t .

<b

\

ESTABLISHED BY EDWARD L. YOUMANS.

Xf

^41^'/' THE

POPIJLAK SCIE]^CE

MONTHLY.

EDITED BY WTLLTAM JAY YOUMANS.

VOL. XLIII.

(.V-

» '"Ci

V '^

■;/"

MAY TO OCTOBER, 1893.

'i

* ^s ^fe»/

NEW YORK :

D. APPLETON AXD COMPANY,

1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET.

1893.

H7

COPTEIGHT. 1893,

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

X '*^^

SAMUEL WILLIAM JOHNSON.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

MAY, 1893.
JAPANESE HOME LIFE.

By Dr. W. DELANO EASTLAKE.

IT must be confessed that the ideas of Japan and the Japanese
which we are likely to gain through the current literature of
the day are apt to be sadly confusing. This, I am quite confident,
is not from any desire on the part of writers on Japanese subjects
to encourage any false impressions, but rather from the very fact
that neither poet nor artist traveler — ay, nor many of the long
residents in Japan, for that matter — have opportunity to see or
take part in the home life of the people of Japan.

But few visitors to that country have been able, in so short a
time, to become so thoroughly en rapport with the customs and
life of this interesting people as Sir Edwin Arnold, whose grace-
ful writings show us how he has thought with them, lived with
them, and loved with them in a deeper and truer sense than many
of the oldest foreign residents, although his stay was compara-
tively short. Yet even in Sir Edwin's writings on Japan we see
the poetry rather than the prose of Japanese life ; and this is not
to be wondered at, for of all countries and people none could
appeal so deeply to the poet as does this fairyland of flowers and
romance. The very air one breathes, the delicious sense of rest
and quiet, the graceful courtesy of the people, the romantic
beauty of mountain or highway, city or dwelling — all these, and
far more, complete an ideal picture that awakens enthusiasm in
the prosiest of tourists or visitors. It could surely scarcely have
been otherwise that the author of the Light of Asia, whose very
heart-strings are tuned to the melody of poetry, should have struck
the keynote of Japanese life and awakened naught but answering
chords of most enchanting harmony.

VOL. XLIII. 1

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

So he has given us these in his writings on Japan so vividly
and artistically that we can almost hear the soft-voiced welcome
of the serving maiden, as the soji is noiselessly pushed aside, and
amid the subtle fragrance of the plum blossoms sink back among
the silken cushions with that delicious sense of repose, while
lulled to rest by the melodic echo of the hoto strings, and find
ourselves once more in fairyland Japan. And would it were only
true !

Yet we are not all of us poets, and few of us are artists, and so
find that there is prose beneath the fragrant blossoms that the
poet's pen has so lavishly scattered over things Japanese. On the

Tub iSiESTA.

other hand, we find that the sweeping assertions regarding Japa-
nese ethics and morals — or rather lack of morals — as contained in
other writings on Japan, are both unjust and untrue.

On the one hand. Sir Edwin Arnold tells us that the women of
Japan approach our ideal of the angelic, while another writer
cries out against the utter lack of morality in Japanese women.
Such diametrically opposed statements are distressingly confus-
ing, and the characteristics of " angelic immorality " are hard to
conceive of, and must be rather paradoxical, to say the least.

Should we desire to gain any true idea of the "prose and
poetry " of Japan, we must look into the details of the home life
of the people ; for, after all, it is the daily routine, the domestic
and social duties, the thoughts, pastimes, and aspirations typical

JAPANESE HOME LIFE. 3

to any people that mold the ethics and character of the nation
itself. In a word, we must enter the homes of both high and low,
there to learn facts and not " foreign impressions."

But, alas ! the task is one most difficult to accomplish, for it
must be acknowledged that the vast majority of foreign residents,
and practically all transient visitors to the country, see little or
nothing of the details of the home life of the people. And why ?
Is the life of the people just what they see it to be in its pic-
turesque and courteous superficiality, and is it indeed all poetry,
music, and flowers, and no earnest reality ?

Indeed, there is; for the word "home" has the same tender
meaning in the hearts of the Japanese as with us ; and the cricket
that chirps so histily on the hearths of American or English
homes would find a rival songster in the cheery little fellow
whose contented chirp by the side of the glowing brazier, or
hibachi, makes such sweet music in Japanese homes.

Apart from the diplomatic and consular representatives from
Western countries, the foreign residents of Japan are chiefly com-
posed of merchants, missionaries, and a comparatively small
number of professional men. The merchant or trading class
represent by all odds the majority of the foreign community.
Numerically, missionaries would come next. Indeed, it would
not be an unfair estimate to state that these two classes constitute
at least four fifths of the foreign population. Trading, as far as
foreigners are concerned, is still limited to the treaty ports, in-
cluding Yokohama, Kob^, Nagasaki, and a few others. Socially,
the Japanese merchant ranks below the humblest tradesman, and,
as all foreign trading with the interior must be carried on through
the medium of these Japanese commission merchants, it is with
this class of people that the majority of the foreign residents
come in contact, and then only in their business relations, and
seldom socially or intimately ; although, were this the case, the
idea gained of Japanese home life would be misleading, for the
Japanese trader very soon learns to conform himself to the man-
ners of his customers, and can not be regarded — as thus met — as
typical of the truly Japanese.

The missionaries as well, for the most part at least, have little
opportunity to study the details of the social or home life of the
people they are working among. Theirs is a duty and vocation
which from its very nature would render this well-nigh impossi-
ble. They are teachers, not students ; they are bearers of spiritual
truths, and must needs open warfare against the existing creeds of
the people ; and this attitude in itself would, in the majority of in-
stances at least, debar them from entering into the pursuits or
pastimes of the people. Before leaving the subject of mission-
aries, I would call attention to the frequent allusions made by the

JAPANESE HOME LIFE. 5

representatives of certain missions, to the disrespect and disre-
gard paid to them or their teachings by the Japanese. Snch
assertions are too sweeping, to say the least, as well as mislead-
ing, for many of the foreign missionaries in Japan have gained
the high esteem of natives, and have endeared themselves, both
by their noble, self-sacrificing lives, as well as ever ready sym-
path}^ and friendliness. There have been many missionaries sent
to Japan during the past decade who are educationally sadly in-
competent to meet the emergencies that present themselves in
Japan. It must be borne in mind that the standard of education
of the present generation in Japan is most high. The works of
Huxley, Spencer, Darwin, and many others have, for the most
part, been translated into Japanese, and the students and gradu-
ates of the university, the Dai gcikJio, are able to compete educa-
tionally with men from our best colleges and universities. The
eagerness for knowledge that one finds so universally displayed
among the Japanese, together with the remarkable advance in
this direction that the nation has made during the past twenty
years, and the prominent position Japan is assuming in its rela-
tions to America and European countries — all this commands our
unbiased interest and respect.

The task of endeavoring to portray a clear, although of neces-
sity incomplete, view of Japanese home life is one of no little dif-
ficulty. It would seem almost as difficult as an adequate descrip-
tion of a Beethoven sonata would be without the aid of music.
For there is a subtle " something " about Japan in which, perhaps,
the exquisite harmony of the land — the scenery and the people —
plays an important part ; yet a " something " that is wont to cast
a charmed spell around one, and causes a former resident, like
myself, to look back to the years spent in the " Land of the Rising
Sun" as to the memory of some peaceful vision of fairyland.
This indefinable charm can not be described in mere word-pic-
tures, and yet escapes few visitors to Japan, and is seldom lost
even after long residence in that country.

The sense of restfulness that pervades our Japanese towns, in
bold contradistinction to that feeling of noisy hurry and feverish
excitement of a busy American city, has been attributed to the
comparative absence of horse traffic in the former. Undoubtedly
this is a potent factor, but not the only one which gives that sense
of quiet and repose already referred to. The courteous politeness
of the people, both rich and poor, the general evidences of light-
heartedness among even the poorest laboring classes, the absence
of that distracting hurry and rush so typical of our great busi-
ness centers, and in addition to all this the picturesque houses and
streets, the spotlessly clean homes, the evidences everywhere of a
national love for the beautiful and artistic, the absence of saloons

6 TH£ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or barrooms, and their substitution by public bath-houses, at al-
most every corner — all these must be regarded as factors produc-
tive of this sense of quiet and rest. Then, again, the strange com-
mingling of the new and the old — for, turning aside from some
busy street thronged with shoppers, venders and tradesmen, a
few steps may find us approaching some majestic temple gate-
way, leading to the shrine or tomb of some great hero of centuries
gone by. Ascending the time-worn stone steps, and standing be-
neath the shadow of the lofty gabled roof of the gateway, our gaze
may follow the intricate maze of lacquer and bronze architectural
adornment until it is lost in the shadowy gloom overhead. On
either side of the two central columns, and shut off by a railing,
are the colossal figures of the " guardians of the temple," grim
and gaunt, with sword in hand. Flanked on either side are the
tall bronze or stone lanterns of the temple, and still beyond, back
even of the font of water and the great temple bell in its gabled
belfry, is the shrine itself, a fitting resting place or tribute to one
who has served his country well, guarded as it is by gnarled and
ancient pines and lofty cryptomarias that were ancient when the
grandsires of the happy throng below ascended these self-same
steps to offer a tribute to the memory of the hero.

There is a marked similarity in the daily routine of the inmates
of Japanese homes, whether they be homes of the rich or poor,
the official or tradesman. The wife is always the mistress of the
home, and hers is the duty of in every way possible rendering the
life of her husband happy — and to be happy herself, as far as he
knows. The instruction of the daughters of the home in the
various domestic duties also devolves upon the mother. The
wardrobe of the entire family is the work of her hands, with the
assistance, perhaps, of an aunt (obdsan), maid, or her growing
daughters. The latter, by the way, are taught how to sew while
yet quite little tots, and as they grow older in years and skill, are
initiated into the mysteries of art needlework. Then the daugh-
ters are instructed in music, a certain knowledge of the samisen,
koto, or some other musical instrument being regarded as a requi-
site accomplishment in even the poorer and middle classes, while
the daughters of the higher classes and nobility are well versed
in art, music, and the poetry of the country. The other accom-
plishments deemed desirable in women consist principally in the
artistic arrangement of flowers and the details of ceremonial tea
making and drinking (cha-no-yu) .

The recitation, or reading of historical poems (utai) is a favor-
ite study, especially if some romance is interwoven into the story.
Usually the dramatic poems (iorori) are ceremoniously read or
sung by the young maidens, while an elder sister or teacher will
thrum a minor accentuated accompaniment on the samisen. Some-

'■*R^'«Rr?«S«

8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

times the story of the utai is told in prose to the eager group of
children gathered around the glowing brazier, or hibachi. The
latter, it must be confessed, in spite of its cheery appearance, ra-
diates but a scant amount of heat in comparison with the open
grates of the Occident. Such a family group may be seen in
thousands of homes in Tokyo alone, on a winter's afternoon ; the
boys, if back from school, resting contentedly on the white tatami,
or studying the morrow's lessons in some quiet nook ; the little
maidens, demurely grouped about the hibachi, Imsily plying their
needles, while listening to some story told by the old aunt or
nurse, that may be acting as instructress. The contented hum of

Singing Gikls playing on tiik Koto and Samisen.

the quaint old iron kettle, resting over the glowing coals, sup-
ported by an iron tripod thrust into the ashes of the hibachi, sug-
gests its entire readiness to assist in the preparation of tiny cups
of fragrant tea for any chance guest that arrives, or for any mem-
ber of the family that wants a steaming cup of this delicate bev-
erage — which is so much more dainty and delicious as prepared
and drunk by the Japanese than by us.

It is then that the telling of stories finds its place in Japanese.
The deeds of heroes, the romances of ancient dynasties, mystical
lore, stories of ghosts and ghouls, and of the wicked and revenge-
ful deeds of fox or badger sprites — this folk lore, historical or
mythical, as it may be, has become so blended with the home life

JAPANESE HOME LIFE. 9

of the people that one can not well dissociate the one from the
other. The story of Kogo-no-Tsiibone — properly an utai, or his-
torical poem — is a favorite on acconnt of the sweet romance it

contains.

THE STORY OF KOGO-XO-TSUBONfi.

Long, long years ago, Ijefore the Shoguns, that now sleep in
their ancient graves in Shiba, had gained power, and before the
advent of foreigners had been even dreamed of, the peace-loving
young Emperor Takakura, a monarch of the imperial line, graced
the sacred throne of his ancestors.

But the imperial power of Takakura was but a nominal one,
for the prime minister — one Kiyomori, of Taira descent — virtually
ruled the land, and, to accomplish his ends more adroitly, had
even caused his daughter to be made empress. Thus the peace-
loving young monarch was a mere tool in the artful hands of Ki-
yomori. Indeed, his power was great, for the emperor could not
have declared war or made peace against Kiyomori's tyrant will.

So, while the prime minister was scheming with his daughter
the empress, the young monarch was forced to seek consolation
in music and art, and found a willing and loving follower in one
of his retainers, Nakakuni, who himself was a most skilled per-
former on the flute. Now, it happened that among the royal mu-
sicians at the palace there was a lady in waiting to the royal
household who in music far outranked any other. Fair as a
dream, gifted with the sweetest of voices, Kogo — for this was her
name — was able to awaken music from her Icoto strings that
seemed to spring from the very soul of the instrument. None
but the tapering fingers of the fair Kogo could create such en-
trancing harmony, and it truly seemed as though the silken strings
would murmur a loving response to her gentle caress.

Frequently the flutist Nakakuni would accompanj^ Kogo's mu-
sic and song, while the young emperor would listen like one en-
tranced. These three passed many hapj)y hours together ; but as
time wore on, the young monarch realized that sweet Kogo's mu-
sic and verse had awakened love. But, alas ! Kiyomori learned of
the emperor's infatuation, and poor Kogo was compelled to se-
cretly flee to the mountain forests of Saga in order to escape from
the relentless persecutions of Kiyomori and his daughter the em-
press.

On learning of Kogo's flight from the palace, Takakura at once
ordered his faithful retainer Nakakuni to go in search of the miss-
ing maiden, and look far and wide, and not to return until he had
found her hiding place. The fleetest horse of the royal mews
was made ready, and Nakakuni, bearing with him a message from
the Emperor, was soon speeding toward the gloomy mountain of
Saga.

lo THi: POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Long lie rode ; tlie giant cryptomarias that flanked the high-
way towered overhead, and well-nigh shut out the remnant of
the dying day. Night dropped her black pall over the earth as
he entered the dark forests of the mountain, but far, far above the
tree-tops the silver moon shone fortli, with the stars peeping out

A Gi-IbliA, UK I'kuFESSIONAL EnTEKTAINKR and MlSIOIAN.

one by one, as though desiring to aid the loyal retainer in his
search. Again and again he would check his horse and stop to
listen, for it seemed that he could hear the melodious tones of a
koto. At last, when, far late into the night, he arrived at the
ancient temple of Horin, the sounds became more audible, al-

JAPANESE HOME LIFE. ii

though still distant. Was it the distant moan of some far-away
tempest among the mountain peaks ? Was it merely the night
wind sighing through the lofty pines overhead ? Or could it be
the plaintive, liquid melody from the harp of the lost one ? Check-
ing his panting, foaming steed, Xakakuni listened intently, and
while listening his heart began to beat wildly, for he now recog-
nized the music of an old love song, and the magic touch of Kogo's
fingers on the Tioto strings. Led by the guiding music, he soon
reached a miserable-looking hut, whence the sounds proceeded.
Dismounting at the door of the hut, he proclaimed himself a royal
messenger and demanded admittance.

A voice from within answered that no dweller in so humble a
hut was worthy of being the recipient of a message from the em-
peror, and that surely he had made some mistake. Not to be put
off, however, Nakakuni declared that he had recognized Kogo's
music, and that it was for Kogo that he was seeking. Then, in-
deed, he was made welcome to the humble abode ; but, after de-
livering the emperor's message, the fair Kogo announced her
determination to forsake the world forever and live the holy life
of a recluse, and begged that Nakakuni would secure the em-
peror's pardon for her enforced disobedience to his commands.
In vain did the faithful messenger endeavor to alter this deter-
mination, and presently the two fell to talking of the happy past
at the palace. The 'koto was brought forth, and Kogo once more
sang those well-known love songs, and the harp strings rang again
with melody. The moments rolled into hours, and the day was
breaking when Nakakuni took leave of the weeping and disconso-
late maiden and rode slowly back to the palace alone.

Sometimes the story is ended here with the conclusion that
Kogo became a Buddhist nun and spent her life in ministering to
others, self-abnegation, and prayer; but the history of the ro-
mance, as set forth in the utai, is kindlier, for the emperor again
sent for the sweet musician, who was finallj^ prevailed upon to
return to the palace, where she was restored to her former honor-
able position in the imperial household.

In rendering the above in English I have endeavored to retain,
as far as possible, the quaintness of the original with which almost
every Japanese is familiar. Regarding the purely legendary lore
of Japan, this is as a rule most weird and mystical. The large
variety of supernatural beings, for the most part of a purely
psychical origin, is truly startling ; indeed, it would be difficult to
imagine or invent any grewsome form for an apparition that is
not already an old inhabitant of Japanese " ghostdom."

But for " fireside " stories it is, after all, the recital of the un-
canny and magical deeds of foxes and badgers that awakens the

JAPANESE HOME LIFE.

^3

greatest interest among the children, and which are, for the most
part, believed in even by the elders. In fact, among the more illit-
erate classes to be possessed with the spirit of a fox {hitsune-tsuki)
is a form of zoanthropy not infrequently met with, although the
disorder is more likely to be assumed than real, and the epithet
kitsune-tsiiki, or "fox-hearted," is more apt to be figuratively
applied than otherwise. Undoubtedly the popular belief in the
magical powers of foxes and badgers in Japan is as extensive as
the frequently unexpressed belief in the supernatural found in
this country. The educated classes will decry any such super-
stitious belief, and yet will tell you of alleged experiences of their
friends or relatives with foxes or badgers, which are " very
strange and not to be accounted for." Fox and badger stories
are therefore highly appreciated by the juvenile members of any
Japanese family, principally on account of their " authenticity,""
and because of that fascinating condition of fear and " the creeps ""
that their recital occasions. Here is a good badger story, the truth
of which I can vouch for, insomuch as there is a field of Inami
near Kyoto, and that it is a grewsome spot well suited for a tryst-
ing place for ghouls and ghosts.

THE BURIAL AT MIDNIGHT.*

Not far from Kyoto, in the smiling hill-land of Harima, there
is a broad, open plain known as the " Field of Inami." Although
surrounded by verdant hillsides, this plain is bleak and barren ;
great gusts of wind sweep over the long, dry grasses, and no
farmer or peasant has ever found a home in this desolate spot.
Yet the great highway to Kyoto runs just to one side of the plain,,
and on this road a postman used to carry his load of letters once
or twice every week. A little bypath leads across one corner of
the x>lain, lessening the distance to the city, and this path was a
great favorite with the postman, as it made his journey so much
the shorter.

Going one day as usual to Kyoto, he reached the field a little
later than was his wont, and night came on before he had ad-
vanced very far. Without a light or the means of procuring one,,
he wandered aimlesslj^ on for a while, but finally seeing that he
had missed the path in the darkness, resolved to pass the night
where he was, with the sky for a coverlet. Without giving a
second thought to all the ugly stories told of the field, the ghosts
and malicious fox-sprites said to hold their nightly revels in that
spot, the postman bravely determined to make the best of it, and

* This tale was first translated from the Japanese into German, and read, among others,
before the Gesellsehaft fur Volkerkunde in Ost-Asien, in Yokohama, by F. Warrington
Eastlake, Ph. D.

H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was just looking for some sort of shelter when he caught sight of
a little, half -ruined hut. Drawing nearer, he found that it was a
sort of watch-house, such as the peasants build near the rice-fields
in order to protect the growing grain. Overjoyed at having
found even this poor shelter, the postman entered the little hut,
and, throwing himself on a heap of dried grass, was soon fast
asleep. Perfect silence reigned over the sterile plain ; only now
and again the far-off hoot of an owl or the mournful cry of some
night bird broke the stillness of the night.

Several hours had passed, when the sleeper was suddenly awak-
ened by the deep, sonorous note of a bell. The sound seemed to
come from the western portion of the field, and all at once the
startled sleeper heard a tramping as of many feet, and a confused
murmur of Buddhist chants and prayers. Nearer and nearer
came the crowd of people, to the listener's great astonishment.
*' There are no houses in the field," thought he, " and anyhow no
one would think of going at midnight to such a deserted and ill-
omened spot." The stars were shining brightly, but no moon
illumined the scene, so that the trembling postman could only see
•objects very near him. Nevertheless he peeped cautiously out of
his hiding place and saw, to his unbounded surprise, a long pro-
cession of men bearing torches and lanterns. In front of all
inarched a tall jjriest, reciting the Buddhist invocation, NaTiiu
Amida Butsu, in a clear, loud voice. " It is a funeral procession ! "
thought the frightened listener, and crept farther back into the
shadows of the hut.

As soon as the mournful procession had reached the little hut
a halt was made, and tlie cofiin-bearers stej^ped forward. Scarcely
five paces from the hut the grave was dug, and the coffin placed
in it. The priest then threw the earth back into the grave and
built a little mound above it, and finally placed a few sticks cov-
ered with Buddhist characters in one end of the mound. With-
out further word the somber procession turned back, and moved
slowly away in the same solemn and impressive manner, leaving
the postman in a most pitiable frame of mind. It was quite bad
enough to be compelled to spend the night in such an uncanny
and grewsome spot ; but the late hour, mysterious burial, and the
proximity of the freshly dug grave were enough to frighten the
bravest heart.

As if chained to the spot by some evil spell, the postman kept
staring at the little mound before him. Suddenly, while he was
gazing fixedly at the grave, it began to rock slowly from side to
side. Quicker and quicker became the rocking, while the invol-
untary spectator underwent an agony of terror. Faster and faster
still rocked the mound, until it fell over with a great shock, and
a naked, horrid thing jumped from the grave and ran toward the

i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

postman. In an instant he remembered that horrible ghouls
always attend a burial, and that these ghouls often kill and eat
living beings. There was no time to lose, for the creature had
already reached the entrance of the hut. Crazed with fear, the

postman drew hisiswovd and made one desperate cut at his enemy,
and then, without daring to give a second blow, ran out of the
hut and into the night.

Hours seemed to have passed before the postman arrived, half
dead with exhaustion and panting for breath, at the house of a

JAPANESE HOME LIFE. 17

peasant, just "beyond the outskirts of the field. He knocked again
and again, but no one came in answer, and so he had to wait for
the day to dawn. Shortly after sunrise the people of the house
arose, and, hearing the knocking, took the still breathless wan-
derer into the guest chamber, where they attended to his pitiable
state, and then begged him to relate what had befallen him.
This he did, and the peasants at once determined to go to the
little hut in the field of Inami, which was well known to them.
Upon arriving at the spot they found no signs of a burial or of a
grave. Mound and coffin had utterly disappeared ; but just in
front of the hut lay the body of a huge badger, killed by the one
cut of the good steel. At once they saw what had happened.
The evil beast had wished to frighten the belated wanderer ; and
the funeral procession and priest, coffin, and grave had been
merely the work of magic.

So much for the stories that play such an important role in
the drama of home life in Japan. It is to be regretted that this
subject has not been more extensively dealt with in recent writ-
ings of the country, for many of the hidden beauties of the coun-
try and people are best portrayed in the stories of bygone heroes,
as told to the children around the hibachi, or as sung by some
graceful maiden with samisen or Icoto accompaniment ; while the
tales of ghosts or ghouls rival those of almost any other land in
variety and horror.

Turning to the pastimes common to Japanese homes, a brief
mention of the most popular games must not be omitted. Oo and
sJiogi are similar to our games of draughts and chess, yet the for-
mer is far more scientific than checkers. There are several games
of cards, the playing cards being about as long as those used in
this country, but scarcely three quarters of an inch wide. Another
favorite game is that of " One Hundred Poems." It is somewhat
similar to our rather childish game of " Authors," with the excep-
tion that the Japanese game is by no means childish, and requires
an intimate knowledge of at least one hundred poems of well-
known merit. Two hundred cards are used in the game, and half
a poem is written on each card. The cards being spread before
the players, the half of a poem on any one card is read, and the
other half searched for by the contestants. Then the different
seasons of the year have typical games. The most picturesque of
these is haguita, or " battledoor and shuttlecock," which is exclu-
sively a New- Year's game. Then the time of the cherry blooms
brings its games beneath the bloom-laden branches. Music and
song find their way into the homes of Japan far more extensively
than in this country. To be sure, the music of either koto or
samisen is apt to sound strange, and at first perhaps almost unin-

VOL. XLIII. 2

l8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

tellig'ible, to our untutored ears; but we soon become familiar
witli the plaintive notes of tlie Icoto or the sonorous vibrations of
the samisen, and learn to both recognize and appreciate the quaint
minor harmonies and softly worded melody of some love song, or
so-fu-ren.

As I have already had occasion to mention, the dramatic or
operatic poems are sung with the accompaniment of the samisen,
while the historical poems, or utai, find a musical accompaniment
only when recited on the no stage, and then flute and drums are
the instruments used. The dramatization of the utai upon the
no stages is a very ancient custom, and can only be appreciated
by the better educated classes. Correctly speaking, no is a liis-

Facsimile of a Poem by Aritsunb

torical dance, full of weird mysticisms almost unintelligible to
those not conversant with its meaning, but its proper performance
is a classic art. It has remained unchanged in the slightest detail
for centuries, and through its medium the classic historical poetry
of the nation is retained and placed before the appreciative public
of the higher class.

Thus the drama and history of the country, so full of heroism
and romance, shape themselves into poetry and song. The blend-
ing of art with poetry is another feature typical of the Japanese
people. There are two purely Jajjanese schools of art : the one
dealing with the minutest details, and the other with the bold and
forcible portrayal of impressions and suggestions, rather than
details ; graceful sketches, rather than detailed drawings. " We

JAPANESE HOME LIFE. ig

can not reproduce Nature in art/' a Japanese artist has said, "and
instead of making so bold an attempt, had best satisfy ourselves
with mere suggestions of Nature's beauties." The same may be
said of some Japanese poetry, for the ida, or sonnets, usually are
mere poetic suggestions of a deeper meaning or sentiment. This
brings one to a realization of the close connection between art and
poetry in Japan, as also between poetry and music. In social
gatherings among friends, a favorite mode for mutual entertain-
ment is for one of the guests to quickly sketch some passing
thought or memory of one of Nature's beauties ; it may be the
crest of some distant mountain, a branch heavy with blossoms, or
a flower. This sketch is then passed on to another guest, who,
in looking at it, seeks to find some poetic suggestion, or hidden
lesson, and having done so, adds the verse to the sketch, and
the picture is complete. These illustrated sonnets, the fruits of
poetic inspiration and artistic impression, are taken home, to
be preserved as cherished souvenirs of the evening's entertain-
ment.

To illustrate this more clearly, we will say that an artist has,
with two or three rough strokes of his brush, depicted a bleak
mountain peak, with a flock of birds flying above it. This is
passed to Aritsun^, a Japanese poet of recognized merit, who
after a few moments' thought adds a sonnet to the sketch. It is,
like the sketch, a mere suggestion of a deeper sentiment, or imi, as
the Japanese would have it. I can best render it as follows,
making the translation as literal as possible :

We may struggle to the peak
Of the mountaio, bare and bleak,

There but to learn,

And well discern,
That the winging birds above,
Speeding to their nests of love,
More of Nature's beauties see

Far than we.

Surely the beauty of the thought is evident, and the deeper
meaning, or imi, appreciable even to the prosiest of us. Yet in
rendering the lesson of the sonnet, as implied to the Japanese
reader of the above words, I might- add the following lines :

So, when striving naught but fame to obtain.
Thou chance mayst reach the highest peak of earthly gain;
Then thou wilt learn,
And well discern.
That Nature doth her beauties wide outspread
For those to daily duties who are wed.
While simple lives yield peace and light.
Fame blinds the sight.

20

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

One more example of this variety of illustrated verse will suf-
fice, and in the one I have chosen the meaning is confessedly
obscure, or at least deep enough to require some thought. The
picture, or sketch, is one of a bunch of wild flowers (chrysanthe-
mums), which make their first appearance during the closing days
of September, by which time, also, the cheery voice of the locust
has been hushed by the increasing cold of the autumn :

Though September's last days are fast ebbing away,

And the locust's bright sonnet is stilled,
Yet the wild flowers fair breathe a far sweeter song

While the air with their fragrance is filled.

In justice it must be confessed that the imi of the above lines
is rather vague, but may be regarded as a reminder of Nature's
kind compensation, for, with the change of seasons, one beauty is

Facsimile of an Uta, or Sonnet

scarcely missed before another has filled its place. Perhaps the
words may be construed as a gentle reproof to discontented spir-
its. That the very heart of the nation finds its voice in song is
quite evident, for in every instance where a sonnet or poem would
find application we are sure to find one. During the time of the
cherry and plum blossoms, in early spring, the bloom-laden
branches are further ornamented by numerous sonnets inspired
by the beauty of the scene — written on strips of white paper, and
then made fast to the low-hanging branches. Indeed, the poetic
enthusiasm of a score of Orlandos in the forests of Arden would
be put to shame. Every season of the year, with the flowers that

THE INADEQUACY OF ''NATURAL SELECTION:' 21

it brings, is praised in verse. From the chrysanthemums in
autumn, the camellias and plum blossoms of the winter months,
the cherry and peach blossoms and wistaria during early spring,
the peony in May, and the great lotus flowers during the summer
months, so every season has its typical flower, and every flower
is loved and praised in song and sonnet by the people. There is
room for flowers in the humblest abode, and even the crests of the
thatch-roofed huts of the farmers are transformed into miniature
gardens of hyacinths and tulips.

So we have pushed aside the latticed doors and glanced in at the
Japanese home. True, our stay has been short, and much must
be left unnoticed ; yet, as we take our reluctant leave, above the
soft melody of the A-o/o strings, we can clearly hear the lusty chirp
of the " cricket on the hearth."

THE IX ADEQUACY OF " NATURAL SELECTION.

. •'•

By HERBERT SPENCER. *i '

ALONG with that inadequacy of natural section to explain'
changes of structure which do not aid life in important
ways, alleged in § 166 of The Principles of Biology, a further in-
adequacy was alleged. It was contended that the relative powers
of co-operative parts can not be adjusted solely by survival of the
fittest ; and especially where the parts are numerous and the co-
operation complex. In illustration it was pointed out that im-
mensely developed horns, such as those of the extinct Irish elk,
weighing over a hundredweight, could not, with the massive
skull bearing them, be carried at the extremity of the outstretched
neck without many and great modifications of adjacent bones and
muscles of the neck and thorax ; and that without strengthening
of the fore-legs, too, there would be failure alike in fighting and in
locomotion. And it was argued that while we can not assume
spontaneous increase of all these parts proportionate to the ad-
ditional strains, we can not suppose them to increase by variation
one at once, without supposing the creature to be disadvantaged
by the weight and nutrition of parts that were for the time use-
less—parts, moreover, which would revert to their original sizes
before the other needful variations occurred.

When, in reply to me, it was contended that co-operative parts
vary together, I named facts conflicting with this assertion— the
fact that the blind crabs of the Kentucky caves have lost their
eyes but not the foot-stalks carrying them ; the fact that the nor-
mal proportion between tongue and beak in certain selected varie-
ties of pigeons is lost ; the fact that lack of concomitance in de-

22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

crease of jaws and teeth in snndry kinds of pet dogs, has caused
great crowding of the teeth (The Factors of Organic Evolution,
pp. 12, 13). And I then argued that if co-operative parts, small
in number and so closely associated as these are, do not vary to-
gether, it is unwarrantable to allege that co-operative parts which
are very numerous and remote from one another vary together.
After making this rejoinder I enforced my argument by a further
example— that of the giraffe. Tacitly recognizing the truth that
the unusual structure of this creature must have been, in its more
conspicuous traits, the result of survival of the fittest (since it is
absurd to suppose that efforts to reach a high branch could
lengthen the legs), I illustrated afresh the obstacles to co-adapta-
tion. Not dwelling on the objection that increase of any com-
ponents of the fore-quarters out of adjustment to the others would
cause evil rather than good, I went on to argue that the co-adapta-
tion of parts required to make the giraffe's structure useful, is
much greater than at first appears. This animal has a grotesque
gallop, necessitated by the great difference in length between the
fore and the hind limbs. I pointed out that the mode of action of
the hind limbs shows that the bones and muscles have all been
changed in their proportions and adjustments; and I contended
that, difficult as it is to believe that all parts of the fore-quarters
have been co-adapted by the appropriate variations now of this
part, now of that, it becomes impossible to believe that all the
parts in the hind-quarters have been simultaneously co-adapted to
one another and to all the parts of the fore-quarters : adding that
want of co-adaptation, even in a single muscle, would cause fatal
results when high speed had to be maintained while escaping
from an enemy.

Since this argument, repeated with this fresh illustration, was
published in 1886, I have met with nothing to be called a reply ;
and might, I think, if convictions usually followed proofs, leave
the matter as it stands. It is true that, in his Darwinism, Mr.
Wallace has adverted to my renewed objection and, as already
said, contended that changes such as those instanced can be
effected by natural selection, since such changes can be effected
by artificial selection : a contention which, as I have pointed out,
assumes a parallelism that does not exist. But now, instead of
pursuing the argument further along the same line, let me take a
somewhat different line.

If there occurs some change in an organ, say, by increase of
its size, which adapts it better to the creature's needs, it is ad-
mitted that when, as commonly happens, the use of the organ
demands the co-operation of other organs, the change in it will
generally be of no service unless the co-operative organs are
changed. If, for instance, there takes place such a modification

THE INADEQUACY OF ''NATURAL SELECTION:' 23

of a rodent's tail as that which, by successive increases, produces
the trowel-shaped tail of the beaver, no advantage will be derived
unless there also take place certain modifications in the bulks and
shapes of the adjacent vertebrae and their attached muscles, as
well, probably, as in the hind limbs, enabling them to withstand
the reactions of the blows given by the tail. And the question is,
by what process these many parts, changed in different degrees,
are co-adapted to the new requirements — whether variation and
natural selection alone can effect the readjustment. There are
three conceivable ways in which the parts may simultaneously
change: (1) they may all increase or decrease together in like
degrees ; (2) they may all simultaneously increase or decrease in-
dependently, so as not to maintain their previous proportions or
assume any other special proportions ; (3) they may vary in such
ways and degrees as to make them jointly serviceable for the new
end. Let us consider closely these several conceivabilities.

And first of all, what are we to understand by co-operative
parts ? In a general sense, all the organs of the body are co-
operative parts, and are respectively liable to be more or less
changed by change in any one. In a narrower sense, more directly
relevant to the argument, we may, if we choose to multiply diffi-
culties, take the entire framework of bones and muscles as formed
of co-operative parts ; for these are so related that any consider-
able change in the actions of some entails change in the actions of
most others. It needs only to observe how, when putting out an
effort, there goes, along with a deep breath, an expansion of the
chest and a bracing up of the abdomen, to see that various muscles
beyond those directly concerned are strained along with them.
Or, when suffering from lumbago, an effort to lift a chair will
cause an acute consciousness that not the arms only are brought
into action, but also the muscles of the back. These cases show
how the motor organs are so tied together that altered actions of
some implicate others quite remote from them.

But without using the advantage which this interpretation of
the words would give, let us take as co-operative organs those
which are obviously such — the organs of locomotion. What, then,
shall we say of the fore and hind limbs of terrestrial mammals,
which co-operate closely and perpetually ? Do they vary together ?
If so, how have there been produced such contrasted structures as
that of the kangaroo, with its large hind limbs and small fore
limbs, and that of the giraffe, in which the hind limbs are small
and the fore limbs large — how does it happen that, descending
from the same primitive mammal, these creatures have diverged
in the proportions of their limbs in opposite directions ? Take,
again, the articulate animals. Compare one of the lower types,
with its rows of almost equal-sized limbs, and one of the higher

24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

types, as a crab or a lobster, with limbs some very small and some
very large. How came this contrast to arise in the course of evo-
lution, if there was the equality of variation supposed ?

But now let us narrow the meaning of the phrase still further ;
giving it a more favorable interpretation. Instead of considering
separate limbs as co-operative, let us consider the component parts
of the same limb as co-operative, and ask what would result from
varying together. It would in that case happen that, though the
fore and liind limbs of a mammal might become different in their
sizes, they would not become different in their structures. If so,
how have there arisen the unlikeness between the hind legs of the
kangaroo and those of the elephant ? Or if this comparison is
objected to, because the creatures belong to the widely different
divisions of implacental and placental mammals, take the cases of
the rabbit and the elephant, both belonging to the last division.
On the hypothesis of evolution these are both derived from the
same original form, but the proportions of the parts have become
so widely unlike that the corresponding joints are scarcely recog-
nized as such by the unobservant: at what seem corresponding
places the legs bend in opposite ways. Equally marked, or more
marked, is the parallel fact among the Articulata. Take that limb
of the lobster which bears the claw and compare it with the cor-
responding limb in an inferior articulate animal, or the corre-
sponding limb of its near ally, the crayfish, and it becomes obvious
that the component segments of the limb have come to bear to one
another in the one case proportions immensely different from those
they bear in the other case. Undeniably, then, on contemplating
the general facts of organic structure, we see that the concomitant
variations in the parts of limbs have not been of a kind to produce
equal amounts of change in them, but quite the opposite — have
been everywhere producing inequalities. Moreover, we are re-
minded that this production of inequalities among co-operative
parts, is an essential principle of development. Had it not been
so, there could not have been that progress from homogeneity of
structure to heterogeneity of structure which constitutes evolution.

We pass now to the second supposition : — that the variations
in co-operative parts occur irregularly, or in such independent
ways that they bear no definite relations to one another — miscel-
laneously, let us say. This is the supposition which best corre-
sponds with the facts. Glances at the faces around yield conspic-
uous proofs. Many of the muscles of the face and some of the
bones, are distinctly co-operative ; and these respectively vary in
such ways as to produce in each person a different combination.
What we see in the face we have reason to believe holds in the
limbs as in all other parts. Indeed, it needs but to compare people
whose arms are of the same lengths, and observe how stumpy are

THE INADEQUACY OF ''NATURAL SELECTION:' 25

the fingers of one and how slender those of another ; or it needs
but to note the unlikeness of gait of passers-by, implying small
nnlikenesses of structure; to be convinced that the relations
among the variations of co-operative parts are anything but fixed.
And now, confining our attention to limbs, let us consider what
must happen if, by variations taking place miscellaneously, limbs
have to be partially changed from fitness for one function to fitness
for another function — have to be re-adapted. That the reader
may fully comprehend the argument, he must here have patience
while a good many anatomical details are set down.

Let us suppose a species of quadruped of which the members
have for long past periods been accustomed to locomotion over a
relatively even surface, as, for instance, the "prairie dogs" of
North America ; and let us suppose that increase of numbers has
driven part of them into a region full of obstacles to easy locomo-
tion — covered, say, by the decaying stems of fallen trees, such as
one sees in portions of primeval forest. Ability to leap must be-
come a useful trait ; and, according to the hypothesis we are con-
sidering, this ability will be produced by the selection of favor-
able variations. What are the variations required ? A leap is
effected chiefly by the bending of the hind limbs so as to make
sharp angles at the joints, and then suddenly straightening them ;
as any one may see on watching a cat leap on to the table. The
first required change, then, is increase of the large extensor mus-
cles, by which the hind limbs are straightened. Their increases
must be duly proportioned, for if those which straighten one
joint become much stronger than those which straighten the
other joint, the result must be collapse of the other joint when
the muscles are contracted together. But let us make a large
admission, and suppose these muscles to vary together; what
further muscular change is next required ? In a plantigrade
mammal the metatarsal bones chiefly bear the reaction of the
leap, though the toes may have a share. In a digitigrade mam-
mal, however, the toes form almost exclusively the fulcrum, and
if they are to bear the reaction of a higher leap, the flexor mus-
cles which depress and bend them must be proportionately en-
larged ; if not, the leap will fail from want of a firm point d'appvi.
Tendons as well as muscles must be modified ; and, among others,
the many tendons which go to the digits and their phalanges.
Stronger muscles and tendons imply greater strains on the joints ;
and unless these are strengthened, one or other dislocation will be
caused by a more powerful spring. Not only the articulations
themselves must be so modified as to bear greater stress, but also
the numerous ligaments which hold the parts of each in place.
Nor can the bodies of the bones remain unstrengthened ; for if
they have no more than the strengths needed for previous move-

26 THE POPTLAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

meiits they will fail to bear more violent movements. Thus, say-
ing nothing of the required changes in the pelvis as well as in the
nerves and blood-vessels, there are, counting bones, muscles, ten-
dons, ligaments, at least fifty different parts in each hind leg
which have to be enlarged. Moreover, they have to be enlarged
in unlike degrees. The muscles and tendons of the outer toes, for
example, need not be added to so much as those of the median
toes. Now, throughout their successive stages of growth, all
these parts have to be kept fairly well balanced ; as any one may
infer on remembering sundry of the accidents he has known.
Among my own friends I could name one who, when playing
lawn-tennis, sna])ped the Achilles tendon; another who, while
swinging his children, tore some of the muscular fibers in the calf
of his leg ; another who, in getting over a fence, tore a ligament
of one knee. Such facts, joined with every one's experience of
sprains, show that during the extreme exertions to which limbs
are now and then subject, there is a giving way of parts not quite
up to the required level of strength. How, then, is this balance
to be maintained ? Suppose the extensor muscles have all varied
appropriately ; their variations are useless unless the other co-
operative parts have also varied appropriately. Worse than this.
Saying nothing of the disadvantage caused by extra weight and
cost of nutrition, they will be causes of mischief — causes of de-
rangement to the rest by contracting with undue force. And
then, how long will it take for the rest to be brought into adjust-
ment ? As Mr. Darwin says concerning domestic animals : " Any
particular variation would generally be lost by crossing, rever-
sions etc., . . . unless carefully preserved by man." In a state
of nature, then, favorable variations of these muscles would dis-
appear again long before one or a few of the co-operative parts
could be appropriately varied, much more before all of them
could.

With this insurmountable dilhculty goes a difficulty still more
insurmountable — if the expression may be allowed. It is not a
question of increased sizes of parts only, but of altered shapes of
parts, too. A glance at the skeletons of mammals shows how un-
like are the forms of the corresponding bones of their limbs ; and
shows that they have been severally remolded in each species to
the different requirements entailed by its different habits. The
change from the structures of hind limbs fitted only for walking
and trotting to hind limbs fitted also for leaping, implies, there-
fore, that along with strengthenings of bones there must go alter-
ations in their forms. Now the spontaneous alterations of form
which may take place in any bone are countless. How long, then,
will it be before there takes place that particular alteration which
will make the bone fitter for its new action ? And what is the

THE INADEQUACY OF ''NATURAL SELECTION:' 27

probability that the many required changes of shape, as well as
of size, in bones will each of them be effected before all the others
are lost again ? If the probabilities against success are incalcu-
lable, when we take account only of changes in the size of parts,
what shall we say of their incalculableness when differences of
form also are taken into account ?

" Surely this piling up of difficulties has gone far enough " ; the
reader will be inclined to say. By no means. There is a difficulty
immeasurably transcending those named. We havie thus far
omitted the second half of the leap, and the provisions to be made
for it. After ascent of the animal's body comes descent ; and the
greater the force with which it is projected up, the greater is the
force with which it comes down. Hence, if the supposed creature
has undergone such changes in the hind limbs as will enable
them to propel it to a greater height, without having undergone
any changes in the fore limbs, the result will be that on its de-
scent the fore limbs will give way, and it will come down on its
nose. The fore limbs, then, have to be changed simultaneously
with the hind. How changed ? Contrast the markedly bent hind
limbs of a cat with its almost straight fore limbs, or contrast the
silence of the upward spring on to the table with the thud which
the fore paws make as it jumps off the table. See how unlike the
actions of the hind and fore limbs are, and how unlike their
structures. In what way, then, is the required co-adaptation to
be effected ? Even were it a question of relative sizes onlj^, there
would be no answer ; for facts already given show that we may
not assume simultaneous increases of size to take place in the hind
and fore limbs ; and, indeed, a glance at the various human races,
which differ considerably in the ratios of their legs to their arms,
shows us this. But it is not simply a question of sizes. To bear
the increased shock of descent the fore limbs must be changed
throughout in their structures. Like those in the hind limb, the
changes must be of many parts in many proportions ; and they
must be both in sizes and in shapes. More than this. The scapu-
lar arch and its attached muscles must also be strengthened and
remolded. See, then, the total requirements. We must suppose
that by natural selection of miscellaneous variations, the parts of
the hind limbs shall be co-adapted to one another, in sizes, shapes,
and ratios ; that those of the fore limbs shall undergo co-adapta-
tions similar in their complexity, but dissimilar in their kinds ;
and that the two sets of co-adaptations shall be effected pari
passu. If, as may be held, the probabilities are millions to one
against the first set of changes being achieved, then it may be
held that the probabilities are billions to one against the second
being simultaneously achieved, in progressive adjustment to the
first.^

2 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

There remains only to notice the third conceivable mode of
adjustment. It may be imagined that though, by the natural
selection of miscellaneous variations, these adjustments can not
be effected, they may nevertheless be made to take place appro-
priately. How made ? To suppose them so made is to suppose
that the prescribed end is somewhere recognized ; and that the
changes are step by step simultaneously proportioned for achiev-
ing it — is to suppose a designed production of these changes. In
such case, then, we have to fall back in part upon the primi-
tive hypothesis ; and if we do this in part, we may as well do it
wholly — may as well avowedly return to the doctrine of special
creation.

What, then, is the only defensible interpretation ? If such
modifications of structure produced by modifications of function
as we see take place in each individual, are in any measure trans-
missible to descendants, then all these co-adaptations, from the
simplest up to the most complex, are accounted for. In some
cases this inheritance of acquired characters suffices by itself to
explain the facts ; and in other cases it suffices when taken in com-
bination with the selection of favorable variations. An example
of the first class is furnished by the change just considered ; and
an example of the second class is furnished by the case before
named of development in a deer's horns. If, by some extra mass-
iveness spontaneously arising, or by formation of an additional
" point," an advantage is gained either for attack or defense, then,
if the increased muscularity and strengthened structure of the
neck and thorax, which wielding of these somewhat heavier horns
produces, are in a greater or less degree inherited, and in several
successive generations, are by this process brought up to the re-
quired extra strength, it becomes possible and advantageous for a
further increase of the horns to take place, and a further increase
in the apparatus for wielding them, and so on continuously. By
such processes only, in which each part gains strength in propor-
tion to function, can co-operative parts be kept in adjustment,
and be readjusted to meet new requirements. Close contempla-
tion of the facts impresses me more strongly than ever with the
two alternatives — either there has been inheritance of acquired
characters, or there has been no evolution. — Contemporary Review,

[To be con eluded. '\

In his work on liurma and Farther India, Genera! A. \i. MacMahon, ex-
Political Resident, expresses the opinion that the caste restriction on social inter-
course, the absence of which in Burma gives occasion for much pleasant inti-
macy with Europeans, has preserved the natives of India from many evils — the
result of a too sudden introduction to European ways and habits to which the
Burmese succumb.

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL MAN IN OHIO. 29

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL MAN IN OHIO.

By Prof. G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.

THE recent sweeping denials by Mr. W. H. Holmes, of the
Bureau of Ethnology, respecting the validity of the evidence
upon which the existence of glacial man in America has been so
generally accepted makes it necessary to present the facts in
greater detail than has heretofore been done. It seems that Mr,
Holmes has been himself looking for palaeolithic implements in
undisturbed gravel of glacial age for two or three years, but has
not found any ; and that he has discovered that the Indians had
quarries and workshops in various places where they threw aside
great piles of partially wrought and rejected implements which
were of such shape as not to be readily available tor their pur-
poses, and which had a faint resemblance to palceolithic imple-
ments. In view of these experiences Mr. Holmes has come to the
conclusion, first, that all the so-called palaeolithic implements
which have been found by Dr. C. C. Abbott and others in America
are simply " rejects ''; and, secondly, that nobody in America has
found any implements in undisturbed gravel of glacial age. In
Science for January 20, 1892, he uses the following language : " If
there was, as is claimed, an ice-age man, or at any rate a pala:'0-
lithic man, in eastern America, the evidence so far collected in
support of these propositions is so unsatisfactory and in such a
state of utter chaos that the investigation must practically begin
anew.^'

The best answer which I can give to this sweeping denial will
be to present, with illustrations, the details concerning a single
discovery in Ohio with which I am familiar, namely, that at New-
comerstown. But, to get the full significance of this discovery,
and the cumulative value of the evidence afforded by it, a brief
statement of other discoveries must be made.

The evidence naturally begins with that at Trenton, N. J.,
where Dr. C. C. Abbott has been so long at work. Dr. Abbott,
it is true, is not a professional geologist, but his familiarity with
the gravel at Trenton, where he resides, the exceptional oppor-
tunities afforded to him for investigation, and the frequent visits
of geologists have made him an expert whose opinion is of the
highest value upon the question of the undisturbed character of
the gravel deposit. The gravel banks which he has examined so
long and so carefully have been extensively exposed by the
undermining of floods on the river-side, but principally by the
excavations which have been made by the railroad and by private
parties in search of gravel. For years the railroads had been at
work digging away the side of the banks until they had removed

30

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

a great many acres of the gravel to a deptli of twenty or twenty-
five feet. Any one can see that in such conditions there has been
no chance for " creep " or landslides to have disturbed the strati-
fication ; for the whole area was full of gravel, and there was no
chance of disturbance by natural causes. Now, Dr. Abbott's tes-
timony is that up to the year 1888 sixty of the four hundred palaeo-
lithic implements which he had found at Trenton had been found
at recorded depths in the gravel. Coming down to specifications,
he describes in his reports the discovery of one (see Primitive
Industry, page 493) found while watching the progress of an ex-

Fio. 1. — Section of the Trenton Geavei., in which the Implements desckibed in the
Text are found. The shelf on which the man stands is made in process of excavation.
The gravel is the same above and below. (Photograph l)y Abbott.)

tensive excavation in Centre Street, which was nearly seven feet
below the surface, surrounded by a mass of large cobble-stones
and bowlders, one of the latter overlying it. Another was found
at the bluff at Trenton, in a narrow gorge where the material
forming the sides of the chasm had not been displaced, under a
large bowlder nine feet below the surface (ibid,, page 496). An-
other was found in a perpendicular exposure of the bluff imme-
diately after the detacdiment of a large mass of material, and in a
surface that had l)ut the day before been exposed, and had not

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL MAN IX OHIO. 31

yet begun to crumble. The specimen was twenty-one feet from
the surface of the ground.

In all these and numerous other cases Dr. Abbott's attention
was specially directed to the question of the undisturbed char-
acter of the gravel, he having been cautioned upon this point in
the early part of his investigations.

Here it is proper to premise that the apparent monopoly of
this evidence by Prof. Putnam and his associates in the Peabody
Museum at Cambridge, Mass., has come about by a legitimate
and natural process, which at the same time has probably inter-
fered to a considerable extent with the general spread of the
specific information in hand. Early in the investigations at Tren-
ton, Prof. Putnam, who had lately become curator of the museum,
with its large fund for prosecuting investigations, satisfied him-
self of the genuineness of Dr. Abbott's discoveries, and at once
retained him as an assistant in the work of the museum, thus
diverting to Cambridge all his discoveries at Trenton. Living on
the ground during long-continued and extensive excavations made
by the railroad. Dr. Abbott's opportunities were exceptionally
favorable ; hence his own prominence in the whole matter.

It is important also to note that, before taking up with Dr.
Abbott's work, Prof. Putnam took ample pains to satisfy himself

Fig. 2. — Section across the Delaware River at Trentox, >'. J. : a, «, Philadelphia red
gravel and brick clay (McGee's Columbia deposit) ; b, b, Trenton orravel, in which the im-
plements are found : c, present flood plain of the Delaware Eiver (ufteT LewLs >. ( From
Abbott's Primitive Industry.)

of its character and correctness. In 1878 Prof. J. D. Whitney
visited Trenton in company with Mr. Carr, assistant curator of
the museum. In the Twelfth Annual Report Mr. Carr writes :
" We were fortunate enough to find several of these implements
in place. Prof. Whitney has no doubt as to the antiquity of the
drift, and we are both in full accord with Dr. Abbott as to the
artificial character of many of these implements." In reporting
further upon this instance at the meeting of the Boston Society
of Natural History, on January 19, 1881, Mr. Carr states that the
circumstances were such that " it [i. e., one of the particular im-
plements] must have been deposited at the time the containing
bed was laid down." In 1879, and again in 1880, Prof. Putnam
spent some time at Trenton, and succeeded in finding with his
own hands '"' five unquestionable palaeolithic implements from the
gravel, at various depths and at different points." One of these
was four feet below the surface soil and one foot in from the per-
pendicular face which had just been exposed, and where it was

32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

clear that the gravel had not been disturbed. A second one was
eight feet below the surface. (Proc. Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist, for
January 19, 1881.)

As confirming the entire trustworthiness of Dr. Abbott's ob-
servations, it is to be noted that, with a single exception, all the
implements reported below the loam which constitutes the sur-
face soil are of argillite, while those upon the surface, which are
innumerable, are chiefly of a different type, made from flint and
jasper, or of other material of related character. Another fact,
which has always had great weight in my own mind, is one men-
tioned by the late Prof. Carvill Lewis, in his chapter upon the
subject at the end of Dr. Abbott's volume on Primitive Industry.
I have the more reason to feel the , force of his conclusions, be-
cause the proof-sheets passed through Lewis's hands at the time
we were together conducting the survey in Pennsylvania, soon
after we had visited the deposits in question. The fact was this :
Prof. Lewis had been at work for a considerable time in classify-
ing and mapping the gravels in the Delaware Valley, being all the
while in ignorance of Dr. Abbott's work until his own results
were definitely formulated. But, after he had accurately deter-
mined the boundary between the glacial gravels and the far older
gravels which surround them and spread over a considerable por-
tion of the territory beyond, he found that the localities where
Mr. Carr, Prof. Putnam, and Dr. Abbott had reported finding
their implements in undisturbed gravel, all fell within the limits
of the glacial gravels, and had in no case been put outside of
those limits. Now, Dr. Abbott's house is situated upon the older
gravel ; but at the time of most of his discoveries he had not
learned to distinguish the one gravel from the other. If these
implements are all from the surface and had been commingled
with lower strata by excavations, landslides, or windfalls, there is
no reason why they should not have been found in the older
gravels as well as in those of glacial age. There is here a coin-
cidence which is strongly confirmatory of the correctness of our
conclusion that there is no mistake in believing that the imple-
ments were originally deposited with the gravel where they were
found.

Such was the progress of discovery at the time when I began
my special investigations upon the glacial boundary in Ohio, and
of the glacial terraces there corresponding in age with that at
Trenton. To the similarity of conditions along these streams I
promptly called attention in 1883, pointing out various places in
Ohio where it would be profitable for local observers to be upon
the lookout for such evidences of glacial man as had been discov-
ered by Dr. Abbott. The first response to this came from Dr. C.
L. Metz, of Madisonville, on the Little Miami River, in southern

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL MAN IN OHIO.

33

Ohio. Dr. Metz is a physician of large practice, of high char-
acter, and of long experience as an assistant of Prof, Putnam in
exploring the mounds of Ohio. He knows the difference between
disturbed and undisturbed gravel as i3erfectly as any one does.
His residence is upon the glacial terrace which borders the Little
Miami Valley. In 1885, while digging a cistern in this terrace, a
perfectly formed implement of black chert was found by him in
undisturbed gravel eight feet below the surface. This was ex-
hibited by Prof. Putnam at a meeting of the Boston Society of
Natural History, on the 4th of November, 1885, and is No. 40,970
in the Peabody Museum. Two other implements were discovered
at a later time by Dr. Metz in the talus of the glacial terrace of
the Little Miami, at Loveland, where also numerous bones of the

Fig. 3. — Chipped Pebble of Black Chert, found by Dr. C. L. Metz, October, 1885, at
Madisonville, Ohio, in gravel eight feet from surface under clay : «, face view ; ft, side
view. Natural size.

mammoth were found. But, as these were not in place when dis-
covered, they can not be adduced as positive evidence.

The discovery at Newcomerstown, of which Messrs. Holmes,
Brinton, and McGee speak so lightly because they do not know
the facts, is really one of the best attested of all the single cases.
The discovery was made in 1889 by Mr. W. C. Mills. The imple-
ment has been presented to the Western Reserve Historical Soci-
ety of Cleveland, and can there be seen at any time in company
with various implements from France. A photogravure from it
appears in the smaller figure in the following cut.

The discovery of the implement was made in October, but it
was not brought to public notice until the next spring, when I
chanced to meet Mr. Mills and learned about it. He then for-

34-

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

warded it to me, when its exact resemblance in form and finish-
ing to an implement which I have in my own collection, that was
obtained by Dr. Evans, of London, at Amiens, France, greatly im-
pressed me. I forwarded it immediately to Prof. H. W. Haynes,

Fig. 4.

-The Smaller is the Pal>eolith feom Newoomerstown,the Lakuer from Amienf,
France (face view). Keduced one half in diameter.

of Boston, whose expert judgment is second to that of no other
person in America, or indeed of the world. Prof. Haynes ex-
hibited it at the meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History
on May 7, 1890, and his account was published in the Proceedings
of that evening. In conclusion, after having enumerated its dis-
tinctive characteristics, he said, " I desire to express most emphat-
ically my belief in the genuineness and age of this Newcomers-
town implement, as well as to call attention to the close resem-
blance in all particulars which it bears to these unquestioned
palEGolithic implements [which he exhibited beside it] of the Old
World." This implement is not a " reject," but is a finished im-
plement, with the secondary chippings all around the edge. The

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL MAN IN OHIO.

35

cuts, reproduced from photographs, perfect as they are, by no
means do it justice.

I promptly gave an account of this discovery in The Nation, in
its issue for April 24, 1890, and repeated it in substance with some
additional particulars on page 620 of the third edition of my
volume on The Ice Age in Xorth America. This account was
also reprinted in The Popular Science Monthly, Volume XXXIX,
pages 314: to 319. The account in my later volume, on Man and
the Glacial Period, is still more condensed. The more detailed
evidence is published in Tract No. 75 of the Western Reserve His-
torical Society, Cleveland, Ohio, containing the report of the meet-

FiG. 5. — Edge View of the Pkeceiiing.

I

ing when Mr. Mills was present and gave his own testimony.
This was held December 12, 1890.

The facts are these : There is a glacial gravel terrace in New-
comerstown at the mouth of Buckhorn Creek, where it enters the
larger valley of the Tuscarawas River. There can be no question
about the glacial age of this terrace. It is continuous up the

36

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

river to the terminal moraine. Its surface is about thirty-five
feet above the fiood-pkiiu of the Tuscarawas ; it consists of strati-
fied material, containing many granitic pebbles and much gra-
nitic gravel. The deposit at Newcomerstown extends over many
acres, having been protected from erosion in the recess at the

Fig. 6.

mouth of Buckhorn Creek. Through the middle of this deposit
the railroad had cut its road-bed, and for years has been appro-
priating the gravel for ballast.

Mr. Mills is an educated business man, who had been a pupil
in geology of Prof. Orton, of the State University, and had with
him done considerable field-work in geology. Mr. Mills's charac-
ter and reputation are entirely above suspicion. In addition to
his business he took a laudable interest in the collection of Indian
relics, and had in his office thousands of flint implements, col-
lected by him and his associates in the vicinity, who had been
organized into an archeeological society. His office was but a
short distance from the gravel pit from which I have said the

EVIDENCES OF GLACIAL MAN IN OHIO.

37

railroad liad been for so many years obtaining ballast. The per-
pendicular face of this bank of gravel as it was exposed from time
to time by the excavations of the railroad men was frequently
examined by Mr. Mills, not with special reference to finding im-
plements, for that thought had not entered his mind, but for the
sake of obtaining specimens of coral, which occasionally occurred
in the gravel. While engaged in one of these rounds, on the 27th
of October, 18S0, he found this specimen projecting from a fresh
exposure of the perpendicular bank, fifteen feet below the sur-
face, and, according to his custom, recorded the facts at the time
in his note-book. There was no lack of discrimination in his ob-
servations, or of distinctness in his memory.

The accompanying illustration from a photograph taken six
months after the discovery, and when a talus consequent upon
the frosts of winter had accumulated to a considerable extent at

Fig. 7. — Terrace in Newcomerstowx, showing where W. C. Mills found a Paleo-
lithic Implement.

the base of the deposit, shows the spot in the bank from which
the implement was taken. In looking for objects of his ciuest,
Mr. Mills thrust in his cane into the coarser gravel which is seen
to overlie the finer deposits. This resulted in detaching a large
mass about six feet long and two feet wide, which fell down at his

38

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

feet. It was in the face of the bank behind this mass that Mr.
Mills's eye, so long trained for the detection of artificially chipped
flints, discovered the implement under consideration, which he
removed with his own hands, and placed in his collection, with
little thought at the time
of the significance attach-
ing to the position in
which it was found. The
accompanying map of the
vicinity and drawing of
the bank were made by
Mr, Mills at the time of
our visit, and furnish,
with the photograph, all
the additional informa-
tion necessary.

There is no possibility
of mistake concerning the
undisturbed character of
the gravel from which Mr.
Mills took the implement,
and observed by him.

These facts, submitted at the meeting of the Western Reserve
Historical Society referred to, were fully detailed upon the spot

Soil, -3 to 5 feet.

Gravel.

SiU]d, '/'2 foot.

lere pala?olith
was t'ouiid.

Fig. 8.

All the strata were clearly exposed

s* {iM lt.hi„U.

'"' f%

Fig. 9. — Heifrht of Terrace exposed, 25 feet. Palajolith was found I43/4 feet from surface.

to myself and a party of gentlemen, consisting of Judge C. C.
Baldwin, E. A. Angell, Esq., William Gushing, Esq., all lawyers
of eminence, and Mr. David Baldwin, who accompanied me in a

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE DEEP SEA. 39

visit to the place on the lltli of April, 1890. We had all the op-
portunity to question and cross-question that could be desired.

In conclusion, it is proper to say that the sweeping character
and the suddenness of these attacks of Mr. Holmes and his asso-
ciates upon the evidence of glacial man in America have been
somewhat bewildering. It has come like thunder from a clear
sky. One has but to go back to Mr. McGee's article in The Popu-
lar Science Monthly for November, 1888, to find an unquestioning
and enthusiastic indorsement of nearly all the facts concerning
glacial man which I have incorporated in my recent volume upon
Man and the Glacial Period, together with a number which I have
omitted, except the discovery at Newcomerstown, which had not
then been made. Had I been aware of the preparations which
these investigators were making to discredit all past observers on
the matter, I should have introduced more detailed evidence in my
summar}^ in the volume referred to. Still, it is probably as well
that the statements were left as they are, for they are all capable
of ample proof ; and it is perhaps better for the public to be re-
ferred for details to such fuller reports as are made in this article
and in the other publications here indicated.

I submit that this evidence is neither " chaotic " nor " unsatis-
factory," but is as specific and definite and as worthy to be be-
lieved as almost anything any expert in this country, or any other
country, can be expected to produce.

GROWTH OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE DEEP SEA.

By G. W. LITTLEHALES,
chief of the division of chart consterction, united states iiy drogfaphic office.

BEFORE the time of the project for the Atlantic telegraph
cable in 1854, there seemed to be no practical value attached
to a knowledge of the depths of the sea, and, beyond a few doubt-
ful results obtained for purely scientific purposes, nothing was
clearly known of bathymetry, or of the geology of the sea bottom.
The advent of submarine cables gave rise to the necessity for an
accurate knowledge of the bed of the ocean where they were laid,
and lent a stimulus to all forms of deep-sea investigation. But
although our extensive and accurate knowledge of the deep sea is
of so late an origin, the beginnings of deep-sea research date far
back into antiquity. The ancients can not be said to have had
any definite conceptions of the deep sea. Experienced mariners,
like the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, must necessarily have
possessed some knowledge of the depths of the waters with which
they were familiar, but this knowledge, whatever its extent, has

40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

now passed away. To the writings of Aristotle, who lived during
the fourth century B. c, are credited the first bathymetric data.
He states that the Black Sea has whirlpools so deep that the lead
has never reached the bottom ; that the Black Sea is deeper than
the Sea of Azov, that the ^gean is deeper than the Black Sea,
and that the Tyrrhenian and Sardinian Seas are deeper than all
the others. The first record of a deep-sea sounding should be
credited to Posidonius, who stated, about a century B. c, that the
sea about Sardinia had been sounded to a depth of one thousand
fathoms. No account is given of the manner in which the sound-
ing was taken, and we have no information as to the methods
employed by the ancients in these bathymetric measurements.

The opinions of the learned with respect to the greatest depth
of the sea, in the first and second centuries a. d., may be gleaned
from the writings of Plutarch and Cleomedes, the first of whom
says, " The geometers think that no mountain exceeds ten stadia
[about one geographic mile] in height, and no sea ten stadia in
depth." And the second : " Those who doubt the sphericity of the
earth on account of the hollows of the sea and the elevation of
the mountains, are mistaken. There does not, in fact, exist a
mountain higher than fifteen stadia, and that is also the depth of
the ocean,"

There was no important addition to our knowledge of the deep
sea during the middle ages, and no definite attempt to provide
effective means for deep-sea sounding appears to have been made
until Nicolaus Causanus, who lived in the first half of the fifteenth
century, invented an apparatus consisting of a hollow sphere, to
which a weight was attached by means of a hook, intended to
carry the sphere down through the water with a certain velocity.
On touching the ground the weight became detached and the
sphere ascended alone. The depth was calculated from the time
the sphere was under water. This apparatus was afterward mod-
ified by Pliicher and Alberti, and, in the seventeenth century, by
Hooke, who substituted a piece of light wood well varnished over
for the hollow sphere. Hooke's instrument was no doubt fairly
accurate in shallow water, but useless in great depths, where the
enormous pressure waterlogged the wood and, by materially in-
creasing its density, greatly diminished the speed with which it
rose from the bottom. When used in currents the float was car-
ried away and the record lost.

During the period when the voyages of Columbus, Vasco da
Gama, and Magellan added a hemisphere to the chart of the world
and forever established the fundamental principles of all scientific
geography, navigators had sounding lines of one hundred and two
hundred fathoms in length, and, although they eagerly studied the
oceanic phenomena revealed at the surface, the deep sea did not

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE DEEP SEA. 41

engage their attention. Kirclier, in his Mundus Subterraneus,
gives the ideas as to the depths of the sea that were accepted
in the first half of the seventeenth century, stating that " in the
same manner as the highest mountains are grouped in the center
of the land, so also should the greatest depths be found in the
middle of the largest oceans ; near the coasts with but slight ele-
vations the depth will gradually diminish toward the shore. I
say coasts with but slight elevations, for, if the shores are sur-
rounded by high rocks, then greater depths are found. This is
proved by experience on the shores of Norway, Iceland, and the
islands of Flanders."

Several soundings were taken in deep water during the eight-
eenth century, but they were not of much value. The first at all
reliable were made by Sir John Ross during his well-known arc-
tic expedition in 1818. He brought up six pounds of mud from
1,050 fathoms in Baffin Bay, and obtained correct soundings in
1,000 fathoms in Possession Bay, finding worms and other animals
in the mud procured. Sir James Clark Ross, during his antarctic
expedition from 1839 to 1843, obtained satisfactory soundings of
2,425 and 2,677 fathoms in the South Atlantic, with a hempen cord.
He also dredged successfully in depths of 400 fathoms.

Meanwhile, about the middle of the eighteenth century, the first
definite ideas about the formation of the bottom soil began to be
advanced, although there had been speculations on the formation
of alluvial layers since the time of Herodotus. In 1725 Marsilli
made a few observations on the bathymetric knowledge then pos-
sessed concerning the nature of the bottom of the sea. He admit-
ted that the basin of the sea was excavated " at the time of the
creation out of the same stone which we see in the strata of the
earth, with the same interstices of clay to bind them together,"
and pointed out that we should not judge of the nature of the bot-
tom of the basins by the materials which seamen bring up in their
soundings. The dredgings almost always indicate a muddy bot-
tom, and very rarely a rocky one, because the latter is covered
with slime, sand, and sandy, earthy, and calcareous concretions,
and organic matter. These substances, he said, conceal the real
bottom of the sea, and have been brought there by the action of
the water. Lastly, by way of explanation, he compared the bed
of the sea to the inside of an old wine cask, which seems to be made
of dregs of tartar although it is really of wood.

Donati's studies on the bottom of the Adriatic Sea led him to
announce, about the middle of the eighteenth century, that it is
hardly different from the surface of the land, and is but a prolon-
gation of the superposed strata in the neighboring continent, the
strata themselves being in the same order. The bottom of this
sea is, according to him, covered with a layer formed by crusta-

VOL. XLIII. 4

42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ceans, testaceans, and polyps, mixed with sand, and to a great ex-
tent petrified. This crust may be seven or eight feet deep, and he
attributed to this deposit, bound together with the remains of or-
ganisms and sedimentary mineral matter, the rising of the bot-
tom of the sea, and the encroachment of the water on the coasts.

In 1836 Ehrenberg produced the first of a long series of publi-
cations relating to microscopic organisms which distinguished him
as a naturalist of rare sagacity. He devoted the whole of his life
to the study of microscopic organisms, to the examination of ma-
terials brought up from deep-sea soundings, and to all questions
appertaining to the sea. Having discovered that the siliceous
strata known as tripoli, found in various parts of the globe, are
but accumulations of the skeletons of diatoms, sponges, and radio-
laria, and having found living diatoms and radiolaria on the sur-
face of the Baltic of the same species as those found in the Ter-
tiary deposits of Sicily, and having shown that in the diatom layers
of Bilin in Bohemia the siliceous deposit had, under the influ-
ence of infiltrated water, been transformed into compact opaline
masses, he concluded that rocks like those which play so impor-
tant a part in the terrestrial crust are still being formed on the
bottom of the sea.

The investigation of the distribution of marine animals accord-
ing to the depths of the sea may be said to have commenced in
1840 with Forbes's studies in the Mediterranean. He maintained
that the dredgings showed the existence of distinct regions at suc-
cessive depths, having each a special association of species ; and
remarks that the species found at the greatest depths are also
found on the coast of England — concluding, therefore, that such
species have a wider geographical distribution. He divided the
whole range of depth occupied by marine animals into eight zones,
in which animal life gradually diminished with increase of depth,
until a zero was reached at about three hundred fathoms. He
also supposed that plants, like animals, disappeared at a certain
depth, the zero of vegetable life being at a less depth than that of
animal life.

It has already been mentioned that probably the first reliable
deep-sea soundings ever made were by Sir John Ross in 1818. To
him is due the invention of the so-called deep-sea clam, by means
of which specimens of the bottom were for the first time brought
up from great depths in any quantity. This instrument was in
the form of a pair of spoon-forceps, kept apart while descending,
but closed by a falling weight on striking the bottom. Two
separate casts were usually made, one to ascertain the depth and
the other to bring up a specimen of the bottom soil.

For the development of accurate knowledge of the depths of
the sea the world will ever be indebted to the genius of Midship-

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE DEEP SEA.

43

man Brooke, of the United States Navy, who made the first great
improvement in deep-sea sounding in 1854 by inventing a machine
in which, applying Causanus's idea of disengaging a weight at-
tached to the sounding line, the sinker was detached on striking
the bottom and left behind when the tube was drawn up. The
arrangement of the parts is shown in the
accompanying figure. When the tube B
strikes the bottom, the lines A A slack and
allow the arms C C to be pulled down by the
weight D. When these arms have reached
the positions indicated by the dotted lines,
the slings supporting the weight have
slipped off, and the tube can be hauled up,
bringing within it a specimen of the bottom.
This implement has been improved from
time to time by various officers of our own
and foreign navies by changing the manner
of slinging and detaching the sinker, and by
adding valves to the upper and lower ends
of the tube to prevent the specimen from
being washed out during the rapid ascent
which has been rendered possible by the use
of wire sounding line and steam hoisting
engines ; but in all the essential features it
is the same as the most successful modern
sounding apparatus. The impulse given to

deep-sea sounding by Brooke was seconded by the successful
adaptation of pianoforte wire to use as a sounding line, in 1872,
by Sir William Thomson ; and within recent years soundings
have been taken far and wide in all the seas by national vessels
during their cruises, by vessels engaged in laying submarine
cables, and by various specially organized expeditions, among
which that known as the Challenger Expedition, sent out by the
Government of Great Britain during the period from 1873 to 1876,
stands pre-eminent. As a result of this work many of the ques-
tions which perplexed the naturalists of the middle of the present
century have now been cleared away.

Many of the specimens of the bottom that were brought up in
the early days of deep-sea sounding were studied through the
microscopes of Ehrenberg, of Berlin, and Bailey, of West Point.
Maury, who believed that there are no currents and no life at the
bottom of the sea, wrote : " They all tell the same story. They
teach us that the quiet of the grave reigns everywhere in the
profound depths of the ocean ; that the repose there is beyond
the reach of wind ; it is so perfect that none of the powers of
earth, save only the earthquake and volcano can disturb it. The

44 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

specimens of deep-sea soundings are as pnre and as free from the
sand of tlie sea as the snowflake that falls when it is calm upon
the lea is from the dust of the earth. Indeed, these soundings
suggest the idea that the sea, like the snow cloud with its flakes in
a calm, is always letting fall upon its bed showers of these micro-
scopic shells; and we may readily imagine that the 'sunless
wrecks ' which strew its bottom are, in the process of ages, hid
under this fleecy covering, presenting the rounded appearance
which is seen over the body of a traveler who has perished in the
snowstorm. The ocean, especially within and near the tropics,
swarms with life. ' The remains of its myriads of moving things
are conveyed by currents, and scattered and lodged in the course
of time all over its bottom. The process, continued for ages, has
covered the depths of the ocean as with a mantle, consisting of
organisms as delicate as the macled frost and as light as the un-
drifted snowflake. of the mountain."

Maury was right in respect to the covering of the bed of the
deep sea, for, as a result of all our researches, it is found that in
waters removed from the lajid and more than fourteen hundred
fathoms in depth there is an almost unbroken layer of pteropod,
globigerina, diatom, and radiolarian oozes, and red clay which
occupies nearly 115,000,000 of the 143,000,000 square miles of the
water surface of the globe. But he was wrong in asserting that
low temperature, pressure, and the absence of light preclude the
possibility of life in very deep water.

Ehrenberg held the opposite opinion with regard to the condi-
tions of life at the bottom of the sea, as may be seen from the fol-
lowing extract from a letter which he wrote to Maury in 1857 :
" The other argument for life in the deep which I have established
is the surprising quantity of new forms which are wanting in
other parts of the sea. If the bottom were nothing but the sedi-
ment of the troubled sea, like the fall of snow in the air, and if
the biolithic curves of the bottom were nothing else than the prod-
uct of the currents of the sea which heap up the flakes, similarly
to the glaciers, there would necessarily be much less of unknown
and peculiar forms in the depths. The surface and the borders of
the sea are much more productive and much more extended than
the depths ; hence the forms peculiar to the depths should not be
perceived. The great quantity of peculiar forms and of soft bodies
existing in the innumerable carapaces, accompanied by the obser-
vation of the number of unknowns, increasing ivith the depth —
these are the arguments which seem to me to hold firmly to the
opinion of stationary life at the bottom of the deep sea."

It would appear to have been definitely established by the re-
searches of the last fifty years that life in some of its many forms
is universally distributed throughout the ocean. Not only in the

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE DEEP SEA. 45

shallower waters near coasts, but even in the greater depths of all
oceans, animal life is exceedingly abundant. A trawling in a
depth of over a mile yielded two hundred specimens of animals be-
longing to seventy-nine species and fifty-five genera. A trawling
in a depth of about three miles yielded over fifty specimens be-
longing to twenty-seven species and twenty-five genera. Even in
depths of four miles fishes and animals belonging to all the chief
invertebrate groups have been procured, and in a sample of ooze
from nearly five miles and a quarter there was evidence to the
naturalists of the Challenger that living creatures could exist at
that depth.

Recent oceanographic researches have also established beyond
doubt that while in great depths the water is not subjected to the
influence of superficial movements like waves, tides, and swift
currents, there is an extremely slow movement, in striking con-
trast with the agitation of the surface water. Although the
movement at the bottom is so slow that the ordinary means of
measuring currents can not be applied accurately to them, the
thermometer furnishes an indirect means of ascertaining their ex-
istence. Water is a very bad conductor of heat, and consequently
a body of water at a given temperature passing into a region
where the temperature conditions are different retains for a long
time, and without much change, its original temperature. To
illustrate : The bottom temperature near Fernando do Noronha,
almost under the equator, is 0"2° C, or close upon the freezing
point ; it is obvious that this temperature was not acquired at the
equator, where the mean annual temperature of the surface layer
of the water is 21° C, and the mean normal temperature of the
crust of the earth not lower than 8° C. The water must therefore
have come from a place where the conditions were such as to give
it a freezing temperature ; and not only must it have come from
such a place, but the supply must be continually renewed, how-
ever slowly, for otherwise its temperature would gradually rise by
conduction and mixture. Across the whole of the North Atlantic
the bottom temperature is considerably higher, so that the cold
water can not be coming from that direction ; on the other hand,
we can trace a band of water at a like temperature at nearly the
same depth continuously to the Antarctic Sea, where the condi-
tions are normally such as to impart to it this low temperature.
There seems, therefore, to be no doubt that there is a current
from the antarctic to the equator along the bottom of the South
Atlantic.

From the millions of reliable deep-sea soundings that have
been made during the last forty years the more general features
of the bathymetric chart of the world have been firmly estab-
lished; and the ancient idea, derived chiefly from a supposed

46

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

physical relation, that the depths of the sea are about equal to
the heights of the mountains, has given place to exact notions as
to the depths as well as the heights.

The greatest known depths that have been reliably sounded in
the different oceans are given in the following list :

Latitude.

Longitude.

Depth in
fathoms.

North Atlantic Ocean

19° 39' N.
19° 65' S.
58° 12' N.

58° sr N.

35° 45' N.
42° 55' N.
19° 0' N.
11° 22' S.
44° 55' N.
24° 37' S.
54° 30' N.
38° 30' N.

\r 15' N.

8° 32' N.

4° 16' N.

5° 24' S.

T 43' S.
78° 05' N.
62° 26' S.

66° 26' W.

24° 50' W.
9° 30' E.

18° 30' E.

21° 46' E.

33° 18' E.

81° 10' W.
116° 50' E.
152° 26' E.
175° 08' W.
175° 32' W.
135° 0' N.
118° 50' E.
121° 55' E.
124° 02' E.
130° 37' E.
120° 26' E.
2° 30' W.

95° 44' E.

4,561

3,284

North Sea (Skagerack)

442

Hiiltic Sea

233

2,405

Black Sea

1,431

3,427
3,393

North Pacific Ocean

4,655

South Pacific Ocean

4,428

Hering Sea

Sea of Japan ■.

2,146
1,640

China Sea

2,350

Sulii Sea

2,549

( 'elebes Sea

2,794

Banda Sea

2,799

Flores Sea

Arctic Ocean

2,799
2,469

Antarctic Ocean

1,975

THE CULTIVATION OF HUMANE IDEAS AND
FEELINGS.*

By Pkof. WESLEY MILLS, M. A., M. D.,

MC GILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL.

THE main object of every society for the prevention of cruelty
to animals I take to be the establishment of right feelings
toward our speechless fellow-creatures. But feeling, to be correct,
strong, and abiding, must be based on sound conceptions of the
nature of that toward which it is exercised. So long as any indi-
vidual believes that another wishes to injure him, so long will he
find it most difficult to entertain kindly feelings toward the man
that he deems his enemy ; but let it appear that he has entirely
misunderstood the motive and actions of the individual in ques-
tion — that instead of an enemy he proves to be a friend — and the
whole current of .feeling is changed. Thus would it be, in my
opinion, with thousands of people if they could be made to see
animals in their true light.

Glancing at historical and national views of animal life, we
find at all periods widely different conceptions, and consequently

* An Address before the American Humane Association, Philadelphia, October 27, 1892.

HUMANE IDEAS AND FEELINGS. 47

feelings, in regard to some of our domestic animals. A certain
animal regarded as a fit subject for contempt by some peoples lias
been an object of worship, or something akin to it, by others ;
hence it is not surprising that the lot of such animals has been
very different in some parts of the world as compared with others.
To illustrate this we need go no further than the universally dis-
tributed dog and cat. In the East the dog is rarely other than
a homeless, despised outcast. In Europe generally he is a mem-
ber of the family. But it is to Great Britain especially that we
look to find all our domestic animals in the highest perfection,
and cherished with feelings of peculiar regard. In Britain it is
contrary to law to hitch a dog, however large and strong, to a cart
to draw even a small child, while in Germany dogs may be seen
used as beasts of burden in all the large cities. In no part of the
world are the good qualities of dogs so appreciated and valued as
in Great Britain ; hence it is not at all inexplicable that cruelty
to the dog and other animals is there comparatively rare.

It may safely be said that never before in civilized countries
were animals — and especially our domestic animals — treated so
well, because never before were they so thoroughly understood.
To what is this to be attributed ? Not alone to the spread of kind-
lier feelings and better principles generally, but largely to the
advance of science. There was a time, well within the recollec-
tion of persons not yet old, when man, we were told by those to
whom we looked for light and guidance, stood utterly apart from
all else in the universe as the one being in whom the Creator
specially, and we might say solely, delighted, and for whose benefit
every other object, animate and inanimate, existed. How natu-
ral, then, for man to believe that animals, as such, had few if any
rights !

The one test to which many persons naturally enough brought
every animal was just this : Is the creature of any use whatever
to man ? If not, then it was held that it simply cumbered the
ground. People, it is true, admitted that man was an animal ; but
they did not realize what this expression meant, or did not accept
it in its full significance. To them man was an " animal," but not
like the others. He was too exalted to have any more than the
common principle of life. Men could not realize then as now that
mind and body are so closely related that for every mental process
there must be a corresponding physical correlative. But this once
being admitted it became possible to understand that animals be-
low man may have minds whose processes are akin to ours. The
question then became, not have animals minds, but what sort of
minds. Wherein does animal intelligence in the widest sense dif-
fer from human intelligence ? As soon as man himself became
better understood it was plain that his feelings were, on certain

48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

planes, parallel witli groups of animals much lower in the scale
generally. To them pleasures and pains were just as real as they
were similar to those of human beings.

I suggest that these most important advances are owing chiefly
to the progress and the diffusion of scientific knowledge and the
scientific spirit. The doctrine of organic evolution published by
Darwin over thirty years ago at once offered to man a broader
kinship than he had previously been able to comprehend. In my
opinion the importance of this conception will, for a right under-
standing of the relations of man and other animals, outweigh
all others, because it will bring us to see that, with a common
origin, there must always remain numerous similarities of nature.

But, without taking advantage of the doctrine of evolution, it
has become apparent that the claim for man of a nature entirely
distinct and different from that of other forms of life is baseless.
Gradually, from many different quarters, this conception of simi-
larity of nature is spreading among the masses ; and the friend
of animals can not do better than encourage people to dwell upon
the resemblances rather than the differences between the highest
and the lower grades of animal life. It will be readily perceived,
then, that my conviction is that we shall best advance the cause we
have at heart — the humane treatment of our animals — by spread-
ing sound views of their nature, and in that keeping prominent
the resemblances to man rather than the differences from him,
many of them questionable, at all events as to kind.

Inasmuch as science has done more than all other agencies in
dissipating man's prejudices and freeing the mind from erroneous
and enslaving views, it will be wise for all societies with a hu-
mane object to think well before in any way interfering with sci-
entific investigations of any kind. Without research the true
nature of those diseases which afflict man and the lower animals
can not be known.

With many persons dogs and hydrophobia are closely associ-
ated mentally, and I recently read an article in which the author
spoke of the dog as the " breeder of hydrophobia." The societies
will do good by publishing actual statistics and other details bear-
ing on the nature of this dreaded disease. I have also read argu-
ments for the complete extirpation of dogs based on the fact that
some sheep were worried. The plain preventive for rabies is the
proper care and management of dogs; and for sheep-worrying,
the confinement of dogs at night, which would be, indeed, a
proper proceeding if no sheep existed. A roaming dog is no more
desirable than a human tramp ; but no one has advocated the
destruction of the human race to get rid of tramps. In attempt-
ing to spread sound views in regard to diseases that are common
to man and our domestic animals, such as rabies, indirectly much

HUMANE IDEAS AND FEELINGS. 49

information will be given to the public about the care of dogs,
with a view to avoiding conditions that simulate this terrible
malady. The " mad dog " of the streets is, we know, rarely rabid,
and usually only needs a little judicious and kindly assistance to
restore him to health. It is just about as reasonable to pounce on
and kill a human being that falls in an epileptic fit, as the majority
of the dogs that are attacked and killed by an excited crowd.

Above all, the public needs enlightenment regarding the true
nature of animals. When that is complete and thorough, right
feelings toward them will spring up in the larger proportion of
people. I would especially direct attention to the education of
children in and out of school on this subject. It should be held
before a child as a more cowardly thing to abuse a defenseless
animal than one of its own species. But this will not weigh much
with the child if all it hears tends to belittle the creatures by which
it is surrounded, and to exalt man beyond all measure. I should
begin with very young children by pointing to similarities of
structure and function between themselves and the family cat or
dog. They have eyes, ears, tongues, etc. ; they see, hear, taste,
feel pain, and experience pleasure just as children do ; therefore,
let us recognize their rights, avoid giving them pain, and increase
their pleasures. I strongly advocate each family having some
one animal, at least, to be brought up with the household to some
extent, whether it be bird, cat, or dog. But, on the other hand, it
seems to me to be a great mistake to introduce any animal as a
mere toy or plaything for very young children. Such a proceed-
ing rather tends to encourage cruelty.

It is of great importance for the education of the public mind
that fine specimens of animals be exhibited. All shows for our
domestic animals are worthy of encouragement as educators.
Many a person that regards the ordinary mongrel dogs of the
street with indifference, if not aversion, has his views and feelings
changed when he attends a dog show, with its numerous speci-
mens of fine, pure-bred animals ; and the same may be said of
horse, cattle, and poultry shows. The aesthetic has a very great
influence in our age. We devote a large share of our energies to
securing the gratification of our sense of the beautiful. It will
be judicious, therefore, to present the beautiful in animals to the
public. For this reason, again, exhibitions of superior specimens
of domestic animals, zoological gardens, museums, and kindred
institutions prepare the public mind to appreciate animals more ;
and, as I am endeavoring to show, to understand and to admire
are usually necessary steps to the generation of humane feelings
toward the creatures with which we come in contact.

Once establish the proper feelings, and fitting conduct is likely
to follow ; but before these feelings arise we must have right con-

yoL. XLiii. — 5

50 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ceptions of man's relations, if not relationship, to the animal
kingdom.

While many persons are ready to admit that, so far as phys-
ical organization is coiicerned, man and other animals are on the
one plane, they either do not believe in any likeness beyond this,
or more probably they have never examined the subject.

It is not unlikely that the great majority of persons have not
devoted a half hour of their lives, taken altogether, to any thought
upon such a subject. It has been taken for granted that man is
on <nie plane of intellect and feeling, and all other animals are so
much below him that their acts are not commonly regarded as
other than the result of instinct, a sort of blind impulse, so that
they are not regarded as showing at all those qualities which we
term mental, much less moral ones. Even educated persons have
but vague conceptions on the subject of animal intelligence. The
publications of many of the humane societies bearing on animal
intelligence must have done a vast amount of good in dissipating
ignorance and prejudice.

We have in Montreal, in connection with the Faculty of Com-
parative Medicine and Veterinary Science of McGill University,
a society for the study of comparative psychology — the only insti-
tution of the kind with which I am acquainted. It has been in
existence now six years.

A brief account of the proceedings of each meeting is pub-
lished in the daily press of the city, and I have reason to believe
that the association has in this way alone helped considerably
the cause of the lower animals. The Montreal Association for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has received and circulated
large numbers of copies of several of the papers read before this
society for the study of animal intelligence.

I suggest that if the interest of teachers — especially the heads
of schools — can be secured, some steps may be taken in leading
the young to entertain correct views and feelings toward the lower
animals. The keynote should be : They are our fellow-creatures ;
in some, but not all respects, our " poor relations " ; to be guarded
and assisted, but also to be respected ; for in not a few directions
they are superior to ourselves. Let this spirit get into schools
and families, and but little actual formal teaching will be required
to accomplish the end in view. Actions on the part of elders in
this, as in other cases, speak louder than words.

Of course, now, and for a long time to come, the ignorant, the
lowly organized, and the depraved will maltreat animals ; and
they must be appealed to in a way that is deterrent — that is, by
punishment. But the sooner we can establish a strong and cor-
rect public feeling on the subject of the rights and relations of
animals, the more effectually will cruelty be prevented ; and when

THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 51

it does occur, be detected and punished. All cases of prosecution
should be published, on account not only of its preventive effect,
but because it strengthens public sentiment.

The cause will be hindered by mawkish sentiment, interfer-
ence to an undue degree in slight cases, while neglecting great
a,nd widespread injustice, or positive wrong, toward our faithful
dumb friends. In spreading sound ideas in regard to animals ; in
correcting generally admitted and great cruelties ; in providing
temporary homes for lost and stray animals; by encouraging,
directly or indirectly, scientific research in biology, especially on
the diseases common to man and our domestic animals ; in con-
tributing to the investigation of animal intelligence — we have, in
addition to many other lines of effort, large and worthy fields of
endeavor for the improvement of the condition of things in the
world in which we live, both for man and his fellow-creatures,
lower in the scale, it is true, but withal very admirable.

THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.

By Prof. WILLIAM M. ABER.

TO-DAY, in the quiet, old city of Oswego, N. Y., stands a school
whose influence has extended throughout the land. At its
head is its founder, Dr. E. A. Sheldon : the school is his life work.

In 1848 Mr. Sheldon, a young man of twenty-four, then a resi-
dent of Oswego, felt moved to study somewhat into the condition
of the poor of that city. Their ignorance and misery excited pro-
found pity. Influential friends were enlisted, an "Orphan and
Free School Association" was formed, a schoolroom provided,
and a teacher sought. To his surprise, he found that he must
teach the school or the enterprise would be abandoned. For sal-
ary he asked the estimated cost of his living, two hundred and
seventy-five dollars per year, and received three hundred dollars.
In the basement of an old church, the inexperienced young teacher
was brought face to face with one hundred and twenty wild boys
and girls of from five to twenty-one. These he held in order and
kept at work by insight, love, and patience — those potent exor-
cisers of evil spirits.

From this movement, though against strenuous opposition,
sprang the free and graded schools of Oswego, which were organ-
ized by Mr. Sheldon in 1853. As a superintendent of schools he
might have ended his days, had he not possessed qualities of mind
and heart which led him to turn from easy, routine work and
encounter toils and dangers to find or make a better way. As
machines for securing from the pupils the learning, memoriter, of

52 THE FOPVLAB SCIENCE MONTHLY.

so many pages per day, and from the teachers recitation-hearing,
marking, and reporting, his schools were eminently successful.
Teachers, pupils, and patrons neither knew nor desired anything
better: but that sympathy with childhood which had led Mr.
Sheldon into this work was not satisfied with these poor results.
Five years of growing dissatisfaction with the current range of

E, A, Sheldon.

subjects and methods of instruction had culminated in a determi-
nation to prepare some books and charts for himself, when a visit
to Toronto revealed the object of his search. He saw there in the
National Museum, though not used in their own schools, collec-
tions of appliances employed abroad — notably in the Home and
Colonial Training School in London. Evidently the seed sown
by this school had not found in Toronto so good a soil as in the
mind of this Yankee schoolmaster. From this visit he returned
with the delight of a discoverer of a new world, laden with
charts, books, balls, cards, pictures of animals, building blocks.

THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL tiCHOOL.

5J

cocoons, cotton bolls, samples of grain, and specimens of pottery
and glass.

In 1859 a new course for the primary schools was introduced
at Oswego, in which lessons on form, color, size^ weight, animals,
plants, the human body, and moral instruction were prominent.
But his teachers knew little about the subject matter of such les-
sons, and less about methods of teaching them. The superintend-
ent was forced to become the teacher and trainer of his teachers.
Without training himself, he sadly felt the inadequacy of his in-
structions, and determined to try to obtain a training teacher from

Old Nokmal School Bl'ildino.

the Home and Colonial School. The Board of Education con-
sented, " on condition of its not costing the city a single cent." To
assist in providing the means, some of his teachers resigned, for
one year, half their salaries, which ranged from three to five hun-
dred dollars. Their names should be recorded among the found-
ers of the school, and written in letters of gold on its walls.
To begin this work. Miss M. E. M. Jones was obtained, for one
year, from the Home and Colonial School. After school hours
each day, Mr. Sheldon, his most interested teachers, and a few
from abroad, sat for two hours in a small, obscure room to receive
the instruction which had been brought from over the sea at so
much personal sacrifice. For one year these men and women be-
came as little children, that they might enter and win the king-
dom of childhood through the door opened by Pestalozzi, for Miss
Jones was a disciple of that master. The work thus begun was
continued by some of her pupils, and by Prof. Hermann Kriisi,
who also had taught in the Home and Colonial, and was a son of
one of Pestalozzi's most trusted helpers.

For two years, this training class was maintained by the city.

54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In 1863 it was adopted by the State, and a grant of three thousand
dolhirs per year was made for its support, on condition of the
city's furnishing the necessary buildings and accommodations,
and of not less than fifty teachers designing to teach in the com-
mon schools of the State receiving free tuition each year. These
persons were to be recommended by county commissioners or city
superintendents and appointed by the State Superintendent. In
1865 a building was purchased and fitted up by the Oswego
Board of Education at a cost of twenty-six thousand dollars.
In 1860 a general act was passed by the Legislature, which
provided for four additional normal and training schools in
various parts of the State, to be governed by local boards, ap-
pointed and removable at will by the State Superintendent, and
supported by an annual grant of twelve thousand dollars each.
On March 27, 1867, the building provided by Oswego was ac-
cepted by the State. With the appointment of a local board of
thirteen, the Training School's connection with the city schools
ended, except that which necessarily arose from the Practice
School. So the city teachers' class had in six years grown into a
State Normal and Training School, and had produced four other
schools fashioned in its own image.*

The development from a training class for the primary teach-
ers of one city to a school for the training of teachers for all
grades and for all parts of the State, necessitated an enlargement
of the curriculum. The one-year course was enlarged to courses
of two, three, and four years. The first covered the field of in-
struction below the high schools ; the second included high-school
work ; and the third added Latin and Greek, with German and
French as an alternative for Greek. The last year of each course
was devoted to professional work. In these enlargements there
was no departure from the original plan. Instruction in the sub-
ject matter to be taught, in the history and philosophy of educa-
tion, in psychology, in general methods of teaching, and methods
in detail for special subjects, and practice in teaching have from
the first characterized the Oswego school — characteristics which
have been reproduced in most of the normal schools of the coun-
try. These enlargements were bitterly opposed by the private
school interests of the State, represented in the academies; but
they were forced upon the normal schools by two facts : most of
the appointees were too imperfectly instructed in the subjects to
enter at once upon the discussion of methods of teaching them ;
and if the schools had rejected all such appointees, their duty of
furnishing teachers for the public schools of the State would have

* The Normal School at Albany already existed, but had been organized on a different
plan.

56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been so unfulfilled as to have imperiled their very existence.
New York State makes her normal-school diplomas valid as life
certificates, pays one half the railway fares of State appointees,
and furnishes text-books free to all. Pupils from other States
were formerly admitted free, but now pay a tuition of forty dollars
per year. In 1892 the two years' course was dropped, and at present
the State Normal Schools have three courses — an English course
of three years, and classical and scientific courses of four years.

In 1890 the Oswego school decided to discontinue instruction
in the ancient and modern languages " when the pupils already
entered for these subjects shall have finished their courses " ; but
diplomas for the classical and scientific courses will be given to
students who possess the required knowledge. This departure
was made because Dr. Sheldon became convinced that more could
be accomplished for the public schools by concentrating the en-
ergy, time, and money required for these linguistic studies on ad-
vanced academic and professional work on the lines of the Eng-
lish course. In lieu of these languages, the Oswego school now
offers three one-year post-graduate courses : — advanced instruction
in natural science, psychology, history, and English, and practice
teaching in higher English and science subjects; kindergarten
training, and special training for primary teaching ; and prepara-
tion of teachers for teaching in training schools. For the kinder-
garten work a diploma is given : for each of the other courses a
certificate testifying to the extra work and qualifications.

To keep pace with these various changes, the faculty of the
school has been increased from six to fifteen persons ; the annual
appropriation raised from $3,000 to $21,000; and in 1879 a new
building was provided by the State at a cost of $56,000. This
building (see cut) stands on the summit of a ridge rising west-
ward from the Oswego River. It forms three sides of an ob-
long, with a south front one hundred and ninety feet, an east
front one hundred and thirty-five feet, and a west front one hun-
dred and twenty-two feet. In its construction, exterior form and
ornament were sacrificed for interior convenience and furnishing.
It gives more recitation room and laboratory space, and is better
equipped with appliances for the best methods of study and pro-
fessional training, than some normal-school buildings of twice its
cost. Arrangements for heat, light, and ventilation are excellent.
On the first floor are the general offices and waiting rooms, the
kindergarten and practice school ; on the second, the assembly
hall, library, reading room, and general recitation rooms ; on the
third, literary society rooms, scientific laboratories, and lecture
room ; and on the fourth, an art room.

The kindergarten is domiciled in the east end of the front, in
a charming room, whose adornments and work make a fairyland

THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 59

through which the little ones enter school life with fearless, happy
steps. As the visitor watches the little ones at play, weaving
bright colors, building with blocks, or molding clay into forms
surpassing in interest even the mud pies of his childhood, he may
sigh for his own first day at school. The writer's is an indelible
memory. In a rough stone house, with a forest in the rear and
a swamp in front — land of more value could not be afforded — he
sat for hours, with dangling feet, on a backless slab bench, until
called up to receive at the master's knees, from a tattered primer,
his first lesson, — looking at and calling the names of queer marks
whose appearance was not interesting, and whose use was not
known. Fortunate children, for whose kindly and wise guidance
over the threshold of education men and women of great minds
and hearts have labored, will you, as actors on the stage of life,
be wiser and better than this generation ?

The practice school has three large assembly rooms and twenty
recitation rooms. The assembly rooms have lofty ceilings and
great windows which preach the gospel of good air and sunshine,
choice products of the children's work adorn their walls, and
libraries for the children's use are attractive features. The school
comprises from four to five hundred children of the primary,
junior, and senior grades. Each grade is divided into classes of
fifteen to twenty pupils. Each class is assigned its own room and
a teacher from the normal class which has reached the point of
practice teaching — the last twenty weeks of the courses. Each of
the rooms is an independent school, for whose discipline and in-
struction the practicing teacher is primarily responsible. One of
these teachers has for ten weeks a primary class and for ten weeks
a junior or senior class ; and the conditions are much like those
which a teacher will have in a school of his own. The work of
the same grades in the other schools of the city is done ; and, in
addition, extra work in drawing, color, form, work in modeling,
parc[uetry, folding, cutting, sewing, and shop work with carpen-
ter's tools. Drawing and modeling are extensively applied in the
study of geography, plants, and animals. Each class room is
adorned with the best work of its children; and ample black-
boards give space for work in number, language, drawing, etc.
In each is a cabinet to whose shelves field, forest, and factory
have furnished treasures which delight and instruct the children.
As these cabinets are constantly growing by the contributions of
pupils and teachers, they have a future of great possibilities.
They are all descendants of that little cabinet stored with the
spoils of the Toronto visit.

The whole collection of little schools is under the charge of five
permanent critic teachers upon whom the tone and character of
the whole depend, and who have the ultimate responsibility for

6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the welfare and progress of the children. To attempt to give, in
this article, details as to the methods of securing real practice
teaching, and yet conserve the interests of the children, is not
practicable. That these objects are attained is evidenced by two
facts, — the practice school is popular with the city patrons, and
the term of practice work is generally regarded by Oswego gradu-
ates as the most valuable in their entire course. It is justly so
regarded ; for five months of teaching under searching but kindly
and constructive criticism may be worth more than years of un-
aided experience. The critic teachers, while employees of the city
Board of Education and responsible to them for the discipline and
progress of the city pupils, are chosen and nominated by the State
Normal School authorities, and are responsible to them for the
normal practice teachers. This arrangement gives opportunity for
difficulty and friction ; but there has been little serious trouble at
Oswego, a fact which speaks volumes for the good sense and tact
of all concerned. The executive ability and teaching power re-
quired to drill a succession of inexperienced teachers, and during
this process to work through these teachers the same or better
.discipline and teaching than prevails in the other city schools, can
be better imagined than described. Whether the saying, "A
teacher is born and not made," is true in all branches of the pro-
fession or not, it certainly is true of the critic teachers of a great
practice school.

On the second floor of the building are eight recitation rooms,
seating from fifty to one hundred students, devoted to mathemat-
ics, language, history, etc., and supplied with maps, charts, models,
ample blackboards, and abundant light. The reading room and
library on this floor have the standard periodicals and well-se-
lected books. The visitor can not forbear the wish that some of
the thousands yearly wasted by New York State could be used to
increase this library ; yet smallness is not an unmixed ill for a
school library if the books are the best of their kind, and the lim-
ited number secures concentration of attention and thorough ac-
quaintance. The Oswego School Library is supplemented by the
City Library, whose volumes are accessible to the normal students.

The Normal Assembly Hall occupies the entire upper portion of
the west wing. This wing, although of the same height as the main
part of the building, is divided into but two stories above the gym-
nasium, thus securing extra height of ceiling for the assembly
rooms of the practice school below and for the Normal Hall above.
This hall is sixty-eight by seventy-six feet, seated for four hun-
dred students, and has a capacity for three hundred additional
seats on public occasions ; it has large windows on three sides, and
plain but tasteful coloring and decoration.

The third floor is the domain of the natural-science department

THE OSWEGO STATE XORMAL SCHOOL. 63

whose laboratories and lecture rooms occupy almost the whole
space. The zoological laboratory is at the western end of the
front, the mineralogical and geological at the eastern, and between
them are the physical laboratory, storerooms, and lecture rooms
for these sciences. The botanical and chemical laboratories are in
the east wing. The zoological laboratory — extending thirty-two
by fifty-six feet, flooded with light by a row of southern windows,
lined on its northern side by spacious glass-fronted cases of speci-
mens, at its eastern end a large tank for the storage of working-
materials, on the floor tables, and along the southern side a broad
shelf, sufficient in all to furnish room for a hundred workers —
wins the heart of the zoologist. It has a full supply of dissecting
apparatus and small microscopes for elementary work, and a fair
equipment of large microscopes with accessories for more ad-
vanced work. The botanical laboratory is twenty-eight by forty
feet. The other laboratories furnish working facilities for forty
pupils each. The furnishing of the chemical laboratory is note-
worthy for the convenience of the tables, apparatus, and water
supply. In the largeness and fineness of the home provided for the
natural sciences in this building, as compared with the crowding
of these subjects into two or three small rooms in some recently
erected normal-school buildings, there is a fit expression of Os-
wego educational ideas.

The art room on the fourth floor is forty-four by fifty-two feet,
admirably lighted, and furnished with fine facilities for teaching
drawing. Two of the three literary societies of the school — the
Athenean and Adelphi — have private rooms neatly fitted up and
furnished by themselves. The rhetorical and literary work of the
school is largely done in connection with these societies. The
Adelphi and Athenean lay out their own work and conduct their
business in their own way. Alternately, about once in two weeks,
they give public exercises in the Normal Hall. The Keystone,
which embraces the lower classes, is in charge of members of the
faculty and occasionally gives a public exercise.

