The Popular Science Monthly 1880-11: Vol 18

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. NOVEMBER, 1880. THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS.* Br HERBERT SPENCER. I.— PRELIMINARY. HOUGHT and feeling can not be completely dissociated. Each emotion has a more or less distinct framework of ideas ; and each group of ideas is more or less suffused with emotion. There are, however, great differences between their degrees of combination under both of these aspects. We have some feelings which are vague from lack of intellectual definition ; and others to which clear shapes are given by the associated conceptions. At one time our thoughts are distorted by the passion running through them; and at another time it is difficult to detect in them a trace of liking or disliking. Manifestly, too, in each particular case these components of the men- tal state may be varied in their proportions. The ideas being the same, the emotion joined with them may be greater or less; and it is a familiar truth that the correctness of the judgment formed de- pends, if not on the absence of emotion, still, on that balance of emo- tions which negatives excess of any one. _ Especially is this so in matters concerning human life. There are two ways in which men’s actions, individual or social, may be re- garded. We may consider them as groups of phenomena to be ana- lyzed, and the laws of their dependence ascertained ; or, considering them as causing pleasures or pains, we may associate with them appro- bation or reprobation. Dealing with its problems intellectually, we * The references to facts cited in this article and succeeding ones will be given when the articles reappear in their permanent shape. Allusions here and th.re occurring in them, to matters not before the reader, must be understood as consequent on their conti- nuity with writings already published. VOL. xvil1.—l

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2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. may regard conduct as always the result of certain forces ; or dealing with its problems morally, and considering its outcome as in this case good and in that case bad, we may allow now admiration, and now indignation, to fill our consciousness. Obviously, it must make a great difference in our conclusions whether, as in the one case, we re- gard men’s doings as those of alien creatures, which it merely concerns us to understand ; or whether, as in the other case, we regard them as the doings of creatures like ourselves, with whose lives our own lives are bound up, and whose behavior arouses in us, directly and sympa- thetically, feelings of love and hate. In “ The Study of Sociology,” I have described in detail the vari- ous perversions produced in men’s judgments by their emotions. Ex- amples are given showing how fears and hopes betray them into false estimates ; how impatience prompts unjust condemnations ; how in this case antipathy, and in that case sympathy, distorts belief. The truth that the bias of education and the bias of patriotism severally warp men’s convictions, is enforced by many illustrations. And it is pointed out that the more special forms of bias—the class bias, the political bias, the theological bias—each produces a strong predisposi- tion toward this or that view of public affairs. Here let me emphasize the conclusion that in pursuing our socio- logical inquiries, and especially those on which we are now entering, we must, as much as possible, exclude whatever emotions the facts are calculated to excite, and attend solely to the interpretation of the facts. There are several groups of phenomena, in contemplating which either contempt, or disgust, or indignation, tends to arise, but must be restrained. Instead of passing over as of no account, or else regarding as purely mischievous, the superstitions of the primitive man, we must inquire what part they play in social evolution; and must be pre- pared, if need be, to recognize their usefulness. Already we have seen that the belief which prompts the savage to bury valuables with the corpse and carry food to the grave has a natural genesis ; that the propitiation of plants and animals and the “worship of stocks and stones ” are not gratuitous absurdities ; and that slaves are sacri- ficed at funerals in pursuance of an idea which seems rational to unin- structed intelligence. Presently we shall have to consider in what way the ghost-theory has operated politically ; and, if we should find reason to conclude that it has been an indispensable aid to social evo- lution, we must be ready to accept the conclusion. Knowledge of the miseries that have for countless ages been everywhere caused by the antagonisms of societies must not prevent us from recognizing the all-important part which these antagonisms have played in civilization. Shudder as we must at the cannibalism which all over the world in early days was a sequence of war; shrink oo a

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POLITICAL INSTiTUTIONS—PRELIMINARY. 3 as we may from the thought of those immolations of prisoners which have, tens of thousands of times, followed battles between wild tribes ; read as we do with horror of the pyramids of heads and the whitening bones of slain peoples left by barbarian invaders ; hate, as we ought, the militant spirit which is even now among ourselves prompting base treacheries and brutal aggressions—we must not let our feelings blind us to the proofs we meet with, that intersocial con- flicts have furthered the development of social structures. Moreover, dislikes to governments of certain kinds must not pre- vent us from seeing their fitnesses to their circumstances. Though rejecting the common idea of glory, and declining to join soldiers and schoolboys in applying the epithet “great” to conquering des- pots, we detest despotism ; though we regard their sacrifices of their own peoples and of alien peoples in pursuit of universal dominion as gigantic crimes—we must yet recognize the benefits occasionally aris- ing from the social consolidations they achieve. Neither the massa- cres of subjects which Roman emperors directed, nor the assassinations of relatives habitual among potentates in the East, nor the impover- ishment of whole nations by the excessive exactions of tyrants, must so prejudice us as to prevent appreciation of the benefits which have, under certain conditions, resulted from the unlimited power of the supreme man. Nor must the remembrances of torturing implements, and oubliettes, and victims built into walls, shut out from our minds the evidence that abject submission of the weak to the strong, how- ever unscrupulously enforced, has in some times and places been ne- cessary. So, too, with the associated ownership of man by man. Absolute condemnation of slavery must be withheld, even if we accept the tra- dition repeated by Herodotus, that to build the Great Pyramid relays of a hundred thousand slaves toiled for twenty years; or even if we find it true that, of the serfs compelled to work at the building of St. Petersburg, three hundred thousand perished. Though aware that the unrecorded sufferings of men and women held in bondage are beyond imagination, we must, nevertheless, preserve a mental state receptive of such evidence as there may be that benefits have resulted. In brief, trustworthy interpretations of social arrangements imply an almost passionless consciousness. Though feeling can not and ought not to be excluded from the mind when otherwise contemplating them, yet it ought to be excluded when contemplating them as natural phenomena to be understood in their causes and effects. Maintenance of this mental attitude will be furthered by keeping before ourselves the truth that in human actions the absolutely bad may be relatively good, and the absolutely good may be relatively bad. Though it has become a commonplace that the institutions under

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4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. which one race prospers will not answer for another, the recognition of this truth is by no means adequate. Men who have lost faith in “paper constitutions,” nevertheless advocate a policy toward inferior races, implying the belief that civilized social forms can with advan- tage be imposed on uncivilized peoples ; that the arrangements which seem to us vicious are vicious for them ; and that they would benefit by institutions—domestic, industrial, or political—akin to those which we find beneficial. But acceptance of the truth that the type of a soci- ety is determined by the natures of its units, forces on us the corollary that a régime intrinsically of the lowest may yet be the best possible under primitive conditions. Otherwise stating the matter, we must not substitute our developed code of conduct, which predominantly concerns private relations, for the undeveloped code of conduct which predominantly concerns pub- lic relations. Now that life is generally occupied in peaceful inter- course with fellow-citizens, ethical ideas refer chiefly to actions be- tween man and man ; but, in early stages, while the occupation of life was mainly in conflicts with adjacent societies, such ethical ideas as existed referred almost wholly to intersocial actions: men’s deeds were judged by their direct bearings on tribal welfare. And since preservation of the society takes precedence of individual preserva- tion, as being a condition to it, we must, in considering social phe- nomena, interpret good and bad rather in their earlier senses than in their later senses ; and so must regard as relatively good that which furthers survival of the society, great as may be the suffering inflicted on individuals. Another of our ordinary conceptions has to be much widened be- fore we can rightly interpret political evolution. The words “ civil- ized” and “savage” must have given to them meanings differing greatly from those which are current. That broad contrast usually drawn wholly to the advantage of the men who form advanced na- tions, and to the disadvantage of the men who form single groups, 2 better knowledge obliges us profoundly to qualify. Characters are to be found among rude peoples which compare well with those of the best among cultivated peoples. With little knowledge, and but rudi- mentary arts, there in some cases go virtues which might shame those among ourselves whose education and polish are of the highest. Surviving remnants of some primitive races in India have natures in which truthfulness seems to be organic. Not only to the surround- ing Hindoos, higher intellectually and relatively advanced in culture, are they in this respect far superior, but they are superior to Europe- ans. Of certain of these Hill peoples it is remarked in India that their assertions may always be accepted with perfect confidence ; which is more than can be said of diplomatists who intentionally delude, or ministers who make false statements concerning cabinet transactions.

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ad * POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS—PRELIMINARY. 5 As having this trait may be named the Santals, of whom Hunter says, “They were the most truthful set of men I ever met” ; and, again, the Sowrahs, of whom Shortt says : “ A pleasing feature in their character is their complete truthfulness. They do not know how to tell a lie.” Not- withstanding their sexual relations of a primitive and low type, even the Todas are described as considering “ falsehood one of the worst of vices.” Though Metz says that they practice dissimulation toward Europeans, yet he recognizes this as a trait consequent upon their in- tercourse with Europeans ; and this judgment coincides with one given to me by an Indian civil servant concerning other Hill tribes, originally distinguished for their veracity, but who are rendered less veracious by contact with the whites. So rare is lying among these aboriginal races when unvitiated by the “civilized,” that, of those in Bengal, Hunter singles out the Tipperahs as “the only Hill tribe in which this vice is met with.” Similarly in respect of honesty, some of those peoples classed as inferior read lessons to those classed as superior. Of the Todas just named, ignorant and degraded as they are in some respects, Harkness says, “I never saw a people, civilized or uncivilized, who seemed to have a more religious respect for the rights of meum and tuum.” The Marias (Gonds), “in common with many other wild races, bear a singular character for truthfulness and honesty.” Among the Khonds “the denial of a debt is a breach of this principle, which is held to be highly sinful. ‘Let a man,’ say they, ‘give up all he has to his creditors.’” The Santal, who “never thinks of making money by a stranger,” prefers to have “no dealings with his guests ; but when his guests introduce the subject he deals with them as honestly as he would with his own people. . . he names the true price at first.” The Lepchas “ are wonderfully honest, theft being scarcely known among them.” And the Bodo and Dhimils are “honest and truthful in deed and word.” Colonel Dixon dilates on the “fidelity, truth, and hon- esty” of the Carnatic aborigines; and they show “an extreme and almost touching devotion when put upon their honor.” And Hunter asserts of the Chakmis, that “crime is rare among these primitive people. . . . Theft is almost unknown.” So it is, too, with the general virtues of these and sundry other uncivilized tribes. The Santal “possesses a happy disposition,” is “sociable to a fault,” “courteous,” but “at the same time firm and free from cringing” ; and, while the “‘sexes are greatly devoted to each other’s society,” the women are “exceedingly chaste.” The Bodo and Dhimils are “full of amiable qualities, and almost entirely free from such as are unamiable.” The Lepcha, “cheerful, kind, and patient,” is described by Dr. Hooker as a most “attractive com- panion” ; and Dr. Campbell gives “an instance of the effect of a very strong sense of duty on this savage.” In like manner, from accounts of certain of the Malayo-Polynesian societies, and certain of the Pap-

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6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. uan societies, may be given instances showing in high degrees sundry traits which we ordinarily associate only with a human nature that has been long subject to the discipline of civilized life and the teach- ings of a superior religion. One of the latest testimonies is that of Signor D’Albertis, who describes certain New Guinea people he visited (near Yule Island) as strictly honest, “ very kind,” “good and peace- ful,” and who, after disputes between villages, “are as friendly as before, bearing no animosity” ; but of whom the Rev. W. G. Lawes, commenting on Signor D’Albertis’s communication to the Colonial Institute, says that their good-will to the whites is being destroyed by the whites’ ill-treatment of them: the usual history. Contrariwise, in various parts of the world, men of several types yield proofs that societies relatively advanced in organization and culture may yet be barbarous in their ideas, sentiments, and usages. The Feejeeans, described by Dr. Pickering as among the most intelli- gent of unlettered peoples, are among the most ferocious. “Intense and vengeful malignity strongly marks the Feejeean character.” Lying, treachery, theft, and murder are with them not criminal, but honor- able ; infanticide is immense in extent ; strangling the sickly habitual ; and they sometimes cut up while alive the human victims they are going to eat. Nevertheless they have a “complicated and carefully conducted political system” ; well-organized military forces ; elaborate fortifications ; a developed agriculture with succession of crops and irrigation ; a considerable division of labor; a separate distributing agency with incipient currency ; and a skilled industry which builds canoes that carry three hundred men. Take again an African society, Dahomey. We find there a finished system of classes, six in number ; complex governmental arrangements with officials always in pairs ; an army divided into battalions, having reviews and sham-fights ; prisons, police, and sumptuary laws; an agriculture which uses manure and grows a score kinds of plants ; moated towns, bridges, and roads with turnpikes. Yet along with this comparatively high social develop- ment there goes what we may call organized criminality. Wars are made to get skulls with which to decorate the royal palace ; hundreds of subjects are killed when the king dies; and five hundred are an- nually slaughtered to carry messages to the other world. Described as cruel and bloodthirsty, liars and cheats, the people are “ void either of sympathy or gratitude, even in their own families,” so that “not even the appearance of affection exists between husband and wife, or between parents and children.” The New World, too, furnished, when it was discovered, like evidence. Having great cities of one hundred and eighty thousand houses, the Mexicans had also cannibal gods, whose idols were fed on warm, reeking, human flesh, thrust into their months—wars being made purposely to supply victims for them ; and with skill to build stately temples, big enough for ten thousand men to dance in their courts, there went the immolation of twenty- Ay

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POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS—PRELIMINARY. 7 five hundred persons annually, in Mexico and adjacent towns alone, and of a far greater number throughout the country at large. Simi- larly, in the populous Central American states, sufficiently civilized to have a developed system of calculation, a regular calendar, books, maps, etc., there were like extensive sacrifices of prisoners, slaves, chil- dren, whose hearts were torn out and offered palpitating on altars, and who, in other cases, were flayed alive and their skins used as dancing- dresses by the priests. Nor need we seek in remote regions or among alien races for proofs that there does not exist a necessary connection between the social types classed as civilized and those higher sentiments which we commonly associate with civilization. The mutilations of prisoners exhibited on Assyrian sculptures are not surpassed in cruelty by any we find among the most bloodthirsty of wild races ; and Rameses II, who delighted in having himself sculptured on temple-walls through- out Egypt as holding a dozen captives by the hair, and striking off their heads at a blow, slaughtered during his conquests more human beings than a thousand chiefs of savage tribes put together. The tortures inflicted on captured enemies by red Indians are not greater than were those inflicted of old on felons by crucifixion, or on sus- pected rebels by sewing them up in the hides of slaughtered animals, or on heretics by smearing them over with combustibles and setting fire to them. The Damaras, described as so utterly heartless that they laugh on seeing one of their number killed by a wild beast, are not worse than were the Romans, who made such elaborate pro- visions for gratifying themselves by watching wholesale slaughters in their arenas. If the numbers destroyed by the hordes of Attila were not equaled by the numbers which the Roman armies destroyed at the conquest of Selucia, and by the numbers of the Jews massacred under Hadrian, it was simply because the occasions did not permit. The cruelties of Nero, Gallienus, and the rest may compare with those of Genghis and Timour ; and, when we read of Caracalla that, after he had murdered twenty thousand friends of his murdered brother, his sol- diers forced the Senate to place him among the gods, we are shown that in the Roman people there was a ferocity not less than that which deifies the most sanguinary chiefs among the worst of savages. Nor did Christianity greatly change matters. Throughout medieval Eu- rope political offenses and religious dissent brought on men carefully devised agonies equaling if not exceeding any inflicted by the most brutal of barbarians. Startling as the truth seems, it is yet a truth to be recognized, that increase of humanity does not go on pari passu with civilization ; but that, contrariwise, the earlier stages of civilization necessitate a rela- tive inhumanity. Among tribes of primitive men, it is the more brutal rather than the more kindly who succeed in those conquests which effect the earliest social consolidations ; and, through many subsequent

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| —_—— 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. stages of social evolution, unscrupulous aggression outside of the soci- ety and cruel coercion within are the habitual concomitants of politi- cal development. The men of whom the better organized societies have been formed were at first, and long continued to be, nothing else but the stronger and more cunning savages; and even now, when freed from those influences which superficially modify their behavior, they prove themselves to be little better. If, on the one hand, we con- template the utterly uncivilized Wood-Veddahs, who are described as “ proverbially truthful and honest,” “ gentle and affectionate,” “ obey- ing the slightest intimation of a wish, and very grateful for attention or assistance,” and of whom Pridham remarks, “ What a lesson in gratitude and delicacy even a Veddah may teach!” and then if, on the other hand, we contemplate our own recent acts of international brigandage, accompanied by the slaughter of thousands who have committed no wrong against us—accompanied, too, by perfidious breaches of faith and by the killing of prisoners in cold blood—we can not but admit that, between the types of men classed as uncivilized and civilized, the differencesare not necessarily of the kind commonly supposed. Whatever relation exists between moral nature and social type is not such as to imply that the social man is in all respects emo- tionally superior to the pre-social man. “How is this conclusion to be reconciled with the conception of progress ?” most readers will ask. “ How is civilization to be justi- fied if, as is thus implied, some of the highest of human attributes are exhibited in greater degrees by wild people who live scattered in pairs in the woods, than by the members of a vast, well-organized nation, having marvelously elaborated arts, extensive and profound knowl- edge, and multitudinous appliances to welfare?” The answer to this question will best be conveyed by an analogy. As carried on throughout the animate world at large, the struggle for existence has been an indispensable means to evolution. Not sim- ply do we see that, in the competition among individuals of the same kind, survival of the fittest has from the beginning furthered produc- tion of a higher type, but we see that to the unceasing warfare be- tween species are mainly due both growth and organization. Without universal conflict there would have been no development of the active powers. The organs of perception and of locomotion have been little by little evolved during the interaction of pursuers and pursued. Im- proved limbs and senses have furnished better supplies to the viscera, and improved visceral structures have insured a better supply of aérated blood to the limbs and senses ; while a higher nervous system has at each stage been required for duly codrdinating the actions of these more complex structures. Among predatory animals death by starvation and among animals preyed upon death by destruction have carried off the least favorably modified individuals and varieties. -

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POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS—PRELIMINARY. 9 Every advance in strength, speed, agility, or sagacity in creatures of the one class, has necessitated a corresponding advance in creatures of the other class ; and without never-ending efforts to catch and to escape, with loss of life as the penalty for failure, the progress of neither could have been achieved. Mark now, however, that while this merciless discipline of nature, “red in tooth and claw,” has been essential to the evolution of sentient life, its persistence through all time with all creatures must not be inferred. The high organization evolved by and for this universal conflict is not necessarily for ever employed to like ends: the result- ing power and intelligence admit of being far otherwise employed. Not for offense and defense only are the inherited structures useful, but for various other purposes ; and these various other purposes may finally become the exclusive purposes. The myriads of years of war- fare which have developed the powers of all lower types of creatures have bequeathed to the highest type of creature the powers now used by him for gountless objects besides those of killing and avoiding being killed. His teeth and nails are but little employed in fight ; and his mind is not ordinarily occupied in devising ways of destroying other creatures, or guarding himself from injury by them. Similarly with social organisms. We must recognize the truth that the struggle for existence between societies has been instrumental to their evolution. Neither the consolidation and reconsolidation of small social groups into large ones, nor the organization of such com- pound and doubly compound groups, nor the concomitant develop- ments of all those aids to a wider and higher life which civilization has brought, would have been possible without intertribal and inter- national conflicts. Social codperation is initiated by joint defense and offense ; and from the codperation thus initiated all kinds of codpera- tions have arisen. Inconceivable as have been the horrors caused by this universal antagonism which, beginning with the chronic hostilities of small hordes tens of thousands of years ago, has ended in the occa- sional vast battles of immense nations, we must nevertheless admit that without them the world would still have been inhabited only by men of feeble types, sheltering in caves and living on wild food. But now observe that the intersocial struggle for existence which has been indispensable in evolving societies will not necessarily play in the future a part like that which it has played in the past. Recog- nizing our indebtedness to war for forming great communities and developing their structures, we may yet infer that the acquired powers, available for other activities, will lose their original activities. While conceding that without these perpetual bloody strifes civilized societies could not have arisen, and that an adapted form of human nature, fierce as well as intelligent, was a needful concomitant, we may at the same time hold that, such societies having been produced, the brutality of nature in their units which was necessitated by the process, ceasing

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i 10 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. to be necessary with the cessation of the process, will disappear. While the benefits achieved during the predatory period remain a per- manent inheritance, the evils, social and individual, entailed by it will decrease and slowly die out. Thus, then, contemplating social structures and actions from the evolution point of view, we may preserve that calmness which is need- ful for scientific interpretation of them, without losing our powers of feeling moral reprobation or approbation. To these preliminary remarks respecting the mental attitude to be preserved by the student of political institutions, a few briefer ones must be added respecting the subject-matters he has to deal with. If societies were all of the same species, and differed only in their stages of growth and structure, comparisons would disclose clearly the course of evolution; but unlikenesses of type among them, here great and there small, obscure the results of such com- parisons. Again, if each society grew and unfolded itself without the intru- sion of additional factors, interpretation would be relatively easy ; but the complicated processes of development are frequently recomplicated by sudden changes in the sets of factors. Now the size of the social aggregate is all at once increased or decreased by annexation or by loss of territory ; and now the average character of its units is changed by the coming in of another race as conquerors or as slaves ; while, as a further incident of this change, new social relations are superposed on the old. In many cases, the repeated overrunnings of societies by one another, the minglings of peoples and institutions, the breakings up and reaggregations, so destroy the continuity of normal changes as to make it extremely difficult if not impossible to draw con- clusions. Once more, change in the average mode of life pursued by a so- ciety, now increasingly warlike and now increasingly industrial, initi- ates metamorphoses : changed activities generate changes of structures. Hence, there have to be distinguished those progressive rearrange- ments which belong to the further development of one social type, from those caused by the commencing development of another social type. The lines of an organization adapted to a mode of activity that has ceased, or has been long suspended, begin to fade, and are traversed by the increasingly definite lines of an organization adapted to the mode of activity which has replaced it ; and error may result from mistaking traits which belong to the one for those which belong to the other. Hence we may infer that, out of the complex and confused evi- dence, only the larger truths are likely to emerge with clearness. While anticipating that certain general conclusions are to be positively

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THE SUNS HEAT. 11 established, we may anticipate that more special ones can be alleged only as probable. Happily, however, as we shall eventually see, those general con- clusions admitting of positive establishment are the conclusions of most value for guidance. THE SUN’S HEAT. By Proressor C. A. YOUNG, OF PRINCETON, N. J. bynes has been a prevailing idea for many years, founded upon Brewster’s fallacious experiments, that thermal, luminous, and chemical rays are fundamentally different, though coexistent in the sunbeams. This is erroneous: it is true, indeed, that rays whose vi- brations are too slow to be seen produce powerful heating effects, and that those which are invisible because they are too rapid have a strong influence in determining certain chemical and physical reactions ; but it is also true that the visible rays are capable of producing the same effects to a greater or less degree, and there is some reason for think- ing that certain animals can see by rays to which the human retina is insensible. There is absolutely no philosophical basis for distinction between the visible and invisible radiations of the sun, except in the one point of vibration-frequency—their pitch, to use the analogy of sound. The expressions thermal, luminous, and chemical rays are apt to be misleading. All the waves of solar radiation are carriers of energy, and when intercepted do work, producing heat, or vision, or chemical action, according to circumstances. If the amount of solar light is enormous as compared with terres- trial standards, the same thing is still more true of the solar heat, which admits of somewhat more accurate measurement, since we are no longer dependent on a so unsatisfactory unit as the “candle- power,” and can substitute thermometers and balances for the human eye. It is possible to intercept a beam of sunshine of known dimensions, and make it give up its radiant energy to a weighed mass of water or other substance, to measure accurately the rise of temperature pro- duced in a given time, and from these data to calculate the whole amount of heat given off by the sun in a minute or a day. Pouillet and Sir John Herschel seem to have been the first fairly to grasp the nature of the problem, and to investigate upon the sub- ject in a rational manner. Herschel’s experiments were made In 1838 at the Cape of Good Hope, where he was then engaged in his astronomical work. He pro- ceeded in this way: A small tin vessel, containing about half a pint

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cE. 12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of water, carefully weighed, was placed on a light wooden support, touching it at only three points. This was put inside of a considera- bly larger cylinder, also of tinned iron ; this outer cylinder having a double cover with a hole in it—the cover large enough to shade the sides of the vessel, and the hole a little less than three inches in diam- eter. A delicate thermometer was immersed in the water, with a sort of dasher of mica for the purpose of stirring it and keeping the tem- perature uniform throughout the mass. The apparatus was so placed and adjusted that the whole of the light and heat passing through the hole in the cover would fall upon the surface of the water, the sun at that time (December 31st) being within 12° of the zenith at noon. This apparatus was placed in the sunshine and allowed to stand for ten minutes, shaded by an umbrella, and the slight rise in the tempera- ture of the water was noted. Then the umbrella was removed and the solar rays were allowed to fall upon the water for the same length of time, and the much larger rise of temperature was noted ; finally, the apparatus was again shaded and the change for ten minutes again ob- served. The mean between the effects in the first and last ten-minute intervals can be taken as the’ measure of the influence of other causes besides the sun, and, deducting this from the rise during the ten min- utes’ insolation, we have the effect of the simple sunshine. Herschel’s figures for his first experiment run as follows : Rise of temperature in first ten minutes .................-. 0°25° “@ = “* second ten minutes (sun)............ 3°90 s 6 * S Geis Cams SNES. ww cnccccsceccoess 0°10 The mean of the first and third is 0°17°, and this deducted from the second gives 3°73° Fahr. as the rise of temperature produced by a sun- beam three inches in diameter, absorbed by a mass of matter equiva- lent to 4,638 grains of water. (We do not indicate the minutie of the process by which the weight of the tin vessel, thermometer, stirrer, ete., are allowed for.) Nothing more is now necessary to enable us to compute just how much heat is received by the earth in a day or a year, except, indeed, the determination of the very troublesome and some- what uncertain correction for the absorption of heat by the earth’s atmosphere ; a correction deduced by means of observations made at varying heights of the sun above the horizon. Herschel preferred to express his results in terms of melting ice, and put it in this way : The amount of heat received on the earth’s surface, with the sun in the zenith, would melt an inch thickness of ice in two hours thirteen minutes, nearly. . Since there is every reason to believe that the sun’s radiation is equal in all directions, it follows that, if the sun were surrounded by a

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n THE SUN’S HEAT. 13 great shell of ice, one inch thick and 186,000,000 miles in diameter, its rays would just melt the whole in the same time. If, now, we suppose this shell to shrink in diameter, retaining, however, the same quantity of ice by increasing its thickness, it would still be melted in the same time. Let the shrinkage continue until the inner surface touches the photosphere, and it would constitute an envelope more than a mile in thickness, through which the solar fire would still thaw out its way in the same two hours and thirteen min- utes ; at the rate, according to Herschel’s determinations, of more than forty feet a minute. Herschel continues that, if this ice were formed into a rod 45°3 miles in diameter, and darted toward the sun with the velocity of light, its advancing point would be melted off as fast as it approached, if by any means the whole of the solar rays could be concentrated upon it. Or, to put it differently, if we could build up a solid column of ice from the earth to the sun, two miles and a quar- ter in diameter, spanning the inconceivable abyss of ninety-three mil- lions of miles, and if then the sun should concentrate his power upon it, it would dissolve and melt, not in an hour nor a minute, but ina single second ; one swing of the pendulum, and it would be water ; seven more, and it would be dissipated in vapor. In formulating this last statement we have, however, employed, not Herschel’s figures, but those resulting from later observations, ‘which increase the solar radiation about twenty-five per cent., giving fifty feet, and not forty feet, as the thickness of the ice-crust which the sun would melt off of his own surface in a minute. An easy calcula- tion shows that to produce this amount of heat by combustion would require the hourly burning of a layer of anthracite coal about sixteen feet (five metres) thick over the entire surface of the sun—four fifths of a ton per hour on each square foot of surface—at least eight times as much as the consumption of the most powerful blast-furnace known to art. It is equivalent to a continuous evolution of more than seven thousand horse-power on every squage foot of the sun’s whole area. As Sir William Thomson has shewn, the sun, if it were composed of solid coal and produced its heat by combustion, would burn out in less than six thousand years. Of this enormous outflow of heat the earth of course intercepts only a small portion, about g354557- But even this minute fraction is enough to melt yearly at the equator a layer of ice something over one hundred and ten feet thick. If we choose to express it in terms of “ power,” we find that this is equivalent, for each square foot of sur- face, to more than sixty tons raised to the height of a mile ; and, taking the whole surface of the earth, the average energy received from the sun is over fifty mile-tons yearly ; or one horse-power, continuously acting, to every thirty square feet of the earth’s surface. Most of this, of course, is expended merely in maintaining the earth’s tempera- ture ; but a small portion, perhaps ;,455 of the whole, as estimated by Rd

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2m _ A nt 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Helmholtz, is stored away by animals and vegetables, and constitutes an abundant revenue of power for the whole human race.* If we inquire what becomes of that principal portion of the solar heat which misses the planet, and passes off into space, no certain answer can be given. Remembering, however, that space is full of isolated particles of matter (which we encoun- ter from time to time as shooting-stars), we can see that nearer or more remotely in its course each solar ray is sure to reach a rest- ing-place. Some have attempted to maintain that the sun sends heat only toward its plan- ets ; that the action of radiant heat, like that of gravitation, is only between masses. But all scientific investigation so far shows that this is not the case. The energy radiated from a heated globe is found to be alike in all directions, and wholly independent of the bodies which receive it, nor is there the slight- est reason to suppose the sun any way differ- ent in this respect from every other incandes- cent mass. Pouillet’s experiments were made about the same time as Herschel’s, but with a differ- ent apparatus, though based on the same prin- ciples. He named his instrument the pyrhe- liometer, or measurer of solar fire. Fig. 1 represents it. The little snuffbox-like vessel, a b, of silver-plated copper, blackened on the upper surface, contains a weighed quantity of water, and a thermome- ter is immersed in it, the mercury in its stem being visible at d. The disk ¢ e makes it easy to point the instrument squarely to the sun by directing it so that the shadow of a falls concentrically upon this disk. The button at the lower end is for the purpose of agitating the water in the vessel a a, by simply turning the whole thing on its axis in the collar cc. The instrument is much more convenient than Herschel’s apparatus, but hardly as accurate, except under very care- ful manipulation. 3 Fie. 1. * Several experimenters have contrived machines for the purpose of utilizing the solar heat as a source of mechanical energy, among whom Ericsson and Mouchot have been most successful, M. Pifre describes in a recent number of the “Comptes Rendus ” some results from a machine of Mouchot’s construction, claiming to have utilized more than eighty per cent. of the heat which falls on the mirrors of the instrument: something over twelve calories toa square metre. We do not mean, of course, that this percentage of the total solar energy appeared as mechanical power in the engine, but only in its boiler. The machine had a mirror surface of nearly one hundred square feet, and gave not quite a horse-power. It is very possible that such machines will find useful applica- tion in the rainless regions like Egypt and Peru. -

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THE SUNS HEAT. 1s Tyndall has modified it by filling the upper vessel with mercury, which is a better conductor of heat than water. For relative measurements, as for instance a comparison of the amounts of heat received from the sun at different hours of the day, Crova employs a slightly different instrument, of which Fig. 2, copied from his paper in the “Annales de Chimie” for February, 1880, is a representation. An exceedingly sensitive alcohol thermometer, shown separately at T, with a large bulb carefully blackened, is inclosed in a double-walled sphere B, nickel-plated on the outside. An opening in the walls of the sphere, carefully aligned with a similar opening in a double screen E, allows a beam of light to fall upon the thermometer-bulb, the beam being about two thirds the diameter of the bulb. The themometer is constructed with a supplementary reservoir, 7, at the lower end, by means of which the end of the indicating column can be made to fall near the middle of the scale at any temperature, the object being to measure only changes of temperature, not absolute temperatures. The bulb and tube are so proportioned that a degree on the scale is nearly half an inch long, thus permitting great accuracy of reading. In order, however, to determine just how much heat is required to raise the thermometer of this instrument 1°, it is necessary to compare it with one of the standard instruments, by exposing it to the sun at the same time. This method of procedure, by which we determine the rate at which a sunbeam of given dimensions communicates heat to a mea- sured mass of matter, is known as the dynamic method ; it is some- what inconvenient in requiring considerable time and a number of readings. There is a different process for deducing the same results, which has been employed by Waterston, Ericsson, Secchi, Violle, and others, and may be called the statical method. It consists essentially in observing how much the sun will raise the temperature of a body, exposed to its rays, above that of the inclosure in which it is placed, this inclosure being kept at a fixed and known temperature by the circulation of water, or some such means, Instruments based on this principle are called actinometers. Of these probably the most complete in its arrangements is that of Violle, described in his paper upon the mean temperature of the sun’s surface, published in the “ Annales de Chimie” in 1877. We give a diagram of the instrument (Fig. 3). It consists of two.concentric spheres of thin metal ; the outer, twenty-three centimetres in diameter, the inner, fifteen centimetres. The outer is polished on the outside, the inner is blackened on the inside. The space between the two spheres is filled with water, which is kept at a uniform temperature, either by mixing snow or ice with it, or else by a current circulated through it by means of the stopcocks ¢¢. A sensitive thermometer, T, has its blackened bulb

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16 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. placed in the center of the inner sphere, the stem reaching outside through a tubulure provided for the purpose. Two opposite openings, shown in the figure, allow a beam of sunlight to pass through the globes. A perforated screen at D limits its diameter so that none of it shall touch the walls of the vessel, though the thermometer-bulb is entirely covered by it. A small screen at M allows the observer to see the shadow of the thermometer-bulb, and so to perceive whether the tube through which the light enters is properly directed. If the ap- paratus is mounted upon what is called an equatorial stand, like a tele- scope, and provided with clock-work, the whole labor of observation will consist merely in reading the thermometer. The difference be- tween its temperature and that of the water in the surrounding shell gives the necessary data for calculating the intensity of the solar radi- ation at the time of reading ; since the heat received by the thermome- ter from the sun and shell together must just equal that radiated back by the thermometer-bulb to the shell, after allowing for the orifices. Fie. 2.--Crova'’s PYRHELIOMETER. Violle found that at noon, on a fair day, the thermometer of this apparatus generally stood, when exposed to the sun, from 10°5° to 12°5° centigrade (i. e., 18°9° to 22°5° Fahr.) above the temperature of the shell when the latter was filled with ice-water. If it were filled with boiling water, as in some of his experiments, the difference be- came about 1° C. less. The results obtained with instruments of this class of course agree very closely with those reached by the dynamic method. It need hardly be said that the amount of heat received from the sun in a minute by a given area exposed to its radiation varies widely

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THE SUN’S HEAT. 17 according to the altitude of the sun and the condition of the air; in- deed, the most difficult part of the experimental problem lies in the determination of the corrections to be applied on account of the ab- sorption of the earth’s atmosphere. It would take us too far to dis- cuss the formule and methods of calcula:ion which have been proposed. They are necessarily very complicated—those, at any, rate which are tolerably accurate in their results—because they have to take into ac- count the meteorological conditions, especially the hygrometric state of the air. Besides this, the absorption varies greatly for radiations of different pitch ; so that the violet rays, which are photographically the most active, suffer more than the green and yellow, which are most effective in the growth of plants ; and these more than the red ; and the red, in their turn, much more than the low-pitched, slowly vibrating waves which, though invisible, are still the chief carriers of energy, and do more to warm and vivify the earth than all the others. Speaking loosely, it may be estimated that at the sea-level, in fair weather, neither excessively moist nor dry, about thirty per cent. of the solar radiation is absorbed when the sun is at the zenith, and at least seventy-five per cent. at the horizon. Of the rays striking the upper surface of the atmosphere, between forty-five and fifty per cent., there- fore, are generally intercepted in the air, even when there are no clouds, . Of course, it does not follow that the heat absorbed in our atmos- phere is lost to the earth. Far from it: the air itself becomes warmed and communicates its heat to the earth ; and, since the atmosphere in- tercepts a large proportion of the heat which the earth would radiate into space, if not thus blanketed, the temperature of the earth is kept much higher than it would be if there were no air. It is now generally customary to express the intensity of the solar radiation in a somewhat different way from that which has been in- dicated. Instead of stating how much ice would be melted in a min- ute by a given sunbeam, we give the number of calories * received per minute by one square metre exposed perpendicularly to the sun’s rays at the upper surface of the atmosphere. This number is called the solar constant, and according to different experimenters ranges from Pouillet’s estimate, 17-6, to that of Forbes, who found 28°2. The most reliable recent determinations by Crova and Violle set it at 23-2 and 25:4 respectively. Probably 24 is very near the truth, though there remains a considerable amount of uncertainty, since the results obtained by the same observer on different days, after all possible pains is taken with the corrections, are even more discordant than the numbers given above. A continued series of observations at some very elevated station would improve the data. * The calory is that quantity of heat which will raise the temperature of one kilo- gramme of water from 0° to 1° centigrade. VOL. xvitr.—2

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A — 18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Experiments with the thermopile show that the heat radiated by the solar disk varies, like the light, very considerably from the center to the edges. The first observations of this kind were made by Pro- fessor Henry, at Princeton, in 1845, and have since been repeated by many others, Secchi and Langley especially. According to Langley, the heat emitted from a point about 20’ from the limb is only one half that from the same extent of surface at the center of the disk; the diminution of heat being notably less than that of light, as shown by Vogel’s observations. Langley’s table runs as follows, the first column giving the distance from the center of the disk, and the second the intensity of radiation shown by the thermopile : Distance from Center. Heat- Radiation. 0°00 100 0°25 99 0°50 95 ~ 0°75 86 0°95 62 0°98 50 Besides this regular variation of the radiation from center to edge, Secchi in 1852 found, or thought he found, a notable difference between the radiation from the equator of the sun and that from the higher lati- tude, the difference being at least one sixteenth between the equator and latitude 30°. The northern hemisphere he also found to be a lit- tle hotter than the southern. Later investigators (Langley especially) have failed to find any such difference ; and on the whole it seems probable that Secchi was mistaken ; though this is not certain, as it would be quite unsafe to assert that the actual condition of the sun’s surface may not have changed between 1852 and 1876. In connection with the absorption of the solar atmosphere, Langley has ventured some interesting speculations. After showing that varia- tions in the number and magnitude of sun-spots can not directly pro- duce any sensible effect upon terrestrial temperatures, he calls atten- tion to the fact that even slight changes in the depth and density of the sun’s absorbing layer would make a great difference ; and he raises the question whether we may not find here the explanation of glacial and carboniferous periods in the earth’s history. It is quite certain that, were the envelope removed, the solar radiation would be at least doubled, and perhaps increased in a much higher ratio ; while any con- siderable increase of its thickness would so diminish our heat-supply as to give us perpetual winter. As yet our means of observation have not sufficed to detect with certainty any variations in the amount of heat emitted by the sun at different times. That there are such variations is almost certain, since the nuclei of sun-spots radiate much less heat as well as light than neighboring regions of the solar surface, and the facule more ; this has been directly determined with the thermopile. The whole amount a

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THE SUN’S HEAT. 1g of variation in the total heat-supply has, however, proved too small for measurement with our present instruments, and science waits anxiously for apparatus and methods of delicacy adequate to deal with the prob- lem. Weare as yet entirely uncertain whether, at the time of a sun-spot maximum, the solar radiation is more or less powerful than ordinary. There has been a great deal of pretty vigorous discussion as to the temperature of the sun, and that the subject is a difficult one is evi- dent enough from the wide discrepancy between the estimates of the highest authorities. For instance, Secchi originally contended for a temperature of about 18,000,000° Fahr. (though he afterward lowered his estimate to about 250,000) ; Ericsson puts the figure at 4,000,000 i Fie. 3.—VI0oLLe’s ACTINOMETER. or 5,000,000 ; Zéllner, Spoerer, and Lane name temperatures ranging from 50,000° to 100,000° Fahr.; while Pouillet, Vicaire, and Deville have put it as low as between 3,000° and 10,000° Fahr. The intensest artificial heat may perhaps reach 4,000° Fahr. The difficulty is twofold. In the first place, the sun can not prop- erly be said to have @ temperature, any more than the earth’s atmos- phere can. The temperature of different portions of the solar enve- lope must vary enormously, increasing fast as we descend below the surface ; so that in all probability there may be a difference of thou- sands of degrees between the temperature at the upper surface of the photosphere and that at the sun’s center, or even at the depth of a few thousand miles.

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. We may, however, partially evade this difficulty by substituting as the object of inquiry the sun’s effective temperature : i. e., instead of seeking to ascertain the actual temperature of different parts of the sun’s surface, we may inquire what temperature would have to be given to a uniform surface of standard radiating power (a surface cov- ered with lampblack is generally taken as this standard) and of the same size as the sun, in order that it might emit as much heat as the sun actually does. In this way we obtain a perfectly definite object of investigation. But the problem still remains very difficult, and has obtained as yet no entirely satisfactory solution. The difficulty lies in our ignorance as to the laws which connect the temperature of a surface with the amount of heat radiated per second. So long as the temperature of the radiating body does not much exceed that of sur- rounding space, the heat emitted is very nearly proportional to the ex- cess of temperature. The extremely high values of the solar tempera- ture asserted by Secchi and Ericsson depend upon the assumption of this law (known as Newton’s) of proportionality between the heat ra- diated and the temperature of the radiating mass ; a law which direct experiment proves to be untrue as soon as the temperature rises a little. In reality, the amount of heat radiated increases much faster than the temperature. More than forty years‘ ago the French physicists Dulong and Petit, by a series of elaborate experiments, deduced an empirical formula, which answered pretty satisfactorily for temperatures up to a dull-red heat. By applying this formula, Pouillet and Vicaire and others ar- rived at the low solar temperatures assigned by them. It is, however, evidently unsafe to apply a purely empirical formula to circumstances so far outside the range of the observations upon which it was found- ed, and, in fact, within a few years several experimenters, Rosetti espe- cially, have shown that it needs modification even in the investigation of artificial temperatures, like that of the electric arc. Rosetti, from his observations, has deduced a different law of radiation, and by its appli- cation finds 10,000° Cent. or 18,000° Fahr. as the effective temperature of the sun ; a result which, all things considered, seems more reason- able and better founded than any of the earlier estimates. He consid- ers that this is also pretty nearly the actual temperature of the upper layers of the photosphere. The radiating power of the photospheric clouds, to be sure, can hardly be as great as that of lampblack, but on the other hand their radiation is supplemented by that of other layers, both above and below. Besides the data as to the intensity of the solar temperature obtained by calculation from the measured emission of heat, we have also direct evidence of a very impressive sort. When heat is concentrated by a burning-glass, the temperature at the focus can not rise above that of the source of heat, the effect of the lens being simply to move the object at the focus virtually toward the sun ; so that, if we neglect the

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THE SUN’S HEAT. 21 loss of heat by transmission through the glass, the temperature at the focus should be the same as that of a point placed at such a distance from the sun that the solar disk would seem just as large as the lens itself viewed from its own focus. The most powerful lens yet constructed thus virtually transports an object at its focus to within about 250,000 miles of the sun’s sur- face, and in this focus the most refractory substances—platinum, fire- clay, the diamond itself—are either instantly melted or dissipated in vapor. There can be no doubt that, if the sun were to come as near us as the moon, the solid earth would melt like wax. In 1878 Professor Langley made a careful comparison between the radiation of the sun and that of the molten metal in a Bessemer “ con- verter” when at its greatest heat. By a very ingenious arrangement he brought the solar heat and that from the metal to confront each other upon the faces of a thermopile ; and he found that, even neglect- ing all corrections for the loss of solar heat by transmission through the smoky atmosphere of Pittsburgh, and by the reflections which brought it to his apparatus, the sun’s radiation was eighty-seven times as powerful as that from the converter, surface for surface. Had the just corrections been ascertained and applied (a matter, however, of extreme difficulty, and even impossible under the circumstances), the ratio would be increased from eighty-seven to more than one hundred certainly, and perhaps to one hundred and fifty. As to the temperature of the metal in the converter, Professor Langley considers that it must have been above that of the fusion of platinum, because platinum wire held over the mouth of the converter just before pouring, or in the stream of metal, melts immediately. There may be some question, however, whether the melting of the wire really indicates quite so high a temperature, since fluid iron and its vapor attack platinum in something the same way as mercury and its vapor attack gold and silver. Similar conclusions as to the inten- sity of the solar temperature follow from investigations by Soret and others, as to the penetrating power of the sun’s rays; and from a comparison with artificial sources of heat in respect to the relative proportion of the rays of different wave-lengths in the total radia- tion. A body of low temperature emits an enormous proportion of slowly vibrating, invisible vibrations, while, as the temperature rises, the shorter waves become proportionally more and more abundant. Thus, in the composition of a body’s radiation, we get some clew to its temperature. Hitherto all such tests concur in putting the sun’s temperature high above that of any known terrestrial flame. And now we come to questions like these : How is such a heat maintained ? How long has it lasted already—how long will it con- tinue—are there any signs of either increase or diminution ?—ques- tions to which, in the present state of science, only somewhat vague and unsatisfactory replies are possible.

