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VOL. XXXVIII.

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THE

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MONTHLY. 'x

NOVEMBER, 1890.

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC.

By HEEBERT SPENCER.

& m

Va

[In preparing a final edition of my Essays— Scientific, Politi-
cal, and Speculative — I have seized the occasion for adding a post-
script to the essay on The Origin arid Function of Music. As,
when embodied along with other matter in its permanent form, this
postscript will be seen by comparatively few, it has seemed desira-
ble to give it a wider diffusion by publishing it separately.]

AN opponent, or partial opponent, of high authority, whose
views were published some fourteen years after the above
essay, must here be answered : I mean Mr. Darwin. Diligent and
careful as an observer beyond naturalists in general, and still
more beyond those who are untrained in research, his judgment
on a question which must be decided by induction is one to be
received with great respect. I think, however, examination will
show that in this instance Mr. Darwin's observations are' inade-
quate, and his reasonings upon them inconclusive. Swayed by
his doctrine of sexual selection, he has leaned toward the view
that music had its origin in the expression of amatory feeling,
and has been led to overestimate such evidence as he thinks
favors that view, while ignoring the difficulties in its way, and
the large amount of evidence supporting another view. Before
considering the special reasons for dissenting from his hypothesis,
let us look at the most general reasons.

The interpretation of music which Mr. Darwin gives, agrees
with my own in supposing music to be developed from vocal
noises ; but differs in supposing a particular class of vocal noises
to have originated it — the amatory class. I have aimed to show
that music has its germs in the sounds which the voice emits
under excitement, and eventually gains this or that character

VOL. XXXVIII. 1

31767

2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

according to the kind of excitement ; whereas Mr. Darwin argues
that music arises from those sounds which the male makes during
the excitements of courtship, that they are consciously made to
charm the female, and that from the resulting combinations of
sounds arise not love-music only but music in general. That cer-
tain tones of voice and cadences having some likeness of nature
are spontaneously used to express grief, others to express joy,
others to express affection, and others to express triumph or mar-
tial ardor, is undeniable. According to the view I have set forth,
the whole body of these vocal manifestations of emotion form the
root of music. According to Mr. Darwin's view, the sounds which
are prompted by the amatory feeling only, having originated
musical utterance, there are derived from these all the other varie-
ties of musical utterance which aim to express other kinds of feel-
ing. This roundabout derivation has, I think, less probability
than the direct derivation.

This antithesis and its implications will perhaps be more
clearly understood on looking at the facts under their nervo-mus-
cular aspect. Mr. Darwin recognizes the truth of the doctrine
with which the foregoing essay sets out, that feeling discharges
itself in action : saying of the air-breathing vertebrata that —

" When the primeval members of this class were strongly excited and their mus-
cles violently contracted, purposeless sounds would almost certainly have been
produced ; and these, if they proved in any way serviceable, might readily have
been modified or intensified by the preservation of properly adapted variations."
{The Descent of Man, vol. ii, p. 331.)

But though this passage recognizes the general relation between
feelings and those muscular contractions which cause sounds, it
does so inadequately; since it ignores, on the one hand, those
loudest sounds which accompany intense sensations — the shrieks
and groans of bodily agony ; while, on the other hand, it ignores
those multitudinous sounds not produced " under the excitement
of love, rage, and jealousy," but which accompany ordinary
amounts of feelings, various in their kinds. And it is because
he does not bear in mind how large a proportion of vocal noises
are caused by other excitements, that Mr. Darwin thinks " a strong
case can be made out, that the vocal organs were primarily used
and perfected in relation to the propagation of the species"
(p. 330).

Certainly the animals around us yield but few facts counte-
nancing his view. The cooing of pigeons may, indeed, be named
in its support ; and it may be contended that caterwauling fur-
nishes evidence ; though I doubt whether the sounds are made
by the male to charm the female. But the howling of dogs has
no relation to sexual excitements ; nor has their barking, which
is used to express emotion of almost any kind. Pigs grunt some-

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 3

times through pleasurable expectation, sometimes during the
gratifications of eating, sometimes from a general content while
seeking about for food. The Heatings of sheep, again, occur
under the promptings of various feelings, usually of no great
intensity : social and maternal rather than sexual. The like holds
with the lowing of cattle. Nor is it otherwise with poultry. The
quacking of ducks indicates general satisfaction, and the screams
occasionally vented by a flock of geese seem rather to express a
wave of social excitement than anything else. Save after laying
an egg, when the sounds have the character of triumph, the duck-
ings of a hen show content ; and on various occasions cock-crow-
ing apparently implies good spirits only. In all cases an overflow
of nervous energy has to find vent ; and while in some cases it
leads to wagging of the tail, in others it leads to contraction of
the vocal muscles. That this relation holds, not of one kind of
feeling, but of many kinds, is a truth which seems to me at vari-
ance with the view " that the vocal organs were primarily used
and perfected in relation to the propagation of the species."

The hypothesis that music had its origin in the amatory sounds
made by the male to charm the female, has the support of the
popular idea that the singing of birds constitutes a kind of court-
ship— an idea adopted by Mr. Darwin when he says that " the
male pours forth his full volume of song, in rivalry with other
males, for the sake of captivating the female." Usually, Mr.
Darwin does not accept without criticism and verification, the
beliefs he finds current ; but in this case he seems to have done
so. Even cursory observation suffices to dissipate this belief,
initiated, I suppose, by poets. In preparation for dealing with
the matter I have made memoranda concerning various song-
birds, dating back to 1883. On the 7th of February of that year
I heard a lark singing several times ; and, still more remarkably,
during the mild winter of 1884- 1 saw one soar, and heard it sing,
on the 10th January. Yet the lark does not pair till March.
Having heard the redbreast near the close of August, 1888, 1 noted
the continuance of its song all through the autumn and winter,
up to Christmas eve, Christmas day, the 29th of December, and
again on the 18th January, 1889. How common is the singing of
the thrush during mild weather in winter, every one must have
observed. The presence of thrushes behind my house has led to
the making of notes on this point. The male sang in November,
1889 ; I noted the song again on Christmas eve, again on the loth
January, 1890, and from time to time all through the rest of that
month. I heard little of his song in February, which is the pair-
ing season ; and none at all, save a few notes early in the morn-
ing, during the period of rearing the young. But now that, in
the middle of May, the young, reared in a nest in my garden, have

4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

some time since flown, he has recommenced singing vociferously
at intervals throughout the day; and doubtless, in conformity
with what I have observed elsewhere, will go on singing till July.
How marked is the direct relation between singing and the con-
ditions which cause high spirits, is perhaps best shown by a fact
I noted on the 4th December, 1888, when, the day being not only
mild but bright, the copses on Holmwood Common, Dorking, were
vocal just as on a spring day, with a chorus of birds of various
kinds — robins, thrushes, chaffinches, linnets, and sundry others
of which I did not know the names. Ornithological works fur-
nish verifying statements. Wood states that the hedge-sparrow
continues " to sing throughout a large portion of the year, and
only ceasing during the time of the ordinary molt." The song
of the Blackcap, he says, " is hardly suspended throughout the
year ; " and of caged birds which sing continuously, save when
molting, he names the Grosbeak, the Linnet, the Goldfinch, and
the Siskin.

I think these facts show that the popular idea adopted by
Mr. Darwin is untenable. What then is the true interpretation ?
Simply that like the whistling and humming of tunes by boys
and men, the singing of birds results from overflow of energy —
an overflow which in both cases ceases under depressing condi-
tions. The relation between courtship and singing, so far as it
can be shown to hold, is not a relation of cause and effect, but a
relation of concomitance : the two are simultaneous results of the
same cause. Throughout the animal kingdom at large, the com-
mencement of reproduction is associated with an excess of those
absorbed materials needful for self -maintenance ; and with a con-
sequent ability to devote a part to the maintenance of the species-
This constitutional state is one with which there goes a tendency
to superfluous expenditure in various forms of action — unusual
vivacity of every kind, including vocal vivacity. While we thus
see why pairing and singing come to be associated, we also see
why there is singing at other times when the feeding and weather
are favorable ; and why, in some cases, as in those of the thrush
and the robin, there is more singing after the breeding season
than before or during the breeding season. We are shown, too, why
these birds, and especially the thrush, so often sing in the winter :
the supply of worms on lawns and in gardens being habitually
utilized by both, and thrushes having the further advantage that
they are strong enough to break the shells of the hibernating
snails : this last ability being connected with the fact that thrushes
and blackbirds are the first among the singing birds to build. It
remains only to add that the alleged singing of males against one
another with the view of charming the females is open to parallel
criticisms. How far this competition happens during the pairing

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 5

season I have not observed, but it certainly happens out of the
pairing season. I have several times heard blackbirds singing
alternately in June. But the most conspicuous instance is sup-
plied by the redbreasts. These habitually sing against one another
during the autumn months : reply and rejoinder being commonly
continued for five minutes at a time.

Even did the evidence support the popular view adopted by
Mr. Darwin, that the singing of birds is a kind of courtship — even
were there good proof, instead of much disproof, that a bird's song
is a developed form of the sexual sounds made by the male to
charm the female ; the conclusion would, I think, do little toward
justifying the belief that human music has had a kindred origin.
For, in the first place, the bird-type in general, developed as it is
out of the reptilian type, is very remotely related to that type of
the Vertebrata which ascends to Man as its highest exemplar ; and,
in the second place, song-birds belong, with but few exceptions, to
the single order of Insessores — one order only, of the many orders
constituting the class. So that, if the Vertebrata at large be rep-
resented by a tree, of which Man is the topmost twig, then it is
at a considerable distance down the trunk that there diverges the
branch from which the bird-type is derived; and the group of
singing-birds forms but a terminal subdivision of this branch —
lies far out of the ascending line which ends in Man. To give ap-
preciable support to Mr. Darwin's view, we ought to find vocal
manifestations of the amatory feeling becoming more pronounced
as we ascend along that particular line of inferior Vertebrata
out of which Man has arisen. Just as we find other traits
which pre-figure human traits (instance arms and hands adapted
for grasping) becoming more marked as we approach Man; so
should we find, becoming more marked, this sexual use of the
voice, which is supposed to end in human song. But we do not
find this. The South American monkeys ("the Howlers," as they
are sometimes called), which, in chorus, make the woods resound
for hours together with their " dreadful concert," appear, according
to Rengger, to be prompted by no other desire than that of making
a noise. Mr. Darwin admits, too, that this is generally the case
with the gibbons : the only exception he is inclined to make being
in the case of Hylobates agilis, which, on the testimony of Mr.
Waterhouse, he says ascends and descends the scale by half-tones.*
This comparatively musical set of sounds, he thinks, may be used

* It is far more probable that the ascents and descents made by this gibbon consisted
of indefinitely-slurred tones. To suppose that each was a series of definite semi-tones
strains belief to breaking point ; considering that among human beings the great majority,
even of those who have good ears, are unable to go up or down the chromatic scale with-
out being taught to do so. The achievement is one requiring considerable practice ; and
that such an achievement should be spontaneous on the part of a monkey is incredible.

6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to charm the female; though, there is no evidence forthcoming
that this is the case. When we remember that in the forms near-
est to the human — the chimpanzees and the gorilla — there is noth-
ing which approaches even thus far toward musical utterance, we
see that the hypothesis has next to none of that support which
ought to be forthcoming. Indeed in his Descent of Man, vol. ii,
p. 332, Mr. Darwin himself says : — " It is a surprising fact that we
have not as yet any good evidence that these organs are used by
male mammals to charm the female : " an admission which amounts
to something like a surrender.

Even more marked is the absence of proof when we come to
the human race itself — or rather, not absence of proof but pres-
ence of disproof. Here, from the Descriptive Sociology, where the
authorities will be found under the respective heads, I quote a
number of testimonies of travelers concerning primitive music;
commencing with those referring to the lowest race.

" The songs of the natives [of Australia] . . . are chiefly made
on the spur of the moment, and refer to something that has struck
the attention at the time." " The Watchandies seeing me much
interested in the genus Eucalyptus soon composed a song on this
subject." The Fuegians are fond of music and generally sing in
their boats, doubtless keeping time, as many primitive peoples do.
" The principal subject of the songs of the Araucanians is the
exploits of their heroes : " when at work their " song was simple,
referring mostly to their labor," and was the same " for every
occasion, whether the burden of the song be joy or sorrow." The
Greenlanders sing of " their exploits in the chase " and " chant
the deeds of their ancestors." The Indians of the Upper Missis-
sippi vocalize an incident, as — * They have brought us a fat dog ' : "
then the chorus goes on for a minute. Of other North- American
Indians we read — " the air which the women sang was pleasing . . .
the men first gave out the words, which formed a consummate
glorification of themselves." Among the Carriers (of North Amer-
ica) there are professed composers, who " turn their talent to good
account on the occasion of a feast, when new airs are in great re-
quest." Of the New Zealanders we read : — " The singing of such
compositions [laments] resembles cathedral chanting." "Passing
events are described by extemporaneous songs, which are pre-
served when good." " "When men worked together appropriate
airs were sung." When presenting a meal to travelers, women
would chant — " What shall be our food ? shell fish and fern-root,
that is the root of the earth." Among the Sandwich Islanders
" most of the traditions of remarkable events in their history are
preserved in songs." When taught reading they could not " recite
a lesson without chanting or singing it." Cook found the Tahi-
tians had itinerant musicians who gave narrative chants quite

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 7

unpremeditated. " A Samoan can hardly put his paddle in the
water without striking up some chant." A chief of the Kyans,
" Tamawan, jumped up and while standing burst out into an
extempore song, in which Sir James Brooke and myself, and last
not least the wonderful steamer, was mentioned with warm eulo-
gies." In East Africa " the fisherman will accompany his paddle,
the porter his trudge, and the housewife her task of rubbing down
grain, with song." In singing, the East African " contents him-
self with improvising a few words without sense or rhyme and
repeats them till they nauseate." Among the Dahonians any inci-
dent " from the arrival of a stranger to an earthquake " is turned
into a song. When rowing, the Coast-negroes sing " either a de-
scription of some love intrigue or the praise .of some woman cele-
brated for her beauty." In Loango " the women as they till the
field make it echo with their rustic songs." Park says of the Bam-
barran — " they lightened their labors by songs, one of which was
composed extempore ; for I was myself the subject of it." " In
some parts of Africa nothing is done except to the sound of mu-
sic." " They are very expert in adapting the subjects of these
songs to current events." The Malays " amuse all their leisure
hours . . . with the repetition of songs, which are for the most part
proverbs illustrated. . . . Some that they rehearse in a kind of
recitative at their bimbangs or feasts are historical love-tales." A
Sumatran maiden will sometimes begin a tender song and be an-
swered by one of the young men. The ballads of the Kamtscha-
dales are " inspired apparently by grief, love, or domestic feel-
ing ; " and their music conveys " a sensation of sorrow and vague,
unavailing regret." Of their long-songs it is said " the women
generally compose them." A Kirghiz " singer sits on one knee
and sings in an unnatural tone of voice, his lay being usually of
an amorous character." Of the Yakuts we are told " their style
of singing is monotonous . . . their songs described the beauty of
the landscape in terms which appeared to me exaggerated."

In these statements, which, omitting repetitions, are all which
the Descriptive Sociology contains relevant to the issue, several
striking facts are manifest. Among the lowest races the only
musical utterances named are those which refer to the incidents
of the moment, and seem prompted by feelings which those inci-
dents produce. The derivation of song or chant from emotional
speech in general, thus suggested, is similarly suggested by the
habits of many higher races ; for they, too, show us that the mu-
sically-expressed feelings relevant to the immediate occasion, or
to past occasions, are feelings of various kinds : now of simple
good spirits and now of joy or triumph — now of surprise, praise,
admiration, and now of sorrow, melancholy, regret. Only among
certain of the more advanced races, as the semi-civilized Malays

8' THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and peoples of Northern Asia, do we read of love-songs; and
then, strange to say, these are mentioned as mostly coming, not
from men, but from women. Out of all the testimonies there is
not one which tells of a love-song spontaneously commenced by a
man to charm a woman. Entirely absent among the rudest types
and many of the more developed types, amatory musical utter-
ance, where first found, is found under a form opposite to that
which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis implies; and we have to seek
among civilized peoples before we meet, in serenades and the like,
music of the kind which, according to his view, should be the
earliest.*

Even were his view countenanced by the facts, there would
remain unexplained the process by which sexually-excited sounds
have been evolved into music. In the foregoing essay I have
indicated the various qualities, relations, and combinations of
tones, spontaneously prompted by emotions of all kinds, which
exhibit, in undeveloped forms, the traits of recitative and melody.
To have reduced his hypothesis to a shape admitting of comparison,
Mr. Darwin should have shown that the sounds excited by sexual
emotions possess these same traits ; and, to have proved that his
hypothesis is the more tenable, should have shown that they pos-
sess these same traits in a greater degree. But he has not at-
tempted to do this. He has simply suggested that instead of hav-
ing its roots in the vocal sounds caused by feelings of all kinds,
music has its roots in the vocal sounds caused by the amatory
feeling only : giving no reason why the effects of the feelings at
large should be ignored, and the effects of one particular feeling
alone recognized.

'»j

Nineteen years after my essay on " The Origin and Function
of Music " was published, Mr. Edmund Gurney criticised it in an
article which made its appearance in the Fortnightly Review for
July, 1876. Absorption in more important work prevented me
from replying. Though, some ten years ago, I thought of de-
fending my views against those of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Gurney,
the occurrence of Mr. Darwin's death obliged me to postpone for
a time any discussion of his views ; and then, the more recent
unfortunate death of Mr. Gurney caused a further postponement.
I must now, however, say that which seems needful, though there
is no longer any possibility of a rejoinder from him.

* After the above paragraphs had been sent to the printers I received from an Ameri-
ican anthropologist, the Rev. Owen Dorsey, some essays containing kindred evidence. Of
over three dozen songs and chants of the Omaha, Ponka, and other Indians, in some cases
given with music and in other cases without, there are but five which have any reference
to amatory feeling ; and while in these the expression of amatory feeling comes from
women, nothing more than derision of them comes from men.

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 9

Some parts of Mr. Gurney's criticism I have already answered
by implication ; for he adopts the hypothesis that music originated
in the vocal utterances prompted by sexual feeling. To the rea-
sons above given for rejecting this hypothesis, I will add here,
what I might have added above, that it is at variance with one of
the fundamental laws of evolution. All development proceeds
from the general to the special. First there appear those traits
which a thing has in common with many other things ; then those
traits which it has in common with a smaller class of things ; and
so on until there eventually arise those traits which distinguish
it from everything else. The genesis which I have described con-
forms to this fundamental law. It posits the antecedent fact that
feeling in general produces muscular contraction in general ; and
the less general fact that feeling in general produces, among other
muscular contractions, those which move the respiratory and
vocal apparatus. With these it joins the still less general fact
that sounds indicative of feelings vary in sundry respects accord-
ing to the intensity of the feelings ; and then enumerates the still
less general facts which show us the kinship between the vocal
manifestations of feeling and the characters of vocal music : the
implication being that there has gone on a progressive specializa-
tion. But the view which Mr. Gurney adopts from Mr. Darwin is
that from the special actions producing the special sounds accom-
panying sexual excitement, were evolved those various actions
producing the various sounds which accompany all other feelings.
Vocal expression of a particular emotion came first, and from this
proceeded vocal expressions of emotions in general : the order of
evolution was reversed.

To deficient knowledge of the laws of evolution are due sun-
dry of Mr. Gurney's objections. He makes a cardinal error in
assuming that a more evolved thing is distinguished from less
evolved things in respect of all the various traits of evolution ;
whereas, very generally, a higher degree of evolution in some or
most respects, is accompanied by an equal or lower degree of evo-
lution in other respects. On the average, increase of locomotive
power goes along with advance of evolution ; and yet numerous
mammals are more fleet than man. The stage of development is
largely indicated by degree of intelligence ; and yet the more
intelligent parrot is inferior in vision, in speed, and in destructive
appliances, to the less-intelligent hawk. The contrast between
birds and mammals well illustrates the general truth. A bird's
skeleton diverges more widely from the skeleton of the lower
vertebrates in respect of heterogeneity than does the skeleton of
a mammal ; and the bird has a more developed respiratory system,
as well as a higher temperature of blood, and a superior power of
locomotion. Nevertheless, many mammals in respect of bulk, in

io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

respect of various appliances (especially for prehension), and in
respect of intelligence, are more evolved than birds. Thus it is
obviously a mistake to assume that whatever is more highly
evolved in general character is more highly evolved in every
trait.

Of Mr. Gurney's several objections which are based on this
mistake here is an example. He says — " Loudness though a fre-
quent is by no means a universal or essential element, either of
song or of emotional speech" (p. 107). Under one of its aspects
this criticism is self -destructive ; for if, though both relatively
loud in most cases, song and emotional speech are both character-
ized by the occasional use of subdued tones, then this is a further
point of kinship between them — a kinship which Mr. Gurney seeks
to disprove. Under its other aspect this criticism implies the
above-described misconception. If in a song, or rather in some
part or parts of a song, the trait of loudness is absent, while the
other traits of developed emotional utterance are present, it simply
illustrates the truth that the traits of a highly-evolved product
are frequently not all present together.

A like answer is at hand to the next objection he makes. It
runs thus : —

"In the recitative which he [Mr. Spencer] himself considers naturally and his-
torically a step between speech and song, the rapid variation of pitch is impossi-
ble, and such recitative is distinguished from the tones even of common speech
precisely by being more monotonous " (p. 108).

But Mr. Gurney overlooks the fact that while, in recitative, some
traits of developed emotional utterance are not present, two of its
traits are present. One is that greater resonance of tone, caused
by greater contraction of the vocal chords, which distinguishes it
from ordinary speech. The other is the relative elevation of pitch,
or divergence from the medium tones of voice : a trait similarly
implying greater strain of certain vocal muscles, resulting from
stronger feeling.

Another difficulty raised by Mr. Gurney he would probably
not have set down had he been aware that one character of musi-
cal utterance which he thinks distinctive, is a character of all
phenomena into which motion enters as a factor. He says: —
" Now no one can suppose that the sense of rhythm can be derived
from emotional speech" (p. 110). Had he referred to the chapter
on " The Rhythm of Motion " in First Principles, he would have
seen that, in common with inorganic actions, all organic actions
are completely or partially rhythmical — from appetite and sleep
to inspirations and heart-beats ; from the winking of the eyes to
the contractions of the intestines ; from the motions of the legs
to discharges through the nerves. Having contemplated such
facts he would have seen that the rhythmical tendency which is

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. u

perfectly displayed in musical utterance, is imperfectly displayed
in emotional speech. Just as under emotion we see swayings of
the body and wringings of the hands, so do we see contractions
of the vocal organs which are now stronger and now weaker.
Surely it is manifest that the utterances of passion, far from being
monotonous, are characterized by rapidly-recurring ascents and
descents of tone and by rapidly-recurring emphases : there is
rhythm, though it is an irregular rhythm.

"Want of knowledge of the principles of evolution has, in an-
other place, led Mr. Gurney to represent as an objection what is
in reality a verification. He says : —

" Music is distinguished from emotional speech in that it proceeds not only by-
fixed degrees in time, bat by fixed degrees in the scale. This is a constant quality
through all the immense quantity of embryo and developed scale-systems that
have been used : whereas the transitions of pitch which mark emotional affec-
tions of voice are, as Helmholtz has pointed out, of a gliding character" (p. 113).

Had Mr. Gurney known that evolution in all cases is from the
indefinite to the definite, he would have seen that as a matter of
course the gradations of emotional speech must be indefinite in
comparison with the gradations of developed music. Progress
from the one to the other is in part constituted by increasing defi-
niteness in the time-intervals and increasing definiteness in the
tone-intervals. Were it otherwise, the hypothesis I have set forth
would lack one of its evidences. To his allegation that not only
the " developed scale-systems " but also the " embryo " scale-sys-
tems are definite, it may obviously be replied that the mere exist-
ence of any scale-system capable of being written down, implies
that the earlier stage of the progress has already been passed
through. To have risen to a scale-system is to have become defi-
nite ; and until a scale-system has been reached vocal phrases can
not have been recorded. Moreover had Mr. Gurney remembered
that there are many people with musical perceptions so imper-
fect that when making their merely recognizable, and sometimes
hardly recognizable, attempts to whistle or hum melodies, they
show how vague are their appreciations of musical intervals, he
would have seen reason for doubting his assumption that definite
scales were reached all at once. The fact that in what we call
bad ears there are all degrees of imperfection, joined with the
fact that where the imperfection is not great practice may remedy
it, suffice of themselves to show that definite perceptions of musi-
cal intervals were reached by degrees.

Some of Mr. Gurney's objections are strangely insubstantial.
Here is an example : —

"The fact is that song, which moreover in our time is but a limited branch of
music, is perpetually making conscious efforts ; for instance, the most peaceful
melody may be a considerable strain to a soprano voice, if sung in a very high

12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

register: while speech continues to obey in a natural way the physiological laws
of emotion" (p. 117.)

That in exaggerating and emphasizing the traits of emotional
speech, the singer should be led to make " conscious efforts " is
surely natural enough. What would Mr. Gurney have said of
dancing ? He would scarcely have denied that saltatory move-
ments often result spontaneously from excited feeling ; and he
could hardly have doubted that primitive dancing arose as a
systematized form of such movements. Would he have consid-
ered the belief that stage-dancing is evolved from these spontane-
ous movements to be negatived by the fact that a stage-dancer's
bounds and gyrations are made with " conscious efforts " ?

In his elaborate work on The Power of Sound, Mr. Gurney, re-
peating in other forms the objections I have above dealt with, adds
to them some others. One of these, which appears at first sight to
have much weight, I must not pass by. He thus expresses it : —

" Any one may convince himself that not only are the intervals used in
emotional speech very large, twelve diatonic notes being quite an ordinary skip,
but that he uses extremes of both high and low pitch with his speaking voice,
which, if he tries to dwell on them and make them resonant, will be found to lie
beyond the compass of his singing voice " (p. 479).

Now the part of my hypothesis which Mr. Gurney here combats
is that, as in emotional speech so in song, feeling, by causing mus-
cular contractions, causes divergences from the middle tones of
the voice, which become wider as it increases ; and that this fact
supports the belief that song is developed from emotional speech.
To this Mr. Gurney thinks it a conclusive answer that higher
notes are used by the speaking voice than by the singing voice.
But if, as his words imply, there is a physical impediment to the
production of notes in the one voice as high as those in the other,
then my argument is justified if, in either voice, extremes of feel-
ing are shown by extremes of pitch. If, for example, the cele-
brated ut de poitrine with which Tamberlik brought down the
house in one of the scenes of William Tell, was recognized as ex-
pressing the greatest intensity of martial patriotism, my position
is warranted, even though in his speaking voice he could have
produced a still higher note.

Of answers to Mr. Gurney 's objections the two most effective
are suggested by the passage in which he sums up his conclusions.
Here are his words :

" It is enough to recall how every consideration tended to the same result ;
that the oak grew from the acorn ; that the musical faculty and pleasure, which
have to do with music and nothing else, are the representatives and linear descend-
ants of a faculty and pleasure which were musical and nothing else ; and that,
however rudely and tentatively applied to speech, Music was a separate order'1'1
(p. 492).

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 13

Thus, then, it is implied that the true germs of music stand
toward developed music as the acorn to the oak. Now suppose we
ask— How many traits of the oak are to be found in the acorn ?
Next to none. And then suppose we ask— How many traits of
music are to be found in the tones of emotional speech ? Very
many. Yet while Mr. Gurney thinks that music had its origin in
something which might have been as unlike it as the acorn is un-
like the oak, he rejects the theory that it had its origin in some-
thing as much like it as the cadences of emotional speech ; and he
does this because there are sundry differences between the char-
acters of speech-cadences and the characters of music. In the one
case he tacitly assumes a great unlikeness between germ and prod-
uct ; while in the other case he objects because germ and product
are not in all respects similar !

I may end by pointing out how extremely improbable, a priori,
is Mr. Gurney's conception. He admits, as perforce he must, that
emotional speech has various traits in common with recitative and
song— relatively greater resonance, relatively greater loudness,
more marked divergences from medium tones, the use of the ex-
tremes of pitch in signifying the extremes of feeling, and so on.
But, denying that the one is derived from the others, he implies
that these kindred groups of traits have had independent origins.
Two sets of peculiarities in the use of the voice which show vari-
ous kinships, have nothing to do with one another ! I think it
merely requires to put the proposition in this shape to see how
incredible it is.

Sundry objections to the views contained in the essay on " The
Origin and Function of Music," have arisen from misconception
of its scope. An endeavor to explain the origin of music, has been
dealt with as though it were a theory of music in its entirety.
An hypothesis concerning the rudiments has been rejected be-
cause it did not account for everything contained in the developed
product. To preclude this misapprehension for the future, and to
show how much more is comprehended in a theory of music than
I professed to deal with, let me enumerate the several components
of musical effect. They may properly be divided into sensa-
tional, perceptional, and emotional.

That the sensational pleasure is distinguishable from the other
pleasures which music yields, will not be questioned. A sweet
sound is agreeable in itself, when heard out of relation to other
sounds. Tones of various timbres, too, are severally appreciated
as having their special beauties. Of further elements in the sen-
sational pleasure have to be named those which result from cer-
tain congruities between notes and immediately succeeding notes.
This pleasure, like the primary pleasure which fine quality yields,

i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

appears to have a purely physical basis. We know that the agree-
ableness of simultaneous tones depends partly on the relative
frequency of recurring correspondences of the vibrations pro-
ducing them, and partly on the relative infrequency of beats, and
we may suspect that there is a kindred cause for the agreeableness
of successive tones ; since the auditory apparatus which has been
at one instant vibrating in a particular manner, will take up cer-
tain succeeding vibrations more readily than others. Evidently
it is a question of the degree of congruity ; for the most congruous
vibrations, those of the octaves, yield less pleasure when heard in
succession than those of which the congruity is not so great. To
obtain the greatest pleasure in this and other things, there requires
both likeness and difference. Recognition of this fact introduces
us to the next element of sensational pleasure — that due to con-
trast; including contrast of pitch, of loudness, and of timbre. In
this case, as in other cases, the disagreeableness caused by fre-
quent repetition of the same sensation (here literally called " mo-
notony ") results from the exhaustion which any single nervous
agent undergoes from perpetual stimulation ; and contrast gives
pleasure because it implies action of an agent which has had rest.
It follows that much of the sensational pleasure to be obtained
from music depends on such adjustments of sounds as bring into
play, without conflict, many nervous elements : exercising all and
not overexerting any. We must not overlook a concomitant
effect. With the agreeable sensation is joined a faint emotion of
an agreeable kind. Beyond the simple definite pleasure yielded
by a sweet tone, there is a vague, diffused pleasure. As indicated
in the Principles of Psychology, § 537, each nervous excitation pro-
duces reverberation throughout the nervous system at large ; and
probably this indefinite emotional pleasure is a consequence. Doubt-
less some shape is given to it by association. But after observing
how much there is in common between the diffused feeling aroused
by smelling a deliriously scented flower and that aroused by list-
ening to a sweet tone, it will, I think, be perceived that the more
general cause predominates.

The division between the sensational effects and the percep-
tional effects is of course indefinite. As above implied, part of
the sensational pleasure depends on the relation between each tone
and the succeeding tones ; and hence this pleasure gradually
merges into that which arises from perceiving the structural con-
nections between the phrases and between the larger parts of mu-
sical compositions. Much of the gratification given by a melody
consists in the consciousness of the relations between each group
of sounds heard and the groups of sounds held in memory as hav-
ing just passed, as well as those represented as about to come. In
many cases the passage listened to would not be regarded as hav-

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 15

ing any beauty were it not for its remembered connections with,
passages in the immediate past and the immediate future. If, for
example, from the first movement of Beethoven's Funeral-March
sonata the first five notes are detached, they appear to be mean-
ingless ; but if, the movement being known, they are joined with
imaginations of the anticipated phrases, they immediately acquire
meaning and beauty. Indefinable as are the causes of this per-
ceptional pleasure in many cases, some causes of it are definable.
Symmetry is one. A chief element in melodic effect results from
repetitions of phrases which are either identical, or differ only in
pitch, or differ only in minor variations : there being in the first
case the pleasure derived from perception of complete likeness,
and in the other cases the greater pleasure derived from percep-
tion of likeness with difference — a perception which is more in-
volved, and therefore exercises a greater number of nervous
agents. Next comes, as a source of gratification, the conscious-
ness of pronounced unlikeness or contrast ; such as that between
passages above the middle tones and passages below, or as that
between ascending phrases and descending phrases. And then
we rise to larger contrasts ; as when, the first theme in a mel-
ody having been elaborated, there is introduced another having a
certain kinship though in many respects different, after which
there is a return to the first theme : a structure which yields more
extensive and more complex perceptions of both differences and
likenesses. But while perceptional pleasures include much that
is of the highest, they also include much that is of the lowest. A
certain kind of interest, if not of beauty, is producible by the like-
nesses and contrasts of musical phrases which are intrinsically
meaningless or even ugly. A familiar experience exemplifies this.
If a piece of paper is folded and on one side of the crease there is
drawn an irregular line in ink, which, by closing the paper, is
blotted on the opposite side of the crease, there results a figure
which, in virtue of its symmetry, has some beauty ; no matter
how entirely without beauty the two lines themselves may be.
Similarly, some interest results from the parallelism of musical
phrases, notwithstanding utter lack of interest in the phrases
themselves. The kind of interest resulting from such parallel-
isms, and from many contrasts, irrespective of any intrinsic worth
in their components, is that which is most appreciated by the
musically-uncultured, and gives popularity to miserable drawing-
room ballads and vulgar music-hall songs.

The remaining element of musical effect consists in the ideal-
ized rendering of emotion. This, as I have sought to show, is the
primitive element, and will ever continue to be the vital element ;
for if " melody is the soul of music," then expression is the soul of
melody— the soul without which it is mechanical and meaningless,

\6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

whatever may be tlie merit of its form. This primitive element
may with tolerable clearness be distinguished from the other ele-
ments, and may coexist with them in various degrees : in some
cases being the predominant element. Any one who, in analytical
mood, listens to such a song as Robert, toi que faime, can not, I
think, fail to perceive that its effectiveness depends on the way in
which it exalts and intensifies the traits of passionate utterance.
No doubt as music develops, the emotional element (which affects
structure chiefly through the forms of phrases) is increasingly
complicated with, and obscured by, the perceptional element ;
which both modifies these phrases and unites them into symmet-
rical and contrasted combinations. But though the groups of
notes which emotion prompts admit of elaboration into structures
that have additional charms due to artfully-arranged contrasts
and repetitions, the essential element is liable to be thus sub-
merged in the non-essential. Only in melodies of high types, such
as the Addio of Mozart and Adelaide of Beethoven, do we see the
two requirements simultaneously fulfilled. Musical genius is
shown in achieving the decorative beauty without losing the
beauty of emotional meaning.

It goes without saying that there must be otherwise accounted
for that relatively modern element in musical effect which has
now almost outgrown in importance the other elements — I mean
harmony. This can not be affiliated on the natural language of
emotion ; since, in such language, limited to successive tones,
there can not originate the effects wrought by simultaneous tones.
Dependent as harmony is on relations among rates of aerial pulses,
its primary basis is purely mechanical ; and its secondary basis
lies in the compound vibrations which certain combinations of
mechanical rhythms cause in the auditory apparatus. The result-
ing pleasure must, therefore, be due to nervous excitations of
kinds which, by their congruity, exalt one another ; and thus gen-
erate a larger volume of agreeable sensation. A further pleasure
of sensational origin which harmony yields is due to contrapuntal
effects. Skillful counterpoint has the general character that it
does not repeat in immediate succession similar combinations of
tones and similar directions of change ; and by thus avoiding tem-
porary overtax of the nervous structures brought into action,
keeps them in better condition for subsequent action. Absence of
regard for this requirement characterizes the music of Gluck, of
whom Handel said — " He knows no more counterpoint than my
cook ; ''' and it is this disregard which produces its cloying char-
acter. Respecting the effects of harmony I will add only that the
vague emotional accompaniment to the sensation produced by a
single sweet tone, is paralleled by the stronger emotional accom-
paniment to the more voluminous and complex sensation produced

THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. i7

by a fine chord. Clearly this vague emotion forms a large com-
ponent in the pleasure which harmony gives.

While thus recognizing, and indeed emphasizing, the fact that
of many traits of developed music my hypothesis respecting the
origin of music yields no explanation, let me point out that this
hypothesis gains a further general support from its conformity
to the law of evolution. Progressive integration is seen in the
immense contrast between the small combinations of tones consti-
tuting a cadence of grief, or anger, or triumph, and the vast com-
binations of tones, simultaneous and successive, constituting an
oratorio. Great advance in coherence becomes manifest when,
from the lax unions among the sounds in which feeling spontane-
ously expresses itself, or even from those few musical phrases
which constitute a simple air, we pass to those elaborate composi-
tions in which portions small and large are tied together into
extended organic wholes. On comparing the unpremeditated
inflexions of the voice in emotional speech, vague in tones and
times, with those premeditated ones which the musician arranges
for stage or concert-room, in which the divisions of time are
exactly measured, the successive intervals precise, and the har-
monies adjusted to a nicety, we observe in the last a far higher
definiteness. And immense progress in heterogeneity is seen on
putting side by side the monotonous chants of savages with the
musical compositions familiar to us ; each of which is relatively
heterogeneous within itself, and the assemblage of which forms
an immeasurably heterogeneous aggregate.

Strong support for the theory enunciated in this essay, and de-
fended in the foregoing paragraphs, is furnished by the testimonies
of two travelers in Hungary, given in works published in 1878 and
1888 respectively. Here is an extract from the first of the two : —

"Music is an instinct with these Hungarian gypsies. They play by ear, and
with a marvelous precision, not surpassed by musicians who have been subject
to the most careful training. . . . The airs they play are most frequently com-
positions of their own, and are in character quite peculiar. ... I heard on this
occasion one of the gypsy airs which made an indelible impression on my mind ;
it seemed to me the thrilling utterance of a people's history. There was the low
wail of sorrow, of troubled passionate grief, stirring the heart to restlessness, then
the sense of turmoil and defeat; but upon this breaks suddenly a wild burst of
exultation, of rapturous joy — a triumph achieved, which hurries you along with it
in resistless sympathy. The excitable Hungarians can literally become intoxicated
with this music — and no wonder. You can not reason upon it, or explain it, but
its strains compel you to sensations of despair and joy, of exultation and excite-
ment, as though under the influence of some potent charm. '•' — Sound about the
Carpathians, by Andrew F. Crosse, pp. 11, 12.

Still more graphic and startling is the description given by a
more recent traveler, E. Gerard : —

VOL. xxxvm. — 2

18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

"Devoid of printed notes, the Tzigane is not forced to divide his attention
between a sheet of paper and his instrument, and there is consequently nothing
to detract from the utter abandonment with which he absorbs himself in his play-
ing. He seems to be sunk in an inner world of his own ; the instrument sobs
and moans in his hands, and is pressed tight against his heart as though it had
grown and taken root there. This is the true moment of inspiration, to which
he rarely gives way, and then only in the privacy of an intimate circle, never
before a numerous and unsympathetic audience. Himself spell-bound by the
power of the tones he evokes, his head gradually sinking lower and lower over
the instrument, the body bent forward in an attitude of rapt attention, and his
ear seeming to hearken to far-off ghostly strains audible to himself alone, the
untaught Tzigane achieves a perfection of expression unattainable by mere pro-
fessional training.

" This power of identification with his music is the real secret of the Tzigane's
influence over his audience. Inspired and carried away by his own strains, he
must perforce carry his hearers with him as well; and the Hungarian listener
throws himself heart and sonl into this species of musical intoxication, which to
him is the greatest delight on earth. There is a proverb which says, 'The Hun-
garian only requires a gypsy fiddler and a glass of water in order to make him
quite drunk;' and, indeed, intoxication is the only word fittingly to describe
the state of exaltation into which I have seen a Hungarian audience thrown by a
gypsy band.

" Sometimes, under the combined influence of music and wine, the Tziganes
become like creatures possessed ; the wild cries and stamps of an equally excited
audience only stimulate them to greater exertions. The whole atmosphere seems
tossed by billows of passionate harmony ; we seem to catch sight of the electric
sparks of inspiration flying through the air. It is then that the Tzigane player
gives forth everything that is secretly lurking within him — fierce anger, childish
wailings, presumptuous exaltation, brooding melancholy, and passionate despair;
and at such moments, as a Hungarian writer has said, one could readily believe
in his power of drawing down the angels from heaven into hell!

" Listen how another Hungarian has here described the effect of their music : —
'How it rushes through the veins like electric fire! How it penetrates straight
to the soul! In soft plaintive minor tones the adagio opens with a slow rhythmi-
cal movement : it is a sighing and longing of unsatisfied aspirations ; a craving
for undiscovered happiness; the lover's yearning for the object of his affection;
the expression of mourning for lost joys, for happy days gone forever; then
abruptly changing to a major key, the tones get faster and more agitated; and
from the whirlpool of harmony the melody gradually detaches itself, alternately
drowned in the foam of overbreaking waves, to reappear floating on the surface
with undulating motion — collecting as it were fresh power for a renewed burst of
fury. But quickly as the storm came it is gone again, and the music relapses into
the melancholy yearnings of heretofore.' " — The Land beyond the Forest, vol. ii,
pp. 122-4. London, 1888.

After the evidence thus furnished, argument is almost super-
fluous. The origin of music as the developed language of emotion
seems to be no longer an inference but simply a description of
the fact.

MEN OF SCIENCE AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC. 19

THE RELATIONS OF MEN OF SCIENCE TO THE

GENERAL PUBLIC*

By Pkof. T. C. MENDENHALL.

JUST fifty years liave passed since a small body of enthusiastic
students of geology and natural history organized them-
selves into an association which was, for the first time in the his-
tory of this country, not local in its membership or in its purpose.
As the " Association of American Geologists and Naturalists," it
was intended to include any and all persons, from any and all
parts of the country, who were actively engaged in the promotion
of natural history studies, and who were willing to re-enforce and
strengthen each other by this union. So gratifying was the suc-
cess of this undertaking that after a few years of increasing pros-
perity under its first name, the Association wisely determined to
widen the field of its operations by resolving itself into the Amer-
ican Association for the Advancement of Science, thus assuming
to be in title what it had really been in fact, from the beginning
of its existence. One of the articles of its first constitution, adopt-
ed at its first meeting, provided that it should be the duty of its
president to present an address at a general session following
that over which he presided. The performance of this duty can
not, therefore, be easily avoided by one who has been honored by
his fellow-members in being called upon to preside over the de-
liberations of this Association ; nor can it be lightly disposed of
when one realizes the importance of the occasion and recalls the
long list of his distinguished predecessors, each of whom in his
turn has brought to this hour at least a small measure of the work
of a lifetime devoted to the interests of science.

The occasion is one which offers an opportunity and imposes
an obligation. The opportunity is in many ways unique and the
obligation is correspondingly great. In the delivery of this ad-
dress the retiring president usually finds himself in the presence
of a goodly number of intelligent people, representatives of the
general public who, knowing something of the results of scientific
investigation, have little idea of its methods, and whose interest
in our proceedings, while entirely cordial and friendly, is often
born of curiosity rather than a full appreciation of their value
and importance. Mingled with them are the members and Fel-
lows of the Association who have come to the annual gathering
laden with the products of many fields which they have industri-
ously cultivated during the year ; each ready to submit his contri-

* Address of the retiring President of the American Association for the Advancemen
of Science. Delivered at the Indianapolis meeting, August, 1890.

2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bution to the inspection and criticism of his comrades, and all hop-
ing to add in some degree to the sum total of human knowledge.

The united presence of these two classes intensifies the interest
which naturally attaches to an occasion like this, and not unnatu-
rally suggests that a brief consideration of the relations that do
exist and which should exist between them may afford a profit-
able occupation for us this evening.

In the beginning it may be truthfully affirmed that no other
single agency has done as much to establish these relations on a
proper basis as the American Association for the Advancement of
Science. In the first article of its constitution the objects of the
Association are defined as follows : " By periodical and migratory
meetings, to promote intercourse between those who are culti-
vating science in different parts of the United States, to give a
stronger and more general impulse and a more systematic direc-
tion to scientific research in our country, and to procure for the
labors of scientific men increased facilities and a wider useful-
ness." So perfectly do these words enibody the spirit of the Asso-
ciation that when, more than thirty years later, the constitution
was thoroughly revised, none better could be found to give it ex-
pression. That it has been successful in promoting intercourse
between those who are cultivating science in different parts of the
United States may be proved by the testimony of thousands who
have come to know each other through attendance at its meetings.
In a country whose geographical limits are so extensive as ours
and whose scientific men are so widely scattered, it is difficult to
overestimate its value in this particular.

In giving a stronger and more general impulse and a more sys-
tematic direction to scientific research in our country it has been
singularly fortunate. Its meetings have been the means of dis-
seminating proper methods of investigation and study through-
out the land ; hundreds of young students, enthusiastic but often
not well trained, have found themselves welcome (sometimes to
their own astonishment), and by its influence and encouragement
have been molded and guided in the utilization of their endow-
ments, occasionally exceptional, to the end that they have finally
won a fame and renown which must always be treasured by the
Association as among its richest possessions. Wherever its migra-
tory meetings have been held the pulse of intelligence has been
quickened, local institutions have been encouraged and strength-
ened, or created where they did not before exist, and men of sci-
ence have been brought into closer relations with an intelligent
public.

But it is in relation to the last of the three great objects, to ac-
complish which the Association was organized, namely, " to pro-
cure for the labors of scientific men increased facilities and a

MEN OF SCIENCE AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC. 21

wider usefulness/' that it has been, on the whole, less successful.
It is true that when we look at the history of science in America
during the past fifty years ; when we see at every point evidences
of public appreciation, or at least appropriation of scientific dis-
covery ; and, most of all, when we observe the enlargement of older
institutions of learning to make room for instruction in science,
and the generous donations to found new technical and scientific
schools, together with an occasional endowment of research, pure
and simple — in view of all these, I say, we are almost constrained
to believe that scientific men have only to ask, that their facilities
may be increased, and that their labors could hardly have a wider
usefulness.

Unfortunately, this pleasing picture is not a true reflection of
the actual condition of things. The attentive observer can not
fail to discover that the relation between men of science and the
general public is not what it should be in the best interests of
either or both. In assemblages of the former it is common to
hear complaints of a lack of appreciation and proper support on
the part of the latter, from whom, in turn, occasionally comes an
expression of indifference, now and then tinctured with contempt
for men who devote their lives and energies to study and research,
the results of which can not always be readily converted into real
estate or other forms of taxable property. It can not be denied
that the man of science is at some disadvantage as compared with
his neighbor, the successful lawyer or physician, when it comes to
that distribution of confidence with responsibility which usually
exists in any well-ordered community, although the latter may
possess but a fraction of the intellectual power and sound judg-
ment which he can command. To his credit it may be said that
he is usually considered to be a harmless creature, and to render
him assistance and encouragement is generally regarded as a vir-
tue. The fact of his knowing much about things which do not
greatly concern the general public is accepted as proof that he
knows little of matters that seriously affect the public welfare.

It is true that when the public is driven to extremities it some-
times voluntarily calls upon the man of science, and in this emer-
gency it is often unpleasantly confronted with the fact that it does
not know where to find him. The scientific dilettante, or worse,
the charlatan, is often much nearer the public than the genuine
man of science, and the inability to discriminate sometimes results
in disaster in which both science and the public suffer.

In venturing to suggest some possible remedies for this con-
dition of things it will be logical, if not important, to roughly
define the two classes under consideration, the scientific and the
non-scientific. One is the great majority, the general public, in-
cluding in the United States over sixty millions of people in all

22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

conditions, cultured and uncultured, educated and uneducated,
but in average intelligence, we are proud to say, superior to the
people of any other nation in the world. Out of these it is not
easy to sift by definition the small minority properly known as
men of science. Only a rough approximation may be reached by
an examination of the membership of scientific societies.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science
includes in its membership about two thousand persons. It is
well known, however, that many of these are not actually en-
gaged in scientific pursuits, either professionally or otherwise ;
indeed, it is one of the important functions of the society to gather
into its fold as many of this class as possible. The fellowship of
the Association is limited however, by its constitution, to such
members as are professionally engaged in science, or have by
their labors aided in advancing science. They number about
seven hundred, but in this case it is equally well known that the
list falls far short of including all Americans who by their labors
in science are justly entitled to a place in any roll of scientific
men. On the whole, it would not, perhaps, be a gross exaggera-
tion to say that not more than one in fifty thousand of our popu-
lation could be properly placed upon the list, even with a liberal
interpretation of terms.

In this estimate it is not intended, of course, to include that
large class of active workers whose energies are devoted to the ad-
vancement of applied science. Although their methods are often
the result of scientific training, and while the solution of their prob-
lems requires much knowledge of science, the real advancement
of science at their hands is rather incidental than otherwise. In
certain particulars they may be likened to the class known as
" middle-men " in commercial transactions, the connecting link be-
tween producer and consumer. It is in no way to their discredit
that they usually excel both of these in vigilance and circumspec-
tion and in their quick perception of utility. By them the discov-
eries of science are prepared for and placed upon the market, and
it is difficult to overestimate their usefulness in this capacity. It
is true that the lion's share of the profit in the transaction is gen-
erally theirs, and that they are often negligent in the matter of
giving the philosopher the credit to which he is entitled, but for
the latter, at least, it is believed that the philosopher is himself
often responsible.

If this statement of the relative numbers of the scientific and
the non-scientific is reasonably correct, the scientific man may at
least congratulate himself on wielding an influence in affairs vastly
greater than the census, alone, would justify ; and this fact en-
courages the belief that, if there is anything " out of joint " in his
relations with the general public, the remedy is in his own hands.

MEN OF SCIENCE AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC. 23

Let our first inquiry be, then, in what particular does he fail in
the full discharge of his duties as a man of science and especially
as an exponent of science among his fellows ?

Without attempting to arrange the answers which suggest
themselves in logical order, or, indeed, to select those of the first
importance, I submit, to begin with, his inability or unwillingness,
common but by no means universal, to present the results of his
labors in a form intelligible to intelligent people. When inability,
it is a misfortune, often the outgrowth, however, of negligence or
indifference ; when unwillingness, it becomes at least an offense,
and one not indicative of the true scientific spirit. Unfortunately ?
we are not yet entirely out of the shadow of the middle ages, when
learning was a mystery to all except a select few, or of the centu-
ries a little later, when a scientific treatise must be entombed in a
dead language or a scientific discovery embalmed in a cipher.

Many scientific men of excellent reputation are to-day guilty of
the crime of unnecessary and often premeditated and deliberately
planned mystification ; in fact, almost by common consent this
fault is overlooked in men of distinguished ability, if, indeed, it
does not add a luster to the brilliancy of their attainments. It is
usually regarded as a high compliment to say of A that, when he
read his paper in the Mathematical Section, no one present was
able to understand what it was about ; or of B and his book that
there are only three men in the world who can read it. We
greatly, though silently, admire A and B, while C, the unknown,
who has not yet won a reputation, and who ventures to discuss
something which we do understand (after his clear and logical
presentation of the subject), must go content with the patronizing
admonition that there is really nothing new about this, and that
if he will consult the pages of a certain journal of a few years ago,
he will find the same idea, not developed, it is true, but hinted at
and put aside for future consideration, or that he will find that
Newton or Darwin declared what is essentially the same principle
many years before. No one can deny that there are great reason
and good judgment displayed in all this, but the ordinary layman
is likely to inquire whether it is distributed and apportioned with
nice discrimination ; and it is the standpoint of the layman which
we are occupying at the present moment.

All will admit that there are many men whose power in origi-
nal thinking and profound research is far greater than their fa-
cility of expression, just as, on the other hand, there are many
more men whose linguistic fluency is unembarrassed by intellect-
ual activity, and representatives of both classes may be found
among those usually counted as men of science. It is with the
first only that we are concerned at the present moment, and it is
sufficient to remark that their fault is relatively unimportant and

24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

easily overlooked. Among tliem is often found that highly
prized but imperfectly defined individual known as the " genius/'
for whose existence we are always thankful, even though his in-
terpretation is difficult and laborious.

Concerning those who, although able, are unwilling to take the
trouble to write for their readers or speak for their hearers, a
somewhat more extended comment may be desirable. It is al-
ways difficult to make a just analysis of motives, but there can be
little doubt that some of these are influenced by a desire to imitate
the rare genius whose intellectual advances are so rapid and so
powerful as to forbid all efforts to secure a clear and simple pres-
entation of results. The king is lame and the courtier must limp.
With others there is a strange and unwholesome prejudice against
making science intelligible, for fear that science may become
popular. It is forgotten that clear and accurate thinking is gen-
erally accompanied by the power of clear, concise, and accurate
expression, and that as a matter of fact the two are almost insepa-
rable. The apparent success before the people of the dilettante
and the charlatan has resulted, in the case of many good and able
men, in a positive aversion to popular approval. It should never
be forgotten that the judgment and taste of the public in matters
relating to science are just as susceptible of cultivation as in
music and the fine arts, and that scientific men owe it to them-
selves to see that opportunity for this culture is not withheld. A
just appreciation by the people of real merit in art has resulted in
the production of great painters, sculptors, musicians, and com-
posers, and there is every reason to believe that the best interests
of science would be fostered by similar treatment. Even the
great masters in science, then, can well afford to do what is in
their power to popularize their work and that of their col-
leagues, so that through closer relations with a more appreci-
ative public their opportunities may be enlarged and their num-
bers increased.

Another error into which the man of science is liable to fall is
that of assuming superior wisdom as regards subjects outside of
his own specialty. It may seem a little hard to accuse him of
this, but nevertheless it is a mistake into which he is easily and
often unconsciously led. That this is the day of specialization and
specialists every student of science learns at the very threshold of
his career ; but that one man can be expected to be good author-
ity on not more than one or two subjects is not so generally un-
derstood by the public. It thus frequently happens that the man
of science is consulted on all matters of a scientific nature, and he
is induced to give opinions on subjects only remotely, if at all,
related to that branch of science in which he is justly recognized
as an authority. Although going well for a time, these opinions

MEN OF SCIENCE AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC. 25

often prove to be erroneous in the end, resulting in a diminu-
tion of that confidence which the public is, on the whole, inclined
to place in the dictum of science.

Examples of this condition of things are by no means want-
ing, and they are not confined, as might at first be assumed, to the
lower ranks of science. A distinguished botanist is consulted and
advises concerning the location of the natural-gas field ; a math-
ematician advises a company in which he is a stockholder in re-
gard to the best locality for boring for oil ; and a celebrated biol-
ogist examines and makes public report upon a much-talked-of
invention in which the principles of physics and engineering are
alone involved.

In these and many other instances which might be related, the
motives of those concerned, at least on one side of the transaction,
can not be questioned, but certainly their judgment is open to
criticism ; and the outcome of it all is that the confidence of the
people in scientific methods and results is weakened. Fifty years
ago or a hundred years ago, there was good reason for much of
this sort of thing. Specialization was neither as possible nor as
necessary as now ; the sparseness of the population of the country,
the absence of centers of learning and scientific research, the ob-
stacles in the way of easy and rapid communication between dif-
ferent parts of the country — all these and other circumstances
contributed to the possibility of a Franklin, who wrote and wrote
well upon nearly all subjects of human thought ; whose advice
was sought and given in matters relating to all departments of
science, literature, and art. Combining in an extraordinary de-
gree the power of profound research with a singularly simple and
clear style in composition, together with a modesty which is
nearly always characteristic of the genuine student of nature, he
wisely ventured further than most men would dare to-day in the
range of topics concerning which he spoke with authority.

But at the present time and under existing conditions there is
little excuse for unsupported assumption of knowledge by men of
science ; and, fortunately, the danger of humiliating exposure is
correspondingly great. The specialist is everywhere within easy
reach, and the expression of opinions concerning things of which
one knows but little is equally prejudicial to the interests of sci-
ence and society.

The scientific man should also be at least reasonably free from
egotism in matters relating to his own specialty, and particularly
in reference to his own authority and attainments therein. In
controversy he has the advantage over most disputants in that he
can usually call to his support an unerring and incontrovertible
witness. A well-conducted experiment or an exhaustive investi-
gation carried out with scrupulous honesty, deservedly carries

26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

great weight ; but it must not be forgotten that it does not, in a
very great degree, depend upon the personality of him who directs
the experiment or plans the investigation. One must not confound
himself and his work to the extent of assuming that upon him
ought to be bestowed the praise and admiration to which his work
is perhaps justly entitled. This blunder is analogous to that of
the mechanic in whom the first symptom of insanity appeared as
a conviction that he was as strong as the engine which he had
built, evidence of which he unpleasantly thrust upon any who
might deny the truth of his assertion. " By your works shall ye
be judged " may be especially affirmed of men of science, not only
as regards the judgment of the public, but particularly that of
their colleagues and fellow-workers. Least of all should title,
degree, membership in learned societies, or the possession of medals
or other awards of distinction and honor, be paraded unduly, or
offered by himself in evidence of his own fitness. In general
these are honorable rewards which are justly prized by scientific
men, but some of them have been so indiscriminately bestowed,
and in some instances falsely assumed, that the general public, not
yet properly educated in this direction, does not attach great value
to them as an index of real scientific merit. Where real merit
actually exists, nothing is usually gained and much is likely to
be lost by boastful announcements of high standing or of accu-
mulated honor. A distinguished man of science, at the end of a
controversy into which he had been called as such, complained
that he had not been recognized as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
"You gave us no reason to suspect your membership," quietly
but severely replied a man of the world.

As another element of weakness in the scientific man I venture
to suggest that he is often less of a utilitarian than he should be.
This is a sin, if it be such, which seems especially attached to those
who, unconsciously or otherwise, are imitators of men of science
of the highest type. The latter are so entirely absorbed in pro-
found investigation, and their horizon is necessarily so limited by
the very nature of the operations in which they are engaged, that
they are altogether unlikely to consider questions of utility ; nor,
indeed, is it desirable that they should. The evolution of pro-
cesses and methods by means of which the complex existence
of the present day is maintained, is largely the result of speciali-
zation or the division of labor. In such a scheme there is room
for those who never demand more of a fact than that it be a fact ;
of truth, that it be truth. But even among scientific men the num-
ber of such is small, and as a class they can never be very closely
in touch with the prople.

Strong to imitate, even in those characteristics which are akin
to weakness, many persons of lesser note affect a contempt for

MEN OF SCIENCE AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC. 27

the useful and the practical which does not tend to exalt the sci-
entific man in the opinion of the public. Even the great leaders
in science have been misrepresented in this matter. Because they
wisely determined in many instances to leave to others the task of
developing the practical applications of their discoveries, it has
often been represented that they held such applications as un-
worthy a true man of science. As illustrating the injustice of
such an opinion, one may cite the case of the most brilliant phi-
losopher of his time, Michael Faraday, who in the matter of
his connection with the Trinity House alone gave many of the best
years of his life to the service of his fellow-men. The intensely
" practical " nature of this service is shown by the fact that it in-
cluded the ventilation of lighthouses, the arrangement of their
lightning conductors, reports upon various propositions regarding
lights, the examination of their optical apparatus, and testing sam-
ples of cotton, oils, and paints. A precisely similar illustration is
to be found in the life of our own great physicist, Joseph Henry,
who sacrificed a career as a scientific man, already of exceptional
brilliancy, yet promising a future of still greater splendor, for a
life of unselfish usefulness to science and to his countrymen, as Sec-
retary of the Smithsonian Institution, as a member of the Light-
house Board, and in other capacities for which he was especially
fitted by nature as well as by his scientific training.

There is an unfortunate and perhaps a growing tendency
among scientific men to despise the useful and the practical in
science, and it finds expression in the by no means uncommon
feeling of offended dignity when an innocent layman asks what is
the use of some new discovery.

Referring to the theoretically extremely interesting spar prism
of Bertrancl, which under certain conditions may be used to detect
traces of polarization of light, a recent writer remarks, " But for
this application the prism would possess, in the eyes of the true
votary of science, the inestimable value of being of no practical
utility whatever."

Much is said, everywhere and at all times, about the pursuit of
science for the sake of science ; and on every hand it is sought to
convey the impression that one who has any other object in view
in interrogating Nature than the mere pleasure of listening to her
replies, is unworthy of a high place among men of science. So
old, so universally accepted, so orthodox, is this proposition, that
it is with much hesitation that its truth is questioned in this pres-
ence. In so far as it means that one can not do anything well un-
less it is done con amove, that pecuniary reward alone will never
develop genius, that no great philosopher or poet or artist will
ever be other than unselfishly devoted to and in love with his
work, just so far it is true, although it does not, as is often as,

28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sumed, furnish, a motive of the highest order. It is a trite saying-
but perhaps it can not be too often repeated, that he who lives and
labors in the interest of his fellows, that their lives may be bright-
ened, that their burdens may be lessened, is above all others
worthy of the highest praise. By this standard the value of a
discovery must at last be fixed, bearing in mind, of course, that
the physical comfort of man is not alone to be considered. Judged
by this standard, the work of Newton, of Watt, of Franklin,
Rumford, Faraday, Henry, and a host of others is truly great-
There should be, and there usually is, no controversy as to rela-
tive merit between the discoverer of a gem and the artist who
polishes and sets it. In science, the genius of the former is un-
questionably rarer and of a higher order, but his work will always
be incomplete and in a great degree useless until supplemented
by that of the latter.

Another demand which the public may justly make upon the
man of science is that his interest in public affairs should not be
less than that of other men. Through his failure in this particu-
lar, science has long suffered and is suffering in an increasing
degree. This criticism is especially applicable in this country,
where in theory every man is supposed to bear his share of the
public burden and to take his part in the performance of public
duties. Unfortunately, the attitude of the scientific man is too
often one of criticism and complaint concerning matters in the
disposition of which he persistently declines to interfere. It can
not be denied, I think, that men well trained in the logic and
methods of scientific research ought to be exceptionally well
equipped for the performance of certain public duties constantly
arising out of local, State, or national legislation ; yet the impres-
sion is well-nigh universal, that the scientific man has no genius
for " affairs." Indeed, it has been more than once affirmed that he
is utterly devoid of administrative or executive ability, and even
that he can not be trusted with the direction of operations which are
almost wholly scientific in their nature. That there are many ex-
amples which seem to justify this belief is too true, but that there
are other instances in which administrative and scientific ability
have been combined is also true. Little search is required to re-
veal cases in which men of science have so ignored all ordinary
rules and maxims of business procedure as to merit severe criti-
cism, in which, unfortunately, the public does not discriminate be-
tween the individual and the class which he represents. It seems
astonishing that one who is capable of successfully planning and
executing an elaborate research, in which all contingencies are
provided for, the unexpected anticipated, and all weak points
guarded and protected, may utterly break down in the manage-
ment of some much, less complicated business affair, such as the

MEN OF SCIENCE AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC. 29

erection of a laboratory or the planning of an expedition, and I
am unwilling to believe that snch failures are due to anything
other than culpable negligence on the part of the individual.

It is generally recognized that, aside from all questions of a
partisan political nature, this country is to-day confronted by sev-
eral problems of the utmost importance to its welfare, to the
proper solution of which the highest intellectual powers of the
nation should be given. The computation of the trajectory of a
planet is a far easier task than forecasting the true policy of a
great republic, but those qualities of the human intellect which
have made the first possible should not be allowed to remain idle
while an intelligent public is striving to attain the last. That
men of science have not, thus far, made their full contribution to
the solution of some of these great problems is due to the fact
that many have exhibited an inexcusable apathy toward everything
relating to the public welfare, while others have not approached
the subject with that breadth of preparation in the close study of
human affairs which is necessary to establish the authenticity of
their equations of condition. As already intimated, we do not
seem to be getting on in this direction. Our own early history
and the history of other nations is full of examples of eminent
scientific men who were no less distinguished as publicists and
statesmen. The name of Franklin is imperishable alike in the his-
tory of science and of politics. On many questions relating to ex-
act science the Adamses spoke with confidence ; Thomas Jefferson
was a philosopher, and, on assuming the duties of the highest office
in the gift of the people, counted his opportunities for association
with men of science as one of its chiefest rewards. Other illustra-
tions might be selected from the pages of the history of our own
country ; while in Europe, where science has been longer cultivated
and under more favorable conditions, they are much more common.
This is notably so in France, whose roll of scientific men who
have distinguished themselves and their country during the past
century includes many names prominent alike for the importance
of their performance in her various crises of peace and war. The
present President of the French Republic, himself an engineer,
bears a name made famous in the history of science by the rich
contributions of his ancestors, one of whom voted for the execu-
tion of Louis XVI, and was a member of the Committee of Public
Safety. It would be difficult to overestimate the value to science,
as well as to the public, of the presence in the halls of legislation
of even a very small number of men who might stand as expo-
nents of the methods of science and as competent authorities on
the results of their application. Our national Congress, especially,
is almost constantly dealing with questions of great moment to
the people, which can only be thoroughly understood and wisely

30 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dealt with by scientific men, and the presence of one or two such
in each branch of that body would be of decided advantage to the
whole country. In the nature of things, opportunities for such
representation will be rare, but when they occur they must not be
suffered to escape.

Finally, if the conclusions reached in the foregoing should be
thought wise, and should any young man at the threshold of his
scientific career determine to be guided by them in establishing
his relations with the general public, he will find splendid exam-
ples among the distinguished leaders of all departments of science.
Should he desire to present the results of his labors in such a way
that they may be understood by intelligent people, he may imitate
Franklin, whose literary style, as to simplicity and clearness, com-
manded the highest praise from literary men ; or Faraday, who
was able to give expression to the most involved conceptions in
simple English ; or Tyndall, the appearance of whose Heat con-
sidered as a Mode of Motion was an epoch in the history of phys-
ical science in its relation to an intelligent constituency, without
which it can not thrive. He will learn that there is no discredit in
" popularizing " science ; that popularizing what is not science is
the thing that is to be shunned and prevented. The arrogance of
genius is not less disagreeable than that of riches, although it is
less common.

Should he wish to cultivate modesty in estimating his own at-
tainments, he need only follow NeAvton, Darwin, and, in fact, the
whole list of distinguished men of science down to the present
time, with a few rare and unexplainable exceptions, the existence
of which serves, like a whistling buoy, to point out what should
be avoided.

Should he aspire to be of some use to the world and to leave it
better because of his life, he will be encouraged by the fact,
already considered, that in the long run those discoveries are most
highly esteemed, and justly so, which are the most potent in their
influence upon civilization and society by ameliorating the con-
dition of the people, or by enlarging their opportunities, and that
all really great men of science have not lost sight of this fact ;
that " science for the sake of science " does not represent the high-
est ideal, nor can the " almighty dollar " ever be bartered for the
" divine afflatus."

All of these questions will serve to enlarge his interest in pub-
lic affairs, because be will come to recognize that he is himself
but a part of the public. He will remember the delight of Fara-
day, when near the end of his life he saw a huge dynamo illumi-
nating the tower of a lighthouse. That which he had given to
the world as an infant, in his splendid discovery of induction, had,
through the fostering care of others, grown to a brilliant man-

THE ROOT-TIP. 31

hood, and he experienced exquisite pleasure in the reflection that
it might be the means of saving the lives of his fellow-men. The
ideal of duty which ought to be present in the mind of every man
of science may well be higher than that growing out of mere self-
ish pleasure in the acquisition and possession of knowledge.

Perhaps it is hardly becoming in me, at this time and in some
sense representing this large body of scientific men, to make even
a simple remark in criticism of the general public, the party
of the second part in the question which we have considered to-
night. I venture to suggest, however, that whenever the public
is disposed to consider its obligations to Science and her votaries,
there are some things which must not be forgotten— things so im-
portant and so numerous, indeed, that many volumes would be
inadequate to their enumeration. Prove this by comparing the
world ivith science with the world without science. Take as an
illustration that which less than two hundred years ago was but a
spark, a faint spark, exhibited on rare occasions by the scientific
man of that time. With this spark, thanks to science, the whole
world is now aflame. Time and space are practically annihilated ;
night is turned into day ; social life is almost revolutionized, and
scores of things which only a few years ago would have been pro-
nounced impossible, are being accomplished daily. Many mill-
ions of dollars of capital and many thousands of men are engaged
in the development of this agent, so purely a creation of science
that the Supreme Court of the land has already declared that it
has no material existence. Surely science, which has brought us
all these blessings, together with thousands besides, is worthy of
every care and consideration at the hands of a generous and ap-
preciative public.

♦■»♦

THE ROOT-TIP.

By FKEDEEICK LEEOY SARGENT.

IT is only within recent years that botanists have realized what
a wonderful organ the root has at its tip. Text-books which
were in use twenty-five years ago give but little more upon the
subject than the statement that at the extremity of each rootlet
is a minute, sponge-like organ, called the spongiole, by means of
which the plant absorbs moisture from the ground. As long ago,
however, as 1837, Ohlert* showed that if this so-called spongiole
be cut off from a young root, and the wound covered with water-
proof varnish, absorption takes place quite as well as before the
operation ; and he expressed the opinion that the true organs of
absorption are numerous delicate hairs which form a velvety

* Linnaea, 1837.

32

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

zone a short distance behind the apex of a rootlet. Later investi-
gators have confirmed Ohlert's conclusions, and have found that
the terminal organ, instead of being absorbent like a sponge, is in
reality a protective cap, and as impervious to water as cork. (See
Fig. 1.)

Just behind this cap, and inclosed by it as a thimble covers
the finger-tip, lies that part of the root which is youngest and
tenderest, where growth is most vigorous, and from which all the

Fig. 1. — Parts of a Young Root (Pentstemon). (1) Seedling, with earth-particles attached
to the root-hairs. (2) The same, showing the root-hairs freed from earth -particles.
(3) Eoot-tip penetrating the soil ( x 10). (4) Root-hairs with earth-particles adhering
( x 50). (5) Vertical section of root-tip, showing protective cap and growing point
(x 30). (Kerner.)

other tissues of the root are derived. This vegetative point we
may consider as the tip proper. (See Fig. 1 (5).) As fast as the
surface wears off by contact with the earth, new tissue is added be-
neath, much the same as one's finger-nail is constantly renewed,
and thus the thickness of the cap remains about the same, al-
though continually worn away.

The new tissue which is added to the body of the root soon
loses the power of increasing in length, and consequently the
elongation of a root is in marked contrast to the elongation of a
stem. The latter, to be sure, has, like the root, a small mass of
formative tissue at the apex, but the tissue which is formed con-
tinues to enlarge for a comparatively long time, and the result
is that a young stem grows in length at a nearly uniform rate
throughout, while in a rootlet elongation takes place only near
the tip. The simple experiment of making a series of equidis-
tant ink-dots along the stem and root of a bean seedling will, as
growth proceeds, give a good idea of the difference in manner of
growth. It is obvious that were a root to elongate like a stem,

THE ROOT-TIP. 33

the results could hardly fail to be disastrous : for, in the first place,
the resistance of the earth would soon cause a strong curvature ;
and, in the second place, the tender apex would be injured by-
being thus forced against the earth. As it is, the tip penetrates
the earth, not like a nail driven by a force behind, but like a slen-
der, tapering cone whose point insinuates itself between the earth-
particles and then by growth in thickness wedges them apart.
Experiment has shown that a root in its longitudinal growth
exerts but very little force ; in the bean, for example, there is
scarcely force enough to raise a quarter of a pound. The force of
transverse growth, on the other hand, is considerable — equal in
the bean to the raising of over eight pounds.*

It was first demonstrated by Darwin that the elongation of the
root takes place in such a way that the apex, instead of going
straight forward, bends to all sides in succession and thus de-
scribes a somewhat corkscrew-like spiral. This movement he
called circumnutation, and found that essentially similar move-
ments (some of which had been before observed) were exhibited
by all growing stems and leaves, and not infrequently after
growth had ceased. In the case of the root, the movement may
be rendered apparent in either of two ways. One method is to
take a seedling growing in moist air, and magnify the movement
of the root-tip by attaching to the bending portion a very slender
filament of glass several inches in length, and then, on a sheet of
glass kept perpendicular to the axis of the root, record by ink-
dots the different points to which the filament is from time to
time directed. Upon connecting the dots made at short intervals
through a period of several hours, a result is obtained somewhat
like that shown in Fig. 2. The other method is to allow the ver-
tical root of a seedling to grow downward against the smoked
surface of a piece of glass which is held oblique to the axis. If
the conditions are favorable, the tip will be found to rub the sur-
face and leave a serpentine tracing similar to those given in Fig.
3. That the course of the tip had been spiral and not zigzag
was shown in Darwin's experiments by alternating regions of
greater and less rubbing, and in some cases by transverse ridges
of soot. Since these experiments can not be performed with the
root imbedded in compact earth, we can not say how far circum-
nutation may take place in ordinary soil, but undoubtedly the
tendency to circumnutate is ever present, and whenever there is
favorable opportunity for its exercise the spiral movement must
materially assist the tip in making its way along the line of least

* For the details of this experiment, as of others to be mentioned later, the reader is
referred to Darwin's Power of Movement in Plants, which contains the most valuable con-
tributions to our knowledge of the root-tip that have ever been made.
vol. xxxviii. — 3

34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

resistance. The chief importance of this power of movement,
however, comes from the way it may be modified, and its force
augmented in certain directions by different influences.

Prominent among these influences is that of gravity. A most
noticeable fact in the sprouting of seeds is that the root points
toward the center of the earth, and the young shoot in the oppo-
site direction, and it has long been known that this tendency to
assume the vertical can not be explained as a response to differ-
ences in illumination, warmth, or moisture, since the organs be-
have just the same when seedlings are grown under conditions
where these differences are entirely eliminated. Moreover, if a
root which has been growing downward be placed in a horizontal
position, the region of growth, for a few millimetres behind the
tip, will in the course of some hours bend so as to bring the tip
into its original vertical position ; and as this bending will take
place against an appreciable resistance, it follows that the as-
sumption of the new position is not a mere drooping, but is a
movement actively performed as if in response to a stimulus.

I

Fig. 2. Fig. 3.

Fig. 2. — Circtmnutation of Radicle (Brassica) — traced on horizontal glass from 9 a. m.

January 31st, to 9 p. it. February 2d. Movement much magnified. (From Darwin's

Power of Movement in Plants. )
Fig. 3. — Tracks left on Inclined Smoked Glass Plates by Tips of Eadtcles (Phaseolus)

in growing downward. A and C, plates inclined at 60° ; B, inclined at 68° with the

horizon. (From Darwin's Power of Movement in Plants.)

That gravity is the stimulus which evokes this response, was first
proved by Knight in 180G.* He reasoned that "as gravitation
could produce these effects only while the seed remained at rest
and in the same position relative to the attraction of the earth,
... its operation would become suspended by constant and rapid
change of position of the germinating seed, and it might be coun-
teracted by the agency of centrifugal force." He accordingly
attached a number of germinating beans in various positions to

* On the Direction of the Radicle and Germen during the Vegetation of Seeds. Thomas
Andrew Knight. Philosophical Transactions, vol. xcvi.

THE ROOT- TIP.

35

the rim of a wheel, and this, placed in a box sufficiently warm
and damp, was made to turn in a vertical plane at the rate of one
hundred and fifty revolutions a minute. After a few days, the
parts of the seedlings were found to be in the position shown in

jjf^~

Fig. 4. — Diagrams illustrating Knight's Experiments. A, wheel rotating horizontally ;
the plants grow under the combined influence of gravity arid centrifugal force. B, wheel
rotating vertically ; the direction of growth is determined by centrifugal force alone.
(Vines.)

Fig. 4, b. Fig. 4, a, shows the position assumed by seedlings placed
under conditions entirely similar, except that the wheel was made
to turn horizontally. Since both gravity and centrifugal force

3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were here acting at right angles to each other upon the seedlings,
the oblique direction of their axes shows that they were affected
by the resultant of the two forces concerned, in just the manner
called for by Knight's supposition.

Although gravity is thus seen to be the influence which" in-
duces a downward tendency in roots, it of course does not follow
that all the younger parts of a root-system are equally affected.
While it is the rule for primary roots, or those first developed, to
grow downward, the secondary branches usually tend to assume
a direction almost at right angles to the vertical, and so grow out-
ward and a little downward, as if they were but slightly suscep-
tible to the action of gravity ; while tertiary branches, and the
farther branches to which these give rise, grow in all directions
quite independent of gravity. It is plain that as a result of these
peculiarities the active parts of the root are distributed in such
a manner as to search the surrounding earth more thoroughly
than would otherwise be possible.

In case a stone or other obstruction is encountered by any
of the branches, the tip is turned aside and follows the contour
closely until the edge is reached, when it soon assumes its proper
direction. Not infrequently it must happen that some root-eating
animal will destroy the end of a young primary root, and so en-
danger the proper development of the whole system, but experi-
ment has shown that in the event of such injury one of the
younger secondary branches changes its direction of growth so as
to point directly downward and thus assume the function of the
primary root to promote the search for food in the deeper regions.

At first sight it would seem that surely gravity must affect all
parts of the growing region of a rootlet in the same manner, since
all parts are equally exposed to its influence. In 1871, however,
Ciesielski * announced that rootlets from which the tip had been
carefully removed with a razor lost all sensitiveness to gravity
until a new tip had grown, when the behavior became normal.
Other investigators failed to obtain the same results ; but some
years later Darwin repeated Ciesielski's experiments successfully,
and confirmed his conclusion that it is the tip alone which is sen-
sitive to gravity, and from this part the stimulus is transmitted
to the adjoining region of growth, which bends downward in con-
sequence.

Another influence to which roots are very sensitive is that of
moisture. This is strikingly exhibited in an experiment devised
by Sachs. Seeds are made to germinate in a layer of moist saw-
dust, contained in a sieve-like framework, and this suspended ob-
liquely as shown in Fig. 5. The young roots grow directly down-

* Abwaitskriiramung der Wurzel. Inaugural Dissertation. Breslan, 1871.

THE ROOT-TIP.

37

ward through the loose mass and out through the meshes of the
sieve, when, instead of continuing vertically, they bend toward
the moisture which comes from the sawdust and keep close to the
inclined surface in spite of gravity.

With a view to seeing Avhether this sensitiveness to moisture
was localized like the sensitiveness to gravity, Darwin covered the
^ tips of a number of seedlings with grease, and then
subjected them to an excess of moisture on one side.
No bending occurred so long as the tips remained
covered. This led him to believe that sensitive-
ness to moisture is confined to the same part
which is sensitive to gravity, and later in-
vestigators, using improved methods, have
confirmed Darwin's conclusion. The
lateral branches, being less controlled
by gravity than the main axis, are,
as might be expected, more re-
sponsive to differences in
moisture. So delicate is
this sensitiveness that
the roots oftentimes
seem to work almost
intelligently in their
search for water.
Thus elm roots have
been found filling up
a drain fifty yards
from the trunk, and
numerous instances of roots growing into wells and choking
water-pipes have been reported.

A very common effect of this special sensitiveness is to regu-
late the distribution of the rootlets in accordance with the water-
shed from the leaves. The greater part of our trees shed the rain
outward like a dome or spire, so that the region of earth best
watered falls directly under what may be called the eaves : it is
just here that the tips of the rootlets occur in most profusion. In
the case of shrubs and herbs, which are more apt to grow close to-
gether, the water-shed is, of course, mostly indefinite, and as a con-
sequence no regularity is apparent in the distribution of the root-
lets ; but even among herbs quite definite water-shed is not uncom-
mon, and as with trees the effect upon the rootlets is well marked
largely in proportion to the isolation of the plants. Certain kinds
shed the water outwardly like the trees (Fig. 6, 1), while others
have the leaves so disposed as to act like a funnel and carry the
water toward the axial root around which the short rootlets are
developed (Fig. 6, 2).

Fig. 5. — Apparatus to illustrate the Mode in which the

■

Influence of Gravity is overcome by the Effect of
Greater Moisture on one Side of the Eoot. (Sachs.)

38

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It lias already been mentioned that the root-tip, when coming
against an obstruction, turns aside and thus avoids being pushed
against it. This has been taken to indicate that the tip is sensi-
tive to contact as well as to moisture and gravity. To test this
supposition, Darwin tried the experiment of affecting one side of
the root-tip with a slight but constant mechanical irritant. In

Fig. 0. — (1) Centrifugal Water-shed in Caladium, and (2) Centripetal Water-shed in
Khdbarb — showing corresponding distribution of rootlets. (Kerner.)

some cases the irritation was produced by a tiny bit of card at-
tached obliquely to the tip by shellac or gum ; shellac by itself
was sometimes used, and in other instances the sensitive region
was touched with caustic. In nearly every case the tip be-
came bent away from the side irritated (Fig. 7). Occasionally
it happened that the region just above the tip became irritated
(by displacement of the card or otherwise), and in such cases
the end of the root was bent strongly toward the source of irrita-
tion. These results seem to warrant the conclusion that the end
of the root is not only sensitive to contact, but responds in oppo-
site ways according as the side of the tip or the region just above is
affected, and we get an explanation both of the way the tip bends
when meeting an obstructing surface, and of the abrupt curve it
makes when the edge of the obstruction is reached. It has been
urged, however, that these experiments do not really prove that

THE ROOT-TIP.

39

the root-tip is sensitive to mere contact, since a certain amount of
injury to the tissues was inflicted by the method employed ; and
this objection has not so far been fully met. Whatever may be
the true explanation, it is a fact that roots find their way into
worm-burrows, and otherwise follow in the earth lines of least
resistance, in a way that is strongly suggestive of a power to dis-
criminate between harder and softer regions of the soil.

A. B.

Fig. 7. — A Seedling of Pea, with radicle extended horizontally in damp air, with a little
square of card affixed to the lower side of its tip, causing it to bend upward in opposition
to gravity. The deflection of the radicle after twenty-one hours is shown at A, and of
the same radicle after forty-five hours at B. (From Darwin's Power of Movement in
Plants.)

An electric current passed through the tip induces curvature,
and in some cases roots have been found to bend away from the
light. Although it can hardly be supposed that sensitiveness to
these stimuli is of any special use to the plants, such behavior,
taken in connection with the highly useful modes of sensitive-
ness above described, surely indicates an almost animal-like irrita-
bility of the organ in question.

From what has been said of the curvature of young roots, it is
obvious that, whenever the tip proper is stimulated, the effort
must be transmitted to the part above, since it is only this upper
portion which curves. A similar transmission of stimulus takes
place in the leaf of the sensitive-plant, and both suggest an anal-
ogy with the propagation of an impulse along the nerves in ani-
mals. Nevertheless, in the absence of all proof that anything
resembling nerves entered into the structure of plants, the anal-
ogy referred to was deemed rather fanciful, and certain mechani-
cal explanations of the phenomena were offered as more in keep-
ing with what was known. A few years ago, however, Gardiner's
demonstration of the continuity of protoplasm in plants * rendered
the mechanical theories superfluous, by showing that the living
matter of adjacent cells was connected by delicate protoplasmic
threads which might fairly be considered the analogues of nerves.
The essential similarity of many plant movements with those of
animals is thus seen to be even closer than was at first supposed,

* Philosophical Transactions, 1883, p. 817.

4o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and an added significance is given to the following words of Dar-
win, with which he closes his memorable work : " We believe that
there is no structure in plants more wonderful, as far as its func-
tions are concerned, than the tip of the radicle. If the tip be
lightly pressed, or burnt or cut, it transmits an influence to the
upper adjoining part, causing it to bend away from the affected
side ; and, what is more surprising, the tip can distinguish between
a slightly harder and softer object, by which it is simultaneously
pressed on opposite sides. If, however, the radicle is pressed by a
similar object a little above the tip, the pressed part does not
transmit any influence to the more distant parts, but bends ab-
ruptly toward the object. If the tip perceives the air to be moister
on one side than on the other, it likewise transmits an influence
to the upper adjoining part, which bends toward the source of
moisture. When the tip is excited by light, . . . the adjoining
part bends from the light ; but when excited by gravitation, the
same part bends toward the center of gravity. In almost every
case we can clearly perceive the final purpose or advantage of the
several movements. Two, or perhaps more, of the exciting causes
often act simultaneously on the tip, and the one conquers the
other, no doubt in accordance with its importance for the life of
the plant. The course pursued by the radicle in penetrating the
ground must be determined by the tip ; hence it has acquired such
diverse kinds of sensitiveness. It is hardly an exaggeration to
say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed, and having the power
of directing the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the
brain of one of the lower animals ; the brain being seated within
the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense-
organs, and directing the several movements."

MY CLASS IN GEOMETRY.

By GEORGE ILES.

A VIVID recollection of my boyhood is the general disfavor
with which my school-fellows used to open Euclid. It was
in vain the teacher said that geometry underlies not only archi-
tecture and engineering, but navigation and astronomy. As we
never had any illustration of this alleged underlying to make the
fact stick in our minds, but were strictly kept to theorem and
problem, Euclid remained for most of us the driest and dreariest
lesson of the day. This was not the case with me, for geometry
happened to be my favorite study, and the easy triumph of leading
the class in it was mine. As years of active life succeeded my
school-days I could not help observing a good many examples of the

MY CLASS IN GEOMETRY. 41

truths set forth in the lines and figures I had conned as a "boy ; ex-
amples which, had they been presented at school, would certainly
have somewhat diminished Euclid's unpopularity. In fullness of
time it fell to my lot to be concerned in the instruction of three
k0yS_one of fourteen, the second twelve, the third a few months
younger. In thinking over how I might make attractive what had
once been my best-enjoyed lessons, I took up my ink-stained Eu-
clid—Playfair's edition. A glance at its pages dispossessed me of
all notion of going systematically through the propositions— they
took on at that moment a particularly rigid look, as if their con-
nection with the world of fact and life was of the remotest. Why,
I thought, not take a hint from the new mode of studying physics
and chemistry ? If a boy gets a better idea of a wheel and axle
from a real wheel and axle than from a picture, or more clearly
understands the chief characteristic of oxygen when he sees wood
and iron burned in it than when he only hears about its combus-
tive energy, why not give him geometry embodied in a fact before
stating it in abstract principle ? Deciding to try what could be
done in putting book and blackboard last instead of first, I made
a beginning. Taking the boys for a walk, I drew their attention
to the shape of the lot on which their house stood. Its depth was
nearly thrice its width, and a low fence surrounded it. As we
went along the road, a suburban one near Montreal, we noticed
the shapes of other fenced lots and fields. Counting our paces
and noting their number, we walked around two of the latter.
This established the fact that both fields were square, and that
while the area of one was an acre and a half, that of the other
was ten. When we returned home the boys were asked to make
drawings of the house-lot and of the two square fields, showing
to a scale how they differed in size. This task accomplished, they
drew a diagram of the house-lot as it would be if square instead
of oblong. With a foot-rule passed around the diagram it was
soon clear to them that, if the four sides of the lot were equal, some
fencing could be saved. The next question was whether any other
form of lot having straight sides could be inclosed with as little
fence as a square. Rectangles, triangles, and polygons were drawn
in considerable variety and number and their areas calculated,
only to confirm a suspicion the boys had entertained from the first
— that of lots of practicable form square ones need least fencing.
In comparing their notes of the number of paces taken in walking
around the two square fields, a fact of some interest came out.
While the larger field contained nearly seven times as much land
as the other, it only needed about two and a half times the length
of fencing to surround it. Taking a drawing of the larger inclos-
ure, I divided it into four equal parts by two lines drawn at right
angles to each other. It only needed a moment for the boys to

42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

perceive how these lines of division, representing as they did so
much new fencing, explained why the small field had proportion-
ately to area so much longer a boundary than the large one.

A chess-board served as another illustration. Taking each of
its sixty-four squares to represent a farm duly inclosed, it was
easy to see how a farmer rich enough to buy the whole number,
were he to combine them in one stretch of land, could dispense
with an immense quantity of lumber or wire fencing. During a
journey from Montreal to Quebec the boys had their attention
directed to the disadvantageous way in which many of the farms
had been divided into strips long and narrow. " Just like a row
of chess squares run together," said one of the lads.

When a good many examples had impressed the lesson on their
minds pretty thoroughly, I had them write under their drawings,
taking care that the terms used were understood : " Like plane
figures vary in boundary as their like linear dimensions ; they
vary in area as the square of their like linear dimensions." It
proved, however, that while the boys knew this to be true of
squares, they could not at first comprehend that it was equally
true of other forms. They drew equilateral and other triangles
and ascertained that they conformed to the rule, but I was taken
aback a little when the eldest boy said, " It isn't so with circles, is
it ?" His doubt was duly removed, but the remark showed how
easy it is to make words outrun ideas ; how hard it is for a young
mind to recognize new cases of a general law with which in other
examples it is quite familiar.

One chilly evening the sitting-room in which my pupils and I
sat was warmed by a grate-fire. Shaking out some small live
coals, I bade the boys observe which of them turned black soonest.
They were quick to see that the smallest did, but they were un-
able to tell why. They were reminded of the rule they had com-
mitted to paper, but to no purpose, until I broke a large glowing
coal into a score of fragments which became black almost at once.
Then one of them cried, " Why, smashing that coal gave it more
surface ! " This young fellow was studying the elements of astron-
omy at school, so I had him give us some account of how the
planets differ from one another in size, how the moon compares
with the earth in mass, and how vastly larger than any of its
worlds is the sun. Explaining to him the theory of the solar sys-
tem's fiery origin, I shall not soon forget his keen delight — in
which the others presently shared — when it burst upon him that
because the moon is much smaller than the earth it must be much
colder ; that, indeed, it is like a small cinder compared with a large
one. It was easy to advance from this to understanding why
Jupiter, with eleven times the diameter of the earth, still glows
faintly in the sky ; and then to note that the sun pours out its

MY CLASS IN GEOMETRY. 43

wealth of heat and light because the immensity of its bulk has,
comparatively speaking, so little surface to radiate from.

To make the law concerned in all this definite and clear, I took
eight blocks, each an inch cube, and had the boys tell me how
much surface each had — six square inches. Building the eight
blocks into one cube, they then counted the square inches of its
surface — twenty-four ; four times as many as that of each sepa-
rate cube. With twenty-seven blocks built into a cube, they
found that structure to have a surface of fifty-four square inches,
nine times that of each component block. As the blocks under-
went the building process, a portion of their surfaces came into
contact, and thus hidden could not count in the outer surfaces of
the large cubes: Observation and comparison brought the boys
to the rule which told exactly what proportion of surface re-
mained exposed. They wrote, " Like solids vary in surface as the
square, and in contents as the cube of their like dimensions."
They were glad to note that the first half of their new rule was
nothing but their old one of the farms and fields over again.

As the law at which we had now arrived is one of the most
important in geometry, I took pains to illustrate it in a variety of
ways. Taking a long, narrow vial of clear glass, nearly filled
with water and corked, I passed it around, requesting each of the
boys to shake it smartly, hold it upright, and observe which of
the bubbles came to the surface first. All three declared that the
biggest did, but it was a little while before they could be made to
discern why. They had to be reminded of the cinders and the
building-blocks before they saw that a small bubble's compara-
tively large surface retarded its motion through the water. The
next day we visited Montreal's wharves, and, pacing alongside sev-
eral vessels, jotted down their length. In response to questions, the
boys showed their mastery of the principle which decides that the
larger a ship the less is its surface in proportion to tonnage. Going
aboard an Allan liner, of five thousand tons burden, we descended
to the engine-room ; we next visited a steamer of somewhat less than
one thousand tons, and inspected her engines — engines having pro-
portionately to power much larger moving surfaces to be retarded
by friction than those we had seen a few minutes before. On be-
ing reminded of their experiments with the vial, the boys were
pleasantly surprised to find that the largest bubble and the ocean
racer come first to their respective ports by virtue of their identi-
cal quality of bigness, by reason of the economies which dwell
with size. As we walked homeward, the youngest of our party
espied a street-vender with a supply of gaudy toy -balloons. One
of them bought, I dare say the little fellow's mind was pretty con-
fident that there was no Euclid in that plaything. It proved
otherwise. That evening he calculated how much the lifting

4+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

power of his balloon would gain on its surface were its dimen-
sions increased one thousand or ten thousand fold — step by step
approaching the conclusion that, if air-ships are ever to be man-
ageable in the face of adverse winds, they must be made vastly
larger than any balloons as yet put together.

Not far from home stood a large store, displaying a miscella-
neous stock of groceries, fruits, dry goods, shoes, and so on. As
we cast our eyes about its shelves, counters, and floor, we saw
many kinds of packages — cans of fish, marmalade, and oil, glass
jars of preserves and olives, boxes of rice and starch, large paper
sacks of flour. Outside the door stood half a dozen empty bar-
rels and packing-cases. It certainly seemed as if the cost of
paper, glass, tin, and lumber for packages must be an important
item in retailing. One after another the boys discovered that the
store was giving them their old lesson in a new form. They saw
that the larger a jar or box the less material it needed. On their re-
turn home they were gradually led up to finding that form as well
as size is an element in economy. Just as farms square in shape
need least fence, they found that a cubical package needs least
material to make it, and that tins of cylindrical form require
least metal when of equal breadth and height.

Our next lesson was one for lack of which not a few inventors
and designers have wasted time and money. Taking the trio to
Victoria Bridge, we asked its custodian the length of its central
span. His reply was, three hundred and fifty-two feet. When I
asked the boys how matters would be changed if the span were
twice as large, they soon perceived that, while increased in strength
by breadth and thickness, it would be heavier by added length as
well. On our return we compared two boards differing in each of
their three dimensions as one and two, serving to make manifest
why it often happens that a design for a bridge or roof, admirable
as a model, fails in the large dimensions of practical construction.

One day a roofer had to be called in to make needful repairs.
We went with him to the roof, and found the gutter choked with
mud. How had it got there ? A glance at the roof, an iron one,
showed it covered with dust which the next shower would add to
the deposit in the gutter. Dust-particles are extremely small and
fine, and did not this explain how the wind had been able to take
hold of them and carry them far up into the air ? Although the
boys had considerably less pocket-money than they liked, they
had still enough to enable them to observe that the smallest coins
were most worn. When they came to think it over, they readily
hit on the reason why.

Our next lessons were intended to bring out the relations which
subsist between several of the principal forms of solids. Two se-
ries of models in wood were accordingly made. The first consisted

MY CLASS IN GEOMETRY

45

of a cube having a base five inches square, and a wedge and pyra-
mid of similar base and height. The second series comprised a cyl-
inder, sphere, and cone, each five inches broad and high. Taking
the first series, a moment's comparison of the sides of wedge and
cube told that one contained half as much wood as the other ; but
that the pyramid contained a third as much as the cube was not
evident. Weighing the pyramid and cube brought out their re-
lation, but a more satisfactory demonstration was desirable, fdr
what was to assure us that the two solids were of the same specific

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

gravity ? Taking a clear glass jar of an accurately cylindrical
interior, measuring seven and a half inches in width by ten in
height, it was half filled with water, and a foot-rule was vertically
attached to its side. The models, which were neatly varnished,
and therefore impervious to water, were then successively im-
mersed and their displacement of the water noted. This proved
that the pyramid had a third the contents of the cube, that the
same proportion subsisted between the cone and cylinder, and
that the sphere had twice the contents of the cone. Dividing the
wedge by ten parallel lines an equal distance apart, I asked how
the area of the smallest triangle so laid off, and that of the next
smallest, compared with the area of the large triangle formed by
the whole side of the wedge. " As the square of their sides/' was
the answer. Dipping the wedge below the surface of the water
in the jar, edge downward, it was observed to displace water as
the square of its depth of immersion. Reversing the process, the
wedge became a simple means of extracting the square root.
Dividing the vertical play of its displacement into sixteen parts
drawn along the jar's side, we divided the wedge into four parts
by equidistant parallel lines. Then, for example, if we sought the

46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

square root of nine, we immersed the wedge with its edge down-
ward until it had displaced water to line nine on the jar's side.
On the wedge the water stood at line three, the square root of nine.
In a similar way the cone was observed to displace water as the
cube of its depth of immersion, and therefore could be impressed
into the service of extracting the cube root. For this purpose its
total play of displacement in a jar of five and a half inches in-
terior diameter was divided into twenty-seven parts, and the cone
was marked off into three sections. To find the cube root of eight,
we lowered the cone apex downward, until the water-level was
brought to eight on the jar's side ; at that moment the liquid
encircled the cone at section two, denoting the cube root of eight.
The pyramid immersed in the larger jar acted equally well as a
cube-root extractor. Measuring both cone and pyramid at each
of their sectional divisions, the boys were required to ascertain
the rule governing their increase of sectional area, and arrived at
the old familiar law of squares — a law true not only of all solids
converging regularly to a point, but of all forces divergent or
radiant from a center, simply because it is a law of space through
which such forces exert themselves.

While I was glad to use examples and models to instruct my
pupils, I wished them to grasp certain geometrical relations
through exercise of imagination. They had long known that the
area of a parallelogram is the product of its base and height ; they
were now required to conceive that any triangle has half the area
of a parallelogram of equal height and base. It was easy then to
show them the very old way of ascertaining the area of a circle, the
method which conceives it to be made up of an indefinitely great
number of triangles whose bases become the circle's circumference,
and whose altitude is the circle's radius. Rolling the cylindrical
model once around on a sheet of paper, its circuit was marked off ;
Hi is was made the base-line of a parallelogram having a height
equal to half the cylinder's breadth; half that area was clearly
equal to the surface of the circle forming the cylinder's section.
Another method of proving the relation between the area of a
circle and its circumference was followed by the boys with fair
promptness. I asked them to imagine a circular disk to be made
up by the contact of a great number of concentric rings. Sup-
posing the disk to be a foot in diameter and each ring to be the
millionth of a foot wide, I inquired, "How many rings would there
be ?" " Half as many, half a million." To the question, " What
would be the size of the average ring's circumference ?" " Half
that of the whole circle." was the reply. They were thus brought
to it that if a circle rolled around once is found to have 3*1416 lin-
eal units for its circumference, its area must be '7854, or one half of
one half as much, expressed in superficial units of the same order.

MY CLASS IiV GEOMETRY. 47

A terrestrial globe was the text for our next lesson. Assuming
its form to be spherical, shift its axis as we might, it was clear
that its center remained at rest during rotation in all planes. A
hint here as to why the calculations of the astronomer are less
difficult than if the planets were of other than globular form,
for each orb as affected by gravitation may be practically con-
sidered as condensed at its center. Turning from astronomy to
navigation, we glanced at the principle of great-circle sailing.
On the equator of our terrestrial globe we found the Gillolo
Islands and Cape San Francisco. A ship's shortest course plainly
lay along the equatorial line which joined them. When I asked
which was the shortest route from San Francisco, California, to
Figami Island, Japan, the boys concurred in the wrong answer,
"Along the thirty-eighth parallel." Taking a brass semicircle
equal in diameter to the globe's equator, and applying it so as to
touch both places, the lads saw at once that the shortest route
would take a ship somewhat toward the north for the first half of
her voyage ; that if two ports are to be joined by an arc, the
largest circle of which that arc can form a part marks out the
shortest track ; and that this largest or great circle is practically
no other than a new equator cutting the earth in a plane inclined
to the geographical equator.

By this time about a year had elapsed since our little class in
geometry had been formed, and its progress was very satisfactory.
The eldest boy was now studying Euclid at a high school and
earning high marks for his proficiency. In the lessons I have
described, and in others which followed them, all three lads
showed their interest by being constantly on the lookout for new
illustrations. Let an instance or two of this suffice. One day they
walked to an immense sugar-refinery some distance off, paced
around it, estimated its height, and brought me their calculations
as to its storage capacity in comparison with that of a small ware-
house near by ; calculations showing how much outer wall and
roof were saved in the vast proportions of the refinery. At home
an extension of the house was heated in the winter by a small
stove ; at a neighboring station of the street railway there was a
much larger stove of the same pattern. Counting efficiency to
depend on surface, one of the boys asked me if it would not be
better to have two small stoves instead of that large one. He was
perfectly conversant with the reason why steam-fitters make their
heating-coils of small pipes, and why their radiators abound in
knobs and ridges.

It may be no more than the effect of bias due to an individual
preference for the study, but, in the light of its influence on these
three young minds, I can not help thinking that geometry affords
a most happy means of developing powers of observation and

48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

reasoning. When the boys came to study plants, minerals, and
insects they found their knowledge of Euclid gave them a new
and vital thread whereon to stiing what they learned. This was
even more decidedly the case when they came to study the various
modes of motion and certain principles of engineering science.
Mr. W. G. Spencer, the father of Herbert Spencer, in an invalu-
able little book * has shown how geometry can be taught so as" to
educe the noble faculty of invention. At the high school at
Yonkers, New York, of which Mr. E. R. Shaw is principal, I have
seen most original and beautiful solutions of Mr. Spencer's prob-
lems worked out by the pupils.

THE LOGIC OF FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION.

By ARTHUR KITSON.

IN an interesting chapter on the history of tariff legislation
Mr. Blaine, in his Twenty Years in Congress, thus presents
the issue :

" It is natural that both sides of the tariff controversy should
endeavor to derive support for their principles from the experi-
ence of the country. Nor can it be denied that each side can
furnish many arguments which apparently sustain its own views
and theories. The difficulty in reaching a satisfactory and im-
partial conclusion arises from the inability or unwillingness of
the disputants to agree upon a common basis of fact. If the
premises could be candidly stated, there would be no trouble in
finding a true conclusion. In the absence of an agreement as to
the points established, it is the part of fairness to give a succinct
statement of the grounds maintained by the two parties to the
prolonged controversy — grounds which have not essentially
changed in a century of legislative and popular contention."

This presentation of the case describes precisely the difficulty
under which all discussions on the tariff question in this country
have hitherto labored. We believe, however, the difficulty in
agreeing upon a common basis is one of inability rather than
one of unwillingness ; for, where facts are contradictory, how is
it possible to establish a common basis ? The advocates of two
opposite and distinctly contradictory theories can scarcely be ex-
pected to find a common basis of fact in a collection of instances
which favor both theories. In such a case it would be reasonable
to suppose one of two things : either that the theories were per se
insufficient to account for the given effect, or that they were

* Inventional Geometry. D. Appleton & Co., New York.

THE LOGIC OF FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 49

totally unfounded. The champions of both free trade and pro-
tection have hitherto waged their combats clothed in mail. Their
swords have been of lead ; their lances, wood. And, like the
modern French duels, no lives have been lost and no blood shed.
Hence the duration of the contest ; hence its f ruitlessness. Tariff
discussions have been conducted on the assumption that the
prosperity of trade was due to one of two systems. Instead of
working from effect to cause, the cause has been assumed, and the
struggle has been an endeavor to reconcile given facts with given
theories. Hitherto it has been a drawn battle. As often as the
advocates of commercial restriction have laid claim to those
periods of national prosperity when their system happened to be
in vogue as evidence of its success, the free-traders have as often
and with equal right claimed like success under eras of free trade.
And when these have associated times of commercial depression
with the protective system, their opponents have retorted by
instancing years in which free trade was accompanied with panics
and business stagnation. The high-tariff periods of 1824 to 1833
and 1842 to 1846 are offset by the low-tariff period of 1840 to 1856,
and the panic of 1857 by that of 1873. The growth of the iron
industry under protection is balanced by the death of the ship-
building industry during the same time. With such instances,
gathered from a century's experience, the cause of the duration
of this contest — which threatens to be perpetual — becomes
apparent when we consider the lines along which the battle has
hitherto been conducted. In England it was conducted somewhat
differently, hence the results were different. There the leaders
fought with sterner weapons, and the fight was fought to a finish.
The difference between the English free-traders and the so-called
free-traders of the United States consists in the former professing
what their name indicates. They have followed their theory to
its logical conclusion. The latter, however, have always stopped
short of absolute free trade. Often, in fact, the dispute on this
side of the Atlantic has been nothing more than one of "tweedle-
dee " and " tweedle-dum." Instead of a difference of principle, it
has generally been one of percentages. We think the fruitless-
ness of these controversies has been due principally to the method
of reasoning employed. Both sides have used the same argu-
ments, and both have been equally effective. Both parties have
rested their claims on the teachings of experience, and both have
drawn equal encouragement from similar results. It becomes
evident that so long as this position is maintained, so long the dis-
cussion will remain in statu quo ante helium.

Recently, attention has been called to a renewal of the combat,
and the occasion has received more than ordinary attention, owing
to the great distinction of the combatants. Indeed, it is doubtful

VOL. XXXVIII. 4

5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

whether at any time in the nation's history there has been so
deep and general an interest felt in the subject as exists to-day.
The chief feature in the renewed controversy is in the presenta-
tion of the free-trade argument from the English standpoint, and
the method of reasoning there employed, with that used by the
distinguished advocate of protection, which is so familiar to us.
We shall endeavor to show that the former is the only method by
which a satisfactory and truthful result can be obtained in any
discussion regarding a subject of so complex a nature as trade. No
word more aptly describes the nature of the Gladstone-Blaine con-
troversy than " duel." The nature of the dispute necessitates di-
rect antagonism. Free trade and protection stand directly opposed
to each other. Like similar poles of a magnet, they are mutually
repellent. They stand as much opposed to each other as virtue
and vice. There are no grounds, nor can there be, for any com-
promise. One is freedom, the other restraint. The one recognizes
a natural, the other an artificial law. If one is right, the other is
wrong. The combatants in the recent contest are champions of
their respective schools. Both were well equipped for the en-
counter, and each side has undoubtedly had the best words pos-
sible spoken in its behalf. Especially is this true in the article
for protection. No abler advocate of the system could have been
chosen. Moreover, this duel means more to Mr. Blaine and the
Republican party than a mere intellectual contest. Far beyond
any literary value the discussion may possess lies its political
significance. A great political battle has been recently fought on
this very issue, and, unless our prophets and wiseacres completely
err, the presidential election of 1892 will occupy the same battle-
field. Every incentive that pride and ambition can furnish con-
spired to urge Mr. Blaine to endeavor, to the best of his ability, to
successfully refute his opponent's arguments and put him utterly
to rout, even though he appear in the person of so illustrious and
respected a man as the English ex-premier.

In any dispute arising between freedom on the one hand and
restriction on the other, the burden of proof necessarily falls upon
the advocate of restriction. Freedom is first in the order of things.
Restriction is an innovation, and should explain its raison d'etre.
It would be sufficient for the free-trader to deny the advantages
claimed for the protective system, and leave its advocate to prove
his case. Mr. Gladstone has, however, gone further, and has not
only given a general denial, but, by a series of arguments as brill-
iant as they are logical, demonstrated the superior advantages
that flow from free trade.

The nature of the succeeding remarks finds its apology in the
absence of anything like logic in the disquisitions of modern polit-
ical writers. When so great an authority as the acknowledged

THE LOGIC OF FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 51

leader of the Republican party is willing to risk his cause on ar-
guments such as those contained in his recent magazine article ;
when the President of the nation seriously and deliberately tells
the country that the import duties ievied on commodities are paid
not by the consumer, but by the foreign producer ; when, in spite
of the warnings given by the numerous and almost continuous
series of labor troubles that have taken place for some years past,
congressional orators assure themselves that wages are high and
the working classes in a very satisfactory condition ; when, in
order to create a profitable trade, a party proposes to subsidize
ocean steamships to do what they otherwise find it unprofitable to
do — it would seem that the greatest need of the day was a com-
pulsory system of instruction in dialectics, with a view more espe-
cially to impress on the mind of legislators the relations between
cause and effect.

The two methods of reasoning employed in this discussion ap-
pear in marked contrast to each other, and it is interesting to see
how their advocates are led to conclusions directly opposite.
Vulgarly speaking, it is the school of Aristotle opposed to that of
Bacon.

Mr. Gladstone deduces his results from general truths. Mr.
Blaine arrives at his conclusions by induction. These two
methods, known as the method of syllogism and that of induction,
have been practiced by mankind in all ages, before the days when
reasoning became an art and logic a science. Both may be em-
ployed with safety where practicable, and both will lead to the
detection of truth, if properly carried out.* Induction is used in
discovery, syllogism in verification. The latter begins where the
former ends. Induction requires both patience and skill, and, if
ill performed, will as assuredly lead to error as to truth when well
performed. Both are constantly used by those who never heard
of a major or a minor premise, of 'comparentice or rejectiones.
The man who, learning that alcohol is poisonous, refuses to drink
whisky, reasons by the method of syllogism. Likewise, the man

* " We shall find that in the study of moral philosophy, as in the study of all subjects
not yet raised to sciences, there are not only two methods, but that each method leads to
different consequences. If we proceed by induction, we arrive at one conclusion; if we
proceed by deduction, we arrive at another. This difference in the results is always a
proof that the subject in which the difference exists is not yet capable of scientific treat-
ment, and that some preliminary difficulties have to be removed before it can pass from
the empirical stage into the scientific one. As soon as those difficulties are got rid of the
results obtained by induction will correspond with those obtained by deduction, supposing,
of course, that both lines of argument are fairly managed. In such cases it will be of no
importance whether we reason from particulars to generals or from generals to particulars.
Either plan will yield the same consequences, and this agreement between the consequences
proves that our investigation is, properly speaking, scientific." (Buckle's History of Civili-
zation, vol. ii, p. 337.)

52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

who carries an umbrella on a cloudy day does so from reasoning
by the method of induction. In the former, having given our
premises, we at once deduce a conclusion, and our only care is to
see that our premises are correct. The inductive method is a far
more elaborate and hazardous proceeding, and can only achieve
success where patiently and exhaustively carried out. Its opera-
tion is thus described : " It requires an exhaustive enumeration of
instances in which the given complex effect is present, in which
it is not present, and in which it is present in various degrees or
amounts. By the process of exclusion or elimination we may dis-
cover a phenomenon, constantly present when the effect is present,
absent whenever the effect is absent, and varying in degree with
the effect." The danger to avoid is an insufficient enumeration of
instances. It is this danger that causes such popular delusions as
" that it is unlucky to start a voyage on a Friday," or " that for
thirteen to sit at a table betokens ill." Macaulay tells of a judge
who was in the habit of propounding a theory that the cause of
Jacobinism was the bearing of three names, and then demonstrat-
ing it by the rules of induction. Not long since a writer in one
of the periodicals, noticing that the great majority of the Presi-
dents of the United States bore but two names, warned the Ee-
publican party against nominating a man for the Presidency who
had more ! There is no proposition under heaven, however mon-
strous, which may not be reasoned out by the inductive method
when so applied.* It led Henry C. Carey to say that "the mate-
rial prosperity of this country could be more fully promoted by a
ten years' war with Great Britain than it could be in any other
way." It will be seen at once wherein the difference between this
induction and that which led Newton to the discovery of the law
of gravitation consists. The difference is not in the kind, but in
the number of instances. Let there be but one instance in which
a heavy body having been projected upward failed to return to
the ground, and away goes the stability of Mr. Newton's theory.
If the believer in the superstition of the number thirteen will
make a few experiments, he will very soon relieve himself of his
delusion ; and had the sagacious writer reasoned properly, he
would have found the names of John Quincy Adams and Ulysses
S. Grant ample material with which to annihilate his theory. A
further difficulty in the application of the inductive method con-
sists in the existence of a multiplicity of causes, and the impossi-
bility often of discovering and separating them. Social problems
are affected by causes so numerous and so complex that their de-
tection and distinction are frequently impossible ; and until we
know what they are, can we do more than state that such and

* " Every man \vho has ever reasoned on this subject has always proved Ms theory, what-
ever it wets, by facts and calculations.'1'' (Hume's Essay on Balance of Trade.)

THE LOGIC OF FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 53

sucli a result is produced by a variety of causes, some of which
may be known and some unknown ? But as to what particular
cause the effect is mainly due, and to what degree others influ-
enced the result, we have no better means of knowing than the
astronomer has of understanding the cause of the variation in the
moon's orbit, when he is ignorant of the Newtonian laws. The
sick man, having dosed himself with a variety of drugs and sud-
denly finding himself restored to health, has no reason for claim-
ing that this or that particular compound had the salutary effect,
if his knowledge is limited to this one or similar experiments ; and
so long as we fail to discover instances in which the disturbing
causes are absent, or in which they can be eliminated, so long the
method of induction remains useless. The problem of trade is an
example at hand. Mr. Blaine informs us that trade is affected by
a multitude of causes, such as locality, the age and population of
a country, wars — both domestic and foreign — by emigration, pes-
tilence, and famine. He states that " the unknown quantities are
so many that a problem in trade or agriculture can never have an
absolute answer in advance." " If," he says, " the inductive method
of reasoning may be trusted, we certainly have a logical basis of
conclusion in the facts here detailed. And by what other mode
of reasoning can we safely proceed in this field of controversy ? "*
What, indeed ! And does Mr. Blaine really think it safe proced-
ure to undertake the solution of a problem by a method the suc-
cess of which is absolutely dependent upon a knowledge of all the
quantities that are involved, when, as he states, the unknown
quantities are so many ? The truth is — and it evidently dawned
upon him when he asked that question — the method of inductive
reasoning can not be applied successfully in this discussion, f The

* It would appear from this remark that Mr. Blaine is ignorant of one of the greatest —
if not the greatest — works on political economy, The Wealth of Nations, which was reasoned
cut entirely from general principles. Statistics — in the teachings of which Adam Smith
placed little confidence — were used only by way of illustration, and were selected to suit
the particular occasion. In his admirable chapter on the Scotch intellect of the eight-
eenth century, Buckle says : " If Hume had followed the Baconian scheme .... he would
hardly have written one of his works. Certainly, his economical views would never have
appeared, since political economy is as essentially a deductive science as geometry itself. . . .
The same dislike to make the facts of trade the basis of the science of trade was displayed
by Adam Smith, who expresses his want of confidence in statistics, or, as it was then called,
political arithmetic. ... It is no exaggeration to say that if all the commercial and his-
torical facts in the Wealth of Nations were false, the book would still remain, and its con-
clusions would hold equally good, though they would be less attractive. In it everything
depends on general principles, and they, as we have seen, were arrived at in 1752 — that
is, twenty-four years before the work was published in which those principles were ap-
plied." (History of Civilization, vol. ii.)

It is a singular fact that neither Hume nor Smith were acquainted with trade practi-
cally, although masters of its science.

f " It is, however, evident that statistical facts are as good as any other facts, and, owing

54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

problem before liini is to show that. the system of commercial
restriction has been a greater source of wealth for the United
States than free trade would have been.*

He goes at once to the experience of the country and selects the
following instances for examination : The high protective periods
of 1812 to 1816, 1824 to 1833, 1842 to 1846, and 1861 to the present
time ; the partially protected period of 1833 to 1842 and the free-
trade periods of 1816 to 1824 and 1846 to 1861. Here are seven
instances, in four of which the effect is present, in one partially
present, and in two absent. Now, assuming that all causes but
one be eliminated, and assuming that one to be protection, the
first four periods should be marked by the production of great
wealth, the fifth by the production of moderate wealth, and the
last two by the production of the least — or even by the loss of —
wealth, calculated, of course, on a time basis such as per annum.
Now, what do we find ? Assuming that Mr. Blaine's rapid and
cursory summary of those periods is correct, we learn that during
the first-named period the country was sustained through a war,
and that genuine prosperity characterized the other three men-
tioned high-protected periods, excepting that from 1873 to 1879,
in which the business of the country was prostrated and the panic
of 1873 ensued. We further learn that the partially protected
period of 1833 was very disastrous to trade, resulting in the panic
of 1837, and that that of 1816 to 1824 was equally disastrous, while
the greater part of the free-trade period of 1846 to 1861 was char-
acterized by the greatest prosperity. Here, then, we find pros-
perity under a high protective system and prosperity during a
free-trade era. Similarly, we find disaster under high protection,
disaster under low protection, and disaster under free trade ; and
from this confusion Mr. Blaine mildly tells us he has proved his
case, and by the great method of Bacon too ! Could anything
be further from the truth ? If his argument proves anything at

to their mathematical form, are very precise. But when they concern human actions they
are the result of all the motives which govern those actions ; in other words, they are the
result not merely of selfishness, but also of sympathy. And as Adam Smith, in the Wealth
of Nations, dealt with only one of those passions — viz., selfishness — he would have found
it impossible to conduct his generalization from statistics, which are necessarily collected
from the products of both passions. Such statistical facts were in their origin too complex
to be generalized, especially as they could not be experimented upon, but could only be
observed and arranged. Adam Smith, perceiving them to be unmanageable, very properly
rejected them as the basis of his science." (Buckle's History of Civilization, vol. ii, p. 367.)
* It is strange how the disputants who have succeeded Mr. Blaine in this controversy
seem to lose sight of the main issue. No one can deny the facts which these gentlemen
unceasingly proclaim, viz., that the creation of wealth, and the growth of the manufacturing
industries of the nation during the enforcement of protective laws, have been prodigious.
But not one writer has offered the slightest particle of evidence to show that a greater
advance would not have been made under a system of free trade.

THE LOGIC OF FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 55

all, it proves that tariff legislation, taken separately, had no more
influence on the national prosperity than the movement of the
planets. To make matters even worse, he attempts to account for
the instances that make against him by ascribing the results to
other causes. For example, in the case of the free-trade period,
1846 to 1856, he tells us that the war with Mexico, the Irish fam-
ine, the discovery of gold in California, and the Crimean war
combined to defeat the natural result of free trade, and, instead
of there being a minus, there was a plus quantity. What else is
this than a simple begging of the question ? By assuming that
the result was due in this instance to a plurality of causes, suffi-
ciently strong to totally destroy and even reverse the effect which
he believes free trade would have produced alone, he leaves the
ground open for a similar assumption by his opponents during
those periods which apparently make for his theory. Wars, fam-
ines, and gold discoveries have happened at other times — times in
which protection was in force. These would doubtless produce
similar effects in disturbing the predicted results, and would act
as disastrously against Mr. Blaine's theory in the one instance as
for it in the other. It was of reasoning such as this of which
Bacon wrote : " The very form of induction that has been used by
logicians in the collection of their instances is a weak and useless
thing. It is a mere enumeration of a few known facts, makes no
use of exclusions or rejections, concludes precariously, and is
always liable to be overthrown by negative instances." *

For a satisfactory and anything approaching a reliable applica-
tion of empiricism, it would be requisite to ascertain precisely what
effect the increase of population, emigration, the variations of the
seasons — causing excessive rains, droughts, and storms — also in-
ventions, political contests, fires, robberies, etc., had upon trade ;
and until such an application can be made, no one can truly say
such and such a period of prosperity was due directly to the tariff.
The element of time plays one of the most important parts in this
method. \ Our greatest and most general truths have taken ages
to make themselves apparent. We come now to the examination
of the argument by which free trade is sustained.

Mr. Gladstone deduces his conclusion from these premises:
" International commerce is based not upon arbitrary or fanciful
considerations, but upon the unequal distribution among men
and regions of aptitudes to produce the general commodities

* The inductive system seems to have been the peculiar aversion of the brightest Scotch
intellects of the eighteenth century. Both Adam Smith and David Flume spoke contemptu-
ously of the Baconian method, and Buckle thinks this aversion to Bacon's system led
Hume to underrate his genius. In his History of England, Hume places Bacon inferior to
Galileo, and possibly below Keppler ! which Buckle considers unfair.

f Hume calls it the " tedious, lingering method." (Philos. Works, vol. i, p. 8.)

5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which are necessary or useful for the sustenance, comfort, and
advantage of human life." There can be no dispute on this point.
It is a self-evident truth. Aristotle tells us that he who rejects
self-evident truths has no surer foundation on which to build.
It follows, as a natural conclusion, that whatever interferes with
or checks the natural flow of goods and commodities from one
region to another, and from one class of men to another, is a de-
cided loss to both classes. " If," adds Mr. Gladstone, " every coun-
try produced all commodities with exactly the same degree of
facility or cheapness, it would be contrary to common sense to
incur the charge of sending them from one country to another."

It has been the aim of protective legislation to offset those
special aptitudes of production which foreign nations possess by
artificial barriers. Such legislative acts have constituted, virtu-
ally, a leveling process whereby the natural flow of trade has been
stopped. This has necessarily been attended with expense and
loss of wealth. The premises may be stated in a different way.
Since trade produces wealth, whatever increases trade increases
wealth, and that which restricts trade restricts the production of
wealth. Protection is restriction. Hence, protection hinders the
production of wealth. It may be varied in another way : The
growth of wealth is proportional to the growth of trade, and the
growth of trade is proportional to its freedom from restraint.
Hence the growth of wealth is proportional to the freedom which
trade enjoys. Similarly, that monstrous statement that " protec-
tion does not tend to keep up prices" may be thus exploded; by
stating the fact that free competition tends to reduce prices, and
that protection hinders free competition. Ergo, protection hinders
the reduction of prices. The premises here laid down are as self-
evident as any truths regarding trade can be. In fact, they are
contained in the definition of the words " free trade " and " pro-
tection " themselves. The protectionists have admitted them
again and again, but yet so blinded have they become by their
own method of induction, that they have been prevented from
following out what reason dictates. The question is analogous
to that of slavery. It was an argument used repeatedly during
the Southern dispute that the slaves were better off under the
slave trade. Numerous instances were given where the slave
preferred to remain in slavery than to accept his freedom. Nev-
ertheless, the question was decided on general principles, and the
moral course has proved the economical one.

The party of protection, instancing the growth of the United
States during the last quarter century — corresponding with the
operation of the Morrill Tariff Act — challenges comparison with
any period of equal duration in the world's history. It is doubt-
ful if history could show any period which would stand compari-

THE LOGIC OF FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 57

son — so far as the amount of material wealth created during so
short a term is concerned. Nevertheless, if this be so, it must
not be forgotten that there have never been in the history of the
world such gigantic forces at work, nor so rich and varied a field
for their operation. If, instead of standing awe-stricken at the
vastness of the results, we contemplate the magnitude and pro-
portion of the original factors, we shall cease to marvel. Remem-
bering the immense area of the country, the fertility of its soil,
the number and riches of its mines, the number and naviga-
bility of its rivers, the availability and inexhaustibility of its
fuel; remembering the amount of available labor, both human
and mechanical— the latter representing hundreds of millions of
human arms, and the former increased by supplies drawn from
the Old World to the extent, also, of millions ; remembering the
number and utility of mechanical inventions designed to assist in
the production of wealth ; and bearing in mind that during this
period the country has been free from war, that she has had to
keep neither navy nor standing army — when we contemplate all
this, instead of losing our mental balance, we shall most prob-
ably feel a sense of disappointment that the results are not even
greater. If it were possible to estimate the original factors in
the production of wealth as they have here existed during the last
twenty-five years and calculate the product that should naturally
follow, we should more than likely find it greatly in excess of that
now existing.

Who can estimate the influence of inventions alone ? It is
supposed that England to-day uses, in steam-power only, a force
equal to an army of eight hundred millions of men in the pro-
duction and transmission of commodities. These, bear in mind,
are men of iron, who never flag so long as fuel is supplied, who
never grow weary, who never strike, who work as readily twenty-
four hours per day as ten, and whose cost of maintenance is infin-
itesimal in comparison to that of men of flesh and blood.

There was invented in the latter part of the eighteenth cent-
ury a machine that has done more for producing wealth than all
the acts for fostering trade and developing industries that were
ever devised by man. Eli Whitney has done more for the pros-
perity of his country than all the tariff discussions before or since
his time. The supremacy of England in trade and commerce
throughout the world is due more to Watt and Arkwright, to
Stevenson and Crompton, than to either Walpole, Pitt, or Peel.
Mr. Edison is a greater force in the national prosperity than all
the measures for the encouragement of trade passed by Congress
during his life-time. The beneficial influence inventions have
had on civilization is only comparable to the evil that war and
pernicious legislation have achieved.

5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

The early history of the colonies furnishes, we think, a re-
markable illustration of what can be done without the fostering
care and protection of a paternal government. In 1G0G there was
not a single English-speaking person in this country. A century
later a colony had sprung up numbering one million souls, with
industries established that bid fair to outrival those of England.
In 1700 the population exceeded one quarter the entire population
of England and Wales. Ships were being built and sent to Eng-
land. The ship-carpenters of Great Britain petitioned Parliament
to suppress an industry that threatened to supplant their own.
The wool manufacturers became alarmed as they found the colo-
nists rapidly acquiring their trade. Bar iron was manufactured
and shipped to England cheaper than that from Sweden. The
hat industry developed in the face of English rivalry. In 1700
the total exports amounted to $1,919,700, in 1730 it was $2,789,-
640, and in 17G0 it had grown to be $3,698,460. And all this was
in spite of acts of Parliament designed to cripple the colonial
trade and ruin its industries. Act after act was passed, forbidding
any one engaging in various manufactures under severe penalties.
At this time England was, as Mr. Blaine says, not only severely
but cruelly protective. Notwithstanding all this, the colonial
trade grew and prospered, and England felt that she had a keen
competitor in many of the manufactures in which she had hither-
to considered herself supreme. Surely we have here an answer
to those who ask " what industries would to-day be existing but
for the great system of protection ?" We present this period,
commencing from the arrival of the first colonist and extending
to the outbreak of the Revolution, and leave our high-tariff friends
to reconcile its teachings with their remarkable theories — if they
can. One advantage, it will be noticed, has accrued to the free-trade
party by the recent controversy. It appears in the form of an
admission. Mr. Blaine admits— with a certain degree of caution —
that an insistence on the application of protection to all countries
as the wisest policy would be erroneous. He says : " Were I to
assume that protection is in all countries and under all circum-
stances, the wisest policy, I should be guilty of an error.'' This
will play sad havoc with our friends, the protectionist optimists,
who hold their system, as Mr. Gladstone says, "to be an economi-
cal good "—good for all lands, all ages, and all people. But why
does Mr. Blaine not insist on the universal application of his
theory ? On what reasonable grounds does he restrict its field of
operation ? Science teaches us that the more applicable a theory
becomes, the nearer it approaches universality, the more certain
may we be of its truth ; and, conversely, the less applicable it be-
comes as its territory enlarges, the more its incorrectness is ex-
posed. The free-trader recognizes this law and refuses to restrict

THE LOGIC OF FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 59

his system by any artificial boundaries. He strikes at once
at the root of the subject. He sees that trade finds its basis
not in any system of legislation, but in human wants and
desires. Wants lead to industries, and industries to commerce.
One form of production necessitates another. Food, clothing,
and shelter are requisite to mankind in all parts of the globe.
Climate, soil, and topography determine only the kind requisite.
Mr. Blaine considers the universal application of Mr. Glad-
stone's theory as a "most remarkable feature." It would have
been a much more remarkable feature had he restricted it. The
"feature" which the protectionist does not seem to understand
is that free trade is not simply a "theory" any more than
human freedom is. Both are moral truths. And just as Mr.
Blaine believed in loosening the shackles that held the slave in
bondage, so the free-trader believes in throwing off all the fetters
that hold trade in check. Similarly, as he would denounce him
who held human freedom to be a policy — wise only under certain
conditions and in certain countries — so the free-trader feels Mr.
Blaine's suggestion to be equally absurd and immoral. Free
trade is not a mere policy. It is based upon the " live-and-let-
live " principle, and the highest testimony to its wisdom, as well
as its truth, is its universal applicability. It recognizes neither
religion, color, language, nor climate, and is limited only by
human existence. It is at this point that the ethical side of the
question may well receive notice. To Mr. Blaine it appears
amusing that his opponent should see any question of ethics in
the subject at all. We believe that to most people the strongest
feature in the slave question was its appeal to the moral senti-
ment. It was certainly this phase that inspired the most eloquent
appeals and the greatest oratorical efforts. Similarly, it is this
same sentiment that animates the mind of Mr. Gladstone. The
idea is expressed by Herbert Spencer as follows : " The ability to
exercise the faculties, the total denial of which causes death — that
liberty to pursue the objects of desire, without which there can
not be complete life — that freedom of action which his nature
prompts every individual to claim, and on which equity puts no
limit save the like freedom of action of other individuals, involves,
among other corollaries, freedom of exchange. Government —
which, in protecting citizens from murder, robbery, assault, or
other aggression, shows us that it has all essential function of se-
curing to each this free exercise of faculties within the assigned
limits — is called on, in the due discharge of its function, to main-
tain this freedom of exchange, and can not abrogate it without
reversing its function and becoming aggressor instead of pro-
tector. Thus, absolute morality would all along have shown in
what direction legislation should tend. . . . An enormous amount

6o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of suffering would have been prevented ; that prosperity which
we now enjoy would have commenced much sooner ; and our
present condition would have been one of far greater power,
wealth, happiness, and morality. . . . The moral course proves to
be the politic one." *

HABITS OF THE BOX TORTOISE.

By ALFRED GOLDSBOEOUGH MAYEE, M. E.

WITH DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR.

WHO has not been charmed by the many quaint and interest-
ing narratives of the habits of animals, left to us by that
father of English natural history Gilbert White ? The philoso-
pher vicar, far from the troubled world, among the peaceful beau-
ties of Selborne, devoted a long life to the study of nature. Among
his favorite pets was "the old tortoise" named Timothy; and
many a letter to the Honorable Daines Barrington gives minute
and careful descriptions of its peculiar actions and intelligence.
There is a joyful ring in the old gentleman's tone when he finds
the tortoise " distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched
with the feelings of gratitude " ; again, we find him lost in wonder
at its extreme old age ; or marveling that an animal so completely
protected should have such fear of rain as to crowd against the
stone wall and close itself up. Then the vicar's head bows sadly,
with the air of a melancholy Jacques, as he watches his pet's
amorous wanderings in early summer.

Fig. 1.— The Box Tortoise. (Side view.)

In America we also have a land tortoise, whose ways and
modes of life are quite as interesting as those of White's Timothy.
It is a little creature not more than five and a half inches long
when full grown. No two individuals are marked alike. Before

* Essays : Moral, Political, and Esthetic.

HABITS OF THE BOX TORTOISE. 61

the attainment of full growth the shell is corrugated by numer-
ous concentric ridges. As a new one is formed every year, the
age of the tortoise may be obtained by counting these ridges,
provided it be not full grown ; for in old age the shell becomes
smooth and polished. Some are of a brownish horn color streaked
with rich yellow, others are black covered with oval yellow spots.
The color of the legs and head varies from dark brown to bright
yellow. Frequently the old males have blood-red eyes, which give
them a ferocious appearance.

The box tortoise is most commonly to be met with in shady
places, near the borders of woods; or near damp or marshy
ground, where worms and insects abound. The tortoise has quite
an aversion for wet places, and, although it is a fairly good
swimmer, and can remain for over twelve hours beneath the sur-
face without once coming out to breathe, it is rarely to be found
in the water. In May and early summer it deserts the shade of
the woods where it has spent the winter, and moves into the open
meadows, Avhere the fresh young grass is becoming thick and
high, myriads of insects are waking into life, and the wild straw-
berries are beginning to redden. After the pastures are mowed
in July the tortoises scatter, some remaining in the meadows,
others taking again to the woods. For this reason the animal is
much more, rarely met with in August than in June.

Owing to the extreme slowness and deliberation of all its
movements, it seems wonderful that it can obtain enough to eat.
Often it will hesitate for a full minute, on finding an insect, before
summoning up enough resolution to seize it. The neck is slowly
stretched forward, the jaws open and close upon the victim, and
the head is immediately snapped back as though frightened at
what it had done. Deglutition is accomplished by a series of
gulping movements, which often cause a squealing sound. Its
food consists of crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars, worms, and, in
fact, almost any luckless insect' which it may find. It is very par-
tial to wild strawberries, tomatoes, and many fungi. There can
be no doubt that it greatly aids the farmer by destroying the
larvse of injurious insects. In seeking its food the tortoise wan-
ders about in the most zigzag courses imaginable. A whole day's
wanderings, of over half a mile, may not cover more than a quar-
ter of an acre. Our little friend rarely wanders far from the
place of his birth. In the month of May, 1880, a dozen tortoises
found in a three-acre pasture were marked by the writer. Every
year they return to the same meadow, so that in 1889 eight of
them were identified. The most erratic individual was found half
a mile from the meadow, six years after being marked. The tor-
toise is very generally distributed over the United States east of
the Mississippi, but its local distribution is variable. In some

62

THE POPULJR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sections it is very common, in others extremely rare. On the ap-
proach of the frost, about the middle of October, the tortoise bur-
rows about a foot beneath the fallen leaves of the woods, or into
soft, marshy ground, and there passes the winter in a torpid
state. About the middle of April it digs its way upward again,
and may be seen crawling slowly about, covered with caked and
frozen mud.

But the most remarkable ability of the little reptile is his
power to entirely withdraw himself within his shell, and then to
close up the openings. Observing the approach of an enemy, he
rapidly draws in his head, legs, and tail, giving expression to his

displeasure by a sharp
iiiss ; then, folding up
the two flaps of the
lower shell until they
fit accurately into the
cup-shaped edge of the
upper, he becomes as
unopenable as an oys-
ter. In most cases the
fit of the carapace and
plastron is so perfect
that it would be diffi-
cult to insert the head
of a pin into any crack,
and the muscles are so
powerful as to render it
well-nigh impossible to
force an opening. Yet
the jaguar of South
America has been seen
to tear open the shells
of similarly protected
tortoises. We may feel
assured that the protection is a needed one, for it is very rare to
find an old box tortoise whose shell does not show marks of rough
usage.

There is a well-grounded popular belief that our tortoise lives
to a vast age, and numerous cases of turtles bearing dates over a
century old have been cited. There was, until 1886, in the neigh-
borhood of the writer's home in New Jersey, an old tortoise which
had been marked by Mr. Cyrus Durand, the inventor of the geo-
metric lathe It bore the inscription " C. D. 1838," clearly cut with
a graver, on its under shell. As the tortoise had been observed
from year to year since the time of its marking by the most trust-
worthy witnesses, there can be no doubt that the date was gen-

Fig. 2. — Under Side, showing Closed Shell.

HABITS OF THE BOX TORTOISE. 63

nine. This tortoise has not been seen since 1886, so it has probably
died. Another, which has been observed for the past nine years,
Avas marked with the inscription " C. B., 1849 " ; as the letters and
date were so much worn as to be but faintly discernible, they
Avere doubtless reliable. This old animal was found for the last
time, dead, in the summer of 1889. Another, bearing the date 1851,
is still alive. Assuming that the tortoises were full grown, or
about twenty years old when marked, we are safe in stating the
period of their lives as from sixty to seventy years. JSTo doubt
some individuals may reach a century or over. Unfortunately for
science, it is a common sport for the country urchin to engraATe
tortoises with dates A^arying from forty to fifty years before the
artist's birth. This, however, can almost always be detected, for
the inscription becomes very faint after thirty years of rubbing
over the ground. In fact, it would seem impossible that an in-
scription could last for a hundred years, as the growth of the shell
and the constant friction Avould probably obliterate it.

The tenacity of life in all tortoises is remarkable The heart
will continue to pulsate for over three quarters of an hour after
being cut out of the body, and the animal is said to have lived for
several months after the brain had been removed. There seems
to be fully as much fat about the muscles of tortoises which have
just aAvakened from the Avinter's sleep as there was in the preced-
ing autumn. Doubtless they could remain torpid for over a
twelvemonth, and then recover.

The mating season of our box tortoise occurs during the first
three weeks in May. The males are unusually active during this
period, and will fight savagely among themselves. The author
was once fortunate enough to witness one of these combats. Two
old males were facing one another ; using the front flaps of their
plastrons for shields, they would charge, snapping viciously, and
whenever one obtained a grip he would hang on with bull-dog
tenacity. The noise made by their shells knocking together could
be heard tAVO hundred feet away. After an hour or more the
smaller male began to sIioav signs of exhaustion, his charges be-
came weaker and Aveaker, until finally he closed his shell tightly
and refused to fight. The victor, after snapping at the unrespon-
sive shell for a few moments, crawled deliberately over the back
of his shut-up adversary. It was found upon examination that
neither of the combatants had received any visible injury, so well
did their armor of shells and scales protect them.

All turtles are oviparous, depositing their eggs in the ground
and leaving them to be hatched by the heat of the sun. The lay-
ing period of our box tortoise extends from the 7th to the 20th of
June. A f eAv females lay in the autumn, but this seems to be a per-
verted instinct, and not a regular habit of the species. They

64

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

always lay at night, and deposit all their eggs in a single nest. As
soon as the sun goes down the female sets abont her maternal
duties. She wanders over the fields with restless activity until
she finds a locality suitable for the formation of the nest. Stub-
ble-fields, or those which, having been recently under cultivation,
are covered with a thin growth of grass, are preferred. She then
begins to scratch up the earth with her hind feet, using first one

Fig. 3.— Old Males fighting. Showing extreme variation in the coloring of the species.

^From a sketch made at the time.)

and then the other. After about three hours of patient labor, a
small hole about four inches in depth and two inches in diameter,
a little wider at the bottom than at the top, has been excavated.
An egg is then dropped into the cavity and carefully pushed
against the side by the hind foot of the mother ; another is then
laid and placed in position as before, until from four to six eggs
are ranged side by side in the bottom of the nest. The earth is
then carefully scraped back by the hind feet, and finally the
grass and leaves are scratched over the opening and pressed down
so skillfully that the ground appears as though it had never been
broken. By this time it is past midnight It is remarkable that
the females do not seem to fear the presence of the observer, but
continue their labors, although he may be but a foot or two away.
When once started digging the nest they rarely abandon the
work. We have observed a tortoise of another species (Nanemys
guttata) which dug all night, ami finally completed its nest on the
noon of the day following.

The eggs are covered with a soft white calcareous shell. They

HABITS OF THE BOX TORTOISE. 65

are of an oval shape, 1'28 inch long and "91 inch in diameter.
When carefully blown they will retain their form. The shell is
very hydroscopic, and, if the eggs be placed in alcohol or glycerin,
they soon shrivel, owing to the abstraction of water from the in-
terior. The yonng hatch late in October, just in time to move into
winter quarters.

The disposition of our box tortoise is timid and gentle. If
kept for a pet, it soon becomes very tame, and will eat from the
hand of its master, whom it may even grow to recognize. In
captivity it displays a great variety of tastes, and will readily take
to cooked meat, vegetables, or bread.

Of all the lower vertebrates the tortoises exhibit, perhaps, the
most marvelous regularity in their habits.

Thus the duration of the laying period is a very short time,
usually in June, and rarely extending over two weeks for each
species. It seems to be independent of the severity or mildness
of the season, but occurs with wonderful regularity year after
year. The same rule seems to apply to the time of hibernation.
Seven young tortoises of various species, which were kept in an
aquarium in a warm room, simultaneously refused to eat on the
5th of October, and went into hibernation just as they would have
done if in the open air. They remained buried in the mud beneath
the water, or huddled up asleep upon the land, and touched no
food for over two months. Sometimes, when the aquarium was
exposed to the full heat of the sun, one or two would awaken and
crawl slowly about, but it was extremely difficult to induce them
to eat.

A turtle's heart consists of two auricles and only one ventricle ;
so, the blood is never completely aerated and is therefore, compar-
atively speaking, " cold." This is the reason that tortoises, espe-
cially those species which inhabit our rivers and ponds, delight
to bask for hours, exposed to the full glare of the hottest sun.

Millions of years ago, when marshes covered the greater part of
the face of the earth, the reptiles were of huge size and strength.
The turtles of to-day are but the pygmy descendants of these giant
ancestors. Protected by their bony coverings, or relying upon
their knife-like jaws and savage dispositions, they have survived
in stunted form until to-day. Now, in this age of man, many spe-
cies bid fair to outlive the wanton destruction which is fast de-
priving our woods and meadows of the wild creatures which once
knew them as a safe retreat. The beaver, the gray squirrel, the
wild pigeon, will soon be no more ; but the lover of nature may
still find our tortoise for his study and amusement.

VOL. XXXVIII. — 5

66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE HISTORY OF A STAR.

By J. NORMAN LOCKYEE.

IT is now exactly thirty years since the world rang with one of
those discoveries which go down to the ages and at once in-
sure the names of the makers of them being inscribed upon the
muster-roll of the immortals. In the autumn of 1859, Kirchhoff
and Bunsen announced that at last a way had been found of
studying the chemical nature of bodies in space — nay, more, that
they had already begun the work, and found that the sun, at all
events, was built up of matter identical with that of which the
earth is composed.

In physical science in most cases a new discovery means that
by some new idea, new instrument, or some new and better use of
an old one, Nature has been wooed in some new way. In this case
it was a question of a new idea and an old instrument. The in-
strument was the spectroscope.

It forms no part of my present purpose to deal either with the
principles involved in spectrum analysis or its history during the
period which has elapsed since 1859. The task I have set myself
in this article is a much more modest one.

First, I wish to point out that during the thirty years the
method of work which Kirchhoff and Bunsen applied to the sun
has been applied to the whole host of heaven. By this I do not
mean that every star has been examined, but that many examples
of each great class — nebula, comet, star, planet — have been studied.
The same kind of information has been obtained with respect to
these bodies as Kirchhoff and Bunsen gleaned with regard to the
sun ; and the great generalization to which I have referred has
been found to hold good in the main for all. From nebulae and
stars existing in space in regions so remote that the observations
have been of the utmost difficulty in consequence of the feeble-
ness of their light; from comets careering through stretches of
space almost at our doors, the same story has come of substances
existing in them which are familiar to us here. In ascending
thus from the particular to the general, from the sun to the most
distant worlds, it is obvious that the field of observation has been
enormously extended. Kirchhoff and Bunsen's view has been
abundantly verified, as we have seen ; but the question remains,
Has this larger area of observation supplied us with facts which
enable us to make a more general statement than theirs ? It is
possible that it has. Recent inquiry has suggested that if the
study of meteorites be conjoined with that of the heavenly bodies,
the story told by the spectroscope enables us to go a step further,

THE HISTORY OF A STAR. 67

and to say that not only have we the same matter everywhere,
but all celestial bodies, including the earth, are due to an exqui-
sitely simple evolution of matter in the form of meteoritic dust.
We have no longer to rest content with the fact that all nature is
one chemically : we have the cause.

Secondly, I propose to make as short and simple a statement
as I can of the general idea of the new cosmogony suggested by
the spectroscopic survey to which I have referred.

I must, in the first place, ask my readers to grant me the scien-
tific use of their imagination ; and in order that it may not be
called upon to cope with questions as to whether space is infinite
or not, or whether space and time ever had a beginning, we will
not consider the possibility of the beginning of things or attempt
to define the totality of space, but we will in imagination clear a
certain part of space and then set certain possibilities at work.

How much space shall we clear ? A very good idea of one of
the units of space which is very convenient for me to employ here
— I mean the distance of the nearest star or one of the nearest
stars — can be obtained by stating the time taken by light in per-
forming the journey between the earth and the stars, knowing as
we do that light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand
miles in a second, In the case of the nearest stars the time thus
required is about three and a half years. With regard to the
twelfth-magnitude stars, we find that in all probability the dis-
tance in their case is so great that light, instead of taking three
and a half years, takes three thousand five hundred years to
reach us.

The space included in a sphere with this radius will be suffi-
cient for our purpose. The stars that we shall have to abolish
for the purpose of this preliminary inquiry number something
like six millions ; the probability being that, if we consider the
stars visible, not in the largest telescopes, but in those which are
now considered of moderate dimensions, their numbers may be
reckoned at something between thirty and fifty millions.

Imagine, then, this part of space cleared of all matter. We
shall have a dark void, and the probability is that all that dark
void will sooner or later, in consequence of conditions existing in
other parts of space into which we have not inquired, be filled
with some form of matter so fine that it is impossible to give it a
chemical name.

Next we may imagine that this something without a chemical
name may curdle into something which is more allied with our ter-
restrial chemistry, and the chances are, so far as we know, that that
first substance will be either hydrogen itself or some substance
seen in the spectrum of hydrogen or closely associated spectra.

It is just possible that at this point we enter the region of

68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

observation. In the nebulse we are brought face to face with a
substance (or substances) which, as far as our observations go,
exists nowhere else except in the very hottest region of the sun
that we can get at with our instruments. It is unknown here,
and all attempts to match the spectrum by exposing terrestrial
substances to the highest temperatures available in our labora-
tories have so far been unavailing. Both in sun and nebulse this
substance (or substances) is associated with hydrogen. This curd-
ling process will go on until at length further condensation will
take place, and instead of having simply the substance (or sub-
stances) to which I have referred, and hydrogen, we shall have an
excess of hydrogen with an infinitely fine dust interspersed in it,
which will go on condensing and condensing until at last we get
dust of substances the existence of which is revealed to us in the
spectra of bodies known to terrestrial chemistry ; among these are
magnesium, carbon, oxygen, iron, silicon, and sulphur.

This dust, fortunately for those interested in such inquiries as
this, comes down to us in more condensed forms still, and it is in
consequence of the messages which they bring from the heavens
that I am engaged in writing this article. Not only have we dust
falling, but large masses ; magnificent specimens of meteorites
which have fallen from the heavens at different times, some of
them weighing tons, are open to our inquiries. Although, there-
fore, it is very difficult for us to collect the dust, it is perfectly
easy to produce it by pulverizing any specimens of these meteor-
ites that we choose into the finest powder. If we examine this dust
spectroscopically, we find that, in addition to hydrogen, its chief
constituents are magnesium, iron, carbon, silicon, oxygen, and
sulphur.

I have, therefore, in this first sketch of a possible result of a
process going on in our space-clearing at an early stage, not ar-
rived at something that is unreal and merely the creation of the
imagination, but something very definite indeed, which we can
analyze and work with in our laboratories.

How it comes that this infinitely fine dust, finer probably than
anything we can imagine, becomes at last, in the celestial spaces,
agglomerated into meteoric irons and stones with which the earth
is being continually bombarded, is one of the most interesting ques-
tions in the domain of science. Space is no niggard of this dust,
for if we deal with agglomerations of it sufficient in quantity to
give rise to the appearance of a " falling star " to the unaided eye,
we know that the number of such masses which fall upon the
earth every day exceeds twenty millions.

We have, then, the idea before us that, here and there in-this
space that we have cleared, we have initial curdling, as I have
called it ; we need not assume that these curdlings are uniform.

THE HISTORY OF A STAR. 69

It is impossible with our present knowledge to suppose that at
any prior stage of the history of the heavens gravitation did not
exist. It is impossible, from what we know now, to suppose that
even the finest form of matter which entered our clearing in space
was not endowed with motion. Given this matter, its motion and
gravitation, let us next see what must very quickly follow.

Gravitation will give us a formation of centers ; we shall get
a rotation (moment of momentum) due to the prior existence of
motion and to this formation of centers ; we shall eventually in
that way get condensing masses of this curdled substance.

The moment we have these centers formed, gravitation again
will give us the motion of exterior particles toward these centers,
and the condensation in one part of space will necessarily be coun-
terbalanced by a clearing in another, so that, if we suppose that
the curdling was not uniform to begin with, the uniformity will
be less and less as time and this action go on.

Let us imagine that here and there we have isolated eddies,
and here and there in the larger aggregations of the dust — in the
most enormous swarms we can imagine — we have also eddies ;
these eddies involved in the larger curdlings will be associated
with the phenomena of the general system of which they form an
insignificant part. These cosmical molecules aggregating in this
way will be, to compare great things with small, like the invisible
molecules of a gas. It is not too much to say, as Prof. George
Darwin has recently shown, that we shall have in effect the whole
mechanism of the kinetic theory of gases before us ; but, instead of
dealing with invisible gaseous particles, we shall have particles,
large or small, of meteoric dust. The kinetic theory tells us that
if we have encounters we must have a production of heat ; if we
have production of heat we must have the production of radia-
tion, although, if the heat be insufficient, the radiation may not
produce light enough to be visible to the human eye.

It is a remarkable thought that all these changes to which I
have so far drawn attention may have been going on in different
parts of space for seons without any visible trace of the action
being possible to any kind of visual organs. I refer to this be-
cause it is right that I should point out here that Halley, who
was one of the first to discuss the possible luminosity of sparse
masses of matter in space, and Maupertuis, who followed him,
both laid great stress upon it.* When, then, these encounters,
which we may call collisions, take place, and when the heat due

* " But not less wonderful are certain Luminous Spots or Patches, which discover them-
selves only by the Telescope, and appear to the naked Eye like small fixt Stars ; but in re-
ality are nothing else but the light coming from an extraordinary great space in the Ether ;
through which a lucid Medium is diffused, that shines with its own proper Lustre. This
seems fully to reconcile that Difficulty which some have moved against the Description Moses

7o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to the arrested motion of the particles coming together, and the
accompanying light are produced, we mnst expect that that light
will at first be very dim, and will require very considerable optical
power to render it visible.

We may now consider some early results obtained in connec-
tion with this matter. Sir William Herschel, although not the
first to examine into it, was the first to bring before us an idea of
the magnificent spectacle which the heavens present to mankind,
and he, without any difficulty, with his large instruments, began
by dividing these dim bodies into nebulosities and nebulae ; the
nebulosities extending over large spaces of the heavens, and being
of very, very feeble luminosity.

When we pass from these we become acquainted with bodies
which may be truly termed nebulae, as opposed to nebulosities,
and the most magnificent of these is that in Orion, which has
recently been so grandly photographed by Mr. Common and Mr.
Roberts^ the latter using the intensifying action of four hours'
exposure of the photographic plate, hereby revealing details that
no human eye will ever see, thus demonstrating how true it is
that these changes may go on for aeons and eeons, though the eye
may never become acquainted with them.

Thare is a magnificent arrangement in the human eye which,
though it invalidates it for some astronomical purposes, is con-
venient, because it enables us to go on using our eyes all our
lives, whereas a prepared photographic plate can only be used
once. By this arrangement, however long we look at an object,
it does not appear brighter, but in the case of the photographic
plate all the action upon it is totaled, so to speak, so that if the
plate be exposed, say for two hours or sixty hours, we shall go on
getting impressed upon it more and more of the unseen. Thus
the nebula of Orion, as seen, is almost insignificant compared
with the glorious object which the photographic plate portrays if
the integrating power be allowed to go on for hours.

It seemed pretty obvious, since the light of such bodies is so
dim that a large portion of it beats upon the earth and upon our
eyes without having any effect upon either, that the temperature
was low ; and it seemed also that to test the idea that this lumi-
nosity might be produced, as I have suggested, by collisions of
meteoric dust, the way was open for laboratory work.

gives of the Creation, alleging that Light could not be created without the Sun. But in the
following Instances the contrary is manifest ; for some of these bright Spots discover no
sign of a Star in the middle of them ; and the irregular form of those that have, shews
them not to proceed from the Illumination of a Central Body, since they have no Annual
Parallax, they cannot fail to occupy Spaces immensely great, and perhaps not less than our
whole Solar System. In all these so vast Spaces it should seem that there is a perpetual
uninterrupted Day, which may furnish Matter of Speculation, as well to the curious Natural-
ist as to the Astronomer." — Edmund Hallet, Philosophical Transactions, vol. xxix, p. 392.

. THE HISTORY OF A STAR. 7i

Smash, a meteorite, collect the dust, expose it to a low tempera-
ture ; compare its spectrum with the spectrum of such, a body as
those we have been considering, and see by actual experiment if
there is any similarity. This was done.

The result was almost identical. It seemed, therefore, that one
had at last got to solid ground, and could go ahead. But how to
go ahead in a scientific way ? Naturally by developing the argu-
ment which had led us so far. Let us agree that the nebulae are
condensations of meteoritic dust, and see whether we are led to
the true or the false by such a concession. Let us further grant
that the condensations go on. What will happen next ?

In certain regions of space the encounters — the collisions — will
increase in number in consequence of the accumulation of me-
teoric dust in these regions ; the temperature will, therefore, be
higher and the light more intense.

Is there only one process by which, the temperature can be in-
creased ? It did not take very long to recognize that there might
possibly be three lines of action, each one of which would result
in the production of a higher temperature. In the first place,
moment of momentum — rotation — being at our disposal to start
with, it was obvious, in virtue of mechanical laws, that as the con-
densation went on the rotation would be accelerated ; the motions
of the particles of dust in the reaction, so to speak, would be more
violent; the collisions, therefore, would produce more smashes,
and more heat, and therefore more light.

We should get a central system and surroundings, such as Mr.
Roberts has recently photographed in the great nebula of An-
dromeda. The exposure he gave was four hours, and again this
photograph brings us face to face with phenomena which will
probably never be seen by the eye alone.

A central condensation, here and there fragments of spirals,
and here and there dark gaps, are seen. These gaps were observed
by Bond and others years ago, but it remained for Mr. Roberts to
demonstrate to us that they are produced by the wonderful in-
draught action which we can now, by means of the photograph,
see going on. We have a concentration toward the center, the
dark gaps representing to us either the absence of matter or the
presence of meteoritic dust in a region where it is all going the
same way, and in which, therefore, there are no collisions. Here
and there we get regions of great luminosity, and associated with
the spirals we get obvious loci of encounters. External swarms
are also seen which have been thought, with great probability,
to belong to the system — smaller condensations partaking in the
general motion of the whole. Here, then, we are in presence of
one possible cause of increased temperature.

There is another. One of the early results obtained by Sir

7 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

William Herschel was, that it was a very common thing for
double nebulae to make their appearance in his gigantic telescope.
Now, it is difficult for us to imagine that these double nebulae, like
their allied systems of stars, should not be in motion ; and if we
imagine a condition of things in which one swarm is going around
a larger one in an elliptic orbit, and occasionally approaching it
and mingling with it, we shall have at one part of the orbit the
centers nearest together ; so that a greater number of particles of
meteoritic dust will be liable to encounters at this time than at
others. Hence we shall get a cause of increased temperature of
a periodic kind ; there must be variable stars in the heavens — and
there are.

As a third possible condition we have the known movement of
these swarms of dust through space. If we take note of the known
movements of the star which forms the center of our own system,
we can learn that these movements may be gigantic. We know
that the sun is traveling nearly half a million of miles every
twenty-four hours toward a certain region ; we know that other
stars are moving so quickly that Sir Robert Ball has calculated
that one among them would travel from London to Pekin in
something like two minutes. We have, therefore, any amount
of velocity. Now suppose that without the formation of either a
single or a double system, such as we have considered — by the ordi-
nary condensation of an initial single or initial double swarm — we
have what we may call a " level crossing " at which two or more
streams of meteoritic dust meet. There, of course, we shall have
a tremendous cause of collisions. Have we such instances in the
heavens ? Again I appeal to Mr. Roberts's photographs of the
Pleiades ; we see in them four nebulae which have been stated to
surround four of the stars. But if we look at the nebulae more
carefully, we find that distinct stream-lines are seen in each in
certain directions ; we have interlacing, the meeting of these
streams at some angle or other, and in each such region we have
the locus of one of the chief stars.

This may be considered to be an irregular cause of a produc-
tion of high temperature ; but so long as such an action as that
continues, an apparent star will be seen, distinct, of constant
light, and not to be discriminated, without such photographs as
these, from those stars which have been produced by more ordi-
nary sequences connected with the more ordinary processes of
condensation.

If, however, the above explanation be the true one, we should
expect to find cases in which we may see such an action beginning
or ending suddenly ; the action will be less constant and durable
— that is to say, the supply of these streams of meteoritic dust
may not be continuous ; it may be smaller, and then the effect

THE HISTORY OF A STAR. 73

will be produced during a much shorter period of time. In that
case the light of the star will not last long. If the onrush of one
stream upon another or a more regular swarm is sudden, we shall
have a sudden blaze out of light ; if the onrushing stream is
short, the light will soon die ; if it continues for some time, and
reduces its quantity, the light will die out gradually. Or again,
such a source of supply may fail by the complete passage of one
stream through the other. In these ways we shall have various
bodies in the heavens, suddenly or gradually increasing or de-
creasing their light quite irregularly, unlike those other bodies
where we get a periodical variation in consequence of the revolu-
tion of one round the other. We shall have " new stars " appear-
ing from time to time in the heavens, and they do.

Unfortunately, no photographs of these bodies to which I refer
have been taken. Observations have been recorded, however, of
their changing light. The changes can be easily explained upon
this hypothesis, but, so far as I know, can not be explained upon
any other.

In one case we had a known star (in Corona) suddenly blazing
out from the ninth magnitude to the second, and almost as sud-
denly going down again. In another star (Nova Cygni) we had
an outburst in a region which observation showed to be without
a star, although I do not know whether any special observation
of that region had been made for the existence of nebula?. Sud-
denly in that part of the heavens a third-magnitude star blazed
out ; this took a very considerable time to die down, as compared
to the first star, in Corona, and ultimately it got down to the tenth
magnitude, and now telescopically it appears as a nebula.

As in condensing these swarms get hotter, they will get brighter
as their volume decreases, and we shall pass from what we term
nebulae to what we term stars. It can not be too strongly insisted
upon that chief among the new ideas introduced by the recent
work is that a great many stars are not stars like the sun, but
simply collections of meteorites, the particles of which may be
probably thirty, forty, or fifty miles apart. Such eddies and sys-
tems, which are not simple, will vary in brightness. In the case
of double nebulae condensing we shall get, as I have already stated,
a periodic variation in light ; and here we have a simple explana-
tion of the facts observed, and hitherto held to be mysterious, in
a large number of variable stars. The " new " stars I have already
referred to are also easily accounted for on the hypothesis of me-
teoric streams.

It may be asked, Why, considering the millions of bodies in
motion capable by this hypothesis of producing them, are not
" new stars " seen more frequently ? The reply is simple : We, as a
rule, deal with the clashing of small streams ; the temperature does

74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not generally exceed that of a comet, probably ; and hence the ac-
tion takes place invisibly to us. Photographic surveys of the heav-
ens often repeated will doubtless give us more numerous records.

We now return to the regularly condensing swarms. In these
the condensation will go on, and the temperature will rise until
the loss by radiation equals the increase of temperature due to the
fall of meteorites upon the continually condensing center. If we
imagine a star to be condensed more and more by the fall of mete-
oritic material upon it, we shall arrive at a time in which, pro-
vided that the supply of material ceases, the increase of tempera-
ture of the star from that reason will also cease, and then will
arise a condition of things in which the heat radiated from the
star will be greater than the heat produced in the body of gas
which is ultimately formed in consequence of the tremendous
temperature caused by the continual fall of meteoritic matter
toward the center.

If it be true that in the nebulae we begin with meteoritic dust-
particles far separate from each other, we must gradually get an
increase of temperature so long as they approach nearer the center
of the swarm by condensation ; and so long as the heat produced
by bombardment is in excess of the loss by radiation, the temper-
ature will increase ; but when the loss by radiation exceeds the
gain by the bombardment we must get a reduction of tempera-
ture. A temperature curve like one of the arches of Westminster
Bridge flattened at the top will illustrate this idea. We have on
the left-hand arm of the curve those bodies in which we get a rise
of temperature due to collisions and to condensation ; along the
top of the curve we have the gradual formation of a globe of gas ;
the gas begins to cool and gradually condenses, until at the lower
end of the right-hand arm of the curve, as a result of the total
action, we get the formation of a body like the earth.

Such a temperature curve has been provisionally divided into
seven parts, and what has been done so far is to show that there
are seven well-defined groups of bodies in space, which may be
located, three on the rising part of the curve, one at the top, and
three on the descending part ; representatives of each of these
groups have been classified and their spectra have been carefully
studied. There is absolutely no difficulty whatever about placing
all the celestial bodies which have been so observed by means of
the spectroscope in one group or the other ; and further, where
the spectroscopic evidence is complete, there is again no difficulty
in dividing these groups into species, just in the same way that
the biologist deals with organic forms. This has already been
done for one group, and in a very few years it will no doubt be
done for more, so that here again we are definitely in the region
of hard, detailed facts.

THE HISTORY OF A STAR. 75

There are two or three points to consider with regard to the
history of a system, so long as it is on the rising part of the curve.
If we begin with globular condensations, such as those first de-
scribed by Sir William Herschel, we shall get, soon after the
initial stage, spiral and irregular intakes, and then these may in
time give place to rings such as we are already familiar with in
a member of our own system; I refer to the rings of Saturn.
Other dust-swarms near which such a system passes will be at-
tracted to it, and in addition to the initial revolving swarm and
its intakes and rings, we shall have a new order of things intro-
duced which we may term comets.

Now the whole history of cometic astronomy goes to show that
no comet can enter such a system as ours without feeling the in-
fluence of the central system in a very remarkable way. We
know from other considerations that the nucleus of such a body
is simply a swarm of meteoritic dust-particles, large or small.

The tail is always produced in a direction opposite to that of
the sun, and by some electrical energy, thermal energy, or what
not ; the result being that something is driven from the swarm of
meteorites in a direction away from the sun. Further, the stuff,
whatever it may be, thus repelled, is brought by the comet from
outer space ; for some of the short-period comets, those that never
leave our system, after they have passed round the sun a few
times, throw out no tail at all.

If this can be universally proved for all comets, this is what
must happen : each central body will, by means of this energy,
place, as it were, a cordon round itself, inside of which no such
matter can remain as is thus driven off from comets and produces
the phenomena of a tail ; and if it be ever possible to state the
chemical nature of a comet's tail, the particular substances re-
pelled by this central energy will be known. It looks as if the
tails may consist, to a large extent, of the gases which exist in
meteorites, and which can be driven out of them at not very high
temperatures. Seeing that these are thrown off with great veloci-
ty and shine through millions of miles in the depths of space, it is
not likely that we are dealing with any such condensable sub-
stances as the vapors of iron, magnesium, or any other metal.
This consideration may help us eventually in the chemistry of
the repelling body.

These revolving dust-swarms, as they increase their temper-
ature, will go through the same temperature changes as other
non-revolving ones. The existence of comets drawn into our sys-
tem from without, composed, like the nebula?, of meteoritic dust,
enables us to subject the view we are now considering to a very
crucial test.

We know that the temperature of comets is increased, chiefly,

76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it has "been supposed, by tidal action, as they approach the sun ;
because such an action must make a considerable difference in
the movements of the particles of the swarm nearer the sun, as
compared to those farther away from it ; we know, in any case,
by their increased light, that the temperature of comets does in-
crease considerably as the sun is approached. It has been shown
that many of the phenomena presented by comets, which are
acknowledged to be clouds of meteoritic particles in the solar
system, are identical with those presented by nebula? and stars
in space ; hence the hypothesis now under consideration, which
affirms the nebulae to be also clouds of meteoritic dust, is greatly
strengthened. Indeed, if the facts had not been found to be as I
have stated them, the hypothesis would have been worth nothing.

I should here add that the recent work has shown how right
Schiaparelli was, when, in 1866, he stated that comets were nebu-
lous masses drawn into the solar system.

The top of what we agreed to call the temperature curve may
now be considered. We have dealt with the ascending arm of it,
and referred to the groups I, II, and III. In these groups there
was evidence to show that, under normal conditions, we were
dealing with orders of celestial bodies in which the temperature
was gradually increasing, in consequence of the continual nearing
of the constituent meteorites in the swarm due to collisions and
gravitation.

It may be convenient that I should very briefly give, even at
the risk of being charged with repetition, a normal case carrying
us up to the top of the curve. For that purpose we may con-
tent ourselves by considering those globular and elliptic nebulas
first recorded by Sir "William Herschel in the last century. In
these there is evidence of different stages of condensation ; in one
series first of all something which is hardly visible is noted, and
the end of that series consists of a dim, diffused, globular mass.
In another we pass from the minimum gradually into another
form of condensation, in which the luminosity increases toward
the center. In still another series the condensation toward the
center goes as it were by jumps, so that finally what appears to be
a nebulous star with a surrounding of very nearly equal density
is seen. Passing from these forms we come to elliptic nebula?,
which doubtless indicate a further condensation of those forms
which, in the first instance, are globular. We have already be-
come familiar with a representative of these elliptic nebula? in
that of Andromeda, as it has been revealed to us by the magnifi-
cent photograph taken by Mr. Roberts. In connection with such
an elliptic figure we often get clear indications of spirals.

A further condensation then will no doubt land us among stars
having a peculiar and special spectrum ; indeed, though they ap-

THE HISTORY OF A STAR. 77

pear as stars in our telescopes, their spectrum closely resembles
that of the nebula. Going still further — still increasing the con-
densation, still increasing the temperature — the region of stars
properly so called is reached, until at last we find those which are
represented at the top of the curve. These results have been ar-
rived at by spectroscopic work, and the facts recorded have been
the chemical changes which take place in these swarms as their
temperature increases, from the most sparse condition at the bot-
tom of the curve to the most condensed one at the top.

In the sparsest swarms, in the so-called nebulse, and those
which are so dim as to be with difficulty visible, indications are
found of the so far unknown substance or substances to which I
have referred at the beginning of this article, together with car-
bon and hydrogen, and, in all probability, magnesium, one of the
most common metals in meteorites, which has a bright spectrum
visible at a low temperature ; though I should add that the visible
presence of magnesium has recently been contested. Its visible
presence or absence, however, is not of fundamental importance.
As the temperature increases, we find carbon more abundant,
and traces of manganese and lead, metals which volatilize at a
low temperature.

The next greatest change that supervenes is the addition of
more familiar indications of the metals magnesium, manganese,
and sodium, while the spaces between the meteorites glow more
intensely with the light of hydrogen and carbon, probably brought
about by some electrical action. Here the sparseness is still so
great that we have little to do with the absorption of light ; we
simply deal with incandescent vapors due to the high temperature
brought about by collisions among the meteorites and to the glow
of the gases between the meteorites. But although the particles
of meteoritic dust are so far apart that there is no possibility of
any obvious absorption of their light occurring at this stage, to
any large extent, the story is soon changed, for, when real conden-
sation begins, the light of the meteoritic dust itself is absorbed by
the vapors produced at low temperatures which lie between each
particle of dust and our eyes. The whole theory of absorption is
dependent upon the fact that light must come from the light-
source through a vapor which is cooler than the light-source
itself.

Thus we get a clear indication that, when this stage is reached,
the meteoritic dust is very much closer together, and is on this
account capable of forming a background enabling us to see these
light-absorption phenomena. Absorption of light by the vapors
of substances known to exist in meteorites, such as manganese
and lead, is the first to occur, and these absorption phenomena
gradually preponderate, and indicate change from low to high

78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

temperature, till finally the main absorption of light is caused by
hydrogen and iron. Toward the top of the curve we get hydrogen
enormously developed. It seems that we deal with a greater and
greater quantity of hydrogen as the temperature gets higher.

Side by side with this sequence in the case of stars, a similar
one up to a certain point is noted in the comets. As a rule the
temperature of comets is, as we should expect, very much below
that reached by stars. There is, therefore, no overwhelming indi-
cation of light-absorption, and it is only in those which closely
approach the sun that any indication of the absorption of light
caused by the presence of iron vapor is to be seen. A comparison
of the spectra observed gives a clear indication that the nature of
comets and nebulae, so far as the spectroscope can seize them, is
very similar : the phenomena present themselves in the same
order ; a line common to both begins the story, and then bright
carbon is found among the first substances indicated, and after-
ward absorption phenomena, produced by manganese and lead
chiefly, it is supposed, are superadded.

After this cometary parenthesis I now return to consider the
top of the temperature curve. I repeat that we have this sort of
condition. The swarms, whether single or multiple in origin,
have by collisions and gravity brought about the highest point
of temperature which they can reach in consequence of these
actions. Swarms of separate meteorites now give place to a
globular mass of gas produced by their volatilization. It may
be that this very high temperature may be produced, and this
enormous globular mass of gas formed, long before all the mete-
orites and meteoritic dust in the parent swarm, or in that partic-
ular region of space, shall be absolutely condensed to the center ;
so that we see it is quite possible that this high temperature con-
dition may last for a very long time. Hence the curve should be
flat-topped — in all probability very flat — for, so far as the spec-
trum analysis of stars has gone at present, more than half of
those which have been examined give us evidence of extremely
high temperature. However that may be, it is easily to be under-
stood that such a mass as that we are considering must be radiat-
ing with tremendous energy ; for a time probably the heat which
it receives by the collisions and condensation of the outer mem-
bers of the parent swarm may be as great as the heat which it
radiates, and under these conditions the average temperature of
the gas will remain constant ; but the moment the input is less
than the output the mass of gas must cool, so that we have next
to consider what will happen to a mass of gas cooling under these
circumstances.

What will cool first ? The outside. We know pretty well the
chemical nature of the outside of the mass of gas we are dealing

THE HISTORY OF A STAR.

79

with ; we are practically dealing with a cooling globe of which
the exterior absorbing layers consist of hydrogen, iron, magne-
sium, and sodium. And now perhaps it will be obvious why I
was anxious in this general statement to begin as near as I could at
the beginning of things. It is only by going back in that way that
it is possible to explain this enormous development of hydrogen
in the hottest stars. We saw that first one or perhaps two un-
known substances — together with hydrogen, carbon, magnesium,
manganese, lead, and iron — wrote their record in the spectrum,
and that finally hydrogen was present in excess in the hottest
stars. By the phenomena of comets it has been demonstrated
that the radiant energy of our sun, and therefore the radiant
energy of all other masses of equal temperature to our sun, drives,
in all probability, everything of the nature of a permanent gas,
like hydrogen or carbon compounds, away from the center of the
system. Thus we may possibly explain the absence of oxygen and
carbon from the sun ; but hydrogen is present. The unknown sub-
stance or substances are concerned in most of the actions which
take place in the hottest parts of the sun, and they are always as-
sociated with hydrogen. In the atmospheres of the hottest stars,
again, hydrogen is enormously developed. Now that hydrogen, we
have reason to believe, can not have passed the cordon to which I
referred. The only supposition is that it and the unknown sub-
stances have as such been produced by the dissociation of the
chemical elements of which the meteoritic particles which have
formed the star in the manner I have indicated are composed.
Here, then, we have a series of facts which add very great proba-
bility to the idea which has been arrived at on other grounds, that
the chemical elements themselves are forms of hydrogen, or have

a common origin.

On the right-hand part of the temperature curve the hottest
state of things is represented at the top and the coolest at the bot-
tom, and we pass through groups IV, V, and VI. As the temper-
ature runs down, the hydrogen gradually disappears ; as this hap-
pens in a mass of gas, the temperature of which is gradually but
constantly reduced, we can only suppose that it is used to form
something else. We get association due to reduced temperature
in the same way that we get dissociation due to increasing tem-
perature. The sun is a star just about half-way down the descend-
ing side of the curve ; we know on other grounds that the sun is
cooling.

The next part of the story is this : with decreasing hydrogen
we get gradually associated an increasing quantity of the metallic
elements (group V), and subsequently of carbon ; but now the car-
bon vapors are absorbing, they are not radiating — in other words,
the spectrum includes dark bands instead of bright ones, as they

80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were on the other side of the curve. The light of the star is grad-
ually blotted out by an enormous quantity of carbon compounds
in some form or other, till at last the star gets blood-red (group
VI), and finally is lost to human ken. The solar atmosphere at
present contains chiefly iron, calcium, and other similar metals,
but the hydrogen is disappearing, and there is possibly the slight-
est trace of carbon, but that trace is so small as to be somewhat
doubtful. The composition of the sun's atmosphere at present is,
moreover, almost identical with that of a mixture of meteorites
driven into vapor by a strong electric current, and, if we except
hydrogen, there is scarcely a line of any importance in the spec-
trum of the one which is not represented in the spectrum of the
other. Calcium, aluminium, iron, manganese, and certain lines of
nickel and other substances, are present. By means of such ex-
periments as this, the wonderfully close connection between the
gases at present existing in the atmosphere of the sun and the
gases obtained from the volatilization of meteorites is put before
us in the clearest and most convincing manner.

With regard to the fact that carbon comes in and takes the
place of highest importance in the atmospheres of these cooling
bodies, it is worth while to remark that if, as seems possible, these
permanent gaseous compounds of carbon with different substances
like oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen, and probably hydrogen itself,
are kept away from the swarm during its condensation by that
form of radiant energy of the center which is evidenced in the
case of the sun by its tail-producing action on comets, it is easy
to imagine that when that radiant energy is reduced, the carbon
compounds will gradually approach the central body, until at
length the flickering energy is no longer able to keep these per-
manent gases away, and then the surroundings of the central
body are invaded by these gases in such tremendous quantity
that an absorption is produced which first turns the cooler star
blood-red, and finally blots it out.

There are several very interesting questions connected with
this. Suppose, for instance, that we attempt to discuss the future
of that magnificent nebula in Andromeda, the true structure of
which Mr. Roberts has recently revealed to us. It is already sus-
pected that the two subsidiary swarms partake of the motion and
form a part of the system. Those smaller swarms will naturally
condense before the larger ones. Let us imagine ourselves no
longer dealing with anything so far away, but with the solar sys-
tem when it was in that stage. The central sun having this cor-
don round it can only be formed of those substances which are not
repelled by its radiant energy ; it will, therefore, be chiefly a mass
of metallic vapor. The masses near it for the same reason will
be also chiefly of metallic vapors, and their density will be high ;

THE HISTORY OF A STAR. 8i

those farther away will be less metallic. Bit by bit, in the case of
the interior bodies, we shall have these permanent gases coming
back again, and more carbon will be added to their superficial
layers ; those bodies also must condense before the central one.

If we consider the conditions of the outer condensations, they
must be particularly rich in permanent gases. We shall, there-
fore, get in the case the outer bodies excessively small density,
and probably associated with that only the very sparse presence
of these metals which have been alone allowed to penetrate toward
the center, because their vapors can condense.

Our sun must ultimately go through the stage in which its
absorption will be due no longer to hydrogen, or to iron, but to
carbon, chiefly by virtue of the process which has been referred
to ; and eventually, as its radiant energy gets less and less, as it
gets cooler and dimmer, the last speck of blood-red sunlight will
be put out by an excess of carbon vapors in its atmosphere.

That is what must have happened to our own earth. It is a
very interesting question indeed to attempt to determine at what
period of the sun's history a solid crust was formed on the planet
on which we dwell. It looks very much as if the consolidation of
the earth may have preceded the highest point of temperature of
the sun — that is to say, that the earth may have reached a condi-
tion closely resembling its present one at the time the sun occu-
pied the apex of the temperature curve to which reference has
been made.

In any case the high density of the earth, compared with the
density of its crust (the enormous quantity of silicon and oxygen
and carbon near the crust having an entirely different specific
gravity from the specific gravity of the earth taken as a whole),
seems to follow as a matter of course from these considerations.

I trust it will be seen that the hypothesis we have been consid-
ering supplies us with an orderly progression of meteoritic dust
through heat conditions produced by collisions till finally a cool
mass is produced ; that this orderly progression brings about all
the known phenomena of the heavens on its way, and simply and
sufficiently explains them. But, though much of the mystery is
gone, all the majesty is left — indeed, to my mind it is vastly in-
creased. It seems as if the working out of the meteoritic idea
will entirely justify Kant's conviction that the physical side of
the science of the universe would in the future reach the same de-
gree of perfection to which Newton had in his time brought the
mathematical side. — Nineteenth Century.

[Note. — In the foregoing remarkable paper the well-known astronomical author and

authority, Prof. Lockyer, demonstrates, by a process of observation and reasoning which

carries conviction with it at almost every step, the evolution of all the numberless kinds

of matter, from the most primary form or substance recognizable by our senses, assisted

vol. xxxviii. — 6

82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by the finest and most delicate instrumental adjuncts and physical testings, with which
we are acquainted. Of this primary something — appearing as a flocculent mass or nebu-
losity floating in space — all that we can now say is, that it appears to be hydrogen or
some other closely allied substance. Further curdled, or condensed to a degree sufficient to
permit its light to be subjected to spectrum analysis, the presence of many of the terrestrial
elements — as oxygen, magnesium, iron, carbon, silicon, sulphur, and the like — is revealed
to us, apparently associated with the hydrogen in the form of infinitely fine dust; and -the
evidence and reasoning are to the effect that, from the further and continued condensation
and chemical action of this gas and cosmical dust, the condensed nebula, nebulous suns,
other suns, planets, and all other forms of associated matter with which we are acquainted,
have originated. Like a true scientist, Prof. Lockyer stops here, and does not attempt to
go beyond the legitimate scope of scientific observation and deduction. He indeed assumes
that this primary matter is endowed with motion, and that the force of gravitation is also
present and potential ; because it is impossible to conceive of the existence of matter in
space free from these qualities. He does not raise the question how the hydrogen, the in-
finitely fine dust, the qualities of motion and the force of gravitation originated ; and the
problem of original creation, although removed further back as it were, remains as inscrut-
able and unanswerable as ever. Nay, more than this, he does not raise the most interesting
and startling theme of speculation suggested by this revelation of stellar and matter evo-
lution, which is this: Of this primal form of matter — the beginning of the history of
cosmical evolution — one of two things must be true. Either associated with this dust and
gas from the beginning were the germs of all the vital and mental energy that have since
manifested themselves in connection with matter, or they were not. If the affirmative is
true, then vital and mental energy, or what we may term life, was associated with inorganic
matter — in an active or latent state — from the beginning. If the negative is the case,
then the vital and mental forces or germs have been subsequently introduced or imparted
from without. And if so, when and where was the bridge by which matter, life, and spirit
were brought into association constructed ? There must have been a time and place in
cosmical history ! A time and place in the process of evolution ! If cosmical dust and
associated hydrogen, in condensing into nebula and suns, are subjected to heat of a greater
degree of intensity than anything within the range of^human experience, as all astronomers
seem to be agreed, it is certain that nothing organic could have existed concurrently; and
there is, therefore, hardly a shadow of evidence that inorganic matter, especially after
having been subjected to incandescence, could ever have originated even protoplasm, by
mere association of atoms. The evidence would therefore seem to be strongly adverse to
the idea of any original association of the vital principle with matter. — Editor.]

-♦♦♦-

SOME LESSONS FROM BARBARISM.

Br ELAINE GOODALE.

IN the course of several years' conscientious effort to civilize
those barbarians within our borders — the American Indians — I
have been unwillingly impressed by the fact that barbarism offers
several points of evident superiority to our civilization. It is well
known that whole tribes of Indians— indeed, all of them to some
extent — have been demoralized and degraded by contact with the
lowest whites, and are no longer fair types of the barbarian.
A few others have been transformed by schools and lands in
severalty into commonplace farming communities, with no very
striking features of their own. Let us consider briefly the pe-

SOME LESSONS FROM BARBARISM. 83

culiar customs and habits of thought of the wilder tribes of
Sioux — a strong, typical aboriginal race — and let us not be
afraid or ashamed to admit that barbarism has valuable lessons
for civilization.

The first thing about them to attract the attention of a stranger
would probably be their dress. The ignorant and narrow-minded
sneer at it because it is unlike the one to which they are accustomed
— to them it is nothing but " savage finery." The cosmopolitan
observer, who recognizes the real superiority of most of the " na-
tional costumes " of European and Asiatic countries to that con-
ventional standard — ugly, extravagant, and unhygienic — which
seems unhappily destined to supplant them — this man perceives
immediately the beauty and propriety of the Indian's dress.

The blanket is convenient, comfortable, and eminently grace-
ful. The fringed buckskin hunting-shirt, leggings, and mocca-
sins have been approved and adopted for more than a century by
the intelligent frontiersman, as the best thing possible for the
hunter in color, cut, and material. The moccasin especially is ac-
knowledged to be the most perfect foot-covering ever invented.
Absolutely comfortable, ornamental, and appropriate, it is worn
very commonly by white men, and women too, who have to do
with Indians or live near them, and it is the last article of native
dress which the " civilized " Indian unwillingly resigns.

The loose, scant robe of the women, with wide flowing sleeves,
is almost exactly similar to the well-known Japanese dress, and it
is therefore unnecessary to affirm that it is pretty, modest, delight-
fully comfortable, and ingeniously adapted to the necessities of a
primitive existence. I have myself worn it in the wilderness with
complete satisfaction, and know by experience how fully it meets
the various exigencies of camp life. It requires only five yards of
calico, and can be made in two hours ! Oh for the ease and free-
dom, physical, mental, and moral, of a fixed standard of feminine
dress which neither deforms, exaggerates, indelicately displays,
nor ridiculously cumbers the female form — a dress suitable for all
women upon every occasion, and requiring small outlay of time or
money or thought! What we all really admire is the healthy,
beautiful woman — not the elaborate toilet — and a bit of artistic
coloring or graceful lines of drapery are as attainable in a five-
cent calico as in a five-dollar brocade.

Another lesson, which many over-civilized people are already
learning, is that of outdoor life — life close to Nature. Does not
he who "camps out" all summer in the Adirondacks or on the
sea-beaches become for the time being a healthy and happy sav-
age ? It is scarcely worth while to expatiate upon the sanitary
virtues of camp life — as much for the mind as for the body. Every
really natural, vigorous, live, thinking person dreads the enervat-

84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing effects of our artificial indoor existence, in overheated, over-
furnished rooms, at luxurious, appetite-destroying tables, and
longs for and if possible obtains for himself, during at least a few
weeks out of the year, a life mainly on horseback or afoot, at the
oar or in the surf; a fine savage hunger, appeased by few and
plain dishes ; an apotheosis of sleep on a bed of balsam in the tent,
or in a hammock under the stars !

So much being granted, it is to be remembered that the Indian
can give the white man innumerable " points " on the manner and
method of " camping out." Instinctively, or perhaps we should
say because of generations of training, he knows the best way to
do everything. He is never careless, bungling, or ignorant ; but
deliberate, systematic, and exact to a degree which is the despair
of the uninstructed pale-face. He shrinks neither from danger
nor exertion in the pursuit of his ends, yet he never for a moment
submits to unnecessary discomfort.

In the Dakota lodge we have the perfection of a canvas house,
as was practically admitted when it was made the model for the
Sibley army tent, now in such general use. Of course, the origi-
nal lodge of tanned buffalo-hide was warmer and more durable
and more completely water-proof ; but even now that this is unat-
tainable, the conical tent of the Dakotas remains the best that has
been devised. I have tried them all, and nothing would induce me
to use any other. It is more roomy and convenient and a thou-
sand times prettier, because of its circular form, than a " wall-tent,"
besides being less liable to blow over in a high wind. It is per-
fectly ventilated as well as warmed by the central fire with its
opening above ; and the chimney-flaps, which are regulated accord-
ing to the direction of the wind, carry off all the smoke. It can
be turned in a few moments into a cool, shady awning in hot
weather, and instantly made almost storm-proof in case of a sud-
den thunder-shower. The women are adepts at making and
breaking camp in the shortest possible time. I have ridden into
camp in a cold, drenching rain, at dark ; and almost as soon as I
had contrived with stiffened limbs to dismount from my pony,
remove the saddle and bridle, and picket him out, the tepee
would be up, beds arranged, a fire made, water fetched, and sup-
per under way — in short, the height of cozy comfort awaiting me.

The men are equally apt at calculating distances, predicting
weather, selecting a camping-ground, discovering water in un-
likely places, tracking men or animals — in short, in every variety
of woodcraft and plainscraft. Both men and women know how
to make available a hundred products of nature of which no
white man has ever learned the use. They can build a fire in a
treeless country, obtain food from the barren wastes in unex-
pected forms — it may be of a small land-turtle or hidden water-

SOME LESSONS FROM BARBARISM. 85

weed — and nearly every leaf or herb, it appears, can be smoked, or
steeped, or smelled of, or lias some medicinal or edible quality.
They are skillful in cooking even such articles of food as they
have borrowed from us ; and I should never expect, while camp-
ing with white people, to taste such admirable hot biscuit as the
Indian women will bake on a bed of coals in a common frying-
pan, or to see coffee browned and prepared with such dexterity
and dispatch.

Indians scrupulously respect the rights of the individual to
his personal possessions, and to such privacy as is possible in tent
life. Each member of the party has his own bed, seat, and espe-
cial corner of the tepee, upon which no other ever intrudes, unless
compelled by the exigencies of hospitality ; and each one keeps
his own blankets, clothing, arms, and ornaments in exactly the
same place, with reference to the door of the lodge, and observes
the same order in packing and repacking throughout the trip.
Although the household utensils may be few in number, each has
its proper function, and they are much less likely to be promiscu-
ously devoted to various uses than is the disorderly camp equipage
of the average white man. Every night the moccasins are neatly
mended, and the harness, if any part has given way, repaired in
such fashion as to be stronger than before — the little work-bag,
containing awls, sinews, and strips of buckskin, is every house-
wife's companion — and it may be added that bathing is frequently
indulged in and garments washed at lake or river side at very
short intervals.

Although we have barely touched upon some of the practical
lessons to be learned from the savage, we will turn from these to
deeper and fundamental questions of social and political organiza-
tion. Do we really believe that the framework of our modern
society is solidly and honestly built ? Do we not condemn in al-
most unqualified terms its false standards, artificial distinctions,
and ridiculous elaborations of purely conventional laws ? I do
not want to be misunderstood as saying that there is nothing ar-
tificial or conventional in the social system of our typical barba-
rian ; this would not be strictly true : nevertheless, it is refreshing
to dwell among a comparatively simple people — a people whose
etiquette is easily learned and based upon an instinctive sense of
propriety ; who know no prearranged division into classes ; whose
every-day hospitality is not determined by the desire for or the
ability to afford display, but solely by the actual need of the
chance guest. It is delightful to hear people come straight to the
point, tell home truths, talk frankly and ask frank questions, call
a spade a spade, and be as unconscious as a child of any possible
motive for doing otherwise. A naive curiosity, a strong sense of
humor, a childlike abandon to the simple pleasures of the hour,

86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a responsive and receptive quality of mind, and real courtesy
of manner, are all characteristic of our barbarian in bis hours of
social relaxation. He has his faults, but these are always en
evidence : what we have determined for once frankly to consider
is, not what the poor Indian lacks, but in what he actually sur-
passes us.

I scarcely dare to go deeper, and to compare the modified form
of communism and the exceedingly simple mode of government
which prevails among these Indians with our political system, so
heartily abused and so earnestly defended. It has occurred to me,
nevertheless, that the college-bred Indian, the product of our
nineteenth-century forcing process for savages, might study with
no little wonder and dismay the modern writers on dress-reform,
and the enthusiastic advocates of an outdoor life ; that he might
find his brain begin to whirl as he rose upon the topmost wave of
progress, and discovered in Henry George, in Edward Bellamy, in
Tolstoi, that the prophets of the new era were trying to make the
world unlearn all that it had so recently taught him, and that
their red-hot schemes of reformation bore many of the familiar
features of that effete " barbarism " which he had so painfully dis-
carded.

Is it barely possible, after all, that the fundamental equality
of man, the necessity of equalizing burdens and benefits, the grace
to " judge not " and to " give to him that asketh," in the Tolstoian
sense, are some of the lessons to be learned from barbarism ?

-♦♦*-

THE USE OF ALCOHOL IN MEDICINE.*

By A. G. BAETLEY, M. D., M. E. C. S.

MY opinion is adverse to the use of alcohol, and I might pro-
ceed to give grounds for this opinion ; statistics, quota-
tions from authorities, as well as facts, I might supply myself, so
as to make my paper more or less exhaustive. My aim is, how-
ever, less ambitious. I have called my paper a contribution
merely. It is, in short, an account of certain incidents in my ex-
perience which bear upon the question; and these I relate as
briefly as possible and in the order of their occurrence. I will
begin by relating an incident which first directed my attention
to this subject, and which will show that I had taken up a strong
ground in this controversy even before I was aware there was
such a controversy at all.

* A paper entitled " A Contribution toward the Discussion of the Employment of
Alcohol in Medicine," read before the iEsculapian Medical Society. Eeprinted from the
London Lancet.

THE USE OF ALCOHOL IN MEDICINE. S7

After I took my degree in medicine I passed at once into the
army, and my first cases of independent medical practice were
in a battery of artillery in the Punjab. After a year or so with
this corps I served two years in an infantry regiment without a
senior surgeon, all this time acting to the best of my lights, but
entirely independent and uncontrolled. At the end of this
period, and about my fifth year of service, a senior surgeon joined
the regiment with power of superintendence. He was an able
and a kind man, and it was not at all in a spirit of unfriendliness
that, going into dinner one night, he said to me, " I was in your
ward this afternoon and found a bad case of delirium tremens in
which you had omitted to order stimulants; however, I have
made it all right." I replied, " I have no case of delirium tre-
mens at present." He said, " Yes, a bad case, which will prob-
ably not survive, and so you had better take care." After some
consideration I at length made out the case he referred to, and
replied, " That man has no delirium tremens and will certainly
be at duty in a week." We thus had a difference of opinion. I
begged him, however, to leave the case in my hands, which he
did, and the man was at duty in fair health in a week. It was,
in fact, a discovery to him, an old soldier, that delirium tremens
could be treated successfully without stimulants; and, I must
add, it was a discovery to me that, although I knew there was
such a disease in the regiment, I had actually treated cases of the
ailment myself without knowing it. That delirium tremens can
be, and ought to be, treated without stimulants is now a common-
place of practice. I speak of the year 18CG. At that time the
treatment consisted chiefly in administration of stimulants and
opium, and I take no great credit to myself for breaking away
from the traditions of the profession. I simply did not treat the
disease by name. It would now be called " alcoholic poisoning."
I looked on recovery as a matter of course, recorded the case as
debility, sometimes from drunkenness, but more generally omitted
the remark as likely to draw down the attention of the command-
ing officer to the offender. On the occurrence of the above incident,
however, my attention was directed to the subject. I continued
my treatment. My two colleagues continued theirs, and, although
we were seldom without a case of delirium tremens, no case of
any severity occurred among my patients. I need not say that
the matter was often warmly debated. In those days Aitken's
Practice of Physic was, as it still is, the chief authority in the
medical service, and it was with keen delight that in the new
edition of that year I found the treatment of this disease laid
down : that, as it proceeded from an irritation of the nervous
system by alcohol, the first condition of cure was to remove the
cause, to forbid alcohol, and to give food in all possible ways, as

88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the patients were dying of starvation — in fact, the treatment I
had been pursuing. Aided by this book, I had the pleasure of
making a convert of my senior.

The next three years are barren of incident. I served in the
Channel Islands the greater part of the time with a battery about
one hundred strong, and quite isolated. After this I returned to
India, and was put in medical charge of the Artillery Division at
Mooltan. It was in this station that I studied the heat fever, in
which I was led to adopt a modification of treatment, which in-
cluded, I may add, an avoidance of alcohol. I early made ob-
servation of another troublesome and prevalent Indian ailment —
diarrhoea. Patients admitted to hospital with diarrhoea very
rapidly recovered by dietetic means alone, and without drugs.
The climate of the Punjab is dry, very different from that of
Bengal, where, we know, diarrhoea does not always tend to cure
itself. In truth, the diarrhoea was curative, proceeding from
some improper ingesta, very frequently a symptom of alcoholic
poisoning. On coming to hospital, milk and arrowroot were
given as diet, and, with rest and quiet, in a day or two the
man was well. Similarly among the children diarrhoea, which
was in any case rare, proceeded from something unwholesome
they had eaten, or from fever. That arising from the former
cause cured itself, and fevers in the hospital, cooled artificially,
quiet, and darkened, seldom lasted over the second day. So that
a child brought to hospital almost insensible with vomiting and
diarrhoea would be quite lively next day, and without any special
treatment other than cold applications. Thus, in addition to
delirium tremens, which was very rare, two other important In-
dian diseases, diarrhoea and heat fever, were treated by sanitary
measures, any drugs employed being mere adjuncts, and alcohol
would only have marred the cure.

There were many cases of acute chest disease in the cold
weather. On admission to hospital, they had plainly one thing
in common with those suffering from alcohol: they were ex-
hausted from sheer want of food. It was the first and main point
of my treatment that this should be met by prompt feeding, most
generally by repeated cupfuls of arrowroot and milk. I gave
niter or other neutral alkaline salt, and morphine for hacking
cough. The tongue began to clean at once and the temperature
to fall, and the haggard and worn patient got refreshing sleep
and began to convalesce. In fact, the cases ran parallel with the
former ailments I have mentioned, and I soon ceased to employ
with them any form of alcohol. They usually passed through a
crisis, sometimes extremely severe. The temperature became
subnormal — at least, as evidenced by the thermometer ; the face
shrunken, with feeble pulse. My practice was, at first, to give

THE USE OF ALCOHOL IN MEDICINE. 89

hot wine and water in this stage. However, I found that the
stage was very transitory, and that hot milk and water was quite
as restorative ; the patient soon went to sleep, and normal warmth
returned.

Hepatic disease is not so frequent in the Punjab as it is found
down country, nor by any means so severe. I can not recollect
any deaths due to it directly during my stay, or any case of
hepatic abscess. Minor congestions and enlargements were a fre-
quent cause of sickness and invaliding. The treatment a few
years earlier consisted in blistering, stimulants, and a mercurial
course. Some time in 1863 a surgeon in Burmah, whose name I
can not now recall, recommended ammonium chloride. This I
tried, and thought it acted very favorably. About 1866 an im-
mense change for the better was brought about by the introduc-
tion of podophyllin. It was called the vegetable mercury, hav-
ing quite supplanted that metal, which indeed became on all
hands, in all diseases, quite decried. At the time I now refer to
(1870) I began to discontinue the use of podophyllin in hepatic
disease, finding Epsom salts far more active and rapid in effects.
I remember getting the idea from a translation in the Sydenham
Society series of some German researches on the effect of certain
saline springs, and made for myself an artificial mineral water.
This, the equivalent of the present white mixture, eased the pain
and reduced the size of the liver, a fact we are now familiar
with, but which was then to me a real discovery. After a few
days of this treatment the patients were very much the same as
convalescents from chest disease. They needed time and rest
and suitable food — in short, nursing — and had a chance of re-
gaining health. Hepatic disease is, however, ineradicable. It
soon recurs in the great heat of the climate and in men not very
abstemious, and few once ailing with it serve long in hot
climates.

Thus, in one after the other of these important diseases, expe-
rience was altogether against the employment of alcohol. It
must be borne in mind that I began with no theory. I gave alco-
hol in pneumonia and hepatitis, while rigidly withholding it in
fever and diarrhoea. I delayed the alcohol, however, in those
diseases to a later stage, until the temperature was nearly nor-
mal, and at length discontinued it altogether, finding that it re-
tarded the cure and prolonged convalescence. I lost some cases,
of course, and, among others, one from delirium tremens — an old
soldier, who had frequently suffered before — and it was at first a
matter of great pain to me to think that, if I had followed the
usual routine of treatment, the cases might have ended differ-
ently. My colleagues, I knew, would probably have held so.
However, my confidence revived in watching their practice. I

9o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

had not the mortality or the severity of forms of disease in the
hospitals around me. I have seen two waiting men attending on
delirious cases, holding the patients in their beds, and preventing
their injuring themselves, just as I have seen in the old regiment
typical cases of delirium tremens ; but I had no such cases, and I
had no doubt then, nor have I now, that the delirium arose from
the free use of stimulants combined with want of food.

After the regimental system had been abolished I found my-
self superseded in charge of the corps of artillery with which I
had served four years, and was attached to a regiment of in-
fantry. The surgeon-major in charge went on leave soon after
I joined, and as I was the next senior, according to the new regu-
lations I assumed charge, although quite a new comer. It was
then for the first time I became aware how much I had diverged
from the ordinary practice — at least as it was then in the service.
The surgeon of the regiment next in rank to myself soon after I
joined consulted me about a bad case of hepatitis, with high
fever, foul tongue, and diarrhoea. He had given a variety of
drugs, which I do not remember. I found, however, that he was
giving large quantities of food : jugged hare, strong soups, and
six or eight ounces of port wine daily. I said I thought the man
was getting too much food to digest, recommended milk diet, to
stop the wine, and give salines. He replied, to my astonishment,

in a nervous way, he would ask his opinion. Now this man

he mentioned was only a short time in the country. He was ten
years my junior, and six or seven years his junior. I said no
more, and went about my business. A few days afterward, how-
ever, the matter cropped up again, and he spoke with an aston-
ishing degree of bitterness on the subject. He said he had once
before met a man with these views, and he proceeded to refer to
a case of mine which he had visited for me on the previous day
as likely to die of hectic from want of support. I pointed out to
him reasons why the ailment was not hectic, and assured him the
man was not in danger. In truth, my case was severe Peshawur
fever which resisted quinine, and the diagnosis was doubtful,
as the man had originally come to hospital for treatment of a
stricture. And, I may add, the man did not die. I saw him often
years afterward at Woolwich. I was greatly surprised at the
degree of irritation this surgeon displayed, and became aware
that the administration or withholding of alcohol was not merely
a scientific question, but one for faith and belief, with strong
feeling attached thereto. His case of hepatic disease died; so
did at least one other in the two months I had charge of the regi-
ment. My colleague did not again seek my advice in his diffi-
culties, and he was clearly not converted, for, I regret to say, he
died himself from the disease in the following hot weather.

THE USE OF ALCOHOL IX MEDICINE. 91

A few months after my transfer to this regiment I came home
in a troop-ship, and there again my divergence of treatment left
me utterly isolated. I was third in order of seniority on board,
and was put in medical charge of the women and children. It
was the last troop-ship of the season, and carried only invalids
and soldiers' families. Of the latter there were about seventy,
with an average of perhaps two children in each. On the day
after leaving Bombay a case of measles was found on board. I
took the case into hospital, and every precaution to isolate it was
adopted — unavailing, however. The sixth day afterward six cases
were reported. After another six days thirty more were found
infected and put under treatment ; and I think that every child
on board passed through the disease. The only number I can
now recollect is that, after discharging all convalescents, thirty-
six cases were sent to Haslar Hospital on arrival at Portsmouth.
There must have been from eighty to one hundred cases in all.
All these I treated myself in the hospital, restricting myself to
this duty at first with the idea of isolation, afterward in order to
control the treatment, for which I was personally responsible. I
gave no stimulants, and met every case of high temperature
promptly by wet towels to the chest and abdomen, and by giving
for food very dilute Swiss milk ad libitum. This treatment met
with deep disapproval on the part of the mothers, who were all
strangers to me, and accustomed to very different treatment.
Toward the end of the voyage I found the women were not un-
supported in their disapproval. They carried their complaints
to the various officers commanding detachments, and thus offi-
cially to my senior, the surgeon-major in charge. Now this sur-
geon-major had been unlucky. He had treated only two chil-
dren on board, one of them his own son. They were both dead,
whereas I had lost no cases, and so, although there was a differ-
ence of opinion between us, I had not much difficulty in arrang-
ing that the treatment should be left entirely in my hands. I
will summarize the result. I was the only medical officer on
board who gave no alcohol. I treated personally the largest
number of cases, and I alone lost no patients. Moreover, of three
children who died on board, two, as I have said, were treated by
the senior medical officer, and the third by my assistant. I will
give particulars of this, as it is a most illustrative case. It was
not a case of measles, and was treated by him in the women's
quarters, and I first heard of it when he told me the child was
dying. I asked him to let me try to save it, which he gladly did.
I put it in hospital with my measles cases. I stopped the wine,
very much to its mother's disgust, stayed with it almost an hour,
feeding it with milk and water, which it took greedily, and left
it fully assured it was out of danger. The child lived for a week,

g2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and was slowly improving. I gave it no drugs, as it had no
symptoms. At the end of this time I told my assistant, whose
patient it had nominally remained, to take it again to the quar-
ters, as the hospital had become so crowded. He did so, and, not-
withstanding all he had seen of my practice, he put the child at
once on brandy, and it died in a few hours. I will make no fur-
ther comment on these occurrences except to say that perhaps a
more crucial experiment could not be devised.

I reached Portsmouth in April, and expected to find the alco-
hol question a matter of keen debate in England. I need not say
I was in this disappointed. I found matters running in the old
groove. This is several years ago. We know matters are now
righting themselves. To continue. During three years' tour of
duty at home I avoided discussion, and, as far as possible, all
consultations. I have, however, one instructive instance to bring
forward from that period. In the family of a sergeant of the
commissariat two well-grown lads, the eldest about ten years old,
had caught measles and were very ailing. The mother fre-
quently suggested that the boys should have stimulants, which I
refrained from. Now it happened that this sergeant was married
without leave, and his wife and family were not recognized. My
attendance on them was therefore voluntary ; not only so, but
her acceptance of my attendance was voluntary, and I found be-
fore many days that the children were taking stimulants under
the direction of some private practitioner, and I ceased attending.
The father, however, was displeased at this, and in a day or two
begged of me to call. I did so, and found a great change for the
worse, in the eldest especially. To me the cause was patent ; be-
sides that, the room smelled strongly of brandy. I did not men-
tion this, but said to the mother, as kindly as I could, that the
boy had no more chance of dying than she or I had if she would
follow my directions. She was obdurate, however, and I did not
call again. In a day or two afterward the father came and told
me the boy had died. This is the last instance I will bring for-
ward from my military service.

I may mention a case which occurred since my coming to
North London, a case of unusually large pleuritic effusion. In
consultation with a physician, a specialist in chest disease, the
fluid was evacuated, and the patient made a rapid recovery. This
physician some time afterward remarked to me what an excellent
case it was— what a remarkably rapid convalescence. I did not
emphasize in my reply, as you may suppose, that which it is my
duty now to do, that I had carefully omitted the six ounces of
port wine daily he had prescribed for my patient. I did once suc-
ceed in converting a hospital physician to my views— a rara avis
in terris, I one day undertook to stand in the middle of his

HUMAN SELECTION. 93

largest ward, and from that position to point ont every patient
therein who had been taking stimulants for three or four days at
least, and I succeeded. To me the pale worn aspect of the patient
is unmistakable.

With this I end my paper. It is not for me to go into statis-
tics on the point, such as may be found, I dare say, in books or
hospital reports. I know that such statistics are scant, for the
question has not yet become a matter of calm scientific investiga-
tion. It is still one of the " fads " of the day, which the practical
physician has not time to trouble about. Nevertheless, the re-
form is irresistibly advancing. No one can overlook the unmis-
takable diminution of the consumption of alcoholic liquors in
hospitals. This is probably due in great measure to the greater
temperance of the general community — a change of fashion rather
than a reform of practice. It has been said long ago that the
evils wrought by a theory have never in history discredited the
theory ; and certainly this would seem to be true in the practice
of medicine. The melancholy history of the use of calomel and
of opium in India is a saddening illustration. A few men here
and there question the theory, and gain adherents chiefly among
the young. The older men are not so much converted. They die
out, and by and by the world awakes and exclaims how foolish
the last generation was.

HUMAN SELECTION.

By ALFKED EUSSEL WALLACE.

IN one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed
himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the
ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no
play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the
race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent,
and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in
each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper
classes. As a recent American writer well puts it, " We behold
the melancholy spectacle of the renewal of the great mass of so-
ciety from the lowest classes, the highest classes to a great extent
either not marrying or not having children. The floating popula-
tion is always the scum, and yet the stream of life is largely
renewed from this source. Such a state of affairs, sufficiently
dangerous in any society, is simply suicidal in the democratic
civilization of our day." *

That the check to progress here indicated is a real one few will

* Hiram M. Stanley, in the Arena for June, 1890.

94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

deny, and the problem is evidently felt to be one of vital import-
ance, since it lias attracted the attention of some of our most
thoughtful writers, and has quite recently furnished the theme
for a perfect flood of articles in our best periodicals. I propose
here to consider very briefly the various suggestions made by
these writers ; and afterward shall endeavor to show that when
the course of social evolution shall have led to a more rational
organization of society, the problem will receive its final solution
by the action of physiological and social agencies, and in perfect
harmony with the highest interests of humanity.

Before discussing the question itself, it will be well to consider
whether there are in fact any other agencies than some form of
selection to be relied on. It has been generally accepted hitherto
that such beneficial influences as education, hygiene, and social
refinement had a cumulative action, and would of themselves
lead to a steady improvement of all civilized races. This view
rested on the belief that whatever improvement was effected in
individuals was transmitted to their progeny, and that it would
be thus possible to effect a continuous advance in physical, moral,
and intellectual qualities without any selection of the better or
elimination of the inferior types. But of late years grave doubts
have been thrown on this view, owing chiefly to the researches of
Galton and Weismann as to the fundamental causes to which
heredity is due. The balance of opinion among physiologists
now seems to be against the heredity of any qualities acquired
by the individual after birth, in which case the question we are
discussing will be much simplified, since we shall be limited to
some form of selection as the only possible means of improving
the race.

In order to make the difference between the two theories clear
to those who may not have followed the recent discussions on the
subject an illustration may be useful. Let us suppose two per-
sons, each striving to produce two distinct types of horse— the
cart-horse and the racer — from the wild prairie horses of America,
and that one of them believes in the influence of food and train-
ing, the other in selection. Each has a lot of a hundred horses to
begin with, as nearly as possible alike in quality. The one who
trusts to selection at once divides his horses into two lots, the one
stronger and heavier, the other lighter and more active, and, breed-
ing from these, continually selects, for the parents of the succeed-
ing generation, those which most nearly approach the two types
required. In this way it is perfectly certain that in a compara-
tively short period— thirty or forty years perhaps — he would be
able to produce two very distinct forms, the one a very fair race-
horse, the other an equally good specimen of a cart-horse ; and
he could do this without subjecting the two strains to any dif-

HUMAN SELECTION. 95

ference of food or training, since it is by selection alone that
our various breeds of domestic animals have in most cases been
produced.

On the other hand, the person who undertook to produce simi-
lar results by food and training alone, without allowing selection
to have any part in the process, would have to act in a very differ-
ent manner. He would first divide his horses into two lots as
nearly as possible identical in all points, and thereafter subject
the one lot to daily exercise in drawing loads at a slow pace, the
other lot to equally constant exercise in running, and he might
also supply them with different kinds of food if he thought it
calculated to aid in producing the required effect. In each suc-
cessive generation he must make no selection of the swiftest or
the strongest, but must either keep the whole progeny of each lot,
or carefully choose an average sample of each to be again sub-
jected to the same discipline. It is quite certain that the very
different kinds of exercise would have some effect on the individ-
uals so trained, enlarging and strengthening a different set of
muscles in each, and if this effect were transmitted to the off-
spring, then there ought to be in this case also a steady advance
toward the racer and the cart-horse type. Such an experiment,
however, has never been tried, and we can not therefore say posi-
tively what would be the result ; but those who accept the theory
of the non-heredity of acquired characters would predict with
confidence that after thirty or forty generations of training with-
out selection, the last two lots of colts would have made little or
no advance toward the two types required, but would be practi-
cally indistinguishable.

It is exceedingly difficult to find any actual cases to illustrate
this point, since either natural or artificial selection has almost
always been present. The apparent effects of disuse in causing
the diminution of certain organs, such as the reduced wings of
some birds in oceanic islands and the very sinall or aborted eyes
of some of the animals inhabiting extensive caverns, can be as
well explained by the withdrawal of the cumulative agency of
natural selection and by economy of growth, as by the direct
effects of disuse. The following facts, however, seem to show
that special skill derived from practice, when continued for sev-
eral generations, is not inherited, and does not therefore tend to
increase. The wonderful skill of most of the North American
Indians in following a trail by indications quite imperceptible to
the ordinary European has been dwelt upon by many writers,
but it is now admitted that the white trappers equal and often
excel them, though these trappers have in almost every case ac-
quired their skill in a comparatively short period, without any
of the inherited experience which might belong to the Indian.

96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Again, for many generations a considerable portion of the male
population of Switzerland have practiced rifle-shooting as a
national sport, yet in international contests they show no marked
superiority over our riflemen, who are, in a large proportion, the
sons of men who never handled a gun, Another case is afforded
by the upper classes of this country, who for many generations
have been educated at the universities, and have had their classi-
cal and mathematical abilities developed to the fullest extent by
rivalry for honors. Yet now, that for some years these institu-
tions have been opened to dissenters whose parents usually for
many generations have had no such training, it is found that
these dissenters carry off their full share or even more than their
share of honors. We thus see that the theory of the non-heredity
of acquired characters, whether physical or mental, is supported
by a considerable number of facts, while few if any are directly
opposed to it. We therefore propose to neglect the influence of
education and habit as possible factors in the improvement of our
race, and to confine our argument entirely to the possibility of
improvement by some form of selection.*

Among the modern writers who have dealt with this question
the opinions of Mr. Galton are entitled to be first considered, be-
cause he has studied the whole subject of human faculty in the
most thorough manner, and has perhaps thrown more light upon
it than any other writer. The method of selection by which he
has suggested that our race may be improved is to be brought
into action by means of a system of marks for family merit, both
as to health, intellect, and morals, those individuals who stand
high in these respects being encouraged to marry early by state
endowments sufficient to enable the young couples to make a start
in life. Of all the proposals that have been made tending to the
systematic improvement of our race, this is one of the least objec-
tionable, but it is also, I fear, among the least effective. Its tend-
ency would undoubtedly be to increase the number and to raise
the standard of our highest and best men, but it would at the
same time leave the bulk of the population unaffected, and would
but slightly diminish the rate at which the lower types tend to
supplant or to take the place of the higher. What we want is,
not a higher standard of perfection in the few, but a higher average,
and this can best be produced by the elimination of the lowest of
all and a free intermingling of the rest.

Something of this kind is proposed by Mr. Hiram M. Stanley
in his article on Our Civilization and the Marriage Problem,
already referred to. This writer believes that civilizations perish

* Those who desire more information on this subject should read Wcismann's Essays
on Heredity.

HUMAN SELECTION. 97

because, as wealth and art increase, corruption creeps in, and the
new generations fail in the work of progress because the renewal
of individuals is left chiefly to the unfit. The two great factors
which secure perfection in each animal race — sexual selection by
which the fit are born, and natural selection by which the fittest
survive — both fail in the case of mankind, among whom are hosts
of individuals which in any other class of beings would never
have been born, or, if born, would never survive. He argues that,
unless some effective measures are soon adopted and strictly en-
forced, our case will be irremediable ; and, since natural selection
fails so largely, recourse must be had to artificial selection.
" The drunkard, the criminal, the diseased, the morally weak
should never come into society. Not reform but prevention
should be the cry." The method by which this is proposed to be
done is hinted at in the following passages : " In the true golden
age, which lies not behind but before us, the privilege of parent-
age will be esteemed an honor for the comparatively few, and no
child will be born who is not only sound in body and mind, but
also above the average as to natural ability and moral force " ;
and again, " The most important matter in society, the inherent
quality of the members which compose it, should be regulated by
trained specialists."

Of this proposal and all of the same character we may say,
that nothing can possibly be more objectionable, even if we admit
that they might be effectual in securing the object aimed at. But
even this is more than doubtful ; and it is quite certain that any
such interference with personal freedom in matters so deeply affect-
ing individual happiness will never be adopted by the majority
of any nation, or if adopted would never be submitted to by the
minority without a life-and-death struggle.

Another popular writer of the greatest ability and originality,
who has recently given us his solution of the problem, is Mr.
Grant Allen. His suggestion is in some respects the very reverse
of the last, yet it is, if possible, even more objectionable. Instead
of any interference with personal freedom, he proposes the entire
abolition of legal restrictions as to marriage, which is to be a free
contract to last only so long as either party desires. This alone,
however, would have no effect on race-improvement, except prob-
ably a prejudicial one. The essential part of his method is, that
girls should be taught, both by direct education and by the influ-
ence of public opinion, that the duty of all healthy and intellect-
ual women is to be the mothers of as many and as perfect children
as possible. For this purpose they are recommended to choose as
temporary husbands the finest, healthiest, and most intellectual
men, thus insuring a variety of combinations of parental quali-
ties which would lead to the production of offspring of the

TOL. XXXTIII. 7

98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

highest possible character and to the continual advancement of
the race.*

I think I have fairly summarized the essence of Mr. Grant
Allen's proposal, which, though enforced with all his literary skill
and piquancy of illustration, can, in my opinion, only be fitly de-
scribed by the term already applied to it by one of his reviewers,
" detestable." It purports to be advanced in the interests of the
children and of the race ; but it would necessarily impair that
family life and parental affection which are the prime essentials
to the well-being of children ; while, though it need not necessa-
rily produce, it would certainly favor, the increase of pure sen-
sualism, the most degrading and most fatal of all the qualities
that tend to the deterioration of races and the downfall of nations.
One of the modern American advocates of greater liberty of di-
vorce, in the interest of marriage itself, thus admirably summa-
rises the essential characteristics and purport of true marriage :
" In a true relation, the chief object is the loving companionship
of man and woman, their capacity for mutual help and happiness,
and for the development of all that is noblest in each other. The
second object is the building up a home and family, a place of
rest, peace, security, in which child-life can bud and blossom like
flowers in the sunshine." f For such rest, peace, and security, per-
manence is essential. This permanence need not be attained by
rigid law, but by the influence of public opinion, and, more surely
still, by those deep-seated feelings and emotions which, under
favorable conditions, render the marriage tie stronger and its
influence more beneficial the longer it endures. To me it appears
that no system of the relations of men and women could be more
fatal to the happiness of individuals, the well-being of children,
or the advancement of the race, than that proposed by Mr. Grant
Allen.

Before proceeding further with the main question it is neces-
sary to point out that, besides the special objections to each of the
proj)osals here noticed, there is a general and fundamental objec-
tion. They all attempt to deal at once, and by direct legislative
enactment, with the most important and most vital of all human
relations, regardless of the fact that our present phase of social
development is not only extremely imperfect but vicious and rot-
ten at the core. How can it be possible to determine and settle
the relations of women to men which shall be best alike for indi-
viduals and for the race, in a society in which a very large pro-
portion of women are obliged to work long hours daily for the

* See The Girl of the Future, in The Universal Review, May, 1890, and a previous
article entitled Plain Words on the Woman Question, in the Fortnightly Review, Octo-
ber, 1889.

f Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the Arena, April, 1890.

HUMAN SELECTION. 99

barest subsistence, while another large proportion are forced into
more or less uncongenial marriages as the only means of securing
some amount of personal independence or physical well-being ?
Let any one consider, on the one hand, the lives of the wealthy as
portrayed in the society newspapers and even in the advertise-
ments of such papers as The Field and The Queen, with their
endless round of pleasure and luxury, their almost inconceivable
wastefulness and extravagance, indicated by the cost of female
dress and such facts as the expenditure of a thousand pounds on
the flowers for a single entertainment ; and, on the other hand,
the terrible condition of millions of workers — men, women, and
children— as detailed in the Report of the Lords Commission on
Sweating, on absolutely incontestable evidence, and the still more
awful condition of those who seek work of any kind in vain, and,
seeing their children slowly dying of starvation, are driven in
utter helplessness and despair to murder and suicide. Can any
thoughtful person admit for a moment that, in a society so consti-
tuted that these overwhelming contrasts of luxury and privation
are looked upon as necessities, and are treated by the Legislature
as matters with which it has practically nothing to do, there is
the smallest probability that we can deal successfully with such
tremendous social problems as those which involve the marriage
tie and the family relation as a means of promoting the physical
and moral advancement of the race ? What a mockery to still
further whiten the sepulchre of modern society, in which is hid-
den " all manner of corruption," with schemes for the moral and
physical advancement of the race !

It is my firm conviction, for reasons which I shall state pres-
ently, that when we have cleansed the Augean stable of our exist-
ing social organization, and have made such arrangements that
all shall contribute their share of either physical or mental labor,
and that all workers shall reap the full reward of their work, the
future of the race will be insured by those laws of human devel-
opment that have led to the slow but continuous advance in the
higher qualities of human nature. When men and women are
alike free to follow their best impulses ; when idleness and vicious
or useless luxury on the one hand, oppressive labor and starvation
on the other, are alike unknown ; when all receive the best and
most thorough education that the state of civilization and knowl-
edge at the time will admit ; when the standard of public opinion
is set by the wisest and the best, and that standard is systemati-
cally inculcated on the young ; then we shall find that a system of
selection will come spontaneously into action which will steadily
tend to eliminate the lower and more degraded types of man, and
thus continuously raise the average standard of the race. I there-
fore strongly protest against any attempt to deal with this great

ioo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

question by legal enactments, or by endeavoring to modify public
opinion as to the beneficial character of monogamy and perma-
nence in marriage. That the existing popular opinion is the true
one is well and briefly shown by Miss Chapman in a recent num-
ber of Lippincott's Magazine ; and as her statement of the case
expresses my own views, and will, I think, be approved by most
thinkers on the subject, I here give it :

1. Nature plainly indicates permanent marriage as the true human relation.
The young of the human pair need parental care and supervision for a great num-
ber of years.

2. Instinct is strongly on the side of indissoluble marriage. In proportion as
men leave brutedom behind and enter into the fullness of their human heritage,
they will cease to tolerate the idea of two or more living partners.

3. History shows conclusively that where divorce has been easy, licentious-
ness, disorder, and often complete anarchy have prevailed. The history of civili-
zation is the history of advance in monogamy, of the fidelity of one man to one
woman, and one woman to one man.

4. Science tells the same tale. Physiology and hygiene point to temperance,
not riot. Sociology shows how man, in spite of himself, is ever striving, through
lower forms, upward, to the monogamic relation.

5. Experience demonstrates to every one of us, individually, the superiority of
the indissoluble marriage. "We know that, speaking broadly, marriages turn out
well or ill in proportion as husband and wife are — let me not say loving — but
loyal, sinking differences and even grievances for the sake of children and for the
sake of example.

We have now to consider what would be the probable effect of
a condition of social advancement, the essential characteristics of
which have been already hinted at, on the two great problems —
the increase of population, and the continuous improvement of
the race by some form of selection which we have reason to be-
lieve is the only method available. In order to make this clear,
however, and in order that we may fully realize the forces that
would come into play in a just and rational state of society, such
as may certainly be realized in the not distant future, it will be
necessary to have a clear conception of its main characteristics.
For this purpose, and without committing myself in any way to
an approval of all the details of his scheme, I shall make use of
Mr. Bellamy's clear and forcible picture of the society of the
future, as he supposes it may exist in America in little more
than a century hence.*

The essential principle on which society is supposed to be
founded is that of a great family. As in a well-regulated modern
family, the elders, those who have experience of the labors, the
duties, and the responsibilities of life, determine the general mode
of living and working, with the fullest consideration for the con-

* Looking Backward. See especially chapters vii, ix, xii, and xxv.

HUMAN SELECTION. 101

venience and real well-being of the younger members, and with a
recognition of their essential independence. As in a family, the
same comforts and enjoyments are secured to all, and the very
idea of making any difference in this respect to those who from
mental or physical disability are unable to do so much as others,
never occurs to any one, since it is opposed to the essential prin-
ciples on which a true society is held to rest. As regards educa-
tion all have the same advantages, and all receive the fullest and
best training, both intellectual and physical ; every one is encour-
aged to follow out those studies or pursuits for which they are
best fitted, or for which they exhibit the strongest inclination.
This education, the complete and thorough training for a life of
usefulness and enjoyment, continues in both sexes till the age of
twenty-one (or thereabouts), when all alike, men and women, take
their place in the ranks of the industrial army in which they serve
for three years. During the latter years of their education, and
during the succeeding three years of industrial service, every op-
portunity is given them to see and understand every kind of work
that is carried on by the community, so that at the end of the term
of probation they can choose what department of the public serv-
ice they prefer to enter. As every one — men, women, and chil-
dren alike — receive the same amount of public credit — their equal
share of the products of the labor of the community, the attract-
iveness of various pursuits is equalized by differences in the hours
of labor, in holidays, or in special privileges attached to the more
disagreeable kinds of necessary work, and these are so modified
from time to time that the volunteers for every occupation are
always about equal to its requirements. The only other essential
feature that it is necessary to notice for our present purpose is
the system of grades, by which good conduct, industry, and intel-
ligence in every department of industry and occupation are fully
recognized, and lead to appointments as overseers, superintend-
ents, or general managers, and ultimately to the highest offices of
the state. Every one of these grades and appointments is made
public ; and as they constitute the only honors and the only dif-
ferences of rank, with corresponding insignia and privileges, in
an otherwise equal body of citizens, they are highly esteemed,
and serve as ample inducements to industry and zeal in the pub-
lic service.

At first sight it may appear that in any state of society whose
essential features were at all like those here briefly outlined, all
the usual restraints to early marriage as they now exist would be
removed, and that a rate of increase of the population unexam-
pled in any previous era would be the result, leading in a few
generations to a difficulty in obtaining subsistence, which Mai thus
has shown to be the inevitable result of the normal rate of in-

102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

crease of mankind when all the positive as well as the preventive
checks are removed. As the positive checks — which may be
briefly summarized as war, pestilence, and famine — are supposed
to be non-existent, what, it may be asked, are the preventive
checks which are suggested as being capable of reducing the rate
of increase within manageable limits ? This very reasonable
question I will now endeavor to answer.

The first and most important of the checks upon a too rapid
increase of population will be the comparatively late average
period of marriage, which will be the natural result of the very
conditions of society, and will besides be inculcated during the
period of education, and still further enforced by public opinion.
As the period of systematic education is supposed to extend to
the age of twenty-one, up to which time both the mental and
physical powers will be trained and exercised to their fullest
capacity, the idea of marriage during this period will rarely be
entertained. During the last year of education, however, the
subject of marriage will be dwelt upon, in its bearing on individ-
ual happiness and on social well-being, in relation to the welfare
of the next generation and to the continuous development of the
race. The most careful and deliberate choice of partners for life
will be inculcated as the highest social duty; while the young
women will be so trained as to look with scorn and loathing on
all men who in any way willfully fail in their duty to society —
on idlers and malingerers, on drunkards and liars, on the selfish,
the cruel, or the vicious. They will be taught that the happiness
of their whole lives will depend on the care and deliberation with
which they choose their husbands, and they will be urged to ac-
cept no suitor till he has proved himself to be worthy of respect
by the place he holds and the character he bears among his fellow-
laborers in the public service.

Under social conditions which render every woman absolutely
independent, so far as the necessaries and comforts of existence
are concerned, surrounded by the charms of family life and the
pleasures of society, which will be far greater than anything we
now realize when all possess the refinements derived from the
best possible education, and all are relieved from sordid cares aud
the struggle for mere existence, is it not in the highest degree
probable that marriage will rarely take place till the woman has
had three or four years' experience of the world after leaving
college — that is, till the age of twenty-five, while it will very fre-
quently be delayed till thirty or upward ? Now Mr. Galton has
shown, from the best statistics available, that if we compare
women married at twenty with those married at twenty-nine, the
proportionate fertility is about as eight to five. But this differ-
ence, large as it is, only represents a portion of the effect on the

HUMAN SELECTION. ic3

rate of increase of population caused by a delay in the average
period of marriage. For when the age of marriage is delayed the
time between successive generations is correspondingly length-
ened ; while a still further effect is produced by the fact that the
greater the average age of marriage the fewer generations are
alive at the same time, and it is the combined effect of these three
factors that determines the actual rate of increase of the popula-
tion.*

But there is yet another factor tending to check the increase
of population that would come into play in a society such as we
have been considering. In a remarkable essay on the Theory of
Population, Herbert Spencer has shown, by an elaborate discus-
sion of the phenomena presented by the whole animal kingdom,
that the maintenance of the individual and the propagation of the
race vary inversely, those species and groups which have the
shortest and most uncertain lives producing the greatest number
of offspring ; in other words, individuation and reproduction are
antagonistic. But individuation depends almost entirely on the
development and specialization of the nervous system, through
which, not only are the several activities and co-ordinations of the
various organs carried on, but all advance in instinct, emotion,
and intellect is rendered possible. The actual rate of increase in
man has been determined by the necessities of the savage state,
in which, as in most animal species, it has usually been only just
sufficient to maintain a limited average population. But with
civilization the average duration of life increases, and the possible
increase of population under favorable conditions becomes very
great, because fertility is greater than is needed under the new
conditions. The advance in civilization as regards the preserva-
tion of life has in recent times become so rapid, and the increased
development of the nervous system has been limited to so small
a portion of the whole population, that no general diminution in
fertility has yet occurred. That the facts do, however, accord
with the theory is indicated by the common observation that
highly intellectual parents do not as a rule have large families,
while the most rapid increase occurs in those classes which are
engaged in the simpler kinds of manual labor. But in a state of
society in which all have their higher faculties fully cultivated
and fully exercised throughout life, a slight general diminution
of fertility would at once arise, and this diminution, added to
that caused by the later average period of marriage, would at
once bring the rate of increase of population within manageable
limits. The same general principle enables us to look forward to

* See Inquiries into Iluman Faculty and its Development, p. 321 ; and Hereditary
Genius, p. 353.

io4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that distant future when the world will be fully peopled, in per-
fect confidence that an equilibrium between the birth and death
rates will then be brought about by a combination of physical
and social agencies, and the bugbear of over-population become
finally extinct.*

There now only remains for consideration the means by which,
in such a society, a continuous improvement of the race could be
brought about, on the assumption that for this purpose educa-
tion is powerless as a direct agency, since its effects are not heredi-
tary, and that some form of selection is an absolute necessity.
This improvement I believe will certainly be effected through
the agency of female choice in marriage. Let us, therefore, con-
sider how this would probably act.

It will be generally admitted that, although many women now
remain unmarried from necessity rather than from choice, there
are always a considerable number who feel no strong inclination
to marriage, and who accept husbands to secure a subsistence or
a home of their own rather than from personal affection or sexual
emotion. In a society in which women were all pecuniarily in-
dependent, were all fully occupied with public duties and intel-
lectual or social enjoyments, and had nothing to gain by mar-
riage as regards material well-being, we may be sure that the
number of the unmarried from choice would largely increase. It
would probably come to be considered a degradation for any
woman to marry a man she could not both love and esteem, and
this feeling would supply ample reasons for either abstaining
from marriage altogether or delaying it till a worthy and sym-
pathetic husband was encountered. In man, on the other hand,
the passion of love is more general, and usually stronger ; and as
in such a society as is here postulated there would be no way of
gratifying this passion but by marriage, almost every woman
would receive offers, and thus a powerful selective agency would
rest with the female sex. Under the system of education and of
public opinion here suggested there can be no doubt how this
selection would be exercised. The idle and the selfish would be
almost universally rejected. The diseased or the weak in intel-
lect would also usually remain unmarried ; while those who ex-
hibited any tendency to insanity or to hereditary disease, or who
possessed any congenital deformity, would in hardly any case find
partners, because it would be considered an offense against society
to be the means of perpetuating such diseases or imperfections.

We must also take into account a special factor hitherto, I
believe, unnoticed in this connection, that would in all probability

* A Theory of Population deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility. Repub-
lished from the Westminster Review for April, 1852.

HUMAN SELECTION. 105

intensify the selection thus exercised. It is well known that
females are largely in excess of males in our existing population,
and this fact, if it were a necessary and permanent one, would
tend to weaken the selective agency of women, as it undoubtedly
does now. But there is good reason to believe that it will not be a
permanent feature of our population. The births always give a
larger proportion of males than females, varying from three and
a half to four per cent. But boys die so much more rapidly than
girls that when we include all under the age of five the numbers are
nearly equal. For the next five years the mortality is nearly the
same in both sexes ; then that of females preponderates up to thirty
years of age ; then up to sixty that of men is the larger, while for
the rest of life female mortality is again greatest. The general
result is that at the ages of most frequent marriage — from twenty
to thirty-five — females are between eight and nine per cent in
excess of males. But during the ages from five to thirty-five we
find a wonderful excess of male deaths from two preventible
causes — " accident " and " violence." For the year 1888 the deaths
from these causes in England and Wales were as follows :

Males (0 to 35 years), 4,158.
Females (5 to 35 years), 1,100.*

Here we have an excess of male over female deaths in one year
of 3,058, all between the ages of five and thirty-five, a very large
portion of which is no doubt due to the greater risks run by men
and boys in various industrial occupations. In a state of society
in which the bulk of the population were engaged in industrial
work it is quite certain that almost all these deaths would be pre-
vented, and thus bring the male population more nearly to an
equality with the female. But there are also many unhealthy
employments in which men are exclusively engaged, such as the
grinders of Sheffield, the white-lead manufacturers, and many
others ; and many more men have their lives shortened by labor
in unventilated workshops, to say nothing of the loss of life in
war. When the lives of all its citizens are accounted of equal
value to the community, no one will be allowed to suffer from
such preventible causes as these ; and this will still further reduce
the mortality of men as compared with that of women. On the
whole, then, it seems highly probable that in the society of the
future the superior numbers of males at birth will be maintained
throughout life, or, at all events, during what may be termed the
marriageable period. This will greatly increase the influence of
women in the improvement of the race. Being a minority, they
will be more sought after, and will have a real choice in marriage,
which is rarely the case now. This actual minority being fur-

* Annual Report of the Registrar General, 1888, pp. 106-7.

io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tlier increased by those who, from the various causes already re-
ferred to, abstain from marriage, will cause considerable num-
bers of men to remain permanently unmarried, and as these will
consist very largely, if not almost wholly, of those who are the
least perfectly developed either mentally or physically, the con-
stant advance of the race in every good quality will be insured.

This method of improvement by elimination of the worst has
many advantages over that of securing the early marriages of the
best. In the first place, it is the direct instead of the indirect way,
for it is more important and more beneficial to society to improve
the average of its members by getting rid of the lowest types
than by raising the highest a little higher. Exceptionally great
and good men are always produced in sufficient numbers, and
have always been so produced in every phase of civilization. "We
do not need more of these so much as we need less of the weak
and the bad. This weeding-out system has been the method of
natural selection by which the animal and vegetable worlds have
been improved and developed. The survival of the fittest is really
the extinction of the unfit. In nature this occurs perpetually on
an enormous scale, because, owing to the rapid increase of most
organisms, the unfit which are yearly destroyed form a large pro-
portion of those that are born. Under our hitherto imperfect
civilization this wholesome process has been checked as regards
mankind ; but the check has been the result of the development
of the higher attributes of our nature. Humanity — the essentially
human emotion — has caused us to save the lives of the weak and
suffering, of the maimed or imperfect in mind or body. This has
to some extent been antagonistic to physical and even intellectual
race-improvement ; but it has improved us morally by the con-
tinuous development of the characteristic and crowning grace of
our human, as distinguished from our animal, nature.

In the society of the future this defect will be remedied, not
by any diminution of our humanity, but by encouraging the ac-
tivity of a still higher human characteristic — admiration of all
that is beautiful and kindly and self-sacrificing, repugnance to all
that is selfish, base, or cruel. When we allow ourselves to be
guided by reason, justice, and public spirit in our dealings with
our fellow-men, and determine to abolish poverty by recognizing
the equal rights of all the citizens of our common land to an equal
share of the wealth which all combine to produce — when we have
thus solved the lesser problem of a rational social organization
adapted to secure the equal well-being of all, then we may safely
leave the far greater and deeper problem of the improvement of
the race to the cultivated minds and pure instincts of the Women
of the Future. — Fortnightly Review.

SCHOOL LIFE, GROWTH, AND HEALTH. 107

SCHOOL LIFE IN RELATION TO GROWTH AND

HEALTH.*

By Pkof. AXEL KEY (of Stockholm).

ONE of our highest, and at the same time one of the pleasant-
est, objects in life is the instruction of our children. It is
our duty to promote their physical and mental health by all the
means in our power ; and the success of our efforts to that end is
one of our greatest joys. The doubt has gradually grown strong
whether modern instruction at home and in school, as a whole, is
so arranged and guided that the aim of a sound mind in a sound
body, which should never be left out of sight, is reached. More
and more sharply is the question of the influence of the present
school system on the growing youth debated in every enlightened
country of Europe. More and more distinctly is it declared, espe-
cially from the side of the doctors, that the school imposes too
great demands upon the young organism in the critical period
of its growth ; that it, as well as all our education, seeks too one-
sidedly to stimulate mental growth, and that the physical develop-
ment is thereby so neglected that great dangers arise, perhaps
fatal for the whole life, to the body as well as to the closely related
mental health. Much as has been thought and written on the sub-
ject, and much as school hygiene has been advanced recently,
thorough investigations of the condition of children's health in
schools have not hitherto been made in other countries than Den-
mark and Sweden, and a practical basis for conclusions on the
matter is therefore wanting. The first fundamental research was
instituted by Dr. Hertel in Copenhagen in 1881, and its result was
so significant that a special hygienic commission was appointed
to examine the conditions of health in all the schools of the king-
dom. At the same time a grand school commission was named
by the Government of Sweden to inquire into the organization of
the whole higher school life. This commission, of which I am a
member, has examined nearly fifteen thousand boys from the mid-
dle schools or the preparatory schools for the university, and three
thousand girls in the private girls' schools, in reference to their
health, and has measured and weighed them. The results of these
researches show that boys pass through three distinct periods of
growth : a moderate increase in their seventh and eighth years ; a
weaker growth from their ninth to their thirteenth years, and a
much more rapid increase in height and weight from their four-
teenth to their sixteenth years, or during the period of puberty.

* Address before the International Medical Congress in Berlin. Translated for the
Popular Science Monthly from the Internationale klinische Rundschau.

108 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The growth continues after the last period, but more slowly.
The development of girls also presents distinct periods, but the
changes occur a few years earlier than in boys. It may be men-
tioned for comparison that American boys are taller and heavier
than Swedish boys during the period of puberty, but that other-
wise the Swedes excel all other boys and pass the Americans in
their nineteenth year. Danish boys compare well with Swedish,
and Hamburg boys, according to Kotelmann's researches, come
very near to them. The smallest boys examined were those in
Belgium and northern Italy. Swedish girls are decidedly taller
and have greater weight than the girls examined in other coun-
tries. Comparing the subjects by stations in life, the more rapid
growth begins a year earlier in the children of the well-to-do
classes than in those of the poorer classes. Scanty and hard con-
ditions of life are restrictive and hindering to the growth of chil-
dren. The slow growth of the poorer children previous to the
period of puberty is prolonged at the cost of the latter ; it is as if
something hindered these children from entering their period of
more rapid development in the same year of their life as children
living in better circumstances. The development of puberty is
delayed in them, but as soon as it is begun it goes on with in-
creased rapidity, and, in spite of the delay, is completed in the
same year as it is in the better situated children. "We see here a
striking example of the elasticity that resides in children and
asserts itself in the processes of growth. A feather can be bent
very forcibly or nearly doubled up, without losing the power of
springing back to its former condition. But if the pressure is too
strong or lasts too long, the power is lost — the quill gives way or
acquires a permanent set. So a child which has been held back
in its growth by unfavorable circumstances has a marvelous
power of winning back what it has lost, and of returning in
growth to its development-curve. But if the disturbing influ-
ences take too sharp a hold or persist too long, the child continues
so far backward in its development that it is never able to make
it normal again.

It is an interesting question, and especially important in rela-
tion to education, whether the growth of children goes on evenly
during the different seasons, in summer and winter. Some pene-
trating researches in this matter have been made by Pastor
Malling-Hansen, superintendent of an institute for the deaf and
dumb in Copenhagen. According to them, children exhibit a
relatively light growth from the end of November to the end
of March. This period, which includes all the winter months, is
followed by a second, from the end of March till July or August,
during which the children grow rapidly in height, but their in-
crease in weight is reduced to a minimum. After this follows a

SCHOOL LIFE, GROWTH, AND HEALTH. 109

third period, continuing to the end of November, in which the
increase in height is very small and the gain in weight very-
large. The daily accession of weight is often three times as great
as during the winter months ; and an earlier beginning of the
summer vacation will be accompanied by a stronger growth in
weight during the holiday time. These facts are of great moment
in aiding to determine the best arrangement of vacations — an im-
portant question in school management.

From this discussion of the different phases in their growth I
pass to the diseases of our school children. First, according to
my examinations of fifteen thousand boys in the middle schools,
more than one third are ill or are afflicted with chronic maladies.
Short-sightedness, which is demonstrably for the most part in-
duced by the overtaxing of the eyes in school-work, and well
merits the name of school -sickness, rises rapidly in height of
prevalence from class to class. Thirteen and a half per cent of
the boys suffer from habitual headache, and nearly thirteen per
cent are pallid ; and other diseases arise in the lower classes and
then decline to rise again in the upper classes. Diseases of the
lungs are most frequent among organic disorders. Diseases of
the heart and intestinal disorders show a considerable tendency to
increase in the higher classes. As to the average of illness in the
different classes, it appears that in Stockholm seventeen per cent
of the children in the first class were ill at the end of the first
school year. In the second school year the illness-curve rose to
thirty-seven per cent, and in the fourth class to forty per cent.
This remarkable increase of illness during the first school year is
not casual, but is exhibited in all the schools ; and corresponding
conditions were brought to light in the examinations of Danish
pupils. A sigkness ratio of 34*4 per cent was found as early as in
the lowest classes of the middle schools. The illness-curve rose
in the first classes, reached its first maximum in the third class,
then sunk and rose again in the upper classes. These wavering
conditions can not be founded in the organization of the school.
The burden of work on the pupil rises incessantly from class to
class, and the boys live continuously under the same hygienic con-
ditions in the same places, and in the same school and parental
houses. There must be a deeper underlying cause. A look at the
growth-periods of the boys shows that the remarkable rise of the
sickness-curve in the preparatory schools and the lower classes of
the middle schools occurs exactly during the period from seven or
eight years to thirteen years, the very time that has been shown
to be one of weaker growth in boys. But as soon as the stronger
growth of puberty sets in, and especially during the last years of
that period, when the gain in weight is most rapid, the curve sinks
from class to class, from year to year, till the year in which the

no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

important change is completed. Immediately after this point is
reached, when the yearly increase in weight and height "begins to
diminish rapidly, the sickness-curve again rises very fast. The
most healthy of all the years of youth is with boys the seven-
teenth, which is also one of the two years of most active growth.
The eighteenth, on the contrary, which follows immediately
upon the attainment of puberty, appears to be a very unhealthy
year.

All this indicates undoubtedly that during the period of weak
growth which precedes the coming on of puberty, and during
which our pupils are passing through the preparatory or lowest
classes of the middle schools, the power of resistance of the youth-
ful organism against external influences is diminished. During
the period of development of puberty, on the other hand, when
the youthful life is approaching maturity with all its swelling
force, the capacity for resistance rises from year to year, and the
liability to illness falls, reaching its minimum in the last year of
that period. Immediately afterward sets in another period of
diminished capacity for resistance, which usually includes the last
years of school life.

Among the school girls, the future mothers of generations to
come, investigations instituted in thirty-five schools with three
thousand and seventy-two pupils brought out a fearful amount
of illness. Sixty-one per cent of the whole, all belonging to the
well-to-do classes, were ill or afflicted with serious chronic dis-
orders ; thirty-six per cent were suffering from chlorosis, and as
many from habitual headache ; at least ten per cent had spinal
disorder, etc. Such a condition of health in Swedish girls, grow-
ing worse in the years preceding puberty and during its begin-
ning, while it is not notably improved in the last, years of the
period, certainly deserves careful attention. The explanation of
it is easily found in the method of instruction for girls as a whole,
and in the organization of girls' schools after the pattern of boys'
schools. The amount of work, sitting still, etc., exacted of the
girl is not consistent with her health during her growing time.
Without going into particulars as to the influences injurious to
the health of growing children which proceed from their homes
or may be brought out in connection with the school and school-
work, it is still manifest that the burden of work which children
have to bear under present school regulations far exceeds what is
permissible, and is to a large extent responsible for the liability of
school children to illness.

The average time daily demanded by the school for work in
class and at home is, according to the gymnasial schedules, seven
hours in the lowest classes ; and it rises rapidly and constantly,
till in the upper classes eleven or twelve hours are required. As

SCHOOL LIFE, GROWTH, AND HEALTH. m

tlie time here given is the average, and private instruction and
optional study hours are not included, it is easy to conceive that
there must be a considerable number of boys who have to take
more time for school- work.

How do children thus situated find time for meals, for rest, for
exercise in the open air, for recreation, and, above all, for sleep ?
Must not their mental force be worn out and benumbed by such
a burden, their physical growth and health suffer, and their ca-
pacity to resist unwholesome influences of every kind be dimin-
ished ? There is no doubt about the answer. The mention of
sleep raises a question of great importance to the rational teach-
ing of children. "We all know how much greater is the need of
children for sleep than of grown persons, and how necessary for
their good it is to be able fully to satisfy this need ; but how
great it is generally at any particular age of the child is very hard
to define exactly. The amount varies under different climatic con-
ditions. In Sweden, we consider a sleep of eleven or twelve hours
necessary for the younger school children, and of at least eight or
nine hours for the older ones. Yet the investigations have shown
that this requirement lacks much of being met in all the classes,
through the whole school. Boys in the higher classes get but
little more than seven hours in bed ; and as that is the average, it
is easy to perceive that many of them must content themselves
with still less sleep. It is also evident from the investigations
that the sleeping time is diminished with the increase of the
working hours from class to class, so that pupils of the same age
enjoy less according as they are higher in their classes. It thus
appears constantly that in schools of relatively longer hours of
work, the sleeping time of the pupils is correspondingly shorter.
In short, the prolongation of the working hours takes place for
the most part at the cost of the time for sleep. If, then, the load
of work of a school youth is too much for his stage of growth, and
too little time is left for recuperation and sleep, the momentous
question arises, whether it has been statistically proved that the
length of the working time exercises a definite influence on the
health of the children. It has. The average time of work of each
class was computed, and the pupils were divided into two groups,
consisting of those who studied more and those who studied less
than the mean. It was found that the amount of illness of those
who worked longer than the average was 5*3 per cent higher than
that of those who worked less ; a result which must be regarded
as of very great importance when we consider how many other
unhealthy influences there are to make themselves felt. The
result was still more significant in the two lowest classes. The
liability to illness there, in connection with the longer hours of
work, was from 8*6 to seven per cent higher. We may also ob-

112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

serve in this condition a new evidence of the depreciation of the
caiDacity of the yonnger pnpils of these classes to resist unhealthy
influences.

It is incumbent on us to see with all possible care that the
growth of youth during their years of puberty, which is so full
of importance, is not disturbed or distorted by any influences" ad-
verse to nature. But as instruction is now arranged, at school
and at home, we should first of all direct attention to the phase of
the child's age immediately preceding the period of puberty, when
the growth is at its lowest, the child's capacity for resistance is
least, and his liability to illness increases from year to year. We
must learn how to obviate this liability to illness, and it is for sci-
ence to forge the weapons with which to do it.

The deeper we go into these researches, the more we appreciate
the great truth that lies in the conception expressed by Rousseau
in the last century. When, he thought, we have brought a boy
to the age of puberty with a body sound, healthy, and well devel-
oped in all respects, then his understanding also will unfold rap-
idly and attain full maturity under continuous natural direction
and instruction ; all the more vigorous will his physical develop-
ment be afterward in the bloom of youth. Rousseau, we know,
would not recognize a compulsory lesson in a book before the
twelfth year as a means of instruction. We can not follow hiin
so far, but we certainly shall have to learn, better than we know
now, how to fit our demands on the child's organization to his
strength and capacity of resistance during the different periods of
his growth ; better than we know now, how to promote his health
and his vigorous physical development. The father of school
hygiene, Johann Peter Frank, introduced his warning a hundred
years ago against a too early and too strong tension of the youth-
ful powers of mind and body with the words : " Yet spare their
fibers — spare their mind's strength ; waste not upon the child the
vigor of the man that is to be."

It is shown by M. Camena <T Almeida, from a comparison of mountain-heights
as giver) in Berghause's table, that the altitude of the highest masses increases in
going from the polar to the equatorial regions ; yet the greatest elevations are
not found at the equator, but near the tropics — in 27° 59' and 35° 28' north in
Asia, and 15° 52' and 19° 47' south in South America. These points are also near
the isothermal lines of the highest summer temperatures. The heights of the
mountains seem, too, to bear a relation to the height of the line of perpetual snow,
they seldom rising more than from six thousand to ten thousand feet above it.
From these facts the author deduces a relation between the height of mountains
and climate ; assuming that there is a limit above the snow -line above which, if a
mountain passes it, it is so ground down by frost and the wear of the elements as
speedily to be reduced to a proper level.

SKETCH OF AMOS EATON. 113

SKETCH OF AMOS EATON".

PROF. AMOS EATON was one among those who cultivated
science in the earlier half of this century, who labored
to popularize the study and make it accessible to the masses.
American geology and botany owe much to him. His books on
those subjects have two special merits— they were among the first
published in which a systematic treatment for America was at-
tempted, and they were written throughout in a language that all
could read.

Amos Eaton was born in Chatham, Columbia County, N. Y.,
May 17, 1776, and died in Troy, N. Y., May 6, 1842. His father,
Abel Eaton, was a farmer in comfortable circumstances, and of
the best standing as a citizen. The scholastic tendencies which
determined the character of his career appear to have shown
themselves at an early age, for we find that in 1790, when he was
only fourteen years old, he was appointed to make a fourth-of-
July oration, and acquitted himself acceptably in the effort. Serv-
ing as a chain-bearer in the surveying of some land, he acquired
a taste for that business. He had no instruments, and, in order
to obtain them, he arranged with a blacksmith to "blow and
strike " for him by day, in return for which the blacksmith should
help him make instruments at night. After several weeks' work,
a needle, magnetized from kitchen tongs, and a working chain
were turned out. A compass-case was made out of the bottom of
an old pewter plate, well smoothed, polished, and graduated ; and
the young man, at sixteen years of age, was ready to do little
jobs of surveying.

He fitted himself for college with the Rev. Dr. David Potter,
of Spencertown ; entered Williams College, and was graduated
thence in 1799, with a high standing in science. He prepared
himself for the legal profession, studying law with the Hon.
Elisha Williams, of Spencertown, and the Hon. Josiah Ogden, of
New York. An association which he formed in New York with
Dr. David Hosack and Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, the most distin-
guished scientific men in the city at the time, marked another
determinative point in his career; for, under their instruction,
he became interested in the natural sciences, and particularly in
botany. So earnest did he become in these studies that, having
borrowed Kirwan's Mineralogy, he made a manuscript copy of
the whole work. Having been admitted to the bar of the Su-
preme Court of New York, he settled in Catskill as a lawyer and
land agent, and continued his studies in science. At this place
he began, in 1810, a popular course of lectures on botany, which
is believed to have been the first attempted in the United States.

VOL. XXXVIII. — 8

ii4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In connection with the lectures he compiled a small elementary-
treatise. Dr. Hosaek commended him as being the first in the
field with this course, saying : " You have adopted the true system
of education, and very properly address yourself to the memory."

Finding that his taste for the incidents of legal practice was
diminishing, and his interest in science was growing upon him,
Mr. Eaton resolved to abandon the law and devote himself to the
more congenial pursuit. He removed to New Haven in 1815, and
there placed himself under the tuition of Prof. Silliman, who was
lecturing on chemistry, geology, and mineralogy. He enjoyed
the advantage of Prof. Silliman's library and of that of Prof. Ives,
in which works on botany and materia medica were prominent,
and was a diligent student of the college cabinet of minerals.
He removed to Williams College, where he gave courses of lect-
ures to volunteer classes of the students on botany, mineralogy,
and geology, and awakened a permanent interest in the natural
sciences. An interesting description of his personality at this
time, when he was in his prime, is given by Prof. Albert Hop-
kins, who speaks of him as " of striking personage, a large form,
somewhat portly and dignified, though entirely free from what is
commonly called starch. His face was highly intellectual, the
forehead high and somewhat retreating, locality strongly marked,
and the organs of observation and compassion well developed.
His hair was black, and, being combed back, rendered his fine
physiognomy still more striking." In the same year the first
edition was published of Prof. Eaton's Manual of Botany, a work
the appearance of which, according to Dr. Lewis C. Beck, gave an
impulse to the study of botany in New England and New York,
which had been hampered by the want of a manual in English.
The only descriptive work previous to this one was that of Pursch,
in which the descriptions were in Latin. The Manual was added
to and became fuller, in successive editions, till the eighth edi-
tion, published in 1840, was a large octavo volume of 625 pages,
known as the North American Botany of Profs. Eaton and Wright,
and contained descriptions of 5,267 species of plants.

From Williams College the lectures were extended, in the
shape of courses, with practical instructions to classes, to the
larger towns of New England and New York. Prof. Eaton was
greatly aided in this enterprise by the patronage and encourage-
ment he had received from the faculty and students of Williams
College, and the fame he derived from his lectures there ; and he
made an acknowledgment of this fact in dedicating the second
edition of his botany to the president and professors, when he said :
" The science of botany is indebted to you for its first introduction
into the interior of the Northern States, and I am indebted to you
for a passport into the scientific world." In the course of two or

SKETCH OF AMOS EATON. 115

three years, says Prof. H. B. Nason, to whose Biographical Record
of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute we are most largely in-
debted for the material for this sketch, " Prof. Eaton diffused a
great amount of knowledge on the subjects of his lectures ; and
so far excited the curiosity and enthusiasm of many young stu-
dents that there sprung up, as a result of his labors, an army of
botanists and geologists." The late Prof. Albert Hopkins, of
Williams College, accrediting Prof. Eaton with being one of the
first to popularize science in the Northern States, mentioned as
among his special qualifications for the task an easy flow of lan-
guage, a popular address, and a generous enthusiasm in matters of
science, which easily communicated itself to his pupils. He adds :
" Prof. Eaton was among the first in this country to study nature
in the field with his classes. In pursuance of this idea, he used to
make an annual excursion with Rensselaer School, sometimes
leading these expeditions in person, at others deputing some com-
petent teacher to take the lead. The cause of natural history in
Williams College owes, undoubtedly, a good deal to Prof. Eaton.
I think his zeal in the department of botany led Prof. Dewey to di-
rect his discriminating mind to the study of plants, a study which
he pursued farther than Prof. Eaton had done in certain lines. . . .
At this time, also, Dr. Emmons took the field. In fact, natural his-
tory came on with the spring-tide, and has never lost the impulse
since." While at Albany, in 1818, on the invitation of Governor
Clinton, delivering a course of lectures before the members of the
Legislature of New York, Prof. Eaton became acquainted with
many leading men of the State, and interested them in geology
and its application by means of surveys to agriculture. Here
was planted the idea which eventually fructified in that great
work, The Natural History of New York. In the same year
Prof. Eaton published his index to the Geology of the Northern
States, which has been pronounced " the first attempt at a general
arrangement of the geological strata in North America." Although
under the undeveloped condition of geology at the time, with
the defective knowledge even among its advanced students, this
book could not fail to contain many statements now known to be
errors, it must be recognized as a creditable and valuable effort.
An interesting view of the conditions of geology at the time and
of the method of study is given in a letter which Prof. Eaton wrote
to Mr. Henry R. Schoolcraft, in 1820, while preparing a second
volume of the index. In it he said : " I have written the whole
over anew, and extended it to about two hundred and fifty pages,
12mo. I have taken great pains to collect facts in this district
during the two years since my first edition was published, but I
am rather deficient in my knowledge of secondary and alluvial
formations. I wish to trouble you with a few inquiries on that

n6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

subject. From what knowledge I have been able to obtain in that
department, I am inclined to arrange the secondary class thus:
Breccia, compact, or shell limestone; gypsum, secondary sand-
stone. I leave much, also, for peculiar local formations. A gen-
tleman presented specimens to the Troy Lyceum, from Illinois, of
gypsum and secondary sandstone, and informed me that the latter
overlaid the former in regular structure. Myron Holly and others
have given me similar specimens, which they represent as being
similarly situated, from localities in the western part of this State.
This secondary sandstone is sometimes more or less calcareous. I
believe it is used for a cement by the canal company, which hardens
under water. Will you do me the favor to settle this question ?
On your way to Detroit you may perhaps, without material in-
convenience, collect facts of importance to me in reference to sec-
ondary and alluvial formations. Anything transmitted to me
by the middle of April on these subjects will be in season, because
I shall not have printed all the transition part before that time.
Have you any knowledge of the strata constituting Rocky Moun-
tains ? Is it primitive, or is it gray wacke, like Catskill Mountains ?
I have said in a note that after you and Dr. E. James set foot upon
it we shall no longer be ignorant of it. I intend to kindle a blaze
of geological zeal before you return. I have adapted the style of
my index to the capacity of ladies, plow-joggers, and mechanics."
Prof. Eaton also delivered lectures at Lenox Academy and the
Medical College at Castleton, Vt., where he was appointed Pro-
fessor of Natural History in 1820. He gave lectures and practical
instructions in Troy, and thus laid the foundation for the estab-
lishment there, as a direct result of his work, of the Lyceum of
Natural History ; and it is said that in the fall of 1818 Troy could
boast of a more extensive collection of American geological speci-
mens than could be found at any other literary institution in this
country. The geological and agricultural survey of Albany and
Rensselaer Counties, made in 1820 and 1821, by Prof. Eaton and
Drs. T. Romeyn and Lewis C. Beck, at the expense of the Hon.
Stephen Van Rensselaer, is believed to have been the beginning
of such surveys in this country, and was described by Prof. Silli-
man, in his Journal, as a novel attempt. Next was a geological
survey by Prof. Eaton, also at the instance of Mr. Van Rensselaer,
of the district adjoining the Erie Canal, the result of which was
published in 1824, in a report of one hundred and sixty pages, with
a profile section of rock formations, from the Atlantic Ocean,
across Massachusetts and New York, to Lake Erie. Governor
Seward said of this work, in the Introduction to the Natural His-
tory of the State of New York, that it " marked an era in the
progress of geology in this country. It is in some respects inac-
curate, but it must be remembered that its talented and indefati-

SKETCH OF AMOS EATON. n7

gable author was without a guide in exploring the older forma-
tions, and that he described rocks which no geologist had at that
time attempted to classify. Rocks were then classified chiefly by
their mineralogical characters, and the aid which the science has
since learned to derive from fossils in determining the chronology
and classification of rocks was scarcely known here, and had only
just begun to be appreciated in Europe. We are indebted, never-
theless, to Prof. Eaton for the commencement of that independ-
ence of European classification which has been found indispen-
sable in describing the New York system. . . . Prof. Eaton
enumerated nearly all the rocks in western New York, in their
order of succession, and his enumeration has, with one or two
exceptions, proved correct. It is a matter of surprise that he
recognized, at so early a period, the old red sandstone on the Cats-
kill Mountains, a discovery the reality of which has since been
proved by fossil tests/'

In 1824 Prof. Eaton was placed at the head, as " Senior Pro-
fessor," of the School of Science founded by the Hon. Stephen
Van Rensselaer at Troy, N. Y., then called the Rensselaer School,
now the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He spent the remain-
der of his life in this position. He introduced and developed here
a system of instruction in which the students were made experi-
menters and workers, and, in place of recitations, delivered lect-
ures to one another. The success of this method was such that
some one or other of its features were introduced into other
schools.

Summarizing his career in brief, Prof. Nason says, in his
biography in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Record: "In
developing the botany and geology of the Northern States, Prof.
Eaton rightfully ranks among the pioneers of the new era of the
natural sciences in this country. His efforts in various depart-
ments of natural history were a rich gift to New England, New
York, and even to the whole country, for which the country owes
him a debt of gratitude. Many of his pupils have been for years
among the most justly distinguished scientific men of the coun-
try. As an educator and an active laborer in the general cause
of natural history in America, his memory will long be cherished.
The history of natural science on this continent can never be
faithfully written without giving the name of Amos Eaton an
honorable place. It was he, more than any other individual in
the United States, who, finding the natural sciences in the hands
of the learned few, by means of popular lectures, simplified text-
books, and practical instruction, threw them broadcast to the
many. He aimed at a general diffusion of the natural sciences,
and nobly and successfully did he accomplish his mission."

Prof. Eaton is described as having been a kind and courteous

n8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gentleman, whose vast acquirements and simple habits were pleas-
antly characterized by Mrs. Emma Willard's designation of him
as " the Republican Philosopher/' Three of his sons adopted
scientific pursuits or cultivated scientific tastes. One, Hezekiah
Hubert Eaton, was Assistant Professor of Chemistry in Transyl-
vania University, but died when only twenty-three years old.
Major-General Amos B. Eaton was an officer of the United States
Army and interested in science. A daughter, Sara C. Eaton, was
a teacher of natural sciences and the modern languages in a
young woman's seminary at Monticello, 111. A grandson, Prof.
Daniel Cady Eaton, has been Professor of Botany in Yale College
since 1864.

The list of Prof. Eaton's books includes an Elementary Treatise
on Botany, 1810 ; Manual of Botany, 1817 ; Botanical Dictionary,
1817 ; Botanical Exercises, 1820 ; Botanical Grammar and Diction-
ary, 1828 ; Chemical Note-Book, 1821 ; Chemical Instructor, 1822 ;
Zoological Syllabus and Note-Book, 1822 ; Cuvier's Grand Divis-
ion, 1822 ; Art without Science, 1800 ; Philosophical Instructor,
1824 ; Directions for Surveying and Engineering, 1838 ; Index to
the Geology of the Northern States, 1818 ; Geological and Agri-
cultural Survey of the County of Albany, N. Y., 1820 ; Geological
Nomenclature of North America, 1822 ; Geological and Agricult-
ural Survey of the District adjoining the Erie Canal, 1824 ; Geo-
logical Text -Books, prepared for Popular Lectures on North
American Geology, 1830 ; and Geological Text-Book, for the Troy
class, 1841.

Speaking of the practical teaching of geology, in his address in the British
Association, Prof. A. H. Green took np the case of places where it is hard to find
■within manageable distance of the school the kind of field geology which is within
the grasp of a beginner. Even here the teaching need not be wholly from books.
Object-lessons may be given indoors. "For instance, give a lad a lump of coarsest
sandstone; let him pound it and separate by elutriation the sand-grains from
the clay ; boil both in acid, and dissolve off the rusty coating that colors them ;
ascertain by the microscope that the sand-grains are chips and not rounded pel-
lets, and so on. All such points he will delight to worry out for himself; and,
when he has done that, an explanation of the way in which the rock was formed
will really come home to him. Or it is easy to rig up contrivances innumerable
for illustrating the work of denudation. A heap of mixed sand and powdered
* clay does for the rock denuded ; a watering-can supplies rain ; a trough, deeper
at one end than the other, stands for the basin that receives sediment. By such
rough apparatus, many of the results of denudation and deposition may be closely
imitated, and the process is near enough to the making of mud pies to command
the admiration of every boy. . . . The great facts of physical geology, which
have so important a bearing on geology and history too, often admit of experi-
mental illustration, such, for instance, as the well-known methods of imitating the
rock-folding caused by earth-movements. "

CORRESP ONDENCE.

119

CORRESPONDENCE.

PUPILS OK MACHINES?

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

THAT the present system of graded
schools is far in advance of the old un-
graded one, where the same teacher instructed
Johnny in his A, B, C, and Johnny's older
brother in geometry, is an undeniable tact.
But to the non-professional observer, who
merely looks at the effect on the children, it
is by no means evident that the reaction
against the schools of fifty years ago has
not gone too far. By the present mode of
specialization, many individual teachers have
worked out their own hobbies, and presented
their arguments so plausibly that they have
gained general acceptance. Each succeeding
year shows a so-called advance in these
" natural " methods, and they are all united
in a system so unnatural that a course of it
kills out all individuality in the child mind
and life, and leaves us with a set of little
machines, all stamped out from the original
metal with the same die.

Look, for a moment, at some of the
methods employed in our schools, examples
taken at random, and that ought to speak
for themselves. First comes a city gram-
mar-school, where the pupils average thirteen
vears of age. To save herself the trouble
of speaking the names of her children, the
enterprising teacher has arranged these
names in alphabetical order, numbered them
according to this order, and addresses the
pupils as "Number Two," "Number Twen-
ty-eight," "Number Forty - three." Slight
as this fact may seem, it is not without its
influence. From ceasing to have any names
of their own, as far as their teacher is con-
cerned, the children cease to have any per-
sonality in her eyes, and the pupil becomes
a mere hollow block, labeled with a certain
number, into which daily portions of arith-
metic, geography, and grammar are to be
poured, regardless of the capacity of the
block and the strength of its walls to resist
overpressure. The child keenly feels such ,
loss of individuality, and, by this loss, much
of the incentive to work is withdrawn.

As for the lessons themselves, much
fault lies at the foundation of all learning to
read. While our parents were forced to
spell columns of words, real or imaginary,
like am, bam, cam, dam, and so on to zam,
and, by perusing such cheerful sentences as
" the lamb is on the tomb," to discover that
in some words the final letter b is superflu-
ous, as an improvement on that the children
of to-day are taught to read without spell-
ing, recognizing each word by its appearance,
and learning it as a detached fact. The
time spent in gaining a vocabulary in this
way would surely be more than sufficient to

teach the child the separate letters and their
usual combinations, and his reasoning pow-
ers would be quite as rapidly developed in
the latter case.

A lesson in writing was recently wit-
nessed with some amusement and perplexity.
One of the pupils took her place at the pi-
ano while the teacher gave these brief or-
ders • "Attention; sit erect; feet together ;
lean forward ; elbows on desks ; curve two
finders ; hold pen ; describe letters m the
air " And, while the piano rattled out a gay
march or a lively waltz, fifty arms were waved
in mid-air, vaguely outlining a string of let-
ters Again the voice was heard : ' btop ;
dip pens ; write on paper ; begin." And
then capital I's were scratched off by the
score, while the waltz sounded its accompa-
niment. Then came the command, Wipe
pens " Alas for the luckless child whose
nen was not dipped deeply enough, or caught
a thread on its tip! On, on he must go
until the order " Dip pens " or Wipe pens
^ave him a chance to repair his accident.
The avowed object of all this is to teach the
rapid writers to take more time, while those
who are slower with their pens must learn
to hurry. Why is this necessary ? And if
the lessons of school are to prepare one for the
everyday needs of life, it would be the nat-
ural conclusion from this that our business
men have grand pianos and church organs
in their offices and counting-rooms, and that
the clerks take turns in playing appropriate
selections from the old masters.

But two more strange rules can be
glanced at. By the first, each child in a
certain public school must take home one
book every night, no matter whether the
lessons are all prepared or not. The other,
which, like the first, comes to us from
Massachusetts, is still more absurd. In
this case the text-books are free, and each
book has a string securely tying down the
leaves not yet studied. On no account may
a child slip out a leaf and look ahead. The
obiect of this last regulation «_ still un-
known ; but for most teachers it is safe to
assume that when a child wishes to learn a
fact, then is the best time to teach him re-

garding it. .

Is not the present craze for carrying ,
" methods " to extremes worthy of some
consideration? Anna Ohafin Ray.

West Haven, Connecticut.

ANTISEPTIC TREATMENT AND SIB
JOSEPH LISTER.
Editor Popular Science Monthly :

In the short list of important discoveries
of the last fifty years, given in the July
number (p. 428), that of the antiseptic treat-

120

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tnent is omitted. Dr. Lister, now Sir Joseph
Lister, realizing that inflammation and sup-
puration of wounds (whether caused by ac-
cident or the kindly knife of the surgeon)
proceeded from noxious spores settling in
exposed parts of the flesh (as taught by
Pasteur), arranged methods by which none
of these germs might light upon the wound,
or, if they did alight, that they might be
killed. This, the antiseptic or germicide
system, gives the modern surgeon, with the
use of anaesthetics, such a command of cir-
cumstances that he can amputate a limb or
explore interior parts of the body with an
impunity almost miraculous. The wound
that, in former times, almost inevitably sup-
purated, is now protected from serving as a
fertile ground for germs that but a few
years ago would have settled there and multi-
plied enormously. The presence of these bac-
teria produced the inflammation, and there-
by much of the vital force of the patient
was expended in the process of recuperation
from a trouble which was but a sequel to
the wound. Now, every skillful surgeon
protects his patient from these spores, and,
binding up the exposed flesh with antiseptic
bandages, the wound heals rapidly without
secondary symptoms. The existence of in-

flammatory gangrene in hospitals ought to
be forever exorcised.

To religiously prominent men are built
shrines, even though they did not perform
miracles either during their lives or after
death. But there will be no need to visit
Lister's tomb ; for the almost miraculous
benefits he has conferred upon us can be
obtained at the uttermost ends of the earth.
Votive offerings innumerable might well
be made to one who, if not listed among the
saints, has rendered an inestimable service
to mankind.

The English Government created Dr.
Lister a baronet, though he was, in the esti-
mation of many, as deserving of a higher
title as any upon whom such honor is con-
ferred. The Germans accepted his teaching
promptly and cordially, and, when he visited
Germany, awarded him a grand ovation.
The American physicians adopted Sir Jo-
seph's ideas, and have, perhaps, improved
upon his system. It is now appropriate that
the laity of all nations should recognize his
most valuable teachings, and raise a sum of
money to create, say, an endowment for origi-
nal research to be named for the baronet.
Yours truly, Horace J. Smith.

PoNTEESINA,, SWITZEBLAND.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

HINDRANCES TO SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.

AN exceedingly useful address was
that delivered this year at In-
dianapolis, by Prof. T. C. Mendenhall,
as retiring President of the American
Association for the Advancement of
Science. "We publish it in our present
number, and trust it may be "widely read
and carefully pondered. In Prof. Men-
denh all's opinion the relations between
the scientific few and the non-scientific
many in this country are not as satis-
factory as they ought to be. He finds
that, though individuals here and there
are disposed to be very liberal in the
endowing of scientific schools and col-
leges, and though science is professedly
held in very high honor, the community
at large hardly seems to know how to
distinguish between a true man of sci-
ence and a dilettante or charlatan. In
many cases the latter more easily secures
attention and credence than the best
qualified scientific specialist. He finds,

too, that scientific methods of thought
are not permeating the community to
the extent that might be expected, con-
sidering all that is said in praise of sci-
ence and the extensive provision that is
already made for imparting a knowledge
of its principles. What are the obsta-
cles that stand in the way of more fa-
vorable results? That is the question
which Prof. Mendenhall applies himself
to answer. He thinks there are faults
both on the scientific and on the non-
scientific side ; and not being able to
deal exhaustively with the whole ques-
tion, he properly confines himself to in-
dicating the faults with which his own
side, the scientific fraternity, may prop-
erly be considered chargeable.

