The Project Gutenberg EBook of Appletons' Popular Science Monthly,
December 1899, by Various
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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899
Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900
Author: Various
Editor: William Jay Youmans
Release Date: October 2, 2014 [EBook #47024]
Language: English
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Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LVI
NOVEMBER, 1899 TO APRIL, 1900
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
[Illustration: FREDERICK C. SELOUS.]
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
DECEMBER, 1899.
EXACT METHODS IN SOCIOLOGY.
BY FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, PH. D.,
PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Those who do pioneer work in science encounter not only the inherent
difficulties of research and interpretation, but also the
misapprehension of certain educated men whose distinctive gift is a
fatal genius for applying false standards of measurement to the
progress of thought. Seizing upon some branch of knowledge that is in
a state of vigorous development, when its newer results are out of
harmony with its earlier hypotheses, such critics love to point out
these contradictions, and try to prove that the branch in question is
no science at all, and that its teachers are hardly worthy of
respectful consideration.
The history of science contains many interesting chapters pertaining
to this kind of criticism and the fate that has invariably overtaken
it. When Copernicus and Galileo showed the absurdity of the Ptolemaic
astronomy, the theologians enjoyed themselves for a time, as they
demonstrated--to their own entire satisfaction--the folly of all
rationalistic attempts to explain what revelation only could make
clear. When Darwin explained the origin of species through variation
and natural selection, the pretensions of biology were completely
exploded by its lay and clerical critics (they thought and said so) by
the extremely simple device of the "deadly parallel column." Was not
Cuvier a great anatomist, and had he ever taught this nonsense about
the mutability of species? Was not Agassiz the most learned naturalist
alive, and what had he to say about Darwinian vagaries? Had he not
proved, over and over again, that the very concept of the species was
the notion of a group of characteristics that could not possibly
change or be changed from generation to generation? In more recent
years we have again seen the same method of reducing science to a
variety show for the entertainment of the tired general reader applied
to both biology and psychology. Weismann has tried to prove that
acquired characteristics are not transmitted in heredity, and that the
germ plasm is distinct from the somatic cells. The neo-Lamarckians,
Spencer, Cope, and some of the botanists have contended for the older
interpretation. Is biology, then, a science? Forbid the thought!
Heaven preserve our minds from such confusion!
If the sociologists have hoped that they alone might not be overtaken
by easy annihilation, they deserve to be humiliated. But it is safe to
say that they have cherished no such illusions. If the men who have
devoted much time to the scientific explanation of society have had no
other qualification for their task, they have at least shown some
acquaintance with the history of thought. And so it is not likely that
they have suffered deeply from disenchantment when they have been
confronted with the regulation exposure of "the present position" of
their science.
There is no need of wasting space to prove that the kind of criticism
here referred to is without scientific value. The present position of
any science can not be determined by arraying its contradictions and
inconsistencies, irrespective of a serious attempt to ascertain which
of its concepts and hypotheses have inherent vitality. It is precisely
when a science is at its best, surely advancing year by year and full
of promise for the future, that contradictions most abound in its
monographs and text-books.
A true scientific criticism, then, must proceed by a different method.
The present position of a science can be ascertained only by
instituting three specific inquiries, namely: First, among the more or
less contradictory conceptions and hypotheses which constitute its
groundwork, what ones are surely displacing all others and gaining the
wider acceptance among active students? Second, what progress is being
made in the application of exact methods to research? Third, is there
a practical or working harmony between the concepts that are gaining
ground and the more exact methods of research that are being
perfected? Do the concepts and hypotheses lend themselves to exact
methods, and do they, on the whole, help to perfect methods? Do
improving methods, on the whole, confirm or strengthen the concepts
that are gaining wider acceptance?
If these inquiries are applied in the domain of sociology they bring
to light unmistakable evidence of a steady and gratifying progress
toward scientific consistency and rigor of method. Much babble about
social ills and possible reforms still masquerades as social science.
A great deal of loose thinking and slipshod investigation is paraded
as expert opinion on questions of social welfare. But no one who has
seriously followed the efforts of scientifically trained minds to
discover the natural laws of social evolution is in any danger of
confounding the results thus far obtained with the chatter over every
passing fad. In the more serious work itself there is found a vigorous
and hopeful disagreement of opinion upon all unsettled questions. But
the fact of real significance is that the disputation has become
intensive. The debate no longer ranges over a wide field. A selective
process has eliminated one after another the more loose and vague
conceptions of the science, the irrelevant issues, and the superficial
analogies. There has been a progressive concentration of attention
upon a group of closely related and fundamental problems.
The sociology of August Comte was little more than a highly
intelligent and quickening talk about social order and progress. It
convinced thoughtful men that there is a social order to be studied in
a scientific spirit and by scientific methods, and that social
progress conforms to laws that may be discovered. Mr. Spencer narrowed
the field of sociological inquiry and gave precision of statement to
all social problems by bringing them within the formulas of universal
evolution. He still further narrowed the field by demonstrating the
close relationship of social phenomena to the phenomena of organic
evolution and by seizing upon certain psychological facts as chief
factors in social causation. All fruitful later work in social
interpretation has been a further concentration of investigation upon
the psychic factors. While admitting that social as well as mental
phenomena are subsumed under biological phenomena, and that the
parallelism of social organization to biotic organization is real, the
younger students of sociology have developed the science as an
offshoot of psychology, and have dropped the biological analogy as
unfruitful for purposes of research. The pioneer in this movement was
Dr. Lester F. Ward, whose masterly analysis of the psychic factors of
social phenomena gave the right direction for all time to sociological
inquiry, and whose emphasis of the importance of reason and volition
in the social process, although it has not yet received the attention
that it merits, is destined to be fruitful in coming years.
To the further study of the psychological foundations of society
practically all the valuable work on fundamental social problems has
been given during the past ten years. Tarde has given us profound
studies of imitation and invention; Gumplowicz and Le Bon, of the
psychology of races and culture groups; Novicow, of the psychology of
conflict and toleration; Le Bon and Durkheim, of the psychology of
crowds, of co-operation, and of the division of labor; Baldwin, of the
psychology of the social unit--the _socius_.
Thus it appears that while sharp disagreements of opinion still exist
relative to the priority or the generality of one or another of these
psychic factors in the social process, discussion has focused about
the psychological phenomena themselves. There has been a progressive
limitation of the field and an increasing definiteness of conception
and hypothesis.
My own effort, if now I may be pardoned for referring to it, has been
to restrict the field yet further, and to make the problems of
sociology yet more specific. I have contended that these psychological
phenomena which have been seized upon for purposes of sociological
interpretation are still too vaguely conceived. They are often
disclosed to the inquirer in purely individual as well as in social
aspects. The lines of inquiry between the study of mind in general, of
mind as individual, and of mind as manifesting itself socially in the
concert or co-operation of a number of individual minds, have not been
drawn with sufficient precision. I have tried to show that the
psychological phenomena that Ward, Tarde, Gumplowicz, Novicow, Le Bon,
Durkheim, Baldwin, and others have so admirably analyzed as psychic
factors of society are social when, and only when, they have certain
coefficients, namely: (1) The coefficient of resemblance--that is, a
fundamental similarity of individuals to one another underlying and,
on the whole, dominating their innumerable differences; (2) the
coefficient of awareness or consciousness of resemblance--that is to
say, certain feelings, perceptions, or thoughts of resemblance, which
give rise to varied prejudices and preferences that facilitate or
prevent effective co-operation. Whether this contention of mine will
prevail, whether there will ultimately be a general agreement among
sociologists that these coefficients of resemblance and consciousness
of kind are the true _differentia_ of social phenomena, time and
further research must determine.
The second inquiry through which we may learn somewhat of the present
position of sociology relates to the development of method. Exact
method in social research is statistical. Wherever we can obtain
numerical data within the domain of social phenomena, there we arrive
at exact or quantitative knowledge. The development and application of
statistical methods to social problems has been one of the most
striking scientific achievements of the present century. When
Quételet, in 1835, published his great work, _Sur l'Homme et le
Développement de ses Facultés_, he laid the foundation for a thorough
statistical investigation of psychological and sociological no less
than of anatomical phenomena. And after the publication, in 1846, of
his work, _Sur la Théorie des Probabilités appliquées aux Sciences
morales et politiques_, followed, in 1848, by _Du Système social et
des Lois qui le régissent_, there was a rapid development of
statistical methods in precision, and of attempts to extend the
statistical method to groups of facts which had until then been
studied only from a purely qualitative or, at best, a vaguely
comparative point of view. At the present time every subdivision of
descriptive sociology draws data from rich collections of statistical
materials, and employs statistical methods for the further extension
of knowledge.
Thus, in the study of the social population, statistical methods are
employed not only to give the total number of inhabitants dwelling
within a given territory and the degree of density of population per
square mile, but also to show to what extent population increases by
births in excess of deaths, to what extent by immigration in excess of
emigration, and to what extent the composition of the population is
rendered complex by the intermingling of many nationalities. The
character of a population, also, and its social capacities are in a
large measure statistically investigated. General intelligence is
studied by means of statistics of literacy and illiteracy; industrial
preferences by statistics of occupation; habits of industry by
statistics of the number in every thousand of the total population who
regularly follow gainful occupations; frugality by statistics of
savings, insurance, and home ownership; and the amount of
communication, whereby assimilation and co-operation are rendered
possible, by statistics of travel, mail, and telegraphic service.
Passing to that study of concerted feeling, thought, and purpose which
may be called a study of the social mind, and which constitutes the
second great division of descriptive sociology, we find that it can be
carried on, and that to a great extent it is prosecuted, by means of
statistical research. We have statistics incomplete, but admitting of
perfection, of those impulsive, emotional disturbances of masses of
men which take the form of strikes, insurrections, lynchings, and
revivals. The report of the United States Department of Labor on
strikes, published in 1894, and a recently published monograph by Dr.
Frederick S. Hall on Sympathetic Strikes, show the possibilities of
this method whenever it shall be exhaustively applied. It could be
successfully applied to the other phenomena mentioned. By painstaking
effort and a sufficient expenditure of money the data could be
obtained. Lombroso and Laschi, in their work, _Le Crime politique et
les Révolutions_, have made a beginning toward the collection of
statistics of insurrections and revolutions. More exact, at present,
are our statistics of the rational working of the minds of large
numbers of men in communication and co-operation. These we have in the
familiar form of election returns, which show us the decisions that
communities make on questions of public policy and administration.
This information could be increased by the application of statistical
analyses to the vast body of statute law and judicial decisions. A
beginning of such work has been made in the valuable Bulletin of State
Legislation, published by the New York State Library.
In the third division of descriptive sociology--that, namely, which
treats of social organization--the application of statistical method
is proceeding with great rapidity. We have not only statistics (yearly
improving in quality) of marriage and divorce, of the organization of
all governmental departments, military and civil, of chartered
corporations, of religious and educational societies, but also of the
thousands of associations formed for the promotion of special
interests, recreation, scientific research, art and literature, and
philanthropy. Every year the statistical information on these matters,
included in such compilations as The World Almanac, becomes not only
more extensive but more precise.
Yet more abundant are the statistical accumulations pertaining to that
fourth and last division of descriptive sociology which treats of the
social welfare--of the functioning of society, of the ends for which
it exists. We have statistics of prosperity, of the accumulation and
distribution of wealth, of the expansion and contraction of credit,
and of business failures. We have statistics of longevity. We
ascertain improving sanitary conditions by changes in the death rate.
We learn by statistical methods of the increase or decrease of
accident and death due to public disorder or maladministration. We
ascertain through educational statistics the decrease of illiteracy
and superstition. And by the same means we ascertain the dimensions of
pauperism and of crime. Not only so, but, by a certain refinement of
statistical method, applied by competent men like Sir Francis Galton,
we ascertain the increase or decrease and the distribution of the
higher manifestations of intellectual ability and moral character.
Thus the whole field of descriptive sociology is being more and more
exhaustively studied by statistical methods that are yearly improving
in precision. So far, then, as may be judged from the development of
its methods, no science at the present time is making surer and better
progress than sociology, and none is offering to the general public
conclusions based upon more exact methods of induction.
Let us now look at the relations which the development of statistical
method bears to that development of fundamental conceptions, which has
already been described. Do we here discover increasing harmony, a
tendency toward co-ordination, or have analyses of concepts, on the
one hand, and developments of statistical method, on the other hand,
followed diverging lines?
There can be no possible doubt of the answer that must be made to
these questions. Conceptions and methods are in as perfect accord as
can be discovered in any branch of science. The merest glance over the
field of social statistics shows that, for the most part, they record
and classify phenomena that are essentially psychological. In working
from the general theory of evolution through the biological
parallelism down to psychological premises, analytical sociology has
been doing in one way precisely what statistics have been doing in
another. The moment we pass from statistics of density and
distribution of population we find ourselves dealing next with groups
of facts that are biological (the facts, namely, of distribution
according to sex and age periods), through facts that are partly
biological and partly psychological in character (the facts, namely,
of nationality), and then, leaving these behind, we deal henceforth
entirely with facts that belong to the mental and moral categories. To
name them would be only to repeat the categories already enumerated:
the statistics of intelligence, industry, and moral character, of
emotional or rational social action, of various forms of organization
for the achievement of as many different purposes, and of the
development of the conscious personality of man as a result of his
social relations and activities.
Not only is this true, but the further interesting fact may be
discovered that social statistics of every category employed or known
are based upon a frank recognition of that coefficient of resemblance,
physical or mental, which I have contended is a mark of social
phenomena. The first step in statistical tabulation is classification,
and classification invariably starts from an assumption of real or
supposed resemblance. Not to dwell on such fundamental distinctions as
those of color, race, and nationality, we encounter the more special
resemblances of agreement in religious belief, agreement in industrial
preference, agreement in political conviction (as shown in election
returns), similar susceptibility to emotionalism, similar capacities
for rational comprehension, similar imperfections of nature, which
result in lives of crime or pauperism. Remove from social statistics
this postulate that blood kinship or mental resemblance between one
social unit and another is the basis of social phenomena, and the
statistics themselves would cease to exist.
Statistics reveal also the consciousness which men have of their
resemblances and their differences. It is statistically known that the
geographical distribution of nationalities is not accidental or
capricious. Immigrant Italians, Germans, and Scandinavians find their
way to those parts of the country where men of their own blood and
speech are already established. Intermarriages of men and women of
different nationalities are statistically known to be frequent where
no differences of religion exist, and infrequent where different
nationalities profess different faiths. The statistics of political
elections are quite as much statistics of the consciousness of kind as
of differences of mental type itself.
The most significant fact of all, however, has still to be named. It
is this: From the first known beginnings of statistical research to
the present time every extension of statistical inquiry has been in a
large measure due to the consciousness of kind. The first statistical
surveys of communities of which we have any record were such tribal
enumerations as those recorded in the book of Numbers, the avowed
object of which was to ascertain the strength and resources of the
various tribes by clans, lesser gentile groups, and households, not
more for utilitarian reasons than for the gratification of gentile and
tribal pride. The census taken in Greece in 594 B. C. was for the
purpose of dividing the people into four classes and levying taxes
according to wealth. The constitution of Servius Tullius, 550 B. C.,
distinguished six property classes, and the attempt to determine these
statistically was one of the earliest experiments in census-making at
Rome. The Domesday Book of William I (1086) is the first great
statistical document in English history, and its origin was due to a
desire to know not only the military and fiscal strength of the
nation, but also its class distinctions and feudal relationships. The
great stimulus given to statistical investigation by the French
Revolution was an obvious product of class feeling. Most of the
refinements of statistical inquiry in later years have had a like
origin. Such, for example, was the cause of the discrimination in our
own census of the foreign born from the native born, and of the native
born of foreign parents from both native and foreign born. Such has
been the cause of the attempt to get more exact statistics of
religious denominations, of labor organizations, and of the
distribution of wealth. Had there been no reason for including these
costly inquiries in statistical investigations, except that of their
general utility and scientific interest, the appropriation for them
would have been denied in Congress without an instant's hesitation.
They have been included because of the political deference given to
class feeling and to various forms of religious and educational
prejudice.
Thus there is seen to be a remarkable interdependence of statistical
method and psychological analysis in the development of sociological
research. Analysis and method have converged upon the same postulates,
and it is apparently by the development of methods frankly founded
upon these postulates that our sociological knowledge is to be further
increased.
It would be a great mistake, however, to assume that sociological
knowledge is to be increased only by the further collection and
interpretation of numerical data. Careful monographic description and
historical research must continue to be important sources of both
information and hypothesis. The great defects of monographic work,
both descriptive and historical, are, first, a certain lack of
precision, attributable to the large part played in investigation by
the individual judgment of the student (the lack of objective tests by
which his subjective impressions may be critically examined); second,
a certain incompleteness, attributable to a failure to separate each
inquiry into all its scientific subdivisions and to attempt to obtain
desired data under each subdivision, as is done in statistical
investigation where, in every table, as many topics as there are
scientific subdivisions of the general subject are represented by
columns, and an entry of some kind is made in every column.
I wish now to point out the possibility of giving greater precision to
monographic work in sociology by the introduction of quasi-statistical
methods--methods that are essentially quantitative in an algebraic
sense, though they are not numerical.
Social phenomena have the interesting characteristic that small
forces, while never lost in that composition of forces which
determines the ultimate equilibrium of the social system, often count
for absolutely nothing in the practical affairs of a given generation.
If, for example, Mr. Bryan and a Democratic Congress had been elected
in 1896, the practical consequences for the United States would have
been much the same whether the Democratic plurality had been one
hundred thousand, half a million, or two or three millions. This is
but one example of a large class of facts. Social phenomena are more
often than not determined by a mere matter of more or less, rather
than by the exact amount or degree of more or less. The determination
is algebraic rather than arithmetical. Is the element under
investigation a positive or a negative quantity? Is its sign plus or
minus? That is usually the important question for the sociological
student.
Now it happens that a great many investigations in descriptive
sociology do not as yet admit of the introduction of exact
statistical--that is, arithmetical--inquiries which, nevertheless, do
admit the use of algebraically quantitative methods. In the
monographic description of a community many questions arise which can
not be answered by the entry of figures in a column, but which could
be answered by entering in a column a symbol indicating that a certain
trait, habit, or choice could be predicated of a large majority, or of
a small majority, or of only a large minority, or of only a small
minority of the entire population. That is to say, it often happens
that an observer who can not take a perfect census (getting answers to
all his questions from every individual in the community), and who
therefore can not fill out his columns with arithmetical values, can,
by such interviewing as is possible to him and by such an examination
of the objective products of social activity as are open to the
inspection of any one who chooses to observe them critically,
determine with absolute certainty whether certain things are true of
majorities or only of minorities.
Suppose, for example, that a traveler is studying an out-of-the-way
settlement, or a tribe, which presents many points of interest that
are comparatively novel. All who are familiar with the narratives of
travel and exploration which Mr. Spencer has used as data for his
Descriptive Sociology are aware that they are almost totally devoid of
system. The reader is told that such marriage customs, such clan
relationships, such political institutions, such industrial
operations, have been observed. The all-important coefficient is left
out. What the student of sociology would most of all like to know is
how many individuals in the community manifest such or such a trait;
how many have such or such a habit; how many profess such or such a
belief; how many adhere to this organization, how many to that. But
since this exact arithmetical knowledge usually can not be obtained
within the limited time and under the circumstances of a traveler's
researches, he should try to get at least partially quantitative
results by noting in every instance whether the phenomenon observed is
true of a majority or only of a minority of the people under
investigation.
