The Popular Science Monthly 1894-02: Vol 44

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Pe : : THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. FEBRUARY, 1894. NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. XIX.—FROM OREATION TO EVOLUTION. By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL.D., L.H.D., EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY. PART IL. THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE. A= the portal of the beautiful cathedral of Freiburg may be seen one of the most interesting of thought fossils. A medisval sculptor, working into stone various theological concep- - tions of his time, has there represented the creation. The Al- mighty, in human form, sits benignly making and placing upon the heavens, like wafers upon paper, sun, moon, and planets; and, at the center, platter-like and largest of all—the earth. The furrows of thought on the Creator’s face show that he is obliged to contrive; the masses of muscle upon his arms show that he is obliged to toil; naturally, then, the sculptors and paint- ers of the medieval and early modern period frequently repre- sented him as the writers whose conceptions they embodied: had done: as, on the seventh day, weary after thought and toil, enjoy- ing well-earned repose and the plaudits of the hosts of heaven. In this fossilized thought at Freiburg, and in others revealing the same idea in sculpture, painting, and engraving during the middle ages and the two centuries following, culminated a devel- opment of human thought which had existed through thousands. of years, and which has controlled the world’s thinking until our own time. Its beginnings lie far back in human history; we find them. among the early records of nearly all the great civilizations, and, VOL, XLIv.—383

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434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. they hold a most prominent place in the various sacred books of the world. In nearly all these there is revealed the conception of a Creator, of whom man is an imperfect image, and who literally and directly created the visible universe with his hands and fin- gers or voice, Among these theories, of especial interest to us are those which controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The Assyrian inscrip- tions which have been recently recovered and given to the Eng- lish-speaking peoples by such scholars as Layard, George Smith, Oppert, Sayce, and others, show that in the ancient religions of Chaldea and Babylonia there was elaborated a narrative of the creation which, in its most important features, must have been the source of that in our own sacred books. Or, at least, it has now become perfectly clear that from the same sources which inspired the accounts of the creation of the universe among the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Phoenician, and other ancient civilizations came the ideas which hold so prominent a _place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In the two accounts imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and also in the third ac- count of which we have indications in the book of Job and in the Proverbs, there is presented, often with the greatest sublimity, that same early conception of the Creator and of the creation—the conception, so natural in the childhood of civilization, of a Creator who is an enlarged human being working literally with his own hands, and of a creation which is “the work of his fingers.” To supplement this view there was then developed the belief in this Creator as one who, having “ from his ample palm Launched forth the rolling planets into space,” sits on high, enthroned “ upon the circle of the heavens,” perpetu- ally controlling and directing them.* Among the early fathers of the Church this view of creation became fundamental; they impressed upon Christendom more and more strongly the belief that the universe was created in a perfectly literal sense by the hands or voice of God. Here and * A somewhat similar series of sculptures representing the Almighty creating the heav- ens and the earth is also to be seen at the cathedral of Upsala and elsewhere. For an ex- act statement of the resemblances which have settled the question among the most eminent scholars in favor of the derivation of the Hebrew cosmogony from that of Assyria, see Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strassburg, 1890, pp. 304, 306; also, Franz Lukas, Die Grundbegriffe in den Kosmographien der alten Vélker, Leipsic, 1898, pp. 35- 46; also George Smith’s Chaldean Genesis, especially the German translation with addi- tions by Delitzsch, Leipsic, 1876, and Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testa- ment, Giessen, 1883, pp. 1-54, ete. See also Renan, Histoire du peuple d’Israel, vol. i, chap. i, L’antique influence babylonienne.

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er Albeholneetae ny NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SUIENCE. 435 there sundry theologians of larger mind attempted to give a more spiritual view regarding some parts of the creative work, and of these St. Augustine was chief. Ready as he was to bend his pow- erful mind to meet the literal text of Scripture, he revolted against the material conception of a creation of the visible uni- verse by the hands and fingers of a Supreme Being, and in this he was followed by Bede and a few others; but the more material conceptions prevailed, and we find them taking shape not only in the sculptures and stained glass of cathedrals,-and in the illumina- tions of missals and psalters, but later, at the close of the middle ages, in the pictured Bibles and in general literature. Into the Anglo-Saxon mind this ancient material conception of the creation was riveted by two poets whose works appealed especially to the deeper religious feelings. In the seventh century Ceedmon paraphrased the account given in Genesis, bringing out this material conception in the most literal form; and a thousand years later Milton developed out of the various statements in the Old Testament, mingled with a theology regarding “the creative word” which had been drawn from the New, his description of the creation by the second person in the Trinity, than which nothing could be more literal and material.* “He took the golden compasses, prepared In God’s eternal store, to circumscribe This universe and all created things. One foot he centered, and the other turned Round through the vast profundity obscure, And said, ‘ Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds : This be thy just circumference, O world!’ But as the evolution of theology proceeded, two new points in this materialistic view were especially developed. The first of these was that no material substance existed before the creation of the material universe—that “God created everything out of nothing.” Some venturesome thinkers, basing their reasoning upon the first verses of Genesis, hinted at a different view—name- ly, that the mass, “without form and void,” existed before the universe; but this doctrine was soon swept out of sight. The vast majority of the fathers were explicit on this point. Tertullian especially was very severe against those who took any other view than that generally accepted as orthodox; he declared that, if there had been any pre-existing matter out of which the world was formed, Scripture would have mentioned it; that by not men- tioning it God has given us a clear proof that there was no such thing ; and he threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposite view, * For Ceedmon, see Bouterwek’s edition, Giitersloh, 1854, vol. i; for Milton, see Para- dise Lost, book vii, pp. 225-230, :

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436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. with “the woe which impends on all who add to or take away from the written word.” St. Augustine, who shows signs of a belief in a pre-existence of matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple reasoning that, “although the world had been made of some material, that very same material must have been made out of nothing.” In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadily followed. The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created everything out of nothing; and at the present hour the great majority of the faithful—whether Catholic or Protestant—are taught the same doctrine. On this point the syllabus of Pius IX and the Westminster Catechism fully agree.* The other point of which there came a great theological de- velopment referred to the time occupied by the Almighty in the creation. The natural tendency of theology was, of course, more and more to glorify the great miracle; and, as a result of this tendency, it began to be held that the so-called Mosaic account of the creation in six days must be subordinated to the text, “He spake, and they were made,” and that in some mysterious manner God created the universe in six days, yet brought all things into existence in a moment. Origen and Athanasius especially pro- moted this view in the East, and St. Augustine in the West. Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views, which to the natural mind seemed absolutely contradictory ; but by ingenious use or suppression of facts, by dexterous play upon phrases, and by plentiful metaphysics a reconciliation was effected, and men came at least to believe that they believed in a creation of the universe instantaneous and at the same time in six days.} Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so fruitful as to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and Western, developed out of the double account in Genesis, with the indications of the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the book of Job, a vast mass of sacred science bearing upon this point. As re- gards the whole work of creation, stress was laid upon certain oc- cult powers in numerals. Philo Judeus had declared that the world was created in six days because “of all numbers six is the most productive”; he had explained the creation of the heavenly * For Tertullian, see Tertullian against Hermogenes, chaps. xx and xxii; for St. Augustine regarding “creation from nothing,” see the De Genesi contra Manichwos, lib. i, cap. vi; for St. Ambrose, see the Hexameron, lib. i, cap. iv; for the decree of the Fourth Lateran Council, and the view received in the Church to-day, see the article Crea- tion in Addis and Arnold’s Catholic Dictionary. + For Origen, see his Contra Celsum, cap. xxxvi, xxxvii; also his De Principibus, cap. v; for St. Augustine, see his De Genesi contra Manichwos and De Genesi ad Litteram, passim ; for Athanasius, see his Discourses against the Arians, ii, 48, 49.

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NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 437 bodies on the fourth day by “the harmony of the number four”; of the animals on the fifth day by the five senses; of man on the sixth day by the same virtues in the number six which had caused it to be set as a limit to the creative work; and, greatest of all, the rest on the seventh day by the vast mass of mysterious vir- tues in the number seven. St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pronounce the work of the second day “ good” is to be found in the fact that there is something essentially evil in the number two, and this was echoed centuries afterward afar off in Britain by Bede. St. Augustine brought this view to bear upon the Church in the following statement: “There are three classes of numbers— the more than perfect, the perfect, and the less than perfect, ac- cording as the sum of them is greater than, equal to, or less than the original number. Six is the first perfect number; wherefore‘ we must not say that six is a perfect number because God finished all his works in six days, but that God finished all his works in, six days because six is a perfect number.” Reasoning of this sort echoed along through the medizsval Church until a year after the discovery of America. It was re- echoed in the Nuremberg Chronicle as follows: “ The creation of things is explained by the number six, the parts of which, one, two, and three, assume the form of a triangle.” This view of the creation of the universe in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, as stated in the first of the accounts given in Genesis, became virtually universal. Peter Lombard and Hugo of St. Victor, authorities of vast weight in the Church, gave it their sanction in the twelfth century, and im- pressed it for ages upon the mind of the Church. Both these lines of speculation—as to the creation of every- thing out of nothing, and the reconciling of the instantaneous creation of the universe with its creation in six days—were still further developed by sundry great thinkers of the middle ages. St. Hilary, of Poictiers, reconciled the two conceptions as fol- lows: “ For, although according to Moses there is an appearance of regular order in the fixing of the firmament, the laying bare of the dry land, the gathering together of the waters, the formation of the heavenly bodies, and the arising of living things from land and water, yet the creation of the heavens, earth, and other ele- ments is seen to be the work of a single moment.” St. Thomas Aquinas drew from St. Augustine a subtle distinc- tion which for ages eased the difficulties in the case: he taught in effect that God created the substance of things in a moment, but gave to the work of separating, shaping, and adorning this crea- tion six days. In the seventeenth century the old view, in exact accordance

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438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. with the first of the two accounts in Genesis, was sanctioned by Bossuet. In his universal history he declared, “ Moses teaches us that this Potent Architect wished to create the universe in six days to show that he did not act under necessity or blind impetu- osity, as certain philosophers imagine.” * The early reformers accepted and developed the same view, and Luther especially showed himself equal to the occasion. With his usual boldness he declared, first, that Moses “ spoke properly and plainly, and neither allegorically nor figuratively,” and that therefore “the world with all creatures was created in six days.” And then he goes on to show how, by a great miracle, the whole creation was also instantaneous. Melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created out of nothing and in a mysterious way, both in an instant and in six days, citing the text: “He spake, and they were made; he com- manded, and they were created.” Calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and laid especial stress on the creation in six days; having called attention to the fact that the biblical chronology shows the world to be not quite six thousand years old and that it is now near its end, he says that “creation was extended through six days that it might not be tedious for us to occupy the whole of life in the considera- tion of it.” Peter Martyr clinched the matter by declaring: “So impor- tant is it to comprehend the work of creation in the faith that we see the creed of the Church take this as its starting point. Were this article taken away there would be no original sin, the prom- ise of Christ would become void, and all the vital force of our religion would be destroyed.” The Westminster divines in draw- ing up their Confession of Faith specially laid it down as neces- sary to believe that all things visible and invisible were created not only out of nothing but in exactly six days. Nor were the Roman divines less strenuous than the Protes- tant reformers regarding the necessity of holding closely to the so-called Mosaic account of creation. As late as the middle of * For Philo Judsus, see his The Creation of the World, chap. iii; for St. Augustine on the powers of numbers in creation, see his De Genesi ad Litteram, iv, ch. ii; for Peter Lom- * bard, see the Sententia, lib. ii, dist. xv, 5; and for Hugo of St. Victor, see De Sacramentis, lib. i, pars i; also, Annotat. Elucidat. in Pentateuchum, cap. v, vi, vii; for St. Hilary, see De Trinitate, lib. xii; for St. Thomas Aquinas, see his Summa Theologica, quest. Ixxxiv, art. i and ii; the passage in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, is in fol. iii; for Bossuet, see his Discours sur I‘Histoire Universelle; for the sacredness of the number seven among the Babylonians, see especially Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, pp. 21, 22; also George Smith ef al.; for general ideas on the occult powers of various numbers, espe- cially the number seven, and the influence of these ideas on theology and science, see my chapter on astronomy.

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NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 439 the eighteenth century, when Buffon attempted to state simple geological truths, the theological faculty of the Sorbonne forced him to make and to publish a most ignominious recantation which ended with these words: “I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses.” * But to these discussions was added yet another, which, be- ginning in the early days of the Church, was handed down the ages until it has died out among the theologians of our own time. In the first of the biblical accounts light is created and the distinction between day and night thereby made on the first day, while the sun and moon are not created until the fourth day. Masses of profound theological and pseudo-scientific reasoning have been developed to account for this—masses so great that for ages they have obscured the simple fact that the original text is a precious revelation to us of one of the most ancient and uni- versal of recorded beliefs—the belief that light and darkness are conditions or entities independent of the heavenly bodies, and that the sun, moon, and stars exist not merely to maintain or in- crease light but to “divide the day from the night, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years,” and “ to rule the day and the night.” Of this belief we find survivals among the early fathers, and especially in St. Ambrose; in his work on creation he tells us: “We must remember that the light of day is one thing and the light of the sun, moon, and stars another—the sun by his rays appearing to add luster to the daylight, For before sunrise the day dawns but is not in full refulgence, for the sun adds still further to its splendor.” This view became one of the “treasures of sacred knowledge committed to the Church,” and was faith- fully received by the middle ages. The mediswval mysteries and miracle plays give curious evidences of this: In a performance of the creation, when God separates light from darkness, the stage direction is, “Now a painted cloth is to be exhibited, one half black and the other half white.” “This theory, leaving out all quibblings and special pleadings, which in the light of modern * For Luther, see his Commentary on Genesis, 1545, introduction, and his comments on chap. i, verse 12; the quotations from Luther’s commentary are taken mainly from the translation by Henry Cole, D. D., Edinburgh, 1858; for Melanchthon, see Loci Theologici, in Melanchthon’s opera, ed. Bretschneider, vol. xxi, pp. 269, 270; also pp. 687, 688; for the citations from Calvin, see his Commentary on Genesis (Opera omnia, Amsterdam, 1671, tom. i, cap. ii, vol. i, p. 8); also in the Institutes, Allen’s translation, London, 1838, vol. i, chap. xv, pp. 126, 127; for Peter Martyr, see his Commentary on Genesis, cited by Zick- ler, vol. i, p. 690; for the articles in the Westminster Confession of Faith, see hap. iv for Buffon’s recantation, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, chap. iii, p. 57.

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440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. knowledge are fast coming to be recognized as profoundly im- moral, was without doubt the understanding and the belief of the person or persons who compiled from the Chaldean and other earlier statements the account of creation in the first of our sacred books.* Thus down to a period almost within living memory it was held, virtually “always, everywhere, and by all,” that the uni- verse; as we now see it, was created literally and directly by the voice or hands of the Almighty, or by both—out of nothing—in an instant or in six days, or in both—and for the convenience of the dwellers upon the earth, which was at the base and foundation of the whole structure. But there had been implanted along through the ages germs of another growth in human thinking, some of them even as early as the Babylonian period. In the Assyrian inscriptions we find recorded the Chaldeo-Babylonian idea of a development of the uni- verse out of the primeval flood or “ great deep,” and of the animal creation out of the earth and sea. This idea, recast, partially at _ least, into monotheistic form, passed naturally into the sacred books of the neighbors and pupils of the Chaldeans—the Hebrews; but its development in Christendom afterward was checked, as we shall hereafter see, by the more powerful influence of other inherited statements which appealed more simply and powerfully to the mind of the Church. Far more striking was the effect of this idea, rewrought by the early Ionian philosophers, to whom it was doubtless transmitted from the Chaldeans through the Phoenicians. In the minds of Ionians like Anaximander and Anaximenes it was most strik- ingly developed ; the first of these conceived of the visible uni- verse as the result of processes of evolution, and the latter pressed further the same mode of reasoning, dwelling on agencies in cos- mic development recognized in modern science. This geneal idea of evolution in Nature thus took strong hold upon Greek thought and was developed in many ways, some wonderfully ingenious, some curiously perverse. Plato, indeed, withstood it; but Aristotle sometimes developed it so as to re- mind us of modern views. * For scriptural indications of the independent existence of light and darkness, compare with the first verses of the first chapter of Genesis such passages as Job xxxviii, 19, 24; for the general prevalence of this early view, see Lukas, Kosmogonie, pp. 31, 33, 41, 74, and passim ; for the view of St. Ambrose regarding the creation of light and of the sun, see his Hexameron, lib. 4, cap. iii; for an excellent general statement, see Huxley, Mr. Gladstone and Genesis, in the Nineteenth Century, 1886, reprinted in his Essays on Contro- verted Questions, London, 1892, note, pp. 126 ef seg.; for the acceptance in the miracle plays of the scriptural idea of light and darkness as independent creations, see Wright, Essays on Archeological Subjects, vol. ii, p. 178.

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NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 441 Among the Romans Lucretius caught much from it, extend- ing the evolutionary process virtually to all things. In the early Church, as we have seen, the idea of a creation direct, material, and by means like those used by man, was all- powerful for the exclusion of conceptions based on evolution. From the more simple and crude of the two views of creation given in the Babylonian legends, and thence incorporated into Genesis, rose the stream of orthodox thought on the subject, which grew into a flood and swept on through the middle ages and into modern times. Yet here and there in the midst of this flood were to be seen high grounds of thought held by strong men. Scotus Erigena and Duns Scotus, among the schoolmen, bewildered though they were, had caught some rays of this an- cient light, and passed on to their successors, in modified form, doctrines of an evolutionary process in the universe. In the latter half of the sixteenth century these evolutionary theories seemed to take more definite form in the mind of Giordano Bruno, who evidently divined the fundamental fact of what is now known as the “nebular hypothesis”; but with his murder by the Inquisition at Rome this idea seemed utterly to disappear— dissipated by the flames which in 1600 consumed his body on the Campo del Fiore. Yet within a generation after Bruno’s death the world was introduced into a new realm of thought in which an evolution theory of the visible universe was sure to be rapidly developed. For there came, one after the other, five of the greatest men our race has produced—Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton—and when their work was done the old theological concep- tion of the universe was gone ; “ the spacious firmament on high,” “the crystalline spheres,” the Almighty enthroned upon the circle of the heavens, and with his own hands, or with angels as his agents, keeping sun, moon, and planets in motion for the bene- fit of the earth, opening and closing the “ windows of heaven,” letting down upon the earth the “ waters above the firmament,” setting his bow in the cloud, hanging out signs and wonders, hurling comets, casting forth the lightnings to scare the wicked, and shaking the earth in his wrath—all this has disappeared. These five men had given a new divine revelation to the world; and through the last, Newton, had come a vast new concep- tion, destined to be fatal to the old theory of creation, for he had shown throughout the universe, in place of almighty caprice, all- pervading law. The bitter opposition of theology to the first four of these men is well known; but the fact is not so widely known that Newton, in spite of his deeply religious spirit, was also strongly opposed. It was vigorously urged against him that by his statement of the law of gravitation he “took from God

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_ 442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. that direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him in Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism,” and that he “substituted gravitation for Providence.” But, more than this, these men gave a new basis for the theory of evolution as distin- guished from the theory of creation. Especially worthy of note is it that the great work of Descartes, erroneous as many of its deductions were, and, in view of the lack of physical knowledge in his time, must be, had done much to weaken the old-conception. His theory of a universe brought out of all-pervading matter, wrought into orderly arrangement by movements in accordance with physical laws—though it was but @ provisional hypothesis—had done much to draw men’s minds from the old theological view of creation; it was an example of intellectual honesty arriving at errors, but thereby aiding the ad- vent of truths. Crippled though Descartes was by his almost morbid fear of the Church, this part of his work was no small factor in bringing in that attitude of mind which led to a recep- tion of the thoughts of more unfettered thinkers. Thirty years later came, in England, an effort of a different sort, but with a similar result. In 1678 Ralph Cudworth pub- lished his Intellectual System of the Universe. To this day he remains, in breadth of scholarship, in strength of thought, in tol- erance, and in honesty, one of the greatest glories of the English Church, and his work was worthy of him. He purposed to build a fortress which should protect Christianity against all dangerous theories of the universe, ancient or modern. The foundations of the structure were laid with old thoughts thrown often into new and striking forms; but, as the superstructure arose more and more into view, while genius marked every part of it, features appeared which gave the rigidly orthodox serious misgivings. From the old theories of direct personal action on the universe by the Almighty he broke utterly. He dwelt on the action of law, rejected the continuous exercise of miraculous intervention, point- ed out the fact that in the natural world there are “errors” and “bungles,” and argued vigorously in favor of the origin and main- tenance of the universe as a slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an inward principle. The Balaks of seventeenth-century orthodoxy might well condemn this honest Balaam. Toward the end of the next century a still more profound genius, Immanuel Kant, took up the theory, and in the light of Newton’s great utterances gave it a consistency which it had never before had; and about the same time Laplace gave it yet greater strength by mathematical reasonings of wonderful power and extent, thus implanting firmly in modern thought the idea that our own solar system and others, suns, planets, satellites, and

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NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 443 their various movements, distances, and magnitudes, necessarily result from the obedience of nebulous masses to natural laws, Throughout the theological world there was an outcry at once against “atheism,” and war raged fiercely. Herschel and others pointed out many nebulous patches yet in the gaseous form. They showed by physical and mathematical demonstrations that the hypothesis accounted for the great body of facts, and, despite . clamor, they were gaining ground, when the improved telescopes resolved some of the patches of nebulous matter into multitudes of stars. The opponents of the nebular hypothesis were over- joyed; they now sang pans to astronomy, because, as they said, it had proved the truth of Scripture. They had jumped to the conclusion that all nebule must be alike; that if some are made up of systems of stars, all must be so made up; that none can be masses of attenuated gaseous matter, because some are not. Science halted for a time. The accepted doctrine became this: That the only reason why all the nebule are not resolved into distinct stars is that our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful. But in time came the discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum analysis, and this was supplemented by Fraunhofer’s discovery that the spectrum of an ignited gaseous body is non-continuous, with interrupting lines; and this, in 1846, by Draper’s discovery that the spectrum of an ignited solid is continuous, with no inter- rupting lines. And now the spectroscope was turned upon the nebule, and about one third of them were found to be gaseous, Here, then, was excellent ground for the inference that in these nebulous masses at different stages of condensation—some ap- parently mere patches of mist, some with luminous centers—we have the process of development actually going on, and observa- tions like those of Lord Rosse and Arrest gave yet further confir- mation to the scientific view. Then came the great contribution of the nineteenth century to physics, aiding to explain a most important part of the vast process by the mechanical theory of heat. Again the nebular hypothesis came forth stronger than ever, and about 1850 the beautiful experiment of Plateau on the rota- tion of a fluid globe came in to illustrate if not to confirm it; even so determined a défender of orthodoxy as Mr. Gladstone at last acknowledged the nebular hypothesis as probably true. Here, too, was exhibited that form of surrendering theological views to science under the claim that science concurs with the- ology, which we have seen in so many other fields; and as typical an example may be given, which, however restricted in its scope, throws light on the process by which such surrenders are ob- tained. A few years since one of the most noted professors of chemistry in the city of New York, under the auspices of one of

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444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. its largest churches, gave a lecture which, as was claimed in the public prints and in placards posted in the streets, was to show that science supports the theory of creation given in the sacred books ascribed to Moses. A large audience assembled, and a bril- liant series of elementary experiments with oxygen, hydrogen, and carbonic acid was concluded by the Plateau demonstration. It was beautifully made. As the colored globule of oil, represent- ing the earth, was revolved in a transparent medium of equal density, as it became first flattened at the poles, as rings then broke forth from it, and revolved about it, and, finally, as some of these rings broke into satellites, which for a moment continued to circle about the central mass, the audience, as well they might, rose and burst into rapturous applause. Thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the thanks of the audience to the eminent professor for “this perfect demon- stration of the exact and literal conformity of ithe statements given in Holy Scripture with the latest results of science.” The motion was carried unanimously and with applause, and the audi- ence dispersed, feeling that a great service had been rendered to orthodoxy. “ Sancta simplicitas !” * What this incident exhibited on a small scale has been seen elsewhere with more distinguished actors and on a broader stage. Scores of theologians, chief among whom of late, in zeal if not in knowledge, has been Mr. Gladstone, have endeavored to “ recon- cile” the two accounts in Genesis with each other and with the truths regarding the origin of the universe gained by astronomy, geology, geography, physics,and chemistry. The result has been recently stated by an eminent theologian, the Hulsean Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He declares, “No * For an interesting reference to the outcry against Newton, see McCosh, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, New York, 1890, pp. 103, 104; for germs of an evolutionary view among the Babylonians, see George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 74, 75; for a germ of the same thought in Lucretius, see his De Natura Rerum, lib. v, 187-194, 447-454; for Bruno’s conjecture (in 1591), see Jevons, Principles of Science, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 299; for Kant’s statement, see his Naturgeschichte des Himmels ; for his part in the nebular hypothesis, see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. i, p. 266 ; for value of Plateau’s beautiful experiment, very cautiously estimated, see Jevons, vol, ii, p. 36; also Elisée Reclus, The Earth, translated by Woodward, vol. i, pp. 14-18, for an estimate still more careful; for a general account of discoveries of the nature of nebulz by spectroscope, see Draper, Conflict between Religion and Science ; for a careful discussion regarding the spectra of solid, liquid, and gascous bodies, see Schellen, Spectrum Analysis, pp. 100 ef seg. ; for a very thorough discussion of the bearings of discoveries made by spectrum analysis upon the nebular hypothesis, ibid., pp. 532-537 ; for a presen- tation of the difficulties yet unsolved, see an article by Plummer in the London Popular Science Review for January, 1875; for an excellent short summary of recent observations and thought on this subject, see T. Sterry Hunt, Address at the Priestley Centennial, pp. 7, 8; for an interesting modification of this hypothesis, see Proctor’s writings. Lesa Pas ad , eS

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NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 445 attempt at reconciling Genesis with the exacting requirements of modern sciences has ever been known to succeed without entail- ing a degree of special pleading or forced interpretation to which, in such a question, we should be wise to have no recourse.” The revelations of another group of sciences, though some- times bitterly opposed and sometimes “reconciled” by theolo- gians, have finally set the whole question at rest. First, there have come the biblical critics—earnest Christian scholars, work- ing for the sake of truth—and these have revealed beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt the existence of at least two dis- tinct accounts of creation in our book of Genesis, which can sometimes be made to agree, but which are generally absolutely at variance with each other. These scholars have further shown the two accounts to be not the cunningly devised fables of priest- craft, but evidently fragments of earlier legends, myths, and the- ologies, accepted in good faith and brought together for the noblest of purposes by those who put in order the first of our sacred books. Next have come the archeologists and philologists, the de- voted students of ancient monuments and records; of these are such as Oppert, George Smith, the Rev. Prof. Sayce of Oxford, Jensen, Schrader, and a noble phalanx of similarly devoted schol- ars, who have deciphered a multitude of ancient texts, especially the inscriptions found in the great library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, and have discovered therein an account of the origin of the world identical in its most important features with the later accounts in our own book of Genesis. These men have had the courage to point out these facts and to connect them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylo- nian myths, legends, and theories were far earlier than those of the Hebrews, which so strikingly resemble them, and which we have in our sacred books; and they have also shown us hew natural it was that the Jewish accounts of the creation should have been obtained at that remote period when the earliest He- brews were emong the Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew poetic accounts of creation were drawn either from the sacred traditions. of these earlier nations or from antecedent sources common to various ancient nations. In a summary which in its profound thought and fearless in- tegrity does honor not only to himself but to the great position which he holds, the Rev. Dr. Driver, Royal Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church at Oxford, has recently stated the case fully and fairly. Having pointed out the fact that the He- brews were one people out of many who thought upon the origin of the universe, he says that they “framed theories to account for the beginnings of the earth and man”; that “they either did this

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446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, for themselves or borrowed those of their neighbors”; that “ of the theories current in Assyria and Pheenicia fragments have been preserved, and these exhibit points of resemblance with the biblical narrative sufficient to warrant the inference that both are derived from the same cycle of tradition.” After giving some extracts from the Chaldean creation tablets he says: “In the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the biblical narrative is drawn from the same source as these other records. The biblical historians, it is plain, derived their materials from the best human sources available. . «+ The materials which with other nations were combined into the crudest physical theories or associated with a grotesque poly- theism were vivified and transformed by the inspired genius of the Hebrew historians, and adapted to become the vehicle of profound religious truth.” Not less honorable to the sister university a to himself is the statement recently made by the Rev. Prof. Ryle, Hulsean Pro- fessor of Divinity at Cambridge. He says that to suppose that a Christian “must either renounce his confidence in the achieve- ments of scientific research or abandon his faith in Scripture is a monstrous perversion of Christian freedom.” He declares: “ The old position is no longer tenable ; a new position has to be taken up at once, prayerfully chosen, and hopefully held.” He then goes on to compare the Hebrew story of creation with the earlier stories developed among kindred peoples, and especially with the Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony, and shows that they are from the Same source. He points out that any attempt to explain particu- lar features of the story into harmony with the modern scientific ideas necessitates “a non-natural” interpretation; but he says that if we adopt a natural interpretation “we shall consider that the Hebrew description of the visible universe is unscientific as judged by modern standards, and that it shares the limitations of the imperfect knowledge of the age at which it was committed to writing.” Regarding the account in Genesis of man’s physical origin, he says that it “is expressed in the simple terms of pre- historic legend, of unscientific pictorial description.” In these statements and in a multitude of others made by emi- nent Christian investigators in other countries is indicated what the victory is which has now been fully won over the older the- ology. Thus, from the Assyrian researches as well as from other sources, it has come to appear and to be acknowledged by the. most eminent scholars at the leading seats of Christian learning that the accounts of creation with which for nearly two thousand years all scientific discoveries have had to be “reconciled ”—the accounts which blocked the way of Copernicus, and Galileo, and

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> & i fi = d NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 447 Newton, and Laplace—were simply transcribed or evolved from a mass of myths and legends largely derived by the Hebrews from their ancient relations with Chaldea, rewrought in a monotheistic sense, imperfectly reconciled, and then thrown into a poetic form in the sacred books which we have inherited. On one hand, then, we have the various groups of men devoted to the physical sciences all converging toward the proofs that the universe, as we at present know it, is the result of an evolutionary process—that is, of the gradual working of physical laws upon an early condition of matter; on the other hand, we have other great groups of men devoted to historical, philological, and archzeologi- cal science whose researches all converge toward the conclusion that our sacred texts were the result of an evolution from an early chaos of rude opinion. The great body of theologians who have so long resisted the conclusions of the men of science have claimed to be fighting es- pecially for “the truth of Scripture,” and their final answer to the simple conclusions of science regarding the evolution of the material universe has been the ery, “ The Bible is true.” And they are right—though in a sense nobler than they have dreamed. Science, while conquering them, has found in our Scriptures a far nobler truth than that literal historical exactness for which theo- logians have so long and so vainly contended. More and more as we consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the great sacred books of the world is found in their revelation of the steadyiag, striving of our race, in obedience to divine law, after higher con- ceptions, beliefs, and aspirations, both in morals and religion. _ Unfolding this long-continued effort, each of the great sacred books of the world is precious, and all in the highest sense are true. Not one of them, indeed, conferms to the measure of what mankind has now reached in historical and scientific truth; to make a claim to such conformity is folly, for it simply exposes those who make it and the books for which it is made to loss of their just influence. That to which the great sacred books of the world conform, and our own most of all, is the evolution of the highest concep- tions, beliefs, and aspirations of our race from.its childhood through the great turning points in its history. Herein lies the truth of all bibles, and especially of our own. Of vast value they indeed often are as a record of historical outward fact; recent researches in the East are constantly increasing this value; but it is not for this that we prize them most—they are eminently precious, not as a record of outward fact, but as a mirror of the evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. They are true because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing

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448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the evolution of truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of human- ity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Per- sia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming more and more precious; and modern science in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old —the reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolu- tion for that of creation—has added and is steadily adding a new revelation divinely inspired. In the light of these two evolutions, then—one of the visi- ble universe, the other of a sacred creation-legend—science and theology have at last been reconciled. A great step in this reconciliation was recently seen at the main center of theologi- cal thought among English-speaking people, when, in the col- lection of essays entitled Lux Mundi, emanating from the col- lege established in these latter days as the fortress of orthodoxy at Oxford, the legendary character of the creation accounts in our sacred books was acknowledged, and when an archbishop suggested that the “Holy Spirit may at times have made use of myth and legend.” * In a communication to the Belgian Geological Society M. Dallo has called at- tention to some traly scientific conceptions expressed or foreshadowed by Dante in bis great poem, including such truths as the moon the principal cause of the tides; the level, except for the relief of the waves, of the surface of the sea; the existence of a centripetal force, illustrated in the fall of bodies; the spherical form of the earth; that the land above the sea is simply a protuberance from the surface of the globe; that the continents are grouped in the northern hemisphere ; the existence of universal attraction; that the elasticity of vapors is a motive power; that the continents have been upraised; and the existence of the chem- ical elements, more or less as they were conceived by Lavoisier. * For the first citations above made, see The Cosmogony of Genesis, by the Rev. 8. R. Driver, D. D., Canon of Christ Church and Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, in The Expositor for January, 1886 ; for the second series of citations, see The Early Narrations of Genesis, by Herbert Edward Ryle, Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, London, 1892. For evidence that even the stiffest of Scotch Presbyterians have now come to dis- card the old literal biblical narrative of creation and to regard the declaration of the West- minster Confession thereon as a “disproved theory of creation,” see Principal John Tul- loch, in Contemporary Review, March, 1877, on Religious Thought in Scotland—especially page 550.

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A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 449 NOTES FROM A MARINE. BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. By Pror. WILLIAM 8, WINDLE. te the past fifteen years it has been customary for the mem- bers of the Biological Department of the Johns Hopkins University to devote the summer vacations to pursuing their studies on the seashore. “The Johns Hopkins Marine Labora- tory,” as the organization is called, is under the direction of Prof. W. K. Brooks, and has been confined to no permanent location, but has been moved from place to place as the wishes of those in- terested demanded. Many seasons were spent in studying animal forms found in waters of the Chesapeake Bay. For a few years the laboratory was stationed at Beaufort, N. C. Then Green Turtle and Biminy Islands of the Bahamas were chosen as sta- tions for biological research. Finally, the organization went so far south as the island of Jamaica. The site of the present marine laboratory is Port Henderson, Jamaica, where it was located two years ago. To secure best results in research upon embryonic forms, our party set out early for the sea. With full equipment for the laboratory we boarded the steamer Ryvingen and sailed down the Chesapeake Bay en route for the West Indies. The voyage was uneventful for the most part. After the lighthouses and white sandy hills of the Eastern Shore had disappeared be- neath the horizon, we continued our course steadily to the south- east, with little to entertain us but occasional schools of flying fish and the flock of “ Mother Carey’s chickens” which followed our boat all the way. Large jellyfish and ctenophores floated by occasionally. On the fourth day out we passed Watling’s Island, or San Salvador, and other smaller islands of the Bahamas. Next day we rounded the eastern coast of Cuba, and by using the cap- tain’s field glass could easily determine the characteristic features of the island. Its mountains appear quite high and rugged in the interior, and they slope rapidly by foothills and broad terraces down to the sea. The shores of Cuba afforded us our first glimpse of cocoanut palms, banana and sugar-cane plantations. It was a beautifully clear and starry night when we sailed into Windward Passage. The gray mountains of Cuba outlined against the northern horizon were slowly fading from view, when the cres- cent moon arose out of the waves in the east. The north star hung low, and in the south the Southern Cross appeared to us for the first time. With such new and charming surroundings we spent the evening very delightfully on deck. Not the least inter- esting was the phosphorescence in the waves and spray. Each crested wave, as it receded from the bow, seemed alive with hosts of glowing fireflies. It was a grand sight to watch the turbulent, VOL, XLIv.—34 — ————— ee ewe ee te ND SAR AP AY ELI IS Eee erry

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450 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. sparkling stream that followed in the ship’s wake. Disturbed by the motion of propeller and rudder, millions of minute phospho- rescent organisms were thrown to the surface like brilliant, spark- ling gems. Now and then large ctenophores emerged from the depths, displaying rich halos of light for a moment, then disap- peared in the surf. In no other place did we notice such rich dis- plays of phosphorescence. After a six-days’ voyage we landed safely at Port Henderson, on the north side of Jamaica. Here we took carriages for a drive of sixty miles across the island to Kingston, its capital. The road Half-way| AN maces PORT Salt Pona Hill: Salt Pond wy, Say Fie. 1.—Tae Vicinity or Kineston. we traveled was a well-built public thoroughfare, fully equaling the American “gravel road.” It followed the coast line pretty closely for twenty-eight miles to Annotto Bay, then extended into the interior by way of the Wag Water River. Reaching the “divide” of the Blue Mountains, the road rapidly descended by a circuitous route into the broad valleys of the south side of the island. This drive across Jamaica affords the tourist a fair idea of its life and scenery. The majestic cocoanut palm, the luxuri- ant banana plant, and the feathery bamboo grace the landscape in every direction. The primitive bamboo cabins, with their dusky occupants, the barefooted market women, “John Crow” the buz- zard, and “Old Joe” the pelican, soon become familiar objects to the tourist in the West Indies. On reaching Kingston we found our way through its narrow streets to Market Wharf, where we took passage on the steam launch Firefly for Port Henderson, our final destination. This is a little village of a dozen or more

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A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 451 buildings lying across the harbor to the southwest about four miles from Kingston. It isa seaside resort for Jamaicans of leisure, and a more attractive and suitable spot about the harbor could not have been chosen. In the rear of the village Salt Pond Hill rises abruptly to a height of one thousand feet or more, and upon its highest point are the ruins of an old stone fort known as “ Rodney’s Lookout.” From this position a glorious view of the surrounding country is obtained. Here, in the early days of pirates and buccaneers, Admiral Rodney had his stronghold, whence he could look out upon the harbor and sea and detect the approach of enemies. From the veranda of our laboratory we had a grand view of Kingston Harbor, in which the entire fleet of the English navy might anchor with safety. Following the low, sandy beach to the left we see the fishermen’s hamlets and old Port Augusta. Across the harbor the city of Kingston appears in dim outline; and off to the right, upon the end of the “ pallisadoes” protecting the har- bor, lies old Port Royal, which was nearly destroyed by the earth- quake of 1692. To the southeast the harbor opened out into the deep waters of the Caribbean Sea. The beautiful landscape stretching out thus before us was completed by the Blue Moun- tains, which formed a dark gray background. The highest point of the range is Blue Mountain Peak (7,560 feet). It appears in bold relief above the range, twelve miles east of Kingston. Two years ago some of our party made the ascent of the mountain. They encamped on the peak overnight, and enjoyed the rare luxury of soft beds of tree-fern leaves improvised for the occa- sion. The location of our laboratory offered many facilities for biological research. Numerous coral reefs, mangrove swamps, and salt ponds were all within an hour’s sail from our port. Good opportunity for study is also found on land. The hills in the rear and the broad valley of the Rio Cobre, not far away, are stocked with land crabs, lizards, termites, scorpions, and the like. Bird life is not so abundant as we had anticipated, but to a botanist the flora of Jamaica offers a most attractive field for study. By those who are acquainted with the coast of Jamaica, Port Henderson is thought to be the most suitable location on the island for a permanent marine laboratory. It offers many advantages for study of life in tropical waters; its collecting grounds and its facilities for “towing” and “dredging” are next in value to those of the Gulf Stream. The location is in the immediate vicin- ity of Kingston, whence the temporary wants of the party may be readily supplied. It is also in direct communication with New York and Liverpool by steamer and cable. With a view, then, of locating a permanent laboratory for promoting the study of. marine biology, a plan is at present being considered by promi-

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A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 453 nent biologists at home and abroad for establishing an “ Inter- national Marine Biological Station” at the place above named. It is sincerely hoped that the preliminary steps taken in this direction may lead to the establishment of the much-needed in- stitution on American shores. The building which we called our “ Marine Laboratory” was a large, one-story stone structure, known as the “Sister Houses.” It was light, airy, and comfortable, affording ample room for our party of seven. Each member of the company occupied a sepa- rate table, and upon this his microscope was placed, together with a varied collection of specimens, “ preserving ” fluids, dishes, scal- pels, etc., the whole forming a veritable “ biologist’s corner.” In other parts of the building were our nets, buckets, jars, gun, and dredge, also books and chemical reagents, arranged as occasion and space suggested. Our usual programme for the day began with early coffee and toast ; then we repaired to our sloop with nets, water glass, dredge, etc., and rowed out to the coral reefs or so-called cays. Landing on one of these, we waded about in water, varying in depth from tiny waves that rippled over the sandy beach to breakers whose white crests dashed over our shoulders, and filled our faces with salty spray. After collecting for two or three hours we would sail for port. One rule adopted for these expeditions shows the ease and freedom existing among the members of our party—i. e., “No one is allowed to capsize the boat more than three times; more than this is considered dangerous on account of sharks.” The regulation was closely observed. When the laboratory was reached, the morning’s collection was set aside for an hour, while all prepared for breakfast by taking a plunge into a large swim- ming pool near by. Our meals were served after the English cus- tom prevailing on the island, and were characterized by a large variety of tropical fruits and vegetables. The Ripley pineapples, No. 11 mangoes, and sapodillas were luscious fruits, but quite forgotten when we returned to the States and found American melons and peaches. After breakfast the remainder of the day was generally devoted to the study and preservation of the morn- ing’s collection. After a lunch of fruits and limeade we fre- quently took walks over Salt Pond Hill or up the valley of the Rio Cobre, in search of termites, scorpions, centipeds, and lizards. Late in the evening was the best time for “ towing,” although we often went out early in the morning. To dosurface collecting we would row out upon the quiet bay about a mile from shore, then throw out two nets made of fine silk bolting cloth. These were tied by long cords to the stern of the boat, so as to drag near the surface of the water. The nets were carefully emptied into buck- ets of fresh sea water every few minutes. The “tow,” or material

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454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. thus captured, was taken directly to the laboratory and examined. By dipping out small portions in glass dishes and holding them up to the light we could detect a great number of minute pelagic animals swimming about in great commotion. These “surface collections” are intensely interesting, for in them the biologist finds multitudes of embryonic forms in various stages of their de- velopment. The larvez of starfish, sea urchins, shrimps, conchs, and other forms, appear in their normal living state under his lens. Besides larve, numerous adult forms, as Sagitta, Appen- dicularia, platoid worms, Meduse, and green Alge, are collected. A careful survey of the hosts of forms thus captured, and a fair understanding of their true significance, prepare one for the often- repeated statement that “the ocean is the original home of all life.” We are impressed with the fact that it is from this source that we must seek further information that shall throw light upon many biological problems at present unsolved. A few days of general collecting in the sea suffices to reveal the great abundance of life in the ocean as compared with its scarcity on land. The various expeditions taken by our party in the tropics would have been interesting and enjoyable to almost any one. To the casual observer they may have presented the appearance of pleasure excursions, rather than trips for earnest work and study. On one occasion we sailed to Salt Pond, a kind of lagoon bor- dering the sea, where numbers of crocodile and turtle were fre- quently found. We had been rowing about for some time in the pond with no success except that of catching mullet with a throw- net, and taking note of the numerous cranes, pelicans, and bitterns flying about, when we came upon a “crocodile slide.” Thisisa smooth, broad trail leading up the bank, which the beast fol- lows when it wishes to prepare a nest in the sand for its eggs, or take a ramble beneath the underbrush. No sooner had we neared the slide than here came a frightened crocodile about seven feet in length, dragging himself down the slippery bank into the water. As it swam out in front of our boat, its black nose protruded above the surface, offering a fine shot, but fortunately for the crocodile our gun was left at home. Before leaving the pond we secured a fine collection of large, beautiful jellyfish (Cassiopea), and luckily for us the boatman discovered a dozen or more little crocodiles among the mangrove roots; we all repaired to the scene, and amid nfuch excitement succeeded finally in cupturing one. One of the most productive collecting fields for our studies was that in the mangrove ponds off the “ pallisadoes,” near Port Royal. The mangroves in this region have extended into the shoal water, BBR re

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A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 455 thus forming a number of quiet ponds and canals. We found life very abundant here. Upon the mangrove roots great clusters of Clavelina, simple ascidians, and colonies of hydroids hung near the surface of the water. Battery actinians and Botryllus grew in the warm waters, attached to blades of eel grass. Echinoderms were very abundant. Sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus) were thick- ly strewn over the bottoms of the ponds. Of starfish we collected three forms (Echinaster, Asteropectin, and Astorina). For holo- thurians no other place along the coast was better. They were profusely scattered about over the muddy bottoms of the ponds. Some were dark brown, others large and spotted, growing toa length of eight and ten inches. Our experience in collecting and preserving these large holothurians was always exasperating, for, Fie. 3.—Tae Marove Laporartory. try any experiment we might, they would always end with nega- tive results. About the time we considered them fully narcotized they began contracting the muscles of the body walls, then sud- denly eviscerated themselves. One very interesting form (Synapta vivipara) was found in great numbers growing among the fila- ments of a certain alga in the ponds. Sponges, gasteropods, and annelids were also numerous about the mangroves, Taking the animals alive to the laboratory was an impor- tant part of our expeditions. For this purpose we used water buckets and open jars. The various specimens were distrib- uted in different vessels, so as not to be crowded; these were allowed as much fresh sea water as possibie, which was changed repeatedly.