The main fault all through, however
its phases may vary, is that men of sci-
ence, or many of them at least, are not
sufficiently practical in their views and
aims. They allow a great gulf to form
between themselves and the non-scion-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

121

tific world, and regard the phenomenon
with indifference or even with com-
placency. They have an infinite con-
tempt for any science that aims at being
popular; and we are not sure that the
efforts we have ourselves made to inter-
est the public in scientific subjects have
not encountered in certain quarters a
high disdain. Prof. Mendenhall, who
may be trusted to know whereof he
speaks, asserts that some men in their
scientific disquisitions are "guilty of the
crime of unnecessary and often premedi-
tated and deliberately planned mystifi-
cation." Think of it for a moment — a
man of science aiming not at being as
lucid as possible, at bringing his ideas
within the comprehension of as large a
number of persons as possible, but con-
trariwise trying to achieve the maxi-
mum of obscurity and the maximum of
intellectual exclusiveness ! The thought
is really a painful one ; and yet we
may profitably dwell upon it, for it
shows that scientific knowledge, like any
other form of power, needs to be hu-
manized if it is not to degenerate into a
selfish and pretentious tyranny. One
thing which must always be set to the
credit of the founder of the Positive
Philosophy is that he clearly saw the
risk which pure science ran of losing it-
self in all kinds of refinements and spe-
cializations, and utterly ignoring so-
cial claims and interests. Many are the
passages in which he has raised a note
of warning on this point; and to-day
we have the President of the American
Association for the Advancement of
Science telling us how seriously the
warning is needed.

How are we to bring down our specu-
lations and researches to the level of
popular comprehension? — some of the
mystifiers referred to by Prof. Menden-
hall will probably ask. Nobody wants
you, we reply, to bring down to popu-
lar comprehension that which can not
possibly be popularly comprehended ;
but we do want you to have, and show
that you have, an interest in the general

advancement of knowledge, and that
you regard your specialty, whatever it
may be, as simply a higher development
of forms of knowledge that are within
the popular grasp, and as being, if re-
motely, still vitally, connected with the
practical concerns of life. If such is
not the case, if, on the contrary, you
are soaring in a region in which practi-
cal views have no place and no possible
relevancy, then we make bold to say
that your so-called science is merely a
laborious and pretentious idleness. It
is one thing to wander far afield in
search of that which may at some time
or another, if not immediately, prove of
value to the human race. It is another
and very different one to wander far
afield for the acknowledged purpose of
getting, not only beyond general com-
prehension, but beyond the sphere of all
possible utility. The only condition on
which science can claim the reverence
of mankind is that it devote itself to
human service, and it rests with the se-
rious students of science to make good
this claim. In order that the relations
between science and the age may be
what they ought to be, the world at
large must be made to feel that science
is, in the fullest sense, a ministry of
good to all, not the private possession
and luxury of a few, that it is the best
expression of human intelligence and
not the abracadabra of a school, that it
is a guiding light and not a dazzling fog.
Prof. Mendenhall's address testifies that
things are not on a right footing at pres-
ent, but we may hope that those who
have it in their power to bring about
the change that is desirable will be in-
fluenced by his appeal to exert them-
selves for that purpose. "We hear a great
deal nowadays about the responsibility
attaching to the holders of wealth. It
is often said that wealth needs to be
" moralized." Prof. Mendenhall makes
it plain that knowledge needs to be
moralized through the awakening of the
holders of knowledge to a sense of their
social responsibility. Whether knowl-

122

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

edge indeed is not more in danger than
capital of throwing off social restraint is
quite an open question.

Prof. Mendenhall touches a very im-
portant point when he speaks of the
unfortunate absence of the scientific ele-
ment from our political life. There may
be, doubtless there are, causes for this
for which men of science are not to be
blamed ; but still it is a fact that a man
of science is commonly looked upon as
a man inapt for affairs. In the British
Parliament science is represented by
such men as Sir Henry Koscoe, Sir John
Lubbock, Sir Lyon Playfair ; literature
and philosophy by Mr. John Morley, Mr.
Balfour, and Mr. Gladstone, to mention
but a few names out of many ; and no
one will question that the presence of
such men raises the intellectual tone of
any assembly in which they sit. In this
country we seem to have no use for men
of science and not much even for litte-
rateurs. The consequence is that with
us political discussion shows a total lack
of breadth and an almost total lack of
conviction. A tariff bill is the occasion
for a simple tug-of-war, not for discus-
sion in the true sense. Time was, as
Prof. Mendenhall points out, when our
politics could show such names as
Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamil-
ton— men strongly tinctured wTith phi-
losophy and at the same time of high
practical intelligence. Why should the
Republic not have to-day the services
of its most thoughtful sons ? While the
thought of the age is rising why should
our politics grovel? When so many
practical problems of the gravest mo-
ment are pressing for settlement, why
should the very men whose habits of
mind best fit them for social service re-
tire, as it were, to a Sacred Mountain
of their own and leave the field of civic
activity to sentimentalists and adven-
turers? To answer these questions or
to attempt to answer them would re-
quire more space than we command.
Suffice it to say that these things should
not be, and that much harm will result

if they should remain as characteristic
features of our civilization. Our chief
hope lies in the adoption by the scien-
tific class of that new and better view
of their duties and functions indicated
by Prof. Mendenhall. There is not
much use in preaching to large masses,
but small bodies may be more easily in-
fluenced; and it hardly seems an im-
possible thing that the corps of scien-
tific workers should be penetrated by a
new sense of social duty and should re-
solve to keep in closer touch with the
people than heretofore. What gives
the clergy of the several churches their
undoubted influence ? It is that they
are with the people and of them. If
they deal in mysteries, those mysteries
are not their private property : what-
ever benefit or grace they yield is avail-
able for all. The mysteries of some of
our scientists, on the pontrary, far from
being for all, are prized in direct propor-
tion to the fewness of those who can
take any part in them. The soaring
specialist is never satisfied till he stands
on a pinnacle so small that no one can
get footing beside him.

We need hardly say that we find in
the address of Prof. Mendenhall an
abundant justification of the work in
which we have been engaged now for a
long term of years — the work of bringing
home the best and surest results of sci-
ence to a popular circle of readers and
of keeping up as active a connection as
possible between true scientific workers
and the public. To this work we shall
apply ourselves in future with increased
courage and determination — increased
courage from the hope that the stirring
words of the retiring President of the
American Association will bring us new
allies and helpers ; increased determina-
tion from a quickened sense of the need of
just such work. It is no new dogmatism
that the times call for, but a new spirit of
helpfulness and hopefulness guided by sci-
ence. By this means, and this only, will
the world solve its problems and outride
the storms that threaten its civilization.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

123

TEE LIBRARY AS A LABORATORY.

What the old proverb says of fire —
that it is "a good servant but a bad
master" — might with truth be applied
to books. It was the great defect of
the old-fashioned education that books
were allowed to get the mastery over
the pupil. But now, that the immedi-
ate study of things has gained the as-
cendency in the modern mode of teach-
ing many subjects, care must be taken
not to run into the opposite extreme,
and disregard books altogether. How
much aid a well-managed collection of
books can give to the student in any field
is clearly pointed out by Mr. George lies
in an article on The Library in Educa-
tion, published in The Week, of Toronto.
He says that, " although deposed from
the supreme station they once held, they
now occupy a place but little lower, and
a place broadened.by the scope of ideas
new in education. Every important ob-
servation, experiment, experience in any
of the unnumbered fields of science, or
of teaching, soon gets itself printed in a
book. Thus printed, it is in no sense
a substitute for individual use of eyes,
hands, and brain, but gives all these
information, guidance, suggestion, of
worth incalculable. . . . While in the
study of architecture, geology, or en-
gineering, the library is of increasing
worth as an aid to work and practice,
there are fields of research where it be-
comes the workshop itself. Research
in law, history, philosophy, economics,
literature generally, can only be pursued
where books are gathered together and
rightly ordered." The phrase " rightly
ordered " is an allusion to the immense
increase of value that librarians are now
giving to the collections in their charge
through improved organization. For-
merly the librarian deemed his duty
done if he faithfully guarded the books
in his care from loss or injury, and the
less they were used the less apprehen-
sions he had for their safety. The libra-
rian that is now coming to the front is
a being of a different kind. He is trained

for his profession, and he has a much
broader conception of the work that be-
longs to him. " The new idea is," says
Mr. lies, "that he shall so vitalize his
library, that to make his books attract-
ive and useful shall be his chiefest care.
To that end he must know how to order
them and indicate their contents, so that
the whole capital intrusted to him shall
be instantly available for any inquirer's
purpose. He must be able to give seek-
ers guidance, have the tact and sympathy
to stimulate research, the kindly enthu-
siasm which promotes study by inviting
it to helpful stepping-stones." A libra-
ry under such management rises to the
plane of efficiency occupied by the labor-
atory. A modern laboratory designed
for students in one of the sciences, with
its convenient desks, drawers, and lock-
ers, its rows of bottles containing re-
agents, its apparatus especially devised
for the work to be done, its arrange-
ments for water, gas, and steam, its
compartments set off to secure special
conditions of light, air, or temperature,
and its collections systematically ar-
ranged for the comparison of specimens,
is a most satisfactory place to work in
To say that the modern library is ap-
proaching this character is the highest
praise that we can give it.

Mr. lies devotes the rest of his article
to paying a well-deserved tribute to Mr.
Melvil Dewey, now Secretary to the
Board of Eegents of the University of
New York, and Librarian of the State
Library at Albany, as being one of the
leading spirits in bringing about modern
reforms in library administration. Be-
fore going to Albany, Mr. Dewey was for
five years Chief Librarian at Columbia
College, during which time he produced
there one of the finest examples of a
modern working library. The Colum-
bia College Library is open all day and
in the evening throughout the year, ex-
cept Sundays and Good Friday ; it has
a card-catalogue, which is the only kind
that can be kept constantly up to date ;
in this catalogue the titles are arranged

124

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by subjects, so tbat tbe resources of the
library in any field of knowledge can be
seen at a glance ; tbe books are arranged
in tbe same way, so tbat tbe readers,
who have free access to the shelves, can
find tbe material relating to each topic
of study all in one place ; there is a
large, light, and airy reading-room with
an electric lamp on every table; tbe
method of calling for books gives the
least possible trouble to tbe reader;
those lent out are charged under a sys-
tem which enables the charging clerk to
tell the whereabouts of every volume at
any time; trained librarians are always
at band to give any assistance needed,
and users of books are afforded other
facilities too numerous to mention. The
improvements in this library made by
Mr. Dewey induced several societies to
deposit their special libraries here per-
manently, and drew in so many gifts
that the collection grew as much in five
years as it had during the preceding
century. In such a library we have the
same thorough adaptation of resources
to the work to be done that character-
izes the laboratory. Similar methods
are spreading widely among libraries
designed for study, and promise to give
books a higher value and a truer useful-
ness than they ever had when they were
the objects of a sort of fetich-worship.

LITERARY NOTICES.

American Spiders and their Spinning-
work. By Henry C. McCook, D. D.
Vol. II. Published by the author :
Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila-
delphia. Pp. 480, quarto. Price, $30
for set of three volumes.

The high character of the first volume
of this work is fully kept up, if not excelled,
in the second. We have here the same care-
ful observation that marked the first volume,
the same painstaking description, the same
clear and picturesque language, and more
than an equal wealth of illustrations, for, in
addition to the four hundred cuts, Volume
II contains five colored plates. These last
may be taken as samples of those that are
to form so large a feature of the concluding

volume. Upon the completion of Volume
III, which is now well under way, the price
of the set will be raised to $50. This has
been found necessary, in order to reimburse
the author for the cost of publication. The
early portion of the present volume is de-
voted to the courtship and mating of spiders.
Here are described the search of the male for
a mate, his approaches, made cautious by the
knowledge that his prospective bride may eat
him if she does not feel amiable, his actions
in the union, and his flight for life afterward.
The males of some species execute curious
dances to win the favor of the females ; the
water-spiders have special habits of mating
due to their mode of life ; and various other
peculiarities are observed in other species.
Maternal industry and instincts are next
taken up, this subject comprising the making
of cocoons, and the means employed to pro-
tect their contents from exigencies of climate
and weather, and assaults of enemies. The
habits of orb-weavers are taken as the basis
of the account, but the cocoonery of many
other species is fully described for the pur-
pose of comparison. The early adventures
of the young form another phase of spider-
life that receives similar detailed attention.
One of the most interesting chapters is that
dealing with the ballooning habit of spiders,
or their practice of sailing through the air
borne up by several streaming threads. The
habit is by no means confined to one species,
Dr. McCook deeming it probable that the
young of most spiders are more or less ad-
dicted to this mode of motion. There is a
chapter on the senses of spiders, in which
the anatomy of the sense-organs is described.
In speaking of color and the color-sense, Dr.
McCook contradicts the popular idea that
spiders as a class are ugly, and says that as
fair and brilliant colors may be found among
the spiders as among the butterflies. Other
topics treated are the influence of hostile
agents in causing mimicry on the part of
spiders, in modifying their habits, and in
causing the feigning of death. Dr. McCook
does not accept the theory of fear-paralysis
as regards spiders, but believes that their
assuming of death-like stillness in the pres-
ence of stronger enemies is entirely volun-
tary. The bodies of spiders are so easily
destroyed that many readers will be sur-
prised to find a chapter on fossil spiders

LITERARY NOTICES.

125

in this book ; yet thirty-two species have
been found in America and one hundred and
ninety in Europe. Of these European spi-
ders one hundred and sixty-eight were pre-
served in amber. In the course of this vol-
ume the author has been brought in contact
with many of the modern problems of bi-
ology, lie has not taken sides in any con-
troversies, but the facts that he has recorded
concerning the araneads can not fail to
throw light on some of the matters in dis-
pute. His contributions to science, already
notable, are made much more so by this
splendid work ; and when it is remembered
that his observations have been made in the
moments that could be spared from a busy
professional life, his achievements excite
wonder as well as admiration.

School Supervision. By T. L. Pickard,
LL. D. New York : D. Appleton & Co.
Pp. 175. Price, $1.

Not only superintendents and teachers,
but all those concerned in the management of
children, will find helpful hints in this volume.
It is the outcome of twenty years of keen ob-
servation in the superintendency of schools,
such excellent oversight that Dr. Harris
writes of it, that "In the visits of inspec-
tion made to the principal cities of the coun-
try in the decade 1867 to 1876 . . . he found
no system to compare with that of Chicago
while under the supervision of Mr. Pickard."
The first subjects treated are the qualifica-
tions and duties of the superintendent in
the State, the county, and the city. The work
of the State Superintendent is largely ad-
visory ; he needs to be upright, broad-
minded, forcible, and judicial. The county
superintendent comes closer to the school-
room, while the city superintendent finds
his chief duty supervision of instruction.
The relation of the superintendent to pupil,
teacher, parent, and Board of Education is
considered in special chapters. In discuss-
ing courses of study, a vigorous argument
for the high school is given. The author
points out in the preface that his views of
promotions and examinations have changed
materially in later years. " Examinations
appear too frequently as the end of school-
work rather than as a means to an end. So
prominent has been the error, and so ruin-
ous its acceptance, that wise men are tend-

ing to an opposite extreme." Other impor-
tant topics which receive attention are physi-
cal training, moral training, and government
of pupils.

Two obstacles to the progress of the pub-
lic schools are noted : " 1. The large propor-
tion of inexperienced teachers employed. 2.
The lack of professional spirit." About
twenty-two per cent of new teachers are re-
quired annually. The majority are women
who make teaching a temporary matter
rather than a life-work. To effect a change
the superintendent must meet the old theory
that " ' competition determines wages,' with
the newer theory that salary is attached to
place and not to person, and, where places
are vacant, the most competent persons avail-
able should be called to fill them without
regard to sex." Professional schools are
needed as well as advancement in normal
schools. Among the means suggested for
the improvement of teachers are teachers'
meetings, the use of good periodicals, and
" lines of study outside of school-work,"
such as scientific societies and summer
schools afford. The book contains besides
an index two appendices — one in which a
strong plea is made for moral influence in
the school, and another devoted to a study
of boys.

Hypnotism. By Albert Moll. The Con-
temporary Science Series. New York :
Scribner & Welford. Pp. 410. Price,
$1.25.

While this subject is doubtless still in
its infancy, it has already engaged the efforts
of so many and so able investigators, and
has aroused such a wide popular interest,
that no list of books on the science of the
time would be complete without a treatise
upon it. Dr. Moll's book is a survey of the
whole subject, adapted to the general reader.
The author passes over the history of hyp-
notism very briefly. His method of giving
the reader an idea of the phenomena of
hypnotism is by relating several experi-
ments, and this leads to a short considera-
tion of the methods of inducing hypnosis,
who can be hypnotized, and what distinct
stages of hypnosis there are. On this last
point Moll accepts provisionally a classifica-
tion lately published by Max Dessoir, divid-
ing the states into two large groups, which

126

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are distinguished thus : " In the first group
merely the voluntary movements show
changes; in the second group abnormities
in the functions of the sense organs are
added. In the first group, also, only those
functions are abnormal which we attribute
to the centrifugal nerves, while in the second
group the functions of the centripetal nerves
are likewise disturbed." The longest and
most important chapter in the book is that
on the symptoms of hypnosis. These he
arranges under the headings Physiology and
Psychology, but merely for convenience, as
the bodily functions become abnormal only
in consequence of changed mental states.
The physiological symptoms concern "the
voluntary and involuntary muscles, the or-
gans of sense, common sensation, the secre-
tions, metabolism, and, in rare instances,
also the cell-power of organization." As to
whether reflex movements that do not ap-
pear under normal conditions appear in hyp-
nosis, as Charcot and Heidenhain assert, the
author is inclined to say " not proven." Un-
der psychology he names abnormity of the
memory, the performance after being wak-
ened of actions suggested during hypnosis,
the habit of hypnotics trying to find reasons
for absurd suggested acts, etc. In his opin-
ion we can not speak of loss of conscious-
ness in hypnosis, nor is the subject devoid
of will power, as is often shown by resistance
to suggestions. In concluding this division
of the subject, Dr. Moll delivers a caution
against mistaking the results of training for
essential hypnotic phenomena. For instance,
Delboeuf artificially induced the stages of
Charcot in one of his own subjects in a few
hours. A discussion of states cognate to
hypnotism follows. Dr. Moll begins by say-
ing, " I do not think we can make a close
comparison between sleep and hypnosis,"
but seems to contradict himself by stating,
in conclusion, that " hypnosis by no means
needs to be sharply distinguished from
sleep." Next the author takes up the the-
ory of hypnotism, and passes in review the
various actions in the brain that have been
supposed to account for hypnotic phenome-
na. He gives a little attention to the sub-
ject of simulation, because disbelievers in
the reality of hypnotism are very fond of
crying fraud. lie also considers respective-
ly the medical and the legal aspects of hyp-

notism in a suggestive style, and closes with
a tolerant glance at the alleged phenomena
of animal magnetism, telepathy, etc. Two
indexes and a short list of the books the
author chiefly recommends are appended to
the volume. The author is himself an ex-
perimenter and frequently alludes to his own
results, but his tone throughout is that of a
judge rather than that of the advocate of
any special theory. His pages bristle with
parentheses, inclosing names of men to whom
he credits observations and opinions. The
work claims to be thoroughly up to date, it
gives evidence of having been carefully
written, and it has already had the benefit of
one revision.

Practical Sanitary and Economic Cooking
adapted to persons of moderate and
Small Means. By Mrs. Mary Hinman
Abel. American Public Health Associ-
ation: Rochester, N. Y. Pp.182. Price,
40 cents.

This little work is the essay for which
was awarded the prize of five hundred dol-
lars offered by Mr. Henry Lomb, of Roches-
ter, in 1SS8. Its great superiority over the
other essays offered in the competition may
be inferred from the fact that no one of the
other sixty-nine was adjudged worthy of the
second prize of two hundred dollars offered
at the same time. The basis of the treatise
is an explanation of what is meant by food-
principles, with the amounts of each that are
required by a man, a woman, and a child, re-
spectively, and the percentages to be found
in different kinds and cuts of meat, in vege-
tables, etc. This theoretical matter is illus-
trated by practical directions for cooking
all the reasonably economical foods. The
recipes are grouped under the three head-
ings, Proteid-containing Foods, Fats and Oils,
and Carbohydrate-containing Foods. In de-
scribing methods of cooking meat, the author
first answers the question — which probably
few housewives have ever thought to ask —
Why do we cook it at all ? Several ways of
cooking each kind are given, and the rank of
each in the scale of economy is told. In the
short chapter On Fats and Oils, the impor-
tance of fat in the diet is emphasized, and
several ways of preparing cheaper fats so as
to take the place of butter are described.
The cooking of grains and vegetables, and
the making of bread, fritters, and puddings,

LITERARY NOTICES.

127

are described in like manner with the cook-
ing of meat. Soups, being among the most
economical of dishes, receive a large share
of attention. The author advises the house-
wife to make use of the full range of season-
ings at her command, so as to increase the
number of stimulating flavors that can be
given to the food of the family. In conclu-
sion, there are given twelve bills of fare for
a family of six, costing on the average sev-
enty-eight cents a day, twelve costing one
dollar and twenty-six cents, and twelve din-
ners to be taken by a man to his work and
eaten mostly cold. Other topics, namely,
drinks at meals, cookery for the sick, and
the buying of meat, are treated, and the au-
thor has deemed a few words on the arrange-
ment of the kitchen not out of place. Mrs.
Abel's mode of presenting her subject is
thoroughly scientific, and at the same time is
attractive and encouraging, and not above
the comprehension of an ordinarily intelli-
gent woman, if she is not afraid of columns
of percentages, and such words as " proteid "
and " carbohydrate." The book is sold for a
nominal price, in order that the information
it contains may be widely diffused. It is pub-
lished in both paper and cloth covers, and
in the German as well as the English lan-
guage, and may be obtained by addressing
Essay Department, American Public Health
Association, P. 0. Drawer 289, Rochester,
N. Y.

A Treatise on Massage, Theoretical and
Practical. By Douglas Graham, M. D.
Second edition, revised and enlarged.
New York : J. H. Vail & Co. Pp. 342.
Price, $2.75.

The history, mode of application, and ef-
fects of massage, indications and contra-in-
dications, are also included in the title of
this book. The author is known to the read-
ers of the Monthly from his having published
in it, in October, 1882, a description of Gen-
eral Massage, which was one of the fullest
and most intelligible and satisfactory popu-
lar accounts of the subject that had till then
been given, and which we believe did much
to bring massage into general notice. The
first edition of this work was published
a little more than two years afterward, for
the purpose of recalling the facts and ob-
servations scattered in numerous medical
memoirs, and uniting them with the author's

own experience. For the present edition,
the work has been thoroughly revised, and
enlarged with numerous additions, many of
them confirmatory of statements previously
regarded as doubtful. Two new chapters
have been added — one on local massage for
local neurasthenia, and the other on the
treatment of scoliosis by means of mass-
age. Much new and valuable information
from European doctors is introduced on the
uses of massage in affections of the ear, in
scoliosis, in affections near and into joints,
and in affections of the abdominal organs.
The summary of the history of massage, to
which two chapters are devoted, traces the
development of the process from the rub-
bings of the most ancient times. According
to Prof. Billroth, massage is as old as sur-
gery itself — and that means as old as man-
kind. Rubbing is spoken of by Homer, and
was practiced among the Greeks and Ro-
mans, by people of different classes, in their
gymnasia and their baths, among whom it
seems to have been highl" appreciated by
men of note, eminent as physicians or phi-
losophers, poets or historians ; and so it has
come down to us — not been discovered. It
is also familiar and efficacious among many
barbarous and savage peoples. In the chap-
ter on the mode of applying massage, the
point is maintained that the matter should
not be left to novices, to persons who " have
a knack " for it, or to those who take it up
without instruction, or with imperfect in-
struction, but is one in which intelligence
and professional skill have an important
place, and which doctors should not be
above engaging in personally. The study
of the physiological effects of massage is
declared to be commensurate with that of
physiology itself. It "rouses dormant capil-
laries, increases the area and speed of the
circulation, furthers absorption, and stimu-
lates the vaso-motor nerves. . . . Seeing that
more blood passes through regions mass£ed
in a given time, there will be an increase in
the interchange between the blood and the
tissues, and thus the work done by the cir-
culation will be greater, and the share borne
by each quantity less." The process is then
shown, in particulars, to be beneficial in af-
fections of the nervous system. In the suc-
ceeding chapters its application is discussed,
with numerous citations of illustrative cases

128

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in each — which are preferred to deductions
— in nervous exhaustion and anaemia, in af-
fections of the uterus and other internal or-
gans, in local neurasthamia, in affections of
the central nervous system, in writer's cramp
and allied affections ; in neuralgia, periph-
eral paralysis, muscular rheumatism, muscu-
lar rupture, elephantiasis, oedema, scoliosis ;
in sprains and affections of the joints; in
disorders of the head, face, eyes, ears, and
throat, and in catarrhal affections.

Sanity and Insanity. By Charles Mer-
cier. Contemporary Science Series.
New York: Scribner & Welford. Pp.
395. Price, $1.25.

The author has endeavored, not so much
to describe and enumerate, as to account for
the phenomena of insanity. It is agreed
that certain occurrences are occasional, oth-
ers common, and others invariable in insan-
ity, and that certain occurrences are fre-
quently associated ; but why such connec-
tions should exist has never been explained,
nor, so far as the author knows, inquired
into. Many hypotheses are experimentally
applied in the pursuit of the inquiry thus
outlined, without claiming that they are the
true explanations of the facts, but because
" at any rate, they are explanations of some
kind," the author believing that the state of
our science "has reached a point at which
some explanation of the facts of insanity
has become desirable, and that any hypothe-
sis, even if erroneous, is a step toward the
attainment of truth, and is better than a
mere unorganized accumulation of facts."
A more clear distinction is insisted upon than
is observed by some physio-psychological
writers — perhaps the careless ones — between
nervous processes and the mental states that
accompany them. While there is no thought
or mental condition without a nervous pro-
cess, the relation between the two is like
that of a shadow, equivalent, obverse, or ac-
companiment of inexplicable association. It
is found, in the search for a definition of in-
sanity, that in every case of the affection
three factors are present — " disorder of the
highest nerve arrangements, disorder of con-
duct, and disorder of consciousness ; and in
every case the disorder of consciousness in-
cludes disorder of thought and of feeling, of
self-consciousness, and of consciousness of

the relation of self to the surroundings. In
no two cases, however, are these various fac-
tors combined in quite the same way, and
thus no two cases precisely resemble one an-
other. On the way in which they are com-
bined depends the form which the insanity
assumes." Among the causes of insanity
are those arising from heredity, which may
work under the law of inheritance or under
that of sanguinity, in which are involved the
effects of different degrees of similarity or
dissimilarity in parents ; direct stress, or the
action of noxious agents immediately on the
nerve-centers; and indirect stresses — which
are of internal origin when the agent is some
commotion in the organ itself, as in the case
of morbid affections ; or of external origin,
when the agent is some commotion in the
environment, as when cares of family or
business or social and political relations
worry. The forms of insanity are various,
and are hardly susceptible of a fixed classi-
fication. They may be arranged from dif-
ferent points of view, and may run into one
another. The author treats idiocy, imbecil-
ity, sleep, old age, and drunkenness as being
marked by one or more of the features that
may enter into insanity, and discusses the
forms of the real affection under the heads
of melancholia, exaltation, and dementia.
The discussion of the points brought up is
lively and bold, and the observations upon
them are pungent and often witty.

The Antiquities of Tennessee and the Ad-
jacent States, and the State of Ab-
original Society in the Scale of Civili-
zation REPRESENTED BY THEM. By GATES

P. Thruston. Cincinnati : Robert Clarke
k Co. Pp. 369, with Plates. Price, $4.

The author is Corresponding Secretary
of the Tennessee Historical Society. He
does not in this work expound a theory,
but presents a series of historical and ethno-
logical studies, very largely his own, but
with those of others often brought in for
illustration and comparison, the aim of which
is to exhibit precisely the evidence which
the mounds and their contents afford of the
degree of civilization attained by the build-
ers and the character of their social life.
The book has grown out of the author's
labors in describing the fine types of pottery
and other objects found in the large abo-
riginal cemetery which was discovered near

LITERARY NOTICES.

129

Nashville about two years ago. The ma-
terial worthy of illustration accumulated so
rapidly that it was found impossible to do
justice to it in the modest pamphlet that
was contemplated. It became necessary,
also, to consider the general subject of an-
cient monuments and antiquities in Tennes-
see, in order properly to introduce the new
material discovered, and thus make the pub-
lication useful to a larger class of readers.
The people whose relics are described here
are called by the author the Stone-Grave
race, because their dead were placed in cists
or box-shaped graves built of stone slabs,
and sometimes constructed with much care.
A hundred or more of these graves are oc-
casionally found, deposited in several tiers
or layers, in a single burial mound. The
utensils and treasures laid away with the
bodies are generally well preserved, and
" tell the story of domestic life in the Cum-
berland and Tennessee Valleys with remark-
able exactness, and unravel secrets that the
most imposing monuments of the native
races have failed to disclose." Besides the
graves, the remains of the forts, villages,
and settlements of the same people have
been discovered in considerable numbers ;
and, on the whole, Tennessee appears to have
afforded one of the most fruitful fields that
the American archaeologist has been privi-
leged to explore. The articles — inscribed
stones, idols, images, totems, potteries, pipes,
implements of chipped stone, smooth stone,
copper, bone, and shell — betoken an artistic
taste and technical skill beyond that of our
Indians or of the mound-builders of the
States farther north, and are more on the
level of the best New Mexican work. Among
the most remarkable of them are some finely
finished large flints, from sixteen to twenty
inches long, which the author designates as
scepters, and others equal to them in degree,
which he classifies as ceremonial implements.
The most remarkable, perhaps, are the shell
gorgets, carved with intricate figures, in
which the human form may be discerned,
the style of which suggests Mexican and
Central American work. One of these, from
the MacMahon Mound, Sevierville, repre-
sents two human figures in combat, and is
regarded as the highest example of aborigi-
nal art ever found north of Mexico. A
unique stone in the collection of the Tennes-
vol. xxxviii. — 9

see Historical Society has engraved upon it
the representation of a group of mound-
builders, with their banners, weapons, cos-
tumes, and manner of dressing the hair
clearly shown. The author, who is an origi-
nal investigator, and not liable to be de-
ceived, vouches for the authenticity of all
that he describes. A chapter is devoted to
the study of the ancient houses, which are
compared with those of the Mandans, and
the aboriginal trade, which seems to have
been co-extensive with the continent. In age
the people were probably pre-Columbian,
but may have lived down to the days of the
Spanish explorers. In ethnic relations they
were a branch of the general stock of our
Indians, in a more advanced stage of civili-
zation than any of them now are, but not in
other respects differing more from them
than some of the tribes differ from others.

The Criminal. By Havelock Ellis. Con-
temporary Science Series. New York:
Scribner & Welford. Pp. 33V. Price,
$1.25.

Mr. Ellis has attempted in this work to
present to the English reader a critical sum-
mary of the results of the science now com-
monly called criminal anthropology. The
study of the problems of this science — which
deals with the criminal as he is in himself and
as he becomes in contact with society, and
with the social bearings of the subject — has
been carried on with great activity during
the past fifteen years in many countries, and
has given rise to a considerable number of
elaborate and thorough-going treatises, most
of which are inaccessible to general English
readers, and, by reason of their magnitude or
of the special, detailed character of the re-
search, are not likely to become familiar.
Mr. Ellis has reviewed them and picked out
the conclusions to which they lead with much
skill and apparently without prepossession
in favor of any special theory. Besides doing
his workman's work in a workmanlike man-
ner, he has shown a capacity to handle the
subject independently, as one who has made
himself master of it, and has matured his
own manner of regarding it. First, the chief
varieties of the criminal are enumerated ;
the causes of crime are classed as cosmic —
the influence of the external organic world ;
biological — the personal peculiarities of the

13°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

individual ; and social. The history of the
study of criminality is next sketched, and its
importance is indicated. The physical char-
acters of criminals are considered and com-
pared with those of other men, after the ex-
ample set by Lombroso, with reference to
various anatomical peculiarities as well as
to the broader factors of general structure,
physical sensibility, and heredity. Of psy-
chical factors, moral insensibility, intelli-
gence, vanity, emotional instability, senti-
ment, and religion are presented as those to
the influence of which, on one side or the
other, the most importance may be attached.
The working of these factors is illustrated
by reference to the custom of tattooing,
thieves' slang, prison inscriptions, criminal
literature and art, and criminal philosophy.
The results of criminal anthropology are re-
viewed in the fifth chapter ; they are some-
times obscure and even contradictory ; but
we can not afford, in dealing with criminals,
to dispense with such science of human na-
ture as we may succeed in attaining. The
lesson is drawn that criminality is a natural
phenomenon to be studied gravely and care-
fully, according to natural methods ; and
that by natural and reasonable methods
alone can the problem of its elimination be
faced with any chance of success. The gen-
eral character of some of these methods is
indicated.

Protoplasm and Life, one of the Fact
and Theory papers series, published by
N. D. C. Ilodges, New York, contains two
biological essays by Charles F. Cox. In
the former essay, entitled The Cell Doc-
trine, the author reviews the history of the
theory of protoplasm and the discussions
upon it, and reaches the conclusions that
the original idea of the cell, as propounded
by Schleiden and Schwann, has gradually
faded away ; that there appears to be no one
visible and tangible substance to which the
name protoplasm is rigidly and exclusively
applied,; and that life is as much a mystery
as ever. In the second essay, which is on
the Spontaneous Generation theory, he en-
deavors to show that a transition from not-
living matter to living forms is an essential
step in the process of evolution ; that at the
point at which experimental proof is appli-
cable (namely, present and continued arche-

biosis) the theory of such transition is dis-
credited, if not disproved ; and that " the
general theory of evolution is still in the
stage of hypothesis, and that in the gap be-
tween lifeless substances and living forms
we have the veritable ' missing link.' "

In preparing his book on Tornadoes (New
York, N. D. C. Ilodges, Fact and Theory pa-
pers) Prof. H. A. Hazen has aimed to pre-
sent in popular style the theories bearing on
the subject, and the facts that have accumu-
lated from year to year, otherwise scattered
through many volumes. Efforts have been
made to sift theories to their sources ; to re-
view Espy's work, which lies at the basis of
modern theories of tornado formation ; to
obtain an estimate of the tornadoes that
have occurred in this country since 18*73 ;
and to compare the destruction by tornadoes
with that by fire. Some suggestions are given
about tornado insurance. The sun-spot the-
ory and the possibility of predicting torna-
does are touched upon. The Louisville torna-
do is described ; and directions are given for
observing tornadoes.

The Chief Signal Officer of the Army
complains in his Report for 1889 that the
military branch of the corps is deteriorating
for the lack of facilities for the practical
training and drilling of the officers and men,
but makes a full exhibit of meteorological
work. The issue of weather forecasts and
storm warnings has been continued, and the
demands for them have increased. As the
field to which they are applied expands,
modifications have to be made in their
shape ; they become more general, and local
work has more to be left to local observers ;
and in this department obligations are ac-
knowledged to certain newspapers in the
larger cities. Defects in the predictions are
excused by pleading the amount of work
that is imposed upon the persons who have
to make them. Thus the chief forecast offi-
cial has forty-nine minutes in the morning
and fifteen minutes at night at his disposal
for what is a very complicated task. Yet,
the percentage of correct predictions is rising
—78-3 in 1887, 81-6 in 1888, and 83'8 in
1889. Weather reports from the West In-
dies have been resumed. A special study is
being made of cold waves. Weather signals
are supplied at 1,056 stations. Observations
of atmospheric electricity have been discon-

LITERARY NOTICES.

Mi

tinued, as not promising, under present con-
ditions, to lead to valuable results. The
weekly weather crop Bulletin has been con-
tinued, and its value has been appreciated.
Special attention is given to the height of
risers at seventy places on twenty-six rivers.

The second volume of the report consists
of a treatise by Prof. Cleveland Abbe of Pre-
paratory Studies for Deductive Methods in
Storm and Weather Predictions. Together
with already known conclusions and princi-
ples, it brings forward many new results;
discusses the relative importance of various
forces and resistances, the prominent feat-
ures of vortex motion, the turbulent flow of
the atmosphere, and the dynamic origin of
the diurnal variation of the barometer con-
nected with it ; gives much space to the
vertical motion due to buoyancy, to the
formation of clouds, and to the conclusions
to be drawn from their study. It seeks for
the source and maintaining power of the
storm, and for the conditions that influence
the movement of the storm center.

The Reference Handbook for Readers,
Students, and Teachers of English History,
by K H. Gurncy (Ginn & Co.), is a series of
tables of the historical families of England.
It gives the descent of William the Con-
queror, of the kings of England and their
families, the descent of the present reigning
families, the nobility of England, counselors
and statesmen from 1066 to 1889, the prin-
cipal British writers, and the dates of prin-
cipal events.

Mr. John Kennedy, author of the Stem
Dictionary of the English Language (A. S.
Barnes & Co.), has proceeded on the opinion
that there is a more satisfactory and more
useful way of enlarging one's vocabulary
than by definition. The definition of- a word
built up out of a familiar primary word is
superfluous, because the word explains itself.
If we know the stem, we can readily deter-
mine the meaning of the words into which it
enters. This leads to the study of stems
and to the adoption of word-structure as the
basis of elementary education. This book is
prepared as an aid to the study. In it the
principal stems of the language are presented
in alphabetical sequence, together with the
value of each ; first the primary value, then
the line of transition into the secondary or
derived use. In connection with each stem

is given a list of its principal applications,
together with such parenthetical remarks as
may be helpful in connecting the stem value
with the present use of the word. The list
is liberally illustrated with quotations from
standard authors, showing how many of the
words have been used in their writings. It
is also freely garnished with notes that em-
body literary, scientific, or historical lore.
The stem-list is preceded by a word list
which may be consulted when the stem is to
be found, and is followed by a list of pre-
fixes.

The first six books of The Annals of
Tacitus, edited by the late Prof. William F.
Allen, has been added to the " College Series
of Latin Authors" (Ginn, $1.65). About
half of each page is occupied with notes,
and an introduction of thirty-two pages em-
bodies information about the works of Taci-
tus and their characteristics, Tiberius, the
condition of the Roman Empire in his time,
etc. Appended to the volume are some
textual notes, an index of proper names,
and an index to the notes.

The Pleroma (Putnam, $2.50) is an ac-
count of creation in blank verse, in which
the author, Rev. E. P. Chittenden, combines
the biblical story with the revelations of
science. It is in what the author calls semi-
dramatic form — that is, like the form of the
second part of Faust, the characters, or
" voices," being mostly angels, spirits, forces,
forms, etc.

The question of reading the Bible in the
public schools is briefly reviewed in an essay
by Joseph Henry Crooker (Wisconsin State
Journal Printing Company). The stimulus to
the publication of this pamphlet was a recent
decision by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin
prohibiting the use of the Scriptures for re-
ligious instruction in the schools of the State,
and a subsequent address by Dr. Bascom
criticising such action. The author finds a
"fundamental fallacy" in the claim that
Bible reading can be warranted in the
schools of a secular state. It is not read as
literature, nor as history, but as a super-
natural revelation. He considers the decree
" a friendly act " toward the Bible, since it
prevents the use of archaic texts and pas-
sages obnoxious to young minds. The con-
clusion is reached that not only is the de-
cision of the court in accordance with the

132

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Constitution of Wisconsin, but that it is
illustrative of " the holiest motive of human
affairs, . . . the sentiment of universal jus-
tice," and indicates the dawn of " the mod-
ern state."

A series of articles originally contributed
to Science by Oscar Browning is republished
in revised form by the Industrial Education
Association, under the title Aspects of Edu-
cation. In this a study is made of the the-
ories of teaching that have influenced the
world since the Reformation. These are re-
solved into three classes : humanism, or the
study of language ; realism, a study of things ;
and naturalism, training for the art of living.
The author claims in favor of language study
that weighing the shades of meaning in words
cultivates a subtler tact than either mathe-
matical reasoning or biological discrimina-
tion. The realistic method of teaching, al-
though indebted to Comenius and Milton,
received its greatest impetus from the ex-
amples of Pestalozzi and Froebel. " There
is no fear that, in the present day, the learn-
ing of things instead of words will be
neglected." It is observed that "natural
education will always have advocates and
apostles, especially in times when there ap-
pears to be a danger of over-refinement or
overpressure ; but the wise educationalist
will turn to it as a repository of cautions
and warnings rather than as an armory of
weapons fit for fighting against the ever-
present enemies of ignorance and sloth."
The pamphlet concludes with a historical
sketch of the English public schools. Win-
chester, Eton, Harrow, and Rugby still ad-
here to the classical curriculum, so that " a
public school man means one who has been
educated mainly in Greek and Latin." The
suggestion is made anent the boardinjr-

CO o

school system, that " an idea may grow up
that the home is, after all, the best place
for children."

Nos. 10 and 12 of Quiz Compends (Blak-
iston, $1 each), are at hand. The former is
A Compend of Chemistry, inorganic and or-
ganic, including urinary analysis, by Henry
Leffman, M. D., which has reached its third
edition. It gives a cursory view of the field
of general chemistry, dealing also with bio-
logical chemistry, and is intended to serve
medical students partly or wholly in place of
written lecture notes. As to changes from

the preceding editions, the author says that
he has endeavored to bring the work up to
date, and has given more space to explana-
tions of the nature and functions of acids
and radicles. He has also treated the organic
substitution compounds more at length.

No. 12 of this series has for its subject
Equine Anatomy and Physiology. It is by
William R. Ballou, M. D., and contains
twenty -nine graphic illustrations selected
from Chauveau's Comparative Anatomy. The
facts and descriptions are given very con-
cisely, and are arranged under heads and
sub-heads, divisions of different ranks being
distinguished by different type. In order
that the eye may readily find any item of
which the reader is in search, each sub-
head begins a new line.

From the same publishers we have re-
ceived the third edition of The Essentials of
Medical Chemistry and Urinalysis, by Sam
E. Woody, M. D. (price, $1.25). It contains
more matter than the usual volumes of
lecture notes, and may be described as a
brief treatise. Directions for a considerable
number of experiments are inserted in the
form of foot-notes, and processes and ar-
rangements of apparatus, etc., are shown in
sixty-two cuts. The chapter on urinalysis is
quite full, and contains figures showing the
appearance under the microscope of various
solid matters, crystalline substances, etc.

Also from the Messrs. Blakiston comes a
little volume in the same style as the last,
but much briefer, on Electro- Chemical Anal-
ysis, by Prof. Edgar F. Smith (price, $1). It
is designed to make students acquainted with
the methods of quantitative analysis by elec-
trolysis. The author describes the plan of
the book as comprising "a brief introduction
upon the behavior of the current toward the
different acids and salts, a short description
of the various sources of the electric energy ;
its control and measurement ; after which
follow a condensed history of the introduc-
tion of the current into chemical analysis,
and sections relating to the determination
and separation of metals, as well as the oxi-
dations possible by means of the electric
agent. . . . The methods of determination
and separation given preference are not
those of any one individual, but have been
selected from all sources after an experience
of many years, care being taken to present

LITERARY NOTICES.

*33

only those which actual tests have shown to
be reliable and trustworthy." The volume
contains twenty-five illustrations.

A new and revised edition is published
by William Wood & Co. of Mr. Henry Kid-
dle's Text-Book of Physics, in which are in-
corporated the alterations needed to adapt
the book to the present state of science.
The work itself is an adaptation or simpli-
fication of Ganot's work, and regard has
been had, in carrying out the revision, to the
changes and improvements that have been
made in the successive editions of the pro-
totype. A large number of experiments,
with new illustrations, have been added in
the department of "Application of Prin-
ciples."

Health for Little Folks (American Book
Company) is the book for primary grades
in the " Authorized Physiology Series." It
teaches what the laws now require in regard
to alcoholic beverages and tobacco, with fre-
quent iteration, and states briefly the gen-
eral rules of health and the structure of the
body. Physiology and anatomy, however,
are treated in the first two books of the
series merely as aids " to enable the pupil
to comprehend the topic which is the real
object of study, viz., the laws of health and
the nature of alcoholic drinks and other nar-
cotics, and their effects upon the human
system." The volume is written in simple
language, it is clearly printed, and is made
attractive with many illustrations. The
series is indorsed by the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union.

The Open Court Company, Chicago, pub-
lishes by special license of the author, Three
Lectures on the Science of Language and its
Place in General Education, which were de-
livered at the Oxford University Extension
Meeting of 1889, by Prof. F. Max Muller.
In the first lecture the author finds a mark
of distinction between man and animals in
the use of language transmitted from gener-
ation to generation, and shows how the enor-
mous vocabulary of the English language
has grown up from a comparatively small
number of primitive roots. In the second
lecture these roots are shown to correspond
with distinct concepts in the mind of man,
of which animals have none ; and the lesson
taught by the science of language — which
is shown to have a practical value — is ex-

pounded. In the third lecture the author
maintains that language — which is the key
to thought — affords a surer test of race
affiliations than physical characteristics can,
and insists upon his theory of the Asiatic
origin of the Aryans as against the Scandi-
navian theory of some modern students. To
the three lectures are added an essay, enti-
tled My Predecessors, in which Prof. Muller
disclaims originality for his idea of the iden-
tity of thought and language, and strives to
show that it has been taught by the nomi-
nalists and other philosophers in the past.
(Price, 75 cents.)

A group of stories from Norse Mythology
has been published by Mary E. Litchfield,
under the title The Nine Worlds (Ginn, 60
cents). The style of the book is intended to
be simple enough for children, but not too
simple for adults. The author says : " I
have written the story of the gods as it has
formed itself in my mind after much read-
ing and thinking. Whatever is coarse or
unpoetic in the old stories has been left out,
and much has been added from my own
imagination." She has taken various lib-
erties with the ancient legends, such as put-
ting certain prophecies into the mouth of
Odin, because he is represented as knowing
the future, supplying connecting links in the
history, and giving added prominence to cer-
tain characters.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

American Chemical Society. Bulletin, First
General Meeting, at Newport, R. I., August, 1890.
Pp.8.

Bailey, L. H. Cornell University College of Ag-
riculture. Report on the Condition of Fruit-grow-
ing in Western New York. Pp. 12.

Ballard, Julia P. Among the Moths and Butter-
flies. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 237.
$1.50.

Bardeen, Charles Russell. Home Exercise for
Health and Cure. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bar-
deen. Pp. 91.

Carter, .J. M. G., Waukegan. Report of the Com-
mittee (Illinois State Medical Society) on Practice
of Medicine. Pp. 10.

Chadwick, John W. Evolution and Social Re-
form : the Theological Method. Boston : James
H. West. Pp. 10. 10 cents.

Cook, Albert S. Sir Philip Sidney. The De-
fense of Poetry, with Introduction and Notes. Bos-
ton : Ginn & Co. Pp. 143. 90 cents.

De Costa, B. F. The Pre-Columbian Discovery
of America by the Northmen. Albany, N. Y. : Joel
Munson's Sons. Pp. 196. $3.

Fairman, Dr. Charles E. The Fungi of Western
New York. Rochester, N. Y. : Academy of Sci-
ences. Pp. 14, with Plates.

Fernow, B. E., Washington, D. C. Report of the
Chief of the Forestry Division for 1S90. Pp. 60.

134

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fiske, John. Civil Government In the United
States. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. Pp. 360. $1.

Georgia, Department of Agriculture. Crop Re-
port. August 1, 1S90. Pp. 13.

Gould, George M., M. D. The Relation of Eye-
Strain to General Medicine. Pp. 21. Philadelphia :
The Medical News.

Griswold, W. M., Cambridge, Mass. Descriptive
List of Novels and Tales dealing with American
Country Life.

Hale, Edwin M., M. D. Tachycardia Vaso-mo-
toria. Pp. 17.

Harkness, Albert. An Easy Method for Begin-
ners in Latin. New York, etc. : American Book
Company. Pp. 34S.

Hinds, J.I. D. "What? How? Why? Whither?
Nashville, Tenn.: Cumberland Presbyterian Pub-
lishing House. Pp. 51, with Blanks. 25 cents.

Holyoake, George Jacob. What would follow
the Effacement of Christianity. Buffalo, N. Y. : H.
L. Green. Pp. 15. 10 cents.

Indianapolis, City of. Report of the Board of
Health for 1889. J. N. Hurty. Pp. 24.

IngersoIL Robert G. The Gods. Buffalo, N. Y. :
H. L. Green. Pp. 40. 20 cents.

Iowa State Board of Health. Monthly Bulletin.
August, 1890. Pp. 16.

James, William. The Principles of Psychology.
New York : Henry Holt &, Co. 2 volumes, l'p.
639 and 704.

Kansas Experiment Station, Manhattan. Report
of the Botanical Department for 1839. Pp. 150.

'Leffmann, Henry, and Beam, William. Progres-
sive Exercises in Practical Chemistry. Philadel-
phia : P. Blakistun, Son As Co. Pp. 104.

Macfarlane, James. An American Geological
Railway Guide. Second edition. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 426. $2.50.

Marcou, J. Belknap. Bibliography of North
American Paleontology for 18S6. Washington :
Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 56.

Mays, Thomas J., M D., Philadelphia. Address
in Hygiene. Pp. 13.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Pros-
pectus of Art Schools for 1890-'91. Pp. 6.

Mills, Wesley. A Text-book of Comparative
Physiology. Newlork: D. Appleton & Co. Pp.
636. $3.

Minnesota, Public Health in. August, 1890. Red
Wing. Monthly. Pp.12. 50 cents a year.

Nadaillac, Marquis de. Prehistoric America.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 566. $2.-5.

New York Agricultural Experiment Station.
Comparative Test of Cows, etc. Pp. 30.

Northam, Henry C. A Manual of Civil Gov-
ernment. Missouri Edition. Syracuse, N. Y. : C.
W. Bardeen. Pp. 151.

Oliver, Charles A., M. D., Philadelphia. Analy-
sis of Symptoms of General Paresis. Pp. 6. — De-
scription of Tests for Color-blindness. Pp. 8.

Ostwald, Wilhelm. Outlines of General Chemis-
try. London and New York : Macmillan &. Co.
Pp. 396. $3.50 net.

Pentecost, Hugh O. Evolution and Social Re-
form. The Anarchistic Method. Boston : James
H. West. Pp. 16. 10 cents.

Potts. William. Evolution and Social Reform.
The Socialistic Method. Boston : James H. West.
Pp. 16. 10 cents.

Preble, Henry, and Parker, Charles P. Hand-
book of Latin Writing. Boston: Ginn & Co. Pp.
109. 55 cents.

Pringle, Allen, Selby, Ontario. Foul Brood
among Bees. Pp. 30.

Prudd-n, T. Mitchell, M. D. Dust and its Dan-
gers. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 111.
75 cents.

Randall-Diehl, Mrs. Anna. A Practical Delsarte
Primer. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bardeen. Pp.
66.

Redway, Jacques W. The Physical Geography
of the Mississippi River. Philadelphia. Pp.81.

Schweinitz, E. A. V., Washington. Ptomaines
of Hog Cholera. Pp. 6.

Storrs School Agricultural Experiment Station,
Storrs, Conn. Bulletin, August, 1890. Grass, For-
age Garden, and Legumes. Pp. 16.

Thompson, Daniel Greenleaf. Evolution and
Social Reform. The Scientific Method. Boston :
James H. West. Pp. 16. 10 cents.

United States National Museum, Washington.
Index to Proceedings. Vol. XII, 1889. — Papers by
Alien Harrison on A New Species of Bat (Alapha
Semota). Pp. 3. — A. K. Fisber. Occurrence of a
Young Crab-eater (Elecate Canada) in the Hudson
River Valley. P. 1. — Gill, Theodore. Osteological
Characteristics of the Family Mursenosocidie. Pp.
4; do. of Anguillidae. Pp. 4; do. of Synaphobran-
chidse. Pp. 4; do. of Mursenida?. Pp. 6.— Holm,
Theodore. Leaves of Liriodendron. Pp. 16, with
Six Plates. — Proudflt. S. V. Stone Implements
from the District of Columbia. Pp. 10, with Five
Plates.— Smith. Hugh M. Disappearance of the
Dick Cissel (Spiza Americana) from the District of
Columbia. Pp. 2.— Smith, John B. Revision of
the Species Agrotis (Lepidoptera, Noetuidse). Pp.
220, with Plates.- Stearns, Robert E. C. New West
American Land, Fresh-water, and Marine Shells.
Pp. 20, with Two Plates — Stejneger. Leonhard.
North American Lizards of the Genus Barissia. Pp.
8.— New Genus and Species of Columbine Snakes.
Pp. 4— Snakes of the Genus Charina. Pp. 6. —
Townsend, Charles H. Reptiles from Islands and
Gulf of California. Pp. 2.— Birds from Coasts and
Islands of Western America. Pp. 12. — True. Fred-
erick W. Life History of the Bottle-nose Porpoise.
Pp. 70. — Two New Species of Mammals from Mount
Kilima-niaro. Pp. 8. — Vasey, Dr. George, and Rose,
J. N. Plants collected in 18S9 at Socorro and Clar-
ion Islands, Pacific Ocean. Pp. 5.

Wagner Free Institute of Science, Philadelphia.
Transactions. Vol. III. Pp. 200.

Weeden, William B. Economic and Social His-
tory of New England. 1620-1789. Boston and New
York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 2 volumes. Pp.
964.

Wiechmann, Ferdinand G. Sugar Analysis.
New York: John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 187. $2.50.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Folk-Lore. — The American Folk-Lore So-
ciety will hold its annual meeting in New
York city, on November 28th and 29th, these
dates being the Friday and Saturday follow-
ing Thanksgiving-day. The sessions will be
held at Columbia College, Madison Avenue
and Forty-ninth Street. The Philadelphia
meeting held last year was signalized by
large attendance and the formation of a lo-
cal chapter of the national society which has
held meetings monthly throughout the win-
ter. Folk-lore has been defined as the col-
lective sum of the knowledge, beliefs, sto-
ries, customs, manners, dialects, expressions,
and usages of a community which arc peculiar
to itself, and which, taken together, constitute
its individuality when compared with other
communities. Folk-lore has been placed on

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

135

a scientific basis as a recognized department
of anthropology. A growing interest in its
study is manifested especially since it is re-
garded as an important adjunct to history,
often indeed preserving the only records of a
race. The officers of the society for 1890 are
as follows : President, Dr. Daniel G. Brinton,
Philadelphia, Pa. ; Council, Hubert Howe
Bancroft, San Francisco, Cal. ; Franz Boas,
"Worcester, Mass. ; H. Carrington Bolton,
New York, N. Y. ; Thomas Frederick Crane,
Ithaca, N. Y . ; Alice Fletcher, Nez Perces
Agency, Idaho ; Victor Guillou, Philadelphia,
Pa. ; Horatio Hale, Clinton, Out. ; Mary Hem-
enway, Boston, Mass. ; Henry W. Henshaw,
Washington, D. C. ; Thomas Wentworth Hig-
ginson, Cambridge, Mass. ; William Preston
Johnson, New Orleans, La. ; Charles G. Le-
land, London, England ; Otis T. Mason,
Washington, D. C. ; Secretary, W. W. New-
ell, Cambridge, Mass. ; Treasurer, Henry
Phillips, Jr., Philadelphia, Pa. The society
publishes a quarterly, entitled The Journal
of American Folk-Lore, a handsome octavo,
bearing the imprint of Houghton, Mifflin &
Co. It is sent free to members. The mem-
bership fee is three dollars per annum. The
society numbers at present about three hun-
dred and fifty, but an increase in member-
ship, especially in New York and Brooklyn,
is desirable. Persons wishing to join the
society, or to receive the circular anaouncing
the meeting, should address Dr. H. Carring-
ton Bolton, University Club, New York city.

Distribution of North American Plants.

— A sitting of the Biological Section of the
American Association was given, by appoint-
ment from the Toronto meeting, to the dis-
cussion of the geographical distribution of
North American plants. The first paper was
by Mr. Sereno Watson, on the relation of the
Mexican flora to that of the United States.
It showed that the Mexican flora is more
nearly related to the flora of our Eastern
than of our Western border. Prof. J. M.
Coulter, in a paper on the Distribution of
the Umbelliferrc, said that the study of the
subject was difficult, because of the imper-
fect definition of the genera. The order and
species were, however, better defined. The
order is essentially one of the north tem-
perate zone ; and, so far as North America
is concerned, it is an order of the United

States. Of the fifty-three genera of the
United States twenty-five are also found in
Asia. The chief home of the order is in the
region of the Sierra Nevada, where fifty-four
per cent of our known species are found.
Special areas exist in the Great Basin and in
Arkansas. The Distribution of the Hepaticae
was described in a paper by Prof. L. M. Un-
derwood, who spoke of the defective condi-
tion of our knowledge of the subject. The
order is represented by about 2,500 species,
most of which are found in the south trop-
ical regions, in the moist forest areas, and
along the borders of waters. Prof. B. D.
Halsted traced the origin of some American
weeds and the manner of their spread over
the country, and described the lines along
which they have run and are still advancing.
The distribution of North American grasses
was described by W. J. Beal, who showed
the areas marked by special varieties, the
lines along which they are extending, and
the modifications that follow the change
from wild to cultivated land. The Cornaccce,
or order of dogwoods, was the subject of a
second paper by Dr. J. M. Coulter. It in-
cludes, he said, three genera, which find their
most congenial home in Mexico and along
the Mexican border. They are found far-
thest north in the Pacific States. The last pa-
per was by Prof. N. L. Britton, who presented
the general subject. Temperature, he said,
is the most important factor in distribution,
and it depends on elevation and latitude.
The most abundant flora is the temperate,
which extends along various lines to a con-
siderable distance north. The northern floras
are characteristic, but also extend south,
chiefly along the mountain-chains. Tracing
the paleontological evidences on the sub-
ject, the author thought that all plant-life
north of the fortieth degree of latitude was
probably destroyed during the Glacial period.
Below that line existed the circumboreal
flora, which subsequently followed the re-
treating ice north. Some suppose that it
thus simply returned to its former habitat.
The sub-tropical flora of the Tertiary age
must have been almost destroyed during the
Ice age, yet it has certain boreal characters.
There is a marked correspondence between
the boreal and tropical flora of America and
Europe, which can hardly be explained by
migration. Probably similar environment

i36

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

has given rise to similar lines of develop-
ment, starting from types having more or
less in common. The discussion was so
satisfactory to the section that a committee
was appointed to consider upon the selection
of a subject for a similar series of papers at
the next meeting.

Insect Aid for our Orange-growers. —

Bulletin No. 21 of the Division of Entomol-
ogy is entitled Report of a Trip to Austra-
lia, made imder Direction of the Entomol-
ogist to investigate the Natural Enemies of
the Fluted Scale. Mr. Koebele, the divis-
ional agent who makes the report, acting
under instructions from Prof. Riley, and
aided by funds through the State Depart-
ment, and the courtesy of Hon. Frank Mc-
Coffin, Commissioner-General to the Mel-
bourne Exposition of 1888-89, sailed for
Australia in August, 1888, where he re-
mained until March of the succeeding year,
collecting and making shipments to Cali-
fornia of the parasites of the fluted scale.
No little difficulty was experienced in find-
ing sufficiently large colonies of the scale to
obtain enough specimens infested with para-
sites, as the latter, aided by other enemies,
have reduced and nearly exterminated the
seerya in Australia. A large number of a
small dipterous parasite were shipped, but,
as this is a slow breeder, its work has been
eclipsed by a small lady-bird which was
afterward discovered and comprised the ma-
jor part of the later shipments. This lady-
bird, called the Vedalia, has done such good
service that the fluted scale is now practi-
cally overcome in California, and orange-
growers have again taken heart. The re-
port deals besides with injurious insects
observed during Mr. Koebele's stay in the
country, among the most notable being the
orange and olive scales, and a scale known
as Monophlcebus, remarkable for its im-
mense size, being larger than any hereto-
fore known. All of these scales are highly
injurious, and figures accompany the descrip-
tions of them, besides which is mentioned
and figured a snout beetle imported from
the Mediterranean region, which is very in-
jurious to the young shoots and leaves of
the olive. In addition to the dipterous par-
asite {Lcstophonus) and the Vedalia before
mentioned, as forming the bulk of the ship-

ments for California, there were also included
a number of other beneficial predatory in-
sects. These were several small coccinel-
lids of the genera Scymnus, Coccinella, Rodo-
lia, and Zeis, all of which are more or less
important as scale-destroyers. As a rival
of the last there were brought over about a
hundred larvae of a noctuid moth ( TJialpo-
chares cocciphaya), which is a most efficient
scale-eater in its larva state and promises to
become a valuable adjunct to our other in-
troduced scale enemies. The work, however,
of the lady-bird ( Vedalia cardinalis) has been
so very effective that the other species have
been kept in the background and probably
driven to the wall. Within a year after its
introduction the Vedalia had practically ex-
terminated the Icerya and given a renewed
impulse to orange culture in California.
Great credit is due to Prof. Riley for the
scientific work that has secured this impor-
tant result.

The Tarantula. — The tarantula, says A. J.
Field, in Knowledge, is one of the largest but
not the most venomous species of spiders
found in Europe. It is one of the Zycosidw,
or wolf-spiders, is about three quarters of an
inch long, and is covered all over its body
with an olive, dusky-brown down. During
the summer months, while creeping among
the corn, it bites people employed in the
fields, but the bite, though painful, is seldom
dangerous. According to Dr. Zangrilli, the
part bitten becomes deadened soon after-
ward, and in a few hours there are slight
convulsive shiverings, cramps of the mus-
cles, and spasm of the throat, followed by
vomiting and a three days' fever. Recov-
ery generally follows after a copious per-
spiration, but in one case there was tetanus
and death on the fourth day. The tarantula
is common in Spain, southern France, and
Italy, where it occurs in great numbers in
Apulia round the town of Taranto. It has
been found in Asia and in northern Africa.
It lives in dry places, partly overgrown with
grass and fully exposed to the sun, in an
underground passage which it digs for itself
and lines with its web. These passages are
round, sometimes an inch in diameter, and
extend to the depth of a foot or more below
the surface. This spider is very quick in
its movements, and eager in the pursuit of

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137

its prey. It has been known to allow itself
to be carried into the air by a large fly that
it has attacked rather than relinquish its
hold. The female tarantula lays from nine
hundred to a thousand eggs in a season, and
shows considerable maternal care. She has
never been known to abandon her offspring
until they are able to take care of themselves.
She hatches two broods in the year, in spring
and autumn, and has been known to hatch
three. The eggs are deposited after they are
hatched within a bag or cocoon almost as
thick as paper, which the mother makes for
them, and then fastens to the end of her body.
When the young ones are excluded from their
shells within the cocoon they remain in con-
finement until the female, instinctively
knowing their maturity, bites open the bag
and sets them free. The young of web-mak-
ing spiders, after leaving the egg, immediately
commence weaving, but the young tarantulas
(leading a vagrant life and having no web),
being incapable of protecting themselves, re-
main for about a fortnight with the mother.
This formerly gave rise to a belief that they
derived their nourishment from her body.

Poisonous Spiders'. — It does not seem
to be generally known that spiders secrete a
poison of a very active nature, the effects
of which are similar to those produced by
snake poisons. The bite of the common
house-spider is quickly fatal to flies and
other insects on which it preys ; when a fly
is bitten by a spider its whole body seems
seized by violent convulsive twitchiugs, and
death generally occurs after a few minutes.
The spider's poison issues from a sac and
duct at the base of its mandibles ; it closely
resembles the venomous matter secreted by
scorpions, and is a transparent fluid, contain-
ing traces of formic acid and albumin. The
spider is provided with a most effective ap-
paratus for injecting its poison, consisting
of modified mandibles called falces, the last
joint of which has a hard curved fang, with a
fissure near the point. The muscles used in
closing the mandibles also press upon the poi-
son-gland, causing the poison to be expelled
through the fissure into the wound, and
thence into the circulation of the victim.
The most venomous spider known is a
little fellow confined to New Zealand, called
by the native inhabitants "Katipo," its

bite not infrequently causing chronic illness
or death. Mr. W. H. Wright describes the
case of a person bitten by the katipo on
the shoulder. " The part bitten rapidly be-
came swollen and looked like a large nettle-
rash wheal. About an hour afterward the
patient, could hardly walk ; the respiration
and circulation were both affected, followed
by prolonged muscular prostration. The
patient, however, recovered in two or three
days."

African Jumpers. — Dr. Bennett, of Gri-
qualand, writes an account of a peculiar nerv-
ous affection which is met with among the
Griquas and other natives and individuals of
mixed descent living in Griqualand. He sug-
gests that perhaps the affection is similar
to that prevalent among the French Canadi-
ans and known by the name of " Jumpers,"
which was described by Dr. G. M. Beard in
The Popular Science Monthly for December,
1880. Dr. Bennett says : " The affection is
entirely confined to the male sex, and I have
never seen or heard of a case in the female.
The victims of this strange form of neurosis
go through the most extraordinary and gro-
tesque antics on the slightest provocation.
A whistle, a touch, a shout — anything, in fact,
suddenand unexpected — will ' set them going.'
Some will stiffen their limbs, make hideous
grimaces, and waltz about as if they had no
joints in their body. Others will jump wild-
ly about like dancing dervishes, imitating the
particular sound that had acted as an exciting
cause. Some, again, will make use of the
most obscene expressions on a transient im-
pulse, correcting themselves immediately
afterward and expressing their regret for
having used such language ; while others, on
the spur of the moment, will do anything
they are told to do. If they should happen
to have a piece of tobacco in their hand and
one should suddenly shout ' Throw it away ! '
they will do so at once, running away for a
short distance and trembling all over their
body. I remember one case in particular.
It was that of a young man, a mason by
trade. He had been handed a piece of tobac-
co, and the person who handed it to him
shouted out suddenly, ' Throw it away ; it is a
snake ! ' He first danced about wildly for
a short time, and then ran away as fast aa
he was able ; but he had not gone far when

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he fell down in a ' fit,' and it was some time
before he recovered." As to the probable
cause of this affection, Dr. Bennett is dis-
posed to ascribe it to the indiscriminate inter-
mingling of the blood of different racial
types and the intermarriage of those stand-
ing in close relationship to one another.

Poisonous Mussels. — An unusual case of
poisoning recently happened in Seapoint,
County Dublin, Ireland, and was described
in the London Lancet. A lady, her five chil-
dren, and a servant partook of a meal of
stewed mussels obtained from a small sheet
of water to which the sea had access, but
which received fresh water and some sewage.
In about twenty minutes after the ingestion
of the mussels some of the children com-
plained of a prickly sensation in their hands ;
graver symptoms rapidly supervened, and in
less than an hour one of the children died,
the mother and three other children suc-
cumbing within two hours after eating the
mussels. One of the children and the maid
(the latter had eaten but few of the mussels)
suffered very much, but recovered. The
chief symptoms were vomiting, difficulty in
breathing, swelling of the face, want of
co-ordinaticn in movement, and spasms, prin-
cipally in the arms. It was thought that
the poisonous nature of the mussels was due
to their feeding on sewage. Some mussels
obtained from the same place were found to
have abnormally large livers and a much
more brittle shell than common. Leucomaine,
an alkaloid poison, was found in the vomited
matter.

Resources of ]Vyassa-Land. — Nyassa-land,
which extends from the southern shores of
Tanganyika Lake to the Zambezi River and
from the Congo free state to the Shire River,
one of the centers of the African slave trade,
has been brought into prominent attention
by the activity of missionary enterprise in
and around it. Its suitableness for British
colonization has been discussed in the British
Association by Captain F. D. Lugard. It
is touched by the most eligible route into
Central Africa, which lies by the water-way
of the Zambezi, Shire, and Nyassa to Tangan-
yika. The carrying trade to the missions is
already sufficient to pay dividends to a small
company. Then there grows up rapidly

around each mission station a desire for
some of the rudimentary necessities of civil-
ization; and these, together with salt, a
chronic 6avage want, and metal wire and
beads for personal adornment, are essential-
ly the pioneering elements, and indeed consti-
tute the money of the country, for which the
natives are willing not only to bring their
produce, but to work by the week or month.
The country has to offer in return supplies of
mineral wealth, the variety and amount of
which are as yet unknown, but certainly ex-
ist. They include gold, copper, iron, asbes-
tus, and coal, and are probably sufficient
to pay the initial cost of exportation.
Other products are ivory, which is destined
to decrease ; coffee, tea, cloves, cinchona
bark, and India rubber, which have as yet
hardly reached the experimental stage, but
promise to be profitable when developed.
Several minor products, not sufficient in
themselves to sustain trade, will help it
along as supplements to the staples. The
beans of the miranguti tree are used by the
natives for food, and furnish a fat suitable
for illuminating purposes and for soap-mak-
ing. The bark supplies a capital mahog-
any dye, which is believed to have preserva-
tive qualities. Enormous herds of cattle
are accompanied by plants endowed with
tanning properties. There are oil-seeds and
dyes, several fiber plants, and in the low-
lands several kinds of timber trees of some
value, although this article is worth less
than some of the others. Many kinds of
imported trees, however, thrive excellently.
As to salubrity, the Shire Highlands have
proved by the test of many years to be well
adapted to the conditions of European life.
But the malarious coast country has to be
passed through, and the first requisite to set-
tlement is therefore a means of rapid convey-
ance from the coast, with better facilities
for accommodation and comfort.

The Tradition of Mount Kasbek.— The

ascent of Mount Kasbck, of the Caucasus sys-
tem, was accomplished by the Russian topog-
rapher Pastuchoff on the 29th of July, 1889.
From the summit, 16,246 feet above the sea,
a view was had that " surpasses description."
The peak itself is concealed from view from
below by the projection of a spur which ap-
pears from the foot of the mountain to be

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

l39

the highest point. The rim of a crater, the
south side of which has been broken in,
occupies a part of the summit. The explor-
ers came down in a violent rain-storm which
flooded the valleys and did much damage to
the corn and destroyed some of the natives'
huts. This was regarded by the people as a
penalty for the sacrilege which the party had
committed in intruding upon the holy summit.
According to an Ossete tradition, when God
had determined to send Jesus Christ down to
the earth he could find no place except this
peak which had not been defiled by the sin-
ful feet of men. He therefore placed the
child in this spot in a golden cradle, and by
the side of it a dove, and a sheep with gold-
en horns. The dove was to rock the cradle
and coo, and the sheep to amuse the child
with its bleating. The animals were fed
from a pile of wheat which the Lord pro-
vided for them. When Jesus had grown up
he came down to the earth, performed his di-
vine acts, and went back to heaven ; but he
left the cradle, the dove, and the sheep on the
mountain as memorials of his abode there.
The dove is still rocking the cradle, and the
bleating of the sheep can sometimes be plain-
ly heard in the evening ; and they are still fed
on the wheat, which has never failed. The
belief prevails among the Ossetes that God
will never permit any one to go up to the top.
of the Kasbek. Many have tried it without
succeeding. Some have been made blind,
others have been cast into the gorges, and
others have been buried under the snow.
Now the Russian has gone up and taken away
the golden cradle ; for which God manifested
his anger in a terrible storm.

Gas Cooking-Stoves. — Gas cooking-appa-
ratus have the advantages over coal stoves
that they produce no dust or cinders, and
are more cleanly in every way. The oven
can be heated to a desired temperature in
only a few minutes after the gas is lighted,
while the degree of heat can be regulated ac-
cording to the nature of the articles to be
cooked by simply adjusting the valves that
control the supply of gas and the ventila-
tion. While gas may be somewhat more ex-
pensive than coal, by careful regulation of
the supply and attention to turning off the
gas the instant it is out of use, the difference
can be reduced till it is hardly perceptible.

Gas-ovens may be heated by burning the
gas directly within them, or by applying the
flame to the walls. In the former case the
products of combustion are present with
the meat, with effects on taste and odor that
are not always agreeable. In the other case
the meat is not distinguishable from a joint
roasted before the open fire. The stove
should be supplied with an escape flue to
the open air. Boilers — for the kitchen only
— may be attached to the larger stoves and
heated from below by atmospheric burners.
The average consumption of gas in a range
for a family of ten persons is estimated to
be twenty feet an hour for six hours a day.

Geology as an Educational Instru-
ment.— Prof. A. H. Green spoke in the Ge-
ological Section of the British Association
over which he presided, on the value of ge-
ology as an educational instrument, and cer-
tain attendant risks that need to be guarded
against. Geologists, he said, are in contin-
ual danger of becoming loose reasoners.
They are too ready to accept conclusions
upon insufficient evidence. The reason is
not far to seek. The imperfection of the
geological record is a phrase as true as it is
hackneyed. Then, how many of the geolog-
ical facts gathered from observation admit
of diverse explanations — as in the theories
of the nature of Eozoon ccnadensc! That,
after all, is only one of the countless un-
certainties that crowd the whole subject of
invertebrate palaeontology. In what a feeble
light have we constantly to grope when we
attempt the naming of fossil conchifers,
for instance ! It is from data scrappy to
the last degree, or from facts capable of
being interpreted in more than one way, or
from determinations shrouded in mist and
obscurity, that geologists have in a large
number of cases to draw conclusions. In-
ferences based on such incomplete and shak-
ing foundations must necessarily be largely
hypothetical. That that is the character of
a great portion of the conclusions of geology
all are ready enough to allow. The living
day by day face to face with approximation
and conjecture must tend to breed an indif-
ference to accuracy and certainty, and to abate
that caution and wholesome suspicion which
make the wary reasoner look to his founda-
tions and refuse to sanction superstructures

140

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.

not firmly and securely based. The author
did not infer that geology could find no
place in the educational curriculum. There
are many ways of neutralizing whatever
there may be potentially hurtful in the use
of geology for educational ends. One way
to make a geologist is not to teach him any
geology at all to begin with — to send him
first into a laboratory, give him a good long
spell of observations and measurements re-
quiring the minutest accuracy, and so satu-
rate his mind with the conception of exact-
ness that nothing shall ever afterward drive
it out. The uncertainties with which the road
of the geologist is strewn have an immense
educational value if we are on our guard
against taking them for anything better than
they really are. A man who is ever dealing
with geological evidence and geological con-
clusions, and has learned to estimate these
at their real value, will carry with him, when
he comes to handle the complex problems
of morals, politics, and religion, the wariness
with which his geological experience has im-
bued him. There are immense advantages
which the science may claim as an educa-
tional instrument. In its power of cultivat-
ing keenness of eye it is unrivaled, for it
demands both microscopic accuracy and
comprehensive vision. Its calls upon the
chastened imagination are no less urgent,
for imagination alone is competent to devise
a scheme that shall link together the mass
of isolated observations which field-work
supplies ; and its pursuit is inseparably
bound up with a love of nature, and the
healthy tone which that love brings alike to
body and mind. Geology should be taught
in schools also for its relation to geography
and to the history of nations and the distri-
bution and migrations of peoples.

Transitions of Fanna in the Mississippi
Delta. — In a paper read in the American
Association, in his absence, by W J McGee,
Mr. L. C. Johnson said that he had made
use of the Nita crevasse of 1890 of the Mis-
sissippi River to illustrate the manner in
which the abrupt changes of fresh-water to
salt-water fauna, and vice versa, of which
frequent evidences appear in the delta, have
been brought about. The crevasse was the
most extensive that has been formed for
many years ; and through it flowed a volume

of fresh water sufficient to transform the
previously brackish lakes and saline bays
on the left of the river into fresh-water
lakes and estuaries. One of the prominent
results of the flood was the destruction of
the salt-water fauna and the substitution of
a fresh-water and mud-loving fauna over an
immense area. The oyster-beds along the
coast, which were the basis of an important
industry, were injured, and in many cases
destroyed. The sea-fishing region was also
ruined, and the pickerel and other character-
istic fishes of the Mississippi may now be
taken where four months ago only salt-water
forms were found. Hitherto the geologist
employed in the lower Mississippi region has
been puzzled to account for the sudden tran-
sitions of fauna ; but here we have a case
where one of them was effected in a single
week, over as wide an extent as all of those
which have so embarrassed the student.

The Mediterranean. — The presidential
address in the Geographical Section of the
British Association, by Sir R. Lambert Flay-
fair, was on the Mediterranean Sea. Its
shores, the author said, include about three
million square miles of the richest country
on the earth's surface. They are a well-
defined region of many parts, all intimately
connected by geographical character, geology,
flora, fauna, and the physiognomy of the peo-
ple. To the general statement there are two
exceptions — Palestine and the Sahara. The
sea, a mere gulf, now bridged by steam, rather
unites than separates the two shores, modi-
fying their climate and forming a junction
between three continents. The Atlas range
is a mere continuation of the south of Eu-
rope. It is a long strip of mountain land,
about two hundred miles broad, covered with
splendid forests, fertile valleys, and in some
places arid steppes, stretching eastward from
the ocean which bears its name. In the east
of the range the flora and fauna do not essen-
tially differ from those of Italy ; in the west
they resemble those of Spain. Of the three
thousand plants found in Algeria, the greater
number are natives of southern Europe, and
less than a hundred are peculiar to the Sa-
hara. There are mammalia, fish, reptiles,
and insects common to both sides of the sea.
Some of the larger animals, such as the lion,
panther, jackal, etc., have disappeared be-

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141

fore civilization in Europe, but linger
through Mohammedan barbarism in Africa.
There is abundant evidence of the former
existence of these and other large mammals
of tropical Africa in France, Germany, and
Greece. The original fauna of Africa, of
which the lemur is the distinctive type, is
still preserved in Madagascar, which once
formed part of Africa. The trout is found
in all the snow-fed rivers that fall into the
sea, but not in Palestine south of the Leba-
non, or in Egypt, or the Sahara. The fresh-
water salmonoid is a European type often
found in the Atlas. There are newts and
tailed batrachians in every country round
the sea, again excepting Palestine, Egypt,
and the Sahara.

Economic Plants of Colombia. — A re-
port of the British Foreign Office names a
large variety of important economical plants
as successfully cultivated in Colombia. The
principal crop is maize ; next to it is sugar-
cane, which is most used for making sugar,
while large quantities of it are employed for
making aguardiente and rum in the hot
country, and chicha, another drink, in the
cold country. The plant ripens in one year
in the hot country, and in a year and a half in
the cold country. Cacao is largely raised in
the hot country on the slopes of the mount-
ains, on newly disforested land, at an eleva-
tion of from one thousand to three thousand
five hundred feet. It is the most paying
crop in the country when once established,
but very difficult and expensive to take care
of in the earlier years of its growth. For
planting the upland rice, the ground is " pre-
pared " by turning cattle into the field after
the first rains to tread up the ground and de-
stroy the grasses. They are again turned in
and driven round, after the seed has been
sown, to tread it into the ground, after
which no further attention is paid to the
crop till the harvest. The potato forms the
chief food of the country. It is very pro-
ductive, and is cultivated in two principal
varieties — the criollas, which are red-skinned,
and yellow or orange-colored inside, and the
ordinary white potato. It also grows wild in
the mountains. The largest and best crops
are raised on savannas on the mountain-sides
at heights of more than nine thousand feet.
The production has greatly decreased since

the potato disease attacked the crops in 1865.
Tobacco is grown on a large scale in four
districts and on a small scale all over the
country. Other cultivated plants are plant-
ains, which form an important food and are
very productive ; manioc, which is used as a
vegetable or made into bread; vegetable
ivory palm ; Carlodovica palmata, from which
the Panama hats are made ; coca ; coffee, the
production of which is increasing and which
is taking the place of cinchona bark as the
chief article of export ; American aloe, which
grows wild everywhere and is valuable for its
fibers ; and cinchona. Pineapples, oranges,
mangoes, cherimozas, and other native fruits
grow very abundantly and spontaneously, and
are so cheap that, except in the immediate
neighborhood of a market, few people take
the trouble to pick them.

The Start of a Bird's Flight.— The mech-
anism of the starting of a bird's flight, as
studied by instantaneous photography, is thus
described by Professor Marey : " When the
bird is not yet in motion, the air which is
struck by its wings presents, in the first in-
stance, a resistance due to inertia, then en-
ters into motion, and flies below the wing
without furnishing to it any support. When
the bird is at full speed, on the contrary, its
wing is supported each moment upon new
columns of air, each one of which offers to it
the initial resistance due to its inertia. The
sum of these resistances presents to the wing
a much firmer basis. One might compare a
flying bird to a pedestrian who makes great
efforts to walk on a shifting sand, and who,
in proportion as he advances, finds a soil by
degrees firmer, so that he progresses more
swiftly and with less fatigue. The increase
of the resistance of the air diminishes the ex-
penditure of labor ; the strokes of the bird's
wing become, in fact, less frequent and less
extended. In calm air, a sea-gull which has
reached its swiftest expends scarcely the
fifth of the labor which it had to put forth at
the beginning of its flight. The bird which
flies against the wind finds itself in still
more favorable conditions, since the masses
of air, continually renewing themselves,
bring under his wings their resistance of in-
ertia. It is, then, the start which forms the
most laborious phase of the flight. It has
long been observed that birds employ all

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kinds of artifices in order to acquire speed
prior to flapping their wings : some run on
the ground before darting into the air, or
dart rapidly in the direction they wish to
take in flying; others let themselves fall
from a height with extended wings, and
glide in the air with accelerated speed be-
fore flapping their wings ; all turn their bill
to the wind at the moment of starting."

Origin of Warts on Forest Trees. — The

formation of abnormal growths — knots or
warts — on forest trees, which are very com-
mon on some species, is thus accounted for
by Robert Cowpar in Science Gossip : " They
are not due to insects, fungus, or accident,
but are perfectly natural. Neither may they
be taken as indications of health or disease,
nor are they in any way attributable to any
particular soil or situation. ... In the
barks of our forest trees are contained a
multitude of latent buds which are devel-
oped and grow under certain favorable con-
ditions. Some trees possess this property
in a remarkable degree, and often, when the
other parts are killed down by frost in se-
vere winters, the property of pushing out
these latent buds into growth preserves the
life of the plant. These buds, having once
begun to grow, adhere to the woody layer at
their base, and push out their points through
the bark toward the light. The buds then
unfold and develop leaves, which elaborate
the sap carried up the small shoot. Once
elaborated, it descends by the bark, when it
reaches the base or inner bark. Here it
is arrested, so to speak, and deposited be-
tween the outside and inner layer of bark, as
can be learned on examining specimens on
trees in the woods almost anywhere."

Yalne of Phcnological Observations. —

Phenological observations of plants, or ob-
servations of the time of the first appearance
in the year of the several stages of growth,
have long been recognized as useful in the
study of climates. A phenological observer
may in five years determine approximative
means for judging of the succession of
each of the phases of vegetation. When
we have ascertained the mean time of the
occurrence of the principal changes for five
years, as, for instance, when the first apple
blossoms open in the immediate vicinity of

the station, or the first fields of barley are
cut, we are then able to judge how the sta-
tion comports itself relatively to any other
station of which the phenological position is
fixed ; and how each point of a region com-
ports itself relatively to the principal point
— whether it is colder or warmer. This is
determined by the stage of vegetation which
the same plants have reached here and there.
The method is really more exact than that
of establishing hundreds of thermometers
and pluviometers at as many different places
— aside from the trouble and expense of
keeping up the observations of so many in-
struments. Phenology goes on without ex-
pense, while meteorology is costly. We are
able, every year and every week in the year,
to compare observations of vegetation with
means that have been established, and as-
sure ourselves whether the vegetation at our
station is normal or in advance. Phenology
is a kind of thermometry that can also be
used to test thermometrical observations and
correct erroneous conclusions from them.
The plant is a sort of registering thermome-
ter. It, in fact, shows us the present condi-
tion, as the thermometer does, and likewise
all the conditions of the past time, immedi-
ately summed up in a final result, while the
thermometer simply gives us the daily oscil-
lations and leaves us to make the summing
up. Phenological observations, with figures
founded on comparisons, have the advantage
of raising the thought of relation in the mind,
of representing something tangible to it.

Ancient Fireplaces on the Ohio. — The

ancient fireplaces at Blue Banks and other
places on the Ohio Biver near Portsmouth
are described by Mr. T. H. Lewis as being of
three different classes. Those on the lower
levels only show a burned streak of clay
from five to eight feet in diameter, with but
a slight concavity, on which are found ashes,
charcoal, burned stones, and bones, with an
occasional fragment of pottery, composed of
broken stone and clay. Many of them, at
the level of twenty feet from the surface,
where they are most numerous, are from one
to three <eet deep, and are lined with flat
stones. The clay outside of the stones bears
evidence of intense heat. In some instances
they are nearly filled with ashes and char-
coal. The pottery within them is composed

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H3

of shell and clay. At a higher level, the
fireplaces, while not so numerous, are more
interesting, because more or less of fire
relics are obtained from them. They are
only slightly concave, and mixed with the
ashes are stones broken by the action of fire,
bones of various kinds, arrow-heads, drills,
stone and hematite celts, stone pipes, per-
forated stones called shuttles, and much
broken pottery. These places seem to have
been occupied at different times, and also by
different tribes or nations. The first occu-
pants used stone in the manufacture of their
pottery. They were succeeded by others
who used shells, and these in their turn gave
way to people using stone. The latter seem
to have occupied the ground for only a brief
period, and then to have been displaced by
others using shell. In the adjoining field,
however, both kinds of pottery are found in-
termingled. It is Mr. Lewis's opinion that
the people of these fireplaces antedated the
residence of the mound-builders in their
neighborhood by many centuries, because the
works of that race, themselves very ancient,
are found on the surface above them. The
fireplaces occur at various levels, from near
the top of the bank to thirty feet below.
At one point they were visible at seventeen
different levels. They are exposed to view
by the caving off of the banks at high water.
A somewhat similar series of fireplaces or
ovens was described in the American Associ-
ation by Prof. Putnam as observed on the
banks of the Little Miami River.

Cold Waves. — According to Prof. T.
Russell's explanation of the subject, in the
American Association, the term cold wave is
employed when a fall of temperature occurs
in twenty-four hours of 20° or more over an
area of at least 50,000 square miles, and the
temperature in any part of the area descends
to 36°. According to this definition, there
were in the United States, between 1880 and
1890, 691 cold waves. In the great cold
wave of January 17, 1882, the twenty-de-
gree fall line included an area of 1,101,000
square miles, and the ten-degree fall line an
area of 2,929,000 square miles. There have
been in ten years six cold waves in which
the area of the twenty-degree fall was more
than a million square miles. The cold waves
seem always to occur over the country

covered on the preceding day by an area of
low barometric pressure, or the southeast of
the country covered by an area of high press-
ure. Where both occur, the cold waves at-
tain their greatest extent. Only a few cases
are recorded in which low pressure areas
have not been followed by a fall of tempera-
ture at their centers. In twelve instances
within ten years there were rises in temper-
ature instead of falls. On the other hand,
cold waves do not occur without the presence
of an area of high or low pressure. The ex-
tent of the cold wave is dependent on the
extent of the area of low pressure and the
area of high pressure on the day preceding
it. The shapes and relative positions of
areas of high and low pressure are various,
and are described and classified in the au-
thor's paper.

The Forest. — In a paper read at the
American Association Prof. B. E. Fernow
said that the forest is both a material re-
source and a ' cultural condition. While it
may and does form the object of individ-
ual activity, it also can by its location or
position become an element influencing
climate, soil, and waterflow. The climatic
influence of forest areas is as yet not gen-
erally proved, although conditionally ac-
cepted, but the influence of forest areas
upon the waterflow, and with it upon soil
conditions and upon winds, is generally
recognized. As a material resource the
forest is exhaustible, but restorable with-
in limit. The virgin forest must be re-
duced to get the agricultural ground that
is needed, but when the requirement for
food is satisfied it is desirable to treat
the forest in such a manner as to secure
continued reproduction. This gives rise to
forest management and forestry as an in-
dustry. Reproduction of the natural for-
est is inferior in quality and quantity to
that which can be produced by national for-
est management. After mentioning some
special considerations and economical pecul-
iarities pertaining to forest growth and for-
estry which may influence the relation of the
state toward them, the author went on to
say that, so far as the forest represents a
material resource simply, the position of the
state toward it need not differ from that
which it takes toward other industries and

i44

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

resources, except in so far as the peculiar
conditions call for special exercise of the
protective and persuasive or educational
functions of the state. Being a restorable
resource, restriction of private enterprise in
regard to it can not be demanded. The re-
strictive and providential action of the state
is only necessary in reference to those forest
areas whose existence and proper condition
influence other cultural conditions. Since
restriction of private rights is always im-
practicable and unsatisfactory, and compen-
sation of damages difficult to adjust, com-
mercial or state ownership of mountain
forests is advocated. The ameliorative func-
tion of the state is called into play for the
reforestation of the large treeless areas
where private energy is powerless to accom-
plish the desired result.

NOTES.

It appears to be the belief of some that
as man in the savage state has, for the
most part, been largely, if not wholly, car-
nivorous, he will, with the progress of civil-
ization, become entirely vegetarian or use
only the products of animals, as eggs and
milk, with vegetable food. A vegetable
diet has been found very successful in treat-
ing kidney troubles and indigestion. In
point of economy it is an enormous saving,
not only in actual cost to the consumer, but
also in land ; as of two equal portions of
ground, one raising a cereal and the other
beef or mutton, the part devoted to the
cereal will support ten times as many men
as the beef or mutton portion.

In a letter on compressed tea, which re-
cently appeared in the Kew Bulletin, Colonel
Alexander Montcrief says that one of the
chief advantages claimed for this form of tea
is that, being subjected to heavy hydraulic
pressure, all the cells are broken, and the
constituents of the leaf more completely
and easily extracted by the boiling water,
thus effecting a considerable saving in the
quantity required for a given amount of the
beverage. There is also a gain in its greater
compactness and portability.

It is said that Iceland is gradually be-
coming depopulated, owing to the constant
emigration of its people to the shores of
Canada and the United States. These emi-
grants send back such favorable accounts of
their new home that others quickly follow.
It is estimated that twenty thousand natives,
nearly one quarter of the whole population,
have left the country in the last year. The
emigrants are chiefly from the northern and

eastern districts, where labor is only carried
on under great difficulties, and recent bad
harvests have caused much suffering.

The largest plant-fossil in Europe is ex-
hibited at the Berlin Berg-Akademie. It was
discovered in 1884 in the coal-mines of Pies-
berg, and sent to Berlin by the magistrate of
Osnabriick. With great difficulty the mass
was cut out of the earth in which it was im-
bedded and carted away. The fossil is a
piece of a gigantic ancestor of the ordinary
lycopodium of the present day, known as
Sigillaria. It consists of a trunk about one
yard in diameter, which divides at the bottom
into several fork-like, strong roots. The
surface of the trunk looks like wood, and
shows a graining in the form of long ridges.
The bark is still traceable in places in
charred-looking remains. The entire fossil,
with the exception of the charred pieces of
bark, consists of argillite.

Daniel J. Rankin, ex-acting consul at
Mozambique and a recent traveler in Africa,
read a paper at the January meeting of the
Royal Geographical Society on the Chinde
River and Zambezi Delta. He points out
the importance of cheap and rapid means of
communication with civilized markets to the
vast tract of country comprised by the Zam-
bezi basin, whose only outlet is through the
delta ; calls attention to the difficulties at-
tending navigation of the Quillimane and
Kongoni ports, the ones now chiefly used ;
and shows the superiority of the Chinde
River in its depth of water and comparative
clearness and constancy of channel as a road
for import and export.

Sir Morell Mackenzie has recently
written upon The Effect of Tobacco-smoking
on the Voice. He tells us that most of the
leading actors suffer from a relaxed condi-
tion of the upper throat, brought on, he be-
lieves, entirely by smoking ; but actresses
are rarely affected in that way. He has
noticed the same thing in public speakers
and clergymen. He says that for a delicate
throat the usual smoke-laden atmosphere of
a common railway smoking-car is even worse
than the actual use of tobacco. The Oriental
hookah is, in Dr. Mackenzie's opinion, the
least harmful apparatus, as the smoke, pass-
ing through water is cooled before entering
the system ; and the cigarette, so popular
nowadays, is the most harmful.

The people of the island of Sangir keep
time by the aid of an hour glass, formed by
arranging two bottles neck to neck. The
sand runs out in half an hour, when the bot-
tles are reversed. Close by them a line is
stretched on which hang twelve sticks marked
with notches from one to twelve, with a
hooked stick which is placed between the
hour last struck and the next one. One of
these djaga keeps the time for each village,
for which purpose the hours are sounded on
a gong by the keeper.

.«***-! U-^iWi.

^^^^^^r" ** i'^

ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO.

ot New YobK

t he

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

DECEMBER, 1890

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES

SINCE COLUMBUS.

I. EARLY STEPS IN IRON-MAKING.
Br WILLIAM F. DURFEE, Engineer.

TO all familiar with the iron and steel industries of this coun-
try it will be manifest that the story of their technological
development can not possibly be told exhaustively in a magazine
article, whose length is scarcely sufficient for an adequate descrip-
tion of a single one of the larger mechanisms employed in work-
ing iron or steel at the present time. Therefore, all that will be
attempted in these papers is such a description of the beginning,
growth, and present state of the technology of these vulcanian
industries as will enable non-professional readers to obtain an
intelligent idea of the more important improvements in machin-
ery and methods that have contributed to a progress which, by
successive steps, albeit oftentimes short, slow, and uncertain, has
brought these industries safely through the manifold perils of
three hundred years to their present wonderful expansion.*

All authorities agree in the opinion that iron was unknown to
the aboriginal inhabitants of America. Tools, weapons, orna-
ments, and culinary vessels made of copper were occasionally
found in their possession, but nothing of iron.

* In the preparation of these papers I am indebted to James M. Swank, Vice-President and
General Manager of the American Iron and Steel Association, for the opportunity to consult
the library of the Association ; and for extracts from his very valuable contribution, Iron in
all Ages, to the history of the manufacture of iron and steel. I am also under obligation
to E. C. Potter, Second Vice-President of the Illinois Steel Company, for engravings and
photographs of parts of the very extensive works of that company. John Thomas, Super-
intendent of the Thomas Iron Company, Ilokendauqua, Pennsylvania, has kindly furnished
me with some interesting facts relative to the first anthracite blast-furnace ; and from J.

VOL. XXXVIII — 10

146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The first mention of the existence of iron-ore on this continent
was by Thomas Harriot, " the geographer " of the second expedi-
tion to Virginia. This expedition effected a settlement on Roa-
noke Island, and Harriot in his history of the colony says : " In
two places of the countrey specially, one about fonre score and
the other six score miles from the fort or place where wee dwelt,
wee foimde neere the water side the ground to be rockie, which,
by the triall of a minerall man was founde to hold iron richly. It-
is founde in manie places of the countrey else. I know nothing to
the contrarie but that it maie bee allowed for a good marchant-
able commoditie, considering there the small charge for the labour
and feeding of men ; the infinite store of wood ; the want of wood
and the deerenesse thereof in England ; and the necessity of bal-
asting of shfppes." Nothing seems to have come of this discov-
ery ; and the colony, being menaced by the Indians, became dis-
couraged and returned to England in 1586.

We next read of American iron-ore in the history of the col-
ony which located at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. We are told
that "on the 10th of April, 1608, the company's ship sailed from
Jamestown, loaded with iron ore, sassafras, cedar posts, and wal-
nut boards." Seventeen tons of iron made from this ore in Eng-
land was sold to the East India Company for £4 per ton. This
was without doubt the first sale of iron made from American
ores. An attempt was made in the years 1620 to 1622 to erect
iron-works on Falling Creek, a branch of the James River, about
sixty-six miles above Jamestown, but on the 10th of March, 1622,
the buildings were burned by the Indians and 317 persons were
killed ; thus ending in fire and blood the first attempt to make
iron on a manufacturing scale on this continent.

We have no account of the actual form of the furnaces or
other apparatus, nor any description of the methods of smelting
employed in the earliest iron-works of this country, but from the
evidence accessible we are quite safe in assuming that the early
American metallurgists were in no great degree wiser than their
European instructors ; and, when we consider the difficulties of
every kind that must have surrounded all attempts to manufact-
ure iron in a new country, it seems highly probable that our early
iron masters would have adopted the simplest and most inexpen-
sive methods known to be capable of accomplishing the desired

Vaughan Merrick and James Moore, of Philadelphia, I have received information in re-
gard to the early use of the Nasmyth steam hammer in the United States. I am also
indebted to Oliver Williams, Esq., President of the Catasauqua Manufacturing Company,
of Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, for information relative to the manufacture of anthracite
iron at that place. I also acknowledge with pleasure the kind offices of W. H. Wahl,
Ph. D., Secretary of the Franklin Institute, and James Gayley, Esq., Superintendent of
Furnaces at the Edgar Thomson Steel Works.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 147

result, and, as fuel and ore were abundant, it is not likely that
economy would be much studied in their use.

The simplest process known for obtaining iron from its ore
can be carried out in an ordinary blacksmith's fire by throwing
crushed ore upon the ignited fuel, covering it with coal, and, after
urging the fire with bellows for a considerable time, there will be
found in the bottom of the fire an irregular mass of forgeable
metal. Some form of this process is still employed by many sav-
age and semi-civilized people ; and this was doubtless the method
used by the "mineral man*' in testing the ores of iron discov-
ered by the Roanoke colonists in 1585.

In Fig. 1 is shown a modification of this process, practiced by
the iron-workers of Persia and adjacent countries, who have

Fig. 1.— Persian Method of Smelting Ikon.

manufactured both iron and steel by this simple and inexpen-
sive method (as measured by their standards of the value of
time, labor, and material), from the days of Tubal-Cain to the
present time, and have fabricated therefrom cutting tools and
weapons of unsurpassed excellence. The keenness of edge, won-
derful temper, and marvelous elasticity of the swords of Damas-
cus have had a world-wide fame for thousands of years. George
Thompson, the distinguished English orator and philanthropist,
stated that " when in Calcutta, he saw a man throw in the air a
handful of floss silk, which a Hindoo cut in pieces with his saber.
Many of the swords and daggers made in central and western
Asia two thousand years ago were as remarkable for their elabo-
rate finish and exquisite ornamentation as for their more practi-
cal qualities.

The process, illustrated by Fig. 1, was substantially as follows :
A basin-shaped hole, six to twelve inches in depth and twelve to
twenty-four inches in diameter, was first made in the earth ; this
cavity was then lined with moistened charcoal dust, which was
well rammed to make it as dense as possible ; the hearth thus
formed was then filled with charcoal, on which Avas placed a layer
of crushed ore, and over this alternate layers of fuel and ore until

148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the heap was of the desired height ; the outside of the mass of
charcoal and ore was then incased in a covering of rough stones
laid in a mortar of clay and sand, or, in some cases, it was merely
plastered over with a thick layer of such mortar ; care was always
taken to have a hole near the bottom, just above the edge of the
hearth, for the insertion of a tube of baked clay to serve as a
tuyere, and a second hole at the top for the escape of smoke "and
gases. Fire was then introduced at the tuyere and the bellows
connected ; a gentle blast being used until all the moisture in the
ore and the covering of the heap was driven off. As soon as this
was accomplished, the blast was increased and the heat thereby
augmented. At the end of several hours a mass of metallic iron,
weighing twenty or thirty pounds, was found in the bottom of
the hearth, from which it was removed by tongs and forged by
sledge-hammers into the desired shape, several reheatings being-
required. The iron obtained was not usually over twenty per
cent of that in the ore, and only the richest ores were used.

The first attempts to smelt iron-ore were probably made in
open, or perhaps partially inclosed, fires, in which the operation
was conducted without the stimulus of a blast ; but the slow and
very irregular burning of the fuel during calms, as compared
with its more rapid and effective combustion when urged by a
high wind, must have soon suggested the desirability of a regu-
lar and manageable method of supplying the primitive furnaces
with a current of air, and we find that the use of some contriv-
ance for this purpose is of great antiquity.

Bellows are known to have been used by the Egyptians over
three thousand years ago. They consisted of a pair of leather
bags (which were nearly spherical when inflated), to each of
which was attached a tube for the discharge of the air.* The
operator stood with a foot on each of these bags, and pressed them
alternately by throwing his weight from one foot to the other.
In the top of each bag was a round hole, which could be closed by
the foot of the workman, and a cord held in each hand enabled
him to distend and inflate either bag as he compressed the other.
His feet served as valves to prevent the escape of air from the
holes, and compelled it to pass through the discharge-pipe into
the fire.

Piston bellows were known in Egypt at least two thousand
years ago, and compressed air was used for various purposes
other than blowing fires. The kind of bellows shown in Fig. 1 was
known and used by the Greeks and Romans at a very early period,
and the bellows of our kitchens are of equal antiquity. Bellows

* Tcrhaps the expression "a pair of bellows," which in the days of "open hearth "
practice in our older kitchens was quite common, had its origin in an equivalent Egyptian
colloquialism.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 149

constructed as shown in Figs. 3 and 15, were invented in Ger-
many in the latter part of the sixteenth century ; the exact date,
as well as the inventor's name, is uncertain. Bellows working
on the principle of those used in accordions and concertinas have
also been known for many centuries. An engraving, showing
such bellows in use blowing a furnace, is given in the great work
of Agricola,* who also illustated rotary fan-blowers ; but these
evidently did not propel the air centrifugally, as does the modern
fan-blower, but pushed the air forward, very much as a revolv-
ing paddle-wheel pushes water.

Another very curious apparatus for blowing furnaces and
smiths' fires is called a trompe. It consists of a vertical pipe,
usually made of wood, of a length suited to the fall of water.
Near the top of this pipe there are pierced a number of com-
paratively small lateral openings which incline downward in their
passage through the thickness of the sides of the pipe, whose
lower end enters the closed top of a barrel or other air-tight ves-
sel, from which proceeds a tube to convey the air to the furnace
or forge. This contrivance operates as follows : The descending
column of water in the pipe draws in air through the lateral
openings near its top, and this air is carried down by the water
and separates from it in the interior of the barrel and then passes
to the forge by the discharge-pipe, the water escaping through a
hole at or near the bottom of the barrel. Percy, f speaking of this
very simple blowing apparatus, says, " It is said that it was in-
vented in Italy in 1G40." But it must have originated at a much
earlier date, as Branca J gives three applications of it, illustrated
by engravings, and it is very probable that this highly ingenious
method of employing the fall of water to compress air was known
and used hundreds of years before the time of Branca.

The early American forges and furnaces were blown either by
the ordinary leather bellows (Fig. 1), or by wooden cylinders
called "blowing-tubs," or by the trompe just described, and there
are still to be found in use a few examples of each of these primi-
tive methods of " raising the wind." In Fig. 2 we have an illus-
tration of a pair of " blowing-tubs " such as Overman # describes
as " the best form of wooden blast-machine." The figure shows
a vertical section through the axes of the upright 'blowing-
tubs," a a, and the " wind-chest," b, placed immediately above
them. Air enters the tubs from beneath and is purnped by the
pistons d d, with the aid of the "clack-valves" shown in the fig-
ure, into the wind-chest. The pressure of the air in the wind-
chest is determined by the weight h suspended at the lower end

* De Re Metallica, Basilae, 1546. % Lc Machine, Roma, 1629.

I Metallurgy, Iron and Steel, Loudon, 1864. ** The Manufacture of Iron, Philadelphia, 1S50.

ISO

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of the rod attached to the piston g, which rises and falls as the
volume of air beneath it varies in accordance with the demands
of the furnace or the slight irregularities of supply. The air
was conveyed to the furnace through a metal pipe, c, connected
with the wooden bottom of the wind-chest by a flanged elbow.
Blowing-tubs of a square cross-section with corresponding pis-

Fig. 2. — A Pair of Blowing-Tubs.

tons have been used with success, and as late as 1873 three such
machines were in use in Detroit for furnishing blast to a large
cupola ; and, notwithstanding the primitive construction of this
blowing apparatus, the melting was quite as satisfactory and
economical as the best of the present day.*

Having now described the various forms of apparatus for
blowing furnaces and forges in use at the beginning of the seven-
be mi ill century, we will again turn our attention to the progress
of the manufacture of iron in America. The first iron-works
built in this country that are entitled to be called successful

* The average record of the. cupola blown by these square wooden "blowing-tubs"' was
eleven pounds of metal melted by one pound of fuel. Very few cupolas now in use do as
well, and by far the greater number are not more than half as economical. — W. F. D.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 151

were erected in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in what is
now the town of Saugus, a suburb of the city of Lynn, about ten
miles northeast of Boston. Their owners, " The Company of
Undertakers for the Iron-works," were granted a number of
special privileges, among which was the monopoly of the manu-
facture for twenty-one years. The works appear to have been
commenced late in the year 164.') or in the beginning of 1644,
and were nearly completed in 1645, as on the 14th day of May in
that year the General Court passed a " Resolve," declaring that
"ye iron- works is very successful (both in ye richness of ye ore
and ye goodness of ye iron)," and that " ye furnace is built, with
that which belongeth to it, . . . and some tuns of so we iron cast
. . . in readiness for ye forge." On the 14th of October of that
year the General Court granted still further privileges on the
condition " that the inhabitants of this jurisdiction be furnished
with barr iron of all sorts for their use, not exceeding twentye
pounds per tunn," and that the land already granted be used
" for the building and seting up of six forges, or furnaces, and
not bloomaries onely," and the company was confirmed in the
right to the free use of all materials " for making or moulding
any manner of gunnes, potts, and all other cast-iron ware."

On the 6th of May, 1646, Richard Leader, the general agent of
the company, purchased " some of the country's gunnes to melt
over at the foundery." This statement seems to justify the belief
that there may have been a reverberatory furnace in this " found-
ery," as such furnaces were well known in Europe at that date, and
castings of all sorts were made from metal melted in them ; but
it is certain that, at the same period, castings were frequently
made from iron taken direct from the blast-furnace, and we know
that scrap cast iron can be melted in a blast-furnace without diffi-
culty. The cupola furnace, for remelting " pig iron " and scrap
cast iron, was not invented until 1790, and, consequently, we are
sure that it was not employed in the " foundery " at Lynn in 1646.
Hence it is evident that the " gunnes " purchased must have been
remelted in the " blast-furnace," or in a reverberatory furnace,
although we have no decisive evidence of the employment of the
latter type of furnace.

It is certain that at Lynn, in the Province of Massachusetts
Bay, was cast, in the year 1645, the first piece of hollow ware made
in America — " a small iron pot capable of containing about one
quart." * This pioneer of all American-made castings was in ex-
istence in 1844, but recent efforts f to ascertain its whereabouts
have been unsuccessful. The works at Lynn appear to have been
very prosperous for a number of years ; but after a time they

* Lewis's History of Lynn, 1844. f By C. H. J. Woodbury, Esq., of Lynn.

152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

became unpopular, owing to the flowage of lands by their dam,
and the great destruction of timber for fuel.

The Rev. William Hubbard, writing in 1G77,* says they were
" strenuously carried on for some time, but at length, instead of
drawing out bars of iron for the country's use, there was ham-
mered out nothing but contentions and lawsuits." Just about
this time Samuel Butler was writing his great poem in which he
makes Hudibras say :

Alas ! what perils do environ

The man who meddles with cold iron! —

a reflection which has been sadly appropriate in the case of too
many American iron-works.

After the establishment of this first successful " furnace " and
" foundery " at Lynn, works for the manufacture of iron were
erected in other parts of New England, and thence-the business
spread into New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.
During the " French War " (1755) there were a number of furnaces
in operation at which " cannon, bombs, and bullets " were made
in great quantity, and many of these iron-works furnished similar
supplies to the Continental army during the Revolution.

It is a matter of profound regret that no drawings of the
early iron-works erected in this country have been preserved ;
and we are therefore conrpelled to form our ideas of their con-
struction from such meager verbal descriptions as are given by
writers of the time, combined with illustrations of furnaces and
processes for the manufacture of iron known to have been used
at or near the same period in Europe. The iron-works at Lynn
seem to have embraced a " blast-furnace," a " foundry," and a
forge. The product of the furnace was in part made into " so we
iron," and the remainder used in " ye foundery," for the manu-
facture of hollow ware and other castings. In "ye forge," the
sow iron f was converted into " all sorts of barr iron." The
blast-furnaces in use in Germany at that time were from twenty
to twenty-five feet high, and had boshes, and openings at several
heights for the purpose of tapping out the cinder. In the Philo-
sophical Transactions for 1G7G, Henry Powle, describing the fur-
naces then in operation in the Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire,
England, says : " The blast-furnaces are about twenty-four feet
square on the outside, nearly thirty feet high, and eight or ten
feet wide at the boshes. Behind the furnace are placed two huge
pair of bellows, whose noses meet at a little hole near the bottom.

* The Present State of New England, 167V.

■f " Sowe iron " was an elongated mass of cast iron, tapering at each end, and having a
triangular cross-section; it was often twenty feet in length, and weighed from twelve to
fifteen hundred pounds. It was made by running the fluid iron from the furnace into a
trench in sand, where it solidified.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 153

These are compressed together by certain buttons, placed on the
axis of a very large wheel, which is turn'd about by water in the
manner of an overshot mill. As soon as these buttons are slid
off, the bellows are raised again by the counter-poise of weights,
whereby they are made to play alternately, the one giving its
blast all the time the other is rising."

Fig. 3 * is a vertical section of a blast-furnace, such as had
been used for some years in Sweden prior to 1734; and it may
be regarded as rep-
resentative of the
construction of fur-
nace that had been
employed in Ger-
many, France, and
England for the pre-
vious hundred years,
and in all probabili-
ty for a much longer
period. The reader
will readily perceive
that the bellows
(made of wood) were
operated by what
Henry Powle, above
quoted, described as
" certain buttons " ;
and in fact the con-
struction and size
of the furnace illus-
trated did not differ
greatly from that
seen by Powle. This
Swedish furnace was fifteen feet square outside, and twenty-
nine feet high ; its internal diameter at the top, D D, was four
feet, and at the widest part six feet. The " boshes," or dimin-
ishing part of the furnace, O O, were made of a mixture of fire-
clay and crushed quartz ; the inner walls, M M, were of sandstone
laid in regular courses, while the outer walls, G G, were made of
any convenient coarse, rough stone laid in lime mortar ; the space,
F F, between the inner and outer walls, was filled with cinder,
small stones, and other similar material. The hearth, C, was about
two feet square. The top of the furnace was surmounted by a
parapet, H, of rough-hewn logs. Comparing the construction of
this furnace with the earlier practice, Swedenborg says :

Fio.

3. — Vertical Section of a Blast-Furnace of the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

* From De Ferro, by Emanuel Swedenborg, 1734.

154

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

"Formerly furnaces were constructed much simpler, and no
specific or exact proportions were observed ; and it was not con-
sidered necessary that the walls should have any fixed dimen-
sions, either as to thickness or height ; but (according to Agricola,
who was the first to describe them) the whole structure was rude,

loose, and imperfect, their daily product of iron was small, and
they consumed a very large quantity of charcoal ; but afterward,
when it became evident that regularity in smelting insured ex-
cellence of product, and at the same time the realization of

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 155

greater profit, then more perfect plans were made, and higher
furnaces, having greater capacity and more solid walls, were con-
structed."

The reverberatory furnace had been employed in Europe from
the earliest times for the melting of brass and other metals ; and
for heating them dry wood was the usual fuel. Benvenuto Cellini
(about 1547) erected such a furnace for melting the bronze for his
statue of Perseus ; and he expressly states that he commenced the
melting with " pine wood, which, because of the oiliness of the
resinous matter that oozes from the pine tree, and that my
furnace was admirably well made, burned at such a rate, that I
was continually obliged to run to and fro, which greatly fatigued
me " ; and, after describing various troubles in getting the metal
melted, he finally completes that operation by the use of " a load
of young oak, which had been above a year in drying."

From a French work on the construction of artillery * we take
Fig. 4, which is a very spirited illustration of a reverberatory
furnace at the moment when the metal is being tapped into the
molds. In this figure A is the furnace ; B, the furnace-doors,
which are made of iron ; C, chimneys of the furnace ; D, fire-
hole ; E, frame of carpentry above the pit, to which is attached
the pulleys and other tackle which serve to lower the molds into
the pit and remove the castings made ; F, pit (made in the earth),
in which the molds are placed ; G, " runners " with " gates " for
the metal ; H, workmen who split the wood and carry it to the
furnace ; I, workman who throws the wood into the fire : the wood
falls upon a grate which is at the bottom of the fire-box, three
feet or more below the part of the furnace containing the metal ;
K, cover, or paddle of iron, for closing the mouth of the fire-box ;
L, workmen who raise the furnace-doors by means of a lever ; M,
lever for raising furnace-doors ; N", workmen who stir the melted
metal with poles of wood, and who remove the slag and refuse
metal with tools called " rabbles " ; O, the master founder, with
the tapping-bar, opening the hole by which the metal is dis-
charged into the " runners " ; around him stand a group of inter-
ested visitors. After this description we are told that " the fur-
nace at Douay contains sixty thousand pounds of metal." This
would not be regarded as a small furnace even now.

As illustrating how the metal was taken from the early blast-
furnaces for the making of " sowe iron " and castings of various
kinds, we reproduce f Figs. 5 and 6. In Fig. 5 workmen, num-
bered 1 and 2, are seen making an open mold of triangular cross-
section in the floor of the " foundry," in which is to be cast a sow,

* Memoires d'Artillerie, 1047.

f From Recueil de Planches, sur lcs Sciences, les Arts Liberaux, et les Arts Mecha-
niques avec leur explications. A Paris, 1765.

156

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and others (3 and 4) are removing, by means of levers and roll-
ers, the sow last made. The wooden bellows which blow the fur-
nace are shown at R, R, R. The furnace illustrated appears to
have been constructed with unusual care, its walls having been

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o

H

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6

built of dressed stone laid in regular courses, strengthened at the
corners by massive rampant arched buttresses, one of which is
marked Z, Z. At B, B, B, are iron bearers that support the
masonry of the furnace above the arch ; C, C, are side stones of
the hearth ; D is the " tymp » ; F, the " dam " ; I, the " tap-hole."

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 157

In Fig. 6 we have a view of the interior of an ancient " foun-
dry," in which the metal was taken direct from the blast-furnace
and used for the making of castings. In this engraving a work-
man (1) is taking the metal from the hearth of the furnace over
the dam F, with a ladle. Another workman (3) is " pouring " the

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a

s

o

H
W

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K
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2

H
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2

mold c, with metal from a hand-ladle ; while a boy (4) skims the
metal and prevents slag and other floating impurities from escap-
ing with the metal from the ladle ; close at hand is another mold, b,
ready for pouring. At 5 is a man pouring metal from a hand-
ladle into the "gate," Z, of a mold that is buried in the floor of

i58

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the " foundry/' while a second man (6) keeps him supplied with
metal from another ladle which is skimmed by a boy (7). At 8 is
a man cleaning a cast-iron pipe. Pipes made at this period were
rarely over three feet in length, and were provided with polygonal
flanges at each end for fastening them together with bolts. Pipes
two inches in diameter had oval flanges and two bolts ; three-
inch pipes had triangular flanges ; eight-inch pipes were square-
flanged ; while pipes of twelve and eighteen inches in diameter
had flanges of six and eight sides respectively, the number of
bolts always equaling the number of angles in the flanges.

It is not at all certain when the first castings were made from
remelted sow, or other form of crude cast iron ; but the crucible
has been used for remelting cast iron since a very remote period,
and is largely employed in China for that purpose at the present

Fig. 7. —The Process of Casting Crucible-melted Iron.

day, and the culinary utensils made in that country are remark-
able for their thinness. As illustrating the making of castings
from crucible-melted iron, we extract Fig. 7, from Reaumur's*
work. In this plate "b is a shed, under which is placed a fur-
nace c, such as is ordinarily found in the shops of the makers of
small castings. This furnace was blown by bellows, held but one
crucible, and was quite similar in construction to many furnaces
in use at the present day ; d d is a box for holding the molding-

* L'art de convertir le fer forge en Acier, et L'art d'adoucir le fer fondu. Par Mon-
sieur de Reaumur, de l'Academie Royale des Sciences. Paris, 1722.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 159

sand ; e e are molds being dried. At the left is seen a small porta-
ble furnace on wheels, to which blast is supplied by the bellows h,
of a forge. When this is used as a forge, the bellows h are re-
arranged so as to blow through an opening at the top. In the
figure, 2 is a workman filling a mold with fluid metal which has
been melted in the furnace. At m are seen the screw-clamps that
confine the three molds n. Near the middle of the picture are
two parts of a mold separated ; at the right, in the foreground, is
a pile of charcoal, and at q is a furnace (similar to a baker's oven)
for drying the cores for the molds."

Fig. 8. — Melting Iron fob Casting in Small Furnaces.

In Fig. 8 (also taken from Reaumur's treatise) "is shown
two common furnaces in which the iron to be melted is thrown
among the charcoal without being placed by itself in a crucible ;
one of these furnaces is represented as erected, and actually
melting the iron ; while the other is dismounted, and the melted
iron is being poured into molds. " The workmen (1 and 2) oper-
ate the bellows ; a b is the upper part of the furnace, whose base
is buried in charcoal dust ; b is the opening into which is thrown
the charcoal and pieces of iron ; c c, the powdered charcoal which
surrounds the base of the furnace ; d is the tuyere which receives
the noses of the bellows ; e is a heap of charcoal ; e 2 is a pile of
fragments of cast iron ; / is a post which supports the lever g,
by means of which the ladle which forms the bottom of the fur-
nace is easily raised." The workmen (3 and 4) are occupied in
pouring into molds the iron which has been melted in the sec-

160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ond furnace, which, is exactly like that already described ; 3 is
manoeuvring- the lever, to one end of which the ladle containing
the melted iron is suspended; 4 holds the handle and tips the
ladle, thus regulating the pouring of the metal ; * i, the hole from
which the ladle ~k, forming the base of the second furnace, was
taken for pouring; I, the upper part of the furnace removed ; n,
mold in which the iron is being poured."

Re'aunmr also describes a third apparatus for melting cast
iron, which consists of a furnace of similar form to that just de-
scribed, but without the removable ladle bottom. This furnace
was supported on "trunnions" by a carriage mounted on wheels ;
at a proper height above the bottom was a " tap-hole," and on the
opposite side an opening, or tuyere, for the nose of the bellows.
The iron to be melted was (as in the last furnace) mixed directly
with the fuel, and when it became fluid accumulated in the bot-
tom of the furnace ; as soon as all the iron was melted, the " tap-
hole " was opened and the bellows removed ; the whole body of
the furnace was then turned on its " trunnions," and the metal
run off through the " tap-hole " into " molds " placed to receive it.
This furnace was at a later period called a "calabash," and it
may be regarded as the direct progenitor of the modern foundry
" cupola " ; and it is not more than forty years since a very simi-
lar apparatus was in use in this country for melting brass ; but in
this the furnace, after the metal was melted, was suspended by its
"trunnions" to a crane, and, being without a "tap-hole," the
metal was run into the molds by inclining the furnace sufficiently
to allow it to run over the top.

The reader must not infer that the primitive lever crane, illus-
trated in Fig. 8, was the only form known in the early part of
the last century ; as, on the contrary, Agricola, more than one hun-
dred and fifty years before, described and illustrated several cranes
of much more elaborate construction, some of which are quite simi-
lar in idea to foundry cranes in common use at the present day.

As in some degree illustrative of the rude picturesqueness of
all the belongings of the old type of charcoal furnace, we have
engraved (Fig. 0) a view of the remains of one situated on the
Conemaugh River, in western Pennsylvania. The "hot-blast
stove " which surmounts the " stack " is evidence that the spirit
of- modern progress has wrestled with the inevitable in vain, and
the broken " blast-pipes," grass-grown " stack," and luxuriant sur-
rounding vegetation, show that the breath of igneous life has
passed away forever, and that Nature is claiming her own again.

The old colonial iron- works were of necessity located in val-
leys where advantage could be taken of a natural fall of water, or
where a stream could be dammed at small expense ; and, although
when measured by the standards of our time, they were very

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 161

imperfect in plan, rude in structure, uncouth and clumsy as to
machinery, yet these primitive works produced metal, albeit small
in quantity (eight to ten tons per week), of a quality that has
never been excelled by the colossal furnaces and forges of this
day and generation. The progress of improvement in those early
days was slow, painful, and uncertain. Steam and Electricity,
twin sons of modern civilization, were unborn, and the mechanic
arts only represented what was possible to be accomplished by

Fig. 9. — Old Furnace on the Conemaugh.

the skill and muscular energy of men and animals. The wonder-
working mechanisms now known as " machine-tools " were un-
imagined, and men wrought laboriously, by dint of the acute eye,
cunning hand, strong arm, and stalwart courage, at subduing the
savagery of a continent.

In presence of so many obstacles, and having such plentiful
lack of nearly everything that modern engineers and artisans
would regard as indispensable, the failure of the pioneer Ameri-
can sons of Vulcan would have occasioned no surprise, and their
triumphant success is therefore all the greater wonder.

Thus far we have spoken chiefly of the furnaces and apparatus
used in colonial times for the production of cast iron in its three
forms of

"sowe iron," "

pig iron," * and " castings," and have

* Pig iron is usually in tlie form of roughly semi-cylindrical masses about two and one
half feet in length, and weighing in the vicinity of one hundred pounds each. These
vol. xxxviii. — 11

162 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

briefly alluded to the fact that the earliest known method of ob-
taining iron from its ores produced a forgeable and weldable
metal. We now purpose to describe more fully this primitive
process, and to illustrate some of the machinery by which the
iron produced was wrought * into bars of various sizes and forms.
The process illustrated by Fig. 1 (page 147) is with slight modi-
fications still in use in Africa, and from iron produced in this
rude way the native Kaffir blacksmiths forge the heads of such
" assagais " or spears as were used with deadly effect in the last
conflict of the Zulus with England.

The quantity of iron that can be obtained by this simple pro-
cess as the result of a single operation is quite limited and only
sufficient for the forging of implements of very moderate size ;
but, as mankind gradually improved the conditions of life, the
necessity for larger masses of the most potential metallic factor
of civilization became more and more urgent, and to meet this
demand there was revealed to some receptive and executive intel-
ligence among men f the means by which such larger masses of iron
could be obtained, and the " Catalan forge " % or " blomary fire " #
supplied for a time the world's needs for an improved process of
manufacturing wrought iron. A section of one of these " forges "
or "blomary fires" is represented by Fig. 10. The cavity of the
hearth d, in the earlier forges, was lined with fire-resisting scone
(usually some variety of sandstone) ; but later, fire-bricks were
used, and still later, iron plates, which in the more recent " blom-
aries " have been made hollow and kept cool by a circulation of
water. The tuyere, b, was placed from seven to eight inches
above the bottom of the hearth, and was contrived so that its in-
clination could be varied at pleasure. The blast was produced

" pigs " derive their name from being cast in the same " bed " with the " sow," in side-
channels communicating with the main trench.

* The term wrought iron doubtless originated as a descriptive designation from the
necessity of distinguishing iron that could be readily " wrought " or shaped as desired from
" sowe " or other forms of " cast iron " which could not be " wrought '' under the hammer.

f Such persons are in these days called " inventors," and are generally regarded as the
originators of the various ideas and devices which they urge upon the attention of mankind ;
but they are, strictly speaking, simply vehicles and avenues by and through which knowl-
edge continually comes into the world for the steady advancement of civilization. Columbus
did not " invent " America, and was no more responsible for its existence than the trumpet
for the note of command that issues from its resounding muzzle. This is not said in dis-
paragement of " inventors," but only in explanation of their true function and relation to
civilization. Certainly no more honorable fame, or honest wealth, can fall to any man than
that which comes from being the recognized means by which beneficent knowledge is dis-
covered ; therefore all honors and rewards to such " inventors," the true prophets of science
and human progress.

\ Derives its name from the province of Catalonia, in the north of Spain, where it has
been used for many centuries.

* From the Anglo-Saxon bloma, a mass or lump; iscnes bloma, a mass or lump of iron.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS.

163

either by the " trompe " or by wooden or leather bellows ; and
sometimes by what some writers — in utter defiance of Euclid and
all his disciples — have called " square wooden cylinders/' worked
by rude water-wheels.

The ores most frequently reduced in these " blomary fires "
were the rich magnetites containing about seventy per cent of
iron, although poorer ores could be, and oftentimes were, used.
Sometimes the ore was employed in the " raw state " (i. e., just as

Fig. 10. — A Blomary Fire.

it is taken from the mine), but the best practice was to subject
it to a preliminary roasting in heaps. The operation of smelting
the ore, or more properly deoxidizing it (for the metallic iron
obtained in these "fires" was not the result of a true fusion),
was substantially as follows, viz. : The bottom and sides of
the "hearth" having been lined with a thick coating of char-
coal dust, it was then filled with charcoal, upon which crushed
ore was thrown, and kept in place by a dam of charcoal dust (c,
Fig. 10). The fire was blown gently at first, and as the heat in-
creased a more powerful blast was employed ; ore and coal were

164

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

added from time to time as the work progressed, and some-
times the mass of fuel and ore was heaped up three or four feet.
After an hour and a half or two hours of blowing, most of
the iron in the ore was found in a pasty condition at the bot-
tom of the hearth, in a bath of liquid " cinder " formed from
the impurities of the ore and the ashes of the fuel ; the blast was
then augmented and most of the " cinder " drawn off through
a " tap-hole " in the front side of the hearth, after which the
pasty iron was lifted by bars until it was opposite or some-
what above the tuyere, and was there heated and manipulated
until it became a spongy but coherent mass or " ball " of forge-
able iron, twelve or fifteen inches in diameter, whose numerous

Fig. 11. — Removing a Ball from a Catalan Forge.

cavities were filled with a more or less fluid cinder. For the
purpose of expelling this " cinder " and imparting greater density
and coherence to the iron, the ball was then removed from the
fire (Fig. 11) and taken to a "trip-hammer"* (Fig. 12) and
" shingled."

The resulting "bloom," roughly cylindrical or rectangular in
shape, represented about three fourths of the iron contained in
the ore used ; the remainder went into the cinder and was lost.
The weight of the " bloom " obtained at a single operation was
usually from three hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds.

* So called from the fact that it is " tripped up " and allowed to fall, by the pins on the
rim of the smaller of the two wheels shown in the illustration (Fig. 12). This form of ham-
mer is also called a " shingling hammer."

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 165

Fig. 12. — A Tkip-Hammer.

The simplicity and consequent cheapness of construction of
the blomary fires caused them to be largely employed in the
early years of the iron manufacture in America ; and a few, that
have superior advantages for obtaining supplies of ore and fuel,
remain active at
the present time.*
We are told f that
in 1731 there were
in all New England
" six furnaces for
hollow ware and
nineteen forges or
blomaries for bar
iron. At that time
there were no fur-
naces for pig iron
exclusively nor
any refineries of
pig metal ; there was one slitting - mill and a manufacture of
nails." In that year there were no iron- works in New York, and
but a few in New Jersey (one furnace and " several forges ") ; in
Pennsylvania there were one furnace and three " forges." At the
same time there were two "furnaces" and one "blomary" in
Delaware, and two "furnaces" and two "blomaries" in Mary-
land, and in Virginia there were three " blast-furnaces " and one
" air furnace " (a form of reverberatory furnace), " but no forge."
The fifteen "furnaces" and thirty "blomaries" above enumer-
ated represented the growth of the iron industry of America
during the eighty-six years following its birth at Lynn.

As the result of a superabundance of painful pondering, sup-
plemented by a proportional volume of conservative hesitation
and doubt, the manufacture of iron slowly increased, not only in
America, but in the world at large ; and soon after the " blom-
ary process " had been generally recognized as the most satisfac-
tory method of making iron, the growing needs of expanding
civilization began to demand some means by which the more
abundant ores that were not so rich in iron as those required by

* The " Catalan forge " or " blomary fire " has been an important factor in the growth
of the iron industry of the United States, but it belongs to an industrial stage of the past.
In 1856 J. P. Lesley, Secretary of the American Iron Association, reported two hundred and
four blomaries in active work (in nine States), whose product for that year was 28,633 tons :
many of these works must have been idle, as the product seems a very low one, averaging
but one hundred and forty tons each. In 1889 James M. Swank, Vice-President and Gen-
eral Manager of the American Iron and Steel Association, reports but five forges (four in
New York and one in Tennessee), producing iron direct from the ore ; their united prod-
uct being 12,407 net tons of blooms.

\ Bishop's History of American Manufactures.

i66

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the " blomary fires " could be easily and cheaply smelted, and at
the same time furnish larger masses of f orgeable metal than the
process in common use could supply.

This demand led to the invention of the " Osmund * furnace "
and the " Stuckofen." f Both of these furnaces are of German
origin, but it is not absolutely certain which is the older ; for,
although we hear of the " Stuckofen " as early as the year 1000,
we find no mention of the " Osmund furnace " (by that name)
until early in the eighteenth century, though furnaces of simi-
lar size and construction (called " Blaseofen " and Bauernofen)
had been in use in Germany for several hundred years ; and as
the natural course of development of all mechanisms and appara-
tus is from the smaller to the larger, or from the less to the more
efficient, it is extremely probable that the " Osmund furnace " was
the immediate successor of the "blomary " and that the " Stuck-
ofen" (a much larger and loftier construction) followed pretty
closely in point of time after it.

Fig. 13.— An Osmund Furnace.

The general construction and equipment of an " Osmund fur-
nace " are represented in Fig. 13. This engraving is a copy of one
given by Percy \ as a reproduction of a drawing accompanying a
report of a Swedish mining surveyor to the Royal Board of Iron
Trade in 1732. A similar engraving (but three times the size) is
contained in the work of Swedenborg, who gives in addition a

* From the German " One" ring, and " Mund" mouth,
f From the German " Stuck," bloom (piece), and " Ofen," furnace.
X Metallurgy of Iron and Steel. By John Percy, M. D., F. R. S.
p. 321.

London, 1864,

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 167

vertical section of the furnace, which is also copied by Percy,
and which we present in Fig. 14.

In Fig. 13, A is a heap of uncalcined bog-ore ; B, a calcining
fire of wood on which the ore is " roasted " ; C, a heap of calcined
bog-ore ; D, earth-borer, used to search for ores ; E, charcoal-rake ;
F, iron shovel ; G, tongs for drawing the " bloom " from the
hearth of the furnace ; H, cinder-hook, also used in handling the
bloom ; K, bar, used for clearing the cinder-notch and tuyere ; L,
large sledge for hammering the " bloom " ; MM, the lump of
iron ; N, the hatchet ; O, the treadles for working the bellows ; P,
bridge of planks; Q, tap-hole for cinder; R, tuyere; S, wooden
shovel for filling ore into the furnace. It will be noticed that the

Fin. 14. — Vertical Section of an Osmund Furnace.

masonry of the furnace is incased by timber-work, which is
locked together at the angles. This construction, rude and unsat-
isfactory as it appears to eyes familiar with the iron-bound fur-
nace-stacks of the present day, was a not uncommon one as applied
to the earlier blast-furnaces in this country ; and those in which
it was employed were called " log-furnaces," to distinguish them
from furnaces whose exterior walls were entirely of masonry.
The bellows, in the case of the Osmund furnace illustrated, appear
to have been operated by a woman, who, by stepping first on one
of the treadles and then on the other, thus raised by her weight
the bellows boards alternately ; while at the same time her nim-
ble fingers were busy with distaff and spindle. We think we are
entirely safe in saying that this method of blowing a furnace was
never employed in America.

It is not certain that the Osmund furnace was ever used in
this country, as we find no mention of any furnace having been
erected called by that name ; but, when we consider its simplicity
and consequent cheapness of construction, and that it was (accord-

168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing to Swedenborg) especially adapted to the working of bog-ores,
large quantities of which were actually smelted in New England,
it does not seem at all improbable that furnaces of similar form
may have been used there for smelting such ores ; and the fact
that this furnace produced wrought iron in masses of considerable
weight would make it of especial utility in connection with
forges, which were quite numerous in the New England colonies
at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

The Stiickofen was an enlargement upward of the Osmund fur-
nace, and may be pretty accurately described, as one Osmund fur-
nace inverted upon another, its interior form being that of two
cones united at their bases, a hearth similar to that of an Osmund
furnace being formed at the lower part. We have no certain infor-
mation that the Stiickofen was ever used in this country ; but as
this furnace was well known in Europe, where it had been in use
for several centuries, those interested in the earlier smelting enter-
prises in the American colonies must have been acquainted with
its construction, and it is very probable that some of the earlier
blast-furnaces were Stuckofens under another name. The fact
that this furnace could be so worked as to produce either cast
or wrought iron, as desired, would make it especially valuable in
a new country, where there was not sufficient demand for either
metal to keep a furnace constantly employed. Besides those al-
ready enumerated, there was another method of producing a
'' bloom " of f orgeable iron ; viz., by the remelting of " sowe " or
" pig " iron in a " Catalan forge " or " blomary fire." In colonial
times this operation was largely used and was often described as
" refining," and the premises in which it was carried on were fre-
quently called a " refinery " ; but the reader must not conf ound
this term with that applied to a comparatively modern apparatus
of quite different construction and purpose, which we will de-
scribe later.

This old refining process * consisted substantially of melting
the pig iron with charcoal, and then directing the blast upon the
melted iron — which was stirred occasionally by proper iron tools
— until its impurities in a great degree were expelled, and a spongy
mass of forgeable iron was formed (quite similar, in fact, to that
obtained when ore alone was used), which could be hammered
into a " bloom."

Thus far we have confined ourselves mainly to a description of
methods and apparatus for the production of " sowe " or " pig "
iron and " blooms," which were either in actual use in America

* This process is even now worked to a limited extent, but its use is steadily declining.
Mr. Swank reports that "the production of blooms and billets from pig and scrap iron in
1889 was 23,853 net tons, against 25,^87 tons in 1888, and 28,218 tons in 1S87."

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS.

169

Fig. 15.— A Forge in 1734.

during the century following the erection of the first iron-works
at Lynn, in 1645, or were coeval therewith. We now purpose to
describe the early ways and means, and some of the more im-
portant improvements thereon, by which "blooms" produced by
either of the before-mentioned methods were shaped into bars
and rods of various forms and dimensions. The simplest means
used for this purpose consisted of a hammer wielded by the mus-
cular energy of a blacksmith.

170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The "hammer" was undoubtedly the first tool invented by
man, and it is still not only the simplest but positively the most
important tool in use ; without its pioneering blows other tools
could not have been fashioned, and the materials of which they
are composed would have lain dormant in the earth's crust for-
ever ; for the ringing of anvils under the beating of hammers was
the absolutely essential overture to the grand opera of the civiliza-
tion of the human race.

If it was intended that the metal be drawn out on an anvil by
" hand-hammers " and " sledges," the soft mass of iron, as it was
taken from the " blomary-fire " or other furnace in which it was
reduced from the ore, was cut by means of a hatchet (as shown
at M N, Fig. 13) into parts not too cumbrous to be handled by or-
dinary smiths' tools ; these pieces were then heated in a fire of
larger size, blown by more powerful bellows than were commonly
used by a blacksmith. One of these enlarged smiths' fires is
shown in Fig. 15 (taken from Swedenborg's De Ferro), and the
tools used are shown scattered about the floor. It will be noted
that there are two bellows, and that these are operated by a
water-wheel.

When, as was usually the case, the purpose was to make from
the iron bars and rods for the general purposes of trade, the
bloom resulting from shingling (as before described) the spongy
mass of crude iron was reheated and drawn into the desired
shape under the blows of a ponderous piece of machinery called
a trip-hammer. This, although of the same name, was quite
different in construction from that already described as having
been used for shingling the crude iron. One of these forge trip-
hammers is shown in Fig. 1G, in which H is the head of the
hammer ; this was sometimes made of wrought iron, but more
often was cast of the proper form and provided with an aperture
through which the wooden beam forming the "helve" was passed
and secured by wedges. W is the anvil, and a the "bloom," whose
movements are guided and controlled by the "hammer-man" (3) ;
while his assistant (2) determines the rapidity and force of the
blows, by varying the amount of water supplied to the water-
wheel which actuates the hammer. The clumsy, heavily iron-
hooped, wooden shaft Y, of the water-wheel, was in this instance
placed parallel with the helve of the hammer. Fastened in the
circumference of this shaft were a number of round wooden pins,
which, as they successively came in contact with the under side
of the helve, forcibly threw it up against the spring-beam, 13,
whose recoil increased the velocity of descent of the hammer and
consequently the force of the blow.

Unless the bars made were of very great thickness, only a
part of the bloom could be drawn out before it became too cold

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 171

to be hammered ; in which case the bar, with that portion of the
bloom which adhered to it, was taken to a fire and reheated ;
sometimes several of these reheatings were necessary before the

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whole of the bloom was forged into a bar. At 1 (Fig. 16) is seen
a bar, B, whose end is being reheated as described. Whenever
it was desired to make round bars, the hammer was provided
with a groove of nearly semicircular section, located on one side

i72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the middle of its striking surface or " face " ; and the anvil
had a corresponding groove ; the " bloom " was first drawn down
on the plain part of the anvil to a square section, and then this
square bar was rounded in the grooves of hammer and anvil.

[ To be continued.}

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE "DAGO"?

By APPLETON MORGAN.

THE very recent murder of David C. Hennessey, chief of police
of the city of New Orleans, appears to direct public attention
to a class of immigrants which has recently sought the hospitable
ports of the United States, and, in connection with the constant
questions of prison reform and prison economics, to justify a
considerable and serious public attention.

The newspaper paragraph which tells what the man to be
hanged at ten o'clock had for breakfast at eight, is doubtless
appetizing to thousands of honest wage-workers who can not
recall sitting down in all their lives to as sumptuous a bill of fare.
The libraries of standard fiction provided for incarcerated felons
are well enough ; though, if the incarcerated felons, when liber-
ated, are at once to take their position as leaders in progress and
increasers of the public wealth, they might better be supplanted,
perhaps, with works on mechanics and the mechanical motors,
steam, electricity, etc. The point in civilization to which the
world has arrived renders it impossible that the inmates of pris-
ons should be starved, frozen, or tortured into imbecility. But
the question as to how tenderly they should be treated, how deli-
cately cared for, and how comfortably their bodily wants provided
for, appears not yet to have been submitted to anything like a
consensus of public opinion. Such question, as a matter of fact,
appears to be left at large, until selected as a sentimental one for
ladies and gentlemen of sympathetic natures and leisure for phi-
lanthropises not otherwise bent ; and the result is, that when any-
thing is done it is done toward the adding of yet one more burden
upon the law-abiding and uncriminal classes, to wit, the provid-
ing of increased consolations, if not luxuries, for their law-break-
ing and criminal brothers and sisters. When we tax the good
man for the benefit of the bad man, we ought to tax him as lightly
as possible. When the peaceful and useful citizen is assessed to
build prisons for the house-breaker and molester of the public
quiet, he doubtless should be assessed roundly enough to keep
the unruly class secure from the facilities for working further
mischief; and nobody will decline to go further, and say that

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE "DAGO"? i73

the prison should be clean enough and well enough drained, and
wholesome enough to prevent the criminals within — their active
work of evil restrained — from negatively breeding infection among
the honest people they no longer affirmatively and independently
rob, disturb, and destroy. There ought to be no hesitation about
going quite as far as this. The question is, How much further—
with an honest regard for the rights of the non-law-breaker —
may we proceed ? A prison is not supposed to be a nice, cozy place
to live in. It should not be a desirable place even to the class of
people which criminals are bred from. Neither the criminal
classes — nor the classes from which criminals come — live and dress
warmly ; their shoes are not dry, their bodies are not well kept and
sleek and cleanly ; their tables are not regularly or sumptuously
or even wholesomely spread. Poverty certainly should not be
allowed to aggravate or in any way influence the penalty for
crime : but it would seem as if, in the enforcement of the pen-
alty, it can not be entirely left out of the estimates taken by our
law-makers , and this for certain reasons, of which the following
are a few :

There is just now seeking these shores, in extraordinary num-
bers, a class of laborers who live more meanly than the imagina-
tion of the general public, in well-paid and well-fed America, can
conceive. Every one who has visited the northern shore of the
Mediterranean, in Italy, is familiar with the class called lazzaroni.
It may be actually said that this class does not live in houses at
all, does not know what a house means : except for shelter against
inclement weather ; that it has no use for roofs at all. Water,
except as it falls from the heavens, it appears to know not in any
external sense ; and during the long summers and mild winters a
wall or an alley is quite as convenient as, and much more available
a shelter than, a roof. A gang of these people, " dagoes " as they
are nicknamed (a corruption of hidalgos, which, though a Span-
ish and not an Italian word, once came to be sneeringly applied
to a foreigner of Latin Europe out of his element), employed in
building an American railroad, will find it necessary, in the new
climate, to be provided with quarters of some sort ; will herd to-
gether as tightly as they can dispose themselves, in anything
which is covered by a roof, and every office of nature will be per-
formed together in the same tumbled quarters. I once happened
to witness the following incident: A small circus, with a few
lions and tigers, exhibiting in a small town, near by where a rail-
road was being constructed, fed, as a part of its programme, these
wild beasts. The bones which the beasts gnawed were left on the
ground when the circus departed between two days. And the
"dagoes" collected these bones and boiled them for their soup!
What terrors have jails and prisons for such human beings ?

i74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

What have they to lose "by pilfering, assaulting, robbing, and
murdering ? So far as creature comforts are concerned, they live
better and work about as much, have warmer clothing and better
beds, in the meanest jail in the United States than they experience
out of it. So far as the duration of life is concerned, they will
probably live as long under a sentence of death as they do in the
wretched filth they pile up around them, and in the rapid changes
of our national weather. The bric-a-brac societies who have
exhausted Ibsen, Browning, and the entire science of photogra-
phy, and who are now devoting themselves to the comfort and
well-being of malefactors, might possibly be in good part, were
there any reasonable percentage of reformation in the ordinary
penitentiary experience ; if the enterprising burglar, after serv-
ing out his term, burglarized no more, or the cut-throat, released
from a long penalty for his crime — as Mr. Gilbert would say —
"loved to hear the little brook a-gurgling and to listen to the
merry village chime " ; but, as a matter of fact, he doesn't. But
here is a practical problem quite in the line of refinement. Sooner
or later, somebody in this country will be obliged to grapple with
the problem of the " dago." Can he be kept out of jail ? Can he
be made a useful citizen by utilizing the leisure he spends in jails
to educate him into some sort of comprehension of the new coun-
try in which he finds himself ? The proposition that every jail
and prison should be made reformatory as well as punitory in its
character would require, one would be apt to say, some little look-
ing into. The question as to whether states are bound to reform
as well as punish, their wrong-doers, depends largely upon the
wider question of the duties of a state to its citizens. The other
considerations, as to whether a state should make its prisoners
comfortable, should watch over their physical welfare, may be
disposed of at once by citing the general propositions that, how-
ever models of what they ought to be in other respects, our jails
ought to be somewhat more uncomfortable to the prisoner than
the most comfortless hovel that the poverty of the habitual
criminal provides ; as, otherwise, there would never be a class of
the community to whom a residence within prison walls would
not be a change for the better. Jail soup may be thin, but let the
man who loves not thin soup keep out of jail. And let the soup
be not thicker than, at least, the thinnest obtainable outside.
To reverse the old rhyme, in most cases "Stone walls should a
prison make, and iron bars a cage." If flowers are to be distrib-
uted by kind-hearted ladies at Easter, let it be to the deserving
who keep, rather than to the undeserving who keep not, the law
of the land. Of course, these propositions are not meant to con-
template the abnormal instances of squalor and filth, which com-
munities for their own preservation must treat with and rectify.

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE "DAGO"? 175

That question is disposed of by the Boards of Health, into whose
province it would seem naturally to come.

Again, as to the duties owed by states to their citizens, two
things are, or ought to be, beyond question : first, that the state
should attempt the greatest good to the greatest number; and,
second, that it should not discriminate against the innocent in
favor of the wrong-doer. If, therefore, a state or community
building a jail, is unable to provide elaborately organized and
classified prisons to punish its wrong-doing citizens without tax-
ing its honest and law-abiding citizens unduly, it would not seem
to be its exact duty to do so. It should not impose unbearable or
irksome burdens upon its citizens who need no reformation, for
the purpose of experimenting upon those to whom reformation is
desirable. It is undesirable that a prison should be so constituted
or managed as to make its occupants, whether reformable or not,
worse than when they entered its portals ; but the tendency of
human nature to retrograde rather than improve, is, probably,
not less constant inside than outside of penitentiaries. So far as
this tendency of human nature to retrograde can be shown to be
largely enough re-enforced by non-classification of prisoners to
work actual harm to the state, some classification ought to be at-
tempted.

To argue as some of us do, for example, that the public revenue
should be charged with the expense of building separate insti-
tutions for boys who, at ten years of age, have begun to burg-
larize, and for those who have begun to steal in broad daylight ;
to keep up with the legal difference between the two crimes ; or
that a further refinement of distinction should be made between
the man who has once and the one who has twice robbed ; or be-
tween the one who proposes on liberation to rob, and the one who
proposes on liberation not to rob again, is not only to be im-
practicable, but to become absurd. To a philosophic mind this
leads up to the doctrine of heredity, and the question whether the
criminal classes, from generation to generation, are not always
distinct, to about the same proportion, from the law-abiding class.
Whether the law-abiding, industrious, and honest classes should
be burdened with increased taxes to try and save the freshman
criminal from becoming a sophomore, and the junior from gradua-
tion into the senior class of crime, is a question much too pro-
found to be solved from any standpoint, especially from the stand-
point of the excellent gentlemen who make speeches to the philan-
thropical societies — which speeches are referred to committees,
whose reports are printed in unlimited pamphlets ; still less from
the standpoint of the pamphlets themselves.

So long as governments owe a duty to all classes of the com-
monwealth alike, and to no one over and above or as against an-

176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

other, they can not be governed by sentiment, be optimists or pes-
simists, or theorists of any sort. They must be governed by
principles. In the application of those principles they must be
guarded by facts ; and governments, unhappily, have no other
means of being informed of facts except by statistics. If figures
should happen to show that one in every four hundred citizens of
a given community is a law-breaker, and that this proportion had
not varied perceptibly in, say, twenty-five years, would that com-
munity be justified in erecting a system of public buildings for
the sake of experimenting toward a decrease of this percentage —
buildings which must be paid for out of the pockets, not of the
law-breakers who pay no taxes, but of the law-observers who do ?
Possibly the tax-payers of the community would think not.

Nothing, of course, should be allowed to antagonize the laws of
humanity, or, in a large sense, the laws of charity. But to whom
is charity to be shown ? Which class of the community deserves
the largest charity ? Is it Christian to expect the honest man, who
forever pays tithes of his toil, to experiment on the reformation of
the man whose ancestral traditions compel or incite him to toil
not, but to break in and help himself to the fruits of the honest
man's toil ? Let the largest charity be meted out to all. But no
charity can be meted out with equity, without some regard to de-
serts. It must not be forgotten, even by the charitable, that if
any preference is to be shown by the commonwealth, it is for
those who keep rather than those who break its statutes, and for
them that observe rather than for them that ignore the unwritten
laws that govern human relations. Ten minutes' inspection of
the haunts of crime in a city like New York, for example, ought
to convince the daintiest of bric-a-brac ladies and gentlemen of
the danger of a too well-appointed, a too substantially fed, and a
too well-libraried prison. The slums where the cold of winter al-
ternates only with the fetid and noxious odors of summer, would,
to most of us, destroy confidence at least in that homeliest of max-
ims, " If you don't like your jail, keep out of it." Certainly, the
more we strip the penitentiary of its penances, the more stress we
throw on the single element of disgrace to keep men out of jail. But
the disgrace of serving a term of imprisonment is a matter which,
unfortunately, partakes quite as largely of bric-a-brac as does the
sentiment of the average prison reformer. What disgrace is a
year or ten years in a prison to a nomad, a man from nowhere,
who has no character to lose, who goes by as many names as he
pleases and changes them as often as he likes ? The problem re-
mains. We must build prisons which, somehow or other, will be
less desirable abiding-places than the slums. We can not starve
prisoners, or turn them on wheels, or distort them with boots or
thumb-screws. We can not freeze them nor roast them, nor feed

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE "DAGO"? 177

them with miasmatic diseases. But, all the same, we must event-
ually find some principle, somewhere, by the practice of which,
while meting out to the wrong-doer the penalty he has earned, we
shall protect the revenues as well as the peace and the safety of
the community.

All this is familiar reasoning enough. But the prohlem seems
to increase to formidable dimensions just now with the new class
of which we have spoken. What shall we do with the " dago " ?
This " dago," it seems, not only herds, but fights. The knife with
which he cuts his bread he also uses to lop off another " dago's "
finger or ear, or to slash another's cheek. He quarrels over his
meals ; and his game, whatever it is, which he plays with pennies
after his meal is over, is carried on knife at hand. More even
than this, he sleeps in herds ; and if a " dago " in his sleep rolls
up against another " dago," the two whip out their knives and
settle it there and then ; and, except a grunt at being disturbed,
perhaps, no notice is taken by the twenty or fifty other " dagoes ''
in the apartment. He is quite as familiar with the sight of hu-
man blood as Avith the sight of the food he eats. His women
follow him like dogs, expect no better treatment than dogs, and
would not have the slightest idea how to conduct themselves
without a succession of blows and kicks. Blows and kicks, in-
deed, are too common an experience with them for notice among
" dagoes." When a woman is seriously hurt, she simply keeps
out of sight somewhere till she is well enough for the kicking
and striking to begin over again, and no notice whatever is taken
of her absence meanwhile. The disappearance is perfectly well
understood, and no questions are asked. The male " dago," when
sober, instinctively retreats before his employer or boss, or any
other man, and has no idea of assaulting him, or indeed of ad-
dressing him, or having any relations with him except to draw
his pay. But, when infuriated with liquor, he will upon any
fancied occasion use the only argument which he possesses — his
knife. I say the only argument, for it is inevitable experience
that he will not talk ; however little or however much he may
understand of what is said to him, he will pretend not to under-
stand. He has a pretty clear idea of how much money is com-
ing to him, and manages to convey that information to his pay-
master. But it is rather dangerous for the paymaster to give
him much less than the amount which, in his idea, is coming to
him. He will refuse to accept it, withdraw, jabber and gesticu-
late, and it will be well for that paymaster to be on his guard
until something representing that month's wages is accepted.

Now, when (as happens constantly in the course of the grad-
ing of a railroad by great swarms of these "dagoes") three- or
four hundred or less of these human beings are quartered for a

TOL. XXXVIII. 12

178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

month in the vicinity of some prosperous, quiet, and orderly little
inland town, where the justice of the peace and the constable
are farmers in the field or keepers of the country " store/' or the
village shoemaker and carpenter respectively — what happens ?
What, indeed, mast happen ? The "dago" will not resume work
the day after his pay-day, which comes monthly. (Did it come
weekly, he would not work at all, as will presently appear.) He
takes his wages to the nearest village or community in which
spirits, or what is called spirits, is sold. If it is not given him,
he fights, is arrested, and locked up ; if it is given him, he also
fights, is arrested, and locked up. In either case he will be taken
by the constable before the justice, and a little experience will
convince these officials that the only safety for their community
is to "fine" the "dago" what money he may happen to have in his
pocket, for, until his money is gone, he will not return to his work.
This programme is repeated month by month, until that section
of the railroad is finished and the " dago " is moved to another,
where another adjacent village must learn, by experience, how to
protect itself precisely as did the last one. Local criminal laws
seem, therefore, incompetent to deal with this "dago." He has
apparently nothing to lose — and from any standpoint except his
own, apparently something even to gain — by the most comfortless
prison that American ingenuity can devise.

Although the argument from design has made great strides
since the days of Dr. Paley's watch, there yet remains much in
nature for science to explain by utilizing it. The constrictive
force of the African python, for example, the aggravative energy
of the New Jersey mosquito, or the tremulous force of the young
ladies' Browning or Ibsen Club, for example, remain as yet to
puzzle us ; and possibly, on the whole, the argument may be stated
as in that condition of compromise in which it appeared to the
starving tramp who discovered a New England swamp full of
whortleberries and rattlesnakes. Design had evidently placed the
whortleberries there to save his life, but chance had dropped in
the utterly purposeless rattlers. A somewhat corresponding mixt-
ure of good and evil appears to confront us in the very large im-
portation lately of this curious people. It is to the eternal credit
of King Victor Emanuel that he, first in history, utilized that
class of his subjects which has been known from time immemo-
rial as the lazzaroni. He put this entirely unattractive person,
who till then had naught to do but accommodate himself to the
weather, to work removing rock debris on the Mont Cenis Tun-
nel, and since he was, to that extent, a successful railroad man,
the royal example has been followed over here, and, it can not be
denied, with very considerable advantage. The dago class, by lib-
erating a class of workmen of, say, one grade higher, has actually

THE IDENTITY OF LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. 179

added to the country's creative wealth. But, when this lazzarone
is imported into the United States and set to grading an Ameri-
can railway, he is found to possess characteristics which may not
have interfered with his usefulness on the Mont Cenis Tunnel,
but which here become exceedingly unpractical, not to say un-
comfortable : and which may, as we have shown, even prove as
large a problem in our criminal, as his advent was, no doubt, a
happy thought in our industrial, economy.

♦»»

THE IDENTITY OF LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY.*

By HENRI HEETZ.

OUR first thought, when we speak of the relations of light and
electricity, is of the electric light. That is not the subject of
the present paper. The physicist thinks of the extremely deli-
cate reciprocal actions of the two forces, such as the rotation by
the current of the plane of polarization, or the variation under
the influence of light of the resistance of a conductor. In these
cases, however, the action is not direct, but a medium, ponderable
matter, is interposed. There are other closer, more intimate re-
lations between the two forces. It is my purpose to discuss the
proposition that light is in its very essence an electrical phenom-
enon— whether it be the light of the sun, of a candle, or of a glow-
worm. Suppress electricity in the universe, light would disap-
pear ; suppress the luminiferous ether, electric and magnetic
forces would cease to act through space. This theory is not of
to-day or of yesterday, but has a long and instructive history.
My own experiments only mark one of the steps in its develop-
ment; and it is my purpose to retrace its whole evolution, not
one of its phases only. It is not easy in a matter of this kind to
be clear without omitting something essential. The phenomena
to be considered take place in space, in the ether itself, and are
not perceptible to the touch or the hearing or the sight. Reflec-
tion and reasoning may permit us to grasp them, but it is hard to
make an exact description of them. We shall endeavor, there-
fore, to connect them with ideas that are already known to us.
"We refer, therefore, first to what we already know concerning
light and electricity.

We know of a certainty that light is an undulatory move-
ment, and that the undulations are transversal ; we have deter-
mined their length and their velocity ; and all that follows from

* A communication to the Sixty-second Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians,
at Heidelberg.

180 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

these facts is equally certain. It is, therefore, sure that all of
space that is accessible to us is not void, but is filled with a sub-
stance capable of entering into vibration — the ether. But while
we have clear notions of the geometrical conditions of the phenom-
ena that occur in this matter, their physical nature is very ob-
scure ; and what we know of the properties of the substance is
full of contradictions. Comparing the waves of light with those
of sound, they were regarded as elastic. But only longitudinal
waves have been observed in fluids, and under the conditions of
matter transverse waves are impossible in them. We have been
obliged, therefore, to assume that the ether acts as a solid body.
But when we regard the motions of the stars and endeavor to de-
termine their conditions, we have to affirm that ether behaves like
a perfect fluid. Without endeavoring at present to explain the
contradiction that presents itself here, we pass to electricity ; it
may throw some light on the problem.

Most of the persons who ask what electricity is have no doubts
respecting its real existence, and only expect a description of the
properties of the singular substance. With scientific man, the
problem takes the form, Does electricity really exist ? Do not
electric phenomena, like the other ones, go back to properties of
ether and ponderable matter ? Our knowledge does not as yet
permit us to answer this question affirmatively. Material elec-
tricity still has a place in our conceptions, and the old and fa-
miliar idea of two kinds attracting and repelling one another,
to which are attributed actions at a distance resembling intel-
lectual qualities, still persists in current language. This theory
dated from the time when Newton's law of gravitation having
been confirmed by astronomy, the idea of action at a distance
without the intervention of a medium was familiar. Electric and
magnetic attractions were thought to obey the same law as gravi-
tation ; and, admitting a similar action at a distance, the phenom-
enon was supposed to be explained in the simplest manner, and
the limits of knowledge on the subject to have been reached. A
different aspect was presented when in this century the reciprocal
action of currents and magnets was discovered, an action infinite-
ly variable, in which motion and time played a great part. In
the necessity of increasing the number of actions at a distance to
complete the theory, the simplicity which gave it its scientific
probability disappeared. Simple formulas and general and ele-
mentary laws were then sought, of which Weber's law was the
most important tentative. Whatever may be thought of the ex-
actness of these essays, they formed an exceptional system and a
seductive whole, a magic circle, which one could not leave after
having once entered it. The road was one that could not lead to
the truth. It required a fresh mind to resist the current, one

THE IDENTITY OF LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. 181

that could enter upon, the study of the phenomena without pre-
conceived opinions, and was capable of starting from what it ob-
served, and not from what it had heard, read, or learned.

Faraday followed that course. He had heard that, in electri-
fying a body, something new was introduced into it ; but he saw
that the changes were external, and not within. He was told that
the forces traversed space, but he remarked that the nature of the
matter that filled the space had great influence on them. He had
read that electricities existed, and that we only had to consider
their properties ; and yet he observed every day the effects of the
forces without ever seeing the electricities themselves : in this
way he reversed the proposition. The electric and magnetic
forces became to him the only tangible reality, while electricity
and magnetism fell to the rank of objects the existence of which is
contestable. Considering these lines of forces, as he called them,
independently of their cause, he regarded them under the form of
states of space, tension, whorls, and currents, without occupying
himself with what they might really be. He was satisfied with
having established their existence, with observing their influence
upon each other, their attractions for material bodies, and their
propagation by the transmission of the excitation from one point
of space to another. If it was objected that there could be no
other state than absolute rest in empty space, he could answer :
" Is space, then, empty ? Does not the transmission of light force
us to regard it as filled with matter ? Can not the ether, which
transmits the luminous waves, suffer modifications which we per-
ceive under the form of electrical and magnetic actions ? Is there
not a relation between these modifications and these vibrations ?
Are not the luminous waves a kind of scintillation of these lines
of force ? " Such were the inductions and hypotheses which Fara-
day conceived. They were as yet only mental views ; he applied
himself earnestly to demonstrate them scientifically ; and the re-
lations of light, electricity, and magnetism became the favorite
object of his studies.

The relation he found was not the one he sought. He con-
tinued his researches till age put an end to his labors. One of
his principal questions was whether the transmission of electri-
cal and magnetic forces is instantaneous. Is the magnetic field
constituted at once to the limits of space whenever the current
excites an electro-magnet ? Or does the action first reach the
nearer points and gradually propagate itself to the more remote
ones ? And is the sudden modification of the electric condition
of a body felt simultaneously in identical variations, in all points
of space, or is there a retardation augmented as the distance in-
creases ? In the latter case, the effect of the variation would be
transmitted as a wave through space. Do such waves exist ?

i8s THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Faraday obtained no answer to his questions, but the solution of
them is directly related to his theories. If electric waves crossing
space exist, the independence of the forces that produce them is
demonstrated. We know that the forces do not traverse vacua
instantaneously, for we can follow their propagation each instant
from one point to another. Faraday's problems can, however, be
solved by very simple experiments. If they had occurred to him,
his theory would have triumphed at once. The relation of light
and electricity would have been so clear that it could not have
escaped even a less perspicacious eye than his own.

But so simple and speedy a way was not yet open to science.
The first experiments brought no solution, and the current view
was inconsistent with Faraday's ideas. In affirming that electric
forces could exist independent of corresponding fluids, he contra-
dicted the theory generally received at the time. A fundamental
discussion of either hypothesis promised to be only a barren spec-
ulation. How much, then, should we admire the man who had
the sagacity to co-ordinate these two hypotheses, apparently so
distantly separated, so that they should eventually support one
another, and a theory come out of them to which it should be im-
possible to deny probability ! This man was Clerk Maxwell,
whose Mathematical Theory of Light was published in 1865. We
can not study the theory without feeling that mathematical for-
mulas have a life of their own, and that they appear sometimes
more intelligent than we ourselves, and even than the master who
established them, giving out more than he looked for in them.
Direction was given to Maxwell's researches by the fact that
magnetic forces are produced from electricity in motion, and elec-
tric forces from magnetism in motion, but the effects were not
appreciable except at great velocities. The idea of velocity,
therefore, enters into the relation between electricity and mag-
netism, and the constant determining this relation, which is
always found in it, is a velocity of enormous value. The velocity
of electricity had been determined by delicate researches, and
found equal to that of light. A disciple of Faraday could not
fail to explain this coincidence by supposing that the same ether
carried the electric forces and light. Hence the most important
optical constant already existed in the electrical formulas. Max-
well labored to confirm this connection between the two orders of
phenomena. He extended the electrical formulas so as to make
them express, along with all the known phenomena, an entire
class of hypothetical facts — electrical undulations. He figured
them as transversal waves, the length of which might have any
value, but which propagated themselves through the ether at a
constant velocity, that of light. It was then possible for Maxwell
to demonstrate that there really exist in nature undulations pos-

THE IDENTITY OF LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. 183

sessing those properties, although, we were not in the hahit of
regarding them as electrical phenomena, and gave them the name
of light. If Maxwell's electrical theory was rejected, there was
no more reason for accepting his views concerning light. In like
manner, if it was affirmed that light is a phenomenon of an elas-
tic nature, his theory of electricity became impossible. But when
his theory was studied without prepossession with the ideas that
were current, all the parts could be seen to lend one another a
mutual support, like the stones of a vault, and the whole resem-
bled a gigantic arch thrown across the unknown, and uniting two
known truths.

The difficulty of the theory did not permit it at first to acquire
a large number of partisans. But after its inner sense was dis-
cerned it was followed out to its ultimate consequences, and then
the value of its fundamental hypotheses was tested. Experiments
were at first limited to a few propositions, the accessory parts of
the theory. I have compared Maxwell's system to an arch trav-
ersing an abyss of the unknown. I might add that it was some
time before the abutments could be connected. It was thus put
in a position where it could support itself, but the span was too
wide to permit any new structure to be built upon it. To accom-
plish that object pillars were needed, rising from the ground, to
support the middle of the arch. The demonstration of the possi-
bility of obtaining electrical or magnetic effects directly from
light would constitute one of the pillars and confirm the the-
ory; it would have immediately established the electrical part,
and indirectly the optical part of it. The completion and sym-
metry of the structure demanded the building of both the pillars
to which we compare these principles, but one was enough to
begin with. The construction of the former pillar has not yet
been undertaken ; but after a multitude of researches a solid base
has been found for the second, with sufficiently ample founda-
tions, on which a part of the pillar has been raised. With the
co-operation of many workers it will soon reach the top of the
arch and afford support to the weight of the edifice which is to be
raised upon it.

I have had the privilege of taking part in this portion of the
work. To this fact I owe it that I am now laying my ideas before
you ; and I hope that I may be excused if I try at present to direct
all attention to this part of the edifice. I shall unhappily be
obliged, for want of time, to omit the labors of a large number of
seekers, and shall be unable to show to what extent my experi-
ments had been prepared for by my predecessors, and how near
some of them had come to a definite result.

It does not at first seem so difficult to show whether propaga-
tion of electrical or magnetic forces is or is not instantaneous ; to

i84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

discharge a Ley den jar, and observe whether there is any delay in
the response of an electroscope a little distance off ; or to observe
the needle while a remote electro-magnet is excited. But these
experiments, and others like them, have been tried without any
interval being determined between the cause and the effect. An
upholder of Maxwell's theory understands that such failures are
inevitable, and arise from the enormous rapidity of the transmis-
sion. "We can only perceive the discharge of a Leyden jar, or the
excitation of an electro-magnet, from a moderate distance, say, of
ten metres. But light, and electricity as well, according to the
theory, pass over such a space in a thirty-millionth of a second.
So short an interval of time can be neither perceived nor measured
directly. Furthermore, we have no signals by which to define
that instant. We do not make a big chalk-mark when we want
to tell off a tenth of a millimetre. It would be quite as absurd, in
determining a duration of a thousandth of a second, to depend
on the sound of a large bell to mark the beginning of the moment.

The time required for the discharge of a Leyden jar is, accord-
ing to our common means of observation, infinitely short. That
does not mean that it is not equal to the thirty-millionth of a
second ; and, for the present case, it would be more than a thou-
sand times too long. But Nature furnishes us another resource.
It has been long known that the Leyden discharge is not uniform,
but is composed, like the sound of a bell, of a number of vibra-
tions of partial discharges, which succeed one another at even in-
tervals of time. Electricity is capable, then, of imitating elastic
phenomena. The duration of each vibration is much less than
that of the whole discharge ; we might, therefore, try a vibration
as a standard. Unfortunately, the shortest vibrations that have
been observed are of a millionth of a second. While one of these
vibrations is going on. its effect is propagated to three hundred
metres ; while within the limited space of a laboratory it will ap-
pear simultaneous with the vibration. Known phenomena, then,
gave no aid, and it was necessary to look for another way. The
difficulty was turned by applying the discovery that vibrations
are produced in any conductor as well as by the discharge of the
Leyden jar, and often much more rapidly. When the conduct-
or of an electrical machine is discharged, vibrations are produced,
the duration of which varies from the hundred-millionth to the
millionth of a second. They are, it is true, only isolated vibra-
tions that are extinguished rapidly — a condition unfavorable for
the experiment. But success would be possible even if we could
observe only two or three of the vibrations. In the same way, in
acoustics, we substitute, when we want to, brief signals sounded
on wood for the lengthened sounds of whistles and cords.

We now possess signals in comparison with which the thirty-

THE IDENTITY OF LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. 185

millionth of a second is no longer a short interval. But they
would be of little use if we were not able to compare them at
that distance of about ten metres which we have proposed to our-
selves. The means employed for this purpose are very simple.
We fix a conductor — for instance, a straight metallic wire, having
a slight interruption at one point — at the place where we desire to
perceive the signal. When the electrical field is rapidly varied, a
spark appears in the conductor.

The means of observation could be pointed out only by experi-
ment. Theoretically it was hard to imagine it. The sparks are,
in fact, microscopic, being hardly a hundredth of a millimetre
long, and they continue less than a millionth of a second. It is
extremely hard to conceive them as visible. Yet they can be seen,
in a dark room and by an eye at rest. On so light a thread is
hung the success of our undertaking. We had in the beginning
a number of questions to answer. Under what conditions are the
vibrations strongest ? We must try to secure those conditions.
What form should the conductor have ? The phenomena will
vary as we use straight or bent wires, or conductors of other
forms. The form being determined upon, of what size should our
conductor be ? This is not a matter of indifference, for we shall
see that we can not study all the vibrations with the same con-
ductor. There are relations between the two elements like the
phenomenon of resonance in acoustics. Lastly, in how many dif-
ferent positions can we arrange this conductor ? We shall see
the sparks at times increase in intensity, or become weaker, or
disappear, I can not enter into these details ; they are simply
accessory to the theory as a whole. They are of importance only
to the operator, and are simply properties of his instrument.

What the experimenter will educe from his process will de-
pend on his knowledge of his means of action. The study of the
instrument and the answers to the questions I have just men-
tioned therefore formed the most considerable part of my labor.
This task having been disposed of, the solution of the problem
was before me.

A physicist, given a number of diapasons and resonators, will
find no difficulty in demonstrating that sound is not propagated
instantaneously, even in the restricted space of a room. Having
set the diapason in vibration, he goes with his resonator to differ-
ent parts of the room and observes the intensity of the sound.
He perceives that it becomes weak in some places, and infers
from this that each vibration is annulled by another of later ori-
gin, which has reached the spot by a shorter route. If less time
is taken in traversing the shorter road, propagation is not in-
stantaneous, and the question is answered. But our physicist

will then show us that the points of silence succeed one another
vol. xxxvin. — 13

186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at equal intervals, and will deduce from this the length of the
wave ; and, if he knows the duration of the vibrations of the
diapason, he will obtain, by these data, the velocity of the sound.
We operate in the same way with our electrical vibrations. The
conductor in which the vibrations are made fills the part of the
diapason. The circuit, interrupted at a certain point, takes the
place of the resonator, and may be called the electric resonator.
We remark that sparks fly out at some points in the chamber,
and quiet prevails in others. We notice that the spots inactive,
electrically, follow in a regular order. We deduce from this,
that the propagation is not instantaneous ; and we can even
measure the length of the wave. We are asked whether the
waves are longitudinal or transversal. Let us place our metallic
wire in two different positions in the same place in the room. It
indicates an electrical excitation the first time, but not the sec-
ond. Nothing more is needed to decide the question. The
waves are transversal. If we are asked to give the velocity of
propagation, we have only to multiply the length of wave which
we have just measured by the duration of the vibration, which
we can calculate. We find the velocity like that of light. If the
correctness of this calculation is doubted, we have another re-
source. The velocity of electric waves in metallic wires is enor-
mous, and quite equal to their velocity in the air. Further than
this, it was directly measured a considerable time ago ; for the
problem was easily studied on wires kilometres long. We there-
fore have a purely experimental valuation of this velocity, and,
although the result is only approximate, it does not contradict
the one we have just got.

These experiments are all very simple at the bottom, and yet
they have most important consequences. They overthrow every
theory that assumes that electrical forces traverse space instanta-
neously, and mark the triumph of Maxwell's system. It is no
longer a simple thread of union between two orders of distinct
phenomena. While his theory of light seemed at first to be prob-
able, it is now hard not to regard it as true. But it may be that
in approaching this end we shall be able to dispense with the sup-
port of the theory. Our experiments took place very near that
neutral zone which, according to it, unites the domains of light
and electricity. Only one step remains to be taken to land in
this domain of optics, which is well known to us. It will not be
superfluous. There are many friends of Nature interested in the
problem of light who are capable of comprehending simple ex-
periments, but to whom Maxwell's theory is still unintelligible.
Moreover, the scientific method requires us to avoid roundabout
ways when it is possible to follow a direct one. If, then, we suc-
ceed in producing phenomena like those of light by means of

THE IDENTITY OF LIGHT AND ELECTRICITY. 187

electric waves, all theorizing becomes superfluous ; the identity
of the two orders springs from the experiments themselves. Suc-
cess in this way also is possible. Let us place the conductor that
produces the variation of the electric condition in the focus of a
large concave mirror. The electric waves will join, and will
come forth from the mirror in the form of a rectilinear beam.
We can, it is true, neither see nor touch this beam ; but we know
it is there, because we can see sparks pass from it to the conduct-
ors which it meets ; and it becomes sensible when we arm our-
selves with our electrical resonator. Its properties are all those
of a luminous ray. We can, by turning the mirror, send it into
different directions. Studying the path which it follows, we may
see that it is propagated in a straight line. If we interpose con-
ducting bodies in its way, they will not let it pass ; they cast a
shadow, but do. not destroy the ray ; they reflect it, and we can
follow the reflected beam and satisfy ourselves that it follows the
laws of the reflection of light. We can also refract it as we do
light ; and, as we use a prism to study the refraction of light, so
we do here. But the dimensions of the waves and of the beam
force us to take a very voluminous prism. So we select a cheap
substance — pitch or asphalt. Finally, we can study on our ray
phenomena which we have heretofore observed only in light,
those of polarization. If we place a kind of metallic grate in the
track of the beam, we can observe our electric resonator emitting
sparks or remaining quiescent in obedience to the same geometric
laws as govern the variations in the glow of a ray of light in pass-
ing through a polarizing apparatus.

In making these experiments we have come into the domain
of optics. In describing them we speak no longer of electricity,
but use the language of optics. We do not say that the cur-
rents pass along the conductors, or that the electricities unite.
We see nothing but undulations crossing one another in space,
separating, combining, and re-enforcing or weakening one another.
Having started from the domain of pure electricity, we have
come step by step to purely optical phenomena. The passage is
made for henceforth, and the road has become easy. The identifi-
cation of light and electricity, which science suspected and theory
predicted, has been definitely established, made perceptible to our
senses and intelligible to the mind. From the heights we have
attained, where the two orders of phenomena are blended, we
look into the domains of optics and electricity. They seem more
vast than we had supposed them to be. Optics is no longer lim-
ited to ethereal undulations of a few fractions of a millimetre,
but includes waves the length of which is measured in deci-
metres, metres, and kilometres. But, enlarged as it is, it is still
only an appendage to electricity. That gains yet more ad van-

188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tage. We shall hereafter see electricity in a thousand conditions
in which we did not before suspect it. Every blaze, every lumi-
nous atom becomes an electrical phenomenon. Even if a body
does not cast light, it is a center of electrical action if it radiates
heat. The domain of electricity is therefore extended over all
nature, and even possesses us ; for is not the eye, in fact, an elec-
trical organ ? Such are the results which we obtain in these
questions of detail ; those that concern the philosophy of science
are no less important.

One of our most difficult problems is that of actions at a dis-
tance. Are they real ? Of all those which seemed indisputable
to us, gravitation is the only one that is left. Will it also escape ?
The laws of its action themselves provoke the thought. The
nature of electricity is another of these great Unknowns. It
reverts to the question of the condition of electrical and magnetic
forces in space. Behind this rises the most important problem of
all — that of the nature and properties of the substance that fills
space, of the ether, its structure, its movements, and its limits — if
it has any. We see this question becoming more and more domi-
nant over all the others. The knowledge of the ether seems des-
tined not only to reveal to us the condition of the imponderable
substance, but also the nature of matter itself and its inherent
properties — weight and inertia.

The ancient systems of physics summarized everything as
formed of water and fire. Modern physics will shortly be asking if
all existing things are not modalities of the ether. Here lies the
ultimate end of our knowledge, the culmination of all that we can
hope to learn. Shall we ever reach it ? Soon ? We do not know.
But we have reached a greater height than ever before, and we
have gained a solid point of support which will make our upward
progress and search for new truths easier. The way that is open-
ing before us is not too steep, and the next step does not look in-
accessible. There is a numerous company of seekers full of ardor
and knowledge ; and we wait with confident hope all the attempts
that will be made in that direction. — Translated for The Popular
Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

A new method of disposing of the dead, which he calls "sanitary entombment,"
is proposed by the Rev. Charles R. Treat. It is intended to combine the feature
of deposition in a tomb with desiccation, whereby the preservation is secured of
the body freed from all noxious properties. An arrangement of buildings is con-
templated, like that of the Campo Santo of Pisa, so constructed that anhydrous
air may enter the tomb and pass over the body to absorb all moisture and morbific
matter, which it will convey to a separate structure, where all shall be consumed
in a furnace. Thus the form of the body may be retained, while all of it that is
subject to decay is cremated.

DEFENSES OF BURROWING SPIDERS.

189

T

DEFENSES OF BURROWING SPIDERS.*

By HENRY C. McCOOK, D. D.

1HE simplest form of burrow is that of the Tarantulas, which
represent the largest known spiders. These huge araneads
appear to depend wholly upon their size to resist the assaults of
enemies who invade their den. At least I have not found satis-
factory evidence that they erect any artificial barrier over the
entrance to their tunnels.

A more complicated burrow, and one better serving for defense,
is that of Leptopelma cavicula of northern Africa. The drawing
(Fig. 1) shows a section view of the upper part of the burrow, the
entrance to which is without any door or other defense as in the
case of the tarantulas. .-,.

The burrow descends 10: '

perpendicularly for a
little way, but at the
top a special branch di-
verges laterally, which
curves and again de-
scends perpendicularly
for a considerable dis-
tance. At the summit
of this second and par-
allel perpendicular tube
another branch issues,
inclining upward to-
ward the surface. A
glance at this structure, if we suppose it to be characteristic
of the species, and not an accidental formation, will show that
it makes an admirable protection against heavy rains, which
sink away into the first burrow as a kind of reservoir, enabling
the spider to escape by the diverging branch. Against enemies
who pursue it into its den, this structure also presents an effect-
ual defense, for, while an enemy naturally would rush down-
ward into the first direct passage, the spider may escape by the
lateral branch. Supposing that the enemy, observing the mistake,
ascends and follows along the branches, the spider has the oppor-
tunity to push up into the second branch while the pursuer, again
following its natural instinct, would rush down the second per-
pendicular tube. I am here in the region of conjecture, but per-
haps no better explanation presents itself.

* Reprinted from Vol. II of American Spiders and their Spinning-work, by the kind
permission of the author, to whom we are also indebted for the accompanying illustrations.

Fig. 1. — Burrow of Leptopelma camexda.
of upper part.

Section view

190

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 2.

-LiLT-snAPED Tube of Lepto-
pelma elongata.

A third stage in the development of this defensive industry is
represented at Fig. 2, which shows the external tube of Lepto-
pelma elongata. This is simply a lily-shaped tube of pure white

spinning-work, rising directly above
the burrow, and supported by sur-
rounding foliage. The purpose of
this structure has not been positive-
ly determined. As able a naturalist
as A. R. Wallace has conjectured
that it may be deceptive in its uses,
its resemblance to a flower attract-
ing to it insects, which are thus
preyed upon by the proprietor.
Such elevated objects are certainly
apt to attract insects, who are dis-
posed to alight upon them without
regard to their promise of provid-
ing food. But I am inclined to be-
lieve that Leptopelma's silken lily
serves as a watch-tower from which
she can observe the approach of enemies and make good her
escape in time. Moreover, I believe that it is possible for her to
pull together the sides of the sheeted turret and thus erect a bar-
rier between herself and some of her feebler pursuers.

Another form of defensive industry is presented at Fig. 3, which
is the exterior part of the turret tube of Dolichoscaptus inops (Si-
mon). This is about an inch in height,
and is composed of mingled chippage
and mud, a sort of debris of chopped
straw and soil.

A still further stage is shown at
Fig. 4, which represents a columnar
turret of Dolichoscaptus latastei, sev-
eral inches high. This resembles the
tower of the preceding species, but adds
thereto a hinged covering after the
manner of a trap-door. This turret is
also composed of chippage and debris of various sorts gathered
from the neighborhood, and is supported upon the surrounding
foliage, which in the drawing is a plant of Lavandula dentata.
All the uses to which such an elevated structure can be put are
served by this ingenious structure, and, in addition, the trap-door
is manifestly intended to defend the inmate from the assaults of
enemies.

We come now to the trap-door nests of Nemesia meridionalis,
and other species making traps of the wafer type, as so fully de-

FlG. 3

— Tukret of DolicJioscaptvs
inops. (Natural size.)

DEFENSES OF BURROWING SPIDERS.

191

scribed by Moggridge. Here we have simply a dropping away of
the turret of Dolichoscaptus, and the use of the burrow independ-
ently of the same, but with the
trap-door retained. In the spe-
cies studied by Moggridge a sin-
gle burrow is the ordinary rule ;
but there are many variations,
some of which are manifestly
characteristic of species, and
others which are probably occa-
sional and accidental.

A variation described by Mr.
Simon is shown at Fig. 5, the
nest of Stothis astuta, which in-
habits the forest of Cartuche,
near Caracas, South America.
The drawing shows a section
of the burrow, indicating the
curved course, and also the two
wafer-like trap-doors habitually
placed at either end. That this
jjeculiar industry is defensive is
probable, for we can readily im-
agine the spider disappearing
within its den at one door, and,
if its pursuer should succeed in
entering the same, escaping at
the other. We might, without much stress of imagination, carry
the conception a little further, and suppose, again, the enemy mak-
ing its exit from one door and the spider again descending into

its burrow by the other. This
game of bopeep might evi-
dently be played to the great
advantage of the trap-door
spider, and manifest discon-
certing of its enemy.

Simon gives an interest-
ing example of the ability of
a spider of this species to
change its habit and adapt its
industry to unexpected sur-
roundings. The species com-
monly seeks dark and damp
localities, and digs in vegetable earth a burrow not very deep.
The nest was begun underneath a stone in soil which was so
rocky as to be impenetrable. Not wishing to change its site, and

vlU

Fig. 4. — Turret, with Trap-dook, of Doli-
choscaptus latastei, supported on a plant
— four inches high. (After Simon.)

Fig. 5. — Section View of Curved Burrow of
Stothis astuta, showing Double Trap-doob
Entrance.

i92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not to be cheated out of its proposed domicile, Stothis proceeded
to erect a cylindrical case about two inches long, composed of a
conglomerate gathered from surrounding particles of soil and
vegetable chippage. These were cunningly wrought together,
the whole structure silk-lined, and the characteristic trap-doors
hung, one at either end. Thus, while varying her habit in so far
as to build a surface tunnel instead of a subterranean one, Stothis
preserved her defensive habit of erecting for herself a back door
by which she could retreat in case of invasion at the front door.

The burrow of Stothis cenobita (Simon) is simply a rounded
chamber underneath the surface, and closed by a trap-door, which
differs in no particular, as far as I can observe, from the ordinary
trap-door of the American Cteniza californica.

It is difficult to say what may be the enemies of the trap-door
spider against which such ingenious architecture has been reared
and such vigilant watch is exercised. But the quite general testi-
mony is that these spiders leave their tubes at night and go forth
in search of prey ; or, as in other cases, open the lids of their
tunnels and spread straggling lines near by, upon which passing
insects are entangled and delayed long enough to allow the spiders
to pounce upon them from their open caves. If we credit these
accounts, we might infer that the enemies which the trap-door
spiders most dread are not such as are abroad at night. Evi-
dently the creatures are fearless at that time — a state of mind
which doubtless results from their knowledge that they are com-
paratively free from their worst enemies. The enemies which
they most dread may therefore be reasonably looked for among
diurnal creatures, and not among those of nocturnal habits.
Among these foes, at least one of the most formidable and irre-
sistible is a diurnal insect, the female of the terrible digger wasp,
which I do not doubt will be found to store trap-door spiders, as
well as tarantulas and lycosids. There is no evidence known to
me that Pepsis formosa invades the tunnel of the Mygalidce, in
order to dig them out. Such an act is not, indeed, beyond her
powers ; and, reasoning from the conduct of Elis 4-notata, it is
highly probable. But we are not yet warranted in attributing
the habit to her. Some lizard or mammal that might pull open
the trap with its claws may be looked for as also a probable
enemy against which trap-door spiders erect and defend their
ingenious barrier.

At all events, the spider herself is well aware of these enemies.
Abbe" Sauvages invariably found, when he attempted to open the
door of the nest of "the mason-spider" (Nemesia and Cteniza),
that the mother was on guard, holding down the lid of her tunnel
with great force. In his efforts to pull the trap-door up, the spider
would jerk it down, and there would be an alternate opening and

DEFENSES OF BURROWING SPIDERS.

J93

shutting of the nest until his purpose was accomplished. It is the
habit, according to Moggridge, Simon, and all observers who have
noted the point at all, for these animals to hang back downward
upon the inner surface of the door. In many nests which I have
seen there are holes along the outer or free edge of the door — the
part directly opposite the hinge — which mark the points at which,
probably, the fangs of the spider had been fixed, in order to give
it a strong purchase against intruders.

One of the most curious examples of relation of structure to
enemies, or perhaps of the reaction of hostile environment and
agents upon structure, is found in a territelarian spider (Cyclo-
cosmia truncata). This aranead, according to Hentz, dwells like
others of its kind in cylindrical cavities in the earth. Though

many specimens were found, he nev-
er saw any lid or closure to the
aperture of its dwelling. The very
singular formation of its abdomen,
which is as hard as leather behind,
and is truncated to form a perfect
circle, induced Hentz to believe that
when in danger it closes its dwelling
with that part of its body instead of
with a trap-door or lid. This con-

Fig. 6. — Cyclocosmia truncata.

Fig. 7. — Side View of same.
Hentz.)

(After

■

Fig. 8. — Diagrammatic View of Truncata, clos-
ing her Burrow with her Abdomen.

jecture, of course, needs confirmation, though it seems not improb-
able ; and one may imagine the intellectual confusion of a pursuing
enemy which finds its prey suddenly disappearing within a hole in
the ground, but which, when investigated, presents nothing but a
level surface where certainly a hole ought to have been ! The
dorsal view of the spider is given at Fig. 6, the side view at Fig.
7 ; and a diagrammatic section view of the creature is drawn at
Fig. 8, as it probably would appear when closing up the opening
to its burrow.

i94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ARCHITECTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT.

Br BAKE FEEEEE.

THE natural conditions that are essential for successful build-
ing have never been better set forth than in a letter written
by the consul Pliny to his friend Gallus in the early part of the
first century of our era, in which he describes his newly-finished
villa of Laurentinum.

'You are surprised/' he writes, "that I am so fond of my
Laurentinum, or (if you like the appellation better) my Laurens ;
but you will cease to wonder when I acquaint you with the
beauty of the villa, the advantages of its situation, and the ex-
tensive prospect of the sea-coast. It is but seventeen miles from
Rome ; so that, having finished my affairs in town, I can pass my
evenings here, without breaking in upon the business of the day.
There are two different roads to it : if you go by that of Lauren-
turn, you must turn off at the fourteenth mile-stone ; if by Ostia,
at the eleventh. Both of them are, in some parts, sandy, which
makes it somewhat heavy and tedious, if you travel in a carriage,
but easy and pleasant to those who ride on horseback.

' The landscape on all sides is extremely diversified ; the pros-
pect in some places being confined by woods, in others extending
over large and beautiful meadows, where numberless flocks of
sheep and herds of cattle, which the severity of the winter has
driven from the mountains, fatten in the vernal warmth of this
rich pasturage. My villa is large enough to afford all desirable
accommodations, without being extensive. The porch before it is
plain, but not mean, through which you enter into a portico in the
form of the letter D, which includes a small but agreeable area.

" This affords a very commodious retreat in bad weather, not
only as it is inclosed with windows, but particularly as it is
sheltered by an extraordinary projection of the roof. From the
middle of this portico you pass into an inward court, extremely
pleasant, and thence into a handsome hall, which runs out to-
ward the sea; so that, when there is a southwest wind, it is
gently washed with the waves which spend themselves at the
foot of it.

" On every side of this hall there are either folding-doors or
windows equally large, by which means you have a view from
the front and the two sides, as it were, of three different seas ;
from the back part you see the middle court, the portico, and
the area; and by another view, you look through the portico
into the porch, whence the prospect is terminated by the woods
and mountains which are seen at a distance. On the left hand
of this hall, somewhat farther from the sea, lies a large draw-

ARCHITECTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 195

ing-room ; and beyond that a second of smaller size, which has
one window to the rising and another to the setting sun; this
has likewise a prospect of the sea, out, being at a greater dis-
tance, is less incommoded by it. The angle which the projection
of the hall forms with this drawing-room, retains and increases
the warmth of the sun ; and hither my family retreat in winter
to perform their exercises : it is sheltered from all winds except
those which are generally attended with clouds, so that nothing
can render this place useless, but what, at the same time, destroys
the fair weather.

" Contiguous to this is a room forming the segment of a cir-
cle, the windows of which are so placed as to receive the sun the
whole day; in the walls are contrived a sort of cases, which
contain a collection of those authors whose works can never be
read too often. Thence you pass into a bedchamber through a
passage which, being boarded and suspended, as it were, over a
stove which runs underneath, tempers the heat which it receives
and conveys to all parts of this room. The remainder of this
side of the house is appropriated to the use of my slaves and
freedmen ; but most of the apartments are neat enough to receive
any of my friends.

" In the opposite wing is a room ornamented in very elegant
taste : next to which lies another room, which, though large for a
parlor, makes but a moderate dining-room ; it is exceedingly well
warmed and enlightened, not only by the direct rays of the sun,
but by their reflection from the sea. Beyond is a bedchamber,
together with its anteroom, the height of which renders it cool
in summer; as its being sheltered on all sides from the winds
makes it warm in winter. To this apartment another of the same
sort is joined by one common wall. Thence you enter into the
grand and spacious cooling-room belonging to the bath, from the
opposite walls of which two round basins projegt, sufficiently
large to swim in. Contiguous to this is the perfuming-room, then
the sweating-room, and next to that the furnace which conveys
the heat to the baths ; adjoining, are two other little bathing-
rooms, fitted up in an elegant rather than costly manner ; annexed
to this is a warm bath of extraordinary workmanship, wherein
one may swim and have a prospect, at the same time, of the sea.

" Not far hence stands the tennis court, which lies open to
the warmth of the afternoon sun. Thence you ascend a sort of
turret, containing two entire apartments below ; and there are
the same number above, besides a dining-room which commands
a very extensive prospect of the sea, together with the beautiful
villas that stand interspersed upon the coast. At the other end
is a second turret, in which is a room that receives the rising
and the setting sun. Behind this is a large repository, near to

196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which is a gallery of curiosities, and underneath a spacious
dining-room, where the roaring of the sea, even in a storm, is
heard but faintly; it looks upon the garden and the gestatio
which surrounds the garden. The gestatio is encompassed with a
box-tree hedge, and, where that is decayed, with rosemary; for
the box, in those parts which are sheltered by the buildings,_ pre-
serves its verdure perfectly well ; but where, by an open situation,
it lies exposed to the spray of the sea, though at a great distance,
it entirely withers.

" Between the garden and this gestatio runs a shady plantation
of vines, the alley of which is so soft that you may walk bare-
foot upon it without any injury. The garden is chiefly planted
with fig and mulberry trees, to which this soil is as favorable as
it is averse to all others. In this place is a banqueting-room,
which, though it stands remote from the sea, enjoys a prospect
nothing inferior to that view : two apartments run around the
back part of it, the windows whereof look upon the entrance of
the villa, and into a very pleasant kitchen garden. Hence an in-
closed portico extends, which by its great length you might sup-
pose erected for the use of the public. It has a range of windows
on each side, but on that which looks toward the sea they are
double the number of those next the garden. When the weather
is fair and serene, these are all thrown open ; but if it blows, those
on the side the wind sets are shut, while the others remain un-
closed without any inconvenience.

" Before this portico lies a terrace, perfumed with violets, and
warmed by the reflection of the sun from the portico, which, as it
retains the rays, so it keeps off the northeast wind ; and it is as
warm on this side as it is cool on the opposite ; in the same manner
it proves a defense against the southwest ; and thus, in short, by
means of its several sides, breaks the force of the winds from
whatsoever point they blow. These are some of its winter advan-
tages : they are still more considerable in summer ; for at that
season it throws a shade upon the terrace during all the forenoon,
as it defends the gestatio, and that part of the garden which lies
contiguous to it, from the afternoon sun, and casts a greater or
less shade, as the day either increases or decreases ; but the por-
tico itself is then coolest when the sun is most scorching — that is,
when its rays fall directly upon the roof. To these, its benefits, I
must not forget to add that, by setting open the windows, the
western breezes have a free draught, and by that means the in-
closed air is prevented from stagnating. On the upper end of
the terrace and portico stands a detached building in the garden,
which I call my favorite ; and indeed it is particularly so, having
erected it myself. It contains a very warm winter room, one side
of which looks upon the terrace, the other has a view of the sea,

ARCHITECTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 197

and both lie exposed to the sun. Through the folding-doors you
see the opposite chamber, and from the window is a prospect of
the inclosed portico.

" On that side next the sea, and opposite to the middle wall,
stands a little elegant recess, which, by means of a glass door
and a curtain, is either laid into the adjoining room, or separated
from it. It contains a couch and two chairs. As you lie upon
this couch, from the feet you have a prospect of the sea; if you
look behind, you see the neighboring villas ; and from the head
you have a view of the woods; these three views may be seen
either distinctly from so many different windows in the room, or
blended together in one confused prospect. Adjoining this is
a bedchamber, which neither the voice of the servants, the mur-
muring of the sea, nor even the roaring of a tempest can reach ;
not lightning, nor the day itself, can penetrate it, unless you open
the windows. This profound tranquillity is occasioned by a pas-
sage which separates the wall of this chamber from that of the
garden; and thus, by means of that intervening space, every
noise is precluded. Annexed to this is a small stove-room, which,
by opening a little window, warms the bedchamber to the degree
of heat required. Beyond this lie a chamber and antechamber,
which enjoy the sun, though obliquely indeed, from the time it
rises till the afternoon. When I retire to this garden apartment,
I fancy myself a hundred miles from my own house, and take
particular pleasure in it at the feast of the Saturnalia, when, by
the license of that season of festivity, every other part of my villa
resounds with the mirth of my domestics; thus I neither inter-
rupt their diveisions nor they my studies."

This remarkable letter was written in a civilization different
from ours, when society and culture were developed in another
spirit ; yet the principles it so clearly illustrates are as much in
force to-day as they were then, and the lessons it teaches as im-
portant to us as they were interesting and profitable to the friend
to whom they were addressed. It matters not that the descrip-
tion is of a building erected more than eighteen hundred years
ago, which has long since passed from the face of the earth. The
truths involved in its construction are as real to-day as when the
letter was freshly written, and, great as is its archaeological inter-
est, its chief merit is the admirable way in which it describes the
model dwelling. Pliny was not an architect, but he was a man
of keen observation, a student of nature, and possessed of sound
common sense, which he never exercised to better advantage
than in the erection of this building. His description shows us
that utility is the chief consideration, first, last, and all the time,
that should be observed in constructing a house. Coupled with
this are the conditions imposed by the environment, the taking

198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

advantage of the natural situation, the direction of the wind, the
heat of the sun, the requirements of temperature and climate, all
of which must receive due attention in good and economic build-
ing. Ornamentation, decoration, design, aesthetic effects, and other
elements which are popularly supposed to compose architecture,
are either neglected altogether or put to one side as matters which
may receive attention after essential things have been considered.
The Romans were fond of ornament, they loved to overload their
structures with decorations of all kinds, and the number of
statues employed in some of their public buildings was prodig-
ious ; but Pliny's letter shows that there were at least some among
them who looked at architecture through the lens of common
sense, and it is to them we must go in our search after truth.

Adaptation to its use was the chief element in Pliny's villa, the
basis on which it rested, and the plan on which it was designed.
There was no insistence on the beautiful or the elevation of artis-
tic form to the chief place, but everything was arranged as con-
venience dictated or sense suggested, and all was in consequence
admirably suited to the requirements of the owner. It was in
these things that he found satisfaction, while if any part was
arranged with elegance, so much the better ; but as long as he
was comfortable, as long as his windows opened on refreshing
views, as long as every advantage was taken of the shade in
summer or the heat of the sun in winter, as long as there were
convenient and accessible places of retreat as well as ample
rooms in which to entertain the guests, there was no fault to
be found, and, as the owner was satisfied, who could complain ?

The pleasure that Pliny derived from his villa is in striking
contrast to the dissatisfaction that is expressed with modern
buildings of all kinds— not dwellings alone, but stores and offices,
churches and public buildings; with those erected in an inex-
pensive way, and those on which unlimited sums have been ex-
pended. The fault-finding is not a subdued murmur, but is gen-
eral and outspoken, and, in the absence of any other object, is
aimed at the architect, sometimes with a vigor that should be
sufficient to arrest his attention. And the architects are largely
to blame ; for, as the leaders in the architectural movement, they
naturally have a fuller acquaintance with the subject than a man
who builds but one house in a lifetime, and, if they do not cor-
rect errors in construction, it is difficult to see who else is to be
held responsible. The reasons for this state of things are obvious.
Every man who undertakes to build a house seeks to make it a
model dwelling in which the faults of every other building he
is acquainted with will be corrected, and everything arranged
to suit his ideas of comfort and utility. He begins with well-
defined views, knows exactly what he wants, and lays them before

ARCHITECTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 199

the architect. The latter undertakes to please his client as best
he may and prepares — a design. Possibly the plan is in accord-
ance with the programme laid down, but it is by a picturesque
exterior, a pleasing elevation, a beautiful drawing, that he hopes
to captivate the eye and fancy of his customer. Other archi-
tects have made their reputation by their exteriors, and the most
successful of all has obtained his fame by some great structure
whose facade surpasses in beauty any offered by his competitors.
Like a flock of sheep blindly following the leader, they go on pre-
paring design after design, such as it is supposed the client will
like, until an immense portfolio of pictures will be accumulated
which may be very pleasing to look at, but which are simply
drawings intended to catch the eye. The plan, the arrangement
of the parts of the house, the convenience cf the occupants, and
all similar questions are too frequently left to be filled in after-
ward, and made to fit the exterior instead of the exterior being
made to express them.

Architecture, in fact, has ceased to be an art, and has become
a fashion. We have styles in architecture just as we have styles
in dress, and the changes in public taste are as capricious in the
one as in the other. The rule of fashion is the most arbitrary
and idiotic form of government to which human beings have
ever submitted themselves, and it is not less so in architecture
than in dress. Our buildings are put up now in one style, now
in another, not because one is more suited to the purpose of
the structure, not because it is better adapted to the climate,
not because it more freely expresses our culture and our civili-
zation, but because we want a change — because our streets are
growing monotonous, because we must alter our structures to
conform to the new style, and thereby give evidence of an im-
proved taste and furnish profitable work for the architect and
good jobs for the laboring man. As to what is behind all this —
the structure itself, the part which calls the facade into being, to
which it is really not more than a lid or screen to shut out
inquisitive eyes — it does not matter. An Italian front does not
necessarily imply an Italian house, nor a Moorish fagade suggest
the rich, luxurious, sensual life of the south. Variety is indeed
the spice of life, and it is an admirable idea to give a diversity to
our streets and erect ornamental fagades to our buildings ; but
when we pass over all thought of convenience, of utility, of
adaptation to natural conditions, and judge of buildings solely
because one is better looking than another, we have passed the
dividing line between sense and absurdity.

From the modern point of view it is a misfortune that build-
ings must be used. Were they only intended to be looked at,
could they but be preserved in glass cases in the galleries of some

zoo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gigantic museum, there would be no complaints, no fault-findings,
no grumblings. If houses were not to live in, architects could
pursue their occupations without inconvenience, and design fronts
and windows and turrets and all sorts of knickknacks to their
hearts' content. Unfortunately, this ideal state can never be real-
ized ; and, as people must conform to the designs of architects —
must have turrets where they do not want them, windows where
they are least needed, and all sorts of beautifications because they
are in the latest style — there is constant conflict between builder
and occupant, between architect and client. Nor could anything
else be expected when buildings are judged solely by their aes-
thetic appearance. The history of architecture carries the com-
forting assurance that structures can be both beautiful and use-
ful ; and, in fact, in the best buildings the two elements are so
closely united as to be scarcely distinguished. In our time, how-
ever, attention is paid to only one of them, and it is, therefore,
impossible to obtain satisfactory results.

Writers on architecture make a broad distinction between
construction and architecture, claiming that they are two differ-
ent things, and that, while all architecture is construction, all
construction is not architecture. Never was a difference pro-
ductive of more perverted ideas. A factory is not architectural,
because it is plain, unadorned construction. Put on some orna-
ment, add a fancy roof, a cornice, and a balcony, and it at once
becomes architectural, though none of these things have aught
to do with the uses of the building, but frequently conflict with
them. Such a definition may be maintained in order to have
certain limitations, but it is clearly absurd to say that a building
only properly comes within the province of architecture when
certain adjuncts are added to it which, while they may increase
its aesthetic appearance, detract from its usefulness.

The history of architecture is the story of the attempt of man
to adapt his life to the environment in which he is placed. The
Abipone under his mat, the Assyrian in his thick-walled house
of brick, the Roman in his conveniently arranged villa, the
mediaeval baron in his castle, the French monarch in his richly
appointed palace, are but so many instances of the influence of
climate and geological conditions, nature of the soil, products of
the land, extent of intercourse with other peoples, temperature,
rainfall, manner of living, and many other phenomena which
have caused the evolution of various grades of society, and
which thus express themselves in visible form. In Assyria the
buildings were of clay, because that was the only substance the
land afforded. In Greece they were of stone, because it was
abundant and easily obtained. The mediaeval baron intrenched
himself in a heavily guarded fortress, because the country was

ARCHITECTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 201

in an unsettled condition and was infested with freebooters. A
change passed over society; laws were enforced, police regula-
tions made, society became settled and calm, fortifications dis-
appeared, and in their place arose chateaux and pleasant villas
that were admirably suited to a free and peaceful life. Each
style, in fact, originated in the various operations of natural con-
ditions ; each form had an evolution of its own, that had as defi-
nite and as readily ascertained causes as those which produced
the evolution of any other form of culture. Reason and common
sense, usefulness and intention, were the great factors on which
all architecture rested ; and when these things were neglected —
when an arbitrary decree of fashion or the development of a new
" taste " became the criterion by which all buildings were judged
— architecture fell. This calamity occurred with the introduc-
tion of the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, and its results
are still apparent.

Natural conditions are apt to be forgotten in this busy life of
ours. We have no time to spend in applying the problems of
perspective to architecture as did the ancient Greeks when they
used curved lines instead of straight, in order to correct the dis-
tortion caused by distance. Our crowded cities, where land has
reached fabulous prices per foot, afford no opportunity for taking
advantage of the conveniences of an ample site. But, though we
may not be able to concern ourselves with such matters, there
are a multitude of other details that can be attended to which are
now more or less neglected, and which, were they intelligently
treated, would remove much of the present reproach from our
architecture.

For many hundred years architecture has been occupied with
solving problems presented by Nature. In earlier times life was
comparatively simple, and artificial needs were few and easily
satisfied. Now, however, we have countless mechanical contriv-
ances that have entered closely into our lives, and the problems
of architecture take a different range. Steam and electricity
have revolutionized society. They have brought the furthermost
parts of the earth into intimate connection. Our lives are one
continuous hurry, and the laggard is soon left behind in the rapid
march of progress. In the cities land is scarce and valuable, and
room is only to be had by expanding upward instead of later-
ally. Inventive genius has supplied us with elevators, steam
heat, electric light. Questions of public safety, correct sanita-
tion, guards against fire, protection against burglary, safe means
of rapid ingress and egress, have formed other conditions. The
spread of manufactures, the making of artificial building materi-
als, as iron and glass, have given us new forces. New methods
of business and the constant and rapid introduction of new occu-

TOL. XXXV III. — 14

202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pations have presented fresh, problems with which to deal. The
increase of great corporations, the building of railroads, new
forms of transportation by water, the changes of life in every
state, have caused new difficulties for the architect, all of which
must be correctly solved if we are to make any true progress.

In our houses, stores, office-buildings, hotels, homes, factories,
machine-shops, depots of construction, warehouses, churches,
dwellings, and places of amusement, there is a constant need for
the application of new ideas and the devising of new methods.
The work that is before our architects is immense, and the way
in which they apply themselves to it will largely influence our
future advancement. Yet in the face of all this the battle of the
styles waxes furious; and if one obtains a handsomer building
than his neighbor, he is told not to complain of its inconven-
iences, but to be satisfied that he has got so much. There never
was a time when the need of a practical architecture was more
pressing than now, and there never was a time when it was so
persistently neglected.

And what is a practical architecture ? Is it one in which
beauty is sacrificed to utility, where plainness is to be preferred
to ornament, where art is subordinated to engineering ? Not at
all ; we can have beauty and utility, art and engineering, all in
one building, and still be practical and in line with good architect-
ural work. It is true that many "practical" buildings are ex-
tremely ugly, and many great works of engineering eminently
hideous. It is small wonder at times that there is a revulsion
against the practical and a demand for more of the beautiful ; but
the error here is as great as when beauty is sacrificed to utility.
Use is by no means synonymous with ugliness, and it is quite as
important to combat such a view as to condemn beautiful things
because they are useless. Practical architecture does not imply
any compromise between the two elements, but it does imply a
strict application of common sense to all material -things. There
is no reason why architecture should be denied the treatment
from the point of view of sound sense that is given to every other
department of thought and progress ; it is too closely connected
with the necessities of life to be made the victim of absurdity.

There is scarcely a limit to the number of examples of the neg-
lect of natural conditions that may be gathered from the archi-
tecture that prevails among us. In the search for the beautiful,
the demand for impressive facades, the taste for complicated
ornament, and a most singular appreciation of the odd, the gro-
tesque, and the ugly, there is little attention paid to matters
which seem self-evident and are of really vital importance.
Windows are arranged to suit a symmetrical facade, whether
they are just what are needed for the rooms or not, and, even

ARCHITECTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 203

where it is possible, little attention is given to the direction of
the sunlight in order that the living-rooms may receive the full
benefit of the natural warmth, nor are those rooms where it is
not needed, or minor offices, relegated to the exposed side. The
most important external feature, the door, is seldom adjusted to
the climate. Even in large office-buildings, hotels, and churches,
where there should be ample space for every structural conven-
ience, the door is frequently of cramped dimensions, and, instead
of being preceded by a porch, which would be an integral part
of the architecture, and which is absolutely essential in our long,
cold, damp winters, is boarded up with " storm-doors " that are
not only hideous in design but an actual obstruction. With the
rapid increase in the value of land which has taken place in all
our large cities in late years, a wild fear lest any inch be wasted
has resulted in a compactness of plan that is frequentlypainful.
The housekeeper longs for the roomy closets and ample store-
rooms of the old buildings; the fine hall that once formed an
imposing and appropriate entrance has given place to the narrow
entry through which it is frequently impossible to carry the
larger articles of furniture. The same difficulty is experienced
in the sharp, frequent turns which characterize so many stair-
ways. Bedrooms are pushed into corners where they seldom
have the benefit of pure, free air and the heat of the sun, for no
other reason than that space is required for ample reception-rooms
and state apartments, which, though used comparatively seldom,
are treated as the most important part of the house.

The same indifference to the true ends of building are to bo
noted in public edifices as well as in private ones. Offices are
small and frequently without light. In many churches it is im-
possible either to see the preacher or to hear him, and some of our
public halls are not much better, while, as a crowning touch, the
seats are placed so close together as to render them the very acme
of discomfort to all but dwarfs. Nor are these structural differ-
ences the only ones that call for improvement. There are a mul-
titude of modern contrivances that are yet in an undeveloped
state. Questions of drainage, of heating, of artificial light, of ele-
vators, of protection against fire, of ventilation, and the very
means of supporting life, are not seldom denied us in structures
that astound us by their size and which have cost vast sums. It
is not because these things are expensive that they are neglected,
nor because they are out of the range of our mechanical powers,
but because they are looked upon as adjuncts to the buildings to
be taken up at some later time and are then never given the strict
attention they require. A draughtsman who has prepared a de-
sign that captivates him by its beauty, and seems destined to win
a much-desired prize by its mere art superiority over other draw-

204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ings, is too apt to forget that, after all, lie lias neglected the con-
sideration of utility ; and that on the perfection of the adaptation
of the structure to human needs must depend its real value, its
true measure of success.

The Great Pyramid of Egypt, which is among the most ancient
monuments in the world, has survived for thousands of years "be-
cause each stone had a definite place, in which it was set with the
greatest care. It owes its size and its endurance to a strict at-
tention, on the part of its builders, to small things, and the exer-
cise of an almost limitless patience. It teaches a profound truth,
that in architecture no single thing is too unimportant to be
treated in the best way ; and, though we need not seek to erect
buildings whose permanency will be of the type of the Pyramid
of Cheops, we can at least apply to our structures the same care
for the minor parts, believing that, as the members are, so will
the whole be.

Architecture must express the life of any people in order to be
successful. It is this which makes former styles so admirable,
and it is this element that is so sadly wanting in our own. We
must not make our lives conform to our buildings, but our build-
ings must conform to our lives. They must express not only our
culture and our tastes, but the land in which we live and the en-
vironment in which we are placed. This can never be accom-
plished by erecting buildings for their exterior only, and until our
architects learn to treat the plan and disposition of the building
as the chief part of the structure we can never hope to be rid of
the discomfort that makes so much of our daily life unbearable.
The Gothic builders achieved success, not because their buildings
were beautiful only, but because they filled every natural require-
ment. It is impossible to delude ourselves with the thought that
we are equally successful simply because we happen to live in a
house with a Gothic front, but which subjects us to hourly an-
noyances by the total absence of the conveniences and necessaries
of modern daily life.

Botany, said Prof. Marshall Ward, in the British Association, ought to he
taught in schools because of the interest which the subject arouses in tbe mind of
a child and the ease with which it can be taught. The study cultivates and stimu-
lates those powers of accurate observation and comparison and conscientious
recording of results so much needed by all, and which come naturally to children
who are not too much under the bane of a mere instruction system. The value of
such teaching is not to be measured by the number and kind of facts remembered,
any more than historical knowledge consists of being able to remember the dates
of battles and other events. The elements of botany afford to the teacher the
cheapest, the cleanest, and the most convenient means of cultivating in young
children the power of observation and comparison direct with nature, and after-
ward teaching them to generalize.

WHAT IS INDIVIDUALISM ? 205

WHAT IS INDIVIDUALISM?

Br M. IIANDFIELD-JONES, M. D.*

SCIENTIFICALLY considered, individualism is the higher
evolution of the atom or unit ; viewed from a social stand-
point, it is a process of intellectual development by which a
man is marked out from his fellows. Individualism implies con-
centration of thought, tenacity of purpose, and a strong sense of
self-reliance. It is the religion of the strong man, the master
principle of his whole existence. Of this an old writer says : " As
every machine has its mainspring, every animal body its heart,
and the whole natural universe its sun, so, amid all the multi-
plied and intricate movements of our individual and social life,
there must be one master principle — one all-regulating, all-im-
pelling spring of action. If this be wrong, then, however fair
and promising to ignorant observers, all is wrong. Human life
should resemble a well-constructed drama. There may be variety,
there may be episodes, but unity of action is indispensable, and
all that is not in keeping, so as to swell the interest of the grand
catastrophe, should be struck out as incompatible with all sound
and wholesome criticism." If we seek a perfect exponent of this
grand principle, we find it in the person of the Christus — that di-
vine and human figure which men in all ages and in every
clime have loved to contemplate. In him every power and every
thought were developed and concentrated on one aim ; he clung
to the set purpose of his life with a tenacity which has never
been rivaled ; strong and reliant, he held the truth of his own
teachings in the teeth of an opposing world.

The great enemy to individualism is laziness, and those who
know anything of human frailties will, I am sure, bear me out
when I say that "mental" laziness is far more common and far
more difficult to overcome than that of the body. It is so much
easier to accept dogmatic teaching, and to shift the responsibility
of our views on to others, rather than to concentrate our thoughts
and work out the lessons of our own observations; it is much
more pleasant to butterfly from theory to theory than to seek
truth with patient tenacity : why trouble ourselves to learn self-
reliance, when natural indolence protests against the sacrifice ?
It is easier to imitate than to originate ; plagiarism and mimicry
are such prominent features in our lives, that their presence
might almost be quoted as an argument in favor of our evolution
in past ages from simian ancestry. How plausible are the ex-

* From an address On Individualism in its Relation to Medicine, delivered at St.
Mary's Ilospital Medical School, London, October 1, 1S90.

206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cuses we make for our want of this individualism ! We are so
dreadfully afraid of being thought bumptious, we are so delight-
fully humble, we really do not wish to intrude our opinion, and
yet all the brightest lights of our profession have been men of
strong individualism. Harvey thought for himself, planned by
patient investigation his theory of the circulation of the blood,
and then, in the face of an opposition which cost him for a time
his position, his reputation, and even his practice, dared to assert
and stand by those views which we hold now as the fundamental
principles of our art. Sir Joseph Lister stood very much alone,
when, after deep research and careful experiment, he first promul-
gated his theory of antiseptic operating and paved the way for
fresh and undreamed-of triumphs in the domains of abdominal and
cerebral surgery. Ovariotomy had such a fearful death-rate at
one time that its performance was held to be almost criminal ; yet
Sir Spencer Wells came forward, almost unsupported, and taught
us that the operation was not only justifiable, but capable of being
made the most successful of all the triumphs of surgical skill.

Names such as those I have just referred to may perhaps sug-
gest the thought that individualism is another name for genius.
The descriptions of genius have been many ; thus Dr. Maudsley
says, in his work on the Physiology of the Mind : " He who has
what is called genius is in harmony with and assimilates the best
thought of his own epoch and of preceding epochs, and carries it
forward to a higher evolution. An age which lacks that impulse
of evolution which the genius embodies is apt to harden in ob-
structive formula." For myself, however, I will define genius as
the highest product of individualism, and I will add that, while
few human beings reach genius, no human unit is without his
share of individualism. Moreover, the more I study the life of a
so-called genius such as Hunter or Newton, Faraday or Darwin,
the more I am struck with the enormous amount of work which
they contrived to compress into one short life. Longfellow
probably had the same thought in his mind when he wrote :

The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,

"Were toiling upward in the night.

I have stated that no human unit is without his share of the
quality which we are considering ; it needs only that he should be
true to himself, and develop it. I have supported my argument
by examples drawn from the highly educated classes, but I can
with equal truth quote men engaged in what are termed the
humbler walks of life. It is well known that for many of the
great improvements in modern machinery we are indebted to
working mechanics, men who, with no advantage save the educa-

WHAT IS INDIVIDUALISM? 207

tion of experience, have worked out their individual conceptions
and revolutionized the course of an industry. I may be allowed
to quote one interesting example. In the days of the old Enfield
rifle, a large manufacturing firm in Birmingham used to make
the barrels of these rifles for the Government. The process was
in the main a simple one, the only difficulty being in securing that
the barrel should be absolutely straight and true. To secure this
latter point often occupied some time, but it was known that one
particular workman had some secret of his own, by which he was
enabled to glance down the barrel and say at once whether it was
perfectly true or not. The man was often pressed to reveal his secret,
but always declined. At last, one day for a drink and some two hun-
dred pounds he sold the mystery. It seems he had noticed the
simple fact that, when the tube was absolutely straight, no shadow
was formed on looking down it toward the light, but if the slightest
deflection existed a shadow was thrown on one or other wall of
the barrel. Our argument, then, so far as we have followed it
out, has brought us to three principal conclusions . firstly, that
every man, whatever his station in life, is endowed with a personal
equation of thought ; secondly, that he can either simply store the
raw material of facts and ideas as they are presented to him by
others, or he can digest them and reproduce them stamped with the
seal of his own individuality ; thirdly, that it rests with ourselves
either to be mere echoes of knowledge, or else "living voices" re-
cording our own gleanings of truth for the help of coming gen-
erations.

Let us now apply these thoughts to the special region of medi-
cal education. In his Moral Philosophy, Prof. Stewart puts down
reverence for great names as one of the principal hindrances to
the spread of real knowledge ; I wish he had written " to the ac-
quirement of real knowledge," for I am firmly persuaded that no
student has reached the first stage of progress until he has sub-
ordinated reverence for great names to a profound respect for his
own individual opinion. Pray do not misunderstand me : I am
not advocating disrespect for our teachers, but I would rather a
student formed an erroneous diagnosis and stuck to it, provided
always he could give me his reasons for having formed such a judg-
ment, than that he should accept my dictum as a teacher without
challenging me for the grounds on which I ventured to differ
from him. A man has made a tremendous stride when he has
learned to have the courage of his own convictions.

The directors of tlie Montsouris Observatory, Paris, have found that the
electrical disturbances produced by the passage of railway trains are a factor
that has to be taken account of in the record of their observations. Two railroads
pass close to the observatory, the trains of each of which produce peculiar and
somewhat different effects.

2o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE "POROROCA," OR BORE, OF THE AMAZON.

By JOHN C. BEANNEE,

STATE GEOLOGIST OF AEKAUSAS.

I ONCE had an opportunity, while traveling upon the Amazon,
to observe some of the effects of a remarkable phenomenon
which occurs at the northern mouth of that river in connection
with the spring tides. It is known to the Indians and Brazilians
as the pororoca* and is, I believe, generally supposed to be
caused in the same manner as the " bore " of the Hoogly branch
of the Ganges, of the Brahmapootra, and of the Indus, f I regret
very much that, like Condamine, who passed through this region
in 1740, I could not observe this phenomenon in actual operation;
but the gentleman whose guest I was at the time, and upon whose
boat I was a passenger, was fairly horrified at my suggesting
such a thing, while his boatmen united in a fervent " God forbid
that we should ever see the pororoca ! " and ever afterward
doubted my sanity. I give some of the results of my observa-
tions, however, as collateral evidence, and in order that those who
in the future visit this particular part of the Amazon Valley, con-
cerning which so little is known, may be able to see and establish
as far as possible the rate of destruction and building up here
being carried on.

I was upon a trip from Macapa — a small town on the northern
bank of the Amazon, and about one hundred miles from its
mouth — down the river to the ocean, and thence up the Rio Ara-
guary as far as the last might be navigable. The one inhabited
place on the Araguary is a very small military colony, called the
Colonia Militar Pedro Segundo. At Macapa I became acquainted
with the then director of this colony, Lieutenant Pedro Alexan-
drino Tavares, and was invited by him to visit the Araguary.

The trip from Macapa was by a small sail-boat down the Ama-
zon to the ocean, and thence up the Araguary. Our departure
was so timed that we should reach that part of the region dis-
turbed by the pororoca exactly at the time of the month when
there would be the least probability of its being met with — that
is, at the time of the neap tides. The voyage down the river was
in the face of the wind, and it was only five days after leaving

* Pronounced paw-raw-raw' ea. This word, which is of Tupv or native Brazilian origin,
is the one invariably used by the Brazilians. Father Jcao Tavares says it is probably a
frequentative form derived from the Tupy word opoe, which means "to break with a noise.''

f Similar phenomena, though on a much smaller scale, occur on the Garonne in France,
on the Wye, Severn, and Trent in England, and on the following streams in Brazil : Eio
Guama, Capim, and Mojii in the province of Para, en the Eio Purus in the province of the
Amazonas, and on the Mearirn in the province of Maranhao.

THE "POROROCA," OR BORE, OF THE AMAZON. 209

Macapa that we put into a channel on the island of Porquinhos
to wait for the turning of the tide. I had already seen islands
said to have been half washed away, and others built up, by the
pororoca ; and I had seen upon the shores the evidences of its de-
structive power in carrying away forests and cutting away banks ;
but it was on this island that I was first able to see some of its
effects near at hand and at my leisure. After having seen so
much, I was only the more anxious to see the pororoca itself ; but
my suggestions in regard to it were answered by an ominous silence
on the part of the director, and my requests by additional expres-
sions of horror.

As I shortly afterward met and conversed with a man who
had seen the pororoca, I can not do better than give his descrip-
tion of it. This man was a soldier in the Brazilian army, and, on
the occasion referred to, was going with a few other soldiers from
the colony to Macapa in a small open boat. Arriving at the
mouth of the Araguary, they went down with the tide, and an-
chored just inside the bar which crosses the mouth of this stream,
to await the turning of the tide, which would enable them to pass
the shallows, and then carry them up the Amazon. Shortly after
the tide had stopped running out, they saw something coming
toward them from the ocean in a long white line, which grew
bigger and whiter as it approached. Then there was a sound
like the rumbling of distant thunder, which grew louder and
louder as the white line came nearer, until it seemed as if the
whole ocean had risen up and was coming, charging and thun-
dering down upon them, boiling over the edge of this pile of water
like an endless cataract, from four to seven metres high, that
spread out across the whole eastern horizon. This was the poro-
roca! "When they saw it coming, the crew became utterly de-
moralized, and fell to weeping and praying in the bottom of the
boat, expecting -that it would certainly be dashed to pieces, and
they themselves drowned. The pilot, however, had the presence
of mind to heave anchor before the wall of waters struck them ;
and, when it did strike, they were first pitched violently forward,
and then lifted, and left rolling and tossing like a cork on the
foaming sea it left behind, the boat nearly filled with water. But
their trouble was not yet ended ; for, before they had emptied the
boat, two other such seas came down on them at short intervals,
tossing them in the same manner, and finally leaving them within
a stone's-throw of the river-bank, where another such wave would
have dashed them upon the shore. They had been anchored, be-
fore the waves struck them, near the middle of the stream, which
at this place is several miles wide.

But no description of this disturbance of the water can im-
press one so vividly as the signs of devastation seen upon the

VOL. XXXVIII. — 15

2io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

land. The silent story of the uprooted trees that lie matted and
tangled and twisted together upon the shore, sometimes half
buried in the sand, as if they were nothing more than so many
strings or bits of paper, is deeply impressive. Forests so dense
that I do not know how to convey an adequate idea of their den-
sity and gloom, are uprooted, torn, and swept away like chaff ;
and, after the full force of the waves is broken, they sweep on in-
land, leaving the debris with which they were loaded heaped and
strewn through the forests, or lodged in the very tree-tops. The
most powerful roots of the largest trees can not withstand the
pororoca, for the ground itself is torn up to great depths in many
places, and carried away by the flood to make bars, add to old
islands, or build up new ones. Before seeing these evidences of
its devastation, I had heard what I considered very extravagant
stories of the destructive power of the pororoca ; but, after seeing
them, doubt was no longer possible. The lower or northern ends
of the islands of Bailique and Porquinhos seemed to feel the force
of the waves at the time of my visit more than any of the other
islands on the southeast side of the river, while on the northern
side the forest was wrecked and the banks washed out far above
Ilha Nova.

The explanation of this phenomenon, as given by Condamine,
appears to be the correct one — that is, that it is due to the incom-
ing tide meeting resistance in the form of immense sand-bars in
some places and narrow channels in others. So long as the tide
advances through a deep ocean, it moves freely and swiftly ; but
when it passes suddenly from the deep waters of the open ocean
to the near-shore shallows, it stumbles upon them, as it were, and
the waters are heaped up.*

Most persons who mention the pororoca say that it breaks as
far up the Amazon as Macapa' ; and, indeed, the people of Macapa
themselves often refer to the rapid cutting away of the river-
banks near their city as the work of the pororoca. It is true that
these banks are being rapidly cut down ; and it is even a common
thing to see, in this part of the country, the stilted houses — the
floors being nearly two metres from the ground — that were origi-
nally built one, two, or three hundred feet from the water, grad-
ually encroached upon until they fall into the stream. A portion
of the old fort at Macapa was, at the time of my visit, about to
fall, on account of the land upon which it was built being washed

* Prof. Hartt attributes the porordca of the Rio Mearim in Maranhao to the form of
the channel. It can not be questioned that the form of the channel may modify, and does
modify, the force with which the surf strikes the shore ; but the single fact of its great
violence along the shores between the Araguary and Cape North, where the whole coast is
exposed to the open sea save for the protection offered by shallows, is sufficient to show
that form of channel is not its sole cause.

THE "POROROCA," OR BORE, OF THE AMAZON. 211

away ; but all this is the work of a rapid current, for the surf of
the pororoca does not reach Macapd,. Moreover, there is a marked
difference in character between the washing done by the pororoca
and that done by the ordinary river or tide current. The latter
works from below, and, by undermining and softening the bank,
causes what is known through the Amazon Valley as terras calii-
das, or fallen banks. The land falls into the stream in sections of
various widths, and not infrequently these form temporary ter-
races miles in length. These terras caliidas are most common
and most extensive on the upper Amazon during high water ; but
they may be seen on a small scale at various places through the
valley.* From this it is clear that the work of destruction goes
on entirely below the surface. With the pororoca, on the con-
trary, the water is dashed fairly against the banks, the earth
is washed away from above as well as from below, and the shore
is left clear of loose debris. The depth to which the banks are
cut shows that this disturbance is also a profound one ; so much
so, indeed, that on the northwest side of Porquinhos the deepest
place in the channel of the river was, in 1881, close to this island,
where the action of the pororoca was most violent.

Throughout this region of the Araguary the pororoca is largely
instrumental in the rapid and marked changes that are constantly
going on. The water of the Amazon is notoriously muddy, and,
as would naturally be expected, these disturbances in compara-
tively shallow places make it much more so, and fill it with all
the sediment it can possibly carry. Even when I entered the
Araguary, a time when there was the least possible tidal disturb-
ance, the water near the mouth of this stream was so muddy
that a thick sediment would settle in the bottom of a vessel of it
left standing a single minute ; though the water of the Araguary
proper, as far down as the Veados, is of a clear, dark color. But
the work of tearing down and that of building up is equally rapid,
and the vegetable world takes quick possession of what the sea
offers it ; and, while some islands are being torn away, others are
being built up, old channels being filled, islands joined to the
mainland, and promontories built out. To the northwest of Faus-
tinho is an island known as the Ilha Nova (New Island), about ten
miles long by about three wide, when I saw it, and which, I was
assured by several trustworthy persons, did not exist six years
before. In 1881 it was covered by a dense forest. The young
plants were sprouting at the water's edge, those behind were a
little taller, and so on ; so that the vegetation sloped upward and
backward to a forest from twenty to thirty metres high in the

* For a good description of the terras cahidas, see The Naturalist on the Amazon, by
Bates, fifth edition, p. 249.

212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

middle of the island.* On the southern side of the month of the
Araguary was a point of land nearly or quite six miles in length,
and covered with vegetation, from young shoots to bushes six
metres high. I was told that one year before this was nothing
more than a sand-bar, without a sign of vegetation on it. The
western end of the island of Porquinhos was once known as Ilha
Franco ; but the channel that separated it from the Porquinhos
has been filled up gradually, and the two islands are now one,
though the upper end of it is still known as Franco. The point
in the mouth of the Araguary known as the Ilha dos Veados
(Deer Island) was, at the time of my visit, fast being joined to
the mainland. A couple of years before, boats navigating the
Araguary passed through the channel on the south side of the
island. In 1881 it was no longer navigable, and the Veados was
rapidly being made part of the right bank of the river.

Owing to this shifting of material the pilots never know where
to find the entrance to the Araguary River. One week the chan-
nel may be two fathoms deep on the north side, and the next it
may be in the middle ; or it may have disappeared altogether,
leaving the river-bed perfectly flat, with only one fathom of water
across the whole mouth. The bar was in this last-mentioned con-
dition when I passed over it in 1881. At this time another bar
extended eastward from the eastern end of Bailique, while a little
farther out was another just south of the same line. The shifting
nature of the sand-bars about the mouth of the Araguary renders
it unsafe for vessels drawing more than one fathom to enter this
river, except at high tides ; but, as high tides and the pororoca come
at the same time, only light-draught steamers can enter by waiting
well outside the bar until the force of the pororoca is spent, f

"With the few canoes or small sailing vessels that enter this
stream (probably less than half a dozen a year) it is the cus-
tom to come down past Bailique with the outgoing tide, and to
anchor north of the bar that projects from the southern side of
the Araguary, and there to await the turn of the tide to ascend
the latter river. Care is always taken to pass this j)oint when
the tides are least perceptible.

* The plants growing upon this newly formed land are all of one kind. They are called
Ciriuba, or Xiriuba, by the inhabitants, and belong to the family Verbcnacece, genus Avi-
cennia.

f Probably the only steamers that have entered the Araguary have been Brazilian men-
of-war of light draught. But in 1881 there was nothing to take a steamer, however small,
into this region ; for, although the forests below the falls contain an abundance of rubber
trees, and although cacao trees form extensive forests, there was at that time next to no
population on the stream, while the malaria and the mosquitoes made it almost impossible
to live there — indeed, this region is noted for being the most unhealthful on the lower
Amazon. Some rubber is gathered above the falls, but it is carried overland from Porto
Grande to the Rio Matapf and thence by canoes to Macapa.

THE "POBOBOCA," OB BO BE, OF THE AMAZON. 213

Although the pororoca breaks as far up the Araguary as mid-
way between the Veados and the entrance to the Apureminho, its
violence seems to be checked by the narrowing of the stream be-
low the Veados, by the turns in the river, and by the vegetation
along the banks.

This vegetation is of a kind against which it seems to be least
effective — namely, bamboos. They grow next the stream from
near the mouth to the foot of the falls above the colony, and for
much of the distance form a fringe to the heavy, majestic forest
behind them, than which nothing could be more strikingly -beau-
tiful. The clusters next the stream droop over till their graceful
plumes touch the surface of the water, and, as the plants grow
older, they droop lower, until the stream is filled with a yielding
mesh of canes. I measured a number of these bamboos, and the
longer ones, taken at random, were from twenty to twenty-five
metres in length and from seven to ten centimetres in diameter.
A more effectual protection against the pororoca could hardly be
devised.

On Bailique and Brigue I found the forests very different from
any I had hitherto seen in the tropics. These islands, like all the
others in this part of the country, are flooded at high tide during
part of the year, and, as a consequence, they are very like great
banks of mud covered with the rankest kind of vegetation. This
vegetation varies with the locality. All around the borders the
island of Brigue is fringed with tall assai palms, bamboos, and
various kinds of tall trees, all of which are hung with a dense
drapery of sipos (lianes) and vines, which form an almost im-
penetrable covering. Inside of these are several palms, the most
common being the ubussu (Manicaria saccifera). The next in
order are the rnurumuru (Astrocaryum murumuru), urucur^
(Attelea excelsa, the nut of which is used for smoking rubber),
and ubim ( Geonoma). But, unlike most tropical forests, this one
has very little or no undergrowth, except upon the borders. Most
of the ground was under from one to six inches of water, while
the exposed places were covered with fine sediment deposited by
the standing muddy waters of the Amazon. I walked several
miles through this forest without finding any palms except the
ones mentioned. The little ground above water was covered with
the tracks of deer, pacas, cutias, and of many kinds of birds,
mostly waders; but the death-like stillness was unbroken, save
for the little crabs that climbed vacantly about the fallen palm
leaves or fished idly in the mud for a living.

This half -land and half -water condition of the country is com-
mon not only in the immediate vicinity of the mouth of the river,
but through a very large part of the valley of the Amazon, and is
one of the most impressive features of this wonderful region.

2H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But, instead of adding to what has already been written upon
this subject, I will quote a few words from two writers, whose
descriptions are entirely trustworthy : " All that we hear or read
of the extent of the Amazons and its tributaries fails to give an
idea of its immensity as a whole. One must float for months
upon its surface in order to understand how fully water has the
mastery over land along its borders. Its watery labyrinth is
rather a fresh- water ocean, cut up and divided by land, than a
network of rivers. Indeed, this whole valley is an aquatic, not a
terrestrial basin." *

" This belt . . . can not be called either land or sea, island or
archipelago. It is a veritable labyrinth of streams, canals, gulfs,
islands, and lakes, combined in such a fashion as to impress one
as to the caprice of man rather than as the work of Nature." f

This vast expanse of muddy water, bearing out into the ocean
immense quantities of sediment ; the pororoca, breaking so vio-
lently on the shores, and carrying away the coarser material to
the open sea, and burying uprooted forests beneath newly formed
land ; the rank vegetation of islands and varzea rapidly growing
and as rapidly decaying in this most humid of climates; the
whole country submerged for a considerable part of the year by
the floods of the Amazon — impress one with the probability of
such phenomena having been in past ages, and still being, geologi-
cal agents worthy of study and consideration. Across the mouth
of the Amazon, a distance of two hundred miles, and for four
hundred miles out at sea, and swept northward by ocean-currents,
beds of sandstone and shale are being rapidly deposited from
material some of which is transported all the way from the
Andes, while in many places dense tropical forests are being
slowly buried beneath the fine sediment thrown down by the
muddy waters of the great river.

So many random and erroneous statements concerning the
pororoca have been made by writers upon Brazil that I take this
occasion to refer to and correct some of the most glaring of them.

Prof. William H. Edwards, who visited the Amazon region in
1846, has made way with it altogether, and says that " no one
knows of such terrible phenomena nowadays," although he " in-
quired of several persons accustomed to piloting in the main
channel, and of others long resident in the city of Para\" But,
with the exception of a very few who have business relations in
that direction, the people of the city of Par&, as a rule, know as
little of the northern mouth of the Amazon as they do of the

* A Journey in Brazil, by Prof, and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, p. 256.

f Mnjor Joao Martins da Silva Coutmho, in the Bulletin de la Societe de Geographic,
October, 1867, p. 330.

THE "P0B0B6CA," OB BORE, OF THE AMAZON. 215

mouth, of the Nile. And no wonder; for the Araguary region
can not be considered an attractive one in any respect, while the
relations of the Paraenses with the ontside world are all through
the Pard, River, which is the main channel, and the only one
used nowadays by vessels visiting the Amazon, whether stopping
at Para or going farther up the valley.

M. A. de Belmar tells how ships coming up the Amazon to
Pard, avoid the pororoca. Prof. Orton says it rises suddenly along
the whole width of the Amazon ; while a writer in the Bulletin de
la Socie'te' de Geographie (November, 1871) says it is washing
away the shore at the Salinas lighthouse, southeast of the mouth
of the Para River. In reply to all this I have only to repeat that
the pororoca proper is confined to the northern mouth of the
Amazon, in the vicinity of the Rio Araguary.

It is well known that the tide is felt as far up the Amazon as
Obidos. Mr. Belmar has erroneously attributed this to the poro-
roca. One authority, in describing this phenomenon, represents
the waves as breaking upon the rocks. I can say, from personal
observation, that there is not a rock to be seen from a short dis-
tance below Macapa to near the colony on Araguary. I can not
speak positively of what may be found in the vicinity of Cape
North, but I very much doubt there being many rocks exposed
there, if any at all.

All that has been written upon this subject by persons having
visited the theatre of its action in Brazil is limited to the notes of
Condamine on the great pororoca of the Amazon and Araguary,*
to those of Bernardino de Souza,f and Dr. Alfred R. "Wallace X on
the small one of the Rio Guama. Dr. Marques also gives some-
thing regarding its occurrence on the- Rio Mearim, in the prov-
ince of Maranhao.*

So far as I am able to ascertain, the pororoca itself in its great-
est development has never been seen by a white man.

Mr. "Woodford, the traveler, says that, although the natives of the Solomon
Islands have matches, they still make fire hy friction on certain ceremonial occa-
sions. Their method is to rub a hard piece of wood in a groove formed on a soft
piece ; but, though the savages would usually produce fire in less than a minute,
the traveler himself "rubbed till his elbows and shoulders ached without ever
producing more than smoke."

* Voyage fait dans l'interieur de l'Amerique, par AT. de la Condamine. Paris, 1745,
pp. 193-195.

f Lembrancas e Curiosidades do Valle do Amazonas, pelo Conego Francisco Bernardino
de Souza. Para, 1873, pp. 126, 127.

\ The Amazon and Rio Negro, by Alfred R. Wallace, pp. 114 et seq., where it is spoken
of as a " 'piroroca."

# Diccionario da Provincia do Maranhao, por Cezar Augusto Marques. Maranhao, 1870,
pp. 385, 386.

216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE EXPERIENCES OF A DIVER.

By Prof. HEKMANN FOL.*

THE Romans of the easy class dreamed of junketing in a villa
with an outlook on cultivated fields. A hundred years ago the
Alps were never spoken of without laying stress upon their ter-
rors. Such facts show how different are the tastes and the ideals
of this generation from those of our ancestors. In the present age
of tiresome security, we have become amateurs of danger. One
man scales the highest mountain-peaks without any other purpose
than to taste for a few hours the rough pleasure of the struggle
for existence. Another prefers risks that will contribute to the
increase of man's scientific capital, and will leave something more
than a simple personal recollection. I invite the exuberant forces
of living youth to the exploration of the sea, than which a vaster
field and one more capable of satisfying daring and curiosity of
every kind can not be found. It is an exploration which, with all
deference to cabinet naturalists, presents at once a great attrac-
tion and a high scientific importance.

I know persons whose ideal consists in getting preserved speci-
mens, no matter how many, provided they are new. We call new
a species that has not yet been dressed up with a Latin name, and
which we have consequently a right to baptize with a word in a
dead language, followed by the name of the baptizer. The harm
of the matter is in the latter element, for, without that addition,
the number of Latin names would be reduced by a half, and there
would be no occasion to protest against authors who create a ge-
nus for each new species. Some find their pleasure in classifying
and naming species. Others profess to despise that occupation.
They prefer to dissect animals and describe their anatomy, with-
out concerning themselves respecting the use to which the organs
are fitted. Still others love to describe the development of beings,
without knowing anything of the purpose of the successive or-
ganizations of larvae and young ; and they meet in the work
anomalies that puzzle their brains. We understand the swallow,
because we see its actions. But if there were naturalists living
on the bottom of the ocean who had never been in the air, and
who knew these graceful birds only through specimens preserved
in alcohol, what brilliant zoological, anatomical, and embryogeni-
cal dissertations would they not make on the subject ! I know
many among naturalists occupying themselves with marine zool-
ogy who do not dive or swim, and whose science is of no more
value than the swallow-science of our supposed submarine natu-

* Address before the Nautical Club of Nice.

THE EXPERIENCES OF A DIVER. 217

ralists would be. "We recognize their excuse. It is, that means of
observing marine animals in life, aquariums, and especially the
diving-dress, are not within everybody's reach. They cost con-
siderable sums. The student needs a diving- jacket, a boat of con-
siderable tonnage, and a crew of competent men, all to himself
and under his orders ; for freedom is a great element of success in
all scientific investigation.

The diving-jacket is a more ingenious and more useful inven-
tion than many that make more noise. It is dangerous or safe
according to the way it is used. It has come into extensive
use. Every seaport, every war-vessel, and every large steamer
has a diving dress and apparatus. Even sponge-fishers have re-
course to it. Science, however, could derive no profit from the
reports of professional divers ; their veracity is below everything
that could be imagined, and then they look without seeing.
Although inhabited by millions of negroes, Africa remained un-
known till educated white men succeeded in crossing it ; the bot-
tom of the sea will never be known till good observers have gone
down there.

Students should descend themselves ; but, unfortunately for
science, persons are rare who have gone to see in place the ani-
mals concerning which they have written large books. They
might have been spared many errors. Some have not the means ;
others are afraid ; and still others have once gone down two or
three metres, and then hurried to fill the press with the creations
of their imagination ; for the first plunge which one makes is of
no value for the observation of things that are outside of himself.
He sees thirty-six colors, and that is all.

This first plunge leaves no agreeable memories. They dress
you as if you had to endure the cold of Siberia, a precaution
which I have found useless in the Mediterranean. With knit
woolen hose, cap, and shirt, I have never felt the cold. Then
comes the ample coat, which we get into through the neck-hole,
and the casque, which resounds as if one had his head in a kettle.
Then they put on you a belt with a dagger, shoes with leaded
soles, and lead at your breast and back. Now you are so loaded
that you could hardly stand straight if the boat should tip — then
you go down into the water where all the weight is no longer felt.

Now a different feeling begins. At the command, " Pump ! "
some one rapidly screws down the glass in front of your casque, and
you hear a noise to which you have to accustom yourself — pah !
pah ! pah ! — accompanied by a hissing of the air. Little whiffs
of air come to you, scented with machine oil and caoutchouc.
The beginner fails to manage the escape, and his coat and sleeves
become inflated, so that, when he wants to go down, he floats like
those frogs we used to blow up when we were boys, and then

218 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

throw upon the water to amuse ourselves with their vain strug-
gles to get under it.

Then conies the gurgling of the water and air escaping through
the valve, and you descend. The pressure immediately increases
at the rate of one atmosphere for about every ten metres of depth.
This increased pressure, which would he insupportable if it was
unequally distributed, is hardly felt, because it is exerted in every
direction. The air is reduced to half its former volume, so that
our inspirations take in double the usual quantity. Instead of
breathing more easily, as one would naturally suppose he would
do, the diver feels an oppression which is very troublesome at
first. But it soon passes away. It is caused by a pressure on
the alveoli of the lungs which impedes the exchange of gases.
But the equilibrium is soon restored spontaneously.

The most disagreeable sensation produced by the descent con-
sists of pains in the ears, sharp and accompanied by a feeling of
dizziness. It is caused by a pressure of the air contained in the
medial ear ; the tympanum is stretched and pushed upon the ossi-
cles, till a bubble succeeds in making a passage for itself through
the Eustachian tube. The pain then ceases, but returns as the
descent is continued. After a few plunges, the Eustachian tube
enlarges enough to let the air pass freely, and the pains cease.
The dizziness is explained by the fact that the inner ear, as M.
Delage and other physiologists have shown, is the seat of the
sense of direction ; so the novice does not know where he is, and
imagines that his head is down. Mariners, in training for diving,
are caused to go down first in a spot where there is hardly water
enough to cover the casque ; they come back with downcast feat-
ures and the flurried air of a man afflicted with vertigo.

The most delicate point is the regulation of the air-escape.
The novice lets out too much air, and water comes in by the valve,
and the casque seems so heavy that he imagines he is nailed to
the bottom. He then lets too much air accumulate, his coat
swells, and the casque rises so much as to take the valve out of
reach of the hand. Despite all his efforts to stay on the bottom,
he springs up to the surface. The air, released from the pressure,
expands, the coat is inflated almost to bursting, and he floats like
a dead body. One can never be a good diver till he learns to
regulate the air as a horseman holds the reins — without thinking
about it. We might, indeed, adjust the valve for a particular
depth, so that it shall act automatically ; but the diver who de-
sires to ascend and descend at will, will do better to keep the
escape-valve taut, and regulate it with his head.

The beginner is not able to travel about as he wants to — first,
because he feels too light or too heavy, according to the quantity
of air in his coat ; and, second, because the water offers an unex-

THE EXPERIENCES OF A DIVER. 219

pected resistance to his progress. He sees things two steps away
that he wants to get, and can not reach them.

Pictures show the diver walking along on the bottom of the
sea as he would do on the land ; it is a false representation. One
can not get along without bending his whole body at an angle of
forty-five degrees in the direction he wishes to go, and then push-
ing along on tip-toe in an attitude that would excite laughter in a
beholder, assisting himself with his arms as in swimming. If the
bottom is uneven, he will do better to creep on his hands and
knees.

On the other hand, one can do things in the water that are
impossible in the air — let himself drop, for example, from the
rocks ; the water will break the fall. Or, he can climb cliffs by
letting a little air collect in his coat and planting the ends of his
fingers in the cracks and rough places. On broken ground he can
pass with a kind of flying leap from one rock to another. But all
this supposes a degree of familiarity which is not acquired for a
considerable time. In my first efforts I cut my hands terribly,
and was not able to use my pen or pencil for several days. I tried
a coat made with the sleeves ending in India-rubber gloves, but
they prevented my picking up small things, and, moreover, did
not last long. I then returned to the common sleeves, closed at
the wrist, and used knit woolen gloves.

Another difficulty is occasioned by the glasses of the casque
becoming covered with the vapor that results from the conden-
sation of the moisture of the breath. The colder the water, the
thicker the vapor is. No means as yet tried to get rid of it have
resulted satisfactorily, but I have solved the problem by rubbing
the glasses with glycerin. The mist then condenses in a uniform
nap which does not obscure the glass.

When all these difficulties have been surmounted, there is still
one that persists — that is, the effect and the danger of compression
and decompression. That imposes a limit to the depth a man can
reach with the diving-dress. Divers are liable to two kinds of
accidents. One is a prostration on coming to the surface, for
which restorative measures often have to be applied ; and which,
according to Paul Bert, results from the effects of the change of
medium on the spinal marrow. It is rarely mortal, but may
eventually produce a paralysis of the lower limbs. The other
accident, graver but very rare, consists of a gaseous embolism
of the capillaries of the lung, produced by the disengagement of
bubbles of air in the blood, which has dissolved too much of it
while under high pressure. The action is like that of Seltzer
water at the moment of pressing on the pedal of the siphon.
Under its effects, when it occurs, the diver dies as soon as he
reaches the surface.

220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Both causes of accident can be avoided by descending and ris-
ing slowly. For this reason a steel chain may be used as a ladder,
to be let down to the depth the diver has reached, by the aid of
which he can stop at will while coming up. But the question of
time comes in to limit the depth which it is possible to reach. If
we allow three quarters of an hour for a diving excursion, a quar-
ter of an hour will be required to descend below thirty metres,
and as long to come up ; so that only a quarter of an hour is left
for staying on the bottom.

Of the scientific observations which I have been able to make
with the diving-dress, I will speak only of those of a physical or-
der ; a book would not be sufficient to describe my zoological obser-
vations. When the water is transparent and the sun shining, we
can, looking down from the boat, distinguish the bottom to about
twenty metres ; but for that the surface should be perfectly
smooth. I have had fixed in the bottom of my yacht Amphias-
tre a light-port with a very thick glass. By darkening the cabin
we can see through it clearly, farther than twenty metres, even
when the surface of the sea is troubled. Seen thus from above,
the bottom of the sea always looks flat. All the visible parts are
equally lighted, and the appearance of relief is naturally destroyed
by the absence of projected shadows. In going down in the div-
ing apparatus, we are astonished at perceiving that the ground,
which appeared nearly uniform, is really bristling with rocks and
hollowed by deep valleys. The shadows are now visible, because
the light coming from above, the parts under the projections of
the rocks and the tufts of sea-weed are in the dark. If the diver
looks up from the bottom through the frontal glass of his casque,
he will see a great light, circular space that may be regarded as
the base of an inverted luminous cone, of which the spectator's
eye occupies the tip, and the apical angle of which is about
62° 50'. Beyond this circle the surface looks dark, presenting
precisely the aspect of the sea as seen when looking down into
it from the boat. The sky and objects in the air are visible only
within the limits of the luminous circle. The borders of this
circle are always more or less indented, for the surface is never
perfectly quiet. The sunbeams are dimmed and come down in
dancing showers as we see them in a room on the edge of the
water when the blinds are drawn down, and the rays, reflected
from the mobile surface, shine upon the ceiling of the room.

The decrease of density of the sun's rays is very rapid, and
they are almost completely diffused at thirty metres. As the sun
declines toward the horizon, a darkness suddenly comes on which
has sometimes caused me to ascend very speedily, in the belief
that night had fallen. Coming out of the water, I was astonished
to find myself immersed in the rays of a sun not yet near setting.

THE EXPERIENCES OF A DIVER. 221

There is an angle at which the proportion of rays reflected to rays
refracted becomes so much against the latter that the illumina-
tion of the bottom falls off very abruptly.

The transparency of the water along the littoral varies enor-
mously. In times of rain, it is clouded by swollen streams pour-
ing into it ; in dry and still weather it becomes nearly as clear as
in the open sea. There are also capricious and sudden changes
caused by currents from the land or from the open sea, which are
capable of producing great effects in a few hours. Experiments
on the penetration of light, to have any value, should be made
very far out.

When the water is comparatively clear, it still absorbs so much
light that at thirty metres' depth, if the sky is clouded, one can
not see distinctly enough to collect small animals. In a horizon-
tal direction one can not distinguish a rock more than seven or
eight metres off. When the sun is shining and the water is very
clear, we can see a bright object at twenty or even perhaps at
twenty-five metres. But in usual conditions we have to content
ourselves with half these numbers. These facts, verified many
times in the descents which I have executed with the diving appa-
ratus of my laboratory at Nice during the last three years, appear
to me important from several points of view.

It is evident that a submarine boat can not see its way under
these conditions. Slow as may be its movement, there will not be
time for it to retreat if it sees some obstacle rising in front of it ;
for it would not be more than ten metres away from the impedi-
ment at the moment of perceiving it. It will always have to take
its directions before going down, and to sail only upon a ground
the relief of which has been carefully explored. Submarine navi-
gation will thus always be confined to limits which the genius of
man — since it can not change the transparency of water — will
never be able to enlarge.

These observations are also of great interest from a biological
point of view. We can see every day that agile marine animals
living in the illuminated strata of the waters— fishes, lobsters,
and cephalopods— are in the habit, when they are frightened, of
giving themselves up to a very rapid flight and quickly stopping.
They feel that a few metres are enough to put them out of the
range of vision of their pursuer. Some even take the pains to add
to the obscurity of the water by discharging their ink, as the
squids do, or stirring up the mud, after the manner of many
fishes. Marine animals may well be near-sighted; for of what
use to them is a long vision when they can at most see only a few
metres away ? Hence their crystalline lens is bulged into a
nearly spherical shape. They live in a world of surprises, and, as
it were, in a perpetual fog. The nets we stretch for them would

222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hardly take any fish, at least in the daytime, if they could see as
far as we see in the air.

The color of water varies from "blue to greenish, usually ac-
cording to the degree of its clearness. Objects at twenty metres'
depth begin to take a bluish hue, and at from twenty-five to thirty
metres the light is so blue that dark-red animals look black, while
green and bluish sea-weeds seem almost white by contrast. Com-
ing back quickly into the air, eyes accustomed to the blue light
see the air-landscape red. The red rays are extinguished first, a
fact which had been already demonstrated by laboratory experi-
ments. The blue rays, being absorbed in a less degree, penetrate
farther ; and these are the rays which act most energetically on
the photographic plate. This fact disposes of the objections
which some students have repeated with a persistency that is
not creditable to their ideas of physics, against the use of photo-
graphic plates in determining the depth to which daylight can
penetrate through water.

When there is a swell, the diver's task is a hard one. He is
constantly tossed about in spite of himself, and an irresistible
force compels him to swing like a pendulum. This oscillation of
the water, which is a counterpart of the waves of the surface, is
nearly as perceptible at thirty metres as at ten metres. It can
not be a surf phenomenon, for fishermen find that, after a storm,
depths of fifty metres and more are swept by it. S]3ecial appa-
ratus and experiments are required to determine to what depth it
extends ; but, in view of the incompressibility of water, I should
not be astonished to find it extending very far down. In this
matter, as well as in a great many others, the diver is in a con-
dition to gain valuable information by which new avenues may
be opened for the study of the phenomena of Nature. — Translated
for The Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

♦»»

DRESS AND PHYSIQUE OF THE POINT-BARROW

ESKIMOS.

By JOHN MUEDOCH.

THE people who live on the extreme northwest corner of our
continent are far from being an ugly or an ill-made race.
Though they are not tall— a man of five feet ten inches is a tall
man among them — they are well-proportioned, broad-shouldered,
and deep-chested. The men, as a rule, are particularly well " set
up," like well-drilled soldiers, and walk and stand with a great
deal of grace and dignity. I fancy that a good deal of the erect
carriage of the men comes from their habit of carrying the gun,

DRESS AND PHYSIQUE OF THE ESKIMOS. 223

or in old times the bow, in a case slung across the back, by a
string passing round the chest.

The women do not have such good figures, but are inclined to
slouchiness, which they perhaps get from trotting ahead of the
dogs when traveling with sledges. They are seldom inclined to
be fleshy, though their plump, round faces, along with their thick
fur clothing, often give them the appearance of being fat. They
generally have round, full faces, with rather high cheek-bones,
small, rounded noses, full lips, and small chins. Still, you now
and then see a person with an oval face and aquiline nose. Many
of the men are very good-looking, and some of the young women
are exceedingly pretty. Their complexion is a dark brunette,
often with a good deal of bright color on the cheeks and espe-
cially on the lips. They sunburn very much, especially in the
spring, when the glare of the sun is reflected from the snow.
They have black or dark-brown eyes and abundant black hair.
The women's hair is often long and silky. When they are young
they have white and regular teeth, but these are worn down
to stumps before middle life is reached. Cheerful and merry
faces are the rule, and they are altogether pleasant people to see
and to associate with. The men cut their hair square across
the forehead and comb it down into a regular " straight bang,"
with long locks on each side of the head, covering the ears,
but clip a round spot on the crown of the head like a monk's ton-
sure, and a strip about two inches wide from this tonsure down
the back of the head to the nape of the neck. They say that, un-
less the hair is clipped off on the crown and back of the head,
the man will suffer from snow-blindness in the spring. The
women part their long hair smoothly down the middle from the
forehead to the back of the neck, and gather it into a braid on
each side behind the ear. When they are dressed up, these braids
are wound round and round with a long string of small, bright-
colored beads, and the whole finished off with a flat brass button
fastened into the hair behind each ear. They wear ear-rings, too,
usually made of long glass beads, dangling from a little ivory
hook which fits into the hole in the ear. They are all tattooed
with one, three, or five narrow blue lines running from the under
lip to the chin. The men are seldom tattooed, but instead, they
wear the curious labrets, or lip-studs, which are peculiar to the
Eskimos of the Northwest. These are large studs of stone or
bone, like sleeve-buttons, which are buttoned into holes in the
under lip, one at each corner of the mouth. At first sight, these
ornaments appear a hideous disfigurement, but it is surprising
how quickly one gets used to them. The most fashionable
labrets, which are worn on " swell " occasions, are made of white
marble in the form of flat disks, about an inch and a half in diam-

224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eter, with half a large blue-glass bead glued to the middle of
each. Others are shaped like plugs, and are made of black, white,
or gray stone. They used to pick up the stoppers of Worcester-
shire-sauce bottles that we threw away, and make labrets of
them. All they had to do was to grind off the knob on top a
little, to make it fit comfortably between the lip and gum.

Their clothes are made almost wholly of the skins of wild ani-
mals, though they sometimes wear outside frocks of calico or
drilling. The skin which is most commonly used is that of the
reindeer, which is perhaps the best material that could be found
for clothing in a cold climate. It is very warm and at the same
time very light, and can be had of various thicknesses, from the
short-haired fawn-skin, fit for making handsome thin clothing, to
the heavy winter coat of the buck, suitable for blankets or thick
clothing, to wear in the very coldest weather.

A man's full suit of clothes consists of a loose frock, with no
opening except at the neck, provided with a hood that can be
drawn up over the head, and a pair of close-fitting knee-breeches,
tied down with draw-strings over the tops of the long boots. In
cold weather a second frock is worn under the first, with the hair
side next the skin, and an extra pair of breeches. On the feet are
worn long stockings of thick deer-skin, with the hair next the
skin, and outside of these the tight-fitting boots, which in winter
are made of the short-haired skin of the deer's legs, with soles of
sealskin tanned white, and in summer of water-proof sealskin,
with the hair carefully scraped off without removing the black
epidermis, with soles made of the skin of the bearded seal or the
white whale. These boot-soles are very neatly crimped up all
round the foot, like the soles of moccasins. The crimjung is done
with the teeth, which is one reason why the women's teeth wear
out so quickly.

I know of no warmer and more comfortable foot-gear for a
cold climate than the Eskimo fur stocking and deerskin boot,
with the elastic pad of whalebone shavings worn under the foot,
between the stocking and the boot as they wear it.

The man's frock is cut off square across the skirts, and reaches
about to the middle of the thigh. The women wear a good deal
longer frock, which comes down in two rounded flaps, one in front
and one behind, nearly or quite to the knees. This frock, too, is
made looser in the back than the man's, so as to make room for
the mother to carry her little baby inside, and there is a special
bulge in the hood just at the back of the neck to make room for
the youngster's head. Instead of breeches and boots, the woman
wears tight-fitting pantaloons all in one piece with the shoes,
which have soles like those of the men's boots. These pantaloons
are made of deer-skin in winter, but in summer they are made of

DBESS AND PHYSIQUE OF THE ESKIMOS. 225

the same stuff as the men's water-proof boots. The men some-
times wear pantaloons like the women, and the boys all do till
they arrive at manhood and have their lips pierced for the labrets.
The boys wear jackets like the men's, but the little girls' dress is
a perfect miniature of the women's, even to the pocket at the back
of the neck for the baby's head. Indeed, the larger girls some-
times do duty as nurses, and carry round their little sisters in
their jackets like grown women.

The usual material for jackets is reindeer-skin, prepared with-
out any process of tanning. The skin is first dried in the sun, and
then the stiff under membrane is carefully scraped off with a very
effective tool made of a small piece of flint chipped into a blunt
blade, and fitted into a handle of ivory or wood, shaped so as to
fit exactly into the hollow of the hand. This scraping also serves
to soften the skin, just as you soften a sheet of stiff paper by rub-
bing it up, and the skin is finally finished off by rubbing it with
pumice-stone and gypsum or chalk. When the skin is finished
the inside looks and feels like white wash-leather, but, of course,
is easily spoiled by wetting. All sorts of skins that are to be used
with the hair on are dressed in this way.

To make a frock of ordinary thickness, they usually select the
skins of does in their summer coat, one for the front and one for
the back, and put them together so that the best part of the skin,
on the back of the animal, comes on the front and back of the
person where it will show, while the poorer skin from the belly is
concealed under the arms or the sides. The head of one skin is
made into the hood by fitting it in with seams. All these gar-
ments are made on regular patterns, just as our clothes are ; all
jackets, for instance, having practically the same number of pieces.
To make the frock fit round the neck, there is a curved triangular
piece let in on each side of the throat, and these throat-pieces are
always made of the white skin from the belly of the deer, no mat-
ter what is the color of the rest of the garment. This gives a very
pretty effect to the frock.

Heavy frocks for very cold weather, especially for wear when
out on the ice seal-hunting, are made of skins of deer in the thick
gray winter coat. Now and then you see a frock made of the
Alaskan variety of the mountain sheep, which is of a pale buff
color, almost white. Full-dress frocks are also made of the
white or variegated white and brown skins of the tame Sibe-
rian reindeer, which they get by trading from the Eskimos
whom they meet in the summer at the mouth of the Colville
River. The latter get them from Kotzebue Sound, whither they
are brought from Asia across Bering Strait. These skins are
highly prized.

There was one old fellow at Cape Smyth who was a very great

VOL. XSXTIII. 16,

226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dandy. He owned, among other fine clothes, two very " swell "
frocks, one made wholly of ermine-skins piit together in stripes
of brown summer skins and white winter skins alternately, with
the tails and feet dangling, and another of blue and white fox-
skins put together in alternate stripes.

The every-day frock has very little trimming except a fringe
of wolverine fur around the wrist, and a strip of long-haired
wolf-skin round the edge of the hood, so that, when the hood is
drawn up over the head, the long hair stands out all round the
face like a halo. This is not merely an ornament, but also serves
to protect the face against the wind. Working frocks are often
without even this frill. Full-dress jackets are often very prettily
trimmed with edging made of alternate strips of light and dark
skins, fringed with wolverine fur, and often ornamented with
little knots of red worsted.

The breeches are usually made of heavier deer-skin than the
frock, so that only one pair is more often worn than a single
frock, and then with the hair inside. Full-dress breeches are
tastefully trimmed with edging like the jacket. The boots and
the women's pantaloons, as I have said, are generally made of the
skin of the deer's legs, and it is the fashion to have the white
patch from the inside of the deer's leg always on the outside of
the ankle. A specially fashionable style of boot has the leg made
of alternate stripes of white and brown skin, with a very pretty
effect. Women's pantaloons also are often made this way below
the knee.

Eskimo dandies, instead of having their boots kept up by the
draw-strings of their breeches, have the tops finished off with a
fancy edging, and kept up by draw-strings of their own. To keep
the moccasin-like sole of the boot from getting out of shape and
running over on one side, there is a pair of strings fastened to the
edge of the sole near the heel, crossed over the instep, and tied
round the ankle.

There are several kinds of material used for making boot-soles,
and each is supposed to be specially suited for some particular
purpose. For walking on dry snow, the best boot-soles are made
of sealskin which has been rolled up and allowed to " heat " and
ferment a little before drying, so that the epidermis can be scraped
off with the hair. This looks like cream-colored morocco and will
not stand the least wetting. For walking on the rough sea-ice
they prefer to have soles made of sealskin dressed with the hair
on, and worn with the flesh-side out ; but for their water-proof
boots they use the thicker skin of the great bearded seal, or, if
they can get it, of the white whale, dressed with oil. Sometimes
the skin of the polar bear is made into water-proof soles. The
white whale skin is the best material. It makes a translucent,

DfiESS AND PHYSIQUE OF THE ESKIMOS. 227

honey-yellow leather, about an eighth of an inch thick, stands the
water very well, and is quite durable.

Under the outer pantaloons the women wear a second pair
of thicker deer-skin, skin-side out, with stocking-feet. When the
spring conies, and the snow gets sloppy on the surface, they dis-
card the outer pantaloons and put on water-proof boots like the
men's, but held up by a draw-string just below the knee. Later
in the season, when there is a good deal of wet weather, and they
are knocking around in boats, they wear pantaloons made wholly
of water-proof black sealskin. All these pantaloons, like the
men's breeches, are rather short in the waist, and are held up by
a girdle just above the hips. Like a sailor's trousers, they need a
good deal of hitching up.

The frock is always confined round the waist by a girdle, often
merely a strip of skin. The men, however, often have handsome
belts about an inch and a half wide, woven of the shafts of feath-
ers. By using black and white feathers a very neat pattern is
produced. The fashionable ladies' belt is made by sewing together
bits of fur from the feet of the wolverine, each with a single claw
attached.

Fastened to the belt behind, every man and boy wears the
bushy tail of some animal. A wolverine's tail is the " correct
thing " ; but those who can not afford this wear the tail of the
wolf or the Eskimo dog. This fashion gave rise to the story, told
by the old Russian voyagers, of men with tails on the American
coast.

It is also very fashionable to wear the skin of an ermine dang-
ling from the frock between the shoulders, or an eagle's feather
in the same place or on the back of the hood. These are amulets,
and are supposed to bring good luck, like the dried birds' heads,
bear's claws, and other such things which the men wear dangling
from the belt.

The only head-covering is the hood of the frock, which comes
forward just far enough to cover the ears. In very cold weather,
or when they are sitting on the ice watching for seals, the men
wear cloaks of deer-skin over their other clothes. When it rains,
or when they are out in the boats in rough weather, both men
and women draw over their other clothes a frock made of strips
of the entrails of the seal dried and stitched together. This
frock has a hood which fits close round the face, and is quite
water-proof.

Since these people have had so much to do with the white men,
they have taken to wearing a good deal of bright-colored calico.
Of this they make long frocks without hoods, which they wear
over their furs in blustering weather to keep the snow from get-
ting on to them.

228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Of course, in such a climate, the hands need to be well pro-
tected, and 'they have first-rate gloves and mittens. The gloves
are always made of dressed deer-skin, with the hair-side in, and
usually have a fringe of wolverine fur round the wrists. They
are specially meant for dress occasions, and are often tastefully
ornamented. The common, every -day mittens are made of thick
deer-skin, and are always worn with the hair next the hand. Both
men and women, particularly the women, when they have no work
to do that requires both hands, have a great habit of wearing only
one mitten, and drawing the other hand back through the sleeve
inside the jacket for warmth.

In very cold weather, particularly when hunting or traveling,
they wear very thick mittens made of the shaggy hide of the polar
bear. These keep the hands very warm, and one of these mittens
held upon the windward side of the face makes a capital screen
against the sharp wind. The long, harsh hair, too, makes a first-
rate brush for dusting off frost and snow from the clothes, and
for brushing up the floor. "When hunting with the rifle in winter,
the hunter wears a pair of thin deer-skin gloves under his mit-
tens. Then, when he is ready for a shot, he slips off his clumsy
mittens, and can handle his gun without burning his fingers on
the cold iron.

Of course, all these clothes are made by the women, who cut
them out by their eye very skillfully, using their favorite tool, a
broad knife shaped like a chopping-knif e, which they use for cut-
ting everything, from their food to a thread. This is better than
scissors for cutting furs, because in cutting from the skin-side
you cut the skin without cutting the hair.

For sewing skins they make their own thread by stripping
fibers from a piece of dried sinew, but use nowadays steel needles
and common brass thimbles. They do not sew as a white woman
does, but wear the thimble on the forefinger and thrust the needle
through from left to right. In old times their needles were made
from the small bones of the reindeer's legs, and they used thim-
bles made of a bit of sealskin, in the shape of a ring with a pad
on one side to press against the needle.

The great time for making new clothes is in October and No-
vember, which are named in the Eskimo calendar " the time for
sewing" and the "second time for sewing/' All summer long
they have been living in tents and knocking round outdoors, and
their clothes have grown pretty shabby and dirty. Now they
have come back for the winter, and the time has come to make
new clothes. But deer-skin clothes must not be made in the vil-
lage while the hunters are out after seals, for that would bring
bad luck ; so the women take their work out into little tents
pitched some distance from the houses.

PRAIRIE FLOWERS OF LATE AUTUMN. 229

By the time December comes, and with it the season for the
winter festivals, everybody in the village has his new clothes for
the year, and all look neat and trim in fresh brown deer-skins and
clean white mittens and breeches.

PRAIRIE FLOWERS OF LATE AUTUMN.

Br BYRON D. HALSTED,

PROFESSOR OF BOTAHY IN RUTGERS COLLEGE, N. J.

IT is not easy to satisfactorily decide why some plants bloom in
autumn, while others produce their flowers only in spring.
To have hepaticas in April is as much a matter of common ex-
pectation as for August to bring the first golden-rods and October
a gorgeous display of asters. An unwritten law of Nature has
been conformed to, and the result is a floral time-piece of the sea-
sons, so accurate in its wonderful mechanism that one only needs
to see the bouquet of a school-girl returning from her Saturday
afternoon ramble in the woods to know the month of the passing
year. Some time ago (The Popular Science Monthly, May, 1887) the
writer prepared a paper upon " Prairie Flowers of Early Spring,"
in which it was stated that the first blossoms of the season
gained an advantage by being first. There is a mutual adaptation
existing between flowers and insects that the most casual observer
can not gainsay. It is not only an advantage, but in many cases
a positive necessity, that flowers be visited by insects in order to
secure that transfer of pollen from one blossom to another which
results in fertilization. The modern accepted view of all floral
display is that it serves the purpose of attracting insects, and acts
as a contrivance by means of which the fertilization of a flower
by its own pollen is prevented. Botanists of earlier days did not
force this truth upon the attention of others, and many persons
better qualified to judge of human than natural history arrived
at the erroneous, if not somewhat selfish, conclusion that floral
forms and colors were primarily to beautify the earth and render
it a pleasant habitation for man. No one can for a moment doubt
that flowers are beautiful, but beauty is a secondary matter so far
as the gratifying of man's taste for beauty in forms and colors is
concerned. It is so planned that the qualities which render the
floral structures so well adapted to the peculiarities of the insects
are the ones which at the same time render them beautiful and
thereby contribute to the pleasure of man. In this adjustment
we may see the working of an Infinite Mind able to combine the
two elements of utility and beauty so completely that it is not
extravagant to say they are often inseparable.

23o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the present paper the reader's attention is invited to some
of the plants that continue to bloom after the fingers of Jack
Frost have silently pulled down the dark curtain of the waning
autumn and shut out the warmth of vitality from all the tender
sorts of vegetation. The first day of October opened upon a land-
scape of varied hues, some of a most somber character, for late
in September the leaves of the box-elder, for example, had been
blasted by freezing and the vineyards were prematurely brown
with the curled and dying foliage rustling in the breeze. Corn
and other plants of a like subtropical nature, not previously har-
vested, were stricken lifeless by the low temperature, and house
plants carelessly left out of doors melted away into a mass of
rapid decay. As one looked about him the scene could but remind
the observer of the Scripture injunction concerning the two
women grinding at the mill. Two plants side by side had been
growing with equal vigor, and both bespoke an equally long life,
but one was taken and the other left. The reason for this is not
easy to find.