This simple method admits of a high degree of refinement by the
obvious device of subdividing the total human mass under observation
into enumeration units. If, for example, we are studying the social
character and activities of the people of the United States, we may
take the fifty Commonwealths and Territories as enumeration units.
Making out a tabular form, we may enter in the left-hand column the
names of the several States and Territories. At the top of successive
columns, counting from left to right, we may enter words designating
the social phenomena to be observed. Then, taking the States and
Territories in order, we may enter opposite the name of each a symbol
indicating that a majority large or small, or a minority large or
small, of the inhabitants of the State or Territory in question
manifests the trait or follows the activity, or belongs to the social
organization designated at the top of the column. The symbols that I
have found most convenient in use are these: For a large majority, a
double plus sign thus, ++; for a small majority, a single plus sign
thus, +; for a large minority, a double plus sign in a circle thus,
[++]; for a small minority, a single plus sign in a circle thus, [+].
The great possibilities in this method of giving precision to
observations and records of the facts of social psychology and
activity become daily more obvious to students who practice it with
reasonable care. Almost any desired degree of accuracy can be attained
by taking smaller and smaller enumeration units. Thus, if I wish to
form and to record my judgment as to whether the people of the United
States as a whole manifest a high, a medium, or a low degree of
general intelligence, I seem to be raising a question that admits of
little better answer than a statement of vague impressions. But let me
take a concrete measure of high general intelligence--for example, the
general intelligence of a town noted for its large proportion of
scientific and professional men, its graded schools, its satisfactory
school attendance, and its low percentage of illiteracy. Let me then
subdivide the United States into fifty parts--namely, the
Commonwealths and Territories--and let me enter in a column opposite
the name of each a symbol indicating that, as compared with the
general intelligence of the town which I have taken as a standard, a
large majority or a small majority, or a large minority or only a
small minority, of the people in that Commonwealth are of the high
general intelligence; that a large majority or a small majority, or a
large minority or only a small minority, are of medium intelligence;
and that a large majority or a small majority, or a large minority or
a small minority, are of low intelligence. Obviously, when I have
completed this process I have subjected my vague general impression
that the people of the United States as a whole are of high, medium,
or low general intelligence to a certain correction and measure. I
count up the entries in my columns. I discover that I have made, let
us say, nine entries indicating that a large majority of the people in
each of nine States are of high intelligence. I find that I have made,
let us say, eighteen entries indicating that in each of eighteen
States a small majority of the people are of low general intelligence;
and this mere counting of the entries may show me that, when taking
the States one by one, I have made a somewhat different estimate of
the general intelligence of the people of the entire country from that
which I made when looking at all the people of the country as an
undivided mass.
If still unsatisfied with my judgment, I may proceed to subdivide each
State into its counties, and take the counties as enumeration units. I
may go through the process of recording my judgments by entering
symbols in the several columns of my table, and at the end I may again
count up my totals of high, medium, and low intelligence. Obviously, I
can do this work only if I am able to travel through every county in
the United States, and, by interviews with people, by forming general
impressions and by visiting schools, get a fairly definite idea of the
relative intelligence of each civil division; or if, being unable to
make this personal inquiry, I resort to printed information--namely,
educational reports, miscellaneous public documents, historical
records, newspapers, and other objective data throwing light upon the
intellectual status of these various divisions. This, I find, is an
enormous labor; but if I conscientiously perform it I correct my
subjective impressions, and there is a fair presumption that my final
result is a judgment vastly nearer the truth than was my first general
impression of the intelligence of the whole undivided mass of the
American population.
Thus the conscientious use of the method which I have suggested
insures, in the interest of precision, two important modifications of
ordinary sociological description: First, it subjects the purely
subjective processes of judgment to a certain correction and
measurement; secondly, it leads the observer step by step, and almost
unconsciously, to resort more and more to definite objective data in
place of first impressions.
Essentially the same method, by slight modifications of detail, may be
extended to historical inquiries. How often do we encounter in
historical monographs the statement that, since a certain date, there
has been a marked increase of this or that activity, or that such a
trait or such a habit, occasionally observed half a century ago, is
now characteristic of whole sections or populations! To the credit of
the historians, it must be said that careful men seldom make such
statements without offering in substantiation of them a certain amount
of objective evidence. But the method is loose, and it has the radical
defect of permitting such terms as "increase" and "decrease," "great
increase" and "great decrease" to stand for different quantities when
applied to different phenomena under examination in the same
treatise. There is no uniformity of measurement. Now, it is easy to
introduce uniformity, even where arithmetical values are not known. It
is possible to know that we are applying the same method of
measurement when we say that, since 1850, there has been a "great"
multiplication of lynchings in the United States that we apply when we
say that there has been a "great" increase of population, although, in
the case of the lynchings, we have not arithmetical values, while in
the case of the increase of population we have.
This can be done in the following way: Distinguish and designate
degrees of increase or decrease by symbols thus: No change, = 0;
absolute increase but relative decrease, = +1; absolute increase with
no relative decrease, = +2; great absolute increase without relative
decrease, = +3; absolute and relative increase, = +4; absolute
decrease but relative increase, = -1; absolute decrease without
relative increase, = -2; great absolute decrease without relative
increase, = -3; absolute and relative decrease, = -4.
Now let the historian who wishes to pass in review the quantitative
changes that have occurred since a given time--for example,
1850--before he puts on paper his impressions, based upon such
evidence as he has been able to collate, put down all these symbols
against the name of each of the social phenomena which he is studying.
He will instantly see that he is trying to apply to each of the
phenomena whose changes he wishes to record a certain scale of
measurement, and he at once asks himself: What do I really mean by
such a term as "relative" increase or decrease when contrasted with
"absolute" increase or decrease; and what do I mean by such a term as
"great" increase or decrease when contrasted with such a term as
"increase" or "decrease" without a modifying word? The moment he puts
these questions before his mind he will feel a sinking of heart as he
reviews the pages in which he has confidently told his readers that
such "absolute" and "relative" changes have from time to time
occurred, and reflects that he has seldom been consistent in his use
of these terms.
How, then, shall he attain consistency and precision? To be consistent
and precise in the use of the word "relative" it is necessary to make
at the outset an arbitrary choice of a term of comparison, just as in
making comparative judgments of such a phenomenon as general
intelligence it is necessary to take as a standard the phenomenon as
observed in a particular community. The most suitable term of
comparison for all judgments of increase or decrease in social
phenomena is the increase or decrease of population per square mile
within the area and during the period studied. The increase of
population is arithmetically measured, and it stands in relations of
direct causation to every social change. The historian, therefore, in
forming his judgments of relative increase or decrease should always
take the increase or decrease of population per square mile as his
term of comparison.
What meaning, finally, shall be attached to the word "great" when the
historian wishes to distinguish "great" increase or "great" decrease
from "increase" or "decrease" in general, and absolute statistics are
not available? There is one, and, as far as I can see, only one,
perfectly satisfactory procedure.
Let the investigator subdivide the community which he is studying into
enumeration units according to the method suggested above for the
descriptive monograph. Let him then make as many tables as there are
ten-year periods in the general historical period that he is
investigating. That is to say, let him make a table for 1850, for
1860, for 1870, for 1880, and for 1890. Let him then proceed according
to the method laid down for the descriptive monograph, entering
opposite each Commonwealth the symbol for majority or minority, thus
showing by States, for each of the ten-year periods, the prevalence of
the trait or activity under investigation. Suppose, for example, that
the phenomenon studied is the growth of popular interest in prize
fighting since 1850. The historian should begin by asking, In what
States, if any, in 1850 were large majorities of the people interested
in prize fights to the extent of countenancing them and eagerly
following their progress? In what States were only small majorities so
interested, in what States only large minorities, and in what ones
only small minorities? The best answers that the historian can make to
these questions, after examining all the evidence that he can command,
he should record by entering the proper symbol against each State,
after which he should repeat the procedure for the date 1860, for the
date 1870, and so on. When his tables are thus completed, he should
count up the number of entries of each symbol in each table. If then
he finds that in less than half of his enumeration units--i. e., in
less than half of all the States and Territories--small minorities
have become large minorities, large minorities have become small
majorities, or small majorities have become large, he will be
justified in concluding that there has been an increase, but not a
"great" increase, in popular interest in prize fighting. If, however,
he discovers that these changes have occurred in more than half of his
enumeration units, he can say with reason that the increase of
interest in prize fighting has been "great."
Cases may arise in which a correction of the judgment thus formed may
be necessary. It might be erroneous to say that there had been no
great increase of interest in prize fighting if it were discovered
that the increase had occurred in two or three Commonwealths only, but
that in them it had been phenomenal. The method itself, however,
reveals the necessity for correction in such cases and measures the
error; for, obviously, a phenomenal increase or decrease in any one
enumeration unit would be disclosed by a dropping of the intermediate
symbols between [+] and ++. That is to say, small minorities would
become majorities, or great majorities would become small minorities,
within an interval during which lesser changes were occurring
elsewhere.
Thus, by taking a little trouble, the historian can apply one constant
measure to his judgments of increase and decrease, as he reviews
social changes. He must subdivide his community into enumeration
units, and against each unit, at each convenient date, he must enter a
record of his judgment that the trait, activity, interest, or relation
under investigation can be predicated of a large or of only a small
majority, of a large or of only a small minority, of the individuals
composing the enumeration unit. He must then count up the changes from
minority to greater minority or to majority, or from majority to
minority. Conscientiously following this method, the historian may
often make comparisons of great precision, when otherwise his
comparisons, made without reference to a common measure, would be
little more than suppositions.
Following such methods as these, the writers of descriptive and
historical monographs can increase our approximately exact
sociological knowledge. Constructing and filling out such tables as
have been described, they can bring to light serious gaps in our
numerical statistics, and they can thereby suggest and stimulate new
statistical inquiries. Thus co-operating, the descriptive writers, the
historians, and the statisticians can in time perfect our descriptive
sociology, and, co-operating with those students who are completing
the analysis of fundamental concepts, they can gradually give
precision to our formulations of sociological law.
* * * * *
Bishop Creighton, of London, has characterized the present
English idea of education as embodying the supposition that "all
the child had to do was to sit still like a pitcher under a pump
while an expert hand poured in the proper amount of material for
it to hold." His own view was that the only education anybody
really obtained was that which he gave himself. "The idea
prevailing at the beginning of the century was that men should
read a good book, master its contents, and pursue for themselves
the lines of thought it suggested, and talk it over and make its
ideas the subject of discussion among themselves. No system could
surely be better."
VINLAND AND ITS RUINS.
SOME OF THE EVIDENCES THAT NORTHMEN WERE IN MASSACHUSETTS IN
PRE-COLUMBIAN DAYS.[1]
BY CORNELIA HORSFORD.
[Footnote 1: A paper read before the Viking Club of London on
December 16, 1898; also before the Section of Anthropology of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science at the Boston
meeting, August, 1898.]
The evidences that Northmen were in Massachusetts in pre-Columbian
days are drawn from two sources, geography and archæology. The
archæological evidence is found by comparing certain ruins in
Massachusetts with ruins of the Saga-time in Iceland, and also with
the native and early European ruins on the coast of North America. The
geographical evidence is found by comparing the descriptions of the
country called Vinland in Icelandic literature with the coast of North
America.
The geographical data for this paper are taken from each and all of
the three oldest manuscript versions of the story of Vinland, because
they complement each other where the descriptions vary in detail.
These are called the Flat Island Book, Eric the Red's Saga, and
Thorfinn Karlsefni's Saga.
If the coast of North America should repeat the same geographical
features, it would obviously be impossible to determine the site of
Vinland by geography alone. Let us see if this is so. It is stated in
Eric the Red's Saga that Karlsefni's party, which consisted of one
hundred and sixty men and their live stock in three vessels, after
sailing southwest from Greenland for a number of days and seeing two
new countries, came to a certain cape. "They cruised along the land
and the land lay on the starboard.... There were there an open,
harborless coast and long strands and sand banks. And they went in
boats to the land and found there the keel of a ship, and they named
it Keel Cape. And they gave a name to the strands and called them
Wonder Strands, because they were long to sail by. Then the land
became scored with bays, and they steered the ships to the bays."[2]
They remained here for some time, but they had not yet seen the
Vinland which Leif Erikson had found a few years before.
[Footnote 2: The translations are from the Icelandic texts in The
Finding of Wineland the Good by Arthur Middleton Reeves. Henry
Frowde, London.]
Thorhall started to seek for it "northward round Wonder-strand and
westward off Keel Cape." Therefore we must first look for a cape, the
trend of whose shore is north and south, with open water west of it,
and beyond that again land. This cape must have a long, sandy,
harborless coast, with sand banks on the east, and it must be broken
up into bays farther to the south, and one of these bays must be large
enough and deep enough for three vessels, one of which could carry at
least fifty men across the Atlantic. The icelandic word "öroefi" which
is used in this text means "harborless," and is the descriptive local
name of the convex, sandy, unsheltered coast of southern Iceland
(Oroefa), the present Skaptafells district, from Stokksnes to
Dyrhólaey. This gives a clear idea of what we ought to look for along
the coast of North America.
The eastern coast of North America[3] shows us that, south of
rock-bound Labrador, the only places north of New York where capes
are to be found jutting northward from the land are northern
Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, the southern shores of the Gulf of
St. Lawrence, Cape Ann, and Cape Cod.
[Footnote 3: Chart of North Atlantic, No. 98. Norie & Wilson,
London.]
There is no stretch of open, harborless, sandy coast from Cape Bauld
to Cape Spear, with its steep, sterile, rocky shores.[4] There are two
or three stretches of unbroken coast from three to five miles long,
north and south of Canada Bay, northwest of Conception Bay, and
northeast of Bonavista Bay, but these are not the shores of capes
jutting to the north, with long strands and sand banks.
[Footnote 4: Belle Isle to Boston, No. 102. Norie & Wilson,
London.]
If we begin with Cape Breton and follow the coast northward we find no
extensive stretch of harborless coast until we reach Island Point.
From this point to Cape Smoke there is a comparatively unbroken coast
about thirty miles in extent whose "headlands are composed of primary
and metamorphic rocks, principally granite, with clay slate in nearly
vertical strata, while sandstone, conglomerate, shale, limestone, and
occasionally beds of gypsum and red and yellow marl occur on the
intervening shores."[5] Here, then, there are not long strands and
sand banks. Cape North is a headland of slate one thousand feet
high.[6] Dr. Gustav Storm, of the University of Christiania, in his
well-known book, _Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, etc._, page 42,
points out a resemblance between Cape Breton and Keel Cape, and states
that the eastern shores of Cape Breton Island are "specially described
as low-lying and sandy." According to the United States Hydrographic
Office Report, No. 99, page 289, the southeast coast of Cape Breton
Island from Michaux Point to Cape Gabarus "is low and has a barren and
rocky appearance, and the shore is broken into numerous lakes and
ponds, protected from the sea by beaches of gravel and some small
rocky islands and ledges.... From Cape Gabarus to Cape Breton, a
distance of fifteen miles, the land is of moderate height and the
shore broken into coves and small harbors." Between Louisburg and Cape
Breton, eight miles beyond, "there are three small harbors, too
intricate and rocky in their entrances to admit vessels of any
burden," and Cape Breton itself is "low and rocky and covered with
grassy moors." This is unlike the open, harborless coast with long
strands and sand banks of the Sagas. Within the Gulf of St. Lawrence
the capes which jut to the north are Cape St. George,[7] with rocky,
precipitous cliffs six hundred feet above the sea; North Point,[8] on
Prince Edward Island, which is broken about five miles down the coast
by Tignish River, and beyond that by the red sandstone cliff of Cape
Kildare; Escuminiac Point,[9] at the entrance to Miramichi Bay, a
broken coast with low sandstone cliffs; and Birch Point,[10] on Miscou
Island, with a steep cliff of sandstone ten feet high.
[Footnote 5: United States Hydrographic Office Report, No. 99,
1897, p. 315.]
[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 314.]
[Footnote 7: United States Hydrographic Office Report, No. 100,
1897, p. 70.]
[Footnote 8: Ibid., pp. 130, 152.]
[Footnote 9: Ibid., p. 157.]
[Footnote 10: Ibid., p. 173.]
Campobello is a rocky island, and Cape Ann is rocky and has no long,
harborless coast.
Cape Cod[11] juts to the north with open water west of it, and beyond
that again land. It has also a long, harborless coast on the east,
with strands and sand banks, and is scored with bays toward the south.
[Footnote 11: United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, General
Chart of the Coast, No. VII.]
Cape Cod, then, is the only cape north of Sandy Hook which corresponds
to the description in the Saga, and near here we should look for
Vinland, leaving the southern shores until later.
Vinland, which was discovered by Leif Erikson, is only described as
_Vinland_ in the Flat Island Book. This account states that Leif
Erikson's party "came to a certain island which lay north of the
land." That Leif Erikson should have thought that Cape Cod was an
island is obvious, because it is impossible from the cape to see the
southern shore of Massachusetts Bay twenty miles away. There is no
need to explain why he also believed it to lie north of the land, as
no one and final answer can be given, although several can be easily
suggested; that water and land again lay to the west is clearly stated
in all three accounts.
Afterward "they sailed into that sound which lay between the island
and the promontory which jutted northward from the land; they steered
in westward past the promontory. There was much shallow water at ebb
tide, and then their ship stood up and then it was far to look to the
sea from their ship." Across the water which lies between Cape Cod and
the mainland is Rocky Point, a high and therefore noticeable
promontory jutting northward from the land. Past this one can only
continue westering to the north, and thence we must now look along the
land to find the place where, in the words of the Flat Island Book, "a
certain river flowed out of a certain lake," having, as was said
before, great shallows at its mouth at ebb tide, whence it was far to
look to the ocean.
Following round the inner coast of Cape Cod, we pass Plymouth and on
to Boston before we find in the Charles River and Boston Back Bay a
river flowing through a lake into the sea, where great shallows at its
mouth are a conspicuous feature and it is far to look to the ocean.
At this point we may add one more feature to the description of Keel
Cape--that it appears to be an island when approached from the north.
Now we can continue our search down the North Atlantic coast, noting
that Sandy Hook is not scored with bays at the south, and that Cape
Henlopen and Cape Henry could not have been mistaken for islands.[12]
[Footnote 12: Chart of North Atlantic, No. 98. Norie & Wilson,
London.]
There is one event described in all three versions of the Vinland
story--the battle with the natives. According to the Flat Island Book,
this battle took place in Vinland; according to the other two Sagas,
Vinland was supposed to be north of Keel Cape. But in these Sagas it
is said that this battle took place _south_ of Keel Cape, where
Karlsefni had found a river flowing through a lake into the sea.
It was this word south which led the Danish archæologist Carl
Christian Rafn to think that Vinland was in Rhode Island. Although
there is no land south of Cape Cod (with the exception of Nantucket
Island) between Cape Cod and Santo Domingo, it is only fair to look
once more at Mount Hope Bay[13] (Rafn's Vinland) to see whether it
really corresponds to the description before us. The Taunton River
flows through Mount Hope Bay to the sea, but there are no shallows
here, and the mouth of the river looks directly out, southward and not
eastward, to the open ocean. In Boston Harbor, moreover, are great
tongues of land and islands such as are described in Eric the Red's
Saga. There is perhaps cause for comment in the use of the word
"fjöll," fells or mountains (according to Vigfusson[14]), applied to
the hills about Boston, of which the highest, "Blue Hill," is seven
hundred and ten feet high. If "fells" is a correct translation, it
would be unobjectionable.
