Whitewater,
Wis.
1873-1882. Professor of geology, Beloit College.
1873-1876. Assistant geologist, Wisconsin Geological Survey.
1876-1882. Chief geologist, Wisconsin Geological Survey.
1878. Made a study of glaciers in Switzerland.
1882-1886. Geologist, United States Geological Survey, glacial division.
1882-1907. Made a study of the glacial formations of America, under the
United States Geological Survey.
1885-1887. Professor of geology, Columbian University.
1887-1892. President, University of Wisconsin.
1892-1919. Head, department of geology, University of Chicago.
1892-1928. Senior editor, Journal of Geology.
1894, Geologist to Peary Relief Expedition—made a study of glaciers in
Greenland.
Contributed chapters on North American glaciation to Geikie’s ‘‘Great Ice
Age.”
594 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
1902-1909. Investigator, fundamental problems of geology, Carnegie Institu-
tion of Washington.
Consulting geologist, Wisconsin Geological Survey.
1908—. Consulting geologist, United States Geological Survey.
1909-1928. Research associate, Carnegie Institution of Washington.
1909. Made a study of fundamental principles of geology, especially the study
of the old hypotheses of the origin of the earth and the solar system, destructive
criticism of these (in connection with F. R. Moulton) and their final rejection.
and the development of an entirely new hypothesis now known as the planetesimal
hypothesis. This view has been widely, though as yet not universally, accepted.
It is perhaps Doctor Chamberlin’s greatest contribution to science.
Developed a radically new view of the history of the atmosphere (from a key
derived from G. Johnstone Stoney).
Made a study of tidal problems.
Carried on diastrophic studies, basing the great epochs of earth history on
changes in the body of the earth.
1919-1928. Professor emeritus, department of geology, University of Chicago.
Smithsonian Report, 1929.—Flexner ad Ng = |
HIDEYO NOGUCHI
1876-1928
HIDEYO NOGUCHI'!
By Stmon FLEXNER
The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York
[With 1 plate]
Hideyo Noguchi was born on November 24, 1876, in Inawashiro,
Fukushima, a village in the mountains of northern Japan. His name
during childhood was Seisaku which, as is the custom in his country,
was changed to another when he reached manhood. The adoption
of the name ‘‘Hideyo”’ gives us an insight into the way his budding
mental powers impressed those about him, for of the two parts com-
posing the word, ‘‘Hide’? means superior or eminent, and “‘yo”’
means world. The prophecy carried by the name came to a remark-
able realization as subsequent events showed.
Noguchi graduated from the local academy at Aizu in 1889,
receiving during this period a preliminary introduction into medical
practice. The circumstances of his early schooling are delightfully
set forth in an account prepared by his teacher and foster-father,
Sakae Kobayashi, which was used in connection with the memorial
exercises held in Doctor Noguchi’s honor in his native village.
According to this account, Noguchi belonged to a family which had
become greatly impoverished. After the restoration of the Meiji,
Mr. Kobayashi, a samurai of the Aizu clan, being learned in the
Chinese classics, entered the teaching profession and became principal
of the higher school (academy) at Inawashiro, with which were
affiliated a number of more elementary schools of the neighboring
villages.
The principal visited these lower schools, and on one occasion while
examining the children at Sanjogata, his interest was aroused in an
ill-clad pupil whose left hand was badly deformed. On inquiry it
developed that at the age of two years the hand had been severely
burned, and the primitive medical treatment had left the fingers,
while not completely lost, yet grown together and almost useless.
1 The substance of this sketch was adopted as a minute for the records of the Board of Scientific Directors
of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Reprinted by permission from Science, June 28, 1929.
82322—30-—39 595
596 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
The physically backward child Seisaku gave his age as 14, and ex-
plained that, because of the poverty of his family, he would be obliged
to leave school. On learning that, in spite of having entered the
school a year or two later than the other pupils, his progress had been
so rapid that he had surpassed them all, the principal had him
transferred to his own school at Inawashiro.
A day was fixed on which Seisaku was brought to Mr. Kobayashi’s
house by his mother. The child astonished the teacher by going at
once to the altar of Buddha, found in many Japanese houses, kneeling
before it and repeating a little prayer before saluting the principal.
As is customary in the East, the mother brought with her a present
which she tendered the teacher. It consisted of a few fresh-water
shrimp, caught doubtless by herself in the adjacent lake.
Seisaku responded quickly to the new environment, making rapid
progress in his studies and growing strong in body and daring in
temperament. It is recorded that he would fight and even defeat
other boys of his class with his single, uninjured arm. However, the
deformity of his left hand constantly vexed him and he considered
many ways of having it corrected.
Just at this time and while Noguchi’s course after graduation was
being considered, there came to the neighboring city of Wakamatsu,
Dr. Kanae Watanabe, whom Noguchi consulted. Separation of the
fingers was undertaken and successfully accomplished, and during
the two weeks of residence in the doctor’s household, while the treat-
ment was being carried out, Noguchi decided to become a doctor.
He continued with Doctor Watanabe, serving as errand boy and
apprentice, and when the China-Japanese War broke out and the
doctor, an ex-military surgeon, returned to the army, the young
Noguchi was left in charge of the household affairs and medical
practice.
With a strange forecast of the future, Noguchi immediately arranged
with a middle-school teacher for lessons in German and with a French
missionary for lessons in French, endeavoring at the same time to
make a beginning in English by himself. Curiously enough, he pro-
gressed fastest in English, although in time he obtained a reading
knowledge of all three languages. This gift for languages persisted,
and later he added not only enough Italian and Spanish to enable
him to read scientific papers, but during a year’s residence in Copen-
hagen he mastered spoken as well as written Danish. On his several
expeditions to South America where he studied yellow fever, he came
to converse in Spanish with doctors and officials, which served greatly
to extend his personal influence.
It was at this early period in his mental training that he disciplined
himself to sleep and work at short intervals. This habit of mind and
body, which played a large role in his scientific career, he never subse-
NOGUCHI—FLEXNER 597
quently relinquished. He would lie on a mat beside his writing desk,
and after a few hours of sleep, he would rise and resume study. His
wife told me recently that his custom was to repose an hour or two
after dinner in a large comfortable chair and then read or write late
into the night. The last days before leaving for Africa he was at the
Rockefeller Institute almost unintermittently for 48 hours or more,
and his letters from Africa were written at the end of long, arduous
days and with the dawn stealing into the windows.
Noguchi’s mental acumen seems not to have been preceptibly
blunted by these excesses. I recall vividly an early morning visit to
my home after a night’s vigil. I was dressing when word was brought
up that Noguchi was waiting. Fearing some catastrophe, I hurried
down and found him eager and tense, but not disturbed or excited.
He had spent the night in going through a lot of about 200 slides of
paretic brain specimens stained for spirochetes. In the early evening
he had detected what he thought were spiral organisms. By going
over and over all the slides he had put to one side seven in which he
believed he had found spirochetae. However, as so many competent
histologists had failed in the same quest, he became distrustful of his
judgment and sought confirmation. He was induced to take break-
fast, after which we went at once to his laboratory where the accuracy
of his observations was immediately established. This discovery
constitutes a landmark in the pathology of paresis.
In 1894, after the close of the China-Japanese War, Noguchi spent
three years at the Tokyo Medical College, graduating in 1897. Prob-
ably the lack of means and want of a college degree barred him from
the University Medical School. He at once passed the government
examinations, became a licensed physician and surgeon, and entered
upon an assistantship under Surgeon-General Satow, at the General
Hospital, which he held for about eight months. This hospital
issued a monthly medical periodical, the editorship of which was
intrusted to Noguchi. The linguistic talents recorded above corre-
spond to a literary facility which he retained throughout his life. He
came to write his scientific papers in English with an amazing speed,
and while they were never faultless, they required far less editorial
correction than might have been expected. It was at this time that
Noguchi became lecturer in general pathology and oral surgery at the
Tokyo Dental College, and his lifelong friendship with Doctor Chiwaki
began. This connection continued until he sailed for America,
although in September, 1898, Noguchi became assistant to Professor
Kitasato, at the Government Institute of Infectious Diseases, an
institution based on the institute founded in Berlin for Robert Koch,
who was Kitasato’s teacher.
Bubonic plague having appeared in China, Noguchi was sent to
New Chwang by the International Sanitary Board; he was made
598 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
physician in chief to the Central Medical Bureau, which comprised
both a hospital and bacteriological laboratory. The plague having
disappeared from this region, he was transferred to Manchuria under
a Russian medical commission, where he remained until the Boxer
outbreak, when he returned to the Institute of Infectious Diseases in
Tokyo.
From 1899 until 1900 Noguchi published several textbooks, includ-
ing volumes on the methods of pathological and bacteriological study,
general pathology and morphology of the teeth, and he translated
from German into Japanese the first part of Hueppe’s popular man-
ual of hygiene.
I come now to the chance meeting which I had with Noguchi in
Tokyo. In the spring of 1899, I was sent by the Johns Hopkins
University as a member of a medical commission to the Philippines
in order to study tropical diseases among American soldiers, and on
this occasion I made a visit also to Japan. We requested permission
from Professor Kitasato to visit his institute, and the invitation to
do so was brought to the hotel by Noguchi. The latter having
extended the courteous invitation, expressed a wish to go to the
United States to study pathology and bacteriology.
It is only proper to state that no particular encouragement was
given to this request. It is desirable to explain that the writer was
not returning to the Johns Hopkins Medical School in the autumn,
but was about to transfer to the University of Pennsylvania. To
avoid embarrassment, Noguchi was asked to write him there. In
due time a letter, composed in English which under the circumstances
must be regarded as remarkable, arrived.
In the meantime, encouraged by a loan of 500 yen (about $250)
from Yashuhei Yako, Noguchi consulted Mr. Kobayashi about his
desire to go to America. His teacher is reported to have said to him
that ‘‘money borrowed is not like money earned. Once it is spent
another loan is asked for; hence he would do well to think twice before
going abroad on borrowed money.”’ The advice determined Noguchi
to earn the necessary money. This accomplished, he went again to
his teacher to ask him to look after his parents, brothers, and sisters
in his absence. Mr. Kobayashi’s account of this incident represents
Noguchi as saying, ‘‘If I wish to be filial and faithful to the
Noguchi family, I feel in duty bound to remain in my country, and
so must sacrifice my cherished hope. If I go to America, I must for-
sake my dear mother. What then am I to do?” Mr. Kobayashi,
feeling that no ordinary obstacle should be permitted to prevent the
fulfilment of so deep an aspiration, promised to look after the family,
whereupon the two friends clasped hands and wept, and Noguchi
said, “Allow me in the future to call you father,” to which consent
was given. Thereafter in his letters Noguchi always addressed Mr.
NOGUCHI—FLEXNER 599
Kobayashi as ‘‘father,” and in 1915 on his only return to Japan he
entered into a pledge of brotherhood with Mr. Kobayashi’s sons and
daughters. I have received a letter written a short time before
Noguchi sailed for Africa, and its tone and contents show a deep
affection for his foster-father and reveal that he was in the habit of
keeping him informed of his scientific work. The progress. of the
studies on trachoma is related in this letter. Mr. Kobayashi is said
to have told Noguchi that his three main assets in life arose from his
physical deformity, his poverty, and his stubborn will. Mr. Koba-
yashi wrote after Noguchi’s death that he had made a great mark in
the world by virtue of these valuable circumstances.
His life has been a long series of struggles, and when he died a dramatic death in
West Africa in pursuit of knowledge, a great storm was raging. Providence did
not give him peace even on the verge of death, for Seisaku, the child, had dreaded
above everything—thunder.
Noguchi arrived in Philadelphia at the end of 1899 under circum-
stances not too auspicious. He presented himself at thedormitories
of the University of Pennsylvania unexpectedly, and in accordance
with eastern custom bearing several gifts, which the writer still
possesses and cherishes. It developed that the most immediately
pressing question would be that of financial support. The small
capital with which Noguchi started on his enterprising voyage had
been all but exhausted by the expenses of the long journey. Univer-
sity funds for his support there were none; inquiry among Japanese
officials brought only disappointment. Hence there was one thing
only to do, namely, to start work and to wait for something to turn up.