Many mysteries flood the mind in contemplating the world of
vegetable life, but none more thoroughly baffles the keenest ob-
server as well as the most penetrating microscopist than that of
hardiness. We freely use the word in ignorance, or worse, to
conceal our ignorance, as physicians may employ longer terms
among their admiring, awe-struck, ignorant patients, but when
the thoughtful pause comes it brings us face to face with a half-
clothed skeleton that nearly frightens all save the brazen-faced.
We may attempt to explain the real meaning of hardiness in a
dozen ways, and in the very offering of so many reasons we exhibit
the weakness of all the arguments. If we say that it is due to
denser structure, the statement is met with the bald-faced fact that
the hardiest plants do not have necessarily the denser tissues. A
box-elder, which is considered a type of hardiness, yields a wood
less than half as heavy as the hickory. Of the sixteen sorts of
trees in the United States with wood heavier than water, all are
in the warmer portions of the country, where no winter tests their
hold upon vitality. Perhaps it is as much the plan of one spe-
cies to have its twigs killed back as it is for another to withstand
the sudden changes of temperature and the severe cold. It de-
mands a more than human penetration to decide that the horse-
chestnut, with its large and well - protected terminal buds in
autumn, is better adapted to its conditions than the raspberry,
with young, immature wood and imperfect buds, which die before
the spring-time comes. The two are working out the problem of
existence along widely diverging lines. The tree grows slowly
and builds for a century, while the bramble forms only transient
stems and runs its chances of making all it can out of a favor-

PRAIRIE FLOWERS OF LATE AUTUMN. 231

able growing season. No one would care to say that a Rubus is
less hardy than an iEsculus. They are not to be compared, and
there the matter ends. If two species in the same genus have
similar habits of growth, and one fails to bear the surrounding
conditions while the other thrives, the case is very different, and
it is more natural to seek the reason, for the answer, if it could be
given, might be a blessing to every orchardist and gardener suf-
fering from losses among his tender plants. And even here it
may be that the explanation turns upon surroundings to which
each plant has been subjected. We know that species migrate
from the home of the parent as birds from the parental nest or
the sheep from the fold. It is not difficult to believe that off-
spring from common stock in time develop progeny subjected to
very unlike conditions. Under dissimilar circumstances they
develop unlike tendencies ; and when, after centuries, these new
forms are again brought together through man's culture, while
they may be outwardly the same, the one is tender while the other
is not. It is a question of the resistive power which, whenever
we reach for it, whether with the high-power lens or the chem-
ist's test-tube, the result is much the same. This generation
seeks after a sign, and it might do many worse things. It may
be a long time before there will be a better test for hardiness
than that which is applied when a plant is subjected to the actual
conditions. At present there is no rule without innumerable
exceptions, which not only " prove the rule," but prove that it is
valueless. The Greenlander may easily fall a victim to small-
pox, because, we say, his system has not been so situated as to
develop the resistive power to this direful malady. The Northern
man goes south and is stricken with a fever that does not cause
death to those " to the manor born."

In the field we see the corn falls with the first hard frost,
while the asters along the roadway hold their freshness and con-
tinue to blossom until early winter congeals the sap. Turn to
the flower-garden, and we see many of our tender plants in the
withered brownness of death, and by their side stands the Anter-
rhinum in the beauty of its pristine freshness, bearing its blos-
soms of every size from the minutest bud up to the full flower.
The pelargonium has its dead branches intermingled with the
living stems of the petunia. The moss-rose is lifeless upon the
ground, while the prostrate verbena is fragrant with new blos-
soms. Snows come and go long after the Indian summer has been
succeeded by the chill November days, and the pansies smile
from among frosty fallen leaves. Death and life are closely asso-
ciated, and, while we can not comprehend it all, there are few
who would lose the exhilaration of a prolonged search for the
sake of knowing it all at once.

232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Along my daily pathway have thronged the shepherd's-purse
and the purslane. The former passed the winter as seedlings from
self-sowed seed in early autumn, and closely hugged the frozen
soil unprotected, or perchance benignly covered with a blanket
of snow. When the November blasts are howling and whirling
down the snows, some belated plants — or, more properly, some
hasty specimens ahead of their time — are left blooming alone.
The pepper-grass (Lepidium virginicum) is closely related to the
shepherd's-purse, and has the same times and seasons and habits
of growth. On the other hand, the hot-blooded purslane, which
was able to sprawl at full length upon the superheated ground in
August, and thrive, to the great annoyance of the tidy gardener,
falls a lifeless victim at the first firm grasp of the frost-king. In
its obeseness it blackens with the rising sun, and soon leaves little
else behind except the thousands of almost microscopic seeds, for
which the icy winter only seems to serve as a fitting introduction
to new activities when the long-delaying spring arrives. Look
into the vegetable garden, if you please, and recall the two classes
of plants therein grown for the table. There are sorts, the seeds
of which may be sown as soon as the ground can be worked ;
while other seeds are of the tender sort and can not be committed
to the earth until the settled weather has come and the danger
of the laggard frosts is past. Toward the end of the season there
is a like distinction. In short, some of the garden favorites must
make all their growth during warm weather, and perish with the
frosts of autumn ; while others can be gathered at pleasure, even
left in the earth until 'the following spring, and improved by the
seeming neglect. Of meadow and pasture crops there are few
that flower later than the red clover. This may be found in full
bloom until the snows cover the melliferous heads for the balance
of the year. The alsike also is a late bloomer, but the white sort
gives up much earlier.

Let us turn now to the wild plants which are in flower upon
or after the first of October in the climate of central Iowa — a
prairie region — where autumn is more than past its middle by
that date. At the outset, it is manifest of the plants in flower
that a large number belong to the sunflower family. Among the
most conspicuous are the asters and golden-rods, and the most
beautiful of them all is the Aster Novce Anglice. This is a com-
mon species, and because at home in New England — as the name
indicates — is none the less attractive, and one, the charm of whose
purple rays of the large heads never flags. I have been upon
long tramps through the low meadow-land where this species is the
chief blossom, and never tired of the variability which the many
plants exhibit. The leaves are clasping as if a strong affection
existed between the blade and the stem from which it sprang.

PRAIRIE FLOWERS OF LATE AUTUMN. 233

Intermixed with this most richly attired of all the asters is the
Riddell golden-rod (Solidago Riddellii) ; quite different from all
the other Solidagos in having the stems clothed with long,
smooth, narrow leaves, which gradually curve upward and then
describe a half circle downward. The large clusters of flowers in
the medium-sized heads have a depth of auriferous color which
can not fail to attract all lovers of yellow. The golden-rod most
nearly like the above is Solidago rigida, an earlier bloomer but
holds its own against the early frosts. As the name suggests, the
stem is large and stiff or rigid, the leaves are sessile, large, thick,
and the heads of the blossoms form a broad, flat-topped inflores-
cence, standing three or more feet from the high, dry prairie soil.
Among the other golden-rods were Solidago speciosa and the
altogether common and yet far from the least attractive species,
Solidago canadensis. This furnishes a serious puzzle to the
careless student, but the lover of slight differences in plants finds
in this species with its various varieties a subject of absorbing
interest. Aster longifolia and A. midtiflorus vie with each other
in making the waste places bright and attractive during the
October days, and exhibit their powers to resist the destructive
agencies of the closing days of autumn by shaking their leafy
stems and bright fresh heads of blossoms in the storms of bleak
November. The three asters already named are among the last
of all the prairie flowers, and seem to be full of life when the
streams are icy in the morning and the sunny side of a log is a
favorite haunt of the birds of winter.

Along the small brooks and over the lowland, where the fog
damp and chill settle at early sunset, the great sunflower (Heli-
anthus grosse-serratus) may wave its head, while around it is the
retirement of the winter condition. Helenium autumnale, with
its handsome heads, with lemon-yellow notched ray flowers and
peculiar velvety decurrent leaves, is not common but attractive.
We do not wonder that it lingers in the lap of early winter,
because the atmosphere of its whole being is one of endurance,
but of the quiet sort befitting the Quaker and not that of the
bully.

But there are many late autumn plants scattered through other
than the sunflower family. Along the streams and standing knee-
deep in the wasted and decaying rubbish of the borders is the
long, leafy stem of the Physostegia virginica, with its slender
spike of showy rose and purplish-white blossoms. It is one of the
mints in all save the minty quality, and for this peculiar lack-
ing it is often a source of trouble to the tyro in classification.
The flowers are complex, the stamens possess an abundance of
hairs, in which the circulation of protoplasm may be seen ; and,
besides, insects visit them.

234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Of a very different type, perhaps more showy and certainly as
interesting to the student of floral structures, is the great blue
lobelia {Lobelia syphilitica), a frequenter of all low places, where
its rank growth and bright deep blue render it a prominent ob-
ject. This plant with its insect attendants has often furnished
amusement for me by the half -hour. The insects seem always in
haste, and dodge in and out of these blossoms with a methodical
rapidity, each time receiving a new invoice of pollen to be scat-
tered upon the stigmas of other blossoms subsequently visited.
Among the most seemingly out-of -place blossoms as to time of
appearing were those of the common blue violet. This is strictly
one of the spring flowers, but with us for years it makes a second
advent, and in some places blossoms so freely as to be no rarity.
It has been used for classes of a hundred members for dissection
in October. This favorite plant is not as well known in habit as
it deserves. Its underground close-fertilized flowers, for example,
are unseen, therefore passed by by those who only pick the showy
aerial blossoms. The little low, round-leaved mallow, or prostrate
mallow — in my boyhood days we called it " cheeses " — is one of
our October flowers.

It will be seen that a fair share of the late autumn blossoms
are weeds and useless plants. The May-weed (Anthemis cotula)
is one of those which, if less common and without its rank odor,
would be a very attractive plant in both foliage and flower ; but,
as it is, no one is anxious to give this wayside intruder any high
place among the purely ornamental species. In like manner the
mullein, or "great American velvet-leaf" as it is sometimes
called in Europe {Verbascum tliapsus),is a plant with some in-
herent attractions ; but, owing to its obtrusive habit, combined
with a coarseness and boldness, it can only rank with the weeds.
It will accommodate itself remarkably to unfavorable conditions
and come up blooming under all sorts of rough if not abusive
treatment. There is a strict military air to this plant as well as
to one of its October associates in the pasture {Verbena stricta).
Both have stems much straighter than some ramrods, and one
time a friend, seeing the mullein in great abundance upon rolling
ground, remarked that they were like ten thousand men march-
ing up a hill. The species of liatris, or blazing-stars, are of the
same strict habit but vastly more showy. We have three species
of these charming rose-purple composites, all of which flower late
in summer and remain to display their marvels of beauty long
after the tender plants have served their time.

Among all the late blossoms there are none for which I have
a greater fondness than the gentians. They come, with their
mingled purple and blue, at a time when those colors have be-
come unusually rare, for they are never common at any time of

PRAIRIE FLOWERS OF LATE AUTUMN. 235

year. Some of the species bear flowers that long seern upon the
verge of coming into full bloom, and disappoint those who look
for wide-open flowers. They are somewhat bell-shaped ; into the
plaited opening, otherwise nearly closed, the bee or other insect
pushes its way in search of nectar and pollen. Upon the exit of
the winged visitant the corolla again closes, to the exclusion of
everything except its insect attendants. The most charming of
all the species of this late-flowering genus is the celebrated
fringed gentian, so named because its long corolla ends in a most
delicate row of long, fine, hair-like projections, suggesting the
heavy eyelashes of a beautiful girl. The tint of the whole blos-
som is a pure and delicate blue, caught, as it would seem, from
some patch of October sky, margined by flecks of fleecy clouds.
These gentians, as well as rich specimens of a cousin to the thor-
oughwort and boneset, with great clusters of pure white flowers,
might be gathered any late autumn day, the former in the low
prairie, the latter in the tangle of frost-bitten herbage in " the
timber " along the water- courses. The boneset flowers suggested,
in their exhibition of white, the approach of winter, when all the
copse is covered with a mantle of snow and the stream is locked
in the embrace of the frost-king.

One of the latest of the autumn prairie flowers — and one not
found by me until drear November has come in the wake of In-
dian summer weather — is the ladies-tresses, an orchid of no strik-
ing beauty, but, in a region where orchids are rare and arriving
after the eleventh hour, it has its full share of interest. The
plants are single-stemmed, few-leaved, and the small, pure white
flowers are so arranged upon the long spike as to assume a spiral
inflorescence, from which fact the common name doubtless origi-
nated in the fertile mind of some imaginative lover of plants.
If the witch-hazel had been a member of the prairie flora un-
der consideration, it would have been in its place of honor at the
close of this list ; but, as it is, the orchid and the aster, the shep-
herd's-purse of the wayside and the prairie must vie with the
pansy in the flower-garden for the last place in the floral calendar
of the year.

The reasons assigned in a previous article for the early bloom-
ing of plants hold good here for those that develop their flowers
late in the year, and can be briefly condensed into the expression
that, in the experience of the species, it is probably found an ad-
vantage to be somewhat out of the season. A single store upon
a side street may do as well as any one in the market-place,
provided it is thoroughly accommodated to the situation : com-
petition, or the absence of it, is likewise an element not to be
ignored in the consideration of the time of blooming of flow-
ers ; and no one can but rejoice that all plants do not produce

23 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their blossoms during the same day or week or even month of
the year.

[The above article has been prepared from notes taken by the
writer while occupying the chair of botany in the Iowa Agricult-
ural College.]

■♦»♦•

THE DUK-DUK CEREMONIES.

By WILLIAM CHURCHILL.

RELIGION is a vanishing quantity in the western Pacific, and
the farther west one goes by so much the more rapidly does
this sentiment vanish ; dogmatic theology and its practical pro-
fession are alike absent from the thought and practice of the dark
Melanesian. Simplicity marks all the desires of this island sav-
agery, and this same simplicity marks all the spiritual side of life ;
instead of wondering puzzlement over the hazy ideas of a great
first cause, or a hereafter which may in some sort be molded by
the conduct of life in the present, the remote islander limits his
religion and the spiritual side of him to an ill-defined, scarcely
acknowledged fear of the unknown. Worship he has none ; even
the idea of propitiation of the malign power has not yet occurred
to him ; and the most that he can conceive of is sedulously to re-
frain from naming this terrible unknown.

Another circumstance deserves note because of its interesting
coincidence with this absence of faith. What internal connection
there may be between the two, if indeed there be any, is most ob-
scure, for the reason that these people are as yet little known, and
are very chary of communicating any information concerning
these two features of their life. It is noticed by the careful ob-
server that just in proportion as the forms and formulas of relig-
ion disappear from the life of the savage communities he visits,
so there is a marked increase in the prevalence and power of the
secret societies which seem to take the place of priestcraft and
kingcraft.

Melanesia presents a very long list of these associations of
men who are inducted into some secret or other, who are threat-
ened with the most severe penalties if they divulge any part of these
mysteries to the profane, and who are provided with signals for the
recognition of other possessors of the same mysteries ; and in more
than one instance it has been observed that these signals have
been recognized and regarded by people on far-distant islands,
speaking a dissimilar tongue, and so remote as at once to preclude
any chance of frequent communication. The very existence of
these mystic orders is as far as possible kept secret, and it is only
by long and patient study of the people that even the merest out-

THE DUK-DUK CEREMONIES. 237

line of their methods can be ferreted out. That they exist and
exercise a tremendous power over the people is certain ; that they
are more powerful in communities devoid of religion is a fact;
and with almost equal certainty it may be said that these secret
societies are in some way intimately connected with the practice
of polyandry, which it is evident has only recently among the
Melanesian races yielded to the present system of polygamy.

New Britain, at the most remote and the most savage verge of
Melanesia, shows to their best advantage the absence of the relig-
ious sentiment and the development of the secret society. Both are
well exhibited in the ceremony of the Duk-duk, which plays a
large part in the life of the community. It has not often been
seen by white men, for the reason that its performers or devotees
are fierce cannibals, and of those few who have seen it none have
been able to learn more than just what little they saw. The rea-
sons for the ceremony and the rude symbolism which underlies it
have been carefully concealed under the seal of the oath of mys-
teries, and have evaded the traders who have witnessed the pres-
entation of the ceremony on the village green. That this account
can go any deeper into the mystery than others is due solely to a
happy chance by which the writer was received into one of the
New Britain families, and was allowed to progress into the chief
mystery by initiation in due form. The public performance of
the Duk-duk will first need recounting.

Upon a day not previously announced to the people the cere-
mony takes place. It is early in the morning, and the people have
not yet scattered to their customary occupations on the beach or
in the jungle that lies behind the village ; the chief stands at the
door of his house, smoking and watching the knots of the villagers ;
by his side stand some of the elders of the village discussing petty
politics ; the women chatter loudly at the spring, and the children
are noisy at their sport. Suddenly there comes the warning cry,
" Duk-duk ! " there is a sound of some one crashing through the
canebrakes, and the scene at once changes. The men hurry to
take their places at the doors of their dwellings, brandishing their
weapons of warfare ; the women shriek and rush for shelter ; and
the children scurry home in hot haste, stumbling and falling in
their hurry, but showing all the signs of terror. The noise in the
jungle grows louder and draws nearer, the .last hedge of rustling
canes is parted, and a strange figure appears running at the top of
his speed.

It is the Duk-duk. Near the ground are seen the legs of a man
black as tropical skies and a hereditary inclination could make
them, shining with cocoanut oil, and in rapid motion, as of a man
who runs and dances with wild pirouettings as he goes. With
the flashing shins all semblance of manhood ceases ; what the eye

23 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sees is not a man but an animated extinguisher, a gigantic copy in
reeds and grass of the tin cones with which a generation that had
not yet struck oil was wont to put out its tallow dips. Ten feet
high, this extinguisher prances through the village, rushing furi-
ously at every house as though intent upon extinguishing all who
might be within, stopping short at sight of the armed householder
only to whirl high in air and dart away to the next house, followed
by the armed man from every house he has visited. It is a mad
dance, this speechless prancing of a rushy cone followed by a con-
stantly lengthening queue of silent warriors grimly brandishing
clubs and poising spears. From house to house it goes until every
house has been visited. If the Duk-duk chance upon a man aAvay
from the shelter of his roof -tree, meet him crossing the village
green, or lurking in one of the narrow alleys, he charges down
upon him, and destruction seems imminent. The man thus met
lifts his arms with certain symbolic movements of the hands and
fingers ; his sign is recognized, the cone dances back, the threat-
ening clubs are lowered, and the stroller falls in at the end of the
procession. If man, woman, or child thus met out of doors failed
to give the proper sign the clubs of the warriors would fall and the
extinguisher would dance upon the prostrate form, dyeing his feet
and ankles and staining the long grasses of his disguise with the
blood of the profaner of the mysteries. Sometimes it happens
that some man not deemed worthy of initiation is caught unawares
before he can gain a place of refuge, and in every such case the
full penalty of death by clubbing is exacted.

Sometimes a man met out of cover gives the proper sign, but
the Duk-duk still dances before him, and the warriors still
threaten but do not strike. Two others then leave the line and
stand by the side of the man thus menaced, always one of the boys
just growing into manhood ; together they all three give the sign,
the disguised fugleman and his tail dance away in search of other
victims, and the two sponsors lead the lad away to an inclosure
near the woods on the outskirts of the village.

The dance is done with a final nourish before the house of the
chief, who would be chief no longer if he incurred the enmity of
the Duk-duk ; the stragglers have given the proper sign and have
joined the dancing queue, or been led away by their sponsors, or
else they have not hailed the mysterious visitor in the due and
ancient form, and lie bloody where they stood, mere dead things.
There is a flourish before the chief's house, and then the dancers,
still strangely silent, follow their leader by the most direct route
to the inclosure of high palisades where await them all such as
they have met who have required sponsors ; there is always one
such, frequently more ; for it is generally for the purpose of
initiating these candidatas into the mysteries that the Duk-duk

THE DUK-DUK CEREMONIES. 239

makes his visit. When the last dancer has entered the inclosure,
a thickly woven hurdle of canes is tied at the gangway, the
dancers prance in a constantly narrowing circle about the novi-
tiates, threatening them with clubs and spears and sharp stone
axes. At last the dance is finished ; the chief seats himself at his
appointed place, where a small mat lying on the ground marks
the spot ; the dancing extinguisher gives over his dancing for the
first time since he burst in upon the village, and stands behind
the chief; the others stand along the stockade except that side
opposite the entrance ; the novitiates stand in the center, and
their sponsors form a little group a few feet away. When all
have taken their places, the deeply masked figure moves toward
the novitiates, no longer with a dancing step, but so crouched that
his legs do not appear beneath the cone of reeds, which thus seems
to possess the power of independent locomotion. The young men
again make the signal which has met with a certain measure of
success, but this time no sponsors aid them. Before each in turn
the cone rests motionless, and the chief, then speaking for the first
time, cries out, " Let him be put to the proof ! "

Obedient to the royal command, the two sponsors lead the
candidate to the vacant side of the yard where the battered wall
gives evidence that it has been many times put to the same use.
The masked figure also moves to a position close at hand, where
he can easily inspect the bearing of the young man under the
ordeal. The sponsors then draw back some space away and each
lets fly his spear, which whizzes by the novitiate and sings as it
sticks in the wall not an inch away from the flesh. If the novi-
tiate wince as the deadly weapons hiss upon him, the keen eye of
the Duk-duk would notice it, and at a signal every spear in the
inclosure would on the instant be hurled with unerring aim upon
the candidate who has been found unworthy. Having success-
fully passed this ordeal, the candidate is conducted before the
chief, and the sponsors fall back a step or two. With a quick
glance from one to the other to get the time, they swing their
clubs and let them fall as one upon the young man who is toiling
over this rocky path toward an insight into the mysteries. If he
bear this trial without a show of pain, he has passed all the tests
that will be required of him. At a sign from the chief, the hur-
dle will be cast off from the gate, and the procession reformed
will take its way still farther into the half twilight of the jungle.
Meanwhile in the village the women and the men who have not
shared the great mystery creep out from their houses in fear and
trembling and pick up the victims of the masked figure's mystic
vengeance.

This ordeal of the spear and club is not the only preparation
of the young man for the mystery of the Duk-duk. When he

240 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

arrives at the age of puberty he is told that he can not take his
rank as a warrior and a man of property, but must always remain
a communal slave, unless he is hardy enough to sue for entrance
to the light of the great mystery. The distinction is one that is
plain to him, and he probably does not hesitate in making his
choice, but applies to his chief to be prepared for that which is to
come. If his prayer be granted, and that is discretionary with
the chief, two men skilled in the mystery are detailed, under the
title of " brothers of the wood and sea/' to educate the postulant.
They conduct him away from his home and to a secluded spot
in the wilderness of jungle. Here the postulant is made to
build a house and hunt a supply of food. At first he is examined
in his bodily exercises and in his. proficiency in the few arts of
his savage life. From these material considerations his tutors
pass to more recondite matters. They instruct him in the secrets
of the sea and the forest, each according to his title. When the
candidate can pass a satisfactory examination in this branch of
his education, his tutors acquaint him with the history of his race
and the list of its hereditary friends and immemorial foes. Last
of all he is taught to fear the spirit of the hidden fire which from
time to time boils up in the craters and rushes down the slopes,
marking its path by hot ruin and stony destruction. This power
he is taught to fear as one that can not be averted, and that he
must always be mindful of if he will save himself alive. All this
has consumed a month or more, according to the ability of the
postulant to master the lessons set for him to learn. When he
finally succeeds in satisfying his masters, the brethren of the
wood and sea, they take leave of him.

" We have taught you now," they say, when the time has come
for their departure, " much of that which you must know in order
to become a man and share our mysteries, and all that it is our
duty to convey. That which remains will be taught you by an-
other who will come to you when he is ready, and until that time
you must not leave this place, nor speak to any man, nor sleep nor
eat. To-day you may have to eat anything you please, but re-
member that whatever you eat to-day you must never taste again,
nor must you so much as speak its name. Choose, then, that
which you will now eat for the last time, and eat well, for days
may pass before he comes who shall teach you the rest." When
the postulant has eaten, the hut is cleared of all that it contains,
and the brothers of the wood and sea sew mats over the doorway
before they go.

His meal over — the last of that particular food which he shall
taste on earth — the postulant composes himself to await the com-
ing of his new master. The day passes, and night comes upon
him left alone in a dark hut, in the heart of the dismal wood, and

THE DUK-DUK CEREMONIES. 241

without fire or the means of making it. He remembers that he
is forbidden to sleep, and, as he sits, expecting the coming of he
knows not whom, his strained senses are awake to a chorus of
unfamiliar sounds which bring him terror. The day comes, but
brings no food, no water, no master. As the sun declines, and he
sees ahead another terrifying vigil, he looks toward the door.
Between him and food, fire, and home, hangs but a light mat, yet
it makes his dungeon as secure as though forged of steel, for a
tabu is on it. As the first night, so is the second ; as yesterday, so
goes to-day, only the hunger gnaws with a sharper tooth, the
thirst parches the throat and mouth still more, and the nerves are
set on edge through lack of sleep. The vigil of hunger, thirst,
and sleepless eyes may last two, three, or four days ; but when
even savage endurance can bear up no longer, the master comes.
He enters the house in all his glory of rushes and colored grass
woven into a cone, and stands before the lad. Little wonder is it
that, worn by his ordeal, he should fear this mysterious figure,
which he has always been taught meant death to look upon. If
his fears overcome him, he is initiated into the mystery of the
club, which strikes but once, and there an end. But if he bears
up bravely under the trial, the Duk-duk teaches him the sign of
recognition, gives him a new name by which he shall hereafter
be known, and bids him go to his own home, avoid his childish
playmates, tell no one the lessons that have been imparted to
him, but await the next visitation, when the Duk-duk will
surely claim him, and if he passes the remaining trials will induct
him into the mysteries.

The young man goes home, announces his new name, and by
abundant food and rest recuperates from his recent privations.
Meanwhile, the Duk-duk day is drawing nigh ; the profane do not
know when to expect it, but the initiated know it to be the day
of the new moon, on which the mullet at dawn swim so near the
surface of the water as to break it into ten thousand ripples. If,
on this day, the fish swim deep at dawn, the ceremony must go
over for another time, when these two phenomena occur together.
If the fish swim high, the Duk-duk appears, the postulant makes
the signal which has been taught him, his sponsors — the brethren
of the wood and sea — answer for him, and lead him to the yard
where he undergoes the final ordeal, and, succeeding, is carried
along with the initiated to enter into the mysteries.

He is led to a path which is adorned with the marks of a
stringent tabu, and here it is made known that this tabu is here-
after not binding upon him. By tortuous ways, winding in and
out through the dense canebrake, the path leads to a large house
screened from sight in every direction. Before the house and,
indeed, all around it, is planted a stockade with one gate. Here

VOL. XXXTIII. 17

242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he is bade wait while the rest enter. At last comes one to the
gate who bids him enter, having first made him undertake, under
penalty of death, not to divulge to women, to children, or to the
uninitiated, anything of that which he may see or hear within.
Entering on this stipulation, he finds the yard crowded with the
warriors of his town, who welcome him to their ranks, call him by
his new name, and congratulate him on passing all the tests so
well. When this social function is over, he is led onward to the
door of the house, there to receive his martial equipment. As he
enters the door he notices the Duk-duk extinguisher standing in
a farther corner, and squatting before it some half-dozen of the
most considerable men of his tribe, including the chief. The bow
and arrows, the spear, the heavy club, and the short-helved stone
axe are then given him by the chief, with a few words of counsel,
bidding him use them as a warrior should, and advising him that,
if he use them well, he may in time be chosen to sit within the
house, while the others are privileged only to use the yard. Then
another of the seated figures — he who has that day worn the
great Duk-duk mask — arises and chants the mysteries, to which,
at proper intervals, the initiated standing near the door respond
by an answering chant, which has no meaning that they know ;
the words are in an unknown tongue, and have been handed down
by tradition from they know not whom. From the sound of
some of the words even in their mutilated condition, and from the
frequent use of the remarkably significant word Saba, it is pos-
sible that this refrain preserves a trace of an ancient Polynesian
migration over these islands, just as the Derry-down chorus in
English is a Druidical remnant.

For the rest, the mysteries, which have very little interest for
the white man, are merely a rationalistic rehearsal of a creed of
unbelief. Everything which by the uninitiated is held as of
particular obligation, is here chanted as something that the ini-
tiated must rigidly impress upon the profane, yet which for them-
selves they may disregard. The tabu is to have no force for them
except the great tabu, with a flock of hair on it, and that they
must not break through. All others they may transgress, if only
they do it slyly, and so as not to raise public scandal among the
women and the others who are bound by their provisions. They
must teach the uninitiated that there are malign spirits abroad
by night, but they themselves need not believe anything so
stupid. In a word, they form an association for the purpose of
playing upon the innocence and credulity of their fellows, and
right bravely do they keep up the imposture. One only belief do
they profess, and that is in the spirit of the volcano-fires, and even
that is discarded by the inner degree of the Duk-duk, those half-
dozen men who sit within the mystic house and dupe the initiates

THE SENSATIONS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN.

M3

of the minor degree as all unite to trick those outside. And the
reason is this : the half-dozen members of the most secret rank
profess to one another that no better system of governing a sav-
age community could be devised than this ceremonial mystery of
the Duk-duk.

THE SENSATIONS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN.

By Dr. E. HEINKICH KISCH.

ALL our sensations, from the most trifling pleasure to the
highest delight, from the hardly perceptible discomfort to
the keenest anguish, the whole gradation of manifold variations
of feeling, originate from the propagation of excitations from
without through the nerves to the central organ of the nervous
system and to consciousness. The nerves are the conductors of
the stimulus-waves which go to the nerve cells of curious term-
inal forms in the brain and spinal marrow ; and every excita-
tion that touches any part of those conductors releases a sensation,
the pleasant or unpleasant character of which depends first upon
its intensity. To a certain degree every moderately strong excita-
tion affecting us is agreeable and begets a feeling of pleasure ris-
ing to lively delight. An excitation surpassing this limit calls
out an uncomfortable feeling which passes into pain. A gentle
stroking of our skin, for example, is enjoyed ; a strong pressure
upon it evokes an uncomfortable feeling, which, continuing, passes
into pain. Harmonious musical tones please our ears, but dis-
cordant noises make us miserable.

That a stimulus striking the sensitive nerves should reach our
consciousness as a pain depends not on the force of the attack
only, but also on the delicacy of the nervous system, which varies
with different men to a considerable degree. Thus, many persons
having finely developed organs of those senses can smell and taste
many things of which other persons can hardly conceive ; and
much that is painful to an over-delicate lady causes no inconven-
ience to the hardy, coarse rustic. Also in various conditions of
disordered health the whole nervous system or part of the sensi-
tive nerves suffers from excessive sensitiveness, in consequence of
which insignificant affections cause agony.

Neuralgias, or pains in particular nervous tracts, may be
brought about by various causes — by disease in the terminal rami-
fications of the nerves, from disorders in the nerve-stem, through
illness of the brain or spinal marrow, or from some irritation
affecting another distant nerve, transmitted to this one through
the central nervous system by what is called a reflex process.
The common expression, " nervous pain," conveys no distinction
respecting the character or source of the affection ; but to the phy-

244 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sician it is a matter of great importance to determine the precise
source of the affection and the means of contending with it.

One of the most common neuralgias is a pain in the eyes ;
it is felt in the region of the trigeminal nerve, and frequently
becomes almost unendurable and very obstinate. It occurs usu-
ally in single attacks, which return at various intervals and
last sometimes only a few minutes, and sometimes a quarter
of an hour or more. The painful feeling, which may be de-
scribed as that of a boring, piercing, stretching, or tearing, gen-
erally radiates from a circumscribed spot in the neighborhood
of the nervous ramifications, in the region of the eyes, face, and
lower jaw, and may extend to the neighboring nervous regions,
to the back of the head, the arms, and the breast. It not rarely
becomes so fearfully intense and rasping that persons afflicted with
it act as if mad, tossing themselves violently around and crying
out in the most heart-rending manner. To this are added disor-
ders of sensation. The eyes become red, vision is troubled with
specks and spots, the flow of tears becomes excessive, the hearing
is dulled or vexed with hummings, and the patient suffers from
an unpleasant taste and burning in the nostrils. Companion
afflictions set in, like twitchings and cramps of the facial muscles,
eruptions on the skin, swellings, and a whole list of other disorders.
To these bodily woes are added mental depression, life becomes a
burden, and the sufferers are sometimes tempted to suicide.

This neuralgia may arise from a variety of causes ; from a cold,
an unsound tooth, from general sickness, or from debility or ex-
haustion. It is sometimes connected with disorders of remote
organs, as of the digestive system, and by reflex action from pains
prevailing there.

Sciatica, or hip-gout, is another frequently occurring neural-
gia, which has its seat in the hip-nerve and its branches, and is
thence transmitted through the whole lower part of the system,
from the pelvis to the toes. The pain is usually confined to cer-
tain points, and rises on motion, and often at night, to great
heights. It is a disease of middle age, prevailing with men and
women, and originates from a variety of causes. The hip-nerve is
exposed by its situation to be easily injured by cold and accidents ;
and the affection is often brought on from stagnation of blood,
disorders of the lower body, and internal diseases. It is very per-
sistent, and may interfere with business activity and occasion
sickness through many years.

These diseases are cited as examples. Many other nerves are
the seat and starting-points of pains which after long continuance
give rise to an exaggerated sensitiveness of the whole nervous sys-
tem, to increased acuteness in all the nervous regions, by which
sound thought and feeling are deeply disturbed. It is evident

THE SENSATIONS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 245

that full attention should be given at once to nervous pains and
the means of counteracting them. First, every pernicious influ-
ence which may directly exert an irritating influence upon the
nerves should be removed ; then the remote causes which mani-
fest themselves by nervous pains should be dealt with.

The removal of a decayed tooth may cure a face-pain at once
and forever ; taking away a body pressing upon the hip-nerve
may be a complete remedy for a sciatica. Like ends may be
reached in other cases by a regulated way of living which will
lead to improved digestion and a more healthy circulation. The
simple operation of an aperient, as I have had occasion to observe
at Marienbad, has sometimes at once alleviated nervous pains
that had defied every sort of treatment for years. Yet we do not
always succeed in elucidating the causes of such troubles and
removing them.

In such case the task of the physician, seeking to alleviate the
pain, is to reduce the sensitiveness of the nerves. Sometimes he
seeks to attain that object by applying counter-irritants on the
skin along the course of the nerve or in its neighborhood. Of
such are mustard-plasters, Spanish flies, burning, and dry cupping.
Electrical treatment constitutes one of the most important appli-
cations for curing sick nerves. With alleviation of the pain,
weakening of the attacks, and quieting of the nervous excite-
ment, it also often induces improvement and cure in desperate
cases. The same is also frequently accomplished by the use of
warm baths, such as may be had at many natural thermal springs,
sulphur, and other medical baths. Sometimes, when the pains
are refractory to the application of heat, cold baths, washing and
rubbing are of effectual service ; and the cold-water method not
rarely achieves real triumphs in cases of long standing, particu-
larly when the neuralgia is the result of a cold, and it is desired,
by hardening the organs of the skin, to make them less sensitive
to changes of weather. Local applications of cold in the shape of
ice-bags, cold poultices, etc., afford effective means of reducing
the supersensitiveness of a nerve. Sometimes drugs are neces-
sary which have the property when introduced into the blood of
increasing or reducing the power of feeling. These remedies are
applied outwardly or inwardly, and many of them have been
known from ancient times. Narcotics taken inwardly, like opium
and morphine, should be used with great care, and reluctantly.
Beneficial and even indispensable as may be the pain-stilling and
quieting operation of these drugs, it must not be forgotten that
the human organization easily accustoms itself to them, so that
ever more frequent application and larger doses of them are de-
manded, and, at last, bodily disease and mental disorder are
brought on through the general poisoning they occasion. The

246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

moment when a man afflicted with neuralgia receives the mor-
phine injection for the first time, to free himself temporarily from
pain, may be decisive for his whole future life. It soon happens
that the anodyne is resorted to, not merely for unendurable nerv-
ous attacks, but for every little discomfort, care, and grief, so
that the veil of f orgetfulness may be drawn over the unpleasant-
ness and the pressure of the unwelcome reality may pass away in
dreaminess. Thus the unhappy man sinks from step to step in
the slough of opium-poisoning, from which deliverance is possible
only rarely and with difficulty. Energy, the power of resistance,
the sense of duty and pleasure in action are lost, and he becomes
a physical wreck ; indolent and indifferent, timid and uneasy,
emotional and excitable, the unhappy man presents the most
critical symptoms of what is called "morphinism." Similarly
terrible consequences follow the habitual use of other quieting
drugs, including the preparations of cocaine. Those, therefore,
who suffer from nervous disorders can not be too earnestly warned
never to use any such preparations, except in extreme cases, by
the prescription of their physician.

Massage has recently played a considerable part among the
remedies applied for the removal of nervous pains. Good effects
are.obtained in neuralgias which originate from colds or stagnation
of the blood by means of the kneading and the muscular exercises
which are implied in this term. The structures in which the dis-
ordered nerves branch out should be worked in all directions,
but only by experienced, intelligent hands — with pressure, rub-
bing, kneading, shaking, and moving, in order to remove the dis-
turbance. Rough handling by awkward persons, such as those
to whom the process is too often intrusted, may do more harm
than good. Health gymnastics is included among the movement
cures which are resorted to for the alleviation of nervous pains.
In many cases, too, the opposite course — complete rest — is pre-
scribed for quieting the excited nervous system, for the reduction
of oversensitiveness.

In desperate cases, where medicines and mechanical applications
have failed, surgical operations are called in, to remove the pain
by severing the nerves. The results which have been often at-
tained by this operation justify its application.

The best protection against nervous disorders is found in spar-
ing the nervous force ; in avoiding overexertion of body and mind ;
in systematic practice of bodily exertion and muscular exercise ; in
a wise alternation of work and recreation, and in hardening the
power of resistance of the body and steeling that of the mind ; in
everything that can protect our emotional nature against degener-
ating into sentimentality, our feeling into tenderness. — Translated,
for the Popular Science Monthly from Di,e Oarienlaube.

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE GREAT DESERT. 247

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE GREAT DESERT.

By WILLIAM MAKSHALL.

THE surface of the earth, with its division of land and water
its diversities of climate, and its various elevations, offers
to the world of plants as well as to animals a complexity of life-
conditions to which their organisms are compelled to adapt them-
selves if they would even exist.

Few regions exhibit to so large an extent such even, uniform,
and original character, as that vast desert expanse which stretches
through southern Arabia and northern Africa from the Persian
Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean. This uniformity is the result of the
correspondence of the desert tract with the same degrees of lati-
tude, and of its never departing from the subtropical regions.
Since, also, the elevation of the land seldom greatly exceeds
3,000 feet, the temperature conditions, however much they may
vary in single places in the course of a day, are as a whole more
uniform than they would be in a similar tract running north and
south, and marked by important elevations. The midday heat
in the desert rises to over 120° Fahr., while at night the cold, in
consequence of the rapid radiation, sometimes makes itself very
unpleasantly felt, and in winter descends below the freezing-point.
More unfavorable to the development of animal life than the
temperature is the want of water, both running and standing, as
well as the absence of rain and dew. Sufficient water and a thin
surface soil are found only in the oases, which exercise an in-
fluence over the distribution of life like that of the presence
of the numerous islands in the great ocean. Even including the
oases, vegetation is very scanty ; the immense territory of .the
Sahara, with an area of upward of 2,500,000 square miles, harbors
only 5G0 species of plants ; while the Japanese Islands, having only
one seventeenth the area, 150,000 square miles, support not less than
2,745 species. Most of the desert vegetation is deficient in quality
as well as quantity ; the plants are sparse, generally small, with
inconspicuous gray leaves, and often covered with sand. Many
plants that are usually annual develop, under the influence of
life in the desert, long roots reaching down to the ground water,
and become perennial. Monocotyledonous plants are represented
only by dry, tough grasses, like the esparto, and by a few palms
in the oases. Woods, the chief resorts of animal life, are wanting.

Most of the scanty fauna is concentrated in the oases. The
oasis of Bachariel, according to the French entomologist Lefevre,
swarms with insects at certain seasons, which would yield a rich
harvest to the collector if he would stay there long enough to

248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

secure the varieties. On the borders of the deserts, where the cul-
tivated land cuts into them, especially in the region of the Nile
Valley and the Red Sea, organic life is fairly well developed. The
broad valleys in those regions are changed after rains into green
meadows, and in January the perennial plants in every mount-
ain-clove and ravine are covered with foliage and flowers; and
annuals spring up, affording a luxuriant flora from February till
April. Day moths sport themselves, in few species indeed, but
in multitudes of individuals. Along with them buzz numerous
wasps and flower-visiting beetles, and in the oases the trouble-
some ants are associated with a series of insects whose larvae
are bred in the water. Dragon-flies appear in multitudes, often
swarming like locusts, and miles from the water, and myriads of
stinging flies for short periods make the sojourn of Europeans
intolerable. The pests of the home are here too, and vermin
that make life a burden even to camels.

Scorpions are plenty, both in the oases and the desert proper,
and spiders abound at the opening of the rainy season. Especially
is this the case with a little purple spider of a velvety sheen, of
which, according to Nachtigall, the people of Bournou believe the
red velvet of the Western countries is made. Little crustaceans
are numerous in the springs, and one species (Artemia oudenyi)
occurs so frequently in some of the salt lakes of Fezzan as to
serve, with the larvse of certain flies, as food for the people. Fish
are found in the ponds and underground springs; but the last
are individuals which have, as Carl Vogt has shown, only casually
reached the springs through underground channels from surface
waters ; for they betray no sign, either in coloring or the struct-
ure of their eyes, that they were ever accustomed to constant
darkness. Of double interest is a fish living in the hot springs of
Tofra and Lafra, in Tunis ; first, because it can bear a tempera-
ture of 167° Fahr. without injury, and also because it belongs to
a genus of which the other species live only in the sea. A few
small fresh-water mollusks are found here and there, and land
shells of a class which are capable of enduring protracted drought
in a passive condition, and reviving when it begins to rain, and
thus afford a remarkable example of adaptation to life in the des-
ert. Frogs and salamanders, which do not easily adapt themselves
to an arid environment, can not exist under the conditions of life
that prevail in the Sahara, not even in the oases. Some reptiles,
birds, and mammals fare better there. These vertebrates, in fact,
with insects, are the only animal inhabitants of the desert.

Nearly all these animals, from lions and gazelles to locusts,
wear the yellow color of the desert sand, verifying the phrase of
the Latin poet, " Flavce, lecenece arida nutrix " (" Dry nurse of the
tawny lioness"). The weakling is thus protected by a coat that

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE GREAT DESERT 249

withdraws him from the lurking view of hidden enemies, while the
strong beast of prey may conceal himself behind a rock, by the
aid of the color of which he can the more easily steal unobserved
upon his prey. Only such animals as fear no enemies display so
conspicuous a color as black. " What strikes the traveler," says
Carl Vogt, " when he comes to the desert from the coast, where
the greenness of vegetation predominates, is the absence of all
lively colors — of red, green, and blue, in the animals." The full-
grown ostrich is white and black ; it is so large and swift that it
has nothing to be afraid of but mounted men, and its food is not
of such a kind that it needs a protective coloring in order to ap-
proach it without observation. The great desert crow (Corvus
umbrinus), in which the negro of the Soudan perceives and wor-
ships his " uncle," is strong enough to keep off all its ene-
mies, and agile enough to seize its prey when it has once had its
eye upon it. The beetles, too, of the desert are black ; not the
"black beetles" of the Mediterranean region, but other kinds
such as often have bright colors or a metallic luster. Carl Vogt
asserts that these beetles are defended by an offensive odor or
taste, that they have highly arched wing-covers and a depressed
corselet or a withdrawn head, and can feign death when they be-
lieve they are threatened. "When driven into close quarters, they
become motionless, assume the likeness of the excrement of ga-
zelles or goats, and thus avoid pursuit.

The coloring of the other animals is often remarkably like
that of the pebbly sand. Those creatures — beasts of prey, rumi-
nants, and birds — which are not confined to the soil, but roam or
fly around, are tawny, but sometimes striped with different tints.
Fowls, larks, stone-chats, running and wading birds, do not form
local races with clear or dark feathers, and have not the faculty
of changing their color according to the background against
which they may for the time find themselves. Another rule pre-
vails with those animals which occur in districts of limited ex-
tent. The snakes and lizards of the desert, even when they are
of the same species, wear different vestures according to their
dwelling-places, while the colors of the same individual, of the
lizards at least, are themselves changeable. The proverbial cha-
meleon is not the only animal which is capable of unconsciously
adapting its colors to those of its surroundings. Eminently accom-
plished in this respect are the plaice, while our brook-trout, frogs,
and many lizards possess the useful faculty in a less degree. The
spring-tailed lizard ( Uromastix acanthinurus) , which Carl Vogt
observed in captivity, presented in darkness and the shade a dull-
gray slate color with indefinite blackish marblings, but when
exposed to direct sunlight became brighter and brighter, and at
last appeared of a dirty cream-color, with small, deep-black spots,

250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

resembling in its hues the fine desert sand mixed with black grain-
pebbles. Another lizard of the Sahara (Trapelus cegypticus) pos-
sesses the same peculiarity in a higher degree. The property of
changing color depends on the presence of certain dark cells in
the tissue of the skin, called chromatophores or color-bearers,
which, contracting, under reflex influences of the nervous system,
permit the full display of the ground-color of the animal, or, ex-
panding to a certain extent, OA^erlie it.

The power of changing color also exists in insects, but less
commonly. We more frequently find among them varieties which
are distinguished by constantly different but always protective
colors. Lefevre observed in the Libyan Desert curious praying-
crickets of the same species as to other marks, which were brown
on a brown soil, and a hundred paces away, on white fossil shells
and fragments of limestone, were correspondingly white. They
resembled the background against which they stood so much that
the French naturalist could not detect them except when they
moved. They had other peculiarities, among them wings so con-
tracted that they could not fly ; a phenomenon which is sometimes
met among insects and birds inhabiting large territories and isl-
ands where they are but little exposed to pursuit. They have dis-
used flight with advantage, for only a good flier can keep his
ground under the conditions that prevail in such places. A weak
flier would be taken by the wind and carried off helpless to de-
struction.

Sand-fowl (Pterocles) are represented by fourteen species. in the
Old World, and are spread from the deserts and steppes of central
Asia and India through all continental Africa. They visit south-
ern Europe as breeding - birds, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar
into the Iberian Peninsula. Their home is never in wooded
regions ; the more barren, stony, and arid the land, the less the
extent of water and swamps, or contrast of mountain and valley,
the more agreeable it is to them. In such regions live these mod-
est birds, on the little which the land affords them, often on the
sparse halfa grass ; yet they can be found in coveys of hundreds,
in places where it seems a puzzle how anything can live. Only
ability to move speedily from place to place can make this pos-
sible. None but accomplished fliers can exist under such circum-
stances, and then when gathered in large groups. " It is easy for
them," says Brehm, who has observed them more closely than any
other naturalist, " to execute a flight, before going to sleep, which
would appear to us equal to a day's journey or more." At breed-
ing-time the coveys separate into pairs, and live in this state for a
considerable period. When the brood is hatched they are still con-
fined to their household duties, and, not being able to roam around,
many suffer for want of the food which their narrow domain does

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE GREAT DESERT. 251

not afford. Life in the desert is, therefore, one of the factors by
which the sand-fowl is forbidden the polygamy affected by other
members of the gallinaceous family. Scarcity of food also affects
the life of these birds by adding to their hours of labor ; for they
require more time to find the quantity of food they need than
other birds whose tables are more richly furnished, and may often
be seen, when the moon is shining, active during a part of the
night.

Their plumage is strikingly like the soiL of their home, though
I doubt if they are aware of the value of the feature, as Brehm
believes. The squatting attitude and the stillness they assume
when they believe themselves in danger are probably only in-
stinctive. Bitterns in like manner resemble in plumage, and in
the position they assume when they perceive anything suspicious,
the old reeds and bushes on the shore. I have observed the same
changes in captive birds when suddenly frightened, and when it
can not be of any use to them. It is an involuntary reflex action,
like the bristling of the hair and the exposure of the teeth in
angry dogs.

With extraordinarily acute sight and hearing joined to a great
power of flight, the sand-fowl is little exposed to danger, except
when a desert fox or fennec succeeds in stealing upon a covey at
their noon-rest, or at night, and snapping up one or two of the
number.

This animal, which is a little larger than a cat, is a true child
of the desert, and is represented by local varieties through all
Africa. Its color is the characteristic yellow of the desert ; it has
a fine growth of hair on the paws, which prevents its sinking in
the fine sand and muffles the sound of its footsteps. The most
striking of the features that have adapted it to its abiding-place
and its way of life is in a certain sense the complement of its soft
foot — a very sharp organ of hearing, the sound-catching outer
part of which is unusually large. Its eye is not adequate to per-
ceive its favorite prey, so well protected by its color ; and there is
a limit to the development of the organ of sight in an animal
which, while it does not shun the day, is eminently nocturnal ;
and, as is often the case, another sense, that of smell, comes in,
besides the hearing, to take the place of sight. Hearing is the
night-sense ; and the fennec can hear the slightest movement of
the sleepy khata (Pterocles alchata) at distances almost incredible
to men, and slip upon its prey with noiseless steps. Then a leap,
and one of the little sleepers, before it is aware of what has
taken place, has breathed out its arduous but not unpoetic life ;
while its companions rush away affrighted, with loud cries of
"khadda, khadda ! " — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly
from Daheim.

25 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO AS A NATURALIST.*

By Peof. EMIL DU BOIS-KEYMOND.

TT is one of the lamentable consequences of the rapid expansion
-A- of human knowledge in this century that, while the power of
comprehension and the adaptability of individuals continue essen-
tially the same, the division of knowledge and mental labor is
ever increasing. The paths which scholars and investigators fol-
low are constantly becoming narrower, tending toward more con-
tracted goals, and more distinctly separated ; and in our histori-
cal view of recent times we regretfully miss such Briarean giants
as he whose memorial day we are celebrating. Men like Leibnitz
not only give by their wide vision and comprehensive power a
conception of the human intellect in its highest manifestations ;
not only does a mutual fructification of different departments of
knowledge take place in their minds through the meeting of differ-
ent views ; not only do they form, like an academy, a bond of
union between accomplished labors in widely separated regions of
knowledge ; but, while they extend its efficacy in many directions
more accessible to the common people, they create a wider par-
ticipation in it than had formerly been given. In their person,
mankind honors science ; and they therefore endure in the general
recollection as memorial stones of human progress after the waves
of oblivion have long surged over the names of the makers of the
most meritorious single investigations. Let us not delude our-
selves. The only member of the Physico-mathematical Section of
the Academy to whom a public monument has been erected, Alex-
ander von Humboldt, owes that distinction not to the professional
efforts by which his memory is kept alive in these halls, but to the
grand recollections which his eloquent pictures of nature, the in-
spiration toward the true and the good that radiated from him, and
his incomparable world-survey, have heaped around his name.

A second member of the Physico-mathematical class is shortly
to be commemorated by a monument in one of the public places
of our city — a man who, while his fame can not be measured with
that of Humboldt, is comparable with that eminent prototype in
the universality of his mental interests, the diversity of his work,
and the place which he occupied as between two nations — our Adel-
bert von Chamisso. It is not, however, as a naturalist and trav-
eler that Chamisso is to receive a monument, but for his other
talents and excellences. We, his successors in this body, can not,
however, refrain from recollecting on this occasion the side by

* Address delivered in the Berlin Academy of Sciences on the anniversary of Leibnitz's
birthday, June 28, 1888.

ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO AS A NATURALIST. 253

wliich lie is related to us, although too early taken away ; he only
belonged to us for three years. Proposed by Alexander von Hum-
boldt and Kunth, he became a member of the Academy in 1835 ;
and then was removed by death, at the age of fifty-seven years,
on the 31st of August, 1838, the fiftieth return of which day is to
be celebrated by the dedication of his monument. Unfortunately,
we can find only the dates concerning Chamisso's election in the
archives of the Academy. Still more strangely, our publications
contain no scientific communications from him except a paper on
the Hawaiian language, which was read in the general meeting of
January 12, 1837, in which he describes himself as an old, sick,
and weary man. Yet he was able to look back on twenty years
of busy work, during which he left distinct marks on several
branches of science ; and it seems fitting to me to remind the pres-
ent generation of some of them.

In what ways and through what vicissitudes the French emi-
grant's son, Chamisso, rose and became a German poet and the
associate of the literary lights of his time is told in his friend
Hitzig's biography of him. The energy with which he pursued
literary art, when applied to the study of nature, laid the founda-
tion of a scientific career in which he became the academical
associate of Humboldt, Von Buch, Ehrenberg, and Johannes Mul-
ler ; and it is our purpose to enlarge upon this side of his life.

Chamisso's military career ended when in 1806 he went to
France as a prisoner of war in consequence of Hanelin's violation
of his parole. He formed connections there by the influence of
which he received a call after he had returned to Berlin to become
a Professor of Greek and Latin in the lyceum about to be estab-
lished at Napoleon ville in La Vendee. The call proved an illu-
sory one, but on his second residence in France he was drawn
into Madame de Stael's circle, and received instruction in botany
from her son, August de Stael. The name of the species Staelia,
Cham., in the order of the Eubiacece, commemorates the excursions
of this pair among the rich flora of the Lake of Geneva and at
the foot of Mont Blanc.

That this employment was suited to him will be evident when
we recollect how, when he was still a boy at Schloss Boncourt, he
" discovered insects, found new plants, and spent stormy nights
looking and meditating at his open window, and that all his plays,
his doings and undoings, tended to physical experiments and the
investigation of the laws of nature." It is, therefore, not strange
that he should have devoted himself with decisive earnestness to
his new calling. He returned to Berlin, and was matriculated in
his thirty-first year as a student of medicine in the newly estab-
lished university. He studied anatomy under the elder Knape;
and was not dismayed either by the dry lessons about bones which

254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the students facetiously called Knape's osteology, or by the unat-
tractive condition of the dissecting art at that time. Thus he
went, with a correct instinct, late but thoroughly, through anthro-
potomy, the true elementary school of biology. He worked in
the Zoological Museum of Lichtenstein, helped arrange the fishes
and crustaceans, and certainly heard Rudolphi on comparative
anatomy and physiology, Weiss on mineralogy, which was very at-
tractive to him, Erman on electricity and magnetism, and Horkel
on natural philosophy. We are astonished at what he must have
assimilated to himself during those three years in preparation for
his journey round the world, when we find how well qualified he
proved to be for every kind of observation on land and water.

While Chamisso's poems of the time of the war of deliverance
contain nothing of importance, the period was marked by his
most famous work, and one that has been translated into most of
the languages of civilization — The Wonderful History of Peter
Schlemil. In Schlemil, in his outer guise, Chamisso presented a
prototype in many respects of himself; and in the way that
Schlemil comforted himself for the loss of his shadow in striding
over the earth with his seven-league boots, " scaling its heights,
testing the temperatures of its fountains and of the air, observing
its animals and studying its plants, speeding from the equator to
the pole, and from one hemisphere to the other, and comparing
experiences" — this fiction is only a reflection of the longings by
which he was possessed, when, a French-German, or a German-
Frenchman, there was no place, no sword for him in the combat.
Out of the human tangle into the expanse of nature, the deeps of
science, was his solution of the difficulty. Sharp questions have
been asked concerning the meaning of SchlemiPs loss of his shadow ;
it is symbolical of Chamisso's loss of a country. The dream de-
scribed by Chamisso in "Schlemil" was soon to be fulfilled, but
not by means of seven-league boots. He was not permitted to
join the expedition of Prince Max von Wied-Neuwied to Brazil,
but Hitzig showed him a newspaper containing an account of a
contemplated exploring expedition of the Russians. A ship fitted
up by Count Romanzoff was to be dispatched to the south seas,
and was also to seek for a northeast passage from the Pacific to
the Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon's return from Elba had just aston-
ished the Congress of Vienna, and set Europe into a fright. In
the newly blazing war-fever, in which he would have to remain
an idle spectator, Chamisso's dissatisfaction rose to the highest
pitch, and, stamping with his feet, he exclaimed, " I wish I was at
the north pole with those Russians ! " The sagacious Hitzig man-
aged the affair with Russia ; and Chamisso, recommended by
Lichtenstein and other teachers, was appointed naturalist of the
expedition, and reported himself on the 9th of August, 1815, to

ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO AS A NATURALIST. 255

Lieutenant Otto von Kotzebue, commander, on board the Rurik, in
the roads of Copenhagen.

A happily decisive turning-point in Chamisso's career was
reached with this event. In these days of steamboats and rail-
roads, and journeys around the world in eighty days, we can
hardly conceive of the importance that was then attached to a
voyage like that of the Rurik, and how it would give definite
direction and working material to the traveler for his lifetime.
Ehrenberg, whose discoveries in the region of the minutest life
quite eclipsed his voyages, was a single exception to this rule.
The whole of Chamisso's subsequent scientific work may be re-
garded as the carrying out of what he began on this voyage. It
lasted three years, and led from Plymouth to Teneriffe, Brazil,
and around Cape Horn to Chili ; to Salas y Gomez, past the island
world of the south seas, to the Radak chain of the Marshall Islands ;
thence northward to Kamtchatka through Bering Strait into the
Frozen Sea and back to the Aleutian island of Unalaska, where
preparations were made for the polar voyage in the following
summer. In the mean time the expedition went south again to
California, the Sandwich Islands, and Radak ; thence northward
again to Unalaska, whence the attempt was made to penetrate
the ice. At this point the original and real object of the voy-
age had to be given up. Kotzebue Sound, Eschscholtz Bay, and
the Chamisso Islands are reminders within the Arctic Circle of
this abortive enterprise, of which the voyage around the world
was the only part realized. On the return the Rurik visited
the Sandwich Islands for the second and Radak for the third
time ; then sailed by Guajan, one of the Marianne Islands, to Ma-
nila, around the Cape of Good Hope, and past St. Helena, to
Europe. In London Chamisso met Cuvier and Sir Joseph Banks,
the companion of Cook on his first voyage. On the 3d of Au-
gust, 1818, the Rurik anchored in the Neva opposite Count
Romanzoff 's house in St. Petersburg. The expedition was broken
up, and Chamisso was left in possession of what he had collected.
He declined the invitation to remain in Russia, and returned to
Berlin.

Chamisso crossed the line four times during this voyage, ap-
proached both poles, and made himself at home in the wastes
where the ice rises to mountains, in the rude yurts of the tawny
fish-eaters of the icy sea, as well as in the palm-crowned splendors
of the tropics and among the airy huts of the graceful lotus-eaters
of the south seas. Including Europe, he set his foot on the four
quarters of the earth, and by a most remarkable coincidence went
over SchlemiPs journey ; and just as Schlemir's boots could not
take him over the wide intervening waters to Australia, Kotze-
bue would not venture to take his cranky vessel through the

256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dangerous Torres Strait, and Chamisso missed seeing the fifth
quarter.

Chamisso's voyage was very similar in its general outline with
the fruitful one that Darwin made fifteen years later. Darwin
was also naturalist on a little war-vessel dispatched on hydro-
graphic work, and the course of the Beagle covered that of the
Rurik in many points, except that it visited Australia instead
of the arctic regions, and Tahiti instead of the Sandwich Islands.
Darwin, according to his Autobiography, does not seem to have
been better prepared for his journey than Chamisso. He had never
dissected, and could not draw like Chamisso. In one point he was
better situated than our traveler : Captain Fitz-Roy furthered his
ends, while Chamisso's captain gave him as little attention as pos-
sible as a naturalist, and treated him hardly better as a man. His
collections were generally thrown overboard, and he had to black
his own boots. The Rurik having only three quarters the capaci-
ty of the Beagle, the limitations of space were extremely adverse
to collecting and observing. So much the more creditable is it to
Chamisso that he was able under so many difficulties to conceal
and bring home natural treasures of every kind, as well as to
make copious fine and striking observations in every conceivable
field. He has in this way enriched, first, botany, then zoology
and natural history, geography of animals and plants, anthro-
pology and folk-lore, geology and geographical physics with facts
of greater or less importance. In two points his observations
stretched over a wider circle than Darwin's — in that they extended
to the polar regions, and that he, paying more attention to anthro-
pology and ethnography than Darwin, studied the languages with
which he came in contact. The discomforts of Chamisso's situa-
tion on the Rurik were alleviated by the society of two men who
shared his scientific tastes. The Russian painter, Login Choris,
was ready with his pencil to fix any remarkable features of the
landscape or in natural history ; and the ship's surgeon, Dr.
Friedrich Eschscholtz, of Dorpat, was often an active, expert
participant in his efforts.

Like Darwin, in his Journal of Researches, Chamisso, in his
Voyage round the World, published his experiences, pleasantly
interwoven with scientific observations, upon which a series of
" remarks and views," in the third volume of Kotzebue's narrative,
afford a commentary. Chamisso's narrative, rich as it is in pleas-
ant details, lacks something that lends a high charm to Darwin's —
the thread of a general thought, which we may possibly see more
plainly drawn across his journal than he was perhaps conscious of
at the time.

Our present effort to distinguish Chamisso's more important
achievements is made difficult by his having permitted his energy

AD EL BERT VON CH AMIS SO AS A NATURALIST. 257

to be largely absorbed in details. It must first be recollected
that lie regarded himself as a systematic botanist. Shortly after
his return to Berlin he received a position as assistant in the
Botanical Institute — at first in the Botanical Garden, and after-
ward in the Herbarium — and filled that office till his death. He
also, at the suggestion of Minister von Altenstein, composed a
little botanical text-book for the use of schools, in the introduc-
tion to which he laid down his general views on organization and
systematics. A memorial of his botanical work was published
shortly after his death by his friend and former colleague von
Schlechtendahl, in Linnsea, in which, under the running title De
plantis in expeditions Romanzofiana observatis (On the Plants ob-
served in the Romanzoff Expedition), several of Chamisso's plants
were familiarly described. A modest plant of the family of the
unwilting amaranths (Chamissoa, Kunth) preserves his name in
systematic botany. His favorite plants were those of the water,
particularly the Potamogetai.

Chamisso's discoveries on the voyage began when he descried,
even on the English coast at Plymouth, a species (Centaur ea ni-
grescens) which had escaped the local botanists. In several places,
as at Teneriffe and in Brazil, he was pre vented from making im-
portant collections by the rainy season, and in Chili by the burn-
ing summer heat ; but he obtained nearly the whole of the flora of
the Radak chain, and the coast of California, which had been rarely
visited by botanists, afforded much that was new ; among others,
the papaver called after his fellow-voyager Esclisclwltzia calif or-
nica, the seeds of which he brought home with him, and the brill-
iant flowers of which still adorn our gardens. The islands of the
Arctic Ocean, between America and Asia, furnished a rich spoil
in their Alpine flora, which strongly reminded him of the Alpine
meadows of Switzerland. So sharp and skilled had his vision
become, which he had begun to train to the observation of natu-
ral objects three years before his journey, that, botanizing on Ta-
ble Mountain at the Cape of Good Hope with Mundt, of Berlin,
who was sojourning there, he found, as at Plymouth, several
plants that had until then escaped notice.

Schlechtendahl can not sufficiently praise the magnanimous un-
selfishness with which Chamisso, after his return home, surren-
dered his specimens to be examined by other botanists who seemed
better fitted by their studies to that work. Thus, he sent to the
Swedish algologue, Agardh, a collection of alg£e, among which
was a rare double form found at the Cape, a living fucoid (F. con-
fervicola or Sphairococcus) on a conferva (C. mirabilis or hospiia).
Agardh, who was a little too earnest a transformist, and believed
that certain algse could become animals, imagined that in this
case the one form was changed into the other — a view which, true

VOL. XXXVIII. — 18

258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to his -well-matured principles, Chamisso contested in a special
memoir.*

As a reward for his earnest exertions, and also as a warning
against too narrowly limiting the circle of possibilities in organic
nature, Chamisso himself was destined to make one of the most
remarkable discoveries in the region of metamorphism. This was
in the case of the Salpce,, those soft, transparent organisms which,
clinging to one another, swim over the sea in chains of from
twenty to forty members. Besides the chains there are individual
salpse, but of two kinds, one of which bear traces in their organs
of adherence of having been members of a chain, while the others
do not. During a calm, on the voyage from Plymouth to Ten-
eriffe, Chamisso made the surprising observation that the indi-
vidual salpse which have never belonged to a chain bear a progeny
resembling the chain salpse ; while he found in the members of a
chain young of forms agreeing with those of the single salpa.
The salpse of the chain, which produce single salpse, are hermaph-
rodite; the single salpse are asexual, and the chains are devel-
oped in them without fertilization, by inner budding. They
thus alternate every two generations, one of which is sexual, and
the other asexual and propagating itself by budding ; and they
are distinguished by other marks. To use Chamisso's figure, a
salpa does not resemble its mother or its daughter, but its grand-
mother, its sisters, and its aunts. Chamisso called this kind of
propagation that by alternating generations. So new and unpre-
cedented was this discovery that, although Chamisso related it
after his return in 1819, in a special Latin publication,! it either
passed unheeded, or was stamped upon. But there came to Copen-
hagen, in 1842, a defender and champion of Chamisso's fame in J.
Steenstrup, who discovered that the process of propagation by
alternating generations such as Chamisso described was common
to a series of organisms, including the Medusae, and Strobilce, the
Cercarice. and Distomce,, and the aphides or plant-lice, to which
many others have since been added ; so that the whole matter
was cleared up in a trice. Johannes Miiller's famous discoveries
concerning the development of the echinoderms furnish a tran-
sition between the phenomena of alternation and those of meta-
morphosis as illustrated in the frogs and butterflies. The honor
of having led the way to these discoveries belongs, as Steenstrup
has expressly declared, to the accurate and ingenious investigator
Chamisso. f

* Ein Zweifel und Zwci Algen (One Doubt and Two Sea-weeds), 1829.

f De animalibua quibusdam c classe vermium Linnaeana in circumnavigatione terra
. . . obscrvatis, etc. (On Certain Animals of the Linnsean Class of Worms observed in the
Circumnavigation of the Earth.) Fasc. 1, De Salpa. Berlin, 1S19.

\ Steenstrup on Alternating Generations. Copenhagen, 18-12.

ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO AS A NATURALIST. 259

Another important subject, with the discussion of which Cha-
misso was associated, likewise relates to the pelagic fauna, but also
belongs as much to geology and physical geography as to biology.
It is that of the origin of the co-called sunken islands or atolls of
the south seas and the Indian Ocean. It has been recognized
from the first that these islands are the work of organic architects,
the coral polyps, which absorb lime from the sea-water and build
their oceanic castles with it.

After Johann Reinhold's theory that the ring-walls were built
by the polyps from the depths of the ocean, and Henrik Steff ens's
hypothesis of submarine craters, came Darwin's celebrated theory,
which supposed that the corals were built upon a substructure
already existing in the ocean-bottom which gradually subsided
under a continuous volcanic action so as to keep the rising struct-
ure at about the same level ; and after that the contradiction of it
by Murray and Wyville Thomson, on the basis of observations
made during the Challenger Expedition, which pointed to a rise
of the substructure. Here comes in a fundamental observation
with which Chamisso's name has been associated, to the effect that
the coral animals, never moving away from the one spot to which
they attach themselves, need a stirring sea to bring them food,
oxygen, and lime. Hence an atoll will rise wherever there is a
suitable foundation, at not too great depth, on which the polyps
can fix themselves ; and as they thrive better on the edge of their
ring, where they are favored by wave-beats and currents than in
the middle, a ring- wall will rise, which should be higher, as is
the case, on the windward side, where the wave-motion is strong-
est. These facts have been put prominently forward in all the
discussions that have been had on the subject ; and Chamisso has
been credited with having been the first person who observed and
mentioned them. I am obliged to disclaim Chamisso's title to
this honor. The observation was first ascribed to Chamisso by
Darwin, who says, in his Coral Reefs, " The larger kinds of corals,
' which form rocks measuring several fathoms in thickness,' pre-
fer, according to Chamisso, the most violent surfs"; and from
Darwin's it has passed into other works. A study of Chamisso's
writings will show that, while he acccurately examined and de-
scribed the atolls petrographically, geognostically, and zoologi-
cally, he never made that remark. Darwin's mistake originated
in his attributing to Chamisso a remark which appears at the end
of the third volume of Kotzebue's First Voyage (containing also
Chamisso's Remarks and Observations), in an Appendix from
other Authors, which, there is abundant evidence to show, was
made not by him but by Eschscholtz.

" The coral reefs and islands of the great ocean," says Chamisso
in Ansichten von der Pflanzenkunde und dem Pflanzenreiche,

260 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" are as much products of animal life as the peat-bogs are prod-
ucts of vegetable life." We get an idea of the comprehensiveness
of his view of Nature when we consider the attention he gave,
soon after his return from the voyage around the world, to so
comparatively insignificant objects as the North German peat-
bogs. The opinion, based upon an observation of Alexander von
Humboldt, then prevailed, and was held by Leopold von Buch,
that such bogs as that of Linum, near Berlin, contained remains
of a sea-weed (Fucus saccharinus), and were, therefore, to be
regarded as of marine origin. After an examination, which he
began at Linum with Poggendorff and Friedrich Hoffmann, and
continued alone at Riigen and along the Baltic coast, Chamisso
supplied the proof that the sea had had no part, either in the
interior or on the coast, in the formation of peat, and that no
change in the relative level of land and water need be supposed
to explain the process. Chamisso saw again at the peat-bog of
Linum the Kimming, or mirage, which had prominently exhib-
ited itself to him in the high north. He attached to this observa-
tion a less known remark, which I recollect having heard in Paul
Erman's Lectures, that the mirage can be seen in vertical planes
on long, straight, sunny walls, like the old city wall of Berlin
between the Potsdam and Halle Gates.

Chamisso's zoological observations were by no means limited
to the lower forms. He regarded the vertebrates of all latitudes
with equally earnest attention — the flying-fish ; the birds that
rested on the Rurik ; the whales, which he dreamed of taming and
training to service ; and the sea-lions, through a bellowing herd
of which he walked fearlessly on St. George's Island. He made
profound psychological observations on the monkeys that were
taken on the Rurik. He also had an eye for extinct animals. A
tusk which was dug up at Kotzebue Sound was referred by Cuvier
in the Ossements fossils, on the evidence of his drawing and de-
scription, to the mammoth.

But, as we have already observed, Chamisso gave special atten-
tion on his voyage to the study of man himself. Of course, exact
observations and determinations of the physical constitution of
men coming up to present ideas on the subject were not to be
expected from him, although he collected skulls; and he must
have been overtaken many times in details by the growth of com-
merce in the last seventy years, and the more perfected methods
of research, like anthropometry, plaster-molding, and photogra-
phy. But he still stands the author who, through his distinction
between the two chief provinces of the great ocean and a separate
group of islands, first cast light on the mixture of peoples who
dwell in the island world. Thus, according to Bastian, the dis-
tinction of Micronesia from Polynesia was first indicated by

ADELBERT VON CH AMIS SO AS A NATURALIST. 261

liim, and, in the north, he furnished valuable data concerning
the relationship of the Asiatic Chuckches and the American
Eskimos.

The general result of his studies of history and nature, as he
expresses it, is again opposed to the views now prevailing, in that
he regarded man as very young on this old earth. But, although
his anthropological views seem to be in many respects antiquated,
his ethnographical sketches are of exceeding value in that he has
lovingly and carefully given us a vivid and picturesque view of
human conditions on the oceanic islands that can never be sur-
passed, for the simple reason that the original is irrecoverably lost.
With prophetic view Chamisso predicted the annihilation of this
endlessly charming culture by contact with the dreadful white
man — a prediction which has been already to a large extent ful-
filled. He knew well what he was doing when he described, drew,
and made memorable what he could of customs and usages, reli-
gious ideas and superstitions, myths and songs, costumes and weap-
ons, vessels and sea-tackle. And after his return he repeated,
impressively and loudly, the advice that the threatened treasures
that still remained should be saved at once. The poet is recog-
nized in the pretty parable in which he clothed his lamentation:
" All the keys to one of the most important problems which the
history of the human race in its wanderings over the earth pre-
sents to us are being thrown by ourselves into the sea of oblivion
at the very hour when they are given into our hands." Only in
very recent times, when it has become almost too late, have we
begun to move in the direction pointed out by his admonition.

Perhaps Chamisso was influenced by some of Rousseau's ideas
in his extravagant admiration of the handsome, happy, easy-going
men of the south sea islands, particularly of the Radak chain.
He had not words enough to praise the native nobility of the men
and the chaste grace of the songful women of Radak. He bitterly
condemned the silly arrogance of the sham civilization that called
these men savage. He contracted what by the taste of these days
would be regarded as a somewhat sentimental friendship with an
especially intelligent man, a castaway on one of the Radak Islands,
who trusted himself upon the Rurik to be taken to his home on
one of the Caroline Islands. Kaclu, as he was called, who, how-
ever, left the ship when it touched the Radak Islands for the last
time, plays an important part in Chamisso's reports, because he
was able to give him information not too easily obtained other-
wise on a number of questions, and Chamisso laments that he was
deprived by the separation of the opportunity of being further
instructed by him. Kadu rendered inestimable service in the lin-
guistic researches which Chamisso pursued with extraordinary
zeal and industry. Chamisso had a gift for languages, although

262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he could not learn Russian, which he displayed in the ease with
which he could come to an understanding with the men of differ-
ent tribes who came on board the Rurik. His Bemerkungen und
Ansichten contain full vocabularies of three Polynesian dialects,
among them that of the Radak chain, and proofs of the Radak
folk-poems, in which he found a solution of his own for the prob-
lem of phonetic transcription, which has been so much discussed
since his time. He continued these studies at Luzon, where the
Tagalic language (of the Malaysian group) had been reduced to
writing, and collected a Tagalic library, which he held as one of
his most valuable acquisitions. When his house at New Schone-
berg was burned in 1822, after the lives of his family, this Tagalic
library was the first thing he tried to save, and, to preserve it
from future dangers of the kind, he presented it to the Royal
Library. In unison with a conviction of the unity of the human
race, he also in philology believed in a single origin for all lan-
guages, in striking contrast, as Max Muller has remarked to me
in a letter, with his habit of emphasizing the specific in natural
history.

A linguistic episode which Chamisso relates is, perhaps, even
now of some current interest. The curious custom was in vogue
in Tahiti of (on the accession of a new ruler and similar cases)
extirpating words from the common (not the old liturgical) speech
and replacing them with new ones. About the year 1800, Tamei-
ameia, the King of the Sandwich Islands, likewise, on the birth of
a son, invented an entirely new language, and began to introduce
it. The newly formed words were not related to any roots in
the current language, and even the particles were changed. It is
said that some of the powerful chiefs, displeased with the move-
ment, poisoned the child who was the occasion of it, and what
had been undertaken on his birth was given up on his death.
The old language was restored and the new one forgotten, so that
Chamisso only found a few fragments of it. He learned just
enough of the Hawaiian language to enable him to speak intelli-
gibly with the natives concerning the most necessary matters,
but made no attempt to commit it to writing. When he came to
revise his Travels for a new edition, just before he was elected to
the Academy, the Hawaiian language had become one of litera-
ture, and the murder of a prince was not needed to deliver it from
an artificial rival. Publications enough had issued from the
Hawaiian press to make a fundamental study of the language
practicable. Wilhelm von Humboldt had begun, in the course of
his great work on the Kawi language of Java, to cast light upon
the Polynesian languages, when death called him away on the
same day that Chamisso's election came up. The latter now
thought he recognized a calling derived from his voyage and his

ADELBERT VON CH AMIS SO AS A NATURALIST. 263

earlier studies to devote his later efforts to making this field of
linguistic research cultivable. He undertook to learn the Ha-
waiian language from the books which he had at hand, and as-
signed himself the task of preparing a grammar and dictionary
of it.

We have thus gone around the circle of Chamisso's scientific
work. From a profusion of single observations, remarks, and
experiments only a small part of his peculiar activity can be illus-
trated here. Considering his activity as a whole, it must be con-
ceded that his strength did not lie in the direction of strict theo-
retical analysis. This is not to be wondered at if we consider
the condition of theoretical science in Germany at the time, when
it was just beginning to recover from its enervating entanglement
with philosophy. But the characteristic and really remarkable
feature of Chamisso's scientific activity is his power of embracing
the whole world of phenomena with the same love, freshness, and
elasticity — from the stone that rung under his geological ham-
mer; the hay, as he modestly named his dried favorites; the sea-
worm, which revealed to him one of its most wonderful mys-
teries ; to that noblest production of Nature, as man represents
himself to objective research, whether considered as a single
being related to the animals, as a tool-making, fire-using, social
creature, or, in his highest expression of speech. With sound,
lively sense, with always ready energy, Chamisso stands before
the things of Nature, exercises unreservedly every kind of obser-
vation, and forms his conceptions without prepossession and with
strict limitation to the actually known. He was thus, although
his monographs may have been overtaken or his general views
have fallen behind those of the present day, a complete naturalist
in the best sense of the word, and that at a time when such men
had to be looked for through Germany as with a candle.

Many of those who go by his marble image in the future will
recall " Peter Schlemil," u Schloss Boncourt," and Salas y Gomez.
A few will think of the botanist and ethnologist Chamisso, of
the salpse and the coral islands. Greeting from their inmost
hearts the few will bow to him who like him, in an iron age, and
in the midst of the striving after the real, have kept in disposi-
tion, fancy, and spirit a place for all that is of man, for the ideal,
and the beautiful. — Translated for The Popular Science Monthly
from the Deutsche Rundschau.

264

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE INFLUENCE OF SPENCER'S PHILOSO-
PHY.

[translation.]

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

SIR : Being a diligent reader of the review
which you direct, and which I consider
one of the best exponents of scientific prog-
ress, and spending a short time in this city,
I have read with satisfaction in the number
for August the article entitled Mr. Spencer's
Place in Philosophy. Only ignorance of the
influence which the scientific philosophy of
Mr. Spencer is exercising in the modern
world, and of the place which philosophy in
general occupies in the order of human
knowledge, could have permitted the editor
of the New York Times to question the posi-
tion which the superior intelligence of the
English philosopher has conquered.

While I do not know what the respond-
ents of the writer who calls himself "Out-
sider" have brought forward, and while I
have no books at hand and can only follow
the tone of your reply, I hope I may be per-
mitted to indicate a few of the points in
which specialists in different sciences have
been anticipated by Mr. Spencer.

When he wrote his Principles of Biology,
organic chemistry was in its infancy : Ger-
hart had not yet occupied himself with the
serial classification ; Kekule had not yet dis-
cussed the molecular constitution of the
carbon compounds ; and the mind of the
philosopher was still only occupied with the
application of mechanical principles. Never-
theless he was able to anticipate the true
function of organic carbon and the peculiar
chemical properties of nitrogen. Many
chemists were not agreed respecting the im-
portance to be ascribed to nitrogen in vital
reactions. But the inertness of that body ; its
strange manner of entering into combination ;
the inverse reactions which it provokes ; the
variations of its equilibrium with the pro-
portions in which it forms part of com-
pounds ; the different modes of its behav-
ior under the influence of electricity; the
personality, as we might say, which it pos-
sesses in every reaction ; and, especially, the
difficulties which chemists like Schoenbein,
Deville, Munst, Marcam, and Berthelot have
met in accounting for the method of its en-
tering into combinations to form vegetable
substances, now proceeding from the air and
now from fertilizers — all these features Mr.
Spencer's paper assigned to this body and
illustrated before chemical studies demon-
strated them. We will not concern ourselves
with the later spectroscopic observations, nor
with the discussions, of which the two very

different spectral systems that nitrogen pre-
sents have been the occasion, for they are
not in question here.

Until a recent date, chemists held to a
conception of the atom not widely different
from that which was accepted in the time of
Epicurus, and his atoms were identical with
those which Dalton conceived. But Mr.
Spencer, before William Crookes had re-
solved yttrium into its more simple com-
ponents, before he conceived the idea of
protyle, had spoken of the physical atoms
thai constitute the chemical atom.

If he who calls himself " Outsider " had
read a letter of Mr. Spencer's addressed to
the North American Review, which was in-
serted at the end of the first volume of the
French edition of the Principles of Biology,
in which he declared himself against the
theory of spontaneous generation, not only
as it then existed among students, but also
as Haeckel afterward denned it in his theory
of perigenesis of the plastidulcs, he would
have been convinced that the philosopher had
anticipated the results obtained by the latest
biological studies and the conceptions of the
chemists of to-day on the complexity of or-
ganic molecules.

Mr. Darwin introduced an epoch in the
history of thought. But, before the Origin
of Species appeared, Mr. Spencer had for-
mulated the doctrine of transformism in a
manner so universal that the truths demon-
strated by Mr. Darwin are seen to be a neces-
sary consequence of the laws of evolution.

The opinions of the philosopher on the
constitution and mechanical function of the
nervous system, as well as respecting the
office which is filled by the system of the
great sympathetic in the higher animals, oc-
cupy a distinguished place in modern physi-
ology.

In the subjective analysis of thought,
Mr. Spencer has reached a point that no
one had attained till his time; and his in-
controvertible criticism of the concepts of
Kant, and of the ideas of time and space, re-
veals a profundity of intelligence which was
not surpassed in Aristotle.

His social studies are instructive to the
statesmen of the present. Bis criticisms of
the parliamentary systems of Europe have
modified the ideas of political men. The
recrudescence of the military regime, with
all its consequences, was foreseen by Mr.
Spencer; the exposure of the absurdities
of much modern law making by constitut-
ed states is his work ; no one has demon-
strated as he has done the wonderful power
of individual initiative as opposed to the
Attila's horse of state intervention ; the

CORRESP ONDENCE.

265

force of German socialism as a consequence
of the socialism of the state imposed by
Herr Bismarck was foreseen and censured
by the philosopher. The New Toryism and
the Coming Slavery which he foresaw, al-
ready exist in Europe. The pernicious con-
sequences of protectionism, which have oc-
casioned great commercial crises in the old
continent, but which the United States have
escaped suffering only because the economi-
cal errors of the system are in great part
balanced by the magnificent political organi-
zation they possess and the conditions of the
environment and the ethnical relations that
help you, were all pointed out in the socio-
logical works of the philosopher. What
authority can be seriously opposed in this
day to the arguments of the socialistic party
in its contentions against the present organi-
zation of society, except we invoke the so-
ciological principles established by Herbert
Spencer ?

It remains, in concluding this letter, to
point to a fact which relates particularly to
my country, Spain. Before the doctrines of
the philosopher had spread among the Span-
ish thinkers, radical partisans had no faith
except in the processes of the French Revo-
lution and in the Declaration of Rights writ-
ten in the Constitution, the precepts of which,
however, were not complied with in practice.
But to-day, the radical Prof. Salmeron, as
well as the conservative D. Antonio Canovas
del Castillo, invoke only the principles of the
laws of evolution. In no other principle has
been founded the changed course of conduct
pursued by the eminent tribune, Don Emilio
Castelar, during the last fifteen years. I re-
main your obedient servant,

Gaston A. Cuadrados,

Pharmacist-major in the

Spanish Army in Cuba.

New Yoke, July, 1S90.

A DEFENSE OP MECHANICAL TEACHING.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Dear Sir : In the November Popular
Science Monthly I notice a letter from
Anna Chapin Ray in which some educational
methods, so called, are severely criticised.
While I acknowledge a certain justice in the
criticism upon the particular points cited, I
beg leave to suggest that possibly a closer
observation of school work might show rea-
sons for the line of action indicated in the
different instances. To designate pupils by
numbers instead of by their names does
seem mechanical, to say the least ; but when
we remember that a teacher has perhaps
eighty children, with a recitation period of
not more than thirty or forty minutes, and
when we also remember that it takes less
time to count eighty than it does to pro-
nounce eighty names, we can hardly wonder
that the teacher resorts to that means which
will secure her the most time for actual
class work. The teacher is not responsible

for being driven to this. School boards are
responsible, and we should understand that
it is impossible for any teacher to do natural
educational work under such conditions.

I have not yet considered the subject of
writing to the accompaniment of music suf-
ficiently to give a decided opinion upon this
question, but I think I can see that music
may be a means of obtaining certain desira-
ble ends in this connection. It may be the
means of securing regularity, precision, uni-
formity, and rapidity of action, and so may
be of value. It does not follow that, if
music is used as a means in teaching writ-
ing, those pupils who may become account-
ants should do their work to the accompani-
ment of music. The music is only a means
to an end, which in this case is skill in writ-
ing. If by means of music this end be at-
tained with a less outlay of time and energy
than it could otherwise be secured, it seems
to me that the teacher shows wisdom in
using it. As soon as the end is gained, the
means, of course, can and will be dispensed
with. Whether the use of music here be
judicious or not, I think that no one will
question the importance of securing uniform-
ity of action upon the part of pupils. In a
writing-lesson, as in other lessons, it is well
that the pupils all observe a direction at the
same time. If every child were allowed the
privilege of being a few moments behind
every other, your correspondent can see that
very little work would really be done. Con-
certed action on the part of children is de-
sirable ; by means of it the more impetuous
pupils of the class are restrained, while slow-
er ones are brought forward more rapidly
than they otherwise would advance.

Class interest, and indeed all social inter-
est, is based either directly or indirectly upon
concerted action. It does not render the
pupil less capable of acting alone when oc-
casion requires, and it does enable him to
adapt his actions to those of another person
when such adaptation is necessary, as we
find it to be more or less in all the relations
of life.

In regard to the book work, I can also
understand that a teacher might very wisely
take means to prevent the children from
anticipating the work on hand. If original
work on the part of the pupil were required,
it would be well that he should not make use
of the matter contained in his book, as the end
in view would certainly thereby be defeated.

Again, I should like to suggest that the
line of action pursued by the different teach-
ers in the different instances stated can not
possibly be considered as " methods " of in-
struction ; they are at best but crude plans
employed by the teachers for the purpose of
securing certain ends. Method in instruction
implies the uniform observation of educa-
tional principles ; while those plans men-
tioned very often illustrate in the teachers
an excess of that individuality which your
correspondent claims for the pupils. If the

266

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

child is to be individual in his actions, the
teacher should certainly be so. The fault in
the instruction in our public schools at pres-
ent, however, is not a lack of individuality,
but rather a lack of uniformity. If our
teachers depended a little less upon their
own individual impulses, and more upon the
recognized principles of education, we should
probably have fewer imperfect plans to criti-
cise, and would secure better results in our
work.

We have not to complain of a " craze "
for carrying methods to extremes so much as
a " craze " for individual prominence, which
results in somewhat absurd plans of proced-
ure that must be abandoned as soon as their
novelty wears away. Nothing will correct
this weakness so completely as the uniform
training of teachers in accordance with rec-
ognized psychological principles. When this
is secured, the observers of school work will
at least do teachers the justice to suppose
that they have excellent reasons for what
may appear to the uninitiated to be mere
erratic action. Yours truly,

Margaret K. Smith.
Oswego, N. Y., October 24, 1890.

UNNATURAL HEADING.
Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : In your issue of November appears
a letter from A. C. Ray, calling attention to
the method of teaching reading in vogue in
our public schools. To quote the writer's own
language, "Children are taught to read with-
out spelling, recognizing each word by its
appearance, and learning it as a detached
fact."

Your correspondent then goes on to show
the unnaturalness of the " natural method "
so called. Permit me to say that I person-
ally thank the writer for having had the
courage to bring this matter to the attention
of your readers. The present natural method
of teaching children to read is indeed an ab-
surdity, and it is difficult to understand the
reason and the authority upon which such
a system has been adopted.

My little girl is attending a grammar
school in Cambridge, Mass., which has the
reputation of being a very good one. My
child is in the fifth class, and I am informed
by the teacher that this class offers greater
difficulties to the average pupil than any of
the higher classes. Night after night I
have the pleasure of rehearsing with her
the writing-lesson of the day. Now, how
does the child learn to read ! The school
uses Swinton's lTistory and Geography.
From this book the teacher, no doubt acting
under instructions, reads daily with the chil-
dren, and then dictates to them the principal
words contained in the paragraphs they have
been reading. I beg to be understood that
the words are dictated and written by the
children as they are found in the text-book —

i. e., the verbs not in the infinitive mood, but
in any of the several tenses ; nouns either in
the singular or plural ; all in confusion. I
will give here a few of the words found in one
of the lessons : Sachem, aurora borealis, Chey-
enne City, arctic, eider-down, Phoenix, Indian-
apolis, Indian dialect, Latin language, French
or Indian, Greek language, German language,
Latin language, compound English-Greek.

It will be observed that these words rep-
resent a fine collection taken from several
old as well as modern languages. No expla-
nation is given by the teacher concerning the
derivation of the words; if she thinks well
of it, she will tell the children what the
meaning of such a word is, but all the rest
is a tabula rasa to the pupils.

No doubt some people will not believe
me when I assert that, though my child has
been attending school four years, has been
studying writing and reading for the same
time, she has never been taught the differ-
ence between a vowel and a consonant, and,
consequently, she is ignorant of the very
tools she is called upon to work with.

It seems but too simple a thing to call
attention to the numerous recurring un-
changeable prefixes, affixes, endings, etc. ;
such, for instance, as "ious," "ive," "able,"
" ation," etc., or to tell ihem that a certain
grouping of characters as a rule produces
such and such sounds, all of which would
materially assist the pupils and save them
hours of laborious work. But no, let them
grope in utter darkness and recognize each
word by its appearance ! If that is a correct
way of teaching children reading, why don't
you apply the same method to teaching arith-
metic ? As the English language contains
about forty thousand words, independently
of numerous derivatives, compounds, and
grammatical formations, the idea of teaching
children reading by recognizing each word
by its appearance is indeed absurd.

The evil effects of such a system are self-
evident, but the means of overcoming the
evil are not so apparent, and after a good
deal of consideration I have thought best to
apply to The Popular Science Monthly for
assistance. No doubt many fathers and
mothers will take a deep interest in this
matter touching the education of their off-
spring, and as it is useless for an individual
to go to the several school boards, laying his
or her grievances before them, I suggest
that through the agency of The Popular
Science Monthly an association may be
formed of such people as are interested in
the education of children; that the aim of
such association be united action to bring
sufficient pressure to bear upon the several
school boards to modify or abolish the
method now used in the public schools to
teach children reading, and to consider ways
and means to best accomplish this purpose.

I shall be glad to hear from other people
in this matter. Victor M. Berthold.

Cambbidgkpobt, Mass., October 27, 1890.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

267

EDITOR'S TABLE.

A DOUBTFUL PROP OF MORALITY.

VERY persistent are the attacks of
the supporters of an effete phi-
losophy upon those intellectual views
which are renewing the life of the
world and enabling the human mind to
shake off the burden of spiritual tyr-
anny. Some of our readers may re-
member an article which we devoted a
couple of years ago to a novel by a cele-
brated member of the French Academy,
M. Octave Feuillet, the leading charac-
ter in which was a young woman who
had been brought up by a philosophical
uncle in complete emancipation from
theological beliefs, and who took, in the
most natural way in the world — as the
direct result, we are given to understand,
of her acceptance of modern thought,
and particularly of the Darwinian theory
— to a career of monstrous and cold-
blooded villainy. Her uncle was a be-
nevolent old gentleman ; but the evolu-
tion philosophy showed its perfect result
in the niece, who had imbibed it in her
very earliest years. This fine example of
a " novel with a purpose " appeared first
in the columns of the Revue des Deux
Mondes; and to-day we find in the same
periodical no less striking an example
of a drama with a purpose, the author
this time being M. George Duruy, and
the title of his production Ni Dieu ni
Maitre. In this work the philosophical
and philanthropical uncle of M. Feuil-
let's creation is replaced by a father —
an eminent medical man — of similar
views and similar character, who has
brought up his own two children in
complete independence of priestly con-
trol, and who, in return for all the affec-
tion he has lavished upon them, reaps
a harvest of selfishness and ingratitude.
"Without being as utterly depraved as
the delightful heroine of M. Feuillet's
romance, they are mere creatures of
pleasure and vanity, and when their

poor father falls into ill-health and com-
parative poverty, instead of sympathiz-
ing with and aiding him, they have
nothing for him but complaints and re-
proaches. The uncle in M. Feuillet's
story and the father in M. Duruy's, it is
noticeable, are both physicians, these
authors paying the medical profession
the compliment of thinking that the
study and practice of medicine are par-
ticularly favorable to a philosophic cast
of mind. M. Duruy throws in an in-
teresting minor character in the person
of a smart young physician, who had
studied under the elder one, and who,
in the days of the latter's prosperity,
had become engaged to his daughter,
but who, having got possession of the
lucrative practice which the elder phy-
sician, through failing health, had been
compelled to hand over to him, throws
the daughter overboard without the
slightest compunction. This young man,
too, is offered to us as a shining example
of what free-thought means when re-
duced to practice. Tricked out as these
fictitious narratives are in all the graces
of style that literary art can command,
they are doubtless adapted to have an
effect on a certain class of minds. Rich
devotees of luxurious superstition will
be greatly edified by the demonstration
that not common sense but ecclesiastical
authority is to determine all questions
of education and conduct ; and timorous
souls in general will be glad to find that
they are justified in refraining from any
independent exercise of their minds
upon moral questions. Others, among
whom we count ourselves, find more of
"purpose" than of honesty in these
representations: to us they do not show
the true working out either of the an-
cient or of the modern principles of
morality, and we propose once more to
show why.

One fact is incontrovertible, let liter-

263

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ary or other reactionists say what they
will, and that is, that in a moral point
of view the world is vastly better to-day
than it was centuries ago. The world
has had its ages of faith ; the world has
now its age of comparative reason. If
we want poisoners who could outdo the
performances of M. Feuillet's young
woman in La Morte, we go to the ages
of faith, we seek them in papal courts
amid cardinals and their relatives. If
we want filial ingratitude in far more
hideous forms than M. Duruy has under-
taken to paint, the same society, in the
same age, will furnish it. The true
middle age is shown in the works it
has produced, in the Decameron of
Boccaccio and the Canterbury Tales of
Chaucer, in which lust and superstition
walk hand in hand. Charles Reade
has also given a powerful picture of it
in his acknowledged masterpiece, The
Cloister and the Hearth. Let any one
compare the condition of Europe at that
time with its condition to-day, and then
say whether the material, moral, and
intellectual interests of mankind have
not gained immensely by the emanci-
pation of thought and the weakening of
authority.

But if we look at the case presented
to us byM. Duruy in Ni Dieu ni Maitre,
we shall see how very ill he conceives
the duties of a really enlightened father
toward his children. His Pierre No-
garet. a physician in the very front rank
of his profession, with an annual income
of over a hundred thousand francs, has
two children, Maurice and Adrienne,
whose mother is dead. Instead of in-
teresting himself in their education, he
turns them over to hired teachers, and
never asks what progress they are mak-
ing or how their characters are devel-
oping. In a conversation between the
brother and sister, the former is made
to say : " I have grown up I don't
know how; no one has ever told me
what is right or what is wrong, and I
can't find it out entirely by myself. Papa
made me take up the study of the sci-

ences, but he never took the trouble to
see whether I learned anything, and now
there are moments when I feel that I
am not worth a rush." The sister has
very much the same account to give of
her education ; and both brother and
sister wrere brought up, as the story
shows, in very extravagant habits. Both
were launched into the world of fashion
without any effort being made to guard
them against the temptations to which
they were thus exposed.

Now why, we ask, should this be
offered to us as an example of educa-
tion upon modern principles? Why
should a man, because he has embraced,
let us say, evolutionary views, allow the
education of his children to proceed at
hap-hazard? Why should such a man
leave his children unprotected against
the seductions of a vitiated society?
Why should he allow their home affec-
tions to be weakened and stunted by a
senseless immersion in social gayeties?
If a clever writer wishes to do justice
to the great question which MM. Feuil-
let and Duruy approach in so partisan a
spirit, let him draw a picture of a man
who has discarded superstition because
of its demonstrated falsity, who has
embraced the principles and results of
science because of their demonstrated
truth, and whose aim it is to do in his
lifetime the utmost amount of good that
circumstances permit. Then let this
man have in conjunction with these
elevated views a certain amount of com-
mon sense. If he has children whom
he sincerely loves — and such love is not
an unreasonable postulate in a father —
let him recognize that, if they are to
dispense with the conventional aids to
right conduct, they must have others in
their place, and let him duly cultivate
their moral and emotional nature. Let
him refrain from placing them, or allow-
ing them to be placed, in circumstances
of too great temptation. Let him care-
fully guard against their becoming the
slaves of luxury and idleness. Let him
not give them as associates persons

EDITOR'S TABLE.

269

whose principles of action are the very
reverse of his own. Let him not be-
troth his daughter to an intriguing
jackanapes who avows himself destitute
of every principle save selfish ambition.
Let his love for his children be mani-
fested otherwise than by keeping up an
expensive establishment. If these con-
ditions be observed, we shall have a man
who, point for point, shall do just what
Pierre Nogaret did not do, and refrain
from doing what Pierre Nogaret did do.
And then let it be shown, if it can, in
consonance with recognized principles
of human nature, how such methods of
training and discipline lead directly to
ill-regulated and frivolous lives on the
part of the philosopher's children. Let
us see just how it comes about that nat-
ural affection dies out in the atmosphere
of such a philosopher's household. Let
us be made to feel in a powerful manner
the chasm that is left in the philoso-
pher's family life by the absence of the
priestly element. It is easy to make
men of straw and then knock them over
or treat them with any other indignity ;
but the task is not one that is worthy of
a literary artist of any ability. In M.
Feuillet's romance there was some at-
tempt made to show how the doctrine
of the survival of the fittest naturally
inspired thoughts of murder in the fe-
male mind. We did not think much of
the proffered demonstration, but it made
at least a decent show of respect for the
requirements of logic. In M. Duruy's
drama such show of respect is wholly
lacking. His philosopher entirely neg-
lects his children's moral education,
brings them up in expensive, luxurious,
and idle habits, exposes them to all the
temptations of a morally worthless so-
ciety, and then, when they have been —
not wholly, but largely — perverted by
the evil influences around them, we are
asked to lay the whole blame of their
perversion upon their father's hetero-
dox views, and to draw a sweeping con-
clusion as to the ruinous effects on mo-
rality of modern philosophy in general.

The unprejudiced reader will not
draw any such conclusion. The con-
clusion that may be drawn is that no
set of merely speculative opinions offers
any guarantee for satisfactory moral de-
velopment apart from a careful observ-
ance of the conditions on which the
formation of sound, moral character
depends. It is one thing to adopt
the Darwinian theory ; it is quite an-
other to know how to bring up chil-
dren: and some Darwinians, or alleged
Darwinians, make nearly as poor a busi-
ness of it as some clergymen. It is not
the mold in which a man's opinions
have run that makes him a competent
moral educator; it is the amount of
earnestness he throws into moral ques-
tions and the amount of practical good
sense that he brings to bear in order to
insure that the children committed to
his charge shall be well grounded in
sound moral principles and habits. The
son of M. Duruy's philosopher tells his
sister that if ever he succeeds in captur-
ing a woman with a big fortune and has
children, she will see how he will "stuff
them with religion." Alas! the recipe
is not a new one. How many children
have been "stuffed with religion," only
to grow up exceptionally bad ! The
children who do best are the children
of parents whose lives bear still more
powerful testimony than their words to
right principles, and who are not too
busy to take a constant interest in their
children's education, moral as well as
intellectual. To ask the world to go
back to mediajvalism in order to save
morals from destruction is asking too
much. That system has been tried and
found wanting, and the world is now
seeking another and a better foundation
for morals. Doubtless many rush for-
ward and grasp at the new opinions
without realizing all that they involve
and demand. The age is one of unset-
tlement ; but it is one, unmistakably, of
progress ; and when our methods of ed-
ucation have been adapted to the new
truths now in course of formulation,

270

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

there will be no reason to regret the
props and stays and leading-strings that
helped to steady the morality of the past.

EUMAIZ SELECTION.

We published in our last number an
interesting article under the above title,
by Mr. Alfred Eussel Wallace. Mr.
Wallace is much concerned over the
fact that modern sooiety is being re-
cruited chiefly from the ranks of its
less worthy members, and is thus un-
dergoing a constant process of dete-
rioration. Under any form of govern-
ment this would be a serious danger,
but, where democratic institutions pre-
vail, it forebodes, unless it can be ar-
rested, nothing less than social dissolu-
tion. The more favored classes marry
late, for the most part, if at all. Their
children are comparatively few. The
improvident and worthless marry early,
without the least regard for conse-
quences, and flood the community with
their degenerate offspring. That is the
situation as described by certain writ-
ers, and the remedies proposed are
many and varied. One writer wants
restrictions placed on marriage, whether
of a physical or merely legal kind we
are not sure. From the very careful
manner in which Mr. Wallace touches
upon this suggestion, we rather fancy
that something radical in the way of
surgery has been proposed. Another
authority, who ought to be better ad-
vised, wishes to substitute a very high-
toned system of concubinage for the
present institution of marriage, so that
the female sex may bo able to select
worthy sires for the children they are
disposed to bear. Another would have
premiums given to young couples of
unexceptionable strain, physical, men-
tal, and moral, so that they may start
early in life to contribute good citizens
to the commonwealth. Mr. Wallace
does not look upon any of these plans
with approval, and rightly pronounces
the second "detestable." He thinks,

for his own part, that we ought to have
an economically reformed society a lit-
tle after Mr. Bellamy's ideas, and that,
if we had, the women might be trusted
to take care of the future of the race.

If Mr. Bellamy had done more than
dream a very incoherent dream, we
might think that Mr. Wallace had
struck into the right path. We believe
in female selection as an influence des-
tined to be very potent in the future,
but we do not look to any such scheme
as Mr. Bellamy's to bring it into play.
It is being brought into play now
through the growing independence and
intelligence of women, and there is no
doubt at all that, as women are more
and more trained to practical usefulness,
not only in the family but in the busi-
ness world, they will consult both their
own dignity and the interests of poster-
ity more than they have hitherto done
in their acceptance of the married state.

We are not disposed to consider the
situation quite so serious as Mr. Wallace
describes it ; but doubtless there is some
room for apprehension as to the future,
and, if we might venture to make a sug-
gestion in our turn, it would be that our
troubles, such as they are, largely arise
from over-legislation, leading to a hurt-
ful decline in the sense of individual
responsibility, and from altogether too
weak methods of dealing with crime
and pauperism. On the former point
we have often dilated, and shall not do
so further on the present occasion. On
the latter point we may remark that
nothing can possibly be more obvious
than the necessity of isolating — perma-
nently if necessary— the anti-social from
the social members of society. In
dealing with contagious diseases we
carry out a rigorous system of iso-
lation, and maintain it just as long as
the danger of infection lasts. Crimi-
nals we imprison for a time, and then
turn loose to prey anew upon society and
beget offspring in their own depraved
image. Paupers and various grades of
helpless people we assist to support,

EDITOR'S TABLE.

271

without imposing any check upon their
reproductive activity. All this is very
foolish. A man is either able to main-
tain himself or he is not. If he is not,
and declares himself not to be by the
systematic acceptance of alms, then so-
ciety may reasonably declare that he is
not fit to found or control a family,
and he should henceforth be assisted
under such conditions and restrictions
as should at least prevent him from
casting new burdens upon society. If
we could stop our miserable political
(so called) wranglings long enough to
take a common-sense view of the situa-
tion and become really interested in
plans for its amelioration, the difficul-
ties would not be found at all insuper-
able. Fit for civil rights or unfit for
civil rights?— that is the question to be
applied to every member of the com-
munity. If we persist, through sheer
indolence and love for all that is paltry
in the rivalry of parties and the squab-
bles of public men, in according civil
rights to those who do not merit them
through an active co-operation in the
industrial life of the community, there
is serious trouble in store for us. "We
might as well voluntarily take diseased
persons into our households as keep
morally and economically diseased per-
sons on the roll of our citizens. What
the latter want is control and segrega-
tion at whatever momentary cost. We
simply recommend a quarantine that so-
ciety has the full right to exercise. It
would be cheaper at once to give ra-
tions to these people than to allow them
to subsist on occasional charity and oc-
casional stealings, while seriously inter-
fering with the hygienic condition of
the community, to say nothing of per-
petuating their kind. Just how they
should be dealt with when separated,
what work should be exacted in re-
turn for maintenance, what educational
measures should be adopted — these are
questions for later consideration. The
" human selection " that is required is
primarily a selection that will put aside

those members of society who in moral
character or in the power of self-help
fall below the requirements of decent
living. This can be carried out as soon
as we have sense enough to attempt it ;
and when once such a separation has
been effected, and we have no longer
in the heart of society a perennial
spring of baseness and incapacity, the
march of improvement in all directions
will be rapid ; while year by year the
burden thus assumed by the state will
diminish.

ANNO UNCEMENT.

We have the pleasure of putting be-
fore our readers in this issue of the
Monthly the first of a series of articles
which will give a comprehensive view
of the evolution of each of the great
manufacturing industries in America
since the time of Columbus. They will
be written in the popular style which
has always characterized the Monthly,
avoiding mere technical details and
wearisome columns of statistics. At
the same time, the writers have had
long acquaintance with the practical
side of the industries which they de-
scribe, and this complete command of
their subjects enables them to present
just those features which the general
reader demands. Mr. William F. Dur-
fee, who opens the series with an arti-
cle in the present number, is known to
the iron and steel men all over the
country as a man of wide experience in
the building and operation of iron and
steel works, and is at present General
Manager of the Pennsylvania Diamond
Drill and Manufacturing Company. Our
history of the cotton manufacture will
be furnished by Mr. Edward Atkinson,
who needs no introduction to the read-
ers of this magazine. Mr. S. N. D.
North, Secretary of the National Asso-
ciation of Wool Manufacturers, is the
author of our account of the woolen
manufacture. The development of glass-
making will be described by Prof. C.

272

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Hanford Henderson, whose illustrated
articles in the Monthly on the present
methods of this industry have been
widely read. Articles on the Siik, Pa-
per, Pottery, Shoe and Leather, Agri-
cultural Machinery, and Ship-building
industries will be furnished by equally
competent hands. In describing the
methods and the implements and con-
structions used in manufacturing, a pict-
ure is often better than pages of words;
accordiugly, this series will be fully il-
lustrated. For the account of the iron
and steel industry alone, sixty-eight en-
gravings have been prepared. It will
be one of the objects of the coming
World's Pair to show the most impor-
tant manufacturing processes of the
present day in operation, and for com-
parison with these the methods used
in other countries when Columbus dis-
covered the New World. In view of
the wide attention that will be thus
drawn to the past and present of our
great industries, we feel that we can
not. offer our readers anything more ac-
ceptable at the present time than the
series above outlined. The wonderful
increase in the quantity of goods that
one man's labor will turn out, the im-
provement in their quality, the reduc-
tion of the cost of manufacture together
with the steady rise in wages during
the period covered by these articles,
are all due to the aid which science
has afforded to the world's workers,
and this is only a fraction of the field
in which the influence of this great
agency is active.

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Principles of Psychology. By Will-
iam James. American Science Series,
Advanced Course. In two vols. New
York : Henry Holt & Co. Price, $6.

Piiof. James is Professor of Psychology
in Harvard University, and this work em-
bodies his class-room instruction in that sub-
ject. It is a large work. The first volume
contains 689 pages and the second Y04
pages. The type is admirable and the illus-

trations are fresh and well adapted to their
purpose. The author says in the preface
that he has throughout kept close to the
point of view of natural science. He re-
jects both the associationist and spiritual-
ist theories. His ground is that thoughts
and feelings exist and are vehicles of knowl-
edge, and that Psychology, when she has
ascertained the empirical correlation of the
various sorts of thought or feeling with defi-
nite conditions of brain, can go no further.
By attempting to explain thought and feeling
as products of something deeper, she becomes
metaphysical, and Mr. James claims that in
dealing with psychology he is strictly a posi-
tivist — indeed, this is the only feature of the
work for which he claims originality. The
author says it is " a mass of descriptive de-
tails running out into queries which only a
Metaphysics alive to the weight of her task
can hope successfully to deal with. That will
perhaps be centuries hence ; and meanwhile
the best mark of health that a science can
show is this unfinished seeming front." It is
thus seen that although Mr. James deals with
the science of psychology as a positivist, he
still has faith in metaphysics, and it is this
circumstance, it seems to us, that gives the
work its most characteristic quality. His
style, which is always clear and forcible, is
never so brilliant as when he is discussing
metaphysical questions. In stating the vari-
ous theories of the different schools of phi-
losophy he does not conceal his own prefer-
ences. Indeed, he is too much in earnest in
his beliefs not to be a partisan. And being
by descent both a metaphysician and rheto-
rician, while his science is more of to-day,
his inherited tendencies now and then get
the better of his scientific judgment.

In Chapter I, On the Scope of Psychol-
ogy, Mr. James limits his field of inquiry
by taking as his criterion of mind " the
pursuance of future ends and the choice of
means for their attainment." This view
answers his purpose much better than would
a nearer approach to the " point of view of
natural science." The scientific psycholo-
gist usually begins with the earliest phenom-
ena of consciousness and the first traces of
nervous organization, and uses his earlier re-
sults to explain the more complex phenom-
ena encountered later on in his inquiries.
But Mr. James is catholic enough to say that

LITERARY NOTICES.

273

" the boundary line of the mental is certain-
ly vague. It is better npt to be pedantic,
but to let the science be as vague as its sub-
ject, and include such phenomena [instinct-
ive and reflex acts of self-preservation] if
by so doiDg we can throw any light on the
main business in hand." He recognizes that
at a certain stage in every science vagueness
best consists with fertility, and quotes in
illustration the Spencerian formula that life
consists in " the adjustment of inner to outer
relations," which he says has done much
real service in psychology though it is
"vagueness incarnate." He further says
that "because it takes into account the fact
that minds inhabit environments which act
on them and on which they react ; because,
in short, it takes mind in the midst of all its
concrete relations, it is immensely more fer-
tile than the old-fashioned rational psychol-
ogy which treated the soul as a detached ex-
istent, sufficient unto itself, and assumed to
consider only its nature and properties. I
shall, therefore, feel free to make any sallies
into zoology or into pure nerve-physiology
which may seem instructive for our pur-
poses." The whole book, we are told, will
be more or less a proof of the proposition
that the brain is the one immediate bodily
condition of the mental operations.

Accordingly, Chapter II treats through *78
pages of the Functions of the Brain, and
Chapter III, of over 20 pages, considers
the General Conditions of Brain Activity.
These two chapters embody the latest as-
sured results of experiment and observation,
along with much comment and elucidation,
and are very interesting and instructive. In
Chapter IV the subject of Habit is dealt
with in a most practical and impressive man-
ner. The author supports his statements by
liberal quotations from Dr. Carpenter's Men-
tal Physiology. He closes with six or seven
pages upon the Ethical Implications of the
Law of Habit, addressed chiefly to the young,
and bearing on the formation of charac-
ter. Chapter V, on the Automatic Theory,
and Chapter VI, on Mind-stuff, are lively, con-
troversial, theoretical, all-sided, and strik-
ingly display both the author's gifts of ex-
pression and peculiarities of method. Be-
ginners are warned against several chapters
in the book as too metaphysical, the one on
Mind-stuff among them. If the trusting ne-
VOL. XXXVIII. — 19

ophyte could read this chapter understand-
ing^, it is hard to imagine the state of mind
produced in him by the concluding para-
graph, wherein all the points that have just
been so conclusively refuted are affirmed to
be, in the present state of our knowledge,
the only ground of a scientific psychology.
This backing and filling seem very odd in a
text-book ; but the author evidently can not
help it. His aptitudes and tendencies are
too strong to be vesisted. And perhaps this
non-committal, bantering, disputatious way
of presenting all sides of the subject is the
best possible one for the author's purpose as
a teacher.

Chapter VII, on The Methods and Snares
of Psychology, and Chapter VIII, on The
Relations of Mind to Other Things, are also
too difficult for beginners. They treat of
the " outer world of objects and relations to
which the brain states correspond."

In Chapter IX, on The Stream of
Thought, the author enters upon the expo-
sition of mind from within, or subjective
psychology. Instead of adopting the syn-
thetic method, and beginning, as is usual,
with sensations, he begins with the process
of thinking, which is treated analytically.
He rejects the idea that because sensations
are the simplest things they should be taken
up first, and affirms that " the only thing
which Psychology has a right to postulate
at the outset is the fact of thinking itself,
and that must first be taken up and ana-
lyzed." In this chapter he treats the sub-
ject of consciousness in a general way, and
in Chapter X he discusses The Conscious-
ness of Self. More than half of this long
chapter of 110 pages is devoted to Pure
Self, and treats of the Spiritualist The-
ory, the Associationist Theory, and the
Transcendentalist Theory. He winds up the
section upon The Soul Theory with the fol-
lowing words : " My final conclusion, then,
about the substantial soul is that it explains
nothing and guarantees nothing. Its suc-
cessive thoughts are the only intelligible and
verifiable things about it, and definitely to
ascertain the correlations of these with
brain-processes is as much as Psychology
can empirically do."

One section of this chapter treats of The
Mutations of Self, both normal and abnor-
mal. The abnormal alterations are classed as

274

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

— (1) insane delusions ; (2) alternating selves ;
(3) mediumships or possessions, and their
discussion is popular, anecdotal, and tolerant,
as becomes a member of the Society of Psy-
chical Research. Mr. James tries to inter-
pret the phenomena of mediumship. He
speculates on the brain-condition during per-
versions of personality, and says " we must
suppose the brain capable of successively
changing all its modes of action, and aban-
doning the use for the timu being of whole
sets of well - organized association paths.
And not only this, but we must admit that
organized systems of paths can be thrown
out of gear with others so that the processes
in one system give rise to one consciousness
and those of another system to another si-
multaneously existing consciousness."

Chapter XI, on Attention, discusses the
question whether this is a faculty or a result-
ant— a cause or an effect. The author accuses
the psychologists of the English empiricist
school, naming Locke, Hume, Hartley, the
Mills, and Spencer, of neglecting to notice it
at all, and explains the motive of this ignor-
ing by saying that " these writers are bent
on showing how the higher faculties of the
mind are pure products of ' experience ' ;
and experience is supposed to be of some-
thing simply given. Attention, implying a
degree of reactive spontaneity, would seem
to break through the circle of pure recep-
tivity which constitutes 'experience,' and
hence must not be spoken of under penalty
of interfering with the smoothness of the
tale." The following extracts from his sum-
mary of the chapter may be taken as a fair
sample of his style, and of his mode of deal-
ing with subjects.

Mr. James says that he inclines to the
cause-theory ; but he also says that, " as re-
gards immediate sensorial attention, hardly
any one is tempted to regard it as anything
but an effect." And, again : " Derived atten-
tion, where there is no bodily effort, seems
also most plausibly to be a mere effect."
And, again : " Even where the attention is
voluntary it is possible to conceive of it as
an effect and not a cause, a product and not
an agent. " Viewing it thus he says : " The
stream of our thought is like a river. On
the whole, easy flowing predominates in it,
the drift of things is with the pull of gravity,
and effortless attention is the rule. But at

intervals an obstruction, a se!-back, a log-
jam occurs, stops.the current, creates an
eddy, and makes things temporarily move
the other way. If a real river could feel
these eddies and set-backs as places of effort,
'I am here flowing,' it would say, ' in the
direction of greatest resistance. My effort
is what enables me to perform this feat.'
. . . The agent would all the while be the
total downward drift of the rest of the water,
forcing some of it upward in this spot. . . .
Just so with our voluntary acts of attention.
They are momentary arrests, coupled with a
peculiar feeling of portions of the stream.
. . . But the feeling of effort may be an
accompaniment more or less superfluous, and
no more contribute to the result than the
pain in a man's finger when a hammer falls
on it contributes to the hammer's weight.
Thus our notion that our effort in attending
is an original faculty, of which brain and
mind are the seat, may be an abject super-
stition. Attention may have to go like
many a faculty once deemed essential. It
may be an excrescence on psychology. No
need of it to drag ideas before consciousness
or fix them, when we see how perfectly they
drag and fix each other there."

Then, after this persuasive statement of
the effect-theory, he gives the other side a
chance by answering the question as to
" what the effort to attend would effect if it
were an original force." " It would deepen
and prolong the stay in consciousness of in-
numerable ideas which else would fade more
quickly away. The delay thus gained might
not be more than a second in duration — but
that second might be critical ; for in the
constant rising and falling of considerations
in the mind, where two associated systems
of them are nearly in equilibrium, it is often
a matter of but a second, more or less, of
attention at the outset, whether one system
shall gain force to occupy the field and de-
velop itself, and exclude the other, or be
excluded itself by the other. When devel-
oped it may make us act, and that act may
seal our doom. The whole feeling of reality,
the whole sting and excitement of our vol-
untary life, depend on our sense that in it
things are really being decided from one mo-
ment to another, and that it is not the dull
rattling off of a chain that, was forged innu-
merable ages ago. This appearance, which

LITERARY NOTICES.

275

makes life and history tingle with such a
tragic zest, may not be an illusion. As we
grant to the advocate of the mechanical
theory that it may be one, so he must grant
us that it may not. And the result is two
conceptions of possibility face to face with
no facts definitely enough known to stand
as arbiter between them." And he adds
that one can leave the question open, or let
one's general philosophy incline the beam.
In his own case, for ethical reasons unstated,
he sides with the believers in the cause-the-
ory, or that consciousness is a spiritual force.

The remainder of Vol. I is Chapter XII,
Conception ; Chapter XIII, Discrimination
and Comparison ; Chapter XIV, Association ;
Chapter XV, The Perception of Time ; Chap-
ter XVI, Memory. They are spirited and in
esting, and especially instructive to teachers.

The opening chapter of Vol. II is upon
Sensations, and discusses such general ques-
tions as the Cognitive Function of Sensa-
tion and The Relativity of Knowledge, which
answers the question whether our objects of
knowledge contain absolute terms or consist
altogether of relations. These sections oc-
cupy twelve pages of the chapter, and the
remaining thirty pages are devoted to The
Law of Contrast. Then follows the chapter
on Imagination, which contains an especially
interesting section upon the differences of
individuals in the power of imagination. The
work done in this field by Fechner and Gal-
ton is set forth, and Mr. James gives also
the results obtained from his own psychol-
ogy-students' descriptions of their power of
visual imagination. The entire chapter is
very readable, although less disputatious
than usual. The next three chapters are
upon The Perception of Things, The Per-
ception of Space, and The Perception of Re-
ality, the two latter being among those the
beginner is advised to omit on a first read-
ing. The chapter on Reasoning is popular
and entertaining. Of course, Mr. James in-
sists on the intellectual contrast between
brute and man, and does not admit any of
the instances adduced by evolutionists to
prove that the essential mental process in-
volved in reasoning is sometimes exhibited
by dogs and elephants. The chapters enu-
merated occupy 3S2 pages of the volume.
The next three chapters, occupying 200
pages, are upon Instinct, The Emotions, and

Will. There is a short chapter on Hypno-
tism, in which the various theories concerning
it are discussed in the usual vein. These theo-
ries are (1) Animal Magnetism ; (2) Neuro-
sis ; and (3) Suggestion, the latter of which,
Mr. James says, is quite triumphant at the
present day over the neurosis theory, as held
at the Salpetriere.

The last chapter in the book, on Neces-
sary Truths and the Effects of Experience,
is an elaborate effort to discredit all at-
tempts of the experience philosophy to ex-
plain the genesis of our mental structure.
As Mr. Spencer is the thinker who has done
most in this direction, of course it is his
especial doctrines that are first of all over-
thrown. This is done in the usual way by
means of half statements and unwarranted
assumptions. To gain his point he regards
the process of adaptation, which Mr. Spencer
calls direct equilibration, as the way of ex-
perience proper, the front-door way, but the
process which Darwin named "accidental
variation," and which Mr. Spencer terms in-
direct equilibration, he calls the back-door
way, and says : " Both these processes are of
course natural and physical ; but they bclony
to entirely different physical sphc?-es." (The
Italics are ours.) This is a pure assumption,
the contrary of which is made more and
more manifest as the observations of natu-
ralists are extended. Yet on this assump-
tion the meaning of experience is given as
"processes which influence the mind by the
front-door way of simple habits and associa-
tion " (the Italics are the author's) ; and back-
door processes are said to be " pure idiosyn-
crasies, spontaneous variations, fitted by good
luck to take cognizance of objects without
being in any intelligible sense immediate
derivations from them." It is in such ways
as this that Mr. James is able to be both
scientist and metaphysician, evolutionist and
anti-evolutionist, as the peculiarities of his
own mind determine.

A Text-book of Comparative Physiology.
By Wesley Mills, M. D., D. V. S.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp.
636. Price, $3.

Like the author's Text-book of Animal
Physiology, recently published, this work is
designed primarily for students and practi-
tioners of veterinary medicine. It is intend-
ed to replace the text books of human physi-

276

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ology, which such students have been using,
with something adapted to their special
needs. The physiology of man is so differ-
ent from that of most of the domestic ani-
mals, that books of the former class are
very unsatisfactory for the use of veterinary
students. Prof. Mills has accordingly pre-
pared a volume somewhat smaller than his
Animal Physiology, embodying the same
general plan, but with greater specializa-
tion for the domestic animals. The plan
of both books is thus described : " I have
endeavored to set before the student a short
account of what has been deemed of most
importance in general biology ; to furnish a
full account of reproduction ; to apply these
two departments throughout the whole of
the rest of the work ; to bring before the
student enough of comparative physiology
in its widest sense to impress him with the
importance of recognizing that all medicine,
like all science, is, when at its best, compara-
tive ; and to show that the doctrines of evo-
lution must apply to physiology and medi-
cine as well as to morphology." Its com-
prehensive scope and clearness of style make
it an excellent introduction to the study of
comparative physiology for the use of the
general student. The volume is finely print-
ed and contains 476 illustrations. Among
the pictures of especially wide usefulness
are several pages of cuts showing the ap-
pearance of the teeth of horses, oxen, and
other domestic animals at different ages.

An American Geological Railway Guide.
By James Macfarlane, Ph. D. Second
edition, revised and enlarged. Edited by
James It. Macfarlane. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 426. Price, $2.50.

There are three classes of people whom
this book is intended to serve: first, the
general traveler who is interested in the in-
terpretation of the various aspects of na-
ture ; second, geologists, and especially stu-
dents of geology ; and, third, those who wish
to know where useful minerals are likely to
be found. The body of the work consists of
lists of the stations on the railroads of the
United States, Canada, and Mexico, with the
name of the geological formation at each
place. The distance of each station from one
terminus of the road is given, and the alti-
tude above sea-level of most. Prefixed to
these lists are descriptions of the geological

formation " intended for railway travelers
who are not versed in geology." A multitude
of foot-notes give interesting facts in addi-
tion to the information contained in the lists.
To the traveler this work offers an opportuni-
ty to learn something of geology during the
usually tedious hours of railway journeys ; to
the geologist it will furnish aid in selecting
routes for geological excursions ; to the man
interested in the material development of new
regions it may serve as a key to the capabili-
ties of any given locality as regards products
of the soil and underground wealth. The
second edition, edited by the son of the au-
thor, contains twice as much matter as the
first. The editor has had the assistance of
the State Geologist or of some other gentle-
man well acquainted with the local geology in
each State. The lightness which the traveler
demands in what he carries has been secured
in this volume by the use of thin but tough
paper and a strong, flexible cloth cover.

Economic and Social History of New
England: 1620-1789. By William B.
Weeden. In two volumes. Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Price, $4.50.

History, which formerly chronicled only
the doings of kings and chieftains, and later
developed into the life-record of the state,
has now extended its scope to the affairs of
the people. Its field is thus made to include
a multitude of forces, individually small but
mighty in the aggregate, which have always
had a potent influence in shaping the courses
of nations and in causing the success or the
overthrow of rulers. Events otherwise inex-
plicable are seen to be natural sequences,
when the temper of a people becomes knor/n
as revealed in their conduct of commercial,
social, religious, and family affairs. Probably
no region with an equal length of history is so
rich in materials for a record of social life as
New England. The early New-Englanders con-
scientiously recorded their business and pub-
lic transactions, and complacently wrote out
their ideas and opinions upon current topics,
and later generations have proudly preserved
these memorials, nencc the wealth of de-
tail that Mr. Weeden has been able to in-
clude in his panorama. Among the impor-
tant institutions of New England to which
the author early calls attention are the
towns. These, he states, " were founded on

LITERARY NOTICES.

277

three leading principles: (1) Freehold land
regulated by the best usage of many cent-
uries. (2) A meeting, the local and social
expression of religious life and family cult-
ure. (3) A representative democratic gath-
ering, corresponding to the old folk-mote of
the Germanic races." We find town regu-
lations affecting all the affairs of daily life,
even some of the most minute and personal.
Many of them had to be repealed almost as
soon as made ; yet the fact that others were
allowed to stand and were tolerably observed
shows in the colonists a great reverence for
the wisdom of the majority. The ap-
proved method for dividing the land in a
town was that each grantee should have a
home lot near the "place for Sabbath as-
sembly," and a field for cultivation farther
away. There were also tracts for pasturing
the cattle in common herds. The holding
and transfer of real estate were among the
matters closely regulated. Dorchester, in
1634, enacts that "no man within the Plan-
tation shall sell his house or lott to any man
without the Plantation, whome they shall
dislike off." In Nahant, colonized by Lynn
in 1657, the householders are to have lots
of equal size, "noe man more than another."
The co-occupation of the country with the
Indians had its influence on the customs of
the colonists, and the trespasses which the
latter committed upon their red-skinned
brethren reveal some weaknesses of the Puri-
tans' character that their religion did not
save them from. Church and civil govern-
ment were closely interwoven. In Massa-
chusetts and Connecticut the franchise de-
pended on connection with the church ; on
the other hand, ministers were commonly
chosen in open town meeting, and marriages
were performed only by magistrates. The
trade in beaver-fur and that in cured fish
were of much importance. Permission to
keep taverns was voted as early as 1630, but
inn-keepers must not force meals at 12c?.
and above on " pore people." The sale of
wines and liquors was wholly prohibited in
the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637, but
the very next year licenses began to be
granted. Ship-building and commerce had a
rapid growth, and the colonial merchants
were soon able to build "fair and stately
houses." Many industries were early estab-
lished ; the first saw-mill was set up at Pis-

cataqua (Portsmouth, N. II.) in 1631. Grist-
mills were already in use. Nicholas Easton
established a tannery at Ipswich in 1634.
Goodman Fitt, a tailor, is empowered by
Charlestown " to set up a salt pan, if he can
live upon it, and upon his trade." In 1639
John Hull notes in his diary, " We began to
print at Cambridge." Iron-works were es-
tablished at Lynn in 1643, and at Braintree
soon after. Among the colonial laws none
seem now so quaint and preposterous as
those regulating manners and morals. The
" blue laws " of Connecticut are proverbial.
In that colony no food or lodging could be
given to a Quaker, Adamite, or other heretic.
Whoever brought cards into the dominion
paid a fine of five pounds. No one could read
common prayer, keep Christmas or saints'
days, make mince pies, dance, play cards, or
play on any instrument of music except the
drum, trumpet, and jew's-harp. Tobacco must
not be taken " publiquely in the street, high-
wayes, or any barne-yards, or uppon traine-
ing days in any open places." Massachusetts
made rules no less meddlesome. Sunday ob-
servance and economical dress were strictly
enforced. Class distinctions were strong,
and often caused much bitterness. They
ruled the seating of the people in church;
thus Stamford, Conn., in 1673 votes to seat
its people according to " dignity, agge, and
estate in this present list of estate." At
Saco, in 1669, two men were voted into the
first seat, and their wives into the third.
Tithing-men with long staffs, having a knob
at cne end and a fox-tail at the other, rapped
or tickled the sleepers in meeting. The
above is a sample of the material that fills
Mr. Weeden's nine hundred pages. Among
the other topics upon which he gives infor-
mation are means of travel and communi-
cation, agriculture, forced service of Indians
which was followed by negro slavery, cur-
rency of wampum, coin, and paper, priva-
teers and pirates, whaling, the East India
trade, the lives of notable men of the time —
such as Hull, the Pepperells, Sewall, Amory,
the Faneuils, Edwards, Franklin, and Derby
— and the effects of England's regulations
upon colonial life and commerce. The
sources from which Mr. Weeden has drawn
his material include the archives and pro-
bate records of Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
and Connecticut, manuscripts and newspapers

278

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the possession of various historical so-
cieties, the diaries of John Hull and Judge
Sewall, and various town histories and other
historical works. Numerous specific refer-
ences to sources are given in foot-notes.
Appendixes contain a list of prices of labor
and commodities in different years from 1630
to 1789, examples of early accounts, remi-
niscences of Samuel Slater, the first cotton
manufacturer in America, etc. An index of
fifty pages makes all the references to any
topic easily accessible.

Outlines of General Chemistry. By Wil-
helm Ostwald, Professor of Chemistry
in the University of Leipzig. Translated
by James Walker, D. Sc. London and
New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 396.
Price, $3.50.

This is a work on chemical philosophy
adapted to college students who have some
acquaintance with descriptive chemistry. An
especially notable feature of it is the pains
taken by the author to make his subject
plain, and to give the student just ideas in
regard to the relative importance and trust-
worthiness of the results which the science
has thus far attained. To this fact the large
size of the volume is chiefly due. As it is
not designed for those who intend to go into
the higher aspects of the science, the higher
mathematics has not been employed. An-
other feature of the work is the connected
account it gives of the discoveries of van't
Hoff in regard to solution and those of Ar-
rhenius concerning electrolytic dissociation,
made within the last three or four years, and
not yet generally recognized by English-
speaking chemists. The translating is evi-
dently well done, but the inconvenient Ger-
man style of index is retained.

The papers and discussions found in the
Circular of Information No. 2, issued by
the United States Bureau of Education in
1889, are especially valuable to those inter-
ested in the question of educational meth-
ods. In The Relation of Manual Training
to Body and Mind, Prof. "Woodward gives an
outline of the work undertaken in the St.
Louis Manual Training School. This de-
partment of Washington University has been
in operation nine years, and the verbatim
reports of parents show that the students

are not only physically benefited by this sys-
tem, but accomplish as much mentally and
develop greater zest for acquirement than
when trained merely in an intellectual direc-
tion. Dr. Harris, treating of the psychology,
gives his reasons for preferring the drill in
reading, geography, arithmetic, and espe-
cially grammar, to any discipline in tool-work.
He insists upon the distinction between
higher and lower faculties ; that " we do not
get at the true reality by sense perception
but by thought " — " man elevates himself
above the brute creation by his ability to
withdraw his attention from the external
world of the senses and give attention to
forces, causes, principles." The province of
the school, therefore, is to make the pupil
master of the tools of thought, to furnish
him " with means for availing himself of the
mental products of the race." Superintend-
ent Seaver gives, as a result of experience,
that " such instruction takes a strong hold
on the minds of a large class of boys who
are either not so well reached, or not reached
at all, by the subjects and methods of teach-
ing current in the older high schools." Other
suggestive papers are those on Psychology
in its Relation to Pedagogy, by Dr. Butler ;
How can Manual Training be introduced into
Ungraded Schools ? by Prof. Allen ; and The
State and Higher Education, by Superin-
tendent Campbell and Prof. Adams. The
discussions on the training of teachers and
on the value of examinations will tend to
alter the gauge of any narrow-minded edu-
cator who may read them.

A History of Education in Alabama, pre-
pared by Willis G. Clark, is the subject of
Ciruclar of Information Ko. 3, 18S9. This
is the eighth monograph in the series, and,
apart from its historical and local worth,
it is deserving of study as an exhibit of in-
tellectual growth remote from well-recog-
nized centers. The fact that Alabama has
possessed a State institution of learning for
seventy years, supplying from one of her
professors a President for Columbia Col-
We — the late Dr. Barnard— and that How-
ard College, in the same State, has furnished
Harvard with a Professor of Hebrew and
Assyrian, shows that the East and North do
not monopolize thoroughness in scholarship.
It is well to learn that " the Southern city
of Mobile, in 1S53, could boast of a public-

LITERARY NOTICES.

279

scliool system with methods as advanced . . .
and discipline as effective as in the justly
famed schools of New England." As early
as 1867 the public - school commissioners
acted in concert with the Freedraan's Bureau
to extend education to colored children. The
report for 1888 shows an enrollment in the
schools of 9S,919 colored pupils, with sala-
ries paid to colored teachers amounting to
$183,933.97. Among the State institutions
enumerated as educational is the Alabama In-
sane Hospital. The classification is scarcely
warrantable, although the leading forth and
restoration of mind rest on the same psy-
chological basis. The institution is worthy
of note on its own account. Under the care
of the distinguished alienist, Dr. Boyce, 1,01 1
patients are managed without mechanical
constraint, healthful and varied occupation
having been substituted for irrational con-
finement and isolation. This pamphlet is
fully illustrated with views of colleges, li-
brary, and laboratory interiors.

In the preface to A Report on Medical
Education, Medical Colleges, and the Regula-
tion of the Practice of Medicine in the United
States and Canada, it is asserted that there
has been greater progress in the direction of
a higher medical education in the year 1889
than in the preceding five years. Various
States have made obligatory a preliminary
examination of those intending to pursue
medical studies, and three additional States
have passed acts requiring, as a condition of
practice, evidence of graduation at a medi-
cal college in good standing, or, a satisfac-
tory examination by an authorized board.
Twenty-seven colleges now insist upon four
years' study and three annual courses of lect-
ures, while only four made such require-
ment in 1889. It is suggested that the
standard will be further advanced in seven
institutions by the provision of four annual
series of lectures. The total number of col-
leges now in existence in the United States
and Canada is given as one hundred and
thirty-nine ; forty-seven of these are open to
both sexes. More than a hundred colleges
have chairs of Hygiene and Medical Juris-
prudence ; lectures on bacteriology are given
in six colleges and two post-graduate schools,
while a large number afford laboratory prac-
tice. The information furnished by the
pamphlet includes titles, locations, addresses

of corresponding officers, curricula of study,
fees, number of matriculates and graduates.
The records of a large number of fraudu-
lent institutions are also given. The data
are arranged in alphabetical order as to
States ; but a full index is appended, by
means of which any medical school may be
readily located.

In the Educational Value of Manual
Training, Prof. C. M. Woodward dissects the
arguments contained in a report on the sub-
ject made to the Council of Education in
July, 1889. To ground the reader fairly in
the debate, the report itself is printed in full,
also a critical review of it, by Gilbert B.
Morrison. The author fears that the report,
which has been published many times, may
lead to wrong inferences concerning manual
training. It is the fugitive side-discussions
and incidental definitions to which he objects.
He discusses the curriculum of the manual
training school ; school tool-work vs. trade-
work ; the age of pupils ; relation to social
evils ; comparison with pure science ; in-
tellectual powers ; the economic value,
and the argument against liberal culture
in tool-work. The gist of the matter ap-
pears to be that, while the committee con-
siders manual training per sc, Prof. Wood-
ward urges that the system of manual train-
ing— i. e., intellectual, scientific, and manual
combined — shall be the subject of investi-
gation.

The spread of educational interest is il-
lustrated in A Short History of the Educa-
cational Society of Japan, 1S90. It is pub-
lished by the society, and printed at the
Tsukijo Kwappan Teizosho, Tokyo, Japan.
The present association is the resultant
from the union of two former societies, and
it has been in existence six years. Its out-
look is flourishing. It issues a journal, of
which 331,559 copies have been published
and has a library of 28,140 volumes, includ-
ing 750 European books as well as Japanese
and Chinese works. Rules for the govern-
ment of the society are given, and to these
is added a list of the patrons, officials, and
members. His Imperial Highness Prince
Arisugawa Taruhito, is honorary president
of the society.

A course of Progressive Exercises in Prac-
tical Chemistry has been prepared by Dr.
Henry Leffmann and Mr. William Beam

280

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

(Blakiston). It includes the exercises that
have been given for several years in the
Woman's Medical College and in the Penn-
sylvania College of Dental Surgery, in Phila-
delphia. The first fourteen pages are de-
voted to descriptions of apparatus and ma-
nipulations, illustrated with forty-two cuts.
The rest of the book is occupied by direc-
tions for 253 experiments arranged to illus-
trate successively the general principles of
chemistry, the properties of the important
elements, and electrical decomposition. The
authors state that they have "given much
attention to details as to quantity of mate-
rials to be used and arrangements of appa-
ratus. Some of the experiments and forms
of apparatus are new, and have been devised
especially with a view to economy." The
book is "adapted for use in conjunction
with any manual of elementary chemical
principles, or to be supplemented by lect-
ures."

Henry C. Northam has prepared a Man-
ual of Civil Government (Bardeen), intended
for public instruction in the State of Mis-
souri. It is arranged in the form of a cate-
chism, and takes up the history of the or-
ganization of the Government of the United
States ; city, village, and State government
as existing in Missouri, giving the duties and
salary of each officer ; the organization and
jurisdiction of the various courts ; presiden-
tial elections ; the two Houses of Congress ;
etc. The Declaration of Independence and
the Constitution of the United States are
appended. The State Constitution of Mis-
souri is not given.

A little calisthenic manual, entitled Home
Exercise for Health and Cure, by D. G. R.
Schrebcr, M. D., has been translated by
Charles R. Bardeen (Bardeen). It consists
of directions for forty-five exercises which
require no apparatus. These are followed
by combinations of the exercises, adapted to
different forms of weakness and to the daily
needs of persons of different ages and both
sexes. General suggestions and remarks
precede and follow the above matter. Where
clearness requires it the exercises are illus-
trated. The publisher states that in Ger-
many teachers are expected to be familiar
with the book, and tliat 140,000 copies of it
had been sold up to 1889.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, Au-
burn. Climatology of Alabama. By P. II. Mell.
Pp. 73.

American Book Company. The Natural Speller
and Word Book. New York ; Cincinnati ; Chicago.
Pp. 166.

Atkinson, Edward, Boston. The Eight Applica-
tion of Heat to the Conversion of Food Material.
Pp. 20.

Babcock, William H. The Two Lost Centuries
of Britain. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott CompaDy.
Pp. 239. $1.25.

Babyhood, No. 71. October, 1 890. Monthly. New
York and London : Babyhood Publishing Company.
Pp. 32. 15 cents. $1.50 a year.

Baker, Sir Samuel W. Wild Beasts and their
Ways. London and New York : Macmillan & Co.
Pp.455. $3.50.

Bessey, Charles E., and Webber., Herbert J. Re-
port on Grasses and Forage Plants (of Nebraska).
Lincoln. Pp. 162.

Billings. Frank S., M. D. Preventive Inocula-
tion. Pp. 56.

Bolton, Henry Carrington. Contributions of
Alchemy to Numismatics. Pp. 44, with Plates.

Boston Society of Natural History. Proceedings.
Parts III and IV. May, lSS9-April, 1890. Pp.340.

Brinton, Daniel G., M. D. Paces and Peoples.
New York: N. D. C. Hodges. Pp. 313.

Collier, Peter. The Future of Agriculture in tho
United States. Pp. 15.

Colman, Lucy N. Reminiscences. Buffalo,
N. Y. : H. L. Green. Pp. 86.

Colorado College. Papers read before the Scien-
tific Society, Colorado Springs, Col. Pp. 36.

Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
Bulletin 104 (on Fertilizers). Pp. 19.

Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion. Bulletin 20 (Cream and Milk). Pp. 12.

Ellis, Major A. B. The Tshi-speaking Peoples
of the Gold Coast of West Africa. Pp. 343.— The
Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West
Africa. Pp. 331. London : Chapman & Hall.

Elson, Louis C. The Theory of Music, as ap-
plied to the Teaching and Practice of Voice and In-
struments. Boston : New England Conservatory of
Music. Pp. 208.

Entertainment. Monthly, October, 1S90. Coun-
cil Bluffs, Iowa: Entertainment Bureau. Pp. 16.
10 cents. $1 a year.

Flynn, P. J. Flow of Water in Open Channels.
Technical Society of the Pacific Coast. Pp. 36.

Green, W. L. Notice of Prof. James D. Dana's
Characteristics of Volcanoes. Honolulu. Pp.15.

Halsted, Byron D. Reserve Food-materials in
Buds and Surrounding Parts. New Brunswick,
N. J. Pp. 26, with Two Plates. 50 cents.

Hegler, Edward C. A Protest against the Su-
preme Court of Illinois, etc. Chicago : Open Court
Publishing Company. Pp. 57.

Heilprin. Prof. Angelo, Philadelphia. Explora-
tions in Mexico. Pp. 15.

Hendrick. Will ird. Brief History of the Empire
State. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 203.

nitchcock, Henry, of Missouri. A Year's Legis-
lation. Pp. 71.

InternationalJournal of Ethics. Quarterly. Vol.
I, No. 1. October, 1S90. Philadelphia : 1602 Chest-
nut Street. Pp 128. 50 cents. $2 a year.

Japan, Imperial University of. Calendar for 18S9-
'90. Pp. 205.

Kansas Experiment Station, Manhattan. Bulle-
tin No. 12 (Fungicides for Stinking Smut of Wheat).
Pp. 25, with Plate

Klauser, Julius. The Septonato and the Centrali-
zation of the Tonal System. Milwaukeo: William
Rohlficng & Sons, Music Publishers. Pp. 274.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

281

Kunz, George F. Precious Stones. Pp. 34.

Lindsay, Thomas B., Editor. The Satires of Ju-
venal. New York, etc. : The American Book Com-
pany. Pp. 226.

Macdon \ld, Carlos F., M. D. Pveport on the Ex-
ecution by Electricity of William Kemmler. Albany :
The Argus Company. Pp. 20.

McLennan, Evan. Cosmical Evolution. Chicago:
Donohuc, Hennebcrry & Co. Pp. 399.

Mallery, Garrick. Customs of Courtesy. Wash-
ington, D. C. : J add & Detweiler. Pp. 16.

Mason, Edward Campbell. The Veto Power.
Boston : Ginn & Co. Pp. 232. $1.10.

Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station.
Bulletin No. 33 (Milch-Cows). Pp. 16.

Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand. The Tempting of
Pescara. New York : W. S. Gottsberger & Co.
Pp. 184.

Michigan Mining School, Houghton. Catalogue,
18S9-'90. Pp. 72.

Monist, The. Quarterly, Vol. I, No. 1. October,
1890. Chicago : Open Court Publishing Company.
Pp. 161. 50 cents. $2 a year.

New England Meteorological Society. Investi-
gations for 18S9. Cambridge, Mass. : Astronomical
Observatory of Harvard College. Pp. 162, with
Plates.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Columbus.
Bulletin on Wheat. Pp. 36.

Peck, H. T. Latin Pronunciation. New York :
Henry Holt &, Co. Pp. 33. 60 cents.

Peet, Stephen D. Emblematic Mounds and Ani-
mal Effigies. Chicago : American Antiquarian Office.
Pp. 35T.

Physical Culture. Monthly. Archibald Cuthbert-
son, Editor. Vol. I, No. 1 . October, 1S90. New York :
80 Nassau Street. 20 cents. $2 a year.

Putnam, G. P., and Jones, Lynds E. Tabular
Views of Universal History. New York: G. P.
'Putnam's Sons. Pp. 211.

Savage, Minot J. A Unitarian Spirit — Dorothey
Dix. Pp. 16.— Old World Religion. Pp. 15. Bos-
ton : George H. Ellis. 5 cents each.

Shufeldt, R. W. Contributions to the Study of
Heloderma Suspectum. Pp. 96, with Plates. — The
Myology of the Raven. London and New York :
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 343. $4.

Swedenborg, Emanuel. Descriptions of the Spir-
itual World, for Use with Children. New York : The
New Church Board of Publication. Pp. 283. 50 cents.

Tillman, Prof. Samuel E. Organic Evolution.
West Point, N. Y. Pp. 36.

Tulare County, Cal. Reports on the Projected
Works of the Tulare Irrigation District. Pp. 4T,
with Map.

United States National Museum, Washington,
D. C. Description of New Forms of Cambriau Fos-
sils. By Charles D. Waleott. Pp. 16, with Plate.—
Birds observed during the Cruise of the Grampus in
183T. By William Palmer. Pp. 18. — Characteristics
of the Dactylopteroidea. Pp. 6. with Plate; Osteo-
logical Characteristics of the Family Simenchelydre.
Pp. 4; The Family Ranicipitidae. Pp. 4, with Plate
— the three by Theodore Gill.

University Magazine, New York. October, 1890.
Pp. 54. 20 cents. $2 a year.

Wagner Free Institute of Science, Philadelphia.
Transactions. Vol. III. Pp. 200.

Ward, Lester F. Genius and Woman's Intui-
tion. Pp. 8.— Origin of the Plane Trees. Pp. 12, with
Plate.

Watts, Charles A., Editor. The Agnostic An-
nual, 1891. New York : 23 Lafayette Place.

Welsh, Alfred H. A Digest of Enslish and Amer-
ican Literature. Chicago : S. C. Griggs & Co. Pp.
8T8. $1.50.

Whitman, C. O., and Allis, Edward Phelps.
Journal of Morphologv. Quarterly. June. 1890.
Boston : Ginn & Co. Pp. 130, with Plates. $3.50.
$9 a volume, of three numbers.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Philosophy at Harvard. — The courses of
study in philosophy that are offered to stu-
dents by Harvard University for the year
1890-91 number seventeen. In the element-
ary courses, students attend one, two, or
three lectures or recitations a week, as the
case may be. Advanced students carry on
their studies mostly by themselves, meeting
for a conference with the professor once a
week. The facilities for philosophical study
at Harvard have about doubled within the
last ten years. In 1880-81 there were ten
courses in philosophy for undergraduates
and graduates, two of which were given
only in alternate years, the instructors being
Prof. Bowen, and Asst. Profs. Palmer and
James. These dealt with logic, psychology,
ethics, contemporary philosophy, earlier
English, French, and German philosophy,
German philosophy of the present day, and
the history of philosophy. Courses cov-
ering substantially the same ground are
given now, besides which four courses given
in the Divinity School, on the philosophy of
religion, are open to general students of phi-
losophy, and there have been added a course
on Greek philosophy and three which deal
with modern thought and modern problems.
One of these last is called Cosmology : a
Discussion of the Principal Problems of the
Philosophy of Nature, with Special Reference
to the Doctrine of Evolution, and embraces
lectures by the professor and the writing of
theses by the students. For the current
year three theses upon assigned topics will be
required, and are to bo based upon the pri-
vate reading of Herbert Spencer's First
Principles, and of Le Conte's Evolution in
its Relations to Religious Thought, and other
reading to be announced. Another of the
newer courses deals with the ethics of the
social questions — charity, divorce, the In-
dians, temperance, and the various phases of
the labor question. The mode of study in-
cludes lectures, essays, and practical obser-
vations. There are also three " seminaries "
for advanced students — a psychological, a
metaphysical, and an ethical — and guidance
will be furnished to students who wish to
take up individual investigations of ques-
tions in ethics. In the psychological semi-
nary the subject for the current year is Pleas-

282

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ure and Pain, and it will be studied by means
of lectures, essays, and laboratory work.
The present officers of the Philosophical De-
partment are Profs. G. H. Palmer, A. M.,
C. C. Everett, D. D., William James, M. D.,
and P. G. Peabody, D. D., Asst. Prof. Josiah
Royce, Ph. D., and George Santayana, Ph. D.,
instructor.

The Founder of Inebriate Asylums. — A

sketch of the late Dr. J. Edward Turner,
founder of the first inebriate asylum in the
world, has been published by T. D. Crothers,
M. D., in The Quarterly Journal of Inebriety.
Dr. Turner was born in Maine, in 1822, and
had his mind turned to the subject of his
life work by being called upcn to take care
of an inebriate uncle at intervals of several
months, during his student life and after he
began to practice medicine. When he first
mentioned his idea of an asylum, where such
cases could be secluded, housed, and treated,
it was received with derision and contempt.
He went to Europe in 1S43, and spent two
years visiting hospitals and asylums, and dis-
cussing his ideas with medical men. On his
return he began the systematic collection of
facts concerning inebriety. About this time
Drs. Valentine Mott aud John W. Francis be-
came interested in his plan for an asylum,
and continued all their lives to be his warm-
est friends. There was much bitter opposi-
tion to the idea of treating drunkenness as
a disease, and still more indifference to the
matter, so that Dr. Turner made but slow
headway. In 1848-'49 he made a second
visit to Europe. After his return he began
to solicit subscriptions to the stock of a
company to build an inebriate asylum. A
charter was obtained from the State of
New York, and finally, in 1858, ground
was broken at Binghamton for a build-
ing planned by Dr. Turner, and the erec-
tion of which he personally superintended.
By persistent petitioning he obtained from
the New York Legislature a grant of one
tenth of the money obtained each year from
liquor licenses, for the building and main-
tenance of the asylum. In 1S62 Dr. Turner
married. The building had progressed far
enough in 1864 to open it for patients, and
a number of inebriates were admitted. At
this point success seemed to have crowned
the efforts of the founder. He had won

over public opinion to his side, and the most
active interest was being manifested all over
the State in the work. But trouble arose
over the mode of treatment. Dr. Turner's
system was military in its strictness, his
first principle being, that the asylum officers
should have full control of the patient, and
that this control should extend over a long
time, and not be governed by the will of the
patient or his non-expert friends. An un-
scrupulous, money-getting lawyer in the
board of directors, and a weak president of
the board, caused a division, which was fol-
lowed by persecution of Dr. Turner, and his
resignation as superintendent in 1867. The
asylum was then sold to the State for a
nominal consideration, and thirteen years
later was changed to an insane hospital,
being known now as the New York State In-
sane Asylum at Binghamton. The trans-
fer was not legally made, and Dr. Turner be-
gan a suit for possession of the property,
which was never carried to an issue. Dr.
Turner then undertook to raise subscriptions
for a woman's hospital for inebriates and
opium-eaters. After three years, the sub-
scriptions in money and materials had
reached a great amount, ground had been
broken for a building, when the Legislature
of Connecticut crushed the scheme by re-
pealing the charter previously granted. For
the next two years after this discouraging
defeat Dr. Turner occupied himself with
writing a book called the History of the
First Inebriate Asylum in the World, which
was a general account of his forty years'
efforts. He then started out to sell the work,
and to solicit aid to push his suit for the
Binghamton asylum, and was busied thus
when he died, July 24, 1S89. Dr. Turner's
career was a striking example of over-
whelming defeat for the individual joined
with signal triumph for his idea. Inebriety
is being more widely recognized as a disease
each year. There are to-day over one hun-
dred inebriate asylums in the world, all the
direct result of his efforts in founding the
first one at Binghamton.

Origin of American Public Museums. —

The first chapter in the history of American
museums, says Dr. G. Brown Goode, in his
lecture on museums, is short. In the early
years of the republic, the establishment of

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

283

such institutions by city, State, or Federal
Government would not have been considered
a legitimate act. When the General Govern-
ment came into the possession of extensive
collections as the result of the Wilkes Ex-
ploring Expedition in 1S42, they were placed
in charge of a private organization, the Na-
tional Institution, and later, together with
other similar materials, in that of a corpora-
tion, the Smithsonian Institution, which was
for a long period of years obliged to pay
largely for their care out of its income from
a private endowment. It was not until 18*76
that the existence of a National Museum, as
such, was definitely recognized in the pro-
ceedings of Congresss, and its financial sup-
port fully provided for. In early days our
principal cities had each a public museum,
founded and supported by private enter-
prise. The earliest general collection was
that formed at Nonvalk, Conn., prior to the
Revolution, by a man named Arnold, de-
scribed as " a curious collector of Ameri-
can birds and insects." This it was which
first awakened the interest of President John
Adams in the natural sciences. He visited
it several times, as he traveled from Boston
to Philadelphia, and his interest culminated
in the foundation of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences. In 1790 Dr. Ilosack
brought to America from Europe the first
cabinet of minerals ever seen on this conti-
nent. The earliest public establishment
was the Philadelphia Museum, founded by
Charles Wilson Peale in 1785, which had
for a nucleus a stuffed paddle-fish and the
bones of a mammoth, and was for a time
housed in the building of the American
Philosophical Society. In 1800 it was full
of popular attractions. The Baltimore Mu-
seum was managed by Rembrandt Peale, and
was in existence as early as 1815 and as
late as 1830. Earlier efforts wore made,
however, in Philadelphia. Dr. Chovet, of
that city, had a collection of wax anatomi-
cal models made by him in Europe ; and
Prof. John Morgan, of the University of
Pennsylvania, who learned his method from
the Hunters, in London, and Sue, in Paris,
had begun to form such a collection before
the Revolution. The Columbian Museum
and Turell's Museum, in Boston, are spoken
of in the annals of the day ; and there was
a small collection in the attic of the State

House in Hartford. The Western Museum,
in Cincinnati, was founded about 1815, by
Robert Best, M. D., afterward of Lexing-
ton, Ky., who seems to have been a capable
collector, and who contributed matter to
Goodman's American Natural History. In
1818 a society styled the Western Museum
Society was formed among the citizens,
which, though hardly a scientific organiza-
tion, seems to have taken a somewhat lib-
eral and public-spirited view of what a mu-
seum should be. With the establishment
of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Phil-
adelphia in 1812, and the New York Lyceum
of Natural History, the history of American
scientific museums had its true beginning.

The Question of Tertiary Man.— The an-
tiquity of man and an account of anthropo-
logical museums were the chief topics dis-
cussed in the address of Mr. John Evans,
President of the Anthropological Section of
the British Association. The question of
the antiquity of man, the author said, is sus-
ceptible of being separated from any specu-
lations as to the generic descent of man-
kind ; and even were it satisfactorily an-
swered to-day, new facts might to-morrow
come to light that would again throw the
question open. On any view of probabili-
ties, it is unlikely that we shall ever discov-
er the exact cradle of our race, or be able to
point to any object as the first product of the
industry and intelligence of man. We may,
however, the author thought, hope that from
time to time fresh discoveries may be made
of objects of human art, under such circum-
stances and conditions that we may infer
with certainty that at some given point in the
world's history mankind existed, and in suffi-
cient numbers, for the relics that attest this
existence to show a correspondence among
themselves, even when discovered at remote
distances from each other. After reviewing
the course of discovery of prehistoric man,
and the considerations on which the attempt
is based to show that he existed in the Ter-
tiary, Mr. Evans declared his conclusion that
on the whole the present verdict as to Tertiary
man must be in the form of " not proven."
When we consider the vast amount of time
comprised in the Tertiary period, with its
three great principal subdivisions of the
Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, and when we

284

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bear in mind that of the vertebrate land
animals of the Eocene no one has survived
to the present time, while of the Pliocene
but one — the hippopotamus — remains un-
modified, the chances that man, as at pres-
ent conditioned, should also be a survivor
from that period seem remote, and against
the species Homo sapiens having existed in
Miocene times almost incalculable. The
a priori improbability of finding man un-
changed, while all the other vertebrate ani-
mals around him have, from natural causes,
undergone more or less extensive modifica-
tion, will induce all careful investigators to
look closely at any evidence that would carry
him back beyond Quaternary times ; and
though it would be unsafe to deny the possi-
bility of such an early origin for the human
race, it would be unwise to regard it as estab-
lished except on the clearest evidence.

Enibryological Recapitulation. — Prof.

A. Milnes Marshall, in his presidential ad-
dress before the Biological Section of the
British Association, after remarking on the
general subject of the study of embryology,
spoke more particularly of its relation to
the doctrine of recapitulation, which, sug-
gested by Agassiz, had been elaborated by
eminent contemporary zoologists. Natural
selection, he showed, explains the preserva-
tion of useful variations, but does not ac-
count for the formation and preservation of
useless organs ; but recapitulation solves the
problem at once, by showing that those or-
gans, though now useless, must have been
of functional value to the ancestors of their
present possessors, and that their appearance
in the ontogeny of existing forms is due to
the repetition of ancestral characters. Such
rudimentary organs are, as Darwin has point-
ed out, of larger relative or even absolute size
in the embryo than in the adult, because the
embryo represents the stage in the pedigree
in which they were functionally active. Ru-
dimentary organs are extremely common, es-
pecially among the higher groups of ani-
mals, and their presence and significance arc
now well understood. Man himself affords
numerous and excellent examples, not mere-
ly in his bodily structure, but by his speech,
dress, and customs. For the silent letter b
in the word doubt, or the w of answer, or the
buttons on his clastic-side boots are as true

examples of rudiments unintelligible but for
their past history, as are the ear muscles he
possesses but can not use, or the gill-clefts
which are functional in fishes and tadpoles,
and are present, though useless, in the em-
bryos of all higher vertebrates. It was the
elder Agassiz who first directed attention to
the remarkable agreement between the em-
bryonic growth of animals and their palaeon-
tological history.

The Scope of Mathematics.— Mr. J. W. L.

Glaisher, President of the Mathematical Sec-
tion in the British Association, in his address
spoke of the range of subjects comprehended
within the scope of mathematics. Its field
extends from the most exact of all knowl-
edge to brauches of inquiry in which only un-
correlated facts have been collected. Con-
sidering pure mathematics, or that of the
abstract sciences which could be conquered
and explored only by mathematical methods,
it is difficult not to feel somewhat appalled
by the enormous developments it has re-
ceived in the last fifty years. The mass of
the investigations, as measured by the an-
nual additions to the literature of the sub-
ject, is so great that it is fast becoming be-
wildering from its mere magnitude and the
extraordinary extent to which many special
lines of study have been carried. There can
be no end to this. So wide and various are
the subjects of research, so interesting and
fascinating are the results, so wouderful are
the fields of investigation laid open at each
succeeding advance, that we may be sure
that, while the love of learning and knowl-
edge continue to exist, there can be no relax-
ation of our efforts to penetrate still further
into the mysterious worlds of abstract truth
that lie spread temptingly before the inves-
tigator. The speaker did not believe that
the bearing of the modern developments
of mathematics on the physical sciences is
likely to be very direct or immediate, but it
would be rash to assert that there is any
branch of mathematics so abstract or so re-
condite that it may not at any moment find
an application in some concrete subject.
Still, it appears that if the extension of the
pure sciences can only be justified by the
value of their applications, it is very doubt-
ful whether a satisfactory plea for any further
developments can be sustained. Although

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

285

the condition of mathematical science in Eng-
land is not fully satisfactory, there is more
cause for congratulation at present than there
has been at any time during the last one hun-
dred and fifty years, and we are far removed
from the state of affairs that existed be-
fore the days of Cayley and Sylvester. The
author concluded with a plea for the study of
the theory of numbers.

Value of Living Traditions. — According
to Mr. J. G. Frazer, the author of a compara-
tive study of religions, entitled the Golden
Bough, the best source for knowledge of an-
cient folk-lore is among the people of the
present. Every inquiry into the primitive
religion of the Aryans, he says, "should
either start from the superstitious beliefs
and observances of the peasantry, or should
at least be constantly checked and controlled
by reference to them. Compared with the
evidence afforded by living tradition, the tes-
timony of ancient books on the subject of
early religion is worth very little. . . . The
mass of the people who do not read books
remain unaffected by the mental revolution
wrought by literature ; and so it has come
about that in Europe, at the present day, the
superstitious beliefs and practices which
have been handed down by word of mouth
are generally of a far more archaic type
than the religion depicted in the most an-
cient literature of the Aryan race."

The Magnctograph. — The magnetograph,
the adaptability of which to use as a seis-
moscope has been tried by Prof. T. C. Men-
denhall, is described by him as a system of
magnetic needles, free to vibrate, and con-
nected with a mirror that turns with the
needles. It has long been noticed that an
earthquake causes a considerable disturb-
ance of the needles ; and that this is not an
effect of vibration is shown by the fact that
a series of brass needles is not thus dis-
turbed. It appears from the study of the
magnetic records that there are two distinct
vibrations, one due to solar influence and
seeming to be dependent jointly on position
and temperature ; the other series were de-
pendent on the relative position of the earth
and the moon, and were therefore regarded
as of a tidal nature ; and the disturbances of
the magnetic needle may be, and probably

are, due to the stress of the earth's crust.
The author mentioned as a remarkable fact
that a periodic disturbance, smaller in am-
plitude than the thickness of the line re-
corded, could be positively and perfectly
determined. This evidence that the lunar
influence is due to variation of stress fur-
nishes a clew to the explanation of the dis-
turbances due to earthquakes. The stress
to which the earth is then subjected causes
an alteration in its magnetic condition which
is recorded upon the sheet. It may there-
fore be possible to recognize an earthquake
by disturbance of the magnetic needle, even
when the motion is too small to be recog-
nized by a seismoscope. It is a curious fact
that it is supposed in Japan that an earth-
quake can be predicted by the vibrations of
a loadstone.

The Natural Gas Supply.— The perma-
nence of the natural gas supply was dis-
cussed in the American Association, which,
meeting in the heart of the natural gas re-
gion, visited some of the more famous sta-
tions at Noblesville, Marion, Muncie, and
Anderson, where the new fuel is used. Presi-
dent Goodale warned the people at Anderson
against waste of the gas, because, he said, it
will surely give out some day. Dr. Edward
Orton affirmed in a paper in the Economic
Section that the supply in the Indiana and
Ohio fields is not only exhaustible, but is
rapidly and surely being exhausted. It is
not now being generated, and every foot that
escapes to the surface leaves the quantity
remaining for future use just so much
smaller. This is proved by the fact that
the pressure of the gas is steadily diminish-
ing, the decrease having already amounted
to thirty or forty per cent. Prof. P. II. Van-
der Weyde is of a different opinion. He be-
lieves that the gas is formed in much the
same manner as water-gas ; that the evolu-
tion of oxygen and hydrogen is constantly
going on in the regions of the earth's in-
terior, where the temperature of dissociation
exists; and that when carbureted metals
having great affinity for water are present
within reach of the dissociated gases, they
will be oxidized by the ascending oxygen,
while the hydrogen will combine with the
carbon to form hydrocarbons. Thus the pro-
cess of generating the gas is going on all the

286

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

time, and the prospect for the continuation
of the supply is cheerful. " Look," the au-
thor says, " at the burning gas-wells of Baku,
where the gas escapes by fissures in the soil,
and has been blowing and burning for cent-
uries, and all for nothing thus far. There
appears to be no diminution in their flow,
while from the Chinese historical records it
appears that natural gas has been evolving
in more than one locality for at least a thou-
sand years, and I expect the same here. It
comes from regions far below the deepest
coal mines, and may continue to flow when
some mines are exhausted."

Geography-teaching in Russia. — The

object of a paper in the British Association,
by Dr. H. R. Mill, on Geographical Teach-
ing in Russia, was to give an idea of the
method of instruction as prescribed by the
official syllabus enforced in government and
private schools. The books are generally
illustrated by black and white maps, and by
diagrams of great interest and ingenuity, ex-
emplifying statistics in graphic form. It is
characteristic of the Russian system to go
deeply into statistics. The absence of pict-
ures in the instruction books is noticeable,
but subjects are treated exhaustively. Great-
er attention is paid to ethnography than in
the system of any other country, because,
probably, of the many races among which
the subjects of the Czar are divided. Rus-
sians are in the habit of regarding Asia
rather than Europe as nearest to them.

Coffee-drinking. — Dr. Mendel, of Ber-
lin, has recently published a clinical study
on Coffee Inebriety. His observations
were made upon the women of the work-
ing population of Essen, a town in Prus-
sia, Department of Dusscldorf. He found
large numbers of women who used over a
pound of coffee a week. The leading symp-
toms are profound depression, frequent
headache, and insomnia. A strong dose of
coffee relieves this for a time ; a partial loss
of power over the muscles occurs, and an
increasing aversion to labor. The heart's
action becomes rapid and irregular. Dys-
pepsia of an extreme nervous type is pres-
ent. Brandy offers only a temporary relief.
The face becomes sallow and the hands and
feet cold. Acute inflammation is likely to

occur; an injury to any part of the body is
the starting point for inflammation of an
erysipelatous character. Melancholy and hys-
teria are common symptoms. Many opium
and alcoholic cases have an early history of
excessive use of coffee.

The Dangers of the Present Mode of
Burial. — Human effluvium from the living
body, taken into the lungs or stomach,
is a weil - recognized cause of disease.
That it is not, at the least, equally so
from the body dead, especially when it
is putrescent, is difficult to believe. The
following, taken from Johnson on Trop-
ical Climates (American edition, p. 83), is an
illustrative case : " An American merchant-
ship was lying at anchor in Whampoa Roads,
sixteen miles from Canton. One of the crew
died from dysentery. He was taken on shore
to be buried. No disease of any kind had
occurred in the ship during her voyage from
America to the river Tigris. Four men ac-
companied the corpse, and two men began
to dig the grave. Unfortunately, they pitched
upon a spot where a human body had been
buried two or three months previously (as
was afterward ascertained). The instant the
spade went through the lid of the coffin a
most dreadful effluvium issued forth, and the
two men fell down nearly lifeless. It was
with the greatest difficulty that their com-
panions could approach near enough to drag
them from the spot and fill up the place
with earth. The two men now recovered a
little, and with assistance reached the boat
and returned on board." Both died — one
on the evening of the fourth and the other
the morning of the fifth day — of a malignant
fever, with symptoms resembling plague.
The other two men, who were less exposed,
were similarly affected, but recovered. That
the poisonous emanations inhaled in this case
would have been any less dangerous if swal-
lowed with the subsoil water in the vicinity
can be surmised by those only who believe
inhumation of the dead to be without dan-
ger to the living.

An Early Form of Telegraphy. — Among
the early devices for conveying information
to a distance by means of signals the follow-
ing is very ingenious. It was used by a
Grecian general, ./Eneas, who flourished in

NOTES.

287

the time of Aristotle. It consisted of two
exactly similar earthen vessels filled with
water, each provided with a cock that would
discharge an equal quantity of water in a
given time, so that the whole or any part of
the contents would escape in precisely the
same period from both vessels. On the sur-
face of each floated a piece of cork support-
ing an upright, marked off into divisions,
each division having a certain sentence in-
scribed upon it. One of the vessels was
placed at each station, and when either
party desired to communicate with the other
he lighted a torch which he held aloft until
the other did the same, as a sign that he
was all attention. On the sender of the
message lowering or extinguishing the torch,
each party immediately opened the ccck of
his vessel, and so left it until the sender re-
lighted his torch, when it was at once closed.
The receiver then read the sentence on the
division of the upright that was level with
the mouth of the vessel, and which, if every-
thing had been executed with exactness, cor-
responded with that of the sender, and so
conveyed the desired message.

NOTES.

Mr. John T. Campbell presented, in the
American Association, the evidence in sup-
port of his belief that there was, in the Wa-
bash River, one last great flood near the close
of glacial time, and that then the water-supply
was so cut off or diminished that there was
never another freshet large enough to wipe
out or modify the marks it left. This flood,
in the opinion of the author, carried about
one hundred times as much water as do the
great floods of the present time.

The largest barometer yet made has been
put in working order in the Saint Jacques
Tower, in Paris. It is forty-one feet five
inches high.

The International Medical Congress met
in Berlin, August 4th. Members of the medi-
cal profession were present representing
every state and city in Europe, and many
from North and South America. An open-
ing address of welcome was made by the
president, Prof. Virchow. Welcoming ad-
dresses were also given for Prussia and Ber-
lin. Dr. Lassar, Secretary-General of the
Congress, sketched the general plan of the
labors of the Congress, and gave some sta-
tistics concerning the representation of the
countries taking part in it. Dr. Hamilton,
Surgeon-General of the United States Army,
was the first regular speaker, and was fol-

lowed by Sir James Paget and Sir Joseph

Lister.

The corrosion of steel by salt water is
said to be much greater than that of iron.
Mr. David Phillips stated, iii a recent address
before the British Institute of Marine Engi-
neers, that he had experimented from 1881
to 1888 with two plates of Bessemer boiler
steel, two of Yorkshire, and two of B. B.
Staffordshire boiler iron. The plates were
as nearly as possible six by six by three
eighths inches, and were kept immersed in
salt water. The results show a great differ-
ence between the behavior of steel and iron.
The steels lost 120 per cent more than the
irons the first three years, when the plates
were in contact; 124 per cent more the sec-
ond three years, when they were insulated ;
and 126 per cent more for the whole period
of seven years.

Unless some of our investigators of bac-
teria are mistaken, there seems to be hardly
a situation where these minute organisms
may not be found. Thus Dr. Charles M.
Cresson claims to have discovered typhoid
bacilli in the juice squeezed from some cel-
ery grown near Philadelphia ; and the Johns
Hopkins Hospital Bulletin for May, 1890,
records some observations, by A. C. Abbott,
upon bacteria found in the interior of large
hailstones which fell during the storm of
April 26, 1890.

The Australasian Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science will hold its third an-
nual meeting at Christchurch, New Zealand,
beginning January 15,1891. Sir James Hec-
tor, F. R. S., will succeed Baron F. von
Muller, F. R. S., as president, and will deliv-
er an address. Arrangements are making
to secure reduced excursion fares from the
other Australian colonies, and probably from
Great Britain.

In his lecture on caves, at the meeting
of the American Association, the Rev. Dr.
Hovey exhibited a photograph made by L.
Farini, of Bridgeport, Conn., from an ordi-
nary negative, by means of the light of the
fire-fly (Elator pkocans).

The object of certain experiments de-
scribed by Mr. W. Sharp, in the British As-
sociation, was to answer the question, What
is the action of the substances called drugs
upon the living body of man ? The conclu-
sions arrived at were the results of experi-
ments made upon men in sound health, with
different quantities of the same drugs. In
the case of fourteen drugs that were used
it was found that the smallest doses admin-
istered have power to act upon the living hu-
man body ; that the commonly received opin-
ion that the actions of drugs are simply in-
creased in degree, and not altered in charac-
ter, by increasing the dose, is an error ; and
that the actions of drugs are sufficiently dis-
tinct to admit of classification.

288

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

An interesting account was given by the
Rev. E. Jones, in the British Association, of
his exploration of the Elbolten Cave, in
Craven. The first chamber, the one exam-
ined, is between thirty and forty feet long,
and from seven to thirteen feet wide. Rel-
ics, including remains of about a dozen men,
were found in two strata. Among the ob-
jects discovered most worthy of notice were
remains of a hearth, neolithic pottery, vari-
ously ornamented and coated with charcoal
on the inside ; pot-boilers made of rounded
grit with marks of fire ; pieces of silurian
slates . that may have been used for the
sharpening of bone implements ; and pieces
of bone, one of which was undoubtedly
used to ornament pottery.

A committee has been formed to place a
marble bust of Richard Jeffries in Salisbury
Cathedral. It is to cost $750, toward which
subscriptions are invited.

M. Marey has succeeded in photograph-
ing the movements of an animal under wa-
ter, taking proofs at the rate of fifty in a
second, with exposures of from inuro" to joW
of a second. A set of twelve photographs
gives all the phases of the undulations which
the medusa impresses upon its umbrella of a
locomotor apparatus. Another series ex-
hibits a squid leaping out of the water. A
ray has been taken in profile while waving
the edges of its flat body ; and the curious
mode of progression of a comatula has been
taken.

A law was announced several years ago
by 31. V. Ncyreneuf relative to the flow of
sound through thin cylindrical pipes, which
proved identical with the law declared by
Poiseuille for the flow of liquids through
capilliary tubes. In a later memoir the for-
mer author has sought to determine the
sounds to be used and the precautions to be
taken for giving their flow a well-defined
character. He also describes experiments
with pipes of varying lengths and diameters,
and experiments upon the effect of the kind
and substance of the pipe.

Mr. St. George Mivart has been ap-
pointed Professor of the Philosophy of Nat-
ural History in the University of Louvain,
Belgium.

Prof. Marsh gave an account to the
British Association of the gigantic Ceratop-
sidce, or horned dinosaurs, which he had iden-
tified in the Laramie beds, near the Rocky
Mountains. The Association gave him a vote
of thanks for his instructive communication.

Dr. Frith iof Nansen, the Norwegian ex-
plorer whose achievement in crossing Green-
land from the eastern to the western shore
resulted in considerable additions to knowl-
edge, is preparing to start in the spring of
1892 on an expedition the main object of
which will be to reach the north pole.

It is shown by Prof. A. Milnes Marshall
that there is great variability in nearly allied
animals, and even in individuals of the same
species. In proof, he refers to the difference
between the French edible frog and the
British frog, and says that the question as
to which of these was the primitive form
is a subject for interesting study.

OBITUARY NOTES.

Miss Marianne North, a distinguished
English botanist, traveler, and artist, died
August 30th. Her career may be said to
have begun in 1S69, when she started to
travel with a view of illustrating the flora of
some countries not then perfectly known.
She visited on different excursions Teneriffe,
Brazil, the West Indies, California, India, Cey-
lon, Borneo, Java, Japan, Australia, and the
Seychelles, and brought back at various times
during twelve years collections of drawings
in oils and water-colors of the scenery, vege-
tation, and flora which she had studied in
their several habitats. In 1881 she presented
a series of 627 pictures to the nation, for
which she erected a gallery in Kew Gardens
at her own expense.

Thomas Carnelley, Professor of Chem-
istry in the University of Aberdeen, died
August 27th, at the age of thirty-eight years.
He was born in Manchester, England ; had a
brilliant career in Owens College ; received
the Dalton Chemical scholarship in 1872
for his original investigation of the vana-
dates of thallium ; and gained it for another
year, on examination ; was private assistant
to Prof. Roscoe, and, having studied abroad,
became professor in succession at Owens
College, the North Staffordshire School of
Science, Firth College, Sheffield, University
College, Dundee, and the University of Aber-
deen. He prosecuted valuable researches in
the extension and application of Mendeleef's
periodic law ; made chemical and bacterio-
logical examinations of the air of dwellings,
schools, etc., in Dundee and its district, which
aroused interest in ventilation ; and be-
sides many contributions to English and for-
eign chemical journals, published a large
book on certain physical constants of chem-
ical compounds.

Signor Orazio Silyestri, a distin-
guished chemist and vulcanologist, recently
died at Catania, Sicily, at the age of fifty-
five years. He was an industrious student of
the eruptions of Mount Etna, and founded
the laboratory on top of the mountain at
the height of upward of 13,000 feet.

Prof. Carl Frederik Fearnley, of the
University of Christiania, an eminent Nor-
wegian astronomer, died August 23d, in his
seventy-third year. He was the author of
numerous astronomical and meteorological
publications, and had been Professor of As-
tronomy at the university since 1857.

••'•V

fl/f-

V-A

Wl/ljj/lllll

ELISIIA MITCHELL.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY,

JANUARY, 1891.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE.

XI. FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.

By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L. H. D.,

EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

PART I.

AMONG the sciences which have served as entering wedges
into the heavy mass of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, to cleave it,
disintegrate it, and let the light of Christianity into it, none per-
haps has done a more striking work than Comparative Philology.
In one very important respect the history of this science differs
from that of any other ; for it is the only one whose results the-
ologians have at last fully adopted as the result of their own
studies. This adoption teaches a great lesson, since, while it has
destroyed theological views cherished during many centuries,
and obliged the Church to accept conclusions directly contrary to
the plain letter of our sacred books, the result is clearly seen to
have helped Christianity rather than to have hurt it. It has cer-
tainly done much to clear our religious foundations of the dog-
matic rust which was eating into their structure.

How this result was reached, and why the Church has so fully
accepted it, I shall endeavor to show in the present chapter.

In the very beginnings of recorded history we find explana-
tions of the diversity of tongues, and naturally such explanations
resort to supernatural intervention. The "law of wills and
causes," formulated by Comte, is exemplified here as in so many
other cases. That law is, that when men do not know the natural
causes of things, they simply attribute them to wills like their
own; thus they obtain a theory which provisionally takes the
place of science, and this theory is very generally theological.

Examples of this recur to any thinking reader of history.
vol. xxxvin. — 20

290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Before the simpler laws of astronomy were known, the sun was
supposed to be trundled out into the heavens every day and the
stars hung up in the firmament every night by the right hand of
the Almighty. Before the laws of comets were known, they were
thought to be missiles hurled by an angry God at a wicked world.
Before the real cause of lightning was known, it was supposed to
be the work of a good God in his wrath, or of evil spirits in their
malice. Before the laws of meteorology were known, it was
thought that rains were caused by the Almighty or his angels
opening " the windows of heaven " to let down upon the earth
" the waters that be above the firmament." Before the laws gov-
erning physical health were known, diseases were supposed to
result from the direct interposition of the Almighty or of Satan.
Before the laws governing mental health were known, insanity
was generally thought to be diabolic possession.*

So, in this case, to account for the diversity of tongues, the
direct intervention of the Divine Will was brought in. As this
diversity was felt to be an inconvenience, it was attributed to the
will of a Divine Being in anger. To explain this anger, it was
held that it must have been provoked by human sin.

Out of this conception explanatory myths and legends grew as
thickly and naturally as elms along water-courses ; and of these
the earliest form known to us is found in the Chaldean accounts.
We see it first in the Chaldean legend of the Tower of Babel.

The inscriptions recently found among the ruins of Assyria
have thrown a bright light into this and other scriptural myths
and legends ; the deciphering of the characters in these inscrip-
tions by Grotef end, and the reading of the texts by George Smith,
Oppert, Sayce, and others, have given us these traditions more
nearly in their original form than they appear in our own
Scriptures.

The Hebrew story of Babel, like so many other legends in the
sacred books of the world, combined various elements. By a play
upon words, such as the history of myths and legends frequently
shows us, it wrought into one fabric the earlier explanations of
the diversities of human speech and of the great ruined tower at
Babylon. The name Babel {bab-iJ) means "Gate of God" or
" Gate of the Gods." All modern scholars of note agree that this
was the real significance of the name; but the Hebrew verb
which signifies to confound resembles somewhat the word Babel,
so that out of this resemblance, by one of the most common pro-
cesses in the history of myth formations, came to the Hebrew

* Any one who wishes to realize the mediaeval view of the direct personal attention of
the Almighty to the universe, can perhaps do so most easily by looking over the engravings
in the well-known Nuremberg Chronicle, representing him in the work of each of the six
days, and resting afterward.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 291

mind an indisputable proof that the tower was connected with
the sudden confusion of tongues ; and this became part of our
theological heritage.

In our sacred books the account runs as follows :

" And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.

" And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that
they found a plain in the land of Shinar ; and they dwelt there.

" And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and
burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime
had they for mortar.

" And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose
top may reach unto heaven ; and let us make us a name, lest we
be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

" And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which
the children of men builded.

" And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have
all one language ; and this they begin to do : and now nothing
will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.

" Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language,
that they may not understand one another's speech.

"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the
face of all the earth : and they left off to build the city.

"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord
did there confound the language of all the earth : and from thence
did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."
(Genesis, xi, 1-9.)

Thus far the legend had been but slightly changed from the
earlier Chaldean form in which it has since been found in the
Assyrian inscriptions. Its character is very simple ; to use the
words of the most eminent English-speaking authority, Prof.
Sayce, of Oxford, a clergyman of the Church of England, "It
takes us back to the age when the gods were believed to dwell in
the visible sky, and when man, therefore, did his best to rear his
altars as near them as possible." And the eminent professor
might have added that it takes us back also to a time when it
was thought that Jehovah, in order to see the tower fully, was
obliged to come down from his seat above the firmament. In its
earlier Chaldean form the legend runs, that the gods, assisted by
the winds, overthrew the work of the contrivers and introduced
a diversity of tongues.

As to the real cause of the building of the tower there seems a
substantial agreement among leading scholars that it was erected
primarily as part of a temple, but largely for the purpose of as-
tronomical observations, to which the Chaldeans were so devoted,
and to which their country, with its level surface and clear at-
mosphere, was so well adapted. As to the real cause of its de-

292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

struction, one of the inscribed cylinders discovered in recent
times, speaking of a tower which most of the leading archseolo-
gists identify with the Tower of Babel, reads as follows :

" The building named the Stages of the Seven Spheres, which
was the Tower of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He
had completed forty-two cubits, but he did not finish its head.
During the lapse of time, it had become ruined ; they had not
taken care of the exit of the waters, so that rain and wet had
penetrated into the brick-work ; the casing of burned brick had
swollen out, and the terraces of crude brick are scattered in heaps."

We can well understand how easily " the gods, assisted by the
winds," as stated in the Chaldean legend, could overthrow a tower
thus built.

It may be instructive to compare with the explanatory myth
developed first by the Chaldeans, and in a slightly different form
by the Hebrews, various other legends to explain the same diver-
sity of tongues. The Hindoo legend of the confusion of tongues
is as follows :

"There grew in the center of the earth the wonderful ' world
tree ' or ' knowledge tree/ It was so tall that it reached almost
to heaven. It said in its heart : ' I shall hold my head in heaven
and spread my branches over all the earth, and gather all men
together under my shadow, and protect them, and prevent them
from separating. But Brahma, to punish the pride of the tree cut
off its branches and cast them down on the earth, when they sprang
up as wata trees, and made differences of belief and speech and
customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men upon its surface."

Still more striking is a Mexican legend : according to this, Xel-
hua, one of the seven giants rescued from the flood, built the
great Pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the
gods, angry at his audacity, threw fire upon the building and
broke it down, whereupon every separate family received a lan-
guage of its own.

Such explanatory myths grew or spread widely over the earth.
A well-known form of the legend, more like that of the Chalde-
ans ihan the Hebrew later form, appeared among the Greeks.
According to this, the Aloidee piled Mount Ossa upon Olympus
and Pelion upon Ossa, in their efforts to reach heaven and de-
throne Jupiter.

Still another form of it entered the thoughts of Plato. He held
that in the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same lan-
guage, but that Zeus confounded their speech because men were
proud and demanded eternal youth and immortality.*

* For the identification of the Tower of Babel with the " Birs Nimrud " amid the ruins
of the city of Borsippa, see Sir Henry Rawlinson, and especially George Smith, Assyrian

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 293

But naturally the version of the legend which most affected
Christendom was that modification of the Chaldean form devel-
oped among the Jews and embodied in their sacred books. To a
thinking man in these days it is very instructive. The coming
down of the Almighty from heaven to see the tower and put an
end to it by dispersing its builders, points to the time when his
dwelling was supposed to be just above the firmament or solid
vault above the earth ; the time when he exercised his beneficent
activity in such acts as opening " the windows of heaven " to give
down rain upon the earth ; in bringing out the sun every day and
hanging up the stars every night to give light to the earth ; in
hurling comets, to give warning ; in placing his bow in the cloud,
to give hope ; in coming down in the cool of the evening to walk
in the garden of Eden and to talk with the man he had made ; in
meeting one chosen man upon a mountain to give him laws, and
another in the desert to wrestle with him.

But closely connected in its effects with this Babel legend was
that of the naming of the animals by Adam. It was written in
one of our two accounts of the creation that Jehovah came down
and brought all the animals before Adam, who gave them their
names. This and other indications of language, together with the
Chaldean legend, which, in passing through the Jewish mind, be-
came monotheistic, supplied to Christian theology the germs of a
sacred science of philology. These germs developed rapidly in the
warm atmosphere of devotion and ignorance of natural law which
pervaded the early Christian Church ; and so there grew a great

Discoveries, p. 59. For a different view, see Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne de l'Orient,
vol. i, p. 118. For some of these inscriptions discovered and read by George Smith, see
his Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 160-162. For the statement re-
garding the origin of the word Babel, see Ersch and Griiber, article Babel ; also, the Rev.
Prof. A. H. Sayce, in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; also Colenso,
Pentateuch examined, vol. iv, p. 268 ; also John Fiske, Myths and Myth-makers, p. 72 ;
also Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne de l'Orient, Paris, 1881, vol. i, pp. 115 et seq. As to
the character and purpose of the great tower of the Temple of Belus, see Smith's Bible
Dictionary, article Babel, quoting Diodorus ; also Rawlinson, especially in Journal of the
Asiatic Society for 1861 ; also Sayce, Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (Hibbert Lect-
ures for 1887), London, 1877, chap. Hand elsewhere, especially pp. 96, 397, 407; also
Max Duncker, History of Antiquity, Abbott's translation, vol. ii, chaps, ii and iii. For
similar legends in other parts of the world, see Delitch ; also Humboldt, American Re-
searches ; also Brinton, Myths of the New World ; also Colenso, as above. The Tower of
Choluia is well known, having been described by Humboldt and Lord Kingsborough. For
superb engravings showing the view of Babel as developed by the theological imagina-
tion, see Kircher, Turris Babel, Amsterdam, 1679. For the Law of Wills and Causes,
with deductions from it well stated, see Beattie Crozier, Civilization and Progress, Lon-
don, 1888, pp. 112, 178, 179, 273. For Plato, see the Polit., 272, ed. Steph., and elsewhere
cited in Ersch and Griiber, article Babylon. For a good general statement, see Bible
Myths, New York, 1883, chap. iii. For Aristotle's strange want of interest in any
classification of the varieties of human speech, see Max Miiller, Lectures on the Science of
Language, London, 1864, series i, chap, iv, pp. 123-125.

294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

orthodox theory of language, strong and apparently firm, which
has lasted throughout Christendom for nearly two thousand
years.

There had, indeed, come into human thought at the very earli-
est period some suggestions of the modern scientific view of phi-
lology. Lucretius had proposed a theory, inadequate indeed, but
still pointing very directly toward the truth, as follows : " Nature
impelled man to try the various sounds of the tongue, and so
struck out the names of things, much in the same way as the in-
ability to speak is seen in its turn to drive children to the use of
gestures." But, among the early fathers of the Church, the only
one who seems to have caught an echo of this truth was St. Greg-
ory of Nyssa ; as a rule, all the other great founders of Christian
theology, as far as they expressed themselves on the subject, took
the view that the original language spoken by the Almighty and
given by him to men was Hebrew, and that from this all other
languages were derived at the destruction of the Tower of Babel.
This doctrine was especially upheld by Origen, St. Jerome, and
St. Augustine. Origen taught that "the language given at the
first through Adam, the Hebrew, remained among that portion of
mankind which was assigned not to any angel, but continued the
portion of God himself." St. Augustine declared that, when the
other races were divided by their own peculiar languages, Heber's
family preserved that language which is not unreasonably be-
lieved to have been the common language of the race, and that on
this account it was henceforth called Hebrew. St. Jerome wrote,
" The whole of antiquity affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old
Testament is written, was the beginning of all human speech."

Amid such great authorities as these even Gregory of Nyssa
struggled in vain. He seems to have taken the matter very
earnestly, and to have used not only argument but ridicule. He
insists that God does not speak Hebrew, and that the tongue
used by Moses was not even a pure dialect of one of the lan-
guages resulting from " the confusion." He makes man the in-
ventor of speech, and resorts to raillery : speaking against his
opponent Eunomius, he says that " passing in silence his base
and abject garrulity/' he will "note a few things which are
thrown into the midst of his useless or wordy discourse, where
he represents God teaching words and names to our first parents,
sitting before them like some pedagogue or grammar master."
But, naturally, the great authority of Origen, Jerome, and Augus-
tine prevailed ; the view suggested by Lucretius, and again by
St. Gregory of Nyssa, died out, and " always, everywhere, and
by all " in the Church the doctrine was received that the lan-
guage spoken by the Almighty was Hebrew ; that it was taught
by him to Adam, and that all other languages on the face of the

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 295

earth originated from it at the dispersion attending the destruc-
tion of the Tower of Babel.*

This idea threw out roots and branches in every direction,
and so developed ever into new and strong forms. As all scholars
now know, the vowel points in the Hebrew language were not
adopted until at some period between the second and tenth cent-
uries ; but in the early Church they soon came to be considered
as part of the great miracle — as the work of the right hand of
the Almighty ; and never until the eighteenth century was there
any doubt allowed about the divine origin of these rabbinical
additions to the text. To hesitate in believing that these points
were dotted by the very hand of God himself came to be con-
sidered a fearful heresy.

The series of battles between Theology and Science in the field
of comparative philology opened just on this little point, appar-
ently so insignificant — the direct divine inspiration of the rab-
binical punctuation. The first to impugn the divine origin of
these vocal points and accents appears to have been a Spanish
monk, Raymundus Martinus, in his Pugio Fidei, or Poniard of
the Faith, which he put forth in the thirteenth century. But
he and his doctrine disappeared beneath the waves of the ortho-
dox ocean, and apparently left no trace. For nearly three hun-
dred years longer the full sacred theory held its ground ; but
about the opening of the sixteenth century another glimpse of
the truth was given by a Jew, Elias Levita, and this seems to
have had some little effect, at least in keeping the germ of scien-
tific truth alive.

The Reformation, with its renewal of the literal study of the
Scriptures, and its transfer of all infallibility from the Church
and the Papacy to the letter of the sacred books, did not abate
but rather intensified for a time the devotion of Christendom to
this sacred theory of language. Only on this one question — the
origin of the Hebrew points — was there any controversy, and this
waxed hot. It began to be especially noted that these vowel
points in the Hebrew Bible seemed unknown to St. Jerome and
his compeers ; and on this ground, supported by a few other au-

* For Lucretius's statement, see the De Rerum Natura, lib. v, Monro's edition, with
translation, Cambridge, 1886, vol. iii, p. 141. For the opinion of Gregory of Nyssa, see
Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissensehaft in Deutschland, Miinchen, 1869; p. 179; and
for the passage cited, see Gregory of Nyssa in his Contra Eunomium, xii, Patr. Graeca,
Paris, 1858, vol. ii, p. 1043. For St. Jerome, see the Epistle, xviii, p. 365, Migne, tome
xxii, Paris, 1842. For citation from St. Augustine, see the City of God, Dod's translation,
Edinburgh, 1871, vol. ii, p. 122. For citation from Origen, see Ilomily xi, cited by Guichard
in preface to l'Harmonie etymologique, Paris, 1631, lib. xvi, c. xi. For absolutely con-
vincing proofs that the Jews derived the Babel and other legends of their sacred books
from the Chaldeans, see George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, passim ; but espe-
cially for a most candid though evidently somewhat reluctant summing up, see page 291.

296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thorities, some earnest men ventured to think them no part of the
original revelation to Adam. Zwingli, so much before most of
the Reformers in other respects, was equally so in this. While
not doubting the divine origin and preservation of the Hebrew
language as a whole, he denied the antiquity of the vocal points,
demonstrated their unessential character, and pointed out the fact
that St. Jerome makes no mention of them. His denial was long
the refuge of those who shared this heresy.

But the full orthodox theory remained established among the
vast majority both of Catholics and Protestants. Illustrative of
the attitude of the former is the imposing work of the canon Ma-
rini, which appeared at Venice in 1593, under the title of Noah's
Ark : A New Treasury of the Sacred Tongue. The huge folios
begin with the declaration that the Hebrew tongue was " divinely
inspired at the very beginning of the world," and the doctrine is
steadily maintained that this divine inspiration extended not only
to the letters but to the vocal punctuation.

Not before the seventeenth century was well under way do we
find a thorough scholar bold enough to gainsay this preposterous
doctrine. This new assailant was Capellus, Professor of Hebrew
at Saumur ; but even he dared not put forth his argument in
France. He was obliged to publish it in Holland, and even there
such obstacles were thrown in his way that it was ten years before
he published another treatise of importance.

The work of Capellus was received by very many open-minded
scholars as settling the question, and among these was Hugo
Grotius. But many theologians felt this view to be a blow at
the sanctity and integrity of the sacred text; and in 1648 the
great scholar, John Buxtorf, rose to defend the orthodox citadel :
in his Anticritica he brought all his stores of knowledge to defend
the doctrine that the rabbinical points and accents had been jotted
down by the right hand of God.

The controversy waxed hot ; scholars like Voss and Brian
Walton supported Capellus. Wasmuth and many others of note
were as fierce against him. The Swiss Protestants were espe-
cially violent on the orthodox side. The Calvinists of Geneva,
in 1678, by a special canon, forbade that any minister should be
received into their jurisdiction until he publicly confessed that
the Hebrew text, as it to-day exists in the Masoretic copies, is,
both as to the consonants and vowel points, divine and authentic.

While in Holland so great a man as Hugo Grotius supported
the view of Capellus, and while in France the eminent Catholic
scholar Richard Simon, and many others, Catholic and Protestant,
took similar ground against this divine origin of the Hebrew
punctuation, there was arrayed against them a body apparently
overwhelming. In France, Bossuet, the greatest theologian that

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 297

France lias ever produced, did his best to crush Simon. In Ger-
many, Wasmuth, professor first at Rostock and afterward at Kiel,
hurled his " Vindicise " at the innovators. Yet at this very mo-
ment the battle was clearly won ; the arguments of Capellus were
irrefragable, and, despite the commands of bishops, the outcries of
theologians and the sneering of critics, his application of strictly
scientific observation and reasoning carried the day.

Yet a casual observer, long after the fate of the battle was
really settled, might have supposed that it was still in doubt. As
is not unusual in theologic controversies, attempts were made to
galvanize the dead doctrine into the appearance of life. Famous
among these attempts was that made as late as the beginning of
the eighteenth century by two Bremen theologians, Hase and
Iken. They put forth a compilation in two huge folios simul-
taneously at Leyden and Amsterdam, prominent in which work
is the treatise on The Integrity of Scripture, by Johann Andreas
Danzius, Professor of Oriental Languages and Senior Member of
the Philosophical Faculty of Jena. To preface it, there was a
formal and fulsome approval by three eminent professors of the-
ology at Leyden. With great fervor the author pointed out that
"religion itself depends absolutely on the infallible inspiration,
both verbal and literal, of the Scripture text " ; and with impas-
sioned eloquence he assailed the blasphemers who dared question
the divine origin of the Hebrew points. But this was really the
last great effort. That the case was lost is seen by the fact that
Danzius felt obliged to use other missiles than arguments, and
especially to call his opponents hard names. From this period
the old sacred theory as to the origin of the Hebrew points may
be considered as dead and buried.

But the war was soon to be waged on a wider and far more
important field. The inspiration of the Hebrew punctuation
having been given up, the great orthodox body fell back upon
the remainder of the theory, and intrenched this more strongly
than ever — the theory that the Hebrew language was the first of
all languages, spoken by the Almighty, given by him to Adam,
transmitted through Noah to the world after the Deluge, and
that the confusion of tongues was the origin of all the other lan-
guages of the earth. In giving account of this new phase of the
struggle, it is well to go back a little. From the revival of learn-
ing and the Reformation had come the renewed study of Hebrew
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and thus the sacred doc-
trine regarding the divine origin of the Hebrew language received
additional authority. All the early Hebrew grammars, from that
of Reuchlin down, assert the divine origin and miraculous claims
of Hebrew. It is constantly mentioned as " the sacred tongue " —
sancta lingua. In 1506 Reuchlin, though himself persecuted by a

298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

large faction in the Church for advanced views, refers to Hebrew
as " spoken by the month of God."

This idea was popularized by the 1508 edition of the Margarita
Philosophica, published at Strasburg. That work — in its suc-
cessive editions a mirror of human knowledge at the close of the
middle ages and the opening of modern times — contains a curi-
ous introduction to the study of Hebrew. In this it is declared
that Hebrew was the original speech, "used between God and
man and between men and angels." Its full-page frontispiece
represents Moses receiving from God the tables of stone written
in Hebrew; and, as a conclusive argument, it reminds us that
Christ himself, by choosing a Hebrew maid for his mother, made
that his mother-tongue.

It must be noted here, however, that Luther, in one of those
outbursts of strong sense which so often appear in his career,
enforced the explanation that the words " God said " had nothing
to do with the voice or articulation of human language. Still,
he evidently yielded to the general view. In the Eoman Church
at the same period we have a typical example of the theologic
method in the statement by Luther's great opponent, Cajetan,
that the three languages of the inscription on the cross of Calvary
"were the representatives of all languages," and he gives as the
reason for this the fact that " the number three denotes perfec-
tion."

In 1538 Postillus made a very important endeavor at a com-
parative study of languages, but with the orthodox assumption
that all were derived from one source, namely, the Hebrew.
Naturally, Comparative Philology blundered and stumbled on in
this path with endless absurdities. The most amazing efforts
were made to trace back everything to the sacred language.
English and Latin dictionaries appeared, in which every word
was traced back to a supposed Hebrew root. No supposition was
too absurd in this attempt to square Science with Scripture. It
was declared that, as Hebrew is written from right to left, it
might be read either way, in order to produce a satisfactory ety-
mology. The whole effort in all this sacred scholarship was, not
to find what the truth is ; not to see how the various languages
are to be classified, or from what source they are really derived,
but to demonstrate what was supposed necessary to" maintain the
truth of Scripture, namely, that all languages are derived from
the Hebrew.

This stumbling and blundering, under the sway of this ortho-
dox necessity, is seen among the foremost scholars throughout
Europe. About the middle of the sixteenth century the great
Swiss scholar, Conrad Gesner, beginning his Mithridates, says,
" While of all languages Hebrew is the first and oldest, of all is

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 299

alone pure and unmixed, all the rest are much mixed, for there is
none which has not some words derived and corrupted from
Hebrew."

Typical, as we approach the end of the sixteenth century, are
the utterances of two of the most noted English divines : First
of these may be mentioned Dr. William Fulke, Master of Pem-
broke Hall, in the University of Cambridge. In his Discovery
of the Dangerous Rock of the Romish Church, published in 1580,
he speaks of " the Hebrew tongue, . . . the first tongue of the
world, and for the excellency thereof called ' the holy tongue.' "

Yet more strong, eight years later, was another eminent
divine, Dr. William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity and
Master of St. John's College at Cambridge. In his Disputation
on Holy Scripture, first printed in 1588, he says : " The Hebrew is
the most ancient of all languages, and was that which alone pre-
vailed in the world before the Deluge and the erection of the
Tower of Babel. For it was this which Adam used and all men
before the Flood, as is manifest from the Scriptures, as the
Fathers testify." He then proceeds to quote passages on this
subject from St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and others. He cites St.
Chrysostom in support of the statement that " God himself
showed the model and method of writing when he delivered the
Law written by his own finger to Moses." *

* For the whole scriptural argument, embracing the various text's on which the Sacred
Science of Philology was founded, with the use made of such texts, see Benfey, Ge-
schichte der Sprachwissenschaft in Deutschland, Miinchen, 1869, pp. 22-26. As to the
origin of the vowel-points, see Benfey, as above : he holds that they began to be inserted
in the second, and that the process lasted until about the tenth century a. d. For Ray-
mundus and his Pugio Fidei, see G. L. Bauer, Prolegomena to his Revision of Glassius's
Philologia Sacra, Leipsic, 1795; see especially pp. 8-14, in tome ii of the work. For
Zwingli, see Traef. in Apol. comp. Jesaiae (Opera iii) : Cf. e. g. Morinus, De Lingua
primaeva, p. 447. For Marini, see his Area Noe : Thesaurus, Lingua? Sanctae, Venet., 1593,
and especially the preface. For general account of Capellus, see G. L. Bauer, in his Pro-
legomena, as above, Leipsic, 1795, vol. ii, pp. 8-14. His Arcanum Premetationis Reve-
latum was brought out at Leyden in 1624; his Critica Sacra ten years later. See on
Capellus and Swiss theologucs, Wolfius, Bibliotheca Nebr., tome ii, p. 27. For the
struggle, see Schnedermann, Die Controverse des Ludovicus Capellus mit dem Buxtofen,
Leipsic, 1S79: cited in article Hebrew, in Encyclopaedia Britannica. For Wasmuth, see
his Vindiciae Sanctae Hebraicae Scripturac, Rostock, 1664. For Reuchlin, see the dedi-
catory preface to his Rudimenta Hebraica, Pforzheim, 1506, folio, in which he speaks
of the ,l in divina scriptura dicendi genus, quale os Dei locutum est." The statement in
the Margarita Philosophica as to Hebrew is doubtless based on Reuchlin's Rudimenta He-
braica, which it quotes, and which first appeared in 1506. It is significant that this section
disappeared from the Margarita in the following editions ; but this disappearance is easily
understood when we recall the fact that Gregory Reysch, its author, having become one of
the Papal Commission to judge Reuchlin in his quarrel with the Dominicans, thought it
prudent to side with the latter, and therefore, doubtless, considered it wise to suppress all
evidence of Reuchlin's influence upon his beliefs. All the other editions of the Margarita
in my possession are content with teaching, under the head of the Alphabet, that the

3oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This sacred theory entered the seventeenth centnry in full
force, and seems to have swept everything before it. The great
commentators, Catholic and Protestant, accepted and developed
it. Great prelates, Catholic and Protestant, stood guard over it,
favoring those who supported it, doing their best to destroy those
who would modify it.

In 1606 Stephen Guichard built new buttresses for it in Cath-
olic France. He explains in his preface that his intention is " to
make the reader see in the Hebrew word not only the Greek and
Latin, but also the Italian, the Spanish, the French, the German,
the Fleming, the English, and many others from all languages."
As the merest tyro in philology can now see, the great difficulty
that Guichard encounters is in getting from the Hebrew to the
Aryan group of languages. How he meets this difficulty may be
imagined from his statement, as follows : " As for the derivation
of words by addition, subtraction, and inversion of the letters, it
is certain that this can and ought thus to be done, if we would
find etymologies — a thing which becomes very credible when we
consider that the Hebrews wrote from right to left and the Greeks
and others from left to right. All the learned recognize such
derivations as necessary ; . . . and . . . certainly otherwise one
could scarcely trace any etymology back to Hebrew."

Of course, by this method of philological juggling, anything
could be proved which the author thought necessary to maintain
his pious theory.

Two years later, Andrew Willett published at London his
Hexapla, or Six-fold Commentary upon Genesis. In this he in-
sists that the one language of all mankind in the beginning " was
the Hebrew tongue preserved still in Heber's family." He also
takes pains to say that the Tower of Babel " was not so called of
Belus, as some have imagined, but of confusion, for so the Hebrew
word ballot signifieth"; and he quotes from St. Chrysostom to
strengthen his position.

In 1627 Dr. Constantine l'Empereur was inducted into the
chair of Philosophy of the Sacred Language in the University of

Hebrew letters were invented by Adam. On Luther's view of the words " God said,''
see Farrar, Language and Languages. For a most valuable statement regarding the
clashing opinions at the Reformation, see Max Miiller, as above, lecture iv, p. 1 32. Both
Miiller and Benfey note, as especially important, the difference between the Church view
and the ancient heathen view regarding " barbarians." See Miiller, as above, lecture iv,
p. 127, and Benfey, as above, p. 170 et scq. For a very remarkable list of Bibles printed
at an early period, see Benfey, p. 5G9. For quotation beginning with the words Dictiona-
ries of Latin and English, see Sayce. For Gesner, see his Mithridates (de differcntiis lin-
guarum), Zurich, 1555. For a similar attempt to prove that Italian was also derived from
Hebrew, see Giambullari, cited in Garlanda, p. 174. For Fulke, see the Parker Society's
publications, 1818, p. 224. For Whitaker, see reprint in the Parker Society's publications
for 1849, pp. 112-114.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 301

Leyden. In his inaugural oration on The Dignity and Utility
of the Hebrew Tongue, he puts himself emphatically on record
in favor of the divine origin and miraculous purity of that lan-
guage. " Who," he says, " can call in question the fact that the
Hebrew idiom is coeval with the world itself, save such as seek to
win vainglory for their own sophistry by obscuring the truth ? "

Two years after Willett, in England, comes the famous Dr.
Lightfoot, one of the renowned scholars of his time in Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin ; but all his scholarship was bent to suit theo-
logical requirements. In his " Erubhin," or Miscellanies, pub-
lished in 1629, he goes to the full length of the sacred theory,
though we begin to see a curious endeavor to get over some lin-
guistic difficulties. One passage will serve to show both the ro-
bustness of his faith and the acuteness of his reasoning, in view
of the difficulties which scholars now began to find in the sacred
theory : " Other commendations this tongue (Hebrew) needeth
none than what it hath of itself ; namely, for sanctity it was the
tongue of God; and for antiquity it was the tongue of Adam.
God the first founder, and Adam the first speaker of it ... It
began with the world and the Church, and continued and in-
creased in glory till the captivity in Babylon . . . As the man in
Seneca, that through sickness lost his memory and forgot his own
name, so the Jews, for their sins, lost their language and forgot
their own tongue . . . Before the confusion of tongues all the
world spoke their tongue and no other ; but, since the confusion
of the Jews, they speak the language of all the world and not
their own."

But just at the middle of the century (1657) came in England
a champion of the sacred theory more important than any of
these — Brian Walton, Bishop of Chester. His Polyglot Bible,
with its prolegomena, dominated English scriptural criticism
throughout the remainder of the century. He begins his great
work by proving at length the divine origin of Hebrew, and the
derivation from it of all other forms of speech. He declares it
" probable that the first parent of mankind was the inventor of
letters." His chapters on this subject are full of interesting de-
tails. He says that the Welshman, Davis, had already tried to
prove the Welsh the primitive speech ; Wormius, the Danish ;
Mitilerius, the German ; but the bishop stands firmly by the sacred
theory, declaring that " even in the New World are found traces
of the Hebrew tongue, namely, in New England and in New Bel-
gium, where the word Aguarda signifies earth, and the name
Joseph is found among the Hurons." As we have seen, Bishop
Walton had been forced to give up the inspiration of the rabbini-
cal punctuation, but he seems to have fallen back with all the
more tenacity on what remained of the great sacred theory of

3o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

language, and to have "become its leading champion among Eng-
lish-speaking peoples.

At this same period we have the same doctrine pnt forth by a
great authority in Germany. In 1G57 Andreas Sennert published
his inaugural address as Professor of Sacred Letters and Dean of
the Theological Faculty at Wittenberg. All his efforts are given
to making Luther's old university a fortress of the orthodox
theory. His address, like many others in various parts of Europe,
shows that in his time an inaugural with any save an orthodox
statement of the theological platform would hardly have been
tolerated. There are few things in the past to the sentimental
mind more pathetic, to the philosophical mind more natural, and
to the progressive mind more ludicrous, than most addresses on
such occasions before assemblages of learned theologians at high
festivals of great theological schools. The audience has generally
consisted mainly of estimable elderly gentlemen, who received
their theology in their youth, and who in their old age have
watched over it with jealous care to see that it is well coddled and
protected from any fresh breeze of thought. Naturally, then, a
theological professor inaugurated under these circumstances has
endeavored to propitiate his audience. Sennert goes to great
lengths both in this and in his grammar, published nine years
later, for, declaring the divine origin of Hebrew to be quite be-
yond controversy, he says : " Noah received it from our first
parents, and guarded it in the midst of the waters; Heber and
Peleg saved it from the confusion of tongues."

The same doctrine was no less loudly insisted upon by the
greatest authority in Switzerland, Buxtorf, professor at Basle,
who proclaimed Hebrew to be " the tongue of God, the tongue of
angels, the tongue of the prophets " ; and the effect of this procla-
mation may be imagined when we note in 1G63 that his book had
reached its sixth edition.

It was re-echoed through England, Holland, Germany, France,
and America, and, if possible, yet more highly developed. In
England Theophilus Gale sets himself to prove that not only all
the languages, but all the learning of the world, have been drawn
from the Hebrew records.

The orthodox doctrine was also fully vindicated in Holland.
Six years before the close of the seventeenth century, Morinus,
Doctor of Theology, Professor of Oriental Languages, and pastor
at Amsterdam, published his great work on Primaeval Language.
Its frontispiece depicts the confusion of tongues at Babel, and, as
a pendant to this, the pentecostal gift of tongues to the apostles.
In the successive chapters of the first book he proves that lan-
guage could not have come into existence save as a direct gift
from heaven ; that there is a primitive language, the mother of

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 303

all tlie rest ; that this primitive language still exists in its pris-
tine purity ; that this language is the Hebrew. The second book
is devoted to proving that the Hebrew letters were divinely
received, have been preserved intact, and are the source of all
other alphabets. But in the third book he feels obliged to
declare, in the face of the contrary dogma held, as he says, by
" not a few most eminent men piously solicitous for the authority
of the sacred text/' that the Hebrew punctuation was, after all,
not of divine inspiration, but a late invention of the rabbis.

France, also, was held to all appearance in complete subjection
to the orthodox idea up to the end of the century. In 1697
appeared at Paris perhaps the most learned of all the books
written to prove Hebrew the original tongue and source of all
others. The Gallican Church was then at the height of its power.
Bossuet as bishop, as thinker, and as an adviser of Louis XIV,
had crushed all opposition to orthodoxy. The Edict of Nantes
had been revoked ; and the Huguenots, so far as they could escape,
were scattered throughout the world, destined to repay France
with interest a thousand-fold during the next two centuries. The
bones of the Jansenists were dug up and scattered at Port Royal.
Louis XIV stood guard over the piety of his people. It was in
the midst of this series of triumphs that Father Louis Thomassin,
Priest .of the Oratory, issued his Universal Hebrew Glossary.
In this, to use his own language, " the divinity, antiquity, and
perpetuity of the Hebrew tongue, with its letters, accents, and
ether characters," are established forever and beyond all cavil,
by proofs drawn from all peoples, kindred, and nations under the
sun. This superb, thousand-columned folio was issued from the
royal press, and is one of the most imposing monuments of human
piety and folly ; taking rank with the great treatises of Fromun-
dus against Galileo, of Quaresmius on Lot's Wife, and of Glad-
stone on Genesis and Geology.

The great theologic - philologic chorus was steadily main-
tained, and, as in an antiphonal chant, its doctrines were echoed
from land to land. From America there came the earnest words
of noble John Eliot, praising Hebrew as the most fit to be made a
universal language, and declaring it the tongue " which it pleased
our Lord Jesus to make use of when he spake from heaven unto
Paul." At the close of the seventeenth century comes, as it were,
a strong antiphonal answer in this chorus from England. Meric
Casaubon, the learned Prebendary of Canterbury, thus declares :
" One language, the Hebrew, I hold to be simply and absolutely
the source of all." And, to make the chorus perfect, there came
into it, in complete unison, the voice of Bentley — the greatest
scholar of the old sort whom England has ever produced. He
was indeed one of the most learned and acute critics of any age,

304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

but he was also Master of Trinity, Archdeacon of Bristol, held
two livings besides, and enjoyed the honor of refusing the bishop-
ric of Bristol, as not rich enough to tempt him. Noblesse oblige :
that Bentley should hold a brief for the theological side was in-
evitable, and we need not be surprised when we hear him declar-
ing, " We are sure, from the names of persons and places men-
tioned in Scripture before the Deluge, not to insist upon other
arguments, that the Hebrew was the primitive language of man-
kind, and that it continued pure above three thousand years until
the captivity into Babylon." The power of the theologic bias,
when properly stimulated with ecclesiastical preferment, could
hardly be more perfectly exemplified than in this captivity of
such a man as Bentley.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century this sacred doc-
trine, based, as was supposed, upon explicit statements of Script-
ure, seemed forever settled. As we have seen, strong fortresses
had been built for it in every Christian land; nothing seemed
more unlikely than that the little groups of scholars scattered
through these various countries could ever prevail against them.
These strongholds were built so firmly, and had behind them so
vast an army of religionists of every creed, that to conquer them
seemed impossible. And yet at that very moment their doom
was decreed. Within a few years from this period of their great-
est triumph, the garrisons of all these sacred fortresses were in
hopeless confusion, and the armies behind them in full retreat ;
a little later, both the orthodox fortresses and forces were in the
hands of the scientific philologists.

How this came about will be shown in the second part of this
chapter.*

* The quotation from Guichard is from L'Harmonie etymologique des langues . . . dans
laquelle par plusieurs Antiquites ct Etymologies de toute sorte, je demonstrc evidemment
que toutes les langues sont descendues de l'Hebraique ; par M. Estienne Guichard, Paris,
1631. The first edition appeared in 1606. For Willett, see his Hexapla, London, 1608,
pp. 125-128. For the Address of L'Empercur, see his publication, Leyden, 162*7. The
quotation from Lightfoot, beginning, " Other commendations," etc., is taken from his Erub-
hin, or Miscellanies, edition of 1629. See also his works, vol. iv, pp. 46, 47, London, 1822.
For Bishop Brian Walton, see the Cambridge edition of his works, 1828, Prolegomena,
§§ 1 and 3. As to Walton's giving up the rabbinical points, he mentions in one of the
latest editions of his work the fact that Isaac Casaubon, Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Vossius,
Grotius, Beza, Luther, Zwingli, Brentz, (Ecolampadius, Calvin, and even some of the popes,
were with him in this. For Sennert, see his Dissertatio de Ebraicae S. S. Linguae Originc,
etc., Wittenberg, 1657; also his Grammatica Orientalis, Wittenberg, 1666. For Buxtorf,
see the preface to his Thesaurus Grammaticus Linguae Sanctae Hebraepe, sixth edition, 1663.
For Gale, see his Court of the Gentiles, Oxford, 1672. For Morinus, see his Exercitationes
de Lingua Primaeva, Utrecht, 1694. For Thomassin, see his Glossarium Universale He-
braicum, Paris, 1697. For John Eliot's utterance, see Mather's Magnalia, Book III, p. 184.
For Meric Casaubon, see his De Lingua Anglia Yet., p. 160, cited by Massey, p. 16 of
Origin and Progress of Letters. For Bentley, see his works, London, 1S36, vol. ii, p. 11,

THE PEOPLING OF AMERICA. 305

THE PEOPLING OF AMERICA.*

Br M. ARMAND DE QUATEEFAGES.

IN acknowledgment of the unexpected honor that has been
done me in calling me to this chair, I have first to perform
the very pleasant duty of saluting the foreign and French schol-
ars who have responded to the invitation of our committee. I
shall do it in few words, but I affirm, in the name of all my
colleagues, that they come from the heart. Welcome, gen-
tlemen !

Unluckily, the same honor imposes on me another task, and a
difficult one. It is the usage, in opening a session of the Congress,
for the president to make an address to his colleagues respecting
the questions that are to occupy them ; and what can I say, con-
cerning America, to learned men who make that continent the
object of their habitual studies ? I do not merit, as you do, the
title of Americanist. Called by the duties of my teacher's office
to deal with the history of all human populations, I can not under-
take especially a study which is more than sufficient to absorb a
whole lifetime. I have much to learn from you, and I thank you
in advance for all that you are going to teach me.

Yet, it is hardly necessary to say, in looking from the point
of view of the whole, which has usually been my practice, my
thought could not fail to be often directed to that New World the
discovery of which opened so many new horizons to nearly all
the branches of human knowledge. The question of the ori-
gin of its inhabitants appears at the very head of the problems
which it sets before the anthropologist. Are the indigenous
Americans in any degree relatives of the populations of the other
continents ? Or, have they appeared on the lands where we have
found them, without any ethnological connection with those
populations ?

You know that both of these opinions have been maintained,
and still have their partisans ; and I made known long ago the
solution which I had reached. In my view, America was origi-

and citations by Welsford, Mithridates Minor, p. 2. As to Bentley's position as a scholar,
see the famous estimate in Macaulay's Essays. For a short but very interesting account
of him, see Mark Pattison's article in vol. iii of the last edition of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. The position of Pattison as an agnostic dignitary in the English Church emi-
nently fitted him to understand Bentley's career, both as regards the orthodox and the
scholastic world. For perhaps the most full and striking account of the manner in which
Bcntley lorded it in the scholastic world of his time, see Marks's Life of Bentley, vol. ii,
chap, xvii, and especially his contemptuous reply to the judges, as given in vol. ii, pp.
211, 212.

* Address before the eighth meeting of the Congress of Americanists.
vol. xxxvin. — 21

jo6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nally, and lias always been, peopled by migrations from the Old
World. At the risk of repeating myself, I will briefly sum up the
grounds of my conviction.

Permit me first to recall the two rules which I have constantly
followed in the solution of the questions, sometimes so ardently
contested, which the history of man raises. The first is to put
away absolutely every consideration borrowed from dogma or
philosophy, and to invoke only science — that is, experiment and
observation. The second is, never to isolate man from other
organized beings ; and to admit that he is subject, as to all that
is not exclusively human, to all the general laws which control
equally animals and plants. Hence, we can not regard as true
any doctrine or opinion which makes man an exception among
organized beings.

We make the application of these principles to the question
which occupies us, but in a broader way ; for it is only a special
case of a more general problem which we may formulate in the
terms — Man is everywhere now : did he appear everywhere in the
beginning ? If not absolutely cosmopolitan in its origin, did the
race appear at an indefinite number of points ? Or, rather, born at
a single and limited spot, has it gradually taken possession of the
whole earth by migration ? At first thought we might suppose
that the answer to these questions would be very different accord-
ing as we admit the existence of one or many human species.
That would be a mistake. We purpose to show that polygenists
can shake hands with monogenists on this point, without involv-
ing themselves in any contradiction. We take, first, the mono-
genist view.

Physiology, which leads us to recognize the unity of the hu-
man race, teaches us nothing in reference to its primary geo-
graphical origin. It is otherwise with the science which concerns
the distribution of animals and plants over the surface of the
globe. The geography of organic beings has also its general
facts, which we call laws. These facts — these laws — must be
learned and interrogated in order to solve the problem of the
manner in which the globe was peopled. The first result of this
inquiry is a demonstration that real cosmopolitanism, as we at-
tribute it to man, does not exist anywhere, either in the animal
or the vegetable kingdom. I cite a few of the evidences in sup-
port of this affirmation.

Take, first, what De Candolle says, that " no phanerogamous
plant extends over the whole surface of the earth. There hardly
exist more than eighteen the areas of which reach over half the
lands ; and there is no tree or shrub among the plants of most
considerable extension/' The last remark touches an order of
considerations on which I shall insist further on.

THE PEOPLING OF AMERICA. 307

In my lectures on this subject I have cited textual ly the words
of the best authorities among men of science respecting the prin-
cipal groups of fresh and salt water animals ; I have passed in
review the fauna of the air, beginning with insects ; and have
dwelt to some extent on fishes and reptiles. I will spare you the
enumeration, and will speak of the bird the area of whose habitat
is most extended. The peregrine falcon occupies all the temper-
ate and warm regions of the Old and New Worlds, but does not
reach the arctic regions, or Polynesia.

In his body, man is anatomically and physiologically a mam-
mal— no more and no less. This class, therefore, interests us
more than the others, and furnishes us with more precise knowl-
edge. I will, for that reason, enter more into detail respecting it,
taking as my guide the great work of Andrew Murray.

By virtue of their strength, their enormous locomotive powers,
and of the continuity of the seas which they inhabit, the cetaceans
should seem to be able to play a truly cosmopolitan part. They
do not. Each species is cantoned within an area of greater or less
extent, beyond which a few individuals may occasionally make
excursions, but always to return soon within their bounds. Two
exceptions to this general rule have been noted. A rorqual with
large flippers, and a northern Balcenopterus, natives of temperate
and frigid seas, are said to have been found, the first at the Cape,
the second at Java. Judging from what Van Beneden and Ger-
vais, the two greatest authorities in cetology; say, these statements
are at least doubtful. But, if we accept them as true, it is still the
fact that neither species has been met in the seas that wash Amer-
ica and Polynesia. We find nothing else resembling the whales
in cosmopolitism, even though it be narrow. Here, also, I spare
you the details. You know as well as I do that the species of
marsupials, edentates, and pachyderms have their respective
countries clearly defined ; and that, if the horse and hog are now
in America, it is because they have been imported there by Euro-
peans.

A very small number of ruminants inhabit the north of both
continents. It is generally agreed to regard the reindeer and the
caribou as only races of the same species ; Brandt, with some res-
ervations, says as much of the bison and the aurochs, the argali
and the big-horn. But none of these species are found in the
warm regions of these two quarters, or in all Oceania.

The carnivorous order perhaps offers some similar facts to the
preceding. But when we come to the Cheiroptera and the Quad-
rumana, we do not find a single species common to both conti-
nents, or to the rest of the world.

Thus there is not a cosmopolite, after the manner of man,
among all organized beings, whether plants or animals. Now, it is

308 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

evident that the area of the actual habitat of any animal or vege-
table species includes the center where that species first appeared.
By virtue of the law of expansion, the center should likewise be
less in extent than the actual area. No plant and no anirnal, there-
fore, originated in all the regions of the globe. To suppose that
man appeared in the beginning everywhere that we now see him
would be to make a unique exception of him. The hypothesis can
not, therefore, be received ; and every monogenist must repel the
conception of the initial cosmopolitism of the human species as
false.

The same conclusion is imposed on polygenists, unless they
refuse to apply to man the laws of botanical and zoological ge-
ography that govern all other beings. In fact, however much
they have multiplied species of man — whether they assume that
there are two, with Virey ; fifteen, with Bery Saint-Vincent; or an
undetermined but considerable number, with Gliddon — they have
always united them into a single genus. A human genus can
be no more cosmopolitan than a human species. Speaking of
plants, De Candolle says, " The same causes have borne on genera
and on species " ; and this is as true of animals as of plants.
Limiting ourselves to the animals — among the cetaceans, Mur-
ray thinks that the genera of the rorqual and the dolphin are
represented in all the seas ; Van Beneden and Gervais dispute
this ; we will, however, admit it, for it will not weaken our conclu-
sions. Besides the cetaceans, there can be no question of generic
cosmopolitism. Of the ruminants, the genera of the deer, the
ox, etc. ; of the carnivores, the cat, dog, bear, etc., have repre-
sentatives in both worlds, but not in Australia or Polynesia.
Further, as we examine the higher and higher groups, we see
the number of these genera of large area diminishing. Finally,
not a single genus of monkey is known to be common to the old
and the new continents ; and the simian type itself is wanting in
the greater part of both worlds and Oceania.

Thus, whether we regard species or genera, the area of the
habitat is the more restricted as the animals are more highly
placed in the zoological scale. It is the same with plants. De
Candolle says on this point, " The mean area of species is as
much smaller as the class to which they belong has a more com-
plete, more developed, or, in other words, more perfect organi-
zation."

Progressive cantonment, in proportion to the increasing per-
fection of the organisms, is then a general fact, a law, which is
applicable to all organized beings, and which physiology easily
accounts for. Now, this law disagrees absolutely with the hy-
pothesis that there can exist a human race, comprehending sev-
eral distinct species, which have appeared everywhere that we see

THE PEOPLING OF AMERICA. 309

men. This is easily comprehended. Invoking the authority of
Murray, and the universality of habitat which he attributes to
the genera of the rorqual and the dolphin, polygenists might be
tempted to say : " Non-cosmopolitism already presents two ex-
ceptions ; why may there not be a third ? Two genera of ceta-
ceans are naturally represented in all the seas ; why may not the
human genus have appeared at the start in every land ? "

This reasoning fails at the base. The rorquals and the dol-
phins belong to the lowest order of mammalia. Men, if we re-
gard the body alone, are the highest order. Unless we constitute
them a single exception, they must obey the laws of the superior
group ; consequently, they can not escape the law of progressive
cantonment. It follows, hence, that a human genus, as the po-
lygenists understand it, must have occupied in its origin an area
no more extended than that which has devolved on some genera
of monkeys. But, among the monkeys themselves, all natural-
ists recognize a hierarchy ; all place at their head the order of
the anthropoid apes. It is, then, from the secondary groups of
this family that polygenists should ask for indications of the
possible extent of the area primarily accorded to the human
genus; and you know how inconsiderable is the area of the genera
gibbon, orang, gorilla, and chimpanzee. You see that, at whatever
point of view we place ourselves, we have either to assume that
man alone escapes the laws that have regulated the geographical
distribution of all other organized beings, or to admit that the
primitive tribes were cantoned upon a very restricted space. By
judging from present conditions, by making the largest conces-
sions, by neglecting the incontestable superiority of the human
type over the simian type, all that the polygenist hypothesis per-
mits is to regard that area as having been nearly equivalent to that
occupied by the different species of gibbons, which range, on the
continent, from Assam to Malacca ; in the islands, from the Philip-
pines to Java. Monogenism, of course, tends to restrict this area
still more, and to make it equal at most to that of the chim-
panzee, which extends nearly from Cairo to the Senegal. I am
the first to recognize that we may perhaps have to enlarge these
limits at some later time. I consider the existence of tertiary
man to be demonstrated ; and only the geographical distribution
of the monkeys, his contemporaries, can furnish more precise
information upon the primary extension of the center of man's
appearance. Paleontology has taught us that the area formerly
occupied by the simian type was evidently more considerable
than it is now. It may have been the same with the anthro-
poid apes. But, till this time, no fossil is connected with that
family. You know that the Dryopithecus, which was long re-
garded as belonging to them, has been shown by the examina-

310 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion of the best preserved specimens to be nothing more than a
monkey of an inferior order.

At any rate, the general laws of the geographical distribntion
of beings, and especially that of progressive cantonment, permit
us to affirm that man primarily occupied only a very limited part
of the globe ; and that, if he is now everywhere, it is because he
has covered the whole earth with his emigrant tribes.

I know that this thought of the peopling of the globe by
migrations troubles many minds. It puts us in the face of an
immense unknown ; it raises a world of questions, a large number
of which may appear to be inaccessible to our research. Thus, I
have often been asked : " Why create all these difficulties ? It is
much more natural to confine ourselves to the popular move-
ments attested by history, and accept autochthonism, especially
in the case of the lowest savages. How could the Hottentots and
the Fuegians reach their present countries, starting from some
undetermined point which you place in the north of Asia ? Such
voyages are impossible ; these peoples were born at the Cape of
Good Hope and Cape Horn."

To these conclusions, if not received, I will first answer by an
anecdote borrowed from Livingstone, the bearing of which is
easy to comprehend. The illustrious traveler tells how in his
youth he used to make with his brothers long excursions devoted
to natural history. " In one of these exploring tours/' he says,
"we went into a limestone quarry, long before the study of
. geology had become as common as it has since. It is impossible
to express with what joy and astonishment I set myself to pick-
ing out the shells which we found in the carboniferous rock. A
quarryman looked at me with that air of compassion which a
kindly man takes on at the sight of a person of unsound mind. I
asked him how the shells came in the rocks. He answered, ' "When
God created the rocks, he made the shells and put them there/ "
Livingstone adds: "What pains geologists might have spared
themselves by adopting the Ottoman philosophy of that work-
man ! " I will ask, in turn, Where would geology have been if
men of science had adopted that philosophy ? I ask the anthro-
pologists to imitate the geologists ; I invite them to inquire how
and by what way the most distant peoples have radiated from
the center of the first appearance of man to the extremities of the
globe. I am not afraid to predict brilliant discoveries to those who
will set themselves seriously to the study of numerous well-marked
migrations. In this the past permits a glimpse into the future.

Some years ago, when they talked to me in such language as
I have just repeated, they did not fail to add Polynesia to the
list of regions which men destitute of all our perfected arts could
not reach. You know how completely such assertions have been

THE PEOPLING OF AMERICA. 311

refuted. Adding liis personal researches to those of his prede-
cessors, Hale first drew up the map of Polynesian migrations.
Twenty years afterward I was able to complete the work of the
learned American by the aid of documents collected after the
appearance of that, the fundamental study. Now, as has been
said by our lamented Gaussin, so competent for all that relates
to Oceania, the peopling of Polynesia by migrations starting
from the Indian Archipelago is as clearly demonstrated as the
invasion of Europe by barbarians in the middle ages.

Like Polynesia, America was peopled by colonists from the
Old World. Their point of departure is to be found and their
tracks are to be followed. The labor will indeed be more diffi-
cult and longer upon the continent than in Oceania, principally
because the migrations were more numerous and go back to a
higher antiquity. The first Indonesian pioneers, who, departing
from the island of Bouro, landed in the Samoan and Tongan
Archipelagoes, probably made the passage toward the end of the
fifth century, or near the time of the conversion of Clovis. The
peopling of New Zealand by emigrants from the Manaias goes
back, at most, to the earlier years of the fifteenth century. Thus,
the peopling of Polynesia was all accomplished during our mid-
dle ages, while the first migrations to America date from geologi-
cal times.

Two investigators to whom we owe some valuable discoveries,
MM. Ameghino and "Whitney, have traced the existence of Ameri-
can man back to the Tertiary age. But this opinion, as you know,
has been contested by men of equal repute, and I believe that the
view of the latter is confirmed by the comparison of the fossil
faunas of the pampas, Brazil, and the Calif ornian gravels. Hence,
judging by the little that we know, man reached Lombardy and
the Cantal when he had not yet penetrated to America. It is
undoubtedly necessary at this point to make the most formal re-
serves with reference to the future ; but, if the fact is confirmed,
it seems to me to admit of easy explanation. Everything leads
me to think that America and Asia were separated previous to
the Quaternary age as they are now. Had it been otherwise, the
species of mammalia common to the north of both continents
would surely have been more numerous. The men and the land
animals of the shores of Bering's Sea would have been stopped
there. But when the great geological winter rapidly brought in
a polar temperature in place of a mild climate like that of our
California, the ancient Tertiary tribes were forced to migrate in
every direction. A certain number of them embarked upon the
bridge of ice which the cold had cast between the two shores, and
arrived in America with the reindeer, as their Western congeners
arrived in France with the same animal.

3i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

From that moment the era of migrations to America was
opened. It has never been closed since. Every year the winter
rebuilds the bridge which connects East Cape with Cape Prince
of Wales ; every year a road, comparatively easy for hardy pedes-
trians, stretches from one continent to the other ; and we know
that the coast populations of the opposite shores take advantage
of it to maintain relations.

Is it not evident that, whenever one of those great movements
which we know have agitated Asia made its shocks felt away in
distant countries, whenever political or social revolutions over-
whelmed them, fugitive or conquered people would have taken
this route, of the existence of which they were aware ? To get
rid of the idea of migrations over the frozen sea, we should have
to assume that all the corresponding regions have enjoyed a per-
petual peace from the beginning of Quaternary times ; but such
a peace, you know, is not of this world.

This sea can have been only the principal route followed by
the American immigrations. Farther south, the chain formed
by the Aleutian Islands and Alaska opens a second route to tribes
which have a little skill in navigation. The Aleuts occupy, in
Dall's ethnological chart, the whole extremity of the peninsula.
By these ways may have taken place what we might call the
normal peopling of America. But, bathed on either side by a
great ocean, that continent could not fail to profit by the chances
of navigation; and we perceive more and more how this must
have been the case. "We are now justified in saying that Europe
and Africa on one side, and Asia and Oceania on the other, have
sent to America a number of involuntary colonists, more consid-
erable, probably, than one would be ready to suppose.

The immigrations, in America as in Europe, have been inter-
mittent, and separated sometimes by centuries. America has
been peopled as if by a great human river, which, rising in Asia,
has traversed the continent from north to south, receiving along
its course a few small tributaries. This river resembles the tor-
rent streams of which we have examples in France. Usually, and
occasionally for years at a time, their bed is nearly dry. Then
some great storm comes, and a liquid avalanche descends from
the mountains where their sources lie, covers and ravages the
plain, turning over the ancient alluviums, stirring up and mixing
the old and new materials, and carrying farther each time the
debris it has torn up on its passage. Like this has been the
career of our ethnological river. Its floods have, besides, often
been diverted to the right or left, and it has opened new deriva-
tions. It has also had its eddies. But its general direction has
not changed, and we can trace it down to the present.

One of the highest tasks of Americanists will be to ascend to

THE PEOPLING OF AMERICA. 313

the sources of this river ; to determine the succession of its fresh-
ets ; to define the origin and nature of the elements which they
have brought down ; to follow these elements from stage to stage,
and thus discover the road which each of them has followed to
its landing-place — in other words, to construct the history of the
migrations of the different American peoples.

The accomplishment of this task will, as I have already said,
present other and more difficulties in America than in Polynesia.
Those who approach it will have recourse to nothing like the
historical charts and the genealogies of which are composed the
oral archives religiously preserved in all the islands of the Pacific.
But modern science has resources of which we are gaining better
and better comprehension of the power. Joining the data fur-
nished by the study of the strata and their fossils, by comparative
craniology, linguistics, and ethnography, we can enter on the
mass of problems and foresee their solution. Serious efforts have
been already made in this direction, and they have not been un-
fruitful. From this time we shall be able to indicate on the map
a considerable number of itineraries, but they are so far partial
and local. They are as yet no more than fragments, like those
which Hale's predecessors could point to in Oceania.

The time may be long in coming, but let not Americanists lose
heart. Every new discovery, of however little importance it may
seem at first, will bring them nearer to the end. From year to
year these fragments, now isolated and scattered, will join and be
co-ordinated with one another; and some day the map of Ameri-
can migrations will be delineated, from Asia to Greenland and
Cape Horn, as the map of Polynesian migrations has been drawn,
from the Indian Archipelago to Easter Island, and from New
Zealand to the Sandwich Islands. — Translated for The Popular
Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

According to M. J. Roche, the telephone was fore-fancied by Charles Bour-
seul, who said, in 1854 : " Imagine that one can speak at a mobile plate so flexible
as to lose none of the vibrations produced by the voice, and that this plate in suc-
cession establishes and interrupts the communication in an electric pile, and that
you have another plate at a distance to execute the same vibrations at exactly the
same times. ... I believe it is certain that, in a more or less distant future,
speech will in some such way as this be transmitted to a distance by electricity."

The theory of the European origin of the Aryan race is supported by Canon
Isaac Taylor in his book on the origin of the Aryans. Inquiring which of the
many races speaking the Aryan languages is the one in which the Aryan form of
speech may be presumed to have originated, he numbers four such. They are the
Iberians ; the race represented by the Swedes and North Germans ; the Lig'urians,
including the Auvergnats and the French Basques ; and the Celto Slavic race.
As among these, he decides upon the Celto-Slavs as the nearest to the primitive
Aryan stock.

vol. xxxvm. — 22

314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES

SINCE COLUMBUS.

II. IRON MILLS AND PUDDLING-FTTRNACES.

Br WILLIAM F. DUKFEE, Engineer.

IN these days of steam-engines, railways, and steam navigation
— telegraphs, telephones, and electric lights — it is hard to un-
derstand a civilization which in literature and the fine arts has
not been surpassed, yet had none of the above-named essentials of
modern fast living and rapid work, and which possessed no better
methods of manufacturing iron than those already described.

It will be evident to the most superficial observer that these
methods were not calculated to produce merchantable bar iron
either rapidly or cheaply, and this fact would be the more manifest
as the bars or rods decreased in size. Therefore, as the require-
ments of trade were mainly for bars and rods of moderate dimen-
sions, from which to forge nails, draw wire, and manufacture
multitudes of the smaller articles of hardware for which the set-
tlement of new countries had created a growing demand, nothing
could have been more natural than that the efforts of mankind
to meet the requirements of the time should have resulted in the
invention of the " slitting-mill." We have no precise information
as to the date of this invention, and none whatever respecting its
inventor. It is very probable that the slitting-mill was invented
in Sweden, and carried thence into Germany, Belgium, and Eng-
land, whence it found its way to the colony of Massachusetts
Bay, where the first " slitting-mill " used in America was put in
operation some time prior to 1731. Swedenborg, in his De Ferro
(1734), speaks of " slitting-mills " in Sweden, Germany, Belgium,
and England, but does not refer to their origin, and says nothing
whatever of grooved rolls. Slitting-mills were introduced into
England as early as 1697.

A " slitting-mill " comprises two principal mechanisms, which
are well illustrated by Fig. 17, which, together with Figs. 16 and
18, we have taken from Recueil de Planches sur les Sciences et
les Arts. Paris, 1765. In Fig. 17 will be seen —

1. A pair of plain cylindrical rolls, C D, placed the one above
the other, each receiving motion, independent of the other, from a
water-wheel, there being one on each side of the mill, whose shafts
are seen at E and O. These rolls could be adjusted so that the
distance between their adjacent surfaces might be varied within
certain limits. These rolls equalized the thickness of the rough
forged bar and prepared it for the next operation.

2. The " slitting-mill " proper, seen between the letters N and

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 315

V. This consisted of two horizontal shafts, placed in the same
vertical plane with the axes of the rolls D C, and coupled to them
by spindles y Y', and coupling boxes u u' and V V. On these
shafts were fixed disks of steel, called " cutters," of a thickness
equal to the width of the bar or rod desired ; the edges of the

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" cutters " on each shaft entered closely between those . on the
other, thus acting with reference to each other like the blades of
rotary shears, which in fact they were ; and, if the end of a flat
bar of hot iron was thrust against the approaching edges of the
rotary cutters, it would be immediately drawn between them,

3i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and in its passage it was " sheared " or " slit " (hence the name
" slitting-mill ") into a number of bars or rods of the same width
as the thickness of the cutters in use at the time. The shafts
carrying the cutters could be taken from the frames or " hous-
ings " in which they revolved, and the cutters could be removed
and replaced by others thicker or thinner as desired. The slit-
ting-mill in Fig. 17 gets its motion from the same water-wheel
shafts, E O, that drive the rolls C D.

John Houghton, in his Husbandry and Trade Improved,
printed in 1697, speaks of rolling and slitting mills as " late im-
provements " ; * speaking of the operation of " slitting " iron bars
that have been hammered out in a " blomary," he says : " They
are put into a furnace to be heated red-hot to a good height, and
then brought singly to the rollers, by which they are drawn even,
and to a greater length ; after this another workman takes them
while hot, and puts them through the cutters, which are of divers
sizes, and may be put on or off according to pleasure. Then
another lays them straight, also while hot, and when cold binds
them also into fagots, and then they are fit for sale."

By comparing this description of John Houghton's with Fig.
17, the original of which was published sixty-eight years later, it
will be evident that very little change had taken place in the con-
struction of slitting-mills in that period.

The furnace (whose door is seen at Y, in Fig. 17), in which
the rough-hammered bars from the " blomary ': were heated
preparatory to rolling, was peculiarly constructed, and had fire-
boxes, P R, on each end. Sections of this furnace are shown in
Fig. 18 ; No. 1 being a longitudinal vertical section through the
fire-boxes, P R, and the reverberatory heating-chamber Q ; No. 2
a vertical transverse section of the heating-chamber Q, the chim-
ney q q, and its hood q. It will be observed that the chimney
of this furnace is not placed, as in a modern iron heating-fur-
nace, at one end of the heating-chamber, while the fire-box is
at the other ; but that it is located outside and in a measure de-
tached from the body of the furnace, and that the products of the
combustion of the wood (which was the only fuel used) burned

* The earliest publication known to me, in which the use of " rolls " for drawing and
shaping metals is described, was written by Giovanni Branca. In his work, Le Machine
(published at Rome in 1629), he gives a very curious illustration of a rolling-mill, which,
notwithstanding its manifest absurdity, suffices to show that he understood the action of
the " rolls " and their advantages. The next mention of the use of rolls for giving shape
to metals pnssed between them is contained in a work by Vittorio Zonca, published at
Padua in 1656. In this work Zonca gives an engraving and description of a mill for roll-
ing the double grooved fillets of lead which were used for securing the glass in stained
windows. We regret that our limited space prevents us from reproducing these illustra-
tions, neither of which has ever been referred to in any history of the manufacture of
metals.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 317

in the two fire-boxes P R, after traversing the heating-chamber
Q, could only reach the chimney by passing out of the door Y.
This arrangement
was not calculat-
ed to produce a
very rapid com-
bustion of the
fuel, and there-
fore large fire-
boxes were neces-
sary. The dimen-
sions of this fur-
nace would not
be thought small
even at the pres-
ent time, for the
heating - chamber
Q was ten and a
half feet long and
seven feet wide,
and the two fire-
boxes were each
four feet square.

The above con-
struction of slit-
ting-mills was not
the initial form ;
for in that, the
axes of the rolls
and cutters, in-
stead of being in
the same, were in
parallel planes,
and instead of be-
ing driven direct-
ly from the water-
wheels, there was
interposed be-
tween the water-
wheel shafts and
those of the rolls
and cutters some
clumsy wooden
gearing. Fig. 19
( from Sweden -
borg ) shows a

3i8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

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mill of this kind. It will be noted that the top roll and set of
cutters were driven from one water-wheel, and the bottom roll
and cutters from another ; it will also be observed that the iron
was evidently heated directly upon the coal. Swedenborg says :
' In the vicinity of Lie'ge are a few works in which iron is rolled

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 319

out and cut into small rods ; and in Germany and England there
is similar machinery, constructed as shown in Fig. 19, which viv-
idly represents the whole operation.

" The furnace shown is simply constructed, and is divided into
two parts, beneath each of which is an ash-pit. The iron is
thrown into the furnace upon the mineral coal {carbones fossiles)
and the bars are placed across one another obliquely, so that the
flame and heat will have access to all sides of them. The roof of
the furnace is formed into an arch. When the pieces of iron are
heated by the direct action of the coal, and by the heat reverber-
ated from the roof of the furnace, they are removed and run
through two steel rolls."

By comparing this mill and furnace with those illustrated in
Figs. 17 and 18, it will be evident that in the thirty-one years
which intervened between the publication of De Ferro and Re-
cueil de Planches sur les Sciences et les Arts important progress
had been made in the construction of both mills and furnaces.

We have been thus particular in explaining the construction
of the early European slitting-mills because it is certain that
many of the ideas embodied in the first American slitting-mill
were derived therefrom.

Industrial history is indebted to William H. Harrison, of
Braintree, Mass., for the preservation of a record of the details
of construction of certainly one of the earliest, if not actually the
first, rolling and slitting mills built in America.* The general
plan and elevation of the machinery, as also of the furnace em-
ployed in this mill, are shown in Fig. 20, and it will be noted that
the natural tendency of the American mechanician to improve on
what had already been accomplished asserted itself in this case.
The designer while retaining many features of previous mills —
such as wooden gearing, the use of two under-shot water- wheels,
one of which drove the top set of cutters and the bottom roll,
while the other drove the bottom set of cutters and the top roll —
yet made some important improvements in the rolls by increasing
their length and making offsets in them f by which iron of vary-
ing thickness could be made without changing their adjustment ;
and he also "chilled" one end of the rolls. % The furnace was a
marked improvement over any before described, and was quite
similar in idea to many in use at the present day ; it had a " fire-
box" (in which "pine sticks" were used as fuel), a "heating-
chamber," and a " chimney." This mill was erected " at Middle-

* The First Rolling-Mill in America. A Paper read by William H. Harrison, M. E., at
the Hartford Meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, May 4, 1881.

f A very close approximation to the " grooved roll."

\ This is believed to be, if not the first " chilled roll " made, yet the first mentioned in
rolling-mill construction.

320

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

boro, Mass., for Peter Oliver, one of the crown Judges in the
province, and a brother of Andrew Oliver, the Lieutenant-Gov-
ernor, in the year 1751."

o

PS

o

«
w
►J

Q

o

<

S
M

j

53

t-H

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53

Mr. Harrison says, in concluding his very interesting paper:
" The drawing was made under the supervision of S. Wilder, Esq.,
of New Castle, Pa., a retired iron manufacturer, who worked in
this mill in 1818, and gave the writer the principal dimensions and

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 321

the method of operating. As to whether this mill — in the year
1818— was precisely the one built in 1751, Mr. Wilder states that
it is likely there had been some renewals of the wood-work, but
most of the iron- work was the original. It was impossible to break
down the mill, from the fact that, if a heavy piece or a pair of
tongs were passed in, the effect would be — after some squeaking
of the timber- wheels — to stop everything."

The claim made that this rolling-mill was the first in America
can not be substantiated, for, according to the evidence adduced,
it was not erected until 1751 ; but it is certain that there were
already several slitting-mills in operation in the colonies, as is
proved by the certificates transmitted to the Commissioners for
Trade and Plantations by the Governors, Lieutenant-Governors,
or commanders-in-chief of his Majesty's colonies in America, in
pursuance of an act of the twenty-third of his present Majesty's
[George II, 1750] reign, containing accounts of any mill or engine
for slitting or rolling of iron, and any plating-forge to work
with a tilt-hammer, and any furnace for making steel, erected in
any of his Majesty's colonies in America " :

Maryland

Pennsylvania

New Jersey

New York

Connecticut

Massachusetts Bay.

Mill or engine for
slitting or rolling iron.

I

1, not now in use.

1,1

Plating forge to work with a
tilt-hammer.

1, with two tilt-hammers.

1

1, not now in use.

1

1, 1, 1,1, 1, 1
1

Furnace for making

steel.

1 , not now in use.

1
1*

By these certificates of 1750 it appears that in all the colonies
there were four slitting-mills, two of which were in Massachu-
setts ; and as Judge Peter Oliver's mill was not erected (" by spe-
cial privilege ") until 1751, it could not have been one of them,
and for the same reason it is certain that it was not the first
rolling-mill in America. Nevertheless the paper of Mr. Harrison
is instructive and valuable, inasmuch as it gives us the only
reliable technical information we have relative to the construc-
tion and operation of rolling and slitting mills in colonial
times. In addition to the leading constructive features of this
mill, we are given some facts regarding its administration, and
are told that " about eight men were employed, at about one dol-
lar per day ; six heats, of about eight hundred pounds each, were
made in twelve hours' running. One pint of rum was consumed
for each heat, or more, according to the weather. The value of
the forge iron was one hundred dollars per ton ; nail-rods, one

* A Comprehensive History of the Iron Trade throughout the World, from the Earliest
Records to the Present Period. By Harry Scrivenor. London, 1841.

322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hundred and twenty dollars ; and nails, twelve and a half cents
or ninepence per pound. The nail-rods were put up in bundles of
fifty-six pounds, and the nailers, who had their little shops around
in the country, were expected to bring back fifty pounds of headed
and pointed nails, receiving " store-pay " of calico, tea, rum, etc.

From this account it appears that " rum," in quantity propor-
tioned " to the weather," was regarded as a necessary stimulant,
to be furnished the workmen to enable them to properly perform
their work. This custom, which was in fact universal in New
England at the time, seems to have had the sanction of several gen-
erations, for the New Haven colonial records tell us that " a propo-
sition made in May, 1662, ' in ye behalf e of Capt. Clarke, that
wine and liquors drawn at the jron workes might be custome
free/ was allowed to the extent of one butt of wine and one bar-
rel of liquors, and no more."

The act of 1750 was pretty generally enforced in the colonies,
and the further erection of rolling and slitting mills prevented.
James Hamilton, Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief
of the Province of Pennsylvania, and William Franklin (son of
Benjamin Franklin), who was the royal Governor of the Prov-
ince of New Jersey (1762 to 1776), were especially zealous in en-
forcing this act. Hon. Edward D. Halsey, in his History of Mor-
ris County, tells us that " a slitting - mill was erected at Old
Boonton, on the Rockaway River, about a mile below the present
town of Boonton, in defiance of the law, by Samuel Ogden, of
Newark. The entrance was from the hill-side, and in the upper
room first entered there were stones for grinding grain, the slit-
ting-mill being below and out of sight. It is said that Governor
William Franklin visited the place suddenly, having heard a
rumor of its existence, but was so hospitably entertained by Mr.
Ogden, and the iron-works were so effectually concealed, that the
Governor came away saying that he was glad to find that it was a
groundless report, as he had always supposed."

From the passage of the act of 1750 to the Revolution the iron
industry of America was chiefly confined to the manufacture of
pig and bar iron in the furnaces, forges, and mills already erected,
and of castings from the blast-furnaces.

Israel Acrelius (who visited America in 1750-1756), in his His-
tory of New Sweden, when describing the iron-works of Pennsyl-
vania, says : " The workmen are partly English and partly Irish,
with some few Germans, though the work is carried on after the
English method. The pig iron is smelted into 'geese' (gcisar),
and is cast from five to six feet long and a half foot broad, for
convenience of forging, which is in the Walloon style. The pigs
are first operated upon by the finers (smelters). Then the chif-
fery, or hammer-men, take it back again into their hands and

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 323

beat out the long bars. The liners are paid 30s. a ton, the ham-
mer-men 23s. del. per ton — that is to say, both together, £2 13s. del.
The laborers are generally composed partly of negroes (slaves),
partly of servants from Germany or Ireland bought for a term of
years. . . . For four months in summer, when the heat is the
most oppressive, all labor is suspended at the furnaces and
forges."

About 1732 Colonel Spotswood erected some air-furnaces at a
place called Massaponux, in Virginia, and used them " to melt his
sow iron, in order to cast it into sundry utensils, such as backs for
chimneys, andirons, fenders, plates for hearths, pots, mortars,
rollers for gardeners, skillets, boxes for cart-wheels, and many
other things. And, being cast from the sow iron, are much bet-
ter than those which come from England, which are cast imme-
diately from the ore for the most part. . . . Here are two of these
air-furnaces in one room, that so in case one want repair the other
may work, they being exactly of the same structure." It is said
that in 17G0 about six hundred tons of iron were smelted in Spots-
wood's furnaces, most of which was sent to England.

About 1750 Baron Henry William Stiegel came to Pennsyl-
vania from Germany, " with good recommendations and a great
deal of money." Soon after he purchased a tract of land in Lan-
caster County and laid out the town of Manheim ; here he built
a furnace, and named it after his wife, Elizabeth ; some time after-
ward he built another furnace at Schaeff erstown, Lebanon County,
and it was here that he cast stoves (made of six plates of iron),
which were among the first made in the country. The baron fully
appreciated the value of advertising, and on each of the stoves he
cast the following couplet :

" Baron Stiegel ist der Mann,
Der die Ofen machen kann " —

which signifies, " Baron Stiegel is the man who knows how to
make stoves " ; but, notwithstanding his skill and enterprise, he
failed in his business. This result was due in a great degree to
the difficulty of making prompt collections, and to the general
stagnation of business due to the political complications with the
mother-country. Elizabeth Furnace finally came into the posses-
sion of Robert Coleman, who cast shot, shells, and cannon for the
Continental army. Some of the credits in his account with the
Government are decidedly interesting. On November 16, 1782, ap-
pears the following entry : " By cash, being the value of 42 Ger-
man prisoners of war, at £30 each, £1,200," and on June 14, 1783:
" By cash, being the value of 28 German prisoners of war, at £30
each, £840."

During the Revolutionary War the manufacture of iron made
little technological progress. Such establishments as possessed

324

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the requisite skill cast cannon and mortars, and the iron ammu-
nition for the same, for that army which controlled them for the
time being. One of the most notable events connected with the
manufacture of iron during these years was the making of the
great iron chain which in 1778 was stretched across the Hudson
River at West Point to prevent the passage of British vessels.
Lossing, in his Field Book of the Revolution, gives a very inter-
esting account of this work, of which we can quote only the lead-
ing facts. " The iron of which this chain was constructed was
wrought from ore of equal parts from the Sterling and Long
mines in Orange County. The chain was manufactured by Peter
Tuwnsend, of Chester, at the Sterling Iron Works in the same
county, which were situated about twenty-five miles back of West
Point. The chain was completed about the middle of April, 1778,
and on the 1st of May it was stretched across the river and
secured. It was fixed to huge blocks on each shore, and under
cover of batteries on both sides of the river." " It is buoyed up,"
says Dr. Thacher, writing in 1780, " by very large logs of about
sixteen feet long, pointed at the ends, to lessen their opposition to
the force of the current at flood and ebb tide. The logs are placed
at short distances from each other, the chain carried over them,
and made fast to each by staples. There are also a number of
anchors dropped at proper distances, with cables made fast to the
chain to give it greater stability." The total weight of this chain
was one hundred and eighty tons. Mr. Lossing visited West
Point in 1848, and saw a portion of this famous chain, and he
tells us that " there are twelve links, two clevises, and a portion
of a link remaining. The links are made of iron bars, two and a
half inches square, and average in length a little over two feet,
and weigh about one hundred pounds each."

The manufacture of nails was one of the household industries
of New England during a large part of the eighteenth century.
James M. Swank, in Iron in All Ages, quotes from Nehemiah
Bennet's description of the Town of Middleborough, Plymouth
County, Massachusetts (1793) : " Nailing, or the business of mak-
ing nails, is carried on largely in the winters, by farmers and
young men, who have little other business at that season of the
year." Speaking of the early attempts to manufacture tacks,
the same authority gives the following from the Furniture and
Trade Journal : "In the queer-shaped, homely farm-houses, or
the little contracted shops of certain New England villages,
the industrious and frugal descendants of the Pilgrims toiled
providently through the long winter months at beating into
shape the little nails which play so useful a part in modern in-
dustry. A small anvil served to beat the wire or strip of iron
into shape and point it ; a vise worked by the foot clutched it

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 325

between jaws furnished with a gauge to regulate the length,
leaving a certain portion projecting, which, when beaten flat by
a hammer, formed the head. By this process a man might make,
toilsomely, perhaps two thousand tacks per day." Arnold, in his
History of the State of Rhode Island, claims that " the first cold-
cut nail in the world was made in 1777 by Jeremiah Wilkinson,
of Cumberland, R. I., who died in 1832, at the advanced age of
ninety years." Bishop, speaking of Wilkinson's tacks, says :
" They were first cut by a pair of shears (still preserved) from an
old chest-lock, and afterwards headed in a smith's vise. Sheet
iron was afterwards used, and the process extended to small nails,
which he appears to have been one of the first to attempt. They
were cut from old Spanish hoops, and headed in a clamp or vise
by hand. Pins and needles were made by the same person during
the Revolution from wire drawn by himself." Such was the gen-
esis of the manufacture of nails in America ; an industry now of
the first importance, and which in 1889, after the lapse of little
more than a century, produced over eight hundred million pounds
of iron, steel, and wire nails, representing a consumption of this
absolutely indispensable manufacture, for the past year, at the
rate of over twelve pounds for each individual inhabitant of the
United States. As nails enter as a component factor into all
structures for domestic, manufacturing, and trade uses, this enor-
mous consumption may be taken as a fair index of the develop-
ment of the country during the past hundred years.

The adoption of the Constitution in 1787, followed by the en-
actment of the first national patent law in 1790 (previous to the
establishment of a national government the several colonies had
issued patents for meritorious inventions), powerfully stimulated
the inventive genius of the people, and it soon became evident
that America was destined to surpass all other nations in the
invention and manufacture of labor-saving machinery.

One of the most important improvements in the manufacture
of articles of metal, of which a large number were required of
the same kind, was developed by Eli Whitney, the inventor of
the cotton-gin, who, disappointed in his expectations relative to
that machine, turned to the manufacture of small-arms for the
United States Government. In 1798 he erected at Whitneyville,
near New Haven, Conn., the first manufactory of fire-arms in
which each part was made so exactly to the prescribed dimen-
sions that it would fit its intended place in any one of thousands
of muskets. Mr. Whitney not only conceived the ideas of the
possibility and economic advantages of such perfect workman-
ship, but invented the system and much of the machinery by
which it was practically accomplished. " Whitney's interchange-
able system" has been applied successfully to the manufacture of

326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

clocks and watches, sewing-machines and steam-engines, and is
universally recognized as indispensable whenever accuracy and
economy are to be combined with a large production.

Swank gives the following description of the Sterling Iron
Works (already mentioned as the place where the West Point
chain was forged), translated from a book published in Paris in
1801, written by the Marquis de Crevecceur, who was in the French
service in the French and Indian War and afterward traveled
extensively in this country :

" Hardly had we put our horses in the stable than Mr. Towns-
end, the proprietor, came to meet us with the politeness of a man
of the world. Having learned that the object of our journey was
to examine attentively his different works, he offered to show us
all the details, and at once led us to his large furnace where the
ore was melted and converted into pigs of sixty to one hundred
pounds weight. The blast was supplied by two immense wooden
blowers, neither iron nor leather being used in their construction.
This furnace, he said, produced from two thousand to twenty-
four hundred tons annually, three fourths of which are con-
verted into bars, the rest melted into cannon and cannon-balls,
etc. From there we went to see the forge. Six large hammers
were occupied in forging bar iron and anchors and various pieces
used on vessels. Lower down the stream (which afforded power
to the works) was the foundry with its reverberatory furnace
(air-furnace). Here he called our attention to several ingenious
machines destined for different uses. The models he had sent
him, and the machines he had cast from iron of a recently discov-
ered ore, which, after two fusions, acquired great fineness ; with
it he could make the lightest and most delicate work. ' What a
pity/ he said, ' that you did not come ten days sooner ! I would
have shown you, first, three new styles of plows, of which I have
cast the largest pieces, and which, however, are no heavier than
the old-fashioned. Each of them is provided with a kind of steel-
yard, so graduated that one can tell the power of the team and
the resistance of the soil ; second, I would have shown you a
portable mill for separating the grain from the chaff ; followed by
another machine by which all the ears in the field can be easily
gathered without being obliged to cut the stalk at the foot, ac-
cording to the old method.' From the foundry we went to see
the furnaces where the iron is converted into steel. ' It is not as
good as the Swedes',' said Mr. Townsend, ' but we approach it — a
few years more of experience and we will arrive at perfection. The
iron which comes from under my hammers has had for a long time
a high reputation, and sells for £28 to £30 per ton.' After hav-
ing passed two days in examining these diverse works and ad-
miring the skill with which they were supplied with water, as

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 327

well as the arrangements for furnishing the charcoal for the dif-
ferent furnaces, we parted from Mr. Townsend."

On June 27, 1810, Mr. Clemens Rentgen, of Pikeland, Chester
County, Pennsylvania, obtained a patent for " rolling iron round,
for ships' bolts, and other uses," by the following method : " This
machine consists of two large iron rollers, fixed in a strong frame.
Each roller has concavities turned in them, meeting each other
to form perfectly round bolts, of from half an inch to one and
three quarter inches, or any other size, in diameter, through
which rollers the iron is drawn from the mouth of the furnace
with great dispatch, and the iron is then manufactured better
and more even than it is possible to forge it out. The force ap-
plied to the end of these rollers is like that applied to mills."

Swank states that W. H. Wahl, Ph. D., Secretary of the Frank-
lin Institute (who is a descendant of Mr. Rentgen), showed him
the original patent, and informed him that Mr. Rentgen " rolled
round iron as early as 1812 or 1813, some of which was for the
Navy Department of the United States Government"; and he
adds, " The fact that a patent was granted to him as late as June
27, 1810, for a machine to roll iron in round shapes, would seem
to furnish conclusive proof that Cort's rolls * had not then been
introduced into the United States." About the beginning of the
present century the steam-engine (two or three steam-engines
had been imported and used for draining mines prior to the Revo-
lutionary War) as a motive power for driving mills and factories
began to attract attention. The period of its introduction is
worthy of mention, as it has played a very important part in the
development of the iron and steel industries of this country.

According to Swank, "the first rolling-mill erected in the
United States to ' puddle ' iron, and roll it into bars, was built by
Col. Isaac Meason, in 1816 and 1817, at Plumsock, on Redstone
Creek, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Thomas C. Lewis was
the chief engineer in the erection of the mill, and George Lewis,
his brother, was the turner and roller. They were Welshmen.
. . . The mill contained two 'puddling furnaces,' one 'heating
furnace,' one c refinery,' and one ' tilt-hammer.' Raw coal was
used in the ' puddling ' and ' heating furnaces,' and coke in the
' refinery.' "

In the early practice in this country the operation of "pud-
dling," by which cast iron is converted into wrought iron, was
usually preceded by a process called " refining," which was effected
by means of an apparatus called a " refinery " — a vertical section
of one of the latest and best forms of which is shown in Fig. 21.

* Cort's patent was taken out in 1Y83, but the evidence is sufficient and conclusive as
to a somewhat extended knowledge and use of grooved rolls on the continent of Europe
many years prior to that date.

328

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It consisted of a basin or hearth, b, in which a fire of charcoal or
coke was built, the fuel being carried above the level of the
water-cooled tuyeres, g g. On this mass of ignited fuel a charge
of a ton or a ton and a half of pig iron was thrown, over which
fuel was heaped, and the blast (which was regulated by the
valves, k k) was then turned on. In about one hour and a half

the pig iron was
melted, and its
upper surface as
it lay in the
hearth was ex-
posed to the ac-
tion of the blast
(oftentimes in
the larger refin-
eries there were
six tuyeres, three
on a side, but
in some of the
oldest refineries
there was but
one tuyere) ; this
effected the oxi-
dation and re-
moval of con-
siderable of the
carbon, most of
the silicon, and
a portion of the
sulphur, a large
amount of "slag"
being formed.
About two hours
after the com-
mencement of the operation the metal was " tapped out " on to
the " running-out bed," which was a shallow trough made of very
thick castings ; a section of which is shown at n. These cast-
ings were provided with flanges, which rested upon the sides,
o o, of a box- or channel, p, filled with water to cool the running-
out bed, and promote the rapid solidification of the liquid refined
iron ; and as soon as this was accomplished the final cooling was
hastened by a jet of water forcibly thrown upon the upper sur-
face of the metal from a hose. This caused the " cinder " on this
surface to separate in a great degree from the refined metal,
which, when perfectly cool, was broken up into pieces of manage-
able size. The fracture of "refined metal" was white, inclined to

Fig. 21. — Cross-section of a Eefinery.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 329

a silvery luster, and oftentimes more or less porous or " honey-
combed " near the upper surface, The purpose of this " refining "
was, as the name suggests, the purification of the metal previous
to its being treated in a puddling-furnace for final conversion
into wrought iron. At the present day the " refinery " is rarely
employed, improved methods having rendered it unnecessary.

The invention of the " puddling process " is usually ascribed to
Henry Cort, of Gosport, England, who patented it in 1784. This
process was a great improvement over that of the "blomary
fire," inasmuch as the labor was diminished, and, as the metal
was not in contact with the fuel, therefore raw mineral coal,
which was much cheaper than charcoal, could be used with nat-
ural draught, thus dispensing with all blowing machinery. The
process, as practiced on its introduction into America, consisted
substantially of melting refined pig iron on the sand bottom of a
reverberatory furnace, and stirring the pool (or " puddle," whence
the name of the process) of molten metal until it became con-
verted into a granular, pasty mass of wrought or f orgeable iron,
as the result of the decarbonizing action of the heated air passing
through the furnace and over the metal. This granular mass of
metal was divided by the " puddler " (as the workman was called)
into several separate " balls," or " loups," which were taken in turn
to a " shingling hammer," and " shingled " into " blooms " ; this
last operation being precisely similar to the shingling of the
" ball " from a blomary fire, already described.

Figs. 22 and 2-3 are respectively vertical and horizontal longi-
tudinal sections of one of the
earlier forms of " puddling-
furnace," in which e is the
sand bed of the puddling-
chamber, d the " bridge-wall "
which separated the fuel on
the grates b of the " fire-box "
from the iron in the puddling-
chamber e , i is the chimney-
flue, and k a lever for raising
the door j. In some of the
early puddling - furnaces in
New England and eastern
Pennsylvania the fuel used
was dry split wood ; and as late as 1858 dry pine wood was used
for puddling and heating at the Hurricane Rolling-Mill and Nail-
Works in South Carolina. This was probably the last instance of
the use of wood as a fuel for such purposes in the United States.

Soon after the introduction of the puddling process into this
country, Mr. Samuel Baldwyn Rogers, of Nant-y-glo, Monmouth-

TOL. XXXVIII. 23

Fig. 22. — An Early Puddling-Furnace.

33°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Fig. 23. — Plan of an Early Puddling-Furnace.

shire, England, made very important improvements in the con-
struction of puddling-furnaces, by substituting iron plates for the
original sand bottoms of their puddling-chambers ; and in the

conduct of the process, by
using iron-ore as the chief
source of the oxygen neces-
sary to decarburize the melt-
ed pig iron. This ore was
packed around the sides of
the interior of the furnace,
and the bottom plates were
protected by a layer of ox-
ide of iron. These improve-
ments more than doubled
the daily production from a furnace, and at the same time a su-
perior quality of iron was made.

Mr. Rogers encountered a great deal of ridicule in attempting
to introduce these improvements, which were pronounced im-
practicable and of no value by many of the leading iron-masters
of England ; and, as he failed to protect his rights by patents, the
only reward that he ever received for inventions that have been
of vast benefit to mankind was the nickname "Old Iron Bot-
toms/' which was bestowed upon him by those of his contempo-
raries who fully believed that they had become possessed of all
desirable knowledge, and were, in fact, too wise to learn. Unfor-
tunately for our country, a few of the descendants of these wise
fools, who were patriotic enough to " leave their country for their
country's good," found their way to America, and are honoring
their ancestry by sneering at all ideas and methods that are not
hoary with antiquity and moldy respectability. In spite of such
counsels in the past, the improvements of Mr. Rogers found their
way into use in America and the world at large, and for the last
fifty years there has not been a puddling-furnace as originally
constructed by Cort in existence.

A very good idea of the appearance and construction of the
puddling-furnace in common use in the " puddle-mills " of England
and America is conveyed by Figs. 24 and 25. Fig. 24 is a side
elevation of the furnace, whose interior form is shown by dotted
lines. The whole of the brick-work is inclosed in a casing of
cast-iron plates, securely bolted together. The door of the work-
ing-chamber is seen in the center (and at C, Fig. 25), counterbal-
anced and operated by a lever and chain, and below it the "tap-
hole," by which the " cinder" made in the process is " tapped oil' " ;
to the left is seen the "stoke-hole," and just to the right of it is
shown, in dotted lines, the outline of the "bridge-wall" separat-
ing the "fire-box "on the left from the " working-chamber" in

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 331

the center of the furnace. The chimney (shown at the right of
the cut, broken in three places for convenience of illustration) is
usually from thirty to forty feet in height, provided with a damp-
er operated by a lever at its top, and its flue is usually eighteen
inches square. Fig. 25 is a section of the furnace (on line G, H,
Fig. 24), showing the form of its interior in
plan, and the relative position of " fire-grate,
"working-chamber," and " chimney-stack." In
mills driven by steam power it is not now un-
common to place a horizontal cylindrical flue-
boiler over each puddling and heating furnace,
and generate the steam required to run the mill
by passing the heat, that would otherwise go to
waste up the chimney, underneath the boiler,
and thence through the flues to the chimney-
stack. This construction was the invention of
the late John Griffen, who at the time of his
death (January 14, 1884) was General Superin-
tendent of the Phoenix Iron
Company at Phcenixville, Pa.
The idea of utilizing the waste
heat of puddling and heating

Fig. 24. — A Modern Puddling- Furnace.

furnaces for the making of steam was, however, quite old at the
time he brought out his arrangement.

When, in 1846, Mr. Griffen erected at Norristown, Pa., for
Messrs. Moore & Hooven, the first mill in which all the steam was
generated in boilers placed over the furnaces, the wise fools
were in strong force ; and Swank tells us that " Mr. Griffen met
with much opposition from observers while employed in construct-
ing the mill upon this plan, and many predictions were made
that the new arrangement would prove a failure. It was a great

332

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

innovation on the practice then prevailing, but it was a complete
success." Whereat the wise fools who had been posing as " ob-
servers," promptly swallowed all their observations, and with the
characteristic agility of their race turned each a back somerset,

D _____

Fig. 25. — Plan of a Modern Pdddling-Fdenace.

and, coming up blandly smiling, with the remark "We always
told you so," forthwith proceeded to foolishly praise that which
they had more foolishly condemned.