[Footnote 13: United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Chart, No.
13. Cuttyhunk to Block Island.]
[Footnote 14: Icelandic-English Dictionary. R. Cleasby. Enlarged
and completed by Gudbrand Vigfusson.]
One morning Karlsefni saw the natives in their skin boats rowing
toward his house, from the south, past a promontory. It is not
difficult to find the only promontory past which canoes could have
come from the south between the mouth of the river and Watertown, the
head of navigation. Here, then, Leif Erikson and Thorfinn Karlsefni
should have built their houses, if this history be true, because this
place corresponds with the description of Vinland, and also because we
can find no other place on the coast like it.
Having found what appears to be the site of Thorfinn Karlsefni's
houses, it is well to inquire next what the characteristic features of
the Norse houses of the Saga-time were, and what traces one might hope
to find after nearly nine hundred years.
Icelandic homesteads of that period usually consisted of a main house,
composed of three or four apartments and one or two outhouses, built
on the surface of the ground.
The walls were one and a half metres thick, and from one to one and a
half metres high, built of alternate layers of turf and stones on the
inside and on the outside, the space between being filled in with
earth. Often, however, the walls were built entirely of turf and
earth, or with only disconnected rows of stones at the base. Wood also
was sometimes used. It is stated in Thorfinn Karlsefni's Saga that
some of the trees in Vinland were "so large they were laid in a
house."
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE HOUSE OF ERIC THE RED IN ICELAND.]
A long, narrow fireplace usually extended through the middle of the
principal room, and an essential feature was the cooking fireplace,
which was about one metre square. These were either paved or
surrounded by upright stones. The plan is of the ruin of the house of
Eric the Red in Haukadalr, Iceland. It shows the different forms of
fireplace, and that the walls, which were built of turf, were one and
a half metres thick. Outhouses were often dug into the hillside, and
were sometimes walled up on the inside with stone and turf. Ruins of
such old settlements in Iceland are usually low, grass-grown ridges
and hollows.
When Professor Horsford first visited the site which his study of maps
and literature had led him to believe was Vinland, he found a few
hollows in the hillside and also some broad, low ridges on the level
ground, indicating that a building about twenty metres long by five
metres broad had once stood there. There was also a mound some
distance away which has since proved to be of modern construction.
[Illustration: PLAN OF SUPPOSED NORSE RUIN IN MASSACHUSETTS.]
No digging was done here until after Professor Horsford's death, with
the exception of a few trenches across the supposed site of Leif
Erikson's house on the other side of the creek. In 1896, during a
visit of Dr. Valtyr Gudmundsson and Mr. Thorsteinn Erlingsson, of
Copenhagen and Iceland, extensive excavations were made, leaving
practically nothing unexamined at this site.
Three kinds of earth were revealed. The upper layer was of black loam
from thirty to forty centimetres deep; below this was a yellow soil of
sand and clay thirty centimetres deep; and below that again the sand
and gravel which had remained undisturbed since the close of the
Glacial epoch.
The ruins were at the junction of the black and yellow earth.
Throughout the black loam to the bottom, wherever we dug, within or
away from the ruins, were scattered fragments of china, glass, glazed
pottery, nails, pipestems, broken bricks, etc., all belonging to the
period of the occupation of this region by the English. None of these
were found in places where their presence would show that they
belonged to or preceded these ruins. In the paved pathway, which will
be described later, a few pieces of brick lie between the stones, but
not deeper than similar fragments of brick were found in the
undisturbed earth near by, apparently trodden in by the cattle which
have been pastured there for years. There were also objects of
aboriginal manufacture, such as stone implements, pottery, pieces of
flint, etc. Occasionally, at different levels, remains of fires were
found, some of which were merely thin layers of charcoal and ashes.
There were, however, two well-built fireplaces, in good condition,
entirely unlike each other. One of these was an Indian clambake,
neatly paved and piled with ashes and unopened clam shells. This lay
sixty-three centimetres below the sod. The photograph is not of this
fireplace, but is a good example of all Indian fireplaces or clambakes
in Massachusetts.
[Illustration: AN INDIAN FIREPLACE IN MASSACHUSETTS.]
[Illustration: ICELANDIC FIREPLACE IN SUPPOSED NORSE RUIN IN
MASSACHUSETTS.]
The second fireplace, which was about one metre square, surrounded by
upright stones at the four corners and filled with oak charcoal, but
no ashes, was the distinctive feature of this ruin, and resembled the
cooking fireplaces of the Icelanders. The absence of ashes has been
accounted for by absorption in the soft clay soil. Ashes often
disappear in this way, but can be detected with acids.
Although the outline of the walls of the long house can only be
suggested, the few stones which were found at the base of the old
walls were placed about a metre and a half apart, as in the walls of
the Saga-time. This, so far as is known, is peculiar to that period
and race. Iroquois long houses were constructed for communal use, and
were usually from one hundred to three hundred feet long. The chief
traces left are fire rows and kitchen middens. They are not known to
have used stone foundations, nor to have made any attempt at
regularity of outline. The drawing shows the method of construction of
these long houses, which were built only by the Indians of the
Iroquois tribe.
Depressions which appeared to be the sites of old huts were in the
hillside back of the terrace on which the long house stood, but the
roadway in front had apparently destroyed all but one of these, and
had also carried away the front wall of this.
[Illustration: EAST WALL OF A SUPPOSED NORSE RUIN IN MASSACHUSETTS,
SHOWING LAYERS OF TURF BETWEEN THE STONES.]
[Illustration: WEST WALL OF A SUPPOSED NORSE RUIN IN MASSACHUSETTS,
SHOWING LAYERS OF TURF BETWEEN THE STONES.]
This hut was four metres across the front, and may have been five
metres deep. When the sod, stones, and the clearings, which had been
thrown in from the cultivated field above, were all removed, the
remains of two side walls were found, supported and protected by the
upper portions of these same walls which had slipped down from above
and lay close to them, forming a compact mass of earth and stones.
None of the stones in this wall were in contact with each other, being
separated by two or three inches of dark earth such as results from
the decay of vegetable matter. There was no fireplace. The manner of
constructing these walls was the counterpart of Icelandic work. I
shall now show you how this differs from post-Columbian cellars.
[Illustration: ANCIENT WALL IN ICELAND, SHOWING LAYERS OF TURF BETWEEN
THE STONES.]
This is a photograph of a ruin in the Thjór's River Valley, in
Iceland. It shows the sod between the stones closely packed but
distinct. The stones in our early English and French cellars
practically touch each other, as in the old cellar in Fort William
Henry, in Maine. Sometimes broken stones fill the interstices, as in
another example of stonework at Fort William Henry. Mortar has been
used here more or less since the beginning of the seventeenth century.
[Illustration: OLD WALL IN A CELLAR IN FORT WILLIAM HENRY, MAINE.]
[Illustration: OLD WALL AT FORT WILLIAM HENRY, MAINE.]
Although European or post-Columbian walls and cellars differ
considerably among themselves, it is within certain limits.
Post-Columbian walls, or foundation walls when built on the surface of
the ground, were practically homogeneous in character, the French only
attaining to one metre in thickness, whereas Icelandic walls were
disposed in three distinct parts, the inner and outer sides being
constructed in layers and the space between being filled in with
closely packed earth, while they were never less than a metre and a
half thick.
Icelandic outhouses when dug into a hillside dispensed with the triple
wall at the back and on the sides, and thus when stone-faced partially
resemble our cellars. But even then they still retain one
characteristic feature, in their alternate layers of turf and stone.
[Illustration: SUPPOSED NORSE PATHWAY IN MASSACHUSETTS.]
[Illustration: SOUTHERN TURN OF SUPPOSED NORSE PATHWAY.]
While this hut was being dug out, our attention was called to stones
protruding through the turf a short distance away and nearer to the
water. When the earth was cleared away, it proved to be a rude
stone-laid pathway leading along the margin of the old creek to the
river. Here at the landing place a similar pathway branched away in
another direction, stopping suddenly a few metres south of the
supposed house of Thorfinn Karlsefni. This pathway is called in
Iceland a _sjávar-gata_, or path to the sea. Ancient pavings have been
found at Fort William Henry, near Pemaquid, Maine. They are, however,
similar to many street pavements still to be found in our eastern
cities. There is also a remarkable paved gutter at the Lewis Farm, in
Maine, which has long interested historians. But none of these
resemble the _sjávar-gata_ in its peculiar construction, especially
where it broadens and divides with a wide margin of pebbles on one
side and small heaps of stones on the other.
[Illustration: A PAVEMENT AT FORT WILLIAM HENRY, MAINE.]
[Illustration: A PAVEMENT AT PEMAQUID, MAINE.]
This map was made for Professor Horsford about ten years ago. It shows
the site of the long house, in which the Icelandic fireplace was
found, and the cot, in which Icelandic walls were found. The paved
path ran along the shore in front. Professor Horsford fixed
Thorfinn's landing place a short distance south of this, on solid
ground. Geologists are unable to say how long ago the salt marshes
were formed. They are on Winthrop's map of 1634, but the _sjávar-gata_
could hardly have been accessible as a landing place after their
formation.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE SUPPOSED NORSE RUIN IN CAMBRIDGE,
MASSACHUSETTS.]
In summary, it may be said that at the only point of land on the coast
of North America which we have found to correspond with the
description of the site of Thorfinn Karlsefni's houses, ruins have
been dug out which bear peculiar features characteristic of the period
in Iceland known as the Saga-time, and differing in certain essential
features from the handiwork of all the native races of North America,
and, as far as is known at present, from all other races in Europe or
in America in post-Columbian days.
_Extracts from the Reports of Dr. Gudmundsson and Mr. Erlingsson._
The following extracts, from reports by Dr. Gudmundsson and Mr.
Erlingsson, refer to the ruins described in the preceding paper.
The plan for these researches was first to compare the aforesaid
ruins with the work of the native races supposed to have
inhabited or visited these shores, next with that of the Norsemen
of the eleventh century, and later, if necessary, with the
earliest English, French, Spanish, and Dutch ruins on these
shores. Dr. Gudmundsson and Mr. Erlingsson noted the points of
resemblance between these and Icelandic ruins, and in their
reports by request wrote everything they could think of in
opposition to, as well as in favor of, their being of Norse
origin.
When these gentlemen left Cambridge the characteristic features
of the early post-Columbian ruins on this coast had not been
ascertained, and these researches were not finished
satisfactorily until a year and a half after the Icelanders
returned to Europe.
_From Dr. Gudmundsson's Report._
The next place into which we dug was a depression or hollow in
the hillside in a northerly direction from the above-mentioned
place. Here we found unquestionable remains of a house which had
been dug into the hillside, with walls constructed of stones, and
layers of earth between the single rows of stones. The foundation
and the lower parts of the two side walls were solid and well
preserved, but the whole back wall, with the exception of a
single row (the foundation), had fallen down. The stones from
this and the upper parts of the side walls covered the whole
bottom, so that they at the first glance seemed to form a
pavement. When carefully examined, it was evident, however, that
most of the stones which covered the bottom belonged to the
walls, though some might have rolled down from the hill above the
house. Thus it could clearly be seen how some of the stones had
fallen down from the walls and some were just sliding down,
without having as yet reached to the bottom, as some stones
underneath had hindered them from gliding farther. The front wall
of the house was wanting, and must either have been of wood
or--which seems most likely--have been spoiled when the road
which runs close past the house was made. When the bottom was
cleared of the stones which had fallen in it proved to consist of
a level black floor.
The construction and situation of this house are _quite_
Scandinavian, built in the same way as houses in Iceland and
Greenland. I would therefore not have had the least hesitation to
declare it to be a ruin of a house built by Scandinavians in the
pre-Columbian period if between and under the stones which
covered the bottom we had not found some pieces of glazed pottery
and bricks, of which some small pieces were found trodden down
even into the floor itself. This seems to indicate that the house
must be post-Columbian, or at least have been occupied by the
first English or French colonists. As in the meantime several
American scholars, with whom I have had an opportunity to discuss
this matter, positively declare that the post-Columbian colonists
never would have built such walls of stones without mortar, and
it must be regarded as _quite_ certain that Indian people could
not have built it, there seems to be no other explanation
possible than that this ruin must be Scandinavian, and, having
been found by some of the first post-Columbian colonists (e. g.,
some fishermen), had been repaired and occupied by them for a
shorter or longer time. If it can be proved that such a building
as this could not have been built by the post-Columbian colonists
nor by Indians, it can hardly be anything else than Scandinavian.
This, however, must be left to American scholars, who have
sufficient knowledge in these matters. But so long as this is not
proved, the pieces of pottery and bricks which were found in it
rather seem to speak for its post-Columbian origin, as those
pieces must have been there when the house fell down, and such a
house as this built in the beginning of the eleventh century
could not have stood five hundred years before its roof and the
upper parts of the walls fell down.
On the other side of the road we found an end of an old path
paved with small stones, running from the house in the hillside
along the edge of the old river bank down to a kind of promontory
which in olden time, when the water stood much higher than it now
does, seems to have served as a landing place. In the middle of
this path, which was from about six to ten inches under the
surface, was a hollow as trodden down by the feet of men and
(perhaps) horses. This path is very like Icelandic paths, such as
may still be found in many places in Iceland. But as we in some
places in this path found some bricks between the stones which
formed its pavement, it must be regarded as doubtful whether it
is Scandinavian. The bricks seem rather to speak for a
post-Columbian origin, though the whole path is so primitive that
it hardly can be suggested that so advanced a people as the first
post-Columbian colonists should have made such a path. To settle
the question whether it could belong to those colonists must be
left to American scholars. This path seems, at any rate, to have
been made by the same people who built the house in the hillside,
so either both of them must be regarded as post-Columbian or they
both are Scandinavian. Another path runs from this landing place
in a westerly direction along the old river bank, where it stops
very abruptly on a certain spot a very short distance east of the
supposed "Thorfinn's house." As I could not find any other reason
for its stopping on this spot than that near it stood a building,
I examined the river bank beside it, and here I found the earth,
about eight inches under the surface, mixed with charcoal, which
could indicate that some refuse from a house had been thrown
there. This seems to lead to the conclusion that there at the end
of this path really has stood a building, of which we could not
now expect to find any traces, or even a building constructed of
turf only (turf walls), which also might have wholly disappeared,
as earth walls on an elevated ground like this perhaps might have
blown away.
The result of these researches is briefly, according to my
opinion, this: As far as concerns the construction, both the
house in the hillside and the two paths, or the two branches of
the path, could be of Scandinavian origin, but I am not so well
acquainted with the life and customs of the first post-Columbian
colonists as to be able to decide whether they could not have
been made by them. This, therefore, must be left to American
scholars.
Very respectfully yours,
VALTYR GUDMUNDSSON.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., _July 16, 1896_.
_From Mr. Erlingsson's Report._
It is not uncommon in Iceland that houses, especially small
outhouses, are dug into small hills, hillsides, or sloping
ground, just as this house is. It is, in fact, built very like
what I have seen in outhouses in many places in Iceland, and what
is left of the walls here nobody could distinguish from Icelandic
walls. The size and the whole form is also very like an outhouse,
but as most frequently in outhouses either all the four walls are
made of stones or none of them, it would seem strange that one of
the walls here is completely wanting. But those stones which
were used in it could have been used in the road which has been
made past the house, or, besides, it is possible that the front
wall of the house has been a wooden one, and, although this is
very rare in outhouses certainly, yet it must be taken into
consideration that here it is much easier to procure wood than in
Iceland. The whole form, the method, and the condition of the
house itself seemed like nothing else than that it was built by
Icelandic hands, although some of the stones seem to be rather
small, but, as pieces of pottery and bricks have been found
beneath the stones which had fallen down from the walls and on
the floor itself, it seems to prove sufficiently that the house
can not belong to the old Icelandic period; but as nobody has
expected such a house here, the discovery is very remarkable.
This path is so like paths in Iceland, for which there have been
gathered stones and which later on have been trodden down by the
feet of horses and men, that I would not have hesitated to
declare that it might be Scandinavian if in it there had not been
found bricks beside the other stones, which seems to indicate
that the path must belong to the same period as the house which
was dug into the hill. This discovery must therefore, too, be
regarded as very remarkable....
Respectfully,
THORSTEINN ERLINGSSON.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., _July 12, 1896_.
THE EDUCATION OF THE NEMINIST.
BY DAVID STARR JORDAN,
PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.
The meeting of the Astral Club of Alcalde, on September 10, 1899, was
rendered memorable by the return, from a month's absence in the East,
of the secretary of the club, Miss Corintha Jones, D. N. N. N. Her
presence had been sorely missed at the August meeting (though I say it
who should not), for it is not often that one of our devoted band is
absent from his post.
Miss Jones had left Alcalde to complete a course of study in medicine
in one of the most famous colleges of the East. At the suggestion of
the president of the club, Mr. Asa Marvin, F. T. S., the usual
programme was suspended on her return, and Miss Doctress Jones, D. N.
N. N. (for such indeed is the title she has now earned), told us of
her studies at the Massachusetts University of Mentiphysics, in
Boston, a noble institution, up to date in all respects, for it
received its charter from the General Assembly of Massachusetts in the
year 1881.
Miss Doctress Jones left her home in Alcalde on the 20th of July,
designing to visit certain relatives residing at Homer and Virgil,
Cortland County, N. Y., on the way. She reached Boston on the 5th day
of August, and at once proceeded to the university. An ignorant
hackman took her over to the suburban village of Cambridge, which is
the seat of Harvard College. Making inquiry of the professors there,
she found none who had ever heard of the University of Mentiphysics,
having eyes and ears for nothing but Harvard, which in some respects
is indeed a great institution, but on a material plane.
At last, after much inquiry, Doctress Jones was sent to the Neministic
Headquarters, a small building on the corner of Milk and
Transcendental Streets. Here she learned, from a little lady with a
withered face and a serene smile, that the University of Mentiphysics
was situated not in Boston, but in the neighboring town of Lynn, which
lies some miles to the north. "But in Massachusetts," she said, "we
call it all Boston."
"So I took the train for Lynn," Miss Doctress Jones continued, "and
drove at once to the street and number named on the card. The little
white house with green blinds, white columns on the veranda, and a few
weedy roses in the front yard did not fill my conception of a
university, for it did not look like our universities in California.
But the fault was with my conception, not with the fact.
"The maid who answered the bell assured me that this was indeed the
university, and ushered me at once into the office of the president.
The wall was covered with pictures and photographs, showing elderly
ladies with serene smiling faces. Under each one were the letters N.
N. N., and a card giving an account of how each one had been made
whole and happy through Neministic Science. The president was a
middle-aged, matronly lady, with a high forehead and brown hair,
streaked with gray, done in graceful frizzes over her brow. Above the
corners of her mouth, which were always drawn up in an engaging smile,
were three deep creases. Mr. Gridley, our schoolmaster, tells me that
these correspond to the grave accent in Greek, and that there being
three of them shows that the lady had been married three times. I do
not know as to this, but somehow her face seemed startlingly familiar
and at the same time strangely pleasant.