On the ground floor is the workshop, provided with engine,
lathes, circular saws, tools, benches, and facilities for various kinds
of woodwork. In this the normal students learn to make the
simpler pieces of scientific and other apparatus, and get some skill
in using tools. In the class in familiar science each pupil con-
structs his own apparatus for illustrations and thus becomes pro-
vided with the necessary apparatus for teaching the elements of
science in public schools. A room for clay modeling and one for
free-hand drawing is also supplied for the manual training work.
The Normal School Gymnasium is on the ground floor of the
west wing. Dail}^ exercise is required of all students, and is con-
sidered important, both for its immediate effects upon health and

64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

comeliness, and for instruction in methods of physical training.
The gymnasium is large and well equipped, and was until recently
under the charge of Dr. Mary V. Lee, a physician who was a spe-
cialist in physical training and made much use of the Delsarte
system. Her recent, untimely death has left the department in
charge of one of her pupils.

From the observatory, which crowns the central front of the
building, the students see, as a whole, the views which all day
long they catch from the windows below — views which have no
small part in their student life. Northward stretches Ontario
with boundless limit, its shores extending right and left in wind-
ing curves, bold bluifs, lowland, field, and forest. Below and
around is the city : to the east, sloping down to the river and rising
beyond it ; to the west, soon shading off into farm lands ; to the
south, rising in a steep slope on which stands the City Orphan
Asylum, a sister institution, tracing its origin to the same source.
Whether the water and land sleep under a June sky or are vexed
by January storms, the eye need ask for no finer scene.

As the mother of normal schools and methods, the Oswego
school presents its most interesting aspect. Normal schools have
been organized on the Oswego plan and called Oswego graduates
to introduce her methods — as city schools in Portland, Boston, New
Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit,
Washington, D. C, and other cities of less note; and as State
schools in all the New England States, in New York, New Jer-
sey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota,
Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and California.* This
influence was felt first in New England and the Mississippi
Valley and later in the South.

The graduates of the Oswego school number 1,703. Oswego
graduates have taught in every State and Territory except Idaho
and Nevada, in the District of Columbia, and in five foreign
countries. Of the graduates who were born and reared in New
York State over four hundred have been called away to teach in
thirty-nine States, two Territories, the District of Columbia,
Canada, Mexico, South America, Sandwich Islands, and Japan.
New York State has complained that through Oswego she has
educated teachers for the schools of other States ; but could any
but an unnatural mother fail to be proud to have her children
worthy to be thus called away, and glad to have within her bor-
ders an institution whose graduates are sought for from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to the Argentine Republic,
and the borders of Asia ?

* See Circular of Information No. 8, 1891, Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C,
and Historical Sketches of the State Normal and Training Scliool at Oswego, N. Y.

VOL. XXIII. fi

THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 67

The fundamental causes of this widespread influence were the
educational unrest which filled the United States forty years ago,
and the fact that through Mr. Sheldon's efforts the Oswego school
offered a means of satisfying it. This unrest made a good soil
for the new educational ideas ; these new ideas were discussed by
school men before New York State had a normal school ; and the
school at Albany was founded and began the teaching of educa-
tional theories before the Oswego school was even thought of.
What Mr. Sheldon did was to focus all these floating ideas on
actual practice, and work out a systematic and rational expression
of these theories for the daily work of the schoolroom — to do
what other men were dreaming about. Doubtless Mr. Sheldon
had unusual genius for organizing and teaching, but these exer-
cised under purely selfish motives would not have led to such re-
sults. School work as a business, pursued for salary alone, attains
no more than it seeks. E. A. Sheldon with his ragged Oswego
boys and girls in 18J:8, and Heinrich Pestalozzi with his destitute
orphans at Stanz in 1799, teach the same lesson. Love, hope, and
faith are the most potent forces in education as well as in religion.
Through these forces the Oswego movement began; through
these, its founder became and has remained a seeker for educa-
tional righteousness, ready to try all things and to hold fast the
better; through these, he became receptive of good influences
from all sources, and eagerly sought to impart them to others.
An incident occurring in 1861 shows how Oswego's gospel was
at first spread. An invitation was issued to leading educators of
different States to come to Oswego to observe the methods. This
invitation was cordially accepted, and after careful examination
these observers made a favorable report, stating that " the sj^stem
of object teaching is admirably adapted to cultivate the perceptive
faculty of the child, to furnish him with clear conceptions and the
power of expression, and thus to prepare him for the prosecution
of the sciences or the pursuits of active life." They also expressed
the opinion that this system " demands of the teacher varied
knowledge and thorough culture ; and that attempts to introduce
it by those who do not clearly comprehend its principles, and who
are not trained in its methods, can result only in failure,'' thus in-
dorsing the necessity of training schools.

The system introduced at Oswego is commonly called Pestaloz-
zian, because it was inspired so directly from that source, for the
Home and Colonial was founded by disciples of Pestalozzi. The
essentials of Pestalozzianism may be summed up as a new point
of view ; and, as resultants of this, a new conception of education,
and methods appropriate for realizing it.* The old education takes

* See Kriisi's Life and Work of Pestalozzi.

THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 69

the standpoint of the adnlt ; the new, that of the child. From the
former, the whole mass of heterogeneous facts composing the
knowledge to be acquired is viewed as having been classified,
labeled, and stored in books. From this conception, what method
of acquiring knowledge can be more direct than the memorizing
of books ? By a cheerful optimism this system crams the child
with words, and trusts that somehow he will grasp the ideas for
himself and will have his powers cultivated in the process. In
exceptional cases these objects are accomplished ; but the average
child is left in a condition of permanent mental dyspepsia and
torpor. The new education conceives the child as looking forward
into the phenomena of Nature and life, curious and eager to know
realities first, then to express his knowledge, and delighted with
the exercise of his powers. To bring the child into contact with
facts, to guide him in classifying and labeling these facts for him-
self, becomes the teacher's first and chief duty, in obedience to the
sound principle that development of powers is gained by their ex-
ercise only. From this point of view education is conceived of as
a natural process extending from the cradle to the grave, with
Nature as the chief teacher, and the mother as the first assistant,
whose work is carried on by the schools and the experiences of
life. In this natural process of education, ideas come before ex-
pressions, whether the idea be the child's first conception of color
and form or the profoundest abstraction of a philosopher ; and its
principles are therefore applicable to education in all grades
from the kindergarten to the nniversity.*

As to the correctness of this conception of education and the
general means of realizing it, there is substantial unanimit}' among
school men ; but, as to details of courses of study and methods of
presenting subjects, diversity of opinion necessarily exists. Here,
as in other fields, practice lags far behind theor5^ To the Oswe-
go school belongs the honor of having developed in great detail
courses of study and methods of teaching that have received the
indorsement of educational reformers and of teachers in hundreds
of schoolrooms as being capable of realizing in large measure the
true educational ideal. Here also were devised simple and effi-
cient means for giving teachers the training required for the new
kind of work. To all who know how broad and how difficult to
bridge is the chasm between educational theory and practice, these
achievements will seem of no small importance. In this con-
nection. Prof. Hermann Krlisi, for twenty-five years the teacher
of the history and philosophy of education, geometry, French,
and German ; Miss Matilda S. Cooper, for the same period teaclier

* For an interesting application, see Sheldon's General History, and Sheldon-Barnes's
United States History, by Oswego graduates.

70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of English grammar and primary methods; and Prof. Isaac B.
Poucher, from 1867 to the present time — excepting an absence of
four 5'ears — teacher of arithmetic, algebra, and methods of teach-
ing these subjects, should be especially remembered. In many
a school called normal the pupils are, in preparatory instruction,
taught exactly as they should not be, in defiance of the principles
and methods to be mastered in their professional training. At
Oswego the preparatory work in mathematics, language, history,
natural science, etc., has, for the most part, been done by intelli-
gent and loyal adherents of the school's professed principles, and
been consistent with the methods inculcated in the professional
work. The students having seen the daily application of these
principles and methods to all sorts of subjects, and experienced
their value in their own persons, more easily comprehend and ap-
ply them in subsequent method and practice work.

The Oswego movement did not lack opponents — a class whose
services in all reforms are equally useful as extinguishers of false
lights and disseminators of true. The most notable of these help-
ers was Dr. Wilbur, Superintendent of the New York State Idiot
Asylum, a man eminently successful in his work. In the New
York State Teachers' Convention of 1862, and in the National
Convention of 1864, he severely attacked the whole system, from
philosophical standpoints. In consequence, a committee was ap-
pointed to examine thoroughly the practical bearings of the
" vicious " system. The chairman of this committee. Prof. Greene,
of Brown University, visited the Oswego schools, tested their re-
sults thoroughly, and made his report before the National Con-
vention of 1865. This report was so intelligent, exhaustive, and
favorable that the underlying principles of the Oswego methods
have never since met serious opposition in any authoritative
body.*

Students at Oswego have sometimes complained of the rigor-
ous drill of classes in methods, and of the practice school, as too
mechanical, tending to produce mannerisms and to crush individ-
uality. These complaints were sometimes made by those who
best comprehended the principles and felt the power and desire
to work out their own applications. These complaints admit this
answer : For the average man and woman comprehension of prin-
ciples does not secure practice. The principles must be embodied
in precepts and rules, must be applied in a practical course of ac-
tion under whose influence habits of right conduct are formed.
Right habits can not be formed in the teacher by imparting to him
the principles merely of his profession more than in the soldier.
If in some cases the product of drill is a mere machine, it is

* See Circular of Information, No. 8, 1891, Bureau of P^ducation, Washington, D. C.

THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.

71

usually because the person is inclined to become a machine, and a
well-constructed machine is better than a poor one. The few so
specially gifted as not to need so much detail and drill suffer no
permanent injury by the temporary restraint of their powers of
independent action. The habits formed in the thorough training
school will but aid their steps into new paths in the wide field be-
yond its walls. To the careful, unremitting drill of her method
and practice school work is largely due the fact that the Oswego
Normal School has turned out so large a product of successful

JIermanm Kkusi.

teachers as compared with her production of mere talkers and
essay writers. No one else deserves so much credit for this as
Miss Cooper, The maxims, The idea before the word, The con-
crete before the abstract, One step at a time. Never tell a child
what he can find out for himself, were constantly applied by her
as the plumb-line and try-square to test all work. Her method of
inculcating principles and teaching the art of questioning was
philosophical. The student was required to write out a series of
logical questions and answers for drawing out the ideas to be
taught; not once, but daily for twenty weeks, in a series of
graduated lessons in each of the subjects to be taught in primary

72

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

schools. The imaginary chiki which each student set up for him
self displayed his ignorance of child life ; and his processes of
questioning showed the limitations of his grasp of the principles
involved. To the student whose sympathy with childhood is
spontaneous and whose grasp of principles is intuitive, such drill
is needlessly irksome. But that the vague notions of childhood
and vaguer grasp of principles of most normal students can be
developed and trained by such courses of drill only, the subse-
quent twenty weeks in the practice school will abundantly dem-
onstrate.

The school has been exceptionally fortunate in its social and
physical environments ; and no enumeration of the causes of her

- '^

S^J

1 ,m^

■ ^J^

k*

^f^

Matilda S. Cooper.

success can afford to omit these potent influences. The site of the
city, at the mouth of the Oswego River and on the shores of On-
tario, one of the fairest of our Great Lakes, is unsurpassed, both
for beauty and for commercial and manufacturing advantages.
Ridges which rise gently on both sides of the river near its mouth,
and, farther back, form bold, picturesque hills, furnish almost ideal
ground for a city. The place is not lacking in the charm of his-

THE OSWEGO STATE XORMAL SCHOOL. 73

toric associations. As one of the gateways to central New York,
its old fort was the prize of battle between Indian, French, Eng-
lish, and Continentals during colonial and Revolutionary days.
To one who has stood on the bluffs to the west of the old har-
bor, with the lake outspread as a shining mirror, and listened to
the soft lapping of the waters on the shelving rocks below ; or
from the crumbling ramparts of the old fort on the eastern side
has watched the sun like a burnished, golden shield slowly sink
into the western waters, sending a flaming track across the wave-
lets, the soothing and restful influences were of unspeakable
value. For a time the fret and fever of ignoble strife departed,
and in the saner hour the spirit was open to better impulses.
When the waters were lashed into fury by storms and hurled in
fierce onset against the rocky shores, not less useful inspiration
came from wind and wave — exultation in strength and courage
for conflict. Nor did these influences altogether perish with the
hour. What Oswego pupil, susceptible at all to Nature's influ-
ence, did not feel the power of those scenes and does not cherish
their memory ?

The social and religious influences of Oswego have been favor-
able to the Normal pupils. The city is not so large as to cause the
Normal School factor to be ignored, nor so small as to cause it to
have undue prominence. In churches, Sunday schools, and other
societies pupils have been welcomed as guests and kept as valued
helpers. A more important social influence has been the free
mingling in work and recreations of the young men and women
composing the school. In the recitation rooms and laboratories,
this influence has produced wholesome rivalry and respect for one
another's powers ; at social gatherings and merrymakings, it has
been refining and ennobling. For many a bashful boy and shy
maiden, excursions on the lake and rambles in woods and fields
have replaced awkwardness and constraint by the easy, natural
manners of comradeship, and given insight into each other's na-
tures and characters. Such introductions into the kingdoms of
true manhood and womanhood are not the least among the
school's gifts to her children. Social intercourse has always been
left as free as the ordinary rules of propriety admit. Rarely has
this freedom been misused, and the good arising from it has out-
weighed a thousandfold the evil. An important center of the
school's social life is the Welland, the girl's boarding hall, whose
parlors have so often echoed to the pleasures of the Friday even-
ing socials.

Dr. Sheldon's home has been the chief center and source of
social influences. This home is situated on a high, wooded point
of the lake shore, a mile west of the city — a very paradise for
quiet beauty. On the spacious grounds, beneath the shadow of

74

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

great forest trees, and in the hospitable halls of this home, many
a generation of Normal pupils have had their merrymakings —
springtime maple-sugar parties and autumnal fruit festivals and
corn-roasts — the hearty participation of the master and mistress
of the place making all feel at home. This home — with its evi-
dence that refinement and simple but generous hospitality can be

Isaac Ji. Foucher,

maintained without wealth or extravagance ; that gentle, winning
manners and a cheerful heart are not incompatible with serious
character and heavy burdens — has been the finest object lesson at
Oswego.

Thirty years have passed since the tender shoot was planted
that has grown into this stately tree : its fruits have dropped all
over our land ; some of the seeds have fallen on stony ground and
withered away after a superficial growth ; others have been choked
by the growth of purely selfish ambitions and brought forth little
fruit ; but some have fallen on good soil and brought forth an
hundredfold. Much has been done for education in our land dur-
ing these thirty years, but a thousandfold more remains to be done
to make the public schools what they must become to merit confi-

THE OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 75

dence as the efficient conservators of our national happiness and
prosperity. In the work of the past, the Oswego Normal has
played an honorable part ; but her mission is not yet ended, nor
her powers abated. With youthful energy, both at home and
through her graduates,* she is grappling with the question of what
to teach, a question of not less importance than the how. That
more useful and interesting material for study may be brought
into schoolrooms, especially in the primary, is to be ardently de-
sired. The best methods applied to trite or useless subject mat-
ter can not make school life interesting or valuable to pupil or
teacher.

After all that has been done, and well done, no one but a most
willful optimist can be blind to the lamentable defects of our
schools, t The censure for these defects usually falls upon teach-
ers, but does not primarily belong there. Teaching requires in-
sight into and sj^mpathy with child life, a condition spontaneous
in but few adults, requiring in most laborious and sustained effort
to gain and to maintain it ; and a constant effort to advance in
scholastic and professional attainments to escape slipping back
into the abyss of slothful indifference. Teaching is, of all the
professions, the most useful for the public welfare, as it is one of
the most laborious and skilled, and should be paid according to
its deserts. Recitation-hearing, however, is one of the easiest, least
skilled, and most useless of all occupations. In this field, as in
others, the public gets the kind of work it pays for. The wages
of the rank and file of public-school teachers average less than
those of skilled mechanics. As long as the public continues to
pay for recitation-hearing, it will not get much teaching ; for
educational missionaries to work without the ordinary induce-
ments are too few to supply the demand, and will probably con-
tinue so until the millennium.

There is need of educational statesmen to secure legislation
efficient for preventing the employment of teachers without ade-
quate scholastic acquirements and professional training, as physi-
cians are forbidden to practice without such attainments. Is the
body of so much more value than mind or soul that it should
have greater safeguards ? There is need of educational agitators
to rouse and awaken the people from complacent day-dream-
ing about the schools, to show them that much of their ex-
penditure is wasted through poor work, and to convince them

* See work of Mr. L. H. Jones for Indianapolis schools in the Forum for December,
1892; " An Experiment in Education," in Popular Science Monthly for January and Feb-
ruary, 1892; and the work of Prof. Barnes in Stanford University.

f See articles h\ Dr. J. M. Rice in the Forum for October, November, and Decem-
ber. 1892.

76 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that better pay and more honor for their teachers would be a
wise economy.

That our alma mater may bear as brave and glorious a part
in the struggles of coming years as in the past must be the heart-
felt wish of every graduate of the Oswego Normal and Training
School.

DECAY IN THE APPLE BARREL.

By BYRON D. IIALSTED, Sc. D.,

RUTGERS COLLEGE.

IpRUITS decay and everybody knows it, but how this rotting
takes place is less evident. Grandfathers told our parents
that it was due to the weather, and some of them may have held
to the notion that the moon had a remarkable influence upon
the keeping quality of various fruits. The perfection of the
microscope and its more general use as an aid in seeing the minute
things which surround us_ upon every side have led to a deeper
comprehension of decays. It is the purpose of this article to show,
if possible, some of the facts connected with the rotting of our
apples, realizing that what holds true concerning one kind of fruit
applies almost equally well to others.

Let us in the first place take a survey of the normal subject,
or, in other words, of a healthy apple. It is made up of five seed
cavities which occupy the central portion of the fruit and con-
stitute the core. Outside of this is the edible portion called the
flesh, consisting of cells of small size filled with liquid substances.
A tough layer covers the outside, which is the skin, and bears the
coloring substance that determines whether the apple is green,
red, mottled, or striped. At one end of the fruit is the stem, or, as
found in the barrel, this former means of attachment to the
branch of the tree may have been broken away or pulled from
the fruit — a matter of no small consideration when the question
of deca}'' is concerned. This end of the apple is known to the
horticulturists as the "cavity," and varies greatly in different
sorts, sometimes being deep and narrow as in the Winesap and
Pearmain, and broad and shallow in the Greening and Peck's
Pleasant.

The opposite end of the apple bears the name of " basin," and
contains the remnants of the blossom — sometimes called the eye
of the fruit. This part of the apple is likewise deep in some
varieties, and shallow and open in others. This is the weakest
point in the whole apple as concerns the question of the keeping
quality of the fruit. If the basin is shallow and the canal to the
core firmly closed, there is much less likelihood of the fruit decay-

DECAY nv THE APPLE BARREL.

77

ing than when it is deep, and the evident opening connects the
center of the fruit with the surface.

For its own protection the perfect apple has a continuous
layer of skin over its whole surface. The stem has not been re-
moved from its cavity, but remains of its full length, for there is
a place naturally provided for its separation from the branch
which bore it. Such an apple is the rare exception as found in
the barrel. At the market or in the storeroom of the consumer,
instead of being without
blemish upon the surface,
there are small specks as
large as a pin-head, or
smaller, which dot the skin
in patches. A portion of
the surface of an apple
with these specks is shown
three times magnified in
Fig. 1. Sometimes one
needs to look for a long
time to find a fruit entirely
free from these specks.
Under the compound mi-
croscope these dots are re-
solved into a thin layer of
interwoven threads, with
their free ends radiating
from a central point. This
is one of the low forms of plant life belonging to the molds, and
grows from microscopic cells called spores, which in the economy
of the mold serves the purpose of seeds. These spores are pro-
duced in great abundance, and, being carried by the air, alight
upon the fruit and there germinate and grow into a colony or
speck which is all the time feeding upon the substance obtained
from the skin of the apple.

The second defect in apples, as seen in the barrel, is the one
known to fruit-dealers as the " scab." To the eye this is recog-
nized by the rough-coated patches, often circular in outline, that
are present upon the skin. There may be several of these spots,
and, by their borders becoming confluent, one half or less of a fruit
may be thus rough coated and more or less dwarfed, making the
apple one-sided. This scab is due to a mold which, under the
microscope, is as different in its real structure from the specks
above mentioned as the two are unlike in general appearance. If
it will add anything to the value of this popular article, the
botanical name of the species of mold causing the apple scab may
be given as Fusidadium dendriticum, Fl. It is as much a distinct

Fig. 1. — Apple Specks. (Ma^fnified.)

78

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kind of plant as the apple tree upon which it thrives. It is not
confined to the fruit, but grows luxuriantly upon the foliage,
causing it to become blotched with the brown patches and other-
wise destroyed. The mold consists of fine, cobwebby threads,
which penetrate the leaf and rob it of nourishment, and after a
time form patches upon tlie surfaces, where innumerable spores of
a dark color are produced.

The apples are first attacked by the scab fungus when they
are quite small, probably while the tree is in blossom, or shortly
after. At that time the surface of the young fruit is tender and
has no well-developed skin, which, when the fruit uears maturity,
might be so tough as to prevent the entrance of the scab mold.
This, therefore, is a defect that does not come upon the fruit after
harvest, and usually does not spread much after the apples are in
the barrel.

The knowledge of the fact that the scab is due to a mold that
begins to infest the fruit in early summer has led to experiments

!.. — Al'l'l.E S(!AI?.

in spraying the trees during the growing season with the Bor-
deaux mixture and other fungicides, with marked success in
checking its ravages. Trees sprayed three or four times in May
or June have borne abundant fruit comparatively free from scab,
while unsprayed trees otherwise alike yielded a scant amount of
distorted, scabby, withered apples. Fig. % shows an apple that is
a fair illustration of the working of the scab fungus.

One of the most interesting things in connection with the
study of the decays of apples is the relation which one mold bears
to another. There are several very common kinds of molds.

DECAY IN THE APPLE BARREL.

79

wliich grow nearly everywhere when circumstances favor them.
Their spores seem to be almost omnipresent, but they do not
possess the ability to penetrate tough substances, and the natural
skin of the apple is usually a barrier they can not pass. Of all
these molds the Penicillium glaucum, Lk,, or commonly known
as the " blue mold," is the one that causes the greatest destruction
in the storeroom. A large part of the rapid soft rot is due to the
Penicillium.

In a few words let the work of the scab fungus be reviewed.
As the name indicates, it causes a scab upon the surface, the

Fig. 3. — Apple Mold followixg Apple Scab.

naturally smooth, tough skin is roughened, and minute cracks are
produced which in short replace the ordinary skin, impervious to
the blue mold, with a disrupted coat that furnishes both a fine
lodgment for the spores of the mold and the condition favorable
for their germination and the further rapid growth of the mold.
It is easy to conceive of the scab upon an apple being so slight
and superficial as not to affect its real value, but the one deface-
ment becomes the entrance of a decay germ, that in a few days
reduces the whole apple to a noisome mass of rottenness resulting
in a million spores or blue mold. To prevent the soft rot of the
apple in midwinter in the barrel, the trees need to be sprayed in
midsummer in the orchard, to check the development of the scab
that would otherwise furnish the place of entrance of the blue
mold. Fig. 3 shows an apple that, when harvested, had a number
of rough circular patches due to the scab fungus. When the
photograph was taken, each one of these spots was the seat of a

8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rapid decay, due to the development upon them of the Penicil-
lium, while all other portions of the fruit were in a normal con-
dition,

Tliere are many diseases due to those exceedingly minute
germs so widely talked of nowadays — namely, the bacteria. They
attack animals and induce fevers of many sorts, and man sinks
before them with the dreaded cholera, consumption, etc. Plants
have their enemies among these micro-organisms, and apples do
not enjoy an immunity from them. The succulent substance of a
ripe apple is a favorite food for the bacteria, the only check upon
their abundant entrance being the tough skin. But there are too
many weak places, and it is presumable that these germs when
falling upon them are capable of beginning their course of rapid
multiplication which, when unchecked, reduces the fruit to rot-
tenness. In Fig. 4 is seen an apple under the apparently un-
broken skin of which in several places were decaying spots with
no signs of any other mischief-makers than the swarming mil-

FiG. 4. — Apple Blotch.

lions of the micro-organisms. As soon as the skin becomes
broken in any such places, the coarser decay germs enter and
quickly the fruit is overrun with a motley vegetation of various
molds.

If we look further among the decaying fruits, it will not be
long usually before an ajjple is found that does not agree with
any of the descriptions given above. Perhaps it is healthy in all
parts save one, and that has no scab present. The blue mold is

DECAY IN THE APPLE BARREL. 81

absent, the skin is unbroken except in a peculiar, almost regular
manner. There is an evident central point where the fungus
started, and, as it has spread, numerous pimples have formed just
under the skin, and sometimes in eccentric circles. From these
minute light-colored pimples spores ooze out and are ready to
find their way to some other specimen. The affected portion of
the apple has a bitter taste, and, on account of this, the term
"bitter rot" has long been given to this form of decay. This

Fig. 5. — Apple Bitter Eot.

same fungus causes the rotting of the grapes, and, if all the facts
were known, this Gloe,osporium fructigenum, Berk., might be
definitely charged with a large percentage of the decay of other
fruits. An apple badly affected with the bitter rot is shown in
Fig. 5, but one regrets that many of the details are lost in the
photo-engraving process by which the engraving was made.

This form of rot while it may be met with upon the tree or
in the windfalls beneath it in late summer, is most abundant in
the storeroom and is decidedly contagious — that is, an apple that
is decaying with the bitter rot is able to communicate the decay
to other fruits by means of the myriads of spores which are
borne upon the surface of the ruptured pimples. These facts sug-
gest the precaution of discarding any rotting fruits whenever
found. There is little room for doubt that were the harvested
fruits themselves sprayed with a fungicide, it would aid mate-
rially in preserving them. Thus, if a thin coating of the Bor-
deaux mixture was applied, the spores of bitter rot and other
decay germs would not so readily germinate. But there is the

VOL. XLIII. 7

82 THIJ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

objection of having the beauty of clean fruit lost nnder a film of
fungicide that while not particularly poisonous is decidedly un-
palatable, consisting of lime and sulphate of copper. A sensation
was created in New York two years ago because grapes were thus
marketed, and the same process for stored fruit is not here recom-
mended, although its effectiveness as a preservative is granted.

A decay that might be mistaken for the last mentioned is
caused by a fungus of a widely separated order. It is shown in
Fig. 6. This might be called the black rot, as it has a strong tend-
ency to turn the affected portions of a dark color. One of the
characteristic features is the almost black pimples formed in con-
siderable numbers beneath the skin, which they finally rupture
and then discharge large numbers of dark-olive spores. This fun-

FiG. 6. — Apple Black Eot.

gus is a described species bearing the name Sphceropsis mdlorum,
Pk. It may be seen in early apples before they begin to ripen,
and the windfalls as they lie upon the ground become badly in-
fested with the SylicRropsis. It is not confined to the apple, but
thrives destructively upon quinces and pears as well. This decay
in its habits of growth calls to mind the fact that the basin is the
weakest point of fruits like the three above mentioned, for in
most instances the black rot begins at the free end where the
remnants of the flower may be still adhering, and very likely as-
sist in the fungus gaining a foothold. This decay, like the bitter
rot, is amenable to treatment, and therefore, in order to check
their destructive work in the storeroom, the fungicide needs to

DECAY IN THE APPLE BARREL. 83

be applied while tlie fruits are growing upon the trees. Thus the
work of the prevention begins a long time previous to picking —
while the barrel -staves are possibly still in the living forest tree.
This reminds one of the time when the boy's educf.tion should be-
gin as stated by Dr. Holmes, namely, with his grandfather when
he was a small lad.

Up to this point remarks concerning the mechanical treatment
of apples have been purposely withheld. There is no question
about the importance of so far as possible preventing the bruis-
ing of the fruit. From what has been said in strong terms con-
cerning the barrier of a tough skin which Nature has placed upon
the apples, it goes without saying that this defense should not be
ruthlessly broken down. It may be safely assumed that germs of
decay are lurking almost everywhere, ready to come in contact
with any substances. A bruise or cut in the skin is therefore
even worse than a rough place caused by a scab fungus as a
lodgment provided by the minute spores of various sorts. If the
juice exudes, it at once furnishes the choicest of conditions for
molds to grow. An apple bruised is a fruit for the decay of
which germs are specially invited, and when such a specimen is
placed in the midst of other fruit it soon becomes a point of infec-
tion for its neighbors on all sides. Seldom is a fully rotten apple
found in a bin without several others near by it being more or less
affected. A rotten apple is not its brother's keeper.

The surrounding conditions favor or retard the growth of the
decay fungi. If the temperature is near freezing they are com-
paratively inactive, but when the room is warm and moist the
fruit can not be expected to keep well. Cold storage naturally
checks the decay. The ideal apple has no fungous defacements
and no bruises. If it could be placed in a dry, cool room free from
fungous germs it ought to keep indefinitely until chemical change
ruins it as an article of food. But the facts in the case are far
different from this ideal. The apple when gathered from the tree
may have the germs of decay already within its tissue. They
may have extended through the basin, become firmly located in
the ragged remnants of the flower or by means of some insect or
"worm" that has bit or burrowed the fruit. Its stem may have
been broken close to the fruit or pulled out from it, or over the
surface specks and scabs may have formed during the season of
growth that have so destroyed the skin as to furnish a ready en-
trance for other more destructive germs. Bruises of the pulp
and breaks in the skin expose the soft, highly decomposable flesh
to the " seeds " of decay, and as one contemplates what an apple is
made of and its many enemies, it seems almost a marvel that
fruit keeps at all until it is cooked to kill the germs within it and
then canned to prevent the entrance of those that are without. It

84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is not designed that apples in tlieir natural state should keep for
long, and all attempts to preserve them in the fresh condition
through the winter and far into the succeeding spring are a tri-
umph against Nature only to he won by the person who is con-
versant with the methods of his microscopic opponents. The use
of fungicides in the orchard while the fruit is growing will insure
more and fairer specimens, thus filling a larger number of barrels
with apples that are less subject to attack after harvest. This,
with careful handling to avoid bruises when picked and housed,
together with a dry storage room, should all bring a full reward.
Fig. 7 shows an apple in the last stages of dissolution, overrun
inside and out with a diminutive forest of fungi. It is the seed-

FiG. 7. — Apple Mold.

time, so to speak, with the host of species each vying with the
others for the last particle of the apple, the seeds only being
left behind ready to grow into trees when suitable circumstances
obtain, provided the vital spark does not expire before the favor-
ing condition arrive. The pulp that has been destroyed is large-
ly man's product developed by him through long years of selec-
tion and culture, and for which the orchard is planted and pre-
served. Nature wants more apple seed ; man desires more and
better pulp. Nature claims that the pulp of the wild apple is
only to secure the wider dissemination of the seed, and to the
orchardist, middleman, and consumer she speaks in her emphatic
way that " if you would exact of me extra-fine pulp, you must at
the same time employ the best devices of your high civilization
to preserve it from your omnipresent and active competitors, the
insidious germs of decay."

DISCOVERY OF ALCOHOL AND DISTILLATION. 85
THE DISCOVERY OF ALCOHOL AND DISTILLATION.

By M. p. E. M. BEETHELOT.

ALCOHOL is an important factor in modern civilizations, the
source of great revenues to states, and of immense wealth
to those who deal in products containing it. While wine, beer,
hydromel, etc., have been in use from prehistoric times, the active
principle common to them which produces the pleasant excite-
ment and the disgusting intoxication, and which is concentrated
in spirituous liquors, alcohol, has been known for only seven or
eight centuries ; it was unknown in antiquity. The story of the
way the discovery of it was made is one of much interest.

The reservation of the name of alcohol for the product of the
distillation of wine is modern. Till the end of the eighteenth
century the word, of Arabic origin, signified any principle atten-
uated by extreme pulverization or by sublimation. It was applied,
for example, to the powder of sulphuret of antimony (koheul),
which was used for blackening the eyes, and to various other
substances, as well as to spirits of wine. No author has been
found of the thirteenth century, or even of the fourteenth cen-
tury and later, who applied the word alcohol to the product of
the distillation of wine. The term spirit of ivine or ardent spirit,
although more ancient, was also not in use in the thirteenth
century ; for the word spirit was at that time reserved for vola-
tile agents, like mercury, sulphur, the sulphurets of arsenic, and
sal ammoniac, which were capable of acting on metals and modi-
fying their color and properties. The term eau-de-vie was given
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the elixir of long/
life. It was Arnaud de Villeneuve who employed it for the first
time to designate the product of the distillation of wine. But h6
used it, not as a specific name, but in order to mark the assimila-
tion which he made of it with the product drawn from wine. The
elixir of long life of the ancient alchemists had nothing in com-
mon with our alcohol. Confusion of the two has led the historians
of science into more than one error.

Our alcohol first appeared under the name of inflammable
water, a name which was likewise given to spirits of turpentine.
Let us try to determine, from the ancient authors and those of
the middle ages, what was the origin of the discovery of alcohol,
and to trace the successive steps in the knowledge of that sub-
stance. The ancients observed that wine gave out something
inflammable. We read in Aristotle's Meteorologica, "Ordinary
wine possesses a kind of exhalation, and that is why it gives out
a flame." Theophrastus, an immediate disciple of Aristotle's, says,
"Wine poured upon the fire, as for libations, throws out a light"

86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

— that is, produces a shining flame. Pliny says, still more decid-
edly, that the Falernian wine, the product of the Faustian field, is
the only wine that can be ignited " on contact with a flame " ; a
thing that happens with some wines very rich in alcohol. These
are common phenomena, accidental observations made in the
course of sacrifices and festivals which served as the beginning of
the discovery. But there had to be many intermediate steps.
Among them was this experiment, an amusing trick in physics,
doubtless devised by some prestidigitator, which is explained in
a Latin manuscript in the Royal Library of Munich : " Wine can
be burned in a pot, as follows : Put white or red wine in a pot,
the top of the pot being raised and having a cover with a hole in
the middle. Having heated the wine till it begins to boil and the
vapor comes out through the hole, put a light to it. The vapor
will at once take fire and the flame will last as long as it comes
out." But alcohol was not isolated by the ancients.

Distillation, or a method of separating the inflammable prin-
ciple from wine, had to be discovered before a further knowledge
of alcohol could be gained-. This process passed through several
stages. It also started from common observations. When water
is heated in a vessel, its vapor condenses on the walls of surround-
ing objects, and especially on the cover of the vessel ; this can be
observed by every one, in domestic economy, on the covers of soup
dishes, of kettles, and of tea and coffee pots. Aristotle mentions
the fact in his Meteorologica. " Vapor," he says, " condenses under
the form of water, if we take pains to collect it." He speaks in
another place of a less usual observation, which was probably
likewise accidental, and which has been extensively applied in
our own time. " Experiment has taught us that sea- water when
converted into vapor becomes potable, and the vaporized product,
when condensed, no longer resembles sea-water. . . . Wine and all
liquids, when vaporized, turn into water." It appeared, then,
according to Aristotle, as if evaporation changed the nature of
the vaporized liquids and reduced them all to an identical condi-
tion — that of water. This change was conformable to the philo-
sophical ideas of the author, wine and sea-water being reduced to
the same condition of water, the principle of liquidity, which was
regarded by the ancient philosophers as one of the four funda-
mental elements of things.

Aristotle's remarks on sea- water soon gave the suggestion of a
practical process mentioned by Alexander of Aphrodisias, one of
his earliest commentators, about the second or third century a. d.
According to that author, sea-water was heated in brass kettles,
and the water that condensed on the covers was collected for
drinking. This was the germ of the industry of the distillation of
sea- water, which is practiced now on a large scale on board of ves-

DISCOVERY OF ALCOHOL AND DISTILLATION. 87

sels. But, before this process could be carried out in a practical
form, the modern improvements in the process of distillation had
to be discovered.

Similar processes to that mentioned by Alexander of Aphro-
disias are described by Dioscorides and Pliny, in the first century
A. D., for the preparation of two liquids so different as mercury
and spirits of turpentine. These discoveries, also met in acci-
dental observations, began to make more general the ideas of the
industrial men and physicists of the time. Cinnabar, or sulphuret
of mercury, has been used from remote antiquity as a red coloring
matter (vermilion) ; the Romans got it from Spain, where the
principal mines of mercury in Europe are still situated. It was
early remarked that, in heating in an iron vessel to purify it, it
disengages vapors of mercury, which are condensed on neighbor-
ing objects, chiefly on the cover of the vessel. This discovery was
the origin of the regular extracting process, described by Dioscori-
des and Pliny. The cinnabar was placed in a capsule of iron in
the middle of an earthenware pot. The cover was sealed on, and
heat was applied. After the operation the cover was scraped, in
order to detach and collect the globules of mercury which had
sublimed from the capsule. Thus was obtained artificial quick-
silver, which the ancients supposed to have different properties
from natural quicksilver, or that which occurs in Nature in mines.
This was an illusion, the mercury being identical, whatever the
mode of extraction. At any rate, the process employed for the
extraction of mercury by vaporization is the same as that de-
scribed by Alexander of Aphrodisias for making sea-water po-
table ; and this process, as I shall shortly explain, was the begin-
ning of the alembic.

Another rudimentary process, the first that was applied to the
extraction of an essential oil, is described by Dioscorides and by
Pliny. It is for the distillation of pine resins, which are now
called turpentines. They were heated in vessels over which wool
was spread ; this condensed the vapor ; then the wool was pressed,
in order to extract from it the liquefied product, spirits of turpen-
tine, which was then called resin oil or flower of resin. It soon
assumed an important function in the composition of the inflam-
mable substances used in the arts and in war. But these terms
seem at first to have designated also and at the same time the most
liquid part of the resins, as well as the water charged with their
soluble principles, which was floating on these resins like whey on
milk, at the moment of their extraction ; and, lastly, the distilled
and odorous water which was vaporized at the same time with the
essence. The ancients were in some confusion about these sub-
stances, which are distinct in modern chemistry ; and this it is which
makes the reading and interpretation of the old authors so hard.

88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The decisive step in the knowledge of distillation was taken in
Egypt. There were invented the first real distilling apparatus
during the first centuries of the Christian era. They are described
precisely in the works of Zosimus, an author of the third century,
from the technical treatises of two women chemists named Cleo-
patra and Mary. In the margin of a Greek text of St. Mark are
the drawings of the apparatus, and they agree exactly with the
author's descriptions. The apparatus consists of a boiler or bal-
loon-shaped receiver, in which the liquid was put ; but the cover
was replaced by a large tube topping the balloon, and ending
above in a cap shaped like an inverted balloon, to serve as a con-
denser. The cap was furnished with lateral conical tubes inclined
downward, which were intended to collect the condensed liquid
and allow it to flow out into small bottles. All the essential parts
of a distilling apparatus are here defined. These lateral tubes
and their recipients constitute the chief improvement, and are
what constitutes the alembic. Among the distinctive character-
istics of the primitive alembic described by Zosimus is the multi-
plicity of the abductor tubes. He distinguishes between two-
beaked and three-beaked alembics. The flow of vapor was simul-
taneous, though there were several beaks, and condensation took
place in two or three receivers at once. Another figure represents
an alembic with a single beak, to which a large copper tube was
attached. An alembic described by Synesius, an author of the
fourth century, and figured in less ancient manuscripts, shows the
boiler with its cap, furnished with a single tube, the whole appa-
ratus being heated in a marine bath. This form varied but little
till the sixteenth century. The alembic passed from the Greco-
Egyptian experimenters to the Arabs without any notable change.
The Arabs were not, therefore, the inventors of distillation, as has
been too often afiirmed. In chemistry, as in astronomy and medi-
cine, they merely reproduced the apparatus and processes of the
Greeks, their masters, adding a few improvements in details. It
is a mistake to trace the discovery of distillation and of alcohol
to Rases, or Abulcasis, or other Arabian authors; the verified
texts have at least furnished me no indication of that kind. In
fact, Rases (tenth century), in the passages cited in support of
that opinion, speaks only of vinous liquids or false wines ob-
tained by the fermentation of sugar, honey, and rice; liquids,
some of which, like hydromel, were known to the ancients. But
there is nothing about distilling them, or extracting a more
active principle, in any passage in Rases that I am acquainted
with. In the pharmaceutical works attributed to Abulcasis or
Abulcasim, a Spanish doctor of Cordova, who died in 1107, we
only find a distilling apparatus for preparing rose-water which
did not differ in principle from those of the old Grecian alche-

DISCOVERY OF ALCOHOL AND DISTILLATION. 89

mists. The Arabs, therefore, were still, in the beginning of the
fourteenth century, using the complicated apparatus of the Greco-
Egyptians.

Alembics with several beaks were still employed by the Western
alchemists in the sixteenth century. In Porta's treatise, entitled
Natural Magic, a collection of processes or secret operations, the
author mentions the cap of three and four beaks, each furnished
with its tube and receiver. It is still the old apparatus of Zosi-
mus. Porta, however, describes two important improvements
which have come down to modern industry — graduated condensa-
tions during the same operation and the cooling worm. We need
not suppose that he invented them, but only that he described the
practice of his time. The new feature is as follows : In the alem-
bics described by Zosimus the three pipes are at the same level,
and doubtless disengaged an identical vapor; the ideas of the
chemists of the time were too vague to allow anything else to be
expected. The three tubes of Porta, on the other hand, are at
different heights, and the author adds that the highest tube fur-
nishes the purest spirit. We can already discern the ideas that
have fructified in our apparatus for fractional rectification, with
series of superposed chambers and trays delivering alcohols of
higher degrees of concentration from the higher levels. This ar-
rangement, however, was abandoned; at least we find no more
trace of it during the following centuries. In this as in many
other incidents, the men of the sixteenth century foresaw the most
modern advances, but by a kind of intuition, without their having
those clear notions and those exact principles of physics which,
being wanting, progress is accidental and transient.

Another more durable improvement was that of the worm.
The alembics of the ancient Greeks doubtless permitted distilled
liquors to be obtained, but on condition of operating slowly and
with a very moderate heat. In fact, the vapors were imperfectly
condensed on the small surfaces of the tubes and the caps repre-
sented in the manuscripts. However little we might try to hasten
the distillation, the receivers would become warm and condensation
would become almost impossible. Hence the ancient authors pre-
scribed that their apparatus should be heated over very slow fires.
They operated by means of sand baths, baths of ashes, or water
baths. Sometimes they tried to distill with no other heat than
that of fermenting manure or a low fire of dung or sawdust.
Their operations were therefore very slow, and often lasted for
days and weeks. It required fourteen days, or twenty-one days, a
text would say, to perform the operation. Not only did they in
this way assure the effect of digestions and cementations, designed
to produce gradual permeation with sulphurous and arsenical
vapors, into sheets of metal submitted to the tinctorial action of

90 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the elixirs, but they also made it practicable to collect the liquids
placed in the alembics.

At last, however, the operators of the middle ages perceived
that the manipulations could be conducted more rapidly, the dis-
tillations, for instance, by cooling the cap and the connected tube
that conducted to the last receiver. For that purpose they first
fixed around the boiler cap a bucket filled with cold water ; this
facilitated the condensation, but caused a part of the liquefied
vapors to fall back into the boiler. A new improvement — the one
described by Porta — consisted in bending the tube between the
cap and the receiver and giving it the form of a serpent. This
was the origin of the modern still-worm. It was surrounded by
cold water in a wooden vessel. But the use of the serpentine ar-
rangement spread very slowly, and was still regarded as recent by
the authors of the eighteenth century.

Let us observe here that we are using the word distillation in
the modern sense of evaporation followed by a condensation of
liquid ; but in many authors of the middle ages the sense is more
vague. The word means, in its literal sense, a flow drop by drop,
and is applied equally to filtration and all refining and purifica-
tion. The word distill is often employed in the same sense in
modern language. It also comprehended from the Greco-Egyp-
tian epoch two fundamentally distinct operations, viz., the con-
densation of dry vapors into a solid form — such as calamines or
metallic oxides, sulphur, metallic sulphurets, arsenious acid and
metallic arsenic (which was the second mercury of the Grecian
alchemists), and at a later date chlorides of mercury, sal ammo-
niac, etc. — the process which is now called sublimation. It re-
quires special apparatus, which the ancients devised and used, and
which gave rise to the Arabian aludel. We mention this here on
account of its connection with many modern industries, although
it has no relation to the discovery of alcohol.

I proceed now to describe distilled liquids and the successive
steps made in their study. " Celestial things above, terrestrial
things below," was the phrase by which the Grecian alchemists
designated the products of all distillation and sublimation. They
declared that " the sublimed vapor emitted from below up is
called divine. . . . White mercury is likewise called divine, be-
cause it, too, is emitted from below up, . . . The drops which
affix themselves to the covers of boilers are likewise called di-
vine." In this expression we find the marks of Aristotle, Dios-
corides, and Alexander of Aphrodisias. The alchemists, accord-
ing to their usage, interpreted these purely physical ideas by
symbols and a curious mysticism. Democritus (or the alchemic
author who took that name) called the spherical apparatus in
which the distillation of water was carried on " celestial natures."

DISCOVERY OF ALCOHOL AND DISTILLATION. 91

The separation which is effected in these between volatile water
and fixed matter is expressed as follows in the text of Olympiodo-
rus, who lived at the beginning of the fifth century : " Earth is
taken in the early morning, still impregnated with the dew which
the rising sun lifts with its rays. It is then like a widow and de-
prived of its spouse, according to the oracles of Apollo. . . . By
divine water I mean my dew, aerial water." In the same style
Comarius, a writer of the seventh century, drew the allegorical
picture of evaporation and the condensation that accompanies it,
condensed liquids reacting on the solid products exposed to their
action : " Tell us . . . how the blessed waters descend from above
to visit the dead, stretched out, chained, and loaded down in dark-
ness and shadow, in the interior of hades ; . . . how new waters
enter in, . . . come by the action of the fire ; the cloud holds them
up ; it rises from the sea, sustaining the waters."

This singular language, this enthusiasm borrowing the most
exalted religious formulas, need not surprise us. The men of that
time, excepting a few superior geniuses, had not reached that
state of calm and abstraction that permits the contemplation of
scientific verities with a serene coolness. Their education, the
symbolical traditions of ancient Egypt, and the gnostic ideas
with which the first alchemists were all impregnated, did not
allow them to preserve their even balance. They were trans-
ported and intoxicated, as it were, by the revelation of that hidden
world of chemical transformations which appeared to the human
mind for the first time.

In the first Greek treatises, all the active liquids of chemistry
are confounded under the common name of divine water or
waters. " Divine water is one in kind," they said ; " but it is mul-
tiplied as to species, and admits of an infinite number of varieties
and methods of treatment." They designated those varieties by
the most various symbolical names, such as aerial water, fluvial
water, dew, virginal milk, water of native sulphur, silver water,
Attic honey, sea-foam, etc. Confusion was systematically engen-
dered by this variety of denominations, for the avowed purpose
of concealing the secrets of the alchemical fabrications from the
vulgar and uninitiated. Although it is occasionally possible to
discern something precise in the deliberate vagueness of the de-
scriptions, there does not exist among them, so far as I know, any
text that is applicable to the distillation of wine. It is barely pos-
sible that the principle of fractional distillation and the diversity
of its successive products are indicated in one or two passages,
but those passages appear to apply to the treatment of alkaline
polysulphides or of organic sulphureted substances, which have
nothing in common with alcohol.

I have not, moreover, met in the Arabic treatises on medicine

92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and materia medica as yet printed, or in the manuscript Arabic
works of Geber and other alchemic authors which I possess and
am preparing for publication, with any precise text relative to
alcohol or to any definite distilled liquid. I have already ex-
plained the passages of Rases that have been wrongly cited as
bearing on this point, which relate only to fermented liquids
without reference to their distillation or to the extraction of alco-
hol. So Abulcasim, who has been cited, after describing some dis-
tilling apparatus modeled after the dibicos and trihicos of the
Greeks, adds simply, " According to this method, whoever wants
distilled wine can distill it." He gives directions for distilling rose-
water and vinegar in the same way. He speaks only of distilla-
tion in a mass. Still, the idea of the preparation of a distilled
fragrant water, like rose-water, appears here clearly for the first
time ; but there is nothing in it that applies to an essence proper,
or especially to alcohol.

I repeat that simply a distillation of wine, without any dis-
tinction between the successive products of a fractional distilla-
tion, is meant in these texts. But it was perceived from that
time, contrary to the opinion of Aristotle, that distilled wine was
not identical with water ; still, our authors do not speak of alco-
hol, although the knowledge of that substance would result al-
most immediately from the study of the distilled liquids yielded
by wine.

The most ancient manuscript containing a precise reference to
this product is in the Clef de la peinture, which was written in
the twelfth century. It is a receipt in cipher, which when de-
ciphered and translated reads : " By mixing pure and very strong
wine with three parts of salt and heating it in vessels designed
for the purpose, we obtain an inflammable water, which is con-
sumed without burning the matter on which it is placed." This
meant alcohol. The property of burning on the surface of bodies
without burning them greatly struck the first observers of it. A
more explicit mention is contained in the Treatise on Fires of
Marcus Grsecus, a Latin work drawn from Arabian and Grecian
sources, no manuscripts of which, however, are of earlier date
than the year 1500. It is a compilation of technical receipts,
mostly relating to the art of war. The receipt for the burning
water was added later to the original text ; for it is not a part of
another manuscript that exists in Munich, but is inserted in it
outside of and after the Treatise on Fires. It contains some new
hints and characteristics, and is as follows : " Preparation of In-
flammable Water. — Take wine, black, thick, and old. For a quar-
ter of a pound add two scruples of very finely powdered sulphur,
one or two of tartar, extract of a good white wine, and two scru-
ples of common salt in coarse fragments. Place the whole in a

DISCOVERY OF ALCOHOL AND DISTILLATION.

93

good leaden alembic ; put on the cap, and you will distill the
burning water. It should be kept in a glass vessel tightly closed/'
The Munich manuscript adds : " These are the virtue and proper-
erties of the inflammable water : A rag moistened with it and
set on fire will burn with a great flame. When the fire is extin-
guished the cloth will be found unharmed. If you dip your fin-
ger in this water and then put fire to it, it will burn like a candle
and not suffer any wounding." This was in fact a prestidigitator's
trick ; and the part those people played is manifest in the begin-
nings of a large number of inventions in antiquity and the middle
ages. In any case the facts pointed to in this description are ex-
act, and show how first observers are often struck by real or ap-
parent properties of bodies, even though they be insignificant.
Frequently, too, they complicate operations by superfluous if not
annoying details, to which, according to the theories by which
they are guided, they attach the same importance as to the rest.
For instance, in the first receipt of Marcus Grsecus is a direction
to add sulphur previous to the distillation, which occurs likewise
in a book by Al Farabi, transcribed into another manuscript of
the same period, as well as in Porta's Natural Magic, which was
composed in the sixteenth century. It is therefore not accidental.
It is the product of a theory which is expounded at length in sev-
eral texts, held by the chemists of the time, that the great moist-
ure of wine is opposed to its inflammability. To counteract this
they added salts or sulphur, the dryness of which, they said, aug-
mented the combustible properties. One of these old authors re-
fers, in support of his theory, to dry wood and green wood, un-
equally combustible, according to the season when they were cut
and the proportion of moisture they contain.

We should recollect also that volatility and combustibility were
then confounded and called sulphurity, a term which was still ap-
plied in this sense in the time of Stahl, at the beginning of the eight-
eenth century. These ideas go back to the Grecian alchemists,
who called every volatile liquid and every sublimate sulphurous
(or divine) water. In this we can see the origin of those compli-
cated preparations, so hard to understand now, which were em-
ployed by the old alchemists. They tried to communicate to bod-
ies the qualities in which they were lacking by adding to them
substances in which those qualities were supposed to be con-
centrated. Hence sulphur was added to wine in the belief that it
would render the manifestation of its inflammable principle easier.

The first man of science known by name who spoke of alcohol
is Arnaud de Villeneuve, who was of a date posterior to the com-
position of these writings. He is commonly spoken of as the
author of the discovery, though he never himself presented such
a claim. He only spoke of alcohol as a preparation known in his

94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

time, which he admired very much. He recorded of it in his
work Concerning the Preservation of Youth : " We extract, by-
distillation of wine or its lees, burning wine, called also eau-de-
vie. It is the most subtile portion of the wine."

He then exalts its virtues : " Discourse on Eau-de-vie. — Some
call it water of life ; some of the moderns say it is permanent
water, or rather golden water, on account of the sublime nature
of its preparation. Its virtues are well known." He next enu-
merates the maladies for which it is a cure : " It prolongs life, and
therefore deserves to be called water of life. It should be kept in
a golden vessel ; all other kinds of ware, except glass, are liable
to be acted upon by it." Then he speaks of alcoholates : " On ac-
count of its simplicity, it receives every impression of taste, odor,
and other properties. When the virtues of rosemary and sage
are imparted to it, it exercises a favorable influence on the nerves,"
etc. The pretended Raymond Lulle, a more modern author than
Arnaud de Villeneuve, speaks of alcohol with equal enthusiasm.
He describes the distillation of the inflammable water, derived
from wine, and of its rectifications, repeated seven times if neces-
sary, till the product burns without leaving a trace of water, and
adds, " It is called vegetable mercury." So it appears that the
alchemists in the beginning of the fourteenth century were taken
with such admiration for the discovery of alcohol that they lik-
ened it to the elixir of long life and the mercury of the philoso-
phers. Yet we have to be cautious against taking every text con-
cerning the mercury of the philosophers or the elixir of long life
as applicable to alcohol.

The elixir of long life is a fancy of ancient Egypt. Diodorus
Siculus calls it "the remedy of immortality." Its invention is
attributed to Isis, and the composition of it may be found in the
works of Galen. The formulas for it in the middle ages were
various. It was also reputed to be capable of changing silver
into gold, or, in other words, was credited with the same chimerical
properties as the philosopher's stone.

Although the discovery of alcohol did not give realization to
these illusions, it has nevertheless had the gravest consequences
in the history of the world. Alcohol is an eminently active
agent, and thereby at once useful and harmful. It may prolong
human life or shorten its term, according to the use that is made
of it. It is also a source of inexhaustible wealth for individuals
and states — a more fruitful source than the pretended philoso-
pher's stone of the alchemists could have been. Their long and
patient labors were therefore not lost ; and their dreams have
been realized beyond their hopes by the discoveries of modern
chemistry. — Translated for TJie Popidar Science Monthly from
the Revue des Deux Mondes.

AMERICAN EXPLORATION TRIBUTE. 95

TRIBUTE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY TO AMERICAN
GEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION.*

THE following tribute to the Americans who have conducted
meritorious geological and geographical explorations is a
graceful and well-bestowed recognition from the French people
of the remarkable results that have been achieved in this coun-
try by individual and Government agencies in adding to the sum
of human knowledge. The tribute of words is even more beauti-
ful than the elegant medal which accompanied it, and while the
United States Geological Survey is made the official recipient of
the gift, it will be seen that it is intended to honor other American
workers in this field of science.

Institute of France, Academy of Science. Meeting of Decem-
ber 21, 1891. Pages 70 to 74.

OUVIER PRIZES.

CoMMissioNEES : MM. Gaudry, FouQuf;, de Quateefages, Milne-Edwards.
M. Daubree, Rapporteur.

The commission charged with awarding the Cuvier prize for
the year 1891 has with unanimous voice given this high mark of
esteem to the collective work of the Geological Survey of the
United States.

In the United States, where all the natural resources are ex-
ploited with so much ardor, the studies relative to the soil ought
necessarily to demand a very particular attention by reason of
the numerous applications which they legitimately promise. It
is therefore more than half a century since the governments of
many States instituted a geological exploration of the lands which
belonged to them. These geological surveys were organized and
confided to men most prominent in their profession. It was in
the Northern States that the most considerable progress was
made. Hitchcock published, in 1833, the Geology of Massachu-
setts. From 1836 to 1840 the eminent Henry Rogers and his
brother, W. B. Rogers, undertook that of Pennsylvania and Vir-
ginia, the essential characteristics and distorted structure of
which they so admirably made known. Charles T. Jackson, of
Boston, the discoverer of etherization, and already known by his
mineralogical works, undertook that of Maine, New Hampshire,
and Rhode Island (1837 to 1839), after having published in 1833 a
study of Nova Scotia. The geology of the State of New York is
confided to James Hall — who has not yet discontinued the series

* Translated by Robert T. Hill, of the United States Geological Survey,

96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of his discoveries — Mather, Emmons, and Vanuxem. It has given
existence to publications that have become classic (1836 to 1842).
By the side of these promoters who have the merit of having been
the first to conquer the greatest difficulties, justice demands that
there should be written the names of two geologists not attached
officially to the service of the United States, whose powerful influ-
ence ought to be proclaimed. Our compatriot De Verneuil pur-
sued since 1846, with the success that is well known, a task which
no other could better undertake, that of comparing upon the two
continents all the sedimentary deposits, from the most ancient
down to those that contain the coal ; and Dana, by his original
work and by his excellent books, has contributed singularly to
the education of all those who, in Europe as well as in America,
devoted themselves and still devote themselves to the study of
geology and mineralogy.

The first results attained proved the utility of like enterprises.
Thus, following the steps of the local governments, the Federal
Government entered into the same path.

It was at first for the great Territories of the West, little
known and not yet classed as independent States. The wise
geologist Hayden, to whom this study was confided and of whom
we deplore the loss, worked there with ardor during a dozen
years. First of all had to be adopted a rational plan for an ex-
ploration at the same time geographic and geologic. This new
service bore, indeed, the title of Geological and Geographical
Survey of the Territories. Then followed the discovery in 1871,
and the detailed exploration in 1872, of the region of the geysers
of the Yellowstone ; from 1873 to 1879 the complete topographic
and geologic survey of the Alpine part of the Rocky Mountains
comprised in the State of Colorado. The atlas which unites all
these researches (1877) is a cJief-d'oRuvre of cartography ; it is in
great part the work of Mr. Holmes, the artist-geologist, of whom
one admires the incomparable sketches scattered in profusion
through the official publications.

In order to explore the Rocky Mountains (1869 to 1875), Mr.
J. W. Powell descended by water the celebrated and dangerous
canons of the Colorado, and made a report which has become
classic on the phenomena of erosion. During the same epoch Mr.
Gilbert made an extremely remarkable study of the Henry Moun-
tains.

At the same time the Engineer Department of the United
States Army was charged with work of the same class over an
immense country still little more than desert and very little
known. The title of this new service, " Geological and geographi-
cal exploration and survey of the one hundredth meridian," shows
that, in this case also, the examination of the constitution of the

AMERICAN EXPLORATION TRIBUTE. 97

soil marclied side by side with the study of its topography and
relief. This important mission was placed, in 1872, under the
direction of Lieutenant Wheeler, who in the preceding year had
explored a portion of Nevada and Arizona. The choice could not
have been better, as is proved by the career since then of the dis-
tinguished engineer. His purpose was to reconnoitre the natu-
ral resources of the mountainous country in the neighborhood of
the chosen parallel, and also of the great railroad lines of the
Union and Central Pacific between the one hundred and fourth
and one hundred and twentieth degrees of longitude west from
Greenwich. After having examined the Sierra Nevada and the
Coast Ranges, Prof. Whitney, Director of the Geological Survey
of California, pushed his investigations toward the Pacific slope.
But, between California on the west and the base of the Rocky
Mountains on the east, exploited by Hayden, there remained a
vast gap of sixteen degrees of longitude which was little known.
Under the direction of Mr. Clarence King this gap was very well
filled. A general knowledge was acquired of the great mountain
system of North America and that in its greatest expansion. We
possess now results sufficient to make clear the important problem
of the dynamics of mountain chains.

Since 1879 all the geological studies executed at the expense of
the central Government have been confided to a single adminis-
tration bearing the title of the Geological Survey.

Organized by Clarence King, it passed in the following year
under the direction of J. W. Powell, in whose able hands it has
since remained. Its end, as is defined by the organic law, is the
reconnoissance of the geological structure of the country, of its
mineral resources, and finally the execution of a geologic map.

The researches carried forward in very different directions of
science have been apportioned to many divisions: Geography,
geology, paleontology, and others. Geologists, to the number of
about twenty, are each one charged with special functions, and
their results are gathered each year into a report of the director
under the name of Annual Report. It is a large volume pub-
lished in magnificent shape, in which are likewise collected mem-
oirs upon divers subjects, with an accompaniment of numerous
maps, engravings, and photolithographs. Already ten annual
reports have appeared.

Besides these reports the survey has published from time to
time monographs upon subjects particularly interesting, likewise
under the form of very beautiful volumes, accompanied with
many figures, and occasionally by a voluminous atlas.

Also under the title of bulletins, of which already have ap-
peared sixty papers relating to subjects new and interesting. And,
finally, a statistical publication bearing the name of Mineral

TOL. ILIII. 8

98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Resources of the United States appears annually and makes
known not only the figures of production but also the numerous
theoretical considerations which interest the miner.

As to the geographic work which the Geological Survey also
possesses among its attributes, a numerous personnel of topogra-
phers and engineers work actively at the execution of the map in
the most diverse parts of the country under the direction of Mr.
H. Gannett. Already more than six hundred sheets have been
surveyed and drawn, and about four hundred have appeared.

Besides geology and geography ought to be mentioned a con-
siderable work, of which Mr. Powell is the founder, in the domain
of the pre-Columbian archaeology, the linguistics, the ethnology,
and the anthropology of the Indians of North America, splendidly
illustrated by Mr. Holmes. The last publication of Mr. Powell
upon the classification of American languages is, according to the
best judges, of great importance.

Not being able to give here a complete list of all the actual
collaborators of the survey, or of their services, we must content
ourselves with noticing those who have taken the principal part
in the execution of the works already published. These are in
alphabetical order: Messrs. Becker, Chamberlin, Cross, Davis,
Day, Diller, S. F. Emmons, Fontaine, Gannett, Gilbert, Hague,
Hayes, Holmes, Iddings, McGee, Marsh, Newberry, Peale, Russell,
Shaler, Van Hise, Walcott, Ward, Upham, Weed, C. A. White,
Whitfield, A. Williams, G. H. Williams, and H. S. Williams. It
is but just that we should not omit the names of those who are
dead : Messrs. Hayden, Irving, Lesquereux, Leidy, Marvine, and
Newton ; or of those who no longer belong to the survey : Messrs.
Bradley, Cope, Curtis, Dutton, Endlich, Hill, Howell, Clarence
King, St. John, Stevenson, and Wheeler. Many of these names
will remain justly illustrious.

It will be impossible to give in this report even a summary
idea of the most remarkable discoveries which are due to the
Geological Survey. They belong to branches very diverse: re-
gional geology, monographs concerning metalliferous deposits,
general and comparative stratigraphy, mineralogy and petrogra-
phy, volcanic phenomena, glacial phenomena, ancient Quaternary
lakes, and a history of the Atlantic littoral.

Among the most considerable results must be mentioned the
paleontological discoveries made in the Rocky Mountains. Since
the day in which Hayden undertook his memorable explorations,
we have learned that the site of the Rocky Mountains was con-
tinuously a part of the continent during the greater portion of
the Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary epochs. Upon this vast
continent the quadrupeds could develop during extended time,
freely, without any interruption to their evolution, and thus they

AMERICAN EXPLORATION TRIBUTE. 99

became numerous, gigantic, and sometimes strange. The paleon-
tologists attached to the Geological Survey have brought to light
these curious creatures. The monographs of the regretted Leidy,
of Cope, and of Prof. Marsh are among the most beautiful pale-
ontologic works accomplished since Cuvier.

Magnificent researches have also been made concerning the
invertebrates and the fossil vegetables.

To resume, under the powerful impulse which the Federal
Government has given to it, the geologic service of the United
States has produced in twenty-five years results very considerable
and very skillfully attained. It must be said that in no other
region of the globe have been made such discoveries in so short a
space of time. Moreover, this organization, all perfect as it is,
could not have given such fruits if the galaxy of savants who
have taken part in it had not given proof, at all times, of a valor
and of a tenacity which, in the diverse and inhospitable regions in
which they were exercised, recall the heroism of an army attack-
ing the most arduous and most inaccessible obstacles.

The work of the Geological Survey, with the magnificent col-
lection of results that it comprises, merits then that we should
render to it a striking homage for the light so vivid and so unex-
pected that it has thrown upon the geologic history and the min-
eral riches of North America.

The Cuvier prize is decreed to this grand collective work, not
only to the actual collaborators, but also to those who have ceased
their labors. It will, we hope, be preserved in the archives of the
Geological Survey as a witness of the high esteem of the Academy
of Sciences.

His studies of the planet Jupiter for the past thirteen or fourteen years liave
satisfied M. Terby that the conditions existing there are more stable than astrono-
mers have of late years been supposing. Even if the phenomena of the spots and
bands are atmospheric, their permanency and regularity point to some fixed cause,
on the real surface of the planet, controlling them. Besides the " red spot," which
has now attracted attention for many years, he finds permanent spots, even on the
equatoi'ial zone, having a movement of rotation corresponding with that of this
object. The supposition may be legitimately drawn from this fact that this period
of rotation agrees with that of the rotation of the planet itself.

At present, the Hon. Rollo Russell contends, in his book on the Causes and
Prevention of Epidemic Plagues and Fevers, the science of " public life-saving "
is far ahead of the practice. We teach, he observes, in compulsorily attended
schools the names of "ancient and unworthy kings," of lakes, mountains, rivers,
and so on; while we neglect to instruct in the weightier matters that concera
life, health, prosperity, and happiness. The remedy lies in placing the knowledge
of the first principles of hygiene within the acquisition of every person of the
comniunitv.

ICO THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

HOW SCIENCE IS HELPING THE FARMER.

By CIIAELES S. PLUMB, B. S.,

DIKECTOR INDIANA AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION.

A SCORE or more years ago, when Horace Greeley and Henry
Ward Beecher were telling tlie American public what they
knew about farming, there was quite a general tendency on the
part of the agricultural class to hold up to ridicule what was
termed " scientific farming." Great claims were then made as to
the importance of a knowledge of science, so that the farmer
might analyze the soil, crops, fertilizers, etc. Especial stress was
laid upon having a knowledge of chemistry, in order to be able to
analyze something. Chemistry was to be the panacea for all the
farmer's ills, and writers indiscriminately quoted Liebig, Boussin-
gault, Johnston, Lawes, and Gilbert, and other famous agricul-
tural chemists. There was much book farming done that was a
source of amusement for practical agriculturists. Much of the
written matter and advice • published was worthless, and time and
the labors of science conclusively demonstrated as much. Early
investigators, engaged in faithful and hard work, gleaned much
information of scientific importance, and eventually overturned
numerous theories that had hitherto seemed plausible. Chief
among these was the analysis of soils, whereby one could know
the composition of his soil and at once determine in what ingredi-
ents of plant food it was deficient, so that he might feed back to
it the lacking elements. Time and study have shown that soil is
a very complex substance, and one analysis is usually quite un-
satisfactory, because a little sample of soil represents only a small
piece of ground, perhaps representing quite unfairly the entire
field. Consequently, as remarked by Dr. Caldwell,* soil analyses
are not thoroughly practical, on account of the difficulty in secur-
ing a sample of a few pounds that shall correctly represent the
millions of pounds of soil in even a single acre, to say nothing of
a field of many acres.

Fifty years ago Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, through
an interest in rural economy which resulted in far-reaching dis-
coveries, established himself as the father of agricultural chem-
istry. His investigations largely related to the composition of
the soil and plant nutrition. He was the first to prove that plants
fed on certain ingredients of the soil, and that different classes of
soils and plants varied in their composition. Liebig's was the
pioneer work, and from his time to the present a mass of scientific
information has been gradually accumulating that in numerous
ways is serving a good purpose.

* Agricultural Science, vol. i, p. 25.

HOW SCIENCE IS HELPING THE FARMER. loi

Never before in history have scientific workers been so prac-
tical as now. We live in essentially a practical age, and men
live better, more intelligently, and more easily than ever before.
Practical problems engage the attention of the scientist over all
others ; and so, instead of ridicule, science as applied to the farm
is now receiving most respectful consideration, for the work is
practical, and sound practice always receives respectful attention.

Science is knowledge. There is no scientific farming. The
highest type of farming is intelligent farming. The intelligent
farmer of to-day is simply making use of certain scientific facts
that have a practical application.

For a half century science has been laboring in the interests
of agriculture. This year the United States appropriates nearly
one million dollars for scientific experimentation as applied to
agriculture. And yet but few farmers realize how material is the
assistance being given the agricultural classes of the country
through the direct application of accomplished scientific work.
In view of this condition of affairs, in the following pages I pro-
pose to give illustrations of what is now in practical use, show-
ing how science has helped and is helping the farmer. These
examples signify something. They mean a saving of millions of
dollars to the people of the country. Millions have been saved to
the farmers in the past ; millions will be saved in the future ;
and all through the aid of scientific research.

The first real substantial assistance received by the farming
public from science was in the examination and inspection of
commercial fertilizers. Liebig demonstrated that plants secured
most of their nutrition from soil ingredients. Nitrogen, potash,
and phosphoric acid were those most in demand by the plant, and
where crops were removed from the soil these articles of plant
food were diminished, thereby reducing cropping capacity. Soil
exhaustion in a measure followed if these substances were not
returned to feed subsequent crops. Natural manures (animal
excrement) contained nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid ; con-
sequently soil fertility could be maintained by the application of
these. But chemistry here came to the farmer's aid, by suggest-
ing that the various essentials of plant food be supplied in arti-
ficially prepared form. Nitrogen could be obtained from Peruvian
guano and animal matter, potash from wood ashes or German
salts, and phosphoric acid from bones ; consequently these sub-
stances could be supplied as desired. With the propagation of
this idea was developed the commercial fertilizer, and artificial
manures were made and sold on the market as is any other com-
modity. However, it was not long before much fraudulent ma-
terial found its way into the buyer's hands ; many dealers were
not honest, and farmers were often outrageously swindled. Here,

102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

again, the chemists came to the assistance of agriculture. Ferti-
lizers could be analyzed, their component parts determined, and
purchasers might learn how many pounds of plant food a ton of
artificial manure contained. Nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric
acid each had a commercial value per pound ; consequently the
chemist could easily determine in a fair manner the value of a
ton of fertilizer.

In 1872, through the efforts of Dr. C. A. Goessmann, Professor
of Chemistry in the Massachusetts Agricultural College, the Mas-
sachusetts Legislature passed a law appointing a State inspector
of fertilizers, requiring that all fertilizer manufacturers making
a fertilizer having a valuation of over twelve dollars a ton should
print on a tag attached to the bag or barrel containing the same the
percentage of nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid in the brand
sold. Samples of all fertilizers selling for over twelve dollars per
ton had first to be analyzed by the State chemist before they could
be sold in the market ; and this ofiicer, designated " inspector,"
was authorized to sample and analyze any or all fertilizers sold
in the State. This Massachusetts law was at first more or less
imperfect, but it was later on amended and made eminently satis-
factory to both the manufacturer and the consumer. Other States
followed the example of Massachusetts, and to-day there is not a
State in the Union handling fertilizers to any extent that has not
upon its statute-books laws patterned to some degree after the
Massachusetts idea, and as a result manufacturers can not with
safety sell the farmers shoddy fertilizers. Now and then a fraud-
ulent fertilizer appears, but its sale is quickly stopped by the
chemist's exposure. Only a short time ago (the summer of 1890)
two fertilizers were suddenly placed upon the Indiana market and
sold for $27.50 and $22.50 per ton, respectively. These were ana-
lyzed by the State chemist, and the former was found to have a
value of $5.7G and the latter of $4.44 per ton. These were out-
and-out swindles ; yet, had it not been for a prompt publication
from the State Experiment Station at Purdue University as to
their real character, many farmers of the State of Indiana would
have been unmercifully swindled. In view of the fact that
millions of dollars' worth of fertilizers are sold yearly in the
United States, one can readily understand how great is the sum
of money that is being yearly saved to the farmers of the country
through the interposition of the chemist.

In the Eastern and more populous part of the United States,
which has been long under cultivation, farm manures are more
highly valued than in the newer regions of the country. For
years investigators have advised that stable manure be handled
economically. Chemists argued that, unless properly protected,
these manures would lose much of their valuable properties,

HOW SCIENCE IS HELPING THE FARMER. 103

mainly through rain leaching away the soluble plant food. Fig-
ures supplied from foreign investigation were used to prove the
point. Finally, in 1889 the Cornell University Agricultural Ex-
periment Station did some practical work to demonstrate how
farmyard manure would deteriorate by leaching and fermenta-
tion.* It was shown that one ton of fresh horse manure had a
valuation of $2.45, but exposed outdoors for six months its valu-
ation was $1.42, a loss of 81.03 per ton, or forty-two per cent.
Mixed horse and cow manure, after leaching for six months,
showed a loss of 9'2 per cent, a less amount, no doubt, than occurs
on the average farm.

At the present time, while there is a vast loss of plant food to
the farms through the improper care of the manure produced
thereon, there is at the same time saved to economic use an enor-
mous amount of fertility through the careful husbanding of the
materials as produced upon the farms of those who are intelli-
gent and economical. We must give scientific investigation the
credit for thus showing husbandmen how important farm losses
may be prevented ; the numerous devices at present used on the
farm for conserving manures, such as manure sheds, pits, cellars,
etc., are money-saving equipments.

In a somewhat different direction, yet in a line where the work
of the chemist is of equal if not greater importance than in fer-
tilizer control, is the inspection of milk. Milk is the most essen-
tial article of food for human consumption, for, properly used, it
is as nearly a perfect food as is known. But milk is a fluid, and
as such is easily adulterated. It consists of from eighty-five to
eighty-eight per cent water, and twelve to fifteen per cent solid
substance — as fat, casein (cheesy matter), albumen, sugar, and ash.
On the percentage and purity of solids in milk is its quality
mainly dependent. After the selling of milk became a recognized
industry, adulteration came more or less to be practiced. The
pump was brought into requisition. Flour, chalk, and other in-
gredients were used to thicken it. In 1872 Dr. C. F. Chandler, of
Columbia College, stated t that, from long-continued investiga-
tion, the milk supply of New York and Boston receives on an
average one quart of water to every three quarts of pure milk be-
fore reaching consumers. He further says, " With the addition of
water in the proportion of one to three before delivering to con-
sumers, we find milk-growers deprived of a business which would
return to them 81,390,000 yearly, at an average first price of fifteen
cents per gallon, city consumers, on the other hand, paying more
than $3,700,000 annually for water."

* Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 13, December, 1889.
\ Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 18'72, p. 335.

104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Here the dairy farmer was either injuring his own interests or
some other fellow was hurting it. The intelligent producer real-
izes that anything that is done to injure the character of market
milk injures the general trade. Were pure milk always placed
on the market, a better price could be secured for it, and there
would not be the extensive sale for patent baby foods and con-
densed milk that there now is. To remedy this evil it became
necessary to treat milk in a measure as the fertilizers were treated,
or, in other words, determine the character of milk by analysis.
As in fertilizer control, so in milk inspection, Massachusetts was
a pioneer worker. The first act to punish fraud in the sale of
adulterated milk in Massachusetts was passed by the Legislature
in 1856. This law was ineilective, so in 1859 a new law was en-
acted, which provided for the appointment of milk inspectors in
towns and cities, whose duties it should be to detect adulteration
of milk, and secure the conviction and punishment of offenders.
This law has since been frequently amended and improved. At
the present time the Massachusetts law requires all milk to con-
tain at least thirteen per cent solids, and milk containing less than
that amount is condemned. Since the Massachusetts law was
first enacted the more progressive dairy States of the Union have
passed laws to prevent deception in the sale of dairy products,
and usually twelve per cent of solids is required in the milk
sold in the market. The London (England) milk supply is care-
fully watched by inspectors. The Aylesbury Dairy Company
of London is the largest of its kind in the world. During 1891
chemists analyzed 21,855 samples of the milk of this company,
and found before delivery 1275, during delivery 1274, and after
delivery 12"81 per cent solids, showing a very good grade of
milk.*

That substance which makes milk most palatable is the fat in
it. Good milk should have four or five ; cream, eighteen to twen-
ty-five, and butter, eighty to eighty-five per cent of fat. Skim
milk, or thin, insipid, disagreeable milk, contains a small amount
of milk fat. When we speak of rich milk, we mean that which
contains a large percentage of this substance. There are in the
United States many thousands of cows, each of which does not
produce over one fourth or one half the amount of butter it
should. The claim is made f that the average yield of our dairy
cows is not over one hundred and twenty-five pounds of butter a
year, whereas it should be three hundred pounds at the least.
Some cows produce a much larger percentage of fat or butter in
their milk than do others. The farmer should own the better

* Milch Zeitung, xxi, Nos. 11 and 12.

f The Dairy Industry, by Peter Collier, New York, 1889, p. 8.

HOW SCIENCE IS HELPING THE FARMER. 105

class of the two, the butter dairyman can only afford to keep prof-
itable cows, and the thousands of creameries over the country
can not afford to purchase good and poor milk for one and the
same price, for that is unjust to the person supplying the best
grade of milk. Consequently, for some years chemists have been
laboring to invent some simple method of determining the per-
centage of fat in milk, so that creamery men and farmers with a
common education might be able to use it, and thus test their
milk accurately. The first method for practical application among
farmers to attract very general attention was that devised by Mr.
F. G. Short, chemist to the Wisconsin Experiment Station, whose
method was published in 1888.* This, however, was somewhat
complex, and too slow of operation. Other methods were after-
ward developed by Messrs. Patrick, Parsons, Cochran, Babcock,
etc. Dr. S. M. Babcock, while chemist at the ISTew York State Ex-
periment Station, did much valuable work in the study of milk
and its products, and in 1889, after becoming chemist of the State
Experiment Station at Madison, Wis., he developed and brought
out a method for testing the fat in milk or cream that is now a
recognized success. The method is simple, and can easily be per-
formed by any person of fair intelligence. Equal quantities of
milk and sulphuric acid are placed in specially constructed bot-
tles, and these put in a simple machine, largely consisting of a tin
cylinder or wheel, about fifteen or twenty inches in diameter, re-
volving on its side, within which, after the manner of spokes, are
cups or pockets, in which these bottles are placed. The wheel is
revolved by a crank and cog movement, and by centrifugal force
and the action of the acid the fat in the milk is separated from
the rest of the fluid. Enough hot water is added to each bottle
to fill the measuring neck, and the fat, after five or six minutes'
turning of the machine, comes to the top clear and yellow, after
which the amount present may be read upon the graduated lines
on the sides of the long neck of the bottle. The milk of as many
as twenty-four cows can be tested in an hour. Machines of from
four to fifty bottles capacity are manufactured.

This invention, the result of long and laborious scientific re-
search, is not patented, and is largely used in the creameries of
Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and many other States in the purchas-
ing of milk. The patrons of the creameries are paid for their
milk according to its quality, as decided by the Babcock machine.
Such a method as this is a blessing to the country, for it informs
the farmer if his milk is inferior to that of his neighbor, and will
consequently incite him to improve his stock.

* University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 16, July, 1888.
A New Method for determinins Fat in Milk.

io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Babcock milk-testing machine is now just as generally-
sold by dairy firms as is an improved cburn or butter- worker.

One of the most wonderful of agricultural inventions is the
centrifugal or milk separator. Briefly, this machine is designed
to separate the cream from the milk as soon as drawn from the
cow, thus dispensing with the old process of setting milk and
waiting for the cream to rise by gravity. At the International
Dairy Show at Hamburg, in 1877, an instrument was exhibited*
consisting of two wheels in a stand, one of which actuated the
other by means of a belt. In the upper wheel four glass tubes
containing milk were securely placed, and the lower wheel was
then revolved, giving the upper upward of one thousand revolu-
tions per minute. Whirling at this speed brought centrifugal
force to bear on the milk in the tubes, and the cream, being light-
est, collected at one end and the skim milk at the other, f

In 1879 De Laval, a Swede, exhibited to the British public at
Kilburn a centrifugal separator entirely unlike the preceding one,
and this machine of De Laval, in principle and general plan, is
the form now commonly used over Europe and America. Milk,
warm from the cow, is conveyed into a hollow steel drum about
ten inches in diameter, which is made to revolve six thousand to
seven thousand times per minute within a slightly larger metal
chamber. The skim milk, being heavier, is thrown to the outside,
and passes off through a tube which rises from a point in the
skim milk where the least amount of fat exists to the upper edge
of the drum ; while the lighter cream rises near the center of the
drum and passes off through another hole, coming out of the
separator on the opposite side from the skim milk. One or two
thousand pounds of milk an hour may be creamed with this ma-
chine, when run by horse or steam power. Several other designs
of centrifugals have more recently been invented, some of greater
capacity than the De Laval, but at the present day the modern De
Laval's is unsurpassed. For small dairies De Laval invented a
hand separator, which is known as " the baby separator." With
the No. 2 size one person can separate the cream from three hun-
dred pounds of milk in an hour, the drum making six thousand
revolutions per minute to forty-two turns of the crank.

The manufacture of this cream separator has been followed
by the invention and introduction within the past two years of a
combined cream separator and butter extractor, which makes it

* Sheldon, Dairy Farming, p. 303.

•)• An editorial in Farm and Fireside, for June 1, 1892, states tbat the cream separator
has been in process of evolution for thirty-three years, and that the first known application
of centrifugal force for creaming milk was made in 1859. Dairy authorities, so far as I can
learn, give no data on the subject preceding that quoted al)ove in the text. — C. S. P.

BOW SCIENCE IS HELPING THE FARMER. 107

practicable to run milk into the machine and take from it butter,
thus avoiding the handling of the cream at all.

The cream separator enables the dairyman to dispense with
numerous utensils ordinarily used in setting milk, and in hot
climates is invaluable, as it saves much of the great expense of
ice. Centrifugal cream is unexcelled. In a comparatively few
years these valuable dairy utensils will be commonly found in use
on the dairy farms of the country.

Never before in the history of man have agricultural plants
apparently suffered so greatly from parasitic vegetable growths
and injurious insects. The conditions of growth have been made
so much more intense for many plants that they have in conse-
quence, in certain directions, thus made themselves more vulner-
able to the attacks of parasites and insects. Some insects have
been deprived of their normal food in a large degree, and have
sought sustenance in agricultural crops. The destruction of these
ravagers meant the saving of valuable crops ; consequently much
important experimental work has been accomplished with fungi-
cides and insecticides.

For two score of years the grape rot has caused immense
damage in the vineyards of the Eastern United States. A small
plant, so minute as to require a high-power microscope to bring
it to view, feeds upon the juices of the tender leaves and ber-
ries of the grape, blasting and ruining the fruit. The parasite
matures and ripens its spores or seeds in vast quantities, and
these are blown over adjacent vines and the disease more widely
scattered.

Within a few years the botanists of both Europe and America
began to devise means to prevent this malady. After long ex-
perimental work with fungicides and spraying machines, a mix-
ture of sulphate of copper (six pounds), unslaked lime (four
pounds), and water (forty-five gallons), termed Bordeaux mixture,
was adopted,* which, when sprayed on the vines several times
during the growing season before the grapes became ripe, com-
pletely prevented the ravages of the rot. Applications are made
after the buds have started, and four or five times later on. Ex-
periments, generally conducted by scientists with the Bordeaux
mixture, have shown it to be most excellent for preventing nu-
merous diseases of plants caused by parasitic growth. The method
is cheap, and small hand machines, or large pump tanks with
spraying attachments and drawn by teams, are made, by which
one can rapidly and effectively spray large areas at comparatively
slight expense. So extensive is the use of Bordeaux mixture be-
coming that all along the Hudson and in other grape regions, in

* American Gardening, April, 1892, p. 260.

io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vineyards of the country, this is the method employed to save the
crop from black rot, mildew, etc.

In the cereal-growing regions, oats and wheat are frequently
damaged by the ravages of smut, a disease nearly all farmers are
familiar with, which destroys the seed or the entire head. This
smut is a mass of spores or seeds of a parasitic plant ripened in
the seed grain. The spores are scattered over the field, and min-
gle among the grain when thrashed out. The grain is planted in
the fall or spring, and the spores of the parasite germinate and
grow along with the young plant, feeding on its juices. When
the head of the plant begins to mature its seed it is blasted by the
smut.

A simple remedy has been devised to combat the smut of oats
and what is known as " bunt " or stinking smut of wheat. Inves-
tigations begun by Prof. Jensen, a Danish scientist, and also con-
ducted at the Kansas and Purdue University Experiment Sta-
tions, conclusively show that by soaking the seeds of these cereals
in water at a temperature of 135° to 140° Fahr. for five minutes
all the spores were killed, and the crop from the treated seed
would grow free of the malady. This simple method, costing
nothing for materials, bids fair to be extensively used in future.
It is estimated, as a result of investigation, that ten per cent of the
oat crop is destroyed by smut. In 1889 the oat crop of Indiana
amounted to 28,710,935 bushels. The value of the estimated ten
per cent of loss is $797,520 for 3,190,104 bushels of oats at 25 cents
a bushel. Certainly, if this sum can be saved it should be.

Few people realize the enormous loss to agriculture through
the ravages of insects. In his annual address before the Associa-
tion of Economic Entomologists at Washington in August, 1891,
Mr. James Fletcher, the president, gave important facts concern-
ing the extent of the losses from insect ravages. In 18G4, Dr.
Shimer estimated the loss to the corn and grain crops of Illinois
to be $73,000,000. In 1874, Dr. Riley estimated a loss to Missouri
by insects of 819,000,000. In 1887, Prof. Osborne, of the Iowa Agri-
cultural College, estimated the loss to Iowa by insects at $25,000,-
000. Mr. L. O. Howard, in 1887, estimates $00,000,000 losses from
chinch bug in nine States ; and Prof. Comstock estimates that the
cotton Aletia in 1879 caused a loss of $30,000,000 in the cotton
States. Finally, Mr. Fletcher estimates $380,000,000 as the sum
total per year for losses from insect ravages.

There are numerous illustrations available to demonstrate
how great are the services of scientific research, from an ento-
mological point of view, to agriculture, but I will refer to only
three, as these are of striking interest and serve to illustrate the
work.

The citrus industry of California is a great one, involving

HOW SCIENCE IS HELPING THE FARMER. 109

hundreds of thousands of dollars. What is known as the fluted
scale insect had for about twenty-five years a foothold in the
orange and lemon groves, and bade fair to cause enormous losses
to the orchardists. A study was made of the parasites affecting
this scale insect, and in 1888 the United States Government sent
two entomologists to Australia to study the parasites of the scale
insects in that country, and bring live specimens to California to
distribute in the orange and lemon groves. Suffice it to say that
these parasites rapidly multiplied and fed upon both the white
and fluted scale, to their destruction. With surprising rapidity
the beneficial insect destroyed the injurious one. Says Dr. C. V.
Riley, United States Entomologist,* " The history of the introduc-
tion of this pest (scale insect), its spread for upward of twenty
years, and the discouragement which resulted, the numerous ex-
periments which were made to overcome the insect, and its final
reduction to unimportant numbers by means of an apparently in-
significant little beetle imported for the purpose from Australia,
will always remain one of the most interesting stories in the rec-
ords of practical entomology."

I have just quoted Mr. Howard's statement that the chinch
bug in 1887 caused $60,000,000 of losses in nine States. A few
years ago the attention of entomologists was drawn to the fact
that chinch bugs occasionally died in large numbers from a pecul-
iar disease. The bugs were found on the ground dead and cov-
ered with a white fungus. This disease seemed to be infectious,
and several entomologists gave special attention to the matter.
Prof. F. H. Snow, of the University of Kansas, pushed the inves-
tigation and thought it possible to artificially induce the disease
and communicate it to healthy bugs, and thus diminish their
numbers, and for the past three years Prof. Snow has worked
upon this line. The Legislature of Kansas appropriated $3,500
for carrying on his investigations during 1891-'92.

In his annual report to the Governor of Kansas, describing his
investigations. Prof. Snow gives a list of 1,400 persons who con-
ducted experiments under his direction in 1891, to assist in dis-
seminating the disease. Of these 1,071 were successful, 181 unsuc-
cessful, and 148 doubtful, in their attempts. As a result of their
season's work. Prof. Snow estimates that, on the basis of the re-
ports rendered, 8200,000 in crops were saved to those 1,071 persons
who worked under his instruction.! Four hundred and eighty-
two farmers reported to him an estimated saving of 887,244.10
through scattering the diseased insects among the healthy, thus

* United States Department of Agriculture Report, 1889, pp. 334, 335.
f University of Kansas Experiment Station, First Annual Report of the Director, for the
Year 1891, p. 171.

no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

resulting in the rapid destruction of all. While this is experi-
mental work, and may not invariably give the satisfactory results
to be wished for, it illustrates in a striking manner one way in
which science is working in the interests of agriculture.

In 1887 what is known as the gypsy moth ( Oc?ierm dispar) was
discovered in eastern Massachusetts. This insect was originally
brought to Massachusetts from France, where it is exceedingly de-
structive to vegetation, and especially the foliage of trees. When
first found in Massachusetts its character was not known by the
finder, but when later examined by Prof. Fernald, of the State
Agricultural College, he, knowing its nature, at once began an in-
vestigation to ascertain how much of a foothold it had in the
State. It was located in numerous towns. The Legislature was
advised of the dangerous character of the insect. A State law
was enacted to provide against the depredations of the gypsy
moth. Several commissioners were appointed and money appro-
priated to eradicate the insect. During the entire growing season
of 1892 bands of men were engaged in destroying this insect in
its various forms, and every effort is being made to prevent its
further increase.

Perhaps the most serviceable labor given by science to the
cultivator, in its application to insects, is the invention and per-
fection of insecticides. A great number of experiments have
been conducted in agricultural colleges and experiment stations
over the country with solutions and powders with which to kill
injurious insects. Arsenic in different preparations, carbolized
plaster, kerosene, hellebore, pyrethrum, hot water, and Bordeaux
mixture have been in use and tested in many ways, so that, as a
result of this work, standard insecticides can be recommended to
farmers generally, which may be easily made at home out of sim-
ple ingredients. What is termed the kerosene emulsion is per-
haps, all things considered, the best general insecticide in use.
This may be made as follows, following Cook's directions : * Dis-
solve in two quarts of water one quart of soft soap or one fourth
pound of hard soap, by heating to boiling ; then add one pint of
kerosene oil, and stir violently for from three to five minutes.
This can then be diluted with twice its bulk of water for use.
This emulsion will destroy lice on both live stock and jDlants.

Finally, we have in the United States nearly fifty experiment
stations where trained men are working in the interests of agri-
culture — men whose one aim is to conduct research of benefit to
mankind. Considering this fact, and that numerou-s scientists
outside of the stations are also engaged in a class of work that of

* Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 76, October, 1891, p. 5. Kero-
sene emulsion.

DIETARY FOR THE SICK. in

necessity is of value to agriculture, farmers should feel satisfied
that their interests are being well looked after outside the pale of
politics. It requires no effort to emphatically show that already
many, many millions of dollars have been gained to agriculture
through the disinterested efforts of scientists. Scientific investi-
gation will continue in the future as it has in the past, and it is
fair to assume that each year will see much good work done.
Certainly no other class of labor is receiving greater benefits from
science than is agriculture at the present day.

DIETARY FOR THE SICK.

Bt Sir DYCE DUCKWORTH, M.D., LL. D.,

PHT9ICIAK A2sD LZCTUEEK OX ITEDICIXE AT ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAX ;
HON. PHYSICIAIT TO H. R. H. THE PEIXCE OF WALES.

IN the practice of medicine as now carried on, one marked
feature is the particular and detailed attention directed to the
diet. It thus happens that as much heed is paid to "kitchen
physic " as to pharmaceutical agents. Dietetics, according to
modern enlightenment, has secured careful study, more particu-
larly within the last quarter of this century, and the subject was
certainly insufficiently appreciated before that time. Now, guided
by the researches of the physiologist and the chemist, we have
more exact knowledge to bring to bear in the dietetic treatment
of many morbid states, and a good deal of this knowledge is now
well established and beyond dispute.

The duty of the practical physician is to apply this knowledge
and to test it in his efforts to re-establish health. And here, as in
the case of the employment of drugs, we have to consider the
clinical side of the question, apart from the researches of the
physiologist and the chemist in their laboratories. The progress
of our art depends on the steady work of both sets of investiga-
tors. The ultimate appeal is to the clinical results. In the matter
of diet we meet with strange differences of opinion — differences
relating to the employment and value of sometimes very simple
forms of aliment. Some of these plainly arise from ignorance in
respect of the properties and qualities of certain foods. Some of
them result from the foisting of mere personal or of very limited
experience of such articles on patients ; and some of them can only
be described as mere vagaries and " fads."

The whole subject has naturally a large interest for several
classes of patients, notably among the weU-to-do, the luxurious,
the hypochondriacal, and the dyspeptic. Such persons having
exhausted many methods of drug treatment, resorted to spas,

112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

undergone massage with incarceration, and found temporary sal-
vation in sipping hot water, pass from one consultant to another
seeking the last new paradox in dietetics. They will continue to
do so, and the more if they fall into the hands of those who give
them really judicious advice. They dislike that, and it is indeed
seldom helpful to such persons. In this brief communication I
shall have nothing to say in respect of them.

We may fairly remark that we are in danger of being per-
plexed by the number of patent and proprietary articles of food
daily brought under our notice. The chemists, especially the
Continental and American, try to help us in our daily work by
contriving the most subtle, and often palatable, preparations of
nutrient materials. And, not content with this, they would fain
abolish almost the entire Pharmacopijeia, and offer food and physic
in one ; aiding themselves in this bold effort by the most fantastic
and obtrusive advertisements, which pass one's best ingenuity to
escape from. Strange to say, they compel attention from persons
who should know better, and should use calm judgment in sweep-
ing most of them aside. So it happens that one frequently finds
many of these vaunted preparations in use by persons who have
not even a bare knowledge of their qualities and powers for good
or evil.

The mischief of all this in respect of foods and new drugs is,
as I have before now stated, that the practitioners in trying, as
they think, to keep pace with the times, lose their hold of well-
approved methods and therapeutic agents, which drop out to make
way for something new and unapproved. They thus fail in the
art of medicine, which I make bold to say is less well established
to-day than it was, in many respects, half a century ago, and
chiefly because of this pursuit of novelties.

We have witnessed many changes of opinion respecting some
of the commonest articles of diet for the sick. The old view, that
calves'-feet jelly was of exceeding nutritive value, was at one time
so controverted that the jelly ceased to be much used. It is now
sanctioned as having a place in dietetics, and I believe it may be
safely regarded as a temporary form of nourishment of no incon-
siderable value.

Beef -tea has been in and out of repute, but we have, or should
have, no doubt now as to its stimulant and reparative properties.
We can not think lightly of it as commonly prepared, for it can
certainly prove harmful, when not desirable, as in the case of
rheumatic fever. I believe it is right to withhold it in such cases.
Again, it is so far apt to act as an aperient that it is best not to
employ it in enteric fever, or in diarrhoea, when the bowels are
in an irritable condition. Mutton, veal, or chicken essences can,
however, be used, having no such aperient action. We have to

DIETARY FOR THE SICK. 113

distinguish between a dietary suitable for acute disease, when we
have to wait and tide over diflBculties, and one that may be better
adapted to restore a convalescent or weakly patient. The highest
nutritive value may not be (I think it is not) the most essential
point to have regard to in selecting a dietary in acute diseases.*

In most cases of acute disease, beef tea, freshly prepared, can
well be taken and digested. It is now often peptonized, and I be-
lieve for clinical purposes this is generally unnecessary, unless
there is manifest failure of secretion of gastric juice. This re-
mark applies equally to milk, which is also too often given pep-
tonized. I feel sure that we do best to administer nutriment in
the most natural and unaltered forms when possible — that is, with
as little of culinary or medicinal interference as may be ; to give
it, in fact, fresh from Nature's laboratory.

In many illnesses it is well to vary the broths given, changing
from beef to mutton, veal, or chicken, and so providing variety
for the patient. Milk and veal broth may often be given together^
Alcoholized liquids are best not administered with animal broths.
These are better given separately, but brandy, rum, or whisky
may be given with milk.

It is, unfortunately, a good rule to boil milk before using it,
especially in the case of children and young persons. This no
doubt averts many of the evils of milk diet, and may also prevent
some specific diseases. I say unfortunately, because I suspect
boiling much damages the nutritive value of a secretion such as
milk. Dilution with barley water, lime water, or the addition of
sodium bicarbonate, certainly aids its digestibility in children and
adults, both in health and disease ; the bicarbonate being prefer-
able if there is constipation. Whey is of considerable value for
many dyspeptics, and also in enteritis, typhlitis, and intestinal
obstruction, and may be freely given. Isinglass boiled in milk is
very useful, and children readily take this in the form of blanc-
mange when not too firm in consistence. Alum whey is of much
avail in diarrhoea, and in cases of enteric fever with haemorrhage.
One drachm of powdered alum is added to a pint of hot milk, and
the whey strained off. Cream with an equal volume of hot water
can often be taken when milk disagrees.

Koumiss has considerable value in cases of great irritability of
the gastric mucous surface. Koumiss one week old I find the most
useful, and I have often known troublesome vomiting checked by
it. Few plans are better than that of employing milk with one

* Thus alcohol, which is by some denied to have any nutrient property whatever, will,
with water, maintain life for days in some cases of acute illness, to the exclu.-iou of any
other articles of diet I consider alcoholized liquids as food, for both ordinary and clinical
purposes

VOL. XLIII. — 9

114 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

third of its volume of lime water, given in teaspoonful doses each,
quarter of an hour by the clock, in rebellious vomtiting of reflex
origin. This quantity will be retained when larger ones will be
rapidly rejected.

The inability to digest amylaceous food when pyrexia is present
is generally recognized : hence the principle of milk and beef-tea
diet in fever. I would strongly urge the employment of occasional
draughts of pure water in fever. This is much neglected. Patients
are plied with strong essence of beef. Brand's jelly, and milk with
stimulants — all this ad nauseam, but a cooling draught of water is
withheld. Water, however, is generally relished, and is of real
service. It promotes appetite for the next food, and cleans the
mouth.

The nutritive value of purely amylaceous foods has been de-
cried, but, I think, with no satisfactory clinical reason. Arrow-
root prepared with water only, or with milk, is certainly sufficiently
sustaining for many invalids who temporarily can not take bread.
In gastric and gastro-enteric catarrh it is of much service, and
diarrhoea may sometimes be checked by stirring into a cupful of
milk-arrowroot half a teaspoonful of raw arrowroot powder, and
ten grains of powdered cinnamon.

Eggs often disagree because of their albuminous constituents.
The yolk alone can often be taken with advantage in soup or in
milk, or beaten up with spirit.

In the treatment of febrile states, tea and coffee are too often
omitted, without reason, from the dietary. They will enable cases
to go on well with a diminished amount of alcohol. Cold tea with
cream is an excellent refreshment early in the morning after pro-
fuse sweats in phthisis. One meets with patients who have been
forbidden butcher's meat, but allowed to eat chicken or game. I
am at a loss to understand the reason for this. I recognize the
greater digestibility of the latter as a rule, although I much doubt
if there is really any difference if the beef or mutton be tender
and of good quality. If, as I conceive, there is an idea that the
one tends to plethora and vascular tension, or is apt to induce uric-
acid disturbances, while the other does not, I should be prepared
to controvert that idea, believing that all these flesh foods fall into
the same category. With fish the case is different, and large meat-
eaters may sometimes with advantage be ordered to substitute
fish. It is hardly possible for any one to overeat himself on fish,
and, whatever may be the explanation of the fact, I am satisfied
that great mental energy and capacity may be secured by occa-
sional meals of white fish to the exclusion of other animal food.

It were well if greater heed were paid to the treatment of the
patient than is commonly bestowed on that of the disease. One
not rarely finds measures adopted for the latter, and no thought

DIETARY FOR THE SICK. 115

bestowed on the subject of it. It is always necessary to treat the
patient, and sometimes what is seemingly necessary for his ail-
ment is very poor treatment for him, if too long kept up. We
especially note this in respect of the employment of wine and
stimulants, and in the conduct of cases of Bright's disease and of
chronic gout,

I think well of the skim-milk treatment in cases of chronic
tubal nephritis. But it is not always well borne by the patient.
He may fail to be sufficiently nourished by it, and a time comes
when the diet must be altered. There is a large variety of foods
available in this condition : bread, biscuit, butter, light farinaceous
pudding, sometimes with eg^ in it, potatoes, spinach and other
green vegetables, with cooked fruit. The albuminuria is often
not materially increased in chronic cases if fish be given once a
day, or the yolks of two eggs be added to the diet. Fat bacon
may also be taken. And on alternate days we may sometimes
give a little mutton or chicken, without any apparent harm to
the disease, and with material benefit to the patient. The con-
dition of the urine must be carefully noted in making these
amendments. Certainly, in some cases, the " large white kidney "
is an expression of a frail and feeble constitution, and has not
always the same significance. A better level of general nutrition,
directed in relation to the renal adequacy, may much aid in help-
ing the kidneys to recovery. It is surely wrong to starve the
patient while aiming only to rid him of his ailment. Of course,
age, habits, constitution, and tissue-proclivity must be had regard
to in all such cases.

The treatment of acute phases of dysentery by absolute milk
diet I believe to be excellent ; and I agree with those Indian au-
thorities who forbid the least addition of animal broth or of fari-
naceous matters to it, possibly for many consecutive weeks.

In many cases of gout and gouty habit of body I often find in-
adequate diet prescribed, and a frail, painful condition of body as
the result. In such cases, again, each person is to be studied as to
his previous habits, inherited proclivities, and textural condition.
The prohibition of meat and wine is often bad, and gouty mani-
festations will be held in check, not seldom, by a good diet and
the use of some trustworthy wine. The tendency now is to make
all gouty persons avoid meat, and drink whisky in routine fash-
ion, or to take to water-drinking. The latter plan has its place,
but many sufferers from gout, in both sexes, are better with some
wine. If they starve themselves of what they formerly took,
perhaps in moderation, and of what their progenitors took per-
haps too freely, they will not so much have gout as gout will
have them — as has been quaintly remarked. Such persons must
attain their highest level of good health, and live above their

ii6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gout, or they will never be free from -untoward symptoms, and
will become miserable. Water-drinking at this stage of onr
social evolution is not, I feel very sure, the summum bonum for
humanity.

The tendency to drink whisky, now so common, is not all due
to medical prescription, as is often alleged. If good wines were
readily procurable at fair prices, especially at hotels, more would
be drunk. People resort to whisky because they know it is com-
monly to be depended on, whereas wine is dear and bad, and they
seek at once to relieve their digestion and save their purses. They
take far more alcohol, and lose the wholesomeness of the many
other good things to be found in a moderate use of honest and
sound wine. " Cheap claret " has done no good in England, but
much harm, and intelligent persons now hardly know the differ-
ence between a vintage of the Mddoc and the abominable stuffs
that issue from Bordeaux, gathered from all other wine-growing
countries, and called " claret." This has been well termed " red
ink at a shilling, or, it may be, six shillings, a bottle." These
compounds are disastrous to digestion, and it is small wonder that
invalids and others resort to whisky. Real M^doc wine is never
advertised for sale, but consumers have now ready means of
knowing where to procure it.

The present agitations in favor of temperance, which should
rather be termed efforts to abolish all alcoholic drinks, have, I
believe, led members of our profession to neglect this important
part of the subject of dietetics, and prevented their gaining an ade-
quate knowledge of the nature and qualities of wine, a knowledge
every physician should possess. Were this more commonly in
possession, we should not hear such discrepant statements respect-
ing wines dogmatically laid down by members of our profession.

Perhaps I should offer an apology for many of the remarks I
have ventured to make in this communication, both because I
have set down little that is new, and may also have appeared to
uproot some well-grown opinions. I will only add, however, that
I believe I have stated nothing that will not be found to be true
and helpful in the daily practice of our art. — TTie Practitioner.

A NOVELTY in scientific photography is the photograph of a meteor, which was
ohtained by Mr. John E. Lewis, of Ansonia, Conn., while trying to photograph
Holmes's comet. The path of the meteor is shown as a bright, clear-cut, almost
straight diagonal line running across the plate, and reaching across about eighteen
degrees of the heavens. Where the line enters the field it shows minute varia-
tions indicating irregularities in the amount of the meteor's light ; the rest of the
line is sharp and level, and of about the breadth of a lead-pencil mark. At every
point it appears brighter after only an instantaneous exposure than any of the
stars, which were subjected to an expobure of thirty-three minutes.