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22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. As to progressive changes in the amount of the solar heat, it can be said, however, that there is no evidence of anything of the sort since the beginning of authentic records. There have been no such changes in the distribution of plants and animals within the last two thousand years, as must have occurred if there had been within this period any appreciable alteration in the heat received from the sun. So far as can be made out, with few and slight exceptions, the vine and olive grow just where they did in classic days, and the same is true of the cereals and the forest-trees. In the remoter past there have been undoubt- edly great changes in the earth’s temperature, evidenced by geological records ; carboniferous epochs, when the temperature was tropical in almost arctic latitudes ; and glacial periods, when our now temperate zones were cased in sheets of solid ice, as northern Greenland is at present. Even as to these changes, however, it is not yet certain whether they are to be traced to variations in the amount of heat emit- ted by the sun, or to changes in the earth herself or in her orbit. So far as observation goes, we can only say that the outpouring of the solar heat, amazing as it is, appears to have gone on unchanged through all the centuries of human history. What, then, maintains the fire ? It is quite certain, in the first place, that it is not a case of mere combustion. As has been said only a few pages back, it has been shown that even if the sun were made of solid coal, burning in pure oxygen, it could only last about six thousand years—it would have been nearly one third consumed since the begin- ning of the Christian era. Nor can the source of its heat lie simply in the cooling of its incandescent mass. Huge as it is, its temperature must have fallen more than perceptibly within a thousand years if this were the case. Two different theories have been proposed, which are probably both true to some extent. One of them finds the chief source of the solar heat in the impact of meteoric matter, the other in the slow contrac- tion of the sun. As to the first, it is quite certain that some of the solar heat is produced in that way ; but the question is, whether the supply of meteoric matter can be sufficient to account for any great proportion of the whole. As to the second, on the other hand, there is no question as to the adequacy of the hypothesis to account for the whole supply of solar heat ; but there is as yet no direct evidence whatever that the sun is really shrinking. The basis of the meteoric theory is simply this: If a moving body be stopped, either suddenly or gradually, a quantity of heat is gener- ated, which may be expressed, in calories, by the formula , in which m is the mass of the body in kilogrammes, and v its velocity in metres per second : a body weighing 850 kilogrammes and moving one metre per second would, if stopped, develop just one calory of heat—i. e., enough to heat one kilogramme of water from freezing-point to 1° centi-

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THE SUN’S HEAT. 23 grade ; if it were moving 500 metres per second (about the speed of a cannon-ball), it would produce 250,000 times as much heat, or enough to raise the temperature of a mass of water equal to itself nearly 300° C. If it were moving, not 500 metres per second, but about 700,000 (approximately the velocity with which a body would fall into the sun from any planetary distance), the heat produced would be 1,400 x 1,400, or nearly 2,000,000 times as great—suflicient to bring a mass of matter many thousand times greater than itself to most vivid in- candescence, and immensely more than could be produced by its com- plete combustion under any conceivable circumstances. With refer- ence to this theory, Sir William Thomson has calculated the amount of heat which would be produced by each of the planets in falling into the sun from its present orbit. The results are as follows, the heat produced being expressed by giving the number of years and days through which it would maintain the sun’s present expenditure of energy : Years. Days. Bs 5'otkud davie nieeeaanlee Sultaneansadenbeesen eens 6 219 TL ci Koes be dKewte Secu eeneii ee she kese nance coed ane 83 326 SD S56 6s Oi Karcnmes bus sa cde benadinad Uieresuaeeehee ts 95 19 259 re | ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee eee eee eee eee ee ee OOO Oe ee er ee eee ee ee ee) OR ee That is, the collapse of all the planets upon the sun would generate sufficient heat to maintain its supply for nearly 46,000 years. A quantity of matter equal to only about one one hundredth of the mass of the earth, falling annually upon the solar surface, would there- fore maintain its radiation indefinitely. Of course, this increase of the sun would cause an acceleration of the motion of all the planets—a shortening of their periods; since, however, the mass of the sun is 330,000 times that of the earth, the yearly addition would be only one thirty-three millionth of the whole, and it would require centuries to make the effect sensible. The only question, then, is whether any such quantity of matter can be supposed to reach the sun. While it is impossible to deny this dogmatically, it on the whole seems improb- able, for astronomical reasons. If so large a quantity of matter annu- ally falls upon the solar surface, it is necessary to suppose a vastly greater quantity circulating around the sun, between it and the planet Mercury. The process by which the orbit of a meteoric body is so changed as to make it enter the solar atmosphere is a very slow one ; so that only a very small proportion of the whole could be caught in any given year. But, if there were near the sun any considerable quantity of meteoric matter—anything like the mass of the earth, for

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24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. instance—it ought to produce a very observable effect upon the mo- tions of the planet Mercury—an effect not yet detected.* For this reason astronomers generally, while conceding that a por- tion, and possibly a considerable fraction, of the solar heat may be ac- counted for by this hypothesis, are disposed to look further for their explanation of the principal revenue of solar energy. They find it in the probable slow contraction of the sun’s diameter, and the gradual liquefaction and solidification of the gaseous mass. The same total amount of heat is produced when a body moves against a resistance which brings it to rest gradually, as if it had fallen through the same distance freely and been suddenly stopped. If, then, the sun does con- tract, heat is necessarily produced by the process; and that in enor- mous quantity, since the attracting force at the solar surface is more than twenty-seven times as great as gravity at the surface of the earth, and the contracting mass is so immense. In this process of contraction, each particle at the surface moves inward by an amount equal to the whole diminution of the solar radius, while a particle below the surface moves less, and under a diminished gravitating force; but every particle in the whole mass of the sun, excepting only that at the exact center of the globe, con- tributes something to the evolution of heat. To calculate the precise amount of heat developed, it would be necessary to know the law of increase of the sun’s density from the surface to the center; but Helmholtz, who first suggested the hypothesis, in 1853, has shown that, under the most unfavorable suppositions, a contraction of about 250 feet a year in the sun’s diameter—a mile in twenty-one years— would account for its whole annual heat-emission. This contraction is so slow that it would be quite imperceptible to observation. It would require 9,500 years to reduce the diameter a single second of are (since 1” equals 450 miles at the sun’s distance), and nothing less would be certainly detectable. Of course, if the contraction is more rapid than this, the mean temperature of the sun must be actually rising notwithstanding the amount of heat it is losing. Observation alone can determine whether this is so or not. If the sun were wholly gaseous, we could assert positively that it must be growing hotter; for it is a most curious, and at first sight paradoxical, fact, first pointed out by Lane in 1870, that the tempera- ture of a gaseous body continually rises as it contracts from loss of heat. By losing heat it contracts, but the heat generated by the con- traction is more than sufficient to keep the temperature from falling. * Leverrier considered that he had detected in the motions of Mercury an irregularity of the kind indicated, but much smaller. It was such as, according to his calculations, would be accounted for by the action of one or several planets, whose aggregate mass should be much less than that of the earth. It was on this basis that he founded his strong belief in the existence of the intra-mercurial planet, Vulcan.

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THE SUN’S HEAT. 25 A gaseous mass, losing heat by radiation, must, therefore, at the same time, grow both smaller and hotter, until the density becomes so great that the ordinary laws of gaseous expansion reach their limit, and con- densation into the liquid form begins. The sun seems to have arrived at this point, if, indeed, it were ever wholly gaseous, which is ques- tionable. At any rate, so far as we can now make out, the exterior portion—i. e., the photosphere—appears to be a shell of cloudy matter, precipitated from the vapors which make up the principal mass, and the progressive contraction, if it is indeed a fact, must result in a con- tinual thickening of this shell and the increase of the cloud-like portion of the solar mass. This change from the gaseous to the liquid form must also be ac- companied by the liberation of an enormous quantity of heat, sufficient to materially diminish the amount of contraction needed to maintain the solar radiation. Of course, if this theory of the source of the solar heat is correct, it follows that in time it must come to an end ; and, looking backward, we see that there must also have been a beginning: time was when there was no such solar heat as now, and the time must come when it will cease. We do not know enough about the amount of solid and liquid matter at present in the sun, or of the nature of this matter, to calcu- late the future duration of the sun with great exactness, though an approximate estimate can be made. The problem is a little compli- cated, even on the simplest hypothesis of purely gaseous contraction, because, as the sun shrinks, the force of gravity increases, and the amount of contraction necessary to generate a given amount of heat becomes less and less; but this difficulty is easily met by a skillful mathematician. According to Newcomb, if the sun maintains its present radiation, it will have shrunk to half its present diameter in about five millions of years, at the longest. As it must, when reduced to this size, be eight times as dense as now, it can hardly then continue to be mainly gaseous, and its temperature must have begun to fall. Newcomb’s conclusion, therefore, is, that it is hardly likely that the sun can continue to give sufficient heat to support life on the earth (such life as we now are acquainted with, at least) for ten millions of years from the present time. It is possible to compute the past of the solar history upon this hypothesis somewhat more definitely than the future. The present rate of contraction being known, and the law of variation, it becomes a purely mathematical problem to compute the dimensions of the sun at any date in the past, supposing its heat-radiation to have remained unchanged. Indeed, it is not even necessary to know anything more than the present amount of radiation and the mass of the sun, to com- pute how long the solar fire can have been maintained at its present intensity by the process of condensation. No conclusion of geometry

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26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, is more certain than that the contraction of the sun, from a diameter even many times larger than that of Neptune’s orbit to its present dimensions, if such a contraction has actually taken place, has furnished about eighteen million times as much heat as the sun now supplies in a year; and, therefore, that the sun can not have been emitting heat at the present rate for more than that length of time, if its heat has been generated in this manner. If it could be shown that the sun has been shining as now for a longer time than that, the theory would be refuted ; but, if the hypothesis be true, as it probably is in the main, we are inexorably shut up to the conclusion that the total life of the solar system, from its birth to its death, is included in some such space of time as thirty millions of years: no reasonable allowances for the fall of meteoric matter, based on what we are now able to observe, or for the development of heat by liquefaction, solidification, and chemi- cal combination of dissociated vapors, could raise it to sixty millions. At the same time it is, of course, impossible to assert that there has been no catastrophe in the past—no collision with some wandering star, endued, as Croll has supposed, like some of those we know of now in the heavens, with a velocity far surpassing that to be acquired by a fall, under the sun’s attraction, even from infinity—producing a shock which might in a few hours, or moments even, restore the wasted energy of ages. Neither is it wholly safe to assume that there may not be ways of which we yet have no conception, by which the energy apparently lost in space may be returned, and burned-out suns and run-down systems restored ; or, if not restored themselves, be made the germs and material of new ones to replace the old. But the whole course and tendency of things, so far as science now makes out, points backward to a beginning and forward to an end. he present order of things appears to be limited in either direction by terminal catastrophes, which are veiled in clouds as yet impene- trable. EDUCATION AS A HINDRANCE TO MANUAL OCCU- PATIONS.* By Proresson SILVANUS P. THOMPSON. HERE can not be two opinions as to the prejudicial influence ex- erted upon the industrial interests of Great Britain by the unsat- isfactory state into which the question of apprenticeship has been gradually drifting, and out of which it has not yet begun to rise anew. Out of harmony with the necessities and conditions of the times, a relic of days long past, ere the steam-engine, or perhaps even the printing- * Extract from an article in the September “Contemporary Review,” entitled “ The Apprenticeship of the Future.”

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EDUCATION AS A HINDRANCE. 27 press, had rendered great manufacturing industries possible, the sys- tem of apprenticeship, which has been handed down to us from our forefathers, is so strangely at variance with the most obvious prin- ciples of sound educational science, to say nothing of sound economic theory, that there is little wonder that it has fallen into discredit, and that the legal provisions under which it grew and flourished have been suffered to lapse into a dead letter. Time was when, for the most part, the skilled artisan, who was master of his trade, worked at home in his own house, assisted, it might be, by a few younger workmen or jour- neymen. Into his house and family he would receive one or two young lads to learn, during a seven years’ engagement, the art and mystery of his craft ; the master himself working and teaching them his work, feeding and clothing them, and receiving from them in return the value of the services which, as they became more apt in their work, they were able to render. The advantages of thorough training by the continuous care of the master were unquestionably proved by the uni- versal adoption of the system. The ancient trade guilds grew and acquired their legal status upon this usage as their very foundation, and a seven years’ apprenticeship formed the one necessary qualifica- tion for the possession of the right to exercise the following of any occupation or employment, art or craft, recognized among the handi- crafts of the time. With the extension of trade and the wider use of machinery the number and power of the adult employed workmen in- creased, and with their increase of power came a jealousy, on the one hand, toward the masters ; on the other, toward the apprentices, who were regarded as cheapening labor when employed in too great numbers. The conflict which arose between employer and employed gradually merged into one between capital and labor. By dint of strikes the workmen at last prevailed, and, in attempting to bring about a limitation in the amount of apprenticeship labor, brought about a re- sult of quite another kind, and one far more disastrous than the evil sought to be remedied—the destruction of all the best and most impor- tant features of apprenticeship. Other issues aided in the accomplish- ment of the course thus entered on. Mr. George Howell has so well delineated the outlines of the change, that the transcription of a few of his words will suffice to complete the tale. “ But a change was com- ing o’er the spirit of the dream: another day was dawning fraught with still greater issues to the journeymen, for, instead of the old system of master and craftsmen, there grew up quite another kind of master- ship and of hiring. The master had already begun to be less the crafts- man and more of the employer. Capital was fast becoming the great ‘motive power. Streams were first utilized, then steam ; complicated machinery was being substituted for hand-labor in many of the grow- ing industries of the time ; the master no longer worked at the trade himself, he directed and found the capital. The number of persons employed was also greatly augmented ; instead of the old fealty be-

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28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tween master and men there came estrangement more and more, until sometimes the workpeople scarcely ever saw their veritable employer. Under these circumstances the conditions of apprenticeship were com- pletely changed, not suddenly, but gradually, until the apprentice be- came merely the boy worker, with less wages but more solemn engage- ments than a journeyman. The master to whom he was bound no longer taught him his trade ; he was, so to speak, pitchforked into the workshop to pick up his trade as best he could, or to learn it from the many journeymen who were there employed. It was no one’s duty to teach him ; there was no pay and no responsibility.” The present state of British commerce brings home the conviction that it is no idle ery that has sounded ever and anon in our ears, warn- ing us of the deterioration in the quality of our manufactures and in the average caliber of our skilled artisans. International exhibitions have from time to time afforded the means of drawing comparisons between the work of other nations and our own work ; comparisons by no means always in our favor, often the reverse. Apprenticeship, with its wholesome rules, having decayed in everything but form, the lads who enter the shops are never properly instructed, but are made the drudges of the older workmen. What wonder that they acquire habits of idleness and carelessness that not only pursue them through the whole of their work, but, worse than this, corrupt and undermine their morals ? What wonder that their manipulation is but half acquired, or that the methods and devices they learn to apply are those of half a century ago; ancient relics of prejudice and unscientific “rules of thumb,” handed down by the tradition of the shops, a veritable sur- vival of the unfittest ? Without the shadow of a doubt the truth that there is—and alas, that there is—much truth in the outcry concerning the inferiority of training and capacity of the British artisan, may be very largely imputed to the relaxation and degeneration of the old system of apprenticeship ; for, with all its faults, it did at least pro- vide that a skilled master should become personally responsible for the training of the apprentice in his craft. In that famous codicil to his will wherein Benjamin Franklin devised so many thoughtful legacies to promote the well-being of the land and city of his adoption, he wrote—and we must remember how intimate and many-sided was his acquaintance with the condition of labor in his day—these ever-mem- orable words: “ I have considered that, among citizens, good appren- tices are most likely to make good citizens.” If this be true, seeing how rare a good apprentice is in the present day, the aphorism instilled into our ears as schoolboys, Boni cives rari (good citizens are scarce), threatens to receive a weighty comment from the experience of the nineteenth century! Be this as it may, a very little consideration will show how real is the crisis to be faced, and how irrevocably of the past the apprenticeship of the past is. What, then, must be done? “ Apprenticeship is absolutely neces-

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EDUCATION AS A HINDRANCE. 29 sary for the purpose of acquiring a practical knowledge of a trade ; without this there can be no guarantee for good and efficient work- manship.” Such is the dictum of one who speaks with authority from the point of view of labor, and the sentiment is the expression of that which all admit. Better education of the children—such, in fact, as is contemplated by the provisions of the Elementary Education Act of 1870—may, it is hoped, quicken the intelligence ere the age is reached at which apprenticeship begins: but will it do more? Nay, have we not indeed some reason rather to look askance at the work of the school boards, and the scheme of education which they offer to our juvenile artisan population? Ccteris paribus, the better educated our artisans are, the better workmen will they make ; but we must take care that the education is of the right sort. Now, what will be the verdict of future generations on learning that the education which this great and powerful nation offers to the children of its artisans, to the class that will form the artisans of the next generation, was of a character purely literary, in no sense technical or even scientific? It is an education which, so far as it goes beyond the three elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, is framed in all its essential features upon an exclusively collegiate type of studies; grammar, history, geography, foreign languages, and the like, being introduced, to the utter exclusion in all the most important of the successive “Stand- ards ” of any teaching of drawing, of mechanics, of the simplest facts of science or of natural history—of all, in fact, that most nearly con- cerns the workman throughout his entire career. In all the construc- tive trades the greater part of a workman’s instructions are given to him in the form of working drawings. Yet we suffer the budding artisan to pass through the schools ignorant of the first rudiments of a science that is as essential to his work as are the four rules of arith- metic. And ought we, then, to be surpriséd if, in pursuance of the system we have deliberately marked out for the rising generation, we keep our future artisans, till they are fifteen or sixteen, employed in no other work than sitting at a desk to follow, pen in hand, the literary course of studies of our educational code, we discover that on arriving at that age they have lost the taste for manual work, and prefer to starve on a threadbare pittance as clerks or book-keepers rather than by the less exacting and more remunerative labor of their hands? At the present moment, this tendency to despise a life of honorable man- ual toil in straining after a supposed gentility would be truly pitiable, if the proportions it has attained did not awaken more serious appre- hensions. It is an evil not confined to this country alone, but it is known, too, in the great cities of the States, of Germany, and of France. In a recent most able work upon primary education and apprenticeship in France, M. Salicis, a naval officer and cantonal delegate, speaks in forcible terms of the distaste for work of the children who leave the elementary schools of Paris: “These little bureaucrats, boys and girls,

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30 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, outlaws from real labor by no fault of their own, come naturally to the end of their school course with one fear before them—that of being forced to become workmen and workwomen ; but with one wish also, the boys to become clerks, the girls shopwomen. And hence this un- defined, uncertain, overstocked class of book-keepers, cashiers, sales- men, clerks, agents with a thousand qualifications, scorning the cap and blouse for the sake of broadcloth and silk hat ; and the correspond- ing class, still more to be pitied, of young ladies, of no shop, perhaps, and some with the coveted bonnet, but, alas ! how procured ?” Obviously, with such facts as these staring us in the face, we must admit a flaw in the training given in our primary schools if its result is in so large a number of cases to destroy the natural capacity for manual labor. The fault is not so much in the amount of education as in the nature of the studies. For many trades the training of the hand to work may, and in some must, begin at an earlier age than that at which many children leave the elementary school. In some trades, indeed, the masters definitely refuse to take apprentices above a cer- tain age ; if they did take them the union would interfere. The taste for manual work is imbibed at a very early age, and there is not want- ing evidence to prove most distinctly that even a very small amount of manual labor introduced into the elementary school serves to keep alive the capacity for active employment, and the manipulative skill of the fingers. The first and most obvious step to be taken to bring about the urgently needed remedy is to render at least permissive, if not authori- tative, a reform more or less sweeping in character in the instruction given in our elementary schools to boys and girls between the ages of ten and fourteen. For this class of children the provisions of our ex- isting educational code could not possibly be more unsatisfactory than they are, when regarded from the point of view that these children will in a few months have to work for a part at least of their own living. The crumbling edifice of apprenticeship is made to repose upon a basis of literary studies which positively unfit the young ap- prentice to enjoy the few benefits which that obsolete institution can still offer. The case is beset, then, with a double difficulty : that while the old system of apprenticeship is less and less able to afford a training wor- thy the name to the child of the artisan, the character of the educa- tion given him not only does not make up for that which apprentice- ship can not now give him, but even predisposes him against the career of manual toil to which apprenticeship is the necessary and only adequate introduction. The reform needed, then, as a first step, is the substitution of certain technical and scientific studies for some of the literary studies at present prescribed. Not that these literary studies are not in themselves good—quite the reverse ; only, they must be de- ferred till a little later in the educational course. Among the subjects

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THE GLACIAL MAN IN AMERICA. 31 that will in lieu claim prominence are drawing * and the elements of the physical sciences so far as they can be illustrated by the common things of every-day life. That is the first and easiest step in reform, but it it does not probe to its depths the malady : at best it is little more than skin-deep. The distaste for work on the part of the artisan children on the one hand and the incapacity and ignorance which re- sult from the chaotic state of apprenticeship on the other hand alike call for a more trenchant remedy. It is absolutely necessary, in the first place, that the children should enter earlier upon manual labor, that they may gain some skill with their fingers ere they pass the perilous point at which their taste or distaste for work may be ac- quired ; and, in the second, that their education, the training of their mental capacities, should continue till a later period, when their minds are more matured and their faculties sharpened by experience. The whole question of technical education lies in the simultaneous solution of these two problems. THE GLACIAL MAN IN AMERICA. By B. F. De COSTA. I ee that distant age when Nature was still toiling at the foundations of the Eastern Continent, portions of America had become dry land, and mountain-peaks in North Carolina were illuminated by rising and setting suns. It is, therefore, an anachronism to speak of America as the New World, especially when we remember the high antiquity of the fauna of North America. Still it is believed that the Eastern Con- tinent was the original abode of man. But when, or under what circumstances, did America receive her first human inhabitant? Heretofore those who have discussed the question have assigned the event to a comparatively modern period, and have considered the probability of immigrations from Asia by Behring Strait.; while others have suggested early transatlantic movements, or the peopling of America from a lost continent of the Pacific Ocean. The discovery of stone implements, however, in the glacial deposits of the Delaware Valley gives a fresh turn to the dis- *I am not here advocating drawing as a fine art, much as we may hope the fine arts might do for the culture of the future generation, but drawing as a science ; by which I mean the representation of real objects to scale, as workmen have them represented in the drawings from which they work ; as, in the higher development, engineers and archi- tects represent them. As is well known, this is frequently, though erroneously, described as “ mechanical” drawing. Erroneously, for the sketches by which directions to work- men are conveyed may be of the roughest “ free-hand” type provided only they are con- structed upon the scientific methods in use in all the best workshops, and “ figured "— that is to say, having the various dimensions accurately marked upon them.

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32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. cussion, and carries the question back to remote periods, It is true that the great antiquity of man on this continent had been maintained previously, but the evidence was quite unlike what is now offered. Yet, whatever may be concluded ultimately respecting the antiquity of the Delaware flints, it is quite apparent that the red-man found in America at the period of its rediscovery by Cabot, Vespucci, and Columbus, was not the descendant of any glacial man. No line of connection can be made out. This continent does not appear to have any Kent’s Hole like that at Torbay, affording a continuous history, beginning with the cave-bear and ending with “ W. Hodges, of Ire- land, 1688.” The race that rose to wealth and power in Central America did not succeed any rude spear-maker. More and more is it becoming evident that the people of Central America sprang from a superior race inhabiting the borders of the Mediterranean. This is indicated by a certain similarity in manners, customs, architecture, and religion. Investigations, now in progress, promise to yield the approx- imate date of the period when the first conquerors of Mexico and Yu- catan crossed the sea. The Spaniards learned that the people whom they conquered had themselves figured in the réle of invaders, entering from a country called Tulan o1 Tulapan, and overrunning the then dominant race. It may yet be demonstrated that this took place about the third year of the Christian era. But who were these earlier in- habitants? These we believe were not the descendants of an indige- nous race, any more than were the later tribes. There is nothing to show that they were ever connected in America with any glacial or pliocene man. They might, however, be referred to still more remote migrations from Europe, which may have taken place in connection with events that gave rise to the story of the lost continent of At- lantis, as related by Plato. The so-called aboriginal red-man is com- paratively a modern, although the author of “ Leaves of Grass” asks concerning “the friendly and flowing savage,” is he “waiting for civilization or past it and mastering it?” However this may be, he is wandering over the graves of peoples who left no record of their ex- ploits, either in the continent where they sprung into life or where they died. It is, indeed, a significant fact that the East furnishes no very plain tradition of any exodus which peopled America. The prehistoric emigrant must have been.possessed of the idiosyncrasies of those who “ . . . fold their tents like the Arabs And silently steal away.” The absence of such traditions is nevertheless not at all surprising, since the people of antiquity, and notably the Phenicians, guarded their distant maritime discoveries with care. Indeed, we wholly mis- apprehend the spirit of that remote age, in supposing that the navi- gators would hasten to show the way to new-found iands, and proclaim their discoveries to all the world. This was not even the spirit of the

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THE GLACIAL MAN IN AMERICA. 33 sixteenth century, for at that period, in the spirit of the Tyrian and Si- donian sailor, the Spaniards and the French had their plans for stopping the advance of other nations—the one by fortifying the straits of Ma- gellan, and the other by holding the supposed route to the Indies by way of the St. Lawrence. It is now gradually becoming apparent that the peopling of Amer- ica was accomplished by more than one race of emigrants, and that at least two distinct expeditions went from Europe to Mexico and Yucatan before the Spaniards. This question, therefore, has its his- toric and archxological side, and consists of a number of very distinct lines, which are to be studied separately by specialists, in the con- viction that no one theory or set of facts covers the whole ground. Several distinct contributions were made by the inhabitants of the Eastern Continent toward the peopling of America, and, by means of a careful division of labor, we may yet reach some satisfactory solution of a subject that has so long baffled inquiry. Such studies may be conducted on strictly scientific principles, as well as those prosecuted with relation to the story of life in general on this continent ; for, if we may accept as historic the representation of Professor Marsh, who pictures the American primates making their way over the miocene bridge at Behring Strait to Europe, and failing, later, when differenti- ated, to return, because the bridge had broken down, man alone re- turning to the country of his “earlier ancestry,” it is certainly reason- able to hope that the origin of those races not connected with the in-comer by Behring Strait may be satisfactorily explained. At what period the Atlantic was first crossed by man it is impos- sible now to conjecture. It was nevertheless navigated in very early times, and was a sea of light, though at the dawn of history it appears as the “Sea of Darkness,” inspiring no little apprehension and dread ; while Albinovinus sends out Germanicus upon the sea with a ruit ipsa dies. Under the circumstances, therefore, the old discussions will be continued, though the subject of the glacial man in America may be pursued as something wholly independent. But was there any glacial man in America? To this question the answer is distinct, though given with the reserve which the subject justifies. For the best that is known, we are chiefly indebted to Dr. C. C. Abbott, who was the first to call attention to the stone imple- ments found in the glacial deposits of the Delaware Valley. These implements are chiefly of argellite, though examples of flint occur at higher levels. They have been found at the bluffs near Trenton, both in position where deposited and among the débris at the base. Dr. Abbott says, “Perhaps it is a wise caution that is exercised in but provisionally admitting the great antiquity of American man, but, were these rude implements not attributed to an inter-glaciab people, their coequal age with the containing beds would never have been questioned.” On this point the Curator of the Peabody Museum at VOL. xvi1.—3

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34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, Cambridge observes, in the tenth annual report: “Dr. Abbott has probably obtained data which show that man existed on our Atlantic coast during the time of, if not prior to, the formation of the great gravel deposit which extends toward the coast from the Delaware River, near Trenton, and believed to have been formed by glacial action. From a visit to the locality with Dr. Abbott, I see no reason to doubt the gen- eral conclusion he has reached in regard to the existence of man in glacial times on the Atlantic coast of North America.” The support given to Dr. Abbott’s conclusions by investigators stamps them as of high interest, while his own arguments are entitled to the same respectful consideration. Several of his observations are not easily set aside. For instance, he says, “if the same age is ascribed to these paleolithic implements and the ordinary Indian relics,” then, as already asked, “how could the one series become imbedded, often to great depths, and not representatives of any class of weapons, do- mestic utensils and ornaments?” It would, indeed, be a singular opera- tion of Nature, that selected one class of relics only for preservation. The conclusion is, “that in the essentially unmodified débris of the terminal moraine in central New Jersey, and in others upon the sur- face (which, however, are in part only of more recent origin), it is shown that the occupancy of this portion of our continent by man ex- tends back into the history of our globe, in all probability to even an earlier date than the great ice age ; and that the maximum severity of the climate did not destroy him ; and that subsequently he tenanted our seacoast and river-valleys, until a stronger and more warlike race drove him from our shores.” It is not the purpose of the writer, however, to attempt to add any- thing to the argument, especially as he is assured that the question now seems to concern the probability of man having existed in Amer- ica prior to the glacial period. We, therefore, take the evidence as it stands, leaving its strengthening or overturning, as the event may prove, to the future, aiming in this article to give a fuller illustration than has heretofore been attempted of ‘the agreement of the theory with accepted history ; for, possibly, it may eventually appear that the glacial man is more closely connected with historic man than could have been expected. Professor Marsh observes, that “the evidence, as it stands to-day, although not conclusive, seems to place the first appearance of man in this country in the Pliocene,” adding that “the best proofs of this are found upon the Pacific coast.” The proofs, however, are a little shadowy, consisting of a stray bone or two, instead of stone axes and arrow-heads ; though it is clearer that some of the first inhabitants, whenever they came, entered from Asia by Behring Strait, the de- struction of the miocene bridge, which once existed there, not imped- ing their advance. It is unnecessary, however, to suppose that the glacial man was unable to find his way westward from Central Europe.

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THE GLACIAL MAN IN AMERICA. 35 The notion that man in that remote age could not navigate great seas is simply a notion, and likewise it is a notion that more than anything else prevents the advance of scientific inquiry respecting the early colonization of America. Two men in a skiff to-day navigate the en- tire breadth of the Atlantic, but such a feat forms no new thing under the sun. In the glacial age communication between Europe and Amer- ica may have been more easy than is now suspected, while a large por- tion of the journey may have been made over fields of ice. The passage of the glacial man from Europe possibly presented no greater difficulties than the migration of the Esquimaux from Labrador to Green- land. But, however man may have reached America, the theory that the Indian peoples sprang from any glacial stock seems untenable. This, then, necessitates the inquiry respecting the subsequent history of the primitive inhabitant ; otherwise, what became of him ? That a people corresponding in the main to the supposed glacial man once dwelt as far south as New Jersey has been agreed by vari- ous writers, without any reference to the contents of the glacial de- posits, of whose existence they did not dream. When, for instance, we turn to the Icelandic Sagas relating to America, it becomes appar- ent that the Esquimaux once flourished low down upon the Atlantic coast. At the present time historians agree, with great unanimity, that the continent of America was visited during the tenth and eleventh cen- turies by Icelanders resident in Greenland. That country was. colo- nized by the Icelanders in the year 985, and when Eric the Red entered Greenland he found no inhabitants. The third Greenland “ Narrative,” however, says : “ They found there, both east and west, ruins of houses and pieces of boats and stone-work begun. From which it is to be seen what kind of people lived in Vinland, and which the Greenland- ers call Skrellings, and who have been there.” * Thus at that early period the remains in Greenland were identified as works peculiar to the people of Vinland, a region, according to the Sagas, lying south- ward toward the forty-first parallel. The account of what the Icelanders saw in Vinland is found in the narratives of Leif and others. In 986 one Biarne, when sailing for Greenland, was blown upon the American coast, and upon his return carried the report of the country to’Greenland. In the year 1000, Leif Erickson resolved to visit the region seen by Biarne, and, sailing southward from Greenland, reached the place. The narrative says: “The country appeared to them of so good a kind that it would not be necessary for them to gather fodder for the cattle in winter. There was no frost in winter, and the grass was not much withered.” The observation that there was no frost was simply an exaggeration nat- ural to an Icelander coming into a country with a climate so unlike that to which he had been accustomed. Morton wrote home to Eng- * “Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen,” p. 20.

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36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. land that coughs and colds were unknown in New England. Leif’s narrative says nothing about any inhabitants; but, in 1002, Thorvald, his brother, sailed to Vinland and found some people at a place a little to the northward of Leif’s resort. The Saga says that one day, when opposite a cape, they “saw three specks upon the sand,” and that, upon examination, they found that these were “ three skin-boats with three men under each boat.” Cruelly attacking them for the plunder, the Icelanders killed eight, while one man escaped with his boat. They also saw “several eminences which they took to be habitations.” Afterward, they rested and fell asleep on board their vessels, only to be awakened by the natives, who had been notified by the man that escaped, and who had now come to avenge the death of their com- rades. When the alarm was sounded, “an innumerable multitude, from the interior of the bay, came in skin-boats and laid themselves alongside.” The Northmen at once put up their “ war-screens” on the gunwales, and, the Saga says, “the Skrellings shot at them for a while, and then fled away as fast as they could.” They did not retreat, however, before dealing Thorvald, the leader of the expedi- tion, his death-wound, it being given by an arrow which struck under his arm. Thorvald was buried on the shore, supposed to be the coast of Massachusetts Bay.* This is the first recorded collision between Europeans and those whom we propose to call the descendants of the glacial man. It shows them as strong and not wanting in the courage that would fit men for the struggle with nature during the great ice period that prevailed in America. In 1006 Thorfinn Karlsefne sailed to Vinland with an expedition, and reached the place formerly visited by Leif and Thorvald, where they wintered in a very mild climate. But one spring morning, while on an exploring expedition, apparently near Long Island Sound, when “they looked around, they saw a great many skin-boats and poles swung upon them, and it sounded like reeds shaken by the wind, and they pointed toward the sun. Then said Karlsefne, ‘What may this mean?’ Snorre Thorbrandson replied, ‘It may be that this is a sign of peace, so let us take a white shield and hold it toward them.’ They did so. Thereupon they rowed toward them and came to land. These people were swarthy and fierce, and had bushy hair on their heads ; they had very large eyes and broad cheeks.” The Northmen, how. ever, were not attacked, and remained there until spring, the statement being that “there was no snow, and all their cattle fed themselves on the grass.” But in the opening of 1009 the Skreellings returned, offer- ing “skins and real furs” for red cloth, the Northmen refusing to sell them swords and spears. Finally, a bull which belonged to the Iceland- ers began to bellow, when the Skrellings became frightened, and ran to their boats, rowing away south. At the end of three weeks, never- theless, “a great number of Skrelling boats were seen coming from * “Pre.Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen,” p. 41.

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THE GLACIAL MAN IN AMERICA, 37 the south like a rushing torrent, all the poles turned from the sun, and they all yelled very loud.” Karlsefne saluted them with his red shield, the sign of war, “and after this they went against each other and fought. There was a hot shower of missiles, because the Skrellings had slings.” At the outset, Karlsefne was forced to retreat, but a rally was made, and the Skrellings retreated. It is also said that “two men fell on Karlsefne’s side, but a number of Skrellings.” The Saga states that Karlsefne was overmatched, so many natives appear- ing that it was difficult to believe that they were real men, but rather optical illusions. In connection with the fight an incident occurred which seems to show that the Skrellings belonged to a people of the stone age ; for one of them found an axe and cut a piece of wood with it, and thought it was a “fine thing.” But when he tried to cut a stone it broke. Then “they thought it was of no use, because it would not cut stone, and they threw it away.” It would appear from this that stone was their standard. Afterward, during a short expedition northward, the Northmen found “ five Skrellings clad in skins, asleep near the shore. They had with them vessels containing animal marrow mixed with blood.” These were killed. Soon after they fancied that they saw men with one leg called “ Unipeds,” and for this piece of imagination the narrative has been objected to as unreal, the objector forgetting that the Uniped is a very ancient institution frequently mentioned by sailors. Charlevoix reports a St. Malo captain, who, when in America, saw men with “ one leg and thigh.” A young Labrador girl captured in 1717 told of those her countrymen who had only one leg. Finally, Karlsefne decided not to expose his little colony, and pre- pared to sail for Greenland. On the voyage home they landed in Markland, supposed to be Nova Scotia, and “found there five Skrel- lings, and one was bearded, two were females and two boys ; they took the boys, but the others escaped, and the Skrellings sank down into the ground” ; that is, disappeared among the hillocks or slipped into their subterranean dens. The Saga says that the boys were taught Icelandic and were baptized. They called their mother Vathelldi, and their father Uvege. They also said that two kings ruled over the Skrellings, one being named Avalldania and the other Valldida. These boys also reported that they had no houses in Markland, but that the people lived in “caves or holes.” The second narrative of Karlsefne treats the subject of the Skrel- lings in the same way, except that these people were of “small stat- ure.” The third narrative states that, when the bull (one of the small Icelandic species) began to bellow, the Skrellings “made off with their bundles, and these were of furs, and sables, and all sorts of skins ; and they turned and wanted to go into the houses, but Karlsefne defended ihe doors.” Also, before the fight commenced there was more trading, and the women brought out “milk and dairy products,” which pleased

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38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the Skrezllings so much, that, as the Saga says, “they carried away their winnings in their bellies.” Such is the account that we have of the Skrellings in the Sagas relating to America. These people do not appear to be referred to again in connection with the voyages, though a geographical fragment mentions “ Helluland,” which is called “ Skrel- lings Land,” not far from Vinland the Good.* The delineation of the people found by the Icelanders in the mild regions of the Atlantic coast is brief, but it is sufficient to fix their character. Rafn, when editing the original Icelandic records, pointed out the fact that these people agree with the Esquimau and Green- lander of to-day. The critic who supposed that the Saga writer should have described a people with the characteristics of the red-man fan- cied that he found an error indicating their unhistorical character. The Indian, however, was a late comer upon the extreme eastern border of North America. Indeed, the oldest distribution of the American races does not antedate the tenth century, and therefore the appearance of the Skrelling in the Sagas, instead of the Indian, is precisely what the truth required. It is hardly necessary to restate the points in the description ; for, instead of the tall red-man found by later voyagers on the coast, so gentle, kindly disposed, generous, and hospitable—traits wellnigh obliterated by subsequent contact with the whites—we have men of short stature, bushy hair, rude, fierce, and devoid of every grace. Also, here in a country covered with fine forest-trees, the principal article of value to the Icelander, the people made their boats of skin like the Greenland kyjack, instead of the bark or the trunks of trees, as often practiced by the Indians, and described by Champlain.t The men described in the Saga evidently did not know the use of metals, and they despised the axe when it was found that it would not cut stone. In the fight with Karlsefne’s men they slew Thorbrand with a flat stone (hellusteinn), perhaps a celt, which they “drove into his head,” thus illustrating, possibly, the rude warfare of the glacial man. Nor should it be forgotten that, while even in the dead of winter the New England Indians wore almost no clothing, these men, encountered by the Icelanders were clad in furs after the spring had set in. Another resemblance is found in the fact that both the Skrellings and the Greenlanders used slings, the latter being mentioned by Davis, the first European who visited Greenland in modern times. But astill more valuable fact is mentioned by this writer in connection with the voyage of 1585. It has already been stated that, when in Vinland, Karlsefne found that the Skrellings used to indicate peaceful inten- tions by pointing certain implements toward the sun, while, when turned from the sun, they indicated war. Thus in Greenland the natives, to indicate peaceful intentions, pointed to the sun with their * “Pre-Columbian Discovery,” etc., p. 49. + “(Euvres,” tome iii, pp. 59, 60.

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THE GLACIAL MAN IN AMERICA. 39 hands, after striking their breasts, refusing to trust themselves with the English until the latter had done the same, through one of their num- ber appointed for the purpose, “who strooke his breast and poynted to the sunne after their order.” Davis thus appears as dealing with descendants of the glacial man. If we are correct in supposing that there was a glacial man, and that the Skrellings were descendants of such a glacial man, it follows that we have in the Sagas four of his words, which may be the old- est known words of human speech; “ Vathelldi,” “ Uvege,” “ Avall- dania,” and “ Valldida,” the names of the parents of the Skrelling boys and of the two kings. At least, in a recent note addressed to the writer, Professor Max Miller says that there is nothing in the lan- guage of the Esquimaux to prevent us from assigning it to an antiq- uity as high as that of the supposed glacial man. During the eleventh century the red-man lived upon the North American Continent, while the eastern border of his territory could not have been situated far away from the Atlantic coast. In New England he must have succeeded the people known as Skrellings. Prior to that time, his hunting-grounds lay toward the interior of the continent. In course of time, however, he came into collision with the ruder people on the Atlantic coast, the descendants of an almost am- phibious glacial man. Then the coast-dweller, unable to maintain his position, retreated toward the far north. The northward movement, however, may have been voluntary in part. During long ages passed in the companionship of the glacier, the race must have acquired that taste and fitness for boreal life which clings to the native of the north to-day, and which makes the Greenlander feel that his country is the most beautiful in the world. The advance guard of the Skrellings had reached Greenland be- fore Eric the Red arrived in 985. He found there, as we have seen, both houses and boats, but no inhabitants. It was inferred, at the time the Saga was committed to writing, that the remains belonged to a people of the same race as those seen in Vinland at the south. These early Skrelling visitors had either perished or retired from Greenland. The Icelanders do not appear to have met any Skrellings in Green- land until a late period—at least none are mentioned. But in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Skrellings crowded into Labrador and the regions bordering Baffin’s Bay, preparatory to the movement across to Greenland, though many of them may have crossed to North Devon and entered at the northwest. It is probable that extreme necessity was all the while urging them on, the red-man crowding upon their rear with great energy. This is evident from the fact that, when the French entered Canada, the region north of the St. Lawrence was occupied by the Indians. The struggle between the Indians and the Skrellings was long continued, and one evidence of the contact may be found in the common use of a certain engine of

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40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. war, which the Saga says was employed by the Skrellings in their fight with Karlsefne. It is said, “ Karlsefne’s men saw that they raised up on a pole a very large ball, something like a sheep’s paunch, and of a blue color ; this they swung from the pole over Karlsefne’s men upon the ground, and it made a great noise as it fell down. This caused great fear with Karlsefne and his men.” The statement at first appears curious and almost childish ; yet in Schoolcraft’s work on the Indians (vol. i, p. 83) may be found a description of a similar engine employed in the ancient times, when the red-man used to sew up a round bowlder in the skin of an animal, and hang it upon a pole borne by several war- riors, which, being swung against a group of men, did great execution. The Skrellings may, therefore, have acquired the idea in their fights with the more skillful red-man then pushing his way into their terri- tory. Pursued by a superior force, we may conclude that the Skrel- lings retreated into the north. Dr. Abbott himself is of this opinion, saying, “ When, also, we consider that the several conditions of glacial times were largely those of Greenland and Arctic America, and that there is unbroken land communication between the desolate regions of the latter and our own more favored land, and, more important than all, that there now dwells in this ice-clad country a race which, not only in the distant past, but until recently if they do not now, used stone implements of the rudest pattern—it is natural to infer that the traces of a people found here, under circumstances that demonstrate a like condition of the country during their occupancy, are really traces of the same people.” That the country as far south as New Jersey was formerly adapted to boreal tribes is evident from the fact that the walrus has been found at Long Branch, while the great auk formerly flourished around the borders of Mount Desert in Maine. Dr. Henry Rink, who for so many years superintended the Danish interests in Greenland, and who studied the question without any reference to the glacial man, reached the conclusion that the “Esquimaux appear to have been the last wave of an aboriginal American race, which has spread over the con- tinent from more genial regions, following principally the rivers and watercourses, and continually yielding to the tribes behind them, until they have at last peopled the seacoast.” Originally their distribution was very wide, and their language prevails to-day from Greenland to Labrador and the northeastern corner of Siberia. Professor Dawkins holds that the paleolithic cave-dwellers of Europe were of the same race as the Esquimaux or Innuit, though no such connection can be shown between them as exists between the ancient Skrellings and the Esquimaux. The Icelandic records prove that the conflicts begun with the Skrellings in the eleventh century in New England were renewed in the fourteenth in Greenland. Possibly it is to the Skrellings that

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THE GLACIAL MAN IN AMERICA, 41 the final extinction of the Icelandic colony in Greenland may in part be attributed. Nevertheless, from the year 985 down to the vicinity of 1335, the Skrellings, so far as the records go, do not appear to have given any trouble. But about that period they suddenly appeared in force. At that time the western coast of Greenland was divided into two districts, called the East and West Bygds, there never having been any Europeans permanently inhabiting the eastern coast, though the Saga of “Thorgill’s Nursling” shows that a family or two of Skrellings may have dwelt there. That the Skrellings appeared in considerable force is indicated by the fact that an expedition was organized to meet them. The “ Chron- icle” of Ivar Bardsen* shows that Bardsen himself was selected by the colonists as their commander. This “Chronicle” was composed during the second half of the fourteenth century, but it is impossible to say in what year. It is certain, however, that upon the 6th of August, 1340, Haquin, Bishop of Bergen, in Norway, commissioned Bardsen to act in Greenland, as the latter was born in that country, and was perfectly acquainted with all its affairs. His commission is still preserved at Copenhagen, and a copy may be seen in Rafn’s “ Amerikas Arctiske landes gamle Geographie,” p. 47. Whether the Greenland colonists appointed him their leader before or after 1340, it is impossible now to say. Crantz, in his work on Greenland, inti- mates that the killing of some eighteen persons by the Skrellings led to the appointment of Bardsen. The natives gave Crantz a tradition respecting a fight between their Skrelling ancestors and the colonists, whom they called “ Kablunets.” A quarrel sprang up about shooting arrows, and blood was shed, the natives declaring that the Kablunets were exterminated. This may possibly explain what became of the remnant of Europeans left in Greenland in the fifteenth century, but it can not refer to the fourteenth, as the communication was kept up with Greenland during that period. It was in the year 1579 that the eighteen colonists were slain. “Islenzkir Annalar,” page 331, says, under that year, that hostile Skrellings invaded Greenland, killing eighteen men, and carrying away two boys captive. It is probable that from this time the Skrellings proved formidable, though, when Bardsen went into the western district to meet them, they were no- where to be found, having either hid themselves or fled into the inac- cessible fastnesses of the north. He nevertheless secured some of the cattle belonging to the colonists, and returned southward to what was called the East Bygd. In Bardsen’s time the West Bygd was evi- dently abandoned, owing to the weakness of the colonists ; and he says, in his “Chronicle,” that “now the Skrellings inhabit all the west land and Dorps.” It must have been from the deserted West Bygd that they came to attack the colonists in 1379. The Ice- landic annals of the fourteenth century mention no more fighting in * Published by Munsell, Albany, as “ Sailing Directions of Henry Hudson.”