"I murmured something about having had the pleasure before. She said,
taking the words from my mouth: 'I know what you are going to say. We
are indeed very much alike, though she is on the material plane.
Still, my friends call me the "Lydia Pinkham of the soul," and I do
not resent it, for what dear Lydia tries to do, that I do.'
"I told the president," Doctress Jones continued, "that I wished to
learn the wisdom of Boston, and especially the science of Neministic
Healing, of which I had heard much in Alcalde. 'But perhaps I should
call at the university, and not trouble you in your rest at home.' At
this her eyes blazed, and she said, with a tragic air: 'Having eyes,
ye see not! I read the Soul and the Stars through a higher than mortal
sense. Has the Sun forgotten to shine and the Planets to revolve
around it? Who was it discovered, demonstrated, and teaches the marvel
of Neministic Healing? That one, whoever it be, does understand
something of what can not be lost.'
"I looked dazed. She quieted down and explained to me that she was
herself the university, because no one but herself could explain what
was revealed to her alone. The whole Neministic Science was taught in
twelve lessons, and I could begin then and there.
"I said something about preparatory work and the books I would need to
read. She placed in my hands a slip which read:
"'N. N. N. Persons contemplating a course in the Massachusetts
University of Mentiphysics can prepare for it through no books save
Neministic Science and Astral Health, with a Key to the Stars.
Man-made theories are narrow, else extravagant, and always
materialistic. _Nihil nemini nocet._' Then she added: 'I recommend
students not to read so-called scientific works antagonistic to
Neministic Healing, which advocate material systems, because such
works and words becloud the right sense of Mentiphysical Science. A
primary student richly imbued with the Neministic spirit is a better
healer and teacher than a normal-class student, who partakes less of
this power. Even an apt scholar who has dipped into my Neministic
Science and Astral Health, with a Key to the Stars (the last revised
edition), may enter this field of labor, without any personal
instruction, beneficially to himself and the race.'
"Then she continued blandly: 'You must learn, my dear, to enter this
great field in a manner beneficial to yourself and the race. You must
teach others to render to Cæsar what is Cæsar's, and to do this you
must first render unto Cæsar yourself. Do you understand?' I looked
puzzled for a moment. Then she said: 'Twenty-five dollars, please,
dear, and be sure to come promptly at ten o'clock to-morrow. You are
now admitted to the Primary Plane, the first degree of Neministic
Healing.' As I gave her the California gold, she bowed me out of the
room with a tender and motherly smile, while she tested the unfamiliar
coins by ringing them softly on the table.
"At the second lesson she gave me the fundamental principles of
Neministic Healing. I received them eagerly, for I recognized in them
a close harmony with the teachings of our dear old Mr. Dean:
"'God is the principle of Mentiphysics. As there is but one God, there
can be but one Principle in this Science. As there are many stars,
there must be many fixed rules for the demonstration of this Divine
Principle.
"'The fundamental propositions among these rules are proved by
inversion, for this is the basis of all true mathematics. Two times
two is four, therefore four is two times two. As a star is the same
whether seen from the north, south, east, or west, so a precept of
Mentiphysics must be the same as seen from every side. To invert is
not to change its meaning, and must prove its truth.' Then she gave me
a printed card containing these words, over which I was to ponder
until the next lesson:
"'N. N. N. There is no Pain in Truth, therefore there is no Truth in
Pain. There is no Nerve in Mind, therefore there is no Mind in Nerve.
There is no Matter in Mind, therefore there is no Mind in Matter.
There is no Matter in Life, therefore there is no Life in Matter.
There is no Matter in Good, therefore there is no Good in Matter.
_Nihil nocet nemini; nihil nemini nocet._'
"'Twenty-five dollars, please,' and I returned to my hotel filled with
new thoughts, which I found later were very incomplete.
"The next day she said:
"'Man, my dear, is governed by Soul, not sense. Sense is the
reflection of matter, and matter does not exist. Thus sense is but the
shadow of a dream. In dreams the laws of health are valueless. There
is but one Law of Health, and that is the one precept of Neministic
Healing.
"'To the awakened mind the seasons will come and go, with changes of
time and tide, cold and heat, latitude and longitude. The
agriculturist finds that these changes can not affect his crops. The
mariner will have dominion over the atmosphere and the great deep,
over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air. The astronomer will
no longer look up to the stars. He will look out from them upon the
universe, and the florist will find his flower before he beholds its
seed. Thus matter will be finally proved to be nothing but a mortal
belief, wholly inadequate to affect man through its supposed organic
action or existence.'
"Then she gave me another mystic card, which read:
"'N. N. N. We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and Creation must
collapse. _Nihil nocet nemini._' And this time I did not need to be
reminded of the final ceremony with which the lesson ended. Nor did
she need to clink the coins on the table.
"In the fourth lesson the president discoursed more fully on 'the
popular gods, Sin, Sorrow, and Sickness, the three S's of Satan; all
three illusions of the Sinful Soul. The very word Illusion proves
their nothingness. These are but troubled dreams of the darkened soul,
and to rise above them is to wake from a cataleptic nightmare to see
the stars shining on the hills.
"'When troubled by a horrible dream, my dear, one has only to say,
"This is a Dream; I will awaken." Then the stars will shine through
the open window and the hideous vision will disappear.
"'So in afflictions of disease and dread and death, one must say,
"This is a Dream." Then it becomes a dream, and we rise above it into
an atmosphere of Perfect Serenity.
"'To the material sense, dear,' continued the president, 'to cut the
jugular vein takes away life. But in Neministic Science Life goes on
unchanged, mounting ever and ever to higher reaches, because there is
no jugular vein, and Matter can not make its mark on Mind.
"'The Barometer, that little prophet of storm and sunshine, can not be
deceived by testimony of the senses. It points to fair weather in the
midst of the unreal apparition of murky clouds and threatening rain.
Thus does Neministic Science, the perfect culmination of Mentiphysics,
point to the changeless Health and Happiness of the Enlightened Man
whatever material science may have to say about the condition of his
members. Man is made in the image of perfection, therefore failure and
imperfection can never assail him. As well expect to gather peaches
from a pine tree as to gather discord from the Concord of Being.'
"Then she gave me a card:
"'N. N. N. The Equipollence of the Stars above and of the Mind below
shows the awful unreality of Evil. _Nihil nemini nocet._'
"After the usual parting ceremony I returned to my room, well
convinced of the unreality of Boston, and doubting whether I should
ever again find my own Alcalde. I feared lest some further precept
might arise by which Alcalde could not exist.
"In the fifth lesson the president informed me that I was now in the
second degree, or Normal Plane. We were ready for the first glimpse
into the full, rounded perfection of Neministic Healing.
"'To cure men of all ills whatsoever, we have only to show them the
stars. When we waken in the night, only the sight of the stars can
tell us we are awake. When we are awake all dreams must vanish, and
all is dream which breaks the serenity of the mind or checks the
perfect perspicacity of being. We need not deal with the body, for the
body does not exist. It is dull, heavy, and aching, because it is the
dead Residuum of Dream. When we forget it, it is no longer there. Then
and not till then can you smile the serene smile of the
Neministically Healed and Mentiphysically Perfect Soul.'
"The little card read:
"'N. N. N. The body says, "I am ill." The reports of Sickness may form
a coalition with the reports of Sin and say, "I am Malice, Lust,
Appetite, Envy, Hate." Treat a belief in sickness as you would
sin--with sudden dismissal. If it were not for what the human mind
says of the body, the body would not be weary any more than an
inanimate wheel. _Nihil nemini nocet._'
"On the sixth day the president greeted me with her serenest smile.
"'We have now reached the point, my dear,' she said, 'when we must
abandon Pharmaceutics and take up Ontology, the science of Abstract
Being. In this we have many rivals who echo the cry, "Why art thou,
NEMINISM, come hither to torment us before our time?" Among the
systems that thus cry out are many whom this world deems successful.
Animal Magnetism, Atheism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Agnosticism,
Pantheism, and Infidelity are antagonistic to Mentiphysics and fatal
to the demonstration thereof, and of Neminism, its noblest
culmination; and so,' she continued, 'are some other systems.'
"She warned me especially against Pantheism, 'the worship of the
sylvan god Pan,' a cult reputed to be especially rife among the
members of our club at Alcalde.
"I tried to explain to her the difference between Pantheism and
Sciosophy, but I did not succeed very well, for she grew impatient. In
her judgment, I discovered, Sciosophy was grossly impractical, and the
views of Mr. Abner Dean would take the bread from the mouths of better
men than he. 'I am told,' she said, 'that Mr. Dean actually signed
that wicked paper[15] of those Washington soreheads, who call
themselves the Reformed College of Neminism.' With this, she would not
listen to another word about Sciosophy.
[Footnote 15: In this document it is asserted that Neministic
Science and Astral Health with a Key to the Stars "and all of the
inspired writings shall be free--i. e., free from the love of the
lust of gain and that the charging of three dollars for Science
and Health, etc., when it can be printed and sold for less than
fifty cents per copy, is wrong in principle, and, in effect, shuts
the doors of this beautiful truth upon the poor by thus putting a
prohibitive price upon it....
"We hold that in the giving of class instruction the teacher is
entitled to a reasonable compensation, and give our opinion that
such compensation should be ten dollars, and we do condemn the
present practice when they charge one hundred dollars for a series
of twelve lessons. Take a class of thirty--which is not
unusual--the teacher receives about $258 per day for two hours'
work. This is unjust, and especially so, because many of these
teachers are unable and unfit for teaching.
"In the matter of healing, when the healer gives the proper time
to the work, one dollar per treatment ought not to be excessive,
but the practice of some of charging before the patient is
received into the room and then heavily charged for the treatment,
is an outrage, ... and should be prohibited."--_See full text,
Washington News Letter, September 6, 1899; Editor._]
"Then I regretted that I had said anything, for this pleasant lesson
came to an abrupt end, and left me without even the customary card to
ponder over. I still wondered what could be the secret meaning of N.
N. N., _nihil nemini nocet_.
"On the next day the storm had blown over, or rather, like all other
storms, it had no real existence, and the smile of the president at
the closing act of the lesson was the sweetest I had ever seen, the
most perfect witness to the truth of her teachings.
"She took up the subject of Materia Medica. After reading from a
printed book the names of a host of poisons, from Abacus to Swamproot
and Sandalwood and _Zygadene_, she warned us against them all. All are
alike evil. All alike have no real existence. Therefore the student
will do well not to learn their names. It will only interfere with his
serenity of mind, and perfect serenity is the sole symptom of success.
"'Surely this is better,' she said, 'than to support the popular
systems of medicine, when the physician may be perchance an infidel
and lose ninety-and-nine patients where Neminism cures its hundred. Is
it because Osteopathy and Ostariopathy are more fashionable and less
spiritual? Even business men have found that Neministic Science
enhances their physical and mental powers, enlarges their perception
of character, gives them acuteness and comprehensiveness, and an
ability to exceed their ordinary business capacity.'
"Then she gave me this card:
"'N. N. N. In 1866 this discovery was made by me and by me alone: "The
erring Mortal misnamed Mind produces all the organism and action of
the mortal body." This led to the demonstration that Mind is All and
matter is naught, and being nothing, nothing hurts nobody. Nobody
hurts nothing, which proves it plainly by inversion. _Nihil nocet
nemini; nihil nemini nocet._'
"On the eighth day the president discoursed on Anatomy. Referring
briefly to the pernicious notions of the 'ancients,' as with a broad
sweep of her hand she designated the professors in Boston and
Cambridge, concerning the structure of the human body, she called it
the nightmare of undigested learning. 'Why should we care where the
jugular vein goes, when we know that there is no jugular vein? What of
bones and muscles, and teguments and integuments? "Toil fatigues me,"
you say; but what is this me? Is it muscle or Mind? Which is tired,
and so speaks? Without Mind could the muscles be tired? Do the
muscles talk, or do you talk for them? Science includes no rule of
discord, but governs harmoniously.'
"On the card were these words:
"'N. N. N. Flesh is an error of physical belief; a supposition that
life, substance, and intelligence are in matter; an illusion; a belief
that matter has sensations. _Nihil nocet nemini._'
"On the ninth day I was admitted to the third degree, or the
Introspective Plane. As the president entered, I noticed a touch of
camellia powder on her face, for the subject of the day was Beauty.
'Beauty,' she said, 'is internal before it is perceived outwardly. To
have perfect faith in the principle of Neminism is to regain the
charms of Eternal Youth.' She told me of patients of hers who had
become beautiful through faith. One good lady at ninety developed new
teeth through belief in Neminism--incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and
one molar. A gentleman at sixty had retained his full set of upper and
lower teeth without a decaying cavity.
"On her card were these words:
"'N. N. N. The receipt for Beauty is to have less Illusion and more
Soul. _Nihil nemini nocet._'
"And, as the final ceremony was passed, the president looked almost
beautiful herself.
"On the tenth day the president gave some account of her early studies
and of the origin of Neministic Healing.
"'While from the human standpoint I inherited the refinement that goes
with culture of family and moral rectitude, as usual here in Boston,
yet there was a marked degree of spiritual Grace, Soulful Delicacy,
and Esoteric Elegance that comes not from human ancestry, neither from
communion with Nature. It was the exquisite coloring of the touch of
the astral hand which opens the petals of thought as it does the
opening rose. This ended in a soft glow of ineffable Joy, and out of
its perfect serenity Neministic Science was born.
"'The discovery was so new, the basis laid down for physical and moral
health so hopelessly original and men so unfamiliar with the subject,
that not until later did I venture to proclaim it to the world.'
"On the card was--
"'N. N. N.
"'My world has sprung from Spirit
In Everlasting Day;
Whereof I've much to glory,
Wherefor have much to pay.'
"Under this was a picture of the egg of a vulture, in which, through
his microscope, Agassiz once saw the sun, moon, stars, and the
gathering of clouds. '_Nihil nemini nocet._'
"At the eleventh lesson I was directed to go out for clinical
practice. In my hotel I found a dear little six-year-old boy who had
been invited, with the rest of a kindergarten class, to attend a
picnic.
"He did not feel that he wanted to go. He seemed dumpish, and,
according to mortal belief, was not well. At noon he said that he
wanted to go to sleep. I took him in my lap and began to read to him
from Neministic Science and Astral Health with a Key to the Stars.
Very soon he expressed a wish to go to the picnic, and did go. So I
gave him a little card, with the words '_Nihil nemini nocet_,' and all
day he said nothing more about being sick.
"Next morning the president gave me an account of various wonderful
cures in her experience. Among others, she showed me a letter from
John B. Higgins, of Little Egg Harbor, N. J. This I copied down as
follows:
"'I am glad to tell you how I was healed. Beliefs of consumption,
dyspepsia, neuralgia, ulcers, tobacco, and bad language....
Doctors that were consulted did nothing to relieve me, and I
constantly grew worse. Nearly two years ago you told me that if I
would read a book called Neministic Science and Astral Health
with a Key to the Stars, I would be healed. I told you I would go
into it for all it was worth, and I found that it is worth all. I
got the book and read day and night. I saw that it must be true,
and believed that what I could not then understand would be made
clear later. After some days' reading I was afflicted with
drowsiness, followed by vomiting. This lasted several hours, when
I fell into a sleep. I awoke healed.'
"The president assured me that if I would spend no time in
intellectual drifting, adhering to the impersonal and scientific
deductions of the one discoverer to whose clarified spiritual eye all
truth of the mind had been revealed, with all the loyalty of a
mathematician to the principles of mathematics, I would be sure of a
comfortable fortune. Although money had no real existence, the shadow
in its substance proved that there was after all substance in its
shadow. The Neministic Healer is at no expense for books or
instruments or medicine, providing always that the one perfect Key to
the Stars (including Neministic Science and Astral Health) lies open
before him. With that in sight he can not go wrong, and with perfect
faith in the unreality of all external things it matters not in
earthly affairs what he does or leaves undone.
"The card for this lesson was:
"'N. N. N. The population of our cities is ample to supply many
practitioners, teachers, and preachers with work. To enter this field
of labor beneficially to ourselves, it is necessary to demonstrate
that _the patient who is able to pay for being healed is more apt to
recover_ than he who withholds a slight equivalent for health! _Nihil
nemini nocet._'
"At the last lesson the president informed me that my course of
instruction was complete, and that I must now go forth and bless the
world. I must lean no longer on her personal leadership, but, trusting
in the spirit, I should rest solely on the pure Mentiphysical
principle at work. As a pioneer of Neministic Healing in the far
uncultured West, I must stand alone in the conflict, smiting error
with the falchion of Truth. The rare bequests of the spirit are
costly, and they have won fields of battle from which the dainty
borrower would have fled.'
"I spoke once or twice of my diploma, without which I could not
practice my profession under the laws of Fresno County. At first she
made as if she did not hear me, but at last she said:
"'The Massachusetts University of Mentiphysics draws its breath from
me, but I yearn for retirement. No one else can sustain this
institution amid the legislation aimed at its vital purpose. This has
given me conscientious scruples about diplomas, and, with the growing
conviction that every one should build on his own foundation, no more
diplomas shall be issued from this flourishing school.
"'But do not worry, dear,' she said. 'Your power is just the same with
or without diploma. You can make known the rare bequests of the Spirit
quite as well as a martyr as you could as a physician. The faithful
will stand by you. Those who believe will always pay. Take this
locket, and hang it about your neck. It will contain the quintessence
of all my teachings, and with this in your right hand and Neministic
Science and Astral Health with a Key to the Stars in your left, you
will drain the cup which I have drained to the dregs as the discoverer
and teacher of Neminism, and without tasting this cup its inspiration
can not be gained.'
"Then I took the little locket, and here it is. On one side are the
letters D. N. N. N., 'which,' she said, 'makes its holder a doctress.'
On the reverse is the face of Lydia Pinkham, while around the margin,
in fine gilt letters, is a scroll with the motto, '_Nihil nemini
nocet._' Mr. Gridley, the learned professor of our Alcalde school,
says this means 'nothing hurts nobody.' But I am sure that there is
more in it than that; besides, whatever it is we can prove it by
inversion: _Nihil nocet nemini; nihil nemini nocet_--one is true like
the other, and its symbolic significance is proved by its three N's,
for N is the symbol of eternity. At least, this is what the president
told me. But now that I am back in Alcalde, the whole thing seems like
a dream, while all the things I had learned to call dreams seem more
real than ever. Maybe I am still on the Material Plane after all, in
spite of all I have done and all the rest of us in Alcalde are doing
to try to rise above it."
DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER.
BY WALTER L. HAWLEY,
OF THE NEW YORK EVENING SUN.
At the beginning of the present century the newspapers published
in the United States numbered 200--one for each 26,450 of
population--while at the present time the total of regular
publications slightly exceeds 20,000--one for each 350 inhabitants of
the country; and in that growth and development of the business is
represented more of science and art, more of physical ingenuity and
mental activity, than in any other line of human endeavor. One hundred
years ago the publication of a newspaper did not rank as a business,
and the preparation of its contents was regarded as a pastime or the
indulgence of a whim, rather than a profession. At the end of the
century, journalism is the history of the world written day by day,
the chief medium of enlightenment for the masses, the universal forum
of scholar, sage, and scientist. As a business enterprise, the
newspaper of to-day commands unlimited capital, and as a profession it
ranks second to none.