The rapid increase of the manufacture of iron in consequence
of the introduction of the puddling process naturally called for a

Inches 12 0

12 Feet

_l

Fig. 26. — The Alligator Squeezer.

more expeditious method than the blows of a " trip-hammer " for
expelling the cinder from the " puddle-balls " and forming them
into " blooms " ; and this necessity resulted in the invention of the
"alligator squeezer," which consisted (as shown in Fig. 2G) of a
lever whose long arm was operated by a crank, the short arm

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS.

333

being provided on its under side with a number of angular corru-
gations, so that it is somewhat suggestive of the jaw and teeth of
an alligator. The " ball " from the puddling-furnace was placed
between the upper and lower jaws of this squeezer, and the work-
men turned it with tongs at each upward movement of the upper
jaw (always moving it toward the fulcrum of the lever), thus
causing the ball to be forcibly squeezed by each downward move-
ment ; and when the operation was completed the most of the
liquid cinder had been expelled from the ball, which had assumed
the form of a bloom.

Although this apparatus was of sufficient capacity for shingling
a very much larger product than the trip-hammer which it dis-
placed, yet it required the assistance of a workman, or " shingler,"
as he was called ; and, as the number of puddling-furnaces in-
creased in the mills, it soon became evident that more rapid and
purely automatic machinery for shingling puddle-balls was desira-
ble. This want was supplied by the inventive genius of Henry
Burden, of Troy,
1ST. Y., who in
1840 invented
the " rotary

squeezer." Fig.
27 is an eleva-
tion of the origi-
nal form of this
machine, and
Fig. 28 is a hori-
zontal section of
Fig. 27 on line A
B. The construc-
tion consisted
substantially of
a heavy cast-
iron casing or
"scroll," a a (Fig.
28), firmly at-
tached to four
surrounding col-
umns, which
stood upon a heavy bed-plate and also sustained a massive casting
which formed the upper support and bearing of a vertical shaft to
which the heavy cast-iron drum b (Fig. 28) was firmly attached ;
below the bed-plate is seen (in Fig. 27) the gearing for giving mo-
tion to the shaft and drum.

The " puddle-ball " was thrown into the machine at the place
indicated by the arrow (Fig. 28), and, as the drum b revolved rap-

Fig. 27. — The Eotary Squeezer.

334

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

idly to the left, the ball was drawn in between it and the scroll,
the teeth on each preventing its slipping ; and, as it was carried
around by the movement of the drum, the constantly narrowing
space caused the ball to be subjected to great pressure, which
expelled the liquid cinder and at the same time forced the ball

to assume before it was
ejected from the ma-
chine the form of a
cylindrical bloom. In
order that the squeezer
should accommodate
balls of considerable
variation in weight,
and at the same time
exert a powerful end-
pressure or " upsetting "
during the operation of
shingling, a very heavy
ring of cast iron (shown
in the plane A B, Fig.
27) was made to rest
upon the upper end of
the mass of metal as it

Fig. 28. — Plan of the Eotart Squeezer.

passed through the machine ; this ring was kept in position hori-
zontally and guided in its movement vertically by the upper part
of the spindle of the drum b. The finished "bloom" was dis-
charged from the " squeezer " at the right-hand side of the open-
ing in the " scroll " through which the " ball " originally entered,
and such was the rapidity of the operation that the " bloom " re-
tained sufficient heat at its close to permit of its being passed
directly through the " rolls " and rolled into " billets " or " muck-
bars " without reheating.

The modern form of the above -described machine differs
somewhat from that shown in the illustrations in the arrange-
ment of its driving-gear, but the general principles embodied in
the original construction are still retained. Large numbers of
' Burden Rotary Squeezers " are in use in the rolling-mills of the
world, and it may fairly take rank as one of the most important
improvements in the manufacture, of iron that have had their
origin in America.

Coincident with the improvements in apparatus and methods
for producing wrought iron, the general advancement of all the
arts, and especially those relating to the manufacture of ma-
chinery, created a demand for forgings of a size impossible of
execution by the ancient trip and helve hammers ; and as a means
of supplying this need for uncommonly heavy forgings, the

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINGE COLUMBUS.

335

manufacture of the " Nasuiy th direct-acting steam hammer " was
commenced in the year 1843, by Messrs. Merrick & Towne, at the
South wark Foundry, Philadelphia, Pa. The " Nasmyth ham-
mer/' as at first constructed at this establishment, is represented
by Fig. 29, in which AAA are the two upright frames of cast
iron, which supported a lintel, C, that sustained the steam-cylin-

^Si

Fig. 29. — The Nasmyth Steam Hammer.

der, D, and its steam-chest, J. The piston-rod, E, was secured at
its lower end to the " hammer-block," F F F, which was free to
move vertically between, and was guided by, the upright frames,
AAA. The valve-gear is shown on the left-hand frame, A,
which actuated the valve in the steam -chest, J. The intensity or
working force of the blow delivered to the work upon the anvil

336

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

w
o

«

o

«
w
P

o

CO

6

varied with the height through which the " hammer-block " was
allowed to fall, and this height could be regulated within the
limits of the full stroke of the hammer by means of the valve-
gear. As soon as the blow had been delivered, the mechanism
for effecting the upward movement of the hammer-block came

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 337

into action. This consisted of a heavy lever, X, which had its
fulcruni on the hammer-block, F F. The shorter arm of this
lever rested in contact with a vertical bar connected with the
valve-gear, P, in snch a way that at whatever point of its length
the bar chanced to receive a side pressure from the short arm of
the lever, X, it caused the admission of steam to the lower end of
the cylinder, D, thus causing the " hammer-block " to make its
upward stroke. This occurred automatically the instant after
the delivery of the blow ; the inertia of the weighted end of the
lever not being overcome, it moved downward after the " ham-
mer-block" came to rest, and forced its short arm against the
vertical bar in the manner described. Such, in brief, were the
construction and operation of the first steam hammer built in
America, and placed by its builders in the smith's shop of their
Southwark Foundry, at Philadelphia, where (Mr. J. Vaughn Mer-
rick writes me) it was " continuously employed till after the sale
of the works in 1871."

The original invention of Nasmyth has undergone many
changes, and since the expiration of his patents a multitude
of modifications having for their object the improvement of
its action or its adaptation to some particular variety of work
have been brought forward ; but they all involve the funda-
mental ideas of lifting a vertically guided heavy mass, or ham-
mer-block, by the direct action of steam upon a piston with
which it is connected, and letting it fall at pleasure upon the
work in hand by cutting off the supply of steam and releas-
ing that already beneath the piston ; and this combination of
ideas and methods originated with James Nasmyth, who, by
his invention, augmented the strength of the arm of Vulcan
and conferred new powers and possibilities upon the skill
of man.

The appearance of a modern forge and all its Vulcanian ac-
tivities is well represented by Fig. 30, which to an experienced
eye presents what may be called a scene of well-regulated con-
fusion, in which, amid smoke and flame, coal and iron, the hiss-
ing of steam, beating of sledges, ringing of anvils, and the
scorching glare of white-hot metal, the stalwart, half-naked sons
of Vulcan strain and sweat at their appointed tasks, while the
solid earth for miles around quakes under the ponderous blows
of the Cyclopean hammer * that

. . . upheaves its mighty arm
While on the anvil turns the glowing mass —

* This is no exaggeration, as it has been authoritatively stated that the blows of the
steam hammers in Woolwich Arsenal have been felt at Greenwich Observatory, about two
miles distant.

338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and all rnake up a picture suggestive rather of the Inferno * or
the wars of thunderbolt and tempest than an exemplification of
the most important of the arts of peace.

[ To be continued.]

STAR-STREAMS AND NEBULAE.

By GAEKETT P. SERVISS.

IT is wonderful what a mass of evidence confirmatory of the
nebular hypothesis in its broadest sense has been accumu-
lated within the past few years. Most of this new testimony in
favor of an old theory has been furnished by Astronomical Pho-
tography, that giant that sees the invisible, which has recently
risen to the aid of astronomers with the startling suddenness and
unexpectedness of the Arab fisherman's afrite escaping from the
despised bottle. Perhaps the most notable of these celestial pho-
tographs, in the direct light that it throws upon the nebular
hypothesis, is Mr. Roberts's already famous picture of the An-
dromeda nebula. Nobody can look upon the vast nebulous spirals
that this photograph reveals, surrounding a great central con-
densation, and showing here and there a brighter knot where a
satellite of the huge focal mass is in process of formation, with-
out feeling that Laplace and Kant were not very far astray in
their guess as to the mode of formation of the solar system.

But, although stars in abundance are scattered over and around
the Andromeda nebula, there is little in their appearance to sug-
gest a connection between them and the nebula. It is different
with the nebulae in the Pleiades and in Orion. In the wonderful
photographs of the Pleiades by the Henry brothers of Paris one
not only sees masses of nebulous matter clinging, so to speak,
to some of the more conspicuous stars, but in one place a long,
straight, narrow strip of nebula has stars dotted along its whole
length, like diamonds strung upon a ribbon. It becomes more
difficult to resist the conclusion that in this strange nebulous
streak, with its starry file, we possess an indication of the mode

* I am reminded of a stalwart iron-master who formerly owned a forge in New England,
and whose ideas of futurity, apparently, were not perfectly definite — at any rate, he was
disposed to be somewhat inquisitive in his way in regard thereto. Whenever he could
tempt a clergyman to visit his forge, he would place him immediately in front of the largest
furnace, and, as the attendant on a signal raised the door, revealing a temperature within
that Nebuchadnezzar's furnace could not have surpassed, he would howl in the ear of the
scorched and thoroughly frightened preacher the inquiry, "Is iiell any hotter than that?"
It has not been recorded that he ever obtained any positive information in answer to this
question, the circumstances of which doubtless afforded food for thought to the parties to
whom it was put.

STAR-STREAMS AND NEBULjE.

339

of origin of the many curious streams and chains of stars with
which the heavens abound, when we look at another amazing
revelation of celestial photography. I refer to Prof. Pickering's
photograph of Orion, taken with a portrait-lens from a mountain
in southern California.

In this photograph a tremendous spiral nebula is revealed,
covering a space on the sky fifteen degrees in diameter, and em-
bracing the whole of the constellation with the exception of the
head and shoulders and the upraised arms of the imaginary giant.
The well-known nebula in the Sword, the three bright stars in
the Belt, the brilliant first-magnitude star Rigel, together with
its less splendid neighbor Beta of Eridanus, and Kappa Orionis,
forming the lower left-hand corner of the great quadrilateral of
Orion — are all included within the boundaries of this vast nebula.
The nebula in the Sword is seen to be only an exceptionally
bright condensation in the nebulous system surrounding it.

But for our purposes the thing to be particularly noticed is
the arrangement of the stars within the nebula. Any one who
has viewed Orion with a powerful opera or field glass must have
been struck with the curious marshaling of many of the smaller
stars. This is particularly
noticeable around the Belt,
where the star Epsilon, itself
long known to be enmeshed
in a faint nebula, is environed
with a garland of little stars.,
which, defiling in a beautiful
double curve, finally stop near
Delta, the next star above in
the Belt. But, indeed, one
does not need a glass in order
to perceive similar rows of
stars in Orion. The most con-
spicuous of these, after the
three stars in the Belt them-
selves, are those that outline
the giant's left arm and the

lion's skin that he is supposed to bear upon it. Another row, not
so striking, is, however, more interesting just at this point, because
it follows the curve of the great outer spiral of the newly discov-
ered nebula. This file of stars really begins below the Belt at Eta,
and, curving round between the Belt and Gamma or Bellatrix in
the left shoulder, includes the stars 27, 22, \J/\ if, 33, 38, and w, be-
sides others too faint to be visible to the unassisted eye. The con-
nection between these stars and the nebula seems too evident to be
doubted. The spiral form of the latter furnishes an explanation

Star Garland in the Belt of Orion.

34o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the geometrical arrangement of the former. So with the chain
of telescopic stars described above as winding around the bright
stars in the Belt — the nebular forms account for the configura-
tion of the stars.

In the cut of Orion's Belt, above, an attempt has been made to
represent the appearance of the assemblage of small stars around
Epsilon, the center star of the Belt. All the stars there shown
can not be seen with an ordinary opera-glass, but a strong field-
glass will reveal them and many more besides. In fact, with a
powerful glass the complication of curving star -lines becomes
rather confusing to one attempting to draw them, and the cut
must be regarded rather as an "impressionist" picture than as
one showing every star accurately in its place and of precisely
the right magnitude. Still, it will be found an approximately cor-
rect representation. The reader should bear in mind the fact that
the star Epsilon, the center of this remarkable sidereal array, has
long been known to be surrounded by a strong nebulosity, and
that in the photograph referred to this spot appears as one of the
principal foci of the great spiral nebula. These considerations
naturally lead to the conclusion (which has also been reached
upon other grounds so far as the larger stars are concerned) that
Epsilon and the other leading stars of Orion, with the exception
of Betelgeuse, which lies beyond the boundaries of the nebula,
are at practically the same distance from us as the small stars
surrounding them, all being members of one system.

There are many such star-streams to be found in the sky
where as yet no related nebulae have been discovered. But one
can hardly doubt, in view of the evidence which the photographs
we have referred to furnish, that the forms of the streams are
derived from the pre-existing forms of the parent nebulae. In
many cases, of course, the process of nebular condensation has
been finished, and we can never expect to discover any evidence
of the nebula having once existed beyond the peculiar configura-
tion of the stars to which it gave birth. In other cases, as in this
of Orion, photography may yet reveal to us the existence of faint
nebulous spirals still connected with the star-groups. Prof.
Holden's discovery of a starry ring connected with the celebrated
ring nebula in Lyra is in direct accord with the revelations of
photography in this respect. Another interesting example is
furnished by Mr. W. F. Denning's discovery last September of a
small nebula which is completely encircled by a ring of stars. It
is impossible, when looking at Mr. Denning's sketch of this curi-
ous object in The Observatory, to think that the stars and the
nebula there shown do not belong to a single system.

Among the most striking examples of curved or spiral stellar
arrangement are the circlet of small stars surrounding Delta

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 341

Cards Majoris and the exceedingly beautiful star-curves in the
neighborhood of Alpha Persei, both of which are figured in my
Astronomy with an Opera-glass. No one can survey the heav-
ens with any kind of an optical instrument for half an hour with-
out discovering many similar instances. If it should ever be
demonstrated that the individuals composing these star-rows
have all an identical parallax, or, in other words, are all at the
same distance from us, so much additional strength would be
given to the argument that they owe their origin to a nebula
which resembled in shape the figure that they mark out. But
the inherent probability that the stars concerned in such cases
really do have practically the same parallax is so great that
actual measurement could hardly make it stronger.

Looking at the matter still more broadly, it is clear that the
Milky Way itself may be regarded as the starry residuum of a
far grander nebula even than that of Orion, which once com-
pletely encircled our heavens ; while the origin of such stellar
streams as we behold in Eridanus, Pisces, and other constellations
having their stars comparatively widely separated and few in
number, may be referred to smaller nebulous masses once scat-
tered over the region of space included within and extending on
each side of the plane of the galactic circle.

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN.

By Prof. T. II. HUXLEY.

THE rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief
characteristic of our age, is effected in various ways. The
main army of science moves to the conquest of new worlds slowly
and surely, nor ever cedes an inch of the territory gained. But
the advance is covered and facilitated by the ceaseless activity of
clouds of light troops provided with a weapon — always efficient,
if not always an arm of precision — the scientific imagination. It
is the business of these enfants perdus of science to make raids
into the realm of ignorance wherever they see, or think they see,
a chance ; and cheerfully to accept defeat, or it may be annihila-
tion, as the reward of error. Unfortunately, the public, which
watches the progress of the campaign, too often mistakes a dash-
ing incursion of the Uhlans for a forward movement of the main
body ; fondly imagining that the strategic movement to the rear,
which occasionally follows, indicates a battle lost by science.
And it must be confessed that the error is too often justified by
the effects of the irrepressible tendency which men of science
share with all other sorts of men known to me, to be impatient

342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of that most wholesome state of mind — suspended judgment ; to
assume the objective truth of speculations which, from the nature
of the evidence in their favor, can have no claim to be more than
working hypotheses.

The history of the "Aryan question " affords a striking illustra-
tion of these general remarks.

About a century ago, Sir William Jones pointed out the close
alliance of the chief European languages with Sanskrit and its
derivative dialects now spoken in India. Brilliant and laborious
philologists, in long succession, enlarged and strengthened this
position until the truth that Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek,
Latin, Lithuanian, Slavonian, German, Celtic, and so on, stand to
one another in the relation of descendants from a common stock
became firmly established, and thenceforward formed part of the
permanent acquisitions of science. Moreover, the term "Aryan"
is very generally, if not universally, accepted as a name for the
group of languages thus allied. Hence, when one speaks of
"Aryan languages," no hypothetical assumptions are involved.
It is a matter of fact that such languages exist, that they present
certain substantial and formal relations, and that convention
sanctions the name applied to them. But the close connection of
these widely differentiated languages remains altogether inexpli-
cable, unless it is admitted that they are modifications of an origi-
nal relatively undifferentiated tongue ; just as the intimate affini-
ties of the Romance languages — French, Italian, Spanish, and the
rest — would be incomprehensible if there were no Latin. The
original or " primitive Aryan " tongue, thus postulated, unfortu-
nately no longer exists. It is a hypothetical entity, which corre-
sponds with the " primitive stock " of generic and higher groups
among plants and animals ; and the acknowledgment of its for-
mer existence, and of the process of evolution which has brought
about the present state of things philological, is forced upon us
by deductive reasoning of similar cogency to that employed about
things biological.

Thus, the former existence of a body of relatively uniform dia-
lects, which may be called primitive Aryan, may be added to the
stock of definitely acquired truths. But it is obvious that, in
the absence of writing or of phonographs, the existence of a lan-
guage implies that of speakers. If there were primitive Aryan
dialects, there must have been primitive Aryan people who used
them ; and these people must have resided somewhere or other on
the earth's surface. Hence philology, without stepping beyond its
legitimate bounds and keeping speculation within the limits of bare
necessity, arrives, not only at the conceptions of Aryan languages
and of a primitive Aryan language, but of a primitive Aryan peo-
ple and of a primitive Aryan home, or country occupied by them.

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 343

But where was this home of the Aryans ? When the labors
of modern philologists began, Sanskrit was the most archaic of
all the Aryan languages known to them. It appeared to present
the qualifications required in the parental or primitive Aryan.
Brilliant Uhlans made a charge at this opening. The scientific
imagination seated the primitive Aryans in the valley of the
Ganges ; and showed, as in a vision, the successive columns, guided
by enterprising Brahmans, which set out thence to people the
regions of the Western world with Greeks and Celts and Germans.
But the progress of philology itself sufficed to show that this
Balaclava charge, however magnificent, was not profitable warfare.
The internal evidence of the Vedas proved that their composers
had not reached the Ganges. On the other hand, the comparison
of Zend with Sanskrit left no alternative open to the assumption
that these languages were modifications of an original Indo-
Iranian tongue, spoken by a people of whom the Aryans of India
and those of Persia were offshoots, and who could therefore be
hardly lodged elsewhere than on the frontiers of both Persia and
India — that is to say, somewhere in the region which is at present
known under the names of Turkistan, Afghanistan, and Kafiristan.
Thus far, it can hardly be doubted that we are well within the
ground of which science has taken enduring possession. But the
Uhlans were not content to remain within the lines of this surely-
won position. For some reason, which is not quite clear to me,
they thought fit to restrict the home of the primitive Aryans to a
particular part of the region in question ; to lodge them amid
the bleak heights of the long range of the Hindoo Koosh and on
the inhospitable plateau of Pamir. From their hives in these se-
cluded valleys and wind-swept wastes, successive swarms of Celts
and Greco-Latins, Teutons and Slavs, were thrown off to settle,
after long wanderings, in distant Europe. The Hindoo-Koosh-
Pamir theory, once enunciated, gradually hardened into a sort of
dogma ; and there have not been wanting theorists who laid down
the routes of the successive bands of emigrants with as much con-
fidence as if they had access to the records of the office of a primi-
tive Aryan quartermaster-general. It is really singular to ob-
serve the deference which has been shown, and is yet sometimes
shown, to a speculation which can, at best, claim to be regarded as
nothing better than a somewhat risky working hypothesis.

Forty years ago, the credit of the Hindoo-Koosh-Pamir theory
had risen almost to that of an axiom. The first person to instill
doubt of its value into my mind was the late Robert Gordon
Latham, a man of great learning and singular originality, whose
attacks upon the Hindoo-Kooshite doctrine could scarcely have
failed as completely as they did, if his great powers had been be-
stowed upon making his books not only worthy of being read, but

344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

readable. The impression left upon my mind, at that time, by
various conversations about the " Sarmatian hypothesis/' which
my friend wished to subsitute for the Hindoo-Koosh-Pamir specu-
lation, was that the one and the other rested pretty much upon a
like foundation of guess-work. That there was no sufficient reason
for planting the primitive Aryans in the Hindoo Koosh, or in
Pamir, seemed plain enough ; but that there was little better
ground, on the evidence then adduced, for settling them in the
region at present occupied by western Russia, or Podolia, ap-
peared to me to be not less plain. The most I thought Latham
proved was, that the Aryan people of Indo-Iranian speech were
just as likely to have come from Europe, as the Aryan people of
Greek, or Teutonic, or Celtic speech from Asia. Of late years,
Latham's views, so long neglected, or mentioned merely as an ex-
ample of insular eccentricity, have been taken up and advocated
with much ability in Germany as well as in this country — prin-
cipally by philologists. Indeed, the glory of Hindoo-Koosh-Pamir
seems altogether to have departed. Prof. Max Miiller, to whom
Aryan philology owes so much, will not say more now, than that
he holds by the conviction that the seat of the primitive Ar-
yans was " somewhere in Asia." Dr. Schrader sums up in favor
of European Russia ; while Herr Penka would have us transplant
the home of the primitive Aryans from Pamir in the far East to
the Scandinavian Peninsula in the far West.

I must refer those who desire to acquaint themselves with the
philological arguments on which these conclusions are based to
the recently published works of Dr. Schrader and Canon Taylor ;*
and to Penka's Die Herkunft der Arier, which, in spite of the
strong spice of the Uhlan which runs through it, I have found
extremely well worth study. I do not pretend to be able to look
at the Aryan question under any but the biological aspect ; to
which I now turn.

Any biologist who studies the history of the Aryan question,
and, taking the philological facts on trust, regards it exclusively
from the point of view of anthropology, will observe that, very
early, the purely biological conception of " race " illegitimately
mixed itself up with the ideas derived from pure philology. It is
quite proper to speak of Aryan "people," because, as we have
seen, the existence of the language implies that of a people who
speak it ; it might be equally permissible to call Latin peojue all
those who speak Romance dialects. But, just as the application
of the term Latin " race " to the divers people who speak Ro-
mance languages, at the present day, is none the less absurd be-

* Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples. Translated by F. B. Jevons,
M. A., 1890. Taylor, The Origin of the Aryans, 1890.

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 345

cause it is common ; so it is quite possible that it may be equally-
wrong to call the people who spoke the primitive Aryan dialects
and inhabited the primitive home, the Aryan race. " Aryan " is
properly a term of classification used in philology. "Race" is
the name of a subdivision of one of those groups of living things
which are called " species " in the technical language of zoology
and botany ; and the term connotes the possession of characters
distinct from those of the other members of the species, which
have a strong tendency to appear in the progeny of all members
of the races. Such race-characters may be either bodily or
mental, though in practice, the latter, as less easy of observation
and definition, can rarely be taken into account. Language is
rooted half in the bodily and half in the mental nature of man.
The vocal sounds which form the raw materials of language
could not be produced without a peculiar conformation of the or-
gans of speech ; the enunciation of duly accented syllables would
be impossible without the nicest co-ordination of the action of the
muscles which move these organs ; and such co-ordination depends
on the mechanism of certain portions of the nervous system. It
is therefore conceivable that the structure of this highly complex
speaking apparatus should determine a man's linguistic poten-
tiality ; that is to say, should enable him to use a language of one
class and not another. It is further conceivable that a particular
linguistic potentiality should be inherited and become as good a
race-mark as any other. As a matter of fact, it is not proved
that the linguistic potentialities of all men are the same. It is
affirmed, for example, that, in the United States, the enunciation
and the timbre of the voice of an American-born negro, however
thoroughly he may have learned English, can be readily distin-
guished from that of a white man. But, even admitting that dif-
ferences may obtain among the various races of men, to this ex-
tent, I do not think that there is any good ground for the suppo-
sition that an infant of any race would be unable to learn, and to
use with ease, the language of any other race of men among
whom it might be brought up. History abundantly proves the
transmission of languages from some races to others ; and there
is no evidence, that I know of, to show that any race is incapable
of substituting a foreign idiom for its native tongue.

From these considerations it follows that community of lan-
guage is no proof of unity of race, is not even presumptive evi-
dence of racial identity.* All that it does prove is that, at some

* Canon Taylor (Origin of the Aryans, p. 31) states that " Cuno . . . was the first to
insist on what is now looked on as an axiom in ethnology — that race is not coextensive
with language," in a work published in 1871. I may be permitted to quote a passage
from a lecture delivered on the 9th of January, 1S70, which brought me into a great deal
of trouble. " Physical, mental, and moral peculiarities go with blood and not with language.
vol. xxxviii. — 24

346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

time or other, free and prolonged intercourse has taken place be-
tween the speakers of the same language. Philology, therefore,
while it may have a perfect right to postulate the existence of
a primitive Aryan " people," has no business to substitute " race "
for " people." The speakers of primitive Aryan may have been a
mixture of two or more races, just as are the speakers of English
and of French at the present time.

The older philological ethnologists felt the difficulty which
arose out of their identification of linguistic with racial affinity,
but were not dismayed by it. Strong in the prestige of their
great discovery of the unity of the Aryan tongues, they were quite
prepared to make the philological and the biological categories
fit, by the exercise of a little pressure on that about which they
knew less. And their judgment was often unconsciously warped
by strong monogenistic proclivities, which at bottom, however
respectable and philanthropic their origin, had nothing to do
with science. So the patent fact that men of Aryan speech pre-
sented widely diverse racial characters was explained away by
maintaining that the physical differentiation was post- Aryan ; to
put it broadly, that the Aryans in Hindoo-Koosh-Pamir were
truly of one race; but that, while one colony, subjected to the
sweltering heat of the Gangetic plains, had fined down and dark-
ened into the Bengalee, another had bleached and shot up, under
the cool and misty skies of the north, into the semblance of Pome-
ranian grenadiers ; or of blue-eyed, fair-skinned, six-foot Scotch
Highlanders. I do not know that any of the Uhlans who fought
so vigorously under this flag are left now. I doubt if any one is
prepared to say that he believes that the influence of external
conditions, alone, accounts for the wide physical differences be-
tween Englishmen and Bengalese. So far as India is concerned,
the internal evidence of the old literature sufficiently proves that
the Aryan invaders were "white" men. It is hardly to be
doubted that they intermixed with the dark Dravidian aborigi-
nes ; and that the high-caste Hindoos are what they are in virtue
of the Aryan blood which they have inherited,* and of the select-
ive influence of their surroundings operating on the mixture.

In the United States the negroes have spoken English for generations ; but no one on that
ground would call them Englishmen, or expect them to differ physically, mentally, or mor-
ally from other negroes." (Pall Mall Gazette, January 10, lSW.) But the "axiom in
ethnology" had been implied, if not enunciated, before my time ; for example, by Ecker
in 1865.

* I am unable to discover good grounds for the severity of the criticism, in the name
of " the anthropologists," with which Prof. Max Miiller's assertion that the same blood
runs in the veins of English soldiers " as in the veins of the dark Bengalese," and that
there is " a legitimate relationship between Hindoo, Greek, and Teuton," has been visited.
So far as I know anything about anthropology, I should say that these statements may be
correct literally, and probably arc so substantially. I do not know of any good reason for

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 347

The assumption that, as there must have been a primitive
Aryan people, in the philological sense, so that people must have
constituted a race in the biological sense, is pretty generally made
in modern discussions of the Aryan problem. But whether the
men of the primitive Aryan race were blonds or brunets, whether
they had long or round heads, were tall or were short, are hotly
debated questions, into the discussion of which considerations
quite foreign to science are sometimes imported. The combina-
tion of swarthiness with stature above the average and a long skull,
confer upon me the serene impartiality of a mongrel ; and, having
given this pledge of fair dealing, I proceed to state the case for
the hypothesis I am inclined to adopt. In doing so, I am aware
that I deliberately take the shilling of the recruiting sergeant
of the Light Brigade, and I warn all and sundry that such is the
case.

Looking at the discussions which have taken place from a
purely anthropological point of view, the first point which has
struck me is that the problem is far more complicated and difficult
than many of the disputants appear to imagine ; and the second,
that the data upon which we have to go are grievously insufficient
in extent and in precision. Our historical records cover such an
infinitesimally small extent of the past life of humanity, that we
obtain little help from them. Even so late as 1500 b. c, northern
Eurasia lies in historical darkness, except for such glimmer of
light as may be thrown here and there by the literature of Egypt
and of Babylonia. Yet, at that time, it is probable that Sanskrit,
Zend, and Greek, to say nothing of other Aryan tongues, had long
been differentiated from primitive Aryan. Even a thousand
years later, little enough accurate information is to be had about
the racial characters of the European and Asiatic tribes known
to the Greeks. We are thrown upon such resources as archaeol-
ogy and human paleontology have to offer, and, notwithstanding
the remarkable progress made of late years, they are still meager.
Nevertheless, it strikes me that, from the purely anthropological
side, there is a good deal to be said in favor of the two proposi-
tions maintained by the new school of philologists : first, that the
people who spoke " primitive Aryan " were a distinct and well-
marked race of mankind ; and, secondly, that the area of the dis-
tribution of this race, in primeval times, lay in Europe, rather
than in Asia.

For the last two thousand years, at least, the southern half of
Scandinavia and the opposite or southern shores of the Baltic have
been occupied by a race of mankind possessed of very definite

the physical differences between a high-caste Hindoo and a Dravidian, except the Aryan
blood in the veins of the former ; and the strength of the infusion is probably quite as
great in some Hindoos as in some English soldiers.

348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

characters. Typical specimens have tall and massive frames, fair
complexions, blue eyes, and yellow or reddish hair — that is to say,
they are pronounced blonds. Their skulls are long, in the sense
that the breadth is usually less, often much less, than four fifths
of the length, and they are usually tolerably high. But in this
last respect they vary. Men of this blond, long-headed race
abound from eastern Prussia to northern Belgium ; they are met
with in northern France and are common in some parts of our
own islands. The people of Teutonic speech, Goths, Saxons, Ale-
manni, and Franks, who poured forth out of the regions bordering
the North Sea and the Baltic, to the destruction of the Koman
Empire, were men of this race ; and the accounts of the ancient
historians of the incursions of the Gauls into Italy and Greece,
between the fifth and the second centuries B. c, leave little doubt
that their hordes were largely, if not wholly, composed of similar
men. The contents of numerous interments in southern Scandi-
navia prove that, as far back as archseology takes us into the so-
called Neolithic age, the great majority of the inhabitants had the
same stature and cranial peculiarities as at present, though their
bony fabric bears marks of somewhat greater ruggedness and
savagery. There is no evidence that the country was occupied
by men before the advent of these tall, blond long-heads. But
there is proof of the presence, along with the latter, of a small
percentage of people with broad skulls — skulls, that is, the breadth
of which is more, often very much more, than four fifths of the
length.

At the present day, in whatever directionNwe travel inland from
the continental area occupied by the blond long-heads, whether
southwest, into central France ; south, through the Walloon prov-
inces of Belgium into eastern France; into Switzerland, south
Germany, and the Tyrol ; or southeast, into Poland and Russia ;
or north, into Finland and Lapland, broad-heads make their ap-
pearance, in force, among the long-heads. And, eventually, we
find ourselves among people who are as regularly broad-heacled
as the Swedes and North Germans are long-headed. As a gen-
eral rule, in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and south Germany,
the increase in the proportion of broad skulls is accompanied by
the appearance of a larger and larger proportion of men of brunet
complexion and of a lower stature ; until, in central France and
thence eastward, through the Cevennes and the Alps of Dauphiny,
Savoy, and Piedmont, to the western plains of north Italy, the
tall blond long-heads * practically disappear, and are replaced by

* I may plead the precedent of the good English words " block-head " and " thick-
head" for "broad-head" and "long-head," but 1 can not say that they are elegant. I
might have emploj-ed the technical terms brachycephali and dolichocephali. But it can
not be said that they are much more graceful ; and, moreover, they are sometimes em-

TEE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREEISTOBIC MAN. 349

short brunet broad-heads. The ordinary Savoyard may be de-
scribed in terms the converse of those which apply to. the ordinary
Swede. He is short, swarthy, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and his
skull is very broad. Between the two extreme types, the one
seated on the shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, and the
other on those of the Mediterranean, there are all sorts of inter-
mediate forms, in which breadth of skull may be found in tall
and in short blond men, and in tall brunet men.

There is much reason to believe that the brunet broad-heads,
now met with in central France and in the west central European
highlands, have inhabited the same region, not only throughout
the historical period, but long before it commenced; and it is
probable that their area of occupation was formerly more exten-
sive. For, if we leave aside the comparatively late incursions of
the Asiatic races, the center of eruption of the invaders of the
southern moiety of Europe has been situated in the north and
west. In the case of the Teutonic inroads upon the empire of
Rome, it undoubtedly lay in the area now occupied by the blond
long-heads ; and, in that of the antecedent Gaulish invasions, the
physical characters ascribed to the leading tribes point to the
same conclusion. Whatever the causes which led to the breaking
out of bounds of the blond long-heads, in mass, at particular
epochs, the natural increase in numbers of a vigorous and fertile
race must always have impelled them to press upon their neigh-
bors, and thereby afford abundant occasions for intermixture. If,
at any given prehistoric time, we suppose the lowlands verging
on the Baltic and the North Sea to have been inhabited by pure
blond long-heads, while the central highlands were occupied by
pure brunet short-heads the two would certainly meet and inter-
mix in course of time, in spite of the vast belt of dense forest
which extended, almost uninterruptedly, from the Carpathians to
the Ardennes ; and the result would be such an irregular grada-
tion of the one type into the other as we do, in fact, meet with.

On the southeast, east, and northeast, throughout what was
once the kingdom of Poland, and in Finland, the preponderance
of broad-heads goes along with a wide prevalence of blond com-
plexion and of good stature. In the extreme north, on the other
hand, marked broad-headedness is combined with low stature,
swarthiness, and more or less strongly Mongolian features, in the

ployed in senses different from that which I have given in the definition of broad-heads
and long-heads. The cephalic index is a number which expresses the relation of the
breadth to the length of a skull, taking the latter as 100. Therefore, " broad-heads "
have the cephalic index above 80 and " long-heads " have it below SO. The physiological
value of the difference is unknown ; its morphological value depends upon the observed
fact of the constancy of the occurrence of either long skulls or broad skulls among large
bodies of mankind.

35© THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Lapps. And it is to be observed that this type prevails increas-
ingly to the eastward, among the central Asiatic populations.

The population of the British Islands, at the present time,
offers the two extremes of the tall blond and the short brunet
types. The tall blond long-heads resemble those of the continent ;
but our short brunet race is long-headed. Brunet broad-heads,
such as those met with in the central European highlands, do not
exist among us. This absence of any considerable number of
distinctly broad -headed people (say with the cephalic index above
81 or 82) in the modern population of the United Kingdom is the
more remarkable, since the investigations of the late Dr. Thur-
nam, and others, proved the existence of a large proportion of,
tall broad-heads among the people interred in British tumuli
of the Neolithic age. It would seem that these broad-skulled im-
migrants have been absorbed by an older long-skulled population ;
just as, in south Germany, the long-headed Alemanni have been
absorbed by the older broad-heads. The short brunet long-heads
are not peculiar to our islands. On the contrary, they abound in
western France and in Spain, while they predominate in Sardinia,
Corsica, and south Italy, and, it may be, occupied a much larger
area in ancient times.

Thus, in the area which has been under consideration, there
are evidences of the existence of four races of men : (1) blond long-
heads of tall stature, (2) brunet broad-heads of short stature, (3)
Mongoloid brunet broad-heads of short stature, (4) brunet long-
heads of short stature. The regions in which these races appear
with least admixture are — (1) Scandinavia, north Germany, and
parts of the British Islands ; (2) central France, the central Euro-
pean highlands, and Piedmont ; (3) arctic and eastern Europe, cen-
tral Asia; (4) the western parts of the British Islands and of
France ; Spain, south Italy. And the inhabitants of the regions
which lie between these foci present the intermediate gradations,
such as short blond long-heads, and tall brunet short-heads and
long-heads which might be expected to result from their inter-
mixture. The evidence at present extant is consistent with the
supposition that the blond long-heads, the brunet broad-heads, and
the brunet long-heads have existed in Europe throughout historic
times, and very far back into prehistoric times. There is no proof
of any migration of Asiatics into Europe, west of the basin of the
Dnieper, down to the time of Attila. On the contrary, the first great
movements of the European population of which there is any con-
clusive evidence is that series of Gaulish invasions of the east and
south, which ultimately extended from north Italy as far as Gala-
tia in Asia Minor.

It is now time to consider the relations between the phenomena
of racial distribution, as thus defined, and those of the distribu-

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 351

tion of languages. The "blond long-heads of Europe speak, or have
spoken, Lithuanian, Teutonic, or Celtic dialects, and they are not
known to have ever used any but these Aryan languages. A large
proportion of the "brunet broad-heads once spoke the Ligurian and
the Rhsetic dialects, which are believed to have been non- Aryan.
But, when the Romans made acquaintance with Transalpine Gaul,
the inhabitants of that country between the Garonne and the
Seine (Caesar's Celtica) seem, at any rate for the most part, to
have spoken Celtic dialects. The brunet long-heads of Spain and
of France appear to have used a non- Aryan language, that Euska-
rian which still lives on the shores of the Bay of Biscay. In Brit-
ain there is no certain knowledge of their use of any but Celtic
tongues. What they spoke in the Mediterranean islands and in
south Italy does not appear.

The blond broad-heads of Poland and west Russia form part of
a people who, when they first made their appearance in history,
occupied the marshy plains imperfectly drained by the Vistula on
the west, the Duna on the north, and the Dnieper and Bug on the
south. They were known to their neighbors as Wends, and among
themselves as Serbs and Slavs. The Slavonic languages spoken
by these people are said to be most closely allied to that of the
Lithuanians, who lay upon their northern border. The Slavs re-
semble the south Germans in the predominance of broad-heads
among them, while stature and complexion vary from the, often
tall, blonds who prevail in Poland and Great Russia to the, often
short, brunets common elsewhere. There is certainly nothing in
the history of the Slav people to interfere with the supposition
that, from very early times, they have been a mixed race. For
their country lies between that of the tall blond long-heads on the
north, that of the short brunet broad-heads of the European type
on the west, and that of the short brunet broad -heads of the Asi-
atic type on the east: and throughout their history they have
either thrust themselves among their neighbors, or have been
overrun and trampled down by them. Gauls and Goths have trav-
ersed their country, on their way to the east and south : Finno-
Tataric people, on their way to the west, have not only done the
like, but have held them in subjection for centuries. On the other
hand, there have been times when their western frontier advanced
beyond the Elbe ; indeed, it is asserted that they have sent colo-
nies to Holland and even as far as southern England. A large
part of eastern Germany ; Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary ; the lower
valley of the Danube and the Balkan Peninsula, have been largely
or completely Slavonized ; and the Slavonic rule and language,
which once had trouble to hold their own in west Russia and
Little Russia, have now extended their sway over all the Finno-
Tataric populations of Great Russia ; while they are advancing,

352 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.

among those of central Asia, up to the frontiers of India on the
south and to the Pacific on the extreme east. Thus it is hardly
possible that fewer than three races should have contributed to
the formation of the Slavonic people ; namely, the blond long-
heads, the European brunet broad-heads, and the Asiatic brunet
broad-heads. And, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it
is certainly permissible to suppose that it is the first race which has
furnished the blond complexion and the stature observable in so
many, especially of the northern Slavs, and that the brunet com-
plexion and the broad skulls must be attributed to the other two.
But, if that supposition is permissible, then the Aryan form and
substance of the Slavonic languages may also be fairly supposed
to have proceeded from the blond long-heads. They could not have
come from the Asiatic brunet broad-heads, who all speak non-
Aryan languages ; and the presumption is against their coming
from the brunet broad-heads of the central European highlands,
among whom an apparently non- Aryan language was largely
spoken, even in historical times.

In the same way, the tall blond tribes among the Finns may be
accounted for as the product of admixture. The great majority
of the Finno-Tataric people are brunet broad-heads of the Asiatic
type. But that the Finns proper have long been in contact with
the Aryans is evidenced by the many words borrowed from Aryan
which their language contains. Hence there has been abundant
opportunity for the mixture of races, and for the transference to
some of the Finns of more or fewer of the physical characters of
the Aryans, and vice versa. On any hypothesis, the frontier be-
tween Aryan and Finno-Tataric people must have extended across
west-central Asia for a very long period ; and at any point of this
frontier, it has been possible that mixed races of blond Finns or of
brunet Aryans should be formed.

So much for the European people who now speak Celtic, or
Teutonic, or Slavonian, or Lithuanian tongues ; or who are known
to have spoken them before the supersession of so many of the
early native dialects by the Romance modifications of the lan-
guage of Rome. With respect to the original speakers of Greek
and Latin, the unraveling of the tangled ethnology of the Balkan
Peninsula and the ordering of the chaos of that of Italy are enter-
prises upon which I do not propose to enter. In regard to the first,
however, there are a few tolerably satisfactory data. The ancient
Thracians were proverbially blue-eyed and fair-haired. Tall blonds
were common among the ancient Greeks, who were a long-headed
people; and the Sphakiots of Crete, probably the purest repre.
sentatives of the old Hellenes in existence, are tall and blond-
But considering that Greek colonization was taking place on a
great scale in the eighth century B. c, and that, centuries earlier

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 353

and later, the restless Hellene had been fighting, trading, plunder-
ing, and kidnapping, on both sides of the JEgean, and perhaps as
far as the shores of Syria and of Egypt, it is probable that, even
at the dawn of history, the maritime Greeks were a very mixed
race. On the other hand, the Dorians may well have preserved
the original type ; and their famous migration may be the earliest
known example of those movements of the Aryan race which
were, in later times, to change the face of Europe. Analogy per-
haps justifies a guess that those ethnological shadows, the Pe-
lasgi, may have been an earlier mixed population, like that of
western Gaul and of Britain before the Teutonic invasion. At
any rate, the tall blond long-heads are so well represented in the
oldest history of the Balkan Peninsula that they may be credited
with the Aryan languages spoken there. And it may be that the
tradition which peopled Phrygia with Thracians represents a real
movement of the Aryan race into Asia Minor, such as that which
in after-years carried the Gauls thither.

The difficulties in the way of a probable identification of the
people among whom the various dialects of the Latin group de-
veloped themselves, with any race traceable in Italy in historical
times, are very great. In addition to the ItaMc " aborigines "
northern Italy was peopled by Ligurian brunet broad-heads ;
with Gauls, probably, to a large extent, blond long-heads ; with
Illyrians, about whom nothing is known. Besides these, there
were those perplexing people the Etruscans, who. seem to have
been, originally, brunet long-heads. South Italy and Sicily pre-
sent a contingent of " Sikels," Phoenicians and Greeks; while over
all, in comparatively modern times, follows a wash of Teutonic
blood. The Latin dialects arose, no one knows how, among the
tribes of central Italy, encompassed on all sides by people of the
most various physical characters, who were gradually absorbed
into the eternally widening maw of Rome, and there, by dint of
using the same speech, became the first example of that wonder-
ful ethnological hotch-potch miscalled the Latin race. The only
trustworthy guide here is archaeological investigation. A great
advance will have been made when the race characters of the pre-
historic people of the terremare (who are identified by Helbig *
with the primitive Umbrians) become fully known.

I can not learn that the ancient literatures of India and of
Persia give any definite information about the complexion of the
Lido-Iranians, beyond conveying the impression that they were
what we vaguely call white men. But it is important to note

* Die Italiker in der Poebene, 1879. See, for much valuable information respecting
the races of the Balkan and Italic Peninsula?, Zampa's essay, Verglcichcnde anthropolo-
gische Ethnographie von Apulien, Zcitschrift fur Ethnologic, xviii, 18S6.
vol. xxxviii. — 25

354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that tall blond people make their appearance sporadically among
the Tadjiks of Persia and of Turkistan ; that the Siah-posh and
Galtchas of the mountainous barrier between Turkistan and In-
dia are such ; and that the same characters obtain largely among
the Kurds on the western frontier of Persia at the present day.
The Kurds and the Galtchas are generally broad-headed, the
others are long-headed. These people and the ancient Alans thus
form a series of stepping-stones between the blond Aryans of
Europe and those of Asia, standing up amid the flood of Finno-
Tataric people which has inundated the rest of the interval be-
tween the sources of the Dnieper and those of the Oxus. If only
more was known about the Sarmatians and the Scythians of the
oldest historians, it is not improbable, I think, that we should dis-
cover that, even in historical times, the area occupied by the blond
long-heads of Aryan speech has been, at least temporarily, con-
tinuous from the shores of the North Sea to central Asia.

Suppose it to be admitted, as a fair working hypothesis, that
the blond long-heads once extended without a break over this
vast area, and that all the Aryan tongues have been developed
out of their original speech, the question respecting the home of
the race when the various families of Aryan speech were in the
condition of inceptive dialects remains open. For all that, at
first, appears to the contrary, it may have been in the West, or
in the East, or anywhere between the two. In seeking for a solu-
tion of this obscure problem, it is an important preliminary to
grasp the truth that the Aryan race must be much older than the
primitive Aryan speech. It is not to be seriously imagined that
the latter sprang suddenly into existence, by the act of a jealous
Deity, apparently unaware of the strength of man's native tend-
ency toward confusion of speech. But if all the diverse lan-
guages of men were not brought suddenly into existence, in order
to frustrate the plans of the audacious bricklayers of the plain of
Shinar; if this professedly historical statement is only another
" type," and primitive Aryan, like all other languages, was built
up by a secular process of development, the blond long-heads,
among whom it grew into shape, must for ages have been, philo-
logically speaking, non- Aryans, or perhaps one should say, " pro-
Aryans." I suppose it may be safely assumed that Sanskrit and
Zend and Greek were fully differentiated in the year 1500 B. c. If
so, how much further back must the existence of the primitive
Aryan, from which these proceeded, be dated ? And how much
further yet, that real juvenilis rnundi (so far as man is con-
cerned) when primitive Aryan was in course of formation ? And
how much further still the differentiation of the nascent Aryan
blond long-head race from the primitive stock of mankind ?

If any one maintains that the blond long-headed people, among

THE STORAGE OF ELECTRICITY. 355

whom, by the hypothesis, the primitive Aryan language was gen-
erated, may have formed a separate race as far back as the Pleis-
tocene epoch, when the first unquestionable records of man make
their appearance, I do not see that he goes beyond possibility —
though, of course, that is a very different thing from proving his
case. But, if the blond long-heads are thus ancient, the problem
of their primitive seat puts on an altogether new aspect. Specu-
lation must take into account climatal and geographical condi-
tions widely different from those which obtain in northern Eura-
sia at the present day. During much of the vast length of the
Pleistocene period, it would seem that men could no more have
lived either in Britain north of the Thames, or in Scandinavia, or
in northern Germany, or in northern Russia, than they can live
now in the interior of Greenland, seeing that the land was covered
by a great ice sheet like that which at present shrouds the latter
country. At that epoch, the blond long-heads can not reasonably
be supposed to have occupied the regions in which we meet with
them in the oldest times of which history has kept a record.

But even if we are content to assume a vastly less antiquity for
the Aryan race ; if we only make the assumption, for which there
is considerable positive warranty, that it has existed in Europe
ever since the end of the Pleistocene period — when the fauna and
flora assumed approximately their present condition and the state
of things called Recent by geologists set in — we have to reckon
with a distribution of land and water, not only very different from
that which at present obtains in northern Eurasia, but of such a
nature that it can hardly fail to have exerted a great influence on
the development and the distribution of the races of mankind. —
Nineteenth Century.

[To be continued. ]

THE STORAGE OF ELECTRICITY.

By SAMUEL SHELDON, Ph. D.,

PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN THE POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE OF BROOKLYN.

THE problem how to save and store up the enormous amount
of natural energy which is daily dissipated in producing
natural phenomena has long occupied the attention of scientists.
During the last fifteen years this attention has been especially
directed toward electricity as an agent. This is, perhaps, because
the majority of the really active investigators have been occupied
in this department of science, or perhaps the popular superstitious
credulity that electricity can be made to do anything, has, to a
certain extent, taken possession of the scientific mind. At any
rate, the result of experiments has been the development of the

356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

electrical storage batteries, or accumulators, as they are sometimes
called.

The employment of these names for the apparatus is very un-
fortunate. They are the cause of the popular idea that electricity,
which is considered as a subtle, indefinite, and intangible some-
thing, is stored up in them, as valuables are stored in a vault.
The commercial current electricity can not, in large quantities,
be stored and still preserve its character. It has but a flitting
existence, and is no sooner produced than it dissipates itself and
is converted into some other form of energy. It was because of
this momentary existence that science had to wait so long for an
accident to reveal to Galvani that such a thing could exist.

The energy which a current may at any instant be said to
possess is immediately transformed into heat in the circuit, which
will under certain conditions produce light ; into chemical energy ;
into motion, which may or may not produce sound ; or into mag-
netic and electrotonic conditions. The last may either be perma-
nent or have the same evanescent existence as the original current.

When electricity is employed to charge a storage battery, only
that part which is transformed into chemical energy is used. The
rest is dissipated. The battery, then, instead of being a place
where electricity is laid away, is a place where chemicals are left
by the current, with the expectation that they will in turn pro-
duce a current when called upon. This may seem a fine distinc-
tion, but it is only apparently so. For instance, the current
might be produced by a dynamo turned by Niagara water-power.
The chemical left by it might be zinc deposited from a solution of
zinc sulphate. This might be transported, preserved, bought and
sold, and finally be employed by some physicist to produce another
current. Were the electricity itself stored in its original form,
then the imaginative reader can best tell what would become of
it and how it must be handled.

To understand this transformation more clearly, and to obtain
a clear idea of what goes on in a storage battery, one must first be-
come acquainted with that part of electricity which treats of the
phenomena resulting when a current of electricity passes through
a liquid. This is called electrolysis, and the liquid through which
a. current can be made to pass is called an electrolyte.

If a current of electricity flows into a liquid solution of any
metallic salt by means of a wire, and if, after traversing it, it
flows out through another wire, then it will, by its passage, sepa-
rate the salt into two parts and deposit the metal upon the latter
wire.

If, for instance, the solution be one of silver cyanide, then silver
will be deposited on the second wire. If a brass fork be connected
with this wire and dipped in the solution, then it will receive a

THE STORAGE OF ELECTRICITY. 357

coating of silver by the process and will be silver-plated. Substi-
tute a solution of nickel nitrate, and the article would become
nickel-plated. By using copper sulphate we are enabled to cover
the faces of types and cuts with a coating of copper, which in-
creases their hardness and consequently their endurance.

This electrolytic action can be watched if a solution of tin chlo-
ride be used. Tin, instead of being deposited, like most other
metals, in fine particles, comes out of the solution in quite large
crystals. If the current of electricity be made to enter the solution
through two wires, placed symmetrically on opposite sides of the
wire through which it makes its exit, and the whole is performed
in a vessel with glass sides, then, as the current passes, the crystals
will appear, as if by magic, growing out around the central wire.
This is but a modification of the " lead tree " which appears in
many text-books on physics. The tin crystals, however, are much
larger and more beautiful than those of lead.

The simplest storage battery, then, would seem to be one con-
structed of two copper plates suspended in a solution of some zinc
salt. A current of electricity passed into this would deposit zinc
upon one of the plates. After disconnecting the charging cur-
rent, the battery of itself would give off a current until the zinc
was redissolved. In fact, a modification of this form of storage
battery has recently been placed upon the market. The question
arises, however, whether it is cheaper to buy zinc sulphate and
transform it by expensive horse-power into metallic zinc or to
buy metallic zinc directly. Of course, in neither case is the zinc
lost, for it can be recovered by chemical means from the solution.
If solutions of zinc were abundant in nature and hence inexpen-
sive, this style of storage battery would, undoubtedly, for eco-
nomic reasons, prevail. Or, still further, if metallic zinc were
inexpensive we would have no need of storage batteries at all,
but could use primary batteries directly.

It might be well, right here, to define a primary battery. If
any two different metals be dipped in an acidulated liquid, and if
their external extremities be connected by a wire, a current of
electricity will flow through the wire. Such a combination is
called a primary battery. Under the same conditions the amount
of electricity obtained depends upon the character of. the metals.
If nickel and iron were employed, a small amount of electricity
would result. If, however, zinc be used in connection with either
silver, gold, platinum, carbon, or copper, a large amount is ob-
tained. The first three of the group are very expensive ; hence,
in most primary batteries, we find zinc combined with either
carbon or copper, the differences between the various forms aris-
ing from difference in the liquids employed or in the shape of
construction.

358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Furthermore, pieces of the same metal under different physical
conditions, when combined with each other, will give a current.
For instance, a piece of polished iron opposed to a rusty piece
gives a current, and a plate of very rusty lead, if I may use the
expression, combined with a piece of bright lead yields even more
current than zinc and carbon. Unfortunately, lead does not rust
sufficiently well to suit electricians, and other physical reasons
prevent its being used in primary batteries.

It will thus be seen that a storage battery, when once charged,
becomes nothing more or less than a primary battery. In the
case before described, after charging, we have zinc and copper in
a solution of zinc sulphate.

In describing the effects of electricity in passing through an
electrolyte, we have assumed that the liquid contained a metal
in solution. Suppose, now, that we take water, which has no
metal in it, and subject it to the action of the current. The elec-
tricity can get no metal to deposit on the wire, where it passes
out, and in consequence does the next "best thing and leaves one
of the components of the water — viz., hydrogen gas. The other
component, oxygen, collects around the entrance wire. The Eng-
lish physicist Grove showed that, if these two wires, around which
the gases had collected, were connected together, a current of elec-
tricity would flow the same as if there were two metals instead of
two gases. Now, water is cheap, and if there were not some
serious technical difficulties as regards efficiency, Grove's battery
would be universally employed.

It was reserved, however, for M. Gaston Plants to construct
the first practical secondary battery. He considered the follow-
ing points in its construction : Water is cheap ; water, when sub-
jected to the electric current, gives off oxygen and hydrogen;
rusty lead, when combined with bright lead, has a high electro-
motive force ; oxygen makes lead rusty and hydrogen makes it
bright. His battery consisted, then, of two lead plates suspended in
water, which contained a little sulphuric acid to assist in the con-
duction. When a current of electricity was passed through, hy-
drogen was thrown off at one plate, making it bright, and oxygen
at the other plate, peroxidizing its surface. When the charging
source was removed, the altered plates would send off a current,
which was in a direction opposite to the one which had charged
them, and this would keep up until the plates had assumed their
original condition.

Plante's choice of materials was most wise, and all practical
storage batteries of to-day are but modifications of his style.

In order that his battery might give a strong current, and one
that would last a long time, it was found necessary that his two
lead plates should be as near to each other, and that they should

THE STORAGE OF ELECTRICITY.

359

I
Mill'

Plante's Accu-
mulator.

be as large as possible. He accomplished both of these ends with
economy of space by winding large plates into a spiral form, they
being separated from each other by strips of rubber.

In charging this battery, care must be exercised that the cur-
rent be not too strong ; otherwise the gases would
be sent off too rapidly for the lead to take them up,
and they would then rise to the top of the liquid and
escape into the air. The electrical energy which
separated them would thus be lost. It accordingly
takes a long time to charge a new Plante battery to
its full capacity. After being subjected to the cur-
rent for a day or two, if the plates be removed and
examined, it will be found that the one which re-
ceived the oxygen has changed its physical char-
acter : instead of having a smooth surface, it pre-
sents a spongy appearance, having little holes and
cavities in it, and thus exposes a larger superficial
area.

If the battery be now discharged, and be again
subjected to the charging current, it will be found
that a much stronger current may be used than at first, without
any gas escaping. This is owing to the much larger surface ex-
posed and to the spongy character of it.

This original charging of a new battery, to change the charac-
ter of the lead surfaces, has been termed formation, and, inasmuch
as only one plate is altered by
a charge in one direction, a
complete formation consists
in a charging in two direc-
tions.

As the .process of electrical
formation is necessarily an
expensive one, it was thought
that the same end could be at-
tained by mechanical means.
Plante" himself suspended the
lead plates, for a few days, in strong nitric acid. The acid does
not attack the lead, but seems to dissolve out small impurities,
which are distributed throughout the metal, leaving it in a much
more porous condition than after electrical formation.

Others cut the plates into fine fringes, thus exposing a large
surface with a small weight of lead.

D'Arsonval, instead of using plates, employed lead shot, think-
ing to get the largest surface for the given weight. The particles
could be effective, however, only under the condition that they
were in good contact with the wires leading to the battery. After

Plant e's Arrangement of Plates.

36°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Lead-shot Accumulator.

becoming oxidized, a large proportion of the shot did not satisfy
this condition, and the method was abandoned.

Lead wire was then substituted for the shot, and was found
very efficient. Lead wire, however, is very expensive ; and, to
obviate this, Simmen invented a very ingenious and economical

process of manufacturing it. This consists in
pouring molten lead into heated iron boxes,
the bottoms of which are perforated with
suitable-sized holes. The metal flows through
these holes, and is suddenly cooled by drop-
ping into cold water. The wire thus manufac-
tured does not possess the same regular char-
acter as drawn wire, but is perfectly suited to
the purpose for which it was intended. The
wire, after removal from the water, is com-
pressed into sheets, which, under the micro-
scope, resemble, in texture, coarse felt. Sim-
men placed pieces of this felt in frames of
cast lead, which acted as supports and im-
proved the electrical contact.

Reynier sought to increase the exposed surface by taking thin
lead foil and forming it into accordion-plaits. The compressed
plaits were then attached to supporting frames.

When Reynier's battery was charged, an unexpected phenom-
enon presented itself. The lead, in taking
up the oxygen, had increased its weight. At
the same time it had been transformed into
peroxide of lead, which is less dense than
pure lead — i. e., a pound of it would occupy
more space than a pound of the metal. The
plaits, therefore, required more room, and in
expanding they buckled the frames holding
them. To obviate this, Reynier then cut a
longitudinal opening in the plaits after they
had been placed in the frame, and when the
battery was charged this opening was closed
by the expansion.

In all the styles of lead batteries men-
tioned, the oxide of lead on one plate and
the spongy metallic lead on the other were formed from the
lead of the electrodes themselves. Camille Faure, however,
lessened the loss of time in formation by using lead plates as
a support, and covering them with a paste made of some pow-
dered oxide of lead mixed with sulphuric acid. This paste he
kept in place by covering with sheets of felt. When the charging
current was connected, the oxide on one plate was changed to a

Lead-wire Plate.

THE STORAGE OF ELECTRICITY.

361

higher oxide, and on the other plate transformed into metallic
sponge. This idea of Faure was an excellent one, and is at the
foundation of the construction of all the commercial lead accumu-
lators. The percent-
age of energy recov-
ered by discharge
was greatly increased.
His method of keep-
ing the paste in place
by felts was, however,
soon abandoned, be-
cause fine lead needles
soon filled up the in-
terstices of the felt,
and thus made a me-
tallic connection be-
tween the electrodes.
Holes were then
punched in the lead

Reynier's Plaits (un-
charged).

Eeynier's Plaits (charged).

plates and the paste pressed into them. A large number of the
patents recently issued for accumulators refer to methods of
making these holes and pressing in the paste, or to the shape of
the holes themselves after they have been punched. The shapes
vary from a slight depression on the surface to a hole completely

Eeynier's Modified Plaits (uncharged).

Reynier's Modified Acctmulator
(charged).

through the plate, and even further, to a hollow plate, with small
openings leading to the surface. A great deal depends upon this
shape, for the paste changes its volume during the process of
charging and discharging, the same as the metallic lead does, and
it would tend to loosen itself from some shaped openings and fall
to the bottom of the cell, while in others it would tend to tighten
itself, and thus provide a better contact.

36z

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Although the electrical end is obtained by substituting paste
for metallic lead, yet this does not prevent the charging current
from attacking the lead frames which hold the paste. These in
time are rendered porous, and after a while they break under

To avoid this, alloys and many secret compo-

their own weight

fi

Plate with Holes of Larger External
Diameter.

Plate with Holes of Larger External
Diameter (filled with paste).

sition metals have been substituted for the lead frames. Even
then, the continual change in volume of the paste contained in
them twists and warps them so that new plates have to be substi-
tuted after a while. No good battery has yet been constructed
which can be said to have a reasonably long life.

From what has been said it will be seen that the electricity
which is used for charging an accumulator is apparently used in

Plate with Holes of Larger Inter-
nal Diameter (filled with paste).

Modern Accumulator.

the production of oxygen and hydrogen gases. These are made
to oxidize one plate and clean up the other. Now, an interesting
question arises, whether it would not be more economical to em-
ploy gases, which can be more cheaply produced through chemi-
cal means. Difficulties, however, arise here, for the oxygen of

ELEMENTARY BOTANY IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 363

electrolysis is generated in the form of nascent oxygen, which is
far more active than ordinary oxygen. A molecule of the ordi-
nary gas contains two elementary atoms, which work upon each
other ; with the electrolytic generation, however, a single atom is
sent off, and this is chemically very active. It is sometimes called
ozone ; but chemists say that a molecule of ozone contains three
atoms. Now, there is no known method of chemically manu-
facturing ozone in large quantities, and ordinary oxygen does not
produce the required effect.

Again, Planters supposition, that the charging current pro-
duced these two gases only, is incorrect. The sulphuric acid in
the water, which he supposed only assisted in the conduction,
really acts upon the lead in forming lead sulphate. This has its
use in preventing the charged battery from running down when
not in use, and from too rapidly expending itself when put to use.

A more perfect system of storage batteries is much to be de-
sired. Already electricity is a staple article, and has a market
price of so many cents per ampere-hour. But its sale is of neces-
sity confined to limited areas. As soon as these can be extended,
by means of storage, an improvement in our commercial welfare
will become apparent, and the fear arising from the predicted loss
of our coal-supplies, will not trouble the minds of our immediate
posterity.

ELEMENTARY BOTANY IN GENERAL EDUCATION.*

By Peof. MARSHALL WARD.

AS I understand it, we may regard the study of botany as
approachable from three points of view. We may speak
of three ends to be attained : those of (1) elementary botany as a
school-subject of general education ; (2) advanced botany, as a
subject of university or academic training, with a view to teach-
ing and research ; (3) special botany, for various purposes in after-
life— e. g., those of foresters, planters, agriculturists, horticultur-
ists, brewers, medical men, timber merchants, etc.

This is, of course, a merely aribitrary division for the argu-
ment, and not a philosophical classification of the subject-matter
of the science of botany.

The next point is the scope of the teaching in each case. I
should advocate that all children pass through the preliminary
training embraced under No. 1 . Not only so, but I would urge
the usefulness and importance of elementary botany in schools
quite apart from its possible pursuit afterward.

* From a discussion at the Leeds Meeting of the British Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, reported at length in Nature for October 23, 1890.

364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It seems to me that the time is gone by when we need discuss
the direct applicability of teaching in elementary schools ; if
school training is read to mean education in the true sense of
the word, then there is no necessity for asking that a boy and
girl should learn at school only those subjects of which they will
make direct application as they grow older. Of course, this
does not preclude our keeping in mind the relative utility of the
various subjects to be taught, but it does — and emphatically —
preclude our falling into the error of imagining that a school-
subject is of educational value only in proportion to its direct
and foreseen utility in the application afterward. In other words,
education and teaching may be, and often are, very different
things.

Now, as I understand it, the nineteenth century has discovered
— possibly rediscovered — the truth that you may impart a won-
drous amount of information to a boy or girl without awakening
those powers of observing and comparing that lie dormant in the
minds of most healthy human beings, and especially when young ;
and that many a brilliant boy grows up without being able to
draw correct inferences from the phenomena around him, and
therefore less able than he should be to hold his own in the world
he awakes in.

The peculiarity of the study of elementary botany, properly
understood and pursued, lies especially in the interest it arouses
in the child's mind, and the ease with which it may be taught,
and I would insist and reinsist on the fact that it stimulates
and cultivates just those powers of accurate observation and com-
parison, and careful conscientious recording of the results, which
are so needed by us all ; and which, be it understood, moreover,
come so naturally to children who are not too much under the
baneful influence of the mere instruction — the mere information
— system.

What I wish to emphasize is that the educational value of this
subject is no more to be measured merely by the number and
kind of facts which the child remembers, than is the educational
value of history to be measured by the dates learned, and the lists
of kings and battles committed to memory. History, reading
and writing, arithmetic, and other subjects, have an educational
value, if properly taught, quite apart from their value as mere
accomplishments, which may be granted ; but children are nat-
urally observers, and why this side of their hungry little natures
should be starved at the expense of their usefulness in after-life
has always been a mystery to me.

To those who allow this, and I am happy to see that their
numbers are now many, it should hardly be necessary to point out
that the elements of botany afford the cheapest, cleanest, and most

ELEMENTARY BOTANY IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 365

easily attained means of cultivating in children the powers of
observing and comparing direct from Nature, and of leading them
to generalize accurately.

Of course, no advocacy is needed for good preliminary educa-
tion in elementary botany in the case of those who are about to
continue the pursuit of the subject as an academic study, or for
a special purpose, as noted under the headings (2) and (3) ; but
a few words may be devoted to pointing out the shocking waste
of time and energy on the part of all concerned in the prevailing
cases where students come up to a university, or other institu-
tion for higher education, insufficiently prepared for progressive
study.

It is still true that boys and young men leave school without
so much as a notion of the real meaning and aims of science ;
this applies no less to subjects like physics and chemistry, which
are professedly much taught in schools now, than to subjects
like natural history and botany, which, though avowedly in the
curriculum of some good schools, are usually entirely ignored.

There is considerable discussion about the details, but many
practical teachers regard such subjects as unfitted for school, be-
cause the boys and girls soon cease to be interested, and get lost
in the masses of facts and hard names that beset their path ; this,
to my mind, simply shows where the whole system is wrong, and
wrong because the tyrant empiricism still rules the prevailing
methods of teaching in schools.

I shall go so far as to say that the only remedy for this state
of things is for the teachers to lose that blind worship of facts, as
facts, which dominates our school system. I am aware that this
lays me open to very serious misconstructions, but I hope to make
that all right in the sequel.

I would say to the teachers, therefore, Do not fall into the mis-
take of measuring a boy's progress by the amount of dogmatic
information which he imbibes, and splutters forth upon his ex-
amination papers, but look to the quality of his understanding of
the relations between relatively few and well-chosen facts ; and
again, pay less attention to the number of facts which a boy
observes and of names he remembers, and more to the way in
which he directly makes his observations, and intelligently de-
scribes them, even if untechnically.

This is, I firmly believe, the only cure for the malady under
consideration — i. e., it is the prevention of it.

Children in schools are taught most subjects from printed
books, and it is not my province to criticise the necessity of this
as regards those subjects ; but let a competent teacher try the
experiment of making the children read directly from Nature,
and he will soon see that the new exercises have a powerful

3 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

effect. They will stumble, and they will even make stupid mis-
takes and mispronunciations ; but do they not do so when they
are reading — i. e., observing and comparing and interpreting —
printed words in a book ? Of course they do, and therefore the
teacher must not be discouraged by their stumbling and mis-
apprehending when first they have to look at and compare differ-
ent leaves and flowers, and give forth the articulate sounds which
correspond to the impressions created on their minds.

Every weary teacher knows what a blessing is variety in the
studies of the class, and it passes my comprehension why advan-
tage is not taken of the splendid opportunity offered by the study
of elementary observational botany.

We now come to the important subject of method. How
should botany be taught ?

Elementary botany in schools should be confined to lessons in
observation and comparison of plants, and the greatest possible
care should be taken that books are not allowed to replace the
natural objects themselves. Indeed, I would go so far as to ad-
vise that books be used only as an aid to the teacher, were it not
that a judiciously written text-book might be employed later on by
even young children as a sort of reading-book.

The chief aids should be the parts of living plants themselves,
however, and, in spite of the outcry that may be expected from
pedantic town teachers, I must insist that every school might be
easily provided all the year round with materials for study. I
even venture to think that these materials might be collected by
the children themselves ; at any rate, there should be no difficulty
about this in the country.

I will illustrate these remarks by a few examples. The teach-
ing of elementary botany to children should commence with the
observation of external form, and might well be initiated by a
comparative study of the shapes of leaves, the peculiarities of
insertion, their appendages, and so on.

The point never to be lost sight of is that if you teach a child
to discriminate, with the plants in hand and, from observation
only, between such objects as the simple, heart-shaped, opposite,
ex-stipulate stalked leaves of a lilac, and the compound, pinnate,
alternate, stipulate leaves of a rose, you lay the foundations of a
power for obtaining knowledge which is in no way to be measured
merely by the amount or kind of information imparted. It does
not matter whether the child learns the trivial facts mentioned
above, or not, but it is of the highest importance that the child
be taught how to obtain knowledge by such direct observation
and comparison ; and the beauty of it all is that, as is well known,
the child will retain most of such information as mere matter of
course.

ELEMENTARY BOTANY IN GENERAL EDUCATION. 367

For the main purpose in hand, therefore, it may be contended
that any objects would do.

This is no doubt true in one sense, but it should not be for-
gotten that (1) the mental exercise on the part of the child is
best exerted on natural objects, to say nothing of the admitted
advantages of familiarizing him with Nature ; and (2) the parts
of plants are so varied, so beautiful, and so common, that he need
never lack materials for his simple and pleasant work. More-
over, the parts of plants are clean, light, and easily handled —
practical advantages which recommend themselves.

I feel convinced that, if the teachers were not opposed to it,
the subject would ere now have been more widely taught ; and
I shall therefore say a few words in anticipation of difficulties.
It has been suggested that materials would be scarce in winter.
Not at all. Let the children be familiarized with the observa-
tion and comparison of the peculiarities of a sprig of holly as
contrasted with one of ivy ; or let them be shown how different
are the buds and leafless shoots of the beech from those of the
oak or the horse-chestnut. Show them how to observe the bud-
scales, how to infer the leaf -arrangement from the scars, how to
notice the color, roughness, markings, etc., of the periderm. Or
give them introductory notions as to the nature of a hyacinth
bulb as contrasted with the potato tuber, confining their atten-
tion to points which they can make out by observation. Every
nut or orange or apple that the child eats might be made inter-
esting if teachers would dare step over the traces of conven-
tion, and introduce such ostensibly dangerous articles into class-
work — and why not ? The doctrine of rewards and punish-
ments is applied more crudely than this in most children's
schools !

Be this as it may, there is no lack of material, at any season,
for children to observe and compare, plant in hand, the peculiari-
ties of shape, color, insertion, markings, etc., of the leaves, stems,
roots, and other parts. The difficulties are supposed to increase
when the flower is reached ; this is not necessarily the case in the
hands of a sympathetic teacher, unless the choice of flowers is
very unfortunate and limited.

There is one danger to be avoided here, however. Young
children should not be troubled with the difficulties of theoretical
morphology ; they should be made familiar with the more obvious
roots, stems, leaves, tendrils, thorns, flowers, bulbs, tubers, etc.,
as such, and comparatively, and not forced to concern themselves
with such ideas as that the flower is a modified shoot, the bulb a
bud, the tendril a leaf or branch, etc., until they have learned
simply to observe and compare accurately. Later on, of course,
the step must be taken of rousing their minds to the necessity of

3 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

drawing further conclusions from their comparative observations
in addition to recording and classifying them ; but, if the teacher
is really capable of teaching, it will be found that the children
begin to suggest these conclusions themselves, and, this stage
once reached, the success of the method is insured.

Glimpses of the meanings of adaptations of structure to func-
tion soon follow, but they should be obvious and simple at first,
and the mistake should not be made of entangling a child in a
discussion as to more remote meanings. It should never be
forgotten, in fact, that the first steps consist in learning to ob-
serve accurately and to record faithfully, comparative exercise
being used in addition, both as a check and as a stimulus to the
judgment.

THE INTELLIGENCE OF CATS.

By W. II. LAREABEE.

QUESTIONS concerning the quality or faculty in animals
comparable with human reason and the extent to which it
is developed in them are much discussed. Mr. Romanes dis-
criminates between those ideas of quality that spring from mere
sensuous impressions and those elaborated notions that arise
from the more complex associations supplied by mental reflec-
tion, and assumes that brutes have a power of thought of the
former or inferior order. The Rev. George Henslow admits that
they reason as we do, but always in connection with concrete
phenomena, whether immediately apprehended by the senses or
present to consciousness through memory; but that they have
no power of conveying truly abstract ideas. Prof. Exner regards
them as capable of certain determined combinations in view of
specific ends which are variable within very narrow limits. Some
of the recorded instances of the exercise of thought by animals
suggest that the sphere of their action in this line is often ca-
pable of considerable enlargement.

In a former article were considered some of the friendships
which cats appear to form with human beings, particularly with
the members of the families in which they live. The discussion
might be continued indefinitely, and illustrated by incidents
without number. Of equal interest are the associations which
they are capable of forming with other animals.

We have only an imperfect knowledge concerning the rela-
tions of different animals toward one another. We can conceive
the relative feelings of an animal that pursues and one that is
pursued, and can comprehend that there should be jealousies and
disputes between rivals for the same prey. We perceive animals

THE INTELLIGENCE OF CATS. 369

of social habits mingling across the lines of species without much
difficulty, and also, perhaps, without much real intimacy. But
there are a large class of other animals that are naturally neutral
as toward one another, concerning whose mutual attitudes an
ample field for inquiry is open. Cats belong to a family of soli
taries. In a state of nature they form only passing relations, and
have more quarrels than friendships with members of their own
species. We should hardly expect them to be particularly soci-
able, or even friendly, across the line. Yet they can be made to
form companionships when brought into association with other
animals under the same roof, and some that seem very strange
to the superficial view. The term " cat-and-dog life " is frequently
used to describe a condition of discord ; but cats and dogs often
dwell very harmoniously together. Lindsay regards the phrase
as implying an insult to both animals. Both he and Wood assert
that the two can be trained to be very good friends, and that
when this occurs " the cat usually behaves in a tyrannous manner
toward her canine friend," and treats him most unceremoniously.
" She will sit on his back and make him carry her about the
room ; she will take liberties with his tail, or bite his ears, and if
he resents this treatment she deals him a pat on the nose/' * and
raises her back at him or retires till his good humor returns to
him. The description will be recognized in thousands of families
as acurate. Wood supplements his observation with a story of a
cat and dog who had become great friends, when the dog was
taken away. He afterward returned, with his mistress, on a visit.
" Pussy was in the room when the dog entered, and flew forward
to greet him ; she then ran out of the room, and shortly returned,
bearing in her mouth her own dinner. This she laid before her
old friend, and actually stood beside him while he ate the food
with which she so hospitably entertained him." f The natural
attitude of the clog and cat may be regarded as one of rivalry for
the same food and attention, and therefore of jealousy. The dog,
being usually the larger and stronger animal, is likely to look
upon the cat as his victim. This excites distrust and hostility in
her, and the foundation of a feud is laid, which can be repressed or
cultivated. An unnamed cat in Belfast, Maine.J became attached
to a pig, and was its constant companion — sleeping with it at
night and following it about by day. When Piggy was slaugh-
tered, Pussy's grief was " pitiful to see. She watched by the life-
less body all night, and was found there in the morning; and
could never be persuaded to eat a mouthful of its pork." Tabby,
of Belfast, who had a kitten, became interested in a pig which

* Wood. \ This story was told to Mr. Wood by the owner of the cat.

X The cat stories from Maine are cited from the Belfast Republican Journal.
VOL. xxxvin. — 26

37o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

had been brought half frozen to the house to be taken care of.
She was found in his box trying " to quiet him and get him to
accept her as his mother. Her kitten would cry, and she would
leave the pig for a few minutes and go and quiet that, and then
she would go back to the pig and try her best to make him com-
fortable/' At last she took her kitten into the box with the pig.
Rosy, an excellent ratter on a Belfast schooner, made friends at
once with a pet rat that was brought on board, slept and played
with it for two weeks, and allowed it to take many liberties with
herself. Don Pierrot de Navarre and Seraphita, cats of The'ophile
Gautier, lived on the most friendly terms with their master's
troop of white rats. Don Pierrot was especially fond of the rats,
and would sit by their cage and watch them for hours together.
If the door of the room where they were kept happened to be shut,
he would insist, by scratching and mewing, on its being opened
to him. Tabby, of Hyde Park, near Boston, having lost her kit-
tens, took a brood of motherless chickens under her care. Know-
ing of them, she begged to be admitted to them. The experiment
was tried. She looked at them a moment, then sprang into the
box and, purring, nestled down among them. This was the be-
ginning of a constant service of six months, during which Tabby
would play with the chickens ; would try to carry them by the
neck as she would her own kittens ; and persisted in licking their
feathers the wrong way.

Mr. J. M. Coffinberry, of Cleveland, Ohio, writes to us that
when, some forty-three years ago, he took possession of a certain
house in Findlay, Ohio, the attention of the family " was called to
a brood of young chicks by a cat who seemed to devote her time
and attention to them. The ground being covered with two or
three inches of snow, my wife fed them regularly, so that we saw
much of them. The cat frequently purred to them, and they
came at her call and followed her as closely as young chickens
follow the mother hen. They lodged together in a wood-shed ad-
jacent to the house for about three months, but in the early spring
the chickens, being well fledged, abandoned their winter quarters
and flew into the higher branches of a fruit tree to roost. The
cat purred and mewed, and seemed much disgusted at their change
of lodgings, but soon accepted the situation and climbed to the
tree-top and roosted with the chickens." This continued during
the few months that the family occupied this house. Mr. Coffin-
berry asks some questions as to what was in the cat's mind or
heart that prompted her to this parental act. It is easily ex-
plained if the qualities which he and many authors claim for cats
are conceded to them. A correspondent, M C , of Na-
ture, tells of a cat and dog who, having been brought into the
family at about the same time, grew up friends and fast com-

THE INTELLIGENCE OF CATS. 371

pardons. They ate out of the same dish and slept on the same
mat. The dog took the cat under his protection, and was particu-
larly assiduous in defending his ward from a vicious black cat
that troubled it. A correspondent of the London Spectator wrote
concerning tomcat Blackie's interest in a dog who had been
blinded by a carter's whip and had been nursed by his master.
Observing that " Laddie " (the dog) had difficulty in finding his
way to the door, and sometimes struck his head against the posts*
she became accustomed to go for him when he was called and
guide him in.

Wood gives, in his Natural History, an account of two cats
called the " Mincing Lane Cats," who lived in a wine-cellar, and,
one being old and the other young, appear to have agreed upon
an interchange of services. "Senior" taught "Junior" to avoid
men's feet and wine-casks in motion, and pointed out the best
hunting-grounds, while " Junior " employed his youthful activity
in catching mice for his patron. In consideration also of the mice,
Senior gave up to Junior a part of his share of the daily rations
of cat's meat. It is represented that the curious compact was
actually and seriously carried out. This had the air of a commer-
cial transaction, but another story told by Mr. Wood exhibits
pure benevolence. A cat in a Norman chateau had every day
more food than she could consume, and the waste of the surplus
" seemed to weigh on her mind." So one day she brought a less
well-fed cat from a roadside cottage, and, having satisfied herself,
gave it what was left. Her master, observing this, gave her larger
platefuls, when she brought in another cat from a greater dis-
tance. The master then determined to test how far the cat's
hospitality would extend, and kept adding to the platefuls from
time to time, as new cats were brought in, till Puss's dinner-party
included nearly twenty guests. "Yet, however ravenous were
these daily visitors, none of them touched a mouthful till their
hostess had finished her own dinner." * An Angora cat belonging
to M. Jumelin \ would often bring a poor, half -starved cat home
with him, and then would see that it was fed. On the last occa-
sion of his doing this, " Master Cat seemed nervous and excited,
and behaved as though he thought the case was urgent. He be-
came more quiet, however, as soon as the dish was set down for.
the strange cat, and contentedly observed what was going on
while the visitor was taking his meal. As soon as the dish was
emptied he showed his guest to the door, bade him good-by with
a friendly but lively stroke of his paw, and accompanied him
down the stairs, addressing him a succession of friendly mews."

* Mr. Wood's informant had this story from the owner of the chateau.
4- Revue Scientifique.

372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Cats appear taciturn in ordinary life, but every one knows that
they can upon occasion, and that often, speak forcibly enough.
They also have a language for their friends, varied and expressive
enough to convey their wants definitely, and make intercourse
with them pleasant and lively. Those who know them best may
readily say, with John Owen, in the London Academy :

" Thou art not dumb, my Muff;
In those sweet, pleading eyes and earnest look

Language there is enough
To fill with living type a goodly book."

Montaigne observed, some three hundred years ago, that our
beasts have some mean intelligence of their senses, well-nigh in
the same measure as we. " They natter us, menace us, and need
us ; and we them. It is abundantly evident to us that there is
among them a full and entire communication, and that they
understand each other/' Dupont de Nemours, who undertook to
penetrate the mysteries of animal language, recognized that ani-
mals had few wants, but these were strong, and few passions, but
imperious, for which they had very marked but limited expres-
sions. He thought the cat was more intelligent than the dog, be-
cause, being able to climb trees, she had sources of ideas and ex-
periences denied to him ; and, having all the vowels of a dog,
with six consonants in addition, she had more words. The Abbe"
Galiani pretended to have made some curious discoveries respect-
ing the language of cats, among which were those that they have
more than twenty different inflections, and that " it is really a
tongue, for they always employ the same sound to express the
same thing." Champfleury professes to have counted sixty-three
varieties of mewings, the notation of which, however, he observes,
is difficult. The sign and gesture language of the cat is even
more copious and expressive than its audible language. As Mr.
Owen has it :

" "What tones unheard, and forms of silent speech,
Are given that such as thee
The eloquence of dumbness man might teach ! "

Lindsay enumerates, as among the elements of the non-vocal
language of cats, capers or antics, gambols, frolic, and frisking in
the kitten ; prostration, crouching, groveling, crawling, cring-
ing, and fawning; hiding, flight, sneaking, skulking, slinking,
shirking, or shrinking ; rubbing against the bodies of other animals
or against hard substances; licking; touching or tapping with the
paws ; scratching ; head-shaking, tossing, or rubbing ; and tail-
movements, of which there are many. Dr. Turton says that " the
cat has a more voluminous and expressive vocabulary than any
other brute : the shprt twitter of complacency and affection, the

THE INTELLIGENCE OF CATS. 373

purr of tranquillity and pleasure, the mew of distress, the growl
of anger, and the horrible wailing of pain." Besides these, the
expressions of the countenance, as Mr. Owen teaches in his poem,
are as lively and varied in the cat as in any other animal. The
well-bred cat can put these diversified means of expression to uses
commensurate with nearly all her wants ; and the sagacious and
sympathetic master can with no very great difficulty learn to
translate them as accurately as he responds to the wishes of his
child.

Romanes gives several instances illustrating the applications
of this sign-language. A cat, observing that a terrier received
food in answer to a certain gesture, imitated his begging. An-
other would make a peculiar noise when it wanted a door opened,
and, if its wish was not attended to, would pull at one's dress with
its claws; then, having secured notice, would walk to the door
and stop with a vocal request. Another cat, having found its
friend the parrot mired in the dough, ran up-stairs to inform the
cook of the catastrophe, "mewing and making what signs she
could for her to go down," till at last " she jumped up, seized her
apron, and tried to drag her down," and finally succeeded in get-
ting her to rescue the bird. Other cats are mentioned which
would jump on chairs and look at bells, put their paws upon
them, or even ring them, when they wanted anything done for
which the ringing of a bell was a signal.

The extent of the cat's understanding of human language must
depend considerably on the treatment and training it receives.
An animal that is treated unkindly or is neglected can not be
expected to learn much beyond the knowledge which its natu-
ral instinct confers upon it. Another animal, not necessarily
brighter, but having better opportunities and more encourage-
ment, may readily acquire knowledge of all the things that it
is important one of its kind should know. Cats having appre-
ciative masters and playmates will gain a really remarkable
degree of knowledge of the tones, gestures, words, thoughts, and
intentions of their human friends. Many of the well-authenti-
cated stories on this point reveal faculties of perception that must
seem astonishing even to persons well informed respecting the
mental powers of animals. Careful observation of his own puss
can hardly fail to convince any one that they understand more of
ordinary conversation, as well as of what is said to them directly,
than we are apt, at first thought, to suspect. Lindsay has shown
that, in common with other tamed and domestic animals, they
understand one or more of the modes in which man expresses his
ideas, wishes, or commands, as well as those ideas, wishes, and
commands themselves, however expressed, particularly the calls
to receive food, and their own names. They also, in common

374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with a smaller number of animals, appear to know the names of
the different members of the family, and of articles of domestic
use. An instance is cited from Clark Rossiter of a cat that knew
the name of each member of the household, and, his seat at the
table. If asked about an absent one, she would look at the vacant
seat, then at the speaker, and, if told to fetch him, would run up-
stairs to his room, take the handle of the door between her paws,
mew at the key-hole, and wait to be let in.

The mistress of Topsey, of Belfast, an invalid, expressed a
desire to have a partridge or a chicken for a broth. Some one
spoke of having seen a flock of young birds in the morning, and
immediately afterward Topsey sprang into the window with a
partridge and laid it at her mistress's feet. The mistress com-
mended the cat, and added, " If you will go and get another, you
and I will have a nice dinner to-morrow." She wTent out, and
shortly brought in another bird, which she also laid at her mis-
tress's feet. Although very fond of birds, she declined to eat these
herself. She was told not to catch any more birds, and brought
no more to the house.

Dollie, of North Monroe, Maine, had one of her legs torn off
by a railroad train. Her mistress, believing her case a hopeless
one, begged two boys, in her presence, to take her away and kill
her. " Instantly," says the teller of the story, " the look of patient
trust with which she was regarding her mistress as she pitied and
petted her, changed to one of terror as she got up and rushed out
of the house." She was found, and fed, but would not return to
the house till her wound was healed. Daisy, of Belfast, persisted
in laying her kitten in her mistress's bed till the lady, looking her
in the eye, told her if she did so again the kitten should be
drowned, when she ceased offending. June, of Stockton, Maine, be-
haved in such a way as to lead the family to suppose that her kit-
tens, which she had hidden under the floor of a back room, had
died. The matter was talked about in the presence of the cat,
who seemed to be sleeping on a lounge, and the relator of the
story remarked that she " would give ten dollars in a moment if
the kittens were out from under the floor." June rose at once
and went to the door. It was opened for her, and she went up
the stairs. After going up and down several times, she rattled at
the door-knob ; when the door was opened she looked into the
lady's face and mewed. Three of her dead kittens were lying on
the floor. The lady said : "Well done, June ; go and get the other
one." She went and brought it, then looked into the lady's face
and mewed again. Spot, of Camden, Maine, answered when she
was asked if she wanted anything to eat ; and if her answer was
negative, she would not eat, even if she was fed. Coonie, of Bel-
fast, when directed in the morning to " go call the children,"

THE INTELLIGENCE OF CATS. 375

■would go up the stairs, into every room, jump upon the bed and
wake up each one ; and, if it was early, would stay in the rooms a
little while, but, if it was late, would hurry down-stairs. A cat at
Poor's Mills, Maine, would hold up her right or left paw, or both,
correctly, as she was directed, previous to receiving her food.
The'ophile Gautier's Eponine, a " delicate, lady-like cat," was
allowed to sit at the table at dinner. Although she preferred
fish, she would eat her soup first, when reminded, in polite lan-
guage, that a person who had no appetite for soup ought to have
none for fish.

Some of these acts may be only coincidences ; but observation
for ten years of my own cat, concerning whom it has often been
remarked that she seemed to understand what we were talking
about and was listening to it, has satisfied me that more of them
were done with knowledge. The story of the adventure of The'o-
phile Gautier's Madame The'ophile with the parrot, on first being
introduced to it, indicates a comprehension of the significance of
language, and has its humorous side also. The cat, looking upon
the bird as a " green chicken," stealthily approached it as with the
intention of seizing it. The watchful bird, at the critical mo-
ment, asked her, in good French : " Have you breakfasted, Jockey ;
and on what — on the king's roast ? " and broke out into song. The
astonished cat retreated hastily, and hid for the rest of the day,
but renewed her attack on the morrow, to be rebuffed in the same
manner. From that time she treated the parrot with the respect
due to a being having the power of speech.

Montaigne says : " When I play with my cat, how do I know
whether she does not make a pastime of me, just as I do of her ?
We entertain ourselves with mutual antics; and if I have my
own times of beginning or refusing, she, too, has hers." The
sportiveness of kittens is exuberant, and makes them the most
delightful of pets. Lindsay's remark is superfluous, except that
it has to be made for the formal completeness of his treatise, that
dogs and cats take part in the fun and frolic — sometimes rough or
boisterous enough — of their child playfellows. They give every
evidence, in fact, that such fun and frolic are the most enjoyed
features of that period of their lives. As the animal matures it
becomes more sedate, and even assumes a meditative air, but the
taste for sport does not die out till infirmity begins to wear upon
it. A cat mentioned in the Animal World would allow itself to
be rolled up or swung about in a table:cloth, and seemed to enjoy
the fun ; and Wood's dignified Pusset would let his friends do
anything they pleased with him — lift him up by any part of the
body, toss him in the air from one to another, use him as a foot-
stool, boa, or pillow, make him jump over their hands or leap on
their shoulders, or walk along their extended arms, with perfect

376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

complacency. At the same time he was keenly sensitive to ridi-
cule, and, if laughed at, would walk off with every manifestation
of offended dignity.

Lindsay names the cat as one of the animals that perpetrate
practical jokes on each other or on man ; that enter thoroughly
into the spirit of the joke or fun, and enjoy and exult in its suc-
cess ; and cites in illustration of his principle an instance of a cat
teasing a frog, seemingly to hear it cry. Tad, of Burnham, Maine,
seems to have had the humorous sense in a more refined degree.
He would sit in the yard, and, calling the neighboring cats to-
gether, would manoeuvre as though giving them orders, till he
got them to fighting ; then would withdraw to one side, or to his
seat upon the window-sill, and look on in evident amusement,
swinging his large, bushy tail forcibly against the window-pane ;
but, when called into the house by his mistress, he always obeyed.

Knowledge of the ways in which certain common things are
done and the capacity to apply it are so frequently shown by do-
mestic cats that it is almost superfluous to mention particular
instances of its exhibition. Most cats know how doors are opened,
and can open them for themselves if the method of handling the
latch comes within the compass of their powers of manipulation.
Romanes asserts that, in the understanding of mechanical ap-
pliances of this character, they reach a higher level of intelli-
gence than any other animals, except monkeys, and perhaps ele-
phants. He thinks that the skill of these animals may be due to
their having, in their flexible limbs and trunks, instruments adapt-
ed to manipulation, which they learn to use. This may be so, but
it should be remembered that horses can open doors and gates
with their teeth and noses, and cows with their horns. The
behavior of cats before a looking-glass, when, failing to find the
image palpable in the face of the mirror, they look or feel around
behind it, is familiar. Having once satisfied themselves that
there is nothing there, they recognize the fact, and cease "to take
any further interest in the phenomenon. So they and other ani-
mals know that they can go round a wall and reach a point on
the other side of it ; or can go round after the mouse which they
have heard rustling behind the door. A noteworthy feat of door-
opening is recorded by Mr. Romanes of his coachman's cat, which,
having an old-fashioned thumb-latch to deal with, sprang at the
half -hoop handle below the thumb-piece, hanging to it with one
paw, depressed the thumb-piece with the other paw, and with her
hind legs pushed at the door-posts till the door flew open. Mr.
Romanes interprets this and another similar action which he
records as involving a deliberate purpose, combined with a mental
process which he treats as complex and very near akin to reason-
ing, and as involving definite ideas respecting the mechanical prop-

THE INTELLIGENCE OF CATS. 377

erfcies of doors. Mr. A. Petrie's cat would climb up by some list
to the click-latch, push it up, and, hanging from the door, simi-
larly push it away from the posts. The cat of Mr. W. H. Michael,
of Queen Anne's Gate, St. James's Park, London, jumped four feet
to the crank-latch of a casement window, caught hold of the
crank with her fore feet, and pressed the window open with her
hind feet. A cat belonging to Parker Bowman learned to open a
window by turning a swivel and bearing upon the sash.

Some equally curious incidents, showing powers of contrivance
and a degree of understanding of the relation of antecedent and
consequent, are connected with cats striking door-knockers and
ringing bells, or, if unable to do so themselves, asking to have
them done. Mr. Belshaw tells, in Nature, of his kitten jumping
upon the door and hanging by one leg while it put the other fore
paw through the knocker and rapped twice. A London cat is de-
scribed in Nature which by standing on her hind legs would
reach the knocker and rap once ; if this was not answered, she
gave what is called a ' postman's knock ' ; and if this was not re-
sponded to, " tried a scientific rat-tat that would not disgrace a
West End footman." It is added that she held the knocker in
her paws as we would hold it in our fingers, and did not simply
tip it up. Mr. J. J. Cole's cat, of Maryland, Sutton, Surrey, hav-
ing observed that a servant went to one of the windows after
hearing the flap of a letter-box attached to it moved by a post-
man, learned to have herself let in when shut out by also rattling
the flap. Some alarm was excited at Mr. Lonergan's house in
London by a mysterious knocking at a door which could not be
reached from the outside except by climbing over a wall. At
length, Mrs. Muffins, the cat, was detected as the author of the
sounds, and it was found some time afterward that she had
learned to produce them by pulling at the loose lower end of a
strip of board running down at the side of the door, and allowing
it to rebound. There is perhaps nothing very remarkable in an
animal, having observed that the striking of the knocker or the
pulling of the bell-knob was usually followed by the opening of
the door, learning to imitate the act. But some cats have gone
further than this, and have learned the connection between the
wire and the bell, and to avail themselves of it in order to be
let in.

Other acts are related of cats that give us a much higher con-
ception of their mental powers, and even go a little way toward
lifting them into the order of beings capable of real abstract
reasoning. Kitty, of Belfast, Maine, having given a mouse to her
kittens to play with, watched the sport for a while as if to see
that the mouse did not escape, but at last bit it so as to disable it,
and then went away. Two kittens, neighbors of Kitty's, disa-

378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

greed over a squirrel which had "been given them. Their mother
cuffed them, then bit the squirrel in two, and gave half of it to
each. Coonie, of Belfast, sitting on the window-sill by the side of
the ladies of the family when the glass was much clouded, put up
her paw and wiped off the mist. This act may be matched by
animals breaking ice to get at the water, and horses scraping the
snow from the ground to reach the grass beneath it, but it also
shows capacity for adaptation to circumstances. The same Coonie
usually had to suffer the loss of all but one of each litter of her
kittens. She finally seems to have determined to choose the one
that should be saved. She selected one, carried it away, and left
the rest to their fate. A Scotch cat, of Greenock, where the
family were in the habit of throwing out crumbs for the birds,
hid in the shrubbery to catch one of the birds when they came
up. One afternoon the crumbs were not eaten, and were covered
with snow during the night. In the morning, Puss was observed
picking the crumbs out of the snow and putting them on top, after
which she retired to her hiding-place. This was noticed two or
three times ; and at last Puss's success in catching the birds forced
the family to cease feeding them. Dr. G. Frost, of London, found
his cat in the habit of waiting m ambush for the throwing out of
crumbs for the birds. The practice of feeding the birds was left
off for a few days ; and Dr. Frost avers that he and another mem-
ber of the household saw the cat herself scattering crumbs on the
grass, " with the obvious intention of enticing the birds." * Mr.
James Hutchings tells, in Nature, f of a cat which, finding a young
blackbird fallen from its nest to the ground, spent several hours
in keeping a strange kitten away from the young bird, and at the
same time herself teasing it, in order to entice the parent, which
was hovering around, within her reach. The cat showed wonder-
ful persistency through several defeats, and played a variety of
tricks to deceive or attract the parent bird, till Mr. Hutchings
forcibly put an end to the cruel sport. A cat living in a hospital
in Massachusetts is described in Nature, which discovered the
blindness of one of the inmates, and regularly took advantage of
the fact to steal a part of her meal from her. Mr. Lawson Tait
relates that a mutual dislike arose between a visitor at his house
and his family of unusually intelligent cats. Although the cats
had always been scrupulously neat and clean, they regularly left
a noxious mess at the guest's room door so long as he stayed at
the house. Just as the slaughter of the whole tribe as nuisances
had been determined upon, the visitor went away, and the objec-
tionable deposit ceased.

A story is told in the Hartford Times of a cat which became

* Nature, vol. xix, p. 519. t Vo1- xii. P- 33°-

THE INTELLIGENCE OF CATS. 379

very uneasy one summer midnight and ran from one bedroom-
door to another with earnest mewing and crying. Having at-
tracted the attention of one of the family, she led the way, watch-
ing carefully to see that she was followed, down the stairs and
through the kitchen and cellar to the outside cellar-door, which
had been left open. A house between Belfast and Hollywood,
Ireland,* taking fire one night, the cat ran up-stairs to the servant-
maid's room and pawed her face. The girl, only half aroused,
turned to sleep again. After a few moments the cat returned and
scratched the girl's face till she woke in earnest, and now smell-
ing the smoke, aroused the rest of the family. The cat already
mentioned, that went and brought help to deliver the parrot from
miring in the dough, evidently realized the nature of the danger
the bird was in, and how it could be remedied. Mr. James K.
Gilmore's (Edmund Kirk's) cat, finding one night, when she came
home from her rambles, that the door leading to the veranda was
open, took pains to give notice of it to the family. The same ani-
mal, when the family were all in other parts of the house, ran up
to her mistress and demanded to be followed. She led the lady
directly to the kitchen, and there was a strange man who had
intruded himself into the vacant room. Mr. Gilmore relates
several other anecdotes of this cat, which show that she under-
stood the value of human help in emergencies — particularly in cases
where her kittens were in trouble — and upon whom to call. She
also understood that whatever demands she might make upon her
master in the daytime, his night's rest must not be disturbed.
At that time she always went to her mistress.

A cat is told of in the Boston Post which was accustomed to
go in the summer with the family to the country. On the occa-
sion of one of the vacations she appeared anxious about her kit-
ten, and at last put it in one of the trunks.

A cat and a starling belonging to Mr. Dupre", of Kensington,
England, were great friends and almost constant companions.
One day the cat suddenly pounced upon the starling, but, instead
of making an end of it, took it carefully up and set it upon a
table ; then rushed out of the room to chastise a strange cat which
had stolen into the house. The forethought it exhibited in securing
the safety of its friend before going into the fight seems to justify
our attributing to it the highest degree of intelligence which any
of the authors we have quoted are willing to accredit to animals.

A cat of Mr. Brown, of Greenock, Scotland, having had some
paraffin accidentally spilled upon it and set ablaze by a cinder
from the fire, at once rushed out of the door and up the street for
about a hundred yards ; plunged headlong into the village water-

* Nature.

380 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing-trougli ; and then stepped out, shook herself, and trotted qui-
etly home. She had been accustomed to seeing the fire put out
with water every night.

Mr. J. Harvey Gibbons's cat, of University College, Liverpool,
when indisposed at one time, wandered strangely about the house,
with an evident inclination toward the coal-bunkers. They were
left open for her, and she went to them at once, and searched
among the coals till she found a piece covered with pyrites. She
licked this vigorously, and afterward returned regularly to the
bunkers for more of the medicine. Some powdered sulphur was
given her, and was accepted as a substitute for the pyrites. Un-
der this regimen she recovered her health.

A most remarkable story illustrating this trait is told in the
Revue Scientifique by Dr. Cosmovici, of Roumania, concerning
his cat Cadi. We may remark that this gentleman appears to
have been a keen observer of intelligence in all animals. The
winter of 1880 was very cold, fuel was high, and our doctor had
to be economical. He was accustomed, therefore, after his morn-
ing fire had burned out, to work during the rest of the day
wrapped in furs, while Cadi sat at his feet. On one of the cold
days, Cadi would every once in a while go to the door and mew
in a tone quite distinct from that of his usual requests. Dr. Cos-
movici opened the door, and Cadi went half-way out, looking at
him the while. He shut the door and Cadi came back and mewed.
At last he gave himself up to the cat's desire and followed her.
She led him straight to the kitchen, and thence to the coal-box,
and got upon it without ceasing to look at her master. He got
coal. Cadi next showed him the way to the wood-box ; thence led
him back to his room, and, once within it, to the fireplace, where
she lifted herself up and arched her back. The fire was made,
while Cadi looked on, manifesting her approval of the operation
by caresses. When it began to burn, she stretched herself before

it, satisfied.

• ■» » ♦

PREDISPOSITION, IMMUNITY, AND DISEASE.

By W. BEENHAEDT.

IT is a generally recognized fact that whole classes and fam-
ilies of animals, as well as single individuals, frequently are
liable to succumb to some influence apparently obnoxious to
health, while others, although exposed to the same danger, prove
exempt from such injury. This experience concerns the action of
vegetable and animal poisons, as well as the attacks of the various
diseases to which flesh is heir. Destitute of a satisfactory inter-
pretation of these divergences, we have recourse to the expression
"predisposition" for explaining the inability of offering resist-

PREDISPOSITION, IMMUNITY, AND DISEASE, 381

ance to the foe — a word which, does not actually explain the mat-
ter, but furnishes a convenient term. Germs of disease are to be
found everywhere, but only predisposition permits its develop-
ment. Immunity, on the contrary, is the condition of the system
which prevents an outbreak. The fundamental cause of this con-
dition is as little known as the cause of predisposition ; only in
a few cases have we been successful in tracing it back to certain
chemical and physiological processes occurring in the body.

The action of carbon monoxide on different animals affords a
suitable instance of what is called immunity, and illustrates the
kind of circumstances on which it may sometimes depend. Car-
bon monoxide is an air-like compound, which is contained to a
large amount in the illuminating gas produced by the decompo-
sition of steam by red-hot coals, and to the presence of which the
poisonous qualities of this gas are chiefly due. A mixture of one
part of carbon monoxide and ninety-nine parts of common air,
when breathed, will in a short time kill any of the warm-blooded
vertebrates. Cold-blooded vertebrates, such as frogs, can for a
considerable length of time stand the exposure to such an atmos-
phere ; arthropoda or insects are not in the least affected by it —
they possess immunity from it. Searching for the cause of these
differences of effect, we find it to be the tendency of haemoglobin,
the albuminous matter constituting the red corpuscles of the
blood, to combine with carbon monoxide. In the process of res-
piration in warm-blooded animals haemoglobin takes up oxygen,
which thereafter, as a necessary agent in the exchange of matter,
is delivered to the different organs of the body. Carbon mon-
oxide prevents the absorption of oxygen, being absorbed in its
place ; but, unfit as it is to replace oxygen in its vital functions,
it causes serious derangements, which end in suffocation. In
cold-blooded vertebrates respiration is of more subordinate im-
portance ; although, as well as in warm-blooded animals, it con-
sists in absorption of oxygen by haemoglobin, the need for oxy-
gen is much lower ; a frog can live for a considerable time with-
out the accession of air. Hence the effect of carbon monoxide is
a much slower one. The blood of insects contains no haemoglo-
bin ; carbon monoxide is not absorbed by it, and is not a poison
to them, provided that a sufficient amount of oxygen is always
present. Carbon monoxide, consequently, acts as a strong poison
upon warm-blooded animals ; its effect is weaker in cold-blooded
vertebrates ; and insects are proof against its effects.

In a few instances only has the cause of immunity become as
well disclosed as in the one mentioned. Neither differences of
organization in animals nor in the constitution of the poisonous
substance generally afford any clew for interpreting an exceptional
want of effect. Unaccountable is the immunity of rabbits against

332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

belladonna leaves (Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade). You
may feed them with belladonna for weeks without observing
the least toxic symptoms. The meat of such animals, however,
proves poisonous to any one who eats it, producing the same
symptoms as the plant. Pigeons and various other herbivora are
also to some degree safe from the effects of this poison, while in
warm-blooded carnivora it causes paralysis and asphyxia. In
frogs the effect is a different one, consisting of spasms. The meat
of goats which had fed on hemlock has sometimes occasioned
poisonous effects. Chickens are nearly hardy against nux vom-
ica and the extremely dangerous alkaloid, strychnine, contained
in it, while in the smallest amount it is a fatal poison to rodents.
More remarkable yet in this respect is the immunity of Choloepus
Hoffmanni, a kind of sloth, living on the island of Ceylon, which,
when given ten grains of strychnine, was not much affected.
Pigeons are possessed of high immunity from morphine, the chief
alkaloid of opium, as well as from belladonna. Eight grains
were required to kill a pigeon, not much less than the mortal dose
for a man. Cats are extremely sensitive to foxglove (Digitalis
purpurea), which on the contrary may be given to rabbits and
various birds in pretty large doses. Many kinds of fish may be
killed by just a trace of Cocculus indicus, although their meat is
not made injurious by it. Laughing-gas, or nitrogen monoxide,
a means used to relieve pain in light surgical operations, affects
man more than any other creature ; when breathed in a mixture
of four parts of laughing-gas and one part of oxygen it produces
a pleasant kind of intoxication together with diminished sensi-
bility, though in animals no such effect has been observed.

The immunity of certain animals against the bite of venomous
serpents is remarkable. Numerous observations have been re-
corded proving the polecat, hedgehog, and buzzard to be proof
against the bite of the viper ; it is mortal for most other animals
of the same size and nearly related to them.

Immunity, however, is not limited to the relations of animals
to poisons of vegetable or animal origin, but is manifested as
well in conditions and processes in the healthy animal organism
and in its susceptibility to diseases. The resistance offered by
the living stomach of an animal to the dissolving effect of the
juice secreted by the stomach itself has to be explained by im-
munity. A watery solution of pepsin — the digestive principle of
the stomach — acidulated by muriatic acid, and thus, as to compo-
sition, corresponding to the digesting juice of living animals, upon
addition of pieces of the stomach of any mammal, dissolves them,
forming a perfect solution. The stomach of the living healthy
animal, on the contrary, does not undergo the least change by
the secreted juice ; it is proof against the digesting effect of its

PREDISPOSITION, IMMUNITY, AND DISEASE. 383

own secretion, as well as to a certain degree against various sick-
ening external influences.

Prominent naturalists are at present occupied in inquiring for
a reasonable way of interpreting the causes of sickness and the con-
ditions of immunity from it, or the resistance offered by a sound
organism. Sickness, as well as health, according to one of the
prevailing theories, depends upon chemical causes, viz., on the
presence and predominance of various complex substances gene-
rated in the juices and tissues of the body by unknown processes,
in which bacteria may sometimes play an important part. Ac-
cording to another theory, the living animal cells are engaged in
a continual struggle against intruding micro-organisms. Animal
cells are considered as individuals similar in character to the order
of Amc&bcR, which are unicellular organisms of the class of Pro-
tozoa. Metschnikoff found that certain cells of the animal body
are endowed with the faculty of swallowing and digesting in-
truding bacteria of every kind, harmless ones as well as patho-
genic ones, or such as produce disease. Not all elementary organs
of the body are equally qualified for this purpose, the function
being intrusted to certain cells of the tissues and blood, which
Metschnikoff calls phagocytes. Health as well as disease de-
pends upon which party is victorious in the struggle. Health is
insured as long as the cells are capable of overpowering the in-
truding bacteria ; an animal in such a condition is secure against
disease. Experiments performed by Metschnikoff have given evi-
dence that the bacilli of splenic fever are easily devoured and
digested by phagocytes. On the other hand, several observers of
late have maintained that the liquid part of blood, the plasma,
and even common albumen, possess the faculty of killing bacteria.
This, however, appears improbable, and a final decision of the
question has still to be expected in future.

Susceptibility to diseases is as variable as sensitiveness to vege-
table and animal poisons. Judging from the current opinion that
putrefying animal matter is the principal bearer and transport-
er of infectious germs, we are forced to ascribe a high degree of
immunity to certain animals which, like swine, ducks, chickens,
and rats, are accustomed to select their food from places where
such matter is accumulated. Predisposition for splenic fever is
stronger among herbivora than among carnivora ; birds of prey
seem to be quite free from it. Experiments on sheep, performed
by Pasteur, the results of which were confirmed by application
on a large scale, gave evidence that immunity against splenic
fever may be acquired by systematic inoculation of the attenuated
virus very much as small-pox is prevented by vaccination.

Various herbivora, chiefly horses, sheep, and goats, are exposed
to a disease called " glanders," which ends by death in most cases.

384 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

White mice are safe against it. This circumstance of late occa-
sioned R. Koch to ascertain, by experiments, whether predispo-
sition to glanders might not be artificially induced by changing
the composition of the animal juices. The change consisted in
the formation of sugar in the blood of the mice, which received
as food phloridzin, a crystalline compound, naturally preformed
in the roots of fruit trees and easily splitting up into sugar and
some other products. It undergoes a similar change when brought
into the circulation of the blood. The result of these experiments
was, that white mice lose their immunity and become susceptible
to glanders when phloridzin is given to them ; infection by this
disease invariably took place when the mice were inoculated to
the virus, and thus the proof was furnished that by changing
the chemical conditions of an animal its immunity from infectious
disease may be neutralized. This indicates that immunity in the
present case, as in the action of carbon monoxide, depends upon
the composition of the blood, predisposition being established
when the composition is changed.

These facts indicate that, as to susceptibility to and immunity
from the effect of poisonous and virulent matter, the composition
of blood is of the highest signification, and that the changes caused
chiefly relate to its condition. They coincide with the experience
that the action of poisons throughout is quickest and most ener-
getic when they are injected into the blood ; moreover, there seem
to be many substances existing which induce infection only when
present in the circulation of the blood, but not when brought into
the digestive channel. Apparently harmless lesions can turn out
disastrously, when even the smallest trace of a virus happens to
reach the wound.

-*-»■*-

THE DECLINE OF RURAL NEW ENGLAND.

By Teof. AMOS N. CUKKIEE.

IN every period of American history the influence of New Eng-
land has been marked and out of proportion to its size and
population. In religious thought and activities, in great moral
and social movements, in literature and scholarship, in inventive
genius and the skilled industries, in the pulpit, at the bar, on the
bench, and in' legislative halls, New-Englanders have always stood
in the front rank and have contributed largely to the worthiest
American achievements.

Now, the bulk of this population, until very recent years, has
been rural rather than urban, and the towns themselves, large
and small, have been made up of the country-born and country-
bred, while almost the entire stream of emigration that has

THE DECLINE OF RURAL NEW ENGLAND. 385

flooded and fertilized the Northwest has had its source in the
hamlets and farms. It would be easy to show that the quality of
this output from the rural districts has been even more remark-
able than the quantity. Hence came Webster, Choate, Chase,
Greeley, Cushing, Bryant, Whittier, Beecher, Hopkins, and a
long list of notables that will occur to every reader. It may
therefore be fairly claimed that what New England has been
and what it has done, at home and abroad, through its citizens
or through its colonists, has come in large measure from the
country districts.

Hence the prosperity of this region concerns not merely New
England, but the country at large. The testimony of many reli-
able witnesses and my own observations, covering more than
twenty years, convince me that the outlook for the future is very
unsatisfactory.

1. Fifty years ago almost every farm was cultivated by the
owner, who had every interest in its most careful tillage, in mak-
ing permanent improvements, and in the care of buildings, fences,
and woodland. Hired labor was the exception, for the large fami-
lies were quite competent for all the farm-work, the indoor as
well as the outdoor, with a surplus which went to the aid of less
fortunate neighbors, and sent brains and muscle to the city or to
the opening West. Not all farmers were equally industrious,
frugal, and successful, but there was a large body of landed pro-
prietors, homogeneous in race, substantially on an equality social-
ly, and alike interested in the present and future welfare of the
community. In this respect there has been a great change in the
last twenty years, and one which is going on more rapidly every
year. The land is passing into the hands of non-resident proprie-
tors, by mortgage, by death of resident owner, by his removal to
the village or manufacturing center, or his emigration to the
West.

It is also held in fewer hands, not as a general thing to be
managed and worked in large estates, but to be rented from year
to year.

The new proprietor has bought the farm at a small price, as
compared with its former valuation, and has no interest or pride
in it or its management except as an investment. So in every
township there is an increasing body of renters, as a class unre-
liable, unsuccessful, shifting, and shiftless. Their interest in the
property and the community is temporary, their tillage such as
they suppose will bring the largest immediate returns with the
least care and labor. It goes without saying that such farms and
all their appurtenances are in a state of chronic decline. These
renters are often bankrupt farmers, or young men without the
pluck and thrift to become farm-owners, the courage and push to
vol. xxxvm. — 27

386 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

go to the West, or the qualities in demand in the manufacturing
towns.

In some towns is found an increasing element of Canadian
French, good-natured, easy-going, thriftless people, living in a
slipshod way from their labor when things go well, but, if sick-
ness comes, or crops are short, or the winter long and hard, more
or less dependent upon the poor-fund. This floating population,
and especially its French element, is the bane of local and even
State politics, especially in New Hampshire, for many of its
voters are purchasable at least once at each election, and, as it
holds the balance of power in many small towns, purchasers for
both parties are rarely wanting, and prices rule high. I have
personally known voters who openly counted their election wages
an important item in the year's revenue. It will be readily be-
lieved that all public interests have suffered enormously by the
substitution of such people for the thrifty, public-spirited farmers
who preceded them. This French element is further objection-
able in that it keeps itself aloof from the spirit of its adopted
country, intact in language as well as religion, and has declared
its purpose to change New England to New France.

2. Many farms are without resident cultivators, and in all
probability will never again be homesteads. The New Hamp-
shire Commissioner of Agriculture reports eight hundred and
eighty-seven such farms, and these are only a small part. I know
a district where eight contiguous farms have been thus aban-
doned, and, taking the farm on which the writer was born as the
center, a circle with a radius of five miles would inclose twenty
farms abandoned within the last few years.

Some of these have good buildings, stone fences, apple and
sugar orchards, and all have made comfortable homes. On some
of them a few acres of the best land are tilled, while the rest pro-
duces a lessening crop of hay or is used for pasture. The fine
old orchards, uncared for, are wasting away, a lilac or a few rose-
bushes struggling for life in the grass show the site of the old
garden, the buildings are falling to decay, and homesteads that
have fostered large and prosperous families for generations are
a desolation and will soon be a wilderness. In some districts the
old country roads are becoming impassable from the growth of
bushes and the cessation of all repairs. An eminent New Eng-
land judge told me last summer that public sentiment in these
districts will not allow a jury to find damages against the au-
thorities in case of injuries to travelers from such defective high-
ways, on the ground that the diminished population can not keep
them in repair.

The abandonment of this rough country and the transfer of
its population to more fertile regions or more remunerative em-

THE DECLINE OF RURAL NEW ENGLAND. 387

ployments may be no financial loss to the nation, bnt it robs New
England of a hardy yeomanry, with whom the love of natal soil
and home and simple life has been almost a religion.

3. Not only is the area of cultivated land decreasing in this
way, but the land-owners are sensibly narrowing their tillage.
The land is growing poorer, partly from natural causes and partly
from less careful working and the marked decrease in the amount
of live stock kept upon it. The fact is, farming does not pay,
especially if help must be hired to do a large part of the work.

The farmer finds himself the victim of all the evils of a pro-
tective tariff without its supposed benefits. The promised home
market he has found to his cost, if not his ruin, is a delusion and
a snare. If the manufacturing centers in his vicinity have raised
the price of some of his products, they have advanced the cost of
labor in a greater degree, and drawn to themselves the best brain
and muscle from the farms. He is being heavily taxed for the
benefit of the whole list of these assistant industries that rob him
of his working force, while the competition, intensified by labor-
saving machines suited to the large prairie farms of the "West and
stimulated by lavish gifts of land to settlers and subsidies to rail-
roads, ruinously reduces the prices of his products in his natural
home market. He buys Western flour and Western corn for his
own consumption at a cheaper rate than he can produce them
with hired labor, and by reason of the long winter is unable to
compete with the West and South in cattle-raising for the East-
ern markets at his door. Confining his attention to the few crops
that, from their bulk or perishable nature, are not subject to the
destructive competition of the West, the ordinary farmer merely
lives and pays current expenses, while his less shrewd and careful
neighbor falls behind each year, and sooner or later will be sold
out of house and home.

Naturally, there is a decay of heart and hope that blights
growth and prosperity. Many farms within a hundred miles of
Boston and not five miles from excellent railroad facilities will not
sell for the cost of the improvements. The New Hampshire Com-
missioner of Agriculture gives a long list of farms with " fairly
comfortable buildings, at prices from two dollars to ten dollars
per acre," and a shorter list at higher prices. The Vermont Com-
missioner gives a list at from three dollars to five dollars per acre,
and nearer to railroad or village, with better buildings, five dollars
to ten dollars — " all at no great distance from market and adapted
to doing business." I know of the sale of such a farm of fifty
acres, with fair buildings, well supplied with water and fuel, at
fifty-two dollars. What a paradise for the Henry George theo-
rists !

4. Outside of the large towns and business centers the popula-

388 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion is stationary or dwindling with greater or less rapidity, ac-
cording as the district in question is more or less exclusively
rural. Then the percentage of young people and children is
much smaller than fifty years ago. The old-fashioned large fami-
lies are the rare exception, and the young folks are early drawn
away from the old homestead. In my native town the school dis-
tricts have been reduced from twenty-one to eleven, and many of
these enlarged districts have only a half or fourth the pupils of
the original divisions. The real decline of the native stock is
greater than the decrease in numbers would indicate, for there is
a decided increase in the foreign element, which with all its vir-
tues is not qualified to strengthen and perpetuate the old New
England type of character and spirit. Nor is this state of things
confined to a few obscure places among the mountains, for some
of the historic towns founded by the Puritans are undergoing the
same process of decline or change of population. Many of the
large towns, deprived of the former stream of recruits from the
country, are fast changing from Anglo-Saxon to Celtic and from
Protestant to Catholic.

5. In the last thirty years the colleges have been strengthened
in endowments and appliances, and are doing a better and wider
work than formerly ; the larger towns have excellent high
schools, and the well-endowed academies are strong and well at-
tended. But, with the rural districts far removed from these ad-
vantages, there is no provision for secondary education. The un-
graded district school, with its brief school term, is the beginning
and the end of local opportunities. The unendowed academies of
forty years ago, then filled with young people, are dead and have
left no successors. It is true, some young people resort to the
high schools and endowed academies, but secondary education
here is far less general than in the former time, while many are
lost to the college and higher education whom a good local acad-
emy of the old type would stimulate to an extended course of
study. In one of the most picturesque districts of New Hamp-
shire is an endowed academy that thirty-five years ago had an
annual attendance of more than four hundred, and sent to college
each year thirty boys, to say nothing of a dozen girls as well and
widely trained for whom no college opened its doors. The same
school has less than one fourth the old number of students and
graduates. It is fair to say that the decadence of this school is
partly due to the larger advantages offered by better-equipped
rivals, but the main cause of decline is the dearth of young people
in its natural region of supply, and the diminished interest in
higher education.

6. Many churches have dwindled into insignificance, or have
been blotted out altogether, owing to deaths and removals, with no

THE DECLINE OF RURAL NEW ENGLAND. 389

corresponding additions. In scores of towns houses of worship
are closed, to all appearance finally, or are used for non-religious
purposes, while others are in the hands of Catholics, or are too far
gone to decay for occupancy of any sort. In many towns enough
church members in substantial doctrinal accord might be found to
form one strong and influential church but for minor points of
doctrine and practice, and so, divided, they live at a dying rate, of
little consequence to their adherents or the community. The
whole truth would not be told if it were not added that this re-
ligious desolation is also largely due to lack of sufficient interest
on the part of members and outsiders to support church work
and attend religious services. Not that the faith of the fathers is
repudiated for newer or more liberal ideas, but that apathy on the
whole subject is often the prevalent spirit. The home mission
societies regard some of these towns in as much need of mission-
ary work as the rudest frontier settlements.

7. I am told by persons who have spent their lives in these
rural towns that there is a decline in public spirit, and a visible
growing away from the pure democracy characteristic of primi-
tive New England. For example, the old school district is no
longer a body politic in New Hampshire. A town committee
manages all school affairs.

All the statements of this paper are particularly applicable to
the large extent of rougher hill country of New Hampshire, Ver-
mont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, but in a lesser degree and
with various modifications, to other districts remote from largo
towns. It is possible that some of these conditions may be im-
proved when industry and population are rearranged and adapted
to the changed circumstances, but I can not escape the conviction
that the decline is permanent. Even if the late movement to at-
tract Swedish immigrants to these abandoned farms is successful,
neither we nor our successors will see here again a rural com-
munity of the old type — keen, active, intelligent, sturdy, and in-
dependent, of strong moral and religious fiber, an unrivaled ca-
pacity for popular government, and an inborn and inbred taste
for hard work, plain living, and high thinking.

A conception of the rate at which facilities of communication have been de-
veloped during the past two hundred years may he obtained from the statement
that in the seventeenth century it required fifteen days to go by diligence from
Paris to Marseilles ; in 1782, the time had been shortened to eight days ; in 1814,
to five days, by mail-post ; in 1840, to three days; and in 1889, to fourteen hours.
In 1830, the voyage from Marseilles to Algiers occupied ninety-six hours ; in 1857,
forty-eight hours; in 1877, thirty-eight hours; in 1887, twenty-eight hours; in
1889, twenty-four hours ; and it is expected to be accomplished, by two boats that
are to be built, in twenty-two hours.

390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE PRINCIPLES OF DECORATION.

By Prof. G. AITCHISON.*

WE have, in our cities, three things that are adverse to the
embellishment of our lives : First, we live, as a rule, in hired
houses. No one will ornament his house with that which is beau-
tiful, permanent, and costly, if some one that he neither knows
nor cares for will, after a few years, enjoy it, and that without
paying one farthing as compensation for the outlay. Secondly,
our clothes are not only ugly, but ignoble in form. Sculpture or
statuary, when used to portray man in the costume worn in Eng-
land, is impossible ; the ablest sculptor can but turn out a scare-
crow if he is bound to reproduce the actual clothes. Thirdly, in
our buildings the atmosphere and its accompaniments almost for-
bid external color in monumental materials. Those materials
that are unaffected by wet, frost, and the vitriol of the atmos-
phere, are soon covered with a pall of soot and dust. If we could
once get Englishmen to love something beautiful, the fine arts
might then enter on a new career. Our machinery and me-
chanical appliances could furnish almost the poorest houses
with copies of first-rate works of art if the demand once arose.
It is, however, much more important that the outsides of build-
ings should be enriched with color and lovely form than their
insides. I may say that they are wanting in their first duty
to the public if they are not beautiful, for they have not only
taken some sky and air from us, and possibly flowers, trees, or
herbage, but they help to poison the air by their smoke, dust,
and exhalations.

In using decoration we are strictly following Nature, who not
only makes the most of her works of beautiful form and of
beautiful color, but enriches them with a variety of texture, of
patterns, and of colors that would in man's work be most strictly
decoration. No doubt some of this is protective, but much also,
as far as we can judge, is purely ornamental.

The schemes for decoration are purely architectural, not only
when they apply to buildings but also in the case of separate
articles that are movable, and that are not wholly covered with
one scheme of ornament, and for this reason, that architecture
deals with harmonic proportions, and with the contrast of primi-
tive forms.

What may be called formal ornament is the application of
certain observed facts in Nature that please. Up to a certain
point the repetition of some simple form is pleasing : lines are said

* Abridged from Ins lectures before the Society of Arts.

THE PRINCIPLES OF DECORATION. 391

to be divided harmonically when they have certain ratios to one
another, and spaces may have similar proportions, and these as
well as certain curves give more pleasure than others ; the combi-
nation of some flat and sharp curves is also found to be beautiful ;
the contrast of certain forms and of certain colors also gives
pleasure. It is the application by man of these observations prop-
erly worked out to things he wants that makes them ornamental,
and their superposition on elegant forms is said to decorate them.
That which is the most perfect in ornament is the work of people
gifted with high artistic fiber, and faultless execution, to whom
Nature appeals in her masterpieces, who assimilate some of the
matchless grace they see in a flower, in the turn of a leaf, in the
curves that mark the growth of a creeper, in the wing of a bird,
the curve of a lizard, or the knots or spirals of a serpent, who can
so arrange these forms as to perfectly satisfy the cultivated eye,
and keep them subordinated to the containing lines ; such things
may be seen in examples of Greek and Tuscan, or rather north
Italian, ornament. This sort of ornament by some mishap has
got christened conventional, a term which has no meaning as ap-
plied to ornament ; it should rather be called abstracted.

Color is another species of ornament that, like form, has
doubtless its laws, though as yet neither have been discovered,
and we call form and color, like medicine, empirical arts. We
observe that the collocation of certain spaces, or masses of certain
colors, give us more pleasure than others, and we try and recollect
these collocations if we deal in color, and use them when we have
occasion. It has been observed that the primaries that are com-
plementary— i. e., whose mixture produces white — go well to-
gether, and that certain secondaries and tertiaries set off primary
colors. Chevreul found that the saturation of the eye with a
color caused it to see the complementary color if a white surface
was looked on ; and Chevreul also found out that, if we looked
at another color, it was modified by the complementary color of
the first.

In choosing color we should be careful to have such a tone
as we can live with, for most people have their dislikes and
preferences. The color of a lady's boudoir is mostly chosen be-
cause it sets off her complexion. In a room where we work we
are soon conscious of an objectionable color which irritates in-
stead of soothing us. Certain colors and certain tones are bene-
ficial or prejudicial to health. Very dark rooms are prejudicial,
and red or yellow will also have a prejudicial effect on our
health if we have to remain in rooms of either color all day and
every day. A manufacturer had a women's workshop painted
yellow, and found much more than the usual sickness among
his hands. His doctor recommended whitewash, and the normal

392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

health was restored. Growers of hyacinths have noticed a
marked effect on their blooming when they are put in glasses of
certain colors.

This age is a jDeculiarly health-seeking one, and it does not
seek health, as the Greeks did, by early rising, temperance, open-
air exercise, and training ; but it asks how health can be pre-
served and promoted by the removal of external sources of dis-
ease, so that it may have freedom to infringe with comparative
impunity Nature's laws. External poisons are the most impor-
tant things to protect ourselves from, especially when we have
enfeebled our bodies, and these are mostly conveyed to us by
mephitic vapors and what the doctors call septic dust. We want
our houses and other buildings so constructed that they can be
freed outside from their palls of dust and soot by means of a fire-
engine or a sponge, and inside by the broom, the dusters, and the
flannels of the housemaid.

Foul and poisonous air has scarcely any connection with dec-
oration, but, with one or two exceptions, is in relation with pure
science and its applications. The exceptions are when some of
the materials used for decoration have a pernicious chemical
action on the air, or parts of their substance readily come off and
poison us when we breathe, or when in contact with our skin.
The former is said to be the case when preparations of arsenic
and some other dyes and pigments are used and are not varnished.
The dust that is not septic consists of minute particles of raw or
cooked earth, stone, and metal, and the ill effect it may produce
can only be from irritation of the mucous surfaces, by clogging
fine vessels, or by getting into parts where it is not wanted. Par-
ticles of some metals, if numerous enough, may poison us, as fire-
gilders are poisoned by mercurial fumes. The septic dust consists
of particles of vegetable or animal fiber, sometimes laden with
the germs of disease, the pollen of flowers, by some of which hay
fever is said to be produced, the eggs of microscopic creatures,
and microscopic creatures themselves. Another source of poi-
soning is by animal and human exhalations.

Anything that forms a dust-trap is as far as possible to be
avoided, particularly when these traps can only be partially
emptied at long intervals, for every breath of air dislodges some
of the lighter particles. The absorbents of the foul-smelling ex-
halations have also the property of imparting them to damp air,
by which we are poisoned or repoisoned. Consequently we want
to avoid as much as possible all woven and felted stuffs in our
houses, and to have all wood and paper protected by varnish.

Few of us can expect to live in houses built of polished granite,
porphyry, and jasper, and adorned with precious stones, but we
may expect to live in those protected and embellished with enam-

THE PRINCIPLES OF DECORATION. 393

eled terra-cotta, glass slabs, or glass mosaic, and that our streets
may at least present a clean, gay, and cheerful appearance.

I beg you to observe the Chinese, Japanese, and Persian pot-
tery exhibited, mostly in the shape of tiles, and I ask you if these
would not make a lovely alternative to our present fronts of dingy
brick or plain or painted compo. When I was in Cairo, many
house-fronts and some fronts of mosques were faced with these
Persian or Khodian tiles. If any one would start a gorgeous front
of enameled pottery, there would be an outcry at first ; but we
should gradually get accustomed to beauty and color, and become
reconciled to the loss of dingy and blackened brick. Even now
there is no outcry when the platforms of a railway station are
lined with white glazed bricks banded with green or gray, and
the small extra cost would soon be repaid by better health and
the saving of painting. At first this could only be done by taste-
ful, benevolent, and patriotic men who were wealthy, or by enter-
prising ones, who thought a house so fronted would advertise
itself ; but as this sort of facing came into fashion, window jambs
and reveals, panels, strings, and cornices would be kept in stock,
probably printed in colors instead of hand-painted, and would be
cheap enough. There is one use of enameled pottery I have not
mentioned — roofing tiles. In parts of France and Italy these pre-
vail. At Lugo, in the Rornagna, I saw the steeple of a church
covered with enameled pottery of different colors, which wound
round it, the steeple being a cone ; the visible glazed parts were
semicircular in section, and, though I do not know how they were
fixed, they looked as if they were stuck into mortar, like the
enameled terra-cotta cones found at Babylon, and used to orna-
ment wall surfaces. Most of the tile patterns I have seen in
France are, to say the least, more ingenious than beautiful ; but
there are gold and green tiles used at Vienna and at Botzen that
are ornamental enough.

Even the Romans were more alive to the use that might be
made of broken glass than we are, for we learn from Martial that
the collection of broken glass was a trade, and the glass, he says,
was exchanged for brimstone matches. I can not say how these
glass slabs or tiles would stand our climate, but, if they could be
fixed in no other way, they might be set in frames of cast iron,
barffed.

I hardly know if I should include sgraffito. It would cer-
tainly be useless in the denser parts of London, as it would
soon be a uniform dingy black ; but we know that there are still
examples that are visible at South Kensington, and that it lasts
well in the country. It is done in this way : Any colored ground
that may be chosen is first prepared of mortar or cement, colored
with earthy or mineral pigments ; it is then laid on the wall.

394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

White, black, yellow, red, or gray are the usual colors. On one
of these grounds, before it is dry, about one eighth of an inch of
cement of one of the other colors is laid, the pattern is pounced
on, and the parts outside the pouncing are scraped off with a
modeling-tool, a knife, or a bit of stick. "When the whole has
set, you have a picture or a pattern in two colors. This sort of
work has stood in England for over twenty years when executed
in the country, and in Italy the whole fronts of many large palaces
have been adorned in this way, and have stood for centuries.

Public buildings built of polished marble, granite, porphyry,
jasper, agate, or onyx, or faced with these, are sometimes orna-
mented by inlaying pictures or patterns with colored marble or
precious stones ; but I do not know of any external example in
England. This work is called pietta dura. The Taj Mahal in
India is a celebrated example. There are plenty of slabs, basins,
vases, paper-weights, and jewelry imported from India and Italy
of pietra dura work.

All external work in calcareous marbles soon perishes in the
atmosphere of London, whether plain or inlaid, and all incised
work filled with mastic so soon gets blackened that to execute
it is merely labor lost. The only other work that can be used
externally is in metal. Iron rusts unless constantly painted, and
almost all other metals turn black. Real block-tin, not tinned
iron, is said to stand the climate of London, but of course does
not lack its pall of soot. Iron plates tinned are much used in
Switzerland for the covering of steeples, but even there they get
rusty. Lead takes its own blackish gray, but, as it otherwise
stands the climate well, I wonder it is not more used for orna-
mental purposes, as vases, statues, roof-crestings, and the like.
When I was a boy, some plumbers' shops were ornamented with
leaden statues, vases, and ornamental cistern fronts. Lead is
still used for ornamental roof-crestings in France, often height-
ened by gold, black varnish, and color. Lead is still much used
for ornamental accessories in Holland — or perhaps I ought to
say, was once used. Up to a short time ago there were leaden
statues and vases in the gardens of the stately mansions in Mark
Lane, near the Tower of London ; there are still some at Hamp-
ton Court, and they would do very well in the niches or on the
pedestals of our red brick fronts, if we could not afford bronze.

It is unnecessary to speak of the ordinary freestones that
weather in London, the sandstones, the brick, both cut and
moulded, the red, yellow, or gray terra-cotta, for all these have
more or less granulated surfaces that can only be cleaned by
tooling or rubbing, but plaster has never of late, as far as I
know, been even tried — I mean plaster of common sand and lime,
or, what is still better, of lime and marble-dust. Yitruvius tells

THE PRINCIPLES OF DECORATION. 395

us that old Roman walls covered with this material were so hard,
so beautiful, and so finely polished, that in his time slabs of it
were cut out and used for table-tops. In speaking of plaster, I
did not mean compo, either Roman, Portland, or mastic, but that
plaster that is made workable for modeling, which the Italians
call gesso duro. It was once common in England ; the " Peter
Pindar," in Bishopsgate, is an example, or was an example a few
years ago, and many admirable specimens still exist in our coun-
try towns. Some of the vaulted ceilings of Hadrian's villa, at
Tivoli, now open to the air, are still adorned with it, the grace,
freedom, and delicacy of whose modeling we still admire, al-
though it was done at least seventeen hundred years ago. In few
things has England declined more than in plastering, from the
prevalence of casting, which allows the employment of the least
skilled mechanic. Most of us have seen the magnificent ceilings
of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I's time, on whose flowers,
fruit, etc., you can even now see the grain of the plasterer's hand,
and the holes made by his thumb to get shadow. Even in plas-
tered ceilings of Sir W. Chambers's time, who died in 1796, you
see beautiful work in high relief of fruit, flowers, and foliage, and
I believe the skill did not die out completely till the end of the
first quarter of this century. The infinite variety that hand-
stamping produces would to refined tastes be worth the expense,
for cast work is all alike.

It is highly benevolent to encourage skilled handwork, for you
not only liberate the better sort from that mechanical work which
frets and eventually destroys a man by its unvarying and un-
thinking monotony, but you encourage higher skill, and you al-
low a man to put his soul instead of his fingers into the work.

Do not suppose I am finding fault with those excellent mate-
rials, Roman and Portland cement, or even mastic ; all I mean is
that, as yet, we have found no way of using them ornamentally
in London, except as imitation of stone and stone carving. If we
had a pure atmosphere, the first two would be invaluable for in-
laying, but in a very short time stone and inlay are indistinguish-
able from the general grime, and that, too, even when the inlay
is black mastic.

In the present day, most of our internal plaster- work of any
pretension is done in canvas plaster. A thin coat of fine plaster
of Paris is brushed into the mold, very thin open canvas in strips
is pressed into this, and brushed over with coarse stuff; the whole
is then stiffened with slips of wood, attached to the backing with
canvas and plaster ; it is then dried in a hot room, and screwed
up in its place, and can be painted on at once ; its greatest merit
is its lightness. The defects of canvas plaster are its want of flat-
ness in the larger panels and of straightness in the cornices.

396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Bronze, though it becomes a blackish green, has this advan-
tage for the decoration of buildings, that it can be reproduced as
often as you please from the modeled clay of the statuary. You
may, therefore, get through its means first-rate work at low cost,
if the repetition is great, and its use may be called benevolent as
well, for it does not condemn skillful men to the brainless work
of constantly reproducing the same thing.

It is needless to speak of wrought iron, which can be made into
any form you like, and of any size and thickness, from the stem
of an anchor to a leaf, and chased or engraved, polished or
lacquered, tinned or gilt. I am happy to say that wrought-iron
work is receiving great attention again both from architects,
painters, and iron-workers, and can be made nearly as well as it
ever could. I think cast iron has been needlessly depreciated and
needlessly neglected in this truly iron age. You can not get the
fineness of bronze, and you can not chase it, but you can get really
beautiful work done in it, and the wit of man can never be better
employed than in using good materials at hand in the proper
way — i. e., by only asking them to do what they can do readily
and properly. As far as I know, the only real drawback to cast
iron is its liability to rust. If Mr. Barff's process can be applied
cheaply and will resist the attacks of the atmosphere for a long
time, all we have to put up with is blackness, and, if the parts
of a front we must have blank were filled in with glass slabs,
you need have very little more black than you want.

Cast iron is a difficult material to use — I mean it wants to be
calculated for its strength, it requires much thought to ornament,
and everything, even to a bolt-hole, has to be settled beforehand,
and, except there is much repetition, it is costly. Its neglect is
greatly owing to this, that no one will pay for the extra skill,
time, and trouble required of the architect, so this admirable
material is almost ignored.

As regards marble, I can not quite agree with M. Charles Gar-
nier, that " even when it has lost its polish it still looks like a
shabby gentleman, and is not to be mistaken for a vulgar fellow
in his Sunday clothes/' Except in rainy weather, when the mar-
ble is temporarily polished by the wet, its unpolished surface, in
my opinion, can not be regarded as worth the outlay ; and I say
this with hesitation and regret, for the exquisite harmonies pro-
duced by the decayed marble of St. Mark's was a thing to be re-
membered ; still, as an architect, I can not reconcile myself to
using a precious material merely to give a flavor when I know
that, in giving it, it is going to decay ; I might, perhaps, if I were
a painter. But for the inside of a building marble is the richest
material you have for the production of lovely color — music
without words — painted as it is by Nature's hand, with every

THE PRINCIPLES OF DECORATION. 397

tint and tone of delicacy and subtleness, and enlivened, too, by
the wildest caprices of beauty.

The bar to its use in England is the damp, for when the air
is full of vapor the marble condenses the moisture, which stands
on it in drops or trickles down it. But as most houses and build-
ings are now warmed, this need not stand for much, and if we
panel our rooms below with wood, there is no reason why the
upper part should not be of marble. Marbles are of every hue
except blue, for blue Beige is black and white, and blue Napoleon,
or imperial, is but bluish gray ; and brown is scarce, though we
have rosewood marble and Californian spar. Marbles are found
in most countries of the world, and there are such vast varieties
in Europe that they can hardly be catalogued.

Great taste in color is requisite for the proper arrangement
of colored marbles ; at present no one cares to exercise this taste
as a profession, as there is so little effective demand, and, in spite
of the low tone of marble generally, it is much easier to make a
vulgar or discordant arrangement than a strikingly good or har-
monious one. The fashion of using white marble chimney-pieces,
white marble bas-reliefs, white marble statues and busts in deco-
rated apartments, is absolutely fatal to low-toned schemes of color
decoration, and, as a rule, all gorgeous schemes of color are low-
toned, and white must then be used most sparingly as a jewel.
White can only be sparingly ornamented with morsels of full
color, or very high-toned decoration must be used in conjunction
with it, as this alone can sustain masses of white.

Considering the wealth of this country, which mainly goes in
useless feasting, useless men and maid servants, useless carriages
and horses, and hideous as well as useless clothes, I do not think
those who will not use marble from poorness of spirit are in-
cluded in the beatitudes.

As I am now on marbles, I may as well include mosaic pave-
ments. These must be greatly restricted in so cold and damp a
place as England. Few of us love to walk on a marble floor with-
out shoes or stockings, as all would do in a warm or hot climate,
but it can be used for the pavement of Protestant cathedrals, for
hall floors, for the center aisles of churches, for conservatories,
porches, terraces, and the like ; and when we can afford it, por-
phyry is by far the best material for the patterns, as it only pol-
ishes by the friction of dusty boots, unlike marble, which rough-
ens, and unpolished marble is not more attractive than stone.
Plain geometrical and flat floral patterns are the best, in marble
or pottery floor mosaic, for the smallness of the pieces rather
helps the scale of the room or building, and does not ruin it like
marble squares.

The objection to pottery as mosaic in floors is its softness, so

398 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that it soon wears away under much traffic. Figure-pictures, for
a floor to be walked on, are a mistake, though they may be used
as a center-piece to be looked at from above, and be surrounded
by plants or flowers ; but nothing can be more appropriate for
internal wall decoration than figure-subjects, or floral ornament
in marble or tile mosaic ; in either case it is permanent, and can
be easily cleaned, and that in marble, at least, must be low in
tone, for it can have but two colors of complete purity, white and
black.

England has got rich these last sixty years by flooding the
world with rubbish, so nothing can be more patriotic than having
a piece of the best workmanship you can obtain put in your
house, and by that I mean attached to the freehold, if it be your
own, and let this piece be adorned by the hand of an artist, for
his workmanship is transcendental, and, if possible, let it portray
a noble example, or evoke a noble reminiscence, and be of such
materials that it can not well be sold or destroyed for the value
of the material.

SKETCH OF ELISHA MITCHELL.

A MONUMENT of modest size and style, standing, in Yancey
County, North Carolina, on the highest point of land in the
eastern United States, marks the grave of the man who first de-
termined, by measurement, the culminating point of the Appala-
chian range — a man, too, whose local fame as a student of natural
history, a hardy explorer, and a teacher, was pre-eminent. Not
the little obelisk of bronze — that only shows the exact spot where
his body lies — but the mountain on which it stands, whose su-
premacy over all the peaks east of the Rocky Mountains he estab-
lished, and in the exploration of which he lost his life, is the true
monument of Prof. Elisha Mitchell.

Elisha Mitchell was born in Washington, Conn., August 19,
1703. His father, Abner Mitchell, was a farmer; and his mother,
Phebe Eliot, was a descendant, in the fifth generation, from John
Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians. His great-grandfather, the
Rev. Jared Eliot, M. D. and D. D., for many years minister at Kil-
lingworth, Conn., was distinguished for his knowledge of history,
natural philosophy, botany, and mineralogy, no less than as a
sturdily orthodox theologian ; was a correspondent of Dr. Frank-
lin and Bishop Berkeley, and was awarded a gold medal by the
Royal Society for a discovery in the manufacture of iron. Young
Mitchell inherited many of the qualities of the Eliots, and par-
ticularly of this ancestor. At four years of age he acquitted him-
self with credit in a school exhibition. At a little later age he

SKETCH OF ELISHA MITCHELL. 399

was fond of collecting his playmates in a group and telling them
what he had read in his books, or explaining the pictures to them.
He was prepared for college at the classical school, in Bethlem,
of the Rev. Azel Backus, D. D., afterward President of Hamilton
College. He was graduated from Yale College in 1813, in the
same class with Denison Olmsted, afterward his associate in the
University" of North Carolina, and with other persons who subse-
quently became conspicuously known. He was then engaged as a
teacher in Dr. Eigenbrodt's boys' school at Jamaica, L. I. ; in the
spring of 1815 he took charge of a school for girls at New London,
Conn., where he became acquainted with the lady who was after-
ward his wife ; and in 1816 he was appointed a tutor in Yale Col-
lege. While thus engaged, he and Prof. Olmsted were recom-
mended by the Rev. Sereno E. Dwight, son of President Dwight,
Chaplain of the United States Senate, to Judge Gaston, member
of the House of Representatives from North Carolina, who ap-
pears to have been looking around for candidates as suitable per-
sons for professorships in the University of North Carolina, at
Chapel Hill. Mr. Mitchell was chosen Professor of Mathematics,
and Mr. Olmsted Professor of Chemistry, to which a chair was
then for the first time assigned. Having studied for a short time
at Andover Theological Seminary and received a license to preach,
Mr. Mitchell removed to North Carolina, and reaching Chapel
Hill on the last day of January, 1818, immediately began his work
as a professor. Here he remained, continuing at his post without
intermission of considerable length, for thirty-nine years, or till
the end of his life.

In the fall of the next year Prof. Mitchell returned to Connect-
icut to be married to Miss Maria S. North, daughter of Elisha
North, M. D., of New London. The bride's letters describing her
journey to North Carolina give some side-lights on the life and
methods of travel of the time. The marriage took place on Fri-
day, the choice of the day having been partly made as a demon-
stration against a popular superstition, and partly determined by
circumstances. The journey of eight hundred and fifteen miles to
Chapel Hill occupied ten days. On the removal of Prof. Olmsted
in 1825 to accept a professorship in Yale College, Prof. Mitchell
was transferred to the chair he had filled, and became, and con-
tinued till the end of his life, Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy,
and Geology.

Dr. Albert R. Ledoux, in a historical sketch of the University
of North Carolina, published in the University Magazine for Octo-
ber, 1890, speaking of the intellectual giants in its faculty who
have given reputation to the institution, and whose contributions
to letters and science made them prominent among the learned
men of their day, observes that Prof. Mitchell was the most noted

4oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of them all. During his occupation of the chair of Mathematics,
the doctrine of fluxions, or the calculus, was introduced into
the course, and the standard of attainment was raised in other
branches of the department. His transfer to the chair of Natural
Science was welcome to him. Even while a Professor of Mathe-
matics, according to Prof. Charles Phillips, he had made frequent
botanical excursions in the country round Chapel Hill ; and after
settling himself in his new chair he extended and multiplied
these excursions ; " so that when he died he was known in almost
every part of North Carolina, and he left no one behind him
better acquainted with its mountains, valleys, and plains ; its
birds, beasts, bugs, fishes, and shells ; its trees, flowers, vines, and
mosses ; its rocks, stones, sands, clays, and marls. Although in
Silliman's Journal, and in other periodicals less prominent, but
circulating more widely nearer home, he published many of his
discoveries concerning North Carolina, yet it is to be regretted
that he did not print more and in a more permanent form. It
would doubtless have thus appeared that he knew, and perhaps
justly estimated the worth of, many facts which much later
investigators have proclaimed as their own remarkable discov-
eries. But the information that he gathered was for his own
enjoyment and for the instruction of his pupils. On these he
lavished, to their utmost capacity for reception, the knowledge
that he had gathered by his widely extended observations, and
had stored up mainly in the recesses of his own singularly reten-
tive memory." The notes of his excursions, which are recorded
in a series of blank books kept for the purpose, give revelations
of the habits of the author's mind ; they chronicle his walks over
farms which he names, and observations of individual plants and
other objects in specified localities. " By such a rock," writes Mrs.
C. P. Spencer, in an article of reminiscences, " in such a field, is a
plant that he must identify. By Scott's Hole, near the willow is a
Carex that he must watch. March 29, 182], he finds yellow jessa-
mine in bloom in Mrs. Hooper's garden, and ' in great abundance
on the creek below Merritt's mill.' . . . May 30, 1821, occurs this
note, that he had that day found the last of the twelve varieties
of oak that are within two miles of the university ; then follows
a list of the oaks and notes of their situation. ... In the third
week of April, 1824, he begins a new Diary of Mosses, and hunts
the Lislxea hypnum through a dozen authorities, to be sure of it.
He had the true scholar's disdain of taking anything at second
hand. Such pages are diversified with ' Hints for the good in-
struction of the class ' ; or, ' Points to be meditated respecting the
nature of light.' " In the preface to ono of these note-books —
written in French — a plan of study was laid down for each week.
So many hours were to be given to mathematics, so many to Latin

SKETCH OF ELI SUA MITCHELL. 401

and Greek, so many to history, so many to the Spanish language
and to botany ; and the resolution appears that, till such an hour,
" I will not touch one book of belles-lettres." He thus visited the
plants and rocks of the State in their own homes, and became
one of the best authorities in the country respecting them. The
expeditions which he conducted into all parts of North Caro-
lina, examining the flora and rocks and strata, made him the
best physical geographer the State had ever had. The informa-
tion he gathered in this way was used profusely in the instruc-
tion of his classes, and they always reaped greater benefits from
his acquisitions, than any other part of the community. While
he wrote occasionally for the scientific papers, " he read more than
he observed, and observed more than he wrote." Among the
articles contributed by him to Silliman's Journal are named, in
a memoir published in the local paper at the time of his death,
those on the low country of North Carolina, 1828; on the
Geology of the Gold Regions of North Carolina, 1829 ; on Wel-
ther's tube of safety, with notices of other subjects, 1830 ; on the
causes of winds and storms, 1831 ; Analysis of the Protoggea of
Leibnitz, 1831 ; and notices of the high mountains in North Caro-
lina, 1839. Such articles were contributed at intervals till the
time of his death. He also prepared for use in his classes, a
Manual of Chemistry, the second edition of which was passing
through the press when he died ; a Manual of Geology, illustrated
by a geological map of North Carolina ; and Facts and Dates re-
specting the History, Geography, etc., of Palestine.

Prof. Mitchell was an industrious reader, particularly on all
subjects that were directly or indirectly connected with his
professorship, and had a knowledge of geography that was re-
garded as wonderful. At a time when students were more iso-
lated from one another than they are now, and facilities for
exchange of news were not so abundant, he was at great pains to
keep up with the advance on every side. With all this he was of
conservative tendency, and not disposed to accept the new too
hastily. As a teacher, Prof. Phillips says, " he took great pains in
inculcating the first principles of science. These he set forth dis-
tinctly in the very beginning of his instructions, and he never
let his pupils lose sight of them. When brilliant and complicated
phenomena were presented for their contemplation, he sought
not to excite their wonder or magnify himself in their eyes as a
man of surprising acquirements, or as a most dexterous manipu-
lator, but to exhibit such instances as most clearly set forth fun-
damental laws, and demanded the exercise of a skillful analysis.
Naturally of a cautious disposition, such had been his own ex-
perience, and so large was his aquaintance with the experience
of others, that he was not easily excited when others announced

VOL. XXXVIII. — 28

4o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

unexpected discoveries among the laws and the phenomena which
he had been studying for years as they appeared. While others
were busy in prophesying revolutions in social or political econ-
omy, he was quietly awaiting the decisions of experience. He
constantly taught his pupils that there were things wherein
they must turn from the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so
sweetly. His influence on the developments of science was emi-
nently conservative, for he loved the old landmarks."

Prof. Mitchell's general fame rests chiefly on his work in the
exploration of the Black Mountain of North Carolina, a spur
which, standing between the main mountain ridges, had been
regarded by persons best acquainted with the region, without
knowing its exact height, as the culminating point of the Appa-
lachian system. The two Michauxes had remarked, about the
beginning of the century — the elder in 1799, and the younger in
1802 — the presence of Alpine plants there that were not found
again south of Canada, and inferred that the peak must therefore
surpass all its fellows in height. John C. Calhoun had come to a
similar conclusion, from the observation of the streams that had
their source on the mountain. Meeting the Hon. David L. Swain,
who was afterward President of the university, in 1825, Mr. Cal-
houn congratulated him on being of the same height with Wash-
ington and himself, and on their both residing in the neighbor-
hood of the highest mountain on the continent east of the Rocky
Mountains. When asked the meaning of his remark, Mr. Calhoun
referred to the map as showing that in this group were to be
found the highest sources of one of the great tributaries of the
Mississippi, the Tennessee ; of the Kanawha, flowing northward
into the Ohio ; and of the Santee and Pedee, which run directly
to the Atlantic — all considerable rivers finding their way to the
sea in opposite directions. The story was told by Governor Swain
to Prof. Mitchell in 1830, during an excursion on the Cape Fear
River. Although Mr. Calhoun's reasoning was defective, his
observation, coupled with the opinion expressed on other grounds
by the Michauxes, impressed Prof. Mitchell, and aroused a desire
in him to know more of the Black Mountain, and to determine its
height. The opportunity came in 1835. The memorandum-book
in which the notes of his visit in that year are recorded contains
such entries as " Objects of Attention — Geology ; Botany ; Height
of the Mountains ; Positions by Trigonometry ; Woods, as the
Fir, Spruce, Magnolia, Birch ; Fish, especially Trout ; Springs ;
Biography " ; etc. He was accompanied by his daughter, and car-
ried " two barometers, a quadrant, a vasculum for plants, and a
hammer for rocks/' The incidents of this expedition, the details
of which became important in the case of a controversy that after-
ward arose, have been summarized and confirmed by the testi-

SKETCH OF ELISHA MITCHELL. 403

mony of witnesses in an article which Prof. Charles Phillips con-
tributed to the North Carolina University Magazine for March,
1858. Having made some observations of the geological forma-
tions of the Grandfather Mountain, and measured some heights
near Morganton, Prof. Mitchell crossed the Blue Ridge and fixed
his headquarters at Bakersville, in Yancey County, near the foot
of Roan Mountain. Hence he made several excursions in a coun-
try which was then nearly in the condition of the primitive wil-
derness. Being told that Yeates's Mountain was the highest of the
group, he climbed it, accompanied by two guides, on the 27th of
July, 1835 — a day so clear and serene " that all the main emi-
nences of the Black were clearly visible." He found that this
mountain was overtopped by several of the peaks around it, the
most of which confronted him in an arc so curved that it was
easy to decide which of them was the highest. He made the
entry : " Top of Yeates's knob ; N. E. knob of Black bore N. 46f E.
Counting from Young's knob : one low one ; one low one ; two
in one, the southernmost pointed ; a round knob, same height ; a
double knob ; then the highest ; then a long, low place with a
knob in it ; then a round three-knobby knob, equal to the highest,
after which the ridge descends." This verbal account tallies ex-
actly with a profile of the range drawn by Prof. Guyot when
standing on the same Yeates's Peak in 1856. On the next day,
July 28th, Prof. Mitchell and his guides visited the peak which
had been determined by the Yeates's Mountain observation to be
the highest; according to the testimony of the guide, William
Wilson, they " came to the top at a small glade, not more than a
quarter of an acre in extent, and, turning to the right, not more
than one hundred and fifty yards, we arrived on the top of the
main highest peak, being the same one as we thought that we had
selected from Yeates's knob the day before. Then Dr. Mitchell
climbed into the highest balsam he could find, and took his obser-
vations. After consulting his barometer, he said that it was the
highest point that he had found yet."

Some of the immediate results of the excursions from Bakers-
ville, including geological and botanical observations, were pub-
lished in the Raleigh Register of November 3, 1835. The height
of the mountain was calculated as compared with that of Morgan-
ton, which was then supposed to be 968 feet above the sea. The
mountain being found to be 5,508 feet above that point, its height
was given as 6,476 feet, or 200 feet less than the real height. The
discrepancy became afterward a source of confusion, and has been
used to support the allegation that the peak Dr. Mitchell climbed
that day was not the real highest peak. But it was explained and
vanished when the railroad surveys showed that Morganton de-
pot is really 1,169 feet high. This would make Prof. Mitchell's

4o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

real measurement 6,677 feet, nearly what lie obtained (6,672 feet)
in 1844. Prof. Guyot, in 1856, obtained a height of 6,701 feet.

Doubts afterward rose in Prof. Mitchell's mind whether the
peak he climbed in 1835 was the true summit of the mountain.
A new measurement of Mount Washington had been made, which
seemed to add to its reported height and lift it above Mitchell's
Peak. Dr. Mitchell revisited the mountain in 1838, and deter-
mined in 1844 to make a new survey and measurement. He
obtained a Gay Lussac mountain barometer from Paris, took
William Kiddle as his guide, and, making Asheville his base for
comparison, found the height 6,672 feet. The identity of the peak
visited this time was afterward called in question by other parties,
but Prof. Mitchell himself never doubted that he had been on the
right spot. He wrote in the summer of 1856, " I stood upon the
highest peak some days since, and could then distinguish the
ridges over which my guide, William Riddle, taking as nearly as
he could a straight, or, as it happened, a diagonal direction across
them from the neighborhood of the Green Ponds, led me directly
to the peak we were in search of."

After the survey of 1844, the Hon. Thomas L. Clingman put
forth a claim to having been the first to measure the real culmi-
nating point of the Black Mountain, and undertook to prove that
Prof. Mitchell had been mistaken in the mountain which he
measured. The question thus raised was the subject of an active
controversy for several years. The highest mountain was called
Clingman's Peak, and Prof. Mitchell's name was transferred to
the peak which was described in his diary of 1835 as "a round
three-knobby knob, equal to the highest," which he had never as-
sumed to climb or to measure. It was as much to settle this dis-
pute as for the sake of more accurate measurement that Prof.
Mitchell made his fifth visit to the mountain in 1857, in which he
lost his life. The question was investigated by his friends after
his death, when all the accessible evidence was collected and com-
pared, and his priority in measuring the peak, and the identity of
the mountain he measured in 1835 with the real highest point, seem
to have been satisfactorily established. In evidence to support his
claim, Prof. Phillips brought forward the notes in his diary of
1835 and their exact correspondence with Prof. Guyot's profile ;
the testimony of William Wilson, one of the guides who went up
with him, and who gave in his certificate a correct description of
the topography of the summit, and of Nathaniel Allen, son of
Adoniram Allen, the other guide, deceased, who said that his
father had always spoken of that peak as the one which he as-
cended with Prof. Mitchell ; the certificate of four citizens who
accompanied William Wilson in September, 1857, while he re-
traced the steps of the ascent of 1835 ; the testimony of numerous

SKETCH OF ELISHA MITCHELL.

405

citizens respecting the landmarks and the geographical features,
particularly of the streams, by which the true highest peak is
located and identified.; and the testimony of the same citizens that
this peak was generally known through the country as Mount
Mitchell or Mitchell's High Peak, while the other mountain
(Party Knob) to which Prof. Mitchell's name has been attached
was not so known till after the visit of 1844.

Prof. Mitchell's fifth visit to the Black Mountain, in 1857, was
made in view of the controversy with Dr. Clingman for the sake
of obtaining more careful and accurate measurements than he
had been able to secure before, and for the purpose of investigat-
ing the value of the number which is used in calculating heights
by barometrical observations. To this end he had provided him-
self with four of Green's Smithsonian barometers, and sent one of
them to Savannah to be employed in contemporaneous observa-
tions by Dr. Posey at the level of the ocean and nearly on the same
meridian as the Black Mountain. He further intended to connect
the beach-mark on the North Carolina Western Railroad survey by
a line determined by a spirit-level with the top of Mitchell's Peak.
After marking off points differing in height by five hundred or a
thousand feet, he designed to continue contemporaneous baromet-
rical and thermometrical observations for several days at each
of these points, and thus obtain reliable data for a full discus-
sion of questions concerning measurements by barometer in the
latitude of the region. He began the survey about the middle of
June. On the 27th of that month, when his work was about half
completed, he separated from his son, with the intention of going
across the mountain to the Caney River settlement to visit the
Wilsons and Mr. Riddle, his former guides, and securing their
assistance in identifying points which they had visited together.
He was never seen alive afterward. A storm arose that evening,
in which he probably perished. When it was found that he had
neither reached Mr. Wilson's nor returned to his lodgings, parties
started in search of him. As the search continued, and the news
spread that he was missing, the parties grew, and soon included
a considerable part of the mountain population of Yancey and
Buncombe Counties ; for the people were all warmly attached to
him. His trail was found and followed to a point where the
guides declared, from its irregularities and the evidences that the
wanderer had become no longer able to pick his course, that dark-
ness had overtaken him ; thence along a small creek to a place
now called Mitchell's Falls ; and there, on the 7th of July, the
body was found in the pool below the falls. The marks on the
bank showed that Prof. Mitchell had slipped forty-five feet down
the slope and then fallen fifteen feet into the pool. The body
was borne by the Yancey men, after the coroner's inquest, a dis-

4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tance of about three miles, to the top of the mountain. Then
word came that it was to be taken to Asheville ; and the men of
Buncombe took it up and carried it there.

Not quite a year afterward, in June, 1858, the body was ex-
humed from the graveyard of the Presbyterian church in Ashe-
ville, and was carried again, this time with formal ceremonies,
and a procession of citizens, large considering the character of
the march, to the top of the mountain, where it was laid in the
earth, within a few feet of the famous balsam tree. A funeral
discourse was pronounced by Bishop James H. Otey, D. D., of Ten-
nessee, one of Prof. Mitchell's first pupils, and an address in vin-
dication of Prof. Mitchell's claims to have the mountain named
after him was delivered by President Swain. It is worthy of
remark that the first class taught by Prof. Mitchell in the uni-
versity was represented at the ceremonies, in the persons of Bishop
Otey and Dr. Thomas H. "Wright, of Wilmington, and the last
class by Mr. J. W. Graham and his own son. A monument,
twelve feet high, in the material known as white bronze, was
erected over the grave in 1888.

The question of the name of the mountain appears to have
been decided by the United States Geological Survey in 18Sl-'82,
which, adopting the final designations for the peaks of this range,
gave Prof. Mitchell's name to this one.

Prof. Mitchell was a Presbyterian minister of the Presbytery
of Orange, Synod of North Carolina, and was styled, in the memo-
rial resolutions passed by the synod, probably the most learned
man that had ever lived in the State ; was a regular preacher in
the college chapel and the village church ; and was the college
bursar, a justice of the peace, a farmer, a commissioner for the
village of Chapel Hill, and at times its magistrate of police. He
was known as a skillful and conscientious professor, and vigilant,
long-suffering, firm, and mild as a disciplinarian. Believing that
prevention of the ills of a college life was better than having to
cure them, he was watchful to guard the students against falling
into error. When offenses were committed, he would try to pre-
sent the nature of his conduct to the culprit in its true light, and,
when punishment had to be inflicted, to select such a method as
would appeal to his better feelings and open the way to a return
to sound views. He loved to help others, and he was a well-
grounded believer in revelation. He was extensively known
among the mountaineers, who all had a remarkably warm affec-
tion for him, and the interest that was aroused among them by
the circumstances of his disappearance was still " warmly alive,"
and the event was still a topic of conversation among them, as
late as the end of 1889.

COBBESP ONDENCE.

407

CORRESPONDENCE.

INDIVIDUAL ECONOMICS.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

IT has been again and again stated, by
good authorities, that the American
people are the most wasteful upon the face
of the earth ; they do not utilize to any ex-
tent their health, strength, money, or tal-
ents. To any thoughtful mind there is evi-
dence of this on every hand.

We might naturally suppose that our
many excellent modes of teaching, from
pulpit and teacher's desk, would eradicate
this evil ; but, on the contrary, the accesso-
ries of our churches and schools become
more extravagant every year, and there is
less to be hoped from them. There are
many ill-balanced minds among the youth
attending our schools. These, with their
intellectual tastes aroused, leave school very
poorly equipped to battle with the exigen-
cies of modern life ; consequently, many of
our so-called educated youth become strand-
ed as embezzlers in State prisons or pa-
tients in insane asylums.

When we study the causes which lead
to the great amount of wretchedness, pov-
erty, and crime in our land, it is evident
that good effects would result to our people
if every child could be taught to see the
wisdom of properly economizing health,
strength, money, and talents. In order to
do this, public opinion must first be con-
verted. People must realize that such men
as George Bancroft, the historian ; Robert
C. Winthrop, the statesman ; and William
W. Corcoran, the philanthropist, and other
noble octogenarians, could never have at-
tained their great age and to such positions
of honor among their fellow-men save by
great self-denial and economy. To be sure,
the law of heredity comes in to aid some
persons ; but do you not think, if the princi-
ples prevailed which governed the early life
of Whittier and the frugal homes of New
England, that each succeeding generation
would reach a higher plane in social life ?
We expect certain intellectual results from
public - school methods ; why not expect
moral benefits to the child's character as
well ? There are many teachers who strive
for this, like wise Mark Hopkins ; but the
field of education is so extensive, and the
attention of educators is so absorbed in
other matters, that little attention is given
to individual economics. Do not under-
stand me to desire the inculcation of pe-
nuriousness among our young people, but
simply wisdom and moderation in all our af-
fairs. It has been customary at some board-
ing schools to have printed upon the plates

from which the pupils eat such sentences
as "Waste not, want not." Such are not
the means that I would urge for teaching
economy, but that our leaders in society, on
the press, in the pulpit, and all teachers,
should unite to enforce the great principles
of economy and moderation by example and
throughout all their teachings. Even teach-
ers of natural history can bring their in-
struction to bear upon this point, from the
innumerable instances of economy in nature.

When a colored girl in Washington re-
plied to a reprimand for being late at school
that the cook was absent and her mother
was sick, and of course she could not get
the breakfast, it showed the lack of thrift
and right management in that household.
She would have been ashamed to make that
reply if the influence of her home and her
school had not left her blind to the dignity
of labor and the honor to be derived from
doing one's duty.

We very well know that college life is
the hot-bed of extravagance, and that no
great and united effort has been made to
repress this wasteful tendency. It is to be
hoped that when our great institutions of
learning have become financially endowed
so that they are perfectly independent, they
may be able to take some means to turn
the tide and set a fashion of economy and
moderation.

Investigation shows that our poorest
classes are the most extravagant. On mar-
ket-days we find that those persons who
carry their entire fortunes in their hands
wijl purchase the highest-priced provisions,
which are often the least nourishing. If
we could have savings-banks in our schools,
as in England, our people who earn good
wages could learn to accumulate. Million-
aires tell us that it is the first thousand
dollars which is the hardest to earn — inter-
est then increases of itself. Have we not
all had the experience of helping people
who would not help themselves, but would,
by lack of self-denial or even moderation,
keep open some leak by which their misfor-
tunes were continually on the increase?

Would there be so much temptation to
anarchism and crime if our working classes
understood the right principles of living ?
— if they understood that fortune and suc-
cess are generally to be obtained only through
systematic living and often great self-denial ?

It is probable that our workingmen
would not spend so much time and money
in restaurants if they could obtain well-
cooked food at home ; therefore, cooking
schools are a great help to economy.

That early training in thrift and mod-

408

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eration is much needed by our girls we have
fair evidence among women in Washington,
where so many are stranded without homes,
friends, or fortune. Sixty women have been
known to apply at a private school as teach-
ers during the summer months, and most
of them ill fitted for earning their living
in any position. The political changes in
Washington conduce strongly to this state
of affairs. It is well known that great im-
providence exists among the families of the
male and female clerks in the departments
in Washington as to their manner of living.
Many a clerk receiving eighteen hundred or
two thousand dollars a year will die, after
twenty years or more, without having saved
a cent, even for his own funeral expenses,
leaving a family with extravagant habits to
battle with the world as best they can.
This is no uncommon case ; to be saving and
buy a home is the exception.

I can only give out a few hints on this
great subject ; but I venture to hope that
reflective minds may be impressed with its
importance, and may exert their influence
to encourage the teaching of the underlying
principles of economy and moderation to
our children in the public schools.

Laura Osborne Talbott.

THE BASIS OF MORALITY.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : I have read Herbert Spencer's The
Data of Ethics, and, if I have not misunder-
stood the work, it teaches that the object to
be gained by pursuing morality is happiness,
and that a nation's happiness increases as
does its morality. If by the term happiness
we mean surplus of pleasure over pain, I
think that the happiness of savage nations
is greater than that of civilized ones. The
former are certainly healthier. By our defi-
nition this fact alone indicates greater hap-
piness. But savage nations are notoriously
immoral. People, whether religious or not,
when they argue against immorality, gener-
ally give reasons for its avoidance which
issue from the heart and sentiment rather
than from the mind.

Here are some instances : We say that
a man who has been a miser all his lifetime
is wretched and unhappy ; yet he may have
been in perfect health, bodily and mental,
which we must assume to indicate that he
has been able to exercise all his faculties :
and the exercise of faculties, according to
Si»encer, constitutes pleasure. Persons un-
able to stick to one occupation for any

length of time are often spoken of in terms
of pity, yet they also may have led lives of
perfect activity. In the former case the
means by which the miser accumulated his
fortune are held up to us as directly causing
pain to the user of them, and we are warned
not to follow his steps, for he must have
suffered. In reality, however, he could not
have suffered so terribly, for if he had he
would not have been left in the possession
of the power to exercise all his faculties.
By similar reasoning we can come to a like
conclusion in regard to the vacillating kind
of people I have spoken of. People make
a mistake in looking at such things through
only their own eyes.

An instance of the opposite kind in be-
half of the pursuit of morality is as follows :
After hearing the biography of two persons,
one of whom led a long, healthy, selfish life,
and the other, having all the advantages of
education, was possessed of a sympathetic
and an emotional nature which recognized
and met the wants of others, and who dur-
ing his lifetime was universally loved but
constantly suffered, most of us would pre-
fer the life of the latter.

With the idea of happiness in mind we
started with, I think the above instances
show that the cultivation of morality is not
necessarily accompanied by increased happi-
ness. Now, if what I have said is true, it
seems to me that the logic of the book in
question is destroyed, and that all those who
are interested in the furtherance of morality
and the scientific discussion of ethics are
obliged to face a disagreeable conclusion.
It is this : Philosophic thinkers can really
give no adequate reason for the pursuit of
morality, and they, too, as well as professed
believers in other-world motives for doing
right, must often argue from the heart and
according to their ideals and not as inexor-
able reason and logic demand ; and must be
content to live somewhat under a contradic-
tion. I use the word professed not unthink-
ingly, as I believe that most really honorable
people find their motives for rectitude in the
present life.

To the possible objection to my argu-
ment that I have forgotten to take into
account the increase of complexity of the
pleasures which takes place as an organism
becomes more moral, I may say that so do
the pains become more complex.

I might also ask the question, Which
pleasures are the greater, the simple ones
of childhood, or the complex pleasures of
maturity ? It seems to me that there is no
difference. K.

Someeville, Mass., November, 1S90.

EDITOR'S TABLE,

409

EDITOR'S TABLE.

THE EVOLUTIONARY VIEW OF
MORALITY.

OUR correspondent " K.," whose
letter we publish on another page,
is in serious trouble over the difficulty
he finds in reconciling the view of mo-
rality given by Mr. Spencer, in his
Data of Ethics, with the facts of real
life. Mr. Spencer, as "K." understands
him, teaches that "the object to be
gained by pursuing morality is happi-
ness " ; while facts teach that morality
sometimes calls for the sacrifice of hap-
piness. Mr. Spencer strives to base
morality on a foundation of reason,
whereas experience seems to prove that
it must to a large extent be based on
sentiment — that, unless there is a heart
impulse toward morality, there will be
a lack of power to do the right, except
in so far as it may also be the conven-
ient. Therefore, as philosophy does not
deal with or control the heart, it fails
to furnish any adequate reason for the
pursuit of morality.

Our correspondent has done well to
express in plain language the thoughts
that trouble him, and that such thoughts
should trouble him is a sign that his
own moral nature is in a state of healthy
activity. "We hope, however, to be able
to show that the evolutionary system of
ethics is not in conflict with experience,
and that it renders important help to
the cause of morality by giving a clear
and consistent idea of what morality is.
It is a mistake to suppose that it does
much more than this. It does not
claim to supply any incentives to right
action, or any dissuasions from wrong
action, other than may be found in a
consideration of the consequences which
such actions entail. "We do not ask the
physician or the hygienist to provide
people with motives, beyond what the
facts they state may furnish, for seek-
ing health or avoiding sickness ; yet no

one, we think, will question that the
diffusion of sound medical and hygienic
information has an important effect in
promoting the health of the community.
The probability is that "K.," like many
others who are feeling their way to the
scientific standpoint, is still more or less
under the influence of moral systems
which bring the sanctions of conduct
into far greater prominence than the
essential nature of conduct. Systems
that do this, and that place their sanc-
tions mainly in another world, do much
to retard the proper definition of mo-
rality. While men's minds are strongly
occupied with the thought of rewards
and punishments beyond all human
measurement, the only question that
seems to have any pertinence is, How
am I to secure this infinite reward ?
How can I hope to escape that terrible
penalty ? The overwhelming character
of the sanctions compels unquestioning
submission to whatever code of morals
may be promulgated in connection with
them ; and future systems of morality
come to be judged, not so much by the
nature of their ethical teaching, as by
the motives they bring to bear in sup-
port of it.

This, however, we maintain, is not
the right point of view. The business
of a moral system is to define morality,
not to enforce it; to trace the conse-
quences and relations of actions, not to
supplement deficiencies in the general
scheme of things. If the decay of arbi-
trary sanctions leaves certain individ-
uals unprotected against their own law-
less tendencies, we can not be altogether
surprised, and should not be unduly
discouraged. No change, political, so-
cial, or intellectual, finds all persons
equally prepared to meet it. The wise
are those whose lamps are trimmed and
fed, and who can light themselves to a
place of light: the foolish are those

410

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

whose lamps are empty and untrimmed,
and who, on a sudden call, can only
stumble about in darkness. Evolution-
ary ethics are not discredited because
there are those whose imperfect moral
development craves inducements and
restraints of. a more imperative nature
than any system which appeals merely
to reason and good feeling can supply.
"But why," our correspondent may
ask, "do you bring in good feeling?
My complaint is precisely that, while
the evolutionary system professes to
dispense with feeling, it does not and
can not really do so." "We know this
is a common idea, but it is not a correct
one. Feeling arises when habits have
become so consolidated that their origin
and justification, if not forgotten, are at
least overlooked, so that they seem to
be, as it were, self -justified. Feelings
and prejudices are of kindred nature:
where there is feeling there is, gener-
ally speaking, prejudice ; where there is
prejudice there is always feeling. In
feeling we have the stored-up energy of
repeated perceptions, and it acts as a
fly-wheel to carry us past many a dead
point of balanced calculations. The
evolutionist shows that moral actions
are those which specifically tend to pro-
duce happiness — to make life as a whole
not only worth living but capable of
being lived, if we may be allowed the
expression. We all want life, and we
want it more abundantly. Evolution-
ary ethics show how life in general is
promoted and enlarged by certain acts,
how it is impeded and straitened and
undermined by others; nor can there
be any reasonable doubt as to the valid-
ity of the classification thus established.
Mr. Spencer does not say to each indi-
vidual, " You will in every case find
your personal happiness promoted by
every moral act you may perform, and
the more moral you are the happier you
will surely be." He might, however,
say : " In performing any moral act
from a moral motive you will be sure to
reap a certain satisfaction — the satisfac-

tion that comes from having placed
yourself in harmony with a law that
you feel to be universal in its applica-
tion ; but whether," he might add,
" your happiness as a whole will be pro-
moted will depend upon how far in
your particular case such satisfaction
outweighs any loss or suffering which
the performance of the act may entail.
That is not a question that can be set-
tled on general grounds ; it depends on
an equation in which your own moral
nature as at present developed is the
most important element." In order to
determine whether an act is a moral act,
what we have to do is to fix its relation
to life as a whole, its specific tendency
to promote or diminish happiness. To
trace its thousand possible incidences
in individual cases would be beyond hu-
man wisdom, and would be of little
value if accomplished. To appeal to
right feeling — to come back to a point
that ought to be made very clear — is to
appeal to a force that we know to have
been accumulated through the perform-
ance of right acts — acts which, each in
their own hour, have yielded up to the
moral nature the satisfaction that comes
from right conduct, and thus furnished
a fund of virtuous impulse for future
use. Far, therefore, from there being
any incompatibility between the sanc-
tion of reason and the sanction of feel-
ing, the two are but one sanction ; the
only difference being that one is special
to the act at the moment under consid-
eration, while the other is the great
closed register of past moral judgments.
Of course, it is open to any man to
say : " There is no morality in my com-
position, no feeling or prejudice in favor
of what you call right courses of action,
no perception of anything as desira-
ble that does not make for my personal
gratification ; and therefore to me your
scientific morality is equally without
meaning and without authority." A
man who spoke in that way would
probably libel himself; but, in so far as
we assume that he speaks the truth, we

EDITOR'S TABLE.

411

have to admit that he is a more suita-
hle subject for a severely authoritative
regime than for any system of intel-
lectual and moral liberty. Such a man
doubtless needs the most alluring in-
ducements on the one hand, and the dir-
est threatenings on the other, to keep him
from frequent transgressions. Not that
the transgressions themselves would not
in many cases entail punishments which,
had they been foreseen, would have de-
terred him from misconduct, but simply
because when a man is so constituted
that, without any prepossession in favor
of right-doing, he calculates over again
on each occasion the probable conse-
quences of a given act, the voice of pres-
ent passion or desire is very apt to
dominate all other pleas. Such a man
is a mere moral pauper, starving him-
self on " beggarly elements," instead of
nourishing himself and building himself
up on well-developed moral principles.
Long before Mr. Spencer, the English
philosopher Hobbes dealt very well
with this point. " The fool hath said
in his heart there is no such thing as
justice; and sometimes also with his
tongue ; seriously alleging that, every
man's conservation and contentment be-
ing committed to his own care, there
could be no reason why every man
might not do what he thought conduced
thereunto ; and therefore also to make
or not make, keep or not keep, cove-
nants was not against reason when it
conduced to one's own benefit." After
thus stating the case of "the fool,"
Hobbes goes on to point out that such
a man takes up a position of hostility
to society, and therefore " can in rea-
son expect no other means of safety
than what can be had from his own
single power," and "can not be received
in any society that unite themselves for
peace and defense, but by the error of
them that receive him." His conclusion
is that "justice is a rule of reason by
which we are forbidden to do anything
destructive to our life, and consequently
a law of Nature."

The fool who says in his heart that

there is no such thing as justice is gen-
erally enough of a knave not to say it
aloud ; and so far he pays homage to
what he recognizes as a settled convic-
tion of mankind. The science of ethics
teaches us how conduct becomes ethical
in its character, through what suc-
cessively higher stages it passes, and
wherein a true moral equilibrium con-
sists. It can do no more. It is for
every man to determine for himself how
far he is influenced or means to be in-
fluenced by the knowledge that certain
courses of action make for the elevation
of his own character and the benefit of
the world, while others make in an en-
tirely opposite direction. If any man
declares that such a manifestation of
the truth influences him not at all, it
would be well for him to seek the re-
straints and persuasives of some other
system ; or, if he means to enter upon
a war against society, to take his meas-
ures with the greatest caution. It is
some satisfaction to think that, among
those who take the scientific view of
ethics, there is rather more inclination
of the heart toward what is right than
among those who reject that view chiefly
on the ground of its too feeble sanc-
tions. "K." himself seems to admit
this, and, if so, we do not see why he
should feel discouraged. In conclusion,
we may say that, if we have not fully
met our correspondent's difficulties, we
shall be happy to return to the subject,
and deal as specifically as possible with
any point he may suggest for discussion.
"We say this, not because there are not
many other questions claiming attention,
but because we are strongly convinced
that there is not to-day a more impor-
tant issue than this of the soundness
and sufficiency of the evolutionary view
of ethics.

CULTURE FOB ITS OWN SAKE.

This is a thing a good deal talked
about, but which does not bear very
close investigation. All work, all effort
must have an object; otherwise it is
not determined to any end, guided in

412

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

any definite channel, or impressed with
any distinct character. The culture of
the mind, like the culture of a field,
must have an object. We cultivate the
field that we may get better crops from
it ; we cultivate the mind that it too
may yield better fruits. Nature in its
spontaneous workings gives us the start-
ing-point in both cases. She supplies
the wild varieties of grain and other
vegetable food, and man by bis art im-
proves her gifts, rendering them more
adapted to his own special needs. In
like manner the mind spontaneously
working, without any thought of cult-
ure or training, lays hold of the facts
which Nature presents to the senses
and interprets them from its own stand-
point. As the interpretation becomes
wider through experience, new facts
come into view, and knowledge and
thought increase with even step. The
object of all culture is, therefore, or
should be, to give the power of broadly
interpreting the data of sense, to place
the individual in the most advantageous
position possible for understanding the
world in which he lives, and exerting a
useful action upon some part of it. A
culture that is severed from all ideas of
utility is something altogether empty
and nebulous; we may go further and
say that it is something that tends to
corruption. What does the decay of
societies through luxury — that staple
and by no means unreal theme of mor-
alizing historians — mean, if not the cor-
ruption that comes of divorcing cult-
ure from service? Knowledge grows,
art develops, wealth increases ; and men
forget that these should have a social
destination and not merely be made
ministers to pride and vanity and lust.
For want of a healthy outlet for these
forces a process of social decomposition
sets in, and another page of history
draws to a close.

Every man and woman, therefore,
who seeks culture should seek it with

reference to some definite aim in life,
and not to make it serve as mere intel-
lectual finery. The time has not yet
come when we can safely intermit our
efforts for the improvement of the social
state ; and all gifts and accomplish-
ments can be pressed into the service of
mankind, if only the motive for so em-
ploying them be present. It is when
we consider our talents or our knowl-
edge as serving only for our own glori-
fication that they spoil on our hands.
What more pitiful can be imagined than
the small jealousy which is often found
animating literary, artistic, and even
scientific circles ? It is hard to say
whether the mutual admiration or the
mutual depreciation of certain devotees
of culture is the more ridiculous. All
this comes of the " culture for its own
sake" theory. Give culture an ulterior
end, and it is at once ennobled and jus-
tified. The scholar, the man of science,
the poet, the painter, the sculptor, the
musician, will pursue their several tasks
with no less devotion or success for
thinking that, however little their work
may be comprehended by the world at
large, there is that in it in which even the
world at large has a practical interest.
If a man can not think this — that is to
say, can not think it truly — then his
work does net make for culture and
might profitably be abandoned. Man
lives by his faculties; culture is the en-
largement or improvement of faculty in
one direction or another, and makes
thus for fuller life and deeper corre-
spondence between the individual and
the world. Governed by a social mo-
tive, it will seek to extend its benefits
to all — as an ultimate aim — and will
thus be kept fresh, vigorous, and pure.
Governed by a selfish motive, it will
degenerate into mere self-pleasing, af-
fectation, and insincerity, and will never
be far removed from moral corruption.
The distinction is easily seized, and may
profitably be taken to heart.

LITERARY NOTICES.

413

LITERARY NOTICES.

Civil Government in the United States
considered, with some reference to its
Origins. By John Fiske. Boston and
New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp.
xxx + 360.

If not the most important book that Mr.
Fiske has written, this is, without doubt, one
of the most useful. The plan of it is good,
the spirit of it is good, the execution of it
is good. Lucid arrangement seems to come
naturally to Mr. Fiske, and to lucidity of
arrangement he is always able to add ex-
treme felicity of expression. With this book
accessible to him, no American, young or old,
can have any excuse for remaining ignorant
of the leading facts in connection either with
the political development or the existing po-
litical structure of his native country. Here
we have the story told in the simplest lan-
guage, and in a style which is not too viva-
cious to be serious nor too serious to be
vivacious. Moreover, by a happy art in se-
lection, Mr. Fiske has told us just what it is
most important to understand and remem-
ber. His task is one of narrative and expo-
sition ; and he is not, therefore, called upon
to any great extent for the expression of his
individual opinions. Here and there, how-
ever, he has found occasion for a judicious
comment or a penetrating criticism, with the
result of making us feel regret that his limits
did not permit more extended remarks of
this character.

In the first chapter he deals with govern-
ment as the taxing power, and broadly states
that the taking of taxes for a wrong purpose,
as by a political party in order to strengthen
its hold on power, is robbery. In his second
he sketches the rise of the township, and
shows the connection existing between this
primary political unit and the church congre-
gation. The important functions exercised
by the township authorities are fully de-
scribed, and justice is done to the politically
educative effect of township institutions.
Very instructive parallels are drawn be-
tween the institutions of the parent state
and those established on American soil.
Except the development of our written Con-
stitution, every bit of civil government de-
scribed in his pages came to America, says
Mr. Fiske, " directly from England, and not
a bit of it from any other country unless by

being first filtered through England." Much
detailed information is given as to the local
circumstances which helped to mold the
development of counties and States in dif-
ferent parts of the country. Chapter V, en
" The City," is most important. Here, again,
our author takes us to the old land, and
shows us the development of the Roman
camp or military settlement into a burg, and
the gradual growth in the burg of princi-
ples and traditions of liberty, though in
many of them oligarchical tendencies be-
came manifest in course of time, giving rise
to the " rotten boroughs " which, on the
political side, were dealt with by the Reform
Act of 1832, and, on the civic side, by the
Municipal Reform Act of 1835. It was the
constitution of the English city or borough
that determined the constitution of the first
city governments established in this country ;
and here, too, a distinct tendency toward
oligarchy, with its attendant evils, began to
make itself felt. The city government, in-
stead of being freely elected by the people,
was, after the pattern of the English bor-
ough, a self-perpetuating corporation with a
very limited responsibility to the citizens in
general. In course of time this system was
abolished ; freedom of election for all city
officers was established ; and then, unfortu-
nately, other evils set in, evils which perhaps
reached their height in this city some twenty
years ago. The tendency of late years in
our cities, as Mr. Fiske points out, has been
to concentrate larger powers in the hands
of the mayor, and to fasten on him a pro-
portionately heavy responsibility. "A hun-
dred years ago," the author remarks, "our
legislators and Constitution - makers were
much afraid of what was called the 'one-
man power.' " To-day we are getting to be
more afraid of the myriad-headed tyrant,
with its manager, " the ring." Fifty years
ago to have had so few elective officers as,
for example, there are in the neighboring
city of Brooklyn, and so many nominated by
one man, would, we are told, " have greatly
shocked all good Americans." To-day we
feel that we are safer in the hands of one
honest man of good judgment, who knows
that the eyes of all the citizens are fixed on
him, than in those of any body of elected
officers, each with only a partial and more
or less doubtful responsibility. Mr. Fiske

4H

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

recalls one fact which should not be lost
sight of, and that is the danger the finances
of a city are sometimes exposed to, not from
the votes of the poorer members of the com-
munity, but from the machinations of the
richer, who have it in their power to bring
the most corrupting influences to bear on
city councils, with a view to obtaining grants
for improvements quite unnecessary on pub-
lic grounds, but eminently useful for increas-
ing the value of private properties. Uni-
versal suffrage has not been the sole fount
of our municipal troubles.

" The purification of our city govern-
ments," says Mr. Fiske, " will never be com-
pleted until they are entirely divorced from
national party politics." This is a view
which a leading newspaper in this city loses
no opportunity to ridicule, but which we
think founded in good sense. The matter
does not admit of discussion here, further
than to say that this is a subject on which
the experience of England can be appealed
to. As our author observes, " The degrada-
tion of so many English boroughs and cities
during the Tudor and Stuart periods was
chiefly due to the encroachment of national
politics upon municipal politics."

The rise of our Federal Constitution is
well and graphically sketched ; and in a few
words the distinction between the two great
political parties is well established. It is
pointed out that, whereas the tariff ques-
tion was formerly debated as a constitutional
one, the predecessors of the present Demo-
crats holding that Congress had no power
under the Constitution to impose taxes for
the purpose of advancing or protecting cer-
tain industries, it is now debated on eco-
nomical grounds alone. The former view of
the matter, however, we venture to hold, has
not lost its pertinence, and we are not with-
out hope that the citizens of this free repub-
lic will yet see that the tariff question is one
in which their liberties are at stake. Mr.
Fiske, as might be expected, has placed him-
self clearly on record as a friend and advo-
cate of civil-service reform. Of the his-
toric declaration that " to the victors belong
the spoils," he observes that " the man who
said this (W. L. Marcy) did not realize that
he was making one of the most shameful re-
marks recorded in history."

There are appended to the volume some

valuable and interesting historical documents,
such as Magna Charta, the Constitution of the
United States, with its amendments, etc.
At the end of each chapter is a set of well-
chosen questions, adding not a little to the
value of the book for educational purposes.
Mr. Fiske has produced a work which can
not fail to be widely read, and which will do
much to develop a spirit of intelligent and
high-minded American citizenship.

"Wild Beasts and their Wats. By Sir
Samuel W. Baker, F. R. S., etc. Lon-
don and Kew York : Macmillan & Co.
Pp. 455. Price, $3.50.

Sir Samuel Ba&er's last book of hunt-
ing adventures is a model of its class. Its
accounts of hunts are spirited and fascinat-
ing, being neither too much nor too little de-
tailed. Moreover, it is not made up solely of
the circumstances of killing certain animals
in specified places. It gives, in addition, the
results of a vast deal of highly intelligent
observation in regard to the nature and hab-
its of the creatures that have fallen to the
rifle of this humane and cultivated sports-
man, as well as of the domesticated animals
— horse, dog, elephant, and camel — which he
employed in different expeditions. Many
incidents of an amusing nature are included,
the telling of which affords play for the de-
lightful wit of the author. The greater part
of the volume is devoted to large game — the
tiger, leopard, lion, bear, hippopotamus,
crocodile, buffalo, bison, and rhinoceros.
Other animals included are the boar, hyena,
giraffe, and various species of the deer fami-
ly. The opening chapter deals with the de-
velopment of the rifle during the past half-
century, embodying Sir Samuel's reasons for
preferring the sorts of arms and ammuni-
tion that he has used for different game.
Following this are three chapters devoted
to the elephant and his ways when tamed,
including his behavior when employed for
hunting tigers, etc. In all parts of the book
appear traits of the animals described which
will be new to many even who are well read in
zoology. It appears that the elephant, who
is generally thought of as a slow and lumber-
ing, bulky body, can kick with extreme quick-
ness and naturally with great force. " This
is a peculiar action," says our author. "As
the elephant is devoid of hocks, and it uses

LITERARY NOTICES.

415

the knees of the hind legs in a similar man-
ner to those of a human being, therefore a
backward kick would seem unnatural; but
the elephant can kick both backward and
forward with equal dexterity, and this con-
stitutes a special means of defense against
an enemy, which seldom escapes when ex-
posed to such a game between the fore and
hind feet of the infuriated animal." In Sir
Samuel's opinion, the intelligence of the ele-
phant has been overrated. It has a wonder-
ful power of learning, and hence can be
taught to perform a great many acts on com-
mand, but it will never volunteer any serv-
ice for its master. " There is no elephant
that I ever saw," he says, " who would spon-
taneously interfere to save his master from
drowning or attack. An enemy might as-
sassinate you at the feet of your favorite
elephant, but he would never attempt to in-
terfere in your defense ; he would probably
run away, or remain impassive, unless guid-
ed and instructed by his mahout" Sir
Samuel has evidently been fond of tiger-
hunting, for he recounts many exciting ad-,
ventures with this dangerous game, the in-
cidents of which make up a very full picture
of tiger character. He has also hunted the
lion, though evidently with less interest, as
he says that he does " not consider the lion
to be so formidable or ferocious as the
tiger." Bears he has hunted in Ceylon and
in Wyoming. He apologizes for admitting
the crocodile, which he numbers among
" vermin," to a place with the other animals
that he describes. But he makes a very
interesting chapter about them, in which he
states that he has slaughtered a vast num-
ber of these reptiles in revenge for their
killing his men. "On one occasion," he
says, "I killed a crocodile which, although
not longer than twelve feet three inches, was
very thick in the body ; this was proved to
be a malefactor by the testimony of two
bracelets and a necklace, belons-rina: to a
missing girl, which we found within its
stomach." Sir Samuel's chapters on deer-
hunting take us through Scotland, India,
Ceylon, and the Rocky Mountains, and are
full of interest, though without the danger-
ous situations included in the earlier chap-
ters. Besides the ways of wild beasts, some-
thing may be learned from this book of the
ways of the human inhabitants of the coun-

tries in which the author has hunted. Judg-
ing, however, from the speeches he puts into
the mouths of American hunters, he does
not attempt to report conversations verbatim.
In conclusion, some observations are given in
regard to animals that have not been objects
of his pursuit — monkeys, bats, wild asses,
and camels. A number of appropriate full-
page illustrations embellish the volume.

Prehistoric America. By the Marquis de

Nadaillac. Translated by N. D'Anvers.

Edited by W. If. Dall. New York : G.

P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 566. Price,

$2.25.

This valuable work was published in
French in 18S2, and the translation, modi-
fied and revised by Mr. W. H. Dall so as to
" bring it into harmony with the results of
recent investigation and the conclusions of
the best authorities on the archaeology of the
United States," was first issued two years
later. A popular edition of the translation
is now brought out at less than half the
price of the former issue. For the benefit
of those who have not seen the book, we
will say that it is a comprehensive work,
describing the human remains and the relics
of human workmanship that have been found
in both North and South America. Besides
the purely descriptive matter, discussions
are introduced concerning the origin of man
in America, the length of time that he has
lived there, etc. Thus, the first chapter is
a summary of the evidence tending to show
that man lived in America with the masto-
don and other gigantic extinct animals.
The second chapter sketches the discoveries
made in American kitchen-middens and
caves. The next two chapters are devoted
to the mound-builders and their works, and
review the questions that the discovery of
these remains has raised. In like manner
the relics of the cliff-dwellers and of the
denizens of the ancient pueblos are described.
Passing from the United States southward,
the author gives an account of the ruins of
Central America, and finally records the evi-
dences of ancient life that have been found
in Peru. He then proceeds to draw conclu-
sions from the material thus furnished in
regard to the physique of the early men of
America. The volume contains two hun-
dred and nineteen illustrations and has an
index.

416

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Yeto Power. By Edward C. Mason.
Harvard Historical Monographs, No. 1.
Edited by Albert B. Hart. Boston:
Ginn & Co. Pp. 232. Price, $1.

The first number of what promises to be
a valuable series of publications has been
issued by Harvard University. It gives the
history of presidential vetoes in the United
States from 1789 to 1889. This record is
introduced by an account of the origin in
English and colonial precedent of that par-
ticular form of the veto power which is found
in the United States. Different classes of
vetoes are discussed in successive chapters,
namely, those affecting the form of govern-
ment, those affecting the distribution of the
powers of government, and those affecting
the exercise of these powers. A chapter
is added on the constitutional points which
have arisen concerning the operation of the
veto power, and another on the develop-
ment of this function during the completed
century of our national history. Appendix
A is a chronological list of all bills vetoed
from April 6, 1789, to March 4, 18S9, with
dates and references to the journals of Con-
gress containing the legislative histories of
the bills. Five other appendixes contain
similar lists and tables. The editor states
that both the author and he have endeav-
ored to make this work free from political
bias, and that " the vetoes are condemned
or approved upon what seem to us sound
principles of constitutional law and political
expediency, irrespective of the attitude of
present parties."

International Journal of Ethics. Vol. I,
No. 1 ; October, 1890. Issued quarter-
ly. Philadelphia, 1602 Chestnut Street.
Price, $2 yearly ; single number, 50
cents.

We are confident that the world will
profit from the founding of this magazine.
It is designed to do work which must great-
ly aid the elevation of human character and
the increase of human happiness. It is the
successor of The Ethical Record, and it is
more than this. The announcement states
that the Journal will be devoted to the ad-
vancement of ethical knowledge and prac-
tice, and that it will not be the organ of
any society or sect or of any particular set
of opinions. The word International in
its name is justified by the composition of

its editorial committee, which consists of
Felix Adler, Ph. D., New York; Stanton
Coit, Ph. D., London ; Prof. G. von Gizycki,
Berlin ; Prof. Fr. Jodl, Prague ; J. S. Mac-
kenzie, M. A., Manchester ; J. H. Muirhead,
M. A., London ; and Prof. Josiah Royce, of
Harvard University. The list of contribu-
tors already engaged has a still wider range.
Seven body articles and a department of
book reviews make up the contents of the
first number. The opening article is on
The Morality of Strife, by Prof. Henry
Sidgwick, of Cambridge University, refer-
ring especially to wars. It has been said
that the spread of altruism would bring
wars between states to an end. Prof. Sidg-
wick maintains that little improvement
would be secured until the predominance of
good-will was complete ; for, so long as any
were wronged, those persons dominated by
altruism would still be eager to fight, albeit
in behalf of others and not for themselves.
To the proposition that strife can general-
ly be prevented by competent arbitration,
Prof. Sidgwick objects that this " external "
mode of solution can not be applied to all
cases, and he thinks it inevitable that, " at
least for a long time to come, every nation
in the most important matters must to an
important extent be judge in its own cause."
Therefore " we must endeavor to be just
judges." Prof. Felix Adler contributes an
article on The Freedom of Ethical Fellow-
ship, in which he states that it is the aim
of the Ethical Societies " to unite men of
diverse opinions and beliefs in the common
endeavor to explore the field of duty," and
"to embody the new insight in manners
and institutions." Prof. Adler says further :
" Ethics is both a science and an art. As
a science its business is to explain the facts
of the moral life. In order, therefore, to
improve it as a science it is necessary, be-
fore all, to fix attention on the facts, to col-
lect them, to bring them into view, espe-
cially the more recondite among them. It
is necessary to effect in the treatment of
the subject a revolution analogous to that
which has taken place in the natural sci-
ences, namely, instead of beginning with
theories and descending to facts, to begin
with the facts and to test theories by their
fitness to account for the facts." The Popu-
lar Science Monthly has always held that

LITERARY NOTICES.

417

there can be no substantial and lasting
morality without a basis in inductive sci-
ence. We maintained this at a time when
the doctrine had few avowed friends and
many active enemies. We are exceedingly
gratified that now a dignified and ably ed-
ited magazine has been established in which
this idea can havo free and full expression.
Among the other articles in this number of
the Journal is The Law of Relativity in
Ethics, in which the author, Prof. Harald
Hoffding, of Copenhagen University, main-
tains that " in an ideal state only that would
be demanded of each individual which lay
within his range and power." Prof. J. B.
Clark, of Smith College, has a paper on The
Ethics of Land Tenure, in defense of private
ownership in land. Bernard Bosanquet
writes on The Communication of Moral
Ideas as a Function of an Ethical Society.
Dr. Abbot's "Way out of Agnosticism'' is
criticised by Prof. Royce very fully and
freely. As to this author's mode of think-
ing, Prof. Royce says, " Dr. Abbot's way is
not careful, is not novel, and, when thus set
forth to the people as new and bold and
American, it is likely to do precisely as
much harm to careful inquiry as it gets in-
fluence over immature or imperfectly trained
minds." A brief paper on A Service of
Ethics to Philosophy, bv William M. Salter,
of Chicago, suggests that " ethics not only
enlarges our philosophy by opening to our
view higher heights or deeper depths than
Science is aware of, but it gives us some-
thing ultimate in philosophy, ideas that may
be fairly classed as ultimate truths." The
Journal's book reviews are all signed.

Emblematic Mounds and Animal Effigies
By Stephen D. Peet. Chicago: Ameri-
can Antiquarian Office. Pp 350. Price,
$3.50.

This book is the second volume of a se-
ries to which the author has given the name
of Nadaillac's work — Prehistoric America.
It is devoted to describing those mounds of
various shapes in our Western States which
it is thought were intended to represent the
forms of certain animals. The author has
aimed to describe all the effigy mounds in
the country; hence the volume, which is
based on his own explorations in Wisconsin,
Iowa, and Ohio, includes also the results
vol. xxxviii. — 29

gathered by other explorers in the same
States and in Dakota, Georgia, and Florida.
The descriptions are illustrated with two hun-
dred and thirty-seven cuts, besides numer-
ous plates, comprising plans of mounds, maps
of the localities in which they have been
found, and drawings of articles of aboriginal
workmanship. The figures of mounds are
generally silhouettes. The author gives the
following as the points that he has sought
to bring out by his explorations and descrip-
tions : " 1. The effigies were undoubtedly
imitations of the wild animals which were
once common in the region, but they are at
the same time totemic in their character
and may be supposed to represent many
things in the clan life of the people. 2. The
effigies are interesting as works of art, but,
at the same time, they were evidently used
for practical purposes, such as screens for
hunters, guards for villages, foundations for
houses, heaps on which sentinels were sta-
tioned. 3. There are some remarkable feat-
ures embodied in the effigies which render
them especially interesting, since they re-
veal certain strange superstitions and cus-
toms which are rarely found, but which are
suggestive of the religious system prevalent
in prehistoric times. 4. The question, Who
built the effigies ? is treated briefly, but is
left undecided." The successive chapters
deal with special divisions of the subject,
such as the animals represented by the effi-
gies, religious character of the emblematic
mounds, the location of the effigies as re-
lated to the topography, etc. The author is
editor of The American Antiquarian.

Sugar Analysis. By Ferdinand G. Wiech-
mann, Ph. D. New Fork: John Wiley
& Sons. Pp. 187. Price, $2.50.

This work is designed to be an authority
for use in refineries, sugar-houses, experi-
mental stations, schools of technology, etc.
Within the past few years numerous new
methods and modifications in old methods
of sugar analysis have been brought for-
ward, and many researches of importance
to the chemistry of sugar have been accom-
plished. This material is scattered through
so many publications, some of them being
foreign journals not readily accessible, that
it can be of use to the majority of American
students and practicing chemists only when

418

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the best of it is selected and embodied in a
manual like the present one. The schemes
of analysis here presented embrace those
which, " after careful investigation, and, in
many cases, after prolonged trial in practice,
have seemed to the writer best adapted to
the requirements of a technical laboratory."
Dr. Wiechmann has avoided many repetitions
by giving the methods of determining each
constituent of saccharine substances once
for all, and adding such suggestions as spe-
cial cases call for, instead of giving a com-
plete scheme of analysis for each product of
the sugar manufacture. The opening chap-
ters contain directions for the use of polari-
scopes, hydrometers, and other instruments
and apparatus, for the verification of hy-
drometers, balances, and graduated vessels,
and for the sampling of sugars and molasses.
The methods for optical and chemical analy-
sis follow, and in conclusion there are given
notes on reporting sugar analyses, methods
of calculating rendement, lists of synonyms
in English, French, and German, and refer-
ences to the literature of sugar analysis.
Nineteen tables required in the various op-
erations detailed are appended to the vol-
ume. These have been selected by Dr.
Wiechmann with great care, and, to secure
uniformity of basis, several have been cal-
culated expressly for this volume.

Proceedings op the Boston Society of
Natural History. Vol. 24, Parts III
and IV. Boston. Pp. 257-597.

These parts conclude the volume, cover-
ing the meetings of the society from May,
1889, to April, 1890, inclusive. Among the
more extended papers in this portion of the
volume is Mr. August F. Foerste's Notes on
Clinton Group Fossils, illustrated with nine
plates, and containing descriptions of a
large number of species. Prof. Alpheus S.
Packard contributes a paper on The Life
History of Drepana arcuata, and another,
occupying sixty-seven pages, entitled Hints
on the Evolution of the Bristles, Spines, and
Tubercles of Certain Caterpillars, apparently
resulting from a Change from Low Feeding
to Arboreal Habits, illustrated by the Life-
Histories of some Notodontians. The latter
is accompanied by two plates, and by figures
in the text. Messrs. W. M. Davis and J. W.
Wood, Jr., publish an account of The Geo-
graphic Development of Northern New

Jersey, illustrated with fourteen diagrams
and small maps. The scope of the investi-
gation embraces a description of the prob-
able course of development of the present
geographical features of the highlands in
New Jersey, a similar account of the forma-
tion of the central plain of the State and
the highland valleys, and a discussion of
the deformation of the central plain indi-
cated by the present course of the Millstone
River. Other papers are by Prof. G. F.
Wright, on The Climatic Condition of the
Glacial Period ; by Mr. Frederick Tucker-
man, on The Gustatory Organs of the Mam-
malia; and by Mr. Samuel H. Scudder, on
The Physiognomy of the American Tertiary
Hemiptera.

Among the Moths and Butterflies. By
Julia P. Ballard. New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 237. Price, $1.50.

Tnis book is a revised and enlarged edi-
tion of Insect Lives; or, Born in Prison,
and is devoted to the natural history of the
insects named in the title. It is written for
children, but the author does not take the
trouble to express herself uniformly in
words with which children are familiar.
The two following passages illustrate the dif-
ferent styles of language that are mingled
throughout the volume. The first chapter
opens thus : "I am only a day old ! I
wonder if every butterfly comes into the
world to find such queer things about Mm ?
I was born in prison. I can see right
through my walls ; but I can't find any
door." Simple enough for any child to un-
derstand ; and the following sentence from
the top of page 35 contrasts strangely with
it : " No philosopher ever showed more pa
tience and dignity under repeated trials at
the hands of a photographer than he dis-
played in the hands of his persecutors, with
no knowledge of the cause to stimulate his
vanity and inspire his courage." This is
not an isolated case. Nearly every page
bristles with polysyllables, very few of
which can be excused by the plea that they
are needed to secure scientifically accurate
description. We fear that the children who
may be condemned to see nature under the
guidance of Mrs. Ballard will get a much
obstructed view of it. The volume is hand-
somely printed and liberally illustrated.

LITERARY NOTICES.

419

We have received in pamphlet form
Prof. Lester F. Ward's article on Genius
and Woman's Intuition, published in the
Forum. It is a reply to an article on
Woman's Intuition, by Mr. Grant Allen,
who, Prof. Ward says, entirely mistakes
the nature of this faculty. It is defined by
Prof. Ward as a power of instantaneous
accurate judgment in matters that affect
the safety of the woman or her children.
Out of its own field this instantaneous judg-
ment fails to be accurate, which is the rea-
son why men are unwilling to trust the con-
clusions of women on the broader ques-
tions of society and the state. Prof. Ward
maintains, also, that Mr. Allen errs in iden-
tifying genius with the intuition of woman,
and speaks of the former as essentially a
creative faculty, which man as a rule pos-
sesses to a greater degree than woman.

The Journal of Morphology (Ginn) opens
its fourth volume with a number containing
five papers. These are The Origin of the
Cerebral Cortex and the Homologies of the
Optic Lobe Layers in the Lower Vertebrates,
by Isaac Nakagawa ; The Skeletal Anatomy
of Amphiuma during its Earlier Stages, by
0. P. Hay ; The Segmentation of the Primi-
tive Vertebrate Brain, by Charles F. W.
McClure; and two by Mr. W. H. Howell,
one being on The Life History of the Formed
Elements of the Blood, especially the Red
Blood Corpuscles, the other being occupied
with Observations upon the Occurrence,
Structure, and Function of the Giant Cells
of the Marrow. Three folded plates accom-
pany the issue.

Bulletin No. 63 of The Michigan Agri-
cultural Experiment Station is a pamphlet
on Greenhouse Building and Heating, by L.
R. Taft. " The greatest defects in the or-
dinary forcing house," Mr. Taft says, " are,
that there is generally too much wood in
the roof in the shape of rafters and sash-
bars, and that sufficient care is not taken to
so erect them that they will not rot down,
or the walls, if of brick or of masonry, be
broken apart or thrown down by frost."
He discusses the material for walls, the ar-
rangement of sash bars and supports, meth-
ods of glazing, ventilating apparatus, steam
and hot-water heating, etc.

Tlie Second Annual Report of the Storrs
School Agricultural Experiment Station, at

Storrs, Conn., contains the following papers :
The Acquisition of Atmospheric Nitrogen
by Plants, by W. 0. Atwater and C. D.
Woods ; Bacteria in Milk, Cream, and But-
ter, by H. W. Conn ; Stubble and Roots of
Plants as Manure, by Charles D. Woods ;
Meteorological Observations, by C. S. Phelps ;
Co-operative Field Experiments with Fer-
tilizers, by C. S. Phelps ; and Effects of Dif-
ferent Fertilizers upon the Composition of
Corn, by Charles D. Woods.

The papers contributed to the Second An-
nual Report of the Experiment Station, at
the Kansas Agricultural College, by the Bo-
tanical Department of the station, comprise
a Report on the Loose Smuts of Cereals ; an
account of Experiments in Crossing Varie-
ties of Corn ; Observations on Crossed Corn
the Second Year ; and Brief Notes of a Pre-
liminary Study of the Receptivity of Corn
Silk. Nine plates illustrate the smuts and
their natural enemies, and two are devoted
to the crossed corn.

A Chart Relative to the Composition,
Digestibility, and Nutritive Value of Food
has been prepared by Prof. Henry A. Mott
(Wiley, $1.25). It contains a large number
of tables of the nature indicated by the
title, the authority for each and the name
of the publication from which the table is
taken being given. A few general com-
ments on the digestibility of foods are given
in a foot-note.

The first number of a magazine whose
purpose is indicated by its name — Physical
Culture — has been issued in New York.
Its editor is Archibald Cuthberlson, who
says that his magazine will endeavor to
avoid publishing articles 6imply because
subscribed by a prominent name. " Physi-
cal Culture will stand or fall, not by or for
lack of certain names appended to its arti-
cles, but by the quality of these attributed
to them by intelligent people." Accord-
ingly, except the opening article, " by the
editor," none of the papers in this issue are
signed at all, and certain marks indicate
that they are mostly the product of one pen,
The number contains a biographical sketch
of James Douglas Andrews, illustrated with
a full-page portrait of Prof. Andrews, and
a view of the interior of the Brooklyn Young
Men's Christian Association Gymnasium.
Other articles take up The Checkley Sys-

420

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tern, Jenness Miller and her Work, Color
and Calisthenics, Prohibition, etc. The price
is $2 a year.

Prof. Robert T. Hill contributes to the
First Annual Report of the Geological Sur-
vey of Texas A Brief Description of the Cre-
taceous Rocks of Texas, and their Economic
Value. The areas covered by these rocks
comprise the tracts known as the Black
Prairie, the Grand Prairie, the two Cross
Timbers, and certain smaller regions. These
form a broad belt of fertile country across
the heart of the State, in which lie the prin-
cipal inland cities of Texas. Prof. Hill's
paper describes and locates the several de-
posits of chalky sands, chalky clays, and
chalky limestones which make up the sur-
face formations of this territory. The au-
thor gives also a table in which the arrange-
ment of the rock sheets is summarized, and
describes the main disturbances of the strata,
illustrating them with a diagram. The sev-
eral economic features of the Cretaceous
system are touched upon by themselves, and
the investigations in regard to them which
the geologists of the survey hope to make
are alluded to.

We have received an address by Colonel
George E. Waring, Jr., on The Sewerage of
Columbus, Ohio, which, although largely lo-
cal in application, contains also the latest
views of this well-known sanitary engineer
on the general subject of sewerage. An in-
teresting discussion that followed the de-
livery of the address is printed with it, and
brings out a number of points more fully
and clearly than is usually done in continu-
ous treatises.

The Wagner Free Institute of Science of
Philadelphia devotes the third volume of its
Transactions to Contributions to the Tertiary
Fauna of Florida, by William H. Ball. Part
I of Mr. Dall's contributions — on Pulmonate,
Opisthobranchiate, and Orthodont Gastro-
pods— occupies the whole of the volume.
The text is accompanied by twelve fine
plates, each containing from ten to twenty
figures.

The Neio England Meteorological Society
has issued a volume of Investigations for the
Year 18S9, prepared under the supervision
of its new director, Prof. W. M. Davis. In
addition to the tabulated reports of observ-
ers, and the review of the year's weather,

which the society publishes yearly, this vol-
ume contains several papers on special top-
ics. The most extended of these is an In-
vestigation of the Sea-breeze, conducted by
W. M. Davis, L. G. Schultz, and R. De C.
Ward, with the aid of observers at over one
hundred stations. There is also a short
paper on Characteristics of New England
Climate, by Prof. Winslow Upton.

Among the reprints which have come to
us is an essay on Tornadoes, by A. McAdie,
which won the second prize in a recent com-
petition, and was published in The American
Meteorological Journal. It is a technical
discussion of the nature of tornadoes and
the practicability of predicting them. The
author believes that a careful study of the
secondary whirlings in the atmosphere would
reveal the causes of the seeming irregulari-
ties of the primary whirlings, and make
possible not only the prediction of torna-
does, but also greater success in foretelling
general weather conditions.

William L. Green issues from Honolulu
a pamphlet under the title Notice of Prof.
James B. Buna's " Characteristics of Volca-
noes," in which he criticises certain state-
ments in Prof. Dana's work that differ from
his own views and observations, as pub-
lished in his Vestiges of the Molten Globe.

The president's address at the thirteenth
annual meeting of the American Bar Asso-
ciation, delivered by Henry Hitchcock; LL. D.,
has been printed from the Proceedings
of the Association, with the title A Year's
legislation. As prescribed it reviews "the
most noteworthy changes in the statute law
on points of general interest made in the sev-
eral States and by Congress during the pre-
ceding year." The national legislation in-
cludes the Administrative Customs bill, the
Dependent Pensions act, the Silver bill, and
acts in relation to the World's Fair, the ad-
mission of six new States into the Union,
desertions from the army, an inland quaran-
tine, trusts, the original-package decision,
and bridging the Hudson at New York.
Mr. Hitchcock expresses regret that no bill
had yet been passed for the relief of the
Supreme and other courts of the United
States. Statutes had been passed by the
Legislatures of twenty-one States and Ter-
ritories during the year which he covers,

LITERARY NOTICES.

421

and he groups those that he mentions under
the heads of education and charity, protec-
tion of women and children, public safety
and morals, labor and trade, legal proced-
ure, development of natural resources, and
the machinery of government. Mr. Hitch-
cock also glances at the Constitutions of the
new Northwestern States, and calls attention
to both these and the statutes above men-
tioned as reflecting the life and convictions
of the respective communities by which they
have been made.

The Ethical Societies welcome to member-
ship all who desire to learn and practice right
conduct, without requiring them to accept
any particular theory. In fact, the societies
as organizations do not teach a definite philo-
sophical system, and take pains not to com-
mit themselves to the views of their own
individual lecturers. In the opinion of Dr.
Paul Carus, they are too colorless in this
respect ; he thinks they should make an act-
ive search for a basis of ethics, and he has
published, in a volume entitled The Ethical
Problem (The Open Court, fifty cents), three
lectures embodying his views. He main-
tains that a system of ethics suited to the
present stage of the world must have a basis
in facts and in a logical structure. " The
facts to be considered in ethics," he says,
"are the many and various relations in
which man stands to his surroundings.
These relations produce the many different
motives that prompt men's actions." The
function of ethics is to tell us which motives
we shall resist and which we shall allow to
produce action. Coming to the theories of
ethics, Dr. Carus reviews supernaturalism,
intuitionalism, utilitarianism, and hedonism,
none of which he deems sufficient ground
for a system of morality. His own theory
is, that man should live not merely to se-
cure happiness for himself, but so as to
pass on to posterity a still richer "treas-
ure of human soul-life" than he has him-
self inherited. But Dr. Carus leaves us
still without a criterion for judging what
makes human soul-life richer and higher.

Dr. H. Carrington Bolton has collected
a considerable quantity of very curious in-
formation in a special field of coin-lore
which he has published in the American
Journal of Numismatics, under the title
Contributions of Alchemy to Numismatics.

The paper consists of a preliminary sketch
of the aims and practices of the alchemists,
followed by detailed descriptions of a large
number of coins and medals struck in evi-
dence of alleged transmutations of base
metals into gold or silver. The circum-
stances attending the issue of most of these
pieces are also given. Three of them are
figured in the paper.

A Digest of English and American Litera-
ture, prepared by Mr. Alfred H. West, author
of Development of English Literature and
Language, and published by S. C. Griggs &
Co., Chicago, presents a condensed parallel
view of history and literature in England
and the United States, from the time of the
Roman invasion down to the present. It is
intended to assist the student to that ac-
quaintance with the characters and lead-
ing events among which he wrote which is
necessary to the proper comprehension of
any of the great writers. That its prepara-
tion was suggested by the author's experi-
ences as a teacher is sufficient indication
that it is intended practically to meet a real
want. The pages facing one another are
divided into four columns, in which are
presented on one side the events and the
characteristics of the period during which
the writers flourished, and on the other side
the writers by which those periods are dis-
tinguished, with brief accounts of their
principal writings. The whole forms a con-
nected outline of the successive periods and
their literary features.

Mr. W. H. Babcock has made an effort,
in TJie Two Lost Centuries of Britain (J. B.
Lippincott Company), to restore in some
shape the history of that country during the
transition period of the Saxon conquest.
The study is an outgrowth, as he expresses it,
of an endeavor to see clearly in his own mind,
and for his own purposes, a part of the life
of the sixth-century Britain. In executing
his purpose, incidents and periods were found
linked to one another in such a way that
each illustrated and was illustrated by an-
other, and called up still others, the light
of which was needed ; so that the study
grew into a kind of history. The author
acknowledges that there may be questions
as to whether what he writes is history, be-
cause he admits and preserves what is prob-
able, but is not provable in a strict sense.

422

TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.

But if history be a setting forth of the past as
the past really was, he reasons, the aid of in-
ference and analogy can not be excluded.
An interesting picture is presented of times
of which not much is accurately known, for
the composing of which the authorities of
the chronicles and poems have been collated.

The chronology of historical events, origi-
nally compiled by the late George P. Putnam,
and forming a part of his cyclopaedia on The
World's Progress, has been revised and
brought down to the present time by Lynds
E. Jones, and is issued in separate form by
G. P. Putnam's Sons as Tabular Vieivs of Uni-
versal History. The tables are arranged in
parallel columns, the headings of which
vary according to the charcteristics of the
succeeding ages, but which usually include
a column for each of the leading nations of
the time, one for the world elsewhere, often
one devoted to ecclesiastical affairs, and al-
ways one headed Progress of Society. For
ancient Egyptian events, the chronology of
Brugsch and Duncker, which puts the erec-
tion of the Great Pyramid at about 3700 b. c,
is adopted as a compromise between extremes.
The earliest Chaldean date is 2234 b. c, for
the earliest astronomical observations ; and
the first Israelite date is about 1055 b. c,
for the accession of Saul.

An excellent Brief History of the Empire
State has been prepared for schools and
families by Welland Hendrick, and is pub-
lished by C. W. Bardeen, of Syracuse. The
author assumes as one of the reasons why
the history of New York deserves to be
studied, that the importance of the colony
in the making of America has been under-
rated. That it learned liberty under the
Dutch and held to it through a century of
English governors ; that, handicapped by
many disadvantages, it was among the first
of the colonies in the war for freedom, and
alone of the thirteen met every demand of
Congress ; and that with its canal it opened
the Northwest — entitle it, he thinks, to
prominent consideration at least in its own
schools. There are also reasons, of a gen-
eral character, for which he regards the
study of State history as profitable.

An Easy Method for Beginners in Latin
has been prepared by Prof. Albert Harhness,
and is published by the American Book Com-
pany, with the intention of introducing the

learner to such a practical and working
knowledge of the Latin language as will
enable him to read Caesar or Nepos with
some degree of pleasure. It approaches
the subject on the practical side, introduc-
ing the student in the first lesson, without a
word of grammar, to the complete Latin
sentences, with verb, subject, and object.

The Handbook of Latin Writing of Henry
Preble and Charles P. Parker grew, in the
first place, out of the necessities of class
work at Harvard College. The development
of Latin writing there and the fuller experi-
ence of the authors have suggested modifi-
cations, and a new revised edition has been
prepared and is published by Ginn & Co.
The essential principle of the first edition is
retained, but some of the exercises having
proved less useful than they were expected
to be, others have been substituted for
them. The authors, attributing ill-success in
Latin writing largely to the habit of trans-
lating the words rather than the thought,
have been at pains to insist on fastening
attention upon the thought, and have tried
to show the learner how to express in Latin
form the ideas which he has grasped from
the English words.

The American Book Company publishes
an edition of the Satires of Juvenal, edited,
after several years of careful study, and a
comparison of the views of the best critical
editors, and annotated, by Tliamas B. Lind-
say, of Boston University. Thirteen of the
sixteen satires are given, and from these
such lines are omitted as seemed likely to
offend a rational delicacy — a very proper
measure for a Juvenal that is to be read in
mixed classes. The notes are copious, and
the whole work is richly illustrated. The
author makes a comparison between Horace
and Juvenal as satirists, showing that Horace
wrote in a brilliant, hopeful age, and is
therefore lively and amusing ; while Juvenal,
writing in an age of decline, when vices
were rife, is contemptuous and bitter.

The short exposition of the Roman
method made by Harry Thurston Peck in
his handbook on Latin Pronunciation is
principally intended for those persons inter-
ested in the study of Latin who have ac-
cepted the Roman method without acquaint-
ing themselves with the arguments on which
it is maintained. It has now received the

LITERARY NOTICES.

423

approval of all Latinists of authority in
Europe and America, as giving substantially
the pronunciation employed by educated
Romans of the Augustan age, and has been
formally adopted at our leading universities.
After presenting the authorities upon which
it has been established, Prof. Peck con-
cludes that " it is not too much to claim that
the system of pronunciation upon which
scholars are now agreed differs less from
that of the Romans of the Augustan age
than does our modern pronunciation of Eng-
lish differ from that of Shakespeare and
his contemporaries." Published by Henry
Holt & Co. (sixty cents).

Much pains is taken in the Natural
Speller and Word Book (American Book Com-
pany) to teach, with the spelling of the
words, the proper use of them. The dicta-
tion exercises are intended to serve to teach
composition and punctuation in addition
to spelling. Homonyms are made to serve
for memory exercises as well as for spelling,
while by introducing the best thoughts of
the best authors they become really ele-
mentary lessons in literature. Synonyms
are introduced to teach discrimination in the
use of words, and lessons in etymology to
teach the meaning of the common stem in
words of like derivation. Important points
to be noted in pronunciation are indicated
by typographical devices.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Abbott, Charles C. Outings at Odd Times. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 282. $1.50.

Agriculture, United States Department of. North
American Fauna, No. 3. Washington: Government
Printing-Office. Pp. 136, with Plates and Maps.

American Chemical Society. Journal. Monthly.
September, 1S90. $5 a year.

Badt, Lieutenant F. B., and Carhart, Prof. H. S.
Derivation of Practical Electrical Units. Chicago :
Electrician Publishing Company. Pp. 56.

Ball, William Piatt. Are the Effects of Use and
Disuse inherited ? London and New York : Mac-
millan & Co. Pp. 156. $1.

Biblia. Monthly. Vol. Ill, No. 8. November,
1890. New York : B. Westermann & Co. Pp. 10.
$1 a year.

Blakiston, P., Son & Co., Philadelphia. The Phy-
sician's Visiting List for 1891.

Blanford, Henry F. India, Burmah, and Ceylon.
London and New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 191.
70 cents.

Blyth, A. Winter. A Manual of Public Health.
London and New York: Macmillan &Co. Pp. 653.
$5 25.

Bodington. Alice. Studies in Evolution and Bi-
ology. London : Eliot Stock. Pp. 220. 50 cents.

Brooklyn Ethical Association. Sociology; Pop-
ular Lectures and Discussions. Boston : James H.
West. Pp.403.

Brugiere, Sara Van Burcn. Good Living. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 580.

Business Men's Association of Niagara Falls.
The Water-power of the Falls of Niagara. Pp. 46,
with Plates.

Caverns, the, of Luray, Virginia. Valley Land
and Improvement Company. Pp. 48.

Census Bulletin. No. 6. Financial Condition of
Counties. Washington, D. C. : Census Office. Pp.
26, with Charts.

Cope. Rums. The Distribution of Wealth. Phil-
adelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. Pp.364. $2.

Davis, Gualterio G. Climas (Climates) de Villa
Formosa, Chubut, y Ciudad de San Juan, Argentine
Republic. Buenos Ayres. Pp. 596.

District of Columbia Public Schools. Teachers'
Manual of Manual Training. Washington. Pp.84,
and Plates.

Durham, William. Astronomy (Science in Plain
Language Series). Edinburgh : Adam and Charles
Black. Pp. 133. 50 cents.

Elderton, William A. Maps and Map-drawing.
London : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 130. 35 cents.

Ely, Talfourd. Manual of Archieology. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 278. $2.

Georgia Department of Agriculture. Crop Re-
port for October, 1890. Pp. 8.

Gribayedoff, Valerian. The French Invasion of
Ireland in '9S. New York : Charles P. Somerby.
Pp. 192.

Hale. E. E., D. D. Sermon on Strength. Bos-
ton : George U. Ellis. Pp. 11. 5 cents.

Hug, Lina, and Stead, Richard. Switzerland
(Story of the Nations Series). New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 430. $1.50.

International American Conference, Washington,
1890. Minutes. Washington, D C. : William E.
Cui'tis, Executive Office. Pp. 905.

Interstate Commerce Commission. Second An-
nual Report on the Statistics of Railways. Wash-
ington: Government Printing-Office. Pp. 566.

Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, Ames.
Bulletin No. 10. Pp. 160.

Iowa State University. Bulletin from the Labo-
ratories of Natural History. Iowa City. Pp. 98.

Jacobs, Joseph, Collector. English Fairy Tales.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 253.

Jastrow, Joseph. The Time Relations of Mental
Phenomena. New York: N. D. C.Hodges. Pp.
60.

Jones, Hon. John P. Shall the Republic do its
own Work? Speech in the United States Senate.
Washington, D. C. Pp. 155.

Martin, H. Newell, and Brooks, W. K., Editors.
Studies in the Biological Laboratory of Johns Hop-
kins University. Vol. IV, No. 7. Baltimore: N.
Murray. Pp. 514, with Plates. $1. $5 a volume.

Musick, Thomas H. The Genesis of Nature.
New York: John B. Alden. Pp. 377.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Colum-
bus. Bulletin, August, 1890. Strawberries and
Raspberries. Pp. 16.

Oliver, Charles A., M. D., Philadelphia. Obser-
vations on the Ocular Apparatus of the Imbecile,
Epileptic, and Insane. Pp. 5.

Osborne, Henry L., Hamline, Minn. Inverte-
brate Dissections. Pp. 36.

Porter, Charlotte, and Clarke, Helen A., Editors.
Poet Lore. Monthly. Vol. II, No. 11. Poet Lore
Co., Philadelphia. Pp. 64. 25 cents. $2.50 a year.

Prosser, Charles S. The Devonian and Silurian
Rocks of Western Central New York. Pp. 12.

Shepherd. Henry A. The Antiquities of the State
of Ohio. Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co. Pp. 139,
with Plates. $2.

Tuckerman, Alfred. Ph. D. Index to the Litera-
ture of Thermodynamics. Washington : Smithso-
nian Institution. Pp. 239.

Tuckerman, Frederick. On the Gustatory Or-

424

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pans of some Edentata. Pp. 5.— On the Gustatory
Organs of the Mammalia. Pp. 12.

University Extension Movement in England.
Report. Philadelphia : Society for the Extension
of University Teaching. Pp. 32.

White, Charles A. Geography and Physiography
of a Portion of Northwestern Colorado and Adjacent
1'arts of Utah and Wyoming. Washington : United
States Geological Survey. Pp. 38.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Intelligence in Plants. — Mr. T. D. Inger-
soll, of Erie, Pa., describes, in Garden and
Forest, a Madeira vine which seemed to ex-
hibit intelligence in its growth. When it
had become eighteen inches high it began,
from top-heaviness, to fall away from the
pot, which stood upon a table, toward the
floor. " This was done gradually, and ap-
parently with conscious care. It seemed to
feel at times that it was letting itself down
too fast, when it would stop with a jerk,
like a nodding child half asleep." When
near the floor it began describing ellipses
about three inches in diameter with its up-
turned extremity. When twenty - seven
inches long it would describe a crescent-
shaped loop seventeen inches long by six
inches broad in about two hours. As it
grew longer, its revolutions were accom-
plished with less regularity, " and at times
it drooped as if weary or discouraged in try-
ing to find something upon which it might
entwine itself." On one day the track of
the tip of the vine was traced and measured,
and found to be six feet nine inches in
length. Finally, a support was provided for
the plant, and it shortly afterward " began
growing again as if it had recovered from
what had been for six days a condition near
the point of death." Another vine, during
several days of cloudy weather, uncoiled it-
self from the stick and reached away toward
the light at an angle with the horizon of
some forty-five degrees. It was brought
back to its support several times and coiled
about the stick, but invariably left it during
the continuance of the cloudy weather. Then
bright weather came on, and it showed no
disposition to escape from the stick or stop
its twining growth. Attempts to make
plants twine in a direction contrary to their
natural one were firmly resisted. " All the
experiments seemed to show how much like
an animal was the plant in its sensitiveness,
not only to changes of light and tempera-

ture, but to harsh treatment. Whenever
restrained or forced, no matter how tender-
ly, out of its natural method of growth, all
progress was retarded and the health of the
vine disturbed to a marked degree. Plants
seem to be creatures of feeling, and the
similarity of movement and of apparent
purpose between them and the lower ani-
mals are used to strengthen their theory by
those who hold to the doctrine of the iden-
tity of life in the two kingdoms."

Modern Views of Consumption. — Two

things are now believed to be necessary for
the production of consumption : the tubercle
bacillus and a disordered state of the body,
such as to favor its growth — in other words,
seed and a fertile soil ; and if either is want-
ing, the disease is not produced. We Dever
know when we may take in the germs on our
food or in the air, hence we should see to it
that we do not give them a fertile soil. " It
is of primal consequence," says Dr. S. S.
Burt, in a paper recently published in the New
York Medical Record, " to elevate the tone
of the tissues and the fluids that bathe them
to a sanitary pitch, where they themselves
are the best of germicides. Bacteria do not
thrive upon such nourishment." While it is
almost certain that the disease itself is not
inherited, it is well established that a debased
quality of blood and tissue, in which the
germs of consumption find their proper food,
is transmitted from parent to child. If
both parents come from consumptive families
their children have little chance of escaping
the disease, but " a child with good blood for
a legacy, even from one parent," says Dr.
Burt, " has every reason to expect immunity
from the disease, if he is reared intelligently.
Such children must be properly clothed, very
carefully fed, and encouraged to spend the
greater part of their daily life in the open
air."

Palm-wine. — Palm-wine is largely used
as an alcoholic drink in India and other
parts of Asia, the islands of the Pacific
Ocean, Africa, and some parts of America.
Most trees of the palm tribe contain a sap
which is rich in supar and is readily con-
vertible into wine. This juice is collected
by making cuts in the spathe or under the
crown of leaves of the tree, and catching it

POPULAR MI SCULL ANY.

425

in a cocoanut shell, gourd, or other vessel.
The sugar is cane sugar, and is often pre-
pared for itself. The richness of the juice
is affected by the peculiarities of the species
and of the tree, and its fermentability by the
place of growth. The species used for wine
are the oil-palm on the West Coast of Africa,
the date-palm in northern Africa and India,
the fan-palm and toddy-palm in India, the
cocoa-palm in Ceylon and the islands of the
Pacific, and the gOmmutti-palm in the Indian
archipelago, the Moluccas, and the Philip-
pines.

The Indians of Northwest Canada.— Dr.

Boas, in the British Association Report on
the Northwestern Tribes of the Dominion of
Canada, describes the Indians of the Pacific
coast as being able-bodied and muscular, with
the upper limbs, owing to the strengthening
of the arms and chest by the constant use of
the paddle, generally better developed than
the lower ones. They have a keen sight, but
in old age frequently become blear-eyed.
Their mental capacity is high, as is proved
by the state of their culture. Whiteness of
skin and slenderness of limbs are considered
among the principal beauties of men and
women, and long, black hair of women. In
some of the tales red hair is described as a
peculiar beauty of women Red paint on the
face, tight-fitting bracelets and anklets of
copper, nose and ear ornaments of variegated
haliotis shells, and hair strewed with eagle-
down, add to the natural charms. The fact
that in honor of the arrival of friends the
house is swept and strewed with sand, and
that the people bathe at such occasions, shows
that cleanliness is appreciated. The current
expression is, that the house is so cleaned that
no bad smell remains to offend the guest. For
the same reason the Indian takes repeated
baths before praying, "that he may be of
agreeable smell to the deity." The Indian
is grave and self-composed in all his actions ;
and playing is considered undignified and
even bad. In the Tsimshian language the
term for play means to talk to no purpose ;
and doing anything to no purpose is con-
temptible to the Indian. He is rash in anger,
but docs not easily lose control over his ac-
tions. He sits down or lies down sullenly for
days without partaking of food, and when he
rises his first thought is, not how to take re-

venge, but to show that he is superior to his
adversary. Great pride and vanity, com-
bined with the most susceptible jealousy
characterize all actions of the Indian. He
watches that he may receive his proper share
of honor at festivals ; he can not endure to
be ridiculed for even. the slightest mistake-
he carefully guards all his actions, and looks
for due honor to be paid to him by friends,
strangers, and subordinates. To be strong
and able to sustain the pangs of hunger are
evidently considered worthy of praise by the
Indians ; but foremost of all is wealth. It is
considered the duty of every man to have
pity upon the poor and hungry. Women are
honored for their chastity and for being true
to their husbands ; children, for taking care
of their parents ; men, for skill and daring
in hunting and for bravery in war.

Manual Training and the Brain.— In the

discussion of Dr. Edward C. Kirk's paper
on the Manual-training Idea as a Factor in
Dental Education, in Philadelphia, Dr. J. L.
Eisenbrey said that " the benefit to be de-
rived from physical training means more
than hand skill ; it means the training of the
brain man, the mental man ; while you may
show the effect of manual training in physi-
cal work, the result upon the brain does not
come up until later on, lying back until the
time calls for it ; and you find that the men
who occupy a conspicuous place, the young
men in our profession, are the men who have
had that training. To lay the foundation of
a broad and complete education you need
physical training, whether you get it in the
city or country. I think that the country
training is the best, from the simple fact
that all over the whole land we find the
places of trust in our banking institutions,
the head places of our mechanical depart-
ments, and even in our schools of learning,
filled by men who have been imported from
the country, from the farm ; who have han-
dled the axe and the plow and the grubbing-
hoe, who laid open the ditches and made of
the swamps fruitful pastures. Physical train-
ing develops a good condition of physical
health, and that means a healthful condi-
tion of the brain man ; and, while it is a
little slower, there comes a time when this
healthful physical condition is shown in men-
tal strength."

426

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A Motherly Insect. — Among insects, as
a rule, parents do not trouble themselves
much about their little ones. They instinct-
ively deposit their eggs in spots where the
larva? issuing from them will find a well-
provided table, and then go away, leaving
the larvae to look out for themselves. Not
so, says M. Albert Larbaletrier, in La Na-
ture, with the earwigs. The female of this
insect lays her eggs in the spring in bunches
in a cool and dark place ; then she sits on
them, covering them in every way she can,
leaving them only when she goes for food.
If they get scattered she immediately finds
it out, bestirs herself, looks about, and
gathers them up, one by one, till she has
got them together again. They hatch out
during the first half of June. The larva?
are at first white, weak, imperfect in form,
and hardly able to move. If left to them-
selves they would certainly perish very
soon. The mother, however, does not leave
them any more than she did her eggs ; but
she takes care of them, brings them food
during their first days, and then guides them
to the plants in the neighborhood. The lit-
tle ones, too, as if aware of their weakness,
do not wander away from their mother, and
at the first sign of danger gather around
her as chickens around a hen. The mother
stays with the larva? through all their molt-
ings, till they are transformed into perfect
insects, when she is taken away from them
by death.

The Cherokee Theory of Disease. — The

Cherokee doctor, according to Mr. James
Mooney, in treating disease works to drive
out a ghost or a devil. According to the
Cherokee myth, disease was invented by the
animals in revenge for the injuries inflicted
upon them by the human race. The larger
animals saw themselves killed and eaten by
man, while the smaller animals, reptiles, and
insects were trampled upon and wantonly
tortured, until it seemed that their only hope
of safety lay in devising some way to check
the increase of mankind. The bears held
the first council, but were unable to fix upon
any plan of procedure, and dispersed with-
out accomplishing anything. Consequently,
the hunter never asks pardon of the bear
when he kills one. Next the deer assem-
bled, and, after much discussion, invented

rheumatism, but decreed at the same time
that if the hunter, driven by necessity to
kill a deer, should ask its pardon according
to a certain formula, he should not be in-
jured. Since then, every hunter who has
been initiated into the mysteries, asks par-
don of the slain deer. When this is neg-
lected, through ignorance or carelessness,
the " Little Deer," the chief of the deer
tribe, who can never die or be wounded,
tracks the hunter to his home by the blood-
drops on the ground, and puts the rheuma-
tism spirit into him. Sometimes the hunter,
on starting to return to his home, builds a
fire in the trail behind him to prevent pur-
suit by the Little Deer. Later on, councils
were held by other animals, birds, fishes,
reptiles, and insects, each one inventing
some new disease to inflict upon humanity,
down even to the grub-worm, who became
so elated at the bright prospect in view that
in his joy he sprang into the air, but fell
over backward and had to wriggle off on
his back, as the grub-worm does to this day.
When the plants, who were friendly to the
human race, heard what had been done by
the animals, they held a council, and each
plant agreed to furnish a remedy for some
corresponding disease when man should call
upon it for help. While the great majority
of diseases are thus caused by revengeful
animal spirits, some are also caused by
ghosts, witches, or violations of ceremonial
regulations.

Instinctive Movements of Children. —

M. Alfred Binet maintains, in the Revue
Philosophique, that the attempts of infants
to walk are instinctive, and not the result of
education. This seems to be indicated by
the more or less correlated movements which
an infant only three weeks old will keep up
if the soles of its feet are allowed to touch
lightly a suitable surface. M. Binet be-
lieves that the time at which a child learns
to walk depends, not on bodily conditions
only, but on its mental characteristics also.
He thinks he has established as a fact that
a child that can give its mind to placing its
steps, and whose attention is not easily dis-
tracted, learns to walk at an earlier age and
in a shorter time than more restless chil-
dren ; and that such children are character-
ized in later life by the important faculty of

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

427

close application to work. He remarks that
the restless movements of young infants are
almost always bilateral, though the two sides
may be affected either synchronously or al-
ternately. If an India-rubber ball connected
with a tracing apparatus be placed in each
hand of an intelligent child, and he be told
to squeeze with one hand only, the tracing
almost invariably shows that the ball had
also been squeezed, but with less force, by
the other hand. The " reaction time " — the
interval between the giving of a signal and
the performance of a prearranged move-
ment— was found to be double that in
healthy adults, and the duration of the
contraction three times as long. M. Binet's
observations indicate, against the conclusions
of Mill and Bain, that our ideas of space
are instinctive. A child three months old,
who, the author is certain, had never had a
fall, and was therefore without experience of
its discomforts, would lie contentedly across
a person's outstretched arms, if the hands
were placed in such a position as to prevent
its slipping down. If, however, the hands
and arms were depressed, so that the infant
would tend to slide down, it would show its
fear by at once screaming and struggling.

Philosophy of Some Assassinations. —

By the customs of some countries kings are
not permitted to die natural deaths, but
must be killed by their successors. An
attempt to explain this usage is made by
Mr. J. G. Fraser, in his Golden Bough. In
primitive thought kings are credited with
the possession of powers of the utmost im-
portance and value to their worshipers.
In Japan the existence of the globe and all
that is upon it was supposed to depend upon
the well-being of the Mikado. Yet kings or
man-gods were subject to the law of death
like ordinary mortals; and in the case of
death the soul was believed to be extracted
from the body by the wiles of a demon or
sorcerer, or else voluntarily to go away never
to return, and in either case to be lost, with
all its virtues and benefits, to the worship-
ers. But if the soul could be caught in the
act of escaping, and in full vigor, then it
might still be kept present with the people.
Hence the only way of security was to kill
the man-god in order to make sure of catch-
ing his soul ; and to kill him when in full

vigor, in order that the soul might be trans-
ferred with all its energies unimpaired to
the body of a suitable successor. ''The
people of Congo believed that if their pon-
tiff, the Chitome, were to die a natural
death, the world would perish, and the earth,
which he alone retained by his power and
merit, would be immediately annihilated.
Accordingly, when he fell ill and seemed
likely to die, the man who was destined to
be his successor entered the pontiff's house
with a rope or a club and strangled or
clubbed him to death. ... In the kingdom
of Unyoro, in central Africa, custom still
requires that, as soon as the king falls seri-
ously ill or begins to break down from age,
he shall be killed by his own wives ; for, ac-
cording to an old prophecy, the throne will
pass away from the dynasty in the event of
the king dying a natural death." There are
instances in which the king is allowed to
reign only for a definite term, fixed inde-
pendently of the signs of disease and decay,
and at the end of which he is either killed
by his successor or he immolates himself.
Formerly the reign of the king of Calicut
was thus limited to twelve years, after which
he was obliged to cut his throat in public.
Under a subsequent modification of the rule
a great feast was made at the end of the
appointed time, and, when this was over, any
guest who, after fighting his way through
the guards, succeeded in killing the king,
was allowed to reign in his stead. " So long
as the king could maintain his position by
the strong hand, it might be inferred that
his natural force was not abated ; whereas
his defeat and death at the hands of another
proved that his strength was beginning to
fail, and that it was time his divine life
should be lodged in a less dilapidated tab-
ernacle."

The Znngariaa Desert. — The desert re-
gion called Zungaria, which lies on the west-
ern borders of Mongolia, rises to a height of
about twenty-five hundred feet, but descends
from it at many points. The soil is chiefly
composed of the clay called loess, a mixture
of very fine sand and a gray or yellowish
calcareous earth. This argillaceous mass is
pierced, like a sponge, by numerous tubes or
pores, which are often lined with incrusta-
tions formed by herbaceous plants. The

428

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

winds and the rain shape these deposits into
abrupt, elevated, square-cut masses. This
property of forming a kind of vertical cliffs,
with the porous texture and the absence of
stratification, are characteristic of the loess,
as is also the presence of terrestrial or la-
custrine remains instead of sea-fossils. Be-
ing exceedingly fine in constitution and well
charged with certain salts, the loess is gen-
erally, when well irrigated, exceedingly fer-
tile. In all the tillable regions of central
Asia, including China, it plays the same part
as the " black earth " of Russia. The mount-
ains which form on the south the western
border of Zungaria are rich in minerals.
Gold is an important product of the region
of Khotan, where there are twenty-two
mines, some of them employing three or
four thousand workmen. This region has
long enjoyed the honor of being the only
known place where nephrite or jade was
found. The beds of that rare substance are
in the district of Karakach ; but the quarry-
ing for it has greatly fallen off since the
disturbances that occurred during the brief
reign of Yacoub Beg in Kashgar.

A Yonng Trader of the Solomon Islands.

— It is amusing, says Mr. Woodford, in his
Naturalist among the Head-hunters, to see
a mere child paddle alongside in a crazy
trough of a canoe, only just capable of sup-
porting its weight. " The water splashes
into the canoe at every stroke of the pad-
dle, and at intervals the small child kicks it
overboard with his foot — a novel kind of
baler. Three or four moldy-looking yams,
ostentatiously displayed, are rolling about
in the water at the bottom of the canoe.
The unsuspecting stranger takes pity on the
tender years and apparent anxiety of the
small native to trade, and gives him probably
four times the price for his rusty yams.
The child eagerly seizes the coveted stick
of tobacco, and immediately stows it for
safety through a hole in his ear, where at
least it will be in no danger of getting wet.
He next whisks aside a dirty-looking piece
of matting that has apparently got accident-
ally jammed in one end of the canoe, and
displays some more yams, of a slightly bet-
ter quality than the last. For the sake of
consistency you can not well offer him less
than you did before, and another stick of

tobacco changes hands and is transferred
to the other ear. You think now that he
must have finished, as there is no place in
the canoe to hide anything else, but with a
dexterous jerk that nearly upsets the canoe
he produces a single yam that he has been
sitting upon. How it managed to escape
notice before is a puzzle. For this he de-
mands a pipe, but is not satisfied with the
first or second that is shown him. No ; he
must have a piala tinoni, or have his yam
back. The piala tinoni is a pipe with a
man's face upon the bowl. But again the
young trader is particular; it must also
have a knob at the bottom, or he will have
none of it."

Popnlation of Cheese. — M. Adametz, of
Somthal, Switzerland, has been making a
census of the microscopic animalcules in
cheese. In the fresh cheese of Emmenthal
he finds from 90,000 to 140,000 microbes to
a gramme, the number increasing with time
— a cheese 71 days old had 800,000 to the
gramme. The population of mild cheese
(fromage mou) was still more dense. At
25 days of age it was 1,200,000; at 45
days, 200,000,000 microbes per gramme.
These figures apply to the middle of the
cheese, while the population is much more
dense toward the outside, where it rises to
from 3,600,000 to 5,600,000. At this rate,
the number of living beings in 360 grammes
of cheese is as great as the number of men
on the globe.

Green Seeds and Early Frnit. — Corre-
spondents of Garden and Forest remark upon
the evidence afforded by recent experiments
that seeds from immature fruit will give a
product requiring less than the usual time
to ripen, and that the earliness thus gained
can be increased by continuing the selection.
This has been observed, according to Dr. E.
Lewis Sturtevant, at the New York Experi-
ment Station, in the case of varieties of corn,
turnip, and cabbage. At Purdue University,
Indiana, a gain of from fifteen to twenty
days has been obtained by early selection-
Prof. Arthur, of Purdue University, has ob-
served further that the plant as well as the
fruit thus cidtivated tends to early ripeness,
and hence the period of fruitfulness, or the
time between the first and the last ripe fruit,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

429

is much shortened. With the increase in
the amount of fruit, according to Prof. Ar-
thur, there is also a corresponding decrease
in the size of the vegetative parts of the
plant — that is, the stems and foliage. A
tomato plant grown from green seed in the
fourth generation was found to bear three
and a fourth times as much fruit as top or
stems and leaves together, while a similar
plant from ripe seed had only one and an
eighth times as much fruit as tops. It fol-
lows that, while earliness may be considered
as a usual condition in all crops from unripe
seed, an increase in the amount of the crop
occurs only when the true fruit is the part
harvested, as in tomatoes and peas, and a
decrease in the amount of the crop occurs
when any part besides the fruit is harvested,
as in turnips and potatoes.

Imitative Coloring'of Animals and Plants.

— Among the later papers by Mr. Proctor in
" Knowledge " is a study of color-mimicry in
animals and flowers. It was suggested by ob-
serving a chameleon among the green leaves
of an ivy, where it was as green as they. A
fly of nearly similar color came along, and
was instantly caught by the animal's nimble
tongue. Afterward the chameleon settled
on one of the sticks supporting the ivy, " and
there it gradually assumed the same color,
so far harmonizing with the stick that he
seemed only an excrescence upon it, not a
live creature which a short time before had
been light green in color." This incident
suggests some other illustrations of various
forms in which color affects the development
of life. Consider, continues Mr. Proctor, the
striped tiger as an example of color in an
animal that lives by preying on others, and
the zebra as an example of color in an ani-
mal whose life depends on its not becoming
the prey of carnivorous animals. " We can
understand how, in certain regions, those
members of feline races who chanced to
have markings on their bodies which corre-
sponded in appearance with the stems of
trees, or with jungle reeds, and the like,
would be better able to remain concealed till
the animals which formed their prey came
within certain range of their spring, and so
would have the best chances of living " ; and
in like manner it is manifestly to the ad-
vantage of the zebra, when sleeping in the

shade of trees, "to have markings on his
body which from a distance would be con-
founded with the stems of trees and shrubs,
beneath which for a while his active limbs
were at rest. For so would he best escape
the attacks of animals of prey. It is note-
worthy that, when the zebra is stretched on
the ground, the stripes on his legs as well as
those on his body are vertical as seen from
a distance. The same is the case in the
tiger's stripes when the animal is coucbed
for a spring." Another topic for speculation
is the persistency of these imitative charac-
teristics, which often appear as sports in the
descendants of these animals ages after the
purpose of their adaptation has ceased to
exist. The author's attention was directed,
while he was writing, to a sandy-colored cat
" marked with stripes such as hundreds of
thousands of years ago were of value to its
remote ancestors in the struggle for life " ;
and a mule plowing in a field near his
house had rings around his legs precisely
corresponding to rings on the same parts in
the zebra. In the vegetable world, color
seems to be in all cases dependent on the
requirements of propagation. Thus, where
seeds are diffused by animals, as with the
berries, we find the fruits brightly colored, to
attract the attention of the animal distribu-
tors. It will be noticed that, when seeds are
distributed by the winds, bright colors are
not found in the fruit, even though the plant
be closely allied to species distributed by ani-
mals in which the bright colors are present.

Bristling with Fire. — Photographic pict-
ures of the smoke issuing from the mouth
of a cannon at the moment it is fired show
thin trails of fire about the circumference of
the smoke-cloud, which give its edge the ap-
pearance of a porcupine's back bristling with
quills. The trails are caused by the ignition
of cubes of the pebble-powder which have
been shot from the gun before the combus-
tion was completed. Prof. W. Mattieu Will-
iams has found, by examining the papers
of Count Rumford, that he made experi-
ments on the same subject, from which he
inferred that in the ordinary firing of gun-
powder in firearms the explosion must be
gradual. In using powder in grains and
cubes of sizes proportioned to the caliber of
their guns, modern artillerists are only car-

43°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

rying out the principles which Rumford ex-
pounded, lie foretold the danger of firing
Buch artillery as we now use with ordinary
small grain powder. Such powder would
explode completely before the shot could
fairly be set in motion, and would produce
bad effects on the gun. The modern cubes
burn on their surface and thereby start the
ball. They continue burning and evolving
more and more gas as the ball travels along
the tube, and, to be perfect, should just
complete their combustion as it leaves the
mouth of the gun. But this degree of per-
fection is not attained, and hence we have
the " porcupine-quills " appearance.

Horse-Sausages. — The best Bologna sau-
sages are made of chopped bacon and pea-
flour, and are flavored chiefly with garlic
and cloves. When the bacon is old, but
sound, says the Sanitarian, such sausages are
wholesome and highly nutritious, and are
especially useful to laborers, travelers, and
soldiers in camp, and others who have not
the means of cooking at hand. They rarely
spoil, but, being eaten uncooked, they may
sometimes introduce trichinae. The use of
horse-flesh is a recent innovation in sausage
manufacture, and is practiced in Italy and
Belgium, as well as in this country. These
horse-sausages are said to be of the Bo-
logna variety, and the makers justify them
from the wholesomeness of horse-flesh when
healthy. But the meat actually used is that
of animals worn out by work or made use-
less by disease — " fit for nothing else."

The Medoc Wines. — The Medoc district
of France, famous for its wines, consists of a
long strip of land, extending northerly from
Bordeaux and lying between the sea and the
river Gironde. The best vines are grown
on a surface of gravel-quartz and sand with
a clay subsoil. The vine most usually grown
is of a stunted variety, and seldom rises
more than two feet from the ground. They
first bear about five years after being planted,
and continue productive for one hundred or
even two hundred years. The grapes, when
taken to the press-house, are stripped from
the stalks and placed in large vats, some of
which have a capacity of 3,240 gallons
apiece. In these they are left to ferment for
a period of from a week to a fortnight.

after which the wine is drawn off into hogs-
heads and taken to cool in well-ventilated
stores. Here the casks are filled up at in-
tervals, and the drawings-off are attended to
at the proper time. Tendency to excessive
fermentation is checked by drawing the
wine off into casks impregnated with sul-
phur. The Medoc wines are classified into
several grades or growths, the qualities of
which are considerably capricious ; and the
quantity of wine produced at the several
vineyards is subject to great fluctuations.
Notwithstanding, however, the uncertainty
of the annual return, the Medoc district
is said to be of greater commercial value
to France than both the better known Cog-
nac and Champagne districts put together.

NOTES.

In respect to the use of the diamond
drill, or an instrument of corresponding
effectiveness, by the ancient Egyptians, Mr.
W. F. Durfee, having inquired through our
consul-general at Cairo, received from Mr.
W. Flinders Petrie the following list of
objects in which marks of such an instru-
ment may be seen : Base of tube-drill hole,
cut too deep in roughing out the statue,
between the feet of the diorite statue of
Chafra (Kofra), in the Boulak Museum ;
sides of two drill-holes, showing on the
inside of the sarcophagus at Gizeh ; the
marks are near the top, at the north end of
the east side, and on the west end ; saw-
cut too deep into the outside of that sar-
cophagus, on the north end, near the top at
the northeast edge ; saw-cut surface beneath
the sarcophagus in the second pyramid at
Gizeh ; drill-hole with core sticking in it, in
the granite lintel of the chamber leading
from the southwest corner of the great hall
of the granite temple of Gizeh, the fifth hole.
Mr. Petrie believes there are some small
drill-holes in the Hyksos head in black gran-
ite from Bubastis, in the Boulak Museum,
where the eye-sockets have been cut out.

The importance of taking care of the
first teeth is insisted on by Mr. Fisher, a
dentist of Dundee. While they are destined
to disappear in a short time and give place
to other teeth, they will cause pain and gen-
eral conditions of disease if they are un-
sound, the same as the permanent teeth do ;
and the latter can not escape being affected
by the disorders they occasion. It is not
safe to depend on extracting them if they
cause pain, for that enfeebles the chewing
power ; and, if many of them are removed,
the jaw does not develop properly, and the
second teeth are made liable to grow irregu-
larly.

NOTES.

43i

The respiration of insects has been the
subject of study by M. Contejean, who has
found that, contrary to what takes place in
vertebrates, the movement of inspiration is
passive and that of expiration active. The
air is driven from the body by a contractile
effort. Hence, when the insect is wounded,
the flow of blood occurs at each expiration.
The respiratory movement is not interrupted
by cutting off the head, nor by the absorp-
tion of curare, whch produces an immediate
cessation in man.

Dr. G. Meter thinks that he is able to
assume, from a comparison of the records of
a number of years, that the moon has an
influence in lowering the height of the ba-
rometer in the months from September to
January, at the time of full moon, and in
raising it during the first quarter. His
views are confirmed by the independent
studies of Captain Seemann, of the Deutsche
Seewarte. No effect has been perceived in
the other months.

The property marking bacteria and ba-
cilli of absorbing aniline and being killed
by it has been put to good use by two
German observers, Messrs. Stilling and
Wortmann. Having demonstrated that the
violet aniline dyes, without arsenic, were not
poisonous to rabbits and guinea-pigs, the
authors produced eye-disorders in those ani-
mals, and treated them successfully with
aniline. They then tried the human subject,
and cured a skin-ulcer on a scrofulous child,
by daily dropping a little aniline solution on
the sore. Similar good results were had
with bad cases of eye disease ; and it soon
appeared that many surgical cases were
open to treatment in this way, and that, in
general, wounds and sores developing suppu-
ration could be sterilized with aniline. It is
thought that cases of internal inflammation
may also be within reach of this treatment.

Pensions have been granted in the Eng-
lish civil list to Dr. Huggins, the widow of
the Rev. J. G. Wood, and the four unmar-
ried daughters of the late Rev. M. J. Berke-
ley.

Mr. G. W. Hambleton regards consump-
tion as depending on conditions that reduce
the breathing surface of the lungs below a
certain proportion to the rest of the body.
The conditions include sedentary overcrowd-
ing, want of exercise, defective seats, ill-
fitting clothes, and whatever may impair the
lungs or lead to undue compression of the
chest. Remedies should be sought in free
country life, well-ventilated rooms, suitable
chairs, and clothing free from constriction
and not too heavy The earliest physical
training should aim at the full development
of the thorax. Persons whose breathing
capacity does not measure up to the normal
should not engage in any occupation tending
to constrain the chest or to expose the lungs
to the inhalation of dust.

Prof. F. W. Oliver has published a pa-
per on the floral biology of the flower Epis-
cia maculata, a plant which, recently sent
over from British Guiana, first flowered at
Kew last summer. It is remarkable in that
the flowers are never open, but the front
lobe of the corolla is from the first folded
back, so as to close the mouth like a cork.
Nevertheless, all the arrangements are such
as are adapted for cross-fertilization by the
agency of some insect. The plant is unique
in being at once closed and yet requiring the
visit of an insect for its fertilization.

Advantage is to be taken of the height
of the Eiffel Tower to fix in it a manomet-
ric tube in which mercury can be poured
to form a column that will give a pressure
of four hundred atmospheres. M. Cailletet
hopes to be able to make use of this enor-
mous pressure in continuing his experiments
on the liquefaction of gases.

A deposit of floridite, or phosphate of
lime, described by Prof. E. T. Cox as found in
Florida, occurs in beds from a few feet to
thirty-seven or more feet deep at places, over
an area of 120 miles north and south, and
20 miles east and west, and consists of 80
per cent pure phosphate. The author be-
lieves that it is derived from the mineraliza-
tion of an ancient guano.

The crumpled and crushed form of the
human ear is accounted for by Prof. II. D.
Garrison as a result of the habit of lying on
the side of the head, which habit has been
induced by the increasing weight of the
brain. The question, says the author, in his
paper on the subject, read at the American
Association, had originally been whether the
animals through which it had been developed
would profit most by large brains or by per-
fect and symmetrical hearing apparatus, and
had been promptly decided by natural selec-
tion in favor of large brains.

The Biological Section of the American
Association has approved of a movement to
establish a biological station on the Gulf of
Mexico, for which subscriptions of $25,000
have been promised. The station will prob-
ably be located at Tarpon Springs, Fla.,
where there are fine opportunities for the
study of fresh and salt water, as well as of
land forms.

Dr. William Huggins has been chosen
to be President of the next year's meeting of
the British Association to be held in Cardiff,
Wales. The meeting of the Association in
1892 will be held in Edinburgh.

Prof. A. J. Cook, speaking of the Food
of Bees, remarks that the carbohydrates
are sufficient for the life of the insects, but
that they must have nitrogenous food to
support them during the process of repro-
duction. The former they derive from the
honey of plants, the latter from spores,
grain, fungi, and bee-bread.

432

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Concerning certain philological and eth-
nological discussions that are going on with
considerable warmth, Mr. John Evans said,
in his address in the British Association,
that it will be for the benefit of science for
speculations as to the origin and home of
the Aryan family to be rife ; but it will still
more effectually conduce to our eventual
knowledge of this most interesting question
if it be consistently borne in mind that they
are but speculations.

An important manufacture of butter from
cocoanut-milk is growing up in Germany.
Cocoanuts for the purpose are imported in
large numbers from India.

Recent ir.vestigations by Prof. Geddes,
of Edinburgh, have led him to reject the
commonly accepted views of the origin of
thorns. He has found that there is a
more or less developed general contrast
in vegetative habit between thornless and
thorny varieties. The thorny varieties or
species show a more diminishing vegetative-
ness than their thornless congeners ; in fact,
they frequently develop their thorns by the
actual death of their germ points.

The presidential address of Prof. T. E.
Thorpe, in the Chemical Section of the Brit-
ish Association, was largely devoted to the
vindication of the claims of Priestley to be
the discoverer of oxygen and of the non-ele-
mentary nature of water, against the attempt
of M. Berthelot, in his Revolution Chimique,
to appropriate a principal share in the dis-
coveries to Lavoisier.

A notion has been put forth by the ed-
itor of a leading dairy paper that neither
dipping out milk nor drawing it through a
faucetfrom large cans gives portions of
equal quality to every customer. The dip-
ping method was tested, at Cornell, on three
milk routes — the conclusion reached being
that by this practice " substantial justice is
done all the patrons so far as the amount of
fat apportioned to each is concerned."

OBITUARY NOTES.

Sir Richard F. Burton, who died at
Trieste, Austria, October 30th, was one of
the most venturesome travelers and explor-
ers and voluminous authors of mclem times.
He was born in Hertfordshire, England, in
1821. Having no taste for the university, he
entered the East India and afterward the
British diplomatic service, ne visited the
holy places of Arabia and won fame by the
book he wrote about them ; was the first
European to visit Herat ; discovered Lake
Tanganyika ; traveled to Salt Lake City and
California; spent throe or four years in
western Africa ; explored the Brazilian
highlands and Paraguay ; spent two vaca-
tions in " unexplored Syria " ; visited Ice-

land ; explored the land of Midian ; and ac-
companied Cameron to the Gold Coast. His
published works approach eighty volumes,
of which thirty-nine are accounts of travel
and exploration. Of these the Lake Region
of Equatorial Africa is one of the best
books on Africa. Burton also published
grammars of three Oriental languages, five
volumes of folk-lore, three books on fencing,
and translations of the Portuguese poet
Camoens, and of the Arabian Nights.

Mr. John Hancock, an English ornithol-
ogist, died at his home in Newcastle - on-
Tyne, October 11th, at the age of eighty-
nine years.

The death is announced of Dr. Wenzel
Leopold Gruber, Professor of Anatomy in
the University of St. Petersburg. He was
seventy-six years old.

Prof. Thorold Rogers, the eminent
English economist, has recently died at Ox-
ford. He was educated at King's College,
London, and at Oxford, and began life as a
clergyman of the Puseyite school. He after-
ward became a " coach " at Oxford, where
he wrote a hand-book on Education and a
pamphlet on the Law of Settlement. He
was made Professor of Political Economy
at Oxford in 1862, after which he devoted
himself mainly to economical subjects, and
entered Parliament in 1880. He published
two volumes of Historical Sketches; Cobden
and Modern Political Opinion ; Agriculture
and Prices in England (his most important
work) ; Six Centuries of Work and Labor ;
The Economical Interpretation of History ;
and the History of Holland in the Story of
the Nations series.

Mr. Robert BRorcn Smyth, of Victoria,
Australia, who died in August last, had an
important part in the scientific work of the
colonies. He was from 1855 to 1858 Di-
rector of Meteorological Observations for
the Colony of Victoria ; was for some years
member and Secretary of the Board of Sci-
ence ; honorary secretary and member of
the Board for the Protection of Aborigines ;
Director of the Geological Survey of the
Colony ; and author of many works and pa-
pers on geology, ethnology, and philology.

Captain JonN Page, of the Argentine
Navv, a summary of whose lecture on the
Gran Chaco and its rivers has been pub-
lished in the Monthly, died in June or July
while making an attempt to explore the
rilcomayo River at about one hundred and
fifty leagues from its mouth. The expedi-
tion reached the mouth of the river in the
small steamer General Paz in April last,
and Captain Pngc attempted the ascent
thence in a vessel built especially for the
service, drawing only eight inches of water ;
but even then the ascent was found im-
practicable, and the steamer could often be
kept afloat only by damming up the stream.

,K(,ft*i.i 3.:. • ..

•**•***+** 4 *•* *

JEAN CHARLES IIOUZEAU.

— o? Miw York —

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

FEBEUAEY, 1891.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE.

XI. FKOM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.

By ANDEEW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L. H. D.,

EX-PKESLDENT OF CORNELL UNIVEKSITY.

PART II.

IN the first part of this article we saw the steps by which the
sacred theory of human language had been developed ; how it
had been strengthened in every land until it seemed to bid defiance
forever to secular thought ; how it rested firmly upon the letter
of Scripture, upon the explicit declarations of leading fathers of
the Church, of the great doctors of the middle ages, of the most
eminent theological scholars down to the beginning of the eight-
eenth century, and was guarded by the decrees of popes, bishops,
Catholic and Protestant, kings, and the whole hierarchy of au-
thorities in church and state.

And yet, as we now look back, it is easy to see that, even in
that hour of its triumph, it was doomed.

The reason why the Church has so fully accepted the conclu-
sions of science which have destroyed the sacred theory is in-
structive. The study of languages has been, since the revival of
learning and the Reformation, a favorite study with the whole
Western Church, Catholic and Protestant. The importance of
understanding the ancient tongues in which our sacred books are
preserved first stimulated the study, and church missionary efforts
have contributed nobly to supply the material for extending it,
and for the application of that comparative method which, in phi-
lology as in other sciences, has been so fruitful of good. Hence it
is that so many leading theologians have come to know at first
hand the truths given by this science, and to recognize its funda-
mental principles. What the conclusions which they, as well as

VOL. XXXVIII. — 30

434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

all other scholars in this field, have been absolutely forced to
accept, I shall endeavor to show in this chapter.

The beginnings of a true and scientific theory seemed weak
indeed, but they were none the less effective. As far back as 1661,
Hottinger, professor at Heidelberg, came into the chorus of theo-
logians like a great bell in a chime ; but like a bell whose opening
tone is harmonious, and whose closing tone is discordant. For
while, at the beginning, Hottinger cites a formidable list of great
scholars who had held the sacred theory of the origin of language,
and here was in harmony with the chorus, he goes on to note a
closer resemblance to the Hebrew in some languages than in
others, and explains this by declaring that the confusion of
tongues was of two sorts, total and partial : the Arabic and Chal-
daic he thinks underwent only a partial confusion ; the Egyptian,
Persian, and all the European languages a total one : here comes
in the discord ; here gently sounds forth from the great chorus a
new note — that idea of grouping and classifying languages which
at a later day was to destroy utterly the whole sacred theory.

But the great chorus resounded on, as we have seen, from
shore to shore, until the closing years of the seventeenth century ;
then arose men who silenced it forever. The first leader who
threw the weight of his knowledge, thought, and authority against
it was Leibnitz, the rival of Isaac Newton. He declared, " There
is as much reason for supposing Hebrew to have been the primi-
tive language of mankind as there is for adopting the view of
Goropius, who published a work at Antwerp in 1580 to prove that
Dutch was the language spoken in paradise." In a letter to Ten-
zel, Leibnitz wrote, " To call Hebrew the primitive language is
like calling the branches of a tree primitive branches, or like
imagining that in some country hewn trunks could grow instead
of trees." He also asked very cogently, " If the primeval language
existed even up to the time of Moses, whence came the Egyptian
language ? "

But the efficiency of Leibnitz did not end with mere sugges-
tions. He applied the inductive method to linguistic study, and
made great efforts to have vocabularies collected and grammars
drawn up wherever missionaries and travelers came in contact
with new races. He thus succeeded in giving the initial impulse
to at least three notable collections — that of Catharine the Great,
of Russia ; that of the Spanish Jesuit, Lorenzo Hervas ; and, at a
later period, the Mithridates of Adelung. The interest of the
Empress Catharine in her collection of linguistic materials was
very strong, and her influence is seen in the fact that Washing-
ton, to please her, requested governors and generals to send in
materials from various parts of the United States and Territories.
The work of Hervas extended over the period from 1735 to 1809 ;

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 435

a missionary in America, he enlarged his catalogue of languages
to six volumes, which were published in Spanish in 1800. His
work contained specimens of more than three hundred languages,
and the grammars of more than forty. It should be said to his
credit that Hervas dared point out with especial care the limits of
the Semitic family of languages, and declared, as a result of his
enormous studies, that the various languages of mankind could
not have been derived from the Hebrew.

While such work was done in Catholic Spain, Protestant Ger-
many was honored by the work of Adelung. It contained the
Lord's Prayer in nearly five hundred languages and dialects, and
the comparison of these early in the nineteenth century helped to
end the sway of Scriptural philology.

