The Popular Science Monthly 1896-03: Vol 48

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APPLETON S’ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. MARCH, 1896. PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, By DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D.C. L., CORRESPONDANT DE L’INSTITUT DE FRANCE, ETO. Il.—THE PLACE OF TAXATION IN LITERATURE AND HISTORY. PART IL, AXATION In ANcrENT GREECE.—In Athens, according to Boeckh, the revenues of the state were derived from receipts from the public domains, including mines, partly from taxes analogous to our “ customs” and “ excise,” and some taxes upon industry and persons which only extended to aliens and slaves; from fines and justice fees, from the proceeds of confiscated prop- erty, and from tribute from allied or subject states. All exports and imports into Athens, at one period, were subject to a small duty of two per cent; and in addition to this, foreign ships lying in the harbor paid a small fee, as did also aliens for the privilege of selling commodities, arriving by sea, in certain designated market places. “A special tax was also levied upon the pro- prietors or occupants of houses, the doors or windows of which opened outward on the public footway. And,as throwing further light on the social system of ancient Greece, we have the state- ment on good authority that the Greeks, having no pockets, used to leave valuable articles in sealed packets, trusting to the laws which punished the violation of a seal. Direct taxes,” according to Boeckh, “ imposed upon the soil, upon industry, or upon persons, excepting in cases of emergency, were looked upon in Greece as despotic and arbitrary; it being considered as a necessary element of freedom that the property of a citizen, as well as his occupation, should be exempt from all taxation, except when a free community taxed itself, which, however, is obviously an essential part of lib- VOL, XLvim1,—41 7

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578 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. erty.” Poll taxes were exacted by the Athenian state, but as such taxes were considered ignominious and as implying subjugation, they were only assessed upon slaves or subjugated foreigners; and failure to pay was regarded in the light of a capital offense. The income of Athens from fines appears to have been con- siderable, and to have constituted a singular and permanent feature of the fiscal policy of the state. Its method of assessment may be best illustrated by examples. Thus, if duly authorized officials did not hold certain assemblages, according to rule, or properly conduct the appointed business, they had each to pay a thousand drachmas ($200). If an orator conducted himself indecorously in a public assembly, he could be fined fifty drach- mas (ten dollars) for each offense, which might be raised to a higher sum at the pleasure of the people. A woman conduct- ing herself improperly in the streets paid a similar penalty. Ifa woman went to Eleusis in a carriage, she subjected herself to a fine of a talent ($1,180). In the case of wealthy or notable per- sons, fines for omissions or commissions in respect to conduct were made much greater, and so more productive of revenue; and there were very few notable or wealthy citizens of Athens who under the rule of demagogues, and through specious accusa- tions of offenses against the state or the gods, escaped the pay- ment of heavy fines; the experiences of Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Demosthenes, Pericles, Cleon, and Timotheus being cases in point.* Every person who failed tu pay a fine owing to the state was reckoned as a public debtor, and was subject to im- prisonment and a practical denial of citizenship; Miltiades, the victor at Marathon, for example, having been cast into prison (where he afterward died) through an inabtity 6 to pay a fine assessed against him of fifty talents. * It was probably the contemplation of this state of things that led her great philosopher Aristotle to the conclusion, expressed in his essay on Politics, that “ the rule of an irrespon- sible majority can be just as despotic as that of a single tyrant.” He defines this extreme democracy as that “in which the majority, and not the law, is supreme”—in other words, “when decrees of the people, and not the law, govern.” By “law” is meant a fixed code of statutes, which can not be changed or repealed by the ordinary legislative power. The latter can pass only decrees in conformity to the fixed code, which thus corresponds to our written constitutions. Such absolute power, he says, makes the people a monarch, and finally a despot refusing to be subject to law; and “such a democracy is analogous to tyranny.” . Both have the same character, for “ both exercise a slaveholder’s rule over the better ci ” In one we have decrees, in the other edicts; in one demagogues are in authority, in the other flatterers. When a dispute arises, the cry always is, “ The people must settle it,” and everything is determined by the momentary will of the supreme multi- tude. From this state of things the wisdom of our fathers has saved us, and the Supreme ~ Court of the United States, as a rule, decides questions of constitutional law with far more wisdom and dignity than its predecessor, the popular court of Athens. + Boeckh’s Public Economy of Athens,

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PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION, 579 Another curious feature of the fiscal policy of Athens was an indirect augmentation of the public revenues, by diminishing the public expenditures by an institution which was essentially one of differential exaction (miscalled taxation), and was known as “liturgies.” They consisted in the conferring upon ambitious and wealthy citizens certain honorary public offices to which noth- ing of salary or compensation was attached, but which entailed large expenditures for the entertainment of the people or defense of the country. .The acceptance of these offices was compulsory ; parsimony in expenditure on the part of the holder exposed him to public censure; and the institution undoubtedly found favor with the masses as a method of dividing the property or con- suming the incomes of the wealthy. The system of liturgies was not, however, peculiar or restricted to the Athenian state, It existed in the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and also to a certain extent in Rome, where the persons accepting the office of edile, whose business it was to take care of public edifices and superin- tend public festivals, were expected to appropriate large sums from their private resources for the convenience and amusement of the people. The office of edile in Rome, which was one of great honor, was thus only made accessible to the very wealthy. But as the office was, however, in the direct line of preferment to some lucrative office in the provinces, the expenditures of its occu- pant were probably regarded in the light of an investment, from which more than complete remuneration was to be expected in the future. The principle involved in the liturgies would also seem to find recognition and exemplification in modern times, and under a different civilization, but in accordance with the same hu- man nature ; as, for example, in Great Britain, which by requiring members of Parliament to serve gratuitously, virtually restricts membership in that body to wealthy citizens; and also in the United States, which, by paying her judges and most of her other great officers of state inconsiderable and inadequate salaries, prac- tically reduces the cost of her Government, and virtually makes merchandise of her honors by entailing a part of the proper ex- penses of such offices upon every first-class incumbent of them.* The comparatively small expenditures of the Athenian state should als6 to be considered in connection with their revenue re- quirements. Thus, Mr. Grote estimates the annual expenditure of Athens, in the time of Pericles, at one thousand talents, or * It will not probably be disputed that the talent and experience which ought to be pre- requisite to the holding and proper discharge of the duties of many of the important offices of the Government of the United States—judges, cabinet ministers, foreign ministers, consuls, etc.—will command in private life a much higher compensation or salary than is paid by the state.

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580 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. $1,180,000; and, according to Mr. Boeckh, the revenues of the city never exceeded two thousand talents, or $2,360,000. The annual tax paid on the property of Demosthenes by his guardi- ans amounted to only one fifth of one per cent of its valuation; and as, before the Peloponnesian war, the receipts from the silver mines owned by the state were so abundant that the sur- plus revenue was divided among the citizens of Athens, it is evi- dent that for a time there was no necessity for taxation. TAXATION IN RoME.—Up to the time of Servius Tullius taxa- tion in Rome consisted of a capitation assessment, arbitrarily fixed, without regard to the means of the individual.* After the termination of the last Punic war, and down to nearly the epoch | of the Empire—a period of at least one hundred and twenty-five years—the people of Rome were exempt from all direct taxation. This was due to the circumstance that Rome had accumulated great wealth, and was in receipt of an annual revenue from her conquered provinces fully adequate to defray all the expenses of the government, including the military establishment of the state. A large revenue for a considerable period was also derived from the imperial silver mines in Spain. Cicero, who lived before the empire, in one of his epistles to Atticus, laments the possibility of a resort to taxation by the state at some time in the future as something ominous of evil. One of the first acts, however, of Augustus, after assuming the reins of government, was the gradual institution of an extensive system of taxation. He organized a land tax for the whole empire; and followed it up with what Gibbon terms “an artful assessment” on the real and personal property of the Roman citizens, who, as before shown, had been long exempted from any contributions for the support of the state. A tax of five per cent, or one twentieth, was also imposed on all legacies and successions, which did not apply to objects inherited of less than a specified value (“ probably,” says Gibbon, “ of fifty or a hundred pieces of gold”); nor was it exacted from the nearest of kin on the father’s side. ¢ This tax which appears to have been most productive, was one of the most permanent taxes of the empire, and its amount was increased by the successors of Augustus. Gibbon seems to have been in doubt as to the motive which * Ortolan, History of Roman Jurisprudence, English edition, p. 257. + “Such a tax was most happily suited to the situation of the Romans, who could frame their arbitrary wills according to the dictates of reason or caprice, without any restraint from the modern fetters of entails and settlements. From various causes, the partiality of parental affection also often lost its influence over the dissolute nobles of the empire; and if the father bequeathed to his son a fourth part of his estate, he removed all grounds of legal complaint.”—-( Gibbon, vol. i, p. 192.)

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PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 581 prompted Augustus to incorporate these new features of taxation in the Roman governmental policy, and suggests a desire to re- lieve the provinces from their burden of tribute, or to effect the impoverishment of the senate or the “equestrian” (knights) order. A more modern and probably a more correct view is, that Augustus recognized that, as Rome possessed all the known world that she considered worth possessing, the profitable results of further conquests, and the drain of accumulated wealth from subjugated nations, had practically come to an end; that her army henceforth existed mainly for maintaining the integrity of the empire, or for defense; and that for its support, in default of opportunities to plunder, an extensive and rigorous system of taxation had become necessary. Under the system of taxation established by Augustus and ex- tended by his successors, most of the taxes known to modern times were anticipated by the Romans. Apart from the taxes on land, they had export and import taxes; tolls for passage over bridges; a tax upon salt; a tax in kind upon corn (wheat), barley, wine, oil, meat, and wood; a tax upon the value of manu- mitted slaves; on sales; and a capitation or poll tax. Of other notable and peculiar Roman taxes was one on the wages of pros- titutes ; and apart from his wars with the Jews and the building of the Colosseum, the Roman Emperor Vespasian is best known in history as the originator of a tax on urinals, Excepting possibly the land tax, there does not appear to have been any general and uniform system of taxation for the whole empire. The taxes on imports and exports were not uniform, and there were separate customs districts, each with a tariff of its own, and some with special immunities. Under the reign of Augustus and his successors, duties varying from an eighth to the fortieth part of the value of the commodity were imposed at Rome on every kind of merchandise, “ which through a thousand channels flowed to the great center of opulence and luxury ; and in whatsoever manner the law was expressed, it was the Roman purchaser and not the provincial merchant that paid the tax.” * A general tax (characterized by Gibbon as an excise), and seldom exceeding one per cent was also exacted at Rome on whatever “was sold in the market place, or by public auction, from the most considerable purchase of land and houses to those minute objects which can only derive a value from their infinite multitude and daily consumption.” As exports were subject to Roman taxation as well as imports, and as the average rates im- posed in both cases were probably low, these forms of taxation appear to have been in the nature of a payment for the privilege * Gibbon, vol. i, p. 190, who in turn cites Tacitus, Annals, vol. xiii, p. 31, as authority.

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582 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of conducting commerce; imposed for the purpose of revenue only, and without the slightest reference to any contingent in- fluences on trade or industry. In fact, the idea of promoting (pro- tecting) industry through taxes on exchanges appears to have found no place in Roman or any other ancient economic history or experience. In accordance with a practice on the part of the ancient Ro- mans of deifying abstractions—as war, love, navigation, thievery, and the like—we find mention of the Genius of the Custom House, or of Indirect Taxes (genius portoriit publici), a divinity that seems to have survived to our own times; inasmuch as many of the curious phenomena that have occurred in connection with modern efforts to prevent free exchanges through the agencies of customs taxation, seem only capable of explanation on the as- sumption that some occult power has been more potential in shaping economic events in this department of government than any proper exercise of man’s reasoning faculties; and that it is the part of wisdom that large sacrifices should be made by the people in order to propitiate this deity. Throughout the whole course of their history the principal taxes levied by the Romans appear to have been collected through the instrumentality of a class of officials known as “ publicans,” who paid the government for the privilege of so doing; and who, intrusted with extraordinary powers, were allowed, by way of compensation for their services, to collect and retain as much of additional revenue as they could force or extort from the tax- payers for their individual and private benefit. Such an admin- istration of the publicans necessarily involved and required the employment of a large number of subcontractors and deputies, who, stationed at seaports, on public highways, at the gates of cities, and the market places, examined all goods exported, im- ported, or offered for sale, estimated their value, and collected the taxes to which they were legally liable, and as much more as they could extort with impunity, for the benefit of their masters or themselves—which last, in disorderly times and under the bad em- perors, had a very wide latitude. This wretched system of “ farm- ing” or discounting the revenues of the state, which appears to have been a permanent feature of the government of Rome at all periods—under its kings, under the republic, and under the em- pire—has, moreover, a feature of general interest, as it clearly illustrates the exceeding limitation and narrowness of the general Roman policy in the sphere of civil administration. Another fact pertinent to the general philosophy of taxation, which the historical study of Roman polity has developed, is also especially worthy of notice in this connection. As has been pre- viously stated, the Romans, for a period of at least one hundred

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PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 583 and twenty-five years before the establishment of the empire under Cxsar, were enabled, through the great spoils of war ob- tained from subjugated nations, to relieve themselves from taxa- tion for the support of their government; and, in so doing, it ap- pears that they first threw off their direct taxes, and at a later period those taxes that were indirect. But when under Cesar it became necessary to reimpose taxes, they established them in a reverse order—that is, the indirect taxes were renewed first and in preference to those which were direct; thus recognizing and affirming in practice the idea that characterizes the fiscal policy of most modern governments—namely, that it is expedient to con- ceal as far as possible the burden of taxes from the people who are to pay them. The gross amount of annual revenue which the empire of Rome collected in its best day is estimated by Gibbon to have been about twenty million pounds sterling ($100,000,000); later authorities place it at a much higher figure, or $200,000,000, In default, however, of exact information as to the purchasing power of money at the time, it is obvious that neither of these esti- mates can give us any true idea of the real amount of the Roman revenue; but, taking the probable price of wheat in Rome at the close of the republic as an indication of the price of other commodities, the purchasing power of Gibbon’s twenty million pounds sterling ($100,000,000) must have represented a much greater sum, or at least $150,000,000. If the largest of these estimates of the revenue of imperial Rome should seem inade- quate for the support of a government that extended over the greater part of the then known surface of the earth, that included a population of at least 150,000,000, and maintained a military and naval establishment of 450,000 men, it should be remembered that, apart from the greater increased purchasing power of money than now prevails, the expenditure by the state for the support of its military forces was comparatively small (“the ratio of mili- tary draft upon society before the inception of Rome’s decadence being but little more than one third as great as that of the seven principal states of present Europe”*); that the present com- plexity and magnitude of expenditure in the form of taxes did not exist; and that a Roman national debt, with its burden of con- stantly accruing interest—the one thing most grievous to modern states—was entirely unknown. The taxes, or rather exactions, on the people of the conquered provinces of Rome were always more numerous, discriminating, and onerous than those levied upon the population of the im- perial city and its adjoining districts; and from the time of the * Baker. The Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans. D. Appleton & Co., 1894.

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584 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. Emperor Diocletian they became more and more destructive of industry, and fell with special weight upon agriculture, Accord- ing to Sir James Stephen, the land tax in Gaul rose to “ the almost incredible amount of one third of the net produce of the land”; but what is more singular and incredible, the present tax on the peasant agriculturist of Italy is equivalent to the value of an even larger share of his product. The provincial taxes which gave rise, however, to the greatest discontent were the poll tax and a tax upon funerals. These were easy to collect, and consequently in favor with the Roman tax-gatherers ; but being levied at fixed and undiscriminating rates, pressed with great and unequal severity upon the poor. The last- mentioned tax—i.e., upon funerals, which required payment be- fore the burial of the dead—was said to have formed one of the principal causes of the revolt of the Iceni (Britons), under their famous warrior, Queen Boadicea. The decree mentioned in St. Luke’s Gospel, of Cesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed, and in pursuance of which “every one went into his own city,” unquestionably referred to a poll-tax assessment, and to its required payment in person by every adult at the Roman tax-col- lector’s office nearest to an established center of Roman authority. In the province of Gaul the annual tribute exacted from every head under the reign of Constantine was reported to have been twenty-five pieces of gold. But the possibility of the payment of such a high capitation tax has been explained by the circum- stance that in all the provinces of the Roman world the ma- jority of the people were slaves, or peasants whose condition was little different from slavery; and that the rolls of tribute em- braced only the names of citizens who possessed the means of an honorable or at least of a decent subsistence. The whole record of Roman experience in respect to revenue collection or taxation before the decadence of the empire, alike in the city of Rome and in her provinces, is, however, of no value, save from an historical point of view. It does not appear, as before noted, to have been based upon any well-devised and harmonious fiscal system, or to have had any influence whatever in originating or developing one; for, unlike other Roman cus- toms and institutions, it everywhere fell into disuse when the authority of Rome was withdrawn. In one feature alone was Rome consistent in her views and harmonious in her practice in respect to taxation: she always levied taxes for the purpose of getting money into the public treasury and for no ulterior reason. The nearest approach on the part of the Romans to a recognition of the policy of stimulating a branch of industry through the in- strumentality of bounties or subsidies seems to have occurred in connection with the distribution of wheat gratuitously, or at

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PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. artificially low prices, among the poor and idle masses of the im- perial city; which practice, originally adopted under the repub- lic, with a view of obviating popular discontent, and continued, with additions of oil and meat under the empire, finally became a cause of great anxiety to the emperors lest anything should interfere with the movement of grain, which was mainly by sea from Africa and Sicily. To insure regularity and efficient service, the state at first farmed out the right to transport the crops to certain wealthy individuals; and this inducement to enterprise proving insufficient, the Emperor Claudius gave a bounty for each successful trip of the grain fleet. The construction of ships was also encouraged by subsidies, and in this way there grew up a class of wealthy shipowners, whose profits and incentive to busi- ness were obtained from the state, and who by organization into an association (analogous to the modern trust) under the name of “Naviculari,” with branches in every city or town in the prov- inces, and with wealthy and influential senators among its stock- holders or patrons, attained to great prominence and influence in the third and fourth centuries, Taxation, in at least one notable instance, was also employed by the Romans as an instrumentality for the correction of a social evil—namely, a disinclination on the part of wealthy citizens, in the latter days of the republic and throughout the whole period of the empire, to contract marriages, with a view of avoiding the cares and burdens of a family. To counteract this tendency, a tax (“@s uxorium”) was imposed on bachelors, with a limitation (“lex Julia et Papia Poppea”) on the transmission of property by will or gift by the unmarried and the childless,* The statesmen and administrators of Rome seem never to have given a thought to the desirability of encouraging industry, trade, or commerce among their own people, much less among the people they had subjugated. There was, throughout all their literature and laws, the contempt which brigands and barbarians entertain for honest industry, at least when that industry is not agricul- * In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was well-nigh universal legislation of this kind, the most thoroughgoing specimens being a Spanish edict of 1623 and one of Louis XIV in 1666, which not only granted exemption from taxation, but positive subsidies in cash, as an inducement to early marriages. That the idea involved in such legislation has also found favor at the present time is shown by the fact that Prof. Richet, a German economist of repute, has recently proposed that in all systems of taxation the fathers of large families be favored, and that corresponding burdens be laid on those who contuma- ciously refrain from marrying ; ignoring the fact that old Rome adopted and carried out this policy by measures much more drastic than the spirit of the present times would tolerate, and that the result is generally believed to have been a failure. Ii is also worthy of note, that at the present time, in the Canadian Province of Quebec, the fathers of the largest families receive bounties of public lands; the motive of which policy is unquestionably to bring the French Canadian element into the control of the Dominion Government.

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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 586 tural. To create wealth appeared to them sordid; to take it was admirable, or, as M. Blanqui has put it, the economic policy of the Roman state may be expressed in the following single sentence, “ Les romains voulaient avant tout consommer sans produire” * The genius of the Roman government was military, not com- mercial, The Romans prohibited commerce to persons of rank and fortune; and no senator was allowed to own a vessel larger than a boat sufficient to carry his own food (grain) and fruit. They encouraged corn merchants to import provisions from Sicily, Africa, and Spain, because the cultivators of the soil of Italy, mainly slaves, did not produce a sufficient supply of food for thecity of Rome. They seem, moreover, never to have had any conception of the impolicy of levying taxes in such a way as to dry up the channels of trade and enterprise; or of the fact, abundantly substantiated by all experience, that when government takes from its people more than a fair share of the savings of capital and labor, then accumulation will cease and capital be destroyed; and against social disorders thus engendered Rome was powerless, That the seeds of decay were thus planted in her governmental system, and that the fall of her empire was hence only a question of time and inevitable, is a point that historians seem very gen- erally to have overlooked. During the years of the later empire, although its resources and population had greatly decreased, its expenditures enor- mously increased ; and the sequence of this was a system of grind- ing exactions, to which, more than any other one immediate cause, the utter decay and final complete downfall of the empire may be attributed. During the period intervening between the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Diocletian it has been estimated that a ma- jority of the population of the empire, from Persia to Gaul, had died of the plague; and what the plague had been to the popula- tion, the “fiscus” or financial policy of the government was to industry. Under Constantius, a. D. 337, taxes were imposed on all trades and industries, and such was the comprehension and severity of the law, that Gibbon tells us, that “the honorable merchant, the usurer who derived from the interest of money a silent and ignominious profit, the ingenious manufacturer, the diligent me- chanic, and even the obscure retailer of a sequestered village, and the public prostitutes,” were all alike obliged to admit the offi- cers of the revenue to a participation of their gains. Such, more- over, was the imperfect state of agriculture and of manufacturing processes that the net product of the individual was necessarily * See Blanqui. Histoire de "Economie Politique en Europe. American translation by Emily J. Leonard. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1880,

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PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 587 very small—so much so that it has been estimated that the labor of several individuals was required to supply even the necessary food of one inactive person. But asthe people became exhausted, the demands of the government, contingent on the maintenance of an extravagant court and a large standing army of soldiers and officials, became greater, the severity in the methods of exaction increased, and in no two provinces was the authority of the gov- ernment (sovereign) exercised in the same manner.* With ma- lignant ingenuity, and with a view of perfecting the control of the state over the individual, and doubtless more especially for, facilitating the operation of the officials charged with the duty of collecting taxes, every man’s position was fixed for him by the conditions of his birth. The son of a cultivator of the soil was chained, as it were, to the lands tilled by his father. The work- men in all other departments of industry were bound to their po- sition for life, and when they died their places were taken by their sons. “If any one of them deserted his work, he was sought out, even to the remotest provinces, and ruthlessly dragged back to his post.” + If he failed to produce a prescribed result, the state intervened and forced its accomplishment. In making assess- ments for taxation, visible tangible property was enrolled with great minuteness by officers who corresponded to our modern as- sessors. The lands were measured by surveyors; their nature— whether arable or pasture, vineyards or woods—was distinctly reported; and an estimate was made of their value from their average produce for five years. Every new purchaser of land contracted all the obligations of former proprietors. Slaves and cattle were counted separately, and carefully reported for assess- ment; and by the Theodosian Code, which for the time was an almost universal law, death and confiscation of estate was the punishment to which every farming proprietor was liable who should attempt to evade taxation. In respect to the assessment and collection of taxes on personal property, the accounts that have come down to us are most inter- esting, and ought to be full of instruction to legislators of the present day who believe in patterning tax administration after old and vicious experiences, so far as the changed conditions and ideas of civilization in the nineteenth century will admit. The proprietor of such property was, in the first instance, questioned under oath; and every attempt to prevaricate or elude the inten- * Alfred Rambaud. L’Empire Grec au Dixidme Siécle. + By a law of the Emperor Theodosius, in 438 a. p., it was provided that the fabricen- ses (meaning thereby the workmen engaged in the fabrication of arms) “shall be so closely bound to their appropriate duties that, worn out at last by their toil, they shall die in the profession to which they were born—both they and their children after them.”—{Co- dex Theod., ii, 9, 4.)

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588 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. tions of the legislator was punishable as a capital crime, and was held to include the double guilt of treason and sacrilege. If the results of personal interrogation under oath were not satisfactory to the tax officials, they were empowered to administer torture; and when personal stoicism or absolute incapacity failed to effect the desired results, resort was had to other, most abhorrent, and unnatural methods for procuring the sum at which their property was assessed—“the faithful slave being tortured for evidence against his master, the wife to depose against her husband, and the son against his sire. Neither age nor sickness exempted from liability and personal inquisition. In taking ages, they added to the years of children and subtracted from those of the elderly. When the number of cattle fell off and the people died, the sur- vivors were obliged to pay the assessments on the dead.” Zosi- mus, a historian who wrote in the early part of the fifth century, says that the approach of the fatal period when the general tax upon industry was to be collected “was announced by the tears and terrors of the citizens.” That the result, so far as the execution of the law was con- cerned, was a success, can not be doubted; nor that by the methods employed large amounts of revenue were collected that otherwise could not have been obtained. But what were the final results? First, a demonstration of an economic truth, which in subsequent years has over and over again been repeated, that the productiveness of a tax is not its first consideration; and that a blight contingent on the method of assessing and collecting a tax may ruin a harvest which it can not gather. Under the state of things, as described, that prevailed under the latter days of the Roman Empire, the agriculture of its provinces was gradually ruined. Long before the footsteps of the barbarians had been seen in Italy, a large part of what had been its most fertile por- tion and the seat of “the delicious retirement of the citizens of Rome,” had become uncultivated and a desert. “The desire and possibility of accumulation languished, and men produced only what would suffice for their immediate needs; for the govern- ment laid in wait for all savings. Capital vanished, the souls of men were palsied; population fled from what was called civiliza- tion, and sought concealment and relief in barbarism and with barbarians. Men cried for social death, and invited the coming of savages; and in the form of Goths and Vandals, Huns and Herulii, Franks and Lombards, they came, and the empire of Rome and its degraded civilization went down in almost universal turmoil, bloodshed, robbery, and woe.” There is also good reason for believing that the Turks were greatly indebted for their suc- cess in overthrowing the subsequent Byzantine or Greek Empire to their simple methods and policy in respect to taxation; and

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THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 589 that the subjects of the empire were glad to change their masters, because instead of multiplied, intricate, and vexatious taxes, the legacy of old Rome, they found themselves subject to a simple tribute, easily collected and easily paid.* ww —3o- THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM: t+ By WILHELM OSTWALD, PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPSIO, _— complaint has gone up in all ages that so little agreement prevails respecting the most important and most funda- mental questions of humanity. Only within our own days has the cry with respect to one of the greatest of these questions been silenced; and although many contradictions are still current, it may yet be said that rarely at any time has a so relatively great unanimity existed concerning the theory of the world of outward phenomena as prevails just now in our scientific century. From the mathematician to the practicing physician, every scientifically thinking man, in answer to the question how he supposes the world is intrinsically constituted, would sum up his view, by say- ing that the universe is composed of atoms in motion, and that these atoms and the forces operating between them are the ulti- mate realities of which individual phenomena consist. The phrase can be heard and read in hundredfold repetitions, that no other explanation of the physical world can be found than one that rests upon the “mechanics of atoms”; matter and motion seem to be the ultimate concepts to which the diversity of natural phenomena must be referred. This conception may be called scientific materialism. I purpose to express my conviction that this so generally ac- cepted conception is untenable; that this mechanical view of the world does not answer the purpose for which it has been formed, and that it is contradictory of indubitable and generally known * The most available source of information on this subject is the historian Gibbon (De- cline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edition with notes by Milman, Guizot, and Smith ; New York, Harper’s), who in turn specially cites as the authority for his statements the two collections of ancient laws designated by the names of the two Byzantine Em- perors under whom they were made, as the Codex Theodosianus and Codex Justinianus, and the writings of Zosimus, a Greek historian, who lived in the early part of the fifth century 4. D., and whose history of the Roman Empire is still extant. For an exceedingly graphic account of Roman experiences in attempting to tax personal property (from which quotations have here been made) see Roman Imperialism, by J. R. Seeley, London, 1870. + An address delivered before the third general session of the meeting of the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians, at Lubeck, on September 20, 1895.

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59° POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and recognized truths. There can be no doubt of the conclusion to be drawn from this proposition: this scientifically untenable conception must be given up, and replaced, if possible, by another and better one. I believe that I can answer the question that would naturally be asked here, whether another better view ex- ists,in the affirmative. What I have to say on the subject will therefore be legitimately divided into two parts—the destructive and the constructive. It is easier in this case, as in others, to destroy than to build up, and the insufficiency of the usual mechanical view will be easier to demonstrate than the sufficiency of the new one, which I shall call the energistic view. But if I declare at once that this new theory has already had opportunity to show its quality in the field of experimental science, so favor- able to calm examination and impartial testing, it will then be able, even if it can not secure conviction of its correctness, to demand recognition of its claim to consideration. It may not be superfluous for me to announce in the beginning that I contemplate an exclusively scientific discussion. I put away absolutely and unconditionally all conclusions which might be drawn from the result for other, ethical and religious, pur- poses. I do this, not because I undervalue the importance of such considerations, but because my result has been obtained independ- ently of them, purely on the ground of exact science. Even for the tilling of this ground the word holds good that he who puts hand to the plow and looks back is not made for the kingdom. The naturalist is pledged to declare what he has found, whomso- ever it may hurt or help, and we may surely trust that earnest seeking, though it may lead us astray for a little while, will never do it permanently. I do not forget that my attempt places me in contradiction with the opinions of men who have achieved much in science, and to whom we all look up in admiration. I hope you will not impute conceit to me because I differ from them on so important a subject. It is not conceit when the sailor whose post is in the “crow’s nest” causes the course of the great ship on which he is only a servant to be turned by the cry of “ Break- ers ahead!” It is his duty to tell what he sees, and he would fail in this duty if he neglected to do so. In the same sense I have a duty to discharge. Yet none of you is obliged to change his scientific course merely on my call of “ Breakers ahead!” Each of you may test whether a reality stands before my eyes, or Iam deceived by a vision. But since I believe that the special kind of scientific work which is my calling permits me for the moment to discern certain phenomena more clearly than they appear from other points of view, I should consider it wrong if I failed for reasons outside of it to speak of what I have seen. In order to set ourselves right in the infinity of the world of

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THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 591 phenomena, we pursue always and everywhere the same scientific method. We put like by the side of like, and seek what is com- mon in diversity. In this way is the gradual mastery of the infin- ity of our phenomenal world achieved, and more effective means for compassing the purpose arise in successive development. From bare comparison we pass to system, from this to laws of Nature, and the most comprehensive form of these is compressed into the general principle. We perceive that the phenomena of the actual world, unlimited as is their diversity, still represent only quite definite and well-marked instances of formally conceiv- able possibilities. The significance of the laws of Nature consists in the determination of the real cases out of the possible, and the form to which they may all be traced back is the ascertaining of an invariant, a something which remains unalterable, even when all other criterions within the possible bounds defined by the law change. Thus we see that the historical development of scientific views is always associated with the discovery and elaboration of such invariants; in them are revealed the milestones of the high- way of knowledge which mankind has trodden. One such invariant of universal bearing is found in the idea of mass. This not only gives the constants of astronomical laws, but is not less invariably illustrated in the most incisive changes to which we can subject the objects of the outer world—chemical processes. For that reason this idea, as being highly adapted to the position, has been made the center of scientific legitimacy. It was, however, in itself too poor in substance to serve for the representation of the manifold phenomena, and had to be corre- spondingly extended. This was done by associating with that simple mechanical idea the series of properties, in their propor- tion, which are experimentally connected with the property of mass. Thus originated the idea of matter, in which was grouped all that was sensibly connected with mass, and continued with it, such as weight, volume, chemical properties, etc., and the physical law of the conservation of mass passed into the metaphysical axiom of the conservation of matter. It is important to understand that with this extension a multi- tude of hypothetical elements were introduced into a conception that was in the beginning wholly free from hypotheses. Chem- ical processes, in particular, must be interpreted in the light of this view against the seeming, not as implying a disappearance of the matter affected by the change and its replacement by new matter with new properties. The theory rather became accepted that even when all the sensible properties of, for example, iron and oxygen disappear in iron oxide, iron and oxygen are never- theless present in the resultant substance, and have only taken on other properties. We have now become so accustomed to this view

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592 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. that it is very hard for us to perceive the strangeness, yes, the absurdity of it. When we reflect that all we know of any par- ticular substance is of its properties, we see that the thought that it is still present, but has no longer any of its properties, is not far removed from pure nonsense. In fact, this purely formal conception only serves to help us harmonize the general facts of chemical processes, particularly the stoichiometrical laws of mass, with the arbitrary conception of a matter unchangeable in itself. But even with this extended conception of matter and the ne- cessary corollaries besides, we can not comprehend the mass of phe- nomena—not once in inorganic Nature. Matter is thought of as something at rest, unchangeable; in order to reconcile this thought with the view of the constantly changing world, we have to complement it with another, independent of it, which shall bring changeableness to pass. Such a supplementary idea was set forth by Galileo, the creator of scientific physics, in the concep- tion of force, as the constant cause of motion. Galileo had discov- ered a highly important invariant for the variable phenomena of free and induced falling. By the application of a self-existing gravity, the effects of which continuously accumulate, he made the complete explanation of these processes possible. The pregnancy of this conception was demonstrated by Newton, who, with his thought that the same force was operative as a function of the dis- tance between the heavenly bodies, conquered the whole visible stel- lar world forscience. This advance it was, chiefly, which aroused the conviction that all other physical phenomena could be ac- counted for in the same way as those of astronomy by the same auxiliary. Then when it resulted, further, at the beginning of our century, through the labors of a number of eminent astrono- mers, principally French, not only that Newton’s law of gravita- tion could account for the motions of the heavenly bodies in their larger features, but that it sustained the closer and far more thorough second test of accounting for the deviations from the typical forms of motion, the perturbations, the confidence in the fruitfulness of this conception was increased in an extraordi- nary measure. What could be more readily suggested than the supposition that the theory which had been competent to account so completely for the motions of the great world was also the right and only means of reducing the processes in the smaller world of atoms to scientific control ? Thus arose the mechanical view of Nature, according to which all phenomena, especially in inanimate Nature, were traced back ultimately to the motions of atoms under the same laws as were recognized for the heavenly bodies. It was a necessary consequence that this conception of the realm of inorganic Nature should be applied to animate Nature

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THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 593 as soon as it was perceived that the same laws which prevailed there could also claim their inviolable right here. This view of the world found its classical expression in Laplace’s idea of a “world formula,” by means of which every past and future event could be brought about in a strictly analytical way according to mechanical laws. For such a work,a mind was required which was far superior to the human mind, but was still essentially like it and not fundamentally different from it. We do not ordinarily remark in how extremely high a measure this generally current view is hypothetical, even metaphysical ; but are accustomed, on the other hand, to regard it as the maxi- mum of exact formulation of actual facts. In contradiction to this it should be declared that a confirmation of the consequence that should flow out of this theory—that all the non-mechanical processes, like heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemism, are really mechanical—can not be reached in any single case. It has never been possible in any one of these instances so to account for the actual conditions by a corresponding mechanical system that there should be no remainder. Mechanical interpretations, it is true, have been given with more or less considerable success to individual phenomena; but when the attempt has been made to account for all the facts in any given field by means of a mechanical conception, it- has always and without exception come to pass that an irreconcilable contradiction appeared at some point, between the actual state of the phenomena and that which the mechanical conception would lead us to expect. Such contradictions might remain hidden for a long time; but the history of science teaches us that they will inevitably sooner or later come to light; and that all that we can say with full certainty of such mechanical conceptions or analogies as are usually called mechanical theories of the phe- nomena in question is that they will at any rate fill the gap for the present. The history of optical theories affords a conspicuous example of these conditions. So long as all optics included nothing more than the phenomena of reflection and refraction, an interpretation was possible under the mechanical scheme proposed by Newton, according to which light consists of small particles which, thrown out straightwise by shining bodies, behaved according to the laws of moving and perfectly elastic masses. That another mechan- ical view, the undulatory theory proposed by Huygens and Euler, accomplished quite as much, might make the exclusive validity of the former theory doubtful, but could not deprive it of its pre- dominance. But when the phenomena of polarization and inter- ference were discovered, Newton’s mechanical conception was found wholly inadequate, and the other, the undulatory theory, VOL, XLVuL—42

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‘ ee me ee ie Be a ‘ted tu ¥ i iss ; zt . ee, wena SOP ne ee a aes - = _ wee et eee oe ee eee + 594 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. was received as proved, because the essential facts at least of the new departments were deducible from its premises. The life of the undulatory theory as a mechanical hypothesis has, however, been a limited one, for it has been borne to the grave in our own time without display, and been replaced by the electro- magnetic theory. The cause of its death is shown very plainly wifen we dissect the corpse. It was carried down by its mechan- ical constituents. The hypothetical ether, on which the task of undulating was imposed, had to do this under peculiarly hard conditions, for the phenomena of polarization demanded per- emptorily that the undulations should be transversal; but such undulations presuppose a rigid body, and Lord Kelvin’s calcula- tions have shown, as a final result, that a medium with such prop- erties as this ether must have is not stable; whence the con- clusion is inevitable that it can have no physical existence. In order to spare the now accepted electro-magnetic theory of light from such a fate, the lamented Hertz, to whom this theory owes so much, expressly denied that he saw anything else in it than a system of six differential equations. This termination of the evolution speaks more impressively than ,I ever can against the permanent usefulness of the formerly current mechanical theorizing. But I hear it said, Those theories have been so fertile. Yes, they have been so through the sum of correct constituents in them, as they have been damaging through their false ones. What were the correct and what the false had to be determined by long and costly experiments. The result of our discussion so far is first a pure negative. We have learned how not to do it, and it seems to be of little use to follow out such negative results, Yet we can point out a gain here, which will not appear worthless to many of you. We find it possible, as we go, to refute critically a view which had no small credit in its time, and caused great concern to many of those interested in the discussion. I refer to the widely known propositions which the eminent physiologist of the University of Berlin, Emil Du Bois-Reymond, made, first twenty-three years ago, on the occasion of the meeting of natu- ralists at Leipsic, and afterward in some more widely read writ- ings, relative to the prospects of our future knowledge of nature, and which culminated in the famous expression ignorabimus. In the long controversy which followed this address, Du Bois-Rey- mond, so far as I can see, remained essentially the victor against all attacks, for all his antagonists proceeded from the same prin- ciple from which he inferred his ignorabimus, and his conclusions stood as firmly as that principle. ‘This principle, which in the meanwhile had never been brought in question by any one, was the mechanical theory of the world—the supposition that the solu-

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THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 595 tion of the phenomena in a system of moving mass-points is the end which the theory of Nature is trying to reach. If this princi- ple falls, and we have seen that it must fall, the ignorabimus falls with it, and science again has free course. I do not believe that you will accept this result with surprise, for, if I can judge from my own experience, hardly a naturalist has seriously believed in the ignorabimus unless he has failed to make clear to himself in what point that in it which is untenable lies. But the gain to the negative criticism of the mechanical theory of the world accruing from the formal laying of that menacing specter may be of some value to many thinkers who have nothing to oppose to the inevitable logic of Du Bois-Rey- mond’s demonstration. What is here laid down for the sake of clearness, in respect to these particular discussions, has, however, a considerably wider bearing. The refutation of the mechanical construction of the universe touches the basis of the whole materialistic theory of the world, the terms being taken in the scientific sense. It appears a vain undertaking, with ultimate failure decreed to every earnest effort, to interpret known physical phenomena mechanically ; hence the conclusion is unavoidable that the attempt can still less succeed with the vastly more complicated phenomena of organic life. The same contradiction of principle forces itself upon us here, and the supposition that all natural phenomena can be traced back primarily to mechanical factors can not even be designated an available working hypothesis. It is a mere error. The following fact bears most plainly against this error: Me- chanical equations all have the property of permitting the ex- change of the sign of time—that is, the theoretically perfected mechanical processes can as well go backward as forward. In a purely mechanical world there are therefore no earlier and later in the sense of our world: the tree might be changed into a twig or a seed, the butterfly to a caterpillar, and the old man to a child. The mechanical theory has no explanation of the fact that this does not take place, and, on account of the'property of mechan- ical equations which we have mentioned, can have none, The actual irreversibility of real phenomena also demonstrates the existence of processes that are not representable by mechanical equations ; and with this the condemnation of scientific material- ism is pronounced. It thus appears to result certainly from these considerations that we shall have finally to renounce the hope of explaining the physical world intuitively by tracing its phenomena back to a mechanics of the atoms, But, I hear it said, if the conception of moving atoms is taken away from us, what means is left of form-

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596 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ing a picture of the reality ? To such a question I might reply, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any image or any likeness!” Our object is not to see the world in a more or less darkened or distorted glass, but as immediately as the constitution of our mind will permit. To set realities, demonstrable and measurable magnitudes, in definite relations with one another, so that when one is given the others will follow—that is the purpose of science, and it can not be fulfilled by the substitution of any hypothetical figure, but only by the demonstration of the mutual dependencies of measurable magnitudes. This road is undoubtedly long and toilsome, but it is the only permissible one. We do not have to go upon it, however, de- spairing of ourselves seeing the end of it, and merely hoping that it may lead our children to the desired heights. No, we our- selves are the happy ones, and the most hopeful scientific gift which the departing century can offer the dawning one is the replacement of the mechanical theory by the energistic. I lay at this point great weight on the declaration which I make that we are not dealing with some fresh novelty, first given in our time. No, we have been in possession of the truth for half a century without knowing it. If there ever was a place for the expression “mysteriously evident,” it is here; we can read it every day, and do not understand.it. When fifty-three years ago Julius Robert Mayer first dis- covered the equivalence of the different natural forces, or, as we should say now, of the various forms of energy, he made a great advance toward an ultimate solution of the problem. But, ac- cording to a constantly recurring law in universal thought, a new fact is never accepted in its primary clearness and simplicity. The receiver, who has not inwardly felt the advance, but has taken it in from without, strives first of all things to connect the new as well as he can with what is already existing. Hence the new thought is obscured, and, although not exactly falsified, is robbed of the best of its force. So strong is this peculiarity of thought that it does not even leave the discoverer free; as even the powerful mind of Copernicus was competent to let the sun and earth change places in their motions, but not to comprehend the simple motions of the other planets; to account. for these he ad- hered to the received theory of epicycles. So it was with Mayer. Hence, as it nearly always is, the work of the next generation consists, not in harvesting the results of the new knowledge, but rather in removing again, piece by piece, the involuntary additions that do not belong to the subject, till at last the fundamental thought can come out in its whole plain identity. A similar development can be perceived, even in our case, After J. R. Mayer had defined the law of equivalence, his theory

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THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 597 of the equivalent transformability of the different forms of energy was too paradoxical in its simplicity to be immediately ac- cepted. Rather have the three physicists to whom we are most indebted for the continued study of the law—Helmholtz, Clausius, and Lord Kelvin—believed that it must be interpreted as imply- ing that all the different forms of energy are fundamentally the same—mechanical energy. In this way, what was regarded as most pressing—close connection with the prevailing mechanical conception of Nature—was reached; but a decisive side of the new thought was lost. It required a half century for the idea to mature that this hypothetical addition to the law of energy did not give depth to the theory, but detracted from it on its most significant side— its freedom from all arbitrary hypothesis. And not even the recognition of this methodical circumstance, but the ultimate failure of all attempts satisfactorily to explain all the other forms of energy mechanically, has been, so far as our advance has as yet proceeded, the decisive reason for giving up the mechanical ex- planation. : You are impatient to learn how it is possible to form, by means of so abstract an idea as energy, a theory of the world that can compare in clearness and intuitiveness with the me- chanical theory. I do not find the answer hard. What do we know of the physical world ? Evidently only what our orgaus of sense permit to reach us from it. But what are the conditions under which these organs act? Turn things as we will, we find nothing common but that the sense organs react upon differences of energy between them and the surroundings. In a world the temperature of which is everywhere that of our body, we would know nothing of heat, just as we have no idea of the constant atmospheric pressure under which we live, and as we never gain knowledge of it till we establish a different pressure. You will admit this, but you will not therefore give up mat- ter, because energy must havea bearer. But I ask you, why ? When all that we learn of the outer world are conditions of its energy, what ground have we for presuming anything in this same outer world of which we have never learned anything ? Yes, I may be answered, energy is only something thought of, an abstraction, while matter is real. I reply: The contrary! Matter isa thing of thought, which we have constructed for ourselves, rather imperfectly, to represent what is permanent in the change of phenomena. Now that we begin to comprehend that the effec- tive thing—that is, that which affects us—is only energy, we have to determine in what relations the two stand ; and the result is in- dubitable that the predicate of reality can be ascribed only to energy.