For three centuries and a half following Gutenberg's invention of type
little progress was made in the art of printing, and the production of
a newspaper in this country in 1800 was accomplished with crude
machinery and involved much slow and difficult hand labor. The
printing was done on wooden presses of primitive pattern, the type was
large and ill formed, the paper used was in many cases inferior to the
lowest grade made at the present time, and the production of a large
number of copies of any issue was out of the question. No attempt was
made in this country to publish a daily paper until 1784, and in 1800
daily editions were issued only in four or five of the larger cities.
[Illustration: FROM THE NEW YORK GAZETTE AND GENERAL ADVERTISER OF
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1800.]
[Illustration: FROM THE NEW YORK GAZETTE AND GENERAL ADVERTISER OF
JANUARY 1, 1800.]
[Illustration: A MUNICIPAL NOTICE FROM THE NEW YORK GAZETTE AND
GENERAL ADVERTISER OF JANUARY 1, 1800.]
The publications of that period were not newspapers in the sense in
which the word is now used, because no particular effort was made to
present an account of the happenings of the day. Notices of the
arrival and departure of ships, time tables of mail coaches, and brief
announcements of matters of political interest filled the limited
space devoted to domestic news. Foreign news consisted entirely of
matter reprinted from the English journals received by sailing
vessels, and therefore weeks or months old when it appeared. The
wooden presses used a hundred years ago were operated entirely by
hand. After the type had been set it was placed in a frame or "form,"
with little or no regard to artistic arrangement of headlines or
displayed matter. To print the edition, the "form" was placed on the
bed of the press and ink spread over the type by the use of hand
rollers. The white paper was then dampened with water, sheet by sheet,
laid over the stationary "form," and the impression was made by
pulling down the upper part of the press with a lever. This work was
so slow that a circulation of three or four hundred copies of a daily
newspaper would severely tax the capacity of the press room. The
weekly publications were as a rule limited to about the same figures,
because the entire mechanical part of production devolved upon one
man, who was often owner and editor as well as printer. Some iron
presses were imported from England in 1810, and in 1817 George Clymer,
of Philadelphia, invented a lever press that was a marked improvement
over the crude machines then in general use, reducing the manual labor
required and increasing the speed with which printed papers could be
turned out. The first power press used in this country was invented by
Daniel Treadwell, of Boston, in 1822, and operated by the American
Bible Society, the power being furnished by a team of mules. These
presses were not adapted to newspaper work, and the first considerable
advance in the mechanical part of the business was made in 1829 and
1830, when a Washington hand press was invented. Seventeen years later
a cylinder power press was perfected by Richard M. Hoe, and the
mechanical ability to produce periodicals was more than doubled; but
during the time when American ingenuity developed the steam engine,
the cotton gin, the sewing machine, and the electric telegraph, the
progress made in the mechanism of newspaper making was comparatively
insignificant. The process of stereotyping was introduced into this
country from England in 1813, and a year later the New Testament was
printed from plates, but the discovery was not utilized in the
publication of newspapers until 1861.
[Illustration: ADVERTISEMENTS FROM THE NEW YORK DAILY ADVERTISER OF
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1800.]
[Illustration: The Daily Advertiser of Wednesday, January 1, 1800.]
In the first half of the century journalism did not at any time rank
as a profession requiring special training, and capacity, and the
returns of the counting room were so meager, the cost of material so
high, and the appliances in the mechanical department so imperfect,
that the publication of newspapers rose only by slow degrees to
recognition as a business enterprise in which capital might seek
investment with fair prospect of a satisfactory return. Modeled after
English publications, the early American newspapers depended, for
whatever of reputation or success they achieved, upon the fame and
ability of the editor. The reporting of current events without comment
was a secondary feature of the daily papers, and in the weekly
publications it was not attempted. Before the days of railroads and
prompt and reliable mail service, communication between men in public
life and, in fact, all persons of education, was chiefly by letter.
The custom grew into a fixed habit, and to a large extent influenced
the character of the newspapers published prior to 1850. The editor
addressed himself directly to his readers through long editorials upon
topics in which he was interested, and his publication was in reality
a mere instrument for the expression of opinions. Public men and
politicians were encouraged to write letters for publication upon
public questions, and a long communication from a man of national
reputation was regarded by the editor as matter of far more value to
his journal than any amount of news of the events of the day.
The organization and development of political parties in the early
part of the second quarter of the century resulted in a rapid increase
in the number of newspapers throughout the country. Party leaders
found that they could reach a greater number of citizens by means of
published letters and speeches than by the primitive process of
campaigning by easy stages from one State or county to another. From
writing personal letters to friends in their districts, senators and
representatives in Congress found that they could keep their
constituents better informed of the progress of legislation and
politics by means of signed statements in the press of their
respective States. The party organ and the personal journal were the
immediate natural results of this condition of public life and
politics. Every secular journal supported some political party or
organization without qualification, and there was little or no
independence of the press. The editor found his subscribers among
the members of his own party, and often looked to the organization or
the candidate for financial support. Papers were established and
editors hired by parties, factions, and individual leaders to advocate
some particular plan of finance or tariff, or some general policy for
the nation or State. During this stage of American journalism the
influence of a paper depended largely upon the reputation,
individuality, and force of character of the editor. He needed not to
possess any particular qualification for the work, except a general
knowledge of the affairs on which he was to write and a command of
vigorous language to compel attention to his utterances. For many
years the majority of the periodicals of the country, daily and
weekly, were critical reviews of the events of the time, rather than
mediums for the spread of general information. News of important
happenings at home spread through all the States ahead of the
circulation of the papers, and the people looked to the latter for
review and comment upon events, rather than for detailed accounts of
the occurrences. Foreign affairs, as reported in the English
publications received in this country, took precedence in the
classification of news in the journals of the first half of the
century, and local events, often matters that were subsequently
recognized as of great historical value, were briefly and too often
imperfectly recorded. It is a matter to be regretted that in the days
when American statesmen and orators were making history for the world,
when the new republic, having passed beyond the stage of experiment,
was advancing with prodigious strides toward glorious achievements in
material development, the journals of the country kept but an
imperfect and often inaccurate record of events that should have been
reported in full.
[Illustration: J. Russel's Gazette of Monday, September 1st, 1800.]
During the first forty years of the present century there was no
system of collecting the news for publication, and the capital
invested in the newspaper business was insufficient to permit of any
extra outlay to obtain reports of events occurring at a distance in
advance of the regular mails. Such reports as were obtained were
usually voluntary contributions written by a friend of the editor, and
often colored or distorted according to the prejudice of the writer.
These letters were, almost without exception, semi-editorial in
character, the writers indulging freely in comment and expression of
opinion upon the event they attempted to record, so that no political
or public matter was reported entirely free from partisan coloring.
The drivers of mail coaches, the captains of coastwise or river
vessels, strolling peddlers, lawyers, surveyors, and wandering
missionaries, who made long journeys into the interior and from town
to town, were the news reporters of early days. When they arrived in
a city or town they would tell the latest news from the places they
had visited, and the next issue of the local paper would contain a
story beginning, "The Rev. Mr. Bland, the traveling missionary,
relates," etc., or, "Captain Smith, of the schooner ----, reports
having heard," etc. Information received in this way might relate to
Indian uprisings, fires, floods, crimes, accidents, or political
events; but in every case the published account would be interspersed
with opinions of the narrator and the comments of the editor who
prepared the story for publication. For news of events happening in
the larger cities, the journals of the first half of the century
depended almost entirely on reprinting from exchanges. They had no
regular correspondents anywhere, and a paper published in New York
would reprint from the papers of Boston and Philadelphia such of the
news of those cities as impressed the editor as being of more than
local interest. During the War of 1812, the subsequent Indian wars,
and the conflict with Mexico, news of battles and movements of armies
in the field was obtained by the slow process of waiting for official
reports to the Government or private letters from officers and men at
the front. The Mexican War stimulated the public demand for news,
increased the circulation of newspapers, and did more than any other
event up to that time to arouse the editors of the country to the fact
that the people wanted early and complete information of what was
going on in the world, rather than individual opinions on general
problems. While that struggle was in progress the arrival of the
weekly mail in a remote village was an event of importance. The
inhabitants would gather in large numbers at the post office, and the
meager war news contained in the newspapers would be read aloud. The
postmaster or some subscriber to a paper would often post a copy of
the latest journal in some conspicuous place in the town, and from
that simple beginning there was developed the newspaper bulletin
board, where the public may obtain brief information of great events
before the full report can be put in type.
[Illustration: FROM THE NEW YORK EVENING POST OF NOVEMBER 16, 1801.]
[Illustration: New York Evening Post of Monday, November 16, 1801.]
After the division of the voters of the country into organized
political parties, the tariff, banking and currency, the acquisition
of additional territory, and States rights developed into great
national questions, precipitating prolonged and heated discussion by
the statesmen of that period. This condition stimulated the growth of
a certain class of newspapers, and brought into prominence many
writers of ability. The statesmen and politicians of that time turned
to the press as an available and valuable medium through which to
disseminate arguments. They sought to convince rather than to inform
the public, and the journalism of that period made no substantial
progress except as an instrument for the development and exploitation
of writers of force and influence. Whatever power the press exerted in
shaping events, whatever it accomplished in swaying the public mind in
the days when nullification was scotched and territorial expansion was
accepted as a fixed policy of the majority, should be credited to the
genius and individuality of the leading writers of that time, rather
than to a full presentation of facts. The years of agitation of the
question of slavery still further developed individuality in
journalism. The newspaper became an instrument for educating the
people on certain public questions, and an influence upon public
opinion by means of editorial writing. That was the period of
so-called great editors, of whom Horace Greeley may be mentioned as a
conspicuous example, who made and unmade politicians with their praise
or criticism, who shaped the policy of political parties, controlled
conventions and nominated candidates, changed the current of their
country's history at critical points, and in many ways wielded an
influence in public affairs greater than that of the leading
statesmen. The editor of that time was greater than his newspaper, and
the power of the press was in reality the force of character of the
individual exerted through the instrument within his control.
[Illustration: A BOOKSELLER'S ADVERTISEMENT FROM THE NEW YORK EVENING
POST OF FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1801.]
From 1830 to 1860 the progress made in the mechanical department of
the business was slow and unimportant in comparison with recent
inventions. Cylinder presses came into general use for the printing of
daily papers, but the weekly and monthly publications continued to use
the primitive hand machines. The speed of press-work was still limited
to a few hundred copies per hour, so that an extensive circulation
could not be supplied even if there had been a demand for it. The
white paper used was still made entirely of rags, and most of the
material was imported from Austria and Italy. The cost of production
was high, and few newspapers in the United States were published at a
fair profit. The uncertainty of the financial returns from the
business greatly retarded its development. Inventors found that their
ingenuity would receive more substantial rewards in other fields, and
editors and publishers were rarely practical men who could discover
imperfections in mechanism and suggest improvements in their own
shops. Throughout the first half of the century most of the improved
methods of printing were developed in the establishments of book and
job printers. There new presses and all new mechanical devices were
first installed, and the newspaper followed, instead of leading, in
the work of material progress in the art.
[Illustration: AN EDEN MUSÉE OF 1801. FROM THE NEW YORK EVENING POST
OF DECEMBER 23, 1801.]
To the New York Herald is generally credited the departure from
old-time methods that resulted in the creation of newspapers devoted
entirely to the publication of news, the reporting of the happenings
of the world day by day. The innovation was not well received by the
editors, who believed that the public cared more for opinions than a
record of events. The new method proved popular, however, and the
development of the newspaper from the personal journal and party organ
dates from that time. The founder of the Herald and the new school of
journalism spent money to obtain the news of the world ahead of the
ordinary channels of communication. He established a system of special
couriers, employed correspondents, and made the collection of reports
of events of general interest a matter of first importance in the
business of making a newspaper. Other editors followed the new
movement slowly, and often with much doubt and hesitation, but those
who stood still and refused to supply their readers with the news were
in time compelled to go out of the business.
When the civil war began the new order of journalism had progressed
far enough to create a general demand for a full report of the
progress of that great conflict. All the larger cities of the country
were connected by railroads and telegraph lines, the political
agitation for five years prior to the beginning of hostilities had
aroused the people to a feeling of intense interest in the struggle,
the circulation of the daily papers had increased almost to the limit
of their mechanical capacity, and every condition favored a rapid
development of the business with a certainty of profitable returns.
The leading editors of the country still exerted a far-reaching
influence in public affairs, and they were consulted by the highest
officers of the Government; but the time had come when the people
wanted the news, rather than individual opinions. American genius and
ingenuity responded promptly and adequately to the demand, and from
the time of the civil war the development of the newspaper has been a
marvel of science and art. The telegraph came into general use for the
transmission of news, correspondents and artists were sent to the
front with all the armies, the men employed in Washington to write
their own views of public questions were instructed to send to their
papers only a record of the great events then transpiring around them,
and in a month, or at most a year, American journalism was well
advanced upon a new era of marvelous development. The time when the
opinions, the power in phraseology, or the individuality of one man
could alone make a daily newspaper a financial, literary, or political
success had passed. The press had become an institution, journalism a
profession, and the publication of newspapers a practical business
requiring and rewarding enterprise and sagacity.
With the sudden demand for more papers came rapid progress in the
mechanical department of the business. Double cylinder presses capable
of printing twenty thousand papers an hour were soon perfected,
folding machines came into general use, stereotyping was employed to
save time, labor, and wear of type, white paper was made from wood
pulp at greatly reduced cost, and the progress in all departments of
the business was by leaps and bounds until every demand was more than
supplied and new expectations created. From that time forward
invention kept pace with every increase of circulation. As soon as one
press was found inadequate or imperfect, the manufacturers were ready
to set up a faster and better one. As competition reduced the selling
price of the newspaper, invention supplied every demand for the
material of production at a reduced rate. The impetus to circulation
imparted by the civil war created a new reading public, which rapidly
grew to include every person who could read and a demand for all the
news of the world once created would not be denied. The collection of
news was quickly reduced to a system and perfected, until to-day no
event of importance occurring in any part of the world is omitted from
the daily record of current history.
The great cost of collecting news at the front and transmitting by
telegraph full reports of battles during the civil war caused certain
newspapers in New York city to enter into an arrangement to receive
reports in duplicate and share expenses. Then the cost was further
reduced by selling the news to papers in other cities. That was the
beginning of the Associated Press, a plan of newspaper combination
that ultimately made the buying and selling of news a great commercial
enterprise. Within a few years after the close of the war this system
had been developed until practically all the daily newspapers of the
country were interested in it or subscribers to the news collected and
sold. This feature of the business continued to grow until agencies
for the collection and transmission of news were established
throughout the world. Similar associations were formed in England and
on the continent of Europe, and news exchanged with the American
organization. In the United States the business was developed until
newspapers of particular sections of the country and even those of
single States formed associations on the principle of mutual benefit
for the collection of full reports of all important events within the
territory where they circulated. At the present time the system has
been perfected until the great news agencies of the country receive
reports of important events from every quarter of the globe with a
degree of promptness and accuracy rendered possible only by
thoroughness of organization and the constant exercise of the keenest
intelligence. The collection of all the news of the world would not be
possible under any other plan, but the American newspapers, having
created a demand for the news, were the first to devise a system of
obtaining it promptly at a cost that made possible the publication of
daily papers at a profit in almost every town in the country. Brief
reports of all important events are transmitted by cable or telegraph
to a central office in New York, Washington, or Chicago, where they
are condensed or elaborated, as occasion may require, and then sent
out over special telegraph wires to papers all over the country that
are subscribers to the service. The larger papers of the country,
however, do not rely upon this service alone. They are represented by
special correspondents not only in all the chief cities of the United
States, but in London. Paris, Berlin, and other news centers of the
Old World.
The development of the newspaper into a medium for recording day by
day every event of human interest was so rapid during the civil war
and the stirring times immediately thereafter that many faults of form
and detail remained. The journalism of that period was a new
departure, and the men who created it had no precedent to guide them,
but all the time there was a steady and intelligent effort to improve
in all directions. The efforts of the leading men in the profession,
influenced by conditions and surroundings, resulted in the creation of
what were for a time known as schools of journalism--that is, one man
set up an ideal, and another man strived to create a journal of
another character. The aim of all was to publish the general news of
the day, but political influences were still strong enough to control
editorial policy, and ultra-partisan and sectional views were
incorporated in the record of events. There were still editors of
great power and influence in politics and public affairs, and they
tried to shape the current of the new condition by the force of
editorial writing. A number of editors, of both the old and new order,
for a time followed the policy of subordinating to partisan politics
all other features of the newspaper. They sought to make the press the
dominant influence in politics, and to do that they presented in their
journals only one side of public and party questions. They undertook
to think and to reason for their readers, and their partisan and
sectional views were reflected in the news columns of their papers. So
long as party feeling ran high this style of journalism was popular
and successful, but the newspaper, being in the nature of an educator
of the masses, soon set the people to thinking for themselves, and
created a demand for the news of public and political events without
the color of individual opinion. The change from intense partisanship
to partial or complete independence of editorial utterance has come
slowly, and is still under way. To-day there is no great daily
newspaper in the United States so entirely subservient to a political
party as to support any man or measure without question or protest.
Politicians fear this spirit of independence, and therein lies the
secret of the great power of the press in public affairs. The most
powerful and successful journals are those that combine absolute
fairness and honesty with independence.
So-called schools of journalism, in the rapid development of the
profession during the past twenty years, have merged into one general
system or plan, which is to get all the news and publish it. Journals
may be graded or classified by their treatment of news and their
judgment as to the intelligence and moral character of the reading
public.
A detailed record of the development of the mechanical part of the
newspaper business during the past thirty years would be almost a
synopsis of all progress in science and art. The newspaper printing
press of to-day, which prints, cuts, folds, and counts ninety-six
thousand papers per hour, with one man to operate it, is the
mechanical wonder of the age. It is justly regarded as the greatest
piece of machinery that the ingenuity of man has yet devised. Type is
no longer set by hand in the making of a newspaper, the letters being
formed from the metal direct and cast in finished lines by machinery.
Studying the perfection and magnitude of the newspaper printing
press of to-day it is difficult to realize that little more than half
a century of time and invention stand between this piece of mechanism,
that seems to work with human intelligence, and the Washington hand
press, upon which the production of printed sheets was a matter of
slow and arduous labor. The great metropolitan newspapers of to-day
are printed by monster machines weighing thirty tons, composed of four
thousand separate pieces of steel, iron, brass, wood, and cloth. In
the great printing-press factory of R. Hoe & Co. eighteen months' time
is required to build one of the modern presses, and the cost of it
would have more than paid for all the newspaper printing presses in
use in the United States at the beginning of the century. These
monster machines are known as quadruple presses, which means that four
complete presses have been built into one. When in operation, white
paper is fed to them automatically from rolls, and this paper, with a
speed greater than the eye can follow, is converted into the finished
newspaper, printed on both sides, cut into sheets, pasted together,
folded, counted, and deposited in files of fifty or one hundred at one
side of the press. White paper is fed to the press from two points,
and finished newspapers are delivered at two places on the opposite
side. An idea of the speed with which the work is done may be gained
by watching the printed papers fall from the folder. They drop so fast
that the eye, no matter how well trained, can not count them. These
presses have a capacity of ninety-six thousand four-, six-, or
eight-page papers per hour, and forty-eight thousand ten-, twelve-, or
sixteen-page papers. Their mechanism is so perfect and so carefully
adjusted that the breaking of a narrow band of tape in the folder, the
loosening of a nut, the slightest bending of a rod, friction in a
bearing, or any other derangement, no matter how slight, is instantly
apparent to the skilled machinist in charge.