SKETCH OF SAMUEL WILLIAM JOHNSON. 117

SKETCH OF SAMUEL WILLIAM JOHNSON.

PROF. SAMUEL WILLIAM JOHNSON is eminent for the
services which he has rendered to scientific agriculture as an
experimenter, a contributor to its literature, and a teacher ; and
for his agency, always active and earnest, in securing the intro-
duction of whatever could advance its standards or add to the
prosperity of the farming interest. A descendant of Robert John-
son, one of the founders of the town of New Haven, he was born
in Kingsboro, Fulton County, New York, July 3, 1830. When he
was four years old the family removed to Deer River, Lewis
County, in the "Black River country.'" He was taught in the
common school and in Lowville Academy, where he studied Latin,
Greek, French, algebra, physics, botany, and chemistry. His
home, says the American Agriculturist, was upon a large, pro-
ductive, and well-managed farm, where he became familiar with
a wide range of agricultural practice. He taught in the common
schools during the winters of 1846-'47 and 184:7-'48, and during
1848-'49 was teacher of natural science in the Flushing Institute,
Long Island. In 1850 he entered the Yale Scientific School, where
he spent eighteen months under Profs. John P. Norton and B.
Silliman, Jr., studying agricultural chemistry. He served during
the winter of 1851-52 as instructor in the natural sciences in the
New York State Normal School at Albany. Having spent the
succeeding winter in work in the laboratory at New Haven, he
went to Germany in January, 1853, where he spent two years in
study at Leipsic and Munich, under Erdmann, Liebig, von Kobell,
and Pettenkofer. Thence he went to England, visiting the Paris
Exposition on the way, and spent the summer of 1855 in study
under Frankland.

In September, 1855, he became Chief Assistant in Chemistry in
the Scientific School of Yale College, and took charge of the labo-
ratory. The next year he was appointed Professor of Analytical
Chemistry in that school, and in 1857 he took charge also, succeed-
ing Prof. John A. Porter, of the chair of Agricultural Chemistry.
In 1875 he became Professor of Theoretical and Agricultural
Chemistry ; and, in addition to the performance of these several
duties, he has taught organic chemistry since 1870.

With the establishment of the State Board of Agriculture of
Connecticut in 1866, Prof. Johnson was constituted one of its
members. On expiration of his term of service, two years after-
ward, he was appointed chemist to the board, and has served in
that capacity ever since. He began to advocate the establish-
ment of a State Agricultural Experiment Station as early as 1873.
The act of the Legislature organizing the station was passed in

ii8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

1877, and, on its going into effect. Prof. Johnson was appointed
director. " For many years," says the Rural New-Yorker, " the
station was confined to two small rooms, and the appliances and
works of reference were for the most part loaned from Yale
College or borrowed from the professor's private laboratory and
library."

Mr. Johnson began his literary work while still a student,
writing for the agricultural papers. Among the earliest of his
publications of general interest was an address before the State
Agricultural Society of Connecticut, in 1866, on Fraud in Chem-
ical Fertilizers. This was followed by the adoption of measures
intended to protect buyers of fertilizers against imposition through
adulterations. As chemist to the State Agricultural Society he
made a series of reports on fertilizers in 1857, 1858, and 1859, by
means of which knowledge on the subject was extended, and
frauds received a further check. Besides his official reports,
" which have been models for works of their kind," Prof. John-
son's writings include many contributions to the agricultural
press, which have been highly appreciated, and several books on
the special subjects of his studies. The best known of these are
How Crops Grow ; How Crops Feed ; Peat and its Uses as Fer-
tilizer and Fuel. The earliest and best known of these books —
How Crops Grow, published in 18G8 — embodied the results of
stvdies undertaken by the author in preparing instruction in
agricultural science. Together with its companion volume — How
Crops Feed — it was intended to present concisely but fully the
state of the science at the time regarding the nutrition of the
higher plants, and the relations of the atmosphere, water, and soil
to agricultural vegetation. In it the chemical composition of
agricultural plants was described in detail, the substances indis-
pensable to their growth were indicated, and an account was
given of the apparatus and processes by which the plant takes up
its food. The book was received with great favor in America and
in Europe. It was republished in England under the joint editor-
ship of Profs. Church and Dyer, of the Royal Agricultural Col-
lege at Cirencester ; a translation of it was published in Germany
under the instigation of Prof. Liebig ; and other versions of it
have been made in Swedish, Italian, and Japanese, and twice in
Russian.

In view of the great advance that had been made in all branches
of science, a new edition of How Crops Grow was issued in 1890,
in which the purpose was guarded of bringing the treatise up to
date as fully as possible without greatly enlarging its bulk or
changing its essential character.

The account of the sources of the food of plants, which were
noticed in this volume in only the briefest manner, was reserved

SKETCH OF SAMUEL WILLIAM JOHNSON. 119

for the next book, its complement. How Plants Feed, published
in 1870. It was exclusively occupied with the subject of vege-
table nutrition. The writer, the author said, did not flatter him-
self that he had produced a popular book. " He has not sought
to excite the imagination with high-wrought pictures of over-
flowing fertility as the immediate result of scientific discussion
or experiment ; nor has he attempted to make a show of revolu-
tionizing his subject by bold or striking speculations. His office
has been to digest the cumbrous mass of evidence in which the
truths of vegetable nutrition lie buried out of the reach of the
ordinary inquirer, and to set them forth in proper order and in
plain dress for their legitimate and sober uses." The author's
method was to bring forth all accessible facts, to present their
evidence on the topic under discussion, and dispassionately to
record their verdict. The books were therefore commended to
students of agriculture on the farm or in the school. Besides these
books. Prof. Johnson edited Fresenius's Quantitative Analysis,
and two editions of his Qualitative Analysis.

The American Agriculturist names Prof. Johnson as one of
the trio, consisting of Johnson, Gossman, and the late Dr. Cook,
of New Jersey, " who have done so much for agricultural science
and experimentation."

The purposes and efforts of Prof. Johnson to make the Con-
necticut Agricultural Experiment Station of practical benefit to
farmers are obvious to every one who inquires into the character
of the work done there, or who will peruse a series of the re-
ports of the institution. These reports are consistently animated
by the single thought of those particular features of agricultural
science in which the farmers are most immediately interested.
One of the predominant crops of the State is grass ; the thing the
farmers most need to make their agriculture profitable is econom-
ical and efficient fertilizers. Accordingly, we find these among
the subjects most conspicuously presented. It would be impracti-
cable to go over all the reports seeking instances of this happy
adaptation of investigations to the peculiar wants of the people
whom it was the station-director's purpose to serve ; but two or
three from the later reports will illustrate this characteristic of
his work. Attention is directed in the report for 1886 to the
important relation of the mechanical constitution of soils to the
growth of plants. Very little practical benefit, the author ob-
serves, is commonly obtained from the analysis of any special
soil beyond the detection of some deleterious ingredient, or prov-
ing the relative deficiency of one or more needful elements. In
most of the cases where the station had undertaken to make soil
analyses, the results had probably disappointed those who sup-
plied the samples. It was pointed out as an obvious defect of the

120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MO^THLY.

ordinary chemical analysis that it could give at the best only an
imperfect or one-sided view of the character of the soil. Two
soils might agree fairly in chemical composition, and yet differ
extremely in their fertility. Again, two soils might be about
equally productive, and yet have unlike chemical composition.
The physical characters of a soil — the texture, porosity, tenacity,
amenability to tillage, retentiveness for water, capacity for heat,
etc. — equally with the chemical composition, influence its product-
iveness and value. These considerations had been appreciated for
a long time, attempts had been made to take account of the phys-
ical capacities of soils ; and of late years much attention had been
bestowed upon their mechanical analysis — that is, on separating
into various grades, according to the dimensions of their parti-
cles. Such mechanical analysis was in most cases essential to
any conclusive investigation of a soil.

In the report for 1887 the intention was declared to include
in the forage garden of the station specimens of all the grasses
found in Connecticut. There were about one hundred and twenty
species of grasses in the' State, of which eighty-one were then
growing in the garden. Prominence was given to persistent
meadow, pasture, and lawn grasses, and to those which continu-
ally reproduce by culture and seeding ; also to other forage plants,
sedges, etc. The question of methods of improving Connecticut
grass lands so as to make them more productive and more perma-
nent, wherever that was desirable, was declared a question of the
first importance. To answer such questions, it is needed to know
more about the plants of this character which would grow in the
State with less care than others, and with no expense for seeding,
their habits of growth, seed production, fitness for meadow and
pasture on different soils, feeding value, rooting peculiarities,
growth with other varieties, possible improvement by cultivation
or by selection of seed, and the effect of different fertilizers. A
more general and closer observation of the appearance and be-
havior of all the useful grasses was also needed, so that they
might be known by botanists and farmers at sight through the
spring, summer, and fall. Names were needed, also, which should
be current everywhere, free from all confusion ; because without
names there could be no discussion of grasses away from the
grasses themselves.

With this eminently practical direction and purpose of his
work. Prof. Johnson is a devoted student of science, and an ear-
nest advocate of scientific methods of investigation. He has a
pleasant, modest manner, a full knowledge of human nature, and
"a practical conception of what farmers want of agricultural
experiment stations." As a writer, " his style is clear and con-
cise, yet delightfully smooth, and most agreeably finished."

EDITOR'S TABLE.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SOUND WOEDS ON EDUCATION.

THE article of President Eliot to
which we called attention three
months ago dealt with the subject of
education mainly in its intellectual as-
pect. In a recent number of the Con-
temporary Review we tind an article
entitled The Teacher's Training of Him-
self, which discusses the same subject,
but mainly from the moral point of
view. The author is Dr. "Weldon, head
master of Harrow, and the article is a
reproduction of an address delivered by
him before the Birmingham Teachers'
Association. Seldom, if ever, have we
found more of sound sense and right
feeling in any discussion of the general
subject of education than is contained
in this essay of Dr. Weldon's. From
first to last it may be said to be a plea
for that which, according to Dr. J. M,
Rice, is so conspicuously lacking in most
of our own public schools — sympathy.
The writer sees that this, above all
things, is needed to vivify education and
make it what it ought to be, a blessing
both to the giver and the receiver — to
prevent it, indeed, from becoming posi-
tively injurious in its effects. Is it due
simply to mental inertness and inferi-
ority on the part of the mass of society
that there is on the whole so little love
of knowledge and so little pleasure in
intellectual efibrt ? May it not be in a
measure due to the fact that in child-
hood the acquisition of knowledge was
carried on under more or less repulsive
conditions with the mental faculties only
half aroused and the sympathetic or emo-
tional nature wholly untouched, except
in so far as it may have been moved to
opposition ?

It is the first step, says Dr. "Weldon,
in the teacher's self-culture to realize
the dignity of his profession, which,
though it may lack the distinction be-

longing to the pulpit, the platform, or
the bar, has "this signal advantage, that
in all its branches and among its hum-
blest no less than its highest representa-
tives, it aspires constantly to two ob-
jects that are among the worthiest of
which human nature is capable — name-
ly, the promotion of virtue and the in-
crease of knowledge." He places the
promotion of virtue first, but in actual
practice we fear that the amount of at-
tention given in public schools of the
ordinary type, here or elsewhere, to that
special object is far from commensurate
with its recognized importance. The
discipline of the school is often said to
be of itself a powerful moral influence ;
and so it would be if the discipline were
maintained in any large degree by the
help of sympathy ; but if it is enforced
in the thoroughly unsympathetic way
described by Dr. Rice we fear it can
hardly be counted on for any very
moralizing effects.

We must, however, pass over much
that we would wish to note in Dr. Wel-
don's address, in order to leave space for
a few of his more striking remarks.
The following are worth quoting and
remembering :

" If a teacher is to train others, still
more must he train himself. ... The
reason is that the influence of every
teacher depends not upon what he says,
nor even upon what he does, but upon
what he is. He can not be greater or
better than himself. He can not teach
nobly, if he is not himself noble.

" It is sadly true that we as teachers
may make mistakes. We may break the
bruised reed ; we may quench the smok-
ing flax. By making the young dislike
us we may make them dislike the sub-
jects we represent. Strongly would I
impress upon you and upon myself the
terrible responsibility which belongs to

122

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

us of malting one of these little ones to
offend. Perhaps if I might sum up in a
single phrase the teacher's true temper
toward his pupils, especially boys in a
large school, I should say it is one of
sympathetic severity. . . . Severity is
not worth much if it stands alone. It
may he said that severity without sym-
pathy is a guarantee of failure.

"There is one word, and only one,
that I have simply begged my colleagues
never to use in their reports of hoys —
the word ' hopeless.' Masters and mis-
tresses may perhaps be hopeless, I can
not tell ; but boys and girls — never.

" An angry schoolmaster, or rather
a schoolmaster who can not control his
anger, is the drunken helot of the pro-
fession. In an angry moment words are
spoken, deeds are done, that are irrep-
arable. Fling away from you the poi-
soned shafts of sarcasm ; they are for-
bidden to the liumanities of school life.
" It appears to be the particular
danger of schoolmasters and schoolmis-
tresses that their profession has natural-
ly a cramping or narrowing influence
upon the mind ; it is therefore the pri-
mary duty of all teachers to take every
opportunity of enlarging and liberalizing
their views. The schoolmaster must not
be a schoolmaster only ; he must be more
than a schoolmaster. He must be a man
of wide interests and information ; he
must move freely in the world of affairs.
Fill your pitchers, however humble they
may be, at the wide and ever-flowing
stream of human culture. It is my coun-
sel, as a precaution against narrowness,
that you indulge largely and lavishly in
reading. You can hardly read too much.
It may be a paradox to say so ; but I
doubt if it matters much what you read,
so long as you read widely. . . , Novel-
reading I conscientiously recommend.
It will take you out of yourselves, and
that is perhaps the best holiday that any
one can have. It will give your minds
an edge, an elasticity. The peril of
reading no novels is much more serious
than that of reading too many. . . .

Apollo himself does not keep his bow
on the stretch forever, and most of us
need relaxation as much as Apollo."

The above is good advice, and happy
is it for those who can take it to heart
and act upon it — for those whose facul-
ties have not been already so deadened
by a mechanical routine as to be incapa-
ble of the ambition of individual culture.
Dr. Weldon speaks and writes from the
elevated standpoint of head master of
one of the great English public schools,
a position of as great independence
probably as any the educational world
affords, and one in which there is infi-
nite scope for the exercise of individu-
ality. The position of the average pub-
lic-school teacher is very different. To
the latter functionary individuality may
be a personal advantage, but it may
easily become, from a professional point
of view, a burden and a drag through
the lack of encouragement or even op-
portunity for its exercise. That the ad-
vice given by Dr. Weldon as to reading
is not very widely followed out by teach-
ers in this country was proved some few
years ago by some one who took the
trouble to write to all the principal
public libraries to ascertain to what ex-
tent teachers took advantage of the
privileges which these institutions af-
forded. We forget the precise result of
the inquiry; but it showed that the
teachers, as a body, used the libraries
almost less than any other class of the
community. We recall this fact in no
unfriendly spirit, but solely with a view
of showing to a public that is hard to
convince on this point how far we are
from having as yet commanded the most
successful conditions for general educa-
tion.

THE SCIENTIFIC ALLIANCE.

The formation of the Scientific Alli-
ance of New York marks an important
step in the scientific movements of this
city, and will not be without beneficial
influence, we believe, in the advance-
ment of research in the country at

EDITOR'S TABLE.

123

large. New York, long recognized as
the great financial and commercial cen-
ter of the Union, and pre-eminent in
some other departments of the life of
the century, has not been eminent in
science. It has, indeed, as President
Low said at the late joint meeting of
the Alliance, many scientific men of the
first order, and has a record of scientific
work of the highest character that has
been done by such men as Draper, Morse,
Rntherfurd, Newberry, and Edison ; but
the fame of that work has been dissi-
pated : it has never been concentrated,
as in other metropolitan cities and many
much smaller towns, under the panoply
of a single organization, central for all the
branches of research. London has its
Royal Institute and Eoyal Society ; Par-
is, Berlin, and other European capitals
have their Academies of Sciences, where
the work ot the whole nation has a com-
mon home, and contributes to the fame
of its chief city. In the United States,
Boston has its Academy ; Philadelphia,
its Academy and the American Philo-
sophical Society ; Brooklyn, the Brook-
lyn Institute ; and other cities, down to
many relatively small ones, have central
organizations through which the scien-
tific work done by citizens receives all
the credit it is entitled to ; but New
York, which should have been in the
advance of all of these, has had only a
few struggling societies devoted to spe-
cialties — nothing comprehensive enough
to command the allegiance of students
of different branches and the attention
of the public. To use President Low's
words again, "These bodies hare re-
vealed at once the strength and the
weakness of New York in these direc-
tions. They have made clear beyond a
doubt the vast resources of the city,
both in men and means. But they have
also revealed the fact that these re-
sources are as yet insufficiently organ-
ized." To this time, by reason of the
division among these special societies
and the want of a general one. the sci-
entific spirit of the city has lacked in-

tensity of expression. It will be the
object of the Scientific Alliance, as
President Low believes it has the ca-
pacity, to give to New York the agency
which it has long needed to develop to
the utmost its activities of investigation
and experiment in the direction of pure
science.

Seven societies, each of which is well
known and has done creditable work
in its special field, have united in the
formation of the Scientific Alliance.
They are the New York Academy of
Sciences, the Torrey Botanical Club, the
New York Microscopical Society, the
Linnsean Society of New York, the New
York Mineralogical Club, the New York
Mathematical Society, and the New
York Section of the American Chemical
Society.

The advantages which are expected
to accrue to these societies and their
work from united organization were
well presented in the address of Mr.
Charles F. Cox. Among them are " the
stimulating and re energizing effect
which will be wrought in them by the
demand made upon them for an in-
creased output of effort for the public
good " ; the re-enforcement and encour-
agement they and their members will
receive from contact with one another;
the saving of work in doing over again
what has been already done which will
be effected by bringing these laborers
in different fields into co-operation and
consultation with one another, and en-
abling them to contribute their several
results to a common stock; in short, a
union of forces to produce the best re-
sults.

The need of endowment for scientific
research and publication was presented
at the meeting for organization in an
address by the Hon. Addison Brown.
The existence of such a body as the
Alliance, proving its efficiency by its
work and extending its influence, may
be expected to attract the gifts of lib-
eral-minded capitalists, as do other en-
terprises for the public good that ac-

124

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

coinplish something. Still another ad-
vantage that may be derived from the
organization is revealed in Prof. Bol-
ton's idea of its furnishing accommo-
dations in a single building for all the
libraries of the societies and for such
other libraries of scientific works as
may seek a domicile there; each library
to be kept distinct, but accessible alike
to all the societies, and one supplement-
ing the others. For this and other pur-
poses of the Alliance a building will be
necessary, and a plea in behalf of this
was made by Prof. N. L. Britton.

Another view of the advantages
that may be derived from this movo-
itient is afforded by the advances which
are being made in all departments of
enterprise in which scientific research
is the original and most important fac-
tor. " The practical men," said the
lion. Addison Brown, basing his re-
mark on the confession to him of an
electrical expert who had made several
very interesting and important inven-
tions, " do not work at random, but
upon the basis of what scientific re-
search and publication have previously
put witbin their grasp." Capitalists
and corporations have derived immense
wealth and power from the fruits of
this work ; and yet science, which has
furnished them the instruments of their
success, has received the most niggardly
treatment from them, and has been
spnrned and scorned by tliem as un-
practical. A society that will serve as
a center for its scattered forces and
give it a voice by which it can assert
itself and emphasize its claim for recog-
nition can not fail to help it greatly in
commanding the liomage of its debtors.

MORAL EVOLUTION.

The recent articles of Prof. 8t.
George Mivart on Happiness in Hell,
in spite of what must seem to many
their fanciful character, may reason-
ably be regarded as an encouraging
sign of the progress the modern world

is making in the direction of reasona-
ble views and humane sentiments. Mr.
Mivart states at the outset that " not a
few persons have abandoned Christian-
ity " on account of the ])0])ular doctrine
of a hell iuvolving unending torture for
untold multitudes of human beings, and
that this doctrine now " constitutes the
very greatest difficulty for many who
desire to obtain a rational religious be-
lief and to accept the Church's teach-
ing." The object which he has in view
is to show that the absurd and cruel
ideas which have gathered round the
conception of hell are no essential or
authoritative part of Christian doctrine.
Whether he has succeeded in doing so,
we must leave to the professional the-
ologians to discuss and, if possible, de-
cide ; but, meantime, some of the writ-
er's utterances deserve to be put on
record as evidences of the moral evo-
lution which theology itself is under-
going.

" To think," says Prof. Mivart,
" that God could punish men however
slightly, still less could damn them for
all eternity, for anything which they
had not full power to avoid, or for any
act the nature or consequences of which
they did not fully understand, is a doc-
trine so monstrous and revolting that
stark atheism is plainly a preferable
belief." The writer of these words
could evidently not subscribe to the
Westminster Confession, nor to the
views of those Congregationalists who
have lately been so much exercised
over the daring theory advanced by
some of their brethren that fairly de-
cent heatben may perchance escape
hell without any aid from missionaries.
A Catholic authority whom Mr. Mivart
quotes says that " if there is one thing
certain it is this — that no one will ever
be punished with the positive punish-
ments of the life to come who has not
with full knowledge, complete con-
sciousness, and full consent turned his
back upon Almighty God." The same
authority farther says that "the God

LITERARY NOTICES.

125

of all jnstice most, and will, make every
allowance for antecedent passion, for
blindness, for ignorance, for inadvert-
ence " ; and this, Mr. Mivart explains,
will apply to that " large proportion
of men's actions which can not be freely
controlled by them on account of an-
cestral influences, early associations or
intellectual and volitional feebleness."
As we read these declarations we begin
to find ourselves somewhat at a loss to
conceive the kind of person who would
really constitute an eligible candidate
for the place which Mr. Mivart so far
offends ears polite as to mention. How-
ever, some do get there, and then they
fare according to their deserts. Their
great loss consists in being shut out
from what theologians describe as "the
beatific vision " — that is, from the hap-
piness of heaven ; but they have appar-
ently all the means of enjoyment and
even of moral improvement open to
them which they had on earth, though
without hope of ever changing their
fundamental state of separation from
God.

Waiving all questions as to the real-
ity of the matter which Mr. Mivart
discusses, we venture to express the
opinion that the view he puts forward
is far more favorable to the interests of
religion, and much better adapted to
produce moral thoughtfulness, than the
heretofore current notions, which no
amount of sophistical ingenuity can tor-
ture into conformity with justice, be-
nevolence, or reason. So far we ex-
tend to the distinguished naturalist and,
as it would appear, not inexpert theo-
logian our sympathy, and bid him God-
speed.

a little more patience from the many
who have been anxiously inquiring for
the volume.

The Index to Volumes I to XL of
The Popular Science Montlily, an-
nounced as in preparation some months
ago, has been completed, and up to March
25th about fifty pages had been put in
type. It will make nearly three hun-
dred pages, and, as setting the type for
such a book is slow work, we must ask

LITERARY NOTICES.

A Handbook of Pathological Anatomy and
Histology. With an Introductory Sec-
tion on Post-mortem Examinations and the
Methods of Preserving and Examining
Diseased Tissues. By Francis Dela-
FiELD, M. D., LL. D., and T. Mitchell
Prudden, M. D. Fourth edition. New
York: William Wood & Co. 1S92. Pp.
xvii+3 to 715.

The fourth edition of this standard work
has an increase of more than one hundred
pages of text, with the addition of seventy-
six engravings, while many portions of the
book have been rewritten, so that it may in-
clude the principal discoveries that have been
made in pathology since the pubhcation of
the third edition in 1889.

In the section on the methods of prepar-
ing pathological specimens for study there
has been added a description of the phloro-
glucin method of decalcifying bone, which is
one of the best that can be used, and there
is also a description of the satisfactory method
of hardening tissues by Lang's corrosive-sub-
limate solution.

The chapter on the composition and struc-
ture of the blood has received important ad-
ditions in the description of oligocythccmia
and of the determination of the presence of
the micro, macro, and poikiloeytes, as well
as a description of the polynuclear neutro-
phile and eosinophile leucocytes and lympho-
cytes ; and there is a section on the methods
of examination necessary to study these va-
rious forms.

One of the most important additions to
the volume is the section on hypertrophy,
hyperplasia, regeneration, and metaplasia;
the authors calling attention to the patho-
logical importance of a knowledge of caryo-
cinesis, because a recognition of mitotic fig-
ures may permit a decision regarding the
particular cells involved in the formation of
new tissue.

The chapter on inflammation has been
practically rewritten and rearranged, the sub-
jects of tubercular and syphilitic inflamma-
tions being now considered under the sections
relating to the diseases producing them.

126

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The chapter on animal parasites contains
a reference to the Amoeba coli and its relation
to dysentery, and also brief reference to the
presence of coccidia in certain epithelial
growths. The chapter on vegetable para-
sites contains reference to ptomaines, toxins,
and toxalbumins, as well as an excellent sum-
mary of the important question of immunity,
though the authors do not commit themselves
to any doctrine regarding that subject.

The subject of infectious diseases induced
by the pyogenic bacteria has been rearranged
and placed as one of the earlier chapters in
the work, which seems to us to be an excel-
lent plan. An illustration of the caution dis-
played by the authors is sho\vn in the section
on lupus, in which reference is made to the
fact that, while that disease is a form of tu-
bercular inflammation, it is not imlikely that
in the chnical group of diseases called lupus
there may be lesions that are not caused by
the tubercle bacillus, a point that must be
decided by more exact bacterial studies.
This same caution is shown in accepting the
bacillus described by Lustgarten as the cause
of syphilitic inflammation.

The skepticism expressed in the former
edition regarding the causative relationship
of Lofiier's Bacillus diphtherice to diphtheria,
has been supplanted by a frank acceptance
of that organism, the first sentence in the
section on diphtheria defining that as an
acute infectious disease caused by the Bacil-
lus diphtherice.

New sections on rhinoscleroma, tetanus,
influenza, smallpox, scarlatina, measles, and
actinomycosis, and descriptions of the Bacil-
lus cedematis maligni, Bacillus pneumonia;,
and BaciUus coli communis have been added.

The chapter on tumors contains a refer-
ence to the structures that have been found
in and between the cells of tumors, " inclu-
sions^^ that the authors consider to be invagi-
nated epithelial or other cells, or cell nuclei
that have undergone various degenerative
metamorphoses, fragmentation, etc. They
state that some of the cell inclusions in car-
cinoma may be coccidia or allied organisms ;
but while not asserting that tumors can not
be caused by parasites, they do not believe
that adequate ground exists for believing
that they are so caused, because the trans-
plantation of tumors from one species of ani-
mal to another has almost uniformly failed,

while it has been impossible to cultivate
either directly or by inoculation any constant
organisms from these morbid growths. This
matter is one that is attracting the attention
of pathologists in several countries, and the
more thorough study of the subject of the
etiology of cancer will probably determine
the status of the coccidia in relation thereto.

The section on chronic arteritis has been
rewritten, the authors believing that the mor-
bid changes in the arteries are the results of
a combination of chronic productive inflam-
mation and of degeneration occurring in con-
nective tissue — a point of view that regards
the arteries as definite parts of the body, and
as likely to become the seat of chronic in-
flammation as the liver or kidneys.

The subject of colitis is another valuable
addition, and the text is enriched by some
excellent engravings of the several varieties
of pathological conditions that occur in in-
flammation of the large intestine.

In the section on the organs of generation
reference is made to the adenomata that lie
on the border between the distinctly benign
and the definitely malignant new epithelial
tissue growths, attention being called to the
fact that the more benign forms are extremely
prone to develop, both in structure and ma-
lignancy, into carcinomata.

While the substitution of the terms " Ivmph
nodes" and "lymph nodules" for "lymph
glands " and " lymph follicles " respectively
was recommended in the last edition, the
change has been made throughout the text
in this volume.

The work is fully abreast of the scientific
knowledge of the day, and it will undoubtedly
be accorded a popularity similar to what it
has received in the past.

The Storv of Columbcs. By Elizabeth
Eggleston Seel ye. New York : D. Ap-
pleton & Co. Pp. 303. Price, $1.

This volume is the first of a series enti-
tled Delights of History, and a delightful
book has been made of it. Beginning with
the wonderful journeys of the Polos, and
the expeditions sent out by Prince Henry
of Portugal, events which may well have
fired the imagination of the youthful Co-
lumbus, we are brought at length to the
gates of Genoa. Here we learn something
of the condition of the weavers among whom

LITERARY NOTICES.

127

the Colombos were numbered. Even the
house in which the family lived is pointed
out. Then follows the story of Columbus's
journey to Portugal, his weary waiting in
Spain, his voyages, discoveries, misfortunes,
and last days spent in pleading with the un-
appreciative Ferdinand. The tale is related
in very simple but graphic fashion, with
many touches of humor, while the varied
illustrations constantly keep fresh the flavor
of the time. Only those anecdotes are given
that come from authentic sources, and the
recent labors of Mr. Henry Harrisse and
Signor Stalieno have added so largely to
the fund that there are enough to make the
narrative sufficiently life like. Xo attempt
is made to screen the failings of Columbus
— his pursuit of wealth, his curious theories,
and the evil which is chargeable to him as
an exponent of his time, the establishment
of slavery in the New World. On the other
hand, these are not enlarged imtil they ob-
scure his courageous project and imflagging
zeal. He still remains " the most conspicu-
ous figure in the history of his age." He
crossed the sea of darkness, and we rightly
honor him for his great achievement.

The Visible Universe. By J. Ellard Gore,
F. R. A. S. London : Crosby Lockwood
& Son. New York : Macmillan & Co.
Pp. 346. Price, $3.76.

Although astronomers have not yet
solved the problem of celestial construction,
the author of this volume refrains from add-
ing any new conjecture to the list. He ex-
amines critically all the explanations worth
serious mention, and this task may well have '.
served to keep him within the dry land of |
fact. Besides the theoretical discussions, the
book contains the latest observations of the
position of stars and nebula; and, so far as
known, their motions and chemical compo-
sition.

Five principal objections have been
brought against the nebular theory ; most of
these have been well answered by M. Roche.
According to M. Wolf, two points are yet un-
determined — how large planets were formed
from the nebulous mass, and how the equa-
torial and orbital inclinations were produced.
M. Faye, however, finds the fifth objection —
the retrograde motion of the satellites of
Uranus and Neptune — destructive of La-

place's theory and advances another hy-
pothesis in his work, Sur I'Origine du Monde,
with which Mr. Gore agrees. In this he as-
sumes that the earth was formed before the
sun, and that its internal heat sufficed for
the evaporation of water and for the uni-
form vegetation that existed for aeons of
time. Laplace did not explain the origin of
the primitive nebula, therefore Dr. Croll con-
sidered the hypothesis incomplete and fur-
nished a cause in his impact theory. Two
dark bodies endowed with enormous veloci-
ty collided in space and produced a perfect
nebula !

A contention which promises no settle-
ment is the duration of the sun's heat in past
time. Noted physicists allow only twelve
millions of years as the maximum period on
the gravitation theory. This is insufficient
for the geologists, who demand a himdred
millions for the denudation of rocks. Dr.
Croll's careful estimate is mnety millions ;
while biologists ask for a still longer period
for the evolution of species. Most astrono-
mers concur in the theory of Helmholtz that
the heat of the sun is caused by the shrink-
age of its mass through gravitation. To this
philosopher also is due the vortex-ring idea
— that matter consists of whirling portions
of the luminiferous ether. This wondrous
fluid, supposed to fill interstellar space and
act as a medium for the transmission of
light, is enormously elastic and wholly un-
like matter, since planetary motion is not
retarded by it as it would be by the most
attenuated gas.

The spectroscope, which has revealed so
much of the constitution of the stars, shows
also another defect in the nebular theory,
unless chemists may come to the rescue.
The spectra of various nebulae give only hy-
drogen and one other unknown element. If
the solar system was evolved from a nebu-
lous mass by condensation, whence the dozen
elements of the sun and the sixty-five of our
own planet ? It has been suggested that all
our elements may be further resolved into
one original element. In anticipation of its
discovery this has been nasned proii/le.

Lockyer's hypothesis was that the upper
reaches of the atmosphere contained parti-
cles of magnesium, manganese, iron, and car-
bon, and that nebuhe were swarms of mete-
oritic dust. His observations in regard to

128

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the magnesium flutings are not accepted by
other a^itronomers, and experiments do not
confirm his explanation of the aurora. Most
puzzling of all astronomical problems per-
haps is the arrangement of stars. If we
could observe from some other point in the
heavens the system might be disclosed to
us, or even if we could compute the distance
of every star, the design might appear. In
all cases, however, the parallaxes are so
small that the measurements are exceeding-
ly difficult. The number of visible stars is
estimated by the author as seventy millions.
Outside of this finite universe there may ex-
ist vast systems in space whose light has not
yet reached us, or which may be forever
hidden, because light itself is extinguished
in a separating void.

Some fine photographs of stars and nebu-
lae accompany the text; an index and notes
are also added.

He MAN Embryology. By Charles Sedg-
wick MiNOT. Illustrated. New York:
William Wood & Co. 1892. Pp. xxiii
-f 815.

The appearance of another v/ork on em-
bryology justifies the assertion that was re-
cently made in these columns that there was
a growing appreciation of the importance of
this subject. The present volume has been
expected for some time past, as the announce-
ment was made some years ago that Prof.
Minot was engaged in the preparation of a
work upon this topic. The ten years' labor
that has been directed to making original in-
vestigations and to collecting and reviewing
the literature of the subject, is presented in
this splendid volume that is a worthy repre-
sentation of American scholarship and re-
search.

On account of the intimate relations be-
tween the uterus and the embryo, the author
devotes his first chapter to a careful presen-
tation of the anatomy and the histology of
the uterus, together with a description of the
changes that occur during pregnancy. In the
second chapter there is a general outline of
human development, in which there are re-
trogressive and progressive histories of the
foetus and its envelopes.

The author calls attention to the limita-
tion of the term genoblaist to the sexual ele-
ments proper, to the spermatozoon or the

egg-cell after maturation, and not to the sper-
matophore or the egg-cell before maturation.
The subjects of spermatozoa, ova, ovulation,
and impregnation are described with refer-
ence to the latest investigations. The author
believes that the ovum draws the spermato-
zoa toward itself by chemical influence, act-
ing as an attracting stimulus, in a similar
manner to the attraction Pfeffer has shown
certain chemical substances may have for
moving spores ; the attractive power of the
ovum being annulled or weakened by the
formation of the male pronucleus. As a so-
lution of the origin of sexuality the attractive
hypothesis is offered that sexuality is coexten-
sive with life ; that in protozoa the male and
female are united in each of the conjugating
cellt, and impregnation is double ; and, finally,
that in the metazoa the male and female of the
cells separate to form, gcnoblasts or true sexual
elements, and impregnation is single.

The author presents a great deal of evi-
dence to support the theory that concrescence
is the typical means of forming the primitive
streak in the vertebrate, the primitive axis of
which is formed by the growing together in
the axial line of the future embryo of the two
halves of the ectental line.

The origin of the mesoderm, the forma-
tion of the coelom and mesothelium, and the
origin of the mesenchyma, are carefully de-
scribed in connection with a review of the
principal theories in regard to the morpho-
logical significance of the mesoderm, the au-
thor believing that Hatschek's germ-band
theory offers the best-founded explanation
of the vertebrate mesoderm.

Emphasis is laid on the fact that the
splanchnocoele (pleuroperitoneal cavity) is al-
most, if not quite, from the start divided into
a precociously enlarged cervical portion (am-
nio-cardial vesicles), and a rump portion (ab-
dominal cavity), the boundary between the
two portions being marked by the omphalo-
mesaraic veins, that run from the area vas-
culosa into the embryo proper at nearly right
angles to the embryonic axis.

The author agrees with Ziegler that the
red blood-cells of all vertebrates arise by pro-
liferation of the endothelial lining of the ves-
sels, basing this conclusion upon the facts
that in various vertebrates certain parts of
the vascular system are at first solid cords of
cells, the central portion becoming blood-cells

LITERARY NOTICES.

129

and the peripheral portion the vascular wall,
and in birds the red cells arise from the walls
of the venous capillaries of the bony marrow.
In other words, the blood-cell is a liberated,
specialized endothelial cell.

One of the most interesting and valuable
chapters in the volume is that on the germi-
nal area and the embryo and its appendages,
in which there is a synopsis of the published
descriptions of embryos not over three weeks
old ; from these it is learned that no human
ovum has been observed to have a primitive
streak, which is the first stage of the series
formulated by the author. In this stage
(twelfth or thirteenth day) the human ovum
is a rounded, somewhat flattened sac of three
or four millimetres in diameter, bearing an
equatorial zone of short, unbranched villi that
are probably formed by the ectoderm only ;
the wall of the sac is ectoderm, whether im-
derlaid by somatic mesoderm or not is uncer-
tain ; a mass of cells is attached to the inner
wall of the sac, over one of the bare poles of
the ovum, constituting the rudiment of the
embryo. The second stage is characterized
by the appearance of the medullary plate, the
third by the appearance of the medullary
groove, the fourth by the formation of the
heart and medullary canal, the fifth by the
development of the first external gill-cleft,
the sixth by the appearance of two external
gill-clefts, the seventh by the appearance of
three gill-clefts, and the eighth by the ap-
pearance of four external gill-clefts.

The fourth part of the work includes de-
scriptions of the chorion, the amnion and
proamnion, the yolk-sac, allantois, and um-
bilical cord, and the placenta.

The final portion of the volume is de-
voted to chapters on the growth and devel-
opment of the various organic systems of the
foetus.

Each section and chapter aims to present
a comprehensive review of the literature re-
garding the subject therein considered, the
author stating the reasons for accepting cer-
tain theories in preference to others. One
blemish in the volume is the free use of Ger-
man embryological terms. The author's de-
votion to German has often led him to use,
also, forms of expression that, while correct
in German, are faulty English. This is, how-
ever, a minor and remediable fault in what
is a most excellent book.

VOL. XLIII. — 10

Pioneers of Science. By Oliver Lodge,
F. R. S. London : Macmillan & Co., 1893
Pp. 404. Price, $2.50.

This work consists of a course of eight-
een lectures on the history and progress
of astronomical research, with biographical
sketches of each pioneer and an examina-
tion of their influence on the progress of
thought. It is divided into two parts. The
first, which is entitled From Dusk to Day-
light, contains ten lectures giving a brief
outline of the physical science of the an-
cients, with an interesting account of the
progress of astronomy from Thales, 640 b. c,
to the death of Newton, 1727 a. d. The
second part is called A Couple of Centu-
ries' Progress, and embraces the period of
astronomical discovery from the publication
of Newton's Principia to the present time.

The author shows considerable power of
lucid condensation in his description of the
labors of the early astronomical scientists,
and while giving a brief history of their
discoveries — notably those of Archimedes,
Ptolemy, and Roger Bacon — he brings us at
a bound over the void of the middle ages
to the beginning of the sixteenth century
(1543) when Copernicus (Nicolas Copemik)
published his famous work, De Revolutioni-
bus Orbium Coelestium, in which he proved
that the earth is a planet like the others, and
that it revolves round the sun — thus shatter-
ing the accepted Ptolemaic system and revo-
lutionizing all other (speculative and theo-
logical) doctrines concerning the form of the
earth and the motion of the heavenly bodies.

This period is called by Mr. Lodge " the
real dawn of modern science." His sketch of
Tycho Brah6 is most interestingly written;
and in the summaries of facts which preface
each lecture will be found some curious coin-
cidences of the dates of the birth and death
of the famous philosophers from Copernicus
to Newton. While admitting the great labors
and immense value to astronomical research
of Galileo's discoveries, the author does not
class him with Copernicus, Kepler, or New-
ton ; in fact, he says that " Archimedes and
Galileo can only be considered in the light
of experimental philosophers." Lord Bacon,
who flourished about the same time as Des-
cartes, is very summarily dismissed ; he does
not admit him into his list of philosophers,
and says : " His (Bacon's) methods are not

n°

THE POPULAR SCTEXCE MOyTIFLY.

those which the experience of niaiikiiid has
found serviceable ; nor are they such as a
scientific man wouhl have thoutjht of devis-
ing."

Mr. Lodge pays reverent tribute to the
genius of Sir Isaac Newton, and claims for
him the palm-wreath among all other phi-
losophere — ancient or modern. His treat-
ment of the biographical sketch of Newton
and of his discoveries and the preparation
of his laws of gravitation, motion, etc., as
contained in the Principia, are most interest-
ing as well as valuable.

The second part of the work (eight lec-
tures) is rather condensed. Laplace's mathe-
matical genius is briefly described, while the
birth of stellar astronomy and the works
of Sir William and Caroline Ilerschel are
excellently portrayed. The volume closes
with chapters upon Comets and Meteors, and
Tides and Planetary Evolution. It is pro-
fusely illustrated.

llYGiENir: Measuuks in Relation to Infec-
tious Diseases. By Geokge H. F. Nut-
tali,, JI. D., Ph. D. (Gottingen). New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893. Pp.
112. Price, 75 cents.

This is a very useful little work and
should have a place in eveiy home library.
There seems to be an almost general ignorance
of both the causes of infections diseases and
how to prevent their spread ; and Dr. Nut-
tall has produced this little handbook in a
form that is so simple and instructive that
even the least scientific reader can, without
any diHiculty, prepare and use ample means
for the disinfection of persons, houses, fur-
niture, etc. — no matter from what cause the
infectious material may exist.

The author warns people against using
" made and patent disinfectants " ; for, as
he says, " the term disinfection means the
ahsoluic destruction of infectious material,"
and "many preparations sold as disinfect-
ants are nothing of the kind," but belong
to the antiseptic and deodorant classes. He
gives, as the Vjest and most certain methods,
those by fire, dry heat, steam, and (;hemicals,
and in a foot-note to the paragraph " Disin-
fection by Boiling," he quotes Fliigge most
instructively: "The ordinary treatment to
whicli soiled linen and clothes are subjected
in the laundry (one half-hour'.s boiling) would

be quite sutlicient for their disinfectioii were
it not foi- the fact that the process of boiling
is preceded by the processes of sorting, soak-
ing, and rhuihiff in cold wat(yr.'^

The volume contains practical directions
for the treatment of infectious diseases in
private houses and other places ; and the
second part is devoted to excellent " infor-
mation as to the causes and mode of spread-
ing of certain infectious diseases and the pre-
ventive measures that should be resorted to."

Rest and Pain. By the late John Hilton,
F. R. S. London and New York : George
Bell & Sons. Pp. 514. Price, $2.

Tins work, which its editor speaks of as
" acknowledged to be one of our few surgical
classics," has reached its fifth edition in Eng-
land, and is now offered to medical students
and practitioners in America. Its special
claim to attention is that it presents certain
facts in a diflereut groujjing from that of
the usual treati.ses, thus throwing a new light
upon the bearing of much that may seem use-
less or abstruse to the student. It has the
two objects of preaching to physicians a let-
alone gospel, designed to secure greater reli-
ance upon the work of Nature, and of point-
ing out how much can be learned in regard
to various disorders from the pains that ac-
company them. The volume consists of a
course of lectures delivered by the author as
consulting surgeon to Guy's Hospital, under
the title. The Therapeutic Influence of Rest
and the Diagnostic Value of Pain in Acci-
dents and Surgical Diseases. It deals with
injuries and diseases of the brain, spinal col-
umn, the joints, the sacro-iliac region, with
abscesses, and miscellaneous other disorders.
A large number of cases are quoted in this
treatise, and the text is illustrated with l(t5
cuts.

Domestk; Science. ]{y James E. Talmage.
Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon &
Sons. Pp. :589.

The field of this l)ook embraces the ap-
plications of science to the affairs of domes-
tic life — a field concerning which there has
always been a great amount of ignorance.
The disi)eirmg of this ignorance was one of
the tasks that enlisted the efforts of the
founder of this magazine, who published his
Ilaiidlxjok of Household Science over thirtv

LITERARY NOTICES.

131

years ago. Dr. Talmage's treatise is very like
the Handbook as to scope and method, and
the author quotes his predecessor frequently
in foot-notes. It is divided into four parts,
treating respectively of Air and Ventilation
with chapters on Heating and Lighting, Wa-
ter, Food and its Cookery, Cleansing Agents,
to the last of which is added Poisons and
their Antidotes. In each of these divisions
the laws of Nature that especially concern
the matters in hand are stated, and the evil
effects of disregarding these laws in each
case are pointed out. The text is much
strengthened by illustrations. The book has
been adopted as a text-book for the Territory
of Utah, and the present is a second and re-
vised edition prepared for such use. The in-
troduction of this subject into the schools can
not fail to do much good.

Introduction to Physiological Psychology.
By Dr. Theodor Ziehen. Translated by
C. C. Van Liew and Dr. Otto Beyer.
New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 284.
Price, $1.50.

The recent introduction of the inductive
and evolutionary mode of treatment into the
field of mental science has brought forth
abundant fruit where, for a long time, bar-
ren speculation had held sway. Psychology,
or a division of it at least, has become a
natural science, and knowledge of mental
processes has been rapidly extended in con-
sequence. Especially has this work gone on
actively in Germany, and the facts obtained
have received two distinct interpretations —
the one held by Wundt and his school, the
other by Miinsterberg and Ziehen. Only one
treatise on physiological psychology — the
large work by Prof. Ladd, of Yale — has ap-
peared in English, hence the translators have
thought that such a small introductory com-
pendium as the present volume would be de-
sirable. The work originated in a series of
lectures that Dr. Ziehen has delivered at the
University of Jena for several years. It has
been the aim of the author throughout to
develop all explanations from physical or
physiological data, and to account for the
presence of certain functions by an applica-
tion of the laws of evolution. The doctrines
that he presents differ essentially from
Wundt's theory and conform closely to the
English psychology of association. By intro-

ducing an especial auxiliary function, the so-
called apperception, for the explanation of
certain psychical processes, Wundt evades nu-
merous difficulties in demonstration. This
book is intended to show that such an " aux-
iliary function" is superfluous, and that all
psychological phenomena can be explained
without it.

Chemical Lecture Experiments. By G. S.
Newth, F. I. C. London and New" York:
Longmans, Green & Co. 1892. Pp. 323.
Price, $3.

This book is of some importance to
chemical lecturers and teachers, as well as
being a valuable assistance to the chemical
student. It consists of six hundred and
thirty-two illustrated experiments, which are
given with remarkable lucidity, the author
claiming that " no account of any experiment
has been introduced upon the authority sole-
ly of any verbal or printed description, but
every experiment has been the subject of his
own personal investigation, and illustrated
by woodcuts from original drawings." It is
arranged in such a manner that students may
learn from it the methods of preparation and
most of the important properties of the non-
metallic elements and their more common
compounds. As a companion to the lectures
which he may attend, the chemical student
will find fully described in this book most,
if not all, of the experiments he is likely to
see performed upon the lecture table, there-
by relieving him from the necessity of labori-
iously noting the apparatus, etc., used by the
demonstrator. Many of the experiments are
novel and interesting, and the tables which
form the appendix will be found to contain
important information for which books of
reference are usually needed.

An overgrown volume of nearly fifteen
hundred pages on Education in (he Industrial
and Fine Arts in the United States comes to
us from the Bureau of Education. This is
only the second part of a special report by
Isaac Edwards Clarke, and the editor states
that most of the matter intended for this vol-
ume has been relegated to a third part. There
is first an Introduction of over a hundred
pages, in which the editor devotes several of
the early pages to telling how his first part
has been praised. Soon after this come three

132

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tributes to deceased educators, which would
be better published elsewhere. A little far-
ther on the editor has a tilt with Prof. C M.
Woodward, and near the end several defenses
of the public schools, having no bearing on
the proper subject of the report, are brought
in. The report proper consists of five hundred
pages of well-digested material, being mostly
accounts of the instruction in industrial art
and the use of mechanical tools that has been
introduced in various places. This is followed
by eight hundred pages of appendixes made
up of miscellaneous reports, essays, and ad-
dresses, parts of which are valuable, other
parts pleasant but vague, and much of the
whole merely duplicating other matter in the
volume. There is a great deal of matter in
these appendixes that only makes the vol-
ume clumsy and impedes the earnest student
of pedagogy. Here and there we find poeti-
cal quotations or wholly unnecessary lists of
names, and in one place a lot of ""after-din-
ner" speeches with the "applause" duly in-
terjected. It is no wonder that the public
printer can not get these bulky reports out
until they are stale, and that so many copies
go unread back to the paper-vat.

A little text-book devoted wholly to men-
suration has been prepared by Alfred J.
Pearce, and is published by Longmans, Green
& Co., under the title Longmans' School Men-
suration (80 cents). It comprises reduction
of denominate numbers and the calculation
of lengths, areas, and volumes. There are a
large number of examples at the end of each
section, and several sets of examination pa-
pers have been introduced. A simple proof
of nearly every rule is given. The diagrams
illustrating the various figures and solids are
very numerous, and have been carefully pre-
pared.

TTie Siq)-hy- Step Primer, prepared by Mrs.
E. B. Burnz (Bumz & Co., 24 Clinton Place,
New York, 25 cents), embodies a thoroughly
scientific mode of teaching reading. The
phonetic principle is the basis of its method,
and the author does not allow any such host
of exceptions and deviations from this prin-
ciple as often makes what passes for " phonic
teaching " into a mongrel practice. The au-
thor insists that the letters shall be regarded
as standing for spoken sounds, just as defi-
nitely as the characters in a piece of music
etand for musical sounds. No one can ques-

tion that this was the intention of the an-
cient inventors of the alphabet, but the fact
is too often lost sight of, especially by teach-
ers of reading. In this primer each letter is
made to show what sound it stands for, and
the learner has only to combine these several
sounds to get the whole word. This is ef-
fected by means of the Burnz's Pronouncing
Print, the chief feature of which is that
when a letter has an irregular sound this
sound is indicated by a small subscript letter
cast on the shoulder of the type. Webster's
diacritics are also made use of, and silent
letters are denoted by Leigh's hair-line type.
Some Hints on Phonic Teaching are ap-
pended to the book. The primer is attract-
ively illustrated and neatly printed.

In a volume of 443 pages, John C. Bran-
ner. Ph. D., State Geologist of Arkansas, has
issued Vol. Ill of the Geological Survey of
Arkansas. This volume concerns "whet-
stones and the novaculites of Arkansas," and
was prepared by X. S. Griswold, assistant
geologist. The whetstone industry is very
exhaustively treated, and the admirable illus-
trations and maps will be found very useful.
The last chapter is devoted to an interesting
account of The Fossils of the Novaculite
Area, and contains articles by R. R. Gurley,
M. D., and Charles S. Prosser, on The Geo-
logical Age of the Graptolite Shales of Ar-
kansas and Notes on Lower Carboniferous
Plants. (Little Rock, Ark., Press Printing
Company, 1892.)

Under the title Coal Pits and Pitmen,
R. Nelson Boyd, M. Inst. C. E., has recast
his publication Coal Mines Inspection ; its
History and Results. In this volume of 256
pages the author reviews the conditions of
the mining operatives of Great Britain, and
gives in somewhat of detail a history of the
legislation for the prevention of the employ-
ment of women and children in coal mines.
Considerable space is devoted to an exami-
nation of the causes of explosions in mines,
and there are some excellent suggestions as
to required legislation in the direction of in-
creased inspection. In treating of the de-
velopment of the coal industry in England
the author gives some very interesting facts :
for instance, toward the end of the eighteenth
century the yearly output was estimated to
be ten millions of tons — giving employment
to fifty thousand work-people, whereas the

LITERARY NOTICES.

133

output of coal in 1891 reached the enormous
total of one hundred and eighty-five millions
of tons — giving employment to about six
hundred thousand persons. The book con-
tains some excellent illustrations, and will be
read with interest by those who desire to
study the social and labor questions. (Lon-
don: Whittaker & Ck). New York agents,
Macmillan & Co. 1892.)

Few persons outside those connected with
engineering business are aware of the im-
portance of the pattern-maker. In a volume
of 180 pages A Foreman Pattern-maker has
embodied the most useful hints to appren-
tices and students in technical schools under
the title The Principles of Pattern-making.
The book is fully illustrated with one hun-
dred and one engravings, and includes a
useful glossary of the common terms em-
ployed both in pattern-making and molding.
Considering the size of the volume it is real-
ly surprising to find such a fund of useful
information upon the fundamental principles
of pattern-making condensed into so small
a space. The illustrations were nearly all
made by the author himself, and are almost
self-explanatory. It is published by Whit-
taker & Co., London. (Xew York agents,
Macmillan & Co. Price, 90 cents.)

TTie Microscopical Examination of Pota-
ble Water is a little volume of 160 pages
which contains a good deal of useful infor-
mation concerning the best methods and ap-
paratus necessary for the microscopical and
bact€riological examination of water. The
author, George W. Rafter, devotes consider-
able space to an explanation of the advan-
tages of filtration by sand over the Parkins
cloth method, and gives minute details of
several examinations and analyses of the
various public water supplies of the country,
basing the arguments which follow upon the
results of an examination of the Boston Sud-
bury River Water Supply. The remarks
upon the effect of light upon the formation
of starch in the algae are interesting, and he
claims that in certain lights the starch re-
mains protoplasmic, and that a low tempera-
ture and darkness are unfavorable to the
growth of algffi in the water supplies. The
book is No. 103 of the Van Nostrand Science
Series.

In a volume of 322 pages entitled Figure
Skating, Simple and Combined, Messrs. Mon-

tagu S. Monier -Williams, Winter R. Pidgeon,
and Arthur Dryden, the most eminent of
British figure skaters, have given an elabo-
rate treatise upon the development of figure
skating in England. It is profusely illus-
trated with cuts and diagrams, and is pub-
lished by Macmillan & Co., New York ($2.26).

Leonard Bobbin, Ph. D., and James Walk-
er, Ph. D., D. Sc, have issued a useful hand-
book of 240 pages entitled Chemical Theory
for Beginners. It is written with the object
of assisting beginners in obtaining an ele-
mentary knowledge of the principles upon
which modem chemistry is based. The
chapters on Elements and Compounds,
Chemical Action, Vapor Density, and The
Kinetic Molecular Theory are interesting
from a standpoint far advanced from the be-
ginner. The use of symbols has been disre-
garded in this work, so that a very young
student in chemistry will have no difficulty
in imderstanding the most intricate exam-
ples of chemical compounds, etc., which are
given. The kinetic theory of gases, as dis-
covered by Clerk Maxwell and Clausius, is
vei7 simply demonstrated. The book is pub-
lished by Macmillan & Co., of London and
New York (70 cents).

In a volume of 978 pages the Interstate
Commerce Commission has issued its Third
Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways
in the United States. It is a comprehensive
tabulation of the classification, mileage, earn-
ings, expenditures, and capital of the various
railway systems of the country. In the read-
ing matter which prefaces the voluminous
and interesting statistics there is a com-
plaint that the statistical data procurable
from the monthly reports of the different
railway corporations is of little value to pub-
licists and economists ; and it is claimed
that the present system of bookkeeping in
vogue among the accountants of the differ-
ent roads "leads inevitably to an erroneous
balance-sheet." The remarks upon and the
statistics of the enormous increase of mile-
age will be read with interest by economists,
and the fact that this increase is propor-
tionately far greater in the Southern States
will be a surprise to those who have not
carefully observed the industrial progress of
that section of the country.

D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, have issued
a new publication entitled The Complete

>34

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Musical Reader, which is designed for " high
and normal schools, academies, and semi-
naries." It is compiled and edited by Charles
E. Whiting, and is really a most useful addi-
tion to the repertoire of school music books.
The first forty-eight pages are devoted to
musical notation, embracing exercises and
solfeggios of a very educational type. The
collection of two, three, and four part songs
is excellent ; but in the two latter sections
some of the selections are rather difficult
for beginners. Among the three-part songs
is a novel arrangement of a solo with voice
(duet) accompaniment — a style of voice cul-
ture that will probably become more general.
The hymn tunes are easy, and will be found
useful by teachers in connection with the
rudimentary exercises and solfeggios. It
contains 224 pages, and is published at 85
cents.

Recognizing the great agricultural de-
pression existing in England and the appar-
ent impossibility of farmers being able to
prosper from the cultivation of grain crops,
J. Cheal, F. R. H. S., suggests that cultiva-
tors of the land should consider what other
means might be adopted in the way of yield-
ing crops that would give more satisfactory
returns. In his book entitled Practical Fruit
Culture, which is published by George Bell
and Sons, London, 1892, he advocates that,
taking into consideration the " enormous
quantities of fruit" imported into England
for consumption there, fruit culture would
be one of the best if not the most important
means toward a renewed agricultural pros-
perity. The volume contains some excellent
information upon the fruits most adaptable
to the climate of Great Britain, and instruct-
ive hints as to their planting, cultivation, etc.
(194 pages; price, '75 cents).

In a volume of 241 pages, C. W. Bardeen,
of Syracuse, N. Y., has published three series
of songs " for schools," which contain over
three hundred selections. The first series is
entitled The Song Budget, and is devoted to
nursery rhymes and songs for young chil-
dren ; the second is called The Song Century,
embracing some of the most popular stand-
ard songs ; and the third, The Song Patriot,
gives examples of patriotic songs, war songs,
and national hymns. It is a useful cheap
edition of song music, but the compiler has
made some rather unfortunate omissions in

neglecting to give the composers' names,
while in at least one important instance
wrong authorship is claimed. This, however,
does not affect the arrangement of the music,
which is excellent (price, 50 cents).

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Abbe, Cleveland, The Mechanics of the
Earth's Atmosphere. Smithsonian Institution.
Pp. 324.

Abbott, Samuel W., M. D. On the Geograph-
ical Distribution of Certain Causes of Death in
Massachusetts. Boston. Pp. 116.

American Young People. Monthly. Volume
I, No. 1. Pp. 52. 10 cents. $1 a year.

Ball, Sir Robert Stawell. An Atlas of Astron-
omy. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 57.
With 72 Plates. $4.

Baumgarten, G., M. D. The St. Louis Medical
College. An Historical Address. St. Louis. Pp.
19.

Bedell, Frederick, and Crehore, Albert Gushing.
Alternating Currents. New York: The W. J.
Johnston Co., Limited. Pp. 325.

Bidgood, John. A Course of Practical Biol-
ogy. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
Pp. 353. $1.50.

Bishop, Louis F. A New Measurement in the
Study of Fever. Pp. 5.

Boland, Mary A. A Handbook of Invalid
Cooking. New York: The Century Co. Pp. 323.
$2.

Bolles, Frank. Students' Erpenses. Cam-
bridge, Mass., Harvard University. Pp. 45.

Booth, Charles. Life and Labor of the Poor in
London. Volume IV. New York: Macmillan &
Co. Pp. 354. $1.50.

Bradford, E. F., M. D., and Lewis, Louis,
M. D. Handbook of Emergencies and Common
Ailments. Boston : B. B. Russell. Pp. 448.

Bradstreet Company, New York. A Record,
not a Prospectus. Pp. 16. — Its Work in Relation
to Mercantile Credit. Pp. 4.

Brinton, D. G., Philadelphia. The Anthropo-
logical Sciences. Proposed Classification and
Nomenclature. Pp. 2. — Reminiscences of Pennsyl-
vania Folk Lore. Pp. 10. — Columbus Day Address,
1892. Pp.8. — Books on American Languages. Pp.
4. — " Further Notes" on Puegian Languages (pp. 5)
and on the Betoya Dialects. Pp. 8. — The Etnisco-
Libyan Elements in the Song of the Arval
Brethren. Pp. 8. — Analytical Catalogue of Works
and Scientific Articles. Pp. 16.

Calderwood, Henry. Evolution and Man's
Place in Nature. New York: MacmtUan & Co.
Pp. 349. $1.

College Association of the Middle States and
Maryland. Fourth Annual Convention. New
York: Educational Review. Pp.86.

Colas, Jules A. Poole Brothers' Celestial
Handbook. Chicago: Poole Brothers. Pp. 110.
With Plates. Poole Brothers' Celestial Plani-
sphere (Revolving Card).

Comstock, Theo. B. Utilization of the Sul-
phide Ores of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz. Pp. 20.

Current Topics. Monthly. February, 1893.
Chicago. Pp. 80. With Portrait. 15 cents. $1
a year.

Duliith, Minn. Annual Report of the Board of
Education, 1892. Pp. 113.

Egbert, Seneca. The Bicycle in its Relation to
the Physician. Boston: A. A. Pope. Pp. 11.

Farquhar, Henry. Competition and Combina-
tion in Nature. Pp. 3.

Paesig, Oliver L. Report of Bibliographer and
Librarian of the U. S. Signal Office. Pp. 22.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

135

Gilbert, G. K. Continental Problems. Roch-
ester, N. Y. : Geological Society of America.
Pp.12.

Glazebrook, R. T., and Shaw, W. N. Practical
Phvsics. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
Pp:633. $2.50.

Hague, Arnold. Geology of the Eureka Dis-
trict, Nevada. Pp. 419. With Plates and an Atlas.

Henderson, C. Hanford. The Cretaceous Fold
of the Alps, between the Linth and the Sihl. Pp.
22. With Chart.

Hogg, Prof. Alex., Fort Worth, Texas. The
Railroad as an Element in Education. Pp. 70.

Hudson, W. H. Idle Days in Patagonia. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 256. 84.

James, Joseph F. Paleontology of the Cin-
cinnati Group. Part IV. Pp. 16.

Jenkins, Oliver P. Primary Lessons in Human
Physiology. Pp. 211. Advanced do. Pp. 318.
Indianapolis, Ind. : Indiana School Book Co.

Jones, Prof. George William. Logarithmic
Tables. Macmillan & Co., and the Author, Ithaca,
New York. Pp. 160.

Joslin, R. Wait. Industrial Union. Pp. 21.

Loney, S. L. Mechanics and Hydrostatics for
Beginners. Macmillan & Co. Pp." 304. $1.25.

Lysacht, Sidney Royse. The Marplot. Mic-
miUan & Co. Pp. 425. $1.50.

McDonald, Marshall. Report of the Commis-
sioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1888. Washing-
ton: Gfovemment Printing Office. Pp. 902.

Marine Biological Laboratory. Fifth Annual
Report. Pp. 62.

Martin, Lillie J. Laboratory Exercises in
Physics. Pp. 36. — Outline of Laboratory Work
in Chemistry in San Francisco Girls' High School.
Pp. 16.

New York State Reformatory at Elmira. Sev-
enteenth Year Book.

Nichols, Rev. George W. Miscellanies Re-
ligious and Personal, and Sermons. Bridgeport,
Conn. Pp. 379. $1.25.

Oliver, Charles A. Symmetrically placed
Opacities of the Cornea, occurring in Mother and
Son. Pp. 3.

Owen, D. A., Franklin. Ind. Observations on
Heloderma Suspectum. Pp. 3.

Pancoast, Henry S. Representative English
Literature, from Chaucer to Tennyson. New
York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 514. $1.60.

Parton, James. General Jackson. D. Appleton
&Co. Pp. .332.

Pater, Walter. Plato and Platonism. Mac-
miUan & Co. Pp. 256. $1.75.

Peabody Museurd of American Archaeology
and Ethnology. Report. Pp. 13.

Philadelphia Polyclinic, February, 1893.
Monthly. Pp. 30. $1 a year.

Pilling, James Constantine. Bibliography of
the Athapascan Languages. Washington: Bu-
reau of Ethnology. Pp. 125.

Pohlman, Julius, M. D. Duration of Life tof
the Nervous American. Pp. 8.

Pope, Albert A. Memorial to Congress on the
Subject of a Road Department. Pp. 96.

Raymon, George Lansing. Genesis of Art-
form. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.311.
$2.25.

Robinson's New Rudiments of Arithmetic.
Pp. 224. 30 cents. — New Primary Arithmetic.
Pp. 80. 18 cents.— New Practical Arithmetic.
Pp. 416. 65 cents.

Salazar, A. E., and Newman, Q,. Sur la con-
servation des dissolutions de Tacide sulfhydrique
(On the Preser\ ation of Solutions of Sulphydric
Acid). Translation from the Spanish. Paris. Pp.
16.

Scott, Sir Walter. Marmion. American Book
Company. Pp. »17. 20 cents.

Sherwood, Sidney. The History and Theory
of Money. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.
Pp. 413. $2.

Shufeldt, R. W. On the Classification of the
Longipennes. Pp. 5.

Smith, Roderick H., New York. The Silver
Question settled. Pp. 31.

Stebbins, Genevieve. Dvnamic Breathing and
Harmonic Gymnastics. New York: Edgar S.
Werner. Pp. 155. $1.50.

Stephen, Leslie. An Agnostic's Apologv, and
other Essays. New York: G. P. Putnam's" Sons.
Pp. :380.

Tenney, D. K., Chicago. Never-ending Life
assured by Science. Pp. 15.

Trumbull. General M. M. Earl Grey on Reci-
procity and CivU Reform. Chicago: Open Court
Publishing Co. Pp. 27. 10 cents.

United States National Museum. Report for
1890. Smithsonian Institution. Pp.811.

Watts, Francis. Introductory Manual for
Sugar-Growers. New York: Longmans, Green
& Co. Pp. 151. $1.50.

Willink, Arthur. The World of the Unseen.
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 184. $1.25.

Wilson, Woodrow. Division and Reunion,
1829-1889. (Epochs of American History.) Long-
mans, Green & Co. Pp. 326. $1.25.

Wright, G. Frederick. Unity of the Glacial
Epoch. Pp. ;^.— Estra-Morainic Drift in the
Susquehanna, Lehigh, and Delaware Valleys. Pp.
25.— Replies to Criticisms. Pp. 8.

Yale Review, February, 1893. Quarterly. Bos-
ton: Ginn & Co. Pp.454. 75 cents; $3 a year.

Zola, EmOe. Modem Marriage. New York:
Benjamin H. Tucker. Pp. 64. 15 cents.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Number of Glacial Periods. — An article
by Prof. George F. Wright, in the American
Journal of Science, is devoted chiefly to show-
ing that certain points of evidence relied
upon by those who believe that the " Glacial
epoch" consisted of two periods of glaciar
tion of similar extent separated by a long
interglacial epoch, are insufficient to afford a
basis for such a conclusion. Furthermore,
the author adds to this : " As bearing against
the duality of the Glacial period, it may be
urged with great force that it is improbable
that two periods should so nearly duplicate
one another as these two are supposed to
have done. To those who maintain the suf-
ficiency of Croll's astronomical cause, how-
ever, this is rather an argument in favor.
But, on the other hand, that cause would
also demand a long succession of periods
during all the geological ages, and of these
we lack sufficient proof; while it would
throw the two periods which Prof. Chamber-
lin recognizes back much farther than the
facts will admit. It must be said, however,
that it is not wholly out of analogy with
known earth movements to suppose that

136

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

there has been in connection with the Glacial
period a succession of oscillations of the
earth's crust nearly duplicating one another.
Such oscillations seem to have occurred in
various geological ages, as, for instance, dur-
ing the coal period, when the successive coal
beds were formed. And, indeed, much can
be said in favor of the view that such an
oscillation when once begun would perpetu-
ate itself. ' . . . But our knowledge of these
matters is too vague to reason of it with any
confidence, as is that also of the other causes
which have been suggested for the produc-
tion of the phenomena of the period. In
conclusion, it is sufficient to remark that our
present state of knowledge on the subject
aeems so imperfect that it is not conducive
to success in investigation to hold any theory
aa to the imity or duality of the period with
great positiveness. Overconfidence on this
point at the present time is likely to blind
the eyes of the investigator, and to" hinder
progress both in the collection and in the in-
terpretation of the multitudinous and com-
plicated facts which everywhere invite our
close attention."

Preservation of Leaves as Fossils. — In

a paper on the Preservation of Plants as Fos-
sils, Mr. Joseph F. James, of Cincinnati,
names as one of the requisites to secure the
preservation of any plant, that it must be in
a position to be almost immediately covered
by some material. A leaf or branch falling
to the ground and likely to be exposed to
the elements has a poor prospect of being
preserved. But if it fall into the water and,
sinking to the bottom of a lake or swamp or
morass, be covered by mud or sand ; or if it
lie on the seashore and be covered by sand
brought in with the tide, it may at least leave
its mark. Or it may, through certain chem-
ical properties it possesses, so act upon the
Htone on which it lies as to be preserved, not
in actual substance, but as an intaglio. The
author was impressed with the possibilities
of the last process while walking along the
street in the rain and looking at the fallen
leaves on the pavements. He first noticed
numerous irregular, discolored patches on
the stone slabs. Looking more closely, he
Bays : " I found that these discolorations had
been caused by the leaves, which had left
their impress on the stone. In many cases

this impression was so distinct that there
was no difficulty in recognizing the species.
The leaves were those of the soft maple, one
or two species of oak, tulip tree, and syca-
more. There is here a possibility of the
preservation of the remains of plants, or, at
all events, of their impress upon stone, had
it occurred under more favorable circum-
stances. But on a pavement, where people
were passing constantly, the impressions were
worn off and soon disappeared. The rain,
however, did not seem to wash them away,
so they were something more than mere sur-
face markings." A similar phenomenon was
observed and described in 1858 by Mr. Charles
Peach in a paper on the Nature Printing of
Sea-weeds, on the rocks of one of the Ork-
ney Islands in Scotland.

Breath Figures. — Some interesting ex-
periments are described by W. B. Croft in
the production of " breath figures " — or la-
tent impressions on contact of objects with
glass and electrifying, which are made visi-
ble by breathing upon them. While there
appears to be no limit to the durability of
these figures if they are carefully protected,
they usually become obscured by dust gath-
ering on them after being often breathed
upon. But certain changes or developments
take place after the lapse of some weeks or
months. In coin pictures, the object is near
to the glass, but not in contact with it ; for
in the best specimens the rim of the coin
keeps the inner part clear of the surface.
Even if a coin only rest for a while on glass,
an outline of the disk and sometimes faint
traces of the inner detail will be produced
when the spot is breathed upon. An exami-
nation paper, printed on one side, put be-
tween two plates of glass and left for ten
hours, either in the dark or the daylight, will
leave a perfect breath impression of the print,
both on the glass that lay against the print,
and on that which faced the blank side of
the paper. Sometimes both impressions are
white, and sometimes they are both black ;
or one may be part white and part black, or
may even change while being examined. The
impressions were very easy to produce during
a sharp frost with east winds early in March,
1890. The following experiments easily suc-
ceed at any time : Stars and crosses of paper
are placed for a few hours beneath a plate of

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

137

glass ; clear white breath figures of the de-
vice will appear. A piece of paper is folded
several times each way to form small squares,
then spread out and placed under glass ; the
raised lines of the folds produce white breath
traces, and in one instance a letter-weight
that was above left a latent mark of its cir-
cular rim. Some writing made on paper with
ordinary ink and well dried, left a very last-
ing white breath image after a few hours'
contact. Plates of glass lying for a few hours
on a table cover worked with silk acquired
strong white figures from the silk. Two cases
have been reported where blinds with em-
bossed letters left a latent image on the win-
dow near which they lay ; it was revealed in
misty weather, and had not been removed by
washing. A glass which has lain above a
picture for several years, but has been kept
from contact by the mount, will often show
on its inner side an outline of the picture,
always visible without breath. The words
white and black in the descriptions of the
impressions relate to the adherence of the
breath to the reliefs (white) or its non-adher-
ence (black). The exact cause of the phe-
nomenon is not known, but is supposed to lie
in some of the unknown regions of molecular
agency.

ExclnsiTe Commimities. — The number of
ants dwelling together in a community, ac-
cording to Sir John Lubbock, is sometimes
as great as five hundred thousand. They are
always friendly toward each other, no quar-
rel ever having been observed between two
ants, members of the same community. They
are, however, very exclusive, and regard an
immigrant with horror. When an ant of the
same species belonging to another nest ap-
pears among them, he is promptly taken by
the leg or antenna and put out. It would
naturally be surmised that this distinction
was made by means of some communication.
To test whether they could recognize each
other without signs, attempts were made to
render them insensible, first by chloroform
and afterward by whisky. " None of the
ants would voluntarily degrade themselves
by getting drunk." Finally, fifty ants were
taken, twenty-five from one community and
twenty-five from another, and dipped into
whisky until intoxicated. They were then
appropriately marked with a spot of paint

and placed on a table where the ants from
one nest were feeding. The sober ones no-
ticed the drunkards and seemed much per-
plexed. At length they took the interlopers
to the edge of the moat surrounding the ta-
ble and dropped each one into the water.
Their comrades, however, they carried home
and placed in the nest, where they slept off
the effects of the liquor.

The Comma Bacillns, Cholera, and Sani-
tation. — Experiments by Prof, von Petten-
kofer and Prof. Emmerich, in which they
swallowed fresh cultures of comma bacillus
upon empty, neutralized stomachs, show con-
clusively to von Pettenkofer that the com-
ma bacillus, during its sojourn in the intes-
tine, does not produce the specific poison that
causes Asiatic cholera. This agrees with the
results obtained by Bouchard, who was able
to induce the symptoms of cholera in rabbits
by giving them the excreta of human cholera
patients, but not by giving them pure cultures
of comma bacilli or their metabolic products.
While he does not deny that the comma ba-
cillus has some etiological importance, von
Pettenkofer can not believe it is the x which,
without the assistance of y, can cause epi-
demics of cholera ; and he reiterates his well-
known views on the influence of the soil, es-
pecially in connection with the rainfall. His
practical teaching may be summarized in the
formula that it is the y — ^that is, the local
physical and sanitaiy conditions — that must
be attended to ; each place must, in short,
be made cholera-proof by sanitation.

Children and Flowers. — In a paper read
before the Society of American Florists, on
training children to love and cultivate flow-
ers, Mr. Robert Farquhar argued that we
could either stifle or strengthen the love of
Nature which is planted in every young heart.
If we encourage and cultivate this love the
mind of the growing child will be opened to
the beauties of Nature, and we shall in this
way provide for it a means of healthy exer-
cise out of doors and a source of delightful
recreation all through life. Children should
have gardens of their own to care for, and
they should be instructed in garden practice.
They should be allowed to sow the seed and
care for the plants themselves, although they
should be directed in all these operations.

138

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Florists who do business in villages and
towns enjoy opportunities for doing effective
work among children by explaining to their
young vitiitors the methods of propagation.
The claims of children should never be for-
gotten in making up the lists of premiums
for agricultural and horticultural fairs. Prizes
should be given for plants grown by them
and for bouquets and collections of wild
flowers made by them. Village improve-
ment societies are doing excellent work in
many sections. Some have distributed seeds
and plants to the school children with most
satisfactory results.

Afrifan Pluck. — Mr. Alfred Coode Hore,
in his Eleven Years in Central Africa, speaks
well of the tribes of the Tanganyika region,
which he finds are peaceable and industrious
for the most part, but turbulent and aggres-
sive when they have learned to dread moles-
tation by strangers. " It seems hard," he
says, " that a man should be called lazy be-
cause he has ample leisure between his busy
times ; who has made with his own hands
from Nature's raw materials his house, his
axe, hoe, and spear, his clothing and orna-
ments, his furniture and corn-mill, and all
that he has, and who, though liable often in
a lifetime to have to commence that whole
process over again, has the energy and enter-
prise to do so. Too often have the same
people been c<alled savage and bloodthirsty
who, through all experience and by all their
traditions regarding armed strangers as ene-
mies, defend themselves and their own with
the desperate energy which, as displayed by
our own ancestral relations, we term patriot-
ism and courage."

Impurities in lee. — The once popular

theory that water is purified by freezing is,
as Mr. Charles Piatt shows in Science, not in
accordance with facts. While water in its
crystalline state should theoretically be near-
ly pure, still, owing to its formation in
needle-like crystals, considerable foreign mat-
ter present in the water in suspension may
be and is mechanically held within the mass.
Another view, that in the freezing of still
water a certain concentration of some spe-
cies of bacteria on the surface of the water
may take place, and the first inch of ice may
contain these in increased numbers as com-

pared with a sample of water from the same
lake, may be well founded, but it is not yet
proved that these bacteria have an increased
or any vital activity. But when the ice is
melted and the temperature of the water is
considerably raised, " then we have another
problem, that of possible decomposition and
organic change in those organisms that may
induce results equal to and exceeding those
of the bacteria themselves." Disease has
undoubtedly, Mr. Piatt affirms, been pro-
duced by the use of ice from impure sources)
and this, too, when mere analysis of the ice
in comparison with water standards would
not condemn it. But the standards in the
analysis of ice must be higher than in that
of water. The Massachusetts Board of
Health has pointed out that it is not the
number of bacteria alone that is to be con-
sidered, but their kind, and insists that no
water supply that is not fit for drinking pur-
poses should be used as a supply for ice.
This is done when ice is gathered from stag-
nant ponds and sluggish canals that receive
the drainage from vaiious sources. Snow
ice and ice that has been formed by flooding
ice fields with surface water are very liable
to be contaminated. In making artificial ice
it is customary to use the entire contents of
the water tanks. In that case the impuri-
ties, repelled at first by the ice forming at
the sides of the vessels, are driven to the
center and there concentrated, to be at last
included in the freezing of the entire mass.

Protection of Orchards against Frost.

— According to Charles Howard Shinn, in
Garden and Forest, experiments are carried
on on a practical scale for the protection of
fruit against frost in the orange groves at
Riverside, Cal. In some winters the tem-
perature falls so low that the oranges are
destroyed or injured. As a remedy the cul-
tivators are using appliances for warming
the orchards on a large scale. Their experi-
ments show that the temperature can be
raised from four to ten degrees by the use
of fires. The moment the thermometer falls
to the danger point electric bells can be rung
and tanks of crude petroleum lighted. One
man has fitted up an eighty-acre orchard at a
cost of $10,000 or $12,000. He claims that
his grove is absolutely protected, and that
the rumiing expense will be very little. Other

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

139

growers use coal-oil cans filled with kindling
wood and coal and placed in the orchard at
the rate of from eight to twenty-five per
acre. Some provide themselves with two-
gallon iron kettles and use reduced petro-
leum. Ten dollars per acre will pay for the
plant and the expense of one night's burn-
ing. Horticulturists in other citrus colonies
are following in the track of Riverside and
preparing for future " cold snaps."

Cnrions Fanna of La Plata. — A curious
medley of animal life is described by Mr-
W. H. Hudson as existing in the pampas re-
gion of La Plata : A poisonous toad which
kills horses ; the wrestler frog, which suddenly
pinches its enemy with its fore legs and then
runs away ; a large, venomous, man-chasing
spider, which pursues men on foot and on
horseback ; dragon flies, a single individual
of which will cause clouds of gnats, mos-
quitoes, and sand flies to disappear in an in-
stant; and an opossum, fully adapted to life
in trees, which yet lives in a desert destitute
of trees, and when brought to a tree, which
it may never have seen before, will clasp it
and climb it with all the agility of its forest-
dwelling relatives of North America.

Manufacture of Fans. — The manufac-
ture of fans is chiefly carried on now in
France, Spain, China, Japan, and India.
The fashions are established m France prin-
cipally at Sainte-Genevieve, Audeville, Cor-
beil-Cerf, Le Deluge, Coudray, and the vi-
cinity of Beauvais and Meru. At Sainte-
Genevifeve they work in bone, mother-of-
pearl, and ivory ; at Le Petit-Fercourt, and
Andecourt, in mother-of-pearl and horn ;
at Le Deluge and Corbeil-Cerf, pear tree,
apple tree, and hornbeam wood ; at Boir-
siei-e, in bone ; and at Paris, in shell. The
leaf of the fan is generally made and the fan
mounted at Paris. Fans have been made in
Spain only for some sixty or seventy years,
notably at Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Mala-
ga, and Cadiz. Most of the Chinese fans are
made in Canton and E-moui, but the manu-
facture is generally diffused through the
country, for the fan is a part of the na-
tional costume. Every Chinese of good so-
cial standing holds a fan during visits of
ceremony, and the custom of writing on fans
is spread throughout the empire. The prin-

cipal centers of production in Japan are the
cities of Osaka, Kioto, and Nagoya. In that
country the fan is a part of the costume of
both sexes, and is to be seen in the hand of
the soldier as well as in that of the monk.
When a gentlem.an gives alms to a beggar,
he often puts the coin upon his fan ; and
salutes are made by waving the fan as they
are in Europe by tipping the hat. There are
also fan factories in some other countries.
Lace fans are made at Brussels and De
Grammont, in Belgium ; fans of braided
straw, at Fiesole and Vicenza in Italy ; and
fan-standards of braided grass and cloth em-
broidered with gold and silver, in Tunis and
Morocco ; but France holds the first place in
the manufacture of luxurious, and China in
that of cheap, fans.

Origin of " Hot Waves." — A theory is
published by Prof. F. Hawn, of Leavenworth,
Kan., that our southwest winds are tropical
currents, which rise to great elevations in
the upper atmosphere, and then flow north
and reach the ground again in latitude 34°,
bringing subtropical heat. As other results
of his theory he concludes that the close at-
mospheric relations between the upper and
lower currents attest their common origin ;
that the atmospheric temperature is inci-
dentally if not perpetually higher in the
upper than on the lower levels ; that these
relatively higher thermal conditions of the
upper atmosphere control the lower atmos-
phere in the spring and summer, and indi-
dentally in the winter ; that the hot waves
of the Northwest have their origin in a
superheated upper atmosphere, and are con-
densed by gravitation in their descent to the
surface, evolving heat in a ratio inverse to
the humidity; and that ihefoehn winds (hot
waves), with their resultant temperatures of
more than 100° in the temperate seasons
and from 65° to 73° in the winter, are not
local west of the eighty-eighth meridian, but
at intervals simultaneously cover the north-
ern half of the United States.

Qualities of Slates. — From experimental
studies with roofing slates, Mr. Mansfield
Merriman has drawn the conclusions that those
with soft ribbons are of an inferior quality
and should not be used in good work ; the
stronger the slate the greater are its tough-

140

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ness and softness and the less its porosity
and corrodibility ; softness or liability to abi'a-
sion does not indicate inferiority, but is an
indication of strength and good weathering
qualities. The strongest slate stands high-
est in weathering qualities, so that a flexural
test affords an excellent index of all its prop-
erties, particularly if the ultimate deflection
and the manner of rupture be noted. The
strongest and best slate has the highest per-
centage of silicates of iron and aluminum, but
is not necessarily the lowest in carbonates of
lime and magnesia. Chemical analyses give
only imperfect conclusions regarding the
weathering qualities of slate, and they do not
satisfactorily explaiu the physical properties.
The soft roofing slates weigh about one hun-
dred and seventy-three pounds per cubic foot,
and the best qualities have a modulus of rup-
ture of from seven thousand to ten thousand
pounds per square inch. The test of a slate
by balancing it, striking it, and observing its
ring is a good one, but is not susceptible of
quantitative expression.

Pasteur's Seventieth Birthday. — The

seventieth birthday of Louis Pasteur was im-
posingly celebrated December 27th, in the
presence of eminent men of science and states-
men of different countries. The first address
was made by the French Minister of Public
Instruction, who spoke of the occasion as the
" festival of France and of mankind." Ad-
dressing M. Pasteur, he said that while his
work could be analyzed only by the scientific,
the ignorant and the learned alike knew that
he had accomplished something great. All
his success was due to his unswerving "apos-
tle's faith " in science. Had he devoted him-
self to pure science, the topmost place would
have been his. Happily for himself and for
mankind, he deserted that path and hence-
forth passed his days in inventing antidotes
for diseases that had for centuries decimated
the animal and human populations. Prof.
Joseph Lister acknowledged the obligations
of the professors of the healing art to M. Pas-
teur. Numerous testimonials and offerings
of different kinds were presented to M. Pas-
teur, with a splendid gold medal, the product
of an international subscription.

Origin of the Asteroids, — A paper on
Groups of Asteroids, by Prof. Daniel Kirk-

wood, illustrates the theory that these bodies
were formed by the resolution of nebulous as-
teroids. When the number of telescopic plan-
ets had grown to hundreds, and when the peri-
helion distance of some of them had become
greater by many millions of miles than the
aphelion of others, the theory of explosion
was necessarily abandoned. But the doc-
trine of similarity of origin, the author holds,
was not so easily disposed of. The original
dimensions of nebulous asteroids were proba-
bly many times greater than those of the pres-
ent bodies. The disrupting tendency of the
great bodies of the system, especially when
resisted only by the slight central attraction of
nebulous asteroids, is easily imagined. Such
separation, in short, has no improbability what-
ever. The dismemberment of comets, as is
well known, has actually occurred under our
own eyes. Why not also the pulling asunder
of nebulous planets ? The fact that in many
cases the motions of asteroids indicate a com-
mon origin, affords strong presumptive evi-
dence in favor of the nebular hypothesis.
Possibly, indeed, its true form may have dif-
fered from that proposed by Laplace. How
many primitive, separate nebulae were con-
tained in our system, and how many of these
primitive masses suffered dismemberment
while Mars and the then future earth were
yet floating in the solar atmosphere, can not
now be told. An indefinite number may, how-
ever, undoubtedly be traced. "May not simi-
lar processes be also indicated in the slow
evolution of binary and multiple stars in the
sidereal heavens ? "

Early Fans< — The extreme antiquity of
fans is attested by their appearance in ancient
Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures, where they
have the shape of a semicircle with a long
handle attached at the center. They were
probably used in worship to protect the offer-
ings and sacred objects against contamination
by dust and flies. They were known also in
India, where they were perhaps introduced
from China. The story of their origin in the
latter country runs that the daughter of a
powerful mandarin was obliged, on account
of the heat, to take off her mask during the
feast of lanterns, in violation of the law and
convention. She shook it rapidly in front of
her face, both to give herself air and by the
quick motion to veil her identity as fully as

y

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

141

possible. Other women followed her exam-
ple, and the fan was invented. The Chinese
historians trace the use of the fan in their
country back to a contemporary of Rameses
II of Egypt ; and it is mentioned by a writer
of a thousand years before the Christian era.
In ancient Grecian life, a eunuch, in one of
the tragedies of Euripides, relates how he
waved a fan, " according to the Phrygian
fashion," before the hair, face, and bosom of
the fair Helen. Fans were early adopted by
Roman matrons, who had two kinds — the
Jlabella of ostrich plumes, and the labella of
thin woven stuff stretched over a frame. A
Roman woman never went out without a slave
{JlaheUifera) whose duty it was to fan her.
It is not known whether the fan was used in
Europe as an article of the feminine toilet be-
tween the fall of the Roman Empire and the
eleventh century, for it is not mentioned in
that relation ; but it was certainly used a
great deal in the ceremonies of Roman Cath-
olic worship, when the deacons and the aco-
lytes waved it over the altar at mass. This
usage Pere Bonami assumes to have traced
back to the apostles. Fans are represented
in manuscripts and on monuments of the
twelfth century and inventories of the four-
teenth, under different names, but without
specification of their use. They seem to have
been disused in the church in the thirteenth
century, to appear again after the Crusades in
the warmer coimtries — Spain and Italy — as
an accessory to woman's dress ; but were not
seen in France till the sixteenth century, when
they were introduced at court by the Italian
perfumers who came in the suite of Catherine
de Medicis.

American and ifriean Deserts. — The

most striking contrast between the North
American " deserts " and those of North
Africa is described by Prof. Johannes Wal-
ther, of Berlin, as consisting in the far
greater wealth of vegetation which charac-
terizes the former. In every direction the
eye is met by the yellow-blossoming ha-
lophytae, silver- gray artemisiae, and prickly
cacti ; between the opuntias are found cush-
ions of moss, and at the foot of the hills
juniper trees seven feet high with trunks a
foot thick. Such are the features of the
landscape of the deserts of Utah, where
plant-growth has completely disappeared

only in those places in which the saline
complexion of the soil kills vegetation. The
Van Horn deserts in western Texas, and the
Gila deserts in California are equally rich
in vegetation ; the altitude of these deserts
above the sea-level makes no important
difference. Either the mean rainfall in the
American deserts is greater than in those of
Africa, or else the flora of the American
deserts is better adapted to a dry atmos-
phere. Although the deserts of the two
continents present fundamental differences
as regards vegetation, there is a surprising
similarity between them as regards certain
important and characteristic desert phe-
nomena, especially with respect to the to-
pography of the country. There is the
prevalence of plains, with mountains rising
from them like islands, with no intervening
heaps of debi-is passing from the plains to
the steep moimtain slopes. This phenome-
non is the more striking, as there are no
rubbish deltas, even at the outlet of valleys
a thousand feet deep. Another feature com-
mon to both is the large number of isolated
" island " mountains and of amphitheatre
formations in the valleys ; also the intensive
effect of insolation, which splits the rocks
and flints, and disintegrates the gi-anite into
rubbish. The denuding influence of the
wind is visible not only in the characteristics
of the surface forms just mentioned, which
differ in important points from erosion
forms, but it can be directly observed in the
mighty dust-storms which rush through the
desert. In view of such agreement of im-
portant and incidental geological phenomena
in regions so remote from each other, the
phenomenon of desert formation must be
considered to be a telluric process which
runs its course according to law, just as the
glacial phenomena of the polar zone or cu-
mulative disintegration in the tropics.

Wind Efleets. — In a paper on The Wind
as a Factor in Geology, published in the
Engineer's Magazine, Mr. George P. Merrill,
after mentioning several familiar examples
of the formation of dunes in Europe, passes
to the account of similar phenomena in the
United States. In May, 1889, a dust-storm
occurred in Dakota during which the soil
was torn up to a depth of four or five inches
and scattered in all directions ; while drifts

142

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of sand were formed, several feet deep in
favorable places, packed as snow-driftfi are
packed by a blizzard. In parts of the West-
ern plains the fine, loose sand has been
blown away at times, leaving every pebble
and large bowlder standing out in bold re-
lief. The loose material often gathers in the
form of drifts or dunes, which travel across
the country with frequent changes of out-
line. A few miles north of Winnemucca
Lake, in western Nevada, is a belt of these
drifting sand hills, described by the geolo-
gist Russell as some seventy-five feet in
thickness and about forty miles in length by
eight miles in breadth. Another range of
sand dunes, at least twenty miles long, and
forming hills some two or three hundred
feet high, is on the eastern end of Alkali
Lake in the same State. Dunes of equal
height have been formed on the eastern
shore of Lake Michigan, and at Grand Ha-
ven and Sleeping Bear have drifted oter the
woodlands, so as to leave only the dead tops
of trees exposed. The erosive power of
these drifting sands is often an important
agent in wearing away the rocks upon which
they strike. Carried along by the force of
the winds, they work effectively in undermin-
ing cliffs, scouring down mountain passes,
and giving curious and fantastic forms to
prominent rocks.

The Whistled Language of the Canary
Lslands. — As a result of his studies of the
whistled language of Gomera, in the Canary
Islands, M. J. Lajard affirms that it is not a
special idiom or a whistle which tries to imi-
tate the Spanish language; but it is the
Spanish language strengthened by the aid
of whistling. " The Gomerian, while he is
speaking, puts one, two, or four fingers in
his mouth, as we sometimes see done in the
street in order to make shrill sounds, and at
the same time he whistles with force. There
results a mixture of words and whistle, un-
intelligible to ears not accustomed to it, but
in which can be distinguished the words of
the language. . . . The whistling, then, is
only an artifice employed to carry to a dis-
tance the sound of the voice, to the detri-
ment of its distinctness and tone-quality.
This last inconvenience is so great that up
to this time travelers have been unable to
understand the whistled language. To be

able to understand it, you must know how
to whistle yourself." It is, however, very
limited in its compass, and whistled conver-
sations are of short duration. It exists in
other of the Canary Islands than in Go-
mera, and there is reason for believing that
it was formerly more widespread and more
prevalent than now. Rudiments of a whis-
tled language, the mechanism of which is
like that of the Canaries, exist even in
Paris; it is employed by butchers and by
thieves.

What constitutes a Polluted Water. —

A water is said to be polluted, according to
Prof, von Pettenkofer, when it is no longer
clear and inodorous, when fishes and plants
perish in it, and when it contains more
organic matter and less oxygen than are to
be found in the unpolluted portions of the
flow of the stream. Such contamination is
essentially different from the transient tur-
bidity due to heavy rains or to melting snow.
Still, even the permanent pollutions disappear
in the further course of the river bed, by
deposition and other agencies. Here the
rapidity of the stream and the quantity of
the water exert a preponderating effect. The
most formidable impurities are supposed to
consist of the putrescent refuse which flows
out of sewers of cities, and quickly produces
an offensive odor at the places where it
accumulates. Prof, von Pettenkofer has for
many years given his attention to the ques-
tion of the extent to which rivers are polluted
by such agencies, and has had researches
conducted by his pupils. But nothing has
hitherto altered the opinion which he ex-
pressed long ago, that sewage may be safely
permitted to flow into a river if its volume
is not more than one fifteenth that of the
river water, and its rate of flow is decidedly
greater than that of the current. Taking the
city of Munich, which has 280,000 iuhabit-
tants, he computes the pollution of the Isar
by its sewage as amounting to only TTnTnTrnTT
of the discharge of the river — a pollution so
inconsiderable that it can not be detected by
the eye when a corresponding mixture is made
up experimentally. But it is also not perma-
nent, for at Ismaning, seven kilometres below
Munich, the sewage influx is no longer to be
detected ; and at Freising, thirty-three kilome-
tres below, the chemical and bacteriological

NOTES.

H3

tests show that it has lost nearly all its power
of pollution. Thus, the number of 198,000
bacteria per cubic centimetre f oimd by Praus-
nitz at the mouth of the Munich sewer was
reduced at Ismaning to 15,231, and at Frei-
sing to 3,602. A similar result was obtained
by Frankel with the water of the Spree at
and below Berlin. The mere number of
bacteria found has, however, no sanitary sig-
nificance, since these particular microbes are
mostly harmless, and in fact destroy the patho-
genic microbes in the struggle for existence.
The purifying action of rivers is ascribed by
von Pettenkofer to the oxygen dissolved in
the water in a free state or separated from
organisms. In the latter respect the green
algae and even non-chlorophyllic plants come
prominently into consideration. This vegeta-
tion should be preserved ; but it may be de-
stroyed by a too great concentration of the
water to be purified ; and to prevent this, in-
dustrial waste waters which destroy vegeta-
tion must be kept out till they have been
purified.

Bacteriologieal Processes against Dis-
ease. — According to a summary in the Satur-
day Review, attempts by bacteriological pro-
cesses to remove from the human system the
germs of infectious disease have been made
by six different methods. The first is by
Pasteur's preventive inoculation, in which a
minute quantity of an attenuated culture of
the virus is administered to produce a Hght
attack of the disease. The second is M.
Pasteur's method in rabies, in which a miti-
gated virus is injected into a person already
attacked with the disease, to overtake it.
The third is the employment of the virus of
a comparatively mild disease to protect
against a more severe one, as in vaccination
for smallpox. Next in order is the destruc-
tion of the disease-producing bacteria by the
administration of antiseptics or bactericides.
A fifth method is the re-enforcement of natural
means possessed by our systems for combat-
ing disease germs : by re-enforcing the leuco-
cytes or white blood-corpuscles, which de-
stroy bacteria, by means of the injection of
the blood of animals insusceptible to the
disease ; by raising or lowering the tempera-
ture of the body of the patient ; by alter-
ations of diet, climate, or surroundings ; or
by injection of phagocyte invigorators. The

sixth method is by the injection of the " tox-
albumens " formed by the bacteria growing
in artificial cultures, as is done in Koch's
method for tuberculosis. That these methods
have not proved entirely satisfactory, and
bacteriological treatment is now apparent-
ly at a standstill, is not due, it is thought,
to any innate defect in the system, but to
some technical detail. " When the ingenuity
of man has arrived at the point of being able
to prove absolutely that organisms, complete-
ly invisible to all but the highest magnifying
powers attainable, cause each its particular
infectious disease ; when these tiny things
may be made to grow like plants in a garden,
separately and in order ; when we can keep
rows of tubes each with its deadly contents
on our laboratory shelves, or in our incuba-
tors, like druggists' bottles of inert powders
or crystals — surely we shall not stop at this
stage in our control over this ' world of the
mfinitely little.' "

NOTES.

A CLARIFICATION of muddy liquids and
partial separation of micro-organisms is
effected by M. R. Leze by subjecting the
liquid to a rapid rotation. Thus, cider, in
turbid fermentation, after being whirled in
a turbine wheel, came out clear ; and while
specimens kept in bottles at 86° soon gen-
erated bacteria, the yeast and alcohoUc fer-
mentation had all disappeared. This method
may be found useful iu bacteriological inves-
tigation ; and in industrial operations, for rid-
ding impure and unhealthy waters of most
of the organisms contained in them.

Chemical analysis has been applied by
M. Berthelot to the solution of a problem in
archaeology. Taking a piece of copper found
by M. de Sarzec in his explorations of the
nuns in Mesopotamia, which was obtained
from one of the most ancient sites, he made
an exact determination of its composition.
It contained no tin or zinc, and only slight
traces of lead and arsenic. It had been oxi-
dized throughout, and presented itself as a
subo.xide or a mixture wf protoxide and me-
tallic copper. Hence, while the question
can not yet be considered decided, the speci-
men is a" contribution of evidence in favor of
the existence of an age of copper.

The physicians of Massachusetts have in
recent years noticed a development of ma-
larial disease in Cambridge and the vicinity
of Boston and in other towns of the State.
The origin of the cases in Cambridge seems,
from the investigations thus far made, to be

144

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

associated with the excavations of brickyards.
The exatuination of cases in the suburbs of
Boston points to the upper waters of certain
streams.

A VERT simple remedy for the annexa-
tion fever now beginning to prevail in Cana-
da and the exodus to this country which is
in full flow, is proposed by Mr. Allen Prin-
glc. It is to " take down the bars " between
Canada and her natural market — to culti-
vate friendly and intimate commercial rela-
tions with the United States.

A PATKNTKD substancc called alumino-
ferric is prepared by English manufacturers,
to promote the precipitation of sewage. It
is used solid, in slabs twenty-one inches long
by ten inches wide and four inches thick,
which are placed in a cage fixed in the flow
of the sewage, or in solution. The " sludge "
is deposited, to be separately carried off or
made into manure, and clear water flows
away. The use of this substance has been
very successful.

Prof. H. Carrington Bolton has been
elected President of the New York Academy
of Sciences.

The Department of Ethnology and Archae-
ology of the Columbian Exposition mtends
to provide as complete an anthropological
library as possible, by aid of which students
and educators may be enabled to become ac-
quainted with the mass of literature on the
subject. All authors, societies, museums,
and publishers are invited to contribute from
their stores all publications on the various
branches of the subject. A complete cata-
logue of the collection will be published and
widely distributed. The library will be con-
veniently and properly arranged and accessi-
ble to students, and full information will be
given them respecting the books. At the
close of the Exhibition loaned books will be
returned, and the rest of the library will be
placed in the permanent Memorial Museum
of Science which is to be established in Chi-

li is said that the passage of boats con-
taining naphtha has had the effect of poi-
soning the waters of the Volga, A great
deal of the liquid is transported in badly
built wooden barges, with a resultant loss by
leakage of about three per cent. Consequent-
ly the fish are decreasing rapidly, and have
already become extinct in some places where
the boats stop. The naphtha likewise kills
off the insect life on which the fish feed, by
being carried in times of flood to the adja-
cent meadows and destroying the larvae there.

The New York branch of the American
Folk Lore Society was oi'ganized at the house
of Mrs. Henry Draper, February 24th, when a
constitution was adopted, and officers were
elected as follows : President, H. Carrington

Bolton; vice-presidents, G. B. Grinnell, R.
W. Gilder ; treasurer, H. M. Lester ; secre-
tary, William B. Tuthill. These officers and
Mrs. Harriet M. Converse, Mrs. Anna P.
Draper, and Mrs. Mary J. Field, constitute
the Executive Committee. Papers were read
at the meeting by Prof. Bolton on Divination
by the Mirror as practiced in New York To-
day, and by George Bird Grinnell on How
the Pawnees stole the Corn. Mr. G. F.
Kunz exhibited a human tooth inlaid with
jadeite. Mr. Newell, founder and secretary
of the National Society, was present and
made some remarks.

OBITUARY NOTES.

The death was announced about the be-
ginning of the year of General Axel Wilhel-
movitch Gadolin, of the Russian army, an emi-
nent mineralogist and physicist, and a mem-
ber of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He
engaged, when not active in military duties,
in research into the molecular forces that
act in the formation of crystals. His chief
work, which is also known to the world
through a German translation, was his Deduc-
tion of all the Systems of Crystals and their
Derivates from a Unique Principle. A paper
on the resistance of the walls of a gun to the
pressure of gunpowder gases is also notice-
able for having given a new formula of
minimal resistance.

Nikolai Ivanovitch Koksharoff, who
died in St. Petersburg January 2d, was an
eminent mineralogist and author of a work in
eleven large quarto volumes, to which a
twelfth is to be added, of contributions to
the mineralogy of Russia.

M. Francois van Rysselberghe, Pro-
fessor of Electrotechnics in the University of
Ghent, and a famous inventor, died suddenly
at Antwerp, Belgium, February 3d, in the
forty-seventh year of his age. Among his
inventions were a universal meteorograph,
exhibited at Paris in 1881, which registered
periodically on a strip of paper the pressure,
temperature, humidity, depth of rainfall, and
direction and force of the wind ; and a sys-
tem of simultaneous telegraphic and tele-
phonic transmission which has come into
general use on urban and suburban lines.
He was counsel in electrical matters for the
Belgian administration of railroads, posts,
and telegraphs.

Mr. Henry F. Blackford, a distinguished
geologist and meteorologist of India, died in
January. Originally attached to the Geo-
logical Survey of India, in connection with
which he wrote several memoirs of much
value, he afterward became Superintendent
of the Meteorological Department of Bengal,
and ultimately of the whole of India ; and in
connection with this position also he pub-
lished useful books and papers.

•■• ■ \ lit

ARCHIBALD GEIKIE.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JUNE, 1893.

IRRIGATION IN THE ARID STATES.

By CHARLES HUWAEU SHI^N.

A MOST vital change is going on in the region west of central
Kansas — a change which will in the near future profoundly
affect many if not all classes of agriculturists in other American
States, and incidentally in Europe also. I refer to the change
that has been brought about by the success of private irrigation
enterprises, by important alterations in the laws respecting irri-
gation, by district irrigation under such laws, and by the steady
growth of a public sentiment favorable to the irrigator, even
when his necessities override ancient precedent.

It is my purpose in this article to give, as far as may be, a
faithful and conservative account of the present condition of arid-
land irrigation enterprises. My account will be statistical as far
as acreage, flow of water, cost of construction, and similar items ;
it will be descriptive, and largely from personal knowledge, as
regards practical methods and their results. The entire subject,
it seems to me, possesses an immeasurable interest for farmers
elsewhere, and for all who are in any waj^ dependent upon the
farming class. Successful irrigation upon a large scale intro-
duces, it is true, a new kind of competition, but it also urges in-
telligent farmers to adopt improver! methods of farming in their
own defense, and often leads them to apply the water of neglected
streams upon their lands. Even the general reader is often inter-
ested in discussions upon farm mortgages, farm rents, wages of
laborers, taxes on crops, cost of fertilizers, and similar agricul-
tural problems of the present time, because he has learned that
they affect his own welfare. Much broader is tlie ai)plication of
arid-land irrigation to every occupation and industry. America

VOL XLIIl. — 11

IRRIGATION IN THE ARID STATES.

H7

has many and greater valleys of the Nile waiting to i)oui- forth
enormous harvests whenever the legislative and executive work
of the irrigator has been accomplished.

If I were writing a history of irrigation in America — and a
wonderful story it is — I should have to devote a chapter to the
Spanish influence in all the lands from Texas to southern Cali-
fornia, where men, whose mountaineer ancestors had learned the
value of water in arid districts from the builders of the Alham-
bra, made reservoirs and led many a fertilizing stream to acres of
vines and oranges on the high plains about old missions, or in
the adobe-walled gardens of newly founded towns, such as San
Antonio, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles. I should have to tell about
the ruined irrigation canals of forgotten tribes in Arizona, south-
ern Utah, and other regions of the Southwest where hundreds of
square miles were covered with a network of water ditches, small
and great. The modern irrigator often adopts the grades of these
prehistoric channels for his enterprises, finding that no engineer
can improve upon them. I should have to describe the fields
under the red and yellow heights of Zuni or Acoma, where the
Pueblo Indians still raise their spotted corn by irrigation, as their
ancestors did centuries ago, in the bottoms of narrow canons
where the ruins of their fortressed cliff-dwellings still remain.
But these things, except perhaps for a passing allusion, are for-
eign to the purpose of this investigation.