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598 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. This decisive side of the new theory will come more plainly into view if I present the concept in a brief historical sketch. We have already seen that the progress of science is marked by the discovery of more and more general invariants; and I have shown how the first of these unchangeable entities, mass, has ex- panded into matter—that is, mass endowed with volume, weight, and chemical properties. Yet this idea was obviously insuffi- cient from the beginning to cover the incessant variability of phenomena ; and since Galileo’s time, that of force has been added as a means of accounting for it. Yet force was destitute of the property of unchangeableness; and after functions were found in mechanics, in living force, and work which manifested themselves as partial invariants, Mayer discovered in energy the most uni- versal invariant, dominating over the whole domain of the physi- cal forces. Conformably to this historical development, matter and energy continued existing together, and all that we could say of their mutual relations was that they mostly appeared with one another, or that matter was the bearer or the vessel of energy. Are matter and energy, then, really different from one another like, for instance, body and soul? Or is not rather what we know and express of matter already comprised in the idea of energy, so that we can represent all phenomena with this one entity? In my opinion the answer can not be doubtful. What is included in the idea of matter is, first, mass—that is, the capacity for momen- tum; next, volume, or space-filling energy; then gravity, or the peculiar kind of static energy which is manifested in general weight; and, lastly, chemical properties, or chemical energy. We still have only energy ; and if we think on about these vari- ous kinds of matter, there is nothing else left us, not even the space it occupies, for this, too, is knowable only by the application of energy, which is required to compress matter within it. Hence matter is nothing but a spatially contiguous group of different energies, and all that we can predicate of it we predicate only of these energies. What I am at pains to assert here is so important that you will pardon me if I try to approach the subject more closely from another side, Permit me, therefore, to take the most drastic ex- ample I can find. Imagine that you are struck with a stick. What do you feel, the stick or its energy ? The only possible an- swer is the energy, for the stick is the most harmless thing in the world, so long as it is not made to strike. But we can also run against a stick at rest. Very true; and what we feel then is, as I have already declared, the difference in the conditions of energy as opposed to our sense organs; and it is therefore all the same whether the stick is struck against us or we are pushed against

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THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 599 the stick. If both have the same velocity, and that in the same direction, then the stick exists no more for our feeling, for it can not come in contact with us and effect an exchange of energies. These premises show, I hope, that all that it has hitherto been possible to represent with the aid of the ideas of matter and force can be represented, and much better, by means of the idea of en- ergy; all that is required is a transference of the properties and laws which have been ascribed to the former to the latter. We further gain the very great advantage of avoiding the contradic- tions which were attached to the former mode of conception, and which I have exposed in the former part of my thesis. While we make no other supposition concerning the connection of the different kinds of energy with one another than that given through the law of the conservation of forces, we gain liberty to study objectively the various properties appertaining to these several kinds of energy, and can thus, by the rational considera- tion and arrangement of these properties, set up a system of sorts of energy which will reveal to us exactly the similarities as well as the differences between them, and will therefore carry us scien- tifically much further than can be done by the obliteration of these differences by the hypothetical assumption of their intrinsic identity. We find a good exemplification of this position in the kinetic theory of gases, which is now almost universally accepted, according to which the pressure of a gas arises from the collisions among its moving particles. Now, pressure possesses no special direction: a gas presses equally in all directions, but a collision is dependent on a moving object, and the motion has a definite direction. Consequently, there can be no turning back of one of the bodies immediately upon the others. The kinetic hypothesis deals with this difficulty by artificially neutralizing the proper- ties of direction appertaining to the collisions through the assump- tion that the collisions take place equally in all directions with- out distinction. In this case the artificial adaptation of the prop- erties of the different energies may be successful, but in other cases it is not quite possible... Thus, for example, the factors of electric energy—tension and quantity—are magnitudes which I might propose to call polar; that is, they are not only desig- nated by a numerical value, but they also possess a sign of such form that two equal magnitudes of opposite signs add up as noth- ing, and not as of double value. Such purely polar magnitudes are not known in mechanics. This is the reason why it will never be possible to find even a barely passable mechanical hy- pothesis for electrical phenomena, If such a mechanical entity with properties of polarity could be constructed—which is per- haps not impossible, and is at any rate worth a thorough investi-

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600 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. gation—then we should have the material for illustrating at least one side of electricity mechanically. It may, indeed, be said here with certainty that only one side is considered, and that here also the defectiveness, without exception, of all mechanical hypotheses is demonstrated, and the full completion of the figure prevented. When we have really traced the laws of natural phenomena back to the laws of corresponding kinds of energy, what advan- tage have we gained ? First, the very important point that a sci- ence free from hypothesis is possible. We inquire no longer for forces which we can not exhibit, acting between atoms which we can not observe, but we ask, when we would judge respecting a process, concerning the kind and number of the energies going into it and issuing from it. We can measure them, and all that it is necessary to know can be expressed in that form. How enor- mous a methodical advantage that is will be clear to everybody whose scientific conscience has suffered from the unceasing amal- gamation of fact and hypothesis which the physics and chemistry of the present offer as rational science. The energistic is the way in which Kirchhoff’s variously misunderstood demand for replac- ing what is called the theory of Nature by the description of phe- nomena can be fulfilled in its right sense. With this freedom from hypothesis of energistic science is at the same time associated a simplicity which, it can be said without hesitation, has not been reached before. I have already pointed to the philosophical sig- nificance of this simple principle in the comprehension of natural phenomena. It lies in the nature of the matter, but might also well be declared on other considerations, that an immense advan- tage will result to the teaching and comprehension of science by means of this philosophical simplification. To cite only one ex- ample, we might assert that all equations, without exception, which relate two or more different kinds of phenomena to one another, must be equations between magnitudes of energy, else they are not possible. This is a consequence of the fact that ‘besides the conceptions space and time, energy is the only entity that is common to the different fields, and in fact to all, with- out exception; comparisons can not be made between different fields otherwise than by the portions of energy that come into question. . I shall have to refrain from showing here how an immense number of relations, a part of which were already known and a part are new, can be immediately written down by means of this view, while formerly they had to be deduced by more or less de- tailed calculations. I can not either set before you in comparison the new sides which other already, if not so perfectly known propositions of thermodynamics, the most extended part of ener-

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be py er THE FAILURE OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 601 gistics, have exhibited in the light of the general theory of energy. All these things must indeed be so, if what I have said to you of the significance of the new theory is well founded. I need not re- vert to this again. But I can not forbear proposing a final question. When we have succeeded in grasping a significant and fruit-bearing truth in its entire, even magnitude, we are only too easily inclined to regard all as likewise concluded in its circle which comes within the field in question. We see this fault perpetrated every day in science, and the opinion which I have devoted half of the time allotted to me in contesting has grown out of just such an error. We shall therefore have to ask ourselves at once, Is the energy which is so necessary and useful for the understanding of Nature also sufficient for that object? Or are there phenomena which can not be wholly accounted for by the laws of energy as they are yet known ? I believe that the responsibility which I have assumed toward you through my thesis can not be better discharged than by my declaring that these questions must be answered with a denial of the universal competency of energy. Immense as are the advan- tages which the energistic theory of the world has over the me- chanical or the naturalistic, there can still, it seems to me, some points be indicated which are not covered by the acknowledged principles of energistics, and which, therefore, point to the exist- ence of principles transcending these. Energistics will exist by the side of these new principles. Only it is not, as we must already perceive, to be the future most comprehensive principle for the mastering of natural phenomena, but will be manifest, presumably, as a particular instance of still more general condi- tions, of the form of which we at this time can certainly have hardly a foreboding. . I do not apprehend that what I have said has depreciated the mental advance for which so much has been claimed; I have my- self extolled that advance. For it has more than once occurred to us that science can never and nowhere recognize any limits to its progress, and even in the midst of the contest for a new pos- session the eye should not be blind to the fact that beyond the ground we have succeeded in winning extend other stretches that must be acquired later on. In the former time we could put up with the dust and smoke of the conflict preventing our looking into the narrow limits of the battlefield. To-day this is no longer permissible; to-day we shoot with smokeless powder—or, at least, ought to—and have, therefore, with the possibility, also the duty, of not falling into the errors of earlier epochs. a

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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. STEPPES, DESERTS, AND ALKALI LANDS. By Pror. E. W. HILGARD. i lg average reader feels but a moderate interest in the sub- ject of steppes, which he usually associates with roving herds and Tartar or Indian tribes, whose periodic raids have in the past been a standing source of disquiet to civilization, whether in the Occident or Orient. The predatory habits of these people seemed to be proof sufficient of the fact that the countries occupied by them are not able to support permanently a population devoted to agricultural and industrial pursuits, and that their inhabitants are under more or less natural stress toward levying forced con- tributions upon their neighbors in order to eke out their existence in a satisfactory way, as in the case of the tribes of the deserts properly so called. As to alkali lands, so far as they are known and considered at all, they are regarded only as obstacles to the settlement and cul- tivation of the otherwise desirable lands whose continuity they mar, aside from the discomfort their pungent dust and saline water causes to the overland traveler; while their Old World equivalents, the “salt steppes” of southeastern Russia, central Asia, and northern Africa, are among the most disconsolate images conjured up by the imagination of those who traverse or read about them. Moreover, it is currently supposed that these regions owe their saline soil to the evaporation of former salt lakes or seas, and that an indefinite amount of similar salts lurks below the surface, ready to replace whatever may be removed in any attempt to reclaim the lands for cultivation. From this point of view it is hard to understand why the peo- ple foremost in ancient civilizations should have chosen for their abodes, and should have developed their civilization rather pre- dominantly, in regions either adjacent to deserts, or having, dur- ing a considerable portion of the year, the aspect and character of the ill-reputed steppe. Egypt is the example nearest to Europe, but Asia Minor, Syria (including Palestine, the “land where milk and honey flows”), Persia, Arabia, and (crossing the Indus) north- ern India, the classic ground of the Vedas and Mahabharata, are more or less tainted with “the breath of the desert,” as well as with its actual presence to a greater or less degree. Looking westward, we again find the old Carthaginian and later Moorish civilization on the borders of the desert. Crossing the Atlantic, we find the empire of the Incas on the steep, bare, uninviting western slope of the Andes, when just across the divide there lay the rich countries now forming the Colombian republics and typically exuberant Brazil. In North America, likewise, the civ-

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STEPPES, DESERTS, AND ALKALI LANDS. 603 ilization of the Aztecs and Toltecs was developed not in the won- derfully prolific tierra caliente, but on the arid plateaus of Old and New Mexico; persisting while the builders of Palenque and Copan had already passed into oblivion. It seems as though a strange infatuation had possessed these ancient nations in the preference given to bare, sun-scorched plains and mountains, as against the cool shades of the forest-clad countries, which in later times have almost monopolized the abodes of advanced civili- zation. It may be said, of course, that forests offer the inconvenience of affording concealment to a lurking enemy ; a serious considera- tion during the ages when a state of war was the normal condi- tion of mankind. Again, it is said that the necessity of clearing away the forest before cultivation was possible offered an obvious inducement toward the utilization, first, of the treeless regions. The former consideration doubtless weighed strongly in the first beginnings of settlement. And yet our Saxon forefathers, both in the old and new continents, have managed remarkably well in their forested countries, in the face of lurking enemies both animal and human. As regards the difficulty of clearing the forest lands for cultivation, it is amply offset by the necessity, almost universally existing in treeless countries, of providing irrigation if cultivation is to be anything more than a lottery. For forests are limited by a certain minimum of rainfall, below which regularity of crops is dependent upon artificial irrigation. In other words, the countries which have harbored most of the ancient civilizations are regions of deficient rainfall and compul- sory irrigation. And as irrigation means heavy investments of { capital or labor, hence the co-operation of many and the construc- tion of permanent works: it necessarily implies the correlative existence of a stable social organization, with protection for prop- erty rights, and (in view of the complexity of the problem of proper and equitable distribution of water) a rather advanced appreciation of the need and advantages of co-operative organi- zation. a T If, then, the general practice of irrigation is conditioned upon a a not inconsiderable degree of advancement in social organization, , 5 shall we attribute the development of the ancient civilizations referred to only to its conservative influence, or are there other factors that have contributed toward the preference and long- ‘ continued permanence of these polities or populations ? "ie The high cost of irrigation is usually found to be compensated by the high and regular production of the lands irrigated; it is almost a maxim that irrigated lands can support a much denser population than those of countries in which rainfall is relied upon for the production of crops, and where therefore frequent /

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604 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

partial, or entire crop failures are to be looked for. The regular- ity of production, of course, results from command of the water supply as such; the high production has usually been ascribed 46 648 CSCS 4 Pe) = @ + x 3 5 & 2k 2 = ) re | i~4 87 3 z ~~ 33 — s o 3 = Se $ 2S a bs 5 EN/ + * + ++ bat Amounts .02

‘ Foot Second Y Foot Depth of Soil Column — largely to the plant food brought to the land by the stream waters used in irrigation, whether in the form of suspended mud or in actual solution. Especially has the never-failing fertility Third Y Foot Fourth ) Poot

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STEPPES, DESERTS, AND ALKALI LANDS. 605 of Egypt been ascribed to the mud carried down by the flood waters of the Blue Nile from the uplands of Abyssinia during the season when torrential rains prevail there. Without denying a certain efficiency of this cause, a closer ex- amination easily proves it to be inadequate to account for the millennially undiminished fertility of the Nile Delta. The average annual mud deposit of the Nile floods amounts to less than the thickness of a common pasteboard.* Were this the best of stable manure well worked in, it could not produce the effect claimed. But examination proves it to be simply a rich soil, such as thou- sands of farmers could haul and spread upon their lands if it could produce the effect ascribed to this Nile sediment. Besides, per- petual fertility belongs equally to the lands of the neighboring Fayoom, which, being irrigated only with the clear water of Lake Morris, do not receive the benefit of any sediment. But the analysis of that water, or of the clear Nile water itself, does not show it to contain any unusual amount of fertilizing matter in solution. There are other examples, too, of lands perpetually productive for thousands of years without fertilization. One is the “ regur” lands region of the Deccan, forming part of the plateau of south central India ; another is the “loess” region of China, drained by the head waters of the Yellow River, and for ages the granary of that empire. In both these cases no alluvial fertilizing deposits come into play, and there is little or no irrigation. But in both cases we have a semiarid climate, the rainfall being close to the limit of actual deficiency; in the case of Egypt the deficiency is extreme during nine months out of the twelve. What, then, is the effect of a deficient rainfall upon the nature of soils formed under its influence? And can these effects serve to explain, in any measurable degree, the choice of the ancient civilizations ? In the course of his investigations of the soils of the United States, the writer has had occasion to make extensive compari- sons of the soils of the Atlantic humid region with those of the arid and semiarid West. A summary of the results of these com- parisons was given in Bulletin No. 3 of the United States Weather Bureau in 1892. They led to important conclusions of a general nature, some of which could have been readily foreseen on gen- eral principles. Continued investigations made since have given additional confirmation, and have developed new facts having important bearings upon the possible utilization and productive * Taking this at one twenty-fifth of an inch, it would amount to about five tons per acre, or about two good two-horse loads. Three times that amount of stable manure is about the usual dressing for an acre.

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606 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. value of vast land areas thus far considered either irreclaimable or adapted only to scanty pasturage. ' Without going into technical details or figures, the case may be stated thus: Soils are formed from rocks by the physical and chemical agencies commonly comprehended in the term weather- ing, which includes both their pulverization and chemical decom- position by atmospheric action. Both actions, but more espe- cially the chemical one, continue in the soil itself; the last named in an accelerated measure, so as to give rise to the farmers’ prac- tice of “fallowing”—that is, leaving the land exposed to the action of the air in a well-tilled but unplanted condition, with a view to increasing the succeeding year’s crop by the additional amount of plant food rendered available, during the fallow, from the soil itself. This weathering process is accompanied by the formation of new compounds out of the minerals originally composing the rock. Some of these, such as zeolites and clay, are insoluble in water, and therefore remain in the soil, forming a “reserve” of plant food that may be drawn upon gradually by plants; while another portion, containing especially the compounds of the al- kalies, potash and soda, are easily soluble in water. Where the rainfall is abundant, these soluble substances are currently car- ried into the country drainage, and through the rivers into the ocean; which shows in its saline portion (about three and a half per cent) the average composition of the matters permanently leached out of the land. Most of this is common salt—chloride of sodium—but a large portion, if not all, of the other elements known are represented in sea water in a greater or less propor- tion. Among these, potash, lime, magnesia, sulphuric and a trifle of phosphoric acids require mention here. Where, on the contrary, the rainfall is insufficient to carry the soluble compounds formed in the weathering of the soil mass into the country drainage, those compounds must of neces- sity remain and accumulate in the soil. They then constitute what in the western United States is now universally known as te alkali.” “ Alkali” is not, then, as is popularly supposed, something for- eign to the soil, imposed as a special affliction upon the dwellers in the arid or irrigation regions. It is the normal product of soil- formation and soil-weathering everywhere; but in the humid regions it appears only in the bottom and stream waters, and is not perceived in the soil itself. Nor does it in either climatic region consist only of salts inju- rious or useless to vegetation. Its origin, as well as the chemical nature of sea water, proves that it should contain the useful or plant-food ingredients as well; and direct analysis amply confirms

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STEPPES, DESERTS, AND ALKALI LANDS. . 607 this induction. But it also shows that while there are great vari- ations in the composition of the alkali salts in different regions 4 866) 8 MED ALKALI LAND -12 -10 IN TULARE EXPERIMENT STATION. SALTS AT VARIOUS 18 20 2 CU —s 14 =.16 AVERAGE 12 04 .06 Amounts of Ingredients in 100 of Soil

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Sr nin i ce gg I A ag ls ON A LOIN ee ths Same Nite! ge PAO ech FA Oa rs Oe ee eee ee ee ak Me Bie meet Pe sh cm Pak mee em 608 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, and even in contiguous localities, as a rule the useless ingre- dients are present in larger proportions than is the case in the original material from which the soil was formed, or in the latter itself. The question as to what has become of the useful mineral plant food representing this difference is categorically answered by the analysis of the soils themselves, If we analyze, by iden- tical methods, series of the soils of the arid and humid regions respectively, we find constant differences in their composition, that are manifestly due to the conditions under which they have been formed. They show in those of the arid regions, on the average, a markedly greater proportion of certain elements of plant food than in the soils that, under the influence of copious rainfall throughout the year, have been currently leached of whatever soluble matters were set free by weathering. The explanation is, that when these soluble matters are re- tained in the soil for a length of time, they are given the oppor- tunity of entering into the insoluble combinations already men- tioned as repositories of “reserve” plant food—i.e., such as may be gradually drawn upon by plants, either by the direct solvent action of their acid root-sap, or by being again rendered water- soluble by a repetition of the weathering process. Thus the soils of the arid region, whether containing a natural surplus of water-soluble salts in the objectionable guise of alkali or not, are found to be greatly superior, in the native stock of cer- tain ingredients of plant food, to the average soils of the regions of abundant rainfall; their average being, in fact, equal to the most highly productive (usually alluvial) soils of the humid region. The chief substances of which the arid soils thus retain consid- erable amounts that run to waste in the countries of abundant rainfall, are potash, lime, and magnesia. The average ratios of these as found in the United States, for the region east of the Mississippi, when compared with that west of the Rocky Moun- tains (or of the hundredth meridian), by the comparison of over a thousand analyses, are as one to three, one to fourteen, and one to six respectively. But these numerical ratios do not adequately express some of the chief advantages enjoyed by the soils of arid regions. While the large amount of potash they contain relieves the farmer for a long time from supplying to his fields the potash fertilizers that prove so effectual and necessary in the East and in Europe, yet the almost universal presence of a surplus of lime (in the form of carbonate) is perhaps of even higher importance. To under- stand this it is only necessary to remind the reader of the com- mon saying that “a limestone country is a rich country ”—abun- dantly illustrated in the Atlantic States by the blue-grass region

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STEPPES, DESERTS, AND ALKALI LANDS. 609 of Kentucky, the black prairies and “ bluff”-lands of the Missis- sippi Valley, and hundreds of local examples. The common and beneficial practice of “marling” noncalcareous lands illustrates the same axiom. It logically follows that, inasmuch as actual examination shows practically all arid soils to be calcareous, “ arid countries are rich countries ” whenever irrigated ; and the actual and concordant experience of mankind corroborates the con- clusion. In other words, the ancient civilizations have, consciously or unconsciously, chosen countries having naturally rich and durable soils, capable of supporting for a long time a denser population than the forested regions, without resort to artificial fertilization beyond irrigation. This seems to be the simple and rational ex- planation of their marked preference for arid countries; and unquestionably Egypt owes its perennially undiminished produc- tiveness at least as much to its arid climate as to the alluvial de- posits brought down by the Nile, asis shown in the oases of the Libyan Desert, as well as in India and China. But if these things are true, then the steppes and alkali lands deserve the most earnest attention, both of agriculturists and of students of natural economy; for in them lie possibilities for the abundant sustenance and prosperity of the human race that have thus far been almost left out of account. While it is true that irrigation water may not be practically available for the whole of the arid regions of the globe, so much remains to be done in the study of the most economical use of water, of appropriate crops and methods of culture, that even an approximate estimate of actual possibilities in this direction can not yet be made. At all events, it is of the highest interest to study the problem of the reclamation of these intrinsically rich lands in all its phases. Foremost in this problem is the question of the manner of dealing with the “ alkali” salts, which, as experience proves, exist not only on the spots where they naturally show on the surface, for as soon as irrigation is practiced they appear at numerous points where no symptoms of alkali were noted before. Some- times, indeed, the entire area of large farms may in the course of years become thus afflicted, so that orchards and vineyards that have been in bearing for a number of years become stunted, and in spots even perish. Examination of the manner in which such injury comes about shows that it is rarely due to direct action of the salts on the roots. Almost always the injured part is at or near the root- crown, or base of stem or trunk; proving that it is the result of accumulation of the salts at the surface (so often obvious to the eyes), 7n consequence of evaporation. VoL, XLVI.—43 ce" Ri in ee

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610 | POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. It follows that the prevention of surface evaporation, to \the utmost extent possible, is of the first importance. Now, the simplest, cheapest, and most universally practicable mode of diminishing evaporation from a bare land surface is to ~ 30 32 3 36 38 40 A2 44 £6 48 ° o ® 7) 4 > 2 x 7 < o reg a < Qo | < x a = 18 .20 22 2% .% TULARE EXPERIMENT STATION. Amounts of Ingredients in 100 of Soil——~- O2 OF 06 08 .10 12 14 16 PLATES Foot Depth of Soil Column——- keep it constantly in loose, fine tilth, to a depth which varies with soil and climate. In humid climates four inches has been found

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STEPPES, DESERTS, AND ALKALI LANDS. 611 sufficient. In the hot summers of arid countries even more than twice that depth may be necessary. In that case the alkali salts left behind by evaporation will be diffused through so large a mass of soil that no injury can ordinarily result. But experience proves that some alkali soils are, in their natu- ral state, incapable of being reduced to a proper condition of tilth ; and this, as well as the tendency of the obnoxious salts to come to the surface more and more when land is irrigated, has been made the subject of extensive investigations by the Califor- nia Experiment Station, in order to determine the proper methods for the permanent repression of these obstacles to cultivation. These investigations proved, as far back as 1880, that the cause of difficult tillage in alkali lands is carbonate of soda (sal soda), the presence of which is recognized by the blackish spots and rings left on the soil when rain or irrigation water evaporates ; hence the popular designation of “ black” alkali, known to be specially injurious and corrosive. It was also shown that the peculiar ill effects of such alkali can be overcome by the use of sufficient dressings of gypsum or land plaster, which—acting in conjunction with water—transforms the corrosive sal soda into bland and rela- tively innocuous sulphate, or Glauber’s salt. The latter, with more or less of common salt, forms the bulk of the salts in the cases of mild or “ white” alkali, of which a much larger proportion is tol- erated by all plants. Gypsum also has the effect of rendering in- soluble the humus and phosphoric acid that had been dissolved by the salsoda. ; But the rise of the alkali brought about by irrigation seemed to indicate that an indefinite amount of these salts might lurk in the depths of the soil; and that as irrigation wets the land more deeply than would the scanty natural rainfall, and correspond- ingly increases the surface evaporation, permanent reclamation of alkali lands seems difficult if not hopeless. To decide this question, at first examinations of the natural bottom waters of such lands were made, which showed in most cases saline contents not greater than those of many waters long successfully used for irrigation. It then became important to determine just to what depth the impregnation of salts actually reaches, For this purpose borings were made at the Culture Experiment Station near Tulare, Cal., samples being taken by means of a post- hole auger of each successive three inches of soil, down to the depth of two or four feet, as might be required. Each of these (twelve to sixteen) samples was then separately leached and ana- lyzed, determining both the total amounts of salts present and the proportions of the three to five principal compounds. The results of this work in four typical cases are embodied in the curve dia-

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612 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. grams below, which show the facts more plainly than would fig- ures ; the vertical line to the left representing the soil depth (in feet and inches), while on the horizontal lines the percentages of salts in the soil are entered at intervals representing two, or four one-hundredths of one per cent each. The area within the curve generated by connecting the points of actual observation repre- sents, of course, the total of each ingredient indicated. Diagram No. 1 represents the natural condition, the soil being at the time covered with the native spring growth of bright flow- ers. No alkali-salts are seen on the surface at this point at any season. It will be noted that the alkali salts are almost wholly accumu- lated between the depths of twenty and forty inches. Both above and below these limits impregnation is not strong enough to inter- fere with vegetable growth of any kind; within them, the sub- soil is hardened into a sheet of hardpan, which not only prevents the passage of roots by its resistance, but would corrode them by contact with a mixture of salts containing up to ninety-four per cent of carbonate of soda. But as the native vegetation is mostly shallow-rooted and annual, this does not interfere with its welfare. The moisture imparted to the land by the scanty rainfall (about seven inches) evaporates through the roots and leaves of this vegetation during its growing period; when it dies off it leaves the ground completely dry, so that no rise of the salts to the sur- face by evaporation can take place during the season, and the seeds dropped can germinate when the rainy season comes, with- out injury from alkali. Diagram No. 3 shows, on the other hand, what happens when irrigation is practiced on this land (or when the water rises from below by seepage from leaky ditches), and the ground is left bare. The abundant water then dissolves the alkali salts in the subsoil hardpan; and evaporation continuing through the whole year, the entire salts are in the course of a few seasons carried upward nearer to the surface. Diagram 3 shows the state of things under these conditions at the same date as Diagram 1 (May 3, 1895); No. 4, a and b, shows the condition existing near the surface at the end of the dry season, in September or October. It will be seen that at that time the salts have accumulated so near the surface that by taking the soil away to the depth of six inches, from five sixths to seven eighths of the total mass of salts would be re- moved, leaving the land with no more than almost any crop can easily resist. Diagram 2, a and b, shows the state of the irrigated land when sown to barley, it being understood that these samples were taken within ten feet of No.3. A glance reveals that we have here a case intermediate between Nos. 1 and 3. The upward movement of

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613 Ks = > ny = ~ ~ x g = x a S Q wy ny A > a) the alkali salts has been partially checked by the evaporation through the roots and leaves of the crop; whose thin foliage, however, could not act as effectually as the dense, leafy mat formed *"NOILVLS INSWIN3dX3 SYUVINI “v68) YSGW31d3S NINVL | ugpuoo) $ ¥ a1Qnnog 1P40.L v3iVId ~~

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Page 38

fn 614 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. vest time most of the soil moisture was exhausted, only a moder- ate efflorescence of alkali was seen on this land even late in the season. It is thus obvious that when by any means a good “stand” of a leafy perennial crop with deep roots, like alfalfa, can be obtained on alkali land, the rise of the salts resulting from irrigation is measurably checked, and may remain wholly innocuous so long as that crop occupies the soil. Experience amply confirms this conclusion ; but the difficulty of obtaining such a stand is often very great, especially on “ black” alkali land, which “rots” the seed as often as sown. It is then that the use of gypsum to neu- tralize the carbonate of soda often becomes the saving clause, enormous crops being then grown on land formerly considered worthless.’ Diagram No. 5 may illustrate this in the case of wheat, which was grown in 1892 at the Tulare Station on ground that, prior to the reclamation work, would hardly grow even “alkali weeds,” but then yielded grain at the rate of forty-five bushels per acre. The diagrams, however, convey unanimously the fundamen- tally important lesson that the amount of alkali salts in these soils is limited, and lies within such easy reach of the surface that ordi- nary underdrainage at the depth of from three to four feet will relieve these rich soils of their noxious surplus, once forall. Also that toward the end of the dry season the removal of a few inches of surface soil will go far toward relieving the land of the same. A few words should be said in regard to the kind of the salts as well as their quantities. As regards the main ingredients, which may be considered as useless or harmful to vegetation, inspection of the diagrams shows that in no case is the noxious carbonate of soda as abundant near the surface as in the case of the subsoil hardpan in Diagram No.1. Investigation has shown this to be due to the aération which occurs near the surface; while, on the contrary, in a water-logged soil, the “black” alkali is constantly in progress of formation from the “white” or neutral salts. Hence we find the worst of the “black” cases in low or badly drained ground, and in close soils. Here, again, underdrainage affords radical relief. But underdrainage and washing-out of the salts would in many cases be like “throwing out the child with the bath.” For, as has been stated at first, not only the wseless but also the useful or plant-food ingredients, which the farmer purchases in the form of fertilizers, are present in them. They not unusually contain as much as twenty per cent of salts of potash, ten to twenty per cent of saltpeter, and several per cent of soluble phosphates. In one notable case the equivalent of one ton of Chile saltpeter (worth

Page 39

"NOSdA4) HLIM GELVIUL ANV'] IIVATY NO NiVUD ATIAVG ANV LVEHM—'e TZLVIG "1108 Wey! powyejoor * TINS UO *1}08 VAlY pomyyjoar Appiwg re sc oe

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ce a I NE BO LE 616 » POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. about four cents a pound) per acre of ground to the depth of one foot, was found to be present. It would clearly be folly to wash out such quantities of fertil- izing material unnecessarily; and this consideration emphasizes the importance of the less radical means of reclamation already referred to, viz., deep and thorough tillage to minimize evapora- tion, and in the case of “black” alkali the use of gypsum. In California the opening of numerous gypsum mines has already followed the latter recommendation. When once the high productive value of alkali lands is gen- erally realized, enormous areas will be added to the producing lands, not only in the arid region of the United States but in the Old World as well. The Russian investigators in central Asia are rapidly coming to this conclusion, and notably Von Middendorff reports that the inhabitants of Ferghana say that “the salt is the life of their soil” provided there is not too much of it; and that they actually sometimes carry the alkali efflorescences to the poor spots. In India, on the Ganges and Jumna, the typically rich lands of that anciently civilized region have had alkali salts made to rise to the surface in consequence of the establishment of high- lying irrigation canals by the English. Similar reports of high productiveness come from the alkali lands of the border and oases of the Libyan and Sahara Deserts, and from the pampas of Argentina. But it must not be forgotten that the reclamation of these fertile lands requires the command of some pecuniary resources; and that the farmer or settler who depends on an annual crop for his subsistence should not undertake their cultivation at first. As in the case of mines, the wealth that lies within them is not yielded to mere scratching or prospecting, but requires the use of some capital and trained intelligence to become available. THE currency of romantic but incorrect translations of Indian names is illustrated by Gerard Fowke in his paper on the Archzology of the James and Potomac Rivers. Shenandoah, which is popularly interpreted as meaning “sparkling daughter of the shining stars,” is a corruption, accord- ing to the author, of the Iroquoian word Tyonondoa, which means, liter- ally, “there it has a large (high) mountain,” or, “in that place there is a high range of mountains.” On some old maps the name, “The Endless Mountains,” is given to some of the ranges of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt is cited as pronouncing the definition “dark and bloody ground,” of the name Kentucky, to be false, and as giving its true derivation from an Iroquoian word conveying the idea “a place where the grazing is good,’ almost identical in sound with Kentucky, “ while there is no Indian word with anything like the: popular meaning that bears the slightest resemblance to it.” It will be observed that both the amended definitions are corréctly descriptive.

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THE STUDY OF INHERITANCE. THE STUDY OF INHERITANCE. A Review of the Writings of Francis Galton. Br W. K. BROOKS, LL. D. SECOND PAPER. | may be well to remind those who are not familiar with statistical reasoning that a type may exhibit the influence of inheritance and yet be of no value as a basis for generalization on inheritance. The bullet type shows the influence of aim, but if we use it to test the accuracy of aim or the excellence of the rifle we may be led astray if some other influence, such as the weight of the bullet, act on all or on a majority of the shots and escape detec- tion. In this case the type may seem to prove that the rifle is inaccurate or improperly sighted when it is not, and we can not assume that because a type shows the influence of aim it is a test of aim. So acharacteristic or a group of characteristics of living things may conform to the mathematical law of deviation from a mean, and may thus form a type, and this type may show the influence of inheritance, without being a safe basis for generalization re- garding inheritance. This may be illustrated by an example. If we were to tabu- late the prices of all the horses sold within a given period, we should undoubtedly find that they would conform to a type: that there is a mean or average price; that the horses which fetch more than this price are equal in number to those which fetch less, and that the prices group themselves about the mean accord- ing to the law of error. If the term be long enough to include several generations, we shall find that inheritance or “ blood” has a marked influence on price, and that the children of high or moderate or low priced parents are much more likely than horses selected at random to bring the same price. This type will ex- hibit the influence of inheritance, but it will be of no value in studying inheritance unless we can in some way separate the in- fluence of blood from the influence of supply and demand which has far more to do with the average price and with the type. That the price of horses is, on the whole, determined like that of other commodities is obvious, and it is also obvious that the type may be changed by events which have no relation to inher- itance, such as the application of electricity to street cars. A change of this sort, such as took place when steam replaced stage coaches, is a “sport” or sudden and fundamental change of type, but this may also be changed by slight and gradual modifi- VOL, XLV1I.—44

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618 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. cation with the slow growth of a complicated civilization and an increased demand for horses. As inheritance has an influence on the price of horses, what will be the result if we destroy the children of all horses which fetch less than +2 of Galton’s scheme, and breed only from that. fourth of the whole which sell for more than 75° of his centesimal scale ? We may at first get fancy prices for our expensive stock, but if selection cease with this first step, and we supply as many colts as before, while the demand remains unchanged, the price will “ re- vert” to the type, and the mean will become the same as it was. Does this prove that those qualities in horses for which money is paid have “ retrograded to mediocrity ” in these descendants of high-priced parents? It proves nothing of the sort, for the quali- ties which command a price are one thing and the price another. Even if the horses have much more of these qualities than the old stock, the price will still be fixed by the ratio between demand and supply, and while blood will tell in use it will not tell in price. It is clear, then, that characteristics of living things which are influenced by inheritance may conform to a type which exhibits “specific stability,” “regression to mediocrity,” an occasional “sport,” and all the other properties of the types which Galton has studied, without furnishing proof that “inherited” qualities be- have in the same way. To prove this we must cancel, or neutral- ize, or make allowance for all the factors which have an influence upon the type, except “ inheritance.” Galton’s generalizations upon the laws of inheritance from the statistical study of finger prints rests upon the belief that the pat- terns are inherited. If they are not, they can teach nothing of inheritance. He proves by statistics that they are, to some de- gree, dependent either directly or indirectly upon inheritance, just as the price of horses is, but this is not enough. To warrant his deductions he must prove that inheritance is the controlling factor in determining the type; that, in the long run, all the other factors will balance; and this, it seems to me, he fails to prove. He has studied in one hundred and fifty fraternal couples or children of the same parents the frequency with which the same pattern oc- curs on the same digit of both, and he finds that when marked on a scale in which 0 indicates no resemblance and 100° the greatest possible relationship, they show 10° of relationship. This num- ber is great enough to prove the influence of inheritance, but it is too small to show that the patterns are themselves directly in- herited, and it seems to indicate that they are indirectly influenced by some other inherited characteristic, such perhaps as the ratio between the growth in the embryo of the ball of the finger and that of the nail.

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THE STUDY OF INHERITANCE. 619 Inheritance is unfortunately a word which is not always used with scientific precision. Most of the qualities which give a horse its value, as compared with other horses, are due to breeding, but this word has many meanings. Orlando says: “ His horses are bred better ; for besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly hired.” The “breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud,” seems to be a wild mare, with no breeding in the first sense,and the horse which did not lack what a horse should have, “round-hoofed, short- jointed, fetlocks shag and.long. Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostrils wide. High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong. Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttocks, tender hide,” is a thoroughbred. Recent speculations have enforced attention to the difference between these meanings of the word. In the last sense breeding is the influence of ancestry, and it may poostionliy be treated as synonymous with theword ancestry. In the first sense breeding, broadly used, is that influence of the ontogenetic environment for which that most objectionable term “acquired characters” has been thoughtlessly adopted. In his earlier writings Galton, borrowing, I suppose, from the Tempest, uses the word “nurture” to designate it, and this term is so apt and expressive that it should not pass out of use, for it may be given a definite technical meaning without violence to its ordinary use. Using nurture instead of acquired characters for the influence of the environment of the individual, we may speak of the two elements of breeding as ancestry and nurture. At the present day it is obvious that our studies of inheritance can have little value unless we distinguish between these two factors, for many naturalists hold that there is good ground for questioning whether the effects of nurture are ever inherited, and most naturalists admit the possibility that the value of these two factors may be very different. If breeding is to be studied by the statistical method for the purpose of exhibiting the laws of inheritance, we must employ types in which we can separate the effects of ancestry from the effects of nurture; for if we make use of types which do not admit of this analysis, our results may tell us no more of inheritance than the scheme of prices tells us of the value of blood in horses. If, as many teach, inheritance is equivalent to ancestry, and nurture is not inherited, no type in which these two factors are combined can tell us anything about inheritance, It seems probable from Galton’s data regarding the resem- blance between the finger marks of fraternal couples that this is due to nurture in the broad sense of the word, and not to inherit-

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620 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ance, and there is ample evidence that the value in breeding of a given parental characteristic does depend upon its origin, and that one due to nurture has a very different value from one which is itself inherited. Of the 2,459 deaf pupils of the American Asylum, nearly six hundred have married and have become the parents of over eight hundred children, of whom 104, or more than twelve per cent, were born deaf—a ratio which is great enough to prove that in- heritance has some influence. Analysis of the records shows clearly, however, that these deaf children are not uniformly dis- tributed among the married pupils of the asylum, but that the result is influenced by the character of the parental deafness. From 283 of the 590 marriages no children are reported, while from three other families no report is made except that all the children hear, so that the 811 childen which are reported are from only 304 families, and in many of them only one parent was deaf. Of the 101 children of forty of these marriages none are reported as deaf, and all but eleven are reported as hearing, and the 710 children are from the remaining 264 marriages. In fifty-two of the marriages both father and mother were congenitally deaf, and these are the parents of forty-eight out of the 104 congenitally deaf children, but they are the parents of only 151 of the total number of 811 children, and nearly thirty-two per cent of all the children of these congenitally deaf parents are congenitally deaf. In two of the groups in which the marriages may be classified the number of marriages and the number of children are about equal, but there is a most remarkable difference in the number of deaf children. In fifty-five marriages, with 139 children, both parents are re- ported as adventitiously deaf, while in fifty-two marriages, with 151 children, both were congenitally deaf. In the latter group fifty-two children, or 31°78 per cent, are congenitally deaf, only eighty-eight are stated to hear, and no facts are given about the hearing of fifteen of them. In the first group only four of the 139 children, or 3°87 per cent, are reported as congenitally deaf, 129 are reported as hearing, and six are not reported. I have divided all the marriages into four groups: In one all the children hear; in the second from five to six per cent are deaf; in the third from twelve to eighteen per cent are deaf; and in the fourth 31°78 per cent are deaf. In the first group, in which all the children hear, five of the marriages, with eighteen chil- dren, are between a hearing husband and a wife who is adventi- tiously deaf; one marriage with four children between a hearing man and a woman the source of whose deafness is unknown; six marriages, with thirteen children, where the wife hears and the husband is adventitiously deaf; twenty-three marriages, with

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THE STUDY OF INHERITANCE. 621 fifty-one children, where husband is adventitiously deaf and wife deaf from unknown causes; two marriages, with six children, where both were deaf from unknown causes; one marriage, with four children, where husband is deaf from unknown causes and wife hears; and two marriages, with five children, where wife is congenitally deaf and husband deaf from unknown causes, None of the 101 children of these forty marriages are reported as deaf, In the second group, where from five to six per cent of the children are deaf, eighty-seven are the children of thirty-seven marriages where the husband was congenitally and the wife ad- ventitiously deaf; and 139 are the children of fifty-five marriages where both husband and wife were adventitiously deaf. In the third class, where from twelve to eighteen per cent of the children are congenitally deaf, 124 are children of fifty-one marriages where husband was adventitiously and wife congeni- tally deaf; sixty-six were children of sixteen marriages of hear- ing husband and congenitally deaf wife; seventy-two were chil- dren of twenty-six marriages where wife hears and husband is congenitally deaf; and seventy-one of twenty-nine marriages of congenitally deaf husband with deaf wife of unknown origin. In all the families of this group one parent was congenitally deaf. In the fourth class, where 31°78 per cent of the children are congenitally deaf, all the parents in the fifty-two marriages with one hundred and fifty-one children are congenitally deaf. While too few to give quantitative results, these statistics prove that it is the congenital and not the adventitious deafness which is transmitted. Of the fifty-two families in which both parents are congeni- tally deaf, twenty-three have congenitally deaf children. Of the thirty-seven families in which the husbands are con- genitally deaf and the wives adventitiously deaf, two have deaf children—four in one family and one in the other. Of the fifty-one families in which the fathers were adventi- tiously deaf and the mothers congenitally deaf, seven produced deaf children, and nine of the congenitally deaf children came from two families. There are fifty-five families in which both parents are adven- titiously deaf, and from these have sprung four congenitally deaf chiidren—one in each of four families. Four of the sixteen families in which the husbands hear and the wives are congenitally deaf have deaf children. In five families out of the twenty-six in which the husbands are congenitally deaf and the wives hear, there are children born deaf. Six of the twenty-seven families in which the husbands were

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622 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. congenitally deaf and the state of the hearing of the wives is un- known produced congenitally deaf children. Of the twenty-six families in which both parents are deaf and have congenitally deaf children, there are five families in which one of the parents has one deaf parent, seventeen families in which both parents have deaf relatives of the same generation, four in which one parent has deaf relatives of the same genera- tion, and five in which neither parent has deaf relatives of the same generation. Of the twenty-six families in which both parents are congeni- tally deaf and have hearing children only, there is none in which either parent has a deaf parent, so far as reported, twelve families in which both parents have deaf relatives of the same generation, eleven families in which one parent has deaf relatives of the same generation, and three families in which neither parent has deaf relatives of the same generation. This illustration proves that the origin of an individual pecul- iarity has much to do with the question of its inheritance, and that we can not be sure that statistical data illustrate inheritance unless we can separate phenomena of ancestry from those of nurture. Furthermore, in order to prove that children always revert to the mean or type of the race, and are on the average more medi- ocre than their parents, we must prove that this is the case when both parents have the same inherited peculiarity. Galton shows that this is true of the stature of children both whose parents were tall or both short, but he has not shown that it is true when the peculiarity in the stature of both parents is the same inherited peculiarity. He points out that stature may be affected by diversity in the thickness of more than one hundred ‘bodily parts, and it is plain that if the extra height of a tall father is due to a long femur for example, the chances are a hun- dred to one that the femur of the tall mother is normal and that her extra height is due to some other peculiarity—thick interver- tebral bodies, for example. There is statistical evidence from other sources to prove that if both parents have long femurs and have brothers and sisters with long femurs, the children, instead of reverting to mediocrity, may on the average be expected to have femurs very much above the mean, and that some of them may have them longer than either parent. Many facts in our stock of information regarding domestic animals and cultivated plants show that hereditary peculiarities are often very persistent independently of selection, and the ex- perience of all breeders shows that this tendency is greatly inten- sified when both parents have the same inherited peculiarity.