A theme in bacteriology was chosen and work begun in the cramped
quarters allotted to pathology in the old medical building. Provi-
dence was, however, not unkind, and before long a patron was found.
A short time before Noguchi’s arrival, Dr. Weir Mitchell, whose
contributions to the nature and action of the venoms are famous, had
conceived the notion of a further study along the lines of immunology
which was then a fresh and advancing subject. He and the writer
had discussed this undertaking and were awaiting a suitable oppor-
tunity to make a start.
The matter was now presented to Noguchi, who fell in with the idea,
confessing of course that he knew nothing whatever of venoms and
next to nothing of the methods of immunology. Doctor Mitchell pro-
vided funds, which at the outset just sufficed for the experiments and a
modest sum for Noguchi’s living. It was a period of strenuous en-
deavor and simple living for him, but Noguchi’s long struggle with
adverse conditions in Japan made it one of no great hardship. The
first lot of rattlesnakes, magnificent specimens, shipped from Florida,
was killed by cold, but Doctor Mitchell soon secured others, and
the study was not only begur but quickly began to yield illuminating
600 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
results. It was not long before Doctor Mitchell interested the
National Academy of Sciences, which made contributions from the
Bache Fund to extend the scope of the investigation, and somewhat
later he interested the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which
made liberal grants. As each special topic of research was completed
it was published in the University of Pennsylvania Medical Bulletin
or elsewhere, and finally the results of the studies as a whole were
brought together in a handsome volume, freely illustrated, brought out
by the Carnegie Institution. Noguchi undertook the preparation of
this volume in English, and it is a tribute to his talents as a linguist
that in spite of the almost herculean task the editorial revision
required was not great. This writing facility persisted and was per-
fected as the years went on. Noguchi came to produce English
manuscripts not only as readily as a trained English writer but even
more quickly than most writers, and he would write clearly under
considerable pressure of work and time. His powers in this direction
were distinctly unusual, since he wrote well and accurately at periods
when his days were given to arduous laboratory work and his nights
to little sleep. His last finished large work, namely, the remarkable
monograph on trachoma, was produced under this kind of stress,
while he was preparing for the African expedition.
There can be no doubt that Noguchi was highly gifted as an
investigator nor that his true medium of research was the biological
field. He was fortunate in entering it at a rewarding period of bac-
teriological and immunological advance. But it is probable that
his peculiar talent in meeting obstacles and overcoming them by
insight and technical skill would have brought him to the front at
another period, and in another branch of biological investigation.
Noguchi’s exceptional powers arose from a threefold union of natural
abilities: he was gifted with a clear, apprehensive mind; his technical
skill was phenomenal; his industry was extraordinary. His per-
spicacious intellect enabled him to state a problem sharply; his re-
sourcefulness in devising means to ends prevented him from being
blocked by methodical obstacles; his inexhaustible industry and
physical prowess, which often made virtually two days of one,
immensely extended the range of his activities. If we add to this
formidable list of qualities the fact that his mind was many tracked,
in the sense that he would keep several major problems moving ‘at
the same time, we may begin to get an insight into the secrets which
determined Noguchi’s remarkable productivity, which tended to
become speedier as the years advanced and experience became richer.
To a visitor who happened into his laboratory late at night and
inquired whether he ever went home he is said to have replied,
“Home? Why this is my home.”
NOGUCHI—FLEXNER 601
The department of pathology of the University of Pennsylvania
between 1900 and 1903 was carrying a heavy burden of routine,
while the staff was young and small in size. Noguchi was exempted
from these duties, not only because of the bar of language, but
because his talents as an investigator were apparent to his colleagues,
who admired him for his gifts and loved him for his ingratiating
personal qualities. Very soon Noguchi was a marked man throughout
the university, and even throughout the world. These captivating
individual traits never diminished. Every one who came within
their influence felt them and was impressed with a kind of noble
simplicity and dignity of personality which scientific success, no
matter how great, never impaired. Part of his outstanding position
as a world figure arose from a kind of living charm of manner and
conduct, raised of course to high power by his eminence as a scientific
investigator.
The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York was
opened in 1904. The year intervening between the transition of
Noguchi from the University of Pennsylvania to New York was
spent by him in Copenhagen. The choice of place to study was de-
termined by the recent publications of Madsen and Arrhenius on
immunochemistry, in which it was sought to range immunological
processes with physicochemical reactions. Noguchi already pos-
sessed an understanding of the opposing chemical view, as embraced
in the side chain theory of Ehrlich. The incident led, however, to
a misunderstanding not without diverting features. Ehrlich had
praised the venom work, which fitted in well with his theory; hence
he interpreted Noguchi’s choice of Copenhagen as a criticism and
defection. All this came out one day in Emil Fischer’s laboratory
in Berlin, where the writer was spending a semester. Ehrlich walked
him up and down in the aisle between the long rows of work tables
expostulating ever more excitedly. At the height of the exhortation,
which had stopped all work going on in the room, Fischer entered
from his private laboratory, having been attracted by the uproar.
The two friends greeted each other warmly, and Ehrlich, realizing
the commotion he had caused, laughed and said to Fischer, ‘‘Why
do you not have me thrown out?” To which the latter replied,
‘Oh, we are very tolerant here.’’ Ehrlich accepted the explanation
offered and nothing more came of the episode. Noguchi remained
rather in the Ehrlich camp of immunologists, although he concerned
himself little with the merely theoretical basis of immunity. With
the opening of the Rockefeller Institute, Noguchi continued for a
time his studies on the Wassermann reaction begun with Madsen,
and devised a new method for its application in which an antihuman
system is employed. Valuable as this contribution proved to be,
602 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
its significance is small compared to the by-product it yielded, namely
the pure cultivation of the class of spirochetal microorganisms.
This class of spiral organisms had become clinically enhanced in
importance through the discovery of the syphilis and yaws spirals.
They, together with known spirals of other sorts inhabiting various
organs, were recognized wholly through their microscopic characters.
All efforts to secure them in pure, artificial cultivation had failed.
Noguchi set himself to this task, which he accomplished in a brilliant
manner. The entry into this field of bacteriological research was
to prove his most important, as well as daring venture, because so
many of his subsequent discoveries were reared on the mastery of the
technical means of cultivation which he secured in working with the
spirochetae.
In essence, the method was invented by Theobald Smith, and it
consisted in employing a culture medium in which a fragment of a
sterile, normal organ (rabbit kidney) had been placed. Noguchi had
to modify the original medium in many ways to adapt it to the
cultivation of the many spiral and other microorganisms which he
obtained in pure form for the first time. Even for the class of spirals
the culture requirements are various, while when the method was
applied to the growth of still other organisms, e. g., globoid bodies in
poliomyelitis, Bactervwm granulosis in trachoma, profound modifica-
tions became necessary. Still it remains true that he found in the
principle of employing fresh, sterile tissues in addition to the more
common culture media, as introduced by Doctor Smith, the key
which was to unlock many bacteriological doors previously unopened.
The cultivation of the parasitic spirals, including the syphilis
spiral, proved, of course, clinically most significant; but in addition
to more than half a dozen pathogenic species, he cultivated pure for
the first time as many merely saprophytic species living in or on the
bodies of animals. The culture of the syphilis spiral was made to
yield luetin, a soluble extract based on tuberculin, of use in detecting
latent and congenital syphilis.
There is no better incident than this to bring out Noguchi’s almost
faultless and infinitely varied technical skill. The culture medium
we are considering is not only very variable in itself, because of the
chemical complexity of the materials entering into its composition,
and therefore exceedingly difficult to keep approximately constant,
but it demands constant modification in order to adapt it to the
many organisms the cultivation of which he accomplished through
its use. Itis no wonder, therefore, that so many of Noguchi’s would-
be followers have failed in their efforts. Several years had, indeed,
to elapse before his work was repeated by others and began to become
widely fruitful. The belief became current that the methods had not
been fully disclosed. There is no doubt that Noguchi did always
NOGUCHI—FLEXNER 603
describe them as fully as language permitted. With factors so
variable in their nature, what he perhaps did not do, and what such
consummate masters of technique almost never find it possible to do,
is to put into words those subtle, imponderable yet essential twists
and turns of method used by them, often unconsciously, in adapting
a medium to a recalcitrant microorganism. The patient and resource-
ful among bacteriologists have learned in time to repeat what Noguchi
has done, but the mass of the conventional among them undoubtedly
soon tired and gave up the unequal contest.
In 1912 Noguchi married Mary Dardis, whom he surrounded with
devotion and who, on his perilous journeys, as we learn from letters
and cable messages, he had constantly in his mind, lest she suffer
from undue anxiety. He required few diversions in order to refresh
his spirit. An occasional game of chess at the Nippon Club or at
his home or an evening with friends sufficed. In the summer at his
bungalow in the Catskills he fished in the stream which ran beside
his little place, or he painted in oils in a self-taught manner in which
there were both talent and charm. In earlier days he was skillful
with the brush and produced water-color illustrations for his pub-
lished papers, which were faithful, finished, and original. As his
mind was too restless to renew itself by idleness, he found in these
simple devices means to restore his strength. These avocations were
followed purely for refreshment, and he always took himself humor-
ously as painter or sportsman.
The last 10 years of Noguchi’s life were spent in the investiga-
tion of certain obscure diseases, including yellow fever, trachoma,
Rocky Mountain spotted fever, poliomyelitis, rabies, kala-azar,
and Oroya fever and verruga peruana. It is true, of course, that he
did not find solutions of all these riddles of pathology, but the re-
markable thing is rather that he should have solved as many of
them as he did.
There was a logic in Noguchi’s work which is not always perceived
immediately by readers of his monographs and many papers. As a
matter of fact he was always capitalizing and refining his experience.
He learned that the gonads of the rabbit not only serve to grow the
syphilis spirochete in great numbers, but also to free them of asso-
ciated, contaminating bacteria. His studies on Rocky Mountain
spotted fever emphasized further the suitability of these organs to the
abundant multiplication of even undetermined microorganisms. He
therefore employed the method to enrich and purify vaccine virus,
and thus for the first time secured this important material in an
uncontaminated state. The neurovaccine, so widely employed in
Europe for vaccination is, of course, a direct outgrowth of Noguchi’s
discovery, as are many of the studies now in progress in which partic-
ular organs of living animals are used to procure evidences of the
presence of parasitic organisms in diseases of unestablished origin.
604 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
In 1918 Noguchi became a member of the commission sent by the
Rockefeller Foundation to Guayaquil, Ecuador, to investigate yellow
fever. This was the first of four expeditions made by him to South
America between 1918 and 1924. On each expedition he isolated
in culture a spiral organism from cases diagnosed as yellow fevei
which he subsequently named Leptospira icteroides. He came to
regard this spiral, which he recognized as biologically related to the
spiral organism of infectious or hemorrhagic jaundice, as the parasitic
incitant of yellow fever. In all his studies he secured the spiral only
in a part of the cases examined—6 of 27 in Guayaquil—but he
detected evidences in the blood of other cases of the presence of
the spiral at some time. This spiral was found afterwards by other
bacteriologists by the employment of Noguchi’s technique. How-
ever, there were many failures also to confirm his findings. At
the present moment, Noguchi’s work on yellow fever in South America
has come into question, so that it is desirable to perceive clearly
just what the question is. There is no doubt that Noguchi and
others cultivated Leptospira icteroides from the cases diagnosed by
clinical experts as yellow fever, and with the cultures reproduced in
animals symptoms and pathological changes resembling those of
yellow fever in man. Now that the extensive investigations of
African yellow fever by Adrian Stokes and others have failed to
reveal the leptospira and have yielded a filter-passing virus, believed
to be the incitant of the disease, and the reinvestigation of South
American yellow fever is offering results tending to confirm the
African findings, there is inclination to discredit Noguchi’s earlier
studies. There is really no conflict between the two classes of find-
ings—the only conflict possible arises from the interpretation to
be placed upon each. Recent experience, gained with full knowl-
edge of the existence of the filterable virus, has reestablished the
occurrence of leptospira in the blood of yellow-fever patients. The
future alone can determine whether cases of another infectious
disease, due to leptospira, have been and still are confused clini-
cally with yellow fever, or whether in yellow fever a second patho-
genic leptospiral microorganism sometimes invades the blood. Such
instances of secondary or concomitant infection are, of course, known
to arise in other defined or specific diseases.