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A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 457 Of all our excursions during the season, those of most popular interest were to the cays which were out in the Caribbean Sea, two to ten miles from our laboratory. They may be described as small islets jutting above the waves a few feet. Some were cov- ered with mangrove bushes, others were of bare rock and sand, over which large waves would break. By overturning stones in the shallow water we found many interesting animals. Brittle stars and sea baskets often shared their homes with spiny annalids and coiling synaptas. Darting about among the rocks were little rock crabs, young lobsters, and small shrimps. Beautiful sea anemones and turbellarian worms were numerous upon the rocks, Wading out a few steps into the deeper water we came to rich coral formations; and looking through a water glass we could sée as through an open window into these beautiful gardens under the sea. There were massive brain corals (Meandrina) growing in scattered groups, with other interesting species between; clus- ters of star corals (Astrea) and branching stag-horns (Oculina) covered large areas, In the clear, open spaces were exquisite sea fans and sea feathers (Alcyonaria) waving their graceful forms to and fro with the tide. The scene was made even more charming when schools of beautifully colored coral fish, goldfish, and mul- let swam in and out among the corals and into the open sea. A _ poet has seen these quiet parlors of the fishes and thus described them : “There with a light and easy motion The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea, And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean Are bending like corn on the upland lea, And life in rare and beautiful forms Is sporting amid those bowers of stone ; Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove, Where the waters murmur tranquilly, Through the bending twigs of the coral grove.” Any report of the Johns Hopkins Marine Laboratory in Jamaica would be incomplete without mention of the kind hospi- tality shown us by the citizens. Our party was cordially received wherever it went; and at the laboratory we were honored by calls from chief officials residing in Spanish Town, Kingston, and Port Royal. As a body of American students, we had the pleasure of taking lunch at “The King’s House” with Lady Blake, the gov- ernor’s wife, It was very gratifying to find the prominent citi- zens of Jamaica enthusiastic in their encouragement of biological research on the island. As to the results of the summer’s work in the tropics, lit- tle can be said at present that is final, since much of it is not. yet completed. A good quantity of valuable material was pre- VOL, XLIV.—35

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458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. served for future study. Very full notes and drawings of the animals in their living and normal condition were made. These notes and drawings, together with the alcoholic specimens, are stowed away awaiting further investigation, to be carried on ‘chiefly at the Johns Hopkins University. o> aa THE RELATION OF EVOLUTION TO POLITICAL ECONOMY. By CHARLES 8. ASHLEY. [* the reader will call to mind the great work of John Stuart Mill, which still contains the best exposition extant of the whole subject of political economy, he will remember that Mill considers it by an analysis of production, distribution, and ex- change, to which he adds a book on the influence of the progress of society on production and distribution, and another on the influence of government. The first three books are devoted, as Mill himself says, to an examination of the “ statics” of thesubject. They are an analysis of the phenomena mentioned as exhibited at a given time; or, more accurately speaking, Mill’s work is really an analysis of the manner in which products are distributed throughout society un- der a single set of social conditions., To an evolutionist accustomed to seeing in industrial society an organism which grows and changes like all others, Mill’s omissions, including those of his fourth book, are more striking than his inclusions, There is, indeed, a bare mention of the fact that the progress of society is accompanied by increased security and co-operation. But the evolutionary conception that industrial society, like all other organisms, begins with a simple germlike state and by constant changes increases its structures and its functions, nowhere occurs. Political economy is considered with- out material reference to time or environment. And it is treated as if industrial society were only to be considered with reference to the way in which social sustenance, however obtained, is distrib- uted along the social alimentary canal. Processes of production, changes in methods caused by inventions, and changes of condi- tions are ignored, and the formation of industrial organizations of men engaged in common works, corresponding to organic struc- tures, is passed by. Included in this is the all-important subject of the division of labor, the examination of the conditions under which it takes place, and the like. Strange as it may seem to one who looks on industrial society from a standpoint of facts rather than books, the functions performed by railroads, by banks, by

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EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 459 boards of trade, and by telegraphs, without which existing society would instantly dissolve, are nowhere set forth. And likewise the great subject of industrial disorders, their origins, progress, and decline, a subject which promisesso much to scientific study, is not even hinted at. In a word, the conception of industrial society as an organism, subject to the same laws of evolution as others, and like other organisms having its structures and func- tions, its changes in response to environment, its health and dis- ease, is entirely absent. It is the province of evolution to introduce these ideas into political economy; to point out the harmony of the evolution of industrial society with that of universal Nature. Evolutionary political economy begins with the formation of those simple social groups whose members lived by hunting and fishing, and the first step in industrial life is shown to be the selection of a member surpassing the rest as a maker of weapons and implements for that duty. This step increases the strength of the group and leads to a further increase in size. Presently, by the interaction of this and other factors, the size of the group becomes such that it is partly encouraged, partly forced into the pastoral and then into the agricultural state. And, however blended and complicated with other social phe- nomena industrial evolution may be, no one who has once fixed his eye on the cardinal principles of evolution will fail to see how strikingly they reveal themselves in economic history. As the yolk slowly divides and again divides until head and limbs and stomach and feathers faintly appear, and finally the chick steps forth, so industrial society, impelled by an indwelling force, evolves from time to time as conditions permit the organizations of men necessary for the better supply of social wants, and also the functions they perform and the processes by which they work. To me the supreme lesson evolution has to offer to students of political economy is the automatic and irresistible nature of the process by which society evolves the functions and structures needful for its betterment. No philosopher or statesman invented boards of trade or foresaw their indispensable necessity as the social agents for the distribution of grain throughout the world, for the steadying of prices, and for the guaranty they afford of a close approximation of the prices paid the producer to that paid by the consumer. No economist established banks or conceived the vast uses they would subserve. No human mind foresaw the uses of the railroad, the steamboat, or the telegraph, nor were any of these created with much thought as to such uses. Gun- powder had accomplished its mission of establishing the physical. supremacy of intelligence before anybody understood what that

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460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. mission was. The same may be said of the alphabet and printing, If one reads the vivid account Lord Macaulay gives of the found- ing of the Bank of England, of the debates thereon, and the still more violent debates on the usefulness or danger of the gold- smiths who originated banking, he will get a good illustration of the utter unconsciousness with which social improvements are made, and the universality with which they arise from a desire for the attainment of some immediate individual end. The great financial invention of our own day—building and loan associa- tions—has begun in the desire of wage-earners, who never heard of Mill, or Spencer, or Das Kapital, to get homes for themselves and each other, and has been perfected in humble and unknown hands till now, having built a million homes, earned a high rate of interest for millions of members, they have grown to hold more money than the savings banks, and may at length aspire to engage the notice of Chauncey M. Depew when next he tells the public what to do with a thousand dollars of savings. Industrial improvements unfold as silently and modestly as the leaf on the tree. New structures, for new uses, do not spring from old structures, fixed in other uses, but from the undeveloped part of the organism, and gradually by inconsidered increments the mightiest economic changes are made. These characteristics of social evolution give us greater faith in the natural progress of society, and have a most important and decisive bearing upon many of the questions agitating social philosophers so much and the rest of the world so little. Evolution teaches us to expect further changes to be additions to the present state rather than anything like subversions. There will be a continual increase in division of labor, increased social stability, and we may expect increased industrial co-operation by means of market reports, by which production in the various trades will be kept more perfectly equilibrated than at present, and the overproduction of any one product prevented. All labor will become more and more specialized, and unskilled labor will have a continual tendency to disappear. Perhaps the most important and interesting topic that evolu- tion brings into political economy is the vast subject of industrial disorders. That these are capable of scientific treatment no evo- lutionist will deny, because they are essentially like all other ills of humankind. What are industrial disorders? How do they originate ? What course do they run? How and when do they subside ? Evolution can and will treat these great questions in a comprehensive way,and when it does we shall for the first time have clear ideas on the most engrossing subject of our own day. That evolution has a panacea to offer I do not believe, for it re- minds us at every turn that pain and suffering are an inseparable

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PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA, 461 accompaniment of organic growth and development. But it will at least teach us not to aggravate social ills by quack nostrums interfering with Nature’s laws. Finally, evolution will rescue political economy from the mist of words and disputation which now surrounds it by reason of the narrow basis on which it has rested. It will bring us back from the uncertainties of analysis and inference from insufficient data to the clear light of universal history—to the experience of great Nature’s self, and will for the first time raise political econ- omy from empiricism to science. PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA.* By SIDNEY J. HICKSON, M. A., D. Se. b eg is not surprising that the naturalists of the early part of the present century could not believe in the existence of a fauna at the bottom of the deep seas. The extraordinary conditions of such a region—the enormous pressure, the absolute darkness, the probable absence of any vegetable life from want of direct sun- light—might very well have been considered sufficient to form an impassable barrier to the animals migrating from the shallow waters and to prevent the development of a fauna peculiarly its own. The fragmentary accounts of animals brought up by sounding lines from great depths might, it is true, have thrown doubts on the current views; but they were not of sufficient importance in themselves, nor were the observations made with such regard to the possibility of error, as to withstand the critical remarks that were made to explain them away. The absence of any evidence obtained by accurate systematic research, together with the consideration of the physical character of the ocean bed, were quite sufficient to lead scientific men of that period to doubt the existence of any animal life in water deeper than a few hundred fathoms, We now know, however, that there is a very considerable fauna at enormous depths in all the great oceans, and we have acquired, moreover, considerable information concerning some of those peculiar physical conditions of the abyss that fifty years ago were merely matters of speculation among scientific men. The relation between animals and their environment is now @ question of such great interest and importance that it is necessary * Abridged from The Fauna of the Deep Sea. By Sidney J. Hickson, M. A., D. Se. Modern Science Series. In press of D. Appleton & Co.

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462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. in any description of the fauna of a particular region to consider its physical conditions and the influence that it may be supposed to have had in producing the characteristics of the fauna. The peculiar physical conditions of the deep seas may be briefly stated to be these: It is absolutely dark so far as actual sunlight is concerned, the temperature is only a few degrees above freezing point, the pressure is enormous, there is little or no move- ment of the water, the bottom is composed of a uniform fine soft mud, and there is no plant life. All of these physical conditions we can appreciate except the enormous pressure. Absolute dark- ness we know, the temperature of the deep seas is not an extraor- dinary one, the absence of movement in the water and the fine soft mud are conditions that we can readily appreciate; but the pressure is far greater than anything we can realize. Ata depth of twenty-five hundred fathoms the pressure is, roughly speaking, two and a half tons per square inch—that is to say, several times greater than the pressure exerted by the steam upon the piston of our most powerful engines. Or, to put the matter in other words, the pressure per square inch upon the body of every animal that lives at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean is about twenty-five times greater than the pressure that will drive a railway train. A most beautiful experiment to illustrate the enormous force ‘of this pressure was made during the voyage of H. M.S. Chal- lenger. I give the description of it in the words of the late Prof. Moseley: “Mr. Buchanan hermetically sealed up at both ends a thick glass tube full of air, several inches in length. He wrapped this sealed tube in flannel, and placed it, so wrapped up, in a wide copper tube, which was one of those used to protect the deep-sea thermometers when sent down with the sounding apparatus. This copper tube was closed by a lid fitting ioosely, and with holes in it, and the copper bottom of the tube similarly had holes bored through it. The water thus had free access to the interior of the tube when it was lowered into the sea, and the tube was neces- sarily constructed with that object in view, in order that in its ordinary use the water should freely reach the contained ther- mometer. “The copper case containing the sealed glass tube was sent down to a depth of two thousand fathoms and drawn up again. It was then found that the copper wall of the case was bulged and bent inward opposite the place where the glass tube lay, just ’ as if it had been crumpled inward by being violently squeezed. The glass tube itself, within its flannel wrapper, was found, when withdrawn, reduced to a fine powder, like snow almost. What had happened was that the sealed glass tube, when sinking to gradually increasing depths, had held out long against the pres- sure, but this at last had become too great for the glass to sustain,

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PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA.

463 and the tube had suddenly given way and been crushed by the violence of the action to a fine powder. So violent and rapid had been the collapse that the water had not had time to rush in by means of the holes at both ends of the copper cylinder and thus fill the empty space left behind by the collapse of the glass tube, but had instead crushed in the copper wall and brought equilib- rium in that manner. The process is exactly the reverse of an explosion, and is termed by Sir Wyville Thomson an ‘implosion.’” It is only reasonable to suppose that the ability to sustain this enormous pressure can only be acquired by animals after genera- tions of gradual migrations from shallow waters. Those forms that are brought up by the dredge from the depths of the ocean are usually killed and distorted by the enormous and rapid dimi- nution of pressure in their journey to the surface, and it is ex- tremely probable that shallow-water forms would be similarly killed and crushed out of shape were they suddenly plunged into very deep water. The fish that live at these enormous depths are, in consequence of the enormous pressure, liable to a curious form Equator _——— Pole

wis ‘cial wt waters nro -----} Intermediate - walers a — s° ae - 4 ~ *° Bottom s° a! <= 3° waters — —=.

Fie. 1.—D1acramM ILLUsTRaTINe THE PassaGE oF AN OczAN CURRENT Across A Barnrmr (A). of accident. If, in chasing their prey or for any other reason, they rise to a considerable distance above the floor of the ocean, the gases of their swimming bladder become considerably ex- panded and their specific gravity very greatly reduced. Uptoa certain limit the muscles of their bodies can counteract the tend- ency to float upward and enable the fish to regain its proper sphere of life at the bottom; but beyond that limit the muscles are not strong enough to drive the body downward, and the fish, becoming more and more distended as it goes, is gradually killed on its long and involuntary journey to the surface of the sea, The deep-sea fish, then, are exposed to a danger that no other animals in this world are subject to—namely, that of tumbling upward. That such accidents do occasionally occur is evidenced by the fact that some fish, which are now known to be true deep- sea forms, were discovered dead and floating on the surface of the ocean long before our modern investigations were commenced, Until quite recently, every one agreed that no rays of sunlight could possibly penetrate the sea to a greater depth than a few

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464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. hundred fathoms, Moseley says that “ probably all is dark below two hundred fathoms excepting in so far as light is given out by phosphorescent animals,” and Wyville Thomson speaks of the “utter darkness of the deep-sea bottom.” Within the last few years a few authors have maintained that it is quite possible that a few rays of sunlight do penetrate even to the greatest depths of the ocean—a view mainly based on the fact that so many deep-sea animals possess extremely perfect and complicated eyes and very brilliant colors. Verrill says: “It seems to me probable that more or less sunlight does actually penetrate to the greatest depths of the ocean, in the form of a soft sea-green light, perhaps at two or three thousand fathoms equal in intensity to our partially moonlight nights, and possibly at the greatest depths equal only to starlight. It must be remembered that in the deep sea far away from land the water is far more transparent than near the coast.” Packard is of a similar opinion. There seem to me to be very slight grounds for this view. The fact that, comparatively speaking, shallow-water fish avoid nets that are rendered phosphorescent by entangled jellyfish does not justify us in assuming that deep-sea fish avoid regions where there are phosphorescent Gorgonians or Pennatulids. It is not by any means. certain that fish avoid sunken nets on account of their phosphorescence. Most fish possess, as is well known, a very acute sense of smell, and it is very probable that they avoid such nets on account of the putrid odors of the dead animals that re- main attached to them. Nor is there much strength in the further argument that it can hardly be possible that there can be an amount of phospho- rescent light regularly evolved by the few deep-sea animals, having this power, sufficient to cause any general illumination, or power- ful enough to have influenced, over the whole ocean, the evolution of complex eyes, brilliant and complex protective colors, and com- plex commensal adaptations. We have no sound information to go upon to be able to judge of the amount of light given off by phosphorescent animals at the bottom of the deep sea. The faint light they show on deck after their long journey from the depths in which they live to the sur- face may be extremely small compared with the light they give in their natural home under a pressure of two tons and a half to the square inch. The complex eyes that many deep-sea animals exhibit were almost certainly not evolved as such, but are simple modifications of eyes possessed by a shallow-water ancestry. The more recent experiments that have been made tend to show that no sunlight whatever penetrates to a greater depth, to take an extreme limit, than five hundred fathoms, Fol and Sarasin, experimenting with very sensitive bromo-gelatin plates, found

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PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 465 that there was no reaction after ten minutes’ exposure at a depth of four hundred metres on a sunny day in March. But although it is very highly probable that not a glimmer of sunlight ever penetrates to the depths of the ocean, there is in some places, un- doubtedly, a very considerable illumination due to the phospho- rescence of the inhabitants of the deep waters. All the Alcyonarians are, according to Moseley, brilliantly phosphorescent when brought to the surface. Many deep-sea fish possess phosphorescent organs, and it is quite possible that many of the deep-sea protozoa, tunicates, jellyfish, and crustacea are in their native haunts capable of giving out a very considerable amount of phosphorescent light. If we may be allowed to com- pare the light of abysmal animals with that of surface forms, we can readily imagine that some regions of the sea may be as brightly illuminated as a European street is at night—an illumi- nation with many very bright centers and many dark shadows, but quite sufficient for a vertebrate eye to distinguish readily and at a considerable distance both form and color. To give an example of the extent to which the illumination due to phosphorescent organisms may reach, I may quote a passage from the writings of the late Sir Wyville Thomson: “ After leaving the Cape Verd Islands the sea ,was a perfect blaze of phosphorescence. There was no moon, and although the night was perfectly clear and the stars shone brightly, the luster of the heavens was fairly eclipsed by that of the sea. It was easy to read the smallest print, sitting at the after-port in my cabin, and the bows shed on either side rapidly widening wedges of ra- diance so vivid as to throw the sails and rigging into distinct lights and shadows.” A very similar sight may frequently be seen in the Banda seas, where on calm nights the whole surface of the ocean seems to be a sheet of milky fire. The light is not only to be seen where the crests of waves are breaking, or the surface disturbed by the bows of the boat, but the phosphorescence extends as far as the eye can reach an all directions. It is impossible, of course, to say with any degree of certainty whether phosphorescence such as this exists at the bottom of the deep sea, but it is quite probable that it does in some places, and hence the well-developed eyes and brilliant colors of some of the deep-sea animals, On the other hand, the entire absence or rudimentary condition of the eyes of a very con- siderable proportion of deep-sea animals seems to prove that the phosphorescent illumination is not universally distributed, and that there must be some regions in which the darkness is so abso- lute that it can only be compared with the darkness of the great caves. It may be stated then with some confidence that in the abysmal VOL, XLIV.—36

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466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. depths of the ocean there is no trace of sunlight. It is highly im- probable, on the face of it, that any ray of light could penetrate through a stratum of water four miles in thickness, even if the water were perfectly pure and clear, but when we remember that the upper regions, at least, are crowded with pelagic organisms provided with skeletons of lime and silica, we may justly consider that it is impossible. The temperature of the water in the abyss is by no means con- stant for a constant depth, nor does it vary with the latitude. It is true that, as a rule, the water is colder at greater depths than in shallower ones, and that the deeper the thermometer is low- ered into the sea, the low- er the mercury sinks. This is consistent with physical laws. If there is any difference at all in the temperature of a col- umn of water that has had time to settle, the thermometer will always reach its highest point at the top of the column and Fie. 2.—Sicyonis crassa: M, mouth; 8, ciliated its lowest at the bottom, groove; T,tentacles. Each tentacie is perforated for the colder particles by a single large aperture. (After Hertwig.) i , being of greater specific gravity than the warmer ones will sink, and the warmer ones will rise. .The truth of this will be clear if we imagine a locality at the bottom of a deep ocean with a source of great heat such as an active volcano. Such a source of heat would, it is true, raise the temperature of the water in its immediate vicinity, but the particles of water thus heated would immediately commence to rise through the superjacent layers of colder water, and colder particles would fall to take their places. Thus the effect of an active volcano at the bottom of the deep sea would not be apparent at any very great distance in the same plane. In fact, unless the bottom of the ocean was closely studded with volcanoes we should expect to find, as in- deed we do find, that the temperature of the sea rises as the water shallows. If then we were to consider a great ocean as simply a huge basin of water, we should expect to find the water at the surface warmer than the water at the bottom. The temperature of the surface would vary constantly with the temperature of the air

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PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 467 above it. That is to say, it would be warmer at the equator than in the temperate regions. The temperature at the bottom would be the same as the lowest temperature of the basin, that is, of the earth that supports it. The great oceans, however, can not be re- garded as simple basins of water suchasthis. The temperature of the surface water varies only approximately with the latitude. It is, generally speaking, hottest at the equator and coldest at the poles, but surface currents in the intermediate regions produce many irregularities in the surface temperature. Again, although we have no means of knowing what the tem- perature of the earth is at one thousand fathoms below the surface of the ocean, it is very probable that in the great oceans the tem- perature of the deepest stratum of water is considerably lower than the true earth temperature. This is due to currents of cold water constantly flowing from the poles toward the equator. If these polar currents were at any time to cease, the temperature of the lowest strata of water would rise. Although the polar currents can not be actually demonstrated nor their exact rapidity be accu- rately determined, the deduction from the known facts of physical geography that they do actually exist is perfectly sound and be- yond dispute. A few considerations will, 1 think, make this clear. If the ocean were a simple basin somewhat deeper at the equa- tor than at the poles, the cold water at the poles would gradually sink down the slopes of the basin toward the latitude of the equa- tor, and the bottom temperature of the water would be constant all the world over. A few hills here and there would not affect the general statement that for aconstant depth the temperature of the lowest stratum of water would be constant. But in some places ridges occur stretching across the ocean from continent to conti- nent, and these ridges shut off the cold water at the bottom of the sea on the polar side from reaching the bottom of the sea on the equator side. If A (Fig. 1) represents a ridge stretching from con- tinent to continent across an ocean, and the arrow represents the direction of the current, then the water that flows across the ridge from the polar side to the equator side will be drawn from the lay- ers of water lying above the level of the ridge, and consequently none of the coldest water will ever get across it, and from the level of the ridge to the bottom of the sea on the equatorial side the water will have the same temperature as the water at the level of the ridge on the polarside. It follows from this that in places where there are deep holes in the bed of the ocean surrounded on all sides by considerable elevations, the temperature of the water at the bottom will be the same as the temperature of the water on the summit of the lowest ridges that surrounds them. This explains why it is that we find that the bottom tempera- ture for a given depth is frequently less in one place than it is in

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468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. another, even in places of the same parallel of latitude. One or two examples may be taken to illustrate these points. The tem- perature off Rio Janeiro in latitude 20° south was found by the Challenger to be 0°6° C. at adepth of 2,150 fathoms. In a similar latitude north of the equator at a depth of 2,900 fathoms the tem- perature was found to be 2°2° C.,and at a point near Porto Rico there is a deep hole of 4,561 fathoms, with a bottom temperature of 2°2° C. Again it has been shown by the American expedition that the temperature of the water at the deepest point in the Gulf of Mexi- co, 2,119 fathoms, is the same as that of the bottom of the Straits of Yucatan, 1,127 fathoms, namely, 41° C. And, passing to another part of the world altogether, we find in the small but deep sea that lies between the Philippines and Borneo that, at a depth of 2,550 fathoms, the temperature is 10°2° C. These facts then show that, although at the bottom of the deep seas the water is always very cold, the degree of coldness is by no means constant in the same latitude for the same depth. We must now return to the polar currents. We have assumed above that these currents do exist, and itis probable that by this time the reader must have seen why they are assumed to exist- The water at the bottom of the ocean is exceedingly cold. Where does this coldness come from ? It is obvious that in temperate and tropical climes it does not come from the surface. Nor is it at all probable that it comes from the earth upon which the water rests; for, if it were so, the temperature for water of a given depth would always be the same. We should not find the bottom temperature of 2°4° C. at 2,900 fathoms off Rio de la Plata and a temperature of 2°2° F. in 4,561 fathoms off Porto Rico. In fact, the only hypothesis that can with any show of reason be put forward to account for the temperature of the bottom of the ocean is that which derives its coldness from the polar ice. Perhaps it is of the nature of an assumption to say that there are no rapid currentsand tides in the abysmal depths of the ocean, for we have no means of demonstrating or even of calculating the rate of flow of these waters. But it is areasonable hypothesis and one that we may well use until the contrary is proved. A fact of some importance that supports this hypothesis, as re- gards some parts of the ocean at least, is presented by the sea-anem- ones. Many of the shallow-water actinians are known to possess minute slits in the tentacles and disk, affording a free commu- nication between the general body cavity or celenteron and the exterior. In many deep-sea forms the tentacles are considerably shorter and the apertures larger than they are in shallow-water forms. It is difficult to believe that such forms, perforated by, comparatively speaking, large holes, could manage to live in rapid-

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PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 469 ly flowing water, for if they did so they would soon be smothered by the fine mud that composes the floor of all the deep seas. In fact, anemones of the type presented by such forms as Sicyonis crassa are only fitted for existence in sluggish or still water. Another character that must be taken into consideration is that presented by the floor of the great oceans. The floor of the ocean, if it were laid bare, would probably present a vast undu- lating plain of fine mud. Not a rock, not even a stone, would be visible for miles. The mud varies in different parts of the globe according to the depth, the proximity to land, the presence of neighboring volcanoes, or the mouths of great rivers. The globigerina ooze is perhaps the best known of all the dif- ferent deep-sea deposits. It was discovered and first described by the officers of the American Coast Survey in 1853. It is found in great abundance in the Atlantic Ocean in regions shallower than Fie. 3.—Guosicertna Ooze, (After Agassiz.) 2,200 fathoms. Deeper than this it gradually merges into the “red mud.” It is mainly composed of the shells of foraminifera, and of these the different species of globigerina are the most abun- dant. It is probably formed partly by the shells of the dead fo- raminifera that actually live on the bottom of the ocean and partly by the shells of those that live near the surface or in intermedi- ate depths and fall to the bottom when their lives are done. So abundant are the shells of these protozoa that nearly ninety-five per cent of the globigerina ooze is composed of carbonate of lime. The remaining five per cent. is composed of sulphate and phos- phate of lime, carbonate of ammonia, the oxides of iron and man- ganese, and argillaceous matters. The oxides of iron and man- ganese are probably of meteoric origin; the argillaceous matter may be due to the trituration of lumps of pumice stone and to the deposits caused by dust storms. Globigerina ooze may be found on the floor of the ocean at LS TE EE IE Ee Tl —

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470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. depths ranging from 500 to 2,800 fathoms of water in equatorial and temperate latitudes. The reason that it is not found in arctic seas may be that the cold surface waters of these regions do not bear such an abundant fauna of foraminifera. This is supported by the fact that it extends ten degrees farther north than south in the Atlantic, the warm water of the Gulf Stream bearing a richer fauna than the waters of a corresponding degree of latitude in the southern sea. The pteropod ooze has only twenty-five per cent of carbonate of lime. It contains numerous shells of various pteropods, hete- ropods, and foraminifera, but nearly fifty, per cent of its substance is composed of the siliceous skeletons of radiolaria and the frus- tules of diatoms. According to Murray, it is found in tropical and subtropical seas at depths of less than 1,500 fathoms. The radiolarian ooze is found only in the deepest waters of the central and western Pacific Ocean. In some of the typical ex- amples not a trace of carbonate of lime was to be found, but in somewhat shallower waters a few small fragments occurred. A diatom ooze, mainly composed of the skeletons of diatoms, has also been found in deep water near the Antarctic Circle, but it has not apparently a very wide range. Of all the deep-sea deposits, however, the so-called “ red mud ” has by far the widest distribution. It is supposed to extend over one third of the earth’s surface. It is essentially a deep-sea de- posit, and one that is found in its typical condition at some con- siderable distance from continental land. Like the globigerina ooze it is never found in inclosed seas. To the touch it is plastic and greasy when fresh, but it soon hardens into solid masses. When examined with the microscope it is seen to be composed of extremely minute fragments, rarely exceeding 0°05 millimetre in diameter. It contains a large amount of free silica that is prob- ably formed by the destruction of numerous siliceous skeletons, and a small proportion of silicate of alumina. It usually contains the remains of diatoms, radiolaria, and sponge spicules, and occa- sionally lumps of pumice stone, meteoric nodules, and, in colder regions, stones and other materials dropped by passing icebergs. In the great oceans, then, we find in the deepest places red mud, or, where there is an abundant radiolarian surface fauna, radiolarian ooze; in water that is not deeper than about 2,000 fathoms, we find the globigerina ooze; in shallower waters and in some localities only pteropod ooze. It must not be supposed that sharp limits can anywhere be drawn between these different kinds of deposits, for they pass gradually into one another and present many intermediate forms. It is probable that the sea water, by virtue of the free carbonic acid it contains in solution, is able to exert a solvent action upon

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PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 471 the calcium carbonate shells of animals as they sink to the bot- tom, and during the long and very slow journey from the surface to the bottom of the deepest seas these shells are completely dis- solved. The first to be dissolved would be the thin, delicate shells of the pteropods and heteropods, for besides the fact that they present a wider surface to the solvent action of the water they are probably influenced more by tide and currents, sink more slowly and erratically, and thus have a longer journey to perform. Then the smaller but more solid and compact shells of the foraminifera are dissolved, and lastly, in the deepest water only the siliceous skeletons of the radiolaria and diatoms are able to reach their last resting place at the bottom of the ocean. These four oozes then are characteristic of the floor of the deep oceans. In the proximity of land and in inland seas where deep water occurs, other muds are found differing from one another in accordance with the character of the coasts in their vicinity. One more character of the deep-sea region must be referred to, and that is the absence of vegetable life. It has not been deter- mined yet with any degree of accuracy where we are to place the limit of vegetable life, but it seems probable that below a hundred fathoms no organisms, excepting a few parasitic fungi, are to be found that can be included in the vegetable kingdom. Whilethen the researches of recent times have proved beyond a doubt that there is no depth of the ocean that can be called azoic, they have but confirmed the perfectly just beliefs of the older naturalists that there is a limit where vegetable life becomes extinct. It is not difficult to see the reason for this. Al] plants, except a few parasites and saprophytes, are dependent upon the influence of direct sunlight, and as it has been shown above that the sunlight can not penetrate more than a few hundred fathoms of sea water, it is impossible for plants to live below that depth. Noriomne the proceedings of the recent meeting of the British Association at Nottingham, the London Spectator remarks upon “a singular deficiency in those careful descriptions of the precise position of any science which have so frequently wakened up ordinary men to careful thought.” There is a popular side to the association’s work which is not less important than the one by which it seeks to advance science. The aim of that side is “to arouse such general interest in sci- ence that the minds which are fitted for such study will be inclined to devote themselves to it. To obtain the ablest in any pursuit we need a vast reservoir of men who are more or less interested in it. You can not have your Napoleon of science without an army to draw him from, and the work of increasing the area of recruiting is not unworthy a great association. Of course, ‘interesting papers’ often add little to positive science; but then, neither do music and banners and fine uniforms add to military force. But they bring recruits, without which such force remains latent and useless.” .