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42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Greenland, and in the fifteenth century Greenland is not mentioned. In this manner Old Greenland passed from sight, and it was not until the seventeenth century that the country was reoccupied by Euro- peans. Some have supposed that the ancient colony was cut off by the plague, but the little remnant may have been exterminated by the Skrvellings, as the modern natives averred. The foregoing brief statement of historical facts puts the modern Esquimaux, or Innuit, in connection with a people who dwelt along the temperate regions of the Atlantic coast in the eleventh century. It also indicates that these rude people were driven by a superior race into the far north, where they succeeded the Europeans. These peo- ple were also of very great antiquity. What, then, was their origin? Who else could they have been than the descendants of a glacial man ? It is true that none of the bones exhumed on the Atlantic coast have been identified as those of the Esquimaux, though if they existed as late as the eleventh century such remains should be found. Hitherto, however, they have not been looked for, nearly everything exhumed being attributed to the red-man as a matter of course. Nevertheless, there have been those who have not felt satisfied with such a disposi- tion of the whole subject. In many localities of Maine, for instance, the opinion has prevailed of late that many of the shell-heaps were not of Indian origin, and that they should be referred to a more ancient people. Certain indications attracted the attention of the writer long before any glacial man was spoken of. On this point Dr, Abbott makes a suggestion, and argues that the stone implements found indi- cate two races, one much more advanced than the other. He writes : “When we come to examine a full series of ordinary surface-found arrow-points, as we gather them by the score from our fields, and oc- casionally find associated with them a rude implement of the type of those found in the gravel-beds, we are naturally led to draw some comparisons between the two widely different forms. The arrow- heads and others, which from their size may be considered as spear- or lance-heads, are of two quite different types, being those made of jas- per, chert, quartz, and rarely of argillite, of a dozen different patterns, and those of argillite of a nearly uniform pattern, and of larger sizes as a rule; all greatly weather-worn, and varying notably from the arrow-points of other minerals in being of much coarser workman- ship, and in this respect seeming to be a natural outgrowth of the skill once exercised only in producing the primitive forms of the glacial drift.” But what have the modern Greenlanders to say respecting their origin? They told Crantz that all the people of the earth originated from one man, who came from the earth, his wife springing from his thumb. This may be their version of what their ancestors learned from the Icelandic colonists who were Christians. Such stories throw no light upon their history, though the Esquimaux gave their family

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A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. 43 genealogies for ten generations. There is nevertheless something in other accounts related by them which may possibly suggest traditions relating to changes that had taken place upon the globe in the past, and traditions that might have come down from the glacial period, when Nature conducted her operations upon such a stupendous scale. It would appear as though their rude intelligence had argue? what would take place in the future from what had transpired in the past. For instance, it was their belief at the time the missionary came among them, that all of the present race would become extinct, and the earth be broken up by some widely operating force, and then puri- fied by a vast flood of water, after which the dust of the earth would be blown together and become more beautiful than before, as the rocks would disappear, being covered with verdure. Now, in this was their fancy stimulated by traditions that had come down to them from glacial ancestors, concerning what we call geological epochs, or was this also taught them by the Northmen? It is, perhaps, to be regretted that we have so few of these relations by the early Green- lander, as they might have proved useful in connection with the at- tempt to solve the question of his origin. Nevertheless, the case is by no means hopeless, and testimony may yet be discovered that will connect him beyond question with the glacial man. A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. By W. H. GARDNER, M. D. ERHAPS there are but few persons who have read Poe’s “ Ra- ven,” or Dickens’s “Barnaby Rudge,” who have not felt some curiosity to learn why ravens and crows, more than any other birds, should be invested with characters so ominous and demoniacal. And not only do these birds bear this ominous reputation in poetry and fiction, and in the legends and folk-lore of many of the nations of the earth, but by the unlearned they are still looked upon as too weird and uncanny for ordinary birds; and many a person can be found even in this age of positivism who would consider a crow lighting upon his house-top as certain a harbinger of evil as Hesiod did, seven hundred and fifty years before Christ, when he said to his brother Perses, “ Nor when building a house, leave it not unfinished, lest, mark you, perching upon it, the cawing crow should croak.” * In this age, our plane of thought is so far above that of our rude and ignorant ancestors that their superstitions and myths seem too puerile to merit notice; but when we study them attentively, with * Hesiod, “‘ Works and Days.”

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44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the light which comparative mythology is able to throw upon them, we find that what at first seemed only childish fables are really de- graded fragments of the religion of our forefathers, and as such they are surely worthy of the attention of their descendants. In the infancy of mankind almost every system of mythology in- cluded the worship or veneration of animals. In one land the deity was a bull, in another it was a serpent, in yet another it was a bird ; and in lands like India and Egypt almost every known animal was either an incarnated deity or demon. The same reasons that caused the animal to be deified and worshiped would, in a short time, sur- round its worship with numberless myths and legends, that would be remembered long after the occasion that called them into existence had been forgotten. As an instance of this, we need only cite the return of the Israelites in the desert of Sinai to the worship of the golden calf—the image of the Apis god of the Egyptians—they prob- ably being no more aware that under this e/dolon was represented the sun-god in the zodiacal sign Taurus than were the mass of the Egyp- tians themselves. Still another reason why these myths and legends would remain long after their real meaning had been forgotten, is due to the metaphoric nature of all early languages ; and this cause would act still more strongly if the various shades of meaning of each meta- phorical term were not limited by accurate writing. Brinton says the Algonquins, who translated “ Michabo” into “The Great Hare,” lost by a false etymology a great part of their religion, the true meaning of the term undoubtedly being, “The Spirit of the Light ” or “The Dawn.” * The great storehouse of myth and fable for all the Indo-European nations is the sacred books of the Hindoos ; and it is here, among the religious beliefs of these old Nature-worshipers recorded away back in the morning of time, that we should first look for myths concerning the crow. In this curious pantheism all nature was divided into two opposing principles: the one containing all that was bright and life- giving and beneficent for mankind—devas ; the other including all that was dark and malignant and destructive—demons. Among these malignant powers of nature, we find frequent mention made of the crow, and usually associated with such ill-omened animals as the wolf and the owl. De Gubernatis says that in the Vedic hymns the term “ vrikas” may mean both wolf and crow ;+ but we find that, though the wolf and the crow were equivalent in many respects, and were both enemies to the devas or bright gods, yet the wolf was aleays demoniacal, while the crow in some of its aspects was benig- nant ; and when the sun-god had finished his daily battle with drag- ons and monsters, and had sunk into the sleep of death, the crow bore him on his pinions down into the dismal land of darkness and the * Brinton, “ Myths of the New World,” pp. 178, 179. + Angelo de Gubernatis, “ Zodlogical Mythology,” vol. ii, p. 250.

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A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. 45 dead. In the last book of the “ Ramayana,” we also find that, when the gods were fleeing before the demons, Yama, the god of the dead, borrowed the plumage of the crow in order to escape, in payment for which service he gave the crow the privilege of eating the funereal food. In the Grecian mythology, at least as early as the days of Hesiod, the character of the crow or raven (kopaz), as a prophet of evil, had already been established (see ante, page 43) ; yet we find it here also sacred to the sun-god and usually associated with the same malignant animals as in the Hindoo mythology. Our Hellenic myths say that, “once upon a time, Apollo sent his feathered attendant, the raven, who was then pure white, to bring water for sacrifice, but the raven, finding a fig-tree with fruit nearly ripe, waited until it should mature and he could appease his hunger ; then, having to account for his delay, he took a water-snake out of the fountain, placed it in the pitcher, and brought it to the god, and told him that the snake had daily drunk the fountain dry. But Apollo was not to be deceived by any such story, and, as a punishment for his crime, he turned the raven black, and condemned him to be tormented with thirst during the season that figs are ripening.” * Another says that “ Apollo was in love with a beautiful nymph of Thessaly named Koronis, but she was false to the god, and was surprised with another lover by the raven, who flew off without heed- ing her entreaties and told his master ; the god in a transport of jeal- ousy slew the faithless damsel, and then, angry at the tattling raven for bringing him the unwelcome tidings, he turned his plumage black.” + In the Grecian myth of the battle between the gods and the giants, Apollo is said to have disguised himself in the plumage of the crow, as we have before seen was done by Yama, in the Hindoo version of the story. In the Roman mythology there were wanting many of the idealistic conceptions of the Greek mind, and even the glorious Apollo was not given a place in the Roman pantheon until a late day. Cicero says, “The whole religion of the Romans at first consisted of sacrifices and divination by birds.” { Besides the sacred geese and chickens which were always on hand and kept in proper condition to consummate the “ tripudium solisti- mum,” whenever the good of the state required it, the Roman college of augurs divided all other birds, for the purposes of divination, into two general classes—Alites, those from which the augury was taken by observing their direction and manner of flight ; and Oscineo, those in which the augury was taken from the voice or cry. Of the latter class none were considered more sacred or more certainly omi- nous than the crow and raven, though Cicero says, “The croak of a * Eratosthenes. + Ovid. ¢ Cicero, “ De Nat. Deorum.”

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46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. raven on the right hand or a crow on the eft was reckoned a good omen.” * Early Roman history records more than one instance when the hoarse croak of the raven and warning voice of the crow have been heard and heeded in the councils of the nation, and sometimes even turned the doubtful issues of a battle. In the war with the Gauls which occurred in the consulship of Camillus, Livy tells us that “when the opposing armies were drawn up ready to join in battle, a Gaul of gigantic size stepped to the front and defied any one of the Romans to meet him in single combat. His challenge was accepted by Marcus Valerius, who was assisted in the fight by a crow, that, sud- denly appearing, lit on the helmet of the Gaul and attacked him with beak and talons until Valerius slew him, when the crow flew away to the east. The death of the Gallic champion brought on a general battle, in which the Gauls were beaten and forced to retreat. After this remarkable event, Marcus Valerius was surnamed Corvus.” + Pliny tells of a sedition that occurred in Rome in consequence of the killing of a raven, and, though we can hardly relegate this prob- ably historic incident to the domain of mythology, yet it will serve to show the peculiar veneration in which these birds were held by the ancient Romans. He says: “ A raven, that had been bred upon the top of the temple of Castor, flew down into the shop of a shoemaker which stood opposite ; the shoemaker took much delight in its visits, and taught it to speak, after which it would fly every morning to the rostra overlooking the forum, whence, addressing each by name, it would salute Tiberius, then the Cwxsars, Germanicus and Drusus, after which it would greet the Ro- man people as they passed, and then return to the shop. For many years it was constant in its attendance ; but at length another shoe- maker, envious of the popularity of his fellow craftsman, killed it ; upon which the people became so enraged at the cruel and irreligious wretch that they drove him from the city and eventually put him to death. The funeral of the bird was celebrated with almost endless obsequies ; the body was placed upon a litter carried by Ethiopians, preceded by a piper, and was borne to the pile with garlands of every size and description.” { Among the Scandinavian gods, the highest throne was assigned to Odin—the A/fader. And, though there was but little in his cruel and relentless character to remind us of the bright and life-giving Vishnu, or the glorious and benignant Apollo, yet there is no doubt but what he was another apotheosis of the sun, only with attributes so changed as to suit the ideal of a stern and warlike race, who had not only brute and human foes to contend against, but even to wage con- tinual war against Nature herself. In the Norse mythology, both * Cicero, “ De Divinatione.” + Livy, lib. vii, chap. xxvi. ¢ Pliny, “ Hist. Nat.,” lib. x, chap. lx.

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A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. 47 wolves and ravens were sacred to Odin. In the prose or elder Edda, which was the sacred book of the Odinic mythology, it is said, “ Odin gives the meat that is set before him to two wolves, called Geri and Foeki, for he himself stands in no need of food.” * And, again : “ Two ravens sit on Odin’s shoulders, and whisper in his ear the tidings and events they have heard and witnessed. They are called Hugin and Munin (mind and memory). He sends them out at dawn of day to fly over the whole world, and they return at eve toward meal-time. Hence it is that Odin knows so many things, and is called the ravens’ god.” ¢ Turning now to the Semitic tribes, we will find that among them, also, ravens were held in greater veneration than any of their feathered congeners ; and more than one mention of them is made in the sacred chronicle as especial messengers of the prophets. In the Biblical nar- ration of the deluge, we read: “And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made ; and he sent forth a raven, which went to and fro, until the wa- ters were dried up from off the earth.” { And, again, after the proph- et Elijah had foretold to the wicked King Ahab how the land would be cursed with drought, the word of the Lord came to him, saying : “ Get thee hence and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith that is before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook ; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord ; for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith that is before Jordan. And the ra- vens brought him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the brook.” § In the Babylonian legend of the deluge, as given in the fragments of Berosus, we have also the episode of the birds being sent out to see if the waters had subsided, but neither the raven nor the dove is es- pecially mentioned by name ;|j while in the legend as given by the old Arabian chronicler, Abou-djafar Mohammed Tabiri, he not only mentions the raven especially being sent forth first, but also gives the reason of his not coming back : “ Noah said to the raven, ‘Go, and place your foot on the earth and see what is the depth of the water.’ The raven departed ; but, having found a carcass, it remained to de- vour it, and did not return. Noah was provoked, and he cursed the raven, saying, ‘May God make thee contemptible among men, and let carrion: be thy food !’” © We have another legend—of the raven as a grave-digger—which is given in Baring-Gould’s “Legends of Old Testament Characters ” as follows : “ After Abel was slain, Adam and Eve sat beside the body and wept, and knew not what to do. Then said a raven whose friend was dead, ‘I will teach Adam a lesson.’ And he dug a hole in the soil, * Mallet’s “ Northern Antiquities,” p. 430. + Mallet, loc. cit. | $ Genesis, viii, 6, 7. § 1 Kings, xvii, 3-6. | Berosus in Cory’s “ Ancient Fragments.” Tabiri, c. 12.

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48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, and laid his friend there and covered him up. And when Adam saw this he said to Eve, ‘ We will do the same with Abel.’ God rewarded the raven for this by promising that none should ever injure his young ; that he should always have meat in abundance, and that his prayer for rain should be immediately answered.” From the same source we select one more legend, in which the ra- ven appears as the possessor of a valuable secret, which, upon compul- sion, it teaches the great king: “ While Solomon was building the temple, he captured Iachr, one of the most powerful of all the jinns ; and, having the demon bound and completely in his control, he prom- ised him his liberty if he would tell him how the hardest metals could be cut and shaped without noise. ‘I myself know of no means,’ an- swered the demon, ‘ but the raven can tell thee how to do this. Take the eggs out of the raven’s nest and place a crystal cover upon them, and thou shalt sce how the raven will break it.’ Solomon followed the advice of Iachr. A raven came and fluttered some time around the cover, and, seeing that she could not reach her eggs, she vanished, and returned shortly with a stone in her beak, named tamur or ichamir, and no sooner had she touched the crystal therewith, than it clave asunder. ‘Whence hast thou this stone?’ asked Solomon of the raven. ‘It comes from a mountain in the far west,’ replied the bird. Solomon commanded a jinn to follow the raven to the mountain and bring him more of those stones. Then he released Iachr as he had promised. When the jinn returned with the stone ichamir, Solomon went back to Jerusalem, and distributed the stones among the jinns whom he had employed in building the temple.” In the Egyptian mythology we have no single equivalent of the glorious sun-god of the Greeks ; and, though the Rosetta-stone has ex- plained to us the mystery of the hieroglyphs, and revealed the long- hidden meaning of many of the sculptured monuments and half-effaced papyri of the land of the Pharaohs, yet much of her curious mythology is a sealed book, and the attributes of some of her unique gods are still enigmas even to the most learned Egyptologists. Osiris, Aroueris, (the elder Horus), Harpocrates (the younger Horus), Chnum, Ra, Tum, and Mentu were all deifications of the sun during some part of the day or year ; but it is no easy matter to limit the peculiar province of each god, or give his exact equivalent in Greek thought ; and though He- rodotus and other Greek writers assert that Horus was the same as the Greek Apollo, even this throws but little light upon the subject, since there were tro Egyptian gods bearing this name, and several (proba- bly deified) kings, one of whom restored the worship of the sun, after it had been forbidden by Amenophis TV, and had been neglected for nearly one hundred years. However, it is at least certain that Horus was worshiped by the Egyptians as the embodiment of the sun in a part of his course, and to him were sacred the hawk, the wolf, and the crow. Pritchard, quoting from olian’s “History of Animals,” says,

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A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. 49 “The Egyptians reverence the hawk as sacred to Apollo, whom they name, in their language, Horus.” * And again, quoting from the same authority : “The crow also was sacred to Apollo, or Horus. In the neighborhood of Coptos only two individual birds of this species were to be seen, which belonged to the temple of Apollo.” ¢ Coming now to the rude and primitive mythology of the red race of America, we find here also several tribes by which these birds were held sacred. And curiously enough, in the Algonquin myth of the deluge, we find both the raven and the wolf as attendants on Messon, the Great Spirit. Brinton quotes it from Father Le June as follows : “One day as Messon was hunting, the wolves which he used as dogs entered a great lake and were detained there. Messon, looking for them everywhere, a bird said to him, ‘I see them in the middle of this lake.’ He entered the lake to rescue them, but the lake overflowing its banks, covered the land and destroyed the world. Messon, very much astonished at this, sent out the raven to find a piece of earth wherewith to rebuild the land, but the bird could find none ; then he ordered the otter to dive for some, but the animal returned empty ; at last he sent down the muskrat, who came back with ever so small a piece, which, however, was enough for Messon to form the land on which we are. The trees having lost their branches, he shot arrows at their naked trunks, which became their limbs, revenged himself on those who had detained his wolves, and, having married the muskrat, by it peopled the world.” { In the Athapascan myth of the creation, the creative power takes the form of the raven. Brinton, quoting from McKenzie’s “History of the Fur Trade,” says: “With singular unanimity, most of the Northwest branches of this stock trace their descent from a raven, a mighty bird whose eyes were fire, whose glances were lightning, and the clapping of whose wings was thunder. On his descent to the ocean the earth instantly rose and remained on the surface of the water. This omnipotent bird then called forth all the variety of animals.” § And again: “A raven, also, in the Athapascan myth, saved their ancestors from the general flood, and in this instance it is distinctly identified with the mighty Thunder Bird, who, at the beginning, ordered the earth from the depths. Prometheus-like, it brought fire from heaven, and saved them from a second death by cold.” | A poetical description of this mythical bird has been given by Mr. Shelling, and is preserved in Griswold’s collection of American poetry. We have room, however, for only a few lines of the poem : * Pritchard, “ Egyptian Mythology,” p. 317. + Pritchard, op. cit., p. 319. ¢ Brinton, “ Myths of the New World,” p. 225. § Brinton, op. cit., p. 211. | Brinton, op. cit., p. 220. VOL, XVIII1.—4

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. * About his burning brow a cloud, Black as the raven’s wing, he wore; Thick tempests wrapped him like a shroud, Red lightnings in bis hand he bore; Like two bright suns his eyeballs shone, His voice was like the cannon’s tone ; And, when he breathed, the land became, Prairie and wood, one sheet of flame. “Afar on yonder faint-blue mound, In the horizon’s utmost bound, At the first stride his foot he set; The jarring world confessed the shock. Stranger, the track of thunder yet Remains upon the living rock.” * But besides the more ancient myths concerning crows and ravens, a volume might be filled with those degraded myths which, under the names of fairy-tales, or folk-lore (Méhrchen), are found in all the lan- guages of Europe; and though we can not follow each one, step by step, in its downward career, or trace all its varying phases with the same certainty that we can the metamorphosis.of Odin into the wild hunts- man of the Hartz, or the dethronement of Jupiter and his decretion into Jack the Giant-Killer, yet there are always preserved sufficient distinctive features by which their parentage can be traced. In the Mecklenburg story of “ The Three Crows,” in the Grimms’ collection, after Conrad had been beaten by his knavish companions until he was blind, and then robbed and tied to the gallows-tree, the three crows that perched over his head at night informed him how he could regain his sight, cure the sick princess, obtain a supply of water for the famishing town, and by so doing obtain the king’s consent to marry the princess whom he had saved.t We rarely discover in any one story so many of the mythological characteristics of the crow as are associated together here ; the ill- omened gallows, the black night, the more than human wisdom of the crows, their knowledge of prophecy, and the healing art befitting Apol- lo’s birds, their power of obtaining water, and lastly their malignant nature ; for when Conrad’s wicked companions sat under the gallows- tree, hoping to hear the crows tell something for their advantage also, the crows fell upon them with wings, beaks, and talons, and buffeted them until they were nearly dead. In the story of “Faithful John,” given in the same collection, we find the crows here also possessed of more than human wisdom in addi- * A few miles from Big Stone Lake, on the borders of Minnesota and Dakota, there is seen an impression in the rock, similar to the imprint of a bird’s foot, with the toes nearly a yard long ; this track the Dakotas say is the footprint of the Thunder Bird. + Grimms’ “ Popular Tales.”

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A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. 51 tion to the gift of prophecy. Faithful John, who understands the lan- guage of the crows, is enabled, by overhearing their colloquy, to save the lives of the prince and his bride; his motives, however, are mis- understood by his royal master, who sends him to the scaffold, where- upon he tells the prophecy of the crows and explains all his conduct ; telling the secret, however, seals his fate, and while his master is beg- ging forgiveness the faithful servant is turned into stone.* This tale in varying forms is one of the most widely spread of all the stories of the Aryan tribes. Cox says it comes from the same source as the Deccan story of Rama and Luxman; and we find a some- what erratic form of it in the touching little story of Prince Llewellyn and his faithful hound Gellert. Philosophers at various times have attempted to account for this peculiar veneration of animals, which by many of the nations of anti- quity was heightened irto worship, and which, among some of the rude and barbarous tribes of Africa and the South-Sea Islands, still exists as almost their only recognition of a religion.+ But a bare recital of the numberless theories would serve no good purpose, and draw out this article to unnecessary length. There are, however, two theories which not only seem plausible, but which seem to be supported by the facts of history and the practices of the savage tribes of the present day. One is, that zoJlatry is an outgrowth of a primitive worship of ancestors (necrolatry). The other is, that zodlatry as well as heliolatry, sabeanism, sex-worship, and probably other cults, are all derived from a primitive worship of the deified powers of nature (pantheism). Though history affords many noted examples of the apotheosis of ancestors, and particularly in the patriarchal form of government, when the ancestor was also the ruler, yet it is only since the scientific study of ethnology has become general that the means have been afforded students of becoming acquainted on any extended scale with the crude and primitive beliefs of the lower races of man. After the examination of a great mass of facts bearing upon the subject, Herbert Spencer arrives at the conclusion that the first ideas of ghosts or other supernatural beings have ‘arisen in the mind of primitive man through the agency of dreams, somnambulism, trance, catalepsy, and other analogous conditions ; and that the same condi- tions are continually reproducing the same ideas in the minds of his more civilized descendants. This alter ego, which exists in the dreams and visions of the primitive man, he believes also exists during the sleep of death ; and that it is then more powerful than during life, and is able to perform not only all the vagaries and metamorphoses which he believes have actually occurred during sleep, but is also able to enter into and take possession of the bodies of animals, and even other human beings. As the vague notions of ghosts and spirits grow into * Grimms’ “ Popular Tales.” + Sir John Lubbock, “Origin of Civilization,” chap. v.

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52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. definiteness by the corroborating testimony of other members of the tribe, there would naturally arise a desire to gain the favor or avert the displeasure of these powerful beings by gifts and offerings similar to what would have given pleasure during life ; these offerings would usually be made at the grave, cave, or house where the dead body was laid, and thus the tomb would become an altar or temple, as we see the tomb and temple associated even in civilized communities. In addition to the belief that the ghost of a dead ancestor or relative has the power to pass into the body of a beast, is the fact that the lan- guages of the lower races of man are so imperfect that metaphorical names require to be interpreted literally, and consequently primitive speech is unable to transmit to posterity the slight shades of difference between an animal and a person named after that animal ; moreover, having no knowledge of proper names, naming after animals, from some fancied resemblance or association of ideas, is most common, and hence we find such names as Black-Hawk, Little-Crow, Lone-Wolf, and Sitting-Bull. In the course of a few generations these animals would be looked upon as the ancestors of respective tribes, and would be reverenced and sacrificed to as deities. Besides explaining animal- gods, this hypothesis accounts for sundry anomalous beliefs, the divini- ties half-brute and half-human, the animals that talk and play active parts in human affairs, the doctrine of metempsychosis, etc.* On the other hand, the pantheistic theory assumes that whatever caused the sentiment of awe, wonder, or fear, in the mind of primi- tive man, would be deified and worshiped ; that the first objects that would excite these emotions would be the sun, moon, and stars, clouds, wind, rain, thunder, lightning, etc. ; that from their ignorance of even the rudiments of physical science, together with the want of exactness of early language and its wealth of metaphor and personification, these cosmic objects and forces would be conceived of as individual entities, ach having absolute personal volition: and since these metaphoric names would vary with the varying conception of each one of these fervent old pantheists, there would thus arise that almost endless polyonomy which has been the fertile source of so many of the myths that have puzzled and horrified mankind ever since their origin was forgotten. Moreover, since all metaphors depend upon some real or fancied resemblance of things less known to things better known, all of these deified powers of nature would be invested with forms and attributes similar to the animals and men with which they were already familiar, though in a magnified degree ; and from this conception, by a very natural and usual transition of thought, the human or animal form, which had at first been sacred only as the eidolon of the god, would in a short time be thought to possess some intrinsic sanctity independent of that divine association. * Herbert Spencer, “ Principles of Sociology,” vol. i, chaps. xv to xxv. + Cox, “ Aryan Mythology,” vol. i, chapters i to v.

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A FLOCK OF MYTHOLOGICAL CROWS. 53 There are many arguments in support of both of these theories, the chief objection being that either one alone is too exclusive to account for all the facts ; for, while there can be no doubt that ancestor-worship was the primitive and only religion of many, possibly all, the tribes of the earth at the dawn of their civilization, yet it is also certain that when tribes had formed settled communities, and a higher grade of culture had been attained, ancestor-worship was supplemented or sup- planted by a worship of nature. And since to primeval man none of the powers of nature seemed so beneficent or worthy of adoration as the sun, heliolatry was one of the most widely spread of all the religions of antiquity, and the daily conflict between the sun-god and clouds and darkness a never-ending theme for poet and priest. And as the incidents of these oft-repeated battles were handed down orally, from generation to generation, decked in all the glowing metaphors of exuberant fancy, the real nature of the deity they described and the celestial battles he waged would gradually be lost and forgotten, while the metaphoric names and metaphoric inci- dents would “survive the wreck of time” and come down to historic ages as actual incidents in the lives of real gods. And it is in this mythological contest between the sun-god and the powers of darkness that we will find the origin of the demoniacal char- acter of crows and ravens, these birds always representing in ancient thought the dark and terrible night, or the black and howling storm- cloud, the natural and necessary opponents of all that was bright and divine and good, of which the sun was the source and origin. Nor were these metaphors far-fetched or inappropriate, the darkness of night settling silently down over the calm, still earth might not inaptly be compared to the descent of some black gigantic bird ; and, to de- scribe the fierce storm-cloud rushing through the sky “on the wings of the wind,” no metaphor could be more exact than to liken it to a huge, ravening bird of prey. In most of the myths herein cited, the cloud seems to be the more exact equivalent of the bird, though in the earlier Hindoo mythology the cloud and the night are often converti- ble. The crow, as the metaphoric name of the cloud, also explains the connection of these birds with water, which we find not only in legends of the deluge but in many others. The first Greek myth given is a degraded version of one of the nu- merous Hindoo myths of the god Indra, who slays the black dragon that has shut up the fertilizing waters ; the white raven is the fleecy cloud of summer that contains no moisture ; but, as autumn advances and figs ripen, the cloud grows blacker and brings rain. It is worth noting, also, that the monstrous dragon of India shrinks into an in- significant water-snake when transported to the less rank soil of Hellas. In the Greek myth quoted from Ovid, we have another of those widely-spread myths of the sun and dawn. Koronis (xopwric) is the

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54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. beautiful (crown of light) Aurora, surprised by the morning cloud, the raven, in the embrace of another lover, the night. In the Norse mythology the ravens that sit on Odin’s shoulders are the clouds that are seen on either side of the rising sun. As the sun mounts higher and the heat increases, the clouds are dissipated, to re- turn again in the evening when the air is cooler and the sun sinks into the western sea. The wolves have doubtless the same nebulous origin as the ravens ; the name of one of them, Freki, most probably being a reminiscence if not a direct derivative of the Sanskrit vrikas (wolf), which, as we have before stated, in the Vedic hymns signifies the black night or the howling storm-cloud. In the Semitic languages, from the prolific root arab, one of the meanings of which is to be black, was formed the Hebrew ore (raven), ereb (evening, land of the setting sun), etc. From the same root also come Erebos and Arabia ; hence, on linguistic grounds alone, it is im- possible to decide whether Elijah was fed by the ravens or the Arabians. The legend of Schamir is found in most of the languages of Europe, but in variously modified forms. In one place it is a stone, in another a worm, and in yet another it is a plant. Their agreement, however, in the power to rend rocks and to discover hidden treasures shows the origin of the myth to have been the storm-cloud which carries the thunderbolt, and with it rends the hardest rocks. In the Egyptian mythology the reason assigned for dedicating the hawk to Horus is the bold flight which the bird is observed to make toward the sun without being dazzled by its rays ;* but the reason for dedicating the crow to the same god is not so apparent, though it is probable that under the forms both of the wolf and the crow was rep- resented the black night as an invariable and necessary follower of the god of day. lian says that in the temple of Apollo at Delphi was the statue of a wolf, and that the reason the wolf was sacred to this god was because he was born of Latona, or nursed by her, under this form.+ It was doubtless a wolf of the same species that suckled the warlike twins of Silvia, at a later age, on the banks of the Tiber. In both the Hindoo and the Greek mythologies we find the owl intimately associated with the crow—the owl, like the crow, being one of the demons of the night ; but, as the owl was the representative of the bright night, or the moon, there was a constant warfare going on between them. The Pancatantra describes a battle between the owls and the crows, the casvs belli being the opposition of the crows to the owl being elected king of birds. Aristotle, too, gravely informs us as a fact of natural history that “the crow and the owl also are ene- mies, for at mid-day the crow, taking advantage of the dim sight of the owl, secretly seizes and devours its eggs, and the owl eats those of the crow during the night.” { * Pritchard, op. cit., p. 318. + #lian, “ Hist. Animal.,” lib. x, chap. xx. ¢ Aristotle, “ Hist. Animal.,” lib. ix, chap. ii.

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A FLOCK OF MYTHCLOGICAL CROWS. 55 Whether an observance of the habits of crows led to their being selected, in the first place, to represent the dark and evil principle, can not now be told, but it is very certain that their feeding upon dead bodies, frequenting battle-fields and plague-infested districts, would add to and intensify their ominous reputation, even if it did not originate it ; moreover, being constantly associated with death in its most repul- sive forms, and from their keenness of scent and vision being able, apparently, to foretell the death of an animal or human being, their very presence soon came to be regarded as a foreboding of evil. This keenness of scent and vision and their straight, vigorous flight were taken advantage of by the old Norse sea-rovers, who made use of these birds as pilots to guide them on their murderous forays and voy- ages of discovery. According to the “ Landnama Book,” one of the earliest records of Iceland, about the year 865 a. p., Floki, one of the most famous Vikings of that day, having performed a great sacrifice and consecrated three ravens to Odin, started from Norway on a voy- age of discovery. After touching at the Shetland and Faroe Islands, Floki steered northwest for the open sea, and when he was fairly out of sight of land he turned loose one of his ravens, which, after rising to a great height, flew off toward the land they had left. From this Floki concluded that he was nearer these islands than any other land. After proceeding on his course some days longer he “let fly ” another raven, which, after being some hours on the wing, returned to the ves- sel. Floki continued his course, and after a few days more let loose his third raven, and followed the direction of its flight until he reached the eastern coast of Iceland. In Callimachus’s hymn to Apollo, we also have mention of a pilot- crow being sent by the god to guide the tongue-tied Battus to Libya, where the Python had declared that he must found a colony. And, again, Plutarch tells, on the authority of Callisthenes, that when Al- exander crossed the Libyan desert to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, he was directed by a flock of crows, that suddenly made its appearance, and guided him on his way, flying briskly ahead when he was on the march, lighting when he halted, and, what is stranger still, when he was going wrong calling him by their croaking until he was in the right direction again. We might also mention, in this connec- tion, the story Herodotus tells of the ubiquitous Aristeas, whom the Metapontines say appeared in their country, and told them to erect an altar to Apollo, and place near it a statue bearing the name of Aristeas the Preeonnesian, for Apollo had visited their country only of all the Italians, and that he who was now Aristeas had accompanied the god in the shape of a crow. Another characteristic of crows is their longevity. Hesiod as- serts that they will live nine times as long as a man, and it is certain that they have attained an age of more than one hundred years. On this account the sorceress Medea, with many other ingredients of a

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56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. peculiar nature, placed a crow’s head and beak in the magic caldron when she was compounding the “ elixir of life” to rejuvenate the de- crepit Aeson. Still another peculiarity of this family of birds is their human-like voice. All of them are easily domesticated, and nearly every variety can, without much trouble, be taught to speak. In some species, par- ticularly the jabbering crow (Corvus Jamaicensus), their voices are so similar to those of human beings that, at a short distance, it is almost impossible to distinguish them apart. But, while the ability to articulate probably first caused the crow to be regarded as a prophet, its evil habits, funereal associations, and metaphoric opposition to the sun-god caused it to be looked upon as a prophet only of evil, and as such it has always been regarded in my- thology, legend, and popular tradition, It seems curious that the figments of extinct mythologies should come from the dim and misty past, down through the ages, and still exist in the enlightenment of the present day ; and yet we know that the débris of these effete religions not only survive in the legends and folk-lore of all the lands now civilized, but to a certain extent adulterate their manners and customs, their laws, and even their forms of religion. A veneration for old manners and customs and the religion of his forefathers is imbibed by the child almost with his mother’s milk ; the sentiment grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength, until, when adult age is attained and the mind should be sufficiently mature to inquire into the truth and propriety of what he has been taught, the judgment has already become so prejudiced, by years of unquestioned obedience and unconscious imitation, that to defend and perpetuate even the errors and superstitions of his forefathers appears to hima solemn duty nearly akin to religion. THE ELECTRIC BURGLAR-ALARM. LABORATE as are the ordinary agencies for the protection of property, they afford but a partial security. Well-lighted streets, careful watchmen, numerous policemen, and strong and in- geniously arranged bolts and bars, are certainly obstacles not easily overcome. But, in his quest of other men’s riches, the accomplished burglar has not found them insurmountable. . However extensive and vigilant a police force, it can not have all points under its surveillance at once, and this gives the burglar the opportunity which he rarely fails to improve. Bolts and bars are, doubtless, good things in their way ; but the experienced cracksman has a cunning beyond them. In the contest between him and the locksmith, the victory has not always been with the latter, though he has produced that marvel of skill and

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THE ELECTRIC BURGLAR-ALARM. $7 workmanship—the modern safe-lock. The burglar’s tools are not such as are thwarted by nice mechanical combinations. Explosives and the simple mechanical powers in his hands have a wonderful range of utility, and are able to frequently set at naught the most elaborate contrivances, The protection afforded by these combined agencies is, however, only realizable to its full extent in the business centers of large’cities. In resident districts, and in suburban and country situa- tions where policemen are often few and far between, reliance has chiefly to be placed upon fastenings ; and these often prove insuffi- cient. Yet it is especially important to the owner of property that his protection be good, for recovery is very difficult. The advan- tages are so largely with the thieves, that they can frequently make the search a long and costly, and often a fruitless one. The cost is, in fact, the main bar to recovery. Only when stolen property is of large value does it pay to regain it. Small amounts, such as are usually taken from private houses, are practically irrecoverable. No practicable extension of the ordinary agencies can greatly in- crease present security. Bars and bolts have now approached very closely to their limit of strength and ingenuity, and police surveil- lance is as extensive and perhaps as effective as circumstances will per- mit. Greater protection must be sought in some further agency—one that will reproduce as nearly as possible the condition of watchfulness present in the daytime. This the electric burglar-alarm is designed to do, and does with a good degree of success. In its earlier forms there weré many defects, but in a development of twenty years these have been mostly corrected. It has now attained to a simplicity of construction and certainty of action that make it one of the most use- ful and trustworthy of man’s servitors. Though widely known and ap- preciated both in this country and abroad, there are probably many not acquainted with it, to whom a brief description will not be without value. However the details of construction differ, the essential elements of every system are, a bell to give the alarm, an annunciator to indicate the point from which it proceeds, wires from all the openings of a building, and a battery to furnish the current. These elements are combined in various ways, depending upon the special circumstances of the particular case, but the manner of use is practically the same. The main piece of apparatus, remarkable alike for the simplicity of its construction and the range of its performance, is the annunciator. In the earlier forms of the alarm, the indications were made by means of a simple switch-board provided with buttons bearing the names of the apartments protected. When ar alarm sounded, the depression of each of these buttons in turn, until the bell ceased ringing, was neces- sary to determine its locality. This is still quite largely used, as it is cheaper than the more perfect annunciator, which tells at a glance where the disturbance in the circuit is. In shape and size this latter instrument resembles an ordinary mantel-clock. The indications are

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58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. given by devices on the face, which vary with different makers. In one form they are made by arrows, which lie horizontal when in nor- mal position, and point to the names of the apartments printed above them when indicating. In another form, cards drop down in front of apertures arranged in rows on the face, and in still another the name and number of a room are uncovered by a falling piece when an alarm is sounded. The needle- instrument is shown in Fig. 1. Once made, the indications remain until the parts are restored by some one. A small switch at one side completes or opens the circuit through the instrument, and one on the other side controls the con- nection with the bell. A row of studs at the base of the apparatus allows any opening to be disconnected that may be desired. Aside from its giving an alarm when an attempt is made to enter a build- ing, the annunciator has an important use in showing whether a place is proper- ly closed. If any window or door has been forgotten, it will infallibly point it out. In large business houses where there are many openings, this feature is of the greatest value. By disconnecting the bell, this test can be made a silent one. The mechanism operating the indicators is of the simplest descrip- tion. In the needle-instrument, an arm on the pivot of the needle is held in position by the hooked end of a lever, the other end of which forms the armature of an electro-magnet. The connection between the lever and the supported arm is very slight, so that a small move- ment of the former allows the latter to fall. When the circuit is closed this takes place. The armature in moving toward the magnet raises the hooked end of the lever, releasing the arm which drops and turns its needle. In the instrument using the card, the card is carried on the end of an arm held up in a similar manner by a hook on the armature of the magnet. The depression of the armature allows the arm to drop by its weight. The restoring of the arms to position is done by a sliding frame raised by a handle or button on the base of the instrument. Delicate as the movements of the appara- tus are, it is not easily put out of order. The points of contact of the hook and arm are so made as to reduce the wear to a minimum. The mechanism is all inclosed, and the exposed parts, such as the needles, switch-handles, etc., finished in polished metal. The annunci- ator and bell are usually combined into one piece of apparatus, but they may be put up separate when desired. Fis. 1.

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THE ELECTRIC BURGLAR-ALARM. 59 The bell used is that common with different forms of electrical instruments. It consists of a gong and a clapper vibrated by the com- bined action of an electro-magnet and a spring. The magnet, when the current passes, draws the clapper to itself and in doing so opens the circuit ; this destroys its magnetism and allows the spring to carry the clapper back. This “make” and “ break” action, rapidly repeat- ed as long as the current is passing, produces a continuous ringing of the bell. Reference to Fig. 2* will make this movement clear. Fie. 2, One end of the wire of the coils of the magnet M M is secured to the binding-post B, and the other to the post C. The arm of the clapper é is a rather stiff spring, which in its normal position holds the arma- ture ¢ carried by it from the poles of the magnet. It then presses against the spring 7, attached to the post D. The posts A and E holding the wires from the battery are respectively connected with B and D by metallic strips. The current enters at A, traverses the coils of the magnet M M, passes through the armature e, and out by way of spring r and posts D and E. In doing so, the soft-iron cores of the magnet are magnetized and attract the armature e. This in moving breaks its contact with the spring 7, and interrupts the current. The clapper then springs back into position. In the bell now generally used the ringing continues not only while the door or window is open, but until the indicating parts of the annun- ciator are restored to position. * Figs. 2 and 8 are reproduced, through the kindness of Mr. George B. Prescott, from his works on “ The Electric Light,” etc., and “ Electricity,” ete.