But the period which intervened between Leibnitz and this
modern development was a period of philological chaos. It be-
gan mainly with the doubts which Leibnitz had forced upon
Europe, and the end of it only began with the study of Sanskrit
in the latter half of the eighteenth century, followed by the com-
parisons made by means of the collections of Catharine, Hervas,
and Adelung at the beginning of the nineteenth. The old theory
that Hebrew was the original language had fallen into disrepute,
but nothing had taken its place as a finality. Great authorities,
like Buddeus, were still cited in behalf of the narrower belief, but
everywhere researches, unorganized though they were, tended to
destroy it. The story of Babel continued indeed throughout the
whole eighteenth century to hinder or warp scientific investiga-
tion, and a very curious illustration of this fact is seen in the
book of Lord Nelme on The Origin and Elements of Language.
He declares that the incident of the confusion was the cleaving
of America from Europe, and regards the most terrible chapters
in the Book of Job as intended for a description of the flood,
which in all probability he had from Noah himself. Again, Row-
land Jones tried to prove that Celtic was the primitive tongue,
and that it passed through Babel unharmed. Still another effort
was made by a Breton to prove that all languages took their rise
in the language of Brittany. All was chaos. The old theory had
gone to pieces, but no new theory had yet been formed. There
was much wrangling, but little earnest controversy. Here and
there theologians were calling out frantically, beseeching the
Church to save the old doctrince as " essential to the truth of
Scripture " ; here and there other divines began to foreshadow the
inevitable compromise which has always been thus vainly at-
tempted in the history of every science. But it was soon seen by
thinking men that no concessions as yet spoken of by theologians
were sufficient. In the latter half of the century came the bloom
period of the French philosophers and encyclopedists, of the Eng-

436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lisli deists, of such German thinkers as Herder, Kant, and Les-
sing ; and while here and there some writer on the theological side,
like Perrin, amused thinking men by his flounderings in this
great chaos, all remained without form and void.*

Nothing reveals to us better the darkness and duration of this
chaos in England than a comparison of the articles on Philology-
given in the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The first edition of that great mirror of British thought was
printed in 1771 ; chaos reigns through the whole of its article on
this subject. The writer divides languages into two classes, seems
to indicate a mixture of divine inspiration with human inven-
tion, and finally escapes under a cloud. In the second edition,
published in 1780, some progress has been made. The author
states the sacred theory, and declares : " There are some divines
who pretend that Hebrew was the language in which God talked
with Adam in paradise, and that the saints will make use of it
in heaven in those praises which they will eternally offer to the
Almighty. These doctors seem to be as certain in regard to what
is past as to what is to come."

This was evidently considered dangerous. It clearly outran
the good sound belief of the average English Philistine ; and ac-
cordingly we find in the third edition, published seventeen years
later, a new article, in which, while the author gives, as he says,
" the best arguments on both sides/' he takes pains to adhere to a
fairly orthodox theory.

This soothing dose is repeated in the fourth and fifth editions.
In 1824 appeared a supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth edi-
tions, and this deals with the facts so far as they are known.
There is scarcely a reference to the biblical theory throughout
the article ; and the author refers rather contemptuously to it.
Three years later comes another supplement. While this Chaos
was fast becoming Cosmos in Germany, such a change had evi-
dently not gone far in England, for from this edition of the En-
cyclopaedia the subject of philology is omitted. In fact, Babel
and Philology made nearly as much trouble to encyclopedists as

* For Hottinger, see the preface to his Etymologicuni Oricntale, Frankfort, 1661. For
Leibnitz, Catharine the Great, Hervas, and Adelung, see Max Miiller, as above, from whom
I have quoted very fully. See also Benfey, Geschiehte der Sprachwissenschaft, etc., p. 269.
Benfey declares that the Catalogue of Hervas is even now a mine for the philologist. For
the first two citations from Leibnitz, as well as for a statement of his importance in the
history of languages, see Max Miiller as above, pp. 135, 136. For the third quotation,
Leibnitz, Opera, Geneva, 1768, vi, Part. II, 232. For Nelme, see his Origin and Elements
of Language, London, 1772, pp. 85-100. For Rowland Jones, see The Origin of Language
and Nations, London, 1764, and preface. For the Origin of Languages in Brittany, see Le
Brigaut, Paris, 1787. For Herder and Lessing, see Canon Farrar's Treatise ; on Lessing,
see Sayce, as above. As to Perrin, see his C3say Sur l'Origine et l'Antiquit6 des Langues,
London, 1767.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 437

Noah's Deluge and Geology. Just as in the latter case they had
been obliged to stave off a presentation of scientific truth, by the
words " For Deluge, see Flood," and " For Flood, see Noah/' so in
the former they were obliged to take various provisional meas-
ures— some of them comical. In 1842 came the seventh edition.
In this the first part of the old article on philology which ap-
peared in the third, fourth, and fifth editions was printed, but the
supernatural part was mainly cut out. Yet we find a curious
evidence of the continued reign of chaos in a foot-note inserted
by the publishers, disavowing any departure from orthodox views.
In 1859 appeared the eighth edition. This abandoned the old
article entirely, and in its place was given a history of philology
free from admixture of scriptural doctrines ; and, finally, in the
year 1885 appeared the ninth edition, in which Professors Whitney
of Yale and Sievers of Tubingen give admirably and in short
compass what is known of philology, throwing the sacred theory
overboard entirely.

Such was that chaos of thought into which the discovery of
Sanskrit suddenly threw its great light. Well does one of the
foremost modern philologists say that this " was the electric spark
which caused the floating elements to crystallize into regular
forms." Among the first to bring the knowledge of Sanskrit to
Europe were the Jesuit missionaries, whose services to the mate-
rial basis of the science of comparative philology had already
been so great, and the importance of the new discovery was soon
seen among all scholars, whether orthodox or scientific. In 1784
the Asiatic Society at Calcutta was founded, and with it began
Sanskrit philology. Scholars strong and earnest, like Sir William
Jones, Carey, Wilkins, Foster, Colebrooke, did noble work in the
new field. Light had come into the chaos, and a great new orb of
science was steadily evolved.

The little group of scholars who gave themselves up to these
researches, though almost without exception reverent Christians,
were recognized at once by theologians as mortal foes of the whole
old sacred theory of language. Not only was the dogma of the
origin of languages at the Tower of Babel swept out of sight by
the new discovery, but the still more vital dogma of the divine
origin of languages, never before endangered, was felt to be in
peril, since the evidence became overwhelming that so large a
number of them had been produced by a process of natural
growth.

Heroic efforts were therefore made, in the supposed interest of
Scripture, to discredit the new learning. Even such a man as
Dugald Stewart declared that the discovery of Sanskrit was alto-
gether fraudulent, and endeavored to prove that the Brahmans
had made it up from the vocabulary and grammar of Greek and

438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Latin. Others exercised their ingenuity in picking the new dis-
covery to pieces, and still others attributed it all to th^ machina-
tions of Satan.

On the other hand, the more thoughtful men in the Church
endeavored to save something from the wreck of the old system
by a compromise. They attempted to prove that Hebrew is at
least a cognate tongue with the original speech of mankind, if not
the original speech itself ; but here they were confronted by the
authority whom they dreaded most, the great Christian scholar,
Sir William Jones himself. His words were : " I can only declare
my belief that the language of Noah is irretrievably lost. After
diligent search I can not find a single word used in common by
the Arabian, Indian, and Tartar families, before the intermixture
of dialects occasioned by the Mohammedan conquests."

So, too, in Germany came full acknowledgment of the new
truth, and from a man won over to the Roman Catholic Church,
Frederick Schlegel. He accepted the discoveries in the old lan-
guage and literature of India as final : he saw the significance of
these discoveries as regards philology, and grouped the languages
of India, Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany under the name
afterward so universally accepted — Indo-Germanic.

It now began to be felt more and more, even among the most
devoted churchmen, that the old theological dogmas regarding
the origin of language, as held " always, everywhere, and by all,"
were wrong, and that Lucretius and sturdy old St. Gregory of
ISTyssa were right.

But this was not the only wreck. During ages the great men
in the Church had been calling upon the world to wonder over the
amazing exploit of Adam in naming the animals which Jehovah
had brought before him, and to accept the history of language in
the light of this exploit. The early fathers, the mediaeval doc-
tors, the great divines of the Reformation period, Catholic and
Protestant, had united in this universal chorus. Clement of
Alexandria declared Adam's naming of the animals proof of a
prophetic gift. St. John Chrysostom insisted that it was an evi-
dence of consummate intelligence. Eusebius held that the phrase
" that was the name thereof " implied that each name embodied
the real character and description of the animal concerned.

This view was echoed by a multitude of divines in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. Typical among these was the
great Dr. South, who, in his sermon on The State of Man before
the Fall, declared that " Adam came into the world a philosopher,
which sufficiently appears by his writing the nature of things
upon their names."

In the chorus of modern English divines there appeared one of
eminence who declared against this theory : sturdy old Dr. Shuck-

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 439

ford, chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty George II, in the pref-
ace to his work on The Creation and Fall of Man, pronounced the
whole theory "romantic and irrational." He goes on to say:
" The original of our speaking was from God ; not that God put
into Adam's mouth the very sounds which he designed he should
use as the names of things ; but God made Adam with the powers
of a man ; he had the use of an understanding to form notions in
his mind of the things about him, and he had the power to utter
sounds which should be to himself the names of things according
as he might think fit to call them/'

This echo of Gregory of Nyssa was for many years of little
avail. Historians of philosophy still began with Adam, because
only a philosopher could have named all created things. There
was, indeed, one difficulty which had much troubled some theo-
logians ; this was, that fishes were not specially mentioned among
the animals brought by Jehovah before Adam for naming. To
meet this difficulty there was much argument, and some theo-
logians laid stress on the difficulty of bringing fishes from the
sea to the garden of Eden to receive their names ; but naturally
other theologians replied to this that the almighty power which
created the fishes could have easily brought them into the garden,
one by one, even from the uttermost parts of the sea. This point,
therefore, seems to have been left in abeyance.*

It had continued, then, the universal belief in the Church that
the names of all created things, except possibly fishes, were given
by Adam and in Hebrew ; but all this theory was whelmed in
ruin when it was found that there were other and, indeed, earlier
names for the same animals than those in the Hebrew language ;
and especially was this enforced on sincere and thinking men when
the Egyptian discoveries began to reveal the pictures of animals
with their names in hieroglyphics at a period earlier than that
agreed on by all the sacred chronologists as the date of the creation.

Still another part of the sacred theory now received its death-
blow. Closely allied with the question of the origin of language
was the origin of letters. The earlier writers had held that let-

* For the danger of " the little system of the history of the world," see Sayee, as above.
On Dugald Stewart's contention, see Max Miiller, Lectures on Language, pp. 167, 168.
For Sir William Jones, see his Works, London, 1807, Part III, p. 199. For Schlegel, see
Max Miiller, as above. For an enormous list of great theologians from the fathers down,
who dwelt on the divine inspiration and wonderful gifts of Adam on this subject, see
Canon Farrar, Language and Languages. The citation from Clement of Alexandria is
Strom, i, p. 335. See also Chrysostom, Ilom. XIV in Gcnesin. Also, Eusebius, Preep.
Evang. XI, p. 6. For the two quotations above given from Shuckford, see The Creation
and Fall of Man, London, 1*763, preface, p. Ixxxiii ; also his Sacred and Profane History
of the World, 1753; revised edition by Wheeler, London, 185S. For the argument re-
garding the difficulty of bringing the fishes to be named into the garden of Eden, 6ee
Masscy, Origin and Progress of Letters, London, 1763, pp. 14-19.

440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ters were also a divine gift given to Adam ; "but as we go on in
the eighteenth century we find theological opinion inclining to
the belief that this gift was reserved for Moses. This, as we
have seen, was the view of St. John Chrysostom ; and an eminent
English divine early in the eighteenth century, John Johnson,
Vicar of Kent, echoed it in the declaration concerning the alphabet,
that " Moses first learned it from God by means of the lettering
on the tables of the law." But here a difficulty arose : the biblical
statement that God commanded Moses to " write in a book as de-
creed concerning Amalek " before he went up into Sinai. With
this the good vicar grapples manfully. He supposes that God had
previously concealed the tables of stone in Mount Horeb, and that
Moses, " when he kept Jethro's sheep thereabout, had free access
to these tables, and perused them at discretion, though he was not
permitted to carry them down with him." Our author then asks
for what other reason could God have kept Moses up in the
mountain forty days at a time, except to teach him to write ; and
says, "It seems highly probable that the angel gave him the
alphabet of the Hebrew, or in some other way unknown to us be-
came his guide."

But this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the other
parts of the sacred theory. Studies in Comparative Philology
based upon researches in India, began to be re-enforced by facts
regarding the inscriptions in Egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions
of Assyria, the legends of Chaldea, and the folk-lore of China,
where it was found in their sacred books that the animals were
named by Fohi, and with such wisdom and insight that every
name disclosed the nature of the corresponding animal.

But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were
still made to support it. In 1788 James Beattie, in all the glory
of his Oxford doctorate and royal pension, made a tremendous
onslaught, declaring the new system of philology to be " degrad-
ing to our nature." He says that the theory of the natural devel-
opment of language is simply due to the beauty of Lucretius'
poetry. But his main weapon is ridicule, and in this he shows
himself a master. He tells the world, " The following paraphrase
has nothing of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems to
have all the elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves " :

" When men out of the earth of old
A dumh and beastly vermin crawled ;
For acorns, first, and holes of shelter,
They tooth and nail, and helter skelter,
Fought fiot to fist ; then with a club
Each learned his brother brute to drub ;
Till, more experienced grown, these cattle
Forged fit accoutrements for battle.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 44.1

At last (Lucretius says and Creech)
They set their wits to work on speech :
And that their thoughts might all have marks
To make them known, these learned clerks
Left off the trade of cracking crowns,
And manufactured verbs and nouns."

But a far more powerful theologian entered the field in Eng-
land to save the sacred theory of language — Dr. Adam Clarke.
He was no less severe against Philology than against Geology. In
1804, as President of the Manchester Philological Society, he deliv-
ered an address in which he declared that, while men of all sects
were eligible to membership, " he who rejects the establishment of
what we believe to be a divine revelation, he who would disturb
the peace of the quiet, and by doubtful disputations unhinge the
minds of the simple and unreflecting, and endeavor to turn the
unwary out of the way of peace and rational subordination, can
have no seat among the members of this institution." The first
sentence in this declaration gives food for reflection, for it is the
same confusion of two ideas which has been at the root of so
much interference of theology with science for the last two thou-
sand years. Adam Clarke speaks of those " who reject the estab-
lishment of what ' we believe ' to be a divine revelation." Thus
comes in that customary begging of the question — the substitu-
tion as the real significance of Scripture of " what we believe " for
what is.

The intended result, too, of this ecclesiastical sentence was
simple enough. It was, that great men, like Sir William Jones,
Colebrooke, and their compeers, must not be heard in the Man-
chester Philological Society in discussion with Dr. Adam Clarke
on questions regarding Sanskrit and other matters upon which they
knew all that was then known, and Dr. Clarke knew nothing.

But even Clarke was forced to yield to the scientific current.
Thirty years later, in his Commentary on the Old Testament, he
pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key. He
says : " Mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the He-
brew. . . . The proper names and other significations given in the
Scripture seem incontestable evidence that the Hebrew language
was the original language of the earth, the language in which
God spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation of his will
to Moses and the prophets." Here are signs that this great cham-
pion is growing weaker in the faith ; in the citations made it will
be observed he no longer says " is," but " seems " ; and finally we
have him saying, " What the first language was is almost useless
to inquire, as it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory infor-
mation on this point."

In France, during the first half of the nineteenth century, yet

442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

more heavy artillery was wheeled into place, in order to make a
last desperate defense of the sacred theory. The leaders in this
effort were the three great Ultramontanes, De Maistre, De Bo-
nald, and Lammenais. Condillac's contention that " languages
were gradually and insensibly acquired, and that every man had
his share of the general result," they attacked with reasoning
based upon premises laid down in the Book of Genesis. De
Maistre especially excels in ridiculing the philosophic or scientific
theory. Lammenais, who afterward became so vexatious a thorn
in the side of the Church, insisted, at this earlier period, that
" man can no more think without words than see without light."
And then, by that sort of mystical play upon words so well
known in the higher ranges of theologic reasoning, he clinches
his argument by saying, " The Word is truly and in every sense
'the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world.' "

But even such leaders as these could not stay the progress of
thought. While they seemed to be carrying everything before
them in France, researches in philology made at such centers of
thought as the Sorbonne and the College of France were undert
mining the last great fortress. Curious indeed is it to find tha-
the Sorbonne, the stronghold of theology through so many cent-
uries, was now made in the nineteenth century the arsenal and
stronghold of the new ideas. But the most striking result of
the new tendency in France was seen when the greatest of the
three champions, Lammenais himself, though offered the highest
church preferment, and even a cardinal's hat, braved the papal
anathema, and went over to the scientific side.*

In Germany philological science took so strong a hold that its
positions were soon recognized as impregnable. Leaders like the
Schlegels, William von Humboldt, and, above all, Franz Bopp
and Jacob Grimm, gave such additional force to scientific truth
that it could no longer be withstood. To say nothing of other
conquests, the demonstration of that great law in philology which
bears Grimm's name brought home to all thinking men the evi-

* For Johnson'8 work, showing how Moses learned the alphabet, see the Collection of
Discourses by Rev. John Johnson, A. M., Vicar of Kent, London, 1728, p. 42, and the
preface. For Beattie, see his Theory of Language, London, 1788, p. 98 ; also pp. 100, 101,
For Adam Clarke, see, for the speech cited, his Miscellaneous Works, London, 1837 ; for
the passage from his Commentary, see the London edition of 1836, vol. i, p. 93 ; for the other
passage, see Introduction to Bibliographical Miscellany, quoted in article, Origin of Lan-
guage and Alphabetical Characters, in Methodist Magazine, vol. xv, p. 214. For De Bonald^
see his Recherches Philosophiques, Part III, chap, ii, Dc l'Origine du Langage, in (Euvres
Completes, Paris, 1859, pp. 64-78, passim. For Joseph De Maistre, see his (Euvres, Brux-
elles, 1852, vol. i, Les Soirees de Saint Petersbourg, dcuxieme entretien, passim. For
Lammenais, see his (Euvres Completes, Paris, 1836-'37, tome ii, 78-81, chap, xv of Essai
sur I'lndifference en Matiere de Religion.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 443

dence that the evolution of language has not been determined by
the philosophic utterances of Adam in naming the animals which
Jehovah brought before him, but in obedience to natural law.

True, a few devoted theologians showed themselves willing to
lead a forlorn hope ; and perhaps the most forlorn of all was that
of 1840, led by Dr. Gottlieb Christian Kayser, Professor of Theol-
ogy at the Protestant University of Erlangen. He did not, indeed,
dare put in the old claim that Hebrew is identical with the primi-
tive tongue, but he insists that it is nearer it than any other. He
relinquishes the two former theological strongholds — first, the
idea that language was taught by the Almighty to Adam, and,
next, that the alphabet was thus taught to Moses — and falls back
on the position that all tongues are thus derived from Noah, giv-
ing as an example the language of the Caribbees, and insisting
that it was evidently so derived. What chance similarity in
words between Hebrew and the Caribbee tongue he had in mind
is past finding out. He comes out strongly in defense of the
biblical account of the Tower of Babel, and insists that by the
" symbolical expression ' God said, Let us go down/ a further nat-
ural phenomenon is intimated, to wit, the cleaving of the earth,
whereby the return of the dispersed became impossible — that is
to say, through a new or not universal flood, a partial inundation
and temporary violent separation of great continents until the
time of the rediscovery." By these words the learned doctor
means nothing less than the separation of Europe from America.

But while at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory
of the origin and development of language was upon the conti-
nent considered as settled, and a well-ordered science had there
emerged from the old chaos, Great Britain still held back, in
spite of the fact that the most important contributors to the
science were of British origin. Leaders in every English church
and sect vied with each other, either in denouncing the encroach-
ments of the science of language or in explaining it away.

But a new epoch had come, and in a way least expected.
Perhaps the most notable effort in bringing it in was made by
Dr. Wiseman, afterward Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.
His is one of the best examples of a method which has been used
with considerable effect during the latest stages in nearly all the
controversies between theology and science. It consists in stat-
ing, with much apparent fairness, the conclusions of the scientific
authorities, and then in making the astounding assertion that the
Church has always accepted them and accepts them now as " addi-
tional proofs of the truth of Scripture " A little juggling with
words, a little amalgamation of texts, a little judicious suppres-
sion, a little imaginative deduction, a little unctuous phrasing,
and the thing is done. One great service this eminent Catholic

444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

champion undoubtedly rendered : by this acknowledgment so
widely spread in his published lectures, he made it impossible for
Catholics or Protestants longer to resist the main conclusions of
science. Henceforward we only have efforts to save theological
appearances, and these only by men whose zeal outran their dis-
cretion.

On both sides of the Atlantic, down to a recent period, we see
these efforts, but we see no less clearly that they are mutually
destructive. Yet out of this chaos among English-speaking
peoples the new science began to develop steadily and rapidly.
Attempts did indeed continue here and there to save the old
theory. Even as late as 1859 we hear the eminent Presbyterian
divine, Dr. John Cumming, from his pulpit in London, speaking
of Hebrew as " that magnificent tongue — that mother-tongue,
from which all others are but distant and debilitated progenies."

But the honor of producing in the nineteenth century the
most absurd known attempt to prove Hebrew the primitive
tongue belongs to the youngest of the continents, Australia.
In the year 1857 was printed at Melbourne The Triumph of
Truth, or a Popular Lecture on the Origin of Languages, by B.
Atkinson, M. R. C. P. L. — whatever that may mean. In this work,
starting with the assertion that " the Hebrew was the primary
stock whence all languages were derived," the author states that
Sanskrit is " a dialect of the Hebrew," and declares that " the
manuscripts found with mummies agree precisely with the Chi-
nese version of the Psalms of David." It all sounds like Alice in
Wonderland. Curiously enough, in the latter part of his book,
evidently thinking that his views would not give him authority
among fastidious philologists, he says, " A great deal of our con-
sent to the foregoing statements arises in our belief in the divine
inspiration of the Mosaic account of the creation of the world
and of our first parents in the garden of Eden." A yet more
interesting light is thrown upon the author's view of truth and
its promulgation by his dedication ; he says that, "being persuaded
that literary men ought to be fostered by the hand of power," he
dedicates his treatise "to his Excellency Sir H. Barkly," who was
at the time Governor of Victoria.

Still another curious survival is seen in a work which ap-
peared as late as 1885, at Edinburgh, by "William Galloway,
M. A., Ph. D., M. D. The author thinks that he has produced
abundant evidence to prove that " Jehovah, the Second Person of
the Godhead, wrote the first chapter of Genesis on a stone pillar ;
and that this is the manner by which he first revealed it to
Adam ; and thus Adam was taught not only to speak but to read
and write by Jehovah, the Divine Son ; and that the first lesson
he got was from the first chapter of Genesis." He goes on to say :

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 445

" Jehovah wrote these first two documents ; the first containing
the history of the Creation, and the second the revelation of
man's redemption, . . . for Adam's and Eve's instruction ; and it
is evident that he wrote them in the Hebrew tongue, because
that was the language of Adam and Eve." But this was only a
flower out of season.

And finally in these latter days Mr. Gladstone has touched the
subject. With that well-known facility in believing anything he
wishes to believe, which he once showed in his connection of Nep-
tune's trident with the doctrine of the Trinity, he floats airily
over all the impossibilities of the original Babel legend and all
the conquests of science, makes an assertion regarding the results
of philology which no philologist of any standing would admit,
and then escapes in a cloud of rhetoric after his well-known
fashion. This, too, must be set down simply as a survival ; in the
British Isles as elsewhere the truth has been established. Such
men as Max Muller and Sayce in England ; Steinthal, Schleicher,
Weber, Karl Abel, and a host of others in Germany ; Ascoli and
De Gubernatis in Italy; and Whitney, with the scholars inspired
by him, in America, have carried the new science to a complete
triumph. The sons of Yale University may well be proud of the
fact that this old Puritan foundation was made the headquarters
of the American Oriental Society, which has done so much for the
truth in this field.*

It may be instructive, in conclusion, to sum up briefly the his-
tory of the whole struggle.

First, as to the origin of speech, we have in the beginning the
whole Church rallying around the idea that the original language
was Hebrew; that this language, even including the mediaeval
rabbinical punctuation, was directly inspired by the Almighty;
that Adam was taught it by God himself in walks and talks ; and
that all other languages were derived from it at the " confusion
of Babel."

Next, we see parts of this theory fading out : the inspiration of
the rabbinical points begins to disappear ; Adam, instead of being
taught directly by God, is " inspired " by him.

Then comes the third stage: advanced theologians endeavor
to compromise on the idea that Adam was " given verbal roots
and a mental power."

Finally, in our time, we have them accepting the theory that
language is the result of an evolutionary process in obedience to

* For Mr. Gladstone's view, see his Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture, London, 1S90,
p. 241 et seq. The passage connecting the trident of Neptune with the Trinity is in his
Juventus Mundi. To any American boy who sees how inevitably, both among Indian and
white fishermen, the fish-spear takes this three-pronged form, this utterance of Mr. Glad-
stone is amazing.

446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

laws more or less clearly ascertained. Babel thus takes its place
quietly among the sacred myths.

Secondly, as to the origin of writing, we have the more emi-
nent theologians at first insisting that God taught Adam to
write ; next we find them gradually retreating from this position,
but insisting that writing was taught to the world by Noah.
After the retreat from this position, we find them insisting that it
was Moses whom God taught to write. But scientific modes of
thought still progressed, and we next have influential theologians
agreeing that writing was a Mosaic invention ; this is followed by
another theological retreat to the position that writing was a
post-Mosaic invention. Finally, all the positions are relinquished,
save by some few skirmishers who appear now and then upon the
horizon, making attempts to defend some subtle method of incor-
porating the Babel myth into modern science.

Just after the middle of the nineteenth century a new system
of theological defense appears. It is that which is seen in the
history of almost every science after it has successfully fought
its way through the theological period — the declaration that the
scientific discoveries in question are nothing new, but have really
always been known and held by the Church, and that they simply
substantiate the position taken by the Church. This new conten-
tion, which always betokens the last gasp of theological resistance
to science, was now echoed from land to land. In 1856 it was
given forth by a divine of the Anglican Church, Archdeacon
Pratt, of Calcutta. He gives a long list of eminent philologists
who had done most to destroy the old supernatural view of lan-
guage, reads into their utterances his own wishes, and then ex-
claims, " So singularly do their labors confirm the literal truth of
Scripture."

Two years later this contention is echoed from the American
Presbyterian Church, and Dr. B. W. Dwight, having stigmatized
as " infidels " those who have not incorporated into their science
the literal acceptance of Hebrew legend, declares that "chro-
nology, ethnography, and etymology have all been tortured in
vain to make them contradict the Mosaic account of the early
history of man." Twelve years later another echo comes from
the Roman Catholic Church. The Rev. Dr. Baylee, Principal of
the College of St. Aidan's in England, declares, " With regard to
the varieties of human language, the account of the confusion of
tongues is receiving daily confirmation by all the recent discov-
eries in comparative philology." And this is echoed in the same
year (1870) from the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland,
when Dr. John Eadie, Professor of Biblical Literature and Exe-
gesis, declares that "comparative philology has established the
miracle of Babel."

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 447

A skill in theology and casuistry so exquisitely developed as
to permit such assertions, and a faith so robust as to warrant
their acceptance, leave certainly nothing to be desired. But how
baseless these contentions are is seen, first, by the simple history
of the attitude of the Church toward this question ; and, secondly,
by the fact that comparative philology now reveals beyond a
doubt that not only is Hebrew not the original or oldest lan-
guage upon earth, but that it is not even the oldest form in the
Semitic group to which it belongs. To use the language of one
of the most eminent modern authorities, "It is now generally
recognized that in grammatical structure the Arabic preserves
much more of the original forms than either the Hebrew or
Aramaic."

Science places inexorably the account of the confusion of
tongues and the dispersion of races at Babel among the myths.

A more complete relinquishment of the old contention is made
by Archdeacon Farrar, Canon of Westminster. "With a boldness
which in an earlier period might have cost him dear, but which
merits praise even in this time for its courage, he says : " For all
reasoners except that portion of the clergy who in all ages have
been found among the bitterest enemies of scientific discovery,
these considerations have been conclusive. But, strange to say,
here, as in so many other instances, this self-styled orthodoxy —
more orthodox than the Bible itself — directly contradicts the very
Scriptures which it professes to explain, and by sheer misrepre-
sentation succeeds in producing a needless and deplorable collision
between the statements of Scripture and those other mighty and
certain truths which have been revealed to science and humanity
as their glory and reward."

Still another most honorable acknowledgment was made in
America through the instrumentality of a divine of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, whom the present generation at least will hold
in honor, not only for his scholarship, but for his patriotism in
the darkest hour of his country's need — John McClintock. In the
article on Language, in the Biblical Cyclopaedia, edited by him
and the Rev. Dr. Strong, which appeared in 1873, the whole sacred
theory is quietly given up, and the scientific view accepted.*

* For Kayser, see his work, Ueber die Ursprache, oder iiber eine Behauptung Mosis, dass
alle Spraehen der Welt von einer einzigen der Noachischen abstammen, Erlangen, 1840,
192 pp. ; see especially pp. 5, 80, 95, 112. For Wiseman, see his Lectures on the Connec-
tion between Science and Revealed Religion, London, 1836. For examples typical of very
many in this field, see the Works of Pratt, 1856 ; Dwight, 1858; Jamieson, 1868. For
citation from Cumming, see his Great Tribulation, London, 1859, p. 4; see also his
Things hard to be understood, London, 1861, p. 48. For an admirable summary of the
work cf the great modern philologists, and a most careful estimate of the conclusions
reached, see Prof. Whitney's article on Philology in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A copy
of Mr. Atkinson's book is in the Harvard College Library, it having been presented by the

448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It may, indeed, be now fairly said that the thinking leaders of
theology have come to accept the conclusions of science regarding
the origin of language, as against the old explanations by myth
and legend. The result has been a blessing both to science and
to religion. No harm has been done to religion ; what has been
done is to release it from the clog of theories, which thinking men
saw could no longer be maintained. No matter what has become
of the naming of the animals by Adam, the origin of the name of
Babel, the fears of the Almighty lest men might climb up into
his realm above the firmament, the confusion of tongues and the
dispersion of nations ; the essentials of Christianity, as taught by
its Blessed Founder, have simply been freed, by comparative phi-
lology, from one more great incubus and incumbrance, and have
therefore been left to work with more power upon the hearts,
minds, and conduct of mankind.

Nor has any harm been done to the Bible. On the contrary, it
has been made, by this new divine revelation through science, all
the more precious to us. In these myths and legends caught
from earlier civilizations, we see an evolution of the most im-
portant religious and moral truths for our race. Myth, legend,
and parable seem, in obedience to a divine law, the necessary set-
ting for these truths, as they are successively evolved, ever in
higher and higher forms. What matters it then that we have
come to know that the accounts of Creation and many early
events in the sacred books were remembrances of lore obtained
from the Chaldeans ? What matters it that the beautiful story
of Joseph is found to be in part derived from an Egyptian
romance, of which the hieroglyphs may still be seen ? What
matters it that the story of David and Goliath is poetry ; and
that Samson, like so many men of strength in other religions,
is probably a sun-myth ? What matters it that the inculcation
of high duty in the childhood of the world is embodied in such
quaint stories as those of Jonah and Balaam ? The more we
realize these facts the richer becomes that great body of literature

Trustees of the Public Library of Victoria. For Galloway, see his Philosophy of the
Creation, Edinburgh and London, 18S5, pp. 21, 238, 239, 446. For citation from Baylee,
see his Verbal Inspiration the True Characteristic of God's Holy Word, London, 1870, p.
14, and elsewhere. For Archdeacon Pratt, see his Scripture and Science not at Variance,
London, 185G, p. 55. For the citation from Dr. Eadie, see his Biblical Cyclopaedia, Lon-
don, 18*70, p. 53. For Dr. Dwight, see The New-Englander, vol. xvi, p. 465. For the
theological article referred to as giving up the sacred theory, see the Cyclopedia of Bibli-
cal, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, prepared by Rev. John McClintock, D. D.,
and James Strong, New York, 1873, vol. v, p. 233. For Arabic as an earlier Semitic de-
velopment than Hebrew, as well as for much other valuable information on the questions
recently raised, see article Hebrew, by W. R. Smith, in the latest edition of the Ency-
clopaedia Britannica. For quotation from Canon Farrar, see his Language and Languages,
London, 1878, pp. 6, 7.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 449

brought together within the covers of the Bible. What matters
it that those who incorporated the Creation lore of Babylonia and
other Oriental nations into the sacred books of the Hebrews,
mixed it with their own conceptions and deductions ? What
matters it that Darwin changed the whole aspect of our Creation
myths ; that Lyell and his compeers placed the Hebrew story of
Creation and of the Deluge of Noah among legends ; that Coper-
nicus put an end to the literal acceptance of the standing still
of the sun for Joshua ; that Halley, in promulgating his law of
comets, put an end to the doctrine of signs and wonders ; that
Pinel, in showing that all insanity is physical disease, relegated
to the realm of mythology the witch of Endor and all stories of
demoniacal possession ; that the Rev. Dr. Schaff, and a multi-
tude of recent Christian travelers in Palestine, have put into the
realm of legend the story of Lot's wife transformed into a pillar
of salt ; that the anthropologists, by showing how man has risen
everywhere from low and brutal beginnings, have destroyed the
whole theological theory of " the fall of man " ? Our great body
of sacred literature is thereby only made more and more valuable
to us : more and more we see how long and patiently the forces in
the universe which make for righteousness have been acting in
and upon mankind through the only agencies fitted for such work
in the earliest ages of the world — through myth, legend, parable,
and poem.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES

SINCE COLUMBUS.

III. IRON-SMELTING BY MODERN METHODS.
Br WILLIAM F. DUBFEE, Engineer.

THUS far in these papers we have dealt only with iron smelted
by charcoal, and, in fact, up to the year 1830, there had been
no attempt whatever to utilize either anthracite or bituminous coal
for the purpose. In regard to the use of mineral coal Swank quotes
as follows from a letter dated March 18, 1825, from the acting com-
mittee of the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal
Improvements to William Strikeland, who was its European agent :
" No improvements have been made here in it [the manufacture of
iron] within the last thirty years, and the use of bituminous and
anthracite coal in our furnaces is absolutely and entirely unknown.
Attempts, and of the most costly kind, have been made to use the
coal of the western part of our State in the production of iron.
Furnaces have been constructed according to the plan said to be
adopted in Wales and elsewhere ; persons claiming experience in
the business have been employed ; but all has been unsuccessful."

VOL. XXXVIII. 31

450 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the year 1835 the Franklin Institute offered a gold medal "to
the person who shall manufacture in the United States the great-
est quantity of iron from the ore during the year, using no other
fuel than anthracite coal, the quantity to be not less than twenty
tons." This medal was never awarded, and it is fair to presume
that the required quantity of iron was not manufactured by any
one person in 1835 by " using no other fuel than anthracite coal."
Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence to prove that from the
year 1830 to the year 1840 there were a number of attempts to use
mineral fuel for the smelting of iron-ores.

The most successful of these experiments was tried at Potts-
ville, Pa., and the works were called the Pioneer Furnace. It was
built for Burd Patterson, by William Lyman, of Boston, and blast
was unsuccessfully applied July 10, 1839, but the furnace was
finally successfully blown in by Benjamin Perry, October 19, 1839,
and produced twenty - eight tons per week of good foundry
iron. " This furnace," say Bishop, " made a continuous blast of
ninety days, and secured for its proprietor a premium of $5,000
which had been subscribed by citizens of the State." On June 5,
1839, Mr. David Thomas, who had been associated with Mr. George
Crane in making pig iron with anthracite coal at Yniscedwin, in
Wales, arrived in America, and on July 9th of the same year he
commenced the erection of the first furnace of the Lehigh Crane
Iron Company at Catasauqua, Pa. This furnace was successfully
blown in by him on the 3d of July, 1840, and the first " cast " was
made on July 4th. The furnace was provided with a hot blast,
and was blown by water power derived from the Lehigh Canal.
This enterprise was a success from the start, the furnace producing
fifty tons of good foundry iron per week, and it continued to be
profitably operated until 1879, when it was torn down. Notwith-
standing the fact that there were several promising experimental
attempts to smelt iron with anthracite coal prior to the erection of a
furnace at Catasauqua by Mr. Thomas, yet this furnace, from its
large initial output (as measured by the practice of the time) and
continuous operation, and the fact that it pointed out clearly the
essential requisites of success in smelting with anthracite coal —
viz., large capacity of furnace, supplied with abundance of blast at
a high temperature * — may fairly be considered the first furnace in
America that achieved a satisfactory commercial success in mak-
ing iron with anthracite as a fuel. From his success in the erec-
tion and operation of this furnace, and subsequent life-long iden-
tification with the manufacture of anthracite pig iron, on a scale
far surpassing any of his contemporaries, Mr. Thomas is fairly
entitled to be called the father of the anthracite iron industry of

* The "hot blast" was invented by James Beaumont Neilson, of Glasgow, in 1828.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 451

America. He died at Catasauqua 011 June 20, 1882, in his eighty-
eighth year.

Fig. 31 is a view of the first furnace erected at Catasauqua by
Mr. Thomas.* This furnace was about forty feet square at the
base and forty feet high ; it was twelve feet internal diameter at
the " boshes/' and was lined with nine-inch fire-brick brought from
Risca, in Wales. The hearth was four feet square. At first the
" hot-blast stoves " were on the ground and fired with coal ; they
were three in number, and each contained two " bed pipes/' con-
nected by ten semicircular " siphon pipes." Each " stove " had a
fire-grate at one end, and at the other was a chimney provided

Fig. 31. — Early Anthracite Iron-Furnace at Catasauqua.

with a damper at its top. The gas escaped freely at the "tunnel-
head," and was, of course, wasted. The first blowing machinery
comprised a " breast " water-wheel, twenty-five feet long and
twelve feet in diameter ; this operated two blowing cylinders five
feet in diameter and six feet stroke. At first the pressure of blast
was only about a pound and a half, but the following year
another water-wheel of the same size was added, after which the
pressure of blast was increased to two pounds and a half per
square inch. The head and fall of the water-supply was eight

* Diligent inquiry failed to discover any photograph or engraving of this furnace ; but
from some plans and elevations, combined with explanatory information kindly furnished
by John Thomas, Esq. Superintendent of the Thomas Iron Works, Hokendauqua, Pa.,
together with information obtained from Oliver Williams, Esq., President of Catasauqua
Manufacturing Company, during a visit to the site of the old furnace, a pen-and-ink draw-
ing was made by the writer, from which the above engraving was reduced. It is said to
give a very correct idea of the furnace and its surroundings.

452

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

feet, the " head-race " taking its water from above the lock oppo-
site the furnace, and the " tail-race " discharging into the lower
level of the canal, below the lock. With one water-wheel the
" make " of iron was only about twenty-five to thirty tons per
week, but with the second wheel the production was increased to
upward of forty tons, varying, of course, with the condition of
the water-supply, and sometimes reaching sixty to seventy tons.
In years afterward this furnace, with still more powerful blowing
machinery, made one hundred and seventy-two tons of iron in a
week. The furnace was filled by a water hoist, consisting of two
"tubs" about six feet square, suspended to a chain passing over a
large pulley at the top of the hoist tower ; the tops of these tubs

Fig. 32. — A Charcoal Blast-Furnace.

were covered and formed platforms on which the barrows were
raised. By letting the water out of the tub that chanced to be at
the bottom of the tower, the weight of water in the tub at the top
caused it to descend, thus raising the other tub with its load. In
order to operate this hoist, it was necessary to have a water-sup-
ply at the top of the furnace to fill the tub that was at the top.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 453

At first nothing but the coal was dumped into the furnace, the
ore and limestone being charged with iron pans similar to the
baskets formerly used at charcoal furnaces ; the limestone was
broken quite small.

After the success of this furnace was assured, furnaces in
which mineral fuel (either anthracite or coke, or a mixture of the
two, with an occasional use of raw bituminous coal) was exclu-
sively used rapidly increased. Various changes and improve-
ments naturally took place as time passed and experience was
gained ; but year by year the volume of iron smelted by mineral
fuel increased relative to that made by charcoal, until in 1889 it
reached the grand total of 7,871,779 tons, while "the make" of
the charcoal furnaces amounted to but 644,300 tons.*

Notwithstanding the practical demonstration by David Thom-
as that mineral coal could be successfully used for smelting iron,
charcoal furnaces continued to be built. The general appearance
of such furnaces as were erected during the fifteen years follow-
ing the year 1840 is well represented in Fig. 32, of which Fig. 33
is a A^ertical section. As a rule they were no better in idea, and
but little in execution, than those described by Swedenborg a
century before ; but, after the year 1855, the construction of fur-
naces began to receive more careful attention, and by the year
1860 the best-informed metallurgical engineers (whose profession
was just beginning to be recognized) had discovered that uncouth
bulk and crude workmanship were not desirable features in a fur-
nace for the making of pig iron. Yet, nevertheless, some of the
stragglers who are always found hovering in the rear of the grand
army of progress, and who never know what is going on at the

* Nevertheless, the actual total production of charcoal iron is found to be increasing, as
there were but 348,954 tons made in 1856, little more than half the product of 1889. The
modern charcoal furnace produces much more iron per year than those constructed thirty-
four years ago. The total output of charcoal iron for 1889 was made in 63 furnaces,
which would require an average annual production of 10,227 tons per furnace ; while in
1856 the total output of charcoal iron came from 416 furnaces, which therefore produced
an annual average of but 838 tons per furnace. This calculation is based upon the suppo-
sition that all the furnaces reported in 1856 were in operation. Of this there is a little
uncertainty ; but, after making the most liberal allowance for this, it is still evident that
the average annual output of the modern charcoal furnace is many times greater than that
of the furnace as constructed in 1856.

A similar calculation applied to the production of anthracite iron (including that made
with a mixture of anthracite and coke) shows that in 1889 each furnace produced 18,465
tons of iron, while in 1856 each furnace made but 3,268 tons, or, in other words, the fur-
nace of to-day produces 5fo times as much as that erected thirty-four years ago.

By a comparison of the old bituminous and coke furnaces with those of our time using
the same fuels, we learn that in 1856 the average annual output of this class of furnace
was 1,61*7 tons, and that in 1889 the average make of the bituminous and coke furnaces
was 34,188 tons. From these figures i*. appears that the furnaces of 1889 were twenty-
one times more productive than those of 1856.

454

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

front, built furnaces, as late as 1864, that, when measured by the
standard of the available knowledge of the time, were little better
than ponderous aggregations of ignorance and masonry.

Among the earlier of the many improvements in the details of
blast-furnace construction and management, which were made in
consequence of the employment of mineral coal for smelting, was

llllllllHNiii'iimiT

Fig. 33. — Vertical Section of a Charcoal Blast-Furnace.

the substitution of blowing cylinders of iron for the wooden blow-
ing apparatus previously employed in connection with charcoal
furnaces. One of the simplest forms of iron blowing machinery
is shown in Fig. 34. This apparatus consisted of two vertical
"blowing cylinders," provided with appropriate valves, through
which the air was drawn in and discharged into a " wind-chest "
by the vertical reciprocation of a piston in each cylinder. These
pistons were actuated by the cranks on the gear-wheel shown,
through the intervention of suitable connecting-rods and walk-
ing-beams. The cut (Fig. 34) conveys only the simplest form of

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 4.55

the idea embodied in the walking-beam blowing-engine, and is
very far from adequately representing the latest exemplification
of that idea, as carried out in the colossal machines employed to
blow many of the largest modern furnaces.

There is great variety in the construction of blast-heating ap-
paratus, but it can be comprehensively described as consisting of

Fio. 34. — Iron Blowing-Engine.

two well-defined types : (1) those forms in which the air is heated
by passing through hot iron pipes, inclosed in a brick chamber or
" oven " ; (2) those forms in which the blast is heated by actual
contact with red-hot masses of brick-work inclosed in air-tight
chambers. Fig. 35 is a vertical longitudinal section, and Fig. 36
a vertical transverse section, of one of the best of the many forms
of the first-named type of " hot-blast stove." This construction
of " stove " was the invention of John Player, of England, who
introduced it to the notice of American iron-masters in 1807 ; and
the first " Player stove " in the United States was erected at the
anthracite furnace of J. B. Moorehead & Co., at West Consho-
hocken, Pa. Before Mr. Player came to America it had been the
usual though not universal practice to place the gas-fired " hot-
blast stoves," as well as steam-boilers, on the same level as the
top of the furnace, but in all the furnaces erected by him he
placed the "hot-blast stoves" and the boilers on the ground, and
brought the gas down to them in a large pipe or " down-comer "
as it was called.

456

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The " Player stove " was provided at its base with a large
"combustion chamber" (see Fig. 35), into which the gas entered,
and there meeting with sufficient air for its combustion, the re-
sulting heated gases passed upward through flues (indicated by
the arrows s, s, s) in the roof of the " combustion chamber " into
the " pipe chamber " above. In this chamber were arranged a
series of vertical " siphon pipes," standing upon hollow bases or

II1IIHMM I 1 1 ■«■■■ III ■■! — — 111! » II— llllll -K'SS

- ' :-vj*-" .'-■•■•;■. -— ^/\

' h 1 /'■'"*' ' ■ ' * ■ ' ■'■

■ X T i ( 1' I

1 1 '1 1 ■ ' • i 1 '•'

Fig. 35. — Longitudinal Section of the Player Hot-blast Stove.

a

bed pipes " of cast iron. The air to be heated was admitted to
the right-hand bed pipe B (Fig. 36), and passed thence in the direc-
tion of the arrows through the siphon pipes into the left-hand
bed pipe B', from one end of which it was taken in suitable pipes
to the furnace. The introduction of the " Player stove " was the
means of greatly increasing the production of iron in the furnaces
to which they were applied, and at the same time the amount of
fuel required per ton of iron was diminished ; further economies
were realized by increasing the size of furnaces, and the power of
the engines that supplied them with blast.

The first example of the second type of hot-blast stove erected

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 45 7

in America was put in operation June 18, 1875, at Rising Fawn
Furnace, in Dade County, Ga. The particular construction there
used was that invented in England by Thomas Whitwell. Its
general idea involved a cylindrical air-tight chamber of boiler
iron lined with fire-brick ; this chamber was traversed by a num-
ber of vertical parallel walls or dia-
phragms, also of fire-brick. The
operation of this stove was as fol-
lows, viz. : The whole interior was
heated to a very high temperature
by means of the waste gas of the
furnace which passed through the
stove in the spaces between the fire-
brick diaphragms. As soon as the
stove was sufficiently heated the gas
was turned off, and the blast was
forced through the stove ; and, as it
traversed the spaces between the fire-
brick walls on its way to the fur-
nace, it absorbed heat from them
and consequently reduced their tem-
perature. This alternate heating and
cooling of the stove, by the passage
for a certain time, first of ignited
gas, and then by the air to be heated,
could be so regulated by suitable
valves that a temperature of blast
could be attained much higher than
was possible in an iron-pipe stove.
In order to insure regularity of work-
ing and uniformity of heat, it is usu-
al to have at least three (some fur-
naces have four, and in Europe five
have been used) such stoves to each
furnace.

Besides the Whitwell stove, there are at present a number of
others of the second type in use, whose details differ somewhat,
but they all have an air-tight chamber lined with fire-brick, as
a common constructive feature ; this chamber is filled with par-
titions, blocks, tubes, and perforated or loose brick, in a great
variety of ways, for each of which is claimed peculiar merit by
its inventor ; but it is quite evident that the design of some of
these stoves was inspired by the desire to avoid the consequences
of infringing existing patents on tweedle-dum by constructing
tweedle-dee.

A good idea of the internal arrangement of a Siemens-Cow-

Fig. 36.-

Transverse Section of the
Player Stove.

458

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

per-Cochrane Stove * is conveyed by Fig. 37, in which, the burn-
ing gases intensely heat the reticulated mass of fire-bricks B B,
which in turn heat the air of the blast. All the fire-brick stoves
are of such huge proportions that a modern furnace plant sug-
gests a hot-blast apparatus with an attached furnace, rather than
a furnace with hot-blast stoves.

Raw bituminous coal has been used to some considerable ex-
tent as a blast-furnace fuel since 1845, near the end of which year
Mr. David Himrod (late of Youngstown, Ohio) used raw coal for a

time with success in a
furnace on Anderson's
Run, Mercer County,
Pa. This furnace had
been " blown in " with
charcoal, but the avail-
able quantity of this
fuel being insufficient,
some coke was mixed
with it, and later raw
coal was substituted
for the coke ; and we
are told that " the fur-
nace worked well and
produced a fair quality
of metal." The first
furnace in America
built with the inten-
tion of using raw bi-
tuminous coal as fuel
was built in 1845 for
Messrs. Wilkinson,
Wilkes & Co., at Low-
ell, Mahoning County,
Ohio. This furnace was
successfully blown in
with raw coal on the
8th of August, 1846, by
John Crowther, an Eng-
lishman, who came to the United States in 1844, previous to which
he had been the manager of seven furnaces in Staffordshire. Mr.
Crowther adapted many furnaces in Ohio to the use of bituminous
coal, and instructed his three sons, Joshua, Joseph J., and Benja-
min, in their management. He died April 15, 1861, in England.
The successful blowing in of the furnace at Lowell may be fairly

Fig. 37.

-The Siemens-Cowper-Cochrane Hot-blast
Stove.

Invented by Dr. C. W. Siemens, Edward W. Cowper, and Charles Cochrane.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 459

regarded as the commencement of the use of raw bituminous coal
as a blast-furnace fuel in the United States.

Coke is the fuel by which over one half of the pig iron made
in America at the present time is smelted.* The first public
mention of coke as a possible substitute for charcoal in American
blast-furnaces is contained in an advertisement which appeared
in the Pittsburg Mercury of May 27, 1813. This is quoted by
Weeks,f as follows, viz. :

" To Proprietors of Blast-furnaces :

" John Beal, lately from England, being informed that all the
blast-furnaces are in the habit of melting iron-ore with charcoal,
and knowing the great disadvantage it is to proprietors, is induced
to offer his services to instruct them in the method of converting
stone coal into cook. The advantage of using coak will be so
great that it can not fail to become general if put to practice. He
flatters himself that he has had all the experience that is neces-
sary in the above branch to give satisfaction to those who feel
inclined to alter their mode of melting their ore.

" John Beal, Iron Founder.

" N. B. — A line directed to the subscriber, post-paid, will be
duly attended to."

There is no evidence that Mr. Beal was ever called upon to
" instruct " the Pittsburg iron - masters of seventy-seven years
ago in the art and mystery of making " coak/' but doubtless his
advertisement may have stimulated inquiring minds ; for, four
years after its appearance, we find that Colonel Isaac Meason used
coke in the " refinery " of his mill at Plumsock, Fayette County,
Pa. This mill went into operation in September, 1817, and it
was the first mill west of the Alleghany Mountains in which iron
was puddled and rolled into bars. Weeks, speaking of the use
of coke in this mill, says, " This is the first definite statement that
I have been able to find of the use of coke in this country." A
short time after this first use of coke in America there were sev-
eral attempts to employ it in a blast-furnace, but there is no
record of any success in this direction until the building of the
Lonaconing furnace, Alleghany County, Md., in 1837. This fur-

* This fact is a good illustration of the realization of great value from a material that
was at first regarded with disfavor. Overman, writing in 1849 (The Manufacture of
Iron, p. 1*79), says : "As we have previously remarked, there is but little prospect of see-
ing coke furnaces in successful operation in the United States. Nearly every State in the
Union has good raw coal in sufficient quantity, as well as of proper quality, to supply its
furnaces."

f Report on the Manufacture of Coke. By Joseph D. Weeks, Special Agent. New
York : David Williams, 1385.

460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nace was (according to Overman *), " the first coke furnace whose
operation was successful erected in this country. It is fifty feet
high, fifty feet at the base, twenty-five feet at the top, and meas-
ures fifteen feet at the boshes." f In 1840 two large blast-furnaces
were built by the Mount Savage Iron Company, at Mount Sav-
age, Md. These furnaces also used coke, of which there -was
made, " from 1840 to 1850, between 50,000 and 75,000 tons "— " most
of which was used at the furnaces. " J All the coke for the above
furnaces was made in pits.

The manufacture of " Connellsville coke/' which is regarded
as especially excellent for smelting iron, was commenced in 1841.
Weeks (writing in 1883) gives the following account of the begin-
ning of the coke business in the Connellsville region : " Two car-
penters, Provance McCormick and James Campbell, overheard an
Englishman, so the story runs, commenting on the rich deposits
of coal at Connellsville, and their fitness for making coke, as well
as the value of coke for foundry purposes, and they determined
to enter upon its manufacture. Mr. McCormick, who is still liv-
ing, an old man of eighty-four, has given me an account from
memory of this enterprise which I quote : ' James Campbell and
myself heard, in some way that I do not now recollect, that the
manufacturing of coke might be made a good business. Mr. John
Taylor, a stone-mason, who owned a farm on which the Fayette
Coke-works now stand, and who was mining coal in a small way,
was spoken to regarding our enterprise, and proposed a partner-
ship— he to build the ovens and make the coke, and Mr. Campbell
and myself to build a boat and take the coke to Cincinnati, where
we heard there was a good demand. This was in 1841. Mr. Tay-
lor built two ovens. I think they were about ten feet in diameter.
My recollection is that the charge was eighty bushels. The ovens
were built in the same style as those now used, but had no iron
ring at the toj) to prevent the brick from falling in when filling
the oven with coal, nor had we any iron frames at the mouth
where the coke was drawn. In the spring of 1842 enough coke
had been made to fill two boats ninety feet long — about eight
hundred bushels in each — and we took them to Cincinnati, down
the Youghiogheny, Monongahela, and Ohio ; but when we got
there we could not sell. Mr. Campbell, who went with the boats,
lay at the landing some two or three weeks, retailing one boat-
load and part of the other in small lots at about eight cents a
bushel. Miles Greenwood, a foundryman of that city, offered to

* The Manufacture of Iron in all its Various Branches, etc. By Frederick Overman,
Mining Engineer. Philadelphia: Henry C. Baird, 1850.

\ A good example of the phtnomenally clumsy construction thought to be essential
U) successful working at that time.

t Weeks's Manufacture of Coke.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 461

take the balance if we would take a small patent flour-mill at $125
in pay, which Mr. Campbell did. He shipped it here. We tried
it, but it was no good, and we sold it to a man in the mountains
for $30 ; and thus ended our coke business.' These gentlemen lost
heavily in their venture. It was not until the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad was completed to Pittsburg, and Connellsville coke had
been used successfully in the Clinton Furnace of Graff, Bennett &
Co., at Pittsburg, that its value as a furnace fuel was thor-
oughly demonstrated and the foundation laid for the demand that
has resulted in such a development of the coke manufacture in
the Connellsville region. This furnace was blown in, in the fall
of 1859. The coke was at first made from Pittsburg coal, near
the furnace on the south side of the Monongahela River, nearly
opposite the Point, at Pittsburg. The furnace was run for about
three months, when, the coke made in this way not proving satis-
factory, it was blown out, and arrangements made to secure a
supply from the Connellsville region. The furnace blew in again
early in the spring of 18G0, the coke used being from the Fayette
Coke-works on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, made at first on
the ground in pits. The result was so satisfactory that thirty
ovens were built in 1860, and arrangements were made to secure a
continued supply."

The general tendency toward improvement in all branches of
manufacturing that began to manifest itself in America about
the year 1840, and which, fortunately for the welfare of the coun-
try, has grown with the years and strengthened with each new
triumph of inventive thought, prompted investigation with a
view to determine what constructive ideas were really essential to
the building of a thoroughly efficient blast-furnace in which coke
was to be used as the fuel ; and it was very soon ascertained that
European metallurgical engineers had discovered that it was not
at all necessary to purchase a stone quarry before commencing
the erection of a furnace, and that all the functions of successful
smelting could be performed in a structure consisting substan-
tially of a sheet-iron casing lined with fire-brick, supported upon
cast-iron columns, between which were the tuyeres and dam, which
were thus rendered readily accessible ; the furnace being entirely
unincumbered with ponderous masses of supporting masonry.
This form of furnace was not a creation, but the result of a grad-
ual evolution from the old truncated pyramidal structure whose
massive proportions were ignorantly supposed to be absolutely
necessary, not only to support the weight of ore and fuel, but also
to confine the heat in the furnace. The first deviation from the
old construction consisted in a reduction of the quantity of mate-
rial used by making all that part of the furnace above the tuyere
arches either cylindrical or conical, and binding it with iron

462

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hoops ; the lower portion remaining quite as massive as had been
customary.

The next stage in the evolution made the whole furnace a
frustum of a cone pierced at the base by four or more arches, that
portion above the arches being hooped. The next change in con-
struction consisted in casing the whole furnace, sustaining piers
as well as the part above, in boiler iron. This construction was
followed by the removal of the piers altogether, the upper conical
portion of the furnace being built of cut stone hooped with iron
and supported on cast-iron columns. Fig. 38 is an elevation and
Fig. 39 a vertical section of one of the earlier furnaces of this con-

Fig. 38. — An Early French Coke
Blast-Furnace.

Fig. 39. — Section of French Coke
Blast-Furnace.

struction. There were three such furnaces built at Hyanges,
department of Moselle, France, prior to the year 1849 (probably
in 1845). These furnaces were forty-six feet high and sixteen feet
in diameter at the " boshes " and eight feet at the top. They were
built expressly for the use of coke, and, according to Overman,
they " worked admirably."

The study of the construction and operation of such furnaces
as these doubtless had its influence in determining the details of
the Clinton Furnace of Graff, Bennett & Co., of Pittsburg, already
referred to as having been the first to use " Connellsville coke"
with success. This furnace, which I visited in January, 18G3, was

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 463

" simply a jacket " of boiler iron lined with, fire-brick. It was fifty-
feet high and twelve feet " bosh."

The make of iron was twenty tons in twenty-four hours. Since
the date of the erection of this furnace, which at the time was
the only blast-furnace in Alleghany County (in which Pittsburg
is situated), Pennsylvania, there have been built within its ter-
ritory twenty-four coke furnaces, which produced in 1889 " more
pig iron than the whole State of Ohio ; more than twice as much
as Illinois ; and more than one seventh of the country's total pro-
duction." *

The furnaces have not only increased in number, but their size
and output have been very much augmented. As an illustration
of this, furnace " F," of the " Edgar Thomson Steel Works," is
eighty feet high, twenty -two feet diameter at the " boshes," eleven
feet diameter of hearth, sixteen feet in diameter at the throat, and
has a capacity of 18,000 cubic feet. This furnace produces 10,603
gross tons of iron per month (351 tons per day) on a fuel consump-
tion of 1,756 pounds (coke) per gross ton. The pressure of blast
at the tuyeres is nine pounds per square inch, and its volume
25,000 cubic feet per minute, heated to 1,200° Fahrenheit.!

While the iron-masters west of the Alleghany Mountains were
increasing the number, size, and economical working of their fur-
naces, the makers of " anthracite iron " in the Lehigh, Schuylkill,
and Susquehanna Valleys were by no means idle ; and their fur-
naces also increased in size and multiplied in number as the years
passed. As illustrating the influence of a successful manufacture
in drawing population and other industries to its immediate vicin-
ity, no better instance could be selected than the town of Cata-
sauqua, Pennsylvania, where was built in 1840 the furnace de-
scribed in the first part of this article. Where then was but a
single furnace, a small number of scattered houses, and a few
score of people, we now find five furnaces, two rolling-mills, and a
number of collateral industrial establishments, giving sustenance
to a large and busy population. Fig. 40 is a view of the present
blast-furnace plant at Catasauqua.J For the purpose of showing

* Annual Report of James M. Swank, Esq., General Manager of the American Iron and
Steel Association, for the Year 1889.

f For these details I am indebted to the courtesy of James Gayley, Esq., Superintend-
ent of Furnaces of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works.

\ This view was taken looking diagonally up the Lehigh River ; but in that of the old
furnace (see Fig. 31) the spectator is supposed to be looking diagonally down the river,
which in Fig. 40 is in front, and just without the limits of the picture. The Lehigh Canal,
which is plainly seen in Fig. 31, is in Fig. 40 between the line of railway and the furnace
buildings. The canal lock (shown in Fig. 31) is at the left of the picture, its lock-house
being seen among the trees. The original furnace (1840) was located very near the large
building, having a curved roof, on the end of which is the sign of the " Crane Iron Works."
Nearly all the foreground, occupied by piles of pig iron, has been filled in since 1840.

464

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

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AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 465

at what rate the technology of the manufacture of anthracite iron
has advanced during these years, we will compare the product of
the furnace of 1840 with that of the furnaces on the same ground
at the present time. The original furnace made in the year end-
ing July 1. 1841, 2,460 tons ; and the present plant (five furnaces)
produced during the year ending July 1, 1890, 111,828 tons, or at
the rate of 22,365 tons per furnace (on the supposition that they
were all running), which is more than nine times the product of
the furnace built in 1840 at that place.

The production of pig iron in the United States for the year
ending June 30, 1890, was the largest in the history of the coun-
try, and, in fact, larger than that of any other nation in the world,
"being 258,216 tons in excess of the production of Great Britain in
1889. The following table exhibits the rate of increase of produc-
tion of pig iron during the past twenty years : *

DISTRICTS.

New England States

Middle States

Southern States ....

Western States

Far Western States.

Totals

Tons of 2,000 pounds.

Year ending
May 31, 1870.

34,471

1,311,649

184,540

522.161

2,052,821

Year ending
May 31, 1880.

30,95V

2,401,093

350,436

995,335

3,200

3,781,021

Year ending
June 30, lSyO.

33,781
5,216,591
1,780,909
2,522,351

26,147

9,579,779

From the above figures we see that the manufacture of pig
iron in New England has been practically stationary for the
past twenty years, while in the Middle States it has nearly
quadrupled, in the Western States it has increased nearly five
times,f and in the Southern States nearly ten times in the same
period.

Few persons save those connected with the manufacture of
pig iron are aware of the enormous and insatiable appetite of one
of the largest blast-furnaces ; and the figures hitherto given fail
to convey an adequate idea of the immense quantity of materials
that pass through such a furnace, and it is only when the total
daily amount of these materials is considered that the tremendous
igneous activities constantly at work in that combination of hur-
ricane and volcano — a modern blast-furnace of the first class —

* For this table and other facts relative to the output of pig iron in this country I am
indebted to the report of Dr. William M. Sweet to Robert P. Porter, Superintendent of
Census for 1890:

f A large proportion of this increase has been manufactured in Chicago and its imme-
diate vicinity. This fact is confirmatory of a belief that the writer has entertained for
many years, that Chicago was destined to be one of the important centers of the iron and
steel manufacture of this country.
vol. xxxvm. — 32

466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

can be fully appreciated. Such a furnace will have passed through
it in twenty-four hours the following materials :

Ore 1,263,360 pounds or 564 gross tons.

Coke 990,384 " " 442 " "

Limestone 353,741 " " 158 " "

Atmospheric air (blast) 2,331,840 " "1,041 " "

Totals 4,939,325 " "2,205 " "

which is equal to ninety -two tons per hour, or 1'53 tons per min-
ute.* From this quantity of materials there will be produced
in twenty-four hours 784,000 pounds or 350 gross tons of pig
iron, which is at the rate of 32,GG6 pounds or 14'57 tons per hour,
or 544 pounds per minute.

Heating the 25,000 cubic feet of air supplied per minute to a,
temperature of 1,200° Fahr., its volume would be increased to 85,000
cubic feet ; and, on the supposition that the furnace is blown by
seven tuyeres, each seven inches in diameter, this torrid air would
rush through each tuyere (under a pressure of nine pounds per
square inch) at the rate of 12,143 cubic feet, and having the enor-
mous lineal velocity of 45,417 feet per minute. This velocity is
over five times that of the most violent tornadoes, and the pressure
is more than twenty-five times greater. Should a blast of equal
pressure and velocity come from unfathomed space and envelop
this earth, it is absolutely certain that no living beings or loose
materials would be left upon its rock-ribbed skeleton, which,
stripped of its flesh and blood, fields and forests, lakes and oceans,
would be hurled into a new orbit and made to assume revolutions
and rotations whose amplitude and duration it is impossible to
imagine or describe.

[To be continued.]

A contribution has been made to the speculations respecting the relative
growth of the white and colored population of the United States by Quarter-
master-General Meigs, who has published tables exhibiting the increase of both,
by decades, since 1790. They show that the total population had increased eight-
fold in 1860 ; while the average increase of whites by decades was 32-8 per cent,
and of negroes 26*8 per cent. In 1790, there were 3,172,000 more whites than
negroes; in 1880, 48,575,000; in 1890, probably 58,640,000 more; and if the
present relative rates of increase are maintained, there will be, in 1990, 1,067,-
043,000 more. The estimate should set the apprehension of negro supremacy a
considerable distance away.

* Perhaps the volume of materials required in the manufacture of pig iron may be more
readily comprehended by considering that, for the making of a pound of that commodity
from the best ore, there are required 1612 pounds of ore; 0*786 pound of coke; 0*451
pound of limestone ; 2*977 pounds of air, or a total of 5*876 pounds of materials for each
pound of iron produced.

PRECISION IN PHYSICAL TRAINING. 467

PRECISION IN PHYSICAL TRAINING.

By M. GEOKGES DEMENY.

THE high aim of science should be, definitely, the physical and
moral perfectioning of man. The exercise of the cerebral
functions of all ought undoubtedly to be directed from infancy
by educators. It is generally agreed that physical education is a
necessity of hygiene, but it is not clear to every one that physical
education should be subjected to rules and to a precise directing.
It is a mistake, in our opinion, to think of getting the best results
while neglecting to make scientifically a comparative study of the
different methods employed, and while abandoning, as is often
the case, the exercises of the body to the caprice of the imagina-
tion. There result from this vague condition various currents of
opinion contradictory of one another and detrimental to the final
result proposed, of ameliorating the physical condition of our
population, especially of the population at school, of every degree.
Fortunately, the elements of physical education are tangible, its
effects are measurable, and we can conduct the discussions on a
positive ground on which they fall of themselves. This condition
is very different from that of mental education. It is a certain
motive for improvement ; and we purpose to review the precise
means which have contributed to the result. We shall first try
to show that it is possible to form a scientific conception of physi-
cal education at the present time. "We shall then see that the new
processes of physiology already permit a satisfactory control of
its results.

For a method of education to be established, it is necessary
that the end sought be well defined, and the means employed be per-
fectly adapted to the proposed end and compatible with the human
organization. The indisputable object of education should be the
perfecting of the individual in view of the general progress ; it is
an economical object, having as its consequence a much greater
conversion of human activity into useful work. In physical edu-
cation it is necessary to apply all the general knowledge we pos-
sess concerning the relations between the function and the organ,
or rather concerning the modifications endured by the organs, of
which we modify the function.

All the ideas acquired by trainers are to be carefully collected ;
and among modifiers of species, selection must be placed in the
first line. Unfortunately, we are still far from the thought of
applying to ourselves* this powerful agent for improvement, al-
though we impose it on our domestic animals ; our own unions
are not often made in view of the inheritance of vigor and health
which we shall leave to our descendants.

468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Selection put aside, we have recourse only to exercise and
regime. The desire to make an athlete of every one must, of
necessity, be abandoned. The ideal human type varies with the
times ; now it is intellectual activity that is in dominant force,
and it is not possible to bring muscular work and cerebral work
to the front with equal vigor. Physiological knowledge on this
subject is extensive enough for us to account for the fact. Cere-
bral labor is a considerable expenditure of energy, a source of
nervous exhaustion quite comparable to the expenditure of energy
that accompanies the production of mechanical labor in the mus-
cles ; whence we conceive that, beyond a certain amount of physi-
cal exercise regulated by hygiene, the total sum of the expenditure
of nervous and muscular energy may become excessive and entire-
ly debilitating. It is wisdom to abandon the constant practice of
violent exercises ; to take deliberate measures to restore athletic
brutality would be a remedy worse than the disease. It would
also be wise to leave uncalled-for and useless exercises to the cir-
cus people.

All exercise which, often repeated, tends to modify the external
form and adapt the human organism to abnormal machines or
movements, to eccentric attitudes, belongs to the domain of the
acrobat, and is of no interest in view of general education. We
thus arrive, by elimination, at the point of preserving as materials
of the programmes of physical education the general measures
which augment the productiveness of man considered as a source
of mechanical work, on the condition that those measures do not
deteriorate the human machine itself, and do not change the nor-
mal relations of that which it has been agreed to call the physical
and the moral. Physical education, in short, ought to confirm
health, give a harmonious development to the body, and teach
how best to utilize the muscular force in the different applica-
tions which are demanded in life. We should also have regard
to the necessities imposed by the social medium, and try to obtain
results by intensive means, requiring little time and little space,
and which address a large number at once.

To these three essentials of physical education — health, har-
monious development, economical utilization of muscular force
— correspond a series of exercises which can not produce their
maximum useful effect without being subjected to regulations of
which we proceed to sketch the principal features.

Health may be with equal ease confirmed or destroyed by
exercise. It is only necessary to refer to the deplorable condition
of the ancient athletes, with whom the enormous mass of the mus-
cles absorbed all the activity of the organism. Health, therefore,
does not depend on the size of the muscles nor on absolute mus-
cular force. It is the harmony of the functions, and does not

PRECISION IN PHYSICAL TRAINING. 469

exist without a certain daily expenditure of muscular labor.
Many persons, it is true, enjoy perfect health without giving
themselves methodically up to physical culture ; but such persons
are easily disturbed by departures from their regular course, or
suffer fatigue disproportionate to the effect produced. They can
not endure the causes of perturbation, while it is the power to
endure that constitutes robust health. It is one of the great bene-
fits of exercise and of regime that they give the organism the fac-
ulty of accommodation to the diversities of our activity and of
the medium that surrounds us. From the hygienic point of view
the introduction into our daily habits of exercise in the open air,
in the form of various games and sports, can not be too highly
commended ; but all such exercises, if we wish to make them al-
ways efficacious and exempt from dangers, should be subjected
to rule.

"We can not prudently leave youth without direction to or-
ganize competitions, like the race, in which violent exercises fig-
ure ; it is indispensable to be on guard against the excesses which
unrestrained emulation and self-love induce. Without this, exer-
cises, which are salutary when practiced with moderation, degen-
erate into overstrain of the most dangerous character. We have
in this way to regret numerous grave accidents due to colds,
troubles of the digestion and the circulation, falls and blows.
Under these restrictions, exercise taken under the form of open-
air games presents a special attraction to all ; it offers the best
hygienic conditions ; but, to constitute a physical education, it
ought also to respond to the desiderata exposed above — the har-
monious development of the body and useful application. Fur-
ther than this, this form of exercise offers in practice, especially
in the large cities, difficulties which are often insurmountable,
at least for the present. In public instruction, as now consti-
tuted, the problem of physical education is very complex ; it
involves finding means to exercise regularly every day a large
number of pupils at once, in a narrow space and a short time. It
is in this shape that the question has been put to the ministerial
commission charged with revising the programme and the manual
of school gymnastics. Every pupil must receive an equal por-
tion of exercise, and often there is only one master to direct from
forty to sixty subjects. Large plats of land are needed near the
schools, and often they do not exist. To send the children away
through narrow ,streets crowded with vehicles takes much time,
and is dangerous. With all this adjusted, large plats of ground
are not enough; ample sheds are needed for open-air exercise.
Our climate is not very mild, and if we depend upon the fair days
for taking exercise we shall run a great risk of seeing the number
of our meetings reduced to an insufficient minimum ; for it is not

470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

occasionally, but every day, that we ought to take our portion of
exercise. Even putting aside the question of time, it is not hard
to show that play-hours do not constitute a complete physical
education.

There is exercise in play-hours, but there is not, properly
speaking, training of the movements ; there is no improvement of
these movements in view of a useful effect. Each one does not
get the portion of exercise to which he has a right. According to
the general law, the strongest or most hardy are more benefited
than the weaker ones, and the mean level does not rise. Games
and sports are still what they have always been — an elegant
means, an agreeable form of exercise, the privilege of the easy
class, the pleasure of the smallest number. They can not be
extended into the working class which is most interested in them,
because it is, unfortunately, often obliged to live in bad hygienic
conditions.

Even while it is possible, by means of more perfect facilities
for communication, to give the children in our schools more fre-
quent excursions in the open air, such excursions will always be
rare — once or twice a week at the most, in the large cities. We
shall be obliged on other days to have recourse to the processes
of a good gymnastics, mere artificial processes, but which have the
advantage of being applicable everywhere, and of producing, in
the hands of experienced masters, successful results — an arti-
ficial remedy in an artificial medium, if we will call it so, and if
we can define precisely the boundary between the natural and the
artificial.

Let us, nevertheless, use all our efforts to multiply the public
places and shelters for the sole purpose of furnishing children
and individuals of every class and every age with places designed
for exercise in the open air.

The essential factor of physical education is voluntary motion.
From the hygienic point of view it is important to have a suffi-
cient amount of exercise to stimulate the combustion in the in-
terior of the organism, and to facilitate the elimination of the
wastes of incomplete combustion, which develop into real poi-
sons. From the point of view of harmonious development, not
the amount alone of exercise is to be considered, but the form or
nature of the movement also ; not the quantity, but the quality,
too, of the movement is of importance.

Nothing is more malleable than bone and muscle. Trainers,
under the influence of movements frequently repeated, transform,
domestic species by the action of three great modifiers — selection,
alimentation, and exercise ; every subject devoted to a well-char-
acterized special calling bears the marks of its calling in its
structure. "We know, in a general way, that under the infiu-

PRECISION IN PHYSICAL TRAINING. 47i

ence of static efforts the body of the muscles becomes thicker
and more salient beneath the skin ; under the influence of ex-
tended movements, on the other hand, the fleshy substance pre-
serves its length and assumes a relation with the amplitude of
the movement.

The articular surfaces are also modified by the latter style of
practice, and "we see how persons who preferably cultivate exer-
cises of suppleness and quickness present a finer and more ele-
gant form than those who develop athletic force by static con-
tractions. "With a similar constitution to begin with, those who
devote themselves to practice with weights, with carrying bur-
dens, become more massive than those who practice movements of
agility, like fencing and racing. The latter come near the type
of the ancient gladiator, the former that of Hercules. "Which
of them do we consider the more handsome ?

The idea of beauty is wholly relative, and varies with places
and times. Artists make beauty to consist in certain proportions
of the parts of the skeleton and in the harmony of the muscular
development. "We might, perhaps, be more definite by saying
that to be handsome at rest and in motion the man ought to pre-
sent the traits of health and moderate strength, and in addition
to be in possession of his means of locomotion and of natural
defense. This view of beauty originates in the consideration that
there is a necessary relation between vigor, skill, agility, and the
outer form of the body at rest and in motion. Thus defined, the
type of beauty, in a given race or medium, is an ideal which we
seek to revive by physical education. It follows that a man
specially devoted to any one exercise can not be handsome. This
may be said of all the professions that localize muscular work in
a restricted region of the body. There are, however, some sports
that have the advantage of exercising equally the upper and lower
limbs ; such, for example, as wrestling, French boxing, swimming,
and canoeing with two oars and a sliding seat. A good gym-
nastics includes complete exercises, and incomplete or unsym-
metrical exercises, under such a condition as that they shall cor-
rect one another, and that the work shall bear upon the lower
and upper limbs. An intensive gymnastics well taught produces
superb subjects. Swedes, Swiss, and Germans, selected from
special schools of gymnastics, and the monitors of the school at
Joinville le Pont, might rival the finest types of antiquity. These
facts are, unhappily, exceptions; children come to our schools
with hereditary blemishes and malformations which the seden-
tary condition, faulty attitudes, and ill-directed exercises only
tend to augment.

If we would come near to the type which we have given our-
selves as the ideal one, we must make a judicious choice in gym-

472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nastic matters. The form of the curvings of the vertebral column
depends on the action of the weight and of the antagonistic mus-
cles that bend and extend it. There is an evident relation be-
tween the curves of the vertebral column and the form of the
thorax ; with large curvatures correspond depression of the ribs,
and enfeebling of the thorax and its consequences — obstruction of
the circulation and of pulmonary ventilation.

The respiratory capacity of a person does not depend on the
absolute volume of the throat, but on the extent to which its
volume increases between expiration and inspiration. The lung
is the slave of the thoracic wall, and follows it in all its move-
ments. It is constantly kept in contact with that wall, through
the action of the atmospheric pressure, which is transmitted to
the interior of the bronchise, whenever the glottis is opened. Ex-
cept under stress of effort, we can not imagine the lung pushing
upon the thoracic wall to dilate it ; the contained has to submit
to the variations of the containing. Hence, we have no reason to
wonder that gymnasts are soon able, by training, to increase their
respiratory capacity by giving, through the motions of the upper
limbs, a great mobility to the articulations of the thorax, and
thus permitting it to dilate more freely under the action of the
elevator muscles of the ribs, to the effect of which is added that
of the diaphragm. By strengthening the shoulder and fixing
the omoplate with strong muscles, we furnish points of support, in
raising the ribs and the flattened thorax. The action of the mus-
cles of the abdominal walls counterpoises that of the extensors
of the trunk, and the spine is raised by diminishing its curvatures
under the effect of these two kinds of curves acting upon it as
upon a bow with two curves. Thus, by perfecting the muscular
powers and bringing them into equilibrium, the trunk assumes
a good attitude, the chest expands, and the man bears the external
indications of vigor and health. % All these observations are facts
demonstrated and known by practitioners, who have obtained
them through good gymnastics. They show that there is a direc-
tion to be given to exercises having a good result in view, and
that the purpose of physical education will be more quickly
attained as the methods are more precise. Stirring around in an
indeterminate way is certainly not the shortest and most direct
means of obtaining the essential modifications sought for.

We have attached so much importance to that part of the
hygiene of exercise that bears upon the form, that we have had
constructed at the physiological station, with the assistance of M.
Otto Lund, an arsenal of instruments of measurement of a new
kind. Some of these instruments give the height, weight, and
outline in true size of the fore and back curvatures of the spine ;
others furnish complete sections of the trunk on a horizontal and

PRECISION IN PHYSICAL TRAINING. 473

on a vertical plane. The measuring-tape gives false indications
of the dimensions of the thorax, for its measurements are influ-
enced by the muscular protuberances. We have substituted for
gross measurements of the circumference of the thorax those of
diameters obtained with compasses and thoracometers specially-
constructed to give the amplification of the framework of the
chest in respiration. With these exact means, and the assistance
of physicians who are all interested in these questions, we hope
to organize in schools a series of measurements that will cast
light on many obscure points. Data are wanting for the defini-
tion of the characteristic differences in the form of different sub-
jects whose movements have been accommodated to a special and
well-defined profession ; and those data in particular are wanting
with which to establish the laws of the development of children
according as they have or have not been subjected to physical
exercise under various conditions. We have begun investiga-
tions on this point at the College Sainte-Barbe, with the aid of
M. Rey, and at the school of Joinville le Pont, with that of M.
Roblot. We have found that with growing children the increase
of the respiratory capacity is parallel with that of the weight,
and has no fixed relation with the stature ; and we have shown
that the ratio of the respiratory capacity to the weight increases
regularly under training. We find also that the absolute dimen-
sions of the thorax do not increase among adults, but that the
extent of the movement of the ribs is related to the respiratory
capacity. It is, for the same subject, parallel with the quantity
of air breathed in. M. Marey showed, some time ago, that the
thoracic movements of subjects under exercise are amplified,
while their frequency diminishes. Respiration becomes fuller
and remains so during rest or after intense exercise. By collat-
ing observations bearing on this point, we shall be able to con-
stitute a kind .of experimental physiology of exercise, and shall
thus have the best and only means of pronouncing without pre-
possession upon the value, as to the general development of the
body, of different methods of education.

We now proceed to examine the tendencies of exercise in view
of the economical utilization of muscular strength. The third
essential point in physical education consists in establishing the
rules that permit the useful and economical employment of mus-
cular force in the various conditions of locomotion, in the man-
agement of tools and arms, and in carrying burdens. This is one
of the most delicate chapters of animal mechanics. It is the one
that is really entitled to be designated the education of the move-
ments, for the educator plays the greatest part in it, and his
action is indisputable. When one has devoted himself for a long
time to practical exercises of the body, especially to varied exer-

474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cises, his muscular sense is refined, and lie becomes aware of a
series of new sensations which remain unknown to those who have
never handled tools. In this way we account fairly well for im-
portant modifications which are produced in the movements by
education.

Absolute muscular force, measured by the dynamometer, soon
reaches its maximum, and, if we limit ourselves to this gross
measure, we shall have but a false idea of physical perfection-
ment. It is not, in fact, in the absolute measure of muscular
force that a great modification is to be found, but in the aptitude
for producing a large sum of work with moderate fatigue and an
economical expenditure of force. This refinement is produced in
the nervous centers ; through attention sustained by the will,
through the frequent repetition of well-defined muscular acts, we
are able to reach the point of suppressing useless contractions
in the desired movement, and bringing into play only a portion
of the muscles which were at first contracted in a mass. To this
intelligent distribution of the central nervous excitation in the
co-operating groups are added a more perfect tact in appositeness,
a surer realization of the direction of the intensity and the dura-
tion of the contractions, and a greater promptitude in grasping at
once all the conditions of the effort. Thus is realized a perfection-
ment of the motor organs which is manifested externally by ad-
dress, agility, and sureness of movements, and closely touches upon
the higher qualities — confidence in one's strength and courage.

Education should not only be applied to movements of precis-
ion, but it ought also to have in view economy in the expendi-
ture of nervous excitation and mechanical labor ; it ought to tend
to reduce useful contractions to a minimum, and in the end to
induce automatism by steadily diminishing the part played by
attention, which is absolutely necessary in the beginning. Thus
the performing musician is not born a virtuoso ; he reaches per-
fection of execution on condition of frequently repeating the
same exercises. To acquire perfection of skill, he seeks to obtain
equality in the motions of his fingers, ease of hand, arm, and the
whole body. He performs the details of a cadence slowly, quick-
ens it progressively, and thus becomes able at last to maintain
accuracy in lively movements. Associations of the nervous cells
are doubtless produced in his system, which render easy and
automatic certain muscular co-operations that were at first insur-
mountably difficult. The visual perception in the musician comes
at last to be translated immediately into a movement of the
fingers without any effort of the attention. In the boxer or the
swordsman, the slightest manifestation of his adversary's inten-
tion produces an instinctive determination which is at once re-
vealed in the attitude.

PRECISION IN PHYSICAL TRAINING. 475

Normal bearings, like the most complicated movements of
gymnastics, are practiced and taught in the same way. There
may be an exception in quick movements, such as leaping, which
can not be decomposed because they can not be retarded. But
skill acquired in difficult exercises creates an aptitude favorable
to learning new ones ; and it is well known that those who have
educated their movements by gymnastics speedily, become habitu-
ated to the most varied exercises. Yet the skill of a virtuoso in
any particular art is acquired only by the force of work and
patience ; and, according to the general law, we are inclined to
prize the result of our work according to the quantity of effort
it has cost us ; in short, to extol the method we have chosen. This
is the origin of the schools and of differences in methods, which
prevail in gymnastics, as in every other matter — those of Ling, in
Sweden ; Jahn, in Germany ; and Ameros and Triat, in France ;
and many others who have left various teachings.

Pupils are cultivated by imitation^ A group of admirers forms
around a chosen person ; and among those who seek to imitate
him are some who often succeed with great difficulty ; the latter
are then well disposed to defend their master and their school ; they
are gratified adepts, who will perpetuate the traditions, with their
qualities and their faults. Those minds are rare which can over-
come a bad habit when contracted. It is with movements as with
moral activity ; and that is why every teacher prefers to take his
pupils from the beginning, to continuing the labors of his col-
leagues. It is easily comprehended that the pupil who has con-
tracted the habit of holding his sword in a certain way will find
it easier to keep up even a defective attitude, a position that will
limit his further progress, than to learn a new one. The effort of
attention that he has to make lest he fall back into his false ruts,
and to destroy the nascent automatism, is so great that he avoids
it. His self-love will not accommodate itself to the idea of be-
coming a novice, and he prefers going on the wrong way to re-
suming the toils of first lessons. On these various considerations
many practitioners have come really to regard their method as
the only good one, and to maintain it, with its errors. But prog-
ress in physical education is impossible if we limit ourselves to
respect for traditions, to a servile imitation of former things.
There can be progress only when we aim at an improvement in
attitudes and movements in general. Having been called several
times to give our vote in competitive physical exercises, we have
been able to observe that the relative merit of the candidates was
usually established on conventional bases. Many pupils, who
had listened to no other rules than those of nature, and were thus
naturally superior, were rated at less than they deserved by
judges who were ignorant of these rules. "We do not see by what

476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

right we should impose laws on the nature of which we are the
resultant. If we would make a durable work, our first thought
should be to learn those laws, in order to submit ourselves to
them more exactly. We should regard it as an axiom that, given
the human organization, there could be only one correct solution
in any special case of utilization of force. The problem is to find
that solution ; and to reach this there is, in my opinion, no shorter
way than to study in each sport those select subjects, or experts,
who have succeeded by practice in excelling in some specialty.
We should for that study arm ourselves with precise means
of investigation, which will explain the essential principles of
their movements, and take these principles as the rules of
education. Although these rules have not yet been established,
it is not because experts have been wanting ; but the most trained
eye can not perceive the subtle differences between the means
which experts employ for reaching perfection of movements.

It has been necessary, in order to make a further advance in
this study, to create processes which have unveiled a new world
of facts. It has been the constant purpose of M. Marey to seek,
besides purely subjective sensations, certain experimental data,
and thus forestall eternal discussions on obscure points of physi-
ology, in which the fundamental basis itself of discussion — facts
— was wanting. The services which the photochronographic
method has rendered to biology are well known ; in the present
case, again, it is invoked as a means of correcting errors. The
photographic methods in use at the physiological station give, in
short, the complete solution of the analysis of motions, however
rapid and complex they may be.

By comparing photographic representations of different sub-
jects or of the same subject at different stages of movement, we
may exactly define the manner in which they proceed, seize the
slightest differences that distinguish their motions, and perceive
the least modifications that are produced in their turn. If these
all relate to the same type in the process of perfectionment, we are
authorized, after eliminating individual variations, to take and
teach what Nature has revealed to us. We can thus study expert
subjects under two points of view, for the qualities which they pre-
sent are derived partly from their structure and partly from their
education. Everybody walks, runs, and jumps ; but there are few
who have a passable gait unless they are trained to it. In short,
we learn to walk, run, and jump, as we learn all the rest. We
can not well learn alone ; and it is one of the essential objects of
physical education to perfect the normal gaits as well as all the
movements in general. It is furthermore important to extend
the individual's life of relation and to accustom it to various
movements which are of indisputable utility for defense and for

GREETING BY GESTURE. 477

personal safety. We can learn to swim and climb only by exer-
cises in swimming and climbing. It is not by running that we
learn to overcome the vertigo we feel in lofty places or to extri-
cate ourselves from danger by the strength of our arms.

These truths can and ought to be taught. A considerable por-
tion of them are already popular ; some, new or less known, form
the matter of the new manual of gymnastic exercises and school
plays which the Minister of Public Instruction is about to pub-
lish.

However important these tentatives in teaching may be, they
are still insufficient. There should be instituted in physical edu-
cation a special technical teaching in which the mechanism of
the movements and their physiology shall be studied with all the
development which it permits. On this condition we can raise
the level and the return of physical education. We can also by
this means introduce ameliorations into manual trades by seeking
for a more perfect adaptation of tools to the human organization,
and in general the best utilization of muscular force wherever it
is called into exercise. This branch is, with hygiene, one of the
most useful applications of biological science and touches at many
points upon the amelioration of the condition of the laboring
classes. While it requires the co-operation of a number of par-
ticular branches of knowledge necessitating specialization, its
social bearing still deserves to interest special minds and exercise
the sagacity of students. — Translated for The Popular Science
Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

♦»»■

GREETING BY GESTURE.

By GAEEICK MALLEEY.
I.

VERBAL salutations have generally been employed to ex-
plain those expressed by gesture and posture. The study of
ancient literature and of modern travel has furnished many
friendly phrases of anthropologic and ethnic interest. But
friendly greetings were common before articulate speech pre-
vailed. Sign-language was then the mode of communication,
and gestures connected with the concepts and emotions of men
preceded and influenced all historic ceremonials of greeting. So
it is judicious to resort to gesture-speech, as still found surviv-
ing among some peoples and deaf-mutes, for the explanation of
the existing and still more of the oldest known forms of saluta-
tion, whether verbal or silent. Undoubtedly some of the verbal
forms are of recent origin and are independent of any gesture,

478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

and such cases require separate discussion ; but there are many-
known instances where greeting is and long has been expressed
by gesture without words, and others in which the words used,
conjointly or independently, are but derivations from the older,
perhaps disused, gestures.

In this application of sign-language the characteristics of
that mode of expression appear with distinctness, noticeable
among which are the variety of shades of meaning conveyed by
substantially the same gesture and the different modes of exhibit-
ing the same substantive concept. Sign-language is more elastic
as well as more comprehensive than oral language. Its abbre-
viation and symbolism are also so clear that linguistic lore and
etymologic guess are not needed for their explanation.

The main divisions of the subject to be now considered are —
I. Salutations with contact ; and, II. Salutations without contact.
Under the first division it is convenient to notice successively
those directly connected with the sense of — 1, touch ; 2, smell ;
3, taste — although that is not the probable order of their evolu-
tion.

Touch. — Under the heading of touch come the personal pal-
pations, such as patting, stroking, or rubbing the head, chest, or
abdomen. These are very ancient and wide-spread, biit have sel-
dom special significance save as expressive of good-will by seek-
ing to give a pleasurable sensation. Licking sensitive parts with
the tongue is in the same category ; and most actions of this class
may be derived from, or at least explained by, those of subhuman
animals.

The abdominal surface was most generally favored, its rub-
bing being practiced in both hemispheres, and ranging from the
Arctic Ocean to Polynesia. Perhaps the notorious fact that eat-
ing was often continued to painful repletion, after which friction
of the abdomen is a relief, may have some connection with the
practice ; but it is more probable that it arose from the moderate
and agreeable warmth and titillation produced by manipulation of
that region. The highest mark of respect in the Mariana Islands
was to stroke with the hand the abdomen of the person saluted.
The stroking of the exposed surface of that part of a friend's
body was symbolized in 1823 by the Eskimos stroking down with
their palms the front of their own fur jackets.

But other exposed surfaces received the same attention. When
the Kaiowa Satana came back to his wives after a long absence,
he said not a word, neither did they, but they stroked his face
and shoulders gently with indistinct murmurs of endearment.
Livingstone reported that the Zambesi patted the hands of the
person saluted.

The Gond people pull the ears of their friends. That familiar

GREETING BY GESTURE.

479

performance between the low comedian and the soubrette on the
stage is probably not immediately connected with the manners
of Corea, where, according to H. St. John, " they have no salu-
tations except buffeting each other/' The latter may be likened
to the proverbial Irish mode of courtship, or with more serious-
ness to the love-making of lions, where the pat of the paw is sub-
versive.

In many hot regions, markedly in the New Hebrides and New
Guinea, actually sprinkling water by the hand over the friend's
head is the best expression of friendship. It was symbolized by
canoe-men who, on approaching a vessel, sprinkled toward it the
sea-water from their paddles, and the significance, if not other-
wise known, would be made clear by the spoken words, meaning
" May you be cool ! " It becomes a question how closely this
idea is connected with baptism, and how nearly the old gesture
of the hand is preserved in those forms of benediction which are
not immediately adopted from the figure of the cross.

In Arabia Petrsea the cheeks are pressed together without
the use of the lips or hands ; and the Indians of Texas in 1685
were noticed to show affection by blowing against the ear. The
Biluchi " embrace " by each laying hands alternately on both
shoulders of the other. The mutual embrace of affection can not,
however, properly be considered as a mere salutation, because it
is a communion practiced wholly unconnected with meeting and
parting, but it may explain the origin of some of the salutes
made with personal contact. Yet certain reports of the occasion
and manner of embraces seem to include them among true salu-
tations— e. g., men of the Darling River, when friendly, " salute
by standing side by side and casting each of them his nearer arm
round his fellow's neck." This suggests the concept of union,
though it is more commonly and more conveniently expressed by
other actions.

When an Aino returns home after travel, he and his friend
put their heads on each other's shoulders ; the elder then lays his
hand on the younger's head and strokes it down, gradually draw-
ing his hands over the shoulders down the arms and to the tips
of the younger's fingers. Until this has been done neither speaks
a word. The description would apply to the usual mode of mak-
ing hypnotic passes. A similar stroking is performed by the
Blackf oot Indians of Canada to express gratification.

Other salutes of contact were symbolized by a pantomime in
which actual contact was omitted. The Eskimos, as La Potherie
told in 1753, " jumped, and rubbed their own stomachs," and the
Ainos in informal society stroke their own flowing beards at a
visitor, as if to signify, " Consider your beard, if you have any, to
be duly stroked."

480 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Some gesture-signs to express friendship are simply symbolic
of the actions of friendly greeting. In the remarkable speech of
Noaman at Tinicum, on the Delaware River, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, he stroked himself three times down his arm,
as a greeting of peace, not being able to perform the ceremony
to the arms of the auditors. The actions, above mentioned, of
the Eskimos in stroking their own bodies and rubbing their own
noses, may merely signify that, when they could not get at the
proper subjects for nose-rubbing and stroking, they made the
semblance of those motions as the sign for their usual physical
demonstration of friendship. A case where actual contact and
symbolizing appear to be mixed was reported in 1699 by DTber-
ville of the Bayogoulas, who first stroked their own faces and
breasts, then stroked the breasts of the saluted party, after which
they raised their hands aloft, at the same time rubbing them to-
gether. The concept of intermingling personalities is indicated.
A suggestion of the absorption of happiness through pressure
and friction comes from the narrative of Sir John Franklin, as
follows : " Whenever Terregannceuck (a Deer-Horn Eskimo) re-
ceived a present, he placed each article first on his right shoulder,
then on his left ; and, when he wished to express still higher satis-
faction, he rubbed it over his head/' This is apparently more
than mere taking possession of the article.

Next may be considered the mutual grasp of the hands in
greeting. It is difficult to realize that the junction of hands by
friends is not instinctive, a physical or sentimental magnetism
being so commonly associated with it. Nevertheless, the mutual
grasp of hands on friendly meeting, apart from ceremony and
symbol, is comparatively recent, and the practice is even yet
confined to a limited area. For instance, it appears in Captain
Back's Narrative that in 1833 the greeting by union of hands was
as strange to the dwellers in arctic lands as their rubbing of noses
was to the visitors. Mr. Spencer has published his opinion that
the " hand-shake," as the salutation is commonly entitled in Eng-
lish, originated in a struggle, first real, afterward fictitious, in
which each of the performers attempted to kiss the hand of the
other, which was resisted, thus producing a reciprocating move-
ment. To verify this suggestion it will be necessary to examine
into the antiquity and prevalence of the kiss in salutation, which
will be considered in its order.

Instances are found for the identical friendly contest for kiss-
ing, or priority in kissing, hands, relied on by Mr. Spencer, but
they are connected with the topic of precedence as affecting all
forms of greeting. Far too much importance is given in the sug-
gested explanation to the shake or motion of the joined hands.
The ancient usage, and even that which is now general, is not

GREETING BY GESTURE. 48i

" hand-shaking" but hand-taking and pressing. The French ex-
pressions are "server la main" and " donner une poignee," or
more fully " echanger une poignee de main." The translated Gaelic
phrase is " Give me the hand," and the German is " Hand reichen "
or " Hand geben." The quotation so often made from Virgil, where
^Eneas says to his father Anchises, " Da jungere dextram," indi-
cates only union. It does not appear that any language but Eng-
lish has the familiar and colloquial form "shake hands " or its
equivalent, and this is because the hands are not often shaken
among other than English-speaking peoples. No more motion is
normally employed than is needed to give emphasis, that is, pres-
sure, to the union, and, except when the gesture is made by awk-
ward persons, the pump-handle is not put into operation. Cases
of great excitement, real or simulated, formed exceptions, and the
ostensible, perhaps ostentatious, motions derived from such ex-
ceptional cases must be classed as extrinsic to the intent and un-
related to the origin of the gesture.

When it is considered necessary to do something obvious in
connection with the grasp, as if to proclaim that the act of peace
and good-will is performed, peoples not of English origin and not
under English influence have devices differing from the " shake."
On the Niger the ceremony is completed by the two parties taking
loose hold of the fingers of each other's hands and then slipping
them, making at the same time a snapping noise with the aid of
the thumb. In the same region the Lander party complained of
being obliged to " crack fingers " along with other ceremonies.
According to Schweinfurth, the Niam-Niam and the Monbutto
extended their right hands on meeting, " and joined them in
such a way that the two middle fingers cracked." The action
is essentially not hand-taking, still less hand-shaking, the ob-
ject being to join in making a noise by the fingers to emphasize
union.

A parallel exhibition of the savage idea that satisfaction
should not be silent is in the still extant custom of those Bedouins
who pride themselves on their breeding. When they sip coffee
they make a noise with their lips such as a horse makes in drink-
ing, which among them is the criterion of the man accustomed to
the usages of polite society ; he who is in the habit of sipping it
noiselessly being regarded as a person whose social education has
been neglected. The Zuili and other Indians, whose sole test of
festal enjoyment is in repletion, show their gratification by pro-
nounced and elaborate eructations.

It must be noticed that a mutual struggle for the privilege of
kissing the hand could only occur in contention of courtesy be-
tween equals. It would be a sign of displeasure for the recog-
nized superior to withdraw his hand from his inferior ; and special
vol. xxxviii. — 33

482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

favor was shown in the East, not by withdrawal, but by turning
the palm to be kissed sometimes instead of, and sometimes in ad-
dition to, the back of the hand, which was normally approached
by the lips. It is also clear that the hand-taking or grasping,
1 with or without the shaking, was in its essence mutual, which
hand-kissing could not be, as the nearest approach to the idea of
mutuality in that action would be its exchange in succession. So
Mr. Spencer's explanation does not apply to the great majority of
the salutes now in question. It is also necessary to bear in mind
that the expression "hand-shaking" as reported by English trav-
elers is deceptive, being, as before explained, a mere term. When
detailed descriptions are presented it generally appears that there
is no " shake," but a mutual grasp or some other use of joined
hands. In the present discussion, therefore, the so-called shake
may be dismissed as non-essential.

The Chinese saluter clasps his hands together, holds them out,
waves them gently, bends forward, and says, " Chin ! chin ! " mean-
ing, " Please, please ! " — or, less definitely, " Thank you," or " Good-
by," as the circumstances explain. In the Society Islands the
clasping of hands marked the marriage union or the loving com-
pact between two brothers-in-arms, but had no place in ordinary
greetings. Among the North American Indians, and in other
parts of the world where, as among the Indians, the hand-grasp
in simple salutation has not been found, the junction of the hands
between two persons is the ceremonial for union and peace, and
the sign for the same concept is exhibited by the two hands of
one person similarly grasped as an invitation to, or signification
of, union and peace. It must be remembered that among the
North American Indians to smoke tobacco is the most common
salutation. Indians are at peace only with those with whom they
smoke, and to smoke is to make peace. When actual smoking is
not practicable the gesture-sign for it is also that for "peace"
and " friend." The Cheyenne form is — tips of the first two fin-
gers of the right hand placed against or at a right angle to the
mouth and suddenly elevated upward and outward to imitate
smoke expelled. Apart from this prevailing sign, one, often
made for peace, is by clasping the hands in front of the body,
the back of the left hand usually down. Some Indians clasp the
hands by interlocking the fingers, holding the forearms vertical.
The Sac, Fox, and Kickapoo tribes hold before the body the ex-
tended left hand, and grasp it with the right. It is of interest,
in confirming the above-mentioned concept of these signs, that
since the Cherokees have learned to write in their own language
by their own syllabary, they place at the end of their friendly
missives the word " ' wigvyaligu," meaning, "I grasp your hand at
a distance."

GREETING BY GESTURE. 483

The ideogram of clasped hands to indicate peace and friend-
ship is found in pictographs from many localities. It is possible
that the exhibition and presentation of the unarmed hand, to be
mentioned in another connection, may have affected the practice,
but the probability that the paramount idea was that of agree-
ment is enhanced by a prescribed pantomime of the old Roman
law continuing down to the empire from the time of Numa, or
the prehistoric lawgivers who were embraced in his mythic per-
sonality. The contestants before the legal tribunals were com-
pelled each to offer his right hand for the clasp of his adversary
in token of good faith and confidence, before the cause was heard.
The same pantomime, pretending honesty of purpose, is obligatory
now between prize-fighters, stripped and in the ring, before the
first blow can be struck. Support to the hypothesis comes also
from a formulary which is still common in Ireland and in some
parts of England, of depositing saliva in the right hands and then
mutually grasping them to solemnize or cement a bargain.

In several parts of the world the junction is not of the hands,
but of some or all of the fingers bent so as to form hooks or links,
thus removing from the salutation the suggestion of magnetic
pressure and sympathy, and substituting that of mechanical at-
tachment. The Papuans of Torres Strait partially bend the
fingers of the right hand and hook them with those of the person
saluted, then rapidly jerk the hands apart. This is repeated sev-
eral times. Schweinfurth describes as general in Africa the hook-
ing of the middle fingers, and their violent jerking, often causing
the " crack " before mentioned. The Dakota sign for " friend " is
to point forward and a little upward with the joined and extended
fore and middle fingers of the right hand, which is about a foot
in front of the right breast ; move the hand upward to the right
side of the face, then straight forward about eight inches, and
then a little upward. Thus a hook is pictured in the air. Or
the bent right index, palm downward, is hooked over the bent
left index, palm upward, the hands about a foot in front of the
body. The Southern Indians frequently link their index-fingers
in front of the body to express friendship. A more emphatic
sign made by the Comanche is to bring the two hands near each
other in front, and clasp the two index-fingers tightly, so that the
tips of the finger and the thumb of each hand touch, thus form-
ing two distinct and united links.

The Delaware Noaman, in his speech at Tinicum, made the
sign for friendship in special connection with alliance " by the
semblance of making a knot." The etymology of alliance from
alligare, to bind to, is at once recalled. Some deaf-mutes in the
United States interlock the forefingers for " friendship " ; clasp the
hands, right uppermost, for " marriage " ; and make the last sign,

484 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

repeated with the left hand uppermost, for " peace." The idea of
union or linking is obvious. Other deaf-mutes, to express friend-
ship, link the index-fingers twice, first holding the left hand hack
down and then turning it back up.

In this connection it is to be noted that the Japanese, in actual
salutation, not merely as a sign of it, only indicate the hand-
grasp. They fumble with their own hands in greeting, instead
of troubling those of the person greeted, which is a proof of their
refinement, deserving of imitation in the United States, where the
continual and promiscuous hand-taking, which often is hand-shak-
ing, is a serious nuisance, and is properly ridiculed by foreign
visitors. The habit, however, is not peculiar to the United States,
most Teutonic peoples having the same and being also ridiculed
by the French. The Chinese, with a higher conception of polite-
ness, shake their own hands. The account of a recent observer of
the meeting of two polite Celestials is : " Each placed the fingers
of one hand over the fist of the other, so that the thumbs met, and
then, standing a few feet apart, raised his hands gently up and
down in front of his breast. For special courtesy, after the fore-
going gesture, they place the hand which had been the chief actor
in it over the stomach of its owner, not on that part of the inter-
locutor." The whole proceeding is symbolic, but doubtless is a
relic of objective performance. The Chinese symbol for friend,
doh, is two hands.

Some writers have conjectured that the custom of giving and
taking hands is derived from the giving and taking of presents,
often an obligatory act of friendship. In several countries objects,
perhaps of no value, must always be exchanged on the meeting of
friends. To offer, accept, or refuse a hand undoubtedly has im-
port, independent of the manner of junction. Other suggestions
have been made to the effect that the hand-grasp was symbolic
of the action by which physical help is frequently rendered, as by
raising up a comrade who has fallen into a hole. A more poetical
concept is clearly indicated in the Oto addition to the common
sign for friend : Both hands are brought open before the chest, then
extended, and the left hand, with palm up, is grasped crosswise by
the right with palm down, and held thus several seconds. The
hands are then unclasped, and the right fist is held in the left
axilla, by which it is firmly grasped. " One whom I will not
let go/'

Indians have another mode of expressing " union," " friend,"
and specifically " brother," and " growing up together." They
hold the right hand in front of and back toward the neck, index
and second fingers extended, touching, pointing upward and
slightly to the front, the others and thumb closed ; raise the
hand, moving it slightly to the front until tips of fingers are as

GREETING BY GESTURE. 4.85

high as the top of the head ; or the index-fingers of both hands
may be used similarly.

A form of expressing friendship accompanied by adoption was
reported in 1837 from a Texan tribe. The oldest chief took the
white visitor " by the right hand and commenced a sort of ma-
nipulation up the arm, grasping it strongly, as if feeling the mus-
cles at short distances quite up to the shoulder." The visitor was
obliged to do the same to the chief, and to exchange the same cere-
mony with all the other chiefs. The Murray-Islanders of Torres
Strait do not clasp hands, but each gently scrapes with his finger-
nails against the palm of the other's hand. These performances
remind of certain secret society " grips," and they may have been
absolutely on that principle, as many American and some Poly-
nesian tribes have mystic, generally religious, secret societies
similar to those of Europe and Asia.

A curious custom of the Ainos may be explained either on the
theory of magnetic rubbing or on that of producing union by
trituration : A strange Aino is received by the head man of the
village visited. Both kneel down, and, laying their hands to-
gether, rub them backward and forward. Neither says a word
before the ceremony is completed.

Smell. — The sense of smell, though intimately connected
with that of taste, is remarkably acute among the lower tribes
of men, therefore probably its exhibition in gesture-speech is
at least as ancient as the similar exhibition of the sense of
taste.

Smelling and sniffing come early among known salutations,
and are still common. Those actions among subhuman animals
on their meeting are so well known that comparison is needless.
The wants and habits of civilized but not thoroughly cultured
life have diminished the functions of smell, and tobacco-smoking,
among other usages, has impaired its organs. But relics of the
importance once attached to smell are yet found. In Siam there
is a rule which might be imitated to advantage. On the approach
of an inferior the superior sends one of his attendants to examine
whether the visitor has eaten or carries with him anything of an
offensive odor. If so, he is refused admission. A remarkable
contrast to most of the American Indians regarding scents has
lately been reported from British Columbia. Immediately before
the expected arrival of friends the tribesmen clean their habita-
tions and bathe, so that no bad odor remains to offend the guests.
They also take repeated baths before religious ceremonies, so that
their redolence may be agreeable to the Dairnon invoked. This
concept recalls the still existing Gaelic belief that the fairies are
pleased by sweet odors and cleanliness, and are driven off by the
opposite. Neither of these examples relates to the use of any cere-

486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

monial perfumes, such as incense, which, indeed, was designed to
affect the worshiper.

The junction of noses is so general, and described as so forcible
in Africa and Oceanica, as to have given rise to a fanciful theory
that it had occasioned the flattening of the noses of the peoples.
But in the accounts of many of the tribes of the Dark Continent
ajid of the islanders of New Zealand, Rotouma, Tahiti, Tonga,
Hawaii, and other groups, the essential action does not seem to
be that of either pressure or rubbing, but of mutual smelling.
It is true that the travelers generally call it rubbing, but the
motion and pressure are sometimes no greater than that of the
muzzles of two dogs making or cementing acquaintance. The
pressure and rub are secondary and emphatic. The juncture only
means the compliment, " You smell very good ! " It is illustrated
in the Navigator group when the noses of friends are saluted with
a long and hearty rub and the explanatory words " Good ! very
good ; I am happy now ! " The Calmucks also go through a sug-
gestive pantomime of greeting in which they creep on their knees
to each other and then join noses, as much as possible like the
two dogs before mentioned. In the Navigator Islands only equals
mutually rub their noses. The inferior rubs his own nose on and
smells the superior's hand. The respectful greeting of Fiji is to
take and smell the hand of the superior without rubbing it. In
the Gambia when the men salute the women they put the woman's
hand up to their noses and smell twice at the back of it. In the
Friendly Islands noses are joined, adding the ceremony of taking
the hand of the person to whom civilities are paid and rubbing it
with a degree of force upon the saluter's own nose and mouth.
The Mariana-Islanders formerly smelled at the hands of those to
whom they wished to tender homage. Captain Beechy describes
of the Sandwich-Islanders : " The lips are drawn inward between
the teeth, the nostrils are distended, and the lungs are widely in-
flated ; the face is then pushed forward, the noses brought into
contact, and the ceremony concludes with a hearty rub."

Sometimes the smelling and the nose-rub are not mutual,
being successively exchanged. The Chittagong-Hill people and
the Annamites place the nose upon the friend's cheek and inhale
through it strongly. They ask not for a kiss, but for a smell.
The Khyoungtha of eastern India apply the mouth and nose to the
cheek and give a strong inhalation. The Zuni clasp hands and
alternately carry the hand of the friend to the mouth and inhale
it. They neither kiss nor smell, but, as they say, " exchange the
breath of the life." This action has been erroneously reported as
hand-kissing ; and several of those above mentioned, which are
accurately described as joining the noses and smelling the cheek
or hand, have been mistaken for the kiss, either mutual or single.

GREETING BY GESTURE. 487

A tribe of the Eskimos was described by Captain Ross as pull-
ing their own noses for greeting, which he thought had reference
to the application of snow as a cure for the frost-bite. It might oc-
casionally have been a signal or warning to a friend that his nose
required snow, but as a greeting it was merely symbolic of the
rubbing or pressing of noses common both in high and low lati-
tudes. This pressing itself is abbreviated or perhaps indicated in
New Guinea by friends simply touching with the hand the tips of
their respective noses. The Todas, in respectful address and on
approach to sacred places, raise the thumb-edge of the right hand
vertically to the nose and forehead. This probably is the gesture
of an imprecation — the penalty being that the head may be split
open — and has no connection with either smelling or with rubbing
the nose, though easily mistaken for those actions. Another
symbolic gesture of salutation which is given by the Aino women
between themselves may be mentioned. They draw the forefinger
of the right hand between the forefinger and thumb of the left,
then raise both hands to the forehead, palms up, and then rub the
upper lip under the nose with the forefinger of the right hand.
This might be translated as expressing admiration for the good
odor imputed to the other lady.

Taste. — After smelling, the gustatory employment of the lips
comes in order of time and of culture planes. Regarded merely
as a salutation, the kiss seems to have been used between men be-
fore it was applied between the sexes — e. g., Cyrus kissed his
grandfather in formal reverence "because he wished to honor
him." But perhaps this distinction was only because there was
no public salutation adopted for men to women, on account of
woman's greater seclusion. In the old days the women were re-
garded as inferiors, and the erect posture required for a mutual
and ceremonial kiss in public was subversive of some regulations
concerning superior and inferior to be discussed later. The
practice of kissing between males, seeming to cultured peoples
ludicrous if not disgusting, is still common in continental EurojDe
and in other less -civilized regions, but it is seldom performed by
the two pairs of lips. The lips of one or successively of both actors
are generally applied to the cheek. But sometimes, when kissing
the cheek has been reported, the action was in fact misunderstood.
In addition to the instances mentioned elsewhere, this error would
naturally attend the " blowing upon our ears," as narrated by Joutel
of the natives of Louisiana in 1685. Also to-day in Arabia, indeed
commonly in the Orient, the lips are applied to the flowing ends
of the saluted man's beard. These appendages, to which venera-
tion is always attached, are solemnly raised to the saluter's mouth
and kissed. That was the treacherous salutation of Joab to Amasa.

The mutual kiss of affection or passion by the lips between

488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

persons of opposite sex is generally considered to be instinctive.
Reichenbach sought to explain it on the theory that the mouth was
the focus of his " odic force/' and that these two foci of opposite
sexes possessed natural attraction to each other. The hypothesis
that the kiss is to be derived from the mutual licking of each other
by the subhuman animals is unsatisfactory, because those animals
seldom bring the soft parts of their respective mouths into con-
tact. They exchange licking as they exchange rubbing of other
parts of the body, and such lickings and rubbings are unrelated
to sex. But the fact that the mutual kiss between opposite sexes
is not general among the tribes of men is abundantly shown by
the observations of travelers in the lands where savagery and
barbarism still exist. Where it is now practiced it is not probably
of great antiquity. In some languages, notably the Japanese,
there is no word for kiss.

When, however, the kiss was introduced to include women, its
vogue, like that of other new inventions, was carried to excess.
According to the chronicle of Winsenius, it was unknown in Eng-
land until the Princess Rowena, the daughter of King Hengist,
of Friesland, instructed the insular Vortigern in the imported
salute. Though the Saxon statistics are not probably exact, it is
historical that in England, not many generations ago, it would
have been the imperative duty of a visitor to have kissed all the
ladies of the household, even without previous acquaintance.
Such was the experience of many surprised literary foreigners,
notably Erasmus. The contemporary drama shows the usage to
have lasted into the Georgian era, and it is to be noticed that the
performance was generally called a "salute," sometimes "the
salute."

The history of the early Christian Church affords instruction
on this topic. At first the kiss was an adopted sign of fellowship
—"Greet all the brethren with a holy kiss" (1 Thess., v, 2G). It
early passed into ceremony as the kiss of peace given to a newly
baptized convert, and in celebrating the Eucharist. But, as it was
found to have some qualities not adapted to religious and spirit-
ual use between the sexes, it was ordered that only men should
kiss men and women only women. The awkwardness of this
practice, or perhaps the experience that promiscuous kissing, even
when limited to the same sex, was liable to convey contagious
diseases, induced another amendment, by which the ceremonial
kiss in the Roman Church was only passed between the minis-
trants, and a relic or cross called the oscillator ium "Or pax waS
passed to the people for their lips.

It may, perhaps, be suggested that one reason for the very long
delay in the practice of the mutual kiss was in the general use by
one or both of the sexes of nose-rings or labrets, either of which

GREETING BY GESTURE. 489

would prevent the approximation requisite. If such use be not
admitted as a causa sufficiens, it at least affords evidence that the
kiss was not customary among the people by whom nose-rings and
labrets were worn. Indeed, Prof. Dall gives instances where
labrets being common and the kiss unknown, the tongues are
protruded in affectionate salutes.

The kiss of the hand is undoubtedly ancient, and therefore
is not derived from that of the lips, but probably the converse is
true. The hand-kiss is loosely asserted to be developed from
servile obeisances in which the earth, the foot, and the garments
were kissed, the hand and cheek succeeding in order of time and
approach to equality of rank. But it is doubtful if that was the
actual order, and it is certain that at the time when hand-kissing
began there were less numerous gradations of rank than at a later
stage. Kissing of the hands between men is mentioned in the Old
Testament, also by Homer, Pliny, and Lucian. The kiss was ap-
plied reverentially to sacred objects, such as statues of the gods,
as is shown by ancient works of art, and also, among numer-
ous etymologies, by that of the Latin word adoro ; and it was also
metaphorically applied by the inferior or worshiper kissing his
own hand and throwing the salute to the superior or statue. In
republican Rome kissing the hands of superiors was common, but
the greeting was more energetic than the emperors could endure,
and soon courtiers of even important station were compelled to
kneel and with the right hand carry the hem of the emperor's
robe to their lips. Even this became a too precious, or, through
proximity, a too dangerous privilege, and they were only allowed
to salute at a distance by kissing their own hands, as when they
adored the gods. This sign of Rome's decadence has survived in
the locality. The mouth kissing the hand, by which Job described
a species of idolatry, is a species of adulation practiced by every
cringing servant in Italy. When the actual practice has ceased,
it survives in phrases. Austrian men habitually say to one
another, " Kilss cVHand ! " and Spaniards "Beso a Vd. los manos ! "
A variant form was found among the Algonkins and Iroquois, as
Champlain related, in 1G22, that "they kissed each his own hand
and then placed it in mine."

Affection, together with respect, is sometimes shown in the
Orient when a servant salutes a master, a son his father, or a
wife her husband, by kissing the other's hand either on back or
palm or both and then carrying it to the kisser's forehead.
Among the- Malays the visitor approaches the 'man he wishes to
salute with his hands joined as if in supplication, while the other
touches them lightly with his own on either side, and afterward
raises his hands to his lips or forehead. These motions are similar
to the ceremonies in the feudal acts of homage and fealty. The

490 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Micronesians, notably in the Pelew and Caroline Islands, took up
either the hand or foot of the party respected and rubbed their
own faces with it. Some religious sects — e. g., the Dunkers — also
kiss one another's feet — after washing them.

The original concept expressed by the hand-kiss was that of
" good." In very early times to possess what had a good taste
was of the greatest importance to man, and therefore a good taste
was the symbol of any good thing or person. So, when practi-
cable, the hand of the person saluted was carried to the lips to
signify that he was good. This act is naturally accompanied by
the bowing of the head. The common gesture-sign for " good "
in all senses is to carry the hand to and from the lips with a
pleasant expression. The spontaneous expression of deaf-mutes
is much the same, signifying not only greeting, but satisfaction,
in short — good. Their full sign is described as " touch lips with
palm or ends of fingers pointing upward, then wave the hands
outward to the right and downward, turning palm up." This is
a complete description of kissing one's own hand, but it has no
relation to the kiss by the pairs of lips.

A common gesture-sign for " peace," the idea of friendship be-
ing more directly connected with that of " quiet," is made by
placing the forefinger on the lips, which sign has often been erro-
neously reported as a kiss. Still another Indian sign, similar in
motion and in conception, is that which, with variant emphasis
and expression, means admiration, or surprise, or a high degree
of content. Its essence consists in placing the hand upon or over
the mouth, that being sometimes closed and sometimes open,
though covered by the hand with rapid emphasis. In the former
case it is interpreted to mean that language is inadequate to ex-
press the sensations felt. When the mouth is open, with the
hand placed over it to attract notice, the sign represents surprise
by imitation of the familiar and instinctive action attending that
emotion. This sign also has been reported as a kiss of the hand.
Another case where the same error might readily have oc-
curred is also of interest, as showing a contrast with the Zuni
inhalation, giving an equally poetical concept. In equatorial
Africa the hands of the person saluted are blown upon, with the
words, " Let it be as smooth with you as the breath I blow on
your hand."

Mr. W. T. Wyndham admires the skill with which the aborigines of Australia
use stone implements, and turn out work that one would hardly believe possible
with such rough tools. They show great ingenuity, particularly in making their
harpoon-heads for spearing dugong and fish ; instead of shaving the wood up and
down as a European workman would do, they turn it round and round, and chip
it off across the grain.

PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE. 491

PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE.

By Dr. MANLY MILES.

THE progress recently made in tracing the interdependent rela-
tions of living organisms is clearing np some of the obscure
problems in the nutrition of plants that have a direct bearing on
the processes of evolution and the applications of science in agri-
culture.

Since the discovery of the composition of the atmosphere, the
problem of the sources of the nitrogen of vegetation has given
rise to a wider range of experimental investigation and discussion
than any other in vegetable physiology. The evidence appeared
to be conclusive as to its source in certain families, including the
cereals, while the larger supplies of nitrogen obtained by legu-
minous plants were not fully accounted for.

The experiments of Boussingault, in France, and the elaborate
investigations at Rothamsted, in England, seemed to show that
atmospheric nitrogen is not appropriated, to any extent, by the
leaves of plants, and that the soil is the main or sole source of the
nitrogen of vegetation.

Wheat and barley were the leading cereals under experiment,
as field crops, at Rothamsted ; and it was found that, while they
contained less nitrogen in their composition than leguminous
crops, they were specifically benefited by nitrogenous manures.
On the other hand, leguminous crops, which obtained larger sup-
plies of nitrogen from the soil, were not benefited by nitrogenous
manures, and they grew luxuriantly on soils that did not furnish
the cereals with their comparatively limited supplies of nitrogen.

These apparently paradoxical results are now explained, in
part at least, by investigations made within the past five years by
Hellriegel and Willfarth, Ward, Prazmouski, and others, which
have been fully verified by experiments at Rothamsted which are
still in progress. Former experiments showed that leguminous
plants obtained nitrogen from some source, or under conditions
that were not available for the nutrition of the cereals, and it was
evidently not obtained from the atmosphere.

It was suggested that the tubercles observed on the roots of
leguminous plants had a direct relation to the appropriation of
nitrogen ; but most observers looked upon them as abnormal and
of no physiological significance.

The latest investigations, however, show, beyond the shadow
of a doubt, that these " tubercles " or " nodules " are the results of
infection by microbes, and that "the relation between the roots
and the bacterial organisms is a true symbiotic one, each develop-

492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing more vigorously at the expense of the other/' and that free
nitrogen is appropriated by the microbes.

In 1883 Hellriegel began experiments with leguminous plants
in pots of washed quartz sand, to which no nitrogen was added.
Marked differences were observed in the growth of the plants un-
der these conditions, but tubercles were found on the roots of the
plants that made the best growth, while they were absent in
other cases. He was then led to attempt the production of the
root-tubercles by seeding or inoculating sterilized sand with a
water-extract of a soil in which leguminous plants were growing.
To some of the pots, in which peas and vetches were planted, from
twenty-five c. c. to fifty c. c. of a water-extract of a fertile soil
were added. When this soil-extract was not sterilized, there was
a luxuriant growth of the plants in the pots to which it was ap-
plied, with abundant formation of root-nodules ; but when the soil-
extract was sterilized, this result was not obtained.

This soil-extract, however, was without effect on lupines and
some other plants ; but when the lupine pots were inoculated with
an extract of a soil in which lupines were growing, the plants made
a luxuriant growth, and root-tubercles were abundantly devel-
oped. In all cases the nitrogen supply of the plants was coinci-
dent with the development of root-tubercles, that were produced
by inoculation with the extract of a fertile soil.

In 1888 a preliminary series of experiments, on the same lines,
were begun at Rothamsted by Sir John B. Lawes and Prof. J. H.
Gilbert ; and in 1889 they were continued, on a more extended
scale, with modified conditions suggested by the results of the pre-
ceding year. Their first experiments were made with peas, blue
lupines, and yellow lupines, in pots seven inches high and about
six inches in diameter. For our present purpose we need only
call attention to the experiments in 1888 with peas.

Pots 1, 2, and 3 were filled with a washed yellow sand, to which
was added 0*5 per cent of the ash of pea plants to furnish the re-
quired mineral constituents. Pot 4 was filled with a rich garden
soil. Distilled water was used for watering the plants, and no
other application was made to pot 1. Care was taken to deter-
mine the nitrogen of the soils, and of the seeds planted, which we
need not describe in detail.

An extract of a rich garden soil was prepared by shaking in a
stoppered bottle one part of soil with five parts of distilled water,
and, after the coarser particles had subsided, twenty-five c. c. of the
liquid was applied to each of pots 2 and 3. A chemical analysis
of this soil-extract showed that the amount of plant food con-
tained in it was so small that it could be safely neglected as an
element of plant growth, and that its effect must be attributed
solely to the soil microbes it contained.

PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE. 493

There was a considerable development of roots in the upper
part of pot 1, and a number of root-tubercles were formed, owing
to the fact, as proved by subsequent experiments, that the sand
was not sterilized before planting the peas. The roots in pots 2
and 3, inoculated with soil-extract, were more abundant than in
pot 1, and the root-tubercles were decidedly more numerous and
frequently in clusters. The above-ground growth was more lux-
uriant in pots 2 and 3 than in pot 1, and " in the total vegetable
matter there was in pot 2 more than twice, and in pot 3 nearly
twice as much, nitrogen as in pot 1 without soil-extract."

A comparison of the total nitrogen in the soil and plants at the
close of the experiment with the original nitrogen in the soil and
seeds showed that " in pot 1, with the impure and not sterilized
sand, but without soil-extract, there was more than three times as
much nitrogen in the products as in the soil and seed ; in pot 2,
with soil-extract, there was about five times as much ; and in pot
3, also with soil-extract, there was more than four times as much."
There was very little difference in the amount of nitrogen in the
soils at the beginning and the close of the experiments, and, neg-
lecting this, it appears that " the nitrogen in the substance grown
was, in pot 1, nine and one half-fold ; in pot 2, nearly eighteen-
fold ; and in pot 3, nearly fifteen-fold that supplied in the seed."

In 1889 similar experiments were made with peas, red clover,
vetches, blue lupines, yellow lupines, and lucern. For the lupines
and lucern glazed earthenware pots, six inches in diameter and
fifteen inches deep, were provided, and for the other plants the
same pots were used as in 1888.

" The sand used was a rather coarse white quartz sand, from
which the coarser and the finer portions were removed by sifting,
and more of the finer by washing and decantation, first in well,
and afterward in distilled water.

"In each case the sand was mixed with 0*1 per cent of the
plant-ash, and 0"1 per cent of calcium carbonate." The prepared
sand was sterilized by keeping it for several days at a temperature
of nearly 100° C. in a water-bath.

" There were four pots of each description of plant." Of the
peas, clover, vetches, and lucern there was one pot of each of the
prepared quartz sand without inoculation with soil-extract ; two
pots of the prepared quartz sand inoculated with the microbes of
a garden-soil extract ; and one pot of garden soil itself. Of the
blue and the yellow lupines there was one pot of each of the pre-
pared, but not inoculated, quartz sand ; two pots of the prepared
quartz sand inoculated with an extract of a soil from a field where
lupines were growing; and one pot of the lupine soil itself, to which
was added 0*01 per cent of lupine plant-ash.

"The soil-extracts were in all cases added on July 9th, before

494

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the sowing of the seed ; twenty-five c. c. in the case of the peas,
the vetches, and clover, and fifty c. c. in that of the lupines and
lucern. The seeds, carefully selected and weighed, as in 1888,
were sown on July 10th — that is, about four weeks earlier than in
the previous year, but still not as early as was desirable."

Fig. 1.— Peas.

Ten seeds of clover, three of the lupines, and two each of the
peas, vetches, and lucern, were put in each pot. " No analytical
results of the experiments of 1889 are as yet available," and we
can only notice the relative growth of the plants under the differ-

PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE.

495

ent conditions. The pots of clover and lucern were left for a
second year's growth, and their roots could not, therefore, be ex-
amined. A photograph of the four pots of peas was made October
22d (a copy of which is given in Fig. 1), and the plants were taken
up for examination October 23d and 24th.

Fig. 2. — Vetches.

The relative growth and development of the plants in the dif-
ferent pots are clearly shown in the photograph. "Unlike the
result obtained in pot 1 in 1888, with the impure and non-sterilized
sand, the plants in the purer and sterilized quartz sand (pot 1,

496

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 1) show extremely limited growth." The plants in pots 2 and
3, inoculated with a soil-extract containing microbes, began to
show enhanced growth, when compared with the plants in pot 1,
before the end of July. Finally, the plants in pot 1 were eight
inches and a quarter, and eight inches and a half high ; in pot 2,
fourteen, and fifty inches and a half ; in pot 3, fifty-two inches and
a half, and fifty inches and a half ; while in the garden soil, in pot

Fig. 3. — Yellow Lupines.

4, they made a somewhat less extended growth than those in pots
2 and 3 in a sterile sand inoculated with soil-microbes. It should
be remarked, however, that " the plants in pot 4 were more vig-
orous, and, while they flowered and seeded, neither of those in pots
.' or 3 did so."

A photograph of the vetches was taken October 25th (a copy
of which is given in Fig. 2), and they were harvested for exami-
nation the following day. The plants in pot 9, which was not
inoculated with soil microbes, were eleven inches and a quarter,
and ten inches and a half high ; those in pot 10, in a sterile but

PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE. 49 7

inoculated quartz sand, were fifty-two inches and a half, and
sixty-seven inches high ; those in the duplicate pot 11 were sixty-
one inches and a half, and fifty-one inches high ; while those in
pot 12, in a garden soil, were only fifty-three, and thirty-six inches
high. As in the case with the peas, the plants in pot 12 flowered
and seeded, while those in pots 10 and 11 did not.

Most of the blue lupines, as in 1888, failed to grow. After some
reseeding two plants of yellow lupines were grown in each pot.
Their relative development, November 29th, is shown in the pho-
tograph copied in Fig. 3.

The plants in pot 17, in the sterilized sand not inoculated with
soil-microbes, were one inch and a half, and two inches high,
"scarcely showing over the rim of the pot"; those in pot 18, in
the inoculated quartz sand, measured twenty-four, and eighteen
inches, " both spreading much beyond the width of the pot " ; in
pot 19, also in inoculated quartz sand, one plant was more than
two feet and the other but little more than eight inches high ;
while in pot 20, in a soil from a field where lupines were grow-
ing, one plant was but sixteen inches and the other only eight-
een inches high, and both less branching than those in pots 18
and 19.

" Unlike the peas and vetches, the yellow lupines, with soil-
extract seeding (pots 18 and 19, Fig. 3), flowered and podded
freely. One plant in pot 18 had nine small pods, and one in pot
19 four large and three small ones. There were also in pot 20,
with lupine soil, on one plant five pods and on the other six.
Thus, in the quartz sand with lupine soil-extract seeding, the
plants not only produced a great deal more vegetable matter than
those in the lupine sand itself, but they as freely flowered and
seeded." This was probably owing to the less porosity of the
lupine soil when watered in the pot.

The root development and root-tubercles in the different pots
may be briefly described as follows : In pots 1 of the peas, 9 of the
vetches, and 17 of the lupines, no root-tubercles could he found, and
the roots were decidedly less developed than in the inoculated
pots 2, 3, 10, 11, 18, and 19.

In pot 4 of the peas in the garden soil the roots were abundant,
but the root-tubercles were not as numerous as in pots 2 and 3'
In pot 12 of the vetches, also with garden soil, the root-tubercles
were less numerous, and the roots were not as well developed as
in pots 10 and 11. In pot 20 of the yellow lupines, in a soil from a
field where lupines were growing, the root-tubercles were not as
numerous, and there was less root development than in pots 18
and 19.

In their " preliminary notice " of the results of these experi-
ments, Sir J. B. Lawes and Prof. J. H. Gilbert say : " It will be

TOL. XXXVIII. — 34

498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

admitted that the results so far brought forward are abundantly
confirmatory of those obtained by Hellriegel ; and that the fact of
the fixation of free nitrogen in the growth of Leguminosce. under
the influence of microbe seeding of the soil and of the resulting
nodule formation on the roots may be considered as fully estab-
lished."

The results obtained by the inoculation of the prepared quartz
sand with the microbes of a fertile soil, or of one in which lupines
were growing, as shown in the increased growth of the plants in
pots 2, 3, 10, 11, 18, and 19, when compared with those in pots 1, 9,
and 17, which were not inoculated, are striking ; but a comparison
of the plants in the inoculated pots with those in pots 4 and 12 in
a garden soil, and pot 20 in a "lupine soil," furnish still more
significant indications of the futility of purely chemical consid-
erations in discussing the nutritive processes of plants and their
relations to the soil. The peas and vetches in a rich garden soil
flowered and seeded, but the plants were not as large, and the
root-tubercles were not as numerous, as in the sterile quartz sand
inoculated with microbes from a fertile soil ; and the lupines made
a better growth in the inoculated quartz sand than in soil from a
lupine field.

The biological factors concerned in the elaboration of plant
food seem to be quite as important as the chemical elements pro-
vided in the soil itself ; and a revision of the accepted theories of
plant growth, and the relations of soils to their processes of nu-
trition, is evidently needed from this standpoint.

It should be remarked, however, that the root-tubercles pro-
duced by microbes are not confined to the Leguminosce,, as they
have, in fact, been observed in several natural orders of plants.
Moreover, there are indications that several varieties or species of
symbiont microbes are concerned in the production of tubercles
on the roots of leguminous plants, and it is probable that each
species has its own favored form.

Hellriegel failed to grow lupines in a nitrogen-free soil inocu-
lated with a fertile soil-extract ; but, when the inoculation was
made with an extract of a sandy soil in which lupines were grow-
ing, a luxuriant growth was obtained.

In the Rothamsted experiments on land where red clover had
been grown repeatedly, and its yield of nitrogen was reduced to
but 22 pounds per acre, vetches, on an average for three years,
obtained 120 pounds of nitrogen per acre ; lucern yielded as
high as 340 pounds, and made an average for six years of 150
pounds of nitrogen per acre ; and Bokhara clover yielded crops of
130 and 145 pounds of nitrogen per acre. On land where beans
had been grown almost continuously for thirty-two years, and had
'' practically failed " to grow, their yield of nitrogen per acre hav-

PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE. 499

ing been reduced to about 16 pounds on the unmanured plot, and
less than 27 pounds on the plot with mineral manure but without
nitrogen, very large crops of red clover were grown containing
about 300 pounds of nitrogen per acre.

If attention is directed exclusively to the root-tubercles of
plants and the roots to which they are attached, it is difficult to
understand the manner in which the free nitrogen of the air per-
meating the soil is made available by the microbes for the nutri-
tion of the more highly organized hosts with which they are asso-
ciated ; but the problem is simplified when we take into considera-
tion the interdependent relations of living organisms arising from
their habits, and different requirements in their processes of nu-
trition.

The influence of cats on the growing of clover seed, as pointed
out by Darwin, furnishes a good illustration of dependent rela-
tions in the struggle for existence. Cats prey on field-mice that
destroy the nests of humble-bees, and the bees are known to be
important factors in the fertilization of the clover plant. Quite
as marked relations of dependence have been observed among
microbes, but the sequence of organisms may be brought about
by a different process.

In the ordinary processes of putrefaction we find an orderly
succession of living organisms engaged in the work of disinte-
gration in which relations of dependence are clearly manifest.
The microbes that initiate the putrefactive process appropriate
the materials required for their own growth and multiplication,
and the residual mass soon becomes better fitted for the nutrition
of other species which succeed them. These are, for similar rea-
sons, succeeded by other forms that are better adapted to the
changed conditions, and a series of organisms, of diverse habits,
is required to reduce the organic compounds to their elements.
Each species performs a specific role, " the earlier ones preparing
the pabulum, or altering the surrounding medium, so as to render
it highly favorable to a succeeding form/' while their own activi-
ties are checked by the changed conditions.

The term symbiosis, as now used, is limited to the immediate
and direct relations of certain species that are mutually beneficial
in their processes of nutrition and growth ; but this interdepend-
ence of vital activities and interests, in many cases at least, seems
to extend to more remote relations through a series of organisms,
each of which may have an influence on the well-being of the
others. An increased growth of clover in a nitrogen-free soil
has been obtained by seeding it with an extract from a root-crop
soil ; and this, in connection with the facts already presented, is
certainly suggestive in explaining the advantages arising from
crop rotations.

5oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The rnicro-organisms that are found in great variety in soils
must have an important influence on the processes of metabolism
that are constantly taking place in the soil itself ; and the results
of their activities, which are not limited to processes of putrefac-
tion and nitrification, can not be measured solely by the amount
of nutritive materials appropriated. In my own experiments with
soil-microbes they have proved their ability to take their required
supplies of lime and potash from solid fragments of gypsum and
feldspar, and even from the glass tubes in which cultures were
made, which were deeply etched by their action.

The roots of plants undoubtedly aid in determining condi-
tions of the soil that favor the vital activities of certain microbes,
and interfere with the well-being of others of different habits ;
and the plants, in their turn, are presumably benefited by the
activities of the microbes best adapted to the prescribed conditions.
In the struggle for existence the dominance of these favored
forms can not, however, be indefinitely maintained. The roots
of one species of plant and their associated microbes, in appropri-
ating their required supplies of nutritive materials, induce a
metabolism of the soil that, sooner or later, renders it better fitted
for other species of plants and other microbe associates; and
these, in their turn, prepare the way for species of still different
requirements in their processes of nutrition.

Soil metabolism, and the involved liberation or elaboration of
plant food, will thus be promoted by a succession of plants of
different habits of growth, each with its associated microbes ; and
the elements of fertility stored in, or permeating the soil, must,
under such conditions, be more completely utilized.

It is practically misleading and inaccurate to say that legu-
minous plants appropriate the free nitrogen of the atmosjmere.
The evidence clearly shows that the soil-microbes which find
favorable conditions for the exercise of their vital activities in
the vicinity of, or in contact with, the roots of leguminous plants,
are able to make use of the free nitrogen that permeates the soil,
and that it is thus made available as combined nitrogen in the
nutrition of the higher chlorophyl-bearing leguminous plants.
The latest investigations are, therefore, strictly in accordance with
the earlier experiments by Boussingault, and at Rothamsted, in
showing that the soil is the source of the nitrogen of plants, and
we must look to soil conditions as essential factors in determin-
ing the vital activities of the microbes that bring free nitrogen
into the combined form that is available for the nutrition of the
higher plants.

It must be admitted that red clover appropriates nitrogen that
has been prepared for it from the free nitrogen of the soil through
the agency of its symbiont microbes, but it is well known that it

PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE. 501

will not grow for many years in succession on the same land, and
other crops must be introduced to put the soil in suitable con-
dition for growing it again. The cereals with their different
requirements, through their reactions upon the soil, which are
undoubtedly aided by their associated microbes, and even the
roots and companion microbes of other leguminous species, may
have a direct influence in determining conditions of the soil that
favor the nutritive processes of the clover roots and their specific
symbiont microbes.

The interdependent biological relations of different farm-crops,
and of the soil-microbes that find favorable nutritive conditions
in the vicinity of their roots, appear to be quite as important
factors in farm economy as the chemical composition of soils and
crops, and the conditions of the soil that influence these relations
are of great practical interest.

In the light of our present knowledge, it must be obvious that
the applications of science to agriculture, so far as crop-growing
is concerned, will be best promoted by investigations relating to
the life history of these microbes, and their immediate and remote
relations to the roots of plants of different species, and to pro-
cesses of metabolism in the soil under different conditions.

The suggestion made by Dr. M. T. Masters, in his Plant Life
on the Farm, that in the future the farmer may be able to apply
the ferment-producing germs to his soil, to promote the growth
of his crops, with greater advantage than he now derives from
the application of chemical manures, seems to be fully warranted
by the results of recent experiments ; and it may be that the
breeding of beneficial microbes may come to be of as great prac-
tical interest to the farmer as the breeding of yeast now is in the
manufacture of beer.

We must not, however, be misled by the plausible inferences
that may be made from the evidence presented in regard to this
recently discovered source of nitrogen supply to leguminous
plants under special conditions. It is not safe to assume that
the nitrogen removed from the soil by crops and by drainage, or
otherwise, is fully restored by corresponding amounts derived
from free nitrogen through the agency of microbes, or that this
is the sole or even the main source of the nitrogen of leguminous
crops on average soils.

The Rothamsted experiments show that the previous accumu-
lations of combined nitrogen in the soil must be the source of a
large proportion of the nitrogen of leguminous crops, and that
the frequent repetition of such crops does not prevent an appre-
ciable diminution of the nitrogen of the surface soil.

The evidence we now have seems to indicate that, under ordi-
nary conditions of farm practice, the microbes concerned in work-

502 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing up the accumulated stores of combined nitrogen in the soil
are quite as significant factors in the nutrition of leguminous
plants as their symbiont microbes that appropriate free nitrogen ;
and the conditions of soils and plants that determine the exer-
cise of these diverse biological activities, in one direction or the
other, present a promising field for future investigation. With
every advance in knowledge there is increasing evidence that the
transformations of matter and energy taking place in the normal
processes of living organisms are so exceedingly complex that
they can not be expressed or defined in simple formulae relating
to a single department of science, and this fact must be recognized
if any real progress is made in solving the problems presented in
the applications of science to agriculture.

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN.

Br Peof. T. H. HUXLEY.
II.

AT the present time, four great separate bodies of water, the
Black Sea, the Caspian, the Sea of Aral, and Lake Balkash,
occupy the southern end of the vast plains which extend from
the Arctic Sea to the highlands of the Balkan Peninsula, of Asia
Minor, of Persia, of Afghanistan, and of the high plateaus of
central Asia as far as the Altai. They lie for the most part be-
tween the parallels of 40° and 50° north, and are separated by
wide stretches of barren and salt-laden wastes. The surface of
Balkash is five hundred and fourteen feet, that of the Aral one
hundred and fifty-eight feet above the Mediterranean ; that of
the Caspian eighty-five feet below it. The Black Sea is in free
communication with the Mediterranean by the Bosporus and the
Dardanelles ; but the others, in historical times, have been at
most temporarily connected with it and with one another, by
relatively insignificant channels. This state of things, however,
is comparatively modern. At no very distant period, the land of
Asia Minor was continuous with that of Europe, across the pres-
ent site of the Bosporus, forming a barrier several hundred feet
high, which dammed up the waters of the Black Sea. A vast
extent of eastern Europe and of western central Asia thus became
a huge reservoir, the lowest part of the lip of which was probably
situated somewhat more than two hundred feet above the sea-
level, along the present southern water-shed of the Obi, which
flows into the Arctic Ocean. Into this basin the largest rivers of
Europe, such as the Danube and the Volga, and what were then
great rivers of Asia, the Oxus and Jaxartes, with all the inter-

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 503

mediate affluents, poured their waters. In addition, it received
the overflow of Lake Balkash, then much larger ; and, probably,
that of the inland Sea of Mongolia. At that time the level of the
Sea of Aral stood at least sixty feet higher than it does at pres-
ent.* Instead of the separate Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas,
there was one vast Ponto-Aralian Mediterranean, which must
have been prolonged into arms and fiords along the lower valleys
of the Danube, the Volga (in the course of which Caspian shells
are now found as far as the Kuma), the Ural, and the other afflu-
ent rivers — while it seems to have sent its overflow northward
through the present basin of the Obi. At the same time, there
is reason to believe that the northern coast of Asia, which every-
where shows signs of recent slow upheaval, was situated far to
the south of its present position. The consequences of this state
of things have an extremely important bearing on the question
under discussion. In the first place, an insular climate must be
substituted for the present extremely continental climate of west
central Eurasia. That is an important fact in many ways. For
example, the present eastern climatal limitations of the beech
could not have existed, and if primitive Aryan goes back thus
far, the arguments based upon the occurrence of its name in some
Aryan languages and not in others lose their force. In the second
place, the European and the Asiatic moieties of the great Eura-
siatic plains were cut off from one another by the Ponto-Aralian
Mediterranean and its prolongations. In the third place, direct
access to Asia Minor, to the Caucasus, to the Persian highlands,
and to Afghanistan, from the European moiety was completely
barred ; while the tribes of eastern central Asia were equally
shut out from Persia and from India by huge mountain ranges
and table-lands. Thus, if the blond long-head race existed so far
back as the epoch in which the Ponto-Aralian Mediterranean had
its full extension, space for its development, under the most favor-
able conditions, and free from any serious intrusion of foreign ele-
ments from Asia, was presented in northern and eastern Europe.

When the slow erosion of the passage of the Dardanelles
drained the Ponto-Aralian waters into the Mediterranean, they
must have everywhere fallen as near the level of the latter as the
make of the country permitted, remaining, at first, connected by
such straits as that of which the traces yet persist between the
Black and the Caspian, the Caspian and the Aral Seas respectively.
Then, the gradual elevation of the land of northern Siberia, bring-
ing in its train a continental climate, with its dry air and intense
summer heats, the loss by evaporation soon exceeded the greatly

* This is proved by the old shore-marks on the hill of Kashkanatao in the midst of the
delta of the Oxus. Some authorities put the ancient level very much higher — two hun-
dred feet or more (Keane, Asia, p. 408).

5o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

reduced supply of water, and Balkash, Aral, and Caspian gradu-
ally shrank to their present dimensions. In the course of this
process the broad plains between the separated inland seas, as
soon as they were laid bare, threw open easy routes to the Cau-
casus and to Turkistan, which might well be utilized by the
blond long-heads moving eastward through the plains contempo-
raneously left dry south and east of the Ural chain. The same
process of desiccation, however, would render the route from east
central Asia westward as easily practicable ; and, in the end, the
Aryan stock might easily be cut in two, as we now find it to be, by
the movement of the Mongoloid brunet broad-heads to the west.

Thus we arrive at what is practically Latham's Sarmatian hy-
pothesis— if the term " Sarmatian " is stretched a little, so as to in-
clude the higher parts and a good deal of the northern slopes of
Europe between the Ural and the German Ocean ; an immense
area of country, at least as large as that now included between
the Black Sea, the Atlantic, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean.

If we imagine the blond long-head race to have been spread
over this area, while the primitive Aryan language was in course
of formation, its northwestern and its southeastern tribes will
have been fifteen hundred or more miles apart. Thus, there will
have been ample scope for linguistic differentiation ; and, as ad-
jacent tribes were probably influenced by the same causes, it is rea-
sonable to suppose that, at any given region of the periphery, the
process of differentiation, whether brought about by internal or
external agencies, will have been analogous. Hence, it is permis-
sible to imagine that, even before primitive Aryan had attained
its full development, the course of that development had become
, somewhat different in different localities ; and, in this sense, it
may be quite true that one uniform primitive Aryan language
never existed. The nascent mode of speech may very early have
got a twist, so to speak, toward Lithuanian, Slavonian, Teutonic,
or Celtic in the north and west; toward Thracian and Greek
in the southwest ; toward Armenian in the south ; toward Indo-
Iranian in the southeast. With the centrifugal movements of
the several fractions of the race, these tendencies of peripheral
groups would naturally become more and more intensified in
proportion to their isolation. No doubt, in the center and in other
parts of the periphery of the Aryan region, other dialectic groups
made their appearance ; but whatever development they may
have attained, these have failed to maintain themselves in the bat-
tle with the Finno-Tataric tribes, or with the stronger among their
own kith and kin.*

Thus I think that the most plausible hypothetical answers

* See the views of J. Schmidt (stated and discussed in Schrader and Jevons, pp. 63-
67), with which those here set forth are substantially identical.

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 505

which can "be given to the two questions which we put at starting
are these : There was and is an Aryan race — that is to say, the
characteristic modes of speech, termed Aryan, were developed
among the blond long-heads alone, however much some of them
may have been modified by the importation of non- Aryan ele-
ments. As to the " home " of the Aryan race, it was in Europe,
and lay chiefly east of the central highlands and west of the Ural.
From this region it spread west, along the coasts of the North
Sea to our islands, where, probably, it met the brunet long-heads ;
to France, where it found both these and the brunet short-heads ;
to Switzerland and south Germany, where it impinged on the
brunet short-heads; to Italy, where brunet short-heads seem to
have abounded in the north and long-heads in the south ; and to
the Balkan Peninsula, about the earliest inhabitants of which we
know next to nothing. There are two ways to Asia Minor, the
one over the Bosporus and the other through the passes of the
Caucasus, and the Aryans may well have utilized both. Finally,
the southeastern tribes probably spread themselves gradually over
west Turkistan, and, after evolving the primitive Indo-Iranian
dialect, eventually colonized Persia and Hindostan, where their
speech developed into its final forms. On this hypothesis, the no-
tion that the Celts and the Teutons migrated from about Pamir
and the Hindoo Koosh is as far from the truth as the supposition
that the Indo-Iranians migrated from Scandinavia. It supposes
that the blond long-heads, in what may be called their nascent
Aryan stage — that is, before their dialects had taken on the full
Aryan characteristics — were spread over a wide region which is,
conventionally, European ; but which, from the point of view of
the physical geographer, is rather to be regarded as a continuation
of Asia. Moreover, it is quite possible, and even probable, that
the blond long-heads may have arrived in Turkistan before their
language had reached, or at any rate passed beyond, the stage of
primitive Aryan; and that the whole process of differentiation
into Indo-Iranian took place during the long ages of their resi-
dence in the basin of the Oxus. Thus, the question whether the
seat of the primitive Aryans was in Europe, or in Asia, becomes
very much a debate about geographical terminology.

The foregoing arguments in favor of Latham's " Sarmatian
hypothesis " have been based upon data which lie within the ken
of history, or may be surely concluded by reasoning backward
from the present state of things. But, thanks to the investigation
of the prehistoric archaeologists and anthropologists during the
last half -century, a vast mass of positive evidence respecting the
distribution and the condition of mankind in the long interval be-
tween the dawn of history and the commencement of the recent
epoch has been brought to light.

506 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

During this period, there is evidence that men existed in all
those regions of Europe which have yet been properly examined ;
and such of their bony remains as have been discovered exhibit
no less diversity of stature and cranial conformation than at pres-
ent. There are tall and short men ; long-skulled and broad-skulled
men ; and it is probably safe to conclude that the present Con-
trast of blonds and brunets existed among them when they were
in the flesh. Moreover, it has become clear that, everywhere, the
oldest of these people were in the so-called neolithic stage of civil-
ization. That is to say, they not merely used stone implements
which were chipped into shape, but they also employed tools and
weapons brought to an edge by grinding. At first they know little
or nothing of the use of metals; they possess domestic animals and
cultivated plants, and live in houses of simple construction.

In some parts of Europe little advance seems to have been
made, even down to historical times. But in Britain, France,
Scandinavia, Germany, western Russia, Switzerland, Austria, the
plain of the Po, very probably also in the Balkan Peninsula, cult-
ure gradually advanced until a relatively high degree of civiliza-
tion was attained. The initial impulse in this course of progress
appears to have been given by the discovery that metal is a better
material for tools and weapons than stone. In the early days of
prehistoric archaeology, Mlsson showed that, in the interments of
the middle age, bronze largely took the place of stone, and that
only in the latest was iron substituted for bronze. Thus arose the
generalization of the occurrence of a regular succession of stages
of culture, which were somewhat unfortunately denominated the
" ages " of stone, bronze, and iron. For a long time after this order
of succession in the same locality (which, it was sometimes forgot-
ten, has nothing to do with chronological contemporaneity in dif-
ferent localities) was made out, the change from stone to bronze
was ascribed to foreign, and, of course, Eastern, influences. There
were the ubiquitous Phoenician traders and the immigrant Aryans
from the Hindoo Koosh, ready to hand. But further investigation
has proved * for various parts of Europe and made it probable for
others, that though the old order of succession is correct it is in-
complete, and that a copper stage must be interpolated between
the neolithic and the bronze stages. Bronze is an artificial prod-
uct, the formation of which implies a knowledge of copper ; and it
is certain that copper was, at a very early period, smelted out of
the native ores, by the people of central Europe who used it.
When they learned that the hardness and toughness of their metal
were immensely improved by alloying it with a small quantity of

* " Proved " is perhaps too strong a word. But the evidence set forth by Dr. Much (Die
Kupferzeit in Europa, 188G) in favor of a copper stage of culture among the inhabitants of
the pile-dwellings is very weighty.

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 507

tin, they forsook copper for bronze and gradually attained a -won-
derful skill in bronze-work. Finally, some of the European people
became acquainted with iron, and its superior qualities drove out
bronze, as bronze had driven out stone, from use in the manufact-
ure of implements and weapons of the best class. But the pro-
cess of substitution of copper and bronze for stone was gradual,
and, for common purposes, stone remained in use long after the
introduction of metals.

The pile-dwellings of Switzerland have yielded an unbroken
archaeological record of these changes. Those of eastern Switzer-
land ceased to exist soon after the appearance of metals, but in
those of the lakes of ISTeufchatel and Bienne the history is contin-
ued through the stage of bronze to the beginning of that of iron.
And in all this long series of remains, which lay bare the minutest
details of the life of the pile-dwellers, from the neolithic to the
perfected bronze stage, there is no indication of any disturbance
such as must have been caused by foreign invasion ; and such as
was produced by intruders, shortly after the iron stage was reached.
Undoubtedly the constructors of the pile-dwellings must have
received foreign influences through the channel of trade, and may
have received them by the slow immigration of other races.
Their amber, their jade, and their tin show that they had commer-
cial intercourse with somewhat distant regions. The amber, how-
ever, takes us no farther than the Baltic ; and it is now known that
jade is to be had within the boundaries of Europe, while tin lay no
farther off than north Italy. An argument in favor of Oriental
influence has been based upon the characters of certain of the culti-
vated plants and domesticated animals. But even that argument
does not necessarily take us beyond the limits of southeastern
Europe ; and it needs reconsideration in view of the changes of
physical geography and of climate to which I have drawn atten-
tion.

In connection with this question there is another important
series of facts to be taken into consideration. When, in the seven-
teenth century, the Russians advanced beyond the Ural and began
to occupy Siberia, they found that the majority of the natives
used implements of stone and bone. Only a few possessed tools
or weapons of iron, which had reached them by way of commerce ;
the Ostiaks and the Tatars of Tom, alone, extracted their iron
from the ore. It was not until the invaders reached the Lena, in
the far East, that they met with skillful smiths among the Jakuts,*
who manufactured knives, axes, lances, battle-axes, and leather

* Andree, Die Metalle bei den Naturvolkern (p. 114). It is interesting to note that
the Jakuts have always been pastoral nomads, formerly shepherds, now horse-breeders, and
that they continue to work their iron in the primitive fashion ; as the argument that metal-
lurgic skill implies settled agricultural life not unfrequently makes its appearance.

5o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

jerkins studded with iron ; and among the Tunguses and Lamuts,
who had learned from the Jakuts.

But there is an older chapter of Siberian history which was
closed in the seventeenth century, as that of the people of the pile-
dwellings of Switzerland had ended when the Romans entered
Helvetia. Multitudes of sepulchral tumuli, termed, like those of
European Russia, " kurgans," are scattered over the north Asiatic
plains, and are especially agglomerated about the upper waters of
the Jenisei. Some are modern, while others, extremely ancient,
are attributed to a ^wcm-mythical people, the Tschudes. These
Tschudish kurgans abound in copper and gold articles of use and
luxury, but contain neither bronze nor iron. The Tschudes pro-
cured their copper and their gold from the metalliferous rocks of
the Ural and the Altai ; and their old shafts, adits, and rubbish-
heaps led the Russians to the rediscovery of the forgotten stores
of wealth. The race to which the Tschudes belonged and the age
of the works which testify to their former existence, are alike un-
known. But seeing that a rumor of them appears to have reached
Herodotus, while, on the other hand, the pile-dwelling civilization
of Switzerland may perhaps come down as late as the fifth century
b. c, the possibility that a knowledge of the technical value of
copper may have traveled from Siberia westward must not be
overlooked. If the idea of turning metals to account must needs
be Asiatic, it may be north Asiatic just as well as south Asiatic.
In the total absence of trustworthy chronological and anthropo-
logical data, speculation may run wild.

The oldest civilizations for which we have an, even approxi-
mately, accurate chronology are those of the valleys of the Nile
and of the Euphrates. Here, culture seems to have attained a de-
gree of perfection at least as high as that of the bronze stage, six
thousand years ago. But before the intermediation of Etruscan,
Phoenician, and Greek traders, there is no evidence that they ex-
erted any serious influence upon Europe or northern Asia. As to
the old civilization of Mesopotamia, what is to be said until some-
thing definite is known about the racial characters of its origi-
nators, the Accadians ? As matters stand, they are just as likely to
have been a group of the same race as the Egyptians or the Dra-
vidians as anything else. And, considering that their culture de-
veloped in the extreme south of the Euphrates Valley, it is difficult
to imagine that its influence could have spread to northern Eurasia
except by the Phoenician (and Carian ?) intermediation which
was undoubtedly operative in comparatively late times.

Are we then to bring down the discovery of the use of copper
in Switzerland to, at earliest, 1500 B. c, and to put it down to
Phoenician hints ? But why copper ? At that time the Phoeni-
cians must have been familiar with the use of bronze. And if, on

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 509

the other hand, the northern Enrasiatics had got as far as copper,
by the help of their own ingenuity, why deny them the capacity
to make the further step to bronze ? Carry back the borrowing
system as far as we may, in the end we must needs come to some
man or men from whom the novel idea started, and who after
many trials and errors gave it practical shape. And there really is
no ground in the nature of things for supposing that such men of
practical genius may not have turned up, independently in more
races than one.

The capacity of the population of Europe for independent
progress while in the copper and early bronze stage — the " palaeo-
metallic " stage, as it might be called — appears to me to be dem-
onstrated in a remarkable manner by the remains of their archi-
tecture. From the crannog to the elaborate pile-dwelling, and
from the rudest inclosure to the complex fortification of the ter-
ramare, there is an advance which is obviously a native product.
So with the sepulchral constructions ; the stone cist, with or with-
out a preservative or memorial cairn, grows into the chambered
graves lodged in tumuli; into such megalithic edifices as the
dromic vaults of Maes How and New Grange ; to culminate in the
finished masonry of the tombs of Mycenae, constructed on exactly
the same plan. Can any one look at the varied series of forms
which lie between the primitive five or six flat stones fitted to-
gether into a mere box, and such a building as Maes How, and yet
imagine that the latter is the result of foreign tuition ? But the
men who built Maes How, without metal tools, could certainly
have built the so-called " treasure-house " of Mycenae with them.

If these old men of the sea, the heights of Hindoo-Koosh-Pa-
mir and the plain of Shinar, had been less firmly seated upon the
shoulders of anthropologists, I think they would long since have
seen that it is at least possible that the early civilization of Europe
is of indigenous growth ; and that, so far as the evidence at pres-
ent accumulated goes, the neolithic culture may have attained its
full development, copper may have gradually come into use, and
bronze may have succeeded copper, without foreign intervention.

So far as I am aware, every raw material employed in Europe
up to the palaeo-metallic stage is to be found within the limits of
Europe ; and there is no proof that the old races of domesticated
animals and plants could not have been developed within these
limits. If any one chose to maintain that the use of bronze in
Europe originated among the inhabitants of Etruria and radiated
thence along the already established lines of traffic to all parts of
Europe, I do not see that his contention could be upset. It would
be hard to prove either that the primitive Etruscans could not
have discovered the way to manufacture bronze, or that they did
not discover it and become a great mercantile people in con-

510 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sequence, before Phoenician commerce had reached the remote
shores of the Tyrrhene Sea.

Can it be safely concluded that the palseo-metallic culture
which we have been considering was the appanage of any one of
the western Eurasiatic races rather than another ? Did it arise
and develop among the brunet or the blond long-heads or among
the brunet short-heads ? I do not think there are any means of
answering these questions, positively, at present. Schrader has
pointed out that the state of culture of the primitive Aryans, de-
duced from philological data, closely corresponds with that which
obtained among the pile-dwellers in the neolithic stage. But the
resemblance of the early stages of civilization among the most
different and widely separated races of mankind should warn us
that archaeology is no more a sure guide in questions of race than
philology. .

With respect to the osteological characters of the people of the
Swiss pile-dwellings information is as yet scanty. So far as the
present evidence goes, they appear to have comprised both broad-
heads and long-heads of moderate stature.* In France, Eng-
land, and Germany, both long and broad skulls are found in tu-
muli belonging to the neolithic stage. In some parts of England
the long skulls, and in others the broad skulls, accompany the
higher stature. In the Scandinavian Peninsula, nine tenths of the
neolithic people are decided long-heads ; in Denmark there is a
much larger proportion of broad-heads.

In view of all the facts known to me (which can not be stated
in greater detail in this place), I am disposed to think that the
blond long-heads, the brunet long-heads, and the brunet broad-
heads have existed on the continent of Europe throughout the
Eecent period ; that only the former two at first inhabited our isl-
ands ; but that a mixed race of tall broad-heads, like some of the
Black-Foresters of the present day, so excellently described by
Ecker, migrated from the continent and formed that tall con-
tingent of the population which has been identified (rightly or
wrongly) with the Belgae by Thurnam, and which seems to have
subsequently lost itself among the predominant brunet and blond
long-heads.

I do not think there is anything to warrant the conclusion that
the palseo-metallic culture of Europe took its origin among the

* Prof. Virchow has guardedly expressed the opinion that the oldest inhabitants of the
Swiss pile-dwellings were broad-heads, and that later on (commencing before the bronze
stage) there was a gradual infusion of long-heads among them. (Zeitschrift fur Eth-
nologie, xvii, 1885.) There is independent evidence of the existence of broad-heads in the
Cevenncs during the neolithic period, and I should be disposed to think that this opinion
may well be correct ; but the examination of the evidence on which it is, at present, based
does not lead me to feel very confident about it.

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 511

blond long-head (or supposed Aryan) race ; or that the people of
the Swiss pile-dwellings belonged to that race. The long-heads
among them may just as likely have been brunets. In north-
eastern Italy there is clear evidence of the superposition of at
least four stages of culture, in which that of the copper and
bronze using terramare people comes second ; a stage marked by
Etruscan domination occupies the third place; and that is fol-
lowed by the stage which appertains to the Gauls, with their long
swords and other characteristic iron-work. In western Switzer-
land, on the other hand, at La Tene, and elsewhere, similar relics
show that the Gauls followed upon the latest population of the
pile-dwellings among whom traces of Etruscan influence (though
not of dominion) are to be found. Helbig supposes the terramare
people to have been Greco-Latin-speaking Pelasgi, and conse-
quently Aryan. But we can not suppose the people of the pile-
dwellings of Switzerland to have been speakers of primitive
Greco-Latin (if ever there was such a language). And if the
Gauls were the first speakers of Celtic who got into Switzerland,
what Aryan language can the people of the pile-dwellings have
spoken ? *

As I have already mentioned, there is not the least doubt that
man existed in northwestern Europe during the Pleistocene or
Quaternary epoch. It is not only certain that men were contem-
poraries of the mammoth, the hairy rhinoceros, the reindeer, the
cave bear, and other great carnivora, in England and in France,
but a great deal has been ascertained about the modes of life of
our predecessors. They were savage hunters, who took advan-
tage of such natural shelters as overhanging rocks and caves,
and perhaps built themselves rough wigwams ; but who had no
domestic animals, and have left no sign that they cultivated
plants. In many localities there is evidence that a very consider-
able interval — the so-called hiatus — intervened between the time
when the Quaternary or palaeolithic men occupied particular
caves and river basins and the accumulation of the debris left by
their neolithic successors. And, in spite of all the warnings
against negative evidence afforded by the history of geology,
some have very positively asserted that this means a complete
break between the Quaternary and the Recent populations — that
the Quaternary population followed the retreating ice northward
and left behind them a desert which remained unpeopled for ages.
Other high authorities, on the contrary, maintain that the races
of men who now inhabit Europe may all be traced back to the

* See Dr. Munro's excellent work, The Lake Dwellings of Europe, for La T6ne.
Readers of Prof. Rhys's recent articles (Scottish Review, 1890) may suggest that the pile-
dwelling people spoke the Gaedhelic form of Celtic, and the Gauls the Brythonic form.

512 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

great Ice age. When a conflict of opinion of this kind obtains
among reasonable and instructed men, it is generally a safe con-
clusion that the evidence for neither view is worth much. Cer-
tainly that is the result of my own cogitations with regard to
both the hiatus doctrine (in its extreme form) and its opposite —
though I think the latter by much the more likely to turn out
right. But I hesitate to adopt it on the evidence which has been
obtained up to this time.

No doubt, human bones and skulls of various types have been
discovered in close proximity to palaeolithic implements and to
skeletons of Quaternary quadrupeds ; no doubt, if the bones and
skulls in question were not human, their contemporaneity would
hardly have been questioned. But, since they are human, the de-
mand for further evidence really need not be ascribed to mere con-
servative prejudice. Because the human biped differs from all
other bipeds and quadrupeds, in the tendency to put his dead
out of sight in various ways ; commonly by burial. It is a habit
worthy of all respect in itself, but generative of subtle traps and
grievous pitfalls for the unwary investigator of human paleontol-
ogy. For it may easily happen that the bones of him that " died o'
Wednesday " may thus come to lie alongside the bones of animals
that were extinct thousands of years before that Wednesday ; and
yet the interment may have been effected so many thousands of
years ago that no outward sign betrays the difference in date. In
all investigations of this kind, the most careful and critical study
of the circumstances is needful if the results are to be accepted as
perfectly trustworthy.

In the case of the remains found in a cave of the valley of the
Neander, near Diisseldorf, half a century ago — the characters of
which gave rise to a vast amount of discussion at that time and
subsequently-the circumstances of the discovery were but vaguely
known. The skeleton was met with in a deposit, the loess, which
is known to be of Quaternary age; there was no evidence to show
how it came there. Consequently, not only was its exact age
justly and properly declared to be a matter of doubt ; but those
who, on scientific or other grounds, were inclined to minimize its
importance could put forth plausible speculations about its nature
which do not look so well under the light thrown by a more ad-
vanced science of anthropology. It could be and it was suggested
that the Neanderthal skeleton was that of a strayed idiot ; that
the characters of the skull were the result of early synostosis or of
late gout ; and, in fact, any stick was good enough to beat the dog
withal.

As some writings of mine on the subject led to my occupation of
a prominent position among the belabored dogs of that day, I have
taken a mild interest in watching the gradual rehabilitation of

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 513

my old friend of the Neanderthal among normal men, which has
been going on of late years. It has come to be generally admitted
that his remarkable cranium is no more than a strongly marked
example of a type which occurs, not only among other prehistoric
men, but is met with, sporadically, among the moderns ; and that,
after all, I was not so wrong as I ought to have been, when I in-
dicated such points of similarity among the skulls found in our
river-beds and among the native races of Australia.* However,
doubts still clung about the geological age of the various deposits
in which skulls of the Neanderthal type were subsequently found ;
and it was not until the year 1886 that two highly competent
observers, Messrs. Fraipont and Lohest, the one an anatomist,
the other a geologist, furnished us with evidence such as will
bear severe criticism. At the mouth of a cave in the commune
of Spy, in the Belgian province of Namur, Messrs. Fraipont and
Lohest discovered two skeletons of the Neanderthal type; and
the elaborate account of their investigations which they have
published appears to me to leave little room for doubt tnat the
men of Spy fabricated the palaeolithic implements, and were the
contemporaries of the characteristic Quaternary quadrupeds, found
with them. The anatomical characters of the skeletons bear out
conclusions which are not flattering to the appearance of the
owners. They were short of stature but powerfully built, with
strong, curiously curved thigh-bones, the lower ends of which are
so fashioned that they must have walked with a bend at the knees.
Their long, depressed skulls had very strong brow-ridges ; their
lower jaws, of brutal depth and solidity, sloped away from the
teeth downward and backward, in consequence of the absence of
that especially characteristic feature of the higher type of man,
the chin prominence. Thus these skulls are not only eminently
" Neandertkaloid," but they supply the proof that the parts want-
ing in the original specimen harmonized in lowness of type with
the rest.

After a very full discussion of the anatomical characters of
these skulls, M. Fraipont says :

To sum up, we consider ourselves to be in a position to say that, having re-
gard merely to the anatomical structure of the man of Spy, he possessed a greater
number of pithecoid characters than any other race of mankind.J

And, after enumerating these, he continues :

The other and much more numerous characters of the skull, of the trunk, and
of the limbs seem to be all human. Between the man of Spy and an existing an-
thropoid ape there lies an abyss.

* Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, 1863, p. 155.

f 7 raipont et Lohest, La Race humaine de Neanderthal, ou de Canstatt, en Belgique.
Archives de Biologie, 1886.
vol. xxxvni. — 35

5H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Now, that is pleasant reading for me, because, in 1863, 1 com-
mitted myself to the assertion that the Neanderthal skull was " the
most pithecoid of human crania yet discovered/' yet that " in no
sense can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a
human being intermediate between men and apes/' * and that
"the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to
me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form,
by the modification of which he has, probably, become what
he is." f

As the evidence stood seven and twenty years ago, in fact, it
would have been imprudent to assume that the Neanderthal skull
was anything but a case of sporadic reversion. But, in my anx-
iety not to overstate my case, I understated it. The Neander-
thaloid race is " appreciably nearer," though the approximation
is but slight. In the words of M. Fraipont :

The distance which separates the man of Spy from the modern anthropoid ape
is undoubtedly enormous ; between the man of Spy and the Dryopithecus it is a
little less. But we must be permitted to point out that, if the man of the later
Quaternary age is the stock whence existing races have sprung, he has traveled a
very great way.

From the data now obtained, it is permissible to believe that we shall be able
to pursue the ancestral type of men and the anthropoid apes still further, perhaps
as far as the Eocene and even beyond.f

These conclusions hold good, whatever the age of the men of
Spy ; but they possess a peculiar interest if we admit, as I think
on the evidence must be admitted, that these human fossils are
of Pleistocene age. For, after all due limitations, they give us
some, however dim, insight into the rate of evolution of the human
species, and indicate that it has not taken place at a much faster
or slower pace than that of other mammalia. And, if that is so, we
are warranted in the supposition that the genus homo, if not the
species which the courtesy or the irony of naturalists has dubbed
sapiens, was represented in Pliocene, or even in Miocene times.
But I do not know by what osteological peculiarities it could be
determined whether the Pliocene or Miocene man was sufficiently
sapient to speak or not ; # and whether, or not, he answered to the

* Man's Place in Nature, pp. 156, 157.
f Ibid., p. 159.

X " Where, then, must we look for primeval man ? Was the oldest Homo sapiens Plio-
cene or Miocene, or yet more ancient ? In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an ape
more anthropoid or a man more pithecoid than any yet known await the researches of some
unborn paleontologist?" — (Man's Place in Nature, p. 150.)

* I am perplexed by the importance attached by some to the presence or absence of
the so-called " genial " elevations. Does any one suppose that the existence of the genio-
hyo-glossus muscle, which plays so large a part in the movements of the tongue, depends
on that of these elevations ?

THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN 515

definition " rational animal " in any higher sense than a dog or an
ape does.

There is no reason to suppose that the genus homo was con-
fined to Europe in the Pleistocene age ; it is much more probable
that this, like other mammalian genera of that period, was spread
over a large extent of the surface of the globe. At that time, in
fact, the climate of regions nearer the equator must have been far
more favorable to the human species ; and it is possible that,
under such conditions, it may have attained a higher development
than in the north. As to where the genus homo originated, it is
impossible to form even a probable guess. During the Miocene
epoch, one region of the present temperate zones would serve as
well as another. The elder Agassiz long ago tried to prove that
the well-marked areas of geographical distribution of mammals
have their special kinds of men ; and, though this doctrine can not
be made good to the extent which Agassiz maintained, yet the
limitation of the Australian type to New Holland, the approxi-
mate restriction of the negro type to ultra-Saharal Africa, and the
peculiar character of the population of Central and South Amer-
ica, are facts which bear strongly in favor of the conclusion that
the causes which have influenced the distribution of mammals in
general have powerfully affected that of man.

Let it be supposed that the human remains from the caves of
the Neanderthal and of Spy represent the race, or one of the races,
of men who inhabited Europe in the Quaternary epoch, can any
connection be traced between it and existing races ? That is to
say, do any of them exhibit characters approximating those of the
Spy men or other examples of the Neanderthaloid race ? Put in
the latter form, I think that the question may be safely answered
in the affirmative. Skulls do occasionally approach the Neander-
thaloid type, among both the brunet and the blond long-head
races. For the former, I pointed out the resemblance, long ago,
in some of the Irish river-bed skulls. For the latter, evidence of
various kinds may be adduced ; but I prefer to cite the authority
of one of the most accomplished and cautious of living anthro-
pologists. Prof. Virchow was led, by historical considerations,
to think that the Teutonic type, if it still remained pure and unde-
filed anywhere, should be discoverable among the Frisians, in their
ancient island home on the north German coast, remote from
the great movement of nations. In their tall stature and blond
complexion the Frisians fulfilled expectation, but their skulls dif-
fered in some respects from those of the neighboring blond long-
heads. The depression, or flattening (accompanied by a slight
increase in breadth), which occurs occasionally among the latter,
is regular and characteristic among the Frisians ; and in other re-
spects, the Frisian skull unmistakably approaches the Neander-

5i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thai and Spy type.* The fact that this resemblance exists is of none
the less importance because the proper interpretation of it is not
yet clear. It may be taken to be a pretty sure indication of the
physiological continuity of the blond long-heads with the Pleisto-
cene Neanderthaloid men. But this continuity may have been
brought about in two ways. The blond long-heads may exhibit
one of the lines of evolution of the men of the Neanderthaloid
type. Or, the Frisians may be the result of the admixture of the
blond long-heads with Neanderthaloid men, whose remains have
been found at Canstatt and at Gibraltar, as well as at Spy and in
the valley of the Neander ; and who therefore seem, at one time, to
have occupied a considerable area in western Europe. The same
alternatives present themselves when Neanderthaloid characters
appear in skulls of other races. If these characters belong to a
stage in the development of the human species, antecedent to the
differentiation of any of the existing races, we may expect to find
them in the lowest of these races, all over the world, and in the
early stages of all races. I have already referred to the remark-
able similarity of the skulls of certain tribes of native Australians
to the Neanderthal skull ; and I may add that the wide differences
in height between the skulls of different tribes of Australians
afford a parallel to the differences in altitude between the skulls
of the men of Spy and those of the grave-rows of north Germany.
Neanderthaloid features are to be met with, not only in ancient
long skulls ; those of the ancient broad-headed people entombed at
Borreby in Denmark have been often noted.

Reckoned by centuries, the remoteness of the Quaternary or
Pleistocene age from our own is immense, and it is difficult to
form an adequate notion of its duration. Undoubtedly there is
an abysmal difference between the Neanderthaloid race and the
comely living specimens of the blond long-heads with whom we
are familiar, But the abyss of time between the period at which
north Europe was first covered with ice, when savages pursued
mammoths and scratched their portraits with sharp stones in cen-
tral France, and the present day, ever widens as we learn more
about the events which bridge it. And, if the differences between
the Neanderthaloid men and ourselves could be divided into as
many parts as that time contains centuries, the progress from part
to part would probably be almost imperceptible. — Nineteenth
Century.

[Concluded. ]

* Virchow, Beitrage zur physischen Anthropologic der Deutschen (Abh. der Koniglichen
Akademie der Wissenscbaften zu Berlin, 1876). See particularly p. 238 for the full recog-
nition of the Neanderthaloid characters of Frisian skulls and of the ethnological signifi-
cance of the similarity.

THE STORAGE OF COLD. 517

THE STORAGE OF COLD.

By chaeles moeeis.

THERE are two processes constantly active upon the surface
of the earth which are of the utmost importance as regards
its suitability for human habitation — the storage of heat and the
storage of cold. Of these we are here concerned only with the lat-
ter. The source and method of the storage of cold (a negative
process, which we may here treat as a positive) are much less evi-
dent and not so generally known as those of heat-storage, and a
review of them may be of interest.

The source of the stored cold is the upper atmosphere, and the
principal storing substance snow. Here we are on ground famil-
iar only to scientists. Readers generally are not aware of the
vitally important part which snow plays in the economy of
nature. The lightly falling snow-flake, with its poetic affiliation
and its attractive aspects, has its aspect of terror as well, for the
feathery snow has done more to limit man's dominion of the
earth than any other of the unfriendly agencies of Nature, even
if we count the fiery ravage of the volcano and the ruinous work
of the earthquake. "While the rains are friends to man, and effi-
cient agents in the progress of civilization, the snows are his ene-
mies, and the most persistently hostile of his foes.

It need scarcely be said that the invigorating beams of the sun
visit the earth in very differing measure, varying from tropical
profusion to frigid sparseness. This diversity of heat distribu-
tion is partly overcome by the agency of the winds and waters,
particularly the latter, since the great ocean currents carry vast
supplies of heat from the torrid zone toward the poles, and drive
far backward the boundaries of the realm of frost. The agency
of the air in this heat convection is of less importance. The anti-
trade winds move through the upper atmosphere, and lose their
heat before descending to the earth ; but surface winds from the
tropics convey a considerable share of the torrid heats to the
colder zones.

Snow is the great opponent to the full effect of this distributed
heat. It constitutes an agent of Nature by which the chill of the
upper atmosphere is conveyed to the earth's surface, and stored
there in a more or less persistent form, which requires much of
the solar heat and the warmth of tropic winds and waters to over-
come. If it be asked how snow can produce such an effect, we
must advert to the heat relations of water. A large supply of
insensible heat — latent heat, as it is called — exists in liquid and
gaseous matter. In the freezing process this heat becomes sensi-

5*8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ble, and is absorbed by the surrounding substances. Such, a pro-
cess takes place on a large scale in the chilled fields of the upper
air, the water vapor of the atmosphere being condensed into snow
and its latent heat lost to the surrounding frosty air. In a word,
snow is water which has lost its latent heat, or — in a negative
sense — has absorbed cold from the upper atmosphere. The fall-
ing snow conveys this chill to the earth, and thus acts as a great
refrigerating agent. To overcome the cold thus conveyed from
mid-air to the earth heat is necessary, and large supplies, which
might have been usefully employed in the service of man, are
lost in the conversion of vapor into snow, and thus indirectly
consumed in warming the upper air.

It may be said here that the conversion of vapor into rain is
also exhaustive of latent heat. In the evaporation of the oceanic
waters a very considerable quantity of heat is absorbed, and con-
veyed to the upper air as the latent heat of water vapor. Of this
heat a part is lost in the formation of rain, and a larger part in the
formation of snow. But the rain reaches the earth in a condition
suitable for service. It does not, like the snow, need to be changed
in its physical state, at a great expense in heat, to render it serv-
iceable. In fact, the chilling influence of rain is inconsiderable,
the heat-consuming agency of snow great and important, and the
mode in which its work is performed calls for some considera-
tion.

Snow has several curious methods of extending the sphere of
its hostile influence. The comparatively light snows which fall
in our latitude are of minor importance, since they readily yield
to the early spring sunbeams. They are in some degree beneficial
to the fertile surface and protective to its more tender annual
plants, while their only important adverse effect is the dangerous
flooding of the rivers, due to their rapid melting. But the deep
and persistent snows of northern regions are far more exhaustive
of solar heat, and reduce the agricultural season of those regions
to a dangerously short period. In their melting, also, the surface
air is chilled, and winds from the north convey this chilled air far
to the south, thus spreading widely over the warmer zones the
frost-inducing influence of the melting snows.

We have seen how the tropic heats are carried toward the
poles by winds and waters. The frigid cold is carried toward the
tropics by the same agencies — chilled winds and cold ocean cur-
rents. It is carried by another agent of great importance, the
direct creep of the snow itself toward the lower latitudes. This
agency has once — perhaps many times — produced an extraordi-
nary effect upon the surface of the earth, one far surpassing that
of volcanic explosions and lava outflows in its adverse influence.
At present this glacial action is greatly reduced, but is still of

THE STORAGE OF COLD.

519

much importance. Were it not for the snow-fall the problem of
climate would be materially modified, and the temperature of the
earth's surface much ameliorated. The seasons would gain a regu-
larity which they do not now possess, the agricultural period of
the colder zones be much extended, and the domain of agriculture
be considerably widened, by the recovery of broad regions which
are now covered during much or all of the agricultural season
by snow.

In the winter the frost-laden strata of the atmosphere descend
to the surface over much of the globe, and produce a direct re-
frigerating influence upon the surface soil and waters. This win-
ter freezing, however, is of minor importance, as it, except in the
polar regions, quickly yields to the spring suns, while its influence
upon the summer temperature of lower latitudes is but slight.
Only for the snow-fall this would be our sole source of cold. But
the vast blanket of snow which descends annually upon the colder
zones conveys downward the severe chill of higher layers of the
air, borrowing from a mighty storehouse of cold which broadly
impends above the earth. This snow blanket must be removed,
and its stored cold overcome by solar heat, before agriculture can
begin, and in this process weeks or months pass away, the effect
being greatly to reduce the area of the earth's surface which is
suitable for human habitation.

The snow of the frigid zones does not wait for the sun to reach
it. It travels toward the tropics to meet the sun. This creep of
the snow, as we may call it, takes the forms of the glacier and
the iceberg. It also acts in another curious method, not generally
known, but which is described by Nordenskiold, in his Voyage
of the Vega. Speaking of the natural conditions at a winter
station near Bering Strait, he says : " The fall of snow was not
great, but, as there was in the course of the winter no thaw of
such continuance that the snow was at any time covered with a
coherent melted crust, a considerable portion of the snow that
fell remained so loose that with the least puff of wind it was
whirled backward and forward. . . . Even when the wind was
slight and the sky clear, there ran a stream of snow some centi-
metres in height along the ground in the direction of the wind,
and thus principally from northwest to southeast. . . . The quan-
tity of water which in a frozen form is thus removed in this
certainly not deep but uninterrupted and rapid current, over the
north coast of Siberia to more southerly regions, must be equal
to the mass of water in the giant rivers of our globe, and plays
a sufficiently great role among others as a carrier of cold to the
most northerly forest regions to receive the attention of mete-
orologists." It may be that a similar condition prevails over
northern America, though concerning this we have no evidence

520 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at hand. The wind thus seems to play a double role in conveying
cold southward — one through the direct carriage of the snow, the
other through the aerial chill caused by the melting snow.

The leading agent in the southward creep of the snow, how-
ever, is the glacier, and its offspring, the iceberg. The glacier is
due to an important relation of the snows to the solar rays ;
namely, to that in which the stored cold is too great in quantity
for the whole year's supply of heat to overcome, so that a part of
each year's snow-fall is carried over to the next. There can be
no glacier where the whole of the snow-fall is melted, even if the
heat of the whole season is occupied in melting it ; but, wherever
a portion of the snow-supply is carried over from winter to win-,
ter, glacial action is inevitable. In every such case the snows
must steadily accumulate, their thickness increasing year by
year. The growing pressure converts the under portions of this
snow mass into ice, and this, through its normal plasticity, is
forced by the weight upon it toward lower levels or more south-
erly regions, until it reaches its limit at that point in which the
melting power of the sun balances the growth of the glacier.

The localities of glacial action are, therefore, the peaks and
valleys of lofty mountains and the elevated regions of the frigid
zones, or the lower regions of the latter in localities of abundant
snow-fall. In all such places the heat derived from the sun is
insufficient to melt the snow, which, therefore, necessarily creeps
to warmer regions in the form of glacial ice. The principal seats
of glacier formation in the north frigid zone are Greenland and
Alaska. The remaining surface of northern America and that of
Siberia are too low in elevation, and perhaps too light in snow-
fall, to permit any important glacial effect. Of the northern
glacier-forming localities, Greenland is much the most important,
and its refrigerating influence upon the coast lands of Europe
and America is considerable. The mountains of snow which are
heaped upon its elevated regions send down huge glaciers to the
coast, which not only aid to chill the waters of the southward-
flowing currents, but send south an annual fleet of icebergs, borne
upon these cold currents, and making their way far into the Gulf-
Stream domain of the Atlantic. No small quantity of the heat-
supply of this warm current is exhausted in melting the floating
mountains of ice. This heat is lost to the northern continents,
and their temperature reduced in consequence, possibly much
more than we imagine. There is thus an annual battle between
the earth's stores of heat and cold. The former, in the condition
of warm ocean currents, makes its way far north. The latter,
brought down from mid-air by the snows, and locked up in the
glaciers, and their offspring — the icebergs — makes its way far
south. They meet in mid-ocean, where an active conflict takes

THE STORAGE OF COLD. 521

place. The heat conquers, but at a great loss of its valuable sup-
plies, and a consequent refrigeration of the adjacent waters, air,
and land.

In the southern seas this effect of the snow-fall is much more
considerable. A belt of glacier-forming lands surrounds the south
pole, and the annual iceberg fleet is much larger than that of the
north. The air indraught to the north polar region is estimated
to extend over a disk of fifty-five hundred miles diameter ; that to
the south polar region over a disk of seven thousand miles diame-
ter. The former is largely composed of land surface ; the latter is
nearly all water, and its air is therefore much more charged with
moisture. In consequence, the moist air which reaches the south
frigid zone is greatly in excess of that which reaches the northern
zone of cold, and the snow-fall there must be very much more
considerable. It is estimated that the south polar ice-cap can not
be less than three miles and may be twelve miles in height. The
thrust of this vast ice mountain upon the viscid material beneath
it is necessarily enormous, and a lofty ice-cliff is pushed off the
land at a rate of not less than a quarter of a mile annually, and
this around a circle of great extent. Fortunately, the immense
fleet of huge icebergs, thus annually launched, has no continental
land to act upon, its refrigerating influence being mainly exer-
cised upon stretches of ocean out of the ordinary channels of
navigation, and far removed from the important seats of human
habitation.

There was a time, far in the past, but within the era of man's
occupancy of the earth, when the influence of the snow was enor-
mously greater than at present, and when the atmospheric chill,
stored in the falling flakes, rendered a vast region of the northern
continents unfit for human habitation, and extended the border
of the frozen zone far toward the present limits of tropical heat.
Doubtless if at present all the snow which forms in the upper
air should reach the earth's surface, a glacial epoch would now
exist in the north temperate zone. The experience of balloonists
and of mountain-climbers teaches us that snow forms and falls in
all seasons of the year. This is melted by the warmed lower
strata of air, and the earth thus saved from its chilling influence.
The solar heat, which has already done good work for man upon
the surface, performs new and useful labor for him in the atmos-
phere, by melting this falling snow, so that its water reaches the
earth only in the form of rain.

At the period mentioned the snow limit in the atmosphere
was much lower than at present, and the great bulk of the snow-
fall reached the surface unmelted. As a result, the region of an
annual snow surplus extended much farther south than at present,
covering much and perhaps all of British America, and a broad

522 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

zone of northern Europe. It is not necessary to dwell upon its re-
results. They have already been abundantly told. It will suffice to
say, briefly, that the glacial ice thus formed, accumulating until it
became of mountain height, crept steadily southward, combating
with the sun as it went, until the front of the polar line of battle
reached a limit extending across central Pennsylvania, and west-
ward to the Rocky Mountain slope. In Europe it covered many
of the active seats of modern civilization. Along this extended
line conditions existed resembling those now found along the
coast-line of Greenland. At this line the arrows of the sun
checked the hosts of the snow, the annual heat balancing the
yearly supply of cold, while great streams of chilled water poured
from the melting ice. The mountain ranges farther south also
sent out their glaciers over wide regions, and a vast extent of the
now habitable earth was held prisoner by the snow.

To what extent the remaining regions of the continents were
chilled by these vast glaciers can not be easily determined. The
cold winds blowing south must have interfered seriously with
vegetation over a broad zone. And the oceans of those days
must have been crowded with icebergs to an extent far surpass-
ing the commercial fleets of modern times. These may have
floated to the tropic seas, and gone far toward exhausting the
heat of the torrid zone, and chilling at their source the great
ocean currents.

A time at length came when victory perched upon the banners
of the sun. Step by step the cohorts of the snow retreated. The
earth slowly reappeared from under its crushing weight of ice.
Northward went the ice front, as the solar power increased, until
it reached the arctic seas, and the northern continents were re-
leased from the foe which had so long held them in captivity.
But the surface of the continents emerged in a greatly changed
aspect. Great masses of rock had been torn by the gliding ice
from the mountains, carried far southward, and deposited in a
mighty breastwork of rounded and polished stones. The mount-
ains themselves had been scratched and polished by rigid tools of
stone, frozen into the ice. Large quantities of gravel and fine
mud had been formed by the grinding of the rocks, and carried
south by the flowing waters, to be deposited as hills of gravel and
beds of clay many miles away from the glacial front. Enormous
labor had been done in scooping out the earth's surface into hol-
lows and basins, which became filled with water from the melt-
ing ice, and formed the host of lakes, large and small, which now
exist over much of the formerly ice-covered region.

Such were some of the permanent effects of this long domin-
ion of the snow, in its secondary form of glacial ice. Undoubt-
edly the growth of human culture was greatly interfered with by

THE STORAGE OF COLD. 523

the long-continued inhospitable condition thus produced, and it
is quite possible that, but for the glacial period, the civilization
of mankind would have been much further advanced than at
present, and most of the awkward questions which are troubling
us now would have been settled ages ago. They might, however,
have been succeeded by other questions quite as awkward, for
the solving of perplexing problems of social relations seems part
of the destiny of man. It has been suggested that the glacial age
may have aided human advancement, by forcing primitive man
to adopt new methods of shelter, clothing, and food-getting, in
self-defense against the cold. Thus, instead of hindering it may
have helped to break the reign of savagery.

Here it may be well to advert to another probable refrigerat-
ing agency of snow to which no attention has hitherto been paid.
Aerial snow — snow that forms in the upper strata and is melted
at lower levels of the air — may have always been an important
agent in the cooling of the earth, aiding essentially in the upward
transport of heat during the ages when the surface was at a high
temperature. In those ages the great quantity of water vapor in
the air hindered the free radiation of heat, whose conveyance
upward was mainly accomplished by warm ascending currents.
This may have been greatly aided by the conversion of the vapor
of these vertical winds into snow in the upper air, the descent of
this snow, and the exhaustion of much of the lower heat in melt-
ing it.

Such a state of affairs may have extended much further back
in time than would at first thought be deemed possible ; perhaps
to that period when the earth was still too hot to permit the
existence of liquid water, and the substance of the present oceans
was held in the air as water vapor. Even then the rarer regions
of the atmosphere were probably chilled below the temperature of
congelation, and a snow limit existed, though very much higher
than at present. The range of vapor must also have extended
much higher than at present, possibly far within the region of
congelation. Therefore, at the period when the surface heat pre-
vented the existence of liquid water, there may have been a con-
tinuous formation and fall of snow in the upper strata of the
atmosphere. The melting of this snow at lower levels, and the
vaporizing, at still lower levels, of the rain which it yielded, must
have been highly important agents in the upward transit of the
surface heat.

There is thus much reason to believe that the snow-fall, which
within the recent period has played so prominent a part in terres-
trial affairs, has been from a very early era an active agent in the
cooling of the earth, the snow limit of the atmosphere gradually
descending through the ages until, in the glacial era, it nearly

524 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

approached the surface, and vastly extended the ocean domain by
covering a broad region of the land surface with frozen water of
almost oceanic depth. With this must have been associated a
marked lowering of the level of the oceans, though to what
extent it would not be safe to estimate.

♦»»

COEDUCATION" IN SWISS UNIVERSITIES.

By FLOEA BKIDGES.

THERE is a sturdy freedom in the Swiss character which is
admirable in American eyes, and which seems to make the
people grow naturally and easily into conditions closely approach-
ing our own ideals. The soil is not so deep, to be sure, nor so rich, /
as it might be but for circumstances which the Swiss himself
already sees and is taking measures to modify. It is interesting
to note the progress of thought in Switzerland in the develop-
ment of schools. Before the government was. thoroughly organ-
ized, there were all sorts of schools, loosely, if at all, connected
with each other. Each canton, or state, had its own schools,
however, thus forming a center of growth whose development
may fairly illustrate that in every other state. Let us take Zu-
rich. Here the principal school was one founded and cared for
chiefly for the purpose of educating men for the ministry of the
Church, in which, however, provision was also made for the study
of the classics by those who had chosen some other life-work.
This was the beginning of systemization ; for this school rested
upon those of lower grade, and was itself subordinate to a kind
of council made up of its teachers, the leaders of the Church in
Zurich, and four other men, churchmen or laymen. These latter
were to be elected every year, with privilege of re-election, by a
higher Educational Council, two from its own number, the other
two at large. This council was composed of the burgomaster,
two representatives of state, and twelve other men, eight of whom
were appointed by the state Senate.

This condition of schools — there were in addition two for tech-
nical training — lasted until 1831, in the spring of which year a
new state Constitution was drafted. This gave all authority in
school matters to the Educational Council, which it reorgan-
ized in the autumn of the same year. It was to consist of fif-
teen members, appointed by the Senate. Three of these should
be chosen from the legislative body of the state, half of the others
with reference to their knowledge of and interest in the higher
schools, the remainder with reference to the lower schools and
practical pedagogics. This new council, under the conviction

COEDUCATION IN SWISS' UNIVERSITIES. 525

that it was desirable to obtain closer connection between the
higher schools, at once established two important institutions.
The old gymnasium — the Carolinum, as that theologico-classical
school had been named after Charlemagne — was enlarged and de-
veloped in two directions, scientific and literary on the one hand,
and industrial on the other. A still higher school was organized
with theological, law, medical, and philosophical departments,
which was at first modestly called a Facultats-Anstalt — an institu-
tion for higher study. This latter school became in 1833 the
University of Zurich, founded by the state " that all her citizens
might develop themselves freely, according to nature, in science
and art. ... Its purpose is partly to increase the sum of knowl-
edge, partly to further the interests of Church and state through
higher scientific culture of professions." So the university was
organized, the canton school by its side as a helper, both under
care of the state through the Educational Council, whose presi-
dent is one of the governor's staff. In similar manner the Poly-
technicum — the national school — is under the care of the General
Government. The professors in the university are appointed by
the Educational Council, and an educational synod, once a year
or oftener, if especial need arises, gives opportunity for free dis-
cussion.

The Swiss universities are broad and liberal in the highest
degree. Statutes are passed in their senates with simple refer-
ence to elevation of character and usefulness, and with no appar-
ent thought of the sexes as separate. These statutes, when pre-
sented in council, are treated in the same spirit, and the question
as to the advisability of coeducation came first in every univer-
sity after women had already entered and studied. The original
statutes excluded no one, and consequently when — after generally
a remarkably long time — women applied for admission, their
names were taken exactly as those of their brothers were taken ;
they took their places among these and worked there undisturbed
until some other consideration brought the question forward. It
is difficult to see why it should have been so long after the estab-
lishment of the universities before women asked to work in them.
In Zurich it was thirty-one years, in Berne thirty-eight, while
Basle was disturbed first last year by the question. Lausanne,
however, which begins its career as a university this autumn,
begins with women students. In Zurich and Berne it may have
been the development of the universities from schools originally
founded for the aid of callings as yet unthought of for women
which caused the indifference on the part of women toward
them. However that may be, when in the sixties women applied
for admission in Zurich — the first one was a foreigner — no ques-
tion was raised; she entered and took her degree. Ten years

526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

later, when so many, chiefly Russians, came with insufficient
preparation, a new law was passed regulating the admission of
" students " into the university, and formally recognizing women.
It had formerly been sufficient for foreigners to present good
passports from their Governments ; but the new law required in
addition testimonials of character and of sufficient previous men-
tal training. If this were not produced, the student must take an
examination. This examination, partly oral and partly written,
must evidence sufficient knowledge of German to read and to fol-
low a lecturer ; sufficient knowledge of mathematics and the sci-
ences to enable the student to understand the university lectures
upon these subjects ; knowledge either of Latin to read and un-
derstand an easy author, or to the same degree of French, with
either Italian or English. The Council supported the wisdom of
the university senate, and these remain the requirements of the
university. Swiss students present diplomas or reports from the
Zurich gymnasium or its equivalent ; and here girls are some-
what at a disadvantage, for, when the framers of new educational
privileges were establishing this canton school which should fit
boys for the higher work of the university, they made no such
provision for girls. During the early years, while education is
compulsory and the state furnishes all books and industrial im-
plements, boys and girls study together; but in the higher
schools they are separated, and the courses of study in girls'
schools are not so complete as in the gymnasiums for boys. As
soon, however, as girls asked for admission to university work,
good private schools sprang up, and the normal school was also
resorted to. The normal school in Zurich now sends out almost
every year, in addition to its well-equipped teachers, at least one
or two girls fitted to take the MaturiUits examination in either
the medical or the philosophical department of the university. At
present, moreover, a bill is before the school commission of the
state, asking that the canton school be opened to girls, and has,
it is thought, fair prospect of being at last adopted.

It was in Berne as in Zurich. Women had studied several years
in the university before the question of their admission was ever
discussed. The Constitution used only the general term "stu-
dent," and naturally girls were accepted as soon as they presented
themselves. No one could have given any authority or reason
for rejecting them. There were five the first year, one of these
an American, it is interesting to know, who wished to study medi-
cine. The next year there were twenty-six. The attention of the
faculty was arrested : a question arose as to the advisability of
simply allowing them to study under the negative provision of
the university laws, and a difference of judgment was mani-
fested ; but the discussion finally resulted in the passage of a new

COEDUCATION IN SWISS UNIVERSITIES. 527

resolution in 1874, formally defining the terms of admission for
students, and including women. Since then there has been abso-
lutely no question ; young men and women work together under
exactly the same conditions, and there is perfect harmony, ex-
cept, perhaps, an occasional unbusiness-like discontent on the part
of laboratory students, brought about by their voluntarily ex-
tended courtesy toward young women, and the thoughtlessness
of these in acceptance of this courtesy. There is only one point
of difference in the admission of men and women : men are not
asked if they are of age, and if everybody is willing to have
them take the university work ; girls are.

Basle met the question first, as stated above, a little more than
a year ago, one young woman having applied for admission.
They were somewhat more conservative in this university, from
their long-undisturbed serenity of masculine atmosphere and
outlook, and this little rising of woman-ambition touched into life
a small cyclone of opposition. The earnest testimony, however,
of universities which had tried the experiment allayed the storm,
and the young woman bravely entered upon her work and con-
tinued through the year. At the close of the year the university
acknowledged that all was thus far satisfactory. In every uni-
versity, we need to remember, the terms of admission, conditions
of study, and all requirements, are exactly the same for men and
women. It is just as in our own high schools.

For simple admission to candidacy for the degree of Doctor of
Medicine, the terms are the same for all, and are determined by
the university senate, with consent of the state Educational Coun-
cil. But if a student wishes to practice in Switzerland, the Gen-
eral Government must prescribe the terms, which it does as fol-
lows : The student begins with the Maturitdts examination, before
alluded to. This makes the following requirements :

A. Languages.

1. Latin. 2. Greek. 3. The mother-language.* 4. A second
Swiss national language. 5. The Greek may be replaced by a
third Swiss national language, with the same requirements men-
tioned in section 4.

B. History and Geography.

6. Ancient, mediaeval, and modern history, physical and politi-
cal geography.

C. Mathematics.

7. Algebra. 8. Geometry. Plane trigonometry, and the sim-
plest propositions in spherical.

D. Sciences.

* German. The " second " and " third " national languages mentioned in 4 and 5 are
French and Italian.

528

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

9. Natural History. 10. Physics and Chemistry.

Having taken this examination, and studied two semesters, the
student is admitted to the so-called natural science examination,
covering physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology, with compara-
tive anatomy. At the end of five semesters comes the examina-
tion in anatomy and physiology, partly written, partly oral. In
this the student must explain some anatomical preparation placed
"before him, answering questions on anatomy ; and must make
and explain some histological preparation. He must also prepare
a written thesis, within closed doors, upon some physiological sub-
ject. The proper oral examination covers anatomy, histology,
embryology, and physiology.

Lastly comes the real doctor's examination, which is practical
"(including written) and oral. The practical embraces —

1. Pathological Anatomy. 2. Pathology and Therapeutics.
3. Surgery and Surgical Anatomy. 4. Obstetrics. 5. Ophthal-
mology. 6. Medicine and Hygiene.

After all this comes the formal oral examination, covering —

1. General pathology and pathological anatomy. 2. Special
pathology and therapeutics, including children's diseases. 3. Sur-
gery. 4. Obstetrics, including women's diseases. 5. Hygiene. 6.
Medical jurisprudence. 7. Psychiatry. 8. Theory of medicine.

Such are the examinations required by the Swiss Government
of all who practice medicine within its borders ; and no thought
is given by its universities as to whether the applicant for per-
mission to practice is a man or a woman. The person must only
be ready on application, and numbers of girls have justified this
confidence. Students of all lands may take the doctor's degree
from any department by passing successfully a final examination
prepared by the university faculty. All, on the other hand, may
be admitted to these other state examinations; and ambitious
ones are sometimes found, even among girls, who accept the
opportunity.

Up to 1883 the whole number of students who had matricu-
lated in the University of Zurich was about 6,700, of whom 284
were women. One hundred and ninety-one of these women were
students of medicine, 91 of philosophy, and two of jurisprudence
According to nationality, they may be classified as follows :

Russia.

Germany.

Austria.

United
States.

Switzer-
land.

Other
lands.

Medicine

119
49

1

12

13

• ■

i

7

28
5
1

10

11

15

Philosophy

6

Thirty took the doctor's degree — 23 in medicine, 3 in pure phi-
losophy, 4 in science, or philosophy of the second class, as it is
called.

COEDUCATION IN SWISS UNIVERSITIES.

529

Up to the present year, since 1833, the number of male stu-
dents matriculated is about 7,300 in round numbers, of whom 988
— more than one eighth — have taken their degree. Since 18G4,
the year when women entered the university, the number of
women matriculated is 484, of whom 57 — more than one ninth-
have taken their degree. The women graduates are classified —

Medicine

Philosophy I .
Philosophy II.
Jurisprudence

Russia.

Germany.

Austria.

United
States.

Switzer-
land.

9

5

4

6

6

1

2

3

4

1

V

1

. .

2

••

1

Other
lands.

5
1

From the establishment of the university up to the present
date; the whole body of graduates may be thus classified :

Jurisprudence.

Medicine.

Philosophy I.

Philosophy II.

Men.

Women.

Men.

Women.

Men.

Women.

Men.

Women.

1833-1864

30
Y9

i

182
249

35

16
101

12

21
310

1864-1890

9

In addition to the examinations taken, each graduate prepares
a thesis upon an assigned subject, and these publications are of
no small worth. A study of the subjects convinces one that in
this way the results of a vast amount of original investigation in
science, literature, and philosophy have become common prop-
erty. And there are also many other publications, not only
from graduates, published after the final theses, but also from
those who have taken partial courses — publications of consider-
able interest and importance. It is impossible to follow these
young women through their after-lives and describe their vari-
ous services to humanity. The one jurist, Mrs. Kempin, of
Zurich, is perhaps the only woman in America now giving lect-
ures in a college for woman students of law. Miss Helene Web-
ster, a graduate of 1889, now holds the chair of Philology in
Wellesley College. And so one might name others. But, from
an investigation of their university life, one can judge whether
the enlarged vision supposed to result from higher education
probably followed in their cases, and whether the privileges were
wisely bestowed.

In the first place, knowledge that the university doors stand
open leads to the formation of earnest purpose and to a wise dis-
posal of hours and energies in the early years of life, while char-
acter is forming a good foundation. The work of these young
women in Zurich, after admission to the university, proves this.
Professors testify that their conscientious fidelity to tasks imposed

and their earnestness manifest an influence not only on the char-
vol. xxxviii. — 36

53o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

acter of the final theses, but also upon the general standard of
scholarship in the university, because the whole body of students
becomes more industrious ; and following this naturally the stand-
ard of the lecturers must be correspondingly raised. It is claimed
that the requirements in examinations are rather higher in Swiss
universities than in those where women are not admitted to equal
privileges. The students themselves grant that the influence is
good by their cheerful acceptance of the conditions and their
business-like adjustment of each other's rights — men and women
together as men and men together, according to rules of refined
courtesy. A tutor from the University of Vienna visited Zurich
during the past winter for the purpose of observation, because an
appeal had come from women in Vienna for admission to study.
He was much impressed by the air of order and business which
the class-rooms everywhere presented. The live interest which
pervaded everything and absorbed all thought of self or sex in
delight of new power to see and do, was incomprehensible to him.
Such earnest preparation and such sensible recognition of favor-
able conditions and devotion to a chosen work must make women
who will be powerful afterward in the general work of elevating
humanity ; and when all the world's universities thus join hands
in developing all the forces God has placed latent in men and
women, the full light will sooner shine into corners which are as
yet mysterious and only tempting to man's curiosity or tantaliz-
ing to his needs.

CHINESE BUDDHISM.

By WARREN G. BENTON.

IN a former paper, on the Taouist Religion, it was the purpose
of the writer not to dwell upon the strictly historical features
of the subject. That has been done by others, whose conclusions
are recorded in books and encyclopaedias which may be consulted.
But the object aimed at was to give as true a picture as possible,
in small space, of the practical workings of the system at the
present time.

In writing of Chinese Buddhism the purpose is not to enter
the historical phases of the question, but to show the present status
of this ancient faith in the land of its adoption.

Historians generally agree that the religion was invented in
Hindostan, about six centuries B. c, and that it has spread
throughout almost all of Asia, until it is to-day the religion of
at least a third of the human race. To have lived so long, and
reached so wide a field in its conquests, indicate elements of vital-
ity not frequently matched in the world's history ; and, while its

CHINESE BUDDHISM. 53i

origin, as well as its founder, is so far back, as the annals of his-
tory go, as to be shrouded in mystery, and even by many attrib-
uted to mythology, yet that it still lives and thrives as the most
widely accepted religion none can deny. A reason for this fact
must be sought in other directions than the perversity and igno-
rance of human minds, which incline men to accept absurd beliefs
as a substitute for truth, as many assert.

There must be somewhat in a system of religion or philosophy
which accords with human experience, and which tends to better
the condition of life, and to foster hope, in order that a decade of
centuries may pass without witnessing any diminution of its
power. It is not sufficient to assume that its being a system of
ingeniously woven myths is sufficient to account for its ready
acceptance by unintelligent and unscientific Oriental minds. For
even New York and London, as well as other centers of intelli-
gence in our own civilization, have their rapidly growing theo-
sophical societies, whose members include men of intelligence.
These have formulated, according to their own fancies largely,
what they are pleased to call a Buddhist creed ; and, while they
do not build temples, and ornament them with wooden images of
their patron saint, as do their Oriental brethren, yet they none
the less ardently declare their belief in the cardinal teachings of
the system.

There is a tradition among Chinese scholars that, not far from
the beginning of the Christian era, a rumor reached China that a
great reformation was going on to the westward, and the emperor
sent a committee to investigate the matter and report. The com-
mittee went overland through Burmah into India, inquiring at
each stage of their journey as to the reports. In this way they
encountered the promulgators of the Buddhist faith, who, on
learning the object of their visit, informed them that their jour-
ney was at an end, and that they had found the true religion. On
investigating the subject, the committee returned and made a
favorable report ; whereupon the emperor announced that the
religion of Buddha was good for the people, and adopted it of-
ficially as one of the state religions of the empire. From that
time the Buddhist missionaries found China a " field already white
for the harvest/' and it was at once recognized as the chief re-
ligion of the people, and has continued such ever since. Some
scholars in China believe that it was the founding of Christianity
that had reached their country ; and that, had the committee
continued their journey farther, China would have been among
the first nations to adopt the Christian religion, instead of, most
probably, the last people now likely to adopt it as a nation. The
idea opens the way to much speculative fancy, but it lies outside
the purpose of this paper to pursue it.

532 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The first thing to attract the attention of one investigating
Chinese Buddhism is the many points of similarity in the details
with the Roman Catholic system. So striking was this resem-
blance, that the first Catholic missionaries declared that, in some
manner, their own faith had preceded them ; and that the Bud-
dhism of the twelfth century was really copied from, or a per-
version of, the Roman faith. But, finding that dates did not
justify this solution of the matter, they then asserted that the
devil, in anticipation of the true religion, had planted a counter-
feit (older than the original), for the express purpose of preventing
the people from accepting salvation when it was offered to them.
This is hardly made clear enough to meet the inquisitive mind in
seeking a solution of the matter.

While in China, investigating this subject of the " Religions
of the Orient," I visited many Buddhist temples, conversed
through interpreters with many priests and laymen on the sub-
ject, and put up at temples for weeks at a time, studying the
methods observed in the semi-daily worship or performances ; and
reached certain conclusions which may have some interest to
others. And in what I shall say it shall be my endeavor to treat
of the present status of the ancient faith as exemplified in the
present generation of believers, leaving the reader to form his
own conclusions. I am not an advocate for or against the sys-
tem, and shall seek to view it impartially.

In the first place, the present generation of Buddhists give but
little or no thought to the origin or founder of the faith. There
is apparently none of the controversial element in them. They
ask no questions and have no doubts. That Buddhism exists, and
meets all their requirements in the religious line, they know ;
and with that they are content. All efforts to dislodge this an-
cient faith are met with the most aggravating indifference ; and
such as have nominally adopted the Christian system have ap-
parently not abandoned the old, but simply taken on another
additional string to their bow. With most men, one religion is
sufficient, but not so with pagan John. In this respect, indeed,
the " heathen Chinee is peculiar." The same individuals believe
in and practice no less than four different systems of religion.
Taouists are also Buddhists, and Confucian disciples recognize
both systems ; while all together, and even the Mohammedans — of
whom there are many in China — recognize the state religion, of
which the emperor is the representative and custodian. And it
is said that many Roman and Protestant converts also adhere to
their former belief in the native articles of faith.

Buddhist priests are not, as a class, educated in any legitimate
sense. They mostly are able to repeat from memory the ritual of
the faith, and many include in their mental storehouses a literal

CHINESE BUDDHISM.

533

memorized text from the " classics " ; but in matters of general
interest they are often the merest children in knowledge. They
are recruited from all classes of society, but most generally from
the so-called literary class. They are strictly celibates, and are
vegetarians in living. Priests are exempt from the law which
requires every other male Chinaman to wear the crown-locks
braided in a queue, while the rest of the head is smoothly
shaved.

Formerly the custom of scalp-taking in the event of conquest
was observed by the Tartars and Chinese (from whom the cus-
tom was handed down through their successors in this country,
he Indians) ; but when the Tartars subjugated China they issued
a decree that all who would shave their scalps, except the scalp-
locks, in token of subjection, and wear that in a braided queue, to
be ready to be removed if emergency should arise, would have
their lives spared. It is not recorded how many refused to accept
the conditions, but the queue on the head of every Chinaman to-
day is the flag of truce, as it were, and by it he is counted loyal
to his conquerors ; but the priests were exempted from this rule,
owing, no doubt, to the custom already in vogue among them of
shaving the head clean as a mark of humility.

The priests live in the temples, having no other home. The
temples are located in the most inaccessible places in mountains
and on islands, and often cover acres of land. They are void of
architectural beauty or effect, and consist of a main auditorium,
with a succession of sheds attached, windowless and plain. The
main room is furnished with an altar, on which is placed an im-
age, generally of wood, of Buddha, sitting upon an imitation
lotus leaf, and on either side of this image are other images of
lesser lights in the calendar of saints who are supposed to be
especially celebrated in Buddhist annals. In front of these fig-
ures incense-sticks burn day and night. These are made of dried
aromatic wood reduced to fine powder and mixed into paste with
oil and then put on splinters of dry wood, the lower end of which
is stuck into a vase of sand and the upper end lighted, which burns
slowly without a blaze, the curling, slender volume of smoke shed-
ding forth an odor which counteracts the damp, musty smells of
the old stone walls and sunless rooms.

The sheds attached serve as living-rooms for the priests and
as guest-chambers for pilgrims and travelers.

At intervals around the walls of the audience-room stand the
images of other saints in the calendar, which includes eighteen
or more principal characters. These are not intended to repre-
sent deities, as many people suppose, but simply symbolize and
preserve the memories of the men who figured prominently in
the past history of the religion. They are supposed to represent

534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

also certain ideas connected with the conception of certain attri-
butes, snch as Love, Mercy, Justice, War, etc., and each figure
has been made to convey the idea of his specialty.

For example, the Love symbol is shown as a fat, jolly-tempered
man surrounded with little children at play. Justice sits with a
face utterly devoid of all traces of sympathy, and with eyelids
drawn down and lips firmly closed, and, with drawn sword, sym-
bolizes the fate of the evil-doer. Thus, each figure is intended to
impress the observer with a proper observance of the graces in-
culcated in the religion. But they are not worshiped. Nor has
Buddha been deified in any proper sense, but is looked upon as
the founder and best example of the faith. So far as I can judge,
no prayers are offered to him as such, but, while he occupies the
post of honor in all temples, he is merely venerated as above indi-
cated.

Morning and evening services are observed in the temples,
which consist of a certain number of strokes upon a great bell
and a similar number of taps on a huge drum, which sometimes
consists of a section of a hollow trunk of a tree, with rawhide
fastened across one end; and this noisy demonstration is pre-
ceded and followed by repetition of ritual, and bowing and kneel-
ing in turn in front of the central altar. Nothing can be more
weird than to listen to the beating on the drum and bell in the
stillness of a mountain gorge at sunset, where no sound except
the occasional howling of tigers near by comes to break the mo-
notony of the mountain stillness. I can well understand how it
affects the minds of ignorant worshipers, inspiring in them an
awe equal to that produced by the most profound ceremonies of
the churches on the minds of the worshipers.

They have no set days for the people to come to the temples to
worship. The priests keep up the service above named at sunrise
and sunset of each day, and the laity may come to the temples at
any time they see fit. Prayers are said for the people, or rather
by the people, in a sort of lottery scheme. A joint of bamboo,
open at one end, is kept in the temples, in which are an assort-
ment of prayers and omens good and bad. The worshiper ( ?) se-
lects one of these by chance, much as we sometimes see children
pulling straws for the longest or shortest to decide some question
in dispute. If the first effort gets an undesirable " prayer," it is
put back and another drawn. This is repeated until the wor-
shiper gets one that suits him, and then he goes on his way, feel-
ing sure that the blessings of Heaven will rest upon his under-
takings.

There are monasteries and convents in addition to the temples,
and these are carried on for the same purposes and very similar in
all respects as the Roman institutions of the same nature.

CHINESE BUDDHISM.

535

Among the tenets of the faith is one commonly called " works
of merit/' similar to and for the same objects as supererogation
— that is, doing more good than the present emergencies require —
for the purpose of having a balance to one's credit in case of
emergency. Priests under such pious inspiration go into the
markets and buy squirming eels of fish-mongers and liberate
them. Paying for them with money first begged from door to
door. The relative merits of buying these eels and giving them
to the hungry for food have not occurred to them ; but they are not
the only people who take the least probable route to gain favor in
the sight of their final Judge. Acts of personal torture and self-
denial rank high in the line of " merit," and men are not infre-
quently met with who inflict the most atrocious penalties upon
themselves in the vain belief that it will gain them high standing
in the eyes of the powers that control their future destinies. The
people can not understand disinterested benevolence ; hence, when
missionaries go among them and apparently put themselves to
inconveniences to induce the people to accept their teachings, they
are looked upon with a certain respect ; but their actions are in-
variably construed as being " works of merit," and that, instead
of their good, it is the future good of the missionary himself
which he is looking after.

I knew an English missionary who went into the famine dis-
trict, twelve years ago, to distribute the relief sent there from
England ; and the chances were ten to one that he would never
return alive. Yet the people admired him as being piously seek-
ing to lay up treasures in heaven to his own credit.

But the leading characteristic of the Buddhist faith, and the
one in the light of which all their actions and observances must
be judged, is the doctrine of transmigration of souls. In this
belief lies whatever of practical good comes from the system, in
addition to the rest of mind and contentment which come of one
being entirely satisfied with his faith. It is urged by religious
people in this country that the disciplinary benefits arising out of
the belief in a future state of rewards and punishments are ap-
parent in and essential to good society; that if a belief in this
doctrine be annihilated, society would lapse into a state of bar-
barism and outlawry. "Without entering into any discussion of
this question, it is sufficient to say that the restraining effects
of the belief in transmigration are an equally strong motive for
right-doing.

They believe that life is a succession of existences, and that
every grade and condition of life are the product of a former career.
All animals are equally immortal as men ; and, in fact, the souls
of all are identical and interchangeable. Hence, to kill an ox or a
dog is as much murder as to kill a man. So strong is this belief,

536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that no Buddhist will take the life of an animal for food, the pig
and fowls alone excepted. But for the contingent of Mohammedans
in Chinese cities, Europeans would fare badly for beefsteaks and
lamb-chops. I never knew a Chinese butcher who was not a Mo-
hammedan ; and when Mohammedan butchers buy fatted cattle
of pious Buddhist farmers, they have to promise that the cattle
shall not be slaughtered. I once asked a fish-dealer why he made
a distinction in his line. He said that he never killed fish, but
that when taken out of the water they died. I suggested that if
he were to reverse this rule and put an ox under water, he too
would die without being killed. When, however, the soul of an
animal has departed, the carcass is exempt, and finds ready takers
among the faithful who are not averse to eating beef. It is from
this fact that all animals having died natural deaths are used by
the people as food. The only exception to this rule of eating
dead animals is in the case of their having belonged to a priest.
I once shot a priest's dog, and it was buried with great cere-
mony (at my expense), and, when asked why they did not eat it,
was told that being a priest's dog it was sacred. That made, of
course, a great difference !

The beneficial results from this belief are apparent in the kind-
ness to all domestic animals. No need for Mr. Bergh's society
there. When a farmer harnesses his faithful ox or cow to plow
his field, he treats the beast with the utmost consideration, for the
reason that, for aught he knows, he has harnessed the soul of his
own grandfather ; and that the soul of the beast is watching him,
and knows just what he is doing, he does not question.

Buddhists accept the proposition that one's relative rank'
whether as a poor man, or, next thing to that, a pig or a donkey,
is entirely due to his actions in a former life. And no matter
how humble one's lot may be, he devoutly hopes for promotion
in the next inning. One of the most potent fears in the minds of
many men is that they may be born next time as a donkey.
With us the difficulty is that sometimes men are born donkeys
but do not appear to know it.

The old problem of how long it will take a frog to get out of
a well twenty-one feet deep by jumping seven feet every day and
then sliding down six feet at night, aptly illustrates the Buddhist's
idea of the problem of existence. How many lives or succession
of ages must one live in order to get into the final haven, or Nir-
vana, whatever that is, is the question. He believes this depends
chiefly upon his own conduct, hence the belief has the tendency
to restrain the vicious to discipline. How well this motive suc-
ceeds is apparent when we consider the unmatched population,
both in numbers and in poverty, and then consider the compara-
tive immunity from crime. True, the civil law punishes crime

' CHINESE BUDDHISM. 537

severely ; but so it docs in other countries, but this is thought not
to be sufficient.

In China, where there is not a burglar-proof safe, and no con-
stant surveillance of policemen, there is comparative security to
life and property. It is apparent that the belief in the transmi-
gration doctrine has a repressing influence in this direction. But
the people are not, as a rule, as good as their religion would make
them if it were practiced. But in this, again, they are not pecul-
iar. The masses are grossly ignorant and largely brutalized by
ages of tyranny and poverty ; yet they plod on in patience and
industry, waiting their final rescue from existence.

The bible of the sect is not without beauty and high moral as
well as poetic conceptions. There is much in it of the nature of
mythology and mysticism, which Buddhists do not pretend to
understand themselves, yet there is much to admire. From a
book of extracts and translations from the Buddhist bible I give
a few examples :

" The perfect man is like the lily, unsoiled by the mud in which
it grows." Another : " The perfect man will not be angry with
him who brings him evil reports of himself, lest he be not able to
judge truthfully of the matter whereof he is accused." Its moral
code contains such rules as " Do not steal " ; " Do not lie " ; " Do
not kill " ; " Do not be a drunkard " ; " Do not to another what
you would not wish done to yourself." From these examples it
may be observed how nearly their moral law runs parallel with
our own ; and that this has exerted a potent influence in forming
the Chinese character is evident. Also, that they cover the car-
dinal rules of right living in good society, none will question.

The system offers motives in the way of rewards for right
living, and punishments for evil-doing. It develops sympathy,
the source of many virtues. It teaches the equality of all men.
One man is better or worse than another only as he observes the
laws of good society or breaks them. That it satisfies the minds
of its votaries is certain. The Chinese will never abandon this
ancient faith on sentimental grounds. They must be convinced
that a better system is offered before they accept it.

Whether this demonstration is forthcoming, remains to be
seen. Strong efforts are being made in that direction, and the
future alone will reveal the outcome.

Rear- Admiral Belknap, of the United States Navy, combining his discovery
of the greatest oceanic depths yet found in the Japanese Kuro Sivro with what
other explorers have found in different oceans, announces the conclusion that, "as
a rule, the deepest water is found, not in the central parts of the great oceans,
but near, or approximately near, the land, whether of continental mass or island
isolation."

538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

SHETLAND PONIES.

THE Shetland pony has been invested with a halo of romance
somewhat out of keeping with the prosaic surroundings of its
native home; and this, apparently, from a very early date, for
we chanced to read not long ago that, traditionally, "the Shet-
land pony was carried from the Caucasian range, by ancient wor-
shipers of Odin, to Scandinavia, thence to Shetland " — in which
tradition we discern a trace of humor, if nothing more, as, consid-
ering the size of some of these animals, they are much more fitted
to be " carried " than to transport any one, whether from the Cau-
casus or elsewhere. But this is not all. Not only is the origin of
the breed thus presumably lost in the mists of antiquity ; a num-
ber of popular misconceptions also prevail in regard to the pres-
ent-day nature and habits of the animals, all of which it seems
desirable to correct. They are now not only drafted annually in
large numbers to the south, but are extensively shipped abroad.
A few words, then, in regard to the breed, as it exists to-day, may
not be out of place.

To begin with, we must contend — in opposition to the popularly
received belief — that there is no such thing as the genuine Shet-
land pony, in the sense of a single pure and original breed.
There happen to be several distinct kinds in the islands, and
these, besides being subject to natural variation, have been further
increased in number by crossing. Crosses apart, however, an Unst
pony is very different from a South Mainland one, while both of
these again differ from a Fetlar specimen. There are also Fair
Isle and Bressay varieties. It would be invidious to seek to indi-
cate in this paper which of these is to be considered the best.
Each kind, no doubt, has its special excellences, but a sufficient
latitude is perhaps allowed when we state that a pure-bred pony
may be anything between, say, thirty-six and forty-eight inches high
at the shoulder. A small-sized pony, again, is not necessarily any
better or more valuable than a large one ; though for certain pur-
poses, such as working in coal-mines, the smaller animal only is
employed. As a general rule extremes of size, either way, fetch
correspondingly extreme prices.

Broadly speaking, the ponies to be seen throughout, say, the
mainland of Shetland — and they are to be met with everywhere,
in spite of reported scarcity — may be divided into two classes,
those kept by large breeders, generally in fenced parks, and the
proletariat class employed by the peasantry in labor. Strings of
the latter may be seen any day upon the roads, dragging peat-fuel
from the hills in Lilliputian carts. They are wonderfully tough
and strong for their size, live upon hard fare, and require, or at

SHETLAND PONIES.

539

least receive, little attention. Numbers of them live out of doors
all the year round, except in the severest weather. The time-
honored fiction that they are habitually left out in the snow, and
preserve themselves from being drifted over by walking constantly
in a circle, contradicts itself. As a matter of fact, snow often lies
for seven or eight weeks in Shetland, covering the ground to a
great depth. Under these circumstances the animals, if exposed,
would certainly succumb, and they are far too valuable to their
owners for this to be permitted. But they certainly do rough it
out of doors in very inclement weather, seeking the doubtful
shelter of dikes and out-houses ; while in hard seasons the stud of
the breeder is carefully housed in sheds made for the purpose.
Unquestionably these ponies can stand a great amount of expos-
ure, being fitted for this by a double or treble thickness of coat.
But it is very much to be questioned — the popular belief to the
contrary notwithstanding —
if any of them are the better
for being subjected to an
extreme test of this kind.
Ponies sent south at an
early age rarely, if ever,
pass through such an or-
deal, and it is not found, we
believe, that their natural
hardiness deserts them, or
even diminishes, when they
receive fair treatment and
proper shelter during in-
clement seasons. If stabled,
however, as in many cases

they must necessarily be, by the southern buyer, they should
have abundance of fresh air ; a simple shed, by way of cover, is
almost all that is necessary for them. And it is imperative that
at all times they should have ready access to drinking-water. No
animal can exist so short a time without it unharmed. It is self-
evident that, if a pony be entirely dependent on outdoor feed, his
condition must necessarily vary with the season. Apoplectically
full in summer, he must be sorely reduced in winter. This must,
sooner or later, injure the health and stamina of the animal.

The writer, who has had considerable experience in the keep-
ing of Shetland ponies, has carefully experimented as to the best
hygienic arrangements for their indoor accommodation. He
finds that a rough stone building, loosely cemented, so as to allow
a free current of air to pass through the walls, with ordinary
stable fittings on a small scale, and covered with a galvanized
iron roof, forms their best shelter. During the day, in almost all

A Shetland Pony.

540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

weathers, they should have their heads loose, in rough pasture ;
and in summer they can safely be left out at night, with the ex-
ception of young foals. Strange to say, the latter are remarkably
delicate. For indoor food common wheaten bran made into a
mash, with the addition of a little Indian meal, suits them much
better than oats ; while hay or straw, with turnips or potatoes, and
perhaps a little linseed cake, complete their stable dietary. Gen-
erally speaking, they are somewhat gross feeders, and, though
capable of standing unharmed a surfeit which would ruin an
ordinary horse, they should have a carefully measured allowance,
varying according to their size and to the work they have to do.

Now, as to the much-vexed question of height. A variation of,
say, three hands between the average large and small sized ponies
means a good deal in the case of such a tiny animal. Yet it ob-
tains, as we have said, among undoubtedly pure-bred specimens,
and entirely independent of any foreign cross. Accidental varia-
tions of size occur, of course, in breeding, and may be perpetuated,
though this is not always to be relied upon. The true explana-
tion, according to one of the most experienced of Shetland judges,
is that size is mainly, though perhaps not entirely, a question of
feed. Scanty feeding on hard pasture tends to diminish the
height, and also to develop that superabundance of hair which
is popularly (though erroneously) regarded as one of the distin-
guishing marks of the genuine strain.

The craze for undersized ponies, in our opinion, has had its day.
Except as curiosities, or for the purposes of the menage, these
pygmy animals are practically useless. The conventional Shetland
pony — the animal represented in picture-books — namely, about
forty to forty-four inches high, very tight-jointed, and with an
impossible growth of hair all over him, is just about as bad a type
of this famous race as can well be imagined. From his build he is
generally short-winded and thoroughly impracticable in his paces.
A South Mainland specimen, on the other hand, long and rakish in
build — hard-grown, as the saying is — and clean-limbed, will far
surpass his companion in staying power. One of this hardy breed
— in our opinion the ideal Shetland pony — has been known to
travel from Sumburgh to Lerwick and back the same day, with
a tolerably heavy riding weight, say fifty-six miles altogether of
extremely hilly road. But, minor differences apart, there are cer-
tain characteristics — unfailing tests in their way with the experi-
enced judge — which go to the " make-up " of a Shetland, as distin-
guished from an Iceland or Faroe, pony — e. g., a certain unmis-
takable breadth of build, set of pasterns, and, more particularly,
an apathetic air which no other breed possesses. Your " Sheltie "
is not a quick animal, is inclined to be sleepy rather than other-
wise in his paces, and is, as a rule, disposed to do no more than he

SHETLAND PONIES. 541

can help in the way of exertion, though, if put to it, he evinces
great power of endurance, and will go through an immense
amount of work for his size. The Iceland variety is altogether
inferior, shorter-lived, narrower in build, and generally fallacious,
but, with all this, he is quicker, livelier, and lacks that air of pen-
sive melancholy which haunts every Shetland pony. Our advice
is to avoid the inferior animal, however highly recommended.
Their price is, roughly speaking, about half that of the Shetlander,
but the money is ill-saved. The average life of an Icelander is
about twelve or thirteen years, while the other will live to twenty-
five or even more.

During the earlier months of spring, before the snow has fairly
disappeared from the Shetland uplands, the American buyer trav-
els over the length and breadth of the isles, picking up every likely
animal he can find for the foreign market. In order to secure a
good selection it is necessary to forestall him. Hence mid-winter
is the best time to buy. Just at present there is a comparative
scarcity of fine animals in the islands. Within the last three
years, and even before that, a disease affecting the ponies, incur-
able save in the earlier stages, and called sarcoptic mange, ravaged
many districts. Infected animals were freely slaughtered, and
the epidemic may be said to have spent itself. Still, the ponies are
fewer than they once were, and the price all round is considerably
higher. At present it may be said to range from £10 to £30 and
upward for three-year-olds. It is impossible, however, within the
limits of this paper to instruct intending buyers. The prices are
very variable, as the animals often pass through several hands be-
fore reaching the ultimate purchaser. The latter will probably
be victimized if buying from so-called agents in the south, as the
latter will endeavor to extort £18 or £20 for an animal which has
cost them little more than half that sum in Shetland. The only
safe plan is to purchase through a respectable dealer on the spot.

The variety of coloring in these tiny animals is extraordinary.
Almost every possible — and some all but impossible — shade of
horse color may be seen during a day's ride through the mainland,
from the lightest fawn, almost white, by gray and slaty shades of
gradation to brown and black. There are no dapple-grays that
we wot of. There is a tradition, of the usual value, that brown is
the " true and original " hue. Cream ponies, if otherwise good,
fetch a higher price than others, as being a " fancy color," and the
same may be said of " piebalds." The theory that light-colored
animals are not so robust or hardy as dark ones is not borne out
by observation. A stripe, or ribbon-like mark, down the spine is
a sign of Norwegian blood, the infusion dating many years back.
If the Caucasian legend is to be relied upon, however, the Norway
pony is at least first cousin to the Shetland one.

542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A mob of ponies feeding together in the open air will use their
heels to each other most liberally. This is a painful but undeni-
able fact, known to every breeder. When running wild on their
native hills they are extremely pugnacious, and will fight most
determinedly, not only with each other but with larger horses,
frequently to the discomfiture of the latter. So far true, but our
romancer — the Shetland Munchausen — goes on to affirm that if

" Fib and Tib and Pink and Pin,
Tick and Quick and Jill and Jin "

are but congregated loosely together in a shed, or other building,
they will no longer quarrel. Amity will reign where hopeless dis-
cord formerly prevailed. We can only say, Try the experiment !
We have. The whole thing is a baseless fiction. They are patient
and enduring, these ponies of Linga ; * in many cases they may
be trained to a docility and sagacity almost human, but there is a
point with most of them — such, at least, is our experience of them
indoors as well as out — when their patience gives way to posi-
tive ferocity, and when once their blood is up they are not so
easily pacified. An experience we once had with a recalcitrant
riding pony in a rural smithy — it was his first shoeing — will never
fade from our recollection, nor, we imagine, from that of the vil-
lage Yulcan.

Never groom a Shetland pony as you would an ordinary horse.
They should be well brushed, and their manes and tails combed ;
but the indiscriminate use of the curry-comb is positively hurtful
to them. More especially is this the case if the animal is to be
left much out of doors. Observe one of them in the open air on
a wet day, and you will notice that the rain runs off his coat as
off a duck's back. But if the " set " be removed, the coat will no
longer be water-proof. It is scarcely necessary to add that, by
immemorial custom, the mane and tail should be lightly trimmed
and no more. Nothing can be more incongruous than the sight
of one of them closely cropped. The tail should just be off the
ground. So careful are Shetland dealers in this respect that we
have often received animals dispatched by them with the tail
thoughtfully tied in a double knot, in case of accidents on ship-
board.

The Shetland pony is shy of a strange owner, and at first re-
quires to be jealously watched in a new home, as being apt to bolt
on the first opportunity. Unfailing tradition steps in here and
gravely informs us that a straying pony, however far removed
from the land of its birth, will invariably shape its course for the
north — in the direction, that is, of its native home. Needless to

* Linga, or ITcath Isle, the ancient name for Shetland, now on the lucus a non lucendo
principle, heath or heather being practically extinct.

SHETLAND PONIES.

543

say that, by preference, it does nothing of the kind. As far as our
experience enables us to judge, a straying pony, wherever it may
be, traverses the line of least resistance.

We have said that they are exported in large numbers annually.
The wonder, in our opinion, is that they are not still more exten-
sively purchased. They are singularly affectionate and repay any
amount of attention. Their uses are manifold, as they are capital
saddle animals — one of forty-seven inches being quite up to an
ordinary riding weight — are as a rule sure-footed and reliable, go
well either singly or paired in harness, make the best of hill ponies,
give little trouble, and are the most captivating of all possible
pets. Take them all in all, they are by far the best of the pony
race. Perhaps their only drawback is their almost infinite teach-
ableness, which tends to make them acquire bad as well as good
habits ; but this is a question of training. In nine cases out of ten
their breaking-in is intrusted to inexperienced boys, with the usual
result of developing a tendency to shy or to throw their rider, at
which latter manoeuvre they may become perfect adepts. These
tricks are never unlearned. But, with an ordinary amount of
skilled attention from the first, they may be perfectly disci-
plined.

Mr. J. Sands is the poet of this special subject — perhaps the
only singer the Shetland pony ever had. In touching verse he
pictures the mother pony with her downy foal feeding together
on the wind-swept grassy hills of Shetland, the latter soon to be
parted from her to go to work in the grimy coal-mine. A fine
touch of nature this, but not without its share of, apparently in-
evitable, fallacy. For mine-ponies, though certainly condemned
to life-long imprisonment, are well looked after and carefully
tended. Assuredly their lot underground is preferable to ill-treat-
ment above ground, and though a pony may suffer from something
like " home-sickness " for a few days in a new dwelling, the attack
seldom lasts long. Our pony, though somewhat of a pessimist, is
a philosopher, and adapts itself with wonderful facility to a change
of home and ownership. — Cornhill Magazine.

One of the traits of recent historical investigation, which is well illustrated in
"Welzhofer's History of the Early Greek People, is its reaction against the skepti-
cal school of inquirers. The disposition to disbelieve the old stories, or to resolve
them into poetical fancies, is giving way to speculations concerning the real facts
on which they may or are supposed to have been founded. Mr. F. T. Richards
suggests, in the Academy, that anthropology has done something to bring about
this change of mind, by finding, still existent, institutions, incidents, legends, and
states of mind closely parallel or akin to early Greek and Roman affairs ; while
the credit of many of the old stories is strengthened by incidents in which the un-
lettered traditions of savages have been found to be true.

54.4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SKETCH OF JEAN-CHARLES HOUZEAU.

THE romantic incidents of M. Houzeau's career in the United-
States must invest his story with a living and lasting interest
to all Americans. His scientific record is no less remarkable. In
versatility, variety of studies, industry, productiveness, and origi-
nality he has been surpassed by few men of science. The mate-
rials for this sketch have been drawn from the affectionate and
appreciative Notes biographiques of Houzeau's intimate friend
and associate, M. A. Lancaster (Brussels, 1889).

Jean-Charles Houzeau de Lehaie was born at L'Ermitage,
near Mons, Belgium, October 7, 1820, and died July 12, 1888. He
was the elder of two children ; his brother, M. Auguste Houzeau,
is a professor of the School of Mines in Mons and a member of
the Belgian Chamber of Representatives. His mother was still
living in 1889, at the age of ninety years ; but his father died in
1885, ninety-five years old. His name was regularly published in
the annual list of nobles in the Almanach royal. The family had
added De Lehaie to their name about the middle of the last cent-
ury, to distinguish them from other branches of the same stock.

Jean - Charles Houzeau showed very early an inclination
toward the branches in which he became famous. He was inter-
ested in astronomy even before he had learned to read ; and with
the bonbons that were given him he would form on a table groups
of geometrical figures intended to represent the constellations.
When he had the table covered with them, he would call his
friends in to look at his firmament. He attended the college at
Mons while from twelve to seventeen years old ; and in the last
year received a special prize. He then applied for admission to
the University of Brussels, but failed to pass the examinations.
He returned to Mons, where he was allowed to pursue his astro-
nomical studies and ramble over the fields at will. From this
time his mind was always on the alert, and he showed uncommon
faculties of observation. "With his own hands he constructed a
small observatory on a neighboring hill. It included a wooden
cabin in which were a mural circle, a transit instrument, and a
telescope. The tubes of these instruments were of zinc; the
glasses, which were not achromatic, were bought in Paris. He
also began to write about this time, and contributed to L' Eman-
cipation, of Brussels, numerous articles on subjects relating to
improvements in industrial arts. He published his first scientific
work in 1839, a pamphlet of 108 pages on turbine wheels, which
can not be found now, but which was regarded by competent
men at the time as of great practical value.

In the two following years, 1840 and 1841, Houzeau attended

SKETCH OF JEAN-CHARLES HOUZEAU. 545

the courses of the Faculty of Sciences in Paris, but did not seek
an academic degree. On his return home, in 1842, he put himself
into communication with Quetelet, to obtain a position in the
observatory at Brussels, and was appointed a voluntary aid. He
had already written a note in the Astronomische Nachrichten, on
the position of the zodiacal light, which is cited by Humboldt in
the first volume of the Cosmos ; but so unknown was he to the
scientific world at this time, that Schumacher, the editor of the
JSTachrichten, wrote to Quetelet to know who he was ; and Quetelet
was obliged to reply that he knew as little of him as his colleague.
In September, 1846, Houzeau was promoted to a recognized
position in the establishment and a salary of fourteen hundred
francs. The industry with which he attended to the special duties
of this position is illustrated by the fact that during the three
years that he held it, he, who had been so frequent a correspond-
ent, did not contribute a single paper to the Academy. The
reports of the director, however, amply attest the esteem in which
he held his assistant, and the value of Houzeau's services in the
work. Some of the fruits of his labors here are embodied in Que-
telet's Climate of Belgium, in the preparation of which Houzeau
had a large part. The astronomical observations had been inter-
rupted for seven years, when Houzeau took hold. He contributed
much to their resumption in 1848. He was usually the first one
at the observatory, when any notable event among the stars was
announced, to point the telescope at the designated object. Thus,
in 1848, he was the first person in Belgium to determine the ele-
ments of the orbit of a comet from observations made in the same
country ; and, on the discovery of Neptune, he at once took obser-
vations for the determination of the new planet's right ascension
and declination. In 1847 he was charged by the Government
with the conduct of geodetical observations on the northern fron-
tier, of which a few points remained to be determined. But his
usefulness as an official astronomer was suddenly interrupted by
the political events of 1848. Houzeau was a warm republican,
with inclinations toward socialism. He had already, in 1839,
when hardly twenty years old, been warmly interested in a dis-
pute which arose with Holland, and had been among the first to
join a company of volunteers for public defense. On the present
occasion he gave free and unambiguous expression to his demo-
cratic principles and republican aspirations, and compromised
himself by forming relations with persons whose political stand-
ing was not good. He published numerous polemical articles in
the journals. On the 25th of March, 1849, a meeting at which he
was presiding was broken in upon by the Leopoldists, and he and
his fellow-republicans were obliged to flee. A few days afterward
he was deprived of his position at the observatory for having, the

VOL. XXXVIII. — 37

546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

decree read, "assisted at meetings organized for purposes con-
trary to the institutions of the country/' Quetelet was discom-
moded by the action of the Government, and did not conceal the
fact. Houzeau continued, however, to take part privately in the
work of the observatory for a few months, till he started on a
tour in Germany, Switzerland, and France. Sojourning at Lyons
from the following February till May, he occupied himself with
the preparation of several works, among them two treatises on
Meteorology, which appeared afterward in the Encyclope'die popu-
laire. In May, 1850, he settled in Paris, where he resided for five
years, devoting himself principally to study. He was an indus-
trious taker of notes, which related, not to science alone, but to all
branches of human activity, and embraced anecdotes and jokes.
He assisted M. d'Abbadie, of the Institute, in arranging the scien-
tific observations which he had made in Ethiopia. He interested
himself much in optical telegraphy. In conjunction with his
brother he made experiments at Paris and Mons to learn if the
light of the flashing of powder at one place could be seen at the
other. Of course, these experiments were not successful, for such
lights could not be seen at so great a distance. Some time after-
ward communication by the electric cable between England and
France was interrupted, and Houzeau proposed to the English
Cable Company to use a system of optical signals. Experiments
were determined upon between Dover and Calais, but were stopped
by the order of the French Government, declaring that such work
should be done only by agents of the state. They were under-
taken again in England, where this kind of interference could not
take place, between Southend and Whitstable. The first experi-
ments were successful, but the populace, excited by so much
night- work with fires, and fancying that the oyster crop would be
damaged by them, mobbed the experimenters and stoned Hou-
zeau's lodgings.

The essay on the Physical Geography of Belgium (1853) was
the first book, M. Lancaster says, in which Houzeau " gave the
measure of his force as a man of science and a writer, and in
which one could perceive the whole extent and variety of his
knowledge, appreciate his expository talent, and enjoy the charm
of his sober, clear, and elegant style." He had been collecting ma-
terials for it for ten years, and in doing so made the best use of his
pedestrian excursions. The book is possessed of an interest that
does not pall for an instant in the reading, and is described by M.
Lancaster as one of the most remarkable works that can be cited.
An important paper in the same line was a study of the influence
by which the peculiar features of the relief of Belgian topography
had been produced. In 1854, through the influence of his friend
and former colleague, Liagre, Houzeau was temporarily commis-

SKETCH OF JEAN-CHARLES HOUZEAU. 547

sioned by the Minister of War as astronomer to determine lati-
tudes and azimuths and make geodetic observations in the tri-
angulation of the Belgian coast. He performed this work -with
great credit to himself and advantage to the service till 1857,
when, the appropriations failing, he was dismissed. About this
time (1857) he published his History of the Soil of Europe — the
most important work he produced prior to crossing the Atlan-
tic. It was accompanied by a map which deserves mention as
embodying the first attempt that was made, with a satisfactory
degree of success, to represent the relief by curves and by succes-
sively deeper tints of shading. Berghaus had previously attempted
a map with relief curves, but it left much room for improvement.

After his dismissal from the work of triangulation, Houzeau
proceeded to carry out a desire which he had cherished for many
years to visit the United States, where he expected to study a
society and customs different from those with which he was
acquainted. He embarked from Liverpool on an emigrant sail-
ing vessel, on the 11th of September, and reached New Orleans
after a voyage of seven weeks, much of the time marked by hard
storms. He expected to remain in America a few months. His
residence actually lasted twenty years. Full accounts of his
experiences and observations during the first ten of those years
are given in his twenty-four communications to the Revue trimes-
trielle. The letters, treating of many questions, constitute, for the
time in which they were written, a complete, vivid, and animated
picture of the manners and institutions, and the social, political,
and intellectual conditions of the districts in which he abode.
The question in which he appears to have been most deeply inter-
ested was that of the abolition of slavery. After staying at New
Orleans long enough to get a passable practical knowledge of the
English language, he went to San Antonio, Texas, where he was
engaged in surveying for irrigating canals; then made a six
weeks' excursion to the Rio Grande, during which he found abun-
dant opportunities to carry on studies of the winds ; he was in-
terested in observations of Donati's brilliant comet and specu-
lations as to its identity with the comets of 1264 and 1556 ; and
was commissioned to make surveys in western Texas for the set-
tlement of some Spanish land titles which had been acquired
by a company. He describes his life here as that of the regular
frontiersman.

When the civil war broke out, Houzeau was in southern
Texas, about to start on a geological excursion to the borders of
the Indian country. The trip occupied six weeks, and, on his re-
turn, he seems to have got himself into some trouble by assisting
in the escape of a fugitive slave. After resting a month, he
started for another geological excursion toward the Rio Pecos.

548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But affairs had become too much disturbed for the undertaking
to be safe, and he was stopped before he had made more than a
few days' journey. Life at his ranch was imperiled by Indian
depredations, and he was obliged to abandon all — even his books
and his precious collections of Secondary and Tertiary fossils, his
field and his cattle — and return to the towns. At Austin he was
invited to join the staff of the Confederate army, to help supply a
seriously felt lack of scientifically educated officers, with the in-
ducement added that he would thereby be enabled to avoid requi-
sitions. He answered : " I would sooner cut off my right hand
than serve that cause. Let the requisitions come; they may
watch me as an obdurate or make a prisoner of me, but a soldier
of the planters — never ! " He returned to San Antonio, where he
hoped to be able to weather the storm in obscurity ; but, being
threatened with a conscription, he claimed the protection of the
Belgian consul at New Orleans, without effect. There was a pow-
erful party in the region opposed to the Confederacy, and he
allied himself with it. Then came the arrest, in October, 1861, of
Mr. Charles Anderson, Unionist, at the head-waters of the Rio
San Antonio, with the accounts of which the papers of the time
were filled. Houzeau, with a Northern lady, his neighbor, formed
a plan to rescue Mr. Anderson, and carried it out with admirable
daring and brilliant success, himself accompanying the suspect on
horseback at night to a point down the river, whence a straight
road led to freedom, and taking care of his business papers.
Desperate but vain efforts were made to discover the " traitor "
who had helped Mr. Anderson off.

In February, 1862, Houzeau learned that the Vigilance Com-
mittee were about to make a descent upon him. He had com-
promised himself by defending the freedom of the negroes whom
Anderson had set free to prevent their being sold by Confederate
officials. He prepared to flee, first taking care to write an account
of the rescue of Anderson. Knowing that the Unionist party de-
sired to send a memorial to the President of the United States,
and wishing to be useful to them before going off, he told them
that if they would prepare the memorial he would take charge of
it. Not being able to carry his own papers with him, he burned
them, for there was not a leaf among them, he said, that did not
contain something in condemnation of slavery. With the Union-
ist memorial stuffed in the barrel of his shot-gun, he started off
under the guise of Carlos Uso, Mexican driver of six oxen, in the
train of Alejandro Vidal, for Brownsville and Matamoras. The
story of the journey of thirty-five days, as told by him in his cor-
respondence, reads like a chapter of Uncle Tom's Cabin. He had
to remain in Matamoras nearly a year, till January, 1863, waiting
for the French blockade to be raised, before he was able to take

SKETCH OF JEAN-CHARLES HOUZEAU. 549

passage for the United States. He spent his time in gardening,
in drawing architectural designs for the rebuilding of the burnt
city, and in making surveys of Matamoras and Brownsville for
the consul of the United States. His house sheltered many Texan
refugees. At last the American war-ship Kensington appeared at
the mouth of the Rio Grande, and Houzeau was given passage
on her to New Orleans as a member of the Belgian Academy of
Sciences. At New Orleans he identified himself with the interests
of the colored population, and became a regular contributor and
one of the editors of their French journal, the Union, afterward
the Tribune, to which he added an English part. He came north
in July, 1863, and resided in Philadelphia till November, 1864,
pursuing scientific and literary studies and preparing his book on
the Mental Faculties of Animals as compared with those of Man,
which was published in 1872. Then he returned to New Orleans
and took charge of the Tribune, which became, on the strength
of his famous article, Is there any Justice for the Black ? one of
the best known and influential journals of the country, contribut-
ing to it some eighteen or twenty columns a day. He presided
over the Republican Convention of July 30, 1866, which was
mobbed, and barely escaped from it with his life by the aid of a
back passage. In the next year a division arose among the par-
ties interested in the Tribune, with which Houzeau would have
nothing to do, and he retired from it.

Houzeau had hardly landed in the New World when he re-
ceived the offer of a professorship of Geology in the Free Uni-
versity of Brussels. He declined, but his name was put upon the
programmes and kept there for two years, while efforts were con-
tinued to induce him to accept. He was disposed to consider
more favorably the offer of a position in the military school,
made in 1863, but the financial limitations of the institution pre-
vented the consummation of the appointment. No settled inten-
tion, but accidents arising one after another, kept him in America
for twenty years. He formed plans to return to Europe several
times, but something occurred to postpone the day. In the mean
time his literary and scientific activity suffered but little inter-
ruption. He contributed to three or four journals sketches of
travel, American life, the Indians, the war, slavery, etc., and to
the scientific societies and journals papers on the numerical cal-
culus, the radius vector of a new planet, parallax, stellar move-
ments, and other subjects ; and, while busiest on the New Orleans
Tribune, he taught stenography to a school of colored men, and
corresponded with the New York Evening Post.

A few weeks after giving up the New Orleans Tribune, Hou-
zeau removed to Jamaica, where he found a new life of freedom
opened up to him with, ample opportunities for study. He took

550 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a house, with a few acres of garden, at Ross View, near the foot
of the Blue Mountains, and there led a life of seemingly pure
enjoyment in his work, varied by excursions, of one of which, to
the higher mountain regions, he has left a full and most enter-
taining account. The colored people of the neighborhood had
borne a bad reputation, but Houzeau found them the best of neigh-
bors. He gathered them around him and taught them the rudi-
ments of science and something of literature. He taught the
children to read, and found by his experiments that the old way
of spelling the words out was better adapted to their mental con-
dition than the " philosophical " one by presenting syllables and
words to be learned bodily. He set up a printing-press, from
which he issued a numerical calculator, a table of logarithms, a
perpetual almanac, Families of Plants, and Correct Information
about Common Things, some of which works, however, were not
completed. The scientific journals were well supplied with the
articles which he produced during this period. The principal of
his works was the Study of the Mental Faculties of Man and Ani-
mals, on which he had labored for several years. It was warmly
commended by Mr. A. R. Wallace, who said it gave the author a
high rank among philosophical naturalists, and by Mr. W. Lauder
Lindsay, who regarded it as the peer of Darwin's works. The
Sky brought within Everybody's Reach was a clear, interesting,
and at the same time scientific popular treatise on astronomy.
He improved the favorable situation he enjoyed at Ross View for
new observations of the zodiacal light, and, perceiving the ad-
vantages which a pure atmosphere afforded for his work, con-
ceived and expressed the idea of seating observatories on the tops
of mountains, which has since been carried out at several places,
with all the good results he anticipated. He undertook in 1875
the preparation of a uranography, or map of all the heavens
visible to the naked eye. In order to enlarge the field of his
observations he spent a few weeks at Panama, and there, suffer-
ing from fever, contracted, in the service of science, the seeds of
the disease that carried him off a dozen years later.

M. Lancaster thinks that Houzeau would have spent the rest
of his days in Jamaica, if the death of Quetelet in 1874 had not
prompted his recall to be the head of the observatory of Brussels.
As it was, he found, when he returned to his home from Panama,
a telegram announcing his appointment as director of this insti-
tution. The observatory had not of late years — Quetelet having
been partly disabled by an apoplectic stroke suffered in 1855 —
kept up with the times. Its instruments had grown old-fash-
ioned, and there was a lack of energy in its work. A commission
was appointed after Quetelet's death to inquire what could be
done to restore it. All agreed that a man of vigor was needed,

SKETCH OF JEAN-CHARLES HOUZEAU. 551

and Houzeau's friends had no hesitation in asserting that he was
the only Belgian who could supply the requisite faculties. But
there was much against him. He had been long away, and was
politically discredited and unorthodox. Even when his nomina-
tion had been put into the hands of the king for the royal signa-
ture, the ministers interposed objections. " He is a freethinker,"
they said. " That is a matter for his conscience," the king replied.
" But he is a republican, too," they added. " That is my business,"
said Leopold, and wrote his name confirming the appointment.
Even Rogier, who was responsible for Houzeau's dismissal in
1849, told the king that, if he were now minister, he would
appoint him. " I owe him a reparation," he said.

Houzeau took charge of the observatory on the 17th of June,
1876. His views as to the renovation of the institution were
approved. New instruments were obtained; the meteorological
department was fitted up ; a spectroscopic department was insti-
tuted ; a daily meteorological bulletin was started, which he at-
tended to personally for the first six months; popular lectures
were instituted, the library was enlarged, new life was given to
the publications, a catalogue was made of the astronomical and
meteorological works in Belgian libraries ; Ciel et Terre, one of the
most valuable scientific periodicals of Europe, was begun, and vig-
orous activity was instituted in every department. During the six
years that he remained here he published The Study of Nature, its
Charms and its Dangers ; his General Uranometry ; an Elementary
Treatise on Meteorology (with M. Lancaster), and special papers.
In 1878, as Vice-President of the Geographical Society, he re-
ceived Mr. Stanley on his return from his Congo expedition.

Houzeau revisited Jamaica, spending five months there, in
1878. In 1880 he was delegated as the Belgian representative in
the Meteorological Congress at Rome, and visited Italy for the
first time. In 1882 he led one of the two Belgian expeditions to
America — one to Texas and the other to Chili — to observe the
transit of Venus. Visiting San Antonio again, he gave lectures
there on scientific subjects, and particularly on the transit. He
had found the climate of Belgium too severe for his enfeebled
constitution, and determined not to return there. He came back
to France, and settled down for a year at Orthez, near Pau ; then,
wishing to be nearer to Brussels and to libraries while preparing
his Astronomical Bibliography, removed to Blois. In November,
1883, he resigned his position in the observatory. His father
dying in August, 1885, he resolved to return to his native land to
take care of his mother, to whom he was always a dutiful son.
The demands of his Astronomical Bibliography obliged him to
go to Brussels, where his labors on that important work were
varied by occupation with his Annuaire populaire, lectures for

552 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the geographical and microscopical societies and societies of art,
and with writing articles on political and social economy for the
journal Rdforrne; in addition to which he projected a great work
on the Beginnings of Science. At the same time his health grew
worse, and in the fall of 1887, while his general appearance was
still not changed, he expressed to his friends the opinion that he
would hardly live through the winter. He was confined to his
bed in February, and died in July, 1888. He was buried, in ac-
cordance with his dying wish, in the most simple manner, in the
public ground, with no stone to mark his grave. Nevertheless, a
handsome monument, seven metres high, adorned on its four sides
with appropriate astronomical and meteorological emblems, has
been erected to him by the city of Mons, on one of its public
squares, near the railway station, and was unveiled on the 2d of
June, 1890, with addresses by the burgomaster of the city; M.
Folie, Director of the Observatory ; and M. Auguste Houzeau.

Most of Houzeau's principal works have been mentioned in
the course of this sketch. His minor papers and special publica-
tions were very numerous, contributed to different societies and
journals, and touched, as M. Lancaster well says, on nearly every
branch of human activity. M. Lancaster's list gives eighty-six
titles, counting as one matter contributed to the New Orleans
Tribune enough to fill a dozen volumes. He was made a corre-
spondent in the Class of Science in the Belgian Academy in 1854,
and two years afterward a member of that body. He was a mem-
ber of several other societies in Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg,
London, and Vienna.

Mr. "Wallace expresses the opinion, in his Darwinism, that animals are spared
the pain we suffer in the anticipation of death, and that their lives are, therefore,
lives of almost perpetual enjoyment ; even the watchfulness they have to keep up
against danger, and their flight from enemies, are, he believes, the pleasurable exer-
cise of the powers and faculties they possess. Dr. E. "W. Shufeldt, after many years
of incessant study of animated forms of high and low degrees in the systematic
scale, has come to very different conclusions from these. He believes that there
has been as much evolution of mind, or reasoning powers, in animals as of organic
structure; and that while the anticipation of death in the ordinary course has
very little to do with marring the pleasures of life among men or animals, the im-
mediate presence of death is awful to both. Instances are not wanting to prove
that most of the higher animals appreciate the difference between a living and a
dead body, and realize much of the suffering due to the fear of death as apart from
the physical pain that may accompany it. In the case of flight from an enemy, or
in the face of any other danger that may result in death, Dr. Shufeldt is convinced
that the animal pursued, be it man or some of the vertebrated forms in the scale
below him, experiences very much the same kind of sensations. Those who have
studied timid animals under such circumstances " know full well that their pleas-
ures in such flights are by no means unmixed ones, but are rather infused with a
very large share of pain, and pain of a very high order.'*

CORRESP ONBENCE.

553

CORRESPONDENCE.

"WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE
DAGO?"

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

MR. APPLETON MORGAN'S query,
in the Monthly for December, What
shall we do with the " Dago " ? suggests
many other questions. I presume the writer
did not design that his description of the
" dago " should be regarded as typical of
the Italian people, or of any considerable
part of them, but only intended it to apply
to a peculiar variety of the dangerous classes
that happens to come from Italy; but his
paper is, unfortunately, liable to the former
offensive interpretation, and has, I happen
to know, been taken in that sense in at
least one quarter. Few will venture to dis-
pute that Mr. Morgan's lazzaroni are as
dangerous as he describes them ; but it is
hardly fair to regard them as the legitimate
products of Italian nature. If we review
the history of Italy, we shall find that it has
been most conspicuous as the progenitor of
a very different class of men.

Classes of outlaws, like the bandits and
assassins of Italy, rarely appear prominent-
ly in any country that enjoys its own gov-
ernment. They are a result of foreign rule,
under which even good citizens may come
to regard the Government as their enemy.
We do not find them in England, or France,
or Germany, or Scandinavia, but in Ireland,
in Hapsburg- and Bourbon-ruled Italy, and
in the European countries under Turkish
sway. If we regard them in Italy, we shall
find them most prominent and dangerous in
those states of the south that were longest
and most continuously under Bourbon dy-
nasties, as in Naples, or Austrian, as in the
central states.

No European nation, excepting Greece,
has done more for civilization and few for
liberty than Italy. About twenty-six hun-
dred and fifty years ago a band of natives
emigrated from the " Long White Hill " in
Latium and went to a group of hills on the
Tiber and built them a new town. It
would be a needless relation of a very old
and universally known story to tell how
Rome grew and conquered all the known
world west of the Euphrates, tamed savages
and squelched tyrants, and carried civiliza-
tion to every quarter of its vast dominions ;
to describe the buildings it erected, the cities
it founded, and the roads it constructed ; to
name its long roll of illustrious men — war-
riors, statesmen, popular tribunes, orators,
artists, and authors ; its more illustrious
women, typifying all that is best in the
sex ; or to speak of its laws, the principles
of which lie at the foundation of most of the

European codes. These men, the authors
of these great works, mostly came from the
same stock as Mr. Morgan's " dagoes " ; for,
as fast as one set of great men or noble
families died out, others rose or were pro-
moted from the ranks. Rome has been
called and is called the " Eternal City." It
has always, since two centuries before
Christ, been the source of the strongest in-
fluences by which the world has been ruled.
" Roman virtue," " Roman honor," and " Ro-
man firmness " are living proverbs.

After the Western Roman Empire was
destroyed and Europe was subjected to bar-
barian despots, there were still free repub-
lics, civilization, and literature in Italy.
These republics lasted till they were over-
thrown by foreigners, some holding out till
the beginning of this century. Communica-
tion was kept up with the Greeks at Con-
stantinople, and the light of literature and
art shone in Italy through all the darkest of
the dark ages. The history of these repub-
lics is full of brilliant deeds and illuminated
by the names of men distinguished in vari-
ous lines, and heroes, the details of whose
history are now hard to find, but of which
the mere references in Dante's poem furnish
a long catalogue.

Considerations of space forbid more
than a mere reference to the splendor of
Italian achievements in literature and art
from Dante's time till the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries. The story is familiar.
The history of the world affords but one
parallel to it — Greece in the age of Pericles.

Four hundred years ago there was an
Italian who made himself a great nuisance.
He had conceived the idea that, if he should
sail west on the Atlantic, he would find
something worth going after. He bothered
the Pope and he bothered the King and
Queen of Spain till they were distracted to
know what to do with him ; and Ferdinand
and Isabella at last gave him ships as the
easiest way to get rid of him. We are in-
viting all the world to come over here two
years hence to help us do his memory the
highest honors in our power ; and there is a
rivalry between us and Spain as to which
shall give him the greatest honor.

Another Italian — he was born in Corsica
— although he was no doubt a bad man,
about the beginning of this century struck
the blows which resulted at last in freeing
Europe from the despotisms and the doc-
trines of despotism which had cursed it for
a thousand years.

How will it be possible, in less than a
volume, to do justice to what the Italians
have done in the last forty-five years for the

55+

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

freedom of their country and for human
liberty? At the beginning of this period
Italy was, as Talleyrand had said, with a
sneer which was also truth, only " a geo-
graphical expression." It was divided up
among some dozen or twenty foreign sover-
eigns, some of whom were of very low de-
gree, and all used their power for dynastic
ends only, regardless of the sufferings of
the people. This was and had been for
centuries just the condition to breed laz-
zaroni and bandits. One sovereign away up
in the northwest, a man of the country, had
ideas beyond his family, and thought of
the people. With him and his son Victor
Emanuel as chiefs, and the great native hero
to urge them on and compel them when
they would not be persuaded, and Cavour to
organize, the long battle was fought of the
people of Italy against the world. The peo-

ple of Italy triumphed and founded a king-
dom than which no modern state is more
enlightened or progressive. This great work
of persistent heroism and its crowning suc-
cess are the achievement of the common
people of the country — the " dagoes " — and
no one else, with no help except what they
compelled. Its champions, Victor Emanuel,
Garibaldi — whom Mr. Morgan's "dagoes"
in person resident in America have honored
with a creditable bronze statue — Cavour,
and their associates, are counted to-day
among the world's noblest men. We might
speak of Italian music and of Italy's con-
temporary literature and science, which
occupy no mean position, but we have said
enough. What shall we do with the dago ?
Give him a chance.

W. H. Larrabee.
Plainfield, N. J., December 10, 1890.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

BELIGIOUS TEACHING IN TEE PUBLIC
SCHOOLS.

FOR good or for evil, education is
now very generally regarded as a
function of the state, and has, in point
of fact, been assumed by the state to
such an extent that private enterprise
in the matter of education is reduced to
an altogether secondary role. One draw-
back to this is that questions of school
management have now become, in the
main, questions of politics. When we
ask, " What should the schools teach ? "
we mean, as a general thing, "What, as
parties and votes are balanced, is it
practically possible and desirable for the
schools to teach ? " We are strongly of
the opinion, for our own part, that this
is not a satisfactory position of the ques-
tion. Had education been left untram-
meled by state interference, we should
have had many different types of schools,
and many different experiments made
by different teachers. Instead of dis-
cussing the question as to what the
schools should teach in a good deal the
same way as a political convention would
canvass the merits of rival candidates,
we should content ourselves with noting
what the schools were teaching, and
"with laboring individually to bring this

or that special conviction of our own on
the subject of education into practical
recognition. Under the present system
we do not inquire what makes or would
make for full intellectual and moral de-
velopment, but merely what courses of
study will be free from objection on the
part of this, that, or the other section of
the electorate. This is part of the price
we pay for state education.

Well, there is nothing to do but to
make the best of things as they are, and
it was perhaps a wise thing on the part
of the Presbyterian Synod of New
York to summon a conference of rep-
resentatives of the different Protestant
churches to discuss the question as to
the extent to which religious instruction
might and should be imparted in the
public schools, regard being had to all
the circumstances of the case. Now
that the conference is over, it is suffi-
ciently evident that the views of those
who would introduce more or less of
theological doctrine into the schools
can not prevail. They can not prevail,
simply because the conditions necessary
to their success are absent. " The
stars in their courses fought against
Sisera," and the stars in their courses,
or at least the influences of the time,

EDITOR'S TABLE.

555

are fighting against those who would
make the state the teacher of any sys-
tem of theological doctrines however
elementary or fundamental whatsoever.
The most striking address delivered in
support of religious teaching was that
of Dr. William A. Butler, who took up
the position that, while in this country
there is an absolute divorce between
church and state, there never has been
any divorce " between Christianity and
the state, or between the state gov-
ernment in its administration and the
Christian religion, as revealed in the
Scriptures." The inference which the
speaker drew was that it was entirely
lawful and proper for the state to sanc-
tion " the reading of the Scriptures in
the public schools, without note or com-
ment, as also the use of the Lord's
prayer, and the inculcation, under proper
safeguards, without admixture of human
doctrine, of Christian morals."

This view of the case was vigorously
combated by Dr. Ward, editor of The
Independent; and, we must confess, it
seems to us amazingly weak. Far be
it from us to argue against religious
teaching in schools under private con-
trol, or to assert or imply that the re-
ligious element is not a most important
one in education generally. That was
not the question before the conference,
nor is it one with which we should
think it right to concern ourselves.
The question is, Can the state teach re-
ligion? Dr. Butler thinks it can, be-
cause there has never been any divorce
between the state and Christianity.
The reason is glaringly insufficient. A
" divorce " means a tearing asunder ;
there has been no divorce between the
state and Christianity for the excellent
reason that there never was any union
of a formal or legal kind to sever. A
majority of the population, it may be
assumed, are professed adherents of
Christianity, but it does not follow from
that that they have authorized the Gov-
ernment to give effect in any practical
shape to such convictions as they may

have on the subject. Before the Gov-
ernment can act, it must have a very
clear mandate ; and manifestly the peo-
ple could not give the Government a
mandate on this subject without stating
clearly what they understood by Chris-
tianity, and with what degree of detail
they wished its doctrines to be made
matter of instruction in the schools.
The idea of a government deciding such
questions for itself is simply ridiculous.
In certain cases, where technical knowl-
edge is required, the state can call ex-
perts to its aid — architects, engineers,
chemists, electricians ; but imagine for
a moment the Government calling for
expert assistance in a question of the-
ology ! But to come down to facts, the
people do not want the state to under-
take any theological or religious busi-
ness on their behalf. They know, they
deeply feel, its utter incompetency in
that sphere. They know that it is as
much as they themselves can do in their
several churches to avoid causes of dis-
pute and separation ; and they have not
the most remote idea of inviting the
politicians whom they have elected
to office to make amateur theologians
of themselves for any purpose whatso-
ever. The very idea is so incongruous
with the spirit of the time that it is
hardly worth while to insist on the fact
that the Christian community is itself
divided by the most serious differences
of opinion upon various theological
questions — so much so that, in the eyes
of certain Christians, others who claim
the name have no title to it whatever.
The differences of opinion, for example,
between Trinitarians and Unitarians,
and between TJniversalists, who look
forward to the salvation of all, and those
who, as the Scotch woman said, " hope
for better things," or between Roman
Catholics and those who think that Ro-
man Catholicism is " the beast " of the
book of Revelation and the Papacy
the "scarlet woman," are fundamental,
and any religious teaching that was
meant to gain equal approval from

556

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

these and all other sections of the Chris-
tian community would have to be very-
vague and non-committal indeed. The
whole merit and force of a religious
system consist in its teaching authori-
tatively that which would not other-
wise be conveyed to the mind at all ;
while the essential character of any re-
ligious instruction which the state could
give would be found in its vagueness
and conventionality.

Well, therefore, did the Rev. Dr. W.
H. Ward declare that " we may con-
sider it as settled that religion is not to
be taught in the public schools — that
the American people will not trust the
state to teach religion." Manifestly, to
give a thing in a weak and diluted form
which, to have any virtue, must be given
in a strong and concentrated form, is to
do more harm than good ; and it may
safely be said that, if through unwise
legislation the formal teaching of re-
ligion were begun in the schools by such
agencies as the state can command, the
result would be disastrous to the cause
of religion itself. Dr. Ward took what
probably most of his hearers must have
regarded as an extreme and dangerous
position when he said that " morals do
not depend on God " ; but, as he meant
it, we do not doubt that he expressed a
truth. His meaning we take to be that
the principles of morality are as capable
of formulation without the help even
of the tbeistic hypothesis as t^hose of
any other subject of human study.
What, after all, are our ideas of God
but the highest ideas which our human
experience has enabled us to frame?
There is no difficulty, then, in teaching
morals in the schools without theology
— no difficulty, that is to say, in laying
down the rules of right conduct as a
thing to be practiced here and now for
reasons of present validity. But, as
Dr. Ward judiciously observed, the best
moral teaching will result from the ob-
servance of order and discipline, honor
and justice, in the management of the
school itself. Direct preaching is of

doubtful utility ; but example tells, and
facts are powerful persuaders.