The arid States and Territories are beginning to organize as a
group of communities that have common interests and a common
purpose. Their respective areas and populations are shown in
the following table :

Name.

Texas

New Mexico

Arizona

California

Colorado

Utah

Nevada

Kansas (west of '.iT').

Nebraska

Wyoming

South Dakota

Nortli Dakota

Montana

Idaho

Oregon (eastern)

Washington (eastern)

Total

Area, square miles.

Population in 1890.

265,780

2,235,523

122,580

153,593

113,020

5it,6"iO

158,360

1,208,130

103,925

412,198

84,9*70

207,905

110,700

45,761

56,000

807,000

76,855

1,058,910

97,890

60,705

328 808

149,100

182,719

146,080

132,159

84,800

84,385

48,000

113,767

35,000

149,390

1,652,060

7,480,573

IRRIGATION IN THE ARID STATES. 149

The total area is more than half of the United States (without
Alaska), and the total present population is less than one eighth
of the population of the United States.

It is difficult, perhaps impracticable, to divide States once cre-
ated. Although a respectable minority in California and Texas
favor division schemes, which would make of the former three
States, and of the latter four, the tendencies of the time are
against it. But with the Territories it is different ; and if admis-
sion is long delayed, so that irrigation developments will have
enabled the soil to sustain a dense population, such Territories as
Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah are very likely to be divided.
Eastern Oregon and Washington are separated by diverse inter-
ests from the western slopes of those States in somewhat the same
way as southern California is separated from the northern coun-
ties. If the desire for smaller States should increase in the fu-
ture, it is not impossible, therefore, that the States and Territories
of the arid belt should some time contain twenty-five or thirty
political divisions instead of sixteen, as at present. It is perhaps
too much to say that the balance of power can ever be transferred
from the Mississippi Valley to the ultimate West of the Rockies,
the Great Basin, the valley of the Rio Grande, the irrigated
leagues of the Nevada and Arizona deserts, the vast valley plains
of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, the mountains of Coast
Range, Cascade, and Sierra. But if such a change is ever brought
about, the irrigator will be the principal cause of the transfer of
leadership from the man of the corn lands to the man of the fruit
lands.

Twenty years ago no one in America knew how to utilize
water on a large scale for irrigation. A few colonies in different
parts of the arid zone, a few settlers in isolated valleys, were mak-
ing experiments. Half a dozen ranchers would come together
and plow an open ditch two or three feet wide, to irrigate their
crops in years of severe drought. As for the districts where the
average annual rainfall was below the required amount, no one
tried to live there. But some of the most successful of recent en-
terprises have been upon lands where there is " no rainfall." Even
ten years ago, though the number of colonists had increased,
the total area under water ditches in the arid region was hardly
more than two million acres. In 188G it had increased to five and
a half million acres, and the following table shows the state of
affairs in 1891 :

150

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Irrigafnl Areas in Arid J\C(/ioii.

State or Territort.

Acreage under
ditch.

Acreage cultivated
by the irrigator.s.

Artesian
wells.

California

4,500,000

3,031,484

3,007,050

1,250,000

1,200,000

990,000

735,000

7(10,000

(iGO,000

350,000

200,000

175,000

150,900

125,000

100,000

2,500

3,550,000

185,000

1,800,000

419,000

330,000

120,000

423,000

4O5,0( to

315,000

1(50,000

40,000

75,000

75,000

45,000

54,000

2,000

3,500

WvoniiiifT. . .

6

4,500

36

Idaho

Kansas (west of 97 )

12
50

Utah

2,524

New Jlexii'o

10

Arizona

Texas

42

1,000
1,000

Washinfjton

10

Nevada

South Dakota

76
6

960

670

17,177,843

7,998,000

13,492

Some of the artesian wells are of enormous size, and yield four
and five million gallons of water daily, capable of irrigating a sec-
tion of land. The greater number are small, however, and prob-
ably not capable of irrigating more than five or ten acres. Half
a million acres is the utmost limit of the present wells. Some
artesian districts contain at least that acreage, so that, if the water
supply is sufficient, a vast area will be reclaimed by this method.

In the above table the most noticeable fact is that less than
half the area lying beneath the water ditches, and capable of irri-
gation, is now cultivated. This is because it takes a number of
years to settle the country, break up the soil, and bring it into
cultivation. In progressive communities the possible acreage
keeps ahead of the demand until the water supply or the land
supply is exhausted. Judging the future by the past, and taking
into consideration many projected ditch lines, there will be from
thirty to thirty-five million acres under some irrigation system by
the close of the decade, and the actually cultivated area may be
close upon twenty million acres.

California has had a longer and more extensive experience with
irrigation than any other division of the arid belt, and immense
sums have been wasted in litigation and experiment. The sys-
tems now in use in different districts illustrate all the details of
the business. All the larger jn-oblems connected with irriga-
tion, such as seepage, drainage, reservoirs, alkali deposits, econ-
omy in distribution, can be studied in the valleys of California.
More particularly one sees private ownership and district owner-
ship in operation side by side, often in the same county.

The Wright irrigation act, passed in 1887, gave a great impetus

IRRIGATION IN THE ARID STATES.

»53

to the process of uniting land and water in a permanent union.
No less than thirty-eight districts have been organized already, and
they include a total of about two and a half million acres, upon
which bonds to the extent of twelve million dollars have been
voted. About three million dollars in bonds have been actually
issued and sold ; seven districts have some of their ditches con-
structed and full of water ; one has completed its entire irrigation
system and is in successful operation. It will take a considerable
time to obtain the desired capital and complete all the districts
organized. Some of them are very large, and will greatly add to
the irrigated area. The following table shows the acreage and
estimated cost of water supply in the ten largest districts :

Irngation Districts.

Name.

Acreage.

Estimated cost.

Sunset

363,000
308,000
271,000
176,000
156,000
129,000
100,000
84,000
80,000
150,000

$2,000,000

Madera . . .

850,000

Selma

1,000,000

Turlock

1,200,000

Central

750,000

Alta

675,000

Colusa

600,000

Kern and Tulare

700,000

Modesto

1,400,000

Palmdale

175,000

Total

1,717,000

$9,350,000

The bulk of the district acreage is included in these ten dis-
tricts, nine of which are situated in the San Joaquin and Sacra-
mento Valleys. The lowest estimate of cost in any of the thirty-
eight districts is $2.56 per acre, and the highest is $83. The
last is in the famous orange colony of Riverside, where the water
is piped to the land, and where the science of irrigation is perhaps
better understood than in any other colony in America. The aver-
age first cost of water per acre is a little over eight dollars. Bonds
issued are a lien upon all the real estate within the boundaries of
the district, as well as upon the irrigation system itself, and are
considered by conservative bankers as excellent security.

Beyond doubt the irrigation district laws of California are full
of suggestion for cheap and effective work by the land-owners
themselves. They are best adapted to communities that have
learned something of the value of irrigation and can work to-
gether. There are many places where no irrigation will be done
until the Government or some private corporation takes hold with
the required skill and capital to secure the water and distribute it
to the land ; then the scattered settlers will use it, and others will
come in and buy the land and water. Some of the irrigation dis-

156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tricts already organized are meeting with bitter opposition from
large land-owners who do not wish to sell, nor to pay higher taxes
upon more valuable because more fruitful land. The average
farmer with his hundred or five hundred acres, where crops fail
one year in three or two in five, is compelled to have water or be-
come bankrupt. The owner of fifty or a hundred thousand acres
pastures cattle there and makes a living that suits him. If the
small farmers form an irrigation district, the cattle baron is apt
to fight it on general principles, and if they outvote him and
include any of his land in the taxable area, he fights them to the
end. Several of the most promising district ditches of California
are lying unfinished at the present time because of the stub-
born opposition of the large land-owners, some of them living in
Europe.

Private ownership of irrigation canals exists more or less in
every county of California. It is too soon to decide the compara-
tive cost of water under the two systems, but the logic of the
situation requires supervision of private enterjjrises by either the
State or the General Government. The danger in many private
schemes is the sale of more water than can be supplied in seasons
of drought, and the consequent loss of crops planted in the ex-
pectation of receiving an abundance. There is a golden mean
between this extreme and the other, now less frequent than for-
merly, of claiming ten times as much water as can be used and
allowing it to go to waste. One of the greatest corporate irriga-
tion enterprises in the United States is in Merced County. The
late Charles Crocker, of San Francisco, was the leading stock-
holder. Three and a half million dollars has now been spent upon
a fifty-mile canal from the Merced River, with a hundred and fifty
miles of lesser ditches ; a giant reservoir. Lake Yosemite, covering
a square mile thirty feet deep, and the purchase of large tracts of
land. The company now has water to irrigate six hundred thou-
sand acres. The carrying capacity of the main canal is not less
than four thousand cubic feet per second. Colonies are springing
up along the line of the canal, and thousands of acres have been
planted to crops that justify irrigation.

A still better illustration of what private enterprise has done
in this field is shown in the Kern region. Seven hundred miles
of large irrigating ditches have been dug in this imperial county,
which contains more than five million acres. The annual rain-
fall is from three to five inches, so that irrigation is absolutely
necessary. Thirty large canals have been taken out of Kern
River, which rises in the highest part of the Sierra Nevada Moun-
tains. The most famous of these canals is the Calloway, eighty
feet wide on the bottom and one hundred and twenty feet wide at
the top, seven feet in depth, and usually full to within a few

IRRIGATION ly THE ARID STATES. 159

inclies of the top of the bank. It irrigates two hundred thousand
acres through sixty-five laterals, of an aggregate length of one
hundred and fifty miles.

But the glory of Kern is the enormous irrigation system upon
the Kern Delta, constructed by two San Francisco capitalists —
Lloyd Tevis and J. B. Haggin. All in all, it is the largest enter-
prise of the kind of which I have any knowledge. The total
expenditure has been fully four million dollars. For this the
owners have obtained a system of twenty-seven main canals
with an aggregate length of three hundred miles, besides about
eleven hundred miles of permanent laterals. Six hundred thou-
sand acres can be watered from these artificial rivers. The sandy
plain slopes south and west upon a grade of five or six feet to the
mile. Very little of the land requires leveling. The great reser-
voir, a former lake basin, covers twenty-five thousand acres and
contains fifty billion gallons of water. The various canals of this
company and others take from Kern River alone a total of twelve
thousand cubic feet of water per second.

Twenty years ago the value of such land was less than a dollar
an acre. No settler could live on a quarter section, and like Fres-
no, Tulare, and in fact most of the San Joaquin Valley, it was
used only for pasturage. To-day there are fields of hundreds of
acres of alfalfa, where the best of Jerseys and Holsteins are kept ;
there are orchards of peaches, apricots, prunes, and almonds —
thousands of acres — loaded each year with fruit ; cotton, sugar
beets, the sugar cane of Louisiana, tobacco, corn, cassava, and a
multitude of the products of the temperate and semitropic re-
gions thrive here and can be grown as staple crops.

Irrigation is often supposed to belong only to the arid lands.
There, it is true, it produces the most surprising changes and the
greatest proportionate increase of values. Water poured upon a
rainless desert makes it blossom under the tropic sun as if some
magician's wand had been waved over it. Vines, fruits, flowers,
green lawns, golden wheat, and silver barley, for miles on miles,
all lifted by the sparkling rivers above the fluctuations of the
season — such are the changes the irrigator brings to the desert.
But thousands of valleys and hillsides in the arid regions have
enough rainfall to enable farmers to struggle along, and not
enough to make their crops a certainty every year. Here there
is an even more immediate need of water to supplement the nat-
ural supply. Xo available statistics can illustrate the extent to
which pioneers in the Rockies, Sierras, and Coast Range are de-
veloping cheaply and easily a local supply of water for their
ranches. The last census, which says there are about thirteen
thousand irrigators in California (there are really twice as
many), is very incomplete in this direction. Besides the organ-

i \

IRRIGATION IN THE ARID STATES. i6i

ized districts and the great irrigation corporations, there are illus-
trations in thousands of beautiful and fertile valleys, and upon
many a sunny hillside, that it pays to irrigate.

In the old placer-mining regions of California one sees much
of the local use of water, ranch by ranch, spring by spring,
cheaply, easily, and effectually. The miners have long been
familiar with the management of water. They built hundreds
of miles of hydraulic mining ditches, triumphs of engineering
skill, bringing whole rivers from the snow peaks to the beds of
gold-bearing gravel below. They siphoned streams over moun-
tains ; they belted their flumes in mid-air to perpendicular cliffs
of granite a thousand feet from base to crest ; they changed little
Alpine valleys into mountain lakes. Such men as these find it
only child's play to water their hillside gardens, to wall up the
" flats " by mountain streams and flood them so that the white
clover or alfalfa keeps green there all the year. Thus one finds
oases of verdure and fruitfulness about the cottage houses of
thousands of mountaineers in Shasta, Trinity, Butte, Lassen, El
Dorado, and the whole Sierra range of mining counties south of
" Old Tuolumne.'' Such men as these live in all the mountain
ranges of the western half of the continent, and not the least at-
tractive chapter of the story of irrigation is that which tells of
their home acres. Even where the annual rainfall is more than
sufficient for the ordinary field crops and the deciduous fruits to
thrive without irrigation, the dry air and sunlight of the semi-
tropic summers often make the application of water desirable
for specialized horticulture, or for the greatest obtainable profit
from ordinary crops.

Here, then, are the primary schools of the irrigator in the
thousands of hidden valleys of Idaho, Dakota, Utah, Colorado,
iN'evada, and California. Out of them, upon the wide valley
plains, upon the vast distances of the high desert mesa lands, the
young men of the coming generation of irrigation adepts pass on
to greater victories. Artesian fountains spring up along their
paths ; rivers from regions of mountains, of forests and abundant
rainfall, follow in their footsteps ; they lead these rivers into the
desert and plant gardens there — the grape, the olive, the date
palm, the orange, the lemon, the banana, the pomegranate.

The facts and figures which I have used to show the progress
of the States and Territories of the arid region are crowded with
infinite suggestions and possibilities. Some time, it is not im-
probable, men may speak of the overflowing granaries, the un-
paralleled horticultural wealth along the Rio Grande, the Colo-
rado, the Sacramento, the San Joaquin, and other great river
plains, as history speaks of Egypt and Assyria in their splendid
prime. What are the duties of the American people toward irri-

TOL. XLIII. 12

1 62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gation in these all-important years of the beginnings of new com-
monwealths based upon new industries ? Millions of acres of
land are forever worthless without water. Who shall own the
streams and reservoirs — a few far-sighted men, or the people
themselves ? Irrigation journals and conventions of irrigators
discuss the matter from the standpoint of the present, and en-
deavor to shape legislation to profitable ends. The slow, dumb
masses have not yet recognized the magnitude of the problems
involved. An effort is being made to have the United States
give all the arid lands to the several States and Territories in
which they lie, but the plan is dangerous. Only the Federal
Government can protect the sources of water supply; utilize,
reservoir, and distribute that supply, and unite water and land in
an indissoluble marriage bond.

THE INADEQUACY OF " NATURAL SELECTION."

By HERBEET SPENCEE.
[Concluded.^

THIS very pronounced opinion will be met on the part of some
by a no less pronounced demurrer, which involves a denial
of possibility. It has been of late asserted, and by many believed,
that inheritance of acquired characters can not occur. Weis-
mann, they say, has shown that there is early established in the
evolution of each organism, such a distinctness between those
component units which carry on the individual life and those
which are devoted to maintenance of the species, that changes in
the one can not affect the other. We will look closely into his
doctrine.

Basing his argument on the principle of the physiological
division of labor, and assuming that the primary division of labor
is that between such part of an organism as carries on individual
life and such part as is reserved for the production of other lives,
Weismann, starting with " the first multicellular organism," says
that — "Hence the single group would come to be divided into two
groups of cells, which may be called somatic and reproductive —
the cells of the body as opposed to those which are concerned with
reproduction " (Essays upon Heredity, p. 27).

Though he admits that this differentiation " was not at first
absolute, and indeed is not always so to-day," yet he holds that
the differentiation eventually becomes absolute in the sense that
the somatic cells, or those which compose the body at large, come
to have only a limited power of cell-division, instead of an un-
limited power which the reproductive cells have ; and also in the

THE INADEQUACY OF * NATURAL SELECTION:' 163

sense that eventually there ceases to be any communication be-
tween the two, further than that implied by the supplying of
nutriment to the reproductive cells by the somatic cells. The out-
come of this argument is that, in the absence of communication,
changes induced in the somatic cells, constituting the individual,
can not influence the natures of the reproductive cells, and can
not therefore be transmitted to posterity. Such is the theory.
Now let us look at a few facts — some familiar, some unfamiliar.

His investigations led Pasteur to the positive conclusion that
the silkworm diseases are inherited. The transmission from par-
ent to offspring resulted, not through any contamination of the
surface of the egg by the body of the parent while being deposited,
but resulted from infection of the egg itself — intrusion of the
parasitic organism. Generalized observations concerning the dis-
ease called pebrine enabled him to decide by inspection of the
eggs which were infected and which were not: certain modifi-
cations of form distinguishing the diseased ones. More than this,
the infection was proved by microscopical examination of the
contents of the egg ; in proof of which he quotes as follows from
Dr. Carlo Vittadini :

" II resulte de mes recherches sur les graines, k I'epoque oil commence le d6-
veloppement du germe, que les corpuscles, une fois apparus dans I'cbuf, augmen-
tent graduellement en nombre, a mesure que I'embryon se d6veloppe; que, dans
les derniers jours de I'incubation, I'oeuf en est plein, au point de faire croire que
la majeure partie des granules du jaune se sont transformes en corpuscules.

" Une autre observation importante est que I'embryon aupsi est souill6 de cor-
puscules, et a un degr6 tel qu'on peut soupgonner que I'infection du jaune tire son
origine du germe lui-m^me; en d'autres term es que le germe est primordiale-
ment infect6, et porte en lui-mfeme ces corpuscules tout comme les vers adultes,
lrapp6s du mfeme mai."*

Thus, then, the substance of the egg, and even its innermost
vital part, is permeable by a parasite sufficiently large to be mi-
croscopically visible. It is also of course permeable by the invisi-
ble molecules of protein, out of which its living tissues are formed,
and by absorption of which they subsequently grow. But, accord-
ing to Weismann, it is not permeable by those invisible units of
protoplasm out of which the vitally active tissues of the parent
are constituted : units composed, as we must assume, of variously
arranged molecules of protein. So that the big thing may pass,
and the little thing may pass, but the intermediate thing may
not pass !

A fact of kindred nature, unhappily more familiar, may be
next brought in evidence. It concerns the transmission of a dis-
ease not unfrequent among those of unregulated lives. The high-

* Les Maladies des Vers i Soie, par L. Pasteur, i, 39.

i64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

est authority concerning this disease, in its inherited form, is Mr.
Jonathan Hutchinson; and the following are extracts from a
letter I have received from him, and which I publish with his
assent :

"I do not think that there can be any reasonable doubt that a very hirge ma-
jority of those who suffer from inlierited syphilis take the taint from the male
parent. ... It is the rule when a man marries who has no remaining local
lesion, but in whom the taint is not eradicated, for his wife to remain apparently
well, while her child may suffer. No doubt the child infects its mother's blood,
but this does not usually evoke any obvious symptoms of syphilis. ... I am sure
I have seen hundreds of syphilitic infants whose mothers had not, so far as I
could ascertain, ever displayed a single symptom."

See, then, to what we are committed if we accept Weismann's
hypothesis. We must conclude that, whereas the reproductive
cell may be effectually invaded by an abnormal living element in
the parental organism, those normal living elements which con-
stitute the vital protoplasm of the parental organism, can not
evade it. Or if it be admitted that both intrude, then the impli-
cation is that, whereas the abnormal element can so modify the
development as to cause changes of structure (as of the teeth),
the normal element can cause no changes of structure ! *

We pass now to evidence not much known in the world at
large, but widely known in the biological world, though known
in so incomplete a manner as to be undervalued in it. Indeed,
when I name it probably many will vent a mental pooh-pooh.
The fact to which I refer is one of which record is preserved in the
museum of the College of Surgeons, in the shape of paintings^ of
a foal borne by a mare not quite thoroughbred, to a sire which
was thoroughbred— a foal which bears the markings of the quag-
ga. The history of this remarkable foal is given by the Earl of
Morton, F. R. S., in a letter to the President of the Royal Society
(read November 23, 1820). In it he states that wishing to domes-

* Curiously enough, Weismann refers to, and recognizes, syphilitic infection of the re-
productive cells. Dealing with Browu-S6quard's cases of inherited epilepsy (concerning
which, let me say, that I do not commit myself to any derived conclusions), he says : " In
the case of epilepsy, at any rate, it is easy to imagine [many of Weismann's arguments are
based on things ' it is easy to imagine '] that the passage of some specific organism through
the reproductive cells may take place, as in the case of syphiUs " (p. 82). Here is a sam-
ple of his reasoning. It is well known that epilepsy is frequently caused by some periph-
eral irritation (even by the lodging of a small foreign body under the skin), and that, among
peripheral irritations causing it, imperfect healing is one. Yet though, in Brown-Sequard's
cases, a peripheral irritation caused in the parent by local injury was the apparent origin,
Weismann chooses gratuitously to assume that the progeny were infected by " some spe-
cific organism," which produced the epilepsy ! And then, though the epileptic virus, like
the syphilitic virus, makes itself at home in the egg, the parental protoplasm is not ad-
mitted!

THE INADEQUACY OF ''NATURAL SELECTIONS 165

ticate the quagga, and having obtained a male, but not a female,
he made an experiment.

" I tried to breed from the male qua^ga and a young chestnut mare of seven-
eighths Arabian blood, and which had never been bred from ; the result was the
production of a female hybrid, now five years old, and bearing, both in her form
and in her color, very decided indications of her mixed origin. I subsequently
parted with the seven-eighths Arabian mare to Sir Gore Ouseley, who has bred
from her by a very fine black Arabian horse. I yesterday morning examined the
produce, namely, a two-year-old filly and a year-old colt. They have the charac-
ter of the Arabian breed as decidedly as can be expected, where fifteen-sixteenths
of the blood are Arabian ; and they are fine specimens of that breed ; but both in
their color and in the hair of their manes, they have a striking resemblance to the
quagga. Their color is bay, marked more or less like the qaagga in a darker tint.
Both are distinguished by the dark line along the ridge of the back, the dark
stripes across the fore-hand, and the dark bars across the back part of the legs,"*

Lord Morton then names sundry further correspondences. Dr.
Wollaston, at that time President of the Royal Society, who had
seen the animals, testified to the correctness of his description,
and, as shown by his remarks, entertained no doubt about the al-
leged facts. But good reason for doubt may be assigned. There
naturally arises the question — How does it happen that parallel
results are not observed in other cases ? If in any progeny cer-
tain traits not belonging to the sire, but belonging to a sire of
preceding progeny, are reproduced, how is it that such anoma-
lously-inherited traits are not observed in domestic animals, and
indeed in mankind ? How is it that the children of a widow by a
second husband do not bear traceable resemblances of the first
husband ? To these questions nothing like satisfactory replies
seem forthcoming ; and, in the absence of replies, skepticism, if
not disbelief, may be held reasonable.

There is an explanation, however. Forty years ago I made
acquaintance with a fact which impressed me by its significant
implications ; and has for this reason, I suppose, remained in my
memory. It is set forth in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural
Society, vol. xiv (1853), pp. 214 et seq., and concerns certain results
of crossing English and French breeds of sheep. The writer of
the translated paper, M. Malingid-Nouel, Director of the Agri-
cultural School of La Charmoise, states that when the French
breeds of sheep (in which were included " the mongrel Merinos ")
were crossed with an English breed, " the lambs present the fol-
lowing results. Most of them resemble the mother more than the
father ; some show no trace of the father." Joining the admis-
sion respecting the mongrels with the facts subsequently stated,
it is tolerably clear that the cases in which the lambs bore no

* Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for the Year 1821, Part I, pp. 20-24.

i66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

traces of the father were cases in which the mother was of pure
breed. Speaking of the results of these crossings in the second
generation "having 75 per cent of English blood," M, Nouel
says : " The lambs thrive, wear a beautiful appearance, and com-
plete the joy of the breeder. ... No sooner are the lambs weaned
than their strength, their vigor, and their beauty begin to decay.
... At last the constitution gives way. ... he remains stunted
for life," the constitution being thus proved unstable or un-
adapted to the requirements. How, then, did M. Nouel succeed
in obtaining a desirable combination of a fine English breed with
the relatively poor French breeds ?

" He took an animal from 'flocks originally sprung from a mixture of the two
distinct races that are establislied in these two provinces [Berry and La Sologne],'
and these he 'united with animals of another mixed breed. . , , which blended
the Tourangelle and native Merino blood of La Beauce and Touraine, and ob-
tained a mixture of all four races ' without decided character, without fixity. . . .
but possessing the advantage of being used to our climate and management.'

"Putting one of these 'mixed-blood ewes to a pure New-Kent ram. , . . one
obtains a lamb containing fifty-hundredths of the purest and most ancient Eng-
lish blood, with twelve and a half hundredths of four different French races,
which are individually lost in the preponderance of English blood, and disappear
almost entirely, leaving the improving type in the ascendant. ... All the lambs
produced strikingly resembled each other, and even Englishmen took them for
animals of their own country.' "

M. Nouel goes on to remark that when this derived breed was
bred with itself, the marks of the French breeds were lost. " Some
slight traces could be detected by experts, but these soon disap-
peared."

Thus, we get proof that relatively pure constitutions predomi-
nate in progeny over much mixed constitutions. The reason is
not difificult to see. Every organism tends to become adapted to
its conditions of life ; and all the structures of a species, accus-
tomed through multitudinous generations to the climate, food,
and various influences of its locality, are molded into harmoni-
ous co-operation favorable to life in that locality: the result
being that in the development of each young individual, the
tendencies conspire to produce the fit organization. It is other-
wise when the species is removed to a habitat of different charac-
ter, or when it is of mixed breed. In the one case its organs,
partially out of harmony with the requirements of its new life,
become partially out of harmony with one another ; since, while
one influence, say of climate, is but little changed, another influ-
ence, say of food, is much changed ; and consequently, the per-
turbed relations of the organs interfere with their original stable
equilibrium. Still more in the other case is there a disturbance
of equilibrium. In a mongrel the constitution derived from each

THE INADEQUACY OF ''NATURAL SELECTIONS 167

source repeats itself as far as possible. Hence a conflict of tend-
encies to evolve two structures more or less unlike. The tenden-
cies do not harmoniously conspire ; but produce partially incon-
gruous sets of organs. And evidently where the breed is one in
which there are united the traits of various lines of ancestry,
there results an organization so full of small incongruities of
structure and action, that it has a much-diminished power of
maintaining its balance ; and while it can not withstand so well
adverse influences, it can not so well hold its own in the offspring.
Concerning parents of pure and mixed breeds respectively, sev-
erally tending to reproduce their own structures in progeny, we
may, therefore, say figuratively that the house divided against
itself can not withstand the house, of which the members are in
concord.

Now if this is shown to be the case with breeds the purest of
which have been adapted to their habitats and modes of life dur-
ing some few hundred years only, what shall we say when the
question is of a breed which has had a constant mode of life in
the same locality for ten thousand years or more, like the quagga ?
In this the stability of constitution must be such as no domestic
animal can approach. Relatively stable as may have been the
constitutions of Lord Morton's horses, as compared with the con-
stitutions of ordinary horses, yet, since Arab horses, even in their
native country, have probably in the course of successive con-
quests and migrations of tribes become more or less mixed, and
since they have been subject to the conditions of domestic life,
differing much from the conditions of their original wild life, and
since the English breed has undergone the perturbing effects of
change from the climate and food of the East to the climate and
food of the West, the organizations of the horse and mare in ques-
tion could have had nothing like that perfect balance produced in
the quagga by a hundred centuries of harmonious co-operation.
Hence the result. And hence at the same time the interpretation
of the fact that analogous phenomena are not perceived among
domestic animals, or among ourselves ; since both have relatively
mixed, and generally extremely mixed, constitutions, which, as we
see in ourselves, have been made generation after generation, not
by the formation of a mean between two parents, but by the jum-
bling of traits of the one with traits of the other, until there exist
no such conspiring tendencies among the parts as cause repetition
of combined details of structure in posterity.

Expectation that skepticism might be felt respecting this al-
leged anomaly presented by the quagga-marked foal, had led me
to think over the matter; and I had reached this interpretation
before sending to the College of Surgeons Museum (being unable
to go myself) to obtain the particulars and refer to the records.

1 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

When there was brought to me a copy of the account as set forth
in the Philosophical Transactions, it was joined with the infor-
mation that there existed an appended account of pigs, in which a
parallel fact had been observed. To my immediate inquiry —
" "Was the male a wild pig ? " — there came the reply : " I did not
observe." Of course I forthwith obtained the volume, and there
found what I expected. It was contained in a paper communi-
cated by Dr. Wollaston from Daniel Giles, Esq., concerning his
" sow and her produce," which said that

"she was one of a well-known black and white breed of Mr. Western, the Mem-
ber for Essex. About ten years since I put her to a boar of the wild breed, and
of a deep chestnut color, which I had just received from Hatfield House, and
which was soon afterward drowned by accident. The pigs produced (which
were her first litter) partook in appearance of both boar and sow, but in some
the chestnut color of the boar strongly prevailed.

"The sow was afterward put to a boar of Mr. Western's breed (the wild boar
having been long dead). The produce was a litter of pigs, some of which, we
observed with much surprise, to be stained and clearly marked with the chestnut
color which had prevailed in the former litter."

Mr. Giles adds that in a second litter of pigs, the father of which
was of Mr. Western's breed, he and his bailiff believe there was a
recurrence, in some, of the chestnut color, but admits that their
" recollection is much less perfect than I wish it to be." He also
adds that, in the course of many years' experience, he had never
known the least appearance of the chestnut color in Mr. Western's
breed.

What are the probabilities that these two anomalous results
should have arisen, under these exceptional conditions, as a matter
of chance ? Evidently the probabilities against such a coinci-
dence are enormous. The testimony is in both cases so good that,
even apart from the coincidence, it would be unreasonable to re-
ject it; but the coincidence makes acceptance of it imperative.
There is mutual verification, at the same time that there is a joint
interpretation yielded of the strange phenomenon, and of its non-
occurrence under ordinary circumstances.

And now, in the presence of these facts, what are we to say ?
Simply that they are fatal to Weismann's hypothesis. They show
that there is none of the alleged independence of the reproductive
cells ; but that the two sets of cells are in close communion. They
prove that while the reproductive cells multiply and arrange them-
selves during the evolution of the embryo, some of their germ-
plasm passes into the mass of somatic ceils constituting the
parental body, and becomes a permanent component of it. Fur-
ther, they necessitate the inference that this introduced germ-
plasm, everywhere diffused, is some of it included in the repro-
ductive cells subsequently formed. And if we thus get a demon-

THE INADEQUACY OF ''NATURAL SELECTIONS 169

stration that the somewhat different units of a foreign germ-plasm
permeating the organism, permeate also the subsequently-formed
reproductive cells, and affect the structures of the individuals
arising from them, the implication is that the like happens with
those native units which have been made somewhat different by
modified functions: there must be a tendency to inheritance of
acquired characters.

One more step only has to be taken. It remains to ask what is
the flaw in the assumption with which Weismann's theory sets
out. If, as we see, the conclusions drawn from it do not corre-
spond to the facts, then, either the reasoning is invalid, or the
original postulate is untrue. Leaving aside all questions concern-
ing the reasoning, it will suffice here to show the untruth of the
postulate. Had his work been written during the early years of
the cell-doctrine, the supposition that the multiplying cells of
which the Metazoa and the Metaphyta are composed, become com-
pletely separate, could not have been met by a reasonable skepti-
cism ; but now, not only is skepticism justifiable, but denial is
called for. Some dozen years ago it was discovered that in many
cases vegetal cells are connected with one another by threads of
protoplasm — threads which unite the internal protoplasm of one
cell with the internal protoplasms of cells around. It is as though
the pseudopodia of imprisoned rhizopods were fused with the
pseudopodia of adjacent imprisoned rhizopods. We can not reason-
ably suppose that the continuous network of protoplasm thus con-
stituted has been produced after the cells have become adult.
These protoplasmic connections must have survived the process
of fission. The implication is that the cells forming the embryo-
plant retained their protoplasmic connections while they multi-
plied, and that such connections continued throughout all subse-
quent multij)lications — an implication which has, I believe, been
established by researches upon germinating palm-seeds. But now
we come to a verifying series of facts which the cell-structures
of animals in their early stages present. In his Monograph of
the Development of Peripatus Capensis, Mr. Adam Sedgwick,
F. R. S., Reader in Animal Morphology at Cambridge, writes as
follows : —

" All the cells of the ovum, ectodermal as well as endodermal, are connected
together by a fine protoplasmic reticulum" (p. 41).

" The continuity of the various cells of the segmenting ovum is primary, and
not secondary; i.e., iu the cleavage the segments do not completely separate
from one another. But are we justified in speaking of cells at all in this case?
The fully segmented ovum is a syncytium^ and there are not and have not been at
any stage cell limits''^ (p. 41).

" It is becoming more and more clear every day that the cells composing the
tissues of animals are not isolated units, but that they are connected with one

170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

another. I need only refer to the connection known to exist between connective-
tissue cells, cartilage cells, epithelial cells, etc. And not only may the cells of
one tissue bo continuous with each other, but they may also be continuous with
the cells of other tissues" (pp. 47, 48).

" Finally, if the protoplasm of the body is primitively a syncytium, and the
ovum until maturity a part of that syncytium, the separation of the generative
products does not differ essentially from the internal gemmation of a Protozoon,
and the inheritance by the offspring of peculiarities first appearing in the parent,
though not explained, is rendered less mysterious; for the protoplasm of the
whole body being continuous, change in the molecular constitution of any part of
it would naturally be expected to spread, in time, through the whole mass " (p. 49).

Mr. Sedgwick's subsequent investigations confirm these con-
clusions. In a letter of December 27, 1892, passages, -whicli lie
allows me to publish, run as follows :

" All the embryological studies that I have made since that to which you refer
confirm me more and more in the view that the connections between the cells of
adults are not secondary connections, but primary, dating from the time when
the embryo was a unicellular structure. . . . My own investigations on this sub-
ject have been confined to the Arthropoda, Elasmobranchii, and Aves. I have
thoroughly examined the development of at least one kind of each of these groups,
and I have never been able to detect a stage in which the cells were not continu-
ous with each other; and I have studied innumerable stages from the beginning
of cleavage onward."

So that the alleged independence of the reproductive cells does
not exist. The soma — to use Weismann's name for the aggregate
of cells forming the body — is, in the words of Mr. Sedgwick, " a
continuous mass of vacuolated protoplasm " ; and the reproductive
cells are nothing more than portions of it separated some little
time before they are required to perform their functions.

Thus the theory of Weismann is doubly disproved. Inductively
we are shown that there does take place that communication of
characters from the somatic cells to the reproductive cells, which
he says can not take place ; and deductively we are shown that
this communication is a natural sequence of connections between
the two which he ignores: his various conclusions are deduced
from a postulate which is untrue.

From the title of this essay, and from much of its contents,
nine readers out of ten will infer that it is directed against the
views of Mr. Darwin. They will be astonished on being told that,
contrariwise, it is directed against the views of those who, in a
considerable measure, dissent from Mr. Darwin. For the inher-
itance of acquired characters, which it is now the fashion in the
biological world to deny, was, by Mr. Darwin, fully recognized
and often insisted on. Such of the foregoing arguments as touch
Mr. Darwin's views, simply imply that the cause of evolution
which at first he thought unimportant, but the importance of

THE INADEQUACY OF ''NATURAL SELECTION:' 171

which he increasingly perceived as he grew older, is more im-
portant than he admitted even at the last. The neo-Darwinists,
however, do not admit this cause at all.

Let it not be supposed that this explanation implies any dis-
approval of the dissentients, considered as such. Seeing how little
regard for authority I have myself usually shown, it would be
absurd in me to reflect in any degree upon those who have re-
jected certain of Mr. Darwin's teachings, for reasons which they
have thought sufficient. But while their independence of thought
is to be applauded rather than blamed, it is, I think, to be re-
gretted that they have not guarded themselves against a long-
standing bias. It is a common trait of human nature to seek
some excuse when found in the wrong. Invaded self-esteem sets
up a defense, and anything is made to serve. Thus it happened
that when geologists and biologists, previously holding that all
kinds of organisms arose by special creations, surrendered to
the battery opened upon them by The Origin of Species, they
sought to minimize their irrationality by pointing to irrationality
on the other side. " Well, at any rate, Lamarck was in the
wrong." " It is clear that we were right in rejecting his doctrine."
And so, by duly emphasizing the fact that he overlooked " Natural
Selection" as the chief cause, and by showing how erroneous
were some of his interpretations, they succeeded in mitigating the
sense of their own error. It is true their creed was that at success-
ive periods in the Earth's history, old Floras and Faunas had
been abolished and others introduced ; just as though, to use Prof.
Huxley's figure, the table had been now and again kicked over
and a new pack of cards brought out. And it is true that La-
marck, while he rejected this absurd creed, assigned for the facts
reasons some of which are absurd. But in consequence of the
feeling described, his defensible belief was forgotten and only
his indefensible ones remembered. This one-sided estimate has
become traditional ; so that there is now often shown a subdued
contempt for those who suppose that there can be any truth in
the conclusions of a man whose general conception was partly
sense, at a time when the general conceptions of his contempo-
raries were wholly nonsense. Hence results unfair treatment —
hence result the different dealings with the views of Lamarck
and of "Weismann.

"Where are the facts proving the inheritance of acquired
characters " ? ask those who deny it. Well, in the first place,
there might be asked the counter-question — Where are the facts
which disprove it ? Surely if not only the general structures of
organisms, but also many of the modifications arising in them,
are inheritable, the natural implication is that all modifications
are inheritable ; and if any say that the inheritablencss is limited

172 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to those arising in a certain way, tlie onus lies on tliem of prov-
ing that those otherwise arising are not inheritable. Leaving
this counter-question aside, however, it will suffice if we ask
another counter-question. It is asserted that the dwindling of
organs from disuse is due to the successive survivals in posterity
of individuals in which the organs had varied in the direction of
decrease. Where now are the facts supporting this assertion ?
Not one has been assigned or can be assigned. Not a single case
can be named in which panmixia is a proved cause of diminution.
Even had the deductive argument for 'panmixia been as valid as
we have found it to be invalid, there would still have been re-
quired, in pursuance of scientific method, some verifying induc-
tive evidence. Yet though not a shred of such evidence has been
given, the doctrine is accepted with acclamation, and adopted as
part of current biological theory. Articles are written and let-
ters published in which it is assumed that this mere speculation,
justified by not a tittle of proof, displaces large conclusions previ-
ously drawn. And then, passing into the outer world, this unsup-
ported belief affects opinion there too ; so that we have recently
had a Right Honorable lecturer who, taking for granted its truth,
represents the inheritance of acquired characters as an exploded
hypothesis, and thereupon proceeds to give revised views of
human affairs.

Finally, there comes the reply that there are facts proving the
inheritance of acquired characters. All those assigned by Mr.
Darwin, together with others such, remain outstanding when we
find that the interpretation by panmixia is untenable. Indeed,
even had that hypothesis been tenable, it would have been inap-
plicable to these cases ; since in domestic animals, artificially fed
and often overfed, the supposed advantage from economy can not
be shown to tell; and since, in these cases, individuals are not
naturally selected during the struggle for life in which certain
traits are advantageous, but are artificially selected hj man with-
out regard to such traits. Should it be urged that the assigned
facts are not numerous, it may be replied that there are no per-
sons whose occupations and amusements incidentally bring out
such facts; and that they are probably as numerous as those
which would have been available for Mr. Darwin's hypothesis,
had there been no breeders and fanciers and gardeners who, in
pursuit of their profits and hobbies, furnished him with evidence.
It may be added that the required facts are not likely to be
numerous, if biologists refuse to seek for them.

See, then, how the case stands. Natural selection, or survival
of the fittest, is almost exclusively operative throughout the vege-
tal world and throughout the lower animal world, characterized
by relative passivity. But with the ascent to higher types of

THE CEREMOXIAL USE OF TOBACCO. 173

animals, its effects are in increasing degrees involved with those
produced by inheritance of acquired characters ; until, in animals
of complex structures, inheritance of acquired characters becomes
an important, if not the chief, cause of evolution. We have seen
that natural selection can not work any changes in organisms
save such as conduce in considerable degrees, directly or indi-
rectly, to the multiplication of the stirp ; whence failure to ac-
count for various changes ascribed to it. And we have seen that
it yields no explanation of the co-adaptation of co-operative parts,
even when the co-operation is relatively simple, and still less
when it is complex. On the other hand, we see that if, along
with the transmission of generic and specific structures, there
tend to be transmitted modifications arising in a certain way,
there is a strong a priori probability that there tend to be trans-
mitted modifications arising in all ways. We have a number of
facts confirming this inference, and showing that acquired char-
acters are inherited— as large a number as can be expected, con-
sidering the difficulty of observing them and the absence of
search. And then to these facts may be added the facts with
which this essay set out, concerning the distribution of tactual
discriminativeness. While we saw that these are inexplicable by
survival of the fittest, we saw that they are clearly explicable as
resulting from the inheritance of acquired characters. And here
let it be added that this conclusion is conspicuously warranted
by one of the methods of inductive logic, known as the method
of concomitant variations. For throughout the whole series of
gradations in perceptive power, we saw that the amount of the
effect is proportionate to the amount of the alleged cause.— Co m-
temporary Review.

♦♦♦

THE CEREMONIAL USE OF TOBACCO.

By JOHN HAWKINS.

COMPARING the stone age of the New World with that of the
Old, an important point of difference comes at once into
view. The American race is distinguished in culture from all
other savages by the possession and use of an implement to which
nothing analogous is found among the prehistoric relics of the
Eastern hemisphere. That implement is the tobacco pipe.

Among the aborigines of America the use of tobacco was
widely prevalent. The practice of cigar-smoking was observed
by the companions of Columbus on his first voyage; and m the
brilliant series of discoveries which followed the great admiral s
achievement, as well as in the slower process of exploration and
colonization, the pipe, the cigar, and the snuff mortar revealed

174 TH^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

themselves at every step. Even if written records were wanting,
the ancient American smoking implements which enrich the mu-
seums of this country and Europe would enable us to assert the
general use of tobacco throughout the New World. Combining
the written and unwritten records, our information on this point
is complete. On the southern continent, although pre-Columbian
pipes are occasionally found, smoking was not so extensively
practiced as in the north. Still, several varieties of the tobacco
plant occur here, and the natives were doubtless well acquainted
with its use. Cabral, in 1515, observed in Brazil the practice of
chewing tobacco, and on the western coast the abundance of
small mortars, carved like the mound pipes of the Mississippi
Valley in the shape of various animals, attest the extensive use of
tobacco as snuff. Leaving South America and crossing the tenth
degree of north latitude, we approach the native land of the pipe.
A province of Yucatan is thought by some to have given a name
to the tobacco plant. A tubular pipe occurs in the sculptures of
Palenque. In Mexico the common custom of smoking was noted
by Cortes in 1519, and the truth of his statement is evinced by
the quantities of elaborately decorated clay pipes since unearthed
in that country, as well as by some of the pictured figures of the
ancient manuscripts. Pipes of clay or stone are found in abun-
dance throughout the United States, those from the mounds, sculp-
tured in the form of various quadrupeds and birds, and occasion-
ally of men, being among the most interesting examples of native
art. Still farther north the great narcotic had established its
sway, prior to the advent of Europeans, beyond the Great Lakes,
in the far Northwest, and in the East, where the French gave to a
tribe of inordinate smokers the name of Petuns, from peiune, a
native name of the tobacco plant.

The use of tobacco excited in the first Europeans who wit-
nessed it feelings of astonishment and disgust. If Montesquieu
is to be believed, the Spanish casuists of the fifteenth century of-
fered to the public conscience, in extenuation of the enslavement
of the Indians, the fact, among others, that they smoked tobacco.
There is other evidence to show that the early explorers of the
New World regarded the custom of smoking as the extremity of
barbarism ; nor have advocates of this view been lacking from
that day to this. But, in spite of all objections, tobacco has ex-
tended its reign over the entire earth; it is an important source
of revenue to the most enlightened of modern governments ; it
numbers among its devotees men of all races and of all ranks ; it
solaces the dreary life of the Eskimo and of the Central African
savage ; but a little while ago it furnished inspiration to the genius
of one of the world's great poets. Concerning the adoption by
civilized people of a barbarous custom like that under discussion

THE CEREMONIAL USE OF TOBACCO. 175

mucli might be said ; but leaving this for the present, I desire to
call attention to a phase of the subject which has received but lit-
tle attention, namely, the ceremonial use of tobacco by the natives
of America.

Since the world-wide diffusion of the tobacco habit, its earliest,
and perhaps original, use has been in a great measure overlooked.
With the aborigines of America, smoking and its kindred prac-
tices were not mere sensual gratifications, but tobacco was re-
garded as an herb of peculiar and mysterious sanctity, and its use
was deeply and intimately interwoven with native rites and cere-
monies. With reasonable certainty the pipe may be considered
as an implement the use of which was originally confined to the
priest, medicine-man, or sorcerer, in whose hands it was a means
of communication between savage man and the unseen spirits
with which his universal doctrine of animism invested every ob-
ject that came under his observation. Similar to this use of the
pipe was its employment in the treatment of disease, which in
savage philosophy is always thought to be the work of evil spirits.
Tobacco was also regarded as an offering of peculiar acceptability
to the unknown powers in whose hands the Indian conceived his
fate for good or ill to lie ; hence it is observed to figure promi-
nently in ceremonies as incense, and as material for sacrifice. It
will be my task to collect here some of the many observations of
travelers, and of students of Indian custom and belief, which illus-
trate these remarks.

Embalmed in poetry and frequently described in prose, per-
haps the most familiar example of the ceremonial employment of
tobacco is the use of the calumet, or peace pipe. In its pungent
fumes agreements were made binding, enmity was disarmed. It
was at once the implement of Indian diplomacy, the universally
recognized emblem of friendship, the flag of truce used in ap-
proaching strange or hostile tribes, the seal of solemn compacts.
Upon its use was founded the widely diffused calumet dance, a per-
formance reserved for occasions when it was desired to express spe-
cial friendship. Like many other usages connected with the pipe,
the calumet, with the traditions which surround it, have survived
to the present day. In many parts of Canada and the western
United States the visitor to the Indian villages is still expected to
present pipes and tobacco as evidences of amity and good will.

There were other sacred pipes besides the calumet, and these
were called into requisition on every possible occasion — in the
election of chiefs, in the ceremony of adoption into the tribe, at
the beginning of a hunt, on going to war, at the end of the har-
vest, and in innumerable other acts of Indian life, both public and
private, as well as in many dances and festivals. Tobacco, in
short, was intimately connected with the entire social and reli-

176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gious systems of the Americans. References to these minor usages
are so abundant in the writings of those who have described the
customs and arts of the aborigines, and so familiar to the general
reader, that they may be here omitted.

Of more importance are the accounts of the employment of to-
bacco as sacrifice and incense. Hariot, the historian of Sir Rich-
ard Grenville's expedition to Virginia in 1584, after speaking of
the cultivation and use by the natives of tobacco, or uppowoc,
says: "This uppowoc is of so precious estimation among them
that they think their gods are marvellously delighted therewith ;
whereupon they sometimes make hallowed fires, and cast some of
the powder therein for a sacrifice. Being in a storme upon the
waters, to pacifie their gods they cast some up into the aire, and
into the water ; so a weare for fish being newly set up, they cast
some therein, and into the aire ; also after an escape of danger
they cast some into the aire likewise; but all done with such
strange gestures, stamping, sometimes dancing, clapping of hands,
holding up of hands, and staring up into the heavens, uttering
therewithal, and chattering strange words and noises." In the
narrative of the voyage of Drake, in 1572, it is noted that the na-
tives brought little rush baskets filled with tdbah, offering them
to the whites, as the narrator says, " upon the persuasion that we
were gods." The Jesuit missionary AUouez, in 1671, visited the
Foxes, in the neighborhood of Green Bay, and after some trouble
succeeded in inducing them to listen to his preaching, which was,
as Parkman relates, so successful at length that when he showed
them his crucifix they would throw tobacco on it as an offering.
An early missionary among the Hurons states that they wor-
shiped an ohi, or spirit, who dwelt in a certain rock, and who
could give success to travelers. Into the clefts of the rock they
were accustomed to place offerings of tobacco, praying for protec-
tion from their enemies and from shipwreck. Early explorers
frequently refer to offerings of tobacco found near prominent
hills, rocks, and trees, and in the vicinity of dangerous rapids and
falls — places, as the poet Moore has it —

" Where the trembling Indian brings
Belts of porcelain, pipes, and rings,
Tributes, to be bung in air.
To the fiend presiding there."

In the narrative of his cajjtivity among the Indians of Lake
Superior John Tanner gives a prayer which he heard recited by
the leader of a fleet of canoes upon the lake, asking for a safe
voyage. At its conclusion the chief threw tobacco into the water,
and the occupants of each canoe followed his example. Coming
down to more recent times, the presence of two sacred bowlders

THE CEREMONIAL USE OF TOBACCO. 177

near the famous red pipestone quarry of the Coteau des Prairies
is mentioned by Catlin, who says that the Indians never went
quite to them, but standing some distance away they would throw
plugs of tobacco to them, thus asking permission of the indwell-
ing spirits to dig and remove the precious pipestone.

Still later survivals of the ancient customs connected with the
use of tobacco maj^ be noted. According to Colonel Garrick
Mallery, an instance of the use of tobacco as incense was fur-
nished by the Iroquois as late as 1882. The following words
were addressed to the fire : " Bless thy grandchildren ; protect
and strengthen them. By this tobacco we give thee a sweet-
smelling sacrifice, and ask thy care to keep us from sickness and
famine." The Iroquois still make an annual sacrifice of a white
dog, on which occasions tobacco is solemnly burned. The idea
underlying this employment of tobacco is well shown in the
prayer which accompanies the ceremony : " I now cast into the
fire the Indian tobacco, that as the scent rises up into the air it
may ascend to thy abode of peace and quietness ; and thou wilt
perceive and know that thy counsels are duly observed by man-
kind, and wilt recognize and approve the objects for which thy
blessing has been asked." Another late custom of the Iroquois is
thus related by Mrs. Erminnie A. Smith : " In a dry summer sea-
son, the horizon being filled with distant thunderheads, it was cus-
tomary to burn what the Indians call real tobacco, as an offering
to bring rain. . . . Every family was supposed to have a private
altar upon which its offerings were secretly made ; after which
that family must repair, bearing its tithe, to the council house
where the gathered tithes of tobacco were burned in the council
fire. . . . Burning tobacco is the same as praying. In times of
trouble or fear, after a bad dream, or any event which frightens
them, they say, ' My mother went out and burned tobacco.' "
The Cohuilla Indians of California believe in evil spirits called
sespes, and when they can not sleep they make offerings to these
of tobacco. In making their buffalo medicine the Dakotas were
accustomed to burn tobacco to bring the herds. Some American
Indians before killing a rattlesnake would make an offering to its
spirit by sprinkling a pinch of tobacco on its head. Others would
beg pardon of a bear which they had killed, and by placing the
peace pipe in its mouth and blowing the smoke down its throat,
ask its spirit not to take revenge. The Sioux in Hennepin's time
looked toward the sun when they smoked, and when the calumet
was lighted they held it aloft, saying, " Smoke, sun.'' A like cus-
tom prevailed among the Creeks. Gordon William Lillie ('* Paw-
nee Bill "), speaking of the pipe dance of the Pawnees, says that
" before lighting their pipes they throw a pinch of the tobacco
into the air. This, with the first three puffs of smoke, which are

vol.. xi.iii. — 13

178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

also blown high in the air, goes to the good spirit. The ashes they
are very particular to throw to the fire, and this is ill luck to the
bad spirit. The pipe (the Indian's idol and shrine) is to the Paw-
nee what the Bible is to the white man, and goes hand in hand
with all the jn-incipal dances."

The facts of this paragraph are gleaned from the interesting
reports made by Miss Alice C. Fletcher upon her studies of vari-
ous Indian tribes : At the Uncpapa festival of the white buffalo, a
priest must be present to fill the inpe, a ceremony performed with
a ritual of words, and it is believed that should the person saying
it make a mistake, or omit a word, he would incur death from the
sacrilege. Relating the details of this festival for publication, the
narrators seated themselves toward the sunrise, lighted the pipe,
bowed to the earth, and passed it, uttering a prayer. In the Elk
mystery or festival of the Ogallala Sioux the pipe is introduced,
together with little bunches of tobacco rolled in cloth. It figures
also in the ghost-lodge ceremony of the same Indians. The pipe
dance of the Omahas is an elaborate ceremony which can not here
be adequately described. It is sometimes exchanged between dif-
ferent gentes of the same tribe, but generally between two tribes.
The two " pipes " peculiar to this dance are not pipes at all, but
only stems, the pipe-bowls being replaced by the heads of ducks.
The stems are hollowed carefully, however, and smoking is some-
times simulated, in which cases the symbolism is as binding as
when the fumes are ])resent. The perforation of the stems is made
quite large, to prevent clogging, which is regarded as a great ca-
lamity. Among the Pawnees, if a stoppage occurs in smoking a
peace pipe, the bearer loses his life. Only a man who has proved
himself valiant in battle, or wise in council, or who has given
away horses, can make one of these pipes. The pipes are wrapped
in the skin of a wild cat, and the bearing of this roll is a special
office. This ceremony, which is accompanied by an elaborate
ritual comprising a number of songs, handed down with their
archaic words through many generations, was one of the means
in ancient times by which possessions were accumulated and ex-
changed, and honors counted and received. It seems to symbolize
fellowship or kinship. The same dance, with a few minor points
of difference, is common to the Omaha, Ponca, Otoe, Pawnee, and
Sioux tribes. In their journeys to and fro the dance parties are
regarded as peacemakers by all who meet them, Ijecause of the
presence of the pipes. Should a war party come in sight, the
warriors would make a wide detour to avoid the group, even
though it behjnged to the tribe about to be attacked.

The investigations of the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey among the
Omahas also reveal many survivals of ancient ceremonies which
illustrate the sacred characteristics pertaining to the pipe. This

THE CEREMONIAL USE OF TOBACCO. 179

tribe possesses but two sacred pipes, which are in the keeping of a
certain gens, though seven gentes are said to have once possessed
pipes which were reserved for ceremonial usages. The two now
in existence are called sacred pipes, or red pipes, and are made of
the famous red pipestone. The filling of the pipes is not done by
the keepers, but by a man of another gens ; and, when this official
does not go to the council, the pipes can not be smoked, since no
one else can fill them. The ancient ritual for this ceremonial fill-
ing of the pipes must not be heard, so he sends all the others out
of the lodge. He utters some words when he cleans out the bowl,
others when he fills it. The pipes are then lighted by the keep-
er, and are ready for use. In opening, handling, smoking, and
emptying them certain regulations must be carefully observed.
Any violation of these laws they believe will be followed by
the death of the offender. In smoking they blow the smoke up-
ward, saying, " Here, Wakanda, is the smoke." If the presence
of enemies renders necessary the sending out of scouts, the pipes
are filled and offered to them, and they are solemnly admonished
to report on their return only the exact truth, and to be careful
to observe well. When the first thunder is heard in the spring
the sacred pipes are filled and held toward the sky, while the
thunder-god is admonished to depart and cease from frightening
his grandchildren. In the time of a fog the men of the Turtle sub-
gens draw on the ground the figure of a turtle with its face toward
the south. On the head, tail, middle of the back, and on each leg
are placed small pieces of breechcloth with some tobacco. This
is to make the fog disappear. Should an enemy appear in the
lodge and put the pipe in his mouth, he can not be injured by
any member of the tribe, as he is bound for the time by the laws
of hospitality, and must be protected and sent to his home in
safety. These Indians use the pipe when declaring war and when
making peace. Among the Poncas at the election of chiefs, the
chiefs-elect must put the sacred pipes to their mouths and inhale
the smoke. If they should refuse to inhale it they would die, it
is thought, before the end of the year. The election of Omaha
chiefs is similar.

Major J. W. Powell states that when the Wyandot tribal coun-
cil meets, the chief of a certain gens fills and lights a pipe, sending
one puff of smoke to the heavens and another to the earth. The
pipe is then handed to the sachem, who fills his mouth with smoke,
and, turning from left to right with the sun, slowly puffs it out
over the heads of the councilors who are sitting in a circle. He
then hands the pipe to the man on his left, and it is smoked in turn
by each person until it has passed around the circle, after which
the sachem explains the object for which the council was called.

A possible evidence of the religious veneration with which the

i8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pipe was regarded in America is furiiished by the mound pipes,
upon which the native sculptors expended a much greater amount
of patient and careful labor than they devoted to any other im-
plement. So skillfully executed are they that Dr. Rau does not
hesitate to affirm that modern artists would find no small diffi-
culty in reproducing them, even with the great advantage of
metallic tools. These facts seem to have impressed themselves
strongly upon the mind of the late Sir Daniel Wilson, who many
years ago investigated thoroughly the narcotic arts and super-
stitions of the Americans, and to whom the writer is indebted for
the main idea of the present paper. The mound pipes are, indeed,
a suggestive theme, though the conclusions which archaeologists
have drawn from them are by no means unanimous. A remark-
able depository of carved pipes was unearthed by Squier and
Davis in one of the mounds of the group known as Mound City,
in Ohio. From a single hearth they took nearly two hundred
finely sculptured pipes, many of them, however, being broken and
injured by the action of fire. Recalling the sacred associations
connected in the mind of the Indian with the tobacco plant and
the instrument of its use, theorists have found in this mound a
possible altar devoted exclusively to nicotian rites. Without dis-
cussing the motives which may have led the builders of the
mounds to deposit so many of these pipes in one place, we may
assume with some confidence that the carved pipes were most
probably totems. "Their sacred nature," remarks Henshaw,
" would enable us to understand how naturally pipes would be
selected as the medium for totemic representations."

Leaving for a time the regions where the pipe occupies so
prominent a place in religious rites, we find, on approaching the
Rio Grande, that the use of tobacco becomes of far less frequent
occurrence. In the pueblos of the Southwest very few pipes have
been found. The Indians of this region have, however, a sacred
cigarette, the antiquity of which is indicated by repeated allusions
to it in the pueblo folk lore. The Navajos share with the Moquis
the smoke-prayer, in which the sacred smoke of the cigarette is
blown east, north, west, and south, to propitiate the good spirits
and drive away the evil ones. Gushing observed that the older
men of Zuiii, in smoking cigarettes, would blow the smoke in dif-
ferent directions, closing their eyes, and muttering a few words
which he regarded as invocations. In Mexico and Central Amer-
ica the pipe reappears, though here it is evidently of much less
importance than in the North. One prominent example of its
application to religious uses is furnished by Diego de Landa. In
his Relaci(5n de Cosas de Yucatan, describing the curious native
ceremony of baptism he says : " Tras esto (the priest) ivan los
demas ayudantes del sacerdote con un manojo de flores y un

THE CEREMONIAL USE OF TOBACCO. 181

liumago que los indios usan chupar ; y amagavan con cada imo
dellos iiiieve vezes a cado mochacho, y despues davanle a oler las
flores y a chupar el humago." That this is not an isolated instance
of the use of tobacco in religious practices in these regions is
shown by the pipes and cigars pictured in some of the ancient
manuscripts. Bancroft states that after some of the hideous
human sacrifices made by the people of Central America, great
fires were built, into which the men threw pipes, among other
offerings. Among the remarkable sculptures of the " Palace of
the Sun," at Palenque, occurs the figure of a priest dressed in a
leopard's skin, a complicated head dress, and ruffles around his
wrists and ankles. In his mouth, supported by both hands, is a
tubular pipe, similar in shape and decoration to many that have
been found in California and in other parts of the United States.
In this figure the learned Dr. Hamy sees, and doubtless correctly,
the performance of an act of worship. He says : " Le pontife souffle
en Phonneur du Dieu dont I'image est sculptde au fond de la
chapelle une large bouffee de tabac," and proceeds to trace the
analogies which exist between this practice of the builders of
Palenque and the rites of the mound-builders and California In-
dians, of whose tubular pipes he says : " Elles servent a souffler
une fumee consacr^e, dans certaines ceremonies religieuses, et le
medicine-man sait, suivant les besoins, les transformer soit en
tubes a ventouse, soit en porte-moxa."

The treatment of disease by means of tobacco and tobacco
pipes, which is here suggested, may now claim attention. The
" sucking cure," in which the medicine-man or sorcerer applies to
the patient's body a tube of stone or bone and pretends to extract
through it some small object, such as a stick or stone, is of world-
wide distribution. In America the tube used is frequently the
tobacco pipe, sometimes empty, and sometimes filled with burn-
ing tobacco. Vanegas, an early historian of California, asserts
that stone tubes sometimes filled with lighted tobacco were often
applied to the suffering part of the patient's body. Forbes states
that in the same region, in 172S, Father Luyanto, of the Loreto
Mission, " as a preliminary to baptism insisted on the abjuration
of faith in the native jugglers or priests, and demanded the break-
ing and burning of their smoking tubes and other instruments
and tokens of superstition in proof of this." Among the modern
Apaches the medicine-man's diagnosis of a case is made by the
pretended swallowing of a pipe filled with burning tobacco. It
works out of his arm or leg, and if white the patient will recover ;
if colored, he is likely to die. Tubular pipes occur in many parts
of the United States, and in California they are numerous. While
they were designed primarily as smoking implements, they were
no doubt often used, as here indicated, in the treatment of disease.

i82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

From the point of view here taken in regard to tobacco its
most interesting use hy far is for the purpose of producing a state
of ecstasy or delirium in which, according to the barbaric theory
of animism, the person under its influence could hold communica-
tion in dreams and visions with the spirits who brought disease
and death, and also with those to whom the savage felt himself
indebted for life and all its blessings. The importance attached
to dreams by savages is well known. Schoolcraft, in 1823, noted
the besotted and spellbound condition of the Indians of the Great
Lake regions, due to their implicit belief in the prophetic nature
of dreams. " Their whole lives," he remarks, " are rendered a per-
fect scene of doubts and fears and terrors by them. Their jug-
glers are both dreamers and dream interpreters." In ancient
Mexico the will of the gods was made known to the four chief
medicine-men in dreams, and Bandelier recalls the familiar story
that Montezuma, previous to the coming of the Spaniards, being
alarmed by mysterious prognostics, called upon the old men and
women, and upon the medicine-men, to report what they might
dream or had dreamed within a certain lapse of time. In the same
country certain men were particularly expert in dream interpre-
tation, so much so that they were generally applied to for that
purpose.

It should be remembered that the capacity of the Indian to
withstand the effect of narcotics is much less than that of the
European, and that the native practice of inhaling the smoke
secured a far deeper and more lasting effect than the modern
method. Oviedo is authority for the statement that tobacco was
greatly valued by the Caribbees, " who call it kohiba, and im-
agined when they were drunk with the fumes of it that they were
in some sort inspired." The Carib sorcerer, in evoking a demon or
spirit from his patient, would puff tobacco smoke into the air as
an agreeable perfume to attract the spirit from the afflicted body.
With the aid of tobacco smoke and darkness he could also hold
communion with his own familiar demon or guardian spirit.
" In La Espanola and the other islands," says Benzoni, " when
their doctors wanted to cure a sick man, they went to the place
where they were to administer the smoke, and when he was
thoroughly intoxicated by it the cure was mostly effected. On
returning to his senses he told a thousand stories of his having
been at the councils of the gods, and other high visions." The
Indians of California sometimes stupefied children with narcotic
drink, in order to gain from the ensuing vision information about
their enemies. Dr. E. B. Tylor notes similar practices in Darien,
Brazil, and Peru. The Brazilian tribes took tobacco to produce
ecstasy, and in this state had supernatural visions. The same
custom obtained in North America. A i)eculiar use of the sweat

THE CEREMONIAL USE OF TOBACCO. 183

lodge (a common institution in America) was observed by Loskiel
among the Delaware Indians. After a feast in honor of tlie fire-
god and his twelve attendant manitous, a hut was constructed of
skins stretched upon twelve poles tied together at the top. Into
this hut twelve men were crowded, twelve red-hot stones were
placed among them, and upon these stones an old man threw
twelve pipefuls of tobacco. The men had to remain inside as long
as they could endure the heat and smoke, and when taken out at
last they were almost suffocated, generally falling in a swoon.
The precise object of this ceremony is not mentioned, but it is
probable that the dominant idea was that of a spiritual inter-
course between the swooning men and the deities.

The origin of the custom of smoking tobacco may, with some
degree of probability, be traced to the ceremonies here recounted.
That stage of primitive culture which is characterized by a strong
belief in the reality of dream figures and the prophetic nature of
visions tended inevitably to engender a class of professional
dreamers and soothsayers. When dreams were in great demand,
it was natural that some man in every savage community, on ac-
count of a mental peculiarity — a taint of insanity, or some power-
ful nervous derangement — should become distinguished above his
fellows for vivid and frequent visions. As the business of the
prophet and seer increased, it became necessary for him to adopt
artificial measures for bringing on the condition of stupor which
was essential to the exercise of his calling. He therefore resorted
to fasting, or, more frequently, to the use of narcotic drugs.
Along the Amazon the seeds of Mimosa acacioides were thus em-
ployed ; among the Peruvians and the Darien Indians it was the
Datura sanguinea ; in Brazil, the West Indies, and North Amer-
ica the great narcotic was tobacco.

In like manner it may be reasonably conjectured that tobacco
did not become an article of sacrifice and incense until it had
passed out of the hands of the medicine-men, by whom alone it
was at first used. In every age men have offered in sacrifice that
which they valued most — the best and first fruits, and the most
precious of their flocks. Tobacco must have come into general
use and become one of the Indian's most prized possessions before
it was offered as a gift to his deities. It is not difficult to trace
this advance from its restricted use by professional dreamers as
just described. When men had learned that the sacred herb could
drive away disease, recall the past and reveal the future, they
naturally wished to try its effects upon themselves— to walk in
person in the hidden land of spirits, instead of sending tlie medi-
cine-man as a deputy. Thus, in time, every man became his own
seer, tobacco rose in the estimation of the Indian above all his
other possessions, and smoking became a common practice.

i84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

AN ETHNOLOGIC STUDY OF THE YURUKS.

By ALCIDE T. M. D'ANDRIA.

THE Yuriiks are nomadic tribos whose existence is a phenom-
enon difficult to understand and to explain. Ethnologists
consider them as direct descendants of the Turkomans, whose dis-
tinctive features they have preserved ; while those properly called
Turks, though descendants of the Turkomans, have mingled with
Aryan and Semitic races, and lost their original characteristics.
Mr. Riegler states that the Turks, owing to numerous crossings
with various foreign races for several centuries, present nowadays
important modifications in their type ; while the ungovernable
Yuruks are proud of their savage origin, and value themselves
as superior to the Turks among whom they live.

The Yuruk has generally a large head, round face, high fore-
head, projecting chin, and long though not oblique eyes. His skin
is brown, his hair dark or auburn ; he has a very strong osse-
ous frame, and is of mediuin height. Such is the physical descrip-
tion of the Yuruks.

As for the etymology of their name, it is entirely Persian, and
is derived from the verb yuruinek, which means to walk. In
some provinces of Asia Minor they are called Gueutcliehe. This
word has the same meaning as yurumek, and is derived from the
verb gueutchmek, which may be rendered in English by to
change lodging. The literal meanings of their names show suffi-
ciently the most striking side of their nature — they are nomadic.
Their tribes are scattered over the Asiatic peninsula. Some eth-
nologists place their number at three hundred thousand, and M.
Elisde Reclus reckons as many as a hundred different tribes. Each
tribe appoints a chief called a sheik. His authority is absolute,
and he fills the office of a judge to settle their quarrels.

The chief occujjation of the Yuruks is the breeding of cattle.
In winter they set their tents near their barns ; but when spring
approaches they fold them and remove to lands more favorable
for the welfare of their animals. Through the warm months of
the summer thoy live in the open air. If they hajjpen to be in the
vicinity of a forest, they ajiply themselves to wood-felling, and
they dispose of the product of their labor in the neighboring cities
or villages.

Their wives and daughters are very skillful in weaving carpets,
particularly one kind known as kilim. Each tribe manufac-
tures carpets having the same design and size ; each family trans-
mits to the children the design it possesses, and the young girls
learn easily the art of weaving without the help of a pattern.

It is unnecessary to say that nomadic life is dear to them, as

AN ETHNOLOGIC STUDY OF THE YURUKS. 185

can be testified by the following quatrain, which is taken from one
of their patriotic songs :

•' There is no rest for the sovereign,
And glory requires many toils and pains.
For me, I would not exchange my poor attire
For all the universe ! "

The Ottoman Government has often tried to stop their wander-
ing life, and many severe edicts have been issued for this purpose.

j^io. 1. — YiRiK Women at the Spring.

The Sultan's idea was to destroy their tents, so as to confine them
in one place where they might apply themselves to agriculture.
The nomads submitted for a time, but their cattle in many places
suffered so much from the sterility of the soil that the authorities
were obliged to grant them again a permit for emigration.

i86

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The language of the Yuruks resembles much the Turkish. In
their dialect, words and even syntactic forms are also found which
recall the Persian and Arabic languages.

Their creed is Islamism, although they do not observe all its
precepts. Thus, they build no mosques, and do not confine them-

selves to the obligation of the five daily prayers imposed upon all
good Mohammedans. Neither do they undergo the long and pain-
ful fasting of the Ramazan. Their women do not cover their faces
as do the Turkish ladies.

The Yuruks who dwell in the plains which extend from the

AN ETHNOLOGIC STUDY OF THE YURUKS. 187

Sipylus to the Traoliis Mountains are named " Kizil-Bacli." Their
tribe is the most important and the most numerous ; they comprise
nearly two thirds of the Yuruk element. In the ethnologic point
of view their study presents the most interest.

The Kizil-Bach, as, in fact, all the Yuruks, are the followers of
Ali, whom they consider as their prophet. Therefore, Mohammed
has no worshipers among them, and this explains why they do not
observe the precepts of the Koran.

A curious thing to notice is also a slight mixture of paganism
in their creed. For instance, in the spring and fall of every year
they set large tents in a remote place, and when night comes men
and women gather to celebrate religious banquets and mysterious
ceremonies, followed by songs and dances.

Their principal poems express veneration for Ali. They also
possess remarkably exalted hymns to chant their adoration to the
Supreme Being and their love for their brethren. The dance, per-
formed only by the women, has an original and Asiatic character ;
its rhythm is grave and slow, the gestures and motions of the
dancers show kindness and amiability for their guests. Only
those initiated in their mysteries are allowed to attend the above
ceremonies, while vigilant and unmerciful guardians, posted in
the surroundings, prevent the approach of strangers on pain of
immediate death.

Besides these banquets and nocturnal ceremonies, which recall
the Saturnalia of the Romans in the time of Tiberius, another fact
leads me to believe that the Yuruks have preserved pre-Islamitic
doctrines that we can also trace in the darkest paganism. For in-
stance, their belief in metempsychosis. The Yuruks, indeed, assert
that human souls return into the bodies of animals, and that the
spirits of the latter take also a human form and apjjear at deter-
mined epochs. This is certainly the reason why they are so kind
to animals. M. Elis^e Reclus says that a Yuruk loves his horse as
much as his family. The horses have their place under the tent,
and it is not uncommon to see them warmly wrapped in a mag-
nificent robe when the Yuruk and his children are covered with
rags. Some other customs attest also a pagan origin; in the
Orient everybody knows that the Yuruks worship certain trees
and rocks. These facts yield sufficient evidence that monotheism
is by no means the essential dogma of their religion.

Among the qualities possessed by the Yuruk, hospitality is, no
doubt, prominent. Deprived, by the very influence of his adventur-
ous life, of all the fierce instincts which characterize the Turko-
mans; restricted, because of his occupations, to the woods, the
plains, or the mountains ; constantly exposed to the inclemency of
the seasons, to dangers and enemies of all kinds, the Yuruk has
conceived a generous and noble idea of hospitality, and he prac-

AN ETHNOLOGIC STUDY OF THE YURUKS. 189

tices it with disinterestedness and pleasure. His tent, whether
in his presence or absence, is always opened to the traveler,
and food and drink in abundance are given him The tents of
the Yuruks are square, and made of a sort of thick black woolen
cloth.

Aside from the information I have given here, nothing precise
is known of their private life. For instance, nobody ever knew
what became of their dead, as no one has ever seen a cemetery. All
I am able to say is that the body of the deceased is placed on a black
mule, destined exclusively for that use, and thus carried to a
mountain. There, I am not aware whether it is cremated or bur-
ied ; but, as I was told that they also take a sheaf of firewood, it
is safe to believe that cremation takes place.

No traveler has ever seen a Yuruk pray according to any rite.
Yet it seems that they are not left without religious instruction,
as a venerable old man, his hair dressed as a Persian dervish, comes
once a year from Syria and remains awhile among them. The
pilgrim becomes the object of their respect and devotion, and they
give him the name of father.

Now, who is this man ? What affinity between him and these
Turkomans ? What does he teach them ? Why do they call him
father ? All these questions involve as many mysteries.

Men are often absent in the woods or on the mountains, and
their wives remain alone in the tents, but they are secure from
all danger, as they have weapons and know how to use them.
Among the women they select one in each tribe whose age and
personal merits render her deserving of distinction, and they in-
vest her with a superior authority. All the women show her a
profound veneration and blindly obey her orders. Even men kiss
her hand, and it is customary that every stranger who arrives in
the tribe should do the same.

All people agree in acknowledging the good morality of the
Yuruk, also his peaceful character, his sober habits and honesty.
The very thought of stealing is a crime in his mind, and the weap-
ons he carries he only uses for personal defense.

Here are a few interesting details about the way their mar-
riages are contracted : First of all, I must say that no religious
ceremony is performed, as they have neither mosques nor priest,
and no person among them is invested with a sacred character.
Marriages among young people of different races are strictly pro-
hibited. Therefore, when a young man has remarked among the
girls of his tribe the one whom he would like to marry, he dele-
gates a third person, who is usually a friend, to the father of the
girl, to announce his intention. If the father sees no objection'
the delegate presents him a small sum of money, and that gift in
their dialect is called mjhirlik—iXint is, iceujht. Afterward the

AN -ETHNOLOGIC STUDY OF THE YURUKS. 191

parents and friends of the intended go to the tent of the young
lady, where, as soon as they arrive, they are offered the sherbet
or sorbet, a beverage made with water, lemon, sugar, amber and
other spices. The purpose of this visit is to appoint a day for the
marriage. When the time comes the young man engages a numer-
ous escort of friends, and they start all together for the tent of
the young woman. The bride has also gathered around her a large
number of her friends to protect her. When the escort of the
groom is near, the bride's protectors utter, at a signal, the wildest
cries, run to the aggressors, insult them, and endeavor to defend
the access of the tent. Insults and even blows are profusely ex-
changed between the two camps. This sham fight ends when one
of the bravest succeeds in carrying off a goat or a sheep belonging
to the father-in-law, and immolates it at once.

The blood shed is considered as a sacred libation, and from that
moment the rights of the groom over his wife are recognized. The
two families and all their friends are invited to a banquet in which
they eat the sheep that was sacrificed.

Before night the bride is escorted to the tent of her husband on
horseback. There, before alighting, she must remove the reins
from her horse and throw them with force over the tent. If she
succeeds in flinging them on the other side, without their touching
the tent, they all declare it a happy omen.

At last some women execute dances appropriate to the circum-
stances, and, as they dance, all armed for the occasion, the effect
of their graceful movements, in the magnificence and freshness of
the Oriental twilight, is \evj impressive.

When all these formalities are accomplished, the guests re-
tire, and the husband, accompanied by his most intimate friends,
is led to the tent where his young wife awaits him. All the
Yuruks espouse one woman at a time ; polygamy is prohibited
and severely punished.

Dr. D. G. Beixtox and Dr. de la Tourette ai-e agreed that nervous diseases
and hysteria are not specially developed by cirilization, as is commonly supposed.
Dr. Brinton, in Science, quotes travelers for evidence that violent and epidemic
nervon? seizures are very common in uncultivated nations. Castian describes
them amouir the Sibiric tribes. An unexpected blow on the outside of a tent will
throw its occupants into spasms. Tiie early Jesuit missionaries painted extraordi-
nary pictures of epidemic nervous maladies among the Iroquois and llurons.
Scenes of this kind were witnessed in the middle ages that are impossible to-day.
The hypothesis is advanced by Dr. I. C. Eosse, of Georgia Medical College, that a
sudden change in the social habit and condition of any race, at any stage of ad-
vancement, may result in a prouipt development of nervous disease; and that
a stable high civilization may excite nervous disorders less tiian unstable condi-
tions of lower grades of advancement.

192 THE POPULAR SCIUJ\/C£J MONTHLY.

MODERN MIRACLES.

By Pkof. E. p. EVANS.

IF, as it has often been stated, tlie age of miracles in the his-
tory of religions is past, it is certain that the age of marvels in
the evolution of science is just beginning. The Orient, which
from time immemorial has been the chief seat and source of theo-
sophic systems and theurgic traditions, is still peculiarly prolific
in all sorts of magical phenomena and other mysterious mani-
festations.

In illustration of this fact we may refer to the performances
of the Arabian fakirs which excited so great astonishment at the
Paris Exposition of 1889, and to the more recent but equally
wonderful feats of the East Indian, Soliman, in the Panoptikum
at Berlin. These fakirs are called 'A'issavtdya from the name of
the founder of the fraternity, Sid Mohammed Ben 'Aissa, a saint
of royal lineage born at Mekinez, in Morocco, about the end of
the fifteenth century. 'A'issa, or 'Yissa, is the Arabic for Jesus:
'Atssavidya is therefore etymologically synonymous with Jesuits,
and both orders are really somewhat akin in scope and spirit,
although to a superficial observer the Mohammedan society may
seem to have little in common with that founded by Ignatius
Loyola, except the name and the general principle of absolute
obedience, which is thus forcibly inculcated in one of 'Aissa's
statutes : " Thou shalt be in the hands of thy sheik like a corpse
in the hands of the embalmer ; his commands are the commands
of God himself." In this injunction the Jesuitical doctrine of the
"sacrifice of the intellect" is pushed to its extreme consequences.
It is also a curious coincidence that ^Aissa should have established
in northern Africa a religious order having for its general aim
the revival and propagation of Islam, at the same time that Loyola-
established a religious order in Paris under the same name, hav-
ing for its object the revival and propagation of Catholicism.
Both orders are likewise exceedingly intolerant and fanatical, not-
withstanding wide difi^erences in their methods of procedure and
the manner in which this zealotry manifests itself.

Besides the common purpose of propagandism as an associa-
tion, each individual member of the order aspires by means of a
severely ascetic life and long-continued physical and spiritual dis-
cipline to attain perfection through emancipation from the flesh
with all its trammels and torments. In order to arrive at this
state, called Tauhidi, and corresponding to the JtuanmuMi (release
from the body before death) of the Hindu Yogi, the candidate
passes through seven stages of penitential purification, each more
rigorous than the preceding one, resulting not only in the com-

MODERN MIRACLES. 193

plete subjection of the moral and mental faculties of the adept to
the will of his superior, but also, as it would seem, in a change of
the vital processes and a suspension of the ordinary conditions of
bodily existence, which give him immunity from pain and enable
him to inflict upon himself wounds that would be fatal to common
mortals.

At Paris the performance took place every evening at nine
o'clock in the upper story of the Moorish cafe, in the Rue du
Caire, of the Oriental quarter. Four "Ai'ssavidya, with their sheik,
squatted in Eastern fashion on a carpeted platform, in the center
of which stood a brazier of burning coals. The exhibition began
with a monotonous sing-song, the burden of which was the in-
vocation of 'Ai'ssa and Allah, accompanied by a sort of tambourine
or tom-tom edged with bells. The music was at first slow and
rather low, but soon went faster and grew louder, until it rose to a
fearful howl and furious din. At this juncture one of the fakirs
sprang up and, throwing off his upper garment, began to dance
with his hands on his hips, his head bent forward, and his eyes in-
tently fixed on the sheik. This dance, called Ishdeh, became at
every moment wilder and the swaying motion of the dancer's body
more violent, until he fell down in a fit of exhaustion, foaming at
the mouth and his eyes in a " fine frenzy rolling," In this state of
ecstasy he is supposed to be possessed by the spirit of 'Aissa and
thereby rendered invulnerable to the sharpest weapons and proof
against the deadliest poisons. We may add that Soliman at Berlin
prepared himself for the ordeal of fire and sword, not by music
and dancing, but by burning a powder and inhaling the smoke,
which, however, did not produce any perceptibly stupefying or
exhilarating effect upon him. He is a member of the order of
Saadi, founded in 1335 by Saadeddin Jebari. Each order seems to
have its own method of procedure in this respect, which forms a
part of its secret science.

In a short time the fakir had sufiiciently recovered from his
trance to stand up, and, when the sheik pointed to the brazier, he
thrust his hand into it, seized some of the live coals, blew them
till they emitted sparks, bit off pieces of them, as one would bite
an apple, and eagerly ate them up. He then went to a large
prickly cactus, which was standing on the platform, plucked a leaf
armed with strong spines, bit off a piece, and swallowed it. With
equal avidity he crunched and consumed thin sheets of glass.
Fragments of the cactus and the glass were handed to the specta-
tors, who examined them and convinced themselves that they were
really the substances they were represented to be. An attendant
brought in a shovel, the iron part of which was red-hot, so that a
bit of paper thrown upon it flashed at once into flame. The fakir
took the wooden handle of the shovel with his right hand, placed

TOL. XUII. — 14

194 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

his left hand on the glowing iron plate, which he also licked with
apparent relish, and then stood upon it with his bare feet until it
became black. This last exploit filled the air with a faint odor of
bnrned horn. A sword, so sharp that it cut a piece of paper in
two when drawn across the edge, was handed to the fakir, who
thrust it with all his force against his throat, his breast, and his
sides. The sword was then held in a horizontal position about
three feet from the ground with the edge upward, by the servant
who took hold of the point, which was wrapped in several folds
of cloth for the protection of his hand, and by another ^Aissaui,
who held it by the hilt. The fakir placed his hands on the shoul-
ders of the two men and, leaping up barefoot on the edge of the
sword, stood there for some seconds. He then stripped and, rest-
ing his naked abdomen on the edge of the sword, balanced himself
in the air without touching the floor with his feet, the sheik mean-
while pressing down upon the fakir's back with the whole weight
of his body. The fakir also thrust a dagger from the inside of his
mouth through his cheek, so that the point projected more than
an inch. Finally, he took a serpent out of a box, and, after irri-
tating it into fierce anger, let it bite various parts of his person ;
at last he himself bit off the head of the venomous reptile and
devoured nearly half of its body.

Having thus gorged his barbarous appetite, he resumed his
dance in the same rapid measure, in which he had finished it,
but the movement became gradually slower, and in due time,
after kissing the yellow turban of the sheik, he sat down again,
" clothed and in his right mind."

Another fakir danced himself into a trance and fed upon
snakes and scorpions, apparently relishing this limited but piquant
bill of fare. In conclusion, the sheik himself performed the most
marvelous feat of all : with the point of a dagger he lifted his
right eye out of its socket, so that one could see into the cavity,
the cornea assuming a dull, glassy appearance so long as the
eye rested on the point of the dagger, but no sooner was it
replaced and gently rubbed than it became clear again and
seemed to be as serviceable as ever. Several medical and sci-
entific men examined the fakir thoroughly after the performance
was over, and unanimously declared that none of these feats left
the slightest trace of a wound on any part of his body, nor did
they draw a single drop of blood. They furthermore afiirmed
that, so far as they could discover, no jugglery or sleight of hand
was practiced.

That these things actually happened is as conclusively estab-
lished as the occurrence of auy event can be by human and even
expert testimony. The literature of the subject is quite volumi-
nous and rapidly increasing in extent, corresponding in this respect

MODERN MIRACLES. 195

with the growth and development of anthropology and ethno-
psychology. Missionaries, tourists, government ofiBcials, and the
most eminent English, French, German, and Italian scientists,
who have witnessed these exhibitions in India and other Ori-
ental countries, all agree as to the genuineness of the phenomena,
although no one has yet been able to give a satisfactory explana-
tion of them. If we accept the argumentum ex consensu gentium
as valid, the evidence is overwhelming and the proof complete.

Indeed, one need not go so far away in search of such mani-
festations. The so-called Choreutse (dancers) of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, the Flagellants of a later period, and simi-
lar fanatical sects, are not to be considered in this connection,
since their object was to inflict pain upon themselves, the physical
suffering being regarded as a sacrament or efficient means of
grace. There is, however, quite a remarkable resemblance be-
tween the marvelous feats of Arabian and Indian fakirs and those
performed by Jansenist convulsionaries in the last century (1730-
1762) at the grave of their ascetic saint, Francis of Paris, in the
suburban church of St. Medardus, the genuineness of which is not
denied by their bitter enemies, the Jesuits, and is even admitted
by such scrutinizing skeptics as Hume and Diderot. These re-
ligious enthusiasts maltreated their bodies much in the same way
as the fakirs and with like impunity, and regarded such actions
as contributing to their spiritual growth and perfection. It was a
sort of homoeopathic treatment, the principle of similia similibus
applied to the cure of souls, whose infirmities were indicated by
bodily symptoms and required vigorous remedies. Thus, an op-
pression of the chest, which had a pathological significance in re-
lation to the spirit, pointed to the therapeutic necessity of beating
it with the greatest violence ; if the convulsionary had a sense of
burning heat, he exposed himself to the flames ; an acute and bor-
ing pain in the mouth, neck, eye, or any other organ required a
dagger to be thrust into the afflicted part, but, strangely enough,
no force could make the sharpest instrument enter the flesh or
inflict a wound. If we are to accept autoptic testimony, given by
shrewd observers, who would have been glad to expose any impos-
ture, these enthusiasts could eat the most injurious things, swal-
low poisons, and lie for hours in the fire, like salamanders, without
singeing a hair or having any smell of burning on their persons.

Doubtless, as Charcot, Lombroso, Mendel, and other scientists
suggest, hypnotism may furnish a partial solution of this physio-
logical and psychological puzzle ; but hypnotism, although recog-
nized as a fact, still remains a mystery, and differs from a miracle
only in being attributed to natural instead of supernatural causes.
It is well known that, in obedience to hypnotic suggestion, persons
will eat the most unpalatable and even disgusting substances as

196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

though they were the rarest delicacies ; the hypnotic state is also
attended by " analgesia " or freedom from pain, and serves as an
effective anodyne in dental and surgical operations ; but we can
recall no well-authenticated case in which it has rendered the hu-
man body incombustible. The hypnotizer can prevent the sub-
ject of his experiment from feeling the surgeon's knife, or cause
him to regard the cutting as an agreeable sensation, but we are
not aware that he is able to make the flesh impenetrable to the
scalpel, although it is possible for him, as Donato has shown, to
thrust sharp instruments into the arm of a hypnotized person
without drawing blood or leaving a visible wound. By hypnotic
suggestion a man may believe himself to be a dog, a wolf, or any
other animal, and act accordingly; and this imaginary meta-
morphosis may perhaps explain the supposed existence of were-
wolves. In like manner, pure water may produce an intoxicating
effect, while, on the contrary, alcohol ceases to inebriate ; and a
simple piece of paper placed on the skin may raise a blister, al-
though the strongest irritant fails to do so. Here we have to deal
with enigmas of the physical and psychical organization, hitherto
unsuspected, the study of which opens up a wide and fruitful field
for research.

THE PHENOMENA OF DEATH IN BATTLE.

By GEORGE L. KILMEE.

IN an article printed in the Monthly for June, 1893, 1 presented
some of the phenomena of the soldier's first actions under a
death-hurt. A field for investigation lying just beyond that — as
I infer from the incomplete records and deductions offered by
men of science — is that of the phenomena of death itself. In a
casual way I stated in my paper that the symptoms attending
death in battle might, in certain cases, be determined by the ap-
pearances of the bodies, and cited a remarkable scene at Antie-
tam, where dead Confederates in one place, to the number of sev-
eral hundred, seemed to have been killed instantly, and to have
retained in death something of the last attitudes of their combat-
ive life. After my manuscript had been given to the editor, my
attention was called to a brief discussion of this question in a
sketch by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, in the Century for February,
1892. The views of Dr. Mitchell are not openly declared in his
Century article, but he quotes, on the lips of fictitious characters,
the opinions of Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, and re-
fers to Dr. J. H. Brinton, an army surgeon, who is on record as a
very positive witness in this matter. General Sherman, accord-
ing to Dr. Mitchell, told the story of a soldier killed by a bullet in

THE PHENOMENA OF DEATH IN BATTLE. 197

the brain wliile kneeling at a spring to drink, who retained his
extraordinary attitude naturally in death. General Grant, when
appealed to, said that it could not be true, as he had never seen a
single instance where a soldier, shot dead, retained the posture
held in life, and his attention had never been called to it in the
war. General Sheridan stated that he had often seen it. I wrote
what I recalled of the Antietam scene thirty years after, and, never
having had a doubt raised but such things could be and were not
rare in war, I assumed the phenomenon to be fairly well estab-
lished, and that citation without proof would not tax the credulity
of readers. Yet the denial by General Grant caused me to ques-
tion my own senses or my memory. As against both Sherman
and Sheridan, the one sanguine and imaginative, the other impul-
sive and good-natured, it would seem that, all things being equal,
a question of fact would have the more competent judge in Grant.
General Grant went no further in his denial than to say that he
had never seen the phenomenon. There are veterans who, having
had the best of opportunities for seeing all phases of the battle-
field, not only say that they never saw a case of the kind, but,
resting upon professional knowledge, assert its impossibility. For
my own part, I can report only what I saw in my capacity as a
combatant — that is, extraordinary attitudes of dead men on cer-
tain fields. Reports of comrades of analogous cases, and the quite
prevalent belief that the manifestation was possible, led to the
acceptance of it as a natural yet withal a rare occurrence. The
fact that military men, and more especially surgeons who have
been on the field, are skeptical on the point, that such phenomena
are comparatively rare, and that scientific observations have been
recorded in but few instances, makes the subject one for extreme
caution and conservatism in treatment. In my paper on wounded
soldiers I cited the cases of oflBcers killed while leading the charge,
who in death held their sword-arms out as when last seen in life.
The inference drawn was that death must have been instanta-
neous. The Antietam scene described was of similar character,
yet extraordinary in the number of examples of the same order.
I confess that I did not see on any other of the score of fields
where I was present a scene at all comparable to that at Antietam,
but competent witnesses have reported similar things on other
fields, as well as on different parts of that field.

The field of Antietam was peculiarly favorable for the devel-
opment of the phenomenon, which for brevity, borrowing a term
from Surgeon Brinton's record of research, I will call battlefield
rigor. It was the hardest fought battle in the East — perhaps in
the whole country. The Confederates were at bay, with the Po-
tomac River behind them, and the Union soldiers were exultant
over the enemy's dilemma, and the fact that for once battle was

198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

invited on tlieir own soil. Circumstances liave relegated it to the
background, but at one time it was deemed worthy the best efforts
of descriptive writers. Charles Carleton Coffin, the war corre-
spondent and historian, wrote of one of the scenes there in lan-
guage that will seem to many overcolored. Speaking of an ac-
tion almost contemporaneous with that at the north cornfield of
which I have written, he says : " The Confederates had gone down
as grass before the scythe. . . . Resolution and energy still lin-
gered on the pallid cheeks, in the set teeth, in the griping hand.
I recall a soldier with the cartridge between his thumb and finger,
the end of the cartridge bitten off, and the paper between his
teeth, when the bullet pierced his heart and the machinery of life
— all the muscles and nerves — came to a standstill. A young lieu-
tenant had fallen in trying to rally his men ; his hand was still
firmly grasping his sword, and determination was visible in every
line of his face.'*

Curiously enough. Surgeon Brinton's field records, which form
the basis of a paper referred to in Dr. Mitchell's remarks on the
subject, include three Antietam scenes. The doctor confesses in
the opening paragraph of his article (American Journal of the
Medical Sciences, vol. xix, p. 87) that this line of investigation was
a comparatively new one at the close of the war, 18G5. He says :
" I have been greatly surprised at the extraordinary attitudes pre-
sented by the bodies of those who had fallen with wounds appar-
ently instantaneously fatal — as in the head or heart. In many
instances the body was rigid throughout, and the position unques-
tionably that of the last moment of life. The muscles had, as it
were, been surprised by death, and the limbs remained set and
fixed in the position held at the moment of the reception of the
fatal wound.''

In the cornfield, along the sunken road at Antietam (the
scene of Mr. Coffin's description). Dr. Brinton saw a Confederate
corpse semi-erect, one foot on the ground, one knee against a bank
of earth, and one arm stretched forward on a low breastwork. His
musket, with rammer in, lay on the ground, and the appearances
indicated that he had been killed while rising to load and fire. He
was shot through the center of the forehead. In the field adjoin-
ing the doctor counted nearly forty dead Confederates, some with
their arms rigidly in the air, some with legs drawn and fixed, and
many with trunks drawn and fixed. The positions were "not
those of the relaxation of death," but were due to " final muscular
action at the last moment of life, in the spasm of which the mus-
cles set and remained rigid." The wounds were chiefly in the
chest, though some were in the head and abdomen. His observa-
tions were made thirty-six hours after death.

Another Antietam case included in Dr. Brinton's list, but re-

THE PHENOMENA OF DEATH IN BATTLE. 199

ported by Surgeon Thomas B. Read, was the corpse of a Union
soldier with his right arm raised above his head and rigidly fixed,
his hand still holding the cap with which he had been cheering on
his comrades.

Aside from the desperate nature of the fighting at Antietam,
the situation was especially favorable to these phenomena, par-
ticularly on the Confederate side. They had fought nine battles
and engagements within one month, besides marching over two
hundred miles. The troops engaged on the portions of the field
under consideration had fought at South Mountain two days be-
fore — September 14th — had been alert all night on the 14th, 15th,
and 16th, marching, countermarching, and skirmishing constant-
ly, and were run down physically from hunger and general ex-
haustion. They had subsisted for several days upon green corn
and apples, and had been one month on half rations of meal and
bacon. The day — September 17th — was about like sultry August
weather in the North, close and lowery in the morning, followed
by a burning sun. The night of the battle was sweltering hot on
the field. These circumstances may have played a part in the de-
velopment of instantaneous rigor.

The first cases that came to the eye of Dr. Brinton were at
Belmont, Mo., November 7, 1861. One was a Union soldier kneel-
ing by a tree, in the act of firing, and shot obliquely through the
head, front to back. His warm body rested on right knee and
leg, left leg bent, with foot on the ground ; the left hand firmly
clinched the barrel of his musket, which rested with the butt on
the ground. The soldier's head drooped to the chest, and rested
against the tree. Attitude generally forward, jaw fixed, rigidity
perfect. The doctor supposed him to be alive, and could scarcely
believe that death rested upon a statue so lifelike. Another Union
soldier, shot near the heart, mounted a straying mule and rode
beside the doctor some distance. Soon the glazed eyeballs gave
unequivocal signs of death, but the body rode on upright. After
a time the mule was needed for a live victim, and the body of the
other was so firm and rigid that it required force to loosen the
knee-grip on the animal's shoulders.

Belmont was fought in autumn, yet the physical activity was
such as to generate great bodily heat. It was a running fight for
seven hours through wood and marsh. The desperate nature of
the struggle is shown by the list of casualties. On the average
during the war the proportion of killed and mortally wounded to
wounded was one to three. In four of the five regiments engaged
at Belmont the proportion was over one to two. The Seventh Iowa
lost 188 killed, wounded, and missing. The death-list reached 74,
leaving 114 for surviving wounded — over one and a quarter to two.

At Williamsburg, Va., May 5, 1863, Surgeon Read reported a

200 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Zouave ■with, one leg lialf over a fence, body crawling forward,
one liand clinched and raised to level of forehead, with palmar
surface outward, as if to ward oif evil. Williamsburg was fought
during a rain, but the men wore overcoats, the ground was low
and heavily wooded, the troops new to war — like those at Bel-
mont — and the mental strain and excitement would be favorable
to bodily heat. That field also brought forth a bit of the kind
of historical description termed fanciful. It is from the pen of
Warren Lee Goss, who has published several narratives of the
civil war. He was a soldier in the Union ranks at Williams-
burg, and states that after the engagement he visited the scene of
a charge in front of the Confederate fort. " Advancing through
the tangled mass of logs and stumps, I saw one of our men aim-
ing over the branch of a fallen tree which lay among the tangled
abatis. I called to him, but he did not turn nor move. Advanc-
ing nearer, I put my hand on his shoulder, looked in his face, and
started back. He was dead — shot through the brain — and so sud-
denly had the end come that his rigid right hand grasjDed his
musket, and he still preserved the attitude of watchfulness, liter-
ally occupying his post after death.''

A case reported to Dr. Brinton from Goldsboro, N. C, is one of
the most striking on record, and it is to be regretted that particu-
lars as to atmospheric and other conditions are wanting. Other-
wise the details are most complete. A party of Union cavalry
met some dismounted Confederates, and the latter, taking alarm,
sprang to their saddles. The Union men fired a volley, and all of
the Confederates rode off save one. He was in position preparing
to mount, his face turned toward the advancing enemy, who were
about to fire again when their leader restrained them, and told
them to capture him. Riding up, they found a corpse with one
foot in the stirrup, left hand grasping the bridle and mane of the
horse, right hand clasping carbine near muzzle, stock resting on
ground. Every muscle was rigid in death, and it was difficult to
detach the fingers from the carbine, bridle, and mane. The body
was laid down, and the same positions and inflexibility were re-
tained by all the members. There were two wounds, one at the
right of the spine, emerging near the heart, the other in the right
temple.

Another case reported at second hand to Dr. Brinton, but
vouched for to him, was that of a cavalryman of the Fourth Wis-
consin, who in a skirmish in Louisiana was shot through the
heart. His comrades placed him alone in a buggy, which was
dragged for an hour by a rope attached to a saddle, the man dying
meanwhile, and his body sitting bolt upright and rigid.

The cases examined by Dr. Brinton were sufficient to fully es-
tablish all that he claims — namely, the existence of a rigor pecul-

THE PHENOMENA OF DEATH IN BATTLE. 201

iar to the battlefield which is as instantaneous as the death with
which it is synchronous. He states that he frequently passed
without examination corpses holding muskets in grasp, pointing
forward as if in a charge; bodies prone, face to earth; trunks
bent, limbs apparently rigid. From other sources come reports
of similar phenomena in more or less details. In a compilation
of surgical reports by J. G. Chenu (Rapport au Conseil de Saut^
des Armies, 1865), Surgeon Perir, from the field of Alma, Boudin
from Inkerman, and Armand from Magenta, named many general
and special appearances of the phenomena. At Magenta many
bodies held to their weapons, even those lying face downward.
The conclusion of M. Armand, appended to his report, was that
death came so suddenly that the hands had not time to let go.
These were head shots. The fighting at Magenta was again ter-
rific, and it was warm June weather. The struggle on the part of
the French side was for possession of the town, the key to the
position, and it was carried house by house. On the scene of one
hand-to-hand combat a corpse was found with the arms raised in
front, one bent, one extended, with fists clutched ; also a dead
hussar on a fallen horse, almost intact in saddle, but leaning on
the right side, holding his saber at a thrust. The Magenta cases
were seen by the surgeons when forty-eight hours old.

At Inkerman, fought in November, during a dull, foggy rain,
M. Boudin saw numberless cases where the bodies rested on the
knees, with guns in firm clasp, cartridges in the mouth, and in
some instances arms upraised, as though parrying blows. " Long
files of the dead seemed to need but the impulse of vital breath to
recommence the action of battle." An eye-witness's off-hand de-
scription of scenes on that field is found in W. H. Russell's corre-
spondence to the London Times. He said : " The battle of Inker-
man admits of no description. It was a series of dreadful deeds
of daring, of sanguinary hand-to-hand fights, of despairing rallies,
of desperate assaults, in glens and valleys, in brushwood glades
and remote dells. . . .

" The British and French, many of whom had been murdered
by the Russians as they lay wounded, wore terrible frowns on
their faces, with which the agonies of death had clad them.
Some in their last throes had torn up the earth in their hands,
and held the grass between their fingers up toward heaven."

At Alma, M. Perir saw a great number of cases. One in par-
ticular he reported where the body lay upon the side, legs bent,
hands lifted at joints, and head thrown back as if in prayer.
Alma was fought in September (in the Crimea). Russell termed
it one of the most bloody and determined struggles in the annals
of war. The allies charged through the waters of the Alma up
the steeps to the Russian batteries on the crest.

202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Instantaneous rigor following violent death has been assumed
to be ordinary rigor mortis, hastened in development by circum-
stances, or a rigidity of tetanic character. Dr. Carpenter, the
English physician, held to the latter theory, and believed that the
rigidity ceased after a few hours, to be succeeded by relaxation
and ordinary rigor mortis in turn. Dr. Brinton, reviewing all
other theories, claimed that the phenomena on the battlefield are
unique. " Ordinary rigor mortis," he wrote, " is developed after
muscular irritability has ceased, but before putrefaction sets in.
The appearance of battlefield rigor is probably synchronous with
violent death.

" In ordinary rigor mortis the march is downward ; the parts
first affected are the neck and jaw ; the lower jaw, if previously
relaxed, is drawn up ; flexor muscles are supposed to be affected
in a greater degree. Battlefield rigor affects probably all regions
alike at once.

" Ordinary rigor mortis is usually of twenty-four to thirty-six
hours' duration ; battlefield rigor remains longer than is supposed.
. . . The prolonged continuance shows that it is not tetanic nor
followed by rigor mortis proper." The doctor saw cases of it
twenty-four to forty-eight hours and once sixty hours after
death. Armand saw it at Magenta twenty-four hours old and
Perir at Alma forty-eight hours after death. Dr. Brinton's paper
closes with this brief summary of the distinctive features of bat-
tlefield rigor :

" The rigor is developed at the instant of death.

" The cadaveric attitudes are those of the last moment of life.

" The death most probably is instantaneous and unaccompanied
by convulsions or agony.

" The rigor is probably more lasting than is usually supposed.

" It is extremely doubtful whether this instantaneous rigor of
sudden death or rigor of the battlefield is succeeded by flexibility,
in its turn to be followed by ordinary rigor mortis."

This subject lies, of course, beyond the realm of experiment.
If rigor mortis is due, as is believed, to solidification of the juices
of the muscles by the acid conditions developed therein, marked
chemical changes, either rapid or prolonged, follow death under
ordinary circumstances. In what degree may the solidification be
hastened by extraordinary violence in death ? We learn that pro-
toplasm is subject to peculiar changes under peculiar conditions ;
that it contracts under electric shocks, and that certain forms of
it coagulate under temperatures varying from 100° to 122° Fahr.,
a species of "heat-stiffening" illustrated by the coagulation of
the white of an egg. The presence of certain salts will cause
muscle juice (myosin) to coagulate at a temperature possible to
be attained in the system of a hard-working man on a hot day.