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THE STUDY OF INHERITANCE. 623 Not only is this the case, but it may be proved by many ob- servations that the normal or type to which the average children of exceptional parents tend to revert may itself be rapidly modified. In proof of this I refer to the following experiments in selec- tion by Fritz Miller (Ein Zuchtungs-versuch an Mais. Kosmos, 1886, 2, i, p. 22): Yellow corn is very variable in many respects. The number of rows of kernels on the cob is usually from eight to sixteen; cobs with ten or twelve rows being the most common, while one with eighteen or twenty rows is very seldom found. After searching through several hundred cobs Fr. Miller found one ear with eighteen rows, but none with more, In 1867 he sowed, at different times, and in such a way as to prevent crossing, (1) seed from the cob with eighteen rows; (2) the seed from the finest sixteen-rowed ear; and (3) the seed from the finest fourteen-rowed ear. In 1868 he sowed (1) seed from a sixteen-rowed ear which had grown from seed from a sixteen- rowed ear; (2) seed from an eighteen-rowed ear from sixteen- rowed seed ; and (3) seed from an eighteen-rowed ear from eight- een-rowed seed. In 1869 he sowed (1) seed from an eighteen- rowed ear with eighteen-rowed parents and grandparents; (2) seed from a twenty-rowed ear with eighteen-rowed parents and grandparents; and (3) seed from a twenty-two-rowed ear from seed from an eighteen-rowed ear produced from seed from a six- teen-rowed ear. The results are given in the accompanying table : 1867. 1868. 1869. Number of rows on 16 16 18 18 18 16 cob from which} 14 16 18 16 18 18 18 18 18 seed were taken. 18 20 22 Total number of cobs produced. 658 885 205 1,789 | 262 460 || 2,486) 740 873 Per c’t.| Per c’t.| Per c’t.|| Per c’t.| Per c’t.| Per c’t.|| Per c’t., Per c't.| Per c’t. 8-rowed cobs ..... es éxae 0°5 Pah soos ht aves shee T suse 1 usbe 10-rowed cobs ..... 14°4 3-0 1°0 1°4 0'8 0-2 fea 12-rowed cobs ..... 48°0 | 22°8 | 18°0 || 22°6 | 14°5 7°8 6°1 6°1 2°7 14-rowed cobs ..... 85°6 | 48°6 | 87°8 || 48°5 | 46°7 | 35°4 || 87°3 | 28°56 | 25°38 16-rowed cobs ..... 8-2 | 18°7 | 34°5 || 22-2 | 28-7 | 83°8 || 88°56 | 41°6 | 41°8 18-rowed cobs ..... 0°5 6°8 | 12°6 4°9 | 12°83 | 18°2 || 18°6 | 20°2 | 24-1 20-rowed cobs ..... ewan 0°1 0°38 0°3 1°2 4°4 3-9 2°8 4°8 22-rowed cobs ..... er 6 © wows 0°8 0-2 0°5 0-8 1°0 26-rowed cobs..... — rn eer ere Pee 0°5 ee 12°61) 14°08; 14°9 || 14°15) 14°39) 15°52)| 15°57) 15°70) 16°15 It will be seen from this table that the number of ears with few rows decreases very rapidly in plants grown from seed taken

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624 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. from ears with many rows, and that the greater the number of rows on the ear from which the seed is taken the smaller is the number of ears produced with a small number of rows. It is also plain that, as the number of rows on the ear from which the seed was taken increases, the number of ears produced with a large number of rows increases, and that we have in each case a very considerable number of ears which equal their parents and a few which excel them, even when the parent seeds are far be/ yond the maximum for all ordinary corn. Fritz Miiller says he has never, under ordinary conditions, except in three instances, found an ear with more than eighteen rows, and Darwin puts the maximum at twenty rows; yet we have among the children of seed from a twenty-two-rowed ear no less than 4°8 per cent, or eighteen ears out of 373 with twenty rows, and one ear out of 373 with twenty-six rows, and it will also be seen that the number of children which equal their parents increases in each case in each successive generation. Thus the seed planted in 1867 from an eighteen-rowed ear prodticed 126 per cent of eighteen-rowed children. The eighteen- rowed ear planted in 1868 from an eighteen-rowed parent pro- duced 18°2 per cent of eighteen-rowed children, and the eighteen- rowed seed planted in 1869 from eighteen-rowed parents and grandparents produced 18°6 per cent of eighteen-rowed children. The series is 12°6 per cent, 18°2 per cent, and 18°6 per cent. The rapid change which took place in the “type” after only three years of selection is well shown by the following table, which gives the dominant number of rows at each sowing, and also the percentage of ears which had this number: 1867, 12 rows 48 percent. | 1868, 14 rows. 35°4 per cent. 1867, 14 “ “ 1869, 14 “ “ 1868,14 “ 5 « 1869,16 “ ........ 416 “ 1867, 14 “ . 1869,16 “ “ The minimum for the third generation is equal to the mean for the first; the mean for the third generation, sixteen rows, is very near the maximum for ordinary corn, and the maximum for the third generation is far beyond the maximum for the grand- parents, and much beyond the maximum for the parents. No one can dispute the well-known fact that this sort of pedi- gree selection for a single point quickly grows less and less effective, and soon reaches a maximum; but this is no proof of any “ principle of organic stability,” or anything else except the truth that long ages of natural selection have made the organism such a unit or co-ordinated whole that no great and continuous change in one feature is possible, unless it is accompanied by general or constitutional change.

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THE STUDY OF INHERITANCE. 625 We must not forget, in addition, that, in a state of Nature, se- lection is neither for one feature, nor is it pedigree selection, or breeding from the fittest. It is the extermination of the unfit, and unfitness may come from the imperfect co-ordination of the whole, or from defect in any quality whatever. It is undoubtedly true that many of our domesticated races can be proved to have arisen as “ sports,” and that no great change of type can be effected, by the methods of the breeder, without sports; but there seem to be both evidence and theoretical ground for holding that, in this particular, artificial selection furnishes no measure of natural selection. It seems to me that, notwithstanding the great value of Gal- ton’s data, they fail to prove that the “principle of organic sta- bility ” owes its existence to anything except past selection; that regression to mediocrity occurs when ancestry is studied uncom- plicated by nurture ; that the “ mid-parent” is anything else than the actual parent; that “sports” are fundamentally different from the ordinary differences between individuals; or that nat- ural selection is restricted to the preservation of sports, Our tendency to believe that a type is something more real and substantial than the transitory phenomena which exhibit it is deeply rooted in our minds. As the very nature of this belief renders disproof of it impos- sible, we can feel little surprise at its appearance and reappearance time after time in the history of thought, although science is based upon the well-warranted opinion that, whether types are real or unreal, we know them only as generalizations or abstrac- tions constructed by our minds. out of our experience of the orderly sequence of phenomena. In zodlogy and botany the conception of species is unquestion- ably valid and justifiable, and as its most obvious characteristic is its persistency, as contrasted with the fleeting procession of evanescent individuals, we can not wonder at the vitality of the belief that specific types of life are more real than the individual animals, although Darwin’s work has done away with whatever evidence may at one time have seemed to support this belief. To the further question, whether specific types are inherent in living matter or external and objective to it, Darwin answers that they are both; that they are inherent, insomuch as all their data, or “events,” are properties of the physical basis of life; but that they are external, inasmuch as the agreement of the “events” with the “law of frequency of error” is the effect of the environment. Biology is not a closed science, and Darwin’s view of the matter is not proved; possibly it is not provable; but its great

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626 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. value is in the proof that there is no shadow of evidence for any other view. When embryologists talk about the doctrine of evolution in embryology as antagonistic to the doctrine of epigenesis ; when biologists seek for the origin of species in “laws of variation” which are not the outcome of selection; when they talk about a “ principle of organic stability ” which does not owe its origin to the same agency—it seems to me that they fail to grasp the sig- nificance of Darwin’s work, and that they are wandering from the only path in which we can have any well-grounded hope for progress—the path which tukes its departure from that concep- tion of specific types which leads us to seek for the origin of the “events” which exhibit the type in the physical properties of liv- ing matter, and to seek in the order of Nature external to the organism for the origin of the “law of error,” which forms a type out of these events. wwe i EXERCISE AS A REMEDY.* Br HENRY LING TAYLOR, M. D. |. A anapeoraon is not a remedy which in some mysterious way may prove beneficial in disordered conditions of the system, still less a specific in any given disease, but it may be made the means of producing gentle or powerful effects of a definite kind, which vary with its form, intensity, duration, time of application, method of administration, and the condition of the patient. The problem presented to the physician in a given case is not merely the prescription of exercise, but rather such proportioning and contrasting of the muscular activity to periods of rest that the total result shall be beneficial; here, as always, the patient is to be treated rather than the disease. Exercise employed systemat- ically and with discrimination is of the highest value in the pre- vention of debility and disease, and also in he treatment of certain chronic affections, In many acute and some chronic diseases ex- ercise is positively and actively injurious, and it is always liable to prove so when employed without due regard to its physiological effects. Though most of the useful effects of exercise can be ob- tained under skilled supervision with little or no apparatus, its practical importance is ignored in hospitals, but little recognized in asylums and imperfectly appreciated in private practice. The neglect of exercise as a therapeutic resource is traceable to fail- ure to appreciate the indications for its employment, and perhaps * From advance sheets of Handbook of Therapeutics, edited by Frank P. Foster, M. D., in press of D. Appleton & Co.

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EXERCISE AS A REMEDY. 627 still more to lack of precision in its application. While its proper prescription is undoubtedly more difficult than that of drugs, no drug is capable of producing effects at all comparable, and the care and attention devoted to its intelligent application by physi- cian and patient are well repaid. It is a practical point of the first importance that individuals differ enormously—according to con- stitution, temperament, training, and previous habits—as to the amount of exercise that will be required to produce a given result. While those who have been trained may require severe or labo- rious exercise to produce physiological effects, the writer has met with individuals free from disease in whom the gentlest passive movements, lasting the fraction of a minute, would produce de- cided subsequent stiffness and constitutional disturbance. As it is just these sensitive and undisciplined people who may be most benefited by properly adapted exercise, it is evident that the kind and amount required must not be gauged by any absolute standard but by the reactive powers of the individual. Like some drugs, exercise may produce different and even opposite effects, according to the dosage and consequent intensity of ac- tion. Slow rhythmical passive movements are decidedly calming, while moderately active movements are stimulating to mental ac- tion. A careful distinction should be made between primary and remote effects. Exercise has also its synergists, antagonists, and incompatibles, its acute and chronic toxic effects, and their anti- dotes. The synergists of exercise are fresh air, a nourishing diet, sufficient rest, an unstrained and cheerful mind, and temperate and regular habits; moderate cold and possibly certain tonic drugs are a help to exercise. Exercise is antagonized by the opposite of the above-mentioned, and by toxic substances in the iood. Some interesting facts-have recently been observed as to the effect of the use of tobacco in checking growth and the de- veloping effect of exercise. From measurements of the one hun- dred and eighty-seven men of the class of 1891, Yale, Dr. J. W. Seaver found that the non-users of tobacco gained in weight during the college course 10°4 per cent more than the regular users, and 6°6 per cent more than the occasional users of tobacco. In height the non-users increased twenty-four per cent more than the regu- lar users and twelve per cent more than the occasional users. In increase of chest girth the non-users had an advantage of 26°7 per cent and twenty-two per cent, and an increase of lung capacity of 775 per cent and forty-nine per cent respectively. These facts in regard to the dwarfing effects of tobacco are corroborated by observations on the class of 1891, Amherst, made by Dr. Edward Hitchcock. He found that in weight the non-smokers increased during their course twenty-four per cent more than the smokers; in increase in height they surpassed them thirty-seven per cent;

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628 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. in gain of chest girth, forty-two per cent; and in gain of lung capacity, seventy-five per cent. It is probable that alcohol and other poisons have similar effects. Exercise of the skeletal muscles is contraindicated in hemor- rhage, fever, inflammation, certain toxezemias, and serious injuries. Pain is an uncertain indication; if it result from inflammation or local injury, exercise is contraindicated, otherwise not necessarily. In acute local inflammation exercise is very injurious, since it increases the local congestion. Severe or sudden exertion should not be permitted in cases of aneurism, atheromatous arteries, cardiac vegetations or extreme cardiac weakness, but systematic training may be beneficial in the latter condition. Severe exer- tion should also be avoided soon after eating and in states of great physical and mental fatigue. Nothing will break down the system more quickly than the combination of mental worry or strain with physical prostration, though gentle exercises are often of value in resting the brain by bringing new centers into play, and thus effecting a better distribution of cerebral activity. It is futile to add to the burden of individuals already overworked, and the proper remedy in such cases is the reduction or proper proportioning of their total work, better hygiene, and provision for adequate periods of rest, repose, and recreation, which are the efficient antidotes for the toxic effects of excessive exercise. Well-chosen exercise may often be made to minister to mental poise, and thus to restful effects. It has been pointed out that the individual patient usually needs not exercise or rest exclusively, but exercise and rest in the proper proportions and in the proper order. The beneficial effects of treatment may often be enhanced by placing the two in sharp contrast. Exercise produces a better impression on a background of rest, and rest on a background of exercise; and particular attention should be paid to securing variety of action by contrasting one set of exercises with others involving different groups of muscles, or the same groups in & different manner. The level road may be the harder to travel in the long run. Neither its specific effect in any named disease, still less the piling up of enormous masses of muscle, is the thera- peutic object of exercise, but the production of definite local or general physiological effects. Increased muscular power is usual- ly an incidental result, but marked remedial effects are often pro- duced with very moderate muscular development. The too domi- nant idea of “gymnastics” should not make us lose sight of the vast therapeutic importance of the nervous reactions associated with muscular movements, and of the systematic culture and training of the involuntary neuromuscular apparatus, which cer- tainly depends in large degree on the activity of the skeletal muscles, but is often best elicited by massage, passive move-

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EXERCISE AS A REMEDY. 629 ments, hydrotherapy, and hygiene; all these involve exercise in a fundamental sense, and are of great therapeutic utility, even in febrile states, where exercise of the skeletal muscles is absolutely contraindicated. The professional and domestic occupations, recreations, and sports have been noticed in their relation to the hygiene of exer- cise, and it is desirable that these means, which are within the reach of such large numbers of people, should be more often util- ized therapeutically. For this purpose it should be remembered that many exercises have a preponderating effect on certain organs, “Rowing tells on the breathing organs; the work of dumb- bells, and of other exercises where muscles are moved without progression of the body, tells most on the muscles themselves; and long pedestrian feats, with climbing, tell on the nervous sys- tem. In cycling, as in running, it is the heart and circulation that first give demonstrative evidence of important change of action” (Richardson). Housework, chores, gardening, walking, climbing, cycling, run- ning, swimming, and many other sports give just the kind of exercise that is indicated in certain conditions, due regard being had to the physiological effects of varying dosage. O6certel has shown how the simple exercise of walking may be adapted to sufferers from cardiac debility by prescribing the distance and speed, and the number and length of the rests, on definite paths graduated according to their slope. His interesting and original work has not only given a new direction to the treatment of cer- tain cardiac affections, but is destined to have an important in- fluence in establishing accuracy in the prescription of exercise, Whoever has studied the map of the environs of Reichenhall, Ba- varia, prepared by Oertel for the application of his method, will acquire a vivid idea of what precision of dosing in exercise means. In this map the different paths suitable for the work are marked in four different colors, to indicate those that are nearly level, those slightly sloping, moderately sloping, and steep, and figures are placed along each route to show the space that should be traversed in each quarter hour. The locality itself is prepared for its remedial use by placing benches for resting at suitable dis- tances, and by marking on certain trees near the path circles, col- ored to correspond with the map, to indicate the difficulty of that particular section. By systematic practice on the easier paths the heart and system are progressively trained and strengthened. In- telligent analysis may do the same work for cycling, horseback riding, and many other familiar exercises. In this way the dosage is practically reduced to a definite number of kilogrammetres in a given time, and a step has been taken in placing the prescription of exercise upon a scientific basis.

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630 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Recreations and sports have the inestimable advantage of being taken in the open air and being interesting to those who take them—two factors whose absence in any form of therapeutic exercise is with difficulty atoned for. Athletics, though sharing in these advantages, are not well adapted to most therapeutic pur- poses, on account of their excesses, indefinite dosage, and lack of variety, each contestant being a specialist in one or a few forms of exercise. There remain for consideration the formal exercises of drill of various kinds, gymnastics, Swedish exercises, including passive and mechanical movements, and massage, which is else- where treated of in this work. As the primary purpose of military, fire, and other drills is not therapeutic, they are not well suited to the treatment of dis- ease, though they share in the beneficial effects of systematic ex- ercise. The manual of arms is not adapted to young children, being too formal and too strenuous; the writer has seen cases of lateral curvature, knock-knees, nervousness, and debility in young boys which had apparently been aggravated if not produced by military drill. Modern gymnastics has been largely shaped with reference to military purposes, and, while gymnastic exercises, if well selected and proportioned, do promote muscular development and physical grace and vigor, they are easily carried to an extreme, and in- stances are not rare where they have broken down the constitu- tion, instead of building it up. Feats of skill train the nerve cen- ters more than the muscles, and once the trick is acquired, their value as exercise is slight. Feats of strength often put an inju- rious strain upon the organism, with no corresponding benefit. The arm appears to be the object of all the exercises of modern gymnastics: (Legrange); breasting and other movements which throw the suspension or support of the body upon the arms and shoulders give them unsuitable work, and result in disproportion- ate development of the muscles of the shoulder girdle, often asso- ciated with a rounded back, and little or no increased power of ventilation, since all such feats are performed with a chest fixed and constricted by muscular effort. The gymnastics of the mod- ern gymnasium are in marked contrast with the athletic exercises of the Greeks, with whom the striving for physical perfection amounted toa passion. Their exercises were running, wrestling, boxing, fencing, and throwing the discus, taken in the open air, without apparatus, and exercising the body throughout, and espe- cially in the fundamental associated movements of the trunk and limbs. The defects of ordinary gymnastics have been felt by those interested in physical culture, and have been partly obviated by the introduction of free movements, like running, jumping, and wrestling, and partly by the use of resistance machines, usually

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EXERCISE AS A REMEDY. 631 constructions of levers, pulleys, and weights, designed to exercise special groups of muscles, as in the Sargent system of apparatus. These reward effort, however, with depressing monotony, are devoid of most of the beneficial general effects of exercise, and appear to the writer to lack the elements of a coherent system. The old gymnastic idea, in the endeavor to accomplish certain feats and to pile up large masses of muscle, ignored the intimate co-operation between muscle and nerve, and the delicate balance between co-operating and modifying muscular groups necessary to build up a clear-sighted, well-balanced mind, in perfect and harmonious but largely unconscious mastery of the bodily move- ments. The wise teacher and physician have small interest in gymnastic feats, but direct muscular activity into those channels best suited to promote harmonious mental and bodily develop- ment and adjustment. With the Swedish system of exercises, devised by Ling and elaborated by his pupils, totally different ground is reached. Peter Henrik Ling was a fencing master, who became interested in ex- ercise as a stimulus to development and as a remedy from observ- ing its beneficial effects on his own health. He never took a med- ical degree, but developed remedial exercises into a system, which remains to-day as the basis of the most valuable procedures in therapeutic kinesiology. He also devised systems of educational,’ military, and «esthetic exercises, These exercises are based on the physiological actions of the different muscle groups and their relations to each other, and consist in free voluntary movements executed by the patient in different positions and in a determined order. The remedial movements include, in addition, passive movements executed by a manipulator, and assistive and resistive movements, in which the operator opposes resistance to the move- ments of the patient, or vice versa. To these are added the vari- ous manipulations of massage. The Swedish therapeutic exercises emphasize strongly the local effect of movements, and hence have been called localized movements, and are largely used for specific local purposes. They proceed from the simple to the complex, aiming to establish cor- rect fundamental attitudes and relations, and to invigorate and develop deficient parts through exercises adapted to the particular condition and situation. The value of gentle and passive exercise in conditions of debility, and of the systematic progressive adap- tation of the exercise to the strength of the patient, is recognized and practiced. The Swedish system avoids the abnormal development of spe- cial parts and the gratuitous feats of ordinary gymnastics, and produces normally acting viscera, a graceful carriage, and good muscular and mental control. One school of the Swedes, led by

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632 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Zander, has in the last thirty years developed a system of mechan- ical movements, both active and passive, given by means of appa- ratus. In these the resistance and amount of motion can be grad- uated to the patient’s needs, and the personal element of the operator is eliminated. Each system fulfills certain indications, and neither can wholly supplant the other. If the Swedish school had given us nothing more than passive movements in therapeu- tics, our debt would have been great. The extraordinary promi- nence in recent years of massage as a remedial agent, in so far as it is justified by results, rests largely on the employment with it of passive movements. These enable the patient to obtain many of the benefits of exercise without effort and without undue fatigue, and can be employed in thousands of cases when active exercises are contraindicated or impracticable. Through passive exercises may be obtained the local effects of exercise on the cir- culation, easing of cardiac action or its gentle stimulation, mental discipline, or mental sedation, as in the soothing effects of rocking or swaying movements on infants; in a word, the more harmoni- ous distribution of nervous and vascular activity. It is well to remember Ling’s adage that every movement properly performed is a respiratory exercise, and it is probable that respiratory development may be best attained through climbing, running, and similar exercises by those who are strong enough and energetic enough to take them. Those who most need them, however, are neither strong nor energetic, and it is often impossible to get patients to practice the purely respiratory exercises with sufficient care and persistence. In such cases, where more thorough pulmonary ventilation and respiratory power are required, passive respiratory movements, manually or mechanically given, often serve a useful purpose. There is no more promising field for the therapeutic applica- tion of exercise than in the treatment of the insane and mentally unbalanced and defective. The elder Seguin has shown that the idiotic brain could be most effectively reached and developed through neuromuscular training, especially of the hand, and the value of manual employments, industrial training, and social life has been to some extent recognized in provision for the epileptic, idiotic, insane, and criminal. The striking and oft-quoted results obtained by Dr. Wey in the physical training of vicious and stupid criminals at the Elmira Reformatory by means of im- proved diet and systematic bathing, massage, drill, and gymnas- tics, mark an era in the treatment of the defective classes. A large proportion of previously incorrigibly dull and vicious in- dividuals submitted to a few months of this treatment improved remarkably in physical and mental condition. Itis safe to say that better provision will be made in future in our public institu-

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EXERCISE AS A REMEDY. 633 tions for the proper application of exercise in its various forms of manual training, sports, drill, gymnastics, and special exercises. As exercise is a fundamental factor in the development and culture of the mind, it can be used to modify mental states, and has most important general and special applications in many nervous diseases. The repetition of rather gentle monotonous movements, especially of the automatic or passive kind, tends to allay mental excitement and nervous irritability. If the excite- ment is of the active insistent type, more vigorous exercise of duration to the point of fatigue may be beneficial, but should be semi-automatic, like walking, cycling, or rowing. These prin- ciples find a useful application in the treatment of insomnia. If the patient is dull and apathetic, with sluggish circulation and nutrition, exercises involving quickness and skill—that is, a more lively mental co-operation, like fencing, tennis, or boxing— should be used. In other cases the brain may need to be pro- gressively trained through manual employments. The finer and more delicately adjusted the movements the less their value as muscular exercise, and the more the nerve centers are called into play. Writing, sewing knitting, playing on instruments, and in general the use of the hands mainly are valuable as mental train- ing, but lack the beneficial general effects of vigorous exercise of the more fundamental groups. From its action as a cerebral sedative or tonic, exercise may be used as a means of influencing certain definite areas in the centers, in order to soothe, to stimu- late, or to distribute and proportion mental action; and certain exercises may be abstained from to deprive certain areas of stim- ulation. We know no drug that acts mainly on the arm centers or mainly on the leg centers, but we can with certainty bring either of these centers into action by prescribing indicated exer- cises. In an important group of neuroses due to the excessive repetition of certain fine movements, usually of the accessory kind, involving accurate co-ordination, such as writer’s, teleg- rapher’s, and piano-player’s cramp, and similar troubles, char- acterized by local pain and inco-ordination, usually associated with extreme mental anxiety, the hurtful practice should be stopped and massage and more general exercises involving more fundamental groups substituted. In another class of cases—the bedfast neurasthenics—the nutrition must first be built up by seclusion and systematic feeding, and the neuromuscular system, both voluntary and involuntary, aroused and strengthened by bathing, massage, and passive movements. Patients that would be injured at first by attempts at active movements will thrive on gentle passive movements of the arms and legs, and will soon be actively co-operating. When sufficiently advanced they can be taught to walk, and before they can do much at this they can VOL, xLv111.—45

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634 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. take with great benefit some forms of passive mechanical move- ments, given after the Swedish system with power machinery, and which cause them to execute walking movements, respira- tory movements, and trunk flexions while reclining, and with a minimum of effort and fatigue. Neurasthenics less severely affected can take such movements from the start, and they are indicated where the effects of exercise in equalizing the circula- tion and nervous activity, developing respiratory capacity and the supply of oxygen, increasing peristaltic and hepatic action, and nutrition, are desired for patients who are physically too delicate or who have too little energy or persistence to be able to get much benefit from exercise where vigorous volitional co- operation is involved. When the latter can be successfully pre- scribed the patient is well on the way to recovery. Exercises of endurance, like cycling, rowing, and running, pushed to the point of considerable fatigue, are the most effective aids to continence, since the procreative impulse is the expression of a surplus of energy, and is abated if enough energy is regu- larly used up through muscular work. As the larger number of functional disorders of the digestive system, such as dyspepsia and constipation, are the result either of the habitual neglect of muscular exercise or else of exercise taken under conditions of hurry, nervous tension, or fatigue, it is clear that the regulation of exercise and habits of life mnst be urgently indicated. In conditions of atony the patient must be . trained to a variety of exercises, especially those involving the waist, abdomen, and trunk, among which the more active ones may be gradually introduced. In the cases due to debility from nerve tire, exercises requiring much skill should not be chosen, since these involve increased demands on the higher nerve centers. As there is usually sluggishness of the abdominal circu- lation, those exercises should be selected which will act on the abdominal organs through the muscles of the waist and trunk and upon respiration. Among the best of these is riding, which, moreover, affords just enough variety of scene and interest in the control of the horse to turn the current of an incessantly active brain into new and more restful channels. Riding may be as accurately dosed as walking, and may range from very gentle to exceedingly severe exercise, according to the gait, training, and disposition of the horse, the muscular development, tempera- ment, and expertness of the rider, and the character of the ride. Changing from one mount to another also gives more variety of exercise than always riding the same horse. Abdominal massage is sometimes useful in constipation, as are also the arm, leg, and trunk movements of the Swedes or of the gymnasium, and walk- ing, running, leaping, tennis, and other sports have their uses.

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- EXERCISE AS A REMEDY. 635 Whatever form of exercise is used, absolute regularity in attend- ing to the calls of Nature must be observed. Disorders of nutrition are powerfully affected by exercise, through the voluntary and involuntary muscles as well as through the nerve centers. Respiratory exercises and the exer- cises stimulating respiration and circulation are beneficial in angemia, as are also the scientific application of massage and cold water to promote tissue interchange. By quickening oxygena- tion, the circulation, and the nutritive processes, moderate system- atic exercise causes thin and poorly nourished people to gain in weight as well as in vigor. In most wasting and febrile diseases, toxeemias and inflamma- tions, the strength of the patient is needed to combat the circulat- ing poison, heal the local lesions, and keep the vital processes going, and for these reasons, as well as on account of cardiac debility, muscular exercise is contraindicated, in some instances even during convalescence. Heart failure after diphtheria from changing from the recumbent to the sitting posture, and serious and even fatal relapse following too early sitting up after typhoid fever, are notable instances in point. Exercise of the unstriped muscles by friction and bathing may, notwithstanding, be ex- tremely useful. It is noteworthy that under the supporting treat- ment afforded by cold bathing with friction much greater liberty is allowable. Not only do the patients bear well the lifting into and out of the tub, but some eminent physicians do not hesitate to let their typhoid patients sit up to adjust compresses to the body, to step into the tub, and even to walk to it with some assistance. Exercise in the open air is of the greatest utility in the prophylaxis of phthisis. After the disease is developed exercise must be used with more caution, and in such a way as not to put great demands upon the vital powers of the patient. Moderate exercise out of doors and gentle respiratory exercises may be made beneficial, especially if directed to their gentle tonic effect and toward the better aération of the pulmonary tissue. There is a large class, especially among women, who habitu- ally neglect exercise and lay up large amounts of reserve material in the shape of fat, which becomes burdensome by its bulk, and injurious by impeding the action of the organs in whose sub- stance or vicinity it has been deposited. These people are not always large eaters, but having accumulated a physiological surplus, they have never been able to oxidize it. Exercise of endurance and respiratory exercises are well adapted to aid in burning up this surplus and to improve the health. It may, in addition, be necessary to reduce the ingestive fluids and fat- forming foods.

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636 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. For those who habitually ingest too much rich and nitroge- nous food and take too little exercise, whether suffering from typ- ical gout or not, the systematic use of the muscles, together with a less hearty diet, is of the greatest value. It should be remembered, however, that when gout is developed, severe or unaccustomed exercise may precipitate an attack ; systematically and judicious- ly employed in the intervals, exercise will tend to ameliorate the condition and prevent the recurrence of attacks. In diabetes, another disorder of imperfect metabolism, it has not been suffi- ciently appreciated that the surplus of sugar may be largely oxi- dized through carefully prescribed exercise. Walking is the most convenient form, and the amount should be graduated ac- cording to the patient’s capacity and training. The aversion of the diabetic to exertion may be overcome by allowing limited amounts of bread as a reward for each mile walked. Those who have tried this plan find a decided advantage over a stricter diet and insufficient exercise. The relation of exercise to the treatment of cardiac and circu- latory affections has entered on a new phase since Oertel’s original work. The dominant idea had been hitherto to relieve a weak or damaged heart of strain by avoiding exercise. Oecertel teaches that the work of the staggering or flagging heart may be cut down by reducing the amount of ingested fluids, and the heart trained and strengthened by graduated daily exercise in walking on level and sloping paths. The results reported confirm the . value of the method, and it is hardly too much to say that by accurately dosing and systematically applying this common ex- ercise to meet the need of individual patients he has not only given the profession a valuable remedy, but a new point of view in the treatment of these serious affections. Oecertel’s cases are largely those of cardiac debility from imperfect nutrition of the heart and system, evidenced by fatty deposits in or about the heart, and not rarely elsewhere. This condition is usually the result of a too inactive muscular life, and in Germany is often associated with the ingestion of large quantities of beer, so that the ill-nourished heart has an increased amount of fluid to pump. In such cases a large reduction of ingested fluids is a necessity while attempting to invigorate the heart by graduated and divided doses, at first small, of walking and climbing exercise. Where valvular disease, with or without dilatation, presents similar indications, a similar course may be followed, but such prescriptions must be made with accurate discrimination and analysis of the actual state and needs of the economy.

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THE STORY OF A MONKEY. THE STORY OF A MONKEY. By M. J. DYBOWSKI. Ww. were on the third hour of our march, one morning; it was nearly nine o’clock, and the sun was already getting burn- ing hot, when, turning one of the green capes which the forest sends out in the sea that washes its base, we perceived the gay tricolor flapping near a hut. It was the port of Nyanga (in the Congo country). We had completed a hard day’s work on the previous evening. The great forest, composed of spiny palms and interlacing lianas, drove us continually to the edge of the raging sea; a leaden sun darted its burning rays upon us, and the ‘reflec- tion from the fine sand threw a blinding light into our faces, which we could only endure by half closing our eyes. We were broken up as much by this toilsome march as by the all-envelop- ing heat, which in spite of all the precautions we could take, with helmet and dress of light linen, produced at last that kind of in- solation which is shown by the fever that reigns normally in this country, and which a trifle will arouse. A thing that rendered this march still more difficult was that the sea washing into the lagoons that stretched along the shore made their water brackish, so that we could only get a little fresh water in the evening by stretching out our India-rubber coats to catch the drops from a shower that came up. The sight of the French flag refreshed our strength, and we walked more rapidly to reach it the sooner, and take a little rest that we greatly needed. The port of Nyanga was held by a brigadier of customs, M. Lambert, who gave us the privilege of his house with a sincere cordiality. It was decided that we should remain there two or three days and make some excursions in the neighborhood. Not far from the house was a little straw hut used as a kitchen, to which our host went to give his orders. I followed him, and saw in it, in one corner, tied to one of the posts, a pretty monkey, which as we came nearer to it uttered low cries and stretched its hands toward us. I was struck with the beauty of the creature and asked why it was there. I was told that it had been three years at the post, and that it usually lived at large; but that it was sometimes necessary to tie it, on account of the mischief it would not fail to commit when it was allowed to run where it would. As I took so much interest in it, it was tied to the veranda. We soon became the best of friends. It was very pleasant and familiar. It allowed itself to be caressed, and responded to the advances that were made to it with cries of satisfaction. It played

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638 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, like a cat, getting on our back and climbing up our legs and arms to our shoulder. The animal charmed me by the gentleness of its manners from the beginning, but I was still more attracted to it by curiosity as to the species to which it belonged. Having no manual of descriptions by which to identify it, I was not able, at first, to refer it to any common type. But I considered that I was concerned with a rare, if not new, species of Cercopithecus. The chief officer at Nyanga thought much of the gentle monkey, which he had had for some time, and which entertained him in his idle moments in the extreme solitude in which he lived. Yet, with the kindness I usually receive from the officers of the countries in which I travel, he offered to give it to me; and I confess that the animal was so scientifically interesting that I did not allow him to repeat the offer. When we left the port, two days afterward, I carried the interesting creature with me, and in recollection of the place where it had lived so long, I named it Nyanga. From this time on, Nyanga formed part of our caravan. She was tied, of course, with a cord fixed to a little harness which was put upon her. By day the foreman of the caravan carried her on his shoulders, and at night she was tied to one of the posts of the tent. The best of care was taken of her. Every one brought her a part of his meal, or some of the fruit found in the bush. In a few days she became perfectly at home with us. She allowed herself to be handled and caressed, and accompanied her graceful motions with low guttural cries expressive of her enjoyment. When we afterward arrived at Letté Cama, our menagerie had been increased by several other monkeys; but these less familiar ones were confined in cages. Nyanga alone continued to enjoy a half-liberty. We shortly gave her a companion, a young monkey of the same species. Nyanga adopted it, hugging it closely during the night as they slept on a box in the tent. : One day when I was hunting in the forest around our camp ‘some monkeys I had heard howling in the branches, one of my men met me and called to me to stop hunting, for Nyanga had escaped, and I might shoot her. I returned hastily to the camp and learned there that our pet, doubtless tired of being always captive, had gnawed her cord in two and fled into the woods. Baba, the Senegalian charged with the care of the menagerie, had gone on the track of Nyanga, who had not got very far away, but had climbed to the top of one of the great trees. She was called to in vain; she had no thought of coming back, and seemed wild with joy at being able to leap freely from branch to branch, to run to the ends of the limbs and make them bend,

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THE STORY OF A MONKEY. 639 and to pick the wild fruits, or catch some insect which she could crush for her amusement. To our appeals Nyanga answered only by cries of joy, as if to let us know she was doing very well where she was. My Senegalian sergeant had gone to a neighboring village to engage some pirogues with which we might cross the lagoon in continuance of our journey. He might M. Dysowskr’s Litre Conco Monkey. (From a photograph by M. J. Ducom, taken in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris.) return at any moment, and it would be impossible for us to wait indefinitely till our monkey should be willing to be caught. It would probably return at night to the camp, but it would be a whole day lost, and a complication added to our march to wait for that. I was perplexed which alternative to choose—whether to abandon the monkey or lose our time, perhaps for no good—for

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640 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, there was no certainty that Nyanga might not meet some com- panion and follow him without thinking any more of us. From time to time we heard her calls, which the natives knew so well. They call this species the king of monkeys, for they believe that when its voice is heard all the monkeys in the wood keep silent. But Baba, the Senegalian, provoked that one of the monkeys given him to take care of should have escaped, made every effort to catch the runaway. He had climbed an enormous tree with a trunk so large that it could not be scaled except by gymnastic efforts of which the blacks alone, who are almost as agile as the monkeys, are capable. He was away at the top, close against a branch, motionless, and hardly distinguishable from it. He had taken with him a light pole at the end of which was fixed a cord with a slip knot, and he hoped that he could get near enough to the monkey to take it in his snare. With a patience of which we whites would be incapable, he waited for the favorable moment. He had been there nearly three hours without moving, when all at once we heard him crying out from the branches, “Nyanga is caught!” It was true. Baba had waited till the monkey in her gambols had got upon a large branch that hung directly over the lake, had urged her gradually to the slender extremities of the bough; and there the animal had been forced to let herself be approached, for her only means of escape was to jump from a height of forty or fifty metres into the lake on the bank of which we were encamped. This adventure cost Nyanga the loss of all her liberty. In order to prevent her escaping again she was shut up like any common monkey in a cage, and was not let out from it except when we were camped at a post. After this long lapse of about a month, which was required for the return from these distant regions, Nyanga, with twenty com- panions of various species which we had picked up on the way, took the express to Paris, and entered the Museum of Natural History, where she became the object of special attentions. M. Milne-Edwards, on examining the animal, recognized in it a species still very rare, of which the British Museum has three ' skins from the island of Fernando Po. Bennett made a new species of it, which he describes as Cercopithecus pogonias. The specimen we brought is therefore the first that has come to Europe alive. Fortunately, I killed an adult male of this species in my African hunts, so that the French galleries also possess a stuffed specimen of it. The Cercopithecus pogonias is a type reaching the full dimen- sions of the genus—that is, adult individuals measure from about forty-five to fifty centimetres in height. Their tail is very long, reaching eighty centimetres. The skin is gray—almost black— upon the back, passes with a lighter tint on the flanks, and is

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NORMAL AND HEIGHTENED SUGGESTIBILITY. 641 changed into a bright red on the chest, abdomen, and inside of the limbs. The face is furnished with full, light gray whiskers on the cheeks, and a very peculiar aspect is given to it by two broad white rays that extend from the superciliary arches to the top of the head, and unite with the tuft of black hairs to form a forelock on top of the forehead. Two bands of the same dark color occupy the sides of the face. Captivity did not take away her charming manners from Nyanga. She came to us joyously and let us caress her, and we could let her out of the cage then with- out danger of her running away. But the amiable animal had just escaped the greatest danger. Her skin is so beautiful, she takes care of it with such pains that she is in as fine condition as if she were living free in the forests of the Congo; so that a person, whom I will not be so un- kind as to name, found her so well kept that he proposed nothing less than to kill her, in order to put her stuffed skin in the cases. Fortunately, this idea was not carried out; and it is not likely that the learned director of the museum would ever consent to listen to it.— Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature. > —-? NORMAL AND HEIGHTENED SUGGESTIBILITY. By Pror, WILLIAM ROMAINE NEWBOLD. f ype is perhaps no question so perplexing to a worker ina relatively new field as that which arises with reference to his terminology. Not only must he be influenced by consider- ations of euphony and etymological correctness, but he must also be on his guard against using words the connotations of which would tend to lead both himself and his reader astray in their practical inferences. It is, for example, true that a quart of alco- hol acts as a poison, but it does not follow that we should use an ounce of alcohol as we would an ounce of strychnine. It may be eminently proper to apply a bad name to a dog under certain conditions, but it does not follow that the dog should be forthwith hanged. “Suggestion” and “suggestibility ” are words which usage compels us to employ, and, as their connotations are apt to mis- lead us, I shall find it necessary to preface my account witha brief analysis of their various meanings. In dealing with any mental state, we have to consider (1) its character, (2) its conditions and causes, (3) its effects. The word “suggestion” properly denotes either an agency which produces a mental state, or the state so produced, and in the latter use it connotes the notion of the agency. Its most common meaning, VOL, XLV1IL—46 '

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642 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. however, is still narrower, and is limited to mental states spring- ing directly or indirectly from physical stimuli, especially from words. The effects of mental states, to which I called attention in my second article, were long ignored in psychology. The first to obtain clear recognition was the property of producing ideas, and this has become famous as “ the law of association.” The motor effects of mental states have been more recently noted, and the study of such effects is now rapidly becoming the fashion in cur- rent psychology, much as the study of association came into vogue in England a century ago or thereabouts. Now, the study of association has been prosecuted for the most part by the psycholo- gist’s watching the flow of his own ideas, but the effects of men- tal states upon movements—what Prof. Baldwin calls dyna- mogeny—has hitherto been studied chiefly by noting the motor effects of ideas and sensations suggested from without by words or physical stimuli of other kinds. Hence the word “sugges- tion” has come to include among its connotations not only the notion of the cause but also that of the effect—especially the mo- tor effect—of the suggested state, and in the derivative “ suggesti- bility ” the original meaning is almost lost; it does not mean “a condition in which mental states may be more readily initiated by suitable causes,” but, “a condition in which mental states, however initiated, tend to work out their proper results more readily than usual.” From this usage, which is nowadays the most common, is derived a still broader one which I shall not scruple to employ. By an individual’s suggestibility we denote the fact that in him every mental state tends to work out definite results of its own. In this sense we are all suggestible. The word corresponds to dynamogeny, save that the latter term has reference to the motor tendencies only of the state, while sug- gestibility includes its tendency to development, its associative and metabolic tendencies as well. The condition commonly known as suggestibility,in which the results of the individual state are more easily traced than usual, I would strictly term “heightened suggestibility,” but for the sake of brevity it may be allowable to call it also simply suggestibility; the context will usually show what degree of suggestibility we are talking of. Suggestions may be subdivided with reference to their origin into suggestions from without, due to impressions received through the senses, and suggestions from within, arising from some pre-existing thought. These are usually termed auto-sug- gestions and hetero-suggestions. Both words are barbarous hybrids, but the former at least is too deeply fixed in usage to be displaced. The distinction is sometimes of importance, since many patients who are very suggestible from within are not at

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NORMAL. AND HEIGHTENED SUGGESTIBILITY. 643 all so from without, and vice versa. Yet it is difficult to draw any sharp line of demarcation between the two classes, and in the account which I shall give of suggestion I shall confine myself to the latter. I may have occasion to recur to suggestions from within in a later paper. I shall also limit myself to the discus- sion of the tendency to development and the associative and motor tendencies of mental states, omitting for the present their effects upon the metabolic processes. Thus the chief phenomena which I shall pass in review are, (1) the development of a suggested idea into a “sensory ” hallucination, (2) the expansion of a suggested idea into a complete dream by evocation of associated ideas, (3) the production of bodily movements by means of suggested sensa- tions or ideas, As I have already said, it is not easy to observe that one is one’s self suggestible. One’s present consciousness contains at all times such a mass of subnascent, nascent, and vivid states that it is impossible to trace the effects of any one group, yet occasionally one can catch,a state on the wing, as it were, and note its effects. Some years ago, I came home about ten o’clock one sunny morning, deeply absorbed in thought; of the latter part of my walk I had no clear memories, but I came to myself to find myself standing in the sunlight, holding a lighted match aloft in my right hand, apparently looking for a gasjet. I always carried in a certain pocket my keys and a matchbox; the sight of the door had prompted me to thrust my hand into my pocket, but I had no clear thought of the latchkey of which I wasin search. Had I had, the mere fact that my hand happened to come in contact with the matchbox would have produced no result. As it was, the feeling of the matchbox found no obstacle to its working out its own results—my hand closed on the box, withdrew and opened it, took out a match and struck it, and this organized motor series was wrecked merely by the physical impossibility of lighting a gasburner where there was none to light, and not by the interfer- ence of inconsistent mental elements. Such phenomena are famil- iar to us all, but we rarely take pains to analyze them in detail, otherwise the precisely similar phenomena of hypnotic sugges- tion would not excite so much astonishment. A large proportion of our acts are thus suggested by sense- impressions. Another large proportion is under the direct con- trol of thoughts almost as simple, but the guiding thought is often so faint and phantomlike that it escapes attention. I was sitting once in a railway train on my way to Philadelphia; in the corner in front of me was an umbrella. I lifted my right hand, extended if, then let it fall. When I say that “I” did this I am not speaking with precision. “I” was at the time occupied with an entirely different train of thought, and the lifting and drop-