In 1925 Dr. T. Battistini, of Lima, came to study with Noguchi
under a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship. He brought with him a
sample of blood taken from a case of Oroya fever. This circumstance
enabled Noguchi to turn his attention to the rod-shaped bodies found
by Doctor Barton in 1905 in the red corpuscles of persons suffering
from the disease. These bodies had not been secured in artificial
culture and were looked upon not as bacteria but as protozoa. Nogu-
chi threw himself into this problem with characteristic energy, and the
NOGUCHI—FLEXNER 605
solution which he found was undoubtedly aided by the fact, already
determined in 1910, that the warty or verrugous lesions appearing on
the skin bear a relationship, if a disputed one, to Oroya fever, and they
had actually been already communicated by inoculation to monkeys.
It was, indeed, this disputed relationship which led the Peruvian
medical student, Carrion, in 1885 to inoculate himself with material
taken from the warty formations, from which a fatal attack of Oroya
fever developed. Since this time the composite malady is often called
Carrion’s disease.
The rods yielded to artificial cultivation, and with the cultures
Noguchi was enabled to reproduce both verruga peruana and the
equivalent of Oroya fever in monkeys. Moreover, the rods have been
cultivated repeatedly from verrugous nodules sent to New York from
Peru. The bacterial incitant of Carrion’s disease having been estab-
lished, Noguchi turned his attention to the manner in which infection
arises.
A good many acute observations made by Peruvian physicians and
others had already indicated that direct transmission from person to
person did not occur. Indirect evidence, indeed, pointed to an insect
carrier or vector of the microorganism. An American entomologist,
Charles H. Townsend, who had studied the subject minutely had con-
cluded that this vector belonged to the phlebotomus class of nocturnal
blood-sucking insects. He even went so far as to name the supposed
vector Phlebotomus verrucarum.
Just before sailing for Africa, Noguchi planned a definitive investi-
gation of this question. Through the cooperation of the Rockefeller
Foundation, Raymond C. Shannon was sent to Peru to study the insect
life of the valleys in which verrugas and Oroya fever abound. He was
to collect and send insects falling under suspicion to New York, where
the inoculation and culture experiments were to be made. ALI this
was carried out precisely as Noguchi had arranged it, with the result
that the vectors of Carrion’s disease have now been determined to be
insects of the class of phlebotomi, as Townsend believed, and Shannon
has succeeded in identifying two species, P. verrucarum and P. nogu-
chit, which certainly carry Bartonella bacilliformis, and a third species,
P. peruensis, which is in this respect still in doubt.
Noguchi’s investigations of trachoma fall into two periods. The
first one dates from 1910 to 1913, in which he studied cases of the dis-
ease in New York. Nothing especially significant came from this study.
But the investigation made in 1926 of cases of Indian trachoma at
Albuquerque, N. Mex.,led to a wholly different result. This investiga-
tion was promoted by Dr. F. I. Proctor and Dr. Polk Richards, who
gave invaluable aid. The plan which Noguchi followed was to make
cultures on specially prepared media and to isolate and test by inoc-
ulation into the conjunctiva of the monkey all bacteria growing in the
606 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
cultures. He decided not to overlook any microorganism, no matter
how banal it appeared tobe. This determination in itself is iJuminat-
ing as to Noguchi’s method of attacking a new, complex problem.
To most bacteriologists the labor involved would seem not only futile
but devastating. Just here we observe not only the rigid system of
research which Noguchi had developed, but we note also the effect of
his incomparable industry, because the mere technical operations of
the plan proved prodigious. They did not, however, abate his deci-
sion, and the end result is that he discovered a new bacterial species
called Bacterium granulosis, which on injection into the conjunctival
mucous membrane of the chimpanzee, baboon, and Macaca rhesus
induces a chronic granular infection, which clinically and pathologically
is indistinguishable from trachoma in man. From the inoculated
conjunctiva of one eye the granular infection spreads of itself to the
uninoculated other eye. This experimental trachoma in monkeys
persists for many months, gradually producing in certain animals the
deforming scarlike changes so commonly met with in man. As is so
common an experience when a disease native in one animal species is
grafted on a species in which it does not naturally occur, there are
certain distinctions, usually of intensity, to be detected, but the essen-
tial trachomatous process arises in the monkeys as the result of the
inoculation of a particular bacterial species hitherto unknown, and
obtained by Noguchi from undoubted cases of trachoma as it exists on
a wide and destructive scale among the American Indian population.
From time to time, Noguchi undertook the investigation of other
problems than those already noted, with which he made progress.
Thus the cultivation of the ‘‘globoid bodies”’ from the filter-passing
virus disease poliomyelitis was a definite achievement. He contri-
buted to the knowledge of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, both in
respect to the Rickettsia-like organisms present in the insect vector,
the wood tick, and in human tissues, and also in respect to an anti-
serum capable of neutralizing the virulent incitant, and thus making
the effective treatment of the fatal disease a matter of hopeful further
pursuit. His study of the protozoan organism causing kala-azar, a
disease of the eastern world, led to the perfection of methods for cul-
tivating the class of flagellated organisms and among them the inter-
esting species inhabiting the latex of the milkweed, which are found
also in the intestines of the insects feeding on the milk. Having
secured a wide variety of flagellates in pure culture, he developed
methods for their distinction by serological and other means such as
are used in the differentiation of bacteria.
In October, 1927, Noguchi sailed for Africa. This was the consum-
mation of a wish he had long entertained, but which uncertain health
had caused to be deferred. He wished naturally to study and compare
the yellow fever of Africa with that of South America. The investi-
NOGUCHI—FLEXNER 607
gation of yellow fever by the Rockefeller Foundation as a world
problem had led to the dispatch of a series of pathologists to Africa,
among whom was Adrian Stokes, who, just before his death from yel-
low fever, had determined the existence of a filter-passing virus in
the African disease. On the other hand, the leptospira had not been
found in the blood of cases, as had been done in South America.
This discrepancy only served to increase Noguchi’s desire to study the
African fever at first hand. As his health had meanwhile improved,
there seemed no sufficient reason for denying him this satisfaction.
Noguchi arrived in Accra, on the Gold Coast, on November 17,
and decided to establish his laboratory there. The British officials
cooperated in every way, and through the aid of the Rockefeller
Foundation staff at Lagos, who lent all assistance, he soon had provi-
sion for monkeys and for laboratory work meeting all his requirements.
Noguchi had completed his African studies which, among other things,
confirmed Stokes’s discovery of a virus and failed to yield Lepto-
spira icteroides; and he was all but ready to embark for home when
he was himself attacked by yellow fever. He paid a visit to the Lagos
station on May 10, being apparently in perfect health and showing
the greatest interest in the work going on there. He returned to Accra
on May 12 and was already ill. The symptoms increased in intensity,
and although there was a temporary improvement, alarming symp-
toms reappeared and his death occurred on May 21, 1928. Dr.
William A. Young, the British pathologist at the Accra station who
undertook to look after Noguchi’s incomplete experiments, himself
fell a victim to yellow fever, from which he died on May 29. Stokes,
Noguchi, Young gave their lives in the pioneer work of establishing
the nature of African yellow fever which had hitherto been one of the
baffling problems of tropical pathology.
Noguchi was an international figure much beloved. His sudden
death, therefore, came as a shock to the whole world. In virtue of
the world-wide scale on which he carried out his fruitful investiga-
gations, he had become known as a leader and pathfinder in bacteri-
ology. Messages of sympathy and admiration were sent from far
and near, and the circumstances of his courageous and tragic death
became the theme of writers in innumerable lay and technical
journals.
As is often observed among men of his race, Noguchi was of small
stature and slender build, but his physical movements were extra-
ordinarily alert and precise. He carried his well-shaped head sur-
mounted by a heavy growth of black hair erect on strong shoulders,
and his well-molded features were dominated and lit up by eyes of
unusual eagerness and quickness of glance. His expression was
genial and almost never severe, although Mr. Konenkov has caught
the latter mood in the portrait bust for which Noguchi sat during
608 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1929
the last days before sailing for Africa. There was striking dispro-
portion between the slight body and the dynamic energy which
characterized Noguchi’s years of devotion to the main passion of his
life—science.
During Noguchi’s eventful life, learned societies and governments
may almost be said to have vied with one another in doing him honor.
The emperor of his own country decorated him twice; in 1915,on his
only return to his native country, when he was hailed as one of the
most famous Japanese of all time; and again after his death, in
special recognition of his eminence and meritorious service to the
cause of science, the Order of the Rising Sun of the highest class was
conferred upon him posthumously. Noguchi’s simple origin and
inauspicious beginnings as well as his amazing career in science have
been seized upon and held up to his countrymen as worthy of admira-
tion and emulation. His example of filial piety to this family and
his teacher, and the story of his visit to his home in 1915, which became
virtually a triumphant tour through the country, are being woven
into a legend of singular beauty so precious to the heart of the East.
The birthplace of Noguchi has been acquired and will be saved to
posterity. As a shrine in which personal effects, mementoes and
records of his scientific work will be deposited and preserved, it will
become an object of pilgrimage and veneration for the intellectually
devout from far and near. The spirit of science will surely hover over
this shrine, and in accordance with the genius of his countrymen, it
will attract worshipers to whom the name of Hideyo Noguchi will
be a sacred emblem of love of his fellow man.
INDEX
A
Page
Abbot, Dr. Charles G., secretary of the Institution.___.._____.________ III,
XI, XU, x11, 1, 19, 41, 42, 43, 44, 49, 56, 68, 80, 92, 97, 98, 99, 100,
101, 103, 104, 108, 112, 120, 127, 154, 155.