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION.* By WESLEY MILLS, M.A., M.D., PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, MOGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL. T is of course necessary that the education of a country shall be systemized, harmonized, and consolidated. This involves so much machinery, including examinations, inspections, reports, etc., that those concerned are under constant temptation to take the form for the substance, and to mistake the immediate issue for the great end. It will not be denied that this state of things exists or has existed in connection with every attempt to pro- duce what has been termed a system of education. Manifestly system is essential to success. Without system, concerted plans, and co-operation you would not be here to-night. One of the great problems of the day is the extent to which system should prevail. The answer to this question, which is filled with practi- cal issues, may be inferred, in part at least, from my treatment of education this evening. The teacher has to do, in reality, primarily with methods, ex- aminations, results, etc., only in so far as these are means to an end, that end being the development of human nature. The teacher is, or should be, first, last, and always, a devel- oper. If he sees no further than methods as set before him by others; if he assumes that the one method will suit all his pupils equally well; if he believes that there is any one invariably best method, he will become after all but a sort of machine. The educator is concerned with human nature, and must endeavor to study it in as broad a way as possible. To him the knowledge of the development of man from more primitive conditions is the study of all studies. His great aim should be to carry on in some measure this progress, this evolution or unfolding, for we know as yet but indifferently the possibilities for mankind. Whether man was derived from some form of life lower in the scale or not, it is perfectly clear that he has passed through states not very distantly removed from the condition of the brutes, or, at all events, immeasurably remote from that of the civilized man of to-day. And the history of the race is in some measure the history of the individual. The teacher who does not realize this can scarcely understand the peculiar behavior of boys in particular. At times, especially when left to themselves, they seem to act like savages; for the moment they appear to revert to a savage state. But knowing the tendency of human nature to * An address delivered before the Ontario Educational Association in Toronto, April, 1893,

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HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION, 473 right itself under favorable conditions, the teacher is considerate, hopeful, and wise in the guidance of his pupils. But equally important is the study of the individual, and it is the neglect of this that constitutes perhaps the greatest danger of modern education. We adapt our methods to human nature as we conceive of it, but is the individual as much considered as he was? Thetendency of the age is to aggregation of men, to con- certed action, to adaptation of methods to the masses, to the aver- age man or boy or girl, while John Smith and Eliza Brown are apt to be regarded as simply units and nothing more, If I were asked to state what I considered the greatest evil threatening education or actually existing in education, if not in our entire civilization to-day, I should reply that in my opinion it was just what I have referred to—not recognizing the individual as such in the masses, Allow me to point out that the available energy of the world is increased in proportion as we develop individuals—i. e., human beings differing from their fellows, We see this in the passage of a community from a savage tc a civilized condition. There is division of labor with differentiation of function. It is better for the community that there should be carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, etc., than that there should be an attempt to make each individual a Jack-of-all-trades, So in education we should aim to develop those differences that Nature has established. So-called education has done much harm by running counter to Nature, Evidently, then, the great business of the teacher is to study Nature with a solicitous anxiety to learn her meaning as to man. Froebel, after ages of educational blundering by mankind, set out on the right path, because he, like the one who would enter the kingdom of heaven, became as a little child, and so under- stood children and adapted methods to human nature as it is— methods in which their individuality is recognized at the very outset, Would that we had followed this great genius closer; would that we were to-day applying his methods in their best aspects to our education more fully! I mean in the sense that we adapted our methods to human nature as it is, and not with any so-called practical end in view, such as fitting the boy or girl merely to sit at a desk in a warehouse, or stand behind a counter in a shop. But our schools, like our other institutions, are a reflection of our general state of human progress; and while we have much to be thankful for, I must, with President Eliot, of Harvard Uni- versity, consider that our school education is still in no small de- gree a failure, partly because we have not grasped the purpose of education and partly because we do not recognize that men are more than methods after all—that John Smith is more than VOL, xLIv.—87

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474 . THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. simply a human unit—that what suits him would not equally well suit Tom Jones. Allow me to put the problem of education in a sort of com- bined biological and psychological form. It is impossible to con- ceive of any organism as existing apart from relations to other things that immediately or remotely affect it—in other words, its environment, which term will be used to designate the sum total of all those influences of whatsoever kind that are in any way related to or can affect such organism. Very often the most im- portant factors in the environment are other organisms of the same kind, and this applies especially in the case of man. In the discussion of educational problems it seems to be of vital importance to realize that we must consider man as a whole. Great mistakes have been made, and are being made, from regard- ing mind and body apart. As a matter of fact, we never know them apart. We have to do with that complex whole we call man. We only know the mind through the body, and speaking generally, so far as we can see, for every psychological manifesta- tion there is a correlated or corresponding physical process. It is of importance not only to concede this in a theoretical way, but to be fully convinced of it; otherwise our education will labor under those misconceptions, irregularities, and inadequacies which have beset it in the past. We get at the mind through the body. To one devoid of all sensation the world is as good as non-existent, and such an indi- vidual would be a mere vegetative organism incapable of any ap- preciable development. Apart from the senses there are probably no avenues to the mind for us. The dependence of the mind on the body in this broad way is then clear. It is not, however, very fully recognized yet that what hinders the development of the body or stands in the way of physical vigor or growth must be in a corresponding degree an impediment to the growth and devel- opment of the mind. Modern psychologists are more and more recognizing the mind as a growth and development ; and undoubt- edly when this great fact and the complete interdependence of mind and body are recognized we will be free from misconcep- tions that have fettered education of all kinds in the past. The teacher who realizes this inevitable relation of mind and body can not be indifferent to the hygienic conditions and phys- ical state of his pupils. The condition of the atmosphere of the schoolroom, the temperature, the quality and the direction of rays of light will be as much considered as the three R’s, for in fact they are of vastly more importance in the development of the organism, as a whole, with which he is concerned. Up to this point I have been endeavoring to show that the educator, in proportion as he has correct and comprehensive views

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HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. 475 of human nature, is supposed to devise methods that accord with them. Even with such views he may not become a very success- ful teacher, because teaching is an art, and it is one thing to un- derstand in the abstract and another thing to apply. But given the natural aptitude for the art, it is surely plain that the applica- tion will be more in harmony with our nature if that be under- stood. And in the application great skill will be required so that the individual will not be lost sight of. In fact, it is just here that the art of so many falls short. They lack the insight to recognize just what constitutes the individuality in each case and to adapt to this. I will therefore endeavor to assist in some meas- ure in the solution of this problem by calling attention to a guide to the individual nature through the subject of heredity. From the earliest times heredity, or the resemblance of offspring to parents, has been admitted in some vague way at least; and if this were now as clearly recognized for man as it is by breeders of our domestic animals, I would anticipate greater human prog- ress than is likely till sound views on this subject are more widespread and more deeply impressed. How few have ever seri- ously sat down and pondered upon such questions as these: Why is my nature such as it is? To what degree am I and in what measure are ancestors concerned in my being whatIlam? What am I likely to become ? I presume one might safely affirm that most persons here never directly faced such considerations at all. Probably many would regard it as impossible to account in any approximately satisfactory way for their physical and mental status, and would be very apt to refer the latter in no small degree to what is commonly known as education. But if we were to visit the establishment of some successful breeder of dom.:tic animals we would find no such hazy mental condition. The breeder does know why his stock is such as it is. You point to some admirable specimen and compare it with an- other of plainly inferior merit and ask him the reason why. He does not attempt to explain the difference by the pasture, but he tells you that the less valuable animal is a common cross-breed without extended pedigree, while the other is derived from an- cestors that he can trace for generations, and the parents of which are now on his farm, the purchase price being a large one. The breeder would have been greatly puzzled if such ancestors had produced offspring entirely unworthy of themselves. Thesame applies to the vegetable world. “Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?” But apparently we often expect this rule to be reversed in regard to human beings. The fact is, man was so much regarded as a creature apart by himself with laws of his own—laws that were every now and then at least interfered with in some inexplicable way—that the public mind got demoralized ;

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476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. for nothing can be so disastrous as to believe that the laws of Na- ture are subject to change. We may require to modify our views as to what the laws of Nature really are, but so far as the world has yet learned these laws are invariable. I must confess myself to have had at one time almost un- bounded faith in the changes that the environment could work, and especially that part of it that we call education, in the nar- rower sense. But a close study of the subject by observation and experiment in breeding some of our domestic animals for a term of years has very strongly impressed upon my mind the strength of heredity. Galton, Ribot, and others have given us the most convincing proofs that heredity is stronger than its an- tagonist variation or than its modifier environment. In account- ing for variations—for no two beings are quite alike—we must admit great ignorance; however, it is impossible to ignore or dis- believe in the effect of the environment. We know that unless there be some favorable features in the environment the best nature can never develop. The very same breeder we before visited might possibly be able to show us an animal that through accident, inadequate feed- ing, or other unfavorable condition in the environment had never proved worthy of its parentage, and the observer will meet many cases like this among human beings, They are instructive inas- much as they illustrate the relative part played by heredity and environment in the total result. Galton, after most exhaustive and careful examination of large classes of men, as statesmen, judges, commanders, divines, authors, artists, and others, shows that of all those that attained great distinction a fair proportion left posterity worthy of them. He concludes also that if a man be possessed of really high-class native ability he will rise in spite of the environment, or, as Shakespeare has it, “Some men are born great.” But what of the mediocre? Do the same laws as to heredity and environment apply? The best way, in my opinion, to be- come convinced on this point is to make an honest and careful study of one’s self, It sometimes takes years to realize the extent to which we represent, often in an occult manner, our ancestors; and we must remember that law, which Darwin has emphasized, that traits of ancestors tend to appear at the same period of life in the offspring as in the parents. It is further to be remem- bered that by a study of parents alone we can not get nearly so good an idea of the heredities of any individual as, if more dis- tant ancestors and collateral lines (uncle, cousins) be taken into account, Indeed, the believer in man’s evolution from lower forms of life takes a much wider view of the whole subject. It must be plain that each individual in some measure is the

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HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. 477 resultant of all those forces represented in ancestors — forces which have been modified in innumerable ways by ancestors—a consideration which greatly complicates the study of heredity. But if any one principle has been established it is that heredity is stronger than environment. However, we must point out that the weaker the heredity the stronger the environment. Educa- tion, in the proper sense, can do more, relatively, for a mediocre or weak nature than for a very strong one. A real genius or a criminal will be such regardless of education; so that the practi- cal issue for educators narrows down very much to the question of heredity and environment for the mediocre or submediocre. It is with the latter classes that the teachers of the land have mostly to do, though we must not overlook the possible best and wisest that may be intrusted to our care. Our systems are not well adapted to discovering them, especially those of high talent or genius, affairs so tend to averages and mediocrities in all direc- tions these days. It will now be my aim to indicate how the educator may, by a study of heredity in a practical, individual way, as well as he- redity as a general fact in Nature, increase his usefulness by di- recting his energies to better advantage, from more exact knowl- edge of the individuals with whom he has to deal. However skilled the teacher may be in reading the individual from his con- duct, the diagnosis (to borrow a medical term) will be much safer if we know the family history and the ancestral tendencies, It is so as regards disease—i. e., tendencies of the physical organization —and it is equally so with the mind, though not yet so generally recognized. The teacher who knows nothing of the parents of a child is but poorly prepared to do the best possible in developing that child. With all the disadvantages associated with the career of a country school teacher who “ boarded ’round” or was expected to make periodic visits, it can not be denied that he had opportuni- ties for understanding that all-important home environment of his pupils, and of studying the parents and other relatives, and gathering hints from scraps of family history that greatly helped him who was not a believer that all children are to be treated educationally just alike, all minds to be compressed into the same mold. With all its imperfections, I am bound to say that the indi- viduality of the pupils in the old log schoolhouse was often more developed than in the city public school of to-day, where for a boy to be himself frequently brings with it the ridicule of his fel- lows—a condition of things that has its effect afterward on the lad at college. I find this fear of being considered odd—out of harmony with what others may think—one of the greatest draw-

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 478 backs to the development of independent investigating students at college. The case is still worse for the girls, When women begin to be really independent in thought, feeling, and action, I shall be much more hopeful of the progress of mankind; and happily the dawn of this better day has already begun. It is scarcely necessary to point out that, in the nature of the case, the parents are in the best position to learn the hereditary tendencies of their children; but inasmuch as in the large pro- portion of cases the subject has never been given any serious attention by them, it remains with the teacher to work it out by such means as he can. As with the physician, practice makes perfect in observation, interrogation and diagnosis. Often a little conversation with the children when at their ease at home will give more information as to their real tendencies than weeks of observation at school. Parents frequently judge of the natural fitness of their own children for the various callings in life very badly; and the assistance of the skilled teacher in deciding such matters would be of inestimable value. By the skilled teacher I now mean the one who is an expert diagnostician of powers and especially of natural leanings in which heredity plays so very prominent a part. How often is the college teacher, who re- gards the mistake in the choice of a profession or career as fatal, pained when dealing with certain of his students who plainly should be somewhere else! Yet it is hard for him to tell a young man that he is out of place. This should all have been settled long ago, In the course of some lectures on education given at the Johns Hopkins University several years ago, Dr. Stanley Hall, the emi- nent psychologist, drew attention to what he called a “ life-book.” In this a record as impartial as possible of such sayings and doings of each child of a family from infancy to adolescence as may be a guide to real tendencies is recommended to be kept. Teachers may widen their sphere of influence by making this rec- ommendation according to discretion to at least some of the par- ents with whom they come in contact. Dr. Hall lays stress on re- cording the exact words of the child and on stating everything with extreme accuracy and impartiality, as the fond mother is very apt to put a flattering interpretation on sayings and doings and fail to record the indications of weakness or evil. It is interest- ing to paste in also the first letter, first story, first rude sketch, etc., indeed anything that will give aclew to the real nature of the child, But, as before indicated, the teacher may discover in a visit to the home what may have escaped even the parents. I know my- self of a born artist having been discovered in the very depth of poverty by a physician who was making a professional call.

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; al 4 HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION, 479 That child has since developed into a distinguished man. Wheth- er innate genius was sufficiently strong to have forced him through and above his environment apart from such early dis- covery and encouragement I can not say. At all events it would in all probability have been a case of devious ways, diverted en- ergy, and lost time, if not final partial or complete failure, but for this early recognition. No doubt the difficulties in the way of meeting all the parents in the case of a large class in the city school are considerable; and it may not be feasible to visit all, though much is gained in more ways than one by ascertaining the home environment as: well as the heredities of the pupils. When once the teacher has made a somewhat complete and reliable estimate of the tenden- cies, good and bad, of any pupil and their relative strength, a large part of the problem of development is already solved. Every human being may be regarded as an organism with a combination of qualities of varying strength, some of which, in- deed most of which, are good in themselves but either weak or strong relatively to a common standard or with reference to each other, so that the question of balance is one of the most vital. The most dangerous of all members of society are those that are ill-balanced and lack self-control, The real criminal organization is of this nature. But so also is the faddist or extremist of any type dangerous, because being ill-balanced he himself tends to lead mediocre minds astray ; and much energy that might be bet- ter employed must be used to counteract his dangerous doctrines and vigorous efforts. The question with the teacher then is, How can I develop each nature committed to my charge so as to strengthen its weak parts physical, intellectual, and moral, so that no faculty shall be unduly developed and that the balance of the whole shall be good —while I do not overlook those faculties that are strong and on which the success of the individual so much depends? It can with the utmost confidence be assumed that in all human beings some powers are by inheritance of different strength from others. Some children are so weak in mathematical perception that they must receive careful and special attention to nurture this faculty up to an approach to the average, while at the same time it must not be made almost the sole standard of intellectual strength or excellence, as I fear has been too much the case in schools within the past twenty years, at all events. An intellect thus weak may have a good deal more than the average capacity for artistic or moral feeling, and men are not mere calculating machines but rather organisms, endowed with feelings that like the steam en- gine supply the source of power, the moving forces. How sadly have we neglected the culture of right feeling in

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480 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, our educational institutions! It was a natural consequence of the misleading because partial doctrine that the great purpose of the public school was to teach “the three R’s.” It can not be too much insisted on that the great purpose of all education is to furnish a favorable environment (using that term in the widest sense) for the development of the highest type of human beings consistent with the innate inherited tendencies. We can not make silk purses out of sows’ lugs, but. we must. take care that we do not convert silk purses into lugs by our bungling and lack of insight, all the more likely if we place undue confidence in our educa- tional systems which we call great because according to the tend- encies of the day they affect vast numbers. A study of heredity tends to prevent and mitigate discourage- ment, and it also shows us how great is the power of the organism to vary with changes of environment. In other words, education, in the true sense, can do much to modify. The world has passed from stages of almost bestial degradation to the present state of civilization through this tendency to vary under environment by some processes which we can appreciate and possibly by others that we do not fully understand. We have every reason to hope for the future; but this hope should be a rational one founded on the adaptation of means to an end, and in this the organisms must first of all be considered. Regarding the human race in this light, it becomes clear to me that, after the parents themselves, the teacher may become the . most potent factor in the development of the human being. He can not radically alter hereditary tendencies, but it is his great privilege to guide and modify them. In some cases he may re- quire to steer so as to avoid Scylla and not fall into Charybdis ; in others to develop energy in weak natures that only tend to drift along in life. But one thing is certain, that to attain these truly great restilts the teacher must himself be very much of a man; and the public would do well if it could but stop long enough in the race for wealth, power, or distinction to consider whether it is taking the right means to find and retain such peo- ple. Mankind must study and observe the laws of the heredities if the race is to make the greatest possible progress; and next to that the race must seek out and cherish in every way those that, after the parents themselves, have the greatest influence in mold- ing and developing—the teachers of youth. All other questions are subordinate. My colleagues in this noble work, let us in our day and generation realize our great opportunity and seize it.

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THE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS. 481 THE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS. By Mrs. ELLEN BATTELLE DIETRICK. NE of the curious anomalies of history is found in the ex- istence of a race whose men are characterized by a passionate love of freedom, equaling that of a William Tell, but whose women habitually accept slavery as the most desirable of earthly conditions. No more thrilling story of spirited resistance to an invader can be found than that of the long struggle of Circassia against the persistently encroaching Slav. After forty years of continual warfare, overwhelmed by Russia’s superior wealth and numbers, thousands of Circassians voluntarily chose expatriation rather than abide in their native land under the yoke of the con- queror, and deserted en masse the best part of the country, to take refuge in Turkey. Yet, from the time Circassia was first known to Europe, it has been the regular custom of these independence- loving, self-governing mountaineers to sell the sisters and daugh- ters whose beauty has given chief fame to the name of Circas- sian; and, difficult as it may be for an American generation reared to abhor slavery to credit the statement, the testimony that these beautiful Circassians gladly accept, and even hasten to meet, their sale is too universal for doubt upon this point. The mystery, however, is largely solved when we learn that to the women of Circassia slavery and marriage are purel y synony- mous terms. To them slavery has meant an exchange from a laborious life of poverty in the mountains to that of ease and luxury as a wife—either chief or secondary—in a city harem. To the Turk, Circassian slavery has meant purchasing a wife to whom he need not give the name wife unless he choose (the sultans never thus distinguish any woman), and thus obtaining one or more companions who will, almost without doubt, be more obedient and contented in that capacity than any one he might secure from among the women of his own blood and rank in society. A Turkish woman of to-day writes: “Formerly a Turk rarely married his countrywoman; on the principle, I suppose, that ‘exchange is no robbery,’ he would marry a Circassian slave, and give his sister to a Circassian man slave, or to some penniless Circassian subaltern in the Turkish army. This was caused by the innate love of power existing in both sexes. A Turkish girl wedded to her equal would, by the laws of religion, feel herself obliged to treat her husband with nearly servile respect, while, when wedded to one so decidedly her inferior, she would be mis- tress in her own house, and, reigning supreme over her husband and slaves, would never fear a rival.” Far from dreading their sale, the girls of Circassia look for-

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482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ward to it as the great opportunity of their lives. They go to seek it as a conscious jewel might start in search of a costly set- ting. They show no more reluctance than Esther manifested when Mordecai delivered her over as one of the fair young vir- gins gathered from far and near to adorn the palace of Ahasuerus, Indeed, the history of Esther reveals the motives which probably animate each of the many maidens of Circassia who to this day re-enact that old biblical story. Each believes that it is she who may find grace and favor in the royal crown, and thus control at will the rise or fall of the royal scepter. But even if not chosen by royalty, those who purchase the beautiful damsels of Circassia are the wealthy and titled; and not the slightest social degrada- tion is attached to their position, even when taken to harems wherein a Turkish wife may be installed as head of the household. The common dependence of all the inmates of a harem upon the favor of a lord who may at any time elevate the Circassian slave to the position of a lady fosters a spirit of equality—of pure, practical democracy, that would be inconceivable under any other circumstances, and in our Southern slave relation to nomi- nal mistress was totally undreamed of. As a Turkish lady ex- plained to an astonished English visitor, “ A slave may become a lady any day, and in treating her as one beforehand we take off very much of the awkwardness which would else ensue.” When we consider that all the children of slaves are acknowledged as the legitimate children of their father, we must confess, in justice to the Turk, that theirs is a condition in which the evils of slavery to the slave are reduced to a minimum. The first step after purchasing a Circassian girl is to give her (as unto Esther) a special retinue of personal slaves, brought from Africa, who relieve her henceforward of the slightest necessity of unpleasant exertion. Though she may not, like Esther, be put through “six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odors,” every accessory of the toilet which may enhance her original attractiveness is bestowed upon her, accompanied by careful lessons in the graces of deportment. Thus to the mountain girt who looks forward. to life in Turkey reports of that life go back freighted with all that could allure and blind the unthinking. Dread of an evil fate is reduced to a mere vague and flitting sur- mise, while the lottery. matrimonial is represented to her as one filled with magnificent prizes. As the Circassians, though pos- sessed of much native intelligence, have no written literature, none of these girls can read or write. They are trained for the marriage market as a fine horse is trained for a race course, and the higher price they bring the greater their satisfaction. “Ask a higher price for me, dear brother,” says a Russian nobleman, “is their not uncommon admonition to the brother who is man-

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‘ THE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS. 483 aging the bargain.” This affords a double gratification, that of being rarely valued for themselves, and of being most highly profitable to the family left behind in the mountains. Great was the astonishment of the first Russian crew which “ rescued” a vessel-load of Circassians on their way to Turkey, to have the rescued ones entreat not to be returned to their homes, but to be forwarded to their destination. In spite of the combined efforts of Russian and English, their attempts at prohibition of slavery among the Turks have merely driven the trade into an appearance of secrecy here and there, without at all diminishing either demand or supply. But a more effectual mode of changing human conditions is at work, silently and subtly undermining the whole system of slav- ery, polygamy, and concubinage in Turkey. Two remarkable letters, written by a Turkish inmate of a harem, appeared in the Nineteenth Century (of August and December, 1890), which give an interesting view of the transformation slowly fermenting in that last stronghold of extreme conservatism on the woman ques- tion—the seraglio. The writer, who signs herself “Adalet” (and who therein makes her first essay at writing), explains that the foreign education of Turkish boys inevitably paved the way for that of Turkish girls; that now sons and brothers are being edu- cated at Oxford or in Paris, and have thus learned that “ when her intellect is not crushed by continual fear and impotent ignorance, woman can become the helpmate and support of man”; that “the view also of the cheerful homes existent in Europe has taught them that one wife is better than twenty slaves; and as the Turk- ish girls are better adapted by nature to second their views than the Circassians, it is to them that they turned for help. It needed but little time to teach the Turkish mothers what was needed at their hands; and where before a little French was the maximum of learning acquired by a Turkish girl, she was now taught to read and write in several languages, to play the piano, to.draw, to paint—in a word, to have as complete an education as any young lady destined to appear in society. This system, of course, in- cluded novel-reading; and in them the young girl, who before believed that the highest happiness for her was to be tyrannized over by a man she did not know, in common with five or six rivals, suddenly saw opened before her a long vista of unknown bliss, which, to her dazzled eyes, seemed more beautiful than anything promised in paradise. She heard of balls, fétes, parties, where women spoke openly with men who were not doctors or cousins; she heard, for the first time, that a woman is considered as highly as @ man, and may even claim from him the homage which, till now, she thought had been exclusively his prerogative; she saw in them the description of happy homes, where one wife ‘alone

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484 possessed the love and confidence of her husband, and little by little the poison imbibed circulated through her veins.” The writer continues, that as it is impossible for a reaction to occur in a country without its rushing to the opposite evil, in Turkey the leap from ignorance to knowledge had the first effect of so dazzling the Turkish woman that, in casting off the ancient trammels, she also in many cases abandoned the code of honor existent among women in every country. “Of our old customs, as well as of our old faith, very little remains, and it is only in the lower orders, or the most secluded harems, that some vestige ¢ of them can be found. At Constantinople women hardly hide their faces, and think it no shame to appear before the public in habiliments which would be hardly considered decent with the lowest dregs of European society.” But, as Adalet sagely observes, “ All this is a secondary ques- tion.” She rightly appreciates that freedom is a gift which can be wisely used only by practice in the use of freedom, and does not forsake her faith in freedom because its first possession has intoxicated those unaccustomed to it. Perceiving that slavery is the corner stone of polygamy, she urges that the women of Turkey should strive with all their force for the abolition of polygamy by themselves enfranchising their own slaves. But she also declares that, however good, as far as negroes are con- cerned, may be the result of the action of the English Govern- ment in Egypt for the enforced abolition of slavery, the effect upon the Circassians has been only evil, and that continually, and for these reasons: “ No Circassian would ever condescend to go to the slave-home, or work as a servant. What has, then, been the result? Hundreds of white slaves have gone to the police court for their freedom, and from there have gone to the bad. In fact, they only took their papers with that intention, as no Circassian ever thought that slavery was ashame, or that it was irksome in any way. Freedom to them means nothing unless the freedom is THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. accompanied by a husband and a home, and they know very well they can not expect these from the police court, as no marriage can be valid with the paper taken from there. ... They have given a bad repute to the police court, and now no slave who respects herself will go there.” Thus Adalet concludes: “I frankly own that I think, in the case of the Circassians, no efforts made for the abolishment of slavery will be successful, when coming from the outside. It is we, we alone, who can, by enfranchising and marrying out, little by little, those we possess, and buying no more, end a custom as bad to ourselves as to them. Every scheme in which we do not participate will end by doing the slaves more harm than they will ever suffer in a harem.” The extreme of injury done to the body politic by a mode of

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THE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS, 485 life which entirely divorces the public interests of women and men is strikingly illustrated in the vicissitudes of Mohammedan- ism. In the Koran itself there originally existed conditions which, taken as a whole, were far more favorable to women than the common law of England. Originally, women of the Moham- medan faith were as highly educated and moved abroad as freely as men, mingling unveiled in their company, and actively par- ticipating in public affairs. Those were the centuries when the liberal and enlightened rule of Mohammedans made the name of Spain glorious, and when all Europe sought. education in Moham- medan universities, It was during those centuries that the Turk passed from victory to victory, proceeding from western Asia into Europe, until his conquering army stood on the eve-of a con- quest of Austria. But, as had so often happened before in warlike nations grown rich with enormous booty, women of the higher class sur- rendered themselves more and more to an indoor life of extrava- gant luxury and idleness, only too truthfully mirrored in the tales of “A Thousand and One Nights.” The veil was doubt- less at first worn as a sort of portable tent, into which one could withdraw to escape the bold stare of unwelcome admirers; partly as a result of a growing refinement, which led them to shun the gaze of a rude soldiery; partly to enhance their own attractive- ness by affected concealment of their beauty. Thus in England also, during the warlike period of the Crusades, English women of rank habitually wore, even within doors, a veil which could be used for such purposes. And the somewhat like circum- stances resulting from like causes conspired to make the English woman, likewise, at one period of her history, a creature whose dense ignorance and silliness equaled that found in the Turkish harem. The Asiatic woman, however, having once become an objet de luxe, plunged deeper into the gulf of helplessness, and has much more slowly begun to grow out of that condition. She is as one fallen into a pit, who can only escape by her own co-operation, but whose enervated arms are so weakened that every movement has become a burden, As woman is the life- stream of each race—the source which must be lifted high as the fountain is to rise—the enslavement of womanhood in Turkish harems has inevitably wrought its own revenge of terrible evil upon the nominal enslavers. Most miserable to-day is the lot of that people born of a raceof slave mothers; most significantly is that debilitated empire known as “the Sick Man of Europe.” Nothing but a patient upbuilding from the very foundation can restore that invalid whose disease is so deep-seated and long- abiding. This upbuilding has already begun. The elixir of modern ideas has not stopped with placing novels and teaching

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486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. showy accomplishments to girls in the harem. Already the invalid has begun to help himself by free schools and public libraries, which must inevitably, in time, revolutionize public thought. Even if the germ of the desire for freedom has, as Adalet confesses, entered woman’s views in its least desirable form, it is something to have the love of freedom reawakened at the source whence youth draws its first impressions; and, after the desire for freedom for what it can give to the woman her- self, must surely follow a desire for that which will enable her to give most worthily to others. ‘ —_++o-—____- WHERE BANANAS GROW. By JAMES ELLIS HUMPHREY. Sig! spite of the fact that a bunch of bananas was a rare sight, and a single one a luxury, when we who are still young were children, they have become so common that we have ceased to ask the questions naturally prompted by unaccustomed sights; and this, not because those questions are no longer unanswered, but as the result of that familiarity which makes us forget our ignorance. We know that we owe this acceptable addition to our bill of fare to the tropics. We admire its texture and enjoy its flavor; but we rarely give it serious thought unless constrained to do so while yielding to the smooth invitation to tarry a while that its cast-off skin extends. We shudder at dreadful stories of venomous tarantulas and scorpions lurking in those compact clus- ters; and the horrors of a region that harbors such creatures out- weigh all other thoughts. Concerning the facts of its climate, the growth of its products, the life of its people, we rarely inquire. There is, perhaps, no other temperate country where the use of fruit is so widespread or so extensive as in the United States. Not only does our own unrivaled domain furnish varied soils and cli- mates perfectly adapted to the temperate and subtropical fruits of the world, but our facilities for transporting and preserving them place the products of the most favored regions within reach of every one during prolonged seasons, The dweller in New York or Boston is thus able to supplement his home fruits by those of Delaware and New Jersey, of the Indian River, and of Los An- ; geles and San Bernardino in an uninterrupted and unfailing suc- i cession which has nearly banished the dried apple of our child- hood. : But the influence of external conditions is as potent here as in other features of our life, and the nature of the food supply sng EE IE ae ele Nn Ae Nee a a RNR RN aE

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WHERE BANANAS GROW. 487 largely determines the character of our food. We owe our good fortune to the abundance and cheapness of the fruit brought to our gates even more than to our growing appreciation of the hygienic value of good fruit. Our neighbors of northern Europe are relatively so far removed from fruit-growing regions that their winter-supply of fresh fruit seems likely to remain limited and costly, however great their willingness to buy. The stores of fruit which have been instrumental in this happy development of a nation of fruit-eaters in the last genera- tion have come, as has been said, chiefly from our own territory. But the banana, which has played as great a part as any one sort, is strictly tropical, sensitive to very moderate cold, and growing safely in our own country only in extreme southern Florida. But here is little good banana land, and the prospective grower of this fruit must look beyond, to the South, for the scene of his operations. The banana is probably a native of southern Asia and the Malay Archipelago, but has been known and esteemed from very early times in tropical America. It is now extensively cultivated in the West Indies and Central America both for home consump- tion and for export. One may form some idea of the growth of our appreciation of bananas from the statement of one familiar with the trade for the past twenty-five years, that an importation of twenty-five hundred bunches into Boston in a summer week, twenty years ago, could with the greatest difficulty be disposed of. Yet the usual receipts for a corresponding period at present are over fifty thousand ‘bunches, and double that number have found a market in a single week. We may try to realize some- thing of the quantity of bananas we eat from the careful trade estimate of importations into the United States in 1892, which is as follows: Into Now Ordoams. ....6ccccscccccccsceusebe 4,483,351 bunches. Into Mow York. .....ccccscccccsdeussvene se 8,715,625 “ Into Philadelphia. .... oo eccisicccvcestdenes 1,818,328 “ Inte Basten .. «000000006 s0eese6eeees soewens 1,710,005 “ Into Baltimore ......cecceccccsccdccccscace 625,077 * Into minor Southern ports.....se...eeseeeees 348,000 “ The total of 12,695,386 bunches represents an increase of 1,578,632 bunches over the previous year. It is true that when we talk of millions of bunches, which means hundreds of millions of ba- nanas, the mind quite fails to grasp the hugeness of the fact, So we may add that this quantity represents about twenty bananas to each person in the whole United States, and a value of not less than five million dollars at the points of shipment before they are placed on board. Formerly our Northern ports received a large part of their supply from Central America and the Isthmus}; but

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488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. more recently the shorter distance and better fruit have given the advantage to the nearer islands; and now, while New Orleans still draws from the older source, Cuba and Jamaica supply the North almost exclusively; and of these two, Jamaica is the more fertile, yields better fruit, is the more healthful in climate, the more beautiful for scenery, the more agreeable for residence or travel. A visit to the “ gem of the Antilles, then,” may show us something of the growth and treatment of this fruit which has come to vie with our own apples as a staple article in our dietary. Like the palms and the grains, the banana plant is one of the “endogenous ” plants of the older botanists. Its nearest relatives familiar in our climate are the Cannas, of late much grown, which give to our summer lawns an air so distinguished and so tropical. While broad-leaved, like the Cannas, the banana plant has the treelike aspect of the palms, with a stout, erect, and rounded bole capped by the splendid cluster of spreading leaves. Yet, unlike the palms, it is not truly a tree; for, while the palms, like all trees, have solid, woody trunks, albeit constructed on a plan radically different from that of the woody plants of our own fields, the apparent trunk of the “ banana tree” is made up only of the soft, sheathing bases of the leaves. These arise from the true stem, a rounded, fleshy mass at the surface of the ground, from which also the roots descend. The huge leaf-bases, several feet in length, tightly inclose each other and form a compact body as thick as a man’s thigh, narrowing upward into short leaf- stalks, which bear the large though graceful oblong blades. Within this cylinder of leaf-bases is the growing-point, or bud, from which new leaves continue to be pushed forth until the plant is full grown. Each leaf emerges in its turn from the center of the crown of leaves, a beautiful, erect roll, pushing straight upward into the air. Gradually unrolling as it finds room, the blade at last flattens out and bends to one side, and an- other leaf is added to the crown. Few leaves are more attractive than these young banana leaves in their first freshness of delicate green, of perfect form and grace, and of spotless purity. But with increasing age the color deepens, and the first wind and rain tear the exquisite blade in numberless places between its parallel veins ; so that an old leaf becomes finally but two rows of rib- bons and tatters, dull or dry, fringing a battered leaf-stalk. After the last leaf has pushed forth and the foliage crown is complete, there appears from its middle the bud for which all the previous activity of the plant has been but the preparation. It emerges as a lanceolate mass borne on a rapidly lengthening stalk. The compact bud may be seen to be composed of close-set purple bracts of fleshy, leaflike texture, tightly overlapping. After a time the outer bract is raised from the underlying ones

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WHERE BANANAS GROW. 489 and, separating more and more, at length falls away, leaving a scar to mark its place, and, just within the scar, a group of tubu- lar, pale yellow flowers. Their petals soon wither and fall away, leaving the ovaries as a row of tiny bananas which will become one of the “hands” of the future bunch. Thus successive bracts fall away from the bud and successive rows of bananas appear. But after a time, though the bracts continue to fall and to un- cover new flower clusters, these are found to be sterile, and young fruits are no longer formed. A bud may, then, contain only two or three fertile bracts, or it may have as many as fifteen or more Fie. 1.—Burr or Banana Pant, wits “ Eres,” anp “Ser” reapy rok PLantine. ’ .] —that is, the number of fruit clusters in the ripened bunch may vary between those extremes. The development of sterile flowers continues indefinitely. Each bract, as it falls, uncovers a fresh group to furnish pollen for the impregnation of the fertile flowers of a neighboring plant, as those of their own bunch, uncovered first, have already received the fructifying stimulus from a neigh- bor. Thus Nature provides for the cross-fertilization on which, as Mr. Darwin first showed us, she lays so much stress, sending the fecundating dust from plant to plant by those loveliest and swiftest of her messengers, the humming birds, and rewarding VOL. XLIv.—388

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490 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. their industrious service with frequent draughts of nectar of her own inimitable brew. While the flowers are thus developing and giving place to fruits, the stalk of the bunch is lengthening and carrying the clusters farther apart, making room for the growth of the fruits, which pretty well keeps pace with that of the stalk. Very early the stalk begins to bend over and, as soon as it has become long enough, turns completely on itself. Thus the bud, and finally the bunch of fruit, hang downward between the leaves. On the other hand, the young bananas turn upward in their growth, and come at last to point directly up. As the tip of the stalk still lengthens, when the bananas are full grown it often hangs a yard below them, tipped by the purple plummet of yet unfallen bracts, It is by this sterile stalk that we see the bunches hung in our shops ; that is, in a position just the reverse of that in which they grow. In the Eastern tropics, the number of varieties and species of bananas and banana-like plants is large; but in America those which are cultivated to any extent are very few. Indeed, of true bananas we need notice only two. The common yellow variety, which is almost exclusively that which our markets receive, is the only one raised in Jamaica, and the chief one everywhere. But in Cuba and Central America the stout, red-skinned variety is still somewhat cultivated and occasionally shipped. It pro- duces smaller bunches, but larger fruits, as a rule, than the yellow one. Another plant, so like the banana in habit as to be prac- tically indistinguishable, but with larger yellow fruits which are eaten only when cooked, is the plantain. Its fruit is a staple arti- cle of food with the natives of Jamaica; and, when sliced and fried in sweet cocoanut oil as a creole cook can do it, is a dish to tickle the palate on which the flesh-pots of Egypt pall. It is a matter of common observation that bananas contain no seeds. Cultivation through unnumbered generations has led to the atrophy of these organs through the substitution of a vegeta- tive mode of propagation, much to the advantage of the eater of the fruit, at least. Only in one or two isolated regions of the Old World are the primitive seed-bearing bananas known. If we examine the rounded mass at the base of a well-grown plant, which is its true stem, there will be found one or more knob-like outgrowths which are plainly large buds. As the plant becomes older, these buds, or “eyes,” as the banana grower calls them, develop upward, breaking through the soil and unfolding their first leaves. From the bases of their own stems, which are merely differentiated bits of the stem of the parent plant, roots are sent down; and thus the shoots become separated or capable of sepa- ration from the parent, and so, of independent life. At this stage jogs tm: pela Aine

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WHERE BANANAS GROW. 491 the plantlets, now perhaps two feet long, are called “sets,” and it is these which, taken from a vigorous plantation, are used for establishing a new one. Although they will do fairly well in the climate of Jamaica in a great variety of soils, the best land for bananas is the deep, rich, and moist alluvium of the river valleys. Here plants and fruit reach their perfection, and the largest returns reward the least labor. In short, the very lands which were the basis of Jamaica’s wealth in the old days of sugar and rum and slavery, and which, during the years of her decadence, have lain waste - Fie. 2.—Native Hitisipe Homes strrounpep sy Bananas. and “in ruinate,” are destined again to give her a substantial prosperity in the new days of the banana and the cocoanut and freedom. And we may hope that this prosperity will be more real and more permanent than the former, because founded on principles of personal liberty and righteous dealing, and without the accompaniment of the semi-barbarous luxury and the wholly barbarous license that cursed the former time. It is but a few years since the crumbling evidences of the ma- terial prosperity of the rule of sugar and rum were to be seen on every hand. Magnificent estates, teeming with a tropical luxuri-

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492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ance of riotous vegetation, only awaiting the directing hand to turn their fertility to use, were everywhere. Old sugar works and stillhouses, monumentally built of stone, still contained the massive remains of machinery which even the corrosion of the tropics had not yet wholly destroyed. And on each estate the splendid “ great house,” still splendid in its desolation, enshrouded in creepers and climbers, in clinging mosses and “ wild pines” and orchids, stood an eloquently mute witness to the external grand- eur of the life.of the sugar planter of an earlier part of the century. And all these things are still far too common. But al- ready the change is evident. These old estates are being rapidly taken up and cleared. The great houses are being renovated or replaced by new if less pretentious homes. Life and activity are replacing death and decay. One hears of thrifty men who have bought fine estates, renovated and equipped them, and estab- lished fruit plantations hundreds of acres in extent, at an expense of thousands of pounds, and from the profits of the first five years have stood free of debt and independent. These are not isolated or exaggerated cases; but they will, of course, become less fre- quent as the fruit supply increases. The pioneer in growing and shipping fruit has been a Cape Cod sea captain, who, trading among the islands, had the foresight to seize the opportunity when it was his for the seizing, and faith that Americans would buy all the fruit he could offer them. In twenty years his real estate and shipping interests have grown too extensive for a single man, and are now in the hands of the Boston Fruit Com- pany, of whose Jamaica interests he is still in charge. This com- pany now owns or controls over thirty of the finest fruit estates in the island, from Morant Bay around the eastern end as far as Buff Bay. Jamaicans cordially recognize their indebtedness to Captain L. D. Baker for the present hopeful outlook for their island. One of the largest and perhaps the most successful of the fruit company’s estates is that called “Golden Vale,” eight miles south of Port Antonio, its headquarters in the island. Here some two hundred acres of genuine “ banana land” are now under cultiva- tion, and the area is being steadily increased. A visit to this plantation will give the best idea of the details of banana culture. The road takes us directly away from the coast through the hills that come down to the very shore almost everywhere in eastern Jamaica. The fine government roads make driving a pleasure, and the magnificent hill views and wonderful vegetation are an unfailing delight. So it is all too soon that we descend the hills into the valley of the Rio Grande, pass through the plantation and settlement of “ Friendship,” on the hither side, ford the river ’ with wheels hub deep in water, and enter Golden Vale. Thanks.