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60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. This secures the proper resetting of the apparatus in readiness for anew alarm. The result is obtained very simply by making the clap- per turn a switch, which cuts from the circuit the opened window or door, and allows the current to pass directly from the battery to the bell. The door and window attachments for closing the circuit by the movements of these parts are of various forms. Those used on doors are simply little push-pins placed in the casing. The pin slides in an insulated case provided with metallic strips. When it is pressed in, the contact between it and the strips is broken and the circuit opened. When the pressure is released, the pin springs out, closing the circuit. The slightest movement of a door allows this motion of the pin to take place. In one form the pin and a metallic casing are so arranged that the attempt to keep the pin pushed in, when the door is opened, by inserting a knife-blade, establishes the circuit and gives the alarm. ‘These push-buttons may be constructed to close the circuit, either by pushing in or springing out, and in both forms have a great wariety of uses, They may be placed under the carpet, in the hall, on the stairs, in front of a window, or wherever any one entering would be liable to step. <A sufficient number properly disposed could make intrusion without giving an alarm simply impossible. The window attachments are usually simple springs placed in the casing so that the movement of the sash presses them together. One form consists of a roller on the the end of a spring arm, which keeps it pressed out from contact with a metal strip, through which the circuit is completed. Placed in the casing, the roller stands out and is received in a pocket in the edge of the sash, so that the motion of the sash brings the roller arm and metal strip into contact. For the purpose of ventilation, the pocket in the upper sash is usually elongated to give a free movement through any desired distance. When the lower sash is left open, security can be gained by covering a push-pin in the window-sill with a flower-pot or other obstruction, the removal of which is necessary to gain entrance. The wires forming the circuit are of insulated copper, carefully put up so as to be completely hidden from view. They are run in grooves in the wood-work, carried beneath a floor, or on its face, according to circumstances. Once in place, they remain unchanged for any period, causing neither trouble nor expense. The Le Clanché battery, shown in Fig. 3, is the one universally employed with this apparatus. It is very simple in construction, ex- hales no noxious gases when in operation, does not waste the material when no current is passing, and needs but very little attention. The positive pole is a piece of gas carbon placed in a porous cell filled with coarse-grained peroxide of manganese and carbon. The cell is sealed at the top with pitch, and a lead cap on the carbon receives the wire. The negative pole is formed of a rod of amalgamated zinc. Both poles are immersed in a solution of sal-ammoniac contained in a glass

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THE ELECTRIC BURGLAR-ALARM. 61 jar. Four of these elements put up in a wooden case constitute the battery usually furnished. . These appliances provided, the most common way of using the system is to make it complete in each building, the alarm apparatus being placed in a sleeping-apartment in a private house, and in the Fis. 3. watchman’s room in a place of business. So arranged, the condition of the circuit is this: In the daytime, when the doors and windows are open, the circuit is continuous at all points except at the alarm appara- tus. At night this is reversed, the circuit being closed at the instru- ment, and broken at all the points protected. A movement at any of these points which closes the circuit gives the alarm and turns the proper needle on the annunciator. The connection with the alarm is made at night by an attendant, and broken at any desired:time in the morning. In private houses fitted with electric bells, a clock is often provided that disconnects the alarm in the morning and turns the cur- rent on to a bell placed in the servants’ room. The movement by which this is done is something similar to that of the ordinary alarm- clock. The protection afforded with such an apparatus in good working order is probably as perfect as it can be made. It is generally impos- sible to cut the wires from the outside of the building, and unless this is done intrusion will start the alarm. Even if the wires be cut, but-

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62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tons under the carpet or circuit-closers in interior doors will reveal the burglar’s presence in perhaps every case. Valuable as is the protection in any particular case of attempted robbery, the general immunity from such attempts that the presence of the apparatus secures is of still greater moment. Burglars will not generally take such risks as those imposed by an efficient alarm system, and will therefore give a house so protected a wide berth. The only case in which there is room for failure of the system is when the bat- tery power is not sufficient to operate the alarm. But it is a very simple matter to provide against this. Tests once every month or two, and the experience soon gained in using the battery, will enable one to know at any time the state of the system. None of the other parts need ever cause any solicitude. While in the great majority of cases the plan of giving the alarm to some one in the building broken into affords perfect security, in some it does not. In business centers, determined and cunning burg- lars, accustomed to take large chances, might frequently overpower the watchman and stop the alarm before it excited outside atten- tion. To meet this difficulty the plan is sometimes adopted of mak- ing the alarm sound in a central office of the company furnishing the apparatus. One company doing this has adopted a system that seems to be beyond circumvention. Each building protected is con- nected on a closed circuit with the central office, at which place deli- cate galvanometers are used as indicators. The circuit of each build- ing is independent of all others. Any change in the resistance of any circuit is instantly shown by the deflection of the proper needle, and an alarm started. The opening of a protected door or window breaks the circuit, as does the cutting of the line, and of course gives an alarm. If the burglar could carry the wire to the ground and insert just the proper resistance, no signal would be given at the company’s office, but this is impossible, as the resistance is not only that of the wire but of the apparatus in circuit. The only way to get around it is to tunnel under the building, but even then cir- cuit-breakers judiciously disposed would generally lead to detection. Nothing is gained, so far as the safe is concerned, in this case, as it is independently protected. It is placed in a light wooden cabinet lined with a metallic casing, consisting of two sheets of tin-foil insulated from each other by a thin sheet of non-conducting material. The wires from a battery are connected each with ore of the sheets of foil. So delicate is the insulation that the sticking of a pin in the cabinet closes the circuit and deflects the needle, and sounds the alarm in the central office. This system, though not yet in extensive use, is gaining in favor among merchants having valuable stores of goods. A similar plan of protecting private houses whose occupants are away is prac- ticed to some extent. The apparatus used in this case is much less delicate, and the protection therefore not so good.

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THE ELECTRIC BURGLAR-ALARM. 63 _ The cost of applying the burglar-alarm to any house will vary in each case. It depends upon the size of the annunciator required and the number of openings to be protected. The prices charged by the different American manufacturers differ very little. Annuncia- tors range in price from thirty dollars with four indications to one hundred dollars with twenty. The annunciator used should have as many indications as there are rooms protected. The cost of circuit- closers, including the placing in position and laying the wire, is three dollars a window when both sashes are connected. The same devices for doors vary from one and a half to two and a half dollars. In ordinary city houses it is only necessary to connect the windows and doors, front and back, of the first two stories and the opening in the roof. The entire cost will not generally exceed one hundred dollars. In the country the cost would of course be somewhat greater, in the average house probably between a hundred and fifty and two hundred dollars. The apparatus once in, the only expense is the main- tenance of the battery. This will generally be very smalJ, probably not more than a dollar a year. Considering the security gained, the outlay required is not excessive, and builders find that it is fully made up to them in increased rents. It is not improbable that the apparatus will eventually be considered as necessary to the complete equipment of a house as now are water- and gas-pipes. Intimately connected with the burglar-alarm system, though having a different object, is an automatic fire-alarm, somewhat extensively in- troduced during recent years. The system consists in placing in the ceiling of a room a number of mercury bulbs, which close an electric circuit when the temperature rises above acertain point and set off an alarm. One form of the bulb or thermostat is shown in Fig. 4. The wire from the lower end is in permanent contact with the mercury, but that in the upper end comes in contact with it only when a given temperature is reached. The bulbs are usually manufactured to make this contact at a temperature of 120° Fahr. The thermostat is set in a bell-shaped shield of sheet- metal, only the rim of which, when in the ceiling, is exposed. They are placed about twenty feet apart in large rooms, a couple being sufficient for those of ordinary size. This alarm, like that for burglars, may be complete in a building, or may give its signal at a central office. In some of the larger cities this latter plan has been carried into practice. Each building is provided with an annunciator placed on the front, where it can be readily inspected. The signal given at the office indicates the building, and the annunciator on the face of the building gives the room in which the fire is located. Fic. 4.—THermostat.

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64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Together these alarms form an excellent protection against the two most common dangers to which buildings and their contents are exposed. The addition of the call-bell system, now so common in hotels, business houses, and the better class of residences, completes an electrical equipment that leaves little to be desired in the way of se- curity and convenience. MENTAL IMAGERY. By FRANCIS GALTON, F. B.S. HERE are great differences in the power of forming pictures of objects in the mind’s eye ; in other words, of visualizing them. In some persons the faculty of perceiving these images is so feeble that they hardly visualize at all, and they supplement their deficiency chiefly by memories of muscular strain, of gesture, and of posture, and partly by memories of touch ; recalling objects in the same way as those who were blind from their birth. Other persons perceive past scenes with a distinctness and an appearance of reality that differ little from actual vision. Between these wide extremes I have met with a mass of intermediate cases extending in an unbroken series. We must establish clearly what we are talking about by contrast- ing in general terms the physiological basis of sight itself with that of sight-memory. Let us put the question to ourselves, “ What should we expect to be the effect on our nervous system, first, when a sudden light is flashed on the eye, and, secondly, when we recall an image of that flash?” If we had means of watching what took place, we should no doubt be aware, in the first case, of a sudden irri- tation in the spread-out terminations of the optic nerve behind the retina. This would rapidly propagate itself along the nerve itself to the brain, where it would be distributed in various directions, becom- ing confused with other waves of irritation proceeding from indepen- dent centers, lingering here and there longer than elsewhere, and finally dying away. In the recollection of a flash a similar sequence of events would take place, but they would occur in the reverse order. A variously distributed irritation in the brain, due to one or more of a multitude of possible causes, into which we need not stop to inquire, would prop- agate itself outward, becoming fainter the farther it traveled. The same links of the same nervous chain would be concerned in both cases, but the tension would be differently distributed among them. When the faculty of sight-memory is strong, the vigorous propagation of a central impulse toward the optic nerve must be habitual ; when it is weak, the propagation will not take place except in peculiar states

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MENTAL IMAGERY. 65 of the nerves, as in dreams, in delirium, in high excitement, or under the influence of certain drugs. These physiological considerations, vague as they are, will never- theless suffice to establish the existence of a true kinship between men- tal imagery and ordinary vision. They enable us to define Shakes- peare’s phrase of seeing “with the mind’s eye” as a condition in which the activity of the nervous center bears a higher ratio to that of the nervous terminations than it does in actual sight. They also justify us in ascribing the marked differences in the quality, as well as the vividness, of the mental imagery of different persons, to the various degrees in which the several links of a long nervous chain are apt to be affected. The mental images of which I am about to speak are those which are habitually suggested by well-known associations. Even when the subject is thus limited, it is almost too large for the compass of a sin- gle memoir. Therefore, I shall do my best at present not to encroach upon that other very interesting branch of it, which treats of the vis- ions and hallucinations that flash into view without any connection with the subjects of conscious thought. It is my purpose to point out the conditions under which mental imagery as above defined is most useful, and the particular forms of it which we ought to aim at de- veloping ; and I shall adduce evidence to show that the visualizing faculty admits of being educated, although no attempt has ever yet been made, so far as I know, to bring it systematically and altogether under control. I draw my conclusions from no small amount of testimony. In ad- dition to a large quantity of oral information of which I have made notes, I have received separate letters and replies by the hundred to a long list of questions which I circulated, besides obtaining batches of replies to the same questions from various schools. The answers, on the whole, have been written in a style that testifies to much careful self-analysis, and the general accordance of those that were derived from independent sources, together with the satisfactory way in which I have found many of the statements to bear cross-examination, has convinced me of their substantial truth. I find the distribution of the visualizing faculty, in respect to its vividness, by a simple method I have described elsewhere.* I take a haphazard bundle of returns, mark them as an examiner would mark the papers of candidates, sort them in the order of their marks, and clip them into a portfolio. If I open the book in the middle I read the medium value ; if I open it at one quarter from the beginning I read the highest quartile value ; if at one quarter from the end, the lowest quartile. If I open it at one eighth of its thickness I read an octile value ; and if at one sixteenth, a sub-octile. * See an article by myself in “ Mind” (July, 1880), p. 301, on “ Statistics of Mental Imagery,” and the references in the foot-notes to it, VOL, XVIIL.—5

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66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Between the first and last quartiles extends the broad middle class. It includes the two middle quarters, or the central half of the popula- tion, whose characteristics are pretty uniform ; it is at the beginning and end of the book that the exceptional cases lie in this, as in all other similar collections of statistics. The medium quality of mental imagery among Englishmen may be briefly described as fairly vivid, but incomplete. The part of the picture that is well defined at any one moment is more contracted than it would be in a real scene ; but, by moving the mental eye from point to point, the whole of the image, so far as it is remembered at all, may be successively brought into view. If this description be heightened a little, it will suit the high quartile ; if it be lowered a lit- tle, it will suit the low quartile, so that with small variations it will apply to the whole of the middle class. When we arrive at the high and low octiles, the tenor of the returns is considerably changed ; but we will pass by them and rest at the sub-octiles. At the highest of these the image is firm and clear, at the lowest there is scarcely any image at all. This brief statement gives a scientifically exact idea of the distri- bution of the faculty among the inner fourteen in every sixteen English- men. I do not go further here, because I wish to specify the extent to which the faculty generally admits of being educated, and not to hola out ideals which are impossible of attainment except by very few. I shall submit direct evidence of what teaching can accomplish, but it will I am sure be allowed, in the mean time, that there is a probability of being able to educate a faculty among the great majority of men to the degree in which it manifests itself, without any education at all, in at least one person out of every sixteen. When speaking, as I shall soon do, of the various qualities of the faculty, I shall keep, as now, as far as possible to the commoner cases. The power of visualizing is higher in the female sex than in the male, and is somewhat, but not much, higher in public-school boys than in men. I have, however, a few clear cases in which its power has greatly increased with advancing years. There is reason to be- lieve that it is very high in some young children, who seem to spend years of difficulty in distinguishing between the subjective and objec- tive world. Language and book-learning certainly tend to dall it. The visualizing faculty is a natural gift, and, like all natural gifts, has a tendency to be inherited. In this faculty the tendency to inher- itance is exceptionally strong, as I have abundant evidence to prove, especially in respect to certain rather rare peculiarities, of which I shall speak, and which, when they exist at all, are usually found among two, three, or more brothers and sisters, parents, children, uncles and aunts, and cousins. Since families differ so much in respect to this gift, we may sup- pose that races would also differ, and there can be no doubt that such

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MENTAL IMAGERY. 67 is the case. I hardly like to refer to civilized nations, because their natural faculties are too much modified by education to allow of their being appraised in an off-hand fashion. I may, however, speak of the French, who appear to possess the visualizing faculty in a high degree. The peculiar ability they show in prearranging ceremonials and fétes of all kinds and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy show that they are able to foresee effects with unusual clearness. Their in- genuity in all technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and so is their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase “ figurez-vous,” or “ picture to yourself,” seems to express their dominant mode of perception. Our equivalent of “imagine” is am- biguous. It is among uncivilized races that natural differences in the visual- izing faculty are most conspicuous. Many of them make carvings and rude illustrations, but only a few have the gift of carrying a picture in their mind’s eye, judging by the completeness and firmness of their designs, which show no trace of having been elaborated in that step- by-step manner which is characteristic of draughtsmen who are not natural artists. Among the races who are thus gifted are the despised, and, as I confidently maintain from personal knowledge of them, the much- underrated Bushmen of South Africa. They are no doubt deficient in the natural instincts necessary to civilization, for they detest a reg- ular life, they are inveterate thieves, and are incapable of withstanding the temptation of strong drink. On the other hand, they have few superiors among barbarians in the ingenious methods by which they supply the wants of a difficult existence, and in the effectiveness and nattiness of their accoutrements. One of their habits is to draw pic- tures on the walls of caves, of men and animals, and to color them with ochre. These drawings were once numerous, but they have been sadly destroyed by advancing colonization, and few of them, and, in- deed, few wild Bushmen, now exist. Fortunately, a large and valuable collection of fac-similes of Bushman art was made before it became too late, by Mr. Stow, of the Cape Colony, who has very lately sent some specimens of them to this country, in the hope that means might be found for the publication of the entire series. Among the many pic- tures of animals in each of the large sheets full of them, I was particu- larly struck with one of an eland, as giving a just idea of the precision and purity of their best work. A small but interesting sheet of copies of Bushman drawings was presented by Colonel Moncrieff, C. B., of gun-carriage celebrity, to the Christie Collection, which is now incorporated with the British Mu- seum. Many notices of them are to be found in Barrow’s travels in South Africa, and elsewhere. The method by which the Bushmen draw is described in the fol- lowing extract from a letter written to me by Dr. Mann, the well-

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68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. known authority on South African matters of science. The boy to whom he refers belonged to a wild tribe living in caves in the Drakenberg, who plundered outlying farms, and were pursued by the neighboring colonists. He was wounded and captured, then sent to hospital, and subsequently taken into service. He was under Dr. Mann’s observation in the year 1860, and has recently died, to the great regret of his employer, Mr. Proudfoot, to whom he became a valuable servant. Dr. Mann writes as follows: “This lad was very skillful in the proverbial Bushman art of drawing animal figures, and upon several occasions I induced him to show me how this was managed among his people. He invariably began by jotting down, upon paper or on a slate, a number of isolated dots which presented no connection or trace of outline of any kind to the uninitiated eye, but looked like the stars scattered promiscuously in the sky. Having with much deliberation satisfied himself of the sufficiency of these dots, he forthwith began to run a free bold line from one to the other, and as he did so the form of an animal—horse, buffalo, elephant, or some kind of antelope— gradually developed itself. This was invariably done with a free hand, and with such unerring accuracy of touch that no correction of a line was at any time attempted. I understood from this lad that this was the plan which was irvaziably pursued by his kindred in making their clever pictures.” It is impossivle, I think, for a drawing to be made on this method unless the artist had 2 clear image in his mind’s eye of what he was about to draw. Otber living races have the gift of drawing, but none more so than the Esquimau. I will therefore speak of these, and not of the Australian and Tasmanian pictures, nor of the still ruder performances of the old inhabitants of Guiana, nor of those of some North American tribes, as the Iroquois. The Esquimaux are geographers by instinct, and appear to see vast tracts of country mapped out in their heads. From the multitude of illustrations of their map-drawing powers, I will select one from those included in the journals of Captain Hall, at p. 224, which were published last year by the United States Government under the editorship of Professor J. E. Nourse. It is the fac-simile of a chart drawn by an Esquimau who was a thorough barbarian in the accepted sense of the word. That is to say, he spoke no language besides his own uncouth tongue, he was wholly uneducated according to our mod- ern ideas, and he lived in what we should call a savage fashion. This man drew from memory a chart of the region over which he had at one time or another gone in his canoe. It extended from Pond’s Bay, in lat. 73°, to Fort Churchill, in lat. 58° 44’, over a distance in a straight line of more than 960 nautical, or 1,100 English, miles, the coast being so indented by arms of the sea that its length is six times as great. On comparing this rough Esquimau outline with the Admiralty chart of 1870, their accordance is remarkable. I have seen many route maps

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MENTAL IMAGERY. 69 made by travelers in past years, when the scientific exploration of the world was much less advanced than it is now, and I can confidently say that I have never known of any traveler, white, brown, or black, civilized or uncivilized, in Africa, Asia, or Australia, who, being un- provided with surveying instruments, and trusting to his memory alone, has produced a chart comparable in extent and accuracy to that of this barbarous Esquimau. Their powers of accurate drawing are abun- dantly testified by the numerous illustrations in Rink’s work, all of which were made by self-taught men, and are thoroughly realistic. So much for the wild races of the present day ; but even the Esqui- maux are equaled in their power of drawing by the men of old times. In ages so far gone by that the interval that separates them from our own may be measured in perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, when Europe was mostly ice-bound, a race, which in the opinion of all anthropologists was closely allied to the modern Esquimaux lived in eaves in the more habitable places. Many broken relics of that race have been found ; some few of these are of bone, engraved with flints or carved into figures, and among these are representations of the mam- moth, elk, and reindeer, which, if made by an English laborer with the much better implements at his command, would certainly attract local attention and lead to his being properly educated, and in much likeli- hood to his becoming a considerable artist. It is not at all improbable that these prehistoric men had the same geographical instincts as the modern Esquimaux, whom they closely resemble in every known respect. If so, it is perfectly possible that scraps of charts scratched on bone or stone, of prehistoric Europe, when the distribution of land, sea, and ice was very different from what it is now, may still exist, buried underground, and may reward the zeal of some future cave explorer. I now return to m7 principal topic, the mental imagery of the Eng- lish race, and I will mention some of the chief peculiarities I have noted in it. When the faculty is strong it is apt to run riot. There are a few persons, including men and women of no mean capacity, who ean not disentangle even the letters of the alphabet from the oddest associations with colors, formed in some half-forgotten period of child- hood. To some of these persons it may be that an @ will always con- vey the sense of blackness, an ¢ that of greenness, an ¢ will be blue, an o white, and a «red. The consonants will also for the most part have their separate tints, so that every word seems parti-colored to their fancy ; and a description of scenery in a book produces an effect upon their imagination very different from what the author could have fore- seen. The same is true in respect to numerals, days of the week, and months of the year. I have collected perhaps twenty good accounts of these bizarre tendencies from independent sources, and find them to run strongly in families. They are not communicated by teaching or imitation, because those who have these peculiarities are usually

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70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. disinclined to talk about them, recollecting how they were laughed at on the few occasions when they did so. The fact of their being com- mon to scattered members of the same family has often been dis- covered for the first time through my inquiries. I should say that I have found no general accordance between particular letters and colors. The relationship between them appears to be in each case a haphazard one ; but having been once formed it is durable. Another and much more common oddity is the tendency to visualize numerals in a peculiar manner, which characterizes, as I have roughly reckoned, about one woman in every fifteen, and one man in every thirty. Those who do so are never able to dissociate any single num- ber from its own particular place in the field of their mental view, so that when they think of a series of numbers they always visualize them in a certain form. Either the numbers are all visible at once, as if they were printed on cards and hung in space, according to some grotesque pattern, or the mind travels along a blank but familiar path to the place where the number that is thought of is known to reside, and then it starts into view. There are many weird varieties of this singu- lar tendency to visualize numbers in forms, which I have lately de- scribed,* and will not here repeat. Suffice it to say, that they date from an earlier period than that to which recollection extends. They manifest themselves quite independently of the will; they are inva- riably the same in the same person, but are never the same in two different persons, and the tendency to see them is strongly hereditary. I have now a collection of hundreds of them, not only from English men and women, boys and girls, but from American, French, German, Italian, Austrian, and Russian correspondents. They are found useful in the simpler kinds of mental arithmetic. Those who see number-forms have usually some equally persistent scheme for dates, based more or less upon the diagrams of the school- room. Iam well acquainted with an accomplished student of history whose mnemonic form for all historical events is a simple nursery dia- gram, which has blossomed, as it were, into large excrescences whereon the subsequently acquired facts are able to find standing-room. These diagrams are really helpful, because their shape is correlated with the subject they portray. They are not like the jingling nonsense verses and bad puns upon which many persons base their memory of facts. The persistency of the forms under which numerals and dates are visualized testifies to a want of flexibility in mental imagery which is characteristic of many persons. They find that the first image they have acquired of any scene is apt to hold its place tenaciously in spite of subsequent need of correction. They find a difficulty in shifting their mental view of an object, and examining it at pleasure in differ- * “Visualized Numerals,” a Memoir read before the Anthropological Institute, March 9, 1880, about to be published in the forthcoming part of their journal of this year. See also a previous Memoir in “ Nature,” February 15, 1880.

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MENTAL IMAGERY. 71 ent positions. If they see an object equally often in many positions, the memories confuse one another. They are less able to visualize the features of intimate friends than those of persons of whom they have caught only a single glance. Many such persons have expressed to me their grief at finding themselves powerless to recall the looks of dear relations whom they had lost, while they had no difficulty in recollect- ing faces that were uninteresting to them. Others have a complete mastery over their mental images. They can call up the figure of a friend, and make it sit on a chair or stand up at will ; they can make it turn -round and attitudinize in any way, as by mounting it on a bicycle or compelling it to perform gymnastic feats on a trapeze. They are able to build up elaborate geometric structures bit by bit in their mind’s eye, and add, subtract, or alter at will and at leisure. This free action of a vivid visualizing faculty is of much importance in connection with the higher processes of thought, though it is commonly abused, as may be easily explained by an exam- ple. Suppose a person suddenly to accost another with the following words : “I want to tell you about a boat.” What is the idea that the word “boat” would be likely to call up? I tried the experiment with this result. One person, a’ young lady, said that she immediately saw the image of a rather large boat pushing off from the shore, and that it was full of ladies and gentlemen, the ladies being dressed in white and blue. It is obvious that a tendency to give so specific an inter- pretation to a general word is absolutely opposed to philosophic thought. Another person, who was accustomed to philosophize, said that the word “boat” had aroused no definite image, because he had purposely held his mind in suspense. He had exerted himself not to lapse into any one of the special ideas that he felt the word boat was ready to call up, such as a skiff, wherry, barge, launch, punt, or dingy. Much more did he refuse to think of any one of these with any par- ticular freight or from any particular point of view. A habit of sup- pressing mental imagery must, therefore, characterize men who deal much with abstract ideas; and, as the power of dealing easily and firmly with these ideas is the surest criterion of a high order of intel- lect, we should expect that the visualizing faculty would be starved by disuse among philosophers, and this is precisely what I have found on inquiry to be the case. Here, however, a fresh consideration comes in, which shows that the tendency to visualize is liable to be over-corrected, especially by those who are accustomed but not obliged to visualize in hard and per- sistent forms, and that they lose thereby the only means of obtaining a correct mental picture of a species or race. I proved two years ago * that a generalized picture did as a matter of fact admit of being pro- duced. I threw magic-lantern portraits of different persons on the top * “ Journal Anthropological Institute,” “Composite Portraits,” vol. viii, 1878, p. 132. “ Journal Royal Institution,” “ Generic Images,” ix, 1879, p. 161.

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72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of one another, on the same screen, and elicited a resultant face which resembled no one of the components in particular, but included all. Whatever was common to all the portraits became intensified by com- bination ; whatever was peculiar to each portrait was relatively too faint to attract attention, and virtually disappeared. I made a great variety of experiments ; in some I optically superimposed images by arrangements of lenses, mirrors, stereoscopes, or doubly refracting crystals ; in others I combined separate photographic impressions upon a single sensitized plate. The result was that I invariably found it possible to make a generalized picture, having a remarkable appearance of individuality, out of a collection of separate portraits, so long as the latter bore a moderate resemblance to one another, and were taken from the same point of view, and were of the same size. I argue that the mind of a man whose visualizing faculty is free in its action forms these generalized images of its own accord out of its past experiences. It readily reduces images to the same scale, through its constant practice in watching objects as they approach or recede, and consequently grow or diminish in size. It readily shifts images to any desired point of the field of view, through its habit of follow- ing bodies in motion to the right or left, upward or downward. It selects images that present the same aspect, either by a simple act of memory or by a feat of imagination that forces them into the desired position, and it has little or no difficulty in reversing them from right to left, as if seen in a looking-glass. In illustration of these general- ized mental images let us recur to the boat, and suppose the speaker to continue as follows: “The boat was a four-oared racing boat ; it was passing quickly just in front of me, and the men were bending for- ward to take a fresh stroke.” Now, at this point of the story the lis- tener ought to have a picture well before his eye. It ought to haye the distinctness of a real four-oar going either to the right or the left, at the moment when many of its details still remained unheeded, such as the dresses of the men and their individual features. It would be the generic image of a four-oar formed by the combination into a single picture of a great many sight-memories of those boats. In the highest minds a descriptive word is sufficient to evoke crowds of shadowy associations, each striving to manifest itself. When they differ so much from one another as to be unfit to combine into a single idea, there will be a conflict between them, each being prevented by the rest from obtaining sole possession of the field of consciousness. There would, therefore, be no definite imagery so long as the aggregate of all the pictures that the word could reasonably suggest, of o}jects presenting similar aspects, reduced to the same size, and accurately superposed, resulted in a mere blur; but a picture would gradually evolve as qualifications were added to the word, and it would attain to the distinctness and vividness of a generic image long before the word had been so restricted as to be individualized. If the intellect be slow,

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MENTAL IMAGERY. 73 though correct in its operations, the associations will be few, and the generalized image based on insufficient data. If the visualizing power be faint, the generalized image will be indistinct.* Some persons have the power of combining in a single perception more than can be seen at any one moment by the two eyes. It is needless to insist on the fact that all who have two eyes see stereo- scopically, and therefore somewhat round a corner. Children, who can focus their eyes on very near objects, must be able to comprise in a single mental image much more than a half of any small thing they are examining. Animals such as hares, whose eyes are set more on the side of the head than ours, must be able to perceive at one and the same instant more of a panorama tian we can. I find that a few per- sons can, by what they often describe as a kind of touch-sight, visual- ize at the same moment all round the image of a solid body. Many can do so nearly, but not altogethet, round that of a terrestrial globe. An eminent mineralogist assures me that he is able to imagine simul- taneously al! the sides of a crystal with which he is familiar. I may be allowed to quote my own faculty in this respect. It is exercised only occasionally and in dreams, but under those circumstances I am perfectly conscious of embracing an entire sphere in a single per- ception. This power of comprehension is practically attained in many cases by indirect methods. It is a common feat to take in the whole sur- roundings of an imagined room with such a rapid meutal sweep as to leave some doubt whether it has not been viewed simultaneously. Some persons have the habit of viewing objects as though they were partly transparent ; thus they can see the north and south poles of a globe, but not the equatorial parts, at the same time. They can also see into all the rooms of an imaginary house by a single mental glance. A fourth class of persons have the habit of recalling scenes, not from the point of view whence they were observed, but from a distance, and they visaalize their own selves as actors on the mental stage. By one or other of these ways, the power of seeing the whole of an object, and not merely one aspect of it, is attained by many persons, and might probably be attained by all. A useful faculty, easily developed by practice, is that of retaining a mere retinal picture. A scene is flashed upon the eye the memory of it persists, and details which escaped observation dur.ug the brief time when it was actually seen may be analyzed and stvdied at leisure in the subsequent vision. The place where the image appears to lie differs much in different persons. Most see it in an indefinable sort of way, others see it in front of the eye, others at a distance corresponding to reality. There exists a power which is rare naturally, but can, I believe, be easily * It may possibly interest some persons, in connection with this topic, to refer to my “ Psychometric Facts,” in the “ Popular Science Monthly” for April, 1879.

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74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. taught, of projecting a mental picture upon a piece of paper, and of holding it fast there, so that it can be outlined with a pencil. The Bush-boy of whom I spoke must have had something of this faculty. We may now foresee that education is likely to accomplish much, for most of the more important peculiarities of which I have spoken are naturally present in a high degree in at least one person out of six- teen. It can hardly be doubted that any of these might be developed by education to a useful amount in, say, twelve out of the remaining fifteen (thus raising all who ranked above the lowest quartile to at least the level of the highest sub-octile). The forms of the visualizing faculty which we ought to aim at pro- ducing appear to me to be as follows : The capacity of calling up at will a clear, steady, and complete mental image of any object that we have recently examined and studied. We should be able to visualize that object freely from any aspect ; we should be able to project any of its images on paper and draw its out- line there ; we should further be able to embrace all sides of the object simultaneously in a single perception, or at least to sweep all sides of it successively with so rapid a mental glance as to arrive at practically the same result. We ought to be able to construct images from de- scription or otherwise, and to alter them in whatever way we please. We ought to acquire the power of combining separate, but more or less similar, images into a single generic one. Lastly, we should learn to carry away pictures at a glance of a more complicated scene than we can succeed at the moment in analyzing. There is abundant evidence that the visualizing faculty admits of being largely developed by education. The testimony on which I would lay especial stress is derived from the published experiences of M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, late Director of the Ecole Nationale de Dessin, in Paris, which are related in his “Education de la Mémoire Pittoresque.” * He trained his pupils with extraordinary success, begin- ning with the simplest figures. They were made to study the models thoroughly before they tried to draw them from memory. One favor- ite expedient was to associate the sight-memory with the muscular memory, by making his pupils follow at a distance the outlines of the figures with a pencil held in their hands. After three or four months’ practice, their visual memory became greatly strengthened. They had no difficulty in summoning images at will, in holding them steady, and in drawing them. Their copies were executed with marvelous fidelity, as attested by a commission of the Institut, appointed in 1852 to in- quire into the matter, of which the eminent painter, Horace Vernet, was amember. The present Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Uni- versity College, M. Légros, was a pupil of M. de Boisbaudran. He has expressed to me his indebtedness to the system, and he has assured me of his own success in teaching others in a similar way. * Republished in an 8vo, entitled “ Enseignement Artistique.” Morel et Cie. Paris, 1879.

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MENTAL IMAGERY. 73 I could mention instances within my own experience in which the visualizing faculty has become strengthened by practice ; notably one of an eminent engineer, who had the power of recalling form with un- usual precision, but not color. A few weeks after he had replied to my questions, he told me that my inquiries had induced him to practice his color memory, and that he had done so with such success that he had become quite an adept at it, and that the newly acquired power was a source of much pleasure to him. The memories we should aim at acquiring are chiefly such as are based on a thorough understanding of the objects observed. In no case is this more surely effected than in the processes of mechanical drawing, where the intended structure has to be portrayed so exacily in plan, elevation, side view, and sections, that the workman has simply to copy the drawing in metal, wood, or stone, as the case may be. It is undoubtedly the fact that mechanicians, engineers, and architects possess the faculty of seeing mental images with remarkable clearness and precision. A few dots like those of the Bushmen give great assistance in cre- ating an imaginary picture, as proved by our general habit of working out new ideas by the help of marks and rude lines. The use of dolls by children also testifies to the value of an objective support in the construction of mental images. The doll serves as a kind of skeleton for the child to clothe with fantastic attributes, and the less individu- ality the doll has, the more it is appreciated by the child, who can the better utilize it as a lay figure in many different characters. The art of strengthening visual as well as every other form of memory lies in multiplying associations ; the healthiest memory being that in which all the associations are logical, and toward which all the senses concur in their due proportions. It is wonderful how much the vividness of a recollection is increased when two or more lines of association are simultaneously excited. It is a mistake to suppose that a powerful exercise of the will can vivify a faint image. The action of the will is negative, being limited to the suppression of what is not wanted and would be in the way. It can not create thought, but it can prevent thoughts from establish- ing themselves which lead in a false direction ; so it keeps the course clear for a logical sequence of them. But, if appropriate ideas do not come of their own accord, the will is powerless to evoke them. Thus, when we forget a familiar name, it is impossible to recall it by force of will. The only plan in such cases is to think of other things, till some chance association suggests the name. The mind may be seriously dulled by over-concentration, and will only recover its freshness by such change of scene and occupation as will encourage freedom and discursiveness in the flow of the ideas. All that remains to be said refers to the utility of the visualizing faculty, and may be compressed into a few words. A visual image is

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76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, the most perfect form of mental representation wherever the shape, position, and relations of object in space are concerned, It is of im- portance in every handicraft and profession where design is required, because workmen ought to visualize the whole of what they propose to do before they take a tool in their hands. Thus, the village smith and the carpenter, who are employed on odd jobs, require it no less for their work than the mechanician, the engineer, and the architect. The lady’s-maid who arranges a new dress requires it for the same reason as the decorator employed on a palace, or the agent who lays out great estates. Strategists, artists of all denominations, physicists who con- trive new experiments, and, in short, all who do not follow routine, have need of it. The pleasure its use can afford is immense. I have many correspondents who say that the delight of recalling beautiful scenery and great works of art is the highest that they know. Our bookish education tends unduly to repress this valuable gift of nature. A faculty that is of importance in all technical and artistic occu- pations, that gives accuracy to our perceptions, and justness to our generalizations, is starved by disuse, instead of being cultivated in the way that will bring most return. I believe that a serious study of the best method of developing the faculty of visualizing is one of the many pressing desiderata in the new science of education.—Fortnightly Review. HENRY AND FARADAY.* By Proressor ALFRED M. MAYER. N OST reluctantly do I here desist from citing further the works = of Henry. It is impossible to crowd into one brief hour the thoughts which were his occupation during more than half a century. I have at least endeavored to exhibit before you the more important of the labors of his life. What shall we think of them? Surely they are on as high a plane as those of any of his contemporaries, and show as much originality as theirs in their conception—as much skill in their execution. Yet it has been said that Henry was not a man of genius. As I have not been able to find that the philosophers, who have the special charge of giving from time to time definitions of genius, have been able to come to any satisfactory conclusion among themselves, I will leave their company, and, with your liberty, take my definition from a book which, if we accredit Thackeray, is one of the very best, if not the best, novel ever writ in English. After listening to this I will allow you to form your own opinions as to whether Henry did or did not possess genius: “By genius I would understand that power, * Extract from “Henry as a Discoverer,” a paper read by Professor Mayer at the recent Boston meeting of the American Scientific Association.

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HENRY AND FARADAY. 77 or rather those powers of the mind which are capable of penetrating into all things within our reach and knowledge, and of distinguishing their essential differences. These are no other than invention and judgment ; and they are both called by the collective name of genius, as they are of those gifts of nature which we bring with us into the world. Concerning each of which, many seem to have fallen into very great errors ; for by invention, I believe, is generally understood a creative faculty, which would indeed prove most romance writers to have the highest pretensions to it ; whereas by invention is meant no more (and so the word signifies) than discovery or finding out ; or, to explain it at large, a quick and sagacious penetration into the true essence of all the objects of our contemplation. This, I think, can rarely exist without the concomitancy of judgment, for how we can be said to have discovered the true essence of two things, without dis- cerning their difference, seems to me hard to conceive. Now, this last is the undisputed province of judgment ; and yet some few men of wit have agreed with all the dull fellows in the world in representing these two to have been seldom or never the property of one and the same person.” My own judgment, if of any value, would rank the ability of Henry—I do not say his achievements—a little below that of Faraday. Indeed, their lives and their manners of working were strangely alike. Each started in life with moral and benevolent habits, well developed and healthy bodies, quick and accurate perceptions, calm judgment and self-reliance, tempered with modesty and good manners—a good ground, surely, in which to plant the germs of the scientific life. Far- aday was an apprentice to a bookbinder. Henry served in the same capacity under a silversmith. Each, endowed with a lively imagina- tion, was in his younger days fond of romance and the drama ; and, by a singular similarity of accidents, each had had his attention turned to science by a book which chance threw in his way. This work, in the case of Faraday, was Mrs. Marcet’s “ Conversations on Chemis- try,” and the book which influenced Henry’s career was Gregory’s “ Lectures on Experimental Philosophy, Astronomy, and Chemistry.” Of Mrs. Marcet’s book Faraday thus writes : My pear Frienp: Your subject interested me deeply every way; for Mrs. Marcet was a good friend to me, as she must have been to many of the human race. I entered the shop of a bookseller and bookbinder at the age of thirteen, in the year 1804, remaining there eight years, and during the chief part of the time bound books. Now, it was in those books, in the hours after work, that I found the beginning of my philosophy. There were two that especially helped me, the “Encyclopedia Britannica,” from which I gained my first notions of electricity, and Mrs. Marcet’s “Conversations on Chemistry,” which gave me my foundation in that science. Do not suppose'that I was a very deep thinker, or was marked as a preco- cious person. I was a lively, imaginative person, and could believe in the “ Ara- bian Nights” as easily as in the “Encyclopedia.” But facts were important

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78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. to me and saved me. I could trust a fact, and always cross-examined an asser- tion. So, when I questioned Mrs. Marcet’s book, by such little experiments as I could find means to perform, and found it true to the facts as I could understand them, I felt that I had got hold of an anchor in chemical knowledge, and clung fast to it. Thence my deep veneration for Mrs. Marcet—first as one who had conferred great personal good and pleasure on me; and then as one able to con- vey the truth and principle of those boundless fields of knowledge which con- cern natural things to the young, untaught, and inquiring mind. You may imagine my delight when I came to know Mrs. Marcet personally ; how often I cast my thoughts backward, delighting to connect the past and present; how often, when sending a paper to her as a thank-offering, I thought of my first instructress, and such thoughts will remain with me. Henry wrote on the inside of the cover of Gregory’s work the fol- lowing words : This book, although by no means a profound work, has, under Providence, exerted a remarkable influence on my life. It accidentally fell into my hands when I was about sixteen years old, and was the first book I ever read with at- tention. It opened to me a new world of thought and enjoyment; invested things before almost unnoticed with the highest interest; fixed my mind on the study of nature, and caused me to resolve at the time of reading it that I would immediately commence to devote my life to the acquisition of knowledge. J. H. Each of these philosophers worked with simple instruments mostly constructed by his own hands, and by methods so direct that he ap- peared to have an almost intuitive perception into the workings of nature; and each gave great care to the composition of his writings, sending his discoveries into the world clothed in simple and elegant English. Finally, each loved science more than money, and his Creator more than either. There was sympathy between these men, and Henry loved to dwell on the hours that he and Bache had spent in Faraday’s society. I shall never forget Henry’s account of his visit to King’s College, Lon- don, where Faraday, Wheatstone, Daniell and he had met to try and evolve the electric spark from the thermopile. Each in turn at- tempted it and failed. Then came Henry’s turn. He succeeded ; calling in the aid of his discovery of the effect of a long inter-polar wire wrapped around a piece of soft iron. Faraday became as wild as a boy, and, jumping up, shouted, “Hurrah for the Yankee experi- ment !” And Faraday and Wheatstone reciprocated the high estimation in which Henry held them. During a visit to England, not long before Wheatstone’s death, he told me that Faraday and he had, after Hen- ry’s classical investigation of the induced currents of different orders, written a joint letter to the council of the Royal Society, urging that the Copley medal, “that laurel-wreath of science,” should be bestowed on Henry. On further consultation with members of the council, it

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HENRY AND FARADAY. 79 was decided to defer the honor till it would come with greater éclat, when Henry had continued further his researches in electricity. Hen- ry’s removal to Washington interrupted these investigations. Wheat- stone promised to give me this letter, to convey to Henry as an evi- dence of the high appreciation which Faraday and he had for his genius ; but Wheatstone’s untimely death prevented this. Both Far- aday and Henry gave much thought to the philosophy of education, and in the main their ideas agreed. I may, in this connection, be ex- cused for reading abstracts from a letter from Henry soon after he had received the news that I had given my son his name. In this let- ter he gives this information, which may be news to the most of you : I did not object to Henry as a first name; although I have been sorry that my grandfather, in coming from Scotland to this country, substituted it for Hen- drie, a much less common, and, therefore, distinctive name. He then proceeds : I hope that both his body and his mind will be so developed by proper train- ing and instruction that he may become an efficient, wise, and good man. I say efficient and wise, because these two characteristics are not always united in the same person. Indeed, most of the inefficiency of the world is due to their sepa- ration: wisdom may know what ought to be done, but it requires the aid of efficiency to accomplish the desired object. I hope that in the education of your son due attention may not only be given to the proper development of both these faculties, but also that they will be cultivated in the order of nature: that is, doing before thinking; art before science. By inverting this order much in- jury is frequently done to a child, especially in the case of the only son of a wid- owed mother, in which a precocious boy becomes an insignificant man. On examination in such 4 case, it will be generally found that the boy has never been drilled into expertness in the art of language, of arithmetic, or of spelling, of attention, perseverance, and order, or, in other words, of the habits of an ac- tive and efficient life. Henry was a man of extensive reading, and often surprised his friends by the extent and accuracy of his information, and by the original manner in which he brought his knowledge before them. Not only was he well versed in those subjects in which one might naturally suppose him proficient, but in departments of knowledge entirely dis- tinct from that in which he gained his reputation as an original thinker. Although without a musical ear, he had a nice feeling for the move- ment of a poem, and was fond of drawing from his retentive memory poetic quotations apt to the occasion. He was a diligent student of mental philosophy, and also took a lively interest in the progress of biological science, especially in following the recent generalizations of Darwin, while the astonishing development of modern research in tracking the history of prehistoric man had for him a peculiar fascina- tion. Yet, with all his learning, reputation, and influence, Henry was as modest as he was pure. One day, on opening Henry’s copy of Young’s “ Lectures on Natu-

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80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ral Philosophy ”—a book which he had studied more than any other work of science—I read on the fly-leaf, written by his own hand, these words : “In Nature’s infinite book of secrecy A little I can read.”— Shakespeare. And did he not read a little “in Nature’s infinite book of secrecy ” ? and did he not read that little carefully and well? May we all read our little in that book as modestly and as reverently as did Joseph Henry ! THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC FORM. By CHARLES MORRIS. HAT does the story of life upon the earth teach us concerning the unfoldment of organic form? Is the human figure a chance result of an evolutionary force which might have pursued some quite different direction ; or are the laws of development such as to lead inevitably toward the form of man as their highest organic product? This is a question admitting of a more definite answer than may at first thought appear, as we hope to show by a rapid sur- vey of the various steps of the process. And, first, it must be borne in mind thai. Nature’s efforts at anima! and plant formation have been on no contracted scale. The varying forms produced have been almost multitudinous. They exist at pres- ent in the greatest variety. But the present is only the apex of a long succession of life-epochs, each with its special! crgame group. We must multiply the existing forms by thousands of such epochs w obtain any adequate idea of the whole broad field of ifs, Plainly, then, Nature has not dealt sparsely with the subject, vut has produced &@ most generous profusion of differing forms. le»ce, narrow as is the field of the earth, there is reason to believe that the form-evolving principle has had full opportunity here to act, and that it has selected out the most favorable line of development from the many directions attempted. Life is an incessant battle—a battle for food, and a battle for safety. The total quantity of food is limited. The powers: of or- ganic increase are unlimited. Thus a fight for food becomes neces- sary ; a conflict in which no quarter is asked and none given. Victory inclines to the strongest and best armed. The successful combatant must have powers of defense against all Nature’s attacks, and of as- sault against all Nature’s defenses. In other words, the organism best adapted to its environment will win. And this incessant weeding-out process is not confined to mature

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THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC FORM. 81 forms. It is constantly in action, from the germ up to maturity. There is as fierce a battle between germs as between grown animals as to which shall survive. The ill-adapted embryo perishes ; the well- adapted lives. Of the multitudes of young, only those survive which are best fitted to obtain food and escape peril. There is thus a suc- cession of conditions to which the growing form must be successively adapted, and each mature form is the sole survivor of a myriad of germs which started together in the race of life. It has been sharply selected out as the best adapted. The law of adaptation thus works vigorously throughout all em- bryonic development. It works as decisively on mature forms, They must be closely adapted to certain conditions of nature ; but the pos- sible variation in conditions is almost boundless. Not only in time have there been constant changes in natural conditions, and not only do they now widely vary in different localities, but even in the same locality a great variety of differing conditions simultaneously exist. As the simple atoms of the chemical elements unite to form com- plex compounds, so do simple conditions unite into complex. Numer- ous sets of minor conditions exist together, from whose combination are formed less numerous major conditions, and from these again a single highest condition which includes all below its level. Thus each locality may possess its many sets of simpler forms, and sets of superior forms narrowing in number as they become adapted to a wider environment, until a highest or most complex form is reached, which is in physical harmony with the totality of existing conditions, And the question of superiority and inferiority between animals is simply a question of the greater or lesser complexity of the conditions to which they are fitted, the broader or narrower field of adaptation which they OCCULY. But, in this yuick pressing o: new forms into every nook and eronny of aature, there are certain geneval principles which have a ecutruliiug iniinence vver the reeuling changes in form. One con- sideration must aiwys be taken in‘e accouni, that of the character of erzauic material—of protoplasm—~and the forms it naturally tends to assume. And a second corsideration is that of the main end of animal life—the absorption of al:ment. From this iatter it follows that the basic type of anima: form is the stomach; and in viewing the fieid of animal development we behold oui: « series of stomachs, provided with various food-taking and Cauger--scaping appendages. Evolution, then, means the gaining of euperior powers of provid- ing for the needs of this voracious core of all animals, the stomach ; and of superior powers of escaping the voracicusness of other armed and pevambulatory stomachs. The aliment on which organisms subsist is oi three kinds—mineral, vegetable, and animal. The pursuit of these yields two distinct classes of organisms. Mineral food needs to underge a high degree of chemi- VOL. XVIII.—6 ay

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82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, cal integration. The organisms which subsist upon it are functionally low, the forces which might have been otherwise employed being used up in the formation of protoplasm and other high organic compounds. The conditions of alimentation limit the vegetable world to one general form. Plants do not need to seek food ; food seeks them. Thus no motive powers are requisite, and they remain fixed in one position. But food seeks them in two different localities, the earth and the air. The earth constituent comes to them dissolved in water, the atmospheric constituent dissolved in air. They must, therefore, have powers of extension sufficient to occupy both these fields. This power is obtained by growth, root-extension seeking the liquid food, leaf-extension the gaseous food. These general conditions confine plants to one generic form, a connecting link of stem between earth and air, and an extension of root-mouths into the soil and of leaf-mouths into the atmosphere. A tree is a society, or family ; the main stem being the patriarch of the flock, the earth and air branches its descendants, and the leaves and rootlets its latest unisexual offspring. As the type of animal form is the stomach, so the type of plant form is the mouth. It has not yet developed into the formation of a central stomach, nor has it attained powers of digestion. It builds up protoplasm by successive steps of chemical integration. It is a laboratory for the production of chemical synthesis—not of chemical analysis, as in animals. Thus the food-taking requisite is provided for in the production of numerous leaf and root mouths, extending themselves into the two great reservoirs of food. But defense must be provided for as well. Plants are attacked by various foes. Fierce storms assail them. These can only be resisted by an inmate strength or elasticity. Wintry cold congeals their food-supply. They must therefore be capable of hiber- nating. Animals seek to devour them. They can only escape by inclosing themselves in a rigid armor, or by becoming unfitted for animal food. This leads us to the most significant adaptation in plants. Their life duration is limited, and they must have powers of reproduction, the best adapted in this respect crowding out the less adapted. Obvi- ously the seed-bearers are best fitted for survival ; and of these, those bearing the most seeds, and having the best facilities for dispersing them. But the fixed plant can not, of itself, spread its seeds beyond its own locality. It must be aided by other agencies. Many plants avail themselves of air-currents for this purpose, the seeds being pro- vided with curious appendages to aid them in flying or rolling before the winds. In other cases the seed is surrounded by a store of pala- table food, offering an inducement to the higher animals to devour it, and thus to disseminate the seeds.