[Illustration: OCTUPLE STEREOTYPE PERFECTING PRESS AND FOLDERS
(printing on both sides of the paper). Capacity 96,000 4-, 6-, or
8-page papers per hour; down to 24,000 24-page papers per hour. A,
paper rolls (Webb's), sometimes five miles long; B, printing
cylinders, each one carrying sixteen plates (pages); C, blanket or
impression cylinders; D, inking motion (fountain and inking rollers);
F, folding mechanism or formers (four of these); G, deliveries (four
of these); H, controlling lever; I, bar slitting, pasting, collating,
and collecting devices (between press and folders).
(We are indebted to the courtesy of R. Hoe & Co. for permission to
reproduce this photograph. This picture and the succeeding one
represent the most powerful and complete printing presses which have
been constructed up to date.)]
[Illustration: SEXTUPLE STEREOTYPE PERFECTING PRESS AND FOLDERS (with
color attachment for printing three additional colors on outside
pages). It prints per hour 48,000 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, or 12-page papers,
36,000 16 page papers, or 24,000 14-, 16-, 20-, or 24-page papers--all
delivered folded, pasted, and counted. Also magazines with pages half
the size of the newspaper pages, one half the pages printed in four
colors and the other half in one color, at the rate of 48,000 of 8,
12, 16, 20, or 24 pages, and 24,000 of 28, 32, 40, or 48 pages,
delivered folded to page size, cut open at the heads, bound with wire
staples, and counted.
(We are indebted to the courtesy of R. Hoe & Co. for permission to
reproduce this photograph.)]
The white paper used in making the newspapers of to-day is
manufactured from wood pulp and is put up in long rolls, wound about
an iron cylinder that can be adjusted in place at one end of the
press. These rolls contain from two to four miles of paper, and weigh
from eight hundred to twelve hundred pounds each. As soon as one roll
is used up another is lifted into place, the loose ends of the two are
pasted together, and, after a stop of less than two minutes, the great
press is again belching forth finished newspapers at the rate of
sixteen hundred a minute, or two hundred and sixty-six each second.
Almost every invention and device of recent years in connection with
the use of electricity is in some way utilized in the production and
distribution of the daily newspapers. The evolution of journalism
having finally established the fact that the chief function of the
daily newspaper is to publish the news of the world, the problem of
the business is how to obtain the news surely, accurately, and
promptly. The ocean cable has taken the place of the sailing vessel,
the trained correspondent has succeeded the occasional contributor,
the electric telegraph and telephone have entirely superseded the mail
in the transmission of domestic news, and every event of human
interest throughout the civilized world is placed before millions of
readers within a few hours of its actual occurrence.
The collection of news is not restricted by any question of the cost
of obtaining it. Fifty years ago it was considered a remarkable feat
for one newspaper to obtain information of an important event in
advance of competitors. To-day it is a matter of comment if any
newspaper fails to publish all the news desired by its readers. If a
war is fought on any part of the earth there are reporters on the
firing line, and no expense is spared in collecting and transmitting
by the quickest method available full reports of any event of
world-wide importance. To-day the hiring of special trains, the
stringing of a special line of telegraph wire, the charter of a ship,
the fitting out of an exploring expedition, or any other great
enterprise in the way of collecting information for the newspapers of
the United States, is so much a part of the everyday business of
journalism that such things are accepted as a matter of course, or
cause no more than a passing comment.
Half a century ago the result of a national convention or election was
not known all over the country for weeks afterward. In the case of a
national convention to-day, telegraph wires lead from the convention
hall into the offices of all the newspapers in the larger cities. An
operator sits near the platform of the presiding officer, and with a
muffled key he sends over the wire a full report of the proceedings,
with a description of every incident of interest. At the other end of
the line is an operator at a typecasting machine receiving the report
and putting it into lines as fast as received. When a candidate for
President has been nominated, extra editions of the daily papers are
selling on the streets of cities a thousand miles away almost before
the applause for the winning man has died out in the convention hall.
The people of every city and town in the United States where a
newspaper is published would feel themselves cheated of their rights
if they failed to receive news of the result of an election by
midnight of the day on which the ballots were cast.
In enterprise and originality the journalism of America leads the
world at the end of the nineteenth century. As a profession, it
commands, with alluring prospects of fame and fortune, the services of
men of genius and learning. Those who enter it from choice succeed or
fail quickly. It is a life of activity, a work where energy and
intelligence are essential qualifications, and honor and honesty are
certain of reward. There is no enduring place in the profession for
hypocrisy, indolence, or mediocrity.
VALUE OF THE STUDY OF ART.
BY GEORGES PERROT.
Georges Perrot is one of the leading art writers and teachers of
France. Born in 1832, not far from Paris, he was graduated from
the École Normale about 1855, and was then for three years at the
French School at Athens. From his return to the present day he
has occupied, with honor and distinction, many positions in the
world of letters. At present he is a member of the Institut, an
officer of the Légion d'Honneur, a professor à la Faculté des
Lettres de Paris, and the director of the École Normale
Supérieure. He is best known to scholars outside of France by the
magnificent work on the History of Art in Antiquity, which he is
writing, assisted by Charles Chipiez, architecte du gouvernement,
and of which seven superb quartos have already appeared.
(Hachette et Cie.) In 1891, by a decree of the Minister of Public
Instruction, the study of the history of the fine arts was
introduced into a section of the studies pursued at the lycées.
In an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1899, Perrot
pleads for an increase of the time assigned to the study and for
its introduction into other parts of the curriculum.
I have translated those pages of the article which are of general
interest as a contribution to a subject which is deservedly
attracting the attention of American institutions of learning.
D. CADY EATON.
Written and spoken language, the language of which the signs are
words, is not the only language which man uses to convey his ideas.
There is also the language of forms, which, with no less clearness and
force, conveys the conceptions of the intellect and the sentiments of
the heart. We study the history and the literature of bygone people
for the purpose of acquiring a better knowledge of ourselves, and this
knowledge is secured by becoming conscious of the different states of
mind, to use a modern expression, through which our ancestors have
passed. Even the most elementary and the most remote of these
successive conditions are, unconsciously perhaps, represented in the
depths of our being by beliefs and customs for which the present order
and progress of civilization can not account.[16]
[Footnote 16: The highest education consists in the presentation
and in the acceptance of the purest ideas and the highest ideals
of all ages, whether they be presented in written or spoken words,
in songs of voices or sounds of instruments, in plastic forms or
glowing pictures, in humble lives or glorious actions. The
well-educated man should be the product and the epitome of the
best thoughts and sentiments the world has produced, for he
carries the responsibility of past centuries.]
Not to go back to the Quaternary period or to the cave dwellers, there
are many of these mental ideas or conditions which would remain hidden
from the inquiry of the historian if he were limited to written
testimony. One example may suffice: the discoveries of Schliemann, at
Troy, Mycenæ, and Tiryns have rescued from oblivion a primitive Greece
of which the Greeks themselves had preserved but a faint remembrance.
Thus has been given to the Homeric epoch a background of many
centuries. Now this Greece, contemporary of the Thutmoses and the
Ramses of Egypt, anterior to not only Grecian history but even to
Grecian tradition, could not write, but could work and use stone;
could hew wood and fashion it for carpentry; could mold and bake clay;
could melt and hammer lead, bronze, gold, and silver; and could carve
ivory. Every bit of material fashioned by the instruments of this
period has the value of an authentic document. How society was
constituted, the life that was led, what notions were held of the
hereafter--all these things are revealed by the marks the hands of man
have left upon everything he touched. The colossal walls of Tiryns,
the majestic funeral cupolas of Mycenæ, the divisions of the royal
abodes of which the outlines can still be traced on the surface of the
soil, and the arrangement of the sepulchres hidden beneath it all
testify. So, too, the weapons, the instruments, the vases, and the
jewels which have been found scattered about amid the ruins of the
buildings or buried in the tombs. Thanks to all these monuments, we
are beginning to recognize in a shadow which year by year glows with a
brighter light the features which characterized the world of Achæan
heroes of which the image, transformed by oral tradition and
singularly enlarged by power of invention, is reflected in the Iliad
and the Odyssey.
From these obscure and remote ages let us transport ourselves to the
Greece of Pisistratus, of Pericles, and of Alexander. Instructors of
youth tell of the losses which have been made, and of how small a part
of the literary work of Greek genius has escaped the great shipwreck
of antiquity. Should they not also indicate where precious supplements
of information may be found to fill the voids of written tradition?
There are many variations of important myths, hardly mentioned in
passing by obscure epitomizers of the lower centuries, which have
furnished to ceramic artists subjects for pictures which make us
acquainted with personages and with episodes of which writers have
hardly left a trace. But even if we had the works of the cyclic poets,
all of which have perished; if we had the lyric poets, of whom only
Pindar has survived, and Bacchylides whose fragments are to-day the
joy of Hellenists; if we had the whole of tragedy, of which we have
but the remnants; if we had all of that comedy which is represented
by Aristophanes alone; if we had all of the more ancient comedy, all
of the middle period and all of the new, with Menander who since the
Renaissance is the regret of all critics of fine apprehension--all
this poetry could not exhaust the multiple fecundity and the
prodigious richness of the imagination which created it. If malevolent
Fortune had decreed the destruction of every bit of Greek plastic art
we should have been condemned to perpetual ignorance of many aspects
and methods of the Greek soul. Is there anything in literature worth
the little clay figures of Tanagra in making clear how the Greeks
apprehended and enjoyed female beauty: how they loved it not only in
the noble and serious types of a Pallas or an Aphrodite, but even as
presented by the humble inhabitants of little villages in the graceful
_abandon_ of their everyday life and in the liberty of their most
ordinary attitudes? If we base an opinion of the religion of the
Greeks only upon the epithets used by poets in defining the gods and
upon actions they attributed to them, we run the risk of judging
wrongly. In contemplating their images we obtain clearer notions of
the ideas associated with each divine type. Alas! we do not possess
the great works of Phidias which according to men of authority made
men more religious--the Athene of the Parthenon and the Zeus of
Olympia. But even in the reduced copies of these two masterpieces
which have reached down to our time we can divine how the master
expressed in the one the idea of calm and luminous intelligence and of
supreme wisdom, and in the other the idea of that sovereign force in
repose and of that omnipotence, tempered by goodness, which were
conceived to exist in the sovereign of the universe, the father of
gods and men.
In subsequent paragraphs Perrot imagines the Greek statues of the
Louvre thus addressing a classical student:
"Young man, you who are studying Greece in Homer and Plato, in
Sophocles and Herodotus, do not pass us by so quickly. We also belong
to that Greece which you discern and which you seek in their writings,
of which not without difficulty you decipher the prose and the verse.
To understand and to love us, to read in our features the thoughts of
which we are the expression, to seize in the modeling of our flesh and
in the pure outline of our limbs the secret of the genius which
created us, no grammar nor dictionary is needed; only apply yourself
to the education of your eye. In this exercise, in this
apprenticeship, you will find a pleasure which will become more and
more keen as you become more capable of perceiving rapidly the finest
gradations. If you aspire to become an authorized interpreter of Greek
genius, do not fear that you may be losing time. When, by long and
affectionate intercourse, you shall have sufficiently entered into our
intimacy to be able at any given hour to evoke in your spirit, as
clearly as if we stood before you, a vision of the forms which shall
have become dear to you, then the images which shall be awakened in
your memories when you read the poets will be akin to those which the
same recitals and the same epithets suggested to the Greeks who saw us
born. To them you will be drawn by similarity of impression. You will
be nearer to them, nearer to thinking and feeling after their fashion,
at least by moments, than the most subtle grammarian or the most
learned Hellenist who never has seen us."
Turning from Greece to Italy, Perrot derives a no less striking lesson
from the statues of Roman emperors:
"Is there a lesson, though given by the most learned professor, that
could cause to live before us all the life of the Rome of the Cæsars
as do these effigies? In the long succession of portraits which
embrace three centuries of history the differences of times and of men
are contrasted more keenly and more vividly than in the recitals of
ancient authors or in the dissertations of modern erudites. Augustus
and Tiberius, Constantine and Theodosius, all bore the same
title--'imperator'; all were called consuls, Cæsars, Augusti, _patres
patriæ_, etc. Nevertheless, from the first to the fourth centuries the
supreme power was greatly modified. Volumes have been written to
explain the change, but there is nothing that makes it so clear as the
comparison of the images of these princes. Augustus, in perhaps the
most beautiful of all his statues, called _de Prima Porta_, has his
head, arms, legs, and feet bare. Over the soldier's short tunic he
wears a cuirass, and over it is thrown the military mantle of command.
He is represented as supreme chief haranguing his troops. Another
statue may represent him as a simple citizen, clothed with the toga
and holding in his hand the manuscript of the discourse he proposes
reading to the senate. The statues still show forth the Roman
Republic, at least the customs and the style of it. Most vividly is
the spirit and also the deception of the system perceived which, while
investing a single individual with a power almost limitless, affects
for two centuries a preservation of ancient liberties. Turn from these
to an image of one of the successors of Diocletian, one who preferred
to reside in Constantinople, the new capital of the empire. Do not
seek his image in one of the ceremonial statues where, by force of
routine, the sculptor may perchance have preserved classic rules; but
in monuments of another order, where the artist kept closer to
reality, in miniatures adorning manuscripts, in mosaics, in ivory
diptychs, etc. There you will find figures which have nothing left of
the simplicity and nobility which Rome borrowed from Greece, but
figures which in some particulars recall the old art of Asia, and in
others already announce the art of the middle ages. The head is
encircled with a diadem. The body and the limbs are entirely hidden by
clinging draperies which are very long and very narrow. The materials
which form this species of case are decorated from top to bottom with
rich embroideries in the shape of medallions, flowers, animals, and
even persons. There is no more deception; we are no longer in Rome;
fictions so long preserved have finally disappeared; the empire has
turned into an Oriental despotism.
"Between the two extremes of the series, how many degrees are there
which furnish the very best commentaries of history? The heads of all
the Cæsars, even those of Claudius, the accidental scholar, and of
Caligula, the wicked and witty fool, are aristocratic. They show the
nobility and the pride of race. You recognize in them the descendants
of those grand patrician families which at first seemed to hold
exclusively the right to give masters to the Romans. With Vespasian,
scion of a middle-class family pushing its way into second-class
public positions, the advent of a new order is evident. Vespasian has
the round and smooth, double-chinned face of the chief clerk of a
commercial or banking establishment. Trajan has the features of a
soldier who has probably pushed his way to the front from the ranks.
Hadrian, who turns his head to hear the better, whose bright eyes
gleam even in the marble, whose half-opened mouth seems in the act of
speech, shows the features of a learned and intelligent scholar.
Marcus Aurelius, with his bristling hair and beard, would be taken for
a Greek philosopher. In Caracalla's looks there is derangement. His
eye betrays that murderous and fantastic frenzy which seized more than
one emperor, especially of those who from early youth had been exposed
to the temptations of absolute power.[17]
[Footnote 17: There is a bust of Julius Cæsar in England of which
a cast or a copy should be by the side of every expounder of the
Commentaries. The presence of the bust would give new life to the
narrative, for there is more life in the marble than in the
writing. There are in the Louvre, placed side by side, three
representations of Nero which tell the story of the man more
graphically than the pages of Suetonius. The first represents the
youth, whose thoughts are pure, hopes bright, and resolves noble.
The second shows the conflict with evil and the beginning of the
triumph of sin. The third is so monstrous in its brutality and
lust that it must have been taken but a short time before the
catastrophe which terminated the matricide's career. Historians
may detail the circumstances of the fall of Rome, philosophers may
investigate the causes which led to it, but that hideous face in
the Louvre tells the whole story with a force so startling, so
instantaneous, that history and philosophy seem weak and wanting.]
"Not to personages alone do pictured monuments give life. The same
character of sensible reality is imparted to the frame and to the
surroundings of the picture, to all the theater where these actors
played their parts. Of this truth no one of our teachers, when I was a
collegian, seemed to have a suspicion. There was not an illustration
in the cold and dry compendiums which were placed in our hands. I can
almost ask myself if, when I studied Greek and Roman history, I was
really convinced that Sparta and Athens, Rome and Carthage had
actually existed. I certainly did not know how or where to place them
in space, what idea to have of their situation, or of the outlines
made by the ridges of their walls, their houses, and their temples.
All these cities were to me vague shadows, floating between heaven and
earth. No one of them answered to a distinct and defined form.
"If this be the case with classical antiquity, in spite of the color
and splendor of the narratives of its writers, how much more difficult
is it to know and understand France of the middle ages when condemned
to study it in its literary work alone! The literature of the period
is partly in debased Latin, partly in early French. The French of the
day was not the language of the thinkers. The deep thought of the age
is not to be found in minstrelsy and ballads. It must be asked of the
learned, of philosophers, of theologians, and of sacred writers. But
to follow them in the subtle analyses and in the excessive
complications of symbolism, in which they delight, requires mental
efforts which are made all the more laborious by the artificial
character of the church Latin, which no longer continued to renew
itself at the source of popular speech. It is impossible to see how
such works, in spite of their value to erudition, can be called to
take part in the education of the young. It is for this reason that
lately, by a judicious innovation, a discreet place has been made in
the curriculum for histories and poems written in the common language,
for the Chanson de Roland, and for the works of Villehardouin and
Joinville. But the student can only read these in translations, or in
those adaptations which so modernize the language as to leave but a
little of its original flavor, and which therefore make but an
imperfect contact between the original work and the mind of the
reader. But supposing the scholar capable of mastering the original
text: can its formless and superabundant prose, or the tiresome
monotone of its flowing dissonances, give him emotions which have the
vivacity of those which a page of Tacitus or a song of Virgil gives to
those who know even a modicum of Latin? Can they have the power to
excite the imagination in the same degree as any strong and concise
sentence of the historian, any sonorous and glowing verse of the Roman
poet?
"It is only exceptionally and as by flashes that the writings of the
middle ages give the impression of true beauty. The conceptions are
often grand, but the expression is always weak and dragging. On the
other hand, Roman or Gothic churches are not less beautiful after
their manner than Greek temples. Their beauty is of another fashion,
but many souls are touched more deeply. They manifest no less clearly
the power of the religious faith which constructed them. The
particular character of Christian faith is shown with singular
clearness in their majesty, in the elevation of their vaults, in the
half lights which flood them, and in the thousands of figures which
populate and animate every surface. As in Greece, the sculptor
co-operates intelligently and docilely with the architect and has
occupied no less happily the allotted fields. As Phidias and Alcamenes
represented on the pediments and friezes of Doric temples the great
gods of Greece and the local myths of Athens and Olympia, so anonymous
masters, called to decorate the cathedrals of the middle ages, have
placed impressive statues on the sides and in the _voussoirs_ of the
portals, in the open galleries which run along the façades, on the top
of the pinnacles which throng the roof--in fact, everywhere where
space is offered. These statues, distributed in an order regulated by
doctrine and tradition, show forth the Saviour, the Virgin, saints and
angels, prophets and apostles, and hosts of personages and scenes
suggested by Holy Writ or by local and popular legends. Among these
images there are many at Bourges, Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, and Nôtre
Dame de Paris, which are marvels of severe elegance, of chaste and
haughty grace, and of lofty moral nobility. This wonderful statuary
has but lately been investigated, exposed, and studied, but already it
would be difficult to find a connoisseur unwilling to compare with the
most boasted statues of antiquity that admirable image of the teaching
Christ of the west portal of Amiens, to which the popular surname has
been attached of _le Beau Dieu d'Amiens_.