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WHERE BANANAS GROW. 493 to a telephonic message that has preceded us, the superintendent awaits us to show us everything of interest and, with unfailing courtesy, to answer the endless questions of a Yankee. After the ground is cleared, holes about a foot and a half deep are dug fifteen feet apart each way. They are then filled with surface soil to a depth of six inches, leaving them a foot deep. In these holes the sets are then placed obliquely, so that their upper ends just project beyond the edges of the holes, and are covered closely. Many planters place the sets upright and cover 4 only their bases; but, though they then make plants rather more quickly, the best growers believe the resulting plants are not so strong, and produce less and poorer fruit. A set covered as above may then “shoot,” in technical parlance, either from an eye at the base of the set or by the continued growth of its principal bud within the sheathing leaves. This results in a new growth bursting through the old leaf-bases—* breaking the husk,” the growers say—and is considered to give the best plants. Good sets will show vigorous growth in three or four, sometimes even in two, weeks after planting, and then grow rapidly, pushing out leaf after leaf, aud finally the flower stalk. At length, eleven or twelve months after planting in good soil, each plant stands from twelve to fifteen feet high, and bears a bunch of fruit full grown. Since a plant bears only a single bunch of fruit, it is removed when the bunch is cut to make room for another. And by the time it is ready for cutting others are ready to take its place in the young plants which have come up all about it from the lat- eral sprouts of its stem. The best of these are selected to re- main and the rest removed. In this selection of plants and the resulting thinning lie the secret of success with bananas. The first to grow from sets in a new plantation are called “ plants,” while succeeding growths from their shoots are “ rattoons,” first, second, third, and so on, in succeeding generations. This word t rattoon is a corruption of the Spanish refofio, a new shoot, and originated in connection with the culture of sugar cane, which is propagated in the same way. An amusing example of the extent of its use may be seen in the Jamaican reference to a meal made » off the remnants of a previous feast as “ eating the rattoons.” By careful selection and thinning of the rattoons a good plan- tation comes in a couple of years to its full development. Then one finds, as nearly as may be, in each “hill,” as we may call the group of plants standing where each original set was placed, four plants strong, vigorous, and in stages of development which present a regular succession from oldest to youngest. Placing the hills fifteen feet apart each way gives nearly two hun- dred to the acre, and a well-managed cultivation should yield two marketable bunches per hill a year. The plants and first

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494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. rattoons give the best fruit, and there is a steady degeneration with succeeding rattoons. The limit of profitable yield for a plan- tation varies éspecially with the soil. But the maximum for deep and moist banana lands may be said to be about ten years. Then the ground must be cleared and a new culture begun with fresh sets. Very little is done in rotation of crops, and the soil has as yet received little fertilization except such as results from the decay of the old plants. It is not alone on the great estates, nor even chiefly on them, that our enormous supplies of fruit are being produced. Scattered Fie. 3.—In THe “Gotpen Vaz” PLanTation. all over the hills are little clearings of a few acres, or even less than one acre, thickly set with banana plants. It is from these little patches that perhaps a majority of our fruit comes. For even the Boston Fruit Company, with all its estates, is compelled to buy largely to supply its trade, and most of the other shippers are wholly buyers. Thus the smaller and less available tracts are turned to account, which is a matter of the first importance in a country so irregular and so mountainous as Jamaica. Whether for shipment or for home consumption the fruit is ‘cut as soon as it is “full ”—that is, when it has reached its adult

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WHERE BANANAS GROW. 495 form and size, but is still quite green. The plant is cut off by a single blow of a machete wielded by a powerful arm. As it falls the bunch is caught, lopped off, and laid aside, while the harvester goes on to the next bunch. It is a popular supposition that ba- nanas “ripened on the tree” are incomparably superior to those cut green. But as a matter of fact one never eats them thus ripened in Jamaica. They are said to be not so good; at all events, one finds no better fruit in texture or flavor than the best of our own markets. But every lover of this fruit knows that its quality varies extraordinarily as it is offered to us. This is due partly to the different sources from which it comes. The best that is brought to us.comes from Jamaica. It is also due still more to the condition of the fruit when cut. Bananas which are perfectly full will ripen mellow and delicious; but those cut when immature, as too many are, will turn yellow, yet never truly ripen, retaining always their hard texture and unripe taste. In Jamaica, as elsewhere, the competition of buyers leads the un- scrupulous ones to accept fruit of any sort, even when totally unfit ; and this sort of competition makes all the more unavail- ing the efforts of honest buyers to raise the standard and to teach the people to withhold their fruit until it is properly developed. Americans can give moral support to these efforts by accepting only such fruit as is mature at any price. A little pains will soon enable one to distinguish good from poor fruit, though it is diffi- cult to give a general statement of the distinctive differences. But, as a rule, it will be found that bananas which are largest, deepest yellow, and least angular are the most mature and best. The view over Golden Vale from the superintendent’s house, which stands at a little distance on a slight elevation, recalls a grain field with its level surface of waving foliage. The drive along the roads within the plantation is beautiful. One may go on and on between the stretches of luxuriant plants, to the soft rustle of the leaves overhead, while below the forests of trunks reach away on either hand beyond the power of the eye to pene- trate. But the experience never to be forgotten is a ride over the estate with the superintendent. On tough little Jamaica horses, docile and sure-footed, we leave at once the wagon road, plunge into the wilderness of plants, and soon lose sight of every land- mark. Pushing on, sometimes along foot paths just distinguish- able, oftenest where there are none ; jumping ditches and prostrate trunks, surrounded only by banana plants in all stages of growth, yet so alike, so monotonous, that one might as easily find his way in midocean. Above us is an overarching roof of foliage sup- ported by massive clustered columns. Beneath our feet is a dense carpet of some of the prized adornments of Northern greenhouses —the Tradescantia or “ wandering Jew,” beautifully contrasting

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2 ———— | | | | | i | . | 496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the deep maroon of the lower faces of its leaves with the green and silvery stripes of their upper sides ; the delicate pink-flowered Oxalis, and the dainty “ sensitive plant,” whose modest shrinking from the slightest touch has been uncharitably attributed toa bad conscience, both by the botanist who named it Mimosa pudica and by the darky boys who call it “shame.” Emerging at last into the full blaze of the tropic sun, which seems all the more garish by contrast, we cross the open for a time and soon begin the ascent, by a slight bridle path, of one of the steep hills that inclose the valley. Slowly but surely the horse creeps upward, now stopping with all four feet together to poise for a leap over a gully, then pressing on over a track that nothing else but a mountain goat could climb, close past and under trees that almost brush one from the saddle. At length we come out upon open ground near the summit, to be a hundredfold repaid by one of the fairest sights the fancy can paint. At our feet lies the sea of bananas; beyond and on either side stretches the amphitheater of hills, plumed with cocoanut palms and fringed with feathery bamboos, and covered with verdure. Back to the house by a good path, we taste true Jamaican hospitality in a cup of tea and that most melting and luscious of Jamaica’s fruits, a Ripley pine—no one says pineapple here. After cutting, it is important to ship the bananas as promptly as possible and to handle them carefully, for the less they have ripened or been bruised before reaching their market the better priges they bring. So each bunch is carefully wrapped with “trash ”—dried banana leayes—and taken at once to the nearest shipping port. From the great properties like Golden Vale they are transported in two-wheeled or four-wheeled mule carts, the former drawn by two mules, the latter by three abreast, carrying, respectively, about twenty and forty bunches. These carts are lined with trash to prevent bruising. The mule team consists of a large mule in the shafts and a small one harnessed to an outrig- ger on one side or on each side, as the case may be. From the smaller clearings and dooryard patches of the peasants come sin- gle bunches on the heads of their owners, or lots of two or four bunches packed in trash and slung pannier-fashion across the backs of donkeys. As the bunches are received at the wharf they are unpacked, inspected, and checked off by a tallyman, and placed in trash-lined bins according to their size and quality. A glance shows an ex- perienced eye how many groups or “hands” of bananas a bunch contains. A bunch of nine or more hands is a whole bunch, and brings the full-bunch price either at the port of shipment or in the Northern market. I am told that bunches of sixteen hands - are occasionally met with, but have never seen one of more than

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WHERE BANANAS GROW. 497 thirteen. A bunch of eight hands is a three-quarter bunch, one of seven hands a half bunch, and a six-hand bunch sells for a quarter or a third of the full-bunch price. Bunches below this size are not ordinarily marketable. Since a hand may contain from a dozen to twenty fruits or “ fingers,” the number in a mar- ketable bunch may vary from six to twenty dozen. The poorer bunches are sometimes reserved for the few schooners still in the Fie. 4.—Loapine at THE Wuarr, Port Antonio. trade, chiefly with our Southern ports, while all the best go by steamers. Originally the entire trade was carried on in sailing vessels, but their slowness and uncertainty have compelled them to give way to the present fleet of stanch and fast steamers, whose regu- lar time of about five days to New York and six to Boston from Jamaica, or half a day less. from Baracoa, Cuba’s largest fruit port, gives them every advantage in the transportation of perish- able freight, in spite of greater running expenses. Most of these steamers, while built especially for the fruit trade, are of the class called tramps, taking short charters wherever they can ob- tain them, and with no allegiance but to their owners. It is with a twinge of regret that an American sees ship after ship, as she

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498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. enters port, break out at her taffrail the ensign of Britain or of Norway. There are but five ports in the West Indies and Central Amer- ica which boast wharves where ships may load or passengers may land. Two of these are chief centers of the fruit trade in Ja- maica—Port Antonio and Port Morant—which owe their facilities to the enterprise of the Boston Fruit Company. Here the fruit is transferred to the ships, bunch by bunch, upon the shoulders of men. But at all the other ports, which lie scattered along the northern and eastern coasts at intervals of ten to thirty miles, from Morant Bay to Lucca, ships must anchor an eighth to half a mile off shore, and receive their cargoes from large surfboats, manned each by three stout negroes, two rowing in the bow and the other standing in the stern, alternately sculling and steering. These boats bring out at each load from a hundred and fifty to two hundred bunches, which are passed on board ship by way of a staging let half way down her side. Each bunch, as it comes on board, whether from wharf or boat, is passed down a line of men reaching from the deck to that part of the hold which is be- ing filled. The first man, as he receives the bunch, calls out its number in series, and, following him, the tallyman on deck keeps the score in his book. Often half a dozen men will join in the refrain : “* One—let ’er go. Two—put ’em down. Three—carefully. Four—banana. Tally—oh——!” This is shouted or chanted with a slow rhythmic swing, and is most frequently heard at night. At such a time—for when once the loading of a ship is begun it continues without interruption until she is ready to sail—the effect is particularly weird. The splash of the oars of boats emerging from the darkness, the shouts of the men, the scantily clothed dark forms dimly lighted by flar- ing lanterns, and, dominating all, this almost unintelligible chant, suggest some orgy of voodoo. In the hold the bunches are placed upright, resting on the thick ends of their stems, and as close to- gether as possible. So a steamer is loaded, in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, with twelve to fifteen, or rarely twenty, thousand bunches. In the busy season, from April through July, the Boston Fruit Company alone loads five ships per week on an average, including two for Boston and two for Baltimore. Their supplies are drawn chiefly from the region between Morant Bay and St. Ann’s Bay, and up the east coast as far as Annotto Bay they are the chief shippers. Their leading competitors are the Jamaica Fruit Com-

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WHERE BANANAS GROW. 499 pany, at Port Antonio, which supplies its Jamaica fruit to the Philadelphia market, and J. E. Kerr & Co., the leading buyers between Annotto Bay and Lucca, who run steamers to New York. Besides these there are numerous smaller buyers. Unfortunately, it can not be said that all buyers deal fairly with the people, though they keep their trade by taking all fruit that offers, re- gardless of its quality or fitness. Many of them are dealers in general merchandise, and, by paying their ignorant clients in goods, not only make a double profit, but keep running accounts with them which are never closed and always show a balance on Fie. 5.—Loaprve From a Boat, Burr Bay. the dealer’s side. While this may not be carried as far as the in- famous truck system, which holds the people of the Bahamas in practical slavery, the tendency is the same, and should be sharply checked before its logical conclusion is realized. And now something as to the people who are engaged in the work of culture and shipment already described. With few ex- ceptions they are native Jamaicans. Some of the most respon- sible positions in the Boston Fruit Company’s offices at Port An- tonio and Port Morant are filled by Americans, who with their families form a delightful colony at the former place. To them

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500 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. visiting Americans are indebted for many kindnesses. The clerks and tallymen at the ports, the superintendents and overseers, or “head bushers,” on the cultivations are chiefly white, creole, or mulatto Jamaicans. A parenthesis here about this word “creole.” Webster and others define a creole as a child of white parents born in the tropics; but this certainly is not the popular use of the term in Jamaica. There it is synonymous with the perhaps com- moner expression “ brown man,” and is applied to a person with a small proportion of negro blood, which, while showing its presence slightly in complexion or hair, or both, still distinguishes its pos- sessor but slightly from a white person. These people are far more numerous than the whites in Jamaica, and enjoy complete social equality with them. This is not only fortunate for all con- cerned, but is the inevitable result of the free intermarriage of persons of all shades of complexion and all degrees of blood mix- ture, as well as of the looser relations which were even recently very common, but which, happily, seem at present to be less con- doned among people with claims to respectability. One always finds Jamaicans of the better class kindly, hospitable, polite, and unaffected, without the veneer of more elaborate civilization. But the manual labor in any industry is largely performed by the negro peasantry, who constitute a very large and steadily in- creasing majority of the population of the island. In the culture and shipment of the banana both men and women were formerly employed, but at present men are almost exclusively engaged, re- ceiving from one to two shillings per day, according to the work. There is much of interest about the Jamaica negro—some good points and many bad ones; but this is not the occasion for their detailed discussion. His life is a curious combination of almost primitive savagery, with some of the least attractive features of our so-called civilization. Living chiefly in wattled bamboo huts thatched with palm leaves, and upon the lavish products of the soil, dressing in the simplest manner, his wants are easily supplied. Very religious in theory and equally immoral in practice, a child in mind and an animal in spirit, he presents a practical problem worthy of any philanthropist’s best efforts. The short time in which, even at his small wages, he can pro- vide for the needs of a week, his entire lack of ambition for more than a bare subsistence, and the seductions of that liquid fire called new rum, make the average negro an uncertain quantity in the labor problem. This has led to the importation into the British West Indies of a class of steadier and more reliable laborers, the low-caste Hindus, or coolies, from India. These slender-limbed and bronze-skinned Caucasians are, as a class, temperate, indus- trious, and frugal; quiet and peaceable when fairly treated. They make excellent laborers, and their picturesque and comfortable

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WHERE BANANAS GROW. sor costumes are far better suited to the climate than the imported European one which the negro apes. Living by themselves in villages of bamboo huts, the coolies have little intercourse with the negroes, whom they regard as their inferiors; and rightly so, from a mental or moral standpoint. The negro, onthe other hand, looks down on them, but has learned from experience that their reserved and quiet manners are no more the outward sign of timidity than his own bluster and braggadocio can replace real courage in an emergency. The typical agricultural tool in Jamaica is the machete. These heavy, swordlike blades are made in Europe and have clumsy handles with grips of rough wood. For a good one the buyer pays a shilling, and then takes it to asmith. Here the wooden grips are removed and a large strip is cut out from the handle to make it narrower and more comfortable; the blade is ground to a keen edge, and its sharp tip is cut off as a safeguard against too serious accident should the tool be dropped upon some always naked foot. The owner now fits to the handle convenient grips, preferably of calabash wood, winds them evenly and tightly with stout cord, and his constant companion is ready at a total expense Fie. 6.—MacuETse READY For Us. of about two shillings. Whether for grubbing up weeds and clearing ground, for gathering grass for his donkey, for harvest- ing bananas, for cutting yam-poles, or for husking cocoanuts, this implement is indispensable. It is formidable in appearance, and would be so in fact were its owner disposed to use it with sanguinary intent. But, happily, he has rarely the courage that makes a dangerous man, and the blood of the cocoanut is the machete’s most exciting draught. To return to our bananas. When the responsibility of the Jamaica people ends with the sailing of the ship, its captain’s re- sponsibility begins. And this is no slightone. In warm weather the holds must be kept wide open but constantly protected from the sun by awnings, and the great ventilating funnels must al- ways be turned to catch the full force of the wind and change the air below as often as possible. In cold weather it may be neces- sary to cover the hatches and close the ventilators to prevent the freezing of the delicate cargo as our shore is neared. And if the ship arrives during a cold snap she may have to lie several days

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502 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. before the weather will permit unloading. Either the closeness of the air beneath tightly battened hatches or the heat of mid- summer weather causes the rapid ripening of the fruit, and it may be the case at either season that when the ship is unloaded there is found a mass of ripe and decayed fruit which will not pay the cost of its transportation. Thus the shipper’s lot is likely to be by no means a happy one, and the success of a trip may depend largely on the skill and judgment of the shipmaster. Fruit which arrives in good condition is transferred by wagons to cool and dark storehouses to ripen, or by rail to interior mar- kets with the utmost dispatch. One may often see a fruiter just arrived at her pier in one of our large seaports, by whose side lies a huge scow bearing freight cars, into which the green bunches are being rapidly passed and stowed for transportation hundreds of miles inland. And so, throughout the year, the work goes on, affording profitable occupation to people who need it and healthful variety to tables that welcome it. Surely the story of one of the choicest products of Nature’s laboratory can not be without interest where that of every result of human ingenuity finds so large an audience. —_——90eg—__- TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT.* By Miss E. A. YOUMANS. > tee the death of Prof. Tyndall science has lost one of its greatest modern leaders, and the century one of its most striking per- sonalities. In early life he became prominent as an original in- vestigator, and later he was even more distinguished as a popu- lar scientific teacher. Probably no man of his time did more to- ward freeing science from the shackles of ecclesiasticism, and vindicating its claims to public regard. With less than the usual advantages of birth or position, he rose by sheer force of char- acter and natural] ability to the headship of one of the foremost scientific institutions of learning and research in the world, the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Here, as Professor of Physics, which appointment he received in 1853, he continued those origi- nal researches which had already made his name familiar in sci- entific circles, and subsequently, on the death of Faraday, he suc- ceeded to the directorship of the institution. His researches in physics embraced magnetism, electricity, light, heat, and sound, the latter including a long series of experi- ments on the atmosphere as a vehicle of sound, with a view to the * A biographical sketch of Prof. Tyndall, with a portrait on steel, appeared in The Popu- lar Science Monthly for November, 1872.

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TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 503 establishment of fog signals on the coast of England. Indeed, his studies branched out toward the practical in a variety of direc- tions; chief among them being his investigations concerning the nature of the dust particles in the air, and their relation to the germ theory of disease. It is said that he had from youth a faculty of examining his premises with extreme minuteness, so that he was hardly ever known to proceed on a false assumption ; and no theory ever pro- pounded by him as the result of mature deliberation has been upset or seriously controverted. Another of his characteristics was that a research once entered upon, the work was carried on with the unflagging industry and persistence of an enthusiast. He has himself furnished the explanation of this in the following passage taken from his later writings: My going to Germany had been opposed by some of my friends as quixotic, and my life there might perhaps not be unfairly thus described. I did not work for money; I was not even spurred by the “last infirmity of noble minds.” I had been reading Fichte and Emerson and Oarlyle, and had been infected by the spirit of these great men. The Alpha and Omega of their teaching was loyalty to duty. Higher knowledge and greater strength were within reach of the man who un- flinchingly enacted his best insight. It was a noble doctrine. It held me to my work, and in the long, cold mornings of the German winter, defended by a Schlaf- rock lined with catskin, I usually felt a freshness and strength—a joy in mere living and working-derived from perfect health—which was something different from the malady of self-righteousness, Again he says of this German experience: I risked this expenditure of time and money not because I had any definite prospect of material profit in view, but because I thought the cultivation of the intellect important—because, moreover, I loved my work and entertained the sure and certain hope that, armed with knowledge, one can successfully fight one’s way through the world. And I must not omit one additional motive, which was a sense of duty. Every young man of high aims must, I think, have a spice of this principle within him. There are sure to be hours in his life when his outlook will be dark, his work difficult, and his intellectual future uncertain. Over such periods, when the stimulus of success is absent, he must be carried by his sense of duty. But it was his power as a scientific expositor that gave Prof. Tyndall his worldwide reputation, and it is on this that his fame chiefly rests. His ability to present even abstruse subjects toa popular audience was unexcelled. The vividness of his imagina- tion, which enabled him to form clear mental pictures of the phe- nomena he sought to explain, and his aptness in illustration led him to translate abstract ideas into their concrete equivalents. On this point, the Athenzeum remarks: His lectures were not merely marked by logical reasoning expressed in for-: cible language, but they were models of method: nothing was left to chance; OE wR re ee

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504 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. everything, down to the minutest detail, was prepared with nicety; and the ex- periments were consequently performed with a precision unequaled by the manip- ulation of an accomplished conjurer. The qualities which characterized his lectures were reflected, as far as pos- sible, in his writings. There was the same clearness of thought, the same vigor of expression. Most of his writings were, indeed, reproductions or developments of his lectures; witness his popular works on Sound, Light, and The Forms of Water. His best-known book, Heat considered as a Mode of Motion—in which he presented, thirty years ago, an admirable exposition of the phenomena of heat in accordance with the dynamical theory—may be accepted as typical of his felicity of expression and readiness of illustration. It was these rare gifts as an interpreter of science which first drew the attention of American readers to Prof. Tyndall, and which finally led to his visit to this country in 1872. Many now living will recall that event and the impulse given to American science by the brilliant course of lectures which he delivered in our chief Atlantic cities. Having been asked to prepare a brief account of this visit, and being assured that it will be of interest just now to the readers of the Monthly, I have decided to comply with the request. I am enabled to do this by the aid of documents and letters left by my lamented brother, E. L. Youmans, who for many years enjoyed the friendship of Prof. Tyndall, and was in frequent correspond- ence with him. Tyndall’s first book, The Glaciers of the Alps, was brought out here by Ticknor and Fields in 1861. All who read it were fasci- nated by the clearness and beauty of its style and the ease with which its facts and principles could be understood. The year following, my brother made his first visit to England, and while in London it was his good fortune to be introduced to Tyndall. In a letter of September 25th he writes: I went with Spencer at his request to see Tyndall respecting the publication of his forthcoming book. He was at the Royal Institution, where his researches are carried on in a dingy hole down cellar, which Tyndall denominated “ the den.” He is a single man of forty, with a scanty strip of forehead, and big, straight, prominent nose—the most restless, nervous creature I ever set eyes on. We stayed but a few minutes, and nothing was said of anything but the book, and the publication of books. The work here referred to was Heat as a Mode of Motion, at that time in the hands of the printers in London. Another letter written from Cambridge during the same visit, when he was attending the meeting of the British Association, describes Tyndall’s manner as a lecturer: Last night there was an address by Tyndall before the association in the lecture room; subject, water in its several conditions. It was altogether the most brilliant affair of the kind I have ever seen. The new philosophy of forces

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TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 505 permeates everything. All science seems worked with reference to it. Tyndall not only assumed it, but it was the foundation of his philosophy. While I was with him the other day Spencer started the point of using the term persistence of force rather than conservation. They bad quite a spurt over it. But to-day Huxley used the term persistence of force, The experiments last night were, first. testing oxygen and hydrogen separately; second, exploding them together ; third, bursting iron bottles by freezing; fourth, exhibiting the formation of crys- tals by the electric light in a vacuum; fifth, formation of an immense spectrum on a screen, absorption of its different parts by colored glasses; and sixth, regela- tion of iron. He had splendid diagrams of the glaciers, but hardly referred to them. He was not still a moment, but bending and twisting in all possible shapes as if he had the St. Vitus dance—twisting his legs together, bending down to the desk, and working. and jerking himself in all possible directions. Everybody was kept awake, entertained, and instructed. It was a work of enthu- siasm. One of the consequences of that first interview with Tyndall appears in the following extract from a letter of my brother’s written to Mr. Spencer in March, 1863. He says: “I received the advance sheets of Prof. Tyndall’s book on Heat, and beg of you to express to him my sincere thanks for the kindness. The Apple- tons will issue it at the earliest moment, the cuts being already nearly all re-engraved. It is a very fascinating and altogether remarkable book, and it will be a pure pleasure for me to work for its circulation. It can not fail to have a good sale.” A letter of Prof. Tyndall’s to my brother relating to the publi- cation of his work on Heat, and bearing date April 29, 1863, is the earliest one in my possession. It is as follows: My Dear Sre: As soon as I received the letter with which you kindly favored me some months ago, I communicated at once with Mr. Longman and requested him to forward you the separate sheets of my work on Heat according as they appeared. I intended to accompany the sheets with a letter which should ex- press my desire to leave the management with the Messrs. Appleton entirely in your hands, but I have been so knocked about—sometimes so ill, sometimes so hard worked, and sometimes engaged so far away from London—that I have delayed thus far to write you. My friend Spencer called to see me a few days ago, and from him I had the great gratification of learning that the book has interested you. Indeed, he read portions of letters from Mrs. Youmans and yourself which gave me very great pleasure. Since the appearance of the work I have had communi- cations from many of my eminent Continental friends regarding it, and they, I am happy to say, concur in your opinion. A French translation of it has already been commenced. I can assure you that I have spared no labor to render a diffi- . cult subject intelligible, and it gives me great pleasure to find that I have, at least in some measure, succeeded. I am now giving a short course of lectures on Sound at the Royal Institution. IfI have time I may throw them into a readable form. I have for some time entertained the idea of publishing my lectures gradually and of afterward collect- ing them and fusing them into a book on general physics. But the time necessary to the proper accomplishment of the task deters me almost from ee However, it may perhaps be executed by mv degrees. VOL, XLIV.—39

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506 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. Mr. Huxley informs me that you are thinking of bringing out his work also, I am glad to hear this, for it is an extremely able production. Indeed, there are parts of it which in point of writing power have scarcely ever been excelled. . . . Good-by, my dear sir; accept my best thanks for the trouble you have taken in my behalf, and believe me Most sincerely yours, Joun TYNDALL. The hook appeared in the summer of 1863, two years after that on the Glaciers, and, although dealing with a difficult subject, was received with equal favor and appreciation. These two works gave their author a high reputation in America as a popular expositor of science, and created an eager demand for his later writings, nearly all of which have been republished by the same house, and have been widely read. Meanwhile Tyndall’s success as an experimenter and his gifts as a popular lecturer had come to the knowledge of many Americans, and the result was a great desire on the part of our more intelligent classes to see and hear the man. This found expression in frequent solicitations to lec- ture in the United States, among others Mr. John Amory Lowell sending him an urgent invitation to come over and deliver the Lowell lectures in Boston. But it was not until some years later, on the receipt of a request signed by twenty-five names “ distin- guished in science, in literature, and in administrative position,” that, yielding to his democratic sympathies and his ardor in the diffusion of science, Prof. Tyndall finally consented to come. The first letter in which I find any mention of his coming to America is dated December 24, 1869. I give it entire: My Dear Youmans: It is a long time since I have heard from you, and the reason, no doubt, is that you wrote to me last. Well, I must not allow you to fall utterly away from me, so by this day’s post I send you the copy of an article which is to appear in the next number of the Fortnightly Review. Your last letter made me smile. I know you imagine me to be a screw in money matters, and therefore you thought it would please me to know that I should be well paid for that short scrap from Macmillan. Well, if you feel an interest in the matter you may ask my friends whether I am a screw or not. Sometimes I certainly wish to put the screw upon publishers; for they sometimes need it much. Let me say now that you may do just what you please with any article of mine, and feel not a thought on the money side of it, as far as I am con- cerned. I am trying very hard on a boy’s book on optics. Ostensibly for boys, but equally for teachers; for boys thus far do not know how to learn and teachers do not know how to teach. I am so treating the subject that boys and teachers may make the experiments for themselves. My aim is to teach them both to experi- ment and to reason upon experiment. I suppose a boy to be alongside, and that we are working together. I try to overcome the apathy and the repugnance aris- ing from awkwardness in the first stages of experiment. I speak, therefore, not only to the boy’s brain, but to his bleed—stirring him to action. I had a fall with ugly consequences in the Alps this year. One morning, after allowing a mountain cascade to tumble over me, I was returning across

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TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. $07 some blocks of granite naked to my clothes when I staggered and fell all my weight against the sharp crystals. Three of them stamped themselves into the fiber of my sbin, and the shin was generally much bruised. But four days of perfect quiet destroyed all pain, and there was no inflammation. Sv I camedown stairs, moved about, excited inflammation, had erysipelas twice over, and was six weeks in bed. It required three months to set me right. I am now well, and just on the point of beginning the Obristmas lectures. I wish much you would tel] me what kind of lectures (scientific) you are ac- customed to in New York. Yours ever, Joun TyNDALt. The subject is again alluded to in the following letter : April 13, 1870. My Dear Youmans: I thank you more fully for the friendly interest you have taken in my affairs than for the money which has resulted to me through the exercise of your kindness, I have had many letters of the most gratifying description from the United States, and this is why I mentioned lectures in my last note to yoa. I am not, however, certain whether it would not be better to pay you a visit without any thought of lecturing. I love freedom, and a scamper through the States, without the incubus of lectures, would be as instructive to me as it would be pleasant. I saw Huxley last night. To him you have been acting as you have to me. The philosophers of England have much to thank you for. I was sorry to hear from Huxley that his little book is not so successful in America as it might be. This surprises me, for it is an excellent piece of work. I wish I had time to do something similar in physics. When I last saw Spencer he was flourishing. He told me he had written to you regarding an amanuensis. He endeavors to persuade me to lighten my labors in this way. But with me an amanuensis would not be so successful as with him. I have to rasp and rasp at my work myself before it pleases me. With regard to the future I have to say that I am pinned this year by the meeting of the British Association at Liverpool; next year I am pinned by my lectures and researches. If I go to the States without lecturing I could probably fly off in 1872. But should I lecture, the needful preparations would throw the visit back to 1874. This is a long time to look forward to. But whether I go or tarry, or whether I go as a lecturer or as a friendly visitor, it will make no difference in the feelings with which I reciprocate the kindness shown to me by your countrymen and yourself. With best regards to Mrs. Youmans, Believe me, yours ever faithfully, Joun TYNDALL, Tyndall’s next letter referring to the subject is interesting as showing the force of custom upon a man of such independence of character : March 26, 1871. My Dear Youmans: ... The desire for lecturing in America seems to be very strong. My relative, Hector Tyndale, who is now in this country, was the bearer of a very flattering proposal to me. Suppose I ask you what would be expected of me were I to close with the terms suggested in your last letter? I

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508 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. @ want to know the amount of slavery that will, under the contract, be inflicted on me. I take it for granted that I should occupy no other position than that habitu- ally accepted by such men as Emerson, Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Wendell Holmes. I should not, of course, dream of becoming a traveling lecturer in England, and I should as little dream of doing so in America if the constitution of society were not such as to render the work of lecturing not unworthy of your own best men. The best men in England, be it remembered, would engage in nothing of the kind. Between the time of his first visit to Europe, in 1862, and the time, ten years later, of Prof. Tyndall’s coming to this country, my brother had made several visits abroad, and his acquaintance with Tyndall had ripened into friendship. In 1871, when he was in England establishing the International Scientific Series (of which the first volume was prepared by Tyndall), he received from him much friendly counsel and important aid, and, in fact, in a letter of June 23, 1871, from my brother, I find it stated that— Tyndall is arranging to come over next year. Two illustrated lectures on the glaciers, two or three on heat, others on light and electricity. ‘I want you to take entire charge of me so far as the public is concerned; my assistant will take charge of experiments. I will not enslave myself. I will take it just as easy as I have a mind to. I don’t want your money, nor will I bring away one dollar of it. I will help your scientific institutions with it; but it shall not be said that I went to America to line my pockets. I have no reflections to cast upon those Englishmen who have chosen to do this. It may have been right for them, but it won’t do for me.” The next letter bearing upon the subject shows that plans for his lectures here were on foot, and that he had asked Prof. Henry to arrange the times and places for him. This is quite in keep- ing with English reverence for institutions, and Prof. Henry stood for the Smithsonian Institution. May 28, 1872. My Dear Youmans: You will have your kindness toward me tested by Prof. Henry in regard to the coming lectures. I wrote to him saying that I knew you would help me, and he has written to me to say he would call upon you. He proposes five cities (and perhaps others) in which to lecture—I have ex- pressed my willingness to give a course of six lectures in each at the rate of three a week. Two things render it desirable that the number should not exceed three a week. Firstly, I must keep up my physical vigor, and the night subsequent to a lecture is only too likely to be a sleepless one. Secondly, it is above all things desirable to make sure of the experimental arrangements the day before the lecture. ... Yours ever, Joun TYNDALL. The revelation given in the next letter of Prof. Tyndall’s men- tal state conce:ning the commercial resources of Boston is too characteristically English to be omitted:

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YNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 509 August $1, 1872. My Dear Youmans: I am in the midst of my preparations here, and shall have them ready so as to enable me to start in the Russia on the 28th of Sep- tember. I shall need your friendly aid in getting my apparatus through the custom house... . With regard to the lecture rooms, in all of them I must be able to lower the lights promptly. Most of my experiments will be projected on a screen. I ‘purpose mixing experiment and philosophy in due proportions. I deal with the illustrative phenomena of light: the laws of reflection and refraction, analysis and synthesis, the bearing and significance of theories. Speoc- trum analysis and its revelations regarding the constitation of the san. The higher phenomena of optics, interference and polarization, reaction of crystals upon light. The building of crystals. The extension of radiation beyond the range of the eye. The identity of light and radiant heat. This is a rough sketch of the subjects which will probably occupy we. I shall not know for a certainty until my preparations are complete. Do your audiences look down upon the lectarer? I suppose I can borrow an air pump in New York if I need it. I suppose if they do not possess ice in Boston I can have a clear block sent there from New York. Acids, of course, are to be had everywhere. Are they in the habit of using compressed hydrogen and oxygen in iron bottles in America, and, if so, could I borrow such bottles? I am taking one screen with me, buat I shall sometimes require two. Is such a thing to be borrowed ? Now, like a good fellow, answer these questions within twenty-four hours, and oblige Yours, ever faithfally, Joun TYNDALL. And again : Fo.xestong, September 19, 1872. My Dear Youmans: . .. I hope they have clear ice in Boston, also nitric and sulphuric acid ; if not, 1 must stock myself from New York. I have written a line to Dr. Draper on this point, but I should be truly thankful to you if you would make this point out for me, and if the acid is not to be had at Boston send there a carboy of nitric and one of sulphuric acid. I am quite shocked at the mass of apparatus I have collected round me. Still I thought it best to take light apparatus—batteries, electric lamps, and costly optical apparatus—with me, having just given the experiments with them here. Yours ever, Joun Tynpalt. Prof. Tyndall arrived in October, and began his work at once by giving the Lowell lectures in Boston. Then followed courses in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. Of his Boston lectures he says: Boston, October 24, 1872. My Dzar Youmans: The hall of the Lowell still continues crowded, but I shoot above their heads sometimes. In fact, this is my difficulty. I do not know the scientific level of my audience. Still the people are most kind and attentive, and the newspapers, I believe, are very civil. :

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510 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ' I go to Niagara next week, so that the fortnight will be one of relaxation in part and in part of preparation. I have pledged myself to lecture in New Haven in January. They would be sorely disappointed if I did not do this. . . . I remain here till Wednesday, when I propose starting for Niagara. The following letter gives Tyndall’s first impressions of Ni- agara Falls: InrernationaL Horet, Niagara Faris, Monday morning, November 4, 1872. My Dear Youmans: I came here on Friday afternoon and have been active ever since. The first impression made upon me by the Falls was tame, because my point of view was not a good one; but they have grown in strength and majesty as I have seen more of them. I had a somewhat exciting day on Satur- day, penetrating into unexpected regions under the Horseshoe Fall. I had a fine, strong fellow with me as guide; he had been pat upon his mettle, and he led me into extraordivary places—into places, indeed, where no prudent man ought to be found. ... I remain here doing some work until Thursday, when I start for Philadelphia. If I find from my assistants that matters are all right in Philadelphia, I may be induced to stay till Friday. There is nothing, I suppose, to be arranged regarding New York? If there were, I could go that way and have a word with you. I am stronger than when I came, and my work will gradually become easier to me—at least I hope so. I quitted Boston on Thursday, not completing al] I wished to do, nor seeing all I wished to see. Still, my sojourn there was a most pleesant one. The only drawback was that many people—thousands I was told —wished to hear the lectures who were unable to hear them. With kind regards to Mrs. Youmans and your sister, also to Mr. Appleton, Believe me ever faithfully yours, Joun TYNDALL. I find by contact with intelligent people here and there that you are well known in your own country and that your work is duly appreciated. In the following letters Prof. Tyndall gives his impressions of his audiences in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington: Puiapetrata, November 23, 1872. My Dear Youmans: The second ordeal has been passed, and I believe success- fully. The audience at first might have damped a person who reckoned on ap- plause, for the Quaker element is strong in Philadelphia, and Quakers eschew the clapping of hands. But the attention was unflagging throughout. I drew heavily upon their patience, occupying them sometimes for nearly two hours. I did not see one yawn in the assembly, nor one mark of weariness from begin- ning to end. They warmed up, moreover, and behaved very much as other Christians in the end. I hardly think any Englishman ever spoke so freely to an American audi- ence as I did to mine last night. I repeated one of De Tocqueville’s hardest say- ings with reference to the poverty of their achievements in the higher walks of science. I took to pieces the claims of the so-called practical man, not attenuat- ing his merit in the slightest, but opening to their view a region of antecedent discovery to which practical men were not contrib=tors, but from which they

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TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 511 drew their supplies. I managed to say all this and a good deal more without exciting a murmur; nay, I was frequently interrupted by expressions of approval, and when I ended the burst of applause was as hearty as I have ever heard. So this matter is past, and I am now preparing for Baltimore. I have re- ceived innumerable requests and invitations to lecture, and could I hope to be able to respond to them or any of them, I should send them to you and ask you to select from the many those that you think most suitable. But I see no hope of being able to prolong my visit beyond the end of January. I dare say I shall be pretty well used up by that time. As regards science, the newspapers that I have glanced at here are very dull and poorly reported. Perhaps I have not seen the best of them. . . . Always yours, Joun TYNDALL. Batrmore, December 1, 1872. Nothing could be more genial and sympathetic than my reception at Balti- more. They declare the lectures entirely successful. Both at Philadelphia and here I have spoken very strongly about their duty as regards scientitic investi- gation. Wasutneron, Weicxerte Horst, 151ra Str., December, 1872. My Dear Youmans: . . . The lectures here are going off well. , Lincoln Hall is crowded, and I am assured that no such audiences ever assembled in Washing- ton before. I was brief the first night, but gave them two hours the second night, and an hour and three quarters last night. By the way, when I came to the hall I found to my horror that I had put the wrong notes in my pocket, and so I had to speak for the hour and three quarters without once looking at a note. No sign of weariness or inattention was to be seen in the audience from first to last. You will not forget the taking of quiet rooms for me. Expense is quite a sec- ondary matter, so if the Brevoort be the best, please let me have rooms there, Quiet is the great thing—more precious than gold; yea, than much fine gold. It is difficult to report these experimental lectures. Ordinary reporters can not possibly do it. Now, if you think the New York papers desire to report the lectures I might throw my notes into such a form as would help them, and let them have a copy of the notes of each lecture. What do you say to this? I hope you are all right again, I am well aided here, and have brought a colored man from Philadelphia, who is very useful. Always faithfully yours, Joun TyNDALL, Prof. Tyndall’s lectures in New York were given in Cooper Institute, then one of our largest public halls. It was densely crowded throughout the course by the most intelligent people of the city and adjacent towns, who listened with close and absorb- ing attention. The ablest men: of science and the professions, successful men of business, and cultivated ladies followed him with sustained enthusiasm, and it was felt that no such assem- blages had ever before been gathered in New York. Much of this success was due to the attractiveness of the experiments, and much to the felicity of the professor’s manner; but the indica- tions of an earnest desire to comprehend the argument and get a thorough understanding of the phenomena presented were abun-

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512 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. dant. The concluding part of the last lecture of the course was without experiments, and consisted of an estimate of the work of science and of the claims of original investigators. This was listened to by the vast audience present with almost breathless attention and made a profound impression. A remarkable test of the public enthusiasm occurred on the evening of one of the lectures. During the preceding twenty- four hours the city was the scene of a raging snowstorm, a heavy body of snow falling, which was piled into drifts by the violent wind. With all his Alpine experience Tyndall spoke of this as “stupendous weather.” Although it stopped snowing and the wind went down at nightfall, the horse cars were blocked and the streets were almost impassable. Tyndall, thinking there would be no audience on such a night, questioned whether it would be worth while to go to the hall, but finally decided to do so. To his astonishment and that of everybody else, the crowd was again on hand, not a seat remaining unoccupied. Prof. Tyndall afterward alluded to “that heroic audience which paid me the memorable compliment of coming to hear me on such an inclement night.” Tyndall had always said that it was not for him to exploit the United States as a lecturer for money, and that he should not take away a dollar of the profits that might accrue from his lec- tures, This was not generally known, and when it was publicly announced, the statement was received with a good deal of in- credulity. A widely circulated weekly said “it was a pleasant story, but not exactly true. . . . After paying all expenses he will take home about fifteen thousand dollars, which on the whole is what the printers call a ‘fat take’ for three months’ work.” But the truth is that for nearly six months’ labor* he did not take a dollar of his earnings above actual expenses. The total receipts for his lectures were $23,100, made up as follows: Boston (six lectures), $1,500; Philadelphia (six lectures), $3,000 ; Baltimore (three lectures), $1,000; Washington (six lec- tures), $2,000; New York (six lectures), $8,500; Brooklyn (six lectures), $6,100; New Haven (two lectures), $1,000. After de- ducting expenses, $13,033 remained, and before leaving the country Prof. Tyndall placed this fund in the hands of a board of trustees consisting of Prof. Joseph Henry, Dr. E. L. Youmans, and General Hector Tyndale, with the recommendation, as ex- pressed in his deed of trust, that they appropriate the interest of the fund in supporting or assisting to support, at such European universities as they may consider most desirable, two American pupils who may evince decided talents in physics, and who may * This includes the time spent in preparation before leaving home.

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TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 513 express a determination to devote their lives to this work. “My desire would be that each pupil should spend four years at a Ger- man university, three of those to be devoted to the acquisition of knowledge, and the fourth to original investigation.” The plan for carrying out this purpose was fully set forth in the deed of trust, but it did not work well in practice. Several students were aided, with satisfactory results, but the selection of young men with suitable qualifications was found to be more of a task than had been anticipated. The trustees were scattered, were busy men with little time for correspondence, and the employment of a paid secretary was deemed impracticable. As a consequence the income accrued faster than it was expended, the fund having been so well invested that in thirteen years it amounted to $32,400. Prof. Tyndall then decided to divide this sum into three equal amounts, to be given, one to Columbia Col- lege, one. to Harvard University, and one to the University of Pennsylvania, for the founding of three permanent fellowships in physical science. These fellowships were designed for the benefit of students desiring to prepare themselves for the work of original research, and the incumbents might study at home or abroad, as the authorities of the respective institutions should decide. There was a widespread feeling that in giving his genius, time, and labor to advance the cause of science in this country, Prof. Tyndall had earned the gratitude of all the friends of science and education in the country; and when it became known that he would also devote his money to the same end, this feeling was deepened and it was thought by many that there should be some form of acknowledgment of the great value of these gifts to the American public. So a meeting was called, and it was there re- solved to honor Prof. Tyndall with a public banquet to give ex- pression to the general feeling and bid him farewell. This took place the evening before his departure. About two hundred guests were present, and numerous letters were received from persons unable to attend, the list embracing the leading men of science, the professions, and public life in the country. The following letters, written after Prof. Tyndall’s return to England, and containing some interesting allusions to his Ameri- can experience, may fitly close this account of his visit : Royrat Instrrvrion, Loxpox, March 11, 1873. Many thanks to you, my dear Youmans, and many thanks to the Tribune for the cordial expression of good will contained in the number which you have just sent me. Two hundred thousand copies! It is eatieiye most extraordinary phenome- non, and one which the English public will probably take to heart. Nothing could be more gratifying.

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514 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. I am throwing my experiences at Niagara into a readable shape, intending to make a Friday evening lecture out of them on the 4th of April. As soon as ever the paper is ready I shall send it to you. I have not yet got properly into harness; indeed, this is always a difficulty with me. When I get into a rut I tend to persist in it. Had a letter yesterday from Hector. He tells me that he has forwarded the deed of trust to Prof. Henry. I did not keep a copy of it, and should like some time to have one, but there is no hurry. . . . Yours ever, Joun TYNDALL. April 12, 1878. My Dear Youmans: The “Tyndall number,” as the World calls it, of The Popular Science Monthly duly reached me. I wish you had sent over a dozen of them. I took the number to Bence Jones (who to my.great grief is dying) and to others. They were mightily struck by its tone, and Bence Jones predicts all manner of great things for a nation which can evoke the spirit manifested in the address of President White. . » » send you by this post a proof of my little paper on Niagara; it may be printed as it stands if time be an element of importance,* otherwise I am having a little map of the Falls prepared which will add to the clearness of the paper. . . . Faithfully yours, Joun TYNDALL. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DOG. Br JOHN MONTEITH. N his recent work on Justice, Mr. Herbert Spencer turns a new light upon old questions in ethics, by tracing the roots of ethical principles to the animal community. There is something wonderful in the way certain animals form a society and ex- emplify the egoistic and altruistic sentiments of justice working in harmony. With all their selfish quarrels and contests, the compact of animals throws many an attempt at human combina- tion into the shade. But such co-operation by limitation and adaptation is only possible where there is power of perception, thinking, emotion, and purpose. Therefore, we must either assume or constantly prove, until demonstration is secured, that some animals, like human beings, think, reason, and feel, and execute intelligent purposes. Do.they ? It is in the line of answer to this question that I introduce the “subject of the following sketch, and record some careful observa- tions I have made of the mental operations of my subhuman dog. Iam unable to gratify the curiosity of the fancier touching * This very interesting paper may be found in the third volume of The Popular Science. Monthly, page 210.