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THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC FORM. 83 Fertilization of the flowers is provided for in a similar manner, The flowers can not reach each other, and therefore enlist insects in their aid, preparing a store of food highly palatable to these air rovers, and thus having their fertilizing germs carried from flower to flower. Such are the general agencies at work in plant-life, and producing its typical form. And thus, while protecting their vital organs by a rigid armor, plants provide for reproduction by adapting a portion of their bodies for animal food ; gaining in this manner for their offspring the powers of motion which they lack themselves. Yet all plants are not confined to this typical form, as all plants are not confined to purely inorganic aliment. Some subsist on partly or fully elaborated organic food, and these deviate from the plant and approach some of the animal types of form, which we have next to consider. In animal life very different requirements from those presented by plants are exhibited, and the forms are essentially different. Yet their main functions are the same. All organisms are adapted to the two general purposes of food-getting and defense, to which all their other powers are subordinate. As vegetables subsist on mineral, so animals subsist on organic food, either vegetable or animal. And this food presents another es- sential difference from that of plants. It exists only in the solid state, while that of plants is wholly fluid. It can not be taken by direct imbibition, like that of vegetables, but must be first rendered liquid through some digestive process, and afterward imbibed. Thus an internal stomach is necessary to all but the very lowest animals, and even these improvise temporary stomachs, which foreshadow the per- manent stomach. The animal—not being bathed in an ocean of food, which it has but to drink in at a multitude of mouths covering its whole periphery, as in the plant—must have means of drawing food to it, or organs ena- bling it to go in search of food. In short, it must have motive powers. And for those creatures which are obliged to go in search of their food, it is equally requisite that they should be able to discover its locality. Sensory organs, therefore, become necessary. Consequently, the animal is superior to the plant through this possession of muscular and sense organs. It is also superior in being able to employ the energy derived from its food, not in the building up of chemical com- pounds, but in the force of motion and sensation. Nor can the animal be wholly protected by armor. Some portion of it must be exposed to danger. At least those flexible limbs which aid it in food-getting are in frequent peril, and need some form of pro- tection. The loss of them can not well be made useful to the animal, as the loss of its exposed portions is to the plants. Evidently the animal is capable of a much wider range of form- evolution than the plant. In its mobility of variation it has branched

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84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. out in many directions, but the possible height attainable by each gen- eral direction of growth is limited by certain principles, which we may be able to discover. Both herbivorous and carnivorous animals may exist in fixed and in motile forms—food-attracting and food-seeking adaptations. The fixed forms are principally or entirely water-animals, comprising the Sponges, a large section of the Polyps, the lower forms of the Echino- derms, with some divergent forms, such as the Bryozoa, the Tunicata, and the Barnacles. These are saved the necessity of moving, by the fact of their being tenants of a liquid whose moving currents bring them food, and by being capable of themselves producing water-currents, on which food is borne to them. Their necessary movements are reduced to the mo- tion of tentacles—current-making or food-seizing organs. No sense is requisite except touch, and therefore no higher degree of sensibility is developed. These fixed forms thus necessarily remain at the foot of the ladder of progress, being but a step above the Protozoa, or single- celled animals. ‘They may be classed, however, as superior to the in- ternal parasites of animals, which live by imbibing elaborated animal juices, and need no motile nor sense organs. But, as soon as an animal obtains powers of free motion, it comes at once into contact with a much wider range of conditions and needs to gain extended powers. It is, moreover, placed under seeming dis- advantages, which are really of high efficacy in its development. It possesses no stone castle of refuge, from which it has but to extend its retractile arms. It is, therefore, exposed to much greater dangers, its whole body being open to the assault of foes. There are two general methods by which protection from these perils is gained : the first by armor; the second by activity and sen- sory acuteness. The armored animals are necessarily heavier, less ac- tive, and less flexible, than the unarmored. The latter depend for safety on activity and variety of motion, on quickness of sense, and on weapons of defense. They are, consequently, more highly developed than the armored, whose firm coating forms their main protective adaptation. They also come into contact with a much wider range of natural conditions, their more extensive excursions accustoming them to more varied forms of food, adapting them to wider surface and temperature relations, and exposing them to more numerous foes. Thus they must become fitted to a wider environment, and their powers be more spe- cialized ; the naked, flexible, active animal being thus necessarily the highest in point of development. These general views lead us to their particular application to the existing animal types. We think it can be shown that each type has had full opportunities of unfoldment, and has reached the extreme limit of its line of growth.

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THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC FORM 85 There are certain requirements of the animal organism to which every adaptation must conform. Underlying the stomachic type is the more primary fact that the natural form of colloid matter is the globe. Like all fluid or semi-fluid matter it tends to curve about a general center of attraction, in distinction to the angular extension of the crystal. This tendency shows itself iu all parts of all animal forms, and also in these forms as wholes, the globe being departed from only through functional necessity, or from the superposition of a series of organs, each with a globular tendency, yielding, through mutual pres- sure, a more or less ovoid result. In the Protozoa we have the globular form, diversified by temporary, improvised limbs, or by permanent organs. In the Metazoa variation from the globe takes place in axial directions—the fixed animals hay- ing usually but two axes of departure from the sphere; the moving animals having ordinarily three axes—a longitudinal, a vertical, and a transverse. ‘The general result is the production of the round, flattened form of the two-axed, and the oval form of the three-axed animals ; the further departure being in the production of limbs—appendages devoted to motion, or to assault and defense. If now we take the Gastrula, the simple stomach-sac, for the primi- tive form of the many-celled animal, and the earliest phase of deriva- tion from the Protozoa, it is easy to perceive that this hollow animal globe may vary in three different modes. First, it may retain its sac-like form and stomach-opening, devel- oping tentacles about the mouth, and radiated body divisions ; thus passing from the single axis of the Gastrula to the double axis of the polyp. Secondly, it may flatten, until it resembles a sack with the open top pressed down upon the bottom, and the sides bulging outward into a circle. If, now, radiated arms extend outward from this rounded side, we have the starfish type of organism. Thirdly—still preserving its affiliation to the globe—it may lengthen instead of flattening. From this mode of development would come the longitudinal type of animals, the vermes, or worm-forms. A still more primitive departure from the original Gastrula form is found in the sponge, in which the body-wall is pierced by minute aper- tures, through which food-bearing currents are drawn into the general internal stomach, and forced out again through the mouth. The low organization of the sponge results from the fact that it does not even require the mouth-arms of the polyp as an aid in food-getting. Its only motive apparatus is the cilia, or vibrating hair, of the Infusoria. Of the three forms which thus seem to be the first natural varia- tions of the Gastrula—the globular, the flattened, and the lengthened —the first two naturally rest on one extremity of the longitudinal or stomach axis; the other, or mouth extremity, being directed upward. Thus only these two extremities are exposed to diverse conditions, the

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86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. one being in contact with the ground, the other with water or air. The intermediate surface is affected in but one manner. It being every- where similarly influenced, its whole development is similar, and a ra- dial or two-axed form results. In the lengthened forms the longitudinal or intestinal axis naturally becomes horizontal. The two extremities of this axis develop into mouth and vent. But the intermediate portions are also differently conditioned. Vertically a lower face is in contact with the ground, an upper face with water or air. Thus ventral and dorsal surfaces are produced. Transversely, the opposite sides are similarly affected, and develop similarly. Gravitation also tends to produce a shortening of the vertical and a widening of the transverse axis. Thus the three- axed animal appears, a lengthened form, with mouth-opening at the anterior-moving extremity, with diverse dorsal and ventral surfaces, with similar lateral surfaces, and with a tendency to become flattened vertically. In this lengthened, or worm type, appears an animal form more highly conditioned than any possible two-axed form, and capable of far higher development. It is much the best adapted for rapid move- ment, its long, narrow shape being well calculated to overcome the frictional resistance of water or air ; while it is capable of a flexibility not possible to the compact types of animal form. Consequently, from the primitive types of animal form we have so far considered, we find two general lines of development. The first of these is a tendency in the compact types to become lengthened in form, to lose their protective armor, and to assume the free-moving condition —their most advanced genera being thus constituted. On the other hand, a retrograding tendency shows itself in certain sections of the lengthened animal type, compact forms appearing. And, significantly, these envelop themselves in shelly or horny armor for protection, be- come sluggish in motion, and fail to develop the acute sensitiveness and other advanced powers of the naked worms. Such being the primitive and secondary form-evolving tendencies, the production of organs of motion is in strict accordance therewith. In the radiated polyps the limbs appear as head-organs. These are so ill-adapted to the production of free motion, that the solitary Polyps have not developed into this condition, except in the case of the Me- duse or jelly-fish. And these in no instance seek to swim by aid of their arms, a slow movement being gained by umbrella-like contrac- tions of their radiate body disk. In the Echinoderm family—one of the reversions from the longitu- dinal type—the shortening of the intestinal axis has brought it into such close relations with the radiate type that the difference is only clearly distinguishable in its embryo stage of existence. Its intestinal axis has become vertical, and it has gained radiated limbs—not head, but side limbs. By the aid of these the free-moving Echinoderms

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THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC FORM. 87 manage to progress slowly, but they depend more particularly on their armor for protection. In the Mollusk family—another form of reversion from the primi- tive longitudinal or three-axed form—the cgnditions of existence ne- cessitate other motive organs. This family of animals, instead of clothing itself in a dermal armor like the Echinoderms, produces a limy covering, a movable house to which it is not anatomically connected, and which principally differs from the stone mansion of the polyp in being movable. Within this house the mollusk preserves his three- axed form ; having no such strong inducement to yield it as has the Echinoderm. But his contact with exterior nature is but a head and foot contact. He therefore develops head-limbs—tentacular organs— while his slow progress is gained by alternate expansions and contrac- tions of a muscular portion of the ventral surface. Thus the lower types of animal form are forced, by the necessities of their environment, to evolve certain general anatomical conditions, which, as we shall hereafter see, act as a fatal drag on their subsequent efforts to occupy the higher fields of life. The worm type has, from the beginning, a marked advantage over them. The creeping forms of this type would naturally tend to de- velop moving organs at their points of contact with the ground, yield- ing ventral limbs, extended along the body. Breathing organs might appear on the dorsal surface, in contact with the water; or at the mouth, where inflowing currents would yield the fullest water contact. In the swimming worms a somewhat different process of limb de- velopment would naturally arise. Here, for the freest degree of mo- tion, some form of fin must replace the limb of the creeping worm. There is reason to believe that fins first arose as lateral extensions of the flattened body. This general fin—under the late theory of limb development—in time lost its continuity, and broke up into four sepa- rate sections, whence arose the four limbs of the future Vertebrates. The possession of such longitudinal body-limbs or fins gives much greater rapidity of motion to the worm type than is possible to the head-limbed or radiate body-limbed types. As a consequence of their motive facility they remain naked, rapidity of motion and keenness of sense giving them powers of attack and escape not needed by the ten- tacled and armored forms. In fact, the advantage of the longitudinal extension is so patent that we find all the lower types making efforts to attain it, and in this man- ner reaching their highest limit of progression. This constitutes the next step in the evolution of animal form, and one which presents some exceedingly curious phases. The phases here referred to are not displayed by the mollusks or the Echinoderms. We shall therefore first speak of their simpler mode of attaining their highest development. In the mollusk it is attained by a lengthening of the compact body,

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88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. while the shell becomes internal instead of external. It continues to be useful as a basis of muscular attachment, but no longer as a defen- sive armor. The whole development of the mollusks, from the lowest bivalve to the highest univalve form, has tended to the production of head-limbs, and a compact, bag-like body. In their naked state their evolution is limited by this hereditary constitution. Two modes of motion are possessed, the swimming and the creeping. For use in the first there is a fin-like expansion of the body, which enables them to move with much rapidity, while backward motion is gained by expulsion of water from between the arm-membranes. But the body continues rigid, and is at a disadvantage as compared with the flexible worm type. Creeping motion is gained by a development of sucking-disks upon the arms, which serve for a slow dragging of the body, turned head downward, and also as an efficient agent in the capture of game. This highest mollusk, the cuttle-fish, is utterly unfitted for a land residence despite its acute sense-organs. The ink-bag, which ena- bles it to conceal itself in the water, would be of no use to it on land ; its tail-fins or its radiated head-arms could not be changed into effi- cient organs of land-motion ; it would, therefore, be at a great disad- vantage as compared with the body-limbed, flexible-framed vertebrates. Thus the highest development of the mollusk type is unsuited by its defective constitution to a land residence, and can only progress to the limited extent permitted by the restrictions of a water residence. In the Echinoderms a similar lengthening of the body is gained. Of the free forms, we have the flattened starfish, with the arms some- times developed at the expense of the body, the body sometimes at the expense of the arms; the globular sea-urchin, with its ambulacral arms ; and the lengthened Holothuroid. In this latter is displayed what seems almost an intelligent effort to imitate the worm type. Unlike the other Echinoderms, its intestinal axis becomes horizontal instead of vertical. Thus, like the worms, it attains dorsal and ventral surfaces, exposed to diverse conditions. As a consequence, of its five rows of ambulacral suckers, those on the dorsal surface disappear in the most advanced genera, only the three ventral rows being retained. The distinguishing radiate structure is displayed only by its circle of mouth- tentacles, the food-getting organs. It also loses the calcareous outer armor of the lower Echinoderms, replacing it by a flexible, leathery skin. But, with these several advances toward the worm type, the heredi- tary disadvantages of the Holothuroid act as impassable restrictions to any great development. The organs of the higher senses are wanting. It is in no way adapted to swimming, its exterior organs being quite unfitted to develop into fins. Nor are the ambulacral suckers suited to any rapid progression. An utter change in character would be necessary to adapt them to a walking or running movement. Thus

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THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC FORM. 89 this line of animal evolution has reached its ultimate at a much lower level than that attained by the Mollusca. But, by this review of what we may, in a figurative sense, call Na- ture’s failures in animal evolution, we begin to perceive the requisites to success. The retrograde forms, after again developing into the lengthened type, are constitutionally restricted from gaining certain structural advantages which are primitive possessions of other types. These advantages we may classify as body-limbs, adapted to walk- ing or swimming ; and an articulated body, capable of a flexibility not possible to the compact, single-sectioned animals. All the other ani- mal types, besides those we have considered, have made an effort to attain this articulated structure, sometimes by a very curious process. The success attained in this effort is closely dependent upon the primi- tive structure of the articulated animal, which has placed impassable restrictions in the path of some types. In the polyps and in the articulates the end seems to have been attained by the linking together of a colony of animals, forming a structure, originally compound, which has become simple by a division of functions between the successive sections. In the Vertebrata alone has it been attained by the articulation of an originally single animal. The vertebrates thus possess special structural advantages denied to the other articulated forms, the com- pound origin of these latter curiously limiting their powers of evolu- tion. In this merging of societies into single animals, Nature presents us instances of every step of the process, from those in which individual- ity remains intact, to those in which it is subordinated to the require- ments of the compound animal. A first step in the process is displayed by the Tunicate mollusks. The Salpa—one form of these shell-less creatures—is a free-moving animal, progressing by the aid of water, which is drawn into one end of its straight intestine and expelled at the other. They exist in two conditions, the single and the compound. In the latter they unite into long chains, not organically connected, but apparently eesti by little suckers. This primitive combination seems assumed for one a only, that of aiding their motion. The animals in the chain contract and expand simultaneously, the whole chain moving like one lengthened animal. The same end is achieved in a still more curious way in the Pyro- soma, another of the Tunicata. These little creatures so group them- selves as to form a hollow tube, open at one end and closed at the other. The minute animals which compose the walls of this tube have one gill-opening extended outward, the other inward. Thus they draw water from outside and discharge it into the interior of the tube. This being closed at one end, the water is necessarily driven from the

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go THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, other, giving to the odd, phosphorescent, living tubes a lengthwise movement through the ocean. The Ascidians—a family of fixed Tunicates—present societies to some extent organically connected. They are grouped by a common connection of their mantles, or rise successively from a common stem, through which an organic unity is established. Yet their individuality continues ; for, if one of the Ascidians has its circulation cut off, by a ligature, from the common stem, it continues to exist independently. In the fixed polyps the subordination of character resembles that of the Ascidians. It is carried further, however. Thus, in some in- stances, not only is the common stem fed by the efforts of a series of individual mouths, but there seems to be a sensitive connection. If, for instance, one of the expanded animals of an Aleyonium community be touched, not only does this animal contract, but gradually the re- maining animals of the community contract also. Again, in the Hydrozoa, individual members of the community are specialized as reproductive organs, being fed through the common stem by the feeding individuals. In these cases the merging of indi- viduality has extended much beyond the simple case of the Salpz, cer- tain members of a society being specialized as organs of a compound animal. These reproductive buds, however, in many cases regain their individuality in a very peculiar manner. They separate from the com- mon stem, and continue to exist as free-swimming animals. But their specialized development has produced material modifications in their form and internal organization. They are no longer fixed polyps, but free Medusz, retaining only a general resemblance to the polyp type, and swimming by means of contractions of their umbrella-like disk. By this strange modification of the polyp form, to achieve special purposes, a new free animal form is produced, which sometimes follows its new line of development so as to yield an animal markedly distinct from its unspecialized brothers of the same community. Such is one of the many strange modes in which Nature has sought to produce new forms of animal life. But the greatest subordination of individuality is shown in the Siphonophore, a family of Hydrozoa in which a distinct effort seems to be made to attain the elongated, free-swimming form, through com- bination. In some of these the evolution of a colony into a single ani- mal is almost complete. A large number of individuals are connected by a common stem ; but these individuals are so specialized in function as to be no longer capable of a separate existence. They have lost certain powers, and developed others, so that they are reduced to the condition of special organs of a single animal. Some act as food-catch- ing organs, some as mouths, some as reproductive and nursing members, and, by a strange transformation, some have become bell-like organs, which, by successive contractions, expel the water, and force the whole community through the seas.

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THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC FORM. gl These swimming bells are not unlike the Meduse in this particular, but have become far more specialized than the Meduse, as they possess none of the organs requisite to individual life. In the Physalia, or Portuguese man-of-war, the connecting body is developed into a floating bladder, moving by force of the winds, and with its variously modified polyps beneath it. Such are some of the modes adopted by Nature to produce free mo- tion in the lower types of animal life. The animals produced by this social subordination of function are imperfect because the subordina- tion is indefinite. There is not a single organ adapted to each func- tion, but a variable number. And the very means by which propulsion through the water is gained renders this imperfection necessary. For, if a single individual constituted each organ, the animal would become compact, and be moved by a single contracting bell. Its powers of motion would be reduced to those of the Medusz, and its organization retrograde toward the original compact stage. This line of progress, with its necessarily imperfect specialization, is evidently incapable of attaining the level of the Echinoderm, much less of the mollusk. But another line—that of the segmented animals—seems much better adapted to attain a high grade of evolution. Not but that its segments possess anatomical characters as stubborn as those of the Radiates, but that these are less restrictive to a high evolution. It is, of course, not the usual view to consider the Articulates as the result of an original social organization. The segments, in the higher genera, are so specialized that they now exist but as organic parts of a single animal. And yet, if we consider the lower articulated worms, evidences of such an origin may be discovered. In these lowest Articulates scarcely any difference is to be traced between the segments. The anterior, from its position, acts as a mouth, but otherwise they are as similar as the individual Salpe. But the most significant feature is that in many cases each of them possesses the organization of an individual. Each segment still retains its separate nervous ganglion, its separate muscles, its separate limbs, frequently its separate breathing organs, and, in a partial degree, its separate cir- culation. These are only subordinated to the extent of being joined by connecting links, while the intestine of each becomes continuous as a common intestine. In fact, this organic individuality is carried, in certain cases, to a yet more significant extent. The organs of special sense—the most highly specialized of animal organs—are, in some instances, retained by the separate segments. There are not only existing worms with eyes at each extremity of the body, but others which possess eyes in each separate segment. Thus we are led not alone to the conception of an original animal which became associated into the Articulates, but even to some idea

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g2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of the organization of this primitive animal. If we assign to it the organs still possessed by the segments of the Annelides, we find it to have had an intestine separate from the circulation, being thus superior to the polyps. It had also simple nervous and muscular systems, and immature eyes, a chitinous armor, a water-vascular system, and possi- bly distinct exterior breathing organs and feet. It may, indeed, have been the primitive form from which other animal types besides the Articulates originated—through a diverse process of evolution. It is not improbable that the Articulate condition was reached, not by a combination of free individuals, but by a continued adherence of longitudinal buds. The increase in number of segments by division is still common in Articulates. The minute fresh-water worm called the Nais, is separated into two sections by a bud which appears in the center of the body. One section develops a head and the other a tail, at the ends adjoining the bud. But the bud itself again and again divides, each division becoming a young Nais, so that finally a chain of worms is formed, all organically connected, and fed by the mouth of the anterior Nais. Eventually they separate, each becoming a free individual. The question now arises as to how a developing force would act on such an articulated society. The highest results of evolution are reached through concentration of function. Such specialization is op- posed to a continuous increase in the number of segments, and must tend to the production of a definite organism, of limited extent. The activity of this organism is increased by its gaining limbs more useful than the bristle-like sete of the Annelides. Its range of food expands when its fore-limbs are changed into food-getting organs. Its powers of motion increase when the body is compacted, and the number of joints decreased, by a welding of several segments into one. . But whence come such new limbs? A consideration of their char- acter leads us to the idea that they may proceed from a simple con- tinuance of the budding process, acting, in this case, in a lateral direc- tion instead of lengthwise. For the limbs are hollow, jointed seg- ments, covered with chitine like the body-segments. They seem, in- deed, to be specialized side-segments which have lost their internal organs through disuse, retaining only their chitinous armor, their muscles, and their intestinal cavity. And the successive joints of the limbs appear to be formed by a continuance of the budding process. One evidence of this is the fact that they may be reproduced by budding when broken off at the joint ; and also that lateral budding again takes place at the extremity of the limbs, yielding double tarsi or pincers in the head-limbs. Such is the character of the articulated animal ; and it appears as if this persistent partial individuality of the segments must prevent that complete localization of function which seems necessary to the greatest animal development. ~~ ée

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=~ é THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC FORM. 93 As we ascend to the higher members of the Articulate type, the specialization of function increases, but not sufficiently to obliterate all the individuality of the segments. The tendency in the Arthropods is toward a continuous welding of the segments. Thus, in the Crusta- ceans we find twenty or twenty-one segments compacted into three body sections. In the higher families these three are reduced to two ; and, in the highest crabs, the abdominal section becomes so reduced that all the body functions are performed by a single section. At the same time the chitinous armor of the segments becomes a continuous cortical armor ; and the chain of nerve-ganglia is reduced to a single large ganglion, which supplies nerve-fibers to all the body. In this manner the Crustacean reaches its most specialized condi- tion, but only by a loss of its longitudinal extension, and a return to the compact, slow-moving, armored type of animal. Thus, its highest evolution has produced an organization antagonistic to any advanced degree of development. Of the air-breathing Arthropods the Arachnid seem to be closely allied to the Crustaceans. They have the same compactness of organi- zation ; are not, as a rule, adapted to swift motion ; and are inferior to the high Crustaceans from the fact that their tendency is toward development of the abdomen, instead of the head section, as in the crabs. The insects and Myriapods do not possess the relations to the Crus- taceans shown by the spiders and their allies. On the contrary, their larval form seems to indicate a separate line of descent from the worms. Different as insects and Myriapods are in their mature forms, they appear to have had a common origin—the embryo of the Myria- pods passing through a stage that resembles the larval stage of insects. They seem, indeed, to have developed from their primitive form in opposite directions, the segments being multiplied in the Myriapods and reduced in the insects. The embryo of the Myriapod has at first but three pairs of legs. Ata later period posterior legs bud succes- sively from the new-formed segments. There seems to be no fixed limit to the number of segments, since they continue to increase throughout life. And their individuality is strongly declared, each segment possessing the organs necessary to a separate life, as a nerve- ganglion and fibers, breathing organs, muscles, an intestine, and a vas- cular space. These organs, if redeveloped from their partly aborted condition, might well suffice to sustain life in separate animals. Even in the highest of the Arthropods—the insects—this heredi- tary individual organization of the segments continues manifest ; these organically independent members of the society stubbornly resist the cession of their primitive functions, only partly yielding to the com- mon needs, and thus retaining a generalization of function which is repressive of any high development. The animal best suited for progression is one which has all its

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94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. functions separately concentrated. Its aération, its circulation, its sensation must have single, localized centers, and its limbs be reduced to the smallest possible number, and separated in duty. These requi- sites are only fully attained in the human form. They are constitu- tiénally prohibited to the segmented animals. In the insects the persistent individuality of the segments is shown partly in their six legs, each pair attached to a segment ; but more par- ticularly in their generalized nervous and respiratory systems. Toa great extent each segment preserves its nerve-ganglion. So, toa similar extent, each segment does its own breathing, the whole body becom- ing one generalized lung. The blood circulation, which is only partly confined to specialized blood-vessels, is accompanied by a general air circulation. There is nothing resembling the localized relations of these circulating systems as seen in the Vertebrates. Such are the constitutional limitations to development in the Articulates, probably resulting from their social origin. The effort to overcome these limitations in the crabs has resulted in organic conditions opposed to a high development. How is it in the insects? In them the segments are so welded as to form three distinct body sections. In the higher insects the individuality of the segments is so reduced that the nerve-ganglia of the thoracic segments are concen- trated into one ganglion, while a single head-ganglion, of large size, officiates as a brain. Their muscular force is greater in proportion than that of Vertebrates, so that they are strong, active, and endur- ing in bodily vigor. What natural influence is it that has restricted their development ? This may not be difficult to discover. We have seen that the too great compacting of the articulated body, as in the crabs and spiders, has proved a hindrance to development. The three sections of the in- sect body, each devoted to a single class of duties, has given them varie- ty of motion, and more diversified food-getting functions. But it has otherwise worked injuriously. Rapid variations in movement require that these sections should be united by flexible joints. But these joints are articulations of an external skeleton, and can only be pro- duced by a deep depression of this cortical armor into the regions dividing the sections. Thus the continuity of the body is almost broken at these joints. A similar relation exists between the joints of the limbs. It seems evident from these considerations that the insect is not con- stituted to attain a large size. Conditions which are suitable to a small body might prove utterly unfitted to the requirements of a larger organism. Let us imagine an insect of the size of an ox; walking on its six many-jointed, hollow legs ; its body composed of three almost separate sections ; breathing through air-holes in its sides, its whole body but an air-tank, or lung. Even if such a growth were possible, it would obviously be at a disadvantage as compared with the Verte-

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THE EVOLUTION OF ORGANIC FORM. 95 brates. Whatever size it might have attained in the absence of the Vertebrata, it certainly would be unfitted to compete with these bet- ter adapted animals for the possession of the higher fields of life. Insects thus seem restricted to a small form, contracted localities, and a narrow range of conditions. The ants, their highest form, is one of the most limited in range. It is highest in having best suc- ceeded in adapting nature to its needs, and, in so doing, having devel- oped a superior mentality ; but it can not advance beyond the needs of its contracted environment. In the various animal types we have considered, Nature seems to have exhausted all side-issues in her efforts to produce an animal form adapted to a high grade of evolution. The persistent individuality of the segments hinders a colony from merging into an individual capa- ble of an advanced phase of development. Another and simpler method remains to be considered ; the direct elongation of a single individual—not the elongation of a previously organized animal, but a primary derivative, unshackled by anatomical difficulties, For high progress in this individual, certain conditions are neces- sary. It must not seek safety in a coat of armor. It must save itself from danger by powers of flight and acuteness of sense. In a water residence the most effective flight is gained by swimming. Therefore our worm must become a swimming animal, its sides being flattened into swimming-flaps. In such an individual the functions would be specialized, as they were in the individuals which became welded into the Articulate. Indeed, the Vertebrate and the Articulate may have had a single ori- gin in this primitive organic form. The swimming worm we are considering has no hindrances to spe- cialization of function. His side-flaps may be reduced to local fins. His intestinal tube—not acting as a series of sectional stomachs—may become localized in function, its anterior portion acting as a lung, its posterior portion as a stomach. There are several advantages in this. The circulation is no longer exposed to danger by a perilous thinning of the outer surface into branchiw. The food being drawn in by water-currents, oxygen is extracted from the water by the anterior intestine, and aliment by the posterior. Similarly, the nerve and muscle systems are single and specialized, and the sense organs local. But another condition is necessary to the full adaptation of this swimming animal to its situation. Its swift motion necessitates mus- cular vigor, and requires some firm point of attachment for the mus- cles. In all the armored types the shell, or outer coating, serves for this purpose. In the naked worm there is no such exterior point of attachment, and an interior one must be developed. Thus we have arrived at the necessity of an interior skeleton, an

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96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, organic condition not displayed in all the vast field of life we have so far reviewed, except imperfectly, in the Cephalopod mollusks. This is, at first, attained by the indurating of a dorsal layer of flesh into a cartilaginous cord, which stiffens the body while leaving it flexible, and furnishes points for muscular attachment. Only a few instances remain of this earlier condition of the Verte- brate type. All others have disappeared. In the embryo of a Tuni- cate animal, the Ascidia, both the cartilaginous cord and the intestinal branchiz appear. In its mature form it becomes a fixed animal, and loses this cord. But in the Appendicularia, a related animal, the cord is retained throughout life. It is also retained, in a more complete development, in the Lancelet Amphioxus, a creature having strong vertebrate affinities in its extended nerve-cord and its general func- tional system. But one further step is required to produce the typical Vertebrate from such an original. This is the formation of joints in the cartilagi- nous cord, when it has become so firm as to resist the lateral move- ments of the body, or is hardened by deposition of carbonate of lime. There is nothing in this like the welding of segments in the Articu- late. The vertebrate joints display none of the separate vital animal functions. They yield every indication of being produced in the mode indicated, by the stress of an undulating body. The joints in the sub- sequent limbs resemble them in character, and seem to be formed in the same manner. The Lancelet is not jointed; it is a single indi- vidual. But the worm from which the Articulate arises és jointed, and each joint is possessed of all the vital functions. Thus it appears that the Vertebrate animal starts in the race of life with advantages possessed by none of its competitors. It remains to trace the steps of its development. THE PROFUSION OF LIFE.* By ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY. WONDER whether it ever occurs to most people to consider how brimful our world is of life, and what a different place it would be if no living thing had ever been upon it? From the time we are born till we die, there is scarcely a waking moment of our lives in which our eyes do not rest either upon some living thing or upon things which have once been alive. Even in our rooms, the wood of our furniture and our doors could never have been if life did not exist ; the paper on our walls, the carpet on our floors, the clothes on our back, the cloth upon the table, are all made of materials which life has * From the Introduction to “ Life and her Children,” in press by D. Appleton & Co. % /

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~~. % / THE PROFUSION OF LIFE. 97 produced for us ; nay, the very marble of our mantel-piece is the work of once living animals, and is composed of their broken shells. The air we breathe is full of invisible germs of life ; nor need we leave the town and go to the country in search of other living beings than man. There is scarcely a street or alley where, if it be neglected for a time, some blade of grass or struggling weed does not make its appearance, pushing its way through chinks in the pavement or the mortar in the wall; no spot from which we can not see some insect creeping, or fly- ing, or spinning its web, so long as the hand of man does not destroy it. And when we go into the quiet country, leaving man and his works behind, how actively we find life employed! Covering every inch of the ground with tiny plants, rearing tall trees in the forest, filling the stagnant pools full of eager, restless beings ; anywhere, everywhere, life is at work. Look at the little water-beetles skimming on the sur- face of the shady wayside pool, watch the water-snails feeding on the muddy bank, notice the newts putting their heads above water to take breath, and then remember that besides these and innumerable other water animals visible to the naked eye, the fairy-shrimp and the water- flea, and other minute animals, are probably darting through the water, or floating lazily near its surface, while the very scum which is blown in ridges toward one corner of the pool is made up of microscopic animals and plants. Then, as we pass over plain, and valley, and mountain, we find things creeping innumerable, both great and small, hidden in the moss or the thick grass, rolled up in the leaves, boring into the stems and trunks of trees, eating their way underground or into even the strong- est rock. The lion, the tiger, and the elephant, roaming over Asia, Africa, and India, rule a world of their own where man counts for very little. Even in our own thickly peopled country hares and rabbits multiply by thousands in their burrows, and come to frolic in the dusk of evening when all is still. The field-mice, land and water rats, squir- rels, weasels, and badgers, have their houses above and below ground, while insects are to be found everywhere, testifying to the abundance of life. Not content, moreover, with filling the water and covering the land, this same silent power peoples the atmosphere, where tiny bats, butterflies, bees, and winged insects of all forms and shapes and colors, fight their way through the ocean of air, while birds, large and small, sail among its invisible waves. Ahd by and by we reach the sea, and there we find masses of tangled seaweed, the plants of the salt water, while all along the shores myriads of living creatures are left by the receding tide. In the rocky pools we find active life busily at work. Thousands of tiny acorn- shells, scarcely larger than the head of a good-sized pin, cover the rocks and fling out their thread-like arms in search of food. Small crabs scramble along, or swim across the pools, sand-skippers dart through the water, feeding on the delicate green seaweed, which in its VOL. XVII.—7 a A A ER ——— ne

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98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. turn is covered with minute shells not visible to the naked eye, and yet each containing a living being. Anywhere, everywhere, creatures are to be found, and even if we sail away over the deep silent ocean and seek what is in its depths, there again we find abundance of life, from the large fish and other monsters which glide noiselessly along, lords of the ocean, down to the jelly-masses floating on the surface, and the banks of rocky coral built by drops of living slime in the midst of the dashing waves. There is no spot on the surface of the earth, in the depths of the ocean, or in the lower currents of the air, which is not filled with life whenever and wherever there isroom. The one great law which all living beings obey is to “increase, multiply, and replenish the earth”; there has been no halting in this work from the day when first into our planet from the bosom of the great Creator was breathed the breath of life, the invisible mother ever taking shape in her children. No matter whether there is room for more living forms or not, still they are launched into the world. The little seed, which will be stifled by other plants before it can put forth its leaves, nevertheless thrusts its tiny root into the ground and tries to send a feeble shoot upward. Thousands and millions of insects are born into the world every mo- ment which can never live, because there is not food enough for all. If there were only one single plant in the whole world to-day, and it produced fifty seeds in a year, and could multiply unchecked, its de- scendants would cover the whole globe in nine years.* But, since other plants prevent it from spreading, thousands and thousands of its seeds and young plants must be formed only to perish. In the same way one pair of birds having four young ones each year, would, if all their children and descendants lived and multiplied, produce two thou- sand million in fifteen years,+ but, since there is not room for them, all but a very few must die. What can be the use of this terrible overcrowding in our little world? Why does this irresistible living breath go on so madly, urging one little being after another into existence? Would it not be better if only enough were born to have plenty of room and to live comfort- ably ? Wait a while before you decide, and think what every creature needs to keep it alive. Plants, it is true, can live on water and air, but animals can not ; and, if there were not myriads of plants to spare in the world, there would not be enough for food. Then consider*again how many animals live upon each other. If worms, snails, and insects were not over-abundant, how would the birds live? Upon what would lions and tigers and wolves feed if other animals were not plentiful, while, on the other hand, if a great number of larger animals did not die and decay, what would the flesh-feeding snails and maggots and other insects find to eat? And so we see that for this reason alone * Huxley. + Wallace. FY

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~ Sire, Dee | there is some excuse for the over-abundance of creatures which life thrusts into the world. But there is something deeper than this to consider. If in a large school every boy had a prize at the end of the half year, whether he ? had worked or not, do you think all the boys would work as hard as they do or learn as well? If every man had all he required and could live comfortably, and bring up his children to enjoy life without work- ing for it, do you think people would take such trouble to learn trades and professions, and to improve themselves so as to be more able than others? Would they work hard day and night to make new inven- tions, or discover new lands, and found fresh colonies, or be in any way so useful or learn so much as they do now? No, it is the struggle for life and the necessity for work which make people invent and plan, and improve themselves and things around them. And so it is also with plants and animals: life has to educate all her children, and she does it by giving the prize of success, of health, and strength, and enjoyment to those who can best fight the battle of existence, and do their work best in the world. Every plant and every animal which is born upon the earth has to { get its own food and earn its own livelihood, and to protect itself from the attacks of others. Would the spider toil so industriously to spin her web if food came to her without any exertion on her part? Would the caddis-worm have learned to build a tube of sand and shells to pro- tect its soft body, or the oyster to take lime from the sea-water to form a strong shell for its home, if they had no enemies to struggle against and needed no protection ? Would the bird have learned to build her nest or the beaver his house if there were no need for their industry ? But as it is, since the whole world is teeming with life, and count- less numbers of seeds and eggs and young beginnings of creatures are only waiting for the chance to fill any vacant nook or corner, every living thing must learn to do its best and to find the place where it is most useful, and least likely to be destroyed by others. And so it comes to pass that the whole planet is used to the best advantage, and « life teaches her children to get all the good out of it that they can. If the ocean and the rivers be full, then some must learn to live on the land, and so we have, for example, water-snails and land-snails, and whereas the one kind can only breathe by gills in the water, the other | breathes by means of lungs in the air, while between these are some, such as the river-snails of the tropics, which have both gills and lungs, and can breathe in both water and air. We have large whales sailing vB, as monarchs of the oceans, and walruses and seals fishing in its depths for their food, while all other animals of their kind live on the land. Then, again, while many creatures love the bright light, others take advantage of the dark corners where room is left for them to live. You can not lift a stone by the seaside but what you will find some living thing under it, nor turn up a spadeful of earth witbout disturb- THE PROFUSION OF LIFE,