"For evident reasons, French sculpture of the thirteenth century did
not, as did Greek sculpture, devote itself to the study and
reproduction of the nude. It denied itself this attraction. All
figures are clad; but beneath the drapery, which is in fine masses
with large folds, the outline and the movement of form are indicated
with precision. The principal interest and the rare originality,
however, of this sculpture is that it is perhaps the most expressive
that has ever existed. This expressiveness appears in the general
effect of the pose, in the disposition of the drapery, but especially
in the character which the artist has succeeded in giving to the
features of the face.
"The august mysteries of the Christian dogma, the poetry of the Old
and of the New Testament, the triumphant deaths of martyrs, the
miracles of saints and their infinite charity--these things which the
middle ages failed to put into clear and intelligible words are fully
rendered in sculpture. The work of the chisel is large and firm.
Difficulties are not sought, nor are they feared. Whatever be the
material, the form is sure. To understand how superior the plastic is
to the literary work, and to measure the distance, compare the Amiens
statue with the portraits the authors of the Mysteries endeavor to
draw of the Son of God. 'What can be more flat than these poor verses,
which are nevertheless of the sixteenth century? The authors had good
intentions and an apprehension of what should be done, but they were
betrayed by the language in which they wrote. The sculptors of the
thirteenth century, on the contrary, who possessed fully the grammar
of their art, expressed all they felt, and have left us the most
divine images of Jesus Christ in existence.'[18]
[Footnote 18: E. Mâle. Revue Universitaire, Third Année, l. i, p.
15.]
"Italy of the Renaissance is quite unintelligible to any one who has
not measured the place held by art in the preoccupations not only of
artists who practice it, but of all men of all conditions--of princes,
nobles, tradesmen, and of citizens of most humble occupations. No one
in any rank is without a passionate love for plastic beauty. This love
was Italy's life and Italy's death. She died of it, because all her
sap was consumed in satisfying it. It made her indifferent to her
dismemberment, to the hard yoke of her tyrants, to the loss of her
political liberties, and of her independence. But, at the same time,
it constituted the intensity of her life which was exhausted and
renewed again in the ardor with which she pursued her ideal and in her
endeavors to realize it under all its aspects. Let him who would wish
to obtain an exact idea of this condition reside for a while in
Mantua, in Parma, in Sienna, in Florence, or in any other less-known
city which nevertheless had its local school of art, its architects,
its sculptors, its painters, some of whom, though they only worked for
their native city, were not far from manifesting genius.[19]
[Footnote 19: Raphael's Madonnas save the reputation of the papal
see of the sixteenth century, for pontiffs who cherished such pure
and gentle representations could not have been so corrupt as
Luther's partisans assert.]
"The written history of the seventeenth century and its rich
literature can not alone give an idea of the situation occupied by
Louis XIV in Europe when he was admired, imitated, or rather servilely
copied, as pre-eminently the type of the modern king even by those who
hated him the most. After two centuries, have we not seen his
wonderful prestige still potent in dominating the sickly mind of Louis
II of Bavaria? In his desire to copy his chosen model Louis ruined
himself in building palaces. In this folly he showed discrimination.
Louis XIV, when dying, may have accused himself of having indulged too
great a love for building; but his edifices, with their majestic
grandeur and the opulence of their decoration, gave that royal life a
frame which had much to do with the dazzling which all Europe
experienced when in the presence of _le Roi Soleil_. In order to
recognize and experience, though but for a moment, a little of the
impression felt by all contemporaries, Versailles must be visited; the
apartments of the palace, the terraces, and the alleys of the park
must be traversed. Thus will be thrown upon this historic figure a
light far more brilliant and true than could possibly be the result of
learning by heart accounts of all the campaigns of Turenne or Condé,
or all the clauses of the treaties of Nimègue and Ryswick.
"The same may be said of the eighteenth century, of which only an
incomplete idea can be had without a knowledge of its art. This
century, to which Voltaire gave the note, seems to have had no
sentiment of poetry. Down to the time of André Chenier everything
called poetry was no more than rhymed prose. The imagination, however,
did not lose its rights. Like a stream which changes its bed, it
withdrew from literature to flow into the arts of design. There it
gives evidence of invention and of light and spontaneous grace.
Architects adopt plans of happy arrangement. They employ forms of rare
elegance both in the elements of construction and in the ornaments
which decorate them. Such sculptors as Capperi and Houdon give to
portraiture a marvelous intensity of life, while the terra cottas of
Clodion, with their fantastic and voluptuous charm, recall the clay
modelers of antiquity. Such painters as Greuze, Lancret, and Boucher
spread before the eyes living idyls, while Watteau and Frangonard
conjure dreams of ideal Cytheras, of a chimerical paradise where reign
eternal youth and eternal desire. The politics of our kings and of our
ministers of the period is but a succession of faults and weaknesses.
The best concerted plans come to naught. The most brilliant victory
produces no useful results. If France, in spite of so many reverses,
still held her supremacy in Europe, she owed it to her writers and to
her artists."
Perrot's arguments might be used with even greater force in reference
to those notions which have had no Comines, no Joinville, no
Froissart, no Villehardouin, but the history of whose civilization may
be traced in monuments along the Rhine and the Danube, the Ems and the
Elbe. In the last part of the article Perrot considers the best
methods of giving the desired instruction. However interesting and
valuable his suggestions may be in communities where the instruction
has already been established, it is evident that there must first be a
conviction of the value and necessity of such studies and the
determination to have them started. Methods are not difficult to
devise, and will vary with national and individual tastes. That
American colleges of thirty, forty, or fifty years ago should have
objected to the introduction of the history of the fine arts into
their curricula is easily understood. Art in any form was regarded by
the New England mind as an emanation of the devil, and the New England
mind controlled American colleges. Why the repugnance continues to
exist is harder to understand. It may subsist from ignorance, from
prejudice, or from conservatism. Conservatism may still regard all
information to be derived from art as objectionable. Prejudice may
still be strongly fixed in the notion that written and spoken words
are the only vehicles of instruction, and that the arts are useless
and idle vanities, while ignorance may be awaiting demonstration which
will have to be strong and conclusive to awake it from self-satisfied
apathy. May the good words of Perrot help on the cause and accelerate
the time when the best and the fullest education will be offered by
the American university!
HOW STANDARD TIME IS OBTAINED.
BY T. B. WILLSON, M. A.
Almost everybody knows that observatories are the places from which
standard time is sent out and corrected daily or hourly. But
comparatively few have more than the vaguest idea of the means used at
the observatories for obtaining it.
Probably the majority of people suppose that the observatories obtain
the correct time from the sun. When the average man wishes to give his
watch the highest praise he says, "It regulates the sun," not being
aware that a watch which would keep with the sun around the year would
have to be nearly as bad as Sam Weller's. The farmer may safely decide
when to go in to dinner by the sun, but if the mariner was as
confident that the sun marked always the correct time as the farmer is
he would be sure to be at times two or three hundred miles from where
he thought he was. In other words, the sun--that is, a sundial--is
only correct on a few days in each year, and during the intervening
times gets as far as a whole quarter hour fast or slow.
These variations of the sun from uniform time caused no end of trouble
between the astronomers and the fine clockmakers before it was
discovered that sun time is subject to such irregularities. The better
the clock, the worse it often seemed to go.
But as the variations in sun time are now accurately known, correct
time might be obtained from the sun by making proper allowance, were
it not for the difficulty of observing its position, with sufficient
exactness. The large disk of the sun can not be located so perfectly
as can the single point which a star makes. For this reason
astronomers depend almost wholly upon the stars for obtaining accurate
time. It is the method of doing this which we propose to describe.
There are several hundred stars whose positions have been established
with the greatest accuracy by the most careful observations at a
number of the principal observatories of the world. If a star's exact
position is known, it can readily be calculated when it will pass the
meridian of any given place--that is, the instant it will cross a
north-and-south line through the place. The data regarding these stars
are all published in the nautical almanacs, which are got out by
several different observatories for the use of navigators and all
others who have uses for them. These stars are known as "clock stars."
Every observatory is provided with at least one, or, better, several
clocks that are very accurate indeed. Every appliance and precaution
which science can suggest is resorted to to make these clocks
accurate. The workmanship is, of course, very fine. What is known as
the "retaining click" prevents their losing a single beat while being
wound. The small variations in the length of the pendulum which
changes of temperature would cause are offset by compensation. The
rise of the mercury in the pendulum bob, if the weather grows warmer,
shortens the pendulum precisely as much as the expansion of its rod
lengthens it, and conversely if it becomes colder. Such clocks, too,
are set on stone piers built up from below the surface of the ground
and wholly independent of the building itself. Often the clocks are
made with air-tight cases, and sometimes are placed in tightly closed
chambers, only to be entered when absolutely necessary. Some fine
clocks even have appliances for offsetting barometric changes, but
these affect such clocks less than other influences or imperfections
which can not be accounted for, and thus they are seldom provided
against.
The astronomer's principal clock--the one he uses in all his
calculations--marks what is known as sidereal, not ordinary, time. The
revolution of the earth in its orbit sets the sun back in its place
in the heavens at the rate of about four minutes a day, or one whole
day in a year, so that this clock, indicating star time, gains this
amount and is only with ordinary clocks once a year. After it is once
adjusted, no attempt is made to regulate it exactly, as the astronomer
would better calculate its differences than disturb its regulation,
always provided its rate is very uniform and accurately known.
One or more of the other clocks, however, are made to show ordinary
time, and corrected by observations taken every few days. It is from
this clock that the standard time is sent out.
It is possible to connect any of these clocks telegraphically with an
instrument in the observatory, known as a chronograph. It consists of
a cylinder with a sheet of paper around it, on which rests a pen
connected with the telegraphic instrument which follows the beats of
the clock. The cylinder is turned slowly by clockwork, and the pen,
carried slowly along by a screw, describes a spiral on the paper with
jogs or teeth in it about a quarter of an inch apart, caused by the
beats of the clock. In this way the astronomer secures a visible
record of the beating of his clock, or rather of the movements of his
telegraphic recorder. Thus, if he has another key on the same circuit
with the clock, connected with his chronograph recorder, and should
touch it between the beats of his clock, it would put in an extra jog
or tooth on his record, and it will show, what he could not have told
in any other way, in just what part of the second he touched this key,
whether in the first or last part of the second, and precisely how far
from either end--that is, he can determine fractions of a second with
great nicety.
[Illustration: A SHORT SECTION FROM THE PAPER BAND OF THE CHRONOGRAPH
CYLINDER, SHOWING TRACINGS OF PEN CONNECTED WITH CLOCKS: 1, seconds of
sidereal clock; 2, both sidereal and common clocks; 3-10, the tracings
of the mean-time clock fall steadily behind the other; 11, sidereal
only; 12, connected with observer's key. The extra teeth show when a
star passed each of the five spider lines. At the extreme right is a
"rattle," put in to show where the observation is on the cylinder.]
As a matter of fact, he has such a key at the telescope which he uses
to make his observations in taking time, so that when he wishes to
record the precise instant in which anything takes place which he is
viewing through his telescope he has but to press the key in his hand
and an extra tooth will be put into the record which the clock is
making, somewhere among the regular teeth put in by the beating of the
clock. Later, when he takes out the sheet he can see just where the
tooth came, and so at what instant it was. If, now, he knows exactly
what the instant was according to the true time as given in his
almanacs--that is, what his clock ought to have shown at that
instant--he can tell how nearly right his clock is. Once knowing how
this clock is, it is a simple calculation to find how the clock which
sends the signals is running, and to alter it if needed in a manner we
shall describe later.
The observations the astronomer makes use of to determine these
instants of time are upon the "clock stars." He uses a rather small
telescope, known as a transit. It is placed with the nicest accuracy
in a north-and-south line. It can turn over vertically, but can not
move sideways out of its line. Its alignment is kept perfect by
occasionally sighting some small mark a few rods from the observatory,
either north or south.
If the astronomer points this transit, say, halfway up the southern
heavens and sees a star pass across the center of its field he knows
that that instant gives, as it were, the "noon mark" of that star. If
it is one of the "clock stars," he knows by his tables what that
instant of time is--should be--by his clock.
We have seen what his means are of comparing his clock and his
observations. But observe, now, how much pains he takes to get the
most exact observations.
To begin with, he must have calculated to a nicety his location. The
director of an observatory always knows where he is located in a sense
that few other men do. The accuracy of a large part of his
observations of any kind depends on his first having determined the
latitude and longitude of his observatory within a very few feet. Then
the data given by his tables are all modified, and adapted to conform
to his locality.
There are stretched across in the eyepiece of his transit five spider
lines. The central one is on the central line of the field of his
instrument. In observing a star for time the astronomer watches it as
it is carried by the rotation of the earth past each of these spider
lines, and presses his key--that is, makes a record--as it crosses
each line. Taking the average of these five observations, he makes
the possible error very small. But, in addition to this, he also
usually makes observations on at least four clock stars, which gives
him twenty observations to average up and determine by. As he inspects
the record of these observations which has gone upon the chronograph
sheet along with the clock beats he is able to determine, after proper
calculations, how his clock stands.
Such observations are made every three or four evenings, and thus the
clocks are not given time to get far out of the way. It is not usual
for a good clock to show a variation of more than half a second. If
the astronomer finds that his clock which is sending the time is
running a fraction of a second slow, he goes to it and lays on the top
of the pendulum bob a minute clipping of metal, which is equivalent to
shortening the pendulum an infinitesimal amount. When he takes his
next observation he discovers how his clock has been affected, and
again treats it accordingly. Thus the time that is sent out
automatically by the clock is kept always correct within a small
fraction of a second. Those who receive the time sometimes arrange
electro-magnets near the pendulums of their clocks, which act with the
beats of the observatory clock, and their attraction is enough to hold
or accelerate the pendulums as needed to make them synchronize with
the observatory clock.
It will be seen that the means of obtaining exact time involve a very
considerable outlay, and that the services of highly trained men are
needed. The public is thus greatly indebted to the railroads,
telephone companies, and other corporations which usually bear the
expense of securing standard time. It is probable, however, that from
motives of scientific pride no observatory would undertake to charge
for this anything like what would be exacted for such rare service in
any department of the commercial world.
It is worth while to note that even with such perfect clocks and
favorable conditions it is still impossible to secure perfect
timekeeping. Add to this the fact that it is not usual for those who
send out the time, after it has been received from the observatory, to
pay much heed to variations, even of several seconds, in their master
clocks, and we see why it is a disheartening task to keep the best
watch as near the second as the owner would fain have it. In the first
place, the watch could hardly be made to keep such time if kept still
in an unchanging temperature; secondly, it is still less capable of it
when subjected to the jolting and changes of temperature it encounters
when carried; and, thirdly, the means of obtaining time with
sufficient exactitude are rarely available to the general public.
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
BY W. E. DE RIEMER, M. A.
The recent death, at the closing of the year 1898, of the lamented
Senator Justin S. Morrill, who, as being the author of the Land-Grant
College Act, is justly styled the father of agricultural education in
the United States, seems to suggest the desirability of taking a
survey of agricultural education as it at present exists in other
countries than our own.
Since the pursuit of agriculture is one which concerns more of the
people of our globe than any other pursuit, the necessity for
scientific training for agriculturists becomes more and more evident
to educated people. It is true that the cultivators of the soil do not
generally admit the need of special schooling. At the beginning of
this century very few educators, even, thought so. It was supposed
that tilling the soil had nothing to do with schools, and that science
had no connection with plowing and sowing. Agricultural lectureships
were established early in the eighteenth century in several European
universities, but they were regarded as curiosities of the
age--superfluities of culture, rather than aids to the cultivator.
Farmers themselves were supposed to be the only competent teachers of
agriculture, and experience the only possible guide. But it has become
apparent that no farmer's experience is broad enough to be adapted to
all soils and climates. The successful farmer has come to regard the
land which he owns as a wonderful machine which, if rightly managed,
will turn out the most costly and perfect product; but which, if
neglected or ignorantly handled, will disappoint his high hopes and
possibly impoverish its owner. The development of commerce which so
easily introduces the wheat and potatoes and other products of our
country into competition with the grain produced in a distant land has
taught the producers of this generation, and especially the citizen of
European countries, that the farmer who can produce the largest crop
of grain from the fewest acres, at the lowest price for the best
cereal or vegetable, is the only successful cultivator. The nation
which succeeds best in this direction with all its soil products is
the one which is sure to have the "balance of trade" always in its
favor.
The United States awoke to this idea when, in 1862, Congress passed
the Land-Grant College Act, allotting Government lands in every State
to aid in founding agricultural colleges. The country became more
profoundly moved by this idea when, in 1887, Congress passed the Hatch
Act, granting annually to each State the sum of fifteen thousand
dollars to organize and perpetuate agricultural experiment stations,
and still further when it organized a Department of Experiment
Stations as an integral part of the Department of Agriculture.
But several of the countries of Europe have anticipated our action in
behalf of agricultural education by a quarter of a century. Germany
and France and little Switzerland realized fifty years ago that
agriculture in its various departments must be pursued with the aid of
the latest science combined with the broadest experience. These
countries have not waited for the laborer to perfect himself in
experience--an impossible attainment--but they have opened schools of
every possible grade, arranged courses of lectures by the best
educated scientists, made elementary agriculture a compulsory subject
in the curricula of the common schools, sent out traveling instructors
to confer with and advise and give courses of lectures to the older
farmers, made it possible--even compulsory--that young people should
attend technical schools at odd hours of the day or evening, and even
tempted them to pass a serious examination in their respective studies
by the offer of a valuable prize as the reward of success. It is said
that Charles Dickens once made a speech at an agricultural dinner in
which he somewhat derisively said that "the field it paid the farmer
best to cultivate was the one within the ring fence of his own skull."
Dickens was correct. The farmer needs scientific education. The best
civilized and progressive nations of to-day are admitting the
utterance of Dickens to be a serious truth. Vast sums of money are
appropriated by European governments to prevent their agricultural
classes from continuing in or subsiding into ignorance of their art.
Even the peasants of Russia, notably in the province of Ekaterinoslav,
by the generous appliances for special agricultural education made by
the Ministry of Agriculture and State Domains, united with the efforts
of the Ministry of Public Instruction, are made to feel that without
expert teaching a man can not succeed even in the raising of fowls or
of bees, the culture of silkworms, the making of wine, or the manuring
of his fields. Consul Heenan[20] says that in the province named above
the Government annually rents thirty-two experiment fields, each eight
acres in extent, distributed four in each district, and each one
located in the midst of peasant fields. Each of these fields is placed
in charge of some scientifically educated public-school teacher, who
is paid twenty-five dollars per year for his direction, and receives,
besides, all the harvest produced. The teacher uses the native tools
and seeds, and hires neighbor peasants to assist in demonstrating that
with care in plowing, cleaning of seed, cultivating, and reaping, his
field will produce larger crops than his slovenly or ignorant
neighbor. The object lesson has its certain result. The peasants are
gradually adopting the four-field culture system--viz., fallow, winter
crops, pastures, and summer crops.