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DOG. 515 the group into which Toots would be placed in a bench show. I suspect he is a somewhat mixed individual. He has the pointed nose, large brain-capsule, small drooping ears, and rough coat of the collie, with the short legs of the dachshund, and weighs about ten pounds. His mother was left by an English gentleman in charge of a scissors-grinder in San Diego. She was stone-blind. Her most remarkable feat was a return to her home by the lead of her nose, after having been transported to a place six miles away. The mental development of this dog so closely resembles the unfolding of the human intellect during infancy, that it will be well to bring the two sets of phenomena into comparison. Let us break the thread of this narrative long enough to refer to some mental characteristics of the baby. A very old objection to the possession, by animals, of mind higher than that manifested in instinct is founded in an equally old fallacy, that thinking is impossible separate from an acquaint- ance with the language of speech. Particularly is it urged that general ideas, or concepts, are impossible without words to repre- sent them. If we think only in words, then dogs, who have no words, can not think. Even what we call memory in animals has been restricted to mere “association” by those orthodox philoso- phers from whom some of us have learned our lessons. It has not been without a struggle against prejudice that we are able to give the dog his due. Prof. Preyer, in his excellent work on The Development of the Intellect, has, to my thought, proved conclusively that the baby, even before it has learned to speak, thinks and forms general ideas. By carefully registered observations, extending through a period of forty months of infant life, the Jena psychologist finds that, so early as the second month, the baby begins the “ associa- tion of memory-images.” The possession of this primitive faculty is proved not only by many examples of infants who in due time learn to speak, but by the most remarkable practical demon- stration in the development of deaf-mutes. Nothing further could be desired in the way of positive proof of the power to generalize, in the first years of life, than that the deaf-mute expresses the concept “red” by touching his red lips, and then pointing to the redness of the sunset sky. From a wide induction of such facts, Prof. Preyer safely concludes that “ many concepts are, without any learning of words whatever, plainly ex- pressed and logically combined with one another, and their cor- rectness is proved by the conduct of any and every untaught child born deaf.” And he further sums up his case by declaring that “it was not language that generated the intellect; it is the intel- lect that formerly invented language; and even now the newborn

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516 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. human being brings into the world far more intellect than talent for language.” We may now proceed with Toots, since we have found for him common footing with the speechless human baby. The necessity of words to thinking will not be an a priori bar to the proper interpretation of his acts. Mere tricks acquired by dogs are of small value for our purpose, since they may be referred to reflex action. Our concern is rather with those spontaneous and self- directed acts of perception, adaptation, combination, and inven- tion which can not be performed without the exercise of genuine intellectual power. At an early period Toots discovered an in- stinctive hostility to mice, moles, and black cats. His puppyhood was passed in company with a gray kitten, whom he treated with respect and affection, never failing to impress a kiss on its nose when morning came, or after temporary separation. His associa- tion of mice, moles, and black cats, and his discrimination in favor of light-colored cats, suggest a perception of color, if not a concept, which his actions have rendered unmistakable. I took him to the house of a neighbor one day, where he fell in witha litter of white-and-gray kittens, entirely strange to him, and he treated them with the utmost kindness. A day or two afterward he was introduced to a litter of black kittens, when, had he been permitted, he would have torn them in pieces. In this idea of “black” it will hardly be claimed that Toots has an abstract con- cept of color, but has not he a vague concept such as a baby has of “red,” not redness? Otherwise, why is it that he entertains an equally intense aversion to black dogs ? The observing powers of this witty animal, and the resulting inventions and devices, have experienced -spontaneous develop- ment in company with his human friends. He possesses in a rare degree the power of laughing, or, more correctly, of smiling. In a high state of pleasurable emotion he parts his lips, shows his teeth, and wrinkles the skin of his cheeks, so as to leave a corru- gated appearance, like the permanent expression of the nose in the ribbed-nose or mandrill baboon. He reserves this laugh for his friends, however, when he knows that they are returning from an absence of considerable length, and never bestows it for a brief separation, unless called upon to laugh. His sign and vocal language is of his own adaptation. For a drink of water he has one combination; another for a request to be let out of the house, and still a different one to pass out at the gate into the street. He instantly observes any change in the dress of his three mis- tresses, which change he assumes as a preparation for an outing, and makes a corresponding request. The putting on of a skullcap by his master brings from him a mild petition to go out into the yard; but when the tall hat appears, and a cane in hand, he runs

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DOG. 517 through his extended vocabulary of freedom, for this means a walk abroad. Are not these acts precisely those of the baby dur- ing the primitive period of its thinking life? And are they not due to a mental process which in a child we always ascribe to thinking ? Toots’s perception of ideas, even thoughts, conveyed in sen- tences uttered in ordinary conversation, surpasses anything I have ever observed in dogs, except in Scotch collies. If, in the course of ordinary family chat, the question is interpolated, “ Do you want to go out ?” he bounds to his feet; if in the same tone he is told, “ You can not go out,” he takes his disappointment without further demonstration, though no other words or ges- tures of command are added. Even while asleep, if the word “cat” is used in the current of conversation, he remains undis- turbed ; but utter the combination “ black cat,” and he rushes to the window to take an observation. The examples thus far given can not be referred to automatic or reflex action ; they belong to the operation of cerebration, and involve ideation, classification, and judgment—in other words, thinking. At least such would be the conclusion were they the acts of a two-year-old baby. Very early in his history Toots was taught to sit on his haunches, receiving bits of food as a reward for the performance, It was observed that he spontaneously raised his hands, as an additional expression of desire. This act was encouraged and de- veloped by taking hold of his arms and waving them vertically, until the whole combined action became habitual, and was ren- dered in answer to the command, “ Wave your hands!” Aftera long period of practice in sitting posture with hand-waving, under various circumstances and in most fascinating fashion, he disclosed the power of imitation. When held upright in the arms of another, and when already satisfied with food, I waved my hands before him, and he at once copied the same motion, and is always ready to do so in answer to this gesture. . Here appears to be a case of imitation, pure and simple, that calls for a reasonable explanation. Prof. Preyer says: “In order to imitate, one must first perceive through the senses; secondly, have an idea of what has been perceived ; thirdly, execute a move- ment correspondent to the idea.”* And further, it may be added, since a volition is involved, there must be a consciousness of self, or a formation of the concept “L” All this is granted in the case of a child ; why not also in the case of a dog ? Scarcely anything is lacking in the mental furniture of this psychological dog to make him the equal of a baby two years old, except thinking in words; and who can prove that he is destitute * The Senses and the Will, p. 282,

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518 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. of this faculty, although not possessing articulate speech ? The other evening, while I was giving my plants a drink, he came to me several times, asking to have the gate opened. Not caring to lay down the hose, I paid little heed to his teasings, and he deter- mined to compass his purpose in another way. To the front door he went, and, pressing it, found it not latched, but requiring some force to throw it open. Then he backed out the full width of the veranda, and running, threw his weight so violently against the door as to drive it open. Very soon he reappeared with his mis- tress, to whom he had made his supplication, and she, without knowing of his failure with me, opened the gate and gave the little fellow his coveted freedom. It should be explained, in regard to the wit shown in opening a heavy or sticking door, that Toots acquired his experience with a fly door closed by the reaction of aspring. He found by experi- ments that if with his fore paws he pressed this door open just far enough to emit his body, it would spring to and pinch his tail; and that by retreating and running the whole length of a small entry he could impart momentum enough to open the door wide and thus clear his tail, at the same time letting out a dependent companion. This act, I am inclined to think, is a little smarter than is usual in a two-year-old child. The skill thus acquired is regularly applied by Toots in open- ing the door of the kitchen, in which his bed is made, when he proceeds with the first morning sunbeam to visit his friends in the sleeping apartments of the house. The door is closed but is not latched, to enable the dog to open it without help. Even in this condition it is moved with difficulty, owing to its friction on the sill—a difficulty intentionally allowed to remain for the pur- poses of my experiments. The first effort of Toots is to press upon the door, to find whether it is fastened. As will be seen, he has come to apply this test as the result of his own experience. If the door is unlatched, he goes to the opposite side of the room and runs, throwing him- self against the panels with the whole weight of his body. This act he repeats five times, after each impact retreating to the oppo- site side of the room to get a fresh start. With the sixth attack the passage is forced, and he scampers away with his companion, a dog with no wit at all,and is happy. More recently he has found that he can decide whether the door is fastened or not by quietly pressing his fore paws against it. Before he had adopted this test, on one night I fastened the door. He pounded it with his running catapult precisely six times; then gave up and cried for help, which was ready at hand. Such repetition of an adapt- ive act requires no analysis to make its psychological value ap- parent,

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DOG. 519 I have recorded another still more interesting act in the comedy of the kitchen door, which act raises the question whether animals are capable of emotions of a religious nature. Romanes claims to have proved that some animals exercise all the human emotions, “with the exception of those which refer to religion, moral sense, and perception of the sublime.” * On the other hand, Mr. John Fiske makes a category for Toots. In discussing the “primeval ghost-world,” he quotes from Nature as follows: “A Skye terrier accustomed to sit on his haunches when wanting favors from his master would also sit up before the mantelpiece before his rubber ball. This illustrates Auguste Comte’s re- mark that dogs, apes, and elephants may have a few fetichistic notions.” + It is a habit of Toots, when alone and occasion requires, to per- form his sitting and hand-waving supplications to inanimate things as if they were capable of volition. He has been discov- ered thus paying his addresses to a rubber doll, beseeching it to descend from the mantelpiece for his benefit. But as to rubber playthings, there is reason to believe that he conceives them to possess real life on account of the resumption of their form by elastic reaction after they are pressed. The same address, how- ever, is made by him toa door he can not open, or to a glass of water he can not reach or ought not to have without asking, when no human friend is present to serve him. So also when he failed to force open the kitchen door that was fastened, there followed his last effort a silence that led me to conclude it was the little fellow’s moment of prayer. Accord- ingly, at the right instant, I thrust open the door, when I found that he had been sitting up before the unyielding object and wav- ing his suppliant hands with a genuine earnestness that would shame the hollow formality of many a human worshiper. The question naturally arises, Does Toots believe in ghosts ? And, if so, have we not found in him the evidence of an incipient fetichism, an inspiration of rude religious emotion and a glim- mering perception of the sublime ? From observations made at two Prussian stations and Teneriffe in 1889, 1890, and 1891, showing slight and continuous changes of position of the plane of the horizon, Dr. von Rebeur Paschnitz has concluded that the relatively rigid surface of the earth is subject to a movement of rising and falling like the ocean move- ment that produces the tides. The amplitude of the observations is very slight, but the apparatus used made it clearly perceptible. The direction of the plamb line also points to a daily disturbance, which is attributed, in conjecture, to solar radiation. A third kind of movement may be referred to distant earthquakes. * Mental Evolution of Man. + Myths and Myth Makers.

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. SUPERSTITIONS OF THE FRENCH CANADIANS, ~ "s-By Miss BLANCHE L. MACDONELL. HE folklore of Canada is the more interesting that it has its origin in various sources. The Canadian transported with him from fruitful Normandy, from poetical and superstitious Brittany, a wealth of popular myths, traditions, legends, and be- liefs which are almost as firmly held in French Canada of to-day as ever they were in the ancient days of faith. Civilization has scarcely invaded the sanctity of earnest faith, or broken its spell. In the legendary lore of Canada the devil plays a prominent part. He does not appear as the strong angel, who fell through pride, the enemy of God, but as the medieval devil of monkish legend, the petty persecutor of man. In the rural districts of Can- ada, Satan is supposed to be very active. His company may be looked for on all occasions. The accidental appearance of a little child in the room often betrays the presence of the evil spirit, as the poor innocent is sure to bewail itself vigorously. The Prince of Darkness may be met at a ball,in the guise of a handsome young man who excels all the rustic gallants in appearance. He wears gloves to conceal his claws, and disregards the trammels of conventionality by keeping his hat on his head to hide his horns, He selects the prettiest girl in the room as his partner, but his choice is usually the village coquette, whose vanity or levity has exposed her to the evil influence. In the midst of the gayety a piercing cry is heard. A strong odor of brimstone becomes per- ceptible, and the attractive cavalier is wafted out of the window, carrying with him some useful domestic utensil, as, for instance, a stove or the frying pan. The girl may escape with asharp scratch of a claw, particularly if she should happen to wear a cross or a crucifix. Canadian rustics never answer “Entrez,” when a knock is heard at the door; they invariably respond “ Owvrez.” This is founded upon an old legend of a young woman who replied “ Entrez” to such a summons, when the devil came in and carried her off. When one is starting in a hurry to bring the priest to the sick, the devil is stimulated to the most lively activity, for then it is the question of the loss and gain of a soul. On such occasions an endless variety of the most unforeseen accidents are sure to hap- pen. The horses are found unharnessed, or the harness breaks without any reason, and strange lights flash before the horses’ eyes. Prudent persons guard against such contingencies by pro- viding themselves with two vehicles; then, if an accident happens to one, the other remains available. The werewolf legend constitutes one of the most somber of Hi 4 ‘ =} 2 q of] rat a 4 , +

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* vt * ee. eX SRS

SUPERSTITIONS OF THE FRENCH CANADIANS, 521 the traditionary beliefs existing in French Canada. The story of a human being assuming a wolf’s shape is certainly one of the most generally diffused throughout the world, and the werewolf story comes down to us from old Roman times. The French Ca- nadian believes that if a person does not partake of the sacra- ment for seven years, he will turn into a lowp-garou—a shapeless animal without head or limbs; the loup-garou might also appro- priate the form of a wild cat, a hare, a fox, or even a black hen, but at night he was obliged to range through woods and desert places. At dead of night the lowp-garow steals from his bed; climbing the highest tree in the neighborhood, he hides in its branches, and is instantly transformed into bestial shape. He is endowed with supernatural speed and strength. <A fierce creature, with appetites exaggerating those of the animal he resembles, his especial delight is in slaughtering and devouring little children. When he returns to human semblance he may be recognized by his excessive leanness, wild eyes, and haggard countenance. In orde: to regain his estate of humanity, it is necessary that the blood of the monster should be shed. This kindly office being per- formed by a friend, a complete restoration results. The wandering Jew legend in various forms was also very popular in Canada. In many parts of the country cats of three colors were considered lucky, therefore the fortunate possessor of a puss mottled with “black, white, and gray should preserve the animal carefully. When a Canadian lumberman is sufficiently fortunate to shoot a deer, he wraps himself at night in the skin, in order to keep off witches. The souls of the lost, or spirits in purgatory, naturally occu- pied a prominent position in Canadian folklore. The dead fre- quently returned to the world ; among old-fashioned persons there were few who had not held converse with a spirit or revenant, In punishment for sin, the dead were often detained on the scene of their past misdeeds. One dead person could not help or relieve another; the wrong committed on earth could only be righted by the intervention of a living being. The evil spirits were unable to cross the blessed waters of the river St. Lawrence without the help of a Christian. These haunting spirits were numerous, and of various descriptions. The aurora borealis, called les marionnettes, les éclairons, les lustrions, are supposed to be lost souls. It is a common habit among the country people to sing aloud to keep off evil spirits— as they express it, “ Lorsqu’ils ne sont pas trop assurés.” They believe that the sound of an instrument, or the human voice raised: in song, will cause the marionneties to dance. However, dire mis- fortune threatens the reckless being who adopts this method of amusing himself: unless the precaution is taken of touching him VoL. xL1v.—40

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522 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. in time with a palm that has been blessed, he gradually yields to a weird fascination, his eyes dilate, his voice grows feeble, and before morning dawns his body lies stiff and stark in death, while his soul has flown to join in the giddy whirl of les lustrions. Fireflies, known as feu-follets, called by country people fi-follets, are also considered to be lost souls, whose goblin lights lure the unwary to destruction; a sad prerogative possessed by fireflies in common with other lights of the century—less brilliant, perhaps, but whose seductions are quite as much to be dreaded. <A simple charm will curb the malicious ‘designs of these airy, glittering imps. If the object of their persecution can retain sufficient presence of mind to thrust either a needle or a sharp knife into the nearest fence, the fi-follet is obliged to stop short in his course, One of two things must then happen: either the fi-folle¢ will im- pale himself upon the sharp instrument, and thus find deliver- ance; or else he will exhaust himself in frantic efforts to pass through the eye of the needle, an attempt which proves quite as difficult to the fantastic spirit as to the most substantial of mor- tals; this gives the traveler time to seek the shelter of a dwelling. The Lutin is a tricky spirit, delighting in mischief. How often may it happen that, on entering his stable in the morning, the habiiant finds his best horses exhausted! One must be stupid indeed not to guess that this is a trick played by Lutin, who enjoys a ride at other people’s expense, and is not at all likely to spare the animals of which he takes possession. A remedy for this imposition exists. Lutin is most orderly in all his ways and methods, and is forced to leave everything in its place exactly as he found it. To prevent the horses from being taken out, it is only necessary to scatter a quart of bran before the stable door. The imp will be obliged to step on the bran, the grains of which will naturally become disarranged by the pressure of his footsteps. In scrupulous fulfillment of his obligation, he must replace them one by one; the night passes in the fulfillment of this tedious task, and, when once morning dawns, farewell to Lutin’s hope of a gallop. The early French missionaries ascribed a very diabolical char- acter to the sorcery practiced by the Indians, and many tradi- tional beliefs held by the French Canadians can be traced directly to the influence of these heathens. It is said that the taking of Canada by the English was predicted by an Indian witch many years before the event actually happened. The French believed that several different descriptions of sorcerers existed among the savages, and that various degrees of magic were practiced among them. It:was always agreed that savage magic could exercise no power over a baptized Christian except when that person hap- pened to be in a state of mortal sin. One kind of Indian wizard bp oF 7 * ¥ 2

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) Ee ae SUPERSTITIONS OF THE FRENCH CANADIANS, 523 was called an adocté—that is, one who had made a secret compact with a mahoumet. It is difficult to find the origin of this term, which the French colonists applied to the familiar spirits of the Indian wizards. A Canadian writer (Dr. J. C. Taché) offers the explanation that, considering the founder of Islamism the incar- nation of all evil, the French applied his name, slightly altered, to these diabolical spirits. The mahoumet was a species of goblin, who devoted himself to the service of his votary on the condition that the latter should obey him in all things and should offer him frequent sacrifices. This mahoumet is described as a little man, about two feet high, having a skin gray and shining, like that of a lizard, and eyes that glowed like living coals. The adocté bound himself by a solemn oath, and it was only the sacraments of bap- tism, confession, and absolution that had power to break the com- pact, Treachery between the contracting parties was not rare, neither being deterred by any scrupulous delicacy from striving to outwit the other; but as the adocté was the slave of his tor- mentor, he usually got the worst of the bargain. The mahoumet counseled his adocté, and, when not restrained by the power of magic superior to his own, aided him in his difficulties. Feuds were frequent between these wizards; through the powers of their mahoumets they played each other many tricks. The con- flicts between them might continue for a long time, but in the end one must perish. Unless a wizard abandoned his evil prac- tices he never died a natural death. The Canadian sailors and fisher folk have superstitions pecul- iar to themselves. A belief in mermaids is very general. There are certain fishes which the fisher folk never touch; for instance, a certain kind of haddock, commonly called “St. Peter’s fish,” which legend declares to have been the first fish taken out of ‘the © net by the apostle on the occasion of the miraculous draught of fishes. The back of the fish is said to bear in black marks the imprints of St. Peter’s fingers. The Abbé Ferland, a well-known Cenadion writer, gives an account of flames which are said to be seen dancing upon the waters of the Baie de Chéleurs, and which the fishermen declare are caused by the souls of sailors who have perished on that spot; and who send this weird appearance that the living may be re- minded to pray for their souls. “According to the reports of _ those who have examined them,” he observes, “ they rise from the sea between Caraquet and Paspebiac. Sometimes no larger than a torch, then again like a vast conflagration, they advance, retire, rise, fall. As a boat approaches they disappear ; then, as it retires, the light acquires fresh brilliancy.” The sailors and fisher folk are also firmly persuaded that Ad. miral Walker, with his phantom fleet, appears occasionally in the

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524 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Gulf of St. Lawrence. The sight of this weird spectacle invari- ably presages disaster for mariners. A very terrible shipwreck, which took place at Isle aux Gfufs many years ago, was believed to have been caused by this ghostly appearance. Before it appears the sea is smooth as glass; suddenly the waters are agitated; the waves rise mountains high, rolling wildly one against another; then a vessel appears, striving against the force of the raging bil-« lows. The deck is crowded by soldiers and mariners whose ancient uniforms date from another century. On the main deck stands the commanding officer, who is pointing out the somber heights of Cape Despair to the pilot, while a beautiful woman in white draperies clings to hisarm. The ship is driving straight on to Cape Despair. Then, as the shattered vessel is ingulfed, piercing cries are heard mingling with the growling of thunder and the hoarse roar of the tempest; then, abruptly as it appeared, the vision has vanished ; the sunshine dimples on a sea like a mirror, and the waves ripple softly to the foot of Cape Despair. The word ignolée designates both a song and a custom im- ported from France by our ancestors. Both flourished for many years in Canada; though now, even in the most remote country districts, they have fallen completely into disuse. M. Ampére, chairman of le Comité de la langue, de V/histoire et des arts de la France, calls this song “ a chorus which is perhaps the only actual fragment left of the Druidical epoch.” The custom is believed to have come down from the time of the Gauls, and is said to have originated in the habit practiced by the Druids of going out on New Year’s eve to gather the mistletoe which clung to the oaks of their sacred forests, and the rejoicing cry uttered by the pagan . " priests as the hallowed plant fell beneath their golden sickles, “Au gui, Van neuf !” (“ Mistletoe for the New Year! ”). Christianity accepted the pagan rite, and sanctified it by charity. In Canada, a party of men, called les ignoleuxz, went, on New Year’s eve from house to house, collecting for the poor of the parish, or in some localities begging wax to make tapers for the altar. They sang a chorus,in which the term ignolée fre- quently occurred, the term assuming slightly differing forms according to the dialects of the various provinces of France from which the colonists had originally come, as ignolée, guillonée, la guillone, aguilaulen. Troops of children, shouting “La ignolée qui vient |” preceded the procession. A table was immediately pre- pared for those who cared to partake of refreshments, as well as gifts for the poor. When the ignoleux reached the house, they beat time upon the door with long sticks as they shouted the chorus; but they never entered until the master and mistress, or their representatives, pressed hospitality upon them. The invita- tion was accepted with great state and ceremony, compliments of

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THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE. 525 the season were exchanged, and the charitable donations were placed in a bag, which was emptied into a sleigh that followed the serenaders. In begging for the poor, request was always made for a chine of pork with the tail attached, called l’échignée, or la chigné. In high good humor, heralded by barking dogs and shouting children, the whole party started for the next house. Tradition constitutes the archives of a people, the treasures of their faiths and beliefs, the landmarks of their past history. The people’s superstitions are, in truth, the people’s poetry—crude, grotesque, but surely most pathetic efforts to find shape and sub- stance for images cast by their own innate emotions, fears, and aspirations. These blind searchings after truths that lie beyond the confines of the senses, and outside the domain of logic, possess a deep significance from a human as well as from a literary point of view. These strivings are themselves phenomena to be taken into account before we can solve the problem of life. THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE. By M. HENRI COUPIN. 8 Bamvcin is always something of truth in even the most con- fused legends. Such is the case, for example, with the wide- spread legend of the Wandering Jew, which seems at first sight to have been wholly inwented, but which can in reality be ex- plained by examples originating in neuropathy. <A very curious essay on this subject has been recently published by Dr. Henry Meige, from which we cite a few of the facts. The beginning of the story of the eternal traveler Cartophilus, Ahasuerus (Fig. 1), or Isaac Laquedem—according to the country in which it is told—is familiar. By the account of Matthew Paris, Cartophilus was the bearer of Pontius Pilate’s pretorium. When Jesus Christ was passing through the gate, he struck him with his hand, and said: “Go on, Jesus, go faster; what are you stop- ping for?” Jesus, turning to him, replied, “I am going, but you shall tarry till I come again, and shall be always wandering.” Ac- cording to another version, Ahasuerus is a large man, with flow- ing hair, a Jew in nationality, a shoemaker by trade, “ who was preseat at the death of Jesus Christ, and has continued in life ever since.” Historians agree, whichever version is taken, in representing the Wandering Jew as marching hither and thither, visiting cities hastily, appearing now in Hamburg, now in Mos- cow, now in Paris, etc., but always with the same aspect. Paint- ers are no less agreed in representing the portraits after a single model ; whether executed at Bautzen or at Epinal, in 1600 (Fig. 2) r

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526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. or in 1800, the figure is always that of a typical Jew, wearing a large cloak, with curled beard and hair, downcast eye (Fig. 3), sadly contracted brow, etc.; with differences of the secondary order, according to the locality or the imagination of the designer. It is evident that historians and engravers have not conspired, from one end of Europe to the other, to talk about the Wander- ‘ing Jew, or represent him. He has really existed, and those who talk of him do so in good faith. ! | i Fie. 1.—Anasvenrvs. Shs Facsimile ot an old German engrav- ing of 1648. (After Champfieury.) How then can we make the uni- formity of the de- scriptions, that ever- lasting life and end- less wandering, agree with the data of sci- ence? M. Meige as- sumes that there have been many wander- ing Jews, who have been taken for one and the same person, because they usually have the same gen- eral appearance and the same manner. These persons have been neuropathic Jews, possessed by an irresistible incli- nation totravel. Fur- thermore, such inva- lids still exist, and have been often seen at the Salpétriére, at- tracted thither by the world-wide reputa- tion of M. Charcot. When they are observed, even superficially, and are made to relate their history, one might really believe he had in his actual presence the hero of the well-known complaint: More cruelly piteous Than the unceasing misery From M. Meige’s collection of cases let us cite that of Moser “ There is nothing on the earth Of the poor Wandering Jew!” B——,, called Moses, aged thirty-eight years, a Polish Jew, born at Warsaw (Fig. 4). While still a child, he was drafted by the Rassian military authorities and put into.a special school, where aes rll i pedo anton Meat ath a

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THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE. 527 he received a certain kind of instruction. Urged by his supe- riors to renounce the Jewish religion, he struggled long before deciding to deny the faith of his fathers; feeling that he was in danger of yield- ing, he ran away and left Russia. He was then fifteen or sixteen years old, and had no trade. From that time on he wandered from one country to another, without any fixed purpose. He married in. Buda- Pesth, and lived there for some time, and had three children fio. 2—Tas Waxperme Jew, from the oldest known en- there. The sojourn graving. (Munich Library.) (Reproduced by Champ- fleury.) was longer than suited his disposition, and he was continually troubled with the desire to travel. He 1 5 took his family to , Jerusalem, and left them there while he traveled oyer the world. Every five years he returned from his pilgrimage, visited his family for a few days, and then turned toward new countries. The mo- tive of these perpet- ual journeys from place to place, he said, “was to find a rem- edy fora malady from which I have suffered Fie. 3.—Trvux Portrait or Tux WANDERING JEW AS HE WAS SEEN PASSING THROUGH Avienon, APRIL 22, 1784. since I was twenty- (Sketch taken at the Bibliothéque Nationale.) five years old, which YY, Y YY,

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528 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. gives me no truce or rest, and concerning which I have con- sulted all the specialists in the world.” He traveled in this way through Poland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, England, and other countries. At last the fame of the school of the Salpétriére drew Moses to Paris during the year 1892. He made his appearance in a shabby costume, wearing a long black frock-coat, worn and patched. His mien was that of a Polish Jew. The thin face, with hollow fea- tures, was buried in a full, untrimmed beard, curling at the sides; the thick hair fell over his ears and upon the nape of his neck in greasy ringlets; his high, round forehead was crossed by deep wrinkles; his heavy eyebrows came together over the nose with two very marked folds, which gave the physiognomy an expres- sion of pain and attention; his long, hooked nose hung over thick lips; a deep-wrinkle separated it from his cheeks, and ‘ was so mobile that one are) never knew whether _. + he was going to laugh or cry. He was ac- quainted with Eng- lish, Turkish, Rus- sian,and Hebrew, but generally spoke Ger- man. When he was admitted into M. Charcot’s office, he be- gan a long story of his troubles, and drew out a detailed list of the symptoms he felt, and began to read it. At times he would describe his suffer- ings with something like enthusiasm ; then he would suddenly break out into an af- fecting lamentation Fic. 4.—Mosrr B——, on Moszs, an Israztirs, Nevro- OVE? them. When a raTuic WANDERER. course of treatment was suggested to him, he assumed an air of attention ; then, gradually, a smile would light up his face, and he would shake his head with a skeptical air, say- ing that he had tried all that with no success. Moses stayed a year in Paris, receiving electrical treatment ; then, finding that of not much effect, he went away in search of a cure that could not be found. gh ee aA cs aha.

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THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE. 529 Gottlieb M—— (Fig. 5), forty-two years old, a native of a vil- lage near Wilna, like Moses, began to travel very early, and has been a frequent visitor to the hospitals. Never finding any remedy for his ills, he passed from Russia into Ger- many, then into Aus- tria, England, and France. The history of oth- er sufferers, in all es- sential features, is very like these. If we compare the wandering neuro- paths with one an- other and with the Wandering Jew of the legend, we find a remarkable uniform- ity among them. In the first place, we are struck with the com- mon origin of the suf- [ii - y aS ferers, who all seem |= Sie = ae | tohavecomefromthe | : ab same source, which is situated on the bor- Fic. 5.—Gorrtizs M——, aw Israrurre, Nevroraraic ders of Germany, Po- WANDERER. land, and Austria. All, while polyglots, speak German by preference. The Wander- ing Jew has the same characteristics. “ Wherever he went,” says a legend of 1618, “he spoke the language of the country.” On the other hand, the persons who thus become wanderers, usually with- out apparent cause, are always Jews; they find in themselves the impulse that urges them to travel; most frequently it is the necessity of consulting a new doctor, of trying a new remedy. On the road, they live on alms; on the other hand, profiting by the solidarity which prevails between Israelites, they find in every city credit houses where they can enjoy a modest revenue that makes them eternally rich, while it leaves them eternally poor; and thereby is explained in a remarkable manner that strophe in the complaint which awakens wonder at first: “T have five sous in my parse, In that is all my means, And everywhere and always I have enongh.”

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530 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, * Like the Wandering Jew, again, these neuropathic wanderers are shabbily dressed in a great cloak or a long robe reaching nearly down to the ground, They are nearly always men thirty or forty years old, but whom we might, from the wrinkles on their faces, suppose to be double that age. Their beards are long and uncombed. The beard of the Wandering Jew is, perhaps, the most characteristic trait of his figure. The primitive painters, as our figures show, represented it with great sincerity : “ Never was seen A man so bearded.” The beards seen in the most ancient engravings are as exactly as possible like those of the sufferers observed by M. Meige; they are curled in all their length or are rolled in ringlets on the sides, where they mingle with the hair, also curled. The faces of all the neuropaths express suffering, lassitude, and despair ; a meager countenance, salient cheek-bones, hollow cheeks, and wrinkled foreheads appear in all the sufferers and all the por- traits. From the pathological point of view wandering neuropaths suffer chiefly from nervous exhaustion—neurasthenia—of which they present all the physical and psychical marks. Hysteria may sometimes be added. The Wandering Jew seems likewise never to have had a firm nervous equilibrium, for every time he had occasion to speak to any one he complained of being persecuted. Thus, after all that we have just said, the Wandering Jew still exists, and under the same form he assumed in past centuries. His figure, his costume, his manners have preserved the same char- acteristics through the ages. The Wandering Jew of the legend and the Wandering Jew of the clinics are one and the same type: a wandering neuropath, a perpetual pilgrim, appearing to-day, vanishing to-morrow, and followed soon by another who resem- bles him in all points; a third wil] come like his predecessors, and then a fourth, and so on. Cartophilus, Ahasuerus, Isaac Laque- dem, Moser B——, etc., are children of nervous pathology. Their resemblances result from attacks of the same malady, and have an identical origin.—Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from La Nature. A curious phenomenon is sometimes observed near Wetter Lake in Sweden, in the standing still of the Motala River. The flow of water ceases and the bed of the river is dried up, while the water is held back in the lake. It was for- merly regarded as a miracle and portent. It is attributed by Block to a sudden sharp frost, which freezes the river to the bottom at a shallow place without allowing time for the formation of mere surface ice. An east wind and the growth of reeds near the outtlow of the lake may also contribute to the stoppage.

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’ BF nf SHAPE OF THE EARTH FROM A PENDULUM. 531 THE SHAPE OF THE EARTH FROM A PENDULUM. By Pror. J. H. GORE. Lu was thought that a maximum paradox was reached when the quotation ex pede Herculem (from the foot, Hercules) forced its way into use. Hercules, in laying out-the stadiwm, the length of the running course in the Olympian games, used his foot as the unit, and made the stadium six thousand feet long. From this distance, which was preserved, Pythagoras obtained the length of the foot of Hercules, and from an arbitrary ratio between the parts of the body deduced his height, thus restoring from the foot, Hercules. But we can now propound a greater paradox, and say from a pendulum, the earth. Not the world that one can put in a sling, but the earth’s shape. This striving after the shape of the earth has occupied men’s attention for centuries; to know this shape they have braved the cold within the Arctic Circle, endured the heat of the equatorial regions, and penetrated India’s malarial jungles. Peaks have been climbed, deserts trgversed, and hostile tribes subjugated. To the theoretical side of this problem scores of the world’s most profound mathematicians have devoted their time, while the practical side has been pushed ahead by the ener- gies of countless troops of observers, artisans, and laborers, sup- ported by the expenditure of millions upon millions of dollars. While this great work is going on, looking toward a solution of this problem, with staffs of specialists in sixteen nations, em- ploying instruments most complicated and refined, making, as it appears, an onslaught on the earth itself to compel it to yield to direct measurement, it now seems that from a modified form of the device which regulates our clocks—the pendulum—we may expect the most accurate knowledge regarding the earth’s shape. When Galileo deduced from observation that a pendulum is isochronal—that is, would make all its oscillations in the same interval of time whether the arc be long or short—he did not dream that the swinging lamp in the dome of Pisa’s great cathe- dral in the year 1583 would be the prototype of the accurate geo- detic instrument of three centuries later. If the ball of a pendulum be drawn away from the vertical and released, its first impulse is to descend perpendicularly ; but being held in restraint by the string, or connecting rod, it does the next best thing, and, keeping as near to this perpendicular direc- tion as possible, it swings down a circular arc whose center is the point of support. Waoen the lowest point of this arc is reached, an amount of energy has been stored up and the ball ascends the other side of the arc until this supply of energy is exhausted ;

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532 _ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. then stopping for an instant the ball again descends, to ascend on the other side, thus adding oscillation to oscillation. Were it not for the resistance of the atmosphere and certain mechanical im- perfections these arcs would be the same, but, what is more im- portant, the times of oscillating are the same. The rapidity with which the pendulum descends depends upon its length and the amount of this impulse to drop vertically. This impulse is known as gravity. Therefore, with a pendulum of constant length the time of oscillation will be dependent upon gravity, and thus time and gravity are determinable one in terms of the other. Newton had shown that gravity on the earth’s surface de- pended upon distance from the center of the earth, and also the diminishing effect of the revolution of the earth on gravity. To this theory other mathematicians made valuable contributions, notably Clairaut, who demonstrated that the relative lengths of the equatorial and polar radii could be ascertained directly from the force of gravity at the equator and at one of the poles. Then, since the gravity is obtained directly from the time in which a pendulum makes ap oscillation and its length, it was necessary to simply swing a pendulum at the equator and at one of the poles to have at once the coveted ellipticity—that is, the ratio of the difference between the equatorial and polar radii to the equatorial radius. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to swing a pendulum at one of the poles. This inability, however, is made of no mo- ment by a law which gives the value of the polar gravity when- ever the gravity of a given place is known, together with the lati- tude of the place. From this it appears that the earth’s figure becomes known through a determination of the length of a pendulum and the time required for it to make an oscillation at the equator (or near it) and at the pole (or as near to it as possible). If the same pen- dulum is used and the constancy of its length assured, it becomes necessary to make sure of the length of time required for an oscil- lation at these two places. Inasmuch as the pendulum appears to stop for an instant when it reaches the highest point in its arc, it is a difficult matter to determine with exactness the time of an oscillation; but if one counts the number of oscillations in an hour, in two hours, or in any number of hours, a simple division will give the time of one oscillation. The figure of the earth desired is an ideal figure, such a figure as it would have if one could remove all the land now standing higher than the surface of the sea—were asea to occupy the place of the land. Hence it is the sea-level earth whose figure we want. Newton’s law of gravity would require that a pendulum, if raised

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SHAPE OF THE EARTH FROM A PENDULUM. 533 above the level of the sea, would make its oscillation in a longer time than when swinging at sea level. Therefore it is necessary to know the elevation of the station in order to ascertain the force of gravity in that latitude on the ideal earth. If the parallels were perfect circles and if observations were absolutely correct, it would be necessary to swing a pendulum at only two points on the earth’s surface in order to determine its shape. However, the results obtained by combining observations two and two are not harmonious; not only because the observa- tions may be affected by errors, but the attraction of dense mat- ter immediately beneath a station might seriously impair the observations made there; and as we never know the exact consti- tution of the earth’s crust at any point, it becomes necessary to eliminate, as far as possible, this uncontrollable error by making observations at many places. The ideal pendulum would consist of a ball of symmetrical form suspended by a wire stiff and uniform. Like all ideal conditions, these are never attained, but a close approximation is sought. In seeking rigidity the pendulum rod must be so large in cross sec- tion as to make the instrument cumbrous. This was a serious feature when, in order to avoid slips in counting, it was not thought feasible to use a pendulum that made an oscillation in less than a second of time—that is, a pendulum about thirty-nine inches long. Again, as the pendulum was provided with sharp knife-edges on opposite sides near its upper end, shaped like a V, on which it swung, the greater the weight of the pendulum the more wear there would be on these knife-edges. This becomes a serious matter, as the length of the pendulum is estimated from the line of support furnished by these same knife-edges. Then, too, the swinging of a large and heavy pendulum was liable to induce a swinging motion in its support, unless the latter were exceedingly rigid, thereby vitiating the results. Several years ago it was realized that the resistance of the atmosphere would vary with different conditions of moisture and density, and hence retard the pendulum more at some times than at others, more at some elevations than at.others. Therefore it seemed necessary, in the absence of any well-accepted correction for these hurtful resistances, to swing the pendulum always under the same atmospheric pressure and surrounded by similar condi- tions as to moisture. This could be done only by inclosing the entire pendulum in a chamber in which the air could be main— tained at the same density and dryness. One can readily see how difficult this would be with an apparatus more than four feet in length and weighing many pounds. Although the shortcomings of the ordinary pendulum forced themselves into recognition one by one, still the readiness with

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534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. which observations ceuld be made, in comparison with direct measures of the earth, has caused it to be regarded as a most im- portant geodetic instrument. As early as 1735 observations were made at St. Domingo, Pana- ma, and Quito, using a plummet suspended by a thread of the aloe; about the same time the party sent to measure an arc of the earth within the polar circle swung a pendulum within twenty-four degrees of the pole. Lacaille carried a pendulum to the Cape of Good Hope and the Isle of France, Legentil took one on his voyage to the Indian Ocean, Phipps on his voyage toward the north pole, and Malaspina while visiting the Spanish posses- sion in the Western hemisphere. Biot, Arago, and Borda were perfecting the pendulum and measuring gravity at different places in France; the labors of Ross, Kater, Foster, and Sabine were giving to England the supremacy in matters pertaining to gravity _ determinations; while Bessel, in Germany, was busy investigat- ing corrections for the weight of air by swinging a pendulum in @ vacuum, then in gases of known elasticity. The French, not willing to follow in the lead of others, sent out expeditions under Freycinet and Duperrey, who brought back pendulum data that still find their places in the discussion of the earth’s figure. These were followed up by Sawitsch in Rus- sia, Plantamour in Switzerland, Basevi in India, and Peirce in the United States. During all this time attention was given chiefly toward per- fecting the mechanism of the pendulum without changing mate- rially its form. It became heavier rather than lighter; the sup- ports were correspondingly more cumbersome; the knife-edges subjected, because of increased weight, to greater danger of dull- ing, while theory was continually devising corrections because of atmospheric pressure and viscosity. The defectsin structure took on an exaggerated magnitude, and the chance to discover absolute corrections appeared hopeless when the rapid advance in physical science set a limit of error to direct observation, and it looked almost as if the pendulum would be a doomed instrument of in- vestigation. , Just in this emergency Superintendent Mendenhall, of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, called to his aid his ex- perienced assistants to so modify the form of the pendulum as to bring it into its proper sphere of usefulness. Skilled as a physicist, it was not possible for him to waste time stumbling through the mistakes detected by the experience of others. He started anew where they had stopped. The first point reached was the important one. By an applica- tion of the principle of coincidences first employed by Foucault in . 1850 in- determining the velocity of light, it became possible to as-

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SHAPE OF THE EARTH FROM A PENDULUM. 535 certain the number of oscillations made by a pendulum within an interval of several minutes without counting them. This at once suggested that the danger of making a slip in counting the oscil- lations, should they be as frequent as two in a second, might be avoided, and thus a short or half-second’s pendulum be employed. This shortening resulted, of course, in a lightening, and each ounce of diminution added to the safety of the knife-edge, thereby contributing to the permanency of the pendulum. Nor was this all: the parts now became of such wieldy size that the whole could be incased in a chamber sufficiently air-tight to maintain a con- stant atmospheric pressure either by exhausting a portion of the air near sea level or forcing air in when stations at great altitudes are occupied. With a pendulum so compact one can visit places heretofore inaccessible with the larger forms, and require distant islands and inhospitable climes to give a voice in determining the earth’s shape. Large land areas are needed for the measurement of ares, and hence less than one fourth of the earth only is available to de- termine geodetically its shape. But now each party sent out on a voyage of discovery or to observe astronomic phenomena can take one of these compact pendulums along and make stations within the bounds of the three fourths so that they may not be encompassed by a figure dictated by the minority. Now that differential methods are used almost universally—that is, comparing the times of oscillation of the same pendulum at dif- ferent places—it is essential that the length may continue to be what it was when swinging at the base station, or station where absolute gravity had been determined. Supposing that due cor- rection has been made for such changes in length as would be occasioned by differences of temperature, the only possibility for variation in length could come from disarrangement or wear of the knife-edge. Any chipping of this knife-edge—made of agate —could not: be rectified, and dullness could not be removed with- out making in so doing a new pendulum, thereby destroying its differential value. In swinging, this agate V rests on a steel plane, and as this plane, forming no part of the pendulum proper, is less liable to injury or derangement, the idea occurred to the survey officers to let these parts change places, So now we have a pendu- lum with a slit in the upper end of its rod, having for its upper surface a plane of hard steel. This plane rests on the agate knife- edge which projects into the slit. If now the agate becomes dull or injured it can be repaired or a new one substituted, and the pendulum remain the same. As already stated, the usual procedure has been, when observ- ing with a pendulum, to note the number of oscillations made in a given interval of time; then, by dividing this interval by the

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- eR On OO a OE ON a a . 536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. number, the time of one oscillation is obtained. Of vourse, the clock or chronometer which furnished this time might be running too fast or too slow. However, it has been customary to determine the rate of the timepiece by making an astronomic observation be- fore swinging the pendulum and then again after. This would give the amount of time gained or lost in the interim, but does not prove that this amount, or even more, was not the change within the interval of swinging, or that the keeping of time was not per- fect while the pendulum was swung, and the error occurred either before or after. From this uncertainty arose the need to eliminate time error, and it has been most ingeniously met in the survey pendulum. Here two pendulums are employed—one at one station and one at another, connected by a telegraph wire. Each is made to record its own coincidence with a beat of one and the same chronometer, so that if the chronometer has a constant rate for a minute or two itis sufficient. The chronometer at the other station is then used to eliminate such errors as might arise in the transmission of sig- nals. In this way the relative time of the oscillations of two pen- dulums is known with absolute accuracy, and from these relative times relative gravity is obtained, and from relative gravity we have relative distances to the earth’s center, or the shape of the earth. In this enlightened age it is not necessary to enumerate rea- sons why we should know the shape of the earth. It enters as a potent factor in astronomic computations; it is indispensable in map-making, and no boundary line can be drawn without its aid. Besides carrying on the special cartographic functions prescribed for it by law, the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey has lost no opportunity to improve our knowledge of this important factor, and under no régime has the survey so completely filled this dual purpose as under the superintendency of Prof. Mendenhall. We do not measure the earth with a span, but with a pendu- lum one span in length we find its shape. Turese hundred tombs, apparently dating from the period of the Huns, were discovered last year in the commune of Cika,in Hungary. They contained bodies of knights in armor, with the skeletons of their horses by their sides. The faces of all were turned toward the east. The bodies were reinterred, and the articles found in the graves were sent to the museum at Buda-Pesth. Tue publication of an Index to the Names and Authorities of all Known Flowering Plants and their Countries, which was contemplated by Mr. Darwin, has been undertaken at the Clarendon Press, under the direction and supervision of Sir J. D. Hooker. Part I of the work is now ready, and Part II is well advanced.