fe Jal S OREM DU \h ice] Dee ee a ee an | ee enna es ee 4, 15, 28, 32, 33, 34
Aborigines of the ancient island of Hispaniola, The (Krieger)____________ 473
Adams, Charles Francis, Secretary of the Navy (member of the Institu-
MOT) Se ee ee Se PE oS ce ee eee ee il ery XI
Pel enim eset 5 8) SS Se ls 2 eee Berane 19, 99
Agriculture, Secretary of (member of the Institution) __._._____________- XI
Agriculture, United States Department of, library____.._._________--____ 119
Aldrich. Dr.) Join) Mi ©. 1) prope Po wpe anh tye Tepid a colt bs ya tht Bek fii xJI, 34
/NIG ha (ehalsed DLO N41! C1 bya 5 Ot eg ee ce RNS Pee Meer a, Ae xu, 99, 100
Milobments fOr printings 295.2 oe oh eee Fat an 126
Ameriea, ancient, The population of (Spinden)_._..._..._.._...__-f = 451
American Association for the Advancement of Science________-_ 40, 58, 111, 113
American Council ofdLearned Societies. .=-.-........-.-22e_ 321 _» 55
American, Historical Association, teports......._....-.....-2)__W__2s 121, 126
Amerncanevuseum) of Natural History 2252222 ee ey ven 114
American negro artists, painting and sculpture by_________-___________ 46
Americans Numismatic Associations = 225 22-2 2 Le ee eee 30
American Research, School, of a. aetL foe eels eo ie sae hho ET ey 60
American Lelephone & Telegraph Co_- =. 2-2-3. = ee 29
Amory Copley. 23.2. 3.2222 552. See teee a A oan piel fine Nant 34
Angstrom, DreAndersi Kes 28. 2 3c oh eee ePrice oo the pee Toe 5
Animals in the collection, June 30, 1929, National Zoological Park______ 84
Anthropological collections, National Museum____________-_--___-__-_- 26
Appropriations; table of; for past 10, years_.-......---2--.--!£-2. 224 152
Arehscologicali society. of Washington... =. 2-..-<2c--seeenennnanau 27
Arctic and Antarctic scenes and character studies___...__._________-__ 45
mOnsireng. -Mennyy at olb eS oo eco 8 oo ce kes ee ot ena nese 20, 105, 106
Antificialicolau@Wwallkes) se wae oe he 229
Arts and industries collections, National Museum____________________-_ 29
Assistant secretary of the Institution________________ XI, x11, 41, 112, 154, 155
Meatrophusieal Observatory = =. 222 ee eee 1, 2, 7, 9, 14, 19
annals. 2asagi eh EP te teen) Seen abe epg SS 2 19, 98, 99, 121
ficldgWwOPke ate nye bien seeelincgeapys. 46 Salsin. ot ia 99
at Mount Brukkaros, South West Africa_____..______-______ 19, 100
aveMount Montezuma iChile=. e024. 2 Seta ee 19, 100
at, Mountawilson;,, Califs twas Bf jy sed ep go i ae Sk Gee 99
at, Table Mountain, (Calif. -eifeD. «cer tenbesteeeul le said 19, 100
TST TS yesh eae sees es ee ak tee tS i EE 115
plantiannaWIPGte se Swe 2 oe ek ny ee Suse sek ees se 93
TRE} OLE See ene om dae) AG a a aL © GEN 93
Ge ET a oes me a ee rahi pe xin, 101
609
610 INDEX
Astrophysical Observatory—Continued. Page
work at Washington eh 2 Deke ae ee ek Eel ee ee me 2 93
AtMOSPWELIChOZONE Mise Rw a ge ie ee a ee 97
concordant results of Table Mountain and Montezuma________ 98
periodicities in solar variation ss Fak 22 oo Se as eee 94
prepatation-ot Volume'V of’the Annals ¢ ee ee eu sb ease 98
reduction of Table Mountain observations____________________ 96
Mtchison,. Joseph Anthonye. 2.3 ot 2e. Be wee tek dee ee ee 8 ap 47
PAGHLCIINS O71 gO CIS Rc eae eo age eR OR eg 2 eee ce 4
Attorney General (member of the Institution) __________--______-___-- XI
Averyuiunds@ 0 .08 20 06 UP he of eat PO eee Ue ee Se 4
B
Bacon-fund,.VirginiasPurdy it buoy SOD EBEsE UD ME Blo 1 eon 4,145
_ Bacon traveling scholarship, Walter Rathbone_________-__-._------ 15925533
Bagdatopoulos, ..Walliam, Spencer. .-=-<<22-2-2<--2eeee ee cetecee es Sas 16, 45
Hare LUN) Wuey. dase ee ce Peete a ere eee eee ee ee ee ee 4,145
Baird Prof. Spencer. Fu. See SI POS PO EG eee 20, 21
Baker, Arthur B., assistant director, National Zoological Park_________~_ XII
Balance sheet of the Smithsonian Institution, June 30, 1929____________ 150
Dalyy Hl uce C.. (Photosynthesis) 2 eee 237
Barbour. rsh OMA s heya cee eee ee ee ee a ee 36
Barnes). bo eee eee ete ee Ae on HOLES) Oh ta eee es 41
Bartseb GORE alos) 2a SO Leas SI PU aS el OI AN xi, 10, 15, 28, 33, 34
Bassler Dr: HRS EI Ch LO ALR x11, 112
Baughinan wM. Woo. eee eee SE MOLI as» eo Ta hE 101
Beckman: Chavles.. ice cen ee tet en EO ae, ee ae all
Bell; Dr. Alexander Graham.%0 Qugalieon DP De Uy ears Te en Tee 116
Belote;. Lheodore ho 2 eee ee eee ee a SORE EBA Oereiel re ea Ee XII
Benjamin, Dr. Marcus, editor, National Museum______________- X11, 124, 127
Benn (James. ste ek el 2 EA 35
Biological.collections,. National.Museums <..---.22 eee ete ues Le 27
Birds; Social parasitismuins (Hriedmann): 2.22222. eee ee 363
Bishop, Carl Whiting, associate curator, Freer Gallery of Art____ x11, 10, 55, 56
Bligh, N. M. (Newly discovered chemical elements) -_-_________------- 245
Bond, Mrs: A.M. 2ccceccee Ses. 22 UE Se Oh IO ORT eee 101
BOSS WINKAHMWE. 2 eee eee Seek tees eee e eats LOR YE. A) RO 36, 37
Boycott, A. E. (The transition from live to dead: the nature of filtrable
WIRUSCS ec ceo cnet does ease eect eee ea ee ee ne eee pen eee 323
Brackett ors hire deriels Ose eee eee ee re ee xin, 2, 9, 104
Brewer, Dr. .Thomas..M. 2... isu indo irs AMOS Oo Boren Oe 20
Brookings, Robertis. \Wegent) ek oe x1, 3, 155
Brockiym Museums .c2<cdsicecneseiccceesceest es oT IOI eee 28
Brown, Walter F., Postmaster General (member of the Institution) -_____ XI
Bryant, Herbert S., chief of correspondence and documents, National
IMNISCUM 2oce nck cee econ a UIE ea od Ore Bs PAO ae XII
Bafialo Colleges...-c.-i2se22eeeeesn22e0u9s? Ae ae 114
Buildings and equipment, National Museum__.----------------------- 37
Bundy, John, superintendent, Freer Gallery of Art__------------------ XII
Bunker ThieutsCol. Paulk Dios. socbseseoet et fee See ese eS ee 30
urk, Rew. Bilen. Licecscsaebbesscesceceeducduicctes =e Bae Uy PATE
utler, C.ePevesdecddueedasadesedcdeceseesesercsees eee] eee eee 101
ByrdjiCommandetwR. .Be a sect te eee Eee 45
C Page
(OPPET TANT T 21 CS CLL: S Ge! 2:5 8 MRRRE Mi fa SAP A ae RR RR ON SO Spee 47
Walitgrmiay sUuhyeneihy) Obsiss sous =. Se Nae ee ele ee oe De ee eee 114
Canada Department OfeAgriculture Of ols 23 525 sa oo ee 114
(Girponaret lel icera) leery noun, sub ave Los oie oe SAN Se et ae RC se Pea LEN oc ie 4,145
RO strats NO Oe ok one eae ee Ne ee a 153
Carnerie Curporation..of New Vorkv.o. 22222) 2.yes ee oc ee 4, 16, 46
Carmegio MUstitMilon Of VWiSsMINelOM = 262 oo ele hse Slee oe eee 22, 34
(eure pe mer ease earn oe ee Ss eed sell See nie late, wy ue Ae 114
CO Fi ATT NVR Zap Meals OSE) OE 5 aes ae aay cee od Rt) 9 2 So He Vi 4
Crisey find; a bomas: lta eee cle ree ROE Le Sa sae sete eee e 4,145
Wisey Wits MMA Welsh oa noe ee He ee Ae 4
Catalogue of Scientific Literature, International, Regional Bureau for
tne Umitedeeimiese ea 2225. oeeeee 48 beds se apc eee eee oe oy xi, 1, 7, 14, 19
SOE OV OVERS pk a Ap i NS ae LE ET a a ae PS 105
Cathedralsiohbrance OG othi¢as. 52 Loi eS aes Ses Se Sed 45
eat oliouWintyoraiiyas se cient et NC A POE ISI 3g Wie a eve 119
Chadbourne, wars. ipimily Ops aly ns eee aera og Ns ee See ee 81
Cham berlam tung erances Lede. o2 200 Be ae A eae 4,15, 29, 145
Chamberlin, Thomas Chrowder (1843-1928) (Willis)_______________-__ 585
Whancellor of the Isititmom. 2s. So ace LoL coool ee SF Fl W542 5155
(Glrsimintey O Clavie mere aca Hayes kts 2. ae Ie Came a eyes en ae ene Co 116
COVEY BEE ny] Its ta yk C7 ns a eg 8 a abe paps 82
Oia AE RVC s OLN Wes tee yen or ees ee ens Se Ne a ee 64
Chemical elements, Newly discovered (Bligh)......-..---_------------ 245
Se CAerUU AEVErsIly Soemr ee ee ee AS nT SMS 2 OL De eee 119
Cleargidh Bes leancote tiavees aeies i 0 pop eee ene erred thal apole ip he aemabemee ay uid let lyk iid yo XI
Wier Coprainntor, OMice Ola. 2 eco bade s 2 oa aoe bess sae 82
Chieh sustice of the; United States. 2252555 2 SSS es Stee ha x1, 3, 154, 155
Waimeser GGVeRnMent.- == soos SUS OS Se Re ee Ae GEN 55
Te rel ape gt S157 be lana asa tated ei et erg en ae Ag Ae gee ST lt XII
Clare clans epee en an ee See ee oe eae ene are x11, 9, 104
ACTER rp VELEE Nd Ame ete an eee ee LOLS TOT Bene ee ae a ee 68
IAG Re In. BRAna Wises c= Ochna an Ls S Oe ae we ph 9 ie
Wruinet Hioumeianldecc 2. = seat rae a ee othe, ATS ore. at ae 45
Ciimatombal mie uiansaCOdiry fo. 2 See wu se ans ee 423
Se oanueGuards United States 252222 Tet TUSUS ke Ska LEP Se oee leas 82
Wola Sar ritvcialn (Walker )ie mot 5 aia Sa ipek d W M stat sl oa ol ele 229
@alechians. National Museum os) 222264) s 22 oe) cee beg oe 26
£23) 0. OU XO) OY OGY 1¢ = ene tbe alae rape A aot ces a TICE GP A AE 26
Bios Aun GUsitios sa. 5 Sek ss TER SES 2 2 ee ee ee 29
[ DESO) | 19 ale pe oe od 1S ON IDE PN DOE Be pL DY NI Lg 27
ECO Dy Rre ea as ts Os oh oy cee Ve Se ORS SE NE ae oe ee he 28
MINGGL yee eae ot a Se ee we ae ee wa NE er 30
Colling, Ikenitys bryyhe coos Sees ST UN hole es Dale ne 10, 15, 26, 32
Commerce, Secretary of (member of the Institution) ___________________ XI
Committee on printing and publications, Smithsonian advisory ______-_--_ 126
Compton, Arthur Hs (What is igntiyee ss. sane oe Re 2 oe Sr eee 2 le
WonsGldatediundass + Sen ocee aE OUR ET ATES ee NS ie re 150