THE PHENOMENA OF DEATH IN BATTLE. 203

and a slight degree of acidity in the muscle juice lowers the tem-
perature for coagulation ; so that hard-worked and heated mus-
cles are, upon chemical grounds, susceptible to the onset of rigor.
The most remarkable cases of battlefield rigor seem to develop
under extraordinary heat. Given heat and the release of blood
pressure, the sudden check of muscular energy consequent upon
the wound cuts off from the protoplasm all healthy expenditure
of waste, and its action may be brought to a halt so sudden and
so effectual as to preclude the slightest change of attitude beyond
what may be caused by external forces. Reduced to its plainest
terms the idea is as follows : Muscular action and excitement de-
velop heat and chemical action. The myosin, or muscle juice,
normally alkaline, is by hard work and excitement rendered acid.
Heat and acidity being present in the muscles, tetanic or early
rigor-mortis contractions might be expected in case of sudden
death.

Again, the outstretched hand of the soldier, the grasp of weap-
ons — even the fixing of the eyeballs in angry stare — are acts of
the will. If death cuts short the power to will a reaction in the
muscles involved by instantly destroying the nerve ceTiters con-
trolling the expanded member, why should the muscles contract
any more than they would expand, if death came at the moment
of contraction ?

The immediate effect of an electric current of lethal energy
comes nearest to what must be supposed as the manifestations
attending instantaneous death in the heat of individual action.
In an electric chair, at the moment of contact with the deadly
current, the entire muscular system of the victim is thrown into
a state of sudden and severe rigidity, lasting until the electrode
is removed. All bodily sensation, motion, and consciousness are
suspended at the same time ; that is to say, the cessation of con-
sciousness and the physical death — " total paralysis of all the vital
organs and the nervous centers by which they are directly or in-
directly vitalized, and by which the muscles of the extremities
are actuated so that when the current is broken there can be no
reflex action of the muscles, such as would indicate the presence
of residual life energy or the possibility of resuscitation" — are
synchronous. In the case of McElvaine, executed at Sing Sing,
February 8, 1892, the reflex action of the voluntary muscles was
tested approximately two or three minutes after the breaking of
the current, and was found to be " absolutely unresponsive to
ordinary mechanical stimuli." Dr. Van Gieson, in his report of
the experiment, says: "This tends to show how superlatively
complete and far-reaching the effects of the current are in abol-
ishing life, not only in the concrete form, but also in the integral
activities of the body, which, in other forms of sudden and vio-

204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lent death, is liable to persist for a time after life is extinct. From
observation at this execution, as well as at the subsequent exami-
nation of the body, the current appears at first not only to extin-
guish life in the ordinary sense of the word, so far as conscious-
ness, feeling, and volition are concerned, with overwhelming sud-
denness, but reaches beyond this, and destroys the energies of the
individual component parts of the body, so that they can not be
raised into activity by artificial mechanical stimulation, as is usu-
ally the case in sudden violent death."

The same thought has been applied to the phenomena of bat-
tlefield rigor. M. Armand wrote of the Magenta cases in 1859,
" Death came so sudden that hands holding weapons had not time
to let go." Dr. Brinton, in 18G5, wrote, "The muscles had, as it
were, been surprised by death, and limbs remained set and fixed
in the position held at the moment of receiving the fatal wound."

Lightning strokes have produced like phenomena. Men and
animals have been found dead in upright postures, a horse even
standing on all fours, with his eyes wide open and nostrils dilated
by the terror which the storm evoked. If rigidity can be instan-
taneous in any one case, why not in another where similar causes
work upon the same elements ?

There is still a link awaiting further physiological research
to connect the manifestations attending deaths in battle action
with those under the electric current. Huxley asserted that the
matter of life depends on carbonic acid, water, and ammonia
brought together under certain conditions, and that the with-
drawal of any one of them puts an end to vital phenomena ; also,
that every form of human action is resolvable into muscular con-
tractions, or transitory changes in the relative positions of the
parts of a muscle. In 18G8 he said: "Perhaps it would not yet
be safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are affected by electric
shocks ; and yet the number of cases in which the contraction of
protoplasm is shown to be affected by this agency increases every
day."

Therefore the sudden appearance of agents in the nature of
electricity and heat may change the combination of acid, water,
and ammonia that causes the constant transition of the molecules
of a muscle, and when that proportion changes and transition
ceases, everything is at a dead stop until other combinations set
in motion other changes that give rise to a new order of phe-
nomena. The first stage is vital life, the last putrefaction, and
the interim rigidity. The electric current causes unconsciousness
and muscular death at one stroke. In battle the wound may pro-
duce swift unconsciousness. May it not also let loose a stored
supply of heat to augment the already intense heat distributed
by the energy of passion and physical action and thus stiffen the

THE PHENOMENA OF DEATH IN BATTLE. 205

muscle jelly ? Or has the capacity for spasmodic reaction been
exhausted by the previous overexertion of the soldier — volition
being cut short by the wound ?

Some men of science not only admit the validity of the evi-
dence offered as to the appearancce of phenomenal rigor under war
wounds as well as electric shocks, but assume it as an established
physiological fact, without, however, accounting for it. Dr.
Mitchell, in his indirect suggestions before mentioned, leaves no
reason to doubt that he believes in it. Dr. Brinton and other
army surgeons familiar with the phenomenon have speculated as
to its causes, and almost all medical men who are not familiar
with it in actual experience are curious as to what proof or ex-
planations may be produced.

There is one other form of manifestations of the battlefield
almost as unique, though not so startling, as instantaneous rigor,
and being more frequently encountered has doubtless impressed
itself more widely upon the minds of soldiers and visitants to the
field. At first thought it seems but reasonable that the intensity
of battle passion and energy should leave its mark upon the
forms and features of combatants who die in the midst of the
fray. Per contra, it seems odd that corpses made so by violence
in the midst of violence should sometimes wear on their faces the
peaceful look of calmness usually associated with quiet death-
beds. I mentioned in the paper of last year, on wounds, that
many of the dead appear to have passed away in a state of mental
composure and freedom from pain. Often in contemj)lating these
scenes one is surprised at the contrasts between the happy smile
on the dead warrior's face and the blood, the spent missiles, the
weapons, and other ghastly symbols of the strife that has passed,
lying beside him. Here, again. Nature has wrought a good work.
Wrath is soon spent, the inciting din of battle quickly hushed ;
pain and melancholy thoughts, even surprise that life remains,
swiftly loosen the chords that once bound the now suffering
man to the warrior's terrible trade. Thought, fanciful it may
be but yet enchanting, takes him miles and leagues away, the
while his torn body lies not ten feet from the cannon that mangled
it, and the smoke of the fatal discharge still hovers about the
scene. Again he is only a man. He tries bravely to live, for-
getting to hate ; makes light of his condition, and may be helps
another victim supposed to be worse off than himself. Finally,
death steals on while some noble or pleasant thoughts play upon
the features. We sometimes found our dead comrades a long
distance away from the landmarks on the spots where they fell.
This brings up a practical suggestion. Those who fall asleep
peacefully die as we would have them if die they must. They
usually, however, show unmistakably that they survived their

2o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wound some little time, and tlie wound often seems trivial to liave
caused death. Since surgical aid to all is out of the question, why
should not every soldier be his own surgeon ? Suppose his pack
contained a tourniquet, bandages, and lint, to the use of which he
has been trained ; also, a draught of some strong cordial which
might sustain his own life or that of a comrade in extremities,
until the relief corps should appear. A simple knowledge of the
tourniquet, of bandages, and lint, and readiness to improvise sub-
stitutes, have saved countless lives. Lack of knowledge, some-
times, and sometimes an inexcusable lack of materials, have sac-
rificed thousands. A wounded soldier of our civil war stopped a
severe haemorrhage in the neck by clogging the artery with balls
made of sand and blood-clot. He had nothing better at hand.

THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT.

Br ERNEST HART.

IN the byways of science, as on the scenes of a theatre and in
the pages of fiction, an alias is often found to serve a very
convenient purpose. But it is always a little disappointing, to
those in search of a veritable novelty, to find in place of it only
a discredited piece of antiquity, though varnished, polished, and
faced with a new color; and it is not inspiriting, even to the
dilettante of the drama or of fiction, to be put off with old and
worn-out characters, masquerading under new names, with fan-
tastic costumes and modern effects, however ingenious and
startling.

The modern Athenians, who dignify themselves with the title
of psychical researchers, have for some time been inviting us to
the investigation of what they have led us to believe were altogeth-
er new departures into the domain of mental philosophy. A new
horizon was opened out before us ; methods of the communication
of thought were described which set distance at naught, which
dispensed with speech or gesture, touch, sight, or smell. Sensa-
tion, we were told, was transmissible without material expression ;
mental impressions could be conveyed by the unexpressed power
of the will, character could be transferred by subtle and invisible
channels into those whose morality required strengthening, or
whose self-control needed bracing. All this has been indicated
with some confidence, and with a careful and measured approxi-
mation to methods of rational inquiry, by some English observers
whose competence in literature and some departments of physical

THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. 207

researcli were calculated to invite confidence. But it must te
confessed that the results whicli they had obtained, and the very
rudimentary evidence which they had adduced in this country,
were far from sufficing to persuade any but a very select band
of idealists that there was anything substantial either in their
premises or their conclusions. For the last year or two, however,
public attention has been invited to a series of phenomena which
were seriously alleged to afford positive evidence of the existence
of a variety of endowments of the human body, and of marvelous
powers of mental action, which realized some of the promised
wonders of " the new psychology." France was now, as in the last
century, the chosen land of marvel. There appears to be some-
thing in the temperament of the Latin race which lends itself
easily to neurotic disorder, to hysterical excitement, and to the
production of startling displays of mental eccentricity. We have
never been celebrated in this country, even in the middle ages,
for our demoniacs, our dancing hysterics, or our miraculous cures.
We have nothing to rival the ancient histories of St. Medard and
Port Royal, or the modern pilgrimages of Lourdes. But if the
modern hypnotists, psychists, and faith-curers are allowed the
full play which has recently been given to them, in infecting the
public mind with the follies of the " new hypnotism," the " pro-
found hypnosis," the " new mesmerism," the " magnetization of
hypnotics," and the " externalization of sensation," which they
have been so solemnly propounding and so profusely describing in
the pages of our leading newspapers and serials, we may yet see
here an abundant harvest of mentally disordered and pathological
creatures, such as have now for some years been permanently
on show across the Channel ; we may expect also to find our more
solid literature poisoned with this evil infl.uence, as our literature
of romance and fiction already has been. From what I hear and
know of the attractions which these false phenomena, these dan-
gerous tricks, and this practice of mental subordination to another
will, are already exercising on some ladies of the upper class in
England and on some writers of influence, it appears high time
that a thorough exposure should be made of the imposture and
the self-deception which underlie the performances. Some of them
have been rehearsed before eminent British journalists on their
visits to Paris, and by them described in good faith, with no
small literary power and considerable although imperfect detail,
to the readers of the great English journals. The most vivid de-
scriptions of the modern development of the now superstitions
appeared in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette early in
last December, and in the Times at the end of December and the
beginning of the present year. I was induced thereby to devote a
fortnight at the end of the year to an investigation of the facts

2o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

described and the phenomena produced, and to an endeavor to
find out how they were produced, and, as is always important in
an inquiry of the sort, in what sort of people they took place.
As a result I was able briefly to affirm in the columns of the Times
that I found the whole series of performances to be based upon
fraud, and that I had succeeded in reproducing the phenomena
without employing any occult means or invoking any new powers
of mind or body. This statement was welcomed by persons whose
opinion I value, and by many of whom the articles in question
had been read, as Prof. Tyndall writes, with " disfavor and indeed
dismay." I am urged to lose no time in sweeping away this mass
of rubbish, and " the disgusting superstitions " which these letters
and publications have tended to promote. This I will attempt to do
by stating in some detail precisely what the performances at the
Charity are, and removing from them the halo of false science
which has rendered them attractive and credible, and has to some
extent obscured their demoralizing character. The business of
demonstrating the marvels of the new hypnotism has been going
on now for upward of twenty years, with very mischievous effects.
It has culminated in performances of the patients of Dr. Luys in
the wards of one of the greatest and most historically celebrated
of the Paris hospitals. The Hospital of La Charity is a hospital
with great traditions, dignified by great names, and still the seat
of sound and able clinical instruction by a staff who must, I am
sure, feel humiliated at finding the name of the great institution
to which they belong becoming thus notorious throughout Europe
for its connection with proceedings which they can but view with
extreme disfavor.

In the first place, two patients were presented (who must be
among the patients referred to), for they are and have been for
some time the main subjects for demonstration at La Charity.
One of these is a man named Mervel, an unhappy being of whom
Dr. Luys promised to give me the clinical history, and of whom,
briefly, it may be said that he has been all his life a wretched hys-
teric, subject to fits, to sleep-walking, and to catalepsy. He has
passed through all the phases of this form of extreme nerve dis-
order. If he had been let alone, as he would have been in this
country, or treated to a sound course of tonics, cold water (inter-
nally and externally), and field labor, he might have lived a more
healthy life. Ho is now a miserable object, trained to all the
tricks and the pathological aptitudes for simulation of a highly
trained hypnotic, and on him were demonstrated phenomena
which might indeed be " marvels " if they were not almost wholly
frauds. I will run rapidly over a series of this man's perform-
ances as they were shown to me in the wards by Dr. Luys in the
presence of observers, and I will presently add some of the other

THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. 209

performances of other patients and trained subjects of Dr. Luys
who have differing aptitudes and a various repertoire. The man
was brought in from the waiting-room and put in an arm-chair ; a
finger held up before his eyes sufficed to plunge him into induced
sleep. This was clearly not simulated, and in a highly trained
subject is exceedingly common. The eyelids were then lifted, and
a little performance was gone through, which is described in the
programme set out in Dr. Luys's Legons Cliniques as the prise
du regard. A finger is held before him ; he gazes at it, sits bolt
upright, and follows it as though fascinated around the room.
This is, of course, a very ordinary performance, and is only, so to
speak, the lever de rideau. He is taken back to his chair, and
then begins the second performance. He is shown a magnetic
bar, and here the true stage play begins, as it does in so many of
these mesmeric performances, with the utterly irrelevant introduc-
tion of the apparatus of magnetism. He sees now from one pole
of the magnet the " odic " effluvia, the blue flames, which are famil-
iar to the readers of Reichenbach. He is delighted with them ;
he caresses the bar like a child with a toy ; he follows it all over
the place, and when the opposite pole of the magnet is presented
to him, he is struck with horror at the red flames which issue
from it, and shows every sign of fear and disgust. There are in-
finite variations of this marvel. Thus, a photograph of the poles
of a magnet affects him in a similar way, no matter how old the
photograph. On the face of Dr. Luys he sees red flames proceeding
from the eyes and nostrils on one side of the face and blue flames
on the other, which is supposed to coincide with the duality of
the nerve-centers of the brain and the opposite polarity of the two
sides of the body — puerile deductions which bear upon their face
ignorant credulity, but which are supposed to derive evidential
strength from these heightenings of the visual perception of this
individual and the other performers of the same school. For
these subjects quickly learn how to pretend to see the same thing ;
and Colonel de Rochas d'Aiglun, the administrateur of the Poly-
technic School in Paris, whom Dr. Luys was good enough to in-
troduce to me, has subjects who have made for him also a con-
siderable series of drawings showing these flames playing about
magnets and parts of magnets, surrounding crystals, and irradiat-
ing the features of himself and others. One patient has done me
the honor of making my portrait with all its magnetic accompani-
ments. To the heightened visual perception of these ladies and
gentlemen it seems that from one side of my face issues a sheet of
lambent blue flame, and my eyes dart rays of blue fire ; the other
side is equally luminous with red flame, while down the middle
of my face is a bright streak of yellow. Mervel drew this inter-
esting picture, and the others confirmed it ; and as this was done

TOL. XLIII. — 15

2 10 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the wards of a hospital and by a patient in a state of " lucid
somnamhulism/' and of good faith, I suppose I ought to have as-
sumed that " there was no room for fraud or imposture." I ven-
tured, however, to think otherwise. I took with me on the third
occasion a magnet lent me by Dr. Johnson, of London, which had
been thoroughly demagnetized by being thrust into the fire, and a
series of steel pins which had been variously magnetized in in-
verse senses, and I found that the heightened senses of Mervel
were quite incapable of distinguishing between the inert magnet,
the variously magnetized needles, and the true magnet. I even
placed the needles and the magnet in the hands of Dr. Luys and
asked him to determine what Mervel saw. He saw always, in reply
to Dr. Luys's questions, the orthodox thing. I then gently sug-
gested to Dr. Luys that he should try some test experiments and
use an electro-magnet, in which he could at will put on and take
off the current and try for himself whether the patient did or did
not really perceive what he described. I ventured to repeat the
same suggestion when Mervel was describing the colored lights he
saw around the poles of a' f aradic machine. My suggestions, how-
ever, were not favorably received ; and Dr. Luys observed that he
must be allowed to make his experiments in his own way. At
these sittings Dr. Sajous, Dr. Lutaud, M. Cremi&re, of St. Peters-
burg, and others, were present. To end this part of the matter, I
should state that I took successively three other subjects of dem-
onstration whom Dr. Luys has presented to his classes, and tested
still more decisively their pretended powers of distinguishing
emanations from the north and south poles of the magnet and see-
ing the colored flames of Reichenbach. These subjects were a
person named Jeanne, an accomplished impostor, and the most
distinguished and highly trained of M. Luys's subjects, whose
portrait occurs repeatedly in the illustrations of his lectures, and
who describes herself as his lyy^emier sujet ; a person named
Clarice, whose marvelous powers are also much described in the
publications of Dr. Luys ; and a patient now in the wards named
Marguerite. I tested these subjects repeatedly in the presence
sometimes of the gentlemen above named, sometimes of Dr. Oli-
vier, of Dr. Meurice, and of others whom I need not at present
name. The results were that Mervel, whether sent to sleep by Dr.
Luys, or by myself, or by the wardsman, was never really asleep
to the extent of not being able to gather verbal and visual sugges-
tions as to his course of action, as to what he ought to do and
what he ought to see, and that his hysterical or hypnotic slumber
did not prevent him from simultaneously carrying on a course
of elaborate imposture. "When I rapidly displaced the magnetic
photograjjhs of Dr. Luys or my own, he blundered over them, but
immediately he understood that he was blundering he corrected

THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. 2U

his mistake and saw what he ought to have seen. He was quite
unable to distinguish an inert piece of iron from a true magnet,
and unless he were guided by words let fall by the bystanders, or
by the adoption of a systematic proceeding to which he was accus-
tomed, he was quite at sea. Clarice and Jeanne, in their lucid
somnambulistic state, never knew whether the current was on or
off ; unless they had a clew to the answers they ought to give,
they were ludicrously wrong. They saw enormous flames issuing
from the powerful magnet which I used. When I told the assist-
ant to put on the current, acting on my previous instructions, he
always did exactly the opposite of what I said, and they always
fell into the trap. The culminating absurdity of this phase of
the performance was the famous show for which this clinique has
become famous, known as the magnetic skullcap, with its thera-
peutic and physical influences. " In this magnetic circlet,^' said
Dr. Luys (speaking in the presence of his somnambulistic patient,
who was supposed not to hear), " are stored up the thoughts and
mental characteristics of an individual who suffered from melan-
cholia and hallucinations of persecution. I will now put it on
Mervel's head, and you will see what follows " ; whereupon Mervel
showed dramatic signs of the hallucination of persecution, suffer-
ing apparently great pain of mind and body. Possibly it was too
cleverly acted to be wholly simulation, but it afforded a good ex-
ample of the mixture of hysterical readiness to accept any sugges-
tion with unlimited powers of deception ; for this took place at
the same sitting, and in the same state in which he pretended to
see red flames and blue flames at random, accordingly as he sup-
posed the magnet, or the photographs which I showed him, or the
prints, or the pins, to be of the north pole or of the south pole. I
repeated the experiment, always with the like results. Dr. Olivier,
the editor of the Revue des Sciences Physiques, writes to me that
the exposure was complete.

There was no correspondence between the phenomena manifested by the hyp-
notized person and the production of the current of magnetization, etc. You
repeated the experiments of Dr. Luys and those of M. de Eochas, avoiding all
suggestion, whether involuntary or unconscious, capable of vitiating the results,
and you were careful to conceal from the subjects of experiment the moment at
which the opening or the closing of the current of the magnet took place.

At any rate, therefore, we may exclude from the positive re-
sults which I attained in the presence of many witnesses the pos-
sibility of the electrical or magnetic current having any real rela-
tion whatever to the phenomena shown, and, as far as the utmost
care could go, we may exclude also the influence of suggestion in
any occult sense. Where the subjects thought they knew what
was expected of them in their state of lucid somnambulism, they
did it or saw it, whether I operated, or Dr. Luys, or his ward

212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

assistant. AVhere they did not know they tried to guess, and with
ludicrous results. Habitually they produced results exactly oppo-
site to those which should have occurred, had the magnetic cur-
rent had any influence whatever as a causal agent. I will now go
further, and will affirm that there never was, any more than there
now is, the slightest ground for believing that the most powerful
magnets are capable of exercising any such influence as Dr. Luys
and others are in the habit of assuming that they can exert over
the animal organism. Opportunely enough, I find in the New
York Medical Journal of the 31st of December a report of the ex-
periments made by F. Peterson and A. E. Kennelly, with the most
powerful magnets in the Edison laboratory, of which Mr. Ken-
nelly is the chief electrician. Very powerful electro-magnets of
2,000 to 5,000 C. G. S. units to the square centimetre were em-
ployed. Not only was no visible effect produced in the polariza-
tion within the magnetic field of the haemoglobin of blood, or in
the circulation in the web of the frog's foot, but when a dog was
placed for five hours under the influence of a magnetic field with
an intensity of from 1,000 to 2,000 C. G. S. units to the square cen-
timetre the dog was in no way affected and was very lively when
liberated. A photograph is given of a boy sitting in a cylinder
two feet in diameter and seven inches deep, upon which a set of
field magnets converged : he was in no way affected. The next
experiments were made by introducing the head into the field of
a very powerful electro-magnet (2,000 C. G. S. units). The current
could be turned on or off the coils of the electro-magnet without
the knowledge of the subject. No effect on consciousness, sensa-
tion, circulation, respiration, or tendon reflex could be perceived.
The subject was quite unable to say when the current was turned
on or off. The last series of experiments were made with an elec-
tro-magnet in which the current was reversed two hundred and
eighty times a second. No effect whatever was perceived when
the head was introduced within the magnetic field of this potent
instrument. The authors conclude that the human organism is
in no wise appreciably affected by the most powerful magnets
known to modern science ; that neither direct nor reversed mag-
netism exerts any perceptible influence upon the iron contained in
the blood, upon the circulation, upon ciliary or protoplasmic move-
ments, upon sensory or motor nerves, or upon the brain. The
authors further observe that they find it difficult to understand
why magnetism appears to have no influence whatever upon the
human organism. The experiments of like kind recorded by Sir
William Thomson and in Pfliiger's Archiv gave equally negative
results.

The complete exposure which the results of my experiments
effected of the valuelessness of the so-called magnetic effects on

THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. 213

tlie patients of Dr. Luys tallies with the negative results of Peter-
son and Kennelly, but it is perhaps too much to hope that it will
put an end to the habitual exploitation of magnetic superstitions
in this connection.

I come now to another series of phenomena which various emi-
nent journalists have noted as illustrations of what the Times cor-
respondent described as a perfectly genuine exhibition, and one
which, as he said, in concluding his description of it, " proved that
suggestions and impressions can be conveyed from one person to
another by mere contact, and even across an intervening space."
As he professes to be an impartial and guarded observer, I will
quote his report, which, so far as some obvious occurrences are
concerned, describes accurately what appears to go on in the ex-
travagant folly which they have described so seriously, known as
" Tenvoutement." This is a title taken from the practices of the
middle ages, when the magicians of France and Italy exercised
(as the magicians of the far East do now) their powers of sorcery
upon a wax image, which, being duly endowed with mystical rela-
tionship to a human subject, was pinched, tortured, wasted, or de-
stroyed, with corresponding results to the unhappy individual in
whose effigy it was made. Here is the modern counterpart in the
new mesmerism of which the modern historian gives the explana-
tion which I have just quoted :

There remains, however, one set of recent experiments, which, from their
novel and startling character, deserve special attention. I refer to the transfer-
ence of sensibility from a hypnotic subject to inanimate objects. I have been for-
tunate enough to witness some of these experiments, and will describe what I
saw. They were not carried out by Dr. Luys, but by an amateur who attends his
clinique. This gentleman had a roughly constructed figure, about a foot high,
resembling the human form, and made of gutta percha or some such material, and
he experimented with it on a hysterical young woman, one of the hospital pa-
tients, and an extremely sensitive subject. She was placed in an arm-chair and
hypnotized, and he seated himself immediately opposite in close contact with her,
their legs touching, and her hands upon his knees. After some preliminary busi-
ness of stroking her arms and so forth, he produced the figure and held it up in
front of her, presumably to be charged with her magnetism, for these experiments
rest on the magnetic theory. Then he placed it out of her sight and pinched it.
Sometimes she appeared to feel it and sometimes she did not, but he was all the
time in actual contact with her. Then he held it where she could see it, and this
time she oiviously suffered acutely whenever he touched the figure and in the
place where he touched it, although she did not look at it or seem to observe it.
Especially when he touched the sole of the foot, it evidently ticMed her heyond
endurance. Then the figure was placed aside on a table out of the sight both of
the girl and of the operator, while another put one hand on the operator's back
and the other on the image. I was in such a position as to see them all, and
whenever the second gentleman touched the figure the girl felt it. Then she was
told that she was to feel it just the same after being woke up, and an attempt was
made to wake her, but she was by this time very profoundly affected, and the

214 ^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

statement was only partially snccessful. In this state — that is, still somnambu-
listic—she stood up and moved from her place, the operator did the same, and,
being separated from her by some feet, he turned his back to her and held the
figure in such a position that she could not possibly see it. Then he pinched at
the back of the neck, and she felt it at the same moment, but at the wrong place.
The place where she did feel it caused her some embarrassment, though harmless
enough, as she informed him of the locality in a whisper, which I overheard. /
can answer for it that she felt something at the moment when he touched the
image, but that she could not see it and was not in contact with him, because I
was standing almost between them. But she felt it far more acutely when he
pinched his own wrist under the same circumstances. That brought the experi-
ments to a conclusion. They occupied at least half an hour, and included a num-
ber of interesting details which I have been obliged to omit.

Thus liis exhibition, whicli was " perfectly genuine," proved
that suggestions and impressions can be " conveyed across space."
The fact is that it did not prove the one any more than the other ;
and if the writer had instituted a few control experiments such as
those which I forthwith carried out on the same subject, he would
have saved himself from having been the medium of introducing
thus impressively to the English reading public, through the
pages of a great newspaper, a solemn description of what was
easily proved to be a common imposture of a vulgar kind, by
which the good faith and unquestionable sincerity and honor of
the amateur of whom he speaks, and of Dr. Luys, had been sur-
prised. There is no secret about the name of the amateur, for he
has published much about the matter in great detail, with an
abundance of highly technical and scientific nomenclature, and
the performances had already been described, under his name, in
the Pall Mall Gazette in this country, and in La Justice and
L'Echo de Paris, and other journals in France. Colonel de Rochas
d'Aiglun, who was the operator in this case in the ward of La
Charity, gave a similar demonstration for my benefit at the in-
vitation of Dr. Luys in the ward of La Charite in the presence of
several witnesses. Subsequently he gave me and Dr. Sajous a like
demonstration with fuller developments at the Ecole Polytech-
nique, of which he is the administrateur ; and I gave him a
counter-demonstration in the rooms of Dr. Sajous before leaving
Paris. To appreciate all the details of these performances one
should read his book, entitled Les Etats profonds de THypnose.*

To the subject, Madame Vix, being plunged into "profound
hypnosis," as it was alleged, was handed a glass of water. To
this she transferred by contact her sensitiveness ; the atmosphere

* Les l5tats profonds de I'Hypnose. Par le Lieutenant-Colonel de Rochas d'Aiglun, Ad-
ministrateur de I'Ecole Polytechnique. Paris : Chamuel, 29 Rue de Tr6vise ; and G. Carr6,
58 Rue St. Andr6-des-Art8, 1892. See also Les Limites de I'luconnu, by Georges Vitoux.
Chamuel, 29 Rue de Trevise, Paris, 1892 ; and Le Figaro, January 10, 1893, p. 2.

i

THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. 215

surrounding lier was also similarly charged with lier sensibility ;
she herself becoming anaesthetic. When pinches were made in the
air at given distances, which were supposed to represent points of
contact and lines of cleavage of the atmospheric planes, such
pinches at these given points were always felt by her and gave
what is above described as " evident pain/' I was shown draw-
ings of these planes. When the water was removed to a distance
and the glass was stroked or imaginary pinches made in the air
just above the water, or the water itself was touched, she gave
similar manifestations. This water, we were told, was charged
with her vitality, and terrible consequences might ensue if the
water were maltreated, either then or subsequently. Fantastic
stories are related by Colonel de Rochas of the terrible effects fol-
lowing from the throwing away of this water and from people
stepping on it, or from watering the flowers with it. In one case,
where some one incautiously drank the water, the patient fell into
a swoon which lasted for a fortnight. The only correct proceed-
ing was to allow the subject herself to drink the water at the
close of the seance, and thus enable her to protect herself from
the sad effects which might follow any careless treatment of it.
She herself was supposed to be insensitive while under operation,
and her sensibilities were externalized and communicated to others
either by " contact " directly to the operator, or in another hypno-
tized patient who was j)laced in contact with her, or, as the re-
porter solemnly describes, "across space." Whenever her mag-
netizer was touched she felt it in the same place.

Now, Madame Yix furnishes seances for a fixed consideration.
On page 28 of his book on the profound stages of hypnosis. Colo-
nel de Rochas refers to her as being a subject " well known in
Paris," " very distinctly polarized,'' and " who passes with extreme
regularity " through all the phases described at length in his first
chapter, and, besides, " through some phases of an indeterminate
character up to the point of syncope." She presented indeed,
" when the left hand was placed on her head instead of the right,
general paralysis so closely resembling death in appearance," that
he did not dare to continue his experiments. She did the wax-
image business, the state of sympathy by contact, and the rest,
with such perfection before me under the manipulations of Colo-
nel de Rochas at the Charite and at the Polytechnique School,
that I asked her to favor me with some professional sittings,
which she readily consented to do. She had an extensive reper-
toire, and on three separate occasions she went through her per-
formances with great precision and completeness in the presence
of a variety of witnesses, some of whose names I have already
cited. I determined, however, to do everything 6'7i/a?<a'. On the
first occasion I solemnly went through all the series of passes and

2i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

strokings and head pressure with, the right hand, which Colonel
de Rochas considers so essential, and we had all the correct success-
ive stages of credulity (or credivite), of lethargy, catalepsy, again
lethargy, somnambulism, lethargy, and rapport, and I then tested
the statements of Colonel de Rochas. In the first place I found
that in all the phases of the stage of rapport the subject perceived
other objects and other persons quite as well as the individual,
my humble self, who was supposed to be "the magnetizer."
When any one pretended to be in contact with me, it had the
same effect upon her as if he were really in contact, and it was evi-
dent that she guessed at what we were doing. Visions were as
easily produced by pressure with the left hand as with the right,
and, as to the seeing of colored odic flames from the magnet, she
saw them " six yards long " ; but, in fact, when proper tests were
applied, she was found to be absolutely incapable of distinguish-
ing a true magnet from a false one. She never knew whether the
current was on or off my electro-magnet ; and her whole perform-
ance in this respect, although she was not made aware of it, was so
manifest and ludicrous an imi)osture that the bystanders had great
difficulty in retaining their gravity. I tested now the phenomena
to which the sham scientific terms of " externalization of sensation,"
"communication by contact," and "transference across space,"
are pretentiously applied. Behind a little pile of books on the
writing table I concealed a tumbler containing some water. In
duly solemn fashion I poured out from a carafe a little water into
a similar glass and placed it in her hands. I then quickly substi-
tuted, without her perceiving it, the hidden glass of water, which
she had neither seen nor touched. We had then a full-dress re-
hearsal of all the performances which I had previously witnessed.
She showed the same " obvious " marks of pleasure or of pain
when the water was caressed or pinched as were witnessed by the
Times correspondent or the Pall Mall Gazette reporter. When one
of the spectators was placed in imaginary contact with me, she
became equally sensible of his actions ; she writhed, she smiled,
she was tickled, she was hurt, she was pleased, and she was " ex-
hausted " in the orthodox manner. I now introduced the " wax
figure." Skeptic as I was, but willing to be convinced, I had pur-
chased two rather pretty little sailor dolls, twin brothers of the
navy, at a neighboring toy shop. One of these she held until
it was sufficiently " charged with her sensitiveness " by contact.
I then rapidly substituted the twin doll from my pocket, and put
away the sensitivized doll for future service. To make the per-
formance quite regular, I cut off a minute lock of her hair and
pretended to affix it to the doll. To this proceeding, which I had
seen Colonel de Rochas gravely go through, she rather objected
in her profound sleep, much to our quiet amusement. " C'est trop.

THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. zij

c'est trop/' she murmured, apparently thinking that I was taking
too much hair for the money. I need not say that I did not affix
it to the head of the doll, although I went through the motions of
doing so. I have now, and shall preserve, the two little doll "wit-
nesses " and the valuable tress of hair as mementos of this inter-
esting performance. It may take its place by the side of the fa-
mous tress cut from the locks of the spirit form of Katie King.
We then produced, with the aid of the untouched doll, just un-
rolled from the tissue paper of the toy shop, all the phenomena of
the envoidement of the sorcerers, of which so much has been heard
lately and which have figured so largely in the pages of the great
newspapers of England and France. She felt acutely when its
imaginary lock was touched and pulled, whether by myself or by
Dr. Sajous, by M. Cremi^re, or by any one else in the room. She
greatly resented its being pricked ; she felt all sorts of indescriba-
ble and generalized heats and pains when the doll was touched in
places of which she could not well make out the locality owing to
our backs being turned to her, and she was duly suffocated when
we pretended to sit down on the doll. I am ashamed to say that
the real doll was lying there all the time, cruelly stabbed by me
to the heart with a stout pin, of which she was unconscious. Its
maltreatment, which ought theoretically to have been fatal to her,
produced no visible effect. These performances she went through
three times. On the third occasion Colonel de Rochas was him-
self present, and assisted to put her into a complete state of
hypnosis, for by this time I had become a little indifferent to the
stages of preliminary mummery, and, as there were three subjects
on hand at the final sitting, I rather abbreviated the proceeding.
Colonel de Rochas was a little astonished when I produced my
toy-shop doll, clothed in woolen trousers and jacket, for demon-
strating the envoidement; but he explained that he was not so
surprised as he should have been at an earlier date, for he had
only that week observed that in a classic author, where these
magical proceedings were described, it was noted that woolen
stuff was a very good conductor ; and he quoted a passage from
a Latin author — of which I am sorry that I do not retain the ex-
act recollection — in evidence of the fact that the woolen dress
might prove an effective medium; otherwise, he observed, he
should have been doubtful of securing good results, as the doll
was of composition and not of wax. It did prove a very good con-
ductor. In the course of the experiment, however, he skeptically
tweaked the nose of the little composition doll face (of the doll
which had not been " sensitivized "), and we had all of us the sat-

Iisfaction of observing that the material made no difference to
Madame Vix, and that the result was as perfectly satisfactory as

218 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that somebody was pulling her nose, and resented it accordingly.
At the close of this final seance, at which I had invited the pres-
ence of Colonel de Rochas, I explained to him the extent of the
imposture, and showed him the false glass of water and the twin
doll, the sham magnet, and the method which we had pursued in
working the electro-magnet under a system of contradictory direc-
tions. I may venture to repeat that Colonel de Rochas acted in
this, as throughout, as a gentleman of the most perfect good faith.
He was duly and adequately impressed with this new order of
facts. It is of course impossible to say what may be the conclu-
sions at which he will ultimately arrive, but I understood him to
incline to the vague belief that " it was all suggestion." — Nine-
teenth Century,

[To be continued.)

ADAPTATIONS OF SEEDS AND FRUITS.

By J. W. FOLSOM.

IF we consider the great variety of seeds and fruits, we natu-
rally inquire its meaning ; and if we are sufiiciently interested
to observe carefully the part which seeds play in Nature, we soon
find that in innumerable ways they are adapted to their surround-
ings. On the seed, primarily, rests the all-important responsi-
bility of perpetuating the species, and success or failure in this
duty depends upon the manner in which the seed is adapted to
encounter the dangers that threaten it.

The manifold adaptations of this kind which Nature exhibits
have been brought about chiefly by natural selection, resulting
from the co-operation of two laws : the law of heredity and the
law of variation. Under the former, characteristics of a parent
are transmitted to its offspring. In obedience to the latter, no
offspring is exactly like its parent, but differs from it more or less.
The variation being inherited by the succeeding generation will,
if of favorable nature, tend to be perpetuated indefinitely. Con-
trarily, variation in an unfavorable direction will conduce to
extermination of the species from the very nature of the case.
Thus it follows that the accumulation of advantageous variations,
however slight, and the necessary destruction of species possess-
ing unfriendly characteristics, results in producing kinds well
fitted for existence.

Bearing the above in mind as a general explanation, let us con-
sider some of its effects as displayed in seeds and fruits.

We usually find seeds in a seed vessel of some sort, the whole
affair constituting the " fruit." Common to all immature fruits
is their necessity for protection, and this is met in various ways.

ADAPTATIONS OF SEEDS AND FRUITS. 219

Winds which would break them off are effectually resisted by
their strong yet flexible footstalks ; and possible injury by bruis-
ing is averted by tough, elastic walls, often cushioned by prickles
or other appendages.

Sudden changes of temperature, before they can penetrate to
the unripe seeds, are rendered harmless by the blanketing effect
of pulp or other material.

For protection from the animal world, immature fruits have
developed a number of interesting devices. Almost universally
" green " fruits so harmonize with surrounding color as readily to
escape detection. In fact, the hazelnut is enveloped in a leafy
coat which renders it very inconspicuous. The nutritious albu-
men of the seed is often fortified by such impenetrable shells as
those of the cocoanut and others. Perhaps there is a formidable
armament of prickles, as in the chestnut ; or of stinging hairs, as
is the case with some pods. Characteristic of immature fruits are
disagreeable taste and consistence. Compare an unripe peach,
sour and stringy, with the same fruit in its luscious maturity.

But all these contrivances fail to repel certain enemies of
growing fruits. The apple's inconspicuousness, toughness, and
sourness are of little avail against the young progeny of the genus
Homo.

In many remarkable instances plants by their movements are
able to protect their precious seeds from injury. In our common
fall dandelion the whole flower closes up while the seeds are
ripening, but reopens at their maturity. Furthermore, the up-
right flower stalk sinks to the ground when the flowers fade, but
erects itself again when the seeds are ready to be scattered by the
wind. In one of our winter house plants, the common cyclamen,
the flower stalk coils up after flowering, bringing the pod to the
ground to ripen ; and our sweet white water lily, after expanding
and withering above water, sinks to mature its seeds in safety.
Other more remarkable but less common cases might be cited
to show the extreme care with which plants preserve their seeds
from possible destruction.

At maturity the one object of the seed is to secure the advan-
tages of wide dispersion, and to effect this purpose Nature uses all
means at hand. The agencies against which she so lately con-
trived are now most sedulously sought, and almost endless are the
modifications of structure which enable seeds to spread far and
wide.

" Dehiscence," the splitting open of a ripe pod, is manifestly a
provision for seed dispersion. In its simplest form dehiscence
merely exposes seeds to various conveying agencies : to the wind,
in the milkweed ; to birds, in the case of some brightly colored
beans. Other plants, however, do more than this. Our wild

220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

columbine is particularly well adapted for having its seeds scat-
tered by the wind. They are held in open seed vessels surmount-
ing a slender stalk which, although nodding at flowering time,
has become upright. A slight breeze easily shakes this stalk,
causing the seeds to be thrown for quite a distance. The poppy
throws its seeds in a similar way, and the little eaves which stand
over the holes in the pod are even said to close in wet weather,
not allowing the seeds to escape.

In many wonderful instances the ripe pod projects its seeds
forcibly into the air. In some of our wild violets the pod, after
dehiscence, consists of three spreading valves, each shaped like a
boat, bearing within several seeds which are pear-shaped, hard,
and smooth. In drying, the valve walls contract, approach each
other, and squeeze out the seeds, which are thus thrown several
feet. Our wild witch-hazel throws its seeds often to the distance
of thirty feet. Many of us recollect the sudden bursting and coil-
ing up of the pods of the " touch-me-not," whose yellowish, spurred
flowers are so common in moist places. The object of this action
is to expel the seeds. Curious is the case of the squirting cucum-
ber of southern Euroj^e. The ripe, cucumber-like fruit is greatly
distended by its contents. At a slight touch, as from a browsing
animal, it breaks from the stalk, and through the hole thus formed
the pressure of the elastic walls forces the seeds in a viscid liquid
for twenty or thirty feet.

Fruits that do not split open are invariably scattered by ex-
ternal means, inanimate and animate. Of inanimate agencies
the wind is far oftenest employed, and seeds have evidently found
it extremely efficient, judging from their many adaptations for
wind dispersion. The seeds of our elms, maples, pines, etc., are
surrounded, as we know, by thin expansions called " wings,"
whose purpose plainly is to present a large surface for the wind
to act upon. Wings are characteristic alone of trees or tall
shrubs, and never occur on low herbs, where they would clearly
be out of place. Instead of a wing, a tuft of hairs frequently
serves the same purpose. A common example is furnished by
the milkweed, whose seed is surrounded by a spreading " pappus "
of long, silky hairs. The dandelions and thistles have adopted
this means of distribution, and this explains their abundance
everywhere. In the smoke-bush of our gardens only a few
flower stalks bear fruit, the rest become slender and feathery,
forming a light network which is borne along in the wind, carry-
ing the few small fruits which have formed.

Flowing water transports many large nuts, some depending
upon it almost exclusively. Drifting along in our fresh-water
streams one may often see the " key fruits " of the red maple, and
the soaking they thus receive must further germination. The

ADAPTATIONS OF SEEDS AND FRUITS. 221

prevalence on our river banks of oaks, hickories, and maples is
also very noticeable. Again, ocean currents are of great impor-
tance in distributing plants. The cocoanut, buoyed by its loose
husk and protected by an impenetrable shell, floats in the sea
until it is brought often to some coral island where it may grow.
Many small seeds are also conveyed by ocean currents, and it is
very probable that they retain their vitality, for Mr. Darwin has
recorded some interesting experiments showing that a good pro-
portion of seeds can withstand injury from salt water for a con-
siderable length of time. The action of freezing water, as mani-
fested in frost, has the well-known effect of freeing nuts from
their protecting envelopes; and frozen water, in the shape of
glaciers and icebergs, is of a little importance in transporting
seeds. It is* possible that during the Glacial period seeds were
conveyed from place to place incased in ice.

Of all devices for dispersion the most remarkable are those by
which the aid of animals is secured, and this aid is so valuable
that plants spare no expense to obtain it. Usually animals are
well paid for their services, but many plants, however, do not
hesitate to deceive their benefactors by all sorts of trickery.
This latter class, though, has not been nearly as successful as the
others in the struggle for existence.

It is now well known that what are popularly called " fruits "
exist for the mutual benefit of plants and the lower animals — not
for man. And it is generally believed that these fruits have
developed their attractive qualities through natural selection.
The results reached by man in selecting and propagating the best
varieties of fruits are the strongest grounds for thinking that
these fruits were once evolved from very crude conditions through
similar selection by the lower animals, particularly birds. Such
fruits, for instance, as by natural variation became at all agree-
able to birds would be sought out by them, to the exclusion of
less attractive fruits. In consequence, the favored fruits would
stand better chances of setting seeds than would their less favored
companions. Variations being transmitted from parent to off-
spring, it is reasonable to suppose that favorable variations would
become still more favorable by further selection, until, by the
accumulation of even slight variations through geologic ages,
there would result fruits highly attractive to certain animals by
their color, perfume, and taste. In the mean time, fruits possess-
ing unfavorable characteristics have for this very reason been
exterminated, or else have attained a less degree of success than
the others.

Insects are the lowest animals known to assist in seed dissem-
ination. Mr. Darwin tells us of locust excrement containing
seeds which grew when planted. Considering that locusts often

222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

occur in vast swarms, they can hardly fail to be highly effective
agents in seed dissemination, thus repaying to some extent for
the immense damage they often do.

Fishes are known to swallow seeds of many kinds, and must
transport them from place to place; but the value of fishes as
seed conveyers is hard to estimate.

We have just said that our edible fruits are really contriv-
ances for securing seed dissemination, especially through the
agency of birds. Take, for example, some of our common fruits
— the currant, grape, plum, peach, apple, etc. All these are con-
structed with this end in view. When ripe, they are colored
brightly to attract animals ; some possess agreeable odors, and
most have a delicious taste and consistence. In short, they are
highly adapted to become the food of animals. While swallow-
ing such food animals can hardly help swallowing seeds as well,
and such seeds are finally emitted under conditions admirably
conducive to germination. Why our most delicious fruits are
often offset by their disagreeable seeds may have occurred to
many of us. The fact is, by this means seeds are protected from
possible injury in the alimentary canals of animals. Take, for
example, the small, hard seeds of the grape or fig, and the similar
so-called seeds of the strawberry, blackberry, and others. Far
from being destroyed by the digestive juices, the seeds are prob-
ably facilitated in their germination by the warmth and moisture
received.

The rapid ripening of fruits doubtless prevents their prema-
ture destruction. The accompanying change in color is remark-
able. Whereas young fruits harmonize completely with sur-
rounding color, mature fruits are extremely conspicuous. Recall
the barberry, rose, sumach, mountain ash, and many more. In
some honeysuckles each cluster of scarlet berries stands in violent
contrast against a green leaf. In the blackberry lily of our gar-
dens the sides of the pod roll back and display their white linings,
conspicuously relieving the black, berry-like seeds. The burning-
bush is a brilliant example with its flaming scarlet. In the West
Indies is a plant whose pods are red witliin, containing seeds that
are blue. Other instances might be named, but they are indefi-
nitely numerous and easily observed by any one.

Many of our fruits are covered with a waxy " bloom " as it is
called. This is plainly a protecti(m, for it is commonly known that
fruits will long resist decay provided this coating is uninjured.
Its probable eft'ect is to resist decomposition by moisture and fungi.

The edible portion, however, is of most interest to us, not only
scientifically, but also in a practical way. How highly it is es-
teemed by some animals may be judged from the expense we
often incur in buying fruits out of season.

ADAPTATIONS OF SEEDS AND FRUITS. 223

The use of poisonous fruits is an interesting subject for con-
sideration. How is a plant benefited by producing them ?

Mr. Grant Allen suggests with regard to a near relative of our
Jack-in-the-pulpit that its brilliant scarlet berries are readily de-
tected and eaten by birds ; that such birds are consequently poi-
soned, and by decaying provide abundant nourishment for the
germinating seeds. He adds that birds can not profit by experi-
ence and avoid the berries, as no bird ever lives to tell the tale.

At first this explanation seems very reasonable, and perhaps
it is ; but we have reason for doubting it, for we find that many
fruits poisonous to mammals are eaten by birds without the
slightest injury. The beautiful apple-like manchineel, which is
most virulently poisonous, is eaten by tropical birds with the
greatest impunity.

On the whole it seems very likely that some fruits are fatal to
other animals but not to birds, and under all explanations poisons
are doubtless a protection, at least, to the fruits which possess
them.

Many fruits have been so highly cultivated by man that they
can no longer set their seeds as originally. Our wild red cherry
is a convenient morsel for even small birds ; but its highly cul-
tured relatives of the garden must submit their flesh to birds who
can not eat stones as well. The case of the strawberry is differ-
ent, however, for birds can scarcely take a morsel that does not
contain numbers of the small, hard "straws," which are really
the most essential parts of the plant, for each one incloses a
seed.

In many cases Xature economically develops as little sweet
pulp as will serve her purpose. In the wild red cherry, for in-
stance, the stone occupies almost the entire fruit, there being only
a thin layer of food substance. Often there is none whatever,
and instead the fruit attains its ends by simulated attractiveness.
The rosary bean temptingly displays its brilliant red seeds,
which are in reality of stony hardness. Yet it does not wholly
rely upon this artifice, for it is very probable that part of the
seeds are scattered by the twisting dehiscence of the tough pod.

In some instances the deception is really wonderful. Some
pods and seeds mimic insects so closely as probably to entice in-
sectivorous birds to carry them, at least until the birds find out
their mistake. It may be also that this appearance i)rotects them
from graminivorous birds. There are pods which curiously re-
semble worms and spiders and caterpillars. Our common castor-
oil bean bears a superficial likeness to a beetle. Yet there are
some most remarkable cases of mimicry where beetles are coun-
terfeited in the minutest detail.

Fruits are also disseminated by mammals as well as birds.

2 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Berries are the favorite food of many of our native mammals, the
woodchuck and others. Wild apples are frequently carried off
by squirrels, and it is well known that squirrels store up large
quantities of nuts which oftentimes are never eaten. Fruits too
large to be swallowed by most birds are easily devoured by the
larger mammals, the apple, for instance, whose seeds are protected
by tight husks well adapted to slip through the alimentary canal
of an animal without receiving the least injury.

The gourd fruits, so much liked by man here, are equally at-
tractive to his quadrumanal brothers in the tropics.

For utilizing the services particularly of mammals many
fruits have developed hooks or horns to catch in the fleece of
passing creatures, who thus transport the seeds from place to
place. An autumn tramp through our pastures will soon con-
vince one of the efficiency of this mode of dissemination.

A very familiar example of this kind we find in the common
burdock ; but the hooks of the burdock are insignificant affairs
compared with some which exist. In the Southern States grows a
ivviii, Markjnia pr6bosciclea,'h.Siymg two recurving horns several
inches long. The appearance of the fruit would justify its having
an even more formidable name. Another fruit, Harjmgophyton
by name, is a bristling mass of powerful hooks. It is said that
lions trying to free themselves from its clutches get it into the
mouth and die in torture. Instead of hooks, seeds sometimes
effect the same purpose by being sticky.

It is a suggestive fact that hooked fruits occur on low plants,
never on trees ; also that in geologic time hooks appeared simul-
taneously with land mammals.

Lastly, we must recollect that man himself disseminates seeds
in a thousand ways. War often introduces new plants into a
region. Commerce is of vast importance in this respect. In the
vicinity of our woolen mills a strange flora, from seeds intro-
duced with the raw wool, is struggling with native plants. Agri-
culture is certainly of unbounded effect in the way we are consid-
ering. In short, human will has almost limitless control over the
circumstances of plant life.

After dispersion most seeds simply rest on the ground to await
germination, perhaps protected by color resemblance, as in nuts,
or by mimicry, sometimes mimicking a dry twig to perfection.
Some seeds, though, do more than this. The parasitic seeds of
the mistletoe, dropped by birds on the boughs of trees, would soon
fall to the ground and die were they were not very sticky. The
seed of Mysodendron has three long, flexible appendages which
twine round any suitable branch to which it is blown.

There are a few seeds which literally corkscrew themselves into
the ground. One of our natives — Erodium, or cranesbill — has

ADAPTATIONS OF SEEDS AND FRUITS. 225

seeds whicli are small, pointed, and covered with hairs. The poste-
rior end is prolonged into a hairy, corkscrew-like awn, which twists
or untwists, according to the amount of moisture. This awn ends
in a feather-like affair with backward-pointed hairs. On moist
ground the seed-hairs stand out so as to place the seed-point down-
ward, and the awn untwists ; but the barbed feather preventing
upward movement, because it catches in the herbage, the seed is
forced into the soil. However, if the awn dries and contracts, the
feather is easily drawn down while the seed is not drawn up. By
successive moistenings and dryings the seed is ultimately driven
completely into the earth.

As to vitality, seeds present widest differences. Very short-
lived seeds are those of the coffee and magnolia. On the other
hand, under abnormal conditions, some seeds have retained vital-
ity for many centuries, apparently. Raspberry seeds, found in a
Celtic tumulus along with coins of the Emperor Hadrian, germi-
nated, according to good authority, after a possible interval of
several centuries. Other seeds from old Roman tombs grew after
a lapse of many hundred years, but these are exceptional in-
stances. Accurate experiments show that a few kinds live for
fifteen years, or thereabouts, while the majority are much shorter
lived. Stories of wheat raised from seed found in mummy wrap-
pings are founded upon no trustworthy evidence whatever.

When a forest has been removed by fire, or otherwise, it com-
monly happens that a fresh growth of entirely new plants im-
mediately springs up. This may be partly due to the unusual
opportunity for growth thus given to foreign seeds ; but the usu-
ally accepted explanation is that the new growth is from seeds
which have long lain dormant.

Finally, as regards germination, seeds accommodate themselves
to surrounding conditions with considerable readiness. Some
seeds are so tenacious of life as to germinate, not only when old,
but also when a large share of their food substance has been
destroyed, provided, of course, that the germ itself is uninjured.
No seed, however, will germinate without the proper amount of
moisture, free oxygen, and warmth, although other disadvantages
are often withstood successfully.

"We have now described some of the more evident adaptations
to surroundings displayed in seeds and fruits, but by no means
all ; for here, as everywhere else. Nature presents a variety which
is almost infinite. Although endless differences in structure are
still unexplained, we must believe that they are adaptations to
circumstances present or past, and our knowledge leads us con-
fidently to expect that future discovery will reveal in increased
vastness the complexity of the relations by which everything in
Nature is adapted, more or less perfectly, to everything else.
VOL. xun. — Ifi

226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

WHY GROW OLD?

By Dr. N. E. YOKKE-DAVIES.

IT may seem a curious assertion to make, but it is nevertheless
an absolutely true one, namely, that a man's life is not meas-
ured by the years that he has lived, but by the way in which he
has spent them. Many a person may be as young and active at
seventy as another at twenty-five, and the length of his life, his
health, and his ability to enjoy green old age, depend in a great
measure on what the surroundings have been in the earlier years
of existence. It is perfectly true that every one may not be born
with a strong and healthy constitution. There are certain consti-
tutional defects that are hereditary in certain families, and these
under certain circumstances may influence length of life. For
instance, we may inherit the scrofulous taint and fall victims, if
not careful, in early life to consumption. We may inherit the
gouty taint, and be subject to all the ills that this disease entails
in middle age in those who do not learn how to diet themselves.
We may be born of families in whom the tendency to obesity is
more than usually developed, and this in advancing life may be a
serious drawback to comfort, and will undoubtedly tend to shorten
existence. But all these weaknesses and idiosyncrasies of in-
herited constitution may be wonderfully improved, and even,
eventually, entirely remedied, if in early life proper care in re-
gard to exercise, food, fresh air, and those surroundings which
tend to strengthen the system and improve constitutional stam-
ina, are made a part of the daily routine.

A boy or a girl should be trained to indulge in athletic exer-
cises of some kind, so that the habit of taking exercise may be-
come established, and this, once acquired, is seldom neglected even
as years advance. The boy who is fond of football, cricket, ten-
nis, and other athletic games will, from the simple love of emula-
tion, always keep up his muscular and nervous strength, and this
will stand him in good stead in middle age, and even in a greater
degree in old age.

In a former article in this magazine I gave some statistics
with regard to the after career of university men, and those
statistics proved that their lives were longer than those of others
who in college life were of a more sedentary habit. That is, they
lived and are living to beyond the average duration of life at any
given age. Some who have come to me of late, to remedy by
dietetic means — the only means I adopt — the tendency to obesity
or gout, have been fine specimens of physique.

We all know that a seed planted, whether it be a grain of
wheat or an acorn, depends for its proper development upon care-

WHY GROW OLD? 227

ful manuring and proper attention in its early existence, as to
whether it becomes a strong plant or dies in its infancy. If it is
planted in congenial soil, and is properly watered and cared for,
it will live and grow luxuriantly ; but if in improper soil, and left
to take care of itself, it will possibly soon die. It is the same
with a human being, and however weakly it may be as an infant,
if it is properly nursed and taken care of, the foundation is often
laid of a mature and sound constitution.

The law of the survival of the fittest may, in some instances,
be a cruel one ; but it is a beneficent one, for it does not seem
right that those entering the world should be handicapped with
the weaknesses of their ancestors, and those who have the well-
being of the race at heart hold the opinion that constitutions that
inherit any strongly marked hereditary weakness should not be
allowed to contract obligations that may and will entail suffering
upon a future generation.

We do not attempt to rear plants and flowers from imperfect
specimens, nor does the agriculturist breed his stock from any
but the best and healthiest in any class that he may wish to
propagate, and surely the same amount of care and selection
should be used with regard to our own species. In the higher
ranks of life we see better specimens of the English race than in
the lower ones, for more care is exercised in this respect. Some-
thing more, of course, must be allowed for this greater care and
attention bestowed up to adolescence. Whereas it is estimated
that out of every million people born, only ninety thousand reach
the age of eighty, eleven thousand that of ninety, and two thou-
sand the age of ninety-five — really, treble that number should
reach these respective ages ; in fact, if all the surroundings of life
in every way were as they should be, there is no reason why six
times the number should not reach these ages.

Much of the comfort of middle and old age depends upon early
training and early feeding, and I refer here more particularly to
school life. Neither mind nor body should be forced. While the
intellectual faculties are being trained, the bodily requirements
should be attended to. The constitution is being built up during
the years that a boy is being educated for his pursuits in after
life. I can remember my own life at a well-known school in a
fashionable town five-and-thirty years ago, and I often wonder I
survived it when I recall many circumstances. No proper care
was taken of us; hunger, thirst, badly cooked meat and vege-
tables, sanitary defects, were the rule. Many a time, hungry as a
schoolboy should be, have I had put before me for dinner meat
that was scarcely warmed outside, and this or nothing had to be
my meal. Had it not been for an old man who used to come to
the playground selling buns and cakes, I do not know how at

2 28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

times we should have endured the pangs of hunger, or subsisted
on the scanty fare allowed, even had it been properly cooked,
■which it seldom was. Fortunately, nowadays, I believe, the cui-
sine in public schools is much improved, and more care is taken
that growing boys should have a sufficiency of those foods that
lay the foundations of a sound constitution in after life. A parent
would do well, before sending his progeny to school, to see that
the ventilation of the rooms, the sanitary arrangements of the
school, and the diet and the capabilities for gymnastics and out-
door exercise are adequate. These things are of as much, if not
of more, importance than the knowledge of Greek and dead lan-
guages, etc. There is every reason why, while the intellectual
faculties are being trained, proper care should be taken of the
material part ; in fact, a boy's mind can not be stored with in-
formation which may be useful to him in after life and the health
maintained at a standard to resist disease, if, at the same time, the
brain is not fed by proper food, and the constitutional stamina
kept up by exercise and fresh air.

There are some diseases due to carelessness in early life that
leave traces that may handicap their possessor throughout exist-
ence, and possibly the worst of all is rheumatic fever. In this
case, mischief may be done to the heart that can never be reme-
died, and therefore it is necessary in the days of adolescence,
when the individual is careless of consequences, that a boy or a
girl should be properly clad, and more especially that the cover-
ing next the skin should be flannel. The tendency that rapid
changes of temperature have to induce this disease where an indi-
vidual inherits the gouty and rheumatic diathesis, should make
its prevention a matter of great importance, and much may be
done by forethought and care to obviate the risk. Another result
of school life that may bear bitter fruit in after life, that never
seems to have attracted the attention it should do, is that the
weak and the strong are allotted the same amount of intellectual
work. This should not be. " The wind should be tempered to
the shorn lamb," and the amount of intellectual work of each boy
should bear some jjroportion to his physical and mental power.

Of course, it would be useless to expect the young to apply to
themselves rules that bear fruit when they get to middle and old
age. They are too young to have forethought and to understand
that, like a bottle of new port, they ought to carefully mature,
so as to improve as time goes on. It is a melancholy circum-
stance, as I have seen even recently, a lad, unfortunately left with
boundless wealth and a great name, beginning life at seventeen
years of age, and becoming a prematurely old man at twenty-four,
and there are few medical men of large experience who can not
recall numerous instances of men who have overdrawn their con-

WHY GROW OLD? 229-

stitutional bank before the age of twenty to snch an extent that
the account can never be placed on the right side on this side the
grave.

If I were asked what factors would conduce to green old age,
and the ability to enjoy life to past the eighties, I should say it
was a matter of plenty of good food, fresh air, and exercise in
early life. But, alas ! how few people take the trouble to consider
for one moment what food would be most suitable for their par-
ticular requirements, or the requirements of their children, at a
time when this is all-important ! We can not put old heads on
young shoulders, but we can suggest to those who have young
lives in their charge that they have a serious trust, and what their
duty is in this respect.

We know that meat and bread furnish all that is necessary to
sustain life, but, of course, we do not live on meat and bread
alone. The ordinary living is made up of thousands of different
articles in daily use. Still, there are certain rules that particu-
larly apply in this way, that certain constitutions require a larger
proportion of one particular class of food than other constitutions,
and the man who does a large amount of physical labor requires
a different mode of dieting from one who is sedentary. It would
be impossible to enter into a subject of this kind at length in a
short article. Diet, however, undoubtedly has much to do with
long life, and this more especially applies in its application to the
particular calling of each individual. The engine of an express
train is coaled differently from that of a slow one. A race-horse
is fed and exercised differently from a cart-horse, etc.

A man brought up in an active occupation that entails a cer-
tain amount of muscular exercise can take an amount of food
that a man of sedentary habits would not stand, and therefore a
certain difference should be made in the composition of the diet
taken by the two. Food is simply fuel, and in a general way an-
swers the same purpose.

As Dr. B. W. Richardson, in his interesting work. Diseases of
Modern Life, observes : " The English middle class, who may be
exhibited as types of comfortable people, moderately provided for,
take on an average twelve ounces of mixed solid food for break-
fast, twelve ounces for midday meal, or luncheon, and from twenty
to thirty ounces for their late modern dinner or ancient supper.
A total of from forty-five to fifty ounces of solid sustenance is in
fact taken, to which is added from fifty to sixty ounces of fluid in
the way of tea, coffee, water, beer, wine. This excess is at least
double the quantity required for the sustainment of their mental
and bodily labor."

He then gives a good illustration of this, and says : " I was
once consulted in respect to the symptoms with which the idle in-

2 3© THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mates of a large and wealthy establishment suffered. I was told
that an affection very much like dysentery had become developed,
and was unusually obstinate of cure. The water supply of the
establishment, the drainage, the ventilation, had all in turn been
blamed, and altered to no effect. I found the unfortunate suffer-
ers were sitting down regularly to four heavy meals a day, with
animal food at each meal ; that they took between meals no exer-
cise adequate for utilizing a little of the potential energy that was
stowed up in their tightly packed organisms.

" This one fact seemed to me sufficient to account for the phe-
nomenon, and the instant relief that followed the cruel prescrip-
tion of ' double the work and halve the food ' was proof direct
that the process of cure was immediate."

This quotation I reproduce as illustrating what I have pointed
out, that the amount of food should be adapted to the require-
ments of the system, and to the amount of physical or intellectual
work done, if it is not to be harmful in some way. If these indi-
viduals had been huntsmen or whippers-in to a pack of hounds,
the food would probably have been just sufficient for the require-
ments of the system. If we want to see good illustrations of green
old age, we must look for it in men who are noted for their physi-
cal and intellectual vigor ; and a man who takes active exercise,
whether in cutting down trees or in brisk walking and other
physical pursuits, and in addition to this does plenty of brain
work, lives carefully, and drinks but very moderately, may, long
after he is an octogenarian, control the destinies of a mighty na-
tion, and give indications of mental and bodily vigor that would
shame many half his age. The wiry frame of such a man will be
vigorous when the obese and sedentary individual of the same
age has drifted into senility and second childhood.

There is no more fatal barrier to long life than obtains in the
case of a man who has until middle age been used to active occu-
pation, and been employed in business pursuits that have en-
grossed his time and energies, and then suddenly retires to a life
of ease, luxury, and enjoyment. The revulsion that such a change
entails seems to throw the whole human machine out of gear.
The surroundings in the way of diet and exercise are seldom con-
sidered and adapted to the altered circumstances, and the result
is that the different organs that looked to the stimulation of active
occupation to keep them in working order, become clogged with
waste ; and those diseases that depend upon such a state of affairs,
such as congested liver, indigestion, obesity, gout, bronchial trou-
bles, etc., soon manifest themselves. Does not this equally apply
to any piece of mechanism ? Even take a clock, for instance ; if
dust, rust, and dirt are allowed to accumulate in its working parts,
how soon (be its steel ever so highly tempered) does the friction

WHY GROW OLD? 231

of adventitious matter throw its harmony of movement out of
order !

Work of some kind or another seems essential to the well-being
of the human organism. Even a machine keeps in better order
when it is worked, looked after, and oiled, than when it is neg-
lected and allowed to rust. Up to middle age persons may in-
dulge in any amount of hard physical exercise — that is, if they
are wiry and of proper physical proportion ; but if a tendency to
corpulency supervenes, certain changes in the blood-vessels and
other organs, on whose healthy action robust health depends, take
place. These become weakened and altered in texture, so that
any attempt at undue exercise is attended with a certain amount
of risk. Hence, any one who wishes to live to old age, and enjoy
it, should look with anxiety at the first indication of corpulency.
How many patients have consulted me to whom I have pointed
out personally, or by correspondence, that they have carried for
years an unnecessary burden in the way of surplus weight ; and
after, by proper dietic treatment, they have been relieved of it,
with improvement in health and condition, they have regretted
that for so many years they should have been weighted with a
useless and uncomfortable load.

Of course, the tendency to corpulency is a very common one,
and I know of no condition that tends to shorten life and to make
it more of a misery, especially as years advance. The extra work
of carrying unnecessary fat entailed on the heart alone is quite
sufficient to shorten life ; but, worse than this even, it lays the
system more open to congestive diseases, and less able to bear
treatment for their cure. It is the greatest bar to enjoyable old
age. I suppose my experience of this condition is exceptional, as
I devote the whole of my professional time to remedying it and a
few other diseases of malnutrition, by a system of scientific diet-
ing now well known. As this condition is the result of taking
certain foods in undue proportions, its remedy lies in properly
apportioning these ; and as soon as those who unduly increase in
weight are taught what the injurious ingredients of their daily
diet are, and advised to curtail them for a time, the result is that
they lose unnecessary tissue rapidly and safely, with improvement
in every way.

For a month or two the daily intake of food and its constitu-
ents must be carefully adjusted. No purgative or other medicine
is necessary for the purpose ; indeed, violent purgative medicines
are absolutely injurious, as they simply wash the food through,
without giving it time to nourish the system, and debility, palpi-
tation of the heart, and loss of condition result. Of course, a
little mild aperient, in the shape of some natural mineral water,
such as the Franz Josef, is always harmless, and most people,

232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from errors in diet, require something of this kind occasionally.
Electrical appliances and electric baths are quite useless as fat-
reducing agents. Quack remedies of all descriptions should be
avoided like poison ; if they reduce weight they do it at the ex-
pense of health. Of this I have seen repeated examples, and this
induces me more particularly to make these observations.

The meager diet and quantity of water drunk at some of the
spas abroad, of course, clears the system of waste ; but this is only
a temporary benefit, as the individual is not taught what little
alteration he should permanently make in his diet. He comes
home to his luxurious surroundings, and rapidly recharges the
system with fat, gout poison, and other injurious products that
form the elements of certain food which he takes in too great
excess.

Exercise, proper selection in diet, and a little abstinence are
better means of warding off an attack of gout than all the sj)as in
existence, and the symptoms of an impending attack are well
known to sufferers. As soon as the system is overcharged with
the poison, an acute attack comes on. How much better to pre-
vent the system being charged at all with an unnecessary poison,
and this is only to be done by a proper selection in diet ! Hard-
worked laborers and the poor never suffer from gout, and the
Scotch are entirely free. It is a disease of overfeeding — more
especially in certain articles of food and drink — and underwork-
ing, and entails on its victim much misery, if not worse, and his
progeny inherit the curse for generations after.

The evils that arise from errors in diet are properly remedied
by diet. An excess of fat invariably depends upon the individual
indulging to too great an extent in sweets and farinaceous food,
and in not taking sufficient exercise to work it off. The surplus
in such a case becomes stored in the system as fat, and can easily,
as previously pointed out, be got rid of by a properly constructed
dietary. This may be very liberal indeed, but all fat-forming in-
gredients must be carefully cut off. I have known twenty-five
pounds of fat lost in a month by dietetic means alone, with vast
improvement in the general health and condition. Indeed, a loss
of surplus fat always means a great improvement in condition as
well as in activity and vigor.*

Different constitutions have peculiarities in regard to the way
in which they assimilate food, and the old adage that what is one
man's meat is another's poison is a very true one. There is no ail-
ment more common in middle life and in old age than indigestion.
This, of course, depends upon improper food taken too frequently

* See Foods for the Fat : the Dietetic Cure of Corpulency, by Dr. Yorke-Davies. Lon-
don : Chatto & Windus.

WHY GROW OLD? 233

and in undue quantity. As a rule, the victim of indigestion flies
to medicines for relief, or to one of the thousand-and-one quack
remedies that are advertised to cure everything.

How much more rational would it not be to alter the diet, and
to give the stomach the food for which it is craving! If the
stomach could talk, I can imagine it, after pills, and gin and bit-
ters, and quack remedies of every description have been poured
into it, begging to be relieved of such horrors, and saying, " Give
me a little rest, and a cup of beef tea and a biscuit, and go and
take a little fresh air and exercise yourself." Instead of this, the
miserable organ has to be dosed with all sorts of horrible concoc-
tions in the way of drugs, brandies and sodas, and champagne, to
endeavor to stimulate it into action. There is no doubt that the
stomach that requires stimulants and potions to enable it to act
efficiently, can hardly be said to be in a healthy state, or can long
continue to do its work properly.

The digestive organs, unfortunately, are the first to sympathize
with any mental worry. They are like a barometer, and indicate
the errors of malnutrition and their consequences. The healthy
action of every organ depends upon the proper assimilation of
the food taken. As soon as the digestive process fails, every-
thing fails, and ill-health results with all its disastrous con-
comitants.

Indigestion is more particularly the ailment of those engaged
in sedentary pursuits, and if a person who is frequently the victim
of it would, instead of flying to drugs, try such a diet as the fol-
lowing for a few days, he would not regret doing so. At least,
this is my experience :

He should begin the day at 7 a. m. with a tumbler of milk and
soda water, or a cup of Liebig's beef tea, or of bovril. At half
past seven he should take a tepid or cold sponge bath and rub the
skin thoroughly with a coarse towel or, better still, before the
bath, with a massage rubber. At half past eight for his break-
fast, one or two cups of weak tea, with a little milk and no sugar.
A little stale bread or dry toast. A grilled sole or whiting, or the
lean of an underdone mutton chop, or a newly laid Qgg lightly
boiled. For luncheon at one, a few oysters and a cut of a loin of
mutton, some chicken or game, or any other light digestible meat.
A little stale bread and a glass of dry sherry or moselle. Such a
one should avoid afternoon tea as he would poison, and at six or
seven have his dinner, which should consist of plainly cooked fish,
mutton, venison, chicken, grouse, partridge, hare, pheasant, tripe
boiled in milk, sweetbread, lamb, roast beef, and stale bread.
French beans, cauliflower, asparagus, vegetable marrow, or sea
kale, may be used as vegetable, and half a wineglassful of cognac
in water may be drunk. If he takes wine, one or two glasses of

2 34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dry sherry after dinner, and before retiring to bed a cup of Lie-
big's beef tea and a biscuit may be taken.

During the day brisk ^yalking exercise to an extent short of
fatigue should be indulged in, or riding or cycling, as the case
may be.

Such an individual in a few days would find himself a differ-
ent person. Slight ailments of this kind, and errors of malnutri-
tion, are much better treated by diet than by medicine. Of
course, there are certain habits that are not conducive to long
life, such as immoderate indulgence in the passions, whatever
they may be, and the abuse of alcohol. There is no reason why a
man should not enjoy, in moderation, all the good things of this
life, and really the enjoyment of them means taking them in
moderation. The man who enjoys wine is the man who takes just
sufficient to do him good, and the man who drinks wine to excess,
and suffers the next morning from headache as a consequence,
can not be said to do so. Excess in alcoholic stimulants in early
life means sowing seeds that will bear bitter fruit in mature age
— if the individual lives to see it. The habit of "nipping" is con-
ducive to shortening life more than any other habit. It stimu-
lates the different organs of the body into unnatural activity, and
the result is that certain of them, such as the liver and the heart,
by the work thrown upon them, become, through the enlargement
and engorgement of their tissues with blood, diseased after a
time. This leads to their being useless as organs of elimination
or of healthy structure, with the result that, when middle age is
just over, the individual becomes prone to such complaints as
Bright's disease, dropsy, cirrhosis of the liver, and other vital in-
dications of decay. These habits are acquired in early life. The
wind is sown then and the whirlwind is reaped later on. It is
seldom that the young will learn the importance of, if I may so
express it, training for old age, but there are exceptions to this
rule. Only a few days ago a man came to consult me ; he be-
longed to the luxurious classes, and, though only twenty-three
years of age, seemed to have the forethought of a man of sixty.
A fine, handsome young fellow of nearly six feet, he said to me :
" Doctor, as most of my family have died young through becom-
ing excessively fat, I want to know what I am to do to avoid this.
I am already heavier than I should be." Now, a man in the full
enjoyment of health and bodily vigor, who had so much fore-
sight, and who wished to learn the means of attaining green old
age, which he saw would be sapped by a hereditary tendency to
obesity, undoubtedly deserves to do so, especially as the particu-
lar condition that he dreads can be so easily benefited without
debarring him almost every luxury within his reach.

If more people followed this example, how many years longer

WJJY GROW OLD? 235

■would the average life be, and liow much more pleasant would
life become! One of the greatest barriers to the enjoyment of
life in old age is the condition that this young man dreaded ; and
my experience is that the food of old people is by no means
always what it is wise for them to take. It seems to be the gen-
eral opinion that old people should be always eating, that they
should be stuffed, and that farinaceous food is what they should
principally take. This, every one knows, tends to develop corpu-
lency, which is, as I have explained, a most undesirable con-
dition.

I find that if old people are put on a good meat diet in the way
of strong soup, beef tea, and animal food, and only just sufficient
farinaceous food and fats and sugar to maintain the heat of the
body, they increase wonderfully in energy and, as they often ex-
press it, feel twenty years younger. This is only natural ; it is a
food of energy ; the food that builds up muscle, nerve, and con-
stitutional stamina.

The requirements of the system in old age, as a rule, are not
very great, and more harm is done by taking too much food than
by taking too little. I have known people considerably over
seventy derive the greatest benefit from a thorough change in
diet. It seems to rejuvenate them. Of course, in old age care
should be taken that the body is not subjected to rapid changes
of temperature. When the nervous power is decreasing as the
result of age, and the system is losing the power of combating
cold and strain upon its energy, a stimulating diet invigorates,
and is conducive to maintaining constitutional stamina better
than any other.

Any natural death but from old age and general decay is an
accidental death; that is, it is due to causes which might, and
even perhaps could, have been entirely avoided and remedied in
earlier years. But, of course, all the secrets of attaining extreme
age are not even now within our reach, and the few that I have
pointed out are but a very few, and those of the commonest. It
is the inevitable law of Nature that we must die. The vital en-
ergy that is implanted in the body at birth is only meant to sus-
tain it for a certain number of years. It may be husbanded or
wasted, made to burn slowly or rapidly. It is like the oil in a
lamp, and may be burned out to little effect in a little time, or
carefully husbanded and preserved, and thus made to last longer
and burn brighter. It is a moot question whether every indi-
vidual is not at birth gifted with the same amount of vital energy
and of life-sustaining power. The probability is that each is.
The circumstances of the environment from the cradle to the
grave determine its future destiny. •

It is a well-known fact that half of the infants born in certain

236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

crowded streets in Liverpool die before tliey arrive at the age of
one year, wliereas, under ordinary or healthy surroundings, a half
would not die within the first five years of life. Why is this so?
Simply because the surroundings are so detrimental to healthy
development. Again, consumption is fatal to sixty thousand
people in England alone, annually, and this is a disease born of
hereditary taint, due to unhealthy surroundings and other health-
depressing influences. In fact, as I have before said, most of the
diseases which destroy in early life are due to causes which ought
not to exist, and in time, as sanitary science advances, will not
exist. We know that already the improved sanitation of the
country is bearing fruit, that the average life is lengthening year
by year, that many diseases that carried off tens of thousands in
the days of our grandfathers are almost harmless now.

Smallpox has lost its terrors. The causes of such fatal diseases
as typhoid, diphtheria, etc., are well established, and doubtless, in
time, these plagues will be rooted out.

Last year we escaped an epidemic that might have carried off
hundreds of thousands, and why ? Because we know its ways,
and have not allowed it to spread in the country. The highest
duty of the state is to guard the health of the people, and public
opinion of recent years is waking up to this fact. An epidemic is
no respecter of persons ; it may have its origin in the hovel of a
pauper, but its baneful influence reaches the lordly palace of the
noble, and it ingulfs all classes in its deadly embrace. The aris-
tocrat and the plebeian are socially separated by a very wide gulf,
but as far as epidemic disease goes they are conterminous. Social
distinctions are no barrier when the angel of death is following in
the wake of those plagues that destroy life before its natural ter-
mination in old age and general decay.

To sum up, if old age is to be put off to its furthest limits, the
individual who wishes to attain it should live carefully up to
middle age, taking plenty of exercise, and so adapting the diet
that corpulency, gout, and other diseases due to taking too much
and improper food without doing sufficient physical work to con-
sume it, can not be developed. Mental and physical occupation
are an absolute necessity, if the constitution is to be kept in
healthy working order, and this applies equally to both sexes.
The human economy will rust out before it will wear out, and
there are more killed by idleness than by hard work. Human
energy must have some outlet, and if that outlet is not work of
some kind, habits are acquired that are not always conducive to
long life.

Old age is the proper termination of human life, and, as Cicero
says : " The happiest ending is when, with intellect unimpaired,
and the other senses uninjured, the same Nature which put to-

WRY GROW OLD? 237

gether the several parts of the macliine takes her own work to
pieces. As the person who has built a ship or a house likewise
takes it down with the greatest ease, so the same Xature which
glued together the human machine takes it asunder most skill-
fully."

Death by extreme old age may be considered the desirable end
of a long-continued and at times weary journey. The pilgrim be-
gins it in infancy, full of hope and life; continues it through
adolescence in its roseate hue ; and onward until middle age, with
its cares and anxieties, begins to dispel the illusion. Then comes
the time of life when vitality begins to decline, and the body to
lose its capacity for enjoyment ; then comes the desire for rest,
the feeling that foreshadows the great change ; and if this occurs
in extreme age, the sufferer seems to fall asleep, as he might do
after severe fatigue.

So the long and, in many cases, the weary pilgrimage of life is
brought to a close with little apparent derangement of mental
powers ; the final scene may be short and painless, and the phe-
nomena of dying almost imperceptible. The senses fail as if sleep
were about to intervene, the perception becomes gradually more
and more obtuse, and by degrees the aged man seems to pass into
his final slumber.

In such an end the stock of nerve-power is exhausted — the
marvelous and unseen essence, that hidden mj^stery, that man
with all his powers of reasoning, that physiology with all the aid
that science has lent it, and the genius of six thousand years, has
failed to fathom. In that hour is solved that secret, the mystery
of which is only revealed when the Book of Life is closed forever.
Then, we may hope, when Xature draws the veil over the eye that
is glazing on this world, at that same moment she is opening to
some unseen but spiritual eye a vista, the confines of which are
only wrapped by the everlasting and immeasurable bounds of
eternity. — The Gentleman's Magazine.

G. A. Leboeet, writing of the late disaster at St. Gervais, Switzerlaad, from
the breaking of a glacial dam, and recalling other stupendous calamities of like
character, charges British geologists, living in a country where Nature's moods
are mild, with being too averse to admitting cataclysmal phenomena and of being
disposed unconsciously to belittle and almost ignore the occasional violent action
of the various rock-destroyers. With such catastrophes in mind as have occurred
several times in the Alps, of which that of St. Gervais is only one specimen;
with the flood in the Indus in 1835, beside which these sink into insignificance —
and nc)t forgetting our Johnstown flood — one must hesitate before as^signing too
uniform a degree of intensity to the various agents of denudation; nor can one
easily avoid the conclusion that, as regards some of them, their rate of work was
occasionally far greater in past than in present times.

238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

CHILDREN'S QUESTIONS.

MY little daughter is sitting very quietly on the floor beside
me, busily engaged in arranging her colored house blocks
in streets and lanes. She seems so completely absorbed in her play
that I am careful not to speak to her, or even to look at her, lest I
should disturb her. Suddenly, however, she drops her little houses
and, looking earnestly at me with her blue eyes, she asks :

" Mother, does everybody die ? "

" Yes, dear ; everybody,'' I answer, struck by her question.

" The very good ones too ? " she questions on timidly.

" Yes, the good ones too. God takes them to him because he
loves them, and wants them to be with him in his beautiful
heaven."

For a while the little one remains quiet ; then again, coming
up and nestling at my side, she says :

" Mother, wouldn't it be all the same to the loving God if he
didn't take me into heaven, but left me always here with you ? "

Drawing her closer to me, I try by caresses and loving words
to calm all the doubts of her little heart. She is in an inquiring
mood, howevBr, and shortly begins anew :

" Mother, does the angel who brings the little babies carry them
in a box or just in his hand ? "

Unprepared for this question, I answer hesitatingly, " No, not
in a box."

" But they have dresses on, haven't they ? "

" No, darling, the little babies come naked into this world."

" But then, mother, how can the parents tell whether it is a girl
or a boy ? "

Once more I am at a loss, but make out to say, " Oh, we see
that in their faces."

The little one is satisfied for the moment, for she turns again
to her toys. Suddenly an idea strikes her. " Mother, father said
the other day that I had the face of a boy. Perhaps I am not a
girl at all." This time I can answer without hesitation: "No,
dear, you are certainly mother's own dear little girl. But now
don't ask any more questions, but come and help me to bake in
the kitchen."

The child is quite content to do as I say, and, following me, de-
votes her mind with as much seriousness to the cooking, or rather
to watching it, as she had before shown in trying to arrive at the
origin of mankind. Truly, there is something wonderful in the
growing mind of a child. The world and life are full of insoluble
problems for the adult understanding, but to the mind of a child
every new phase of things comes as a riddle and a mystery. What

CHILDREN'S QUESTIONS. 239

wonder, therefore, if in their struggle for knowledge, and the
efforts they make to learn from the experience of their elders, their
whole being becomes, as it were, one big, interminable question I

At times, of course, it can not be denied, the questions become
irksome, but who would wish a child to ask no questions ? Julius
Sturm tells, in one of his pretty fairy tales, how a grandfather,
driven into impatience by the constant questionings of his grand-
child, exclaimed, " I wish your tongue were out of joint ! " but
when, unexpectedly, his wish was fulfilled, and the child became
dumb, how he joyfully exchanged one of the two years which an
angel had prophesied he was yet to live for the privilege of hear-
ing the little one's prattle again.

A child whose questions are not answered by its parents will
either turn to others who are willing to gratify its desire for knowl-
edge, but who perhaps are unable to distinguish between what
is good for a child to know and what is not, or else it will lose its
fine natural susceptibility, and learn to look upon life in a dull,
spiritless way, without interest or curiosity. Worse, however,
than not answering a child's questions is to ridicule them. Noth-
ing wounds a child so deeply as finding its inexperience abused
and its earnestly-meant questions made the subject of mockery.
How common a thing it is to hear a child's question impatiently
and even contemptuously condemned as " silly " I Yet, in most
cases of the kind, the silliness is not with the child, but with the
older person who fails to understand how a child's mind works.
Every child has involuntarily a feeling of distrust for grown-up
people, which is only expelled through trust in the love of its
parents. This trust once thoughtlessly abused and shaken may
perhaps never be restored to its original purity and strength ; and
who could have the heart deliberately to impair such sweet con-
fidence ?

It is true children sometimes ask questions which it is not easy
to answer, at least not in the short, simple form suited to the
mind of the questioner. For example :

"Do the little sparrows know they are sparrows ? "

" Do animals go to heaven, too ? "

" Can God do everything ? "

" Can he make iny birthday come twice in one year ? "

Or, again :

" Why does the fire burn ? "

"Why is ice cold?''

To answer such questions may baflie our knowledge, but we
should at least make an honest and patient effort to say something
helpful. If we can not give all the light we could wish, we can at
least give sympathy and encouragement. — Translated for Tlie Pop-
ular Science Monthly from the German, by F. 31. J.

240 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EAST CENTRAL AFRICAN CUSTOMS.

By JAMES MACDONALD.
PART II.

AN institution peculiar to Central Africa is the prophetess,*
who combines with her prophetic functions the office of
witch detective. As she is the most terrible character met with in
village life, a detailed account of her office and method of pro-
cedure may be interesting. It is to the prophetess the gods or
ancestral spirits make known their will. This they do by direct
appearance, and in dreams or visions. The prophetess, who is
frequently the chief's free wife, dreams her dreams and then gives
forth oracles at intervals, according to the exigencies of the case.
These are generally delivered in a kind of hysterical frenzy.
When she sees the gods face to face, which always happens at the
dead hour of night, she begins by raving and screaming. This
she continues till the whole village is astir, and she herself utterly
prostrated by her exertions. She then throws herself on the
ground, and remains in a state of catalepsy for some time, while
the villagers gather round her, awe-stricken, waiting for her rev-
elations. At last she sj)eaks, and her words are accepted without
question as the oracles of God. Has she not seen the ancestors
face to face ? Has she not heard their voice sending a message
to their children ? Is she not their friend, to whom they have
shown favor ? Must not all hear the words of those who have
gone before ?

After these revelations, the prophetess may impose impossible
tasks on men, and they will be attempted without question. She
may order human sacrifices, and no one will deny her victims.
Suppose she, for any reason, declares that a person must be offered
in sacrifice to a mountain deity — for there are gods of the valleys
and gods of the hills, deities of the rivers and of the forests — the
victim is conducted to a spot indicated by her, and bound hand
and foot to a tree. If during the first night he is killed by beasts
of prey, the gods have accei)ted the sacrifice, and feast " on his
fat," which is " as the smell of spices in their nostrils." Should
the victim not be devoured, he is left to die of starvation, or is
thrown into lake or river with a sinker attached. " The slave was
not worthy of the god's acceptance. He is worth nothing to any
one." Fowls and other animals killed in sacrifice are not burned ;
they are simply left near the " prayer tree," and when devoured
during the night the sacrifice is accepted. Among the tribes

* Walolo triVje and Lake Shirwa district generally.

EAST CENTRAL AFRICAN CUSTOMS. 241

farther south, animals sacrificed are cooked and eaten, with the
exception of the sacred portions, which are burned with fire.

As a detective of wizards and witches, the prophetess is in con-
stant demand. When traveling on official duty in this capacity,
she goes accompanied by a strong guard, and when she orders a
meeting of a clan or tribe, attendance is compulsory on pain of
confessed guilt. When all are assembled, our friend, who is clad
with a scanty loin-cloth of leopard skin, and literally covered from
head to foot with rattles and fantasies, rushes about among the
crowd. She shouts and rants and raves in the most frantic man-
ner, after which, assuming a calm, judicial aspect, she goes from
one to another, touching each person's hand. As she touches the
hand of the bewitcher she starts back with a loud shriek, and
yells : " This is he, the murderer ; blood is in his hand ! " I am not
certain if the accused has a right to demand the rmuai, but it ap-
pears this may be allowed. My impression is that the law does
not require it, and that the prophetess's verdict is absolute and
final. The condemned man is put to death, witchcraft being a
capital crime in all parts of Africa. But the accuser is not con-
tent with simply discovering the culprit. She proves his guilt.
This she does by " smelling out " — finding — the " horns " he used
in the prosecution of the unlawful art. These are generally the
horns of a small species of antelope, and which are par excellence
" witch's horns." The prophetess " smells out " the horns by going
along the bank of a stream, carrying a water vessel and an ordinary
hoe. At intervals she lifts water from the stream, which she pours
upon the ground, and then stoops to listen. She hears subter-
ranean voices directing her to the wizard's hiding place, at which,
when she arrives, she begins to dig with her hoe, muttering incan-
tations the while, and there she finds the horns deposited near the
stream to poison the water drunk by the person to be bewitched.
As they are dug from the ground, should any one, not a magician,
touch them, even accidentally, the result would be instant death.

Now, how does the detective find the horns? By what devil's
art does she hit upon the spot where they are concealed? The ex-
planation is very simple. Wherever she is employed she must
spend a night in the village before commencing operations. She
does not retire to rest like the other villagers, but wanders about
the live-long night, listening to spirit voices. If she sees a poor
wight outside his house after the usual hour for retiring, she
brings that up against him next day as evidence of guilty inten-
tion, and that, either on his own account, or on account of his
friend the wizard, he meant to steal away to dig up the horns.
The dread of such dire consequences keeps the villagers within
doors, leaving the sorceress the whole night to arrange for the
tableau of the following day.

VOL. XLIII. — 17

242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In addition to the horns, arms and pieces of human flesh may
he dug up in suspicious places, and this is the carrion on which
witches and wizards feed. Any one tasting a morsel of such food
is himself thereby converted into a wizard. Witches and wizards
have midnight feasts, so says the legend, at which they gorge
themselves with human carrion. Hence it is that in many parts
the dead are not buried till putrefaction sets in, and graves are
watched a considerable period after interment. The detective
may not be known as such to a wizard, and may pretend to follow
the same art in order to gain his confidence. If, then, the wizard
offers the detective human carrion, no further proof of guilt is
needed. Whether such food is ever offered to these rogues it is
difficult to say, as their word is accepted without question or
inquiry.

Witches can. cause milk to flow down through a straw from the
roof of a house,* and by this means rob their neighbors of the
milk of their goats and cows. When I read of this superstition
for the first time it reminded me of an incident, connected with a
similar Celtic superstition, which happened in Sutherlandshire
about twelve years ago. In that region a superstition still lingers
that witches can " steal the feet " of cows by walking through the
fields while the dew is on the grass, dragging a rope made of cow-
hair after them. A Thurso mason, well acquainted with north
country superstitions, was employed in the district at the time re-
ferred to, and got a quantity of new milk daily from a crofter's
wife. At the beginning of August she sent to say she could no
longer let him have new milk, as that went to the shooting lodge,
but he could have milk from which the cream had been taken.
The wily rogue sent her the following message : " Tell your moth-
er I do not wish to be nasty, but I must have new milk, if not
by fair means, then otherwise. I shall take it from the rafters of
the house rather than want." Next morning the girl appeared
with skimmed milk, thin and blue. Malcolm had meantime made
his preparations. He had bored one of the roof couples, and fixed
a bladder filled with milk in the thatch so as to empty its contents
through the hole when required. He then carefully plugged the
hole. When he saw the quality of the milk sent, he asked the
girl into the house that she might see what happened there. He
next took an auger and bored the plug away, when down came a
stream of rich milk and cream. After that he had but to ask
what he required. No one dared refuse his most extravagant de-
mands. His reputation as a wizard spread far and near over the
country side, and still lingers there among the superstitious.

Wizards visit their victims while asleep, and " instill " a power-

* Tbds is pretty general in East Central and South Africa.

1

EAST CENTRAL AFRICAN CUSTOMS. 243

ful poison^ known only to themselves, into tlie ear.* For this there
is no cure ; the patient withers away, and dies " when all the flesh
has melted off the bones." They bewitch fowls, cattle, crops,
everything a man possesses. They make his wives barren, and
himself incapable of begetting children. They put enmity be-
tween him and his friends. In one word, there is no evil but they
practice, and a great deal of the legislation of the country is de-
signed to put down this crime, and punish those who are found
guilty of it.

In South Africa war resolves itself into a cattle hunt ; in the
lake region of East Central Africa it is largely a slave hunt. A
dangerous neighbor or rival can be effectually curbed by carrying
away a large number of his subjects and sending them to mar-
ket. This resolves war largely into raiding by means of a sudden
and unexpected descent. The elaborate preparation of the South
would warn the whole country, and while the doctor was engaged
" charming " the army, and distributing magic tokens to render
the braves invulnerable, the enemy would have put " seven hills "
between himself and the advance column. All the same, there is
a close resemblance between the war usages of the South and
what we find in Central Africa. There we find, especially among
the Angoni, the Basuto habit of cutting out an enemy's heart and
liver, and eating them on the spot. We also find the habit of
mutilation, for the purpose of reducing the parts to ashes, to be
stirred into a broth or gruel, which must be " lapped " up with the
hand and thrown into the mouth, but not eaten as ordinary food
is taken, to give the soldiers courage, perseverance, fortitude,
strategy, patience, and wisdom. Should a brave leader retire to
a mountain, and die there unconquered, his spirit becomes, accord-
ing to Yao tradition, the guardian of the rain clouds that gather
there, and to him offerings and prayers are presented at the great
national gatherings for rain. Mantanga inhabits Mangohi, the
mountain the Yao remember as their home, and to him they pray
and sacrifice for rain. He is liberal to his children, and bestows
great plenty. Chitowe, on the other hand, is surly, and is associ-
ated with drought, famine, and leanness. He sometimes appears
as an emaciated child or a young woman. These, and many others,
are the spirits of warriors who perished centuries before the white
man came to bring a new and terrible implement of destruction,
and to introduce strange customs and stranger gods to people
whose ways have been uniform since before the Flood.

Death is largely caused by wizards. The very introduction of
death into the world has a suspicious look of witchcraft about it ;
in any case, it was caused by a woman who taught two men to go

* Manganga, Angoni, Yao, Walolo.

244 TS^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to sleep. One day wliile they slumbered, slie, more cruel than
Jael, held the nostrils of one till his breath ceased and he died.*
So it happens that " death and sleep are one word." When a man
dies, if his death was caused by witchcraft, there is no safety for
any one till the suspected person drinks the poison bowl. How
such are discovered has been already indicated ; the poor wretch
who must drink the poison may be the man's most intimate
friend, his nearest relative, or perhaps his wife. There are even
occasions when a large quantity of mivai is prepared and num-
bers take it together. In this case wizards and witches are
" cleaned out " wholesale. ■ The practice is not uncommon on the
Shire and the Zambesi.

Apart from the discovery of the culprit, the dead are mourned
for by a persistent beating of drums by night and by day,f and
also by a continued howling kept up by relatives and others, of
whom many may be hired for the occasion. The louder the drum-
ming, the greater the grief. Relatives shave their heads, and in
the case of a chief this is done by all his tribesmen. At the grave
offerings are made, and the same is continued for a varying period
at the votive pot placed on the site of the deceased's house.

At times, in the case of persons of social importance, as gen-
erals in the army and councilors, mourning is prolonged for many
days before sepulture takes place, and in that case the body is in-
cased in bark and placed in a suitable position, with a hole dug in
the floor underneath to receive the decomposed and putrefied mat-
ter which exudes from it. The body is ultimately buried in the
house, which is razed, and the materials carried away, that the
spot may be leveled and a votive pot placed there. A slave is
frequently killed and put in the same grave with his deceased
master, that the latter may not have " to go alone." Enemies
killed in war are not buried.

When sepulture is to occur in the usual place, and according
to the general custom of the country, the body is wrapped in a
mat, usually the person's bed, and a curious custom observed by
Yao and Wayisa, who perform this ofi&ce, is washing their hands
as a ceremonial act. This is quite distinct from the idea of un-
cleanness after handling a dead body, which requires bathing
in running water before eating or associating with their fellow-
men. After the ceremonial act of washing is performed, the body
is carried to the grave suspended along its length to a bamboo
pole. When the grave is dug, it is carefully lined with palisades
and green branches. At either end a forked stick is driven se-

* Yao tradition, told also liy Wayisa.

■)• Macdonald, Description of Funeral and Mourning Customs in Nyassa Regions. Mock
funerals are most common among the Angoni.

EAST CENTRAL AFRICAN CUSTOMS. 245

curely into the ground at the bottom of the grave, and the body
suspended to the bamboo pole is placed in position, the ends of
the bamboo resting on the forked sticks, and preventing its touch-
ing the ground. A canopy of boughs is then placed over it to
prevent the earth falling down on the body, and the grave is filled
in as is usual. A slave may be killed to accompany the deceased,
but not necessarily. The house occupied by him is burned, and a
votive pot placed on its site. Similar pots are also placed on the
grave. When the chief of a tribe dies, he is buried in his house,
which is not taken down nor burned, and in this case the votive
pot is placed outside the door, under the veranda. The personal
articles of the deceased — pipes, broken spear, walking-sticks, orna-
ments, badges of office, charms, and wallet — are placed in the
grave, and this seems to be common among all, or almost all,
African tribes. When mourning for the dead is concluded, which
is after a varying period, there are feasting, drinking, revelry, and
a second shaving, after which the dead is forgotten, or at all events
seldom or never mentioned except as an ancestor to be worshiped,
and then not by name, but by relation — " my father,'^ " my broth-
er,'' " my chief," " my chief's son," etc.

A man worships the spirits of his own ancestors ; a village,
those of its departed heads ; a tribe, those of its chiefs. The
names of great warriors are kept long in remembrance, and we
meet with many such whose history, exploits, and country are
quite lost, but whose memory tradition preserves as great spirits
who are high in rank above ordinary ancestral gods, and on whose
will depends the destiny of peoples and the conditions of life as
regards plenty or scarcity. This is common to almost all Bantu
tribes. Worship takes the form of prayer, offering, and sacrifice.
Reference has been made to the manner of human sacrifice, and
its frequency among certain tribes is appalling. When the gods
are offended, men must die ; when hungry, cattle or fowls serve
their turn ; and when only to be propitiated, as in view of a favor
desired, flour or corn is acceptable to them. At great national
gatherings — as for rain — the magician, in the priestly character,
conducts the sacrifice and the prayers, as also in cases of disaster
and national mourning. In connection with rain-making, the
chief supplicates his own special god or guardian ancestor. A
dance is held in his honor, and the chief throws up water to indi-
cate that he prostrates himself and his people at the spirit's feet,
who has the giving or withholding of that for which they pant
and die. At times Mpamhe (lightning), in the form of a deity of
the clouds, is invoked for rain by Yao and Shirwa tribes, but Mn-
lunga, the great spirit — or more properly great ancestor — is the
deity to whom men look for help in times of distress and drought.
This worship of Mulunga leads to a kind of tribal pantheism in

246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

the lake region, for, after all, is not tlie Earth the mother of us
all, Muluiiga himself included? In the more private devotions of
the peoi)le of the Nyassa region Mulunga does not appear, but a
man may not only pray and sacrifice to his own ancestors, but
also to the old inhabitants who occupied the country before his
forefathers took possession of it. The people are gone, all dead,
but their spirits live, and dwell in the old place, and see all that
goes on in which they take an interest. There do not seem to be
family and tribal distinctions as such among spirits ; in any case,
they do not fight about territory as men do. No Milton has yet
appeared in Central Africa to set the spirits by the ears.

The dead, however, may reappear in the form of animals, but
only for pure mischief.* Widows are often held in bondage and
terror by their lords returning in the guise of a serpent. This
brute will enter the house, hide in the thatch, and look at its vic-
tim from between the rafters. It will coil itself by the fire and
steal into the beds ; it will glide over articles of food and explore
the interior of cooking utensils. For this persistent persecution
there is but one remedy, and that is to kill the serpent, when there
is nothing left but "pure spirit," which can not appear in material
form any more.

A Yao spirit appearing in material form is different from a
spirit's messenger, which also appears in animal guise. The lat-
ter may be a bird, a form which a spirit can not assume, but which
can be sent as a messenger, to make known the spirit's will, some-
what after the manner of those sacred chickens which the stout
old Roman threw over the side when they refused to eat. The
African, too, can deal somewhat summarily with bird messages
when his interests and inclination lie in that way, but this im-
plies a degree of courage which is phenomenal.

Among the Angoni and the people dwelling on the western
side of Lake Nyassa there is a common belief that demons hover
about the dying and dead before burial, to snatch away their souls
to join their own evil order. By the beating of drums and firing
of guns such evil spirits are driven away, but a more certain
method of avoiding their machinations is to have a mock funeral,
and so mislead and confound them. When it is determined to
have such a funeral, an artificial body is manufactured of any
convenient substance, and treated exactly as is done with the
bodies of the dead. This lay figure is carried a considerable dis-
tance to a grave, followed by a great crowd, weeping and wailing
as if their hearts would break. Drums are beaten, guns fired, and
every species of noise made. Meantime the real corpse is interred
near the dwelling as quietly and stealthily as possible. The evil

* Angoni, Manganga, Waomba, Anyasa, etc.

EAST CENTRAL AFRICAN CUSTOMS. 247

spirits are effectually deceived ; when the mouriiers retire, there
is nothing in the mock grave but a bundle of rushes, while the
true grave they do not know and can not find. Traces of this
still linger in the South.

As the African must account for the origin of death, so, too,
he has a theory regarding the first appearance of man on the earth.
Both he and all other animals came out of a hole in the ground,
after which Mulunga — the great ancestor — closed up the opening.
The place is now desert, no man dwells there, and the spot is
Known to none. The gods refuse to reveal it. Whether this is
that it may not be opened, and other creatures be allowed to es-
cape from it, their philosophy does not very clearly explain, but
what is very certain is, that monkeys were men at the time of
their exit from the earth,* but having quarreled with their friends,
went to " dwell in the bush." To vex and harass those whom they
left, they began to pick the seed from the ground after it was
sown, and this habit having grown to be hereditary, monkeys can
not grow corn, as they " could not leave their own seed in the
ground," which is perhaps as good a definition of the difference
between men and monkeys as any given by scientists.

Reference to monkeys reminds one of that wonderful proces-
sion seen by the pasha, where each carried a torch to light him in
his depredations among the corn-fields — a story which one man
explains by referring it to Emin's defective eyesight, another to a
possibility of monkeys being able to produce fire by friction.
Without giving any opinion regarding the accuracy of the ob-
server, a statement made to me by a South African native, a
Pondonusi, may throw as much light upon it as all our science.
At the time I paid little attention to it, and indeed it passed quite
from my mind till I came across the pasha's story in Mr. Stanley's
book. It was, so far as I can recollect, in the following words —
the connection in which it was told is of no importance : " The
master is surprised. There are monkeys in the mountains " (the
gorges of the Drakensberg) " that go to the fires men leave in the
bush, and carry away burning sticks ; they even go up the trees
with them, and then throw them down. I have not seen it myself,
but I have heard say that when women leave a fire near the edge
of the bush, they come out to the grass openly with burning
pieces of wood, and play with them — some say they carry them
back to the fire to make them burn better." If this is a true and
sober version of what is not uncommon, a little less science and a
little more ordinary intercourse might have saved the eminent if
erratic German a good deal of idle speculation. One can quite
fancy monkeys playing with fire-brands found near the edge of

* This tradition Mr. Macdonald found common in the Shirwa and Nyassa regions.

248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the forest, carrying them off in their march to the corn-fields, to
cast them aside when the "work of depredation began.

If man's origin can be satisfactorily accounted for, his destiny
is shrouded in impenetrable gloom. All spirits live, nor can they
be killed ; but how employed or what country they inhabit is
known to no one. It is true a man*s ancestors watch over his life,
and the chief's ancestors guard the honor of the tribe, but beyond
this all is uncertainty and doubt.* A man's spirit is not at his
grave, though it may be met there ; it is not at his old home, but
still it sees the offerings placed in the votive pot. It does not in-
habit his son's house, though he can not cut his nails or trim his
hair without his father's eye being upon him ; and should he fail
to bury the clippings of his nails or to burn the produce of the
barber's shears, he may expect to be reminded of it in the most
unpleasant manner. Nor is it a man's own actions alone that come
under the cognizance and censorship of his father's ghost. Should
his wife, while he is on a journey, anoint herself with the oil or
fat in daily use, she will not only suffer herself, but bring calamity
upon her husband ; should she dream during his absence, she must
offer a private gift for herself and the absent one. So far the
wishes of spirits are known, but how they employ themselves in
the spirit land, and what are the mutual relations between them,
has never been told. A chief remains such in virtue of his office,
but as to the relations between rival chiefs and old enemies, " the
people who are here do not know ; it never was known, for they
never told."