It is possible the late conference
may lead some to perceive, as they
never did before, the disadvantages con-
nected with making education a branch
of politics. In discussing education we
should not have to canvass a political
situation, but at present that is just
what we have to do. And when we
engage teachers for our public schools
we engage them to follow a prescribed
routine, not to throw all their original
force and all their deepest convictions
into their work. That the highest type
of education is not to be had on this
plan is evident ; and whether the wider
diffusion of education, due to state
agency, is sufficient to make up for the
deterioration in the quality of the arti-
cle is a most serious question, which we
believe the experience of each succeed-
ing year will force more and more on
the attention of the community.

INTERNA TIONAL COP YRI6UT.

Eveey day is adding to the number
of those who believe that ethical stand-
ards are the safest guides in the conduct
of men's affairs. All such will find good
reason to rejoice at the evidence of a
dawning conscience in political circles
afforded by the recent passage of the
copyright bill in the House of Repre-
sentatives. For nearly a century those
citizens of the United States who be-
lieved in honest government have been
more or less actively striving to obtain
for the foreign author some sort of
effective recognition of the principle
embodied in this measure. Property in
ideas, when these have been material-
ized in the form of books, has long been
practically recognized, as well in the
copyright laws of our own as in those
of other countries. Yet for years, and
in the face of this fact, we have suffered
the disgrace of being about the only
civilized nation on earth mean enough
to refuse to make the principle interna-

LITERARY NOTICES.

557

tional in its application. Whenever it
■was proposed to do this, the enemies of
the reform have raised the cry of " ex-
pediency," "the needs of the reading
public," " the advantages of cheap lit-
erature," and other similar catch-words
intended to mislead, while the ethical
questions involved have been contempt-
uously brushed aside as unworthy of
serious notice.

By its refusal to legislate on the sub-
ject in accordance with well - known
principles in force in other countries,
our Government, it is not unfair to say,
tacitly maintained that, after all, steal-
ing was quite the thing, or at least not to
be interfered with, as long as it served
the interests of a numerous class, and
could be carried on without peril and to
the profit of the thief. To plunder the
foreign author became an innocent oc-
cupation : he was not one of us, and we
stilled our consciences with the pretense
that moral obligations were limited by
geographical boundaries.

The decisive majority in favor of the
new bill sharply discredits this belittling
view of our duty as a nation. It also
marks a most encouraging advance in
public sentiment which is daily growing
more and more appreciative of that rare
variety of legislation which is founded
on right and justice. There is good
ground to hope that the bill will meet
with equal success in the Senate, while
the President, with his well-known de-
votion to principle, is already committed
in its favor.

Yet, bright as the prospects for the
early triumph of the measure appear to
be, its friends and promoters can not
afford to relax their efforts until the bill
becomes a law Signs are not wanting
that its enemies, so far from being dis-
couraged by the present attitude of Con-
gress, have rather been stimulated by it
to renewed exertions in their desperate
opposition to the reform. They are try-
ing to create dissensions among its sup-
porters, hoping by this means to weaken
their influence in its behalf.

In view of this it should be remem-
bered that few measures of the kind
can be perfected until they have had a
practical trial. It would be the height
of folly to imperil the essential principle
of the bill merely because some of its
minor details did not exactly meet
the views of all its supporters. The
greatest need now is, that those more
directly interested in the welfare of the
measure should sink their differences,
and, uniting with the friends of justice
and honest legislation everywhere,
should continue to urge the matter upon
the attention of Congress until success
has been achieved, trusting to time and
experience, when need arises, to bring
the several features of the law into closer
harmony with the public interest.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Outings at Odd Times. By Charles C.
Abbott, M. D. New York : D. Appleton

& Co. Pp. 282. Price, $1.50.

It is a pleasant task to review one of Dr.
Abbott's books. The contrast implied in
the title of his preface to this volume —
"Nature and Books about it" — is reduced
to the lowest point in his writings. The
genial doctor has a happy faculty for trans-
ferring the charm of Nature to the printed
page, that is the more valuable for its rarity.
It might seem a mistake on the part of the
author to put as the first of his four groups
of essays the one headed " In Winter," for
Nature in that season is by many regarded
as wholly uncommunicative, if not frigidly
forbidding. But Dr. Abbott does not find it
so. Coming to an ice-fringed brook, in one
of his winter outings, he quickly detects in
the water " dainty little frogs — the peeping
hylodes — squatted on dead leaves and yel-
low pebbles, and so spotted, splotched, and
wrinkled were they that it took sharp eyes
to find them. . . . The spirit of exploration
seized me now," he says, " and I brushed
the shallow waters with a cedar branch.
Lazy mud minnows were whipped from their
retreats, and a beautiful red salamander
that I sent whizzing through the air wriggled
among the brown leaves upon the ground.
It was only after a hard chase that I capt-

558

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ured it, and, holding it in my hand until
rested, I endeavored to induce it to squeak,
for it is one of a very few that has a voice ;
but it was not to be coaxed. It suffered
many indignities in silence, and so shamed
me by its patience that I gently placed it in
the brook. Soon black, shining whirligigs —
the gyrinus — suddenly appeared ; and a tur-
tle, as if wondering what might be the cause
of the commotion, thrust its head in the air,
stared angrily at me, and returned to its
hidden home. There was no dearth of life
in the brook, yet this is a winter day."
Equally numerous does he find the birds in
winter, and, in the right places, growing
plants, with an occasional flower, if the sea-
son happens to be open. He sees, too, the
meadow mice, skurrying back and forth in
their grass-walled, ice-roofed runways. In
spring, Nature's drama becomes more varied.
Under the name of this season, Dr. Abbott
discourses of the April moon, of small owls,
of apple blossoms, etc., and even draws en-
tertainment from such an unpromising place
as a meadow mud-hole. In summer, and
again in autumn, the scene changes, but all
under such delightful leadership is intensely
fascinating. Sprinkled through these pages
are bits of reminiscence of boy life, not
without its pranks, in a Quaker farmer's
family ; and digressions upon such topics as
old almanacs, weathercocks, " skeleton-lift-
ing,'* and fossil man in the Delaware Valley,
occur here and there. The material form of
the volume, with its narrow page and wide
margins, and its tastefully designed cover,
admirably fits the character of the matter
within.

The Pre-Columbian Discovert of America
by the Northmen, with Translations
from the Icelandic Sagas. By B. F.
De Costa. Albany, N. Y. : Joel Mun-
son's Sons. Pp. 196. Price, $3.

A scholarly and entertaining work is
this upon the Northmen and their Western
voyages. The author was doubtless instru-
mental in arousing interest in regard to the
Icelandic chronicles and literature by the
publication of the first edition of this book
in 1870, and he must view with satisfaction
the progress made since that time, which
has been emphasized in the erection of two
statues to Leif Ericsson.

Fairly and candidly the author treats all

evidence bearing upon the earliest knowl-
edge of the American continent, even ad-
mitting that many facts point toward the
Irish as the first to cross the Atlantic. Be-
ginning with references found in Greek and
Latin authors to " a vast island lying far in
the West and peopled by strange races," he
comments upon the exploits of Tyrian and
Phoenician navigators. Cadiz, in Spain, was
settled by Tyrian traders 1200 b. c. ; in the
ninth century there were colonies upon the
western coast of Africa ; and three hundred
years later the continent was circumnavi-
gated by the Phoenicians. A chart of the
Canary Isles was made by Sebosus, 63 b. c,
and a description of King Juba's expedition
is furnished by Pliny. It is regarded as a
possibility that the Phoenicians made trans-
atlantic discoveries : " From the Canaries to
the coast of Florida is a short voyage, and
the bold sailors of the Mediterranean, after
touching at the Canaries, need only spread
their sails before the steady-breathing mon-
soon, to find themselves wafted safely to the
western shore."

The first chronicle of any voyage to
America is found in the Icelandic tongue.
This language was spoken by the Northmen
who settled in Denmark and the Scandi-
navian countries, but were at length op-
pressed in Norway by King Harold. Too
proud to brook any curtailment of their
power, the jarls sailed away to the frozen
shores of Iceland. Here, in 868, they found
Christian monks who would not affiliate with
the pagan new-comers, but promptly gave
up their icy retreat and " left behind them
Irish books, bells, and croziers, from which
it could be seen that they were Irishmen."
In 982 Eric the Red, banished from Iceland,
sought refuge in Greenland. Colonies were
soon established here, and only eight years
elapsed before Leif, the son of Eric, made
his first voyage to Vinland. The Ericssons
were a family of explorers. Thorvald and
Thorstein , brothers of Leif, and Freydis, a
sister, each undertook an expedition to the
new land. The most important voyage was
made by Thorfinn Karlsefne, an Icelander
of famous lineage, who, with three vessels
and one hundred and sixty men, visited Vin-
land and remained three years. Had it not
been for the observant habits of the Ice-
landers, who were taught to study " the di-

LITERARY NOTICES.

559

visions of time and movements of the heav-
enly bodies," the location of Vinland might
be a matter of doubt ; but it is fixed not
only by their description of the coast and
character of the country, but by the account
of Leif and his comrades, that " on the short-
est day the sun was in the sky between
Eyktarstad and Dagmalastad," periods cor-
responding to 4.30 p. m and half-past 7 a. m.,
making the latitude 41° 43' 10", nearly that
of Mount Hope Bay. Ancient vessels that
have been exhumed in Denmark, as well as
measurements found in the Sagas, prove
that the ships of the Northmen were able
to bear them across the Atlantic. That no
enduring structure marks their occupation
of New England is not astonishing ; accord-
ing to the story of their sojourn, they lived
in wooden booths.

The literature and general knowledge of
the Icelanders were much in advance of the
rest of Europe during the twelfth century,
so that it is altogether credible that they
wrote the Sagas and performed the voyages
recorded. A corroboration of the Iceland-
ic writings is also found in early English
annals, which contain statements and dates
that exactly agree. The manuscript from
which the Sagas are taken is the Codex
Flatoensis, " a work that was finished in
1395 at the latest, . . . and now preserved
in the archives of Copenhagen."

The latter part of Dr. De Costa's work is
devoted to translations from these writings,
relative to the pre-Columbian voyages. Ex-
tracts are given from the Landanama,'the
doomsday-book of Iceland ; from the Sagas
of Eric, composed in Greenland ; and from
the Saga of Thorfinn, of Icelandic origin.
Following these are minor narratives taken
from the Eyrbyggia Saga, and two geographi-
cal fragments that mention Vinland. Al-
though the volume possesses an index, it
has the unusual distinction of being a book
without chapters.

Dust and its Dangers. By T. Mitchell
Prudden, M. D. New York : G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. Pp. 111. Price, 75 cents.

The author of this book does not discuss

purely inorganic dust of any sort, not even

the specially injurious kinds resulting from

processes of manufacture, but in a simple

and attractive way tells of the common dust

that is dangerous — that which contains

micro-organisms hurtful to man. He de-
scribes the classes of germs that can be
identified, and explains how biological anal-
yses of the air are made by the " filtration "
and the easier " plate method." Comparison
of averages obtained in various cities and in
different localities in New York show that the
number of bacteria in a given volume of air
varies chiefly according to condition, the pro-
cess of street-cleaning summoning the great-
est number of germs, 5,810 to a disk 3f-
inches in diameter. Indoor air is, however,
the main subject of investigation, and ex-
periments prove that ventilation which com-
pletely changes the atmosphere three times
an hour will not appreciably affect the num-
ber of bacteria in an apartment, as the in-
truders cling obstinately to the carpets and
upholstery. Only violent currents of air dis-
lodge these, and the sweeping and cleansing
which result in removing, not redistributing
the dust. Ordinarily we are liable to take in
with every twenty breaths from eleven to
eight hundred and seventy-six organisms.

Among the disease - breeding bacteria
Dr. Prudden selects for study the one num-
bering most victims, the Bacillus tubercu-
losis. He points out that prolonged drying
does not kill it ; that it does not exist in
the air exhaled from consumptive lungs,
but in the sputa that is ignorantly allowed
to become part of the dust. It results that
" the way to most efficiently stop this dis-
tinctly preventable disease is to see that the
sputum of consumptives is properly dis-
posed of."

One of the most instructive chapters is
that in which the action of the cilia, of the
lymph-filters, and of the wandering white
cells, is described. A number of illustra-
tions and an index accompany the book,
which is published in uniform style with
The Story of the Bacteria, by the same
author.

Kaces and Peoples. By Daniel G. Brin-
ton, M. D. New York : N. D. C. Hodges.
Pp. 513. Price, $1.75.

A series of lectures, delivered at the
Academy of Natural Sciences, in Philadel-
phia, during the early months of 1890, forms
the basis of this book. In the first two
lectures are given respectively the physical
and the mental characteristics of races, upon
which ethnography is based. The third iect«

560

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ure discusses the beginnings and subdivis-
ions of races, locating the birthplace of the
species in a region comprising southern Eu-
rope, the bed of the Mediterranean, and
northern Africa, which in early Quaternary
times was one connected body of land. In
succeeding chapters the probable course of
the early migrations of the various races,
and the formation of subdivisions, are
traced. The author places the first home of
the white race — which he calls Euraf rican —
in the region just mentioned, and regards its
migrations as having taken place toward the
east in two divisions. The early history of
the black and yellow races, and of certain in-
sular and littoral peoples, is then taken up. In
his review of the American race, Dr. Brinton
does not take up the question where the In-
dians came from, having stated fully else-
where his reasons for believing that America
was peopled from Europe, by way of a for-
mer land connection across the north At-
lantic. A concluding lecture is devoted to
discussing the destiny of races, and certain
ethnographic problems, as acclimation, amal-
gamation, and civilization. An index of au-
thors quoted and one of subjects are ap-
pended.

Our Government : How it grew, what it

DOES, AND HOW IT DOES IT. By JeSSE

Macy, A. M., Professor of Constitutional
History and Political Economy in Iowa
College. Revised edition. Boston: Ginn
& Co. Pp. xii + 296.

Prof. Macy is to be congratulated on hav-
ing produced in the work above mentioned
an extremely valuable treatise upon the sys-
tem of government under which we live.
One of the encouraging signs of the times
is the attention which is beginning to be
bestowed in our schools and colleges upon
the laws and institutions of the land — upon
American politics in the wider and better
sense. Foreigners are under a general im-
pression that all American citizens able to
read and write have the Constitution of
their country at their fingers' ends, and that
no one here needs much special preparation
to enter on a political career. We could
wish the impression had more foundation in
truth than it has. The fact is, that igno-
rance in regard to the whole field of political
knowledge is wide-spread among the elect-
orate, and is in danger of becoming more

so from year to year. The efforts, there-
fore, that are now being put forth to foster
such knowledge are most timely; and we
welcome the appearance of a manual like
the present, which brings home to the mind
of the student or general reader what kind
of a country this is in a political sense;
what the rights and duties of each citizen
are, and what powers and responsibilities
are invested in the different grades or spe-
cies of government by law established.
There are great advantages in a healthy
and vigorous development of local institu-
tions as with us ; but, as everything good
has some drawback, so this, on the whole,
fortunate circumstance has the drawback
of somewhat enfeebling the individual citi-
zen's consciousness of participation in the
life of the nation. We need to awaken and
stimulate this consciousness, and the way to
do it is undoubtedly to bring the facts of
national life home to each mind by careful
instruction. We do not hesitate to say that
a knowledge of the facts contained in the
work before us could scarcely fail to create
in any ordinary mind a respectful interest
in national and State politics, and would
thus tend to rescue the individual citizen
and voter from the hands of mere intriguing
party managers. The amount of informa-
tion in regard to local, municipal, State, and
Federal Government that Prof. Macy has
managed to pack into the present manual is
surprising. There is not a single page which
any student who desires to be thoroughly
well informed in United States politics can
afford to skip. Comparing the present work
with Mr. Fiske's recent book, we may say
that Prof. Macy's is the more complete
hand-book of the two, while Mr. Fiske's is
perhaps better adapted to bring home pow-
erfully to the mind of the reader a limited
number of carefully chosen facts and ideas.
A valuable division of Prof. Macy's book is
Part III, on The Administration of Justice,
in which a large amount of information is
given in regard to State and Federal courts
and their respective jurisdictions and modes
of procedure. The different departments of
the Federal Government are well described
in Part IV, as well as the methods followed
by the two Houses of Congress in the dis-
patch of business. Part V deals particu-
larly with Constitutions — chiefly, of course,

LITERARY NOTICES.

561

State and Federal. The idea that may be
derived from the resume of State Constitu-
tions here given is that much might yet be
done to bring some of these into a more
rational and business-like form. We are
strongly reminded how many things with us
are yet in the experimental stage, and the
thought is not very far in the background
that much of our experimenting has been
somewhat crudely done.

Prof. Macy has abstained from all criti-
cism of institutions. Even in pointing out
the differences between British cabinet gov-
ernment and the system established here, he
does not venture on any hint as to which
on the whole is the better, or as to which is
the better even from any partial point of
view. He does not hesitate, however, to
condemn the " spoils system," giving in de-
tail his reasons for regarding it as one of
the plague-spots of our political life. We
think that perhaps a few words more than
he has actually given might have been de-
voted to the Civil-Service Bill at present in
force ; and it might not have been amiss to
show how difficult both political parties
seem to find it to carry out their pledges in
favor of civil-service reform. Take it all
in all, however, as a hand-book of the po-
litical institutions of the United States, Prof.
Macy's little work is deserving of high praise
for completeness, accuracy, and good sense.
We hope it will come into wide use.

A Manual of Public Health. By A. Wtn-
ter Blyth, M. R. C. S., etc. London and
New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 653.
Price, $5.25.

This work is a comprehensive and au-
thoritative text-book for officers of public
health departments. Its first section, of
three chapters, is devoted to vital statistics,
giving methods of recording the data, and of
calculating birth and death rates, life tables,
etc., and describing certain calculating ma-
chines. The next section deals with air,
ventilation, and warming, taking up the gen-
eral character of air, with methods of ana-
lyzing it, the principles and methods of ven-
tilating and warming, and including a chap-
ter on measuring cubic space and reporting
on ventilation. Two short chapters describe
the common instruments used for meteoro-
logical observations. A section on water
supply tells the usual sources of water, and

VOL. XXXVIII.— 38

gives microscopical, biological, and both
qualitative and quantitative chemical pro-
cesses for water analysis. There is also a
chapter describing the supplies of the various
companies furnishing water in the city of
London. The section on sewerage describes
the construction of house drains and of sew-
ers, the arrangements for certain special
systems of sewerage, and various methods
for the disposal of sewage. The sewering
of London is also described, with a map.
Under the head of nuisances, the processes
employed in a large number of manufactures
yielding offensive waste products are given.

The section on disinfecting contains ex-
perimental methods for testing the value of
a disinfectant, an account of various appa-
ratuses for disinfection by heat and of the
general process, and information concerning
chemical disinfectants, giving especial promi-
nence to the halogens. About two hundred
pages are devoted to zymotic diseases, in
which the modern general theory of micro-
parasites is first given, and then the special
character and course of each disease of this
class. Single chapters deal with the con-
struction of isolation hospitals, the general
principles of diet, and the duties of sanitary
officers aa prescribed by English statutes.
Inspection of food is the subject of the clos-
ing section, and this gives the characteristics
of unfit vegetable and animal foods, and de-
scribes diseases of animals which make their
flesh unwholesome. There are sixty-five cuts
and plates, and an index.

English Fairy Tales. Collected by Jo-
seph Jacors, Editor of Folk-Lore. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 253.

" Who," the editor asks, " says that Eng-
lish folk have no fairy tales of their own ?
The present volume contains only a selection
out of some one hundred and forty, of which
I have found traces in this country [Eng-
land]. It is probable that many more ex-
ist." A quarter of the tales in the volume
have been collected during the last ten years
or so, and some of them have not been
hitherto published. The name Fairy Tales
is given to the collection, though few of
the stories speak of fairies. Yet they are
what the little ones mean when they call
for fairy tales. They do not call for " folk
tales " or " nursery tales," and this is the
only name we can give them. The terra

562

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fairy tales must be extended a little to in-
clude tales in which something " fairy," or
extraordinary, like fairies, giants, dwarfs,
or speaking animals, occurs ; and also to
cover tales in which the extraordinary thing
is the stupidity of some of the actors. The
question of nationality, too, is one to which
it is hard to assign limits. Some of the
stories were found among the descendants
of English immigrants in America, some in
Australia, some among the Lowland Scotch ;
and one of the best was taken down from
the mouth of an English gypsy. Some of
them exist in the form of ballads. Writ-
ing for children, the author has consid-
ered it expedient to take a few liberties
with the text, translating sometimes from
dialect or introducing or changing an inci-
dent ; but mention of the fact is always
made in the notes. He has felt authorized
to do this amount of adaptation because he
expects on some future occasion to treat the
subject of the English folk-lore tale in a
critical manner, when the originals will be
reproduced with literal accuracy.

The Myology op the Raven. By R. W.
Shufeldt. London and New York :
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 343. Price, $4.

The author has prepared this treatise in
the belief that a work fully and practically
illustrated and devoted to a complete ac-
count of the muscles of any species of bird
is wanting ; and that such a work would be
of service to persons engaged in the gen-
eral morphology of vertebrates as well as to
special students. Birds are among the most
easily procurable subjects for the use of the
demonstrator and the student, and of these
none are more convenient than those of the
raven kind, which represent a numerous and
cosmopolitan family, including the crows,
jays, orioles, and very many others. As, ac-
cording to the author, the student's investiga-
tions in the myology of birds advance, three
lines of improvement in knowledge of their
muscular system will force themselves upon
him. " In the first place, we still remain
very ignorant of the details of this system
in a great many important types of birds ;
secondly, an ever-pressing demand is evi-
dent to fix the homologies of muscles in the
vcrtebrata, and, consequently, to bring so
far-reaching a knowledge of this department

of research to our assistance as to be able
to give the same name to the same muscles
accurately throughout the vertebrate series ;
and, finally, a simple, scientific, and eupho-
nious nomenclature is very much to be de-
sired. As an index of our present status
with respect to our knowledge of the mus-
cles of birds, it is hoped that the volume
here offered will faithfully represent it ; but
its writer trusts that in future works he
may lend his assistance to the improvement
of all the lines above indicated."

A Practical Delsarte Primer. By Mrs.
Anna Randall-Diehl. Syracuse, N. Y. :
C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 66.

If the only aim of this little book had
been to serve as a guide in making the body
flexible and responsive, one third of the con-
tents might have been omitted with nothing
to regret.

The first chapter suggests an excellent
drill to gain bodily control. Exercises are
given for the fingers, hands, shoulders,
head, and trunk ; also directions for various
movements, including stage-falls. In the
closing chapter it is shown how the ac-
quired suppleness may be utilized in repre-
senting mental and emotional states. The
laws of expression in relation to each organ
are defined, and a quotation is made from
Duchenne's Human Physiognomy, confirm-
ing the method delineated.

The intermediate part of the book is
taken up with an outline of the philosophy
of Delsarte, which is said to depend upon
"the triune nature of man." A trinity is
defined as "the union of three things neces-
sarily coexistent in time, copenetrative in
space, co-operative in motion." Accord-
ingly, the human organization is split up
into ternary combinations, and nothing is
allowed to overflow the trinitarian mold.
There is the "essential trinity" and the
" dynamic trinity " ; the " nervous," the " cir-
culatory," and the " visceral trinity."

The triple classification into moral, men-
tal, and vital, differentiates our unoffending
members in a remarkable manner. The
bones are vital, the skin mental, and the
flesh moral. The pupil of the eye expresses
intellect, but the iris has a leaning toward
righteousness. The tip of the nose is also
virtuously distinguished from the nostrils.

LITERARY NOTICES.

563

Why the epigastric organs should be moral
while the thoracic are mental is another
philosophic mystery.

Not less perplexing than this tripartition
is the use made of the word thermometer.
We learn that there are six physical ther-
mometers— the larynx, wrist, shoulder, el-
bow, eyebrow, and thumb. The eyebrow is
the thermometer of the mind, from which we
might infer that Shakespeare wrote in all
seriousness of " a woful ballad " to that im-
portant feature. However, judgment is de-
clared to be " the lowest form of intellectu-
ality," and in the dim light above it, or
without it, little incongruities, such as have
been noticed, may not appear.

In a sketch of Francois Delsarte, prefixed
to this work, it is expressly stated that he
died in 18*71. Were it not for this, we
might conclude that he nourished some
seven hundred years earlier, and that we
had stumbled upon a manual of the old
scholastics, who tortured facts into accord-
ance with arbitrary symbols and "ground
the air in metaphysic mills."

Are the Effects of Use and Disuse in-
herited? By William P. Ball. Na-
ture Series. London and New York :
Macmillan & Co. Pp.156. Price, $1.

This is obviously and avowedly a con-
troversial book. The author takes the nega-
tive side of his question, in opposition to
Darwin and Spencer, and argues it with
much ability and in an admirably courteous
tone. He is not, however, alone in his posi-
tion, for he is able to name Weismann, Wal-
lace, Poulton, Ray Lankester, and Francis
Galton as disagreeing in greater or less
measure from the two great leaders just
named. The author examines in detail the
examples of Spencer and those of Darwin
cited on the affirmative side of this ques-
tion and replies to them. He next dis-
cusses the inheritance of injuries, and then
passes to certain miscellaneous considera-
tions. In conclusion, he affirms that use-
inheritance is supported by insufficient
evidence, while "the adverse facts and
considerations are almost strong enough to
prove the actual non-existence of such a law
or tendency." But, he says, "It will be
enough to ask that the Lamarckian factor of
use-inheritance shall be removed from the
category of accredited factors of evolution

to that of unnecessary and improbable hy-
potheses. The main explanation or source
of the fallacy may be found in the fact that
natural selection frequently imitates some
of the more obvious effects of use and dis-
use. ... As depicted by its defenders, use-
inheritance transmits evils far more power-
fully and promptly than benefits." It is to
natural selection, without the doubtful aid
(as he deems it) of use-inheritance, that he
trusts to save the race as a whole from de-
generation.

Astronomy : Sun, Moon, Stars, etc. By
William Durham, F. R. S. E. Edin-
burgh: Adam & Charles Black, Pp.133.
Price, 50 cents.

The character of this book is indicated
by the name of the series in which it is the
second volume — Science in Plain Language.
The author states that it is not a treatise on
astronomy, but that it " merely describes in
plain language some of the more interesting
facts and speculations connected with that
science." The divisions of the subject which
he makes are, the sun and moon ; the earth ;
stars, nebulae, etc. ; planets ; astronomical
speculations as to the formation of the
heavenly bodies, and the contents of space ;
the tides, etc. The various topics are treated
in an attractive style, free from mathemat-
ics, but in such a way as to impart as full
a knowledge of astronomy as most cultivated
people require.

Derivation of Practical Electrical
Units. By Lieutenant F. B. Badt and
Prof. H. S. Carhart. Chicago: Elec-
trician Publishing Company. Pp. 56.
Price, *75 cents.

How did certain electrical units come to
be called ampere, ohm, farad, etc. ? must
have been asked by many persons, know-
ing more or less of electrical science. To
answer this question is the task that Mr.
Badt undertakes in the little volume before
us. He gives in an introductory chapter the
general reasons for adopting the system of
practical units now in use, with a table show-
ing the names and symbols of the several
units, the quantity to be measured by each,
comparative values, remarks, etc. This is fol-
lowed by biographical sketches and portraits
of the eminent electricians whose names have
been given to these units. The list includes

S64

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Weber, Gauss, Ampere, Volta, Ohm, Fara-
day, Watt, Joule, Dr. Werner von Siemens,
Sir William Siemens, Daniell, and Von Jacobi.
A sketch of Coulomb is also given, without
a portrait, and the author doubts if one is
extant. In each sketch is told how and
when the name of the subject was adopted
for an electrical unit. A chapter by Prof.
H. S. Carhart on Modifications of the Prac-
tical Electrical Units, is added, in which it
is pointed out that, since there are three
units of resistance in use, there are accord-
ingly three modifications of all units depend
ing upon this.

Psychological investigators will be in-
terested in Prof. Joseph Jastrow's essay on
The Time-Relations of Mental Phenomena,
published in the series of Fact and Theory
Papers (Hodges, 50 cents). The paper defines
and analyzes simple and complex reactions,
describes the methods of experimentation
that have been devised by a number of inves-
tigators, and gives two tables — one of simple,
the other of complex reaction times — from
the observations of Cattell, Berger, Munster-
berg, Kries and Auerbach, Merkel, and
others. Various conditions affecting the
times of simple reactions, and such as affect
distinction, choice, association, and other ele-
ments of complex reactions, are discussed,
and a classified bibliography is appended.

A little manual on Maps and Map-Draw-
ing, by William A. Elderton, has been is-
sued in Macmillan's Geographical Series
(Macmillan, 35 cents). It describes briefly
various modes of surveying, and tells some
of the things that can be learned from
globes — among them the explanation of
great-circle sailing. In the chapter on map-
drawing the several projections are de-
scribed; contouring, hachuring, and mezzo-
tint shading are taken up ; and a few direc-
tions for the use of maps are given. A
short chapter on copying maps is included ;
but the author does not deem this as im-
portant as the drawing of memory maps.
The latter subject he, accordingly, treats
more fully, giving directions for drawing a
memory map roughly, taking France as an
example ; also for doing more careful work,
using England and Wales as the subject;
and for a rough map of the world on Mer-
cator's projection.

An address on Tlie Future of Agricult-
ure in the United Stales, by Dr. Peter Collier,
of the New York Agricultural Experiment
Station, is devoted to the exhortation of
farmers to study and put more intelligence
into their work, and to the enforcement of
the thesis that " we have not yet begun to
approach the limit of even profitable pro-
duction upon our lands."

A new monthly periodical, called the Edu-
cational Review, is to be begun in January,
to be published by Henry Holt & Co. Prof.
Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia Col-
lege, President of the New York College for
the Training of Teachers, will be its editor,
and will have as his associates head-master
E. H. Cook, of Rutgers Preparatory School,
New Brunswick, N. J. ; Dr. William H. Max-
well and Dr. A. B. Poland, superintendents
of schools in Brooklyn and in Jersey City.
The University, the Preparatory School, and
the public schools will thus be represented
in its editing. The enterprise starts with
the approval, attached to its prospectus, of
some hundred leading educators.

Foet Lore, a monthly magazine, devoted
to Shakespeare, Browning, and the compar-
ative study of literature (Poet Lore Co ,
1602 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia), Charlotte
Porter and Helen A. Clarke, editors, is a lit-
erary periodical of the highest order. Be-
sides the two authors specially named, re-
cent numbers have contained studies of the
Provencal poets, by Miss M. L. Elmendorf ;
English and German Literature in the Eight-
eenth Century, by Prof. Oswald Leiden-
sticker ; Shelley ; the Alkcstis ; Dante ; The
Russian Drama, by Nathan Haskel Dole; and
other papers, which define the scope of the
publication as a sufficiently broad one to
make it acceptable to all cultivated readers.
The November number contains a study of
Browning's " Childe Roland." Next year,
in lieu of the July and August numbers,
double numbers will be published in June
and September, each containing a foreign
work of the first order, little known, but
destined to awaken strong interest. The
contents will be increasingly in the direc-
tion of comparative criticism. Price, 25
cents a number; $2.50 a year.

G. P. Putnam's Sons publish, in the Story
of the Nations Series, Switzerland, prepared

LITERARY NOTICES.

565

by Lina Hug and Richard Stead. Due stress
is laid upon the interest of the story, which
is attractive to American readers by its as-
sociation with the other features of the
country — " the playground of Europe " —
as well as by the long, arduous, and faithful
struggles for liberty which it records. Most
of the existing accounts of Swiss history in
the English language go no further back
than a. d. 1291, the date of the earliest
Swiss league, and of the beginning of mod-
ern Swiss nationality. The authors in the
present volume have gone beyond this, and
have included the previous history of the men
who founded the league, with the changes
which the country has undergone, in being
overrun by different barbarous tribes ; ac-
counts of Cassar's Helvetians ; and of the
lake-dwellers. The lesson of the history of
the country is enforced by the citation of
the maxim that " it teaches us, all the way
through, that Swiss liberty has been won by
a close union of many small states."

Biblia, a monthly magazine devoted to
biblical archaeology, furnishes a current
record of what is accomplished in the sur-
vey and exploration, particularly of the
monuments, of the extremely ancient centers
of civilization, gives reviews of literature on
the subject, and assists the purposes of the
Palestine and Egypt exploration funds and
other societies engaged in Oriental investi-
gation. The subscription price is one dollar
a year. The publication office for New York
is with B. Westermann & Co.

The third of the Manuals of Religious
Instruction, Doctrinal Series, published by
the New Church Board of Publication, is a
series of Descriptions of the Spiritual World,
for use with children, from the writings of
Emanuel Swedenborg. The works chiefly
represented are the Heaven and Hell, Con-
jugal Love, and the True Christian Religion.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

American Chemical Society. Journal. October,
1890. New York : John Polhemus. Pp. 54. $5 a

year.

Baker, Daniel W. History of the Harvard College
Observatory. Pp. 32, with Plates.

Baldwin, James. Harper's Sixth Reader. Ameri-
can Book Company. Pp. 504. 90 cents.

Binet, Alfred. On Double Consciousness. Open
Court Publishing Co. Pp. 93.

Binz, Dr. C. (Bonn). Quinine as a Prophylactic
against Malarial Fever. New York : Boehringer &,
Soehne. Pp. 24.

Bird. Charles. Elementary Geology. Longmans,
Green & Co. Pp. 248, with Map.

Bissell, Mary Taylor, M. D. Household Hygiene.
New York: N. D. C. Hodges. Pp.83. 75 cents.

Borden, John. Two Essays on Economics. Chi-
cago : S. A. Maxwell & Co. Pp. 139.

Burt, W. H., M. D. Consumption and Liquids.
Chicago : W. T. Keener. Pp. 233. $-.50.

Cajori, Florian. The Teaching and History of
Mathematics in the United States. United States
Bureau of Education. Pp. 400.

Clark, J. S., & Co., Louisville, Ky. Epitaphs,
Original and Selected. 25 cents.

Cook, George H. Final Report of the State
Geologist of New Jersey. Vol. II, Part II. Zoology.
New Brunswick, N. J. : Irving S. Upson, Geologist
in Charge. Pp. 824.

Cornell University Experiment Station. Bulle-
tins Nos. 21 and 22. Pp. 28.

Dawson, George M. Later Physiographical Geol-
ogy of the Rocky Mountain Region. Pp.75, with

Plates.

Delaware College Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion, Newark, Del. Bulletin.No. 10. Pp. 82.

Ebers. Georg. The Elixir and other Tales.
Gottsberger & Co. Pp. 261.

Fuller, J. Morrison, Boston. To-day. Published
weekly. Pp.116. 5 cents.

Hyatt, Alpheus, and Arms, J. M. Insecta. Heath
& Co. Pp. 300.

Iowa, Pioneer Lawn -Makers, Association. Re-
unions of 1SS6 and 1890, Des Moines. Pp. 167.— State
Board of Health Monthly Bulletin. Pp. 16.

Jago, William. Inorganic Chemistry. Longmans,
Green & Co. Pp. 458.

Lange, nelene. Higher Education of "Women in
Europe. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 186.

Lewis, T. H., St. Paul, Minn. Quartz- Workers
of Litile Falls. Pp.3.

Lockyer, Norman. The Meteoric Hypothesis.
Macmiilan & Co. Pp. 560. $5.25.

Locomotive, The. Hartford Steam-boiler Inspec-
tion and Insurance Company. Monthly. Pp.24.

Lowell, Augustus. Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Commemorative Address. Pp. 24.

Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station.
Analysis of Commercial Fertilizers. Pp. 8.

Meehan, Thomas, Philadelphia. Contributions
to the Life Histories of Plants. Pp. 8.

Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station. Bul-
letins 65 to 69. Pp. 7 to 20 each.

Mitchell, Clifford, M. D. A Clinical Study of Dis-
eases of the Kidneys. Chicago: W. T. Keener. Pp.
431. $3.

Morris, I. H. Practical Plane and Solid Geome-
try. Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 260.

New England Meteorological Society, W. M.
Davis, Director. Investigations in the Year 1889.

New York Agricultural Experiment Station.
Bulletin No. 24. Pp. 20, with Plates.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Columbus.
Bulletin for September, 1890. Pp. 16.

Oldberg, Oscar. A Manual of Weights and Meas-
ures. Pp. 250. $1.50 — Do., and Long, John II. A
Laboratory Manual of Chemistrv. Pp. 457, with
Plates. $3.52. Chicago : W. T. Keener.

Ontario Department of Agriculture. Foul Brood
among Bees. Pp. 30.

Photo-gravure Company, New York. Sun and
Shade. November, 1890. 40 cents. $4 a year.

Pasadena, Cal. Report of Public Schools for 1S90.
Pp. 33.

Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates
in Medicine. Announcement. Pp. 12.

Pickering, E. C, and Wendell, O. C. Harvard
College Observatory. Results of Observations with
the Meridian Photometer. 1882-,S8. Pp. 2C7.

566

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Pope Manufacturing Company. Desk Calendar
for 1891.

Remsen, Ira, Editor. American Chemical Journal.
Vol. XII, No. 8, Pp. 75. 50 cents. $4 a volume.

Reynolds, John P., M. D.. Boston. The Limitiug
of Child-hearing among the Married. Pp. 24.

Riley, C. V., and Howard, L. O., Editors. Insect
Life. Vol. Ill, No. 4. Washington: Division of En-
tomology, Department of Agriculture. Pp. 48.

Rotch, A. Lawrence. Observations at Blue Hill
Meteorological Observatory, Mass., in 1S89. Pp. 76.

Shufeldt, R. W., M. D. Osteology of Arctic and
Subarctic Water- Birds. Part VIII. Pp. 18.

Sime, James. Geography of Europe. Pp. 341.
80 cents.

Skidmore, Sidney T., Philadelphia. University
Extension. Pp. 12.

Smith, John B. Mouth Parts of the Diptera.
Pp. 20.

Specialties. Monthly. London. Pp. 12.

Thompson, Daniel Greenleaf. The Philosophy of
Fiction in Literature. Longmans. Pp. '/26.

Tillier, Claude. My Uncle Benjamin. Boston :
Benjamin R. Tucker. Pp. 312.

Tingle, J. Bishop. Hjelt's Principles of General
Inorganic Chemistry (translated). Longmans. Pp.
220.

United States National Museum, Washington.
The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Southern
British Columbia. Pp. 130, with Plates — Fire-mak-
ing Apparatus. By Walter Hough. Pp.57. — Hand-
book of Prehistoric Archaeology. By Thomas Wil-
son. Pp. 72. — Corean Mortuary Pottery. By Pierre
Louis Jouy. Pp. 8.— Ostoological Characteristics of
the Family Amphipnoidse. By Theodore Gill. Pp.
4. — Inquiry respecting Palaeolithic Man in North
America. By Thomas Wilson. Pp. 36. — Expedition
to Funk Island and the Great Auk. By Frederic A.
Lucas. Pp. 36, with Plate. — Hippisley Collection of
Chinese Porcelains. By Alfred E. Hippisley. Pp.
104. — Report of Section on Transportation and En-
gineering. By J. Elfreth Watkins. Pp. 5. — Report
on Oriental Antiquities. By Cyrus Adler. Pp. 12. —
Report on Condition and Progress. By G. Brown
Goode. Pp. 84.

Werge, John. The Evolution of Photography
London : Piper &, Carter, and the author. Pp. 812,
with Plates.

Willoughby, Westel W. The Supreme Court of
the United States. Johns Hopkins Press. Pp.124.

Winchell, Alexander, Ann Arbor, Mich. Recent
Observations on some Canadian Rocks. Pp. 12.

Wardel, Robert B. Recent Theories of Geomet-
rical Isomerism. Salem, Mass. : Salem Press.

Tale University Observatory. Report for 18S9-
'90. Pp. IS.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Pasteur Institute, 3Vew York. — From the
opening of the New York Pasteur Institute,
February 18, 1890, till October 15th, G10
persons that had been bitten by dogs or cats
presented themselves to be treated. For
480 of these patients it was demonstrated
that the animals which attacked them were
not mad. Consequently, they were sent
back, after having had their wounds at-
tended during the proper length of time
when it was necessary; 400 patients of this
series were consulted or treated gratis. In
130 cases the antihydrophobic treatment was

applied, hydrophobia having been demon-
strated by veterinary examination of the
animals which inflicted bites, or by the in-
oculation in the laboratory, and in many
cases by the death of some other persons or
animals bitten by the same dogs. All these
persons were, on the day of the report, en-
joying good health. In eighty cases the pa-
tients received the treatment free of charge-
The persons treated were — sixty-four from
New York ; twelve from New Jersey ; twelve
from Massachusetts ; eight from Connecti-
cut ; nine from Illinois ; three from Mis-
souri ; three from North Carolina ; three
from Pennsylvania ; two from New Hamp-
shire ; two from Georgia ; two from Texas ;
one from Maryland ; one from Maine ; one
from Kentucky ; one from Ohio ; one from
Arizona ; one from Iowa ; one from Ne-
braska ; one from Arkansas ; one from
Louisiana ; and one from Ontario, Canada.

The Tuscarora Deep. — Rear -Admiral
Belknap, of the United States Navy, read a
paper before the Asiatic Society of Japan in
Yokohama, in October, describing the deep
soundings made by his survey vessel, the
Tuscarora, in the Euro Siwo, last summer,
and comparing them with deep soundings
in other seas and parts of the ocean. The
main object of the Tuscarora expedition
was to determine the feasibility of a cable
route across the mid-North-Pacific from
California to Yokohoma, by way of Hono-
lulu and the Bonin Islands, and on the
homeward run to survey a second route
from a point on the east coast of Japan, on
a great circle running through the Aleutian
chain of islands, and ending at Cape Flat-
tery at the entrance of Puget Sound. The
mid-Pacific survey had been successfully
run, without finding any unusually remark-
able depths, and the party anticipated that
the return survey would be correspondingly
easy. But, putting to sea on the 10th of
June, the Tuscarora had hardly got a hun-
dred miles from the coast, when a sounding
was made of 3,427 fathoms, the waters
having deepened more than 1,800 fathoms
in a run of thirty miles. The next cast was
still more startling, for, when 4,643 fathoms
of wire had run out, it broke without bot-
tom having been reached. Corresponding
depths to these were found in all the sound-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

567

ings taken in that neighborhood, the greatest
measured being 4,655 fathoms. At 4,340
fathoms a Miller Casella thermometer came
up wrecked from the resultant pressure.
The time occupied in making a cast of 4,356
fathoms and getting back a specimen of the
bottom was two hours twenty-six minutes
and fifty-seven seconds. Good specimens
were brought up from four of the depths,
and in one other the specimen-cup struck
rock. At the deepest of the casts the
wire parted. In view of the remarkable
depths found, the conclusion was irresisti-
ble that the great-circle route would have
to be abandoned, and a new line of less
depth adopted if it could be found. This
series of depths, ranging from 3,500 fathoms
to 4,600 fathoms and upward south and
east of the ridge between Cape Lopatka and
the Aleutian Islands, indicates that a trough
or basin of extraordinary depth and extent
exists along the east coast of Japan and the
Kurile Islands and under the Black Stream
(Kuro Siwo), exceeding any similar depres-
sion yet found in any other region of the
great oceans. The depth of the deepest cast
— five miles and a quarter, the deepest wa-
ter yet found — is sufficient to hold two
mountains as high as Japan's great Fusi-
jama, and leave them nearly two thirds of
a mile under water. This region of the Pa-
cific has been named by the German geog-
rapher Petermann the " Tuscarora Deep."

Improvement of Printing-machines. —

The first automatic printing-machines, ac-
cording to Messrs. Southward and Wilson's
woik on the subject, were invented for
calico-printing in 1*750. About a hundred
years ago, Nicholson took out a patent for
a machine applicable to the printing-press.
It did not come into use, on account of
Nicholson's poverty, and the first practical
machine was made by Koenig in 1810,
when the Annual Register was printed on
his press. This machine was capable of
printing a thousand copies in an hour,
while no other press then existing could
print more than a fourth of that number.
Curved stereotype plates were made by
Cowper in 1816. Inking by rollers had al-
ready been invented. For the last sixty
years progress has been very rapid, and
every year brings some new machine to

save time and trouble, and increase the
speed of production. Much attention is
now given to type-setting machines, of
which six are described by Southward and
Wilson as in use. The great difficulty in
the use of these machines, which has only
now been solved, is in the distribution of
the type. It is evaded in the London Times
office by taking a cast of the matter, then
melting the type and refounding it. One of
the latest machines, it is said, however, ef-
fects the distribution as rapidly as the set-
ting.

The Aye-aye. — A curious creature is
the aye-aye (Cheiromys madagascariensis),
which was long a puzzle to naturalists on
account of its many peculiarities of form
and structure. It was named by the French
traveler Sonnerat, after an exclamation
made by the Malagasy natives on seeing it.
It is classified by Prof. Owen as the sole
representative of the last of the three fami-
lies into which the lemuroids are divided.
It has eighteen teeth, of which the four
front ones — two upper and two lower — are
much like those of a rat. Cuvier compared
the lower teeth to plowshares. They are
powerful cutting instruments, and availa-
ble for removing wood, making holes in
branches, and gnawing through the stems
of sugar-canes and other similar plants.
The ears are large, round, and open, and
have been compared to those of a bat ; the
eyes are wide and staring ; and the upper lip
is perfect, or uncleft. The whole body, ex-
cept the ears, nose, soles, and palms, is cov-
ered with thick, dark fur. The most curi-
ous peculiarity of the animal lies in the
structure of the third and fourth fingers,
which are very long, the fourth being the
largest and longest, while the third is so ex-
traordinarily thin and wasted in appearance
that, as Prof. Owen-says, it seems as if it was
paralyze d. The use of this finger is described
by Prof. Saudwith, who gave his pet aye-aye
some sticks to gnaw which were bored by
grubs : " Presently he came to one of the
worm-eaten branches, which he began to ex-
amine most attentively, and, bending forward
his ears and applying his nose more closely to
the bark, he rapidly tapped the surface with
the curious second digit as a woodpecker
taps a tree, though with much less noise,

568

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from time to time inserting the end of the
slender finger into the worm-holes as a sur-
geon would a probe. At length he came to
a part of the branch which evidently gave
out an interesting sound, for he began to
tear it with his strong teeth. He rapidly
stripped off the bark, cut into the wood,
and exposed the nest of a grub, which he
daintily picked out of its bed with the
slender tapping finger and conveyed the
luscious morsel to his mouth." The aye-
aye is nocturnal, and seldom lets itself be
seen in the daytime.

Montezuma's Head-dress.— A study was
recently published by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall of
a rare object in the Imperial Ambras Col-
lection at Vienna which has been variously
described as a Mex can head-dress, a gar-
ment intended to be worn about the waist
as an apron, and a standard. Whatever it
may have been, it was supposed to have be-
longed to some person attached to the
court of Montezuma. The author decides
that it was a head-dress. As it is now
mounted, on a backing of black velvet, it
presents a gorgeous appearance. The long,
loose fringe of quetzal-feathers exhibits
slight evidence of decay, while the other
parts have been carefully restored. The
fan-shaped base of the feather-piece is com-
posed of harmoniously disposed concentric
bands of delicate feather-work studded with
thin beaten gold plates of different shapes.
The details of the structure and attachment
of these plates confirm what the early Span-
iards said about the admirable nicety of
Mexican industrial art. The loose fringe
was composed of about five hundred of the
long tail-feathers, of which each male quet-
zal bird has but two. Next to it the most
striking feature of the specimen is the
broad turquoise-blue band of feathers on
which a design was executed with small
gold pieces, originally fourteen hundred in
number, disposed, overlapping one another
like fish-scales, so as to form a flexible rec-
tilinear pattern suggesting a series of small
towers. The blue of this band was edged
with a band of scarlet feathers, so disposed
that their inner sides, curling outward,
formed a projecting ruffled border. Above
this were fringes of the small wing-feathers
of the quetzal and of the tail-feathers of the

cuckoo, whose white tips formed a sharply
defined broad line studded with small gold
disks. The whole was skillfully worked
upon a suitable backing, and secured by a
kind of kite-frame. " Manufactured with
the utmost care," says Mrs. Nuttall, "of
materials most highly esteemed by the
Mexicans, uniting the attribute and em-
blematic color of Huitzilopochotli, fashioned
in a shape exclusively used by the hero-
god's living representatives, the high priest
and the war chief, this head-dress could
have been appropriately owned and dis-
posed of by Montezuma alone at the time of
the conquest, from which period it assuredly
dates." It was probably one of the gifts
sent to the Emperor Charles V by Cortes in
1519.

Influenza and the Weather. — A study
of the relations of weather and influenza, so
far as they may be illustrated by the regis-
trar-general's reports for London from 1875
to 1890, has been published by Sir Arthur
Mitchell and Dr. Buchan. The recurrence
of a strongly marked winter maximum and
an equally marked summer minimum through
the whole forty-five years, with a small sec-
ondary maximum running from the middle
of March to the middle of April, indicate
that the rate of deaths from influenza is in-
verse to the temperature. The curve show-
ing their distribution is congruent with that
for diseases of the breathing organs, with
the addition of a slight rise in the spring.
But although the epidemics occurred mostly
during the cold season, they were not con-
nected with any exceptionally cold weather
at that season, but rather with exceptionally
warm weather, which manifested itself gen-
erally both before and during the epidemic.
In no case was any exceptionally cold
weather, intercalated in the period of the
epidemic, accompanied with an increase of
deaths from influenza, or even with an ar-
resting of the downward course of the curve
of mortality, if the cold occurred at the time
the epidemic was on the wane. Other dis-
eases which appear to have prevailed most
extensively during epidemics of influenza are
diseases of the breathing organs, phthisis,
diseases of the circulatory system, rheuma-
tism, and diseases of the nervous system.
The diseases which yielded a mortality un-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

569

der the average during the prevalence of
the epidemic were diarrhoea and dysentery,
liver disease, measles, scarlet fever, typhoid
fever, and erysipelas. The death-rate of
persons above twenty years old rose consid-
erably above the average during the four or
five weeks immediately preceding the begin-
ning of the registration of deaths due to the
epidemic. In studying the dissemination
of germs of the disease by winds, it is well
not to confine attention to surface winds.
It ia now found that atmospheric circulation
takes place largely through cyclones and
anticyclones, by means of which the levels
of the currents are changed.

Zigzag Lightning. — It was asserted by
Mr Shelford Bidwell, in a lecture at the Lon-
don Institution, that the zigzag lightning-
flash of artists has no existence in nature,
but is simply an artistic fiction or symbol ;
and the speaker produced photographs to
prove his point, asserting that not an in-
stance of the zigzag flash could be found
among the two hundred specimens in the
collection of the Meteorological Society. Mr.
Eric S. Bruce has since published a paper
for the purpose of showing how the zigzag
flash, which is really often seen by observ-
ers and is frequently depicted by artists,
may have a counterpart in nature consistent
with the evidence of the society's photo-
graphs. In his view, the appearance is not
the flash itself, but is the optically project-
ed image of the flash formed on clouds, not
of a smooth surface, but of the rocky cumu-
lus type. The image of the flash takes the
angles of the uneven surface and becomes
zigzagged. The author has exemplified this
process by casting the photograph of a light-
ning-flash, by means of the optical lantern,
on model cumulus clouds, when the " stream-
ing " flash became zigzagged.

Identification by Measure. — M. Jacques
Bertillon has described a method now prac-
ticed in France of identifying criminals by
comparing their measures. Photography is
used in it only as an aid to identification es-
tablished by other means. The basis of the
system is to obtain measurements of those
bony parts of the body which undergo little
or no change after maturity, and can be
measured with extreme accuracy to within

a very minute figure. Those parts are the
head, foot, middle finger, and parts of them,
and the extended forearm from the elbow.
By the classification of these anthropometri-
cal coefficients, a list including any number of
persons of whom photographs are obtained
can be divided into many groups containing
a small number of individuals each. Stress
is laid on the importance of the hand and
the ear as marks of recognition. The hand,
because it is the organ in most constant
use in every calling, and in many trades
and professions it becomes modified in ac-
cordance with the particular character of
the work which it has to do. The ear is the
precise opposite to this. It changes very
slightly, if at all, except perhaps in the case
of prize-fighters, who develop a peculiarity
which is easily recognized. It is, therefore,
an important organ to measure, inasmuch
as the results are not likely to be nullified
by a change in the conformation.

Irish Myths. — In his book on the Myths
and Folk-lore of Ireland Mr. Jeremiah
Curtin regards as insufficient the theories
of Mr. Miiller and Mr. Spencer, who de-
rive all mythology from a misconception of
the meanings of words and a confusion of
ideas, and refers its origin to a misconcep-
tion of the causes of phenomena. " The
personages of any given body of myths," he
says, " are such manifestations of force in
the world around them, or the result of such
manifestations, as the ancient myth-makers
observed." Mr. James Mooney remarks
that the definiteness of detail characteristic
of Irish stories contrasts strongly with what
is found in other parts of Europe. In Hun-
gary, for instance, the usual introduction
is, " There was in the world " ; while the Rus-
sian story-teller, hardly more satisfactory,
informs us that " in a certain state in a cer-
tain kingdom there was a man." In the
Irish myths, on the contrary, according to
Mr. Curtin, we are told who the characters
are, what their condition of life is, and how
they lived and acted ; the heroes and their
fields of action are brought before us with
as much definiteness as if they were per-
sons of to-day or yesterday. The Gaelic my-
thology, so far as it is preserved in Ireland,
is said to be better preserved than the my-
thology of any other European country.

57°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

From the definite character of the myths,
together with the internal evidence afforded
by the language itself, it would seem that
the Gaelic occupancy of Ireland dates from
a very remote antiquity — going back, in
fact, to the period of the earliest wave of
migration from the primitive home of the
Aryans.

Cariosities of African Custom. — Yet new
phases of African life and custom are de-
scribed in the diary of a journey from Bihe
to the Bakuba country of the eminent Port-
uguese trader, Silva Porto. The Kiboko or
Kashoko, when their chief dies, either re-
turn to their relatives or build themselves a
new village. The new chief also builds a
new village, and receives a man or a woman
from each of his sub-chiefs as a contribution
toward peopling it. The lukatio, or brace-
let, bestowed as a symbol of power upon one
of the chiefs by his superior for faithful
service, is made of brass or copper, inter-
woven with the sinews of a human being
who has been sacrificed on some specially
solemn occasion. It is covered with the
skin of an antelope, and has charms attached
to it. If the holder of this emblem loses
the favor of his feudal lord, a messenger,
bearing a similar bracelet, but of smaller
size, and a two-edged knife, is sent to him,
and the disgraced chief — and his brothers
and wives usually with him — quietly submits
to decapitation. A curious custom, called
slnkai/andando, is observed by the Bakuba
in concluding a bargain. An offer having
been made and accepted, the vender plucks
a leaf and presents it to the intending pur-
chaser, who taking hold of it cuts it asunder,
when the two pieces are thrown behind. If
this mode of confirming a bargain is neg-
lected, the vender can claim double the value
of the merchandise in question.

Preservation of Mummies. — A supposi-
tion that the mummies of the Egyptian
kings in the Archaeological Museum at
Gbizeh had begun to decay since they were
unrolled and deprived of their bituminous
coverings was suggested by the appearance
of a white efflorescence on certain parts of
the mummy of Seti I. In order to ascertain
whether this was true, Dr. Fouquet, a person
having special qualifications for the work.

was invited by M. Grebaut to examine the
mummies and the efflorescence, and deter-
mine whether signs of decay had been de-
veloped since the unrolling; whether the
efflorescence was the result of damp, and
whether the mummies were threatened with
destruction. Dr. Fouquet reported that he
had observed the efflorescence on the mum-
my of Seti I at the time it was unbandaged,
June 16, 1886; that a specimen of it ex-
amined microscopically was found to be
composed of scales and prisms of crystallized
salts, with the origin of which dampness
had nothing to do, and that in it were
neither mycites nor spores ; and that efforts
to propagate mold on pieces of mummy and
mummy-cloth exposed to damp resulted only
in sterility. The efflorescence is, in fact,
simply an extrusion of the salts employed in
the embalming of the mummy, and of the
repairs to the same when it was removed,
about twenty-three hundred years ago, from
its original resting-place to Dahr-el-Bahari.
Hence, the mummies are supposed to be safe
from atmospheric deterioration.

The Fijians. — In a lecture on the Fiji
Islands, delivered at Hokitika, New Zealand,
the Rev. S. J. Gibson said that the native
population was about a hundred thousand,
while the Europeans numbered three hun-
dred thousand. All the natives have em-
braced Christianity ; churches and schools
are found in every village, and crime is al-
most unknown. In the construction of the
native houses, chimneys and partitions are
not appreciated. The sleeping-place is di-
vided off by mosquito-curtains only. The
men are powerful, well developed, with cop-
per-colored skins, and some of the women
are of prepossessing appearance. European
clothing is used by some of the natives, and
gives them occasionally a grotesque appear-
ance. Oiling the body and liming the hair
are customary. A dress consisting of a
white shirt, a length of white sheeting round
the waist, and a sash of native cloth is be-
coming. Young girls wear a waist - cloth
and a sort of pinafore, without either head-
covering or boots. The language is musi-
cal, but difficult to master ; and it is, indeed,
almost impossible for a white man to learn
it thoroughly. A kind of bread is made by
burying fruit with some substance to make

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

57i

it ferment. After a time it is dug up and
eaten ; but the smell is rather strong at
first. Fiji is a commonwealth in the proper
sense of the term, all articles being public
property. No native lives by trade, and
they seem to have no idea of the principles
of commerce. They are industrious, and
adepts in pottery and wood-work, although
their implements are for the most part
crude. The native drum, formerly used to
sound the war alarm, is now employed to
summon people to church, which they all
attend.

Ocean Transportation of Plant Species.

— Experiments performed by Dr. Guppy at
the Keeling Islands, which are six or seven
hundred miles from the nearest large land,
show that certain kinds of seeds will germi-
nate freely after being thirty, forty, or fifty
days in sea-water. During this time they
may be conveyed, on a drift current of only
one knot an hour, a distance of from one
thousand to twelve hundred miles. Some
seeds that do not readily float, or float only
for short periods, are conveyed hither and
thither in a variety of ways — as in the cavi-
ties of pumice-stone, and in the crevices of
drift-wood. Such seeds as germinate have
difficulties in establishing themselves, the
most formidable of which are caused by the
crabs, which eat the green sprouts as soon
as they appear. If the plants escape the
crabs in their earliest infancy, they are safe.
An evidence of the tenacity of life under
unfavorable conditions is afforded by the
fact that despite clearing and cultivation,
and the introduction of foreign enemies, no
species of plant ever known to grow wild on
the little islands has become quite extinct.

The Wise Use of Medals. — More dis-
crimination in awarding medals by learned
societies is recommended by Prof. W. M.
Williams. " Looking critically," he says,
" at the awards that have been made during
the present generation, it is difficult to find
a case in which the honor has not been fairly
earned ; but still, I think, they have not been
as beneficially awarded as they might have
been, nor in the manner generally desired
by their founders. Most of them were in-
tended as a stimulant, encouragement, and
help to scientific workers. Such a medal

would be all these to a poor or young or
obscure worker, but is none of them to a
man whose reputation is established, whose
scientific eminence is already attained, and
who is already quite sufficiently official."
A case in point is that of J. A. R. Newlands,
whose duly published discovery in 1864 and
1865 of the periodic law of the chemical
elements was not noticed, while the Royal
Society's Davy medal for the same discov-
ery was given four or five years afterward
to the "official" chemists Mendeleef and
Lothar Meyer. But at length, in November
last, Newlands received the medal which he
had earned previous to either of the other
chemists.

Leonardo da Vinci's Theory of Fossils.

— M. Charles Revaisson is publishing photo-
typic facsimiles of the manuscripts of Leo-
nardo da Vinci. It seems that nothing which
constituted the scientific domain of mankind
in the sixteenth century was strange to that
illustrious artist. We give here his theory
of the formation of fossils : " Of animals
which have bones on the outside, such
as shell-fish, snails, and oysters, of innu-
merable species. — When the floods of turbid
rivers discharge fine mud on the animals
living in the adjoining waters of the sea-
shore, the animals remain pressed in the
mud, and, being overwhelmed by its weight,
necessarily die for want of the creatures on
which they are accustomed to feed. The
sea receding in time, this mud, the salt
water having run off from it, becomes
changed into stone, and the shells are filled
with sand instead of the animals that have de-
cayed from within them. Thus, in the midst
of the transformation of all the surrounding
mud into stone, that also which remained
within the shells becomes joined by means
of a slight opening of the shells with the
other mud ; so that all the shells are inclosed
within the stone — that is, the stone that in-
cludes them and that which they contain.
These shells are found in many places ; and
nearly all the petrified mollusks in the rocks
of the mountains still have their natural
shells — particularly those which had grown
old enough to be preserved by their hard-
ness ; and the young, being already for the
most part reduced to lime, had been pene-
trated by the viscous and petrifiable humor.

572

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

"Of the bones of fish which are found
in the petrified fishes. — All animals having
bones within their skin which have been
covered by the mud of rivers, which have
overflowed their ordinary beds, have received
to the line the impress of that mud. And
with time, the beds of the rivers having
fallen, these animals having the impression
of the mud which has inclosed them and
consumed their flesh and organs, the bones
alone remaining — their organization being
consumed — they have fallen to the bot-
tom of the concavity of their impression ;
and in that concavity the mud, when it has
been dried by its elevation above the course
of the river from its aqueous moisture and
then from its viscous moisture, becomes
stone, inclosing within itself whatever it
finds there and filling everything hollow
with itself. And finding the concavity of
the impression of such animals, it pene-
trates subtilely into the minute porosities
of the earth by which the air which was in
them escapes — that is, by the lateral parts,
for it can not escape above, because that
porosity is occupied by t'-ie humor that de-
scends into the void ; and it can not flee be-
low, because the humor already fallen has
closed the porosity. There remain the lateral
particles opened so that the air condensed
and pressed by the humor that descends
escapes with the same slowness with which
the humor descends. That humor drying
becomes stone without weight, and main-
tains the same form as the animals that
have left their impression there, and of
which it incloses the bones.

The Taxation of Revolvers.— The fol-
lowing, from the London Lancet, will ap-
ply with equal force in this country, where,
in not a few cases, the boys even indulge in
the senseless and dangerous practice of car-
rying fire-arms : " The dangerous folly of
carrying revolvers was once more illustrated
in a case recently tried in the North London
Police Court. In this instance a young man,
described as being most respectably con-
nected, though without occupation, was ac-
cused of threatening to shoot a policeman
with whom he had had an altercation.
Though he had been drinking, he was not
intoxicated. A revolver loaded in two
chambers was taken from him. The case

is exactly typical of its kind, and requires
no further explanation to show the hazard
and the uselessness of this custom of ha-
bitually carrying fire-arms. Entirely need-
less for purposes of self-defense, they may
become at any angry moment the instru-
ments of hasty and irreparable crime. An-
other minute and the policeman might have
been a corpse and his assailant a foredoomed
murderer, all for the sake of a petty differ-
ence of opinion. Most persons, we feel
sure, will agree with us that the time is over-
due for some restrictive measure which will
abate this growing nuisance. We would,
therefore, advocate once more the imposi-
tion of a sufficiently heavy tax upon the
possession of these weapons, and of regis-
tration in each case of sale. To regulate
by such restraints an idle practice and a
constant menace to public security implies
no injury to, but rather a needful care for,
private rights."

The Pamir Table - land. — The name
Pamir is not properly the name of any par-
ticular spot, but means the country of frozen
winds. It is well fitted to the region to
which it is applied — a table-land in central
Asia, having the height of the Jungfrau,
one of the highest of the Alps, and a super-
ficial extent of a hundred thousand square
kilometres. In consequence of its height,
although it lies in the latitudes of southern
Spain, its climate is extremely rigorous.
The snow-line varies somewhat, at a height
of about fifteen thousand feet, and the zone
of cultivation rises to within about fifteen
hundred feet of it. Within this zone cereala
are raised, and a few good pasture tracts are
found here and there. Forest growths are
wanting.

About Certain Dye-stnffs. — The princi-
pal dye-woods of the Argentine Republic
are the Quebracho Colorado, the Algorrobo
bianco, the CorovMo, and the Lapacho. The
extract of the quebracho, the chemical con-
stitution of which has not been ascertained,
when dried, gives an almost bla.ck substance,
brittle, and having a characteristic luster.
It is used alone to dye wool, and with mor-
dants. The brownish-black sap of the al-
gorrobo gradually solidifies in the air into a
resinous and gummy substance that wholly

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

573

dissolves in water, or into delicate, viscous,
and somewhat tough superficial lamina?.
Without using any Mordant, it produces
very fast colors in wool, silk, cotton, and
linen goods, varying, according to the appli-
cation, from the clearest to the blackest
brown. The corovillo affords a deep scarlet
color, the preparation and application of
which are a secret known only to a few fam-
ilies who keep it well. The acid extract
from the lapacho — lapachic acid — appearing
in greenish-yellow needle-crystals, affords,
according to its treatment, rose-crimson,
yellow, clear brown, and dark brown. The
tree itself has some remarkable character-
istics— in the impenetrable density of its in-
florescence previous to the appearance of
the leaves, the firmness and strength of its
wood and its freedom from ash, the resist-
ance of the wood to decay, and the intense
induration of its wood when soaked for a
considerable time in water.

Speed Of Insects. — "Flies," observes a
writer in the London Spectator, "frequent
the insides of our windows, buzzing slug-
gishly in and out of the room. But what
different creatures are they when they ac-
company your horse on a hot summer's day !
A swarm of these little pests keep perti-
naciously on wing about your horse's ears ;
quicken the pace up to ten or twelve miles
an hour, still they are there ; let a gust of
wind arise and carry them backward and
behind, the breeze having dropped, their
speed is redoubled, and they return to their
post of annoyance to the poor horse. But
this example gives only a partial proof of
the fly's power of flight. The present writer
was traveling one day in autumn by rail at
about twenty-five miles an hour, when a
company of flies put in an appearance at
the carriage-window. They never settled,
but easily kept pace with the train ; so
much so, indeed, that their flight seemed to
be almost mechanical, and a thought struck
the writer that they had probably been
drawn into a kind of vortex, whereby they
were drawn onward with little exertion on
the part of themselves. But this notion
was soon disproved. They sallied forth at
right angles from the carriage, flew to a dis-
tance of thirty or forty feet, still keeping
pace, and then returned with increased

speed and buoyancy to the window." The
same writer estimates that the dragon-fly,
which passes and repasses as in instantane-
ous jerks, is capable of flying at a speed of
from eighty to a hundred miles an hour.

Ambergris. — The word ambergris is
French for gray amber, which is a misnomer,
for ambergris is a very different substance
from amber. The latter is fossilized resin,
and is therefore of vegetable origin, while
the former is a product of some disease in
the sperm whale. Ambergris is sometimes
found in the intestines of the whale, but
most of the supply is picked up in masses
which float on the surface of tropical seas.
The best ambergris is soft and waxy, gray
in color, and streaked with different shades.
It is opaque, inflammable, and remarkably
light. It is found in the largest quantities
near the Bahamas, but it is a scarce article
at best, being quoted in New York at thirty-
four dollars an ounce, wholesale. Its use is
in perfumery, its great value being due to
its powerful odor, which somewhat resembles
that of musk, but is much more lasting. It
is so peculiar that it has never been success-
fully imitated. Ambergris is so costly that
it is one of the most adulterated articles
known in commerce. It is too costly to use
alone, but a small quantity of its solution in
alcohol is mixed with other perfumes, the
blended odor of which it intensifies. A grain
or two rubbed down with sugar is often add-
ed to a hogshead of wine, to which it gives a
pleasing fragrance. A handkerchief per-
fumed with the famous Parisian compound
perfume, extrait d'ambre, will retain the odor
after several washings.

Strength of the Earth's Crnst. — In esti-
mating the strength of the earth's crust,
Mr. G. K. Gilbert uses the term crust to in-
dicate the outside part of the earth, without
reference to the question whether it differs
in constitution from the interior. The con-
ditions of the problem are illustrated by
supposing a large tank of paraffin with level
surface. If a hole be dug in this and the
material piled up at one side, the perma-
nence of the hole or heap will depend on its
magnitude. Beyond a certain limit, further
excavation and heaping will be compensated
by the flow of the material. Substitute for

574

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

paraffin the material of the earth's crust
and the same result will follow, but the
limitations of the hole or heap will be dif-
ferent, because the strength of the mate-
rials is not the same. Assuming the earth
to be homogeneous, the greatest possible
stable prominence or depression is a meas-
ure of the strength of the material. Hav-
ing examined a marked example of elevation
and depression in the region of the Pleisto-
cene Lake Bonneville and the Wahsatch
Mountains, the author deduces the working
hypotheses that the measure of the strength
of the crust is a prominence or cavity about
six hundred cubic miles in volume ; and that
mountains, mountain ranges, and valleys of
magnitude equivalent to mountains, exist
generally in virtue of the rigidity of the
earth's crust ; continents, continental pla-
teaus, and oceanic basins exist generally in
virtue of isostatic equilibrium in a crust
heterogeneous as to density.

The Dragon-fly and the Cricket. — Mr.

E. Giles relates, in the Journal of the Bom-
bay Natural History Society, that in June,
1888, his attention was attracted by a large
dragon-fly which was cruising backward
and forward in his porch in an earnest man-
ner that seemed to show that he had some
special object in view. Suddenly he alight-
ed at a small hole in the gravel and began
to dig vigorously, sending the dust in small
showers behind him. " I watched him,"
says Mr. Giles, " with great attention, and
after the lapse of about half a minute, when
the dragon-fly was head and shoulders down
the hole, a large and very fat cricket
emerged like a bolted rabbit, and sprang
several feet into the air. Then ensued a
brisk contest of bounds and darts, the
cricket springing from side to side and up
and down, and the dragon-fly darting at him
the moment he alighted. It was long odds
on the dragon-fly, for the cricket was too
fat to last, and his springs became slower
and slower, till at last his enemy succeeded
in pinning him by the neck. The dragon-
fly seemed to bite the cricket, who, after a
struggle or two, turned over on his back
and lay motionless, either dead or tempo-
rarily senseless. The dragon-fly then, with-
out any hesitation, seized him by the hind
legs, dragged him rapidly to the hole out of

which he bad dug him, entered himself and
pulled the cricket in after him, and then,
emerging, scratched some sand over the
hole and flew away. Time for the whole
transaction, say, three minutes."

Evolntion in Floridian Shells. — Except
Mr. Edward Potts's article on Fresh-water
Sponges collected in Florida, all the papers
in Vol. II (December, 1889) of the Trans-
actions of the Wagner Free Institute of
Science of Philadelphia are by Prof. Joseph
Leidy. They are on Some Fossil Human
Bones ; Mammalian Remains from a Rock
Crevice in Florida; Mammalian Remains
from the Salt Mine of Petite Anse, Louisi-
ana ; Platygonus, an Extinct Genus allied
to the Peccaries ; and The Nature of Organ-
ic Species. The last paper relates to a se-
ries of shells found in Florida which appear
to illustrate the transmission or evolution
of an extinct form [Fulgur contrarius) into
that of a living species {Fulgur perversus).
The changes are illustrated by engraved
plates. In this series, as also in a series of
Strombus, great variability seems to have
prevailed among the fossil forms, while the
existing species are comparatively stable.
Another shell, the Mchngena coronata, found
in the same bed, manifests great uniformity
in structure ; " while, at the present time,
it is probably the most variable shell living
on the coast of Florida. . . . We thus find
in the same bed one genus that was widely
variable in character which now manifests
much greater stability in structure ; and
also two genera that were quite fixed or
stable that at the present time are very in-
constant." In explanation of this anomaly
Prof. Leidy suggests that " no species has
been found to be constant or permanent
during a long period of geological time;
and there appear to have been periods of
rest and periods of activity in the transmu-
tation of species. Surviving from the Mio-
cene age, the Fulgur -contrarius may have
been ripe for a change, which was stimu-
lated into action by a cause that would not
affect other species, especially such as had
not been in existence long. For the same
reason the Melongcna coronata and the
Strombus pugilis may be active in their in-
constancy now, as they have survived from
a former period."

NOTES.

575

Ancient Maps of the Egyptian Desert. —

Mr. Cope Whitehouse called attention, in
the British Association, to some points in
connection with ancient maps of Egypt,
Lake Mceris, and the Mountains of the
Moon. The revised map of Egypt prepared
by the Intelligence Department of the War
Office shows a part of the changes effected
by the observations of the author. A critical
study of the manuscript and printed maps
attached to the text of Claudius Ptolemy
had enabled him to aver, as a crucial test of
their authenticity, that a depression would
be found to exist in the desert to the west
of the Nile and to the south of the Fayoum.
The physical conditions of this region have
now been determined with extreme accuracy.
The most important maps of the printed
editions of Claudius Ptolemy, of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, have been
reproduced in the facsimile atlas of 1890.
Mr. H. M. Stanley's identifications of Ruwen-
zori with the Mountains of the Moon re-
versed this method. He found the mount-
ains and then examined the maps and the
historical evidence. The existence of ancient
originals from which the mediaeval copies
were made is no longer open to dispute.
They have never been submitted to critical
analysis. It is reasonable to anticipate
other important additions to geographical
knowledge as the result of the renewed
credit which will henceforth attach to the
only atlas which has reached us from ancient
days.

NOTES.

In reference to a note in the Monthly for
December, 1890, ascribing to Dr. Charles M.
Cresson the discovery of typhoid bacillus in
juices squeezed from celery, Dr. Cresson de-
sires to observe that the only publication
he has made in reference to the bacillus of
typhoid in connection with celery, bore upon
the practice of certain truck - farmers of
ladling upon the plants, for manure, un-
treated night-soil directly from the carts.
Some of the stuff is certain to lodge in the
interstices of the plant and not be washed
off, and that may contain typhoid bacilli.
No claim has been made or facts given that
would warrant the assertion that the bacil-
lus was naturally carried in the juice of the
plant.

Prof. Pickering describes, in the Sidereal
Messenger, fourteen photographs of the

planet Mars, which were taken on two suc-
cessive days, the 9th and 10th of April,
seven on each day, in the second of which
the southern polar white spot was much
larger than in the former series. In the
first day's photographs the spot was dimly
marked, as if veiled by fog or by particles
too small to be represented separately ; but
on the second day the region was brilliantly
white. The date of the event corresponded
with the end of the southern winter of Mars,
or with the middle of our February; the
event itself was a snow-storm.

The fibrous plants of the island and their
capabilities will furnish an important depart-
ment of the exhibition to be held in Jamaica
in January, 1891. Among the native plants
of this class are those of the aloe, banana,
pineapple, plantain, and nettle families.
The managers particularly desire to have a
full showing of machines for extracting
fibers ; and liberal prizes have been offered
for the best, provided that no less than three
manufacturers compete. Small and inex-
pensive machines are preferred.

Two theories in regard to the treatment
of milk have been tested at the Agricultural
Experiment Station, at Cornell University,
and both proved mistaken. The way gener-
ally practiced for getting the most cream
from milk is to set the milk in deep cans in
ice water. It has been asserted that the
addition of an equal quantity of water, either
hot or cold, to fresh milk in deep cans would
secure rapid and complete creaming. The
experiments show that the proposed treat-
ment is not nearly as effective as the ac-
cepted one ; moreover, when hot water was
added, the milk was sour at the end of
twenty-four hours, and in some cases the
cream was injured for butter-making. Set-
ting in shallow pans in the air was found to
give better results than any other practice,
except deep setting in ice-water.

In a paper read at the meeting of the
American Association, Prof. J. E. Siebel
sought to show that certain fixed relations
exist between the quality of a water and the
geologic horizon from which it is derived in
a given locality, and that by measuring and
analyzing supplies of different depths, with
proper precautions, considerable informa-
tion can be obtained. In applying his meth-
od to the underground water-supply of Chi-
cago, the author found that at least six
waters could be differentiated in that neigh-
borhood, each having a well-defined and
pronounced character.

Some new Indiana crustacean fossils, de-
scribed by Charles E. Newlin, are found
about half a mile south of Kokomo, in a
single ledge of the water limestone of the
lower Helderberg formation. They are foot-
prints, and appear to be new to the paleon-
tology of Indiana,

576

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Appomattox formation of the Mis-
sissippi embayment described by W J Mc-
Gee, which Prof. Stafford identifies with his
La Grange formation in Tennessee, corre-
sponds with an area extending from the
coast along the Rappahannock River west
to the Mississippi and north into Tennessee,
which is covered with an interstratified sand
and clay, susceptible to erosion and much
affected by it. It is said that three fourths
of the formation have been removed by ero-
sion. The formation overlaps in irregular
lines the Tertiary strata of Virginia. White
kaolin, or feldspar clay, is often detected in
it, and large quantities of white clay of com-
mercial value have been uncovered in the
northern part of Mississippi.

The Redonda phosphate, described by
Prof. Hitchcock in the American Geological
Society, is found in the volcanic island of
Redonda, in the Caribbean Sea — an island
with perpendicular walls five hundred feet
high, which the visitor must scale with wind-
lass and rope. The phosphates are found,
nearly forty per cent pure, nearly devoid of
lime, under a vast quantity of guano. They
are not crystalline or fossiliferous, and occur
in sheets between the layers of lava, or in
pockets. The existence of this valuable
substance at such a place has never been
satisfactorily accounted for.

According to a paper by Prof. S. Coulter,
Indiana, which is the fifth lumber-producing
State in the Union, has one hundred and six
species of trees, belonging to twenty-four
orders. The most uniformly distributed tree
is the sugar maple, which is found in every
county. The author thought that geological
formations had comparatively little effect in
the distribution of forest trees in the limited
area of the State, but that the chief influence
came from the elevation of certain general
sections and of particular localities, the
courses of the streams, and the location of
swamps. The forest area of the State has
been reduced to 2,000,000 acres, about one
tenth of the total area.

Prof. H. W. IIenshaw, describing the
Indian method of making maple sugar, main-
tained that the knowledge of the sugar and
the process were aboriginal, dating from
times unknown, and not in any degree de-
rived from the white man. Indians collect
the sap in bark vessels, which in some cases
hold a hundred gallons. They take advan-
tage of cold April nights to freeze the sap,
and in the morning throw out the ice. They
evaporate the sap by throwing hot stones
into the reservoirs. They make sugar also
from the silver maple and box elder, and, in
Canada and Manitoba, from the birch tree.
The sugar is eaten mixed with corn. Veni-
son and rabbits are boiled in the hot sap
during the process of evaporation. Some-
times pure sugar is the only diet of Indians
for a month.

Mr. M. P. Mayo Collier disputes the
conclusion accepted by many authors that
" flat-foot " is due to a general want of
tone in the fibrous structure of the body,
and traces it by an elaborate physiological
argument to overstrain of the ligaments and
overpressure upon the os calcis, which may
be produced by wearing high heels. For
treatment of the malady he recommends
good food, fresh air, and as much rest as
possible, with a radical change in the con-
struction of the boot. The toe and heel
should change places ; or a good laced boot
should be worn, with the sole an inch thick
in front and fining off to a line or two at
the heel. By this means the normal incli-
nation of the os calcis could be maintained,
and the weight of the body properly dis-
posed of.

According to Prof. F. V. Colville's sum-
mary, in the American Association, of the
organization of the Botanical Division of the
Department of Agriculture, the work is di-
vided into two chief parts, the economical
and the scientific ; the latter includes some
special investigations on forage plants in the
Western arid lands. The authoritative po-
sition of the bureau gives it special facilities
for making exchanges with other countries.
The results of the work are published as
bulletins and contributions from the scien-
tific investigation. An immense amount of
valuable material is being collected in the
herbarium. A resolution was passed by the
Association calling the attention of the de-
partment officers to the necessity of better
protection for the collections against fire.

Prof. Joseph Moore reports that an en-
tire skeleton of Casteroid.es ohioensis, or
beaver of the days of the mastodon, has
been found in Randolph County, Ind., a few
miles east of Winchester. The bones indi-
cated an entire length of the animal of five
feet nine inches, and that its gnawing powers
were commensurate with its size.

Prof. O. A. Derby explained to the
American Association his method of sepa-
ration, by means of the batea, or Brazilian
miner's pan, of rare and heavy accessory
elements in rocks. By this means certain
minerals, regarded as extremely rare, have
been shown to be common and widely spread.
By his new method of search he had, on the
day of his arrival there, found in rocks of
New York State minerals never before found
in those rocks in this country.

The Austrian Minister of Public Instruc-
tion reported some time ago that the evil of
overpressure in the public schools was real
and extended, and that its source was not so
much in the course of study as in the
method pursued. As remedies, he advised
a better division of the holidays, and aboli-
tion or reduction of written exercises and of
memorizing.

— ''■mm 1 » -.*»•#-»

*-v* va-i :.;

SAMUEL LATHAM MITCIIILL.

— Til New Kork.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

MARCH, 1891

SUPPOSED TENDENCIES TO SOCIALISM.*

By WILLIAM GKAHAM, M. A.,

PROFESSOR OF' POLITICAL ECONOMY AND JURISPRUDENCE, QUEEN'S COLLEGE, BELFAST.

THERE are others besides Herbert Spencer who discern social-
ism as the end or logical outcome of certain tendencies which
now prevail or which are thought to prevail ; and, as all prophe-
cies in modern times must be based on what we know of existing
tendencies, supplemented by what history tells us of the course
of similar tendencies in the past, it is a matter of importance
to know how far such tendencies do really exist, and, if they do,
to gauge, if possible, their probable momentum, and to judge
whether they are likely to be permanent or passing, because con-
fident prophecies have been hazarded on the strength of certain
tendencies, while at the very moment of the prophecy a counter-
tendency was setting in.f

The alleged tendencies to socialism are chiefly two : the tend-
ency of the state to widen its functions, especially in the economic
sphere ; and the tendency to increased concentration of wealth.
As to the former, there is no doubt that the modern state has a
tendency to widen the range of its activity in the economic sphere,
as also in the interests of culture, and this tendency is to a certain
extent socialistic. The tendency exists ; it has increased in Eng-
land during the present century, especially since the passing of
the first Factory Acts in 1844. It has increased especially in the
legislative sphere, and as far as the regulation of industry is con-

*From Socialism New and Old, by William Graham. International Scientific Serie?,
No. LXVIII. In press of D. Appleton & Co.

f As in the case of De Tocqueville's celebrated prophecy that nothing could stop the
tide setting toward democracy and the equality of conditions, although a counter-tide
toward a new inequality had already set in, with, as a consequence of it, the rise of a new
aristocracy or plutocracy in all western Europe.
vol. rxxYin. — 39

578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cerned ; it will increase further in the interests of the health, the
happiness, and the morals of the working class; so in like man-
ner the tendency to assume industrial functions on the part of
the central or the local government will increase. Nevertheless,
this tendency will not increase fast nor go far, unless a second
tendency, which we have now particularly to consider, should de-
velop and show itself socially mischievous.

The second tendency is that toward the increased massing to-
gether or concentration of capital which has been going on all
through this century, at first as a consequence of the industrial
revolution and the needs of the large scale of production, then
by the undertaking of ever larger enterprises requiring vast sums
of capital, as in the making and working of railways — a tendency
which first showed itself in the instance of the great individual
capitalist, then in the company or union of capitalists, and lastly,
within the past few years, in the syndicate or union of companies.
This second tendency does exist ; it is likewise an increasing tend-
ency, and, under certain circumstances of abuse into which it
would be tempted to fall, it might lead to socialism, not because
of its affinities, since it is the very opposite of socialism, but by
way of repulsion ; it might lead to excessive government regula-
tion, or to the superseding of the syndicates by government man-
agement in the interest of the public.

But, before considering the circumstances which might lead
to such state socialism, it is necessary to clear away a mistake as
to the concentration of capital, to point out a mistaken tendency,
which, if it really did exist, would probably lead to socialism by
a far shorter road — the mistake that the increasing concentration
of capital, which is an undoubted fact, is an increasing concen-
tration or accumulation in ever fewer individual hands ; a mis-
take made conspicuously by Karl Marx, which was indorsed by
Cairnes and Fawcett, and which lies at the bottom of all their
desires to change the present industrial organization by substi-
tuting for it universal collectivism, as Marx would wish, or co-
operative production, as the other two prefer.

According to Karl Marx, socialism will come when the process
of evolution has resulted in a few colossal capitalists face to face
with millions of exploited and expropriated proletarians, includ-
ing many smaller capitalists who have been undersold and driven
into the ranks of the proletariate. " When the constantly dimin-
ishing number of the magnates of capital has resulted in a few
gigantic ones with a growing mass of misery, oppression, slavery,
degradation, and exploitation " ; and when, in addition, " the work-
ing class, increased in numbers, organized, disciplined, and united
by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production it-
self, is animated with a spirit of revolt," then, he declares, " the

SUPPOSED TENDENCIES TO SOCIALISM. 579

knell of capitalist property will sound, the expropriators will be
expropriated." But we can now see that Marx mistook the course
of the industrial evolution, and that he prophesied without due
allowance for other facts and forces that might check, or cross, or
turn the tendency he thought he had divined.

According to Cairnes also, as we have seen, the tendency is
to " an increased inequality in distribution. The rich will grow
richer, the poor, at least relatively, poorer." And he recommends
to the latter co-operative production as their sole hope. Now,
Cairnes's mistake was the less excusable, as he wrote at a time
(1874) when the tendency to great individual accumulation had
received a check, and there were statistics available that might
have tested his deduction. And, in fact, all that his argument
really proves is that the class receiving interest (and occasionally
wages of management, in addition to interest) tends to get a larger
part of the produce than the class that lives by hired wages, or,
as he puts it, that the wages fund tends to lag behind the other
parts into which capital is divided. This last, if true, would still
be a sufficiently serious thing, though Mr. Giffen, the eminent
statistician, denies its truth ; but, true or not, it is a quite differ-
ent thing from the increasing concentration of wealth in indi-
vidual hands, which Cairnes appears, in the above quotations, to
think implied in it ; that one class, and a large class, tends to get
a somewhat larger share than another and a much larger class
would not be a desirable thing if it could be prevented ; it would
scarcely be an argument for a total change in our industrial sys-
tem, as desired by Cairnes, still less for the further social and po-
litical changes desired by advanced socialists.

According to Comte also (writing in 1850), the tendency was
to the greater concentration of capital in the hands of individual
capitalists ; he thought the tendency a good one ; far from desir-
ing to thwart it by human volitions, he affirmed that the tend-
ency would necessarily and beneficially lead to a more pro-
nounced capitalism instead of to socialism, and with the capital-
ists ruling in the political as well as the industrial sphere — so
differently did the philosophers forecast the future from the same
assumed tendency.

Now, if the tendency were really to the concentration of capi-
tal in ever fewer hands, with a mighty mass of ill-paid and dis-
contented workers, and with no great middle class lying between,
then indeed the transition to socialism more or less complete
would be much easier to accomplish, and in some shape it would
probably come ; at least it would be easier to expropriate a com-
parative few ; it would be almost impossible to prevent it, the
forces of might and justice added to envy being adverse, and
with no mediating middle class. Both might and morality would

580 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be on the side of the laboring class, and the fall of snch a plu-
tocracy might be safely prophesied. But Marx happily was mis-
taken as to the tendency. The tendency is not to the greater and
greater fortunes of individual capitalists. That tendency did,
however, exist during and for a certain time after the industrial
revolution, especially in England, so long as she had a compara-
tive monopoly of the continental as well as other foreign mar-
kets. And the tendency was so marked, it lasted so long, and
some men became so rich, that Marx may be excused for gener-
alizing too hastily from it, as undoubtedly he did. That tend-
ency has now almost ceased in England, from increased compe-
tition, from the want of the old opportunities, from increased
wages, from the spread of companies, and other causes ; and
though it did exist at the time Comte wrote, according to M. Le-
roy-Beaulieu it has ceased in France ; the law, moreover, having
there considerably assisted to check it by the equal partition of
inheritances among the children.

The real tendency at present is to the greater massing together
of separate portions of capital owned by many capitalists, small,
great, and of moderate dimensions ; to the concentration of capi-
tal certainly, but not to its concentration in single hands ; to the
union of capitals for a common purpose, while still separately
owned. The tendency is to the creation of companies and unions
of companies ; to the transformation of the larger businesses into
companies with larger capital, the original owner retaining a
large portion of the shares, and possibly a large influence in the
management, if the business is in a sound condition. The tend-
ency is also to give business ability without capital chances of
becoming rich through the management of such large concerns,
and greatly to increase the number of directors of industry who,
without being large capitalists, may in time become considerable
capitalists.

The tendency to the concentration of capital, then, does exist
as a fact, and socialism might conceivably come as the end of
the tendency ; only it will not come as the result of its concen-
tration in the hands of a few mammoth millionaires, for the tend-
ency is not toward such in any country save the United States,
and even there the tendency is not marked, or it only shows itself
in comparatively few instances. It might conceivably come as
the result of a universal syndicate and monopolistic regime,
which, if the monopolists greatly abused their position, might
necessitate the state either to regulate stringently or itself to
occupy and undertake those industries whose abuses proved in-
corrigible. But if a partial socialism came in this way, it would
give the present system a much longer lease of life, both because
the process of monopolistic occupation will probably be slow, and

SUPPOSED TENDENCIES TO SOCIALISM. 58i

"because the capitalists of a given country will not be, as Marx
prognosticated, a small number, but hundreds of thousands, prob-
ably millions, who would oppose a very powerful resistance to
state occupation of a given industry, unless where such occupa-
tion was manifestly beneficial for the great majority.

The great multitude interested, the great number of owners of
capital, whether in large or small portions, including the more
intelligent artisans, would certainly make it difficult or impossi-
ble to expropriate them, would indefinitely delay the process, and
only those industries could be taken over by the state the func-
tions of which were discharged to the detriment of the com-
munity.

If indeed every province of production, distribution, and
transport were occupied by syndicates and monopolies; if they
abused the natural strength of the monopolist's position by rais-
ing prices to the utmost, and especially prices of the prime neces-
saries, while at the same time trying to reduce wages to the low-
est point ; if, in short, they were animated solely by egoism, and
without conscience, or humanity, or public spirit, the public out-
side the industrial world, the large and intelligent middle class
outside the industrial class, would probably side with the laboring
class in pressing on the Government the suppression of the worst
of them and the undertaking of their functions.

But, in the first place, the universal occupation of the indus-
trial field by monopolies, and the extinction of competition, is
very far off ; in the second place, where any large combinations
show too much corporate selfishness they can be pulled up by
state supervision, and in certain cases great potential combina-
tions can be nipped in the bud, their formation can be prevented
by the state refusing permission to the companies to unite as
" contrary to public policy " or to public interest ; because a com-
pany is, in a certain sense, a creation of the state, as is likewise a
union, and neither should exist, or receive permission of the state
to come into being, if deemed likely to prove inimical to the gen-
eral weal, so that the state could always check early or altogether
the formation of possibly objectionable unions. Where, as in a
case like that of railways, they were necessary, it would not
be desirable to prevent their formation ; they could always be
checked if they abused their position, and conditions should al-
ways be attached to the concession of powers and privileges to
them. It is, therefore, extremely unlikely that the industrial
field will ever be occupied by a few colossal and irresponsible
syndicates, or that the state will be driven to substitute itself for
them, save possibly in a very few cases.

Lastly, the syndicates would have to be devoid not only of
conscience, humanity, public spirit, but also, what we can less

582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

easily suppose to be absent, common sense and prudence, if they
tried to extort the highest prices in cases of necessaries supposed
to be controlled by them, or, on the other hand, to reduce wages
to the lowest point, on the ground that laborers had no alterna-
tive work ; such would be dangerous policy for themselves, though
no doubt there would be a temptation to it which might prove too
great for some employers. Only in such a case of abuse would
the state be called upon to interfere, and either strictly regulate
or itself undertake the function abused.

But the result of these several considerations is to put off uni-
versal socialism indefinitely as a natural evolution, and points
merely to the introduction of such partial applications of state
socialism as peremptory public exigence may require, in those
cases where a social function could not be intrusted to private
enterprise, whether monopolistic or competitive.

There is also the tendency on the part of the laborers to co-
operative effort, from which some people expect the elevation
of the laborers and the composing of the quarrel between capital
and labor by merging the two ; and this tendency does certainly
exist ; it is, moreover, in the direction of socialism in the widest
sense of the word ; only it is a much slower tendency, and a small-
er one, more especially in the field of production, as already stated.
Of the two tendencies, one to co-operation on the part of labor,
and one to the spread and consolidation of companies on the part
of capital, the former will not develop fast enough. The com-
pany will develop much faster, and socialism might much sooner
come as the term of that evolution unchecked than through co-
operation. But the one might be restrained by the state, the other
might be quickened ; the state might become the workingman's
bank, to some extent, as it has been the creditor of the farmer
in Ireland ; it might lend at market rate, three or three and a half
per cent, to such associations of workers as had saved a moiety of
capital, if they could show the likelihood of success in their pro-
jected enterprise. But as this point has already been considered,
it is not necessary to enlarge on it here any further than to say
that the working classes, now that they have got so much political
power, may not improbably press for some state assistance to in-
crease the numbers of owners of capital, especially as the results
of unaided efforts must be extremely small and slow.

What political action to improve their economical position
they may take can not be precisely stated. It is by no means
likely that they will ever combine to demand a maximum work-
ing day in England. They will not ask the help of the state for
the purpose ; nor will they, with the socialists, ask it to fix a mini-
mum of wages, which they can if they choose themselves fix
through trades-unions. They may ask for the nationalization

SUPPOSED TENDENCIES TO SOCIALISM. 583

of the land ; though, it is not clear, if landlords were compensated,
what they would gain by it beyond the creation of small fanners,
the granting of allotments to agricultural or other laborers, as an
occupation for slack times, all of which may be secured otherwise :
so that it is not easy to forecast the resultant line of action of the
working classes, more especially as the interests of the skilled and
unskilled laborers are not always identical, however the desires
for higher wages and fewer hours may be common to both.

Thus far as to the existing tendencies. As to the final goal,
it is very difficult to say what it will be, or what the end in
which society will rest (if, indeed, it ever attains to rest other
than provisional equilibrium). And it is difficult because of the
new and unforeseen factors that arise in the course of an ever-
expanding evolution which might upset our calculations. New
factors, industrial, social, moral, religious ; new physical discov-
eries, like steam or electricity, that might revolutionize industry ;
new moral or religious forces that might revolutionize manners
and the scheme of life, and with it indirectly the distribution of
wealth; and great physical discoveries and inventions affecting
industry — we may indeed certainly look for as in the normal
course of evolution.

Society may, indeed, come to the collective ownership of land
and capital, but it will not be for a long time ; it may come to
equality of material goods, but it will be at a time still more re-
mote. On the other hand, the system of private property and
freedom of contract may last indefinitely or forever ; but, if it
does, we may safely prophesy that it will be brought more in ac-
cordance with reason, justice, and the general good, and, though
there be never equality of property, there will be a nearer ap-
proach to equality of opportunities, and a somewhat nearer
approximation of the existing great extremes of fortune.

Eminent writers during the past hundred years have prophe-
sied far more confidently as to the future : Karl Marx, as we have
seen, that the concentration of capital in the hands of a few would
lead, naturally, necessarily, and at no distant date, to their expro-
priation, and to a collectivist regime ; and De Tocqueville, that
society was being borne invincibly to a state of general equality
of conditions, where the state would continally become more pow-
erful. On the other hand, the sociologists, who, if their science
were all that its name implies, should be able to forecast the
future, " to look into the seeds of time and say which grains would
grow and which would not," predict very differently : Comte, that
the concentration of capital in ever fewer hands would and should
lead definitely to the political rule of the capitalists, tempered by
the counsel of positive philosophers, and that within a short space
of time ; while Herbert Spencer, as we have already seen, filled

584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY '.

with the doctrine of evolution, and impressed with the lesson it
teaches as to the length of time required for changes for the bet-
ter, discerns at " the limits of evolution," countless generations
hence, as goal, a system of property and contract, purified and
supplemented by voluntary benevolence, with the authority of
the state reduced to a minimum.

In like manner Mill prophesied ; but his conclusion was dif-
ferent. He prophesied that co-operative production, " sooner
than people in general imagined," would transform society by
superseding the capitalist employer ; and with respect to the two
exactly opposite prophecies of Mill and Comte, all that need be
said is that neither of them has been as yet fulfilled. Co-opera-
tive production has not advanced, nor, on the other hand, has the
capitalist attained supreme political power, though of the two
perhaps the prophecy of Comte has come nearer to fulfillment.

When De Tocqueville wrote his remarkable book on "De-
mocracy in America," the new tendency to inequality had not
shown itself in America, there was great equality of conditions,
•and there was likewise considerable equality of conditions in
France as a consequence of the Revolution. De Tocqueville
generalized from what he then saw, and prophesied a further and
a general equality, though somewhat prematurely, because a tend-
ency to a prodigious inequality was setting in at the time he was
writing, a tendency first manifested in England, that increased,
spread, embraced the civilized world, that was followed by a new
social conquest, and the rise of a new and potent moneyed aristoc-
racy. It grew greater ; and, generalizing from this tendency,
Karl Marx prophesied it would grow still greater until all capital
was concentrated in a few hands ; the capitalists would then be
expropriated, and socialism and equality would come. But Marx,
as already stated, based his prophecy on a misread tendency, a
short tendency which had spent its full force before he died, just
as De Tocqueville based his prediction on a supposed tendency
gathered from the facts of a generation earlier. Both were
wrong : a great current toward inequality came, especially in
America, after De Tocqueville wrote, in 1835, just as there came
a check to the concentration of capital in fewer hands, and a tend-
ency to its dispersal, before Marx died.

Others also have prophesied in our century, though without
pretending to base their predictions on the scientific study of
political or social phenomena: St. Simon, that the golden age
was in the future, and that society would reach it through his
doctrine ; Carlyle, that the abyss lay before society, unless the
Great Man appeared to save it. To the like effect the poet-laure-
ate also speaks : " Before earth reach her earthly best a God must
mingle with the game."

SUPPOSED TENDENCIES TO SOCIALISM. 585

What is the lesson to be gathered from the prophets and
writers on the science of society ? Not that we should expect
an early and radical transformation of society; neither the su-
premacy of a few capitalists, nor yet their early expropriation ;
hardly even that we should expect the coming of the semi-divine
man of Carlyle and Tennyson to set things right. The chief les-
son is the rashness and exceeding doubtfulness of specific proph-
ecies which are grounded as often on hopes or fears, likes or dis-
likes, as on superior insight. The prophets are, however, in gen-
eral optimistic ; they believe in progress or evolution ; and they
believe that civilized society is progressing to something better
than the present state, though they differ considerably as to what
constitutes that better. I share this faith, on the whole, myself.
I believe that society is in movement as part of an inevitable pro-
cess to something better in the end, though some of the stages to
it may appear to be really worse for particular generations. I be-
lieve we are moving toward a better, to " a far-off divine event "
which can not be fully perceived at present ; and I believe that the
road to it lies through something better than the present which
can be perceived. To get to this better will require the co-opera-
tive efforts and volitions of men, especially of the working classes,
and of their leaders. Social thinkers will be required to furnish
light and guidance, and also, it may be, great statesmen filled
with the spirit of understanding and justice, and with regard for
the general good. There will be neither miracle wrought, nor
sudden social transformation, which would be a miracle in order
to last ; but with good sense, self-reliance, and persistence on the
part of the many, assisted by the light and help of the few, and
with better dispositions on the part of employers of labor, a con-
siderable advance for the whole people, and especially for the
cause of labor, might be made during the present generation;
while, with these same conditions as permanent facts, the move-
ment for social reform, if not the socialistic movement, will
advance as fast as is desirable, and will realize in future as much
good as the nature and complexity of things social and things
hunian will allow.

The scheme for an exploration of the antarctic regions is gradually assuming
shape. A report was made at the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society of
Australasia in August, that Baron Nordenskiold would consent to take command
of an expedition on condition that the Australian colonies contribute five thou-
sand pounds toward the expenses, to be met by a like contribution by Norden-
skiold's friend Baron Oscar Dickson. The Geographical Society, which had already
pledged itself to support a South Polar Expedition, accepted the proposition of the
Swedes at once, on the faith that the necessary subscriptions would be secured,
and itself contributed two hundred pounds toward the amount.
vol. xxxvm. — 40

586

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES

SINCE COLUMBUS.

IV. IRON-WORKING WITH MACHINE TOOLS.

Br WILLIAM F. DUEFEE, Engineer.

WHILE the builders and operators of blast-furnaces were
achieving such splendid results as have been described, the
owners, managers, and engineers of rolling-mills were not idle. At
the very beginning of rolling-mill construction in America the dis-
position to make improvements in known methods and to invent
entirely new mechanisms and processes was promptly manifested.
Even in the first mill of which we have any authentic account the
rolls and heating furnaces wTere decided improvements on previous
practice ; and from that day to the present time the best Ameri-
can rolling-mill practice has been characterized by originality of
idea and perfection of construction. Fig. 41 is a longitudinal sec-

Fig. 41. — Longitudinal Section of a Heating Furnace.

tion of a heating furnace in which coal was used as a fuel. The
" fire-box " with its grate is seen at the left ; to the right of this is
the " bridge-wall " separating the " heating chamber " from the
" fire-box." The bottom, a, of the "heating chamber" is made of
silicious sand. On the extreme right of the furnace is seen the
"cinder-tap," b, for the discharge of any liquid "cinder" made
during the operation of heating the iron ; near this " cinder-tap "
is the lower part of the " chimney-flue." The iron to be heated
was placed upon the sand bottom a, and the flame from the fuel
in the fire-box passed over it, not only heating the metal directly
but the roof and side walls and bottom of the heating chambei
also, which, as was said when this form of furnace was first intro-

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 587

duced, " reverberated " more heat upon the metal ; hence the name
" reverberatory furnace" often applied to such structures. The
walls, roof, fire-bridge, and chimney-flue are built of very refrac-

Fig. 42. — Levee Shears for cutting Bab Iron.

tory brick, called " fire-brick." Furnaces of similar construction
(sometimes called "air-furnaces") are used for melting pig iron
for making heavy castings; but in these furnaces, instead of a

Fig. 43.— Front Elevation of Boiler-plate Shears.

sand bottom of the form shown at a, the furnace at this part
has its bottom depressed so as to form a basin to hold the fluid

588

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

metal. Thirty to fifty tons of metal are sometimes melted in such
furnaces.

Among the machine tools used in rolling-mills those called by
the general name of " shears " occupy an important place ; these
tools vary greatly in form and constructive detail, and are de-
signed with especial reference to the work for which each is in-
tended. Fig. 42 is an illustration of a common form of lever shear
for cutting bar iron. The cutting knives are located at a b, and
when the eccentric d is revolved by the rotation of the shaft on

It ' W

Fio. 44. — End View and Transverse Section of Boiler-plate Shears.

wnich it is placed, it lifts the long arm of the lever c and causes
the upper knife b to cut or " shear " past the lower knife a, thus
dividing any bar of iron that may have been between the two
knives.

Fig. 43 is a front elevation of a "shear" for cutting boiler
plate, and Fig. 44 is an end view and transverse section of the same
machine.

In Fig. 43 at g is seen a large mass of cast iron, to the lower
edge of which is attached a long, inclined cutting knife, which is
designed to operate in conjunction with a straight knife attached
to the frame of the machine (the relative positions of the two
knives are shown in Fig. 44 at h and i) to shear any sheet metal

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 589

placed between them. The "gate" g, to which the upper knife is
attached, has a vertical reciprocating motion communicated to it
by means of the eccentrics e and the rods /, and, as the upper
knife h has an inclined edge, the shearing will commence on the
right and gradually extend to the left as the " gate " g descends.
Shears of this description have been made to cut ten feet in length
at one movement of the " gate " g. Such tools are very heavily
geared, and are usually driven by a special steam-engine.

The first iron-works in the United States in which iron was
puddled and rolled into bars was built by Colonel Isaac Meason,
in 1816 and 1817, at Plumsock, on Redstone Creek, between Con-
nellsville and Brownsville, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
Swank tells us that " Thomas C. Lewis was the chief engineer in
the erection of the mill, and George Lewis, his brother, was the
turner and roller. They were Welshmen."

We have no exact description of the machinery of this mill,
but we are told that, in addition to the rolls, " the mill contained
two puddling-furnaces, one refinery, one heating furnace, and one
tilt-hammer " ; and that " the iron was refined by blast and then
puddled." This mill produced " bars of all sizes, and hoops for
cutting into nails." The mill was started on September 15, 1817,

Fig. 45. — Train of Eolls for Square and Flat Bar Iron (1817).

and continued in operation until 1824, when it was destroyed by
a flood, and never rebuilt. Although we have no details of the
roll train used in this mill, it is fair to assume that, as its design-
ers were Welshmen, they followed as closely as possible the prac-
tice with which they were familiar. Fig. 45 is an elevation of a
train of rolls such as was in common use in England and Wales
at the beginning of this century for rolling square and flat bar

590 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

iron. In this figure, a is the foundation sill of the mill. This sill
rested upon some heavy frames of timber, which in turn were
supported by a pair of bottom sills ; the " stands " or " housings "
in which the rolls turned were placed directly on the timber sills,
a, and secured by long bolts that passed through the lower sills.
At this period, and for some years thereafter, in fact, timber foun-
dations for rolling-mills were considered absolutely necessary, in
order to impart a certain degree of elasticity to the machinery ;
and when we consider the rude way in which all machinery was
constructed at that time it is not improbable that some elas-
ticity was essential to its operation.

In Fig. 45, at b, are seen the " pinions," which were a strong
pair of toothed wheels of the same diameter which served to in-
sure an equality of rotation in the top and bottom rolls of the
mill. These pinions were connected with the rolls by the spindles
e e. The rolls at / could be used to make square bars, or to " rough
down " the iron preparatory to passing it through the rolls g,
which were intended for flat bars of various widths and thick-
nesses. This construction of rolling-mill is what is known as a
" two-high train," and is so called from the fact that each pair
of "stands" or "housings" contains but two rolls placed one
above the other. It is obvious that, as the rolls revolve constantly
in one direction, the iron, after passing through one of the grooves,
would have to be returned over the " top roll " before it could be
passed through the next groove for further reduction in section
and extension in length. It is also evident that such a method of
working wasted half the time and a large amount of the heat of
the metal ; but, notwithstanding these and other quite as serious
objections to this form of mill, it continued in use until a very
recent period, and it is possible that even now there may be found,
in localities uninfluenced by the spirit of progress, some examples
of this rotary antiquity still in operation.

Up to the year 1844 the rolling-mills of the United States pro-
duced little else than bar iron, hoops, and nail plates ; all the early
railroads had been equipped with strap rail (flat bar iron provided
with " countersunk " holes at proper intervals, through which
passed the spikes by which the " rail " was secured to longitudinal
stringers of wood), which could easily be rolled in this country ;
or with imported T or H rails. The T rail is of American origin,
it having been invented by Robert L. Stevens, President and En-
gineer of the Camden and Amboy Railroad. Mr. Stevens had
the first of these rails rolled at Dowlais Iron Works, in Wales,
and they were laid in the track of the Camden and Amboy Rail-
road in 1831-32.

The first heavy railroad iron of America manufactured was
made at the Mount Savage Rolling Mill, in Alleghany County,

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 591

Md. This mill was designed expressly for this class of work.
The first rail rolled was what is known as the U rail, and for this
the Franklin Institute awarded its silver medal in October, 1844.
Such was the demand for railroad iron that other mills for its

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production were rapidly constructed. The Montour Rolling Mill
at Danville, Pa., was built in 1845, and in October of that year
turned out the first T rails made in America. On the 6th of

592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

May, 1846, the Boston Rolling Mill made its first T rail, and
on the 19th of June, 1844, the rolling-mill of Cooper & Hewitt, at
Trenton, N. J., commenced rolling rails. About the 1st of Sep-
tember, 184G, the New England Iron Company, at Providence, R. I.,
made their first rail. Railroad iron was rolled at Phcenixville, Pa.,
in November, 1846, and about the same time at the Great Western
Iron Works at Brady's Bend, and at the Lackawanna Iron Works
at Scranton, Pa. Rails were also rolled, early in 1847, at the Bay
State Iron Works in Massachusetts ; in January, 1848, at the
Rough-and-Ready Rolling Mill at Danville, Pa., and in the same
year at Safe Harbor, Pa., and at Avalon, Md. Some few other
mills rolled rails prior to 1850, but at the beginning of that year,
owing to the severity of foreign competition, only two out of the
fifteen rail mills in this country were in operation.

The rail trains in all the above-named mills were "two high"*
(that is, one roll above another in pairs), and a general idea of
the forms of the several "' grooves " or " passes " in the rolls used
in a two-high rail train may be derived from an inspection of
Fig. 46. A two-high rail train comprised two pairs of rolls, one
pair being called the " roughing rolls " and the other " the finish-
ing rolls." Their general relations to each other were quite simi-
lar to the rolls of the " bar-mill," shown in Fig. 45.

In Fig. 46, A represents the five " passes " in the " roughing
rolls," and B the six in the "finishing rolls." The progress of
the metal was from left to right, through each of the " passes "
in each roll successively. We have no space to describe in detail
the peculiar features of the three-high train ; but its more promi-
nent peculiarity consisted in the fact that there were three rolls
in each pair of housings, and that the " rail," or other form of bar
being rolled, was passed between the middle and " bottom roll "
and returned between the middle and "top roll," and received
compression and extension at each " pass."

Fig. 47 gives a very life-like view of the interior of a rolling-
mill as constructed about the year 1855. It will be noted that the
"trains of rolls" are all "two-high," and that the building is
evidently constructed of wood; and the large number of men
employed is also a conspicuous feature. To those at all familiar

* For the manufacture of heavy " bar iron " and " structural shapes " (" beams," " chan-
nel bars," " angle" and "tee iron") the "three-high rolls" are a development of American
practice due to the ingenuity and practical sagacity of the brothers John and George Fritz,
who erected the first mill of this kind for rolling rails at the Cambria Iron Works at
Johnstown, Pa., in 1858. Such were the manifest advantages of their system that it was
at once adopted by many of the larger rolling-mills, although as late as 1865 there were a
few mills rolling rails on the old " two-high trains." I well remember advising in 1 862 the
removal of an ancient " eighteen-inch two-high rail train," and the putting in its place of a
'• twcnty-onc-inch three-high train," and the opposition and ridicule over which that advice
finally triumphed.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 593

594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with such establishments, it will require but a slight effort of
the imagination to impart to the picture all the attributes of
real life ; and to fill the sooty air with the hissing of steam, the
jigging jingle of coupling-boxes and spindles, and the groaning
of rolls, among which sounds are injected the resounding blows
of a steam hammer, answered by the clattering scream of a
" cutting-off saw," mingled with the hum of revolving wheels, and
scores of minor sounds and reverberations ; over all, the lurid
glare of furnaces and hot iron, amid which the busy workmen
move in orderly activity at the work in hand; the whole making
a scene in which the strength of man and iron, the energy of
fuel and fire, and the power of steam and machinery are com-
bined as in no other industry on the surface of the round
world.*

The rolls for making heavy bar iron of a rectangular sec-
tion, hitherto described, have been provided with a number of
"grooves" or "passes" of varying dimensions suited to the sizes
of the bars required ; but the manifest objection to this very
common arrangement is that, in order to be able to produce a
large variety of bars, a great number of rolls must be kept in
stock. But the mill represented in Fig. 48 is so contrived that it
will roll an almost unlimited number of sizes of rectangular bars
by the use of a combination of four plain cylindrical rolls, two
of which revolve on horizontal axes, and the other two on verti-
cal ones. In the figure, for the purpose of clearness, the driving
mechanism of the vertical rolls is omitted. Each of the pairs of
rolls is driven at an appropriate velocity, and is adjustable, so
as to adapt their relative positions to the particular cross-section
of bar about to be made. The horizontal rolls can be adjusted
vertically and the vertical rolls horizontally, and therefore any
proportion of width and thickness can be turned out, up to the
limitations imposed by the width of the cylindrical portion of
the horizontal rolls and the length of the body of the vertical
rolls. This highly ingenious mechanical combination was in-
vented by Herr Daelen, a German engineer, and it was first erected

* The Plutonic appearance of most iron-works was fully appreciated by the poet Burns.
Sir John Sinclair, in his Statistical Account of Scotland (1191), states that the "Ayrshire
poet " was refused admission to the Carron Iron Works, and, " upon returning to the inn at
Carron, he wrote the following lines upon a pane of glass in a window of the parlor :

" ' We cam na here to view your warks
In hopes to be mair wise ;
But only, lest we gang to hell,

It may be nae surprise.
But when we tirl'd at your door,

Your porter dought na bear us ;
So may, should wo to hell's getts come,
Your billy, Satan, sair us.' "

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS,

595

at the works of Piepenstock & Co., belonging to the Horder So-
ciety, in 1848. It found its way to America about twelve years
later ; but it has not received the attention from American engi-
neers that the value
of its constructive
ideas justifies.

The first iron
beams for use in
buildings rolled in
America were made
the mill of

Fig. 48. — Universal Mill.

m

Messrs. Cooper &
Hewitt, at Trenton,
N. J., in the spring
of 1854. They were
seven inches deep,
weighing about
eighty-one pounds
per yard. They
were used in the
construction of the
Cooper Institute
and the building of
Harper & Broth-
ers, and also by the
Camden and Am-
boy Railroad for rails. A special " train of rolls," the invention of
William Burrows, was constructed for doing this work. An eleva-
tion of the " finishing rolls " of this " train " is given in Fig. 49. It
will be seen that there are three short rolls, AAA, whose axes are
vertical and supported by a cast-iron frame or housing, D I). Be-
sides these vertical rolls there are two horizontal rolls, E E. The
power was transmitted to the mill from the main driving-shaft B,
through the bevel gearing B1, B2, the three spur-gears B5, and the
spindles B8. This was the only mill of its kind ever erected, and
after a few years it gave place to a " three-high train/' which is
the kind of mill exclusively used in America at the present time
for the manufacture of the various forms of " beams," etc., known
as " structural shapes."

The space available will not permit of a detailed description of
the various improvements in machinery and methods that have
been brought forward within the last thirty years, and we can
only briefly mention the more prominent.

In 1859 John and George Fritz (par nobile fratrum)* patented

* A noble pair of brothers.

596

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 49.— Elevation of "Finishing Bolls " fob Beams— Cooper & Hewitt.

AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 5g7

important improvements in " three-high " mills, embracing what
is known as the " feed-roll " and " hanging guides." In 1864 Ber-
nard Lauth patented the well-known form of " three-high mill "
(often called " Lauth's mill ") for rolling boiler plate and sheet
iron. In 1872 James Moore and John Fritz patented a "three-
high train," having a fixed middle roll and an adjustable top and
bottom roll ; and in the latter part of the same year George Fritz
patented " feeding tables having driven rolls " for " three-high
trains."

In December, 1873, James Moore, William George, and Alex-
ander L. Holley patented a " three-high blooming train," having
an adjustable middle roll. The first mill of this kind was made
by James Moore, of Philadelphia, and was put at work in the
Bessemer Steel Works at Troy, N. Y., by the late A. L. Holley,
who was then manager of these works.

Among the more recent improvements in the manufacture of
iron and steel the use of gaseous fuel stands conspicuous. The
idea of first converting the fuel into a combustible gas, and con-
veying this to the point where heat was required, and there ignit-
ing it, is a very old one,* and, in one form or another, it has been
employed for over a thousand years ; but it is only within the pres-
ent century that the manifold advantages of gas as a metallurgi-
cal fuel have become fully recognized by the iron and steel work-
ers of the world. The early gas furnaces used in Silesia, Sweden,
and other European countries were but enlarged modifications of
Geber's Tower of Athanor, and, although they were a great im-
provement on the furnaces in which solid fuel was burned on a
grate, yet they were not able to produce a temperature suffi-
ciently high and controllable to satisfy the demands of the rapidly
developing iron and steel industries.

The gas furnace most commonly used in the American iron
and steel works was invented about thirty years ago by the broth-
ers Frederick and Charles William Siemens, German engineers
resident in London. The first " Siemens furnace " built in this
country under the sanction of these inventors was erected at the
works of John A. Griswold & Co., at Troy, N. Y., in 1867, and
was used as a " heating furnace." f This was followed in the

* The first gas furnace of which we have any exact account was invented by Abu
Musa Dschabir, more commonly known as Geber, an Arabian alchemist, who lived in the
eighth century. The furnace invented by Geber he called the Tower of Athanor, or the
undying one, because from its construction a steady and uniform heat could be maintained
for an indefinite period.

t Previous to this, however, in 1862, there had been erected, at the copper-works of
Park, McCurdy & Co., in Pittsburgh, a " Siemens furnace " for refining copper ; and in
1864 Park Brothers & Co. (also of Pittsburgh) built one of these furnaces for heating steel ;
and in the same year, in a neighboring establishment (James B. Lyon & Co.) one was con-

598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

same year by a heating furnace at the works of the Nashua Iron
and Steel Company, Nashua, N. H., and early in 1868 the first
" Siemens furnace " for melting steel in crucibles (often called a
" pot furnace ") was started in the works of Anderson & Woods
at Pittsburgh.*

The first works in which the " Siemens gas furnaces " were
used, to the exclusion of all other methods of burning fuel, were
those of the American Silver Steel Company, at Bridgeport,
Conn., which were erected from the plans and under the super-
vision of the author of these papers in 1868-'69. In these works
were two puddling furnaces, \ three heating furnaces, one twenty-
four-pot melting furnace, a twenty-four-pot muffle, and ten " gas-
producers," all on the Siemens principle. Gas from the " pro-
ducers " was used under the boilers with entire success. At the
time of the erection of these works they were the largest and
most perfect plant of gas furnaces in America.

" Natural gas " has been known to the nations of the Old World
for thousands of years. The Persian fire-worshipers used it for
their sacred fire, and it has been used as a fuel in China since a
time beyond the range of authentic history.

The earliest use of natural gas in this country was as an ilhi-
minant in the village of Fredonia, N. Y., in 1827, and it is still
used there. The first person to use natural gas for manufactur-
ing purposes is believed to have been Mr. William Tompkins,
who, in 1842, employed it in the Kanawha Valley for heating
the kettles of a " salt-block" one hundred feet in length. In 1845
Messrs. Dickerson and Shrewsbury bored a well on the Kanawha
River, in West Virginia, to a depth of one thousand feet, from
which a sufficient quantity of gas issued, according to a computa-
tion by Prof. B. Silliman, Jr., "to light the city of New York for
twelve years." The first use of natural gas for the manufacture
of iron was in the Siberian Rolling-Mill of Rogers & Burchfield,
at Leechburg, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, in 1874 ; twenty-
nine years after it had been successfully used under a " salt-block "
in West Virginia, and forty-seven years after its first use for light-

structed for melting glass. None of these furnaces were built from the inventors' plans or
under their license, and all were abandoned after a short life.

* All these furnaces, and many subsequently constructed, were built from the plans of
J. Thorpe Potts, an English engineer, who was one of the firm of Richmond & Potts, rep-
resentatives of the inventors in this country.

f These furnaces were the first successful gas puddling furnaces constructed, and al-
though their performance was in every way satisfactory, and the works were visited by
every prominent iron manufacturer in America, it was many years before puddling with
gas became popular with the ironmasters of the country ; in fact, it was not until the
introduction of " natural gas " that the great value of gaseous fuel began to be properly
appreciated, and even now there are new works for the manufacture of iron being erected,
in which the puddling furnaces are not in any way better than those in common use in 1840.

HYPOCRISY AS A SOCIAL ELEVATOR. 599

ing at Fredonia, N. Y. But now gas wells increase and multiply
in the land, and lines of pipe radiate from thein in all directions,
conveying silently as the lapse of time, to city and mill, forge and
furnace, their heat-giving product that has lain dormant in the
earth for untold centuries, but which now, at the summons of
modern Science, comes forth from its abiding-place to do no small
share of the work of the world. Many of these lines of pipe are
of great length,* and suggest the possibility of converting coal
into gas at the mines and conveying it to consumers in distant
cities by pipes ; and this proposal in our day is not nearly as
uncertain of realization as was the original idea of lighting cities
and buildings by gas at the time of its invention, one hundred
years ago.

[ To be continued. ]

•♦»»

HYPOCRISY AS A SOCIAL ELEVATOR.

By JOHN McELROY.

WHEN atrabilarious Hamlet, in his choleric interview with
his mother in the cabinet, impudently advised her to
" Assume a virtue if you have it not,"
he unwittingly laid down a general-conduct rule of high value to
individuals and the community.

Simulation of virtue, though far inferior to the real article, is
still the next best thing to it, just as whitewash, though much
inferior to marble, is yet greatly superior to dirty nakedness.

It is very desirable that all men and all women should stand to-
gether on the very highest plane of goodness ; but the largest pro-
portion of them do not — probably never will. It is unreasonable
to expect that the mass of humanity will be steadily aligned on
the most advanced standards of morality, especially when those
standards are pushed forward as rapidly as they have been in the
more recent centuries. Ethics is a constantly developing science.
What was a high grade of morality in the eighteenth century
would be a very ordinary one to-day ; just as the man who, in our
colonial times, would have been regarded as neat and cleanly in his
person, would seem a good deal of a sloven to-day. Then, as now,
men and women assumed to be much cleaner, morally and physi-
cally, than they really were, and by sheer force of persistence
and habit became really cleaner than they at first pretended to
be. Persons with the bump of approbativeness highly developed
constantly forge to the front on lines which they think will win

* One large mill has three liDes of pipe, each over forty miles long.

600 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

them the esteem of their fellows, and the latter follow with un-
equal steps, first showing outward respect and conformity to bet-
ter ideas and practices, and then making them more or less of
realities in their lives.

Denunciation of hypocrisy forms a large part of the " prop-
erties" of lay and ecclesiastical moralists who exploit time-
warped schemes of salvation. Exercise of moderate reasoning
powers would teach them that calculating and persistent hypoc-
risy has been one of the most powerful factors in the moral ad-
vancement of the world. We all aspire higher than we attain,
and in the moral domain pretense constantly precedes practice.
We begin by appearing to be better than we really are, and the
force of habit soon makes an actuality out of what was merely
assumption. Hamlet explains this clearly to his mother :

"That monster, Custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this :
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence — the next more easy —
For use can almost change the stamp of nature,
And either quell the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency."

Those who pretend to be much better than they are have at
least begun the upward development, and recognized the goal to
which their faces should be turned.

No man is made worse by simulating goodness. There is every
chance that he will be made better by the mere act of simulation.

Beyond doubt, the much-abused Pharisees were powerful pro-
moters of the ethical development of the Jews. Their firm insist-
ence upon higher moral ideas and purer lives could not have been
without marked influence upon those around them. If the only
motive for doing this was to enhance the esteem in which they
were held by the community, it speaks well for their shrewdness
in recognizing the drift of public sentiment, and for the commu-
nity which honored superior goodness.

Jesus Christ's denunciations of them should be given the
allowance usually accorded the polemic blasts of a sorely nagged
sectary against his rival sectaries. If, indeed, they only cleaned
the outside of the cup and platter, they certainly did much better
than those who let both outside and inside remain foul. The
very denunciation implies that this must have been the rule with
those around them. If a man, seeking the applause of his neigh-
bors, begins by furbishing the outside of his platter, in order to
be superior to them, there is every probability that he will soon

HYPOCRISY AS A SOCIAL ELEVATOR. 601

progress to the cleansing of the inside also, so as to still keep
ahead of those who emulate him by external purification of their
culinary utensils. Then their cleanliness as a principle becomes
merely a matter of time.

National histories and the portraiture of the great men of the
past are all more or less flagrant pieces of hypocrisy. The histo-
rians of every nation carefully feed its self-esteem by the assidu-
ous elaboration of everything in its past that is noble, brave, and
enlightened, and the equally assiduous obscuration of all that is
mean, cowardly, barbarous, and otherwise discreditable. It is
true that modern historians have abandoned the ancient practice
of tracing the descent of their peoples directly from the immor-
tal gods, but they come as near it as the limitations of modern
thought will allow. Invariably they represent their people as
of exceptionally distinguished lineage and character and a pow-
erful factor for good from the moment of entrance upon the
stage of history. Its soldiers were godlike in courage and devo-
tion ; its statesmen divine in purity and wisdom. Higher motives
than desire to flatter the national vanity help to actuate the his-
torians in this misrepresentation. They believe that it is best to
make out of the past ideals for coming generations to emulate.
They desire to stimulate national virtue by high examples.

The truth is, the early history of every great nation is like the
early history of men who have risen from the gutter to promi-
nence. There has been a long and dreary period of ignorant —
frequently disreputable — struggling of mean abilities, in mean
ways, with mean competitors and mean surroundings. Rightly
viewed, this is one of the most comforting facts in human history,
for it shows that nations, like men, constantly

"rise to higher things,
With their dead selves as stepping-stones."

Take, for example, the history of England. The impression
which has been studiously produced upon the mind of the aver-
age reader is that that great nation has, ever since the advent of
William the Conqueror (if not before), occupied the same proud
place at the head of the wealth, power, and civilization of the
world that she has for the past century. Nothing could be far-
ther from the truth for at least four centuries after the battle of
Hastings. Until usurper Henry VII snatched the scepter from
the lifeless hand of usurper Richard III, on Bosworth Field, in
1485, England was a thinly peopled, out-of-the-way island, of
almost as little importance to the rest of the world as Venezuela
is to-day. Such ignorant, dull, brutalized white men as the Eng-
lishmen of the Plantagenet period are not to be found to-day out-
side of a Russian village, or a community of Hungarian miners

VOL. XXXVIII. 41

602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in a Pennsylvania coal town. Then civilization shed but feeble
light at its centers on the Continent, while the mongrel race in
England were literally the " heathen of the isles," who dwelt in
Cimmerian darkness. Nor, as historians would make us believe,,
was the high civilization which succeeded self -evolved from this
unpromising horde. Native Englishmen — Norman and Saxon —
played but a small part in the development of the nation. The
men who made England were the swarming adventurers from
every land — enterprising merchants, cunning artificers, and sail-
ors bold — who flocked to the island when the discovery of the
Cape of Good Hope and the Americas, together with the growth
of northwestern Europe, made it the finest business location in
the world. It gratifies the pride of the amalgamated descendants
of those many-tongued adventurers to believe that they are
sprung directly from the Anglo-Saxon lords of the soil, or from
the " landless resolutes " who went filibustering with William the
Bastard. The besotted peasantry found to-day in the purely
agricultural districts of England indicate the intellectual sterility
of the land before its splendid commercial opportunities caused it
to be fertilized by a freshet of the best brains and energy of the
Continent. The domestic peace which began with the Tudors
was also potent in this enrichment, in attracting thither from the
war-accursed mainland a large share of the intellect and skill of
Europe. The few hundred thousand beef-witted Britons of the
days of the early Tudors would have counted for no more in
history than the Bretons of France, the Basques, or the Styrians,.
had it not been for the inundation of superior minds, moved to
flow in from every quarter by love of gain, of peace, and of free-
dom of conscience.

" Lives of great men all remind us," if we examine them criti-
cally, that, since their day, the advance in morals has been almost
as great as in the arts and sciences. Judged by present ethical
standards, many great men of the past — the benefactors of their
race, and men who builded strongly and well for their countries
and the world — had the morals of the slums. Had they been held
to the same accountability as the men of to-day, they would have
been social outcasts, if not actually behind prison-bars.

Taking even our own country, and so recent history as that of
the end of the last century, every well-informed man knows that
the private lives and much of the public careers of the men whom
we revere — such men as Winthrop, Hancock, Adams, Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Monroe, Jackson, etc. — would not
bear at all the tests we now apply to public and private characters.
Yet we hypocritically assume that these men were altogether
superior to any now before the public eye. We teach our chil-
dren that they were ideal men, whose characters form the highest.

HYPOCRISY AS A SOCIAL ELEVATOR. 603

models for imitation. While this is arrant hypocrisy, it is prob-
ably wise public policy, and, after all, but justice to those illus-
trious men. Their morals were undoubtedly superior to the rule
in their day. The good they did lives after them, while the evil
is buried with their bones. Much, too, of the evil seemed good to
them. As Froude well says, "All history is anachronism, for
we constantly see the events of yesterday by the light of to-
day." Nothing is to be gained by parading their weaknesses and
vices, while much good is accomplished by presenting them as
unblemished ideals — exemplars for present and future genera-
tions.

It is the same with our national history. Up to that time
there was never a more genuinely patriotic struggle in the history
of the world than our Revolution. Yet if the movement for in-
dependence had been deprived of all the aid given it by sordid
greed, selfish ambition, industrious self-seeking, and partisan ran-
cor, the patriotic impulse would have been far from strong enough
to carry on the contest to final victory. But we wisely enrich
human nature by placing to its credit all these baser metals
transmuted into the pure gold of unselfish patriotism.

The elevation of woman to her present position from the
degradation into which she had sunk during the long night of the
dark ages was a slow and tedious work. Nothing aided in it so much
as the arrant hypocrisy which took the form of mediaeval gallantry.
It became the fashion to show ostentatious deference to woman,
especially if she had birth, youth, and some pretensions to beauty.
At first hollow and specious to the last degree — thinly varnishing
a bestiality so low that it was scarcely above that of a " bull "
seal, who takes possession of all the " cows " that he can force
into his rocky harem and defend against the lust of rival " bulls "
— the bombast of idolatrous devotion, the shamming of respectful
deference, the make-believe admission of superiority in manners,
morals, love, and religion constantly came, by mere force of itera-
tion, to approach nearer the reality. Even the coarsest-grained
of the gluttonous and swilling boors who formed the body of the
"gentle knighthood" became, through the habitual wearing of
the mask, more genuinely appreciative of womanhood and more
of a gentleman at heart. The women, on the other hand, for the
same reason, became more elevated because of the factitious ele-
vation assigned them, better informed as to what was due them,
and more strenuous in exacting it.

Sir De Bracy, the "free captain," was quite capable, had he
gained the Princess Rowena for his wife, of beating her " with a
stick no larger than his thumb," as the old English law permitted,
or of subjecting her to other and deeper indignities. But the re-
quirement of ostentatious politeness in public would have oper-

6o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ated to make him less of a tyrant at home, and this influence, ex-
tending through scores of generations, has assisted powerfully in
securing for women all that they now enjoy. Even the Ivaiihoes
of the thirteenth century made fearfully tough husbands, and
led their " queens of love and beauty " wretched lives ; but still
they had to make some show of living up to the gush and swag-
ger of the tournament, and the women were better off than they
otherwise would have been.

Millions have drifted into intimate relations with the bath-tub
and clean linen who, at the outset, had no intention of going fur-
ther than such superficial cleansing as would make a good im-
pression on those around them whose favorable opinion it was
desirable to have.

The traditional young lady who, notified that she was to go
to a party that evening, called down the stairs to her mother to
know if she were to wash for a high-necked or a low-necked dress,
undoubtedly came in time to value cleanliness for its own sake,
and make her ablutions without careful reference to the amount
of surface her costume would reveal.

We shall go far, however, to find so good an illustration of the
rapid development of pretense into actuality as is afforded by the
history of religions. All religions began with shows, forms, and
external observances, which, per opere operato, as the Catholics
used to hold of baptism, speedily became faith. The conquerors,
rulers, and soldiers who, for political and selfish reasons, imposed
the Christian and Mohammedan religions on more than half the
world, only attempted to compel extrinsic acceptance of their
forms and ceremonies. What one generation did under the shadow
of a sword which was quick to smite, succeeding ones did from
what was considered the deepest religious instincts. Outward
forms, which were terms of capitulation exacted by conquer-
ors, quickly grew into symbols of true inward faith. Belief
sprang from the reflex action of acts. Men did certain things to
save their lives or property, and then fully accepted the spiritual
meaning of those things. So long as Christianity relied merely
on the teaching of its doctrines, it made slow progress indeed.
Three centuries after Christ Constantino the Great, for political
reasons, gave to it the powerful aid of the sword of state, and
thereafter its spread was much more rapid. Still, it required more
than one thousand years of bloody propaganda, by blade and fire,
before its ascendency became acknowledged throughout the whole
of Europe. By the end of the fourth century the energetic mili-
tarism of Theodosius the Great — frequently exerted by armies of
barbarians — had nominally overthrown paganism throughout the
Roman Empire, and nominally established not only Christianity,
but the Nicene form of that faith. His successors devoted such

HYPOCRISY AS A SOCIAL ELEVATOR. 605

leisure intervals as they could gain amid their swiftly following
intrigues, accessions, assassinations, insurrections, invasions, and
dethronements, to wholesale baptisms of Jews, pagans, and other
non-Christians, so that the Church grew in numbers though the
empire fell to pieces.

In the eighth century Charlemagne set about the work of
evangelization on a grand scale, and for thirty-two years devoted
the major part of the military resources of his empire to spreading
the gospel among the heathen Saxons. He killed off possibly one
hundred thousand of them — slaying forty-five hundred in cold
blood at one time — and deported thousands of those he did not
kill to other lands. Finally, their king and leading warriors had
to bow before his puissant sword, and receive the rite of bap-
tism. He also converted great numbers of Huns, Danes, Wends,
Swedes, and Czechs.

Still a large portion of northern Europe was left under the
control of the priests of Odin, and for several centuries the work
of rounding up these pagans, and chasing them with blade and
brand into the bosom of the Church, was a favorite occupation of
princes and knights. At the end of the tenth century Olaf I suc-
ceeded in converting the Norwegians at the point of the lance,
and his son followed up pagan-killing with such enthusiasm as to
win himself canonization from the Church. Sweden was brought
into the fold about the same time and by the same means ; but it
was not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that the
Christianization of Denmark was completed by a grand raid
of Valdemar II into Esthonia. Then the Teutonic Knights did
some very successful missionary work, accompanied with much
slaughter, in securing the supremacy of the Cross among the hea-
then of Prussia, Courland, and Livonia.

While mailed hands were thus persistently hammering the
heathen of northern Europe into practicing Christian rites, the
evangelization of Russia was brought about with less attrition —
the Muscovites being a more submissive people. Toward the end
of the tenth century Vladimir the Great decided that it was neces-
sary to have a state religion. He studied the Jewish, Mohamme-
dan, Roman Catholic, and Greek forms, and gave the preference to
the latter. He had sixty thousand of his people baptized in one
day, and the rest accepted the ordinance as fast as his agents could
reach them and communicate his will.

Everywhere the result was the same. Outward compliance
begat inward conviction, and the peoples whose stubborn necks
were bent with most difficulty to the yoke of the Church became
in time its sturdiest upholders. Hudibras says :

"The man enforced against his will
Is of the same opinion still."

606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Human history does not confirm this. On the other hand, it
supports the assertion that if the enforcement is strong and con-
tinuous, the probability is that the enforced one's opinion will
eventually coincide with it. With several volumes of standard
reference books close at hand, I calmly await the vehement chorus
of dissent from this proposition.

CULTIVATION OF SISAL IN THE BAHAMAS.

By JOHN I. NORTHROP,

OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

" A RE you interested in sisal ? What do you think of it ? "
-^- These were the questions addressed to the writer almost
before he had landed in the Bahamas. The object of the writer's
visit to the " land of the pink pearl " was to make a collection of
its plants and animals ; but, during the pleasant six months occu-
pied in so doing, he had many opportunities of observing the cul-
tivation of the " sisal hemp." This industry is now in its infancy
in the Bahamas, but, if the present prospects are realized, it will
before long bring to the islands both wealth and prosperity. Since
his return the writer has found that most of those to whom he
has spoken of sisal had at best but a vague idea of the fiber or of
the plant that produces it, so it was thought that some notes on
the subject might prove of interest.

The group of coral islands known as the Bahamas lies east of
southern Florida and north of Cuba. One of the islands, New
Providence, is well known to those who, in search of health or
recreation, have been to Nassau and enjoyed its lovely winter cli-
mate. But the " out islands," as the remaining ones are locally
termed, are seldom visited, even by those who live in Nassau.
The largest of these " out islands " is Andros, which is about the
size of Long Island, New York ; there, as in all the others of the
group, except New Providence, the population is almost entirely
composed of negroes, only seven white men living on the island ;
and of these, four are interested in the production of the fiber
known as sisal hemp.

The term " fiber " is used commercially to designate the ma-
terial obtained from the leaves or stems of many different plants.
Hemp, on the contrary, refers to the product of a single plant,
known botanically as Cannabis sativa, and belonging to the same
order as our hop. But in speaking of fibers the word " hemp " is
often added, and thus we hear of " sisal hemp/' or, as it is some-
times called, " sisal grass," or even manila. The latter term, how-
ever, is properly restricted to the fiber obtained from a species

CULTIVATION OF SISAL IN THE BAHAMAS. 607

of plantain (Musa textilis), belonging to the same .genus as the
hanana.

Sisal hemp, the subject of this paper, is obtained from the
leaves of some of the species and varieties of the genus Agave,
one species of which is well known in cultivation under the name
of " century plant." This genus belongs to the order Amarylli-
dacecB, and is related to the snow-drop, amaryllis, and narcissus ;
but, owing to the much greater size of the plants, and some pecul-
iar points of structure, it stands prominent among its congeners.
The agaves are indigenous in the New World only, and the major-
ity of the species are natives of Mexico, only a few being known
within the limits of the United States.

The same general appearance is presented by all, so that any
one familiar with the century plant can form a very good idea of
ihe appearance of the other species of the genus. In all, the
leaves are thick and fleshy, as they contain the supply of material
which is to nourish the great flower-stem when the plant arrives
at maturity. This stem, which is a prolongation of the trunk of
the plant, shoots up from the center of the rosette of leaves, and
often attains a height of from twenty to thirty feet. The time
required to arrive at maturity varies in the different species, and
in the same species under different conditions. The "century
plant " in its native home, Mexico, blossoms in from ten to fifteen
years, while with us it requires thirty, fifty, or in some cases, it is
said, even a hundred years to mature. During the production of
the great flower-stalk the store of nourishment in the massive
leaves is exhausted, and, after the fruit is produced, the plant
withers and dies.

The leaves of all the agaves contain what are known botani-
cally as the fibro-vascular bundles. In order to see these, it is
only necessary to cut off a leaf of the century plant; as, in a
thick transverse section, that has been allowed to dry slightly, the
fibers will look like short bristles projecting from the surround-
ing soft tissue ; and in a longitudinal section these bristly points
are seen as threads running through the leaf. Should the ob-
server be the fortunate possessor of a compound microscope, on
examining these threads he will find them composed of exceed-
ingly fine, elongated cells, closely connected in a bundle, and
surrounded by the much larger circular cells that compose the
soft parts of the leaf. When the outer skin and the soft tissue of
the leaf are removed, the fibro-vascular bundles remain and con-
stitute what is commercially known as " fiber."

While all the agaves will yield fiber of some kind, it is only in
a few that the quantity and quality of the material are such as to
make its manufacture profitable. This fact has been known for
a long time in Yucatan, the home of the sisal industry. There

6o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the natives b.ave from time immemorial cultivated a number of
agaves, until now it is difficult for botanists to decide whether
some of them are distinct species or only cultivated varieties.

One of the native species, known as Agave rigida, is a rather
small plant, having leaves from two to four feet long, and- as
many inches wide. These are armed on the edges with dark-
brown spiny teeth, and are terminated by a stout, reddish-brown
spine. This seems to be the plant called clielem by the natives
of Yucatan, and is the one from which the cultivated varieties
are supposed to have originated. These varieties, collectively
known as henequen or jenequen, are separately distinguished as
the " yaxci, furnishing the best quality, and the sacci, with the
largest quantity of fiber ; cliucumci, larger than the last, produces
coarse fiber ; and babci has finer fiber, but in smaller quantity."

Of the varieties mentioned above, only two need be consid-
ered— the sacci and the yaxci. The former, known as Agave
rigida, variety longifolia, is distinguished from the native plant
by having much longer, spiny leaves, from four to six feet in
length, and slightly different flowers. It is extensively cultivated
in Yucatan, and, as already stated, yields the most fiber. The
other variety, the yaxci, botanically dignified by the title Agave
rigida, variety sisalana, or sometimes even elevated to the rank
of a species, is one of the most valuable of the fiber-producing
agaves.

The leaves are of a dull-green color, four to six feet long, as
many inches wide, and terminated by a stout, dark spine. The
margins are commonly described as smooth, as they are without
teeth, but in all the plants examined by the writer the leaves
were slightly rough on the edges, and in many of the young
plants some of the leaves had well-developed teeth. A full-grown
plant presents a rather striking appearance, bristling all over
with the long, spiny-tipped leaves, thickly radiating from the
short cylindrical trunk, which is crowned by a sharp, slender,
cone-like bud. Indeed, a large plant makes one think of a gigantic
sea-urchin. The leaves as they unfold from the bud slowly as-
sume a horizontal position, but remain rigid and straight, never
curving downward, as they do in the century plant.

As has been said above, when the plant arrives at maturity,
and has a sufficient store of nourishment, it sends up its flower-
stem, known to cultivators as the " mast " or " pole." This is
from twenty to twenty-five feet high, and about six inches in
diameter near the base. On the upper two thirds branches are
developed, converting the pole into a huge panicle, covered with
innumerable greenish-yellow flowers. A peculiarity of the sisal
plant is that it seldom or never sets a seed. The flowers fall, car-
rying the ovary with them, then on the ends of the branches

CULTIVATION OF SISAL IN THE BAHAMAS. 600

young plants develop, so that the pole presents a rather
appearance, with the small plants growing out in the places usu-
ally occupied by the flowers. When these young plants have
attained a height of from three to four inches, they fall to the
ground and take root. The old plants also reproduce themselves
by means of suckers, and hence, when old and neglected, are often
seen surrounded by numerous smaller ones, as in the common
houseleek (Sempervivwm).

Agave rigida, var. sisalana, in Blossom, near Nassau, N. P.

Such is briefly a general description of the plant that seems
destined to occupy the capital and energies of the people of the
Bahamas ; for it was this plant that was introduced there a few
years ago by Sir Henry Blake,* then governor of the colony.

* Governor Blake is generally credited with having introduced the plants. But as
early as 1854 an agave was sent by the British vice-consul Baldwin from Florida to the
Bahamas. It is not unlikely that this plant was the same as those introduced by Dr. Per-
rine into Florida.

6io

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Although, the plants were neglected, they throve and increased
to such an extent that finally the people looked upon them as
troublesome weeds, and as such they were often destroyed.
Their usefulness, however, was evidently appreciated "by a few ;
for, as Sir Ambrose Shea, the present Governor of the Bahamas,

A Branch of the "Pole" of the Sisal Plant.

told the writer, he was one day passing the house of a native,
when a piece of rope attracted his attention. On inquiring where
he obtained it, the negro replied that " it growed in de yard/' and
showed the governor the plant, and explained the way in which
the rope had been made. Now, Sir Ambrose happened to be a
native of Newfoundland, and hence knew a good rope when he
saw it ; so inquiries were at once made, and the value of the plants
was learned.

The people, however, were slow to realize the importance of
the subject, but the governor evinced great energy and enthusi-
asm in keeping it before them, and when some of the fiber ob-
tained from old plants sold in London at the rate of fifty pounds
per ton, and was declared to be superior to that produced in
Yucatan, sisal in the Bahamas had somewhat of a " boom," and
people carefully guarded the very plants that formerly they
would have destroyed as weeds. Everybody became enthusiastic,
and sisal plantations were everywhere started, not only by the

CULTIVATION OF SISAL IN THE BAHAMAS. 611

people of the colony, but also by outsiders, as the following facts
show.

A company from St. John's, Newfoundland, has obtained a
grant of 18,000 acres of crown land at Abaco ; another tract of
20,000 acres on the same island has been allotted to a London
company ; 2,000 acres have been taken on Andros by a gentleman
from Edinburgh ; 1,200 are in process of cultivation on Inagua ;
but the largest application has been lately made by two London
companies, who together ask for 200,000 acres. Besides the large
plantations mentioned above, many small scattered areas go to
swell the total. Indeed, there have been so many demands for
crown land, that the governor has recently advanced the price
from one dollar and twenty-five cents to four dollars per acre.

Now as to the character of the land. In Andros, which, as
above stated, is the largest of the group, and where most of the
writer's time was passed, the land is locally described by one of
three terms : it is either " coppet," " pine-yard," or " swash." The
coppet, which occupies, as a rule, the more elevated parts of the
island, is composed of small angiospermous trees, often only two
or three inches in diameter, and so close together as to make an
almost impassable thicket. Back of the coppet, which is mostly
a fringe along the eastern coast, nearly the whole interior is one
vast " pine-yard," made up of the Bahama pine (Pinus baJia-
mensis). The trees are generally small, and from ten to twenty
feet apart. Under them is very frequently a dense undergrowth
of a tall brake, which is often six or seven feet high, and is known
by the natives as " May-pole."

" Swash " is a very expressive term to denote the low, swampy
ground, of which there are thousands of acres on the west coast.
Here the soil is soft and is composed of comminuted calcareous
particles ; it supports no vegetation except innumerable small
mangroves {Rhizophora mangle), here and there small " button-
woods" (Conocarpus erectus), a few "salt bushes" (Avicennia
nitida), and in some places palmettoes. So far as sisal culti-
vation is concerned, the "swash" is utterly valueless; but the
" pine-yard " and coppet are both available. In neither of these,
however, is there what we recognize here as " soil " ; and at first
it was a source of wonder to the writer that anything at all
could grow there, for the surface is very largely the bare coral
rock. However, it is rarely smooth, but is rough and jagged
with innumerable points and crevices, so as to resemble some-
what the appearance of a well-thawed mass of snow-ice. In most
places, also, there are numerous holes, from a few inches to many
feet in diameter ; and it is in these holes, cracks, and crevices
that what little earth there is can be found — still, this little seems
sufficient to support the dense vegetation. Some of the other

6l2

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

islands — Eleuthera, for instance — have considerable depth of soil ;
but it is when growing on the bare, rocky ground described above
that the sisal is said to produce fiber of the best quality.

Given the land, the next step is to clear it, and the method of
clearing varies according to the character of the vegetation. If

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"Swash,'' West Side of Andros.

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it is " pine-yard/' a fire is started, which burns off the May-pole ;
the pines are then cut down, and either made into charcoal or
laid in rows across the fields and allowed to decay ; if coppet, the
trees and shrubs are cut down with axes or cutlasses, according
to their size, and the brush is then burned.

While his land is being cleared, the planter should be getting
his plants ready. As usually obtained, they are fresh from the
" pole/' and only from one to four inches in height. These are too
small to put out in the fields, so they are set out in beds of cave
earth until they get to be eight or ten inches high. When taken
from these nurseries their rootlets are carefully trimmed off, and
they are then planted every eight or nine feet in rows that are
about ten feet apart. Thus an acre of ground usually contains
from five to six hundred plants. In order to facilitate carrying
the leaves out of the field, the latter is divided by roads into sec-
tions of about one hundred acres each.

After planting, it is not very long before the fields will have

CULTIVATION OF SISAL IN THE BAHAMAS. 613

to be weeded, and this process is said to be necessary about twice
a year, until the sisal plants attain a height of three or four feet,
when weeding is no longer needed. The most troublesome enemy
of the planter, in the way of weeds, is the " May -pole," as it grows
very rapidly, but the roots are said to die after the third cutting.
In about four years the sisal plant produces what are called
r" ripe leaves " — that is, leaves that are horizontal and large

Clearing the "Pine- yard" for Sisal near Nassau, N. P.

enough to cut. The cares of the cultivator are now about over,
and all he has to do is to cut off the leaves as fast as they mature,
and manufacture his fiber.

The cultivation of sisal is of such recent introduction into the
Bahamas that as yet none of the large plantations have begun to
produce to any extent ; so for a description of the next stages we
will turn to Yucatan, where, as has been said, the industry has
been carried on from time immemorial. There the men cut the
leaves off close to the trunk, and lay them tip to butt in bundles
of fifty, when they are carted to the machines. The cutting of
thirty bundles, or fifteen hundred leaves, is considered a good
day's work. In order to save the cost of transportation, as the
leaves yield but about five per cent of fiber, there is usually a ma-
chine to every one hundred acres. The machine now in use con-
sists of a horizontal wheel, on the face of which brass strips are

6 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

transversely placed, forming dull knives. The leaf is introduced
so as to bring one side in contact with the revolving wheel, which
is run by a small engine. A brake then presses the leaf against
the scrapers, while the butt is firmly held by a pair of pincers.
The scrapers remove the outer surface and some of the soft tis-
sue ; then the leaf is taken out and turned, and the other side
undergoes the same operation, until only the fibers are left.
These are then shaken out and hung in the sun for a few hours
to dry. The result is a rather coarse fiber of considerable
strength. The finest quality is nearly white, while the inferior
grades are yellowish in color. In order to produce the best qual-
ity of fiber, the leaves must be cleaned as soon as possible after
being cut ; otherwise the fiber is apt to be spotted.

It may be well to state here that the cultivation of sisal is
also being tried in Bermuda, Trinidad, and Jamaica, but on a
much smaller scale than in the Bahamas. There, as already stated,
large tracts of land have been bought from the Government for
the sole purpose of producing the sisal hemp. The price is now
four dollars an acre, and two acres are said to produce one ton of
fiber. Wages for men vary from thirty-six to sixty cents per
day, according to the season and locality, as most of the negroes
are spongers, and at certain times of the year labor is not easy to
obtain. Women, however, are largely employed in the planting
and weeding, and receive on the average twenty-five cents a day.
These are the data on which it is stated that a ton of fiber can be
produced for fifty dollars. As the price of the fiber is now from
one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty dollars a ton,
and has been as high as two hundred dollars, these figures look
attractive.

But it may well be asked, " How about the quantity of fiber
now on the market, and will the market stand the enormous in-
crease, that the yield of the Bahamas will give ? " That is, of
course the very point on which the question of profit or loss will
turn. The writer has been told, by one who is well acquainted
with the fiber market, that if the sisal hemp could be sold for
four and a half or five and a half cents per pound, in a few years
the consumption would be doubled ; for, when the price reaches
nine or ten cents a pound, the use of the fiber for many purposes
is abandoned, and is replaced by some cheaper material, as jute.

One of the principal obstacles in the way of cheaper fiber is
the need of a good machine, as the one now in use is a crude af-
fair, requiring the attendance of two men and a boy besides the
engineer, and producing but a small quantity of fiber daily.
Although much skill and money have already been spent in
attempting to invent a better machine, as yet all efforts have been
msuccessful ; but, as inventors and mechanics are still at work,

CULTIVATION OF SISAL IN THE BAHAMAS. 615

and as the recent " sisal boom " in the Bahamas will increase the
demand, there is little doubt but that here, as in so many other
cases, necessity will prove the mother of invention. When the
fiber can be cheaply produced in large quantities, there is little
doubt but that increased uses will be found for it, and that the
demand will equal the supply.

The House of a Sisal Planter, Andkos.

In 1887 Yucatan exported crude fiber valued at over $3,000,000,
besides $37,862 in rope and $43,891 in hammocks. About eighty-
four per cent of the crude fiber and fifty per cent of the hammocks
came to the United States ; most of the remaining fiber went to
England, Germany, and France, while Spain took the rest of the
hammocks and all the rope. In 1889 the import of sisal hemp
into the United States was between $0,000,000 and $7,000,000, about
50,000 tons, on which a duty of fifteen dollars a ton was paid.*

Now it may be asked, " Why can not the United States produce
sisal too ? Is no portion of our vast territory suitable for this
crop ? " As we shall see, some one did ask that question over fifty
years ago. It is not generally known that in 1827 the Treasury
Department issued a circular to some of the American consuls,
requesting them to collect and preserve seeds and specimens of

* The duty has since been removed.

616 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

such, plants in their districts as were " useful as food for man or
the domestic animals, or for purposes connected with the manu-
factures or any of the useful arts." The American consul at Cam-
peche, Dr. Henry Perrine, responded to this call with energy and
enthusiasm, and soon introduced into Congress " a bill to encourage
the introduction and promote the cultivation of tropical plants in
Florida, and conveying to Dr. Perrine and his associates a town-
ship of land, on condition that every section should be forfeited if
at least one fourth thereof should not be occupied and success-
fully cultivated in tropical or other plants within five years."
These hard conditions were accepted by Dr. Perrine, and in one of
his letters to Congress he calls attention to the sisal plant, and
says, " He repeats his unbroken conviction that its introduction
will make an era of as great importance to the agricultural pros-
perity of our confederation as the invention of the cotton-gin."

For nearly ten years he labored, sending to Florida plants and
seeds, and endeavoring to obtain his township of land, desiring
" no more honor than the power of passing the brief term of his
painful existence amid the privations and exposure incident to a
chief pioneer in the planting and population of tropical Florida."
He finally succeeded in establishing a sisal plantation on Indian
Cay. Unfortunately, Dr. Perrine was not permitted to see the
result of his labors, for, during the Seminole War, the Indians
set fire to his buildings, and he himself fell a victim to their mer-
ciless attack. With the death of Dr. Perrine ended the cultiva-
tion of the plants he had introduced ; but one of them, that he
named Agave sisalana, remained, became naturalized, and is now
flourishing on some of the Florida Keys, where the young plants
are now being gathered and carried to the Bahamas.

Thus we see that the plants are growing within our borders,
and it is only necessary to determine the quality of their fiber;
for, although the plants are the same species as those now culti-
vated in Yucatan and the Bahamas, the quality of the fiber may
not be as good, and yet on the other hand it may be better. For
instance, it is said that the Bahama fiber is superior to that pro-
duced in Yucatan ; so why may not the " Florida fiber " of the
future surpass that of the Bahamas ? In order to determine its
value it is only necessary to prepare it by hand from the plants
now growing in Florida and compare it with the article now on
the market. The subject is being investigated by the Department
of Agriculture, and a report may be looked for in the near future.

It may be said in conclusion that, as a crop, sisal has much to
recommend it. It grows best on barren, rocky land that is use-
less for other agricultural purposes. Drought affects it but little,
if at all, as the writer can testify from his own observation. The
yield is not confined to any one season, but is continual ; hence

DR. KOCH'S METHOD OF TREATING CONSUMPTION. 617

the employment of labor is constant, and the planter can estimate
closely what the yield will be for a given time. The old plants
are easily replaced by the suckers that have been previously cut
off and kept for this purpose. These advantages are shared by
all the cultivators of sisal ; but, in addition, the planter in Florida
will have at his door a market that now absorbs eighty-four per
cent of all the fiber produced. He will not only bring into use
land now almost worthless, but will probably make for himself a
fortune and introduce a new industry into the United States.

4 « ♦

DR. KOCH'S METHOD OF TREATING CONSUMPTION.*

By G. A. HERON, M. D., F. E. C. P.

(~*\ ENTLEMEN : This demonstration is given at the request of
VX my friend Dr. Koch, who desires that in London and else-
where his method of treating tuberculosis should, so far as is at
present practicable, be open to the inspection of the medical pro-
fession. Certain parts of this work are already established upon
a basis of clinical observation. Other parts of it remain still to
be worked out. I think practically all that is yet known to be of
consequence in the work is stated in Dr. Koch's paper, which was
published in Berlin on the 14th of last month — a paper which has
excited more wide-spread interest than any other contribution to
medical literature. As a matter of course, you are all familiar
with the details of the paper, and I propose to do no more to-night
than to touch briefly upon those parts of it which it seems to me
are essential to the understanding of the method of the adminis-
tration of the remedy to our patients, and to a clear apprehen-
sion of the obvious results which follow its use in human beings.
The mode of action of the remedy within the body is not yet
fully known. This much, however, is certain : tubercle bacilli
are not destroyed by it in the tissues. It is upon the living tuber-
cular tissues encircling the tubercle bacilli that the remedy pro-
duces its effect, and Koch says of this action that there is, " as is
shown by the visible swelling and redness, considerable disturb-
ance of the circulation and, evidently in connection therewith,
deeply seated changes in nutrition, which cause the tissue to die
off more or less quickly and deeply, according to the extent of the
action of the remedy. ... To recapitulate/' he goes on to say, " the
remedy does not kill the tubercle bacilli, but the tubercular tis-
sue ; and this gives us clearly and definitely the limit that bounds
the action of the remedy. It can only influence living tuberculous

* Address delivered at the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, December
1, 1890.

VOL. XXXVIII. — 12

618 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tissue ; it has no effect on dead tissue, as, for instance, necrotic
cheesy masses, necrotic bones, etc., nor has it any effect on tissue
made necrotic by the remedy itself."

In dead tubercular tissue living tubercle bacilli are often
found. If the organisms so situated do not escape in some way
from the body, they may find a nest for themselves there, and so
set up fresh centers of tubercular disease. This fact clearly indi-
cates that the treatment of tuberculosis by this new remedy must
be continued for some time. From what is now known, it seems
likely that about six weeks will be required to rid patients in
the early stage of consumption of the symptoms of their disease.
Whether this does or does not mean the complete cure of the dis-
ease is at present a question which will be answered conclusively
by patients treated in hospital wards. It is in the highest degree
probable, as every bacteriologist will understand, that relapses
will occur. They must be treated on the principles already laid
down by Koch, and their importance as a factor in the ending of
the case must be worked out in public hospital practice. This I
can say concerning the success which attends the use of this rem-
edy in tuberculosis. I have never seen in a considerable series of
cases treated by any remedy such uniformly good results, nor
results so favorable to the patients. I do not, in what I have just
said, include cases of advanced lung tubercle. Of that class of
patients I have seen too few treated in the new way to entitle me
to speak of them from my own knowledge. What we have heard
and read of such cases in connection with this treatment leads us
to expect at most temporary amelioration of their condition. At-
tention can not be too forcibly drawn to what Koch says, in his
paper of November 14th, concerning the grave responsibility
which will in future rest upon medical men, who leave any means
untried to diagnose tubercular disease in its earliest stages. To
that end the examination of the sputum ought, he says, to be
much more frequently practiced than it is to-day in Germany.
Speaking from an experience in that direction which is not small,
I venture to say that this remark of Koch's applies with at least
quite as much truth to England as to Germany. Now that we
have the means, in this new remedy, of holding out to our patients
who are in the early stages of tuberculosis — whatever form the
disease may assume — the highest probability of a cure of their
condition, it will, in my opinion, be a very grave reproach to any
medical man who neglects to make an early diagnosis of tubercu-
losis, and, having done so, postpones needlessly the systematic
use in those cases of Koch's remedy.

Koch has said that the action of his remedy consists in the
destruction of living tubercular tissue. The destroyed tissue
must be thrown off or absorbed. We might, perhaps, feel un-

DR. KOCH'S METHOD OF TREATING CONSUMPTION. 619

easy as to the consequences of this, even in some cases of lung
tubercle in its early stages, and especially in tubercle affecting
the larynx, where the swelling, which is part of the effect of the
remedy, might conceivably prove dangerous. Experience has,
however, shown that, in the considerable number of such cases
already treated, no serious risk has arisen. It is a fact that the
mucous membranes of the tubercular larynx, while under this
treatment, do not swell to such an extent as to interfere very seri-
ously with respiration. Even in advanced cases of lung tubercle,
with excavation of considerable portions of lung tissue, there
have been no ill effects from the treatment when it has been con-
ducted with careful attention to the regulation of the dose of the
remedy.

The remedy is a transparent, reddish-brown fluid, not unlike
brown sherry in appearance. It has no sediment, and when un-
diluted does not readily decompose. When diluted with distilled
water it is, on the contrary, apt to decompose. Bacterial growths
quickly appear in it, and it becomes turbid. In this condition it
is unfit for use. Its decomposition in dilution is prevented by
boiling it, but that process is not necessary if the dilution be
made with a half-per-cent solution of carbolic acid in distilled
water. It should be remembered that both by the frequent boil-
ing of the dilution, as well as by the mixing of it with carbolic
acid in the way described, the vigor of action of the remedy is
impaired, and therefore fresh dilutions ought only to be used. Ex-
perience has, however, shown, I am told, that a one-per-cent dilu-
tion of the remedy made with distilled water containing one half
per cent of carbolic acid remains efficient at the end of one week.
The remedy is introduced into the body subcutaneously by means
of a syringe which Koch devised for his bacteriological work. It
has no piston or washers, and consists of four parts — an India-
rubber ball, with a small hole in it. This ball is fixed upon a
hollow metal stem furnished with a stopcock ; into the other end
of the metal stem there fits a glass tube, pointed at the farther
end, and graduated to one cubic centimetre, each division repre-
senting a milligramme. Upon the pointed end of the glass tube
there fits a hollow needle. In using this syringe the glass tube,
with the needle affixed, is detached from the metal stem and filled
with absolute alcohol. The metal stem and ball are then replaced
in position, and the alcohol gently expelled. Every day before
using the syringe I think it well to disinfect the metal stem and
the India-rubber ball. Alcohol, however, causes cloudiness in
the dilutions of the remedy, and therefore it is necessary to get
rid of it as much as possible. For that purpose I wash out the
syringe with a little distilled water.

The dose of the remedy has been sufficiently well fixed for

620 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

all practical purposes. In a healthy man, 0'25 c. c. produces an
intense effect. Koch thus describes the symptoms produced
by that dose on himself, after it had been injected into his upper
arm : " Three to four hours after the injection there came on pain
in the limbs, fatigue, inclination to cough, difficulty in breathing,
which speedily increased. In the fifth hour an unusually violent
attack of shivering followed, which lasted almost an hour. At
the same time there were sickness, vomiting, and rise of body
temperature up to 39"6° C. (103'3° Fahr.). After twelve hours all
these symptoms abated ; the temperature fell until next day it
was normal, and a feeling of fatigue and pain in the limbs con-
tinued for a few days, and for exactly the same period of time
the site of injection remained slightly painful and red."

One c. c. of a one-per-cent solution — that is to say, a dose of
O'Ol c. c. of the remedy — is the smallest dose which affects healthy
adults, and the symptoms, more or less marked, following its ad-
ministration are, in the majority of cases, slight pain in the limbs
and a sense of transient fatigue. Only a few persons after this
dose show a rise of temperature up to not more than about 100°
Fahr. The word "reaction" is used to indicate the symptoms,
mild or severe, which follow upon the use of the remedy. In
non-tuberculous adults there is no real reaction consequent upon
the administration of any dose of the remedy less in amount than
0*01 c. c. ; therefore, the presence of reaction in the adult after a
dose of less than 0-01 c. c. of the remedy shows the presence of
tubercle in the patient. If in the adult no reaction were ob-
tained by any dose short of 0"01 c. c, then it would be certain
that the case in question was not one of tuberculosis. This is a
law to which no exception has hitherto been found, and it gives
the remedy great diagnostic value, which, it seems likely, will
be one of its most useful clinical applications. The law applies
to both man and beast, and to all tubercular conditions. Already
cases have occurred in which the presence of tuberculosis was
not even suspected until the remedy was injected and reaction
followed.

The dose of the remedy is regulated in tubercular cases by the
age and strength of the patient, and by the conditions of his dis-
ease. In children and weak people, and in cases of very extensive
disease of the lungs, the treatment should begin with the smallest
effective dose, which should be very gradually increased. In
fairly strong adults with lupus, joint or gland disease, and also
in cases of lung tubercle, where the disease is slight in extent, or
where the case is doubtful, a full dose of O'Ol c. c. may be adminis-
tered with safety. But in lung disease, however slight or other-
wise favorable the case may be, it is well to begin with a much
lower dose. The difference in the conduct of the treatment of

DR. KOCH'S METHOD OF TREATING CONSUMPTION. 621

lung tubercle and of lupus is that the former is treated with
small doses daily, and the latter with large doses at intervals of
one or two weeks. Tuberculosis of joints, bones, and glands is
treated in the same way as lupus.

A first dose in early cases of lung tubercle in an adult should
be either O'OOl c. c. or 0*002 c. c. If reaction follows this dose, then
it should be repeated after the temperature has returned to the
normal point. The same dose should be continued in this way
until no reaction follows its use. The dose should then be in-
creased by one, or at most two, milligrammes at a time ; each dose
being repeated until it is found that no reaction follows its ad-
ministration, and so on until the dose of O'Ol c. c. is reached. The
dose of the remedy should never exceed O'Ol c. c, except as a test
to ascertain whether the utmost limit of benefit to the patient
has been secured, and this test should be applied to every case.
The duration of the treatment in early cases of lung tubercle
Koch states to be, as I have already said, from four to six weeks.
If after the administration of test doses of the remedy no evidence
of the presence of disease is noticed, then the case, Koch says,
may " be pronounced cured." I repeat, this statement refers to
early lung tubercle only.

As regards the immunity from tuberculosis which may be
enjoyed by the human patient after such a course of treatment,
no evidence, so far as I know, has yet been brought forward con-
cerning it in clinical records from hospitals, though the protect-
ive power of the remedy has been established as a fact by Koch's
experiments as regards beasts. The doses of the remedy are pre-
pared as follows : Two dilutions of the fluid are in general use, a
one-per-cent dilution and a ten-per-cent dilution. The one-per-cent
dilution is prepared by putting 0'5 c. c. of the remedy into a glass
vessel graduated up to 50 c. c. The vessel is then filled up to 50 c. c.
with distilled water containing a half per cent of carbolic acid.
One c. c. of this solution contains a dose of O'Ol c. c. of the remedy.
Koch's syringe is graduated in milligrammes up to a capacity of
1 c. c. ; therefore, if 1 c. c. of this one-per-cent dilution be placed in
that syringe, each marked milligramme of it will contain a dose
of the remedy equal to 0*001 c. c. The ten-per-cent dilution is used
exactly in the same way as the one-per-cent dilution. Every milli-
gramme of it contains 0*01 of the remedy, and by means of this
stronger dilution the larger doses may be given, or, by dilution,
any less dose that may be needed. The subcutaneous injection of
the remedy is made in the skin of the back, between the shoulder-
blades and the spine, or near the lumbar part of the spine. These
parts are selected for this purpose because they are less sensitive
than most parts of the skin, and because absorption takes place
very quickly from their neighborhood. Before giving an injec-

622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion the skirt around the proposed site of puncture should be dis-
infected by means of a 1 in 40 dilution of carbolic acid. The
needle should also previously to its being used be dipped in a 1 in
20 dilution of carbolic acid.

The reaction in tubercular cases consists in a gradual rise of
temperature, beginning three to five hours after the injection. In
ten to twelve hours it reaches its acme — namely, a temperature of
102° to 104° Fahr. It may even rise as high as nearly 106° Fahr.
Shivering often occurs as the temperature rises, but it is not a
constant symptom. Pains in the joints, increase of cough and
expectoration, nausea and vomiting, headache, often frontal in
position, and great prostration and drowsiness, sometimes deep-
ening into stupor, are the symptoms of the reaction. In one in-
stance a man who was tuberculous continued in a state of stupor
for forty-eight hours after receiving a dose of 0'01 c. c. Slight
icterus and a general papular eruption, which has been so very
well described by Dr. Radliffe Crocker, in his paper in The Lancet
of November 22d, are among the less frequent symptoms which
follow the injection. The fever lasts, as a rule, for from fifteen to
twenty-four hours, and is accompanied by an increase in the rate
of the pulse and of the respiration. The fever gradually declines,
and the temperature falls to subnormal, but often rises again to
about 100° Fahr., less or more, and then gradually drops to nor-
mal. The patient, as a rule, suffers but little after the fever.
Cases of lupus best show the local reaction, but, as Dr. Koch has
perfectly described all that is meant by the local reaction, it is
needless to trouble you now with a repetition of his words. I
have also a case to show you which illustrates sufficiently well the
early action of the remedy on lupoid tissues. — Lancet.

THE TYRANNY OF THE STATE.

By SAMUEL WILLIAMS COOPEE.

THE duties of the individual to society, particularly in the
crowded centers of the world, become every day more numer-
ous and burdensome. Thousands of bulky volumes do not suffice
to contain the common law, the codes, and the countless decisions
under the same on this subject. The taking of human life and the
throwing down on the street of a piece of waste paper are alike
punishable as crimes. If two or three gather together on the cor-
ner of a public highway to discuss the many obligations they owe
to the sovereign power, and raise their voices loudly, the state, in
the form of a blue-coated officer, orders them off, and, if any
objection or answer is made, clubs them to the station-house.

THE TYRANNY OF THE STATE. 623

Thereupon the state becomes the accuser, the witness, and the
judge, and, without an opportunity to be heard or to call wit-
nesses in defense, the offenders are held to await trial. Should
any one become disgusted with his duties as a citizen and attempt
to end his misery, if caught in time, he may be punished as an
abandoned criminal.

Amid this never-ending round of obligations the nature and
limits of the authority that imposes them is a question seldom
stated, yet it must be recognized as one of vast importance to
mankind. The axiom that the people do not need to limit their
power over themselves has been used to quiet all complaints, and
the patients have gradually become stupefied by their own wis-
dom. There would seem to be an ever-increasing inclination on
the part of the state to unduly stretch its rights over the individ-
ual— both by careless legislation and by indifference to its solemn
obligations.

It is true, that to read the Scriptures in English or to speak
against the Prayer-book is no longer a capital offense, nor are in-
nocent old ladies executed at Salem for witchcraft ; but personal
liberty and the rights of property are constantly violated, and the
citizen is utterly without redress. The comfort administered in
monarchies to those who complained on this score was that the
king could do no wrong ; but a few years ago the Supreme Court
of the United States declared that this doctrine had no place in
American jurisprudence. This enunciation of a democratic feel-
ing was, however, mere emptiness ; for, in other cases before the
same tribunal, it has been held as axiomatical that the sovereign
power is free from all legal duties. Law, it is said, is a rule of
action laid down by a superior ; and the state can not be said to be
in subordination to itself, excepting so far as it may choose to part
with its sovereignty.

For many years the only redress against the United States
for wrongs done by it was by bringing the injuries to the atten-
tion of Congress. Latterly the Court of Claims has been estab-
lished, but has jurisdiction only to hear cases that arise out of
contracts made within six years from the time suit is brought.
For those older than this — for all sorts and the vast variety of
claims that may arise, other than for mere money demands — the
sole redress is still before the legislative body. It would take a
series of volumes almost as great as those containing the duties of
the individual to the state to recount the tales of robbery and
outrage on the part of the national Government that appear in
the appeals for justice now on record at Washington. Had these
same acts been committed by private bodies, the united wrath of
the people would have exterminated the offenders.

For goods or lands wrongfully taken by the officers of the

624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

United States, although, absolutely necessary for the support of
the sovereign power, there is no liability ; and if the claim is on
contract, it must be shown to have been made with an officer
authorized by statute to enter into the particular agreement.
Although the claimant has been wrongfully kept out of his own
for years, and finally recovers a judgment, the United States
calmly tells him that it never pays interest on its debts (United
States vs. Bayard, 127 United States Reports, 251) ; yet if it has a
claim against a citizen who is insolvent it demands every dollar
of it, with interest, before any other creditor can be allowed a
cent (Brent vs. Baule, 10 Peters, 596). An action of ejectment for
land taken by the Government will not lie. The officers who
committed the act may be liable, but a judgment against them
does not bind their principal (Carr vs. United States, 98 United
States Reports, 433). The States are prohibited from passing any
laws impairing the obligations of contracts, but the United States
still reserves the power to itself of doing such wrongs (Evans vs.
Eaton, Peters C. C, 323). The contracts with the Indian tribes
are sad examples of this fact. Treaty after treaty of the most
solemn kind, founded upon considerations of money and the deep-
est morals, has been violated with as much indifference as a man
would brush a fly from his body. So the Supreme Court of the
United States has declared that, notwithstanding the prohibition
on the States, they may violate those contracts at will that they
have made with the citizen, or by laws framed to protect his
health, morals, education, good order, or the public safety. The
elasticity of these words, as stretched by the judges, is greater
than any lexicographer could have supposed them capable of.
The injustice is not so much in the decisions on this point, how-
ever, as in the results — not so much in the wrongs done to the
individual, that are often necessary — but in the failure of the
state to provide any compensation for the injuries.

For example, the various prohibitory or high -license laws have
had the direct effect, in countless instances, of taking the property
of the individual and wrecking his life and business, yet leave
him without redress. It has happened innumerable times that
men who have spent enormous sums in enterprises connected
with the manufacture and sale of liquor, in States which by their
laws encouraged them, have been deprived of every dollar by sub-
sequent legislation. In Pennsylvania, under the recent license
act, property to the value of millions of dollars was destroyed, the
future of many good citizens was ruined, and some were driven
insane and committed suicide. These were engaged in a traffic
made lawful by the State laws, and in many instances there was
not a word of complaint as to the moral character of the appli-
cants. The Supreme Court of the United States has sustained

THE TYRANNY OF THE STATE. 625

such, enactments on the ground that they are an exercise of police
power, of the correctness of which, except in extreme instances,
the State is the sole judge (Light Company vs. Heat Company, 115
United States, G50). To such an extent has this ruling been car-
ried, that an act under which the sheriff was authorized to take
possession of and destroy the contents of all liquor establishments,
without making compensation, was held constitutional (Mugler
vs. Kansas, 123 United States, 623).

There are bigots who will claim that this is a proper punish-
ment for those who have been wicked enough to sell intoxicating
liquors. These we refer to a late decision of the United States
Supreme Court, arising under a statute of Pennsylvania in regard
to oleomargarine (Powell vs. Pennsylvania, 127 United States,
678). In this case a citizen, a Mr. Powell, upon the faith of the
two acts of Assembly that recognized the right to manufacture
and sell oleomargarine, if properly stamped, spent a large sum of
money in the erection of a factory. Subsequently another law
was passed making it a misdemeanor to manufacture or sell such,
goods in any form. It was admitted that the food was perfectly
healthful, cheaper than regular butter, and that it had been
stamped as required by the earlier acts of Assembly. Despite
this, the conviction of the citizen was sustained on the ground
that the act was within the police power of the Commonwealth.
It was held that it might be made a crime to sell any of the goods,
because, if improperly manufactured, they would be injurious.
As Justice Field, in a long dissenting opinion pointed out, almost
every article of food on like grounds might thus be prohibited.

Could a greater outrage have been inflicted on a citizen ? The
State passes laws that provide for the manufacture and sale of a
commodity ; then, after the business has been established, makes
the citizen a criminal who put his capital into it at its invita-
tion. To produce a cheap, wholesome food would seem to be de-
serving of commendation rather than a prison cell. It is not
necessary to read the dissenting opinion to be convinced that
such a statute deprives the citizen of life, liberty, and property
without due process of law. What should be said of a private
person or corporation that committed the crime of inducing
another, by false promises, to invest his all in a business ac-
knowledged to be beneficial to mankind, and then deprived him
of it and put him in jail ?

To multiply cases on this point would be to detail outrages.
The ruin that has been brought upon countless thousands can
never be fully told. The power of the Government on such ques-
tions may be admitted to be absolute and necessary for control
and good order ; but, even so, the few should not be made to bear
the burdens of the many without compensation.

626 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The right of taking private property for public use is an inci-
dent to the sovereignty of every government ; eminent domain, or
inherent sovereign power, gives this control to the legislature —
the interest of the public is deemed paramount to the individual,
but the obliation is concomitant that in the exercise of the right
full compensation shall be made. This is a fundamental doctrine,
founded on national equity and a principle of universal law. As
we have seen, however, there is a distinction made between prop-
erty taken by right of eminent domain and that taken under the
police power. In the former case just compensation must be
made, in the latter none, although the act prohibited may have
been lawful under previous statutes. There would seem to be no
just reason for this difference. In either case the individual suf-
fers for the benefit of the state. Indeed, in the exercise of the
latter power the injury is often greater, in that it is unexpected,
and hence can not be provided against.

Again, in the case of a contract made by a State directly with
her citizens, as in the issue of bonds for the raising of revenue,
there being no remedy by a suit against the State, the contract is
substantially without sanction except that which arises out of the
honor and good faith of the State itself, and these are not subject
to coercion (Louisiana vs. Jumel, 17 Otto, 711). And although
the State may, at the inception of the contract, have consented as
one of its conditions to subject itself to suit, it may subsequently
withdraw that consent and resume its original immunity without
a violation of the obligation of its contract in the constitutional
sense. Thus the State of Louisiana entered into certain engage-
ments with her creditors ; she embodied them in the most solemn
form in her statutes and in her organic law ; she provided for the
levying of a tax to pay them ; she prescribed certain duties for
designated officers to perform in their collection and disburse-
ment ; she declared that no further legislation should be necessary
for the collection of a tax or the appropriation of the proceeds,
and that for the collection of the tax the judicial power should be
exercised whenever necessary. In spite of all these seeming obli-
gations and safeguards the Supreme Court, by a divided bench,
decided that there was no power to stay repudiation. Substan-
tially the same decree was made in the Virginia tax cases (exparte
Ayres, 123 United States, 443). In these instances the States,
after entering into the most solemn obligations with their citizens,
deliberately and openly violated every principle of honor and good
faith. To say nothing of the infamous wrongs inflicted, the influ-
ence of such actions on the morals of the people must be wide-
spread.

The complications arising under the divorce laws of the vari-
ous States have been dwelt upon at length of late by various

THE TYRANNY OF THE STATE. 627

writers, and a full discussion of the subject here is unnecessary.
Attention, however, may be called to the fact that a citizen who
fails to observe the nice distinction laid down may find himself a
vile criminal, with illegitimate children, because he failed, when
the marriage ceremony was performed, to cross a river or step
over a border line. This neglect of uniformity is a crime on the
part of society toward its members that in this age of the world
should not be tolerated.

Again, take the instance of a man accused by the state of
crime who is innocent. All the power of the social body is ex-
erted to make him out a criminal. He is put to enormous expense
in the employment of counsel, the obtaining of evidence, and all
the incidental expenses of a trial ; his business may be broken up,
and his hopes and happiness in life wrecked. Yet, even if he is
proved innocent, the whole burden falls on him, for the state
makes no compensation for mistakes. At the last session of the
American Bar Association a resolution looking to the correction
of this evil was presented and referred to a committee, and it is to
be hoped that the influence of this body may not be without effect.
The forms of verdicts should be modified so as to express fully
and distinctly the guilt or innocence of the accused, and in cases
where it is clear that the defendant is entirely without blame, he
should be compensated for the wrong done him.

If the citizen is convicted of crime, what shall be said of his
treatment ? He is looked upon as one who has run contrary to
the currents of society and involved it in disorder ; yet, truly, he
is rather an index of the civilization that holds him. He has
fallen, not because he was worse than his fellows, but because
bad influences surrounded his weaknesses. Between those who
are out and those who are in there is often no more than the
thickness of the prison doors. But the fact that a criminal who
is caught is safely confined is deemed enough; his reform is a
matter to which the state pays but small attention. How little
has been done the records speak. In some places the unfortunates
are bound in chain-gangs and hired out as slaves ; in others, they
are driven insane by solitary confinement ; and, again, the young
and innocent are herded with vicious age. For these wards of
the state, for whose condition it is largely responsible, there is
seldom any effort at improvement. Yet the thoughtful man will
find in the study of criminals and their ways the courses of crime,
and a partial solution of the problems of social disorder. There
should be an opportunity given them to work out their freedom
under conditions more hopeful than those found in the confine-
ments of our prisons.

Almost all the States have provided in their Constitutions that
no human authority shall interfere with the rights of conscience.

628 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Yet no citizen will be allowed to give evidence in a court of jus-
tice who does not profess belief in a God and a future state. The
result of this is that infidels may be looked upon as outlaws, and,
if the conviction of a robber depends on their testimony, he may
go free. This rule admits the evidence of those atheists who deny
their faith, and excludes those who are brave enough to openly
affirm it. A citizen's safety, rights, and property may thus be
made to depend upon his belief. What rational man would not
willingly believe the testimony of Huxley, Spencer, or Ingersoll
on questions involving rights between themselves and other men ?
Yet these, under our free government, might be challenged as
witnesses on religious ground, and thus deprived of the protection
of the state.

By the Constitution of the United States all citizens are to be
protected against all unlawful searches and seizures; but these
rights are continually violated, without redress, by the action of
brutal and ignorant officers who, without authority, make police
raids and do irreparable injury to innocent men.

Space will not permit of the further recital of offenses, but
what has been said will show clearly that the state has done acts
that are as deserving of the name of crime as anything committed
by the citizen ; and, further, that we have drifted into a passive
condition of assent to the doctrine that " we, the people/' can do
no wrong. The effect on the community of the ills that have been
set forth is demoralizing, and weakens the stability of the state
as a body.

The principal question of human affairs must ever be the
proper adjustment of the rights of the individual as against
society. The value of existence to the citizen depends upon the
restraints placed on the actions of other people. Yet looking at
the subject in its widest sense, how little has been done ! The influ-
ence of custom is so great that the rules laid down by the superior
power appear self -justifying. The struggle between liberty and
authority — the man and the tyrant — has given place to a more
representative government ; but success in politics, as in persons,
sometimes brings with it infirmities, and popular control may
perpetuate in other forms the wrongs of despots long gone.

The question is not new. In some form or other it has been
before mankind from the remotest ages. The law that the king
could do no wrong has been declared inapplicable to our repub-
lican government. But in the monarch's place appears the hydra-
headed tyrant — the state. The authority of this body, more dan-
gerous than the power of the king, presents itself under new
conditions that require deep consideration and fundamental
treatment.

The remedy for many of the troubles is extremely simple. Let

GREETING BY GESTURE. 629

the state be the subject of suit in all cases where it has injured
its citizens by acts which would come within the cognizance of
laws between individuals ; let twelve men adjust the differences
between the one who has suffered for the good of the many and
the corporate body that represents the public. This is done in all
cases where property is taken by corporations created by the
state, and there is no reason to prevent the application of the
same rules to the principal as is applied to the agents. The time
has gone by for the invoking of ancient doctrines at the expense
of the liberty and the justice due to the citizen.

Despite the fanciful theories of the new school of political
economists, the strong force of personal impulses and preferences
are the mainsprings from which the advancement of the world
takes its movement. The protection of the freedom and rights of
the individual against the power of the state is as important as
that society shall be protected against him, and any system of
laws or social science that ignores this fact is certain to retard
the cause of progressive government.

•♦»»

GREETING BY GESTURE.

Bt gaeeick malleey.

II.

Salutations without contact. — The salutation now most
prevalent among civilized people is the bow. That, in its
abbreviated form, consists in a forward inclination of the head,
sometimes accentuated by a corresponding motion of the arms,
as in the salam, sometimes deepened by the depression of the
upper part of the body. It is regarded by Herbert Spencer as
merely a modification from the expressions of physical fear and
bodily subjection noticed among subhuman animals and the
lowest races of man. It originates, he says, with abject pros-
tration and groveling, to which crawling and kneeling succeed,
and the bow is but a simulated and partial prostration. An
argument for this explanation is drawn from usages of savages
and of antiquity.

A large class of obeisances undoubtedly had their origin in
the attitudes of deprecation. A modern and familiar instance, also
illustrative of the religious attitude of adoration and supplica-
tion, is in the " hands up " of our Western plains, which is an
old Indian gesture sign for " no fight " or " surrender " — the
palm of the empty hand being held toward the person to whom
the surrender is made or implied. The Thlinkits, in addition
to holding up their hands as a confession of utter helplessness,

630 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

also turn their backs. The concept of peace is close to that of
surrender, and the Indian sign described is often used simply
for "friend." The members of the Wonkomarra tribe salute
one another on meeting by throwing their hands up to their
heads. The etiquette of the Todas is in point to show that
prostration and groveling are voluntarily performed in cere-
mony. One party falls at the other's feet, crouching, and the
other places first the right and next the left foot on the pros-
trate head. But all this is done with high good humor as
being the correct etiquette, and by no means cruel in the one
party or shameful to the other. In southern India the inferior
prostrates himself with extended arms to show entire helpless-
ness. In Japan the host and hostess fall on their knees and
lower their faces to the floor, the nose and chin resting on the
back of the right hand, to which the visitor responds in the
same manner. Sometimes both parties distinctly and repeat-
edly strike the floor with their heads.

It must also be admitted that the principle of the superior
preserving an easy posture and the inferior assuming one of
physical inconvenience is obvious in many ceremonials. In
the court of France the right of sitting in the presence of the
monarch, though on a low, armless, and backless stool called a
tabouret, was jealously guarded, the exceptions even in favor
of age and sex being made by special edict ; and, although pros-
tration is Mr. Spencer's great original of all respectful forms,
recumbency in the court mentioned was not to be imagined.
A quaint illustration of this is in the device by which alone
it was considered possible for Louis XIII to pay a necessary
visit to Cardinal Richelieu when confined to his bed. The
king had another bed prepared, and on his arrival at once
lay down on it himself, so that his subject had at least no
advantage over him. The same concept rules the customs of
many lands. In Monbutto no servant is permitted to address
his superior except in a stooping posture with his hands upon
his knees. The Hindoo in the presence of a Brahman raises his
folded hands to his forehead, touching it with the balls of his
thumbs, uttering at the same time a word meaning " prostra-
tion," which clearly explains the gesture. But notwithstand-
ing this array of examples in favor of the origin of the bow
from physical fear, there is reason to believe it had a separate
and independent course of evolution, and that the subject is
much more complex than as hitherto presented.

Mr. Spencer's theory about the origin of the bow must refer
exclusively to the actions of the inferior toward the superior, in
the same manner that his theory of the derivation of the hand-
shake, really hand-grasp, depends upon the conduct of equals.

GREETING BY GESTURE. 631

Both motions, however, are interconnected, and the weight of tes-
timony inclines against both of his explanations. Most of his
views expressed in his chapters on Ceremonial Institutions are
beyond controversy, but regarding some portions in the narrow
field of the present discussion there is now more known, through
scientifically conducted explorations, than when those chapters
were written. It is now possible to approach the subject from a
direction to which Darwin led the way in his volume on The Ex-
pression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and from study of
the sign-language as still extant among some bodies of men.

Among several tribes the chief must never see any head more
elevated than his own, so that the sitting posture, though one of
greater ease, is one of respect. This is mentioned by the French
missionaries in 1611 regarding the Iroquois and northern Algon-
quins. Sitting and kneeling are more distinct in territory than in
concept. The male foot-scrape and the female courtesy, recently
common in Europe in connection with the bow, may be relics of
kneeling or simply of pretended lowering of the stature. Japan
was emphatically the " kneeling country." The very costume of
the Tycoon's court required the silk trousers to form an angle at
the heels so as to trail far behind, thus simulating kneeling even
when walking. But the Japanese habitually did not sit except in
a semi-kneeling crouch, so that kneeling was to them the normal
mode of lowering the person. In some other countries it was also
forbidden to stand erect in the ruler's presence, but sitting took the
place of kneeling. In Java sitting down is a mark of respect ; in
the Mariana Islands the inferior squats to speak to a superior, who
would consider himself degraded by sitting in the presence of one
who should be objectively as well as figuratively " below " him.
Similar rules of etiquette prevail in Rotouma. Some of the Af-
rican kings ingeniously reconcile the relative elevation with their
own comfort by sitting down themselves while their subjects squat,
kneel, or crouch. Prof. Hovelacque explains the dismounting of
Kirghiz horsemen, when they salute, on the principle of descend-
ing from an elevation through courtesy. It is, however, probable
that such dismounting is required as a measure of precaution, on
the same principle that a horseman approaching a military picket
is required to dismount before giving the countersign. This is
both to insure the countersign being spoken so low as not to be
overheard, and also to render less feasible a sudden attack and
dash through the lines.

The relative elevation is an example of what is taught by oral
as well as sign language to express the concepts of superior and
inferior, above and below, high and low. A Cheyenne sign for
"chief" pantomimically shows "he who stands still and com-
mands ; " but the most common sign consists in raising the index-

632 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

finger held upward, vertically to and above the head, the concept
"being " the one who is above others." The same sign has variants
in many lands. Baker was greeted at Shoa by each native seiz-
ing both his hands and raising his arms three times to their full
stretch above his head. Perhaps this was to make him give the
sign of chief, which as in fact made by them through him implied,
" you are our superior," " we submit to you."

The Andamanese salute by raising one leg and touching the
lower part of the thigh with the hand. This gesture, which
among some peoples is insulting, in the light afforded by sign-lan-
guage may mean, " I am supposed to be sitting " — equal to the
modern " your servant." With this expression may be compared
the custom of the Zambesi, who, according to Livingstone, show
respect by slapping their thighs, and gratitude for presents by
holding them in one hand and with the other slapping their thighs.

The punctilios relating to the fundamental rule that rank is de-
fined by elevation are carried to absurdity in the Orient. "When
an English carriage was procured for the Rajah of Lombok it was
found impossible to use it because the driver's seat was the highest,
and for the same reason successive kings of Ava refused to ride
in the carriages presented to them by ambassadors. In Burmah,
that a floor overhead should be occupied would be felt as a degra-
dation, contrary to civilized ideas that the lower stories are the
most honorable. In Siam, on the principle that no man can raise
his head to the level of his superior, he must not cross a bridge if
one of higher rank chances to be passing below, and no mean per-
son may walk upon a floor above that occupied by his betters. On
the same principle the furniture or stage setting for old ceremonies
required the dais or raised platform for the seats of dignitaries.
That elevation has become convenient for jireserving order to
officers presiding over assemblies, so that their seat has grown in
prominence, while the royal or nobiliary dais has become excep-
tional or at least occasional.

From this executed concept of higher and lower the mere
diminution of stature by bowing the head has possibly some rela-
tion. Explanation may be suggested by two salutations of the
Chinese. Ceremonially they bend forward more or less deeply,
with hands joined on the breast. Their less formal greeting is
to raise the arms in front with the hands joined, thus forming
an arch the elevation of which specifies the degree of respect.
The Cossacks " bow to the girdle " — that is, bend forward so as to
form a right angle at the waist.

In gesture-speech, the consensus throughout the world is that
a forward inclination of the head, or in its place a similar mo-
tion of the hand in advance with an easy descent, as if in the
curve of least resistance, signifies assent, approval, agreement.

GREETING BY GESTURE. 633

It is the opposite of the transverse motion which shows negation,
discordance, enmity, crossness. A lower inclination, either of
head or hand, is emphatic, and often shows respect, not necessarily
fear, as made to the older and wiser as also to the more powerful
by rank or physical prowess. Forms of kindred expressions are
still so common as to be classed as natural or involuntary. The
head erect 01 thrown back with the eyes fixed to meet those of
others shows haughtiness, defiance, or impudence. Casting down
the eyes with an assisting inclination of the head is the evidence
of modesty, yielding, gentleness, or subservience, according to
the degree of action. Hanging the head may, however, exhibit
dissent accompanied by shame. Le Page du Pratz gives an ac-
count of the gesture as observed by him among the Natchez at
about 1718 : " In the war-songs the great chief recites his exploits.
Those who know them to be true respond with a long ( hou ! ' and
certify their truth. Applause in the councils is also by the sound
' hou ! ' Their want of satisfaction is given by lowering the head
and maintaining silence."

A more poetical and rather metaphorical variation sometimes
occurs from the pretense of the unsupportable glory and brill-
iance of the dignitary approached, where the eyelids must be
partially closed, a bow of the head assisting in their shading,
and the hands sometimes advanced as an additional screen, in
which motion the salami has a supposable origin. Curiously
enough, this gesture, regarded as purely Oriental, was observed
by Marquette on his visit to the Illinois in 1G73, where " the Host
stood before the Cabin, having both his Hands lifted up to Heav-
en, opposite to the Sun, insomuch that it darted its rays thro' his
Fingers, upon his Face ; and when we came near him, he told us,
What a fair Day this is since thou comest to visit us ! " Adair
tells that the Southern tribes in the United States never bowed
to one another, but did in their religious ceremonies, which per-
haps was with reference to the effulgent rays of the sun, the
object of their special adoration. Such instances tend to show
that the origin of the bow was not always in the abjectness of
physical fear.

Touching the ground in connection with salutation, though
asserted to be derived from kneeling or prostration, does not
necessarily arise from fear, or indicate any more than the relative
higher and lower station. For instance, at Amorgos in the Cycla-
des the priest, on entering his father's house, touched the ground
with his fingers, as a token of respect, before embracing him.
His sisters touched the ground with their fingers before kissing
the proffered hand of their brother. In each case there was ex-
pressed affection while the rank was recognized by the lowering
reference to the ground. In the second dispatch of Cortes he
vol. xxsvin. — 43

634 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

describes his reception "by the principal Mexicans, each of whom
put his own hand to the ground and then kissed it. A yet clearer
illustration is shown in the practice still existing in some parts
of Germany, that the inferior calling upon a high official should
knock at the door, whether open or closed, of the latter's apart-
ments, not at the convenient level of his hand, but low down near
the flooring, thereby humbly indicating his station. An actual
lowering of the head is required in these cases, but normally it is
not seen and is only incidental to the main action. A truly gal-
lant sentiment appears in the custom in some Dutch cities of
bowing when passing the house where a lady friend resides, even
though it may be certain that the salute can not be seen. Her
presence, real or supposed, receives the compliment.

In southeastern Africa, two chiefs, each claiming to be at least
the other's equal, can never meet because the initiative in saluta-
tion acknowledges the superiority in rank of the chief saluted. If
no salutation is made, the followers fall to blows and war begins.
But among the Mbengas it is the duty of the highest in position to
make the first salutation, a curious example of the coincidence
between the low types of man and the latest culture which rules
that a lady has the privilege as well as duty of recognition. Such
salutes must always be returned, and indeed nearly all forms and
expressions of greeting must be reciprocated as made, even among
savages who are the representatives of antiquity, this fact mili-
tating against the degrading origin of the bow, which could only
apply when made by one party — viz., the inferior. To adduce one
instance among many : The king of the Hoorn Islands, early in
the seventeenth century, receiving the party of discovery, held
his hands against each other with his face above them for two
hours, lowering himself nearly to the ground, and remaining so
until the visitor had paid him the like reverence. Until then the
ceremony was incomplete.

The uncovering of the masculine head, with or without the
forward bow, by removal of whatever head-dress is upon it, is
also explained by Mr. Spencer on the principle of fear. It means
to him a removal of part of the clothing as symbolical of the
whole, and thereby is an abbreviation of the exhibition or pre-
tense of poverty, helplessness, and abjectness by which the wrath
or greed of a tyrant is deprecated. In support of this view many
usages are cited in which whole or partial nakedness and dis-
played misery seem to become ceremonial. It is also true that
the respective costumes of the master and servants were often de-
signed to assert that the former alone was big. Not only such
titles as Highness, Celsitude, and Altitude implied elevation be-
fore mentioned, but those like Majesty and Magnitude demanded
the show of relative size. Similar devices to distinguish the great

GREETING BY GESTURE. 635

appear in sign-language and picture-writing. In the ancient
Egyptian pictures the king was always enormous and his sur-
rounders were very small fellahs. The Mexican glyphs also sig-
nify great by big. Yet these devices do not conclusively show
the effect of fear. They are but symbolic of high and low, big
and little, as those figurative terms are applied to-day in English,
and with corresponding significance in all languages, to discrimi-
nate between stations and ranks.

There are, however, instances directly opposed to the theory
that uncovering is a mark of inferiority, and others are traceable
to divers concepts. The Oriental custom of uncovering the feet,
arising, as generally understood, in the imputation of holiness to
a locality, has a curious parallel, if not an explanation, in the expe-
rience of Lewis and Clarke in 1805. The Western Indians, before
the ceremonial smoke, "pulled off their moccasins, a custom
which . . . imprecates on themselves the misery of going bare-
foot forever, if they are faithless to their words," on their thorny
lands. A similar imprecation having regard to the burning sands
in lands where the practice was first noticed might have induced
it there. Should the religious ceremony in time be performed
only at certain places or in buildings, the original significance
would be lost and the locality itself simply considered holy. It is
perhaps not fair to adduce historical cases in which the inferiors
were expected to don their most sumptuous raiment to do honor
to the king or general, while the latter, perhaps in affectation, was
clad more soberly than any of his retinue. But there are many
savage and ancient examples in which, instead of uncovering being
the form for respect, envelopment, or indeed muffling, was adopted.
Though generally in the Orient respect requires the feet to be
bared, the head must be covered. The Israelite practice is famil-
iar, and many other peoples, e. g., the Malabarese and the Malays,
preserve covering on their heads in their temples and pagodas
to show reverence. Although the New-Irelanders in respect take
off the usual head-gear, they place their hands on their heads as a
more honorable covering. Quakers, in avoiding the usual Chris-
tian ceremony of uncovering on taking an affirmation and on
other religious occasions, use a pagan ceremony by insisting on
keeping on their hats.

The Thibetans when before the dolai-lama remove their hats,
cross their arms over the breast, and stick out the tongue drawn
to a point. A collation of the known cases of the curious salute
by the pointed tongue leads to the suggestion that it is connected
with the conception before mentioned that the subject is too great
to admit of speech. The extended tongue prevents speech as com-
pletely and even more obviously than does the covering of the
mouth by the hand. It is, however, possible that the gesture

636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

symbolically signifies reaching out for a good taste, which, also
has been discussed. This gesture is common among the Austra-
lians, who are said to stick out the tongue in respect, not in de-
rision, as we would regard the action, as also did Isaiah in his
query, " Against whom make you a wide mouth and draw out the
tongue ? " But close observers report that the Australian tribes
wholly unaffected by Europeans do not thrust forward the tongue,
but extend it downward from the widely opened mouth as in the
preparation for licking. The action of these people, perhaps the
lowest of all humanity, is similar to the tasting and sniffing by
the subhuman animals to distinguish friends.

Cyrus beheaded two satraps because they omitted to place
their hands inside their sleeves when they saluted him. Captain
Speke had trouble in Uganda lest he should not be admitted into
the king's presence wearing his usual dress, without the conceal-
ment of his trousers by flowing robes. Probably the origin of
these rules of etiquette was the restriction from free motion of
the arms and legs of the subjects, so as to insure greater safety
to the ruler. In the one hundred and seventieth of the Arabian
Nights' Entertainments Prince Camaralzaman showed respect
for his father by keeping his hands joined behind his back and
covered by his sleeves, but when he became angry with the king
he unclasped his hands from behind and rolled his sleeves up
on his arms. This is the fighting attitude, and shows that the
posture and muffling of respect were adopted because they were
the converse of the free pose appropriate for contention. With
the same concept a Sakaptin chief, in the early part of this cent-
ury, threw his robe down on the ground as a sign of displeasure,
though not intending an attack.

Other considerations may be mentioned in the direct line of
militancy so often discussed in the Synthetic Philosophy, but not
definitely in this connection. Apart from the purely ornamental
head-gear, such as feathers, horse-hair, fur, and other attach-
ments, the earliest coverings for the head were for defensive pur-
poses. The abandonment of defensive as well as of offensive
armor, though once a mark of defeat and subjection, is now more
generally a sign of peace and friendship. Some African tribes
not only ostentatiously lay down all weapons but remove the up-
per portion of their clothing to show that neither arms nor armor
are concealed. Some formal military salutes still prevailing may
be consulted upon the same topic. The theory of these is to ren-
der the saluter actually or symbolically powerless for the time.
This is the case with the firing of unshotted guns, the dropping
of the sword-point, and presenting the musket. The common
military salute, in which the empty hand, with palm outward, is
raised to the visor, is less objective and more symbolical. Simi-

GREETING BY GESTURE. 637

larly, the special naval salute by lowering sails and manning
yards places the vessel in a position of inaction. In the same
manner the removal of his helmet left the ancient warrior de-
fenseless in the most vulnerable, often the only protected, part
of his person. This action, therefore, would present a better
argument for the surrender than for the beggary theory, and it
is strengthened by the fact that women, who did not wear hel-
mets, have not generally been required to remove their head-gear
in public. It is also to be noticed, in reference to the intercon-
nection of ceremonials, that the motion of removing the hat is
normally downward, thus including the concept of assuming an
inferior height before discussed. The crest, which often showed
the warrior's cognizance, as the flag shows that of nations, was
lowered, as the flag is, in formal respect. A pretended or sym-
bolized uncovering and lowering appears when the English and
French proletaires and peasants pull a lock of their hair in servile
obeisance to their superiors.

The special privilege in old Spain of wearing the hat in the
presence of the sovereign may be compared with the limitation
of sitting in the French court, before mentioned. Spanish gran-
dees were distinguished by the cherished prerogative of wearing
their hats before their king when his hat was on, though not
when he was uncovered. Mr. H. Ling Roth, in his excellent
paper On Salutations, falls into a small error on this subject. It
was not, in the time of the Tudors, " the custom in England, when
a gentleman lost his bonnet, for all those who were with him to
doff theirs," nor was it simply the omission of that act as one of
ordinary politeness which indicated the coming fall of Thomas
Cromwell. That the courtiers should retain their hats while he was
uncovered, was much more distinctly than mere rudeness the as-
sertion that they did not consider him to be their ruler. All am-
bassadors have the privilege, though now seldom used, of putting
on their hats when they read their reception speeches, the sover-
eign principal being then more specially represented than on any
other occasion. When the Cossacks met for counsel, not being
then an army but a brotherhood, they kept on their hats, but
their ataman, when addressing them and explaining his cause,
removed his head-covering. When he asserted command as the
head of the army he donned his hat, and the same members of
the council, before covered, removed theirs.

In most parts of the civilized world the hat, in ordinary greet-
ing, is now seldom wholly removed from the head, and the latter
is but slightly inclined. The action is much abbreviated, and
doffing is simulated by a touch of the brim, or by a great variety
of jerks or waves of the hand and arm to which the head-cover-
ing is the point d'appui. These motions are full of interest to

638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the gesture-reader. They generally suppose some degree of real
or perfunctory respect, but may indicate pride as well as hu-
mility, familiar affection or cold formality, welcome or aversion,
even irony or derision. The Poles and Cossacks use the phrase,
" With the forehead to you/' when, in fact, there is no "bow made.
This is on the same principle as the phrase, " I kiss your hands,"
when the hands are not kissed. Both expressions are relics of
actions, and neither means more than the English " my respects."
Likewise, through the Eussian Empire, " I fall at your feet," is
often said to men, and " I kiss your feet " to women, though those
performances do not take place.

The above considerations lead to the conclusion that several
known motions expressive of emotions, both separately and to-
gether, tend to explain the bow. Furthermore, these motions, and
the emotions or concepts expressed by them, seem to be as ancient
as any known to have been common among men. It will, there-
fore, appear that the genesis of our bow does not appear exclu-
sively and among all peoples in the groveling of the whipped
hound or the cowering of the dastard slave. Perhaps on examin-
ing all the tribes of men a theory that prostration was but an
exaggerated bow might be as well maintained as one that the
bow is a relic and symbol of prostration, but it is now only sug-
gested that the two expressions may be independent.

Clapping Hands. — At this point an attempt may be made
to explain the curious custom of clapping the hands in salu-
tation.

Among the Uvinza, "when two ' grandees ' meet, the junior
leans forward, bends his knees, and places the palms of his hands
on the ground on each side of his feet, while the senior claps his
own hands six or seven times. They then change round, and the
junior slaps himself first under the left armpit, and then under
the right. But, when a ' swell ' meets an inferior, the superior
only claps his hands, and does not fully return the salutation by
following the motions of the one who first salutes. On two com-
moners meeting, they pat their stomachs, then clap hands at each
other, and finally shake " (i. e., take) " hands. These greetings
are observed to an unlimited extent, and the sound of patting and
clapping is almost unceasing." Serpa Pinto found this ceremonial
clapping in violent exercise among the Ambuellas. Paul du
Chaillu reports the salute of the Ishogos to be clapping the
hands together and stretching them out alternately several times.
Among the Walunga, in the morning, on every side a continuous
clapping of hands goes on, with the accompaniment of " Kwi-tata,
Tcwi-tata ? " which is their mode of saying, " How d'ye do ? " If
a chief passes, they drop on their knees, bow their heads to tho
ground, clap vigorously, and humbly mutter, "Kwi-tata, Tcwi-

GREETING BY GESTURE. 639

Ma ? " The clapping distinguishes the ceremony from that of
mere prostration.

When the people of Londa wish to be excessively polite they
"bring a quantity of ashes or clay in a piece of skin, and, taking
up handfuls, rub it on the chest and upper front part of each arm ;
others in saluting drum their ribs with their elbows ; while still
others touch the ground with one cheek after the other, and clap
their hands. The chiefs go through the semblance of rubbing the
sand on the arms, but only make a feint of picking it up. Among
the Warna, an inferior in saluting a superior takes a piece of
dried mud in his right hand ; he first rubs his own left arm above
the elbow and his left side, then, throwing the mud into his left
hand, he in like manner rubs the right arm and side, all the time
muttering away inquiries about his friend's health. Each time
the chief's name is mentioned every one begins rubbing his breast
with mud.

From these notes the elements of the clapping pantomime may
be resolved into, first, beating or slapping the arms and upper
parts of the breast, sometimes rubbing them with mud — these
being ancient modes of expressing grief — and afterward the noise
of the slaps is simulated by clapping the hands. It is well known
that many peoples act both in pantomime and with speeches to
disguise their happiness and thereby escape the notice of malevo-
lent demons. It is also known that among certain tribes, on the
meeting of friends who have been long absent, markedly when
they have been in danger, the welcoming party gash their arms
and breasts so as to draw blood, which placates the jealous gods
on the joyous occasion. "When the actions become simulated and
symbolic, the claps in the examples cited may represent the
wounding strokes, and the mud-stains imitate those of blood.
When the superstition has decayed, such actions, and afterward
their simulation, may be used as any happy greetings.

It is not forgotten, however, that clapping hands is used for
applause and rejoicing, as in Ezekiel, xxv, 6 : " Because thou hast
clapped thine hands, and stamped with the feet, and rejoiced in
heart." But " clap at " is used with hiss in Job, xxvii, 23, and also
in Lamentations, ii, 15, to signify derision. In this respect the
gesture shows the general nature of gesture-signs which, accord-
ing to the manner of use and the context, can be applied with
many shades of significance — indeed, by very slight changes can
express opposite meanings. It is at least as flexible as oral speech,
which gains the same result by collocations of words and modu-
lations of voice.

Joy-weeping. — One of the most curious of the demonstrations
upon the meeting of friends is that called " joy- weeping," which
also may be connected with the dread of jealous demons. Cry-

640 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ing, "both, with tears and with howls at such times of gladness,
is known in many lands. It has been lately reported among
the Andamanese and was noticed by Cabeza de Vaca in 1527
among the Caddoes of Texas and Louisiana. It may also be con-
strued as mentioned about the ancient Israelites in the twenty-
ninth, thirty-third, and forty-fifth chapters of Genesis, where
weeping is recorded at the meeting of Jacob and Rachel, Jacob
and Esau, and Joseph and Benjamin. Singularly enough, the
same practice was found existing fifty years ago in central Aus-
tralia, where parents upon meeting children after a long absence
fell upon their necks and wept bitterly. The Tahitians cut them-
selves with shark's teeth and indulge in loud wailing to testify
gladness at the arrival of a friend, and the New-Zealanders scar-
ify themselves with lava on such meetings.

Dr. E. B. Tylor explains the practice as mourning for those
who had died during the interval of separation, thus following
Hennepin in his account of La Salle's visit to the Biskatronge
nation in 1685 as follows: "At their arrival those people fell
a-crying most bitterly for a quarter of an hour. This is their
custom whenever there comes any strangers afar off amongst
them, because their arrival puts them in mind of their deceased
relations which they imagine to be upon a great journey, and
whose return they expect every hour." The proceeding is ex-
plained in the account by Alexander Henry of the Assiniboin
feasts in 177G which were begun by the violent weeping of the
whole party, and the reason they gave was that it was in memory
of their deceased relatives whose absence was brought fresh into
their minds. This religious ceremonial of the Indians was mis-
taken by some travelers for salutation, which it only resembled
as the formal grace before meat resembles the modern " good-
morning " or the libation among the Romans was analogous to
the " salve " of their daily life.

Hennepin's explanation does not apply to the large majority
of the cases known, and indeed is properly grief -weeping. If joy-
weeping is not to be classed with the tricks to deceive the jealous
gods, it possibly arises from the familiar agitation in which the
signs of extreme joy and mirth are similar to those of grief.
Most of us have laughed until tears rolled down our cheeks. Such
exhibitions may have induced the real or imitative expression of
joy by crying. In this connection it is curious that the English
word " greeting," defined as a kind salutation, is still preserved in
the lowland Scotch dialect with the sense of weeping or mourning.

The Heart.— Gestures of salutation, the motions of which are
directly connected with the heart, have some special interest.

In some Oriental countries the mere bow- was not held to be
enough. Sometimes the right hand was placed across the head.

GREETING BY GESTURE. 64 i

Sometimes tlie hand was put first to the forehead and then to the
heart — perhaps to symbolize that intellect and love are at the dis-
posal of the one addressed. In this simple form, but as an invo-
cation, the sign has been translated as " may my head be the
penalty if my heart be false ! " A similar gesture, imitating with
the hand the act of cutting the throat, and sometimes before and
sometimes afterward touching the heart, is represented as having
the same significance, " On my head be it ! "

In Greece the ancient style of greeting a priest is still observed
by placing the hand on the breast and inclining forward ; and the
Lander party in the Niger basin were obliged to bend forward
and to place their hands with solemnity on their heads and
breasts. Tribes of Eskimos in 1833 saluted by patting their
breasts and pointing to the heavens. In the same year a Kansas
warrior grasped hands with the party greeted and then pressed
his own bare breast. In 1886 tribes of eastern equatorial Africa,
with the same intent of friendship, grasped hands and rapped
their own breasts. All these gestures meant that the heart was
" good," perhaps poetically then it beat in sympathy. The Fue-
gians, as a greeting of friendship, pat their own breasts, conclud-
ing by three hand-slaps given at the same time on the breast and
back of the friend, then bare their own bosoms for a return of
the slaps. A Texan tribe, in 1685, expressed friendship by laying
their hands on their hearts, and evidently expected La Salle's
party to respond in the same manner, which was done. A Ha-va-
su-pai, of Arizona, grasps the hand of a friend on meeting, mov-
ing the hand up and down in time to the words of his greeting ;
and, as he lets it go, lifts his own hollow palm toward his mouth,
then, with a sudden and graceful motion, passes it down over his
heart. Here, in addition to the concluding emphasis connected
with the heart, there is a motion which might be mistaken for
hand-kissing, and also the nearest approach to "shaking" the
hand among savages or barbarians which has been accurately
reported. But to beat the time of a rhythmic formula is very
different from the English pump-handle shake, even when it was
less hideous than the last " fad " with the raised elbow, and its
intent is the very opposite of Mr. Spencer's struggle.

Two of the special signs for " good " in the sign-language of
the Indians may be mentioned as in point. Hold the extended
right hand, back up, in front of and close to the left breast, fin-
gers extended, touching, and pointing to left (index-finger usually
rests against the breast in this position) ; move the hand briskly,
well out to front and right, keeping it in the same horizontal
plane. Concept, " Level with the heart." Or pass the opened
right hand, palm downward, through an arc of about ninety
degrees from the heart, about two feet horizontally forward and

642 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

9

to the right. "Heart easy or smooth." "My bosom's lord sits
lightly on its throne/'

The kalmucks salute their high chiefs by pressing the forehead
with the clinched hand, and then touching the chief's side with
the same hand. The chief responds by placing one of his hands
on the saluter's shoulders. This may be translated as " My head
is dependent on the emotion of your heart " ; and the response is,
" I accept your offering, and recognize that I possess you."

Intimately connected with the imagery of the heart is the
union by exchange of blood. In ancient Persia, as in modern
Africa, it was common to open a vein and then present the blood
to be drunk by the friend. This was and is often mutual. Per-
haps it is straining the illustration to infer that when the Wanika,
after the hand-grasp, press together the balls of their respective
thumbs, it is to effect the union of the pulsations. It is, however,
in point that the Norse pledge of friendship was to allow the
blood to flow between the pierced and grasped hands, and it has
been conjectured that " striking hands," often alluded to in the
Old Testament (e. g., Proverbs, vi, 1) as a ceremony of covenant,
meant an actual intermingling of blood from the pierced palms,
or at least was a relic and symbol of that form. But it is fanciful
to explain the simple hand-grasp from this blood-mixing ; indeed,
all symbolism should be closely scrutinized. Stanley reports that
the natives of Panga, as a peace greeting — being at a distance
from the party greeted — poured water on their own heads and
sprinkled their bodies with it. Much of the symbolism about the
solvent and cleansing qualities of water, including origins of lus-
tration and baptism, might be deduced from this performance,
but it was simply the sign of coolness and refreshment elsewhere
mentioned in these pages.

Miscellaneous Salutes. — It is impossible, within present
limits, to detail the world's many forms of gestural salutation.
They, like all gesture-signs, show different conceptions of the
same general intent and different modes of expressing the same
concept. They are also in many cases so abbreviated and modu-
lated as to be intelligible in their present forms only through
comparison and investigation. A few salutes having special inter-
est may be mentioned.

The important mystic agency of saliva has before been noticed
in connection with the hand-grasp. It is too large a topic to be
now dwelt upon ; but some examples may be given of its imme-
diate connection with salutation. Among the Masai, spitting
expresses the greatest good-will and the best of wishes. It takes
the place of the compliments of the season. They spit when they
meet, and do the same on parting. In some of the South Sea
islands they spit on the hands and then rub the face of the com-

GREETING BY GESTURE. 643

plimented person. Schweinfurth says of the Dyoor that mutual
spitting betokened the most affectionate good-will.

The inhabitants of Hainan gracefully greet a guest by extend-
ing the arms, the hands open with the finger-tips touching, or
nearly so, and drawing them inward with an inviting motion.
They bid farewell by extending the open hands with the palms
upward and slightly inclined outward, in a movement as if hand-
ing the friend on his way. In arctic America there is a queer
example of returning a kiss for a blow. A stranger coming to
the village is regaled with chant and dance, after which he folds
his arms, and the head Ancoot hits him as hard as he can on the
cheek, often knocking him down. The actors then change parts,
and the visitor knocks him in the same way, after which they
kiss (probably on the cheek, but not described), and the ceremony
is over.

In this connection the supposed hand-kissing struggle to ex-
plain the hand-grasp may again be mentioned with an additional
criticism. The hand-grasp was common among those peoples of
the world who now use it in greeting before altruism had made
so much progress as to reverse many of the old conventions of
precedence.

After examination of the whole subject there appears to be
significance in the connection before suggested between the offer-
ing of the unarmed hand and the strictly military salute with
sword, rifle, and cannon. They all display temporary defenseless-
ness, though not now through fear, but the reverse — trust and
confidence — and they are always returned with rivalry only in
the demonstration of amity. This is but one instance to prove
that militancy is not a mere incarnation of evil and drag upon
civilization. Spencer accuses it of paralyzing humanity through
fear, of originating deception and lies, and of antagonism to jus-
tice and mercy. But militancy has shown a most interesting and
instructive evolution within itself. Modern armies, by the edu-
cation and discipline enforced, furnish to the world perhaps as
large a number of really valuable men as they cost.

It will be noticed that in proportion to advance in civilization
and culture, gestural salutations — as is also true of the verbal —
are exchanged or returned, thus denoting a mutual sentiment or
sympathy. A gesture of greeting is now seldom made exclu-
sively by one class to be merely received by another, but meets
with reciprocity, though often in abbreviation. It is not con-
tended that the most degrading theory of the origin of some of
the gestures treated of may not be correctly applied to some
tribes and regions, though it is suggested, from the information
given by sign-language and from many compared facts, that
among other peoples those gestures originated in different and

644 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

independent concepts. But if cowardice and slavishness gave the
true and only explanation, still more pointed would be the lesson
taught by the modern general exchange of the same courteous
action between strong and weak, rich and poor.

The history of salutations does not directly show the contest
of good and evil or of any principles, but it illustrates the tran-
sition from egoism to altruism. Whatever was a custom, men
considered to be right, while it lasted. Men have not at any time
chosen between industrialism and militarism, but an evolution
has proceeded in industrialism and militarism themselves as also
in peoples, who have advanced, though slowly and with stumbles,
from lower to higher planes of culture. Differing environments
affected their earliest conceptions and practices, and expedited or
delayed their march. Those peoples who have reached civiliza-
tion and enlightenment can still find the representatives of their
early greetings among remote savages, and perhaps trace some of
the salutations above mentioned to subhuman ancestors. Ages
before the great poet wrote, the human race obeyed the precept, to

"Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die."

Note. — A similar study of verbal salutations, inculcating the same lessons as the pres-
ent article on gestural greetings, has been published by the same author in the American
Anthropologist for July, 1890, under the title of Customs of Courtesy.

[Concluded.]

-♦♦*-

NON-CONDUCTORS OF HEAT.

By JOHN M. OEDWAY,

PEOFESSOR OF APPLIED CHEMISTRY IN TULANE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA.

IT is a matter of common observation that a hot body continu-
ally gives off its heat to things around it, until at length the
giver and the receivers all come to a common temperature. This
gradual equalization may be brought about in three different
ways : In the first place, heat is thrown off in every possible
direction from every point of a heated body by what we call
radiation. Secondly, when air, water, or any other fluid is in
contact with a hot surface that is not directly over it, the touch-
ing particles become warm and light, and move away to give
place to others. This carrying away heat by the successive
particles of a fluid is called convection. In the third place, when
a solid substance is placed against anything of a higher tempera-
ture, its nearest parts are warmed and give up a portion of the
heat received to those parts lying next to them; and these,
again, share their gain with those next in order ; and so on, till

NON-CONDUCTORS OF HEAT. 645

finally the outer surface heats whatever is in contact with it.
Such conveyance of heat from particle to particle, without sen-
sible motion, is termed conduction.

Strictly speaking, according to modern theory, radiant heat
is a peculiar kind of undulation communicated to a supposed ex-
ceedingly subtile, all-pervading ether ; and conduction is an oscil-
lation of the molecules of the conductor itself. But, though we
no longer consider heat to be a substance, it is convenient to use
the old terms figuratively in describing the phenomena, just as
we still say the sun rises and sets, though it is the earth that
moves.

When we sit near an open fire, we are warmed by radiation
through the intervening air, while the air itself is heated by con-
tact with the fire and passes up the chimney. So radiation and
convection, or radiation and conduction, may go on at the same
time, and when cooling takes place it is not always easy to tell
how much of the effect is due to each of the causes respectively.
Hence, substances that are put around hot bodies to retard the
change of temperature are often called indiscriminately non-con-
ductors, though in fact they may act partly by preventing con-
vection or by intercepting radiation. Practically, indeed, it is of
little consequence to decide exactly how the loss of heat is pre-
vented, but, in the full study of retentive coverings, we must not
altogether lose sight of the distinction between mere conduction
and general transmission.

It is a matter of much interest as well as of economical im-
portance to find out what substances are most suitable to keep
hot bodies warm and cold bodies cool ; and several methods have
been devised for making either absolute or comparative trials.
After due consideration of the plans used by different experi-
menters, the writer has adopted, for the many determinations
which he has had occasion to make, an apparatus which may be
arranged in three different ways : First, a short, cylindrical me-
tallic vessel, with the flat ends vertical, is kept at a constant high
temperature by a continual current of steam or hot water passing
in at the bottom and out at the top. The non-conductor, of a
regular thickness, say one inch, is applied to one of the flat faces
of the heater. The other surface of the covering is in contact
with a thin brass box, or calorimeter, filled with a known quan-
tity of water to receive the transmitted heat. The number of de-
grees which the water is raised in an hour gives a definite meas-
ure of the amount of heat that the covering allows to pass
through.

Secondly, in trying liquids or air for their conducting power
it is desirable to get rid of convection by heating from above, so
that the hottest part of the fluid shall be and remain at top.

646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Therefore the heater is suspended with its used face downward
and exactly horizontal. The calorimeter, with its face also hori-
zontal, is placed at any chosen distance "below the heater, and is
furnished with a curb of well-varnished pasteboard extending up
a little higher than the face of the heater. This curb is of a
somewhat larger diameter than the hot box, so that there is a
free space all around, and very little heat can be conducted by it.

Thirdly, in making practical tests of coverings for steam-
pipes the non-conductor is put entirely around the pipe and the
calorimeter is made in two parts with concave sides to fit the cov-
ering. Of course, in all cases the whole apparatus is surrounded
by cotton-wool or woolen blankets to prevent the disturbing in-
fluence of the surrounding air.

With the first arrangement, if the space between the calorim-
eter and the heater is filled with air only, which is confined by
a curb of paper, but is free to circulate within the inclosure, the
heat passes over rapidly, especially when the heater is at a very
high temperature, while in the second apparatus the transmission
is slow. In the former case, convection has full scope; in the
latter, the air is stagnant and the heat passes downward by con-
duction and radiation. Therefore, still air has very little trans-
mitting power, and confined air which is free to move around
within the inclosure conveys heat readily.

Yet it is a not uncommon belief that, as air is a poor conductor
of heat, a mere inclosed air-space around a hot or a very cold body
suffices to prevent change of temperature. It is said by some
that an ice-pitcher or a refrigerator needs only a double wall and
no filling between. And we occasionally meet with loose state-
ments like the following : " Confined air has long been regarded
by scientific and practical men as one of the best non-conductors
of heat." But it should be remembered that imprisonment is not
always close confinement. The air must be fettered so that it can
not stir.

Now, if we fill the space in either the first or the second appa-
ratus with cotton or fine wool, we shall find the transmission even
less than with still air. And yet the fibrous matter may actually
occupy only a hundredth part of the space which it apparently
fills, and the fibers can touch the heated surface and each other
only in a few points. Therefore the specific conducting power of
wool or cotton can have very little to do with their capability of
keeping back heat. We know not precisely what the conducting
power of the solid matter of cotton may be, for we can not com-
press the fibers far enough to destroy their elasticity and expel all
the included air. But the woods are very similar in substance,
and some of them are two thirds as dense as fully compacted cot-
ton would be. One of the dry, hard woods, heavy enough to sink

NON-CONDUCTORS OF HEAT. 647

in water, was found to have about four times the transmitting
power of loose cotton. Were the transmission due to the sub-
stance of the fibers themselves, it would be increased by packing
more in the same space. But, in fact, it is found that it is some-
what diminished by moderate crowding.

It would appear, then, that the efficiency of light non-conduct-
ors must be owing mostly to the imprisoned air which really oc-
cupies all but a small fraction of the space ; and the stiller the air
is held, the better is the effect.

Of course, the amount of friction which fibers can oppose to
the motion of the entrapped fluid depends on their minute struct-
ure and arrangement. Thus in cotton they are long, fiat, twisted,
irregular in breadth, and variously bent. And as to fineness, it
was found by counting and weighing some Sea Island cotton
fibers averaging about an inch and a half in length, that it would
take seventeen thousand to weigh a grain. Wool is scaly and very
crinkly. Down is made up of flat threads with innumerable short,
loose branches. The heads of the common cat-tail ( Typlia latifolia),
which make a good non-conductor, consist of brown seeds, each
having a stalk with very spreading branches. The seeds, with
their appendages, are so very fine that eight hundred of them
weigh only one grain. They may well float, as each one, for its
weight, presents a very extensive surface to the air ; and, for the
same reason, in mass they serve to keep the air stagnant.

Ground cork and some other barks, and the sawdust of the
soft woods, as well as the charcoal made of these substances, are
very good retainers of heat. Lampblack also works well. When
the thing to be kept hot is at a very high temperature, some light,
incombustible powders are very suitable. Among the best of
these are fossil meal and the calcined magnesia and magnesium
carbonate of the druggists. Fossil meal consists of the silicious
skeletons of microscopic vegetables, called diatoms, exceedingly
various in shape and size, the very largest of them hardly reach-
ing the length of the hundredth of an inch. It is found abun-
dantly in some peat meadows and in the bottoms of ponds. Both
fossil meal and magnesium carbonate have been largely used in
covering steam-pipes.

Obviously, when the same light substance is tried in both the
first and second apparatus above mentioned, and the results dif-
fer, it must be owing to the inability of the substance to hold the
included air still in the first arrangement. So powdered plum-
bago, or black lead, which is very slippery, shows nearly twice as
much transmissive power in one case as in the other. Loosened
asbestus fiber also lets through about twice as much heat in the
vertical arrangement as in the horizontal. Yet this fiber may be
split up exceedingly fine ; but the great difference in its behavior

648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as compared with cotton or wool must be owing mnch less to its
own greater specific conducting power than to the smoothness
and inelasticity of its fibers. It has too slight a hold on the in-
cluded air. The more finely shredded it is the better it works ;
but our experiments have proved that it is not to be recommended
as a non-conductor. And yet asbestus is often spoken of as though
its excellence in this respect were unquestionable ; but, because
this wonderful mineral is very useful in many ways by reason of
its incombustibility, it does not follow that it has any magic vir-
tue in its other relations to heat. Asbestus paper intercepts heat
somewhat better than the loose fiber ; but a great many layers
must be put together, and then the virtue is by no means com-
mensurate with the cost. It is sometimes recommended as a
suitable article to put between floors to prevent the spreading of
a possible fire ; but those who propose it for this use seem to over-
look the fact that the efficiency of non-conductors is nearly pro-
portional to their thickness, and, though an inch might be of some
service, one fiftieth of an inch can do very little good.

Fibrous matters and powders in the loose state are somewhat
troublesome to confine in the form of coverings, and hence they
are sometimes consolidated into sheets or blocks which can be
handled without breaking and applied easily. Hair-felt, which is
made in thick sheets from the hair which tanners scrape from
hides, is cheap and is very serviceable when the heat is not scorch-
ing. Paper pulp has been formed into very thick, hollow, half
cylinders to put around steam -pipes. Carbonate of magnesium
and fossil meal cohere when moistened and slightly compressed,
and they may be made into slabs with the addition of a very
small percentage of hair or asbestus to give toughness. Such a
paste may be plastered directly on steam pipes or boilers and
allowed to dry, the fiber serving to prevent cracking ; but the
greater compactness of light materials so consolidated renders
them less effective, especially when a heavy cementing substance
is added, like clay or plaster of Paris.

Of non-conducting substances that are already in the solid
form, the light woods are often used advantageously. It should
be noticed that most of them conduct heat much better along the
grain than across it. Thus a cross-section of Liriodendron, or
yellow poplar, was found to transmit heat nearly twice as fast as
a board of the same thickness sawed lengthwise. Cork is expen-
sive and hard to get in large pieces ; but it is far preferable to
wood, as it is lighter and more elastic and does not absorb water.
Very porous and light bricks confine heat much better than those
that are hard burned, but they must be kept dry.

The presence of moisture in a non-conductor greatly impairs
its usefulness, as every one knows who has attempted to hold a

NON-CONDUCTORS OF HEAT. 649

hot body with a damp cloth. Count Rumford, who long ago did
much valuable work in the experimental study of heat, concluded
that fluids have no conducting power at all, but transmit heat
solely by convection ; and, accordingly, water is still sometimes
spoken of as an exceedingly poor conductor. But later investi-
gators have disproved the correctness of that idea. Our own
trials show that, when convection is obviated, water transmits in
a given time six times as much heat as hair-felt of the same
thickness, and nearly eight times as much as still air. Others
have found that bisulphide of carbon and ether transmit heat
even better than water; but most liquid substances are slower
conductors. Thus it takes more than twice as long for a given
amount of heat to pass through cotton-seed oil or lard oil as
through water.

As to the gases, some physicists seem to have proved that heat
passes through air more readily than through a vacuum, while
hydrogen has six times as much transmissive power, and carbonic
acid half as much as air ; but none of them used apparatus that
would give absolutely certain results.

To show more clearly the retentive power of various sub-
stances, we subjoin the following table, in which the first column
of figures shows the net percentage of solid matter in a given
space. The second column of figures gives the number of English
units of heat transmitted in one hour through one square foot of
the covering one inch thick, the average difference of temperature
between the heater and the water in the calorimeter being 100°
Fahr. By the English unit of heat is meant as much heat as will
raise the temperature of one pound of water 1° Fahr. Of course,
the smaller the number in the last column the better is the sub-
stance for keeping a body warm or cold.

In some of the experiments the source of heat was steam at
310° Fahr. In the others a stream of water at about 176° Fahr.
was kept running through the heater.

It is plain that in choosing non-conductors for practical serv-
ice we should take into account something more than their heat-
retaining power. They should be of materials that are abundant
and cheap ; clean and inodorous ; light and easy of application ;
not liable to become compacted by jarring, or to change by long
keeping ; not attractive to insects or mice ; not likely to scorch,
char, or ignite at the long-continued highest temperature to which
they may be exposed ; not liable to spontaneous combustion when
partly soaked with oil; not prone to attract moisture from the
air ; and not capable of exerting any chemical action on surfaces
with which they are placed in contact. There is no one thing
which combines all the desirable good qualities, but there is a
considerable range of substances which fulfill most of the require-

TOL. XXXTIII. — 44

650

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

NON-CONDUCTORS ONE INCH THICK.

Still air

Confined air ,

" " = 310°

Wool = 310°

Absorbent cotton ,

Raw cotton ,

it u

Live-geese feathers = 310°

u « (i

Cat-tail seeds and hairs

Scoured hair, not felted

Hair-felt

Lampblack = 310°

Cork, ground

Cork, solid

Cork charcoal = 310° ,

White-pine charcoal = 310°

Rice-chaff ,

Cypress (Taxodium) shavings

" " sawdust

" " board

" " cross-section

Yellow poplar (Liriodendron) sawdust. . . .

" " " board

" " " cross-section

" Tunera " wood, board

Slag wool, best

Carbonate of magnesium

Calcined magnesia = 310°

" Magnesia covering," light

" heavy

Fossil meal = 310°

Zinc white = 310°

Ground chalk = 310°

Asbestus in still air

" in movable air

Dry plaster of Paris = 310°

Plumbago in still air

" in movable air = 310°

Coarse sand = 310°

Water, still

Starch jelly, very firm, "

Gum-arabic mucilage, "

Solution sugar, 70 per cent, "

Glycerin, "

Castor oil, "

Cotton-seed oil, "

Lard oil, "

Aniline, "

Mineral sperm oil, "

Oil of turpentine, "

Net cub.

:n. of Heat units trans-

solid tut

itter mitted per sq.

in 101

). It. per hour.

43

108

...

203

4-;

! 36

2-t

! 36

2

44

1

48

5

41

2

60

2-]

I 50

9-(

; 52

8-J

i 56

5-(

> 41

45

49

5-:

J 50

li-i

) 58

14-1

3 78

7

60

20--

L 84

si-;

5 83

31-*

I 145

16-!

J 75

36-'

t 76

30-'

t 141

79*'

t 156

5-'

J 50

6

50

2-:

I 52

8-1

> 58

13 <

J 78

6

60

8-1

i 72

25-;

5 80

3

56

3-(

5 99

8-

L 210

86-f

J 131

so-i

5 134

26 •■

L 296

52-i

) 264

835

S45

290

251

197

136

129

125

122

115

95

ments. For steam-pipes there have been many more or less suit-
able coverings in the market. But one should receive with much
allowance the representations of dealers, who sometimes continue
to advertise what has been proved to be of inferior value. Not
uncommonly they are anxious to sell that on which they can make
the most profit rather than that which is most efficient.

ON VODU-WOBSHIP. 651

ON VODU-WORSHIP.

Bt Hon. Majok A. B. ELLIS.

SIR SPENCER ST. JOHN'S book Hayti, or the Black Repub-
lic, brought prominently before the English-speaking peoples
of the Old and New Worlds the subject of the so-called vaudoux
or voodoo worship which prevails in the island of Hayti-Santo Do-
mingo ; and the numerous articles published from time to time by
Mr. G. W. Cable in Harper's and the Century Magazines have
shown us what the " voodoo-worship " in Louisiana is like ; but,
as neither of these two authors has, apparently, had any personal
acquaintance with that part of the west coast of Africa from
which vodu is derived, they have, very naturally, been unable to
more than describe it as they found it on this side of the At-
lantic. They have been unable to tell us to what language the
word vodu belongs, what it means, and what the various practices
which in Hayti and Louisiana are roughly grouped together
under the designation of vaudoux-worship really are. I fancy I
can recollect an article, but by whom written I can not remember,
in which the writer derived the word vaudoux from Pays de Vaud j
and, as some light seems to be required on the subject, it is here
proposed, though now perhaps rather late in the day, to give it.

The word vodu * belongs to the Ewe language, which is spoken
on the Slave Coast of West Africa, between the river Volta on the
west and the kingdom of Porto Novo on the east, and extends in-
land, as far as is yet known, about one hundred miles. It is de-
rived from the verb vo — to inspire fear — and is used in just the
same way as English-speaking people use the word "fetich" —
that is to say, it is used as a descriptive noun " god," and also as
an adjective in the sense of sacred or belonging to a god. Thus
any native god may be described as a vodu, and his image, para-
phernalia, and sacred tract of bush called vodu. A priest is
termed vodu-no — "He who stays with the vodu." The word is
not an epithet of any particular god, it is a general term ; and it is,
therefore, incorrect to say that "it is the name of an imaginary
being of vast supernatural powers residing in the form of a harm-
less snake." No doubt the python-god, worshiped by the inhab-
itants of the southeastern districts of Ewe territory, may very
correctly be described as a vodu ; but it is not more a vodu than
Khebioso, So, Legba, Bo, Hunti, Wu, and the other gods of the
Ewe pantheon. The expression " vodu-worship " means, then,
" god- worship," which is a rather comprehensive term.

* The Greek circumflex here indicates a highly nasal intonation. The u, as in all
We3t African languages, is pronounced like oo in English.

652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Vodu worship, in so far as it relates to the worship of a snake,
was undoubtedly introduced into Hayti by slaves from Whydah
and Ardra, or Allada. Moreau de St. Mdry, an old author who de-
scribed Hayti while it was still a French colony, and who is
quoted by Sir S. St. John and Mr. Cable, distinctly says it was
introduced by the " Aradas " ; and it is only in the neighborhood
of those two old kingdoms that python-worship is to be found on
the Slave Coast at the present day. Whydah and Ardra were, at
the beginning of the eighteenth century, two small states situ-
ated near the southeastern corner of Ewe territory. Whydah,
which had a sea front of some thirty miles, extended inland about
seven miles, its northern boundary being a lagoon which ran east
and west just beyond the town of Savi, called Xavier by old
writers. Ardra, or Allada, lay inland of Whydah, and extended
as far northward as the marshy belt called the Ko — that is, to
about thirty-five miles in a straight line from the sea. Its capital,
Ardra or Allada, formerly a large and populous town, is now a
miserable village, with a population of some three hundred souls.

The inhabitants of these two kingdoms were essentially com-
mercial, and acted as middle-men between the inland tribes and
the Europeans who frequented Whydah in their ships. Of these
interior tribes, Dahomi, about 1625, became the most prominent.
It gradually subjugated the surrounding peoples, and, in 1723,
Guadja Trudo, the then King of Dahomi, was sufficiently power-
ful to demand of the Ardras a right of way and free traffic to
the sea. The Ardras refused. The Dahomis invaded their terri-
tory in 1724, defeated them in a great battle, and the kingdom of
Ardra was at an end. Three years later, in February, 1727,
Guadja Trudo made a similar demand upon the Whydahs ; the
king of the latter also refused compliance : his territory was at
once invaded and the kingdom overthrown. These two invasions
fix for us the date at which snake- worship was introduced into
Hayti ; for thousands of Ardras and Whydahs, prisoners of war,
were sold to the slave-traders and shipped across the Atlantic.
For a good many years before the downfall of these kingdoms
Whydah had been the chief, probably the only, slave emporium
of the Slave Coast, and large numbers of slaves had thence been
exported ; but these earlier slaves had not been Ardras and Why-
dahs, among whom alone the python-worship prevailed ; they
were Mahis, and members of the various small tribes which had
been defeated by Dahomi, and whom the people of the two sea-
board kingdoms had bought from the latter to sell to the white
men.

It was, then, the war captives taken at the conquest of Ardra
and Whydah who brought both the word vodu and the snake-
worship into Hayti ; and if it be asked how it is that the other

OJST VdDU -WORSHIP. 653

West Indian Islands are at the present day free from every trace
of the cult, the explanation is ready. The English supplied their
colonies with slaves from their forts on the Gold Coast, and the
great majority, so great as to comprise almost all the slaves im-
ported into the British West Indies, were what were called, in the
jargon of the slave trade, Coromantees, a designation which was
a corruption of the name of a town called Acromanti, situated
some fifteen miles to the east of Cape Coast Castle, and where the
first English fort on the Gold Coast was built. These Coromantees,
all members of the Tshi-speaking tribes — the Ashantis, Denkeras,
Akims, Assins, Fantis, etc. — were noted for their superior physi-
cal strength, and for their ferocity and rebellious disposition.
Every slave rebellion in the British West Indies, from the first in
Jamaica in 1690 to the last in 1831 in the same island, was a rebel-
lion of Coromantees ; and their dangerous character was so well
known that other nations did not care to purchase them. The
Royal African Company had a treaty with Spain by which it un-
dertook to supply the Spanish colonies with Eboe or Ibo slaves from
the delta of the Niger, who, though of inferior physique, were pre-
ferred on account of their docility; and the French obtained their
slaves principally from Whydah, though partly also from Senegal.
Hence the great mass of Ardras and Whydahs were shipped to
the French West India Islands, and no doubt the snake cull was
introduced into Martinique and Guadeloupe as well as into Hayti.
All such vodu or " fetich " practices were, however, sternly sup-
pressed by the planters, partly because they themselves feared
them and had a superstitious belief in their power for evil, but
principally because it was by their means that the more restless
and uncontrollable slaves instigated their more docile brethren to
rebel. There was the religious element at the bottom of every
outbreak, and consequently all vodu practices were forbidden
under heavy penalties. But such superstitions die hard ; and
though we do not now hear of any vodu-worship in Martinique
and Guadeloupe, yet it is probable that, if the negroes of those
islands had succeeded in achieving their independence, we should
find it in as full vigor there as we do now in Hayti.

At the date of the overthrow of Ardra and Whydah, Louisi-
ana was also a French possession, colonized by the French Mis-
sissippi Company; so we might reasonably suppose that some
Ewe-speaking slaves were introduced there also, though it seems
that the colonists obtained a great many from English slave-
traders. But in 1809 a large number of French planters with
their slaves, who in consequence of the insurrection in Hayti had
sought refuge in Cuba, were compelled by the outbreak of war
between France and Spain to quit their asylum, and landed in
New Orleans. There were about five thousand eight hundred in

654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

all, whites, mulattoes, and slaves, and the latter, no doubt, Drought
into Louisiana the word vodu and the snake-worship.

That the Ardra and Whydah slaves should have clung more
tenaciously to the worship of their snake-god than to that of the
other deities of their native country is explained by the fact that
the python-god was the national god. According to existing tra-
dition, the people of Whydah advanced the python to the dignity
of their chief tutelary deity on account of the signal services it
rendered when they were attacked by some powerful foe. Over-
whelmed by superior numbers, they were giving way in every
direction, when all at once the python-god appeared in the
broken ranks, caressed the warriors with his head and tail, and
inspired them with new courage ; so that, when the chief priest
raised the god on high at arms' length, and showed him as a guar-
antee of victory, the Whydahs rushed forward in a frenzy of en-
thusiasm, swept back the foe and utterly routed him. It was on
account of this service, says the tradition, that the Whydahs
built at Savi an elaborate temple, in which the priests professed
to keep the very snake who had brought them victory. So confi-
dent were the Whydahs in the power of their god that, on the
approach of the invading Dahomi army in 1727, instead of con-
centrating their forces at the lagoon to the north of Savi, which
was only fordable at one point and on a narrow front, and so
might easily have been held against superior numbers, they
remained quietly at home and confided the defense to a python,
which they placed on the southern bank. The Dahomis soon dis-
covered this, crossed the lagoon without opposition, killed the
python, and captured Savi.

The Dahomis treated the snake-gods with contempt, and de-
stroyed the temple at Savi, but they did not prohibit the worship ;
and the remnant of the Whydahs who escaped the slaughter of
the conquest continued it, with the result that after a quarter of
a century or so the more southern Dahomis adopted the worship
themselves. Some fugitives from Ardra, who fled to the east-
ward and founded the kingdom of Porto rTovo, a new Ardra as it
was then called, established the worship there ; and these places,
with Agweh and Little Popo to the west, to which the cult has
within the last half-century spread from Whydah, are the only
ones in which python-worship prevails.

The name of the python-god is Dailh-gbi (dank, snake, and
agbi, life). He is the god of wisdom, to whom all things are
known, and, as he opened the eyes of the first man and the first
woman, who were blind, he is the benefactor of mankind. He
must not be confounded with the Great Snake of the Heavens,
Anyiewo, sometimes called simply Danh, who is the Rainbow-
god. Danh-gbi has his own order of priests, and, like all tho

ON VODU-WORSHIP. 655

chief gods of the Ewe-speaking peoples, numerous " wives,"
Icosio — that is, women dedicated to his service, who tend the tem-
ples, and on holy days and festivals give themselves indiscrimi-
nately to the worshipers of the god. The ranks of the Icosio are
recruited by the affiliation of young girls, who are received in a
kind of seminary, where they remain for three years, learning the
sacred songs and dances and other matters appertaining to the
worship. During this novitiate they may only be visited by the
priests, but at its termination they practice openly as kosio. This
is the ordinary mode of becoming a Jcosi ; but any woman what-
ever, married or single, can, by publicly simulating possession by
the god, by uttering the conventional cries recognized as indica-
tive of possession, at once join the body. In this case she like-
wise undergoes a three years' novitiate, during which she is for-
bidden, if single, to enter the house of her parents, and, if married,
that of her husband. The kosio of Danh-gbi usually appear with
the bosom smeared with palm oil, but their distinguishing mark
is a necklet, called adunka, made of the twisted filaments of a
sprouting palm leaf. On ceremonial occasions they wear a fillet
of the same material, with anklets, armlets, and neck-strings of
cowries. The remainder of their costume consists of a strip of
cotton print hanging from the waist and barely reaching to the
knee. They are most licentious ; and the festivals, which are usu-
ally kept up all night, present a horrible scene of drunkenness
and debauchery. As is the case with the women attached to tem-
ples in India, this life of prostitution is not considered dishonor-
able, because it is regarded as part of the service of the religion.
The kosio are, indeed, not considered as responsible for their
actions. It is the god, say the people, who inspires them at such
times.

When a follower of the python-god wishes to have the advan-
tage of his advice and assistance, he has recourse to a priest, who
fixes and receives the fees and appoints a day for the ceremony.
Such consultations of the oracle, so to speak, are always public.
The person seeking the aid or counsel of the god comes with all
his relatives and friends ; the priest and kosio turn out in force
and parade the sacred drums and temple paraphernalia; and
then, in the open space in front of the temple, the priest becomes
inspired and gives vent to the oracular utterances. The indwell-
ing spirit of the python enters the body of the priest and speaks
through his mouth, in a strange, unnatural voice. Some honest,
though perhaps hysterical, priests really do work themselves up
into a condition of frenzy, by means of the violent and extraordi-
nary dance which is always the main feature of such exhibitions ;
and the dishonest ones, who form the great majority, foam at the
mouth and simulate as well as they can the symptoms of an epilep-

656 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tic seizure, which here, as among most other uncivilized commu-
nities throughout the world, is regarded as the effect of a god, or
devil, having entered the body. It is perhaps needless to say
that the oracle is nearly always ambiguous. " If Danh-gbi be
propitious, you will attain your object/' is a reply commonly
heard. If the applicant should fail, then the priest naturally
explains that Danh-gbi was not propitious ; perhaps he had been
offended by something, or perhaps the offerings were insufficient ;
and if he should succeed, then the priest claims the result as being
entirely due to the intervention of the god. In this respect, it
will be observed, the practice of the Ewe priest does not materi-
ally differ from that of the expounders of higher religions. The
sacred dance is always performed to the sound of the sacred
drums, on which is played a rhythm peculiar to the god. The
whole ceremony of " possession " is exceedingly curious, but for
further details I must refer the reader to Chapter X of my Tshi-
speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, where will be found a descrip-
tion which applies in all essential particulars, equally well to the
Ewe-speaking peoples.

The Danh-gbi we — " House of Danh-gbi " — or Python Temple
at Whydah, which is the most important of its kind, is a circular
structure with walls of " swish " or kneaded mud, and a conical
roof thatched with grass, a privilege accorded to shrines and tem-
ples only, all other buildings being required to be roofed with
palm thatch. It stands in a small rectangular inclosure near the
center of the town, and around it are the calabashes and shallow
earthen vessels containing water, palm wine, palm oil, cowries,
fowls, and other offerings. A few sacred trees stand in the in-
closure, and long strips of white cotton fluttering from bamboo
poles indicate the sacred character of the spot, for white is the
color belonging to the vodu. The pythons, usually from fifty to
eighty in number, live in the temple, but have free exit, holes
being made in the mud walls to enable them to pass in and out.
They are allowed to wander anywhere about the town, and are
only carried back to the temple when they happen to enter some
profane locality, such as the yard of a European trader. In such
a case a priest goes to fetch the god, prostrates himself before it,
apologizes for the liberty he is about to take, and then, raising it
gently in his arms, carries it home. When a lay native meets
one of these snake deities in his path, he prostrates himself in
front of it, rubs his forehead on the earth, and covers himself
with dust which he throws on his head and shoulders with both
hands. " You are my father — you are my mother ! " he cries.
" My head belongs to you. Be propitious to me."

Opposite to the DaSh-gbi we are the schools or seminaries
where the Jcosio live, and where any child who may chance to

ON VODU-WORSHIP. 657

touch, or be touched by, a python has to be kept for an entire
year, at the expense of the parents, and learn the songs and dances
proper to the worship. In former days adults were similarly
liable, especially women ; and not even the daughters of influential
chiefs were exempt. The scandals that resulted from this — for
the kosio seminaries are chiefly schools of debauchery — and the
decline of the priestly power during the last thirty years, have
now, however, led to the penalty being restricted to children.

Fifty years ago any native who killed a python, even by acci-
dent, was burned to death ; and even Europeans have been killed
for having thus offended the religious prejudices of the Whydahs.
At the present day, though the appearance of carrying out the
old sentence is preserved, the culprit is allowed to escape with
life. To keep up the form, he is confined in a small hut made of
dried grass, which at a given signal is fired on all sides. The
man bursts forth, and is then attacked with sticks by the wor-
shipers of Daflh-gbi, who rain blows on his head and shoulders,
until he succeeds in reaching water, which bars him from further
attack.

There are days consecrated to Danh-gbi, when great proces-
sions are held, and which are remarkable for many curious cere-
monies, too lengthy, however, to be described here. During one
procession every house is closed, and the people are forbidden to
be abroad in the streets or to peep from their windows ; and all
processions are ushered in by a general slaughter of all hogs
found at large, which are pursued and beaten to death by bands
of priests armed with clubs, for the hog is a sacrilegious animal,
even capable of devouring a python-god, should he find an oppor-
tunity. White ants are the messengers of Danh-gbi, and their
nests may often be seen encircled with palm leaves, to indi-
cate that the inhabitants are in his service. Many people still
believe that the traditional python, which turned the tide of
victory in favor of the Whydahs, still lives. It is believed to
inhabit a gigantic tree hidden in the depths of a vast forest, and
to climb every morning to the topmost branch, coil its tail round
it, and hang head downward toward the earth. When it is suffi-
ciently long to reach the earth with its head, it will, say the
natives, be able to reach the sky and climb up into it.

Such, briefly sketched, is snake-worship, as it exists on the
Slave Coast at the present day ; and, if we may judge from the
descriptions given by old voyagers, it has not changed in any
important particular since the downfall of the kingdoms of
Ardra and Whydah. Let us now turn to the worship as it is
found in Hayti and Louisiana. It will be perhaps more con-
venient to examine it in detail.

Sir Spencer St. John, apparently following St. Mery, says (p.

658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

186 et seq.) that the " Arada " negroes are the true sectaries
of " vaudoux " in Hayti, and that the word " vaudoux" signifies
an all-powerful and supernatural being, on whom depend all
the events that take place in the world. This being only con-
sents to communicate with his worshipers through a high
priest, and still more through " the negress whom the love of
the latter has raised to the rank of high priestess." These two
are called the king and queen. They are the chiefs of the sect,
decide who shall be admitted to the society, receive the gifts
offered to the god, and, being the interpreters of his will, natu-
rally have great power.

Let us look into this first. As has already been stated, the
word vodu should not properly be limited to the snake deity, and
in Africa Danh-gbi is not supposed to control the affairs of the
world. He is simply the god of wisdom and the benefactor of
man, the natural phenomena being under the control of other
gods. There is on the Slave Coast nothing answering to the king
and queen found in Hayti, but some such change might be ex-
pected, for it is improbable that any of the regular priesthood
were shipped across the Atlantic as slaves. In the intertribal
wars of the present day it seems to be the invariable rule to
enslave the masses and to strike off the heads of all chiefs, priests,
and men of eminence, whose skulls are carefully preserved, partly
as trophies and partly in order that the victory may not be
forgotten. From all the evidence now obtainable this seems to
have always been the custom ; and, as Captain Suelgrave tells us
that four thousand prisoners of war were sacrificed at the con-
quest of Whydah, it is probable that the " classes " were used up
in this manner. In Hayti the king takes the place of the Slave
Coast priest, and the queen is seemingly the result of a confused
recollection of the institution of the Icosio. In both places the
priests are the mouth-pieces of the god, who can only be con-
sulted through them. Of course, this must necessarily be the
case wherever there is a priesthood which depends upon the
people for a livelihood ; for, if any and every individual could
consult the gods himself, the office of priest, or mediator between
god and man, would be superfluous.

To epitomize further from St. John : In Hayti the reunion of
worshipers never takes place except secretly, in the dead of
night, and in a place safe from any profane eye. There is an oath
of secrecy, which is the foundation of the association. Red seems
to be the favorite color, the king and queen wearing handker-
chiefs in which it predominates. The snake is present, confined
in a box. The meeting commences by adoration of the snake,
by protestations of being faithful to its worship and submissive
to its commands. Then, those who wish to consult the god, and

ON VODU-WORSIIIP. 659

ask his aid and assistance in any matter they may have at heart,
come forward in turn. The king takes the hox containing the
snake, and commands the qneen to stand on it. " She trembles,
all her body is in a state of convulsion, and the oracle speaks by
her mouth." Sometimes she promises success, sometimes the
reverse ; at others she dictates a certain procedure to be followed ;
generally there is a certain amount of ambiguity in her utter-
ances. After the consultations comes the "vaudoux" dance —
that is, the dance proper to the worship. It is performed by the
worshipers generally, who imbibe copious draughts of spirituous
liquors; and the night terminates in a scene of disgusting de-
bauchery. Those who consult the god bring offerings, and the
proper sacrifice is a white fowl or a white goat.

This very closely resembles the proceedings on the Slave Coast.
The simulation of possession or inspiration by a god always com-
mences with a violent trembling of the whole body, followed by
convulsive movements, during which the " oracle " speaks. White
fowls and white goats are to this day the proper offerings to
Dailh-gbi at Whydah ; and the sacred dance, with its accompany-
ing drunkenness and final midnight debauchery, is what may be
seen during any festival. The secrecy which attends the cere-
mony in Hayti is of course the natural result of the French laws
for the repression of the cult. Bosnian (a. d. 1705) says that
red was the royal color at Ardra, which is the probable reason
of its being the favorite vodu color in Hayti.

The description given by St. John (p. 191) of the ceremony
observed for the admission of a new member to the sect hardly
differs at all from what may be seen at the present day on the
Slave Coast when a man joins the priesthood. A candidate for
the priestly office undergoes a three years' novitiate like the kosio,
at the end of which time he is required to show, by being publicly
inspired or possessed, that some god accepts him and considers
him worthy of his service. For this test a circle is traced on the
ground, images of the different gods are set at regular intervals
round the circumference, and the would-be priest is set in the
middle. The drums strike up the rhythm of the sacred dance,
and the candidate commences his performance, dances wildly and
violently, and then goes through the form of possession, foaming
at the mouth and trembling from head to foot. While in this
condition he comes in contact with one of the images which sur-
round him, and this indicates the god who has found him worthy.
The idea, of course, is that the possessing god causes the candi-
date to touch the image ; and to cross the circumference of the
circle without coming into contact with one is a very bad omen.
In Hayti the circle is traced, but no images or emblems of the
gods are placed round it, because only one god is concerned ; there

660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is no question as to which god the candidate is to serve. Then,
too, to leave the circle during possession is equally considered a
bad omen.

Vodu-worship in Louisiana does not seem to differ much from
the above, except that the office of king has almost disappeared,
and that the queen is paramount. In both places it is the wor-
ship of the Whydah Danh-gbi in a disintegrated condition, the
disintegration being caused by the disruption of the cult from its
proper habitat and surroundings, by the repressive measures en-
acted by the French, which caused new features to appear, "By
the altered condition of the worshipers, and especially by the dis-
appearance of the established and regular priesthood. Hence a
confusion of ideas, which has caused the Haytians to drift some-
what from the true cult; but that they know whence they ob-
tained it seems certain, for St. John found in a vodu temple a flag
of red silk, on which was embroidered, " Socidtd des Fleurs za
Dahomi'an." This flag was said to have been the gift of the con-
sort of Soulouque, the Haytian "emperor"; and the fact that
such a statement could be openly made and generally believed
is significant of the extent to which Haytian society is permeated
by this barbarous religion.

One of the most striking results of the confusion of ideas is
the grafting of human sacrifices and cannibalism upon the wor-
ship of the snake-god, which, in Africa, has no connection with
either of these practices. This innovation is, it seems, not uni-
versally accepted, for St. John says that there are in Hayti two
sects of " vaudoux " worshipers, one of which, perhaps the least
numerous, offers human victims and indulges in cannibal feasts ;
while the other holds such practices in abhorrence, and is content
with the white goat and the white fowl, the proper sacrifices of
the African cult. The Haytians term the sacrifice of a human
victim the offering of "the goat without horns," a euphemism
for which we can find many parallels. Louisiana is, fortunately,
free from this horrible taint, but, from the numerous instances
given by St. John, there can be no doubt that the immolation of
young people, generally girls, is not uncommon in Hayti. At
page 193 he tells us of a scene witnessed by a French priest in the
district of Arcahaye in 1SG9. This man had persuaded some of
his parishioners to disguise him as a negro, and to take him to
witness the vodu ceremonies All went on in the manner that
has already been described till after the sacrifice of a white goat
and fowl, when a young man came and knelt before the queen
and said : " O maman, I have a favor to ask. Give us, to com-
plete the sacrifice, the goat without horns." The queen gave a
sign of assent, the crowd in the shed separated, and there was a
child sitting with its feet bound. In an instant a rope, already

ON VODU -WORSHIP. 66 1

passed through a block, was tightened, the child's feet flew up
toward the roof, and the king approached it with a knife. The
loud shriek given by the victim aroused the Frenchman to the
truth of what was really going on. He shouted, " Oh, spare the
child ! " and would have rushed forward, but he was seized and
hurried from the spot by his friends. There was a short pursuit,
but he escaped, and, on reaching the town, strove to induce the
police to hasten to the place. They would, however, do nothing
till the morning, when they accompanied him to the scene of
sacrifice, and found the remains of the feast and the boiled skull
of the child.

During the government of President Geffrard, a determined
opponent of vodu practices, four men and four women were tried
and convicted of the sacrifice of a young girl, whose body was
afterward eaten by the worshipers. The overthrow of Geffrard
was said to have been the result of the measures he took to stamp
out these atrocities, and since his time no President, except Bois-
rond Canal, appears to have had the courage to attack them. Ac-
cording to St. John, these practices are rapidly gaining ground,
and are now scarcely even concealed.

The only native god of the Slave Coast whose worship is in
any way connected with cannibalism is Khebioso, the lightning-
god, who in the eastern districts, abutting upon the Yomba coun-
try, is commonly known by his Yomba name, Shango. In bygone
days it used to be the duty of the priests and kosio of Shango to
cut up and eat the bodies of all persons killed by lightning, but
at the present day the practice has fallen into desuetude. If the
person killed be a freeman, the priests place the corpse on a raised
scaffolding of sticks, and, after making all preparations for cut-
ting it up, suffer the relations to ransom it ; but where the de-
ceased is a slave, whose body no one would care to ransom, the
hosio cut from the corpse large lumps of flesh, and chew them,
without swallowing, crying to the passers-by, " "We sell you meat
— good meat." As human sacrifices are frequently offered to
Shango, it seems probable that the sacrifice of " the goat without
horns," and the subsequent cannibal feast, are really derived from
the worship of the lightning-god ; and that, owing to the ab-
sence of distinct orders of priests in Hayti, the two practices
became grafted, by one sect of vodu-worshipers, upon the wor-
ship of the snake deity. This view is supported by what St.
John says (p. 195) of some curious polished stones, which were
shown to him by a French priest, and which formed part of the
relics worshiped by the vodu sect. One of these was a stone axe
in the form of a crescent, and all implements of the stone age
are, on the Slave Coast, sacred to Shango, whose thunderbolts (so-
kpe, " fire-stone ") they are believed to be. In fact, whenever a

662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

house is struck by lightning, a mob of priests, Jcosio, and worship-
ers of Shango rush into it and plunder it, while pretending to
search for the sacred stone. When the house is stripped the
priests produce a stone implement, generally an axe, which they
pretend to have found, and which justifies their pillage. Blood,
mixed with rum, is commonly drunk by the votaries of Shango
on days of festival ; and this is the drink used in the secret cere-
monies of the cannibal "vaudoux" worshipers of Hayti.

In the Century Magazine for April, 188G, Mr. George W. Cable
mentions some " voodoo " charms ; but these have no connection
at all with python-worship. They are superstitious practices,
such as are found everywhere ; survivals of the religions which
gave birth to them, and in which each had a definite meaning and
intention. Thus, on the Slave Coast, each god has his own dis-
tinguishing badge or amulet, made by his priests and sold to his
worshipers, who wear them so that the god may be reminded
that they are under his protection. From the priests of malevo-
lent gods people can also obtain charms to work evil; and these
are either harmless rubbish, such as parrots' feathers tied to-
gether, small bunches of human hair, etc., or powders which are
reputed to possess magic properties. To keep up the reputation
of the efficacy of such preparations, the priests occasionally se-
cretly supplement them with poison, which they contrive to have
placed in the food of the person against whom the spell was
directed ; and the purchaser, finding that his enemy has died,
attributes it to the action of what he obtained from the priest,
and consequently regards all such preparations with great dread.
The hollowed-out acorn, mentioned by Mr. Cable, seems a copy of
the cutch-nut charm of the Gold Coast, whose chief use there
however, is to restrain the slanderous tongue ; the dough or
waxen heart, stuck full of pins, is evidently an idea borrowed
from mediaeval witchcraft ; and the pouring of champagne on a
moonless night at the four corners of a square seems a corruption
of the form of invocation of Shugudu, a malignant god, who will
lend his aid to any one who on a dark night will pour a libation
of rum into a hole dug in the ground, or bury a fowl alive.

The different words given by Mr. Cable, as used in connection
with vodu- worship, are difficult to identify ; they have, no doubt,
changed at least as much from the original as the Creole French
has from European French. As the word vodu and the snake-
worship are both peculiarly Ewe, one might expect to find words
belonging to that language predominating ; so, at a guess, one
might suppose the words tigui li, in the vodu song, given at the
foot of page 820, to be tigeicola, " a maker of charms/' or "medi-
cine-man"; and the concluding sentence, Do sedan go-do, to be
Do dsi danh godo, " O curved snake, may you be fat," i. e., " have

THE RELATIVE VALUE OF CEMENTS. 663

a good meal." This, however, is mere conjecture, for the word
papa in the same song, if not French, is the Tshi adjective
"good," and not Ewe at all; while the words Heron mande defy
solution. Maignan, or magnan, an epithet of the vodu, may be a
corruption of amdga, " the old, the venerated," or even of Danli-
gbi itself. I have seen a corruption nearly as bad; that of the
Tshi nyan-kupon, to accompong, in Jamaica, for instance. These
are, however, evidently words belonging to other languages now
mixed up with the vodu cult in Louisiana. One such is ivongah,
used in Louisiana to mean a vodu charm, and which is most
probably the Ga term ivong, " a charm." The words in the song
De-zab, at page 827, appear to be Tshi, but I should never have
been able to identify them without the translation, " Out from
under the trees our boat moves into the open water." By its
means, however, " Day zab, day zab, day koo-noo wi wi. Koonoo
wi wi momzah," may be taken to be really Des arbres, des arbres,
de canoe wiwi. Canoe iviwi miombah — " From the trees, from
the trees, the canoe, stealthily. (In the) canoe, stealthily, let us
come." The word rozah is unintelligible ; in the Tshi language
there are no words commencing with r, or with that letter with
which r is so frequently interchangeable, Z. It would be, how-
ever, mere waste of time to look further into this jargon, in which
French, Ewe, Effon, Tshi, and Ga words are certainly — and Yomba,
Ibo, and Congoese words most probably — indiscriminately mixed
together, and so distorted as to render positive recognition almost
hopeless.

♦»»

THE RELATIVE VALUE OF CEMENTS.

By CHARLES D. JAMESON,

PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING, STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA,

AND

HUBERT REMLEY,

CLASS OF 1890.

IN The Popular Science Monthly of June, 1890, page 253, there
appeared an article entitled Natural and Artificial Cements,
by Prof. La Roy F. Griffin, in which theories were advanced
in regard to the setting of cement which are at variance with
the chemical reactions that are known to take place. There were
also given the results of some cement tests, with deductions
from the same, that not only are contrary to the results obtained
by other experimenters, but are also contrary to the results ob-
tained from the use of cements in works of construction. That
there are so many points in Prof. Griffin's article to which excep-
tion must be taken, and the exceedingly false impression his
article would leave upon the public as to the relative value of

664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

American cements, both natural and artificial, is the excuse of
the writers for the following article. The diagrams and tables
given have been compiled from results obtained in an extended
course of cement tests now in progress in the Engineering De-
partment of the State University of Iowa.

Cements, such as are used for constructive purposes, may be
divided into two general classes, natural and artificial. The
essential ingredients, carbonate of lime, silica, and alumina, are
the same in both classes, the principal difference being the pro-
portions in which they are present, and their purity.

In the manufacture of natural cement the raw material gen-
erally used is some stone in which the carbonate of lime, silica,
and alumina are present in more or less correct proportions, while
in the manufacture of the artificial cement the raw material used
consists of the essential ingredients, each in a comparatively pure
state, thoroughly mixed in theoretically the correct proportions.
It is due to this fact that artificial or Portland cement is not only
much superior to natural cements, but that it is much more uni-
form in its quality. This feature of uniformity is perhaps the
most valuable possessed by Portland cements, and one which can
never be attained in the manufacture of natural cements.

The term Portland cement is now generally used to designate
artificial cement, from the fact that the first artificial cement
made in England, when hardened, resembled the famous Portland
building-stone.

Whether the mixture of the necessary ingredients is artificial
or not, it is burned almost to the point of vitrification and then
ground to an extreme fineness. The fineness to which cement is
ground is one of the most important points in its manufacture,
for the reason that, if not finely ground, its strength may be re-
duced fifty or seventy-five per cent. The theory advanced by
Prof. Griffin, on page 254, in regard to the setting of cement,
namely, the absorption of carbon dioxide, the uniting of this gas
with the lime, and the reforming of lime-stone, is simply the old
lime-mortar theory, and in no way applies to the setting of
cement. In regard to the changes that do take place during the
setting of cement, the following quotations from an article upon
the subject by Dr. L. W. Andrews and F. W. Spanutius, in The
Transit for December, afford the clearest explanations :

"The setting of a cement is, in general, a complex process,
partly chemical in its nature, partly mechanical. Broadly stated,
the chemical changes which occur may be said rather to afford
opportunity for the mechanical changes which result in harden-
ing than themselves to cause the hardening. The chemical
changes are, therefore, susceptible of wide variation without
materially influencing the result. ... In some cements, of which

THE RELATIVE VALUE OF CEMENTS. 665

plaster of Paris may be taken as the type, water simply combines
with some constituent of the cement already present. In others,
of which Portland cement is the most important example, certain
chemical reactions must first take place. These reactions give
rise to substances which, as soon as formed, combine with water
and constitute the true cementaceous material. Portland cement
contains as chief, sometimes as almost sole constituent, a lime
peridote, and in addition a tricalcium aluminate, CasAlaO„ solu-
ble in 3,000 parts of water, and a dark-brown fusible substance,
CasAl9Fe9Oa. In the act of setting, the tricalcium aluminate first
dissolves in water and then begins to separate again as a mass of
felted needles consisting of calcium aluminum hydrate, which
extend in every direction and are directly the cause of the first
setting of the cement. At the same time an action begins which
requires a much longer time for its completion, and which proba-
bly consists in a combination of the first formed aluminum
hydrate with the calcium peridote and the water, forming a
mineral belonging to the zeolite class and possessing very proba-
bly the composition H]0CaAlaSi4O1T. This zeolite crystallizes out
as it forms, and this continues, for long periods subsequent to the
first setting of the cement, to add to its solidity and tenacity."

Following the reasoning of Prof. Griffin, we are unable to
understand the meaning of "pure lime cement," as the two terms
" pure lime " and " cement," when used in an engineering sense,
are incompatible. The effect of the presence of magnesia upon
the quality of cement is not perfectly understood ; but that an
increased hardening in cement for a long period of time is due
alone to its presence, is not so, as cements that contain no mag-
nesia have been known to improve constantly during a period of
two years.

To quote from Prof. Griffin :

" So a Portland cement will develop its full strength in a few
months, while our natural cements will not for years, and, so long
as it (this chemical action) continues, the structure improves."