Woolidgs,, Calvin= <2. 222 Sh SS ORR PS Sat Sh Sc eee 84
Corbin; William. libranian of the-Institution 2)" ee x1, 120
Counting the stars and some conclusions (Seares)_____________________ 183
Coville Dry Bredencle Vos ise sss" Sr es ee Wie AE eee XII
82322—30——40
612 IyDEX
Page
resson,, Mrs: Margareh Prenen 62 Je 2 26 Be ee ee 48
Craofiug: Miss ‘Bessie boos ae so eee ac ae oe ee ae eee te ene ee 47
Comming, Mrs. Alistair Gordon. =-- ee ee 47
Crrators Ol whe mnstlbUbiOn. 2. 2 eee ee ie is Ses ee eee eae XII
Curry, J. ©..(Climate andumiprations)= 9 +22. 20-205. ven 2 oe eee 423
Curtis, Charles, Vice President of the United States (member and regent
CL AE HG Ta GG ULL OND) ets fea eh nN XI 3, 155
D
Dall Mor Wiliam Wealeys 2-22.25. o ne mercer ncaa See epee ae 13, 111
1 oi aU WP a Ng aR i a aa tar ge ehatee 154
Daly, (Reginald A’ (X-raying the earth) > 5.222252 2 ee ce 261
Daughters of the American Revolution, National Society, report_______-_ 126
Davide, John Washine iON. jac. eee oC oe en ee ee ee 48
Daviss Col SEeunye One esc neS og is oe ee 2 OR eet eg ee 48
Devas eMissilentry¢ O12. <2 ose eee Ee oe oe eee 48
Davis, James John, Secretary of Labor (member of the Institution) ____-_ Sail
HD a WER PEON RATIOS Ir a a 2yateeyo oh ee te a ee a 4, 154, 155
Debuchi, Hon. Katsuji, Ambassador from. Japan... 2 ee 28
Decker "Mrs: EH ibennebbs= Ahan 28 oot tne an oer See eee 41
Melange: Hrederic AW (@egent) 28 92 oles ee ee ee XI, 3, 42, 153, 154, 155
Werte whore: Wyre CarliOse: .2 22 S22 ce en ane eke near lc SO ee 33
WenmarkesClayton Woe. 328 aes 22. Sei ee 2 oe ee cane pee XII
HDDS AW ie cal eee a ee or ee ha eg ane ee 34, 41
IDETOVET A NIISS Vie oo hot aoe 2 ci ae a i eee = ia Bee ee gee 101
Densmore ura nces- = Se eros ake ee eS oe Oe ee eens 17, 57, 64, 65
iDerPeyater collection) Watts --5 2.5 c te. oa se ee ee ee 118
1D ayeytOW a7 0B pci! © eel Fa) 5 ie mel a is ag yy SE A hr 97, 98, 100
Donnan, HAG AGhbe mystery, OPM). Seon eo Suen ee ee 309
Dorsey, Harry W., chief clerk of the Institution.._........_._._...---__-_ xI
Dorsey, Nicholas W., treasurer and disbursing officer of the Institution_ x1, x11, 7
Dryadn- bie, uneerine (Mevi)e 2.452. too ence eee ee ee 205
Wbe, Mie We Whe ae oe Se ec Re ie ee oe Steg ee ee 16, 44
Du Pont de Nemours & Co., E. I., experimental staticn.__..__._._____- 114
Dar wr, vberison. Grays 02 20s eck a et ee See ee 22, 41
Dykeasr, WOses. Wie 2-520 coe oct s eee ee eee pp ee ee les 47
E
Marth, ¢xX-ravingathe (Daly). oo ec soe eet el oe ee 261
RAST WG te tec he case ar hes Sahih gre ee era ee 34
EIGIFOTS OL te lS OU CGT Wee eee XI, 65, 124, 125, 127
LTTSCET Ve Bags UVES CS y= UE om a a i i a Vee Keven aI ane PGR? > 9 53, 56
Elements, chemical, Newly discovered (Bligh) ___--------------------- 245
Pndowmentitund of the Institution... -— neo aoe eee ene 4
cablersho wine erowit NiO be yates eye he i ek ee eo ee 149
BinO WMA Ecce So Sel es er ye Ey eho ae Ee ee 29
Entomology, Bureau of, United States Department of Agriculture_____-_- 22
rnet: | Wiss: elem. Ag Olay ho ops) ee a ee ee cn re 47
Bebe VETS), ris ONS ce Me ie ee rh Pe Bah Senet. ge ee eae 47
IDS obs av asso A SVo ay as (op ant Fol Ba OS A ante ge ny ee i ee Se oe 2
Ethnological and archeological investigations, cooperative___-____-_---- 10
allotments forycoqperative projects-.-.----_- _- - oe e 11
INDEX 613
Page
Rihnology.: puream oieAmerican: '- 253 sei. 600 Ll ere k tee 1,257, 14,17
Chie healt Mee hk Se, Se ES ee aie ee ee xu, 8
Collections shes. 22 oe uLa Bee ey ees 2 oe Sa 8 ee 67
editorial work and publications_-_---..-..------------ 12, 65, 66, 121, 125
DU rset VO a Sere SE et et a ee I Oi ek 66
inompry es eee aS Ce ko ee ee ees 13, 67, 109, 115, 119
TOWODUE Wee Boe] Wawa se be sk ee eA ee eee oe eS 57
SPecCinieresearoheses W..eose aee e e See 64
BU cit ipermn ene area ser LUNE ate ok es ee ee ae eee XII
Evolution, Heritable variations, their production by X rays and their rela-
pion towCNTUiler ee an tl Ae ie wt ee eae oe et te ee 345
Hea WO EIB se oe sgh es ed ee te bo ae ee 34
Fechanigess intermacional 42 Gee. 2 oe a X11, 7,)24,, 04, 110
foreign depositories of governmental documents_-__--.------------- 72
Foreign exchange AGencles oo) 2a a SS oS ie ee 78
interparliamentary exchange of official journal________.----------- 75
TOP OT bm ee bebop ee cots ewes Beit Sh Sey Re te ee ee ES eR ee 69
Pemorapions and imeldaworks 2420S 222 J ee ee kt ee 10
National) Vinseumpeite at 29. 2). ate pe' eFP Ss reptetoeh OEE pee 31
Extinction and extermination, (Tolmachoff).:.--.....-----2- 222322. 269
F
Mer kes. rs dec Walbete == = ee ee a eh 17, 57, 68
TE co] TN Ora ySei aT aa aa a neh Se AE oP OMIM ok UO = ea gr 114
Filtrable viruses, the nature of: The transition from live to dead (Boy-
OLE) al Oe a, Sac om A RIA ee 323
iewanceson the Institutions ty aay es ee ee ek ee 3
MiBESLONe VEATVGY: 82 22520-55240 (roeeetS 3 Ee a ceet hes. oan oe 81
oSelavere, TOY as AN Ge Bee AN a Ry RC Oe aR pe eI eRe ¢ OAR een 33
TRY SUNS Ses REET OT 1 [ess aa ak Aa IE CRS AU el eagle A aR Daly So abe ey pial 61
Fixed Nitrogen Laboratory, United States Department of Agriculture__ 10, 104
Blexner simon s(hiceyO, INOBUCDI): =<. tes 22. ele ee Sa 595
LayST RE YER. Doh NUG Us |S a a ea OR AEE Ae ea AY Ry 35
gamle Siredenicice base ps" 2 ate se de Ue Ns eS XIII, 96, 97, 103
DBABeE UnmestaricwINa iA 2605 See eo ee 2 ee eae 42, 46
LE 1.2erep Ov hd 3 OTB RAL A ea a COR Pear eco gate 19, 99, 101
PERRO ATIC Uy ese ees sage ee le ae ee EE 2 a ea 14
15 5,60 GS SA 0 NS aT Ni a et ni nee en nD, A ay me eee eee a 150
GE CEAG MIO RVEOQR ATU tina ee ete 0. ty coe ee oS. et 12) 5, 14, 16
BU LETICAN Cee mena ek Beh le ee besa Ne a i 5 ke Su SN ea dai, ee ee 54
areyl Gla ripe meer. eee Ante ek a ye mentees RE nts Ae Set Sat ene 54
COLE CHO TTS ere ue Ce ten! 2 ee Oe rc we RL AIOE patent Sy co 50
ENGOWANETIGaE ee weir Ulett eR eS le ai 147
SKIES MAY Cay el cet AS UO BC 2 Reet any ee ee Reena Se yt eee ee 55
fund, SE cy ehh Ny ee eT ORS OR Teh Weel er ey Gs oe 146
Meaney see elem ana s Be Sogn kL ee bec ese ol a 53, 109, 116
BESTS UP Be ee a lr EN ea a cr a a ge 50
FOproduchiamsanudepaintings se 2 a le ae here tS lees ee Se 54
SUH CRM Aes o's el Tat ME a ce WOO SEY SOL ED NS re py PR x11, 56
Rinsnch:-MajeiVearions@anie, o.oo oe 8 oy tee ee 30
1° FoI) sie Fs ap SRY SS Ne NN OR ines at el ae RO NETS ee gL oer ~ een es 36
Friedmann, Herbert (Social parasitism in birds) ..----------- hs 363
614 INDEX
G Page
Garber; ‘Paul Edwartd:~=--::2---2+222ic22.) nee Jo pene aw 112
Gelltthy. Johns rss a2 a5n25 lees Sool bro e lS ae Te 1, 16, 42, 47, 155
gilt: of art-collection -of===+~==8is2.22222J22 222202250. Leese 8, 47
Geographic’ Board, United States... --....-.200Maorking hoe syow Intend 63
Geological collections; National-Museum_2.2/022222. 0 ilu 5212. enotiie 28
Geoldgical’ Survey, ‘United: States_.~=-=<.-.2 2222. encdaeeae cece eee ee 119
Geophysical~baboratory--22 se lef titel elise ee 111
Gest, JH s+* eed n cated a sen ene seen cee otk nds. Soonona ais 43
Gidley, “Dre Wess ss akon od ded ee ae et bese 15, 29, 36, 112
Gilbert, "Chester WiC 8 il «. C0 nonoypotg Tend egeliaiiay aidasna Hf tah XII
Gill, De Lancey, illustrator, Bureau of American Ethnology___________ XII, 66
Gill”) Herbert; As *s0ls.s8e0tnnsscesdelou tier lee tae ee 13, 40, 111
(EL Ai yd U8? 0s Yo cA ALUk We er rua ie Ae fo detoa onan initost ara as 40, 111
Gilmore, ‘Dr: Charles -W—_ 2 7200 etvertirig vee to sain XII, 15, 29, 35, 36
Goddard;-Miss: Sara=:-=2i-222-2.2. 222.222 [S.C ee gy eon tone sro 60
Goldsby,-J- Fs +4 +=<<2--- JASUNC Maaehy 10 gapaiieyy yipinonpel yes 81
Goldsmith, James S., superintendent of buildings and labor, National
Museum s===2=>-Seeers son sse wae tl se eow ble fine gee XII
Good, James W., Secretary of War (member of the Institution)________- xo
Gordon; Richard--= =-+=2---2---.~ eeianoT ) ‘ach nninyaizs Dae i 81
Gomever vc olleger 2). 2 Meena ao ae eee eee tes on ee ee ae 114
Governmentally, supported) branches: “25-2. S20.) 4oc7. 2 eae See 13
table: showing appropriations for. =-2--2..2......2-. eves) sei 152
Graham, "Rey: Wavid-C~s- <2 =.-2-s>s2s22iess sc eee lel Issa 10, 15, 27, 34
Grandin,-the. Misses’! 20 aor sOneaeiy ors 1 by atten ot enpeiy 6 47
Greeley ier Areenesat aiid poss tle cleo e lel. UL ee ES Se see ee ee 101
Guest, Grace Dunham, assistant curator, Freer Gallery of Art__________ XII
Gulf Stream and its problems, The (Marmer)...-_-.-....--2-22¢uiJ_ 2 285
Gunnell* eonand) © ss0- +s eawese Heo SRE SEE LS eat ei erE Tae x11, 108
H
Habel funds 2222s" 2*====4 2s 22lo-cen. 2222. Ghoeor “Dvebiins norte» 4
Eftachenberg fund: = +2525 222242 Sole seatec ue Se lees eee eee ee 4
(amiltow fudd@. 2-2 sts sob lv ss beet eset eas ssass so ee eee +
Earmow, pian Bis ss%+ 22223. seseees hein soot AL ee wena 46
Eiarrinian Alaska’ Expedition s=><i2-3 22055225 Lincs see ee oe ee 21
Harriman tAlaskan: Tibrary=s+==+f4-2056s- ~2e eee csec eel Le eee 13, 154
Harriman Vire. Wd wabddd« es 026 bn ene en eee oe 13, 41, 111, 154
aang, ELK oS 22h oS easel eer s sere dee SoU Sel ea oe eee 41
Eigrringtons Jolin Pai Ps ee A ee eS oe x11, 17, 59
15 Hea mgt ell Dalian ne hl pd gee eee ee ee ee pe eee Ee Ls 18, 91