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THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. By Pror. JOSEPH PRESTWICH, F. B. 8. 6 ip position of geology in this country at the present time, more especially as relates to the later geological periods, is anomalous and possibly without precedent. On one side its ad- vance is barred by the doctrine of uniformity, and on the other side by the teaching of physicists. The former requires that everything should be regulated by a martinet measure of time ' and change. It asserts that the vast changes on the earth’s sur- face, effected during long geological periods, are to be measured by the rate at which similar but minor changes are effected in the present day, and that the agencies now modifying the surface have been alike, in every respect, in all past time. It is true that no restriction is placed on the extent of the changes, but such pro- longed time is insisted on for their accomplishment as to destroy the value of the concession. Not that time is in itself a difficulty, but a time rate, assumed on very insufficient grounds, is used as a master key, whether or not it fits, to unravel all difficulties, What if it were suggested that the brick-built Pyramid of Haw4ra had been laid brick by brick by a single workman? Given time, this would not be beyond the bounds of possibility. But Nature, like the Pharaohs, had greater forces at her command to do the work better and more expeditiously than is admitted by uniformi- tarians. On the other side, physicists would lead us to suppose that those great movements of the earth’s crust, with which we are all familiar in the form of high mountain and continental upheavals in the earlier stages of the earth’s history, were impossible in those times which more immediately approached our own. They maintain that if the earth is not solid throughout, its outer crust at least must have now attained a thickness estimated to vary from eight hundred to twenty-five hundred miles, and is so rigid that we are forced to believe that for a long preceding period it must have been in a state of comparatively stable equilibrium, This, however, would have rendered the great earth movements, j : considered by geologists to have continued up to the threshold of * our own times, impossible. And to this finding the physicists would have geological speculations conform. At the same time; judging, among other reasons, from the rate of cooling of hot solid bodies, they would assign a much shorter term to the earth’s history since it became habitable than is compatible with the views of the uniformitarian school of geologists. The one side counts in round numbers upon some three hundred million years; the other sees no reason to go beyond fifteen to twenty million years VOL, xiiv.—41 y eae ik, vehi ER? ae Fei

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538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. —a term, in our humble opinion, much more probable than the other. On another point our two allies (allies in the sense of work- ing at the same subject) are in irreconcilable antagonism. The physicists tell us that uniformity of action in all time is impos- sible, while the uniformitarians say that such a shortening of geological time as would follow on the acceptance of the physical argument is against all geological experience. Not only do these opinions clash, but those also concerning the rigidity of the earth and the thickness of itscrust are widely divergent. None of these contentions can, however, be disregarded, for we must all rec- ognize the importance of considering the question from every point of view. The argument in favor of uniformity of action has been put before us with so much skill and ability, and possess- ing as it does the charm of an infallible faith, that uniformitari- anism has become the accepted doctrine of the dominant school of geology. Besides, within certain limits and in certain lights, the arguments of the uniformitarian and of the physicist might hold good—that is to say, if we would restrict the deductions of the former to the recent period, and could adopt the propositions of the latter. Our part, however, is to see whether their conclusions agree—not with their respective assumptions, but with the geo- logical evidence: for no conclusions can be accepted that do not meet with the full concurrence of all the copartners interested in the result, and without respect for their mutual claims progress is not possible. The geologist must attend to the claims of the physicist, and the physicist cought not to overlook those of the geologist. How then stands the case ? With regard to the geological problem, we are told by the uni- formitarians that the forces acting on the surface of the globe have been in all past times the same, both in kind and degree, as those now in operation. On those grounds they have proceeded to estimate, first, the time required for mountain and continental elevation; secondly, the rate of erosion of the valleys, and of the denudation or lowering of the land. Their conjecture is that our limited experience of two thousand to three thousand years has sufficed to furnish us with instances of all the various vicissitudes and changes that the earth has undergone during the illimitable past—a generalization incompatible with what is known of the evolution of the earth, and in contradiction to their own premises. For even geologists who recognize no change admit the original molten state of the globe. This of itself involves, in the cooling of the mass, the intervention of stresses and strains, with all their consequences, which render it inconceivable that there was noth- ing in all those stages of the earth’s history beyond what our limited experience has brought us in contact with.

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> 4 o THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY, 539 But although the assumption of the uniformitarians on the question of degree may be disputed, that on the question of kind admits of no dispute. That rivers excavate and currents dis- tribute the excavated materials, and that the land is mobile and subject to changes of level, no one will contest. The point of contention is the rate at which these operations and changes proceeded formerly as compared with the rate at the present day. The many observations made on the erosive and transporting power of rivers, and on the movements and waste of the land, are admirable in so far as they apply to the silting up of ports, the recession of the coast, and the reclamation of marsh lands; but, though valuable to the engineer, they are misleading to the geologist. They furnish him, it is true, with standards appli- cable to present changes, and indicate the method in which the erosive power of the rivers and seas has acted in all time, but they give no measure of the amount and rate of work they did at different periods. Nevertheless, knowing what at present is ac- complished by their means, it is reasonable to judge, by ascer- taining what their agency accomplished in former days, of the difference in the forces in operation at the several periods. Those forces have to be estimated by the work done in the past, and not by any fixed rate founded upon present work. Few geologists would, we presume, contest this position; not- standing which, and though many now profess a modified uni- formitarianism, the old lines of argument still, with few excep- tions, prevail, and the concessions made are more apparent than real, or are of little value. In our opinion, no partial concession can be entertained on the question of degree. It must be an unconditional surrender; for, in contradistinction to method, or manner, where we are on common ground, no common scale on the question of degree is possible in judging of the past by com- parison with the present. As an example of the present position, we may take one argument as presented by the advocates of the uniformitarian school. The observations on the transporting power of the large rivers of the world have shown that the quantity of sediment carried down by them to the sea is, according to one of their esti- mates, such as would suffice to lower the level of the land about one foot in six thousand years, or about a thousand feet in six million years. Exception might be taken to this estimate in that no ac- count is taken of the calcareous matter removed in solution, which, in fact, is not far from the quantity of insoluble matter carried down mechanically. Let that pass. This measure, or one ap- proximate to it, has been very generally accepted, and is in common use. Hence those geologists, proceeding solely on the assumed postulate, and not attaching due weight to othér con-

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540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. siderations, have, it seems to us, placed the later Quaternary times at far too great a distance from the present. In the same way, the rate at which the elevation of the land took place hav- ing been estimated on the mean of two and a half feet in a century, would, if that scale were accepted, manifestly push back to a very remote distance even later geological changes. The importance of determining these points more accurately became more evident when it was discovered that man existed with the extinct mammalia; and therefore upon the solution of the time-rate problem depended the determination of the an- tiquity of man upon the earth. Various have been the attempts since made ; but, as they have almost all been made upon meas- urements based on the above-named scales, they necessarily involved a very free use of time. For long, geologists had held to the belief, prevailing half a century ago, that man could not have existed on the earth for more than five to six thousand years. When evidence was given, and at last accepted, to prove a higher antiquity, the uniformitarians were placed in the difficulty of proving too little or too much. If they adopted a short chro- nology, it would clash with the corner stone of their belief as to the age of the Quaternary deposits; if, on the other hand, they retained their belief in the great length of time they held to be necessary for the formation of the post or later glacial deposits, they would have to assign to man an antiquity which would clash sorely not only with their own previous belief, but also with that held on various grounds by other geologists and an- thropologists. The fetich of uniformity prevailed, the uniformitarians made wolte-face to their former contention, and hesitated not to claim for man an antiquity going on for a million years. One old friend of ours, in a public lecture, even put in a-claim for two millions, heedless of the cries of his unprepared audience to re- mind him of the rights of Adam. At a loss to prove their case by independent geological evidence, they found an unexpected ally in a novel and ingenious astronomical hypothesis, which apart from its connection with geology we will not contest. The object of the hypothesis was to show that there had been cycles, in which at times the position of the earth in its orbit was such as would cause a great lowering of the terrestrial temperature and give rise to recurring glacial periods. Here were offered the definite measures that geology failed to furnish, and which tallied too well with the time needed by the uniformitarians to be neglected. It was therefore eagerly adopted, and has since been prominent in geological literature. That the hypothesis, however, is not in accordance with the facts of geology has been abundantly shown both in America and in this country; never-

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THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. 541 theless the belief prevails. The result is that, as the last of these astronomical periods was calculated to have commenced two hun- dred and fifty thousand years and to have ended eighty thousand years ago, these numbers have become stereotyped as those of the beginning and the end of the Glacial period. The able author of this hypothesis, in his attempt to reconcile geological and astronomical time, built his geological argument upon the rate of erosion of rivers at the present time, as held by the uniformitarian. Nevertheless, an observation of his own, that must be indorsed by all geologists, whatsoever their creed, shows the fallacy of adopting the rates of the present day as measures for the past, for he remarks: “ If the rate of denudation be at present so great, what must it have been during the Glacial period ? It must have been something enormous.” Very true, yet the argument proceeds as before. With the admission here made, how is it possible to adopt a scale admitted by its advocate to be subject to such variation ? Its retention only serves to divert the real issue and stay inquiry. Another objection to this chronology is that it fixes the date of the disappearance of paleolithic man and the Quaternary fauna at a distance of eighty thousand years from our own times. Of these eighty thousand years, we can account for ten or twelve thousand during which neolithic and recent man has been in occupation of the land; but this leaves some seventy thousand years unaccounted for. Unable satisfactorily to show on geologi- cal grounds the need of so great an interval between the end of the Quaternary period and the present time, the uniformitari- ans find a more colorable defense on biological grounds. They point, in a manner we do not quite understand, to the circumstance that with the close of the Post-glacial period a number of the animals then living disappear from the scene, and contend that for the dying-out of so many species long ages must have been required. Had they been able to show the working of evolution in the coming in of new species by descent from the extinct species, or of change in the contemporary species still living, their argument could not be gainsaid. But there is no question of evolution. The mammoth and woolly rhinoceros disappeared for good; the reindeer, musk ox, and glutton were driven to northern latitudes, and there still survive unchanged; while the horse, ox, red deer, wolf, fox, badger, hare, and others remain on with us without variation of species. The extraordinary change of climate which then took place is quite sufficient to account for such changes as these, which are chiefly of those of faunal distribution, having been effected in a measurable length of time, instead of needing the vastly long period mentioned. This length of time could hardly have failed to involve more extensive changes

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542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. in the species, even without the aid of the physical changes which then took place, than are apparent in the species now exist- ing. There is, in fact, no sufficient evidence either geological or biological to show the need of the long interval assumed. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it did not exist, but that paleolithic man and his companions came down to within some ten to twelve thousand years of our times. We can not suppose that either man or geological work would have remained stationary during seventy thousand years, and yet that is the conclusion we should be driven to adopt. Are we to be debarred from pursuing these inquiries by a hypothesis having no better foundation, and involving such unquestionable difficulties ? Another barrier to inquiry is the postulate which would fix the rate of upheaval of the land during geological periods upon observations based—not upon the experience of even two or three thousand years—but upon observations which do not extend be- yond two centuries. These observations have shown, as put by uniformitarians, that the mean rate of elevation of the coasts of Norway and Sweden has been during that time two and a half feet in a century, and this scale has been accepted and employed unhesitatingly as a safe and sure basis for calculation of geologi- eal time. The determination of a secular rise of the land is of itself an interesting fact, as settling the question of a retained mobility in the earth’s crust; but it is quite insufficient, even if it were applicable, to establish a definite rate, not only for the past but even for the present. It is not a mean rate that is wanted. No upheaval can be otherwise than local and graduated. The ex- tremes are what is needful. No engineer would take the mean delivery of a river as the measure to be depended upon for a water supply. It is the limit in both directions, or the minimum and maximum quantities, that are essential. To know what earth movements can still effect, we should at least take the maximum rate, which amounts in the above case, at the North Cape, to five feet in the century, or double the measure of the mean adopted by uniformitarians. If also, in calculating the present rate of elevation of the land, the mean rate along the whole length of the axis is adopted, the same rule should at least be applied to elevations of past periods, and the time should not be estimated by the height of any one point, as that may prove to be more or less in excess of the mean. Thus, for example, the Westleton marine shingle is found in Buckinghamshire at a height of six hundred feet. Estimating this upheaval at the rate of two and a half feet in a century, the uniformitarian would put in a claim for twenty-four thousand years. But this bed, as it trends eastward, is met with at grad- ually lower levels, until in Suffolk it falls to the sealevel. A ~ Erker ve eS ee

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Ke hemi OR Ra. ° THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. 543 mean of three hundred feet should therefore be taken, with a cor- responding shorter time-term of twelve thousand years; or are we to ignore any interval of time and to look only at the beds on the coast where they are consecutive? From every point of view such estimates must be worthless. : More than this, the very leaders of the belief that the average rate of motion does not exceed that above named allow that “the average rate proposed is a purely arbitrary and conjectural one.” It is admitted also that it is not improbable that during the last four hundred years there has been a still faster rate in high northern latitudes, Not only, however, is the half measure adopted, but the warning that higher measures exist is neglected. When therefore the mean is applied to determine the length of time required to effect such elevations as that of the marine shell bed on Moel Tryfaen, fourteen hundred feet above sea level and of late Quaternary age, uniformitarians are obliged to ask for a term of fifty-six thousand if not eighty thousand years. Should the case of Moel Tryfaen be objected to as uncertain, there are still the unquestioned raised beaches of Norway and Sweden, which are from two hundred to six hundred feet above the sea level, and of still more recent date. These, on the same esti- mate, would have taken for their upheaval some eight thousand to twenty-four thousand years. We need not, however, pursue this subject further. The very admissions of the advocates of the two above-named measures of time, based upon present rates of denudation and of elevation, show how untenable their conclu- sions are. Such observations, howsoever useful and suggestive, are in fact futile so far as regards their application to former rates of upheaval, and needlessly play with time. If we could suppose that the causes which produced those movements had always acted with the same degree of energy, the reasoning would hold good ; but, as that regularity depends upon the stresses to which the earth’s crust has been exposed at any particular time, the effects must have varied in proportion as the stresses varied. With a cooling globe it could not have been otherwise. What those movements of the past were, and what their duration, must therefore be judged of by other circumstances and on surer data. We trust we have now said enough to show upon how insecure a basis the uniformitarian measures of time and change stand, They have probably done more to impede the exercise of free inquiry and discussion than any of the catastrophic theories which formerly prevailed. The latter found their own cure in the more accurate observation of geological phenomena and the progress of the collateral sciences; but the former hedge us in by

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544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. dogmas which forbid any interpretation of the phenomena other than that of fixed rules which are more worthy of the sixteenth than of the nineteenth century. Instead of weighing the evi- dence and following up the consequences that should ensue from the assumption, too many attempts have been made—not unnatu- rally by those who hold this faith—to adjust the evidence to the assumption. The result has been strained interpretations framed to meet one point, but without sufficient regard for the others, We repeat. that we would not for a moment contend that the forces of erosion, the modes of sedimentation, and the methods of motion, are not the same in kind as they have ever been, but we can never admit that they have always been the same in degree, The physical laws are permanent; but the effects are conditional and changing, in accordance with the conditions under which the law is exhibited. Such are the barriers which seem to us seriously to retard the advance in one direction of an important branch of theoretical geology, while in another it is fronted by the stern rules of an ap- parently definite calculation. We must ask to be forgiven if we can not accept the conclu- sions of physicists respecting the extreme rigidity of the earth and the immobility of the crust as conclusive. That the rigidity is now very great—as great, we will admit for argument’s sake, as if the globe were of glass or steel—may be as asserted, but that conclusion can only be accepted in so far as it conforms to the facts of geology. Were the data on which the conclusion is based fixed and positive, like those on which the laws of gravitation and light are established, there would be nothing for the geologist to do but to bow to the decision of the physicist, and, if possible, re- vise his work. But in this case the tidal observations, on which the calculations of rigidity are mainly based, are of such extreme delicacy that, failing as the hypothesis does to satisfy the require- ments of geology, the geologist may be excused for his dissent, pending further inquiry. Should this tend to confirm the extreme rigidity of the globe, we must seek for some explanation of earth movements consistent with that rigidity. It is indisputable that up to the latest geological period—that touching on our own © times—the mobility of the crust was very considerable, for the raised beaches of Europe and of the Mediterranean prove conclu- sively that in that period extensive tracts were raised at intervals to heights of from ten to six hundred feet or more above their former levels. It is difficult to conceive that a globe, of which the crust was then so mobile, could have acquired, in the com- paratively short interval between the latest of the beaches and our own time, so great a rigidity as to be practically immobile. For similar reasons the conjoint conclusion that the crust of

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THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. 545 the earth is not less than from a thousand to twenty-five hundred miles thick is open to question. We can not imagine that a crust of that enormous thickness could, in such recent geological times, have possessed so great a flexibility as is indicated by the move- ments we have referred to. Independently of that improbability, there are certain geological facts which are inexplicable on that assumption. Volcanic phenomena would be unintelligible; for vents traversing that thickness of solid rock could hardly be kept open owing to the cooling which the lava in its ascent would undergo. The rock fragments ejected during explosions are also those of rocks which lie at no great depth, while, with the in- crease of temperature in descending beneath the surface, there is every reason to suppose that at a depth to be measured by tens, and not by hundreds of miles, the immediate underlying magma at least is in a state of plasticity such as would allow of compara- tively free movements of the crust. Again, surely,if the crust were so thick, we might expect to find, when that crust was broken and its edges thrust up by compression or protrusion of the igneous rocks, that some indications of that enormous thickness should be exhibited ; but none such are forthcoming. Whatever may be the state of the nucleus, there is nothing geologically to indicate, as some physicists also have contended on other grounds, that the outer crust of the earth is more than from about twenty to thirty miles thick. The effective rigidity will therefore, if it be necessary, have to be explained in some other manner than that of a comparatively solid globe or of a crust of enormous thickness. We are thus brought face to face with apparently irrecon- cilable opinions. That they admit of adjustment there can be no doubt, but it must be by mutual understanding. How it is to be effected is a problem for the future. These, briefly, are the barriers which restrict inquiry on many important questions. On the side of the uniformitarians, it is assumed that every position must be reduced to a fixed measure— where fixity is not possible—of time and speed; and, on that of the physicists, geologists are gently reminded that the subject is outside their immediate sphere of inquiry, in a way somewhat suggestive of “the closure.” It would be an unfortunate day for any science to have free discussion and inquiry barred by assumed postulates, and not by the ordinary rules of evidence as established by the facts, how- ever divergent the conclusions to which those facts lead may be from the prevailing belief. In any case it must be remembered that no hypothesis can be true which does not satisfy the con- ditions both of the geological phenomena and of the physical laws. VOL. XLIV.—42

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546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The foregoing remarks are intended to apply mainly to ques- tions connected with the more recent geological periods. The older epochs have happily been treated as beyond the barriers, and consequently have enjoyed and made good use of their greater freedom. It is to be hoped that, when the phenomena of these later periods are judged of by the evidence of facts rather than by rules, they will receive more independent interpretations—inter- pretations that may escape the dwarfing influence of uniformi- tarianism.— Nineteenth Century. SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN. Br Pror. MELVILLE B. ANDERSON. AVID STARR JORDAN was born in 1851, at Gainesville, New York. His father was a farmer who devoted far more attention to the elder. poets than to the Rural New-Yorker. His mother is characterized by strength of will, depth of feeling, and pithiness of speech. Goethe tells us that he owed to his father his stature and his seriousness, and to his mother his happy disposi- tion and his delight in story-telling. In Jordan’s case this order was reversed. From the mother he seems to have inherited his executive power, and from the father his literary instinct. He grew up a very unusual farm product—a shy, observant lad, much given to lonely excursions with a copy of Gray’s Botany in one pocket and Longfellow’s poems in the other. He early exhibited his instinct for classification by attempting a catalogue raisonné of the Assyrian kings, but as his teacher could supply him with data for but two categories, viz., the good and the bad, his labors were not very fruitful. Owing to his distaste for the severe manual labor generally expected of boys on a farm, young Jordan was considered lazy by the neighbors, and doubtless some of them blamed his parents for allowing him to loiter and dream ~ his time away. Not that he was idle. He attended first the village school, and afterward, no secondary school for boys being accessible, was admitted to the academy for young ladies in the neighboring town of Warsaw. He learned French and Latin; he made a cata- logue of the plants of his native county; he read a good deal of history, and grew intimate with the best American and English poets. But he was the victim of no rigorous system of academic routine. He came to his studies, as a boy comes to a well-spread table, with a healthy appetite. A stranger to “cram,” his mind assimilated its own, rejected what was not food, and was never

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SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN. 547 converted from a natural organ into a machine for gerund grind- ing. At a time when most of our teaching is little better than or- ganized interference, the attitude of Jordan’s parents is instruc- tive. It is told of Darwin that, when one of his friends expressed surprise at the way he allowed his boys to run at loose ends, his reply was: “I dare not interfere; Nature can manage them better than I can.” This recalls Wordsworth’s abiding faith “that there are powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours Tn a wise passiveness.” It would be wrong to assume that this attitude toward education is purely negative. In a very positive sense it may be said of young Jordan, as of the good Lord Clifford, that “ His daily teachers had been woods and rills.” Such an education might, or might not, be a good one for a bookkeeper, a forge master, or a minister; for a naturalist it was ideal. One of its outward results was that when, in 1869, the youth of eighteen entered the first freshman class at the Cornell University, he was found to be a learned authority on such diverse subjects as hoof-rot in sheep and the flora of Genesee and Wyo- ming Counties. His career as a teacher had already begun at the Warsaw Academy. In his junior year at Cornell he was ap- pointed an instructor in botany. In his senior year he became President of the Natural History Society, which then counted among its members several men of unusual activity and ability, whose names are now not unknown in the scientific world. At least two of these gentlemen have made their grateful recogni- | tion of his high example and bracing personality a matter of record, In 1872 he was graduated with the degree of M. 8., being the only man who ever received the Master’s degree from Cornell upon completion of an undergraduate course. Perhapsitis worth remarking that he shares with Mr. Andrew D. White alone the distinction of an honorary degree from the same university. Im- mediately after graduation he was appointed to the professorship of Natural History at Lombard University, Galesburg, Illinois. Here he began that systematic study of the fishes of the Missis- sippi Valley and the Great Lakes which he continued with so much success during the many years of his residence in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Throughout these years all his summer vacations were spent in scientific excursions fruitful of result. Passing over some minor positions which he held but for a short

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548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. time, it is important to note that he was enrolled as a student at Penikese under Louis Agassiz, who was not slow to observe the remarkable powers of the young naturalist. In 1874 Jordan re- turned to Penikese as lecturer in marine botany. In the follow- ing year he became Professor of Biology at Butler University, near Indianapolis; in 1879, Professor of Zodlogy at the Indiana Univer- sity; and in 1885, president of the same institution. This last position he held until 1891, when he was selected as the first Presi- dent of the Leland Stanford Junior University. In 1880 Jordan was appointed “Special Agent of the United States Census Bureau” for the investigation of the marine in- dustries of the Pacific coast: In this capacity, with the assist- ance of Prof. Charles K. Gilbert, Jordan made the first compre- hensive survey ever undertaken of the fishes, both fresh-water and marine, of our Occidental seaboard. The records of the scien- tific discoveries made in the course of this survey are scattered through many bulletins of the United States Fish Commission, while the chief economic results are recorded in the section of the Tenth Census Report devoted to fisheries. Of Jordan’s hundreds of published works, great and small, but a few of the most important can be enumerated here. The most bulky of them, A Synopsis of the Fishes of North America, is a book of nearly twelve hundred pages, the authorship of which is shared with Prof. Gilbert. The Manual of the Vertebrate Ani- mals of the Northern United States (A. C. McClurg & Co.) has grown through several successive editions from a small pocket volume to a stout octavo of nearly four hundred pages. It is an extremely useful work, and attempts to give such guidance with respect to the classification of vertebrate animals as a botanical key gives with respect to our flora. In his Science Sketches (A. C. McClurg & Co., 1887) are collected several papers and addresses of a popular character. Noteworthy among them are The Story of a Salmon (first published in this magazine), The Story of a Stone (first published in St. Nicholas), Darwin, and The Ascent of the Matterhorn. Some of these sketches are marked by a union of sound knowledge, with a whimsical humor and delicate fancy which is sufficiently rare among men, whether scientific or liter- ary, and which goes far to convince readers that Jordan might have attained a place in literature perhaps as distinguished as his place in science. What always strikes even a casual observer in Jordan is that he seldom does things as other men do them. If it can not always be said that his way is the best, his unfailing success attests that it is anyhow the best for him. In bearing, phrase, turn of wit, and simplicity of life, he is unique, and that without the slightest affectation of originality. This was trueof him asa student. He

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SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN. 549 was probably the best man of his time at college, yet he was rarely seen to study. He paid his expenses in one way and another by his own labor, yet he was a man of leisure. Despite his careless- ness with respect to his personal appearance, and despite his whimsical address, his spiritual qualities marked him out as a man of fine breeding. As a teacher, Jordan makes the impression of weight, sincer- ity, and simplicity. He rests down confidently upon the subject and makes that speak. He has the instinct attributed by Matthew Arnold to Wordsworth: he lets Nature speak through him “ with her own bare, sheer, penetrating power.” Students say he is the simplest of lecturers. Others may seem more profound because less lucid. Perhaps Jordan does not see everything—he does not wish to see everything—it is enough for him to see what is vital. Those who have time may dwell, if they will, in the skirts and suburbs of things; Jordan strikes for the center. He has the sense of an Indian for direction, and may be relied upon to bring his followers out of the woods as promptly asany guide who could be mentioned. As an administrator, Jordan is a man of distinguished per- formance and splendid promise. In the course of six years he raised the State University of Indiana from a condition of ob- scurity and ineffectiveness to its present position in the front rank of Western colleges. This he did in the face of very great obstacles, of which, perhaps, the remoteness of the seat of the university and the parsimony of the State were the most for- midable. His success was largely due to his policy of surround- ing himself with a Faculty of young, energetic, progressive men, and of keeping the university in touch with society at large. As President of Stanford University he has to confront still greater difficulties, but he has the enormous advantages of far greater resources and of a vastly widened field of action‘ Jordan is singularly fitted for the multiform duties and per- plexities of his present position. Physically and mentally he is @ massive man, as imperturbable as a mountain. He eats heartily, sleeps soundly, and turns off his work promptly, almost impercep- tibly. Labors which break down ordinary men he takes as easily as a game of baseball, in which he delights; grinding disappoint- ments seem to affect him little more than does the defeat of the Faculty team by the Freshmen. He is incapable of being inter- rupted ; he will answer your questions and dispatch your business while finishing the identification and description of a new species of fish. He is impervious to the bore, not because he is thick- skinned, but because he does not stop long enough to let the bore insert his sting. His mind seems to be organized on the co-opera- tive principle, so that he can carry on several lines of work simul-

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55° THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. taneously. It is, however, absurd to use the word “ work” of the productive energy of a man who does everything with the uncon- scious ease of a child at play. The only thing that really worries him is a full-dress dinner, with its dissipating accompaniments of smoking, drinking, and speech-making. He is so thoroughly imbued with the conviction that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points that he is incapable of the circui- tous treatment of a subject essential to the after-dinner speech. Like all penetrating minds, he is intolerant of verbiage, and has never been known to be guilty of a lapse into “ fine writing.” Jordan is still in his prime, his vigor of mind and body unim- paired, and it is reasonable to hope that his main life work is still before him. But even should his career be cut short at any time, its influence would survive. The nature of this influence may be partially inferred from his published utterances on educational subjects; but only those who have been associated with him, either as fellow-teachers or as students, can be aware of its per- vasive power. To scores of teachers and to hundreds of earnest students, Jordan has been something like a spiritual emancipator. It was delightful to see him, at the University of Weissnichtwo, confronting hide-bound pedants with the simple nature of things. He went quietly about his business; he did not strive nor cry, much less scold; but somehow tradition, system, dialectic, cur- riculum—everything in short that had hitherto passed unques- tioned in that place—softly faded like the ghost when it begins to scent the morning air. Cautiously, after much debate, some changes were made; the timid hied to cover; but the sky did not fall. Once it became understood that change was possible in matters academic without greater harm than that of converting impotent philippics into whining jeremiads, things moved very rapidly. The great discovery was made that the laws of Nature operate in college as well as elsewhere. It was suggested that the way to educate a man is to set him at work; that the way to get him to work is to interest him; that the way to interest him is to vitalize his task by relating it to some sort of reality. Teachers were amazed to find that students work better when they are led than when they are driven. The abounding ingenuity of Ameri- can youth, which had hitherto been exhausted in cheating at ex- aminations, victimizing professors and freshmen, evading duty, eluding detection, and framing perennial excuses, found ample scope in fascinating experiments leading up to some scientific result, Without losing their natural-vivacity boys became men, bringing to the serious work proper to men the spring and hope- fulness of youth. College pranks ceased, but by no means college sports. Academic rules and regulations became dead-letter, not because of their frequent infringement, but because no need

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SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN. 552 longer remained for their enforcement. It came to be seen that a university community where every man is absorbed in his work may be made practically self-governing. Such a body of students has channels for the excretion of the idle and the vicious. As may be surmised, the effect upon the instructor of such a series of reforms as those here glanced at was profound. The college scout was converted into the university professor. In case he proved recalcitrant to this high calling, he was permitted to “seek some other field of usefulness.” In case he turned out worthy, his life acquired the value and dignity of high purpose, even when the practical work of organizing an educational ex- periment gave him little time for scientific or literary production. Upon the indebtedness of such men at several seats of learning to President Jordan, this is not the time to dilate. Suffice it to say that at Stanford University, where of course his influence is at its height, he has drawn a large number of diverse and energetic personalities into abiding harmony touching matters that pertain to educational salvation. Jordan’s favorite quotation is the say- ing of Ulrich von Hutten, “Die Luft der Freihett weht” (“ Free- dom is in the air”). This free air is to us the breath of life, THe common opinion, says Mr. Horatio Hale, in one of his anthropological papers, that women among savage tribes in general are treated with harshness, and are regarded as slaves, or at least as inferiors and drudges, is based on error, originating in too large and indiscriminate induction from narrow premises. A wider experience shows that this depressed condition of women really exists, but only in certain regions and under special circumstances. It is entirely a question of physical comfort, and mainly of abundance or lack of food. Where, owing to an inclement elimate, as in arctic or subarctic America, or to a barren soil, as in Australia, food is scanty, and the people are frequently on the verge of famine, harsh conditions of social life prevail. When men in their full strength suffer from lack of the necessaries of existence, and are themselves slaves to the rigors of the elements, their better feelings are numbed or perverted, like those of ship- wrecked people famishing on a raft. Under sach circumstances the weaker mem- bers of the community—women, children, the old, the sick—are naturally the chief sufferers. The stories of the subjection of women, and of inhumanity to the feeble and aged, all come from these inhospitable regions. Where plenty pre- vails, as in tropical or subtropical America, and in most of the Polynesian islands, the natural sentiments resame their sway, and women enjoy a social position not inferior, and sometimes actually superior, to that which they possess in some civ- ilized countries. The wife of a Samoan landowner or a Navajo shepherd has no occasion, so far as her position in her family or among her people is concerned, to envy the wife of a German peasant, The change which took place in the social condition of the Tinneh women, when their emigration had carried them from the bleak skies and frozen swamps of Athabaska to the sunny uplands and frait- ful valleys of Arizona, is thus explained. any

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. EDITOR’S TABLE. THE LATE PROF. TYNDALL. Y the death of Prof. Tyndall Eng- land has lost not only one of her foremost men of science, bot a man who, by his labors and his character, has con- tributed in an eminent degree to render the science of the nineteenth century honorable. Some men take to science as to a gainful trade, hoping that, in the competition of life, it will serve their turn better, perhaps, than any other career they see open tothem. Others are led to it by a more or less amateur- ish curiosity. Others again enter upon the study of it from a sense of the im- portance of the truths and principles it unfolds and from a desire to place such knowledge as they may gain at the service of mankind. In the latter class we must place the late Prof. Tyndall. No man ever felt more fully and deeply than he that the investigation of the laws of Nature was a ministry, the es- sential preparation for which lay in a candid mind and a readiness to impart as freely as one received; and no sci- entific man of our time, it may confi- dently be said, has maintained a more unbroken record of personal high-mind- edness, of broad humanity, and un- gradging helpfulness. . In the various notices of him that have appeared in the press since his death, the leading incidents of the late professor’s life bave been sufficiently stated, and we need not on the present occasion go into many biographical de- tails. From his father he inherited neither social position nor wealth ; but what he did inherit was of far more importance than either or both—a sound constitation, s well-developed brain, and a character in which courage, independ- ence, and love of truth were the pre- dominant elements. The philosopher Schopenhauer prefixed to the second edition of his principal work an elabo- rate dedication to the manes of his father, whom he eulogized chiefly for having left him an ample provision of worldly means, whereby he had been enabled to devote himself to intellectual labor without any anxiety for his sub- sistence. “ Thy presiding care,” he says, “hath sheltered and borme me, not merely through helpless childhood and unregarding youth, bat even in man- hood and up to the present day. For as thou didst bring into the world a son such as I am, thou didst also make pro- vision that, in a world like this, such a son should be able to subsist and de- velop himself.” We quote this as evinc- ing a spirit the very opposite of Tyn- dall’s, He did not trouble himself about what kind of a world he was born into, but from the first resolved to take things as he found them and make his way in the world by dint of honesty, industry, and courage. Leaving school in his nineteenth year, he took service on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and in turn performed every branch of the work from the most mechanical to the most theoretical, and thus made con- siderable progress in what were already favorite studies of his—geometry and trigonometry. This was not sufficient, however, for his active mind and stren- uous disposition. A few words of coun- sel given to him by an official of the survey as to the best use to which to put his spare time caused him to enter on a systematic course of study. At five o'clock next morning he was at his books, and, having adopted this plan, he kept it ap without interruption for twelve years, The salaries paid on the Ordnance Survey, at least to the juniors, were not large, and when Tyndall re- tired from it in 1848, after four or five years’ service, his wages were only

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EDITOR'S TABLE, twenty shillings a week. “I have often wondered since,” he observed in an ad- dress * delivered in the year 1884, “ at the amount of genuine happiness which a young fellow of regular habits, not caring for either pipe or mug, may ex- tract even from pay like that.” He next found employment in railroad sur- veying, the railway-building mania in England being then at its height. The remuneration was a little better than in his former position, but the work was terrible. ‘*The day’s work in the field,” he tells us, “usually began and ended with the day’s light, while fre- quently in the office, and more espe cially as the awful 30th of November— the latest date at which plans and sec- tions of projected lines could be de- posited at the Board of Trade—drew near, there was little difference between day and night, every hour of the twenty- four being absorbed in the work of preparation. Strong men were broken down by the strain and labor of that arduous time. . . . In my own modest sphere I well remember the refresh- ment I occasionally derived from five minutes’ sleep on a deal table with Babbage and Callet’s Logarithms under my head for a pillow.” A better school for expelling any sickly dreams or pes- simisms that might haunt a young man’s brain could not easily be imagined. Possibly more than one rather discour- aging philosophical treatise might never have been written had the authors been required to go through a similar expe- rience. At one moment the idea of speculating in railway shares took pos- session of the young surveyor’s mind. He made a purchase in the most legiti- mate way, and for three weeks was the most miserable of men; when, finding the burden intolerable, be went back to his brokers and “ unloaded” at the ex- act price he had paid. * My Schools and Schoolmasters. in The Popular Science Monthly for January, 1885. 553 After four years of railway work Tyndall accepted a position as teacher of mathematics at Queenwood College in Hampsbire. Here he learned by prac- tical experience that two factors went to the formation of a teacher, ability to inform and ability to stimulate. To quote his own words in the address al- ready referred to: “A power of char- acter must underlie and enforce the work of the intellect. There are men who can so rouse and energize their pupils as to make the hardest work agreeable. Without this power it is questionable whether the teacher can ever really enjoy his vocation—witb it I do not know a higher, nobler, more blessed calling than that of the man who, scorning the cramming so preva- lent in our day, converts the knowledge he imparts into a lever to lift, exercise, and strengthen the growing minds com- mitted to his care.” After a year of teaching the ardent student gathered all he bad saved up to that time, some two hundred pounds, and went over to Germany in order to take a course in science at the University of Marburg, which at the time was enjoying great repute through the lectaores of the illus- trious chemist Bunsen. It was neither a desire for money nor a desire for fame, he tells us, that took him to Ger- many. He had been reading Fichte and Emerson and Carlyle, and had beep touched by their spirit. “The Alpha and Omega of their teaching was loyalty to duty. Higher knowledge and greater strength were within reach of the man who unflinchingly enacted his best in- sight.” Living was cheap at Marburg in those days: a good dinner could be got for eightpence—a more bounteous dinner, indeed, than so abstemious a liver as Tyndall cared to eat; for it oon- ‘sisted of several courses, while he gen- erally limited himself to one, not caring to waste any of his energy in needless wear and tear of his digestive organs. After studying for a time at Marburg he went to Berlin, where he fell in with a