Turning from speculations regarding creation, life, and death
to the daily concerns of this world, we meet with a number of very
curious minor customs and institutions among the Yao and allied
tribes. One of these is that of surety, or what we might call God-
parent. Every girl has a surety, and when her hand is sought in
marriage it is this official who is approached, and not her parents.
He makes the necessary arrangements, and sees what provision is
to be made for her and her children, should she have any ; and
also, in the event of her being sent away without just cause, how
she is to be supported and cared for. When a free wife — for this
institution applies only to free women — is dismissed, she returns
to her surety, and he redresses her wrongs, and makes such ad-
justments as the circumstances admit of.

In the ordinary conduct of affairs, domestic and public, women
have no voice ; everything is regulated by the men, who may be
said to sit perpetually in council. A Yao woman, asked if the

* The following customs are gleaned from notes and references by missionaries in the
Xyassa and Tanganyika Lake regions, no particular tribes being named. The customs seem
common.

EAST CENTRAL AFRICAN CUSTOMS. 249

child she is carrying is a boy or girl, frequently replies, " My child
is of the sex that does not speak." The position of woman is prac-
tically that of a chattel. Women kneel when addressing men,
and go off the public path into the grass or bush when they meet
any of the opposite sex as a sign of subordination and subjection.
Young girls do not take milk ; if they did it would make them
barren. Women, especially Makololo, wear a lip-ring the size of
a small table napkin-ring in the lip, not suspended, as earrings
are, but inserted into the lip as the " eyes " through which " reef
points " pass are inserted between the canvas of the sail and its
" bolt-rope." It causes the lip to project an inch and a half in
front of its natural position, and at right angles to the teeth and
gums. A small brass or lead ornament is suspended from the side
of the nose, which is pierced for the purpose as the lobe of the ear
is for earrings. Some of the front teeth are knocked out as a
beauty mark, and the arms, cheeks, breast, and shoulders are tat-
tooed with strange and fantastic devices. Necklets of teeth, shells,
or bits of wood are common, and brass wire is in great demand
for bracelets and anklets. The dress consists of a loin-cloth of
skin, cotton, or bark. The latter is made by stripping a piece of
bark from a tree, and then beating it with an ebony hammer till
soft and pliant. It is easily torn, and even when treated with the
greatest care does not last long. On the Shire and round Lake
Nyassa the people have hardly any stock except fowls and a few
goats, and are thus precluded from having the comfortable sheep-
skin garments so common among the Kaffirs. Domestic animals
are precious in Central Africa, so when chickens are hatched the
abandoned egg-shells are collected and hung up in the house to
protect the brood from hawks and accidents of all kinds.

The principal industries among the tribes whose customs I am
considering consist of pottery and working in iron.* They manu-
facture clay pots of beautiful design, and burn them with consid-
erable skill. There is a tradition lingering in odd corners that
once upon a time their ancestors used hollow stones as pots before
the art of pottery was discovered. If this is true — of which there
is no adequate proof, however — it effectually disposes of Don San-
tos's idea that the East Central African had gradually degenerated
from a higher civilization, and points rather to a record of prog-
ress. And there seems to be beyond question steady, if slow,
progress in their skill in working metal and fashioning imple-
ments of war and husbandry. There is no question that within a
comparatively recent period they tilled the ground with wooden

* The Angoni own a tribe of inner Africa which they have redticed to the position of
domestic slaves. They are the best smiths in the lake region. Whence they came I do
not know, but they were not natives of that region originally.

250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

implements, for the memory of it lives in universal tradition
among tliem. At no very remote date a Tubal-Cain appeared,
and since liis day the iron-headed hoe has found its way into the
remotest hamlet, and the national ingenuity has found exercise in
fashioning and ornamenting weapons of war. The improvements
made in the manufacture of implements of husbandry and tools
for the craftsman are insignificant compared with the advance in
the manufacture of spear and battle-axe. The iron they smelt
from its native ore by a primitive process of blast furnace, and
then work and temper it much as was done by our country smiths
two or three hundred years ago. I have seen spears of African
manufacture, made by Baralong smiths, tempered so finely that
it required a good Sheffield blade to turn their edge. This is,
however, exceptional, and the vast majority of articles made are
soft, and the iron coarse in texture when broken. In woodwork
their progress has been slower, and beyond polishing spear-han-
dles and the manufacture of musical instruments, pillows — a regu-
lar article of commerce — pipes, walking-sticks, and mallets, not
much is done, the manufacture of canoes, their greatest triumph,
being always excepted. — Journal of the Anthropological Institute.

\^ConcIud€d.'\

THE BAY OF FUNDY TIDES AND MARSHES.

By FKANK H. EATON.

CONCERNING the Bay of Fundy the school-books generally
note the single fact that " here the tides rise higher than any-
where else in the world.'' But so meager a reference to what is in
itself an imposing exhibition of gravitational energy, helpful as it
may be in a mnemonic way to the learner of geographical cata-
logues, gives no hint either of the extraordinary series of physio-
graphical conditions which are the cause of this phenomenon or
of those which it creates. The Bay of Fundy is remarkable not
only for the grandeur of its tidal phenomena, but equally so for
the exquisitely picturesque sculpturing of its coast line, and the
diversity, range, and richness of geological evidence thereby re-
vealed ; for the unique character of the extensive alluvial tracts
that skirt its head waters, and for the wealth of legend, tradition,
and romantic incident embodied in the early history of the people
that dwell about it.

What is the cause of the extraordinary height of the Bay of
Fundy tides ? What part have they played in the creation of the
Acadian marshes ? Whence have been derived the materials for
this enormous alluvial deposit ? And what is the source of its ex-

THE BAY OF FUNDY TIDES AND MARSHES. 251

haustless fertility ? These are questions often asked by tourists,
and whicli are answered, imperfectly no doubt, in the following
pages.

North, of Cape Cod the continental coast line recedes abruptly
westward, and then sweeps in a long curve northeastwardly till
the head waters of the Bay of Fundy are reached. Turning again
on itself, its course is westward to Cape Sable, from which it again
stretches away toward the east as the southern shore of Nova
Scotia. Thus, between Capes Cod and Sable lies the long, narrow^
open Bay of Maine, which terminates toward the north and east
in the landlocked Bay of Fundy. In the shallow waters of this
larger open bay the tidal impulse, which over ocean depths moves
only as a wave of vertical oscillation, is changed into one of trans-
lation. As the effect of this transformation the whole body of
water moves first landward, and then, sweeping round with the
curving coast line, skirts the southern shores of Maine and New
Brunswick, till it reaches the narrow strait between Briar Island
and Grand Manan. Compressed between these closer limits the
water is forced onward with increasing velocity into the Bay of
Fundy. Part finds its way into the Annapolis Basin and its
tributary rivers, while the main current moves onward till it
meets the tongue of land which terminates in Cape d'Or. Here it
divides, the northern portion filling Shepody and Cumberland
Basins ; while the southern half rushes onward through the nar-
row entrance to the Basin of Minas. As it passes Cape Blomi-
don this swirling, eddying, foaming torrent reaches its greatest
velocity — a rate of ten or twelve miles an hour.

Thus it is that the long, sickle-curved Maine coast gradually
gathers up the water rolled upon it twice a day by the rhythmic
ocean movements, and, throwing it backward, presses it at last
into the funnel-shaped Bay of Fundy and its adjacent basins,
covering with a semidaily flood the low and unprotected marsh-
lined shores and filling the channels of the tributary rivers for
many miles inland to a height of ten, twenty, or thirty feet above
their fresh-water levels. Such, in a general way, is the set of con-
ditions under which the spectacular and physiographical effects
of ordinary tidal phenomena are exaggerated in the Fundy tides
far beyond their normal limits. At some points the extreme eleva-
tion of the flood tide above low-water mark is as great as seventy
feet. In some of the rivers, particularlj^ in the Peticodiac of New
Brunswick and in the Shubenacadie of Nova Scotia, the upward
flow against the fresh-water current forms a rapidly moving wall
or bore several feet in height, the rushing sound of which can
be heard at a considerable distance, while in others the two cur-
rents meet and mingle so quietly that an observer can hardly tell
where the backward flow begins.

252 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Lining the shores of the head waters of the bay and spreading
far inland up the valleys of its river tributaries are extensive
tracts of alluvial marsh land of remarkable fertility, and differ-
ing in their origin from other so-called marshes. In general,
alluvial deposits are formed in river basins, by materials washed
down from higher levels by fresh- water floods; but here the
whole deposit is of tidal origin, the result of a landward rather
than a seaward transportation. Every incoming tide is freighted
with a finely comminuted sediment, the product of the wearing
action of the currents upon the sides and bottom of the bay.
During the interval between the flood that covers the undiked
river and basin margins and the ebb that leaves them bare again,
the sediment is deposited as a film of soft and glistening mud
upon the somewhat hardened material left by previous tides.
Thus layer after layer accumulates, until the flat becomes too
high for any but extraordinary tides to cover.

Instructive illustration these marsh flats often give of Na-
ture's methods in the preservation of the records by which the
geologist reads the physical history of the earth. So plastic and
impressionable is the mud which an outgoing tide has left that
it easily takes and holds the tracings of any disturbing contact.
A wind-blown leaf, a resting insect, a drop of rain, may make
in it a tiny mold which, hardened somewhat before the next
incoming flood, receives thereafter successive linings to Avhich it
gives its form and markings. In this way even the rain-prints
of a passing shower have been fixed, and then completely cov-
ered up ; and yet when subsequently exposed, so perfectly were
the spatter marks preserved, that one could tell in which direction
the wind was blowing when the shower fell.

It is obvious that the deposition of tidal sediment can, in gen-
eral, be made only between the lower and the higher limit levels
of the ebb and flow. The accumulation of greater depths of mud
than such a range permits can only be accounted for by the sup-
position of a gradual subsidence of the littoral areas — a move-
ment which would also widen the area of tidal inundations. That
such a steady and prolonged subsidence of the Fundy marsh-lined
shores has been in progress since the marsh began to form is at-
tested to not only by the surprising depths of mud accumulated,
but also by the occurrence in many places, especially along the
shores of the Cumberland Basin, of deeply buried forests which
were clearly once above the coexistent tidal levels.

A general idea of the geological features of the great depres-
sion in which the Bay of Fundy lies is necessary to a fuller
understanding of the nature of these Acadian marshes, and
especially of the sources of their wonderful fertility. In early
geological times, and until long after the close of the Carbonifer-

THE BAY OF FUNDY TIDES AND MARSHES. 253

ous period, the bay was much, -wider and somewhat longer than it
is now. The long ridge of trap rock, known as the ISTorth Moun-
tain, which stretches as a huge wall between the Annapolis Val-
ley along its southern, and the waters of the bay along its north-
ern base, did not then exist, and the waters of the bay extended
uninterruptedly over the whole of the Annapolis Valley to the
base of the Silurian hills which, under the name of the South
Mountain, now form the southern inclosure of the valley. East-
wardly the head waters of the ancient bay washed the Devonian
and Carboniferous rocks of the Cobequid Hills, while the north-
ern shore line of the present bay, skirting the southern limit of
the Palaeozoic rocks of New Brunswick, is substantially identical
with that of the original bay.

In general character the tidal movements of this larger Atlan-
tic inlet were the same as in the smaller modern bay. And the
semidaily ebb and flow of the waters produced, by their incessant
attrition with the carboniferous limestones, shales, and sand-
stones, and the other ancient rocks that formed the bed and mar-
gins of the bay, immense quantities of sand and mud — sediment
that was redistributed over the greater part of the Fundy Valley.
Subsequent changes of level caused a recession of the waters to
within their present limits, and brought to view, as the Triassic,
or new red sandstone, extensive areas of these deposits. These
red sandstone strata are still to be seen in shreds and patches at
various points in the Annapolis Valley and on the shores of the
Minas and Annapolis Basins. Their general dip toward the
north indicates that the epoch-closing movement which nar-
rowed the Bay of Fundy within its present confines was a sinking
of the bed along its northern or New Brunswick border.

Following this subsidence, and as the concluding events in the
series of seismic convulsions by which the region gained its pres-
ent topographical features, occurred the volcanic eruptions in
which the North Mountain had its origin. This long, trappean
wall forms the southern boundary of the bay from Cape Split to
the extremity of Digby Neck, a distance of one hundred and
twenty-five miles, the only interruption to its continuity being
the singular gap called Digby Gut, which gives an entrance into
the beautiful Annapolis Basin. Though there were probably
many volcanic vents along this extended line of fracture, yet the
scene of greatest activity was undoubtedly near Cape Split, at the
entrance to Minas Basin, scattered along the shores of which on
either side are isolated patches of amygdaloidal trap. Transverse
ridges of the same volcanic rock run at intervals, also, across the
bottom of the bay.

It is the grinding action of the Fundy waters upon these two
Triassic rocks, the trap and its underlying sandstone, that provides

2 54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the tidal currents witli an unfailing supply of muddy sediment.
It is mainly in the erosion, transportation, and reprecipitation of
these two rocks, and especially of the latter, that the process of
marsh formation consists. The incessantly destructive tide-work
may be seen at many points along the shore line, perhaps most
conspicuously at the base of Blomidon. Here the sandstone
foundation is continuously being cut away from under the super-
incumbent columnar trap; and at intervals, especially in the
spring time, large masses of the igneous rock are loosened from
the precipitous mountain side and crushed upon the beach below,
where the solvent and abrading action of the waters can reach
them. It is after one of these spring slides that the richest har-
vests of amethystine and zeolitic crystals, for the beauty and
abundance of which the Minas shores are noted, can be secured.
But it is along the bottom of the bay that the destructive tidal
work is most extensive and effective. Here exist great troughs,
furrowed out of the soft sandstone, many fathoms deep along the
channel bed, with here and there the interruption of the trans-
verse trappean dikes already spoken of.

The sandstone yields, of course, the greater part of the marsh-
creating sediment. Its detritus consists of a large percentage of
silica, a little clay, the iron which mainly determines its reddish
color, and the calcareous matter which served as cement in the
parent rock. This material, in the extremely comminuted form
in which it occurs in marsh-laud soil, would itself afford condi-
tions highly favorable to the support of vegetable life. But an
additional cause of the wonderful fertility of the Acadian marshes
is the richness of the trap rock in various salts of potash, lime,
and alumina which the action of the water mingles freely with
the sandstone mud. The plant-supporting power of this complex
soil is increased still further by contributions from the upland
soils through the medium of the streams and rivers flowing
toward the bay.

The great fertility of this alluvium may be inferred from the
fact that portions of the Annapolis, Cornwallis, Grand Prd, and
Cumberland marshes have been producing annually for nearly
two centuries from two to four tons per acre of the finest hay.
Besides, it is a common practice, after the hay has been removed,
to convert the marshes into autumn pastures, on the luxuriant
tender after-growth of which cattle fatten more rapidly than on
any other kind of food. Thus, virtually, two crops are annually
taken from the land, to which no fertilizing return is ever made.
The only portions of the Acadian marshes that have as yet
shown signs of exhaustion are those about the Chiegnecto branch
of the bay, on the cliffs and bed of which the Triassic rocks do
not occur, but in their stead a series of blue and gray "grind-

THE BAY OF FUNDY TIDES AND MARSHES. 255

stone grits " of an earlier formation. In this region the marshes
situated well up toward the head of the tide, where the red soil
of the uplands has been mingled with the gray tidal mud, are
good, while those lower down are of inferior quality and less
enduring. Efforts are being made to renew and improve these
inferior tracts by admitting the tide upon them.

In general, however, the necessity for periodic inundations by
the muddy waters of the bay in order to maintain the productive-
ness of the marshes, as implied in the passage from Evangeline —

" Dikes that the hand of the farmer had raised with labor incessant,
Shut out the turbulent tides ; but at stated seasons the flood-gates
Opened and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows " —

not only does not exist, but, on the contrary, some two or three
years are required for the grass roots to recover from the injury
done them by the salt water, when, as occasionally happens, an
accident to the protecting dikes admits the M?iwelcome flood.

The exceedingly fine texture of the soil, and its consequent
compactness and retentiveness of moisture, render it for the most
part quite unsuitable for the production of root crops, and at the
same time adapt it admirably for the growth of hay and of
cereals, especially oats, barley, and wheat. As a rule, however,
the succession of grass crops is interrupted only at intervals of
from five to ten or more years by a single crop of grain. The re-
productive power of the grass roots declines perceptibly with
long-continued cropping, so that a renewal of the stock by re-
seeding is occasionally necessary. For this purpose the marsh is
plowed in the autumn or spring and new seed sown ; but to avoid
the loss of a season, since grass does not mature for harvesting
the first year, grain is also sown and a large yield usually ob-
tained. This plowing and reseeding at intervals often of many
years is the only cultivation the soil receives or requires. There
is no reason to suppose that abundant harvests of grain might not
be obtained annually for an indefinite period, but, as this would
involve annual tilling, the hay crop is more profitable.

Along the river estuaries the encroachment of the land upon
the sea is in continual progress, so that there are always consider-
able areas of unreclaimed salt marsh, the lower portions of which
are fiooded every day, while the higher portions are covered only
by the highest tides. The reclamation of such new marsh is
effected by building around its seaward margin a wall or dike of
mud to prevent all tidal overflow. After two or three years the
salt will have sufficiently disappeared to permit the growth of a
crop of wheat, and in a year or two more the best quality of Eng-
lish grass will grow.

At the head of Cumberland Basin an interesting experiment in

256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tlie reclamation of worthless land lias been successfully tried.
Large areas of swamp and in some instances shallow lakes have
been connected with the tidal waters of the neighboring rivers by
channels cut through intervening ridges of upland, thus effecting
the double purpose of draining and of admitting the mud-laden
tides. In this way, in five or ten years, many acres of worthless
swamp have been converted into valuable dike-land.

The use of marsh mud as a fertilizer is very general among
farmers to whom it is accessible. It is taken in the autumn or
winter from the bank of some tidal creek or river, where the daily
depositions can soon replace it, and spread directly on the upla,nd.
Its effects are twofold : it enriches with valuable supplies of plant
food the soil to which it is applied, and it greatly improves the
texture of all light and open soils, making them more compact
and firm, and so more retentive of moisture and of those ingredi-
ents which are otherwise easily washed away. This permanent
effect upon the physical character of the soil which the marsh
mud produces renders undesirable its application to clayey soils
already compact and firm and moist enough ; for it makes them
more difficult to work, and more impervious to atmospheric influ-
ences. To well-drained hay fields, however, which need but little
cultivation, the mud may be advantageously applied, even though
the soil be naturally stiff and heavy.

The French settlers were the first Acadian dike-builders.
They brought the art from the Netherlands; and to this day
no other class of provincial workmen is as skillful in the often
difficult work of dike construction as the Acadian French. It
was no doubt the existence of these vast areas of marsh land, whose
potential value was even then clearly seen, that induced the first
New World immigrants to settle about the Bay of Fundy shores ;
and it was these same broad, fertile marshes left unoccupied by the
expulsion of the Acadian French that attracted the New England
settlers, whose descendants now derive from them an income
aggregating not less than a million dollars annually.

As described by B. F. S. Baden-Powell, in his In Savage Isles and Settled
Lands, the aboriginals of Australia are an extraordinary people — to look at,
"quite unlike any other human beings I ever saw. A tliick, tangled mass of
black hair covers their heads ; their features are of the coarsest ; very large, broad,
and flattened noses; small, sharp, bead-like eyes and heavy eyebrows. They
generally have a coarse, tangled bit of beard ; skin very dark, and limbs extraordi-
narily attenuated like mere bones. But they always carry themselves very erect.
. . . They wander about stark naked over the less settled districts, and live en-
tirely on what they can pick up. ... If not the lowest type of humanity, they
would be hard to beat. They show but few signs of human instinct, and in their
ways seem to be more like beasts."

SKETCH OF SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE.

SKETCH OF SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE.

THE most prominent features in Sir Archibald Geikie's geo-
logical work are his studies of the effects of volcanic force,
beginning in Scotland and extending to many countries ; and his
explanations of the fundamental part which geological processes
have played in shaping the topographical features of the land,
and in the origin of natural scenery.

Prof. Geikie was born in Edinburgh in 1835 ; was educated at
the high school and the university in that city ; was appointed an
assistant on the Geological Survey of Scotland in 1855 ; acquitted
himself so well in that ca|)acity that when the Scottish branch of
the survey was made a separate establishment in 1867, Sir Roderick
Murchison appointed him its director. In December, 1870, he was
appointed to the new professorship in the University of Edin-
burgh of Geology and Mineralogy, founded by Sir Roderick
Murchison, with a concurrent endowment by the crown. He held
this position till the beginning of 1881, when he resigned it, to
take the place of Sir Andrew C. Ramsay as Director-General of
the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, and Director of
the Museum of Practical Geology in London.

The published record of Prof. Geikie's life relates exclusively
to his investigations, papers, addresses, and books on subjects re-
lating to geology. In this field he has laboi . ^ with unceasing
diligence, and to it he seems to have devoted the whole energy of
his active career. Complicated problems presented themselves to
him when he entered upon the surveys, of which he was called
upon to work out the solutions. One of the first to attract his
attention was the relation of the crystalline rocks of the High-
lands to the Silurian strata on which they rest, which Murchison
had accepted as normal ; an assumption from which logically fol-
lowed the hyj)othesis that these gneisses were altered sediments.
Mr. Geikie gradually became dissatisfied with this view, and com-
missioned two assistants to review the fields in which the most
decisive evidence was to be obtained, instructing them " to divest
themselves of any prepossession in favor of published views, and
to map existing facts in entire disregard of theor}^." From the
evidence afforded by this survey, Murchison's view was proved to
be a mistaken one ; and for it was substituted the theory that the
elevation of the mountains and the metamorphism of the gneisses
were the effect of enormous pressure resulting in the folding and
breaking of the whole border of the dry land. The mountains
have been reduced to their present shape by denudation, by which
also much of the evidence of plication has been washed away,
while the remains of the disturbed rocks occupy the position

VOL. XLIII. 18

258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

■which, suggested Murcliison's view. The displacements were ac-
companied by modifications of the rocks, of which Geikie wrote
that " in exchange for this (Murchison's) abandoned belief we are
presented with startling new evidence of original metamorphism
on a colossal scale, and are admitted some way into the secret of
the processes whereby it has been produced."

Sir Archibald Geikie's chief geological work, according to the
estimate of Nature, seems to be his exhaustive review of the vol-
canic history of the British Isles. The northwestern part of Great
Britain is marked, like the Snake River region in our own coun-
try, by the evidences of the outpouring over the land of immense
sheets of lava, which in the present instance took place in Tertiary
times. Sir Archibald made it his task in the investigation of this
phenomenon " to discern the site of the centers of eruption, and
determine the old chimneys, the remnants of which give a glimpse
into the lowest parts of ascending lavas ; to discriminate the vol-
canic necks, the intrusive sheets and dikes, the bedded lavas and
the tuffs." Evidences of still earlier volcanic activity were also
found in the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, and in the oldest
formations of England and Wales. In order to prepare himself
more thoroughly for the investigation of this phenomenon, Mr.
Geikie traveled over much of Europe, from northern Norway to
the Lipari Islands; then came over to Canada and the United
States, and followed the course of our geological surveys, particu-
larly in the Western States and Territories and the lava-covered
regions. In another department of the same investigation he gave
more attention to petrological studies than any Englishman had
done before him. Besides giving rise to many valuable memoirs
relating directly to what he had seen and observed, these studies
contributed greatly to the enlargement of Prof. Geikie's views
and to the increase of the breadth of his work ; and some of their
results may be seen in the greater richness of illustration appar-
ent in his subsequent writings. Their mature fruit is presented
as a whole in his presidential addresses of 1891 and 1892. He was
especially interested, they being exactly in the line of his princi-
pal study, in the lava beds of Snake River ; and in his essay on
the Lava Fields of Northwestern Europe refers to them as the site
which first enabled him to realize the conditions of volcanic action
described by Richtofen — the emission of vast floods of lava with-
out formation of cones and craters — and, without acquiescing in
all that author's theoretical conclusions, to judge of the reality of
the distinction " which he rightly drew " between massive erup-
tions and ordinary volcanoes with cones and craters.

We have referred to Prof. Geikie's work in tracing the origin
of the present shaping of land surfaces and of natural scenery to
its geological factors as constituting one of his special titles to

k

SKETCH OF SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE. 259

fame. To his aptitude in this application Nature largely ascribes
the success of his more popular works, which, it says, "will be
easily understood if we remember that in Sir Archibald's works
the traditional barrenness of geology is always smoothed and
adorned by a deep and intense feeling for Nature. Nobody has
done more than he to associate geological science with the appre-
ciation of scenery." Mr. G. K. Gilbert, in a review of his Text-
Book of Geology, remarks as a single departure in the volume
the elevation of physiographical geology to the rank of a major
division. " The same title, it is true, has been placed by Dana at
the head of a primary division of the subject, but it was used by
him in a different sense. With Dana it is a synonym for physical
geology; with Geikie it is 'that branch of geological inquiry
which deals with the evolution of the existing contours of the
dry land.' So far as the subject has had place in earlier treatises,
it has been regarded as a subdivision of dynamical geology, and
the classification which placed it there was certainly logical. In
dynamical geology, as formulated by Geikie, the changes which
have their origin beneath the surface of the earth (volcanic action,
upheaval, and metamorphism) and the changes which belong ex-
clusively to the surface (denudation and deposition) are separately
treated. In physiographical geology the conjoint action of these
factors of change is considered with reference to its topographical
results. Starting from geological agencies as data, we may pro-
ceed in one direction to the development of geological history, or
in another direction to the explanation of terrestrial scenery and
topography, and if the development of the earth's history is the
peculiar theme of geology, it follows that the explanation of to-
pography, or physiographical geology, is of the nature of an inci-
dental result — a sort of corollary to dynamical geology. The sys-
tematic rank assigned to it by Geikie is an explicit recognition of
what has long been implicitly admitted — that geology is con-
cerned quite as really with the explanation of the existing fea-
tures of the earth as with its past history."

The subject was first formally presented from this point of
view in the Lectures on the Scenery of Scotland viewed in Con-
nection with its Physical Geology, which were delivered in 1865.
At this time, as Mr. A. H. Green remarks in his review of a new
edition of the lectures in 1887, the controversy respecting Hut-
ton's theory of denudation as the main and most efficient agency
in shaping the earth's surface was at its height. The author ac-
knowledged in the preface to his second edition that his views
when first published ran directly counter to the prevailing im-
pressions on the subject ; but now, after a lapse of twenty-two
years, they were accepted as part of the general stock of geologi-
cal knowledge. " How largely," Mr. Green says, " this result is

2 6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

due to his own steady and powerful advocacy all geologists are
aware ; but he gracefully reminds us that we also owe much to
the labors of those American geologists who have found in the
Western Territories such convincing instances of the work of
denudation in shaping the surface/' The first part of the book,
comprising the lectures, deals with land-sculpture in general, and
describes the working of Nature's sculpturing tools. The reader
is then taken in succession to the different characteristic regions
in the country and shown in detail, with much wealth of illustra-
tion, how the hills and valleys and salient features have been
wrought out. The subject could very well be treated in such a
manner as to make the presentation of it formal and dry in the
extreme ; but, says Mr. Green, the author " knows and loves his
fatherland too well to look upon it merely as the object of geo-
logical research. Legend and history, old ballads and modern
poetry, have all been pressed into his service, and he interweaves
into his narrative allusion and quotation in a way that enlivens
even the most technical parts of the volume. The chapter on
The Influence of the Physical Features of Scotland upon the
People shows well what a vast amount of human interest attaches
even to so special a science as geology."

Prof. Geikie himself predicted in an address before the Geo-
logical Society of Edinburgh, in 1873, for the future of his theory :
" Of one thing I feel surely confident : When the din of strife has
ceased and men come to weigh opinions in the dispassionate light
of history, the profound influence of the Huttonian doctrines of
the present time on the future course of geology will be abun-
dantly recognized. By their guidance it will be possible to recon-
struct the physical geography of the continents in successive ages
back into some of the earliest periods of geological history."

Prof. Geikie's theory is further elaborated and applied in his
five lectures, delivered at the Royal Institution, in 1884, on The
Origin of the Scenery of the British Isles. In these lectures the
author held that " the present surface of Britain is the result of
long, complicated processes in which underground movements,
though sometimes potent, have only operated occasionally, while
superficial erosion has been continuous so long as any land has
remained above the sea. The order of appearance of the existing
features is not necessarily that of the chronological sequence of
the rocks. The oldest formations have all been buried under
later accumulations, and their re-emergence at the surface has
only been brought about after enormous denudation." The lect-
ures conclude with an indication of the connection between the
scenery of a country and the history and temperament of its peo-
ple. This subject was considered from four points of view, the
influence of landscape and geological structure being traced in the

SKETCH OF SIB ARCHIBALD GEIKIE. 261

distribution of races, national history, industrial and commercial
progress, and national temperament and character. Prof. Geikie
found in the United States an emphatic confirmation of his theory
in one of the most impressive features of our geology, which he
records, in 1887, in a review of Newberry and Macomb's Survey
of the Upper Colorado. "The whole of this Colorado basin or
plateau is justly regarded as the most magnificent example on
the face of the globe of how much the land may have its features
altered by the action of running water."'

The method based upon this theory prevails in Prof. Geikie's
Physical Geology, which is described by Dr. Jukes as " an ex-
ample of the treatment of geographical questions from the point
of view of the geologist." The author is actuated, the reviewer
continues, " by the conviction of the necessity for a broader and
more vivid presentation of the action and reaction upon one an-
other of the various forces acting and reacting upon the surface
of the globe than is usually found in works on physical geogra-
phy, in order to convey a just idea of the character and signifi-
cance of the features which it presents."

The subject is again presented in the presidential address at
the Edinburgh meeting of the British Association in 1892, the spe-
cial topic of which was the commemoration of the centenary of
Hutton's theory and unif ormitarianism, and in which special stress
is laid on Hutton and Playfair's recognition of the fact that exist-
ing inequalities in topographical detail " are only varying and
local accidents in the progress of the one great process of the
degradation of the land."

This breadth of view concerning the methods and purposes of
geological study marks those of the author's addresses of which
that was the principal subject. In the opening lecture before the
class in geology of the University of Edinburgh, delivered in 1871,
he advises his hearers, " Let us turn from the lessons of the lec-
ture-room to the lessons of the crags and ravines, appealing con-
stantly to Nature for the explanation and verification of what is
taught."

The introduction to his Class Book of Geology, published in
1886, concludes with the words : " Geology is essentially a science
of observation. The facts with which it deals should, as far as
possible, be verified by our own personal examination. We should
lose no opportunity of seeing with our own eyes the actual prog-
ress of the changes which it investigates, and the proofs which
it adduces of similar changes in the far past. To do this will
lead us to the banks of rivers and lakes, and to the shores of the
sea. We can hardly take any country walk, indeed, in which,
with duly observant eye, we may not detect either some geological
operation in actual progress, or the evidence of one which has now

262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been completed. Having learned what to look for and how to in-
terpret it when seen, we are as it were gifted with a new sense.
Every landscape comes to possess a fresh interest and charm, for
we carry about with us everywhere an added power of enjoyment,
whether the scenery has been long familiar or presents itself for
the first time. I would therefore seek at the outset to impress
upon those who propose to read the following pages that one of
the main objects with which this book is written is to foster a
habit of observation and to serve as a guide to what they are
themselves to look for, rather than merely to relate what has
been seen and determined by others." At the very outset in this
work, geology is regarded, "not as an amusement for the collector
and a means of learning where he will get pretty and curious
objects for his cabinet ; not as a field where the ingenuity or per-
versity of the classifying mind may delight itself with grouping
natural products as reason prompts ; not in any other of those
limited aspects beyond which it is feared the wisdom of some
geologists never reaches; but as a history — the history of the
earth in ages long gone by."

Believing that no branch of the study should be overlooked,
we find him lamenting, in 1871, that while in all that relates to
stratigraphic geology the British had kept ahead of other nations,
they had allowed petrography, or the study of rock species, to
fall into disuse. Matters had improved, partly perhaps under his
own influence, in 1880, when, writing of the Mineralogical Society
of Great Britain, he remarked upon a revival of interest in min-
eralogy, which had before been neglected for fossil-hunting.

In one of the reviews of Prof. Geikie's Science Primer of
Geology, in 1874, a curious omission is remarked, in that the
author had not referred to Darwin's theory of coral islands as
a "proof that a part of the crust of the earth has sunk down"
— the reviewer suggesting that to lead pupils up to this theory,
and then test it as Darwin had tested it, was " an excellent exer-
cise in that peculiar kind of reasoning about past causation which
is of the essence of geology." Prof. Geikie appears to have built,
as the saying is, better than he knew; for in 1884 he confessed
himself reluctantly compelled, in view of Mr. Murray's observa-
tions in the Challenger Expedition, to admit that Mr. Darwin's
theory could no longer be accepted as a complete solution of the
problem of coral reefs.

Prof. Geikie has long taken an intense interest in the Ameri-
can geological surveys, and has followed them up with the
closest attention for many years ; and his notices of their reports
and summaries of their results constitute a very considerable
part of his frequent contributions to Nature. He was fully im-
pressed with the magnitude and extent of the geological phe-

SKETCH OF SIR ARCHIBALD GEIKIE. 263

nomena of the United States, and of the vahie of the study of
them for the contributions it affords to our general knowledge
of the subject and the explanations it furnishes of phenomena
in other countries.

Writing on the subject in 1875, he said the United States had
certainly done noble work in the exploration and mapping of its
vast empire. Having spoken commendatorily of the style in which
the reports were prepared and distributed, he added, " But what-
ever be their external guise, these narratives are pervaded by an
earnestness and enthusiasm, a consciousness of the magnitude of
the scale on which the phenomena have been produced, and yet a
sustained style of quiet description, which can not but strike the
reader.'' In reviewing Hayden's Report at the end of 1883, he
ascribes a singular fascination to American geology. " Its fea-
tures are as a whole so massive and colossal, their infinite detail so
subordinated to breadth of effect, their presentation of the great
elements of geological structure so grand, yet so simple and so
clearly legible, that they may serve as types for elucidating the
rest of the world. The progress of sound geology would assuredly
have been more rapid had the science made its first start in the
far West of America, rather than among the crumpled and broken
rocks of western Europe. Truths that have been gained on this
side of the Atlantic by the laborious gathering together of a
broken chain of evidence would have proclaimed themselves from
thousands of plateaux, canons, and mountain ranges, in language
too plain to be mistaken. No European geologist can visit these
Western regions without realizing more or less distinctly what an
amount of time has been wasted over questions about which there
should never have been any discussion at all. This impression is
renewed by every new geological memoir which brings to us
fresh revelations of the scenery and structure of the Western
Territories."

On the occasion of his appointment as Director-General of the
Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland, Prof. Geikie was
presented in March, 1882, by past and present students of the
geology class in the University of Edinburgh with an illumi-
nated address, recording their sense of loss on his leaving the uni-
versity ; referring to the distinguished services he had rendered
the science; recognizing the signal success with which he had
maintained the reputation of the Scottish school of geology, and
of Edinburgh ; and expressing the sympathy and affection with
which they regarded him. Prof. Geikie responded in similar
spirit, and said that he believed he was the first in Scotland, if not
in Britain, to organize a practical class for the study of miner-
alogy and the microscopic investigation of rocks. He had tried
always to make the cultivation of field geology a prominent part

264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of the work of the class ; and some of their pleasantest associa-
tions had been among the glens of the Highlands and the hills and
shores of the Lowlands.

Prof. Geikie is a prolific writer on all subjects relating to geol-
ogy. When ho was appointed in 1871 to the chair in Edinburgh he
had the whole department to organize — a difficult task, but also
an educating one — and to that, says Nature, we are indebted for
the undisputed superiority which he has displayed in his Text-
Book, as well as in his other educational writings, " such as the
Class Book, a very model of clearness, whereby it has been once
more demonstrated that those only are qualified for writing ele-
mentary books who are in the fullest possession of the whole mat-
ter." Likewise he is the author of small books or primers on
Physical Geology and Physical Geography, of which some hun-
dreds of thousands of copies have been sold, and which have been
translated into most European languages, as well as several Asi-
atic tongues. He is also author of numerous memoirs in the
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, the Transactions of
the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the memoirs of the Geological
Survey, the Quarterly and North British Reviews, Nature, etc. ; of
the Story of a Boulder, 1858; in conjunction with the late Dr.
George Wilson, of The Life of Prof. Edward Forbes, 1861 ; of the
Phenomena of the Glacial Drift of Scotland, 1863 ; The Scenery of
Scotland viewed in Connection with its Physical Geology, 1865,
and a new edition, largely rewritten, in 1887 ; in conjunction with
the late J. B. Jukes, of a Student's Manual of Geology, 1871 ; of
the Science Primers of Physical Geography, and Geology, 1873 ;
Memoir of Sir Roderick I. Murchison, with notices of his Scien-
tific Contemporaries, and of the Rise and Progress of Palaeozoic
Geology in Britain, 2 vols., 1874 ; of the Geological Map of Scot-
land, 1876 ; of the Class Book of Physical Geography, 1877 ; of
Outlines of Field Geology, 1879 ; of Geological Sketches at Home
and Abroad, 1882 ; of A Text-Book of Geology, 1882 ; of A Class
Book of Geology, 1886. Prof. Geikie was associated with Sir
Roderick Murchison, in the Scottish Highlands, in the prepara-
tion of a memoir of that district, and of a new Geological Map of
Scotland, both published in 1861. Ho was elected to the Royal
Society before reaching the age of thirty years, and is now its
foreign secretary. He is past President of the Geological Soci-
ety. He received the Murchison Medal of the Geological Society
in 1881, and has been twice awarded the McDougal Brisbane medal
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is an associate of the
Berlin Academy, of the Royal Society of Sciences at Gottingen,
of the Imperial Leopold Caroline Academy, of the Imperial Soci-
ety of Naturalists at Moscow, and a correspondent of the French
Academy of Sciences.

CORRESP ONDENCE.

265

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE FIRST TRANSATLANTIC STEAMER.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

SIR : On page 424 of the January number
(1893) of The Popular Science Monthly
is given a precis of the log of the ship Savan-
nah, which is correct ; but the heading, The
First Transatlantic Steamer, is totally wrong.

The Savannah was not the first trans-
atlantic steamer, but a sailer, with propelling
contrivances to be used in smooth water;
moreover, she did not carry fuel enough to
take her across to England by steam, and
she proved a failure as far as transatlantic
steam navigation was concerned. All this is
proved by her log. The transportation of a
steam engine and paddles by a sailing ship
does not constitute her a steamer in the true
sense of the word.

The firet genuine pioneer steamship to
cross the Atlantic Ocean by steam alone, and
the first complete success in steam naviga-
tion, was the steamship Royal WiUiam, built
at Quebec, Canada, through the enterprise
of Canadian merchants, by Canadian ship-
builders, and with Canadian money. It was
sent across the Atlantic Ocean in 1833, and
proved to be the origin of the Cunard line of
steamers. It was sold to the Spanish Gov-
ernment for a man-of-war and called the
Isabela Segunda, being the first war steamer
in the world, and was engaged in action
against the Carlists. Some years later she
went to Bordeaux, France, for repairs, but
her hull was condemned and a new vessel
was built on her model, in which the old
engines were placed. This vessel went into
service under the same name, but was
wrecked in 1860 on the coast of Algeria,
where no doubt the Royal William's engines
may now be found.

I send you our Transaction, Xo. 20, con-
taining the whole attested account of the
Royal William, which is incontrovertible
proof of what I say, and proves that the
honor of first transatlantic steam navigation
belongs to Canada and Quebec city, and not
to the United States at all.

_ The Savannah was a fraud, a veritable
sailing ship, built as such, subsequently took
on an engine and propelling contrivances
which could only be used in smooth water ;
with these she steamed out of jiort, then
sailed to England, steaming only eighty hours,
not consecutively, out of a passage of twenty-
nine days and a half, but took good care to
let down her paddles on coming into port,
making believe that she steamed the whole
way across the Atlantic, and, moreover, re-
peated this performance at every port she

visited. The Royal William was the first
veritable transatlantic ocean steamship.

F. C. WURTELE,

Librarian of the Literary and Historical
Society of Quebec.

Quebec, March 2.j, 1893.

[All that Mr. Wurtele says of the defects
of the Savannah appears on the face of the
article we published. The title, if not strict-
ly accurate, reflects current speech on the
subject. We are glad to give our Canadian
neighbors the credit that is their due in the
matter of the Royal William. — Ed.]

FOOD OF THE GARTER SNAKE.

Editor Popular Science Monthly.

Sir : In your February number, Mr. Alfred
G. Mayer, in speaking of the habits of the
garter snake, says that he is not aware of
their eating birds or mice. They will, when
kept in captivity, at least, eat the latter ani-
mals. I once kept one under observation for
a considerable time, and its only food was
mice. These it ate with apparent relish and
in greater numbers than I supposed at first
would be eaten. Its mode of capturing and
killing a mouse was also different from that
by which the snakes secure frogs. It lay
quietly coiled, with its head slightly elevated,
for a little time after the mouse was put into
the box. The latter ran to and fro over the
coils of the snake, as though utterly unaware
of the presence of an enemy. Presently the
snake darted forward, seized the mouse in
its jaws, and with lightning-like rapidity
coiled itself around its body — the head of
the snake and the mouse being invisible
from without the coil. The quickness of
the movement was decidedly startling. After
about one minute the coils began to slacken,
and the mouse rolled out, completely crushed
and quite dead. The snake moved away,
but within an hour devoured it. This snake
was Eutcenia sirtalis. I have not found any
one else who has seen it take its food in this
way, and can not account for the actions of
this particular specimen. A full-grown cop-
perhead, under similar conditions, behaves
very differently. With marvelous rapidity
it would shoot its head forward, apparently
merely touching its victim. The mouse would
give a faint squeak, and in thirty seconds
would be dead and perfectly stiff. His
suakeship then devoured it at his leisure.
Wilbur S. Jackman.
Cook CouxTr Normal Scuool, Chicago, III.

2 66

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
"TTTE have read with considerable
V V interest a book by Mr. Henry M.
Boies, elsewhere noticed in this num-
ber, having for its title Prisoners and
Paupers. "Wc have read it not only
with interest but with sympathy, for Mr.
Boies is much in earnest, and his aim is
the noble one of serving the community
by checking the evils of criminality,
pauperism, and mental and physical de-
generation, which in these latter years
have been assuming so threatening pro-
portions. With much that the author
says we entirely agree, and many of his
suggestions seem to be of a very prac-
tical and useful kind. Here and there
is perhaps a touch of undue national
vaingloriousness which does not harmo-
nize very well with the fact that the
book is in the main a revelation of the
weaknesses of American society. Here
and there, too, the author seems to con-
tradict himself, as where, on page 95,
he speaks of the upward tendencies in
this country being more powerful than
the downward ones, and afterward (page
258) says that, while " we are listening
to the delusive enchantments of physical
prosperity and national growth, millions
of remorseless teredos from the lower
depths are honeycombing the hull of
our ship of state " ; and again (page 259)
that "the condition politically is desper-
ate, but not hopeless " ; and again (page
278) that '' signs of a general degeneracy
are attracting public attention." The
important thing, however, is that, in the
statements and observations he makes,
Mr. Boies gives us plenty to think about,
and makes it very plain that something
more than thinking is called for — that
prompt, strenuous, and intelligent action
is an urgent necessity of the moment.

It all amounts to this, that, while the
men of this generation are eating and

drinking and taking their ease, marry-
ing and giving in marriage, running po-
litical machines, and blowing hot or cold,
as the case may be, upon the stock mar-
ket ; while luxury is on the increase,
and practical Science is recording her
most magnificent triumphs, the founda-
tions of society are being sapped by the
incessant growth of unsound social ele-
ments. In early ages mankind, in only
less degree than the lower animal tribes,
had the benefit of the rude but effect-
ive surgery of Nature to keep them
up to a certain level of physical eflS-
ciency ; and in a later period the ex-
treme severity of the laws had the effect
of removing from the community large
numbers of those who were least adapt-
ed for citizenship. As a result of these
processes the civilization of to-day, with
its more humane and philanthropic
spirit, became possible ; but it is now
beginning to be found out that philan-
thropy, as heretofore practiced, is no
match, so far as the physical purification
of society is concerned, for the methods
of Nature, as described by Malthus and
Darwin, or even for the penal discipline
of our forefathers. Mr. Boies fully ac-
cepts this view of the matter, as the
following extract from his book will
show:

" The civilized man is the product ot
the survival through all the ages of the
strongest, most stalwart, and capable
savages. In the progress of his civiliza-
tion the development of the sentiment
of human brotherhood and the princi-
ples of Christianity has caused an inter-
ference with the natural law provided
for the extinction of the unfit by impel-
ling the strong to maintain and care for
the weak and defective. At the same
time, advances in the sciences of hygiene,
medicine, and surgery enable many of
the unfit to survive the tests of child-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

267

hood and disease which, iii a state of
nature, would be fatal. It is necessary,
when humanity thus restrains the op-
eration of the laws of Nature, that it
should supply a correlative supplement
to prevent disastrous consequences. If
civilization and philanthropy can not
permit Nature to accomplish its inexo-
rable decrees in its own way, they must
provide some other way, or finally be
overwhelmed."

The practical question may therefore
be very simply stated : Can a sufficient
amount of public attention be concen-
trated on the evils that threaten us,
through the disproportionate multipli-
cation of criminals, paupers, and phys-
ically defective persons, to cause effect-
ive measures to be taken to combat those
evils, and, as far as possible, extirpate
their cause or causes? Mr. Boies shows
clearly enough the measures to be taken,
and, on the whole, we must say that we
find very little to dissent from in his sug-
gestions. He pours just denunciation on
our present method of turning criminals
loose upon the community after a cer-
tain term of imprisonment without the
slightest guarantee, moral or other, for
their future good behavior. He calls at-
tention for the thousandth time to the
evils wrought by our unwholesome meth-
ods of Jail administration. " It is the
unanimous testimony," he says, " of
every one who is conversant with the
management of county jails that they
are nothing more or less than breeders
of criminals, where they are, as is gen-
erally the case, committed to the super-
intendence of political sheriffs." Of the
jails of the State of Pennsylvania — and
here the author professes to speak from
personal knowledge — he says : " These
jails permit a promiscuous and unre-
strained commingling of the most de-
praved and vilest professional convicts
with children, accused persons, and de-
tained witnesses, without let or hin-
drance. In many cases even sexes are
not separated." Upon a recent visit to
the jail of Sunbury, Northumberland

County, the author found, among fifty-
four inmates of all classes," two bright,
nice-looking boys, one thirteen and the
other fourteen years old, who had l)een
incarcerated already two months and
would have to remain two months
longer before trial. They were accused
of stealing four bottles of ginger beer! "
Along with them was a depraved and
vicious-looking boy charged with at-
tempted rape. There are, we are told,
in the United States, seventeen hundred
and fifty-eight county jails and only
forty-four juvenile reformatories. Great
Britain, on the other hand, supports
over four hundred reformatories and in-
dustrial schools, and has in consequence
been able to close fifty-six out of one
hundred and thirteen prisons and jails
within ten years. In this country dur-
ing the same period there has been a
constantly increasing expenditure for
prisons and jails, as might be supposed
from the fact stated by the author at
the outset, that our criminal population
has increased in almost double ratio to
the general population.

The most important suggestion made
by the author is, that incorrigible crimi-
nals and all the ho])elessly defective
members of the community who are
thrown upon the public care should be
segregated under conditions that shall
absolutely prevent them from propagat-
ing their kind. He proposes, indeed,
that the problem shall be simplified by
calling in the aid of surgery " to remove
or sterilize the organs of reproduction,"
an operation, he adds, which if " be-
stowed upon the abnormal inmates of
our prisons, reformatories, jails, asy-
lums, and public institutions, would en-
tirely eradicate those unspeakable evil
practices which are so terribly preva-
lent, debasing, destructive, and uncon-
trollable in them." The proposed ap-
plication of this remedy will be consid-
ered by most too sweeping ; but as
regards incorrigible criminals, particu-
larly those whose crimes take the form
of violence and lust, it will not be

268

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

long, we believe, before public opinion
will sanction its employment in tbeir
case.

The conclusion of the matter for the
present is, that society is taking far too
little interest in the questions which Mr.
Boies so ably and earnestly discusses.
It must be aroused from its easy-going
indifference, or our boasted civilization
will not be worth many generations'
purchase. Philanthropy has taken the
job of keeping up the standard of the
human race out of the hands of natural
selection ; and it now devolves upon it
to show that, aided by science, it is equal
to its self-imposed task, and can indeed
accomplish results that never could have
been accomplished by the oj)eration of
unconscious laws.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Prisoners and Paupers. A Study of the
Abnormal Increase of Criminals, and the
Public Burden of Pauperism in the United
States ; the Causes and Remedies. By
Henry M. Boies, M. A. New York : G.
P. Putnam's Sons, 1893. Pp. 318. Price,
$1.50.

Mr. Boies had peculiar facilities for the
production of such a work as this and he has
used them ably. In his preface he says that
he has in this work not only endeavored to
give a general view of the subject as it ap-
pears in this country, " to emphasize the
waste of human sympathy and public funds
which results from what appears to be incon-
siderate and misdirected methods of treat-
ment," but he proposes a most feasible —
he says, " positive remedy."

The eleventh census of the United States,
which is now being published, " furnishes
statistics of a national growth in numbers,
wealth, and general prosperity unparalleled
in the history of civilization." Nevertheless,
this census, says the author, makes some dis-
closures which are " appalling in the highest
degree to our confidence in the future." One
of these is the extraordinary increase in the
criminal classes ; and he shows that while in
1850 the proportion of criminals was 1 in
3,500 of the population, it increased in 1890
to 1 in ^SC'S, or 445 per cent ; while the in-

crease of population in the same period was
only 170 per cent.

Mr. Boies claims that " such a dispropor-
tion can not continue indefinitely without a
relapse into barbarism and social ruin." And
he explains his statement by telling that such
a condition of affairs does not exist in any
other civilized nation. He attributes the first
cause for crime and pauperism to the unnatu-
ral increase of intemperance ; the second,
" the crowding of the people to the centers."

The third cause lies in the existing laws for
the punishment of criminals and the unintel-
ligent manner in which they are administered.
And having thus briefly summarized the con-
ditions of paupers and prisoners generally and
the causes for their existence, the author re-
views the awful criminal condition of Penn-
sylvania, and in the sixth cha])ter begins an
examination of the classes which form the
prison and pauper population of the country.

In this part of the work it is stated that
that portion of the population which is for-
eign-born, or having one or both parents for-
eign-born, furnishes over one third of the
criminals and three fifths of the paupers of
the country, whereas they constitute only one
fifth of the whole number. From this the
author concludes that to avert the danger
" which has become imminent, and threatens
our very existence, . . . Congress must regu-
late immigration as the initial remedy."

The excessive increase of criminals from
the negro population occupies the next chap-
ter, and the anomalous proportion of crimi-
nals among the population of African descent
is so startling that Mr. Boies analyzes the
causes very minutely. It appears, he says,
that although " they constitute less than 13'5 1
per cent of the total population, yet they con-
tribute one third of our convicts, though only
8"8 per cent of our paupers." Further on he
says that this alarming increase " is quite as
important and threatening as the foreign ele-
ment," which has been considered. The
cause for this disparity of criminals and pau-
pers he claims is that " a ruling white minor-
ity (in the South), possessing the wealth,
stands over a black majority which is paid
for their labor actually less than the fairly
comfortable subsistence which they received
as slaves, and denies to them every right of
equality. . . . This is as hostile to true Amer-
icanism as was slavery." And he continues.

LITERARY NOTICES.

269

that as a remedial measure, " Congress must
therefore enforce . . . the protection of the
colored race in the enjoyment of the rights
it has conferred upon it in the face of the
world."

In the chapter, Intemperance as a Cause,
Mr. Boies claims that alcoholic drink is the
direct or indirect cause of 75 per cent of all
the crimes committed, and of at least 50 per
cent of all the sufferings endured on account
of poverty, and that " the terrible effects of
this curse of humanity are displayed to all
the elements of our population, the native,
the foreign, the colored, and the urban alike."
As one of the remedies against intemper-
ance he suggests the establishment of cheap
coffee and tea houses and social halls, after
the fashion of those established by the Sal-
vation Army in England ; and he adds that
" as the way to a man's heart is through his
stomach," give him good, cheap food, and his
desire for stimulants will cease.

The author entirely disapproves of the
present general conditions of the arrest, prose-
cution, and imprisonment, or rather the man-
ner of imprisonment, of criminals. He claims
that the penal code should be reorganized,
and that more consideration should be shown
to " youthful delinquents ; " for " county jails
are nurseries of crime," and he attributes this
to the "wrong management of the prisoners."
" Xo State," he says, " should tolerate " " the
infamous jails as they at present exist in
county towns." And, "until the whole penal
system is reorganized upon the basis of com-
mon sense," he offers some excellent sugges-
tions as to the segregation of the different
types of prisoners — the one from the other,
as well as to how the number of prisons could
be and should be lessened.

The work is illustrated with fourteen
plates, and is a most valuable addition to the
social and economic literature of the nation.

The Great Commanders Series. Edited by
General James Grant Wilson. New
York : D. Appleton & Co.

Admiral Farragut. By Captain A. T.
Mahan, U. S. N. Pp. 333. Price, $1.25.
— General Taylor. By General 0. 0.
Howard. Pp. 386. Price, .$1.50.— Gen-
eral Jackson. By James Parton. Pp.
332. Price, $1.50.

The issue of what gives promise of being
a very attractive series of biographies has

been begun under the above general title.
The first volume is a life of Admiral Farra-
gut. The career of the most celebrated of
America's naval heroes is sufficiently pic-
turesque to warrant its being given the lead-
ing place. Captain Mahan's account of it is
of a popular character, being neither a mono-
graph on naval warfare on the one hand nor
a juvenile story on the other. A few pages
suffice to tell of Farragut's parentage, birth,
and his meeting with Commander Porter,
which determined the course of his life. His
boyhood, before the beginning of his naval
career, was too brief for much incident, for
his warrant as midshipman dates from the
middle of his tenth year. The record pro-
ceeds with Farragut's first cruise on board
the Essex durmg the War of 1812. A dozen
somewhat eventful years followed, bringing
the young man to the rank of lieutenant.
The years from 1825 to 1860 take compara-
tively little space, for they represent mostly
the routine service of a naval officer in time
of peace. Then come his grand achieve-
ments in the civil war — the New Orleans ex-
pedition, the operations at Yicksburg and
Port Hudson, and the entrance of Mobile
Bay. These events are described with much
detail and vividness, and the several opera-
tions are illustrated by charts. A short
chapter is devoted to the admiral's five years
of life after the war, and a sympathetic esti-
mate of his character closes the volume.

In the Ufe of Zachary Taylor is given a
record rich in those details which often re-
veal more of the subject's character than his
most formal and deliberate acts. We have
a glimpse at his early life in the frontier ter-
ritory near Louisville, Ky., then an account
of his first few years in the army, his service
in the Northwest Territory during the War of
1812, his campaigns against the Indians in
Florida and elsewhere, all leading up to his
magnificent achievements in the Mexican
War. His part in this contest is described
in a sympathetic and picturesque manner.
Close upon the heels of it comes his election
to the presidency, and a sketch of his ad-
ministration, of little over a year, brings his
life to a close.

In James Parton's biography of Jackson
is seen the hand of a master historian. Vig-
orous, as befits the history of such a strong
personality, it is everywhere judicious, faith-

270

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ful, and conscientious. Jackson's faults and
autacratic acts are not concealed, while bis
sterling qualities and remarkable achieve-
ments are set forth in due prominence. The
account of Jackson's campaign in defense of
New Orleans is given large space in the vol-
ume. It is told with much vivid detail, and
has the fascination of a tale of brave and
forceful deeds, which it is. This book is
notable, too, as being the last literary labor
of its author, who passed away two months
after it was completed.

The series is to be continued with lives
of Washington, Greene, Sherman, Grant,
Lee, and many others.

The Industrial Arts of the Anglo-Sax-
ons. By the Baron J. De Baye. Trans-
lated by T. B. Harbottle. London :
Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. New York :
Macmillan & Co. 1893. Pp. 135, 4to.
Price, $7.

This work, which is illustrated with thir-
ty-one cuts in the text and seventeen full-
page engravings, although of considerable
value to archaeological students, does not
shed much ethnographic light. As a mat-
ter of fact, all attempts at an arrangement
of antique arts and industries must to a cer-
tain extent be arbitrary and artificial, as
chronological classification can not be fully
carried out in the present condition of ar-
ch'ceological research. Baron de Baye claims
that the Jutes occupy the first place, chrono-
logically, among the invading barbarians of
Great Britain. The Saxons and Angles fol-
lowed soon afterward, and, according to the
author, they all settled in Kent, in which
county the most perfect archa;ological speci-
mens of the ancient Anglo-Saxon industries
are found. The baron uses Eutropius,
Ptolemy, and Tacitus very freely in his
proofs of the German ancestry of the early
Britons ; but it is an incontestable fact that
long before the advent of the Anglo-Saxon
barbarians, the Kelts, who were settled in
Ireland, had made incursions into England.
The archaeological specimens of Anglo-Saxon
industries which are illustrated in the beau-
tiful volume we have under observation
clearly resemble the accepted evidences of
an earlier industrial condition among the
Irish Kelts, and, more distinctly than the
authorities quoted by Baron de Baye, assert
their parentage as Keltic and not Germanic.

Apart from this too frequent error of
the ethnographer, the author has compiled a
very valuable addition to the archaeological
literature of England. The chapters on
Anglo-Saxon fibulae are not alone interest-
ing but important, although they stamp the
evidence of origin as Scandinavian rather
than German. In these chapters the author
proves with tolerable clearness an archaeo-
logical point which has occupied the atten-
tion of savants for centuries, for he shows
that the fibulae which have been discovered
in Kent and the Isle of Wight are of conti-
nental origin, and precisely similar in con-
struction to the ornaments of Gothic manu-
facture which have been found in the bar-
barian cemeteries of the continent. This dis-
covery at once establishes a proof of inter-
coui-se, and illustrates the artistic influence
exerted over that part of Britain which was
near to France ; while in other parts of the
work we have, upon comparison with the
catalogue of the Museum of the Royal Irish
Academy, distinct evidences of a Keltic ori-
gin for the industrial arts of the early Brit-
ons.

The author's analysis of the uses of the
beads and crystal balls which have been
found in the graves of the Anglo-Saxons is
very interesting. In Nenia Britannica it is
claimed that they were used for occult pur-
poses, whereas Mr. Roach Smith is of opin-
ion that " all the objects exhumed are ca-
pable of a perfectly simple explanation."
Baron de Baye, however, asserts with some-
what of authority that they were used as
talismans against sickness and " to neutral-
ize the force of the enemy's blows." The
work is excellently printed and got up, and
the plates and references will be found to
be of exceeding interest to ethnographical
students.

FAITH-nEALING, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, AND KlN-

DUED Phenomena. By J. M. Buckley,
LL. D. New York: The Century Com-
pany. Pp. 308.

Besides the subjects named in the title,
those of Astrology, Divination, and Coinci-
dences ; Dreams, Nightmare, and Somnam-
bulism ; Presentiments, Visions, and Appari-
tions ; and Witchcraft, are treated of in this
volume. In his discussions the author has
adopted certain principles as working laws,

LITERARY NOTICES.

271

namely : " That before endeavoring to explain
how phenomena exist it is necessary to de-
termine precisely what exists ; and that so
long as it is possible to find a rational ex-
planation of what unquestionably is, there is
no reason to suspect, and it is superstition to
assume, the operation of supernatural causes."
His course, therefore, is to ascertain the facts
and find a common- sense explanation for
them. In investigating phenomena, some of
which it is claimed are connected with re-
ligion and others with occult forces, it is
necessary to proceed without regard to the
question of religion. We look more closely
at the chapters on Faith-healing and Chris-
tian Science and the Mind Cure as re-
lating to the most vital subjects. In questions
of faith-healing allowances must be made for
the operation of natural causes, unobserved
or concealed, for the excited minds of wit-
nesses, and for other circumstances that
mask the real facts ; but, after all deduc-
tions have been made, the author believes
it must be admitted that "most extraor-
dinary recoveries have been produced, some
of them instantaneously, from diseases in
general considered incurable by ordinary
treatment, in others Imov^Ti to be curable in
the ordinary process of medicine and sur-
gery." The cases remaining to be accounted
for are those in which the effect is unques-
tionably produced by a natural mental cause,
and those in which the operation of occult
causes is claimed. In these cases, of both
classes, subjective mental states are impor-
tant factors. With or without belief they
can produce effects either of the nature of
disease or cure. Active incredulity is often
more favorable to sudden effects than mere
stupid, acquiescent credulity. Surprise at
seeing an unexpected effect may lead the
mind to succumb to the dominant idea. Con-
centrated attention, with faith, can produce
powerful effects ; may operate efficiently in
acute diseases, with instantaneous rapidity
upon nervous diseases, or upon any condition
capable of being modified by direct action
through the nervous or circulatory system.
Cures may be wrought in diseases of accu-
mulation with surprising rapidity where the
increased action of the various excretory
functions can eliminate morbid growth. Cer-
tain inflammatory conditions may suddenly
disappear under similar mental states, so as

to admit of helpful exercise ; which exercise,
by its effect upon the circulation, and through
it upon the nutrition of diseased parts, may
produce a permanent cure. The mind cure,
apart from the absurdities associated with it,
and from its repudiation of medicine, has a
basis in the laws of Nature. The pretense of
mystery, however, is either honest ignorance
or consummate quackery. All the practi-
tioners are unable to dispense with surgery
where the case is at all complex and mechan-
ical adjustments are necessary, and they can
not restore a lost member; but in certain
displacements of internal organs the conse-
quence of nervous debility, which are some-
times aided by surgery, they sometimes suc-
ceed by developing latent energy through
mental stimulus. The claims of Christian
faith-healers to supernatural powers are dis-
credited by facts which are cited ; and faith
cure, technically so called, as now held by
many Protestants, is pronounced " a pitiable
superstition, dangerous in its final effect."
It is harmful because it tends to produce an
effeminate type of character which shrinks
from pain, and to concentrate attention upon
self and its sensations. It sets up false
grounds for determining whether a person is
or is not in favor with God ; it opens the
door to every superstition. Practically it
gives support to other delusions which claim
a supernatural element. It diminishes the
influence of Christianity by subjecting it to
a false and inconclusive test; diverts atten-
tion from the moral and spiritual transforma-
tion which Christianity professes to work ;
destroys the ascendency of reason ; and irre-
sistibly tends, in some minds, to mental de-
rangement. "Little hope exists of freeing
those already entangled, but it is highly im-
portant to prevent others from falling into
so plausible and luxurious a snare, and to
show that Christianity is not to be held re-
sponsible for aberrations of the imagination,
which belong exclusively to no race, clime,
age, party, or creed." The relation of the
mind -cure movement to ordinary medical
practice. Dr. Buckley concludes, is im-
portant. " It emphasizes what the most
philosophical physicians of all schools have
always deemed of the first importance,
though many have neglected it. It teaches
that medicine is but occasionally necessary.
It hastens the time when patients of dis-

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

crimination will rather pay more for advice
how to live and for frank declarations that
they do not need medicine than for drugs.
It promotes general reliance upon those pro-
cesses which go on equally in health and dis-
ease. But these ethereal practitioners have
no new force to offer ; there is no causal con-
nection between their cures and their theo-
ries. ... Recoveries as remarkable have
been occurring through all the ages as the
results of mental states and Nature's own
powers,"

A Dictionary of Terms used in Medicine
AND THE Collateral Sciences. By the
late Richard D. Hoblyn, M. A. Oxon.
Twelfth edition. Revised throughout,
with numerous Additions, by John A. B.
Price, B. A., M. D., Oxon. New York :
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 822. Price, $2.25.

The appearance of the twelfth edition of
this dictionary, with revisions and additions,
which include even the terms used in the
very modern science of bacteriology and bring
the book fully up to date, places a use-
ful work at the disposal of physicians and
students. It is, of course, not exhaustive;
but it contains descriptions of all the ordi-
nary terms relating to medicine, and these,
although necessarily brief, are full enough
for all practical purposes. Under the head
of poisons, eight or nine pages are devoted
to a classification of the commoner ones, in
which the symptoms and most approved
methods of treatment are given.

Its small size and good print make the
contents of the volume readily accessible,
and the names on the title-page are suffi-
cient guarantees of accuracy.

A Manual of Practical Medical and Physi-
ological Chemistry. By Charles E.
Pellew, E. M. New York : D. Appleton
& Co. Pp. 314. Price, $2.50.

With the recent attempts to regulate the
conferring of medical degrees by means of
State legislation has come a tendency in the
more prosperous medical schools to make
their curriculums even more extended than
the law requires. One of the most important
innovations in this line has been the incor-
poration into the regular courses of a system
of laboratory work, by means of which each
student is given facilities for the actual
chemical and microscopic study of the proxi-

mate principles, the elements entering into
the composition of the human body and its
secretions, and the reactions and histological
characteristics produced by various patho-
logical conditions, which are of value in
diagnosis. The study of these subjects, in a
practical way, has until quite recently been
confined, in this country at any rate, to a few
physiologists and post-graduate workers, so
that an elementary text-book suited to less
practiced students became a necessity. Mr.
Pellew's book was designed to fill this need.
Its treatment of the subject is neither origi-
nal nor exhaustive, but it is very well adapt-
ed to the use of elementary students. It is
printed on heavy paper, and contains several
well-prepared plates and numerous line draw-
ings.

Ethnographische Beschrijving tan de
West en Noordkust van Nederlandsch
NiEUW-GuiNEA (Ethnographical Descrip-
tion of the Western and Northwestern
Coasts of Dutch New Guinea). By F. S.
A. DE Clercq and J. D. E. Schmeltz.
One vol., 4to, pp. 300, plates xlii. Ley-
den: P. W. M. Trap.

This magnificent work describes the col-
lections made by Mr. F. S. A. de Clercq in
New Guinea in the years 1887 and 1888,
which are now in the Royal Ethnographic
Museum at Leyden, Holland. The descrip-
tive portion of the work is mainly by Dr. J.
D. E. Schmeltz, conservator of the museum.
The book is a model of its kind. It is fur-
nished with a full list of all authorities
quoted, a list of all places mentioned, an
excellent map, and admirable indices — all
necessary, but, unfortunately, often omitted
in ethnographic writings.

The main portion of the work is divided
into three parts. In the first we have a de-
scription of each object — size, form, mate-
rial, details, and provenance — with references
to passages in any author where similar ob-
jects have been described or illustrated.
Where necessary for comparison or illustra-
tion, sketches are introduced into the text.
The objects described are divided into five
groups: a, dress and adornment; J, houses
and domestic utensils ; c, objects used in
trade, fishing, etc.; rf, weapons; e, objects
used on festal occasions, ceremonies, etc.
The plates, more than forty in number and
mostly colored, represent the objects de-

LITERARY NOTICES.

273

scribed admirably. Among some of the
more striking and interesting may be men-
tioned handsome headdresses of feathers,
ear decorations of tortoiseshell, boar-tusk
and red-bean breastplates, stone pounders
for sago, paddles, drums, spears barbed along
both edges, narrow shields elaborately deco-
rated with carving and color, quaint carved
figures, and wooden headrests or pillows.
Two plates are devoted to portraits showing
hairdressing, tattooing, and face ornaments.
The coloring of the plates is done in Trap's
best style. The second part of the work is a
study in geographical distribution of the ob-
jects. A brief ethnographic sketch of Xew
Guinea (based on Serrurier's classification) is
presented. Four tables are then given in
which the distribution of each type of ob-
jects is shown, and the fact is made plain
that there are distinct areas of culture in the
great island. A study of some ten pages
follows upon the relationships shown by the
ornamentation of the various objects. In
1884 Tan Rye prepared a complete bibli-
ography of Xew Guinea ; in Part in of this
work Dr. Schmeltz completes this to the
present date.

Messrs. de Clercq and Schmeltz are to be
congratulated upon their work. The Nether-
lands Government is also to be greatly com-
mended for the encouragement and aid
which it has given to its publication. Pub-
lic interest in ethnography is keen and intel-
ligent in Holland.

Geological Scrtet of Missouri. Vol. II :
A Report on the Iron Ores of Missouri.
Pp. 365. By Frank L. Xasos, Assistant
Geologist. Also Tol. HI : A Report on
the Mineral Waters of Missouri. Pp. 256.
By Paul Schweitzer, Assistant Geologist.
Published by the Geological Survev,
Jefferson City, 1892.

These volumes, which are issued by
Arthur Winslow, State Geologist, are ex-
haustive treatises upon the subjects of their
titles. Mr. Xason complains in his preface
that the lack of railroads and good public
roads made the survey difficult ; but, never-
theless, his patient work, assisted by the co-
operation of the intelligent citizens of the
iron-ore districts, enabled him to compile a
most interesting as well as valuable report.

In Chapter X of the Report on the Min-
eral Waters of Missouri Prof. Schweitzer

VOL. XLIII. — 19

makes some very interesting comparisons
between the domestic waters and the mineral
waters of Europe, which will be read with
profit by those engaged in the merchandising
of the Missouri waters. In these compari-
sons, the author was largely assisted by the
observations of Prof. Arthur Winslow. Both
volumes are elaborately illustrated. Em-
bodied with Vol. HI is a very useful ap-
pendix, containing a bibliography of mineral
waters, chronologically arranged.

The Mound-Btilders : their Works and
Relics. By Rev. Stephes D. Peet, Ph. D.
Vol. I, illustrated. Chicago: Office of
the American Antiquarian. Pp. 370.

Dr. Peet claims that man's first appear-
ance on the American continent was not con-
temporaneous with but toward the close of
the Glacial period — about ten thousand years
ago. As to the appearance of this prehis-
toric individual he quotes other students of
the subject to prove that the great French
archaeologist is in error when he claims that
man, immediately after the Glacial period,
was " of great stature." His research en-
ables him to corroborate Dr. Thomas Wil-
son's summing up of the characteristics of
palaeolithic man, viz., "He was of short
stature and strong of hmb."

The author says, in his first chapter, that
" In Great Britain ... we go back of the
Celts and Saxons to find the Britons and the
Basques, who were comparatively modern."
This is an error. Authentic records prove
that not only were the Celts pre-Briton, but
that the nomenclature of England was de-
rived from the Celts of Ireland and Scotland,
and was, at that time, precisely similar.

The chapter entitled The Stone Grave
People is of important interest. In this the
author devotes several pages to an analysis
of the mound-building theory as it applies to
America ; and from the specimens of pottery
that have been taken from the stone graves
he builds a probable and interesting pre-
sumption of the facial characteristics of the
prehistoric dwellers on this continent. In
another chapter he seems to recede from his
contention that the first appearance of man
in America was after the Glacial period ;
for he accounts for the scarcity of images,
etc., in the South by the assumption that
during the dissolution of the glacial forma-

274

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tlon the mastodon retreated northward, and
man — " the hunters " — followed.

The chapters on the Migrations, Village
Life, and Defensive Works of the Mound-
builders will be read with considerable pleas-
ure and benefit by archaiological students.
Dr. Peet has given the results of his research
in a style that will be acceptable even to
non-students. The work is profusely illus-
trated.

Practical Pocket-book of Photography.
By Dr. E. Vogel. Translated by E. C.
CoNRiVD, F. C. S. London : Swan, Son-
nenschein & Co. New York : Macmillan
& Co. 1893. Pp. 202. Price, $1.

Photography now exerts such an influ-
ence upon current literature and general
events that a handbook such as that which
Dr. Vogel has produced is not alone timely,
but useful. One of the great difficulties un-
der which beginners in the art bi photogra-
phy labor is the fact that the foamulas and
instructions in most guides are too many, too
complex, and too incomplete. In thi.s little
volume the author has selected only the sim-
plest and best formulas for developers, in-
tensifiers, etc., all of which have been ac-
cepted and are used by the professors of the
Royal Technical High School of Berlin.

The first chapter is devoted to an exami-
nation of the diiferent photographic appara-
tus in vogue among Germjin experts, and
contains also some very useful information
on photographic objectives, or the combina-
tions of lenses that are capable of giving an
optical image. Listantancous photography
is also treated in this chapter, and some
simple rules by which exposures should
be determined will be read with profit by
both amateur and professional photogra^
phers. Among the formulas for developers,
the author draws attention to a new and con-
centrated para-amidophenol developer, which,
under the name of " rodinal," has been intro-
duced by the Aktiengesellschaft fiir Anilin-
fabrikation. This developer only needs dilu-
tion with water to be ready for use, and " is
especially excellent for instantaneous photo-
graphs."

In the fifth part of Chapter IV, Dr. Vogel
gives some very simple instructions for the
recovery of silver from residues, which will
be useful for those who use developers, in-

tensifying baths, etc., in large quantities.
The fifth chapter is devoted to the positive
processes, which are examined in brief detail.
The book is illustrated fully, and the se-
lection of cuts and diagrams is admirably
suited to the subject matter. The translator
has added some important foot-notes to the
general text, which was evidently written for
the use of German students by Dr. Vogel.

Minkral Springs and Hkalth Resorts of
California. By Winslow Anderson,
M. D. San Francisco: The Bancroft
Company. 1892. Pp. 384.

Having regard to the value of the inves-
tigation of balneotherapy and the scientific
internal administration of mineral waters,
which has gone on with great benefit in
Europe for centuries. Dr. Anderson, believ-
ing that California possessed valuable min-
eral springs, spent several years examining
and comparing the waters of that State,
and gives the result of his labors in this
work. It is a perfect revelation of the min-
eral waters of California, and apparently
leaves nothing unsaid either as to their effi-
cacy as health restorers or of their compara-
tive value against well-known European min-
eral waters. Although the greater part of
the work is devoted to an exhaustive ana-
lytical examination of the waters, a fund of
useful information is added on the ancient
uses of mineral springs, their classification,
and the theory of their origin, with the
therapeutics or medicinal uses of the differ-
ent waters. The book is profusely illustrated
with cuts of the mineral springs and of Cali-
fornia's most famous health resorts.

Elementary Text-book op Entomology. By
W. F. Kirby, T. L. S. Second edition.
London : Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. New
York : Macmillan & Co. 1892. Pp.281.
Price, $3.

This work is elaborately got up, contain-
ing eighty-seven plates and over six hundred
and fifty figures, representing a pictorial li-
brary of the insect world. In his introduction
Mr. Kirby gives an unusually lucid explana-
tion of the structures and zoological nomen-
clature of the insect tribe, which he divides
into four classes of animals having bodies
composed of a number of joints or segments.
He pays reverent tribute to the researches
of Linn6, who divided all the insects known

LITERARY NOTICES.

275

to him into seven orders in his work Sys-
tema Naturae (1735). Fabricius (a pupil of
Linne) prepared a new classification of in-
sects, founded on the structure of the mouth,
and he renamed all the Linnsean orders, even
where they coincided with his own.

From these and other sources Mr. Kirby
selects only the nomenclature that is modern-
ly accepted, and he gives a most interesting
study in this volume. The chapters on the
Hymenoptera class will be found to be of
more zoological value than any account of
the habits of bees, wasps, ants, etc., that has
yet been published ; and as this family is,
industrially, of more consequence to the pub-
lic than any other of the insect class, the se-
lection of the Hymenoptera species for his
most elaborate history is well chosen.

The analysis of the Lepidoptera family is
treated very exhaustively. It comprises espe-
cially butterflies and moths, and the plates
at the end of the book very fully illustrate
the principal members of the species.

The Student's Handbook of Physical Ge-
ology. By A. J. Jdkes-Brown, B. A.,
F. G. S. Second edition, revised. Lon-
don: George Bell & Sons. 1892. Pp.
666. Price, $2.25.

This is a recast of Mr. Jukes-Browne's
Handbook of Geologj', to which he has added
over one hundred pages, chiefly dealing with
physiographical geology and the substructure
of the earth's crust. He shows pretty clearly
that, although physiographical geology is in
the nature of an incidental study, it is nev-
ertheless the most perfect basis upon which
to form accurate geological beliefs, and he
places this part of the work, very properly,
immediately following the chapters on Dy-
namic and Structural Geology.

Perhaps the most interesting section of
the work is that devoted to the underground
circulation of waters. The mechanical ef-
fects of this subterranean water circulation
are very important in geological research.
In England and in many parts of the Conti-
nent and America they usually consist of
landslips and cave formations ; whereas in
Ireland and in southern Germany the shell
of land above the water is oftentimes
" cracked," and, becoming detached from its
moorings, travels a mile or two from its
original location.

In the chapter on Igneous Rocks as Rock
Masses, Mr. Jukes-Browne has given some
highly interesting examinations of the por-
phyritic deposits of Wales, Scotland, and
Ireland, clearly indicating the volcanic struc-
ture of these countries. In dealing with the
influence of earth movements, the author
quotes Prof. Powell in connection with the
probable system and time of the bed forma-
tion of Colorado, and he says: "All the
facts concerning the relation of the water-
ways of this region to the mountains, hills,
canons, etc., lead to the inevitable conclu-
sion that the system of drainage was de-
termined antecedently ... to the formation
of the eruptive beds (lavas) and (volcanic)
cones." The work is profusely illustrated.

The Earth's History. An Introduction to
Modem Geology. By R. D. Roberts, N. A.
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
1893. Pp. 270. Price, $1.50.

This is a useful little volume, giving an
interesting sketch of the methods and chief
results of geological inquiry ; but the author
errs, in the same manner that do most Eng-
lish scientists and writers of scientific Eng-
hsh bibliology, inasmuch as that he assumes
that " the geology of Great Britain is indeed,
in epitome, the geology of the world." In
his preface he says that although individual
groups of rocks may be found developed on
a grander scale in one or other of the con-
tinental areas, and that " particular scenic
features, more majestic and impressive, may
be found elsewhere; in no part of the world
can so great a variety of geological phenom-
ena (no doubt often in miniature), and so
complete a system of natural agencies, either
in active operation or displayed in their re-
sults, be observed than in Great Britain."
The recent geological surveys of Arizona,
California, and other American States had
not apparently reached London when Mr.
Roberts wrote his book, for in the ascer-
tained stratigi-aphical conditions of these
States we have a far more generous field for
geological research than the well-ventilated
analysis of British geological conditions can
ever display. Nevertheless, the author has
compiled a valuable text-book of preUmiuary
examination of the study of geology, and in
the chapters upon Aqueous Rocks and the
Deposition in Past Times, and the Volcanic

276

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Action in Past Times, he has materially
added to the existing literature upon geo-
logical research.

Three books in the scries of English
Classics for /Schools, by the American Book
Company, well illustrate the excellent idea
on which the issue is based — which is that
of presenting the best English books, of suit-
able size, with the accompaniment of full
prefatory information concerning the sub-
jects, environments, and authors of the
works. The Sir Roger de Coverlcy Papers
from the Spectator is introduced with an
account of the Tatler, of which the Spectator
was the direct outcome, and its characteris-
tics, and biographical sketches of Addison,
Steele, and BndgcU, the authors of the Sir
Roger de Coverlcy papers. To a similar edi-
tion of Sir Waller Scotfs Marmion are pre-
fixed a characterization of Scott's work in
the poem, a description of the Scottish peo-
ple of the time of the action, their customs
and distinctions, an account of the signifi-
cance of the battle of Floddcn Field, and
maps of the region and of the battle-ground.
The Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham,
by Lo7-d Macaulay, is furnished with bio-
graphical sketches of the author and of
William Pitt. These volumes are neat in
appearance, moderate in price, and are suit-
able for the modest library as well as for the
schoolroom.

Robinson'' s Arithmetics (American Book
Company) have for many years had a wide
use among the best American schools. In
preparing new and revised editions, the ob-
ject has been kept in view of retaining all
the features which have contributed to their
usefulness and popularity, and making only
such changes as would add to their value
and bring them up to date. In the Frimary
work, stress is laid upon teaching pupils to
recognize numbers of objects before they are
required to represent numbers by words or
by figures. A valuable feature of the re-
vision of the Rudiments consists in the addi-
tion of about forty pages of introductory
exercises, of a general character, which adapt
the book for use in a two-book series, in con-
nection with the Practical Arithmetic, or it
may be used without the introductory exer-
cises, in a three-book series. The scheme of
revision of the Practical Arithmetic has been

rather one of judicious addition than of
omission, and yet by an economical adjust-
ment and by an occasional dropping out of
useless matter it has been possible to add
many valuable features and much new matter
without materially increasing the size of the
book. In the arrangement of subjects atten-
tion has been paid to placing those in se-
quence which run naturally and by easy
stages into one another, and to giving early
places to the most important and useful ap-
plications.

uEdeology, by Dr. Sydney Barrington
Elliot, is devoted to the physiology, hygiene,
etc., of the generative life of man. The
volume is compiled from a gi'eat variety of
sources, and is characterized by that vague
generality of statement which appeals to a
prurient curiosity without doing much for
the enlightenment of the reader. Full and
explicit instruction in the physiology of the
generative system, suitably timed and adapt-
ed in the education of the young, would be
of great service to society, and there is noth-
ing in this class of publications that will take
the place of it or approach it in value. (New
York, St. Clair Publishing Co., 260 pages ;
price, $1.50.)

In the sixth edition of M. Foster's Text-
hook of Physiology, the appendix by Dr. A.
Sheridan Lea, on The Chemical Basis of the
A nimal Body, is bound by itself as Part V
(Macmillan, $1.75). It has been enlarged,
and now constitutes a treatise on the chem-
ical substances occurring in the animal body.
The several classes of proteids are first de-
scribed, after which the chemistry of the
enzymes, or soluble unorganized ferments, is
given. Certain amorphous bodies allied to
proteids — mucin, gelatin, keratin, etc. — and
the few carbohydrates found in the human
body then receive attention. Other groups
are the fatty acids and their allies, the
amides and amido acids, the uric-acid group,
the ptomaines, and the various coloring mat-
ters. Cuts showing the appearance of crys-
tals of many of the substances described are
scattered through the text, and the volume
has a separate index and a list of authorities
quoted.

A treatise on Varicocele and its Treat-
ment has been prepared by Prof. G. Frank
Lydston, M. D. (Keener). After a description
of the disorder, its causes are reviewed, and

LITERARY NOTICES.

277

various modes of treatment, palliative and
radical, are set forth. The volume has an
mdex and a bibliography. A number of cuts
illustrate the appearance of diseased parts
and methods of operation.

Studies in American Hisfory, by Prof.
Mary Sheldon Barnes (Heath, 60 cents), is a
teachers' manual, consisting of a series of
outlines for lessons. It is designed to direct
pupils in studying history from the original
materials, and to that end gives lists of au-
thorities, with critical comments, summaries
of points to be made under each head, notes,
suggestions, and references for the teacher's
reading. The studies are divided into seven
groups, one being introductory and the
others covering the history of the territory
occupied by the United States from Colum-
bus to 1892. Machine teachers had better
let this book alone ; it is a tool they can not
handle.

An Elementary Treatise on Trigonometry^
by E. W. Hohson and C. M. Jessop, has been
issued from the press of Cambridge University
(Macmillan, $1.25). It is a book for beginners
in its subject, and parts are indicated which
students are advised to pass over until they
have been once through it. A large number
of problems are given, many of them practi-
cal, and the answers are put at the end of
the volume.

Having received from Prof. Kiikenthal
for examination some specimens of Apus
brought from Spitsbergen, Mr. Henry Mey-
ncrs Bernard has made a study of the species
and come to the conclusion that it is a vari-
ety of Lepldurus ylacialis, which he pro-
poses to call L. Spitzberffcnsis. His observa-
tions of this Apics form Part I of a book,
The Apodidce, which he has contributed to
the Nature Series (Macmillan, $2). In Part
I, also, he undertakes to prove that Apm is
an original crustacean easily derivable from
an annelid. Going on, in Part II, the author
maintains that Apus is, moreover, the origi-
nal of all the modern crustaceans.

The Heredity 0/ Acquired Characters is
the title of a paper by Dr. Manly Miles, Lan-
sing, Mich., which was published in The Pro-
ceedings of (lie American Association for the
Advancement of Science. The inheritance of
acquired character has been denied by Weiss-
man, who claims the " continuity of the
germ plasma as originally formulated, and all

inheritable variations are assumed to be the
result of fortuitous changes in the reproduc-
tive germs." Dr. Miles claims that it is im-
possible that a living substance, undergoing
constant changes, can be " a substance of
extreme stability" to "grow enormously
without the least change in its molecular
structure," as advanced in Weissman's the-
ory, and he adds that the fact of the germ
plasma being brought into intimate relations
with the metabolism of the body plasma, the
habits of the organism in modifying the gen-
eral metabolism of the body must also exert
an influence on the system of the germ cells,
and, through their constantly changing sub-
stance, on the forms of activity that are
transmitted from one generation to another.
From Dr. Miles's standpoint it is an almost
impossible supposition that from two germs
of identical qualities and tendencies, two
adult forms could be evolved, precisely alike
in every detail. To arrive at such a perfect
reproduction it would be necessary to have
the same series of anastates in the construc-
tive processes of every organ, and the same
destructive metabolism throughout the entire
period of growth, which, of course, could
very rarely occur in the surrounding condi-
tions of two individuals ; but he admits that
the repetition of an acquired habit for
several generations, uniformly transmitted,
might establish a dominant, inherited family
characteristic.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Baldwin, C. C. Review Extraordinary of
" Man and the Glacial Period." Pp. )i2.

Balfour, Henry. Evolution of Decorative Art.
New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 131. $1-25.

Bell, Clark. Bulletin. Psychological Section
of the Medico-legal Society. New York. Pp. 8.

Blackwell, Antoinette Bro\vn. The Philoso-
phy of Individuality. New York: Q. P. Putnam'6
Sons. Pp. 593. $3.

Bolles, Frank. At the North of Bear Camp
Water. Boston and New York: HouErhton,
Mifflin & Co. Pp. 293. $1.25.— Students' Ex-
penses. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University.
Pp. 45.

Browning, W. W. Modem Homoeopathy.
Philadelphia. W. J. Dornan, Printer. Pp. 32.

Bumham, W. P. Three Roads to a Commis-
sion in the United States Army. New York: D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. KiO. $1.

Bulletin, U. 8. Fish Commission. Volume X.
1890. Government Printing Oftice. Pp. 450.
With Maps and Plates.

Catalogue, Michigan Mining School. Hough-
ton. Pp. 175.

Chite, O. Sparry. Flat Pea. Michigan Asrri-
cultural E.xperiment Station Bulletin. Pp. 18.

Conn, H. W. Bacteria in the Dairy. Pp. 80.
Reprint.

278

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dana, Mrs. W. S. IIow to know the Wild
Flowers. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
Pp. 298. Sl-50.

Day, David T. Mineral Resonrces of the
United States. Washington: Government Print-
ing Office. Pp. 630.

Denizes, El Dr. G., and Delano, Manuel A.
(translator). Esposizidn elemental de los Prinzi-
pos fundamentujes de la Teorfa Atomiqa (Kle-
montary Exposition of the Fundamental Princi-
ples of the Atomic Theory). Paris. Pp. 35.

Drummond, A. T. Colore of Flowers in Rela-
tion to Time of Flowering. Pp. 5. Reprint.

Everett, Charles Carroll. The Gospel of Paul.
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mirtlin & Co.
Pp. 307. $1..W.

Extermination of the Gyppy Moth. Report of
the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture.
Boston. Pp. 93.

Frazer, Persifor. Thomas Sterry Hunt. Pp.
13. Reprmt.

Oilman, N. P. Socialism and the American
Spirit. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 376. %\.W.

Gladden, Washington. Tools and the Man.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 308. $1.25.

Glazebrook, R. T. Laws and Properties of
Matter. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 184.

Gould, George M., M. D. The Meaning and
the Method of Life. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.
297. $1.75.

Greppo, C. L'Eeprit Humain (The Human
Mind). Paris. Pp. 73.

Halsted, B. D. A Study of Solanaceous An-
thracnosie. I*p. 3. Reprint.

Hopkins, W.J. Telephone Lines. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 258. $1.50.

Houston, E. J. Electrical Measurements.
New York: W. J. Johnson. Pp. 429. $1.— Out
lines of Forestry. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
Co. Pp. 254. $1.

Journal of Physiology. Volume XIV, Nos.
2 and 3. March, 1893. Michael Foster, editor.
Cambridge, England. Pp. 100. With Plates.

Keen, W. W. Tumor of the Hard Palate :
Acute Appendicitis; Perinephritic Abscess. Pp.
7. Reprint.

Keenan, W. J., and Riley, James. The Trans-
mitted Word. Dorcliester Press Company, Bos-
ton. Pp. 113. 75 cents.

Laurie, S. S. John Amos Comenius. Syra-
cuse, N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 272.

Lecky, W. E. H. The Political Value of His-
tory. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 57. 75 cents.

Lloyd, J. H. A Case of Syringo-myelia. Pp.
12. With Plates. Reprint.

Marine Biological Laboratory. Report of the
Trustees. Boston. Pp. 01.

Morse, Edward S. A Curious Aino Toy. I>p.
7. — Latrines of the East. Pp. 16. Reprints.

Michelson, A. A. Spectroscopic Measure-
ments. Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 24. With
Plates.

Mivart, St. George. American Types of Ani-
mal Life. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Pp.
374. $2.

Orchardson, Charles. Light of the Ages.
Qnincy, 111. Pp. 304.

Orser, Levi. The Natural Method of writing
Music. Boston: Eastern Publishing Company.
Pp. 67.

Outdoors. Boston: Pope Manufactnring Co.
Pp. 76.

Palraberg, Albert. A Treatise on Public
Health. Macmillan & Co. Pp. 539. $5.

Pettee, Rev. J. T. Annual Address before the
Meriden (Conn.) Scientific Association. Pp. 31.

Proctor, R. A. The Old and New Astronomy.
Longmans, Green &, Co. Pp. 816. With Plates.
312.

Sabine, W. C. Physical Measurements. Bos-
ton: Ginn & Co. Pp. 126.

Salter, W. M. America's Compact with Des-
potism in Russia. J. B. Lii)pincott Co. Pp. 22.

Shari', F. C. The .Esthetic Element in Mo-
rality. Macmillan & Co. Pp. 131. 75 cents.

Smith, L. H. The New Education. Roches-
ter, N. Y.: Wilson & Young. Pp. 24.

Shufeldt, R. W. The Chionididie. Pp. 7.—
Ridgoway on the Anatomy of the Uummlng-Birds
and Swifts. A Rejoinder. Pp. 5.

Stephen, Leslie. An Agnostic's Apology. G.
P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 380.

Stevenson, J. J. Southeastern Alaska and its
People. Pp. 18. With Map. Reprint.

Taft, L. R., Gladden H. P., and Coriell, R.
J. Vegetal)le Tests. Pp. 30.— Spraying Small
Fruits. Pp. 20. Michigan Agricultural College
Bulletins.

The First Millennial Faith. By the Author of
Not on Calvary. New York: Saalfleld & Fitch.
Pp. 84. 50 cents.

The New Education. Monthly. W. N. and
E. L. Hailmann, editors. New York: Simpson
& Co. Pp. 24. $1 a year.

Transactions of the American Institute of Elec-
trical Engineers. March, 1893. Monthly. Pp.
50. $5 a year.

Tucker, Benjamin R. Instead of a Book. New
York: B. R. Tucker. Pp. 512. $1.

Waldo, Frank. Modern Meteorology. Charles
Scribner's Sons. Pp. 400.

Williams, S. G. The Natural Sciences in Ele-
mentary Education. Pp. 10. Reprint.

Wright, J. Horticulture. Macmillan & Co.
Pp. 154. 35 cents.

Youmans, Leroy F. Columbus Day Address.
Columbia, 8. C. Pp. 37.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

The Telautograph. — A new system of
electric transmission was recently exhibited
in New York and Chicago which promises to
rival in commercial importance the telephone.
This is the writing telegraph of Prof. Elisha
Gray. By means of it any one can with an
ordinary lead pencil on ordinary paper write
a message or make a sketch and have it re-
produced with exactness, in its minutest de-
tail, in the receiving instrument, which may
be hundreds of miles away. As this method
of communication necessarily provides a rec-
ord, and as the mistakes so easily possible
in any system of oral communication can
not occur, it should find a wide field of use-
fulness in the business world. Facsimile
telegraphs are almost as old as the art of
telegraphy itself, but no such system has
heretofore come into extended use, as they
have proved unreliable in practice and have
lacked the simplicity essential in any appa-
ratus designed for general use. Nearly all
previous attempts to provide autographic re-
production have depended upon synchronism

POPULAR MISCELLANY

279

in the movement of the transmitting and re-
ceiving instruments, a condition practically
impossible of realization. Unlike these ear-
lier devices, the system of Prof. Gray does
not depend at all upon the timed movements
of the instruments at each end of the line,
but like the telephone the transmitter posi-
tively actuates the distant receiver. The
fundamental principle of the apparatus is
that first applied to this purpose by Mr. E.
A. Cowper, of England, some fifteen years
ago; but Prof. Gray has greatly simplified
the construction and given a range and flexi-
bility to the instruments which practically
constitutes a new departure in this method
of transmission. The principle involved is
the familiar geometric one that any plain
curA'e, no matter how intricate, may be de-
composed into component parts along two
lines at right angles to each other. If, then,
a point be affixed at the junction of these
lines, all that is necessary to reproduce its
movements is to cause two other similar
lines to reproduce the movements of the
first two. A point at the junction of the
second lines will then travel in exact con-
formity with the first point. This principle
is made use of in the famihar draughtsman s
instrument, the pantograph, used for pro-
ducing enlarged or reduced copies of an origi-
nal drawing. In Prof. Gray's apparatus the
transmitting instrument consists of a box
provided with a leaf or table, upon which
the paper, which is fed from a roll mounted
upon the instrument, rests. The pencil is
placed at the junction of two silk threads at
right angles to each other, the farther ends of
which are wound upon drums in such a way
that the motion of the pencil serves to ro-
tate them backward and forward in exact ac-
cordance with the linear components of the
curves described by it. These drums have
each an arm which sweeps over a series of
electrical contacts, thereby sending a suc-
cession of electrical impulses into its line
wire proportional to its movement. A con-
tact playing between stops serves to reverse
the current with the reversal of the motion
of the drums. The receiving instrument con-
sists of a pen mounted at the junction of
two light metal arms, the movements of
which are controlled by the electrical im-
pulses sent to line by the transmitting mech-
anism. This control is effected by means of

a gear-wheel — one for each metal arm —
which is actuated by clutch-weights, which
weights are in turn controlled by the current
through the medium of an electro-magnet.
The gear-wheels, therefore, move in one di-
rection or the other in exact accordance with
the currents sent over the line wires and give
motion to the arms carrying the transcribing
pen. The pen is of the ordinary form in
such instruments, namely, a glass tube drawn
out to a capillary bore near the point and
supplied with a free-flowing ink.

Relations of Leaves and Boots. — As a re-
sult of investigations of the influence of ma-
nure on the development of roots, M. Deherain
has found that roots in unmanured ground
have a larger growth than in manured, having
to spread more in search of the scanty nutri-
ment. It having been previously found that
transpiration largely depends on the activity
of the roots as well as on the evaporative
surface, and is not, therefore, strictly pro-
portional to leafy development, it follows
that if a plant with small leafy growth evap-
orates relatively more water than one with
more abundant foliage, it is probably due to
large root-gi'owth procuring more water.
Volkens has observed that desert plants have
extraordinarily long roots. M. Deherain
further points out that solar rays falling on
a plant have the twofold work of assimila-
tion and transpiration to perform, and that
these are complementary. In strong, leafy
plants, assimilation is vigorous, so that trans-
piration is limited ; while in the leaves of an
" anffimic " plant a large fraction of the solar
energy is given to transpiration.

Folk Lore of the Kootenay Indians.—

Among the Kootenay Indians of southeast-
ern British Columbia there exist some
strange ideas of mythology. Their folk lore
is extremely picturesque, and bears strong
resemblance to that of the earlier European
and Asiatic races. The moon is regarded
by them as a man, and the sun [naid-nik) as
a woman. There was no sun in the begin-
ning (according to the Kootcnay-Indian
mythology), but after the Indians had vainly
endeavored to discover it, the coyote was
successful in making it rise above the moun-
tains. Another version makes the chicken-
hawk cause the sun to rise, and the coyote,

28o

THE POPULAR SCIE^^CE MONTHLY.

getting angry, shoots an arrow which misses
the sun, and causes the prairie to take fire.
The man in the moon is an Indian, who
chopped wood every day, including Sunday,
whereupon the moon came down and seized
hira, and he has been up there ever since.
In the same manner the stars are supposed
to be Indians, who have " got up into the
sky " from time to time ; thunder is caused
by a great bird, and the lightning by the
arrows which it shoots. Their version of the
flood is a very quaint piece of folk lore, and
apparently entirely original with them. In
a report of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, on the Northwest-
ern Tribes of Canada, Mr. A. F. Chamberlain
describes this legend very interestingly, and
in his pamphlet, which covers almost every
trait and characteristic of the Kootenays, as
well as statistics of the development of their
language and customs, he relates the strange
history of their sociology, folk lore, physical
characteristics, etc. The monograph is pub-
lished at the offices of the association at
Burlington House, London.

Animals for Pets. — What is required for
an every-day pet, says the London Spectator,
is that it shall be beautiful and intelligent;
that it shall neither be too large nor too deli-
cate ; and, if a bird, that it shall sing or talk
— preferably both. The limits set by size
and constitution are the main consideration
in the choice of pets. Yet even so, the pos-
sible range is very great, and might well ex-
tend far beyond the species which form the
main body of those usually seen at home.
Tame rabbits are plenty, but tame hares are
rare. A charming little foreign pet for the
house is the suricate, " an active and viva-
cious little fellow, some ten inches long, with
greenish-brown fur, large bright eyes, a short
pointed nose, and dainty paws, which, like the
squirrel's or the raccoon's, are used as hands,
to hold, to handle, and to ask for more. . . .
The creature is made for a pet, and is so af-
fectionate to its master that it can undergo
any degree of 'spoiling' without injury to
its temper." A larger and more beautiful
creature is the brown opossum from Tasmania
— the "sooty phalangist" — with fur of the
richest dark bro\yn covering its prehensile
tail like a fur boa. " Its head is small, with
a pink nose and very large brown eyes ; and

it has a ' compound ' hand, with claws on its
fingers, and an almost human and clawless
thumb, with the aid of which it can hold a
wineglass, or eat jam out of a teaspoon.
That owned by the writer was, without ex-
ception, the most fearless and affectionate
pet he has ever known. In the evening,
when it was most lively, it would climb on
to the shoulder of any of its visitors, and
take any food given it. It had a mania for
cleanliness, always ' washing ' its hands after
taking food, or even after running across the
room, and was always anxious to do the same
office by the hands of any one who fed it.
It made friends with the dogs, and would
' wash ' their faces for them, catching hold
of an old setter's nose with its sharp little
claws, to hold it steady while it licked its
face. The staircase and banisters furnished
a gymnasium for exercise in winter, and in
summer it could be trusted among the trees
in the garden." The American gray squir-
rel, the coati, the mongoose, the marmot,
and the prairie dog are commended as pleas-
ant pets in their various ways ; but only one
monkey — the capuchin — is thoroughly recom-
mended as an indoor pet. No other monkey
approaches it in good temper and pretty, win-
ning ways. They all have good, round heads,
with black fur on the top and light brown on
the cheeks. Their faces are most expressive
and seldom still, for they take deep and abid-
ing interest in everything in or about their
cages. One is mentioned which had learned
to put out burning paper by beating it with
its hands or knocking it against the floor.
Another, if it got a match, would collect a
heap of straw, strike the match, light its bon-
fire, and dance around it. " The capuchin is
so small, so pretty, and so clever that it seems
to embody all the good and none of the bad
points of monkey nature."

Spinal Cnrvatnrc in Schools. — The re-
sult was recently presented by Dr. Scudder,
of Boston, of an investigation into the seat-
ing of thirty-five hundred schoolgirls, with
especial reference to its effect on the spine.
Lateral curvature of the spine, the author
said, is probably due to several factors, among
which are the weight of the body falling upon
a weakened spine ; weakness of the spine in
bone, muscle, or ligament; and a position
persistently out of the median antero-poste-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

281

rior plane of the body. The author had made
a careful examination of the seating in schools,
and found that faulty positions are certainly
induced because of the lack of adaptation of
seat to pupil and of pupil to seat. It was not
possible to say how much of a factor poor
seating is in causing lateral curvature, but
there could no longer be any doubt that it
plays an important part. He favored as a
counteractive measure the introduction of
general neutral movements tending to de-
velop the whole child along the lines of
his natural muscular evolution, or exercises
like those of the Swedish gymnastic system.
Some of the participants in the discussion of
the reading of the paper suggested that faulty
school attitudes might be less potent in pro-
ducing curvature than bad habits acquired
independently of them. All agreed upon the
utility of suitable exercise as a counteractive.

Contrasts ia Mountain Seenery. — Writing
in Appalachia from the New Hampshire
mountains of his visit to the Sierra Madre
Mountains, Mr. Charles E. Fay begins by
describing the contrast between the two
scenes, than which, he says, there can hard-
ly be a greater one. " The cool, balsamic
air, the morning sky already piled with
cumulus cloud prophetic of showers in mid-
afternoon, the green fields cut by teeming
brooks imdulating away to meet the darker
forest green that drapes the varied shapes of
Whiteface, Passaconaway, Paugus, and the
lower slopes of Chocorua, are a striking an-
tithesis to what we looked on there. These
mountains woo you, and there is an anticipated
satisfaction in the promise made yourself to
stand on every one of the peaks within your
range of vision, attaining them by pleasant
joomeys through ferny, mossy, pathless
woods. But in southern California the
mountains do not invite one — at least, not
for their own sakes. The conditions of chmb-
ing are most unfavorable. The summer heat
ia intense. They lie beyond an unattractive
stretch ; for the grass and flowers that in
spring cover in wonderful profusion the
ground that slopes upward to the sudden be-
ginning of the steep foothills have withered,
and in July all is parched and barren. The
scattered live-oaks in the foreground, domi-
neered by the will of the prevailing wind,
have a half-frightened air ; nothing of the

repose of our maples, oaks, and white pines.
The mountains themselves, rising with an
almost monotonous uniformity of grade, are
also burned as dry as a cinder, their dead-
white rocks pallidly reflecting the remorse-
less sunlight. Not until near the summits or
deep in the canons do you find forest trees.
The dull vegetation of the slopes of lesser
altitude is of a shrubbery hard to penetrate,
the most common sorts being a so-called
greasewood (not the plant known in Colorado
by that name) and a disagreeable thorn-bush,
which, however slightly broken as you force
your way through it, gives forth a sticky,
milk-white juice ; less frequent is the raan-
zanita, its smooth, reddish brown being pret-
tier to the eye than yielding to the push."
These slopes aboimd in rattlesnakes, and
there are myiiads of lizards or " swifts."

Amenities of Seientific Controrersy. —

Says the Independent, April 20, 1893 : "Not
on the ground of Incompetency, but on the
ground of courtesy and decency, we will say
that there ought to be a certain overhauling
of the United States Geological Survey. Our
attention has been called to articles in the
American Anthropologist and the Literary
Northwest by William J McGee, member of
the Geological Survey, criticising a geological
work recently written by a competent gentle-
man not connected with the Survey, but who
has given great attention for many years to
surface geology. This review is sprinkled
with such words, applied to the author of
this volume, as ' idlers,' ' pitiable paupers,'
'swindle,' 'harpies,' 'parasites,' 'shyster,'
' gull,' ' vulture,' and ' betinseled charlatan.'
It is a long while since we have seen so inde-
cent an article."