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644 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ping of my hand struck “ me” as something so strange that I fell to looking about in the dark nooks and crannies of my mind to find the culprit thought. Fortunately, I was in time. I had been looking out of the window, and the lowering clouds had suggested rain, walking the streets, getting wet; my hand reached out for the umbrella with some dim notion of taking off its cover and making ready for the rain. Then arose a vague, unformed thought which, if it had become articulate, would have taken some such form as, “Two hours yet before I get there”: the hand was arrested half extended, and fell. The whole of this little comedy was enacted in an out-of-the-way corner of my mind, while “I,” the thinking self, was absorbed in a train of abstract thought, and probably both the actors would have escaped notice and been straightway forgotten had it not been for the inconsist- ency of their motor results. Every object of perception and thought is a center of innumer- able diverging suggestions. Not all of these are of equal strength, and the manner in which any given object will affect a given indi- vidual will vary with his education, his habits, and his present mood. Many physical objects have, besides the lines of motor suggestion which they share with others, certain special lines peculiar to themselves, Of these perhaps the most important is the use of the object. Thus, of all the things which I could possibly do with a dagger, stabbing is to me by far the most attractive, and I find it very attractive indeed. I can not handle . a dagger without feeling a marked propensity to strike the point into anything that comes handy. Many other objects are simi- larly suggestive. A gentleman, while visiting a friend of mine, was asked to examine a fine rifle which his friend had recent- ly acquired. He loaded it, poised it, lifted it to his shoulder, took aim, remarking in a joking tone, “Suppose I fire?” “ Do,” said his friend—and he did. Happily, the ball contented itself with plowing its way through a cherry bookcase and four or five books, and no lives were lost. When asked why he did such a reckless thing, he could only say that he did not know—he did not intend to do it. To my mind there is nothing surprising about it. The rifle, to a man fond of shooting but without much experience, is instinct with dangerous suggestions. Ordinarily the immensely preponderating mass of inhibiting ideas keeps even the most reckless well within the danger line. But when the rifle was loaded, cocked, and aimed, and the finger on the trigger, a great mass of ideal and sensational suggestions were excited to the highest pitch and all converged upon the delicate muscles of the forefinger. Still, the inhibitory suggestions of time and place would, under most circumstances, have been suffi- cient to counteract all these; probably the command, “ Do,” re-en-

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NORMAL AND HEIGHTENED SUGGESTIBILITY. 645 forced the latter at the very moment that it distracted attention from the former, and the slight advantage thus given to the weaker of the two systems of forces was sufficient to contract the finger and bring about the catastrophe. The spontaneous phenomena which the Germans call Massen- psychosen—a word denoting a state of mind shared by a mass of people at once—are nothing more than Nature’s experiments in suggestibility conducted on a large scale for our benefit. The panic is a familiar illustration. The terrifying suggestion which each man could easily brave alone becomes so intensified in being reflected upon him from a thousand frightened faces that he gives way and becomes for the time being an unreasoning, strug- gling animal. During every great strike such phenomena are common. A crowd gathers, the spirit of disorder is abroad, and the soberest of citizens feels his fingers fairly itching for mis- chief. A stone is thrown, another, and then another, and in a few moments every man is vying with his neighbor to see how much damage he can do. In these cases the frequently repeated sug- gestions given by the words, and still more by the deeds, of others overcome the results of years of training in orderly habits, and when the excitement has subsided many a participant in the late riot may fall to wondering “what in the world possessed him.” The colloquial phrase, like many another, enshrines a truth. He was indeed possessed—not by any evil spirit, to be sure, but by myriads of delicate physical impulses, which, streaming in through eye and ear, prompted him with almost irresistible force to violence. The so-called “contagion of crime” is somewhat analogous, There are at all times in the community “ weak brethren ” who, while not criminals, are drawn like moths to the flame by the fascination of a great crime. The Whitechapel murders and the assassination of Mr. Harrison, late Mayor of Chicago, are illustra- tions fresh in our minds. In each case a crop of dangerous “cranks” was brought to light, who, without the suggestion, might never have fallen into the hands of the police. Turning now from these illustrations of suggestibility in gen- eral to the conditions under which it is heightened, the first phenomena to arrest attention are those of childhood. The con- sciousness of a newborn baby must be very unlike anything that we can picture. It contains perhaps sensations of pain and touch something like those with which we are familiar, but differing from them in lacking all localization and reference to an outer world. It is only by slow degrees that sight and hearing are developed, and we can never hope to know the various stages through which the raw material delivered to consciousness by the developing organs of sense must pass before it becomes any-

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recat el RR eel sas SEES i i Sea) ae 646 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. thing like what we call sense-experience. Yet, however dim, con- fused, and rudimentary the baby’s consciousness may be, the in- going nerve currents produce more or less definite mavements, and, as consciousness becomes more highly evolved, not merely do the impressions of sense produce movements, but the ideas also, or copies of those impressions, acquire control over the body. The later history of volition merely records the steps by which the inner control, through its gradually increasing complexity, comes to supersede the outer. In the earlier years of life the child may almost be said to be a slave to his environment. His conduct is controlled for the most part either by what he actually sees and hears or by his most recent memories and immediate anticipations, The remote past and the distant future affect him but little: he is a creature of the present. Consequently, one can see the motor effects of sensations and ideas more directly in children than in the adult. At first definite responses are limited to a few reflexes. Sucking, winking, crying, swallowing, clutch- ing, and one or two more, constitute the capital with which the child begins life. Besides these we find a mass of random move- ments out of which all later forms are evolved. At a somewhat later period the child enters upon the imitative stage, to which so much attention has been attracted of late; no sooner does be see an act performed than he attempts to doit himself. Of the mental and physiological conditions which lie at the basis of imi- tation we know very little. It probably marks a period in which . the visible appearances of the grosser bodily movements are enter- ing into associative union with those thoughts of how the move- ments feel when performed which are the immediate psychical antecedents of the movements which they represent. “ Naughti- ness,” in children passing through this stage, is frequently noth- ing more than sheer inability to overcome the imperative sug- gestions of the environment by the relatively feeble thoughts which its parents’ commands suggest. For children, example is indeed better than precept. As the child grows older and his mind becomes more richly stored with memories, as his hereditary instincts come to view, and his increasing power of imagination enables him to picture the future more distinctly, he is little by little emancipated from his slavery to the present. Yet in many children marked suggest- ibility persists to a quite late period. In the normal adult the store of memories has become so rich and the power of anticipat- ing the future so great that the primitive suggestibility seems almost- to have disappeared. The man’s conduct is no longer mainly controlled by this or by that suggestion of his environ- ment, but springs naturally from the steady stream of thoughts and purposes that fill his mind. No suggestion can enter his

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NORMAL AND HEIGHTENED .SUGGESTIBILITY. 647 mind without running the risk of encountering a mass of ideas which either are antagonistic to it or overcome it by sheer weight of numbers. Furthermore, most persons who closely watch their mental life can detect in it that at present mysterious activity of the “self” to which I alluded in my first article. We must con- ceive it as in some way originated by and dependent upon our past experience, and in it we see, as I have elsewhere expressed it, the present conscious representative of the net resultant of our past experience, brought to bear upon the nascent mental state. Its function in our life may be compared to that of the rudder on the ship: it serves to hold us steadily to the course already laid out, and makes our present and our future symmetrical with our past. It is evident, then, that, if we would restore primitive suggest- ibility in an adult, we must either break up the consciousness of self, or weaken its power of control. If we can do that, we have removed from the path of the suggested state the most formi- dable possible impediment to its free progress and development. But to give it full liberty we must abolish or enfeeble all other sensations and ideas as well. These would be, from the psycho- logical point of view, the conditions of heightened suggestibility. In many cases it is, unfortunately, impossible to get any evi- dence as to the mental condition of the patient, but such evidence as we have goes to support this hypothesis. The hypnotized patient, if asked what he is thinking about usually says, “ Noth- ing.” Sometimes you find that he is dreaming and will tell his dreams, but, like other dreams, they are readily guided or dissi- pated by the least sensory suggestion. In the few cases in which the patient remembers his experiences upon awaking, he says he felt drowsy, dull, or weak. One of my patients told me that it seemed to him as if the motor suggestions I gave him were exe- cuted by his body, mechanically, without his own concurrence. He did not feel disposed to resist, but, when he did, he either found himself helpless, or could overcome the suggestion by the most strenuous resistance only. But the suggestibility thus produced differs widely from that observed in children. The consciousness of the child is so rudi- mentary in character that complex thoughts can not be awakened in it by any means; its suggestibility, therefore, is limited to the performance of relatively simple acts. But in the complex brain of the adult, with its myriad ramifications, the range of suggesti- bility, when once it is established, is far greater and its phenom- ena more striking. In language we possess an instrument which, although intangible, is as much physical as an axe, a saw, or a knife, and with it, as with an adjustable stamp, we can impress upon the still sensitive brain what modifications we will. Once

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648 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. started, they work out their proper results with almost fatal pre- cision. Turning now from the theory underlying these phenomena to the actual facts, we may say that heightened suggestibility is found under three chief groups of circumstances. First, it is found in sleep occasionally, and more frequently in the states akin to sleep termed hypnotic. Second, it is sometimes found as one of the symptoms produced by certain drugs. As we suppose these symptoms to be due to poisons circulating in the blood, the type is termed toxemic suggestibility, from two Greek words meaning blood poison. In the last place, heightened suggestibil- ity is found as a spontaneous phenomenon for which no reason can be given. This is called idiopathic suggestibility. Of these three forms, hypnotic suggestibility is the best known and for many reasons the most interesting. Dreams, as I have already pointed out (February number), are largely due to sug- gestions given in sleep. A higher degree of suggestibility is sometimes found in normal sleep. A friend of mine told me that, when a boy, he had a schoolmate who became highly suggestible whenever he was slightly disturbed in sleep. Without awaking, he would become partly conscious and would do everything, no matter how preposterous, which the mischievous ingenuity of the boys could suggest. In hypnotic states suggestibility is so con- stantly found that some propose to regard it as an essential char- acteristic. Let me give a few illustrations of its varying forms. T—— B—— is a laborer, twenty-three years of age, neurotic, in- temperate, easily hypnotized. His muscles are entirely at my com- mand. I can stiffen a finger or an arm by a word so that he can not bend it. I can even contract one set of muscles while leaving the opposite set under his control. I bring his hands together, place the tips of his fingers in contact, and tell him he can not sepa- ratethem. The systems of muscles necessary to hold them together are strongly innervated, while those that pull them apart are left under his control; he struggles in vain to part them, and his struggles are such as could not be easily imitated voluntarily. I can control his sensations in the same way. I can abolish his sensations of pain, of touch, of sight, and of hearing. I tell him he will feel in his right hand what I do to his left; I then puta lighted match to his left hand and it remains at rest, while the right jerks violently about in its efforts to escape from the fire. I tell him he is blind, and he is—deaf, and he can hear nothing. I tell him he can not see or hear such a man, and he acts as if he were unconscious of his presence. I can create hallucinations of all the senses also. . The limitations of suggestibility are even more interesting. R—— is a college graduate and is now a student of divinity.

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NORMAL AND HEIGHTENED SUGGESTIBILITY. 649 ‘ When hypnotized, he passes into a light sleep, remains vaguely conscious of his surroundings, and remembers all that happens. The smaller muscles, as those of the eyelids, lips, and fingers, are entirely under my control, but the larger groups only in part. I can affect all his senses to some degree cxcept that of hearing. The sense of sight is also refractory, and, although I can obliterate it, it is only for a few moments. I lean over him, look him in the eyes, and say, “I am getting dim—you can not see me clearly—now I am fading out altogether—I am gone—you are blind.” “No,” he says, “I see you still.” He tells me afterward that I did grow faint and for a moment vanished, but almost instantly reappeared in brighter colors than before. I put a chair before him and say: “There is Mr.S——. You see him clearly—he is looking at you.” “No,” is the reply, “I do not see him; he is not there.” I repeat it over and over again, but without effect. I try again. We are in Prof. F——’s lecture room, and R—— is sitting in the large chair on the platform. “There,” I say, “in front of you, is Prof. F——.” R—— denies it, denies it several times, and then suddenly admits it. When I press him to tell me exactly what he sees, I find that he fancies himself sitting in the body of the room where he usually sits during lectures, and sees Prof. F—— standing on the platform in an attitude he frequently adopts. In other words, R—— is dreaming with his eyes open, and. his dream is determined by my command, he himself supplying for the dream of Prof. F——a suitable associative setting. At another time I told R—— to re- flect upon the name “ Henry Jones,” and put in his hand a pencil. After some time the hand fell to twitching and then swiftly wrote “Henry.” “What are you doing?” I ask. “Thinking of that name.” “ What is your hand doing?” “Nothing.” “What did itdoa moment ago?” “Itmoved.” “Did you move it?” “No,” “What did it move for?” “Idon’t know.” No questioning on my part could elicit any consciousness of the writing. In other words, the touch suggestion given by contact with the pencil had re-enforced the motor tendencies of the thought, and the thought had literally written itself. I have not myself seen any cases of toxemic suggestibility, but many are reported in the literature of the subject. For example, Dr. Janet describes a patient suffering from alcoholic delirium who was suggestible in the highest degree. Dr. Carpen- ter quotes from Dr. Moreau a description of the effects of hash- eesh, than which nothing could better describe the augmentation in the developmental and associative tendencies of the suggested states. “ We become the sport of impressions of the most oppo- site kind; the continuity of our ideas may be broken by the slightest cause. We are turned, to use a common expression, by every wind. By a word or gesture our thoughts may be success-

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650 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ively directed to a multitude of different objects, with a rapidity and a lucidity which are truly marvelous. Fear becomes terror; courage is developed into rashness which nothing checks; the most unfounded doubt or suspicion becomes a certainty. The mind has a tendency to exaggerate everything.” So, also, De Quincey, of the effects of opium: “ Whatsoever I happened to call up and trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness, was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams. Whatsoever things I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye; and, by a process apparently no less inevi- table, when once thus traced in faint and visionary colors, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out, by the fierce chemistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendor that fretted my heart.” In the delirium of fever and in the coma of ether and nitrous oxide suggestibility is sometimes noted, but it is not a common phenomenon, and more information is much needed. Idiopathic suggestibility has been reported by many observers, but I shall limit myself to the description of one case which has fallen within my own ken. Florrie is a little girl aged twelve. Her father is a blacksmith in good health but not robust. Her mother is a work-worn woman, slow of speech and slower of wit, and is easily hypnotized. Florrie is a quiet child, has suffered from frequent and violent headaches, and is very forgetful. In all other respects she is quite normal. She was hypnotized some time ago by a traveling showman. Of her condition before that time there is no record, but since then she has been markedly sug- gestible. A command forcibly uttered, once, twice, or thrice, is sufficient to displace her upper consciousness and throw her into a dreamlike state in which she executes nearly all suggestions. A typical experience with her will serve as an illustration. I had been lecturing in an amphitheater crowded with students, and she had been waiting outside. The patients I had already shown aroused a great deal of laughter, and when I went for her I found her panic-stricken, sobbing bitterly: she would not go, no, she would not go before all those men—she was afraid. I said to her in a low tone: “ Florrie, of whom are you afraid ? Are you afraid of me?” “No.” “Of your mother?” “No.” “ Well, there is no one else here.” After much persuasion I got her to look out. “ There,” said I, triumphantly, pointing to a crowd of physicians and nurses, “don’t you see that bare wall? There is no one here but us three.” Her tears were dried at once. I led her into the amphitheater and said, pointing to the rows upon rows of men, “Don’t you see, Florrie, there is nothing here but empty benches and ourselves?” She saw nothing save what I told her to see, was perfectly cheerful and happy, entirely at her ease, and abso- lutely subject to my commands. She seemed to be quite normal,

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NORMAL AND HEIGHTENED SUGGESTIBILITY. 651 and she acted out the dreams I suggested to her with a grace that any actress might envy. I told her there was a plate of strawber- ries on the table. “Oh,” said she, “what beautiful berries! May I have one ?” She began eating them, and took the stem off each imaginary berry with a precision that almost made an observer believe that his own eyes were at fault, and that the berries were really there. “Are they sweet?” said I. “Oh, yes.” “ Rather odd, in February, isn’t it ?” said I. “I would have thought they would be sour.” As she ate the next berry she made a wry face. “ Dear me!” she said, “it is as sour as sour can be.” At another time I told her I had two bouquets for her, and wished her to choose the one she liked best. I gave her with my right hand a real bouquet—with my left, nothing. She took both, smelled each in turn, exclaimed over their beauty, and finally returned to me the real bouquet, saying the other was much the prettier. I might cover pages with such illustrations, but one is as instructive as a thousand could be. This child was not “hypno- tized,” yet she was in a “secondary state” or dream. I was never able to determine precisely how much of the real, visible, tangible world entered into her dreams apart from what I deliberately sug- gested to her to see, but my impression was she saw and felt as the rest of us do unless my suggestions were inconsistent with the testimony of her senses—in that case the suggestion triumphed. The suggested dreams were remarkably permanent. If she were told there was a parrot or cat in the room, she would continue to see it until it was abolished in the same way. Once or twice she refused suggestions that I gave her. For example, when I told her she was a princess, she acted the part very well; but when I told her she was a horse and was pulling a cart, she said she was not, and no amount of insistence on my part could make her see that cart. Once I tried to “hypnotize” her—i. e., I told her I would put her to sleep—and she went to sleep so soundly that I had great ado to get her awake again. So also after suggesting dreams to her, it was not possible to restore her at once to her normal condition, although if left to herself she slowly returned to it. I always took pains to abolish all the hallucinations I had given her, and she would then seem quite normal, but upon ques- tioning her afterward I always found that her memory did not begin until perhaps a half hour after she had left me, and the attempt to elicit recollections of the forgotten period by leading questions always resulted in throwing her into a similar second- ary state. Yet there was no connection between her secondary states ; in one she never recollected what had happened in another, and no suggestion could make her remember. Nor was I ever able to produce posthypnotic suggestions, although I frequently tried to do so. I wished very much to relieve her headaches in

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652 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. this way, but could produce no effect upon them whatever. In other words, she failed to present many of the most characteristic phenomena of hypnosis. I think, perhaps, I should say that my attention was called to this little girl’s case by her physician, and although in all the experiments that we made upon her we kept a sharp lookout for any indication of evil results, we were never able to detect any. Her waking dreams did not seem to be more injurious than other dreams. One may justly ask how one can guard against simulation in such cases. I do not think the possibility can be altogether ex- cluded, and in this case I was at first very suspicious. But after a good deal of careful observation one forms a pretty clear opinion, based upon many slight indications. My chief reason for thinking that the phenomena in her case were genuine was that taken as a whole they differed widely from the type of hypnosis she had seen in the public shows she had attended, which would naturally have given the model for her to imitate, and agreed very closely with rare cases reported by other observers. e+ —eo THE COMING OF THE RAINS IN GUIANA. By JAMES RODWAY. E are nearing the end of November, and the rains have come. For three months no more than one or two pass- ing showers have fallen, and every tree and shrub in our gar- dens has done its best to accommodate itself to the changed con- ditions. During the rains of May, June, and July they grew rampant, the climbers extending themselves in every direction for long distances. Then came a severe check. The burning sun poured down on the parched earth at the beginning of September and caused most of the trees to flag and hang limp. Some of the more delicate plants in the garden had their leaves burned at the edges and for a time they looked unsightly. Some commenced to drop their leaves preparatory to a partial rest, but these were few; the majority braced up, as it were, and soon adapted them- selves to the altered situation. The change was characterized at first by a wealth of flowers, but these quickly disappeared, until hardly a blossom could be seen. As the foliage grew less dense, the young fruit became conspicuous, and very soon guavas began to ripen and mangoes to set. Now also the mammee apple, which matures its fruit only once a year, felt the influence of the sun and came to perfection. As month after month passed, the leaves fell until the canopy was almost bare, and in one or two cases toward the end of the

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THE COMING OF THE RAINS IN GUIANA. 653 dry weather the trees became denuded for a few days, or, in the case of the fiddlewood and silk cotton tree, several weeks. Those trees which never become quite bare dropped leaf after leaf until when the proper time came the young foliage pushed off the few leaves that remained and took their place. Now comes the rain. The heat has been more oppressive than usual, and the sun is often obscured by thick clouds. Distant thunder is heard, and to the west and south the black clouds are lowering. Now and again great splashes of rain fall suddenly and as suddenly cease. Walking along a straight road, you see a mist apparently rising half a mile away, and when you come to the spot find that the rain has well soaked the road for a short distance. Then you may see a similar mist over a cane field, and notice that it is rolling steadily toward you. Listening, you hear a clattering, as if a regiment of cavalry was galloping along the road, and in a few seconds look for shelter against the big drops. It comes, wets you to the skin, and passes on up or down the road, leaving you very uncomfortable, but brightening up the vegeta- tion and rousing the birds from their siesta. These are the preliminary skirmishes, as it were. The rains have not yet come—only their vanguard. Presently they will be down in force to soak the parched earth and make every tree and shrub rejoice and blossom. During the drought, animal life has been almost quiescent. Butterflies, moths, and beetles have been dormant as chrysalids, The foliage has hardened and lost its luscious taste; it would be therefore undesirable that larve should be hatched at such a time. Ants have been busy as usual, however; their nests may be seen in the dry ground everywhere. Frogs hide themselves in cracks of the earth or crawl into the mud at the bottom of the almost dry canals. Spiders, centipeds, scorpions, and cockroaches go outside the house only to come back when the ground is sodden. A few flowers come up on the roadsides as the dense thicket of sour grass becomes less rampant, but toward the end of the season the parapets look almost bare. Yesterday a heavy downpour closed the cracks in the dry ground and flooded some of the ants’ nests in the garden. To- day a regiment of great black ants is marching up the sides of the open gallery, and here and there one is running over the floor. Three quarters of an inch long, these creatures look rather formidable, but they are not vicious, nor is their nip painful. Out in the garden, however, a swarm of red fire ants is moving house, and if you happen to tread on the procession the mistake is very soon brought to your notice by sundry pricks and instil- lations of venom on your lower extremities. Then there are the tree ants, who make little nests the size of walnuts and keep

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654 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. flocks and herds of scale insects on the under surfaces of the leaves. For months their live stock has consisted mainly of hard scale insects; now they are busy fostering the young of these and bringing forward species of a softer nature. Some of these stock- breeders build their small nests about the roots of plants and thus escape the flood, while those who nest in the bushes seem to have gone a step further in their development. At this time also the sma]] black ants are everywhere. They come into the rooms and get upon our dining table, even though its legs are placed in pans of kerosene oil. A chair will provide a suitable gangway, or they will even run over your clothes as you sit at dinner. They even get into our beds, and we wake up at night to find hundreds of these tiny creatures crawling over us and giving vicious bites here and there. Then the baby cries in the next room, and its nurse wakes up to find the little pests running over its face and sucking the moisture from its eyelids. The child wakes up and rubs the part with his fist, to be rewarded with sundry bites on his delicate skin. Or perhaps one of them has got into his ear, and the child screams with all his might; then the mother or nurse has much ado with a syringe and oil before silence is again restored. Now come the cockroaches. Not that they have ever been entirely wanting, but as long as the weather was dry they could hide under heaps of dead leaves or about the roots of trees in the garden. Routed from these snug quarters, they appear in great numbers, flying into the open sitting rooms, and perhaps making a lady scream out with disgust as one of them sprawls on her dress. Their object is to hide themselves as soon as possible, no matter where, and female drapery is very convenient. Like the ants, these stinking creatures invade our bedrooms, and a new- comer is warned not to sleep with his mouth open, for he might wake to find one exploring the cavity. Those who have lived in the tropics for any length of time can hardly escape tasting the cockroach. Now and then they run over our dishes and leave their taste and smell behind, while occasionally one gets into the flour barrel and spoils your cake or pudding. We have seen bits of their carcasses in our bread, and have had to reject a roll alto- gether from such a cause. Now that the ground is well soaked, the wood ants or termites begin toswarm. They fly for a little while, but quickly get rid of their wings, to crawl into the chinks and crannies of the floor, between the covers of books, and in fact everywhere. They litter the tables with their cast-off wings, and if not looked after will do serious damage in a few days. ‘Furniture is bored with holes, books are excavated to provide nests, and the very house itself becomes ultimately little more than a home for wood ants. The

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THE COMING OF THE RAINS IN GUIANA, 655 boards appear to be uninjured, but you can almost put your finger through them on account of the numerous channels and excavations of these apparently helpless little creatures. The hardback—a black, chaferlike beetle—is very conspicu- ous after the rains have drenched the ground. They pass their larval stage in the earth and are driven forth in myriads. Not so disgusting as the cockroaches, they are yet very troublesome. They fly to the lights in your sitting room and drop upon your book as you are reading, or inside your collar. As for the ladies, they seem to be peculiarly open to such crawlers, as they have so much drapery, but the creoles take hardbacks almost as a matter of course. We remember, however, one occasion at an evening entertainment when these beetles spoiled half the pleasure of the female part of the audience. They came in literally by thou- sands, and, flying in their blundering way at the gaslights, fell upon the people below. Evening dress was worn by the ladies, and this made the matter so much the worse. Some shuddered as they felt them crawling over their bare necks, and there was a continual movemtnt of the hands to pick them off. When we state that the beetles were swept up next morning by pailfuls, some idea can be formed of their number. Moths also appear in great numbers at this time. The flowers open, and those that are nocturnal perfume the air, bringing the insects to your garden. The white flowers shine in the darkness, but not so brightly as your gaslights, and it follows that many a sphinx comes in and commits suicide. Smaller insects also appear, so that what with one and another a table under the lamp is lit- tered with hundreds of the dead and dying before you go to bed. As these come indoors, some of their enemies follow. Centi- peds, scorpions, and spiders leave the garden and look for the luscious cockroach in his new quarters. Web-making spiders are not very conspicuous, but those which hunt—veritable beasts of prey—lurk in every corner. To see one of them spring upon a cockroach is as interesting, perhaps, as the attack of a tiger upon an ox. And, when the spider has taken all he wants, the ants come and carry off the remainder. There they go, marching up the wall, a hundred tiny creatures carrying between them the monster corpse, probably weighing more than a thousand of its bearers. We have often wondered at such a sight, and thought of the difficulty of carrying a heavy weight under such circum- stances, Under the ground floor our cat had kittened, but we did not know of the fact until the first great downpour of the season. Waiting under cover until the rain abated, we saw puss come out bearing a little, half-drowned creature in her mouth, which she carried to a dry place. A torrent came pouring down the gutter

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656 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. immediately above the entrance to her lair, but the anxious mother passed through this to bring a second and then a third kitten, until all her family were rescued from the flood. Not only are nocturnal insects roused by the rains, but the butterflies also come forth from their chrysalids. We have an Aristolochia picta climbing up the gallery which has been seri- ously checked by the continual attacks of one particular species. It is a handsome creature, with black wings edged with yellow. As the rains fall, the plant puts out new shoots, and almost imme- diately the leaves and stems are dotted with yellow eggs. The butterflies come into the open gallery sometimes three or four at a time, and refuse to be driven off until they have done their work. In two or three days the caterpillars are at work, and with all our attention the plant is often quite denuded. The frogs come forth from their hiding places as the canals become filled, with their rejoicing croak and hubble-bubble. Toward evening another species chirps and makes up to some extent for the absence of singing birds: in fact, it has been called the Demerara nightingale. After nightfall fireflies swarm over the marshy places, twinkling like myriads of stars, and they sail here and there in search of prey; for, of course, the gnats and midges and ‘mosquitoes are at hand in such places. They also come intu the house occasionally, but not in great numbers. We have read of fireflies glancing through myrtle boughs and lighting up the dark arches of the forest, but rarely indeed do we see them among bushes, and never in the virgin forest. Their prey can not be found in such places. Over a marshy spot, however, they dart by thousands, each for an instant shin- ing forth and as quickly hiding its light. Here, also, mosquitoes swarm, to pounce upon the unlucky wanderer who goes “ moon- ing” about after dark. In our garden the ferns are suddenly infested with caterpil- lars. The young and succulent fronds are delicate morsels, and as the rain brings them forth their enemies come to the front. Yonder pretty specimen of Adiantum farleyense was pushing out three delicate croziers yesterday; now they are nothing but bare stalks, while the fat green larva which has done the mis- chief hides behind one of them. Snails also appear from you know not where, to get a share of the succulent young shoots, and grasshoppers follow to almost denude a plant of leaves during the night. Under the arc lights on the street are scattered hundreds of beetles, and round them hover great batlike sphinges, impatient to destroy themselves. Prevented from getting inside the globes, they dash themselves against the barrier, to fall or go off at a tangent. As you stroll along in the moonlight, the odors ofa

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THE COMING OF THE RAINS IN GUIANA. 657 thousand flowers are wafted from the neighboring gardens, and the buzz and hum of insect life show that other living things are attracted by the efforts of the flowers. Yonder is a white con- volvulus, its flowers showing up against the dark foliage like little moons. It does not emit any perfume, for its size and color alone make it conspicuous. Here is an avenue of fiddlewood trees, the flowers of which can not be seen, but the almost over- powering odor they emit is quite as effectual as the color of the convolvulus. You would like toclassify these odors. Some are very grate- ful, others cloying. There is the jasmin type, which, when ex- cessively strong,is sickly. Then comes the West Indian mignon- ette, which is not unpleasant at a distance, but which is almost nasty inaroom. The most grateful to our sense of smell appears to be an odor in which there is something spicy—this never cloys. On a damp evening all these come at intervals, now as light zephyrs and anon in overpowering bursts of perfume. Then there are odors too delicate for appreciation by our gross organs, which nevertheless attract insects from long distances. As the flowers open, the visitors appear, to linger round for an hour or two perhaps in the morning and then vanish until the same time next day. Why do particular species of butterflies and moths confine themselves to one plant? Our plague, the butterfly above mén- tioned, comes to lay its eggs on or near the Aristolochia, but on no other plant. A day or two ago we found its larve on some seedlings about two inches high, and there is one plant which vainly attempts to push out new shoots, for as soon as a green leaf appears it is eaten. But the insect does not always lay its eggs on the leaves or stalks of the plant, but rather chooses a rail- ing of the gallery or a portion of the latticework, always, how- ever, in the immediate neighborhood of the food plant. Is not this the act of a reasoning being rather than hereditary instinct ? The effect of the rainfall on our magnificent vegetation is * wonderful. What immense quantities of water are stored in the great herbaceous plants of the tropics—the banana, maranta, and the treelike papaw! All these are softer-wooded than many of the delicate plants of other climes which grow only to a few inches above the ground. With such a wealth of light and moist- ure, everything rises toward thesun. Daisies and primroses would be smothered ; there is no room for them except up in the trees among the epiphytes. Your gardens, fields, and even woods are but miniature representatives of ours—only comparable to the contents of a box of Dutch toys. Grasses often rise above our heads, and the cousins of your Composite become tall shrubs. There are no Ranunculacee, Primulacee, or Umbellifere, and the VOL. xLvin1.—47

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658 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. violets are almost trees. Nothing but rampant grasses and sedges in the meadows, a few coarse, weedy flowers on the roadside, a wealth of vegetation in the canals, and everything else bushes and trees. No delicate plant hugs the ground for warmth, but all shoot upward, only requiring the heavy rains to enable them to rise higher and higher. THE ANCIENT ISLANDERS OF CALIFORNIA. By Pror. C. F. HOLDER. i the past summer several attempts were made to thoroughly investigate the shell heaps, kitchen middens, and graves of the islands of Santa Catalina and San Clemente, off the coast of southern California. One of these parties, organized by Mr. J. Neale Plumb, of New York, in the short time at their command made some interesting finds. The two islands are respectively twenty-two and forty miles off shore, each about twenty-two miles in length. Santa Catalina is Fie, 1.—Gieantic Natcrat Sanppit at San CLEMENTE Isianp. a mountain range, with peaks twenty-five hundred or three thou- sand feet in height, with a climate that makes it a most desirable spot the year round, as the summer is delightful and in winter the island is a garden in the sea. San Clemente rises to a height’ of one thousand or twelve hundred feet at places, but is fiat on top, as though swept by the winds.

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THE ANCIENT ISLANDERS OF CALIFORNIA. 659 Both islands were inhabited when discovered by Cabrillo in 1542, and undoubtedly for ages supported a large and vigorous- population of savage seafarers who were skilled in all the rude arts of the fisherman and the sea. How long these islands have been occupied, and who were the original settlers, are questions difficult to answer; but on Santa Fic. 2.—SKELEToN Founp aT San CLEMENTE IsLanp, CALIFORNIA. Catalina the writer has identified a number of residence sites, shell mounds, caves, and tumuli, all of which show evidence of ancient occupation. ; On the island of San Clemente we began work on the north end, at what is known as the Isthmus. Here for several hundred acres the sand has covered the soil and is gradually flowing up over the island, driven by the wind. For some reason this appears to have been a favorite location for the aborigines, as in every direction traces of previous occupation were found ; but as the sand has been blowing for centuries, a greater portion of the material has been covered by it. The evidence was in the shape of shell mounds— piles of abalones, brought from the ocean, half a mile distant; heaps of the bones of fishes, seals, and various animals, among which were found stone implements, well-molded scraping stones, grinders and broken mortars. A day was spent in digging in these sand dunes with poor suc- cess, but the following morning, on the west shore of the island, another sand stretch was discovered which had evidently been occupied for years. In one place we found human bones uncovered by the sand, in such numbers that the impression was given that here was an old battlefield where bodies had been left as they fell. As far as the eye could see down the coast the sand dunes

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660 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. extended, and everywhere were the telltale fragments of shell and abalone. In the space of the present article it is impossible to more than call attention to a few of the finds made, illustrating the everyday history of these unknown people. The sand in places was littered with fragments of stone vessels which had been broken probably by some vandal. Some of these jars weighed nearly twenty pounds, others more, and were of all sizes, from small vessels, in- tended as paint or color jars, to vessels which would hold several quarts of water. Here were discoidal stones exactly like those taken from the kitchen middens of Europe, flint arrow and spear heads, beads of shell and bone, scrapers and awls of bone, and rings and other ornaments cut from the pearly abalone. The most interesting find was made in the center of the dune, where, in sinking a trench, a skeleton was found in so peculiar a Fic. 3.—Musicat Instruments, Douste anp Sine te, IntaIp with PEARL TAKEN FROM Sanps or San Crements, By C. F. Hotprer, Aveust, 1895. position that the entire party gathered about and aided in the ex- cavation. It was lying on its face, the head to the east, the arms raised over the head as though the man had fallen on his knees, or had been buried in a bent position. The bones were of a deep tan color, and about them was not the slightest vestige of clothing. The sand was carefully worked out, and after an hour’s labor the skeleton was seen in perfect relief against it. Then began the de- tachment of the bones, each one being taken out separately and carefully laid aside to dry ; in this way the perfect skeleton was secured. Of many skeletons discovered by the writer on these islands, this was the first with which some of the possessions of the native had not been buried ; as a rule, mortars and pestles, beads, weap- ons, and other property of the deceased were buried with him. When the skeleton was almost exposed, an interesting find was made about five feet behind it. When first found it was supposed to be another skeleton, but careful digging with a

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THE ANCIENT ISLANDERS OF CALIFORNIA. 661 knife in the soft sand soon resulted in the uncovering of three musical instruments, or flutes, showing that evidently the musi- cian of the tribe had been discovered. They were the leg bones of the deer, found on the mainland forty miles away, and were evidently highly treasured by the owner, as they were ornamented with pearly iridescent plates cut from the haliotis. The flutes, which are now in Mr. Plumb’s collec- tion at Islip, Long Island, were about eight inches in length, perforated with four or five finger holes, while the largest end was covered with asphaltum, into which was set the square or ob- long piece of pearl, evidently selected for its beauty and luster. These quaint instruments had been placed at the feet of the body evidently, as they were just on a level with it. It is not impossible that some stone vessels had been buried over the skeleton, as numbers of broken fragments were found here. Near by a large shell was discovered at the surface filled with shell beads, and a short distance away a skeleton partly burned, the bones mixed up among charred wood, fish bones, etc. Beneath it were several discoidal stones, and a curious object resembling a bell- clapper, probably a polishing implement of some kind. The entire region was undoubtedly either a vast burying ground or had been a village site covered in the intervening years by the drifting sand that was ever creeping up the cafions. As to the age of these remains, no estimate could be made, but everything pointed to an early period in the history of the island. San Clemente is subjected to winds, has a poor water supply, and does not pre- sent the attractive features found at Santa Catalina, now a famous watering place. The latter island evidently had a larger population. During the past ten years the writer has located at least twenty ancient town sites or camps on Santa Catalina, and found stone imple- ments on many of them, ranging from mortars and pestles to discoidal stones, and various objects of stone, wood, shell, Fic. 5.—Sroxe Jk FROM THE and bone. One location is of especial interest, being an ancient olla manufac- tory, where the natives from time immemorial made soapstone vessels and objects of various kinds. Here are the old olla marks, showing where the mortars had been broken off; and Fie. 4.—Peart Or- NAMENTS,

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662 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. where the site was originally located the remains of the vessels were found. These two islands are virtual archeological treasure houses which, when thoroughly examined, will undoubtedly produce many interesting finds. ACCLIMATIZATION. By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND ECONOMICS IN THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. HERE is no question of greater significance for European civilization than the one which concerns the possibility of its extension over that major part of the earth which is yet the home of barbarism or savagery. The rapid increase of the Aryan populations is more and more forcing it to the forefront as a great economic problem. No longer is it merely a scientific and abstract problem of secondary importance as contributory to the theories of the unity or plurality of the human race.* It has to- day become a matter of peculiar significance for the present gen- eration of men, and the old abstractions, which did so much to confuse its students, are laid aside.t The substantial unity of the species having become an accepted fact along with the doctrine of evolution, the migration and consequent acclimatization of the various branches of the parent stock follow as a matter of course. The modern problem plainly stated is this: First, can a single generation of European emigrants live ? and, secondly, living, can they perpetuate their kind in the equatorial regions of the earth ? Finally, if the Aryan race is able permanently so to sustain itself, will it still be able to preserve its peculiar civilization in these lands; or must it revert to the barbarian stage of modern slav- ery—of a servile native population, which alone in those climates can work and live? An area of fertile lands six times as great as that cultivated by the people of Europe to-day stands waiting to absorb its surplus population.{ But its point of saturation * Revue mensuelle de Ecole d’ Anthropologie, i, p. 129; Virchow, in Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fir Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, 1885, p. 202. + The French distinction between “ acclimatement ” and “ acclimatation ” is practically an illustration of these two phases of the question. Vide Bulletin de la Société d’Anthro- pologie, Paris, v, p. 781. Our National Department of Agriculture has become so im- pressed with the importance of this matter that special investigations are being prosecuted, and a climatological journal is promised. ¢ In Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, January, 1891, p. 27, are maps, re- produced from a paper by Mr. Ravenstein before the British Association for the Advance- ment of Science at Leeds, of lands open for settlement. Vide also map in Transactions of the Seventh International Congress of Demography and Hygiene, x, opp. p. 163, of lands im-

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ACCLIMATIZATION. 663 will obviously soon be reached if traders and superintendents of native labor are the only colonists who can live there. Moreover, the problem of acclimatization has a great political importance ; for if any one of these European nations be possessed of a special physiological immunity in face of the perils of tropical coloniza- tion, the balance of power may be seriously disturbed. Or a great menace to the feeble attempts of Europeans to colonize the tropics may exist in the surpassing aptitude of the great Mongol horde, which is perhaps the most gifted race of all in its power of ac- commodation to new climatic conditions.* Africa, Polynesia, and all parts of the earth have now been divided among the na- tions of Europe. What will they be able to do with them, now that the explorer has finished his work ?+ Because the problem pertains to the sciences of physiology and of anthropology, in no wise lessens its concrete importance for the economist and the statesman. Before we are in a position to measure even approximately the influence of a change of climate upon the human body and its functions, a number of subordinate confusing factors must be eliminated. Neglect to observe this rule vitiates much of the tes- timony of observers in the field. In the first place, a change of residence in itself always tends to upset the regular habits of the soldier or the colonist. The temperate youth in England becomes a heavy drinker in the barracks of India; and the Portuguese and Spanish races, predisposed to the use of light wines—ready even to give up the habit if need be—suffer from the disorders in- cident to alcoholism far less than the English.{ Inflammation of the liver is indigenous to the tropics; and yet the ofttimes six- fold deadliness of hepatitis among English soldiers in India, com- pared with the mortality among the native troops from the same disease, is probably due more to the consumption of alcoholic drinks than to the influence of the climate.* To this fact is also possible of colonization by the Teutonic people. In Petermann’s Mittheilungen, xxxviii, 1, p. 8, and Ausland, 1891, p. 481, the present extension of the “ plantation” stage of culture is shown by maps. * This theme is ably discussed by Prof. Ratzel in Kolonization, Breslau, 1876. It forms the groundwork of the pessimistic plaint in Pearson’s National Life and Character. Vide also Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain. + This was the great question before the International Geographical Congress at London in August, 1895. t Dr. Montano, pp. 428 and 437, and St. Vel, p. 41, insist upon the necessity of abstemi- ousness. Vide also C. Stolz, Das Leben des Europiiers in den Tropenliindern, in Mitthei- lungen der ost-schweizerischen geographischen-commerziellen Gesellschaft in St. Gallen, 1888. The abuses of this habit are sympathetically portrayed by Kipling in the Mulvaney stories, * Davidson, op. cit., i, p. 455.

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664 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. due a certain immunity of the wives and children of soldiers in this regard. A moderate amount of alcoholic stimulant undoubt- edly has a beneficent action.* Dr. Clarke even asserts that light wine is an indispensable part of a hygienic diet;+ but the abuse of the drinking habit is a factor in the comparative immunities of all races in the tropics not to be neglected. Alcoholism and sexual immorality go hand in hand. Newly acquired vicious habits, unknown amid the restraints of home life, would speedily cause physical prostration in any climate. An engineer in Algeria testifies that “a Sunday will put more men in the hospital than three days in the hot sun.”{ One of the most subtle physiological effects of a tropical climate is a surexcitation of the sexual organs,* which in the presence of a native servile and morally undeveloped population often leads to excesses even at a tender age.|| The elimination of this factor be- comes especially important in dealing with the crossing of races and the effects of climate upon fecundity. It is invariably true that the mulatto—a social as well as an ethnic hybrid—suffers from a loss of caste which exposes this class to many temptations. The effect of this upon morbidity can not but be very great in face of the peculiarly weakened physical resistance.“ Among the imported and liberated negroes in the West Indies, indeed, im- morality rises to a climax almost sufficient to outweigh every other consideration. () The influence of national habits in the choice of food is a third element to be eliminated. One of the immediate effects of a trop- ical climate is a stimulation of the appetite,{ which too often leads to overindulgence. On the other hand, it seems to be rather the kind than the quality of food which is the decisive fac- tor. Dr. Felkin advises an increase in the daily allowance, pro- vided it be of the right sort.¢ In this regard the Teutonic nations are especially handicapped in competition with the Mediterranean peoples. The English and Germans insist upon their usual allow- ance of meat, where the Spaniards or Italians are content with * Science, 1891, p. 3. + Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, xix, p. 75. ¢ De Quatrefages, The Human Species, p. 236. * Vide Jousset, op. cit., p. 229. | Vide interesting letters from Dutch physicians in the East Indies in Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, 1886, p. 90. 4 Revue d’ Anthropologie, second series, v, p. 47. 4 Publications of the American Statistical Association, June, 1895, p. 195 seg. } Jousset, op. cit., p. 211; St. Vel., p. 29. $ The physiological effects of diet are discussed in Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1889, p. 787. Vide also Archiv fiir Anthropologie, xxiii, p. 467. Foster (Elements of Physiology, p. 843) agrees with Dr. Felkin. The caution of the best authorities in making positive assertions is in sharp contrast with the statements of Buckle and earlier writers.

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ACCLIMATIZATION. 665 cereals or lighter food. The Chinese are especially favored in ac- commodation to a new tropical climate by reason of their simple diet of rice. More important even than food, as a correction to be applied, is the effect of daily habits of life and of profession upon the physiological processes.* An indolent life always and everywhere tends to superinduce a multitude of disorders. De Quatrefages has pointed out that in the West Indies the wealthy and idle creoles, and not the “ petit blancs,” swell the death-rate of the white population above the average.t Gentle and regular exercise, then, must be accounted one of the most important hygienic precautions to be observed. Worse than lack of exercise, however, is overexertion, especially if it be coupled with exposure to the hot sun or to miasmatic exhalations. Statistics for the Jewish race, confining all its ac- tivities to shops in the towns, must be corrected, therefore, for this circumstance, before they are compared with statistics for the Germans, who as colonists take up the ever-deadly cultiva- tion of the soil. The Boers, who thrive as herders, would un- doubtedly suffer were they to stir up the soil as husbandmen. { Most favored of all is that nationality which is seafaring by na- ture. The apparently high vitality of the Italians and Maltese in Algeria is in part because they are mainly sailors and fisher- men.* In consonance with this principle is the relative immunity, already cited, of the wives and children of soldiers in India. | Slavery also always produces a terrific death-rate which vitiates all comparison between the statistics for the white and the negro.“ It should be noted, moreover, that such an institution exercises a selective choice upon the negro; for the survivors of such severe treatment will generally be a picked lot, which ought to exhibit vitality to a marked degree, all the weaklings having been re- moved.() Racial comparisons are also invalidated by the fuct that hygiene and sanitation are generally confined to the European populations, so that, other things being equal, a higher death-rate among the natives would be most natural. In any scientific discussion of the effect of climate upon the human body the racial element must always be considered ; and * Archiv fiir Anthropologie, xxiii, p. 467. + Op. cit., p. 236. ‘ ¢ Verbandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fir Anthropologie, 1885, p. 258. * Jousset, op. cit., p. 291. | Vide also Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, 1886, p. 90. In some cases the mortality of adult women is higher, as in the island of St. Louis. Revue d’ Anthropologie, new series, v, p. 30 et seg. 4 De Quatrefages, op. cit , p. 234. ( The bearing of this in Algeria is discussed in Revue d’ Anthropologie, second series, v, pp. 47, 54.