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554 number of very eminent men of science, with all of whom he formed the most satisfactory relations. “The philoso- phers of Germany,” he says—and the testimony is one of which Germans may be proud—“ were men of the lof- tiest moral tone.” It was the recogni- tion which Tyndall’s scientific essays received in Germany which awakened the world of science in England to a sense of his greatness. In 1852 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in June of the year following he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution, of which, on the retirement of Faraday a few years later, be became superin- tendent. It is needless to give an enumeration of the works which Prof. Tyndall gave to the world, but we may remark that his life-work falls into two portions, original research into the most abstruse questions of science and earnest at- tempts at the popularization of scien- tific knowledge. There are those who are pleased to say that scientific knowl- edge can not be popularized; but the statement would be safer if it affirmed merely their own inability to popularize it—an inability which, in some cases, we have very little doubt, springs from unwillingness. No man ever knew better or felt more strongly than Prof. Tyndall how rigorous are the demands of scientific investigation in the way both of preparation and of method, and yet no man was more willing than he, whenever his severer engagements per- mitted, to open, or try to open, the door of knowledge to the unlearned public. “ Look jealously,” he said twenty years ago, on the occasion of the banquet to him in this city, “upon the investigator who is fond of wandering from his true vocation to appear on public platforms. The practice is absolutely destructive of original work of a high order.” True enough, the man who, being supposedly equipped for the work of advanced in- vestigation, is fond of wandering from THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. that work in order to appear on public platforms, is a man our confidence in whom as an original investigator is apt to be weakened; but it is one thing to be fond of escaping from the severer tasks of science and quite another to re- linquish them from time to time under a sense of duty; and we should be in- clined to say that no man should be so immersed in the specialties and tech- nicalities of minute investigation as to be unabie to lay before a popular audi- ence a general view of some portion ot the scientific field. How the possession of the power to do the latter would in- terfere with the power of carrying on even the profoundest studies we are at a loss to imagine, though we are pre- pared to admit that possibly the con- stant habit of dealing with difficult and abstrase problems, the very language and symbolism of which are absolutely unintelligible to the lay mind, may, if allowed to do so, develop a real incapaci- ty for popular exposition. It did not, however, lead to this result in the case of Prof. Tyndall, nor in that of his even greater predecessor Faraday; and we venture to conjecture that the great Sir Isaac Newton himself conld, if he had wished, have delivered a very good pop- ular lecture in astronomy. We have spoken of Prof. Tyndall’s visit to this country. No man of sei- ence from abroad was ever more hearti- ly received; perhaps none was ever so heartily received, and yet we have had among us Lluxley and Spencer, who both stand very high in the opinion and re- gard of the American people. How dis- interestedly he pursued his vocation here is doubtless known to all our read- ers. Had his object been to make money he could have returned to England with the respectable sum—for a scientific man—of thirteen thousand dollars in his pocket. That was not his object, however ; and, finding himself possessed of this sum over and above all the ex- penses of his tour, he placed it in the hands of trustees for the assistance of

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students without means who might wish to devote themselves to scientific re- search. Difficulties having presented themselves in the way of applying the money precisely as intended, the trus- tees retained it with Prof. Tyndall’s ap- proval, and finally divided it between the Universities of Harvard, Columbia, and Pennsylvania, each receiving—so successful had been the management of the fand—no less a sum than ten thou- send eight hundred dollars. The gen- erous donor of the original som had a good right to say as he did at the ban- quet, ‘ Not as a servant of Mammon do I ask you to take science to your hearts, but as the strengthener and enlightener of the mind of man.” These words were the key to his own life, and might well be engraved on any monument raised in his honor. Dr. Axprew D. Wurrs contributes to this number of the Monthly the first of a group of papers which, while they form part of his New Chapters in the Warfare of Science, have also a distinc- tive leading idea. Their general title is From Oreation to Evolution, and they are intended to show that the modern scientific conception of the aniverse, in- cluding man and his activities, has been developed out of the theological and metaphysical conceptions through a con- tinuous progression. In the article pub- lished this month the change of belief in regard to the formation of the earth and stars is traced, and, as our readers will find, with all the wealth and defi- niteness of evidence which always char- acterize Dr. White’s writings. LITERARY NOTICES. Romance or 4 Born Camunat. Milan: Chie- si, 1893, Tas remarkable book, published and prefaced by a well-known Italian criminal anthropologist, can not and ought not to be judged by the usual canons of criticism. The LITERARY NOTICES. 555 title of romance must be subjectively justi- fied, since the feeling that inspired the pro- tagonist, a convict, to write these pages was certainly not diverse from that which moves other contemporary authors to expose their intimate ideas and sentiments in biograph- ical form. Le Crime et le ChAtiment, by Dostojewski; La Béte Humaine, by Emile Zola, Giovanni Episcopo, and L’Innocent, by Gabriele d’ Annunzio, are the latest examples of this pathological literature, in which the skill of the authors opens before our minds a vista of deep knowledge of morbid states of mind, in which art takes the place of truth. In this book art there is none, but of truth there is perhaps a great deal more, and the very literary inexperience of the writer throws this into high relief; for, if truth comes to the fore because if is touched with the ac- cent of veracity, what is false can not be glossed over here as with professional scribes, who know how to varnish and pleasantly hide by means of a pleasing and misleading style. It may have been the writer's inten- tion to indite a work of art, but he has suc- ceeded rather in furnishing the world with a most precious scientific and human document, and as a scientific document the book must be perused. The adventures of this capo ca- morra, a perfect type of the instinctive crim- inal, who believes he can justify and rehabili- tate himself in the eyes of the world by re- counting his crimes, his changes of fortune, are not without interest. The protagonist © endeavors to attenuate and almost to vindi- cate the former by excusing them in his own way. In publishing this work A. G. Bianchi wishes to give a practical illustration of the theories of the new penal school of criminal anthropology which, thanks to Lombroso, Ta- massia, and other well-known observers, has developed so greatly in Italy, and is begin- ning to influence the decrees of human jus- tice when called upon to decide on the culpa- bility of criminals. This book by Bianchi is, in short, the offspring of analytical studies. “ This work of mine,” says Bianchi in his preface, “ought to be a help to the study of ‘individual criminality, whether subjectively by the narration of his own adventures by the delinquent himself, or objectively and scientifically, thanks to the help of the great savant, Silvio Venturi, professor at the uni- versity at Naples and director of the lunatic

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$56 asylum at Girifalco, who was able to know, observe, and study the subject of this book.” Bianchi defines Antonino M. as a grapho- maniac. His memoirs are important docu- ments in many ways. For example, they help us to estimate how far those modern and ancient writers were sincere who have given to us real or fancied confessions. In some respects, mutatis mutandis, these pages recall to our minds Rousseau’s famous Con- fessions, Here, as there, we encounter an absolute lack of the sense of shame which seems a distinctive feature of the instinctive criminal. And who, judging Rousseau by modern standards, would deny that he had in him many traits of the born criminal? This work should make jurists and sociologists pause tothink Surely prison life should turn out its inmates not only punished but correct- ed. Yet from these pages we learn that they are apt to issue forth more expert thieves than they entered. This book is really to the thoughtful an indirect apologia for capital punishment. Signor Bianchi’s book is a new proof of how incessantly the positive school of crimi- nal anthropology labors in Italy, and what many and diverse modes they adopt to make known and to popularize their science. Tar Brste: irs Orion, Growrn, anp Car- Acter. By J.T.Sunperianp,D.D. Put- nams. Tuts book makes no claim to originality, but is an excellent summary of the most probable conclusions of modern scholarship on the questions discussed. It covers the ground admirably for so small a work. It is reverent in spirit and judicious in statement, and all who desire to know just what the best thought on biblical criticism is should read this book. Its chapters on the canon, the text, and the infallibility of the Scriptures are specially fine and interesting, and it is as- tonishing that any one, with such facts before him as are here stated, can believe in the in- errancy of the Bible, and it is still more as- tounding that those who dispute this dogma should be expelled from the Church. The vexed question of the Pentateuch, or rather the Hexateuch, the origin and authorship of the Old Testament histories, the Psalms, the Prophecies, etc., the composition of the Gos- pels and Epistles of the New Testament are THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. all ably discussed. The author holds that “sacred books or Bibles come into being naturally. They are a necessary and inevi- table outgrowth of the religious nature of man.” Again he says: “Our Bible, particu- larly our New Testament, is greatly superior to any of the Bibles of the so-called heathen peoples. But the difference is one of degree, not of kind.” He denies the mechanical theory of inspiration, which makes the Bible writers mere penmen of the Deity, but ad- mits that they were “quickened by touch with the Infinite Mind and illuminated by that Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” These quotations are sufficient to give a general idea of the nature of the book. An excellent biblio- graphical appendix is added. Tae Srory or uy Lire rrom CHILDHOOD TO Mannoop. By Gerore Esers. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 382. Price, $1.25. In this volume Dr. Ebers tells of his fumily relations in childhood, of his school days, of the beginning of his career, and of the friendships he formed, with only a sin- gle sensational element in the political dis- turbances of 1848; and we follow the whole with deep interest. As he was born in a country quarter of Berlin where now the city is dense around, before there were rail- roads, when the journey to his grandfather’s in Holland required several days, and when tinder boxes had not been superseded by matches, his story helps us realize the extent of the social changes that have taken place. Remarkable changes have likewise been wrought during his lifetime in the political affairs of Germany; and nothing gives him more cause for gratitude “than the boon of being permitted to see the realization and fulfillment of the dream of so many former nations and my dismembered native land united into one grand, beautiful whole. I deem it a great happiness to have been a contemporary of Emperor William I, Bis- marck, and von Moltke, witnessed their great deeds as a man of mature years, and shared the enthusiasm which enabled these men to make our German Fatherland the powerful united land it is to-day.” A picture is given of the revolutionary excitement of 1848 in Berlin. Dr. Ebers passed through the Keil-

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hau Institute, where Froebel’s spirit pre- vailed, the gymnasium at Koltbus, and the University of Géttingen, and after a serious illness began to prepare himself for his life work. He relinquished the study of the law, which he had begun, and was attracted to Egyptology. He had no guide, but found an adviser in Jacob Grimm. Grimm told him he was beginning at the wrong end. His decipherment of hieroglyphics could only make him a dragoman, while he must be- come a scholar in the higher sense, a real and thorough one. “The first step is to lay the linguistic foundation.” He obeyed this counsel, studied, with Lepsius and Brugsch to oversee and advise him; and after he had studied, wrote his sketches and novels. In teaching this example of thorough prepara- tion the book, besides the pleasure it gives, furnishes a valuable lesson. Bump We.t: Tae Basis or Inprvipvat, Home, anp National Ecevation; THE Piain TRUTHS RELATING TO THE OBLIGA- TIONS OF MARRIAGE AND Parentage. By C. A. Greene, M.D. Boston: D. & Co. Pp. 233. THE rough self-regulation by which so- ciety protects itself against evil influences is seen in its treatment of books of this class. Written so often by charlatans from purely mercenary motives, and hence appealing to a widely prevalent craving for loose literature, it has happened that all books upon this theme done in a popular style are considered disreputable if not positively pernicious. This feeling keeps down their circulation and prevents a great deal of mischief that would arise from the perusal. But in creat- ing a feeling that prevents the proper study of these subjects in the family other grave evils are begotten for which the only remedy is a more discriminating public opinion. Cer- tainly there is no other form of knowledge that so vitally interests the individual or the nation as this relating to the obligations of marriage and parentage. It concerns the one function to which all others are subservient, which governs our actions in a greater degree than any other, which has the greatest power for happiness or misery over our lives, and which, above all, owing to the more or less unnatural posi- tion in which modern civilization places us, is not satisfactorily governed by our instincts LITERARY NOTICES. ‘some of the various diseases, both mental and 557 and desires. It seems very irrational that this central function about which all others are grouped should be a tabooed subject, not to be read about or even thought about till the individual has suffered oftentimes irrep- arably through his ignorance. This work, Build Well, has evidently been written with an earnest and devout de- sire to help the public in this greatly needed direction. And nobody can understand more truly the perishing need there is of such help than its author, who for more than thirty years has been in charge of a successful sanitarium for the treatment of the diseases of women. If profound learning, wide expe- rience, marvelous powers of intuition, and the tenderest sympathy with suffering are @ proper warrant for treating this subject, Dr. Greene can certainly claim her right to a hearing. It is a work that ought to be read and pondered over by every father and mother, and it will be the greatest help to any young person of either sex about to join fortunes with another for life. Itisa book that will do much toward correcting many false impressions regarding not only purely physiological questions, but also some social fallacies, more especially having to do with the marriage relation. In the first chapter, entitled Introductory Thoughts and Inquiries, the author asks the question, “ Are all the unfortunate results of heredity a ne- cessity?” and answers it strongly in the negative. Chapter II, headed Man, deals with the outward results on face and form of certain ways of living and habits of thought. Chapter III is given over to an embryological excursion, and sums up with the conclusion that “dual force is indispen- sable in eur world to the full conservation of all living things.” Chapter IV gives in de- taii the more important physiological facts relating to and governing the phenomenon of reproduction. In Chapter V the author treats of the same subjects, but more in their dual and emotional aspects. Chapter VI deals with the proper care of the mother during intrauterine life. Chapter VII is de- | voted to a discussion of the Proper Conduct of the Marital Relations. The remainder of the book—with the exception of two chap- ters, The Love of Manhood and The Love of Womanhood—consists of a consideration of

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558 physical, which may affect the reproductive function. The book is an extremely satis- factory one and calculated to do much good. Texr-Boox or Grotocy. By Sir ArcereaLp Geir, F.R.S. Third edition, revised and enlarged. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 1147. Price, $7.50. Tr is little enough to say of this text- book, by the most eminent of living geolo- gists, that it is a most able and authoritative work. Its scope and characteristics were set forth in the notice of its first edition, in the twenty-second volume of this magazine. The present edition has been entirely revised, and in some portions recast or rewritten, so as to bring it abreast of the continuous advance of geological science. The additions made to the text, which extend to every branch of the subject, increase the volume by about one hundred and fifty pages. The position of the author as Director-General of the Geo- logical Survey of Great Britain and Ireland has given him exceptional facilities for se- curing the utmost fullness and accuracy at- tainable in a geological treatise, and it is greatly to the credit of the British Govern- ment that it keeps such a man in such a place. Essays on Rourat Hyorenzr. By Grorce Vivian Poorz, M.D., F.R.C.P. Lon- don: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1893. Crown 8vo, pp. 330. Price, $2. Tue author states that eight of the thir- teen chapters of this work have been pre- viously published as lectures, addresses, or essays, but notwithstanding the desultory manner of their appearance there is a con- tinuity in the subject matter, and the book has none of the characteristics of a collec- tion of published papers. He tells us that the title Rural Hygiene was chosen because it is only in places hav- ing a rural or semi-rural character that it is possible to be guided by scientific princi- ples in our measures for the preservation of health and the prevention of disease. He considers that the hygienic arrangements in cities are the products of expediency rather than principle, and are not infrequently car- ried out in defiance of the teachings of pure science. He truly says that if the rural ele- ment be entirely banished from our towns, THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and if the fearful concentration of popula- tion that is seen in the modern city, both in England and America, be allowed to proceed unchecked, we are in a fair way to increase rather than decrease the liability of our towns to suffer from epidemics. He ex- presses the Utopian sentiment that before the nineteenth century closes people will be- gin to see the advantages not only of rural features in the city but also of urban fea- tures in the country. In the first and second chapters, on the concentration of population in cities, it is in- sisted that this is an indirect effect of our mod- ern sanitary methods, that give a fatal facility for the packing of houses in dangerous prox- imity to each other. It is shown that the re- tention of a rural element in rapidly develop- ing towns, by allowing open spaces to exist between houses, has great advantages on the score of health as well as on that of finance. Some of the shortcomings of modern sani- tary methods are dealt with in the third chap- ter; such as the mixing of putrescible matter with water, that leads to the dissemination of water-borne diseases, to the pollution of rivers, and the poisoning of wells. The fourth chapter, on the “ living earth,” shows that by virtue of the animal and vege- table organisms contained in humus it has the marvelous power not only of turning or- ganic matter into food for plants, but of pro- tecting the air and water from animal pollu- tions. The many evils associated with what are known as modern sanitary fittings are re- viewed in the fifth chapter, on the house. It is insisted upon that no house can be se- curely and permanently wholesome unless it have tolerably direct relations with cultiva- ble land. The sixth chapter discusses some of the elementary facts in regard to air as well as the relationship that exists between the earth and the air. The latter is freshened by vege- tation, and when the air in cities becomes too foul to allow vegetation to flourish a danger to health is in existence. The seventh chapter shows that, if we want pure water, a scientific and careful dis- posal of putrescible refuse is necessary; and the relations that exist between earth and water are discussed. In the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh

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LITERARY NOTICES. chapters the practical details of the various problems of domestic sanitation are discussed from the standpoint of personal experience. The author advocates, in the twelfth chap- ter, the advantages of inhumation over cre- mation, because the former is cheaper, sim- pler, and quicker, and it is productive, not destructive. The thirteenth chapter gives a brief bi- ography of Nicolas Thomas Bremontier, and describes his successful efforts in the recla- mation of the sand wastes of Gascony. There is a great deal of sound common sense in this volume, and the advice it gives can not but be of advantage to every house- holder. Tue MEANING AND THE Mernop or Lire. A Szarcn ror Rericion in Brotoer. By Gsorce M. Goutp, A. M., M.D. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893. Pp. 297. Price, $1.75. Ir would seem that the anagram that some schoolman of the middle ages made of Pontius Pilate’s question, Quid est veritas? (What is truth ?) the letters being ingeniously transposed into Est vir qui adest (It is the man who is before you), anticipated the fun- damental fact of Dr. Gould’s philosophy. For as in the life of Him that was tried by Pilate is to be found an explanation of life’s mean- ing and a suggestion of its method, so in all living matter does Dr. Gould find an evidence of the Deity. He says, “It is plain that a practically omnipresent, invisible, living, in- telligent force is operating in and through every living thing.” He does not consider that the inorganic world shows any hint of design or of divinity. In the word Biologos he would connate the purpose, wisdom, and intelligence instinct in every living thing, and his philosophy takes no heed of un- known power and possibility. This is a wide step beyond agnosticism, that the author considers an unmanly resignation and despair after a first defeat, and yet beyond monism that he says is muddleism, or pantheism that ignores the dead material, or materialism that ignores the living worker. Rather than an infinite there is a finite creative being, aiming at the highest, encouraging all that is good, and while combating the bad still often baffled because of the refractoriness of material laws. 559 The world may be considered as a letter direct from the Father’s own hand, advising us, telling us of himself, and urging us to hasten our return to him. During the long journey we read it over and over again, de- lighted at the kindness it witnesses, and the beautiful suggestions it gives of his thought- fulness and wisdom and lovableness. The author’s creed is that the extension and perfection of healthy life over the globe are the plainest aim and the most primary work of Biologos. Whatever aids in that is right and whatever opposes it is wrong. Many will not, can not accept Dr. Gould’s conclusions, but al! must be impressed by his earnestness that finds expression in such sen- timents: “ Dazzled and dazed the scientific mind is at present like the aphakic, suddenly brought to see, but not recognizing or know- ing what he sees. It still sees men as trees walking, and does not know that what it sees is at last the benignant and beckoning God himself.” A Dictionary or Braps, By Atrrep New- ToN, assisted by Hans Gapow. With Contributions from Ricnarp Lyp Caries §. Roy, and Roszrr W. Sav- recpt, M.D. Part I(A to Ga) and II Seg London: Adam Charles ; New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 304. Price, $2.60 each. Tus work is founded on a series of arti- cles contributed to the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, modified so as to make them more continuous so far as al- phabetical arrangement will admit, and sup- plemented by the intercalation of a much greater number. Of the additional articles the most important, chiefly anatomical, are furnished by Dr. Gadow. Dr. Shufeldt, of Washington, who is well known to our read- ers by his contributions to the Monthly, has also furnished valuable aid. In the choice of subjects for additional articles the author has aimed to supply information which he knows, from inquiries made of him, is greatly needed. Hence he has had regard to names found in books of travel and other works, which no dictionary will explain. But there are other names, compounded (mostly of late years) by writers on orni- thology, which have not come, and are not likely to come, into general use; and these are left out, for “these clumsy inventions

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560 are seldom found but in technical works, where their meaning, if they have one that is definite, ig at once made evident.” Hence many local names, except those which have found their way “into some sort of litera- ture,” are omitted. Yet, though arbitrary, the author has tried to make his method tend to utility. The longer articles consist chiefly of descriptions of birds, with notices of synonyms, and excellent papers on bird anatomy. A map of the world on Mercator’s projection shows the bird regions and their boundaries. A Porutar History oF ASTRONOMY IN THE Nuinereenta Century. By Acnes M. Cuarx. Third edition. New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp; 573. Tue revision called for by the great num- ber and importance of the astronomical dis- coveries that have been made since the last previous edition of this book was published has been made with great care and pains, and with the aim, not only of furnishing the new information, but also of so completely incorporating it with the pre-existing text as to leave no gaps in the narrative suggesting interpolations. The book has thus grown and been brought down to date “by a pro- cess of assimilation rather than of mere ac- cretion.” The foot-note references have been multiplied; the index has been made more copious; the chronological table has been considerably extended ; and several new tables of data have been appended. Tue Ore Derostrs or rae Unirep Srares. By James F. Kewp. New York: The Scientific Publishing Company. Pp. 302. Price, $4. Tue claim is made for this book that it fills a vacancy in our scientific literature, for no complete review of the ore deposits in our country has appeared since the publication of Whitney’s Metallic Wealth in the United States in 1854. Yet within the last forty years enormous developments have been made in new mining districts, the relative importance of different regions has changed, and great advances have been made in our theoretical knowledge regarding the origin and formation of ore beds. The present work has been conceived with such consid- erations as these in view. A twofold pur- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. pose is to supply a condensed account of the metalliferous resources of the country which shall be readable and serviceable as a text- book and book of reference; and to treat the subject in such a way as to stimulate investigation and study of the phenomena, The ore deposits are taken according to the metals they yield. The treatment is geo- logical, and the principles of origin have been made prominent. To the descriptions of others the author adds observations made by himself in travel during the last ten years. Camp Frees or a Naturauist. By Ciarences C. Epworps. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 304. Price, $1.50. Pror. Lewis Linpsay Dycue, of the University of Kansas, enjoyed in his boyhood and youth the life of a pioneer on the plains. He lived in close communion with Nature, among the animals and plants, and grew up a naturalist. He acquired a school and col- lege education largely by means of his own efforts, was graduated from the university at the head of his class, and became an as- sistant and afterward professor of anatomy and physiology there, of zodlogy and animal histology, curator of the natural history mu- seum, and director of the taxidermical work. In the museum stands, according to Mr. Ed- words, the finest collection of mounted ani- mals in the world—his creation. This book is devoted to the relation of the story of the incidents and adventures of his fourteen ex- peditions after North American mammals. It is taken from his note-books and diaries, with nothing added to the facts he has re- corded. The adventures are not of a thrill- ing kind, but present the life of the woods as it actually is, in a dramatic form, with sketches of scenery and the life of the hunt- ing camp, and information about the charac- ter and habits of the animals hunted. Socialism AND THE American Spier. By Nicnotas Paine Gitman. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 876. Price, $1.50. Tue development of socialism in the United States is thoroughly discussed in the thirteen chapters of this volume. Whether the American spirit conforms to Mr. Gilman’s outlines is a doubtful matter. He may de-

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LITERARY NOTICES. pict a stage of its existence. There are other times when it does not fly, but crawls, or else is wrapped in a web of indifference. The preface contains the lesson of the book —the way to Utopia is for all of us over the difficult road of moral improvement. According to strict definition, pure indi- vidualism separates man from his kind, calls government an evil, and tends toward anar- chy, while socialism makes man dependent, exalts government, and ends in communism. Either alone is impracticable as a method of life. The wise man therefore uses both as he employs his two eyes or hands, In the domain of politics and property, the indi- vidualist seeks liberty, private capital, own- ership, and competition; the socialist de- mands authority, common possessions, and collective capital. The thorough American is an opportunist, wary of extremes, caring little for theory, and adopting only what is successful in practice. The tendency of the time, however, is in all countries distinctively socialistic. Mr. Gilman deprecates the pseudo-scien- tific method in treating politics, economics, and ethics. The right order of things has been strangely mistaken by scientists— more properly sciolists. The knowledge of man is of more importance than the most astonishing development of natural science. Pure individualism, he conceives, is best illus- trated by the struggles of brute man in pre- historic ages. We have, or ought to have, outgrown this struggle-for-existence ethics. It is a blunder in thought to introduce the evolution philosophy in place of the higher law for man. The social problem, largely due to unre- stricted immigration, belongs to the city. The labor question does not trouble the farm- er, and it must be remembered that three fourths of the population still dwell outside the large cities. A difference is noted be- tween English and American individualism. Twenty-five years ago liberal Americans avowed Mr. Spencer’s political creed. No longer do they belong to the Suspenceru- maru-homi—the sect that swallowed Spencer whole! Government is not a monstrosity, but the organ which expresses the intelli- gence and will of a reflecting community, Elsewhere the author states that to take any- thing out of politics in civilized countries VOL, XLIV.—43 561 means to take it out of corruption into hon- esty ! Among socialistic measures the Ameri- can accepts free schools, free libraries, and free text-books as benefits, while he rejects the state publication of books as a failure. Nationalism, or romantic socialism, flour- ishes chiefly on paper. It was doomed to failure since it ignored the separate common- wealths. Christian socialism aims to accom- plish by religious influence what socialism, attempts in the reconstruction of society. Without violent reforms the industrial situation may be much improved by means of boards of arbitration, building associations, life insurance, and a better form of labor contract. There are now over three hun- dred business firms that practice some form of profit sharing. We may expect the functions of the state to be enlarged, but purification of existing method should pre- cede this extension. As a way of escape from present evils, the author directs us to a higher individualism, properly Christian. This favors voluntary co-operation, and aims at fraternalism. Mr. Joseph John Murphy is the author of a book entitled The Scientific Bases of Faith, published twenty years ago, the purpose of which was to show that the new ideas of the nature and origin of things, including the en- tire doctrine of evolution, constitute a better basis for Theistic and Christian faith than the old. Since the book was published much has been thought, said, and written on the subjects of which it treats; and a second book, Natural Selection and Spiritual Free- dom, is now presented by the author to set forth his newer thoughts on the same class of subjects. In it Prof. Drummond’s Natu- ral Law in the Spiritual World receives promi- nent attention, and Mr. Murphy has to “re- mark with wonder over the vast change that must have come over the religious mind of the English-speaking people before Prof. Drummond’s work could have been received as an orthodox book,” which, we may say by the way, it is not, because “ there is not one of Drummond’s characteristic passages which might not have been written by a denier of the characteristic doctrines of apostolic and Nicene Christianity.” Drum- mond’s doctrine of conversion i8 first ex-

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562 amined; then the Darwinian doctrine of progress by natural selection among sponta- neous variations is shown to be a case of “natural law,” which is true also of the “spiritual world.” The question of the fate of those rejected in God’s selective judg- ment and the subject of freedom are next considered ; and the final chapter contains an argument against both gnosticism and agnosticism, and in favor of “ religious com- mon sense.” (Macmillan & Co. Price, $1.75.) Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer believes that landscape gardening is a real art, and in Art Out of Doors asks that it be recognized as on a par with architecture, sculpture, and painting. “The mere statement of its pur- poses,” she says, “should show that it is truly an art. The effort to produce organic beaty is what makes a man an artist”; and this is done by the man who uses ground and plants, roads and paths, and water and acces- sory buildings, with an eye to organic beauty of effect. Then, having shown what are or should be the aims and methods of landscape gardening, she goes on to describe its particu- lar features and accessories—the home ground and “close to the house,” roads and paths, piazzas, formal flower beds and formal gar- dening when they are in place, architecture, outdoor monuments, and trees. In the chap- ter entitled “A Word for the Axe” she ad- vocates the removal of trees that interfere with the artistic plan, no matter how dear they may be to the individual owner. Other chapters deal with cemeteries, the love of Nature, books as an aid to the love of Nature, and the artist. (New York: Charles Scrib- ner’s Sons. Price, $1.50.) The Niagara Book is designed to rem- edy what its projectors regard as a lack of a good souvenir of Niagara Falls. They have tried, “ by securing the co-operation of the most prominent literary men in Amer- ica, to supply sucha need. By following an idea of their own they have persuaded repre- sentative men in their lines to write for the book original stories, sketches, and essays— descriptive, humorous, historical, and scien tific—dealing directly with Niagara Falls.” The articles are of unequal merit. They are: Niagara, First and Last, by W. D. Howells ; What to See, by Frederick Almy ; The Geology of Niagara Falls, by Prof. N. 8. Shaler; The First Authentic Mention of THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Niagara Falls, by Mark Twain; Famous Vis- itors at Niagara Falls, by Thomas R. Slicer ; Historic Niagara, by Peter A. Porter; The Flora and Fauna of Niagara Falls, by David F. Day ; As it Rushes by, by Edward 8. Mar- tin; The Utilization of Niagara’s Power, by Coleman Sellers ; and The Hydraulic Canal. These are illustrated by photo-copies from water colors and drawings by Harry Fenn. (Underhill & Nichol, Buffalo. Price, $1.50.) The Revolt of the Brutes (C. T. Dilling- ham, 50 cents) is unique among the books of the year. It describes a convention consist- ing of an “upper house” of air-breathers, which is supposed to meet on the shore of Lake Michigan, and a “lower house” of water-dwellers assembling in the lake itself. After a lively debate, in which the wrongs done by man to the brutes are set forth, the extermination of the human race is resolved upon, and means are chosen for putting this purpose in execution. The proceedings of the convention are humorously recounted and the officers of both “ housés” are de- scribed in the same vein. Throughout the text is kept up a running fire of allusions and witticisms, and one must be widely read to appreciate them all. The author is Mr. Hyland C. Kirk, who has published Heavy Guns and Light, The Possibility of not Dying, etc. A word must be said for his illustra- tions, which are many and display great in- genuity in the posing of the creatures repre- sented, The merits of William Swinton’s School History of the United States are too well known to need elaboration at this day. It was prepared to meet the views of teachers who are aiming at definite results in the study. A revised and readjusted edition of the book is now offered by the American Book Company, in which are added an intro- ductory chapter on Prehistoric America, and a chapter giving some account of the settle- ment of the three colonial centers—Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Price, 90 cents. The American Book Company publishes, as additional volumes in 11s series of English classics for schools, Matthew Arnold’s poem, Sohrab and Rustum, and Ralph Waldo Hm- erson’s essays on The American Scholar. To the former volume are prefixed an ac- count of the life and the critical and educa-

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LITERARY NOTICES, tional work of Mr. Arnold and an outline of the story on which the poem is founded; and to the latter, a sketch of Mr. Emerson’s life and an inquiry into his religious belief, which is deemed necessary for a proper un- derstanding of his writings. (Price, 20 cents each). Mr. Z. A. Kirkpatrick, of the State Nor- mal School, Winona, Minn., has prepared, primarily for use in his own classes, a man- ual of Inductive Psychology, or introduction to the study of mental phenomena, in which a kind of experimental method is applied. The pupil, instead of taking what the author tells him about imaginary mental processes, is expected to analyze and observe the actual processes of his own mind and those of others, whereby he may be led to observe, yudge, and think for himself. (Published by the author.) The Zzercises in Greek Prose Composi- tion, based on Xenophon’s Anabasis, of Wil- liam R. Harper and Clarence F. Castle," originated in the belief that Greek prose composition is not an end to be sought for its own sake, but a means for learning the principles of the Greek language, that they may become the key to unlock its litera- ture. The method adopted is believed to be one that will stimulate observation and in- vestigation, and so become an inductive pro- cess, The text book matter is preceded by some helpful suggestions about composition, and followed by a series of inductive studies in the uses of the Greek modes. (American Book Company. Price, 75 cents.) The Principles of Fitting—engine fit- ting it is usually called, but the author ob- jects to that designation as being too special —by a foreman pattern maker, is a manual designed for apprentices and students in technical schools. The author has directed his attention to those cardinal matters which lie at the basis of the trade, in preference to entering into a multitude of details that would be applicable only to the practice of a limited class of shops. He has also assumed that his readers are thrown upon their own resources without the aid of the automatic machines of modern shops, and has devoted considerable space to vise work. (Macmillan & Co. Price, $1.50.) The main purpose of the Duchess of Cleveland’s relation of The True Story of 563 Kaspar Hauser from Official Documents ap- pears to be the vindication of her father, the Earl of Stanhope, who had the care of the mysterious personage during the latter part of his career, against the aspérsions which have been cast upon his motives and conduct by certain writers who have assumed to tell the story. The author’s version is told in a terse and vigorous style, with pun- gent criticism and comment. She regards Kaspar Hauser as simply an impostor and liar, whose whole life and conduct were a de- ception, and who fabricated the attacks that were made upon him, including the one from which he died, the fatality of which was due to some awkwardness or blunder of his own. She rejects the idea of his having been a person of any importance. (Macmillan. Price, $1.50.) In Castorologia, or the History and Tra- ditions of the Canadian Beaver, Mr. Horace T. Martin has presented a popular mono- graph on that subject, in which he has en- deavored to separate the tradition from the history, while giving each its due present- ment. His book includes chapters on the mythology and folklore respecting the ani- mal, Indian legends of giant beavers, and the mammoth beavers of geology ; the European beavers ; the more important American ro- dents; the life history of the Canadian beaver, its geographical distribution, its en- gineering accomplishments, the economical uses that are made of it, the chemico-medi- cal properties of castoreum, the importance of the animal in trade and commerce, the uses made of it in manufactures, the hunt- ing of it, Experiments in Domestication, its anatomy and osteology, and the Beaver ip Heraldry—all handsomely illustrated. (Mont- real, William Drysdale & Co.) Mr. D. W. Taylor's book, largely mathe- matical, on the Resistance of Ships and Screw Propulsion originated in the author’s own sense of the need of a treatise on the subject, containing data, formulas, and tables. Much of the material has been de- rived, necessarily, from papers read by the late William Froude, and R. E. Froude, his son, before the Institution of Naval Archi- tects; and much of it is original. The au- thor has intended to discuss ships as they are, not floating bodies in general; and to set forth methods and deduce results as sim-

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564 ple as the nature of the subject will allow, and sufficiently accurate for every-day use. (Macmillan & Co. Price, $3.75.) Helen Gilbert Ecob makes a plea for rational dress in The Well-dressed Woman, which she designates as a study in the practi- cal application to dress of the laws of Health, Art, and Morals. The study is made in the light of scientific investigations of the injuri- ous effect of certain features of modern dress upon the vital organs. Of these features the tight corset is the worst and most formidable ; and several chapters are devoted to the ex- hibition of the ills it causes on the breathing, the liver, heart, circulation of the blood, stomach, and pelvic organs; while the feet and the proper fitting of the shoes are not forgotten. Physical culture is commended as authorized by the laws of our being, and as teaching muscular economy as well as muscular development ; and “ one great step toward physical restoration will be taken when women adopt a style of dress which allows diaphragmatic breathing and muscu- lar freedom.” But “ the failure of reform- ers who have appealed only to the conscience of women shows that correct dress will be adopted only when it is made beautiful.” The latter part of the book is therefore de- voted to showing how this may be done. (Fowler and Wells Company, New York. Price, $1.) The Bureau of Education has issued a Circular of Information on Shorthand Jn- struction and Practice, by Julius Ensign Rock- well, which is in part a revision of a similar circular issued in 1884, but with some new matter. One important addition is a digest of legal decisions in regard to shorthand writers.. The statistics of the new volume are for the scholastic year ending June 30, 1890, We can not see why any part of the taxes paid by the people of the United States should have been used for publishing this book. In justification of the outlay it is stated in the letter submitting the publica- tion to the Secretary of the Interior that of the earlier circular “an edition of twenty thousand was soon distributed, and was fol- lowed by another of equal size, which was exhausted in a few years, and for the past three years I may say that there have been more frequent calls for this circular than for any other published by the Bureau of Edu- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. cation.” Now the people, represented by the Government, are supposed to publish only such useful books as have no money in them for private enterprise. But a book of which over forty thousand gratis copies are called for would doubtless sell to half that number ata price covering cost, royalty to the author, and a fair profit to the publish- er. The persons to whom the book has value would pay for the copies, and those who have no interest in it would not be forced to contribute to the cost of producing it. Inno case should a second or a revised edition of an inexpensive book for which there is a large demand be published by the Government. Part XXIV of the Proceedings of the So- ciety for Psychical Research (Paul, 3s. 6d.) contains three papers. Mr. F. W. H. Myers furnishes two chapters in continuation of his series on The Subliminal Consciousness, the first of which describes phenomena that ‘seem to indicate the existence of a double personality, and the second brings together a considerable number of cases of thought- transference, under the head of Motor Au- tomatism. The defense which the theoso- phists have made against the adverse verdict of the society upon their operations and claims is reviewed by Dr. Richard Hodgson. There is also a joint paper by A. T. Myers, M. D., and F. W. H. Myers on Mind Cure, Faith Cure, and the Miracles of Lourdes. Their provisional judgment on this class of cures is that no evidence of their being mi- raculous has been furnished, but that they produce, “by obscure but natural agencies, effects to which no definite limit can as yet be assigned.” Dr. Hodgson, 5 Boylston Place, Boston, is the agent of the society in America. Professors James Harkness and Frank Mor- ley have published a Treatise on the Theory of Functions (Macmillan). The earlier chapters are made complete in themselves by includ- ing indispensable theories which are given by some, but not all, recent writers on algebra, trigonometry, the calculus, etc. The authors have aimed at a full presentation of the standard parts of the subject, with certain exceptions. Thus the theory of real func- tions of a real variable is given only so far as they deem necessary as a basis for what fol- lows, In the account of Abelian integrals

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their object has been to lead the student as simply and rapidly as possible into what is itself a suitable theme for more than one large volume. The automorphic functions have been entirely passed over, since it was not possible to give even an introductory sketch within the space available. However, an account of some of Kronecker’s work, which is necessary for the study of Klein’s recent developments of the theory of Abelian functions, is included, and one chapter is de- voted to a treatment of double theta-func- tions, which goes further than the immediate purpose of the authors, for the reason that the subject is not very accessible in English. A glossary is added which gives the prin- cipal technical terms employed by German and French writers, with the adopted equiva- lents. There are also an index and a table of references. The second volume of the Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity, by A. £. H. Love (Macmillan, $3), has now been issued, the first volume having appeared a year ago. Volume II opens with a Historical Introduction, tracing the work of the twe Bernouillis, Lagrange, Saint-Venant, Poisson, Kirchhoff, Thomson and Tait, Boussinesq, Clebsch, Rayleigh, and others. In the eleven chapters forming the body of the volume the author treats first the elasticity of thin rods, passes from this to thin plates and shells, and concludes with a chapter on the stability of elastic systems. There is an in- dex to the present volume, and forty dia- grams are employed in the text.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. Milicete Indian _— His- am. a7 n= Society, New York. Pp. 41 Andrews’, Captain, Cru Oruiae in the Be "New York: Enoch Morgan's Sons rine Apes Austin C. veaaxtianaemeielat Northern United States. Trenton, N.J. Pp. 68. Arthur, J. C. —< Factor in the Improve- ment of Crops. Pp. 8. hmead, William H. Monograph of & North American Proctotrypedz. Was — States National Museum. Pp. 472, Bailey, Vernon The Pusite Guesnt Glee or agg gh — the Mississippi aw ash- ington: U. tates Department of Agriculture. Pp. 69, wi th Maps. Barber, Edwin At Lee. The Pottery and Por- celain of the United States. New York: G. P. vpn oe Pp. 446. “ Guide for a ‘Twenty Weeks’ Course ae ——— w Heath & Co. Pp. 168. 40 LITERARY NOTICES.

565 Bernhard, Marie. For My Own Sake. New York: The International News Company. Pp. 258. 50 cents. Bollman, Charles Harve eee st North America. Washington: United States Na- tional Museum. Pp. 21 Branner, John C., il Geologist. and other 'Limestones ‘kansas. T. C. —e Pp. 443, with Volume of Brinton, Daniel G. The Native ny gl of Central America and New Mexico. Pp. 59. Balti- Brooks, W. K. The Genus Sal more: The Johns Hopkins Press. Pp. 371, with a Volume of Plates. Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Mummy: Cha oo Kagpien Fees somes . New Macmili n & Co. Pp. 404. Carus, Paul. Primer of Open Court Publishing Company, Pe, 9 232. poe * Gordon, Columbia, 8. C. Posute. » Senge Henry. Genera Pp. 331. $1.50. a a Crooker, Joseph Henry. The New Bible and its Uses. Boston: George H. Ellis. Pp. 286. Dal), William Healey. Land Shells of the Ge- nus Bulimulus in Lower California. } dey — States National Museum. Pp. 12, wi nce en Ist Are vania University. Pittsburg. Pp. 22. — win, M. D.. Cambridge, Mase logical ¥ ork: J. Walter. A-Wa/-to-bi. An Archmo- of a Tuscayan Legend. Pp. Flint, Weston. Statistics of Public Libraries eS Washington : sano ‘lone Ah veal of Phosioh Volume 2 aac The NW Nets and Scope of the M Haw’ C. C., and Wallis, F. its Theory, ufacture. ‘New York: Macmillan & Co. . 520. 10s. 6d. Angelo, Editor. Around the heey: ber, 1893. ew York and Pale Pp. 20. ” 15 cents. $1.50 a year. vol Sorat" fst Man. Palo Alto, Cal. 8., Secretary. Twenty-sixth Anema} Rapert of the How York Ste Duastat Charities. Huxley, T. H. Darwiniana. New York: D. 18 | appleton & Co. Pp. 475. $1.75.