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100 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ing some little creature which is content to find its home and its food in the dark ground. Nay, many animals for whom there is no chance of life on the earth, in the water, or in the air, find a refuge in the bodies of other animals and feed on them. But in order that all these creatures may live, each in its different way, they must have their own particular tools to work with, and weapons with which to defend themselves. Now, all the tools and weapons of an animal grow upon its body. It works and fights with its teeth, its claws, its tail, its sting, or its feelers; or it constructs cunning traps by means of material which it sucks out of the water, as in the case of the oyster, or gives out from its own body, like the spider. It hides from its enemies by having a shape or color like the rocks or the leaves, the grass or the water, in which it lives. It pro- vides for its young ones either by getting food for them, or by putting them, even before they come out of the egg, into places where their food is ready for them as soon as they are born. So that the whole life of an animal depends upon the way in which its body is made ; and it will lead quite a different existence according to the different tools with which life provides it, and the instincts which a long education has been teaching to its ancestors for ages past. It will have its own peculiar struggles and difficulties and successes and enjoyments, according to the kind of bodily powers which it pos- sesses, and the study of these helps us to understand its manner of existence. And now, since we live in the world with all these numerous com- panions, which lead, many of them, such curious lives, trying, like our- selves, to make the best of their short time here, is it not worth while to learn something about them? May we not gain some useful hints by watching their contrivances, sympathizing with their difficulties, and studying their history ? And, above all, shall we not have some- thing more to love and to care for when we have made acquaintance with some of life’s other children besides ourselves ? The one great difficulty, however, in our way, is how to make ac- quaintance with such a vast multitude. Most of us have read anec- dotes about one animal or another, but this does not give us any clew to the history of the whole animal world ; and, without some such clew, the few observations we can make for ourselves are very unsatis- factory. On the other hand, most people will confess that books on zodlogy, where accounts are given of the structure of different classes of animals, though very necessary, are rather dull, and do not seem to help us much toward understanding and loving these our fellow creatures, What we most want to learn is something of the dives of the differ- ent classes of animals, so that when we see some creature running away from us in the woods, or swimming in a pond, or darting through the air, or creeping on the ground, we may have an idea what its ob-

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f 4 CRITICISMS CORRECTED. 101 ject is in life—how it is enjoying itself, what food it is seeking, or from what enemy it is flying. And, fortunately for us, there are an order and arrangement in this immense multitude, and in the same way as we can read and under- stand the history of different nations which form the great human family spread over the earth, and enter into their feelings and their struggles, though we can not know all the people themselves ; so, with a little trouble, we may learn to picture to ourselves the general life and habits of the different branches of the still greater family of life, so as to be ready, by and by, to make personal acquaintance with any particular creature if he comes in our way. ———_ + ¢ @ —__ —_—_ CRITICISMS CORRECTED. By HERBERT SPENCER. Il T. E. CLIFFE LESLIE. N objection made to the formula of evolution by a sympathetic critic, Mr. T. E. Cliffe Leslie, calls for notice. It is urged in a spirit widely different from that displayed by Mr. Kirkman and his applauder, Professor Tait ; and it has an apparent justification. Indeed, many readers, who before accepted the formula of evolution in full, will, after reading Mr. Cliffe Leslie’s comments, agree with him in thinking that it is to be taken with the qualifications he points out. We shall find, however, that a clearer apprehension of the meanings of the words used and a clearer apprehension of the formula in its totality exclude the criticisms Mr. Leslie makes. In the first place he dissociates from one another those traits of evolution which I have associated, and which I have alleged to be true only when associated. He quotes me as saying that a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous characterizes all evolution ; and he puts this at the outset of his criticism as though I made this change the primary characteristic. But if he will refer to “ First Principles,” Part II, Chapter XIV (in the second and subsequent editions), he will find it shown that under its primary aspect evolution “is a change from a less coherent form to a more coherent form, consequent on the dissi- pation of motion and integration of matter.” The next chapter con- tains proofs that the change from homogeneity to heterogeneity is a secondary change, which, when conditions allow, accompanies the change from the incoherent to the coherent. At the beginning of the chapter after that come the sentences—“ But now, does this gen- eralization express the whole truth? Does it include everything essen- tially characterizing evolution and exclude everything else? ... A

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102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. critical examination of the facts will show that it does neither.” And the chapter then goes on to show that the change is from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity. Further qualifications contained in a succeeding chapter bring the formula to this final form: “ Evolution is an integration of matter and concomi- tant dissipation of motion ; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogene- ity ; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel trans- formation.” Now, if these various traits of the process of evolution are kept simultaneously in view, it will be seen that most of Mr. Cliffe Leslie’s objections fail to apply. He says: “The movement of language, law, and political and civil union, is for the most part in an opposite direc- tion. Ina savage country like Africa, speech is in a perpetual flux, and new dialects spring up with every swarm from the parent hive. In the civilized world the unification of language is rapidly proceed- ing.” Here two different ideas are involved—the evolution of a lan- guage considered singly, and the evolution of languages considered as an aggregate. Nothing which he says implies that any one language becomes, during its evolution, less heterogeneous. The disappearance of dialects is not a progress toward the homogeneity of a language, but is the final triumph of one variety of a language over the other varie- ties, and the extinction of them: the conquering variety meanwhile becoming within itself more heterogeneous. This, too, is the process which Mr. Leslie refers to as likely to end in an extinction of the Cel- tic languages. Advance toward homogeneity would be shown if the various languages in Europe, having been previously unlike, were, while still existing, to become gradually more like. But the supplant- ing of one by another, or of some by others, no more implies any ten- dency of languages to become alike than does the supplanting of species, genera, orders, and classes of animals, one by another, during the evolution of life, imply the tendency of organisms to assimilate in their natures. Even if the most heterogeneous creature, man, should overrun the earth and extirpate the greater part of its other inhab- itants, it would not imply any tendency toward homogeneity in the proper sense. It would remain true that organisms tend perpetually toward heterogeneity, individually and as an assemblage. Of course, if all kinds but one were destroyed, they could no longer display this tendency. Display of it would be limited to the remaining kind, which would continue, as now, to show it in the formation of local varie- ties, becoming gradually more divergent ; and the like is true of lan- guages. In the next case Mr. Leslie identifies progressing unification with advance toward homogeneity. His words are: “ Already Europe has nearly consolidated itself into a heptarchy, the number of states into which England itself was once divided ; and the result of the American

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CRITICISMS CORRECTED. 103 war exemplifies the prevalence of the forces tending to homogeneity over those tending to heterogeneity.” To this tbe reply is that these cases exemplify, rather, the prevalence of the forces which change the incoherent into the coherent—which effect integration ; that is, they exemplify evolution under its primary aspect. In the “Principles of Sociology,” Part II, Chapter III, Mr. Leslie will find numerous kindred cases brought in illustration of this law of evolution. To which add that such integrations bring after them greater heterogeneity, not greater homogeneity. The divisions of the heptarchy were societies substantially like one another in their structures and activities ; but the parts of the nation which correspond to them have been differ- entiated into parts carrying on varieties of occupations with entailed unlikenesses of structures—here purely agricultural, there manufac- turing ; here predominantly given to coal-mining and iron-smelting, there to weaving ; here distinguished by scattered villages, there by clusters of large towns. Again, it is alleged that an increasing homogeneity is shown in fashion. “Once every rank, profession, and district had a distinctive garb ; now all such distinctions, save with the priest and the soldier, have almost disappeared among men.” But while for a reason, to be presently pointed out, there has occurred a change which has abolished one order of differences, differences of another order, far more multi- tudinous, have arisen. Nothing is more striking than the extreme heterogeneity of dress at the present day. As Mr. Leslie alleges, the dresses of those forming each class were once all alike ; now no two dresses are alike. Within the vague limits of the current fashion, the degree of variety in women’s costumes is infinite ; and even men’s cos- tumes, though having average resemblances, diverge from one another in colors, materials, and detailed forms in innumerable ways. Other instances given by Mr. Leslie concern the organizations for carrying on production and distribution. He argues that “in the in- dustrial world a generation ago a constant movement toward a differ- entiation of employments and functions appeared ; now some marked tendencies to their amalgamation have begun to disclose themselves. Joint-stock companies have almost effaced all real division of labor in the wide region of trade within their operation.” Here, as before, Mr. Leslie represents amalgamation as equivalent to increase of homoge- neity ; whereas amalgamation is but another name for integration, which is the primary process in evolution, and which may, and does, go along with increasing heterogeneity in the amalgamated things. It can not be said that a joint-stock banking company, with its proprie- tory and directors in addition to its officers, contains fewer unlike parts than does a private banking establishment : the contrary must be said. A railway company has far more numerous functionaries with different duties than had the one, or the many coaching establishments it re- placed. And then, apart from the fact that the larger aggregate of a a

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104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. codperators who, as a company, carry on, say, a process of manufacture, is more complex as well as more extensive, there is the fact, here chiefly to be noted, that the entire assemblage of industrial structures is, by the addition of these new structures, made more heterogeneous than before. Had all the smaller manufacturing establishments car- ried on by individuals or firms been destroyed, the contrary might have been alleged ; but, as it is, we see that in addition to all the old forms there have come these new forms, making the totality of them more multiform than before. Mr. Leslie further illustrates his inter- pretation by saying: “ Many of the things for sale in a village huck- ster’s shop were formerly the subjects of distinct branches of business in a large town ; now the wares in which scores of different retailers dealt are all to be had in great establishments in New York, Paris, and London, which sometimes buy direct from the producers, thus also eliminating the wholesale dealer.” Replies akin to the preceding ones are readily made. The first is that wholesale dealers have not been at present eliminated ; and can not be so long as the ordinary shopkeep- ers survive, as they will certainly do. In the smaller places, forming the great majority of places, these vast establishments can not exist ; and in them, shopkeepers carrying on business as at present, will con- tinue to necessitate wholesale dealers. Even in large places the same thing will hold. It is only people of a certain class, able to pay ready money and willing to go great distances to purchase, who frequent these large establishments. Those who live from hand to mouth, and those who prefer to buy at adjacent places, will maintain a certain pro- portion of shops, and the wholesale distributing organization needed for them. Again, we have to note that one of these great stores, such as Whiteley’s or Shoolbred’s, does not within itself display any advance toward homogeneity or despecialization ; for it is made up of many separate departments, with their separate heads, carrying on business substantially separate—all superintended by one owner. It is nothing but an aggregate of shops under one roof instead of under the many roofs covering the side of a street ; and exhibits just as much hetero- geneity as the shops do when arranged in line instead of massed to- gether. That which it really illustrates is a new form of integration, which is the primary evolutionary process. And then, lastly, comes the fact that the distributing organization of the country, considered as a whole, is by the addition of these establishments made more hete- rogeneous than before. All the old types of trading concerns continue to exist ; and here are new types added, making the entire assemblage of them more varied. From these objections made by Mr. Leslie, which I have endeavored to show result from misapprehensions, I pass to two others which are to be met by taking account of certain complicating facts liable to be overlooked. Mr. Leslie remarks that “in the early stages of social progress, again, a differentiation takes place, as Mr. Spencer has ob-

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= — CRITICISMS CORRECTED. 105 served, between political and industrial functions, which fall to distinct classes : now a man is a merchant in the morning and a legislator at night ; in mercantile business one year, and the next, perhaps, head of the navy, like Mr. Goschen or Mr. W. H. Smith.” Nothing contained in this volume explains the seeming anoimaly here exemplified ; but any one who turns to a chapter in the second part of the “ Principles of Sociology,” entitled “ Social Types and Metamorphoses,” will there find a clew to the explanation of it, and will see that it is a phenomenon consequent on the progressing dissolution of one type and evolution of another. The doctrine of evolution, currently regarded as referring only to the development of species, is erroneously supposed to imply some intrinsic proclivity in every species toward a higher form ; and, similarly, a majority of readers make the erroneous assumption that the transformation which constitutes evolution, in its wider sense, im- plies an intrinsic tendency to go through those changes which the for- mula of evolution expresses. But all who have fully grasped the argu- ment of this work will see that the process of evolution is not neces- sary, but depends on conditions ; and that the prevalence of it in the universe around is consequent on the prevalence of these conditions : the frequent occurrence of dissolution showing us that, where the con- ditions are not maintained, the reverse process is quite as readily gone through. Bearing in mind this truth, we shall be prepared to find that the progress of a social organism toward more heterogeneous and more definite structures of a certain type continues only as long as the actions which produce these effects continue in play. We shall expect that, if these actions cease, the progressing transformation will cease. We shall infer that the particular structures which have been formed by the activities carried on will not grow more heterogeneous and more definite ; and that if other orders of activities, implying other sets of forces, commence, answering structures of another kind will begin to make their appearance, to grow more heterogeneous and definite, and to replace the first. And it will be manifest that while the transition is going on—while the first structures are dissolving and the second evolving—there must be a mixture of structures causing apparent con- fusion of traits. Just as during the metamorphoses of an animal which, having during its earlier existence led one kind of life, has to develop structures fitting it for another kind of life, there must occur a blur- ring of the old organization while the new organization is becoming distinct, leading to transitory anomalies of structure, so, during the metamorphoses undergone by a society in which the militant activities and structures are dwindling while the industrial are growing, the old and new arrangements must be mingled in a perplexing way. On read- ing the chapter in the “ Principles of Sociology ” which I have named, Mr. Leslie will see that the above facts referred to by him are interpret- able as consequent on the transition from that type of regulative organ- ization proper to militant life to that type of regulative organization ae

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106 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. proper to industrial life ; and that, so long as these two modes of life, utterly alien in their natures, have to be jointly carried on, there will con- tinue this jumbling of the regulative systems they respectively require. The second of the objections above noted, as needing to be other- wise dealt with than by further explanation of the formula of evolu- tion, concerns the increase of likeness among developing systems of civil law; in proof of which increase of likeness Mr. Leslie quotes Sir Henry Maine to the effect that “all laws, however dissimilar in their infancy, tend to resemble each other in their maturity”: the implication to which Mr. Leslie draws attention being, that in respect of their laws societies become not more heterogeneous but more homo- geneous. Now, though in their details systems of law will, I think, be found to acquire, as they evolve, an increasing number of differ- ences from one another, yet in their cardinal traits it is probably true that they usually approximate. How far this militates against the formula of evolution we shall best see by first considering the analogy furnished by animal organisms. Low down in the animal kingdom there are simple mollusks with but rudimentary nervous systems—a ganglion or two and a few fibers. Diverging from this low type we have the great sub-kingdom constituted by the higher mollusca and the still greater sub-kingdom constituted by the vertebrata. As these two types evolve, their nervous systems develop ; and though in the highest members of the two they remain otherwise unlike, yet they ap- proximate in so far that each acquires great nervous centers : the large cephalopods have clustered ganglia which simulate brains. Compare, again, the mollusca and the articulata in respect cf their vascular sys- tems. Fundamentally unlike as these are originally, and remaining unlike as they do throughout many successive stages of ascent in these two sub-kingdoms, they nevertheless are made similar in the highest forms of both by each having a central propelling organ—a heart. Now, in these and in some cases which the external organs furnish, such as the rerharkable resemblance evolution has produced between the eyes of the highest mollusea and those of the vertebrata, it may be said that there is implied a change toward homogeneity. No zo- ologist, however, would admit that these facts really conflict with the general law of organic evolution. As already explained, the tendency to progress from homogeneity to heterogeneity is not intrinsic but ex- trinsic. Structures become unlike in consequence of unlike exposures to incident forces, This is so with organisms as wholes, which, as they multiply and spread, are ever falling into new sets of conditions ; and it is so with the parts of each organism. These pass from primitive likeness into unlikeness as fast as the mode of life places them in dif- ferent relations to actions—primarily external and secondarily inter- nal ; and with each successive change in mode of life new unlikenesses are superposed. One of the implications is that, if in organisms other- wise different there arise like sets of conditions to which certain parts we “yy

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ee “yy

CRITICISMS CORRECTED. 107 are subject, such parts will tend toward likeness; and this is what happens with their nervous and vascular systems. Duly to codrdi- nate the actions of all parts of an active organism, there requires a controlling apparatus ; and the conditions to be fulfilled for perfect codrdination are conditions common to all active organisms. Hence, in proportion as fulfillment approaches completeness in the highest or- ganisms, however otherwise unlike their types are, this apparatus ac- quires in all of them certain common characters—especially extreme centralization. Similarly with the apparatus for distributing nutri- ment. The relatively high activity accompanying superior organiza- tion implies great waste; great waste implies active circulation of blood ; active circulation of blood implies efficient propulsion ; so that a heart becomes a common need for highly evolved creatures, however otherwise unlike their structures may be. Thus is it, too, with socie- ties. As they evolve, there arise certain conditions to be fulfilled for the maintenance of social life ; and, in proportion as the social life be- comes high, these conditions need to be more effectually fulfilled. <A legal code expresses one set of these conditions. It formulates certain regulative principles to which the conduct of citizens must conform that social activities may be harmoniously carried on. And, these reg- ulative principles being in essentials the same everywhere, it results that systems of law acquire certain general similarities as the most de- veloped social life is approached. These special replies to Mr. Leslie’s objections are, however, but introductory to the general reply ; which would be, I think, adequate even in their absence. Mr. Leslie’s method is that of taking detached groups of social phenomena, as those of language, of fashion, of trade, and arguing (though, as I have sought to show, not effectually) that their later transformations do not harmonize with the alleged general law of evolution. But the real question is, not whether we find ad- vance to a more definite coherent heterogeneity in these taken sepa- rately, but whether we find this advance in the structures and actions of the entire society. Even were it true that the law does not hold in certain orders of social processes and products, it would not follow that it does not hold of social processes and products in their totality. The law is a law of the transformation of aggregates ; and must be tested by the entire assemblages of phenomena which the aggregates present. Omitting societies in states of decay and dissolution, which exhibit the converse change, and contemplating only societies which are growing, Mr. Leslie will, I think, scarcely allege of any one of them that its structures and functions do not, taken altogether, exhibit increasing heterogeneity. And, if, instead of taking each society as an aggregate, he takes the entire aggregate of societies which the earth supports, from primitive hordes up to highly civilized nations, he will scarcely deny that this entire aggregate has been becoming more various in the forms of societies it includes, and is still becoming more various.

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108 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, HYPNOTISM.* By G. J. ROMANES. ONSIDERING the length of time that so-called “animal magnet- ism,” “ mesmerism,” or “ electro-biology,” has been before the world, it is a matter of surprise that so inviting a field of physiological inquiry should have been so long allowed to lie fallow. <A few scientific men in France and Germany have indeed, from time to time, made a few observations on what Preyer has called the “ Kataplectic state ” as artificially induced in human beings and sundry species of animals ; but anything resembling a systematic investigation of the remarkable facts of mesmerism has not hitherto been attempted by any physiolo- gist in our generation. The scientific world will therefore give a more than usually hearty welcome to a treatise which has just been published upon the subject by a man so eminent as Heidenhain. The research of which this treatise is the outcome is in every way worthy of its dis- tinguished author ; for it serves not only to present a considerable and systematic body of carefully observed facts, but also to lead the way for an indefinite amount of further inquiry along the lines that it has opened up. Heidenhain conducted his investigations on medical men and stu- dents as his subjects, one of them being his brother. He found that, in the first or least profound stage of hypnotism, the patient, on being awakened, can remember all that happened during the state of mes- meric sleep ; on awakening from the second or more profound stage, the patient can only partially recollect what has happened ; while in the third, or most profound stage, all power of subsequent recollection is lost. But, during even the most profound stage, the power of sen- sory perception remains. The condition of the patient is then the same, so far as the reception of sensory impressions is concerned, as that of a man whose attention is absorbed or distracted ; he sees sights, hears sounds, ete., without nowing that he sees or hears them, and he can not afterward recollect the impressions that were made. But the less profound stages of hypnotism are paralleled by those less profound conditions of reverie in which a passing sight or sound, although not noticed at the time, may be subsequently recalled by an effort of the will. Further on in his treatise Heidenhain tells us that, even when all memory of what has passed during the hypnotic state is absent on awakening, it may be aroused by giving the patient a clew, just as in the case of a forgotten dream. This clew may consist only “* Der sogenannte thierische Magnetismus.” Physiologische Beobachtungen, von Dr. Rudolf Heidenhain, ord. Professor der Physiologie und Director der physiologischen In- stitutes zu Breslau. (Breitkopf und Hartel, Leipsic, 1880.)

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¢ b HYPNOTISM. 109 of a single word in a sentence. Thus, for instance, if a line of poetry is read to a patient during his sleep, the whole line may sometimes be recalled to his memory, when awake, by repeating a single word of the line. Again, we know from daily experience that the most compli- cated neuro-muscular actions—such as those required for piano-play- ing—become by frequent repetition “ mechanical,” or performed with- out consciousness of the processes by which the result is achieved. So ° it is in the case of hypnotism. Actions which have been previously rendered mechanical by long habit are, in the state of hypnotism, per- formed automatically in response to their appropriate stimuli. There being a strong tendency to imitate movements, these appropriate stim- uli may consist in the operator himself performing the movements. Thus when Heidenhain held his fist before his hypnotized subject’s face, his subject immediately imitated the movement ; when he opened his hand his subject did the same, provided that his hand was visible to his subject at the time. Also, when he clattered his teeth, the hypnotized patient repeated the movement, even though the patient could only hear, and not see, the movement ; similarly, the patient would follow him about the room, providing that in walking he made sufficient noise to constitute a stimulus to automatic walking on the part of his patient. In order to constitute stimuli to such automatic movements, the sounds or gestures must stand in some such customary relation to the movements that the occurrence of the former naturally suggests the latter. Another characteristic of the hypnotic state is that of an extraor- dinary exaltation of sensibility, so that stimuli of various kinds, al- though much too feeble to evoke any response in the ordinary condi- tion of the nervous system, are effective as stimuli in the hypnotic condition. It is remarkable that this state of exalted sensibility should be accompanied by what appears to be a lowered, or even a dormant, state of consciousness. It is also remarkable that this exaltation of sensibility does not appear to take place with what may be called a proportional reference to all kinds of stimuli. Indeed, far from there being any such proportional reference, the greatly exalted state of sen- sibility toward slight stimuli is accompanied by a greatly diminished state of excitability toward strong stimuli. Thus, deeply hypnotized persons will allow themselves to be cut, or burned, or to have pins stuck into their flesh, without showing the smallest signs of discom- fort. Heidenhain is careful to point out the interesting similarity, if not identity, between this condition and that which sometimes occurs in certain pathological derangements of the central nervous system, as well as in a certain stage of anesthesia, wherein the patient is able to feel the contact of the surgical instruments, while quite insensible to any pain produced by the cutting of his flesh. Reflex sensibility, or sensibility conducing to reflex movements, also undergoes a change, and it does so in the direction of increase, as might be expected from

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110 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, the consideration that with the temporary abolition of consciousness the inhibitory influence, which we know the higher nerve-centers to be capable of exerting upon the lower, is presumably suspended. But quite unanticipated is the remarkable fact that the state of exalted reflex excitability may persist for several days—perhaps for a week—after a man has been aroused from a state of profound hypnotism. Thus, Dr. Krener, after having been hypnotized by Professor Heidenhain, and while asleep made to bend his arm twice, for several days after- ward was unable again to straighten it, on account of the flexor mus- cles continuing in a state of tonic contraction, or cramp. In these experiments Heidenhain found that a very gentle stimulation of the skin caused only the muscles lying immediately below the seat of stimu- lation to contract, and that on progressively increasing the strength of the stimulus its effect progressively spread to muscles and to muscle- groups farther and farther removed from the seat of stimulation. It is interesting that this progressive spread of stimulation follows al- most exactly Professor Pfliger’s law of irradiation. But the rate at which a reflex excitation is propagated through the central-nerve organs is very slow, as compared with the rapidity with which such propagation takes place in ordinary circumstances. Moreover, the muscles are prone to go into tonic contraction, rather than to respond to a stimulus in the ordinary way. The whole hypnotic condition thus so strongly resembles that of catalepsy that Heidenhain regards the former as nothing other than the latter artificially induced. In the case of strong persons this tonic contraction of the muscles may make the body as stiff as a board, so that, if a man is supported in an horizon- tal position by his head and his feet only, one may stand upon his stomach without causing the body to yield. The rate of breathing has been seen by Heidenhain to be increased fourfold, and the pulse also to be accelerated, though not in so considerable a degree. In a chapter on the conditions which induce the state of hypnotism, Heidenhain begins by dismissing all ideas of any special “force” as required to produce or to explain any of the phenomena which he has witnessed. He does not doubt that some persons are more susceptible than others to the influences which induce the hypnotic state, and he thinks that this susceptibility is greatest in persons of high nervous sensibility. These “influences” may be of various kinds ; such as looking continuously at a small bright object, listening continuously to a monotonous sound, submitting to be gently and continuously stroked upon the skin, ete.—the common peculiarity of all the influences which may induce the hypnotic state being that they are sensory stimuli of a gentle, continuous, and monotonous kind. Awakening may be pro- duced by suddenly blowing upon the face, slapping the hand, scream- ing in the ear, etc., and even by the change of stimulus proceeding from the retina which is caused by a person other than the operator suddenly taking his place before the patient. On the whole, the hyp-

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>. Yr HYPNOTISM. 111 notic condition may be induced in susceptible persons by a feeble, continued, and regular stimulation of the nerves of touch, sight, or hearing ; and may be terminated by a strong or sudden change in the stimulation of these same nerves. The physiological explanation of the hypnotic state which Heiden- hain ventures to suggest is, that a stimulus of the kind just mentioned has the effect of inhibiting the functions of the cerebral hemispheres, in a manner analogous to that which is known to occur in several other cases which he quotes of ganglionic action being inhibited by certain kinds of stimuli operating upon their sensory nerves. In a more recent paper, embodying the results of a further investi- gation in which he was joined by P. Grutzner, Heidenhain gives us the following supplementary information : The muscles which are earliest affected are those of the eyelids ; the patient is unable to open his closed eyes by any effort of his will. Next, the affection extends in a similar manner to the muscles of the jaw, then to the arms, trunk, and legs. But even when so many of the muscles of the body have passed beyond the control of the will, consciousness may remain intact. In other cases, however, the hyp- notic sleep comes on earlier. Imitative movements become more and more certain the more they are practiced, so that at last they may be invariable and wonderfully precise, extending to the least striking or conspicuous of the changes of attitude and general movements of the operator. Professor Berger observed that, when pressure is exerted with the hand at the nape of the neck upon the spinous process of the seventh cervical vertebra, the patient will begin to imitate spoken words. It is immaterial whether or not the words make sense, or whether they belong to a known or to an unknown language. The tone in which the imitation is made varies greatly in different individuals, but for the same individual is always constant. In one case it was a hollow tone, “like a voice from the grave” ; in another almost a whisper, and soon. In all cases, how- ever, the tone is continued in one kind, i. ¢., it is monotonous. Further experiments showed that pressure on the nape of the neck was not the only means whereby imitative speaking could be induced, but that the latter would follow with equal certainty and precision if the experi- menter spoke against the nape of the neck—especially if he directed his words upon it by means of a sound-funnel. A similar result fol- lowed if the words were directed against the pit of the stomach. It followed with less certainty when the words were directed against the larynx or into the open mouth, and the patient remained quite dumb when the words were directed into his ear, or upon any other part of his head. If a tuning-fork were substituted for the voice, the note of the fork would be imitated by the patient when the end of the fork was placed on any of the situations just mentioned as sensitive. By exploring the pit of the stomach with a tuning-fork, the sensitive area

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112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. was found to begin about an inch below the breastbone, and from thence to extend for about two inches downward and about the same distance right and left from the middle line, while the navel, breast- bone, ribs, etc., were quite insensitive. Heidenhain seeks—though not, we think, very successfully—to explain this curious distribution of areas sensitive to sound, by considerations as to the distribution of the vagus nerve, Next we have a chapter on the subjection of the intellectual fac- ulties to the will of the operator which is manifested by persons when in a state of hypnotism. For the manifestation of these phenomena the sleep must be less profound than that which is required for pro- ducing imitative movements ; in this stage of hypnotism the experi- menter has not only the motor mechanism on which to operate, but likewise the imagination. “ Artificial hallucinations” may be pro- duced to any extent by rehearsing to the patient the scenes or events which it may be desired to make him imagine. A number of interest- ing details of particular cases are given, but we have only space to re- peat one of the most curious. A medical student, when hypnotized in the morning, had a long and consecutive dream, in which he imagined that he had gone to the Zodlogical Gardens, that a lion had broken loose, that he was greatly terrified, etc. On the evening of the same day he was again hypnotized, and again had exactly the same dream. Lastly, at night, while sleeping normally, the dream was a third time repeated. A number of experiments proved that stimulation of certain parts of the skin of hypnotized persons is followed by certain reflex move- ments. For instance, when the skin of the neck between the fourth and seventh cervical vertebrae is gently stroked with the finger, the patient emits a peculiar sighing sound. The similarity of these reflex movements to those which occur in the well-known “ croak-experiment ” of Goltz is pointed out. A number of other experiments proved that unilateral hypnotism might be induced by gently and repeatedly stroking one side or other of the head and forehead. The resulting hypnotism manifested itself on the side opposite to that which was stroked, and affected both the face and limbs. When the left side of the head was stroked, there further resulted all the phenomena of aphasia, which was not the case when the right side of the head was stroked. When both sides of the head were stroked, all the limbs were rendered cataleptic, but aphasia did not result. On placing the arms in Mosso’s apparatus fer measur- ing the volume of blood, it was found that, when one arm was hypno- tized by the unilateral method, its volume of blood was much dimin- ished, while that of the other arm was increased, and that the balance was restored .as soon as the cataleptic condition passed off, In these experiments consciousness remained unaffected, and there were no dis- agreeable sensations experienced by the patient. In some instances,

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HYPNOTISM. 113 however, the above results were equivocal, catalepsy occurring on the same side as the stroking, or sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. In all cases of unilateral hypnotism, the side affected as to i }s motion is also affected as to sensation. Sense of temperature under these circumstances remains intact long after sense of touch has been abolished. As regards special sensation, the eye on the hypnotized side is affected both as to its mechanism of accommodation and its sense of color. While color-blind to “objective colors,” the hypno- . tized eye will see “subjective colors” when it is gently pressed and the pressure suddenly removed. Moreover, if a dose of atropine be ad- ministered to it, and if it be then from time to time hypnotized while the drug is gradually developing its influence, the color-sense will be found to be undergoing a gradual change. In the first stage yellow appears gray with a bluish tinge, in the second stage pure blue, in the third blue with a yellowish tinge, and in the fourth yellow with a light- bluish tinge. The research concludes with some experiments which show that in partly hypnotized persons imitative movements take place involuntarily, and persist until interrupted by a direct effort of the will. From this fact Heidenhain infers that the imitative move- ments which occur in the more profound stages of hypnotism are purely automatic, or involuntary. 9 ) In concluding this brief sketch of Heidenhain’s interesting results, it is desirable to add that in most of them he has been anticipated by the experiments of Braid. Braid’s book is now out of print, and, as it is not once alluded to by Heidenhain, we must fairly suppose that he has not read it. But we should be doing scant justice to this book if we said merely that it anticipated nearly all the observations above mentioned. It has done much more than this. In the vast number of careful experiments which it records—all undertaken and prose- cuted in a manner strictly scientific—it carried the inquiry into vari- ous provinces which have not been entered by Heidenhain. Many of ethe facts which that inquiry yielded appear, a priori, to be almost in- credible ; but, as their painstaking investigator has had every one of -a» his results confirmed by Heidenhain so far as the latter physiologist has prosecuted his researches, it is but fair to conclude that the hither- to unconfirmed observations deserve to be repeated. No one can read Braid’s work without being impressed by the care and candor with which, amid violent opposition from all quarters, his investigations were pursued ; and now, when, after a lapse of nearly forty years, his results are beginning to receive the confirmation which they de- %. ? serve, the physiologists who yield it ought not to forget the credit that is due to the earliest, the most laborious, and the hitherto most exten- sive investigator of the phenomena of what he called hypnotism.— Nineteenth Century. VOL. Xv111.—8

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114 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. SKETCH OF LEWIS H. MORGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. By J. W. POWELL. EWIS HENRY MORGAN was born near the village of Aurora, New York, November 21, 1818, The subject of this sketch is eight generations in lineal descent on his father’s side from James Morgan, who settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1646 ; and on his mother’s side from John Steele, who settled in Newton, now Cam- bridge, in 1641 ; beginning with these, seven generations of his ances- tors have lived and died in New England. In 1840, at the age of twenty-one, young Morgan graduated at Union College, and was engaged in the study of law until 1844. Dur- ing this time he occasionally wrote articles for the “ Knickerbocker” and other periodicals. On his return to Aurora from college he was induced to join a secret society composed of young men of that place. This trivial circumstance had a great influence on his future career. The society was organized for no definite purpose, and failed to inter- est young Morgan, who at once looked about for some method of ex- panding the society and extending its influence ; and finally, under his management, a new society was organized and styled “The Grand Order of the Iroquois.” The plan was to model it somewhat after the pattern of Indian tribes, and to extend the organization over all the territory occupied by the Iroquois, and to have a group of branch societies for each area occupied by an Iroquois tribe, or nation, as they were then called, and these larger divisions divided into chapters as Indian nations were divided into gentes—so-called tribes. In order that this new organization might be properly formed on the plan of the ancient Iroquois confederacy, young Morgan went among the Indians of New York for the purpose of studying their | social organization and government. In this he soon became deeply interested, as did many of the originators of “The Grand Order of the Iroquois.” A number of the gentlemen who took part in the organization of the society have since risen to important posi- tions in American society, as a mention of the following names will demonstrate: Rey. Isaac N. Hurd; Henry Haight, afterward Goy- ernor of California ; the late General Albert J. Myer, Chief of the Sig- nal Service ; Hon. George Barker, Justice of the Supreme Court of New York ; the late Judge Charles P. Avery, of Oswego ; the late Hon. Charles Billinghurst, member of Congress from Wisconsin ; Rev. An- son J. Upton, President of the Auburn Theological Seminary ; Charles T. Porter, of Philadelphia ; Hon. Theodore Pomeroy, of Auburn ; William Allen, of Auburn ; C. White, of Aurora; the late Frederick De Lano, of Rochester ; the late Alexander Mann, of Rochester ; Hon.

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SKETCH OF LEWIS H. MORGAN, 115 Stephen Goodwin, of Chicago; Rev. James S. Bush, of Staten Island ; and George 8. Riley, of Rochester. The society seems to have greatly flourished for a time, and to have been very popular throughout that portion of New York west of the Hudson River. Its ceremonies were picturesque and attractive. The meetings of the society were called councils, and were held in the woods. The Grand Council was held in a forest near Aurora by night, and the forest aisles were illuminated by huge camp-fires, and the sachems and chiefs who there assembled came in Indian panoply, with chaplets of eagle-feathers, Indian tunics, scarlet leggins, and decorated moccasins. It was wild sport, in which the young men engaged in merry mood. Morgan and his young associates soon became absorbed in active business, and found that the society they had organized could not be operated without consuming too great a portion of their time, and it died by premeditated neglect. But the discoveries made by Morgan were of such importance and interest that he continued his investiga- tions from time to time, and, in order to obtain a deeper insight into the home life and customs of the Indians, and their social and govern- mental organization, he spent much time among them and was adopted into a gens of the Senecas. In 1847 he published in the “ American Review ” a series of “ Let- ters on the Iroquois,” over the signature of “Skenandoah.” In the mean time he was building up a legal practice, and found that he must neglect it or abandon his studies of Indian life and govern- ment ; and so he determined to publish the materials on hand, and then devote himself exclusively to the practice of his profession. This resulted in the publication in 1851 of “The League of the Iro- quois,” in which the social organization and government of this won- derful confederacy were carefully and thoroughly explained. The volume also contains interesting accounts of the daily life, customs, and superstitions of these Indians, and was the first scientific account of an Indian tribe ever given to the world. The work is not entirely free from the nomenclature of sociology previously, and to some extent since, used by writers on our North American Indians, in which tribes are described as nations, and the institutions of tribal or barbaric life defined in terms used in national or civilized life. But the series of organic units was discovered among the Iroquois and was correctly defined, though the confederacy was called a league, the tribe a nation, and the gens atribe. In like manner, kinship as the bond of union was fully recognized, In 1856 Morgan attended the Albany meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and read a paper called “The Laws of Descent of the Iroquois.” The reading of the paper awakened great interest in the subject, and a number of the leading members of the Association urged Mr. Morgan to continue his studies

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SS ——— ~ LE LO Tt arm 116 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, in this field. Professors Henry and Agassiz were especially urgent in the matter, and Morgan decided to return to his old studies, but rather as an amateur and in such a manner as not to interfere with his pro- fession. In 1858 he was at Marquette, where he found an encampment of Ojibwa Indians, and, going into a tent, sat down with an Indian, and gradually in conversation drew from him an account of the Ojibwa system of kinship, the list of gentes, and the gentile organization of the tribe, and found them essentially the same as the Iroquois. To him this was a great surprise, for up to this time he had sup- posed that the Iroquois Confederacy had a system peculiar to itself and was an anomaly among governments. But here he found society and government organized upon the same plan, and yet the linguistic terms were totally different. He had thus discovered the essential characteristic of tribal government in two distinct stocks of our North American Indians, and it occurred to him that the system might extend further, so he determined to pursue his investigations among other Indians. On his return to Rochester he took up “ Riggs’s Dakota Grammar and Dictionary,” then lately published by the Smithsonian Institution, and found in the kinship terms as therein defined evidences of the same kinship system. He then more carefully examined the English and Roman systems, especially as they are set forth by Blackstone and in the Pandects of Justinian. Finally, he prepared schedules of in- quiry to be circulated among missionaries, teachers, traders, and other persons familiar with Indian life. At this stage Professor Henry became deeply interested in the investigations and published the schedules for Mr. Morgan, which were widely distributed in America and throughout the world by the Smithsonian Institution and by the active codperation of General Cass, who was then Secretary of State. During the earlier years Mr. Morgan was greatly disappointed with the returns from the circulation of these schedules. The subject was new and strange, and the persons to whom they were sent were slow in comprehending the nature and value of the researches suggested ; and so he determined to pursue his investigations in person, and for this purpose in 1859 he made an expedition through Kansas and Nebraska. In 1860 he went over the same ground, revising his former work, increasing his observations, and extended his journey far up the Missouri River. In 1861 he made a trip to the Hudson Bay Terri- tory and Lake Winnipeg, and in 1862 to Fort Benton and the Rocky Mountains. In his travels he everywhere sought the Indian tribes, and through the aid of interpreters—white men and Indians—filled out his own schedules and extended his studies into the social life and government of the Indians and other collateral branches of anthropology.

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{ fi SKETCH OF LEWIS H. MORGAN. 117 Finally, returns from his schedules of inquiry began to pour in from all quarters of the globe, and gradually a vast correspondence grew up, until the kinship systems of more than four fifths of the world were recorded either directly by himself or by others whom he had enlisted in the work. The materials thus collected were gradually by years of labor thoroughly systematized, and finally published by the Smith- sonian Institution as one of its “ Contributions to Knowledge,” entitled “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family.” It is a quarto volume of about six hundred pages, the result of many years of patient and well-directed labor, and it constitutes a model of inductive research. The kinship systems of eighty tribes of North America, together with those of a great number of the principal na- tions and tribes of the Old World and the islands of the sea, are fully and elaborately recorded in its tables. This publication marks a most important epoch in anthropologic research. Prior to its appearance, the social and governmental insti- tutions of mankind antecedent to the evolution of civilization were to a large extent unknown. Travelers and various persons more or less familiar with tribal life had put on record many curious facts, and the compilation of these facts by scholars had resulted in the accumulation of incoherent and inconsistent materials about which more or less crude and fanciful speculations were made ; but the essential characteristics of tribal society, as based upon kinship in barbarism and upon com- munal marriage in savagery, were unknown. This first volume was essentially a volume of facts, and only a brief and rather unsatisfactory discussion of the facts was undertaken. Mr. Morgan’s final conclusion and philosophic treatment of the subject were reserved for a subsequent volume. During the earlier years of Morgan’s work upon the “Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity,” he carried on an extensive law business, and was engaged in a railroad enterprise upon the Michigan Peninsula. The latter necessitated frequent visits to what was then a forest wilder- ness on the shores of Lake Superior, and here he became interested in the study of the beaver, which resulted in the publication, in 1868, of a volume entitled “The American Beaver and his Works.” In his preface to this volume Mr. Morgan thus describes the circumstances under which these studies were made : Having been associated in this enterprise from its commencement, as one of the directors of the railroad company, and as one of its stockholders, business called me to Marquette first in 1855, and nearly every summer since to the present time. After the completion of the railroad to the iron-mines, it was impossible to withstand the temptation to brook-trout fishing, which the streams traversing the intermediate and adjacent districts offered in ample measure. My friend Gilbert D. Johnson, Superintendent of the Lake Superior Mine, had established boat-stations at convenient points upon the Carp and Esconauba Rivers, and to him I am specially indebted, first, for a memorable experience in brook-trout fishing, and, secondly, for an introduction to the works of the beaver

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118 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. within the areas traversed by these streams. Our course, in passing up and down, was obstructed by beaver-dams at short intervals, from two to three feet high, over which we were compelled to draw our boat. Their numbers and magnitude could not fail to surprise as well as interest any observer. Although constructed in the sulitude of the wilderness, where the forces of Nature were still actively at work, it was evident that they bad existed and been maintained for centuries by the permanent impression produced upon the rugged features of the country. The results of the persevering labors of the beaver were sug- gestive of human industry. The streams were bordered continuously with beaver meadows, formed by overflows by means of these dams, which had destroyed the timber upon the adjacent Jands. Fallen trees, excavated canals, lodges, and burrows, filled up the measure of their works. These together seemed to me to afford a much greater promise of pleasure than could be gained with the fish- pole, and very soon, accordingly, the beaver was substituted for the trout. I took up the subject, as I did fishing, for summer recreation. In the year 1861 I had occasion to visit the Red River settlement in the Hudson’s Bay Territory, and in 1862 to ascend the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, which enabled me to compare the works of the beaver in these localities with those on Lake Superior. At the outset I had no expectation of following up the subject year after year, but was led on by the interest which it awakened, until the materials collected seemed to be worth arranging for publication. Whether this last sur- mise is well or ill founded, I am at least certain that no other animal will be allowed to entrap the unambitious author so completely as he confesses himself to have been by the beaver. My unrestrained curiosity has cost me a good deal of time and labor. Morgan’s researches among the tribes of North America were ex- tended to many subjects not included in the great volume published by the Smithsonian Institution. The results of these collateral inves- tigations led to the publication of a series of articles in the “ North American Review.” The first appeared in 1869, and was entitled “The Seven Cities of Cibola,” in which he comes to the qualified con- clusion that the ruins on the Chaco in New Mexico represent what re- mains to us of the so-called cities described by the ancient Spanish trav- elers. Incidentally, the paper also contains a careful description of pueblo architecture, and its relation to gentile life, and is compared with the architecture of old Mexico; and the statement is made that the buildings discovered by the Spaniards in Mexico were in fact pue- blos, or communal dwellings, but were exaggerated by them into pala- tial residences of emperors, with retinues of serving lords and hosts of slaves. The lengthy article closes with the following paragraph : When the romantic features of the discovery and conquest of Mexico, which made such a powerful impression upon the writers of the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, and which have not yet lost their influence, shall become soft- ened down by our increasing knowledge of Indian character, arts, and institu- tions, it will be possible to reconstruct, from existing materials, a rational history of this interesting people. Ifthe author of the volume, whoever he may be, will entitle his work ‘ A History of the Aztec Confederacy,’ and, after explaining the political relations of the three nations of which it was composed, and the func- tions of the council by which it was governed, will then introduce Montezuma «

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“¢ -——_ SKETCH OF LEWIS H. MORGAN. 119 as the head chief of the Aztecs, one of the three confederated peoples, the reader will be certain to start with a tolerably clear impression. No harm will be done to truth, if the great lords, with many vassals and large landed estates, and the little lords, with few vassals and small landed estates, are introduced as plain In- dian chiefs, innocent of all knowledge both of estates and vassals. Besides this, it is not improbable that the palaces and most of the temples will ultimately resolve themselves into plain communal houses, like those now standing in the picturesque and beautiful valley of the Chaco, roofless and deserted. With these, and a number of similar changes, the future student of aboriginal history will not be led to deceptive conclusions by the glitter of inappropriate terms. Such a history is due to the memory of the Aztecs, and to a right estimate of the Indian family. This article inaugurated the reconstruction of the history of Mexi- ean and Central American culture, which is now rapidly in progress. All the previous history had a been a vain but brilliant exaggeration of Indian society, with its languages, arts, religion, and social and governmental institutions—a picture derived from boastful and men- dacious travelers. In the latter part of 1869 a second article appeared in the same journal on Indian migrations, followed by a third on the same sub- ject in 1870. The purpose of these articles was to indicate an original general dispersion of the Indian tribes from the region of the Colum- bia River. In 1876 a fourth article appeared, entitled “ Montezuma’s Dinner,” which was in part a review of Bancroft’s “ Native Races of the Pacific States,” but in fact was a general characterization of the culture dis- covered in Mexico and Central America, with a review of the historic evidence, and was an exquisite satire on the exaggerated accounts of Spanish travelers and priests, expanded and glorified by modern writers. In the same year a fifth article appeared, on the “ Houses of the Mound-Builders.” The great work of Mr. Morgan was yet unpublished. It remained for him to gather the materials he had collected on tribal society into one philosophic treatise. This was accomplished in the publication of his volume entitled “ Ancient Society” in 1877. This was divided into four parts, as follows: Part I. Growth of Intelligence through Inventions and Discoveries ; Part II. Growth of the Idea of Govern- ment ; Part III. Growth of the Idea of the Family ; Part IV. Growth of the Idea of Property. In the first part technologic evolution was discussed, and culture periods, or what Mr. Morgan denotes “ ethnical periods,” were defined. These grand periods, through which the most highly developed races of mankind have passed, and into which the various peoples on the globe may be distributed, were set forth as the savage, the barbaric, and the civilized. These were defined in terms relating to the evolu- tion of arts. Savagery and barbarism were divided into three periods

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120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, each, giving the lower, middle, and upper status of savagery, and the lower, middle, and upper status of barbarism ; these subdivisions also being established on the development of specified arts. Two grand plans of government are also set forth—tribal and na- tional ; tribal government being personal, i. e., taking into account persons only, and national government being territorial and based on property. In the second part he discussed in a thorough manner the different forms of government in the order of their evolution, beginning with the organization of society upon the basis of sex, as it is found in Australia, and fragments of which are found as survivals among other tribes of the world. He then expounded the organization of society and tribal governments based upon kinship; and having by wide research discovered this system in every quarter of the globe among people living in barbaric life, and having discovered by abundant evi- dence that the same form of society and government existed in the early history of the most civilized peoples, he logically inferred that gentile society and tribal government as based upon kinship are the universal characteristic of man in his passage through the period of barbarism. He also discussed the evolution of gentile society from connubial society ; defined the organic units of tribal government as gentes, phratries, tribes, and confederacies, pointing out their origin and growth as illustrated by abundant examples throughout the globe ; and, finally, the evolution of gentile society and tribal government into property society and national government. In Part III he treats of the evolution of the family—discovers five successive forms, and sets forth the processes by which the first or consanguineal family, which is founded upon the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, own and collateral in a group, was developed into the last or monogamian, which is founded upon marriage by single pairs with exclusive cohabitation. In the final chapter of this part he gives the sequence of institutions connected with the family in tabular form with appended explanations. In the fourth part Mr. Morgan deals with the origin of civilization. Discovery and invention finally led to the accumulation of property, and society was organized on this basis ; and for the protection of property and the industries by which it is produced civilized govern- ments have finally been established over territorial areas. The growth of the idea of property with the development of industries is explained, together with the evolution of laws of inheritance. Thus the plan of Mr. Morgan’s great work was completed. In it was laid the foundation for the science of government as it is finally to be erected by the philosophy of evolution. In the progress of human culture institutions are developed ; new rights with their correlative duties arise from the new relations into which men are placed. For the maintenance of these rights and the | ora"

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SKETCH OF LEWIS H. MORGAN. 121 enforcement of these duties, governments change in all their substan- tial characteristics, and the great laws of evolution in the processes of differentiation and integration are followed, as tribes integrate into nations and the functions of government are differentiated ; commu- nal industries change to individual and corporate industries ; commu- nal property to individual and corporate property ; communal marriage to individual marriage ; communal government to organized national government, with the differentiation of the three great departments, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial ; and these again elabo- rately differentiated with special organic members for special organic functions—all progressing with advancing intelligence to secure jus- tice and thereby increase happiness. This survey of governments in their totality presents one fact of profound interest to statesmen. Government by the people is the nor- mal condition of mankind, as a broad review of human history abun- dantly maintains. Monarchies are temporary phases of government in the evolution of mankind from barbarism to civilization ; and these monarchies with their attendant hierarchies, feudalisms, and sla- very, appear only as pathologic conditions of the body politic—diseases which must be destroyed or they will destroy—and hence disappearing by virtue of the survival of the fittest. Hope for the future of society is the best-beloved daughter of Evolution. Morgan has here been spoken of as a pioneer in a special field of research, but many others worked contemporaneously with him in the same field. Notable among these are Tylor and Maine, whose fields of investigation were, to some extent, identical with Morgan’s ; though in a larger sense, the areas which they covered were diverse. Where their studies were in common their methods of research were diverse. Maine and Tylor ransacked recorded history. Morgan plunged into the wilderness and studied Indian tribes, but his plan also included the study of annals ; yet his work is largely made up of a record of facts previously unknown to science. Long years of excessive labor, with sorrows that invade the domes- tic circle through disease and death, have somewhat decreased the vigor of physical life not long ago so characteristic of the man. On account of his infirmities he presided with some difficulty at the last meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ; but his mental vigor continues, and he is now engaged in the preparation of a volume on the “ House Life and Architecture of the North Amer- ican Indians,” to be published by the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. May his years continue and his works multiply! It is not one of the least of the results accomplished by Mr. Morgan that he has gath- ered about him loving disciples who are reaping harvests from fields planted by himself.