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666 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. correction must be made for ethnic peculiarities before any defi- nite conclusions become possible.* Three diseases are peculiar to the white race and to civiliza- tion—namely, consumption, syphilis, and alcoholism,} there being marked differences in the predisposition of each of the barbarous races for them, which often vary inversely with the degree of civilization they have attained; so that their widely varying lia- bility to contract these diseases becomes an important considera- tion in the ingrafting of any degree of culture or of artificial life upon the native inhabitants of a colonial possession. The Aryan race in its liability to consumption stands midway between the Mongol and the negro, climatic conditions being equal. The immunity of the Ural-Altaic stock in this respect is very remarkable. The Kirghis of the steppes, exposed to the severest climatic changes, are rarely affected with it,{ and the pure Turanian stock is almost exempt from its ravages.* This may be one reason why the Chinese are able to colonize in many places even in the tropics where the negro can not live, since it is well known that a tropical climate is fatal to all persons with a consumptive tendency. || The Chinese succeed in Guiana, where the white can not live;* and they thrive from Mamiatchin, where the mean temperature is below freezing, to Singapore on the equa- tor. That their immunity from phthisis is due in large measure to race, and not to climatic circumstances, seems to be indicated by the results of ethnic intermixture. The Japanese apparently derive a liability to it from their Malay blood, which not even their Turanian descent can counteract.{ The Malays, a mixed race, seem to lack vitality in many other respects as well, in all * Dr. Bordier, of the Ecole d’ Anthropologie at Paris, is perhaps the best authority upon this subject. A fine outline will be found in Revue d’ Anthropologie, i, p. 76; ii, p. 135; iv, p. 236; and v, p. 30. Vide also Dr. Montano in Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, Paris, 1878, p. 444; and Bulletin de la Société d’ Anthropologie, 1881, p. 733. In Germany Dr. Buchner has discussed it in Correspondenzblatt der deutschen Gesellschaft fiir Anthro- pologie, xviii, p. 17; and more popularly in Sammlung gemeinverstiindlicher wissenschaft- lichen Vortriige, 1886, No. 42. Dr. Ashmead, in Science for 1892, has raised some inter- esting points. + Whether nervous affections belong to this category is a matter of present controversy. Vide Science, December 16 and 30, 1892. Suicide as an ethnic disease is ably discussed by Morselli in his treatise on Suicide. ¢ Revue d’Anthropologie, third series, i, p. 77. * Ibid., new series, iv, p. 236. | Jousset, op. cit., p. 300. “ Bordier, Colonisation Scientifique, p. 472. 4 Peschel, Races of Man, p.77. The mortality table given in Quatrefages op. cit., p. 235, seems to contradict this. C7. Revue d’Anthropologie, new series, i, p. 76 ef seg., where tables of mortality are given. } Revue d’Anthropologie, new series, iv, p. 237; and in Bulletin de la Société d’ Anthro- pologie, 1881, p. 733.

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c a - A a ‘ 3 = s | i ACCLIMATIZATION. 667 of which the Japanese share to some extent. Their liability to consumption seems to be akin to that penchant for alcoholism, which is lacking among the Chinese because of the national opium habit. The negro even in the tropics is especially subject to all affec- tions of the lungs, a fact which constitutes a serious bar to his wide extension over what has been designated by Dr. Fuchs the catarrhal zone, in contradistinction to the dysenteric zone of the tropics.* The black races have in general less fully developed chests + and less respiratory power{ than the European race, They perspire less freely,* and their skin is thicker, or at least more dense, so that oxygenation by the lungs alone is more neces- sary. They are consequently exceedingly sensitive to atmospheric changes, and are severely handicapped in any migration for this reason.|| Almost invariably, where the European succumbs to bilious or intestinal disorders, the negro falls a victim to diseases of the lungs even in the tropics. An interesting case is instanced “ of a caravan in Senegal, composed of ninety-five negroes and ninety Europeans, in which the average mortality for each of the two contingents was exactly equal for two years. Yet only one of the whites was affected with disease of the lungs, while five of the eleven negroes who died succumbed to diseases of this class. Similar to the effect of change of climate upon the negro in in- ducing respiratory derangement is the influence exerted by alti- tude, which will be discussed in another place. Dr. Ashmead has suggested an interesting reason for the pre- disposition of the negro for consumption—namely, that the broad, open nostril of the race is unfitted to perform the necessary service of warming the air before its entrance into the lungs.() Leptor- rhinism, he asserts, is due to natural selection, which has fixed upon that form of nose as most suitable to the temperate zone ; and the negro, deprived of this advantage, suffers from disease of the * Dr. Rey, op. cit., has fully discussed this. + Jousset, p. 85. t Ibid., p. 88. The same point is startlingly proved by the statistics of the civil war in the reports of the Sanitary Commission and of the Provost Marshal General, and in the recent reports of the Surgeon General of the Army as for 1895. * Ibid., p. 111. | Dr. Buchner, in Correspondenzblatt der deutschen Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, xviii, p. 17, distinguishes ektogenen (from the environment, such as malaria) from endogenen diseases (from within, such as tuberculosis), The white race, he avers, is most liable to the former, the negro to the latter. Certain facts seem to lend slight color to this generaliza- tion, as, for example, the immunity of the negro from septicemia. (Vide example on p. 669 infra.) Spencer notes this peculiarity of primitive peoples in Principles of Sociology, i, p. 49. "; Revue d’ Anthropologie, v, p. 95. Other examples might be multiplied indefinitely. ) Science, March 31, 1893.

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668 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. lungs at once he is transferred to that part of the earth. It is not inconceivable that this may indeed serve as a partial explanation, but how, then, can we account for the equally open nostril of the Turanian stock so immune from consumption ? Or how can this theory be made to square with the predisposition of the Polyne- sian for the same class of diseases, especially when the leptor- rhinism of this latter race is taken into account ?* At all events, this element of race must be reckoned with in every comgeraee of the statistics of different localities. In the geographical distribution of diseases there is no more uncertain factor than the ethnic peculiarities of syphilis. It can therefore never be neglected in any project for acclimatization by crossing with the natives, since its relation to fertility is so impor- tant. Probably brought by the Aryan race to America ft and to New Guinea, { and by it disseminated in Polynesia, this disease seems to be as yet unknown in Central Africa to any extent.* In fact, it dies out naturally in the interior of that continent even when introduced, while it kills the American aborigines at sight. || From this dread disease the Chinese are especially exempt; for if contracted, it speedily becomes benign, in marked contrast to the Japanese, who betray their Malay blood in this respect. Every- where syphilis follows the Malay stock even in crossing with other races, like the negroid, which by nature is immune, as has been said. In Madagascar, where five sixths of a certain popula- tion was infected, Hirsch declares that the Malagasy (negroid) element is quite free from it, the Hovas (Malay cross) having it in the severest form. It will at once appear that these ethnic peculiarities of syphi- lis are of the greatest importance, therefore, since this disease is likely to prevail among exactly those classes in a colonial popu- lation where ethnic crossing would be most likely to occur. Intermixture as a remedy for acclimatization would consequently be much more difficult of application in the East Indies or in South America than in Cochin China or the Congo Valley ; for * The extermination of this race by diseases of this character is suggested by De Quatre- fages. Vide also Revue d’Anthropologie, new series, i, p. 76 ef seq. + Revue d’Anthropologie, i, p. 76; and Hirsch, op. cit., ii, pp. 67 and 74; although denied by Boudin. ¢ Revue d’Anthropologie, second series, vi, p. 497. * Lombard, op. cit., iv, p. 485; and Hirsch, ii, p. 77. This immunity has not persisted in America, however, so that syphilis is frightfully prevalent; shown, for instance, in med- ical officers’ reports of the Freedman’s Bureau, etc. | Livingstone, Travels, p. 128; and Hirsch, ii, p. 82. 4 Revue d’ Anthropologie, new series, iv, p. 236 et seg.; Bulletin de la Société d’ Anthro- pologie, 1867, p. 543; and 1881, p. 733. ) Op. cit., ii, p. 77; Revue d’ Anthropologie, second series, v, pp. 54 ef seg.

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pe Shttr ee ty © te ACCLIMATIZATION. 669 where this malady strikes down the first cross—the mulatto or the half-breed—all further assimilation of the races is at an end. The list of ethnic diseases might be greatly extended, but enough has perhaps been said to indicate the importance of elimi- nating it before entering upon the discussion of acclimatization per se. The predisposition of the negro for elephantiasis* and tetanus,t his sole liability to the sleeping sickness, so severe that in some localities the black is utterly useless as a soldier, { his im- munity from cancer * and his liability to skin diseases in general, || together with his immunity from yellow fever and bilious disor- ders, are well-recognized facts in anthropology. The Mongolian type appears to be likewise free from inflammatory diseases,* and oftentimes from cholera to some extent; () as well as from beri- beri, which is so peculiar to the Malay stock that it may be traced in the Japanese kak ké.{ The Polynesians are immune from scar- let fever,} and it is said that the Japanese can not even be inocu- lated with it.¢ This again is an illustration of the same persist- ence of pathological predispositions, since the partial affinity of the Japanese to the Polynesian race is well established. Modern investigation is bringing out similar examples of the constancy of racial diseases among the modern peoples of Europe. Dr. Chibret affirms that the Celtic type is immune from “trachoma,” or epi- demic granular conjunctivitis, which has often seriously ravaged the rest of Europe.** Spreading in the Belgian army, it passed over the Walloons; and in the central plateau of France attack- ing strangers alone; it passed over southern Bavaria, even when contracted by a Celt, speedily becoming benign. The only excep- tion to this racial immunity is that of the Piedmontese, otherwise it never extends above the two hundred metre Celtic boundary. tt * De Quatrefages, p. 426. Instanced by all writers. + Revue d’ Anthropologie, new series, iv, p. 236. ¢ Hirsch, iii, p. 595; Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, Paris, 1878, p. 444. # Not universal, however. Bulletin de la Société d’Anthropologie, 1879, p. 390. The frequency of tumors among negroes in the United States is a peculiar fact. | Clarke, op. cit., p. 67. 4 Revue d’Anthropologie, new series, iv, p. 236. ) Cf. tables in ibid., new series, i, pp. 76 ef seg. Contrast with table in De Quatrefages, p. 235. } Ibid., third series, iv, p. 206. Dr. Ashmead has tried to prove it is a result of unsani- tary environment (Science, November 8, 1892). ¢ Ibid., second series, v, p. 30. ¢ Science, April 21, 1892, p. 343. ** Comptes rendus du deuxi#me Congrés international des Sciences médicales, Berlin, 1891. Curiously, however, Dr. H. H. Haskell, of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, informs me that the disease is especially common in America among the poorer classes of Irish extraction. It is generally ascribed to unhealthy conditions of life. t+ The geographical distribution of caries also indicates an ethnic predisposition. Vide Map, Bulletin de la Société d’Anthropologie, Paris, 1867, p. 100; also 1868, p. 138; and

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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. Always, in accounting for such a phenomenon, two factors are to be considered—race and environment. Hence, in our study of cli- matic circumstances the first must be carefully eliminated before proceeding to study the second. Finally, the effects of ethnic intermarriage or crossing must in every case be taken into account. It is present as a complica- tion in almost all colonial populations, and is by far the most subtle and difficult of all eliminations to be made. Notwithstand- ing the objection that accommodation to climate by intermarriage is in reality not acclimatization at all, but the formation of an entirely new type, the two are continually confused; and crossing with native stocks is persistently brought forward as a mode and policy of action. As an element in colonization, and a devious means of avoiding the necessity of acclimatization, it arises to complicate the situation. Intermarriage is said to be the secret of Spanish and Portuguese success ;* in Mexico this has appar- ently been the case,} as well as in the Philippines.{ Dr. Bordier states that the Spanish and southern French are more prolific than others in marriage with negroes;* and concludes that the only hope for the future of French colonization in Cochin China lies in such crossing with the natives.|| The efficacy of this remedy is to-day accepted quite generally by anthropologists. Topinard agrees with Ten Kate that half-breeds resist climatic changes better than pure whites,“ and other authorities concede the same.{) Desmartis has even proposed to inoculate the British troops in India with Hindu blood as a preventive of tropical dis- orders. { Mémoirs de I’ Académie de Médecine, Paris, xxix, 1878. It formed the basis of an inter- esting discussion at the meeting of the Association frangaise pour |’Avancement des Sci- ences. Vide Bulletin for 1878, p. 808. Sormani, Chervin, and Lagneau have also treated of it in their respective publications. * Revue d’Anthropologie, N. S., iii, p. 265. Dr. Felkin finds the success of south Europeans in their element of Semitic blood (Scottish Geographical Magazine, ii, p. 652). + Ibid., v, p. 318. ¢ Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 1883, No. 2. * Colonisation Scientifique, p. 285. An example is also given in Revue d’ Anthropologie, second series, viii, p. 190. | Ibid., p. 397. 4“ Elements d’Anthropologie, p. 204. The Hudson Bay Company refused for many years to employ trappers with white wives, partly because they desired to increase the supply of half-breeds (Political Science Quarterly, ii, p. 139). § Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, xxix, p. 178. “ Bertillon’s principle” is accepted by Landowsky in the Bulletin of the French Associa- tion for the Advancement of Science, 1878, p. 817. In Revue d’Anthropologie, second . series, viii, p. 190, is a statistical account of crossing in Algeria on a meager basis, seeking to prove that French crosses with natives are more prolific than those with Germans. } Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1861, p. 143. hal ——_) pS... srg tee Pp ‘ Sein hla Ald ¥e A Sipe: - he - % se io. > 4 Ap *. & ” — Cavifet ores emia ae = ee) et eee ee $ ees acct mel eyes,” re as, $x) Sudeley Sie PA OD as *% . ¥ ep Rn se he REL tice ciaelelaO ARMM saad actin tern mss rT = lg Ue Aaipelaliela Kg i eG BOSE: 303 , . f F

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SETAE 8G = Ra oon & MS SAA Coie ete Re Moyes hace 7 mibee Fhe et eee wal doves ‘shirts seta! inde peaabeny eA ihe: ne ACCLIMATIZATION. as 671 On the other hand, a cross between races is too often apt to be a weakling, sharing in the pathological predispositions of each of its parent stocks, while enjoying but imperfectly their several immunities, as we have seen, Mulattoes in any climate are liable to lack vitality, and espe- cially, unless a continual supply of white blood is kept up, they tend to degenerate.* Dr. Gould notices this lack of vitality among mulattoes as very marked in the Union army.+ For this reason intermixture is by many regarded as a doubtful remedy. [ Neither the Malay nor the Japanese mixed races have the vitality of the Chinese.* Jousset affirms that in many cases crossing in- creases the liability to attacks of fever.) In Guiana the negroes thrive, but the mulattoes suffer from the climate Berenger- Ferand states that the mulatto in Senegal so far degenerates as to become infertile after three generations ;() and Westermarck, while acknowledging that many statements of this kind are exag- gerated, inclines to the view that crossing may be unfavorable to fertility.{ Be this as it may, it is certain that mulattoes are pathologically intermediate between the white and the negro; they rarely have yellow fever, and are less liable to malaria (paludism) than the Europeans; and they are not predisposed to bilious disorders. But they have all the diseases to which the negro is alone liable—namely, elephantiasis leprosy, phthisis, and even the dreaded sleeping sickness (mal de sommeil).¢ Finally, it may be added that many of the most successful examples of acclimatization have occurred where there has been a complete * Dr. 8. B. Hunt showed by measurements during the civil war that the brain weight of the mulatto, with less than half white blood, is below that of the pure negro (Quarterly Journal of Psychological Medicine, New York, 1867). + Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers, 1869, p. 319. ¢ Dr. Ricoux, in Annales de Demographie, vi, p. 5, says it can never be a permanent remedy in Algeria. Vide also Revue d’Anthropologie, second series, v, pp. 54, 79. Ibid., pp. 85 e¢ seg., contains full details on the relation of the sexes in South America. Walther (Revue d’ Anthropologie, new series, i, p. 76) gives, for example, the following rates of mortality from cholera in Guadaloupe in 1865: Chinese, 2°7 per cent; negro, 3°44; Hindu, 3°87; European, 4°31 ; mulatto, 6°32. The particularly high vitality of the Chinese is as marked as the weakness of the half-breed; Dr. Brinton (Races and Peoples, p. 284) corroborates this fully. * Revue d’ Anthropologie, new series, iv, p. 286. Vide also remarks on racial pathology infra. | Op. cit., p. 150. Its effects are discussed on pp. 154 ef seg, 4 Revue d’Anthropologie, ibid. ~ ( Parturition is held by Pruner Bey to be peculiarly difficult among hybrids (Etudes sur le Bassin, p. 13, Paris, 1855). Vide also Revue d’Anthropologie, second series, ii, p. 577, and Pésche, Die Arier, p. 10. } History of Human Marriage, pp. 284, 287. ¢ Bordier, Colonisation Scientifique, p. 285, and Berenger-Ferand, op. cit. ; also Revue d’ Anthropologie, new series, v, p. 30.

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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. absence of crossing, as among the Jews* in the Bourbon Islands, + with the Boers in South Africa,{ and in many parts of South America.* The physical elements of climate, ranged in the order of their importance, are humidity, heat, and lack of variety. Heat by itself, when unaccompanied by excessive humidity, does not seriously affect human health except when unduly ex- tended.|| The ranges of temperature to which the human body may become accustomed are very broad, so that the limitations to the dispersion of the race seem to be set by the food supply rather than the degree of heat orcold.“ All authorities agree, therefore, that the regions where acclimatization is most difficult are to be found in the areas of excessive humidity, or, roughly, where there is the maximum rainfall.( For this reason the suc- cessful examples adduced in favor of the view that acclimatiza- tion in the tropics is possible, should always be examined in the light of this consideration. A traveler in northern Africa has noted this in his observa- tion, that “where there is water and something can grow, there the climate is murderous; where the climate is healthy, there is no water and nothing can grow.”{ In this sense, the boasted acclimatization of the French in Algeria is merely accommoda- tion to one element of climate, after all. With this limitation it will be generally conceded that the success of the French in their African possessions along the Mediterranean is assured.{ The mortality of soldiers and sailors in Algeria was seventy-seven * The Jews prosper in South America (Montano, p. 445) and in Egypt (Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, 1885, p. 258), and elsewhere (Jousset, p. 292); while even in the uttermost parts of Russia they increase faster than the natives (Wallace, op. cit.). Their cosmopolitan character, first pointed out by Boudin, is generally accepted by anthropologists (Revue d’ Anthropologie, new series, i, p. 76). Dr. Felkin suggests that Semitic blood always helps in acclimatization (Scottish Geographical Magazine, vi, p. 652). + Quatrefages, p. 236. ¢ Wallace, op. cit. * Ibid. | Jousset, p. 37; Ratzel, Anthropo-geographie, i, p. 308; Virchow in Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, 1885, p. 208., 4 Ratzel, op. cit., p. 300, traces out the climatic limits of human life in detail. Vide also Science, January 27, 1893. 4 A comparison of Hahn’s map of the extension of the plantation system in Peterminn, Geographische Mittheilungen, xxxviii, No. 1, p. 8, with a map of the distribution of rain- fall in Berghaus’s Physicalischer Hand-Atlas will illustrate this relation. } Quoted from a scathing article by Max Nordau, Rabies Africana, in Asiatic Quar- terly Review, second series, ii, p. 76. ¢ General references are Berthelon, “ De la Vitalité des hue du Nord dans les Pays chauds,” and the statistics given by M. Bertherand (Paris, 1882). Vide also Landowsky in Bulletin de l’ Association francaise pour YAvancement des Sciences, Paris, 1878, p. 817." OE ie ot opal s, ee OEE e c ~ r pi ce : TS Pry xy ee he a ee eet oe ea ee Ue oe ee eke oe wt Oy SiN pee S aeeaeee

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st —— a ile te op [ge ee fo ts Pa aang AiR) La EATON ot mats var aiibesiaal setae’ se $cc a aire —. + ~~ ACCLIMATIZATION, 673 pro mille from 1837 to 1848, so that Boudin, Bertillon, and Knox doubted if the French could ever colonize there, At the present time the birth-rate even exceeds that in France itself;* and the death-rate is but little above the normal.+ In Tunis also the birth-rate was 35°6 pro mille in 1890-’92, greatly exceeding the ruling death-rate of 25°7 per thousand.{ In America it is in the uplands of Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, or along the arid coast of the Pacific, and not in the real tropical climate of Brazil, where the Spaniards have succeeded most fully. They have also done well in Cuba, to be sure, but the cases are entirely dissimilar. And to reason, from the French success in Algeria, that the same would ensue in the Congo basin, in Madagascar, or in Cochin China is totally to misconceive the real limitations of a tropical climate.* The relative difficulties to be encountered in these several cases may be roughly indicated by the mortality of soldiers. In Cochin China it is almost exactly double that in Tunis;| and this is, roughly speaking, a measure of the difference between a mere torrid climate as distinguished from one which is very humid as well as hot, for humidity means that malaria is superadded to all the other difficulties inherent in climate alone. The heat in a tropical climate becomes important but indi- rectly, because it is the cause of humidity and generally accom- panies it. In the temperate regions humidity goes with cool weather except in the dog days, while within the tropics heat prevails just when radiation through perspiration is most retard- ed by moisture in the atmosphere. This, in combination with the enforced lack of exercise and its attendant excretion, forms the double cause of physiologic disturbances. The blood is not prop- erly purified and anzmia ensues, if the more immediate effects do not manifest themselves in intestinal disorders, Everything which conduces to give a variety to the climate of the tropics affords relief. The alternating sea and land breezes of islands make them more amenable to European civilization.“ Especially when these islands are volcanic or mountainous is the strength of these tempering elements increased. This, in fact, is * Levasseur, La Population frangaise, iii, p. 43; and De Quatrefages, p. 229. + Revue d’ Anthropologie, third series, iv, p. 346. t Ktude statistique sur le Colonie de Tunisie, Tunis, 1894 ; reviewed in L’ Anthropologie, v, p. 781. * Vide Ravenstein in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, January, 1891, pp. 30 et seg. Dr. Felkin has not always been clear on this (Scottish Geographical Magazine, ii, p. 649). Refrigeration may do something as a palliative, but it deals with the lesser factor. Vide address by President Galton before the Anthropological Institute, London, 1887. : | Revue d’ Anthropologie, third series, iv, p. 346. A Vide Jousset, p. 50, VOL XLVI1L,—48

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. oe 4 PP ae Mae : H fsa me Aiea eee bees ts + te See Se Pe ee eS LW yy: ; os casa 5 Nek . oi 3 b eehse' <3 as a ee ss yp Soe 3 4 : 674 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the only alleviating circumstance in Jamaica, where the fierce sea breezes by day, reversing at night, have made life for the English possible. Singapore owes its prosperity to the fact that it is the only place in the East Indies where malaria is com- pletely unknown. Similarly, wherever there are alternating sea- sons of heat and cold, the chance of acclimatization becomes greater.* Hence one advantage of the climate of plateaus in the tropics, since both daily and seasonal variations are very great. Even in the major part of the African plateau, however, the ele- vation can not overset the monotony of the tropical climate, the seasonal variations ranging much lower than ours, while the mean temperature is fifty per cent higher.t Altitude, while giving at least temporary relief to the white race, { seems to exert a peculiarly baneful effect upon the negro and the Indian. Dr. Spruce gives an interesting example* of great economic distress produced by it in South America. Coffee grows in the zone from four thousand to six thousand feet, and - the demand for native labor is very great. Indians coming from above die of dysentery, while if they come from the coast they succumb to respiratory diseases, so that the planters are severely hampered. It is said in our Southern States that the negro can not go from the hill country to the plains without great physio- logic disturbance. || Jousset declares that the elevation of three thousand to forty-five hundred feet proves fatal to the negro in Africa.“ This, of course, is due in part to the greater sensitiveness of all primitive peoples to climatic changes, and partly due to lack of hygiene. But that the negro by nature really lacks a power of accommodation, even in the tropics, in this respect is conceded by most observers;( for by change of habitat he loses the immuni-

* Jousset, p. 62. An interesting table to illustrate this in Cuba is given from Ramon de la Segra in Revue d’Anthropologie, new series, i, p. 76 (although the relief in winter to the white, becomes correspondingly fatal to the negro). Lombard’s Atlas, Maps 2 and 3, shows the effect of seasons in Europe. + This was fully discussed in the Proveedings of the Seventh International Congress of Demography and Hygiene, p. 155, in London. Drs. Felkin and Markham took a hopeful view of the Central African region. Ravenstein declared Matabeleland alone to satisfy the conditions (Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, January, 1891, p. 31). Jousset, p. 341, asserts that an elevation of three thousand to forty-five hundred feet will make acclimatization everywhere possible in the tropics. : ¢ Jousset, p. 57, as well as p. 484. Vide also Dr. Montano, p. 484. Topinard, Anthro- pologie, p. 392, analyzes Bertillon’s views in this regard. * Wallace, op. cit. ] An interesting letter in the Nation, October 12, 1893. Vide also Revue d’Anthro- pologie, new series, v, p. 30. A Op. cit., p. 341. 4 Vide discussion in the Bulletin de la Société d’ Anthropologie, i, p. 528 ; Hunt, op. cit., p. 181; Jousset, p. 148; Ratzel, i, p. 304. Cf. the case of Apaches in Alabama given in the Publications of the American Statistical Society, September, 1893.. %

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EDUCATION IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, 675 ties he once enjoyed, and does not thereby gain any new ones.* A project to import twenty thousand negroes from Alabama and Mississippi into the State of Durango in Mexico has been defi- nitely abandoned, after the payment of over one hundred thou- sand dollars for freight charges alone. The land companies will introduce Chinamen instead, and the outlook is correspondingly brighter. Every experiment but demonstrates more clearly that the negro is useless as a colonist, even for reintroduction into the tropics. + -— seo EDUCATIONAL VALUES IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. By Pror. M. V. O'SHEA. ii is perhaps safe to say, without attempting to enter into the question in detail, that there has scarcely ever been a time when intelligent people have not been concerned about what their children should be taught in the schools. Leaving the attitude of bygone ages out of view, it is apparent to a careful observer that in our own time and country there is marked interest manifested in the question, What materials of instruction are of greatest value to be employed in elementary education ? The last quarter century has witnessed many and important changes in the cur- ricula of the elementary school; new subjects have been intro- duced and old ones dropped, or less time and emphasis put upon them. The recent appearance of two of the most important edu- cational documents of modern times,{ both considering in the main the relative worth of branches of instruction; and the rapid growth .of book and periodical literature dealing with the same problem, are indications of the importance which is being at- tached to this matter by all educators. Our educational gather- ings, too, in every part of the country are largely given over to the discussion of this old but yet very new question; and not only teachers, but parents and statesmen take sides in the de- bates, some maintaining that the classic three R’s furnish su- perior material for the scholastic training of childhood, while others believe that the many new subjects of history, literature, science, music, and art are better adapted to prepare our youth for the circumstances they will encounter when they leave the school- * Jousset, p. 279. Waitz and others agree that the negro returning to Africa from America becomes liable to fevers from which his predecessors were immune. + Vide letter in Boston Transcript, dated Mexico, August 11, 1895. ¢ The Report of the Committee of Ten, 1893 ; and the Report of the Committee of Fif- teen, 1895.

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676 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. room., So there are taking place in the educational arena warm contests between the champions of conservatism and those of radicalism ; between those who cling to the things of the past as adequate for the exigencies of the present, and those who feel that the complexity of our modern life demands somewhat different training in the schools, and who realize that contributions from recent scientific investigation along various lines have given us many valuable ways and means for improving and extending the work of the schoolroom that could not have been known or ap- preciated a century ago. Perhaps in no matter of public interest, all things considered, is there such ferment of ideas as in elemen- tary education; and one potent cause of this disturbance is our changing standards of educational values. Whatever things are contributing to alter the opinions of peo- ple as to the comparative values of various materials of instruc- tion, there are at least two or three agencies whose influence may be clearly and easily traced. In the first place, modern psycho- logical inquiry is leading toward a very different view of the mind and the mode of its development from that which has been held in previous times. This is not so much to be wondered at, though, for psychology, while a very old subject is a very new science, at least in its applications to the choosing of educational materials and the determination of educational processes; and some of the theories advocated a hundred years ago by eminent teachers show that the knowledge of mental activities in those days was extremely meager and formal, as perhaps those who fol- low us a century hence will be able to say of our present notions. One view commonly held at that time, and which seems to have determined school work ever since, maintained that the mind is composed of parts, each of which may accumulate general power by exercise in any special direction, in some such manner as we believe the muscles of the body grow and develop for future use in all sorts of ways by being disciplined in the gymnasium in youth. Now, it seems evident that, referring to physical things, the employment of the muscular system upon any kind of work develops a capacity which may be of service, at least in a meas- ure, in all kinds of work. A young man, for example, who has passed his youth upon a farm engaged in manual labor is gener- ally a more promising candidate for the football eleven or the crew when he enters college than is an individual whose early life has been spent in intellectual pursuits, or amid the idlenesses and luxuries of the city. A crew in preparation for a race, to illustrate further, spend a portion of the training period in run- ning, believing that the strength and endurance accumulated in this way may be advantageously used in the final great effort, which will require activity of a different kind from that necessi-

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3 « * as Se, iy 2 - r F - Rs PE Sg a es Fs * ¥ * af : - i * . > *. eas Nims 2 —_. : a f ¥ As S ele We" “Ey ae. cae, ee ee ee al ‘ : Loe ae eke 4 * Pore ae e j Pring ; 4 “G 2. SOLON Fae rn a 4 EES RTOS OT eee AT 8 aon Oe ee EDUCATION IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 677 tated by the training. But it is not needful to multiply ex- amples ; the proposition will be granted to be true, in a general way at any rate, although it has been pointed out by many * that it does not hold absolutely, in the sense that the power developed by one special line of work can be used as well to perform other kinds as the particular kind by which the power is accumulated. That is, to illustrate, a blacksmith can not use his strength so advantageously in farming or carpentry as in making horseshoes, or performing other kinds of labor common to the forge and anvil. This reference to physical things is important for us here only in illustration of certain theories that have been, and are still per- haps, extensively held concerning the development of the mind, and that have been largely influential in determining the material and method of elementary education. Reasoning from analogy, which seems to have been the principal method followed by early psychologists, it would appear that exercising any part or faculty of the mind in a given direction would create a power in the part exercised that could be employed with equal advantage in all di- rections. Thus if memory were employed in recalling and retain- ing any kind of facts—whether in language, in science, in mathe- matics, or in history—there would result a general power which in later life could be profitably used to remember anything and everything that was desired. It would follow, then, that if a pupil should master the vocabulary of a language so that it could be recalled readily, he would because of the power thus generated more easily remember legal matters after he left the school if he became a lawyer, medical matters if he became a physician, com- mercial matters if he became a merchant, or theological matters if he became a minister of the gospel. In the same way, and per- haps in a more Serious sense even, if a pupil should pass some ee aa, act ko ta = time in reasoning upon any kind of material in the schoolroom, # he would thereby be prepared to reason accurately and readily i upon all sorts of things after he left the school, just to the degree E3 that he reasoned accurately and keenly upon the special thing in j the school. The conclusion rushes upon us that if you wish men 4 and women to be reflective beings, judging wisely upon all mat- ters with which they may be concerned in daily life, you should require boys and girls to reason much in school ; and that kind of material of instruction should be chosen that gives the greatest opportunity for the exercise of the ratiocinative faculty. Until recently—perhaps we ought to include our own time—this mate- rial was supposed to have been most largely comprised in mathe- matics ; and as reason has been regarded as the highest faculty * For example, by Prof. Hinsdale, in the Educational Review for September, 1894.

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678 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of the mind, the ability to exercise which keenly and readily was the thing most to be coveted in life, it was a natural result that mathematics should have formed the backbone of school studies. And since we are still in that period when reasoning is regarded by most people as the highest attribute of man, we of necessity must have arithmetic as the most important subject in the ele- mentary school curriculum. It will not be possible within the limits imposed upon us here to examine in detail the theories of this “ faculty” psychology: it will suffice to say, although perhaps in a dogmatic manner, that in our own day students of the mind are breaking away from these old notions, and establishing what seems to be a much more rational and simple system of psychology; and following upon this there must come a different appraisal of educational materi- als, and a consequent change in the subjects taught in our schools. To be very brief, one important general conception of modern educational psychology is that the mind is a unit, and develops as a unity. As an inference from this it can be seen that the material of instruction in the school must be chosen with a view to train the whole individual—his perceiving, remembering, imagining, judging, and reasoning faculties, so called, and not any one of them singled out from all the others. And not only must this material train one intellectually as a unity, but it must affect him emotionally and volitionally as well—that is, it must develop character. We have had in the past, as every one knows, a kind of educational philosophy which declared that there should be one subject to train one faculty, another subject another faculty, and so on throughout the list of faculties and subjects; and there should also and particularly be special material to cultivate the emotions and furnish proper incentives to the will. The error of this sort of thing must be plainly apparent to any one who will study the problem concretely, by observing and interpreting the activities of his own mind, and looking into the various types of mind in his environment. If one will become introspective for a little time he will see that his perceptions are not divorced from his memory and reason along the lines that he is perceiving; and he. will also discover that what he perceives, remembers, or re- flects upon has its effect upon his emotions and will in leading him to some sort of action, immediate or in the future, One never sees a physician who is keen and ready in his perceptions of things relating to the practice of medicine who can not and does not remember, reason, and imagine equally well in regard to those matters; nor is his character, his personality free from the shaping influences of his system of thought. The same may, of course, be said of the lawyer, the merchant, or any other type of individual. The truthful view of the case seems to be that per- wee Ese i ha Th PN RN able Re hs: Mle a Ae a SM 0

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aa wa ~< (7: —— re “ ‘ iN eNO ise Ae Sie 8 0 ‘ ~ tibiae: Te seach etd a he ha aid AMM ne 4 ths Os < mS err tan . ee a ee

pee TL Ye i. OO RD EDUCATION IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 679 ception, memory, imagination, and reasoning are phases of one process, and they can not be separated from each other except by logical procedure ; nor can the intellect be considered apart from the emotions and will. There is no virtue either in this separation except for the mere purpose of analysis, for in daily life these faculties are never divorced in their activities from each other; and in training the individual in school, educational psychology declares it to be a serious mistake to try to separate one faculty from the others and train it by the use of some special material. The workings of this old analytic and analogical psychology are especially apparent in its teaching that the exercise of the mind in any direction generates a capacity which may be used equally well in all directions. The very statement of this doctrine would seem to show its falsity, but yet belief in it has practically determined the subjects taught in our schools for the last three centuries. No one, upon reflection, would maintain that an ex- tended study of mathematics would prepare a man for the practice of medicine so well as would the specia] study of physiology and - the effect of medicinal agencies upon the human system. Nor would such mathematical discipline be the very best thing to pre- pare for the profession of law, or theology, or any other business which does not directly call into play a large body of mathemat- ical. knowledge. Common-sense philosophy long ago concluded, and thoroughly believes now, that one who is to be engaged in the practice of some art-should wisely acquire all the knowledge possible relating thereto; and it esteems this of far greater ac- count than to be concerned in getting some foreign matter for the sake of whatever discipline this will give. Thus one who is to become an architect could spend his time to greater advantage in familiarizing himself with those things that relate to the success- ful conduct of his business, than he could to study profoundly into chemistry, botany, or theology in the belief that the general power gained by such mental gymnastics would make him more expert in architectural matters; and the illustration may be mul- tiplied at pleasure. . . Tocarry our point a step further, it must be obvious to any one who has thought about the matter that what an individual studies, and what he thereby gets to know, determines almost en- tirely what he can get to know in the future; not along general lines either, but in special directions. The mathematician, for example, is enabled by the abundance of his learning in geometry and calculus to appreciate and interpret further mathematical facts ; but he is by no means empowered, by virtue of his mathe- matics merely, to be a competent or appreciative judge of histor- ical, legal, psychological, or linguistic matters. It has become a

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678 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of the mind, the ability to exercise which keenly and readily was the thing most to be coveted in life, it was a natural result that mathematics should have formed the backbone of school studies. And since we are still in that period when reasoning is regarded by most people as the highest attribute of man, we of necessity must have arithmetic as the most important subject in the ele- mentary school curriculum. It will not be possible within the limits imposed upon us here to examine in detail the theories of this “ faculty” psychology: it will suffice to say, although perhaps in a dogmatic manner, that in our own day students of the mind are breaking away from these old notions, and establishing what seems to be a much more rational and simple system of psychology; and following upon this there must come a different appraisal of educational materi- als, and a consequent change in the subjects taught in our schools. To be very brief, one important general conception of modern educational psychology is that the mind is a unit, and develops as a unity. As an inference from this it can be seen that the material of instruction in the school must be chosen with a view to train the whole individual—his perceiving, remembering, imagining, judging, and reasoning faculties, so called, and not any one of them singled out from all the others. And not only must this material train one intellectually as a unity, but it must affect him emotionally and volitionally as well—that is, it must develop character. We have had in the past, as every one knows, a kind of educational philosophy which declared that there should be one subject to train one faculty, another subject another faculty, and so on throughout the list of faculties and subjects; and there should also and particularly be special material to cultivate the emotions and furnish proper incentives to the will. The error of this sort of thing must be plainly apparent to any one who will study the problem concretely, by observing and interpreting the activities of his own mind, and looking into the various types of mind in his environment. If one will become introspective for a little time he will see that his perceptions are not divorced from his memory and reason along the lines that he is perceiving; and he will also discover that what he perceives, remembers, or re- flects upon has its effect upon his emotions and will in leading him to some sort of action, immediate or in the future, One never sees a physician who is keen and ready in his perceptions of things relating to the practice of medicine who can not and does not remember, reason, and imagine equally well in regard to those matters; nor is his character, his personality free from the shaping influences of his system of thought. The same may, of course, be said of the lawyer, the merchant, or any other type of individual. The truthful view of the case seems to be that per- ‘eats, ae ee a ee x - ie Re ARO ein. icetinadiinatag. iy Mashpee cea raee ~

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ae ee yet Se GP ee te ” Shad . ¥ Fela! ret oes ak sy Dae See te S pis at — i ah 9a “Sig oA. EAR 7 EDUCATION IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 679 ception, memory, imagination, and reasoning are phases of one process, and they can not be separated from each other except by logical procedure; nor can the intellect be considered apart from the emotions and will. There is no virtue either in this separation except for the mere purpose of analysis, for in daily life these faculties are never divorced in their activities from each other; and in training the individual in school, educational psychology declares it to be a serious mistake to try to separate one faculty from the others and train it by the use of some special material. The workings of this old analytic and analogical psychology are especially apparent in its teaching that the exercise of the mind in any direction generates a capacity which may be used equally well in a!l directions. The very statement of this doctrine would seem to show its falsity, but yet belief in it has practically determined the subjects taught in our schools for the last three centuries. No one, upon reflection, would maintain that an ex- tended study of mathematics would prepare a man for the practice of medicine so well as would the special study of physiology and - the effect of medicinal agencies upon the human system. Nor would such mathematical discipline be the very best thing to pre- pare for the profession of law, or theology, or any other business which does not directly call into play a large body of mathemat- ical. knowledge. Common-sense philosophy long ago concluded, and thoroughly believes now, that one who is to be engaged in the practice of some art-should wisely acquire all the knowledge possible relating thereto; and it esteems this of far greater ac- count than to be concerned in getting some foreign matter for the sake of whatever discipline this will give. Thus one who is to become an architect could spend his time to greater advantage in familiarizing himself with those things that relate to the success- ful conduct of his business, than he could to study profoundly into chemistry, botany, or theology in the belief that the general power gained by such mental gymnastics would make him more expert in architectural matters; and the illustration may be mul- tiplied at pleasure. , . Tocarry our point a step further, it must be obvious to any one who has thought about the matter that what an individual studies, and what he thereby gets to know, determines almost en- tirely what he can get to know in the future; not along general lines either, but in special directions. The mathematician, for example, is enabled by the abundance of his learning in geometry and calculus to appreciate and interpret further mathematical facts ; but he is by no means empowered, by virtue of his mathe- matics merely, to be a competent or appreciative judge of histor- ical, legal, psychological, or linguistic matters. It has become a

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” 680 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. truism in the public mind that a mere specialist grows more nar- row every day of his life, and there seems to be plenty of evidence in one’s-environment to give rise to such speculation. The argu- ment in favor of liberal culture before a man takes up his spe- cialty is based upon a recognition of the fact that knowledge of one kind only predetermines a man to be able to appreciate and interpret things of a similar nature, and these merely. There are two reasons for this, as one can readily see from a little study of humanity around him. In the first place, what a man knows determines what he is interested in ; and common-sense philosophy has often declared that people are essentially selfish, because they are interested only in their own kinds of business, their own pur- suits, their own specialties, and they lack that many-sided interest which is necessary for any title to unselfishness. The lawyer feels little interest in what the medical fraternity are doing, and per- haps will never be seen at a medical lecture; the scholar, pure and simple, troubles himself little about questions of government, and is a very insignificant warrior indeed in the political camp. The mechanic reads theology or listens to a theological sermon with the greatest difficulty. But each of these types has the deep- est interest for readings, lectures, and everything else that relate to his own specialty, or to the thing he is most familiar with. It sometimes happens, it is true, that a poet may be interested in psychology or theology, but this isthe case only when he is already well versed upon these subjedts; and other apparent exceptions to the general rule may probably be explained in the same way. The second point in proof of this law, that what one knows determines what he can get to know, is that, psychologically speaking, ideas create the ability to appreciate and interpret other ideas of a similar nature. This also may be abundantly illus- trated by the circumstances of daily life. A man very widely read in history may be unable to understand a lecture upon biology, mechanics, or any subject unrelated to history. The general power which he has accumulated in his historical re- searches can not be applied to the ready and easy mastery of al! sorts of things, as the old psychology stoutly maintained. Again, one.» who has pursued mathematical studies to great length is not thereby qualified to become a statesman; the power which may be generated by the study of mathematics is not transferable immediately to the solution of social problems. Educational psychology, then, may be said to declare in a very broad way that ideas create capacity for the reception of ideas of similar kind, but that there is practically no such thing as the acquisition of general power by the mastery of special subject-matter. In explanation of this practically, it should be said that any kind of

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ee, ee ae EDUCATION IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 681 intellectual activity, no matter what it be, tends to create habits that may be carried into all kinds of study or business. One who has patiently, day after day and year after year, solved arith- metical or algebraic problems in the school, has by such exercise acquired habits of careful reflection and weighing of evidence that will lead him to dwell with somewhat the same care upon all matters that are brought to his attention ; but unless he has suffi- cient data upon these new matters his reflections, of course, will come to but little. The practical conclusion is, and the one of im- portance in education, that study along any line limits excellence in perceiving, remembering, imagining, or reasoning to matters along this same line. Applying this principle to the work of the schoolroom, we see that no subject should be studied merely for the discipline it may be supposed to give. The old theory that the school should culti- vate the senses, the memory, and the reasoning powers of pupils, means nothing as a matter of pure discipline; in the light of modern psychology we must understand that the only way to secure this cultivation is in special directions determined by the peculiar nature of the material upon which the mind is exercised. Assuming, then (for it will not be deemed necessary to argue the matter here), that one ideal of our civilization is to have an indi- vidual understand himself in relation to his natural environment, so that he may be able to adapt himself to natural laws and turn them to the promotion of his own happiness and welfare, it follows that the study of natural law, the method of adapting one’s self to it, and the industries that are based upon an adequate comprehen- sion of it, should form an important part of school work ; and it is some such argument that has introduced Nature-study into many elementary schools, giving it a prominent place there. In like manner, if it is desirable for one to be able to adjust himself in the best way possible to his social environment, he should study the organization of society, and the ethical and material conditions upon which his own and others’ welfare and advancement depend. These considerations have been at the bottom of changes in the school curriculum, and are now at work in the endeavor to intro- duce still further improvements, as many educators think. At all events, the old idea of formal discipline is gradually losing the breath of life, and we can think no better of it than that the sooner it releases its hold upon those who make school curricula, the sooner will the material of instruction be more nearly adapted to prepare the individual for his needs in after life. Whatever may be said in favor of the study of any branch for its disciplinary value, because of the good habits which are formed in its pursuit, may be said with equal force of those sub- jects which have direct worth in giving the pupil knowledge that

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Pe ee OE a Ne ee ae a pees 34 ‘ 6 Sy ae by, a eS ae Pa i atta, Cath Tete eee oe! <i es rf 682 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. will be of service to him outside the schoolroom, for these also will create habits of attention, reflection, and industry equally well. Thus, in the study of history, literature, or science, habits of careful observation and reflection may be formed with as great readiness and surety as in the study of algebra, English grammar, Latin, or Greek. And, moreover, the conditions for accurate ob- servation and reasoning in science or in the conduct of society are somewhat different, as every one will admit, from what they are in Greek, Latin, or arithmetic; and if the purpose is to lead the pupil ultimately to observe keenly and accurately and inter- pret readily and serviceably facts of Nature or the phenomena of social intercourse, then the more he has to do of this in the school the more will he become familiar with right methods for future activity. On the other hand,if the object is to make the pupil keen in the appreciation of linguistic matters, then, of course, he must study language; and we might speak in a similar way of any special subject. We have, therefore, this broad conception, that study along special lines does not create general but only special power. There follows a second principle of equal importance in deter- mining the relative value of materials of instruction; but this, like the one just considered, has not yet received universal recog- nition among teachers. It has been maintained from aforetime that arithmetic, grammar, spelling, and the mechanical side of reading, writing, and the art subjects should receive particular attention because of the paramount necessity that the pupil should be master of these things before he leaves the school, in order to be able to make any progress in his learning thereafter ; and there has always accompanied this first argument another, close of kin, that these branches afford opportunity for excellent discipline of the mind. Enough has already been said perhaps to indicate that the idea of pure discipline (or, as Prof. Hinsdale calls it, “the dogma of formal discipline” *) is not founded upon good philosophy ; it remains to examine briefly this second posi- tion which many teachers, with their faces always turned toward the setting sun, declare with fervor to be impregnable. A survey of the subjects in the elementary school currieulum will show that they fall naturally into three great classes, usually styled (1) the real or content subjects, including history, literature, ge- ography, and Nature-study or science; (2) the form or symbolic subjects, including language, grammar, arithmetic, and the me- chanical side of reading, writing, music, and art; (3) the indus- trial or “psycho-manual” subjects, including manual training, sewing, and cookery. It has been held hitherto that the elemen-

* Educational Review, September, 1894.