Harmison. Pairtax.s2 5505 Sesser as hat elec scenes 22 Ser el thle ee 4
Harvard University - 222 s*255 45 Ns. ieee Lee Pee e 2 bo eee 119
Henry fund: -Caroline= >>" "" 252. o=s 253: e025 nb eL eles Seales eee 4
Heritable variations, their production by X rays and their relation to
evolution” (Mirller)-AsSaeSseoF ohn ka eae be! PeeWee 345
wit Ot, ES 2m etre A ie ol a ee tere ad x11, 17, 62, 63
Heyl. Paul R- (Che lingering dryad) 222222225. 2000 neo" be ano aies 205
Hill, James H., property clerk of the Institution__________-_-_-------- XI
Hispaniola, The aborigines of the ancient island of (Krieger)____._------ 473
Hitchcock; A. S222" ssozs esses tsasosesseeessstes snes sel elce ee 35
Hixson, Lieut. Col. Arthur, United States Army____-_-____--2--------- 31
INDEX 615
Page
Ma@drkansruncdmeenetal tm 2a ee eee ee ee 4,145
speciiem= tt tee. oe SOs OU? Te ee 4
Mogan: Miss Virginia. ewe Le wed Cee oe IL ee 39
Holmes, Dr. William H., director, National Galiery of Art__ xu, 48, 49, 112, 116
Hoover, Herbert, President of the United States________--------- XI, 3, 42, 48
Hoover; Mrs. erbert==<<2.2+2-2<+s2- ose eden ee ecsee = EA 48
Pioover, We dlie- eben ee eee ected tet eeecee UU Ie oe 101
Hough, rs Walteri2 22 sibs ee reer LEE LOE x1, 27, 32
Mowmesectamy (Snodgrass) iio. ne ee et LU th EO 383
iHieward, Droueland.O---Yeolowdtel Myotis io ieONE) SOCIO SEE - Xl
Brdlitka. or, Adesso ja os Gyo SS ele Bebe Sl eS x11, 10, 32
Emo bard, ais Ge Wee ee eee eee ct eee ee ee ete eee a 21
Hughes; Charles Evans (regent)... <<22-2--eeee ees +e --1- SUE XI, 3, 154
PieheslundMpruaee 20) OF) 20 oda Tarte BS oavOu aie ot Tag zsMe pes 4, 145
deigse hing he. Witth We veto in. cote cece cee tte meee tee ee eeeeeette 48
Hyde, Arthur M., Secretary of Agriculture (member of the Institution) -_ XI
Hycienic-leboratory :---=-=-2+22-2-keeeekeeeneeeeeenemedeene cE 111
I
Indian water-e@lor PAINTINGS. Of 2. aoe Se ah ee ea 45
iimsects fly. How (Smoderass)'- =... 5.2 Sot oe are ee ea oe 383
Interior, Secretary of the (member of the Institution) _---_-..--------- XI
International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union at Berne____-.--~-- 30
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, Regional Bureau for the
DISOEA AES US Na ee a St a | No xa, 1, 7.14, 19
TE POT tet ot ae ei Nd gh at es aE 105
IMternapionalvexchangesa. 2 2 e ee kl ae a ee ee eee Sas We TS AUG,
foreign depositories of governmental documents_-___--_------------ Ce
foreigm exchange-agencies = . -+--=24-2-2..=22 88 Oot Ts of 78
interparliamentary exchange of official journal___-___--_---------- 75
TEPOR ae see hae bee ee RE OO NE COU Lee 69
fehikaway Profs Chiyomatsus 2 boll {800i ar, 1029901) he IRAE! 2B 28
J
Jeans, Sir James (The physics of the universe)._..1-..-.--...- east 2 161
Jenness). Dr Diamond =.= 22 neon 2 ra trae eegitnd Temctien Ma oe 58
Johnspbliop kins Uiniversitys 205. 2oas25 56 obo eee ee ee ee 103, 114
Johnson, Representative Albert (regent) ___---.-------ilassitLe_-us_ x1, 154
1) CLNTS aro NG D ERY ESE aN a nee eee lee. Oe) x11, 9, 104
ordan wiieubalol sary Wo 82s ee eek eke oe Se 30
ddd, Neil, M_(aese 2194) ee qertyoee ts ee Peer ee aee see ee eee xu, 32
K
CAT On Kyser ruil MV URS: MINT Sea 2 Te ee ee 47
Kellers, Ur. ti G.. United States Nayy__-..-_. 4.222. Sa. ee ee 81
Eclag eo -wioT meveMmaln OMe ke tse ee me Ol Ee ks eat 37, 41
TES PURR GY ARE ane eS aed IIE DTG et Diet la ea ca pe aa ele the cde EEE HS ne 20
eae Egret ee ee ee eee ieee then es I Rie ea Soe 48
tov ee MTS. OUR DOSm emetic ore SNS SR eal Nee eee 47
TETUDEY ove ail HUME Op ota ated EO 1 ha NE het STN i he a Reel ae La xi, 34, 41
1TH fe) Way A WEG eh Rd LER SR a PP St pl he Unni Ween 41
JEST AV OFS OUT REHM ppN die ae Seb DE oS IE I oe yey Pay ey a RR a SP 5 Re 56
Knowles, William A., property clerk, National Museum______--__--__-- XII
RGrieven, vEVEE OCT bay ete ae etre oe Se eT a SS ee es ae x11, 10, 82
(The aborigines of the ancient island of Hispaniola) -_-_-._.-------- 473
616 INDEX
L
Page
Labor, Secretary of (member of the Institution) _._.._..___._._.----_-. XI
te VISE: PDD eb WAS Wi sas 2 as, ee ne ee ke ge Fee pee es 41, 110
iit, Wlesche, (Dr. Francisa 3a sy stalh Laren th ol. aber bly ER oye a Pe XII
Lamont, Robert P., Secretary of Commerce (member of the Institution) _ xI
Mare. Mag JOON Ws i222 Re Leo os ee ee ee 30
Mencley. Samuel Pierpont 08 oe ee ie ee eS 98, 103, 116
meronaiticn) library. 22h fe pe ee ee 13, 109, 116
Waughiin, Irwin, B, (repent). ee lee el x1, 3, 4, 154, 155
Leary, Ella, librarian, Bureau of American Ethnology._-_--___--_------ XII, 67
Werboleeviiss Clara: Sie ce ek ee ee cee el ee 60
CORAL Beene ree ee Se SOE ee ee, Rell oe ane A 28, 34
Bewtonr Mrederiek W 2-22. ee ee eld el i XII
(The servant in the house: a brief history of the sewing machine)____ 559
Me TO eee os har a ee et Oe a a a 17, 55, 56
Libraries of the Institution and branches___________.--------------- 1, 13, 48
TARE) OX) Gages a pes aR a EN RC AN CUE emcee eee ee et tees 2 109
CLEFT eae ab a Rl DE SE pe Ee ee ee eee 109
MIGTADY Ol) © GHPTEAS ase = Sees ee Ne Ne ee = 67, 109, 112, 114, 117
Simithsonian' deposit in "22 - a" = 2s - = 6s ane See 13; 110,412) 013
iuite, “Phevmystery-of (Donnan) = 27-9 2-2 seers a4 5 SS ae ee ee 309
iient WHat ist (COMMMbome see oe ee ate ELT SCN ee ieee eee ae 215
fhupernp dryads rhe’ Urieyl) 22) _ eek eee She Oe ae ae 205
Live to dead, The transition from: the nature of filtrable viruses (Boy-
COLDS Team. ees SER ok oo = es BR enn © 3 4 oe QU en. ma ee eee 323
Lodge, John Ellerton, curator, Freer Gallery of Art________---_---- x11, 43, 56
M
MacCurdy.sDriGeorpe Grant. Jo) 2& eT hy oy 9 eh pee ee oy 27
Mackenzie,;Miss\Sallie Pinkerton)-t.:54u- S26 hes Sat ete 30
Malbone, Edward, Greene, miniatures by_-.- 224. 2.2.22. 2.2 eee 16, 45
Mann, Dr. William M., director, National Zoological Park____-___ x11, 91,92, 127
Manze Biological Laboratory 2. 22 soss en eee ee 119
Marmer, H. A. (The Gulf Stream and its problems) ___._________------- 285
Mathey,. Deans — 5 ceo i lt Ae eal yelee eh eee oe 4
Matters of general interest, secretary’s report____.______..-_----------- Uf
fTAN Cialis ches he ODT oe see ie ee rE erie 7
Maxon.JDr.\ William ReeSe soca aan peel he ee ete ty XII
Mag Dre, Draw. awe bee 2 eke te el ee ee Ei 81
Means. James = 20> oi kee ee Deke ee ee meee ie 116
Mechanical transport era in America, The beginning of (Mitman)______-_ 507
Meetings and receptions, National Museum-_-________-_-------------- 38
Melchers: (Ganitent oe ae Lee ee ee, 16, 42, 43, 44, 155
Mellon, Andrew W.,, Secretary of the Treasury (member of the Institution)_ >a
Merman Dr. Johmi@s (regent) 2c pete eee xI, 3, 42, 158, 154, 155
Memb DrvGeorgeie Sees nee ea eae a eee XII, 35, 127
Metropolitanr Museum of Art (28° Sc2a2s2 2! nose e eset en ssa ea ee ee 112
VMichelsonmiD rer rim ante. <n ee ae eee x11, 58, 59
Misrations, Climate and (Gury) ests 22-2 o<2 tse iets eets sete. see ee eee 423
1 BIT 0D he eran ape Apes iy Bena cE pie capeel meade Cy ape hur gh 6b belly helnaety Nee Rte t yOicp eh lp fin 56
Military exhibits; reorganizationiofthevs = 224520 5h 4ye eee eee eee 30
Miler nGerrity Oe jr eae ON A eee ee eee eee ae eee eee x11, 10
“Minnesota, SUniversityichuts Lo tee ee Sete fat ale ak 114
Mire try © lar esi By es mere rare ae Sk CANE rel SE Re 41
INDEX 617
Page
Miisdonge bastoreainpocietye..24 eee ee ee oe ed ee ee 5
Nitchelle Gens Willian Sele 2 22 bees eee ee ao Ne ae ee 28
Mitchell, William D., Attorney General (member of the Institution) ---- sai
Mitman: Carli Weses--s2—= Dist Pacts eo SA a ae) or 2k ee ca tee 2 8 a XII
(The beginning of the mechanical transport era in America) - ------- 507
RYOULG AR enn mene een oe ee a eee le Oe ee ee 101
aGores Ghariese ee sa ioe Mele aa ME yee Le ete oe 43
Moore, Representative R. Walton (regent) ----.------------- XI, 153, 154, 155
Morrow, Dwight Ws @egent): 2-222 22 ee ek eh ee x1, 3, 154
Morons @onrad) Vii osc es So SSS 2 SS 41
Muller, H. J. (Heritable variations, their production by X rays and their
relationstovevolution)|=22s2- 22-2 =- Seek a pee Ee a 345
ianrge Mlissiblelemers 6 oak we wk oo ee oe eee eee 66
MrscuimNationeloss ls ho 2. oe RN kee Se ee Aveda, La
bueines andveqiipmentes oie a...) s eee cl eae eS eee 37
COME CULO TS er ae aS ae Rac a NTRS =e Th Sha a rae 26
BUTTE OBO DOLORES a) fee eRe iret oe ae ee 26
argscan dom GustReses ae ke ee ee a ee 29
Ratko pr yee eile aes ce ae tease soe ee Ae 27
POOL RY 2 eet Gh ee eee Bio) I ed eas 28
History seas agate Gab seep aot he eee 30
UTES GOT ag ae ph Lay NL gy has de a al XII
exploration and fleld'‘work.2-2 22.2 223-32.2-- 22+ gosto 4 31
HDA Ye oe Se es 8 Oe ee eo oe ee eee So 109, 113
meetings and receptions #2222. 4. 2. bus S222 Se. oe Se 38
ROUUDMICA TIONS 8 2 Ses tt Ee hh decree BS he Ny ae ak 12, 40, 121, 124
TOPOS ee ke ios a Nee ee eos ae SH ee eS 23
SAAS HG OTS ee ee ee ae an BEN ME Lr pay i at ok Gren eh 40
Niyer fund, Catherine“ Walden] — )..-- 4920 koh alee See. ese See 4, 146
N
National Commission: of Fine Arts. 2... iL ee be st aa 47
National Galleryvof Arto uusau i venet ie. solo te x11, 1, 7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 116