The Channels of Mars. — A new explana-
tion of the channels of Mars is offered by
Mr. T. W. Kingsmill, of Shanghai, China, as
follows : As Mars revolves round the sun,
under the rule of gravitation, it must have
tides on its surface ; and since its moons are
not sufficiently large to cause any sensible
rise, its tides must be mostly solar. Now, the
best views we have of this planet are when
it is in opposition — that is, when we are in-
terposed between it and the sun, so that we
should always see it best at high tide. The
writer then makes rather a strong point of

282

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the great eccentricity of the orbit of Mars,
and the consequent heavy fall it makes when
plunging toward the sun. Situated farther
from the sun than we are, Mars must be re-
garded as an older member of our system ;
and since it is smaller than the earth, it is
only natural that its surface crust should be
thicker than that of our planet. Granting
this, then the internal pulp would not have
such a power to compensate for the rapid fall
as the earth does internally, for there would
not be so much of it, so that an external com-
pensation, assuming the crust to be too thick
to alter its form, would have to take place at
the surface. On the surface, of course, the
water is the only power ; therefore we should
expect, to put it in Mr. Kingsmill's own
words, " that the water in the ocean would
be projected into the Martial hemispheres,
and as the planet approached the sun, tides
would sweep round the planet ; that the ca-
nals should sometimes appear and>sometimes
be duplicated ... is only, a priori, what
might be anticipated."

Factors of a River's Character. — Where
a river shall go, what kind of a channel it
will cut, how much work it will do, says A.
P. Brigham, in his paper on Rivers and the
Evolution of Geographic Forms, are matters
determined, in an infinite number of ways,
by the underlying strata. A river flowing on
horizontally bedded rocks will tend to have,
in its youth, a narrow canon. Alternations
of hard and soft strata give, in early stages
of river life, alternations of rock benches and
talus slopes ; and many terrace-like horizons
on the sides of the valley mantled commonly
by soil, have this origin. Thus a terrace may
be built up or carved out, and it may consist
of alluvium, glacial rubbish, or bed rock.
Tilted rocks give different types of river val-
leys in infinite variety. These types may be
said to be just now beginning to attract a fair
share of the interest of geographers and ge-
ologists. They will, in years to come, afford
some of the most intricate as well as most
fascinating problems which are open to in-
quiry.

The Critical Point inaThandcrstorm. —

The belief that danger from lightning ceases
as soon as the rain begins to fall heavily —
expressed in the words of a mother reassur-

ing her children, " Don't cry any more, God
is sprinkling the earth with holy water " —
prevails extensively among the Flemish peas-
ants. Usually, according to M. P. J. De Rid-
der, lightning flashes from stonn-clouds at
the line between the heavy rain of large
drops and the finer rain — or from the edge
of the hea\7 rain. This is always the case
in cumulo-nimbus storms, and as the number
of storms of that kind exceeds all others, the
belief of the peasants is at least worthy of
attention. In nimbus storms, on the other
hand, the critical point is at the latter end.
In those of them which are developed in the
veil of strato-cirrus, as when the sky is slow-
ly covered, the rain falls at first without in-
tensity and increases gradually, with distant
thunder, while the storm itself does not seem
to make much headway. But suddenly the
rain falls more rapidly, and the dangerous
moment has come. The roar of the thunder
becomes terrible, the storm ceases, and the
sky is cleared.

The Agaves. — The name of aloes is com-
monly given to plants of peculiar appearance
which have long, fleshy leaves, with spines
on their tips and sides ; but this does not ex-
plain why the name has been given to species
to which it does not belong, such as the agave,
which do not resemble them. In Central Amer-
ica, their real country, where they have been
cultivated on a large scale from the most re-
mote times, they are called pitu, ozal, istle,
metl, maguey, etc. Probably, soon after the
discovery of America, a species of agave was
introduced in the south of Europe, and be-
came quite at home there. Linnaeus, not
realizing that all the agaves are American,
gave it the specific name of Agave ameri-
cana. Now there are more than a hundred
species on horticulturists' catalogues, but
many of these are only varieties. The uses
to which these plants are found applicable
are constantly increasing. In the United
States and Europe they are only garden orna-
ments. In Mexico they hold the first place
as wine plants and as textile plants. The
filamentous substance obtained from their
leaves is known all over the world as aloes
fibers. These fibers, of length and thickness
depending on the variety and locality, are so
elastic and durable as to be in great demand
for ropes, brushes, harness, and coarse woven

POPULAR MISCELLANY,

283

goods. The national drink of the country —
its wine and cider, there caWeA pulqite — is pro-
duced from this plant. When pulque not
yet wholly fermented — then called agua miel
or maguey juice — is properly distilled, an al-
coholic drink called mescal is obtained. The
plants are cultivated on a large scale in the
lower and middle lands of which the agave
is native, and the consumption and exporta-
tion have attained a great development. The
maguey enjoys the advantage of flourishing
where nothing else can grow ; and immense
tracts of sterile soil on the seacoast have
been, under the stimulus of profit, made to
produce remunerative crops. Yet the plant
does not reject fertilizers, and those contain-
ing potash have been found very good. The
elevation and climates of the several prov-
inces varying considerably, many kinds of
agave are cultivated, according to their adap-
tations, and have been given as many local
names, which are Aztec or Spanish. Some
ten varieties are adapted to produce fibers of
henequen, or Sisal hemp — long, silky, elastic,
and durable fibers suitable for rope-making
or for coarse woven fabrics. Other varieties
called lechuguiUa in Mexico, having shorter
and coarser fibers, furnish acceptable sub-
stitutes for hog's bristles in brush-making.
These fibers are called isile or tampico. The
thick and fleshy part of the root of some of
these agaves — called amole — is used for soap,
and when roasted fujnishes what is consid-
ered a " savory food." The Agave ameri-
cana is planted in Algeria for hedges. The
dry flower stalks furnish materials for light
buildings ; and the pliant pith is made into
insect paste and dressing for razor strops.

The Danger of the Cellnloid Bntton. —

An instance is related in England in which
a lady was put in great danger while stand-
ing before a bright but not blazing fire by
the burning of one of the fancy celluloid but-
tons of her dress. Experiments made by
Prof. C. Vernon Boys prove that articles
composed of this material are very suscepti-
ble to heat and take fire very readily. Prof.
Boys advises the public to guard themselves
from what is likely to be a grave source of
harm, even to the extent of fatal issues, by
taking the precaution of submitting to a very
simple test that resembling tortoiseshell, hair-
pins, combs, and other ornaments, and toys.

On briskly rubbing the button on cloth a
strong smell of camphor is evolved. If this
ready test fails, a small portion may be ig-
nited ; it will burn energstically with a flar-
ing noi^e, and the fumes of camphor given
off can not be mistaken. If the article is
composed of other material, the smell will
probably bring to remembrance that pro-
duced on burning feathers. Celluloid, it is
said, may be made uninflammable and safe
by mixing with it certain metallic salts —
among them the chloride of tin.

Evolution of the Color of Birds. — Mr.

Charles A. Keeler, of the California Academy
of Sciences, has published a volume of 336
pages on The Evolution of the Colors of
North American Land Birds. In explana-
tion of how he arrives at the theories which
he advances he quotes the experiments and
researches of many celebrated scientists on
the evolution of the colors of butterflies,
goldfish, spiders, etc., and dwells particularly
on the effects of climate and the laws of
heredity — uninterrupted transmission, sexual
transmission, and mixed or mutual transmis-
sion — as the chief elements in the evolution
of the coloring of birds' plumage. Remark-
ing, en passant, that the plumage of birds,
confined or diseased, loses its brilliancy, and
that, should the confined wild bird breed, the
plumage of the offspring would be of less
beautiful colors than the parent, Mr. Keeler
cites Mr. Darwin, who says : " Each of the
endless variations which we see in the plu-
mage of our fowls must have had some effi-
cient cause ; and if the same causes were to
act uniformly during the long series of gen-
erations on many individuals, all probably
would be modified in the same manner."
And in relation to the fact that there is a
general constancy of coloration in the wild
birds, he remarks that this uniformity of col-
oration is preserved by free intercrossing,
and where this is prevented by isolation or
migration, variations of color very frequently
take place. Young birds of various species,
after the autumn molt, continue through the
winter to assume, by degrees, the more in-
tense colors characteristic of the adults, with-
out changing feather; and Mr. Yarrell says
that many birds appear to become more bril-
liant in color as the breeding season ap-
proaches, without either molting or the

284

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wearing away of the tips of the feathers.
Of the effect of food aiul environment upon
the colors of bird plumage, Mr. Keeler be-
lieves that the direct influence of the envi-
ronment plays an important part in the evolu-
tion of colors, and regarding food he quotes
Mr. Frank Beddard, who says in Animal
Coloration : " If the nature of animal colors
is borne in mind, it seems impossible to
doubt the modifying action of food ; those
that are due to structural peculiarities of the
parts colored (e. g., feathers of many birds),
may be altered just as much as those that
are caused by the deposition of pigment ; for
the ' structural ' colors depend largely upon
pigment for their manifestation. . . . When
there is an obvious relation between waste
matter and the skin pigments, it can not be
doubted that variation only in the amount of
the food may lead to color changes." 8ome
interesting color evolutions are given in the
chapter entitled The Direct Influences of
the Environment ; for instance, if a yellow
canary is fed with cayenne pepper, it will
cause the feathers to turn red ; carmine was
given to some canaiies and the yellow feath-
ers became white ; while Amazon parrots
change from green to yellow when fed upon
the fat of certain fishes. Notwithstanding
the exhaustive manner in which Mr. Keeler
has treated the subject, he says that " the
paper is written more with the hope of
stimulating thought, and Inciting in a new
and as yet almost untrodden field of ornitho-
logical inquiry, than with the expectation of
reaching definite results."

Beharior of Yonng Snakes. — One of the

most curious matters connected with the
breeding habits of certain snakes is the
"egg-tooth," a small tooth fixed to the
united premaxillary bones, and projecting
slightly forward, beyond the edge of the up-
per lip. It is present only in the embryo,
and is Bhed very shortly after the escape of
the young snake from the egg. This tooth
is employed by the little snake in ripping
open the tough egg-covering in its efforts to
escape from its prison. The young of the
Hetcrodon (a snake closely allied to the cop-
perhead) are perhaps the most amusing
youngsters of the snake family. In Volume
XV of the United States National Museum,
0. P. Hay, in a paper entitled On the Breed-

ing Habits, Eggs, and Young of Certain
t^nakcs, gives a very interesting account of
the singular habits of the young Heterodon
from personal obseiTation. Having received
a consignment of twenty-seven eggs, which
were supposed to be those of the copper-
head snake, he watched the bursting from
the tough, parchment-like egg-covering of
the young snakes, and exactly eight days
after the receipt they were all hatched, the
length varying from seven to eight inches.
" From the moment of escape from the egg
all were quite active and manifested the
characteristics of the adults. ... A faint
hiss was uttered, but that may not have been
voluntary. One would sometimes flatten its
head and body and rear up with the anterior
third of its length from the ground. If one
did not know well their inoffensive natures,
one would be excused for fearing to handle
them. An exceedingly singular habit pos-
sessed by the adults (which is also practiced
by the young) is that of feigning death." On
being struck or teased, they will roll over
as if in the intensest agony, and then throw
themselves on the back and lie there as if
dead. If left undisturbed for a little while
they would turn over and creep slyly away.
In this paper Mr. Hay treats the peculiar
appearance of the eggs of snakes, which
bring forth their young alive, very interest-
ingly, and it would seem that even in these
also there is present th§ singular egg-tooth.

Precautions against tlic Lizard. — A su-
perstition prevails among the Shuswap In-
dians of British Columbia that a man who
sees a small lizard of a particular species
is followed by it wherever he may go during
the day, till at length, when he is asleep dur-
ing the following night, it finds him, and, en-
tering his body, proceeds to tear out his
heart, so that he quickly dies. The late Mr.
Bennett, of Spallumsheen, told Dr. Dawson
in 1877 that the Indians employed by him in
making a ditch for purposes of irrigation, on
coming into camp in the evening, would
jump several times over the fire in order to
lead the possibly pursuing lizard to enter the
fire and be destroyed in attempting to cross.
He also noticed that they carefully tied up
the legs of their trousers when retiring.
If, while at work during the day, they saw
one of these little lizards, which appeared to

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

285

be abundant in that locality, it would be
caught in a forked twig, the ends of which
were then tied together with a wisp of grass,
and the butt end of the twig afterward
planted in the soil. Thus treated, the lizard
soon died and became a natural mummy.
If, during the progress of the work, any one
found and carelessly tossed aside one of
these lizards, the Indians would throw do«Ti
their tools and search diligently until they
found it and secured it in this manner. A
Bimilar belief to the one here recorded is
noticed in Nature by Mr. C. Bushe, as pre-
vailing in Ireland, with reference to water-
newts, which are there called man-eaters.
One woman to whom a specimen was shown,
said they were known to jump dowTi peo-
ple's throats, to their certain destruction.

Life in Morocco. — The present popula-
tion of Morocco, says Nature, is a puzzle al-
most as diflBcult, although on a smaller scale,
as that of China. The authors, Lieutenant-
Colonel Sir Lambert Playfair and Dr. Rob-
ert Brown, of the Bibliography of the coun-
try, give 4,000,000 as an estimate, but the
guesses of various authorities vary between
1,500,000 and 15,000,000. The roads shown
on the map are merely mule and camel tracks
made by the feet of the pack animals, un-
aided by any engineer. Ferries are rare, and,
of course, bridges are unknown in the inte-
rior. The distribution of towns and villages
is often at variance with the rules holding
for civilized countries. The villages are
built out of the way of the main tracks, be-
cause people never travel in Morocco for
the good of the inhabitants, and it is safer
to live off the path of the tax collector and
the government official, who demand free
food and quarters. The great number of
place-names on the map of so thinly peopled
a country is due to the fact that the tombs
of saints are such important landmarks that
they must be indicated, even if only a few
persons live beside them. All the places
beginning with Sidi (Lord, Master) are either
actually tombs, or the tomb has formed the
nucleus of the town or village. "Sok," an-
other affix of frequent occurrence, means
market-place, and many of the established
sites for periodical fairs are uninhabited be-
tween the gatherings of people from far and
near. Many of the place-names on the coast

exist in two forms at least — the native word
and its Portuguese or Spanish translation;
Casablanca and Dar-el-beida (both meaning
white house), for example.

Sirius and its Companion.— The slight
periodical displacements of Sirius, first ob-
served about seventy years ago, were found
by Bessell in 1851 to be due to its revolution
in an ellipse, the largest diameter of which
is 2'4", which is accomplished in about fifty
years. Sirius wa% therefore concluded to be
a double star, with a satellite of considerable
relative importance, which, as it was not
seen, was supposed to be dark. The satellite,
which is not quite dark, was seen for the
first time in 1862; and can now, by taking
proper precautions, be found at will. The
period of revolution of the group has been
determined by M. Auwers at forty-nine years
and between four and five months, and the
orbit an ellipse, the greater axis of which is
2"42". Hence, according to the estimated
distance of Sirius, the two stars are about
twenty times as far apart as the distance of
the earth from the sun, or equal to the dis-
tance of Uranus. The mass of the whole
system has been computed to be 5 '24 times
that of the sun, of which Sirius has 2"20
times and the companion 1*04 time. The
orbit of the companion is larger than that of
Sirius. The distance apart of the two stars,
now less than 4", will diminish for two years
longer, after which it will begin to increase
again, till in twenty-six or twenty -seven years
it will exceed 11". The discovery of the
system and of the rate of its revolutions af-
fords proof of the operation of the force of
gi-avity beyond the limits of the solar system.

Origin of Cliolcra. — All the theories of
the origin of cholera, Mr. C. Egerton Fitz-
gerald suggests, may be right. The disease
will eventually be found to be a miasmatic
one, of which the hitherto undiscovered germ
can be conveyed through the air, by water,
excreta, infected bodies, and clothing. What
the special germ may be we as yet know not ;
but that it multiplies with enormous rapidity
under favorable conditions of heat, moisture,
and dirt there can be no doubt. Each indi-
vidual aa he is attacked becomes a fresh
nidus, a hotbed for disease germs, which
seek and require only a suitable soil or cul-

286

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tivating medium for their propagation ; but
a suitable condition of the atmosphere exists
only under certain exceptional circumstances.
This accounts for the rapid spread of cholera
among large masses, especially dirty masses,
of men. Each unit of infection acts on suit-
able media exactly as would a particle of
yeast if introduced into a mass of fermeuti-
ble fluid under the requisite conditions of
temperature, etc. This is the explanation
of the fact that, although cholera may arise
sporadically anywhere, under favorable but
exceptional circumstances, it is endemic only
in India, where, presumably, these requisite
conditions constantly prevail. That cholera
does spread principally along the lines of
human intercourse, that it may be conveyed
by man, by water, by fomites, may be
readily conceded without affecting the con-
tention as to its miasmatic and aerial charac-
ter and method of propagation. That chol-
era is caused by Koch's vibrio is.to the last
degree improbable, and certainly unproved,
and the presence of that microbe in the de-
jecta of cholera patients may be due simply
to its finding a congenial soil there.

Progress in Practical Electricity. — The

recent inaugural address of Mr. W. H. Preece,
as President of the English Institution of
Electrical Engineers, was devoted to a review
of the progress of the practical applications
of electricity during the forty years of the
speaker's service in developing them. He
spoke first of the extension of the telegraph ;
then of the oceanic service of the Eastern
Telegraph Company, the greatest cable cor-
poration in the world, whose system of 25,370
miles stretched from Cornwall to Bombay,
connected the northern and southern shores
of the Mediterranean with Malta, and joined
the various other islands of the Mediterra-
nean and the Levant. This company, in con-
junction with the Eastern Extension and the
Eastern and South African Companies, also
gained access to Australia and New Zealand
on the one hand, and the Cape of Good Hope
on the other, the combined mileage reaching
a total of 47,151 miles. There was no more
perfect apparatus in existence, the speaker
said, than the lightning protector, and if it
ever failed to do its duty it failed from man's
neglect of some simple rule or his failure to
keep it in proper order. In 1892 not an ac-

cident was recorded in any high-class tele-
graph instrument in the whole United King-
dom. To railways, electricity had proved an
invaluable adjunct — in the repetition of sig-
nals obscured from the view of the signal-
man, and in night signals. The number of
telephones in actual use might be put down
at a miUion. The speaker had recently de-
vised a new form of cable which would prob-
ably quadruple the rate of telegraphic cable
working to America. There was no theoret-
ical reason why we should not converse be-
tween London and every capital in Europe,
while it was not impossible to speak even
across the Atlantic. Heating and cooking
apparatus worked by electricity had not at
present a very favorable outlook, though
many appliances had been shown in opera-
tion. The electric light was essentially the
poor man's light. Many efforts were being
made to utilize the waste forces of Nature in
producing electric currents for the econom-
ical supply of the light. There were many
towns whose streets could be brilliantly il-
luminated by the streams running past them.
The range of power transmission had been
enormously extended since much higher
voltages than were possible with continuous
currents could be employed. Meanwhile,
power transmission by single-phase alternat-
ing current had also been developed. The
use of electrically transmitted power in mines
had been greatly extended within the last few
years, especially in America, and the use of
electrical energy for working railways was
making gigantic progress in the United States,
while it had begun to make a serious move
in the United Kingdom.

NOTES.

In his article in the April number of The
Popular Science Monthly entitled Science
and the Colleges, President D. S. Jordan
made the statement that "it is not many
years since the faculty of one of our State
universities spent a whole afternoon discuss-
ing the proposition to abolish laboratory
work in science." He now writes us that al-
though the statement was given on what he
regarded as good authority, he has been in-
formed by a member of the faculty of the
institution in question, who took part in the
discussion, that the question was not whether
laboratory work should be abolished, but
simply whether, in the course leading to the
degree of B. A., laboratory work should not

N-QTES.

287

be made optional rather than obligatory. In
other words, the movement was not in the
direction of opposing laboratory work in sci-
ence, but in the direction of the extension of
the elective system. He therefore desires
this correction to be made.

The entertainments called the Urania
Spectacles that have been given in New York
and Boston during the past two winters are
very successful efforts to exhibit some of the
wonders of science to large audiences. They
consist of numerous photo-opticon views, in
which coloring and motion as well as form
are shown, accompanied by an explanatory
lecture. The lecturer is Mr. Garrett P. Ser-
viss, whose ability to make the facts of as-
tronomy interesting is well known to the
readers of the Monthly. The spectacles are
now three in number : A Trip to the Moon,
The Seven Ages of our World, and The
Wonders of America. Among the more
striking pictures in the first of these are an
eclipse of the sun, close views of lunar
craters and canons, and the rotating earth
as it would be seen from the moon. In the
second the progress of a world from a nebula
to a bumed-out cinder is traced ; and in the
last the marvelous scenery of our own land
is depicted.

A SPECIMEN of volcanic dust from near
Omaha, Nebraska, is described by Prof. J. E.
Todd. It was from a stratum of whitish
aspect, about eighteen inches in thickness,
found in the bluffs facing the Missouri River.
It has the same general characteristics as the
volcanic dust which has been found in quanti-
ty along the Republican River, in southern Ne-
braska, and in Knox, Gumming, and Seward
Counties in the same State ; but it differs in
being stained with oxide of iron and the
sharp angular grains coated with carbonate
of lime. This locality is the most eastern
exposure of the volcanic dust stratum which
is found scattered over the most of Nebraska.

The summer school has now been made
an integral part of the university at Cornell,
and will be open for 1893 with courses con-
siderably enlarged in scope. Without ex-
cluding others qualified to take up the work,
these courses are offered for the special bene-
fit of teachers. They are open to women as
well as to men, and the same facilities for
work are afforded to those students as to the
regular students of the university. Every
opportunity will also be afforded for original
research. Addresses will be delivered similar
to those given in 1892 by President Schur-
mann and ex-President White. The session
will continue from July 6th till August 16th.

The sixth session of the Marine Biologi-
cal Laboratory, Woods Holl, Massachusetts,
will begin June Ist and continue till August
30th. The Laboratory for Investigators will
be open during the whole time, and in it
twenty special tables will be provided for

those who are prepared to begin original
work. An elementary course in vertebrate
embryology will be introduced, with studies
mainly of the fish- egg, conducted by Mr.
Lillie and Prof. Whitman, to open July 5th
and continue six weeks. The Zoological Lab-
oratory for Teachers and Students will be
open during the same time, with regular
courses in zoology and microscopical tech-
nique, in which students will be permitted,
under special conditions, to begin their indi-
vidual work as early as June 15th. The Bo-
tanical Laboratory will be opened July 5th
for study of the structure and development
of tj-pes of the various orders of cryptogamic
plants, giving special attention to the marine
algae. A department of laboratory supply
has been established, to fill orders from a dis-
tance, in which a considerable number of
species are kept in stock. The laboratory
is under the general direction of Prof. C. 0.
Whitman, with whom are eleven professors
in special branches, and other assistants.

The opinion expressed by Mr. Alfred G.
Mayer, in his article on the Habits of the
Garter Snake, published in the Monthly for
February, that snakes, as feeders on frogs
and toads, are therefore friends of insects and
indirectly enemies of leaves, is criticised by
Garden and Forest as a dangerous generali-
zation, "for, although the snakes will eat
frogs and toads, as well as anything else in
the line of small animals that they can mas-
ter, they also eat a great many insects, and
they could not, under any circumstances, in
justice, be called protectors of insects."

The valuable memoirs of T. A. Conrad
on the Tertiary fossils of the United States
have become very rare, and are practically
out of the market. Yet the work is of great
importance to students. The idea of reprint-
ing the work has accordingly found favor.
A reprint of the volume on the Eocene is
contemplated by Mr. Gilbert D. Harris, of
the Smithsonian Institution ; and the Wag-
ner Free Institute of Science, of Philadel-
phia, proposes to reprint the volume on the
Miocene — the Medial Tertiary — with plioto-
gravure reproductions of the original plates
and an introductory chapter and a table show-
ing the present state of the nomenclature of
the species ; the whole forming an octavo
volume of about 150 pages, with 49 plates.
Subscriptions are asked for loO copies, at
$3.50 each.

Mk. Joseph E. Carxe, Curator of the Min-
ing and Geological Museum at Sydney, Aus-
tralia, has been appointed a geological sur-
veyor.

Researches into the conditions of the life
of micro-organisms have shown them to be
variously adapted to considerable diversities
of temperature, and some of them to be
adapted to great ranges. Forster and Bleck-
rode have found a few species containing

288

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

immense numbere of individuals, and living
in various media, capable of developing at
the freezing point. One of them, a sea-water
species, produces phosphorescence at that
temperature. It is well known that to pre-
serve meat and other articles of food success-
fully it is necessary to employ a nnich lower
temperature than that of the melting of ice,
and experience has further shown that this
is best done when the atmosphere is deprived
of moisture.

Electric currents were proved many years
ago to exist in plants ; and Kuukel was led
to think, by his experiments, that they were
caused by the mechanical process of water-
motion, set up on application of the moist
electrode. A new investigation of the sub-
ject has been made by Herr Haaske, and he
concludes that it is unquestionable that
changes of matter of various kinds are con-
cerned in the production of the electric cur-
rents, especially oxygen-respiration and car-
bonic-acid assimilation ; and that while water
movements may possibly share in their pro-
duction, their share is certainly only a small
one.

Mr. Kepamath Basu has observed that
under the influence of enlarged education
and refinement, tattooing and the use of red
paint on the forehead and crown are dimin-
ishing among the women of Bengal. These
fashions still persist in the Northwest Prov-
inces, along with the insertion of thick and
heavy wooden plugs in the lower lobes of
their ears.

A SPECIMEN of ruthenium, weighing two
kilogrammes, prepared by M. Joly, was re-
cently exhibited in the French Academy of
Sciences. The metal is very hard and brittle,
having a specific gravity of 12, and melts at
the temperature of the electric arc. It is
usually found associated with iridium, palla^
dium, rhodium, and osmium, in platinum ores.

Hekr Dit Bois-Reymond has shown, in a
communication to the Physiological Society
of Berlin, that a sensation of heat follows
the immersion of the hand in a receiver
containing gaseous carbonic acid. A like
effect is produced by other gases which do
not enter into the composition of the air.
The heat sensation may be compared with
that produced by a temperature of 68° Fahr.
in the air. The phenomenon results from a
stimulation of the nerves sensitive to heat.

Experiments are described by Herr We-
sendonck, the object of which was to deter-
mine whether electrification is produced by
the friction of gases. While ordinary air gave
considerable charges, negative or positive,
according to the adjustment of the apparatus,
no electrification was produced when the air
had been previously freed from dust and
moisture. Oxygen behaved in the same way.
Carbonic acid, evaporated from the liquid
state, imparted a strong positive charge,

which was, however, reversed as soon as the
cold led to the precipitation of watery vapor.
Ordinary atmospheric dust was found to elec-
trify the brass negatively, and the charge
was increased by previous drying. It seems,
therefore, that pure gases are incapable of
producing electrification by friction, and that
the effects observed are conditioned by the
presence of solid or liciuid particles.

Ax account of a thunderstorm in which
the rain was mixed with live land mussels,
which is said to have occurred at Paderbom,
Germany, in August, 1892, is published in
Das Wetter. A yellowish cloud attracted the
attention of several people, both from its
color and the rapidity of its motion, when
suddenly it burst. A torrential rain fell with
a rattling sound, and immediately afterward
the pavement was found to be covered with
hundreds of the mussels.

Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant has presented
to the Missouri Botanic Garden, St. Louis,
his entire botanical library, which is particu-
larly rich in pre-Linnasan works.

The question of evaporation from the sur-
face of snow is discussed in a Russian mete-
orological journal by M. A. Miiller, of the
Observatory of Ekaterinberg. Authors who
have prexiously written on this subject, in-
cluding Nuckner, Woeikoff, and others, have
not been agreed as to whether the evapora-
tion exceeds the condensation from the air
in contact with the snow. The method usu-
ally adopted has been to compare the temper-
ature at the surface of the snow with the
dew point, and assume that if it is superior,
evaporation, if inferior, condensation, takes
place. M. Miiller's observations were made
from December 21, 1890, to February 28,
1891. His conclusion is that, according to
the method adopted, evaporation is superior
to condensation in the proportion of 73 to 27.

The report of a parliamentary committee
on the plague of voles in Scotland shows, on
the authority of early Celtic chroniclers, that
as early as the year 896 Ireland was devas-
tated by a plague of "vermin of a mole-like
form, each having two teeth," which " fell
down from heaven," and were driven out only
" by prayer and fasting." There is also a
pli'gic of voles in Tliessaly (a Grecian land),
anu the Mohammedans there have sent to
Mecca for some holy water.

OBITUARY NOTE.

The Rev. F. 0. Morris, of Yorkshire,
England, a well-known popular writer on
natural history, died April 10th, aged eighty-
two years. Among his many books were A
History of British Birds, in six volumes, and
Natural History of the Nests and Eggs of
British Birds.

CHARLES A. JOY.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MOKTHLY.

JULY, 1893.

THE SPANISH INQUISITION AS AN ALIENIST.

By henry CHARLES LEA.

THE degree of responsibility attaching to insane criminals has
in all ages been a difficult problem for the dispenser of jus-
tice. I am not aware that the contributions made to its eluci-
dation by the Spanish Inquisition have ever received attention,
and the history of a few cases which throw light upon this phase
of the subject may not be without interest.*

On September 20, 1621, Madrid was startled by the report of
a shocking sacrilege committed in the chapel of the archiepis-
copal prison. A vagrant Catalan, named Benito Ferrer, had been
arrested as an impostor for begging in clerical garments without
being in orders. The offense was not serious, and after a month's
detention he was about to be discharged, when, at the morning
mass, as the bell tinkled to announce the elevation of the Host,
Benito, who was praying with a rosary in an upper chamber,
rushed down like a madman to the chapel, seized the Host, which
had been deposited on the communion cloth, broke it, flung the
fragments on the floor and trampled on them, exclaiming, " O
traitor God of darkness, now you shall pay me!" He was
promptly seized and carried to the courtyard, where he was
stripped of his cassock, and when some fragments which had
lodged in it fell to the ground he endeavored to stamp on them
with similar ejaculations. The first care of those present was to
gather reverently the pieces of the body of the Lord ; the soles
of Benito's shoes were carefully scraped, and the dust and sand

* I am indebted to the custodians of the Konigliche Bibliothck of the University of
Halle for the opportunity of consulting the records of these cases.

VOL. XLIII. — 20

290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the courtyard were swept up into a white cloth. He was
chained hand and foot, maintaining a sullen silence and refusing
to answer questions.

The affair, of course, excited the utmost horror. The young
king, Philip IV, then only five months on the throne, sent his
favorite, Count Olivares, to ascertain for him the facts, and the
papal nuncio eagerly sought the details to report them to Rome.
The archiepiscopal vicar, Diego Vela, was at first disposed to take
a rationalistic view of the matter : he asserted the insanity of
his prisoner, and proposed to discharge him, doubtless thinking
it wiser to assume that no Spaniard in his senses could be ca-
pable of an offence so heinous. He was soon, however, made to
understand that this would not be allowed, and it came near
bringing him into trouble. The Holy Office asserted its jurisdic-
tion over a case of heresy so flagrant ; on the 23d Vela surren-
dered Benito to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition, and he
was sent to the tribunal of Toledo (for as yet there was none in
Madrid), with orders that his trial should be pushed with all ex-
pedition — an urgency that was soon after twice repeated, with
the significant addition that the king took special interest in the
matter and desired to know its progress.

The Toledan inquisitors were prompt and zealous. The dila-
tory and cumbersome forms of procedure were hurried as rapidly
as the traditions of the tribunal would permit, and in exactly
two months, on November 33d, they were ready to pronounce sen-
tence. Yet the end was still far off. In his examinations Benito
had been made to give the details of his life. He was forty-three
years old, born at Camprodon of an Old Christian father and a
mother who had Jewish blood in her veins — a fact which told
heavily against him. His father, who was a cloth-shearer, took
him, at the age of thirteen, to Montserrat and placed him with
an uncle, a chaplain in the monastery, who in six months sent
him back to his father in Barcelona. For some time he served
as page to persons of quality, and finally Don Bernardo Terres
took him to Flanders, when the Cardinal Archduke, Albert of
Austria, went thither in 1595. There he had a succession of
masters, with one of whom he returned through France to
Catalonia. Filled with desire for a religious life, in 1603 he en-
tered the Barefooted Carmelite convent of Mataron as a novice,
but was expelled in about six months. After vainly seeking to
join the Carthusians of Monte Alegre and the Jeronymites of
Murta, at last the Observantine Franciscans of Barcelona ga^ e
him the habit, but deprived him of it in about eight months.
Then two years were spent in study at Tarragona, which he left
in 1606, and since then he had led a wandering life in pious pil-
grimages. He had offered his devotions at the shrine of his

I

THE SPANISH INQUISITION AS AN ALIENIST. 291

namesake, San Vicente Ferrer, at Vannes ; twice he had been to
Rome and once to Monte Cassino and Sicily, besides traversing
Spain and Portugal in all directions. About 1609 came the
shadow which darkened his subsequent life. Fray Francisco de la
Virgen, the master of the novices at Mataron, was Antichrist,
and had bewitched him, since when all men whom he met were
demons. He had ceased to attend mass or to confess and take
communion, for he could find no priest who was not a demon.
When, in the upper room of the prison, he was praying and heard
the bell that told of the elevation of the Host, it was revealed
to him that the oflSciating priest was a demon and the Host was
another. In doing what he did he performed a service to God,
and he would repeat it fifty millions of times if the occasion
required. This Carmelite Antichrist, moreover, had in 1606 killed
Philip III and his three children, and their places had since then
been filled by demons. There was also some wild talk about
Toledo being no longer Toledo, nor Madrid Madrid, for Saint
Joseph had changed them all. Barcelona is now La Imperial
de Santa Ana, and is on the Straits of Gibraltar, for Catalonia
has grown so that it is now larger than all Spain was formerly.
The emperor of La Imperial is Don Dalman de Queralt, who
daily sends him food in prison,' so that he has not to accept it from
the demon alcaide and his attendants. The inquisitors have no
power to burn him, for they are all demons and he is in the hands
of God. With all this he was strictly orthodox in his replies to
the searching questions of the inquisitors as to his belief in tran-
substantiation and other points, except that he attributed five per-
sons to the Godhead — Michael and Gabriel being added to the
Trinity. Throughout the course of his prolonged trial nothing
could make him swerve from these hallucinations or modify his
story. He defied the inquisitors, for he had a revelation in prison
that they were demons and had no power to harm him.

Anxious as were the inquisitors to push the trial to a conclu-
sion, they felt that evidence of his sanity was necessary. For this
they examined the alcaide of the prison and his assistant and
three fellow-prisoners confined in the same cell. All testified to
Benito's soundness of mind as evinced in his daily actions, though
he was silent and reserved and spent most of his time in prayer or
in reading his breviary. Then three physicians were made to
visit him several times, who reported that he talked sanely on
most subjects but wildly on others; the insanity seemed feigned,
and according to the rules of the medical art he was sane. Thus
fortified, on November 23d, the inquisitors called together the
regular consuUa, an assembly of experts, to decide on the case.
There were nine of them in all — the three inquisitors, the Vicar
General as representative of the Archbishop of Toledo, and five

2 92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

consuliores or assessors. Opinions were not harmonious. Four
voted to put Benito to the torture to verify his sanity, and if this
failed then to make inquiry into his antecedents, Three voted to
relax him to the secular arm for burning, first employing learned
theologians to convince him of his heresy. Two were in favor
of the common-sense plan of endeavoring to ascertain his sanity
without torturing him.

When, in the customary routine, these diverse views were sub-
mitted to the Inquisitor General and Supreme Council, that body
considered the case maturely. Statements of the leading points
involved were laid before three skilled theologians, two of whom
pronounced Benito to be a sacrilegious heretic whose delusions
were feigned. The third opined that he might be subject to de-
moniacal possession, for which he should be exorcised and subse-
quently tortured to ascertain the truth. On January 12, 1623, the
Council sent these calificaciones or opinions to Toledo, with in-
structions to get similar ones from learned men there ; also, to ex-
amine more carefully into Benito's sanity and to investigate the
causes of his expulsion from the convents which he had sought to
enter. Accordingly, on January 15th, the Toledo tribunal assem-
bled four Dominican masters of theology, who unanimously pro-
nounced Benito a heretic and an impostor. To ascertain details
about an insignificant novice who some twenty years before had
passed a few months in a convent might seem impossible, but the
perfected organization of the Inquisition was equal to it. The
tribunals of Barcelona and Valencia were called upon ; the frailes
who had been novices in Benito's time were hunted up in the con-
vents to which they had scattered, and four were found who en-
tertained some recollection of him. Three of these described him
as mentally deficient, and one of these remembered his having
revelations ; the fourth spoke of him as " melancholy " and like
one possessed by the devil.

May was drawing to an end when the result of these investiga-
tions reached Toledo, and the summer was spent in fresh examina-
tions of those in the prison who had access to Benito, and in get-
ting opinions from theologians and physicians. That he showed
signs of insanity was evident, but the experts held that the proof
of soundness of mind was infallible and the madness feigned. So
when, on September 10th, another consulta was held, the vote to
burn him was unanimous — the two assessors who had previously
advocated simple investigation having been discreetly omitted
from the meeting. On this decision being submitted to the
Supreme Council, it met with no greater acceptance than the
former one, and it was sent back September 17th, with orders to
torture Benito to ascertain his intention in the sacrilege and the
fiction of his insanity.

THE SPANISH INQUISITION AS AN ALIENIST. 293

In the proceedings of the Inquisition torture was so universal
a resource in cases of doubt, that its use for the diagnosis of insan-
ity need not be a matter of surprise. On October l.'ith it was duly
applied. Benito was brought in and told that if he would not con-
fess the truth he would be tortured, to which he replied quietly
and earnestly that he had told the truth and was not mad ; he had
acted only as a faithful Christian and at the command of the
Eternal Father. In the administration of torture the nerve of the
patient was tested at every step with adjurations to tell the truth
and with promises of mercy — lying promises, for confession would
only secure the boon of being garroted before burning. So in
this case, at the making out of the sentence of torture, its formal
signing, the adjournment to the torture chamber, the stripping of
the prisoner, the tying him to the hanquillo or trestle, the adjust-
ing of the cordeles or sharp cords around each thigh and each
upper arm — at every stage he was entreated affectionately {con
mucho amor) to tell the truth and save his soul. Benito's resolu-
tion was immovable ; to every adjuration his reply was the same
— he had told the truth, and the inquisitors were demons. Then
the torture began, scientifically graduated, and at every interval
came the adjuration and the response. First a single cord around
each member, successively tightened and twisted into the flesh,
then another and another, until there were six on each limb and
the blood was dripping from them all — in spite of the universal
rule that torture was never to be carried so far as to cause effusion
of blood. The official report of the examination minutely records
his shrieks and groans and writhings, his fruitless prayer for
water, his despairing appeals to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, his cries
that he is dying, and through it all his unvarying response that
he had told the truth and that the inquisitors were demons — an
assertion which he once offered to prove if they would give him a
Bible. When the capacity of the cordeles to inflict increased tor-
ment was exhausted he was threatened with the rack, but to no
purpose. It was made ready and he was stretched on it, but this
augmentation of agony was fruitless. His resolution was uncon-
querable, and at last his wearied judges ordered him to be untied,
still threatening him with a continuation of the infliction if he
would not tell the truth. Exhausted nature could do no more ;
with a final ejaculation that he had told the truth, for they were
demons, he sank motionless and remained silent.

For three unbroken hours the torture had lasted, and the in-
quisitors said that it was too late for more that day, so they sus-
pended it, warning him that they were not satisfied, and that it
would be resumed if he did not tell the truth. He was carried
back to his cell, and two days later was brought before the tribu-
nal again. Even in the pitiless secular criminal legislation of the

294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

period tlie endurance of torture without confession was held to
purge away the evidence against the accused and to entitle him to
an acquittal, but it was otherwise in the Inquisition. The torture
had been merely to gratify the curiosity of the judges and to
justify the foregone conclusion of his burning. Therefore, when
they now examined him and adjured him to tell the truth, and he
answered by referring to his previous statements as the truth,
they had him carried back to his cell, and coolly assembled their
consnUores to pronounce on him a second sentence of relaxation
to the secular arm for burning. This was duly submitted to the
Supreme Council, which postponed its answer until November
24th. Then it said that it held him to be insufficiently tortured,
but that for the present he should be kept in prison and carefully
watched to determine his sanity. He was to be confined with per-
sons who could be relied upon and sworn to secrecy, who should
observe him and report.

Another cell was accordingly selected for him, in which were
two friars and a physician awaiting trial, who were duly sworn
and instructed. So matters continued for a year, with occasional
examinations of his fellow-prisoners. The friars pronounced him
a heretic and an impostor ; the physician a sane man subject to
delusions. Finally, in November, 1G23, another consultation was
held to vote upon his case, and he was unanimously sentenced to
burning. To this at last the Supreme Council assented, but desired
the execution to take place in Madrid, where the sacrilege had
been committed. He was to be sedulously kept in ignorance, and
to be secretly conveyed to the capital. There, on the Plaza
Mayor, January 21, 1024, there was a solemn auio dafe celebrated,
and he was burned alive as an impenitente negativo.

If this was expected to strike salutary terror into the hearts of
sacrilegious heretics and to instill respect for the Venerable Sacra-
ment, it signally failed of its purpose. In less than six months, on
Friday, July 5, 1G24, Madrid was again thrown into excitement
by a double sacrilege that had every appearance of organized
premeditation. During the celebration of morning mass in the
church of San Felipe, a man named Ren^ Perrault, who was
kneeling near the altar, suddenly leaped forward at the elevation
of the Host, and crying out, *' Why do you elevate this idol of
Christ, so that the people commit idolatry and offend God?"
he snatched it from the hand of the priest and scattered it in
fragments on the floor, while with a sweep of his arm he over-
turned the cup that was standing on the altar. At the same mo-
ment a similar scene was enacted at the church of Santa Bar-
bara, by a man named Gabriel de Guevara. It was with diffi-
culty that the offenders were rescued from the summary venge-

THE SPANISH INQUISITION AS AN ALIENIST. 295

ance of the worshipers, and they were forthwith brought before
the Inquisitor General, Andres Pacheco. Apparently his experi-
ence of the Toledo Inquisition in the previous affair had not been
satisfactory, for he at once himself undertook the preliminaries
of the case, and hastily organized for its trial in Madrid a tri-
bunal which sat in extemporized quarters in the convent of the
Barefooted Carmelites. The documents concerning Guevara are
not accessible, but those of the trial of Perrault present to us an-
other aspect of the dealings of the Inquisition with insanity.

Friday was busily occupied with the examination of witnesses,
and at 10 p. m. Perrault was brought before the inquisitor. He
was still defiant, and told his story without hesitation or conceal-
ment. He was about forty years old, born at Angers, of Catholic
parents. Brought up in strict orthodoxy, he had, until within a
fortnight, always been a good Catholic, regular in his attendance
on confession, communion, and mass. For twelve years he had
wandered around Spain as a peddler of needles, thimbles, and
such small wares, till a fortnight before at Talavera, while in the
street seeking customers, a sudden revelation from God showed
him that there was only one God, the Creator ; that Christ was
an impostor, who had properly expiated on the cross the blas-
phemy of calling himself the Son of God, and that what the peo-
ple adored was idolatry and an offence to the Almighty. From
that time this idea was ever present to him, on the road and in
the house. God impelled him to do what he had done, and to
come to Madrid for the purpose, so that the act should be more
conspicuous. He had left his saddle-bags at Getafd, a village a
few leagues distant, on Tuesday, July 2d, and had come with his
mule to Madrid. There he first looked up a French paper and
fruit seller named Domingo Diaz, of whom he inquired the address
of his brother, Pierre Perrault, an embroiderer living in Madrid.
He found him, and told him of the revelation and his consequent
intention, when Pierre earnestly reasoned with him, telling him
that it was a suggestion of the devil, and that he would denounce
him to the Inquisition if he were not his brother. The next morn-
ing Pierre came to him with an Italian, a tailor ; they bought
some food, crossed the bridge of Toledo, breakfasted by the road-
side, and Ren^ agreed to return to Getaf d. After parting he trav-
eled half a league on his mule ; he chanced to overtake a man
going thither, by whom he sent word to his host to forward his
saddle-bags to Madrid, and he turned back to the city. To render
his act more symbolical, he resolved to postpone it until Friday,
so he had a day and a half on his hands. These he spent in seeing
the sights of the capital, and he mentioned his disappointment on
going to the theatre and finding there was no performance. On
Friday morning, at breakfast, he abstained from his customary

296 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

flask of wine, in order that it might not be said that he was drunk.
Ho went to San Felipe and committed the sacrilege.

The next day, when brought again before the tribunal, his en-
thusiasm had evaporated. Excitement had been followed by re-
action ; he realized the terrible fate in store for him, and was
eager to avert it in any way he could. He had been drunk, he
said, the day before, and had stumbled against the priest ; he was
crazy ; people had given him food which rendered him insane,
and the ill-treatment to which he had been exposed habitually on
the road had driven him mad. At Consuegra he had been beaten ;
at Medellin, beaten, imprisoned, and his goods confiscated ; he
was a good Catholic, and believed all that the Church believed,
and he remembered nothing of the confession of yesterday ; or, if
he had said such things, he must have been out of his senses.
When, later in the day, his formal defense was drawn up and
presented by his advocate, it was that he had been drunk, and he
now supplicated mercy and penance.

Probably no trial before the Inquisition, since the abounding
harvest of its early days', was ever conducted so speedily. Though
all the formalities were observed, on Sunday, July 7th, the con-
sultation was held to determine the sentence. The opinion was
unanimous that he should be relaxed to the secular arm for burn-
ing, but on the question of preliminary torture a difference arose.
The Inquisition was naturally desirous to know whether he had
accomplices ; the simultaneous crime of Gabriel de Guevara
pointed to concerted action ; besides, one of the witnesses had
testified that Rend entered San Felipe with two men clad in the
French fashion, who departed at the commencement of the mass.
Rend had consistently denied this, asserting his independence of
action and sole responsibility ; but heretic plots were always float-
ing before the inquisitorial imagination, and it was manifestly
impolitic to burn Rend without utilizing him for the conviction
of his possible confederates. While, therefore, all the consulters
agreed that he should be subjected to unlimited torture, some
held that it should be in caput alienum, to discover his associates ;
while others, in view of his varying confessions, humanely urged
that it should be employed for the benefit of his soul, and to con-
firm him in the faith. The next day the Supreme Council, in
approving the sentence, decided that the torture should be in
caput alienum.

At ten o'clock that night Rend was brought before his judges
and questioned as to accomplices, but he only repeated his story,
with a few additional details. In the torture which followed he
manifested a curious mingling of strength and weakness. Before
it commenced he flung himself on his knees and begged piteously
for mercy, but refused to forfeit his soul by perjury, for he had

THE SPANISH INQUISITION AS AN ALIENIST. 297

no associates, and no Frenchmen entered San Felipe with him.
During all the stages of graduated torment he screamed and
struggled desperately, but he adhered resolutely to this, and re-
fused to incriminate any one ; he had never breathed his inten-
tion to any save his brother, who threatened to denounce him to
the Inquisition. This continued till half past one o'clock, when
the inquisitors, finding the torture fruitless, announced its dis-
continuance ; but next morning they commenced proceedings
against Pierre Perrault and Domingo Diaz. What was the re-
sult of these we do not know ; but had anything been extracted
from them further compromising Ren^, it would have appeared
in the records of his trial.

If the torture thus was useless in caput dlienum, it at all
events served the more humane purpose of confirming the suf-
ferer in the faith. On July 12th word was brought to the inquis-
itor Chacon that Ren^ desired to return to the Church : he has-
tened to the temporary prison where the culprit was confined and
found this to be the case. Now that he had nothing further to
hope, Rend said that his first statement was true. He had been
misled and tempted by Satan for fifteen days before the crime,
and had believed that he was rendering a service to God ; but now
God had enlightened him, and he reverted to his former belief in
the Trinity, in the passion of Christ, and the transubstantiation
of the sacrament, and he desired to be reconciled to the Church.

On the following Sunday, July lith, Madrid enjoyed the re-
ligious spectacle of an auto da fe, in which Rene Perrault was
burned, but doubtless his recantation obtained for him the priv-
ilege of being garroted before the pile was lighted. Thus, if
Spain furnished to Geneva the Unitarian Miguel Servet, France
returned the favor with Rene Perrault.

Another case, less tragic in its issue, illustrates a different
phase of the subject. At Cobeiia, a village not far from Alcahl,
de Henares, a poor carpenter of plows named Benito Penas, or de
Valdepeiias, created scandal by denying that Christ had died on
the cross. He was wholly illiterate but devout, and once, when
visiting Madrid with a load of corn, he had heard in the church
of San Felipe a sermon by afraile, who spoke of the passion and
resurrection as metaphorical.* The idea took possession of his

* The Spanish preachers of the period allowed themselves the largest license in the
effort to attract attention, and shrank from no jjrotesqueness of irreverence. In the trial
in 1592, of Fray Joseph de Sigiienza, a distinguished Jeronymite friar and favorite of Philip
11, there is a description of a sermon preached before the king by Fray Cristobal de Lafra,
another Jeronymite, on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. He said the Minotaur was
Christ and the Labyrinth the gospel liber (lenerationix ; Ariadne was Our Lady, and the
child she bore to Theseus was Faith ; and that if anv one desired to enter the Labvrinth

298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

brain and played havoc with the anthropomorphic conceptions of
orthodox theology, including the humanity of Christ. This had
been going on for several years, when early in 1G40 the attention
of the archiepiscopal visitor, Bernardo Garcia de San Pedro, was
called to it on his reaching Cobena. He promptly threw Benito
into the village jail, whore many priests and friars visited him
and labored fruitlessly to convince him of his error. Then, in
July, Dr. Buendia, the physician of CobeSa, denounced him to
the nearest commissioner of the Inquisition, Juan Burgalez Diaz,
at Fuente el Saz. The affair was now fully in train. Diaz has-
tened to Cobena, took testimony of some of the chief inhabitants,
and forwarded the papers to the tribunal of Toledo. The inquis-
itors submitted to calificadores the propositions contained in the
reports of Benito's talk, and they were duly condemned as heret-
ical and Manichsean. The Inquisition, however, appears to have
thought little of the matter, and it would probably have gone no
further, had not a zealous cleric of Cobeila, toward the end of the
year, written that the people were scandalized at the delay in act-
ing in an affair so notorious. Thus stimulated, on January 25,
1041, the inquisitors issued an order to bring Benito to Toledo,
and to sequestrate his property— the latter being the customary
precaution for the event of a sentence of confiscation.

It was the invariable j^ractice of the Inquisition, whenever
possible, to make the accused, whether innocent or guilty, pay all
the expenses attending his trial. The familiar to whom the order
was sent was therefore required, in sequestrating Benito's prop-
erty and placing it in the hands of a receiver, to keep thirty ducats
for expenses ; if there was no money or grain, then he was to sell
at auction enough to realize this amount, and he was also to
reserve a bed and bring it with him for Benito's use in prison.
These customary instructions were rigidly carried out as far as
practicable. A reversionary interest in some money left by a dead
brother was garnisheed, and security taken to await the result of
the trial. The only ready money in Benito's possession amounted
to nineteen copper coins or cuartos, worth in all about two reales
and a half ; so on Sunday, February 10th, his pitiful store of furni-
ture, tools, and clothing was sold by auction in the jjublic square
after high mass, reserving only the garments on his back and one
of two old shirts for him to wear ; even the rosary in his hands

he must pray to the Virpin for her child. He also said that God was the heifer lo, who
converted Jews ; that wherever God trod he left his footprints, which are his works ; ask-
ing who made these admirable works of the sun, the moon, etc., the answer, Yo Yo, gave
the name, which is God — the name impressed by the steps of the heifer. It is therefore
by no means improbable that Benito Pcnas may have heard a sermon which conveyed to
him the impression he described and led to his misfortunes.

THE SPANISH INQUISITION AS AN ALIENIST 299

was taken and sold. The total proceeds amounted only to two hun-
dred and forty and a half reales, or less than twenty-two ducats,
and, after deducting costs, the commissioner handed over to the
familiar twenty ducats. The expenses of guards and the journey
to Toledo consumed more than half of this ; and when Benito was
delivered on February IGtli at the carceJes secretas, there were but
one hundred and five and a half reales left, which were duly en-
tered on the prison books. The timid suggestion of the familiar
of some remuneration for his time was left unnoticed.

When on February 18th Benito was examined, he willingly re-
peated all the articles of the creed except " suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, and on the third day arose
from the dead," which, he obstinately refused to utter. It was
easy to entangle him in a theological discussion in which he was
led to deny the incarnation and conception by virtue of the Holy
Ghost, the birth and death, and the second advent. The efforts
made to convince him of his error of course only hardened him
in his belief, and he resolutely accepted the inferences drawn from
it until he came virtually to deny the Trinity — the three names were
but three different designations for the one God. He was ready,
he declared, to die in defense of his belief, and all the theologians
in France and Spain could not convert him. When the counsel
assigned to him by the Inquisition found him immovable, he
formally withdrew from the defense in order not to incur the
penalties decreed against advocates who undertook to defend her-
etics.

In March the inquisitors began to entertain doubts as to
Benito's sanity, and sent to Cobeiia to obtain testimony respecting
it. The evidence was emphatic as to his soundness of mind. The
cura had known him for forty years, and had never entertained a
doubt of it ; the alcalde and others who knew him said the same.
It was true that for a year or more prior to his arrest he had
grown very devout, praying much and frequenting the church ;
moreover, on one occasion he had remained shut up in his house
for some days, until the alcalde and cura broke in and found him
lying with a rosary in his hand in a trance, from which they
aroused him with a rope's end, and he had repeated this in a her-
mitage near the town, but in all the relations of life he had shown
himself in full posession of his faculties.

Thus the case went on with the deliberation customary in the
Inquisition, until in July it was resolved to make a more thorough
investigation as to his sanity. Two learned theologians were de-
puted to examine him, who reported him to be crazy : his answers
bore no relation to the questions put to him ; he talked of the om-
nipotent God and the sweet name of Jesus ; the Virgin was cre-
ated without father and mother, and was anterior to Eve ; when

300 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

we die our bodies are not converted into dnst ; in fine, he was not
a case for the Inquisition, but for a madhouse. Then two more
theologians were caUed in, and their opinions were the same.
Evidently under the paternal care of the Inquisition his insanity
was developing rapidly.

In August the three physicians of the Holy Office were sum-
moned to examine him. Two of them questioned and cross-ques-
tioned him, and were prepared to pronounce him sane when the
third arrived, and in the course of examination chanced to ask him
what signs he had of his own salvation, to which he replied that
when he commended himself to God he saw lights like stars de-
scend from heaven to him. This convinced them, and they re-
ported that he was insane or was subject to diabolic illusions.
The alcaide of the prison and his assistant were then interro-
gated ; they had no doubt of his insanity from his disordered talk
and from the fact that they always found him kneeling in prayer.
Then as a last effort two more distinguished theologians were de-
puted to convince him of his errors, but they found their labors
hopeless, and declared that he was crazy.

It was impossible to resist this cumulative evidence, and when,
on August 29th, the customary consultation was held to decide
upon his fate, the opinion was unanimous that he was irresponsi-
ble. It was agreed to write to the authorities of Cobena to that
effect ; his relatives must send for him and take care of him ; he was
never to be allowed to leave the town, and must henceforth wear
a doublet half gray and half green. To this the response was that
he had no kindred, but Juan de San Pedro was sent to bring him
home, while a plaintive allusion to the expense of the journey
and the absence of all property from which to defray it received
no attention.

Thus the poor wretch was beggared, deprived of all means of
livelihood, and condemned to the disgrace of exhibiting his shame
in a party-colored garment at a time when such insignia had a pe-
culiarly sinister significance. According to the convictions of the
period, it was all for the greater glory of God ; but as an alienist,
the Inquisition was clearly not a success.

In liis ascent of Mount Dnlit in Borneo, 5,090 feet liigli, Mr. Charles Hose
found a cave above four thousand foot, with wild tobacco growing at its mouth
and several remarkable ferns, of one of which the fronds were fourteen feet long.
The fauna illustrated the widespread distribution in the highlands of Borneo of
IMinalayau forms. A magnificent view was had from the moss-clad summit of
the mountain of distant ranges. Some natives reported having heard a tiger
roaring in the neighborhood, but Mr. Hose found that the sound proceeded from
a gigantic toad, which measured fourteen inches and a half round the body.

FOSSIL FORESTS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. 301

FOSSIL FORESTS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.

Br Prof. SAMUEL E. TILLMAN.

THE fossil forests of the Yellowstone Park are among its most
interesting features, but they are as yet not within ready
reach of the tourist, and so little has been published about them
that only a few have definite knowledge of them. It is accord-
ingly believed that the accompanying notes in regard to them will
be of general interest.

The locality to which the term fossil forest has especial refer-
ence is along the west rim wall of the valley of the Lamar River,

'* -"' .^^ f^- "j._^. r^.~ "^^

Fig. 1. — Point of Specimen Eidge : a, 5, c. Petrified Stumps.

or East Fork of the Yellowstone, opposite the mouth of Soda Butte
Creek. The same arrangement of petrified stumps and trees is,
however, found at many other places in this region separated by
considerable distances — as much as thirty miles. The general
physical conditions that brought about the existing state of affairs
is so plainly shown by the present exposures that they can not be
mistaken.

The petrifactions were visited at several places, but the descrip-
tion appended refers to a part of the ridge designated on the map
of the Geological Survey as Specimen Ridge, at a point about six
miles east of the junction of the Lamar and Yellowstone Rivers.

302

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The fossil trees exposed at this point are along the upper slope
of the southern wall of Lamar Valley. The slope here makes an
angle of about thirty-three degrees with the horizon, and is about
nine hundred feet long. The petrifactions are standing all the
way up this slope, interspersed with the living conifers of to-day,
represented at Fig. 1. At first sight it appears that either these
ancient trees grew upon the slope now exposed, and tliat there had
been no change in the slope from that day to this, or that the
present had brought back exactly the same surface conditions as
existed when the now silicified trees were alive. Such an appar-
ently simple conclusion would, however, involve more remarkable
phenomena than are yielded by the true explanation.

A little consideration, taken in connection with the formation
of the bluffs that connect Lamar Vallev with the higher lands to

t. J

^

f ±.

<lJ

■*■

V- 7

-Jh ... ri?

^ t

t ,

♦

*■

^ 4

. 'f

*

*- 3

+-

+

^^ 2

•i^

■^ ^ /

f Ancient Forest Tkccs. I PsTitinco Remains.

Fig. 2.

Ljvino Trccs.

the south and west, shows clearly the action that has placed the
living and petrified trees upon the same slope at this and at many
other points in the region.

A series of forests has grown upon successive levels, each
level having been produced by an accumulation of volcanic mate-
rial which destroyed the then existing forest. This explanation
will be readily understood from Fig. 2. The level upon which the
first forest grew is indicated by 1. The level of the volcanic
accumulation which destroyed this growth of trees is shown at 2.
Upon this second level came another growth of trees, which in
turn was destroyed by the accumulation extending to the level 3.
Still another forest grew upon 3, which in course of time was
destroyed. This alternate growth and destruction was repeated

I

FOSSIL FORESTS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. 303

until at this place (Specimen Ridge) there grew and were destroyed
certainly nine successive forests and very probably twelve. This
is all indicated in Fig. 2.

The number of growths was determined in two ways : first,
where the roots of the petrified trees are shown at different
heights in the same vertical plane the horizons of growth may be
counted directly ; second, when the roots do not show, a sufiicient
vertical distance must be allowed between horizons to insure that
the projecting body at one level does not have its roots in the hori-
zon next below.

In the second method it was sometimes possible to settle the
point by following the volcanic ledges to the right or left until
a petrifaction with roots exposed, decided the question.

In later times, when the volcanic accumulations had ceased
and the agents of denudation began their work, the layers of lava
and the great sheets of volcanic conglomerate were gradually
eaten away, and a valley formed extending in the figure from e
to/. Along the southern slope of this valley are growing the
conifers of to-day, and on the same slope also stand the petrified
stumps, the relics of many successive forest growths. Thus,
though the living and the petrified trees now stand on a com-
mon slope, the latter did not, like the former, all grow at the
same time, but succeeded each other at intervals of considerable
length.

These standing silicified stumps and fallen trees were found
varying in diameter from one to seven feet. Two sections of trees
were found so perfect that the rings of annual growth throughout
could be counted, except a few, perhaps fifteen or twenty, near the
heart and bark. One tree, measuring three feet in diameter, had
two hundred and twenty-two rings of growth ; and another, of three
feet five inches diameter, had two hundred and forty-three — this
without any allowance for a few missing rings at the center and
toward the bark. The larger of these trees was only about half
the size of the largest seen. Many were found varying in diame-
ter from five to seven feet, but none of this size were seen exposing
the rings throughout the entire section. Judging from the close-
ness of the rings in certain well-preserved portions of these larger
trees, many of them must have been at least five hundred years
in attaining their growth, if the rings were truly annual. Tak-
ing one half this number, two hundred and fifty years, as the more
probable age of the successive forests at this point, it is seen that
the earliest of these trees were living more than two thousand
years before the latest, during which time there were alternating
conditions of growth and accumulation of volcanic material.

This estimate makes no allowance for the time necessary for
the formation of a soil upon the volcanic material, which at first

304

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sight would seem necessary for the support of such a vigorous
vegetation. It is not probable, however, that any considerable
time was necessary for this purpose, for, with rare exceptions,
each succeeding forest took root and began to grow very prompt-
ly after the destruction of its predecessor. In most cases the
destroying flood consisted largely of mud, ashes, conglomerate,
and other volcanic material, which formed an excellent base for
vegetation, and it was doubtless covered with a luxuriant growth
as soon as it was dried or cooled suflSciently, and this would re-
quire only a short time.

In some cases the trees grew upon a true lava base ; but even
then the growth began very promptly after the flow; for the
upper surface of the lava soon weathered sufficiently for vegeta-

FiG. 3. — A, B, Petkifieu Stumps near Yancet's, Twenty Miles East of the Mammoth

Springs.

tion to gain a footing. The growing trees then too, as at present,
were frequently supported by very shallow and wide-spreading
roots. We now often see large trees with such roots standing
over rocks barely covered with soil ; the petrified trees exhibit the
same phenomena.

Besides the standing stumps, the fossil forests contain many
specimens lying upon the ground. Some of these were petrified
standing and then fell, and others were down before the petrifying
action began. It is frequently possible to distinguish between the
two by position : the first lie upon the present slope of the ground ;
the second often show the original surface and consequently pro-

FOSSIL FORESTS OF THE YELLOWSTONE, 305

ject at different levels from the bluff and making angles with the
present slope.

It is rather remarkable that only one standing stump was
seen with a limb in position. This is probably explained by the
fact that the living trees were generally covered by the volcanic
material to a less height than that of their lowest limb, and con-
sequently the upper portions of the trees were not preserved, but
suffered aerial decomposition. In general, the silicified tree
would crumble down as rapidly as the rock material surround-
ing it would wear away, so that only short stumps would now
be found, though greater lengths were petrified. The absence
of limbs in position is, however, mainly due to the fact first
named. In the cases of trees that were petrified after they had
fallen, both limbs and roots projecting upward were seen in
position.

Specimens of rotten wood far progressed toward complete de-
composition were found perfectly preserved in stone. Petrifac-
tions of bark were of frequent occurrence, and the channeling and
borings of worms or insects were beautifully preserved in some
of the specimens, so that we literally have petrified wormlioles.

In some of the finer water-collected debris were found beau-
tifully preserved impressions of leaves, showing two kinds of
deciduous trees, of course entirely different from any trees now
growing in the region. The impressions of conifer leaves and
the petrified part of the same wood were also found.

These fossil tree remains are found over a wide area in the
park region. Along Soda Butte Creek they stand up the slope
from each bank, but along the Lamar River, below the mouth
of this creek, they exist on the left bank only, the imbedding
material having been entirely removed from the right bank by
erosion. The lowest level at which a petrified tree was seen
in position was on the left bank of the Yellowstone, opposite
the mouth of Hell-roaring Creek, at an approximate altitude of
G,100 feet. The highest was seen opposite the mouth of Soda
Butte Creek at an altitude of about 8,180 feet. These trees are
twelve or fifteen miles apart, and the original slope of the ground
between them is not known, so that they can not be taken to fix
the highest and lowest levels of the original forest growths in
this area.

At Specimen Ridge, where the closest examination was made,
the lowest stump seen in position was at an altitude of about
7,000 feet, and the highest a little over 7,500 feet. There were
here between these limiting growths certainly nine successive
forests, and of course an equal or greater number of incursions

I of imbedding materials.
In what has gone before I have not attempted to designate
I TOL. XUU. — 21

3o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

definitely the imbedding material which ingulfed and destroyed
the living trees, and in which the petrifactions are now preserved.
It is, as a rule, a volcanic conglomerate, or more properly a vol-
canic agglomerate. Both the matrix and the imbedded particles
are truly volcanic, the latter varying from dust particles through
all sizes up to those of a ton or more in weight. That the ma-
terial has been accumulated under the partial influence of water
or liquid conditions is evident from the more or less perfect
stratification which generally pervades it. But the fragments are
too angular, brecciated, to have suffered transportation and de-
position as subaqueous or as ordinary river deposits. The at-
tractive and satisfactory explanation of conglomerate formation
in the Utah plateau region, as given by Captain Button, I do not
think is here applicable.

From what is said in regard to the series of forest growths, and
also from the evident thinness of the layers of debris, it is seen
that there have been many successive sheets of the material laid
down at the same place. In some cases and at certain places a
true lava flow has spread over the surface, but the lava ledges can
at points be seen to shade into the brecciated layers. While not
believing that the great mass of breccia, covering perhaps hun-
dreds of square miles, has been literally ejected from volcanoes,
as has been held in regard to such formations, I am of the opin-
ion that the accumulation of it is the direct and immediate result
of such eruption.

Extruded lava from any source, not being perfectly liquid,
would cool with an irregular surface, and terminate in precipitous
ledges. This unevenness of surface, combined with the original
slope that must have existed to permit any flow, would soon cause
the whole area involved to be abundantly floored with volcanic
fragments of all sizes. During subsequent eruptions these frag-
ments would be swept along by and with the liquid matter, com-
mingled with dense showers of ejected material, amid heavy flows
of water from accompanying rains and perhaps melting snows, to
be deposited in layers at varying distances from the centers of
eruption, the condition in which it is now found. Most of the
material of which the agglomerate is composed I believe to have
come by the ordinary process of weathering of previously erupted
rocks, and then to have been commingled with finer ejected ma-
terial and distributed by the floods which accompanied some if
not all the outflows. The interstratified beds of varying degrees
of fineness are the results of less tumultuous periods.

Such explanation involves the necessity for many centers of
eruption in the park region, for the agglomerate is of wide ex-
tent, and it could not be formed at great distances from these
centers.

PRIVATE RELIEF OF THE POOR. 307

The above facts and conclusions are from personal observa-
tions begun by me in the summer of 1891, and continued in the
summer of 1892 in connection with Prof. James Mercur, of the
United States Military Academy. Not until we had embodied
our conclusions in an official report to the War Department did
I become aware that anything had been published in relation to
these forests. I then learned that Mr. W. H. Holmes, formerly of
the Hayden Survey, had made reference to them in his report on
The Geology of the Yellowstone Park; also that Mr. W. H.
Weed, of the present Geological Survey, had contributed an arti-
cle upon the subject to the School of Mines Quarterly for April,
1892. It is believed that nothing else of an explanatory or de-
scriptive nature has been published in regard to these interesting
objects.

PRIVATE RELIEF OF THE POOR.*

By HEEBEET SPENCER.

LESS objectionable than administration of poor relief by a law-
established and coercive organization, is its administration by
privately established and voluntary organizations — benevolent
societies, mendicity societies, etc. " Less objectionable " I say, but
still, objectionable : in some ways even more objectionable. For
though the vitiating influences of coercion are now avoided the
vitiating influences of proxy-distribution remain. If we have not
a machinery so rigid as that set up by the Poor Law, yet we have
a machinery. The beneflciary is not brought in direct relation
with the benefactor, but in relation with an agent appointed by a
number of benefactors. The transaction, instead of being one
which advantageously cultivates the moral nature on both sides,
excludes culture of the moral nature as much as is practicable,
and introduces a number of bad motives. Note the ill workings
of the system.

As with the Poor Law (especially the old Poor Law), those
who were distressed but thrifty and well conducted got no help,
while help came to the improvident and ill-conducted ; so with
philanthropic societies in general. The worthy suffer rather than
ask assistance ; while the Avorthless press for assistance and get it.
The Mansion House Fund of 1885-'SG, for instance, was proved to
have gone largely for the support of " idlers, spendthrifts, and
drunkards." " They did not see why they should not have some
^^ of the money going as well as their neighbors." In some cases
l^ft applicants " demanded their share." Where, as in another case,

L

* From the author's Principles of Ethics, vol. ii, just published by D. Appletcn & Co.

3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cmplo3^ment was offered, less than one fifth proved to be good for
anything ; showing that the unemployed, so generally pitied as
ill-used by society, are unemployed because they either can not
or will not work ; and showing, by implication, that charitable
agencies enable them to evade the harsh but salutary discipline
of Nature.

The encouragement of hypocrisy, which goes along with this
neglect of the good poor who do not complain and attention to
the bad poor who do, becomes conspicuous when religious pro-
fessions are found instrumental to obtainment of alms. Clergy
and pious women, easily deluded by sanctimonious talk, favor
those who are most skilled in utterance of spiritual experiences,
and in benedictions after receiving gifts. Hence a penalty on
sincerity and a premium on lying ; with resulting demoralization.

This evil is intensified by sectarian competition. There are
competing missions which collect and distribute money to push
their respective creeds, and bribe by farthing breakfasts and
penny dinners. Nearly half the revenue of one mission is dis-
tributed in credit tickets, and " if the recipient wishes to cash his
ticket, he can not do so until after the evening service": this
vicious system being carried even to the extent that the visitors
try " to force its tickets on the most respectable and independent
people" — pauperizing them to make hypocritical converts of
them. Said one woman, poor but clean and tidy, who saw how
the emissaries of the Church favored the good-for-nothings : " I
didn't want any of the good lady's tickets . . . but it's very 'urt-
ful to the feelings to see that careless drinking people liviiig like
'ogs gets all, and them as struggles and strives may go without."
And not only does there result a discouragement of virtue and an
encouragement of vice, but there results a subsidizing of super-
stitions. Unless all the conflicting beliefs thus aided are right,
which is impossible, there must be a propagation of untruth as
well as a rewarding of insincerity.

Another evil is that easy-going people are exploite by cunning
fellows who want to make places for themselves and get salaries.
A crying need is found; prospectuses are widely distributed;
canvassers press those on whom they call; and all because A, B, C,
etc., who have failed in their careers, have discovered that they
can get money by playing the parts of manager, secretary, and
collector. Then, if the institution vehemently urged is estab-
lished, it is worked in their interest. But it is not always estab-
lished. As there are bubble mercantile companies, so there are
bubble philanthropic societies — societies kept up for a time merely
for the purpose of getting subscriptions. Nay, on good authority
I learn that there are gangs of men who make it their business to
float bogus charities solely to serve their private ends.

PRIVATE RELIEF OF THE POOR. 309

Not even now have we reached the end of the evils. There is
the insincerity of those who furnish the funds distributed : ilun-
kyism and the desire to display being often larger motives than
beneficent feeling. These swindling promoters when writing to
wealthy men for contributions, take care to request the honor of
their names as vice-presidents. Even where the institutions are
genuine, the giving of handsome subscriptions or donations, is
largely prompted by the wish to figure before the world as gen-
erous, and as filling posts of distinction and authority. A still
meaner motive co-operates. One of the nouveaux riches, or even
one whose business is tolerably prosperous, takes an active part
in getting up, or in carrying on, one of these societies supposed to
be originated purely by benevolence, because he likes the pros-
pect of sitting on a committee presided over by a peer, and per-
haps side by side with the son of one. He and his wife and his
daughters enjoy the thought of seeing his name annually thus
associated in the list of officers ; and they contemplate this result
more than the benefits to be given.

There are kindred vitiations of other organizations having
beneficent aims — orphanages, provisions for unfortunate and aged
tradesmen, etc. Here again, the least necessitous, who have many
friends, are usually those to benefit, and the most necessitous, who
have no friends, are neglected. Then there is the costliness and
corruption of the selecting process — expensive and laborious can-
vassing, exchange of votes, philanthroiDic log-rolling. Evidently
the outlay for working the system, in money and effort, is such as
would be equivalent to a maintenance for many more beneficiaries,
were it not thus wasted in machinery.

JSTor is it otherwise with institutions thought by most people
to be indisputably beneficial — hospitals and dispensaries. The
first significant fact is that thirty per cent of the people of London
are frequenters of them; and the largeness of this proportion
makes it clear that most of them, not to be ranked as indigent, are
able to pay their doctors. Oralis medical relief tends to pauperize
in more definite ways. The out-patients begin by getting physic
and presently get food ; and the system " leads them afterward
openly to solicit pecuniary aid." This vitiating effect is proved
by the fact that during the forty years from 1830 to 18G9, the in-
crease in the number of hospital patients has been five times
greater than the increase of population ; and as there has not been
more disease, the implication is obvious. Moreover, the promise
of advice for nothing attracts the mean-spirited to the extent that
" the poor are now being gradually ousted out of the consulting-
room by well-to-do persons." People of several hundreds a year,
I even up to a thousand, apply as out-patients, going in disguise:
twenty per cent of the out-patients in one large hospital having
I

310 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

" given false addresses " for the purpose of concealing their iden-
tity. Swarming as patients thus do, it results that each gets but
little attention : a minute being the average for each, sometimes
diminished to forty-five seconds. Thus those for whom the gratis
advice is intended get but little. Often " the assistance given is
merely nominal " ; and " is both a deception on the public and a
fraud upon the poor." These gratuitous medical benefits, such as
they are, " are conferred chiefly by the members of the unpaid
professional staffs "' of these charities. Some of them prescribe at
the rate of three hundred and eighteen patients in three hours
and twenty minutes — a process sufficiently exhausting for men
already hard-worked in their private practice, and sufficiently
disheartening to men with little private practice, who thus give
without payment aid which otherwise they would get payment
for, very much needed by them. So that the six hundred thou-
sand pounds a year of the metropolitan hospitals, which, if the
annual value of the lands and buildings occupied Avere added
would reach very nearly a million, has largely the effect of de-
moralizing the patients, taking medical care from those it was
intended for and giving it to those for whom it was not, and
obliging many impecunious doctors and surgeons to work hard
for nothing.*

These various experiences, then, furnished by societies and in-
stitutions supported by voluntary gifts and subscriptions, unite
to show that whatever benefits flow from them are accompanied
by grave evils — evils sometimes greater than the benefits. They
force on us the truth that, be it compulsory or non-compulsory,
social machinery wastes power, and works other effects than those
intended. In proportion as beneficence operates indirectly instead
of directly, it fails in its end.

Alike in the foregoing sections and in the foregoing parts of
this work, there has been implied the conclusion that the benefi-
cence which takes the form of giving material aid to those in dis-
tress, has the best effects when individually exercised. If, like
mercy, it "blesses him that gives and him that takes," it can do
this in full measure only when the benefactor and beneficiary
stand in direct relation. It is true, however, that individual
beneficence often falls far short of the requirements, often runs
into excesses, and is often wrongly directed. Let us look at its
imperfections and corruptions.

* The evidence here summarized will be found in Medical Charity : Its Abuses, and how
to remedy them, by John Chapman, M. D. Some of the sums and numbers given should
be greatly increased; for since 1874, when the work was published, much hospital exten-
sion has taken place.

PRIVATE RELIEF OF THE POOR. 311

The most familiar of these is the careless squandering of pence
to beggars, and the consequent fostering of idleness and vice.
Sometimes because their sympathies are so quick that they can
not tolerate the sight of real or apparent misery ; sometimes be-
cause they quiet their consciences and think they compound for
misdeeds by occasional largesse; sometimes because they are
moved by that other- worldliness which hopes to obtain large gifts
hereafter by small gifts here; sometimes because, though con-
scious of mischief likely to be done, they have not the patience
needed to make inquiries, and are tempted to end the matter
with a sixpence or something less ; men help the bad to become
worse. Doubtless the evil is great, and weighs much against
the individual exercise of beneficence — practically if not theo-
retically.

The same causes initiate and maintain the begging-letter im-
postures. Occasional exposures of these in daily papers might
serve as warnings ; but always there is a new crop of credulous
people who believe what they are told by cunning dissemblers,
and yield rather than take the trouble of verification ; thinking,
many of them, that they are virtuous in thus doing the thing
which seems kind, instead of being, as they are, vicious in taking
no care to prevent evil. That the doings of such keep alive num-
bers of scamps and swindlers, every one knows ; and doubtless a
considerable set-off to the advantages of individual beneficence
hence arises.

Then, again, there meets us the objection that if there is no
compulsory raising of funds to relieve distress, and everything is
left to the promptings of sympathy, people who have little or no
sympathy, forming a large part of the community, will contribute
nothing; and will leave undue burdens to be borne by the more
sympathetic. Either the requirements will be inadequately met
or the kind-hearted will have to make excessive sacrifices. Much
force though there is in this objection, it is not so forcible as at
first appears. In this case, as in many cases, wrong inferences are
drawn respecting the effects of a new cause, because it is supposed
that while one thing is changed all other things remain the same.
It is forgotten that in the absence of a coercive law there often
exists a coercive public opinion. There is no legal penalty on a
lie, if not uttered after taking an oath ; and yet the social disgrace
which follows a convicted liar has a strong effect in maintaining
a general truthfulness. There is no prescribed punishment for
breaking social observances ; and yet these are by many conformed
to more carefully than are moral precepts or legal enactments.
Most people dread far more the social frcfwn which follows the
doing of something conventionally wrong, than they do the
qualms of conscience which follow the doing of something intrin-

312 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sically wrong.* Hence it may reasonably be concluded that if
private voluntary relief of the poor replaced public compulsory
relief, the diffused sentiment which enforces the one would go a
long way toward maintaining the other. The general feeling
would become such that few, even of the unsympathetic, would
dare to face the scorn which would result did they shirk all share
of the common responsibility ; and while there would probably be
thus insured something like due contributions from the indiffer-
ent or the callous, there would, in some of them, be initiated, by
the formal practice of beneficence, a feeling which in course of
time would render the beneficence genuine and pleasurable.

A further difficulty presents itself. "I am too much occu-
pied," says the man of business when exhorted to exercise private
beneficence. " I have a family to bring up ; and my whole time
is absorbed in discharging my responsibilities, parental and
other. It is impossible for me, therefore, to make such inquiries
as are needful to avoid giving misdirected assistance. I must
make my contribution and leave others to distribute." That
there is force in the reply can not be denied. But when we call
to mind the common remark that if you want anything done you
must apply to the busy man rather than to the man of leisure, we
may reasonably question whether the busy man may not occa-
sionally find time enough to investigate cases of distress which
are forced on his attention. Sometimes there may even result,
from a due amount of altruistic action, a mental gain conducive
to efficiency in the conduct of affairs.

At any rate it must be admitted that individual ministration
to the poor is the normal form of ministration ; and that, made
more thoughtful and careful, as it would be if the entire responsi-
bility of caring for the poor devolved upon it, it would go a long
way toward meeting the needs : especially as the needs would be
greatly diminished when there had been excluded the artificially
generated poverty with which we are surrounded.

But now, from this general advocacy of individual giving ver-
sus giving by jmblic and quasi-public agencies, I pass to the spe-
cial advocacy of the natural form of individual giving — a form
which exists and which simply needs development.

Within the intricate plexus of social relations surrounding

* A most instructive and remarkable fact, which ilhistrates this general truth at the
same time that it illustrates a more special truth, is that respecting the rudest of the
Musheras of India, who have no form of marriage, but among whom "unchastity, or a
change of lovers on either side, when once mutual appropriation has been made, is a thing
of rare occurrence"; and, when it does occur, causes excommunication. So that among
these simple people, public opinion in respect of the marital relation is more potent than
law is among ourselves. (For account of the Musheras see Calcutta Review, April, 1888.)

PRIVATE RELIEF OF THE POOR. 313

each citizen, there is a special plexus more familiar to him than
any other, and which has established greater claims on him than
any ot-her. Every one who can afford to give assistance, is brought
by his daily activities into immediate contact with a cluster of
those who by illness, by loss of work, by a death, or by other ca-
lamity, are severallj' liable to fall into a state calling for aid ; and
there should be recognized a claim possessed by each member of
this particular cluster.

In early societies, organized on the system of status, there
went, along with the dependence of inferiors, a certain kind of
responsibility for their welfare. The simple or compound family
group, formed of relatives standing in degrees of subordination,
and usually possessing slaves, was a group so regulated that while
the inferiors were obliged to do what they were told, and receive
what was given to them, they usually had a sufficiency given to
them. They were much in the position of domestic animals in
respect of their subjection, and they were in a kindred position in
respect of due ministration to their needs. Alike in the primitive
patriarchal system and in the developed feudal system, we see
that the system of status presented the general trait, that while
dependents were in large measure denied their liberty, they were
in large measure supplied with the means of living. Either they
were directly fed and housed, or they were allowed such fixed
proportion of produce as enabled them to feed and house them-
selves. Possession of them unavoidably brought with it care for
them.

Along with gradual substitution of the system of contract for
the sj^stem of status, this relation has been changed in such man-
ner that while the benefits of independence have been gained the
benefits of dependence have been lost. The poorer citizen has no
longer any one to control him; but he has no longer any one to
provide for him. So much serAdce for so much money, has be-
come the universal principle of co-operation; and the money
having been paid for the service rendered, no further claim is
recognized. The requirements of justice having been fulfilled,
it is supposed that all requirements have been fulfilled. The
ancient regime of protection and fealty has ceased, while the
modern regime of beneficence and gratitude has but partially
replaced it.

May we not infer, with tolerable certainty, that there has to
be re-instituted something akin to the old order in a new form ?
May we not expect that without re-establishment of the ancient
power of superiors over inferiors, there may be resumed some-
thing like the ancient care for them ? May we not hope that
without the formation of any legal ties between individuals of
the regulating class, and those groups whose work they severally

;i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

regulato in one or other way, tliero may come to bo formed
stronger moral ties y Already sucli moral ties are in some meas-
ure recognized. Already all householders moderately endowed
with sympathy, feol bound to care for their servants during ill-
ness; already they help those living out of the house who in less
direct ways labor for them; already from time to time small
traders, porters, errand-boys, and the like, benefit by their kind
offices on occasions of misfortune. The sole requisite seems to be
that the usage which thus shows itself here and there irregularly,
should be called into general activity by the gradual disappear-
ance of artificial agencies for distributing aid. As before im-
plied, the sympathetic feelings Avhicli have originated and sup-
port these artificial agencies, would, in their absence, vitalize and
develop the natural agencies. And if with each citizen there re-
mained the amount now taken from him in rates and subscrip-
tions, he would be enabled to meet these private demands : if not
by as large a disbursement, yet by a disbursement probably as
large as is desirable.

Besides re-establishing these closer relationships between su-
perior and inferior, which during our transition from ancient
slavery to modern freedom have lapsed ; and besides bringing
beneficence back to its normal form of direct relation between
benefactor and beneficiary ; this personal administration of relief
would be guided by immediate knowledge of the recipients, and
the relief would be adjusted in kind and amount to their needs
and their deserts. "When, instead of the responsibility indirectly
discharged through ])oor-law officers and mendicity societies, the
responsibility fell directly on each of those having some spare
means, each would see the necessity for inquiry and criticism and
supervision : so increasing the aid given to the worthy and re-
stricting that given to the unworthy.

And hero we are brought face to face with the greatest of the
difficulties attendant on all methods of mitigating distress. May
we not by frequent aid to the worthy render them unworthy ; and
are we not almost certain by helj)ing those who are already un-
worthy to make them more unworthy still ? How shall we so
regulate our pecuniary beneficence as to avoid assisting the in-
cai)ables and the degraded to multiply ?

I have in so many places commented on the impolicy, and in-
deed the cruelty, of bequeathing to posterity an increasing popu-
lation of criminals and incapables, that I need not here insist
that true beneficence will be so restrained as to avoid fostering
the inferior at the expense of the superior — or, at any rate, so
restrained as to minimize the mischief which fostering the in-
ferior entails.

PRIVATE RELIEF OF THE POOR. 315

Under present circumstances the difficulty seems almost insur-
mountable. By the law-established and privately established
agencies, coercive and voluntary, which save the bad from the
extreme results of their badness, there have been produced un-
manageable multitudes of them, and to prevent further multipli-
cation appears next to impossible. The yearly accumulating
appliances for keeping alive those who will not do enough work
to keep themselves alive, continually increase the evil. Each
new effort to mitigate the penalties on improvidence, has the
inevitable effect of adding to the number of the improvident.
Whether assistance is given through State-machinery, or by
charitable societies, or privately, it is difficult to see how it can
be restricted in such manner as to prevent the inferior from be-
getting more of the inferior.

If left to operate in all its sternness, the principle of the sur-
vival of the fittest, which, as ethically considered, we have seen to
imply that each individual shall be left to experience the effects
of his own nature and consequent conduct, would quickly clear
away the degraded. But it is impracticable with our present sen-
timents to let it operate in all its sternness. No serious evil
would result from relaxing its operation, if the degraded were
to leave no progeny. A short-sighted beneficence might be al-
lowed to save them from suffering, were a long-sighted bene-
ficence assured that there would be born no more such. But
how can it be thus assured? If, either by public action or by
private action, aid were given to the feeble, the unhealthy, the
deformed, the stupid, on condition that they did not marry, the
result would manifestly be a great increase of illegitimacy;
which, implying a still more unfavorable nurture of children,
would result in still worse men and women. If instead of a
" submerged tenth " there existed only a submerged fiftieth, it
might be possible to deal with it effectually by private industrial
institutions, or some kindred appliances. But the mass of effete
humanity to be dealt with is so large as to make one despair ; the
problem seems insoluble.

Certainly, if solvable, it is to be solved only through suffering.
Having, by unwise institutions, brought into existence large num-
bers who are unadapted to the requirements of social life, and are
consequently sources of misery to themselves and others, we can
not repress and gradually diminish this body of relatively worth-
less people without inflicting much pain. Evil has been done
and the penalty must be paid. Cure can come only through afflic-
tion. The artificial assuaging of distress by State-appliances, is
a kind of social opium-eating, yielding temporary mitigation at
the eventual cost of intenser miserj^ Increase of the anodyne
dose inevitably leads by and by to increase of the evil ; and the

3i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

only rational course is that of bearing the misery which must be
entailed for a time hy desistance. The transition from State-
beneficenco to a healthy condition of self-help and private be-
neficence, must be like the transition from an opium-eating life
to a normal life — painful but remedial.

ARE THERE EVIDENCES OF MAN IN THE GLACIAL

GRAVELS ?

By Major J. W. POWELL.

THE geologist studying in the Rocky Mountains is ever aston-
ished at the rapid degradation of mountain forms. Cliffs,
I)eaks, crags, and rocky scaurs are forever tumbling down. The
rocks break asunder above and roll down in great slides on the
flanks and about the feet of the mountains. As the slopes are thus
diminished, gradually the slides are covered with soil, in part
through the decay of the rocks themselves, in part by wind-drifted
sands, but perhaps in chief part by the washing of the soils above.
In this manner a great mountain is ultimately buried by over-
placement. This overplacement gradually washes down, to be
distributed on still lower grounds, but it is replaced from above
from the newly formed soils. The process goes on until the
mountain is degraded into hills and the streams have carried
away the greater part of the material of the ancient mountain.
Now, in studying these mountains, the geologist is always on his
guard to distinguish overplacement from foundation structure.
When the mountains are all gone the hills are degraded in the
same manner, and the process continues until a grand base-level
is established, below which degradation can not take place ; then
the mountains and hills have all been carried away by rivers to
the sea. As mountains and hills are degraded, so valley slopes
are brought down. The river, meandering now on this side and
now on that, increases the length of its course, as every bend
throughout the valley is cut back ; but ultimately bend works
back against bend, until shorter channels are produced. By cut-
off channels the course of the river is diminished ; by increasing
its meanders the course of the river is lengthened ; but in the
grand operation the one about compensates for the other. In this
manner the river is forever rearranging the flood plain. The
banks of the stream, left dry by the vicissitudes of river cutting,
tumble down, and a bank goes through a process much like that
of the mountain slope ; and the geologist is ever on the lookout to
distinguish overplacemelit from the rocks of the foundation struc-
ture. There are many conditions where this distinction is j)lain.

ARE THERE EVIDENCES OF MAN IN THE DRIFT? 317

but there are many other conditions where it is ohscure. Let us
see how some of these obscurities arise.

In the United States and in British America there is a vast
district of country covered with glacial drift. In a period known
to geologists as the Glacial epoch deep snows and gigantic accu-
mulations of ice extended from a region far to the northward
down into the United States, nearly to the mouth of the Ohio
River. The margin of this great ice field stretched from this cen-
tral point eastward and northward to the Atlantic Ocean, and
westward and northward to the Great Plains, while the Rocky
Mountains were covered with great ice fields. This enormous ice
sheet was ever working southward, and ever melting along its
southern boundary. As it moved southward it plowed the
mountains, dug down the hills, and generally filled the valleys
with the debris ; and it spread over much of the great area a vast
sheet of rounded gravels, sands, and clays ; and it fed the streams
from the border of the ice sheet with fine silt that was distributed
along the valleys to the Gulf of Mexico. This glacial flour is now
recognized as the loess of the South. Since the disappearance of
the great ice sheet the glacial formations that were made by it
cover much of the dry land. Now, these glacial formations, being
composed of incoherent bowlders, gravels, sands, and clays, are
pretty easily distinguished from the underlying, more indurated
rocks ; but rains, brooks, creeks, and rivers have been at work
carving new valleys, and remodeling the bluffs, hills, cliffs, and
mountains of all the country, and in the process have distributed
over the land formed by the glacial ice extensive bodies of over-
placement. This overplacement is incoherent, like the glacial
formations. There is no difficulty in distinguishing the overplace-
ment from the primeval foundation, but there is great difficulty
in distinguishing it from the glacial formations, and it requires
nice powers of observation to always make the distinction with
certainty. The criteria for distinguishing overplacement from
the original glacial formations have been gradually discovered
and formulated in the last few years.

In 1882, by act of Congress, the Geological Survey was author-
ized and directed to make a geological map of the United States.
The survey entered upon this work in different parts of the coun-
try. Among many problems before it, one of the more important
was that of mapping the glacial formations, and in order to do it
two things were necessary : First, it was necessary to distinguish
the glacial formations from modern overplacement ; second, it was
necessary to study the history of the glacial action and the vari-
ous structures which the ice produced, for there are many — such
as moraines, osars, kames, and bodies of till, sand, gravel, and
bowlders ; and it was sought to discover the history of their forma-

3i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion, and especially the history of the entire Glacial epoch. The
members of the Geological Survey engaged upon the general work
■were only to a limited extent occupied with this problem. In the
special fields where they were engaged in studying the primeval
foundation rocks they also studied the glacial formations and the
modern overplacements. But the field was very large, and many
geologists in the country had already made observations and en-
gaged in researches of this character. Most of these geologists
were professors in the various colleges of the country, and it was
decided by the director to enlist these professorial geologists as
far as possible to continue the work and solve these problems for
the general survey of the United States upon the foundation of
observation already begun by them. For this purpose Prof.
Chamberlin, then of Beloit College, with Prof. Salisbury, his asso-
ciate, and many other professorial assistants, were engaged upon
the work. Prof. Shaler, of Harvard University, was also enlisted,
with a large corps of assistants. Prof. Emerson, of Amherst Col-
lege, was likewise enlisted, with his assistants ; and Prof. Davis,
of Harvard University^ with his assistants, also took a part. Mr.
Gilbert, of the Geological Survey, with his assistants, was study-
ing the lake basins of the far West, but, as their history was in-
volved in the history of the glacial formations, he incidentally
took part in this work. Mr. McGee, permanently employed upon
the survey, with his assistants, was engaged in studying the
estuarine and coastal-plain formations of the Atlantic slope, and
he soon discovered that they were involved with the glacial de-
posits that had come down from the Appalachian Mountains.
Besides the men thus occupied, many other volunteers, as pro-
fessors and students, took part in the work, now here-, now there ;
so that altogether more than fifty different men engaged in the
solving of these great problems. Nearly all the men who engaged
in this work soon discovered that the preliminary problem was to
formulate the criteria by which modern overplacement is to be
distinguished from original glacial formation. As this proceeded
it was further discovered that much of the confusion in the study
of the glacial rocks themselves was cleared away, and that it was
possible to read the record of the old Glacial epoch in such a
manner as to discover its history.

So the work went on year after year, in small part by the regu-
lar employees of the survey, in chief part by a x)rofessorial corps,
aided by many volunteers, often university students. Then many
of the State geologists were enlisted, and the work proceeded,
until at last a vast body of facts has been collected. The men
often conferred with one another and visited doubtful points to-
gether. The officers of the Geological Survey, the professorial
geologists, and the State geologists thus associated themselves

ARE THERE EVIDENCES OF MAN IN THE DRIFT? 319

voluntarily, and made many excursions together. For example,
Mr. McGee believed tliat lie had made some discoveries in Ala-
bama and Mississippi which were inconsistent with conclusions
reached by State geologists. Thereupon he conferred with Messrs.
Hilgard, formerly of Mississippi, now of the University of Cali-
fornia; Smith, of Alabama ; Holmes, of North Carolina; Safford,
of Tennessee ; Hill, of Texas ; and Ward, paleobotanist of the
Geological Survey; and they visited the region together, all
having distinct views somewhat differing from one another.
They examined the problems concerning which differences of
opinion had arisen, and they all united in a common conclusion.
Subsequently Messrs. Chamberlin and Salisbury visited the same
region in company with Mr. McGee, and came to substantial
agreement with the first party. Such instances of harmonious
co-operation have occurred again and again in all portions of the
glaciated area. The whole body of men engaged in the research
worked together for a common purpose, and were unwilling to
publish material conclusions until the facts could be submitted
to many minds. They worked with a harmony and a patience
for dissenting opinion worthy of such a body of scientific men.
Mr. Chamberlin, first the Professor of Geology at Beloit College,
afterward President of the University of "Wisconsin, and now in
charge of the geological department of the new University of
Chicago, had the largest share in all this work; he gave more
time to it himself and he employed more assistants than any one
else ; in fact, he was considered the Nestor of the work. He had
long before been the State Geologist of Wisconsin, where glacial
formations are highly developed, and had made a special study of
the subject, and all the workers in the field deferred largely to
his judgment in suggesting methods of research.

Occasionally some observer failed to make the necessary dis-
criminations, and dropped out of the work. Among others whom
Prof. Chamberlin enlisted was Prof. G. F. Wright, of Oberlin
College, who devoted some summer months to these investiga-
tions. Now, some of the observations made by Prof. Wright were
of value, but he seemed to fail to distinguish overplacement from
glacial formation ; and, after trying him for two or three seasons,
his labors were dispensed with. Thereupon Prof. Wright com-
menced the preparation of a popular work upon the history of
the Ice period. When this came to the knowledge of Prof. Cham-
berlin, he demurred. Still, Prof. Wright continued his work, and
ultimately published his book. On its appearance it was found
that he had ignored the conclusions of his co-workers — had prac-
tically denied the accuracy of their observations — and had pub-
lished a work on the history of the Ice period which they believed
to be erroneous and misleading. But they let the subject pass

320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTH LF.

\ritli no unfavorable criticism, believing that ultimately the
grand results of the combined labors of so many men, when
published, would correct all errors.

There is another phase to this question, connected with the
science of archaeology. I have already set forth the distinction
which geologists recognize between overplacement formations and
fundamental formations. Certain archa>ologic problems which
have sprung up in late years in the United States are profoundly
affected by the discovery and formulation of these distinctions.
Many years ago a local observer at Natchez, Miss., claimed to
have discovered a human skeleton in the loess of a bluff on the
Mississippi River. The loess is a formation contemporaneous
with the glacial formation of the North, as previously explained.
The discovery of a human skeleton in this situation was believed
to prove that man dwelt in the valley of the Mississippi during
the loess-forming epoch. The discovery seemed to be of so much
importance that the site was visited by Sir Charles Lyell, who on
examination at once affirmed that the skeleton was not found in
the loess itself, but in the overplacement or modified loess — that
is, in the talus of the bluff ; and all geologists and archaeologists
have accepted the decision.

From time to time other supposed discoveries were made in
this country ; but one after another was abandoned, until a series
of discoveries were made along the line of hills which stretch
from the Hudson to the James River. This line of hills marks
an interesting geological displacement. The country to the sea-
ward of the line has been differentially displaced from the coun-
try mountainward by an uplift on the Appalachian side or a
downthrow on the ocean side, or both. The displacement has
given rise to many rapids and falls in the streams. Above this
line of displacement the waters are not navigable, the declivity
of the streams being too great ; below, tidewater always flows to
the foot of the hills. Now, along this line of hills, back and forth
from the upper country to the lower, are many glacial gravels,
many hills of ancient river gravels, and many hills of estuarine
gravels, all of Glacial age. But there are other gravels of still
greater age intimately associated with them, and in making the
geological survey of the country it became necessary to distin-
guish the older gravels of Neocene and Cretaceous age from the
younger gravels of the Ice period, and it also became necessary
to distinguish the overplacement of modern times. In these same
gravels certain archaeologists had discovered what they believed
to be palaeolithic implements ; and as some of the gravels were
known to be of Glacial age, they supposed them all to be Glacial,
and that they thus had evidence that man inhabited the coun-
try during the Glacial epoch. These implements were gathered

ARE THERE EVIDEXCES OF MAN IN THE DRIFTS 321

in very great numbers and collected in various museums in the
United States, and many collections were sent abroad to the great
museums of the world. Several different collectors engaged in
this enterprise for some years, and acquired great reputation
for their proof of the antiquity of man on this continent, and for
their zeal in discovering the evidence ; and to recompense them
for this work they were made members of many scientific societies
throughout the world, and decorated with ribbons, and some were
knighted. Geologists, however, held the question more or less in
abeyance, not feeling sure of the geological evidence for the age
of the formations in which the supposed stone implements were
found. Then other discoveries were made in Minnesota and else-
where ; and finally geologists, with some misgivings and many
ifs and perchances, accepted the conclusion that Glacial man in
America was a reality.

But now the problem of these formations had to be studied
geologically in making the map of the United States, for they had
to be represented thereon. They were soon found to be of dif-
ferent ages, but had been confused by reason of the overplacement
which is so abundant everywhere. At the same time a new class
of archfeologic investigations began. The first new work of the
character was undertaken in the neighborhood of Washington, on
Piny Branch. It had been discovered that the gravels of this
locality were of Cretaceous age, and if the flaked stones supposed
to be found therein were really deposited in situ, then man in
America was not only of Glacial age but of Cretaceous age, for the
very same class of implements which the Indians made two cen-
turies ago in the valley of the Potomac were also supposed to be
found in the Cretaceous gravels as well as in the gravels of the
Glacial epoch. Thereupon Mr. Holmes, of the Bureau of Ethnol-
ogy in the Smithsonian Institution — not a member of the Geo-
logical Survey — undertook the investigation, and he commenced
by trenching the hills, and worked patiently for months at the
problem. He proved that all the supposed stone implements be-
longed, not in the foundation rocks of Cretaceous age, but in the
overplacement. Man, then, was not of Cretaceous age. While
these investigations were in progress the American Association
and the International Geologic Congress met in Washington, and
many of the scientific men visited the ground. Most of the as-
sistants of the Geological Survey visited it, and other geologists,
attracted by the problem, came to Washington for the purpose ;
so that the whole field was surveyed and the evidence weighed by
very many of the geologists of the country and of the world, and
they all agreed that the stone implements belonged to the over-
placement, and might possibly have been deposited within the last
three hundred years.

VOL. XLIII. 22

322 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

But there were many like finds in Neocene gravels and gravels
of Glacial age stretching down into Virginia and northward
through Pennsylvania and New Jersey. One after another these
gravel sites were explored by Mr. Holmes and his assistants in
the same manner, and in every instance it was revealed that the
stone objects were found in the overplacement, that in no case
could they be found in the underlying rocks. Objects of the same
character have been observed all over the United States. Within
the last twenty years the writer of this article has seen them made
by Indians in the Rocky Mountain region, and they are scattered
far and wide over nearly all the gravel hills of this country. This
creates a presumption that, where there are so many of mod-
ern origin, all may be modern. It has already been mentioned
that certain implements of this kind had been found in gravels,
supposed to be of Glacial age, in Minnesota. This is known as the
Babbitt find. Finally, Mr. Holmes, together with Prof. Winchell,
the State Geologist of Minnesota, visited the locality. They made
careful examinations, and were entirely satisfied with the evi-
dence that the stone objects of that site were found in overplace-
ment.

Up to this stage one locality had not been examined with care
by the new methods — the locality in Trenton, which had espe-
cially become historic by reason of the many collections made
therefrom for sundry museums ; and this Mr. Holmes finally vis-
ited. The implements collected had been found mainly, perhaps
not wholly, along old banks of streams, and two localities of this
nature had furnished many of the objects of the museums. When
visited by Mr. Holmes and other geologists, implements could not
be found save in the overplacement. The principal of these sites
was a low bluff of gravel in the city of Trenton, and property con-
ditions prevented thorough examination of the site by trenching ;
thus it seemed that final observation by the new methods was no
longer possible. But at this stage the authorities of the city of
Trenton commenced to dig a sewer parallel to the bluff and but a
few steps back from its face — a deep trench to carry a large body
of sewage to a distance where it would no longer be noxious to the
inhabitants. Shortly after this work began Mr. Holmes again
visited the place, and returned from time to time during its prog-
ress, and for upward of a month kei)t an expert assistant watch-
ing the progress of the digging. With all the examination made
no stone implement was ever found. This led him to the conclu-
sion that the flaked stones originally found on the bank really
belonged to the overplacement and not to the foundation forma-
tion of Glacial age.

In the fall of 18H0 the writer visited Boise City, in Idaho.
While stopping at a hotel some gentlemen called on him to show

ARE THERE EVIDENCES OF MAX IX THE DRIFT' 323

him a figurine which they said they had found in sinking an arte-
sian well in the neighborhood at a depth, if I remember rightly,
of more than three hundred feet. The figurine is a little image of
a man or woman done in clay and baked. It is not more than an
inch and a half in length, and is slender and delicate, more delicate
than an ordinary clay pipestem, and altogether exceedingly fra-
gile. Hold the figurine at the height of your eye and let it fall on
the hearth at your feet, and it would be shivered into fragments.
It was claimed that this figurine had been brought up from the
bottom of an artesian well while the men were working, or about
the time that they were working at the well, and that as it came
out it was discovered. When this story was told the writer, he
simply jested with those who claimed to have found it. He had
known the Indians that live in the neighborhood, had seen their
children play with just such figurines, and had no doubt that the
little image had lately belonged to some Indian child, and said the
same. While stojjping at the hotel difi^erent persons spoke about
it, and it was always passed off as a jest ; and various comments
were made about it by various people, some of them claiming that
it had given them much sport, and that a good many " tenderfeet"
had looked at it and believed it to be genuine; and they seemed
rather pleased that I had detected the hoax. When I returned to
Washington I related the jest at a dinner table, and afterward it
passed out of my mind. In reading Prof. Wright's second book I
had many surprises, but none of them greater than when I dis-
covered that this figurine had fallen into his hands, and that he
had actually published it as evidence of the great antiquity of
man in the valley of the Snake River.

Consider the circumstances. A fragile toy is buried in the
sands and gravels and bowlders of a torrential stream. Three
hundred feet of materials are accumulated over it from the floods
of thousands of years. Then volcanoes burst forth and pour floods
of lava over all ; and under more than three hundred feet of sands,
gravels, clays, and volcanic rocks the fragile figurine remains for
centuries, under such magical conditions that the very color of
the burning is preserved. Then well-diggers, with a pump drill,
hammer and abrade the rocks, and bore a six-inch hole down to
this figurine without destroying it, and with a sand-pump bring
it to the surface, to be caught by the well-digger: and Prof.
Wright believes the story of the figurine, and places it on record
in his book 1

There are some other cases that ought to be considered, but
none of them differs greatly from those given, and enough has
already been said.