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~ Po - Se aa Me ee rie’ G4, ‘ ’ : ‘ . ; : ey ‘ wf id d a As ha ae e ETS EN ee Ee a eee RE ee Ty TIE a oe ME + Pare ETN TS yee er, t EDUCATION IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 683 tary school should be concerned very little if at all with the real or content subjects, because these could not be studied with profit until a considerable body of symbols had been acquired, by the ready use of which a pupil would be enabled to talk, read, write, spell, draw, and cipher in the expression of what he gained from his investigations ; and, moreover, is it not impossible for one to study history, literature, or science until he has mastered a vocab- ulary that will enable him to intelligently comprehend what he is trying to study about? That is to say, must he not first study words so that through them as symbols he may finally get to know about the realities symbolized ? It is doubtless familiar to every one who has looked into the matter that there has been a revers- ing of this doctrine in many places of late years, and the aim is now to acquire familiarity with symbols through the things which they represent. It has become a truism of modern educational psychology that a symbol is learned with great difficulty and with little serviceableness unless it be connected with the thing or thought it is to symbolize; it is learned only after great effort, because, in the first place, it possesses no characteristic in itself but that of form, and in the case of words and figures very simple forms at that, which increases the difficulty of mastery. A mature person looking at the end of a pencil in the endeavor to fix it in the mind so that it may be identified in the future from similar pencils, would find the task well-nigh impossible, although it appears so entirely simple; but if the same effort be made in remembering a horse, or large and complex object of any kind, the problem is very much easier, because there are more evident characteristics to fix the thing in the mind, and by which it may be identified when it appears there again. Now, in the case of learning the symbolic subjects in the schoolroom, the ease of mastery depends upon every word and figure learned being connected with the thought or thing it symbolizes; the thought being previously aroused in the mind, and the symbol fused with it, as it were. Hence the maxim now frequently heard: First the & thought, then the symbol. Psychological observation has shown also that the use of a symbol can become automatic in acquiring or expressing thought (which is the sole ultimate object in the teaching of the form subjects) only when that symbol has been x connected a great many times in one act of thought with the thing it represents; and then whenever the symbol appears in q the mind the thing symbolized will be automatically suggested. | 2 It is illustrated every day of our lives that when two or more Vee things are perceived or experienced as connected with each other 4 in time or space, one being thought of or experienced again, the other invariably accompanies it in the manner of the original appearance. Psychology has long recognized that contiguity is Sit Hid LE al be BAS ile eR coe =:

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say Saree 23° a: fs 684 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the essential principle of memory; and it is particularly applica- ble to the automatic memory, upon which, as already said in sub- stance, the teaching of the symbolic subjects must depend. The object is to have thought spontaneously suggested by symbols, with no conscious attention upon the symbols themselves; and, of course, there is the co-ordinate purpose to acquire power to use the means of expression automatically to convey thought. Neither of these objects may be secured if the learning of forms is divorced from their constant use in the ready acquisition and clear conveyance of thought; which, when applied to the work of the schoolroom, means that the study of arithmetic, language, grammar, or the mechanics of reading, writing, and drawing, apart from their natural connections with the pursuit of the con- tent subjects, history, literature, science, and geography is a mis- take. Common sense maintains, in everyday life at least, that the mechanism necessary to the performance of any art may be most advantageously acquired through actual practice of the art; and one never learns the mechanics of bicycle-riding, baseball- playing, typewriting, and similar arts before he begins to ride the bicycle, play ball, or use the typewriter; but he acquires skill in doing these things by applying himself to their execution at the outset. A child at its mother’s knee learns to talk by talking, and to walk by walking, rather than in either case to acquire beforehand the theory and mechanics of each in the hope to ap- ply them some time later in life. But common sense, which has always been slow in carrying its philosophy of the activities of daily life into the work of the schoolroom, is just now beginning it seems to appreciate in a way that what is true concerning the mastery of the mechanics of doing things in daily life applies also to the formal subjects of education, in the sense that they may be most serviceably acquired in an incidental manner, while using them continually to acquire and express thought aroused by the study of real things. It is, no doubt, necessary to have much drill upon these formal things to make their use automatic; but this drill must follow and depend upon the use of the symbolic subjects in the study of the real subjects at any time rather than to aim at mastering a body of forms which may be applied at some future period. From the foregoing (and there are other arguments, such as the greater interest which the pupil will have in the study of the formal subjects when they are thus connected with the real sub- jects, which can not be entered into here) it may be concluded that the formal branches of instruction acquire a value from their connéction with the study of content subject-matter; and taught by themselves they are, comparatively speaking, empty and valueless. What has been said of the symbolic studies may \ re eee Hee ES - me PAPE AA heaters: P98

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woudignn eactvtibaibigdaledi ORR 1 a eiritnh S PAM alowed 4 Rar 3” Pat earn we Te 2 ae ey ee” ee . Se ee ae ee iia: ‘ain, + Bin 5’ 9 wok ier aS tS a " he ek te ee ¢ Ve SPINY ¢ ver 2 . - ‘ m 2 ties > “ AS - * ain) ‘bs ean EDUCATION IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 685 be said also, without repeating arguments here, of the psycho- manual or industrial subjects: they, too, must be concerned with the expression, and hence with the deepening and intensifying of thought gained from the pursuit of history, literature, and sci- ence. Thus when the pupil studies about the industries in his environment and gains an impression of the activities of the me- chanic, farmer, seamstress, and so on, he makes his ideas effective and lasting by imitating these activities himself. But to require him to learn the rules and mechanism of these industries before having an opportunity to perform them is to create an indiffer- ence or distaste for them all because of the formality and empti- ness of such work. In drawing, too, the object should be to have the pupil express what has been gained from the study of some real object, or to illustrate some scene from history or literature; and when the mere grammar of drawing is learned before put- ting it to any use, not only interest but effectiveness in the work is lost. Other matters should be considered in a complete and thorough analysis of educational values in elementary education ; but from what it has been possible to say here it may be concluded that in the arrangement of the elementary school curriculum the central place should be given to the real or content studies—literature, history, geography, and science—and all other subjects must fol- low and depend upon them in the acquisition and expression of thought gained from their pursuit. As to whether the literary or the scientific subjects should receive greater emphasis there seems not to be so great agreement among psychologists and edu- cators; although the ideal of the development of moral character in our schools, so frequently spoken of nowadays by teachers, would seem to argue the superiority of those studies that have a moral content—that is, those that deal with moral matters. Educational psychology points out a danger people are liable to fall into in thinking that because the material of instruc- tion used treats of moral questions the result upon the char- acter of the pupil must of necessity be moral. If this were true it would follow that the learning of moral subject-matter, as literature and history, would constitute adequate means for the training of exemplary men and women. In somewhat the same way it was once thought by religious teachers, and may be yet in some places, that the study of the catechism would cause an indi- vidual to become religious. But a little observation of types in one’s environment will show that these theories do not hold abso- lutely, at any rate. If it necessarily follows that the study of his- tory produces an estimable moral character, then we should find historians to be exemplary above all other men, and statesmen to be infinitely more than politicians. Taking things literally, we

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686 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, should expect all those individuals whose calling leads them to study history more or less, as the lawyer, the politician, historical teachers, and others to be distinguished for their morality above the scientist, the mathematician, or any one else in the commu- nity; but if this be so, it has not yet impressed itself upon the public mind. The more just view to take of this question is (to be dogmatic for the sake of brevity) that those activities which tend to become habitual are the ones that determine character; and an individual may study profoundly about charity, for instance, without ever exercising that quality himself; while, on the other hand, one may be little familiar with the literature of benevolence, but an exemplary person in its practice. Although it seems eminently true that our thoughts tend to get worked out into appropriate activities, yet we make a serious mistake when we conclude that those ideas which we get from books are upper- most in our minds when we are inspired to action; rather those impressions that have already become deepened and fixed through previous expressions are the ones that get mastery when we are about to act. This does not imply that literature and history have not great moral culture value when rightly used to furnish incentives and models for moral activities that become actually realized in the pupil’s life—in the child immediately under the guidance of the teacher, in the older person at a more remote period perhaps. But at the same time it should be understood that character in a true sense includes the whole of personality, and a defect in any part is essentially a moral defect; so that what one can and does do, in a material sense, is as important to be looked after in elementary education as how he may think or feel in a bookish sense. These considerations alone (and there are other important arguments that might be advanced) indicate that, so far as values are concerned, the study of science, and of the various industries that may be understood and improved upon only by a comprehension of its laws, should hold a place in the elementary school co-ordinate with that of literature and history. One may not dogmatize here, though, considering the present state of our knowledge upon the most effective means for training moral character; and it is to be sincerely hoped that we may ere long be in possession of further contributions along this line from psychologists and educators. CurTTING telegraph wires is, according to Mr. P. V. Luke, of the British- Indian Chitral Expedition, a favorite amusement with frontier tribes. They find the wire useful. Sometimes, too, they convert the hollow iron posts of which the telegraph poles are made into guns, by lapping them round with wire ; and they cut the wire up for bullets. ewer. Sr oo AN ag mii, 8%

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THE VELOCITY OF ELECTRICITY. THE VELOCITY OF ELECTRICITY. By GIFFORD LE CLEAR. eae determination of the velocity of electricity has been the ambition of many physicists; yet at present it is generally conceded that the velocity may be anywhere from the fraction of an inch per hour to millions of miles per second. By the popular use of the words “current of electricity” we have grown to think of a fluid flowing through a wire, yet we do not know that there is any such fluid, and consequently we can hardly say that it has a velocity. However, the attempt was made, some years ago, to find the velocity of electricity, consider- ing it as a fluid, by finding the time taken for a signal sent from the Harvard Observatory, Cambridge, to reach St. Louis. The distance between the two places was known, and the gentlemen who conducted the experiment easily found what they supposed was the velocity of electricity by dividing the distance by the time. To understand why this velocity is not really the velocity of electricity, as well as to understand the direction in which physical research is now directed, we must consider what we really do know about electricity. When the two poles of a battery are connected by a wire we say a current of electricity is flowing through the wire. The evidences of the so-called current are two: in the first place, the wire is heated; and in the sec- ond, a magnetic force is set up in the neighbor- hood of the wire. It is this magnetic force that interests ‘us, and we must get as clear an ideaof it as possible. We find by experiment that in the a neighborhood of the wire z a compass needle is * turned from its custom- ary north-and-south posi- tion: The force which so turns the needle we call the magnetic force, and the direction in which the north end of the needle is pulled we call the direction of the magnetic force. The adjacent figure is from a photograph of iron filings spread over a plate through which a wire is thrust, perpendicular to the plate. A current is passing through the wire whose cross-sectioa al » _ . Sapte nt = a ia ae a eo wlan Sea Meet re = ss

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688 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. we seeat A. The filings arrange themselves in the direction of the magnetic force, which we see to be in concentric circles around the wire. According to theory, this magnetic force extends to an indefinite distance. Near the wire the force is very strong, but grows weaker, losing strength with distance until it finally be- comes imperceptible. Before we connected the wire to our battery this force did not exist. Where did it come into existence first— near the wire or far from the wire—or did it come suddenly everywhere at once? The late Dr. Hertz performed some won- derful experiments in this connection, in which he showed that the magnetic force comes into existence first near the wire and then makes its appearance a little farther off, and so on till all the surrounding space is filled with the force. Dr. Hertz’s experi- ments seem to indicate, moreover, that the rate at which this magnetic force travels out from the wire is perfectly definite; in a word, that it travels with the velocity of light. You can picture this to yourself by imagining the wire suddenly to emit light just as we connect it to the battery; then the light and the mag- netic force will both reach any point at which you may place your eye at exactly the same time. This is the theory, and a very interesting one it is, but it does not stop here, for not only does this magnetic force travel with the velocity of light, but it has been proved by experiment that it can be reflected, refracted, and brought to a focus. Many observers are now engaged in reproducing and extend- ing Dr. Hertz’s experiments, and many brilliant results are to be expected. Now, to see why the velocity determined between Cambridge and St. Louis was not the velocity of electricity, we must go back to some fundamental principles which at first sight seem to have no connection with the question. Just as a current of electricity produces magnetic force around the wire carrying the current, so does magnetic force around a wire produce a current of electricity, no matter how the magnetic force may be produced; but, whereas the current produces a mag- netic force that lasts as long as the current flows, the magnetic force produces a current only while the force is growing, so to speak—while it is being made, If, now, we have a wire, a, so ar- ranged that a current of electricity may be sent through it from a battery by pressing a key, and another wire, }, parallel to a, connected with an instrument for detecting a current of elec- tricity, when we press the key we shall get magnetic force around a, extending as it grows tob. While this magnetic force is grow- ing, we find there is a current through b in the opposite direction to the current through a. Now let us move b up closer toa. We get, of course, the same effgct, only the current in b is stronger

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eT Re Ae ee! ee eee Mtoe emery cart Ek ee 3 Tie age lee r ee ae . 7 ee i: THE VELOCITY OF ELECTRICITY. 689 than before, because the magnetic force is stronger the nearer we get toa. Finally, let 6 toucha. We have then really only one wire, since the wires touch and form one conductor. Of course, now the magnetic force can not send a current through our wire, as it did through b, in the opposite direction to the current from i the battery; but it tries to do so, opposing the current from the “a battery. Consequently, the current that the battery gives is very ; weak for a short time, but only for a short time, because this opposing current lasts only while this magnetic force is growing. x This phenomenon evidently holds for every wire through which 4 we try to start a current. - The instruments used in the experiments between Cambridge "a and St. Louis could not work unless the current from the battery 3 had reached its full strength, so that the time the experimenters found between the sending of the signal and its receipt was not + the time it took for electricity to pass from Cambridge to St, 3 Louis, but was the time it took for the current they used to grow . to its full strength. ii We know that the strength of the magnetic force around a g wire depends upon the size and form of the figures into which B the wire is bent, and the time it takes for a current through the wire to reach its full strength depends upon the strength of the magnetic force. Therefore we should expect that, by using dif- ferent instruments on which wire is wound in different forms and sizes, we ought to find that it takes different times to send a sig- nal from one place to another. This has been tried and found 3 true. In fact, it was in this way that it was first proved that the velocity found between Cambridge and St. Louis was not really the velocity of electricity. . It would seem, then, that in our search for connecting links | between electricity and light we had better turn our attention to what goes on in the space around a wire carrying a “current” rather than to confine ourselves to what takes place in the wire. & - yd 9 a eh rx = ¥ tpl, Cb ta OO THE Davenport Academy of Sciences is endeavoring to organize a sys- tematic and thorough field work in archzolegy through the State of Iowa, with the expectation of ultimately publishing a final report on the subject. For that purpose it asks the co-operation of workers everywhere in the State in collecting the material necessary, hoping to accomplish the task in not less than five years. That the work may be intelligently done, it has sent out a “circular of suggestion,” giving details of instruction as to methods of proceeding in examining mounds, earthworks, shell heaps, vil- lage sites, rock shelters, aboriginal workshops, cliff carvings and paint- ings. A combined summary of what has already been done in this work has been prepared by Prof. Frederick Starr, and is sent out by the academy. VOL, XLvu1.—49

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Shah g POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. SKETCH OF WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT. haw him we lose the most accomplished bryologist which thig country has produced, and it can hardly be said that he leaves behind anywhere a superior.” This is high praise, and its value is enhanced by its coming from Prof. Asa Gray, who cer- tainly knew whereof he spoke. WIL1L1aM STaRLING SULLIVANT was born January 15, 1803, at the little village of Franklinton, then a frontier settlement in the midst of primitive forest, near the site of the present city of Co- lumbus. He was the eldest of the four children of Lucas Sulli- vant, a Virginian, and Sarah (Starling), his wife. His father had been commissioned by the Government to survey a district in the Northwestern Territory lying in the center of what is now the State of Ohio, where he early purchased a large tract of land, bordering on the Scioto River, and near by, if not including, the site afterward chosen for the capital of the State. The early life of William Sullivant was therefore that of the frontier, with its mixture of hardships and opportunities. Ata time when the hominy mortar and the hand grater served to fur- nish coarse meal for bread, and grist mills were few and far apart, young William, mounted astride of a bag of wheat on one horse and leading another on which also was strapped a well-filled bag, was often sent on a journey along the blazed bridle-path through the forest to procure flour for the family. These expeditions fre- quently occupied two or three days’ waiting for the grist, and ne- cessitated sleeping in the mill wrapped in a blanket, where he was fortunate who had a pile of corn or wheat for his couch instead of the hard floor. But all this, together with the athletic sports of the frontier settlement, served to give him the fine physical development which was often remarked in his adult years. He was also one of the party on some of his father’s shorter survey- ing expeditions, thus gaining knowledge that he was soon destined to put in practice. He was sent to a private school in Kentucky, and, entering the Ohio University when that institution opened, received there the rudiments of a collegiate education. He was then transferred to Yale College, from which he was graduated in 1823. His father dying in the same year, he was obliged to give up the idea of studying a profession in order to take charge of the large family estate. The property consisted of lands, mills, etc., and demanded much and varied attention. The care of it required him to become @ surveyor and a practical engineer, and to be much engaged in business for the greater part of his life. He became a member of the Ohio Stage Company, whose operations covered a wide field, A oie sis ES ECL SOC RS bps ni oA > fiat TY Tt a i pana RG OR neh,

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KA Sighs i hk pide ~ ,* eg ge ee ey ay tee v OD ee ee ROAR CI iti MEERA 8 os re See ss A Sea Se ee ee

vey SKETCH OF WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT. 651 and before the introduction of railroads afforded the best accom- modations and facilities to the traveling public. He was one of the original stockholders and directors of the Clinton Bank, and - for a time its president. Mr. Sullivant was not one of those whose predilection for science appeared at an early age. He was nearly thirty years old, and his youngest brother, Joseph, was already somewhat proficient in botany, conchology, and ornithology, before his interest in natural history was aroused. He had married Miss Jane, daughter of Alexander K. Marshall, of Kentucky, and niece of Chief-Justice Marshall, and was living in his suburban resi- dence in a rich floral district. His wife had died within a year after marriage, leaving him an infant daughter. His first scientific observations were upon the birds. When his attention was directed to botany, by his brother Joseph, he took up the subject with the determination to acquire a thorough knowledge of it. “He collected and carefully studied,” says Prof. Gray in the memoir already quoted from,* “the ‘plants of the central part of Ohio, made neat sketches of the minuter parts of many of them, especially of the grasses and sedges, entered into communication with the leading botanists of the country, and in 1840 he published A Catalogue of Plants, Native or Naturalized, in the Vicinity of Columbus, Ohio (63 pages), to which he added a few pages of valuable notes, His only other direct publication in phanerogamous botany is a short article upon three new plants which he had discovered in that district, contributed to the American Journal of Science and Arts in the year 1842. The observations which he continued to make were communicated to his correspondents and friends, the authors of the Flora of North America, then in progress. “ As soon as the flowering plants of his district had ceased to _ afford him novelty, he turned to the mosses, in which he found abundant scientific occupation, of a kind well suited to his bent for patient and close observation, scrupulous accuracy, and nice discrimination. His first publication in his chosen department, the Musci Alleghanienses, was accompanied by the specimens themselves of mosses and hepatice collected in a botanical ex- pedition through the Alleghany Mountains from Maryland to Georgia, in the summer of 1843, the writer of this notice being his companion. The specimens were not only critically deter- mined, but exquisitely prepared and mounted, and with letter- press of great perfection; the whole forming two quarto volumes, which well deserve the encomium bestowed by Pritzel in his The- saurus, It was not put on sale, but fifty copies were distributed

* Read before the National Academy of Sciences, April 22, 1875. 7 i? ee ee a oi i pu, 2) othe ili Sins eee On : fs ba re es bie eee e : we 4

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692 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. with a free hand among bryologists and others who would appre- ciate it. “Tn 1846 Mr. Sullivant communicated to the American Acad- emy the first part, and in 1849 the second part, of his Contribu- tions to the Bryology and Hepaticology of North America, which appeared one in the third, the other in the fourth volume (new series) of the academy’s Memoirs, each with five plates from the author’s own admirable drawings. These plates were engraved at his own expense, and were generously given to the academy. “When the second edition of Gray’s Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States was in preparation, Mr. Sullivant was asked to contribute to it a compendious account of the musci and hepatice of the region, which he did, in the space of about one hun- dred pages, generously adding, at his sole charge, eight copper- plates crowded with illustrations of the details of the genera; thus enhancing vastly the value of his friend’s work, and laying a foundation for the general study of bryology in the United States, which then and thus began. So excellent are these illus- trations, both in plan and execution, that Schimper, then the leading bryologist of the Old World, and a most competent judge, since he has published hundreds of figures in his Bryologia Euro- pea, not only adopted the same plan in his Synopsis of the Euro- pean Mosses, but also the very figures themselves (a few of which were, however, originally his own), whenever they would serve his purpose, as was the case with most of them. “ A separate edition was published of this portion of the Man- ual under the title of The Musci and Hepaticez of the United States East of the Mississippi River (New York, 1856, imperial octavo), upon thick paper, and with proof impressions directly from the copperplates. This exquisite volume was placed on sale at far less than its cost, and copies are now of great rarity and value. It was with regret that the author of the Manual omitted this cryp- togamic portion from the ensuing editions, and only with the understanding that a separate Species Muscorum, or Manual for the Mosses of the whole United States, should replace it.” This work Mr. Sullivant was about to prepare at the time of his death. Mr. Sullivant married Miss Eliza G. Wheeler, of New York, a lady of rare accomplishments, who became a zealous and acute bryologist, and ably assisted her husband in his scientific work until her death, of cholera, in 1850 or 1851. Her botanical services were commemorated by Schimper in the name of the Ohio moss, Hypnum Sullivantiea. Two daughters and a son were the fruit of this marriage. In 1848 Mr. Sullivant secured the co-operation of the accom- plished botanist Leo Lesquereux, by whose labors his undertak- ings were substantially promoted. A characteristic feature of his

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ey a ee As aaa WAM hee PPA, So MS Ie Se ee \ : : nl eT PER ees Oe eT ee Siete es tit |’ \ ‘ eit ws ; ee Sai Gilbey : " iat, ee ¥ APO Fe, eT. aE OT SKETCH OF WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT. 693 scientific work was the issuing of sets of specimens, mounted on leaves with printed labels, and bound into a volume having a title-page, index, etc. Specimens had accompanied Mr. Sullivant’s text in the Musci Alleghanienses, and now, from the ample stores collected by him and Lesquereux, or otherwise acquired, fifty-six sets of about three hundred and sixty species each were made up, and all, except a few copies for gratuitous distribution, were placed on sale at less than cost, for the benefit of his esteemed associate. The title of the volume was Musci Boreali Americani quorum specimina exsiccati ediderunt W. 8S. Sullivant et L. Les- quereux ; 1856. The value of the work insured the speedy sale of the edition. A similar but larger collection, containing between five and six hundred species, many of them recently gathered in California by Dr. Bolander, was issued in 1865. The sets were disposed of with the same unequaled liberality as before dis- played. Still later, Mr. Sullivant aided his friend Mr. Austin both in the study of his material and in the publication of his Musci Appalachiani. In his Musci Cubenses, which appeared in 1861, Mr. Sullivant named the species of Charles Wright’s earlier acquisitions in Cuba and described the new ones. These mosses were also distributed in sets by the collector. His researches upon later and more ex- tensive collections by Mr. Wright, in which many new species were indicated, were left in the form of notes and pencil sketches at his death. The same is true of an earlier collection, made by Fendler in Venezuela. Mr. Sullivant was several times called upon to work up the mosses gathered by Government exploring expeditions. Thus the Bryology of Rodgers’s United States North Pacific Exploring Expedition was early prepared for publication by him in the most elaborate manner. But, from causes over which he had no control, it has never been published, although brief characters of the principal new species have seen the light. The fact that Sullivant’s exquisite drawings of these species were not promptly engraved and given to the scientific world is especially to be regretted. In the case of the South Pacific Exploring Expedition, under Commodore Wilkes, the volume on the mosses was not published in his lifetime, but Mr. Sullivant issued a separate edition of his portion of it in 1859. It forms a sumptuous imperial folio, the letterpress having been made up into large pages, and printed on paper matching that used for the twenty-six plates. The fourth volume of the Pacific Railroad Reports contains Sullivant’s de- scriptions of the mosses collected in Whipple’s Exploration, occu- pying about a dozen pages, and accompanied by ten admirable plates of new species,

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694 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY. The Icones Muscorum, however, is Mr. Sullivant’s crowning work. It was issued in 1864, and consists of “ Figures and De- scriptions of most of those Mosses peculiar to Eastern North America which have not been heretofore figured,” forming an imperial octavo volume with one hundred and twenty-nine cop- perplates. “The letterpress and the plates,” says Prof. Gray, “(upon which last alone several thousand dollars and immense pains were expended) are simply exquisite and wholly unrivaled ; and the scientific character is acknowledged to be worthy of the setting.” Most of the time which Mr. Sullivant could devote to science in the last few years of his life was given to the prepara- tion of a second or supplementary volume of the Icones. The plates were finished, the descriptions partly written out, and it was to have been printed in the spring in which he died. Mr. Sullivant was attacked with pneumonia in January, 1873, about the time of his seventieth birthday, and, although making a partial recovery, died from the effects of the disease on April 30th. He had married Caroline E. Sutton, who survived him. Four sons and two daughters were born to them. He bequeathed all his bryological books and his exceedingly rich and important collections and preparations of mosses to the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University. The rest of his botan- ical library, his choice microscopes, and other collections, were left to the State Scientific and Agricultural College, then re- cently established at Columbus, and to the Starling Medical College, founded by his uncle, of which he was himself the senior trustee. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected Mr. Sul- livant to membership in 1845; he was also an associate of the other chief scientific societies of this country and of several in Europe. The honorary degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by Gambier College, while Torrey and Gray honored him early by bestowing the name Sullivantia Ohionis upon a rare and modest plant discovered by him in his native State, and belonging to the same order (saxifrages) with the currant, syringa, and hydrangea. For nearly forty years Sullivant corresponded with Asa Gray, also collecting with him and co-operating in research whenever practicable. He is often mentioned in Gray’s Letters. When Lesquereux, who had been Gray’s curator at Cambridge, left him to go and assist the Western bryologist, Gray wrote in a letter to Torrey: “They will do up bryology at a great rate. Lesquereux says that the collection and library of Sullivant in muscology are ‘magnifique, superbe, the best he ever saw.’” Under date of De- cember 6, 1857, Gray writes to W. J. Hooker: “ Your first letter is now gone to Sullivant, hecause you speak of him so hand- oT PS hie” hes . Seat ne 1 ied all Aa iat PR pot eg kaw ee ae sy ~ a je LY es 3 Fe a weaned ati B=. oa x wae * we a kali 1 eae ~

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: tke 5 tat ee Se ? Pion Oe este " : race oe ¥ ves ee gi AW phat Py Be bs Zz a —, peat ha : re % Te a Esl es T. ” rr s ¥ s ~ ‘ iad ee 2 SKETCH OF WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT. 695 somely, and say that Mitten is instructed to prepare a set of mosses for him. A noble fellow is Sullivant, and deserves all you say of . him and his works. ‘ The more you get to know: of him the better : you will like him.” And when, in 1877, he gave to Mr. Burgess, ; since famous as a designer of yachts, a note of introduction to Charles Darwin, Gray wrote: “ He has just married the daughter of my dear old friend the late Mr. Sullivant, who did for mus- cology in this country more than one man is likely ever to do again.” Prof. Gray said of him in the memoir already quoted, and which has supplied the facts for a large part of this article: “In personal appearance and carriage, no less than in all the traits of an unselfish and well-balanced character, Mr. Sullivant was a fine specimen of aman. He had excellent business talents, and was an exemplary citizen ; he had a refined and sure taste, and was an accomplished draughtsman. But after having illustrated his earlier productions with his own pencil, he found that valuable time was to be gained by employing a trained artist. He discov- ered in Mr. A. Schrader a hopeful draughtsman, and he educated seh v 2; sl) var BY oh ey f POTEET Lat Re tig aes a ae 8 = owe a e him to the work, with what excellent results the plates of the 4 Icones and of his other works abundantly show. As an investi- st gator he worked deliberately, slowly indeed and not continuously, * but perseveringly. Having chosen his particular department, he £ gave himself undeviatingly to its advancement. His works have laid such a broad and complete foundation for the study of bry- ; ology in this country, and are of such recognized importance H every where, that they must always be of classical authority; in ‘ie fact, they are likely to remain for a long time unrivaled. Wher- fy ever mosses are studied his name will be honorably remembered ; # in this country it should long be remembered with peculiar grati- tude.” The following extract from a letter written immediately after Sullivant’s death to Mr. Joseph Sullivant by Leo Lesquereux will be interesting : “In everything, as well you know, W. 8. 8. was most accu- rate. He was superficial in nothing. He worked his mosses © slowly, coming again and again to a doubtful species, comparing authorities, repeating the most difficult anatomical preparations, till fully satisfied that his conclusions were warranted as far as botanical science could warrant them. The numerous species to which he has given his authority have therefore been admitted and recognized by the most eminent botanists of our time— Schimper, Miller, Lindberg, etc. More than ten years ago a very honorable account of his works as a bryologist was published in the Botanische Zeitung of Leipsic, which, for botany, is the high- est European authority.

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696 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. “ Another remarkable trait of the character of your lamented brother was his perhaps too liberal disposition to work in science for the benefit of others, without credit for himself. Not only did he give his time to the determination of an immense number of specimens which were sent to him by students, or by so-called authors, etc., but often, without claiming his right of authority, he determined the species, prepared descriptions of the new ones, when he well knew that they would be published under the names of his applicants. He has thus fixed a far larger number than those which were published in his name. Even lately he exam- ined a large collection of mosses in which his opinion was re- quested, prepared descriptions of new species, remarks on inter- esting ones, etc., and from this work a catalogue was made by the same applicant, the notes copied as well as his remarks, and thus the authorship was literally taken from him, and not even a word of credit was given for his work. Such absence of scientific hon- esty was not even resented by your brother, who merely alluded to it as a poor reward for hard work. A character as was his, without trace of envious or jealous feeling, marked by true kind- ness for everybody, by a ready disposition to acknowledge and help every effort for the advancement of his science of predilec- tion, to recognize errors and to correct them without the slightest word of depreciation, could but excite admiration and love; and, indeed, your brother was truly and sincerely loved by the few who knew him well; for he was not open to everybody. A man of few words, he never talked of himself or his doings, and thus only those who had the privilege of being intimate with him would recognize his noble nature.” IN a paper read at the recent International Geographica! Congress, Mr. H. Yule Oldham, of the University of Cambridge, attached great value in the study of the history of geographical discovery to the medizval manu- script maps or portolani. Usually made for practical purposes, by sailors, they were, as a rule, free from personal and political bias. A careful study of them gives valuable corroboration and often correction of information derived from ordinary documents. It was long customary to ascribe the discovery of the Madeiras and Azores to the fifteenth century, but they were found on maps of the fourteenth century. Similarly ata later period Cuba was shown to be an island at a time when, according to the ordinary historical documents, it was believed to be continental; and the Bermudas and other islands were shown on maps of earlier dates than those to which their discovery was ascribed. So often was cartographical information found to be ahead of historical records pointing to the results of otherwise unrecorded voyages, that additional interest and importance were lent to those maps which seemed to indicate the — of a pre-Columbian discovery of America.

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PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. XL—PAINTER. By HERBERT SPENCER. | gg mere representation in its rudest forms not only pre- cedes civilization but may be traced back to prehistoric man. The delineations of animals by incised lines on bones, discovered in the Dordogne and elsewhere, prove this. And certain wall- paintings found in caves variously distributed, show, in extant savage races or ancestors of them, some ability to represent things by lines and colors. But if we pass over these stray facts, which lie out of relation to the development of pictorial art during civilization, and if we start with those beginnings of pictorial art which the uncivilized transmitted to the early civilized, we see that sculpture and paint- ing were coeval. For, excluding as not pictorial that painting of the body by which savages try to make themselves feared or ad- mired, we find painting first employed in completing the image of the dead man to be placed on his grave—a painting of the carved image such as served to make it a rude simulacrum. This was the first step in the evolution of painted figures of apotheosized chiefs and kings—painted statues of heroes and gods, We shall the better appreciate this truth on remembering that the complete differentiation of sculpture from painting which now exists did not exist among early peoples. In ancient times all statues were colored: the aim being to produce something as like as possible to the being commemorated. The already named images of dead New Zealand chiefs tattooed in imitation of their originals, illustrate primitive attempts to finish the representations of departed persons by surface-markings and colors; and the idols preserved in our museums—not painted only but with imitation eyes and teeth inserted—make clear this original union of the two arts. Of evidence that the priests painted as well as carved these effigies, little is furnished by travelers. Bourke writes of the Apaches :—*“ All charms, idols, talismans, medicine hats, and other sacred regalia should be made, or at least blessed, by the medi- cine-men.” But while the agency of the primitive priest in idol- painting must remain but partially proved, we get clear proof of priestly agency in the production of other colored representa- tions of religious kinds. Describing certain pictographs in sand, Mr. Cushing says :— | “When, during my first sojourn with the Zuifii, I found this art practice in vogue among the tribal priest-magicians and members of cult societies, I VOL, XLVIUL.—49*

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698* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. named it dry or powder painting.” The pictures produced “are supposed to be spiritually shadowed, so to say, or breathed upon by the gods or god- animals they represent, during the appealing incantations or calls of the rites. . Further light is thrown on this practice of the Zufli in making use of these suppositively vivified paintings by their kindred practice of painting not only fetiches of stone, etc., and sometimes of larger idols, then of washing the paint off for use as above described, but also of powder painting in relief; that is, of modeling effigies in sand, sometimes huge in size, of hero or animal gods, sacramental mountains, etc., powder painting them in common with the rest of the pictures, and afterward removing the paint for medicinal or further ceremonial use.” But the clearest evidence is yielded by the Navajo Indians, Dr. Washington Matthews in a contribution on “The Mountain Chant, a Navajo Ceremony,” says :— “The men who do the greater part of the actual work of painting, under the guidance of the chanter, have been initiated [four times], but need not be skilled medicine men or even aspirants to the craft of the shaman... . The pictures are drawn according to an exact system. The shaman is frequently seen correcting the workmen and making them erase and revise their work. In certain well-defined instances the artist is allowed to indulge his individual fancy. This is the case with the gaudy embroidered pouches which the gods carry at the waist. Within reasonable bounds the artist may give his god just as handsome a pouch as he wishes. Some parts of the figures, on the other hand, are measured by palms and spans, and not a line of the sacred design can be varied.” * Unquestionably then pictorial art in its first stages was occu- pied with sacred subjects, and the priest, when not himself the executant, was the director of the executants. The remains and records of early historic peoples yield evi- dences having like implications. As shown already, there existed in America curious transitions between worshiping the actual dead man and worshiping an effigy * Both great surprise and great satisfaction were given to me by these last sentences. When setting forth evidence furnished by the Egyptians, I was about to include a remem- bered statement (though unable to give the authority), that there are wall-paintings—I think in the tombs of the kings—where a superior is represented as correcting the drawings of subordinates, and was about to suggest that, judging from the intimate relation between the priesthood and the plastic arts, already iillustrated, this superior was probably a priest. And here I suddenly came upon a verifying fact supplied by a still earlier stage of culture: the priest is the director of pictorial representations when he is not the executant. Another important verification is yielded by these sentences. The essential parts of the representa- tion are sacred in matter, and rigidly fixed in manner; but in certain non-essential, decora- tive parts the working artist is allowed play for his imagination, This tends to confirm the conclusion already drawn respecting Greek art. For while in a Greek temple the mode of representing the god was so fixed that change was sacrilege, the artist was allowed some scope in designing and executing the peripheral parts of the structure. He could exercise his imagination and skill on the sculptured figures of the pediment and metopes; and heré his artistic genius developed.

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PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 699* of him—cases in which a figure was formed of portions of his body joined with artificial portions. The Nile Valley furnished other transitions. Concerning the Macrobrian Ethiopians, Herod- otus tells the strange story that— “ When they have dried the body, either as the Egyptians do, or in some other way, they plaster it all over with gypsum, and paint it, making it as much as possible resemble real life ; they then put round it a hollow col- umn made of crystal.” And to this plastered, painted, and inclosed mummy they made offerings. The Egyptian usage diverged from this simply in the casing of the mummy and in the painting: the one being opaque and the other consequently external. For the carved and painted representation of a human figure on the outer mummy-case, was doubtless a conventionally-stereotyped representation of the occu- pant. And since, in all such cases, the ancestor-worship, now of private persons, now of major and minor potentates, was a religion, painting as thus employed was a religious art. The leading subjects of Egyptian wall-paintings are worshiping and killing: the last being, indeed, but a form of the first; since pictures of victorious fights are either glorifications of the com- memorated commanders or of the gods by whose aid they con- quered, or both. In early societies sacrifice of enemies is religious sacrifice, as shown among the Hebrews by the behavior of Sam- uel to Agag. Hence the painting in these Egyptian frescoes is used for sacred purposes. That in Ancient Egypt the priest was the primitive sculptor we have already seen; and the association of painting with sculp- ture was so close as to imply that he was also the primitive painter—either immediately or by proxy. For, seeing that, as Brugsch remarks, Egyptian art “is bound by fetters which the artist dared not loosen for fear of clashing with traditional direc- tions and ancient usage,” it results that the priests, being deposi- taries of the traditions, guided the hands of those who made painted representations when they did not themselves make them. But there is direct proof. Erman says:—“‘ Under the Old Empire the high priest of Memphis was regarded as their chief, in fact he bore the title of ‘chief leader of the artists,’ and really exercised this office.” In another passage describing the administration of the great temple of Amon he tells us that the Theban god had his own painters and his own sculptors; both being under the super- vision of the second prophet. It may be that, as in the case of the Indians above named, these working painters had passed through some religious initiation and were semi-priestly. ‘ In connection with this use of painting for sacred purposes in Egypt, I may add evidence furnished by an existing religion. Says Tennent concerning the Buddhists of Ceylon :-——

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700* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. - “The labors of the sculptor and painter were combined in producing these images of Buddha, which are always colored in imitation of life, each tint of his complexion and hair being in religious conformity with divine authority, and the ceremony of ‘ painting of the eyes,’ is always observed by devout Buddhists as a solemn festival.” It is interesting to remark that in its mural representations, Egypt shows us transitions from sculpture to painting, or, more strictly, from painted sculpture to painting proper. In the most sculpturesque kind the painted figures stood out from the general field and formed a bas-relief. In the intermediate kind, relief-en- creux, the surfaces of the painted figures did not rise above the general field, but their outlines were incised and their surfaces rendered convex. And then, finally, the incising and rounding being omitted, they became paintings. By the Greeks also, painting was employed in making finished representations of the greater or smaller personages worshiped— now the statues in temples and now the figures on stele used to commemorate deceased relatives, which, cut out in relief, were, we may fairly infer, colored in common with other sculptured fig- ures, just as were those on Etruscan sarcophagi. Of this inference there has recently been furnished a justification by the discovery of certain remains which, while they show the use of color in these memorials, show also the transition from raised colored fig- ures to colored figures not raised. Explorations carried on in Cyprus by Mr. Arthur Smith, of the British Museum, have dis- closed— “a series of limestone stele or tombstones, on which is painted the figure of the person commemorated. The surface of the limestone is prepared with a white ground, on which the figure is painted in colors and in a man- ner which strongly recalls the frescoes of Pompeii.” The painting being here used in aid of ancestor-worship, is in that sense, religious. Very little evidence seems forthcoming concern- ing other early uses of painting among the Greeks. We read that before the Persian war, the application of painting “was almost limited to the decoration of sacred edifices, and a few other relig- ious purposes, as coloring or imitating bas-reliefs, and in repre- sentations of religious rites on vases or otherwise.” In harmony with this statement is the following from Winckelmann :— “The reason of the slower growth of painting lies partly in the art itself, and partly in its use and application. Sculpture promoted the worship of the gods, and was in its turn promoted by it. But painting had no such — advantage. It was, indeed, consecrated to the gods and temples; and some few of the latter, as that of Juno at Samos, were Pinacothecz, or picture galleries ; at Rome, likewise, paintings by the best masters were hung up in the temple of Peace, that is,in the upper rooms or arches. But paint- ings do not appear to have been, among the Greeks, an object of holy, undoubting reverence and adoration.”

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PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. ‘ 701" This relatively slow development of painting was due to its origi- nal subordination to sculpture. Independent development of it had scope only when by such steps as those above indicated it became separate; and, employed at first in temple-decoration, it gained this scope as sculpture did, in the ancillary and less sacred parts. Partly because the Greek nature, and the relatively incoherent structure of the Greek nation, prevented the growth of an ecclesi- astical hierarchy, with the normal developments arising from it, and partly—perhaps chiefly—because Greek civilization was in so large a measure influenced by the earlier civilizations adjacent to it, the further course of evolution in the art and practice of paint- ing is broken. Wecan only say that the secularization became marked in the later stages of Grecian life. Though before the time of Zeuxis various painters had occupied themselves with such semi-secular subjects as battles and with other subjects com- pletely secular, yet, generally executed as these were for the ancillary parts of temples, and being tinctured by that sentiment implied in the representation of great deeds achieved by ances- tors, they still preserved traces of religious origin. This is, in- deed, implied by the remark which Mr. Poynter quotes from Lucian, that Zeuxis cared not “to repeat the representations of gods, heroes, and battles, which were already hackneyed and familiar.” The first stages in the history of painting, and of those who practiced it, after the rise of Christianity, are confused by the in- fluences of the pagan art at that time existing. It was only after this earliest Italian art, religious like other early art in nearly all its subjects, had been practically extinguished. by barbarian in- vaders, that characteristic Christian art was initiated by intro- duction of the methods and usages which had been preserved and developed in Constantinople; and the art thus recommended, en- tirely devoted to sacred purposes, was entirely priestly in its ex- ecutants. “From the monasteries of Constantinople, Thessalonica, and Mount Athos,” says Mr. Poynter, “Greek artists and teachers passed into all the provinces of Southern Europe ;” and there- after, for a long period, the formal Byzantine style prevailed everywhere. Of the scanty facts illustrating the subsequent relations be- tween priest and painter in early Christian Europe, one is fur- nished by the ninth century. Bogoris, the first Christian king of the Bulgarians, solicited the emperor Michael “for the services of a painter competent to decorate his palace,” and the “emperor dispatched [the monk] Methodius to the Bulgarian Court.”