artiworks received, during the, year. =-..-..--.-=-=4. 42eeLi asst. 3 46
collections reinstallation, Of sess 5 = 5 = ae eo ae 46
CONIMMISSIONMae wee nee tee Le ke eee bee eee 8, 16, 42, 154, 155
GUIS GI UbiO MS ee ee ee es = ea grr Rah ey gpd gk A Be a aa 47
unease rere Ce tet Ob as els as ee Ne ee eae 48, 109
logis accepbed iby phelsi oe O32) ee eek ee Boe see 47
IVCAESOPS! [Sys qsh 00s ae eta ena a ane ee eee OL ya e EN eee ee ee 48
| CHIT OUEN ES 131001 07s yee Nae Sul te aa a TGA tea UM eee ce ES 49, 121
SCE) OPEL ES tee ee RE ee ee eA eer ay a Se 42
speciahexnipitions held im thes. 2a. d2c4624- 0232 oo ee ee 4
National Geographic Society. .....-.-_..---------- 15, 19, 27, 32, 33, 93, 100
National Herbarium, United States, Contributions from-_-------------- 121
NEULIOTI A IRIS UIH eae ey Meee sk fe Le ee ey Ee 152.7 (boo
buldingstancenuipmentsse8 8 2220 8 oak oe Eee ee 37
COLE CHO S Hee re Sells I ek a es a ed ane Be ee 26
Eat! Sime y ole) (Of NM Sl Coa 0 FI RAI aR NE ROR a eRe eps Se 26
APUSKATUGEIIGIIS TRC Seyi ire cess gk 2 ot ee ee 29
1 rye ae a eee ee een Ry ak ae dee ee 27
Pa UaN UVa nage Se UIA, AS At th a ee Sm re CL 8 28
TE Oy yO IE Die Sy, EY 100 a Dy PS SPICES HT 30
618 INDEX
National Museum—Continued. Page
CUTALOTSHss 2 =a 8 sm ates alm ole Rie weet lei me ele PO OPo) LAA OE XII
exploration and field’ work«+- = © ==" os) = oss oi ses so ASE OE 31
Wray ee ees Penh a Ey ee MAREE FV ORD YOR RS SS ERS 109, 113
meetings*and receptions:=2224="ss2en Ss. cele sae eee ake eos WE ie a 38
publications: 2) Ss Ae BI Te DEE UE Sols Ay ad 12, 40, 121, 124
reportys = 422 a sah eta EMER eh VEN AS ODER SEE SE Soe Coe eee eee 23
VISILOPS ) 22142 © = Se BEV S Se TEAR ES URGE ME ONS oes AB REE RULE RES oe Rey 40
National Research Gouneil®+ 222+ 2225 WEIS Ge LE a OV POR 58
National-Research Institute of China_2 i .-<2222.- 5 at ow p Sip) 7
National Zoological Park 22 2-2) 2-25 2 Ee sok ee se ee Si 1, 2; 7, 14, 18
ACCESSLONS 2 Ble ew Ee OR OVER RS LOPE SABO LES EDD she ae 81
animals-in the ‘collection June: 30; 1929. .222-2-22--UiON inves OF ee 84
director 2" ti tav taste sbevenen esi stow ahh he ee ee oe x11, 91, 92, 127
improvements = 22.2. Wee ee Se Ee oe OE 91
library2ens esses sseewecewes eee ieee eee es = COO DO Ree me 109, 117
t needs*or thes =! oss Shee ek lea ee ee ek eek Bde ys Oe See eee 92
TEPOTEL LAP AM AS MAEM R RAE AR RES NES ee Wee a Se bee SO TY CLR = 81
Staffcss sos s=0 Cobb a hoeee eee Re Se ad ee eR SAE a ER A Xai
VISICOTS A= Se 4s SER eS SWE a bah We Re eee bo ae ONO 91
Navy Department, United States2+ 2.4 )s=6) 844542228. yee. c LE OLNOR 81
Navy, Secretary of the (member of the Institution) ______....---_____- al
INecrolog y=) seas oe Lo ae eee ca ed we eh Re eee eee 20
New Mexico; “University of): s<=.45 22225582222. 2 10 0G: Dee Molton 60
New York Zoological Society____._._...--.-___- eC LP 81
New Zealand ‘Government2-- 0-224 /s22255 024.5 - uO IeSN Se aD 81
Newton, Representative Walter H. (regent) ___________._-___--___-_ x1, 3, 154
Norcuchi,Elhidey.o(Klexner): «<= < 4... 2. 4 - ads on wee eee ee ee 595
O
O'Donnell, Maj“Lowis’A:! United StatestArmy = 2.ec. 2s 222265. 22s eee 30, 31
Officials o£ the Institution, list lof. # 2 222 BUSA tan Pl Ges pea peated ely bh XI
Olmsted, Dr. Arthur J., photographer, National Museum____________- xu, 112
Olimisted;.Miss Helen) Ages 2 hon Ot Oe SU a aye mil tbe lay faded exec 46
OuMatley, Mrobenry, Wee. <i 22. oss See ee Bette pene slndig! 81
Oxientalt Whaling? Coe oo Or ee PO SE so a pepe a 15, 28
Outstanding events of the year, secretary’s report_____._____----------- 1
P.
Parasitic, social in pirds,(rriedimannpeoo2 =~ - 22 = nese eos ee oe Oe 363
HE trips ate) (eyed ng 1S) tebe sane eG at Nero fe fin od eed abode ahestsleh tee pabsl tes ysal zee. 43
Pateng Oiice, mited SUktest. 5228) 2 Seen te = tee ne oe Se eee 25
Pellkeollection: Alrede ly iranie ys yee Se eae put tees acer ee ea aes eee 46, 48
Rell fund, Wwormelia tavinostoms oo cock mince tiem ee eye ea ere eee 4, 146
PERL OSES OICR EN Sse soe tee aaa mcrae ape Reh ere epee en et een Oe 112
BRerimess Sy Ntheie, ChedeTOve) cot stom Nee ste ae ie Siete els eee 253
Stara OW Soa Lie sta ey ee ce See ey Pe ee oe Se nn Sees Aa ne Pe ee 28, 33
Peters Cartridge, Coro. 22 accel e Cen oe ine ee mere een Oe ee ee 29
Enalosophical Society of Washinton 22 ¢ 22282 ores steers eee 13; 210
PnGrosyMunesinc (bey. tenet cee eye ee mer i ae Sores ee ee ee 237
Riysics ol the) umiverse. Winer (heaims mat = es ee een eee ee 161
d PTH a\o) aon raged 5 Mol wea i Gi on ec bad me er an lw el pl ash el al eapedin ong ohio ape Noe uel 33
LEO OME Waitt oy 6p eye) estan pee tep cecbate sted retain cabal ania ln lal dak aye Aah tebe ge 6 Mi 10, 28, 33
Poore fund, ucy VT: and 'George"We 2. eee ee se ee ee eer 4, 146
INDEX 619
Page
Bigenocr Cone 2) Pai ON ee 8 yes uw owe UE 5
Population of ancient. America; The (Spinden)....-......-..--l0422.2 451
Postmaster General (member of the Institution) ____-_---------------- XI
President of.ohes United Statesa---2 8.2224 lee ese cone ee a XI, 3, 42, 48
Princeton University... 220 25 S9Rood7 seagate ods Jolt Ss ue Sa 114
Banting, allotments forse vec ed sob eceudecenseus 4 A _ 2 Ne 126
Printing and publication, Smithsonian advisory committee on_~_--_--~---- 126
Publications of the Institution and branches___----------------- 11, 40, 49, 65
TOPOM 42 esos seks os bse steeds sieuneeee seecckescedes ck a QS 121
Q
Gaale} Bailip. Pi ssss2 4a oes eo oss c cans ee seed. LUOSROEE Shee eee 29
R
Radiation and organisms, division of... .2=~223000. 4 DS. Se. S 1, 8,9
equipment.2 2 Uae now Ole On ue se ie SIT 22k CATO OES 103
financiglals 2 Ue eyo LO go) earn I Seas) EO ete te 103
Mattoon tome sisi sesh yas a ke i de A A NES 103
iibrany ee 20m Oe Ek Pee ede od APU ee 13, 109, 116
Organization . eet site Nee OS ee OU ee ed I 2 104
Teportied Wel }.oa Onis er he BT in wtote he 16riG 8 ald aon ae ae 102
Staft Ceo) Os BEL SSR IGR QOL eT A ON ATE 8 RELL XIII
Ranger fund, Henry, Ward. 38.3 522... ae ee ee 43
Rathbun, ‘Miss: Mary-Jeustowe Viorica iolik. te Wil, oh SI 112
Ravenel, William de C., administrative assistant to the secretary ___-- x11, 112
A esau Hitt orp VASE AUCs ok ark ig Ah ka aay windy Ac ate 48
15:2) SCCTOVG) |) oA © ee SERN AeA nays OE OnE ne eee RON Uren “We Yay. h 35
Redgrove, H. Stanley (Synthetic perfumes) _...---.--------.--4LL---+- 253
Repentstof the Institution) Board of 215.0). 425.342. 42.2252218 RR AM xI, 3
annual meeting December-3,.1928..-.....-.-)82000) BAO) Hiode 154
EXECU UV EC OMIT CECE oa as ea hy OS aa a a fin es 7, 42
BEPOE Suse seeen seas see ao aa Se eases Se 145
meeting-of Kebruary- 145.1929... 5. 2224555222 22 bes Sees heee 155
permanent committee! Hf Mae NET SE Ee a aS 8
Mrocesqings: of 22 5 se eed Be hole Ce ee oa 3 2 OE ee 154
Rewtund Addison T....+22522b22sshs2sen2352- SSN Ons AE shone 4, 146
Regia TO Ay yee fos eS Soe a eos Te ee oe 2 se DE ae 28
esearch. Corporations. 2.2.52. 22255 2554 SOOie DORR 5, 8, 103, 155
HeSSseE Dr, CHarles. Bi. cri sok ootscbewseessecss ss SR ee eee Xi, 35
eheeswhum@ tae te ee 2 oe Se oe eh ee 4
Rhoades, Katharine Nash, associate, Freer Gallery of Art___._-------- XII
Fachinonds Mra '@harles.W iL. 22 2.5 seslsadese eos bess. Foe ee 112
Radaway, DrewRobpert 2.2/2.2 452525 ROE Peto eh OR e FSET 20, 39
Tyan aE eae ee epee BO ka a ecu OS HOO IRE ROR oe 112
PSISSermVidse SAMI Reis oot ak ac se eee a =n ERE ee 61
RUSUETURW AU Oyo a ee OO a ee 15, 26
ouverts, neh ranks Ea ob. nis 2252 so to OT) ae xu, 17, 61, 62
Robinson, Senator Joseph T. (regent)___..-...------------ xI, 3, 154, 155, 156
Reminson, Seth Bajqrls iis cee oe eo ee ee 47
Robinson, Tl. Dudley... 12a sh Pa In DONE Oth) bs 2 Be 47
EROSGOTY ABORT WWI G cs a ik ee a ee et | 15, 27
igek, Dir J Ose piri aye te Weel i oo open SU ee 15, 27, 33
inocketcllersHoundationmaaw sss sees eee oe oe ee 5
620 INDEX
Page
ROCs TMG © cys a ee ae sey a ee i as al oe oe ee a 4,15, 28, 29, 146
Reebling, John A. 32 2.-- 2. feeb ee eh babione pba eis wee 5, 100
Resenbusch,, Miss Louise A... 2eaihititent? adit Jo. eacdengiw! Ieee eal) wets 112
Royal Society of London... ..22.-..-2--5.-- 3. Pee Be Bee a 106, 108
Royal tombs, more: Ur of the Chaldees (Woolley) ____________-_____-- 437
Royal University of Upsala... en se 111
s
NSE Fe Ru OTS We OU om mE ENE a TS SE ge RCN PLANS caraA a eeaap ate Lier aye 65
pantordehund.; George je x92 ae mere ey eceee re e e e e 4
DIC MNCL WE O Ny Leos Any bse ey Se ees one tee es eR ee xu, 34, 112
Nemwarz; Dr. Mugene-Amangus. 2-2-0 -- 3 =e ee ee ee 21, 39, 41
SCObo me AEG Wil Mies 2 ie Las ee Suk een ee ce ees ore ae 30
SCOUb Dr se NNO NNTe LG.) ee errs ea Cem ey eS ee gs be ee 46
Scudder, Stevens, and Clark, Messrs_..... a_2cibeth papeteeee. has Se 8
Seares, Frederick H. (Counting the stars and some conclusions)________ 183
Searles, Stanley, editor, Bureau of American Ethnology__-__-__ xu, 65, 125, 127
serretary of the institution...“ 2. 222 2 oe TO ee ene III,
XI, XII, x1, 1, 19, 41, 42, 43, 44, 49, 56, 68, 80, 92, 97, 98, 99,
100, 101, 103, 104, 108, 112, 120, 127, 154, 155.