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122 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. CORRESPONDENCE. SCIENCE AT PRINCETON COLLEGE. Messrs, Editors. FP VHERE are statements in the “ Corre- spondence” of the last number of “The Popuiar Science Monthly” fitted to | leave an unjust impression as to what is taught in Princeton College. upon the argument of that article, which is palpably illogical, Itis that we have had low fever, taking a typhoid shape, because we do not teach physiology to our students, Two scientific adepts have reported as to our sanitary state, and what they have testified is likely to be accepted by the public. Nor do I look on this as the fitting opportunity to enter on the discussion as to what branch- es should be taught in colleges which im- | part a high and refining education, and con- fer the Bachelor’s, the Master’s, and the Doc- tor’s degrees. My opinions on this subject have often been given to the world. lieve that, in our higher educational institu- tions, there should be a due combination of literature (including languages), of science, and philosophy. We have endeavored to unite these, and give a proper place to each in our curriculum. It is only thus that we ean fulfill the grand end of education, that of developing the man and the full man. I do not regard a youth as fully trained who knows merely Latin and Greek ; but as lit- tle do I look upon him as educated if he knows only his own bodily frame and ma- larial disease. Nor am I ashamed to add I do not enter | are employed in teaching the various sci- ences, including the very latest. As to the special branches which we are said not to teach, the Professor of General Chemistry reports: “ All students of the college have | a full course of instruction in the outlines of human anatomy and physiology, with so ' much of hygiene as there is time for; and | chemistry. I be- this has been done in the college for nearly half a century. We do not profess to be a medical college, or to train physicians, but no student leaves us without a fair knowl- edge of his own bodily system.” The Profes- sor of Analytical Chemistry reports: “ The question of sewage, from a chemical point of view, is fully investigated by all the stu- dents of the scientific course and by those of the academic course who elect applied Its injurious effects on the at- mosphere and on the water are described and the laws of the diffusion of all gases are applied at this present time, and have always been, to this question.” The Profes- | sor of Natural History writes : “ The students | in science go through a course of physiol- ogy, using ‘ Huxley’s Elements’ as a text- book, along with ‘Youmans’s Chapters on Hugiene, to which special attention is giv- ' en. The subjects which are said to be neg- that religion has an important part to act | in a college, if we would impart the proper | spirit to our young men. “The Popular Science Monthly,” Professor Ifuxley and Herbert Spencer, have avowed The favorites of | that there is no adequacy in physical sci- | ence to make youths moral; and the former wishes the Bible taught in the public schools | of London, and the latter seems to be trust- ing to a development which will make peo- ple moral in a million of years, if in the mean time the world is not burnt up by leeted are all taught with some degree of fullness.” I have an idea that some of the readers of “The Popular Science Monthly” will be gratified to notice that Professor Youmans is allowed to teach hygiene to our young men; but they will also discover that this fact undermines his argument, which is that, where hygiene is taught, there should be no fever. James McCosn. Princeton CoLiecr, August 14, 1880. THE SENSE OF DIRECTION IN ANIMALS. | Messrs. Editors. the conflagration which he says must come, | But my special object in this communica- tion is to correct certain statements and in- sinuations as to our teaching. The impres- sion is left by the article that we give ex- clusive, or, at least, our chief attention, to classics and certain old branches, and that | we neglect the study of our own bodily frame and of the laws of health. laration, your readers may be surprised to learn that of our thirty instructors thirteen After this dec- | I was very much interested in the ac- count, published in your July number, of the experiments with the intelligent Cin- cinnati dog, and I think the facts there developed tend strongly to the proof of a theory that I have long believed to be cor- rect, viz., that some of the lower animals are endowed with a sense of location and direction which at most is only rudimen- tarily possessed by man. I do not think that the feats of the carrier-pigeon can be accounted for on the theory of any finite

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ee! : CORRESPONDENCE. 123 development of the sense of sight, smell, or hearing, and the action of honey-bees pre- sents the same difficulties to persons familiar with the habits of these interesting insects. In searching for wild honey, the bee-hunter provides himself with a small box with a sliding door ; inside of this box he puts some sweet substance as a bait for the bees. When several bees have collected in the box, he closes the lid. As soon as they have finished eating, he releases a bee, which, after ascending high enough to clear the surrounding trees, makes a “ bee-line” for its hive. The hunter marks this direction and carries his box off at right angles to the line made by the first bee, and releases another bee; he carefully marks the direc- tion taken by this second bee, and, if they are both from the same swarm, the hive will be found at the point where these two lines meet. I might cite well-authenticated cases of cats, pigs, and dogs, finding their way home, where such a feat would seem impossible to man under like circumstances ; my object, however, was not to theorize, but simply to record what I consider some interesting ob- servations bearing upon this subject. Last spring I built a trout-pond in my garden, on the west side of a running brook discharging about six hundred cubic feet of water per minute. The brook is quite rapid where it passes the pond, and the surface of the pond is some five feet higher than the surface of the brook. The pond is sup- plied with water brought 2,000 feet in un- derground pipes and discharged in a foun- tain in the center of the pond. Common bull-frogs (Rana pipiens) occasionally find their way into this pond. On the 18th of last July I found three frogs in the pond, and shot allof them witha pistol. I dipped them up with a scoop-net, and found two of them shot through the body, and the other, a little fellow, weighing about two ounces, was shot across the back, the bullet just raising the skin and leaving a white streak across its dark- surface. I emptied the three frogs out of the net into the swift- running water of the brook, and they float- ed down stream out of sight. On the 19th of July, the day following, I found the wounded frog in the pond again, and readily recognized it by the scar from the bullet. I found no difficulty in catching it in the scoop-net, and, fearing that the scar might disappear from its back, I cut off the cen- ter toe of its right foot, put the frog into a paper bag, carried it down the brook | across a bridge, and finally threw it into the stream some one hundred yards below the pond. On the 2tth of July I found the frog back again, caught it, and, so as to leave no doubt about its identification, I cut off the middle toe of the left foot. I then put the | frog in the paper bag, started from the pond in a northeast course, stopped and whirled the bag around so as to confuse any ideas that it might have had of direction, and then changed my course, and finally re- leased the frog on the opposite side of the brook in an oat-field about an eighth of a mile in an easterly direction from the pond. To prevent the frog from getting any idea from watching me, I passed on after re- leasing it, and did not go back again to the pond for several hours, Three days after- ward I saw the frog in the pond again, but it was so wild that I could not catch it with my scoop-net, and I afterward tried various devices to capture it alive, but the moment it saw me approach the pond it would jump in and remain hidden in the stones at the bottom until I left. Finally, despairing of catching it alive, and having some doubts about its identity, on the 9th of August I shot it, and recognized it by the absence of the cut-off toes. The general direction is up-hill from the point where the frog was last released to the pond, and about the same distance in a down-hill course would have taken the frog to the Ausable River. It still remains possible that the frog waited until night, and then followed my tracks back to the pond, but that seems improbable, I think, even more so than to believe that the frog knew all the time the direction of the pond, and slowly worked its way back again as in- clination prompted, Grorce CuHanoon. AvsaBLe Forks, New York, August 16, 1550. SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICEIGAN. Messrs. Editors. My eye has just fallen on your editorial comments under the head of “ Sewage in College Education” ; and I can not resist the impulse to point out a few of the errors into which you have been drawn. Not much space will be required, I think, to show that the attitude of the University of Michigan toward scientific and classical studies has been quite misapprehended. In the first place, you are in error in assuming that Bishop Harris spoke as the representative of the University. Would it have been fair to assume that Yale College was represented by President White’s fa- mous address on the “ Warfare of Science ” ? Each of these gentlemen was invited to de- liver a commencement address, each chose his own subject, each treated his subject in his own way, and each was alone responsi- ble for what he said. One sentence in the Bishop’s address may have misled you. I refer to that in which he expressed his grati- tude that classical studies still maintain their

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124 prominence in this university. But it is certain that the Bishop either meant simply to express his satisfaction that so large a number of students still continue to pursue classical studies, notwithstanding the induce- ments held out by the scientific courses, or, what is perhaps quite as likely, he himself was not fully aware of what the University is doing for the encouragement of scientific pursuits. In one instance, at least, the Bish- op ran squarely athwart all the traditions and usages of the University. The orator in- dicated certain studies which he would not permit the student to pursue. The Univer- | sity, on the contrary, has lgng held up as | its ideal; “All learning and that of the | best”; and entire freedom of choice on the part of students as to what they would pur- suc. You remark: “This great institution, with its fourteen hundred students, seems just as much enslaved by vicious traditions as the older schools. Middle-Age studies are still in the ascendant. The sciences are taught there, but the classical course is the one encouraged by the whole weight of the University influence.” I think a few facts will be enough to show you that this assertion is totally and comprehensively incorrect. 1. As many as twenty-eight years ago the University of Michigan was the pioneer in the work of raising scientific studies to a footing of absolute equality with the old classical curriculum. At that moment there was not a single college or university in the country that had a scientific course of four years. Such a four years’ course was then established here; it has ever since been main- tained, and the requisites for admission to it have been raised as rapidly as the condi- tion of the preparatory schools would per- mit. 2. The work, thus early begun, has gone steadily on to the present day. Besides the various professional degrees in engineering, the University now confers four degrees as the reward of four years of successful study, viz.: Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Philosophy, and Bachelor of Letters. The ancient languages are required for the first of these degrees only ; and even THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. forty-four (44). The number of teachers employed to give instruction in Latin and Greek fifteen years ago was four; last year the number was four; fifteen years ago the number of teachers in the sciences was five, last year the number was twenty-four. 4. The means of illustration in the clas- sical courses have remained almost station- ary; while the appliances for the pursuit of scientific studies have spread out in every direction. The physical laboratory affords constant occupation to a considerable num- ber of original investigators. The botani- cal laboratory is daily occupied by a crowd of students pursuing advanced microscopi- cal researches. The pbysiological labora- tory is positively overrun with students from the beginning to the end of the year. The | chemical laboratory last year offered to our for A. B. the amount of Latin and Greek | required aggregates only about one solid year’s work, while the amount of science required aggregates scarcely less, and the | amount of science the student may elect in addition aggregates the work of two full years. Thus, even in the classical course, the student with his one year of classics may, if he choose, take two and a half years of science. 3. The number of courses of instruction in Latin and Greek offered to students the present semester is twelve (12), while the number of courses offered in the sciences is students a hundred and seventy-five tables for personal experimentation in applied chemistry, but the number was so inade- quate to a supply of the demand that the building at the present moment is in process of enlargement by nearly as many tables more. If you were to wander through these busy rooms, and see the hundreds of students clad in their scientific aprons and carrying on their researches with scalpel and micro- scope and test-tubes you would not fajl to reform your opinion that the “ whole weight of the University influence” is devoted to the encouragement of the classical course. Other universities have reared grander dor- mitories and memorial halls; but, if any other institution in the country has dene more for the direct encouragement of scien- tific study and research within the past fif- teen years than the University of Michigan, I have yet to learn which one it is. If you will point us toa better record than that indicated in the above facts, we will then endeavor to emulate our superior. As your facts were at fault, of course it is not necessary to point out the error of your conclusion. I trust that the facts given are sufficient to justify you in modi- fying your intimation that the institution ‘deserves to be suppressed as a public nui- sance.” I ought perhaps to correct s or two further errors of your article. t I con- tent myself with saying that the University has not been “ maintained from the first by public taxes ”; that it was not until after it had already acquired strength, and renown even, that the first dollar of taxes was levied in its behalf; nay, that the first taxes were not levied for it until long after a funda- mental law had been passed prohibiting the requiring of Latin and Greek as a condition for admission to the full privileges of the University. You conclude your paper by com the University of Michigan with Cornell, a pointing to the difference, as evinced in the

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contrast between Bishop Harris’s address and the thesis of a Cornell student on the sanitary condition of Ithaca. I conclude mine by saying that, if you will favor the University of fichigan with a visit, the Li- brarian, I doubt not, will take great plea- EDITOR’S TABLE. 125 sure in showing you a cartload of theses of the very kind you so justly admire. Very respectfully yours, C. K. Apams. Unrversiry or MicniGan, t Ann Arson, September 15, 1580. EDITOR’S TABLE. POLITICAL SCIENCE, E commence this month the pub- lication of an important series of articles on ‘The Development of Politi- cal Institutions” from the highest living authority on the subject of the science of society. By the science of society is meant such a systematic exposition of the facts and relations of social phe- nomena as shall bring out the natural laws of social change and transforma- tion. The doctrine of evolution com- pels the study of society from a scientific point of view. Based upon the dynami- cal view of nature, the principle of con- tinuity, and the immutable operation of cause and effect, it brings out the natu- ral laws by which the course of society is governed in all its stages of progress and decline. The political element in society is but a part—though an impor- tant part—of a great complex organism, but it has had its laws of growth like all other parts of the organization. But, if such determinable laws of political change exist, it is desirable that they should be traced out and formulated. The discussion, therefore, now entered upon, we meed hardly say, is of great theoretical and practical moment, be- cause a knowledge of the principles by which political institutions originated and have grown up and are still ad- vancing must become in future the basis of all intelligent political action. Social science thus elucidated will yet consti- tute the true foundation of the art of politics, or the practical carrying on of governmental operations; though there is as yet in the public mind but little preparation for this mode of regard- ing social questions. Familiar as we are with the highly developed results of long social unfolding, it is not easy to go back into the dim obscurities of social embryology. This, however, is indispensable if we are to gain any ade- quate understanding of the method of social development. Mr. Spencer has elsewhere dealt very fully with the im- pediments to the study of social evolu- tion, and in the preliminary paper here- with printed he calls attention to some of the difficulties to be met in the political study of evolution. It is always very hard work for the loose and careless thinker to subject himself to the rigor- ous requirements of thorough scientific study; but the task becomes still more serious when to lax habits of thinking there are added those prejudices and gross errors to which men so passion- ately cling in the sphere of political thought. Yet these obstacles will be overcome as people are slowly educated to a better appreciation of the scien- tific spirit and the scientific method. It is desirable to explain that the articles on “‘ The Development of Polit- ical Institutions ” that are to appear in the “Monthly” when collected will constitute that portion of Spencer’s “Principles of Sociology” which is to be devoted to the evolution of political government. The preceding division on the development of ‘ Ceremonial Institutions ” is already published; and the part now appearing on political in- stitutions will be followed by the cor- responding treatment of ecclesiastical and industrial organizations. These to- gether will form the second volume of the “ Principles of Sociology,” the sev- enth volume of Spencer’s philosophical

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126 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, system. We refer to this because there , is much misunderstanding of the bear- ings of Spencer’s various books on the subject of sociology. Dr. Porter, for example, has lately taken him up in the | * Princeton Review,” and we think, if he had been a little more particular in | his reference to Spencer’s sociological | works, he would have given increased | help to readers unacquainted with them. He says: “Spencer's contributions to this science are professedly only intro- ductory to its study. They are to con- sist of ‘ The Principles of Sociology,’ in two volumes, ‘ Social Statics’ and ‘ The Study of Sociology,’ as also several vol- umes of ‘ Descriptive Sociology.’ More precisely “‘ The Principles of Sociology ” will comprise three volumes instead of two. “Social Statics” is an old book, that forms no part of his sociological system, and only “ The Study of Sociol- ogy,” an incidental contribution to the subject, should be especially character- ized as introductory to it. It is hardly fair to an author to mix up his works in this careless way, and it is especially unfair to Spencer, because he has been long engaged in developing his ideas in various lines of work, and publishing them in fragmentary parts, so that read- ers are easily liable to become confused in regard to them. President Porter's critical essay is entitled ** Spencer’s The- ory of Sociology,” and he says, “ The only practicable method of discovering the author’s theory is to subject the volume to a minute criticism.” We think the still more “ practicable ” | method would be an examination of | the works in which the theory is pro- | fessedly expounded rather than in a volume which disavows all attempt to formulate the principles of the sci- ence. Ile has explained in the pref- | ace to the work that “The Study of | Sociology ” was a side discussion, form- | ing no part of the systematic treatment of social science. It was written with main reference to those prepossessions of the public mind which tend to hin | der a scientific study of social subjects. Instead of explaining the science of so- ciety, the book was designed to remove objections to its possibility and to arouse interest in its legitimate questions. Yet Dr. Porter undertakes to judge Spen- cer’s “Theory of Sociology” by an analysis of this book which does not contain it. Spencer’s works are tempt- ing game for sensational criticism, be- cause of their extent, incompleteness, and comprehensive method, which make misconception easy and misrepresenta- tion easier, and for this reason we are called upon to correct false impressions more frequently than would be other- wise necessary. SCIENCE IN THE COLLEGES. WE call attention to the correspond- ence from Princeton and Ann Arbor correcting alleged errors in our Septem- ber article on “ Sewage in College Edu- eation.” Dr. McCosh thinks it palpably illogical to argue that they have had typhoid fever because they do not teach physiology to the students. Our stric- tures were based on an assumed state of facts which is not contradicted, viz., that the fatal fever resulted from causes that were clearly preventable. We sim- ply charged that the knowledge that would have averted the catastrophe, and which, as tending to self-preserva- tion, is the most important of all know]l- edge, is culpably neglected in the col- lege, is subordinated to more worthless studies, and not so taught as to yield the beneficent results which it is capa- ble of producing. And what are the facts? Dr. McCosh says that the chem- ical professor reports as follows: “ All students of the college have a full course of instruction in the outlines of human anatomy and physiology, with so much of hygiene as there is time for; and this has been done in the college for nearly half a century.” That is, they teach as much about the laws of life as the old crowded classical curriculam -

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EDITOR’S TABLE. » = will allow “time” for, and hygiene is ; to the giving of periodic fairs, while treated just as it has been these fifty | States and counties vie with one another years. We only say, let the knowledge | in the same sort of work. The holding that conduces to self-preservation be | of fairs is a very old practice in all civil- taught first and thoroughly, and, if the | ized countries; and it has always been text-books are inadequate or the teach- | made tributary to social gratification as ers incompetent, turn them all out to- | well asto commercial utility. Such ex- gether and procure those thatare better. | hibitions are primarily a means of giving Professor Adams, we are happy to publicity to the wares of manufacturers say, makes an excellent showing of the | and traders, but they are not without extent of scientific study in Michigan | a further value to the general public. University. But it seems we were at There must of necessity be a good deal fault in trusting the statements of Bish- of repetition at the successive collec- op Harris, who misrepresented some tions, but the rapid advances now made things and was ignorant of others, while | in the arts insure the bringing forward the plaudits which he evolved were in- | of a sufficient number of new and inter- tended rather for his rhetoric than his esting objects to give novelty and plea- ideas. Professor Adams intimatesthat sure to the recurring displays. Great it was unfair to assume that the Bishop fairs are, moreover, always instructive. spoke as the representative of the uni- They not only offer favorable opportuni- versity. But when a State Bishop is ties for observing and comparing many brought out before a State institution articles with which people desire to sup- on an important occasion, and the cus- | ply themselves, but, by bringing togeth- tomary exercises are suspended in his er the best products of useful and artis- behalf, and he takes up the work of the tic workmanship, they familiarize the institution as his theme, certainly it public with the highest standards of would not have been admissible in out- excellence, and become the centers of siders to question his representation of jmpulse, and incite to still further im- facts. Professor Adams gives an inter- provement. International exhibitions esting and most encouraging account of have undoubtedly had great effect in the progress of scientific study in the stimulating whole communities to apply university, and we all owe thanks to greater intelligence to the processes of the Bishop for starting a discussion that the arts and to attain a higher perfec- has brought out these excellent results, | tion in industrial products; and this and in which his inaccuracies have been | wholesome education has been also pro- overruled for good. But we will try | moted, though in a lesser degree, by the to be more discriminating in future as large local exhibitions. to whose statements are to be trusted. Among the fairs annually held, those of the American Institute have long had a leading place. The position of THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE FAIR. | the Institute, at the chief distributing Ixpustriat exhibitions now seem point of the country and the center of to have become a recognized part of population, has doubtless contributed the machinery of trade. Those of a largely to give its fairs such a charac- merely local character are held in great | ter; but the judicious conduct of the numbers and at many different points, | concerns of the society and the discre- while those of international range are tion with which awards have in the of such frequent occurrence as to be | main been bestowed have been no less fast losing their novelty. Most of the | important factors. The American In- considerable cities of this country now | stitute was the pioneer in the work to have permanent organizations devoted | which it is devoted—the promotion and

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128 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. encouragement of the industrial arts in In referring to these various classes this country. Founded in 1828, it has | of persons, Mr. Hayes uses the terms for half a century had a successful ca- | “illiteracy,” “ignorance,” and “ un- reer. Its growth has been coincident | able to read and write ” interchange- with a most remarkable industrial de- ably or as equivalents; that is, the velopment, and its exhibitions during | “ignorance” of which he speaks seems this period have been among the most | to be that grade of incapacity or illit- available means of bringing to the early | erateness which is indicated by inabil- notice of the public the most important | and valuable inventions and improve- | ments of which this country has been, | perhaps, more prolific than any other. The forty-ninth exhibition is now | being held, and in point of variety and | interest of exhibits compares favora- | bly with those of preceding years. No | remarkable machines or processes are shown, but in several departments there are appliances which are decided ad- | vances upon previous constructions. As | a whole, the exhibition is well worth a | visit, and there is much to be seen there that will repay careful examination. POWDER AND BALL FOR DEMA- GOG UES. Prestpent Hayes has been discuss- ing the subject of public education ; | and, in his speech at Canton, Ohio, he called attention to the extent, and point- | ed out the main sources, of illiteracy among our heterogeneous populations. Ten years ago, he says, there were three | quarters of a million of negro voters who could not read their ballots, and in | this respect things have not improved much since. The Indian tribes which | we must soon absorb are equally igno- rant. Half the population of New Mex- | ico can not read and write, and, of the | enormous immigration from Europe, | from twenty to twenty-five per cent. | are to the same degree illiterate. Mr. | Hayes maintains that it is the duty of | the national Government to enter upon | the great work of public education with | the view of qualifying all these incom- petent citizens, present and prospective, for the proper exercise of the right of suffrage. | ity to read and write. We are left to infer that this is the ignorance which he considers dangerous to the state, and which it is therefore the duty of the national Government to remove. We assume that this is the sort of ignorance which Mr. Hayes means when he says, “In our own country, as everywhere | else, it will be found that in the long run ignorant voters are powder and ball for demagogues.” Are we to conclude, then, that in the belief of President Hayes, if the negroes, | Indians, immigrants, and illiterate peo- | ple generally are taught to read and | write, American demagogues will be de- | prived of their ammunition, and repub- _lican government placed upon an en- during foundation ? Does Mr. Hayes think that the real danger to popular institutions in this country comes from the presence of those who are unable to read their ballots? Certainly the most dangerous class in the communi- ' ty is the demagogues themselves, and these can not only read and write, but they are commonly educated men. Nor is this all; they are the dangerous ene- mies of republican institutions by virtue of that education which gives them com- mand of the means of mischief. And as it is by education that they are quali- fied for the skillful practice of their vicious arts, so it will be found that a certain amount of education on the part of their victims is necessary to bring them within the full range of demagogi- cal influence. It is not the illiterate classes by any means that are most mis- led and cheated by the demagogues. It is those who can read the newspapers and campaign documents that are most openly accessible to the flatteries, de-

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LITERARY NOTICES. 129 ceptions, and cunning artifices of wily ; a peculiar interest derived from their au- political managers. The illiterate classes | thor’s special studies ; and the present work, are indeed, to no small degree, pro- | similar in character, well sustains the writ- tected by their very ignorance from the | ¢t’s reputation, Dr, Macmillan combines, most insidious forms of political impos- | im 4 somewhat marked degree, several traits ture. They are manipulated by coarse which give character to his productions, methods, while the class of citizens who - a phn a devoutly pone soe ses are called intelligent, morally require ange aie i gh den dag png . . i : i alit l a ir. sharper practice to circumvent them. iy ingeeend WED Oe cay ft See é ‘stak that itual world; and he writes to illustrate It is @ great mistake to suppose that | 414 enforce the fundamental conceptions of our demagogues are mere p etty Oper | the Christian system. Then he is an enthu- ators, animated by low cunning, and | ciastic student of nature, and well up in the who find their chief prey among those | jatest results of science—especially in geol- who can not read their ballots. They | ogy, botany, and zodlogy, the objects of are trained and accomplished men, sub- | which are so obtrusive in all the aspects of tle of intellect, inventive in resources, | nature. He is besides a clear and pleasing and well equipped with knowledge. | writer, with a dash of poetic feeling which The great mass of the people have a gives life and vividness to his descriptions, smattering of education, and the whole though sometimes betraying him into un- system of demagogical art assumes it | due fervor and elaboration of style Though and is adapted to it. The common his book is pervaded by the most literal or- schools teach just enough to turn out | thodox beliefs stated in Scripture forms, yet “powder and ball for demagogues.” | it is in no sense a polemic, nor is there any Our “machine politics” is the bright attempt to establish his theological views by , the customary logical methods. He rather consummate flower of American dema- | 5 : ies , | aims to enforce their truth by showing in gogism, but it never could have had so sa ‘asa ; , . what striking ways they harmonize with the wre a growth if the ignorance of methods and operations of nature. His vir- American voters had not been duly cul- | 4...) thesis is that the “ Two Worlds,” spir- tivated. The more ignorant and stu- | jtua) and material, are ever in agreement pid men are, the greater is their fealty | when we get down to their deeper meanings, to party, and the more easily they can | and he gives many ingenious and interesting be counted on; but, as they begin to | exemplifications of this unity. The book is think, the demagogue is thrown upon | written in excellent temper, and is free from his resources, so that the effect of the | all asperity. Science is looked upon, not schools is to cause him to perfect his | as the enemy but as the handmaid of faith ; methods. Of course, ignorant voters and, although advanced views are accepted are everywhere “powder and ball for | 48 4 matter of course, there is never a word demagogues” ; we only insist that there | of disparagement of scientific men. The shall be no demagogical narrowness in moral inculcations of the volume are ele- defining the class of ignorant voters. vated and impressive, and, with their fresh and attractive illustrations, can not fail to exert a wholesome and improving influence. Of its twenty-one chapters, those entitled LITERARY NOTICES. '“Grairs of Sand,” “Weeds,” “Summer | Blossoms,” “ Mountain Peace,” “ Leaven,” Two Wortps are Ours. By Rev. Huen Mac- | « Snow.” “Waste,” and “ The Days of a Mocmiti a? Pps E. hed ane | Tree,” have most interested us acmillan 6 . 349. Price, $1.75. | , : To say that this book is by the author | 4 Tare Repveiic. By ALBERT STICKNEY. of “ Bible Teachings in Nature” and “First | = New York: Harper & Brothers, 1879. Forms of Vegetation,” published several | Pp. 271. Price, $1. ears ago, will be a strong commendation | Mr. Stickney here grapples with the y ag ng to many readers. Those books were full of problem of the causes and the cure of the VOL. XVIII.—9

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130 widespread and increasing demoralization in American political life, and, where others who have as keenly felt the evil have content- ed themselves with vague utterances, he pro- poses a definite scheme of action. The im- patience with party methods and party dic- tation, which is now so evident among think- ing men, has not generally gone to the length of questioning the utility or neces- sity of such organizations. Parties are held, by even those most energetic in their oppo- sition to their present tendencies and meth- ods, to have a legitimate function in a free state. It is only their abuse that there is need to war against. Rightly limited, they are the sole means of giving effective ex- pression to the popular will, and for carry- ing out lines of national policy. Emanci- pated from the control of the self-seeking classes, they are the most efficient agents of the control of the affairs of govern- ment by the people, and the problem of our politics is to get their management into proper hands. This opinion Mr. Stickney denies outright. Parties, in the sense of vast permanent organizations, are to him wholly an abomination. They do not now aid, and never have aided, in furthering calm political discussion, or in carrying measures of real value to the people. They are now, and always have been, organiza- tions for the carrying of elections, The great questions of the hour have indeed been used by them as their battle-crics, but the contest has always been for the places of honor and profit. They have pushed these questions to issue only to the extent demanded by their needs; the real interests of the people have always been made sub- servient to their triumph. Wise legislation is the outcome of deliberation, of a careful consideration of the real merits of the ques- tions involved. It needs honesty of pur- pose and harmony of spirit. But the very essence of party is strife. Warring fac- tions, jealous of any possible advantage that one side may gain over another, per- petually prevent all harmony of action be- tween those holding by different parties. The action of legislators, clected to conserve the interests of the whole people, is deter- mined almost solely by party considera- tions. The division of votes on most ques- tions is along strictly party lines. As a; THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. means of affording discussion of the merits of the men and measures presented for popular suffrage, they are worse than use- less, The candidates are all chosen by the managers, and the people have only the choice of ratifying at the polls the selec- tions of the caucus. These are not acci- dental but inherent features of the party system. They are bad enough, but they are but a part of the evils due to it. The fea- ture that makes improvement hopeless, and that paralyzes all attempts to reform within party lines, is the influence that the system inevitably exerts over our public men. In it is to be found the cause of the progressive corruption of public servants. Not only does it offer the opportunity for public ser- vants to do their work ill, but, more than that, it compels them to do it so. Their continuance in office is dependent upon their party carrying the next election. They are therefore forced to devote their time and en- ergies to keeping their places. They can not, therefore, give their attention to the proper work of their offices. More than this, they must of necessity administer these offices, not with an eye to the public good, but to the best advantage of their party. The sys- tem, therefore, makes it certain that the public will neither get good service from the men in office, nor get the best men to do Government work. These results are not peculiar to America. They have followed wherever tenure of office has been made to depend, not upon the faithful performance of duties, but upon political success. Men will always, at all times and places, give their best work to that upon which their preferment depends. If in this country party control has gone to greater lengths than in other countries, and not only the elective, but all offices, have come to be the prey of party faction, it is because the op- portunities have been greater. Our fre- quent elections make possible the profes- sion of the politician. Every few years a chance of a change in party control of the Government gives a promise of vacancy in great numbers of offices. Men, therefore, temporarily out of office can wait for one of these recurring opportunities. Mr. Stickney reviews English and American history in support of his position. He finds that se- curity of tenure and official purity have

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LITERARY NOTICES. 131 been invariably associated, while corruption ; sponsible for the work of the entire Ex- and tenure dependent upon political suc- | ecutive branch of the Government to the cess have always gone along together. National Assembly. Mr. Stickney favors Sweeping as is the indictment of party, | only one body, of four or five hundred its methods and results, its substantial accu- | men, instead of the two we now have; but, racy will be questioned by few conversant | if there be two, it is sitting as one body with the facts. The evil is allowed, but the | that they form the Assembly to whom the means of remedying it are not clear. To Executive is responsible. The Executive many it has seemed that there is no cure. | may be at any time removed for any cause Mr. Stickney is not of this number. His bya two-thirds vote of this Assembly. The showing of the causes upon which the evil | | Assembly has no voice in the choice of a depends has revealed to him the method | new Executive. The senior department offi- of eliminating it. The public does not get cer is made President pro tem. pending the its best men in the public employ, or get | election of a new President. The members from its servants their best work, because , of the Legislature are elected, like the Pres- the best men will not condescend to the | | ident, for no definite term. They can be work necessary to enter and remain in the | turned out of office by a two-thirds vote of public service, and because they have not | “the Assembly of which they are members. security in their position during “good be- |The judges are also made elective, but for havior.” In the callings of private life men | no definite time. These are the only elec- have the assurance that, if they do their tive offices, in the national, State, and city work well, they will have employment for governments. All the others are by ap- life. They have also the assurance that, if pointment. Under this system the power they do it ill, they will lose their employ- of party as now existing would be destroyed, ment. They are therefore under constant Mr. Stickney holds, because there would be pressure to do their work well. Mr. Stick- _ few offices to be captured by election work, ney believes that these conditions can be and, the tenure being dependent upon good realized in the public service by the changes behavior, it would be impossible to deter- in our political system which he advocates. mine when these few would be vacant. The These changes consist in abolishing the term office-secker would then disappear, because system, in so arranging the control of ap- | the profession could no longer pay. And pointment and dismissal from office that the office-seeker as a distinct class having there shall be direct responsibility for the disappeared, public servants would become performance of the work of the various | as efficient and as honest as those in private departments, and in reducing the number life. The whole of Mr. Stickney’s scheme of elective offices to the lowest point. To turns upon this point—the breaking up of this end the President is elected as now, party organization by removing the oppor- not for any definite term, but to continue in | tunities of profit which keep it intact. office so long as he performs his duties It seems to us that it is just here that the well. He has absolute control over the ap- | scheme fails. The power of party man- pointment and dismissal of the heads of de- | agers is dependent not upon themselves partments. These heads have in turn the | alone, but upon the following they can com- same power over their subordinates, and are mand. And they can command this fol- responsible to the Chief Executive alone for lowing in virtue of the intensity of party the work of their departments. And so | feeling. It is because there are multitudes down through the entire service, each em- of men who can be rallied by the party cry ployee being responsible to his immediate to support it through thick and thin that superior for the faithful performance of his _ the managers are able to prostitute the ser- duties, and being assured of his place only | | vices of the Government to their own ends. so long as they, are well done. To secure | | The diminishing of the elective offices not efficiency, each man must have work of only only would not reduce this partisan feel- one kind. The Chief Executive is given | ing, but would have no tendency to do so. no voice, as now, in legislation, his veto- | These elective offices are, moreover, but a power being taken from him. He is re- | part of those of the Government. The

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132 great mass of those which are now filled by appointment—and which, under Mr. Stick- ney’s system, would be increased—are as much sought after by party workers as those that are elective ; and there is no greater se- curity under the proposed system than un- | der the present, that they will be kept out | of their hands. The security is even less, because the Executive has greater power. burg, Bavaria. Suppose the chief Executive and the re- quired majority of the Legislature to be of the same party, with the same intense par- | tisan feeling existing that now exists, what, under Mr. Stickney’s system, is to prevent the offices from the top to the bottom be- ing filled with political workers, and kept there without any more regard for their fitness than at present. A majority gained by the other side would simply have the effect of putting in a new Executive, who might make a clean sweep of the depart- ments in the interest of his party. The only restraining force upon him then, as now, would be the pressure of public opinion, but that would necessarily be less than at present, because it could not make itself so effectively felt. The same party majority that would be able to keep | the Executive in power for party reasons THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. than the present one, and, with the destruc- tion of this spirit, its purpose can be ac- complished with the system we have. | An Exementary Text-Book or Borayy. Translated from the German by Dr. K. Prantt, Professor of Botany in the Royal Academy of Forestry, Aschaffen- The Translation revised by S. H. Vives, Fellow and Lecturer of Christ’s College, Cambridge. With 275 Illustrations. Philadelphia: J. B. Lip- pincott & Co. 1880. Price, $2.25. Is his preface to the English translation of Professor Prantl’s text-book, Professor | Vines tells us that the work appeared in _ Germany in response to a demand for an would also be able to keep members of | the Legislature of their own party in their seats. Practically a member would be se- cure in his tenure unless guilty of the gross- est misconduct. And party standards of conduct are not of the highest. If this As- poses, of the best and wisest men of the nation, and the chief Executive were a man of great administrative ability and honesty of purpose, doubtless his plan would work admirably. by its ability to meet the worst cases. If the Assembly were filled with strong parti- sans, and the Execntive were the willing tool of his party, the result would be anything | but satisfactory, and there would be, under the law, no means of effecting a change. While the discussion of Mr. Stickney is in many ways suggestive, and throughout bears | the evidence of careful thought, his system can not, to our thinking, be accepted as a solution of the problem. Without a destruc- tion of the party spirit, it affords no better security for efficient and faithful service But a system must be judged | introduction to Professor Sachs’s well-known and voluminous “ Lehrbuch der Botanik,” that should resemble it in its mode of treating the subject. Professor Prantl’s success in this undertaking is attested by the rapidity with which his book has passed to a third edition in his own country, and by its prompt translation into English. The large work of Professor Sachs was trans- lated by Bennet and Dyer, and published at Oxford in 1875. To readers unacquainted with this important volume, we may say that it introduces the student to the pres- ent state of knowledge concerning botanical science. It not only describes the phenom- ena of plant-life that are already accurately known, but it indicates those theories and problems in which botanical research is at present engaged. It is a quarto volume of sembly were composed, as Mr. Stickney sup- 860 pages, of which some 200 are given to the consideration of “General Morpholo- gy,” nearly 400 to “Special Morphology "and Classification,” about 200 to “ Physiolo- | gy,” and the remaining 60 or 70 pages to chapters on “ Plant Movements,” “ Sexual Reproduction,” and “The Origin of Spe- | cies.” Professor Prantl’s introduction to Sachs’s “ Botany” is an octavo volume of 332 pages. In treating a subject of such great extent in this brief space, the author has adopted a somewhat different order from that of the large work, and omitted many of the recondite subjects which are there so ably presented. The introductory | chapter is devoted to external morphology. The anatomy of plants is treated in two chapters, the first upon cell-structure, con- tents, and development; and the second