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702* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. The continuance of this connection is shown by the following passage from Eastlake’s History : “In the practice of the arts of design, as in the few refined pursuits which were cultivated or allowed during the darker ages, the monks were long independent of secular assistance. Not only the pictures, but the stained glass, the gold and silver chalices, the reliquaries, all that belonged to the decoration and service of the church, were designed, and sometimes entirely executed by them; and it was not till the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the knowledge of the monastery began to be shared by the world at large, that painting in some degree emerged from this fostering though rigid tuition.” Along with the practice of painting went knowledge of the ancillary art, the preparation of colors. In a later passage East- lake says :— “Cennini, speaking of the mode of preparing a certain color, says that the receipt could easily be obtained, ‘especially from the friars.’” In another passage there is implied an early step in seculari- zation. “Colors and other materials, when not furnished by monks who re- tained the ancient habits of the cloister, were provided by the apothecary.” And further steps in the divergence of lay painters from clerical painters are implied by the statement of Laborde, quoted by Levasseur, to the effect that the illuminators of the thirteenth century had for the most part been monks, but that in the four- teenth and fifteenth laymen competed with them. Various paint- ers in miniature and oil are mentioned. Painters continued to be illuminators as well; they also painted portraits and treated some sacred subjects. Throughout early Christian art, devoted exclusively to sacred subjects, there was rigid adherence to authorized modes of repre- sentation, as in ancient pagan art—Egyptian or Greek. Over ecclesiastical paintings this control continued into the last cen- tury ; as in Spain, where, under the title of Pictor Christianus, there was promulgated a sacro-pictorial law prescribing the com- position of pictures in detail. Nay, such regulation continues still. M. Didron, who visited the churches and monasteries of Greece in 1839, says :— “Ni le temps ni le lieu ne font rien A l'art grec; au XVIII" siécle, le peintre moréote continue et calque le peintre vénitien du X°, le peintre athonite du V* ou VI*°. Le costume des personnages est partout et en tout temps le méme, non-seulement pour la forme, mais pour la couleur, mais pour le dessin, mais jusque pour le nombre et l’épaisseur des plis. On ne saurait pousser plus loin l’exactitude traditionnelle, l’esclavage du passé.” And Sir Emerson Tennent, & propos of the parallelism between the rigid code conformed to by the monkish artists of the East and the code, equally rigid, conformed to by the Buddhists of Ceylon, quotes an illustrative incident concerning these priest-

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PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 703* painters of Mount Athos, who manufacture pictures to pattern with “almost the rapidity of machinery.” M. Didron wished to have a copy of the code of instructions “drawn up under eccle- siastical authority,” but “ the artist, when solicited by M. Didron to sell ‘cette bible de son art,’ naively refused, on the simple ground that ‘en perdant son Guide, il perdait son art; il perdait ses yeux et ses mains.’” Concerning later stages in the rise of the lay painter, it must suffice to say that from the time of Cimabue, who began to depart from the rigidly formal style of the priestly Byzantine artists, the lay element predominated. Amid a number of apparently non- clerical painters, only a few clerics are named; as Don Lorenzo, Fra Giovanni, Fra Philippo Lippi, Fra Bartolommeo, But mean- while it is to be observed that these secular painters, probably at first, like the secular sculptors, assistants to the priests in their work, were occupied mainly and often exclusively with sacred subjects. Along with this differentiation of the lay painter from the cler- ical painter there began a differentiation of lay painters from one another; and the facts show us a gradual beginning where imagination would have suggested only an abrupt beginning. As I learn from an academician, the first form of portrait (omit- ting some painted under a surviving classic influence in those earliest days before art was extinguished by the barbarians) was that of the donor of a sacred picture to a church or other eccle- siastical edifice, who was allowed to have himself represented in a corner of the picture on his knees with hands joined in sup- plication. Something similar happened with another form of art. Land- scapes made their first appearance as small and modest back- grounds to representations of sacred personages and incidents— backgrounds the composition of which displays an artificiality congruous with that of the figure-composition. In course of time this background assumed a greater importance, but still it long remained quite subordinate. After it had ceased to be a mere accompaniment, landscape-painting in its secularized form was but partially emancipated from figure-painting. When it grewintoa recognized branch of art, the title “ Landscape with figures,” was still generally applicable; and down to our own day it has been thought needful to put in some living creatures. Ouly of late has landscape pure and simple, absolutely divorced from human life, become common. Of course various classes and sub-classes of artists, broadly if not definitely marked off, are implied by these and other specialized kinds of paintings: some determined by the natures

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704" + POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of the subjects treated and others by the natures of the mate- rials used. For form’s sake it is requisite to say that here as always those units of a society who make themselves distinct by performing functions of a certain kind, presently, along with separation from the rest, begin to unite with one another. The specialized individ- uals form a specialized aggregate. When in the Middle Ages the artists employed as assistants to priests for ecclesiastical decoration became a class, they grew into something like guilds. Levasseur, quoting Laborde, says they were hardly distinguished from artisans: like them they formed corporations under the name of paintres, tailleurs d’ymaiges et voirriers. In Italy during the fourteenth century a Brotherhood of Painters arose, which, taking for its patron St. Luke the Evan- gelist, had for its purpose, partly mutual instruction and partly mutual assistance and protection. That in modern times the tendency to integration has been illustrated all know. It needs only further to remark that the growth of the chief art corporations has been followed by the growth of minor art corporations, some of them specialized by the kinds of art practiced ; and also that embodiment of the profession is now aided by art periodicals, and especially by one, The Artist, devoted to professional culture and interests. MENTION is made in Prof. Frederick Starr’s Comparative Religion Notes, in the Biblical World, of the important place in the ceremonials of the Indian tribes of the Southwest occupied by curious pictures or mosaics made of sand. Different colored sands are procured by pounding up the various kinds of rocks. The designs are made by qualified persons, accord- ing to a prescribed method, after preparatory purification. Colors and designs are symbolical. In making them the sand taken in the hand is allowed to run out between the thumb and forefinger along the lines to be produced. The practice is found among various pueblo peoples and among the Navajos ; and notice is made of similar observances among the Hindus and Parsees ; and sand pictures are made as a street amusement in Japan. THE London Spectator gathers from a number of letters it has received that “a great many cultivated people like their small superstitions. . . . Some dislike trusting their reason wholly, because, they think, that way agnosticism may lie; some feel in their superstitious beliefs an antiquarian charm, or relation to their forebears; while others appear to have the feel- ing that, if they cleared the superstitions wholly out, their mental scenery would be rendered base and marred by sameness. . . . They do not all put the question, but all we think are inclined to ask us, as one rather clever old lady has done, what harm the petty superstitions do? Why not throw salt over your shoulder if you spill it ?”

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CORRESPONDENCE. Correspondence. ALCOHOL AND CRIME. Editor Popular Science Monthly : oe Writing of Scientific Temperance and President Jordan’s thoughtful ar- ticle in your January issue, you say, “ There is no denying that much the greater part of the crime and misery with which society is afflicted is caused by the use of alcohol in one form or another.” May I be pardoned if I say that the proposition may weil be denied ; and may, even without much trouble or skill, be proved totally fallacious? And to pre- vent misunderstanding, permit me to say that I do not in this communication either advo- cate or condemn the use of alcoholic drinks: the question may well be left for a separate discussion. Consider that, if much the greater part of crime and misery . is caused by the use of alcohol, it must follow as a corollary that, where alcohol is most used, there we shall find most crime and misery. But i teaches that this is not true. Here in Cali fornia, at least, and, I think, perhaps through- out the United States and elsewhere, the rep- resentative business and professional men, as a rule, use alcoholic beverages regularly, and in much greater quantity than can possibly be obtained by the poor—those most ac- quainted with misery and crime. I keep well within the bounds of truth in saying that a majority of merchants, lawyers, judges, and men of affairs, “ politicians,” legislators, and perhaps physicians, drink daily from two to four glasses of spirits; that many, and these not the least reputable and prosperous, drink double this quantity; and not a few, three or four times as much. Beer, in sum- mer time especially, is drunk by great num- bers of the active, efficient, well-behaved, and prosperous business and professional men, both American and German, from two to twenty and even more times a day; and these do not seem on an average to be dis- posed to crime, or to suffer what is called misery. Brewers, as a class of workingmen, are not more disposed to commit misdemean- ors, not to say crimes, than others: and they appear to be far enough from misery; yet I am informed by credible people, who know whereof they affirm, that many, indeed most, of them drink daily from twenty to thirty and forty glasses of beer. I have not much personal acquaintance with Wall Street spec- ulators and millionaires, or with their ways; but I conclude, from information and such glimpses into their lives as one occasionally catches, that few of them are abstainers from wine or the stuff called champagne, or from brandy, whisky, etc. If these as a class VOL, XLV111.—50 are criminals (and I for one do not say nay), at least theirs is not the crime, nor is such misery as they may perhaps suffer, the crime and misery of which you speak. I know personally some workingmen, reputable, even respectable, who drink at home from two to four gallons of whisky per month ; of course, they are not brilliant members of society. It is true, doubtless, that the money spent by such well-to-do people as I have mentioned does not bear so large a ratio to their incomes as does that spent by many mechanics and clerks and laborers ; and therefore it does not impoverish the former as much as it does the latter. But the same is true of other ex- penses of “living,” viz., those for dwellings, butcher meat, bread, clothing, and amuse- ments; yet none of these things are con- sidered to be causes of crime and misery. If it be true that the use of alcohol has any genetic connection with crime, then those who have served terms in the penitentiary, where alcohol is excluded from their diet, should after liberation be less disposed to crime than before; but experience traverses this conclusion. The truth appears to be that, excluding from consideration people having organic proclivities crimeward, as Sir Thomas More hath it, there is no “ punishment so horrible that it can keep them from stealing, which have no other craft [or poh narra: whereby to get their living ” rther, as he saith, “‘ great and horriblepunishments be appointed for thieves; whereas, much rather provision should have been made of some means where- by they might get their living, so that no man should be driven to this extreme necessity to steal ; for they that be thus destitute of service [opportunity to work] either starve for hunger or manfully (sic) play the thieves. For what would you have them to do?.. . what can they do but steal, . . . or else go about begging?” Evidently the author of Utopia saw no reason for b any ticular article of diet or pleasure with the making of thieves or the causing of misery! It is a good rule, in scientific investigations, when you have discovered a sufficient cause for a particular phenomenon, there to rest your case. Grorere Pysurn. SacRAMENTO, CAL., January 21, 1896. [Not having space for the whole of our dent’s letter, we print only that part of it which bears more or less directly on the point in dispu His contention, if we rightly interpret it, seems to come to this: Since a t many people drink who are neither nor

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698 criminally inclined, and who can not fairly be included in the category of the miserable, it is not true that crime and misery are to any great extent chargeable to the use of alco- ol. We said nothing about the number who drink, nor did we refer to the quantity of spirits or beer which may be taken with impunity by the individual or that may be distributed and consumed by the community at large, these considerations being in our opinion quite beside the question. The fact should be sufficiently obvious that the prin- cipal evil connected with the use of alcoholic liquors lies in that excess which is commonly known as drunkenness, the marked tendency toward which is one of the most character- istic features of the drinking habit. Concerning the aggregate of crime and distress that is plainly traceable to this form of indulgence, there is in the absence of full statistics abundant room for a wide differ- POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ence of opinion, ranging from an almost total disbelief in the vicious effects of alco- hol, to an equally undiscriminating claim that it is at the bottom of most human ills. For ourselves, we are not in sympathy with either extreme. But when we seé the papers, particularly of our large cities, containing daily numerous accounts of crimes of vio- lence of all grades from simple assault to murder, committed in the frenzy of intoxica- tion, it is useless to shut our eyes to the fact that alcohol is a most potent inciter to this form of crime. Add to this its acknowledged action in the causation of disease even among moderate drinkers, its debauching influence on the lower classes, the poverty that sooner or later is sure to overtake the victims of its immoderate use, and there can be little question that it is also a most important factor in the production of human misery.— Eprror. ] Editor’s Table. THE NATURE OF LIBERTY. IME was when John Stuart Mill's little book on the subject of Liberty was thought rather ad- vanced reading. It advocated indi- vidualism—the right of every man to think his own thoughts, utter his own views, and live his own life without unnecessary control or intimidation by law or public opinion. It was an atiack on every form of bigotry and an earnest appeal to all that is best and most generous in human nature to assert itself and make the world richer and better by doing so. That idea of liberty, however, is to-day to many of our social reformers an outworn mode of thought, quite in- adequate, they declare, to the needs of the present time. An eminent writer, Mr. W. D. Howells, has un- dertaken to enlighten us on the sub- ject in a recent number of The Forum. Part of his article is very much on the lines of certain chap- ters in Mr. Spencer's Justice, but the rest strikes out from those lines at a wide angle. Mr. Howells tells us that he was in Venice “ during the last years of Austrian oppression,” and was a witness of the earnest longings of the people for the liberty which they anticipated from union with Italy. With these longings he strongly sympathized, though his position being an official one, that of consul, he could not venture to ex- press his sympathy openly. He says he had a suspicion that the peo- ple were expecting more from “ lib- erty” than they were likely to get out of it; but he assumed that“ by and by, when they had been free long enough,” they would take the American view of the matter and be satisfied. “They would be able to vote for this one and against that one; to make their own laws or choose legislators to make them; to speak or to print anything they liked; to go and come without ask- ing for a passport; and this would be sufficient, though it was not all they had expected of liberty. It did not,” Mr. Howells goes on to confess,

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EDITOR'S TABLE. “then occur to me that the Vene- tians had a right to expect from a free state what they unconsciously and yet really expected—security from want and from the fear of want.” Had such a notion been suggested to him, he adds, he would have laughed it to scorn. Mr. Howells has lived to recog- nize that citizenship in a free coun- try does not always make a man free. It is here that he agrees with Mr. Spencer. Political liberty, he says, “appears something final, abso- lute, a good in itself ; but it is never a good in itself, and is never final ; it is a means to something good.” According to Mr. Spencer (Justice, Chapter X X11), the man’s real rights are the right to live, or, as he more comprehensively expresses it, to “ physical integrity,” the right to free- dom of movement, the right to receive and enjoy what he has earned, the right of free exchange, free contract and free industry, and, finally, the right of free belief, free worship, and free speech. Apart from these, any claims a man may have must, Mr. Spencer says, be of a different kind and “can not be classed as rights.” As regards the franchise, all we can properly say of it is that it “gives the citizens in general powers of checking trespasses upon their rights "—powers, he adds, “ which they may or may not use to good purpose.” That they are not always used to good purpose is evidenced by the fact that, in more than one country where universal suffrage exists, real rights are trampled on. Our own country, we regret to say, is used by the author of the Syn- thetic Philosophy as an example. “ Universal suffrage,” he observes, “does not prevent the corruptions of municipal governments, which impose heavy .taxes and do very inefficient work ; does not prevent citizens from being coerced in their 699 private lives by dictating what they shall not drink ; does not prevent an enormous majority of consumers from being heavily taxed by a pro- tective tariff for the benefit of a small minority of manufacturers and artisans; nay, does not even effectually preserve men from vio- lent deaths, but in sundry States allows of frequent murders, checked only by law officers who are them- selves liable to be shot in the per- formance of their duties.” When Mr. Howells, therefore, made the discovery that political lib- erty might not mean liberty in any very wide sense, he discovered a truth, and one of serious import; but when le went on and attached to the idea of liberty certain advantages which individual success in the carrying on of life alone can give, he went, in our opinion, very far astray, and formu- lated a doctrine essentially danger- ous to the well-being of society. We really wonder how so broad and seri- ous a thinker can bring himself to write as he does in the article to which we have referred. He says : “Tf the Venetians had agreed with Italy when they were united to it that thenceforward all should be guaranteed the means of livelihood, they would really have all freed themselves. If the French Revolu- tion had established these conditions, the first republic would still be one and indivisible.” The nature of lib- erty, then, according to Mr. Howells, is not alike for all men : to some it means the right to claim a livelihood from others, and to those others it means the obligation to provide the first with a livelihood. It would be interesting to see a document drawn up which should establish liberty in this sense of the word; and after it was drawn up it would be interest- ing to witness its execution. The visages of the guaranteed parties would, no doubt, betoken a consider-

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700 able degree of relief and satisfaction at having life’s problem so comfort- ably settled for them; but the guar- antors might be pardoned if they were not in an equally jovial mood. Where liberty comes in for the lat- ter is a question we are not prepared to answer. If it be explained that under such an agreement everybody would guarantee everybody, the an- swer, which every one must feel to be true and sufficient, is, briefly, that that is nonsense. A man is a free man, Mr. Howells says, “if he has the means of liveli- hood and is assured in their posses- sion; if he-is independent of others.” Other similar observations are: “ Lib- erty and poverty are incompatible.” “Tf (a man) has not the means of livelihood in his hands, he can not come and go when he will; he can not command his time, ete.” “ Lib- erty is for those who have the means of livelihood.” Now, with the ut- most respect for the motives of this very able writer, we are compelled to say that, in our opinion, he has here written some very mischievous stuff. By identifying liberty with the ad- vantages which flow from a more or less successful conduct of life he vir- tually authorizes, so far as his words carry weight, those who have failed to secure such advantages, or who are not satisfied with the share they have gained, to lay violent hands on the possessions of others. It is deep- ly ingrained in the general con- sciousness that liberty is something which communities and individuals may vindicate for themselves—that liberty is not a thing to sue for, but to seize the moment you feel strong enough. Mr. Howells comes for- ward and says: “In wealth consists liberty. You have not wealth, and therefore you have not liberty; you are not free men. The only free men in this nation are the men of means, the men whose livelihood POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. is secure.” Surely this is warrant enough for those who accept it as true for taking, without more ado, the means of liberty; in other words, for overthrowing violently the pres- ent organization of society. Mr. Howells may say that he does not think much of the present order of society; but does he see his way clear beyond the chaos which would ensue if his hint were taken ? This is an old story; still, as the attacks on the true principle of lib- erty are unceasing. we do not see how the believers in that principle can do aught else than continually come forward in its defense. The important distinction to be observed is this: liberty is one thing; what a man can accomplish with his liberty is another. Some men can accom- plish, and do accomplish, much ; oth- ers, whether they can or not. do, in point of fact, accomplish little or nothing. It might not unreasonably be said that such men are not fit for liberty, and some of them prove it by getting themselves incarcerated for criminal practices. That, how ever, isanother matter. Mr. Howells and others refuse to make this dis-- tinction; they say that liberty is not liberty unless you add thereto the fruits of a successful conduct of life, and that the community ought to guarantee these fruits to every man. We thus get the question into a nut- shell. Mr. Howells and those who think with him must hold that the community could give such a guar- antee and render it effectual; we hold that it could not, and there the argu- ment must rest for to-day. THE NEW NATURAL HISTORY. Pror. C. Lioyp Moraan, of Bristol University, during January gave a course of public lectures in New York, under the auspices of Columbia College. The main ques-

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EDITOR’S TABLE. tion considered was, How far is it likely that the individual experiences of parents are transmitted to off- spring? In discussing this ques- tion Prof. Morgan gave the results of some recent experiments by him- self and his students. A chick of a common fowl, hatched in an incu- bator, was secluded from parental care, and found to be destitute of knowledge that water is good to drink. The little creature would wade in water, and only when it pecked its toes, and so incidentally thrust its bill in the water, did it fill its mouth and turn up its head in the familiar thirst-quenching atti- tude. Prof. Morgan inferred that it is only by imitating its mother or in imitating another chick that drink- ing is usually learned, Hence, as a chick is not left to its own ignorance in the matter, natural selection has never had a chance to eliminate birds through their not knowing how to drink. From the fact that the instinct to drink is not trans- mitted in perfection, Prof. Morgan argues that it is not the inheri- tance of experience acquired dur- ing the individual life, but the natural selection of favorable va- riations, that determines survival. However, in the case of the mega- pode of the Philippine Islands, which is hatched in a mound of vegetable matter without parental care, it must be that the chick is born with per- fect instinct as to drinking. Prof. Morgan found his chicks born with an instinct to peck—at no matter what—beads, pinheads were as enticing as grain. One experi- ment or two at most with a nauseous caterpillar proved enough for care- ful avoidance thereafter. Young bullfinches left to themselves were observed to pull primroses to pieces in an utterly random fashion; but some thirty trials taught them their work perfectly, so that they came as 701 expertly as adult birds at the drop of sweet dew within the flower. Their intelligence did not create a new activity, but selected from a number of indeterminate acts the one act which was both useful and pleasant, the impulse, and the impulse only, being instinctive. A London bird fancier, in a large way of business, was quoted by Prof. Morgan as finding that young linnets and thrushes brought up among various other birds, never- theless sang true; young bullfinches, in the same circumstances, imitated their neighbors. A student of Prof. Morgan’s secluded a young bullfinch from all opportunity of observing nests: its first nest was true in form, but not true in material, although the usual material could have been chosen by it; iis second nest was true in both form and material. A cat taught by Prof. Morgan to re- trieve did not transmit the talent to its family. There are on record three cases of dogs and one of a cat which did transmit to their off- spring the capacity to “ beg.” Prof. Morgan is to continue ex- periments the prime interest of which is in denoting that natural history has entered upon a new stage. In- stead of merely repeating old obser- vations of birds and beasts, instead of gathering their nests, eggs, and skins as thousands have done before, the naturalist, young or old, can easily carry forward experiments in- tended to throw light on unsettled questions of profound interest. He can observe how a bird varies its song or the building of its nest un- der circumstances which exclude the possibility of imitation. He can note the degree of domestication, very great in the case of the quail, possible with easily secured speci- mens of wild birds. He can ascer- tain whether “begging” or pointing taught a dog, and unknown before

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702 in its race, is transmitted to its pup- pies when these are secluded from all chance of instruction or imitation. The students who make natural se- lection the be-all and the end-all of evolution assume that it seizes upon favoring variations, even the slight- est, as they appear. Whether these variations are indebted to parental POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. question which only careful experi- ment can decide. The significance of the work when interpreted, the charm of coming upon results wholly new, must do much to extend interest in natural history. Often that in- terest comes early to a weary end in the dust of common-place and meaningless adding of shell to shell experience directly transmitted is a | and butterfly to butterfly. Scientific Literature. SPECIAL BOOKS. In these days when many wonders are being accomplished through electricity, and greater ones are constantly expected, it is interesting to glance backward into the times when the lodestone and the sulphur globe stood for all that was known about this mysterious form of energy. Such a glance is afforded us by Mr. Park Benjamin’s* popular history of the advance of knowledge in this subject. Our author has ranged far and wide to gather his material. He has laid under contribution the works of those early philosophers who took all knowledge for their province, the Greek and Roman ‘classics, the results of modern investigation into the old civ- ilization of Phoenicia, Egypt, and even of people of prehistoric epochs, the Norse histories, the ancient writings of the Chinese and Arabs, the treatises of the fathers of the Church, the works of medizval monks, magicians, cosmographers, and navigators, etc. The significance of the title he has chosen lies in the fact that he has aimed not so much to chronicle the laying of fact upon fact in the building of the present science of electricity as to show how the progress of the human intellect is indicated by the way in which it has grappled with and overcome the problems in this field.that have successively presented themselves. He shows how mythology, which was the world’s resource for explaining strange phenomena when the lode- stone became known, gave way to philosophy, and how philosophy in turn yielded its sway to science. Who first discovered that a freely suspended magnet will point north and south our author does not undertake to say, but from a careful examination of the allusions to the use of the compass in Chinese writings, and a consideration of the Chinese character, he is convinced that it was not the Chinese. For several centuries the develop- ment of the compass was the only advance in the field of magnetism made by Arabs or Northmen or the peoples of western Europe. Roger Bacon made some interesting observations on the compass, but it appears that the French engineer, Peter Perigrinus, of whom Bacon speaks in glowing terms, made an experimental study of this instrument, which was far more fruitful than any earlier efforts. Among other things he revealed the law * The Intellectna' Rise in Electricity. By Park Benjamin. Pp. 611, 8vo. New York: D. Apple- ton & Co. Price, $4.

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aan ered 4 A . % SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 703 that unlike magnetic poles mutually attract, he invented several forms of compass, including the first which could be constantly used to steer by as the modern mariner’s compass is used, and he proposed the first magnetic (electric) motor. Columbus figures in Mr. Benjamin's history as discover- ing the line of no variation of the compass needle. After him comes Hart- mann, who discovered the dip of the needle, then Sarpi, whom Galileo addresses as “ my father and my master,” Porta, Cardano, and other learned Italian physicians of the sixteenth century. These men prepared the way for the important advances made by Queen Elizabeth’s physician William Gilbert, who is rightly regarded as the founder of the science of electricity, even if Francis Bacon could never appreciate his talents. The young science was fostered by Galileo and Descartes and von Guericke and the Abbé Nollet on the Continent, by Newton and Boyle and Hauksbee in England. Other men, also, less known to fame, were at work upon electrical problems during the same period. Gilbert's discoveries did not fail to raise up a swarm of charlatans, among whom Van Helmont and Kenelm Digby stand forth prominently. The history stops with Franklin’s demonstration that lightning and electricity are identical. This, says Mr. Benjamin, “ brings to culmination the long series of events whereby the single incom- prehensible effect observed in the lodestone and the amber gradually grew into recognition as a world force, subject to universal law and pervading all Nature.” The volume is tasteful as to its mechanical features, and is embeilished by reproductions of many of the portraits and quaint engrav- ings in the early books from which its material has been drawn. Those who are desirous of improving the environment of the poor may obtain valuable guidance from the eighth special report of the United States Commissioner of Labor.* As would be expected, the greater part of the report is devoted to model dwellings, other matters receiving some con- sideration in the fore part of the volume. Dr. Gould tells what is being done to secure better housing for the poor in New York, the chief cities of Great Britain, and more briefly in western Europe, through building and sanitary laws, and municipal condemnation of insanitary houses. Sanitary aid societies have greatly furthered this end by co-operating with or spurring on the public authorities in their work. A form of private effort that has done much good is the rent-collecting agency of Miss Octavia Hill, in Lon- don. The method pursued by her and the assistants whom she has trained is both businesslike and philanthropic. She buys tenement houses with capital furnished by those interested in her work, and undertakes the col- lection of rents or the whole management of buildings for others, at fixed rates. She rewards prompt payments and proper use of the premises by making repairs and improvements in the buildings. The incorrigible are turned out, but by the use of tact the number of these is kept very small. The moral influence of her system has been to admit women to a greater extent into the management of housing companies. In his account of model buildings Dr. Gould takes up successively “ block buildings” or flats, small houses, and lodging houses. He describes model block buildings in Brooklyn, New York, and. Boston, and in large cities of Great Britain, * The Housing of the Working People. Prepared under the Direction of Carroll D. Wright, Com- missioner of Labor, by E. R. L. Gould, Ph.D. Pp. 461,8vo. Washington.

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704 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. France, Germany, Holland, and Sweden. Views and plans of many of these buildings are given, which show that in securing convenient interiors neat and attractive exteriors have not been sacrificed. Nearly all of the groups of small houses described have been erected by large commercial corporations for their workpeople. Judging from the number of examples given here, France and Germany seem to lead in this sort of dwellings. In the United States examples are taken from Maine, Massachusetts, Con- necticut, and Illinois. The model lodging houses described are confined to Baltimore and five British cities. The author of this report has given prominence to the financial returns from model houses, being convinced that there can be no permanent solution of the housing problem unless im- proved housing can be shown to pay. Moreover, for the sake of the self- respect in the persons benefited, which a wise philanthropy seeks to build up, such operations should be self-supporting. Model housing has a view to the morals as well as the health of the tenants, aiming to correct the abuse of adults and children of both sexes huddling into the same sleeping rooms. In cities rapid transit has an important influence on the housing problem. For the workingman’s purposes space is measured by time, not by distance, Taking into consideration all the agencies that are now oper- ating against unwholesome congestion, the outlook is decidedly hopeful. There is much food for thought in the relation between man and the animals that he has trained to his service. The most obvious result of their association with him has been to promote most efficiently his ascendency over the actively hostile or inertly resistant features of his environment. This association, also, has greatly modified the numbers, distribution, and development of the domesticated animals, while the necessity of controlling and caring for his dependents has had its influence upon the intellectual growth of man himself. These considerations and others are suggested in the attractive volume on the Domesticated Animals * recently issued from the press of the Scribners. It is no dry and formal treatise that Prof. Shaler here presents, nor yet a string of more or less authentic “stories about animals.” He has pursued a happy mean by giving facts not only in- teresting in themselves but having a bearing also upon those problems of the origin, evolution, and intelligence of animals with which science has long been engaged. The first place in the volume is given to the dog—the first of the lower animals to be domesticated. Prof. Shaler discusses the ancestry of domesticated dogs, the variations induced by civilization, the evils of specialized breeding, and the future development of the species. He describes the peculiarities of character exhibited in the principal breeds, and gives considerable attention to canine intelligence, especially with ref- erence to the expression of emotions. The intelligence of dogs is also com- pared with that of other animals, and it is only in this comparison that cats figure in the book. The horse is described in mych the same way as the dog. Briefer consideration is given to the beasts for burden, food, and rai- ment, among which camels, elephants, and pigs are included with the com- moner kinds. There is an interesting chapter on barnyard and water fowl, pigeons, song birds, and falcons; the few useful insects are also duly * Domesticated Animals. By Nathaniel Southgate Shaler. Pp. 267, 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Price, $2.50.

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SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. considered. Prof. Shaler takes up the question, which has appeared only 795 in recent times, as to how far it is justifiable to inflict pain upon animals for the benefit of man, and seeks to reconcile the opposing views on this subject now current. tions of domestication, which indicate volume is handsomely printed, and is the style of the day. GENERAL Tue lack of a trustworthy and complete work on dietetics * has long been felt among medical men in this country. The dietary of a patient is of no small importance in his treatment, and Dr. Thompson, appreciating this fact, seems to have adequately supplied the want referred to. Of the seventy odd chemical elements, thirteen regularly enter into the composition of the body, and ten more are occasionally found. Although these are comparatively few in number, their molecular arrangement is very complex. In Part I, after a study of these elements as they occur in food, the different foods and food preparations are taken up individually and studied from the various standpoints of the dietician: How much force can be ob- tained from them, how much heat, are they stimulating or depressing, are they difficult or easy to digest? etc. In Part II, the chemical composition of the common stim- ulants, beverages, and condiments is given, and then their effects upon body and mind are considered when used in moderation and in excess. The ultimate dangers which their habitual ingestion may lead to in the shape of permanent tissue change, and the special diatheses which absolutely con- traindicate their use, are dwelt upon at some length. Cooking, the preservation of food, and the quantity of food required, are the topics dealt with in Part II The changes which cooking and the various methods of preservation—salting, smoking, canning, etc.—produce in the chemical com- position and digestibility of the food stuffs are studied carefully. This is one of the most important departments of dietetics, and yet one which is usually given little atten- tion. Part IV deals with special dietaries * Practical Dietetics, with Special Reference to Diet in Disease. By Gilman Thompson, M. D. Pp. 802, 8vo. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Price, cloth, $5 ; sheep, $6. VOL, XLV111.—651 He has something to say, also, on the general condi- the possible future of the art. The bound and generously illustrated in NOTICES, for infancy, old age, diet and heredity, cli- mate and season and food, body weight and food, etc. The physiology of digestion, and the conditions which specially affect it, are next considered. The chapter on the gen- eral relation of food to special diseases, and the diseases which are caused by dietetic errors, will prove of great value to the lay- man as well as the physician. Administra- tion of Food to the Sick, Part VII, is also full of practical data for the nonmedical. Part VIII, which consists of about three hundred pages, and which forms the main portion of the book, is devoted to diet in special dis- eases. Each disease is first described in a general way, and then the appropriate diet for it worked out. This chapter is prefaced by some general remarks regarding the care of the sick-room and the patient. Many of the suggestions seem matters of little impor- tance, but it is these small details that are most frequently disregarded, and that are oftentimes the deciding features in the case. Rations and dietaries are discussed in Part IX, army and navy diets, diet in pris- ons, in athletic training, the various diet “cures,” diet and occupation, artificial in- fant foods, and sleep and food, being some of the special topics. An appendix con- taining receipts for the preparation of in- valid foods and beverages, and the list of illustrations, finish up the erght hundred and two pages. Dr. Thompson’s book should be on every physician’s table, and as a part of the general household library it would not be out of place. A large portion of it bear- ing on hygienic questions, its possession might oftentimes prevent the necessity for calling a doctor, through the prevention of unbygienic feeding and the long train of ills which follow in its wake. We have already noticed the first two half volumes of the noble work of the Pro-

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706 fessor of Botany in the University of Vienna,* and have endeavored to speak of it as its merits deserve. The examination of the concluding volume only enhances our appre- ciation of its value, and, we might add, of its interest, for it has real interest, such that the unscientific or even the casual reader may find that it has a story to tell him. The in- troduction to the new parts comprises a brief review of the sources of a history of plants, showing how the description of the external characters of plants as given by Theophras- tus and Pliny and the earlier modern writers gradually expanded into the study of the conditions of their growth, reproduction, and dissemination. Then came the discovery of fossil plants, leading to the extension of botany to the study of the ancestral history of existing flora and the derivation and de- velopment of species. This sketch outlines the order of presentation in these two half volumes, which follows the stages of devel- opment of the science. “ A history of the en- tire plant world considered as a single great community must be preceded by a history of species. But each species is the sum of num- berless individuals, which are alike in consti- tution and have the same external charac- teristics, and a history of species therefore presupposes a knowledge of the history of the individual. Accordingly, our first business is to describe rejuvenescence, multiplication, and distribution of individuals, and to show by what means a plant, considered as a sep- arate organism, maintains itself, takes pos- session of its habitat and is enabled to keep its hold on that habitat, up to the moment when it is replaced by descendants endowed with a vitality of their own.” The discussion of the Genesis of Plant Offspring relates to asexual reproduction by spores and thallidia, and by buds or roots, stems, and leaves ; to reproduction by means of fruits, under which the process from the beginning and the office of the pollen, its protection, the means of its dispersion by wind and by ani- mals, the agencies that attract animals, the crossing of flowers, and autogamy are de- scribed; and to changes in reproductive * The Natural History of Plants. By Dr. An- ton Kerner von Marilaun. Half volumes ITI and IV. Pp. 988, large8vo. New York : Henry Holt | & Co. Price, $7.50. London: Blackie & Son. Price, 25s. net. POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. methods, including the replacement of fruits by offshoots, parthenogenesis, and hetero- morphism and alternation of generations. The History of Species follows, comprising the nature, alteration in the form, origin, distribution, and extinction of species. The work is completed by a glossary of fourteen pages, and an index of fifty-nine closely printed pages. Nursery Ethics* is an attempt, and a very successful one, to deal with the big people of the nursery, and to outline the moral relations which ought to exist in this little kingdom between the governing pow- ers and the governed. It is a word well and wisely spoken to mothers and to fathers. It is not formal enough to be called a system of morals. It might even be said to lack what Matthew Arnold is said to have lacked —“a philosophy with coherent, interdepend- ent, subordinate, and derivative principles ”"— but we find it on this account more effective. Back of the running comment on nursery affairs there lie a consistency and thorough- ness which indicate that Mrs. Winterburn has kept her fundamental ethical axioms well in mind, if not in type, and has done no violence to them. In this respect the little book is eminently philosophic. Its one aim is to secure justice for the little people. It is a modern and improved form of Mrs. Do- asyouwouldbedoneby. Those whose sense of humor has been touched by Anstey and Frank Flockton, or whose sense of justice has been aroused by that too frequent sight, the abuse of parental authority, will readily admit that no rights are so sacred and inviolable as the rights of little children, because none are so absolutely defenseless. Such a crusade might easily tempt one to rhetorical ex- tremes, but Mrs. Winterburn has shown the same self-restraint in dealing with her liter- ary child that she so strongly recommends to other parents in dealing with their chil- dren of flesh and blood. The treatment is full of feeling: it is enriched with deep, womanly sentiment, but it is also calm and clear, and its suggestions have a definite- ness which gives them practical value. In considering the attitude of parents * Nursery Ethics. By Florence Hull Winter- burn. New York: The Merriam Company. Pp. 41, 12mo. Price, $1.

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and the nature of their authority, Nursery Ethics shows very clearly what few parents evidently realize—that the only foundation for parental authority is the furtherance of childish welfare. This is the strict limit. Any further usurpation of authority is sim- ple tyranny. Obedience to persons is also shown to be without moral sanction. But obedience to conditions imposed by events is a large part of the discipline of life. This is the sort of obedience we should teach our children, and with what graciousness we can teach it if we ourselves yield the same obe- dience! Above all, there should be no con- flict of authority. No one detects this sooner than a child, or sooner takes advantage of it. The deepest moral lesson of the nursery comes, as elsewhere, from a recognition of the law of cause and effect. By associating natural results with action, and by adjusting punishments on the same ground, parents may early begin that judicious abdication of authority which is finally to lead to self- government and the evolution of truly moral beings. It is a point of profound wisdom to let this abdication keep always a step in advance of the child’s demand for freedom. The chapters on special problems in nursery management deserve no less careful reading. Mrs. Winterburn’s book contains much to commend. We believe that every word of it is true. In style and outward dress it is also attractive. If the ethical principles which it so clearly develops could but find an application in the nurseries of America, the chief work of education would be accom- plished at home, and the subsequent prob- lems of school and college would be infinitely easier than they are at present. We wish the little book a most successful mission. Since the general adoption of embryology and histology as a part of the regular medi- cal curriculum, there has been a large acces- sion of works on this subject to our litera- ture—more, it almost seems, than the demand justifies. Many of them are translations, and a very large proportion are not at all suited to the elementary student. A certain amount of confusion is inevitable, because of the unsettled state of the subject, but the chief difficulty has been the lack of an im- partial treatment—each author being inter- ested in upholding one of the many theories, SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 797 and subordinating everything else to this end. Dr. Hertwig’s book* is fairly free from this fault, and seems to have been carefully arranged with reference to the student’s needs, As the title indicates, it deals with cell physiology as well as anat- omy. The book consists of nine chapters, with numerous subdivisions under each. Chapter I gives a general historical review of the cell theory, the protoplasmic theory, and the literature of the subject. The Chemico-physical and Morphological Prop- erties of the Cell is the title of Chapter II. In the third, fourth, and fifth chapters the vital properties of the cell are discussed. These are followed by two chapters on The Vital Phenomena of the Cell. The title of Chapter VIII is Metabolic Changes occurring between Protoplasm, Nucleus, and Cell Prod- ucts, and Chapter IX closes the book with a discussion of the cell as the elementary germ of an organism, embracing theories of heredity. The translation is well done de- spite the difficulties, which must have been considerable, as the editor says, in finding English equivalents for many of the German words. A good feature is the bibliography which is given after each chapter, thus enabling the student to readily follow out more in detail any special point which he may be curious about. The book is fairly well illustrated. The last ten years have been marked, in botanical study, by numerous investigations upon the Archegoniates, as the ferns and mosses are collectively called from the pe- culiar character and resemblance of the or- gan in them corresponding with the pistil, and by the extension of our knowledge to many forms which were hitherto but very imperfectly known. But while the collected results of the earlier investigations prompted by Hofmeister’s work have appeared for the most part only in text-books, where limita- tions of space prevented full justice bemg done to them, those of the later researches have only begun to find their way into the text-books. The author, who is Professor * The Cell: Outlines of General Anatomy and Physiology. By Dr. Oscar Hertuig. Pp. 268, 12mo. London: Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. Price, 2is. New York: Macmillan & Co. Price, $3.

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708 of Botany in Leland Stanford Junior Uni- versity, has therefore undertaken the present work * mainly for the purpose of presenting, in somewhat detailed form, a summary of the substance of the great mass of literature upon the subject that has accumulated, much of which is out of reach of the botan- ical workers who have not access to the great libraries. Papers published by him from time to time have served as the basis of the work, and these have been supple- mented by somewhat extended series of ob- servations, the results of which are pub. lished now for the first time. The illustra- tions were, as a rule, made by the author from his own preparations, and most of them expressly for this work. A bibliog- rapby of fourteen pages and a full index make the work complete as a book. Limited as is the district to which this volume of the work + is devoted, the south- ern tier of counties and the coast from the North Foreland to the Land’s End, it presents an extraordinary variety of outline, soil, and climatic influences, and is hence of great in- terest to the climatologist and health-seeker. Each county is taken up separately. The general geological features and the surface configuration are first considered ; then the climate, mortality statistics, and other facts bearing on the healthfulness of the more im- portant towns ; and finally a summing up of the diseases which are aggravated by and those benefited by a sojourn in this climate. For instance, “ rheumatism prevails gener- ally in Cornwall, which therefore is to be avoided by persons of rheumatic tendencies. The county as a whole presents influences, probably in the water, which are preventive of urinary stone and gravel.” Devonshire, Somerset, Dorset, Hampshire, and the south- eastern counties are dealt with in detail, and valuable conclusions drawn from their pbys- ical and climatic peculiarities. The portion of the work on medicinal springs occupies POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. the last hundred pages, and consists of a consideration of the chemical composition of each water and its probable effect on the body, especially with reference to diseased conditions. The book contains a great deal of interesting information, much of which was before inaccessible to the general reader and practitioner, and with the companion volume promised will undoubtedly take rank as a standard treatise. The rapid advances which have occurred during the past decade in all the sciences have been nowhere more marked than in the department of surgery. They have made necessary the publication of a book of 1082 octavo pages * as a supplement to a work of six volumes which seven years ago was a complete and exhaustive treatise on surgery. In this volume the aim has been to obtain a digest of accepted and valuable facts; mere novelty and possible future value not being considered sufficient warrant for serious con- sideration. In carrying out the intention to make the volume a supplement to its prede- cessors, the authors of the several articles have so far as possible avoided repeating the contents of the previous work. Some topics were originally so elaborately treated as to now require but little discussion, while others —such, for instance, as brain surgery—which may almost be said to have come into ex- istence during the past seven years, have called for more space than did the article in the main portion of the work. Diseases of the Vascular System and Thyroid Gland} is Part IV of a very thorough and extensive treatise on modern medical practice. While the subjects treated in this volume are few in number, they are of great importance to the general practi- tioner. The first article, to which more than half the volume is devoted, is on the diseases of the heart and pericardium, and was written by Dr. James T. Whittaker, of Cincinnati. An interesting section of the paper is devoted * The Structure and Development of Mosses and Ferns (Archegoniate). By Douglas Houghton Campbell. Pp.544,8vo. London and New York : Macmillan & Co. Price, $4.50; 14s. + The Climates and Baths of Great Britain, being the Report of a Committee of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London. Vol. I. Pp.640,8vo. New York and London : Mac- millan & Co. Price, $6.50; 2is. * The International Text-Book of Surgery. Vol. VII. Edited by John Ashhurst. New York : William Wood & Co. + Twentieth Century Practice and Interna- tional Encyclopedia of Modern Medical Science. In twenty volumes. Edited by Thomas L. Sted- man, M.D. Vol. IV, Diseases of the Vascular System and Thyroid Gland. Pp. 841, 8vo. New York: William Wood & Co.