Now it must here be confessed that a large iiumber of geolo-
gists some years ago were willing to acknowledge the validity of

k

324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the evidence of Glacial man. Many of them had committed them-
selves to it, and yet when better evidence was brought they were
willing to withdraw opinions previously affirmed. The writer
himself has entertained a belief in the existence of Glacial man,
and there is still some evidence in California that has not yet
been examined by the new methods, and it may be that this evi-
dence is good. The writer has much linguistic material that
points to the high antiquity of man on this continent. So we will
all withhold final judgment until the evidence is in, being per-
fectly willing to believe in Glacial man, or Tertiary man, or Cre-
taceous man, if the evidence demands it, and being just as willing
to believe that man was introduced on this continent within the
last two thousand years, if the evidence demands it. What care
we what the truth is, if it is the truth ?

Some years ago Mr. McGee found in a lake formation of the
West a stone implement, like those still made by the Indians of
that country, in beds of an age not greatly differing from those
of the gravels of the Eastern shore ; and he published his find. In
after years he had learned to distinguish overplacement from
foundation formation, and he questioned his own conclusions.
This was before the present controversy arose, before Mr. Holmes
had so skillfully trenched the hills and shown the true age of the
stone implements of the Atlantic slope; but still Mr. McGee,
warned by his own observations of the difference between over-
placement and under-formation, concluded that he might have
been too hasty, and published a long article on the subject, from
which the following extract is made :

" It is a fair presumption that any unusual object found with-
in, or apparently within, an unconsolidated deposit is an adven-
titious inclusion. Every cautious field geologist accustomed to
the study of unconsolidated superficial deposits quickly learns to
question the verity of apparently original inclusions ; he may, it
is true, exhaust the entire range of hypothesis at his command
without satisfying himself that the inclusion is adventitious ; yet
he is seldom satisfied that he has exhausted the range of possible
hypothesis as to the character of the inclusion, and hesitates long
before accepting any unusual association as veritable. His case
is not that of the invertebrate paleontologist at work in the
Palaeozoic rocks, to whom a single fossil may carry conviction ;
for not only are the possibilities of adventitious inclusion indefi-
nitely less in solid strata, but the mineral character of the fossil
is commonly identical with that of its matrix, and so affords in-
herent evidence of the verity of the association. Nowhere, indeed,
in the entire range of the complex and sometimes obscure and
elusive phenomena of geology is there more reason for withhold-
ing final judgment based upon unusual association than in the

ARE THERE EVIDENCES OF MAN IN THE DRIFT? 325

unconsolidated superficial deposits of the earth ; and it is only
where there is collateral evidence that such testimony is accept-
able to the cautious student. Now, the sediments of Lake Lahon-
tan are generally, and in Walker River canon almost wholly,
unconsolidated, and so the probabilities are against the verity of
the association." *

When Prof. Wright's second book, Man and the Glacial Period,
appeared, the subject was one of popular interest, and it was
thought that the book would do harm. Thereupon his fellow-
workers criticised the book in various scientific journals, and
sometimes spoke very disparagingly of it, as being unworthy of
acceptance — all intended to warn the public against a book widely
advertised and circulated as the greatest contribution that had
ever been made to glacial geology. The fact that in support of
his pretensions the author. Prof. Wright, signed his name as a
member of the United States Geological Survey, was especially
ofl^ensive to the others who had been engaged under the auspices
of the survey, whether as volunteers, professorial assistants, or
permanent employees.

When Prof. Wright found his book thus attacked, he skill-
fully evaded the real issue — the truth or error of his conclusions
— and he or certain of his personal friends raised the cry of per-
secution by the official geologists of the United States. Most of
those who criticised him were professorial geologists, like him-
self, who had aided the Geological Survey with their work. Prof.
Wright was thus attacking his fellow-workers in the field, not
deigning to make scientific reply to scientific objections, but
making only general statements in relation thereto, and turning
the issue on the right of geologists to criticise his work, which
he assumed was not official, though he had placed his name on
his book with an official title.

All this required no reply from me, until at last Mr. Wright
enlisted the championship of The Popular Science Monthly. An
article by Mr. Claypole, of Ohio, was published in the April num-
ber of the journal, making a bitter attack upon the professorial
geologists and upon the regular employees of the United States
Geological Survey, and in no covert way attacking the admin-
istration of the survey itself. This attack, based as it was on
error in every paragraph, would still have called for no response
from myself, but would have been passed by, had not the editor
of the journal attempted to draw a lesson therefrom in con-
demnation of the work of the Geological Survey and of that of
the professorial geologists and volunteer assistants connected
with the universities, colleges, and State surveys of the entire

* American Antliropolo^iist, vol. ii, 1889, pp. W\~M2.

326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

country. It seems now to be incumbent upon me to make a
simple explanation of the facts. This I have done briefly, with
confidence that the editor of The Popular Science Monthly, find-
ing that he has been misled in the matter, will cheerfully correct
the impression that his editorial will naturally make upon those
unacquainted with the circumstances.

For more than twenty years the writer of this article has
been engaged in conducting and supervising scientific research
in various portions of the United States. During the history of
this work there have been published under his auspices about
two hundred volumes, as annual reports, monographs, bulletins,
and other miscellaneous works. In all this body of literature
there is very little of controversy. The hundreds of men em-
ployed have worked together in practical harmony. They have
not always agreed, but agreement has been singularly common,
and when disagreements have arisen they have been stated
courteously and with little exhibition of temper. It is believed
that no other publications of the same magnitude can be found
in the world where so little controversy is shown and where dis-
agreement is so uniformly courteous. There have been some con-
troversies, but they have been confined to the journals, and have
not found their way into the official publications. And the jour-
nalistic controversies have been very few ; and in only two in-
stances within my knowledge have they been bitter, the case of
this book being one of them. The controversy on this subject
has not appeared in the official publications, but only in the jour-
nals. It has been wholly unofficial.

Prof. Wright stands almost alone in his advocacy of a sci-
entific doctrine. He has a few sympathizers, and some defenders
of portions of his theory, but the great body of his work is
repudiated >)y nearly every geologist in America, and especially
by the professorial corps. The controversy which broke out in
the journals was at the time unknown to the Director of the Geo-
logical Survey. He was away from home and an invalid. He
had never by word or circumstance directed or suggested it. and
knew nothing of it until after it had occurred. Most of the
gentlemen who engaged in it and expressed their indignation at
what they believed to be a pseudo-scientific work, were connected
with universities and colleges, and were wholly out of the juris-
diction of the Geological Survey. Nor are they men accustomed
to brook such dictation. Only one of the controversialists was
a permanent member of the Geological Survey.

After the above statement, it only remains for the editor of
The Popular Science Monthly to render that judgment which the
facts demand.

MORAL LIFE OF THE JAPANESE. 327

MORAL LIFE OF THE JAPANESE.

Bv Dr. W. 1>ELA>() EASTLAKE.

AMONG the many interesting features that a close acquaint-
- ance with Japan and its people reveals to foreigners, the
ethics of the Japanese will surely claim the paramount attention
of the ethnologist. The people are unlike any other ; and we find
that this strong national individualitj^ — so fascinating to visitors
to Japan — reaches far beyond the quaint homes, graceful costumes,
obsequious courtesy of both rich and poor, and the picturesque
beauty of the country itself ; finding its origin in the very heart
of the people, inculcated by the lives and precepts of generation
upon generation of warriors, poets, and statesmen.

The moral life of the Japanese has found many exponents in
the literature of the Occident, and, on account of the contradic-
tory character of many of the writings on the subject, the ideas
gained by the reading public can not be other than confusing and
vague. Any just consideration of the ethics of the Japanese
admits of no equivocation, and conventional prudery must in all
cases be replaced by simple, ungarnished facts. I would neither
seek to confirm nor deny the varied statements of other observers,
believing that a clearer insight may be gained from a brief por-
trayal of the various ethical influences — either domestic, social, or
religious — that touch the life of the people from early childhood
until, after life is done, their mortal remains are packed into a
square pine box, not unlike an ordinary dry-goods case, and con-
signed to the keeping of Mother Earth.

Japan has been frequently referred to as the "' Children's Para-
dise," and with considerable justice, for in no other country is child-
hood made so much of, and are children surrounded by so many
devices for their amusement. In every town there are numbers
of street venders and hawkers whose sole customers are children.
One class of these venders carry two charcoal stoves, or furnaces,
swung in the conventional manner of the country from the ends
of a pole which rests across the shoulder. Arriving at a conven-
ient corner, the load is put down, and a group of eager children
quickly gather. For the moderate sum of one or two rin * the
children are each supplied with a tiny cup of sweetened batter
and a si)Oon. Thus equipped, they proceed to bake their own
cookies on the smooth iron top of the stoves, fashioning the dain-
ties into whatever shape they please, and when they are crisp and
brown, devouring them. The ame vender also devotes his skill to

* The Japanese rin is the tenth jiart of one sen, or eent ; l,nOO rin, therefore, ecjnal one
yen, or dollar.

32^

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

children. His "stock in trade" consists of dried reeds and a
quantity of midzu ame,a sort of malt paste. Some of the ame

The Mii.zi -Ame Autim'. Ad aiiiu.ser ol uliil.lruii, bclii in every Jupauese city.

is put on the end of a reed, and is molded or blown into some
fantastic shape by the vender. The young customers dictate as to

MORAL LIFE OF THE JAPANESE.

329

the figures, and butterflies, flowers, gourds, or what not are shaped
from the sweet paste. The children, after having satisfied their
tastes for artistic design, eat the finished work, the reed handle
preventing their fingers from becoming sticky. There is another
of the child amusers that can be seen in the streets of Tokyo or
any other Japanese city. This artisan molds fruits, flowers, and

A BfUDHIST I'lilEST IN Flll Canonicals.

vegetables from colored rice-flour dough, and does his work so
deftly that it is really difficult to distinguish the artificial from
the real fruit.

This universal love and regard for children is also displayed at
every temple festival, where numerous booths, gay with toj^s, flags,
and games, form always a prominent feature.

And what of the life of and influences surrounding these little
folks ? Well, the first event of importance after they have been
ushered into this world occurs when they are one hundred days
old. This is a feast day for the family, in which the baby plays
the chief role. Toys, money, gowns, and sweets are lavished upon
him by admiring friends and relatives. Among the j^oorer classes
the baby is then considered old enough to be strapped on the back

330 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of its brotlier or sister (usually the latter) and to go about with
them during- the greater part of the day, and from that time spend
at least half the day in the open air. As soon as the child is old
enough and strong enough to run about, a small doll-like bundle
is strapped to its back, the weight of which is frequently increased
as the child grows stronger ; so, by the time the next arrival in the
family has put in an appearance, a well-broken and docile little
human " pack-horse '' will be found ready for him. The newcomer
is put through a similar course of training in due time ; and so
on, and so on — but let us trust not ad infinitum !

The relations between parents and children are entirely natural,
free, and unrestrained. The truths of life and Nature are unfolded
to them as soon as the children are old enough to inquire about
them. Nothing is left for them to learn from outside sources.
The result of this perfect candor, so far from developing any un-
due precocity in the children, serves to preserve that indefinable,
unconscious grace, so beautiful in childhood, which, by the secret
acquisition of some hidden knowledge, is so apt to be replaced by
that glance of definable conscious disgrace seen in the faces of so
many prematurely " old " children of the Occident.

There are two national children's festivals during the year:
Sekkii, for boys, and Ohinasama, for girls. Sekku, or " boys' day,"
is celebrated on the 5th of May. At this time gifts are made to
the boys of the home, and for every male child in the family a
huge paper carp (koi), of some brilliant hue, is hung out on a pole
above the house-top. During this festival a Japanese town looks
like a great aerial fish-pond. Ohinasama, " the honorable goddess
of maidenhood," rules Japanese homes on the 3d of March, pro-
vided there are any daughters in the household. It is virtually
" dolls' day," for all the dolls hold high carnival, and are brought
forth w^ith all their belongings — such as miniature ceremonial tea-
sets, ornaments, and utensils — and set out in state ; while in the
tokonoma, or alcove, hangs a silken picture of Ohinasama her-
self ; and a vase filled with odorous blossoms is placed before her.
Presents to the daughters of the household, of flowers, cakes, and
sweets, are also in order.

The school education of Japanese children begins at the age of
six years ; and in the primary departments the boys and girls are
taught together, although occupying different parts of the school-
room. It would be impossible, in this article, to discuss the
present status of education in Japan ; suffice it to say that there
are business colleges, mining and engineering schools, law schools,
universities, and even musical conservatories — all of which rank
most high. Regarding the education of women, this usually con-
sists in an eight years' grammar-school course, and frequently two
or three additional years in the shihan-gakko, or normal school.

MORAL LIFE OF THE JAPANESE.

331

The moral education of Japanese children is conducted partly at
home and partly in school, and is based largely upon the teachings
of the history of the country. Intrepid valor, zeal, sobriety, direct-
ness of speech, extreme courtesy, implicit obedience to parents
and superiors, and deferential reverence and regard for old age—

The I.n>-,;r Gate leading to the Tomb of the Siio.ir.v Tokigawa. Shiba, Tokyo.

these are among the chief characteristics looked for in boys : while
industry, gentleness, faithfulness, and cheerful demeanor are re-
quired of girls.

Little or no importance is attached to the religious training
ot children. Whether the parents be Buddhists or Shintoists it

332

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

matters not, for in either case the children rarely take any part
in the religions life of their parents or elders, and indeed usnally
grow up in blissful ignorance as to what it is all about. True,
they may be occasionally taken to the temple, and taught to rub
their palms together, clap thrice, and incline tlieir heads toward
the shrine, as they toss their offering of rin through the wooden
grating of the huge money-till. They may have some vague
notion that there is something meritorious in all this, but noth-
ing more, although every Japanese home has a latticed niche,
or kamidana, dedicated to the service of the household Lares and

iNfERIOB OF THE ShRINE AT THE ToMB OF THE ToKl!GAWA ShoGUNS AT ShIBA, ToKTO.

Kelics of the hero arc preserved in the rear.

Penates, or Daikoku and Ehisu as they appear in Japan. These
quaint figures — Daikoku with his bag of rice, and Ehisu with his
wise smile and accompanying fish — are regarded more as symbols
of good luck than supreme beings, and are retained, in many
homes at least, in the same spirit as we Occidentals would fasten
a horseshoe over a doorway.

The entire absence of demonstrative affection in Japanese fam-
ilies seems almost incompatible with the deep feeling of parental
and filial love and tenderness that exists. Petting and caressing
are dispensed with as soon as babyhood is over; and even during
this time the mother but rarely presses her lips to the child's

334 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

face, although tlie ministering love and tender care of the parent
are not lessened one whit with the advancing maturity of the
child. Again, while the relationship between brothers and sisters
is most sincere and cordial, embracing, kissing, or any other caress
is never thought of. An old Japanese precept goes so far as to
command that, after the age of seven, brothers and sisters should
not even sit together ; and up to the present dynasty this rule was
strictly adhered to. So, when the father of the family would read
aloud to the assembled children, the daughters would always sit
apart, half hidden by a screen. In contradistinction to these
apparently formal relations, brother or sister, even after having
attained the age of puberty, will have no hesitation in disrobing
or bathing before one another; while the utmost freedom in con-
versation is admissible. This formality between the sexes, even
in the same family, may be briefly summed up in the words,
" Hands off I " and apart from this the closest intimacy and affec-
tion may exist.

The word " kiss " finds no exact equivalent in the Japanese
language ; the nearest approach to it being kuchi-su, literally " to
suck the mouth " — a caress only admissible in conjugal relations.
The principal years of a girl's life that are specially celebrated
are the third, seventh, and fifteenth, at which latter age she is re-
garded as a woman, and no longer a child. The most important
years of a boy's life are the third, fifth, and fifteenth, and at this
last age he is supposed to put off childishness, and is regarded as
a man and of age. Besides the two children's festivals already
referred to, there are four other minor boys' festivals and four
girls' festivals in the year, so that practically every month has its
■" children's day."

So much for the ethics of child life in Japan ; and much that
has been said concerning the same holds good also during later
years, in so far as the family relationships are concerned. We
now can turn to a consideration of the various relationships be-
tween the sexes.

Engagements for marriage are either arranged by the parents
•of both families, while the principals are yet children, or else
through the mediumship of a 7iaJcodo, or go-between, who must
be a friend of both families. In the former case, it is usually
with the desire of uniting the houses, and the engagement is
arranged by the parents while the contracting parties are only
infants ; or even — conditionally, of course — before the birth of
•either child. The children thus engaged are brought up to re-
gard each other as affianced, although their relationship toward
•each other is no more than playmate or friend, until the consum-
mation of the marriage.

When a youth chooses a wife for himself, and has settled upon

MORAL LIFE OF THE JAP AXE SE.

335

his choice, he summons a mutual friend to act as nakodo. In
this case the engagement is usually of very short duration ; fre-
quently not more than a few days or weeks. The nakodo arranges

everything— the dower, the wedding itself, and the subsequent
entertainment. The engaged couple may see each other, but
never alone. Their previous acquaintance may have been a long
one, and the young people themselves may have come to a
mutual understanding : but to all intents and purposes the groom
elect, prior to the betrothal, has merely been a friend of the
family in general. The Occidental custom, or rather usage, which

MORAL LIFE OF THE JAPANESE. t,i^j

permits the daughters of the home to entertain their male guests
alone, would be regarded as unpardonable in Japan.

As I have said, the engagement is either the matter of a life-
time or else of a few days or weeks. The date of the wedding
having been fixed upon, and finally arriving, the first step is taken
by the ceremonious removal of the bride's effects to the home of
the groom elect. Apart from a nominal civic marriage, which
practically only consists in registration, the ceremony is purely
of a domestic nature.

The wedding invariably takes place in the groom's house.
The bride elect is escorted to her future home by her parents, and
is received by a young girl, who acts as the machi-joro, " waiting
lady," by whom she is conducted to the dressing-room. In the
mean time the parents of both parties have assembled in the
guests' chamber, with a few intimate friends and the inevitable
nakodo. Before the tokonoma, or alcove, is a lacquered table, in
the center of which is a miniature pine tree — the symbol of good
fortune and prosperity ; and beneath the tree are two miniature
figures of an old man and woman, each with a broom — symbols
of household thrift and long life ; while at the root of the tree is
an ancient turtle of bronze, also symbolic of longevity and good
fortune. This odd ornament is known as the takasago, and is
always placed between the bride and groom during the ceremony.
There are also in readiness the me-o-chocho (male and female
butterflies), a boy and a girl of about eight years old, who wait
upon the bridal couple and take the place of our "best man" and
" maid of honor." The yiakodo is also present with a nest of three
sake cups of different sizes, and a supply of hot sake, a rice spirit.
The bride and groom having taken their places on either side of
the takasago, the ceremony proper, or san-san-ku-do, or "three
times three toasts," is next performed. The riakodo takes one of
the cups and passes it to the groom. It is then filled with sake
by the "best man," and then the groom drinks and returns the
cup to the nakodo, who passes it to the bride. It is now filled by
the " maid of honor " and emptied by the bride, and again re-
turned via the nakodo to the groom, and again emptied. This
same form is gone through with the two remaining cups, after
which the couple are regarded as man and wife. Then the na-
kodo, or parent of the bi'ide, chants the iakasago, or nuptial ode,
as follows :

" Takasagoya, kono ura bune ni,

Ho-o-agete tsuki uiorotomo ni, ideshi-o no,

Narai no awaji no shinia kageya,

To-oku naruo-no oki sngite,

Haya suininoye ni

Tsiiki ni keri."

VOI . XLIII. — 'l'.\

338 THiJ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I will not attempt to render this in verse ; approximately it
may be Englished as follows :

Taka«ago, ye married ones, have sailed now

From the bay of lone estate,
The moon of love has risen with the tide of joy
And casts its silver beams upon the waters of your lives.
The shadow of Awaji's Island steals across the rippling bay,
And now the waters are all enshadowed, o'on to Suminoy6 —
Let peace and joy remain, for ye are one!

I have endeavored to ingraft the hidden meaning, or imi, into
the above. Literally the ode would signify bnt little to us. The
chant being finished, the few friends and relatives now offer their
congratulations. In the evening there are a general reception
and congratulations and good wishes all around. Among the
merchant classes it is customary for the ncikodo to take the bride
around among her new neighbors the day after the wedding. The
costume of both bride and groom at the wedding is ordinary
" full dress," of a somber hue, but it must bear the family crest.
Naturally, the details of marriage etiquette differ somewhat ac-
cording to the social standing of the contracting parties, but the
wedding itself always remains the same.

An interesting description of a sumptuous marriage and feast
is contained in the following story, which also goes to show that
the Japanese fox — that wary beast — also takes a keen interest in
weddings :

THE REVENGE OF THE FOX.*

About fifty years ago, when the Shogun Tokugawa was at the
head of the feudal chiefs, there was a prince in the province of
Mikawa, whose prime minister was a man of great renown for
his wisdom. This minister had lost his wife in the early years of
wedlock, after the birth of a little daughter. The child grew to
maidenhood, and often wandered far into the woods that sur-
rounded the grounds adjoining the homestead, searching for wild
flowers. The thousand sweet odors and the graceful blossoming
plants filled her with intense enjoyment. One day she strolled
deeper into the odorous shade of the thick forest than was her
custom, and discovered a large hole, which she knew was the den
of a fox. With childlike whim and thoughtlessness she began to
throw little stones into the opening ; but when the shadows of the
great trees grew longer and longer, she suddenly remembered
that the hour was late, and with a flutter of the heart hastened
homeward to her father.

* Originally translated into German by F. Wanington Eastlake, Ph. D., and read before
the Gesellschaft fiir Volkerkunde in Ost-Asien.

MORAL LIFE OF THE JAPANESE.

339

Full twelve mouths passed without any noteworthy occur-
rence. The minister's daughter grew more subtly beautiful day
by day. and many noble lovers sought to win her favor. But the

Bronze Bell in Uyeno Park, Tokyo.
About the bell are hung tlie straw sandals of devout pilgrims.

maiden's heart was not unlocked ; her eyelids closed upon dream-
less slumbers, and her gentle soul knew no dawning thought of love.
Then one morning came, when a gold-bedecked rider with a
dazzling retinue drew up before the door of the mansion, and a

340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

servant with low prostrations made known that the son of the
prime minister of a neighboring prince had arrived. So soon as
the handsome yonth had dismounted, he was ceremoniously wel-
comed, and the cause of his visit inquired into. He answered
that the fame of the young girl's beauty had reached his province,
and he had hastened hither to ask for her hand in marriage.
Greatly overjoyed, the proud father at once gave his consent, and
ordered the attendants to summon his daughter ; but the young
knight interposed, saying that he must return without delay, and
wished his bride to accompany him. With courteous mien he
added that all necessary arrangements could be equally well
carried out npon arriving at his father's house — such as the
dower, wedding gifts, and everything relating to the marriage
ceremony. No pomp or pageant would lack in fit magnificence
by being postponed a little later, and the bride should be heralded
by flowers, torches, and the marriage song; but their immediate
departure was inevitable.

For a moment the lordly father was silent and embarrassed
by doubts ; but fearing Ihat he might lose so brilliant a fortune
for his only child, he gave his full consent. Within an hour
tlie blushing girl, in bridal robes and splendid draperies, came
tlirough the outspread inner doors, and stood in all the " alarm
of beauty and troubled pride," ready for the journey. Her wait-
ing maids and servants, who were to accompany her, clustered
around her, wondering whence sprang all this blaze of wealth in
so short a space of time.

In a moment the kago (palanquin) for the bride was brought
forth, and before she and her maids could realize the fact, the
kago, the horsemen, and the courtly suite were in motion. This
time the palanquins of the bride and retinue of women took the
precedence and headed the rest, as with joyous music, and heralded
by the blare of trumpets and roll of drums, the procession left the
minister's door. It seemed not long before the bridal cavalcade
drew up before a palatial building. The young groom sprang
from his saddle, and, hastening to the kago of his bride, softly
announced that this was his dwelling, and requested her to step
out and enter the guest-chamber. She did so, while shadowy
servitors bowed low within the halls as they entered. The bride
said nothing, but oi)ened her soft eyes half in fright, and then
with wonder and admiration, at the beauty of the palace. Stately
halls opened into still statelier chambers. Such unrivaled mag-
nificence! — carved cedar, gold lacquer, and vessels of solid gold.
In one fairy room, a mimic glade and shady forest with branching
stems interlaced, recalled to her the woodland walks at home,
while the very air seemed laden with the sweet odor of blossoms
and wild flowers she used to gather.

3 + 2

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Upon reaching the largest room a regal feast was si)read.
Here, too, small woodland intricacies and miniature trees were in
each nook and niche. The rich luster of the banquet-room, so
filled with perfume and brilliancy, with mirrors on the walls,
making twin pictures of all this loveliness, utterly bewildered the
young bride. Then the groom reassuringly pressed her hand and
told her that this feast had been prepared for her and her at-
tendants. Happiness stole over her, and her rosy cheeks seemed
to absorb the delight of her lover as he gazed upon her. Joy and
gladness pervaded the guests, and the youthful bride tasted with
delight the dainty dishes set before her.

Then, suddenly, a war cry resounded through the halls, and
clearly could be heard the neighing of excited steeds and the

Tut Toiiu 'iv OauKiiiANouAN. A typical Jafanese pravc. The body is buried in a square
casket, and is pliiced in ji eroueliiii;^ position.

clash of drawn swords. The bride sprang up in terror, and her
trembling maidens surrounded her as they beheld a full-armed
knight, with threatening aspect, ride toward her. She turned
quickly to her bridegrom for protection — but where was he ?
She shrieked, but nothing Imt the shri(»k and its echo were heard.
Where was the gorgeous palace with all its new-born delights ?
All had vanished. The stately music and the soft-voiced lutes
had ceased. A deadly silence, that seemed like a horrid ])resence,
was all that remained. Bridegroom and friends, paintings and

MORAL LIFE OF THE JAPANESE. 343

carvings, vases and embroideries, palace and court were all gone.
All was blighted. She and her maidens were standing in the
middle of a shady recess in the woods ; before her gaped only the
dark opening of a fox's hole ; and around them, instead of the
splendors of the feast table, were refuse, offal, and all manner of
offensive things. At this moment a horse and rider galloped up
hurriedly beside them, and told the weeping maiden that he was
the real son of the neighboring prime minister. He had heard
that a deceiver had made use of his name, and had carried off the
lovely daughter of the minister of Mikawa. He had come to find
the wretch and avenge the dishonor, but had met no one but this
little group of weeping girls in the wood.

Good counsel was dearly purchased. Heart-struck, the young
bride, with weak hand, motioned him to be silent, for she knew
now that she had been enchanted by the cruel fox, and that all
that had occurred was a wizard's revenge. Sad and ashamed,
with one beseeching glance, she turned away ; and with her maids
and servants entered her father's house again, and recounted all
that had befallen her with browbeaten air, her fair form trem-
bling with apprehension.

The minister was shocked and overcome with emotion, but
carefully commanded that the affair should be kept a profound
secret ; as it was considered an entailed disgrace when a samurai,
or high noble, or his children, allowed themselves to be bewitched
by a fox.

Despite all warnings and every precaution on the part of his
minister and his retainers, the rumor of the disgraceful enchant-
ment reached the ears of the prince. He was terribly angry.
" Surely, it must be a weak-minded fool," thought he, " who could
so easily fall a victim to the intrigues of a fox," and he at once
determined to banish the minister and his family from his king-
dom. The honorable minister waited upon his princely master,
and entreated a milder punishment, but without any success ;
leave he must with his daughter and servants. He journeyed to a
distant province and died soon after, heartbroken by the dis-
grace. His daughter never married. It is true, her hand was
sought by other men of rank, but she had had more than enough
experience with her first bridegroom, and refused all others.

This was the revenge of the fox I

The system of legalized concubinage, still existing in Japan,
is far from being akin to polygamy in a social sense. In taking
up this question, I am forcibly reminded of Pierre Loti's " Madame
Chrysantheme." This story, while in many respects faulty in its
portrayal of Japanese life, and at best revealing a rather degrad-
ing and unfortunate view, by no means typical except in seaport

L

344

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

towns where the foreign element is strong, nevertheless serves to
reflect with considerable truth the attitude of so many — so very-
many — foreigners toward the women of Japan.

In Japanese households the concubine or mekake occupies a
position similar to that of a servant, so far as her rights are con-
cerned. The wife is always the mistress of the house, and looks
upon her husband's we^'aA-e in the light of a maid. Should the
concubine become a mother, she has no claim upon the child, who
belongs to her master and mistress, and who is taught to regard
them only as his natural parents. Indeed, most frequently a

Tli;: riKi.^T IhMIIH <rAT? ()!■ YeNGAKI.II

mekake is employed in a family for the sole purpose of securing
an heir ; and no sooner has the child been born and weaned, than
the concubine is discharged.

The mekake has no prerogatives above the other servants of
the house, and is subject to immediate dismissal whenever the
master of the house desires it. No pseudo-marriage, such as sug-
gested by Pierre Loti, ever exists between the master of the house
and the mekake. She is simply a convenience, and has been se-
cured from some employment bureau, just as any other servant,
and receives regular wages.

MORAL LIFE OF THE JAPANESE.

345

Concubines are rarely, if ever, employed by unmarried men—
at least among the Japanese ; I do not refer to the foreign element

it being regarded as a grave breach of social laws. Where the

me]ial-es mostly find a place is in the home of a long-married or
childless couple. How does the wife tolerate the presence of the
concubine ? In the majority of cases, very well ; for but few Jap-
anese wives expect absolute loyalty on the part of their husbands.

The Dai Butsu at Kamakura. This is the second largest figure of Buddha in Japan. It
was formerly inclosed in a temple, but the latter was destroyed hy an earthquake sev-
eral centuries ago.

Although, as a rule, the husband remains true to his wife, he nev-
ertheless is not bound to do so by any legal or moral obligation.

There have been several efforts made by reformers to discoun-
tenance the system of concubinage, and to make it illegal. But
it would be decidedly a case of "people in glass houses," should
the present Emperor of Japan enforce any such law, or allow it to
be enacted. For not only is the Emperor himself the child of a
mel-ake, but so is also the present heir apparent to the throne.

346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

both the Empress Dowager and the present Empress being chiki-
less. Then, besides this, the Emperor's liousehold includes sev-
eral meJiakes chosen from noble families.

Regarding divorces, up to the present time the husband has
always had the ])rivilege of divorcing his wife at will, and send-
ing her back to her parents' home for apparently trivial reasons.
But, as easy as it is to sever the nuptial bonds, this privilege is
rarely taken advantage of, exce])t in extreme cases, for divorces
are looked upon with anything but tolerance by the Japanese.
On the other hand, the only thing which warrants a wife in leav-
ing her husband is cruel treatment, in which case she may return
to her father's house, and the marriage may be annulled.

There are two other classes of Japanese women that I would
make mention of : geisha, or professional entertainers, and joro,
or prostitutes. The geisha is a time-honored institution, and may
be seen at almost any public dinner or entertainment. They are
professional musicians, dancers, and entertainers in general, and
are licensed as such. Frequently the geisha will take out a pros-
titute's license as well. From this it will be understood that
what has been said concerning the reserved nature of social and
domestic relationships in Japanese society is entirely absent with
geisha. The women of the Japanese household rarely if ever
take part in the public social life of their husbands, and there-
fore all social or official dinners among men are held at some
restaurant or tea-house, and geishas employed to furnish music
and entertainment. They frequently are accompanied by two or
three dancers (oshakku), girls between twelve and fifteen years of
age, who dance while the geishas furnish music and song. The
moral instincts of the geisha are crude, to say the least, and many
progressive Japanese look eagerly forward to the day when the
geisha will not be an inevitable feature of entertainments.

Prostitution is under strict government control and supervis-
ion, and all houses of ill fame relegated to certain portions of the
town known as the yoshiwara. A prostitute's license is only for
three years, for which period of time she sells herself to the keeper
of one of these houses for a lump sum. Not infrequently among
the poorer families, one of the daughters of the home is thus
practically sold to a life of dishonor by her parents, in order to
keep the wolf from the door. I know of many sad cases of this
kind ; and while this heartless procedure is legal, yet it is re-
garded with equal repugnance and abhorrence by the Japanese
public as it would be with us, and is as loudly condemned. After
the three years' service is over, the daughter may again return to
the parental roof.

Regarding the moral life of women of the poorer classes, it is
in the main similar to that of the higher. The maids employed

tp'

,' ■ i< ' *! 1 V >« V >T ^

348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by the second-rate hotels and tea-houses bother themselves but
little about any moral obligation; button the whole, the immo-
rality laid at the door of Japanese women is unjust and mislead-
ing.

Regarding the religious life of women as affecting the ethics
of the country, little remains to be said. The enamored maiden
may write the name of her lover and herself on two strips of pa-
per, and, twisting them together, tie the spell to the lattice work
of the temple of Kicannon, the goddess of love, trusting that her
offering and prayers may be of avail, and unite their lives and
hearts.

Religion enters mostly into the lives of the Japanese people
when the sands of life are nearly run out. It is then that the
people, and more especially the old women, turn to Buddhism or
Shintoism with great avidity, and if wealthy will make lavish
gifts to the temples, or cause votive stone lanterns to be erected
at their expense along the approach to the temples, and will
readily yield themselves to the commands of the astute priests, so
that they may be assured of future peace and happiness. The
Buddhist faith undoubtedly offers the greatest inducements to
believers and condemnation to heretics. The Shinto faith, which
is the present court religion, is practically a hero worship, and the
Shinto priests are not celibates. Some of the more popular saints
or deities have been adopted by both creeds — as a matter of policy
— notably the "Seven Wise Ones," Sichi Fuku Jin, among whom
are Daikoku and Ebisu, the household Lares and Penates. In
the Shinto temples there are no idols, but relics of the deified hero
are preserved ; and before the shrine stands a huge mirror of pol-
ished metal, into which the worshiper gazes, seeking to place
himself face to face with his own soul. In the Buddhist temples
there are idols and superstitions galore.

Such are briefly the most salient features of the ethics of the
Japanese, in the account of which I have unavoidably been com-
pelled to omit much that is interesting and novel. As I have said,
on the whole the Japanese people have been done a great injustice
to, when a lack of moral instinct has been charged to them. In
no other country, and surely in no other language, has love found
an apter exponent. Filial piety, connubial affection, parental ten-
derness, fraternal fondness — all these have been sung about in
Japanese poetrj'' in a thousand dainty ways, and may be daily
witnessed in the lives of the people, and above all this is that
ardent spirit of patriotism and love for home that so preserves
the unity of the Jai)anese people ; and should we seek for the key-
note of the wondrous ancient heroism and present rapid advance
of the country we will surely find it in the words Mikune no tame,
"For my country's sake."

EDUCATION AND SELECTION. 349

EDUCATION AND SELECTION.

By M. ALFRED FOUILLKE.

MOST of the controversies which are rife in reference to the
vital question of education appear to have originated in
failure to rise to a sufficiently general point of view of the subject
— to a national, international or perhaps an ethnic view. M. M.
Guyau, who, in his Education et VHerediie, has discussed prob-
lems relative to morals, religion, aesthetics, and education, from
the sociological point of view, has put the question into a really
scientific form : Given the hereditary merits and faults of a race,
to what extent can we by education modify the existing heritage
to the advantage of a new heritage ? For nothing less is involved ;
we have not only individuals to instruct, but a race to preserve and
increase. Education, therefore, must rest on the physiological and
moral laws of the cultivation of races. We do not overlook this
in breeding useful animals, but in dealing with human beings we
forget it — as if the education of men was concerned only with in-
dividuals.

The ethnic point of view is the correct one. We need, by edu-
cation, to create hereditary qualities physically and intellectually
useful to the race ; besides cerebral and physiological heredity,
we should assure such social hereditary forms as traditions, cus-
toms, social conscience, and public opinion. Society is, in fact,
an organism endowed with a certain collective consciousness, al-
though it is not concentrated in a self. We should, therefore,
regard as a form of heredity and organic identity through ages,
everything that maintains among a people continuity of charac-
ter, spirit, habits, and aptitudes ; in short, a national conscious-
ness and a national will.

It being admitted that the ultimate aim of education is to in-
sure the development of the race, the question arises as to the best
means of insuring it. There is one which we desire to set promi-
nently in the light— selection. The history of mankind shows us
the struggles of races, nationalities, and individuals — not for life
only, but for the progress of life under all its forms, including in-
tellectual, aesthetic, and moral life. In our talk about the struggle
for existence we forget the metamorphosis which selection under-
goes in passing from the domain of brutal into that of intellec-
tual and moral forces. We have, therefore, to reach a comprehen-
sion of the analogies and the differences between natural and
social selection. As a first step toward this, we should ask to
what extent ideas rule the world, and how a selection of ideas is
first induced in the brain by education. We might call this psy-
chological selection. The power of instruction and education.

350 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which some exaggerate and others deny, is simply the force of
ideas and feelings. We can not bring too much scientific exact-
ness to the determination of the extent and limitations of this
force. We start from the principle that every idea tends to real-
ize itself; and it does so in fact, if it is not counterbalanced by a
superior force. The principle of the struggle for existence and of
selection is applicable, therefore, to ideas not less than to living
individuals and species. A selection is produced in the brain in
favor of the strongest and most exclusive idea, which carries the
whole organism. The child's brain is a battlefield of ideas and
the impulses they generate; every new idea is an additional force
encountering ideas already installed and impulses already devel-
oped. Education is, then, a work of intellectual selection. Let us
suppose a mind still void, into which is abruptly introduced the
representation of movement, the idea of some action, as of raising
the arm. The idea being solitary and without any counterpoise,
the disturbance begun in the brain takes the direction of the arm,
because the nerves abutting in the arm have been disturbed by
the representation of it; consequently the arm rises. To think
of a movement is to begin it. A movement once existing can not
be lost, but is communicated as of necessity from the brain to the
organs — unless it is arrested by some other representation or im-
pulsion. This propagation of motion is assured physiologically
by the symmetry of the limbs, which tend to execute the same
movement in succession. The brain provides the theme and the
limbs reproduce it, and we have sympathy and synergy of the
organs. The contagion of the idea to the limbs is infallible if the
idea is solitary or predominant. We call this the law of idea-
forces,

Chevreul's well-known experiments with the exploratory
pendulum and the divining rod show that, if we represent to our-
selves a motion in any direction, the hand will unconsciously
realize it and communicate it to the pendulum. The tipping table
realizes a movement we are anticipating, through the interven-
tion of a real movement of the hands, of which we are not con-
scious. Mind-reading, by those who divine by taking your hand
where you have hidden anything, is a reading of imperceptible
motions by which your thought is translated without your being
conscious of them. In cases of fascination and vertigo, which are
more visible among children than among adults, a movement is
begun the suspension of which is prevented by a paralysis of the
will, and it carries us on to suffering and death. When a child, I
was navigating a plank on the river without a thought that I
might fall. All at once the idea came like a diverging force, pro-
jecting itself across the rectilinear thought which had alone
previously directed my action. It was as if an invisible arm

EDUCATION AND SELECTION. 351

seized me and drew me down. I cried out, and continued stagger-
ing over the whirling waters, till help came to me. The mere
thought of vertigo provoked it. The board lying on the ground
suggests no thought of a fall when you walk over it ; but when it
is over a precipice and the eye takes the measure of the distance
to the bottom, the representation of a falling motion becomes in-
tense, and the impulse to fall correspondingly so. Even if you
are safe, there may still be what is called the attraction of the
abyss. The vision of the gulf as a fixed idea, having produced an
" inhibition "' on all your ideas and forces, nothing is left but the
figure of the great hole, with the intoxication of the rapid move-
ment that begins in your brain and tends to turn the scales of the
mental balance. Temptation, which is continual in children be-
cause everything is new to them, is nothing else than the force of
an idea and the motive impulse that accompanies it.

The force of an idea is greater as the thought is more distinctly
selected than others in the consciousness. This selection of an
idea that becomes so exclusive that the whole consciousness is
absorbed in it has been called monideism. The state is like that
of a hypnotized person. The hypnotizer creates an intellectual
void in the brain by inducing artificial sleep, and suggests a
thought which, being alone and unhampered, is at once realized
in movements ; and hypnotic suggestion is nothing else than this
artificial selection of a single idea to the exclusion of others. The
same force of the idea prevails in natural somnambulism. The
somnambulist no sooner thinks of anything than he performs it,
with his hands and feet as well as with his brain. The movement
of the overexcited brain is so lively and the resistance offered by
the sleeping organs is so weak that the impulse is communicated
to the limbs by the mere fact that it has been conceived. The
kind of dream in which children sometimes live is not without
some analogy with somnambulism. The fixed idea is another ex-
ample of the same phenomenon which is produced in the waking
state, and increasing may go on to monomania — a kind of un-
healthy monideism. Children, having few thoughts, would be
likely to have fixed ones, except for the mobility which perpetual
novelty causes in them. In this way all the facts may be ex-
plained that are grouped under the name of auto-suggestion.
Generalizing the law, we might say that every conceived idea is
an auto-suggestion, the suggestive effect of which is counterbal-
anced only by other ideas producing a different auto-suggestion.
This fact is especially exemplified in children, who execute very
quickly what passes in their heads.

The force of example is likewise brought back to the commu-
nicative and selective force of all representation. In the same
manner is explained the form of suggestion in which the idea

352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

suggestiug the act occurs not to one's self, but is introduced by
another. In this line M. Guyau has j^ointed out a possible appli-
cation of suggestion in moral therapeutics " as a corrective of ab-
normal instincts or as a stimulant of too weak normal instincts."
He looks upon suggestion as an instinct in the nascent state cre-
ated by the hypnotizer. Many and important results have been
realized from suggestion since his remark was made. Of course,
M. Guyau does not advise, but expressly condemns the introduc-
tion of hypnotism into normal education. He cites these patho-
logical facts in order to deduce from them consequences relative
to the normal condition. He considers hypnotic suggestion as
simply the unhealthy and grossly artificial exaggeration of sug-
gestive phenomena which are produced in a state of perfect
health. Normal suggestion, which alone should find a place in
education, is psychological, moral, and social ; it consists in the
transmission of ideas or impulsive feelings from one person to an-
other, and in the possibility of fixing them. While in the normal
condition we are not under the power of a determined magnetizer,
it does not follow that' we are not "accessible to an infinity of lit-
tle suggestions ; now acting contrary to one another, now acting
cumulatively and producing a very sensible average effect."
Children in particular are open to all the suggestions of the me-
dium. The state of an infant on coming into the world is com-
pared by M. Guyau to that of a hypnotized person. There is tlie
same absence of thoughts of its own or the same predominance of
a single thought. " Everything that the infant will hear or see
will therefore be a suggestion. This suggestion may be the foun-
dation of a habit which may be developing during the child's
whole life, as impressions of terror inculcated in children by
nurses often do." If the introduction of new feelings is possible
by a wholly physiological means, it should be equally possible by
psychological and moral means.

Suggestion, which creates artificial instincts capable of balanc-
ing hereditary instincts, constitutes a new power comparable with
heredity. Education, says M. Guyau, being a collection of co-or-
dinated and reasoned suggestions, we can understand the impor-
tance, the efficiency which it may acquire in both a psychological
and a physiological respect. In our own view, suggestion is only
a particular instance of the more fundamental law of idea-forces
which rules in all pedagogic science.

Ideas have been sometimes despised and treated as having
hardly any influence on the conduct. The philosophers of the
eighteenth century, with Descartes and Pascal, on the contrary,
regarded the feelings and passions as confused thoughts, as " pre-
cipitations" of thoughts. There is truth in this. Under all our
feelings there is a collection of imperfectly analyzed ideas, a flood

EDUCATION AND SELECTION. 353

of hasty and confused reasons, on the mass of which we are lifted
up and borne off. On the other hand, there are feelings under all
our ideas which breed even under the cooling cinders of abstrac-
tions. The mind itself has a force, because it arouses all the
feelings which it summarizes. Thus the simple words " honor "
and " duty " resound through our consciousness in infinite echoes,
giving rise to legions of images.

We talk of dead formulas, but they are few. The idea and the
word are formulas of possible actions and of feelings ready to pass
into acts ; they are " verbs." Every feeling, every impulse that
comes to the point of formulating itself into a kind of fiat, ac- '
quires by that fact a new and in some sort creative force. It
finds itself cleared up, defined, specified, and squared with the rest,
and thus directed. It is this that renders formulas relating to
actions powerful for good or evil. A child has a vague tempta-
tion, an inclination he can not account for. Pronounce the for-
mula to him, change the blind impulse into a clear idea, and you
give him a new suggestion, which will, perhaps, cause him to fall
on the side to which he is inclining. On the other hand, there are
formulas and generous suggestions that need only to be pro-
nounced to carry entire masses. It sometimes falls to the man of
genius to translate the aspirations of his epoch into ideas; he
pronounces the word and a whole people follow. Great moral,
religious, and social revolutions occur when feelings, long re-
strained or hardly recognized, come to be formulated into ideas or
words. The way is then opened, the object is revealed with the
means, selection takes place, and all the desires are turned at once
in the same direction, like a torrent that finds a point where pas-
sage is possible.

Conduct depends, therefore, to a large extent on the circle of
the ideas which one has received under the influence of experi-
ence, social relations, and aesthetic and intellectual cultivation.
Every man possesses at the bottom a collection of general notions
and maxims which becomes the source of his resolutions and
actions, because the aggregate is, fused into a sentiment and a
habit. The tendency to translate everything into maxims is
manifested even in children, because the maxim is a generaliza-
tion that satisfies the thought. If, then, the circle of ideas proves
incomplete at any important point, if false notions or immoral
maxims insinuate themselves, we are condemned to incurable
weakness or to vice, like a nation whose code contains bad funda-
mental laws.
I^^B The mental faculties, like the physical faculties, develop in the
^p individual into a relation of reciprocal action ; but mental activity
is more dependent than the other. If you have false ideas on a

tT.r^intof fact or reasoning, it is possible for me in a little while to
VOL. XLIII. — 24

354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

enable you to put your finger on your error, or by a demonstration
to convince you of it. But it will take months or years to modify
a feeling, an inclination, or a habit. Intelligence is, therefore,
more flexible, more movable, more progressive, than the rest of
our constitution, and for that reason we can act upon it with more
facility. Put over the eye of a near-sighted man glasses that will
make things visible to him, and he will be obliged to agree that he
sees them ; show an ignorant man a drop of water in the micro-
scopic field, and he will have to recognize that it is inhabited.
Intelligence is to the other faculties of our mind what the eyes are
to the organs of our body — a touch at a distance. Hence intellec-
tual activity has a superior power to direct and transform the
other kinds of activity. As it discovers new sides in things, it
thereby produces a double efl^ect. It excites new feelings and
opens new ways to action. Every new idea tends thus to become
a sentiment and an impulse, and consequently an idea-force. The
intelligence is the great instrument of voluntary selection. It is a
shortening means of evolution ; it accelerates and accomplishes in a
few years selections that might otherwise have required centuries.

If, instead of the individual, we regard the social organism, we
shall find that here, too, the diverse activities and the diverse
products of civilization are conditioned upon one another, while
the products of intelligence and knowledge stimulate or direct all
the social functions. Religious, moral, aesthetic, political, and
economical creations are determined by the progress made by
mankind, whether in the real knowledge of things or in the dis-
covery of new ideals. Instruction is a motor of prime importance
in the social mechanism ; but on condition that it is brought to
bear on truly directive and selective ideas, on those which, by
their intimate relation with feeling and will, conspicuously merit
the name of idea-forces.

There is, therefore, a medium between prepossessions for and
against education. If education does not manifest all the power
of which it is capable, it is because it is rarely directed toward its
true end and by means adapted to that end. From this results a
loss of living forces by the mutual neutralization and disorder of
ideas. We sow ideas, as it were, at haphazard in the mind. They
germinate in like manner according to the chances of circum-
stances, of internal predispositions and of the external medium.
This is fortuitous selection, as in the domain of material forces.
It is not sufficient to instruct ; instruction itself must become an
education, a process of reflected and methodical selection between
ideas that tend to assume reality in acts. We say continually,
instruction ; other peoples say cultivation, and they are right. The
former word leads us to consider the material bearing of what is
acquired ; the latter the degree of fertility gained by the mind.

I

EDUCATION AND SELECTION. 355

Education should not be a simple acquisition of knowledge, but a
cultivation of living powers for the purpose of assuring the pref-
erence of the highest idea-forces.

After psychological selection, internal to the individual, we
have to consider social selection, which takes place between dif-
ferent individuals, or between races or peoples. There are, for any
race, physiological and psychological essential conditions of supe-
riority. The race must first of all be physiologically strong, and
here only are the ordinary laws of selection applicable, because we
are in the domain of life. The sound mind can not exist except in
the sound body ; all the delicacies of mind are not worth as much
to a race as health, vigor, and fertility. Even geniuses can not be
born except of a strong race ; the intellectual faculties can not be
kept up long and advance, except among a vigorous people, and
selection can not be efficient and produce the best by nature — a
necessary condition of all progress — except in a fruitful and nu-
merous and consequently strong race. "Whenever, therefore, we
overwork the mind at the expense of the body, we lower the phys-
iological, and therefore the intellectual, level of the race ; for gen-
erations physiologically weakened will sooner or later suffer the
weakening, with their cerebral power, of their mental capacity.
The laws of heredity are fatal : to bequeath impoverished organs
to children is to prepare for what Pascal would call the stultifica-
tion of the race at a more or less distant epoch. In the struggle
and selection of peoples as recorded in history, when young and
perhaps barbarian blood has not been infused with the aged body
of a nation, it has fallen steadily, become sterilized, and disap-
peared or declined, while other peoples were ascending.

Instruction may, we think, lead to two kinds of results : either
in dynamic effects — that is, augmentation of cerebral force — or in
purely mechanical effects ; like scientific and literary routine. In
the former case, it acts upon heredity and can produce a hereditary
transmission of cerebral force ; in the second case, it does not act,
or it acts mischievously to the exhaustion of the nervous system.
It is intellectual force, not acquired knowledge, that is transmitted
by heredity from one generation to another. Hence the criterion
which we propose for estimating methods of education and teach-
ing ; if there is an augmentation of mental, moral, and a?sthetic
force, the method is good ; if a simple storing up in the memory,
the method is bad, for the brain is not a storehouse to be filled,
but an organ to be fortified.

The physical and mental inconveniences of overwork may,
therefore, very properly occupy attention at this time. Good
scholars — those who wish to succeed in an examination or enter
certain schools — are the ones who are overworked under our pres-
ent systems ; for the majority of pupils there is no overwork, but

L

356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

simply almost complete loss of time, years passed in wearing out
the benches of the school. Of all that is paraded before their
minds they retain nothing but a few vague and confused notions;
they attend, as idlers, the excursions of their successive professors
through all kinds of sciences, and what is overwork for the others
is for them only intellectual vagabondage. If all children were
overworked, the race would soon be lost. The idle, says M.
Guyau, save it physically. On the other hand, unfortunately,
they contribute to keep it in intellectual and moral mediocrity,
and to give a false direction to public affairs. The advantages of
their idleness might have been preserved without suffering its in-
conveniences if instead of requiring from all so much knowledge,
most of which is useless, we had required strictly necessary knowl-
edge and such moderate number of the finer branches as would
lift up the mind while interesting it. In this way we could sup-
press a large number of the idlers without falling into overwork
and without depreciating the race under pretense of elevating it.
We need not concern ourselves about the number of things a child
knows, but about the way he knows and has learned them, and
about the general vigor he derives from his exercises, which alone
gives a net profit to the species. How does the earth recreate it-
self ? In the sun, the air, and the rain, by the free action of forces
which work upon it incessantly. Quiet on the surface, it works
and buds beneath. So with the mind. We should at certain times
let Nature act, and not interrupt the unconscious and spontaneous
work of organization that is going on in the depth of the brain,
as we let the force which is germinating grass and oaks work in
the depth of the soil, in solitude. — Translated for The Popular
Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes.

1

Peof. "W. Flinders Petrie is quoted as having said that the Egypt of the
early monuments was a mere strip a few miles wide of green, amid boundless
deserts, and beneath a sky of the greatest brilliancy ; a land of extreme contrasts
of light and shadow, of life and death. These conditions were reflected in the
art. On the one hand was the most massive and overwhelming construction,
and on the other, the most delicate and detailed reliefs; on the one hand, the
most sublime and solid statuary ; on the other, the course and accidents of daily
life freely treated ; on the one hand, masses of smooth buildings that far outdo
the native hills on v.'hich they stand, gaunt and bare; and on the other, the
vivid and rich coloring in the interiors. In consequence of the climate also Egypt
is a land of great simplicity of life, and simplicity is the characteristic of the oldest
Egyptian buildings.

From the ages of persons who have died in Fr.inco during the last thirty-two
years, M. Turquan computes that the average length of life in that country has
been about thirty-eight years for women, thirty-six years for men, and thirty-
seven years for the whole. This is now exceeded, and the average has risen to
more than forty years.

EVIL SPIRITS. 357

EVIL SPIRITS.

By J. H. LONG.

OF all tlie dark chapters in the history of the world none is
more terrible than that which deals with sorcery and demo-
niacal possession. To-day this belief has almost entirely disap-
peared in civilized lands : it lingers only in some remote hamlet
in "lucky and unlucky days," good and bad signs, and similar
harmless idiosyncrasies; although most grown persons can re-
member that in their childhood certain uncanny individuals were
regarded as "witches," just as certain houses were said to be
" haunted." But, after all, the belief was only vague and nebu-
lous ; while now among even the children ghosts and fairies and
witches are regarded with profound skepticism. It is extremely
difficult, then, for us to grasp the idea that "for fifteen hundred
years it was universally believed that the Bible established in thej
clearest manner the reality of witchcraft, and that an amount or
evidence so varied and so ample as to preclude every possibility
of doubt attested its continuance and prevalence. The clergy de-
nounced it with all the emphasis of authority. The legislators of
almost every land enacted laws for its punishment. Acute judges,
whose lives were spent in sifting evidence, investigated the ques-
tion on countless occasions, and (as a result) condemned the ac-
cused. Nations that were completely separated by position, by
interest, by character, were united on this question." More than
this. In the city of Treves alone seven thousand witches were
burned. At Toulouse, the seat of the Inquisition, four hundred
persons perished in one single execution. Remy, the judge of
Nancy, in France, boasted that he had put to death eight hun-
dred witches. In the little Italian district of Como one thousEind
perished in one year. The Judge Voss of Fulda burned seven
hundred, and said that he hoped to make it one thousand. Bene-
dict Karpzow boasted that he had signed twenty thousand death-
warrants for witchcraft. In Sweden in 1690 seventy persons were
condemned, and most of them burned. In Great Britain, chiefly
in Scotland, in twenty years alone between three and four thou-
sand were put to death. The executions in Paris in a few months
were, a contemporary writer says, " almost infinite." Indeed, not
to mention imprisonment and torture — torture beyond the Avildest
flight of modern fancy — the number of persons who perished,
chiefly by fire, in Christian Europe and America has been cal-
culated as from one million to nine million. Probably four mill-
ion is a correct estimate. The annals of the world may be
I searched through and through, and nothing can be found, I be-
lieve, to compare in tragic interest with the chapter on witch-
i

358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

craft and sorcery. It seems a dreadful thing to say, but I believe
it is true : all the heathen persecutions of Christians put together
are nothing in comparison with the horrors of the crusade against
witches set on foot by members of the Christian Church and by
civil rulers in sympathy therewith.

Nor is any single church entirely exempt from this charge.
" The Roman Church proclaimed in every way in her power the
reality and the continued existence of the crime. She taught, by
all her organs, that to spare a witch was a direct insult to the
Almighty ; and to her ceaseless exertions is to be attributed by far
the greatest part of the blood that was shed." Bulls were issued
by Pope Innocent VIII, who commissioned the inquisitor Spren-
ger, whose book was long the standard authority on witchcraft,
'and who (Sprenger) condemned to death hundreds every year.
Bulls were issued also by Pope John II, by Adrian VI, and by
^jnany another occupant of the chair of St. Peter. " The universal
bractice was at service to declare magicians and sorcerers to be ex-
(bommunicated, and a form of exorcism was inserted in the ritual
(^f the church. . . . Ecclesiastical tribunals condemned thousands
to death ; and countless bishops exerted all their influence to mul-
tiply the victims." The same was the case — although not to so
g,reat an extent — with the non-Roman churches. Luther said :
"il would have no compassion on these witches: I would burn
tkem all." In England the Reformation was marked by a large
increase in the number of persecutions; the prominent theolo-
gians, both within and without the established Church, holding
firmly to the belief in witchcraft. In Scotland persecution was
carried on with peculiar atrocity, while the executions in Puritan
Massachusetts form one of the darkest pages in the history of
Anfierica.

[Now, the remarkable thing about witchcraft is that it was be-
lieVied in not only by the ignorant, but also by the learned ; not
only by the clergy, but also by the laity. "The defenders of the
belipf maintained that no historical fact was more clearly attest-
ed. ». . The subject was examined in every European land by tri-
buuials which included the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the
age, on the scene and at the time of the alleged acts, and with the
assistance of innumerable sworn witnesses. The judges had no mo-
tive whatever to desire the condemnation of the accused ; indeed,
they generally had the strongest motive to proceed with caution
and deliberation," in view of the awful penalties attached to con-
viction. Cudworth, one of the most learned theologians the An-
glican Church has ever produced ; Bacon, one of the acutest law-
yers and philosophers of the age ; Sir Matthew Hale, chief justice
toward the end of the seventeenth century — these are only three
from a host of names that might be cited of those who believed in

I

EVIL SPIRITS. 359

witclicraft. Sir Matthew Hale lays it down in one of liis rulings
that it is an undoubted fact that there is such a thing as witch-
craft, and that witches ought to be punished. Even Shakespeare
shared in the general belief ; the witches in Macbeth were to him,
not poetic creations, stern realities.

The question is, then : How did this marvelous delusion arise ?
Three causes, I believe, produced it. 1. To quote Lecky, the his-
torian: "A religion that rests largely on terrorism will engender
the belief in witches or magic ; for the panic which its teachings
create overbalances the faculties of the multitude." This is true :
a cruel religion, as Christianity became when it began to rest
more and more on the basis of eternal punishment and the wrath
of God, will inevitably be haunted by the fear of evil spirits.
Therefore it is that the religion of Zoroaster and that of Brahma
have been free from the reproach of the persecution of witches
and sorcerers. 2. The support from the Bible. Now, there is no
doubt at all that the Bible does support the doctrine of evil spirits
and witchcraft. And this fact alone is sufficient to destroy the
orthodox theory of what Dr. Briggs calls " biblical inerrancy," or
freedom from error, for not one person out of one hundred now
believes in the reality of possession by evil spirits. There is, I
say, no doubt that the Bible does teach this doctrine. "Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live," was the repeated command in
the Levitical law ; this command was the foundation stone upon
which the putting to death of witches rested. We all know the
story of the witch of Eudor, as told in the twenty-eighth chapter
of the First Book of Samuel. Again, the devil afflicted Job in
various ways, one way being the sending of a tempest which de-
stroyed Job's sons. Great atmospheric disturbances were always
ascribed to Satanic agency, although a nice distinction prevailed :
when the destruction was great, it was ascribed directly to Satan ;
when small, to angels, the word angels being used in a double
sense, as messengers of evil and messengers of good. To come to
the New Testament. Philip baptizes Simon the sorcerer ; and
Saul of Tarsus finds in Paphos a certain sorcerer, a false phophet,
a Jew named Bar-Jesus.

Whatever view we may take of the Bible, one thing is certain,
it abounds with references to evil spirits, the Bible characters
believed implicitly in the existence of such spirits, and there is no
intimation given that the reign of such evil spirits should cease
to exist until the end of all things. We are expressly told, indeed,
that "when Christ had called unto him his disciples, he gave
them power against unclean spirits to cast them out"; and
again: "And these signs sha-1 follow them that believe: in my

»name shall they cast out devils."

360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

important of all, was the belief tliat natural phenomena of a
hurtful type are the result of the action of evil spirits. As a
writer has said : " The phenomena which impress themselves most
firmly on the mind of the savage are not those which are mani-
festly the operation of natural laws and which are productive of
beneficial efi'ects. They are, on tlie contrary, those results which
are disastrous and apparently abnormal. Gratitude is less vivid
than fear, and the smallest apparent infraction of a natural law
produces a deeper impression than the most sublime of its ordi-
nary operations. When, therefore, the more startling and terrible
aspects of Nature are presented to his mind, when the more deadly
forms of disease or natural convulsion desolate his land, the sav-
age derives from these things an intensely realized perception of
diabolical presence. In the darkness of the night, amid the
yawning chasms and the wild echoes of the mountain gorge,
under the blaze of the comet or the solemn gloom of the eclipse,
when famine has blasted his land, when the earthquake and the
pestilence have slaughtered their thousands, in every form of dis-
ease which refracts and' distorts the reason, in all that is strange,
portentous, and deadly, he feels and cowers before the supernatu-
ral. Completely exposed to all the influences of Nature, and com-
pletely ignorant of the chain of sequence that unites its various
parts, he lives in continual dread of what he deems the direct and
isolated acts of evil spirits."

These three causes, then, combined to produce a belief in witch-
craft and Satanic possession.

Let us now trace its growth as far as Christianity is concerned.
But to understand this we must go back for a moment to the
classic nations among whom Christianity was planted. Magic
or sorcery prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, all sects
accepting its existence except one sect, that of the Epicureans. It
is true, occasional laws were enacted against its practice ; in some
instances magicians were condemned to death ; but the persecution
in general was only occasional and was not severe, as magic was
regarded as an offense not against God or the gods, but as against
the state or the individual. The magician was punished because
he injured man, not God. And punishments for injuries to men
have always been less severe than punishments for supposed in-
juries to God. This is the rule of history : punishments for reli-
gious offenses have been much greater than those for civil or
criminal offenses, the greatness of the crime being measured by the
greatness of the being injured. At times it was found that the
prognostications of the soothsayers from the flight of birds, the
positions of the stars, and other data, tended to produce conspira-
cies against the emperor ; and so punishments were inflicted and
repressive laws passed. But, in general, magic and soothsaying

EVIL SPIRITS. 361

were not regarded witli disfavor, the augur, the haruspex, and the
keeper of the sibyl's books being considered as part of the regular
state life of Greece and Rome.

With the advent of Christianity, however, there came a great
change. In the matter which we are considering, as in many an-
other, old things had passed away and all things had become new.
Before very long after the death of Jesus the Christians were
filled with a sense of the awful presence — in fact, the omnipres-
ence — of Satan, which colored their every thought and act. This,
added to the idea of eternal punishment — a fate reserved for all
those about them who were not of the new faith — gave to the early
Christians an intensely realistic sense of evil and an eager readi-
ness to believe in agents of evil of a supernatural order. To their
minds the world about them, with its imperial government and
especially its non-Christian church ritual, was simply a great
object-lesson of Satan's unbridled sway. Everywhere they saw
the finger of Beelzebub, the prince of devils. These facts, or
rather supposed facts, together with various philosophical sys-
tems, such as the system of Plato and that of the Gnostics, made
the early Christians believe the earth, the sea, the very air, to be
full of evil spirits, the emissaries and agents of Satan. Some of
these were the spirits which had rebelled against God and had
been hurled "sheer o'er the crystal battlements of heaven."
Others were spirits which had gone hither and thither, deluding
man in the antediluvian world. Others were heathen deities —
Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and so on — all of whom, whether they were
of good or of evil report among the Greeks or Romans, were equal-
ly evil spirits to the Christians. The spirits who, by these Greeks
or Romans, were worshiped under the names of departed heroes —
heroes who had achieved so many acts of splendid and philan-
thropic heroism — these were to the Christians not the real spirits
of the dead, but merely devils who had answered the name and
assumed the honors of the dead. No relation of life was free from
this scourge of evil spirits; they even became the husbands or
wives of the Christians themselves. Like the locusts of Pharaoh
of old, they were over all the land. It is very hard for us now to
imagine what all this means — it seems so laughable, these trans-
formations and artifices and disguises to which the spirits resort-
ed to do their master's bidding ! But to these Christians of the
second and succeeding centuries it was all stern reality — a matter
of eternal life and death.

Now, what followed from all this ? Simply that no truce was
to be kept with, no mercy shown to, the sorcerer or magician ; he
it was who could send forth and summon back these spirits ; he
it was whom they must obey. He was worse, far worse, then,
than the evil spirits, for the latter only followed the instincts of

362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their nature, the former went outside the realm of his human na-
ture to blight by supernatural means the happiness of others and
to destroy the peace of the Church. He was therefore held in ex-
ecration — the enemy of God and man. And after a time — i. e., in
the fourth century — the Church obtained secular power, Chris-
tianity became the state religion. Then began those awful perse-
cutions that have left an indelible stain upon the Christian name.
Constantine, the first Christian emperor, had been reared a pagan.
He was inclined, therefore, to be lenient. But Constantius and his
successors enacted the severest laws. " All who attempted to fore-
tell the future were emphatically condemned. Magicians who
were captured in Rome were to be thrown to the wild beasts, and
those who were seized in the provinces to be put to excruciating
torments and at last crucified. If they persisted in denying their
crime, their flesh was to be torn from their bones with hooks of
iron. These fearful penalties were directed against rites which
had long been universal ; and which, if they were not regarded as
among the obligations, were at least among the highest privileges
of paganism." Of course, the sufferings produced by these laws
may have been exaggerated — the laws are plain, they are still pre-
served in the official Latin — and of course a large part of the bar-
barity is to be laid not to the Christian priests or to the better
classes of the Christians, but to fanatical mobs and cruel officers.
But still two things are plain : the Christians believed in magic
and witchcraft as the results of Satanic agency ; and, again, they
indulged in very severe persecution against suspected persons.
These laws, however, proved ineffective; they but showed two
things which the world has not quite learned even yet : First, that
the mere passing of a law does not change human nature ; and,
second, that a law that is not sustained very strongly by public
opinion is worse than useless. It was thus found impossible by
law to suppress the old pagan magic handed down from genera-
tion to generation among those who had not become Christians.
And so, by a very natural process, there grew up in the Church
a counter-system, a sort of rival, the talismans of which were
holy water, crucifixes, and other signs and symbols, which became
in the succeeding centuries the visible means wherewith the de-
signs of the evil spirits were thwarted.

Gradually paganism grew weaker, but it did not entirely dis-
appear. It merged itself into Christianity, a fact never to lose
sight of, for it explains so many apparent mysteries. Just as
the Roman Catholic Church to-day in various lands — e. g., in
Spanish America — has accepted old heathen customs and festivals,
and has changed them into Christian customs and festivals ; just
as, to take another group of examples, the Druidical May day and
Harvest Home, and the Oriental Christmas were adopted by the

k

EVIL SPIRITS. 363

Christian Church ; so at the time of which I am now speaking —
i. e., the sixth century after Christ — the Church adopted, under
somewhat changed aspects, many of the beliefs and customs of
paganism. The mantle of the ancient faith fell upon the shoul-
ders of the new Church.

In the sixth century the dark ages began, and lasted, roughly
speaking, until the beginning of the twelfth century. And dark
indeed they were. The old light of classic learning and letters
had died away ; the new light had not yet dawned. The world
was sunk in ignorance and superstition. Evil spirits and sorcery
held unquestioned sway. As a writer says : " There had never
been a time when the minds of men were more completely mold-
ed by supernatural conceptions, or when the sense of Satanic
power and presence was more profound and universal. Many
thousands of cases of possession, exorcism, miracles, and appa-
ritions of the evil one were recorded which were accepted with-
out the faintest doubt. There was scarcely a great saint who
had not on some occasion encountered a visible manifestation of
an evil spirit. Sometimes the devil appeared as a grotesque and
hideous animal ; sometimes as a black man ; sometimes as a beauti-
ful woman ; sometimes as a priest haranguing in the puljjit ; some-
times as an angel of light; sometimes actually in the form of
Christ. But the sign of the cross or a few drops of holy water, or
the name of Mary, could put him to an ignominious flight. The
Gospel of St. John around the neck, a rosary, a relic of Christ or
of a saint, any one of the thousand talismans distributed to the
faithful, sufi&ced to baffle the utmost efforts of diabolical malice."

In the twelfth century, however, a new idea appeared, that of
the witch proper. Up to this time the idea of a formal compact
with the evil one had not taken definite form ; but in the twelfth
century the conception of a witch, as we now conceive it — that is
to say, of a woman who had entered into a deliberate compact with
Satan, and who was endowed with the power of working miracles
whenever she pleased, and who was transported through the air to
pay her homage to the evil one — this idea first appeared. The panic
created by this belief advanced at first slowly, but after a time
with fearfully accelerated rapidity. Thousands of victims were
sometimes burned alive in a few years, and every country of Eu-
rope was stricken with the wildest panic. But this very twelfth
century has been called the turning point of the European intel-
lect. It began to awaken from its sleep of centuries; foreign
lands were visited by travelers ; Arabian learning began to per-
meate Europe ; and gradually the people became just a little skep-
tical. Men learned to doubt, but there was as yet no science, as
we understand that word ; there was no independent inquiry ;
men began to doubt — but to doubt was still a crime. The Church

364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

saw the change ; and, as was her custom, proceeded to crush the
new movement, for rebellion against authority was, in her eyes,
the one unpardonable sin. The church teaching began to assume,
therefore, a more somber cast ; the people became more gloomy
and fanatical. This is clearly seen in art, which, before the in-
vention of printing, served as an index to the spirit of the age.
For example, up to the end of the tenth century Christ was always
represented in painting as having a peaceful, gentle face, and as
being engaged in works of mercy. The parable of the Good
Shepherd was the favorite subject for the artist. But in the elev-
enth century this began to change: the painters deal with the
death of Christ and with the last judgment. Moreover, Christ's
face becomes sterner and mournful. In the twelfth century the
change is complete : Christ appears stern and unyielding, like the
God of old, whom it repented that he had made man. In this age
and the succeeding ages occurred also a suc<^ession of physical,
social, and political events, all tending to heighten and deepen the
gloom which seemed to have settled upon men's minds. Chief
among these was that awful scourge, " the Black Death," in all
probability the greatest calamity that has ever visited the world,
by which in six years twenty-five millions of persons, or one quar-
ter the population of Europe, were swept away. Then began a
veritable reign of terrorism : men's minds were paralyzed with
dread, uncertain fear. They knew not whither to look; they
abandoned themselves to the anguish of despair. Then it was
that reappeared the Flagellants, scourging themselves and crying
aloud like the prophets of old. Then it was that there wandered
from land to land those bands of monks whose bodies were ever
bleeding with self-inflicted torture ; and then there loomed upon
the horizon of a startled world the dread figure of the Inquisition,
to whose autos da fe had been given the task of crushing out
heresy and witchcraft. The trials for witchcraft increased ten-
fold, and in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century the persecu-
tion reached its climax. And truly the aspect which Europe pre-
sented at that time was in many ways full of discouragement for
those who believed in the ultimate progress of humanity. As a
great writer has said : " The Church, which had been all in all to
Christendom, was heaving in what seemed the last throes of dis-
solution. The boundaries of religious thought were all obscured.
Conflicting tendencies and passions were raging with a tempestu-
ous violence, . . . and each of the opposing sects proclaimed its
distinctive doctrines essential to salvation. Yet over all this
chaos there were two great conceptions dominating unchanged.
They were the sense of sin and of Satan, and the absolute ne-
cessity of a correct dogmatic system to save men from the agonies
of hell." This was the state of Europe at the time of the Protest-

EVIL SPIRITS. 365

ant Reformation, a seething mass of conflicting theological parties
and opinions : the old Church, acknowledged even by its defenders
to be corrupt, making what seemed to many its death-stand
against Protestantism ; and Protestantism divided into number-
less hostile camps, each only with difficulty united against the
common foe.

In these matters of history our minds ought to be espe-
cially free from prejudice. For example, the Reformation in the
end undoubtedly accomplished a vast amount of good. It fos-
tered among the Protestant churches a spirit of liberty and of
free inquiry. It rejected multitudes of superstitions and of worn-
out theologic dogmas, it simplified the ritual, it encouraged the
reading of the Scriptures, it curtailed the power of the clergy.
The good effects of the Reformation were felt also after a time by
the Roman Church itself — in greater definiteness of statement, in
purified morals, in increased zeal. The Protestant Reformation,
in fact, produced the reaction in favor of Roman Catholicism, and
ushered in that brilliant era of Roman Catholic missionary effort
which still, like an aureole of glory, crowns that ancient Church.
But, although this is undoubtedly true, yet it can not be denied
that the immediate effects of the Reformation were not entirely
beneficial. It unsettled men's minds, it increased the doubt and
uncertainty that weighed down upon men, and it in no wise
lightened the gloom in which they groped their way. Moreover,
" it was for a time only an exchange of masters. . . . The Protest-
ant believed in his own infallibility quite as firmly as his oppo-
nent believed in the infallibility of the Pope. ' Faith ' still meant
an unreserved acceptance of the opinions of others. As long as
such a conception existed a period of religious convulsion was
necessarily a period of extreme suffering and terror."

As far, then, as the belief in evil spirits and other agents of
Satan is concerned, the Protestant churches stood upon the same
ground as that upon which stood the Roman Church. By both
sections of the Christian world Satan and his angels were believed
to be almost omnipresent. For example, Luther, courageous, full
of common sense as he was, tells us that in the cloisters at Wit-
tenberg he used to hear the devil talking to him ; in fact, he was
so accustomed to this that he naively relates that once, upon be-
ing awakened by the noise, he looked, and seeing that it was only
the devil, he went to sleep again. The black stain on the wall of
the cell at Wartburg still remains : Luther had thrown an ink-
bottle at Satan. He ascribed all his ailments except earache — I
do not know why he made an exception of that — to the agency of
evil spirits. He tells us that the devil frequently caught travelers
and strangled them, and transported persons through the air. He
had known Satan to appear in court as an innocent barrister;

366 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and, although Luther was extremely fond of children, yet he ad-
vised with great earnestness the family of a boy to throw him into
the river because he was possessed with a devil.

And thus, by Protestants as well as by Romanists, witches were
tortured and put to death in numbers so vast as to seem to us now
utterly incredible, the total number of persons who suffered death
in Europe and America being at least four millions. In most cases
there was a regular judicial trial ; in many cases, however, there
were various processes for testing the reality of the witchcraft.
These methods resembled the ordeals of the olden time. A favor-
ite method was to throw the accused into water. Then, if she did
not drown, that was a sign of possession. For how could she be
saved except by Satan's aid ? if she did drown, that was not
conclusive proof of innocence, because God might have taken
the punishment into His own hands. However, at that stage of
the case, the trial did not possess any further interest to the ac-
cused : it was simply a question of clearing her memory.

I have used the feminine pronouns she and her. This brings
up the question why it was that women were supposed to be al-
most always the ones who entered into this compact with Satan.
The answer is, not so much because of the sensibility of their
nervous constitution and their consequent liability to religious
monomania, as because, from various causes (for example, that
Eve tempted Adam, and that women in olden times held an in-
ferior position as to legal rights), women were considered as in-
herently more wicked than men. In Roman times Cato had said,
" If the world were only free from women, men would not be with-
out the converse of the gods." And Chrysostom, the great father,
the golden-mouthed orator, had declared woman to be " a natu-
ral temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fas-
cination." When celibacy was introduced into the Church, it was
regarded as the highest form of virtue, and theologians exhausted
all the resources of their eloquence in describing the iniquity of
that sex whose charms had rendered celibacy so rare. So it came
to pass that women were believed to be especially prone to enter
into compacts with the Evil One. These and hundreds of other
matters connected with witchcraft are to be found in the litera-
ture of the subject which has come down to us from those far-off
days. Endless discussions upon all phases and aspects of the
question, the volumes stand now in the great libraries of Europe
a monument to human credulity and superstition. All phases and
aspects of the question, I have said. For example, there was the
point whether a witch felt torture or not. The general belief
was that she did feel it, but not so acutely as do others, and that
therefore the torture ought to be more severe. Then there was an-
other point, that of self-confession. As all know, a confession of

■

EVIL SPIRITS. 367

a crime now is not looked upon as conclusive in law, and the ac-
cused is not obliged to confess. But in these trials for witchcraft
the whole aim of the court seemed to be to extort a confession.
For this object torture was resorted to, with the results that mul-
titudes confessed that they were witches and persisted in their
confessions until death relieved them. For the confession meant
death, its object not being to spare the accused, but to justify the
accuser. As a writer has said, " Madness is always particularly
prevalent during great religious and political revolutions " — many
therefore confessed through madness. Others, of a timid, doubting
mind, made themselves believe that, unknown to themselves, they
were witches. While " very often the terrors of the trial, the pros-
pect of the most agonizing of deaths, and the frightful tortures
that were applied to the weak frame of an old and feeble woman,
overpowered her understanding ; her brain reeled beneath the ac-
cumulated suffering, the consciousness of innocence disappeared,
and the wretched victim went raging to the flames, convinced that
she was about to sink forever into perdition."

Another yqyj interesting point discussed at great length in
these old books was whether the same body could be in two places
at once. That the body might be in one place and the mind in
another — this was agreed upon ; but whether the body might be
in two places — that was a harder question. However, it was de-
cided eventually that this was quite possible, and thereafter the
fact that wives were at home with their husbands was not accept-
ed as proof that they were not elsewhere in the same form as
witches. Indeed, several early saints had this same gift. St. Am-
brose celebrated mass in France and Italy at the same time, and St.
Clement is well known to have consecrated a church at Pisa while
performing mass at Rome. There is no doubt as to this latter
point, for there is blood as a proof upon the altar at Pisa ; and if
this is not his blood, whose is it ? Closely allied to this was what is
called " lycanthropy " — i. e., the taking of the form of an animal
by Satan or one of his angels. There are some most wonderful
stories of transformation to be found in the old records, all of
which are very ludicrous to us in this nineteenth century, but
when, three hundred years ago, it was a question of the stake here
and everlasting fire hereafter, they did not appear so full of humor.
A French judge named Boguet devoted himself especially to this
branch of witchcraft, wrote a book upon it, and burned multitudes
of these lycanthropes, his rule being to strangle other witches first,
but to burn these without strangling.

So it came to pass that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
the skies of continental Europe were lurid with the flames of
burning women, and every market place had its fagot and its
stake.

368 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But after a time men's hearts and minds revolted from this
hideous slaughter. The first book on the Continent that made
an effective attack upon the system was by John Wier, a learned
doctor of Cleves. In this book Wier took the ground that, al-
though devils are everywhere about us, and although many per-
sons are possessed with devils, yet there are no such beings as
witches, and therefore no one ought to be punished as a witch.
He said further that, in his humble opinion, a good many persons
supposed to be possessed with devils simply had some disease or
other which doctors ought to try to cure. This Dr. Wier was a
strange sort of man. He published another book, giving various
particulars about the lower regions. He was very exact in his
figures ; and he ascertained that at that time these regions were
ruled by seventy-two princes, and the number of devils was
7,405,926. This book of Wier's brought out the ablest defense
ever made of witchcraft — a volume by Bodin, esteemed the most
learned of all Frenchmen. This book was not answered ; and as
far as authorities and figures and biblical texts and judicial rul-
ings go, it can not be answered. Still, it did not stem the rising
tide against the belief in witchcraft. Humanity and common
sense were asserting their sway, and persecution was doomed.
In 1588, the very year of the Armada, Montaigne, the great
Frenchman, published the first really skeptical work in the French
language. This work ushered in the new treatment, the modern
treatment of all such questions. He calmly ignored the mass of
authority. "I do not attempt," he said, "to untie the knot: I
simply cut it. It is more probable that we are deceived, or that
men should tell falsehoods, than that witches should exist. And
further, it is setting too high a value on our opinions to roast
people if they will not accept these opinions." Montaigne had
calmly risen above the mists of superstition into the clear realm
of common sense and reason. The last witch in France was burned
in 1718. After that there were one or two trials, but the prisoners
were acquitted ; for " the star of Voltaire had risen above the
horizon, and the unsparing ridicule which his followers cast upon
every anecdote of witches intimidated those who did not share in
the credulity."

In Great Britain the first regular enactment against sorcery
was in 1541 — i. e., at the beginning of the Reformation — although
it had been known before that time. In fact, Joan of Arc had
been put to death by the command of the English, although on
the soil of France and under the sentence of a French judge.
Great Britain, indeed, was not so violently affected by this de-
lusion as was the Continent. This for various reasons, her in-
sular position and greater freedom being the chief. So, although
Cranmer, the great churchman, he to whom is so largely owing the

EVIL SPIRITS. 369

Book of Common Prayer, directed his clergy to seek out witches
and sorcerers; and although in the reigns of Henry VIII and
Elizabeth there were a few executions, it was not until the time
of James I that really severe measures were taken ; for James I
had been reared in Scotland under Puritan influences, and the
Puritans were always especially severe ujDon witchcraft. The
king, in fact, had written a pamphlet on the subject; had pre-
sided at the excessively cruel torture of a person who had, it
was alleged, caused a storm at sea ; and was particularly fond of
boasting that Satan considered him, the king, as by far the ablest
opponent he (Satan) had as yet encountered in this world. And
thus in this reign — the era of Bacon and Coke and Shakespeare —
England became, like the Continent, the theater of persecution.
But all this was as nothing compared to that carried on in the
time of the Commonwealth, when the Puritans held sway. Crom-
well himself was not inclined to be cruel ; but the whole teaching
of Puritanism tended toward the belief in witchcraft and the per-
secution of witches. It forbade amusements, and had thus a tend-
ency to make the people somber and gloomy. It was intensely
earnest: the finger of God and the finger of Satan were seen
everywhere. Moreover, it developed especially a taste for the
reading of the Old Testament, which abounds with references to
supernatural events, and the characteristic of which is severity
toward those who are not the Lord's people. And the Puritans
were the Lord's people, to whom had gone forth the command " to
bind the kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron,"
So, notwithstanding all their many good qualities, the Puritans
did not err on the side of leniency toward the unfortunate
witches. Indeed, in the county of Suffolk alone sixty persons
were hanged in a single year. But the Puritan regime came to an
end, the Cavaliers returned; and these, being of a more light-
hearted although less earnest mind, and also being full of dislike
for everything that savored of Puritanism, allowed the laws
against witchcraft in great part to remain unenforced. Further,
the people were becoming more intelligent and humane, and the
Royal Society for the study of science had just been established,
and French philosophy became the fashion ; and gradually Eng-
land forgot her witchcraft and her persecution. The last execu-
tions were in 1712, in which same year the judge on the bench at
another trial charged the jury against the belief in witchcraft.

Scotland, however, was not so fortunate. As a writer has said :
" The misery of man, the anger of the Almighty, the fearful
power and the continual presence of Satan, the agonies of hell —
these were the constant subjects of the preaching. All the most
ghastly forms of human suffering were accumulated as faint
images of the eternal doom of the immense majority of mankind.

TOL. XLIII. — 25

370 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Countless miracles were represented as taking place within the
land, but they were almost always miracles of terror. Disease,
storm, famine, every awful calamity that fell upon mankind or
blasted the produce of the soil was attributed to the direct inter-
vention of spirits ; and Satan himself is represented as constantly
appearing in a visible form upon the earth. . . . Such teachings
necessarily created the superstition of witchcraft ; it was the re-
flection by a diseased imagination of the popular theology. More-
over, it was produced by the teaching of the clergy, and was
everywhere fostered by their persecution." Thus it is that the
annals of Puritanism and Calvinism in Scotland are red with
tales of the thumbscrew and the boot and the witches' bridle and
the axe and the stake. While the clergy of the Established Church
in England were comparatively free from any desire to persecute,
while torture was only very rarely resorted to ; while, in a word,
persecution was carried on by the people in a very half-hearted
way, in Scotland there were being enacted, at the express com-
mand of the clergy, scenes which rivaled those in Roman Catho-
lic Europe. " And yet these Presbyterian clergymen of Scotland
were men who had often shown, in the most trying circumstances,
the highest and most heroic virtues. They were men whose
courage had never flinched when persecution was raging ; men
who had never paltered with their conscience to attain the favors
of a king ; men whose self-devotion and zeal in their sacred call-
ing had seldom been surpassed ; men who in all the private rela-
tions of life were doubtless amiable and afl^ectionate. They were
but illustrations of the great truth that when men have come to
regard a certain class of their fellow-creatures as doomed by the
Almighty to eternal and excruciating agonies, and when their the-
ology directs their minds with intense and realizing earnestness
to the contemplation of such agonies, the result will be an indiffer-
ence to the suffering of those whom they deem the enemies of
their God, as absolute as it is perhaps possible for human nature
to attain."

But Scotland also became sick of blood and fire. The last
execution for witchcraft was held in 1722, although in 1773 the
divines of the associated Presbytery passed a resolution declar-
ing their belief in witchcraft and deploring the general skep-
ticism.

It is not necessary to enter upon the history of witchcraft in
America. Its details are known to all. Nothing so clearly brings
to one's mind the reality of this delusion and the persecution it
entailed as the court papers, preserved as they are in the archives
of Essex County, Massachusetts. As one looks upon those faded
records and reads of question and cross-question, of plea for
mercy and stern refusal, he can again see those awful trials ; he

EVIL SPIRITS.

371

can once more behold tlie dread procession wending its way amid
jeers and scoffs and pitiless execration to what is still " The Gal-
lows-hill of Salem."

It is, in fact, impossible to exaggerate the sufferings produced
throughout Christendom by this superstition. " It is probable
that no class of victims endured suft'erings so unalloyed and so
intense. Not for them the wild fanaticism that nerves the soul
against danger and almost steels the body against torments. Not
for them the assurance of a glorious eternity that has made the
martyr look with exultation upon the rising flame as on Elijah's
chariot that is to bear his soul to heaven. Not for them the sol-
ace of lamenting friends or the consciousness that their memories
would be cherished and honored by posterity. They died alone,
hated and unpitied; their very kinsmen shrank from them as
tainted and accursed. The superstitions they had imbibed in
childhood, blending with the illusions of age and with the horrors
of their position, persuaded them in many cases that they were
indeed the bond-slaves of Satan, and were about to exchange
their torments on earth for an agony that was as excruciating, but
was eternal." And it is wonderful how long this delusion lasted
after judicial punishment in most countries had ceased. In Spain
a witch was burned in 1780 ; in 1807 a beggar was tortured and
burned in France ; in 1850, in France, a man and wife tortured
and killed a woman suspected of witchcraft, and it was with some
diflBculty that they were punished at all, on account of the linger-
ing belief in sorcery ; in 1860 a woman was burned in Mexico, as
was the case with several persons in 1874; in 1879 and 1880
witches were burned in Russia ; while up to that date, and possi-
bly later, regular judicial trials were held in Austria and Prussia.
It is needless to say that almost up to the present, even in Eng-
land and the United States, persons have been attacked by mobs
and private individuals, because it was believed that they were
in league with Satan.

But, roughly speaking, this superstition has entirely disap-
peared ; and it has disappeared, not so much through religion as
through enlightenment and rationalism. The crushing of this
hydra-headed monster of superstition is one small part of the
debt the world owes to science.

Some drawings recently found by Herr J. Naue at a prehistoric station near
Schaffhausen, Germany, comprise, on one side of a piece of limestone, a horse, a
foal, and a reindeer, and on the other side several horses. The stylo is not so
fine as that of tlie Tliayngen drawings of France, but the pictures, according to
the finder, display a power of keen observation. Herr Naue also remarks that it
was more difficult to work on stone than on a bone still fresh.

L

372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

STRUCTURAL PLAN OF THE HUMAN BRAIN.

By Prof. CIIAELES SEDGWICK MINOT,

OF THE IIARVABD MEDICAL SCHOOL.

THE human brain is tlie most complicated organ known, and
although its anatomy has been the object of innumerable in-
vestigations, often by observers of the highest ability, we are still
far from understanding its organization. Within recent years,
however, embryologists have turned to the study of the develop-
ment of the brain, and have succeeded in elucidating many of the
obscure features. Here, as in so many other cases, embryology
has furnished the master-key to unlock the mystery of the adult
anatomy. The series of conceptions which we have derived from
our present knowledge of the development of the brain are so
clearly established that I regard them as impregnal)le. They are
so far in advance of all previous achievements in the study of the
brain that they may be called almost revolutionary, and they are
of so fundamental a character that the entire anatomy of the
brain and the entire physiology of the brain must be recast to
agree with our embryological results.

The present article is an attempt to summarize, as simply as
possible, the principal conclusions of recent researches on the
nervous system.

Physiologists have long been accustomed to divide nerve fibers
into two classes : efferent, or those which carry out impulses ; and
afferent, or those which carry in nerve impulses to the nervous
system. Not infrequently the less accurate terms sensory and
motor are used as synonymous with afferent and efl'erent respect-
ively. The nerves are bundles of nerve fibers, and each nerve is
supposed to have typically two roots — one sensory, by which all
the sensory fibers enter, and the other motor, by which all the
efferent fibers leave, the nervous system. It was supposed that
every nerve fiber was connected with a nerve cell in the central
nervous system, and that the nerve fibers grew out from the cen-
tral nervous system. It has long been known that various nerves
have thickenings at certain points; the thickenings are the so-
called ganglia and they contain nerve cells. The cells in these
ganglia were supposed to have migrated from the central parts
along the nerves.

The preceding recapitulation of familiar elementary facts will
serve to emphasize the following new conclusions : 1. The nerv-
ous system consists of two parts, which differ so markedly in their
origin and differentiation that it would be hardly an exaggera-
tion to say that there are two nervous systems, for the original
duality is never obliterated. The two parts I shall term the

STRUCTURAL PLAN OF THE HUMAN BRAIN. 373

medullary and the ganglionic respectively. Eacli part has its
special typical cells and nerve fibers. It is further probable that
there is still a third class of nerve fibers — namely, those connected
with the sensory apparatus of the special sense cells. 2. There
are three sets of nerve roots— namely, the true dorsal roots, which
are formed solely by ganglionic nerve fibers ; and the lateral and
the ventral roots, which are formed solely of medullary nerve
fibers; the lateral roots have been hitherto generally confused
with the dorsal roots ; they have been traced heretofore only in
the brain and in the cervical nerves, but I consider it more than
possible that the posterior roots of the spinal nerves will be found
to represent both dorsal and lateral roots. 3. Nerve fibers grow
out from a cell and the end of each fiber branches ; but, so far as
observed, none of the branches become materially continuous,
either with other nerves or nerve cells or with any other cells or
other protoplasmatic structures. 4. The entire brain and spinal
cord is divided into four principal longitudinal divisions, which I
have named after their discoverer the zones of His. The zones
are in pairs — that is to say, on each side there is a dorsal (i. e., in
the spinal cord " posterior ") and a ventral (i. e., in the spinal cord
" anterior ") zone. These zones are of fundamental importance,
because all the fibers which belong to the ganglionic portion of
the nervous system ramify in the dorsal zone, while all the fibers
belonging to the medullary portion leave the spinal cord (or
brain) through the ventral zone. Both zones persist throughout
life, and preserve their fundamental relations to the two kinds of
nerve fibers.

Let us now attempt to acquire fuller and more exact concep-
tions in regard to the four discoveries above enumerated. We
may hope to do this without entering into technical details and
with the use only of terms readily understood. At the same time
we shall learn wherein the significance of the four discoveries lies.

The First Discovery. — The division of the nervous system
into a medullary portion and a ganglionic portion has to be ex-
plained. The division has long been a familiar fact to anatomists,
but its true character and fundamental significance have been
known a short time only, because it is owing to very recent em-
bryological discoveries that the independent development of the
ganglionic portion has been elucidated. The existence of the gan-
glia has long been known, but their development independently
of the rest of the nervous system is a new conception. Their in-
dependence is, of course, not absolute but relative, for every part
of the body develops in intimate relations with, and in depend-
ence upon, the neighboring parts.

By the medullary portion we understand the brain proper
[plus the spinal cord or marrow and the nerve fibers, which grow

374

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

out from the "brain and spinal cord. The brain and spinal cord,
since the days of the celebrated investigations of Karl Ernst von
Baer, have been identified as modifications of a single long tube,
the so-called medullary tube of embryology. This tube, as the
embryo advances, gradually increases in complexity, especially in
the region of the head, until it is converted into the brain and
spinal cord. The complications which occur may be conveniently
grouped under four heads — namely, the flexures, the widening of
the cavity or its obliteration in a way varying for each region,
changes in the thickness of walls, and lastly an extreme differ-
entiation of the microscopic organization. Without detailed ex-
planation it may be readily conceived that by the varying co-

Dorsal zone white
Ventral zone shaded

Olfactory Lobe

Lifundibulum

Bpinal Cord

operation of these factors great differences arise in the sundry
parts of the originally simple medullary tube. On the other hand,
in the most fundamental characteristic, the production of nerve
fibers, the same principle governs brain and spinal cord alike.
There api)ear very early certain cells, which soon become recog-
nizable as young nerve cells (neuroblasts) because of their size
and pointed shape ; the pointed end now elongates into a very
delicate thread, the nerve fiber, which is at first very short but
rapidly lengthens almost like a growing root ; the growing fiber
takes its course for a certain distance, varying according to cir-
cumstances, within the wall of the medullary tube, but ultimately
passes outside the tube into the neighboring tissues together with
other nerve fibers of similar origin. It must be added that some

STRUCTURAL PLAN OF THE HUMAN BRAIN. 375

of the nerve fibers are of the Golgi type — that is to say, they end
as well as begin within the central nervous system. The bundle
of nerve fibers which pass out together constitute a nerve, or, to
speak more correctly, a nerve root. So far as yet observed no ex-
ception occurs ; therefore we may safely assert that every nerve
cell of the brain or spinal cord produces one nerve fiber and only
one, and this fiber grows out from the nervous system into the
tissues of the body. The fiber is single at its origin, but since we
always find the peripheral fibers branching, we may add that the
fiber is multiple at its termination. The nerve cells acquire also
other secondary branches — the so-called protoplasmatic processes
or dendrites — which grow out from the cells, but are not nerve
fibers and are confined in their growth to the nervous tissue itself.
The secondary branches present highly characteristic variations in
the different regions of the brain, as described in the text-books.

By the ganglionic portion we now understand the nerve cells
which lie in little groups outside of the medullary tube. These
cells produce fibers, which grow in two directions — on the one
side into the brain or spinal cord, on the other away from the
brain and cord into other tissues and organs. It has been ob-
served that the ganglionic nerve cells elongate and become spin-
dle-shaped ; each pointed end of the cell grows out into a nerve
fiber ; as the nerve cell connects the two fibers, we may describe
the actual condition accurately as resulting in a single nerve fiber,
which has a nerve cell interpolated in its course. Each group of
nerve cells forms a bundle of nerve fibers, which constitute the
posterior (or so-called dorsal or sensory) root of the anatomists.
If we follow a ganglionic fiber into the spinal cord or brain, we
find that it forms two branches, as first recorded by Ramon y
Cajal, a distinguished Spanish histologist ; of these two branches,
one runs upward, or in the brain forward, and the other runs
downward, or in the brain backward ; each fork gives off second-
ary branches (collaterals), that ramify still further, and are all
situated within the central nervous system proper. If we study
the termination of the ganglionic fiber at its other end — that is to
say, in the tissues or organs — we find that there also there occur
several ramifications. These fibers, like the medullary fibers, have
each a single origin, but, unlike the medullary fibers, have two
sets of multiple terminations. Although both the peripheral and
central terminations have been carefully studied, they have never
been found connected with other structures or cells, but only to
be in contact with them.

The true history of the ganglia and their nerve fibers has been
elucidated chiefly through the masterly researches of Wilhelm
His, Professor of Anatomy at Leipsic, who is the recognized high-
est living authority on the development of man. This addition

376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to our knowledge of the nervous system is perhaps the most im-
portant which has been made during the last generation. It
teaches us that the nervous system comprises two sets of nerve
cells and fibers, which differ not only in their situation, but also
in their development and distribution. We are already in a posi-
tion to say that the entire physiology of the brain must hence-
forth be based upon this discovery of the independence of the
ganglionic system, because the same laws can not apply without
change to structures so differently organized as are the two por-
tions which we have briefly characterized, and there can be no
doubt that the functions are as fundamentally divergent as is the
organization. It is, however, still too soon for cerebral physiology
to have remodeled itself, but that remodeling must follow, since
physiology always bases itself on the anatomical facts.

Besides the two classes of nerve fibers, the medullary and gan-
glionic, we may have to add a third. In the organs of special sense
(sight, hearing, smell, and taste) there are found the peculiar sen-
sory cells, which all present two special features : First, they have
characteristic modifications of cellular structure, by which they
are adapted to receive sensory impressions; second, they are each
united with a single nerve fiber. It has long been, and indeed
still is, the prevalent theory that the nerve fiber arose from the
brain, grew to the cell, and united with it. Merkel was, I think,
the first to suggest that the sensory cells are also true nerve cells,
the nerve fiber springing from them and growing to the brain.
This view has been brought into fresh prominence by the discov-
ery made by Michael von Lenhossdk that Merkel's supposition is
true in the case of the earthworm, which has cells scattered in its
skin, each cell giving rise to a nerve fiber, which must arise from
the sensory cell since it is connected with no other cell, although
it enters the central nervous system and there ramifies.

The Second Discovery. — For the recognition of the three
sets of nerve roots also we are indebted to the researches of His,
published in 1888. Previous to that time anatomists recognized
two roots only — the posterior or dorsal roots, and the anterior or
ventral roots. In the spinal cord it was easy to maintain Bell's
law, that the posterior roots are sensory ; the anterior, motor or
efferent. The cephalic nerves, however, could not be brought into
accord with this law, because of numerous difficulties, of which
one may be mentioned as an example. The nerve called the facial
was found physiologically to be both sensory and motor, and yet
was shown embryologically to correspond to a posterior root.
Through His we learned that the cephalic nerves corresponding to
the posterior roots have in reality compound roots, being double.
In fact, the nerves of the class referred to consist each of a bundle
of ganglionic fibers which enter the brain and branch in its dor-

378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sal regions, and of a bundle of medullary fibers, wliicli arise in
the ventral portions of the brain and pass out from it immediate-
ly below the entrance of the ganglionic fibers. Evidently there
are two roots, which, from their close juxtaposition, have been
hitherto unrecognized ; the ganglionic bundle is the true dorsal
root, the medullary bundle the lateral root. If, now, we modify
Bell's law by saying that all medullary fibers are efferent or mo-
tor, and all ganglionic fibers afferent or sensory, we can under-
stand the double function of the facial nerves and of the other
nerves resembling it — to wit, the trigeminal, glosso-pharyngeal,
and vagus.

The recognition of the lateral root as distinct from, though
joined with, the dorsal sensory root, removes many obscurities in
the anatomj'" of the nervous system. We know that lateral roots
are not confined to the nerves of the head, but tlioy also occur in
the upper cervical nerves, and I regard it as highly probable that
with the progress of research they will be found sharing in the
formation of other spinal nerves. Should this expectation be ful-
filled, the long-established conception of the posterior roots as
purely sensory will have to be modified, although it has reigned
for three quarters of a century as one of the fundamental concep-
tions of physiology.

The Third Discovery.— The third discovery is that neither
the nerve cells nor nerve fibers are directly continuous either with
other nerve cells or with the cells or structures of other tissues
and organs. Every nerve cell, together with its fiber, is an entity,
and is not organically continuous with anything else. It is cer-
tainly premature to affirm this discovery positively, for we can
say at present only that the consensus of the best opinion, of such
men, for instance, as His and Kolliker, is in favor of the concep-
tion that every nerve cell plus its nerve fiber is an isolated ele-
ment. • Until recently the hypothesis was received with favor that
the cells of brain and spinal cord were connected by threads of
protoplasm, or, to speak more precisely, by branches of the pro-
cesses of the cells ; according to this hypothesis, there would be a
direct protoplasmatic continuity between the different parts of
the nervous system, and therefore a nerve impulse brought by a
sensory fiber to the brain could be conceived as traveling along
an uninterrupted pathway of living matter until it produced its
final action. In many text-books of physiology there are dia-
grams to illustrate the theory of a continuous pathway. It is evi-
dent that if there is no such connection between nerve cells as
assumed, then we must radically alter our conceptions of the
process of the transmission of nerve force through the brain.

In the question before us, C.amillo Golgi and his followers
must lead the way. Golgi, whom the world will probably rank

I

STRUCTURAL PLAN OF THE HUMAN BRAIN. 379

among men of genius, lias unquestionably done more than any
other man living to enlarge our knowledge of the minute struc-
ture of the brain, for we owe to him, besides invaluable re-
searches, the invention of an entirely novel method of study, by
which a few of the cells of the brain are marked out with the ut-
most distinctness by a deep deposit of color, while most of the cells
and tissues of the brain are left translucent and lightly tinged.
The finest ramifications of these cells can be followed in such
preparations under the microscope, yet they have never been
proved to unite with the ramifications of other cells. Another
method is that which consists in treatment by chloride of gold, as
long employed in histology for tracing the finest thread of nerv-
ous substance, yet with this also it has hitherto been impossible
to demonstrate any actual continuity of cell with cell. There are,
however, certain authorities who still uphold the older view.
Thus Adam Sedgwick, guided by certain general theoretical con-
siderations as to the laws of cell connection, expects to find the
continuity hypothesis re-established. Recently Prof. Dogiel, of
the Siberian University at Tomsk, has published an article in
Russian, in which he apparently seeks to verify the same hypo-
thesis by actual observation, but unfortunately his results are
not yet fully accessible to me. The settling of the problem is
beset with the greatest difficulties.

The physiological consequences of the theory of non-continuity
reach very far. Thus, if the sensory fibers simply branch within
the brain, then there must occur a leap from those fibers to the
cells which are to send out the reflex response to the sensation.
So in other cases there must be a leap from one cell to another.
Perhaps the leap or transfer is comparable to an electric induc-
tion. But it is obviously useless to ramble into sheer speculation.

The Fourth Discovery. — The zones of His were vaguely
recognized by Lowe, but to His belongs the honor of having first
clearly recognized them and established their morphological im-
portance. There are four zones of His — two on each side ; they
run the entire length of the brain and spinal cord, except that in
the partially aborted end of the latter the zones are imperfectly
developed. Each zone is a thickening of the wall of the medullary
tube. We distinguish the dorsal and ventral zones. The dorsal
zone was termed by His the FlugelpIaUe (wing plate) and the
ventral zone the Orundplatte (basilar plate), but the new names
proposed appear to me preferable. At an early stage of develop-
ment the two zones are very clearly marked off from one another ;
but after a more advanced stage is reached, although they pre-
serve their characteristic differences, their delimitation is far less
conspicuous. They persist throughout life, and can be identified
in the adult. Thus, for example, in the cerebral region proper, or.

38o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as commonly termed, the region of tlie third ventricle, is a groove
known as the sulcus of Munro, which runs from the opening
which is termed the foramen of Munro, along the lateral wall of
the ventricle, backward to the narrow continuation of the ventri-
cle which has received the fanciful name of the aqueduct of Syl-
vius. This groove, the exact position of which I have thus indi-
cated for the sake of possible anatomical readers, is the boundary
between the dorsal and ventral zones. The superficial character
of our previous knowledge of the brain is emjihasized by the fact
that the sulcus of Munro is usually not mentioned or figured in
anatomical text-books, and yet we can say now that it is the most
important landmark to be found in the part of the brain in which
it occurs. It will suffice to give one other example : In the spinal
cord the structure known by the name of the posterior fissure — a
singular misnomer, since it is not a fissure — arises by the growing
together of the two dorsal zones ; a line drawn from the bottom of
the so-called posterior fissure to the entrance of the posterior
nerve roots would represent approximately the boundary between
the dorsal and ventral zones. These two examples can, of course,
be clear only to anatomists, but they demonstrate the permanency
of the zonal divisions.

We have already learned that the fibers which arise from the
nerve cells of the ganglia outside the nervous system proper enter
the dorsal zone of His and there fork, the forks running longitu-
dinally within the zone but in opposite directions. Gradually the
number of fibers running in the zone increases until they form a
fibrous tract of considerable size. The tract is originally situated
next the outer surface of the nervous system ; in the case of the
spinal cord it remains permanently upon the outside, and there-
fore, as the nerve fibers ultimately become white in color, there is
the so-called " white substance " covering the outer portion of the
dorsal zone of the spinal cord, and it is this covering, which is
known anatomically as the