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566 Leffmann, Hi and Beam, William. Analy- sis of Milk and Milk Products. Philadelphia: P. Biakiston, Son, & Co. Pp. 92. $1. Lord, John. Two German Giants—Frederick the Great and Bismarck. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert. Pp. 173. $1. Macfarlane, Alexander, University of Texas. On Rainmaking. Pp. 10. Mayer, I.H., M.D. Domestic Economy. Lan- Pa. Pp. 288. Mendenhall, T. C., Capetntentent, Funda- nae Standards of id Mass. Washing- — States C ond Geodetic Survey. j, Philadelphia Record Almanac for 18D Pp. sick E. C., Director of Astronomical Ob- Harvard College. Miscellaneous Re- a ont, oe Years 1883-1893. Pp. 227.— Com) of ions of Certain Stars, 1870 to 1884. By W. A. Rogers. 381.—Account of the 0) . Pp. 4.—Investigations of the War be Wr Sei cot Brow PP. bservations made at the e Hil Me Meteors terological Observatory in 1892 un- der the Lawrence Rotch. Pp. 138. é wpe Contents. Beiogre rf of States Burean of Plummer, Fred. G. Dlustrated Guide-book to Mount Tacoma. Tacoma, Wash. Pp. 10, with Pope Manufacturing Com Columbia Desk Calendar for 1894. Powell, J. W., Director. Ninth Annual Re of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1887-’88. Washing- : Government Printing Office. Pp. 617. y 3 Mass. Pp. 365 gp toren W.P. The } oy Use of Com- — Air. New York. Pp. 7. E. D. Results of Observations for the Variations’ of Latitude at Waikiki, Hawaiian Is- United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. Pp. 20 20. Putnam, Haven. Authors and their Public in Ancient New York: G. P. Put- nam’s Sons. Pp. 309. . Pyle, J. 8. Canton, Ohio. A Plea fora pratng Capital Criminals to the Experimental Pets, Bie 8. a of oh land Kitchen—and Leafi ‘Boxto ata — Cuan. shes few and how to First and Second Series. Boston: D. heath & Oo. Pp. 202 and 212. 90 cents each. Ridgway, Robert. A ppoviaen, of Go Gomme Formicarius Boddaert. 20.—Description of some a et n Islands near Mada- Pp. 9.—Remarks on the Fe Genus us. Pp. 4. Washington: nited States "aon ye and t Myriapoda ot th ee United ar fines Bene: e pse dition of Rotch, J. Lawrence. The Meteorological Sta- tions on Mont Blanc. 4.—The Hi Me- teorological Station ‘in the World, Pp. 6, both Savage, M.J. Jesus and Modern Life. ton: George H. Ellis. Pp. 229. $1. naa gt og The — American Book Pp. 586. 60 cents Bos- Sh R. W., M.D. Mechanics of the Up- per soins ¢ Scolopacidee. Pp. 3. Smock, John N.J. Annual Re- port of he Sate Gedlogieto ‘ew Jersey for 1892. Stevenson, John J. of the Pennsylva- nia Anthracite. » &: Geologiesl Se. ciety of America, Pp. 70."

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY.

Sim Charles T. Fossil Unios and Fresh- water Shells from the Drift at Toronto, Can. apa United States National Museum. True, aay ae O Ww. i ~ ys Mammals from Tana River, East 4.—Description of a3 New 8 ies of fruit} Bat Aldabra Island. ashington: United States N: ational ‘Ma Mu- 1 Underwood, B. F. New Occasions. Monthly. Chicago: C. H. Kerr & Co. Pp. 538. I0 cents; $1 a year. Van der Heyden, W Building 2 of a ‘newly M. D., Yokohama, Ja- devised Sanitary Weed, Clarence M. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Harvest 8 at of Ohio. vanes United States Nat Museum. Pp. 24 West, James H. Uplifts of Heart and will Boston: George H. Ellis. 50 cents Wheatley, William A. The German Declen- sions Simplified and Symbolized. Syracuse, N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 58. 25 cents. Wilder om ey Quarter-cen Po By some of Dis Former Btechente. ithaca, N. Y.: Comstock Publishing Company. Pp. 494 with Plates. $5. Woolcomber, W. G. Practical Wot & ae New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 6

POPULAR MISCELLANY. Pestalezzianism in America.—<An article under this title, by Mr. George W. Boutwell, in The Popular Science Monthly of Novem- ber, 1893, undertakes to correct in one im- portant point my article on the Oswego Nor- mal School, in The Popular Science Monthly of the preceding May. I fully agree with Mr. Boutwell that Pestalozzian principles were known and discussed in this country long before the Oswego movement. This was implied in my article, if not distinctly stated. I did not state where, when, and by whom they were introduced, not because of a desire to detract from the honor due to Pestalozzian pioneers in Massachusetts or elsewhere in America, but because these matters were not directly within the scope of my article, and limitations of space did not permit excursions from the subject. It is claimed for Dr. Sheldon and his associates that they were the first to systematically ap- ply Pestalozzian methods to a system of pub- lic schools in all its grades, and the first to give to teachers systematic training in these methods. This claim will, I believe, bear investigation, and will keep in honorable remembrance the work done at Oswego.— Wittiam M, Aper. Prehistoric Trepanning.—A considerable number of examples of trepanning and of in-

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. = + 4 £ * ¥ ba b | my, ie ie P 3 struments used in the operation have been re- covered from the prehistoric remains in differ- ent countries, the chronological dates of which range from the earliest neolithic age to his- toric times. Hippocrates was not a stranger to these processes, but performed them in cases of accidents to the skull, and even of headache. The Montenegrins submit to the operation ; and it has been suggested as prob- able that in both instances the procedure is simply a custom surviving from primeval ages. A paper reviewing this subject, by Dr. Robert Munro, records a strange blend- ing of medicine and theology in the earlier periods of this treatment, for he shows that during the neolithic period the operation was performed on children afflicted with cer- tain internal maladies, and that the skulls of those who survived the treatment were considered possessed of special mystical qual- ities. When such persons died, fragments were often cut from their skulls and used as amulets; and pieces cut from the margin of the cicatrized opening were preferred. The process in prehistoric times was practiced chiefly on children, partly, probably, because it could be more easily accomplished upon them, and possibly, also, as an early precau- tion against certain supernatural and demo- niac evils. The Chaldean magic, according to Lenormant, mentioned “the wicked de- mon which seizes the body, which disturbs the body,” and taught that “the disease of the forehead proceeds from the infernal re- gions; it is come from the dwelling of the lord of the abyss.” We have a right to sup- pose, in view of these evidences, as Broca has suggested, that many of the convulsions peculiar to children were regarded as the re- sult of demoniacal possession. it would be natural, then, to try to assist the escape of the imprisoned spirit by boring a hole in the skull by which it was confined. The belief in the medicinal efficacy of cranial bones per- sisted till the beginning of the last century; and such bones have been worn in recent years by aged Italians as charms against epi- lepsy and other nervous diseases. When once the dogma was promulgated that sanc- tity and a perforated skull were correlated, fond relatives might bore the heads of the departed to facilitate the exodus of any ma- lignant influence stili lingering within, and to insure them, by the venerated aperture, POPULAR MISCELLANY, 567 a satisfactory position in their new existence, For similar reasons the bone was buried with the deceased, and sometimes it was even placed within his skull, Dr. Munro, while accepting Broca’s view and amplifying upon it, suggests further that the post-mor- tem trepanning may have been such a pious endeavor to carry sacramental benefit beyond the grave as induced the early Christians to be baptized for the dead, and that it points to a belief in the supernatural and in the ex- istence of a future state. Prof. Huxley and the late Sir Andrew Clark.—Prof. Huxley has furnished the Lon- don Lancet with the following reminiscence of his first meeting and subsequent acquaint- ance with Sir Andrew Clark, the eminent English physician, who has recently died: “I was appointed assistant surgeon to H, M. 8. Victory at Portsmouth in March, 1846, and was, in the ordinary course, detailed for duty at Haslar Hospital until such time as the Admiralty might be pleased to order me to join a seagoing ship. Some time after—I think two or three months—a young Scotch- man joined our mess. He was very slender, of somewhat stooping carriage, and with that florid delicacy of complexion which common- ly marks the poitrinaire. Most of us were tolerably vigorous young men, and we thought that our new colleague, Andrew Clark, had a good deal less prospect of standing the life that was probably in store for him than we had. In fact, he looked just the sort of man to die of consumption before the age of thirty-five. Now it so happened that three out of the small company of assistant sur- geons at Haslar during the five months of my residence—Alexander Armstrong, John Watt Reid, and myself— were destined to prove our competency to go through a fair share of hard work, official and other; and it would have very much surprised us to hear that Clark was not only to work harder, but to go on working for years after we had been put upon our respective shelves as retired veterans. I doubt if a good deal more wis- dom and experience than any of us possessed would have divined in our very quiet, and even retiring, young messmate the prodigious — store of mental and physical energy upon which he was able to draw in later life; and I venture to be certain that, of all careers

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568 imaginable, that of the most fashionable physician in London is the last that any one, however sagacious, would have predicted. for him. I went my way to the other side of the world, for four years, in the fall of 1846, and, after my return to England, the kindly fates determined I should no longer be exposed to the risk of committing homicide as a griev- ously incompetent member of the noblest of professions. So my former messmate and I drifted far away from one another on our several courses, and only indirect accounts of him reached me from time to time. I heard that destiny had withdrawn him from the service, no doubt for reasons directly oppo- site to those which led to my removal; then, that he was practicing in some far-off region of London, eastward of the fashionable Eden; then, as it seemed quite suddenly, I learned that he was a hospital physician of great repute and rapidly increasing practice, residing in the very omphalos of Aisculapia —Cavendish Square. We met row and again, as busy men in London do; but I sup- pose our renewed acquaintance would have stopped there, had I not fallen ill in 1871 of what it was then the fashion to call over- work. I was desired to rest, go to Egypt, and do all sorts of other things ; which I did, but with no other result than that of gradu- ally descending into lower and lower circles of the inferno of hypochondriacal dyspep- sia. After a year or more of this increasing wretchedness, a friend fairly worried me into consulting the doctor who was all the fash- ion, and who, I confess, seemed nowise the better in my eyes for being so. It is difficult for me to speak in moderate language of the time and pains which one of the hardest- pressed of physicians devoted to my case; of his thoughtful and self-sacrificing care not only of me, but of several members of my family ; of the scientific sagacity of his diag- nosis; or of the firmness with which he in- sisted on somewhat ascetic remedial meas- ures which, in the opinion of not a few of my friends, tended to speedy euthanasia. Suffice it to say that I was practically well in three months, and remained in a very good state of repair for a dozen years. From that time onward we were fast friends, none the less for heartily disagreeing about a good many fundamental questions. Thoughtless people blame Sir Andrew Clark for not leav- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ing off work when he had reached wealth, fame, and the official headship of his profes- sion. But though he may have liked these rewards as well as another, my friend did not live for them. His work was his life, and no true friend would have desired for him, of all men, a prolongation of that shadow-life of enforced rest, in which there is no repose.” Action of Light on Dyes.—The report of the British Association’s committee on the action of light on dyed colors refers chiefly to coloring matters belonging to groups of dyes known as eosins, rosanilines, indulines, and azo colors, producing various shades of red. The results show that relative fastness: or permanence of the colors when exposed to light is practically the same on silk as on wool. The most fugitive red dyes are those of the eosin group and their allies, while the most permanent, with very few exceptions, belong to the group of azo colors. One very important result is that the rate of fading of a dye depends mainly on its chemical consti- tution, and does not depend upon whether it is an artificial or a natural product. It fol- lows that, contrary to the common belief, artificial coloring matters are made that are quite as permanent when exposed to light as the colors obtained directly from vegetable products. Guesses and Proef.—Dr. Pye-Smith, in the course of the last Harveian oration, de- livered in London in October, said: “ As Paley justly puts it, ‘He only discovers who proves.’ To hit upon the true conjecture here and there amid a crowd of untrue guesses, and leave it again without apprecia- tion of its importance, is as a sign, not of in- telligence, but of frivolity. We are told that of the seven wise men of Greece one—I be- lieve it was Thales—taught that the sun did not go around the earth, but the earth around the sun, and hence it has been said that Thales anticipated Copernicus—a fla- grant example of the fallacy in question. A crowd of idle philosophers, who sat through the long summer days and nights of Attica discussing all things in heaven and earth, must sometimes have hit upon a true opin- ion, if only by accident; but Thales, or who- ever broached the heliocentric dogma, had

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POPULAR MISCELLANY. no reason for his belief, and showed himself not more but less reasonable than his com- panions. The crude theories and gross ab- surdities of phrenology are not in the least justified or excused by the present knowl- edge of cerebral localization; nor do the baseless speculations of Lamarck or Erasmus Darwin entitle them to be regarded as the forerunners of Erasmus Darwin’s illustrious grandson. Up to 1859 impartial and com- petent men were bound to disbelieve in evo- lution ; after that date, or at least so soon as the facts and arguments of Darwin and Wallace had been published, they were equally bound to believe in it. He discovers who proves, and by this test Harvey is the sole and absolute discoverer of the move- ments of the heart and of the blood.” Habits of Seorpions.—<A study is con- tributed to Nature by Mr. R. J. Pocock, of the habits of living scorpions. They were made upon the two species Parabuthus capen- sis and Huscorpius carpathicus. The speci- mens were evidently nocturnal, spending the daytime huddled together in the corners of their box, or under pieces of wood, and wan- dering about at night. “It was easy, how- ever, at any time during the day to rouse them from their sluggishness by applying a little artificial warmth to the box.” If the warmth was very moderate, they would seek it and bask in it; but as it increased, even while the author could bear it for several minutes without inconvenience upon his hand, “they were at once in a state of con- sternation.” While walking, both species carried their pincers well in advance of the head, where they served as feelers. Zw- scorpius dragged its tail along the ground; Parabuthus carried his, curled in a vertical plane, over the hinder part of the back. All scorpions appear to be carnivorous, and to live principally on insects or other articu- lated animals, but the species differ con- siderably in their choice of food from the variety offered them. “As soon as a cock- roach is seized the use of the scorpion’s tail is seen; for this organ is brought rap- idly over the latter’s back, and the pcint of the sting is thrust into the insect. The poi- son instilled into the wound thus made, al- though not causing immediate death, has a paralyzing effect upon the muscles, and

569 quickly deprives the insect of struggling powers, and consequently of all chance of escape. If the insect, however, is a small one—one, in fact, that can be easily held in the pincers, and eaten without trouble while alive—a scorpion does not always waste poi- son upon it.” The only one of the higher senses that seems to be highly developed is that of touch. M. L. Becker says that that sense and hearing are excessively developed, but Mr. Pocock finds no evidence of audi- tory organs, and the sight very poor. The external organs of touch are the hairs that thickly or sparingly cover various parts of the body; and the pectine or ventral combs appear to play an important part in this office. The stinging by a scorpion is not a random thrust, delivered indiscriminately at any part of a captured insect. The scorpion “ generally feels carefully for a soft spot, and then with an air of great deliberation delicately inserts its sting into it. There can be little doubt that this care is taken that there may be no risk of damaging the point of the sting against a substance too hard for it. . . . The same care of the sting is shown in the carriage of the tail, this organ being curled in such a way that the point can not come in contact with any for- eign bodies. Even when turned with a piece of stick, or irritated by being crawled upon by a cockroach, a scorpion is not often suffi- ciently provoked to use its sting. The tail is certainly used to knock aside the instru- ment or sweep off the insect, but the sides or lower surface of the organ are employed, the vesicle being carefully tucked down.” The author did not find his scorpions so pug- nacious as they are generally said to be, and he doubts if they ever deliberately commit suicide, though they may do so accidentally, or in desperation. The Blue Mountains ef Jamaieca.—The

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57° From its highest point, 7,500 feet above the sea, it throws out branches north and south, which now open into alluvial plain, now descend sheer into the girdle of warm blue sea that encircles the island. The trip to the highest point—Blue Mountain Peak— is one of two days, the night being spent in a hut on the summit. Provisions must be laid in and guides procured, who will also serve as porters. The road mounts ridge after ridge, winds down steep descents, crosses the streams that rush down every gorge, skirts along the slopes and goes over the tops of the intervening hills, and now and then leaves one valley and follows the course of another. An easy ride of about four hours brings the traveler to Farm Hill Coffee Plantation, where the keys of the hut on the summit may be obtained. The road then winds along past Whitfield Hall to Abbey Green, whose houses and terraces of solid masonry are perched on slopes so steep that they appear in imminent danger of tum- bling into the abyss beneath them. Behind this the road zigzags up the steep sides of the mountain, threading its course between fields of coffee, some of them of such vener- able age that many of the bushes have as- sumed the appearance of dwarfed trees from the constant lopping and pruning, with trunks from six to nine inches in diameter, and only about four feet high. The leaves of cin- chona, blotched with scarlet, now add their quota of color to the scene, for we are leaving the coffee region and reaching the elevation at which this plant best flourishes. Hundreds of acres were planted here some fifteen years ago, but their cultivation is less profitable now, and the cinchona runs wild and self- sown, growing in rank thickets. At the top of the peak, about two hours from Farm Hill, is a small open space covered with soft, springy turf and fringed with stunted trees,. at one side of which stands a little hut of two rooms. It has a stove and a supply of fire-wood, which can be used on condition of replacing the wood before ieaving—a most rigidly observed point of peak etiquette. South of the hut is a narrow track leading down a precipitous ravine, near which is a small pool of water sufficient for one’s ab- solute needs—except in extraordinarily dry weather, when it fails. The thermometer sometimes falls to 40° Fahr., and solid ice THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. was once found on the summit during a wave of unusual cold. Only one of the peaks— Sir John’s Peak, which is 6,100 feet high— approaches within 2,000 feet of the altitude of this one. The southern and western slopes of the range are largely cultivated with cof- fee and inhabited. Coneurrence of Parts in the Living Or- ganism.—The presidential address of Dr, J. 8. Burdon Sanderson at the British Asso- ciation was devoted to the exposition of the character and scope of biology. Aristotle was named as the true father and founder of the science, while the name was given to it by Treviranus. He conceived the difference between vital and physical processes to lie, not in the nature of the processes them- selves, but in their co ordination—that is, in their adaptedness to a given purpose, and to the peculiar and special relation in which the organism stands to the external world. His conception, the speaker declared, “ can still be accepted as true.” It suggests the idea of organism as that to which all other biological ideas must relate. It also sug- gests, although perhaps it does not express it, that action is not an attribute of the or- ganism but of its essence; that if, on the one hand, protoplasm is the basis of life, life is the basis of protoplasm. Their rela- tions to each other are reciprocal. We think of the visible structure only in con- nection with the invisible process.” It is also of value as indicating at once the two lines of inquiry into which the science has been divided by the evolution of knowl- edge. These two lines may be easily de- duced from the general principle from which Treviranus started, according to which it is the fundamental characteristic of the organ- ism that all that goes on in it is to the ad- vantage of the whole. This conception has at all times presented itself in the minds of those who have sought to understand the distinction between living and non-living. It was expressed by the physiologists of three hundred years ago by the term consensus partium—which was defined as the concur- rence of parts in action, of such a nature that each does its share, all combining to bring about one effect, “as if they had been in secret council, but at the same time by some constant law of Nature.” It means

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that, regarding a plant or an’ animal as an organism, we concern ourselves primarily with its activities or its energies. These are naturally distinguishable into two kinds, ac- cording as we consider the action of the whole organism in its relation to the exter- nal world or to other organisms, or the ac- tion of the parts or organs in their relation to each other. This distinction has always existed, but has only lately come into such prominence that it divides biologists into two camps—those who make it their aim to investigate the action of the organism and its parts by the accepted methods of phys- ics and chemistry ; and those who interest themselves rather in considering the place which each organism occupies and the part it plays in the economy of Nature. A Year’s Work in Physies.—Among the notable papers of the year resulting from studies in physics, Mr. R. T. Glazebrook, sec- tional president in the British Association, mentioned Mr. E. R. Griffith’s redetermina- tion of the mechanical equivalent of heat —a work which it has taken five years to complete, With the exception of one group of experiments the results differ by less than one part in ten thousand. During his investigation Mr. Griffith proved an exact accordance between thé scale of tempera- ture as determined by comparing his plati- num thermometer with the air thermometer made in 1890 by Callendar and himself, and that of the nitrogen thermometer of the Bureau International at Sévres. Among other long investigations completed during the year was Rowland’s Table of Standard Wave Lengths. The photographic map of the solar spectrum taken by Mr. Riggs with a Rowland grating was also finished. Lord Rayleigh’s paper on the Intensity of Light reflected from Water and Mercury at nearly perpendicular incidence, combined with the experiments on reflection from liquid sur- faces in the neighborhood of the polarizing angle, establishes results of the utmost im- portance in optical theory. ‘There is,” says Lord Rayleigh, “no experimental evidence against the rigorous application of Fresnel’s formula—for the reflection of polarized light—to the ideal case of an abrupt tran- sition between two uniform transparent media.” Prof. Dewar has continued his ex- POPULAR MISCELLANY. 57! periments on the liquefaction of oxygen and nitrogen on a large scale. To a physicist perhaps the most important results of the research are the discovery of the magnetic properties of liquid oxygen, and the proof of the fact that the resistance of certain pure metals vanishes at absolute zero. The last discovery is borne out by Griffiths and Cal- lendar’s experiments with their platinum thermometers. Mr. Williams’s article on the Relation of the Dimensions of Physical Quantities to Directions in Space led to an interesting discussion. The Polar Basin.—In his presidential ad- dress before the Geographical Section of the British Association Mr. Henry Seebohm, after stating that the foundation of all geography is exploration, and that its scientific study requires a knowledge of cartography and of meteorology or climatology, elaborated these subjects in detail, taking the polar basin as an example. There is, he said, only one polar basin ; the relative distribution of land and water and the geographical distribution of light and heat in the arctic region are ab- solutely unique. In no other part of the world is a similar climate to be found. The distribution of land and water round the south pole is almost the converse of that round the north pole. In the one we have a mountain of snow and ice covering a lofty mass of congealed water surrounded by an ocean stretching away with very little inter- ruption from land to the confines of the tropics. In the other we have a basin of water surrounding a comparatively flat plain of pack ice, some of which is probably per- manent (the so-called paleocrystic sea), but most of which is driven hither and thither in summer by winds and currents, and is walled in by continental and island barriers broken only by the narrow outlets of Bering Strait and Baffin’s Bay, and the broader gulf which leads to the Atlantic Ocean, and even that interrupted by Iceland, Spitzbergen, and Franz Josef Land. If we assume that the unknown regions are principally sea, then the polar basin, including the area drained by all rivers flowing into the Arctic Sea, may be roughly estimated to contain about 14,- 000,000 square miles, of which half is land and half water. In the coldest part of the basin the land is either glacier or tundra,

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§72 and in the warmer parts it is either forest or steppe. Greenland, the home of the glacier and the mother of the icebergs of the North- ern Atlantic, rises 9,000 or 10,000 feet above the sea level, while the sea between that lofty plateau and Scandinavia is the deepest known in the polar basin, though it is sepa- rated from the rest of the Atlantic by a broad belt or submarine plateau connecting Greenland across Iceland and the Faroes with the British Islands and Europe. Ice- land, Spitzbergen, and Novaya-Zemlia, the latter a continuation of the Urals, are all mountainous and full of glaciers. The gla- ciers of southern Alaska are some of the largest in the world. Aspects of the Antaretie Regions.—The subject of antarctic exploration was dis- cussed at the meetiag of the British Associa- tion. Mr. W. 8S. Bruce contributed Notes of an Antarctic Voyage. Dr. C. M. Donald, re- porting some observations made on the voy- age, said that the antarctic regions differ in many respects from the arctic regions, the differences arising probably from diversities in geological structure. Bird life is scant in the south, and the birds are of different kinds from those of the north. The ice- bergs, too, instead of being rugged and irregular, are plateau-shaped, rising with straight sides about two hundred and fifty feet from the water, and often of vast ex- tent. One was met thirty miles long. Two of the steamers of the expedition worked through the pack ice—impenetrable to a sailing ship—and approached the sixty-fifth parallel. Mr. Seebohm described the pen- guin as being, with the exception of a few petrels, almost the only bird found in the ntaretic aregions. Penguins were so differ ent from all other birds that some had di- vided the order into penguins and not-pen- guins. The penguin was found almost to the equator ; not only where there is a cold cur- rent. The Australian Antarctic Expedition, much talked of a few years ago, is in a state of suspense on account of the difficulty of obtaining the money needed. The Place of Geology in Education.—In the discussion, in the British Association, of the Place of Geology in Secondary and Pro- fessional Education, Prof. Greenville A. J. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Cole urged that geology formed a subject of such far-reaching importance that it should be included in the general course for boys and girls of about the age of sixteen or sev- enteen. Every one should be capable of ap- preciating his surroundings, and particularly the past history of life upon the globe, if he was to be able to pass judgment upon cur- rent affairs and to play his part as an indi- vidual organism. Geology was as funda- mentally important as history, and tended to modify very largely our conceptions of the relations between what is called antiquity and ourselves. In common with other natu- ral sciences it encouraged a love of truth where statements could be safely made, and of reserve where assertions would be merely dogmatic. The course suggested for all pupils was one in which mineral details were subordinated, except where they were impor- tant in explaining the origin of certain broad features, such as familiar and local land- scapes. The greatest stress for general pur- poses was to be laid upon an outline of stratigraphical geology and its illustration by such beds, unconformiti2s, etc., as might be exhibited in the environs of the school. The outdoor character of the study should be insisted on; and the fact that the broader generalizations of the science were based on the collation of local observations would not be among the least valuable results of the introduction of the subject into our educa- tional systems. Prof. G. A. Lebour thought that in teaching geology to students destined to be engineers or to have charge of mines it was desirable that they should have such a knowledge of the subject as would enable them, not to solve problems, but to under- stand the grounds on which experts base their reports. Finger Marks.—In the British Associa- tion Mr. Francis Galton gave a description | of his system of finger-print impressions which had been recently introduced into the Indian army. There is affixed to the nomi- nal roll an impression in ink of the fore, middle, and ring fingers of the right hand of each recruit. This plan is found very useful as a check upon personation. Sir William Herschel used the method with success in Bengal for many years. If a clear impres- sion with the finger tips were made, there

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POPULAR MISCELLANY. would be obtained between thirty and forty bifurcations or ridges which were absolutely persistent through life. For purposes of identification the impression of three fingers would be sufficient, but for purposes of regis- tration it was desirable to take the whole ten. It was suggested that this method might be adopted in the case of illiterates instead of making the usual cross-mark as a signature to legal documents. The President of the Anthropological Section said that this method was used by prehistoric man for pur- poses of ornamentation. A Scheme of Education.—In one of his Johns Hopkins University lectures on the Philosophy of Education, Prof. W. T. Harris marks three epochs of school education— the elementary, secondary, and higher; of which the first or elementary stage is the opening of the “ five windows” of the soul: arithmetic, the foundation of our knowledge of Nature, by which we measure and count all things inorganic ; elementary geography, by which the distribution of animal and plant life is learned; reading and writing, which give a glimpse into literature; grammar; and history (of the pupil’s own country). Literature, says the author, “lifts up the pupil into the realms of human nature and discloses the motives which govern the ac- tions of men.” In history, one sees “re- vealed the aspirations of his countrymen, his own nature, written out in colossal letters.” The secondary education takes up human learning and continues it along the same lines—namely, inorganic Nature, organic Na_ ture, literature (the heart), grammar and logic (the intellect), and history (the will). Algebra deals in general numbers, geometry and physics continue inorganic Nature, while natural history continues the study already begun in geography. Then come Greek and Latin, “and here is opened up a great field of study into the embryology of our civiliza- tion. In the dead languages we have the three great threads running through the history of our civilization. The Greek, with its literature and esthetic art and philoso- phy, shows the higher forms of human free- dom; the Roman seeks the true forms of contracts and treaties and corporations ; and the Hebrew thre: is the religious one. So with the secondary education we begin to get 573 the embryology of our forms of life.” The higher or collegiate education is the compara- tivestep. Each branch is studied in the light of all the others. The first or elementary edu- cation, then, is but superficial, a mere inven- tory; the secondary insists on some reflec- tion on what has been learned; and the third or higher education is the unity and com- parison of al] that has been learned, so that each is explained by the whole. Mineral Resources of Missouri.—The ter- titory occupied by the State of Missouri, ac- cording to a report by Arthur Winslow, State Geologist, has been known as a mineral- producing area for nearly two hundred years. Penicaut, one of Le Sueur’s party, which as- cended the Mississippi River in 1700, refers to a mine west of the Mississippi and west of Sainte Genevieve, whence the Indians got their supply of lead. This indicates with reasonable certainty the date when the French began to make use of the mineral resources of the region. Iron mining was begun about 1815. Records of the existence of coal date from 1804; in 1840, 8,908 tons were mined, and production has since been continuous. Zinc was mined with lead ores for many years, but was not utilized till 1869, Since then the growth of production has been rapid. The principal mineral prod- ucts of Missouri are zinc, in respect to which the State ranks first in the country; lead, in which it is second only to Colorado, and iron. In addition, Missouri is a large producer of coal, its clays have a national reputation, and it has a great variety of excellent building and ornamental stones. Among the minor products are quicklime, glass sands, copper, and baryta. Several of the more common classes of mineral waters are scattered all over the State. The zinc region is in the extreme southwest; lead is known to occur in thirty or more counties, and was mined during the past year in fourteen. Iron mining is confined to a part of the State south of the Missouri River and east of the marginal line of the coal measures. Of the four prominent mineral products of the State coal is the most widespread. Clays suitable for all or- dinary uses are very abundant. Building stones are plentiful for home use, and ship- ments are made from many of the quarries

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to foreign points. They include marbles, sandstones of excellent quality, and the Mexican “ onyx” (arragonite, or carbonate of lime). Sands suitable for the manufacture of glass are abundant in the eastern part of the State. Silver occurs at one place, but the mine has been abandoned. Prespects of Negre Education.—The problem of the comparative intellectual or ethical capacities of the Caucasian and the negro is treated by Dr. J. L. M. Curry, chair- man of the Executive Committee of the John F. Slater Fund, as a speculative question that need not be studied as yet. What is called the “negro problem” is remote from its final or satisfactory solution. To settle it will require more than the thirty years that have elapsed since the Proclamation of Emancipation and more data and calmer and more scientific generalizations—free, too, from prejudice, fanaticism, sectarianism, and partisanship—than are yet at hand. The education of the negro is encompassed with peculiar complications, difficulties, and limi- tations. What has been accomplished is encouragement to do more. What has been attained is the demonstration that other and better things can be reached. In adopting means and methods to secure the highest results in education it must not be forgotten that the negro is still fettered by the hered- ity of thousands of years and by the in- grained and slowly eradicable weaknesses of slavery. It is proper to remember that African slavery has strengthened the neces- sary evils of the “peculiar institution” into habitudes, and that these in the course of years have become racial characteristics. Conferences were held during the last year, at which the normal and material condition of the negroes and the obstacles to their prog- ress, the methods’ and means of progress, and the influence of women were discussed. Unquestionable as has been the improvement in normal and industrial work in the schools, it is equally beyond question that the in- struction is not what it should be in any of them. What is called normal instruction is too often of very superficial character and a mere annex to the ordinary literary course, while what is done in manual training is un- scientific and based apparently on merely utilitarian considerations. The Slater Fund 574 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. has heretofore been operated in connection with the denominational and other schools already established in the South. While its managers have sought to emphasize as much as possible its peculiar objects of normal and ° manual training, it could not interfere with their objects or expect them to subordinate them to its purpose, The Hampton and Tuskegee Schools and the one at Montgom- ery are, however, not under these embarrass- ing conditions. A proposition is now before the trustees for establishing or aiding in es- tablishing an independent school in which the purposes of the fund shall be predomi- nant. Theamountof the fund is $1,220,375. NOTES. A Correction.—The article on Vegetable Diet, by Lady Walb. Paget, which appeared in the Monthly for November, 1893, was re- printed from the Nineteenth Century, to which magazine it should have been credited. Tue Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, has the awarding of certain medals for merito- rious discoveries and inventions which will contribute to the promotion of arts and man- ufactures, as follows: The Elliott Cresson medal, gold, for some discovery in the arts and sciences, or for the invention ard im- provement of some useful machine, or for some new process or combination of mate- rials in manufactures, or for ingenuity, skill, or perfection in workmanship ; the John Scott Legacy Premium (twenty dollars) and medal, bronze, for useful inventions; and the Ed- ward Longstreth medal of merit, silver, for useful invention, important discovery, and meritorious work in science or the industrial arts, or contributions to them. Persons desir- ing full information on the subject may corre- spond with William H. Wahl, secretary. M. Dyzowsk!, in a recent journey in the interior of Africa, encountered a tribe who have reduced cannibalism to such a system that they have only one object of purchase— slaves to be eaten. They refuse to sell food or any other products of their country for anything else, and the surrounding tribes capture and export canoe loads of slaves for this purpose. ATTENTION was recently be ees ~ M. Dollo in the Belgian Geologi mage Aes some scientific conceptions ° aks hus there are references in the Commedia Di- vina, which was published about 1320, to the facts that the moon is the principal cause of the tides ; that the surface of the sea is uni- form except for the waves ; that there exists a centripetal force, causing bodies to fall;

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that the earth is spherical; that the land above the waters is only a protuberance on the surface of the globe ; that the continents are grouped in the northern hemisphere ; that there exists a universal attraction ; that the elasticity of vapors is a motive power ; that the continents have uprisen; and that chem- ical elements exist, more or less as Lavoisier conceived them. Tue largest continuous distinct forest district in West Prussia is known as the Tucheler Haide, and extends over an area of thirty-five square miles. It is subject to great and sudden changes of temperature. Snow has fallen as late as May 19th, and night frosts have occurred as late as the Ist and 8d of June. Prehistoric remains are found belonging to the later stone and to the bronze ages. The inhabitants are occu- pied almost entirely with forestry and agri- culture. Polish is still the prevalent lan- guage, though German is now generally un- derstood. As to the speed with which the migra- tion flights of birds are accomplished, Canon Tristram, in the British Association, quoted Herr Giatke as maintaining that godwits and plovers can fly at the rate of 240 miles an hour. Dr. Jerdon had stated that the spine- tailed swift, roosting in Ceylon, would reach the Himalayas, a thousand miles, before sunset. In their ordinary flight the swift was the only bird the author had ever no- ticed to outstrip an express train on the Great Northern Railway. Tosacco juice is very useful to agricul- turists as a remedy for sheep m and an insecticide, but its value is greatly lessened by its rapid fermentability. Experiments are making in the French Department of Manufactures for a process for concentra’ an extract which shall be rich in nicotine an capable of indefinite preservation. A color- less extract is also sought which cultivators may use upon flowers attacked by insects. Puorocraras of the invisible are what M. Zenger calls two pictures which he took about midnight of August 17th from a win- dow looking out upon the lake of Geneva. They gave weak images of the lake and of Mont Blanc, which could not be seen in the darkness. Mr. Bertrand remarks that invisibility is a relative term, the significance of which depends on the power of the ob- server's eyes. The pi phs were taken with a light of very small intensity, and did not represent an invisible object. So sky- photographs taken in observatories show stars which can not be discerned by the most piercing vision. Tue absorption of light by platinum at different temperatures was the subject of a recent memoir to the Academy of of Turin by Rizzo. The author ob- tained pellicles of unoxidizable platinum under NOTES. 575 the action of heat the transparency of which he found increased with the tem e3- pecially in the more refrangible determination of this fact esta es & new correlation between light and electricity, the augmentation of the electrical resistance of a conductor being accompanied by an increase of transparency. An International of lied Chemistry has been call by the Belgien Association of Chemists, to meet in Brussels August 4, 1894. A number of interesting subjects appertvining to biological are to be considered, including those of the establishment of a Review of Reviews of Pure and Applied Biological Chemistry ; pure yeast in practical fermentation; new researches of the relations of oxy and yeast; raw grains in brewing; studies on the hol- ony and physiology of vinegar eels ; 0 as suitable for brewing, and the manufacture of glucose; and analy- sis of molasses with a view to Communications may be addressed to M. Van Laer, General Secretary of the Congress, 15 Rue de Holland, Brussels. Accorpin¢ to one of the latest visitors to the Ainus of Japan, Mr. A. H. Savage Lan- dor, the supposed pious ejaculations, on the strength of which these people have been credited with a religious system, are really execrations. An examination of the molluscan fauna that accumulate in the fresh-water pipes of Paris, brought there from the rivers w the water is drawn, has been made by M. A. Locard, of Lyons. Tue schooner in which the Swed- ish explorers and Kalstennius eee 00 Oe ee to study the fauna and flora of arctic shores, has been found by Captain Mackey, of the Aurora, of Dundee, fast in the ice of Carey Island, Baffin Bay. The vessel had been cleared of boats and that she had been The boty of 0 man ove See ee ; i fi |

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576 structions to forward them to the nearest Swedish consul. The manuscripts have not been fully examined. Pror. FraNkLanp says that while the virility of many bacteria can be greatly reduced by successive cultivations, and the ous effects of such active bacteria as those of typhoid and cholera can be intensi- fied by passing them repeatedly through the bodies of animals which at first offered great resistance to their pathogenic action, this increase in toxic effect can not be pro- duced by artificial cultivation, and it has not been found possible to convert a harmless organism into a pathogenic one. A curious case of resuscitation of an optical image has been described by Prof. T. Vignoli from his own experience. After a railway journey in a bright sun and two days’ walking in the heat, he looked from the room in which he was engaged in con- versation upon a balcony standing out in the bright sunlight. Early in the morning two days afterward, while lying awake in bed, he saw upon the ceiling an exact reproduc- tion of the balcony, in all its colors and de- tails. The image disappeared on closing the eyes, and reappeared on opening them again. Its appearance was not changed when it was regarded with one eye, looking with either alternately. It was interrupted by putting the finger in front of the eye, and responded in every respect to the usual features of ordinary vision. A cage of birds which hung upon the original balcony ap- peared, swinging as the real cage did. Wuart is undoubtedly the first publication of Asa Gray, although it is not included in the published lists of his writings, has been sent to Garden and Forest. It is a cata- logue of the indigenous flowering and filicoid plants growing within twenty miles of Bridge- water, Sneida County, New York. It consists of nine pages, is dated January 1, 1833, or when the author was just in his twenty-fourth year, and is contained in the forty-second an- nual report of the Regents of the University of the State. It is also included in Prof. Britton’s List of State and Local Floras of the United States and British America, where it is entered under Onondaga County. Concernine his experience with horse- shoes of aluminum, M. Japy reports that as that metal is four times lighter than iron a complete outfit of shoes of it will weigh no more than a single iron horseshoe. Horses accustomed to iron shoes when shod with shoes of aluminum imagine themselves bare- footed, and are as careful in planting their steps as if they were unshod. The shoes open out as the hoof expands, and conse- uently never cramp it. An aluminum horse- choo will lst from forty to Pee alot cording to the compos of the an the kind of work done by the horse. M. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Japy concludes that aluminum can be util. ized in shoes for race and carriage horses, and that it may be of service in the treat- ment of diseases of the hoof. It should, how- ever, be used only by persons experienced in working the metal. AN instrument which be calls a formeno- phone has been invented by a French en- gineer, M. E. Hardy, for detecting the pres- ence and estimating the proportions of gas- eous impurities of an atmosphere by the sound they give ina pipe. It is based upon the principle that air passing through an or- gan pipe gives a definite and constant tone, while ifany other gas is mixed with it the tone varies according to the gas and the quantity of it. Two instruments of similar construction are used—one arranged so that pure air, the other that the air to be meas- ured shall be made to pass through pipes of identical construction. Tne importance of taking thorough pre- cautions in the case of animals dying of in- fectious disease is newly illustrated in an ob- servation made by the Russian Diatroptoff. The water of a particular well was supposed to be the cause of an epidemic outbreak of anthrax among certain sheep. No contami- nation was found in the water, but the mud at the bottom of the well contained a microbe which produced anthrax on being inoculated into a sheep. The germs are supposed to have percolated through the soil to where they were found. The anthrax among the sheep ceased on the well being closed. In a paper on Grinding and Polishing, Lord Rayleigh, after referring to the accu- racy with which optical surfaces can be worked, said that the operation of grinding did not produce scratches on a glass surface, but that pits were cut into an otherwise plane surface by it. A surface so ground, when used for a lens, gave excellent definition, but great loss of light by irregular reflection. To remove this defect the lens had to be pol- iShed, by which operation the pits were gradually removed. He gave reasons for believing that in the process of polishing the glass was worn off molecularly, whereas grinding removes fragments of the glass. He found that in polishing a certain thin disk of glass a thickness equal to about six wave- lengths of yellow light was removed. It was easy to remove as emall a depth as half a wave-length by means of hydrofluoric acid if proper precautions were taken. Mo ps differ from bacteria, according to Prof. Frankland, in their action, and pro- duce an oxidation, or burning up, instead of fermentation. A yew section, that of physiology, has betn formed in the British Association. It is the ninth section, and will be designated by the letter I. #|

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