Unless Prof. Griffin classes Portland cement as a " pure lime
cement" (which it is not), he has advanced no proof of the above
quotation ; and furthermore this statement itself is incorrect. It
is a fact well known to all engineers and builders that as a class
Portland cements are slower setting than the natural cements;
and also that natural cements attain their full strength within a
comparatively short time (within the first year as a maximum
limit), and that, after the full strength has been attained, this
strength may decrease, as time goes on, in some natural cements.
There has, however, been found no limit of time beyond which
Portland cement deteriorated, and for two or three years at least
it improves its strength.

vol. xxxviii. — 45

666

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

In speaking of cement testing, Prof. Griffin says :
" No one of these" (meaning tests for compression, tension, tor-
sion, and cross-strain) " can be dispensed with, since material that
will endure one satisfactorily will utterly fail in another; . . . but
for general purposes the test of cement which is the most valu-
able is that which determines its tensile strength."

There are very few cases in practice where any tests other
than for tension are made. The statement that " no one of these
can be dispensed with," etc., is contradicted by what follows, that
the most general test is for tensile strength.

From the very nature of cement, these necessary qualities are
so dependent one upon the other that practice and experiment
have shown that, where one of these physical tests is passed satis-
factorily, the others within certain limits must also be satisfac-
tory. It is due to this fact alone that tests for tensile strength are
accepted as standard, as in construction cement should never be
subjected to tension or cross-strain, but is usually subjected to
compression, or possibly in some cases to torsion ; but because
the compressive strength in cement is generally proportional to
its tensile strength, tension tests have, on account of the facility
and accuracy with which they can be made, been adopted as
standard.

The form of the test briquette given by Prof. Griffin is not
that approved by the American Society of Civil Engineers and

adopted in all standard cement tests.
The approved form of briquette is that
shown in Fig. 1.

These briquettes are usually made
by hand, as described by Prof. Griffin.
But unless a great deal of help is avail-
able, the process is much too slow for
any very extended series of tests ; the
amount of mortar that can be mixed
at once is small ; and where different
persons are employed it is impossible
to obtain briquettes that give satisfac-
tory comparative results, owing to the
difference in the personal equations of
the makers. This was soon found to be
the case in the " State University of
Iowa " cement tests, and a specially designed machine was built,
having a capacity of making over three thousand briquettes per
day, being run by two men. This made possible the making of a
much greater number of briquettes under practically the same con-
ditions. Owing to the greater amount of pressure machine-made
briquettes are subjected to (about one hundred and fifty pounds

-/*-

^^T_L ^

Fig. 1. — Standard Form of Bri-
quette, One Inch in Thickness.

THE RELATIVE VALUE OF CEMENTS. 667

per square inch), they are probably stronger than the hand-made ;
but, as this pressure is uniform for all the briquettes, which is not
the case when they are made by hand, the comparative value of
the tests is far superior to anything attainable by hand-made
briquettes. The following table shows the difference in tensile
strength between hand- and machine-made briquettes. Each re-
sult is the mean of ten briquettes broken at the end of six months :

NAME OF CEMENT.

Hand-made.

Machine-made.

333
609
669

846

" Gibbs's Portland (English)

703

844

All the briquettes used in the tests from which the table and
diagrams here given were taken were allowed to stand twenty-
four hours in the air, and were then immersed, the time of im-
mersion being the zero marked upon the diagrams, and all the
periods of time being reckoned from this point in weeks, which
are noted along the bottom of the diagram. A number of bri-
quettes were broken each day for the first seven days ; after
this a number was broken every seven days, and the average of
these results giving the ordinates to the line on the diagram.
Besides these briquettes, ten extra ones were broken at the expira-
tion of one week, one month, three months, and six months. The
average of the tensile strength of these, and the time of break-
ing, are shown on the diagram by black dots, the letter showing
the brand of the cement : M, Milwaukee ; U, Utica ; G, Gibbs
English Portland ; and B, Buckeye American Portland. This
system of breaking briquettes shows the effect of time upon their
strength. The testing-machine used in these tests was Riehle
Brothers' " Standard Cement Tester," in which the strain upon
the briquette is gradually increased by means of a screw-and-
worm gear. Although the type mentioned by Prof. Griffin pos-
sesses accuracy, and is very satisfactory, still the Riehle machine
gives equally satisfactory results, and allows of a much greater
number of briquettes being broken within a given time.

Any comparison of the relative value of cements based upon
their percentage of increase in strength, as made by Prof. Griffin,
is of no value. A cement that attains a certain strength in seven
days, even if it only increases one per cent during the following
ninety days, is superior for constructive purposes to one that in-
creases four hundred per cent during the same time, provided the
ultimate strength of the latter is not greater than the former.

The strength of Milwaukee cement, of which Prof. Griffin has
much to say, can be seen in the diagram, as compared with the
other brands of cements given. The table given by Prof. Griffin,

668

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to illustrate the superiority of Milwaukee cement, shows that the
strength of the Milwaukee was three hundred and eighty-two
pounds per square inch at thirty days, and only three hundred
and fifty pounds per square inch at sixty days. This hardly
proves either the superiority of Milwaukee, or that natural

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cement increases in strength with age ; and, as it is the average
of seventy-five specimens, would rather seem to disapprove the
points mentioned. It is true that briquettes made of the same
cement, at the same time, kept under the same conditions, and
broken at the same time, show a groat variation in tensile

THE RELATIVE VALUE OF CEMENTS.

669

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670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

strength. The statement of Prof. Griffin that Milwaukee cement
has been shown to have the greatest crushing strength is rather
too sweeping, to say the least, as all first-class Portland cements
are superior to Milwaukee in this respect, and there are a number
of brands of American natural cements that are in every way its
equal. Although English Portland cements are among the best
in the market, still they are equaled by both German and French
Portland, while there are now manufactured in the United States
Portland cements that in tensile strength exceed any imported
cements. Briquettes made of American Portland have shown a
tensile strength of eleven hundred pounds at the end of twenty-
six weeks.

A careful study of the diagrams will give a correct idea of the
relative values of typical English and American Portland cements,
American natural cements, and Portland and natural cements.
It is not intended to show in Fig. 2 that Milwaukee cement is
inferior to all American natural cements, but simply that there
are American natural cements that under the same treatment will
give at least as good results. The numbers along the bottom of
the diagrams indicate the age of the briquettes in weeks; the
numbers at the side indicate pounds.

-++*-

ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE.

By M. SAINT-YVES MENAED.*

THE object of the acclimatation of animals and plants is to
add to the species, races, and varieties of a country species,
races, and varieties of other countries that may be useful or sim-
ply agreeable to it, whether they be represented in the wild or the
domesticated state. The history of the subject is not compli-
cated. It is a general fact that the sciences which we now have to
study before entering into the practice of the arts originated after
considerable applications of them had been made. They culti-
vated wheat long before agronomical institutes were founded;
iron was extracted from its ores before metallurgy was known ;
we took care of the sick — and some pretend that we cured them —
before the science of medicine existed. So we domesticated wild
animals and took them from country to country, from climate to
climate, before we had a science of acclimatization to direct us.
But while most of the sciences originated in the distant past, the
science of acclimatization is new. Something is indeed said on
the subject in the books of Buffon, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,

* From a Lecture before the Sccidte de Medeeinc Pratique.

ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE. 671

and other authors ; and two important acclimatizations — that of
the merino sheep by Daubenton, and the introduction of the
potato to general use by Parmentier — were made or brought to
completion in the eighteenth century, but these were isolated cir-
cumstances. The systematic, methodical, deliberate thought of
looking out in behalf of any country for animals and plants that
might be of profit to it, and of making a study of their value and
of the means of making them at home in their new abode, was
originally conceived by Isidor Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. His studies
were first directed to this point in 1829, after which they con-
stantly held the most prominent place in his mind. He founded
the Society of Acclimatation, for propagating this idea and giv-
ing it practical force, in 1854 ; and five years later, in 1859, in co-
operation with that society, he created the zoological Jardin
d' Acclimatation for the purpose of applying the idea to new spe-
cies, and of studying the conditions under which they could be
best made to thrive.

We may divide the history of acclimatation into two peri-
ods : one immensely long, beginning with the first domestications
of animals and the first migrations of men — a period of practice
without science, which was nevertheless fruitful ; and the other,
which is as yet only a half-century long, of scientific acclimata-
tion. We may also consider the subject with a view to its utility,
and to the results that have been achieved in it and the encour-
agement it offers for the future.

To the first period we owe nearly all our domestic animals and
cultivated plants. If we inquire into the origin of our domestic
animals, we shall find that twelve of them came from Asia, two
from Africa, and three from America, while five are European. If
we only had what Europe has furnished us, our list would be re-
duced to the pigeon, duck, goose, rabbit, and bees. Our farmsteads
would then be only modest poultry-yards, and our fields would not
be cultivated. It is true that we should not have much occasion
to cultivate anything, if we had to leave off from our list of plants
all that are not native to Europe. We should be reduced to an
unpleasant state indeed if we only had to give up the last im-
ported plant, the potato.

The first importations date from an age long before historic
times, and can be determined only from archaeological research.
The first human inhabitants of Europe, the palaeolithic men,
had no domestic animals, and depended for their livelihood
solely on the natural products of the soil and the fruits of the
chase. Centuries after them came the neolithic men, of another
race— a pastoral people, bringing witli them certain domes-
tic animals. Our knowledge of the kind of life these races
lived is only of the vaguest character. But the knowledge of

672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

some contemporary tribes who are still living in the stone ages,
and without domesticated animals or plants, will enable us to
make a fair comparison between the condition of man before
their introduction and that to which he has been able to rise by
their aid.

The Fuegians and the Australian aborigines are still living in
a condition very nearly like that of primitive man. The only
habitation of the Fuegians, cold as is the climate of their coun-
try, is the hut of branches, their only clothing is the skin of a
fox, deer, or guanaco, which they throw over the right shoulder
or over the left, according to which is exposed to the wind. They
have no domestic animal except the dog, which assists them in
hunting, and is of no mean service to them ; for their only weap-
ons are a javelin tipped with a sharp bone, and bows, with flint-
pointed arrows. They are, in fact, contemporaries of our civili-
zation, still in their palaeolithic age. They are not good fisher-
men. They gather a few shells on the beach, and an occasional
stranded whale furnishes them a royal feast. They eat their
food with only the slightest preparation, sometimes throwing
their meat on the fire for an instant to bring out its salinity.
They have no convenient means of making fire, and, if the supply
they try to keep goes out, have to resort to the tedious process of
rubbing sticks. Their existence becomes most terrible when
storms prevent them from hunting and fishing.

The Australians are, if possible, more savage than the Fue-
gians, but they live in a hospitable country, the natural flora of
which furnishes them some food-supply, and the fauna abundant
game. But they have no domesticated animal. Their wild dog
is sometimes tamed and trained to hunting, but has not been
reduced to a really domestic condition. With no habitation or
fixed abode, the Australian sleeps wherever night overtakes him.
He has no clothing or feeling of modesty. His arms are a wooden
lance, tipped with a kangaroo's tooth, and the boomerang. His
food depends on the chances of the chase. When it is abun-
dant, he never thinks of saving it ; if it is exhausted, he suffers
hunger or turns anthropophagist.

The Eskimos of Greenland are also hunters and fishers. Not-
withstanding the rigor of their climate, they enjoy conditions of
existence infinitely superior to those of the Fuegians and Aus-
tralians ; and they owe their advantages to two animals — one not
domesticated, the seal, which nearly supplies all their wants. It
being very plentiful on their coasts, they hunt it so regularly as
to be nearly always out of the danger of privations. The second
animal, the dog, is domesticated, and, besides being a valuable
auxiliary in the chase, serves them as a draught animal.

The Eskimos close their windows with seal parchment ; they

ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE. 673

warm and light their huts with seal oil ; the basis of their food
is seal meat, fish and shell-fish only serving to give variety to it ;
they wear a full dress of seal-skin sewed with seal tendons, with
needles of seal bone ; their boots are of seal leather, and their
baby-clothes are also made of seal-skin ; and that substance con-
stitutes the sheathing to their boats. They are able to travel on
land, or snow and ice, in sledges drawn by their dogs. With the
conditions of existence thus fairly well assured to them, they
have proved themselves accessible to a certain degree of civiliza-
tion, and have been taught to read and write, and to submit
themselves to religious restraints. Yet they are liable to suffer-
ings in seasons of extreme severity which they might escape if,
instead of the wild seal, they had some domestic animal on which
they could depend for the supply of their food and economical
wants.

The reindeer is to the Laplander all that the seal is to the
Eskimo, and more. It /gives him its skin for clothing, its flesh
for food, its horns and bones for tool-making. It furthermore
gives milk, and is a pack and draught animal. To these it adds the
capital advantage over the seal of being a real domestic animal,
so that the Laplander is rarely deprived of necessaries. The dog
is also an auxiliary. The Laplander has, therefore, two domestic
animals. He has made a corresponding advance in civilization
beyond what has been accomplished by the Eskimo.

The Spanish conquerors found two countries in America which
had a civilization of ancient date — Peru, where there were two
domestic animals, the dog and the llama ; and Mexico, which, with
no domestic animal but the dog, had an advanced and very pro-
ductive agriculture. Everywhere else the Spaniards found sav-
ages, of whom the Caribs were the most famous. These are rep-
resented now by the Galibis and other tribes in Guiana, who
exist in a primitive condition, without domestic animals. On his
second voyage to America, in 1493, Columbus brought over some
European domestic animals, which became the property of the
Indians who had intercourse with the whites. The half-breeds
of these Indians, the Gauchos and the Araucanians, became in
less than two centuries pastoral and agricultural peoples, while
other tribes, retiring from the whites, fell into a state of decline.

America, poor in domestic animals and having few cultivated
plants at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards, from being
able to support only a primitive and sparse population, has by the
aid of these elements of civilization become populous and wealthy.
The same that has been accomplished in America in three cent-
uries has been done in Australia in fifty years.

From this review of primitive life we draw the conclusions
that, wherever he may be found, man is condemned perpetually
vol. xxxviii. — 46

674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to a savage and primitive life in a stone age, if he has not com-
mand of domestic animals and cultivated plants ; from the begin-
ning of human progress comfort of living has "borne a relation
to the number of domesticated species ; and it was by importing
their animals and plants, or by acclimata'tion, that advanced
peoples made conquests and colonizations in lands occupied by
primitive man. In such cases the natives generally give way be-
fore the conquerors.

To the nine animals primarily acclimated in Europe, . there
were added in the age of the Greeks, by domestication, the goose,
bee, and pigeon, and by acclimatation the peacock and the
guinea-fowl. In the Roman period the rabbit and duck were
domesticated, and the ferret was introduced. After that there
were no additions to the domestic fauna till the sixteenth century,
when the guinea-pig, American duck, and turkey were acclimated
from America. Notwithstanding the small number of acquisi-
tions in this long period, the domestic animals and cultivated
plants of Europe were the prime cause of a considerable gradual
augmentation in the comfort of the population. They have been
brought to a high degree of perfection, corresponding with the
growing extent of our wants, and have been subjected to some
remarkable modifications, under the new science of zootechnics ;
a process of transformation which is still continuous and will
never be completed. Species have been divided up to meet
the requirements of varied wants, so that one has been made
competent to give the service that might be demanded of two,
three, and four species. Thus, in horses, we have the riding
horse, which can walk, pace, trot, or gallop ; the cart horse, which
can pull a heavy load at a walk ; the stage horse, drawing a
lighter load, with a fair degree of speed ; and the carriage horse,
which travels with speed and elegance of gait. Could the horse
have rendered us such a variety of services if he had been left in
a wild state ? This question is not a gratuitous supposition.
The half -wild horses imported* a few years ago from the Argen-
tine Republic were of little value, because they had not been
fitted, by ancestral training, to perform the various duties re-
quired of them.

Instead of increasing the number of species, we have devel-
oped varieties within the species, each adapted to a special work.
The Laplander has one reindeer, that clothes, feeds, and draws
him ; we have four or five horses, for the purposes of transporta-
tion alone. We have also got animals intermediate between two
species.

It is thus found that the material comfort of a people depends
much on the animal and vegetable products it possesses, on their
variety as well as on their abundance. The variety of animal

ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE. 675

and vegetable products depends on the number of domestic
species and on the number of specialized varieties within the
species.

M. I. Geoff roy Saint-Hilaire had shown, at the time of found-
ing the Society of Acclimatation, that most of our animal and
vegetable products had come to us through that process as the
prime source. While no one could deny the advantages that had
been derived from it in the past, some were skeptical as to its
utility in the future. But, as M. Quatrefages has said, man is
constantly developing new wants ; so that the luxury of the even-
ing becomes the necessity of the morrow. He reminds us that
the turkey was first imported as a fancier's bird, and the dahlia
as an eatable plant ; and I. Geoff roy Saint-Hilaire spoke of the
guinea-pig, which the experimental physiologist has found so
valuable, as useless.

I begin the list of the recent trophies of acclimatation with
the great Australian eucalyptus, a few seeds of which planted
in 1856, in Provence, produced good trees, showing that the spe-
cies could be grown on the Mediterranean littoral. It is now at
home in Corsica, Algeria, Italy, and Spain, and is distinguished
by the properties of rapid growth, making marshy places sani-
tary, and having a hard wood impregnated with a peculiar essen-
tial oil, the presence of which insures its durability. The indus-
trial cultivation of the bamboo was begun in 1861 in the Basses
Pyrenees, under the direction of M. Garique. The plantation of
four hectares is now very remunerative. Following M. Garique's
example, the Southern Railway Company is using the bamboo to
fix the taluses of its embankments and adorn its lines. The mili-
tary administration contemplates using it also on the taluses of
its fortifications, where it will have the further advantage of
making the works difficult of access. By cutting the stems on a
slanting line the ground can be converted into a tract of stiff,
sharp stubble that no one will be able to walk over. This has
been done in Tonquin.

The Stachys affinis, to which M. Pailleux has given the name
crosnes as a common name, is a labiate plant, allied to sage and
mint, and is cultivated in China and Japan for its eatable tuber-
cles. Specimens of it received by the Societe d' Acclimatation in
1882 were cultivated by M. Pailleux, who finds that the tubercles,
cooked about as beans are cooked, have the flavor of the arti-
choke, and possess the advantage of offering a fresh vegetable in
December, January, and February, when such foods are scarce.
Thus, in less than ten years, an edible plant has been imported,
experimented upon in cultivation, experimented upon in con-
sumption, and definitely acclimated.

The soja, a kind of oleaginous pea from China, which, not con-

676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

taming starch, is an excellent food for persons afflicted with dia-
betes, was introduced in 1855, and has been the subject of numer-
ous experiments by members of the Societe d' Acclimatation, and
has been most extensively cultivated in Austria-Hungary. It
has now become a common agricultural plant. The ailantus
silk-worm (Attacus Cynthia) was imported from China to Italy
in 1856, has been largely multiplied, and has now become so well
acclimated that it lives in the wild state. It may thus be found
living on the ailantus trees in different parts of Paris. It has
not yet, however, been made industrially profitable, because its
silk is hard to wind, but a means will be found some day of obvi-
ating this difficulty.

The first attempts to naturalize the ordinary salmon (Sal mo
solar) in the waters of southern France in 1886 and 1887 were not
successful, because the temperature of the water there was not
suited to that species. The introduction of the California salmon
(Salmo quinnat) by the society in 1888 has been attended with a
better prospect of success. The stock, obtained from the United
States Fish Commission, is prospering, and will probably be the
starting-point for peopling the affluents of the Mediterranean
with this valuable fish.

The golden pheasant, originally from China, was imported into
England toward the middle of the eighteenth century, and has
been much in favor as a cage bird. It has lately acquired an
economical value from its feathers having come into fashion as
an adornment of clothing, and the cages have been called on to
supply them. The sacred pheasant, imported from China in
1866, has multiplied rapidly, with a corresponding reduction in
price, and it may now be found wild in the chases around Paris,
where no more care is taken of it than of other game birds.

The belief that the African elephant can not be tamed is re-
futed in the case of Juliette, in the Jardin d 'Acclimataiion, who
has borne several young, and is distinguished by the two quali-
ties of strength and docility.

Burchell's zebra, or the dauw, although it has not yet been
naturalized to our farmsteads, has been seen frequently for sev-
eral years in the streets of Paris serving as a draught animal.
These animals make themselves at home in our stables, behave
themselves soberly, and reproduce regularly. Eighteen years of
experiment in the Jardin d Acclimataiion on eight subjects have
shown that they are easily tamed, are susceptible of training, and
are capable of displaying much strength in draught. — Translated
for TJie Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

LAWS OF GOVERNMENT AMONG LOWER ANIMALS. 677

LAWS OF GOVERNMENT AMONG THE LOWER

ANIMALS.

By J. W. SLATEK, F. E. S.

" Positive morality under some form or other has existed in every society of which the
world has had experience." — (Gkote's Fragments on Ethical Subjects, vol. iii, p. 497.)

WHETHER the author just quoted knowingly or intention-
ally referred to the societies of the lower animals, as well as
to those of mankind, I am not aware. Perhaps, if he had no such
intentions, his testimony may be regarded as all the more valu-
able. Assuredly the ant-hill, the wasp's nest, the rookery, or even
the roaming herd of elephants, antelopes, peccaries, or the like,
could not cohere, and therefore could not continue to exist as such,
without some kind of law and government. Such law, too, must
have its foundations laid not exclusively in the physical force of
the individual, but in part upon notions of right or wrong, how-
ever vague and crude. Absolute personal equality is probably
non-existent in any case. Bodily strength plays a part the more
prominent the less complex and perfect is the organization of the
society. In a herd of bisons, of wild horses, of elephants, or in a
troop of baboons, the strongest, generally a male in the prime of
life, possesses and exerts a certain supremacy. He holds exactly
the same position as does the chief of a savage human tribe;
holds it by the same tenure and exercises it in a very similar
manner, and subject to the same limitations. That his authority
is not absolutely uncontrolled we may learn from a fact to which
I shall have to return — the existence of adult males, generally
large and powerful, who live in exile.

Among birds the moral life is more highly developed than
among mammalia, as we may learn from their being more gen-
erally monogamous. Hence, with them, individual superiority
sinks very much into the background. The rookery or the her-
onry seems to form a republic where all are subject to a code of
laws which the majority is always ready to put in force against
any offender.

The queen bee holds her position by the right of the strongest
as against all rivals, and, on the birth or the introduction of
another female, she is always bound to do battle to the death for
her position. But her sway over her subjects— if such we may
consider them— unlike that of the strongest tusker in a herd of
elephants, rests nowise upon physical force.

Before speaking of the laws of brutes, we must necessarily first
show that they have a perception of duties and of rights. Many
facts prove that the lower animals recognize property, and distin-

673 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

guish as clearly as do many men "between rneum and tuum. When
trespassing they plainly know that their quarrel is not just, and
conscience makes cowards of many if not of all.

" You are aware," says a writer in the Zoologist (vol. v, p. 1G35),
" that in Rome the inhabitants are accustomed to throw out the
garbage and refuse of their houses, which is deposited generally
in some blind corner appointed for that purpose by the police.
Though several hundreds of these depots exist in Rome, not one
is unappropriated, but has become the fee-simple of some particu-
lar dog, who will not suffer his claim to be invaded. Some cases
of copartnership in a corner have been observed, but with brothers
on the death of a parent, and desperate battles occur occasionally
about ' fixity of tenure/ as in Tipperary."

The homeless dogs of Constantinople have their particular
quarters of the city, into which no dog save its regularly estab-
lished canine inmates can intrude without the risk of being torn
to pieces.

A spider, unless greatly superior in size, hesitates to invade the
web of another spider for marauding purposes. Ants consider
themselves rightfully entitled not merely to the city they have
built, and the roads they have laid out, but to the whole neigh-
boring territory, and they will brave any odds in its defense.

I do not assert that among the lower animals right is the only
might. Like the " lords of creation " they often covet what is not
their own, and, like them, they sometimes overcome the feeling of
respect for their neighbor's landmark. There are feathered and
four-footed Romanoffs— Nachbarfresser— who, without scruple,
seek to absorb whatsoever lies in their vicinity. Nor does right-
eous indignation always lend the assailed party strength enough
to defend his Plevna.

We may go yet further : not only do animals feel a right to
such possessions as they have acquired by custom, by first dis-
covery, or by labor. Such right, among social species, is recog-
nized by public opinion, and is enforced by positive law. In sup-
port of this statement let us turn to the rookery. It has been ob-
served, not once only but repeatedly, that a particular couple of
rooks, too lazy to fetch building materials for themselves, and
given to plundering their more industrious neighbors, have been
formally punished by the community. The penalty inflicted va-
ries greatly. Sometimes it consists simply in a sound beating.
Sometimes the ill-gotten nest is summarily demolished, and the
materials are given back to their rightful owners. Sometimes,
again — perhaps when sundry former convictions are on record*—
the offenders, after a severe cuffing, are forever banished from the
rookery and left to seek out for themselves a new settlement. On
one occasion I saw a rook stealthily approach the bottom of a

LAWS OF GOVERNMENT AMONG LOWER ANIMALS. 679

completed nest and try to remove some of the sticks. But the
inmate, reaching over the edge, gave the thief a good peck, where-
upon he at once new away without attempting to defend himself
or to retaliate. Similar cases may be witnessed among other
sjDecies of birds which live in communities.

It may here be pertinently asked whether the laws of the
lower animals protect persons as well as property, or whether
they resemble the criminal code of England, which imprisons the
thief and dismisses the ruffian with a paltry fine — in fact, a retro-
spective license. In reply, I must point to the " rogue elephants "
of India and Ceylon, and to the outlawed buffaloes of South Af-
rica. The gratuitous malignity of these outlaws has been noted
by many travelers, and it has been ascribed to their expulsion
from the herd. This is confounding cause with effect : they are
banished for being quarrelsome and for repeated breaches of the
peace.

But to return to the rookery : " crow courts," or crow parlia-
ments " as they are locally called, have been observed in various
districts. These are prolonged meetings in which, after much
noise, sometimes proceeding from one bird, sometimes from a
small number, and then again from the general assembly, a single
rook is attacked by the community and put to death. These exe-
cutions do not seem to be connected with any inroad upon prop-
erty, since they are not confined to the nesting season, the great
time for robberies. There is hence reason to suspect that we have
here proceedings for offenses against the person, or against the
general well-being of rookdom.

In districts where carrion crows abound, similar trials and exe-
cutions have also been observed among these bold marauders.

Among rooks, further, laws of a different kind may be traced,
the exact purport of which has not been discovered, but which
evidently subserve a public purpose rather than the mere regula-
tion of private disputes. For instance, in a grove tenanted by a
flourishing rookery, one particular tree, seemingly eligible enough,
was never selected for nest-building purposes. If a pair of young
birds made the attempt, they were prevented and the foundations
of their house regularly removed until they conformed to the cus-
tom of their fellow-citizens and built on some authorized tree.
In this one case a clew to the proceedings was furnished by acci-
dent. A violent storm suddenly overthrew the tree, which, though
apparently sound and vigorous, was inwardly decayed beneath
the surface of the ground. How the rooks discovered the untrust-
worthy condition of the tree is a question interesting, indeed, but
beside our purpose.

The existence of such laws proves that the rooks have made
some advances in civilization, and deem it a duty to protect the

680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lives of their community even against its own ignorance or care-
lessness. The prohibition of nests in the unsafe tree is a step
toward sanitary legislation.

But there are other instances, instructive in their way, where
rooks interfere with members of their own community without
any apparent cause. White remarks (Selborne, Observations on
Various Parts of Nature), " If a pair offer to build on a single tree,
the nest is plundered and demolished at once." This has been
repeatedly observed by other naturalists where the trees were
quite unexceptionable in point of soundness. Surely these birds,
by their conduct in such cases, remind us of certain proceedings
of our own species. The rooks who persecute their fellow-citizens
who build on unauthorized trees are exactly like human beings
who claim a vested interest in their neighbors' speculative opin-
ions, who carry scientific questions to be decided upon in a po-
lice court, who dictate what may be discussed and what must
be ignored, and who seek to limit the methods of scientific re-
search. Hence the rooks are probably the first animals which
have evolved the vice of intolerance. Censorships, anti- vivisection
agitations, the imprisonment or execution of discoverers, may
thus be traced down the zoological series, and may be deemed the
ultimate transformation of the tabooed trees near the rookery.
In the rooks, as in the demos of ancient Athens, as G. H. Lewes
pointed out, it is curious that the first distinct manifestation of
intolerance should be in a republican community. Perhaps here,
as elsewhere, political freedom has to be bought at the price of
intellectual and moral bondage.

The laws of ants are probably more complete and intricate than
those of the rookery. In the ant-hill the individual is completely
absorbed in and subjected to the interests of the community.
Cases which seem to indicate sanitary legislation have been ob-
served by Sir John Lubbock and others. Theft in communist
societies like those of ants can not occur, and needs, therefore, no
repression. Neglect of duty does occasionally take place, and it
has been seen to be promptly punished with death. Among
the agricultural ants of Texas prisoners l^ave been known to be
brought in by a fellow-citizen and handed over in a very rough
manner to the guards who are always on duty on the level ground
before the city, and who carry the offender into the underground
passages. Working ants (Mrs. L. Hutton, Journal of the Lin-
naean Society, vol. v, p. 217) have been seen to be killed by their
companions, apparently as the penalty of inaction.

It is sometimes contended that the divisions of the human
species in general, or of any of its races and subraces, into nations,
tribes, and clans, is a phenomenon which has no parallel among the
lower animals. This view is a grave error. Almost every truly

LAWS OF GOVERNMENT AMONG LOWER ANIMALS. 681

and permanently gregarious species, as distinguished from such as
merely flock together temporarily for some casual purpose, shows
plain marks of a subdivision into nationalities. These tribes, by
whatever name man may condescend to call them, possess the
main features of similar aggregations among the human species.
They lay claim to some particular territory ; they defend it to the
best of their ability against outsiders, and at the same time in a
manner truly human they are not unwilling to encroach upon the
domains of their neighbors. They have even two distinct moral
codes, one to be observed toward fellow-citizens and the other for
aliens of their own species.

Nationality among the lower animals shows itself in two very
different types. Among vertebrates, the nation, wherever it exists,
is composed, as in the human species, of a number of families,
monogamous or polygamous as the case may be.

Among the Articulata, at least in the only cases where true
nationality can be traced — i. e., among insects — the social unit is
not the family but the individual. In the case of the hive bee we
might, indeed, say that the family and the nation are coextensive.
Among ants this is not the case, since in every well-established
ant-hill there are several queens, so that the community is not
linked together by blood. It may be contended that the absence
of the family, viewed as a something which for most individuals
has claims stronger than those of the state, is the cause which has
permitted the successful organization of communism in insect so-
cieties.

Among ants, bees, wasps, etc., the state has no rival. She ab-
sorbs all those sympathies and energies which in human society
the average individual devotes to the interests of his wife and
children.

We thus see that, from their own point of view, theorists on
social reform have been logically consistent in attacking the in-
stitution of marriage and the entire system of domestic life,
though unwittingly they have sought to approximate man to the
condition of the ant and the bee. They would form society, not
as heretofore of families, but of individuals ; or, as it might be
expressed in physical language, they seek to build up the com-
munity not of molecules, but of atoms !

But suppose that communism were successful in the abolition
of marriage among mankind, would it therefore reach its ideal ?
Let us look a little more closely into insect life.

It is not enough to show that the failure of communism among
mankind and its success among ants and bees are due to the exist-
ence and the power of the family in the former case and to its
absence in the latter. We must yet inquire into the why and
the wherefore of so important a distinction. Vertebrate society,

682 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

where it exists at all, is founded on family life, because every
normal vertebrate animal is attracted to some individual of the
opposite sex by the strongest impulse of its nature, that of self-
preservation alone, and not always, being excepted. Invertebrate
society where it exists in perfection, as among certain Hymenop-
tera, is not formed of an aggregation of families because the great
majority of hymenopterous insects of the social species are neuters,
incapable of domestic attachment and devoted to the community
alone. To attempt without the existence of neuters to introduce
among mankind the social arrangements of the ant-hill is an ut-
terly baseless scheme.

Looking a little further in the same direction, we see that
among men there is a wide diversity both in intelligence and in
energy. The more highly endowed individual, if he does not
leave his children in a better position, materially speaking, is yet
likely to hand down to them his own personal superiority. In
this manner the equality craved for by theorists is practically
annulled.

Among ants nothing parallel can occur. The workers and the
fighters are sexless. If any individual is superior to its fellows in
strength and intelligence — and certain facts recorded lead us to
believe that such must be the case — it has no offspring to whom
its gains could be bequeathed or its personal superiority handed
down.

Hence the origin of a pariah, a criminal, or a pauper class is
prevented. Conversely, the formation of a class cV elite is rendered
impossible. The ant-hill is, indeed, safe from the existence of the
pedagogue and his disciples ; but it is, on the other hand, deprived
of the thinker, the inventor, and the discoverer.

This is doubtless the reason of the stationary character of the
civilization of ants. In proof of this ossification or stagnation, a
very interesting fact was pointed out by the eminent Swiss natu-
ralist Oswald Heer. Certain ants belonging to one and the same
species are found both in Switzerland and in England. Between
the two groups no intercourse can have taken place and no com-
munication can have been transmitted since the " silver streak of
sea " was interposed between Dover and Calais— that is, for many
thousands of years. Yet on careful examination the social ar-
rangements of these two severed portions, their architecture, and
their habits in general, appear identical. Now, had their civiliza-
tion been undergoing any changes, it is not conceivable that such
changes would in both these communities have proceeded at the
same rate and taken exactly the same direction. Hence the in-
ference seems plain that in that species of ant progress is at an
end.

The brevity of the career of each individual insect acts also

LAWS OF GOVERNMENT AMONG LOWER ANIMALS. 683

decidedly in favor of the preservation of social equality and of
the stationariness of civilization. If either ant or man is apt to
rise or to fall, then the shorter the time during which snch rise
or fall is possible the more surely will a uniform level of society
be maintained.

To prevent misunderstanding, I must remark that differences
of structure, with a corresponding difference of duties, occur
among the workers in the ant-hill ; but these differences are not
transmissible, and the various classes of workers spring indis-
criminately from the same parents. Hence they are not analo-
gous to the castes that have arisen in many human races.

It is noteworthy that man has from time to time sought to
imitate the neuter order so prevalent in hymenopterous societies.
These attempts, however, whether made by devoting certain
classes to celibacy, or by a more barbarous method prevalent in
antiquity, and surviving in the East even to our own times, have
been an utter failure. Celibates have always proved a disturbing
force. What would be the effects, moral and social, of the appear-
ance of a neuter form of the human species, corresponding to the
working bee or ant, it is difficult to foresee. We may venture to
surmise that they would be disastrous.

But, though communists, ants and bees are not cosmopolitans.
A stranger of the same species, but belonging to a different nation-
ality, is far from welcome in the hive or the nest. As a rule, death
will be its lot.

Wars not infrequently rage between different hives, or between
distinct settlements of ants of one and the same species. Accord-
ing to several observers, though the contending armies are to
human eyes utterly undistinguishable, yet each individual com-
batant never fails to discriminate between friend and foe.

Concerning the government of social insects, we are as yet
utterly in the dark. We see works undertaken, altered and ex-
tended, criminals executed, guards set, food brought in, nuisances
removed, expeditions planned, and wars waged, but we do not see
the guiding spirit. Who determines in what direction a body of
ecitons shall set out on a foray ? Who regulates the numbers and
the position of the guard found at the entrances of an ant-hill ?
Who relieves the little sentinels in due course ?

In some species there are, indeed, large-sized individuals which
seem to exercise a kind of authority, but concerning their powers
and duties we know little indeed. If the various functions of a
human community were left to the spontaneous initiative of all
comers, we should have sad confusion. Now, the various duties
to be regularly performed in an ant-hill, if less numerous and
multiform than those of a civilized human city, yet seem, to our
eyes, to be sufficiently complex to necessite a prearranged system.

684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A most curious fact in ant-life lias been observed by the emi-
nent French chemist, M. Berthelot, who is also a zealous ento-
mologist. He noticed in a little wood a nourishing city of ants
which for several successive years went on enlarging its struct-
ures and laying out roads in every direction. At last, without
any manifest cause, it began gradually to decay. It had not been
afflicted by wars, nor by scarcity of provisions ; yet the number
of its inmates seemed to diminish, their energy and activity faded,
and their domes and galleries, no longer kept in repair, took a
desolate and ruinous aspect. On the other hand, a colony which
the old ant-hill had formerly sent out to a considerable distance
was becoming the leading city of the district. "What might be
the cause of this decay of the mother-city is, of course, very
doubtful. Perhaps its inmates had had an attack of what is now
called " national conscience." Perhaps in a fit of " magnificent self-
abnegation " — a modern synonym for suicide — they had decided
that it was selfish to look after their own interests, and decreed
that such ought to be allowed to perish. Or, it might be merely
an instance of the fact that not merely individuals, but communi-
ties, races, and species are mortal — the loss of vitality having its
wider analogue in the decay of the tribal instinct.

I have formerly witnessed a very similar case among rooks.
A huge ash tree, flourishing in the court of a suburban mansion,
and known familiarly as the " crow tree," had been, for a term
of years going beyond my remembrance, tenanted by a com-
munity of rooks to the extent of perhaps twenty-five to thirty
nests each season. At last there set in a gradual falling off.
From year to year the number of inhabited nests decreased, and
those which were unoccupied fell to ruin or were carried off as
building materials. When I last had occasion to pass through
the town, only two nests remained in the old " crow tree."

All this time a new rookery had been founded in a park at
about a mile outside the town, and thither the former denizens of
the tree emigrated. This colony is now much more populous than
the old settlement had ever been.

The cause of the " decline and fall " is as mysterious as that of
M. Berthelot's ant-hill. The birds had not been in any way mo-
lested ; their ranks had evidently not been thinned by disease, or
the new rookery could not have increased so rapidly.

But, whatever might be the causes in these two instances, we
see here another feature in common between human nations and
the nations of the lower animals.

It has been observed that even common misfortunes will not
compel animals of one and the same species, but belonging to dif-
ferent nationalities, to unite. This fact has come under the notice
of elephant-hunters. It has sometimes happened that two distinct

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICANISTS. 685

herds of these animals have been surrounded and entrapped
together. In such a case, instead of uniting in one grand charge
upon the barriers, they keep coldly aloof from each other.

The penalty of banishment occasionally inflicted upon an evil-
doer by a community, whether of elephants, buffaloes, or rooks,
involves in its very essence the idea of nationality. Where there
is no patria, there can be no expatriation. Any group of beings
must feel themselves a community before they could inflict exile
upon an offending member.

■+»»

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OP AMERICANISTS.

THE International Congress of Americanists was formed at
Nancy, in France, in 1875, for the historical, archaeological,
ethnographical, and linguistic study of the two Americas. Its
subsequent meetings haye been held successively at Luxemburg,
Copenhagen, Madrid, Turin, Brussels, and Berlin. The last, the
eighth meeting, was held in Paris, beginning October 14th. M.
de Quatrefages presided, and delivered the opening address, which
was published in the Monthly for January. French American-
ists were well represented among the participants by Lucien
Adam, the Comte de Charency, Remi Simeon, Le'on de Rosny,
Alphonse Pinart, Desire* Charnay, and Dr. Jourdanet ; German,
by Schoene, Drs. Hellmann, Joest, Seler, Ehrenreich, Grempler,
Herr Kunne, and Virchow. M. Fabri, now occupying a cabinet
position at home, was missed from the Spanish delegation. Mem-
bers were present from Holland, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland ;
Dr. Brinton and Mr. H. A. M. Phillips from the United States ;
Don Ignacio Altamirano, an Aztec, and Dr. Penafid, from Mexico ;
Senor Manuel de Peralta, from Costa Rica ; and others, not named
in Das Ausland's account, from other South American states.

The first question discussed was the one, now of several years'
standing, of the origin of the name of America. M. Paul Marcou
and M. Lambert de Saint-Bris, it will be remembered, had ad-
vanced the hypothesis that, instead of being derived from Amer-
igo Vespucci, who was also called Alberigo, the name is of native
origin, and came really from roots which were also represented in
the Ameriqui Mountains of Venezuela, Lake Maracaybo, and the
region of Amaracapan in Central America. As against this sup-
position, M. Jimenez showed that the name of the Ameriqui
Mountains did not appear on the oldest maps. Other respondents
showed that the name of Ameriqui was not known to the official
authorities of Venezuela, and that it is written in a different
shape (Amerisque) in documents of very modern date. Testi-

686 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mony was adduced as to Vespucci being called Amerigo as early
as 1492 and 1495, in the face of which M. Marcou had "been com-
pelled to modify his assertions on that point. Dr. Hamy pro-
duced the copy of a map made in Malorca, in 1439, on which was
marked in an ancient handwriting the receipt of the cost price
in gold from Amerigo Vespucci. The Congress with great una-
nimity approved an observation by Dr. Hellmann that this ques-
tion should henceforth be regarded as removed from the pro-
gramme of its discussions. Dr. Hellmann mentioned a document,
printed at Lyons in 1546, in which the compiler purposed to
describe briefly America, which is also called L'Ameque, " a
group of islands of which little is known." M. Gabriel Marcel, of
the Bibliotheque Rationale, called attention to a wooden globe in
that institution, called " the green globe/' which is supposed to
have been made in 1513, and is one of the oldest documents on
which the name of America appears. On it the land is shown
pierced by a strait passing through the heights of Panama, by
which it is divided into two large islands.

M. Gaffarel, of the University of Dijon, gave an account of
Portuguese voyages of discovery in the Columbian epoch. The
fitting out and leading of these expeditions seem to have been
monopolized by the Corte Real family ; and claims are made that
in 1464, or twenty-eight years before Columbus, Johovaz Corte
Real discovered the land of Kabuljane — Canada, or Newfound-
land. The first voyage authenticated by documents is that of
Gaspard Corte Real, in the year 1500, in which he discovered the
Terra Verdex — Newfoundland, or Labrador. The next year he
undertook a new voyage, with three ships, only one of which
came back. The report of these voyages is contained in letters
of the Venetian ambassador Pasqualigo, and the merchant Al-
berto Cantino, to the Duke of Ferrara. It is inferred from them
that the expedition reached some region in the far north— perhaps
Baffin's Bay, or some neighboring water. Venetian beads have
been found used as ornaments by the natives of the coast. In
1502 Miguel Corte Real undertook a new voyage, in search of his
brother. He also disappeared. The interest of the Portuguese
was afterward turned toward Brazil, discovered by Cabral, which
was visited by Amerigo Vespucci in 1503.

The sessions of the second day, under the presidency of Senor
Altamirano — who was introduced by M. de Quatrefages as a
representative of the pre-Columbian races — was devoted to the
archaeology of America. Dr. Seler presented the last number of
the publications of the Berlin Museum fur VoTker'kunde, contain-
ing an interesting chapter of the Aztec original text of P. Saha-
gun, with pictures and descriptions of thirty-six Mexican divini-
ties, translations, and commentary. He also described the wall-

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICANISTS. 687

paintings of the palace of Mitla, in red and white, containing
many remarkable mythological figures and symbols, which he
had copied on the spot, and photographed the pictures.

Desire" Charnay read a long paper on resemblances between
the Central American structures and those of eastern Asia, China,
and Cambodia, as indicating a derivation of the American race
from Asia.

Dr. Seler followed him with remarks on ancient Mexican
goldsmith's, lapidary's, and feather work, all of which reached
a high condition in that country. We know as yet but little
of their methods.' The gold was melted up by the Spaniards;
most of the feather work — great quantities of which were sent
to Europe in the early days of the conquest — has perished by
moth-eating, neglect, and dirt. Handicrafts were probably still
more extensively carried on in the earlier days of the conquest ;
but the old chroniclers seldom took pains to give any details on
this subject. Exact descriptions can be found only in the Aztec
text of P. Sahagun's history. The speaker had copied a large
part of two originals in Madrid during the last spring. The
ancient Mexican goldsmiths applied gold chiefly — silver only in
inlaying — to a kind of linen-lawn fabric. They made cast and
hammered ornaments. For casting, a model of the article was
carved out of a mixture of fine sun-dried earth and powdered
charcoal and covered with a thin wash ; or the form was made
of clay and coarsely broken coal. Luster was given to the cast
object by heating it in an alum bath, and then in a bath of clay
mixed with salt. There was a double technic, too, with feather
work. In one kind, whole feathers were used. They were stiffened
with bamboo and woven together with threads. In this way were
many devices fashioned, which the Mexican war chiefs wore
strapped to their backs in the dance and in battle. In the other
style the feathers were cut up and glued to paper. The feather
mosaics, constituting a kind of painting in feathers, were made
thus : A ground was formed of the more common, cheaper feath-
ers, and upon it were overlaid brilliant feathers from the tierra
caliente.

Senor de la Rada y Delgado exhibited a number of ancient
Peruvian pieces preserved in the Madrid Museum, that were ob-
tained in the expedition of Ruiz y Paron. He pointed out as
particularly characteristic the identity in the form of the utensils
of stone and of bronze, and showed a fine bronze axe, which was
almost an exact reproduction of the stone hatchet with its string-
fastened wooden handle. The handle of this axe is remarkable
for its beautiful ornamentation of silver inlayings in the bronze.

The afternoon session of this day was opened by Dr. Brinton
with an address in English. M. Eugene Beauvois brought for-

688 > TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.

ward for the seventh, time his theory, based on the legend of Quet-
zalcoatl, of a pre-Columbian settlement of America by the Irish.
The Marqnis de Nadaillac presented the evidence in favor of the
population of America in the diluvial period. The Abbe Petitot,
long a missionary in British North America, controverted him,
affirming that the land was then in the bed of the sea. The Cana-
dian Indians, he said, had a tradition of the world having been
overwhelmed by snow. The abbe" also told of the creation-myths
of the Chiglit Eskimos of the mouth of Mackenzie River, who
trace their origin to a giant beaver, living on an island in the
western sea. He had two sons. One went eastward to America.
From him are derived the Chiglits who wear sticks in their lips.
The other went west, to Asia. From him are descended the west-
ern Eskimos, called blowers, and, as the Chiglits believe, the
Europeans. The island of the tradition was believed to be Bobro-
via, or Castor Island, in Bering Sea. The abbe" showed a num-
ber of utensils of the Mackenzie River tribes and the western
Eskimos, which went to confirm, by their resemblance, the tradi-
tion of a common origin. M. Raymond Pilet gave some illustra-
tions of the music of the Guatemalan Indians. Not much can be
said of their vocal music. For instruments they have a drum and
a flute or flageolet, and the marimba, which was introduced by
the negroes, and can not be called native. Their melodies, as
played by the speaker on the piano, had a pleasant sound.

Dr. Deniker gave an account of the results of the French sci-
entific mission to Cape Horn of himself and Dr. Hyades, during
which they had spent several years in Tierra del Fuego. They
had examined members of three tribes as to their physical pecul-
iarities and differences. Photographs had been brought home of
living persons, and prepared specimens of the dead ; their dwell-
ings had been photographed, and collections made of their uten-
sils, and the way of using them had been represented as well as
possible. These results would all be published in a few months.
Dr. Deniker spoke of the voyages, hitherto little known, of
Frenchmen to Tierra del Fuego, accounts of which are preserved
in the Bibliotheque Nationale. They are those of M. de Beau-
chesne, about the end of the seventeenth century ; of the engi-
neers De Sabat and Du Plessis, who made hydrographic surveys in
the Strait of Magellan and along the west coast of South Amer-
ica about the same time; and of the filibuster Jouan dela Gui]-
baudiere, who was shipwrecked in the Strait of Magellan in 1795
and compelled to spend eleven months with the savages. He com-
piled a vocabulary of more than three hundred words, which is of
interest, because it is the earliest collection of Fuegian words we
possess. Seiior de la Rada y Delgado spoke of the two Maya
manuscripts in the Madrid Museum, the Codex Troano and the

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICANISTS. 689

Codex Cortes, a paper on the former of which, by Dr. Cyrus
Thomas, was noticed in the Monthly for May, 1883. M. Raynaud,
Librarian of the Socie'te' Ame'ricaine, of France, continuing the
subject, would distinguish two periods of civilization, one origi-
nal, generally Mexican, and a later higher, narrower, Yucatecan
civilization. Senor Villanova y Piera, Professor of Geology at
Madrid, spoke concerning a skeleton which had been found by
Senor Carles in the lower deposits of the La Plata region. One
of its prominent markings was the evidence of a great wearing
away of the teeth by the use of a corn diet.

The fourth day of the Congress was devoted to linguistics;
and a number of peculiarities of various languages received free
discussion. Remarks were made concerning the geographical
name of Central America and the application of the term
Anahuac, which Dr. Seler insisted means " the land by the
water."

M. Alphonse Pinart submitted two papers on the Antiquities
and Rock Inscriptions of the Great and Little Antilles, and the
inscriptions on the little island of Aruba, near Curagoa. The
former were ascribed to a pre-Carib population, which the author
called the Haytian race. The Aruba inscriptions are very differ-
ent from those of the Antilles, being cut in the rock, while the
others are done in colors. M. Pinart is publishing a series of
articles in the Revue d'Ethnographie on the population of the
Isthmus of Panama. He distinguishes in Costa Rica the Guetares,
civilized inhabitants of the Savannas, living in regular political
communities, from the wandering tribes of the eastern forests,
the Talamanca Guatusos. The former he regarded as ethnologi-
cally identical with the Changuinas of the lagoons of Chiriqui. The
same Tiuacas, rock inscriptions, etc., are found among both. The
Mexicans are a second important element on the Isthmus, and can
be found, the author believes, as far down as Chagres and the im-
mediate neighborhood of the line of the canal, and on the Isle of
Pearls. But the chief element of the population of the Isthmus,
after the Guaymi-Changuinas, is the Cuna, who live on both sides
of the territory ; a strong, brave nation, fairly well advanced in
civilization, living in constant warfare with the Choco Indians,
who are in turn under the influence of the highland tribes. They
appear to be ethnologically related to the people of eastern Costa
Rica. The use of the blow-tube is a peculiar characteristic of the
tribes on the Caribbean Sea side of the Isthmus. This paper
called out discussion and some dissent.

M. Girard de Rialle read a paper on three treaties concluded in
1666 between the Governor of Canada and representatives of four
of the " Five Nations," and the use of totems in the Indian signa-
tures. M. Delisle, of the Museum of Natural History, gave an

VOL. XXXVIII. 47

690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

anatomical dissertation on the deformities of the sknlls of the
Chinook Indians. M. Marcele Daly exhibited two large water-
color drawings taken by his father, many years ago, of plans of
the ruined cities of Copan in Honduras, and Utatlan, the ancient
capital of the Quichas, accompanying them with remarks on
Central American architecture. Among its peculiarities are the
presence of walls in the interior of the temple pyramids, and the
thorough painting of the whole. The author considered it re-
markable, too, that long houses with rows of columns were usu-
ally found near the temple pyramids (or adoratorios). Dr. Seler
exhibited a number of Aztec manuscripts containing plans of the
great Temple of Mexico, on which the long pillar houses were
likewise seen near the temple pyramid, and remarked that they
were the residences of the priests, as is expressly given out in
the Sahagun manuscript. As described by M. Theodore Ber, the
ruins of the ancient city of Tiahuanaco are composed of a pecul-
iarly colored granite, which probably came from the " Island of
the Sun " in Lake Titicaca, and must have been brought to the
site on large rafts. Vessels with a capacity for a hundred persons
are still in use on the lake. The author explained that the name
of the city means " a dried shore/' and discussed the probability
of the waters of the lake having once reached to the spot. Among
other subjects that were considered in papers and discussion were
the attributes, relations, and symbolism of the Aztec war-god
Huitzilopochli, by Dr. Seler ; Ancient Danish Colonies in Green-
land, by Prof. Waldemar Schmidt, who held that the eastern and
western settlements were not on different sides of the peninsula,
but both on the western side ; and Vestiges of a Tiahuanaco
Civilization, Aztec Cities, and Aztec Potteries in the Pampas, by
Senor Moreno, of Buenos Ayres.

Attention was called by M. de Saint-Bris to the assumed Chi-
nese documents relating to a pre-Columbian discovery of Amer-
ica ; but their value was disputed by the Sinologue, Prof. Cor-
dier ; and Prof. Gafferal explained, with reference to the alleged
pre-Columbian discoveries of the Corte Reals, that the name An-
tilla in Martin Behaim's globe refers to Aristotle's Antilla, and
not to an America known before Columbus. — From Das Ausland.

M. J. RocnE, addressing the International Telegraphic Conference in Paris, re-
called some of the objections that were made to the electric telegraph when it
first went into practice, as being of historical interest, and as illustrating the
extent to which the fear of the new controls the world. Berryer said that the
wires running along the railways would cause accidents to the engineers, and with
the posts would offer unpleasant sights to travelers ; Pouillet said that the expense
would be ruinous and without practical results ; and that the invention, though
an ingenious one, would not displace the old way of telegraphing.

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LATHAM MIT CHILL. ' 691

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LATHAM MITCHILL.

THE name and fame of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill have, in the
absence of a complete biography, become to a considerable
* extent a tradition, known to few except students ; yet, during the
first quarter of this century, he was one of the most conspicuous
figures in the literary and scientific life of the United States. He
is called by Dr. J. W. Francis " the Nestor of American science,"
and " the pioneer philosopher in the promotion of natural science
and medicine in America." He was a man of various attainments,
and proved himself at home in many fields — in medicine, science,
letters, politics, and social life.

Samuel Latham Mitchill was born in Hempstead, Long
Island, August 20, 17G9, and died in the city of New York, Sep-
tember 7, 1831. He was the third son of Robert Mitchill, an in-
dustrious farmer and member of the Society of Friends, and was
remarkable for his habits of observation and reflection. His
father seems to have taken less interest in his early instruction
than his maternal uncle, Dr. Samuel Latham, of North Hemp-
stead, who assisted him to obtain a good classical education.
He afterward studied medicine with Dr. Latham ; then with Dr.
Samuel Bard, of New York ; and in 1783 went to complete his
studies in the University of Edinburgh, whence he was graduated
in 1786. He enjoyed here rare advantages of intellectual society,
and had among his contemporaries at the university such illus-
trious men as Sir James Mackintosh and Thomas Addis Emmet,
Dr. Caspar Wistar, Richard S. Kissam, the surgeon ; and William
Hammersley, afterward a professor in Columbia College. After
graduation, and before returning home, he made a pedestrian tour
through a part of England. In 1787, after his return to America,
he visited Saratoga Springs while it was surrounded by the forest,
and ascertained experimentally that the gas extricated from the
water was " fixed air, with the power to extinguish flame, destroy
the life of breathing animals, etc." He is found in 1788 recording
his walking with congenial companions " in the very grand pro-
cession for celebrating the adoption of the Constitution of the
United States." He began the study of law with the Hon. Robert
Yates, Chief Justice of the State of New York, and was shortly
afterward appointed one of the commissioners to treat with the
Five Nations for the cession of the " Great Western District " to
the State of New York. He attended the council at Fort Stan-
wix, witnessed the deed, and received names from the Oneidas
and Onondagas.

In 1790 Dr. Mitchill was chosen a representative from Queens
County in the New York Legislature. In the next year he exerted

692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

himself to form the North Hempstead Library Association and
Library. In 1792 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry, Natu-
ral History, and Philosophy in Columbia College, where, while
dissenting from some of the principles of the French chemist, he
introduced, for the first time in the United States, the chemical
nomenclature devised by Lavoisier. His dissent from Lavoisier
led to a controversy with Dr. Priestley, at the end of which the
two disputants found themselves on a footing of mutual esteem
and warm personal friendship. He records himself in 1794 as
having exhibited at full length, in a printed essay, the actual state
of learning in Columbia College. At about this time, too, he was
co-operating with Chancellor Livingston and Simeon De Witt in
the establishment of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture,
Manufactures, and the Useful Arts, before which he delivered his
first public address. Having executed a commission from this
society for that work, he made a detailed report, in 1796, of geo-
logical and mineralogical observations on the banks of the Hud-
son, for coal, etc. — a performance which, he mentions, was respect-
fully quoted by Count Volney. This was the first work of the
kind undertaken in the United States, and the report helped to
secure a wide European as well as American reputation for the
author. Referring to it, Dr. J. W. Francis says, " He may fairly
be pronounced the pioneer investigator of geological science
among us, preceding McClure by several years." The report was
published in the Medical Repository, a quarterly magazine begun
in 1797 by Dr. Mitchill, with Drs. Edward Miller and Elihu H.
Smith, and continued by Dr. Mitchill for more than sixteen years.
After his marriage, in 1799, to Mrs. Catharine Cock, which
brought him the enjoyment of an ample fortune, Dr. Mitchill
was able to devote himself entirely to scientific and public occu-
pations. Among the scientific works with which he accredits
himself during the few years succeeding this event is the publica-
tion of a chart of chemical nomenclature, with an explanatory
memoir, in which he contended that metals in their malleable
and ductile state are compounds of a base with hydrogen (phlo-
giston), as in their calciform state they consist of a base with
oxygen ; and that in several there is an intermediate condition in
which there is no union either with hydrogen or oxygen. And
he extended the same doctrine to the greater part of inflammable
bodies. In 1802 he records a correspondence with Albert Galla-
tin, Secretary of the Treasury, on a project for illuminating the
lighthouses of the United States with inflammable air. In 1806
he wrote the introduction to the American edition of Assalini's
Observations on the Plague, Dysentery, and Ophthalmy of Egypt ;
and in the ensuing winter translated from the Latin Lancisi's
book on the noxious exhalations of marshes at Washington — a

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LATHAM MIT CHILL. 693

work which, was afterward printed in the Medical Repository. As
a member of the Legislature, he supported, in the face of ridicule
and opposition, the act of 1798 giving Livingston and Fulton the
exclusive right to navigate the waters of New York by steam.
He performed, with Fulton, in August, 1807, the first voyage in a
steamboat. He was again chosen to the Assembly in 1797 as one
of the representatives from the city and county of New York for
a term of service which he marked as distinguished by his intro-
duction of a motion relative to the sixth commandment, requiring
citizens to -labor on the six days as well as to refrain from labor
on the seventh day. In 1801 he was elected to the national House
of Representatives, as member from the district consisting of the
counties of Kings and Richmond and the city and county of New
York. He was appointed to the Senate in 1804, to fill the vacancy
caused by the resignation of John Armstrong, and after the ex-
piration of his term there, in 1809, served in the House again till
1813. A bright picture of his life in Washington is given in the
letters written by him to his wife during his term of service, a
selection from which was published in Harper's Magazine in 1879.
They are full of the life of the politics and the society of the
capital, and the telling of the incidents is made more attractive
by the writer's always lively humor.

The lines of Dr. MitchilFs work in Congress are indicated by
various notes in his letters and in the record which he has left of
Memorable Events and Occurrences in his life. During his first
term he was a member of committees of the House on Commerce
and Manufactures, .the Naturalization Laws, the protection of
American seamen and commerce against the Tripolitan corsairs,
Naval Affairs, memorials concerning perpetual motion, Patent
Rights, the Mint, and French spoliations. He labored in the
Senate for the adoption of improved quarantine laws, " and was
strenuous," says Dr. Francis, " to lessen the duty on the importa-
tion of rags, in order to render the manufacture of paper cheaper,
the better to aid the diffusion of knowledge by printing." In
December, 1811, he brought up for adoption by the House of
Representatives a report favorable to the "nascent nations" of
Spanish America, and " full of good wishes toward them in their
exertions to become free and independent." In connection with
the War of 1812 he acted as a commissioner under the Navy
Department in constructing a floating battery or heavy vessel
of war, to defend the sea-coast and harbors of the United States ;
and in 1814 he was found laboring jointly with his patriotic
neighbors, " with mattock and shovel, in the trenches for several
days, to erect fortifications against the enemy."

National and social matters did not absorb Dr. MitchilFs atten-
tion in Washington to the exclusion of his interest in scientific

694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

inquiries. Curious speculations and remarks appear in his letters
about phenomena which came under his observation. In one let-
ter, Dr. Mitchill wishes his wife to inform him exactly at what
hour a certain storm began. " I wish to know/' he said, " exactly
when the storm began in New York, as it is connected with other
facts tending to a theory of the atmospheric motions in winter."
Another letter, forwarding a specimen of the Mitchella repens,
explains why no plant had been named after him. Prof. Will-
denow, of Berlin, had intended to give his name to some plant,
but found it already appropriated by this partridge-berry, which
was named by Linnaeus in honor of John Mitchell, of Virginia.
He was more fortunate, according to Dr. Francis, in the matter
of fish. " He was the delight," says this biographer, " of a meet-
ing of naturalists. The seed he sowed gave origin and growth to
a mighty crop of those disciples of natural science. He was em-
phatically our great living ichthyologist. The fishermen and
fish-mongers were perpetually bringing him new specimens. They
adopted his name for our excellent fish, the striped bass, and
designated it the Perca Mitchilli."

He writes concerning a conversation he had with Captain
Lewis, the explorer, about the burning plains up the Missouri,
where the burning strata of coal underlying the plains produced
such intense heat as to form lava, slag, and pumice-stone by the
same process that forms those volcanic substances in the burning
mountains of other countries. December 30, 1807, he congratu-
lates his wife on the account in one of her letters of the meteoric
stones that fell to the earth in Connecticut, which arrived at a
most convenient time, having preceded all the letters to the Con-
necticut delegation, and even outrun the newspapers. Dr. Mitchill
also during this period visited Upper Canada, and described the
mineralogy of Niagara Falls ; wrote a history of West Point and
the Military Academy ; and visited Harper's Ferry and described
the geology and scenery of that spot, which had been eulogized
for its sublimity by Jefferson' in his Notes on Virginia. Dr.
Mitchill retired from his professorship in Columbia College on his
election to Congress, in 1801. In 1807, when the College of Phy-
sicians and Surgeons of the City of New York was organized, he
was chosen its first Professor of Chemistry, but declined the posi-
tion, preferring his public duties. In 1808, however, he accepted a
professorship of Natural History ; and in 1820, on the reorgani-
zation of the faculty, became Professor of Botany and Materia
Medica. Difficulties occurred with the Board of Trustees in 1828,
and the whole faculty of the college resigned. Among other
works for the advancement of science and learning mentioned in
his record are his action with Drs. Hosack and Hugh Williamson
in laying the foundation of a Literary and Philosophical Society

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LATHAM MITCHILL. 695

in New York, in 1815 ; the reading to the society of a narrative
of the earthquakes of the United States and in foreign parts,
during 1811, 1812, and 1813; co-operation in a petition to the
Common Council of New York for the grant of the building in
the North Park for the purposes of Literature, Science, and Arts ;
the delivery, in connection with a curious case by which the town
was stirred, of a public lecture on the Somnium, or dream, as a
state different both from wakefulness and sleep ; an excursion
with friends to the region watered by the Wallkill, where the
party disinterred a mammoth ; participation in an excursion to
the Neversink Hills, near Sandy Hook, where a dangerous mis-
take in their altitude, which had been supposed to be six hundred
feet, was corrected, and the real height was found to be only half
as great, or three hundred feet ; acting as vice-president of the
District Convention which met at Philadelphia for preparing a
National Pharmacopoeia ; and co-operation with Samuel Wood
and- Garrett K. Lawrence in recommending the willow-leaved
meadow-sweet (Spiraea salicifolia) "as an admirable article for
refreshment and health, and as a substitute for the tea of China."
A description and classification of one hundred and sixty-six
species of fish, chiefly found in the fresh and salt waters adjacent
to the city of New York, which he offered to the Literary and
Philosophical Society at one of its earlier meetings, was the
nucleus of what is regarded as his chief work. He mentions in
his record more than forty additional species described in Bigelow
and Holly's Magazine, and several more in the Journal of the
Philadelphia Academy of Sciences. An elaborate History by him
of the Botanical Writers of America is to be found in the collec-
tions of the New York Historical Society. Of his literary and
scientific work as a whole, in fact, it is well said in the Cyclopaedia
of American Literature that' numerous papers by him are in-
cluded in the Transactions of the many learned societies of Europe
and America of which he was a member ; and he was often called
upon, at the anniversaries of the societies of his own city, to appear
as their orator. " His multifarious productions are consequently
scattered over a number of publications and collections of pam-
phlets, and are somewhat overshadowed by the reputation of the
learned bodies with which they are connected. They have fallen,
to some extent, into an unmerited oblivion." He had committed
his manuscripts to his brother-in-law, the late Dr. Samuel Akerly,
as the friend most competent to write his biography, and the work
was begun, when the papers were destroyed by the burning of the
house in which they were deposited. Had Dr. Akerly not been
thus prevented from completing this work, and had he been able
to present Dr. Mitchill's life and writings in substantial form, the
subject of our sketch would doubtless have received the credit to

696 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which he was entitled, and have "been made to appear as one of
the most vigorous leaders of early American science.

The scientific items in Dr. Mitchill's record are continued
with mention of the introductory lecture to the College of Phy-
sicians, etc., on the life and writings of their late president,
Samuel Bard, 1821 ; a philosophical discourse in St. Stephen's
Chapel, Bowery, to the class formed in that congregation for cul-
tivating the natural and physical sciences, 1822 ; a discourse on
the Life and Writings of Linnaeus, at Prince's Botanical Gardens,
Flushing, on the anniversary of the Swede's birthday in 1823 ; and
the publication of a catalogue of the geological articles and or-
ganic remains which he presented to the museum of the Lyceum.
In 1823 he appears as performing, after the Venetian example, on
an invitation from Albany and a mission from New York, the
ceremony of marrying the Lakes to the Ocean, at Albany, " on the
day of the unprecedented gathering of the people to witness the
scene of connecting the "Western and Northern Canals with the
Hudson " ; and again, two years afterward, as a member of a com-
mittee for celebrating the completion of the Western Canal, when,
in the vicinity of Sandy Hook, he pronounced an address " on the
introduction of the Lady of the Lake to the estate of her spouse
the Lord of the Ocean." This, according to Dr. Francis, was the
proudest day of his life. He also acted on a committee, in 1824,
to receive funds in aid of the efforts of the Greeks to achieve then-
independence.

Dr. Francis says, summing up his work, and quoting at least a
part of the estimate from the book, Old New York, that " the uni-
versal praise which Dr. Mitchill enjoyed in almost every part of
the globe where science is cultivated, during a long life, is demon-
strative that his merits were of a high order. . . . His knowledge
was diversified and extensive, if not profound. His first scientific
paper was an essay on Evaporation. His mineralogical survey of
New York, in 1797, gave "Volney many hints ; his analysis of the
Saratoga waters enhanced the importance of those mineral springs.
. . . His ingenious theory of the doctrine of septon and septic acid
gave origin to many papers and impulse to Sir Humphry Davy's
vast discoveries ; his doctrines on pestilence awakened inquiry from
every class of observers throughout the Union ; his expositions of
a theory of the earth and solar system captivated minds of the
highest qualities. His speculations on the phosphorescence of the
waters of the ocean, on the fecundity of fish, on the decortication
of fruit trees, on the anatomy and physiology of the shark, swelled
the mystery of his diversified knowledge. . . . His researches on
the ethnological characteristics of the red men of America be-
trayed the benevolence of his nature and his generous spirit. . . .
He increased our knowledge of the vegetable materia medica of

SKETCH OF SAMUEL LATHAM MIT CHILL. 697

the United States, and wrote largely on the subject. . . . He
largely seconded the views of Judge Peters on gypsum as a fer-
tilizer. . . . His letters to Tilloch, of London, on the progress of
his mind in the investigation of septic acid — oxygenated azote —
is curious as a physiological document. . . . He was associated
with Griscom, Eddy, Colden, Gerard, and Wood in the establish-
ment of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb ; and, with Eddy
and Hosack, may be classed with the first in this city, in respect to
time, who held converse with the afflicted mute by means of signs."

It would be difficult, says an article in Harper's Magazine for
April, 1879, for those who never saw Dr. Mitchill, " to conceive
the deference paid to his learning and judgment. His knowledge
of the physical sciences, his varied and intimate acquaintance
with classical literature, both ancient and modern, his attain-
ments in history and political science, his practical acquaintance
with public affairs, and his remarkable affinity with the common
and useful arts, caused him to be looked upon as a fountain of
learning always ready to pour forth abundant streams of knowl-
edge to every thirsty applicant. A witty friend once said of him,
'Tap the doctor at any time, he will flow/ Accordingly, the
merits of all inventions, discoveries, projects, arts, sciences, liter-
ary subjects and schemes, new books and publications, profes-
sional cases, acts of charity or public spirit, and a multitude of
other things, used to be submitted to his critical opinion. If he
had not been one of the most polite and amiable of men, he could
hardly have borne the demands thus made upon his time and
patience." Dr. Francis relates that, being present at his funeral,
he stayed till all but the sexton had gone, and then asked, unrec-
ognized by him, whom he had just buried. " A great character,"
the man answered, " one who knew all things on the earth and in
the waters of the great deep." Dr. Francis is also authority for
the story that when the purchase of the Elgin Botanic Garden by
the constituted authorities was argued at the Capitol, " he won the
attention of the members by a speech of several hours' length, in
which he gave a history of gardens and the necessity for them.
. . . With his botanical Latinity occasionally interspersed, he
probably appeared more learned than ever. Van Home, a west-
ern member, was dumfounded at the Linnsean phraseology, and
declared such knowledge to be too deep for human powers to
fathom."

As described by Dr. Francis, Dr. Mitchill's appearance before
his class in the instruction-room was that of an earnest instructor,
ready to impart the stores of his accumulated wisdom for the
benefit of his pupils, while his oral disquisitions were perpetually
enlivened with novel and ingenious observations. Chemistry,
which first engaged his capacious mind, was rendered the more

698 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

captivating by his endeavors to improve the nomenclature of the
French savants, and to render the science subservient to the use-
ful purposes of agriculture, art, and hygiene. In treating of the
materia medica he delighted to dwell on the riches of our native
products for the art of healing, and he sustained an enormous cor-
respondence throughout the land, in order to add to his own prac-
tical observations the experience of the competent, the better to
prefer the claims of our indigenous products.

Many of Dr. Mitchill's scientific papers were published in the
London Philosophical Magazine, New York Medical Repository,
American Medical and Philosophical Register, New York Medi-
cal and Physical Journal, American Mineralogical Journal, and
Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia; and
he supplied several other periodicals, both abroad and at home,
with the results of his cogitations.

Dr. Mitchill was the author of a few verses, and of prose
essays or addresses of an order of humorous trifling, much affect-
ed at the time, of which the lighter works of Irving and Pauld-
ing furnish the most conspicuous examples, and with which
Halleck's verses are in sympathy. One of his favorite topics was
a proposition to give a new name — Fredon, or Fredonia — to the
United States, after which the people should be called Fredes or
Fredonians, and their relations Fredish or Fredonian. The sub-
ject was taken up and discussed in the New York Historical
Society, but has long since been forgotten.

His social and domestic character, according to the writer in
Harper's Magazine, was unusually amiable and attractive, and
marked by many amusing peculiarities. He had great fondness
for young people, and a rare power of inspiring them with the
love of knowledge. His home was pleasant and unpretending,
"and the numerous celebrities who used to resort to his salon
were entertained with cordial but simple hospitality." His house
was a perfect museum of curiosities, and Mrs. Mitchill used to be
troubled by the disorder they occasioned. As pertinent to this
nuisance, the story of the ant-eater's skin was told. . At first the
skin was an object of great interest. Then it became dingy and
dusty, and was remanded to the garret. In two or three years
more it became old and moth-eaten, and Mrs. Mitchill and the
servant, not wishing to worry the doctor, had it secretly carried
off and thrown into the street. Dr. Mitchill, taking his regular
walk the next morning, came upon a group of boys curiously
looking at some unusual object, which proved to be the ant-eater's
skin. He joined them, and, after giving them a full scientific
lecture on the a"nt-eater, said he had a skin like this one at home
and would bo glad to have another — and bought it from them for
fifty cents. No further attempts were made to get rid of it.

COBRESP ONDENCE.

699

CORRESPONDENCE.

A. DEFENSE OF THE ARCHITECTS.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

SIR : Mr. Barr Ferree's articles on modern
architecture, in the June and December
numbers of the Monthly, are interesting as
giving an outside view of the present con-
dition of that profession ; but the writer
fails to discriminate between past perform-
ance and present tendency, between evils
in the ascendency and evils on the decline.
He appears, indeed, quite uninformed as to
what is being done by our leading archi-
tects and as to the spirit and methods of
their work, and judges the architecture of
our time by its worst instead of its best
performances. The views he expresses are
more or less widely prevalent in the com-
munity, and now that they have found such
pointed and vigorous utterance, demand
that some one should call attention to the
fallacy of a part, at least, of their asser-
tions. Architects are not such unwilling
listeners to lay criticism as this writer
would have us believe, but they do ask that
it shall justify itself by clear definitions,
precise statements, and evidence of thor-
ough acquaintance with the various bear-
ings of the subject. These are to be looked
for in vain in the above-mentioned articles,
which, moreover, seem to ignore the prog-
ress made by the profession in the last
twenty years (in house - planning, for in-
stance, in which the work of our architects
has aroused wide-spread interest even among
the conservative French). Both articles at-
tribute to architects as a class a disregard
of sanitary and mechanical requirements
quite unwarranted by the facts, and depre-
cate the attention they pay to exterior de-
sign, although most critics find this the
weakest side of their work. They are writ-
ten in apparent ignorance of the fact that
it is to the architects that we owe in great
measure our municipal building laws and a
large part of the modern advance in scien-
tific construction and in sanitation applied
to building. The strictures in these papers
appear to be based on reading rather than
on careful observation. Their author fol-
lows hard after Ruskin in his apparent
hatred of the Renaissance, and the last part
of the Fifth Discourse in Viollet-Leduc's
Entretiens sur 1' Architecture would seem to
have furnished a large part of the ammuni-
tion for his December assault ; but the En-
tretiens were written seven-and-twenty years
ago, and the evils at which they were aimed,
however prevalent in France at the time,
and however characteristic even of our own
architecture twenty years ago, are not fairly
characteristic of it now. The article in

question is out of date ; it is a quarter of a
century behind the times.

It is practicable here to notice only in
a summary way the erroneousness of its
main contentions. The grain of truth in
them need not be denied. That there are
charlatans and ignoramuses among the ar-
chitects of our day is as true as it is of the
legal, medical, or clerical profession, or of
any other class of men following a common
pursuit. It may even be admitted that
among them are to be found not a few men
of intelligence and culture who are pursu-
ing their career along mistaken lines or
without sufficient technical training ; but
from this to the denial of the existence of
intelligence or conscience in the profession
is a long distance across which one should
not attempt to leap without looking. Is it
indeed true that charlatanry and ignorance
control the profession and give it its char-
acter ? Is it true that architects generally
subordinate common sense to caprice ? Is
it true that when a client comes with a
rational, well-considered, and practical pro-
gramme for a given building, the architect
generally disregards his wishes and fools
him out of his programme by pretty pict-
ures intended only to catch his eye and a
commission, or that in the average work of
representative architects the demands of ex-
terior ornamentation alone dictate the in-
terior planning '? Is it true that our archi-
tects have signally failed to avail them-
selves of modern progress in scientific con-
struction ? Is it not rather true that they
have, on the contrary, often been the pio-
neers in the introduction and development
of new materials, appliances, and building
processes ? It is certainly a mistake to as-
sert that Roman architecture paid no atten-
tion to exterior effect, and did not largely
avail itself of the splendor of internal
adornment by applied ornament. It was
subject to the changes of " fashion," and
its forms are largely the product of a change
of fashion following the conquest of the
Greek world. The like is true of many
phases of Gothic and other historic styles.

The contentions of the articles under
consideration need only to be stated in the
plain and concise form of these queries and
denials to appear to every well - informed
and fair-minded student of our architecture
an almost grotesque caricature of the true
state of affairs. Their effect, in view of the
reputation of the magazine through which
they have been given" to the public, can only
be to foster existing prejudices, however
vague and unfounded, against architects
as a class, and to impede instead of helping

700

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the reform of our architecture. It is
hardly too much to ask that writers on the
state of modern architecture will, before
pronouncing absolute condemnation, make
the acquaintance of our leading architects,
visit their offices, study their methods, fa-
miliarize themselves with the great difficul-
ties and amazing complications of the archi-
tectural problem, and carefully examine the
effort? which these men are making for its
satisfactory solution.

Yours, etc., A. D. F. Hamlin,

Adjunct Professor of Architecture,

School of Mines, Columbia College.
New Yobk, December 17, 1890.

NEW ENGLAND AGRICULTURE.
Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : I have just been reading Prof. Cur-
rier's article on The Decline of Rural New
England. It does not in any degree satisfy
me as an exposition of things as they are.
Like him, I was born close to the soil ; like
him, I have been and am a student ; but, un-
like him, I am now, and have been for most
of my life, a practical fanner. My diagnosis
of the case is (consequently) quite different.
I agree with him only in thinking that our
tariff laws have generally done the farmer
more harm than good. He utterly ignores
the chief of all the reasons why farming has
declined, so far as a decline can be noted.
This decline is in the hill-farms chiefly, and
it has been coincident with the opening up
of Western free lands. But it has also been
coincident with a great decline in the fertil-
ity of those farms, with no corresponding
increase among the farmers of knowledge
how to prevent such decline, or how to re-
store lost fertility.

The comfort and prosperity of the ear-
lier generations of our farmers are exagger-
ated. There was as much debt, as little gen-
eral advance, and very much more vice
among New England farmers fifty years ago
than now. Prof. Currier makes the common
mistake of comparing the valley farmers of
fifty years ago with the hill farmers of the
present day. By the enforcement of pro-
hibitory laws, and the general reprobation
of intemperance in the rural districts of
New England, the moral condition of the
hill farmers has been, on the whole, much
improved, and their manner of life — their
civilization — much advanced. But, in the
mean time, for lack of instruction, their
lands have become infertile to the degree
that they fail to give them a good living ;
while free farms in the West have been
made so cheaply accessible to them that they
have sold out and gone away. This is the
whole explanation of what has been and is
called the " decline of New England farm-
ing." The census does not reveal any real
decline. The value of the agricultural prod-
ucts of New England is still as large, per

acre and per man ; while compared with
other sections New England yet stands with
the best States, even without allowance for
the natural inferiority of much of her soil.
" Plenty of food, plenty of children." As
the fertility of the hill-farms disappeared, so
came the decline in the size of the families
on them. Is this only a coincidence? I
think not ; although I admit an equal decline
elsewhere, from different causes.

If religion has declined among our peo-
ple, there has been no accompanying decline
of morality. The ministers have lost much
of their influence, chiefly because they have
been educated away from the people. In
my youth the rural ministers were among
the best farmers we had. Now, I do not
know in a whole county a minister who takes
any interest in agriculture. A farming min-
istry would be a great help to New England
agriculture, and equally to moral social life.
But our classical schools and colleges all
educate away from the farm and from sym-
pathy with the plain people. Our rural min-
isters are almost to a man the outspoken
foes of science, as being destructive to the
dogmas upon which their religious systems
are built.

The hill - farms in New England are
" played out." Many of them are going
back to forest, which is perhaps their best
use. But one has only to take a carriage
trip through our river valleys to see abun-
dant signs of agricultural progress and pros-
perity. Not that even our valley farmers
have not their " ups and downs " — their
years of bad as well as of good times — but
they and their families live better, have
more, and enjoy more, much more, than did
their fathers and grandfathers. They are
better educated ; and many of them, and of
their families, are careful readers and stu-
dents of their art, as well as interested in
the general progress of the world. Their
great need is for better schools, in which
scientific instruction should have the first
place. The old literary methods, though
still supported by the college and seminary
bred clergy, are obsolete, useless, and preju-
dicial to the advance of true civilization and
the industrial arts, especially the art of agri-
culture. T. H. Hoskins.
Newport, Vt., January 10, 1891.

EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS.
Editor Popular Science Monthly :
Sir : Some of the difficulties that trouble

your correspondent K , in regard to

evolutionary ethics, will, I think, disappear
by enlarging his conception of happiness so
as to include the happiness of society as
well as that of the individual. In the long
run, and in the main, these two coincide ;
but it is evident that with our present im-
perfect moral development there must arise
many instances where the welfare of so-
ciety runs counter to the happiness of the

EDITOR'S TABLE.

701

individual. All this is involved in what Mr.
Spencer teaches in his Data of Ethics ; but
perhaps it may be made plainer if we sub-
stitute for happiness the more comprehen-
sive word adaptation. Perfect adaptation
— that is, the complete and continuous ad-
justment of internal relations to external
relations — would be complete happiness
were it attainable, a3 it covers both the
physical and psychical sides of our nature.
It includes perfect bodily health as well as
perfect mental and moral health, and does
not oblige those who teach scientific ethics
to face the " disagreeable conclusion " men-
tioned by your correspondent. In fact, the
substitution of adaptation for happiness as
the criterion of morals has several advan-
tages.

It base3 morality upon the principles of
evolution. The development of society im-

plies the development of certain moral in-
stincts in the individuals who compose it ;
for it is apparent that, unless selfishness is
more or less restrained by altruism, social
growth would be retarded if not stopped.
It explains why opinion varies both in time
and place in regard to conduct, for actions
are considered virtuous by a given society
when they are regarded as conducive to its
welfare and sinful when they are supposed
to be injurious. It accounts for the gains
which altruistic sentiments have made upon
egoistic, in man's progress upward, as social
contact creates and fosters a public opinion
in favor of the former, which is slowly be-
coming more and more irresistible, until
finally shall dawn the era of peace upon
earth and good-will to men.

Robert Mathews.
Eochestee, N. T., January 4, 1S91.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

A PROFESSION- FOB WOMEN;

THE crusade for the higher education
of women that is now going on
seems to have two chief impelling forces.
One is the necessity for a growing num-
ber of the sex to provide for their own
support ; the second is the weariness of
being idle that is afflicting another class
of women. It is not necessary to point
out here the reasons why women with-
out male supporters are more numerous
than formerly. They are mainly such
as cause the deferment or abandonment
of marriage by many men and women,
through making family life less attract-
ive and single life more satisfactory to
both sexes. The same reasons, with
others, operate to increase the number
of wealthy women who have nothing to
occupy them.

As a remedy for both these ills, col-
legiate education is I eing widely pre-
scribed. This promises admission to lu-
crative professions to the bright women
who must support themselves, and offers
the degree of a men's college as the
goal of their wealthy sisters' efforts.
These remarks have been suggested by
a recent volume in the International
Education Series, on Higher Education
of Women in Europe, by Helene Lange,

which advocates the collegiate education
idea, though in a notably reasonable and
discriminating manner. But this way
of treating the difficulty has serious de-
fects. In the first place, it tends to in-
crease the evil which it is expected to
cure. The lack or deferment of suita-
ble marriage is what is at the bottom
of the whole matter, and the literary
and professional education of women
would make this lack greater. Inde-
pendence of a husband's support would
favor maiden life (though to the ex-
tent of preventing false marriage this
is a good thing) ; so, too, would the
absorption of women's interest and am-
bition in study or in a professional
career. Moreover, women who have
been occupied with books or business to
the exclusion of learning how to make
a home will not be very desirable as
wives. Secondly, the proposed remedy
would stimulate that undesirable trait,
selfishness. It puts before a young wom-
an the ideal of learning a profession for
the benefit of self, of winning honors
for self, of acquiring a high culture for
self. It crowds out the opposite idea
of fitting herself to co-operate with a
husband for their joint benefit and that
of their children, or the idea of using

702

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

her leisure for the elevation of the race.
Furthermore, anything that teaches men
and women to live independently of
each other lessens the respect that be-
longs to the family as an institution,
and robs parenthood of the honor that
it deserves.

Before reading thus far, our critics
will be demanding what alternative
remedy we have to offer for the ills
whose existence we admitted at the out-
set. We would strike at the root of the
difficulty, and remove the disturbing
cause instead of accepting it as inevita-
ble. Earlier and more numerous mar-
riages should be the rule, and women
can bring this about if they choose.
Mothers should so rear their daughters
that young men can afford to marry
them. A young woman properly brought
up would be healthy and strong enough
to need few or no servants and little
doctoring; she would be competent to
manage a household ; and would not
have a fondness for extravagance that
is like a second nature. "Women should
discountenance the men who remain
bachelors without good reason, and es-
pecially should shut out of good soci-
ety those dissipated youths and wealthy
rakes who are the deadliest enemies of
the marriage relation. By these and
similar means women can secure for
most of their sex the most natural
mode of support — that which belongs
to a wife. For those women who do
not lack means, but only an object on
which to employ their energies, there
is worthier occupation than acquiring
culture for its own or rather their own
sake. There are social and ethical
questions, and other problems, whose
solutions are demanded, and which can
be best solved by women. There are
affairs to be administered and abuses to
be corrected for which woman's nature
especially fits her; and there are other
fields of labor, not hers exclusively, but
which are imperfectly worked because
left to man alone. As a shining exam-
ple of women who have already seized

upon such a chance for usefulness may
be mentioned the Ladies' Health Pro-
tective Association in New York city,
which is engaged in abating nuisances
prejudicial to the public health. There
might remain some women who could
not be provided for in the ways just
suggested, but they would be excep-
tions, and their wants could properly
be met by exceptional methods.

There is a class of women to whom
the counsel in this article will be very
distasteful. The career of a wife and
mother has little appreciation in their
eyes. It is not enough appreciated by
a large share of both sexes. But the
remedy for this is in the women's own
hands. If they would have an honor-
able profession, they have only to do a
quality of work that is worthy of honor.
Surgery was once a branch of the bar-
ber's trade, and certainly no more hon-
ored than house-work is to-day ; but men
have made a study of it, have given it a
broad, scientific basis, invented instru-
ments and processes to increase its effi-
ciency, and arranged a systematic mode
of learning its practice, with the result
that the surgeon of to-day has one of
the most honorable of professions. In
a similar way dressmaking — which is a
trade in the hands of women — has been
made a profession in the hands of one
man. The ordinary dressmaker gets
little respect; Mr. Worth is held in high
esteem, and the difference is that ho
does work which compels esteem. The
ordinary housewife and mother takes
little pains to learn her business; she
follows rule-of-thumb methods handed
down from her great-grandmother, in-
troducing no improved processes or ap-
pliances, and feeling no shame if her
home is ill managed or her children ill
trained. If women doubt that competent
administration in the home would win
the same esteem that is paid to the com-
petent surgeon, or lawyer, or merchant,
or college professor, they should recall
the Eoman matron, Cornelia, whose
fame has already lasted for nearly a

EDITOR'S TABLE.

7°3

score of centuries. With her spirit the
modern woman should say of her home,
" This is my diploma " ; and of her chil-
dren, "These are my degrees."

SCI Eire E AND CIVILIZATION.

That civilizations have perished in
the past is a commonplace of historical
reflection. That all is not well in the
latest of civilizations is a truth which
earnest men are feeling more deeply
from day to day. Undoubtedly there
are influences at work that tend to an-
tagonize the true evolution of society.
There probably never was a time when
so many people felt themselves unsuited
to their environment, when there was
so much of unsatisfied' ambition or so
much unsettlement of purpose. "We
have disengaged forces that sometimes
threaten to be too strong for us. We
have created in thousands of minds ex-
pectations which even the improved
conditions of modern life are unable
to satisfy. Men have been taught that
two giants of unexampled strength are
ready to do their bidding, one called
Science and the other Legislation : with
these the world is to be renovated.
That there can be little renovation apart
from renovation of individual character
is a truth which, whether believed in
or not, has been kept in the back-
ground. The discussion that has taken
place regarding " General " Booth's
scheme for the extinction of pauper-
ism and degradation in London has
made it clear that certain guiding prin-
ciples of social reformation are seriously
needed, and that, unless these are found
and acted upon, our whole social system
may suffer grievous injury.

The key-note, the watch-word of so-
cial reform, some say, is to be found in
charity — that is to say, in the benevo-
lent interest of man in his fellow-man.
These would organize moral salvage
corps, would visit the poor and degrad-
ed and try to heal and restore them by
kind words, good advice, and pecuniary

or other equivalent assistance. That,
under favorable circumstances, some-
thing can be accomplished in this way
we should be extremely sorry to deny.
Many a man doubtless needs no more
than some slight, kindly intervention to
enable him to recover a wavering bal-
ance and betake himself with fresh
courage to the battle of life; but wheth-
er wide-spread social diseases are to be
successfully coped with by charity in
any of its forms is still a question.
Charity is the word of Religion, and a
beautiful word it is, expressing funda-
mentally a beautiful idea ; but it is not
the word of Science : the word of Sci-
ence is Justice. Are, then, charity and
justice incompatible? Far from it; there
is a charity that is just — that is no more
and no less than justice — and there is a
justice that is charitable in the highest
sense. We shall attack our social prob-
lems successfully only when, leaving all
sentiment and all unproved assumptions
aside, we seriously ask ourselves as a
community what we ought to do, what
justice requires us to do. If justice de-
mands what might be called charity, let
us not call it charity or disguise it un-
der any other specious name, but let
us call it justice and nothing else. If
it is pleasant to get good in the form
and name of charity, far sweeter and
far more strengthening and every way
beneficial is it to get it in the form and
name of justice. It is a misfortune that
the word justice has been so often asso-
ciated with the penal administration of
the law, and that in this way it wears
a severer aspect than properly belongs
to it. The law should be a terror to
evildoers and to none else; and we
should accustom ourselves to think of
justice as the most beneficent of divini-
ties and the very palladium of our civ-
ilization. This it is, whether we so rec-
ognize it or not ; only as we are in the
main a nation of just men is our civiliza-
tion secure.

To follow out in detail the applica-
tions of the principle of justice to our

I

7°4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

social miseries and weaknesses is beyond
oar present purpose. So much, indeed,
do people in general think of charity as
a social remedy, and so little do they
think of justice in that light, that it
would not be surprising, were a change
of policy from charity to justice decided
on, if there should be a marked unreadi-
ness and inaptitude for the practice of
the new virtue. It might be found,
moreover, to involve a great deal more
than charity had ever appeared to in-
volve. When a man is bestowing char-
ity he may give little or much ; as it is
all a free gift, there is virtue, there is
merit, there is room for self-commenda-
tion, however little he gives; but when
he is dealing out justice the case is dif-
ferent : he must go to a certain line or
Tie fails in justice and is open to con-
demnation. No wonder charity is the
favorite virtue ; but the more we com-
pare the two the more we see that jus-
tice is the better for the soul. It does
not flatter self-love, and it is more favor-
able to respect for our fellows.

Justice, we have said, is the word of
science, and herein we see where sci-
ence may powerfully help to strengthen
the social fabric. On the one hand, sci-
ence tends to produce social ferment by
continually introducing new ideas and
continually unsettling commercial ar-
rangements in the various ways which
Mr. D. A. "Wells has so well pointed out.
On the other hand, if science can be
made to ever inculcate and reinculcate
the idea of justice, it will do vastly more
by that means to knit, than it possibly
can in any other way to loosen, the
bonds of society. Let us have science,
then, in our schools ; but let it not be a
mere matter of experimenting with gases
and acids, with air-pumps and electric
machines, but let it be brought home as
Nature's message to the hearts as well
as to the minds of the young. Let it
teach them justice; let it impress upon
them that there is a right, that there is
a true, that there are moral balances as
well as chemical ones, that there are

conditions of moral stability and insta-
bility just as of chemical or mechanical
or electrical. The teacher who can not
extract moral instruction ar.d inspiration
out of physical science ought to leave it
alone — whether he is fit to teach any-
thing is a question. There are countless
useful analogies to be drawn between
the laws of matter and those of mind
and of society. To mention but one
that occurs to us at this moment, the
law of the expansion of gases with di-
minishing pressure is an apt illustration
of the expansion of human desires with
enlarging scope, or, in other words, as
external pressure diminishes. As in tho
one case with every added volume tho
elasticity becomes less, so too often in
human life, the more desires are grati-
fied, the less there is of that elasticity
of spirits which made life seem worth
living.

The law of natural selection, again,
might be made to teach many most
useful lessons. It shows in the first
place that, as the world is constituted,
it is a great privilege to live. Then,
if life is to be maintained on a satis-
factory footing, it must be by the ex-
ercise of prudence, of industry, and
whatever other virtues make for indi-
vidual success. The thought that so
many lives are abortive, far from culti-
vating pride or selfishness, should add a
certain tinge of solemnity to all one's
thoughts of life. " Iu me," each of us
may think, "that spark which struggled
vainly to maintain itself in so many
others has become a living flame. IIow
shall I use the powers so mysteriously
bestowed and on which in many ways
such vast issues depend? Shall I make
life, as I ought, a sacred thing, or shall I
pass my days in idle frivolity or yet
more idle gloom ? Seeing that I possess
the gift of life, shall I not strive to raise
it to its highest value and its best ex-
pression?" If life is a struggle, it is a
struggle not so much against living com-
petitors— that is a view of which quito
too much is made — as against antagonist

LITERARY NOTICES.

705

influences chiefly in the way of ill-regu-
lated desires; and the law of natural
selection rightly expounded will teach
us that, if we wish to survive, we must
cultivate all the qualities that make for
fitness, and repress those that tend to
produce unfitness.

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Earth and its Inhabitants. By Elisee
Reclus. North America, Vol. I. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 496.
Price, sheep, $6 ; half morocco, $*7.

The American edition of this great de-
scriptive work, by the eminent French geog-
rapher Reclus, has now reached the section
devoted to North America. This division
will probably require four volumes, the
first of which is now before us. A chapter
sketching the early discoveries in the New
World and the chief features of the West-
cm Continent introduces the volume. This
is followed by detailed descriptions cf the
northern parts of the continent, comprising
Greenland, the neighboring islands, Alaska,
and the British possessions, including Cana-
da. The physical features, flora, fauna, and
inhabitants of each region are fully described.
In the account of Greenland the glaciers of
that ice-bound land are a prominent feat-
ure. Their distribution, extent, rates of
movement, and mode of termination are de-
scribed, and their appearance and arrange-
ment are represented by many pictures and
maps. The nature of the illustrations in
this work is already known to our readers
from the article on Greenland and the Green-
landers, in the Monthly for last July, for
which some of them were borrowed. The
geography of Alaska is given with much de-
tail so far as it is known, and the progress
of exploration in that Territory is sketched.
Here, again, the glaciers demand considera-
ble attention. Maps show the zones of tem-
perature and trees, and the distribution of the
native tribes and the animals is also point-
ed out. About three hundred and fifty pages
are devoted to Canada and the other British
provinces in North America. The reader is
led from the rivers and fiords of British Co-
lumbia, through the wild Northwest Terri-
tory, among the posts of the Hudson Bay
Company, and the lakes of the Winnipeg
VOL. xxxviii. — 48

region, then down the St. Lawrence through
Ontario and Quebec, to the Maritime Prov-
inces, finally reaching Labrador and New-
foundland. The description deals with — be-
sides the natural features — the social and
political conditions, trade, languages, reli-
gions, etc., of the several divisions of the
country. The full-page pictures, which are
liberally scattered through these chapters,
represent wild scenery of the central and
western regions, the features and dress of
the natives, and the large towns on the east-
ern rivers and seaports. The maps, which
arc very numerous, are from actual surveys,
and hence contribute to the scientific accu-
racy which is characteristic of the whole
work. Statistics of area, population, trade,
etc., are given in appendixes.

The Meteoric Hypothesis : a Statement op
the Results of a Spectroscopic Inquiry
into the Origin of Cosmical Systems.
By J. Norman Lockyer. London and
New York : Maemillan & Co. Pp. 560.
Price, $5.25.

The purpose of this volume is to bring
together and co-ordinate the observations
which have been made up to the present
time on the spectra of the various orders of
cosmical bodies in connection with labora-
tory work on which the author has been en-
gaged since 1868. It embodies in a con-
nected form, among other matters, various
reports made by him through the Solar Phys-
ics Committee to the Royal Society. It is,
in fact, a natural sequel to the Chemistry
of the Sun, published in 1S87, in which were
presented researches suggesting that many
solar phenomena might owe their origin to
falls of meteoric masses on the sun's sur-
face. The theory here presented is sub-
stantially an enlargement and extension to
the universe of the hypotheses therein set
forth. Beginning with a chapter of history
and facts on the fall and nature of meteor-
ites, the author treats in successive chap-
ters of the Spectroscopy of Meteorites ; Me-
teorites in the Air, in the Solar System, and
in Space ; Proposed New Grouping of Cosmi-
cal Bodies ; the Origin of Binary and Mul-
tiple Systems ; and the Variability in Light
and Color of Cosmical Bodies. Among his
principal General Conclusions are : that all
self-luminous bodies in the celestial space
are composed either of swarms of meteorites

706

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or of masses of meteoric vapor produced by
beat. The heat is brought about by the
condensation of meteor-swarms due to grav-
ity, the vapor being finally condensed into a
solid globe. That the existing distinction be-
tween stars, comets, and nebulae rests on no
physical basis ; that stars, the temperatures
of which are increasing, do not resemble the
sun, but consist chiefly of discrete meteoric
particles, just as comets do on Schiaparelli's
hypothesis ; and that the spectra of all cos-
mical bodies depend upon either the heat of
the meteorites produced by collisions, and the
average space between the meteorites in the
swarm, or, in the case of swarms wholly
volatilized, upon the loss by radiation since
complete vaporization.

The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold
Coast ok West Africa. Pp. 343. — The
Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave
Coast of West Africa. Pp. 331. By
A. B. Ellis. London : Chapman &
Hall.

The purpose of the author in these
books, which constitute part of a series, is
to show by examples taken from the negro
peoples the subjects of them, how the evo-
lution of religion may proceed. Four peo-
ples have been had in view : the Tshi-speak-
ing peoples of the Gold Coast ; the Ga-
speaking peoples of the Gold Coast ; the
Ewe- speaking peoples of the Slave Coast ;
and the Yoruba-speaking peoples of the
Slave Coast. Their languages all belong to
one family, indicating, apparently, that they
have all sprung from a common stock. They
occupy territories on the west coast of Af-
rica contiguous in the order in which they
are named, from west to east, and exhibit,
on the whole, a gradual advance in civiliza-
tion, in the same order. The author sug-
gests that the differences in civilization may
be due to differences in local conditions and
surroundings and in the character of the
country, which opens up from the forest
regions of the west, where density of popu-
lation is discouraged and communication is
difficult, to the open plains of the Yoruba
country. The religious beliefs of the Ga-
speaking people resemble those of the Tshis,
and are not considered for the present.
Those of the Yorubas are reserved for a fu-
ture volume. The best-known representa-
tives of the Tshi-speaking tribes are per-

haps the Fantis and Ashantis. Throughout
the vast tract of forest inhabited by them,
they live in insignificant villages and ham-
lets, built in small clearings in the forest,
between which communication is kept up
by narrow forest paths. Ideas permeate
among them but slowly ; and notwithstand-
ing an intercourse on the part of the inhab-
itants of the sea-coast with Europeans, which
has existed for more than four hundred
years, they are much in the same social and
moral condition as they were at the time
of the Portuguese discoveries. The Ewe-
speaking peoples, among whom are the Da-
homis, present the ordinary characteris-
tics of the uncivilized negro. In early life
they evince a degree of intelligence which,
compared with that of the European child,
appears precocious, and they acquire knowl-
edge with facility till they arrive at the age
of puberty, when the physical nature mas-
ters the intellect, and frequently deadens it.
Like most inhabitants of the tropics, they
have more spontaneity and less application,
more intuition and less reasoning power,
than the inhabitants of temperate climes.
These traits, of both peoples, are ascribed
partly to the climate, partly to physical
peculiarities, and partly to the social con-
dition and the general sense of insecurity.
As a result of all the inimical influences,
the energy of all has degenerated into idle-
ness and sensual enjoyment, " and it will
take centuries to raise them." Incidentally,
in collecting information concerning the re-
ligion of these peoples, the author also gath-
ered facts concerning other matters — their
laws, government, various customs, prov-
erbs, folk-lore, etc. — and these subjects are
also presented, not as in a full record, but
to fix a starting-point from which a sys-
tematic and more complete study may be
made.

Geological Survey of New Jersey. Final
Report of the State Geologist. Vol.
II, Part II. Zoology. Trenton. Pp. 824.

The present " part " of the final report
of the late Prof. Cook contains two papers :
A Catalogue of Insects found in New Jersey,
by John B. Smith ; and a Descriptive Cata-
logue of Vertebrates, by Julius Nelson. Mr.
Smith confesses to having had to encounter
many difficulties in preparing his catalogue

LITERARY NOTICES.

707

of insects. The contrasts in the geological
features of the State influence the botany,
and this affects the character of the insect
forms. There are no large collections of
insects in the State. Collectors are few.
Some aid was got from collectors in New
York and Philadelphia, but their excursions
into New Jersey covered only a limited area,
and were mainly directed in special lines.
Except in Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, New
Jersey is practically unexplored, and the
northern and northwestern regions are not
represented, even in the collected orders.
The author himself, collecting in all orders,
in different parts of the State, though for
too short a time, has been able to add con-
siderably to all the lists, from his own ex-
perience. His catalogue includes 6,093 spe-
cies, of 2,307 genera and 238 families, and
is arranged after the Linncean system. Mr.
Nelson's catalogue of vertebrates is a re-
vision of Dr. Abbott's catalogue of 1S68,
and it has been found a laborious task
merely to incorporate the changes in nomen-
clature and classification which have been
made within the last twenty years. Mr.
Nelson has added descriptions of each spe-
cies, with particular reference to features
distinguishing it from its allies ; and the
descriptions have been made most complete
for birds and fishes.

Principles of General Organic Chemistry.
By Prof. E. Hjelt, Helsingfors. Trans-
lated by J. B. Tingle, Ph". D. London
and New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
Pp. 220.

Every one who has had anything to do
with the teaching of organic chemistry will
assent to the statement of Prof. Hjelt that
students are very apt to overlook general
principles and relations in their endeavor to
remember particulars concerning single sub-
stances. To remedy this defect he has made
a book, intended as a supplement to ordi-
nary text-books, which is devoted to the
chemical philosophy of the carbon com-
pounds. Its object is to extend and sys-
tematize the knowledge of these substances
which the student has obtained from other
sources. In Part I the composition, consti-
tution, and classification of organic . com-
pounds are discussed and explained. Part
II is devoted to illustrating the connection
between the constitution of organic com-

pounds and their chief physical properties.
Part III deals with the chemical behavior of
organic compounds. The reactions described
in this section are arranged according to the
results — dehydration processes, for instance,
being all classed together. Two editions of
the work having been received favorably in
Swedish, a German version was prepared by
the author, and from the latter the English
translation has been made.

The Coast Indians op Southern Alaska
and Northern British Columria. By
Ensign Albert P. Niblack, U. S. N.
Washington : Smithsonian Institution.
Pp. 161.

There is much to tell about the Alaskan
" wards of the nation " and their relatives
in the British dominions. Sufficient, evi-
dence is given in this monograph to show
that the Indians of the Northwest coast
have a high degree of skill in many arts,
industries, and pursuits, a systematic tribal
organization, interesting customs and cere-
monies, and traditions and folk-lore which
are instructive to the student. The infor-
mation here presented is based on the col-
lections of objects in the United States Na-
tional Museum, and on the personal obser-
vation of the author in connection with the
survey of Alaska. Subdivisions of the
above topics are treated with varying full-
ness in fifteen chapters, the text being illus-
trated with seventy full-page plates. The
carvings in wood and slate, and the woven
garments and baskets here figured, display
much ingenuity, while the accounts of the
way in which these peoples have adapted
themselves to the ways of civilization give
proof of much mental strength.

Inorganic Chemistry, Theoretical and

Practical. By William Jago, F. C. S.

London and New York : Longmans,

Green & Co. Pp. 45S.

The author of this work is an experi-
enced writer of chemical textbooks. The
present volume is described as a manual for
studentsinadvancedclasses — that is,for those
who have some acquaintance with the com-
mon elements, and some knowledge of chem-
ical reactions. It does not omit any essen-
tial subject, but elementary matters are
treated briefly, while larger space is given
to the laws of chemistry and to manufact-
uring processes. A feature of the book is a

708

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

brief statement of the industrial applications
of all substances that have important uses.
The volume is well printed, and contains
seventy-eight illustrations and a colored
plate of spectra.

A very attractive and well-made text-
book for beginners is the Elementary Geol-
ogy, by Charles Bird, which is one of Long-
mans' Elementary Science Manuals (Long-
mans, 80 cents). It is written in a simple
and easy style, giving a vivid idea of how
geological changes have taken place, and
with examples, mostly English, of the for-
mations described. The economic use of
each rock mentioned is also generally stated,
and there are 24*7 helpful illustrations, and
a colored geological map of the British
Isles. The sort of teaching that the author
gives is well indicated in his preface. He
reports the successful use of the lessons in
this book before they were printed, saying
that they sent many town boys on long
walks into the country, and enabled practi-
cally the whole class to pass the South Ken-
sington elementary examination. But he
deems the abiding interest aroused in natu-
ral phenomena and outdoor objects " a more
valuable and useful possession than even a
South Kensington certificate."

A Text-Book of Practical Plane and Solid
Geometry, by /. H. Morris, has been added
to the same series (Longmans, 80 cents).
It is devoted to the construction of geo-
metrical figures or geometrical drawing, and
contains several hundred problems, which
range from the simplest to those of consid-
erable complexity. The part of the volume
dealing with plane geometry leads up to the
drawing of spirals of different kinds and
other curves. This is followed by a chap-
ter on the application of geometry to the
construction of patterns and simple tracery,
including geometrical tracery windows. The
drawing of plans, elevations, and sections
of solids, such as prisms, pyramids, and
cones, in simple positions is then taken up.
The second section of the book deals with
the projection of points and lines, and the
representation of planes by their traces on
co-ordinate planes, and also the projections
of solid objects of simple form. Lists of
exercises consisting of problems taken from
the examination papers cf various English

colleges are introduced at intervals. The
diagrams appear in all cases on the page
opposite the problems.

The Geography of Europe, by James Sime,
corresponds in character with the preceding
volumes of Macmillan's Geographical Series,
to whioh it belongs (Macmillan, 80 cents).
The chief feature of the book is the atten-
tion it gives to the past evolution of politi-
cal divisions. The historic associations of
towns have also been made prominent. The
author states, as to the information he has
aimed to include in the volume: "In the
case of each country the physical features
arc first described ; then an attempt is made
to mark the stages of its history, so far as
they are related to geography. Next I have
brought together some of the leading facts
relating to government, population, and na-
tional character, religion and education, and
industry and trade. Finally, an account is
given of the principal towns, these being
generally grouped under the historic di-
visions to which they respectively belong."
As there is a volume devoted to the British
Isles in this series, only a short chapter on
the United Kingdom is included in the pres-
ent work. There are thirty-three cuts rep-
resenting characteristic buildings and places.

In the same series has just appeared a
volume on India, Burmah, and Ceylon, by
Henry F. Blanford (price, *T0 cents). The
subject-matter of this book may be described
as wholly geographical, and the author says
that, in order to bring so large a subject
within lcs3 than two hundred pages, it has
been necessary to restrict the description
to the most important features. But few
historical allusions are to be met with in
these pages. The text is illustrated with
twenty-seven cuts. Neither this nor the
preceding book contains maps, as both are
designed to be used with an atlas.

From the Smithsonian Institution we
have received a number of monographs, in
pamphlet form, which are to constitute parts
of volumes soon to be issued. The Report
on the National Museum for 18SS, by 67.
Brown Goode, assistant secretary in charge,
contains some facts in regard to the history
and organization of the museum, a review
of the work of the year, a list of the more
important accessions, and other information.
During the year a Department of Living

LITERARY NOTICES.

709

Animals was organized, which the secretary
hopes will develop into a national zoological
garden. Among these pamphlets is a pa-
per by Walter Hough, on Fire-making Ap-
paratus in the United States National Mu-
seum. It contains descriptions of a large
number of ways of making fire, with sixty
cuts of apparatus. The methods are classi-
fied and arranged in their presumed order
of development as follows : Fire-making by
twirling one stick on another, by sawing
and by plowing one stick with another, by
striking flint and pyrites together, and flint
and steel. Most of these methods have been
used by the Indians or Eskimos of Ameri-
ca. A Study of Prehistoric Anthropology,
designed as a hand-book for students be-
ginning this science, has been prepared by
Thomas Wilson, curator of this department
in the National Museum. It is a general
view of the subject, with a bibliography and
many cuts representing implements of stone,
bone, bronze, etc., dolmens, vessels, orna-
ments, and human representations. Frederic
A. Lucas has prepared an account of The
Expedition to the Funk Island, winch he
made in 1887, to procure bones of the great
auk. The bones obtained equaled in num-
ber all other collections combined, and a
thorough exploration was made of the isl-
and. The paper is illustrated with a picture
of the bird and one of its egg, a sketch map
of Funk Island, and diagrams. A popular
account of this expedition was contributed
by Mr. Lucas to the Monthly for August,
1S88. A Catalogue of the Hippisley Collec-
tion of Chinese Porcelains, toith a Sketch of
the History of Ceramic Art in China, pre-
pared by Alfred E. Hippisley, is now pub-
lished. In 1S87 this large collection was
deposited in the National Museum, with the
understanding that it should be allowed to
remain on exhibition for at least two years,
and that the museum should print a de-
scriptive catalogue. The catalogue occupies
some fifty pages, containing 438 numbers,
and the history of ceramic art is quite ex-
tended.

Several Bulletins of the Geological Sur-
vey have reached us together. No. 58 con-
tains a paper on The Glacial Boundary in
the Central States, by Prof. G. F. Wright,
with an introduction by T. C. Chambcrlin.
It is occupied mostly with observations on

the distribution of the till, but contains also
some facts in relation to striated surfaces of
rocks in place. The paper contains also
the evidence for and against the hypothesis
of a glacial dam at Cincinnati. Recent finds
of pakeoliths pointing to the probable exist-
ence of interglacial man in Ohio are here
reported; the relation of the loess to the
glacial drift, and the finding of gold near
the glacial margin, are also touched upon.
Eight plates and ten figures illustrate this
monograph. No. 59 is by Frederick D. Ches-
ter, on The Gabbros and Associated Rocks
in Delaware, the massive gabbro being the
most prominent formation in the northern
part of that State. The paper is illustrated
by a map and five figures. A Report of Work
done in the Division of Chemistry and Phys-
ics for the year 1887-'88, by F. W. Clarke,
forms No. 60. It contains an extended ac-
count of the occurrence and utilization of nat-
ural soda, by Thomas M. Chatard, analyses of
various rocks, ores, waters, and meteorites,
and notes on a number of other subjects.
No. 64 is a similar report for lS88-'89, and
is occupied largely with examinations of
minerals. No. 61 is Contributions to the Min-
eralogy of the Pacific Coast, by William H.
Melville and Waldemar Lindgren, the objects
of study being cinnabar crystals and other
specimens collected during a recent exami-
nation of the quicksilver deposits of Cali-
fornia. A Bibliography of Palceozoic Crus-
tacea, by Anthony W. Vogdes, forms No. 63.
It comprises a list of authors, a catalogue of
trilobites, and a catalogue of non-trilobites.
No. 66 is On a Group of Volcanic Rocks from
the Tewan Mountains, New Mexico, and on
the Occurrence of Primary Quartz in Certain
Basalts, by Joseph P. Iddings. We have
also received a paper by Charles A. White,
entitled On the Geology and Physiography of
a Portion of Northwestern Colorado and Ad-
jacent Parts of Utah and Wyoming, which
is to form a part of the report of the Geo-
logical Survey for 18S7-'S8. The district
here described lies round about the Uintah
Mountains, and the phenomena specially
considered relate to its geological structure
and to surface drainage. A colored geo-
logical map of the region and a number of
diagrams are given.

The object of the scries of reports on
the Mineral Resources of the United States,

710

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of which Mr. David T. Day, Chief of Di-
vision of Mining Statistics and Technology,
is the editor, is to record annually the most
important facts concerning the development
of the minerals found in the country. The
present, the sixth volume, is for the year
1888. The method of treatment pursued in
the previous volumes is continued in this.
The report opens with a summary statement
as to the condition of each mineral industry
at the close of the period under review — the
calendar year. At the end of this summary
is a table in which the values of the various
products are added, so as to furnish an esti-
mate of the relative importance of the min-
ing industry as a whole. Following the
summary each important mineral industry
is discussed in a separate chapter. The sta-
tistical tables given in former reports are
extended to include 1888, but otherwise the
material in each chapter is intended to show
the developments in 1S88 only and not in
previous years. To facilitate the consulta-
tion of all the volumes of the scries, an
index to the six is in preparation. (Gov-
ernment Printing-Office, Washington )

Volume XXIV of the Annals of the Har-
vard Observatory is devoted to Results, of
Observations with the Meridian Photometer,
from 1882 to 1688, by Edward C. Pickering
and Oliver 0. Wendell. The measurements
are of stars having magnitudes brighter
than 9-l of the Durchmustcrung. The ob-
jects observed number 20,9S2. Four photo-
metric settings were made upon each ob-
ject, and these were repeated on the average
between three and four times. The total
number of settings is 207,092.

The Elements of the Differential and In-
tegral Calculus of Prof. Arthur Sherburne
Hardy (Ginn & Co.) is based on the system
of rates which, in the author's experience,
has proved most satisfactory in a first pres-
entation of the object and scope of the sci-
ence. The object of the Differential Calcu-
lus is the measurement and comparison of
rates of change when the change is not uni-
form. The rate at any instant is determined
by ascertaining what the change of a quan-
tity would have been in a unit of time had
its rate remained what it was at the instant
in question. This change the Calculus en-
ables us to determine, however complicated
the law of variation may be.

The Bureau of Education has issued,
among its Circulars of Information for 1890,
a book of some four hundred pages on The
Teaching and History of Mathematics in the
United States, by Prof. Florian Cajori. The
first chapter, dealing with elementary schools,
the colleges then existing, and self-taught
mathematicians in colonial times, describes
persons and ways of teaching, many of which
seem very quaint to modern eyes. The
next two periods treated cover respectively,
the influx of English mathematics and the
influx of French mathematics. The list of
colleges grows longer in these two chapters,
and among the other topics which now enter
into the history are the surveying of Govern-
ment lands, mathematical journals, and the
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.
A chapter on mathematical teaching at the
present time contains the answers obtained
by sending a list of questions to several hun-
dred colleges, normal schools, academics,
etc. This is followed by several historical
essays on mathematical subjects, and a bib-
liography of fluxions and the calculus.

The Laboratory Manual of Chemistry,
Medical and Pharmaceutical, by Oldbcrg and
Long, which we noticed in July, 18S8, has
come out in a revised and enlarged edition
(Keener, $3.50). The preface states that
the greater part of this edition is an exact
reprint of the first, but that the chapter on
the chemical analysis of urine has been en-
tirely rewritten, and a new chapter has been
added on the microscopic examination of the
sediment.

Mr. Wcstcl W. Willoughby, in his mono-
graph on the Supreme Court of the United
States (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press),
holds up that tribunal as an illustration of
the maxim that in America, as elsewhere,
institutions are the result of an evolution,
and not an invention ; and that constitu-
tions, whether written or unwritten, are but
the results of the gradual recognition of
those laws and methods which are the best
suited for the government of a politically
organized people. The history of the Su-
preme Court begins with accounts of the
judiciaries in the colonies and under the
Confederation, and is carried on through
the Convention, the State Conventions, the
establishment and jurisdiction of the Fed-

LITERARY NOTICES.

711

eral Courts ; with reviews of the relations
of the Supreme Court with Congress, the
State Legislatures and Judiciaries, and the
Executive ; the Supreme Court and politics ;
the present condition and needs of the Su-
preme Court ; and the conclusion, resulting
in the assertion that it should be a matter of
special congratulation that " of all our great
institutions the Supreme Court is most dis-
tinctly the product of American genius, and
that its success is a direct testimony to the
high political ability of our American people."

Bulletin No. 6 of the Eleventh Census is
a preliminary statement of the Financial
Condition of Counties. It has been pre-
pared by Special Agent T. C. Copeland, and
shows the bonded, floating, gross, and net
debt, sinking fund, available resources, and
annual interest charge of each county in the
United States. The Bulletin contains also a
series of maps illustrating the geographical
distribution of county debt and resources.
Bulletin No. 19 gives partial results of an
inquiry into the Vital Statistics of the Jews
in the United Stales, conducted by Dr. J Jin
S. Billings. A discussion of the tables by
Dr. Billings brings out the apparent fact
that the birth-rate is decreasing and the
death-rate increasing among the Jews with
prolonged residence in this country.

Economic subjects are being written
upon to-day by thoughtful men in every
calling. A recent addition to the volume
of literature thus produced is The Distri-
bution of Wealth, by Jiufus Cope (Lippin-
cott, $2). It embodies the author's opinions
on the production of wealth, its division be-
tween labor and capital, savings, interest,
taxation, protection and free trade, monop-
olies, and allied topics, closing with a chap-
ter on education of the people, secular and
religious. It also contains full and free com-
ments on certain recent books and magazine
articles, and in some cases the writers are
criticised as well as their published views.
On the question at present most prominent
— the tariff — the author takes the position
of an apologist for protection. Throughout
the volume his statistics are for the most
part those of the census of 1SS0, although
his table of tariff revenues is only three
years old. From education, he hopes that
the working classes will gain much in the
way of bettering their condition.

A quarterly magazine called The Monist
has been established, with the stated object
of continuing a portion of the work hitherto
done by The Open Court (The Open Court
Publishing Company, $2 a year), or of de-
veloping " a unitary conception of the world,
free from contradictions and based upon
the facts of life." A result which is ex-
pected to flow from the . accomplishment of
this task is a purification of our religious
ideals. The opening article of the first
number is a reply by G. J. Romanes to cer-
tain statements of A. R. "Wallace on Physio-
logical Selection. The line of this reply is
that Mr. "Wallace has professed hostility to
the views of Mr. Romanes and Mr. Gulick,
and afterward reproduced them as original.
Prof. Cope contributes an analysis of The
Material Relations of Sex in Human Society,
from which he draws the conclusion that,
while woman is under some social disad-
vantages in respect to man, these are based
on facts of nature which can not be changed,
and that she has a full equivalent in advan-
tages which are also derived from the nat-
ural order of things. Other articles in the
number are The Immortality of Infusoria,
by Alfred Binet ; The Analysis of the Sen-
sations— Anti-metaphysical, by Prof. Ernst
Mach ; The Origin of Mind, by Dr. Paul
Carus ; The Magic Mirror, by Max Dessoir ;
and Hoffding on the Relation of the Mind
to the Body, by "W. M. Salter. There is
also an installment of Literary Correspond-
ence from France, by Lucien Arreat, a de-
partment of book reviews, a conspectus of
the instruction in philosophy given at lead-
ing American colleges, and a list of psycho-
logical and philosophical articles in other
periodicals.

Inquirendo Island, by Hudor Genone
(Twentieth Century Publishing Company,
$1), is a satirical story dealing with theo-
logical matters. Extracts from reviews on
the slip sent out by the publishers show the
religious press to be divided as to whether
the book is religious or irreligious.

The Standard Dictionary of the EnglisJi
Language, to be published by Funk & Wag-
nails, is intended to be such a dictionary as
the people will find most useful for daily
consultation. While the wants of scholars
will not be overlooked in its preparation,

712

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

those of lay readers will be preferred. For
this reason some departures will be intro-
duced in it from the usual custom of dic-
tionaries. Besides the spelling and pronun-
ciation of the word, the first thing sought by
the average man is its most common present
meaning. For that reason, the meaning
now most generally accepted is given first,
while the less usual meanings and the ob-
solescent and obsolete meanings are re-
manded to back places. The etymologies
are given after the definitions. The quo-
tations by which the meanings are illus-
trated will be verified by reference to the
particular work, chapter, and page of the
author cited, in which the word is found.
A large proportion of the verifying quota-
tions are from the standard writers of the
day ; and, as between a foreign and an
American author of equal authority, the
American will be preferred. Pronuncia-
tions will be indicated in the alphabet sug-
gested by the American Philological Asso-
ciation. The various departments of the
work are to be prepared under the direction
of scholars eminent in their respective spe-
cialties. The dictionary will be published
in a single volume of more than twenty-one
hundred pages, a little larger than the
pages of the unabridged dictionaries, will
be illustrated, will contain the usual supple-
ments, and will be sold for $10 a copy, with
a special discount to advance subscribers.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

American Academy of Medicine. Bulletin on
the Value of Academical Degrees. Pp. 8.

Bellamy, B. W., and Goodwin, M. W. Open
Sesame. (School Reader.) Ginn & Co. Pp. 8G1.

Burney, 8. G. Studies in Psychology. Nash-
ville, Tenn. : Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing
House. Pp. 535.

Calendars for 1S91. Styles <fc Cash, printers.
New York — E. B. Treat & Co. Don't forget it
Calendar.

Charity Organization Society, New York. Direct-
ory of Charities. Pp. 400.

Children's Aid Society, New York. Tenth An-
nual Report. Pp. 80.

Coy, Edward 0. Greek for Beginners. Ameri-
can Book Company. Pp. 152.

Cresson. Dr. C. M. Water-supply and Disease
In Philadelphia. Pp. 24.

Census. United States, Bulletin. Vital Statistics
of Jews. Pp. 24.

Fall, Delos, Albion, Mich. Action of Alcohol on
the Human Body. Pp. 16.

Fontaine, W. M.. and Knowlton. F. H. Triassic
Plants from New Mexico. Smithsonian Institution.
Pp. 6, with Plates.

Foulko, William Dudley. Civil-service Reform
In its Later Aspects. Society for Political Education,
New York. Pp. 13.

Genone, Hudor. Inqulrendo Island. New York :
Twentieth Century Publishing Co. Pp. 34T. $1.

Geological Survey, United States. Bulletins: No.
58. Glacial Boundary, Pennsylvania to Illinois. By
G. F. Wright. Pp. 44.— No. 59. Gabbros, etc., in
Delaware. By F. D. Chester. Pp. 40.— Nos. 60
and 64. Reports of the Division of Chemistry and
Physics, Ihbl-'bS and 1S8S-89. By F. W. Clarke.
Pp. 150 and 60.— No. 61. Mineralogy of the Pacific
Coast. By W. H. Melville and W. Lindgren. Pp.
33, with Plates.— No. C3. Bibliography of Palaeozoic
Crustacea. By A. W. Vogdes. Pp. 177.— No. 66.
Volcanic Rocks from Tewan Mountains, New Mexi-
co, etc. By J. P. Iddings. Pp. 34.

Gilbert. G. K. Lake Bonneville. Pp. 438. Wash-
ington : United States Geological Survey.

Hale. E. M., M. D.. Chicago. Are Valvular Dis-
eases of the Heart curable? Pp.4.

Hamilton. Gail. A Washington Bible Class. D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 303. $1.50.

Harding, George. Argument on Patent Suit.
Self-carrier for Self-binding Harvesters. Philadel-
phia. Pp. 124.

Heilprin, Prof. Angelo. Corals, etc., of the Gulf
of Mexico. Pp. 14, with Plates.

Iowa, Universitv of, Engineering Society. The
Transit. Vol. I. No. 2. Pp. 96, with Plates. 50
cents.

Ivers, J. E. Echinoderms from the Northern
Coast of Yucatan, etc. Pp. 24, with Plato.

Lockver, J. Norman. The Meteoric Hypothesis.
Macmillan. Fp. 560. $5.25.

Maclean, .T. P. Fingall's Cave. Cincinnati:
Robert Clarke & Co. Pp. 49. 75 cents.

Madison, Andrew W , New York. The Truo
Theory of Christianity. Pp. 86. 15 cents.

Nichols, Prof. E. L., Cornell University. The
Artificial Light of the Future. Pp. 21.

Norton, C. L. Political Americanisms. Long-
mans. Pp. 184. $1.

Pennsylvania. University of. Museum of Arche-
ology. Annual Report. Pp. 54.

Powell, J. W. United States Geological Survey.
Ninth Annual Report. Pp. 717, with Maps and
Plates.

Powers, Edward, Delavan, Wis. War and the
Heathen. Pp. 202. $1.

Stone, George H. Glacial Sediments of Maine.
Pp. 24.

Tolstoi, Count Leo. The Fruits of Culture.
Boston: Benjamin R. Tucker. Pp.185.

Tourgee, Albion W. Murvale Eastman, Christian
Socialist. Fords, Howard and Hulbert. Pp. 545.
$1.50.

Wheeler, George Montagu, U. 8. A. A Uni-
versal World's Exhibit. Washington. Pp. 6, with
Chart.

Whitman. C. O., Boston. Marine Biological Lab-
oratory. Report. Pp. 27.

Williams, G. H. Elements of Crystallography.
New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 250.

Wilsinsr, J. Determination of the Mean Density
of the Earth. Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 12.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

White-fish in Lake Ontario. — A num-
ber of citizens of Rochester are endeavor-
ing to interest the people of the State of
New York in stocking Lake Ontario with
white-fish. The lake once afforded abun-
dance of this sweet and juicy fish, as Lake
Erie does still, but they have now become
scarce in it. The citizens to whom we refer

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

713

show that Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, "Wiscon-
sin, and the Dominion are busily stocking
their lakes ; while New York, with Ontario
and numerous smaller lakes adapted to the
raising of white-fish, is doing comparatively
little in this particular direction. " We
ought," they say, " to put out from thirty
million to fifty million white-fish per annum."
For this purpose we need regular and year-
ly liberal appropriations for stocking the
lakes ; stringent laws against netting or
fishing during the spawning season or on
spawning beds ; laws forbidding the use of
nets with a mesh smaller than is defined in
them, and the catching and marketing of
fish of less than a determined weight ; the
appointment of a first-class fish warden with
enough deputies ; and co-operation with the
national and Dominion Governments.

The American Folk-lore Society.— The

Council of the American Folk-lore Society
reported at the recent meeting of that body
that it stood upon a more solid basis than
ever before, and its existence no longer
needed to be justified. It may be confi-
dently affirmed that no branch of American
historical research offers a field for original
investigation comparable to that presented
by the traditions, rites, beliefs, and customs
of the aboriginal races. On the other hand,
the rapidity with which these tribes are pene-
trated by the ideas of civilization is strik-
ingly illustrated by the movement now in
progress among the Indian tribes of the
United States. Every year, by increasing
the difficulty of research, adds to the likeli-
hood that many problems of primitive re-
ligion and usage will, in consequence of de-
ficiency of information, remain permanent-
ly unsolved — a failure which, again, must
of necessity obscure the comprehension of
more advanced developments of human in-
telligence. It is therefore greatly to be de-
sired that to the task of collection shall be
devoted an energy in some degree commen-
surate with its importance, and that labors
in this direction should be extended and
systematized. As respects other branches
of the work, especially observations con-
cerning immigrant races, the material al-
ready printed in the publications of the so-
ciety has been sufficient to demonstrate the
various interest of the subject, the width of

the field open to the collector, and the man-
ner in which existing habits and beliefs
serve to illustrate history. The Council
has decided, if the society consents, to begin
the publication of a Library of American
Folk Lore, of which two volumes may be
issued annually. While no member will be
required to subscribe for these works, they
will be obtainable for a subscription of two
dollars in addition to the membership fee of
three dollars, making the whole expense five
dollars — for which all the regular publica-
tions of the society will be sent. The es-
tablishment of local chapters, which has al-
ready been successfully carried into effect
in Philadelphia and Boston, is recommended.
The society had four hundred and forty-
seven members, with applicants enough to
swell the number to more than five hundred.
The Journal of American Folk Lore, the
society's publication, is already, according
to the statement of Prof. Crane, one of the
editors, accepted as an authority in this coun-
try and in Europe.

The Bath in the Middle Ages.— An asser-
tion made several years ago by Dr. Lyon
Playfair, trusting to " worthless authorities,"
that " for a thousand years there was not a
man or woman in Europe that ever took a
bath," which was laughed at at the time, has
been seriously refuted by the Rev. T. E.
Bridget in his historical essay on Blunders
and Forgeries. According to him, no one
who has read much of the mediaeval litera-
ture of any part of Christian Europe can
doubt that the bath was constantly called
into requisition. Among the accounts of
Queen Isabella, wife of Edward II, is an en-
try of a payment " for repairs of the queen's
bath and gathering of herbs for it." In a
narrative of the arrival of Louis of Bruges,
created Earl of Winchester in 1472, we find
among other comforts provided for him that
in the third chamber there " was ordered a
Bayne, or ij, which were covered with tentes
of white clothe." Mr. Dickson, the editor,
tells us in the preface to the first volume of
the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of
Scotland, that " bathrooms were not uncom-
mon in the houses of the great, and even the
luxury of baths in bedrooms was not un-
known. The accounts show two payments
for broadcloth to cover a ' bath-fat ' — that

7H

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is, to form a tent-like covering over it."
The Abbe Thiers, in his Traite des Supersti-
tions, mentions certain days on which silly
people fancied it was wrong to bathe, a no-
tion which would never have arisen had not
bathing been a common practice.

The Battersea Home for Dogs. — TheBat-
tersca Temporary Home for lost and starv-
ing dogs took care last year of 24,123 dogs,
for 3,613 of which homes were found — either
new homes or by restoration to their owners.
The report says that homeless dogs coming
from the London streets were for the most
part untrained, ill-bred, deformed, diseased,
and half -starved, which, by the necessities of
the situation, " found in the lethal chamber
a merciful refuge." The muzzling order
greatly augmented the number of dogs sent
to the home during the latter part of the
year, and threatened to overwhelm the re-
sources of the institution. The home had
prevented the spread of rabies by clearing
the streets of the dogs most liable to be bit-
ten by rabid animals, and had thus benefited
the whole community. A cats' home had
been added for the boarding of these ani-
mals, and neglected pussies were now found
new homes or sent to the lethal chamber.
The Duke of Portland — who presided at the
annual meeting of the society — expressed
his satisfaction at the personal interest which
was shown by the Queen in the work of
the home, as was proved by " her interpo-
sition to lengthen the time between the in-
coming of the dogs and the consequences of
no one claiming them " — which is a beauti-
fully delicate way of phrasing the unpleasant
truth.

The Failure of the Apple Crop of 1890.

— The failure of the apple crop of 1S90 in
western New York is accounted for by Prof.
L. H. Bailey, of the Cornell Experiment Sta-
tion, as a result of the weather, which was
exceedingly wet and cool in the spring, then
marked by unusually heavy rains, followed
by drought. A blight was developed in the
foliage of the trees, caused by the growth
of the apple-scab fungus. The scab (Fusi-
cladium dendriiicum) is found upon the
bracts or small leaves attending the flower-
cluster, and is frequent upon very small
fruits. It is nearly always present, to a

greater or less extent, upon both leaves and
fruit, but it is rarely so destructive to foliage
as in the last year. It has increased rapidly
in New York of late years, and apples have
been unusually scabby. The wet spring
afforded it just the conditions for rapid
growth. The scab appears to be somewhat
worse upon low and undrained lands than
upon high and warm elevations, although
in the infected regions the latter are never
exempt. A closely related species (Fusicla-
dium pyriniim), by some regarded as iden-
tical with the other, attacks the pear, in
fruit and foliage, and probably causes much
of the failure in the pear crop. It has a
tendency to remain in more or less definite
spots, so that pear foliage rarely looks as
brown as apple foliage. The injury to trees
by the fungus is not vital. It is best coun-
teracted by spraying with solutions of car-
bonate of copper, beginning before the flow-
ers open, and making four or six applica-
tions between then and the 1st of August.
A solution of copper sulphate, carbonate of
soda, and carbonate of ammonia is also rec-
ommended.

Advent of the Ghost Idea. — Lady TYelby
offered a puzzle to the British Association
when she presented the question, which has
not been solved, of accounting for the great
" break " in human thought which occurs
when the "ghost idea," or the thought of
another life and the supernatural, comes in.
The governing notion of those who regard
the human intellect as a result of evolution
is that man slowly accumulated experience,
and from it, by comparison, by deduction,
and by meditation, arrived at last at abstract
and non-material thought. He considered
the effect of revenge, for example, and its
operation on tribal society, till he arrived at
the idea of just revenge, or, as we call it, of
justice ; and, finally, his horizon ever widen-
ing, at the lofty conception that forgiveness
might occasionally, or even frequently, be
more to the general advantage, or, in other
words, might be nobler, and therefore to be
adopted. This theory leaves much unex-
plained, but it is supported by an array of
facts, and will, if accepted, explain many of
the phenomena. Much of thought is a re-
sult of experience and observation, and more
may be ; and it may be possible to extend

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

715

the result of teaching by experience till it
covers most of the field of human intelli-
gence. But a break occurs at the moment
when the ghost idea intrudes. That can not
be derived from experience ; for no man has
ever lived again the present life, nor has a
ghost ever been observed except in fancy,
and if in fancy, how did the fancy originate?
It can not be explained, either, as the result
of dreams, for, while people may dream odd
things and whimsical combinations, they do
not dream absolutely new things — that is,
things outside their experience and outside
the imagination developed from thinking
about the collected results of experience
either personal or inherited. Two supposi-
tions are mentioned by the London Spec-
tator in reviewing Lady Welby's paper as
admissible on the subject. The first is that
primitive man had evidence that he had seen
or heard, at some time or other, that which
inspired conviction in his mind, and became
Burc of another life because he had watched
its manifestations. The other is that, what-
ever be the truth about the evolution of
thought, some thoughts must be intuitional
— that is, have been generated in man origi-
nally by some external power.

Chinese and Indian Tea. — The suprem-
acy of the tea trade is gradually shifting
from China to India and Ceylon to such an
extent that the Chinese Government is said
to have instituted an investigation into the
matter. The cultivation of tea as an indus-
try is hardly fifty years old in India, and not
more than ten years old in Ceylon ; yet the
British importations from those countries
almost equal in weight and exceed in money
value those from China ; and while the ex-
ports of China tea doubled between 1866
and 1886, those of Indian teas increased
fourfold. The causes of the change were
found by the Chinese investigation to rest
largely in differences in the preparation of
the commercial product. The Chinese
method is characterized as careless. The
crop is raised in small gardens by men who
own them and whose capital is small. The
picking is done by the family, with hired
help only when it can not be got along with-
out. To save expense it is pushed forward,
and the plucked leaves are allowed to stand,
deteriorating in quality, till it is finished.

Consequently, the leaves are not evenly
withered. In India, tea is grown in large
gardens, under skilled superintendence, with
thoroughly organized methods. The pick-
ing is attended to with extreme care, so that
each leaf is plucked at the proper stage,
the plants being gone over again and again
as the leaves successively mature. The
plucked leaf is started at once on the course
of " making," so that no time is given for
deterioration to begin. Like differences in
care and system prevail through all the de-
tails and processes, down to the packing
and transporting to market ; and the In-
dian teas are prevailing by virtue of the
real superiority which they thereby obtain.

Infant Serpents. — As described by Dr.
Walter Sibley, in his paper in the British
Association on The Incubation of Serpents'
Eggs, the first sign of the process of hatch-
ing is a slit, usually Y-shaped, appearing at
the highest part of the egg-shell, whether
the egg is placed on its side or on one end.
The snout of the young reptile appears at
the crack. After a time the head is pro-
truded, and often remains out of the shell
for some hours before the body and the tail
are hatched. If disturbed, the head is again
withdrawn into the shell. The author had
seen fully-hatched young snakes return into
their shells when alarmed. The young
snakes, when first hatched, are smooth and
velvety to the touch, with the yellow ring
(of the common English snake) beautifully
marked from the first, and the eyes open ;
but often there is some opacity about the
cornea, which disappears in the course of a
few hours. They are about six inches long,
and weigh about eighty grains. They begin
to hiss in the first few days.

Compressed Air as a Motor Power. — The

power of compressed air was described by
Prof. Alan Lupton, at the British Associa-
tion, as suitable for large or small motors,
and one that could be cheaply and safely in-
troduced into workshops, houses, and shops.
It will do the heavy work of a mill-course
or iron-works, and the light work of the
tailor, shoemaker, hair-dresser, and grocery,
and will drive a dynamo for electric lighting.
In Birmingham, by the agency of three
steam-engines of 1,000 horse-power, air com-

7i 6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pressed to a pressure of forty-five pounds
above the atmosphere is delivered into pipes
which are laid like gas-pipes over four miles
of streets. The works had only left the
hands of the contractors, when there were
forty customers for air-power, some of them
at a distance of a mile and three quarters
from the compressing station. The loss of
power by friction in the pipes is so light
that no ordinary gauge will show it. The
engines of the consumers vary in size from
half a horse-power up to fifty horse-power.
Under the system of Hughes and Lancaster,
by which compressed air may be applied to
tramways, a pipe is laid in the street for the
supply of compressed air to the cars, which
carry the machinery for propulsion. Any
gradient which a locomotive can mount can
be ascended by the cars, and fresh supplies
of air can be taken in without stopping the
cars.

Petroleum as an Explosive. — Experi-
ments by Peter T. Austen exhibit petroleum
as an explosive of the dangerous class. It
evolves inflammable gases at ordinary tem-
peratures, and some of them are not liquefied
by a considerable reduction of the tempera-
ture. The author applying a match to a
flask containing crude petroleum at zero
Fahrenheit, the flask was filled with a blue
flame. Since the evolution of gas is in-
creased by shaking the oil, an inflammable
gas must accumulate in the vacant parts of
car-tanks, in a condition more or less fa-
vorable to explosion. If the gas in contact
with the petroleum becomes ignited, the oil
will, in most cases, take fire unless the body
of the liquid is very cold ; and the danger
increases as the temperature. The behavior
of a tank of petroleum under pressure has
not been much studied ; but all know how
tinder may be ignited in a " fire syringe " —
an effect of simple compression. The lubri-
cating oil of the piston also takes fire — at a
temperature of about 300°. The volatile
gases of petroleum may be ignited at a lower
temperature. If the mixture of air and va-
por over petroleum is compressed to one
fourth its volume, the temperature will be
raised to 429° from zero, and to 499° from
70° Fahr. It follows, therefore, that if an oil-
tank filled or partly filled with such a mixt-
ure is suddenly compressed in such a way as

greatly to reduce its volume, the gas, and
probably the oil, will be ignited by the com-
pression. This might happen in r. case of
telescoping or of a fall of the tank. If a
tank nearly filled with oil were suddenly
compressed, the resistance offered by the
liquid would heat it sufficiently to cause an
evolution of its lighter hydrocarbons in suf-
ficient quantity to create a dangerous press-
ure within the tank. This might happen
when, the car being stopped in a collision,
the oil is suddenly hurled against the front
end of the tank. The author concludes
that precautions against explosion are ne-
cessary in the transportation of crude petro-
leum.

Alcohol as a Cause of Disease. — Dr.

Lewis D. Mason, of the Inebriate Asylum,
Fort Ilamilton, N. Y., discussing The Eti-
ology of Dipsomania and the Heredity of Al-
coholic Inebriety, determines as facts that
alcoholism in progenitors will produce physi-
cal and mental degradation in their descend-
ants, with the disorders that arise from a de-
fective nerve organization ; and all grades
of mental weakening, from slight enfeeble-
ment of intellect to insanity and complete
idiocy ; and that the laws regulating these
changes are similar to those that govern con-
genital degenerative changes from other
causes. The offspring of the confirmed
drunkard will inherit either the original vice
or " some of its countless Protean transfor-
mations." In another paper — on Pathologi-
cal Changes in Chronic Alcoholism — Dr. Ma-
son exhibits alcohol as modifying the serum
and the anatomical elements of the blood,
besides being an irritant and directly produc-
ing modification and degeneration of tissue,
and therefore as being most evidently a dis-
ease-producing agent. Contrasting the little
progress that has been made in the study of
the pathology of chronic alcoholism and of
the diseases incident to alcoholism with the
great advance that has been achieved in
knowledge of microbic diseases, he adds :
" Alcohol has not any microbe, but the grand
total of its mortality will exceed the com-
bined effect of all the bacteria that have ever
passed the microscopic field or developed in
the culture-tube of the bacteriologist." The
subject is now, however, beginning to receive
some of the attention it deserves.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

7i7

Leaf and Stick Insects. — The leaf insect
and the walking-stick insect are curious creat-
ures. All of the family to which they belong
are nocturnal in habit, and spend their days
resting on trees and bushes the leaves of
which form their food. They so resemble
the leaves and twigs as to escape all but the
very keenest observation. In the leaf in-
sect, the head and thorax form a stalk, while
the abdomen, which is flat, thin, and much
dilated, exactly resembles a leaf. The six
legs have broad, membranous appendages on
the upper part, which are especially notice-
able on the fore-legs ; so that the creature
while resting has the appearance of a leaf
that has been gnawed on both sides by a cat-
erpillar. While the color of the insect va-
ries at different periods of its life, it always
more or less resembles a leaf at some stage ;
when settled on the leaves and eating at
them, its body becomes bright green. After
death it becomes brown like a dry leaf. The
stick insects are common in the tropics, which
are the principal habitat of the leaf insects,
and are also found in temperate regions, in-
cluding the United States. The tropical spe-
cies are the largest, some of them reaching
nine or ten inches in length. They are
hatched from the egg in a form closely re-
sembling that of their parents, coming into
the world with three pairs of legs, which
keep their shape with but little, if any, al-
teration during their entire existence, and
which are all walking limbs. At all stages
of their life they closely resemble sticks and
twigs, either green and growing, or brown
and withered, from which they obtain their
name. They are also called specters, from
their skeleton-like appearance and their slow,
stealthy movements. A colony of these in-
sects in the London Zoological Gardens is
breeding prosperously.

Fort Ancient. — Mr. "Warren K. Moore-
head gave the American Association an ac-
count of his excavations of Fort Ancient,
Ohio, and what he found there, in which he
more fully elaborated the theory of the his-
tory of that work which was indicated in the
volume upon it that we have recently re-
viewed. One of the points of this theory,
based on the comparison of the potteries and
implements found in and around the fort,
and the burials, was that it was a point of

contest, or battle-ground, between two races
of men. Other questions occupied the au-
thor's mind as he considered the subject,
and years, he said, might be spent in care-
ful excavation of the graves and cemeteries,
and there would still remain sufficient ma-
terial to engage the attention of antiquaries
for a long time to come. " This great in-
closure, so rich in facts, so productive of im-
plements that tell us of the every-day life of
the ancient people who lived within its walls,
may yet reveal to the patient investigator a
history that shall go far toward dispelling
the darkness that surrounds the origin and
movements of ancient men on the American
continent." The site has been bought by
the State of Ohio, and will be preserved as
a State park.

The Spectra of the Metals. — A paper by
Prof. Rowland, of Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity, on The Spectra of the Metals, was re-
ceived by the Physical Section of the British
Association as a most important advance in
our knowledge. The author had undertaken
during the past year the measurement of
the wave-lengths of the lines of nearly all
the metallic spectra, and had compared
them with the solar spectrum, in order to
ascertain which metals were certainly pres-
ent in the sun. The object of the research
was primarily to find out what sort of thing3
molecules are, and in what way they vibrate.
This can be deduced from the wave-lengths
of the light emitted if we can find any rela-
tion between these wave-lengths. If the
molecules are spheres, we should have a
series of bands getting gradually nearer
together toward the violet, and representing
harmonics of one fundamental vibration. A
spheroid or ellipsoid would give a similar
crowding, but not so uniformly arranged.
The author had worked on a larger scalo
than in any previous observations, with neg-
atives twenty feet long for the whole spec-
trum, lie looked for and found many indi-
cations of the truth of the periodic law,
which points to the fact that similar chemi-
cal substances have mohculss vibrating in a
similar manner. As examples, nearly every
line in the spectrum of zinc has a corre-
sponding one in that of cadmium ; so also
with calcium, strontium, and barium, and
with potassium, caesium, and rubidium. In

7i8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

. the case of several elements there is a band,
consisting of three very bright lines, which
it is supposed correspond to vibrations
along the three principal axes of the mole-
cule. Dut the agreement in the spectra
of various metals does not extend to all
members of the group. For instance, the
spectra of beryllium and magnesium do not
resemble those of the other alkaline metals.
Lockyer supposed a fundamental basic line
common to all the elements, but the author
found no trace of it. Any line in the solar
spectrum which is common to two elements
Prof. Rowland considers to be so only by
coincidence. Further dispersion would sepa-
rate the line into two. Some elements give
no lines, except in the ultra-violet — boron,
for example. Probably most elements have
lines beyond the limits of the photographic
plate. The author doubts whether the plat-
inum metals and uranium are present in
the sun. Among substances not present are
antimony, bismuth, arsenic, boron, gold, and
nitrogen. On the other hand, many lines in
the sun, such as D 3, correspond with no
known metal.

Physical Development versus Consump-
tion.— For several years Dr. G. W. Ilamble-
ton, President of the London Polytechnic
Physical Development Society, has been
publishing papers showing how physical de-
velopment may be employed to counteract
consumption. He has given the results of
further researches in a communication to the
British Association. His theory is that con-
sumption is directly produced by conditions
that tend to reduce the breathing capacity
below a certain point in proportion to the
rest of the body, and that it can both be
prevented and recovered from by the adop-
tion of measures based upon that interpre-
tation of its nature. Tables were exhibited
showing the measurements of one hundred
of the two hundred members of the author's
society who have already obtained an in-
crease of chest-growth of one inch and up-
ward. The average increase is a little over
an inch and three quarters. A considerable
increase was also obtained in range of move-
ment. The increase has taken place in small
as well as in large chests, whether the men
were tall or short, under or over twenty-one
years of age, and with or without gymnastic

training. The subjects were engaged in more
than fifty different trades and occupations,
working in them from eight to twelve hours
daily. The variations in chest-girth that took
place during the year were also significant.
Some of the members of the society were
prominent members of the gymnasium, and
as such had energetically prepared them-
selves for certain exercises there. On such
occasions he had frequently noted a large
decrease of the chest-girth. The girth also
decreased when the men were much en-
gaged in extra work, stock-taking, cycling,
etc., or when they neglected to follow the
directions given them. In fact, the increase
or decrease observed was in direct relation-
ship with a corresponding change in the
conditions of their surroundings. But it is
not only in the ordinary routine of daily
life that this relationship between the
chest-girth and the conditions to which it is
subjected is manifested. In the treatment
of consumption the author had obtained in-
creases of from two to three inches and up-
ward. This increase of the chest-girth is
accompanied by a corresponding increase
of the range of movement and of the vital
capacity, and by a change in the type of
chest from that of disease to that of health ;
for happily it could be said that the treat-
ment of disease by this method had been
invariably successful. What had been ex-
perimentally obtained had been also equally
well obtained in the practical application of
that research. One part of the investiga-
tions confirms the other, and the case as a
whole is complete and practicable.

Fatness and its Treatment. — It is de-
clared to be a misconception that fatness is
in itself a disease. It only becomes morbid
when, by mechanical pressure, fat impedes
the functions of the organs, or by weight
unduly burdens the body so as to exhaust
the strength or make too large a demand on
the resources of force and vitality. There
is no certainty in trying to prevent fatness
by any process of dieting, for "there are
many ways of fat-making, and those per-
sons who have a tendency to its production
will make fat, however they are fed — in
truth, almost as rapidly on one class of
diet as on another. There are idiosyncra-
sies which may, in a limited number of in-

NOTES.

719

stances, be taken advantage of to check the
tendency to form fat, but these specialties
of the chemico-nutritive function are by no
means common ; and, speaking generally, it
must be said that, except by starving the
body as a whole, fatness can not be pre-
vented." The exceptions to this rule are
chiefly such as may be explained on the
principle of a special tissue appetite. Thus
some persons have a tendency to form mus-
cle in excess, others to build up the nerves ;
and the last will grow thin while feeding
well ; and there are, in this way, persons
whose specialty it is to make adipose tissue,
and they will wax fat even when other parts
of the organization are relatively in a con-
dition approaching starvation. These and
many other matters have to be taken into ac-
count when calculating the probabilities or
improbabilities of success in the endeavor to
diminish the fatness of any person by a sys-
tem of dieting. Drugs, except when intelli-
gently directed to some special morbid con-
dition, have just as little influence in the
matter.

Inflncnza and Children's Growth. — A

systematic course of observations of the
growth in weight of the children in the Deaf-
mute Institution at Copenhagen has been
kept up for seven years. Among the most
striking results is the fact that the princi-
pal increase takes place in the fall months.
Last fall (1889) the influenza appeared in
Copenhagen toward the end of November.
Six of the professors of the institution were
attacked, while no pronounced cases were
developed among the pupils. At the same
time, for four weeks after the 23d of No-
vember, the weight of the boys increased
only two fifths as rapidly as it had done in
the corresponding weeks of the previous
years, while the girls gained nothing. It is
supposed that the vital force that usually
went to increase of weight was for this occa-
sion used up in resisting the germs of the
disease.

NOTES.

The conclusions expressed by Prof. Key,
in the November number of the Monthly, re-
specting periods of growth in school chil-
dren, seem to be confirmed by the measure-
ments of Dr. Henry P. Bowditch in the
schools of Boston. From these measure-

ments, Dr. Bowditeh observed in the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences, it was shown
that the big boys and girls get their growth
earlier in life than the small boys and girls.
The latter make up their relative proportion,
but not till about aycar later in life. The same
fact was proved regarding height and weight.
There was also shown to be a period of what
the author called " female superiority," when
the girls are the superiors in height and
weight of the boys of the same age. This
age is from about fourteen to sixteen years.

Experiments are being tried in Germany
in making horseshoes of a material the
chief constituent of which is paper. It is
said to fit to the hoof better than the iron
shoe, to be impervious to water, and to grow
rough under use, so as to become a safe-
guard against slipping.

M. Armand Vire has discovered some
dozen rocks in the valley of the Lunain,
France, covered with smooth furrows run-
ning in various directions, which the people
there believe to be scratchings of the devil's
claws. They were used, it is supposed, dur-
ing the Quaternary epoch, for finishing off
the stone hatchets.

A portable boat has been devised by
Colonel Apostoloff, of the Russian army,
which may be constructed instantly by mak-
ing a framework with the lances of the Cos-
sacks and covering with a tarred cloth. Two
boats are capable of carrying thirty-six men,
with their baggage and arms.

MM. Fremt and Verneuil have contin-
ued their experiments in the manufacture of
artificial rubies, which attracted attention
several years ago, and, improving their pro-
cesses, have made it successful on a con-
siderable scale. They now obtain crystals
weighing a third of a carat. In their later
processes they add carbonate of potash to
crude alumina, with bichromate of potash
for color. The process, with the agitation
of fluoride of barium, is continued for a
week without interruption, at a temperature
of 1350° C. Several times in the course of
their experiments they have observed the
red crystals of the ruby formed along with
the violet and blue crystals of the sapphire.
Mineralogy as well as jewelry is likely to
profit by "these operations, which are destined
to cast light upon the coloring of gems.

Painted human bones have been found
by Prof. Vasselovski in two prehistoric graves
in the Crimea. Such bones had previously
been found in three other graves. They are
supposed to belong to the original inhabit-
ants of the Crimea, the Cimmerians of Herod-
otus, who laid their dead on elevated spots
till the birds consumed the flesh, and painted
the skeletons, when they were bleached, with
some mineral pigment. Painted skeletons
have also been found in central Asia.

J2Q

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In some informal remarks at the meet-
ing of the American Folk-lore Society, Dr.
J. W. Fewkes gave the results of observa-
tions among the Zuni Indians at Pueblo,
which go to show how the traditions of the
tribe survive in a kind of dramatic represen-
tation by dances. He thought that many
historical events could be traced by making
a careful study of the dances.

The trustees of the American Museum of
Natural History have just opened a collec-
tion of the woods of the United States, gath-
ered under the direction of Prof. Sargent,
editor of Garden and Forest, and presented
by Mr. Morris K. Jesup. It is nearly ex-
haustive, and represents four hundred and
twelve species, including nearly all trees that
are large enough to be considered of com-
mercial importance. Attached to each spe-
cies is a small colored map showing over what
areas in the United States the wood is found,
while near by are water-color drawings of
flowers and fruit of the species, in nearly
natural size and colors. In another hall arc
cases of specimens in economic entomology,
illustrating the work of insects injurious to
forest trees.

The latest attempt to solve the " smoke
problem " is the scheme of Mr. Elliott, of
London, for condensing the smoke in water
and recovering the by-products. The smoke
is drawn from the chimney by means of a
fan into a tank of water in which revolving
stirrers arc moving ; by these the products
of combustion are churned up and arrested
and condensed in the water. When the wa-
ter is fully charged, it is drawn off, and the
tank is filled with fresh water. The charged
liquor is to be afterward treated, and the by-
products due to the combustion of the coal
are to be recovered.

According to a paper of Prof. John
Trowbridge, the discharge from a Lcyden
jar is not a single act, but is a series of os-
cillatory movements back and forth till an
equilibrium is reached. The oscillations take
place in -rmnioTFo of a second.

A gigantic pendulum — a bronze wire,
a hundred and fifteen metres long, with a
steel globe weighing ninety kilogrammes at
the end — has been suspended in the Eiffel
Tower, for the purpose of demonstrating visi-
bly the motion of the earth.

A leprosy commission has been dis-
patched from England to India, which, after
an investigation of one year, is expected to
report concerning the desirability or other-
wise of encouraging the voluntary partial
withdrawal of lepers from among the non-
leprous population ; of enforcing the com-
plete isolation of all lepers ; and of enforc-
ing the isolation of certain lepers. It will
also report on the best methods of accom-
plishing whatever may be decided upon.

The. California Museum Association of
Sacramento offers a prize of two hundred
and fifty dollars for an invention to utilize
the rise and fall of the tides, giving not less
than three horse-power for six hours ; also
two hundred and fifty dollars for an inex-
pensive device to improve the hygienic con-
ditions of the air in rooms. Inventors to
retain all rights. Plans should be sent in
by April 1, 1891. Full details on the mat-
ter can be obtained by addressing J. A.
Woodson, president, Sacramento, Cal.

Du. Chaei.es A. Oliyer has described, in
the Transactions of the American Ophthal-
mological Society, a system of tests, and the
apparatus required, which he has devised
for detecting color-blindness in railway serv-
ice. The first test consists in matching
wools, being a modification of the Holm-
gren method ; the second requires the recog-
nition of squares of bunting in a series of
black boxes at one thousand yards distance ;
and the third is like the second, except that
illuminated colored glass is used instead of
bunting, and the test is conducted at night.
A spectacle-frame is also used in which
different glasses can be inserted so as to
produce the light effects of various sorts
of weather. A number of advantages are
claimed for the system.

In a paper in the Society for the Pro-
motion of Agricultural Science, Prof. Manly
Miles remarked that the interdependent bio-
logical relations of different farm crops and
of the soil microbes that find favorable
nutritive conditions in the vicinity of their
roots appear to be as important factors in
farm economy as the chemical constitution
of soils and crops, and the conditions of soil
that influence these relations are of great
practical interest. The applications of sci-
ence to agriculture will be best promoted
by investigations concerning the life histo-
ries and relations of these microbes.

OBITUARY NOTES.

The French aeronaut, Eugene Goddard,
died at Brussels, November 9th, in the six-
ty-third year of his age. He was famous for
the numerous and daring ascensions which
he executed in Europe and America.

Mr. James Croll, LL. D., F. R. S., author
of Climate and Time, and other important
works in cosmic science, died December 15th,
in the seventieth year of his age. He was
of humble birth and without scientific train-
ing, but "by sheer force of intellect" and
by ability and industry he raised himself to
a prominent position among scientific think-
ers. His Climate and Time has received
great attention, and his works on Oceanic
Circulation and Stellar Evolution have been
widely read. He had been suffering for
several years from a painful disease.

DANIEL GARRISON BRINTON.

Of Kiw Kgiut.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

APRIL, 1891.

FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE.*

By HEEBEKT SPENCER.

OF the many ways in which common-sense inferences about
social affairs are flatly contradicted by events (as when
measures taken to suppress a book cause increased circulation of
it, or as when attempts to prevent usurious rates of interest make
the terms harder for the borrower, or as when there is greater
difficulty in getting things at the places of production than else-
where) one of the most curious is the way in which the more
things improve the louder become the exclamations about their
badness.

In days when the people were without any political power,
their subjection was rarely complained of; but after free institu-
tions had so far advanced in England that our political arrange-
ments were envied by continental peoples, the denunciations of
aristocratic rule grew gradually stronger, until there came a great
widening of the franchise, soon followed by complaints that
things were going wrong for want of still further widening. If
we trace up the treatment of women from the days of savagedom,
when they bore all the burdens and after the men had eaten re-
ceived such food as remained, up through the middle ages when
they served the men at their meals, to our own day when through-
out our social arrangements the claims of women are always put
first, we see that along with the worst treatment there went the
least apparent consciousness that the treatment was bad ; while
now that they are better treated than ever before,.the proclaiming
of their grievances daily strengthens : the loudest outcries coming

* Introduction to a Collection of Essays entitled A Plea for Liberty; An Argument
against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation. Consisting of essays by various writers.
Edited by Dr. Thomas Mackay. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1891.
vol. xxxviii. — 49

It

722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from " the paradise of women," America. A century ago, when
scarcely a man could be found who was not occasionally intoxi-
cated, and when inability to take one or two bottles of wine
brought contempt, no agitation arose against the vice of drunken-
ness; but now that, in the course of fifty years, the voluntary
efforts of temperance societies, joined with more general causes,
have produced comparative sobriety, there are vociferous demands
for laws to prevent the ruinous effects of the liquor traffic. Simi-
larly again with education. A few generations back, ability to
read and write was practically limited to the upper and middle
classes, and the suggestion that the rudiments of culture should
be given to laborers was never made, or, if made, ridiculed ; but
when, in the days of our grandfathers, the Sunday-school system,
initiated by a few philanthropists, began to spread and was fol-
lowed by the establishment of day schools, with the result that
among the masses those who could read and write were no longer
the exceptions, and the demand for cheap literature rapidly in-
creased, there began the cry that the people were perishing for
lack of knowledge, and that the State must not simply educate
them but must force education upon them.

And so it is, too, with the general state of the population in re-
spect of food, clothing, shelter, and the appliances of life. Leaving
out of the comparison early barbaric states, there has been a con-
spicuous progress from the time when most rustics lived on barley
bread, rye bread, and oatmeal, down to our own time when the
consumption of white wheaten bread is universal — from the days
when coarse jackets reaching to the knees left the legs bare, down
to the present day when laboring people, like their employers,
have the whole body covered, by two or more layers of clothing—
from the old era of single-roomed huts without chimneys, or from
the fifteenth century when even an ordinary gentleman's house
was commonly without wainscot or plaster on its walls, down to
the present century when every cottage has more rooms than one
and the houses of artisans usually have several, while all have
fireplaces, chimneys, and glazed windows, accompanied mostly by
paper-hangings and painted doors; there has been, I say, a con-
spicuous progress in the condition of the people. And this prog-
ress has been still more marked within our own time. Any one
who can look back sixty years, when the amount of pauperism
was far greater than now and beggars abundant, is struck by the
comparative size and finish of the new houses occupied by oper-
atives—by the better dress of workmen, who wear broadcloth on
Sundays, and that of servant girls, who vie with their mistresses
—by the higher standard of living which leads to a great demand
for the best qualities of food by working people : all results of the
double change to higher wages and cheaper commodities, and a

FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE. 723

distribution of taxes which, has relieved the lower classes at the
expense of the upper classes. He is struck, too, by the contrast
between the small space which popular welfare then occupied in
public attention, and the large space it now occupies, with the
result that outside and inside Parliament, plans to benefit the
millions form the leading topics, and every one having means is
expected to join in some philanthropic effort. Yet while eleva-
tion, mental and physical, of the masses is going on far more rap-
idly than ever before — while the lowering of the death-rate proves
that the average life is less trying, there swells louder and louder
the cry that the evils are so great that nothing short of a social
revolution can cure them. In presence of obvious improvements,
joined with that increase of longevity which even alone yields
conclusive proof of general amelioration, it is proclaimed, with
increasing vehemence, that things are so bad that society must be
pulled to pieces and reorganized on another plan. In this case,
then, as in the previous cases instanced, in proportion as the evil
decreases the denunciation of it increases ; and as fast as natural
causes are shown to be powerful there grows up the belief that
they are powerless.

Not that the evils to be remedied are small. Let no one sup-
pose that, by emphasizing the above paradox, I wish to make
light o^ the sufferings which most men have to bear. The fates of
the great majority have ever been, and doubtless still are, so sad
that it is painful to think of them. Unquestionably the existing
type of social organization is one which none who care for their
kind can contemplate with satisfaction ; and unquestionably
men's activities accompanying this type are far from being ad-
mirable. The strong divisions of rank and the immense inequali-
ties of means, are at variance with that ideal of human relations
on which the sympathetic imagination likes to dwell ; and the
average conduct, under the pressure and excitement of social life
as at present carried on, is in sundry respects repulsive. Though
the many who revile competition strangely ignore the enormous
benefits resulting from it — though they forget that most of all
the appliances and products distinguishing civilization from sav-
agery, and making possible the maintenance of a large popula-
tion on a small area, have been developed by the struggle for
existence — though they disregard the fact that while every man,
as producer, suffers from the under-bidding of competitors, yet, as
consumer, he is immensely advantaged by the cheapening of all
he has to buy — though they persist in dwelling on the evils of
competition and saying nothing of its benefits ; yet it is not to be
denied that the evils are great, and form a large set-off from the
benefits. The system under which we at present live fosters dis-
honesty and lying. It prompts adulterations of countless kinds ;

724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it is answerable for the cheap imitations which eventually in
many cases thrust the genuine articles out of the market ; it leads
to the use of short weights and false measures ; it introduces
bribery, which vitiates most trading relations, from those of the
manufacturer and buyer down to those of the shopkeeper and
servant ; it encourages deception to such an extent that an assist-
ant who can not tell a falsehood with a good face is blamed ; and
often it gives the conscientious trader the choice between adopt-
ing the malpractices of his competitors, or greatly injuring his
creditors by bankruptcy. Moreover, the extensive frauds, com-
mon throughout the commercial world and daily exposed in law-
courts and newspapers, are largely due to the pressure under
which competition places the higher industrial classes; and are
otherwise due to that lavish expenditure which, as implying suc-
cess in the commercial struggle, brings honor. With these minor
evils must be joined the major one, that the distribution achieved
by the system, gives to those who regulate and superintend, a
share of the total produce which bears too large a ratio to the
share it gives to the actual workers. Let it not be thought, then,
that in saying what I have said above, I under-estimate those
vices of our competitive system which, thirty years ago, I de-
scribed and denounced.* But it is not a question of absolute
evils ; it is a question of relative evils — whether the evils at pres-
ent suffered are or are not less than the evils which would be suf-
fered under another system — whether efforts for mitigation along
the lines thus far followed are not more likely to succeed than
efforts along utterly different lines.

This is the question here to be considered. I must be excused
for first of all setting forth sundry truths which are, to some at
any rate, tolerably familiar, before proceeding to draw inferences
which are not so familiar.

Speaking broadly, every man works that he may avoid suffer-
ing. Here, remembrance of the pangs of hunger prompts him ;
and there, he is prompted by the sight of the slave-driver's lash.
His immediate dread may be the punishment which physical cir-
cumstances will inflict, or may be punishment inflicted by human
agency. He must have a master ; but the master may be Nature
or may be a fellow-man. When he is under the impersonal coer-
cion of Nature, we say that he is free ; and when he is under the
personal coercion of some one above him, we call him, according
to the degree of his dependence, a slave, a serf, or a vassal. Of
course I omit the small minority who inherit means: an inci-
dental, and not a necessary, social element. I speak only of the
vast majority, both cultured and uncultured, who maintain them-

* See essay on The Morals of Trade.

FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE. 725

selves by labor, bodily or mental, and must either exert them-
selves of their own unconstrained wills, prompted only by
thoughts of naturally-resulting evils or benefits, or must exert
themselves with constrained wills, prompted by thoughts of evils
and benefits artificially resulting.

Men may work together in a society under either of these two
forms of control : forms which, though in many cases mingled,
are essentially contrasted. Using the word co-operation in its
wide sense, and not in that restricted sense now commonly given
to it, we may say that social life must be carried on by either vol-
untary co-operation or compulsory co-operation; or, to use Sir
Henry Maine's words, the system must be that of contract or that
of status — that in which the individual is left to do the best he
can by his spontaneous efforts and get success or failure accord-
ing to his efficiency, and that in which he has his appointed place,
works under coercive rule, and has his apportioned share of food,
clothing, and shelter.

The system of voluntary co-operation is that by which, in civ-
ilized societies, industry is now everywhere carried on. Under a
simple form we have it on every farm, where the laborers, paid by
the farmer himself and taking orders directly from him, are free
to stay or go as they please. And of its more complex form an
example is yielded by every manufacturing concern, in which,
under partners, come clerks and managers, and under these, time-
keepers and over-lookers, and under these operatives of different
grades. In each of these cases there is an obvious working to-
gether, or co-operation, of employer and employed, to obtain in
one case a crop and in the other case a manufactured stock. And
then, at the same time, there is a far more extensive, though un-
conscious, co-operation with other workers of all grades through-
out the society. For while these particular employers and em-
ployed are severally occupied with their special kinds of work,
other employers and employed are making other things needed
for the carrying on of their lives as well as the lives of all others.
This voluntary co-operation, from its simplest to its most complex
forms, has the common trait that those concerned work together
by consent. There is no one to force terms or to force acceptance.
It is perfectly true that in many cases an employer may give,
or an employe' may accept, with reluctance : circumstances he
says compel him. But what are the circumstances ? In the one
case there are goods ordered, or a contract entered into, which he
can not supply or execute without yielding ; and in the other case
he submits to a wage less than he likes because otherwise he will
have no money wherewith to procure food and warmth. The gen-
eral formula is not — " Do this, or I will make you " ; but it is —
" Do this, or leave your place and take the consequences."

726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

On the other hand compulsory co-operation is exemplified by
an army — not so much by our own army, the service in which is
under agreement for a specified period, but in a continental army,
raised by conscription. Here, in time of peace the daily duties —
cleaning, parade, drill, sentry work, and the rest — and in time of
war the various actions of the camp and the battle-field, are done
under command, without room for any exercise of choice. Up
from the private soldier through the non-commissioned officers
and the half-dozen or more grades of commissioned officers, the
universal law is absolute obedience from the grade below to the
grade above. The sphere of individual will is such only as is
allowed by the will of the superior. Breaches of subordination
are, according to their gravity, dealt with by deprivation of leave,
extra drill, imprisonment, flogging, and, in the last resort, shoot-
ing. Instead of the understanding that there must be obedience
in respect of specified duties under pain of dismissal, the under-
standing now is — " Obey in everything ordered under penalty of
inflicted suffering and perhaps death."

This form of co-operation, still exemplified in an army, has in
days gone by been the form of co-operation throughout the civil
population. Everywhere, and at all times, chronic war generates
a militant type of structure, not in the body of soldiers only, but
throughout the community at large. Practically, while the con-
flict between societies is actively going on, and fighting is regarded
as the only manly occupation, the society is the quiescent army
and the army the mobilized society : that part which does not
take part in battle, composed of slaves, serfs, women, etc., consti-
tuting the commissariat. Naturally, therefore, throughout the
mass of inferior individuals constituting the commissariat, there-
is maintained a system of discipline identical in nature if less
elaborate. The fighting body being, under such conditions, the
ruling body, and the rest of the community being incapable of
resistance, those who control the fighting body will, of course,
impose their control upon the non-fighting body ; and the regime
of coercion will be applied to it with such modifications only as
the different circumstances involve. Prisoners of war become
slaves. Those who were free cultivators before the conquest of
their country, become serfs attached to the soil. Petty chiefs
become subject to superior chiefs ; these smaller lords become
vassals to over-lords ; and so on up to the highest : the social
ranks and powers being of like essential nature with the ranks
and powers throughout the military organization. And while
for the slaves compulsory co-operation is the unqualified system,
a co-operation which is in part compulsory is the system that per-
vades all grades above. Each man's oath of fealty to his suzerain
takes the form — " I am your man."

FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE. 7z7

Throughout Europe, and especially in our own country, this
system of compulsory co-operation gradually relaxed in rigor,
while the system of voluntary co-operation step by step replaced
it. As fast as war ceased to be the business of life, the social
structure produced by war and appropriate to it, slowly became
qualified by the social structure produced by industrial life and
appropriate to it. In proportion as a decreasing part of the com-
munity was devoted to offensive and defensive activities, an in-
creasing part became devoted to production and distribution.
Growing more numerous, more powerful, and taking refuge in
towns where it was less under the power of the militant class,
this industrial population carried on its life under the system
of voluntary co-operation. Though municipal governments and
guild-regulations, partially pervaded by ideas and usages derived
from the militant type of society, were in some degree coercive ;
yet production and distribution were in the main carried on under
agreement — alike between buyers and sellers, and between mas-
ters and workmen. As fast as these social relations and forms of
activity became dominant in urban populations, they influenced
the whole community : compulsory co-operation lapsed more and
more, through money commutation for services, military and civil ;
while divisions of rank became less rigid and class-power dimin-
ished. Until at length, restraints exercised by incorporated trades
have fallen into desuetude, as well as the rule of rank over rank,
voluntary co-operation became the universal principle. Purchase
and sale became the law for all kinds of services as well as for all
kinds of commodities.

The restlessness generated by pressure against the conditions
of existence, perpetually prompts the desire to try a new posi-
tion. Every one knows how long-continued rest in one attitude
becomes wearisome — every one has found how even the best easy-
chair, at first rejoiced in, becomes after many hours intolerable ;
and change to a hard seat, previously occupied and rejected,
seems for a time to be a great relief. It is the same with incor-
porated humanity. Having by long struggles emancipated itself
from the hard discipline of the ancient regime, and having dis-
covered that the new regime into which it has grown, though
relatively easy, is not without stresses and pains, its impatience
with these prompts the wish to try another system ; which other
system is, in principle if not in appearance, the same as that
which during past generations was escaped from with much re-
joicing.

For as fast as the regime of contract is discarded the regime
of status is of necessity adopted. As fast as voluntary co-opera-
tion is abandoned compulsory co-operation must be substituted.
Some kind of organization labor must have ; and if it is not that

728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which, arises by agreement under free competition, it must he
that which is imposed by authority. Unlike in appearance and
names as it may be to the old order of slaves and serfs, working
under masters, who were coerced by barons, who were themselves
vassals of dukes or kings, the new order wished for, constituted
by workers under foremen of small groups, overlooked by super-
intendents, who are subject to higher local managers, who are
controlled by superiors of districts, themselves under a central
government, must be essentially the same in principle. In one
case, as in the other, there must be established grades, and enforced
subordination of each grade to the grades above. This is a truth
which the communist or the socialist does not dwell upon. Angry
with the existing system under which each of us takes care of
himself, while all of us see that each has fair play, he thinks how
much better it would be for all of us to take care of each of us ;
and he refrains from thinking of the machinery by which this is
to be done. Inevitably, if each is to be cared for by all, then the
embodied all must get the means — the necessaries of life. What
it gives to each must be taken from the accumulated contribu-
tions ; and it must therefore require from each his proportion —
must tell him how much he has to give to the general stock in
the shape of production, that he may have so much in the shape
of sustentation. Hence, before he can be provided for, he must
put himself under orders, and obey those who say what he shall
do, and at what hours, and where ; and who give him his share of
food, clothing, and shelter. If competition is excluded, and with
it buying and selling, there can be no voluntary exchange of so
much labor for so much produce ; but there must be apportion-
ment of the one to the other by appointed officers. This appor-
tionment must be enforced. Without alternative the work must
be done, and without alternative the benefit, whatever it may be,
must be accepted. For the worker may not leave his place at
will and offer himself elsewhere. Under such a system he can
not be accepted elsewhere, save by order of the authorities. And
it is manifest that a standing order would forbid employment in
one place of an insubordinate member from another place: the
system could not be worked if the workers were severally allowed
to go or come as they pleased. With corporals and sergeants
under them, the captains of industry must carry out the orders of
their colonels, and these of their generals, up to the council of the
commander-in-chief ; and obedience must be required throughout
the industrial army as throughout a fighting army. " Do your
prescribed duties, and take your apportioned rations," must be
the rule of the one as of the other.

"Well, be it so," replies the socialist. "The workers will
appoint their own officers, and these will always be subject to

FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE. 729

criticisms of the mass they regulate. Being thus in fear of pub-
lic opinion, they will be sure to act judiciously and fairly ; or when
they do not, will be deposed by the popular vote, local or general.
Where will be the grievance of being under superiors, when the
superiors themselves are under democratic control ? " And in this
attractive vision the socialist has full belief.

Iron and brass are simpler things than flesh and blood, and
dead wood than living nerve ; and a machine constructed of the
one works in more definite ways than an organism constructed of
the other, — especially when the machine is worked by the inor-
ganic forces of steam or water, while the organism is worked by
the forces of living nerve-centers. Manifestly, then, the ways in
which the machine will work are much more readily calculable
than the ways in which the organism will work. Yet in how
few cases does the inventor foresee rightly the actions of his new
apparatus! Read the patent-list, and it will be found that not
more than one device in fifty turns out to be of any service.
Plausible as his scheme seemed to the inventor, one or other hitch
prevents the intended operation, and brings out a widely different
result from that which he wished.

What, then, shall we say of these schemes which have to do
not with dead matters and forces, but with complex living organ-
isms working in ways less readily foreseen, and which involve
the co-operation of multitudes of such organisms ? Even the units
out of which this re-arranged body politic is to be formed are
often incomprehensible. Every one is from time to time sur-
prised by others' behavior, and even by the deeds of relatives who
are best known to him. Seeing, then, how uncertainly any one
can foresee the actions of an individual, how can he with any
certainty foresee the operation of a social structure ? He proceeds
on the assumption that all concerned will judge rightly and act
fairly — will think as they ought to think, and act as they ought
to act ; and he assumes this regardless of the daily experiences
which show him that men do neither the one nor the other, and
forgetting that the complaints he makes against the existing sys-
tem show his belief to be that men have neither the wisdom nor
the rectitude which his plan requires them to have.

Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those who
have observed their results ; and paper social systems similarly
affect those who have contemplated the available evidence. How
little i<he men who wrought the French revolution and were
chiefly concerned in setting up the new governmental apparatus,
dreamt that one of the early actions of this apparatus would be
to behead them all ! How little the men who drew up the Amer-
ican Declaration of Independence and framed the Republic, an-
ticipated that after some generations the legislature would lapse

730 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

into the hands of wire-pullers ; that its doings would turn upon
the contests of office-seekers ; that political action would be every-
where vitiated by the intrusiou of a foreign element holding the
balance between parties ; that electors, instead of judging for
themselves, would habitually be led to the polls in thousands by
their " bosses " ; and that respectable men would be driven out of
public life by the insults and slanders of professional politicians.
Nor were there better previsions in those who gave constitutions
to the various other states of the New "World, in which un-
numbered revolutions have shown with wonderful persistence the
contrasts between the expected results of political systems and
the achieved results. It has been no less thus with proposed
systems of social re-organization, so far as they have been tried.
Save where celibacy has been insisted on, their history has been
everywhere one of disaster; ending with the history of Cabet's
Icarian colony lately given by one of its members, Madame Fleury
Robinson, in The Open Court — a history of splittings, re-split-
tings, re-re-splittings, accompanied by numerous individual seces-
sions and final dissolution. And for the failure of such social
schemes, as for the failure of the political schemes, there has been
one general cause.

' Metamorphosis is the universal law, exemplified throughout
the Heavens and on the Earth : especially throughout the organic
world ; and above all in the animal division of it. No creature,
save the simplest and most minute, commences its existence in a
form like that which it eventually assumes ; and in most cases the
unlikeness is great — so great that kinship between the first and
the last forms would be incredible were it not daily demonstrated
in every poultry -yard and every garden. More than this is true.
The changes of form are often several: each of them being an
apparently complete transformation— egg, larva, pupa, imago, for
example. And this universal metamorphosis, displayed alike in
the development of a planet and of every seed which germinates
on its surface, holds also of societies, whether taken as wholes or
in their separate institutions. No one of them ends as it begins ;
and the difference between its original structure and its ultimate
structure is such that, at the outset, change of the one into the
other would have seemed incredible. In the rudest tribe the chief,
obeyed as leader in war, loses his distinctive position when the
fighting is over ; and even where continued warfare has produced
permanent chieftainship, the chief, building his own hut, getting
his own food, making his own implements, differs from others
only by his predominant influence. There is no sign that in
course of time, by conquests and unions of tribes, and consolida-
tions of clusters so formed with other such clusters, until a nation
has been produced, there will originate from the primitive chief,

FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE. 73i

one who, as czar or emperor, surrounded with pomp and cere-
mony, has despotic power over scores of millions, exercised
through hundreds of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thou-
sands of officials. When the early Christian missionaries, having
humble externals and passing self-denying lives, spread over
pagan Europe, preaching forgiveness of injuries and the re-
turning of good for evil, no one dreamt that in course of time
their representatives would form a vast hierarchy, possessing
everywhere a large part of the land, distinguished by the haughti-
ness of its members grade above grade, ruled by military bishops
who led their retainers to battle, and headed by a pope exercising
supreme power over kings. So, too, has it been with that very
industrial system which many are now so eager to replace. In its
original form there was no prophecy of the factory system or
kindred organizations of workers. Differing from them only
as being the head of his house, the master worked along with
his apprentices and a journeyman or two, sharing with them
his table and accommodation, and himself selling their joint
produce. Only with industrial growth did there come employ-
ment of a larger number of assistants and a relinquishment,
on the part of the master, of all other business than that of super-
intendence. And only in the course of recent times did there
evolve the organizations under which the labors of hundreds and
thousands of men receiving wages, are regulated by various
orders of paid officials under a single or multiple head. These
originally small, semi-socialistic, groups of producers, like the
compound families or house-communities of early ages, slowly
dissolved because they could not hold their ground: the larger
establishments, with better subdivision of labor, succeeded be-
cause .they ministered to the wants of society more effectually.
But we need not go back through the centuries to trace transfor-
mations sufficiently great and unexpected. On the day when
£30,000 a year in aid of education was voted as an experiment,
the name of idiot would have been given to an opponent who
prophesied that in fifty years the sum spent through imperial
taxes and local rates would amount to £10,000,000, or who said
that the aid to education would be followed by aids to feeding
and clothing, or who said that parents and children, alike de-
prived of all option, would, even if starving, be compelled by fine
or imprisonment to conform, and receive that which, with papal
assumption, the State calls education. No one, I say, would have -
dreamt that out of so innocent-looking a germ would have so
quickly evolved this tyrannical system, tamely submitted to by
people who fancy themselves free.

Thus in social arrangements, as in all other things, change is
inevitable. It is foolish to suppose that new institutions set up,

732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

will long retain the character given them by those who set them
up. Rapidly or slowly they will be transformed into institutions
unlike those intended — so unlike as even to be unrecognizable by
their devisers. And what, in the case before us, will be the meta-
morphosis ? The answer pointed to by instances above given,
and warranted by various analogies, is manifest.

A cardinal trait in all advancing organization is the develop-
ment of the regulative apparatus. If the parts of a whole are to
act together, there must be appliances by which their actions are
directed ; and in proportion as the whole is large and complex,
and has many requirements to be met by many agencies, the
directive apparatus must be extensive, elaborate, and powerful.
That it is thus with individual organisms needs no saying ; and
that it must be thus with social organisms is obvious. Beyond
the regulative apparatus such as in our own society is required for
carrying on national defense and maintaining public order and
personal safety, there must, under the regime of socialism, be a
regulative apparatus everywhere controlling all kinds of produc-
tion and distribution, and everywhere apportioning the shares of
products of each kind required for each locality, each working
establishment, each individual. Under our existing voluntary
co-operation, with its free contracts and its competition, produc-
tion and distribution need no official oversight. Demand and
supply, and the desire of each man to gain a living by supplying
the needs of his fellows, spontaneously evolve that wonderful
system whereby a great city has its food daily brought round to
all doors or stored at adjacent shops; has clothing for its citi-
zens everywhere at hand in multitudinous varieties; has its
houses and furniture and fuel ready made or stocked in each
locality ; and has mental pabulum from halfpenny papers, hourly
hawked round, to weekly shoals of novels, and less abundant
books of instruction, furnished without stint for small payments.
And throughout the kingdom, production as well as 'distribution
is similarly carried on with the smallest amount of superintend-
ence which proves efficient ; while the quantities of the numerous
commodities required daily in each locality are adjusted without
any other agency than the pursuit of profit. Suppose now that
this industrial regime of willinghood, acting spontaneously, is
replaced by a regime of industrial obedience, enforced by public
officials. Imagine the vast administration required for that dis-
tribution of all commodities to all people in every city, town, and
village, which is now effected by traders ! Imagine, again, the
still more vast administration required for doing all that farmers,
manufacturers, and merchants do ; having not only its various
orders of local superintendents, but its sub-centers and chief
centers needed for apportioning the quantities of each thing every-

FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE. 733

where needed, and the adjustment of them to the requisite times.
Then add the staffs wanted for working mines, railways, roads,
canals ; the staffs required for conducting the importing and ex-
porting businesses and the administration of mercantile shipping ;
the staffs required for supplying towns not only with water and
gas but with locomotion by tramways, omnibuses, and other
vehicles, and for the distribution of power, electric and other.
Join with these the existing postal, telegraphic, and telephonic
administrations; and finally those of the police and army, by
which the dictates of this immense consolidated regulative system
are to be everywhere enforced. Imagine all this and then ask
what will be the position of the actual workers ! Already on the
continent, where governmental organizations are more elaborate
and coercive than here, there are chronic complaints of the
tyranny of bureaucracies — the hauteur and brutality of their
members. What will these become when not only the more
public actions of citizens are controlled, but there is added this
far more extensive control of all their respective daily duties ?
"What will happen when the various divisions of this vast army
of officials, united by interests common to officialism — the inter-
ests of the regulators versus those of the regulated — have at their
command whatever force is needful to suppress insubordination
and act as " saviors of society " ? "Where will be the actual
diggers and miners and smelters and weavers, when those who
order and superintend, everywhere arranged class above class,
have come, after some generations, to intermarry with those of
kindred grades, under feelings such as are operative in existing
classes ; and when there have been so produced a series of castes
rising in superiority ; and when all these, having everything in
their own power, have arranged modes of living for their own
advantage : eventually forming a new aristocracy far more elab-
orate and better organized than the old ? How will the indi-
vidual worker fare if he is dissatisfied with his treatment — thinks
that he has not an adequate share of the products, or has more
to do than can rightly be demanded, or wishes to undertake
a function for which he feels himself fitted but which is not
thought proper for him by his superiors, or desires to make
an independent career for himself ? This dissatisfied unit
in the immense machine will be told he must submit or
go. The mildest penalty for disobedience will be industrial ex-
communication. And if an international organization of labor
is formed as proposed, exclusion in one country will mean
exclusion in all others — industrial excommunication will mean
starvation.

That things must take this course is a conclusion reached not
by deduction only, nor only by induction from those experiences

734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the past instanced above, nor only from consideration of the
analogies furnished by organisms of all orders ; but it is reached
also by observation of cases daily under our eyes. The truth
that the regulative structure always tends to increase in power,
is illustrated by every established body of men. The history of
each learned society, or society for other purpose, shows how the
staff, permanent or partially permanent, sways the proceedings
and determines the actions of the society with but little resist-
ance, even when most members of the society disapprove: the
repugnance to anything like a revolutionary step being ordinarily
an efficient deterrent. So is it with joint-stock companies — those
owning railways for example. The plans of a board of directors
are usually authorized with little or no discussion ; and if there
is any considerable opposition, this is forthwith crushed by an
overwhelming number of proxies sent by those who always sup-
port the existing administration. Only when the misconduct is
extreme does the resistance of shareholders suffice to displace the
ruling body. Nor is it otherwise with societies formed of work-
ingmen and having the interests of labor especially at heart — the
Trades Unions. In these, too, the regulative agency becomes all-
powerful. Their members, even when they dissent from the pol-
icy pursued, habitually yield to the authorities they have set up.
As they can not secede without making enemies of their fellow-
workmen, and often losing all chance of employment, they suc-
cumb. We are shown, too, by the late congress, that already in
the general organization of Trades Unions so recently formed,
there are complaints of " wire-pullers " and " bosses " and " perma-
nent officials." If, then, this supremacy of the regulators is seen
in bodies of quite modern origin, formed of men who have, in
many of the cases instanced, unhindered powers of asserting their
independence, what will the supremacy of the regulators be-
come in long - established bodies, in bodies which have grown
vast and highly organized, and in bodies which, instead of con-
trolling only a small part of the unit's life, control the whole of
his life ?

Again there will come the rejoinder — " We shall guard
against all that. Everybody will be educated ; and all, with
their eyes constantly open to the abuse of power, will be quick to
prevent it." The worth of these expectations would be small
even could we not identify the causes which will bring disap-
pointment ; for in human affairs the most promising schemes go
wrong in ways which no one anticipated. But in this case the
going wrong will be necessitated by causes which are conspicu-
ous. The working of institutions is determined by men's char-
acters ; and the existing defects in their characters will inevitably
bring about the results above indicated. There is no adequate

FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE. 735

endowment of those sentiments required to prevent the growth of
a despotic bureaucracy.

Were it needful to dwell on indirect evidence, much might be
made of that furnished by the behavior of the so-called Liberal
party — a party which, relinquishing the original conception of a
leader as a mouthpiece for a known and accepted policy, thinks
itself bound to accept a policy which its leader springs upon it
without consent or warning — a party so utterly without the feel-
ing and idea implied by liberalism, as not to resent this tram-
pling on the right of private judgment which constitutes the root
of liberalism — nay, a party which vilifies as renegade liberals,
those of its members who refuse to surrender their independence !
But without occupying space with indirect proofs that the mass
of men have not the natures required to check the development
of tyrannical officialism, it will suffice to contemplate the direct
proofs furnished by those classes among whom the socialistic idea
most predominates, and who think themselves most interested in
propagating it — the operative classes. These would constitute
the great body of socialistic organization, and their characters
would determine its nature. What, then, are their characters as
displayed in such organizations as they have already formed ?

Instead of the selfishness of the employing classes and the
selfishness of competition, we are to have the unselfishness of a
mutual-aiding system. How far is this unselfishness now shown
in the behavior of workingmen to one another ? What shall we
say to the rules limiting the numbers of new hands admitted into
each trade, or to the rules which hinder ascent from inferior
classes of workers to superior classes ? One does not see in such
regulations any of that altruism by which socialism is to be per-
vaded. Contrariwise, one sees a pursuit of private interests no
less keen than among traders. Hence, unless we suppose that
men's natures will be suddenly exalted, we must conclude that
the pursuit of private interests will sway the doings of all the
component classes in a socialistic society.

With passive disregard of others' claims goes active encroach-
ment on them. " Be one of us or we will cut off your means of
living," is the usual threat of each Trades Union to outsiders of
the same trade. While their members insist on their own free-
dom to combine and fix the rates at which they will work (as they
are perfectly justified in doing), the freedom of those who disa-
gree with them is not only denied but the assertion of it is treated
as a crime. Individuals who maintain their rights to make their
own contracts are vilified as "blacklegs" and "traitors," and
meet with violence which would be merciless were there no legal
penalties and no police. Along with this trampling on the liber-
ties of men of their own class, there goes peremptory dictation to

736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the employing class : not prescribed terms and working arrange-
ments only shall be conformed to, but none save those belonging
to their body shall be employed — nay, in some cases, there shall
be a strike if the employer carries on transactions with trading
bodies that give work to non-union men. Here, then, we are
variously shown by Trades Unions, or at any rate by the newer
Trades Unions, a determination to impose their regulations with-
out regard to the rights of those who are to be coerced. So com-
plete is the inversion of ideas and sentiments that maintenance of
these rights is regarded as vicious and trespass upon them as
virtuous.*

Along with this aggressiveness in one direction there goes
submissiveness in another direction. The coercion of outsiders
by unionists is paralleled only by their subjection to their lead-
ers. That they may conquer in the struggle they surrender their
individual liberties and individual judgments, and show no re-
sentment however dictatorial may be the rule exercised over
them. Everywhere we see such subordination that bodies of
workmen unanimously leave their work or return to it as their
authorities order them. Nor do they resist when taxed all round
to support strikers whose acts they may or may not approve, but
instead, ill-treat recalcitrant members of their body who do not
subscribe.

The traits thus shown must be operative in any new social
organization, and the question to be asked is — What will result
from their operation when they are relieved from all restraints ?
At present the separate bodies of men displaying them are in the
midst of a society partially passive, partially antagonistic ; are
subject to the criticisms and reprobations of an independent
press ; and are under the control of law, enforced by police. If
in these circumstances these bodies habitually take courses which
override individual freedom, what will happen when, instead of
being only scattered parts of the community, governed by their

* Marvelous are the conclusions men reach when once they desert the simple principle,
that each man should be allowed to pursue the objects of life, restrained only by the lim-
its which the similar pursuits of their objects by other men impose. A generation ago we
heard loud assertions of " the right to labor," that is, the right to have labor provided ; and
there are still not a few who think the community bound to find work for each person.
Compare this with the doctrine current in France at the time when the monarchical power
culminated ; namely, that " the right of working is a royal right which the prince can sell
and the subjects must buy." This contrast is startling enough ; but a contrast still more
startling is being provided for us. We now see a resuscitation of the despotic doctrine,
differing only by the substitution of Trades Unions for kings. For now that Trades Unions
are becoming universal, and each artisan has to pay prescribed moneys to one or another of
them, with the alternative of being a non-unionist to whom work is denied by force, it has
come to this, that the right to labor is a Trade-Union right, which the Trade Union can sell
and the individual worker must buy !

FROM FREEDOM TO BONDAGE. 737

separate sets of regulators, they constitute the whole community,
governed by a consolidated system of such regulators, when func-
tionaries of all orders, including those who officer the press, form
parts of the regulative organization ; and when the law is both
enacted and administered by this regulative organization ? The
fanatical adherents of a social theory are capable of taking any
measures, no matter how extreme, for carrying out their views :
holding, like the merciless priesthoods of past times, that the end
justifies the means. And when a general socialistic organization
has been established, the vast, ramified, and consolidated body of
those who direct its activities, using without check whatever co-
ercion seems to them needful in the interests of the system
(which will practically become their own interests), will have no
hesitation in imposing their rigorous rule over the entire lives of
the actual workers ; until, eventually, there is developed an offi-
cial oligarchy, with its various grades, exercising a tyranny more
gigantic and more terrible than any which the world has seen.

Let me again repudiate an erroneous inference. Any one who
supposes that the foregoing argument implies contentment with
things as they are, makes a profound mistake. The present social
state is transitional, as past social states have been transitional.
There will, I hope and believe, come a future social state differing
as much from the present as the present differs from the past
with its mailed barons and defenseless serfs. In Social Statics, as
well as in The Study of Sociology and in Political Institutions, is
clearly shown the desire for an organization more conducive to
the happiness of men at large than that which exists. My oppo-
sition to socialism results from the belief that it would stop the
progress to such a higher state and bring back a lower state.
Nothing but the slow modification of human nature by the
discipline of social life, can produce permanently advantageous
changes.

A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly all
parties, political and social, is that evils admit of immediate
and radical remedies. " If you will but do this, the mischief
will be prevented." "Adopt my plan and the suffering will
disappear." " The corruption will unquestionably be cured by
enforcing this measure." Everywhere one meets with beliefs,
expressed or implied, of these kinds. They are all ill-founded.
It is possible to remove causes which intensify the evils ; it is
possible to change the evils from one form into another ; and it is
possible, and very common, to exacerbate the evils by the efforts
made to prevent them ; but anything like immediate cure is im-
possible. In the course of thousands of years mankind have, by
multiplication, been forced out of that original savage state in
which small numbers supported themselves on wild food, into the

VOL. XXXVIII. — 50

738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

civilized state in which the food required for supporting great
numbers can be got only by continuous labor. The nature re-
quired for this last mode of life is widely different from the nature
required for the first ; and long-continued pains have to be passed
through in remolding the one into the other. Misery has neces-
sarily to be borne by a constitution out of harmony with its con-
ditions ; and a constitution inherited from primitive men is out
of harmony with the conditions imposed on existing men. Hence
it is impossible to establish forthwith a satisfactory social state.
No such nature as that which has filled Europe with millions of
armed men, here eager for conquest and there for revenge — no
such nature as that which prompts the nations called Christian to
vie with one another in filibustering expeditions all over the
world, regardless of the claims of aborigines, while their tens of
thousands of priests of the religion of love look on approvingly —
no such nature as that which, in dealing with weaker races, goes
beyond the primitive rule of life for life, and for one life takes
many lives — no such nature, I say, can, by any device, be framed
into a harmonious community. The root of all well-ordered social
action is a sentiment of justice, which at once insists on personal
freedom and is solicitous for the like freedom of others ; and there
at present exists but a very inadequate amount of this sentiment.

Hence the need for further long continuance of a social dis-
cipline which requires each man to carry on his activities with
due regard to the like claims of others to carry on their activities ;
and which, while it insists that he shall have all the benefits his
conduct naturally brings, insists also that he shall not saddle on
others the evils his conduct naturally brings : unless they freely
undertake to bear them. And hence the belief that endeavors to
elude this discipline will not only fail, but will bring worse evils
than those to be escaped.

It is not, then, chiefly in the interests of the employing classes
that socialism is to be resisted, but much more in the interests of
the employed classes. In one way or other production must be
regulated ; and the regulators, in the nature of things, must al-
ways be a small class as compared with the actual producers. Un-
der voluntary co-operation as at present carried on, the regulators,
pursuing their personal interests, take as large a share of the
produce as they can get ; but, as we are daily shown by Trades-
Union successes, are restrained in the selfish pursuit of their ends.
Under that compulsory co-operation which socialism would neces-
sitate, the regulators, pursuing their personal interests with no
less selfishness, could not be met by the combined resistance of
free workers ; and their power, unchecked as now by refusals to
work save on prescribed terms, would grow and ramify and con-
solidate till it became irresistible. The ultimate result, as I have

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE OHIO RIVER. 739

before pointed out, must be a society like that of ancient Peru,
dreadful to contemplate, in which the mass of the people, elabo-
rately regimented in groups of 10, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000, ruled by
officers of corresponding grades, and tied to their districts, were
superintended in their private lives as well as in their industries,
and toiled hopelessly for the support of the governmental organi-
zation.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE OHIO RIVER.

By Pbof. JOSEPH F. JAMES, M. Sc.

TpAR up in one of the wildest regions of eastern North. Amer-
-L ica rise most of the streams which form the Ohio River.
These streams are separated from the head-waters of the Potomac
by a spur of the Appalachian Mountains only a few miles wide.
This region, in Randolph County, West Virginia, was called, many
years ago, and, for aught I can say to the contrary, may still be
known as "Canaan." It is a wild, undeveloped tract of thou-
sands of acres, with many deer and bears ; surrounded by rugged
mountains, abounding in leaping trout-streams, and full of laurel
brakes impenetrable alike to man and beast. Within these pre-
cincts are the sources of one of the great rivers of the continent.

The picturesque birth of the Ohio River is a fitting prelude to
its romantic history. Its physical history is almost that of the
continent, for its birth dates back to a time when a large part
of eastern North America rose for the last time above the sur-
face of the sea. Centuries ago its valley was the home of the
hairy mammoth and the lordly mastodon. In later times it saw
the bison in countless herds reflected in its waters. The mound-
builders have left some of their most wonderful works within the
confines of its valley. Later still, its hills have re-echoed the
shouts and battle-cries of Indian and of white ; and now the hum
of industry and the homes of civilized man fill its valley from
end to end. " La belle riviere " it still remains, and to this it
might add another epithet, " La me'chante riviere " (or the way-
ward river), because of its astonishing variations in volume of
water.

The Ohio River proper results from the union of two streams
in the western portion of Pennsylvania. One of these — the Mo-
nongahela — rises in that " Canaan " already referred to, and is in
its turn formed of two branches, the Cheat and the Tygart's Val-
ley Rivers. These are formed again of minor streams, whose ulti-
mate sources lie along the back-bone or high ridge which sepa-
rates the sources of the rivers of the Atlantic coast from those of
the Mississippi Valley. The Cheat is a wild and romantic stream,

74o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

particularly at its head-waters, where it tumbles over and around
rocks in the wild and reckless exuberance of youth. It abounds
with trout, and furnishes scenery well worthy the attention of
artist or student of nature.

The Monongahela itself has become somewhat celebrated of
late years, because of certain terraces found along its banks, the
history of which has been the source of considerable speculation.
They are found in the vicinity of Morgantown, W. Va., and are
composed of silt, clay, and loam, with a few animal and many
plant remains scattered throughout their extent. They vary from
70 to 275 feet above low water in the river, but have an approxi-
mate elevation of from 1,045 to 1,065 feet above tide. Evidently
produced by the action of water, they are yet too far removed
from the present stream to have been formed by its agency, at
least in its present condition. An explanation of their origin will
be suggested later on in the course of this article.

The other branch, which unites with the Monongahela, is the
Alleghany. This takes its rise in the northwestern part of Penn-
sylvania, enters New York State for a short distance, turns south
again, and joins its sister stream at Pittsburg. It does not rise in
a mountainous country, but in a region comparatively level ; and
there is every reason to believe at one time in its existence it was
tributary to Lake Erie instead of to the Ohio. It is some four
hundred miles long, and is navigable for small boats for two hun-
dred and fifty miles from its mouth. It flows through the great
oil and gas region of Pennsylvania, a region which gave to the
world over 150,000,000 barrels of petroleum. It is from here, too,
that has come the gaseous fuel which has changed Pittsburg
from the smokiest city of the Nation into one of the cleanest.
Pittsburg, besides being a great manufacturing center, is the start-
ing-point for the great coal fleets that supply the cities of Cincin-
nati, Louisville, and hundreds of others with the fuel taken from
the mines of Pennsylvania. Prom this point begins the Ohio
River proper. We may glance now at its history, and trace briefly
the vicissitudes through which it has passed from its birth to the
present time.

The actual birth of the Ohio River dates from the close of the
Carboniferous or Coal era, and the final elevation of the Appa-
lachian chain of mountains. Previous to that time the country
through which the river now flows lay upon the borders of the
ocean, and in places was lost in the ocean itself. After the land
was elevated above the sea-level, the drainage system of the val-
ley was established, and the great river was born.

All streams in the course of their existence go through several
phases, which correspond to the features presented by the different
parts of their course. The head-waters are swift and roaring tor-

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE OHIO RIVER.

741

rents, leaping from ledge to ledge, or dashing round and over
masses of rock in their wild mountain homes. Lower down the
current slackens, some of the impetuosity is lost, but it still glides
swiftly over its rocky bed. Still lower down the current becomes
slower, the stream broadens out, and the bed loses its rocky and

Ideal view of an Old Unglaciated Coun-
try, SHOWING THE FORM ASSUMED BY THE

Eminences when Erosion has proceeded
to a great extent. (United States Geo-
logical Survey.) (Chamberlin.)

A Country, in contrast with the adjacent
Figure, in which the Drainage has been
disturbed by Glacial Deposits, and the
Streams are beginning to wear new Chan-
nels. (Chamberlin.)

rugged character ; while as the mouth is approached the current
becomes sluggish, broad bottoms appear, a greater width to the
stream is apparent, and all signs point to the end of its career-
As with the course of a river, so with its life. In early days, be-
fore the channel is well defined, it is a foaming torrent. Later on
it smooths its bed and becomes more stable in position. As years
and centuries pass away, the rougher places are leveled, and the
stream then flows placidly in its course over its well-worn, often
deeply excavated channel. The Ohio has reached this last stage
in its history, for at only a single place in all its course from
Pittsburg to its mouth does its channel show signs of a rocky
character. The reason for this single exception will soon become
clear.

An examination of the geological structure of the country
through which the Ohio flows shows none but the extreme end of
the valley to be of later age than the Carboniferous. Portions are,
indeed, far older ; but the area covered by these, though perhaps
extensive enough to allow the development of some system of
drainage, was never large enough to develop a stream of any

VOL. XXXVIII. 61

742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

great size. None of the tributaries of the river, either from the
north or the south, flow through regions more recent than the
Carboniferous, with the exception of the lower parts of the Ohio
itself and of the Tennessee, which border on the Quaternary. The
lowest formation in the valley is the Cincinnati, which is just
touched at a single point, and only for a short distance, about
twenty miles above the city.

It may be stated, then, that since the close of Carboniferous
time the river has flowed mainly in the same channel. The vast
antiquity of the river is thus easily established, and the existence
of the wide valley, with its broad bottom lands, is readily ac-
counted for. The story of the river during the long period of
pre-glacial time would be simple. For ages its waters were prob-
ably poured directly into the Gulf of Mexico, an arm of which
extended northward into the continent at least as far as the pres-
ent site of Cairo, Illinois. In later time the Mississippi-Missouri
began the formation of a delta, which, gradually extending, has
left the Ohio a tributary merely of the mighty " Father of
Waters." As ages passed away it smoothed its rocky bed, and
cut deeper and deeper between the hills, until at last there came a
time in the history of the earth which man has called the " Gla-
cial period." It was an age of intense cold — when a mantle of ice
and snow covered all the New England States, New York, part of
Pennsylvania, of Ohio, of Indiana, and Illinois, and thence ex-
tended northwestward to Dakota and the Rocky Mountain region.
When the period was at its height, and the maximum limit of the
ice-sheet had been reached, the course of the Ohio River became
seriously affected.

Profs. G. F. Wright and H. Carvill Lewis, Mr. Warren Up-
ham and others, have shown that, at the period of the greatest
extension of the ice, a portion of it crossed the Ohio River in the
vicinity of Cincinnati, and extended southward for some miles
into Kentucky. The course of the river as it now exists was
blocked for a distance of probably fifty miles, or from near Point
Pleasant, twenty miles above Cincinnati, to the mouth of the Big
Miami, thirty miles below.

Investigations into the topography and surface geology of the
region about Cincinnati reveal the existence of an ancient chan-
nel of the Ohio which divided into two branches.* One was on
the eastern, the other on the western side of the city, and the two
united just north of the city and continued to Hamilton, twenty-
five miles. Here the old stream was joined by what is now the
Big Miami, and the united rivers then turned southwestward and

* See a paper by the writer in the Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural His-
tory, vol. xi, pp. 96-101.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE OHIO RIVER.

743

entered the present channel of the Ohio near Lawrenceburg, In-
diana.

At the present time the Ohio passes by the city of Cincinnati
and follows a channel cut between the hills at a more recent
period than the greater portion of its bed. At the time of the ex-
istence of the old valley extending north from Cincinnati, a bar-
rier of land extended across from Ohio to Kentucky and barred
the way of the river to the west. This was cut down probably

:map op

4; CINCINNATI and Vicinity

SHOWING

ANCIENT CHANNEL OF THE

OHIO RIVER.

|THE SHADED PORTIONS REPRESENT LOWLANDS
I

at the time the country was occupied by the glaciers, and as a
result we find in the present bed of the stream immense banks
of coarse gravel alternately on the Kentucky and on the Ohio
side for some miles below Cincinnati, while near the mouth of
the Big Miami is another immense deposit which resulted from
the melting of the glaciers as they retired northward up that
valley.

The consequences of the stoppage of the current of the river
are plainly seen. The glaciers creeping down from the north
would naturally follow the old channel of the river and prevent
its egress to the north, so it was probably during the on-coming

744

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of the glaciers that the river began the task of cutting a new
channel for itself — the one it now occupies; but when the ice
reached and crossed the channel and entered Kentucky, this partly

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made new way was likewise obstructed. As a result the water rose
higher and higher, backing farther and farther up its valley, until
its estimated depth varied from three hundred to six hundred feet.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE OHIO RIVER. 745

The investigation of this matter was made the subject of a special
paper by Prof. E. W. Claypole, and from his pamphlet we glean
some interesting facts.

Lake Ohio, as this body of water produced by the ice-dam was
called, extended four hundred miles up the valley and was in
places two hundred miles broad. Its waters covered the present
site of Pittsburg to a depth of three hundred feet. Backing up
the Monongahela River, it carved the terraces already mentioned,
so that these represent the shores of this ancient lake in the
mountains of Pennsylvania. Its northern boundary was formed
partly by the ice wall itself and partly by the irregular outline of
the high land it could not overflow. A few isolated patches pro-
jected as islands above its surface. On the south, long fiords ex-
isted in place of the former tributaries, and from the lower end of
one of these was the probable outlet for the water. This, how-
ever, is still a mooted question, and though it is probable that
much found its way through a low pass in the water-shed be-
tween the valleys of the Licking and the Kentucky Rivers, it is
also likely that a part followed the foot of the ice and reached the
Ohio Valley again some thirty or forty miles below the present
site of Cincinnati.

How long Lake Ohio was in existence it is, of course, impossi-
ble to say. Various facts, however, indicate a life of many hun-
dreds, perhaps thousands of years. So long as the dam existed, Lake
Ohio held its own ; but, when the ice began its retreat, the fate of
the lake was sealed. As year after year the foundations of the
dam were weakened, the pressure of the water was with greater
and greater difficulty withstood. The heat of summer sapped its
strength, but this was again renewed by the winter's cold ; but,
when the cold of winter was insufficient to supply the waste of
summer, the end was really at hand. As Prof. Claypole says :
" Possibly the change was gradual and the dam and the lake went
gently down together. Possibly, but not probably, this was the
case. Far more likely is it that the melting was rapid and that
it sapped the strength of the dam faster than it lowered the water.
This will be more probable when we consider the immense area
to be drained. The catastrophe was then inevitable — the dam
broke, and all the accumulated water of Lake Ohio was poured
through the gap. Days and even weeks must have passed before it
was all gone ; but at last its bed was dry. The upper Ohio Valley
was free from water, and Lake Ohio had passed away."

This conflict of ice and water must have been frequently re-
peated, for the cold of winter would have repaired the damage
of the summer ; so that year after year, for how long one can
not tell, the conflict was renewed. Says Prof. Claypole : " This

* Lake Age in Ohio, p. 16.
tol. xxxtiii. — 52

746 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

period of conflict between the ice and the river must have "been
a terrible time for the lower Ohio Valley and its inhabitants. At
times the river was dry, and at others bank-full and overflowing.
The frost of winter by lessening the supply, and the ice-tongue
by forming a dam, combined to hold back the water. The sun
of summer, by melting the dam, and the pressure of the accumu-
lated water, by bursting it, combined to let off at once the whole
of the retained store. Terrible floods of water and ice, laden with
stones, gravel, and sand, must have poured down the river, and
have swept everything away in their path — trees, animals, and
man, if present. ... To the human dwellers in the Ohio Valley — for
we have reason to believe that the valley was in that day tenanted
by man — these floods must have proved disastrous in the extreme.
It is scarcely likely that they were often forecast. The whole
population of the bottom lands must have been repeatedly swept
away ; and it is far from being unlikely that in these and other
similar catastrophes in different parts of the world, which charac-
terized certain stages in the Glacial era, will be found the far-off
basis on which rest those traditions of a flood that are found among
almost all savage nations, especially in the north temperate zone."

So there finally came a time when the Ohio Valley was no
longer blocked by ice. But, when this time came, the debris from
the melting glaciers had filled up the previously northward trend-
ing channel, while the long-continued floods had cut a new chan-
nel along the southern border of the ice as far as the mouth of
the Big Miami. Thus was its ancient bed deserted forever, and
was left to be occupied by insignificant streams, or else remained
high and dry above the reach of any flood of future years.

The city of Louisville stands upon a deserted portion of the
Ohio River channel also. It is in front of this city that the
celebrated Falls of the Ohio are found. Here the river rushes
over a rocky bottom, of itself indicative of a new channel, while
on either side are wide stretches of sand or gravel, or low-lying
plains through which the river formerly flowed. A late writer
in one of the scientific magazines * states that evidence points to
the fact that in pre-glacial times the Ohio River divided above
the city, one branch flowing on the north and another on the
south of an island, the two uniting again below the city. Well-
borings show the rock in some places to be one hundred and
fifty feet or more below the present surface, and what are now
insignificant streams were once large enough to carve valleys
half a mile wide and many feet in depth. Where was once the
island, are now the falls. The ancient channels are filled with
debris, and the new channel is a shallow rock cut, excavated since
the close of the great Ice age.

* John Bryson, in American Geologist, March, 1890.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TEE OHIO RIVER. 7+7

A physical history of the Ohio River would not be complete
without a mention of the great variation in volume it presents,
and some mention of the probable causes. Nothing is definitely
known of its fluctuations during the prehistoric period, or indeed
previous to 1832. It is true there are traditions of great floods in
the river as far back as 1774. In 1787 there was a flood which
some authors state reached one hundred and twelve feet. In 1792
there was another, reaching the height of sixty feet. The flood
of 1832, of which there is authentic record, attained a height of
sixty-four feet three inches. There were, up to 1883, twelve floods
which reached or exceeded fifty feet. In that year (1883) the
water reached a height of sixty-six feet four inches ; and this was
exceeded the following year by a volume of water which marked
upon the gauge at the Cincinnati Water-Works seventy-one feet,
three fourths of an inch. During the year 1890 the water twice
reached a depth exceeding fifty feet.

Contrast these great floods with the extreme low water some-
times experienced. Five times during fifty years has the water
sunk so low as to leave but three feet in the channel. The lowest
ever known was in September, 1881, when the records show that
twenty-three inches of water were found where three years later
there were seventy-one feet. In October, 1887, it was also very
low, there then being but two feet eight inches in the channel.
At that time the river in front of Cincinnati showed its hidden
dangers as scarcely ever before. A boy four feet high might
have waded across without wetting his suspender-buttons. " Ugly-
looking black bowlders, long, narrow, jagged reefs of moss- and
slime-covered rocks and hillocks of gravel uplift their heads
three, four, and five feet above the surface of the stream, all along
the channel between the railroad and suspension bridges, while
the big bar at the mouth of the Licking thrusts itself sheer across
the river to within a hundred feet of the Ohio edge, at the foot of
Walnut Street. One pebbled and coal-strewn reef, between Wal-
nut and Vine Streets, is exposed for over two hundred feet, and it
can be reached by wading from either shore. A sunken barge,
which for years has been concealed from sight by the waters, is
now wholly exposed, and its skeleton is visible from keel to gun-
wales, and stem to stern." *

The cause of such fluctuations is not far to seek. The destruc-
tion of forests about the head-waters of the tributaries, large and
small, prevents the conservation of the water which falls in a
rainy season. It rushes in torrents down the denuded hills and
mountains, and is gone in a few days. A smaller amount of rain
than the average, and the river becomes abnormally low. Abun-
dant precipitation, on the other hand, combined with such con-

* Local paper, October 27, 1887.

748 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ditions as cause heavy snows to be melted suddenly, together
with the absence of forests which tend to absorb moisture and to
give it out but slowly, produce disastrous floods, such as have so
frequently occurred. That there is any effectual remedy for the
floods can scarcely be maintained ; that their violence can be miti-
gated, the adherents of reforesting devoutly believe ; and that
the great dearth of water can be largely prevented by allowing
the hills to become clothed again with forests, and the springs
give out their stores perennially instead of drying up in seasons
of drought, all must admit. But the problems of a great river are
not worked out in a few years, any more than its own history has
been. Time is necessary for all things. We firmly believe that
man will in the end find a cure for the evils of drought and flood
to which the mighty Ohio has been subject since civilized man
has planted himself upon her hilly shores.

«»»

STREET-CLEANING IN LARGE CITIES.

By General EMMONS CLAEK.

ALTHOUGH it is an unquestionable fact that cleanliness of
the streets is necessary to the health and comfort of the
people, few, if any, of the large American cities have as yet satis-
factorily accomplished this important sanitary object. European
cities have generally been more successful in this particular, and
their success is due mainly to their earlier attention to sanitary
subjects, to their more arbitrary methods of enforcing police and
sanitary regulations, and to the comparative absence of political
and personal influences in their municipal governments. A dif-
ference is noticeable in the cleanliness of the streets of American
cities, which may be attributed to the great disparity in the char-
acter and condition of their population, and the variety of plans
upon which the streets are laid out, and the building blocks or
squares are constructed. In those cities and parts of cities where
the people of the laboring class and the poor are crowded in tene-
ment-houses, and where a considerable part of the population is
foreign-born and from countries where personal and public clean-
liness have not been enforced by proper police regulations, it is
no trifling task to secure cleanliness of the streets ; but this desir-
able result is obtainable with comparative ease in those cities
whose founders provided lanes or alleys in the rear of all dwell-
ings, through which house refuse can be removed without any
use of the public streets except for its transportation in carts to
places of deposit.

New York, from its insular position, from its large foreign-

STREET-CLEANING IN LARGE CITIES. 749

born population, from the crowded condition of a considerable
part of its people in tenement-bouses, and from its peculiar street
and block construction, whereby it is necessary to remove ashes,
garbage, and house refuse through a front entrance to carts in
the public street, affords an example of the worst possible condi-
tions for street cleanliness. But the more fortunate towns are
not entirely exempt from the difficulties and embarrassments
which have for a long period surrounded this subject in New
York ; and, although they may be interested in a less degree in
the solution of this great sanitary and social problem, it will be
observed that the history of street-cleaning in New York during
the past twenty-five years is not uninstructive, and that the im-
proved methods necessary in the metropolis are more or less
applicable to all large American cities.

During the past twenty-five years the people of New York
have earnestly demanded cleanliness of the streets ; the press has
echoed public opinion by a vigorous censure of the officials re-
sponsible for their filthy condition, and the sanitary authorities
have urged from time to time an improvement in this part of the
municipal service, as necessary to the public health and comfort.
When the Metropolitan Board of Health was organized in March,
1866, it inherited from the city inspector the duty of enforcing
an existing contract for cleaning the streets and removing the
ashes and garbage of the city. The board made an earnest effort
to perform its duty ; charges of inefficient and unsatisfactory
service and breach of contract were frequently made against the
contractors ; voluminous testimony was taken and counsel were
heard, but without the desired results. In answer to the testi-
mony of sanitary inspectors as to the condition of the streets, the
contractors were always able to produce abundant evidence from
their employe's that the streets had been thoroughly cleaned in
accordance with the provisions of their contract ; and they also
claimed that any just cause of complaint was due to the non-
enforcement by the police of the laws and sanitary ordinances
designed, directly or indirectly, to aid and facilitate their impor-
tant work.

The hearings of the street-cleaning contractors by the Metro-
politan Board of Health demonstrated that cleanliness of the
streets is comparative and relative, and a subject upon which
men entertain different opinions. A dwelling which a good
housewife declares is filthy and intolerable, another housekeeper,
less tidy, industrious, and exacting, will pronounce cleanly and
satisfactory ; so the contractors insisted that the streets of New
York were clean, or " thoroughly cleaned," while the board and
its officers were firm in the belief that they were dirty, detrimental
to health, and discreditable to the city. It was also demonstrated

750 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at these hearings that it is hardly possible to draw a contract that
will secure clean streets without giving entire and unquestion-
able power to the city authorities to revoke and cancel the same
at pleasure, and that with such a condition no responsible con-
tractor would undertake the work and invest the large amount of
money necessary for its performance. The importunity of the
Board of Health, and its dissatisfaction with the condition of the
streets, finally led to a sale of the street-cleaning contract to the
Hon. James R. Whiting, a prominent leader in all movements
for municipal reform at that period. Great hopes and expecta-
tions were entertained by all good citizens that New York would
soon rejoice in clean streets, but they were doomed to disappoint-
ment, for no permanent improvement was visible. The opinion
of all interested, officially or otherwise, was quite unanimous at
last that street-cleaning by contract was a hopeless failure ; and
there was a general approval of the act of the Legislature of 1872,
imposing temporarily upon the Police Department the duty of
cleaning the streets and removing the ashes and garbage of the
city.

The reasons for permanently conferring this power and duty
upon the Police Department in the new city charter of 1873
were, first, that the commission was non-partisan, the two politi-
cal parties being equally represented; and, second, that the de-
partment would strictly enforce the laws of the city and sanitary
ordinances in respect to' the streets and the care and disposal
of ashes and garbage, and thereby remove an alleged cause of
the failure of street-cleaning by contract. Although the Police
Board was in one sense non-partisan, it soon appeared that both
parties were clamoring for appointments and political patronage
under the Bureau of Street-cleaning with a power and persist-
ence almost irresistible and not always resisted. Nor was there
any considerable improvement in the enforcement of the laws
and sanitary ordinances in respect to the streets and the care and
removal of ashes and garbage. The police force of New York,
in physique, intelligence, and bravery, in the detection and pre-
vention of crime, and in the protection of life and property, is
certainly equal to any in the world ; but for a proper and thorough
enforcement of ordinances and regulations, trifling in detail but
important in the aggregate, which concern and are necessary to
the comfort of the people, it has never been distinguished. The
streets of New York under the police regime were certainly as
clean, and the removal of the ashes and garbage as well done, as
at any previous or subsequent period, and at less expense ; but
the department did not satisfy the 'public or the press. A change
was earnestly and imperatively demanded, and in 1881 the Legis-
lature created a Department of Street-cleaning with a single head

STREET-CLEANING IN LARGE CITIES. 751

and with ample power for its important purposes. Appropri-
ations for this department have increased from year to year,
until the enormous sum of $1,787,774.51 was estimated by the
commissioner as necessary for the year 1891, and $1,584,250 was
the amount appropriated ; changes in the chief officers and em-
ploye's have been made ; various methods and devices have been
adopted and tried ; but the fact remains and is universally recog-
nized that the streets are unclean. Some attribute their condi-
tion to insufficient appropriations ; others to the inefficiency and
incapacity of those intrusted with the work ; others to political
influences and to the use of its offices and appointments as politi-
cal patronage ; and others to the system and methods employed
in conducting the details of the business. But, whatever the
cause, the cry is universal, Is there no remedy or relief ?

It is confidently asserted that none of the different plans pro-
posed for cleaning the streets, nor an appropriation for that pur-
pose double the present amount, nor a Commissioner of Street-
cleaning of ideal business ability, fidelity, and integrity, can
give New York clean streets, so long as householders and house-
keepers sweep or throw their dust, dirt, ashes, garbage, or refuse,
or any part of such material, into the streets, or allow anything
to escape from their garbage receptacles upon the sidewalk or
upon the street, nor so long as carts conveying dirt and refuse
are allowed to drop any part of their contents on the streets. A
walk in the principal streets and avenues from seven to nine
o'clock in the morning will convince the observer that, whatever
the shortcomings of the Street-cleaning Department, storekeepers
and housekeepers are primarily and incidentally responsible for
dirty streets by allowing their employe's to sweep into the streets
the dust of their houses or stores, and the dirt and refuse found
upon the sidewalk. If the walk is extended to the tenement-
house districts at any hour of the day, it will be noticed that it is
quite the custom to throw ashes and garbage into the streets, and
to allow these materials to escape into the street or upon the
sidewalk from insufficient, improper, or overflowing receptacles.
It will also be noticed that, soon after a street has been cleaned, it
is again defiled by the refuse and garbage from the neighboring
buildings, and that the carts which transport street dirt, ashes,
and garbage, sand for new buildings, earth from cellar excava-
tions, and the dust and dirt from buildings torn down, scatter
some part of their contents into the street as they proceed to
their destination. A student of the problem of street-cleaning
has only to make the above observations to learn the primary
cause of dirty streets in New York, and that, without a thorough
reform in this particular, relief is well-nigh hopeless. This sim-
ple solution of the problem is only the application to the streets

752 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the familiar rules which govern every well-regulated house-
hold. Can a house be clean if the members of the family throw
waste paper and other refuse on the floors, and ignore the waste-
basket and the cuspidore ; and how many times a day must the
floors of the house be swept, if such a practice is tolerated ?

It being absolutely necessary to the proper cleanliness of the
streets that no dust, dirt, refuse, ashes, or garbage should be
swept or thrown into the streets or upon the sidewalks, or allowed
to escape thereon from ash and garbage receptacles or from carts,
a thorough reform must be secured in this particular, and by the
following means :

1. The education of the entire population of the city on this
subject. All desire clean streets, and an appeal to the common
sense and public spirit of the people will be successful. A plain
and simple circular from an official source should be placed in the
hands of each householder and storekeeper, and of each family
in tenement-houses, to the effect that every particle of dust, dirt,
ashes, garbage, and refuse should be placed in the garbage recep-
tacles, and that the sidewalk should not be swept into the street,
but the dust and paper thereon should be carefully gathered and
placed in the garbage receptacles of the stores or houses. Such a
circular would be disregarded by some, and all such should be
personally warned by an officer of police against the continuance
of the practice. Owners of carts conveying dirt, ashes, garbage,
manure, or any refuse, should be notified that their carts must be
absolutely tight and properly covered, and that the escape into
the street of any part of the contents, however trifling, is a viola-
tion of the sanitary ordinances, which will be officially noticed by
the police. In a very few months the people would thoroughly
understand the importance of this subject, and few would over-
look or violate regulations so reasonable and proper.

2. When proper notice and warning fail to prevent throwing,
sweeping, or allowing the escape into the streets or upon the side-
walk of any dirt, ashes, garbage, or other refuse, the vigorous
enforcement of proper sanitary ordinances becomes necessary. It
should be made a part of the duty of every police officer on patrol
to arrest any one violating such ordinances, and to ascertain who
is guilty of any violation in the absence of an officer ; and, for any
neglect of such duty, officers should be held to as rigid accounta-
bility by their superiors as for failure to arrest or detect offend-
ers against the laws concerning life and property. In many Eu-
ropean cities the police are so active and vigilant in enforcing
sanitary laws and ordinances of this character that the streets
are models of cleanliness, and their condition materially promotes
the health, comfort, and happiness of the people. To make the
action of the police effective, the hearty co-operation of the courts

STREET-CLEANING IN LARGE CITIES. 753

is necessary, and police justices must promptly punish offenders
against the cleanliness of the streets, and severely, too, in case
they are repeated. With proper action and co-operation of police
officers and police justices, the great and most important obstacle
to clean streets in New York can be removed.

When this is accomplished, the following will be necessary to
entirely secure the desired object :

1. The laws and sanitary ordinances should be amplified and
extended, if necessary, to cover minutely all subjects incidental
and necessary to clean streets. Such laws and ordinances should
be so broad, plain, and explicit that every citizen would know his
duty in the premises, that every police officer would be certain
when it was proper to make an arrest for violations, and that no
police justice could fail to punish upon proper evidence.

2. The ash and garbage receptacles, in which the refuse of
buildings and the sweepings from the sidewalk should be care-
fully placed, should be well made of galvanized iron, of style and
size prescribed by ordinance, and they should be portable, abso-
lutely tight, with covers, and the covers should not be removed
except when necessary. These receptacles should be placed for
removal in the areas within the stoop lines, or in some other con-
venient place, but never on the sidewalks ; and rag-pickers and
scavengers should not be allowed to disturb their contents. The
ashes and garbage should be removed daily at a fixed and regu-
lar hour from every building, in absolutely tight carts, of size
and style prescribed by ordinance, with covers so arranged that
no part of the contents can escape. Carts for the transportation
of street or cellar dirt, manure or other refuse, should also be of
uniform size and style, tight and covered, and specially con-
structed and adapted to their respective purposes.

Public cremation of garbage, or its utilization by some of the
known methods, should be introduced in New York without
delay. Proper buildings for this purpose should be constructed
upon the water front, conveniently located in different parts of
the city. In many cities in this country the different processes
are used for this purpose with satisfactory results. It is several
years since the New York Board of Health demonstrated that
refuse animal matter could be safely and inoffensively utilized
within the city limits, and the metropolis should not be last to
avail itself of improved methods for disposing of its garbage.
When arrangements are made for the public cremation or utiliza-
tion of garbage, the ashes and garbage should be placed in sepa-
rate receptacles, and should be removed separately, the ashes be-
ing disposed of for filling sunken lots, redeeming marshy ground,
and making new land in the city and vicinity. For a long period
in the future, street dirt, and ashes free from garbage, will be

754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

demanded for these purposes ; the expense of removal would be
trifling, and possibly at times could be done without cost to the
city ; and the improvements made by this means would abate the
serious nuisances caused by stagnant water, and by wet and marshy
lands, and add to the taxable property of the city. The harbor of
New York would also be relieved from the dangers incident to
the dumping of ashes and garbage in the neighboring waters, and
the adjacent shores would be spared from the offensive nuisance
caused by such a primitive and obnoxious practice. The removal
and disposal of ashes and garbage should be done by contract, as
the details of the work can be minutely specified. As a general
rule, municipal work should be done by contract, as the direct
employment of men by public officials, and the ownership of
carts, horses, and stables by the corporation, are likely to lead,
directly or indirectly, to abuses, personal or political, and private
enterprise can satisfactorily accomplish nearly all public work at
reduced expense to the city.

3. The city should be divided into districts of such size
that one man would be able to sweep the streets of his district
and keep them clean at all times. Nothing being swept or thrown
into the street, one man would be able to keep in good order a
considerable territory. To every twenty-five or thirty districts
there should be an inspector or foreman, to note the service of
the men, their efficiency, capacity, and faithfulness, and the char-
acter and result of their work. To these inspectors or foremen
the sweepers in charge of districts should be directly responsible
for the cleanly condition of the streets in their respective terri-
tories, and the inspectors should be responsible to a general su-
perintendent under the Commissioner of Street-cleaning. The
inspectors, as well as the sweepers, should be known to the citi-
zens of their districts by a badge or uniform ; and they should
aid the police, by information and otherwise, in the enforcement
of the laws and ordinances relating to the streets and their clean-
liness. The inspectors should be men of the discretion and execu-
tive capacity necessary to their office ; and the sweepers should
be able-bodied, industrious, and temperate men, their qualifica-
tions to be tested by a fair trial, and their places secure during
good service and behavior. Both inspectors and sweepers should
be paid by the month, thereby elevating their respective positions
above that of the day laborer, and making this employment
desirable on account of its continuity and permanence.

4. The cleaning of streets and the removal of ashes and gar-
bage should be conducted on strictly business principles, and can
never be successful or satisfactory unless exempted from per-
sonal and political influences. The commissioner at the head of
the department and all officers and employe's, including street-

TRAINING FOR CHARACTER, 755

sweepers in charge of districts, should be selected solely because
of their fitness for their respective duties, and should not be re-
moved except for good and sufficient cause. The methods of the
successful merchant, banker, and manufacturer, especially in re-
spect to all employe's, are necessary to the economical and satis-
factory conduct of any public business ; and whoever attempts to
clean the streets of New York by any other theory or practice is
certain to add another to the many notable failures of the past
twenty-five years.

It is believed that with the adoption of the measures and
methods above indicated, and strict adherence to the same, with
fair executive business ability at the head of the Department of
Street-cleaning, the streets of New York can be made as clean as
those of London, Paris, or Berlin. From the city statistics it
appears that the expense of cleaning the streets and removing
the ashes and garbage of the city has increased more rapidly than
the population, and that the expense was considerably less com-
paratively while the business was conducted by the Police Depart-
ment than at any time since. As there has been no appreciable
improvement in the condition of the streets in respect to clean-
liness, it may fairly be concluded that the increased appropria-
tions have not produced correspondingly improved results. It is
also a reasonable conclusion that, with the exercise and use of
business and common-sense methods, the entire cost of keeping
the streets of New York clean, and carefully and satisfactorily
disposing of its ashes and garbage, should not for a long period
exceed the average appropriation of the last five years.

»»»

TRAINING FOR CHARACTER.

By Pbof. HENRI MAEION.

I PURPOSE to study now the movements of the child at the
earliest age, and on the present occasion, particularly, the
appearance and first steps of the growth of the will. In previous
lectures we have witnessed the awakening of emotions in the
child.* We have seen its perceptive faculties developing, new

* This lecture is a part of M. Marion's course on the science of education, delivered at
the Literary Faculty of Paris. The lecturer's special subject in 1889 was the psychology
of the child, and the present lecture was the tenth of the year. ITaving in previous years
treated of education in general, its objects and means, of the great biological, psychologi-
cal, and moral laws which rule in it, and of the great departments comprehended in it, M.
Marion finally comes to the connected subject of the psychical development of the child,
attending first to the description of it as it takes place in fact and spontaneously, but
pointing out, as he goes, what it ought to be, how it should be directed, and how it is often
disturbed.

756 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and more complex sensations gradually modifying its simple and
ingenuous egoism; and sympathy appearing and rising out of
self-love, and transforming it as would a ferment. The child's
social nature breaks out long before the end of the first year ; it
begins by beaming on the nurse and the mother, and then the
child smiles at all pleasant and kindly faces. Play, which begins
from this time to hold a large place in its life, appears to us in its
origin as an essentially social pleasure. At the same time with the
affectionate feelings we see arise those of a contrary character,
like jealousy, which St. Augustine fixed in the sixth month.

Feelings and passions of a higher order are attributed by some
writers to children of this age — the taste for the beautiful, for
example. Some would give it to the child at the breast, with
reason, if infants' admiration for bright lights and vivid colors
is a taste for the beautiful. While this tendency is common to
children with many animals, we have a right to see in it a nascent
aesthetic feeling. M. Victor Egger has described a case of musi-
cal enthusiasm in a child less than six months old. " Lying on a
bed, its nurse having already excited it by playing with it, the
Marseillaise was sung to it (in a man's voice). It listened, looked
up, with throbbing mouth and throat, throwing its arms out from
time to time. In the midst of the song it uttered a single sharp
cry that almost frightened us. During all this time it exhibited
an intense, joyous emotion, but too deep for infantine joy. It
might be said that it put itself in unison with what it heard. The
song was not repeated. The child's excitement was too great."
Whether enthusiasm or not, there was certainly more than a sim-
ple sensation in the emotion thus described. It is very certain
that a child of that age should be spared such an intoxication,
which could not be repeated many times without grave prejudice
to the firmness of its nerves and its psychical equilibrium.

I have not perceived at the period we are considering anything
resembling the moral feeling which Mr. Darwin and M. B. Perez
believe they have found in the nursling ; it appears later, largely
as a fruit of education. Associations of agreeable or disagreeable
ideas which the infant is susceptible of from its first months
should not be confounded with rational feelings, like those of
order and justice and right and duty.

The movements are next to receive our attention; they are
the only possible signs of what is going on in the child. Its af-
fective sensations, its representative sensations, its feelings— all
the phenomena of its psychic life which we have so far studied —
are apparent to us only through their motive manifestations. But
what we have been able to say in passing of such and such move-
ments as expressions of consciousness is not enough. The motions
deserve a special study in themselves and for themselves, in view

TRAINING FOR CHARACTER. 757

of their psychological significance, which is immense, especially
when it is considered in connection with their intimate relation
to voluntary energy. We shall consider, first, in general, the
psychological value of the movements. It has already been
thought worthy of remark that movements, or muscular con-
tractions, translate the interior life and give it outward radiance.
The obscurity of the fact is relieved if we suppose, with contem-
porary physiology, that thoughts and feelings, as facts of con-
sciousness, while not undoubtedly reducible to simple movements,
are nevertheless based on incipient or asserted movements. On
the other hand, M. Fere" has shown that all sensation is accom-
panied by an augmentation or disengagement of muscular force.
The force and quality of motive manifestations are undeniably
signs of psychical dispositions, either permanent or accidental.
We all know that a weak and indecisive step, halting speech,
slowness in eating, the physical tendency to dawdle and take
twice as long as it needs to do anything, betray in children a gen-
eral mental, corresponding with the organic inertness. The
quality of the habitual motions, as revealed by the attitude, the
walk, the play of the features, and the writing are certain signs
of the character. While we may be mistaken through inexperi-
ence or want of attention, or of method in the interpretation of
them, their value to a skilled observer can not be disputed.

Motion, strong, various, fruitful, which delights in itself and
enjoys the effort it calls out, is agreeable when there is a super-
abundance of life, when it sets to work reserves of energy which
it has not exhausted. The diversities of our tastes come in a
large degree from this. What is beyond the capacity of some,
and seems impossible or insupportable to them, charms others,
and seems like play to them. There is a profound analogy be-
tween being fond of action and the physical, and having move-
ment in the mind and force in the character ; but it does not
extend to identity.

Besides interpreting the moral condition, motions act upon it
in return. This reciprocal influence of movements on states of
consciousness is another law of general psychology, of which
education should not lose sight for an instant. Not only do what
we feel, think, and wish determine our motions and acts, but, in-
versely, the motions and acts which become habitual, even those
which were involuntary in the beginning, determine, to a greater
or less extent, in time our ways of feeling, thinking, and wishing.
The recurrent action of attitudes, gestures, and acts on the moral
condition was pointed out long since by physiognomy. The fact,
now trite, that, by giving a certain position to the limbs of a
hypnotized person, we put him into a corresponding psychical
state, is only an extreme case of this law.

TOL. XXXVIII. 53

758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The plasticity of the child is hardly less. By causing it to
perform a certain motion and habitually preventing it from mak-
ing the opposite one, we act in a wonderful degree on its feelings
and ideas. Is not making it talk, eat, and move in a more lively
way a means of shaking off the inertness of which we just spoke ?
Hence the possibility of that moral training, which should not be
confounded with moral education proper, for it is in one sense
the opposite, but which is, nevertheless, not unrelated to it ; for
there is mechanism, one part of training, at the beginning in all
education. It is thus important to study the motions of the little
child — first, in order to interpret them correctly as signs, and
thereby to read in its consciousness ; and, second, to know how to
regulate them practically, to favor or repress them according to
circumstances, and in this way to act upon the child's character.
Let us try, then, to retrace in outline the progress of the faculty of
motion in the child till it learns how to walk, dwelling preferably
upon the movements the more direct relation of which with the
will gives them a special importance. The general truth prevails
through the whole subject that motions which become voluntary
begin by not being so ; that intentional activity, the nascent will,
does but gain possession of acts which were at first not willed.
We are about to inquire how this takes place.

Involuntary motions appear to be of four kinds — automatic,
reflex, instinctive, and imitative. The motions which I call auto-
matic are not inspired or guided by any representation, but pro-
ceed exclusively from the energy accumulated from nutrition in
the nervous centers. They occur when that energy is disengaged
outwardly by the motor nerves without peripheric excitation of
the sensitive nerves, and of course without a mental representa-
tion, of which the subject is not yet capable. These uncoordi-
nated movements, including motions before and just after birth,
the first motions of the eyelids, eyes, hands, arms, and legs, and
all sorts of grimaces, have in themselves but little psychological
interest ; but they are the ones of which the will gains the most
complete possession. The more indeterminate and characterless
they are in their origin, the more conscious energy, awaking in
them, will be able to make them its own. The case is different
with the motions of the next two categories; regulated and
limited by nature, the will will never absolutely dispose of them
or resist them without difficulty. It would be no small effort for
it to prevent reflex actions and contend against the instincts.

The reflexes are motions which are produced instantaneously
and mechanically after certain peripheral impressions ; of such is
sneezing, the first act of the infant in coming into the world, and
coughing. Although they fall more or less under consciousness,
in that it is informed of them as they occur or immediately after-

TRAINING FOR CHARACTER. 759

ward, they are not produced by mental representations, nor are
they in any degree at first dependent on the will. By its inevi-
table and mechanical character, the reflex is the contrary of the
voluntary act. Yet we may say that it also is after its way a kind
of matter for the will. One of the first exercises imposed by edu-
cation, one of its most laborious apprenticeships, is to control the
reflexes and prevent their being produced. Except for the little
that the will may gain upon them, or rather upon the conditions
under which they are produced, the reflexes remain substantially
the same through life, with the difference, which Preyer seems to
have well established, that they are slower in the new-born child
than they afterward become.

The instinctive motions resemble the reflexes ; they have to a
certain point their mechanical character, and are produced only
as in consequence of certain determined impressions. Thus, the
young chick does not perform the motion of scratching on the
carpet, but begins it at once on the gravel walk, as if the feeling
of grains of sand was necessary and enough to set the mechanism
in motion. But there is a great difference between instinct and
the reflex ; it is not only that instinct is more complicated and
its complex motion is composed of co-ordinated movements;
but it is connected with a mental disposition, and is dependent
on a psychical representation and tendency, or an image and a
feeling.

Some philosophers, reserving the name of instinct for the re-
markable industries of some species of animals, like bees and the
beaver, deny that man has instincts. But how can we dispute
that true and indestructible instincts preside over the functions
by which individual life and the life of the species are preserved ?
The truth is that, while instinct is all with certain animals, with
others, more perfectible and higher in the scale by that fact, a very
large part is left to the intelligent activity that can adapt itself
to circumstances. This is at the maximum in man ; and in the
adult and cultivated man of the higher races the part of mechan-
ism is reduced very nearly to nothing. But in the child instinct
exercises all its rights, till education deranges and modifies it.
The instinctive character — that is, partly psychical and not purely
reflexive — of the movements composing the action of sucking, ap-
pears by the fact that the hungry child will suck at his finger as
well as at the breast, while, if he is not hungry, he will refuse even
the breast. It is also by instinct that he laughs when we excite
him by playing with him, or even by tickling him, for, if he is in
a bad humor or a stranger tries the experiment, he may cry in-
stead of laugh. The instinctive reaction depends essentially on
the psychic condition at the moment. Nevertheless, this does not
prevent instinct being a hereditary mechanism, over which the

760 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

will has directly very little influence. It can affect it only by dis-
posing at its desire, when it can, the circumstances that call the
instinct into exercise.

Till the end of four months, I believe, the child makes no mo-
tions that are not automatic, reflexive, or instinctive. From the
fifth month, perhaps, certainly in the sixth and seventh months,
imitative motions appear, the nature of which is obscure, but
which are of signal importance in the point of view of psycho-
genesis and education. It is hardly necessary to say that I am
speaking of unconscious motions instinctively imitated, not of
conscious and voluntary imitation, which will come much later.

Preyer seems to me to be under a mistake when he supposes
imitatio'h to be essentially voluntary. To my mind there is no
will without an expressed intention. Where is the intention, the
reflecting consciousness, when an infant, hearing another one cry-
ing, begins to cry by contagion, or when a child of seven months,
seeing me tapping the table or the window with my fingers, exe-
cutes a poorly imitative scratching with his fingers ? Nurses
teach children at this age to say good-by with a motion of the
hand, which their wards imitate at sight. I was recently told of a
boy twelve months old on a railway train, who, when his father,
to quiet him, snapped his fingers in his face, immediately imitated
the motion, to the surprise of all. Rubbing my hands one day at
the table, partly because of the cold, partly in idleness, I saw a
little girl three years old stop eating to rub her hands too. The
same child, when twenty months old, seeing an image of a crying
child, by an unconscious imitation opened her own mouth. Chil-
dren laugh when they see people laughing, yawn, sing, cough,
spit, snuff the candle, light a paper at the fire, and pretend to
read and write, long before they comprehend any of those acts.
One of their greatest pleasures is to imitate the cries of animals,
either spontaneously or after another. Their plays are nearly all
imitations of adult life. When they hear a story that engages
them, we can see them taking on, one after another, the expres-
sions of the characters ; and when they begin to speak, they
repeat all they hear, including oaths and other bad words, which
it horrifies us to hear from them. It is hardly correct to see in
this aptitude of children to imitate a sign of inferiority, as De-
launay did. It is rather a promise of intelligence. What is called
the child's docility results largely from these endowments. It
learns everything, at first, by imitation— to speak, write, and
sing. Unconscious imitation accounts for many facts— for the
fact, among others, that in a family of several children the
younger ones are often more advanced than their elders were at
the same age. But this more than half animal plasticity is not
really intelligence, although it announces it ; and it is truly un-

TRAINING FOR CHARACTER. 761

fortunate if age comes upon one without giving him something
better than this simian and parrot-like disposition.

These imitative motions, at first wholly involuntary, are the
ones which the will will take hold of to make them its own or to
suppress them. Habit, however, renders them indelible. Hence
it is never too soon to watch against them. As Preyer well says,
everything that could lead its imitative tendency into dangerous
ways should be removed from the child. The first duty of educa-
tion is to look after the surroundings of children, who can not
grow up healthy except in a wholesome medium. To comprehend
the weakness of the will against imitation re-enforced by habit,
we have only to recollect the struggle we have had against the
tendency to do what we have been accustomed to do. Usually
reason accommodates itself to the situation. Anticipated and led
on, it does what is easiest. It seeks, and always finds when it
seeks, reasons in favor of inveterate acts, and invents sophisms to
justify them.

Voluntary motions are the intentional ones, or those which
depend essentially upon conscious thoughts and feelings, repre-
sentations and emotions. The will appears at a relatively late
stage of the general development, when the senses have furnished
a rich provision of images and the consciousness of a consid-
erable number of feelings. Not till then can there be at the same
time the conception of various possible motions, foresight of
what should result, comparison, preference, and choice, or a rela-
tively clear acquiescence in certain acts to the exclusion of
others.

There is no sign of will so long as the child performs only
unconscious, automatic, reflexive, instinctive, or imitative motions
independently of its previously acquired ideas and pre-existing
affections. "Will begins when a thought properly so called be-
comes motive in itself, or in the desire accompanying it ; when a
movement known to be possible is anticipated with its results, and
is accomplished intentionally. Not that every detail of the mat-
ter is understood, for even adults are not thus acquainted with
the inner mechanism of their movements ; but it should be repre-
sented in advance, preconceived as a whole, and determined origi-
nally by the thought of the new that it will introduce into the
consciousness of the subject. Observers seem agreed that there
can be nothing of this kind before the fourth month. "Will ap-
pears when the child, for example, associates the thought of an
object to be taken with that of making a motion to take it. It is,
as it were, revealed to itself when after awkward and fruitless
attempts the child meets a sudden success, discovers his power,
and gains confidence in himself. From this time on the will
gathers force with the number of such associations as they are

762 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

more and more frequently repeated, and with the number of such
efforts becoming more and more sure and successful.

The will presenting the double aspect of a choice between a
number of possible acts and of ends to be sought, and of a con-
scious effort to use the means by which the object is to be reached,
its growth is also double. It becomes more worthy of attention
as the consciousness, growing richer in ideas and feelings, obtains
a larger choice of ends and means, and as the active energy be-
comes capable of stronger and more consecutive effort.

As the faculty of voluntary motion is developed, movements
which were at first fortuitous, unconscious, and ignorant of ob-
jects, executed without intentional direction or prevision, me-
chanically or upon chance impressions of the senses, are taken
notice of, become gradually more closely associated with the per-
ceptions, executed with increasing ease and accuracy, and more
and more the effect of an express will or conscious energy, which
knows what it is doing and does what it wants to. This energy,
although it takes on a new name, does not invent a single new
movement and creates nothing. The power of attention is an
essential factor, perhaps the principal one, and makes of an
energy in the beginning dispersed a concentrated and intentional
energy. We can not determine to what point attention is at any
age the condition of a rich mental and moral development. But
when the child, having taken notice of its incoherent and awk-
ward movements, begins the effort to co-ordinate them in view of
precise ends ; when, for example, it moves symmetrically both
arms to embrace or both hands to take ; when, inversely, it iso-
lates movements formerly associated, stepping on one foot to
push the ball with the other, striking with one hand the dish
which it is holding in the other — it is already performing an act
of the will.

There is a kind of struggle for existence among the thousand
vague movements of the eyes, arms, hands, feet, and head. Those
which are useless or injurious are eliminated. Those which
are advantageous, that procure a physical or moral satisfaction,
are repeated, predominate, and are accomplished in better style.
From involuntary they become voluntary, while many, again, es-
cape the will to become habitual. Preyer gives a minute descrip-
tion of the various motions of the child and their progress, which
we can retrace daily in its general features, in the attitudes and
motions of the head, for a long time directed very awkwardly,
even in taking the breast ; the motions of prehension, apparently
more natural and often easier to the child than the act of letting
go, when it has a hold ; the gradual way in which it learns to sit
down and remain seated, to creep, to get along on its knees, to
rise upon its feet, to stand, to let go of the support, and to walk.

TRAINING FOR CHARACTER. 763

It is a law of some of the motions we are talking of that exer-
cise perfects them ; we can, therefore, to a certain degree, hasten
their development. But we must be very careful how we do this,
for every premature exercise is accompanied by dangers ; all pre-
cocity is paid for in bad money. The precept, follow Nature, is
especially pertinent in the earlier years. Then, more than ever,
Nature takes her revenge if we try to hurry her and do violence
to her. No artificial excitations. They are rarely necessary, and
are dangerous.

People sometimes ask, At what age can we seat a child in a
chair ; when put him on his legs ; how old must he be before we
teach him to walk ? The answers are easy. He must not be made
to sit till he has spontaneously sat up in his bed and has been able
to hold his seat. This sometimes happens in the sixth or seventh
month, sometimes later. The sitting position is not without dan-
ger, even when he takes it himself ; imposed prematurely upon
him, it tires the backbone and may interfere with the growth, so
the child should never be taught to stand or to walk. That is his
affair, not ours. Place him on a carpet in a healthy room or in
the open air, and let him play in freedom, roll, try to go ahead on
his hands and feet, or go backward, which he will do more suc-
cessfully at first, it all gradually strengthens and hardens him.
Some day he will manage to get upon his knees, another day to go
forward upon them, and then to raise himself up against the chairs.
He thus learns to do all he can, as fast as he can, and no more.

But, they say, he will be longer in learning to walk if he is left
to go on his knees or his hands and feet indefinitely. What differ-
ence does it make if, exploring the world in this way, he becomes
acquainted with things, learns to estimate distances, strengthens
his legs and back, prepares himself, in short, to walk better when
he gets to walking ? The important thing is, not whether he
walks now or then ; but that he learn to guide himself, to help
himself, and to have confidence in himself. I hold, without exag-
geration, that education of the character is going on at the same
time with training in locomotion, and that the way one learns to
walk is not without moral importance. From different points of
view, but for reasons identical at the bottom, hygienists and
moralists agree in disapproving of leading-strings. In a moral
and physical sense, the pre-eminent educating agent is liberty,
natural activity, unfolding itself without constraint under a dis-
creet surveillance that is limited to removing grave changes and
preventing real faults. The necessity of such surveillance is
otherwise evident from the fact that the body of the child, on ac-
count of its extreme suppleness, takes every sort of wrinkle, if we
may speak thus, with equal facility. Vigilance at every moment
is all that can prevent it from contracting every kind of vicious

764 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

habit ; the great point is to reconcile such vigilance with the lib-
erty which its spontaneous development demands.

The progress of voluntary motions reaches its goal when they
are willed, so to speak, in all their parts, going to their clearly
conceived end by the simplest ways, with the greatest precision
and accuracy. Then there is no more fortuitous or indeter-
minate motion, no more expenditure of useless force. Such a
triumph of reflective activity may be observed, for example, in
the accurate designer. Those know how much time and pains it
takes to reach that point who, trying to teach children to write,
have seen them at seven or eight, or more, years old, twist them-
selves, make faces, stick out their tongue, pucker their lips, and
make ten useless movements to one useful one. This brings us
back to the important fact that inhibition of noxious or useless
acts, of automatic motions having no necessary relation to the
willed act, is an essential element of the progress of mobility.

This is equally the case in the progress of the will generally.
In morals, too, when the act consists as much in the inner resolu-
tion as in the motion that carries it out, while the will may begin
by being a hardly conscious effort of desire tending toward its
object, it will end by being to a large extent the contrary — or a
conscious and intentional restraint, a spontaneous inhibition. I
say spontaneous ; but a long time will pass before the child be-
comes capable of controlling himself, of spontaneously resisting
his impulses and desires ; he will have to be helped in it at first.

It is the office of education to put the first check upon some of
these impulses to the advantage of others, to oppose thought to
thought, tendency to tendency, and fear to desire. That is why
the subjection of children to a firm discipline is always the begin-
ning of education. To resist them is to hold them up. To bend
them to a rule, as broad as you please, but inflexible as to what it
prohibits, to prevent their doing what ought not to be done, to
exact from them only what is necessary, but exact it firmly, is to
prepare them to govern themselves.

But, so far as the inhibition is not the child's own act, it is not
an act of the will. It does not become that till after having been
imposed often from without, and, having thereby become less pain-
ful, it is appreciated by the child itself for its results, and the will
becomes the possessor of it. This is the reason that while the
earliest discipline should be firm, it must nevertheless be broad
and liberal, and become more and more so as the reasoning fac-
ulty is developed. I call broad and at the same time firm a
discipline which, without yielding anything to caprice, or to
the unregulated and tyrannical demands of the child, purposely
avoids loading him down with prescriptions and prohibitions, and
leaves him as much elbow-room as possible in order to accustom

TRAINING FOR CHARACTER. 765

him to frank action and the free exercise of his faculties under
his own responsibility. It must not be forgotten that, while the
inhibition imposed upon him is a means, voluntary inhibition is
the end. The purpose is to initiate him into self-restraint and
self-government, and he can be prepared for it only by being ex-
ercised in it.

Preyer is not quite clear in marking the distinction between
not wishing and wishing not. We define two distinct species of
inhibition ; one voluntary, and the other really willful. The first
takes place when a child under restraint and watch abstains
against his own inclination from doing what is prohibited — for
example, when he stops crying when interrupted by a stranger,
or when in the garden he draws back from a trespass he is about
to make upon the turf at the sight of the watchman. There is in
those acts what may be called a simple non-wishing, for the thing
that counteracts the temptation is something outside of the
child's will. But when the child, free and alone, finds sponta-
neously in his own thoughts and feelings a counterpoise to his
temptations, there occurs an inhibition of a new kind, which is
not simply a non-will but a positive and meritorious will. Moral
education consists essentially in gradually substituting this kind
of inhibition for the other, the empire of reason for that of con-
straint.

It does not really begin so long as we only guard, watch, and
prevent. Innocence thus obtained has only a provisional and
preparatory value with the child, and none with adults. Some
young people have been brought up in this way, under conditions
of complete surveillance, kept in leading-strings till they were
twenty years old. This is better than nothing, in so far as the
object is to prevent their making fools of themselves ; but their
parents are mistaken if they believe they have been well trained ;
they have not been trained at all. They are like the cat that
withholds its paw from the tempting dish as long as it sees the
stick, but which is secretly eager to get its chin in.

That person alone is morally trained who can watch and con-
duct himself ; who, as Montaigne says, " has enough in his own
eyes to keep him in office." Education ought gradually to lead
children to this point, prudently risking a little, loading them
from the beginning with as few restraints as possible and loosen-
ing these little by little, making only reasonable demands and ex-
plaining the reasons for them as fast as they can be comprehended.
I do not hesitate to measure the value of an education according
to the degree in which it has sought to teach the child from the
cradle to help himself and govern himself — to make men who
shall be characters. — Translated for The Popular Science Monthly
from the Revue Scientifique.

766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

WHAT KEEPS THE BICYCLER UPRIGHT?*

By CHAELES B. WARRING, Ph. D.

THERE is something weird, almost uncanny, in the noiseless
rush of the 'cyclist, as he comes into view, passes by, and disap-
pears. Pedestrians and carriages are left behind. He yields only
to the locomotive and to birds. The apparent ease and security
of his movement excite our wonder. We have seen rope-walk-
ers, and most of us have tried to walk on the top rail of a fence,
and have a vivid recollection of the incessant tossing of arms and
legs to keep our balance, and the assistance we got from a long
stick or a stone held in our hands. But the 'cyclist gets no help.
His legs move only in the tread of the wheel, and his hands rest
quietly on the ends of the cross-bar of his machine. The rope-
walker keeps every muscle tense, and every limb in motion or
ready to move. No wonder, when a tourist on his bicycle spins
for the first time through a village here, or among the nomads
of Asia, he is followed by a gaping crowd, till his machine car-
ries him out of their sight.

We involuntarily ask, How is it possible for one supported on
so narrow a base to keep his seat so securely and, seemingly, so
without effort ?

For an answer to this question I have searched somewhat
widely, and, while I have found articles enough on or about the
bicycle, and what has been done by its riders, I have found
none that offered a reasonable theory for its explanation. This
is my apology for presenting the present paper. In it I shall
state the theories which have been offered, the reasons why they
are unsatisfactory, and then give what appears to me the true
rationale of the machine.

The only paper I found that claimed to explain the bicycle was
one by Mr. C. Vernon Boys, entitled The Bicycle and its The-
ory. It was delivered before a meeting of mechanical engineers,
and is reported at great length in Nature, vol. xxix, page 478.
Here, thought I, is something valuable and convincing. But, on
examination, I found that, out of several pages of closely printed
matter, the Theory occupied possibly a dozen lines. All the rest
was about the bicycle and what had been done on it, but not
another word about its theory. We are told that Mr. Boys ex-
hibited a top in action, and requested his audience to notice its
remarkable stability. Then he said that the stability of the bi-
cycle was due to the same principle, but made no attempt to show
any connection between them. The top revolves on its axis, and

* A paper read before the Vassar Brothers' Institute.

WHAT KEEPS THE BICYCLER UPRIGHT? 767

it stays up as you see ; the wheel of the bicycle revolves on its
axis, and therefore it stays up, was his theory and demonstration,
and the whole of it, and, so far as one can judge from the report,
he was satisfied, however it may have been with his audience.

Of all machines, none seem to be so little understood as the
top and its near relation, the gyroscope. Hence the best that can
be said is, that the lecturer availed himself of the tendency found
in most minds to " explain " an unfamiliar phenomenon by re-
ferring it to some other more familiar one, longer known, but
equally incomprehensible — as if, as in grammar, two negatives
make an affirmative, so, in physics, two unknowns make a known.

Without going into the theory of the top, or of the gyroscope,
it is easy to show experimentally that their stability and that of
the bicycle must be due to different principles. I spin on the
table before you a top with a somewhat blunt point (Fig. 1).
You notice it runs around in a circular or rather a spiral path,
and gradually rises to a perpendicular. I strike it quite a hard
blow, but do not upset it. I send it flying across the table, or off
to the floor, but still it maintains its upright position. You no-
tice that, when it is perpendicular, it stands still ; but, if it leans
ever so little, it immediately begins to swing or gyrate around a
vertical axis. I now change the top for one whose point is very
fine and well centered and sharp (Fig. 2). You see that it hardly

Fig. 1. — Blunt-pointed Top. Fig. 2. — Sharp-pointed Top.

travels at all. I now cause the point to fall into a slight pit in
the surface of the table : it ceases to travel, but continues for a
very considerable time to swing around a vertical axis, and is
remarkably stable, whatever the angle at which it leans. Stop-
ping its traveling has, as you see, no effect upon its stability ; but
now I put my pencil before the axle and stop the gyration or
swinging around. Immediately the power of staying up is gone,
and the top falls. I may vary the experiment in every possible
way : so long as the axis is inclined, the result is the same ; the
moment the gyration ceases, the top falls.

In the case of the bicycle there is no gyrating around a verti-
cal axis. Whatever else it may do, it does not do that. Yet, as

768

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

you saw, gyration is absolutely essential to the effect which Mr.
Boys thinks accounts for its stability.

We may, I think, dismiss the top from further consideration ;
but there is another instrument apparently much closer in its re-
lation to the bicycle. I mean the gyroscope, or rather that form
of it which Sir William Thomson calls a gyrostat. Its wheel is
upright like the bicycle's (see Figs. 3 and 4). The lower part of

Figs. 3 and 4.— The Gyrostat.

the ring which supports the wheel rests in a kind of trough, to the
bottom of which is attached crosswise a piece of metal (best seen
in Fig. 3) curved on the lower edge, and with two projecting wires
by which it may be drawn back and forth in the plane of the wheel.
I now set the wheel in rapid motion — much more rapid than
any bicycle-wheel can go ; I place it on a smooth, hard surface — I
have here a pane of glass — and leave it to itself. It begins at once,
as you see, to revolve around a vertical axis. If it leans little, it re-
volves slowly ; if it leans much, it revolves faster. It will not fall
to the table, though I push it, or strike a hard blow. It resists
with remarkable force. I now take it by the projecting wires
and attempt to make it move in a straight course, as a bicycle
does when it spins along the road. Instantly it falls. The rota-
tion of the wheel on its axis was not in the slightest degree inter-
fered with, but the stability vanishes the moment the rotation
around the vertical axis ceases. Invariably it falls. Yet you ob-
serve the conditions are far more favorable for the effect of gyro-
static action than in the bicycle, for the mass of the rim of our
gyrostat is many times heavier in proportion to its size, and its
speed incomparably greater. I try the experiment over and over,
the result is always the same. No amount of skillful manage-
ment will make the instrument stay up for an instant if it has to
move in a straight line. I submit that these experiments are
proof positive that the sustaining power of the bicycle does not
come from any gyroscopic action.

WHAT KEEPS THE BICYCLER UPRIGHT?

769

ZI_

i

B

Fig. 5.-

C

Diagram illustrating the Com-
position of Forces.

Others find in its going so fast the reason why the bicycle does
not fall — referring, of course, in a blind way to that principle em-
bodied by Newton in his first law : " A body in motion, if left to
itself, will continue to move in a straight line forever." A brief
examination will, I think, convince you that this, too, fails to
account for the effect which we know is somehow produced.

It is another principle in phys-
ics that two forces acting at right
angles to each other do not inter-
fere. Each produces its own effect
as fully as if the other did not act.
For example, if a certain force
sends a body (D, Fig. 5) north at
the rate of ten feet in a second, and
another force sends it east at the
same rate, at the end of one second
it will have gone ten feet north and
ten feet east, exactly as if each force D
had acted alone. Going toward A B
does not in the least hinder its go-
ing toward B C Now, in case of a bicyclist, his forward motion,
whether fast or slow, is at right angles to gravity, hence does not
in any way resist it ; and, therefore, as it is gravity that causes
him to tilt over, the forward motion will not prevent his falling.

But it may be said that the force of gravity when the 'cycle
leans, say to the right, is in fact resolved into two components,
one vertical and the other lateral, and it is the latter only that
causes the bicyclist to fall. This does not help the matter, for
both components are perpendicular to the course of the bicycle,
and hence its forward motion can in no way counteract either of
them. Unless some other force comes into play, the bicyclist must
fall toward whichever side he happens to begin to lean.

Many think they find this counteracting influence in " centrif-
ugal force." You all are familiar with the effects of this " force."
You feel them every time you turn a corner quickly, whether on
foot or in a wagon, or on horseback. The bare-back riders in the
circus lean well toward the center of the ring, to escape being
thrown outward. We see its effect when the bicyclist spins around
a corner. In such cases " centrifugal force " plays an important
part, and is the real upholding force.

But centrifugal force is impossible so long as the body moves
in the same direction — i. e., in a straight line. There must be
change of direction, and, other things being equal, this force is
greater in proportion to the abruptness of that change ; or, as
mathematicians say, the velocity being constant, it varies in-
versely as the radius of the curve in which the body moves. The

77o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

larger the radius the smaller the centrifugal force. If the radius
of curvature becomes infinite — i. e., the curve becomes a straight
line — the centrifugal force becomes infinitely small, or zero.

So long, therefore, as the bicyclist does not turn corners — keeps
in a straight course — the centrifugal force gives us no assistance
whatever in understanding why he keeps his seat so securely.
But yet it may be thought that this force, if supplemented by
skillful balancing, is sufficient. It keeps the bicycle from falling
when turning corners : will not good balancing account for the
stability when moving in a straight course ? We are all familiar
with the phenomena of balancing one's self. "We know the help
a heavy pole gives at such times ; how a person's legs and arms
move with startling rapidity in the opposite direction to that in
which he feels himself falling. There is nothing of this on the
wheel. If the stability was due to balancing, it would not be so
very difficult for a bicyclist to sit upon his machine when not in
motion., and when its wheels both point in the same direction. I
have never seen one that could do it. I suspect, however, that it
is not impossible, any more than to stand on the top round of an
unsupported ladder. But the ordinary bicyclist can not do it ;
and yet, without apparent effort, he rides securely. That his sta-
bility is not due to his balancing and to his rapid forward motion
combined, is evident when we reflect that if the handles are made
immovable, so that neither of the wheels can be turned to the
right or left, it is impossible for any ordinary rider, no matter at
what speed he may move, to keep from falling for any consider-
able time after he once begins to tilt.

Apparently the fact that some can ride " hands off " on a safety
wheel contradicts this, for, however it may be on an " ordinary/'
on a " safety " the rider can not guide it by the pedals, and as he
does not touch the handles of the steering-wheel or the wheel
itself, it would seem that his not tilting must be due to good bal-
ancing. Experiment, however, proves the contrary. Let the
steering-wheel be fixed by tying the handles, or by a clamp on
the spindle, so that it can not turn to the right or the left, and
then let the 'cyclist try to keep it erect. Balancing won't help,
except possibly to delay his fall a few moments. And worse than
that, he can't ride hands off at all if he tries to do so only by bal-
ancing. The explanation of such riding is not very difficult, but
requires some other matters to be treated first. At present all I
desire to establish is that in this kind of riding, as well as in all
others, the rider's ability to keep from falling to one side for an
indefinite time while traveling in a straight line is not due to bal-
ancing.

I think you will agree with me that the reasons thus far
assigned for the stability of the bicycle cast little or no light

WHAT KEEPS THE BICYCLER UPRIGHT? 77i

upon the subject. Gyration has nothing to do with it ; centrif-
ugal force has no application to it, except when turning corners,
or otherwise changing abruptly the direction of the movement ;
balancing is a detriment rather than an assistance ; * and rapid
motion alone accounts for nothing. Some other explanation is
needed ; this I shall now attempt to give.

Regarded mathematically as a machine for the application of
force, the bicycle is a very simple affair. The weight (Figs. 6 and
7) is applied at the saddle, A, and is so great that the center of

Fig. 6. — An "Ordinary" Bicycle, with Lines of Force.

gravity of the whole is very close to that point. A B and A 0
are the lines of force, B marking the point where the fore wheel
rests on the ground, and C where the rear one. In discussing the
forces that act on the machine we need consider only these lines,
all the other parts being merely for convenience or ornament. It
is evident that A can not of itself tilt either backward or for-
ward, since a vertical line from it falls between B and C. In

* At the close of the reading of the paper, a teacher of the art of riding the bicycle, a
man of large experience, arose, and, in the course of his remarks, said that one of the
chief difficulties he had to contend with in teaching beginners to ride, was to induce them
to give up all idea of balancing; that till this was done they could not ride well — a
striking corroboration of the theoretical conclusion arrived at by the writer of this paper.

772

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

reference to them it is in stable equilibrium, while in regard to
side motion its equilibrium is very unstable ; the least thing will
upset it.

To study the matter more conveniently, I have had a form
made which eliminates all unnecessary parts and represents only

Fig. 7. — A " Safety " Bicycle, with Lines of Fokce.

the lines of force and the weight on the saddle (Fig. 8). It con-
sists, as you see, of two long, slender pieces of pine, and looks
like a huge capital A, the cross-piece serving merely to hold the
whole more firmly together. At the apex, A, I have placed a
few pounds of lead to represent the rider's weight.

In the older form of the bicy-
cle, the wheel in front is very
much the larger. The corre-
sponding leg, A B (Fig. 8), is
much steeper and shorter than
the other. In " safety 'cycles " it
is just the reverse, the rear leg
being steeper and shorter, while
the two wheels are of nearly the
same size. As the theory of both
C B machines is the same, I shall, for

Fig. 8.— Apparatus illustrating the Way the present, speak Only of the
A Bicycle is kept Upright. ~

former.

For convenience in handling, and that it may be better seen,

I place the foot C, the rear one, on the table, and hold the other,

B, in my hand, and at the same height from the floor. Now,

notice : the weight at the apex, or saddle, begins to tilt to the

WHAT KEEPS THE BICYCLER UPRIGHT? 773

right ; I quickly move my hand to the right till it comes under
the weight. If the saddle tilts to the left, I move my hand
quickly to the left. In every case, by moving my hand more
rapidly than the weight tilts, I bring the point of support under
it. It is very easy in this way to keep the weight from falling ;
and that is the way the bicycle is kept upright.

But you will ask, How can the rider move the point of sup-
port when it is on the ground, and several feet out of his reach ?
He does it by turning the wheel to the right or left, as may be
necessary — that is, by pulling the cross-bar to the right or left,
and thus turning the forked spindle between whose arms the
steering-wheel is held and guided.

But, some one will say, How does turning the wheel bring the
point of support to the right or left — whichever the machine may
happen to be leaning ?

Let us suppose a 'cyclist mounted on his wheel and riding,
say, toward the north. He finds himself beginning to tilt toward
his right. He is now going not only north with the machine, but
east also. He turns the wheel eastward. The point of support, B
(Fig. 6), must of necessity travel in the plane of the wheel ; hence
it at once begins to go eastward, and, as it moves much faster than
the rider tilts, it quickly gets under him, and the machine is again
upright. To one standing at a distance, in front or rear, the bot-
tom of the wheel will be seen to move to the right and left, just
as I moved the foot of the skeleton frame a moment ago.

I conclude, then, that the stability of the bicycle is due to>
turning the wheel to the right or left, whichever way the leaning
is, and thus keeping the point of support under the rider, just as
a boy keeps upright on his finger a broomstick standing on its
smallest end.

It may be questioned whether the bottom point of the wheel
really travels faster than the weight at the saddle tilts over,
and, if it does not, then the explanation which I have been giv-
ing fails.

By an easy calculation, based on the well-known principle' that
the velocity of a body moving under the influence of gravitation
varies as the square root of the height from which it has fallen,
irrespective of the character of the path it has described, I find
that when the rider's seat is, e. g., sixty inches high, and the ma-
chine has inclined, say, six inches out of the perpendicular, it is at
that instant, if free to fall, tilting over at the rate of much less
than a mile an hour. But six inches is a large amount to lean —
a good 'cyclist does not lean that much — we will suppose him out
of plumb only three inches ; then his lateral movement will be at
the rate of only some twenty-two hundred feet in an hour.. If the
tilt is less, the falling rate will be less. To keep the center of

VOL. XXXVIII. — 54

774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gravity over the base, the bottom of the wheel needs only to move
to the right or left — whichever the machine is leaning — some-
what faster than these slow rates. There is no great difficulty in
doing this, for, if the bicycle is going eight miles an hour, it is
necessary to change its course only about seven degrees ; if four
miles, then only about fourteen degrees ; if two miles, then about
twenty-eight degrees. The greater the speed, the less the angle :
at sixteen miles an hour, the wheel would need to be turned less
than two degrees. From which follows the fact, well known to
'cyclists, that the slower the machine is traveling the more the
handles must be turned, and the more difficult to keep from
falling.