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LITERARY NOTICES. upon tissues. “ Plant Physiology” is treat- ed in six chapters, and the remainder of the volume, over two hundred pages, is devoted to the “Classification of Plants.” Special morphology is here elucidated, along with the exposition of the characters which un- derlie classification. The illustrations are numerous, attractive, and very helpful to an understanding of the text. As a brief exposition of the complete science of botany, we have seen nothing equal to this manual, which is every way worthy of the incomparable work to which it is the stepping-stone. CoNTRIBUTIONS TO THE ARCHAOLOGY oF Mis- SOURI BY THE ARCHAOLOGICAL SEcTION or THE St. Lovis Acapemy oF ScrEnce. Part I, Pottery. Salem, Mass.: George A. Bates. $3.00. Tas handsome quarto volume is printed on heavy tinted paper, and is illustrated by five folded maps and twenty-four litho- graphic plates, containing one hundred and forty-eight figures. It contains a descrip- tion of the earthworks and brief references to the archeological remains of southeast- ern Missouri, by Professor W. B. Potter, and a description of the ancient pottery by Dr. Edward Evers. Their descriptions are terse and to the point. Dr. Evers has no theory regarding the race of people who made this pottery, neither does he permit himself to see some symbolic conception in every quaint de ‘gn he meets with. He gives precisely what his readers want, a pro- fusely illustrated volume of one hundred and forty-eight figures of various vessels, strong- ly drawn, and well drawn too. We congratulate the St. Louis Academy of Science on this evidence of its pros- perity, and we particularly congratulate its Archeological Section that it wastes no time or money in rummaging through Greece, Cyprus, or other parts of the Old World, in quest of antiques, when at home such rich treasures are to be revealed. Lire on THE SeasnorE; on, ANIMALS OF ovr Coasts anv Bays. With many Illus- trations. By James H. Euertoy. Salem, Mass.: George A. Bates. $1.50. 133 » It will be found an exceedingly handy book | for any one interested in the animals of the coast of New England. Much information regarding the development and habits of the lower animals is here given in a clear and concise form. As a successful zodlogical draughtsman, Mr. Emerton should remember that an ob- | ject expressed in lines is to be acknowledged as fully as an idea expressedin words. This | remark is necessitated by his neglect in | many cases to give the authorities for the drawings he uses. The book is handsomely | bound and printed. Intropvction To tHe Mortvary CrsToms amone THe Norra American Inprans, By Dr. H. C. Yarrow. Washington: Government Printing-Office. 1880. Pp. 107. Tue series of works, of which this vol- ume forms the third installment, has been undertaken with the object of obtaining a complete and trustworthy account of the present and ancient customs and beliefs of our North American Indians, Though much has been written on the subject by travelers and explorers, the amount which is of value is comparatively small, through carelessness of observation and the predispositions of the writers. The volumes only profess to be introductions, but it is hoped that, by awakening the interest and directing the attention of those in a position to obtain first-hand knowledge, a body of accurate and, in time, comparatively complete infor- mation can be obtained. Introductions to the study of Indian language and Sign-lan- guage, the first by Major J. W. Powell, and the latter by Colonel Garrick Mallery, have already appeared. The present volume will be followed by similar ones upon the medi- cine practice, the mythology, and the soci- ology of these Indians. In the preparation of the volume on mortuary customs, Dr. Yarrow has enlisted the services of a great number of observers, with the result of ob- taining a large mass of reliable data. The plan adopted was to send to Indian agents, physicians resident at agencies, army offi- cers, and others, a circular clearly setting forth the kind of information desired, and Tuts little book forms the first volume the precautions necessary to be taken to get of the “ Naturalist’s Handy Series,” and is alike creditable to author and publisher. it reliable. The ground covered by the vol- | ume includes the care of the lifeless body

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134 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. previous to burial, and the ceremonies at- tendant upon it; the method of burial, the site, attitude of body, its manner of resting, the ceremonies and the beliefs of the tribe where it occurs concerning it; the gifts of- fered to the dead, at the time of burial and later ; the superstitions relative to the influ- ence of the dead over the living; and all those practices which express these beliefs, as well as the methods and periods of mourn- | ing. Many of the customs and practices de- scribed are extremely curious, and all are of | interest, not alone to one whose studies have | been in this field, but to all intelligent peo- | ple. The codperation of all who have op- portunities of observation of the Indians is solicited, to the end of making the final pub- lication on the subject as complete and val- uable as possible. | | | ANNALS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATO- | ry oF Harvarp Cottice. By Epwarp | C. PickertnG, aided by Artuur SEARLE and Wixstow Uproy. Vol. II, Part IL. | Photometric Observations. Cambridge, | University Press: John Wilson & Son. 1879. Pp. 315. Tais is a continuation of the photomet- | ric observations of Professor Pickering up- | on the light of the stars. The observations include those upon the satellites of Mars, Ju- piter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Mea- surements have also been made of the light of unequal double stars, where the difference between the two is considerable, and also of that of a number of the asteroids. Some observations upon the limit of visibility have also been made, and are still in progress, A discussion of the results obtained on this latter subject is reserved for a future part. Tue Harr, its Growrn, Care, Diseases, AND TreEatMeNT. By C. Henri Leonarp, M.A.,M.D., Professor of Medical and Surgical Diseases of Women in the Michigan College of Medicine. TIllus- trated by 116 Engravings. Detroit: C. Henri Leonard. Pp. 319. Price, $2. Tue author has here evidently aimed to make a popular work, conveying as much scientific information as he can make con- sistent with that idea. It seems to be a very good digest of general knowledge re- lating to the structure and diseases of the hair, and gives many hints respecting its care and healthful preservation. The vol-— ume is interspersed with a great deal of cu- rious information respecting extraordinary hair-growths, and the author is fond of ap- ' plying the multiplication-table to the eub- ject, and bringing out the most astonishing results from insignificant elements. For example: “ Were it possible to place end to end the hirsute covering of the heads of Detroit citizens, we would have a hair-line long enough to more than reach thirteen times to the moon, or one that would belt the earth some one hundred and twenty times at its equator.” The volume is pre- paratory to a larger work, in which the author promises to show the possibility of the classification of animals from the dif- ferences in the microscopical structure of their hair-shafts. Essays on Art anp ArcnazoLocy. By Cuarces Tuomas Newron, C. B., Ph. D., D.C. L., LL. D. London: Macmillan & Co. 1880. Pp. 472. Price, $4. Ix this volume Mr. Newton has collected a number of papers contributed by him to different periodicals, most of them in recent years, though several date back a consider- able time. They are written in an agreeable style, and will be found of interest, not only to those who have more or less acquaintance with the subject, but to the wider circle of the general public. The opening paper of the volume, read at the Oxford meeting of the Archeological Institute, in 1850, is an exposition of the scope of the science, bearing the title “On the Study of Archeology.” In it the author considers the kind of records of the past of the human race with which archxology is concerned, the difficulties that encompass in- vestigation, and the need of museums, etc., where the collections of materials can be classified and disposed for intelligent study. Mr. Newton’s experience, as keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities in the British Muse- um, qualifies him for the discussion of the best way of arranging the collections in that | institution, which forms the second paper of the volume. That placed third is devoted to an account of the Greek sculptures from ' the west coast of Asia Minor, now in the same museum. A long and interesting es- say is that on “ Greek Inscriptions,” in which Mr. Newton points out the great

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LITERARY mass of this material at the disposal of the archeologist, and refers in detail to many of the more important inscriptions. Mr. Wood’s discovery of the site, and his res- toration of the temple at Ephesus, which, in the time of St. Paul, was one of the seven wonders of the world, Mr. Newton presents in his article on “ Discoveries at Ephesus,” and the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann at Mycene in the one following. ‘“ Research- es in Cyprus,” “ Discoveries at Olympia,” “Greek Art in the Kimmerian Bosporos,” and “Greek Numismatics,” complete the papers of the volume. A Greek inscription, engraved on the four sides of a ste/é of blue marble, which was some years since discov- ered in the Castle of St. Peter, at Budrum, is reproduced in an appendix. Qvatitative Cuemicat ANnatysis. By Smias H. Dovevass, M. A., M. D., and ALBerr B. Prescort, M. D., F.C. 8S. Third edi- tion, wholly revised. With a Study of Oxidation and Reduction, by Oris Coz Jounson. New York: D. Van Nostrand. 1880. Pp. 305. Tue new feature in this edition of this excellent manual is the text upon oxidation and reduction, by Mr. Otis C. Johnson, in which a new interpretation is given to quan- tivalence. The authors state that the meth- od of Mr. Johnson has proved very success- ful in teaching, and bespeak for it a careful examination by chemists. The subject is technical, and can be fully understood only by those acquainted with chemical theory and manipulation. Besides the addition of this new matter, the book has been care- fully revised, and such improvements made as the experience of actual use in teaching has suggested. Some Taovents concerninG Eprcation. By Joun Locke. With Introduction and Notes by Rev. R. H. Quick, M. A. Cam- bridge, Eng.: University Press. 1880. Pp. 240. Price, 90 cents. ALtHoveH put forth so long ago, the “Thoughts” still possess a value for the modern student of education. Locke’s ideas of the purpose and scope of education were greatly in advance of the practice of his own time and of much of that of ours. He recognizes that education is properly a de- veloping of the natural powers, and not a | NOTICES. 135 mere loading down the memory with undi- gested knowledge. Many of his suggestions and recommendations are so entirely in agreement with modern views as to seem commonplace. His advice in the matter of physical education is especially noticeable for its concordance with present medical practice. Dr. J. F. Payne, who contributes valuable notes upon the medical portions of Locke’s discourse, finds little to correct in his recommendations, except those advising that children’s feet be wet, and they be oth- erwise exposed, to harden them. Besides the treatise of Locke, the book contains a biographical sketch of him, and a critical estimate of his services in education, and his relation to his predecessor in educational reform, Montaigne, and his successor Rous- seau. His plan of working-schools for the children of the poor and his essay “Of Study” form an appendix, while the notes of Dr. Payne, mentioned above, with others not so good, and an index, complete the vol- ume. Tue New Text-Boox or Paysics. An Ele- mentary Course in Natural Philosophy, designed for Use in High Schools and Academies. By Le Roy C. Coorey, Ph. D. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1880. Pp. 317. Proressor CooLtey was among the first to attempt to introduce into elementary in- struction in physics the modern doctrine of molecules and molecular action. In his text-book of natural philosophy, published some twelve years ago, he sought to give it a form suited to the comprehension of the class of students for whom the book was designed. In this revision of the former work he has aimed to do the same thing for the fundamental conception of the sci- ence—that of energy. Heat, light, etc., are accordingly presented as so many different manifestations of energy, and not as a num- ber of distinct forces. The work is ar- ranged to bring out the essential features of the conception, and then to show its ap- plications in explanation of the various groups of phenomena within the scope of physics. The first three chapters are de- voted to a gaining of clear ideas of the properties of matter and laws of motion. These lead up to the doctrine of energy, which is explained and illustrated in the te

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136 fourth. In the four succeeding chapters, the forms of energy constituting heat, light, sound, and electricity are considered, with such illustrative examples as exhibit the essential features of each group. A brief summary of the principles of machines forms the closing chapter. A new feature of the book is a review at the end of each chapter, consisting of principles and topics, and a number of problems. Simple restate- ment of principles in the order of the pre- vious discussion has been avoided, with the object of showing the truths enunciated in new relations and with added force, The text throughout is fully illustrated. Emivest Ispaktites oF THe NINETEENTH Century. By Henry Samvet Morais, Philadelphia : Edward Stern & Co, | 1880. Pp. 371. Price, $2. Tue careers of the hundred Jews, whose portraits Mr. Morais has presented in this volume, speak much for the inherent vital- | ity and power of a race so long proscribed, The sketches are brief, much too brief to do | justice to many of their subjects, but they | are in the main judicious and are full of | interest. The labors of these eminent He- brews take a wide range. Literature, the- | ology, music, philanthropy, statesmanship, and commercial pursuits all have their rep- resentatives, many of whom have achieved | not only distinction, but positions of the | very first rank. They are as diverse in their | nationalities as in the character of their la- bors, coming as they do from all European | states, as well as from America. The rec- ord as a whole is one with which Jews have | reason to be gratified, while it is interesting | and instructive to a wider circle. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. his materials and the most efficient way of working them to secure success. Most miners at present engaged in hydraulic min- ing, Mr. Van Wagenen says, have but slight knowledge of physics, and are more or less rusty in their arithmetic, so that many er- rors are made in construction and operation, which prove costly experiments. He has therefore attempted, in this little manual, to give, in a clear and concise form, the information needed to avoid such errors. Among the subjects briefly treated are the use of decimals; the methods of finding areas and volumes; the pressure of water when at rest, and its flow through orifices and flumes ; the proper method of construct- ing flumes, their grades, size of nozzles, etc. Tables of square and fifth roots of the num- bers commonly entering into the miner’s calculations are given at the end of the book. Deep-Sea SovnprnG anp Dreneine. A De- scription and Discussion of the Methods and Appliances used on board the Coast and Geodetic Survey Steamer Blake. By Cuartes D. Siesper, Lieutenant-Com- mander U.S. Navy. Washington: Gov- ernment Printing-Office. 1880. Pp. 208. LievTENANT-COMMANDER SIGSBEE was in charge of the Blake for the four years from December, 1874, and during this time prosecuted extensive researches relative to the condition of the deep-sca bottom. Dur- ing the winter of 1874-75 soundings were made off the mouth of the Mississippi Riv- er, the total number of miles being 2,505. | Nearly as many miles of soundings were taken in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 1875, and in the winter of that and the | next year a system of east and west lines | Was run across the great bank west of the Manvat or Hypraciic Mista, ror tHe Use OF THE Practica Mixer. By T. F. Van Wacenen, E. M. New York: D. Van Nostrand. 1880. Pp. 93. PLACcER-MINING, the author states, is, when economically conducted, as certain of | good returns as apy ordinary avocation. Auriferous gravel deposits are very exten- | sive on the Pacific coast, and, as the plant necessary is comparatively inexpensive, the miner has a wide field for remunerative work. He must, however, conduct his oper- ations with a knowledge of the nature of Florida Peninsula. Others were run on the northern portion of the bank, and a number from the delta of the Mississippi out to sea, closing with a line from the South Pass to the Yucatan Bank, and one from Alacran Reef to Tortugas. The remaining years | were devoted to further soundings in this portion of the waters of the American coast. The Blake was very thoroughly fitted out for her work. Her party was one of the | first to use piano-forte wire for deep-sea dredging and trawling, and the experience with it showed it to be much better than

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POPULAR MISCELLANY, rope. The greater part of the apparatus used was either new or improved forms of that ordinarily used, and much of it was due to the ingenuity of Commander Sigs- bee. The present work does not go into the results obtained by the various expedi- tions, but is devoted to a description of the apparatus employed and statement of its actual value in use, Detailed drawings sup- plement the descriptions, anda large num- | ber of heliotype plates clearly show the |

arrangement and method of using on board ship. ‘ | Co. 1880. Pp. 222. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Ed- ucation. No.3. Legal Rights of Children. Wash- ington: Government Printing-Office. 1880. Pp 96. Address before the American Association for | the Advancement of Science, Section A. By Asaph Hall. Boston Meeting, August 25, 1880. Cambridge: John Wilson & Son. . 16. - Progress of Western Education in China and Siam. racks. Pp. 5. Vacation Colonies for Sickly School Children. Pp. 2. From the Bureau of | Education. Washington : Government Prioting- Office. 1880. Water Pollution, and a Remedy for the Evils of the Present Water-Supply ovens prepeces By Nelson Green. New York: The Hub Pub- lishing Co. Pp. 29. Who planned the Tennessee ny of 1862? or, Anna Ella Carroll rx, Ulysses 8. Grant. By Matilda Joslyn Gage. Pp. 16. An Examination of the Double-Star Measures of the Bedford Catalogue. By 8S. W. Burnham, Esq. Pp. 36. What constitutes a Discovery in Science ? By Dr. George M. Beard. New York. 1880. Pp. | 7. to Criticisms on “The Problems of A Repl Pe By Dr. George M. Beard. 1880. Pp. Insanity. 34. Occurrence of Microscopic Crystals in the aa of the Toad. By H. Carrington Bolton. , p. 4. Notice of Jurassic Mammals representing Two New Orders. By Professor O. C. Marsh. Illustrated. Pp. 5. National Association for the Protection of the Insane and the Prevention of Insanity. Boston. | 1880. Pp. 31. Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Wash- ington. Vol. I, 1871-74. .49. Vol. II, 1874- | 78. Pp. 392. . . 169. Wash- ington : the Codperation of the | Smithsonian Institution. i Drug Attennation : its Objects, Modes, Means, | and Limits in Homeopathic Pharmacy and Po- sology. By the Bureau of Materia Medica, Phar- | macy, and Provings in the American Institute of Homeopathy, 1879 and 1880, J. P. Dake, M. D., Chairman, Philadelphia: Sherman & Co. 1880. Action of Light on the Soluble Iodides, with the Outlines of a New Method in Actinometry. 7; 22. The Literature of Ozone and Peroxi of Hydrogen. . 63. Laws governing the De- composition of Equivalent Solutions of Iodides under the Influence of Actinism. Pp.7. By Dr. p. 13. The Indian School at Carlisle Bar- | _of prime importance.

Albert R. 8. 137 Memoirs of the Science Department of the University of Tokio, Japan. Vol. LI, Part I. Report on the Meteorology of Tokio for the Year 2539 (1879). T. C. Mendenhall. Tokio: Govern- ment Printing-Office. 1580. On the Algebra of Logic. By C. 8S. Peirce. Reprinted from the “ American Journal of Mathe- matics.” Pp. 42. The Textile Record of America. Devoted to the Manufacture and Distribution of ail Woven Fabrics: Cotton, Wool, Silk, and Flax Culture. Edited by Lorin Blodget. Philadelphia: Nagle & Ryckman. Monthly. Pp. 16. $3 a year. An Elementary Treatise on Analytic Geome- try,embracing Plane Geometry and an Introduc- tion to Geometry of Three Dimensions. By Ed- ward A. Bowser. New York: D. Van Nostrand. 1830. . 287. American Aristocracy. A Sketch of the So- cial Life and Character of the Army. BY Daane Merritt Greene. Chicago: Central Publishing The Minor Arte. By Charles G. Leland. Il- lustrated. London: Macmillan & Co. 1880. Pp. 148. 90 cents. Hints for Home Reading. <A Series of Chap- ters on Books and their Use by Different Au- "thors. Edited, with an Introduction, by Lyman Abbott. New York: G. P. Putuam’s Sons. 1580. Pp. 152. 50 cents. School and Industrial Hygiene. By D. F. | Lincoln, M. D. Philadelphia: Presley Blakiston. 1880. Pp. 152. 75 cents. German Thought from the Seven Years’ War to Goethe's Death. By Karl Hillebrand. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1580. Pp. 298. $1.75. Diseases of the Throat and Nose. By Morell Mackenzie, M. D., London. Vol. I. Diseases of the Pharynx, Larynx, and Trachea. Illustrated. — Presley Blakiston. 1880. Pp. 570.

POPULAR MISCELLANY. Improved Safety Construction of Ele- vaters.—With an appliance in such general use as the elevator, means of securing safety in case of the parting of the cable, or failure of other parts of the moving apparatus, are A great varicty of devices, many of them quite ingenious, have been designed to accomplish this object, but few of them are entirely satisfactory. They have done much to decrease accidents, but these still happen frequently enough with them to show the necessity of a more perfect apparatus. These mechanical stops consist of combinations of levers, pawls, and clutches so arranged that the weight of the carriage will throw them into action. Both classes, those which bring the carriage to a sudden stop, and those which act as a break, need to begin to act the moment the fall commences, or the motion becomes so great as to be beyond control. From various causes impossible to provide against, these devices

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138 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. frequently fail at the critical moment, caus- ing loss of life or damage to property. Re- cently a system of protection has been per- fected and is now being introduced, which, the promoters claim, secures perfect safety, and the trials made in this and other cities seem to amply confirm the claim, It con- sists in making the descending carriage act as a plunger to compress the air in the shaft below it, so as to form a cushion which re- tards and gradually overcomes its motion. The change in the ordinary construction of the elevator to secure this action is very slight, and can readily be applied to one al- ready put up. The shaft is made to fit the elevator carriage closely, through the first three or four feet of the lower portion, and then gradually widens tothe full size. This funnel-shaped portion extends from fifteen to twenty feet above the contracted base, depending upon the size and height of the elevator. A stiff rubber flange around the lower edge of the carriage leaves a space for the escape of the air in the contracted portion of not more than one fourth of an inch wide. The straight part of the shaft above the funnel is of a size to leave a space of six to eight inches all around the carriage. With such a constructed shaft, the carriage, when it begins to fall, readily presses the air from beneath it up the sides of the shaft. As it gains in velocity, greater resistance is offered by the air, and, as it de- scends through the funnel portion, this is rapidly increased by the narrowing of the air outlet. When the contracted base portion is reached, the confined air has only a narrow outlet, and the resistance it offers is consequently very great. The air ar- rests the motion of the carriage so gradually that there is very little shock. In one of the trials in this city where the fall was seventy- five feet, eggs and delicate glassware placed on the floor of the car were unbroken. A great number of trials have been made, and many persons have gone down in the falling cars without injury. With the shaft prop- erly and strongly built in the lower portion where the strain comes, this apparatus seems to offer no chance of failure. Types of Pottery.—Professor E.S. Morse read an interesting paper on this subject at the last meeting of the American Associa- | tion. The earlier types belonging to the shell-heaps of Japan were described and illustrated by specimens from each of the deposits examined by Mr. Morse ind his special students. The pottery of Yezo was nearly all cord-marked, while the shell-heap pottery of the middle of Japan had a much less proportion cord-marked. In the south- ern portions of Japan, at Higo, cord-marked pottery was extremely rare. He remarked on the extreme diversity in the shape and ornamentation of the pottery in different places in Japan—the pottery of Yezo re- sembling the pottery of the northern Uni- ted States, and the pottery from the central portions of Japan resembling that found in Porto Rico and Jamaica. He also spoke of the hard, blue pottery supposed to be Corean, and associated with it a red pottery which might have been made by the same people. This was lathe-turned. Other forms were mentioned and illustrated by examples. The Fiftieth Meeting of the British As- sociation.—No remarkable discoveries were brought forward at the recent meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, but the addresses and papers in the various sections showed a steady ad- vance in scientific work. Professor A. C. Ramsay, the new President, chose for the subject of his inaugural address the doctrine of uniformity, under the title of “ The Re- currence of Certain Phenomena in Geologi- cal Time.” There has recently been a dis- position in certain quarters to question the truth of the doctrine in the extended appli- cation made by most geologists. The ques- tioners admit that geologic changes in times past were produced by the same forces now in operation, but deny that they were of the same degree. The uniformity and cataclys- mic theories seem to them to both contain truth. Professor Ramsay reaffirms the uni- formity doctrine in the broadest and most general manner, and very ably defends his position. One of the most valuable if not the most important address of the meeting was that of Professor W. G. Adams, before the Section of Mathematics and Physics, re- viewing recent work in the domain of molec- ular physics. His statement of the molec- ular condition of the three forms of matter —-solid, liquid, and gaseous—was the clear-

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Ti POPULAR MISCELLANY. 139 est and least technical that has been made. He reviewed the work done by Lockyer and others in spectrum analysis, and, without committing himself to the conclusions drawn from them by the several workers, point- ed out that the advance in our knowledge of molecular action is in the direction of effacing the distinction between chemistry and physics. It seemed to him even that all the sciences were becoming more and more branches of physics—that they “are yielding results of vast importance when the methods and established principles of phys- ics are applied to them.” Professor Adams closed his address with a consideration of the influence of the sun in producing magnetic diurnal variations. A number of reports were submitted in this section, the most im- portant of which was that on the present state of spectrum analysis. It gave an ac- count of recent progress both in the meth- ods and results, together with an extended list of everything that had been published on the subject in the past few years. Pa- pers were contributed by Mr. Preece, on the proper form of lightning-conductors, and by Mr. Richard Anderson, on the necessity of inspection of them. Dr. Tempest Ander- son described an improved heliograph and an apparatus for estimating astigmatism. A powerful magnet for magneto-machines was described by Mr. Ladd, and a new form of electro-motor by Mr. Weisendanger. In the Chemical Section Dr. J. H. Gilbert gave an able summary of the state of agricultural chemistry, with an account of his own re- searches during a number of years, and criti- cism of various methods of applying chemis- try to agriculture that have found advocates. The report upon the best means of obtain- ing light from coal-gas was the one in this section of the greatest interest to the pub- lic. It concludes that improved light must be sought in the use of more perfect burners, and that the best, fitted with governers, now made by Sugg, Peebles, and others, answer all practical purposes. In the Biological sec- tion, the principal feature was the address of the Vice-President, F. W. Balfour, before the Department of Anatomy and Physiology. He sketched briefly the progress recently made in embryology by applying the laws of variation and heredity. He contends that the evidence now in favor of the devel- opment theory is overwhelming, and there are very few naturalists who do not ac- cept it in its main features. Dr. Sorby’s address before the Geological Section was an important discussion of the structure of vol- canic rocks and artificial slags, showing that a study of the process of formation of the latter throws much light upon that of the former. Professor Prestwich here took ex- ception to the conclusions of Professor Ram- say’s address regarding unvarying uniform- ity, contending that the superficial deposit termed “trail,” “warp,” and “ head,” in the southwest of Europe showed that this part | had been submerged in recent geological | times. Other papers of interest and value were those by G. M. Dawson on the “ Geology of British Columbia,” by Dr. Phené; on the geology of the Balearic Islands; and by Mr. W. T. Blanford on the age and relations of the Pikermi and Sewalik faunas in India. Sir J. H. Lefroy, in the Geographical Section, | devoted his address to the advances made in geographical research in North America, showing that the great increase of our knowl- edge of this region is due to railways and the various State surveys. Among the in- teresting facts mentioned are the rise in ' the level of some American lakes, and the | depths to which the ground is permanently | frozen in the northern part of British North | America, Though, before 1866, the surface of Salt Lake had been falling, since that | time it has risen eleven feet, Pyramid Lake | has risen nine feet, and Lake Winnemucca twenty-two feet. No theory of the cause | was advanced. The ground at Fort Norman, on the Mackenzie River, is frozen to a depth | of forty-five feet, and at York Factory, on Hudson Bay, but twenty-three feet, while at Yakutsk, Siberia, it is frozen to a depth of three hundred and eighty feet! Quite a number of papers were read in this section, showing a large and rapid increase of geo- graphical knowledge. The most important of the public lectures was that by Mr. Fran- cis Galton, on “ Mental Imagery,” which is published in the present number of the “Monthly.” Professor Boyd Dawkins deliv- ered an address on “ Primeval Man,” which was mainly a summary of the matter of his recent work. An account of “ Professor Nor- densjéld’s Expedition ” was given by Mr. F. Seebohm to an audience of workingmen.

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140 The Westinghouse Automatic Brake.— The well-known Westinghouse air-brake, in- | vented and so largely used in this country, seems to be rapidly gaining in favor abroad. The English journal “Iron,” in a recent is- sue, highly commends it as answering all | the requirements of a perfect brake, as laid | down by the Board of Trade, and gives some | valuable statistics concerning its use. From | returns received up to the 20th of last July, it appears that the number of applications of the automatic brake throughout the world is—to engines, 3,277, and to carriages, 13,- This is an increase in less than Sous. teen months of 1,594 to engines, and 6,255 to carriages. Besides this, there are 2,472 en- gines and 8,812 carriages fitted with the non- automatic brake—that is, the one using ordi- nary air-pressure. This, then, makes a total of 5,749 engines and 22,514 carriages fitted with this apparatus. In the case of 678 engines and 2,720 cars a change has been made from the non-automatic to the auto- matic. This equipment is divided between | the different countries as follows : The Uni- | ted States has 2,211 engines and 7,224 cars | using it; England 456 engines and 2,942 car- riages; in France there are but 203 engines and 1,609 carriages; and in Belgium 197 of the former and 1,241 of thelatter. The num- ber in use in Germany, Russia, and Holland is small, ranging from 55 to 28 engines and 93 to 117 carriage equipments. A few are also in use in Italy, Sweden, and the British provinees, Certain very excellent improve- ments and additions “Iron” points out have recently been made to this brake system, which greatly increase its usefulness. There area method of lighting the cars and a means of communication with the engineer by the passengers. The light is produced by carbu- retting air in a manner somewhat similar to that in common use in the numerous port- able gas-machines. The air is reduced from the high pressure necessary to operate the brakes to a moderate and steady one. It is then passed into a small iron box containing sponges saturated with gasolene, and from these passes to the burners. The light is said to be of good quality and sufficiently | bright to see to read fine print in any part | of the car. Its cost is much less than gas or any other material commonly used for | this purpose on railroads. The communi- 502, THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. cating apparatus consists of an arrangement of air connections, such that the pulling of a handle in the car starts a whistle on the engine and on the car, and puts the brakes partially on. The attention of the engineer being attracted, he can complete the appli- cation of the brakes if he is in a favorable position for stopping, or, if not, release them. The handle once pulled, the passenger can not return it to its place. This can only be done by one of the trainmen, so that im- proper use of the apparatus is readily de- tected. This appliance is especially designed to meet the requirements of passengers in the compartment carriages, such as are used abroad. With the American system of cars, the bell-rope furnishes a ready means of communication, while the trainmen are gen- erally within easy call. The lighting and communicating apparatus can be added to carriages after the brake is put in, and but one connection between the carriages is re- quired. The Cireulation of Sap in Trees.—Pro- fessor Joseph Bihm has suggested, as a theory to account for the circulation of the | sap in plants, that the exhaustion of the water by evaporation from the top of the plant causes a difference in pressure in the adjoining cells, which produces a sucking up of the fluid from the cells that are relatively rich to those that are relatively poor in water. He has also endeavored to make clear what is the purpose of those vessels which run the whole length of deciduous trees, and which can be easily perceived with the naked eye in sections of many spe- cies, as the oaks, maples, etc. Generally these vessels have been regarded as air- vessels, but Professor Béhm has been con- vinced that in many plants they not only receive sap by measured transpiration, but also in consequence of an active exhalation take up a relatively great quantity of water, so that the air fails to penetrate them at the ordinary pressure and only escapes in con- siderable quantities after the plant has be- come drier. It has also been shown that the branches of many plants, willows for in- stance, notwithstanding their vessels are supplied with fluid, are able to take up more water from without, and in such quantities that twigs will increase in weight twenty

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POPULAR MISCELLANY. per cent. in the course of a few days. Pro- fessor Béhm’s theory corresponds closely with that advanced by Professor Draper in his work on the circulation in plants and animals, and substantially agrees with the views of Herbert Spencer, as expressed in his paper on “ Circulation and the Forma- tion of Wood in Plants” (“ Transactions of the Linnzan Society,” March 1, 1866), It supposes that the sap-bearing cells in the whole plants are subject to a moderate pressure in consequence of the resistance which the water meets on its way from the root to the assimilating leaf. If, however, | the branch can take up water through a cut end with little difficulty, a partial absorption of the contents of the vessels into the sap- | bearing cells will follow, new water will | pass through the cut end from without into the vessels, and the limb will become | | death of the tree by debilitation. 141 the adjoining cells which has been disturbed by transpiration is restored. It follows from this that the tension of the air in the upper sap-bearing cells must be very slight to make a rising of the sap possible. The exhaustion of the air finally reaches its ex- treme degree at an appointed age of the cells, the air in the cells is cut off from the neighboring vessels, and the factor which produces the rise of sap is thereby elimi- nated. The wood, which was a living sap- wood, becomes a dead heart-wood. This process is accomplished with different de- grees of rapidity in different kinds of plants ; even in individuals of the same species, cir- cumstances cause many differences in the formation of heart-wood. The final result is, however, always the same, the natural The thin outside layer of living wood is no longer heavier. In this process, the ducts of the | sufficient to supply the expanded top with willow do not serve as air-tubes, but as | fluid food, no formation of new wood worthy water-canals which pour their contents into | of the name takes place, the limbs die out the purs)).system of the sap-bearing cells, | year by year, and finally only a feeble shoot These canals become obstructed, after the | here and there, with a few leaves of a strange- cuttings have stood for some time in the | ly light color, indicates that there is still a water, by the growth of cells across the | little life in the stem, and this is destined tubes. As soon as the flow of water through | the vessels to the higher part of the limb | is thus interrupted, the rapid increase of | weight ceases. That the cutting does not perish at this stage, but continues to live for several months without any consider- able increase of weight, is due to the fact that after the ducts have been closed the | circulation of water takes place only through the sap-bearing cells and is greatly retard- ed. In another series of plants, as the oaks, acacias, catalpas, amorphas, etc., the ducts of the new wood have been found to be penetrable to the air, but neither air nor water could pass through the old wood, because the older veins were closed by trans- verse cells or gummy substances. The ves- sels of these plants were really air-vessels, for they held only air of the tension of the atmosphere and were destitute of sap. Yet an uninterrupted stream of sap must be kept up in such plants from the root to the top. It takes place in the same manner as in willow-cuttings, the vessels of which have been closed by transverse cells—that is, the sap is filtrated from cell to cell, so that the balance in the pressure of the contents of soon to be extinguished. Those trees whose vessels continue to be filled with water in their old age, as the willows, birches, lin- dens, horse-chestnuts, etc., do not die in this manner, but through a dissolution of their sap-bearing vessels and wood-cells, opening the way for the introduction of fungi, which settle within them and attack their sub- stance. The process of decomposition spreads and the wood is gradually reduced to dirt, till the tree finally falls or is blown to the ground. The French Association.—The French Association for the Advancement of the Sciences held its ninth annual meeting at Rheims. The opening address was deliv- ered by the President, M. Krantz, who re- ferred to the growth of the Association since its organization, just after the close of the Franco-German war, and to the results of the Great Exposition of 1878. The prog- ress of the Association has been continu- ous and marked from year to year, and it now numbers thirty-one hundred and fif- ty-six adherents. It has a capital exceed- ing three hundred thousand francs, and

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142 has distributed funds in aid of investiga- tion to the amount of about seventy thou- sand francs. The Secretary, M. Mercadier, stated that five hundred and seventy-two members had been enrolled since the last meeting at Montpellier to the lst of Janu- ary, 1880, and that five hundred and sixty inscriptions had been received since then. | The Association receives a gift of one thou- sand francs a year from M. Kuhlmann ; the city of Paris and the city of Montpellier, fel- lowing its example, have instituted funds out of the surpluses remaining from the col- lections for entertaining the sessions, to pro- vide small subventions; and M. Brunet has | given twenty-three thousand eight hundred francs for the foundation of an annual sub- vention of one thousand francs. More than three hundred papers had been sent in at the opening of the sessions. English and American Birds.—Mr. H. D. Minot records his impressions of English birds as compared with American in the August number of the “ American Natural- ist,” and his good opinion of American birds is not depreciated by the comparison. Birds are less abundant in England than with us, | but are, on the other hand, more accessible and companionable—for the boys in England do not stone, and the men do not shoot them, at every opportunity. They seem to be heavier and slower of flight than in America. This was observed particularly of the wild pigeon, the swift, and the grouse. Further- more, says Mr. Minot: “I believe I may justly say that as the birds of England are inferior to those of New England in variety, so are they, on the whole, in coloring and in song. Her kingfisher may be as tropical in brilliancy as our humming-bird ; her thrushes, swallows, and finches as pretty as any other of their tribe; but with the exquisite and delicate beauty of our wood-warblers, and with the splendor of our tanagers, orioles, and starlings, she has almost nothing among her familiar friends to compare. Then, among her song-birds, of whom I heard nearly all, she has none corresponding as musicians to our hermit-thrush, house-wren, water-warbler, solitary vireo, song-sparrow, or rose-crested grosbeak; yet all these, and many kindred that I might associate with them here, are good singers. Toall her song- | THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. birds (that I have heard), on the contrary, except two or three, we have singers corre- sponding, and to all absolutely, I may say without prejudice, equals or superiors, as well as I can judge.” The nightingale did not quite meet his anticipations, but he re- cognized that “it had a most wonderful com- pass, and was the greatest of all bird vocal- ists, but with a less individual and exquisite genius than our wood-thrush, yet, to bear that delicious, soft, liquid, warbled trill which she alone can give was a lasting pleasure.” The flight of the skylark “is indeed astonishing, though exaggerated by report... .. His song is an unbroken, ec- static torrent ; but it is shrill, slightly harsh, and not very musical. It is not so rich as our bobolink’s roundelay, and its sweetest notes, though they suggest, do not equal, the canary’s song, except for their intensity of utterance. All his poetry and the secret of his charm are in his flight.” The most indi- vidual and only new type of bird-song Mr. Minot heard was that of the wood-lark, “ the repetition of a delicate whistle (ch’née), shrill at first, intensifying as the bird rises, and, as he drops, falling in tone and pitch so as to die away upon the ear. It is exquisite.” Other singers are the song-thrush, whose music is like our brown thrush’s, but with | less variety and occasional harsh notes ; the blackbird, with a richer and more liquid and at times exceedingly delightful song; the wren, singing with characteristic sweetness and power, the black-cap linnet, and chaf- finch, to whose songs Mr. Minot gives only faint and qualified praise. Robin-redbreast is charming on account of its associations. Mr. Minot earnestly commends the collections of birds in the local museums, especially those at Salisbury and Torquay. Transformation of Sound into Light.— M. Tréve, a ship captain, has described to the French Academy of Sciences an experi- ment with the apparatus called the singing condenser, by which he believes that he pro- duces a transformation of sound into light. If we bring the current of a Ruhmkorff coil to bear upon one of these condensers, the latter will repeat on a larger scale the vi- bratory movement of the coil. The noise which it makes is due to the vibrations of the air in the condenser under the shock of

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NOTES. the electric current. If we put a light pres- sure upon the leaves of the condenser, the sound will be diminished in proportion as the pressure is increased, till it ceases. Re- versing this experiment, M. Tréve put a con- denser into a Geissler tube, and brought the two poles of the inductive current of the Ruhmkorff coil to bear upon it through the electrodes of the tube. The tube was then connected with an air-pump. The condenser sounded as usual when the current was di- rected to it under the ordinary atmospheric pressure; as the air was withdrawn, the sound became more feeble, till, when a vac- uum was produced, it ceased, and instead of it there shone a clear, bright light, sparkling like pearls, from the leaves of the condenser. It was not like the pale and vague light of the Geissler tubes, but something, he says, quite different, sharp and distinct—a con- densed light. Caves in Japan.—Professor Morse also described a number of artificially construct- ed caves which he had examined in various parts of Japan, giving sketches of them | on the blackboard. These caves varied con- siderably in their design, but agreed in their general proportions, and were evidently in- | tended as receptacles for the dead. They were excavated in soft rock on the sides of hills—the apertures small, and in some cases showing grooves for the adjustment of slabs of rock or other material to close them. The absence of remains in these caves could be explained by the fact that in earlier times outlaws and refugees often used them as places of shelter and residence, and laws had finally been passed by the governors of some of the districts, causing the caves to be filled up, or their entrances obstructed, to prevent their being used in this manner. NOTES. Derine an excursion to the White Moun- tains made in July, 1879, Mr. W. H. Pick- ering visited a moving mass of snow in Tuckerman ravine, which he describes as pre- senting many of the phenomena of an Alpine glacier, only on a greatly reduced scale. The surface of the snow was convex, being high- est at the middle; where not exposed to the sun it was very hard, and differed from ice only in color. Stones previously placed 143 upon the surface of the patch showed that the middle had a motion of about eight inch- es per day, the sides moving more slowly. In Mr. Pickering’s opinion, it corresponds with the upper portion of a glacier, and might, perhaps, be called an incipient gla- cier, An illustration of the fixedness of the characters of plants is shown from the analy- sis of specimens of the oleaginous Chinese pea (Soya hispida) from Hungary, China, and France. Only insignificant differences in composition were discovered notwithstand- ing the peas had grown in widely separated countries under very different conditions of climate and soil. Proressor Bensamin Peirce, F. R. S., LL. D., died in Boston October 6, 1880, aged seventy-one years. He graduated at Har- vard College in 1829, was made Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in that institution in 1833, and Perkins Pro- fessor of Astronomy and Mathematics in 1842. THe minute organisms or microbes, which M. Pasteur has shown to be concerned | in epidemics and contagious diseases, are so | very minute that they may sometimes easily escape detection, especially in pure water. | In such case they may be killed, without | being deformed, by certain chemical agents, | among which is osmic acid, and will sink to the bottom in such quantities as to admit of microscopic examination, The deposit may | be examined after several hours (twenty- four or even forty-eight) if the water has been very pure. Coloring reagents mixed with dilute glycerine may also be used with advantage in the work. A CONSIDERABLE number of the workmen engaged in the boring of the tunnel of St. Gothard were prostrated by a dangerous anemia, M. E. Perroncito, who has been investigating the causes of the disease, has found that all those who were affected by it were also troubled by certain species of parasitic worms, the mere presence of which was sufficient to account for the develop- ment of disease. This case is not an iso- lated one. Dr. Giaccone, a medical atten- dant of the St. Gothard company, states that a disease of identical character ap- peared during the boring of the tunnel of Fréjus. Ay ostrich, long on exhibition at Rome, having been suffocated by thrusting its neck between the bars, there were found in its stomach four large stones, eleven smaller ones, seven nails, a necktie pin, an envel- ope, thirteen copper coins, fourteen beads, one French franc, two small keys, a piece of a handkerchief, a silver medal of the Pope, and the cross of an Italian order.

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144 Tue phenomenon of the perforation of rocks by sand carried on the wind has been observed in the Valley of the Rhdne in France. A very violent wind often prevails in the neighborhood of Uzés, and drives large quantities of sand against a band of quartzose pebbles contained in a tertiary soil. The pebbles contain cavities which might be believed to have been made by human hands, but which are really produced by the often renewed friction of the sandy particles against their surface. Dr. Cuan.es T. Jackson, distinguished as a chemist and geologist, and one of the dis- coverers of the anesthetic properties and uses of ether, died at Somerville, Massachu- setts, on the 29th of August, 1880, aged sev- enty-five years. AccorDING to the recent census of New Zealand, the Maories or primitive inhabi- tants are rapidly decreasing, their num- bers, which in 1861 were 55,334, having fallen in seventeen years to 43,595, or about twenty per cent. The causes given for this national decay are love of drink, bad food and clothing, neglect of cleanli- ness, and unwholesome dwellings. The na- tives of Hawaii are disappearing still more rapidly. In 1866 they numbered 57,125, and had fallen off in the next twelve years to 44,088. Tue report of the experts employed to | ascertain the causes of the Tay Bridge dis- aster is in refreshing contrast to the excu- satory treatment of official recklessness and incompetency in this country. The bridge, according to this report, was badly designed, badly constructed, and badly maintained, and it tumbled down on account of defects of structure that became apparent and were patched up some time before the casualty happened. The initial blunders are laid at the door of Sir Thomas Bouch, the designer and constructor of the bridge, and General Hutchinson, the Board of Trade Inspector, has to bear the blame of allowing the bridge to be used when he knew it was in this dan- gerous condition. M. Bovtieny has called attention to the remarkable powers of resistance against chemical agents possessed by insects. Hav- ing put a common fly into the lye of potash, he found it in the best condition on the next day. He also found that weevils, imprisoned for a considerable time in a flask containing caustic stone and coriander-seed, prospered, multiplied, and lived as long as the seed lasted. Samvet Suerman Harpeman, Professor of Comparative Philology in the University of Pennsylvania, died at his home in Chic- kies, Pennsylvania, September 10, 1880, at the age of sixty-eight. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. M. Riverr Carnac, who has explored many of the barrows and burial-mounds of India, has found in them new evidences of | the resemblance of the mounds and their | contents to similar works in Europe. The shape of the tumuli is the same in the East and the West, and they are always placed on the slope of a hill facing the south, Proressor Foret, of Morges, Switzer- land, has just published some interesting observations he has made upon the flicker- ing of gaslights. At a distance of six miles these lights appear to the eye as star-like shining points ; and from a large number of observations Professor Forel has arrived at the conclusion that their flickering is strong- est when the air is still, and becomes weaker as the force of the wind increases. This appearance should not, of course, be con- founded with the flickering which is pro- duced by the wind. The study of the at- mospheric conditions under which the flick- ering takes place might be made the starting- point for investigating the twinkling of the Stars, Fritz Mtier has found a bivalve crus- tacean allied to Cythera, a salt-water genus, living between the leaves of the bromeli- ads, or plants of the pineapple tribe, which grow upon the trees in Brazil. It does not resemble any living entomostracan, but has its nearest known ally in a fossil species of the silurian strata of Bohemia. Miiller has named it Elpidium bromelliarum. He found it in the tree-frequenting bromeliads every- where from the seaside to nearly one hun- dred miles in the interior. As it can not wander from tree to tree, or even from one plant of bromelia to another, its distribution must be effected by beetles or some other bromelia-infecting forms. By putting chloride of aluminum, the vapor of water, and metallic magnesium in a heated porcelain tube, Stanislas Meunier has produced a multitude of microscopic octahedral crystals, of extreme hardness and wholly proof against the action of fuming nitric acid, which he says have the same composition as natural spinelle. He has also produced, by the reaction of water and | chloride of aluminum, hexagonal lamine of corundum crystallized as in nature. In a paper on Japanese Pulmonifera, read at the Boston meeting of the American Association, Professor Morse called atten- tion to the occurrence of a number of spe- ' cies of land-snails in Yezo, identical with forms occurring in New England. He also | alluded to the occurrence of two species of | slugs in Japan which are common in New England. While he had met with most of fresh-water genera of Pulmonifera in Japan, he had never yet found a~ example of Physa.

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VE hhh Zygor Y JEAN BAPTISTE ANDRE DUMAS.