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SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. to the neuroses of the heart, and the portion ’ on valvular affections also deserves special mention, The next two articles, Diseases of the Blood-vessels, by Dr. A. Ernest Sansom, of London, and Diseases of the Lymphatic Vessels, by Dr. Bertrand Dawson, also of London, seem to be complete, and to bring the subject up to date. The closing article is one of especial interest, by Dr. George Murray on diseases of the thyroid gland, in- cluding myxeedema, cretinism, exophthalmic goitre, and goitre, as well as inflammation and neoplasms, A Revision of the Deltoid Moths, by John B. Smith, forms Bulletin No. 48 of a series of Smithsonian publications which are intended to illustrate the collection constituting the Nationa: Museum. Under the general term deltoids there are usually grouped in lists, catalogues, and collections the moths of a series of species and genera which have a somewhat distinctive appearance and habitus, but for which we have as yet no exclusive characters. The home of the group is in that region extending from Maine through Canada, west to the Great Lakes, southward along the Mississippi, and eastward through Ohio along the southern boundary of Penn- sylvania to the Atlantic coast. All the species fly at night and are readily attracted to light and sugar. The book is well made, but will only be of interest to the specialist. It is illustrated with fourteen plates. The third edition of Mr. Alfred Daniel's Textbook of the Principles of Physics (Mac- millan & Co., $4) has recently come to us. It maintains the characteristics of the pre- vious editions, of clear statement and sim- ple arrangement, and improves upon them in the correction of some minor errors which ' recent researches have brought to light, and in the adoption of a uniform notation, which will prove a great help to the student. Every equation is considered from the point of view of its dimensions, and this has necessitated the modification of some of the original text accordingly. The book is intended either as a preparation for the more valuable laboratory work of experimental physics or for those who have no access to a laboratory, and who must derive their physics entirely from book reading. Any one having a fair knowledge of mathematics ought to.have 7°99 no difficulty in following the text, which is illustrated wherever clearness is gained. A valuable little text-book on Alternat- ing Currents, by E. J. Houston and A. £. Kennelly, is the latest volume of the Electro- Technical Series to reach us. This subject of alternating currents is probably the most important and most difficult portion of mod- ern electrical science. It is the department in which most of the advanced experimenters are working, and from which new and valu- able results may at any time be expected. A very clear and simple explanation of the two forms of currents is first given, their differ- ences explained and accounted for, and the means by which one may be transformed into the other described. The more im- portant commercial applications of the alter- nating current in electric lamps and motors are then described in detail. Chapter XVII, which closes the book, discusses multiphase motors. (W.J. Johnston Co., N. Y.) The Fourteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey, for the years 1892-1893, consists of two volumes, the first of which contains the general reports of the director and heads of divisions. The second consists of a series of monographs on geology and related subjects. The first paper, by W J McGee, discusses the potable waters of the eastern United States. He first points out the large part which water takes in our dietaries, and the dangers which arise through its contamination; and then gives a general history of the methods which have been employed for storing and purify- ing it. In the next article A. C. Peale deals with the natural mineral waters of the United States. The different varieties are named and classified, and the paper is closed by an extended index of the mineral springs, ar- ranged according to States. The Results of Stream Measurements is the title of the third paper, by F. H. Newell. The methods and special instruments by which the meas- urements are made are first described, and then the data resulting from their employ- ment on various rivers are given. Besides these there are articles on the Laccolitic | mountain groups of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona; The Gold-Silver Veins of Ophir, California; Geology of the Catoctin Belt; Tertiary Revolution in the Topography of

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710 the Pacific Coast; The Rocks of the Sierra Nevada; Pre-Cambrian Igneous Rocks of the Unkar Terrane, with notes on the pe- trographic character of the lavas; on the Structure of the Ridge between the Taconic and Green Mountain ranges in Vermont; The Structure of Monument Mountain in Great Barrington, Mass.; and The Potomac and Roaring Creek Coal Fields in West Virginia. White's Outline Studies in the History of the United States (American Book Co., 30 cents) is an exercise book in which are printed questions which the pupil is to an- swer by writing or drawing in the blanks left for the purpose, or by marking localities on outline maps. A volume of Short Studies in Nature Knowledge has been prepared by William Gee as an introduction to the science of physiography (Macmillan, 3s. 6d., $1.19). The chief geographical topics are taken up in successive chapters, beginning with the Great Globe itself and following with Moun- tains, Valleys, and Great Plains, The Sea, Rivers and their Work, The Wihds of Heav- en, The Force and the Filigree of Frost, etc. In style and language the book is adapted to pupils of an advanced grade. It is purely descriptive, and while containing a great number of facts the text is always readable and is frequently adorned with poetical quo- tations. Over a hundred illustrations, a glos- sary, and an index add to the value of the book. Dr. Roger S. Tracy has put the chief rules of sanitation into a compact and handy form in his Handbook of Sanitary Informa- tion for Householders (Appletons, 50 cents). Taking as the object of sanitary science to secure good air, good food, and good water, he tells first how proper ventilation is to be provided. His longest chapter is that on house drainage, which contains the rules of the Board of Health of New York city. There is a chapter on disinfection, supple- mented by a list of the common disinfect- ants, with a brief description of each, and the average price at retail. With regard to foods he tells what adulterations are found in the chief articles of consumption and how they may be detected. Means of testing water and guarding against impurities in it are also given. An appendix contains a list POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. of the materials needed for fitting up water- closets, with prices. A second edition has appeared of The Theory of Light, by Thomas Preston (Mac- millan & Co., 15s., $5), which was noticed in this magazine in 1891. In the new edition the text has been revised and has been aug- mented by more than a hundred pages of new matter, in conjunction with which sev- eral new diagrams have been introduced, The changes occur chiefly in those portions which relate to the rectilinear propagation of light, wave reflection and refraction, and the application of graphic methods to the solu- tion of diffraction problems. More detail has been introduced in some places, especial- ly in the chapter on the velocity of light, where the experiments of Prof. Newcomb have been described. The Report of the Department of Health of the City of Chicago for 1894 is notable as covering the latter and more serious half of an epidemic of smallpox lasting from the middle of 1893 to the middle of 1894. By vigorous preventive and remedial measures— over a million free vaccinations being per- formed—the deaths were kept down to a total of 1,033. This gave a rate of 5°58 to each 10,000 of population against 16°74 in 1864, 17°80 in 1872, and 23°07 in 1882, which were epidemic years. The experience of the health officers in many difficult cases that they had to deal with are given. The report includes a description of the water supply of Chicago by the Commissioner of Health, Arthur R. Reynolds, M. D., the vital statistics of the city, and special reports on the municipal laboratory, on sanitary and meat inspection, on smoke nuisances, and free public baths. The American Book Company has issued several simple German texts in board covers at 25 cents each. Three of them now before us are by Seidel and Stifter, two writers of the present century characterized by their naturalness of style. Each book contains about fifty pages of text and a twenty-page vocabulary. They are printed in the Schwa- bacher type, which is more open and hence more grateful to the eyes than the ordinary German print. In cheaper form and smaller are the Germania Texts, edited by A. W. Spanhoofd (10 cents each). They are de-

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pee PE sat signed to supply to advanced classes speci- mens of the less familiar German authors which have been accessible only in expensive volumes. Among the authors already or soon to be represented are Cholevius, Gervi- nus, Biirger, Kurz, Goethe, and Khull. The selections are printed in Roman type. A system of abbreviations has been pub- lished by its inventor, Rev. D. A. Quinn, under the title Stenotypy (the author, 125 Governor Street, Providence; paper, $1; cloth, $1.50). It is designed as a substitute for shorthand, to be used on the typewriter, but there is nothing to prevent its being written with the pen or printed from type. The inventor claims that a hundred and twenty words a minute can be written in this system by an ordinary and three hundred words a minute by an expert typewriter operator, and that only a few hours are needed for learning it in place of the many weeks or months required for learning short- hand. He recommends it especially for use with the telegraph and for persons who read addresses from manuscript, as well as for all mercantile and newspaper work. The first line of Hamlet’s soliloquy appears as follows in stenotypy: 2B Rnt2BTZ’ qst 6. The List of Books for Girls and Women prepared by Augusta H. Leypoldt and George Jles (Library Bureau; cloth, $1; paper, 50 cents) brings helpfully together inquirers and authorities in the literature of art, sci- ence, and recreation. Its twenty-one hun- dred works have been chosen by specialists of mark, who add descriptive and critical notes of refreshing independence. Although the list is designed for girls and women, nine tenths of its titles and fully half its hints for clubs would serve boys and men very gainfully. The editors state that this list will probably be followed by others more detailed, the aim being to pass brief, compe- tent judgments on the whole working litera- ture of our time. The Sexuality of Nature, by L. H. Grin- don (Boston, Mass.: New-Church Union, 75 cents), attempts to prove that “Nature is a system of nuptials. Everything in creation partakes either of masculine or feminine qualities. Animals and plants, earth, air, water, color, beat, light, music, thought, speech, the sense of the beautiful, the adap- SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. an tation of the soul for heaven—all exist as the offspring or products of a kind of mar- riage.” Under the consideration of inorganic substances we find: “ And again, by the mar- riage of oxygen and nitrogen, two gases in- visible and innocuous, nitric acid, a yellow, ferocious liquid, is produced.” The book is a povel one, and may interest the psychol- ogist. Its science, however, seems rather uncertain, as the formation of a “ ferocious liquid,” nitric acid, by the “marriage” of oxygen and nitrogen, is something that has not as yet been successfully accomplished in the laboratory. Pan-Gnosticism, by Noel Winter (Trans- atlantic Publishing Co.), is described on its title-page as “the outlines for a methodized course of thought, in which is submitted a proposition transfiguring the present ulti- mate conclusions of philosophy: and to the effect that inscrutability is a delusion; or, in other words, that the conditions necessary to absolute mystery involve an absurdity.” A volume of short passages in prose and verse—from two to five to a page—all relat- ing to Patriotic Citizenship, has been pre- pared by Thomas J. Morgan (American Book Co., $1). The matter is carefully arranged on a plan intended to stimulate an intelligent patriotism. A large number of authors and speakers, mostly American, has been drawn upon, ranging in time from Edmund Burke and Patrick Henry to persons now promi- nent in literature and affairs, An appro- priate illustration stands at the head of each chapter. A collection of Readings and Recitations Sor Jewish Homes and Schools, made by Isa- bel E. Cohen, has been issued by The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia. The selections are mostly poems dealing with episodes in Hebrew history and legend, and are drawn from the works of the best English and American writers. Among the names oftenest appearing are Byron, Dis- raeli, Emma Lazarus, Longfellow, Charles Reade, and Whittier. Results of Primary Triangulation, by H. Gannett, is the title of Bulletin No. 122 of the United States Geological Survey. The triangulation of the survey is executed solely for the primary control of topographic work upon scales not exceeding 1: 62,500, The

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712 extreme of accuracy is not therefore sought, but only such a degree as to insure that the maximum accumulated error will be imper- ceptible upon the maps. The results are ar- ranged in chapters by geographical groups, and as an introduction to each chapter there is given a description of the work, outlining the methods employed and instruments used. The groups into which the work is divided are roughly as follows: New England, the Middle Atlantic States, the Southern Appa- lachian Region, some of the North Middle States, the Black Hills of South Dakota, Aspen, Colorado, and portions of California, the plateau region of New Mexico and Ari- zona, Texas, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Kansas. There are a number of triangula- tion maps which illustrate the work done in the various groups. POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, The second volume of Prof. Wiley’s Prin- ciples and Practice of Agricultural Analysis (Chemical Publishing Company, Easton, Pa., $2) is devoted to fertilizers. In the first three divisions the determination of phos- phoric acid, nitrogen, and potash is de- scribed, the official methods and a number of other processes being given in each case, The fourth and concluding part is devoted to the examination of miscellaneous fertilizers, some of mineral and others of organic origin. The general principles of fertilizer manufac- ture and application have been presented, in so far as they seemed to the author to throw light on the rational method of examination and analysis. A list of authorities cited is given at the end of each division of the vol- ume, and there are seventeen figures of ap- paratus. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. Agricultural Lg = yy Stations. State Agr cultural Coll re: Farmers’ In-titutes, Winter, 1894-"95.—New Hampshire Colle, : Agri- culture and the Mechanic Arts: Agricultural College Extension; An Agricultural ‘ollege at Home.—New York Station: Currants.—Ohio Sta- tion: The Grape-root Worm.—Purdue Universit Station: The Improvement of Unproductive Blac Soils.—United States Department: North Ameri- = Vine a 10; Weather and Crop Service, C7) Michigan Bailey H. Plant Breeding. "ey and New York: ‘tendin &Co. Pp. 293. $1. Lessons. i. Joi, B Teacher's Manual of Nature t. John, N. B.: J. and A. McMillan. mani Catalogues, Reports, Reprints, etc. Academy of Natural Sciences of Ph: elphia. Publications. Pp. 515-530.—American Chemical Society. Programme of Twelfth General Meet- ing, 1895.—Boas, Herr Franz. Zur Anthropol gic der Nordamerikanischen Indianer, aus den handlu ee der ~w wy I anthropologischen Ge. sellschaft.—Bruen, A. J. Our Charities, etc.— Cail, R E. The Unionide of the Ohio River and The The Strepomatide of the Falls of the Ohio. From ne & of = Indiana Academy of Science, No. 4, 1 ences. Bulletin Vo. Academy of Natural Sci- II, No. 2. Outline of New Classification of the Muricide ; also ea mom Annual Report, 1895.—i “ewkes, J. W. Contri- a hnobotany. From ra Anthro- January, 18°6.—Field Columbian Mu- Sane Pubtiestinn 7, Vol. I, No. 2. On Certain Portions of the Skeleton of Protost Gigas — Forbes, E.H. Epidote from Huntington, Mass., and The Optical ra of Epidote.” From American Journal of Science, Vol. I, 1896. - Geo- eat Society of America. "Bulletin, Vol. VII, + Glacial Deposits of the Southwestern berta in the Vicinity of of the Rocky Mountains, phical Evolution of Cuba.—Guiteras, Sonn i The United States and Cuba. Re- view of Documents relating to Intervention of the United States mn Affairs of Spanish-American —. Pp. 17.—Harvard College Astronomical Report for Year ending September oo 1800 insdale, Guy, M.D. Recent Measures for the Prevention’ "Treatment of Tuberculo- sis. From Transactions, American Clim: tological Association, for 1895.—Light Cars. Sheffield Car peng. FD —Pyburn, Dr. George. The Beepons bility of 1 Men of Science in Relation to Problems.—Railways, Income Account of. Interstate Se Commission, Publication of. —Rotzell, W. E. Birds of Narburth, Pa., and Vicinity —Seaman, William H. Relations of Chemistry to Education. Address of Retiring President of Chemical Society of Washington.— Simonds, Frederic W. evi § Sand. From American Geol ogist, Vol. XVII me 1896.— Smithsonian Institution. of the United States National Musca val va VII, 1894. —Talmage, J University of Utah. Notes concerning a Peculiarly Marked Sedimentary Rock from Vicinity of ~ Canyon, Arizona.— University of the State of New York. Report of Extension meget. 1894.—Ward, Lester F. Plutocracy and Paternalism. From Forum, No- vember, 1895; and Sociol and Biolo; From American Journal of Socio ology, November, 1895. Chavez, Ezeguiel A. Geografia Elemental. Porte ond Metice: Ch. Bouret. Pp. 79. Chittenden, Hiram Martin. The Yellowstone National Park Illustrated. Cincinnati: The Rob- ert Clarke Co. Pp. 397. Columbian, The. Monthly. Dlustrated. Pp. 90. 10 cents, Cooke, M. C. Introduction to the Stu-y of Fungi. London: Adam and aes Black. York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 360. 50. Curry, J. L. M. Difficulties ‘nee with the Education of the Negro. Pp. 23. 25 cents. Dall, William Healey. Alaska as it was and is. Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington. Douglas, James. Cantor Lectures on Recent American Methods and Appliances hand Bil in the Metallurgy of Copper, Lead, — and Silver. London: W: Trounch. Pp. 41 Drown, Thomas Messin Lehigh eeeenitie. — Value Engineering Studies. rt of Commissioner of, for the ashington: Government Print- Education, Re Year 1892-93. ing Office. Pp. 1224. Glazebrook, R.T Mechanics, an ee =A Text-book, Theoretical and “Bractical New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 208. $2.95.

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FRAGMENTS Harvard College Astronomical Observatory Annals. A Catal e of 7,922 Southern Stars ob- —_ with the 7: Photometer during the Years 1889-91, by Bailey ; Observ: made at the Blue. Hills ye Observa- tory in the Year 1894; O ions of the New England Weather Service in the Year 1894. Hiorns, Arthur H. Principles of TC! New York and London: Macmillan & 888. $1.60. Holman, Silas W. Com Logarithms. New York and & Co. Pp. text 45, tables 73. $1. Hudson, W.H. British Birds, with a Cha on Structure and Classification by Frank E. dard, Illustrated. New York and London: Long- mans, Green & Co. Pp. 363. $8.50. Jameson, Charles D., State University of Iowa. Portland Cement. A Monograph. Pp. 192. Jordan, David Sm and Starks, E. C. The Fishes of Puget So Pp. text 69, plates 30. Leland Stanford, Jr., ~ Debvenstey Publications. Marey, E. J. Movement. New York: D. Ap- leton & Co. International Scientific Series, No. 73. Pp. 828. $1.75. Roth, Filibert. Timber. Pp. United States Department of Agriculture. bulletin No. 10. mutation Rules for don: Macmillan OF SCIENCE. 713 eo, F. W. ee and y- Bos- : Arena Publishing Co. Pp. 496 George H. The a the State. ppt 100. Proceeat the American can Philosoph- ical Society, Vol. av ‘No. 148. Smithsonian Contributions to aw The Composition of ~~ gy Air and its upon Animal Life. Pp Society — Serentes Research, Proceedings of. Part 29, V Pp. 308. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Tribuer & Co. Technica] Journal, The. Monthly. New York. Pp. 16. £0 cents a year, 10 cents a copy. Terrestrial Magnetism. An International Quar- terly. The Rad of Chicago Press. a year, 50 cents a copy. Thompson, C. J.8. The Chemist's Compen- dium. on York and London: Whittaker & Co. Pp. 289. Tu meengeate Chan Chania. New York and London: Mac Pp. ments, Gen- 158. 60 cents. London: Ginn hed 8. Practical Williams, R. P. Chemical eral and any ical. Boston &Co. Pp. 1 F ragments Three Blind Deaf-mutes.—Three blind deaf-mutes whose faculties have been devel- oped from a completely latent condition are subjects of special notice in the report of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, Boston. Edith Thomas is described as fur- nishing convincing testimony to the effi- cacy of the system which is pursued in training such children. She has a good share of common sense, but is a little averse to intellectual exertion. Yet she is improv- ing fast, gaining knowledge regularly and systematically, and is “steadily becoming more skillful, attentive, thoughtful, logical, and earnest, and the stream of her thoughts grows broader, deeper, and richer.” She is fond of letter-writing, and does it with in- creasing facility of expression; while her letters show that she appreciates the pleas- ures of life, and despite her privations en- joys them highly. She likes reading and be- ing read to, but wants her books true to life, and will not listen to fairy or highly imagi- native stories. She is able to appreciate the rhythm of poetry, and Whittier and Tenny- son are among her favorites. She dislikes arithmetic and is backward in it, but is pro- ficient in geography. She has learned to mold ot Science. maps in clay, and is able to repeat accurately the details of the surface of the regions she has studied. At the school commencement of 1894 she modeled the map of Massachu- setts, divided it into counties in the presence of the audience, and pointed out the natural features and the towns with her left hand, while with her right hand she spelled the names into the hand of a blind classmate, who announced them, She has become a skillful dolls’ dressmaker without the aid of patterns, and in teaching the use of the Braille typewriter to her companions she has exhibited the qualities of a strict disci- plinarian. Willie Elizabeth Robin, now ten years old, came to the institution four years ago, totally blind and deaf, and ignorant of language. She has become proficient in reading, writing, elementary zodlogy, articu- lation, and knitting and sewing by the Sloyd method. She has even learned to use her tongue rather than talk with ber fingers, She is specially interested in studying ani- mal forms, and searches out the minute de- tails of their structure. She is expected to tell all she can discover of each specimen given her; to represent it in clay ; and after- ward to write down what she has learned.

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714 Of a crayfish studied thus, she reported: “It has eight arms and two legs anda tail and two eyes, it has an body, it lives in the wa- ter. The body is hard and the arms and the legs are not strong, they are soft.” Tommy Stringer came to the kindergarten department feeble, inert, exhibiting few signs of intelligence, and seemingly devoid of most of the impulses of children. He is now full of eager curiosity concerning the world about him, enjoys life, and is bright, affectionate, and extremely fond of fun. He is at the head of his class in some of his studies. He is remarkably interested in mat- ters of housekeeping and domestic economy. He has a strong bent toward zodlogical study. In a talk about fish his attention was drawn to the backbone. He felt it carefully from end to end, and then passed his fingers up and down his own backbone to show the correspondence. “ On discovering the eyes, mouth, nostrils, etc., of the frog, he pointed to similar features of his own; and when he found joints in the frog’s hind legs, he im- mediately began looking for the joints of his own body and found nearly all.” No seeing boy’s portrait is more animated in ex- pression than his. Glaciation in High Latitudes.—In his Glacial Studies of Greenland, Mr. T. C. Chamberlin regards the effect of latitude on glaciation merely in the light of such results as may be attributed to the constancy of the sun above or below the horizon, the low angle of incidence of its rays, their impact from all points of the compass, and similar features. A partial means of determining what these are is found by comparison be- tween the glaciers of Disco Island, only a little within the Arctic Circle, and those of Inglefield Gulf, eight and a half degrees farther north. The Disco glaciers seem to have all the familiar characteristics of gla- ciers south of the Arctic Circle, while the Inglefield glaciers take on habits significant of their high latitude. The feature which is likely first to impress the observer on reach- ing the glaciers of the north is the vertical- ity of their walls. Southern glaciers termi- nate in curving slopes, and the Disco glaciers have the same habit; but the margins of the Inglefield glaciers rise abruptly like an es- carpment of rock, a hundred or a hundred POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and fifty feet or more. The layers of ice are cut sharp across, exposing their edges. This, however, is not quite universal, as slop- ing forms occur here and there. Occasion- ally a glacier presents both aspects. These abrupt terminal walls turn toward all points of the compass. Next to verticality, the most impressive feature is the pronounced stratification of the ice, which is vastly more evident than in ordinary glaciers. The ice is almost as distinctly bedded and laminated as are sedimentary rocks, The movement of these glaciers is in most cases exceedingly slow, and many of the ordinary signs of movement are absent; but a few glaciers at the head of the gulf which produce large icebergs are notable exceptions to the rule. Several of the glaciers observed show .evi- dence of retreat. One was seen overriding its terminal moraine in one portion and re- treating within it at another, a fact indicat- ing that it had been stationary for a consid- erable period. The combination of various evidences leads the author to regard the in- ference as unavoidable that the ice in Green- land, on its western slope at least, has never in recent geological times advanced very greatly beyond its present border. “ This,” Mr. Chamberlin adds, “carries with it the dismissal of the hypothesis that the gla- ciation of our mainland had its source in Greenland.” Indians of Piedmont Virginia. — The earliest accounts of the Indians of the Pied- mont region of the South Atlantic States are given by Lederer, who explored the country in 1670, and Beverley. According to Beverley, as quoted by Mr. James Mooney in his paper on the Siouan Tribes of the East, each Virginian tribe had a particular tribal mark—such as one, two, or three arrows arranged to point upward, downward, or sidewise—painted on the shoulders, by which its members could be distinguished when away from home. The Virginia Assembly found these marks useful in the recognition of friends, and had badges made and distributed among the tribes, without which no Indian was allowed to come to the settlement. For counting, these Indians used pebbles or bundles of short reeds or straws. Heaps of stones in- dicated the number of persons killed on a battle ground or of emigrants to some dis-

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mein eee > + FRAGMENTS tant region. Time was measured and a rude chronology was arranged by means of strings of leather with knots of various colors, very much as in Peru. This system proved so convenient in dealing with the Indians that it was adopted for the purpose by a governor of South Carolina. At certain ceremonies reeds or straws were arranged in a particu- lar order, and left thus in place after the ceremony, as a record of the character of the performance there enacted. They were never disturbed, as it was deemed a sacrilege to interfere with them. Their pictograph sys- tem is described as having been capable of symbolizing mental qualities as well as spir- itual things. The English were symbolized under the figure of a swan, on account of their white complexion and their power of flight across the sea. Their traditional his- tory was delivered in the form of long narra- tives from the fathers to the children, who were obliged to learn them by heart. Among the Saponies fire was made by rubbing to- gether two dry sticks of prepared wood, a process that required about ten minutes. On the occasion of any religious ceremony a new fire was made from two sticks which had never been used before. A strong thread was made from the fiber of a kind of “silk grass,” with which baskets were woven and the aprons that formed the chief part of a woman’s dress. Spoons were made of buf- falo horn, and the Indians believed that these spoons would split and fall to pieces if poison was put into them. It was believed that venison and turkey must never be cooked together, under penalty of provoking the anger of the hunting gods. Systematic Archeologie Work in Iowa. —aA definite plan of research upon the archeology of Iowa was formulated several years ago by Prof. Frederick Starr. It em- braced the preparation of a bibliography and ‘ of a summary, from which those interested may learn what has been done, the organiza- tion of exploration in every part of the State, publication of a report on such exploration and of a map showing the places where relics, etc., have been found, and finally the preparation of sets of illustrations and models of specimens, mounds, etc., to be dis. tributed to schools, colleges, and scientific and historical societies within the State. OF SCIENCE. 715 The Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences has published the bibliography and the sum- mary, both prepared by Prof. Starr. The latter is a brief description of the finds that have been made from time to time, arranged alphabetically by counties, and accompanied by a number of small maps and other cuts. By a wide distribution of this publication through the State of Iowa it is hoped that a body of helpers and coworkers may be raised up to work under direction toward definite ends. M. Trovve’s Acetylene Lamp.—Through the accidental discovery, in the electric furnace, of carbide of calcium, there has ap- peared a new lighting gas, acetylene. Up to this time the gas (C,H,) had been simply a laboratory product, discovered by Davy in 1836. It was found, however, that when calcium carbide, a peculiar spongy material, was plunged into water, acetylene was given off in abundance. It burns with a steady snow-white flame of great brilliancy and high candle power. M. Trouvé, says La Nature, has recently invented a practical lamp for generating and burning acetylene. The reservoir of the lamp is of glass and contains a metallic box in which is placed the calcium carbide. This box is connected with a stop- cock, leading to a small gas burner which projects from the top of the reservoir, and is so arranged that as the water in the reservoir is allowed to enter and act on the calcium carbide, acetylene is generated and passes out to the burner where it may be ignited. The admission of water to the calcium car- bide has to be carefully regulated, so as not to cause a too rapid evolution of the gas. The lamp resembles an ordinary drop light in appearance, and may be made in a variety of forms, lending itself readily to decorative purposes, Iee Saws for Opening Navigation.—It is stated in the Journal of the Society of Arts, on the authority of the United States consul at Ghent, that a successful ice-sawing ap- paratus, by which bodies of fresh water may be kept open for navigation in the winter, is in use on the river Scheldt at Antwerp. It consists of a strongly built boat with rounded sides, carrying a smal! portable steam engine. At the bowa movable framework which may

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716 be raised or lowered at will carries the axes of two circular saws ; these latter are operated by power from the portable engine. The boat itself is moved by means of a rope run over a windlass, the loose end of the rope being attached to an anchor fixed in the ice at a distance in front of the boat, and in the direction to be taken. The framework con- taining the saws is placed at a suitable height, according to the thickness of the ice, and the saws are set in motion. Being separated from each other by a distance of about five yards, they cut out a band of ice which the boat breaks into fragments by its forward movement. By reason of its form it causes these fragments to scatter before it—that is to say, to disappear on the right and on the left under the ice remaining in place. Through ice two inches thick this machine forced a passage at the rate of twenty feet per minute. In eight-inch ice the advance was about one third of a mile per day. The Cost of an Epidemie.—In a recent number of the British Medical Journal, Dr. Munro gives the following interesting statis- tics: In the course of an epidemic of enteric fever in 1893 there occurred eight hundred and fifty-nine cases, and seventy-four people lost their lives. The loss in wages was $16,- 455; the cost of treatment was $21,475; fu- neral expenses, $1,850. Adopting Farr’s esti- mate of the average value of an individual as a wage-earner, $795, we have for the seventy- four deaths the large sum of $58,830. So that the pecuniary loss to the community, arising in connection with the epidemic, amounted to a total of $98,619. A con- sideration of these figures, says Dr. Munro, might well suggest the reflection whether any investment was calculated to yield a better pecuniary return than the expenditure in- volved in the operations of the Public Health Department, which has for its main object the prevention of epidemics. In the Frankincense Country.—Near Cape Risut, on the coast of Arabia, Mr. Theodore Bent, in his exploration of the frankincense country, found the trees cover- ing a large tract. They have bright green leaves like those of the ash, small green flowers, and insignificant fruit. Frankincense was the old staple of trade in this district, POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. and it is still gathered in three places in the Gara Mountains, and is classified in three qualities. It is only collected in hot weather, before the rains begin, in March, April, and May, for during the rains the trails in the Gara Mountains are impassable. The col- lectors cut the stem, and after seven days return to collect the gum which has exuded. This they do three or four times a month. In the cool weather, as the gum comes down slowly, they leave the trees alone. The trees belong to the various families of the Gara tribe, each of them being marked and known to its owner. The product is sold wholesale to traders who come after it. This odorifer- ous gum was much more prized for temple worship and household consumption than it is now, and so precious was it that the old Sabsean merchants invented marvelous stories of genii and draguns guarding the trees and of the woods exhaling deadly odors, in order to protect them from too curious and enterprising trespassers. Seebohm the Ornithologist.—The science of ornithology has sustained a severe loss in the death of Mr. Henry Seebohm, which took place at his home in London, November 26, 1895, From a brief biographical sketch in the London Spectator we take the following: Com- ing of an old Quaker family, and from child- hood an enthusiastic observer and collector, when he later in life became a large steel man- ufacturer at Sheffield, he still found time to make numerous excursions to foreign lands, in order to see for himself the English migra- tory birds in their temporary homes. His His- tory of British Birds and their Eggs is one of the best works of its class. Among the many trips which he took to clear up some question of migration or habitat, the one which led to his discovery of the north coast tundras as the great breeding ground for a large class of European birds is one of the most inter- esting. In looking for the breeding place of several English birds which regularly disap- peared every spring, no one knew whither, he was led to visit the Petchora River, which flows from the Ural Mountains northward and falls into the Arctic Ocean opposite No- vaya Zembla. On the upper river is the great Siberian forest, while lower down on either bank below the limit of trees ia the tundra, which fringes the whole length of the

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FRAGMENTS northern coast. It is called the region of treeless swamp, is uninhabited, and for eight months out of the twelve is covered with snow. Yet he found this to be the unknown land which drains the Old World of half its bird population every spring. At the begin- ning of April Mr. Seebohm reached Ust Zyl- ma, three hundred miles from the mouth of the Petchora. The surface of the river was frozen as far as the eye could reach, and the frozen forest was as bare of life as the Des- ert of Sahara. Suddenly summer came, and with it the birds arrived. The ice on the river split and disappeared, the banks steamed in the sun, and innumerable birds of all sizes and colors appeared within forty-eight hours after the first warmth. The tundra was found to be a moor, with here and there a large, flat bog and numerous lakes. It was covered with moss, lichens, heathlike plants, dwarf birch, and millions of acres of cloudberries, cranberries, and crowberries. Forced by the perpetual sunshine of the arctic summer, these latter bear enormous crops of fruit. But the crop is not ripe until the middle or end of the arctic summer, and if the fruit- eating birds had to wait until it was ripe they would starve. But each year the snow de- scends on this immense crop of ripe fruit be- fore the birds have time to gather it. It is perfectly preserved by this natural system of cold storage until the next spring, when the melting of the snow discloses the bushes with the unconsumed last year’s crop hanging on them or lying ready to be eaten on the ground. It never decays, and is accessible the moment the snow melts. The same heats which free the fruits bring into being the most prolific insect life in the world. No European can live there without a veil after the snow melts. Thus the insect-eating birds are provided for. The trip to the Petchora was but one of many similar expeditions which Mr. Seebohm undertook from a pure love of and interest in his science. The Negre Problem.—Mr. J. L. M. Curry, Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Slater Fund, has written an interesting pamphlet on The Negro Problem in the South, in which, among other things, he discusses the influence of education on the negro since the war. He says in substance: More than a generation has passed since slavery ceased in OF SCIENCE. the United States. Despite some formidable obstacles, the negroes have been favored be- yond any other race known in the history of mankind. Freedom, citizenship, suffrage, civil and political rights, educational oppor- tunities and religious privileges, every method and function of civilization have been secured and fostered by Federal and State govern- ments, ecclesiastical organizations, munifi- cent individual benefactions, and yet the re- sults have not been on the whole such as to inspire most sanguine expectations or justify conclusions of rapid development or of racial equality. Much of the aid lavished upon the negro has been misapplied charity, and, like much other almsgiving, hurtful to the recip- ient. Schools which were established with- out any serious need of them have been helped ; public-school systems, upon which the great mass of children, white and colored, must rely for their education, have been un- derrated and injured, and schools of real merit and doing good work, which deserve confidence and contributions, have had as- sistance legitimately their due diverted into improper channels. A very promising sign, however, is the long-wished-for industrial de- velopment which seems to be dawning on the South. Whatever may be our speculative opinions as to the progress and development of which the negro may be ultimately capa- ble, there can hardly be a well-grounded op- position to the opinion that the hope for the race in the South is to be found not so much in the high courses of university instruc- tion or in schools of technology as in handi- craft instruction. This instruction, by what- ever name called, encourages us in its results to continued and liberal effort. What such schools as Hampton, the Spelman, Claflin, Tuskegee, Tongaloo, and others have done is the demonstration of the feasibility and the © value of industrial and manual training. The general instruction heretofore given in the schools, it is feared, has been too exclusively intellectual, too little of that kind which pro- duces intelligent and skilled workmen, and therefore not thoroughly adapted to racial development nor to fitting for the practical duties of life. That the two diverse races now in the South can ever permanently har- monize while occupying the same territory, no one competent to form an opinion be- lieves. That the presence in the same coun- ey Te. 7. ae - 2s 7) RES SEE TS a ae ee ee Te Niall de el _:

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718 try of two distinctly marked races having the same rights and privileges, of unequal ca- pacities of development—one long habituated to servitude, deprived of all power of initia- tive, of all high ideal, without patriotism beyond a mere weak attachment—is to be regarded as a blessing, is too absurd a propo- sition for serious consideration. Respirability of Vitiated Air.—The breathing of air in which a candle flame will not burn is generally considered dan- gerous. In a paper by Mr. Frank Cloues, read before the British Association, at the Ipswich meeting, the results of some inter- esting experiments were given. It was found that the flames of ordinary candles and lamps were extinguished by mixtures which contained, on an average, about 16°5 per cent of oxygen and 83°5 per cent of the extinctive gases. A flame of coal-gas, how- ever, required for its extinction a mixture still poorer in oxygen and containing 11°3 per cent of oxygen and 88°7 per cent of the extinctive gases. These results have since been confirmed by a different method, which consisted in allowing a flame to burn in air inclosed over mercury until it was extinguished; the remaining extinctive at- mosphere was then subjected to analysis, when its composition was found to be prac- tically identical with that previously ob- tained from the artificial mixtures. An analysis of air expired from the lungs proved that it was also of the same compo- sition as that which extinguished the flame of an ordinary candle or lamp. The average composition of expired air and of air which extinguishes a candle flame is as follows: Oxygen, 15°9; nitrogen, 80°4; carbon diox- ide, 3°7. Now, an atmosphere of this com- position is undoubtedly respirable. Physi- ologists state that air may be breathed until its oxygen is reduced to ten per cent. The maximum amount of carbon dioxide which may be present is open to question, but it is undoubtedly considerably higher than three per cent. Dr. Haldane maintains that the above atmosphere is not only respirable, but would be breathed by a healthy person with- out inconvenience of any kind; he further states that no permanent injury would result from breathing such an atmosphere for some time. The conclusion to be drawn from POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. these facts is that an atmosphere must not be considered dangerous and irrespirable because the flame of an ordinary candle or oil lamp is extinguished by it. The popular notion about such an atmosphere might often deter one from doing duty of a hu- mane or necessary character. Death of Hoppe-Seyler.—Ernest Felix Immanuel Hoppe-Seyler (his name was Hoppe; he changed it to Hoppe-Seyler in 1862) was born in Freiburg, on the Umstrut, Saxony, on December 26, 1825. At eleven he had lost both father and mother. He was taken in charge and educated by the governing body of an endowed institution in Halle. Beginning the study of natural sci- ence in 1846, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1850, and began practicing in Berlin. In 1856 he was appointed prosector in the University of Greifswald, and in 1858 was called to Berlin to act as Virchow’s as- sistant; three years later he was called to the chair of applied chemistry in the Uni- versity of Tiibingen, and in 1872 was ap- pointed to the only ordinary professorsbip of physiological chemistry in the German Empire, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Universitat at Strasburg. Here he worked until the very eve of his death. He died on the fore- noon of August 10, 1895. In 1857, while at Berlin, he published the first paper in a long series of valuable contributions to the physi- ological chemistry of the blood. In 1858 appeared the first edition of his Handbook of Physiologico-Chemical and Pathologico- Chemical Analysis. In 1862 he published one of his most valuable papers, On the Behavior of the Blood-coloring Matter in the Spectrum of Sunlight. The researches which foliowed on the chemistry of the blood-coloring matter probably constitute his highest claim to distinction. In'1877—78 he founded the Zeitschrift fiir physiologische Chemie. Profs. Baumann and Kossel are, it is understood, to be the future editors of this journal, Although he did much to advance both physiology and pathology, Hoppe-Seyler is said to have been more of a chemist than a biologist. A Colony for Epilepties.—The Craig Col- ony for Epileptics, named from the late Oscar Craig, of Rochester, is located on a tract of

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FRAGMENTS nearly nineteen hundred acres in the Genesee Valley. Its post office and railway station is called Sonyea, an Indian word signifying sunny place. The land is extremely fertile and the district a very beautiful one. There have already been erected some thirty or forty buildings. The colony will be a coun- try village, only differing from others in being composed entirely of epileptics. The butcher, the baker, the grocer, the shoe- maker, the mason, all will be sufferers from this curious disease. About thirty years ago a somewhat similar attempt was made in northern Germany ; it has now developed into one of the most important labor colonies in Europe. The origin and history of this colony, which is called “Bethel,” are given in detail in a previous issue of the Monthly. There are one hundred and twenty thousand epileptics in the United States; these unfor- tunates—perfectly well able to work, and many of them very competent—are debarred from almost every occupation, because of Amone the singular native customs pre- vailing in the western division of British New Guinea, the official report mentions that of the woman making the proposal of mar- riage and sending for the man to visit her; while the sister-in-law of the bride is often given in marriage in exchange, without re- gard to her wishes. The skeletons of dead relatives are sometimes kept in the villages ; the skulls of enemies are preserved as tro- phies ; and occasionally the body of an enemy is cooked and partly eaten. Brsipes the considerable collections of the minerals and fossils of the region in the University Museum and the Deseret Museum, the University of Utah enjoys the advan- tage, in the Deseret Museum, which has been placed in its building, of an extensive series of specimens illustrating the persons and habits of the cliff dwellers and other aboriginal tribes of the region. Besides numerous perfect and fragmentary speci- mens of desiccated remains, this collec- tion comprises many examples of weapons, tools, and domestic workmanship of these early people, which as a whole afford a valu- able record of this phase of American ar- MINOR PARAGRAPHS. OF SCIENCE. 719 their liability to “fits.” They are not ad- mitted to the public schools, and are hence much handicapped in getting an education. In fact, about the only places where they are received are insane asylums and poorhouses. There are over a thousand epileptics in alms- houses in New York State. The first work of the Craig Institution will be to remove these from the care of the State; after they are provided for, then outsiders will be ad- mitted. There are no restrictions as to the age of patients, but necessarily no insane epi- leptics will be received. As the patients are received they will be set to work or at study in various ways. They will take care of the farms, gardens, and orchards ; they will plan and build new houses; in fact, every sort of employment, every sort of recreation, every- thing, in short, that goes to make up the life of a country village will be found in this colony. The resources of the land are such, it is thought, that by judicious management the community can be made self-sustaining. cheology. The specimens are arranged with special reference to the requirements of study and teaching. Tue conclusion results from an archeo- logical exploration of the James River and Potomac River Valleys by Mr. Gerard Fowke that the aboriginal remains between tide- water and the Alleghanies, from Pennsyl- vania. to southwestern Virginia, pertain to the tribes who lived or hunted within the territory at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Nothing indicating a more ancient or another race was found; while the occur- rence of objects which could have been ob- tained only from white traders fixes approxi- mately the date of some burial places, and resemblances in various points necessitate the classification of others as not far removed in time or origin from these. From a review of the results of a trans- continental series of gravity measurements by George R. Putnam, Mr. G. K. Gilbert con- cludes that they appear more harmonious when the method of reduction postulates isos- tasy (or hydrostatic equilibrium) than when it postulates high rigidity. Nearly all the local peculiarities of gravity admit of simple

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720 and rational explanation on the theory that the continent as a whole is approximately, and the interior plain is almost perfectly, isostatic. Most of the deviations from the normal arise from excess of matter and are associated with uplift. The Appalachian and Rocky Mountains, and the Wasatch Pla- teau, all appear to be of the nature of added loads, the whole mass above the neighboring plains being rigidly upheld. The Colorado Plateau Province seems to have an excess of matter, and the Desert Range Province may also be overloaded. NOTES. In the article on The Collecting of Naval Stores, in the February Monthly, we inad- vertently omitted to give credit for the cut on page 479, illustrating the French method of tapping or “ bleeding ” pine trees for their turpentine. The block was kindly placed at our disposal by the Forestry Department at Washington, to which we owe our acknowl- edgment. From a note in the Revue Scientifique we gather that M. L. Roncorini, of Turin, a pupil of M. Lombroso, has recently made some interesting microscopical researches on the breins of epileptics, criminals, and idiots. He found alterations in structure which were fairly constant, and which in most cases were marked enough to differentiate them from the normal brain. If his work is con- firmed by future observations it will justify M. Lombroso’s theory that criminals and epi- leptics are closely related. A New application of the phonograph is described in a recent issue of Industries and Tron. The Knowles Steam Pump Company has a large pumping station on the Elk River in California. Something went wrong with the big pump, and the manager of the station, in order to save the expense of hav- ing an expert come on from New York, conceived the ingenious notion of using a phonograph. He first spoke into the receiver, giving a general account of the matter, and then placed the receiver so that the working of the pump was recorded on the wax roll. When the cylinder was put into the ma- chine in New York, the voice of the man- ager of the pumping station was heard iving the symptoms, and then asking the steners to pay attention tothe pump’s ac- tion. By this means the difficulty was made out and the proper remedy forwarded. In a letter on the poison ivy, in Garden and Forest, W. H. Harrison says: “ The poi- son of the ivy, though always present, proba- bly, like all sap, varies slightly in activity with the season, though perhaps not more than POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. does man’s power of resisting it, for the warm, perspiring skin of summer with its open pores takes in and throws out juices much more readily and is more easily irri- tated than the dry, firm skin and contracted pores of the exposed parts in winter. Aside from the sand form, all parts of the poison ivy are poisonous at all seasons, the root being by far the most virulent of all. I have seen a robust physician in the prime of health poisoned almost fatally and rendered nearly helpless for many days simply by pull- ing the roots. The poisoning, which is of an erysipelatous nature, usually appears in light cases at the point where the ivy juice comes in contact with the skin, but severe cases are apt to centralize at some point where the skin is tender. The remedies for this poison are unsatisfactory. The best way to effect a cure is to let the irritated area severely alone, notwithstanding the itching.” Art the August meeting of the German Society of Anthropology, Dr. Waldever de- livered an address on the somatic differences of the two sexes. He argued that since a wide collation of measurements and statistics proves that woman has a smaller brain, has less physical strength, preserves more traits of infancy and childhood in adult life, and has practically in all times and places held a position inferior to man, in our schemes of social improvement these undeniable facts should be respected, and he quoted with ap- proval the opinion of Bartels, that the edu- cation, physical and mental, of woman, how- ever high it may be, should be always aimed to fit her for the duties of the family circle only. Tre Argentine Medical Club of Buenos Ayres offers three prizes, the first of three hundred dollars, for researches in bacteri- ology, to be presented before May 31, 1897. The prizes are offered to honor the memory of Pasteur. Messrs. Macumtitan & Co. announce in preparation An Atlas of Nerve Cells, by M. Allen Starr, M.D. Its object is to present to students and teachers of histology a se- ries of photographs showing the appearance of the cells which form the central nervous system, as seen under the microscope. As the result of a trial carried on for a year the New York Agricultural Experiment Station has found that a lot of Leghorn hens, having ground and moistened grain as thirty- seven per cent of their food for the year, cost less to feed, both as regards live weight and the eggs produced, than a similar lot having their grain food dry and whole. With two pens of Cochins the same result was obtained as regards live weight, but the opposite in regard to the production of eggs. As to the comparative profits from large and small breeds, this experiment turned out rather favorably to the large ones. 5 aaa

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