From the fact that the bicycle is kept erect by keeping its
point of support under it, like a pole standing upright on one's
finger, some curious and, to most persons, quite surprising results
follow. I have here three rods, respectively one foot, three feet,
and seven feet long. I hold the last, as you see, very easily ; the
second not so easily; and the first only with considerable diffi-
culty. I now put a cap of lead weighing four or five pounds on
the top of each, and then again support them as before. In every
case it is now easier to keep them from falling. Hence, in a
bicycle, the higher and the heavier the load, the less the danger
of falling ; and, as most of the weight is in the saddle, the center
of gravity of the whole is very near it, and it is the height of
that, and not the size of the wheel, that affects the lateral stabil-
ity. A rider with a load on his back, whether a bag of grain or
a man sitting on his shoulders, is by all that the more safe from
falling either to the right or left, however it may be as to headers.

Experts sometimes ride for a considerable distance with both
legs over the cross-bar. But there is nothing strange in this, for
placing their legs in that position only raises the center of grav-
ity, and hence really adds to the stability. If in some way they
can manage to turn the cross-bar, they can ride without difficulty
until the momentum is exhausted.

A much more difficult feat is to ride on one wheel. The small
wheel — the rider holding the other in the air — is most easily man-
aged. It is merely a case of supporting on a small base a long,
upright body. One keeps moving the point of support so as to
'bring it under the center of gravity. It needs only a quick eye
and a steady hand. It is much more difficult when the 'cyclist
uses only the big wheel, the other having been removed, for he is
liable to fall forward or backward, as well as to either side. To
avoid the first and second, he leans forward a little beyond his
base, and would pitch headlong, but that he drives the wheel for-
ward by means of the treadles just fast enough to prevent it.
"We all do the same thing when we walk. We lean so far forward

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 775

that we would fall, did we not keep moving our feet fast enough
to prevent it. On the single wheel most of us would fail, because
from lack of experience we would make the wheel go too fast,
and so would fall backward ; or else, not fast enough to keep from
falling on our faces. As to falling sidewise, that is prevented
exactly as when both wheels are used — the rider turns the cross-
bar to the right or left, and propels the machine in that direc-
tion. Experience, a level head, and a steady hand tell how far to
turn it.

From mere inspection of Fig. 6 we see that safety against
headers varies inversely as the height of the saddle, and directly
as the distance from the foot of the perpendicular A D to the for-
ward point of support B (Figs. 6 and 7). In other words, the
higher the saddle, the greater the danger of headers ; and the far-
ther back, the less the danger.

As to the law of lateral safety — i. e., against falling sidewise —
it is in one respect the reverse of the other, for the greater the
height of the saddle, the easier not to fall to either side, just as it
is easier to keep upright on the end of my finger a long stick than
a short one.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH.

By the DUKE OF AEGYLL.
I.

ON the boundless subject of religion it is not possible for any
man, within the limits of a magazine article, to set forth his
whole mind. If those who write such papers have cause to feel
this, those who read them have not less occasion to remember it.
Misconception is a constant danger. Beliefs which seem to be
vehemently repudiated may nevertheless retain some hold when
differently expressed. Doctrines which seem to be insisted on
with passion may yet not be held without important modifica-
tions. These reserves may not be expressed only because the
occasion for expressing them did not seem to arise. Large por-
tions of the whole subject may be left out of view. Those which
are actually dealt with may be treated, from the accidents of con-
troversy, in a narrow and angry spirit.

It is with a sincere desire to remember all these reasons for
caution that I now call attention to the article by Prof. Huxley
published in this Review for the month of July, 1890.* But, in
full remembrance of the caution, we may fairly say that this
article is an open and avowed attack upon Christianity. Nobody
has any right to complain of this. But everybody has a right to

* Ninteenth Century, July, 1890, The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science.

776 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

identify and recognize it as a fact. That article is not a mere
attack upon certain narratives and traditions of the Old Testa-
ment, on the ground that they have been incautiously admitted
as integral parts of Christian belief, while in reality they need not
and ought not to occupy any such position. On the contrary, this
contention is repudiated expressly, and with scorn. Prof. Huxley
patronizes the school which insists on the barest literalism in the
interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. He refers to Canon
Rawlinson's Bampton Lectures (1859) as asserting that " the nar-
ratives contained in the canonical Scriptures are free from any
admixture of error." * He praises the justice and candor of the
lecturer when he asserts as distinctive of Christianity among the
religions of the world, that it claims "to be historical." \ He rep-
resents him as insisting that Christianity is surely founded " upon
events which have happened exactly as they are declared to have
happened in its sacred books." \ He further ascribes to the lect-
urer the argument that the " New Testament presupposes the his-
torical exactness of the Old," and that the demonstration of the
" falsity " of the Hebrew records, especially in regard to those nar-
ratives which are assumed to be true in the New Testament, would
be fatal to " Christian theology."* Having thus nailed the colors
of Christianity to the bare poles of the very barest and narrowest
literalism, the professor jumps and leaps upon this teaching as
giving him an easy fulcrum for tearing those colors down. He is
enchanted by the reasoning of the Canon. He adopts it with effu-
sion. " My utmost ingenuity," he says, " does not enable me to
discover a flaw in the argument thus briefly summarized." Nor
does he conceal the full sweep of the destructive work which he
desires it to accomplish. Not only the whole story of Creation,
the whole story of the Fall, the whole story of the Flood, the
whole story of Abraham and of any special mission to the Hebrew
people, but even the glorious idea and hope of a Messiah — the
whole Messianic doctrine which binds the Jewish and Christian
Churches — all are relegated to the same category as the Greek
myths about Theseus or the Latin stories of the regal period of
Rome. And, as the writers of the New Testament have believed
those stories and dwelt upon them, the authority of those writers
is denounced as that of a body of men who " have not only ac-
cepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very
foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands." A

This language — with plenty more of it — is unmistakable. Its
tone is that of the whole article. It must be accepted, therefore,
as a pronounced attack upon Christianity all along the line.

I do not stop to inquire whether the doctrines of biblical inter-

* Page 7. f Ibid. + Ibid. » Ibid. J Page 8. A Ibid.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 777

pretation which he ascribes to two eminent divines of the Church
of England are or are not fair and correct summaries of their
teaching. Fortunately, on this subject we are not at the mercy
of any individual divines whether living or dead. The Christian
Church, with its long and varied history of nearly two thousand
years, has never been committed to it. The doctrine indeed of
verbal inspiration, though never defined and never authoritatively
adopted by any Christian Church, has been often widely prevalent.
But even this doctrine is exaggerated, distorted, and made ridicu-
lous by its development in the hands of Prof. Huxley. As patron-
ized by him, the law of interpretation applied to some of the most
ancient records of our race would exclude all the elements of alle-
gory and of metaphor, of imagery, of parable, and of accommo-
dated presentation. And this, too, when some of these records
purport to set before us an idea of the origin of things. The
argument is not only illogical but grotesque, that because Chris-
tianity claims to be an historical religion, therefore it follows
that any accepted narrative attempting to give us some con-
ception of the creative work, must do so in words as literal and
prosaic as an account of the execution of Charles I. * Cre-
ation, strictly speaking, is inconceivable to us. And yet creation
is a fact. The system of visible things in which we live was cer-
tainly not the author of itself. If we are capable at all of receiv-
ing any mental impression of its beginnings we can only do so
through modes of representation which are charged with allegory.
In his own special science no man has declared more clearly than
Prof. Huxley that the limits of our observation are not the limits
of our knowledge. Biology, for example, declares as its verdict,
after much evidence has been taken, that, as matters now stand,
the living is never generated by the not-living. Every form of
organic life comes from some other older form which has already
been established. But he points out that this has no adverse bear-
ing upon the deductive conclusion that life must have had its first
beginning otherwise. On the contrary, he admits that conclusion
to be certain. " If," says he, " the hypothesis of evolution is true,
living matter must have arisen from not-living matter." f I
venture to add that whether the theory of evolution be true or
false, or whether (as is more likely) it be partly true and partly
false, the certainty of this conclusion is not affected. But if that
beginning is to be rendered conceivable by us, it can not be ex-
pressed in the language of experience. We have no experience
to go upon. Of necessity, therefore, the very idea of a beginning
must be dealt with in the language of metaphor or allegory.
Accordingly, even Darwin was compelled to have recourse to the

* Page V. f Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth edition, vol. iii, Biology, p. 689.

778 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

familiar imagery of the Hebrew Scriptures when he had to ex-
press his idea of the origin of life. There were certain germs, he
assumes, into which " life was first breathed." What should we
think of the rationality of a man who interpreted Darwin to
believe that there was some big Being who originated life by
emptying his lungs into certain bits of protoplasmic jelly ? Yet
this is the law of interpretation which Prof. Huxley would im-
pose upon the magnificent symbolism of Genesis. The events
described — avowedly transcending the region of experience —
must have happened " exactly as they are declared to have hap-
pened in the sacred books." When we are told that God said,
" Let there be light," we are to interpret this sublime image as
an assertion that the Almighty did actually address this sentence
in a definite language to the brute elements of chaos. We are
to understand that the words thus attributed to the Creator were
actual words, like the words spoken by King Charles to Bishop
Juxon on the scaffold at Whitehall. If we don't believe this, we
are to believe nothing whatever coming from writers so unhis-
torical. In like manner, when we are told of the Almighty walk-
ing in an earthly garden " in the cool of the day," * and when
the narrative seems to imply that Adam saw him and hid, we
are to understand this baldly and literally as an actual midday
scene in a shady wood somewhere in western Asia. Such is the
childish argument which is to destroy Christian theology— such is
the kind of logic in which Prof. Huxley can not, for the life of him,
see any flaw. St. John may perhaps be credited with knowing,
1 at least as well as the professor, what would and what would not
be fatal to Christian theology. Yet he does not seem to have been
even conscious of the difficulty. Passages even stronger and more
definite in the Old Testament, involving hyperbole, metaphor, and
imagery, stood nothing in his way. He must have known the
famous passage in Exodus f in which Moses is represented as
having spoken with God as a man speaketh with his friend.
Yet the professor's canon of interpretation is unknown to him.
" No man hath seen God at any time " is the grand sentence of
the apostle. J But the extension of this argument to destroy all
authority as belonging to the writers in the New Testament is
perhaps a still more remarkable illustration of the reasoning
which the professor considers to be faultless. Men who accepted
such narratives as those of Genesis are not to be trusted as them-
selves historically safe. If St. Paul did really believe in those
primeval narratives we can not trust him when he tells us of
the light which burst upon him on his way to Damascus, and
which changed him from a persecutor of the faith into the great

* Genesis, iii, 8. f Exodus, xxxiii, 11. f John, i, 18.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 779

apostle of the Christian Church. And so of ourselves. If we do
not consider ourselves bound to hold that an actual serpent was
selected as the most persuasive advocate of evil — if we are dis-
posed to think that there is all the air, and all the most obvi-
ous characteristics, of allegory in such words as the " tree of the
knowledge of good and evil " — if we do not accept it as a literal
fact that the rotation of the earth was suspended to keep the
valley of Ajalon above the horizon for a longer time than was
due to the season of the year, then we are equally bound to dis-
trust the truth of the migration of Abraham, and of the sojourn
in Egypt, and of the conquest of Palestine, and of the Babylonish
captivity, and of the stream of prophecy pointing to some great
Deliverer not for the Jews only but for all peoples — and of the
life and death and teaching of our Lord. The whole argument, I
confess, appears to me to be not only illogical, but irrational.

This is a subject, however, of vast extent on which we have no
right or reason to expect any special light or guidance from Prof.
Huxley. Even if he approached it in the careful and cautious
spirit in which he has generally dealt with his own noble science
of biology, it would not follow that he could deal with it as well.
We know the confession which Darwin has made of the effect
upon his own powerful mind of exclusive devotion to one class
of ideas and to one purely physical pursuit, in rendering him
comparatively insensible to the whole class of conceptions which
are the warp and woof of the higher branches of philosophy.
Even in this article, Prof. Huxley tells us that when he tries to
follow those who walk delicately among " types " he soon " looses
his way." * This is a strange confession to make when even in
his own special science " type " is one of the most familiar of all
words, and when the suggestions connected with it — for example,
on the general development of the vertebrate skeleton — are con-
fessedly of the most profound and far-reaching interest. It is still
more strange when he himself — walking so delicately as to be
most difficult to follow — has tried his hand at the definition of a
" type." It is, he says, a " plan of modification of animal form." \
He tells us he has " a passion for clearness." Is the above defini-
tion perfectly pellucid ? All animal form is in itself a " plan."
Each modification, we now hear, is another " plan." Is this what
he means ? And if so, what does he mean by a " plan " ? Does
he mean what all other men mean by the word — some mental con-
ception with a view to the future ? Or does he mean only some
accidental pattern such as a drop of water may leave when it
splashes on a window-pane ? Then, what does he mean by a
" modification " ? Does he mean some wonderful adaptation to

* Page 20. t Comparative Anatomy, p. 7.

73o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

some special use ? And if he does, how does he account for that
adaptation arising exactly when and where it is needed ? Was it
purely accidental ? Does he worship at the shrine of the great
goddess Fortuity ? Where is his " passion for clearness " when
all these questions are evaded ? If he finds such mysteries in a
purely physical science, why should he sneer at conceptions also
" seen through a glass darkly/' in the spiritual regions of belief ?
He is certainly narrower than the higher aspects even of his own
pursuit. But, besides the cramping effect of all specialisms when
exclusive, Prof. Huxley has most clearly approached the subject
under the strongest animus. "The slings and arrows of out-
rageous " clerics at church congresses seem to goad him on. His
one desire appears to be to trample on them. If he can here and
there catch some popular divine committing himself to some argu-
ment or idea which may be ridden to the death, he hugs it with
effusion. He gives it the requisite dressings of his own verbal
evolution. Then turning round he endeavors to tie down the
whole of Christian theology to ridiculous conclusions under the
choppings of a childish logic.

But there is one thing we had a right to expect from Prof.
Huxley, and that is, that when in the course of his argument he
comes across questions of purely physical science, he should treat
them as candidly and fairly when they are supposed to bear upon
" Christian theology " as when he delivers a scientific lecture or
writes an article for an encyclopaedia. Yet this is just what he
has failed to do in the case before us. His canons of biblical in-
terpretation are not more crude and violent than his dealings with
the discoveries of geology, and still worse, if possible, his dealings
with the things which geology has not yet discovered. I proceed
to define and illustrate what I mean.

Prof. Huxley selects the story of the Deluge as his particular
battle-horse in the fight. He is quite right, and well within his
right, in doing so. That story is special in the fact that it pur-
ports to give an account of an event within the limits of human
experience, and that in doing so it narrates occurrences which
may to some extent be brought within the cognizance of discov-
ery in more than one branch of physical science. Prof. Huxley
has a very definite theory as to the origin of the story. He thinks
it probably arose out of some terrible inundation of the two great
rivers of Mesopotamia.* This is quite an intelligible hypothesis,
since we know from the facts of our own day, in the case of the
Yellow River in China, what an enormous destruction of human
life may be caused by river floods bursting in upon low, flat plains
thickly peopled. But this hypothesis fails to give any adequate

* Pages 14, 15.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 781

explanation of the universality — or nearly so — of the tradition of
a great flood among all branches of the human race. The late
eminent French scholar Lenormant marshaled and collated the
evidence on this subject not long ago, and came to the conclusion
that a tradition so wide-spread, if not actually universal, must
have arisen from the memory of some great catastrophe which
did actually take place, and had left an indelible impression on
the progenitors of every race. Prof. Huxley takes no notice
whatever of this argument, although the fact on which it rests is
fairly stated in a careful and temperate article by Dr. A. Geikie,
upon the Deluge, to which the professor himself refers.* No hy-
pothesis which does not take notice of this fact can rest on ade-
quate scientific reasoning.

The question then naturally arises whether it is or is not pos-
sible that there may have been, since the birth of man, some great
catastrophe far more wide-spread than the inundations of any
river; and whether the narrative in Genesis of the Flood may
not be the account of this catastrophe — told in its religious aspect,
just as the previous narrative of Creation is an account of that
(to us) inconceivable operation — told in the same connection — that
is to say, in its connection with the final causes of the Divine gov-
ernment and action.

Now, in dealing with this question scientifically there are three
things which must be done : first, there must be a careful view
given of the purely physical phenomena which are really of neces-
sity involved in the form of the narrative in Genesis as it has
come down to us ; secondly, there must be another view given, as
careful and complete, of any conclusions relative to the subject
which have been really established by geology or by any other
branch of the physical sciences; and, thirdly, there must be a
frank and free confession of the ignorances of science — of the
problems which it sees but which hitherto it has failed to solve,
and of the unexhausted possibilities of physical causation which
lie wholly unknown behind them. Prof. Huxley's article does not
comply with any one of these conditions. He does not state fairly,
but on the contrary most unfairly, what the narrative in Genesis
does of necessity involve. He does not set forth fairly what are
the related facts which geology may claim to have established ;
while — above all — with regard to the ignorances of science, he
seems wholly unconscious even of that sober estimate of his fa-
vorite agnosticism which true science impresses on us all.

He starts with songs of triumph over the very general aban-
donment of the idea that the Deluge could have been universal,
complete, and simultaneous over the whole globe. Pie might as

* Kitto's Encycl. of Bibl. Lit. Deluge.

782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

well be jubilant over the cognate fact that the six creative days in
Genesis are now never thought or spoken of as compelling us to
believe that the whole creative work which has been done on our
planet since it was in a state of chaos, was a work accomplished
within six literal days of twenty-four hours each. Or he might
as well shout over the still older movement of thought which
divorced the conceptions of the Christian world from the literal
language of the geocentric astronomy. It is quite a mercy that
Prof. Huxley has not trotted out our old friend Galileo again, and
has taken refuge in such later and lesser lights as the late Canon
William Harcourt, and the still living Canon Eawlinson. But
even on this question of the possible universality of a deluge,
Prof. Huxley takes no notice of certain features in the Hebrew
narrative which manifest a most curious avoidance of the real
scientific objection to a complete and universal deluge, in spite of
some language which appears to assert it. It is not true, so far
as I know, that any science has proved a universal deluge to be a
physical impossibility. In particular, it is not true that there is
any deficiency in our existing oceans of a quantity of water ad-
equate— more than adequate— to cover the whole earth. On the
contrary, it is a fact that the actual distribution of sea and of dry
land on our planet is such that even a comparatively slight eleva-
tion of the floor of our oceans, together with some corresponding
depression of the land, would spill over upon our continents
enough water to submerge them completely, and to submerge
them all. My distinguished friend Dr. John Murray (of the
Challenger Expedition) has calculated that there is enough water
in our existing seas to cover the whole globe with water more
than two miles deep. This is the latest calculation of scientific
inquiry, and it is curious. The fundamental objection to a com-
plete and simultaneous deluge at so late a period of the earth's
history is not physical but biological. It lies in its bearing upon
the history and development of organic life. Even this objection
applies only to the completeness, and not to the universality, of a
deluge. That is to say, biological facts may be perfectly com-
patible with the partial and contemporaneous submergence of
every continent on the globe, but not with any such submergence
having ever been total or complete. As regards the lower animals,
there must have been, so far as we can reason, other refuges than
an ark. There must have been many areas left uncovered. But
this necessity is demanded quite as much by the narrative in Gen-
esis as by the scientific evidence of the distribution of life. The
repeopling of the deluged earth by ordinary generation requires
this absolutely. The universal destruction of all terrestrial life
would have necessitated a complete re-creation of all its forms.
And yet this is exactly the consequence which the narrative in

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 783

Genesis definitely excludes. The writer ascribes the subsequent
repeopling of the earth, both as regards the lower animals and
men, not to any re-creative work, but to ordinary generation.
The divine employment of natural means is the dominant idea of
the whole narrative. But seeing that the dimensions of the ark
represent a vessel considerably smaller than the Great Eastern,
it is clear that without what are called miracles on the most stu-
pendous scale — which the writer does not seem at all to contem-
plate— the whole creatures of all the continents of the globe could
not have been represented in it, even if they could have been
brought together and congregated in one spot in western Asia.
The writer or writers of the narrative in Genesis, or those still
older recipients of tradition in whose hands that narrative grew
into its present form and through whom it was transmitted, had
presumably no more knowledge of the very existence of the New
World, or indeed of the extent of the Old World, and of the quan-
tity of animal life which swarms upon both, than they had of the
nature of the sun or of the orbit of the earth. What they con-
ceived or thought upon this subject has no moral or religious sig-
nificance. Whether the American mastodon and megatherium,
and the European mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, and all
the other huge Pleistocene mammalia, were saved at all, even
in single couples — whether all the lesser mammalia which have
survived could or could not be saved from drowning by the
refuge afforded in a single vessel — these are questions which
do not seem to have been even thought of. Accordingly, the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews does not even take the
smallest notice of such questions, or, at all events, brushing
them aside, fixes on the central conception of the whole narrative,
the effect of the Deluge upon man, and the personal relations
between one faithful patriarch and the Almighty Disposer of
all events. He tells us that this one man "by faith, being
warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, pre-
pared an ark to the saving of his house." * Here we have the
whole essence and purport of the narrative in the Old Testament
condensed, and reproduced by a Christian disciple who, whatever
his name, is certainly, humanly speaking, one of the most power-
ful among the writers of the New. It matters nothing to this
view of it, whether the Deluge was or was not conceived to be
literally universal, complete, and simultaneous. It matters noth-
ing what may or may not have happened at the same time to the
kangaroos of Australia, to the moas of New Zealand, to the giraffes
and countless antelopes of central Africa, or to the llama and
tapir world of the South American continent. If there is any

* Hebrews, xi, 7.

784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

good scientific reasoning, as I think there is, which seems to prove
that no deluge can have been at once complete, universal, and
simultaneous, over the whole globe, then there is no more reason
to believe it than there is to believe in the literal interpretation of
the passages involving the rotation of the sun round the earth, or
the still more striking passages which we have seen so summarily
dealt with by St. John.

Leaving, therefore, Prof. Huxley to his jubilations over the
general abandonment of a deluge at once complete, universal, and
simultaneous, let us see how he proceeds to deal with the alterna-
tive of a deluge which may have been enormously wider than the
Mesopotamian Valley, and yet may have been partial only — as
regards the whole area of the globe.

The device of the professor is to assume that belief in any such
deluge must of necessity involve the notion that while the exist-
ing levels of the land were fixed or unmoved, the waters were
heaped up over some portion of it, without any containing banks
or walls to keep or hold them in their new position. Over this
ridiculous idea he runs riot and enjoys quite a happy time of it.
He shows triumphantly how it contradicts the fundamental laws
of hydrostatics, how impossible it is to conceive any agency by
which such a heaping up of loose waters could have been effected,
and how tremendous must have been the outrush when any (in-
conceivable) restraints were removed. Now I am not concerned '
to inquire whether this conception as to the cause of a partial
deluge has or has not been ever formulated or distinctly pictured
by any human being. Considering the absolute and wide-spread
ignorance of all the physical sciences which prevailed in the
world for centuries, it is quite possible that something like this
may have been one of the popular ideas concerning the Deluge.
It is perfectly natural that it should have been so. That in this
world of ours the solid earth is the stable, while water is pre-emi-
nently the unstable element, is the universal prepossession of
mankind. It is not overcome even in countries where the land is
often trembling under earthquakes or subject to the ravages of
volcanic action. Over by far the largest part of the habitable
globe, where men have not even these suggestive experiences to
consider, the preconception is insuperable that the land is compar-
atively steady and that the sea is the most liable to change. That
this preconception should have governed the reasonings of pre-
scientific ages and of ignorant men of the present day is not aston-
ishing ; but it is most astonishing indeed to see it patronized by
Prof. Huxley. The very first lesson of all geological science is to
teach us and to make us familiar with the idea that in all relative
changes between the areas of sea and land the element of con-
stancy is in the liquid water and the element of mutability is in

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 785

the solid earth. The sea is bound by the most rigorous laws to
keep its general level. The dry land is under no similar bondage
to keep either its general or its local elevation. On the contrary,
the same great force which keeps water with its peculiar proper-
ties in a fixed relation to its supports is the very force which
ceaselessly tends to make those supports yielding and unsteady.
It is true, indeed, that the ocean leans against the land with an
attracted bulge. This bulge is not visible to the eye, nor can it,
perhaps, be measured by any mechanical instrument; but the
mind of man has recognized it as a necessary consequence of the
law of gravitation. All land-masses above the water must at-
tract more or less the sea which is beneath them. Independently
of this, from ordinary hydrostatic causes, the ocean must always
be lipping over along its shores — ever ready, as it were, to take
instant advantage of the smallest movement of depression. Del-
uges, therefore, by submergence are ever on the cards. They are
the easiest and most natural operations in the world. Of course,
Prof. Huxley knows all this, and, of course, he does not commit
himself to any other doctrine ; but he does argue against a partial
deluge as if it involved of necessity the vulgar error of the sea
being raised up and heaped over any area which may have been
submerged. This is not ingenuous. What is the value of a sci-
entific argument against any supposed occurrence which rests
entirely on a popular delusion as to the physical causes by which
that occurrence may have been brought about, while the contro-
versialist knows all the time that the very same occurrence might
very easily have been brought about by other causes perfectly
natural and perfectly easy to conceive ? Yet this is the way in
which Prof. Huxley prances on his selected battle-horse of the
Deluge. He elaborates picture after picture of the physical con-
sequences involved in a partial deluge effected by a heaping up of
unsupported waters over a fixed and steady land, and then he
stamps upon the nonsense which he has himself adopted — in so
far at least as it is useful to him, and has intensified where it
could be made to be so.

This perverse dwelling upon an absurd physical conception,
as a means of raising prejudice, is all the more gratuitous and
irrelevant since, wherever else it came from, it certainly did not
come from any description contained in the Hebrew narrative. On
the contrary, one of the most salient and even mysterious char-
acteristics of that narrative is that it is absolutely inconsistent
with the idea of sudden, violent, and torrential action. Prof.
Huxley himself, in the midst of his strained denunciation of what
must have been involved in any partial deluge, stumbles on the
fact that the Hebrew narrative assumes a rate of movement so
slow and gradual that " if it took place in the sea, would be over-

786 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

looked by ordinary people on the shore."* I say he stumbles
upon it, because he mentions it only in so far as it comes handy
for the purpose of showing the inconsistencies of the popular no-
tions of heaped-up waters upon a steady land. But he does not
deal with it or consider it in its true connection — namely, as show-
ing that this popular notion finds no support in the Hebrew nar-
rative. Dr. Geikie's early paper on the Deluge, written not lately
but some thirty years ago, stands, as regards this, in creditable
contrast with the heedless representations of Prof. Huxley. Dr.
Geikie did, indeed, fall apparently into the same strange error of
holding that every partial deluge must of necessity have involved
a universal one, an argument which rests wholly on the notion
that any such deluge must have been caused by a heaping up of
water over a stationary land. But Dr. Geikie, with characteristic
sagacity, emphasizes and dwells upon the fact that the Hebrew
narrative does not suppose any violent or convulsive action, and
that in this respect the popular imagination of it has been quite
unjustified.f But even Dr. Geikie's paper, fair and candid as it
intended to be, does not point out the unquestionable conclusions,
that the whole idea of the narrative in Genesis assumes a deluge
caused by a slow and gradual subsidence of the land, and not
caused by any capture of it by some sudden assault and battery
of the sea. This conclusion does not depend on the true meaning
of archaic and obscure expression, such as the " breaking up of
the fountains of the great deep," which are almost incapable of
an exact physical interpretation. It depends on the structure
of the whole narrative, and on the incidents which it includes.
Its importance does not lie in any question touching the sources
of that narrative, or the conceptions entertained by those who
have handed it down. Its importance depends on the sugges-
tion which arises out of it, whether intended or not, that the physi-
cal impossibility of a partial deluge is an argument founded on
the most ignorant of all preconceptions, and is demonstrably the
grossest of all delusions. That there can not have been partial
subsidences of the crust of the earth — even on an enormous scale
— would indeed be an ignorant proposition, contradicted alike by
theory and observation.

But here we come to another branch of the subject, on which,
if anywhere, we had a right to expect from Prof. Huxley some-
thing better than the most loose and yet the most dogmatic decla-
mation. This branch is that which deals with the actual discov-
eries of modern science, so far as they bear upon the question.
Geology is a science which has made such rapid and enormous
progress during a period spanned by the extreme measure of a

* Page 15. f Kitto's Encylopaedia of Biblical Literature, Deluge, p. 243.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 787

single human life, that we are all apt to be a little drunk with
our own success. And yet that progress has been marked by inci-
dents which should make us sober. The field, though a small
one, on which its victories have been achieved, is strewn with the
bodies of the slain. Dead theories and abandoned speculations
lie thick upon the ground, while some of the most mischievous
preconceptions still encumber the progress of inquiry. One of the
first great general conceptions which lifted the speculations of mere
cosmogony to the dignity of a science, was the Huttonian theory.*
One part of it was securely true. Another part of it was pro-
foundly false. It was true as regards the continuity of causes. It
was also as regards the uniformity of their effects. It was true
that the rocks have been built up by the interaction of the forces
of elevation, and the forces of degradation and depression. It
was true that the causes which heaved the hills, have been ever
met and checked by causes which wore them down again. But it
was not true that the operation of higher laws is never indicated,
or that all we can ascertain is limited to a perpetual seesaw of
monotonous repetition. As usual, there were many minds which
valued the Huttonian theory not for its truths, but mainly for its
deficiencies and errors. The school of thought that delights to
shut out those fountains of power from which all thought has
come, were enchanted with a conception which reduced creation
to the dull rounds of mechanical necessity. It was enthusiastic
over the famous formula that geology saw " no trace of a begin-
ning, no symptom of an end." In this form it may be called the
great hurdy-gurdy theory. Then came the discovery of a clew
by which an order of succession could be established in time, and,
with time, in the perpetual introduction of new forms of life. Of
course the mechanists set to work again, and they are at work
still. Lyell supplied them with the only philosophical basis on
which they can stand at all, and preached the doctrines of uni-
formity with immense knowledge and with infinite skill. As in
the previous case of the theory of Hutton and of Play fair, much
of what he taught was true, while the errors and exaggerations of
his teachings are now being gradually but surely left behind.
" The bit-by-bit theory of our friend Lyell will never account for
all our facts," was the observation made to me one day by Lyell's
compatriot, friend, and equal, Sir Roderick Murchison. On this
subject happily there is no need of controversy with Prof. Huxley.
He has himself taken a creditable part in checking extreme opin-
ions and in showing that the doctrine of uniformity, in the only
sense in which it can be rationally held, is quite consistent with
any amount of catastrophe and convulsion. In fact, the recur-

* Theory of the Earth, by James Hutton, M. D., 1795.

788 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rence of catastrophe and convulsion may be part and parcel of
uniformity itself ; and so in like manner, when the speculations of
Darwin have furnished the mechanists with renewed passion for
a new doll, Prof. Huxley has hoisted more than once a caution
signal. He has uttered a warning voice against converting a sci-
entific hypothesis into a dogmatic creed.

It was high time. The passionate enthusiasm with which an
obscure and confused verbal metaphor has been accepted as solv-
ing all the mysteries involved in the origin of new forms of or-
ganic life, will one day be seen to have been — what it is — only
another great warning example of the impediments which beset
the progress of knowledge. That the origin of species may be
ascribed to some thing called " Nature " selecting things which did
not as yet exist, and could not therefore have been presented for
selection, is among those mysteries of nonsense which are not un-
common in the history of the human mind. But even this delu-
sion, prevalent as it has been, is breaking down, and assaults upon
it, all too timid though they be, are nevertheless increasing day
by day. I have therefore much sympathy with those who on the
whole are reasonably proud of geology as regards its past, and
are reasonably hopeful of it as regards its future. But its prog-
ress, and even our appreciation of its present teaching, is abso-
lutely dependent on two conditions : first, that we bear constantly
in mind the wide seas of ignorance which surround the little isl-
ands of our knowledge ; and, secondly, that we rightly estimate
the full sweep and significance of the facts and laws which we
can clearly see. It would be difficult to say whether the science
has suffered most from f orgetfulness of the things that we do not
know, or from failure to appreciate or exhaust the consequences
flowing from the things we do know. The vision of past worlds
which geology presents may be compared to the view of some
land seen at a distance upon the ocean, and upon which heavy
banks of cloud are resting. Above, mountains and peaks are seen
here and there, with outlines cut clear against the sky. Below,
capes and headlands and promontories are also seen, cut as clearly
against the sea. The middle slopes are only visible at intervals,
and some great plains just roughen the verge of the horizon. But
all details are lost. We do not even know whether we are looking
at one continuous land or at a group of islands. Hills which seem
united, or separated only by some narrow valley, may be really
far apart, and broad channels of the deepest water may lie be-
tween them. So it is with the vast landscapes of the past in the
revelations of geology. The general outlines of geological causa-
tion are clear enough ; and so in broad outline, too, is the general
succession of organic life. But both the exact history of the rocks,
and the exact history of the creatures which they entomb, are

PROFESS OB HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 789

beset with, mystery. We talk glibly of aqueous deposit as the
physical origin of stratification; but we know little indeed of the
physical conditions under which this agency worked in early times.
The scientific naturalists of the Challenger Expedition report
as the result of their investigations that nowhere in the existing
world of waters have they found going on anywhere such deposits
as are necessary to account for the vast massive accumulations of
the Palaeozoic sandstones.

Before such, mountains as those of the Cambrian formation on
the northwest coast of Scotland — cut out of the thickness of ap-
parently one continuous deposit — full of the ripple-marks of the
sea, and yet destitute of life — the theoretical uniformitarian may
well stand abashed. Similar difficulties are crowded into the con-
ditions under which our great storages of carbon were provided
for by repeated elevations and depressions of the land, each eleva-
tion giving occasion for the growth of a dense and rich vegeta-
tion ; and each depression potting it up and preserving it for
future use. Similar difficulties beset the equally massive lime-
stone formations of the Secondary rocks. But even these diffi-
culties are less serious and less profound than those which beset
the progress of organic life. Only, in this case there are some
great outlines which are clear and definite. We can see that or-
ganic life has advanced from less to more — from low to higher
levels — from the generalized to the specialized, and from various
functions performed roughly by some one rude and simple mech-
anism, to the same functions separated, elevated, and committed
to the care of selected and adapted organs. We can see how there
is some strange but profound analogy between this magnificent
line of march and that along which every living creature goes in
its individual growth. Just as the science of embryology has in
in some measure revealed to us how — that is, in what order — " the
bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child," so in the
embryology of this planet, as revealed to us in the rocks, we can
see the steps of a process which is not only analogous but homolo-
gous. That is to say, the two pathways are not only vaguely like
each, other according to some dim resemblance, but are identical
as corresponding parts in one plan, and of one intellectual method.
We can see that the past ages were full of prophetic germs. We
can see the rise, one after another, of structures which were in-
cipient, useless, or comparatively useless for a time, but destined
in the future for some splendid service. Our physiologists, and
anatomists, and morphologists are wholly unable to resist this
evidence when it is their business to describe the facts. The
structure of their own mind compels them to admit it, even when
they struggle hard to shut their eyes against it.

Few men have used language more expressive of conceptions

TOL. XXXVIII. — 55

79Q THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which agnosticism repudiates than Prof. Huxley himself in his
purely scientific writings. In his descriptions of the growth of
living things, from the ovum to the finished creature, we seem to
be listening to a literal reading and exposition of some page out
of that book in which all " our members were written when as
yet there were none of them." It is surely remarkable that Na-
ture should be so full of the spirit and of the characteristic ideas
of Hebrew and of Christian theology. But so it is. In Prof.
Huxley's instructive work on the Elements of Comparative Anat-
omy he is rich in the use of language descriptive of the prepara-
tions for that which is to be. Every change that arises in the
mysterious egg-substance is explained, as it can only be explained,
by its relations with the future. Does a movement begin in the
formless mass, establishing a long cleft or groove ? It indicates
the position " of the future longitudinal axis of the body." Do
the lateral boundaries of this groove at one end of it " grow up
into plates " ? It is that this end is the end which " will become "
the interior region of the body, and these plates are the " dorsal
laminae." Do these dorsal laininse at length unite ? It is that they
may " inclose the future cerebro-spinal cavity." Does another por-
tion of the mass grow downward instead of up ? It is that it may
" form the vertical laminae," with a function in the future not less
essential.* One thing can only be understood when it is conceived
as " laying the foundations " of another, f A second thing can
only be understood as " pre-shadowing " the form and relations J
of a third, and so on throughout. Nor does Prof. Huxley confine
this great principle of interpretation to the development of the
individual foetus. This governing idea of referring all organic
growth to the work of preparation and prevision, he extends to
the whole history of life since it first began. He quotes with
approbation, and adopts, the grand generalization of John Hunter,
that organization is not the cause of life, but life is the cause of
organization. Immense consequences are involved in this con-
ception. Organisms are the habitations and the homes of life,
but life must build them before it can settle in them and take pos-
session. An organ is a structure for the discharge of function,
but it must be shaped and made before the function can be dis-
charged. This luminous idea sends its searching light through
and through the stupidities which confound between things made
for use and things that are said to be made by use. Use as an
intellectual aim must precede use as a physical cause. And so
the prophetic interpretation of foetal development becomes the
only possible interpretation of all organic growth so far as it is
known to us. Accordingly, Prof. Huxley interprets the whole his-

* Pages 65, 66. f PaSe 13?- t Page 142-

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON TEE WAR-PATH. 79i

tory of the vertebrate skeleton, and especially of the vertebrate
shall, as the development of a "plan." This is the word he has
selected, and which he uses over and over again. A plan — we
must repeat — is not a mere pattern, which may arise by accident ;
it is a construction of which all the leading component elements
are parts of one general conception having reference to a future.
Such a plan, he tells us, canjDe traced and identified in all skulls,
from the skull of a pike to the cranium of a man. The immense
differences which mask this unity of plan are due to successive
adaptive modifications, with which, in all their wide extent, the
original plan was destined from the very first to work in har-
mony.

These are grand conceptions. They are scientific conceptions
in the highest sense of that word, because they bring phenomena
into harmonious relations with the highest faculties of the human
mind. They are the conceptions which confer all its dignity and
interest on geology, and on the affiliated sciences of paleontology
and comparative anatomy. Although in one sense highly ideal,
and in the best sense metaphysical, they are yet strictly literal,
and absolutely true to fact. Hence Prof. Huxley most truly as-
serts that the doctrine of " all bony skulls being organized upon a
common plan " is a simple generalization of the observed facts of
cranial structure.* It is curious that many of those who use these
conceptions for the purposes of description immediately turn
round and repudiate them for the purposes of philosophy. But
the language which embodies them can only be useful for the
purposes of explanation by reason of the similitudes which they
involve between our own mental operations and those which are
obvious in nature. Yet these very similitudes and intellectual
homologies are most distasteful to the agnostic school ; and very
often, even in the mere work of description, every device is re-
sorted to to keep them out of sight. Thus some movements of
the nervous and muscular apparatus in animals which involve
the most complicated adjustments are constantly spoken of as
mere " reflex action " — as if they could be compared with the mere
reflection — or bending back — of light from water, or of sound
from a wall. So again " differentiation " is perpetually used to
describe the processes of preparation by which the building up of
special organs is accomplished — just as if these wonderful pro-
cesses could be described by a word which is equally applicable
to the processes of corruption and decay. There is no disloyalty
to truth so insidious as that which leads us to sin in this way
against our own intellectual integrity. What our mind sees, we
must confess to — at our peril. It may have been a brave thing in

* Comparative Anatomy, p. 278.

792 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Nelson to turn his blind eye to the recalling signal of his admiral.
But it is not a brave thing — quite the contrary — in any man to
turn a blind eye to the, instinctive perceptions of his own intelli-
gence.

Nevertheless, it is possible to be true and faithful to the auto-
matic workings of mind within us when it recognizes and iden-
tifies the methods of its own vaster image in the external world,
and yet to be not less true and faithful to our consciousness of
ignorance. The great thing to do is to put our agnosticism not in
the wrong but in the right place. We may well rejoice in the
clear and grand vision we have obtained through science of or-
ganic life having been developed through unnumbered ages on
lines which do in themselves constitute a " plan." We may re-
joice with the truest intellectual delight in our perception of the
relation which this plan bore from the beginning to the future in
creation. We may admire without ceasing the combination in
this plan between an obvious fundamental unity and a not less
obvious fundamental subordination to endless change — wherever
new needs had to be met and new functions had to be discharged.
All this is science and science of the highest quality; but the
sense of it is compatible with a constant remembrance of the
enormous gaps in our knowledge which remain unfilled. That
which always we are most curious to know remains always also
unexplained. Geology has told us of a succession in the forms of
life ; but it has as yet told us nothing as to the methods by which
this succession was brought about. There are, indeed, so-called
" links" ; but the links are never within each other's touch. The
" imperfection of the record " is blamed for this ; but there are
portions of the record which seem continuous and complete — por-
tions of time which were long enough to see the introduction of
new species — and yet the mystery remains unsolved. In the Lias,
for example, and in some other formations, we have beds of great
thickness following each other in orderly and undisturbed suc-
cession. New shells appear in turn, and yet we never see how or
whence they came. My friend Mr. Robert Etheridge, F. R. S.,
F. G. S.,* informs me that there is one bed no thicker than an or-
dinary mantel-piece in which a peculiar ammonite appears and
never appears again. So it is throughout the record wherever it
is accessible to us. New forms come like apparitions, and like
apparitions they also go. We do not know where such new forms
have arisen nor how. We do know that the whole series must
have begun somewhere and at some time, in some initial opera-
tion which was not that of ordinary generation. We do not
know that this initial operation has never been repeated, or,

* Assistant Keeper Geological Department British Museum (Natural History).

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE WAR-PATH. 793

if it has been repeated, how often or under what special con-
ditions.

The abstract dicta — the vague verbal propositions — on the
strength of which the possibility of this repetition has been de-
nied, are splendid specimens of those cobwebs of the brain which
used to entangle thought in the meshes of the scholastic philoso-
phy. The " law of parsimony " is the ambitious phrase under
which theorists have hid the stupid notion that what Nature does
once she never repeats again, or that results which she has ob-
tained by one method at some one time must never be compassed
by the same method again. Hear how magniloquently the great
agnostic professor sets forth this marvelous dogma : " If all living
beings have been evolved from pre-existing forms of life, it is
enough that a single particle of living protoplasm should have
once appeared upon the globe as the result of no matter what
agency. In the eyes of a consistent evolutionist any further inde-
pendent formation of protoplasm would be sheer waste." * This
is very grand. The limitation of the possibilities of creation by
the vision of a " consistent evolutionist " is delicious. It reminds
one of the American joke that the planets revolve round the sun,
" always subject to the Constitootion of the United States." But,
unfortunately for the dogma, it renounces the testimony of facts,
while sounder reasonings upon them are dead against it. Nature
is economical, but she is not miserly. The prodigality of Nature
is more conspicuous than her parsimony. The habitual expendi-
ture and repetition of all her processes is at least more clear to us
than her refusals to repeat them. Her fondness for identity of
principle in all her various operations is more pervading than her
casting aside of any method merely because it has been used al-
ready. That bits of living protoplasm, with inconceivably com-
plex potentialities within them, should have been called into being
once, and that nothing similar should ever have been done again,
may possibly be true ; but it is not according to analogy and we
can not accept it on the authority of Prof. Huxley. Still less can
so weighty a conclusion be hung securely on a gossamer structure
of abstract and empty words. — Nineteenth Century.

Photographs of the annular nebula in Lyra, taken at Algiers, and magnified
sixty-four times, give the largest images that have ever been -obtained of that ob-
ject, and make it possible to study the distribution of its light with a precision
that has not been heretofore approached. Two very clear maxima of light are
observable on opposite sides of the ring of unequal brilliancy. The space within
the ring, which is dark to ordinary vision, is found not to be wholly destitute of
photographic power. Chemical emanations radiate from it, the existence of which
was not suspected before.

* Encyclopedia Britannica, ninth edition, Biology, p. 689.

794 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SOCIAL CHANGES IN CALIFORNIA.

Br CHABLES HOWAED SHINN.

WHEN the Central Pacific Railroad crossed the high Sierras,
and the Crockers, Stanfords, and Huntingtons, till then
obscure Sacramento merchants, gained the first of their long
series of industrial and political victories, a country blacksmith,
the late Henry Vrooman, afterward State Senator and one of the
greatest party leaders ever known on the Pacific coast, said to
me : " That railroad changes forever all the conditions of human
existence in California. It will never again be as easy to live
here/'

A thousand times since, events have shown that the gold-
miners' El Dorado of 1849, which had become as different from
the rest of the United States as South Carolina is from Massachu-
setts, was readjusting itself to new conditions imposed by the iron
links that bound it to the Atlantic slope and the valley of the
Mississippi. At first the change was slow and almost unnoticed.
Until the close of the war, prices, rates of wages, and the general
conditions of life in California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada
remained practically the same as before. Arizona was then but
a frontier outpost, and men like Mowry were holding mines with
rifle and revolver against the unconquered Apaches. The whole
Pacific coast, from the borders of Mexico to Puget Sound, was
still forming its own social customs and creating, as did the
South, its own literature. The decade of railroad-building was
also the decade of the foundation of State universities, magazines,
art-schools, and libraries, and, to a remarkable degree, the decade
of the beginnings of many private fortunes in mines, commerce,
and real estate.

Early conditions of life in California were unusual in the wide
range of opportunities offered to men of strong tenacity of pur-
pose. Nearly every one could make money, and a great deal of
it, in the decade between 1849 and 1859, but the temptations to
spend were enormous. Illustrations of this are usually drawn
from the mines, but some of the most characteristic stories come
from other sources. In 1853 there were half a dozen men who
shot wild fowl and other game in Contra Costa for the San Fran-
cisco markets. They could earn fifteen or twenty dollars apiece
every day for nine months of the year. One of them saved his
money and bought land for a dollar and a quarter an acre that is
now covered with buildings ; but the rest are forgotten charac-
ters, except for a few sentences in the local chronicles respecting
their notable bags of game.

SOCIAL CHANGES IN CALIFORNIA. 795

Numberless were the contrasts between California life at that
period and life anywhere else in the country. Ordinary economic
conditions were for a time suspended. Gold was the chief crop
of the State, and gold was gold everywhere. The merchants who
wanted to make a " corner " in any product need only " corral "
all there was of that commodity in California to be safe for days
or weeks. Steamers went twice a month to Panama, and the
pony express crossed the continent ; but we had no telegraph and
no railroad, and immigration, after the close of the great gold-
rush, was comparatively small and steady. In the midst of this
isolation a community developed in which every man of any
strength or purpose soon knew and was known to every other
man of ability. Thus, in the old mining towns, like Placerville,
Grass Valley, Oroville, Shasta, and early valley towns such as
Stockton, Marysville, and Sacramento, and coast cities such as San
Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Eureka, and in the hun-
dreds of country neighborhoods, where ex-miners became owners
of herds and growers of wheat, isolation produced strong indi-
vidualism.

The Calif ornian not only gave up his Eastern newspapers, but
his Eastern weeklies and monthlies. Cities of the same popula-
tion as the San Francisco of 1850-'60 seldom have half so long a
list of publications. Many of these were illustrated by the draw-
ings of artists like Keith and Nahl. Men drew and painted,
etched and engraved, wrote and spoke, for the busy, energetic
people of the lands west of the Sierra Nevada. No other audi-
ence was possible ; no broader field was desired. As the Virgin-
ians and the North Carolinians, climbing the Blue Ridge and
settling on the lands that slope to the Mississippi and the Ohio,
became Kentuckians and Tennesseans in a single generation, so
the pioneer men and women from every State of the Union that
settled on the Pacific coast became Oregonians and Californians,
and founded two as distinct commonwealths as there are in
America.

The literary field to which I have alluded is fruitful in illus-
tration. California, before the walls were fairly broken down,
had half a dozen weeklies, none of which now remain. They
were circulated in every mining camp, some printing ten or twelve
thousand copies, and among their writers were Bret Harte, Mark
Twain, Noah Brooks, George Frederic Parsons, Ina D. Coolbrith,
and such a group of literary men and women as no American
city outside of Boston and New York could gather together at
that period. A monthly magazine was established, which in a
few years gained a circulation of eight thousand copies, and made
the reputations of a host of writers. As the sharp pressure of
outside competition began to be felt, all or nearly all the literary

796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

journals of California rapidly deteriorated in quality, as they lost
home support, and they either suspended or hecame mere ad-
vertising publications. Conditions of literary life in California
changed during the decade that witnessed the driving of the last
spike of the first railroad across the continent. Most of the writ-
ers who had earned reputations went elsewhere, and those who
stayed became more and more conscious of the fact that they also
should have gone. It is not too much to say that along in the
early seventies, Californians, always a reading people, became
thoroughly aware of the existence of the publications of the rest
of the United States. After the crash that followed, when every
local journal felt for the first time the competition that a daily
mail implies, a few single-hearted men and women revived the
magazine, and an entirely different line of weekly publications
was established. The old journals had no models, and practically
recognized nothing ouside of " the coast " ; the new journals, far
less original, and developing as yet no writers of national reputa-
tion, have become better established financially, and depend con-
siderably upon a circulation in other parts of the country. The
chief characteristic of most of them, however, is an exaggerated
dread of being considered " provincial," and one can not gratify
them more than by praising the " Parisian style " of their local
epigrams and illustrations.

The first literature of California was purely American in its
best features, and accurately reflected the frank egotism and splen-
did energy of the young commonwealth, that had as yet felt little
or none of the life-struggle in which the rest of the world was
engaged. But when the stress came, and the land of ease and
plenty, high wages, large profits, and abundant comfort knew
hard times, the only book of the era was Progress and Poverty.
Luck of Roaring Camps, Big Jack Smalls, and similarly pictur-
esque studies born of the mingling of Russian, Spanish, and Amer-
ican currents, could no more be written in California. The
" Great Bonanza " period came and went ; the new Constitution
agitation, Kearney's sand-lotters, McGlashan's anti-Chinese boy-
cotters, were chapters in the State's history, but no representative
book, except George's Progress and Poverty, came to the surface,
though the raw materials of half a dozen novels were contained
in this transition era. Instead of crystallizing into permanent
literary form, the agitation caused by new economic conditions
became chiefly political.

During the period of revolt and uncertainty, business suffered,
speculation increased, and many men withdrew capital from Cali-
fornia. The railroad-builders had brought the State into the
general order of things, and life on the old scheme had become
impossible, though the war, the clinging of Californians to gold

SOCIAL CHANGES IN CALIFORNIA. 797

values, and the development of the Comstock, long prevented the
popular recognition of the gravity of the problem. When knowl-
edge came, it came swiftly and bitterly. Workingmen who had
been earning five or six dollars a day, found, in three or four
years, that their wages were forty per cent lower. They felt
Chinese competition far more, and other laborers were coming in.
The farmers found the price of wheat falling, and ships leaving
the coast because of railroad competition, so that freights rose.
The merchants found the area of tributary country diminished by
the creation of other commercial centers. California suffered
more in the necessary readjustment than did any other part of
the Pacific coast, because its growth had been much more rapid,
its resources had been larger, and it had had, in the historic sense,
a far more educating environment. The commonwealth of Cali-
fornia was not merely the colony of gold-seekers of '49 ; it was,
in the broader view, the result of American energy working upon
the old foundations laid by Spanish pioneers of the eighteenth
century ; it had its missions and its olive groves before the Ameri-
can Declaration of Independence, when all the rest of the Pacific
coast was an unknown wilderness. It could not be otherwise than
that the change in economic conditions struck to the heart of
Californian life, and seemed for a few years to have produced the
disaster of a permanent descent to lower ideals.

" Calif ornians," said a brilliant newspaper man to me during
that period, " were once the most magnificently liberal race of
men on earth ; now they have determined to become the most
miserly. Once they talked of endowing a university with twenty
million dollars ; now they have let President Gilman leave them
and go to Baltimore. Once they were proud of everything Cali-
fornian ; now they want a foreign trade-mark on everything."

During the period that I have called the transition era, extend-
ing over eight or ten years after 1870, political standards in Cali-
fornia were lowered to an extent, in both kind and degree, which
is difficult to explain, and which has hardly changed since, except
for the worse. All the links and fetters of party allegiance were
more tightly drawn. The rule of the purse was more and more
pre-eminent in every campaign, and no party or faction long re-
sisted temptation. An almost unbroken line of demagogues, num-
bered and branded by political bosses, and divided with amusing
evenness between the Democrats and the Republicans, misruled
the State and increased the expenses of government. The lower-
ing of the remarkably advantageous economic conditions of a
quarter of a century ago appears to have thrown many unthink-
ing voters into closer relations with " the bosses/' and so has made
honest politics a more difficult business. It is the most deplora-
ble result of that sudden outbreak of discontent called Kearney-

798 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ism, that a lower, more mercenary political order still prevails.
Reform rests with the young men, who are organizing, regardless
of party, to work for the purification of politics, and with a new
conservative class — the horticulturists.

Stanford's railroad-builders, breaking down the mountain walls,
so that the world-spirit surged in, opened the way for new indus-
tries, and the same chain of circumstances that delayed the Cali-
fornia's realization of the end of his Utopia allowed the firm
establishment of a vast group of occupations before impossible.
Foremost of these was that varied and profitable industry which
some have called " intensive horticulture " — the industry that
makes an acre produce more food value than a hundred acres of
wheat or corn. California made a new start, and escaped indus-
trial ruin, chiefly by reason of vineyards, gardens, orchards, seed-
farms, hop-yards, and the whole group of allied pursuits. These
industries educated a great number of cattle-raisers and wheat
farmers, supplemented by clerks and mechanics with their small
savings, into horticulturists. Thus California obtained a new and
very valuable class of conservative citizens, well out of debt, and
more intelligent than the ordinary farmer. The movement toward
horticulture, as a business, began when the Central Pacific was
completed, and went on steadily through all the years of ferment.
It was the most hopeful movement of the time, for it built up the
interior of the State, it broke up the great stock-ranges and wheat
ranches, and it promised to restore to California far more than
had been lost. As soon as horticulture became established as the
great future industry of the State, an era of immigration began,
first in southern California, then over the whole region. The
inevitable readjustment of forces and shifting of industrial cen-
ters followed, and is still in progress.

For fifty years to come horticultural interests will probably
increase, and among horticulturists the skilled fruit-grower, own-
ing from ten to fifty acres of land, will best represent his class.
Such a person is likely to be more of a business man than the
average farmer, and is in closer relations to town and city life.
He is compelled to travel more, watches the markets and the
fields of invention closer, and represents, all in all, a finer type.
A California fruit-grower is in some respects akin to the middle
class of suburban dwellers near Boston and New York, with this
very important difference, that he actually and constantly makes
his living from the soil he owns. The one tendency of his life is
toward what may be termed " extreme Calif ornianism," for he is
growing almonds or oranges or something or other that can not
be produced at a profit in many other places on the continent, and
the " glorious climate " is his best friend. But, on the other hand,
he is in a skilled business, full of technical details, requiring

SOCIAL CHANGES IN CALIFORNIA. 799

plenty of brain-work, and he is selling in the world's markets.
Many a California grower of raisins, oranges, walnuts, olives,
prunes, or other horticultural products goes to Chicago and New
York every autumn, " to keep the run of the field." The drift of
Pacific coast life is toward a rapid increase of the number of
orchardists. They are organized, too, in a manner unknown
among the farmers, and have several times shown unsuspected
courage in independent politics. Some of these days professional
politicians will have to deal with a new factor — the horticulturist,
a distinct evolution from the conservative American farmer type,
quicker of brain, less wedded to party bonds, and more capable of
understanding the interests of the commonwealth.

This rapid review of some important economic changes of the
past fifty years leads naturally to the consideration of the present
conditions of life in California. Wages are still high, and all
classes of workers should be prosperous. The resources of the
State are being developed at a marvelous rate. In 1880 the popu-
lation of California was 864,000, and the assessed value of all the
property in the State was $504,578,036. " Assessed value," in
California, means " that amount which the property would bring
at a forced sale." In January, 1890, the estimated population was
1,465,000, and the assessed value of property was $1,112,000,000.
The deposits in the savings-banks averaged over $87,000,000, and
were widely distributed. The assessors' returns for the counties
show that lands in city and country, and their improvements, are
well divided up among the people, and California is becoming a
State of moderate-sized farms and fair but not large incomes.

The wages of ordinary farm hands in California range from
twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a month, usually with board.
Portuguese, who are already the peasantry of the rich valleys
near the bay of San Francisco, expect from twenty-six to thirty
dollars, and board themselves. They own small tracts of a few
acres, "work out" most of the time, and are a fairly capable
though slow class of laborers. Chinese, who are expert in garden
and orchard work, are paid the same as the Portuguese. Italians
in the vineyards rate at about thirty-five dollars, and board them-
selves. Skilled labor in some departments of farm and orchard
work commands forty or forty-five dollars a month. Pruners,
grafters, fruit-packers, teamsters, obtain such wages, and in the
lumber districts Americans often get fifty dollars. Commissioner
Tobin's report for 1887-88 gives the statistics of wages paid in
California and other places, and a few comparisons with New
York wages will serve to illustrate the subject. California brick-
layers rate at thirty dollars a week as against twenty dollars in
New York ; carpenters, twenty-one dollars as against fourteen ; ma-
sons, thirty dollars as against eighteen ; blacksmiths, twenty-one

800 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dollars as against thirteen ; draymen, fifteen dollars as against ten ;
gardeners, eighteen dollars as against nine.

The cost of clothing in California is about ten per cent higher
than in the Atlantic States, but the California workman is apt to
wear better clothes. The average cost of food is estimated to be
higher in California, but the California workman lives better.
The cheap restaurants of San Francisco are superior to any in
Eastern cities, and one can live there at less expense, or get more
for his money, whichever he chooses. Owing to the climate, inci-
dental expenses can be made less in California, and no time need
be lost from one year's end to another. Lots are still cheap, and
wood, the great building material, is about one third lower than
in New York city.

Favorable as are the conditions outlined, the chief advantages
are obtained by men. The wages paid to women for manual labor
do not compare favorably with Eastern rates. The seamstress is
no better off in California than in New York. Men proof-readers
receive eighteen dollars a week, while women get nine dollars;
men glove-makers are paid twenty or twenty-five dollars, while
women have from five to ten dollars; salesmen in stores receive
from fifty to a hundred dollars a month, while saleswomen are rated
at from twenty to forty dollars. This difference comes partly
from the fact that Chinese competition has been especially strong
in domestic occupations. As regards teachers, the school law of
California says, "Females employed as teachers in the public
schools shall in all cases receive the same compensation as is
allowed male teachers for like services, when holding the same
certificates." In San Francisco the average salary paid to women
teachers is $75.16 per month for twelve months. The statistics of
the Labor Bureau bring out many encouraging facts about the life
of the laboring women of San Francisco. These women number
about twenty thousand, engaged in some three hundred occupa-
tions. The general condition of the establishments where they
are employed is better than in some classes of establishments in
the Eastern States, and the hours are shorter. Several " sweaters'
shops" have been investigated, and public feeling aroused. In
some of the cigar-factories and canneries Chinamen and Ameri-
can girls were found working together, and a law will probably
be passed to prevent this. A " workshop and factory inspector,"
to operate under some general laws such as those of Massachu-
setts, is needed. The most satisfactory point about the condition
of California working girls is the extent to which they " live at
home." The tenement-house system has not yet reached San
Francisco. With few exceptions the homes of the working
women are neat and comfortable. In the interior towns work-
girls are paid better, as a rule, than in San Francisco. The

SOCIAL CHANGES IN CALIFORNIA. 801

growth of horticultural industries has made so many demands
for work-girls in the country that the factory system can not be
established in California for years to come.

Many California women are making horticultural ventures.
Teachers, clerks, type-writers, and saleswomen seem particularly
apt to buy land and plant vines or trees. An association of about
a hundred women are becoming florists. Another group is inter-
ested in buhach, the Persian insect-powder plant. Within a hun-
dred miles of San Francisco the conditions necessary to the suc-
cessful culture of leading fruits can be obtained. The extent to
which women are turning their attention to this field is note-
worthy, and must prove one of the important elements in the
organization of the "coming California." One finds women di-
recting outdoor operations in every part of the State, and several
of the largest orchards are owned and superintended by women.

Labor organizations are strong in California, containing about
thirty thousand wage-earners, and collecting over $100,000 a year
in dues in San Francisco alone. The trades-unions of San Fran-
cisco and vicinity have twenty thousand members. Hours of
labor among unorganized classes of workmen range from twelve
to sixteen, among the organized classes from eight to ten. In the
matter of strikes the trades-unions have sometimes been difficult
to control, reckless and dangerous, especially during the " period
of transition." Between 1880 and 1886 there were one hundred
and seven strikes in California, affecting 6,763 men and women,
and losing 1,508 working days, at a cost of $324,639 to the strikers
and $311,093 to the employers. Seventy-seven of them succeeded.
There were nine lock-outs, all but one among the cigar-manufact-
urers. Since 1886 the number of strikes and lock-outs has dimin-
ished by one half. The largest ones have been in the foundries
and iron-works, those industries being in a state of depression.
Public sympathy has been with the employers in most of the
recent strikes, as the favorable conditions of workingmen in Cali-
fornia are well understood.

The Chinese problem, so called, has but little vitality, although
it is still a fruitful subject for newspaper editorials and sensa-
tional space-writing. The masses of Californians appear to think
that the present laws are reasonably well enforced. Orchard and
vineyard extensions may cause such a demand for "cheap labor "
that the farmers and orchardists, who have hitherto depended a
great deal upon Chinese, will form a pro-Chinese party. It was
the fruit-growers as a class that broke up and defeated the Chi-
nese boycott in California a few years ago. The ground they take
is that they prefer white labor, but they will not see their crops
lost when Chinese can be had, and they will not allow any dicta-
tion from trades-unions or boycotters. The Chinese now in Cali-

8o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fornia have been greatly benefited by the Exclusion Act. They
receive better wages than before, and in many cases better treat-
ment. The more enterprising among them show a tendency to
become land-renters, and in a few instances land-owners. A Chi-
naman's point of view is about this : that the soil, climate, and
opportunities of California suit him, and a " dollar and a quarter
a day " is as much of a bonanza to him as the " sixteen-dollar-a-
day diggings " were to the American Argonauts of 1849. He will
stay as long as he can get his wages, and, if the Exclusion Act is
strictly enforced, the chances are that his earnings will continue
to increase. He has trades-unions of his own, and whenever it
appears judicious, he strikes for higher wages and usually gets
them. The laws that protect him against the competition of other
workers of his own race are exactly to his mind.

Speculation in California has taken a turn of late years. Few
persons invest in mining stocks any more, and there are not
many other speculative securities. The glories of Pine Street
and Pauper Alley have departed. Wealthy men who used to
gamble in " stocks " now buy mines instead. Twenty or thirty
California operators, who have left the street, have agents and
experts visiting every camp from Sonora to Alaska, and the act-
ual mine-workers have gradually secured nearly all the valuable
properties of the coast. Speculation in real estate has become the
form of investment among the poorer and middle classes. Town
lots in new towns have had their day, and acreage now " takes the
call." Over whole counties the farmers and fruit-growers are
mortgaging lands to buy more lands, believing that they never
will be so cheap again. The rule of the wheat-grower is that
thirty dollars an acre is as much as he can afford to pay, and ten
or twelve dollars is nearer the average cost of the grazing lands
now changing to wheat. The rule of the fruit-grower is that he
must have only the land that is exactly suited to the business,
and he can pay from fifty to two hundred dollars an acre for such
land, provided he has capital to plant it at once.

Books of California travel, with hardly an exception, lay
stress on the restlessness of life here. "The whole State is for
sale" is a commonplace of the tourist. But the average Cali-
fornian farmer, instead of being a speculator, is as tenacious a
land-holder as a Pennsylvania Dutchman. During the whole
land speculation period in southern California, hundreds of Los
Angeles County ranchers went on raising corn and potatoes as
calmly as if the excitement had been a thousand miles away.
There are large and fertile counties where nearly every farm for
miles along the highways is owned by the man who "took it
up in the fifties," or is divided among his children. There are
rich valley townships where hardly three land transfers take

DR. HENRY T. SCHLIEMANN. 803

place in a year. The old Missourian settlers are slow to sell or
change, but equally slow to improve. New England settlers never
sell, but extend their acres if a chance offers. The Western " hus-
tlers," and men from the cities, are the ones that lay out new towns
and colonies where immigrants can buy ten or twenty acre tracts.
Instead of California being a land of rapid changes in land-owner-
ship, it is, on the whole, very conservative in this respect. The
large ranches are for sale, but the homesteads are not.

The middle classes of California will always draw their living
from the soil. Mining and lumbering require more capital, and
manufacturing will not develop to any great extent for many
years to come. The products of which the State appears to have
a natural monopoly promise to support a dense population, spread
over the country in colonies, on small farms, and in loosely built
towns. No other part of the United States is developing under
similar conditions, and hence the economic history of California
has the importance of a new experiment. Wages still high, a
generous scale of living, few manufactures, industries largely
horticultural, tendencies which rapidly change the better classes
of workmen into small land-owners — such are the conditions.
What sort of a community will the California of the twentieth
century be ?

♦«»

Dr. HENRY T. SCHLIEMANN.

DR. HEINRICH T. SCHLIEMANN, the enthusiastic excava-
tor of the most ancient Grecian cities, died in Naples, Italy,
December 26, 1890. He was born January 6, 1822, at Neu Buckow,
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, where his father was a Protestant clergy-
man, poor, but interested in ancient history, and particularly in
the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, which were then
fresh. Acquiring some taste in these matters and a little knowl-
edge of Latin from his father, young Schliemann's interest in
Troy was aroused when he was seven years old by the sight of a
sensational picture, in Dr. Georg Ludwig Jerrer's Universal His-
tory, of the burning of that city. The book, according to Dr.
Irving J. Manatt, in the Independent, is still treasured in Schlie-
mann's library at Athens, and in it, the writer adds, "he has
pointed out to me the rude picture of Troy in flames, the sight of
which first lodged the seed-thought in his soul." He decided at
once that the foundations of such a city must still exist, " covered
up by the dust of ages," and determined to make their discovery
the purpose of his life. To this determination he adhered through
all the vicissitudes of a precarious career. After some four years
at the Gymnasium and the Realschule, he was apprenticed in 1836

8o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to a grocer in Fiirstenberg, where he worked for five years from
five o'clock in the morning till eleven at night on a maximum
yearly salary of thirty dollars. He was able to gratify his archae-
ological tastes in this situation by hiring a drunken but learned
miller's clerk to recite to him lines from Homer. One day he
broke a blood-vessel while trying to lift a barrel, and was dis-
charged as no longer of value to his employer. Utterly destitute,
he took passage in a vessel for South America, was shipwrecked,
found his way to Amsterdam, and obtained a light employment,
in connection with which he was able to read a little every day.
He thus gradually acquired a good knowledge of English, Dutch,
Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. In 1844 he entered the office of
Messrs. Schroder & Co. on a comfortable salary and began to
learn Russian, preparatory to taking an agency for the house in
St. Petersburg. He soon started in business in that place on his
own account. In 1850 he came to California, where he became an
American citizen and the possessor of $400,000. He returned to
Russia, continued his business, and learned Swedish and Polish.
After the Crimean War he learned Greek and then devoted two
years to the study of Greek literature. In 1858 he traveled
through northern Europe, Italy, Egypt, and the lands of ancient
• Greece. Being compelled by a lawsuit to return to Russia and
stay there three years, he went into business again and made more
money. Before beginning his life-work, for which the opportu-
nity at last offered, he- made a voyage around the world and pub-
lished his first book, La Chine et le Japon, in 18G6. Having dug
experimentally, without important results, at Ithaca, he began in
1870 his excavations in the Troad to verify the accuracy of Ho-
mer's account of the lost Troy, in the literal reality of every part of
which he fully believed. He began first at the place called Bou-
narbashi, which the learned world had agreed was the site of the
ancient city. Having dug and examined the topography long
enough to satisfy himself that nothing was to be found there, he
tried the mound of Hissarlik. Here he unearthed six cities which
had succeeded each other on the same site, four of them at least
prehistoric, and one of which, bearing the marks of a great con-
flagration and being rich in relics, he was satisfied was Homer's
Troy. For security in performing this work, Dr. Manatt tells us :
" As an American citizen he took out our passports for himself,
his family, and his servants ; and it may as well be remembered
that Troy was uncovered under the protection of our flag/' The
results of these explorations were described in the books Troy
and its Remains, and Ilios, the appearance of which was the signal
for an active discussion of the merits of his discoveries. While
many doubted the accuracy of his identification of one of the
cities with the real Troy, it was generally agreed that he had

BR. HENRY T. SGHLIEMANN. 805

found something remarkably interesting and important, as well
as very ancient, and that possibly the real Troy was somewhere
in the heap. Convincing testimony to the value of the investi-
gation was given by Dr. Virchow, who visited the place and ex-
amined it, and by a commission of archaeologists, who made a
special report upon the subject. Dr. Schliemann next turned his
attention to Mycenae, the capital of Agamemnon and the kings
of the house of Atreus. Following the directions of Pausanias,
he selected a spot, dug, and found, if not the tombs and the treas-
ury of the Atridae, five tombs of royal rank, with sarcopjhagi and
death-masks, and a treasure-chamber, which he decided to be of
equal age. Dr. Manatt says that when the first skeleton came to
light in these royal tombs, " he fell upon his knees before it, ex-
claiming, ' Thus have I imagined my hero ! ' " The results of this
work were described and published in another splendid book on
Mycenae and Tiryns. He next excavated Tiryns, which he had
already partly explored and described in connection with his work
at My cense, and laid bare the walls and a prehistoric palace and
citadel, with the gates, court-yard, hall, chambers, and bath-room.
Another volume, corresponding in style with the previous ones,
was devoted to the discoveries made here. Dr. Schliemann sub-
sequently made excavations at Orchomenos, the mound of Mara-
thon, and other important ancient sites, and was contemplating
further work of a similar character. The value and accuracy of
his discoveries have been subjected to unfriendly criticism and
much active discussion ; but, while he could not prove that the
second prehistoric city at Hissarlik was identical with Troy itself,
or that the tombs and treasures at Mycenae actually belonged to
the Agamemnon who was murdered by JEgisthus, he was able to
repel all efforts to discredit the results he got, and to convince the
most accomplished antiquaries and archaeologists that, if not
these, he had found something very like and very near in time to
them. Every kind of hypothesis was tried, as the Saturday Re-
view says, by those who doubted the genuineness of the discovery
of Mycenae, "but only Dr. Schliemann's fitted the case. The
bronze blades of the poniards, when the patina was removed,
were found to be beautifully chased in various-colored gold, such
as Homer describes, with scenes of war and the chase. The art
was clearly inspired by Egyptian reminiscences : here were men
hunting wild ducks, for example, in a papyrus marsh ; here were
pictures of such huge shields as Homer attributes to his heroes.
The figures, on the other hand, were far more free in execution
than those of the earliest known Greek art. In brief, new mate-
rials and a new problem were offered to archaeology, and the
evidence of tradition was once more proved to be more trust-
worthy than any one had expected." The grandeur of this dis-

vol. xxxviii. — 56

8o6

THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

covery, indeed, furnished the chief doubt of the validity of the
identification of Troy, for " if Mycena? were so great and strong,
why did it need all the power of Achaia to overthrow the little
village of Ilios ? " His wife, a well-educated Grecian lady who
shared his Homeric enthusiasm, assisted him with her sympathy
and co-operation in a large part of his researches. Dr. Schlie-
mann's death followed a cold contracted after undergoing a suc-
cessful surgical operation for deafness at Halle. He tarried for
business on his way home, and, failing to take the care of himself

Henry T. Schliemann.

which he needed and which prudence should have demanded,
caught a severe cold, and had stopped at Naples for treatment.
His enthusiasm in archaeology and his example have been the
inspiration of many, and have provoked the organization of socie-
ties in England, Germany, France, the United States, Greece itself,
and other countries, for the exploration and excavation of the
ancient Grecian sites. The enthusiasm, which carried him through
all his life-work and permeated even his commonplace occupa-
tions and his amusements, was illustrated in his custom of giving
Homeric names to all who came into his household. "Among Ins
busy servitors," says Dr. Manatt, " were iEneas and Creusa ; Bel-
lerophon was his porter and Priam kept his garden, Circe and
Electra were his handmaids. No matter what name one brought
into his service, the chrism of the Hall of Troy made all heroic.
His own children were Andromache and Agamemnon from their

THE BADGER AND THE FOX. 807

birth — for sliort, Andromacliidion and Agamemnonid ion." When
Dr. Manatt, accompanied by liis daughter of seventeen, first vis-
ited him, he at once gave her a Greek name — Artemis — and thai
she remained to him to the last. At the first breakfast, " Artemis
was installed in the place of the mistress of the mansion, and re-
ceived the homage due to her illustrious new name."

Dr. Schliemann made his permanent residence at Athens,
where he built a fine house which is styled a palace. Here, in the
midst of trophies which he had recovered from the ancient world
and " muniments of the world's honors," he led a methodical
working life. " Hours before the Attic dawn, winter and sum-
mer, daily he was at the Phaleron for his plunge in the divine
sea ; all day long the busy work went on ; and late into the night
the lamp burned in the study that looks over the city upon the
Acropolis." From any of his occupations he would turn to meet
and entertain a visitor, and he was at home " of all men the most
accessible." He dispensed a liberal hospitality, and 011 festival
occasions his house was thronged by the best — the select of Athens
and strangers. His business interests were never allowed to suf-
fer. He had valuable investments in many countries, and they
were all profitable ; and he could find himself familiar at any
moment with the details of their condition and management. His
funeral was honored with testimonials from the Emperor of Ger-
many, from the city of Berlin — which had honored him with the
distinction shared only by Bismarck and Von Moltke, of making
him one of its Ehrenburger — and from numerous learned men
and learned bodies, and by the personal attendance of the King
and Crown Prince of Greece.

THE BADGER AND THE FOX.

OF the few animals which now inhabit the woods and the hill-
sides, perhaps the badger is the least known to the general
public. He is nocturnal, in the first place ; and his coloring,
being in broken tones, does not readily arrest the eye. His head,
chin, and neck are white, with brownish- black bands running on
either side from the nose over the eyes and ears. His upper parts
are light-gray sprinkled with black, the lower parts brownish
black ; his fore feet are long and stout, his limbs muscular, his
jaw powerful, and his teeth sharp ; in fact, he is well set up as
far as these formidable weapons are concerned. The usual length
of the animal is a little over three feet, but in his family, as well
as in the human race, there are large and small individuals.
Take his general appearance as he jogs along, and a small bear is
at once suggested to your mind. Many of his ways, too, are bear-

808 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

like ; lie will lie up in the winter, and eat vegetable as well as
animal food. Some other creatures, that are supposed to be
strictly carnivorous, will eat fruit when they can get it.

The badger, poor beast ! is getting scarce ; more's the pity,
from the animal collector's and the naturalist's point of view.
He generally manages to dispense with the observation of the
latter ; for, unless his ways are well known, he will escape from a
place that might have been supposed strong enough to hold a
rhinoceros. All his family have been excavators from the begin-
ning, on the most scientific principles. Unless you take the great-
est precautions, he will dig himself out and get away in quick
time. He is a most quiet and orderly being, and a contented one
too, if let alone ; for, as a rule, he is fat.

His persecutors are many, from the keeper down to the rat-
catcher's lad, who boasts that he has "the best dog at any var-
mint as ever run on four legs." Some of our common expressions
require alteration, being founded on ignorance. For instance,
folks say, " Dirty as a badger " ; whereas a cleaner creature in its
home and surroundings would be hard to find. A very wide-
awake individual he is ; and he needs be, for the hand of both
man and of boy is against him, and utterly without reason.

If the badger had but the same privileges extended to him
that the fox has, he would not be so rare an animal as he is now.
Why should he be so worried by dogs ? It is to be hoped that
badger-drawing has nearly had its day. This very practice,
brutal as it is, testifies to his determined courage and fighting
qualities ; you could not find a more determined antagonist than
he is when on his mettle.

With regard to his food, the greater part of it consists of such
small deer as may fall in his way, when he wanders here and
there in the evening after leaving the hole where he has lain
dormant all the day. That long snout of his will poke and root
out all manner of things, from a wild bees' nest to a field-mouse.
He will eat young rabbits when he can get them, and old ones
do not come amiss to him when the chance offers. A sporting
character I knew once procured a fine badger for the express pur-
pose of having him baited by all the fancy dogs in his locality.
Among other creatures he kept rabbits, and his particular fancy
was to have the very best of the lop-eared variety that could be
procured. One doe he valued most highly, because, setting aside
her own qualities, she had a fine lot of young ones, well grown,
and as beautiful as herself.

The badger had only been caught the same evening on which
it was brought to this individual. Not having a place ready for
it, he placed it for the time in an empty hutch just over the one
in which his favorite doe and her little ones were. Fastening the

THE BADGER AND THE FOX.

809

door securely, lie left the animal to his own devices for the night,
little thinking what these might be. Next morning he found, to
his horror, that the badger had torn up the floor of the hutch
where he had been placed, and got into that of the doe, where he
had slaughtered the whole family. Their bodies lay dead there,
the badger curled up in the middle of them, fast asleep, and very
full of rabbit. His first impulse was to kill the beast, there and
then, but on thinking it over he remembered that he had paid a
considerable figure for it ; so he got the badger out and sold him
to one of his friends as a pet, telling him that it was " quite harm-

.~^,V{- V"jl >, '.-.';.' I J5

The Badger.

less, would live on bread and milk, and in a very short time would
follow him about like a dog." Very soon, indeed, he was re-
quested by this friend to take him back again, but he refused.

I will describe one of his homes, which I have visited many
times. At the bottom of a glade, by the side of the chalk hill, is
a dip or hollow, not deep, but a kind of basin about twice the size
of one of my living-rooms. Round this, old beeches, growing close
by, have pushed forth their great roots in all directions ; on one
side of the hollow a gnarled oak stands, not any great height, but
of vast bulk, the great limbs reaching far over the open space. In
the middle of the hollow, under the roots of this oak, our friar of
orders gray has made his home, and a very secure and pleasant
one it is.

When the moon is high up in the sky, and throws a soft sil-
very blue tone on the tops of the firs which line the side of the
glade, the glade itself showing like a bright blue-green stripe, and
nothing is heard but the jar of the fern-owl as he flits over the
glade, or the drone of some beetle as he flies along, then is the

8io

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

time for our friend the badger to come out and see how the world
looks in the moonlight.

He has left his hole, and there he stands in the full light of
the moon, the great limbs of the oak throwing checkered shadows
around him on the greensward and on the exposed surface of the
chalk here and there. The greater portion of the sides of the
hollow nearest his home is covered with foxgloves and trailing
bramble. He looks round about him for a few seconds, and
sniffs, just to find out if anything peculiar is in the air ; then,
finding matters all right, as he thinks, he gives himself a scratch
or two and a good shake, and deliberately waddles off to get some-
thing to eat — a very easy matter at this time of the year, for on a
warm summer night all kinds of creatures are about, and he
makes their acquaintance much to his own satisfaction, if not to
theirs. *.

Little does he think that he is wanted on this particular even-
ing. While he goes plodding along, picking up a little bit here
and there, the keeper and his lad are holding some conversation
about him. I happen to come across them ; my sympathies are
with the badger, but it is not my business to interfere.

" Have ye got the bag and sack, Jim ? If ye have, jest make
yer way, quiet like, over t'other hill, an' cum down the side on
it, on the quiet, mind ; fix yer bag, an' when 'tis done, give three
hoots, one arter t'other, to let me know as things is all right ; ye
minds what I tell ye ; I'm goin' back to git Ginger an' Nipper.
They'll hussle him up, an' no mistake. They ain't big uns, but

better tarriers than what
they be never cum inter
this 'ere wurld. Now then,
off ye goes, an' before ye
gits yer job done I shall be
near to ye, fur to hear ye
hoot : he's sartin sure to be
on the ramble."

Arriving at the spot, Jim
produces the bag, or rather
a small sack, from his jack-
et pocket, and places it in
the entrance to the badger's
burrow in such a way that
should the animal rush for
home, as he generally does
when alarmed, he will go
right into it. The string that runs round the mouth of the sack
will be pulled tight by the force of his rush, and there he will be
like a pig in a poke. The string of the bag is secured, of course, to

<tf©

iV.M'N

V. ■ • -:■ . V " ■" ■ A-*. =%

Indian Badger.

THE BADGER AND THE FOX.

811

a peg. Having arranged all this to his own satisfaction, Jim picks
up the large sack — he had two, a large and a small — walks out of
the hollow on to the moonlit greensward, and hoots like a brown
owl, three times. After this musical effort he stands cpiite still, and
listens intently, but for some time the humming jar of the fern-
owl, chur-chur-er-er-er-er-chur, is the only sound that reaches his
ear. Suddenly he places his empty sack on the ground beside
him, and is on the alert, for a sound of quickly moving feet at a
distance makes itself heard. He knows what that means : Ginger
and Nipper are close on the badger's track ; and like the well-
bred, well-trained little fox terriers that they are, they run him
mute, save for the mere ghost of a whimper now and again, just
enough to show they are eager to close with the poor beast.

That, however, is far from the keeper's intention ; he would
not let his two little beauties, game though they are, close with
such a desperate antagonist as an old dog badger, if he could help
it ; for he knows well enough that dogs and badger would fight
to the death. His plan is that they shall drive him to his burrow,
and into the sack.

The best -laid plans do not succeed always, however, as is
proved in this case. Nearer and nearer comes the sound of pat-
tering feet at full speed, and behind that the heavy tread of a
man who is putting his best foot foremost. Nearer they come ;
they will break into the moonlight in another moment ; we can
hear them pant, for they have run him through the cover at top
speed. The lad is ready to
dash down into the hollow ;
in fact, he has already
moved to do so, when the
sound of running feet stops
dead ; and then, in the
thicket, a desperate tearing
scuffle is heard going on, for
Ginger and Nipper have
run into and closed with him
before he could reach home.

The sounds make Jim
wild with excitement, and
he shouts his loudest to the
keeper, who is now close at
hand and puffing like a steam-engine with running so hard.

" Can't ye git a badger in a sack without hollerin' like mur-
der ? " he asks angrily. " I'm a good mind — \

What he'd a good mind to did not transpire, for the boy yelled
out : " I ain't got him ; they'se got him ; don't ye hear 'em worryin'
of him ? "

American Badger.

812 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Making use of some very strong expressions, such as he would
not make use of at a chapel tea-meeting, the keeper dashes into
the thicket, followed by Jim ; quickly they reach the spot, where
they see a confused mass of living matter, turning and twisting,
growling, whining, and snapping, at their feet.

" I'll murder ye, you old varmint ! — Look out, Jim ! Cuss an

hang him ! I can't git a stroke at him ! Why the here they

are ; what's up now ? Ginger ! Gin ' r ! loose him ! Ginger !
he'll rip ye up in bits. Let me smasl tim ! "

:' Here he is ; hold hard, master ! ye nearly had 'im ; hold
hard ! "

' Well, if ever I take my tarriers ! Oh dear ! oh dear ! if there
ain't Nipper ; he's done for. Hold him, Jim ; don't ye let him out
o' yer arms, for mercy sake. Now, then, here they are ; now fur
it, one way or t'other. This is the wust night's work as ever I
come across. Jim ! Jim ! where be ye ? "

" In this 'ere tangle ; I'm comin' fast as I can."

" Have ye got Nipper ? "

" Yes, I got un."

" He's a dunner, ain't he ? "

''' No, he ain't ; it's tight work fur me to hold him ! "

;e Don't ye let him go ; here they be, dead as herrins ! Oh dear,
Ginger ! if I ain't wound up clean ! Never agin will I see your
feller. If it waunt fur the shame on it, I could fairly beller ! I
be cut up, an' no mistake."

:' Pick him up, master ! you'll hev to loose his holt, for dead as
he be he's got him under the ear. This 'ere night's work about
winds my pig up, I can tell ye."

Picking Ginger up, and holding him in his arms, the keeper
stood in silence. Presently a slight movement took place in the
body of the terrier, and with a low whimper and one long-drawn
breath he opened his eyes, and then licked the face of his master.

" Jim ! hoora ! houra ! Ginger's alive ; oh, my precious Gin-
ger ! oh, ain't you tore about ! Give us Nipper, an' shove that
cusnation warmint in the sack, an' let's git back fur to doctor
these 'ere poor things. We'll git 'em round, if 'tis to be done. —
Look 'ere, Jim, did ye ever ? they ain't hurt much ; they're tryin'
their werry hardest ter get out o' my hands ter hev another go at
him ! I don't think as there's sich another pair o' tarriers as
these 'ere two, no, not nowheres : there can't be ! Ye've got that
murderin' warmint ?"

" Yes, he's in the sack."

"Then look sharp! we'll cut out <>' this ; come on! an' next
time as master wants a badger fur one o' his friends, somebody
else's tarriers '11 hev to drive un. The fust one as we got out was
that old warmint's missus an' her cubs. That was a diggin' job,

THE BADGER AND THE FOX.

813

as we wunt forgit in a hurry ; 'twas desprit work. But tins 'ere
bit o' business sets that aside clean. Jim ! what are ye sniggerin'
about ? what's in the wind now, ticklin' yer fancy that way ? "

" Oh, nuthin' pertickler. Is Ginger an' Nipper quiet ? "

" No, they ain't ; I thinks as they'd like ter fall foul o' that 'ere
sack."

" Well, I dessay they wud ; fur this 'ere warmint has cum
round agin', an' is teariu jn' scratchin' like mad. It do take a
lot to wind a badger's cloc up, that it do ! "

" Jim, when we've sin to the dogs, you come up an' hev a pint
o' the best cider."

The Fox. — I feel it almost presumptuous on my part to say
anything about that wonderful animal, the fox — so much has
been written and said about him, both by sportsmen and some of
the greatest of our literary geniuses. My account of him will be

ft

w%%>.

tMs*-, •■.

-■ . s ■'.

%\<\

English Fox.

brief ; not having the fox-hunter's feeling of veneration for him,
nor the hatred natural to the poultry-keeper, my views will at any
rate not be one-sided. Nor have I ever had the least wish to pos-
sess Master Reynard embalmed as a mummy, or to see the wily
gentleman in a glass case, lean and hungry-looking, with squint-
ing cunning in his eye. He is known to me as a clean, swift,
strong, and handsome creature, full of courage. He is also uni-
versally credited with a very large amount of intellectual power,
although it is always said to be employed exclusively for his own
benefit. To call an individual of the human family an old fox
is certainly not a compliment, for it implies that he is crafty and
selfish.

His usual length is four feet, but he varies in size according
to food and locality. In the Highlands of Scotland he is almost
like a wolf in size and strength ; and he is not regarded in the
same light as in England, for he is shot down without the least
compunction there. The proper place to see all wild animals to

8 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

advantage is in their own home. May I be allowed to say that,
in this respect, they are unlike many individuals of the human
species ?

It is just after four o'clock on a soft May morning, and the
sun lights up the tops of the trees, bringing the tender foliage
out in sparkling relief against the hill-sides. At the foot of the
one nearest us Reynard and his vixen partner have their home.
Numbers of fine beeches grow here ; the chalky soil is well suited
to them. A large one has been blown down at some time, but it
has been sawn from the roots long ago. For a long distance the
soil was loosened in its fall, and Reynard has taken advantage of
this to form an earth for himself and family among the loosened
chalk, stones, and old tangled roots. The surface round about is
covered with the finest and greenest turf. Many hawthorn
bushes are there, giving out their delightful fragrance to per-
fection, for the morning is warm. On the end of a long beech
bough, which reaches far out over the earth, a cuckoo sits and
flirts his tail about, shouting, " Cuckoo ! cuckoo ! " The entrance
to the earth and a small space about it is bare, for the little foxes
are playful animals, and are at high jinks often, capering about.
At present they are, comparatively speaking, quiet, for all their
bellies are full. Father Reynard is sitting in the bright warm
sunlight, winking in a most knowing manner, while two of his
cubs play with his bushy tail to their hearts' content, tossing it
from one side to the other in a most comical fashion. Mother
vixen has a rabbit in her mouth, which she tosses up and catches,
and then lets drop for one of the young ones to nibble at its ears,
while the darling of the family torments a poor frog that has
found his way there. The whole lot look as though they had a
touch of dropsy, their bellies stick out so. The feathers and feet
of pheasants strew the ground, and other remnants, for Reynard's
motto is : " Other creatures' young ones can cry for food if they
let 'em ; but mine don't, if I know it."

At some distance the alarm note of a blackbird sounds. Rey-
nard opens his eyes, pricks his ears, and the cubs leave off playing
with his tail. The next moment a jay squeaks out, and comes
flying overhead. That is enough ; he is up on his feet, ears
erected, eyes gleaming, and his brush held almost in a line with
his back, his fore feet well to the front, the hind ones on the
spring. Squeak ! squeak ! and another jay flits past. With a
rush the cubs dash to earth, followed more leisurely by their
worthy parents. The cause of their stampede is soon exjjlained,
for up the side of the wooded slope a man is seen coming ; it is
the keeper on his early round.

Reynard is very accommodating as to his food; nothing nice
comes amiss to him : game of all kinds, furred and feathered ; fish,

THE BADGER AND THE FOX.

815

when he can get the run of them in spawning time, when the}
are on the sides of the shallows ; field-mice, and his especial dai 1
a well-fed barn rat. There is no lack of these in the harvest
time, and up to the commencement of the winter months. Then
they troop back to their old quarters for the cold season. He has
a taste for poultry ; ducks he values most highly. Perhaps no
one but a miller would expect to find a fox in a swamp ; but he
knows his tricks and likings, and, though he curses him most
heartily, yet lets him go free, for is he not St. Reynard ? The
miller's landlord hunts him in the orthodox manner.

;\w<--

■"»«*•.. ■:-■.-. A- \.- v,V, A."

American Fox.

On the tussocks, covered with flag and rush spread all over the
swamp, the fox makes a most comfortable retreat. Getting into
the middle of one, he twists himself round and round, dog fashion,
and there he lies on a nice bed, soft and dry, completely hidden
from view, remaining there until the miller informs his landlord's
keeper that a fox is there ; then the huntsman comes round — and
the sooner he does this the better, or there will not be a duck left
on the pond.

Reynard can hear them nozzling and softly quacking at the
edge of his hiding-place; with cat-like steps he creeps closer,
looking through the flags. When he finds that he is near enough
for a jump, there is a splash, and one low quack and the drake is
in his mouth. In pictures you may see him represented with his
quarry slung over his back. This is not correct ; he carries what
he has caught in front of him, like a retriever. More than once,
when in search of wading birds, have I come on the retreats of
the fox and the otter very near to each other. For cool impu-
dence, match him if you can. I have known a dog fox, when the
vixen had the care of a family, enter the yard of the keeper's
house, take one of his game hens from under his living-room win-
dows, march off with it across the road and to his home, give it
to his family, and then come back for another. A pointer was in
the yard at the time, chained to his kennel. Driven off at his

8i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

«f|

Arctic Fox.

second visit, lie coolly recrossed the road to the turf, squatted on
his haunches there, and looked over at the yard, and the game hens

used for hatching out the
^ / pheasants' eggs. It was too
much for the. keeper to put
up with. Slipping a cart-
ridge into his gun, he swung

it up to his shoulder and let
drive at the fox, saying,
' There's notice to quit, you
thund'rin' sweep ! " Then
did Master Reynard play
some extraordinary antics.
First he jumped off the
ground several times in the
most lively manner, then he
cuffed his ears vigorously
with his fore feet, gave a bit of a yelp, and bolted at top speed.
His skin is thick, and what would knock other things over would
not cripple him.

When the hunters and the hounds chevy him across the fields
honest farmer Giles complains most bitterly. " Dash my old
gaiters, if I doan't wish as every warmint of a fox as ever run
was cold and stiff ; that I do ; an' 'tis a pity as some folks ain't
got better work for their bosses than ridin' over other people's
craps an' breakin' fences an' gates. 'Tis wonderful what a likin'
most of 'em have fur blunderin' thru a fence an' knockin' the pad-
lock off a gate. Why doan't they jump over 'em ? ef their hearts
was as big as their hosses hap they wud. That there field of tur-
mits will be punched inter sheep feed, they wunt want to go inter
no cuttin' machine. Cuss all fox-huntin'! I sez ; 'tis ruin for
farmers ! "

It was wonderful how quickly farmer Giles was brought to
modify these strong opinions on fox-hunting by the appearance of
a two-gallon bottle labeled Old Irish, "with the Hunt's compli-
ments." He uncorked the bottle, smelt and tasted it more than
once, with and without sugar, ejaculating between each sip,
"Massy, oh alive!'1 Then he walked to those fields again over
which they had ridden. Could it have been the softening influ-
ence of the Old Irish, or had he been making mountains out of
molehills ? for when he got back he told his " missus," with a
beaming smile of benevolence on his face, that, " raly, considerin'
the lot o' gentlemen as 'ad rid over the craps, the little harm as
he cum across waunt wuth speekin' on." — Cornhill Magazine.

RACE INFLUENCE AND DISEASE. 817

RACE INFLUENCE AND DISEASE.

By G. BERNAED HOFFMEISTER, M. A., M. D.

IT has been my lot to deal professionally for some years with
people of divers colors and races, nations and languages in
many different parts of the world, and in varied and constantly
changing climates. I have thus had exceptional opportunities
and sufficient leisure to ponder over racial variations as they pre-
sent themselves to the medical eye.

Perhaps the most interesting races with whom I have been
thrown into contact are the African, and I will consider them
first. I have more especially had to do with the natives of East
Africa, who are Mohammedans of a somewhat lax and unortho-
dox type, and yet, owing to theirv implicit acceptance of Moham-
med's fatalistic doctrines, their submission to kismet is so com-
plete as distinctly to influence the course of their illnesses.

Indirectly it does so in the following way : When a Sidi-boy
incurs, for instance, a wound on his leg, he thinks that if Allah
wills that this should get well its healing is certain, but, if the
divine wish is otherwise, no human skill or care can do one iota
of good ; on this account details of simple dressing and protection
are quite neglected by this poor fellow, or as much so as the sur-
geon will allow. If under discipline, he is willing to have his
name on the sick list for the privileges which belong to it ; but
in his heart he despises surgical treatment. Clearly, then, the
prognosis with such a case is much worse than it would be in
other subjects.

The same argument applies with much greater force to medi-
cal cases, on account of the childlike ignorance which exists
among such people as to what disease actually means.

This extreme and apathetic dependence on fate forms the
greatest difficulty with which the physician has to contend. It
speaks well for the blind religious faith of these races, and puts
to shame many professing Christians on their sick-beds ; but it
costs many lives, and entails much extra work on medical attend-
ants, who have perhaps to administer remedies with their own
hands, and that often under great difficulties and at much per-
sonal sacrifice.

Another more direct point, and one which adds to the gravity
of the prognosis, is that these men are not at all anxious to re-
cover ; their idea of the value of life is very low, their present
existence is usually a hard one, while their religion promises them
better times in their heaven, so that if Allah wills to take them
they are in luck, and by no means to be pitied.

Now, we all know what it is in the crisis of a severe illness for
vol. xxxviii. — 57

818 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a patient to have pluck, and a sufficient supply of doggedness to
be capable of making a continued effort ; to make up his mind
in his saner moments not to yield to the sinking feelings that
w ill come over him, to fight against his illness as against an at-
tacking enemy, to feel that he is determined to pull through, if
only to please his friends, to spite his rivals, to foil his foes, or to
accomplish some non-completed task. I remember to have had
somewhat similar ideas in my own maladies, and I feel sure they
were of much assistance to my recovery.

Such impulses as these from the organs of thought and will
must of necessity have a distinct effect upon the rest of the nerv-
ous system, and thus over the heart and other organs, if only
through the emotions, and that a beneficial and stimulating
effect ; these impulses may therefore make all the difference in
tiding over a crisis, and during early convalescence. But of
course the influence of the mental state upon disease is unques-
tioned. The absence in these races of this important factor, and
the presence of the stagnating fatalism above mentioned, are, I
feel sure, the causes of many a death.

One of my first cases, and it taught me a great lesson, was
that of a stalwart East African who complained of feeling ill ; on
examination nothing could be found amiss but slight febrile
symptoms and a small patch of pleuritic friction. To my sur-
prise, the poor negro began by saying he was going to die ; he
went to his bunk, and next day I found him much the same,
except that the heart's action was rather enfeebled, though no
physical signs of cardiac disease could be detected. He was, how-
ever, utterly uninterested in his condition, and only took food
under compulsion. In the evening he suddenly expired, more as
it seemed — for I was unfortunately unable to make a post-mortem
investigation — from what I might call inertia than from his actual
disease. Later experience told me that had I bullied the man,
and given him brandy with my own hand, and stirred him out of
his apathy, I might have saved his life. But it was often noticed
among us that if, on becoming ill, these men predict that they are
sick unto death, they will, if left to themselves, simply go and lie
down and quietly die, refusing all assistance.

Confirmation of this view is found in the following words of
Hume Nisbet, when speaking of similar races :

" When hope ceases to glow in their breasts, or a superstitious
omen tells them that they are to die — it may be the word of the
magician, or the bone pointed at them, as among the Queensland-
ers, or the lizard running over them, as with the Maori, or the
utter weariness of life taking possession, as with the Sidi-boys —
they can lie down and give up life as easily and methodically as
they fall asleep.

RACE INFLUENCE AND DISEASE. 819

" This will-power is utterly beyond the comprehension of us
Westerns, nor can doctors give the complaint a name ; sailors say
they die out of 'pure cussedness.' A Maori will count up the
days he has to live, inform his friends of the fact, and die up to
time ; he calmly lies down and dies without an effort."

So much as regards the course of diseases ; now as to treat-
ment. The most successful means of treating such cases lies in
the use of alcohol, and so unaccustomed are most of these people
to its action that very small doses are required to produce a good
effect. It acts partly by a kind of intoxicating influence, putting
a little energy, or even " devilment/' into them. If administered
with cautious judgment, this support may be kept up until con-
valescence is fairly established, when with returning strength
they realize that destiny means them to survive ; here the ordi-
nary good effects of stimulant treatment are much enhanced by
the previous abstinence.

It is well known how very excitable are these woolly-haired,
thick-lipped, flat-nosed races, the excitement representing the
opposite mental condition to the extreme languid depression of
which I have already spoken. For instance, at the great Mohur-
ram festival at Bombay, which I once witnessed, I noticed that all
the noise and mad dancing and boisterous fanaticism of the night
processions were manifested, not by the natives of India, who
were in a large majority, but by the negroes, their religious fer-
vor and the frenzy born of bhang conspiring to excite them. It is
this sensitiveness to rapid mental change that gives alcohol such
potent virtues with them in sickness.

The natives of our Eastern empire, always excepting the fine
Sikh races, and those living near the northern frontier, than whom
I have never seen finer or braver specimens of mankind, are peo-
ple of poor stamina, and are easily prostrated. Timid and feeble,
they dread the pain of illness, and dislike the thought of death
mostly on account of the ordeal of the dying process. They are
therefore ready, nay, over-anxious for medical treatment, and are
fond of both liniments and physic. But in spite of this they fare
worse than the Europeans in all ordinary diseases ; symptoms
are more severe if less sthenic, prognosis is graver. Some expla-
nation may be found in their habitually poor diet, which leaves
little balance to the credit account in the nutrition of the tissues,
and consequently small resisting power to disease, but more, I
think, belongs to a want of " real grit " among them, a character-
istic racial failing.

For example, a catarrhal condition of the alimentary canal will
pull such a patient down with alarming rapidity, out of all pro-
portion to the other symptoms, and indeed often to a fatal ending.
Stimulants in such cases are, of course, of great use, but not to

820 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the same extent with our Aryan brother as with the Africans.
With small abrasions and ulcers healthy granulations are the
exception, lymphatic abscesses are a frequent result, and belong
to a low phlegmonous type, pyaemia often supervening. Perfo-
rating ulcers of the feet and gangrene about the toes bear evidence
to a poorness of local nutrition, and a low vital tone of some of
the tissues, also shown by the fact that necrosis of bone is a much
more frequent sequela to blows than with hardier nations.

Another point that I have noticed is that minor ailments, such
as coryza, etc., take a much more severe course than that with
which we are acquainted.

Both the Indians and Africans are much less subject to ill
effects from changes of temperature than are Europeans. This
is perhaps to be expected in tropical climates, and may be due to
the excellent way in which their sweat-glands respond to an extra
call upon them, consequent probably on their scantier clothing
and less constant interference with the natural skin-functions.
Also, in spite of their thin cotton garments, sudden and tempo-
rary exposure to a winter climate produces a very small percent-
age of sickness among them, though those who do suffer become
really ill. True, they grow torpid and incapable of much work ;
but, if Europeans were exposed as much as I have seen these
darker races, I feel sure a very much larger proportion of them
would soon be on the sick-list.

Chinese and Japanese make much better patients. They have
faith, want to recover, and endeavor to do so. They are fairly
tractable and obedient, their average constitution is more robust,
and they are not destitute of moral courage ; consequently treat-
ment yields in their case better results.

Among European nations I have been much struck with the
difference in the course of sickness between the Teutonic and the
French people. For instance, I have witnessed the effects of
extreme heat in the Red Sea, through which I passed seven times
in a single year. The phlegmatic German, from sheer stolidity,
stays exposed to the sun until he feels queer, then comes below
and takes a large draught of beer, which, of course, makes him
much worse. His condition soon becomes one of typhoid delirium
bordering on stupor, but he is easily treated, and soon recovers.
Now, look upon the other picture. The fussy Frenchman, from
rank obstinacy, exposes himself to a high temperature, and on
feeling ill becomes at once fearfully alarmed, wants to try every
remedy at once and nothing long, blames every one but himself,
grows noisily delirious, and finally works himself into a state
of extreme exhaustion which materially adds to the gravity of
his case.

The above personal observations have led me to search out

RACE INFLUENCE AND DISEASE. 821

evidence to support my views on the subject, and I now append a
very brief account of what I have found in reference to particu-
lar diseases, specific and otherwise.

Influenza. — Isolation for long periods from other races, as in
the case of insular populations, causes influenza and similar epi-
demics to run a more severe and dangerous course ; witness the
cases of St. Kilda and the Society Islands. An epidemic takes
place when the infecting visitors are afflicted with apparently
only the slightest of colds, while less recent arrivals, if attacked,
suffer far more lightly than do the older inhabitants, though more
so than the visitors themselves. During my stay at Ascension
Island I was told by a resident official that a cold introduced from
a passing vessel runs through the island as a severe epidemic,
necessitating rest in bed and active treatment for several days.
This effect is still more virulent, leading even to fatal results, in
the island of Tristan d'Acunha, where the isolation is much more
complete, and the people are of British origin.

Now, sea- water is by no means the only method of isolation,
and in earlier ages, situation, feuds, and scanty means of locomo-
tion were efficient causes. "When a tendency to a particular com-
plaint becomes increased by long periods of isolation, so that
heredity is able to accentuate any special proneness, one possible
explanation of the origin of pathological racial idiosyncrasies is
afforded.

Dengue. — African races incur this disease much less fre-
quently than do others, and with them it takes a very mild form,
being highly amenable to expectant treatment and simple care.
On the other hand, the natives of India suffer in greater numbers
and much more severely than do Europeans even, and show a
much higher death-rate from it. Now, there are many African
immigrants in India, and vice versa, yet this racial law still holds
good among them, even after some generations.

Small-pox. — Both the negro and the Arab tribes in the Nile
regions of Africa, and also the Aryan races of central Asia, have
from time immemorial suffered cruelly from variola. Vaccina-
tion has lessened the value of comparative statistics on this point,
but the mortality from the disease has been and is positively awful,
complete depopulation sometimes resulting in particular valleys
or islands.

Measles as an epidemic has caused terrible devastation among
insular races, especially in warm climates, assuming a far more
virulent type than that known to Europe, among people less capa-
ble of resisting a panic-creating disease.

Malaria. — Here occur the best instances of acclimatization of
races. Ethiopians are affected less frequently than are other peo-
ples, and with diminished severity. Blonde and blue-eyed Euro-

822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

peans, as with gonorrhoea and some other complaints, furnish the
worst victims. As regards its treatment, quinine has far less effi-
cacy with them than with us, and arsenic is more of a specific
remedy to them, though this depends on the actual variety of the
fever. With the negro, after-effects upon the constitution are
quite exceptional.

Yellow Fever. — Special liability and increased mortality
belong to the light-haired Europeans, and acclimatization is by
no means absolute; yet pure-blooded negroes possess congenital
immunity, which is certainly absent from Redskins, or Hindoo
coolies, though the Chinese are almost exempt.

Cholera. — The African races incur the greatest danger from
this dread disease, dying off without an effort at resistance and
with the greatest rapidity, giving little opportunity for treat-
ment. Europeans and Hindoos, however, provided the latter are
under fair hygienic conditions as to food, etc., suffer very simi-
larly. After a famine the Indians, deprived of all resisting
power, fall ready victims.

Typhoid Fever gives a typical instance of acclimatization of
race through heredity, for in tropical regions the disease is often
completely limited to strangers. During my visit to Jinjeera, off
the Malabar coast, I was informed that the foul water of the large
" tank " is certain death to a European through this fever, and yet
it forms the ordinary drinking-water supply of the crowded inhab-
itants. Among such people mild cases, due probably to the same
poison exerting a much mitigated action, are, however, not infre-
quent. In this instance time has apparently produced a modified
form of the disease by a general protective process of natural
infection, similar in its effects to inoculation, as well as by the all-
pervading action of natural selection and accommodation to envi-
ronment.

Leprosy is well known specially to select tropical races, and
to run a more rapid course with them.

Syphilis punishes negroes of the coast of Africa often and
very viciously. Phagedsena forms an ordinary complication, as
also does bone-disease; and specific treatment has to be pushed
with perseverance. On the other hand, the central Africans are
remarkably exempt, as are also Icelanders and Greenlanders. In
Chinese ports Europeans suffer extremely when compared with
the natives, as if the poison, like other living species, had its
varieties. Perhaps, too, an inherited natural inoculation becomes
a protection to particular races.

Bronchial Catarrh for some reason, it may be carelessness as
to clothing and dwelling, inflicts greater punishment on indige-
nous dark races than on strangers among them, runs a much more
trying course, and is more resistant to therapeutic influence.

SCIENTIFIC JOTTINGS IN EGYPT. 823

•

Pneumonia. — Natives of the tropics, and more especi ally-
negroes, whether at home or abroad, are peculiarly subject to
this acute fever. The death-rate and average of severe cases are
among them exceptionally high.

Phthisis is also remarkably rapid and frequent with these
races when sojourning for many months in cold climates, but less
so with the southern Asiatic. — The Practitioner.

•»»♦■

SCIENTIFIC JOTTINGS IN EGYPT.*

By De. H. CARRINGTON BOLTON.

THE following pages record impressions and observations made
in the spring of 1889, during a brief sojourn in the Nile Val-
ley, and a more deliberate study of the Sinaitic Peninsula. In
discussing one's experience on a journey the weather claims early
notice. In February, at the hotel in Cairo, the thermometer ranged
from 60° at 8 a. m. to 78° at 3 p.m.; but on the Nile steamer much
greater extremes were noted, 54° at midnight (February 19th)
to 87° at 2.30 p. M. (February 9th). In the shade the heat was
rarely oppressive.

The temperature in the desert in March was favorable to the
traveler's comfort, with rare exceptions ; the thermometer ranged
from about G0° to 80° in twenty-four hours at the sea-level, and
from 48° to 75° at the elevation of about five thousand feet.

The highest evening temperature was on March 17th, after the
khamsin had blown all day — at 7 p. m., 84°. The lowest temper-
ature observed was on March 20th, in camp about three thousand
feet above the sea— at 6.30 a. m., 33°. (In February, 1874, Rohlf
noted in the Libyan Desert a minimum temperature of 23°.) In
considering the physiological effects of these temperatures one
must remember the extreme dryness of the atmosphere in the
desert.

My first experience in Egypt was calculated to give the im-
pression that it is a rainy country, for I saw two showers in
three days. In passing through the Suez Canal (January 31st),
a heavy shower, lasting half an hour, drove the passengers to
shelter, and a brilliant rainbow delighted beholders. Two days
later, rain again fell at night in Cairo, making the dirty streets
more nasty still. Of course this experience was exceptional, as
rain is a rarity in Cairo. Authorities give the rainfall at Alex-
andria as about eight inches per annum, and at Cairo about

* Abstract of a paper read to the New York Academy of Sciences, February 24, 1S90,
and condensed by the author from the Transactions, vol. ix, p. 110.

824 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

4

V2 inch, while in Upper Egypt the precipitation of moisture is far
less ; there are adults who say they have never seen rain.

I noticed, on the other hand, unmistakable signs of recent
rains, such as dried mud-puddles, rain-drop prints, etc., at several
points, near Cairo, east of Thebes (Wadi Bab-el-Molook), and in
the peninsula of Sinai, and I was impressed with the belief that
more rain falls in Egypt than is usually supposed. A local
shower passing over a sandy, gravelly region, makes but little
impress on it ; and there is no corps of trained observers, out-
side of Cairo and Alexandria, to record the phenomenon. On
visiting the Khedivial Astronomical Observatory just out of
Cairo, I was cordially received by the director, Mr. T. Esmatt,
a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris, and for three
years an assistant in the Naval Observatory at "Washington.
I take pleasure in mentioning his politeness and courtesy, but I
can not omit pointing out a weakness : he took me to the roof of
the building to see the meteorological instruments, and I noted
that the rain-gauge was quite full of water ; this again gave me
reason to regard Egypt as a rainy country. (The last shower fell
one month previously.)

During my journey in the desert (March 13th to April 8th)
rain fell three times in my vicinity : twice the fall was insignifi-
cant, lasting only two or three minutes, but on March 19th rain
fell abundantly in Wadi Feiran, from 7.15 a. m. to 9.30 a. m.
Heavy mists had obscured the peaks bordering this extensive
valley nearly all the preceding day ; the temperature during this
rainfall was 52°, elevation about nineteen hundred feet.

That heavy falls of rain and even of snow occur in December
and January in the Sinai region, is reported by many travelers ; in
the defile of Nakb-el-Hawi (five thousand feet), crossed by pilgrims
en route for the sacred mountain, the winter rains make veritable
torrents ; in 1867 the water rose to such a height in the valley ad-
joining, Wadi Selaf, as to wash away a camp of Bedouins, causing
a loss of forty lives and of numerous cattle (Baedeker). Captain
Palmer describes also a sudden precipitation so copious as to fill
the bottom of Wadi Feiran to the depth of several feet, causing
the party to seek high ground. That the Oasis of Feiran was
once the site of a village of anchorites and monks sufficiently im-
portant to become an episcopal see, is known to students of his-
tory ; this was in the second to the sixth century a. d. A few cut
stones, the capital of one column, and ruined sites, alone remain
to indicate the locality.

Powerful winds sweep across the plains and through the val-
leys of Arabia Petrsea, with a violence and continuity that I have
not elsewhere experienced. In the spring months the prevail-
ing wind in the desert is from the north and northwest, down

SCIENTIFIC JOTTINGS IN EGYPT. 825

the gulf. This wind is a cool one, but it occasionally veers
around to the south and becomes oppressively hot. In April and
May this south wind, called khamsin, blows unremittingly for
days together, scorching the traveler's skin and filling the orifices
in his head with a very fine dry dust. Khamsin is from an Ara-
bic word meaning fifty, so called from a mistaken notion that it
blows for a period of fifty days before the summer solstice.

In the Nile Valley, north winds prevail during the heated pe-
riod of eight months, and southern winds during the rest of the
year ; these being in the opposite direction from the winds in the
region of the Red Sea.

I witnessed three characteristic sand-storms at localities far
apart and under varied circumstances. On February 15th, when
riding a donkey through Thebes Nileward, a powerful west wind
arose in the afternoon, blowing before it fine dust from the Lib-
yan Desert. Words fail to describe the discomfort of such a sand-
storm ; the fine dust seems able to penetrate everything except
perhaps an unbroken egg, and it is quite impossible to escape
from it ; to prevent suffocation, I borrowed from a fellah a coarse
yet closely woven blue outer garment and wrapped my head up.
Donkeys did not seem to enjoy the phenomenon any better than
the Bedouins, and they shrank from its blast as well as the
travelers. After crossing to Luxor in a boat, we found the resi-
dents in the large hotel much inconvenienced by the pene-
trating dust, although the building is screened by a handsome
garden.

My second experience was in Cairo itself. On March 6th a
northwest, and consequently a cool, wind blew dust from the ad-
joining desert into the city with such power as to obscure the usu-
ally brilliant sun during an entire day. Residents of Cairo said
that the sand-storm was the severest in twenty-five years, and of
an unusual character — being accompanied by a low temperature
instead of the scorching khamsin.

I experienced a third sand-storm in the desert of Sinai, on the
plain of El Markha ; it was accompanied by a scorching south
wind, and the drying effects on the skin and the capital orifices
produced greater discomfort than the suffocating dust and cut-
ting sand ; my party could do nothing but sit in silence on our
camels, facing the storm, and the poor animals forgot to snatch
at the tufts of scanty shrubs, as is their custom. In the evening
the fierce wind very nearly overturned our tents in spite of extra
stays, and at dinner every course was seasoned with the all-pene-
trating dust. The temperature at 7 P. m. was abnormally high,
84° ; just twenty-four hours later it fell to 53°, the wind having
meanwhile veered around to the north, bringing with it heavy
mists.

8 26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Before dismissing the subject of climate, I wish to testify to
the invigorating, delightful air in the desert ; it has a bracing
quality that enables one to expend much energy without fatigue.
From about 1 to 3 p. m. the glare of the sun is often great, and
shade is a comfort ; but the constant breeze, sometimes rather too
strong, tempers the heat. I suspect, too, that the air is very free
from disease-germs.

In the journey from Suez to Sinai by the ordinary caravan
route, one crosses undulating plains, limestone and sandstone
hills, and eventually reaches bold granitic mountains, rising to
the height of eight thousand feet. Each of these regions is fur-
rowed by wadis, or dry water-courses, which present very differ-
ent aspects in the three divisions named. The first fifty-two miles
of the journey, occupying about two days and a half, as camels
travel, cover an arid, sterile plain about ten miles wide from the
low range of limestone hills on the east, Et Tih, to the gulf on the
west. This plain, like that of El Gaa, to the south, rises gradually
from the sea to the foot-hills, and is undulating toward its south-
ern end. It is crossed by broad, shallow wadis, running east and
west, which were perfectly dry at the time of my visit ; Wadi
Werdan, the largest, is depressed but a foot or two below the
level of the plain, and is approximately three miles in width at
about six miles from the point where it enters the sea.

The most extensive plain on the western side of the peninsula
is that of El Gaa, which is about eighty miles long and fifteen
wide at its widest point. From the sea-coast to the mountains
bordering it on the east it rises nearly one thousand feet, but so
gradually as to deceive the eye and appear level. It is crossed by
many shallow wadis, and its northern half is separated from the
sea by a range of limestone hills (Jebel-el-Araba) reaching a
height of sixteen hundred feet. When the plain was covered
by the sea, this range was probably an island, or series of isl-
ands. The plain is rarely broken by hills, the sharp-pointed Kren
Utud, conspicuous from a distance, being an exception. I crossed
the monotonous desolate waste, from the mouth of the beautiful
Wadi Es-Sleh to Tor (or Tur), on the gulf, a distance of about
fifteen miles, and noted scarcely a dozen tufts of plants ; water is
absolutely wanting. North of Tor, however, and east of Jebel-el-
Araba, are palm-gardens that extend for several miles in a narrow
belt ; and these date-bearing trees owe their existence to several
saline springs occurring at intervals, some of which were quite
warm. On this sterile plain the characteristics of a desert are
seen in perfection : the level expanse is not too broad to conceal
the lofty mountains on the east, nor to prevent glimpses of the
blue sea on the western horizon ; the floor is a firm, hard surface,
made up of a compact mixture of gravel and coarse sand, so hard

SCIENTIFIC JOTTINGS IN EGYPT. 827

indeed that camels make no impress on it with their broad feet.
At some places the surface pebbles are of many shades of brown,
intermingled with black and white, and these are so closely laid
and regularly distributed as to resemble a mosaic pavement, but
of course a patternless one. The surface particles are generally
coarser than those immediately beneath ; they are chiefly lime-
stone, sometimes of coralline limestone, intermingled with flint
and other varieties of amorphous quartz. Many of the pebbles
show on their surface beautifully regular pittings and furrows
carved out by the wind -driven sand. The fine-grained sand has
all been lifted high in air by the powerful winds, whirled away,
and dropped into depressions or on the lee sides of hills. Hun-
dreds of acres have no surface stones larger than an ostrich-egg ;
no water whatever is found in this region, much less any signs
of vegetable or animal life, rarely even a passing bird.

On this desolate plain, when overtaken by night, one place
is as good (or bad) as another for pitching the tents, unless
perhaps a small hillock is reached, which may serve as a partial
shelter from the gales that sometimes threaten to overturn the
canvas.

In the region of extensive plains, the wadis, or dried-up water-
courses, being depressed but little, closely resemble them. The
floor of the wadi hardly differs from that of the plain, except
when a torrent has swept before it large bowlders and deposited
them irregularly in its bed. The sorting power of the water,
however, is noticeable, as also the well-defined vertical walls, per-
haps only a few inches deep, excavated at the point of lowest level.
On the margins, too, of the wadis of the plain, and at points pro-
tected from the full force of the winter floods, several varieties of
green shrubs grow in widely separated tufts. I often remarked
mud-cracks, apparently of recent date ; but these indications of
water probably remain undisturbed in this desolate region for a
considerable period, perhaps for several seasons.

In the limestone hills these wadis take the form of canons, hav-
ing nearly vertical walls, sometimes hundreds of feet high — as in
Wadi Tayyibeh. The regular erosion on their sides produces,
often, picturesque effects, as at Ras Abu Zanimeh.

In the granitic district the wadis form V-shaped valleys,
broken by narrower ones entering at right angles, and bounded
by bold peaks many thousand feet above the beholder. In the
beds of these wadis are scattered specimens of the rocks of the
surrounding country ; often bowlders of great size testify to the
violence of the torrents during the winter months, especially in
Wadi Feiran.

The absolute dependence of the population of Egypt upon the
Nile is a familiar fact, discussed from the time of Herodotus to

828 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the present day. The proposed reopening of Lake Mceris in the
Fayoum district, for irrigating the Delta, has been fully explained
to the Academy by one of our members, Mr. F. Cope Whitehouse,
its enthusiastic advocate.

The conditions of occurrence of water in the desert are per-
haps less familiar. Not only is water scarce, but when obtained
a large proportion of it is practically unpotable, being saturated
with saline matter to such an extent that the soil in the vicinity
is white with efflorescent salts of soda, magnesia, and lime. The
" bitter waters " of Marah are not exceptional. The longest jour-
ney that I made without meeting good drinking-water was on the
return from Tor to Suez, a distance of about one hundred and
fifty miles, occupying six and a half days. On this route we
passed a well in Wadi Gharundel where camels and Bedouins
slaked their thirst, and our water-barrel was replenished with
water for washing; but had we not been supplied with sweet
water from the Nile, brought down to Tor on a boat from Suez,
we should have fared badly in this respect. At the time of my
visit all wells were admittedly very low, and in some places en-
tirely dried up ; so I saw the region in its most arid aspect.

Good water, flowing from springs and running short distances
— say a quarter of a mile before sinking into the thirsty soil — is
found in Wadi Feiran and in Wadi Tarfa. In the former place,
many date-palms and even barley-fields make a charming oasis ;
at the latter, palms, canes, and tamarisks line the babbling brook,
as it may truly be named, but the oasis is not extensive. North
of Tor, on the gulf, are flowing springs of warm and saline water,
not very palatable, but admirably adapted to the culture of date-
palms, of which there are many thousands. The best drinking-
water in the region that I have visited is on the flanks of Sinai.
There are four wells within the monastery walls, one without, and
others in the Leja Valley and vicinity.

In Wadi Es-Sleh, the romantic gorge southwest from Sinai, I
discovered a cold and sweet sulphur spring, agreeable to the
palate. It issues in the center of the wadi, at a point two hours'
journey east of its mouth, and flows a short distance, depositing
characteristic bluish sulphur on its borders. It was this latter
that first attracted my attention. This spring is not mentioned in
Baedeker's guide-book, generally so accurate.

The total absence of ponds and lakes is a marked feature in the
physical geography of the peninsula of Sinai. Rain does at times
fall in abundance, but it rushes precipitately down the wadis into
the seas which bound it on two sides. Yet there is evidence of
the existence of lakes at some earlier period. In Wadi Feiran,
banks of earth sixty to one hundred feet high rest on the mount-
ain-sides, especially in the angles of the valley, showing clearly

SCIENTIFIC JOTTINGS IN EGYPT. 829

the former existence of a lake, the barrier of which was probably-
near Hererat. I noticed also, at the point where the Wadi Es-
Sleh enters the plain of El Gaa, unmistakable signs of an ancient
lake. The wadi emerges suddenly from the mountain-range, and
a circular depression from thirty to fifty feet deep, with a per-
fectly level sandy bottom and bounded by nearly vertical gravel
cliffs, now marks the bed of a small lake.

The uninhabitability of the peninsula is due to its sterility
rather than to its climate. Its sterility is due, I imagine, more to
the unequal annual distribution of the water than to its absence,
and, should the population warrant it, storage-dams, easily con-
structed in the narrow granite- walled wadis, would to a great
degree remedy this defect. Perhaps at some future day, when a
crowded world thrusts its surplus population into regions now
hardly regarded as habitable, Arabia Petrsea will bloom like a
garden. Granite and limestone furnish valuable soil -ingre-
dients, and the climate is not unfavorable to semi-tropical culti-
vation.

The flora and fauna of the desert have been often described,
yet I imagine that much remains to be studied ; the variety,
beauty, and fragrance of the shrubs and flowers which the trav-
eler meets in the most forbidding and unexpected spots were to
my unprepared mind a remarkable feature. In March I gath-
ered dandelions and daisies at Wadi Useit, also "butter and
eggs " ; in Wadi Tayyibeh, near saline water, spearmint ; and in
Wadi Feiran, on the hillsides, sorrel.

The oases with their date-palms, tarfa (or tamarisk) yielding
manna, seydl (or acacia) yielding gum arabic, gharkad shrubs,
and thickets of tall reeds, are veritable islands of fertility in
an ocean of desolation. At the monastery, cypresses, oranges,
peaches, and vines are cultivated, although five thousand feet
above the sea-level.

Naturalists enumerate a number of large animals that live in
the oases of the desert, among them the gazelle, ibex, jackal, and
fox. I met with the head of a gazelle and numerous horns of
ibexes, and in Wadi Es-Sleh a Bedouin suddenly appeared with
two little half-tamed ibexes about fourteen days old ; my travel-
ing companion bought them, but they were unable to withstand
the novelty of camel-riding, and, though kindly cared for, died
within a few days. Their skins were preserved. I noted on the
journey a large field-mouse, a small light-yellow snake two and a
half feet long, and a peculiar kind of lizard (?). At Assouan I
killed an intensely energetic scorpion, and at many places noted
chameleons basking in the sun. Of the numerous and curious
fish in the Red Sea, I can only say that some of them proved to
be excellent food.

830 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Insects were rarely seen in the desert, and only in the neigh-
borhood of water, or in the oases. I observed red and black ants,
one large caterpillar, very few flies, many black beetles leaving
behind them well-defined tracks as they crawled over the fine-
grained sand, a few moths, a bee, a grasshopper, many spiders, a
lady-bug (so called), gnats near the sea-coast, and my traveling
companion noted fleas. Mosquitoes, so abundant in CairOi were
not seen nor heard. Twice large birds sailed high above our
heads. This is the total of animal life met with in my four weeks'
journey, excepting camels, goats, one lamb (which we ate), one
donkey (at Tor), a dozen cats (at the monastery), several Bedou-
ins, two Russian ladies, two German philologists, two Irish the-
ologians, three enterprising Americans, and twenty -nine lazy
monks.

WHALE-CATCHING AT POINT BARROW.

By JOHN MURDOCH.

ALL through the latter part of the winter the seal - hunters,
-£-*- who are out every day tending their nets, along the shore
from Cape Smyth to Point Barrow, have been watching and
studying the ice. Running along nearly parallel to the shore
and about a thousand yards off, is a bar on which the water is
not more than two or three fathoms deep. On this the heavy
pack-ice, coming in with the autumn gales, usually grounds, piling
itself up into a wall of rugged masses of ice, while inshore the
sea freezes over smooth and level. Outside of this is the rough
pack, broken masses of ice piled up in irregular heaps like the
craggy fragments on a frost-riven mountain-top, but interspersed
with undulating fields of ice, many seasons old, and thick enough
to resist the pressure when the ice-fields come together before the
winds and currents. Occasionally, too, the grounding of heavy
masses of ice — there are no true icebergs in this part of the Arctic
Ocean — affords sheltered spaces where fields of "new ice" can
form undisturbed by the movements of the pack.

Through January, February, and March these ice-fields re-
main motionless, or are only crushed closer together and pressed
harder upon the land by the prevailing westerly gales ; but in
April the pack gradually begins to loosen, and when the long-
wished-for east wind blows, cracks open six or seven miles from
the shore, extending often for miles, parallel to the land. These
cracks or " leads," as they are called, seldom remain the same for
many days, but open and close as the wind changes, now spread-
ing clear of all obstructions for hundreds of yards or even for a
mile in width, now filled with loose ice, floating with the current.

WHALE-CATCHING AT POINT BARROW. 831

It is in these leads of open water that the whales work their way
to their unknown breeding grounds in the northeast, passing by
Point Barrow chiefly during the months of May and June, and
it is during this season of migration that they are hunted by the
Eskimos.

The chase of the whale is of great importance to these people. .
The capture of one of these monsters means meat in abundance ;
blubber for the lamps, and for trade with the Eskimos whom
they meet in the summer ; whalebone to purchase ammunition ;
tools and luxuries from the ships ; and the choicest morsel that an
Eskimo knows, the " black-skin " or epidermis of the whale. Con-
sequently, the successful whaleman is the best man in the vil-
lage, and soon grows rich and influential.

But to return to the seal -hunters and their observations of the
ice. From long experience, the Eskimos are able to judge pretty
accurately where the " leads " will first open in the spring, and,
when they have concluded where the boats will be launched, they
set to work to select the best path for dragging out the boats
through the rough ice-field. They soon make a regular beaten
trail, winding in and out among the hummocks, taking advantage
of all the smooth fields of ice that they can, and, from time to
time as they pass back and forth from their seal-nets, they chip
off projecting corners of ice with their ice-picks, and with the
same implement widen out the narrow defiles in the road, and
smooth off the roughest places. Men sometimes go out on pur-
pose to work for a few hours on the road, using ice-picks or
" whale-spades " (something like a heavy, broad chisel, mounted on
a long pole, used for cutting the blubber off a whale), which they
have obtained from the white men. It is a pretty rough path,
however, at the best.

By the middle of April all the hunters have returned from
the winter deer-hunt, and the business of getting ready for whal-
ing is taken seriously in hand. The frames of the great skin
boats must be taken down from the scaffolds where they have
rested all winter, and carefully overhauled and repaired, while
every article of wood that will be used in whaling, from the
timbers of the boat to the shafts of the spears and harpoons,
must be scraped perfectly clean, in honor of the noble quarry.
Gear must be looked to, and the skin covers for the boats re-
paired and soaked in the sea, through holes in the ice cut close
to the shore, till they are soft enough to stretch over the frame-
work.

. Meanwhile, a careful watch is kept from the village cliff for
the dark cloud to seaward which indicates open water ; and if the
much-talked-of east wind does not speedily begin to blow, the
most skillful of the wizards or medicine-men get out on the bluff,

832 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and with magic songs and beating of drums do their best to make
it come.

It is not every man in the village who owns an umiak that
fits it out for whaling, as it requires a good deal of property to
procure the necessary outfit. About eight or ten boats from each
village make up the usual fleet. The crews — eight or ten men to
a boat — are made up during the winter.

The owner of the boat — who is always the captain and steers-
man— sometimes hires his crew outright, paying them with to-
bacco or cartridges or other goods, and sometimes allows them a
share in the profits, but, I believe, always feeds them while the
boat is " in commission." When enough men for a full crew can
not be secured, women and even half-grown lads take their places
in the boat. One man is selected for harpooner and posted in the
bow, and usually another, amidships, has charge of a whaleman's
bomb-gun, for firing an explosive lance into the whale, for most
of the rich Eskimo whalemen now own these guns.

Now, as to the instruments used for the capture of the whale.
Instead of harpooning the whale, or " fastening " to him, as the
white whalemen say, and keeping the end of the line fast in the
boat, which the whale is made to drag about till the crew can
manage to haul up and lance him to death, there is but a short
line attached to each harpoon, to the end of which are fastened
two floats made of whole seal-skins, inflated, which are thrown
overboard as soon as the harpoon is fixed in the whale. Each
boat carries four or five harpoons, and several boats crowd round
and endeavor to attach these floats to the whale every time he
comes to the surface, until he can dive no longer, and lies upon
the water ready for the death-stroke. Some of the harpoons are
regular whalemen's "irons," but they still also use their own
ingenious harpoons, in which the head, made of bone or walrus
ivory, with a point of stone or metal set into it, is alone fastened
to the line, and is contrived so as to " unship " from the shaft as
soon as it is thrust into the whale, and to turn at right angles to
the line, like a toggle, under the skin. To kill the whale after he
is harpooned, they used in old times long lances, with beautifully
flaked flint heads, as broad as one's hand ; but now they all have
regular steel whale lances, and, as I have said before, most of
them own bomb-guns.

Some of the boats are carried out over the ice to the place where
they are to be launched before the " lead " opens, and, as soon as
open water is reported by the scouts, all start. There is a great deal
of ceremony and superstition connected with the whale-fishery.
The captain and harpooner of each boat wear special trappings,
and streak their faces with black-lead, as, indeed, is often done on
festive occasions. Long before the time for whaling, all those

WHALE-CATCHING AT POINT BARROW. 833

who intend to command whaling boats during the coming season
assemble, with all their gear, in the public room and hold a
solemn ceremony, with drumming and singing, to insure good
luck. Charms and amulets of many kinds are carried in the
boats. They believe that the whales are supernaturally sensitive.
If the women should sew while the boats are out, or the men
hammer on wood, the whales, they say, would leave the region in
disgust. .

Let us see, now, how the boats are carried out over the path I
have described. The boat is firmly lashed on a flat sledge, to
which a team of dogs is attached, while the men and women hold
on to the sides of the boat, pushing and guiding. Hearing, one
day in May, 1882, that one of the Cape Smyth boats was starting
for the edge of the ice, two of us set out over the trail, and over-
took the party about two miles from the shore, where they were
resting, having sent the dogs ahead 'in charge of two women, with
another sledge loaded with all sorts of gear — rifles, spears, and so
on. The party consisted of five men and two women. The cap-
tain of the boat and the harpooner wore on their heads fillets of
the light-colored skin of the mountain sheep, from which dangled
on each side a little image of a whale, rudely flaked from rock-
crystal or jasper. The captain's head-dress was fringed with the
incisor teeth of the mountain sheep, and the harpooner had an-
other stone whale on his breast. One of the women was deco-
rated with a stripe of black-lead diagonally across her face. In
the boat, for charms, were two wolves' skulls, the dried skin of a
raven, a seal's vertebra, and several bunches of eagle's feathers.
They say the skin of the golden eagle — " the great bird " — or a
bunch of hairs from the tip of the tail of a red fox, bring great
luck. In the boat were also five or six inflated seal-skins, which,
when we came up, they were using for seats on the ice.

One of the women soon came back with the dogs, the seal-skin
floats were tossed into the boat, the dogs hitched up, and we
started ahead, the woman leading the dogs, and the men shoving
alongside. When we came up with the first sledge, the dogs were
unhitched from the boat and sent ahead with a load of gear for
another stage, and so on. On smooth ice the boat travels easily
and rapidly ; but where it is broken it is hard shoving and rough
scrambling for the men, while occasional stops have to be made
to chisel out projecting pieces of ice and widen narrow places in
the path. Then the dogs get tangled up from time to time, and
have to be kicked apart, so that their progress on the whole is
slow. When they reach the open water the boat is launched and
the gear put on board, and the sledges drawn up out of the way.
Everything is put in readiness for chasing the whales, and the
boats begin patrolling the open water. The harpoon, with the
vol. xxxviii. — 58

834 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

floats attached, rests in a crotch of ivory lashed to the bow of the
boat, and everybody is on the alert. Sails and oars are never
used in the boat when whaling, but the boat is propelled by pad-
dles alone.

Thus they spend the months of May and June, eating and
sleeping when they can, for the daylight now lasts through the
twenty-four hours, occasionally hauling the boat up to the edge
of the ice for a rest. Somebody, however, is always on the watch
for whales or seals or ducks, which last now and then at this
season pass by in thousands on their way to the north.

When the " leads " close, the boats are hauled up safely on the
ice, and all hands come home till an east wind and " water sky "
warn them of a fresh chance for whaling.

Let us suppose that there is good open water, and that a couple
of boats are hauled up on the edge of the land floe, their crews
resting and gossiping, perhaps waiting for the return of the
women who have been sent home to the village for food. Sud-
denly a faint puffing sigh is heard, and a little puff of vapor is
seen over toward the edge of the ice. It is a whale " blowing."
The men all spring to their feet and quickly run the boats off
into the water, and, scrambling on board, grasp their paddles and
are off in the direction of the "blow." If they are lucky enough
to reach the whale before he escapes, the harpooner, standing up,
thrusts the heavy harpoon into him with both hands, and quickly
recovers the pole, to be used again. The nearest boat rushes in ;
other boats, seeing what is going on, come up and join in the at-
tack until the whale is captured. Sometimes, indeed, an oppor-
tunity occurs for a successful shot with the bomb-gun as soon as
the whale is struck, and the contest is ended at once. But the
attack is not always so successful. Sometimes the whale escapes
into the loose ice before the boats can reach him ; sometimes the
harpooner is clumsy, or the harpoon does not hold. Sometimes,
too, the whale escapes before enough floats can be attached to
him to hamper him, and carries off the harpoons, floats and all.
Even if the whale is killed, he sometimes sinks before he can
be towed to the edge of the ice, where the " cutting in " is to
be done.

When the " lead " of open water is narrow, the natives who
own bomb-guns patrol the edge of the ice, watching an oppor-
tunity to shoot the whales as they pass. It was when engaged in
this kind of hunting that a young acquaintance of ours at Cape
Smyth came near losing his life. A man near him, handling his
bomb-gun carelessly — the Eskimos are all frightfully reckless
with fire-arms — discharged it by accident, sending the bomb into
the ice under his feet, where it exploded, shaking him up like a
small earthquake.

WHALE-CATCHING AT POINT BARROW. 835

"When the whale is killed, it is towed, as I have said, to the
edge of the solid floe, and the work of cutting him np begins.
By long-established custom, universal among the Eskimos, the
skin, blubber, and flesh of a whale belong to the whole commu-
nity, no matter who killed it ; but, at Point Barrow, the whale-
bone must be equally divided among all the boats that were in
sight when the whale was killed.

They have none of the appliances used by civilized whalemen
for easily and rapidly stripping off all the blubber, but hack
away at everything in reach, getting off all they can before the
carcass sinks. The news soon reaches the villages that a whale has
been killed, and there are very few households that do not send a
representative to the scene of action as speedily as they can, with
sledges and dogs to bring away their share of the spoils. As may
be supposed, there is a lively scramble round the carcass. Some
on the ice, some crowding the boats, they cluster round the whale
like flies round a honey-pot. Leaning over the edge of the boats,
careless of the water, they hack and cut and slash with whale-
spades and knives, each trying to get the most he can. So far as
I have ever heard, this is a perfectly good-natured scramble, and no
one ever thinks of stealing from another's pile on the ice. The
blubber, meat, " blackskin," and whalebone are soon carried home
to the village. The blubber is not tried out, but is packed away
in bags made of whole seal-skins, and, with the meat, is stowed
away in little underground chambers, of which there are many
in the villages.

The " blackskin " is eaten fresh, and is seldom if ever cooked.
This curious dainty is the epidermis or cuticle of the whale. It
is about an inch thick, and looks, for all the world, like black
India rubber ; it is not so tough, however. Civilized whalemen
are nearly as fond of it as the Eskimos, but are not in the habit of
eating it raw. When nicely fried in the fresh, sweet oil of the
" try-pots," when they are " boiling out " the blubber of a whale,
for instance, it is very palatable, tasting much like fried pigs'
feet. It is also good boiled and " soused " with vinegar and spices.
The Eskimos are fond, too, of the tough white gum round the
roots of the whalebone.

The jawbones of the whale are cut out and preserved. From
these and from the ribs are sawed out strips of bone for shoeing
the runners of the sledges. In fact, everything that can be cut
off from the whale, before the carcass sinks or is carried off by
the current, serves some useful purpose.

The most favorable time for whaling is when there is a con-
tinuous " lead " of open water, not more than a couple of hundred
yards wide, with a solid pack of ice beyond it. Then the whales
must pass up within sight or hearing of the boats. When the

836 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

open water is very wide> the whales may pass at a distance un-
noticed, or so far off that it is impossible for a boat to overtake
them.

If there is much loose ice, the crafty animals take advantage of
it, and come up to breathe at little holes among the floes where a
boat can not reach them.

As the season advances, the whales grow scarcer, and the
whalemen relax their vigilance and pay more attention to the
capture of seals, which they shoot through the head when they
rise near the boat, securing them with light harpoons before they
have time to sink. At this season, also, the whale-boats some
times capture walrus and white whales.

At length several days pass without a whale being seen, and
one by one the crews give up looking for them and bring home
their boats, until by the first of July the whaling is over for the
year, the boats are all in, and everybody is preparing to leave the
village for the summer excursions.

♦»»

SKETCH OF DANIEL GARRISON BRINTON.

Br Dr. CHAKLES C. ABBOTT.

A FEW years prior to the widely spread interest in American
archeology that is now taken, there was published in Phila-
delphia a small duodecimo volume of two hundred pages entitled
Notes on the Floridian Peninsula, concerning which its author
states in his preface, " The present little work is the partial result
of odd hours spent in the study of the history ... of the penin-
sula of Florida/' A " little " book, in one sense, it is true, but far
from it in all others, and it remains to-day our best resume of the
archeeology of that wonderful peninsula. The author of this vol-
ume, but twenty-two years old at the time of its appearance, is
the subject of the present sketch— Daniel Garrison Brinton.

Dr. Brinton was born May 13, 1837, at Thornbury, Chester
County, Pa., and is of English descent on both the paternal and
maternal side. His ancestor, William Brinton, came from Shrop-
shire, where the family had lived for many generations. He be-
came an early member of the Society of Friends, and emigrated
to the colony of Pennsylvania in 1G84. His descendants have
generally continued their attachment to Quakerism.

The life-long interest which he has taken in the study of the
American Indians may have been owing to the fact that on his
father's farm was a " village site " of some ancient encampment
of the Delaware Indians. Many a day of his boyhood was passed
in collecting from this and similar localities the broken arrow-

SKETCH OF DANIEL GARRISON BRINTON. 837

points, the stone axes, and the fragments of pottery which marked
the presence of this older and mysterious race. The study of
McClintock's Antiquarian Researches, a now almost forgotten
volume, fixed and expanded this taste. The work, however, to
which he attributes beyond all others a formative influence on his
youthful tastes was Humboldt's Cosmos, the English translation
of which by Colonel Sabine was his favorite reading at the age of
fifteen and sixteen. The poetic hues in which this great master
knew how to garb the dry facts of science, and the wonderful
skill with which he developed the intimate relationship of lower
and inorganic existence to the thoughts, aspirations, and destiny
of man, stimulate the imagination with the force of a great epic.

Dr. Brinton graduated at Yale College in 1858, and studied
medicine in the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, where
he took the degree of M. D. in 1860. After a year, spent chiefly
at Paris and Heidelberg, he was recalled by the events of the war
and entered the army as Surgeon of United States Volunteers.
After serving in the field as Medical Director of the Eleventh
Army Corps, he was sent to Quincy and Springfield, 111., as super-
intendent of hospitals, where he remained until the close of the
war. In 1867 he was tendered the position of editor of the Medi-
cal and Surgical Reporter, at that time the only weekly medical
journal in Philadelphia. This position he held uninterruptedly
until 1887.

In 1884 he was appointed Professor of Ethnology at the
Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and in 1886 Pro-
fessor of American Linguistics and Archaeology in the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania. At both the institutions named he deliv-
ers a course of lectures every winter, which are highly appre-
ciated by the public, as the numbers attending them attest. His
subject-matter, being both ethnologic and archaeologic, necessa-
rily covers an enormous field ; but Brinton very successfully ex-
ercises the faculty of conciseness, yet never at the expense of
lucidity.

Dr. Brinton's contributions to scientific literature began, as
already stated, in 1859, when he published The Floridian Penin-
sula, its Literary History, Indian Tribes, and Antiquities, the re-
sult of some months' travel in that State. His next work of im-
portance was The Myths of the New World : a Treatise on the
Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America (New
York, 1868; second edition, 1876). Other volumes which have
appeared from his pen are The Religious Sentiment, its Source
and Aim : a Contribution to the Science of Religion (New York,
1876) ; American Hero Myths : a Study in the Native Religions
of the Western Continent (Philadelphia, 1882); Essays of an
Americanist (Philadelphia, 1890); Races and Peoples; Lectures

838 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the Science of Ethnography (New York, 1890) ; and has no-w-
in press a work entitled The American Race ; a Linguistic Classi-
fication and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of
North and South America. It is the first attempt ever made to
classify all the Indian tribes by their languages, and it also treats
of their customs, religions, physical traits, arts, antiquities, and
traditions. The work comprises the results of several years of
study in this special field.

Of the ethnological papers by Dr. Brinton the National
Legend of the Chahta-Muskokee Tribes, Notes on the Codex
Troano, The Lineal Measures of the Semi-civilized Nations of
Mexico and Central America, On the Xinca Indians of Guatemala,
and The Books of Chilan Balam, are specially prominent, as are
the strictly archaeological papers, such as The Probable Nation-
ality of the Mound-builders, in which the author favors the
theory that the mound-builders of the Ohio Valley were of the
same race as the Choctaws, and probably their ancestors ; On the
Cuspidiform Petroglyphs, or Bird-track Sculpture of Ohio ; and
the later Review of the Data for the Prehistoric Chronology of
America. Dr. Brinton has given attention, too, to folk-lore, as a
subject worthy of scientific treatment, and published The Journey
of the Soul, a comparative study of Aztec, Aryan, and Egyptian
mythology, and also The Folk Lore of Yucatan.

This goodly list, of which any scientific worker might well be
proud, if the results of a long life, by no means covers the ground
of Brinton's scientific and literary activity. He has been both
publisher and editor of the Library of Aboriginal American Lit-
erature, of which eight volumes have appeared, six of which are
edited by Brinton. The titles, given in order of their publication,
are: The Chronicles of the Mayas, The Comedy-Ballet of Gue-
giience, The Lenape* and their Legends, The Annals of the Cak-
chiquels, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry, and The Rig Veda Americanus.
These works are all of unquestionable merit, notwithstanding
they have been subjected to considerable adverse criticism. This
is not to be wondered at, as works of this character, if edited in a
pronounced manner, by one having strong opinions that are
plainly expressed, are sure to meet with some opposition, which
reflects, however, nothing upon the skill with which they are
edited, and is, we hold, a pretty certain indication of their value
as contributions to knowledge. Were further testimony to this
wanting, it is shown in the fact that this series obtained for its
author the prize medal of the SociCte* Ame'ricaine de France ; this
being the only instance in which it has been decreed to an Ameri-
can writer.

In linguistics Dr. Brinton has published during the past
two decades, Grammar of the Choctaw Language, by Rev. Cyrus

SKETCH OF DANIEL GARRISON BRINTON. 839

Byington, edited by Brinton ; Contributions to a Grammar of the
Muskogee Language ; The Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yuca-
tan, describing Lauda's so-called Maya alphabet; The Arawack
Language of Guiana, in which the author shows that the nations
of the Bahamas and Antilles at the discovery were of the Ara-
wack stock ; this essay contains an analysis of the primitive lan-
guage of Hayti On the Language of the Natchez, wherein the
writer identifies the language of the Natchez as largely a dialect
of the Chahta-Muskokee family ; the Names of the Gods, an exe-
getical study of the Popol Vuh, or national book of the Quiches
of Guatemala ; A Grammar of the Cakchiquel Language of Gua-
temala ; American Languages and why we should study them ;
The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as set forth by
Wilhelm von Humboldt, with the translation of an unpublished
memoir by hiin, on the American verb; On Polysynthesis and
Incorporation ; Notes on the Manque, an extinct dialect formerly
spoken in Nicaragua; The Taensa Grammar and Dictionary, in
which are shown the fraudulent claims of the alleged Taensa
language, introduced by Parisot ; The Study of the Nahuatl Lan-
guage ; The Phonetic Elements in the Graphic System of the
Mayas and Mexicans ; The Conception of Love in some American
Languages; On the Ikonomatic Method of Phonetic "Writing;
and, in 1889, associated with Rev. Albert Seqaqkind Anthony was
issued a Lenapd-English Dictionary, based upon a manuscript of
the last century, preserved in the Moravian church at Bethle-
hem, Pa.

In general linguistics he has contributed several papers to the
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society on the possi-
bility of an international scientific tongue, the chief arguments in
which were summed up in a pamphlet published in 1889 on the
Aims and Traits of a World-Language.

In the great conflict between scientific thought and religious
dogma, Dr. Brinton has always occupied a pronounced position.
His volume on the Religious Sentiment begins by an absolute re-
jection of the supernatural as such, and explains all expressions
of religious feeling as the results of familiar physical and mental
laws. These opinions he further emphasized in an address on
Giordano Bruno, published in 1890, a philosopher to whose the-
ories he had paid considerable attention in early life.

While singularly devoid of taste or faculty for music — which
may perhaps be attributed to six generations of Quaker ancestry
— Dr. Brinton has always cherished an ardent love of poetry. He
is Vice-President of and a frequent contributor to the Browning
Society of Philadelphia, which numbers nearly seven hundred
members ; he is also a friend and disciple of Walt Whitman, and
has published an essay explaining his eccentric versifications.

840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In November, 1889, the Archaeological Association of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania was organized, and Dr. Brinton at once
became a leading spirit in its councils, and by personal labor and
influence materially advanced its progress. The formation of a
museum is necessarily slow work, and too often fails through
misdirected energy ; but this has not been the fate of the under-
taking in question. Looking upon such a museum as valuable in
proportion to its collections being the result of exploration intelli-
gently conducted, Brinton insisted, from the Very outset, that by
such means, rather than by the purchase of collections or single
specimens, should the work be carried on. His wise counsel has
prevailed, and as material for the illustration of archaeological
lectures, the university now possesses hundreds of objects of
which every available fact with reference to their history is
known.

Dr. Brinton's scientific work covers so broad a field that it is
difficult for any one person to follow him wheresoever he leads ;
but if it be a safe guide to accept the general trend of criticism
among archaeologists, ethnologists, and those learned in linguistic
lore, he has touched upon no subject without throwing light
thereon, and to-day, still young in years and vigorous both of
mind and body, is preparing for further labors. American sci-
ence and American letters may be proud of such a worker, for
his position, both as a scientist and a litterateur, is no uncer-
tain one.

Besides the two positions that he holds in Philadelphia, to
which reference has been made, Dr. Brinton is President of the
American Folk-lore Society and of the Numismatic and Anti-
quarian Society of Philadelphia ; member of the Anthropological
Societies of Berlin, and Vienna, and of the Ethnographical Socie-
ties of Paris and Florence ; of the Royal Society of Antiquaries,
Copenhagen ; the Royal Academy of History of Madrid ; the
American Philosophical Society, the American Antiquarian So-
ciety, etc.

The aboriginal race of Tasmania, of which only a single survivor remains — if
she be really of pure blood, which is doubted — was one of peculiar interest, for it
continued down to our own times at a degree of culture hardly equal to that of
the palaaolithic flint-workers. The making of rude stone implements and of bas-
kets were almost the only arts they possessed. They made fire by the stick and
drill ; for ornaments they had strings of shell ; and for weapons only the spear
and the waddy. Their huts were slight, and they had no knowledge of agriculture.
Dr. Tylor says that their life may give some idea of the conditions of the earliest
prehistoric tribes of the Old World, except that they had a milder climate than the
others and no large animals, and were in some arts rather below them. All the
information respecting these people has been collected by Mr. H. Ling Roth for
his book upon them.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

841

EDITOR'S TABLE.

KOCH'S CONSUMPTIOK-CURE.

THE very great importance of the
subject of the cure of consump-
tion, the enormous extent of the mal-
ady and its great fatality, would natu-
rally be the means of attracting univers-
al attention to any remedy which was
supposed to possess curative powers
over it. To one who is familiar with
the writings of Koch on this subject it
need not be said that he is not properly
to be held responsible for the exagger-
ated ideas which have been received of
the efficacy of the new agent ; nor, in-
deed, are any of the numerous scientific
men who have carefully observed its ef-
fects in different countries. But many
visionary persons in the medical pro-
fession, and many not in it, became im-
bued early with the impression that
there had at last been found a means of
working miracles. Moreover, a few de-
signing and unscrupulous doctors inten-
tionally aided, to a slight extent, in the
propagation of this idea; but probably
the most generally operative cause of
the exaggerated notions that have ob-
tained with regard to the potency of the
new remedy lies in the popular inclina-
tion toward a belief in the supernatural.
People who wish to be deceived often
begin by unintentionally endeavoring to
deceive themselves.

That the public should derive an
idea of the potency for good of this
remedy far beyond what Koch has ever
claimed for it, or what any experience
with it would warrant, is not surpris-
ing— such has often been the case be-
fore with new and relatively untried
remedies. Not only the public, but the
doctors, are often deceived by the her-
alding of new cures. It is but a few
years since the benzoate of soda was
published by reputable physicians in
high places in Austria as a means of
curing consumption. Medical literature
teemed with accounts of its powers for

a few months, and then it sank rapidly
into oblivion. A few years later there
came to us from the Riviera most start-
ling accounts of cures of consumption
and various other pulmonary diseases
by means of the introduction into the
blood of sulphureted hydrogen dissolved
in carbonic acid. These accounts were
most circumstantial, and the truth of
them was vouched for by several men
of good standing in the medical profes-
sion. So brilliant were the results
claimed that the method of treatment
soon became common. Many doctors
tried it in many cities, and after a fluctu-
ating existence of a few months the
Bergeon treatment, as it was called,
quietly died and was decently interred
among many other therapeutic proced-
ures that had once had their day. Some
years ago the world was startled by the
assertion that in South America a cure for
cancer had been found in the bark of a
climbing plant called condurango. The
sensation created by this announcement
is remembered by many doctors who are
still young. It was tried in that year
here and in various European capitals,
and was discarded as inert and useless.
Condurango was then supposed to be
dead as a therapeutic agent beyond all
possibility of revival, when suddenly the
serenity of the medical world was again
rudely shocked by a publication which
emanated from the Professor of Medi-
cine in the University of Heidelberg,
two years later, in which he reported
the cure of a cancer of the stomach by
the use of this drug. Since then evi-
dence has accumulated to show that
condurango does seem to possess a cura-
tive power in some forms of cancer
of the stomach ; but it is known to
be inert as regards cancer elsewhere.
It would be easy to adduce evidence in
favor of the importance of receiving
encomiums upon new and marvelous
cures with the utmost caution.

842

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It can not yet be said that the exact
status of Koch's remedy is fixed ; nor can
we even yet say with certainty that this
much-heralded cure is destined to sur-
vive among established methods at all.
The most that is claimed for it by its
most ardent advocates is that it seems
capable of depriving the bacillus of the
material in which it thrives best — i. e.,
of disintegrating and destroying tuber-
culous tissue. There has been no claim
that it has any direct effect upon the
existence of the bacillus, nor that it,
having deprived the bacillus of its food,
tends in any way to remove that para-
site from the body, and thus to elimi-
nate the possible source of danger of
subsequent or more general infection.
Under its influence in some forms of
local tuberculosis — especially of the
6kin — it has been shown that tissue
which was of the very lowly organized
variety characteristic of the disease has
been at first in part and then wholly
replaced by a tissue of higher organiza-
tion, and one that is likely to be per-
manent.

In regard to tuberculosis of the
lungs, there can be no question that im-
provement in the patient's general con-
dition and also evidence of improve-
ment at the site of the disease have
followed the use of this remedy. The
general improvement manifests itself
by a gain in weight, lessening of fever,
increased appetite, better sleep. The
local improvement is surmised from cer-
tain changes to be observed by auscul-
tation and percussion, together with a
diminution in the severity of the cough
and in the amount of the expectoration,
and also a diminution in the number of
the bacilli in the expectoration or their
complete disappearance from it. This
has not always been the case. In not
a few instances no improvement has
resulted, and in other cases direct and
most damaging results, including haem-
orrhage and even death, have been
brought about by it. In the treatment
of tuberculosis of the bones and joints

results seem to have been widely differ-
ent. It is certain that some cases have
been benefited, and equally certain that
others have not.

Quite startling testimony to the pos-
sible causation of bad effects in a mis-
cellaneous group of cases has recently
been adduced in Berlin. This testimony
is in the shape of the results of twenty-
one autopsies made by Prof. Virchow
of the bodies of patients who had been
treated by Koch's fluid. Of these
twenty-one cases sixteen were cases of
consumption in the ordinary sense —
that is, cases in which the disease was
either wholly or chiefly in the lungs.
The others included bone disease,
chronic pleurisy, and tubercular menin-
gitis. Some of the diseased changes
described in important tissues and or-
gans— in the lungs, heart, brain, intes-
tines, and elsewhere, which can be di-
rectly ascribed to the influence of the
" lymph " — make one feel that the rem-
edy is quite as potent for evil as it is for
good. Some of these effects were very
disastrous in their results, even though
the cases had, as a rule, been carefully
selected by competent physicians as be-
ing appropriate subjects for the new
treatment. Virchow shows how the
process of consumption in the lungs can
be made to spread and involve greater
areas by the gradual loosening of masses
of tubercular tissue from their original
sites and their transference elsewhere.
He shows how the disease in the larynx
can be caused to take a sudden and very
serious turn in consequence of the local
swelling produced by the treatment.
This may be so great as to prevent the
entrance of air to the lungs, and cause
death at once by suffocation. He shows
how a fresh eruption of tubercles may
be caused by it, and demonstrates their
presence in the coverings of the brain
and of the heart and elsewhere. He
explains these occurrences by the hy-
pothesis that the new remedy is capablo
of disturbing a localized tubercular focus
and setting free the virus of the diseaso

EDITOR'S TABLE.

843

under such circumstances that it is ca-
pable of disseminating tubercle in otber
parts. He also shows tbat it is capable
of causing intense congestion and haem-
orrhage. Virchovv is not the only critic
of Koch's method, though he is the most
prominent one. Others in Berlin and
elsewhere have related cases in which
the disease extended while the patients
were under treatment.

No one who has tried it carefully at
all questions its powers ; but the most
competent observers agree that its gener-
al or indiscriminate employment would
be most unsafe. Furthermore, compe-
tent observers here have concluded that,
even though the cases be selected ever
so carefully, if the dose of the fluid be
not most accurately adjusted to the con-
dition of each individual case, serious
general disturbances may be caused and
local changes at the site of the diseased
tissue may be so marked as to produce
dangerous results. These results are
among those described by Virchow as
due to the sudden dislodgment of tu-
bercular masses in the lungs of such
large size that they can not be coughed
up, and their falling into more depend-
ent places in the lungs and becoming
lodged there and giving rise to new iu-
fection which may develop rapidly.

On the whole, it seems fair to say
that before conclusive results can be ob-
tained in the treatment of so chronic a
disease as consumption time must elapse
— time measured by months or years —
before the present method can be said
to have been thoroughly tried and as-
signed to its definite place in the thera-
peutic armamentarium. It may be a boon
to mankind in comparison with which
vaccination is a trifle; and it may yet
be relegated to the dimly lighted region
where rest many once promising meth-
ods whose day is long since forgotten.
Meanwhile the treatment of consump-
tion is by no means hopeless without
Koch's fluid. Exactly the kind of cases
that are doubtless often capable of be-
ing benefited by it have long since been

known to be greatly improved and often
cured by hygienic and dietetic treat-
ment. It is within the experience of
the writer that several such cases have
been permanently cured at the Saranac
sanitarium in the Adirondacks when
they seemed to be gravely ill and after
they had developed some of the symp-
toms which are usually regarded as
most alarming. Many other equally
good resorts are to be found in elevated
regions in different parts of the country.
Many cases that are not permanently
cured in these mountainous regions are
greatly improved, so that life may be
indefinitely prolonged if one is willing
to make his home considerably above
sea level. It is a matter of common ex-
perience to every pathologist to find in
the bodies of people who die from wide-
ly different causes, often in those who
die from surgical injuries or accidents,
perfectly unmistakable evidence of con-
sumption. Old tubercular deposits in
the upper parts of the lungs are exceed-
ingly common in people who ceased to
cough or present other symptoms of the
disease years before they died. In many
of these cases no especial care could
have been taken, certainly no system-
atic and intelligent treatment could
have been followed, for these patients
die in hospitals after long lives of toil,
privation, hardship, or excesses. Thus
not only is the disease often curable by
care, as we have said, but it often gets
well wholly without care and even with-
out proper food and shelter. In the ab-
sence of positive proofs of the general
efficacy and safety of the new treat-
ment, and in view of the fact that it is
still accessible to but very few of our
consumptives, those who are threatened
with consumption or who are actually
suffering from it should not allow their
hopes of relief by the new cure to take
the place of those hygienic measures
which, if rightly applied, may serve to
ward off many of the most serious
symptoms of consumption, and some-
times even to cure the disease.

844

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY.

The recent prosecution of the Rev.
Howard MacQueary for heresy has
brought out in a striking manner the
fact that the sympathies of the public
in a case of this kind are, as a rule,
strongly with the defendant — with the
man who is striving to obtain recogni-
tion for intellectual rights as against ar-
bitrarily imposed dogmas. We do not
say that the prosecutors in such a case
are to be blamed. Their motives may
be, and doubtless in general are, of the
purest, and their logical position may be
very strong. Still, they labor under the
disadvantage of administering and striv-
ing to enforce a system in which au-
thority takes the place which, in other
fields of thought, is only assigned to
proved and still provable results of in-
vestigation. Long ago men were led to
think and believe so and so : no other-
wise must they think and believe to-
day. Such is the principle that gov-
erns adhesion to theological standards
— a principle that has had its uses in
past times by giving stability to insti-
tutions under which the forces of so-
ciety were being organized and the
sympathies of men developed. Mani-
festly, however, this principle is becom-
ing more and more out of harmony
with the spirit of the age. Men now
know that, apart from constant — not re-
assertion, but — reverification, the opin-
ions of their ancestors are not to be de-
pended on for guidance; and they do
not see why this should not apply as
much in the theological region as in any
other. The creeds may be all true, and
it is certainly no part of our business to
say they are not; only in these days it
is almost impossible for intelligent men
not to hold them subject to such veri-
fication as their nature and alleged
evidences admit of. Subjective impres-
sions, we all know, are just as liable
to error as objective ones; and because
a man, many centuries ago, held that
he had received a supernatural commu-
nication we can not feel absolutely cer-

tain— unless collateral proofs of consid-
erable cogency are forthcoming — that
he really received such a communica-
tion and was not under the influence of
illusion. In saying this, our object is
not in any way to weaken the hold
which theological doctrines may have
upon any mind, but merely to explain
how it is that so much public sympathy
seems to be accorded to those who seek
to escape from what, to them, has be-
come the bondage of authority. In our
institutions of secular learning the put-
ting forward of a new theory or the dis-
carding of an old one, far from subject-
ing a man to forfeiture of office, gives
a certain additional interest to what he
has to say, and he is allowed the freest
possible scope for developing his thought
and his conclusions. Of course, he must
run the gantlet of criticism ; but this
is just what a man who thinks he has
discovered new truth desires. We do
not blame our ecclesiastical friends for
not acting at once on similar principles,
for we know they can not do so, and
we are very ready to believe that many
of them at least, if not most of them,
are doing the best they can in their sev-
eral positions, and acting fully up to
their lights. But none the less do we
maintain that verification is the only
charter on which beliefs of any kind
can be properly or safely held, and that
this truth must eventually be recognized
in every field of thought and speculation.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Socialism, New and Old. By William
Graham, M. A., Professor of Jurispru-
dence and Political Economy, Queen's
College, Belfast. International Scien-
tific Series. Vol. LXVIII. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. lv + 416. Price,
$1.75.

The latest addition to the International
Scientific Series is a very timely one. The
subject of socialism or social reconstruction
is in the air ; and a competent thinker, who
has any well-matured views on the question,
is sure of an attentive hearing. Prof. Gra-
ham, in the work before us, deals with the

LITERARY NOTICES.

845

subject of socialism, first historically, then
critically, and lastly constructively. From
first to last he holds the attention of the
reader by the vigor of his style and his own
manifest interest in the important questions
at issue. The thorough impartiality of his
attitude also compels admiration. The ob-
ject he has set before himself is to discover
in what points the present constitution of
society is faulty, and what promise of better
things the different socialist programmes now
before the world contain. Considering that
he is an exponent of what is so often spoken
of as " the dismal science," the energy with
which he arraigns the vices of the existing
social order and the sympathy he expresses
for the unhappy victims of an excessive
competition may appear surprising ; but the
fact is, that political economy to-day is not
content with recording facts and indicating
the laws of which these facts seem to be the
expression and proof, but aims at showing
what ought to be as well as what is. It no
longer confines itself to the question, How is
the maximum of wealth to be produced ? or,
What motives sway men in the pursuit of
wealth ? It inquires into the general con-
ditions of social well-being ; it wants to
know how far it may be possible to check
that reign of universal cupidity on which the
older economists seemed to count as an un-
alterable attitude of the human mind ; and
it asks searching questions as to the nature
and requirements of justice between man
and man. The one thing to dread in con-
nection with this new departure of political
economy is a possible lapsing into senti-
mentalism The wider the scope it allows
itself the more rigorously should it adhere
to strict scientific method. There is nothing
weakly sentimental in the tone of Mr. Gra-
ham's book, and yet it hardly appears to us
that he has given due recognition to some
of the severer aspects of the problem with
which he is grappling. " Man's inhumanity
to man," as we all know, has been a dark
feature in past history ; but is it not the
case that Nature itself, in the production of
imperfect individuals — imperfect from the
social point of view, and taking into account
the present development of civilization — is
primarily responsible for a large, if not the
larger, part of the troubles with which we
are contending to-day ? Every one in the

least familiar with the doctrine of natural
selection knows that if different species are
kept up to a certain standard of efficiency,
it is due to the disappearance in the strug-
gle for life of the more poorly endowed in-
dividuals that come into existence. Among
mankind, if even the most poorly endowed
perishes from want, our whole civilization is
considered to be disgraced. This is a point
which certainly requires very careful con-
sideration, not only in connection with the
criticism of existing institutions, but also
in connection with any plans which may be
formed for the improvement of our social
organization. There is no use in trying to
fight against Nature ; the only thing to do,
when we clearly recognize the incidence of
a natural law, is to see how we can best con-
vert it to our uses or turn aside any injury
it may threaten to our interests. Thus, hav-
ing recognized the fact that, by the opera-
tion of the simple law of variation. Nature
will produce imperfect individuals, iil-adapt-
ed to their environment and destined in all
probability to be a drag on the society in
which they have a place, the question arises
how to deal with them ; and that question
ought to be very fairly and fully met.

But, supposing even that all individuals
produced were of average quality, how does
the law of population bear upon the social
question ? How far are our social troubles
the result of an undue rate of increase in
population ? It is true that there are large
tracts of the earth yet unoccupied, but the
vis ineriiai of mankind counts for something ;
and it does not follow because there is
still room for settlement that any given rate
of increase might not be in extfess of the
available means for spreading population
over the face of the earth. In early ages
tribes used to swarm very much like bees ;
but in those days men were not particular
where they found their new abodes, or whom
they dispossessed, or otherwise disposed of,
in doing so.

Looked at from certain points of view,
competition seems a terrible thing; but is
there any certainty that the world could do
without it ? The successful and the less suc-
cessful cr unsuccessful alike are impelled
by it to exertion ; it keeps the world at
work, and so far helps to make the world
happy. What would come from any marked

846

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

relaxation of the law that forces us all to
keep our faculties in exercise it would be
difficult to say ; but, taking into account
what we know of average human nature, we
can hardly predict that the effect would be
good. It is easy to find fault with Nature,
but not so easy to put her aside and do the
work that she is doing. There are few in-
telligent men who do not recognize what
an advantage it is to them to be, in many
things, under the law of necessity ; and prob-
ably also there are few who have much rea-
son to pride themselves on what they have
done wholly apart from any such pressure.
When a man may either do a thing requir-
ing effort or leave it undone, the chances
that he will do it are not overwhelmingly
great.

Mr. Graham criticises very effectively the
wilder suggestions of socialistic writers, but
he does not hesitate to express his opinion
that a certain infusion into legislation and
government of the socialistic spirit and of
socialistic methods is a present necessity.
" The state," he says, " has great power :
through its laws and institutions it can affect
the relations of classes. It can temper great
inequality. It can mitigate poverty. It can
check the strong oppressor. It can protect
the poor, their health, their lives, their prop-
erty. Many of these things it has already
done to some extent, and it has shown an
increasing tendency, within the past forty
years, to interfere in order to protect the
feeble workers and to restrain unscrupulous
employers. ... Its duty is more than the
protection of life and property. It has to
make just and beneficial laws respecting
property. It is its duty to enforce contracts ;
but it may also be its duty to narrow the
sphere of contracts in certain cases where
the contracts can not really be free." He
draws a fearful picture of what would have
happened in England had it not been for
the interference of the state in the passing
of factory laws and other similar acts. " We
should have had a proletariat of servile
workers, degraded in physique, in mind, in
morals ; mothers working in mines and fac-
tories, their sickly children dying without a
mother's care, or surviving with enfeebled
frames ; other children ignorant and lawless,
worked to death or growing up savages ; the
whole laboring population turned into mere

human plant and instruments to make the
fortunes of masters, constantly becoming
more insolent and inhuman from impunity.
We should have had the slave gangs of the
Roman Republic repeated, only that the
slaves would have been the countrymen of
their masters, neither conquered in battle
nor born in slavery." This is strong lan-
guage, and to some the conclusion may ap-
pear somewhat too dogmatically stated.
Some such idea, we think, must have oc-
curred to the writer himself, for he hastens
to add, " That is a deducible consequence,
had the system continued in its strictness
and the hands submitted." It is worth re-
calling that so judicious and philanthropic
a man as the late John Bright was of opin-
ion that the factory laws had done more
harm than good. Prof. Graham's book is
one that ought to be widely read, as we are
persuaded that, whether the writer's own
conclusions are accepted or not, his candid
and able discussion of the various questions
comprised under the general head of " So-
cialism " can not fail to be helpful and bene-
ficial.

The Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spec-
tra. Photographed with the Eight-inch
Eache Telescope as a Part of the Henry
Draper Memorial. Astronomical Ob-
servatory of Harvard College, Edward
C. Pickering, Director. Pp. 388.

This volume contains a catalogue of the
photographic spectra of 10,351 stars, nearly
all of them north of 25° south declination.
Six hundred and thirty-three photographic
plates are discussed and 28,266 spectra
measured. Exposures of about five min-
utes were generally used for equatorial stars,
and somewhat longer exposures for northern
stars. Photographic plates eight inches by
ten were employed ; and at each exposure
the spectra were obtained of all the stars
of sufficient brightness in a region of 10°
square. All stars brighter than the seventh
magnitude would generally give images of
sufficient intensity to be measured, unless
they were of a reddish color. Many stars
of the eighth magnitude or fainter appeared
on the plates with sufficient distinctness to
be included. The total number of spectra
on a single plate sometimes exceeded two
hundred. The plan of work was such that
the entire sky north of 25° S. was covered

LITERARY NOTICES.

847

twice in the first cycle of photographs. The
plates overlapped, so that a spectrum which
appeared near the corner of one plate would
appear near the center of another. The
work was then repeated by a second similar
cycle of plates. Each star should, in gen-
eral, appear on four plates. Owing to the
overlapping of the regions and the repeti-
tion of plates which were not satisfactory,
this number is greatly increased for many
of the stars. The faintest stars appear on
only one plate. In this case a second inde-
pendent measure was always made. Eight
type photographs of as many stars are
given in the frontispiece to the volume.
But the general appearance of a copy of a
photograph varies so much with changes in
exposure and development that it is difficult
to convey an idea of the original negative by
a paper print.

Guides for Science Teaching. No. VIII,
Insecta. By Ai.r-HEUS Hyatt and J. M.
Arms. Boston : D. C. Heath & Co., Pub-
lishers. 1890.

The teachers are again under obligations
to Prof. Hyatt and also to his coadjutor Miss
Arms for the admirable Guide which is now
before us. One follows a path laid out by
this distinguished naturalist sure that he
will have no pitfall in the way. He does
not start on a road that is just six weeks
long, but finds a broad avenue, with here
and there places where he can use his own
powers of observation and perhaps find a
shorter cut. As stated in the preface, the
Guide is a series of replies to questions which
have arisen in the minds of its authors while
teaching. " Teacher and scholars should rec-
ognize that science is infinite, and demands
from all its votaries a modest acknowledg-
ment of this fact. They should work more
as companions learning from each other's
observations, and less as teacher and pupils,
than in those studies which can be taught
from written treatises." The Guide is illus-
trated by 223 figures, derived from the
highest sources or drawn from originals,
and presents the latest knowledge concern-
ing the structure and classification of in-
sects. To an old-time entomologist it will
seem odd to find other groups raised to the
dignity of the seven well-known orders, for
now we have to face sixteen orders. This,
after all, simplifies the work of analysis.

A unique diagrammatical plate, showing the
probable origin of the different orders and
their relation to each other ; a synopsis of
the contents ; a list of letters and signs
which are uniform throughout the book ;
and an exhaustive index at the end com-
bine to make the work an indispensable
guide to the study of insects.

Higher Education of Women in Europe.
By Helene Lange, of Berlin. Translated
and accompanied by Comparative Statis-
tics by L. R. Klemm, Ph. D. Inter-
national Education Series. Edited by
W. T. Harris, LL. D. New York : D.
Appleton&Co. Pp. 36 + 186. Price, $1.

In this work, those interested in the
higher education of women (and who out of
Germany are not ?) will find a most rational
treatment of the subject.

In the editor's preface attention is called
to the changed condition of women by the
advent of labor-saving machinery, which has
taken the old hand-labor from thousands.
Multitudes who were formerly occupied are
stranded for want of something to do. The
incompetent become paupers. This condi-
tion presses harder upon the women, and
avenues of rough industry which are closed
against them drive them to immoral lives.
It is believed, and with good reason, that, if
every avenue of work was opened equally to
women, different results would follow.

The figures given by Dr. Klemm show
that the question of the higher education of
women is no longer a problem in this coun-
try, and England is fast following our exam-
ple. In other European countries, notably
in Prussia, the case is far different, and in
the one occupation for which women are
eminently fitted, that of teachers, not more
than ten per cent are found in this field,
as compared with the United States, where
sixty-three per cent of the entire number of
teachers are women ; taking the cities of the
United States alone, over ninety per cent are
women. Now, either one of two things is to
be noted from these figures — either we are
committing a colossal blunder or the Ger-
mans are.

Miss Lange says : " The English teacher
and principal enjoys unquestioned authority,
externally and internally. In German pub-
lic girls' schools the older students know, or
instinctively feel, that the education of the

848

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

female teacher, obtained in a normal school,
is despised by the male teachers who ob-
tained theirs in the university. It is too
obvious that the women are found only in
subordinate positions (exceptions not count-
ed) of the school organism. No wonder
that the pupils sometimes refuse them the
respect which is offered as a matter of course
in England, where the female teachers are
provided with the highest professional edu-
cation." Quoting again, she says : " In
France there were no preparatory schools for
the university. Only after the downfall of
the second empire, after the humiliating ex-
periences in 1870— '71, steps were taken fa-
vorable to women. The Government became
convinced of the fact that an elevation of the
whole people is only possible by means of
an elevation of its women. The motion of
Camille See to found and maintain lyceums
for women was adopted without delay. ' Our
law is a moral as well as a social and politi-
cal law' — thus he pleaded for it, in 1880,
before the Chamber of Deputies — ' it con-
cerns the future and security of Trance, for
upon the women depends the greatness or
decay of the nations.' "

In Portugal " the question of establish-
ing special girls' lyceums is being agitated ;
a violent controversy has been going on
concerning this, and the desire of many Port-
uguese is that ' their ladies may remain in
future as charmingly amiable and foolish
children as they have been since Adam's
time.' " " Clemens Nohl speaks in his Ped-
agogy for Higher Schools of the absolute
necessity to grant the female sex a thorough
education, and says the mother needs it for
the sake of her family, the unmarried woman
for her own sake."

One forcible argument which is not urged
by Miss Lange comes to one when he realizes
how much work is done by women in the
post-office, telegraph, and other public de-
partments in England, or, if he chances to
pass the Treasury and other departments in
Washington at the noon hour, and sees the
thronging thousands of women pour out
from these buildings, he feels that, in case
of war, hardly a man would be needed at
home to carry on the minute details of office
work. The Landwehr and the Landsturm
could march out to a man, and not a wheel of
government machinery would be checked in

its movement. Germany, in this respect, is
still in the Oriental stage, and it behooves
her public men to look into this matter from
the standpoint of military strength. Cer-
tainly such an argument might reach her,
despite the uniform brutality which marks a
German's attitude toward women as contrast-
ed with their treatment by other nations.

A Washington Bible - Class. By Gail
Hamilton. New York : D. Appleton &
Co. Pp. 303. Price, $1.50.

The story of the Bible-class is told in an
introductory chapter. A mother in Wash-
ington, embarrassed by the refusal of her
sons to accept certain doctrines as they are
held by the theologians, and finding it
equally embarrassing to teach them what
her reason could not approve, consulted
with other mothers about the religious
instruction of their children. The end of
the consultation was the formation of a
class to study the Bible, not with reference
to speculation, but to find the truth in
it ; not what there might be of Calvin-
ism, or Lutheranism, or agnosticism, or
Catholicism, or Universalism, but what is
Scripture ; not what men say Scripture says
and means, but what Scripture itself means
and says. " The class, as it grew, embraced
members of the families of the Cabinet, of
Congressmen, diplomats, scientific and lit-
erary men, etc., and persons of a great va-
riety of shades of belief. The class was at
first intended to be conversational, and its
idea one of common study, comparison of
results, and general conference " ; but the
woman who was chosen leader soon found
herself doing most of the talking, and the
proceedings, as they are presented in the
book, took the form of lectures. The tenor
of these lectures is what we might describe,
without presuming to express an opinion or
to approve or disapprove, as embodying a
common-sense view of the questions that
arose. The narrative is composed, as to its
most remarkable passages, in an anthropo-
morphic state of mind, which sees God in
everything, regards all phenomena as his
direct act, and personifies him as the actor.
It is assumed that the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah was by an eruption
of natural gas in that asphaltic region ;
that Lot was warned by a messenger who

LITERARY NOTICES.

849

foresaw the eruption, and his wife lin-
gered and was caught in a shower of salt-
peter and sulphur. A parallel to the sun
standing still in Joshua may be found in
the red sunsets of 1883 and 1831, and other
phenomena recorded in history. If the lit-
eral accuracy of the accounts is not es-
tablished by this kind of reasoning, nei-
ther science nor piety need lash itself to
fury over the explanations of literature.
They are questions of literature. They are
not questions of faith. It is science itself
which forbids us to pronounce too confi-
dently against even the literal truthfulness
of the Bible. Many things which might be
given up to legend without impairing the
moral value of the Holy Scriptures, because
God can be illustrated by a legend or a myth as
well as by a fact, science and research seem
to be basing upon a true historical founda-
tion. " The rationalist must be wary with
his myths, for the Egyptian explorers are at
his heels." The natural possibility of the
passage of the Red Sea is illustrated by
citing the bar at Mount Desert, over which
a retreating army might pass at low tide
over to Bar Island, while the returning
high tide should keep the pursuing army on
Mount Desert ; only it was the wind that
played the part of the ebb tide at the Red
Sea. In like spirit with these explanations
the leader of the Washington Bible-class
discoursed of the story of the Garden of
Eden, of the Mystery of Melchisedek, of
the Call of Abraham, of the Institutes of
Moses, the Origin of Sacrifice, the attitude
of Christ and the Apostles toward the Mo-
saic Institutes, Inspiration, the Atonement,
Miracles, and various other knotty questions
of doctrine.

Anales de la Oficina Meteorologica Ar-
gentina (Annals of the Argentine Me-
teorological Office). Under the Direction
of Walter G. Davis. Vol. VIII, 1886.
Buenos Ayres. Pp. 596.

The general course of the office corre-
sponded with that of previous years. Nu-
merous valuable observations were received
from points well distributed throughout the
republic, the results of which have been
found useful in advancing the knowledge of
climatological laws, for both practical and
scientific purposes. New instruments have
been added to the apparatus, or old ones
vol. xxxviii. — 59

replaced. Observations have been begun
or renewed at six new stations, and reports
were registered from twenty-three stations
or separate observers. The system of ob-
servations at the central office has been
greatly improved. The temperature of the
soil has been taken at different depths down
to twelve feet. The monthly means are
given in the beginning of the report from
twelve stations, of temperature, atmospheric
pressure, humidity, pressure of atmospheric
vapor, rainfall ; and hourly means from
the naval school and Cordoba, as well as
temperature of the soil, wind direction and
velocity, ozone, solar heat, and rainfall at
Cordoba. The principal meteorological phe-
nomenon of the year was the great snow-
fall and frost of the 19th, 20th, and 21st of
September, which caused much injury to
agriculture and cattle through the whole of
the republic. Its history and course are
traced from its origin in the Cordilleras, on
the 16th, to the Atlantic. The director
hopes that, with the advancing settlement
of the country and the extension of means
of communication and telegraphs, improve-
ment may be gained in the knowledge of the
laws of the meteorology of the country and
the means of predicting changes of weather
commensurate with that which has been
realized in local observations. The volume
is mainly occupied with the record of the
detailed observations made at Villa Formosa
(capital of the Northern Gran Chaco, two
observers), the colony of Chubut, and the
city of San Juan.

The Theory of Music. By Louis C. Elson.
Boston : New England Conservatory of
Music. Pp. 208.

This book is designed to furnish an out-
line for instruction in the fundamental prin-
ciples of music. There is danger that the
musician may become a specialist ignorant
of the basis and framework of his art. The
author has prepared this text-book as a help
toward broader study. The general sub-
jects treated are : Acoustics ; The Orches-
tra ; Rhythm and Notation ; Musical Em-
bellishments ; Instrumental and Vocal Form.

The character of a vibration is first con-
sidered. The French define this as motion
to one side only, but in England and Amer-
ica it includes the oscillation from side to

850

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

side and back to the point of rest. Reg-
ular and continuous vibrations produce
music ; irregular vibrations result in noise.
There are four laws or canons of the
stretched string, depending upon its length,
thickness, tension, and density. Vibrations
become audible when they reach the rate of
sixteen per second and vanish at the point
of 38,000 per second. Overtones are likened
to the wavelet3 which form part of a larger
ocean wave. The sound-waves, however,
divide with mathematical regularity, and the
laws concerning them were first formulated
by Helmholtz in 1863. The number and
strength of overtones, or harmonics, cause
us to recognize the difference between two
instruments, as flute and violin, when sound-
ing the same tone. The musical scale now
in use arose to fit the needs of keyed instru-
ments. The voice and stringed instruments
can give the natural scale with many more
intervals. Pitch has mathematical niceties,
and its standard is a variable quantity.
Philosophical pitch is determined by sub-
dividing a wire that vibrates once a second.
The variety of musical instruments has re-
sulted from employing different vibrating
substances, and from exciting vibration in
these by several methods. Six classes of
vibrations are noted : first, the vibrations of
strings ; second, of reeds ; third and fourth,
of elastic membranes ; fifth, of solid elastic
substances; and, sixth, "the vibrations of
air upon itself in a confined space."

A consideration of orchestral instru-
ments naturally follows. These are grouped
as the string band, the " wood-wind," and
the brass band. In each of these divisions
are found four or more instruments that
correspond to the soprano, alto, tenor, and
bass in a vocal quartet. The modern or-
chestra dates from 1600; for, although the
ancients used many instruments, they per-
formed only unison-music, " while our idea
of orchestral music is essentially part-music."

Rhythm, notation, marks of expression,
and musical embellishments are fully illus-
trated. Musical form is next analyzed and
traced to an origin in the old dances. The
suite was " at first a set of dance - move-
ments." In a study of figures and phrasing,
the author points out that the leit-motif so
characteristic of Wagner was first used by
Mozart in Don Giovanni. Among the musi-

cal forms afflicted with changeable defini-
tions is the symphony, now understood as
a sonata for orchestra, but in the early part
of the last century known as a prelude, in-
terlude, or postlude. The development of
the sonata, its various movements and de-
pendent forms, follows, the more important
of these being the concerto and classical
overture.

The Catholic mass is named as the earli-
est vocal form. Some vocal forms are the
offspring of instrumentation, such as the
aria and rondo. Vocal music of any char-
acter may be written either in the strophe
form, which repeats the music of one verse,
or as an art-song, in which the music inter-
prets the poem from beginning to end. The
canon, the fugue, and, finally, modern dance
forms are subjects of special study.

In conclusion, the author recommends to
those wishing to become earnest musicians,
ensemble - playing and score-reading. The
German language should be acquired for the
philosophy and literature of music, but Ital-
ian is most important to the vocalist.
" Bach should be faithfully studied by every
musician," since in him "the intellectual
and emotional are so well balanced."

War and the Weather. By Edward
Powers, C. E. Revised edition. Dela-
van, Wis. : Published by the author.
Pp. 202. Price, $1.

A belief exists that heavy cannonading
and great fires bring on rain. In some
places it has been noticed often that a clear
morning on the 4th of July has been fol-
lowed by rain, and this has been attributed
to the explosive celebration of the day.
Mr. Powers has written his book to furnish
definite evidence in support of the belief
that rain can be produced by means of
artillery, and to advocate the making of ex-
periments by the Government in order to ob-
tain certain proof in regard to it. His evi-
dence consists of a record of those battles in
our Mexican and civil wars in which artil-
lery was largely used and which were fol-
lowed by rain, giving the chief circumstances
in each case. An appendix contains letters
from army officers, transcripts from diaries,
etc., supporting this record. In regard to
the fact that artillery-firing does not always
bring rain, the author says that the chief

LITERARY NOTICES.

851

reason is that enough guns are not always
brought into action and fired simultaneously,
but there may be also minor reasons. He
inserts an estimate of the cost of two ex-
periments in which two hundred siege-guns
should be used, making the amount $160,000
for the two. After this mode of causing
precipitation had become systematized, he
estimates that " a good rain-storm " would
cost less than $21,000.

The Septonate and the Centralization op
the Tonal System. By Julius Klauser.
Milwaukee: William Rohlfing & Sons.
Price, $3.

It is no exaggeration of the condition of
an average musical student that Mr. Klauser
describes in the introduction to this work.
After pursuing the study of music for ten,
fifteen, or twenty years, he may still be un-
able " to tell you what the intervals, chords,
rhythms, and meters are that you dictate
for oral discrimination." He has learned to
use his voice or some instrument. His eye,
hand, or vocal organs may be trained, but
the cultivation of his ear has been left to
chance. " Students are not taught, nor do
they learn, to hear." A system of teaching
which turns out pupils ignorant of the ele-
ments of their art, and liable to be embar-
rassed by simple questions, must be faulty.
The author of this volume holds that there
are two fundamental errors in musical train-
ing: one, the inverse method of instruc-
tion, in which a pupil is taught to perform
before he can listen intelligently ; the other,
the usual presentation of the tonal system.
As a remedy for the first, the beginner should
be taught to hear exactly and discriminate
from the start. A corrective for the second
demands a reconstruction of our tonal con-
ceptions. " The scale is too complex a unit ;
... its combinations are too multiple for
any beginner to grasp as a whole." After
much investigation of tonal relations and
analysis of the mental process of musical
reproduction, Mr. Klauser has fixed upon
the scale-half or tetrachord, and the union
of two scale-halves with a common central
tonic, as simpler elements for tone-study.
To the latter group of tones he gives the
name of septonate, " seven principal tones in
their natural positions," three preceding and
three following a tonic. Other divisions of
tones, which are the framework of the sys-

tem, are the key-group and the tone-stratum.
The key-group contains seventeen tones,
consisting of the septonate and ten other
tones ; five sharps, called w/)-mediates, and
five flats, the doiow-mediates. Ten more
tones, named secondary intermediates, added
to the key-group, complete the tone-stratum.
A new theory for tone discrimination is in-
troduced in the Principle of Progression.
In hearing a series of tones, "we are dis-
posed to progress on certain tones and to
stop on others." The tones from which we
feel a desire to move are called by-tones;
those which create a feeling of rest are
harmonics. The author explains these phe-
nomena as the result of the antagonism or
agreement which certain tones have with the
melodic phrase already in mind, and which
he calls " the governing voice."

The author argues the need of a new
notation, and may hereafter attempt that
Sisyphean task. Prefixed to this volume is
an interesting and suggestive essay on a
higher education in music. Some experi-
ences in training children deficient in tone-
sense deserve attention. The relation of
music and mind is exhibited in the fact that
music must be executed in a prescribed
tempo — " the moments of cognition are lim-
ited." So "a concentrative power without
parallel " is cultivated. In concluding the
volume, various views of the origin of music
are given, the author believing that music
antedates speech, as the chromatic intervals
of the wind and the melodious phrases of
birds preceded the existence of man.

Elements of Crystallography. By George
H. Williams, Associate Professor in the
Johns Hopkins University. New York :
Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 250. Price,
$1.25 net.

This text-book, which is offered to stu-
dents of chemistry, physics, geology, and
mineralogy, contains as much of the subject
as any one who does not intend to make
mineralogy his life-work will need to know.
It describes the several crystallographic sys-
tems, taking up a considerable number of
the combinations possible under each, and
giving diagrams and symbols. There are
also chapters on Crystal Aggregates and Im-
perfections of Crystals, and an Appendix on
Zones, Projection, and the Construction of
Crystal Figures. To the student of miner-

852

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

alogy this will, of course, be an elementary
volume ; accordingly, a list of books is given,
mostly German, in which fuller information
can be found. There are 383 cuts in the
volume.

Reader's Guide to Economic, Social, and
Political Science. Edited by R. R.
Bowker and George Iles. New York :
Society for Political Education. Pp. 160.
Price, cloth, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cents.
Within the past decade a very notewor-
thy increase of interest has taken place in
economic, social, and political science. Its
literature to-day flows in a stream many
times as wide as that of 1881, and, passing
the limits of the monographs and reviews
specially devoted to it, now finds its way
into popular magazines and leading journals.
The quickening of interest which this de-
notes is not without a reason. Every year
brings its enlargement of the functions of
the state and some fresh appeal for yet
wider extension of its scope. Interstate
commerce is one of the more significant of
its accessions of sway in recent years. It
would seem that the guardianship of for-
ests and the supervision of irrigation are
to be among its duties in the near future.
With authority in international trade to
speak the word of good or ill fortune, Gov-
ernment is constantly being asked to step
into the arena of domestic industry. Why
may not the power which claims to bring
prosperity by a tariff be invoked to regu-
late immigration, fix the hours of labor, or
otherwise become as a Providence to the
nation ? With a literature teeming from the
press treating these and allied questions —
questions of the creation of wealth and its
distribution ; Government, and its relations
to the commonwealth — such a guide as
that provided by the Society for Political
Education is clearly invaluable. Its editors
present a classified list of the leading books,
articles, Government and other reports, in
the various fields covered by the manual.
Each department has been revised by a com-
petent specialist ; and where, as in the case
of free trade and protection, there are op-
posed camps, a representative of each has
co-operated with the editors. The book is
not a mere list, but a trustworthy guide,
every work of importance receiving a brief
descriptive or critical note. Prefixed to the

several sections, wherever desirable, are a
few lines advising the reader or student
which books are best, and in what order
they may most profitably be taken up. The
titles have been selected not only from
American and English, but from German,
French, and Italian works. That foreign
literature is very much richer than our own
in economic and social science is a fact
which this little book brings out very clear-
ly. In emphasizing it, something will be
done to broaden the outlook of American
students, too often content with home au-
thors not of the first rank. Lists for read-
ing, elementary, intermediate, and advanced,
are prescribed. The courses in politics and
economics in leading American colleges for
men and women are epitomized ; and a very
full index doubles the value of the book.

Those who have a taste for speculations
on abstruse scientific questions will be in-
terested in Cosmical Evolution, by Evan
McLennan (Donohue, Chicago). It is a new
theory of the physical universe, which sub-
stitutes for gravitation a system of bonds
connecting the stars and planets as chemical
atoms and molecules are assumed to be con-
nected. The author's handling of the sub-
ject gives evidence of much ability.

Under the title Manual of Archaeology
Mr. Talfourd Ely publishes a sketch of an-
cient art (Putnam, $2). It is divided into
two books, the first relating to Prehistoric,
Egyptian, and Oriental Art, and the second
to Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art. The
art of these countries is described as dis-
played in architecture, sculpture, engraving,
painting, enameling, mosaic, and in the in-
dustrial arts. At the head of each of the
eighteen chapters is a list of books recom-
mended by the author for further reading.
The work has an index, and contains one
hundred and fourteen illustrations.

The Tliird Annual Report of the Agri-
cultural Experiment Station, at Cornell Uni-
versity, covering the year 1890, comprises
the separate reports of the several officers
of the station, together with the collected
bulletins that were issued during the year.
These reports are largely devoted to descrip-
tions of the buildings and laboratories that
have been provided for the use of the sta-
tion, illustrated with views and plans. The

LITERARY NOTICES.

853

bulletins, most of which have been noticed
in this magazine, deal with corn-growing,
the examination and care of milk and cream,
spraying plants, fruit-growing, tomatoes, in-
sects injurious to plants, the clover rust,
anl a variety of minor investigations.

An Examination of FingaVs Cave, by J.
P. MacLean (Clarke, 75 cents), is an account
of this famous cavern enlarged from a re-
port made by Prof. MacLean to the Smith-
sonian Institution in 1887. The island of
Staffa contains several caverns besides the
one of chief prominence, and these receive
brief mention. The author's description of
Fingal's Cave consists mostly of Sir Joseph
Banks's account of his visit in 1772, which
is inserted in full, and quotations from
other sources. The origin of the cave is
discussed, and reasons are given for not be-
lieving it to be the work of man. The vol-
ume is illustrated from drawings by the
author and from other sources.

Harper's Sixth Reader (American Book
Company, 90 cents) is devoted to British
authors, and completes the series to which
it belongs. Attention is called by the pub-
lishers to the gradation in the several classes
of selections as they are herein arranged :
those pertaining to modern history occur in
chronological order, so also do the articles
on Roman life and customs. Among the
lessons are views of American institutions
from English standpoints, examples of the
best of British fiction and humor, and essays
on questions of morals and personal duty.
While many of the selections are new to
school readers, a large number of acknowl-
edged classics are also included. Both the
living and the earlier writers are repre-
sented. Notes on the author and on the
unusual words of each piece are appended.

The paper of Mr. George M. Dawson, of
the Geological Survey of Canada, On the
Later Physiographical Geography of the
Pocky Mountain Region in Canada, is a
monograph of a like order of those of which
members of our own Geological Survey have
produced a large number. Relating to what
is virtually an extension into the British
Provinces of the identical regions with
which our own geologists are concerned, it
may be grouped with their special memoirs
as constituting one of a mass of materials by
the aid of which American geology is being

shaped into a more extensive, systematic,
and harmonious scheme than has been ap-
plied to any other region. The western
border region of the continent is defined by
Mr. Dawson as being formed by a series of
more or less nearly parallel mountain sys-
tems, with an average breadth in British
Columbia of about four hundred miles, and
tending in a direction similar to that of the
Pacific shore line, the position of which in
fact depends upon that of these orographic
features. In traversing this generally
mountainous zone — which the author calls
the Cordillera belt — from east to west, we
cross the Rocky Mountains ; what may be
classed together as the Gold Ranges (in-
cluding the Selkirk, Purcell, Cariboo, and
other ranges) ; the Coast Ranges ; and an
irregular mountain system — the Vancouver
system — of which Vancouver Island and the
Queen Charlotte Islands are unsubmerged
parts. A region between the mountain and
the Coast Ranges, without important mount-
ain ranges, is referred to as the Interior
Plateau of British Columbia. The paper
has special reference to changes in elevation
and the history of the Glacial period, and is
divided into two parts : I. Mesozoic and
Tertiary History ; and II. Glacial History.

TJw Fruits of Culture is a comedy in four
acts by Count Leo Tolstoi (Tucker, Boston).
It deals with spiritualism, the principal scene
being a bogus seance. The characters are
Russian nobility, learned persons, servants,
and peasants.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

American Chemical Society. Journal, Decem-
ber, 1890. Index number. New York : John Pol-
heinus. $3 a year.

Appalachia, December, 1890. Boston : W. B.
Clarke & Co. Pp. 80. 50 cents.

Bardeen, C. W , Syracuse. N. T. College Pre-
paratory and Lower Grade Schools. Pp. 5.

Brown, D. Walter, New York. The American
Patent System. Pp. 64. 25 cents.

Census Bulletin, No. 16. Population of the
United States by States and Territories, 1S90. Pp.
10.

Chambers, George F. Descriptive and Practical
Astronomy. Oxford, England : Clarendon Press. 8
volumes. Pp. 14S4.

Chanute, O. Aerial Navigation. New York : "
Kailroad and Engineering Journal. Pp. 36.

Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion. Report for 1890, and Bulletins 24 and 25.

Cox, Charles P. Faith-healing in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries. New York : De Vinne
Press. Pp. 21.

De Garmo, Charles. Witt's Tales of Troy.
Bloomington, I1L : Public School Publishing Co.
Pp.68.

854

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Delphian Record. Quarterly. Syracuse, N. T. :
0. 8. Twist.

Draper, Henry, Memorial. Catalogue of Stellar
Spectra. Cambridge, Mass. : John Wilson & Son.
Pp. 388.

Earle, John. English Prose. G. P. Putnam's
Sons. Pp. 530. $3.50.

Food, Home, and Garden. Philadelphia : Vege-
tarian Society of America. January, 1S91. Pp. 14.

Foster, Michael, Editor. The Journal of Physi-
ology. Vol. XI. Nos. 4, 5, and 6. Cambridge,
England. $5 a volume.

Gaertner, Frederick. Rules and Applications of
Reichert's Hsemometer. Pp. 8.

Geographic Names, United States Board on.
Bulletin No. 1. Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 13.

Gerhard, William Paul, New York. Architect-
ure and Sanitation. Pp. 11.— Gas - lighting and
Gas- fitting. Pp. 54.— Disposal of Sewage of In-
land Country Houses. Pp. 28.

Gore, J. Howard. Decimal Measures of the Sev-
enteenth Century. Pp. 8.

Gray, E. W. A Gospel of Love. Chicago :
Thome Publishing Co. Pp. 429. $1.50.

Gunton, George. Principles of Social Econom-
ics. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 451. $1.75.

Harris, William T. Hegel's Logic. S. C. Griggs
& Co. Pp. 403. $1.50.

Hart, Albert Bushnell. Introduction to the
Study of Federal Government. Ginn & Co. Pp.
200. $1.

Heilprin, Prof. Angelo, Philadelphia. Cretaceous
Deposits of New Mexico. Pp. 24, with Plates.

Heydenfeldt, S., Jr. Essays related to Animal
Magnetism, etc. Pp. 105.

Hill, Robert T., Austin, Tex., and Kemp, J. F.,
Ithaca, N. Y. Pilot Knob. Pp. 8.

Illinois, University of. Report for 18S9-'90, and
Bulletin of the Agricultural Experiment Station.
Champaign. Pp. 24 aud 36.

Indiana College Association. Addresses and
other Proceedings, 18S9. Terre Haute : Moore &
Langen. Pp. 64.

Ingersoll, Robert G. Testimonial to Walt Whit-
man. Pp. 77. 50 cents.

Irelan, William, Jr. Tenth Annual Report of
the State Mineralogist of California. Sacramento.
Pp. 983, with Map."

Johnson, J. B. Theory and Practice of Survey-
ing. John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 730.

Kansas City Scientist. Monthly. Kansas City,
Mo. : Academy of Science. Pp. 16. 10 cents. $1
a year.

Kenney, E. C. Ghosts, Devils. Angels, and Snn
Gods. Truxton, Cortland County, N. Y. Pp. 126.
25 cents.

Leffmann, Henry, and Beam. William. Examina-
tion of Water for Sanitary and Technical Purposes.
P. Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 130.

Lewis, T. H. Cave Drawings. Pp. 10. — Bowlder
Outline Figures in the Dakotas. Pp. 6.

Loti, Pierre. A Child's Romance. W. S. Gotts-
berger. Pp. 284.

Lucas, C. P. A Historical Geography of the
British Colonies. Oxford, England : Clarendon
Press. Pp. 343. $1.90.

Maxwell, W. H. Examinations as Tests for
Promotion. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bardeen. Pp.
11.

Missouri Geological Survey. Bibliography of the
Geology of Missouri, By F. A. Sampson 1'p. 158.
— Bulletin on Clay, Stone, and Sand Industries and
Mineral Waters. By G. E. Ladd and A. E. Wood-
ward. Pp. 102.

New York Academy of Sciences. Transactions.
Vol. X, No. 1. Pp 32.— Do. Index to Vol. IX.
Pp. 181.— Annals. Vol. V. Nos. 9-12. Pp. 192,
with Plate.

Norton, Charles Ledyard. Political American-

isms. Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 133, with
Blanks.

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. Bulletin.
Asparagus and Onions. Pp. 12.

O'Reilly. Bernard, D. D. Ireland's Cause, Ire-
land's Leader. Pp. 16.

Photo-gravure Company, New York. Sun and
Shade. February, 1891. Eight Plates. 10 cents.

Pickering, Edward C, Director. Astronomical Ob-
servatory of Harvard College. Forty-fourth Annual
Report. Pp. 12— Do. and Wendell, Oliver C. Dis-
cussion of Observations made with the Meridian
Photometer. Pp.136. Cambridge: John Wilson &
Son.

" Prognostic." The New Reformation. New
York : J. Van Buren. Pp. 76.

Roosevelt, Theodore. Historic Towns. New
York. Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 232, with Map.

$1.-5.

Sabin, Henry. Organization and System vs.
Originality and Individuality in School. Syracuse,
N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen. Pp.9.

Scott. Frederick N. ^Esthetics. Ann Arbor,
Mich. Pp. 32.

Shepperson, Alfred B., New York. Cotton Facts.
Pp. 79.

Shufeldt, R. W.. M. D. Crania of North Ameri-
can Indians. Pp. 4.

Smock, John C. Building Stone in the State of
Now York. Albany : University. Pp. 396,- with
Maps.

Thwaites. Reuben Gold. The Colonies, 1492-
1750. Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 301, with Maps.
$1.25.

Tolstoi, Count Leo. Church and State. Boston :
Benjamin B. Tucker. Pp. 169.

Traddles, Moses. Poems and Sketches. Cin-
cinnati : Keating & Co. Pp. 64.

Trelease, William. Director, St. Louis. The Mis-
souri Botanical Garden. Pp. 167, with Map.

Upham, Warren, Somerville, Mass Cause of
the Glacial Period. Pp. 10. — Glacial Lake Agassiz.
Pp 156.— The Fiords and Great Basins of North
America. Pp. 5. — Artesian WreUs in North and
South Dakota. Pp. 12.— With F. Leverett, N. Shaler,
and W. O. Crosby. Discussion of the Climatic Con-
ditions of the Glacial Period. Pp. IS.

Watson, B. A. Surgery— Ancient, Mediseval,
and Modern. Pp. 47.

Whiting, Harold. Experiments in Physical
Measurement. Cambridge, Mass. : John Wilson &
Son. Pp. 583.

Whitman, C. O. Biological Lectures. Ginn &
Co. Pp. 250.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Photographs in Aid of Road Improve-
ment!— The New York and Connecticut
divisions of the League of American Wheel-
men have united in offering three prizes, of
$50, $30, and $20 in gold, for collections of
not less than three photographs showing
the need of improved roads in the United
States. The circular sent out by the com-
mittee states that the kind of pictures
wanted are such as show a farmer's wagon
and team hub-deep and knee-deep in a
muddy road, break-downs caused by rough
or muddy roads or steep grades, and, for
contrast, those showing teams hauling loads

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

855

over smooth, hard-surfaced roads. By this
action the bicycle-riders show a readiness
to do their share toward securing improve-
ments that are important to all users of
roads. Competitors' blanks and particulars
will be sent by Isaac B. Potter, 278 Potter
Building, New York, or Charles L. Burdette,
Hartford, Conn. The competition closes
May 1, 1891.

New Metric Standards. — Prof. Menden-
hall exhibited at the last meeting of the
American Association exact copies of the
new metric standards received by the United
States Government from the International
Board of Weights and Measures. The stand-
ards, when received, were opened formally
in the presence of the President and Secre-
taries of State and the Treasury and sixteen
specially invited scientific men, and duly cer-
tified to, as was done with the standard troy
pound during the administration of John
Quincy Adams in 1828. The meter is a rod
with H cross-section, made of an alloy of
platinum and iridium. In making these
standards for the various governments, two
thirds of all the iridium known in the world
was used. The extreme delicacy and exact-
ness of the measurement work done upon
the standards was illustrated by saying that
when two of the standard kilogrammes were
balanced against two similar masses, if one
of the masses on one side of the balance was
placed on top of the other mass, the balance
would be destroyed. In other words, raising
the mass of one kilogramme through less
than two inches made a difference in the at-
traction of the earth readily observed.

Some North Dakota Mounds. — Mr. Henry
Montgomery, between 1883 and 1889, exca-
vated and explored thirty-nine ancient arti-
ficial mounds in North Dakota. They con-
sisted of one beacon mound, one well-marked
sacrificial mound and another not so well
marked, and thirty-six burial mounds. The
burial mounds were of two kinds. The or-
dinary burial mound consisted of a circular,
rounded, or conical heap of earth, mostly
rich, black soil from the prairie, clothed
with grass, and rising generally to a height
of several feet above the surrounding level.
One or more vaults occur in each, in which
human skeletons and various implements,

ornaments, trinkets, etc., are found. A sin-
gle vault is near the center ; two or more
vaults are found eccentric in situation, and
at varying distances from one another. The
vault is a circular, well-like pit, having a
calcareous bottom and wall, and often also
a calcareous covering. In digging for the
vault — which was done systematically, a foot
at a time, the level being carefully preserved
— wood was found at the depth of about a
foot, consisting of poles or young trees,
varying in diameter from three to ten inches,
charred at their ends and over the greater
part of their surfaces. The skeleton was
generally found in a crouching posture, with
back against the wall and face toward the
center. The second kind of burial mound
is distinguished by having no wood and no
burial chambers, and in the bones being
broken and scattered. A third kind of
mound, containing a layer of clay that seems
to overlie many human skeletons, is hardly
distinctly enough defined to be constituted
a separate class. A well-defined sacrificial
mound was explored by the author on the
south side of Devil's Lake. Another mound,
somewhat resembling this, was opened near
Sweetwater Lake in July, 1889. A beacon
mound in Beacon County was explored in
September, 188*7. The mounds are situated
on high ridges and hills, composed often of
drift clays and bowlders, and sometimes of
gravel and sands.

Prehistoric Traps. — Some curious wood-
en machines fished up from European peat-
bogs were described by Dr. Robert Munro,
in the British Association, as probably pre-
historic otter and beaver traps. Two of
them, which were taken as typical, were
found in the great' Laybach Moor, in the
vicinity of the famous group of lake-dwell-
ings there under investigation. The more
perfect of the two was made of a solid piece
of oak thirty-two inches long, twelve inches
wide, and four inches thick. It tapered a lit-
tle at both ends, and contained a rectangular
hole in the middle, nine inches long and five
inches wide, for a valve, which was worked
by pivots projecting into corresponding holes
in the framework. The valves were freely
movable when pushed upward, but the mo-
tion was arrested a little short of the per-
pendicular by the slanting shape of their

856

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

after-edges, so that when left to themselves
they always fell down, and so closed the
aperture. Somewhat similar machines have
been found in Ireland, north Germany, Styr-
ia, and Italy, and their character has been
the subject of discussion. They are usually
regarded as traps, and it is remarked that
all the examples from Italy, Ireland, and
Laybach were found in bogs which in earlier
times were lakes. If they were really traps,
they could be used only in water, where the
animal could insert its head from below ;
and, among amphibious animals, the otter
and beaver are the only ones to which all
the conditions involved in a trap theory
would apply.

The Qualifications of a Good Norse. —

" Now in what," asks Dr. Hal C. Wyman, in
an essay on The Training of Nurses, " shall
the ideal nurse be trained ? She should have
a good education. She need not be schooled
in mathematics or philosophy, poetry or sci-
ence ; but she must have a good common-
school education that will enable her to read
any instructions that may be given her, or
left with her, in writing; to make records of
the condition of the patient, and to write
orders for those who may be subject to her.
. . . She must be fully acquainted with the
English and the metrical system of weights
and measures, and she ought to be a good
reader, sufficiently well acquainted with the
art of elocution to read various selections for
the entertainment of her patient. One of
the most interesting scenes of hospital life I
ever witnessed was that of a Gray Nun in a
ward of paralytic and demented patients,
reading the news of the day. The soft
modulations of her voice, the rapt attention
of her listeners, and the agreeable contrast
to the listless, weary air of the patients in
an adjoining ward I shall never forget."
Not only should there be trained nurses in
large cities and in connection with large hos-
pitals, but they are needed " in communities
where there are no large hospitals, in com-
munities where there are no hospitals at all,
and there ought to be some means of train-
ing them on the ground where they are
needed. Every county, nearly, has its or-
ganization for the medical care of the sick
poor. That class, more frequently than any
other, needs the tender and supporting min-

istrations of the nurse. Why not, wher-
ever there are physicians employed by the
county, have the county physician, with the
aid of the superintendents of the poor, or-
ganize a school for the training of nurses ? "

Reversion, or Arrested Development. —

In a paper in opposition to the doctrine of
reversion to a former type, Miss Layard said,
in the British Association, that in consider-
ing the subject of linear evolution the great
importance of a clear understanding of the
laws of reversion is apparent ; for, if it can be
positively proved that structures common to
lower groups occasionally make their appear-
ance in man through this means, a strong
point has been gained. It is logically certain
that there can not be a return to a state
which has not once existed. But if, on the
other hand, such appearances can be traced
to an arrest during the process of develop-
ment, or to a sport, the phenomenon shows
no connection between higher and lower
groups. If we carefully divide positive cases
of arrested development and sports from
those which may be, strictly speaking, con-
sidered to have true appearances of rever-
sion, the number diminishes enormously.
Perhaps the most important point to be
ascertained is as to the limit of time after
which reversion to an earlier type becomes
impossible. If there be no limit, then it
may be a matter of surprise that reversion
is not more constant in man.

Storage Reservoirs for the Mississippi.

— Captain Eads's scheme of jetties and all
other plans for improving the Mississippi
River by tinkering with the channel are con-
demned by Mr. Jacques W. Redway, in a
pamphlet on The Physical Geography of the
Mississippi River, as likely to work more mis-
chief in tlie end than they remedy. The au-
thor, on the other hand, advocates a plan
embodying the storage of the surplus water
that accumulates during the spring floods.
This will both lessen the volume of the fresh-
ets that occur at the breaking up of the win-
ter season, and also furnish a supply to be
drawn from during the low stage of summer
and fall. The storage reservoirs in construc-
tion at the present time are mainly the natu-
ral basins at the head of the Mississippi
proper — Chippewa, St. Croix, Crow Wing,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

857

and Wisconsin Rivers. To hold the water
subject to control, a dam is to be construct-
ed across the lowest rim of each basin — that
is, that part of the rim which is the drainage
outlet of the basin. In each case the dis-
charge gate of the reservoir will have an
area not less than the cross-section of the
stream at low water. It is shown that
95,572,000,000 cubic feet of water may be
stored away in the reservoirs on the Missis-
sippi alone. The reservoirs already com-
pleted on that stream show an actual capaci-
ty of nearly 5,000,000,000 cubic feet more
than their estimated capacity. Not all of
this water is available for storage, however,
as 46,000,000,000 cubic feet are required for
the constant flow between May and Decem-
ber, leaving a minimum of 49,000,000,000
cubic feet (with a possible ten per cent more)
available for storage. Calculations show that
with a low stage of water continuing for four
months, the amount to be drawn from the
reservoirs would aggregate only 42,000,000,-
000 cubic feet against an actual amount of
49,000,000,000 cubic feet in the reservoirs.
This, if we consider the increased actual over
the estimated capacity of the reservoirs,
would give 5,800 cubic feet per second that
could be spared, while only 4,400 are need-
ed. Including also the reservoirs that might
be constructed on the Wisconsin, Chippewa,
Crow Wing, and Fox Rivers, the available
supply could be increased to a possible 40,-
500 cubic feet per second for ninety days.
The reservoirs, once they are constructed at
the sources of these streams, will give a much
more uniform volume in the Mississippi, so
as to insure a fair stage on all bars, and will
also add several hundred miles of navigable
waters to the great system of river transpor-
tation. These streams are mentioned, not
because they are more important than the
large rivers below, but because they are the
outlets of hundreds of large lakes in the
northern part of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Their freshets may be an important factor
in the more disastrous floods of the lower
Mississippi.

Glacial Action in Niagara River. — Prof.
G. W. Halley dissents from Prof. Gilbert's
theory of the history of Niagara River, and
believes that glacial action was an agent in
the formation of the channel. In 1840, he

said, a large surface of rock on the bank of
the river was removed at different points
for the purpose of making certain improve-
ments, and was found to be deeply scored
while the vicinity furnished many granite
bowlders. Three branches of drift stone
and gravel are developed at Lewiston, and
the evidence of glacial action is abundant.
These and other facts which the author men-
tioned point, in his opinion, to the existence
and progress of a grand terminal moraine,
which was once the boundary of an immense
inland sea. So far from the Niagara River
carrying no sediment, as Prof. Gilbert as-
sumes, and as one who visits it in summer
might be justified in supposing, one who
lives near it many years may see its waters
running for ten days at a time with a dirty
chocolate or dark amber color, and charged
with great quantities of sand, gravel, and
silt ; and could hear in the rapids the gravel
and pebbles grinding and scratching their
way along the rough bottom. The vast
dense bar at the mouth of the river on Lake
Ontario is overwhelming proof of its im-
mense scouring properties.

Valne of Science in Industries. — In his

paper on The Development of the Coal-tar
Color Industry since 1880, Dr. W. H. Per-
kin named various coloring matters which
had been discovered during the last ten
years, and illustrated his remarks by ex-
periments with different colors. Germany
still holds the first position in the market,
both as to quality and quantity, but the
competition of Swiss, French, and English
manufacturers with that country has been
steadily increasing. Several years ago the
author had expressed an opinion of the
necessity of scientific research being made
an important part of the training for
chemical students, so that highly skillful
chemical men imbued with a spirit of in-
vestigation might be produced, not only to
fill chemical chairs, but also to occupy im-
portant positions in chemical works. Hith-
erto not so much progress had been made in
this direction as was desirable, and he feared
that this was to some extent due to manu-
facturers not having as a body sufficiently
realized the great importance of employing
such men in their works. Thus, the demand
being small, the supply necessarily corre-

853

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sponded ; but surely the wonderful develop-
ment of the coal-tar industry, which had
been and still was being carried on in such
thoroughly scientific spirit, was an example
which should not be forgotten. Sir Freder-
ick Abel, the President of the British Asso-
ciation, where the paper was read, was struck
with Dr. Perkin's remarks on the reasons
why the English had been left behind in the
development of that particular industry, and
said that there were now great works in Ger-
many where chemical research is carried on
as an elaborate business, and was pursued
by men who had acquired university degrees
and distinction. He knew of one establish-
ment where forty trained chemists were at
work on the particular branch of research
in which it is interested. If they could get
a small army of men in England to pursue
the work systematically, they might regain
lost ground. In the first years of the coal-
tar industry the English claimed it as par-
ticularly their own, but now they could not
do so in view of the competition of the
French and Germans.

The Available Lauds of the Globe.— The

subject of the lands of the globe still avail-
able for European settlement was discussed
at a joint meeting of the Geographical and
Economical Science Sections of the British
Association. Mr. G. E. Ravenstein reviewed
the capacity of different parts of the earth,
excluding the arctic and antarctic regions as
wholly unavailable, to accommodate popula-
tion. He estimated the total number of per-
sons whom the earth could feed at 5,999,-
000,000. The kind of population with
which it shall be inhabited will depend to a
large extent on the capacity of Europeans to
thrive in strange climates. He spoke of the
tendency of populations to move to the
southward, but did not think tropical cli-
mates adapted to the acclimatization of Eu-
ropean races in the sense in which the word
acclimatization is generally used. The health
of Europeans in tropical countries had im-
proved in consequence of sanitary measures,
but that was not all. Population in some
countries did not increase ; and, where they
could compare the facts collected in the
same country, they found that the superior
race increased at a slower rate than the in-
ferior race. That would, in course of time,

keep back the growth of population, and, in
fact, the whole of mankind was being gradu-
ally lifted up to a higher level. If only the
superior, not the inferior, people increased,
the speaker did not think the progress of
civilization would be quite so steady. Mr.
E. J. Marend, after his experience in Africa,
was of the opinion that the prevalent idea
that tropical regions are unsuited to coloni-
zation by Anglo-Saxons is mistaken. Eng-
lishmen live for years in Matabeleland,
bringing up their children and keeping their
health. Traders, missionaries, and Dutch-
men are all able to thrive there, and the
country is competent to provide the food-
supplies for a large population. Sir R. Raw-
son believed that the proportion of land in
the different zones is as follows : About fifty
per cent of the whole is in the temperate
zone, about forty per cent in the torrid zone,
and about a tenth in the arctic zone. Be-
fore going further in dealing with a future
home for the surplus population of Europe,
we must ascertain the zones that are suited
to a European population. The surplus pop-
ulation of England and the north of Eu-
rope could occupy only a temperate zone. It
was also essential that we should know how
much is available in each of the zones. Mr.
John Mackenzie's experience had shown him
that South Africa is habitable for both the
north and south Europeans. The Rev. Dr.
Cunningham pointed out that the intensity of
production might be much increased through
the direction of native agriculture by Euro-
pean intelligence. Mr. Wells, a traveler in
Brazil, from whose papers we have quoted,
called attention to an area in the south of
that country which might be called the
Transvaal of South America. To the north-
west of Rio lay a considerable coffee-produc-
ing area, with an exceedingly healthy cli-
mate, and the productive powers of the
country were very far indeed from being
approximately reached. Several speakers
mentioned the necessity of emigrants to the
south adapting their mode of life to the
changed climate, and insisted on the neces-
sity of temperance. Dr. J. G. Garson said
the question of drainage was most impor-
tant, though it often occurs that the first
steps toward sanitation are followed by out-
breaks of fever, arising from saturation of
the soil by sewage. Elevation above the

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

859

sea-level exerted much influence on health,
though the great thing for emigrants was to
choose a climate as nearly as possible like
that to which they were used.

An Experiment in Hypnotism. — Mr. A.

Taylor Inness contributes to the London
Spectator a curious relation of a case in
which a hypnotizing practitioner ventured to
stop the beating of the heart of his subject.
Calling a physician of the place, who was
well acquainted with the subject, to himself,
he asked him, " Doctor, will you put your
finger upon his left pulse, while I keep mine

on his right ? " Dr. , says the story,

" was skeptical and hostile, but at our in-
stance he consented. Keeping one hand on
the lad's wrist, Lewis laid the other gently
over his heart. Within a minute or two M.

lost his rich and vivid color, and Lewis

counted the decreasing strokes till he an-
nounced that they were scarcely recognizable.
' Is that not so, doctor ? ' he asked. Dr.

was extremely unwilling to speak ; but,

under the urgency of some of us who stood
by, he at last said, in so many words, that
the pulse had almost shrunk to nothing.
The boy stood, a ghastly statue, for a min-
ute longer, when Lewis, saying hurriedly,
' The pulse is now imperceptible ; we must
protract this no longer,' took away his hand
from the breast, to the evident relief of his
improvised colleague. But it was to the
evident relief, too, of their common patient.
I remember distinctly to this day the ashen
hue even of his lips, and the wonderful
gradations through which the blood found
its way back into them and into the whole
young face — a face still asleep, but now
glowing as if it had traveled a long way from
the margin of the grave."

Physical Geography of the Mediter-
ranean.— Sir R. L. Playfair said on this sub-
ject, in his British Association address, that
the Mediterranean must at one time have
consisted of two inclosed or inland basins
like the Dead Sea, separated by the isthmus
between Cape Bon, in Tunisia, and Sicily.
The depth between Italy and Sicily is insig-
nificant, and Malta is a continuation of Sicily.
The shallows cut off the two basins from all
but superficial communication. The con-
figuration of the bottom shows that the

whole strait was at one time continuous land,
affording free communication for land ani-
mals between Africa and Europe. In the
caves and fissures of Malta are three species
of fossil elephants, a hippopotamus, a gigan-
tic dormouse, and other animals that could
never have lived on so small an island. In
Sicily remains of the existing elephant have
been found, as well as the Elephas aniiquus,
and two species of hippopotamus, while
nearly all these and many other animals of
African type have been found in the Pliocene
deposits and caverns of the Atlantic region.
The submersion of this isthmus no doubt
occurred when the waters of the Atlantic
were introduced through the Strait of Gi-
braltar. The rainfall over the entire area
of the Mediterranean is not more than thirty
inches, while the evaporation is twice as
great. Therefore, were the strait to be
closed, the level of the sea would sink again,
and this would affect the Adriatic and the
^Egean Seas and a great part of the west-
ern basin. At the Strait of Gibraltar an
upper current at three miles an hour sup-
plies the sea with the difference between
rainfall and evaporation. An opposite cur-
rent of warmer water flows out at half the
rate, carrying off the excess of salinity, but
leaving the Mediterranean salter than any
part of the ocean except the Red Sea. The
almost constant temperature of 56°, com-
pared with 53° to 49° in the Atlantic, en-
abled Dr. Carpenter to distinguish between
Atlantic and Mediterranean water.

Castomary Survivals. — Our knowledge
of primitive civilization, says Canon Isaac
Taylor, in Knowledge, is largely derived from
the study of survivals. Survivals may be
defined as anomalous traditional usages,
seemingly meaningless or useless, which
originated in some state of things that has
passed away, but which by the force of cus-
tom have continued to exist. That the
Queen still gives her assent to acts of Parlia-
ment in a formula couched in Norman French
is, for instance, a survival from the time
when the sovereign of England was a Nor-
man duke, unable to speak English. A
judge's wig is a survival of the long hair
which came in fashion at the Restoration ;
and the black patch on the crown, with its
white fringe, is a survival of the black skull-

86o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cap that was worn over the coif of white silk
or linen that formed the head-dress of the
sergeants-at-law from whom the judges were
selected. The procurations paid to an arch-
deacon of the Church of England are a
money composition in lieu of his ancient
right of quartering himself and his attend-
ant horsemen on the parochial clergy during
his visitations. Fee-farm rents, as they are
called, are in many cases survivals of pay-
ments for services no longer rendered. Canon
Taylor pays a rent of this kind, which repre-
sents a composition for a certain number of
thraves or sheaves of corn, which his prede-
cessors in title rendered to the Abbot of
Beverley for his services in " correcting the
villans " of a certain parish, who might
avail themselves of the privilege of sanctu-
ary that was conferred by Athelstan on the
monks. The unchronicled history of English
villages may be largely recovered from the
study of such anomalous survivals. Sir
Henry Maiue and Mr. Seebohm in England,
and Von Maurer and Prof. Nasse in Ger-
many, have made some valuable researches
in this line, and Mr. G. L. Gomme has added
to them. The last author explains a dupli-
cate municipal jurisdiction that used to pre-
vail at Rochester by assuming that there was
a community there of Danish origin, gov-
erned by its own laws and officers, but sub-
ordinate to the rule of the Saxon community.
Canon Taylor also cites a more striking case
at Exeter, where Mr. Kerslake has succeeded
in delimitating the boundaries of the Celtic
and Saxon communities which dwelt side by
side within the walls.

Early Printing at Avignon. — Documents
have been recently discovered by the Abb6
Requin that go to show that printing was
practiced at Avignon before Gutenberg in-
troduced it in Mentz. They record that in
1444 one Procopius Valdfoghel (Waldvogel),
a goldsmith of Prague, was living at Avig-
non, and instructed two students there —
Manaud Vitalis and Arnaud de Coselhac — in
the art of artificial writing and furnished
them with the instruments for it, consist-
ing of two abecedaria of metal and two iron
formes, a steel screw, forty-eight formce
of tin, and other implements. About the
same time Valdfoghel instructed one Davin,
of Caderousse, a Jew, in the same art ; and

two years later, on the 10th of March, 1446,
he entered into an agreement with the Jew
to supply him with twenty-seven Hebrew
letters cut in iron, and other implements for
the practice of printing. At the same time
the Jew agreed not to disclose the art, either
in theory or practice, to any one as long as
Valdfoghel remained at Avignon or in the
neighborhood. A partnership was formed
between Valdfoghel and his two former
students, from which Vitalis retired in April,
1446, giving up his share in the implements,
whether of iron, steel, copper, lead, and
other metals, or of wood. He also made
oath on the Holy Gospels that the art of arti-
ficial writing taught him by Valdfoghel was
a true art, and easy and useful to any one
who desired to work at it and was fond of
it. It is questioned whether this declaration
was obtained to avoid the imputation of sor-
cery, or to commit Vitalis to an assertion
that the invention was a successful one.
These transactions took place while Guten-
berg was still experimenting at Strasburg,
and their date, if confirmed, would fix Avig-
non, instead of Mentz, as the second city
where printing was carried on.

Sparrows and Robins. — Another attack
on the English sparrow is made by C. B.
Cook in a Bulletin of the Michigan Agricult-
ural Experiment Station. No new charge
is made against the sparrows, nor is any new
proof adduced of the old charges that when
too numerous they are a nuisance and that
they drive away other birds. We respect, if
we do not love them, for the good they have
done in clearing city trees of measuring-
worms. As to their incompatibility with
other birds, we have the witness of one
suburb of New York, where the sparrows
have been the longest and have multiplied
the most, that since the law came in to pro-
tect other birds against the man with a
gun and the boy with a stone, the robins
have been increasing very fast, are not
troubled by the sparrows, and during the
past spring were more often seen than they.
Thus the assertion that man, not sparrows,
is responsible for the recent scarcity of
song and friendly birds is confirmed. Mr.
Cook's paper furnishes an amusing if not
pleasant illustration of the folly of offering
bounties for the destruction of sparrows.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

861

Nearly five hundred dollars were paid out in
Michigan from July, 1889, to March, 1890,
"for 15,697 sparrow-heads." Most of the
birds, Mr. Cook says, were red-polled linnets
— valuable birds. It would perhaps be bet-
ter to protect the good birds more efficiently
and not worry so much about the sparrows.
That plan has had excellent results in New
Jersey.

Permanency of the Earth's Features. —

A paper was read in the American Geologi-
cal Society by Prof. E. W. Claypole, trav-
ersing the doctrine toward which a few
geologists are tending, that the sea-beds and
the continental masses are permanent and
date back to the original consolidation of
the earth's crust. After reviewing the sev-
eral arguments by which this theory is sup-
ported, the author concluded that " we have
ample evidence of change of level to ac-
count for the conversion of the deep sea
into dry land and vice versa, and that the
absence of deep-sea deposits among the
stratified rocks is not a valid objection. It
would also follow that the depression may
occur in any part of the world according to
laws as yet unknown, but that when a de-
pression is full of sediment re-elevation is
likely to occur ; that the deep ocean-beds,
instead of being permanent outlines of the
earth's contour, are subject to the same laws
of elevation that govern the rest of nature.
On this view the ocean abysses would be
areas of subsidence unfilled by deposit be-
cause they were out of the reach of shore
action, rather than permanent depressions
on the earth's surface."

Democracy and the Chnrchcs.— The In-
fluence of Democracy on Religion is the sub-
ject of an article in the London Spectator,
suggested by the popular enthusiasm aroused
by the funeral of Mrs. Booth, of the Salva-
tion Army. The author accepts the story
of the Salvation Army, and the story of the
Wesleyan movement of the last century, as
testimony to the unconscious influence of
democratic feeling on ecclesiastical organi-
zation ; and he believes that the whole char-
acter of the Reformation and its offshoots
has been gravely affected by the attraction
of democratic forms and phases of feeling
for religious natures. Both Judaism and

Christianity have always placed the poor,
and especially the poor in spirit, above those
accounted the possessors of this world's
privileges ; and, as a consequence, these re-
ligions have struck at the heart cf slavery,
and have raised women to the spiritual level
of men. The earlier Protestant enthusiasm
may have profited by the democratic aver-
sion to specially privileged spiritual orders,
like the priesthood and the episcopate. The
recognition by the Wesleyans of the minis-
terial capacity of the laity, and the jealousy
against a hierarchy manifested by many
other of the Nonconformist churches, gave
the religious world a consciousness of the
popular advantage which a more emphatic
development of the democratic idea in re-
ligion bestowed on those churches and sects
which were founded on free choice by the
laity of their ecclesiastical representatives.
The Nonconformists have been compensated
for their rejection of state privileges by be-
ing brought thereby nearer to the people.
The influence of democratic tendencies in
other churches is also marked. The univer-
sal tendency in Ireland, where the priest-
hood are of the class which feels most keenly
the pressure of democratic principles, to
modify and even defy the authority of the
Roman Catholic Church in the interest of
the peasantry, has been very startling. In
England the Episcopal churches, both An-
glican and Roman Catholic, are curiously
divided between the strong democratic sym-
pathies which their rulers feel under the
pressure of public opinion and the natural
leaning of their theology against anything
like concession to the lawless cravings of
the human heart. Roman Catholic dignita-
ries in England express their sympathy with
Irish offenders against the law and with re-
calcitrant bishops in Ireland. Church con-
gresses discuss social reforms with a dispo-
sition to find a middle ground between the
old principle of individual right and liberty
and the new collectivism. In the United
States even Roman Catholic priests take
part with the Knights of Labor and ignore
the authority of their bishops. English Ro-
man Catholics support earnestly movements
known to be popular, and when there is a
struggle between labor and capital the great-
est man is on the side of labor, often when
labor is in the wrong. Everywhere the

86z

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

spread of democracy is redressing, and more
than redresses the balance of religious pre-
possession. Yet it is certain that no relig-
ion will remain popular long which does not
put a strong curb on the passions and whims
of human nature. This, too, is felt, and the
course of ecclesiastics is modified by the
feeling.

Shorter flours and Wages. — An elabo-
rate review of the probable effects on wages
of a general reduction in the hours of labor,
presented in the British Association by Prof.
J. E. C. Munro, brought him to the follow-
ing conclusions : 1. A reduction in the hours
of labor which is neither universal nor uni-
form will tend to reduce the net product
available for division among the producing
classes, but such reduction may be lessened
or counteracted by greater efficiency in labor
and in the use of capital. 2. Capital will
be able to throw a portion of the loss on la-
bor, and labor generally will be affected. 3.
Any check to the accumulation of capital
due to the reduction in the net produce will
tend to raise interest and lower wages ; but
this may be avoided to some extent by the
more economic use of capital. 4. The re-
duction in hours will not necessarily lessen
the number of the unemployed, inasmuch as
it will not increase the purchasing power of
the consumer, and will not affect the chief
cause of poverty incident to our present or-
ganization of industry. 5. The position of
the chronic unemployed, or residuum, will
not be materially improved. 6. In so far as
additional laborers are employed to maintain
the net produce, it will be at the expense of
other workers, if the net produce remains
the same but the number of producers in-
creases. It is necessary to point out, the
author added, that arguments which may be
urged against a general, though unequal, re-
duction of hours do not apply with the same
force to a reduction of hours in a particular
trade that may be the subject of special
economic surroundings. Before venturing
to express an opinion on the desirability of
reducing hours in a given industry — mining,
for example — the economist will require to
investigate these surroundings in order to
estimate what loss, if any, will occur, and
upon whom such loss will fall. But, even
if there be a loss in a particular industry or

a national loss, it may be more than made
good to the nation by the beneficial effects
on the working classes of greater leisure.
Hence the importance of asking what the
working classes will do with the hours they
gain from toil. Reasons drawn from cur-
rent movements were given for believing it
probable that, so far as the skilled indus-
tries are concerned, the workers would, on
the whole, utilize additional leisure in a man-
ner creditable to themselves and useful to
the state. Prof. A. T. Hadley, of Yale Col-
lege, in the discussion of this paper, cited the
results of an investigation which was made
ten years ago into the relative output of ten-
hour workmen in factories in Massachusetts
and eleven-hour men in Connecticut. The
result was in favor of ten hours in Massa-
chusetts, and was proved not to be owing to
any difference in the health of the workmen,
but largely to the fact that the workmen of
the Massachusetts mills were of a superior
class to those of Connecticut. There was a
process of a sort of natural selection going
on among those who did not mind the long
day and could not stand the increased pace
of the short day, and those who cared more
for the extra hour of leisure and minded
less the necessity of increased exertion.

Fast and Fugitive Coal-tar Colors. — In

a paper on fast and fugitive coal-tar colors
Prof. J. J. Hummel, in the British Associa-
tion, contradicted the idea that the modern
coal-tar colors are all fugitive while the col-
ors of the older vegetable dye-stuffs are all
fast. There are fast and fugitive dyes in
both classes. We have now about five hun-
dred distinct kinds of coal-tar colors, of
which about thirty are extremely fast and
an equal number or more are moderately
fast. On the other hand, out of the thirty
or so natural dye-stuffs usually employed we
count ten as giving fast colors. We have,
therefore, a total of about three times as
many fast coal-tar colors as of fast natural
dye-stuffs. This pitting of natural as against
artificial coloring matters ought now to cease.
Of course, it is not to be denied that we have
a very large number of fugitive coal-tar dyes ;
and the indiscriminate use of these, due
largely to competition, has, no doubt, injured
the reputation of the whole class. The
question, often asked, whether there is no

NOTES.

863

method of rendering the fugitive colors fast,
must be answered in the negative. The fast
or fugitive character of a color is an inher-
ent property of the coloring matter used, and
depends mainly, if not entirely, upon its
chemical constitution. In order to improve
the fastness of coal-tar colors we should ex-
amine thoroughly the characteristic of every
coloring matter, then choose the fastest and
reject the rest, or only employ them when
they are perfectly admissible. Such a pro-
cess of selecting the fittest has gone on in
the past with reference to the dye-woods,
and such is the sifting process now at work
among the coal-tar colors. Side by side with
this must run the selection of the most
brilliant and most easily applied of the fast
colors, so that the ultimate goal of perfec-
tion to which we would thus attain would be
to have all our colors fast, brilliant, and
easily applied. Given a good range of brill-
iant colors, it becomes possible by their va-
ried combinations to produce the most pe-
culiar, pleasing, and attractive shades of
grays and olives and browns, and the thou-
sand and one delicate tints beloved by the
artist ; and they yield when desired a rich-
ness and life and body of color compared
with which older colors are poor and life-
less. Let the artist, inexperienced perhaps
in the application and proper use of coal-tar
colors, confine his attention, if he wishes, to
the more somber and older dye-stuffs, but
do not allow him to persuade you that there
is no beauty or permanence or other quality
of excellence in any of the coal-tar colors of
to-day.

NOTES.

Peof. F. V. Riley takes a hopeful view
of the promise of good results to come in
apiculture from experiment and investiga-
tion. He pointed out, in his address last
fall before the Society of Economic Ento-
mologists, as one of the most inviting fields
the search for new varieties or species of
bees and their introduction; "for just as
American apiculture has profited in the past
by the importation of races like the Italians,
Syrians, and Carniolans, there is every pros-
pect of further improvement by the study
and introduction of such promising races as
are either known to occur or may be found
in parts of Africa and Asia." The further
study of desirable bee forage plants, and the
introduction and acclimatization of such as

are known to be valuable to parts of the
country where they do not yet occur, are
very desirable.

A new spice adulterant is described by
Frank A. Hennesey, Ph. G., in The Pharma-
ceutical Era. It consists of ground crackers
made from a very low grade of wheat — but
little better than cattle-feed. The powder
thus obtained is colored yellow with turmer-
ic, black with charcoal, brown with Spanish
brown and turmeric, etc., according to the
spice it is to adulterate. The biscuits are
made in a steam bakery in Philadelphia, and
large quantities of them have been delivered
to a certain spice house in the same city.
The presence of this adulterant can not be
detected except by a chemical analysis of
some difficulty. Ordinary cracker dust has
also been used for this purpose.

A correspondent of La Nature, from
Bagdad, describes a shower of rain accom-
panied by a fall of " manna," that took
place in August, 1890, around Mardeen and
Diarbekir. A surface about ten kilometres
in circumference was visited. The nutritious
substance was picked up by the people and
made by some of them into bread, which
had a pleasant taste and was easily digested.
A specimen of it sent to La Nature was in
the form of spherules, about as large as
millet-seed, agglutinated together; was yel-
lowish on the outside and white within. It
proved, after a botanical examination, to be a
lichen (Lecanora esculenta), which, according
to Decaisne, is common in the arid mount-
ainous regions of the Tartarian desert,
where it lies on the ground, distinguishable
only by the most practiced eyes from the
gravel with which it is mingled. Parrot
told, in 1828, of a shower of it which fell in
Persia, where it was collected by the people
and was greedily eaten by cattle. The par-
ticles had probably been taken up by some
whirlwind and separated from the accom-
panying sand while passing through the at-
mosphere.

A bold device, which will also furnish a
new source of excitement, is suggested by
M. Aristide Berges, a French engineer, in
the shape of an elevator-car to fall, with its
passengers, through a thousand feet, or the
height of the Eiffel Tower. During its fall
the machine will acquire a velocity of about
250 feet per second, or more than twice that
of the swiftest express train. The car will be
built in the form of a long cone, strength-
ened by inner cones which will act to pre-
vent the sudden compression of the air
within the chamber, and will be about
thirty feet high. To break its fall, a well
of water will be provided, 160 feet deep,
into which the machine will descend, and
sink so gradually as to remove the sensation
of shock. A picture is published by the de-
signer showing the car carrying fifteen peo-
ple in its headlong journey.

864

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A unique collection of migrating birds
formed at Heligoland during forty years by
Herr Gatke has been bought for England by
Mr. Henry Sebohm, and is to be deposited
in the natural history department of the
British Museum.

Observations made on Venus to test the
conclusions of M. Sehiaparelli respecting its
rotation, indicate that the rotation is slow,
and is made in such a way that the relative
position of the spots and terminator do not
go through any notable change during many
days ; that the time of rotation of the planet
does not differ more than thirty days from
its sidereal period of revolution (about 225
days) ; and that the axis of rotation of the
planet is almost perpendicular to the plane
of its orbit. These conclusions support those
deduced by Sehiaparelli from an extended
discussion of all the observations of the
planet.

A curious instance of protective mim-
icry in a toad is described by Mr. Robert
Snordy, of Durham, England. The muscles
of the batrachian's body were (as usual)
arranged in such a fashion that the back of
its head " looked like minute nodules of
dark gravel imbedded in a damp path below
trees." On top of this gravel-like arrange-
ment of muscles was spread a mesh or net-
work of very fine lichen, with oval-shaped
leaves of lightish - green color, connected
more or less to each other by a hair-like
process of stems. This lichen spread irreg-
ularly over the toad's back, and odd sprays
of it were also to be seen on the legs and
upper surfaces of the feet. "Now," says
Mr. Snordy, " had the toad been in its regu-
lar haunts under t e trees and shrubs, with
this wonderful counterfeit of gravel and
protective coloring, it would have been al-
most impossible to discriminate its form
from the dark gravel, lichens, moss, wood,
sorrel, and dead leaves of the place; and I
doubt not that this animal's unobtrusive at-
tire would aid it materially in capturing the
insects necessary for its subsistence."

In Paris compressed air is supplied to
houses through pipes for working elevators,
and also for refrigerating purposes.

An Edinburgh physician writes to the
London Times that he has driven a horse,
without shoes, on a tour of over four hundred
miles, and afterward used him on paved and
macadamized streets, without the animal
showing any signs of lameness or tenderness.
With two larger horses the experiment failed.
In slippery weather the unshod horse proves
far more sure-footed than a horse with rough-
ened shoes. The doctor concludes that where
the growth of the hoofs is strong and rapid,
horses are the better for not being shod, es-
pecially in the country. The front of the
hoofs may have to be rasped away a little,
but the sole of the foot is left untouched.

The ratio of the circumference to the
diameter of the circle was calculated by
Archimedes as 22 : 7 ; P. Metius made it
355 : 113. Now Shanks has fixed it, after a
very long calculation, as far as 530 deci-
mals, and Rutherford has verified his results
up to the 440th decimal. Omitting the in-
teger and taking only the fractional part of
w, in the decimal notation, he has found
that the first twenty figures added together
give 100 ; the alternate figures in the odd
series (first, third, etc.) give 45 ; and the
alternates of the even series (second, fourth,
etc.) give 55. A curious triple coincidence,
but one that has no meaning.

A number of experiments on the com-
parative palatability of insects, etc., are re-
corded in Nature, by E. B. Tichener and F.
Finn. The insects experimented upon —
consisting of beetles, moths, bees, etc. — were
offered to domestic mice, common toads,
and a common mynah (Acridolheres tristis).
The results evinced considerable variability
and some caprice in the tastes of the ani-
mals fed, but do not indicate that their ap-
petites were voracious for the delicacies
given them. The stronger beetles were
taken with some hesitation. The mice de-
clined to take bumble-bees ; the mynah ate
wasps greedily; the toads readily took wasps
and bees, and were often stung, without
seeming to pay much attention to the acci-
dent. The cockroach was eaten by the
toads. The mynah for a long time refused
it, and only took it, as well as the earth-
worm, finally, in the dearth of other insects.
A few centipeds were given to the mice and
the mynah, but were never eaten, though the
mice, in one case, eagerly seized and killed a
large specimen.

A striking example of law-making de-
feating its own purpose is furnished in India,
where a bounty offered for killing poisonous
serpents has led the natives to breed the
reptiles as a source of income. This recalls a
former practice in Australia, where a reward
was paid in one district for the feet of rab-
bits, and in another district for their heads.
As a result the heads and feet became ob-
jects of exchange between the inhabitants of
the two sections.

An instance of transmission of an ac-
quired mental peculiarity is given by Pastor
Handtmann, of Seedorf on the Elbe, to the
German Anthropological Society. It occurred
in the case of a farmer who always wrote
his first name " Austug " instead of " Au-
gust," and his daughter. Inspecting the
school, some years after his first acquaint-
ance with it, the author heard a little girl
read "Leneb" for " Leben," "Naled"for
" Nadel," etc. She was the daughter. The
farmer had been remarkable for his habit
of shifting the consonant sounds of words,
which had originated in a fall some time be-
fore the birth of the daughter.

INDEX,

ARTICLES MARKED 'WITH AN ASTERISK ARE ILLUSTRATED.

PAGE

Abbott, Cbar.les C. Sketch of D. G. Brinton. (With Portrait.) 836

African Custom, Curiosities of. (Misc.) 570

Agriculture, New England. (Corr.) T. H. Hoskins '. 700

Agricultural Science, Progress in.* M. Miles 491

Air, Compressed, as a Motor Power. (Misc.) 715

Aitchison, G. The Principles of Decoration 390

Alcohol as a Cause of Disease. (Misc.) 716

" The Use of, in Medicine. A. G. Bartley 86

Ambergris. (Misc.) 573

America, The Peopling of. A. de Quatrefages 305

Americanists, International Congress of 685

Animal Life in the Great Desert. W. Marshall 247

Animals, the Lower, Laws of Government among. J. W. Slater 077

Antiseptic Treatment and Sir Joseph Lister. (Corr.) PI. J. Smith 119

Apple Crop of 1890, The Failure of the. (Misc.) 714

Architects, A Defense of the. (Corr.) A. D. F. Hamlin 699

Architecture and the Environment. Barr Ferree 194

Argyll, Duke of. Professor Huxley on the "War-path 775

Aryan Question, The, and Prehistoric Man. T. H. Huxley 341, 502

Aye-aye, The. (Misc.) 567

Assassinations, Philosophy of some. (Misc.) 427

Babel, From, to Comparative Philology. A. D. White '. 289, 433

Badger, The, and the Fox * 807

Bartley, A. G. The Use of Alcohol in Medicine . 86

Bath, The, in the Middle Ages. (Misc.) 713

Benton, Warren G. Chinese Buddhism 530

Bernhardt, W. Predisposition, Immunity, and Disease 380

Berthold, Victor M. Unnatural Reading. (Corr.) 266

Bicycler, What keeps the, Upright? * C. B. Warring 766

Bird's Flight, The Start of a. (Misc.) 141

Bolton, H. Carrington. Scientific Jottings in Egypt 823

Books noticed 124, 272, 413, 557. 705, 844

Abbe, Cleveland. Deductive Methods in Badt, F. B., and H. S. Carhart. Deriva-

Storm and Weather Predictions, 131. tion of Practical Electrical Units, 563.

Abbott, C. C. Outings at Odd Times, 557. Baker, Samuel W. Wild Beasts and their
Abel, Mrs. Mary H. Practical Sanitary Ways. 414.

and Economic Cooking, 126. Ball, William P. Are the Effects of Use

Allen, W. F. The Annals of Tacitus, 131. and Disuse inherited ? 563.

Babcock, W. H. The Two Lost Centuries Ballard, Julia P. Among the Moths and

of Britain, 421. Butterflies, 418.

VOL. xxxviii. — 60

866

INDEX.

Books noticed :

Ballou, W. R. Equine Anatomy and Physi-
ology, 132.

Bird, Charles. Elementary Geology, 708.

Blanford, Henry F. India, Barman, and
Ceylon, 708.

Blythe, A. W. A Manual of Public Health,
561.

Bolton, H. C. Contributions of Alchemy
to Numismatics, 421.

Boston Society of Natural History. Pro-
ceedings, Vol. XXIV, 418.

Bowker, R. R., and George lies. Reader's
Guide to Economic, Social, and Political
Science, 852.

Brinton, D. G. Races and Peoples, 559.

Browning, O. Aspects of Education, 132.

Bureau of Education. Circular of Infor-
mation, No. 2, 1889, 278.

Cajori, Florian. The Teaching and His-
tory of Mathematics in the United
States, 710.

Carus, Paul. The Ethical Problem, 421.

Census Bureau. Bulletins Nos. 6 and 19, 71 1.

Chief Signal Officer of the Army. Report
for 1889, 130.

Chittenden, E. P. The Pleroma, 131.

Clark, Willis G. History of Education in
Alabama, 278.

Collier, Peter. The Future of Agriculture
in the United States, 564.

Cope, R. The Distribution of Wealth, 711.

Cornell University. Third Annual Report
of the Agricultural Experiment Station,
852.

Cox, Charles F. Protoplasm and Life, 130.

Crooker, J. H. The Bible in the Public
Schools, 131.

Dall, William H. Contributions to the Ter-
tiary Fauna of Florida, 420.

Davis, Walter G. Anales de la Oflcina
Meteorologica Argentina, 1886, 849.

Dawson, G. M. On the Later Physio-
graphical Geography of the Rocky
Mountain Region in Canada, 853.

Day, David T. Mineral Resources of the
United States for 1888. 709.

De Costa. B. F. The Pre-Columbian Dis-
covery of America by the Northmen, 558.

Diehl, Anna Randall-. A Practical Del-
sarte Primer, 562.

Durham, William. Astronomy, 563.

Educational Review. N. M. Butler, Edi-
tor, 564.

Educational Society of Japan, A Short
History of. 279.

Elderton, William A. Maps and Map-
drawing, 564.

Ellis, A. B. The Ewe-speaking Peoples of
the Gold Coast of West Africa, 706.

Ellis, A. B. The Tshi-speaking Peoples of
the Slave Coast of West Africa, 706.

Ellis, Havelock. The Criminal, 129.

Elson, Louis C- The Theory of Music, 849.

Ely, Talfourd. Manual of Archaeology, 852.

Fiske, John. Civil Government in the
United States, 413.

Genone, Hudor. Inquirendo Island, 711.

Geological Survey. Bulletins 58 to 66, 709.

Graham, Douglas. A Treatise on Mas-
sage, 127.

Graham, William. Socialism, New and
Old, 844.

Green, W. L. Notice of Prof. J. D. Dana's
Characteristics of Volcanoes, 420.

Gurney, E. H. Reference Handbook of
English History, 131.

" Hamilton, Gail." A Washington Bible-
Class, 848.

Hardy, A. S. Elements of the Differential
and Integral Calculus, 710.

Harkness, Albert. An Easy Method for
Beginners in Latin, 422.

Harper's Sixth Reader, 853.

Hazen, H. A. Tornadoes, 130.

Health for Little Folks, 133.

Hendrick, Welland. Brief History of the
Empire State, 422.

Hill, Robert T. The Cretaceous Rocks of
Texas, 420.

Hippisley, A. E. A Catalogue of the Hip-
pisley Collection of Chinese Porcelains,
709.

Hitchcock, Henry. A Year's Legislation
(1889-'90;, 420.

Hjelt, E. Principles of General Organic
Chemistry, 707.

Hough, W. Fire-making Apparatus, 709.

Hug, Lina, and Richard Stead. Switzer-
land, 565.

Hyatt, Alpheus, and J. M. Arms. Guides
for Science Teaching. VIU. Insecta, 847.

International Journal of Ethics, 416.

Jacobs, Joseph. English Fairy Tales, 561.

Jago, William. Inorganic Chemistry, 707.

James, William. The Principles of Psy-
chology, 272.

Jastrow, Joseph. The Time-relations of
Mental Phenomena, 564.

Journal of Morphology, Vol. IV, No. 1, 419.

Kansas Agricultural College Experiment
Station. Second Annual Report of Bo-
tanical Department, 419.

Kennedy, John. Stem Dictionary of the
English Language, 131.

Kiddle, Henry. Text-book of Physics, 133.

Klauser. Julius. The Septonate and the
Centralization of the Tonal System, 851.

Lange, Helene. Higher Education of
Women in Europe, 847.

Leffman, Henry. A Compend of Chemis-
try, 132.

Leffman, H., and W. Beam. Progressive
Exercises in Practical Chemistry, 279.

Lindsay, T. B. Satires of Juvenal, 422.

Litchfield, Mary E. The Nine Worlds, 133.

Lockyer, J. Norman. The Meteoritic Hy-
pothesis. 705.

Lucas, F. A. The Expedition to the Funk
Island, 709.

McAdie, A. Tornadoes, 420.

McCook, Henry C. American Spiders and
their Spinning-work, Vol. II, 124.

INDEX. 867

Books noticed : PAQB

Macfarlane, James. An American Geo- Putnam, G. P., and L. E. Jones. Tabular

logical Railway Guide, 276. Views of Universal History, 422.

MacLean, J. P. An Examination of Fin- Reclus, E. North America. Vol. I, 705.

gal's Cave, 853. Report on Medical Education and the
McLennan, Evan. Cosmical Evolution, 852. Practice of Medicine in the Unitedj
Macy, J. Our Government : How it grew, States and Canada, 279.

what it does, and how it does it, 560. Schreber, D. G. R. Home Exercise for
Mason, Edward C. The Veto Power, 416. Health and Cure, 280.

Mercier, C. Sanity and Insanity, 128. Shufeldt, R. W. The Myology of the Ra-
Mills, Wesley. A Text-book of Compara- ven, 562.

tive Physiology, 275. Sime, James. Geography of Europe, 708.

Moll, Albert. Hypnotism, 125. Smith, Edgar F. Electro-Chemical Anal-
Monist, The, 711. ysis, 132.

Morris, I. H. Text-book of Practical Plane Smithsonian Institution. Report of the

and Solid Geometry, 708. National Museum for 1888, 708.

Mott, Henry A. A Chart relative to the Storrs School Agricultural Experiment

Composition of Food, 419. Station. Second Annual Report, 419.

Miiller, F. Max. Three Lectures on the Swedenborg, Emanuel. Descriptions of

Science of Language, 133. the Spiritual World, 665.

Nadaillac, Marquis de. Prehistoric Amer- Taft, L. R. Greenhouse Building and

ica, 415. Heating, 419.

Natural Speller and Word Book, 423. Thruston, Gates P. The Antiquities of
New England Meteorological Society. In- Tennessee and the Adjacent States, 128.

vestigations for the Year 1889, 420. Tolstoi, Leo. The Fruits of Culture, 853.

New Jersey. Final Report of the State Ward, Lester F. Genius and Woman's

Geologist, Vol. II, Part II, Zoology, 706. Intuition, 419.

Niblack, Albert P. The Coast Indians of Waring, George E., Jr. The Sewerage of

Southern Alaska, 707. Columbus, Ohio, 420.

Northam, Henry C. Manual of Civil Gov- Weeden, W. B. Economic and Social His-

ernment, 280. tory of New England, 276.

Ostwald, Wilhelm. Outlines of General West, Alfred H. A Digest of English and

Chemistry, 278. American Literature, 421.

Peck, H. T. Latin Pronunciation, 422. White, C. A. On the Geology and Physi-
Peet, Stephen D. Emblematic Mounds ography of Northwestern Colorado and

and Animal Effigies, 417. Parts of Utah and Wyoming, 709.

Physical Culture. A. Cuthbertson, Editor, Wiechmann, F. G. Sugar Analysis, 417.

419. Williams, George H. Elements of Crys-
Pickard, T. L. School Supervision, 125. tallography, 851.

Pickering, Edward C. The Draper Cata- Willoughby, W. W. The Supreme Court

logue of Stellar Spectra, 846. of the United States, 710.

Poet Lore. Charlotte Porter and Helen Wilson, Thomas. A Study of Prehistoric

A. Clarke, Editors, 564. Anthropology, 708.

Powers, Edward. War and the Weather, Woodward, C. M. The Educational Value

850. of Manual Training, 279.

Preble, Henry, and Charles P. Parker. Woody, S. E. Medical Chemistry and

Handbook of Latin Writing, 422. Urinalysis, 132.

Prudden, T. M. Dust and its Dangers, 559. Wright, G. F. The Glacial Boundary, 709.

Bore of the Amazon, the Poror6ca, or. J. C. Branner 208

Branner, John 0. The Poror6ca, or Bore of the Amazon 208

Bridges, Flora. Coeducation in Swiss Universities 524

Brinton, Daniel Garrison, Sketch of. (With Portrait.) C. 0. Abbott 836

Buddhism, Chinese. W. G. Benton 530

Burial, The Dangers of the Present Mode of. (Misc.) 286

California, Social Changes in. C. H. Shinn V94

Cats, The Intelligence of. W. H. Larrabee 368

Cements, The Relative Value of. C. D. Jameson and H. Remley 663

Chamisso, Adelbert von, as a Naturalist. (With Portrait.) E. Du Bois-

Reymond ' 252

Cheese, Population of. (Misc.) 428

Cherokee Theory of Disease, The. (Misc.) 426

868 INDEX.

PAGE

Churches, Democracy and the. (Misc.) 861

Churchill, William. The Duk-duk Ceremonies 236

Clark, Emmons. Street-cleaning in Large Cities 748

Climate, Adaptation to. Saint Y. Menard 670

Coeducation in Swiss Universities. F. Bridges 524

Coffee-drinking. (Misc.) 286

Cold, The Storage of. C. Morris 517

Cold Waves. (Misc.) ' 143

Colors, jCoal-tar, Fast and Fugitive. (Misc.) 862

Consumption, Dr. Koch's Method of treating. G. A. Heron 617

" Modern Views of. (Misc.) 424

" Physical Development, vs. (Misc.) 718

" Cure, Koch's. (Editor's Table) 841

Cooper, Samuel W. The Tyranny of the State 622

Copyright, International. (Editor's Table) 556

Cuadrados, Gaston A. The Influence of Spencer's Philosophy. (Corr.). . . . 264

Culture for its own Sake. (Editor's Table) 411

Currier, Amos N. The Decline of Rural New England 384

Customary Survivals. (Misc.) 859

" Dago," What shall we do with the ? A. Morgan 172

" " What shall we do with the ? " (Corr.) W. H. Larrabee 553

Decoration, The Principles of. G. Aitchison 390

Demeny, Georges. Precision in Physical Training 467

Desert, The Zungarian. (Misc.) 427

Development, The, of American Industries since Columbus.* William F.

Durfee 145, 314, 433, 586

" Announcement. (Editor's Table) 271

Disease, Race-influence and. G. B. Hoffmeister 817

Diver, The Experiences of a. H. Fol 216

Dogs, The Battersea Home for. (Misc.) 714

Dragon-fly and the Cricket, The. (Misc.) 574

Duk-duk Ceremonies, The. W. Churchill 236

Durfee, William F. Early Steps in Iron-making* 145

" Iron-mills and Puddling-Furnaces* 314

" Iron-smelting by Modern Methods* 449

" Iron-working with Machine Tools* 586

Dye-stuffs, About Certain. (Misc.) 572

Earth's Crust, Strength of the. (Misc.) -. 573

" Features, Permanency of the. (Misc.) 861

Eaton, Amos, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 113

Economics, Individual. (Corr.) L. O. Talbott • 407

Education, General, Elementary Botany in. M. Ward 363

Egypt, Scientific Jottings in. H. C. Bolton 823

Egyptian Desert, Ancient Maps of the. (Misc.) 575

Electricity, The Storage of.* S. Sheldon 355

Ellis, A. B. On Vodu-worship 651

Embryological Recapitulation. (Misc.) 284

INDEX. 869

PAGE

Eskimos, the Point-Barrow, Dress and Physique of. J. Murdoch 222

Ethics, Evolutionary. (Corr.) Robert Mathews 700

Fatness and its Treatment. (Misc.) 718

Ferree, Barr. Architecture and the Environment 194

Fijians, The. (Misc.) 570

Fire, Bristling with. (Misc.) 429

Fireplaces, Ancient, on the Ohio. (Misc.) 142

Fol, Hermann. The Experiences of a Diver 216

Folk Lore. (Misc.) 134

Folk-Lore Society, The American. (Misc.) 713

Forest, The. (Misc.) 143

Fort Ancient. (Misc.) ' 717

Fossils, Leonardo da Vinci's Theory of. (Misc.) 571

Fox, The Badger and the * 807

Freedom, From, to Bondage. Herbert Spencer 721

Free Trade and Protection, The Logic of. Arthur Kitson 48

Gas Cooking-stoves. (Misc.) 139

Geography-teaching in Russia. (Misc.) 286

Geology as an Educational Instrument. (Misc.) 139

Geometry, My Class in.* George lies 40

Ghost Idea, Advent of the. (Misc.) 714

Glacial Action in Niagara River. (Misc.) 857

Goodale, Elaine. Some Lessons from Barbarism 82

Graham, William. Supposed Tendencies to Socialism 577

Greeting by Gesture. G. Mallery 477, 629

Halsted, Byron D. Prairie Flowers of Late Autumn 229

Hamlin, A. D. F. A Defense of the Architects. (Corr.) 699

Heat, Non-conductors of. J. M. Ordway 644

Heron, G. A. Dr. Koch's Method of treating Consumption 617

Hertz, Henri. The Identity of Light and Electricity 179

Hindrances to Scientific Progress. (Editor's Table) 120

Hoffmeister, G. Bernard. Race-influence and Disease 817

Hoskins, T. H. New England Agriculture. (Corr.) TOO

Hours, Shorter, and Wages. (Misc.) v 862

Houzeau, Jean Charles, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 544

Human Selection. A. R. Wallace 93

" Human Selection." (Editor's Table) 270

Huxley, Professor, on the War-path. Duke of Argyll 775

Huxley, Thomas H. The Aryan Question and Prehistoric Man 341, 502

Hypnotism, An Experiment in. (Misc.) 859

Hypocrisy as a Social Elevator. J. McElroy 699

Identification by Measure. (Misc.) 569

lies, George. My Class in Geography * 40

Imitative Coloring of Plants and Animals. (Misc.) 429

Indians, The, of Northwest Canada. (Misc.) 425

Individualism, What is ? M. H. Jones 205

87o INDEX.

PAGB

Inebriate Asylums, The Founder of. (Misc.) 282

Influenza and Children's Growth. (Misc.) 719

Influenza and the Weather. (Misc.) 568

Insect, A Motherly. (Misc.) 426

Insect Aid for our Orange-growers. (Misc.) 136

Insects, Leaf and Stick. (Misc.) 717

Insects, Speed of. (Misc.) 573

Instinctive Movements of Children. (Misc.) 426

Irish Myths. (Misc.) 569

Iron-making, Early Steps in.* W. F. Durfee 145

Iron Mills and Puddling- Furnaces.* W. F. Durfee . 314

Iron-smelting by Modern Methods* W. F. Durfee 449

Iron-working with Machine Tools.* W. F. Durfee 586

James, Joseph F. A Brief History of the Ohio Eiver * 739

Jameson, Charles D., and H. Remley. The Relative Value of Cements 663

Jones, M. H. "What is Individualism ? 205

" Jumpers," African. (Misc.) 137

K. The Basis of Morality. (Corr.) 408

Kasbek, Mount, The Tradition of. (Misc.) • 138

Key, Axel. School Life in Relation to Growth and Health 107

Kisch, E. Heinrich. The Sensations of Pleasure and Pain 243

Kitson, Arthur. The Logic of Free Trade and Protection 48

Lands, The Available, of the Globe. (Misc.) 858

Larrabee, William H. The Intelligence of Cats 368

" " What shall we do with the Dago ? " (Corr.) 553

Lessons from Barbarism, Some. Elaine Goodale 82

Liberty, Intellectual. (Editor's Table) 844

Library, The, as a Laboratory. (Editor's Table) 123

Light and Electricity, The Identity of. II. Hertz 179

Lightning, Zigzag. (Misc.) ■ 569

Lockyer, J. Norman. The History of a Star 66

McCook, Henry C. Defenses of Burrowing Spiders* 189

McElroy, John. Hypocrisy as a Social Elevator 599

Magnetograph, The. (Misc.) 285

Mallery, Garrick. Greeting by Gesture 477, 629

Man, Tertiary, The Question of. (Misc.) 283

Manual Training and the Brain. (Misc.) 425

Marion, Henri. Training for Character 755

Marshall, William. Animal Life in the Great Desert 247

Mathematics, The Scope of. (Misc.) 284

Mathews, Robert. Evolutionary Ethics. (Corr.) 700

Mayer, Alfred G. Habits of the Box Tortoise* 60

Medals, The Wise Use of. (Misc.) 571

Mediterranean, The. (Misc.) 140

" Physical Geography of the. (Misc.) 859

Menard, Saint Yves. Adaptation to Climate 670

INDEX. 871

[•ASH

Metric Standards, New. (Misc.) 855

Miles, Manly. Progress in Agricultural Science* 491

Mississippi, Storage Keservoirs for the. (Misc.) 856

Mitchell, Elisha, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 398

Mitchill, Samuel L., Sketch of. (With Portrait) G91

Mendenhall, T. C. The Kelations of Men of Science to the General Public. . 19

Montezuma's Head-dress. (Misc.) 568

Morality, A Doubtful Prop of. (Editor's Table) 267

Morality, The Basis of. (Corr.) K 408

Morality, The Evolutionary View of. (Editor's Table) 409

Morgan, Appleton. What shall we do with the " Dago " ? 172

Morris, Charles. The Storage of Cold 517

Mounds, Some North Dakota. (Misc.) 855

Mummies, Preservation of. (Misc.) 570

Murdoch, John. Dress and Physique of the Point-Barrow Eskimos 222

" Whale-catching at Point Barrow 830

Museums, American Public, Origin of. (Misc.) 282

Music, The Origin of. Herbert Spencer 1

Mussels, Poisonous. (Misc.) 138

Natural Gas Supply, The. (Misc.) 285

New Chapters in the Warfare of Science. A. D. White 289, 433

New England, Rural, The Decline of. A. N. Currier 384

Northrop, John I. Cultivation of Sisal in the Bahamas* 606

Notes 144, 287, 430, 575, 719, 863

Nurse, a Good, The Qualifications of. (Misc.) 856

Nyassa-Land, Resources of. (Misc.) 138

Obituary Notes 288, 432, 720

Ohio River, A Brief History of the.* J. F. James 739

Ordway, John M. Non-conductors of Heat 644

Palm-wine. (Misc.) 424

Pamir Table-land, The. (Misc.) 572

Pasteur Institute, New York. (Misc.) 566

Petroleum as an Explosive. (Misc.) 716

Phenological Observations, Value of. (Misc.) 142

Philosophy at Harvard. (Misc.) 281

Physical Training, Precision in. G. Demeny 467

Plant Species, Ocean Transportation of. (Misc.) 571

Plants, Intelligence in. (Misc.) 424

Plants, North American, Distribution of. (Misc.) 135

Plants of Columbia, Economic. (Misc.) 141

Ponies, Shetland.* 538

" Pororoca," The, or Bore of the Amazon. J. C. Branner 208

Prairie Flowers of Late Autumn. B. D. Halsted 229

Predisposition, Immunity, and Disease. W. Bernhardt 380

Printing, Early, at Avignon. (Misc.) 860

Printing-machines, Improvement of. (Misc.) 567

Publications Received 133, 280, 423, 565, 712, 853

Pupils or Machines ? (Corr.) A. C. Ray 119

872 INDEX.

PAGE

Quatrefages, Arraand de. The Peopling of America 305

Ray, Aijna 0. Pupils or Machines? (Corr.) 119

Reading, Unnatural. (Corr.) V. M. Berthold 266

Relations of Men of Science to the General Public, The. T. C. Mendenhall. . 19

Religious Teaching in the Public Schools. (Editor's Table) 554

Remley, Hubert, and C. D. Jameson. The Relative Value of Cements 663

Reversion ; or Arrested Development. (Misc.) 856

Revolvers, The Taxation of. (Misc.) 572

Reyinond, Emil Du Bois-. Adelbert von Chamisso as a Naturalist. (With

Portrait) 252

Road Improvement, Photographs in Aid of. (Misc.) 854

Root-tip, The.* F. L. Sargent 31

Sargent, Frederick L. The Root-tip * 31

Sausages, Horse. (Misc.) 430

Schliemann, Dr. Henry T.* 803

School Life in Relation to Growth and Health. Axel Key 107

Science and Civilization. (Editor's Table) 703

Science, Value of, in Industries. (Misc.) 857

Seeds, Green, and Early Fruit. (Misc.) 428

Sensations of Pleasure and Pain, The. E. H. Kisch 243

Serpents, Infant. (Misc.) 715

Serviss, Garrett P. Star-streams and Nebulae * 388

Sheldon, Samuel. The Storage of Electricity * 355

Shells, Floridian, Evolution in. (Misc.) 574

Shinn, Charles Howard. Social Changes in California 704

Sisal, Cultivation of, in the Bahamas.* J. I. Northrop 606

Slater, J. W. Laws of Government among the Lower Animals 677

Smith, Horace J. Antiseptic Treatment and Sir Joseph Lister. (Corr.) 119

Smith, Margaret K. A Defense of Mechanical Teaching. (Corr.) 265

Socialism, Supposed Tendencies to. "W. Graham 577

Solomon Islands. A Young Trader of the. (Misc.) 428

Sparrows and Robins. (Misc.) 860

Spectra, The, of the Metals. (Misc.) 717

Spencer, Herbert. From Freedom to Bondage 721

" The Origin of Music 1

Spencer's Philosophy, The Influence of. (Corr.) G. A. Cuadrados. 264

Spiders, Burrowing, Defenses of.* H. C. McCook 1S9

Spiders, Poisonous. (Misc.) 3 37

Star, The History of a. J. N. Lockyer 66

Star-streams and Nebulas.* G. P. Serviss 338

State, The Tyranny of the. S. W. Cooper 622

Street-cleaning in Large Cities. E. Clark 748

Talbott, Laura O. Individual Economics. (Corr.) 407

Tarantula, The. (Misc.) 136

Tea, Chinese and Indian. (Misc.) 715

Teaching, Mechanical, A Defense of. (Corr.) M. K. Smith 265

Telegraphy, An Early Form of. (Misc.) 286

INDEX. 873

PAG!

Tortoise, Box, Habits of the.* A. G. Mayer 60

Traditions, Living, Value of. (Misc.) 285

Training for Character. U. Marion 755

Transitions of Fauna in the Mississippi Delta. (Misc.) 140

Traps, Prehistoric. (Misc.) 855

Tuscarora Deep, The. (Misc.) 560

Vodu- Worship, On. A. B. Ellis 651

Wallace, Alfred R. Human Selection 93

Ward, Marshall. Elementary Botany in General Education 363

Warring, Charles B. What keeps the Bicycler Upright ? * 766

Warts on Forest Trees, Origin of. (Misc.) 142

Whale-catching at Point Barrow. J. Murdoch 830

White, Andrew D. From Babel to Comparative Philology 289, 433

White-fish in Lake Ontario. (Misc.) 712

Wines, The Medoc. (Misc.) 430

Women, A Profession for. (Editor's Table) 701

END OF VOL XXXVIII.

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