Servant in the house, The: a brief history of the sewing machine (Lewton). 559
Sewing machine, a brief history of the: The servant in the house (Lewton) - 559
Shoemaker (Cc gR =o See ee ee) ae oe 34
Shoemaker, Coates W., chief clerk, International Exchanges__________- x11, 80
Sieplerse. Ho sntowny elt of bee reioep Hy lterto lay ha." ) ab pele 5
Smalco. AllerbeC sic cep ET A ne ee 34, 41
SES TI CTAB rose 5 (EY. RNR aR eSNG ey ARO MMETIP Ee Ray Me TRIN yl * la. | 39
Smith, Dr. Homer: W..-2 5.500202" pega een BHAA yb Se te ee OE 28
Namitha, Dr, Pugh Moos ob ok Ae Figen eT idee gitgeh nth, ae 27, 34
Smith, Captain John Donnell_.._.....- .#@@!_ 84 <erlepewall waiioae 22, 41, 118
Samiti s i bo hy 2 ED eA ARS ye i ate pm i194
Smmaithsonmy Wamesiet Abt 388Y Ooo oe tien ee oP eS AS hl eee 2
fT a a FET IL, SNELL SARE ROLE, seats peuple Fe eee +
Smithsonian advisory committee on printing and publication___._-____- 126
ANTM AWTS POLES Fs alsa tata ae fe ia a 12, 121, 122
coutributions-to-knowledge-= 2 2224-2. 52225555222. 2) sine ee 121
endowment func ss. eis Ree ae a a 145
Institution, balance sheet: of thes. 6. <2 )2220 200 alee 150
Institution, Series. (ine,) <4 <2. 8 ko a eee ees 12
LOTS Try ae A a ella od DS ot ee Aa a ee 1
miscellaneous collections: = =2<tfeO)-sene% -etetonees dee A ap te FP _ 12, 121
SeieritificySenies, ee ge ee he 2; 5, 7, 12, 40, 155
James, Smithson Memorial Hdition...-- =. 3 Seerte ee 12
Listior SubSURIberS: tO: ne a se aa ee 128
special pukdicationse2 sn 252 Ge ea a ee Se ero aia 12, 121
SHitbsonian-Chrysleriexpedition... 2222222 9222.52 222 epee ee 18, 81, 84
Smoot Senator Reed (regent). 2... 2. es ae XI, 8, 42,155
Snodgrass, Ri BH ow. insects fly) _..... -. teens _ © teal ste e 383
3) 0) 8101 Cl GH © a ORION a 5 se Ra IN EOE aS Nice MOU meme Ty SAE Ty) CP 101
Spinden, H. J. (The population of ancient America) ____._-.------------ 451
Sominer tard «Marek ee he se Ne oa 4, 29, 146, 150
Stanim: aMliss Winifred) se ep 61
RbaneOn(ines) to) ee he oh ee ly ee 5
INDEX 621
Page
prandards.. United states Bureau of. oo 262.3 bo ee ee ee 37
OARS NOS CAEN ese 225 UCL Cb ole ey aay em eg has ag lag eee a a ace 10
Stars, Counting the, and some conclusions (Seares) -_-_---------------- 183
State, Secretary of (member of the Institution) -__---.---------------- Sr
Steamboat Inspection Service of the United States__-_-_____-_-_------- 38
Stel oir se Aee ae eee ee ee ee eee See ee Soe ee a ee ae 13, 40, 111
SSCOLTI SAI SET eAUELE 1m ese ser nn eres se aye a es ang ciate oa nee 111
BIOmneren yy DieCOnOArGem an ne. estes. eke ee ae xa, 126
SHHEAHERANS LON aod D Wee hg ls Wish i at Seah tend ot cael gre malay ie a et cred 41
Stimson, Henry L., Secretary of State (member of the Institution) ------ xT
Stirling, Matthew W., chief, Bureau of American Ethnology__---------- XII,
17, 57, 58, 68, 127
BLOKEs Ot eA MSGN ME Relpse sas ee eee eee ee se ee oe 46, 48
Bpokce weranicm Wiens Semon ee eee scene ne ems iS oe Pee ae ee eee 16, 45
hs WIIREM EcTH(0y BA Yeadon cP Ye Ra i gE VOR RAPE NSE 27
Supervising Architect, Treasury Department, Office of____-____----- 16, 23,37
Swalesthuncdaels rages writl oie cxe te ye es eee ee te ee 28
Swiallens td AsO Maw meteeeh ce sneer ne ee ce ea ie Sees oe ie ae 35
Swanson, Menator Glauue A. (TERENt) — 2-2-6 oes ee ea See ee xI,,3, 155
WAN GON Meer OMe se Seen eee en eee ee De x1, 58, 68
a
Taft, William Howard, Chief Justice of the United States (chancellor
ANGMMeETMOCE Ole Ue MTS HUG UULOM) yy ay= ee = remo as Solos loo
NSSEG oye ELAS ERG Jae ga is SPN ge Ul 1ST a amen Gabe ey ae pet by 43
CANT AUN gy DED cEEW Ud bes a Re ag et ae nee ey SP 41
“Cea SD Woy Spel Mh ae hha toe ely eh tee Web app eR A tof 82
“TOSS Fa fev aysiu) IST 1ge| (i 0 2) els omg ie ley meg i aj A a AE 61
Tolmachoff, I. P. (Extinction and extermination) -____---.-_--------_- 269
ue aren iran ER po ery RR hepa eb Ae se en A eS 45
Tombs, more royal: Ur of the Chaldees (Woolley) -----.-------------- 437
owners sabelea fabsisvall Gl bTarians s= ese es oe eee ee ee XII
Transition from live to dead, The: the nature of filtrable viruses (Boycott). 323
Transport era, mechanical, in America, The beginning of (Mitman)--_-- 507
Traylor, James G., appointment clerk of the Institution_-------------- xa
reasurervol the United States 2s 222 62-23 tee te eke ee 150
Treasury, Secretary of the (member of the Institution) ______---------- XI
“rue, Webster P., editor of the Institution 5-5-5225 2° 522 o 62 toe ose > 17A7/
Hacker NVlissw Vides Wire see ces see eee ciee Soe ae ee ne ee ee tee 68
U
Uinited snoe. Machinery Corporation. 2 5° - "iS °° SIZE it tte Sk ete ee 29
Mgvigerse, he physics of the (Jeans): 52222 ° LSS Illes To eceea se 161
imeversity Of WHICAgOe oe oes ta aon Oe ee ee ee ae Oe eee 114
Ur of the Chaldees: more royal tombs (Woolley)t___------------------ 437
V
Mian Cele PiGcer. sano e oe te oho steep ences one ae 16, 45
Variations, Heritable, their production by X rays and their relation to
Eyioliubioris CMa er) oye p ere eer ce ns ag ey a as 345
Vice President of the United States (member and regent of the Institu-
EET) eg me eRe: RRNA i Eg Fe afer Sgt Ain LU CN as a x1, 3, 155
622 INDEX
WwW Page
Walcott, Dr. Charlies Doolittle. seo une oee cays. oe ek ea oe es ee 43
fund for researches, Charles D. and Mary Vaux___-------_---__ 4, 146, 150
WVGICOGH; UVESTY, VEU er ela errr ee an yes Aes) f5 ceega ne ney ee Lee
NWialker que Deru dd £220 ke Soe hae CeCe ROAR! hence tee oe 41
War Denarvment, WMtea Ww LAlen= oo 2.5826 Seale oe oe ee ee 2, oc
War, Secretary of (member of the Institution)_.............-.-._.-_-_ XI
Washington Academy, Of SClences. soo! 24-2 acne ok ee oe eee 111
Weather bureau iW nited: States. asec. nu cae ak kee te eee eee 19, 100
WVERIBER DR Wy = Snes pM te ier se ge Ke ie ee ae 2 ee 101
DETTE Yi ANT CH SLC Gr © soe wis re ic a 8 a gy a gr ee 56
Wetmore, Dr. Alexander, assistant secretary of the Institution_________ XI,
xu, 41, 112, 154, 155
What isiientr. (Compo) sem cova sa eee we Skea oes eae aie ee ee 215
DVT OG, Dire Dea Wa oem ee ee cu ae heen ca XII
Wihitridge “Mrs: NMOrris= zee is. Be Be El ele en ee kde 15, 30
Wilbur, Ray Lyman, Secretary of the Interior (member of the Institution) - a
Wilkes, (Gordon, BS. (CATtiicialicold) 2.2 252 2k oe ene aoe eee ee 229
Willis, Bailey (Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (1848-1928))____.__-___- 585
WMCOKONG EARN Greg PRl EVO OVE aro RI CIARA Nt YS RG A A a EN a A 30
Woodburn MirsenGra cei ly een Si ie ae ie sles eal eyes es Sa Ue ee Lay 64
Woodhouse, (Drs eWeek epee ost Ops aA 46
Woodrunm.'ConpressimamiG HAl gu el a ko eee 39
Woolley, C. Leonard (Ur of the Chaldees: more royal tombs) _-__-_____ 437
x ;
MTA ne earbh (Daly) aaneu cena aacicee ook eas eee ee 261
X rays, Heritable variations, their production by, and their relation to
EV OUUEEOI" (AVE UIIRET) eS se ee pe ec Spc ie gas occa geet ee 345
2G
RCC OM TV alse Meth Rtas eye) oR ae Se ect ee See 153
BY LOU ITLVBTSED Ups sc ate tee ak ay ie Se ee Ae eee 48, 119
MOKkOVaMS, (pDeloe oo ae ee ee eee ai 2 ee Oe ee Se eee 15, 28
Vounger fund, Helen @W alcotheraps: 9.42.52 sono Le eee ee 4, 146, 150
Z
FANG oes ai S (aR S (aye snl em a SSUES IST ULE Do RAAT NIE 101
ZOOIOPICAL Lark, INAMONGL 2 ee ete cee tena se oo See = ee re 1, 2, 7, 14, 48
EELS TET OY GY fe alge A IN BP a OE AW Ee wa LN 81
animalshm the collectionvmmersO s 1929s] 25 eee ee ee ee ee 84
Pa eyes ray Ca tetas SI Ca eet SRN Ee eu eens eles MIT a x11, 91, 92, 127
iIMPLOVEMEMESS Sees ee ee OLS Sars ted AS REE ct ee MeN RS 91
PRES Tey ee a ey Nr le Bey yO HS yc ig AN NO I VL cp 109, 117
MICCOSNOL SU MC me ne ape sla ar ae a LN a hs ae eo ee ee 92
5S) OO) ay Pete ue a UN aie Ey a TP AS SN AO 81
BURT se creo ee a te A Se Se Se ee XII
VATS 1G OTS er se ere ra ee a ae Sap ON et ay CT a Es tet ete re 91
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