[Footnote 20: See United States Consular Reports, vol. lvii, No.
215, August, 1898, article on Gardener's Schools in Russia, by
Consul Heenan.]
Besides these, Russia sustains 68 agricultural schools, containing
3,157 pupils, at a cost of $403,500, of which sum the Government pays
$277,500, and the local _zemstovs_ (societies) or the school founders
pay $136,000.
In France the eminent scientist Lavoisier, at the close of the last
century, advocated the founding of a national school for the teaching
of agricultural science. His plan for government initiation was not
realized, but in 1822 Matthieu de Dombasle founded, near Nancy, the
first true agricultural school. In 1829 and 1830 the schools at
Grignon and Grandjouan were founded by August Bella and Riefell
respectively. Now France boasts of one of the most perfect systems of
agricultural education of any country of the world. Under the joint
direction of her Ministers of Agriculture and of Public Instruction,
France plans to cover every phase of education from the simplest forms
of object lessons taught by law in all her primary schools to the
crowning National Institute of Agriculture at Paris. The facts of
science, united with the soundest experience, are demonstrated to the
farmer by lectures and experimentation; the future agriculturists of
the country are educated in the certainties of scientific research at
graded schools, ranging from elementary to university degrees, and
every milkmaid is taught the necessity of promptness, cleanliness, and
system in the care of milch cows and in the disposal of their milk.
The former able Director-General of French Agriculture, Monsieur
Tisserand, says: "The aim and object of France has been not only to
give to children and young people the means of acquiring knowledge,
but also to establish means for _interesting old cultivators_. In this
century of extreme competition we must admit that the agriculturist
can only thrive if, in working the soil, he adopts scientific methods.
Old routine is no longer sufficient in this branch, as it is proved to
be insufficient in manufacture." In carrying out her enlightened
policy, instruction was given in 1893[21] to 3,600 pupil teachers.
Thirty agricultural laboratories throughout the country furnish
analyses of soils and manures for the help of cultivators, and 3,362
trial fields are established where farmers can profit by experiments
suitable to their own districts. The special farm schools number
sixteen; practical schools of agriculture, thirty-nine; national
schools of agriculture and horticulture, six; three veterinary
schools; and one each, bearing the name of National Agronomic
Institute, is a shepherd school, a cheese, and a silkworm school. In
the universities are no less than 160 departments and chairs of
agriculture for students of profoundest research. All this costs the
departments alone over 4,504,050 francs per annum.
[Footnote 21: Statistics of 1893. The French Government only
occasionally issues its official report of agricultural schools.]
In Prussian Germany no less activity is displayed or energy put forth
to make the farmer's occupation one of financial profit and scientific
status. Statistics for 1897 are at hand in the report of the Prussian
Minister of Agriculture. The German system is based on the theory that
schools and colleges are the only places where theoretical agriculture
can be properly taught. Few of the higher agricultural schools first
established were exclusively such. A liberal education could be
obtained at most of them without touching the subject of agriculture.
Later educators have developed a system which begins by fostering a
love for Nature in the minds of the pupils in the kindergarten, and
patiently develops that love through all the dozen or more grades of
schools until it culminates in the polytechnic school or the degree
granted by the university.
Germany is indebted to the learned Professor Thaer for the
establishment of its first agricultural school at Möglin in 1807. But
more than all is she, in common with all the world, indebted to the
famous chemist Baron von Liebig, who, in 1840, announced the
scientific truth which underlies all arguments for agricultural
education--viz., that no matter how impoverished a soil is naturally,
or has become by excessive cropping, its fertility may be restored,
maintained, and even increased by providing it with the mineral and
organic matter which it lacks.
Prussian agricultural affairs are under the supervision of the
Ministry of Agriculture, Domains, and Forests. The state maintains
three grades of schools--higher, middle, and lower--as in other
European countries. The most celebrated are the Royal Agricultural
High Schools at Berlin and Popplesdorf, two royal academies of
forestry, and the university courses in agriculture at Halle,
Göttingen, Königsberg, Leipsic, Giessen, and Jena. The state expends
something like two hundred thousand dollars annually on agricultural
education. In Germany agricultural education has so broadened out as
to include training in every technical part of a farmer's
work--culture of forests, fruits, flowers, and vines; schools to teach
wine, cider, and beer making, machine repairing, engine running, barn
construction, and surveying; knowledge of poultry, bees, and silkworm
raising; domestic economy, sewing, and accounts for farm women--all in
addition to the long scientific courses of study and years of
practical work on an established farm. Verily, the country that excels
Germany in training agriculturists must be _par excellence_ in its
methods.
A special feature of agricultural teaching is the traveling professor
(_Wanderlehrer_). United States Consul Monaghan enthusiastically
describes him: "These teachers, supported partly by the state and by
agricultural unions, go from place to place ... and lecture on
agricultural and horticultural subjects. Their purpose is to lift up
and ennoble agricultural life; to afford the farmer the knowledge
gleaned by science since he left the school; to impart to him the best
methods of selecting soils, fertilizers, cattle, trees, etc.; to teach
him how to use his lands to best advantage, to graft, to breed in; to
get the best, quickest, and most profitable results. These teachers
are skilled scientists, practical workers, not theorists, ...
perfectly familiar with the wants and needs of their districts. Armed
with this knowledge, the teacher's usefulness is certain and
unlimited. When he speaks his voice is that of one in authority, it is
heeded.... He is a walking encyclopædia of knowledge, especially of
knowledge pertaining to the woods, hills, farms, and fields."
Austria has, like Germany, a system of agricultural and forestry
schools in three grades--viz., superior, middle, and lower. Its oldest
school of superior grade was established in 1799 at Krumman.[22]
Similar schools existed later at Grätz, Trieste, Lemberg, Trutsch, and
Altenburg. The latter is especially complete in every appliance for
instruction, and well patronized. The middle schools provide two-year
courses of study and practice, and are located at Grossan, Kreutz,
Dublany, and other points, while the lower schools incline less to
study and more to lectures and farm practice. They are located in the
provinces of Bohemia, Styria, Galicia, and Carinthia.
[Footnote 22: See Barnard's Journal of Education, vol. xx, 1870,
p. 673.]
Forestry schools of various grades exist at Mariabrunn, Wissewasser,
Aussen, Pibram, Windschact, and Nagny; of these, Mariabrunn is
especially deserving of mention for its thorough course and complete
equipment.
Switzerland was the home of the philanthropist and educator
Fellenburg. His school, established at Hopyl in 1806, was a
philanthropy in aid of the peasantry, concerning whom he said that
possessing nothing but bodies and minds, the cultivation of these was
the only antidote for their poverty. At least three thousand pupils
received their education in agriculture here. The Federal Polytechnic
School at Zurich is the nation's pride. Out of six courses of superior
training which it provides for its one thousand students, forestry
and agriculture count as two. Five universities and numerous special
schools furnish aid to agricultural education.
The little kingdoms of Belgium and Holland are following hard upon the
tracks of their powerful neighbors. In Belgium may be found superior
institutions of agriculture, horticulture, veterinary science, and
forestry at Gembloux, Vilvorde, Cureghem, and Bouillon respectively.
In Holland, whose people robbed the sea to obtain lands for farms and
homes, about £71,500 were expended by the state on its agricultural
department in 1897. Its first school, established by a communal
society at Hären in 1842, was discontinued. The state in 1876 adopted
the school of agriculture which has been established at Wageningen as
its own, and this institution can fairly lay claim to equality with
any in Europe. Government also supports the State Veterinary College
at Utrecht, and subsidizes a school of forestry and several dairy
schools. Agricultural teaching in primary schools has not yet proved a
success.
Italy has not made such progress in agricultural education as her
northern neighbors, yet she is not indifferent to the requirements of
the times. She has a most unique scheme for Government superintendence
of agricultural matters. All comes under the purview of a general
Director of Agriculture, assisted by a Council for Agricultural
Instruction, which latter was established by royal decree in 1885, and
reorganized in 1887. Four divisions of the department exist--namely,
(1) agriculture proper, (2) zoötechny, (3) forestry, and (4)
agricultural hydraulics. Statistics are not easily procured, but
recent catalogues show that the two Royal Superior Schools of
Agriculture, located respectively at Milan and Portici, are
institutions of which any country might be proud. Of the latter Mr. E.
Neville Rolfe, British consul, wrote in 1897 that it was originally a
provincial establishment, but in 1885 it had been established by royal
charter and domiciled in the magnificent grounds and buildings of a
disused royal palace. Its study course requires three years to
complete, and graduates obtain the degree of Laureato Agronomo. Up to
1896, two hundred and twenty-eight students had obtained this degree,
most of whom are instructors or Government employees of high rank. It
is known also that thirty-three special and practical agricultural
schools exist in different parts of the kingdom.
Much can not be said in praise of agricultural education in Spain.
That country possesses the machinery for education of the higher
grades, but through her seven distinctly agricultural colleges,
located at Madrid, Saragossa, Barcelona, Corunna, Valencia, Caceres,
and Jerez, she seems only to have obtained men for Government service
at home or abroad. Spain expended in 1896 on agricultural education
the sum of £58,460, but she evidently sends no _Wanderlehrer_
instructors among her peasant farmers.
It is said that Portugal possesses seven agricultural schools,
attended in 1896 by one hundred and eighty-seven students, but of
their location, save one, and courses of study the writer has no
information. The Government conduct of education is committed to a
Director-General of Agriculture. The leading school is named the
General Institute of Agriculture, and is located at Lisbon. It
provides four courses--viz., (1) rural engineering, (2) agronomy, (3)
sylviculture, (4) veterinary medicine. It has a large tract of land
for demonstration purposes located a few miles from the city.
Concerning Greece and the smaller kingdoms in southeastern Europe,
together with the land of the Turk, not much to the encouragement of
the scientific agriculturist can be said; but turning northward across
Europe to the Scandinavian countries quite a different state of things
becomes apparent. At once we find that the system of agricultural
education is highly developed, and in some phases is not surpassed by
other countries. Immediately we are in a network of dairy schools,
experiment stations, chemical and seed-control stations, agricultural
societies, colleges, and universities. Here we find five institutions
all under royal patronage and state support. In Norway is the Higher
Agricultural School at Aas, established in 1859. In Sweden stands the
Agricultural Institute at Ultuna, established in 1849, and the Alnarp
Agricultural and Dairy Institute, established in 1862. In Denmark is
the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural College at Copenhagen,
established in 1773 as a veterinary college. In Finland the Mustiala
Agricultural and Dairy Institute, established in 1840. In these four
small states there exist agricultural, horticultural, forestry, and
dairy schools of all grades to the number of one hundred and
fifty-nine. Education in agriculture is not attempted in the primary
public schools of Norway or in any of these Scandinavian countries,
but agricultural elementary instruction is begun in what other
continental countries would call secondary schools, and is provided
for persons intending to be farmers and who are eighteen years of age
and older. Norway spent on elementary agricultural education in
secondary schools, in 1895-'96, the sum of $31,182, and Finland more
than doubled that sum.
Crossing the Channel to Great Britain, again we see a nation intent on
solving the question of success for her agricultural population.
Celebrated Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen early began to plan for
an educated peasantry, but it was long before any national system was
evolved. The sectional divisions and peculiarities belonging
severally to Scot and Celt and Saxon have not yet permitted a uniform
legislation. Ireland and Scotland each has its own scheme of
Government supervision, and both differ from England and Wales. It is
estimated that but ten per cent of England's laboring population is
concerned with agriculture for support, while in Ireland there is
scarcely ten per cent of the people who are not dependent on
agriculture for existence. In consequence, we find in Ireland, as in
France, intense interest centers upon the plan to teach agriculture
and horticulture in the elementary public schools, while in England,
until very recently, agricultural education served principally to
produce a class of educated scientific men fitted for the Government
home and colonial service.
In Ireland compulsory attendance on primary schools is made by law. In
1876 Ireland claimed to be the pioneer country in providing compulsory
elementary agricultural instruction in all her rural schools. She has
desperately clung to the theory that in providing such education in
her elementary schools she would eventually train a nation of
agriculturists. To attain this end, elementary text-books were
prepared, which all teachers must use. The Government grant for a pass
at examination in agriculture was much larger than a pass in any other
study; teachers who held certificates to teach it were given higher
salaries than others, and to enable teachers to prepare for such
certificates, scholarships were offered them at teachers' colleges
(normal schools), and their railway fare was free in going and coming.
Plots of ground at schoolhouse or teacher's house were provided, where
flower and vegetable culture could be constantly practiced, and a
special grant was allowed to the school for cultivating a successful
garden, and another special for classes showing proficiency in
practical work. Gardens were cultivated at convents and workhouses,
and the subject was taught theoretically to "half-time" pupils and
students at the "evening continuation schools."
In December, 1896, Ireland had 8,606 national schools, with an average
attendance of 815,248 pupils. She also had 150 half-time schools, 155
workhouse schools, 267 convent schools, 30 model schools, five
training colleges for teachers, and two training agricultural
institutes (at Glassnevin and at Munster), and in all of these
agricultural science or practice is either a compulsory or a voluntary
subject. What country can surpass Ireland's enthusiasm for
agricultural training?[23]
[Footnote 23: A bill for the development of Irish agricultural
industry and Irish technical education, providing for Government
aid to private enterprise in agriculture, and in manufacturing
industries also, has just passed (August, 1899) the House of
Commons, and is assured its passage by the House of Lords also.]
Scotland enjoys deservedly the distinction of having been first among
the peoples of Europe to introduce in the university course scientific
education in agriculture. In 1790 a chair was established in the
University of Edinburgh, and a course of agricultural lectures was
given therefrom by Rev. D. Walker. Better than that, in 1743 a volume
entitled Select Transactions was published by Maxwell, representing
the agricultural society known as the "Society of Improvers," and
numbering at one time three hundred members. Out of this society grew
the "Highland and Agricultural Society," which organization has
fostered every agricultural effort which private beneficence or royal
grant has initiated in the land since 1834. Through its munificence
both the departments of forestry and veterinary surgery have been
placed upon a firm educational basis, and the educational lectureship
of Edinburgh University has been permanently endowed. It has
instituted its own syllabus of examinations for granting "Fellowships
in Agriculture," and stimulated pupils of the secondary schools to
make the effort by offering prizes and scholarships to the ambitious
students.
The University of Aberdeen has lately entered the field as an
agricultural educator by becoming what the Government styles a
"collegiate center," receiving a straight subsidy of £100 per annum,
and furnishing professional instructors to rural assemblies arranging
lectures for them. In the public schools of Scotland agricultural
science is arranged for as an optional study from the third to the
sixth standards inclusive. In 1895-'96, 4,148 pupils passed
examinations in the subject, and the cost of this to the state was
£42,792. In 1896-'97 pupils in the "evening continuation schools" to
the number of 1,089 passed in agriculture, and 115 others in
horticulture.
England and Wales are under a joint administration of agricultural
affairs. The Government policy, so far as it has one, has been
continually opposed to paternalism and direct subsidy or ownership of
schools. Rather has her Parliament waited to be solicited to make
subventions by way of encouraging individual or local society
initiative. The flourishing agricultural schools at Cirencester and
Downton, for the instruction of the higher classes, have grown out of
private establishments, then been perpetuated by obtaining royal
charters, by which the Government became pledged to supply any lack of
income. But since 1893 the state has so far relaxed her policy as to
grant subsidies to certain colleges centrally located, which it styles
"collegiate centers," through which colleges it offers superior
instruction to the public. These colleges associate with themselves
ample farm lands for experiment grounds and dairy machinery, and equip
themselves with competent lecturers, who are also practical experts,
and who, upon invitation from agricultural societies or county
councils, go forth as lecturers upon their special subjects. Each
adjacent county makes an annual grant of £75 to the college funds, and
is privileged to nominate students to attend the college agricultural
course at a reduction of twenty-five per cent on the usual fee. In
1898-'99 the Board of Education granted to fifteen colleges and
associations in England and Wales the sum of £7,200. The colleges were
the Yorkshire College at Leeds, Durham College of Science at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, University Extension College at Reading, University
College at Nottingham, Southeastern Agricultural College at Wye, and
in Wales the University Colleges at Bangor and Aberystwith.
Besides the direct Government subsidy to higher education, the state
grants to the several counties part of the money raised from the
excise ("drink money") for educational purposes, out of which at least
£78,000 were spent by the committees in 1896-'97 in promoting
agricultural education.
Still further, Parliament puts into the hands of the Science and Art
Department large sums of money to be expended as grants-in-aid of
"technical education." The state recognizes instruction in the
principles of agriculture as instruction in elementary science, and
through this Science and Art Department's grants to primary and
secondary schools, and to teachers' colleges, it encourages
agricultural education as a technical study. In 1896-'97, 1,023 pupils
passed examination, and the respective school managements received as
grant on their account a total sum of £140,150.[24]
[Footnote 24: Appendix to Report of Science and Art Department,
1896-'97.]
In 1897 the Royal Commission on Agricultural Depression in England
made its report. Among other declarations made by the commission were
these: "We believe that it is essential for the welfare of agriculture
that there should be placed within the reach of every young farmer a
sound, general school education, including such a grounding in the
elements of sciences bearing upon agriculture--e. g., chemistry,
geology, botany, and animal physiology--as will give him an
intelligent interest in them and familiarize him in their
language."[25]
[Footnote 25: Page 152 of Report.]
They further recommend that hereafter the control of all funds for
technical agricultural education be placed with the Board of
Agriculture, and that the entire income of the Customs and Excise Act
of 1890 should be devoted to educational purposes, agriculture
receiving its adequate share. Should the first recommendation carry
for all divisions of the United Kingdom, agriculture would cease to
be one of the subjects provided for examination by the Science and Art
Department. Should the second recommendation become a law, the sum
expended by local county councils in agricultural education would be
vastly increased.
Passing from England to her colonies, let us journey toward the
sunrising. Stopping for a moment in Egypt, we note with pleasure the
existence of the newly established School of Agriculture at Gizeh,
which is under the direction of the Ministry of Public Instruction for
Egypt. Its reconstructed course of study was open to students in 1898,
and it provides for four years of study. Arabic and English are the
teaching languages, especially the latter, and allotments of land for
individual culture are made to all pupils.
Beyond the Indian Ocean lies Hindustan. Here all science study is
awaiting its development. The best cultivation of India is not behind
that of England as a matter of empiricism,[26] but the science of
cultivation is yet to be developed. Agricultural chemistry and
agricultural botany and horticulture, as related to India, have
scarcely been investigated, and text-books in the native tongues have
yet to be written. For this accomplishment all elementary instruction
in public schools must patiently wait. For an agriculturally educated
set of teachers, also, Indian youth studying in the vernacular must
patiently wait. In 1889 the home Government (Parliament) laid upon the
Indian Educational Department the duty of providing school "readers"
which should contain elementary instruction in agricultural science,
and it authorized a liberal grant-in-aid toward such schools as could
furnish pupils for passes in this subject. For those students who have
mastered the English language a few colleges exist. Saidapet, near
Madras, with about forty students in a three-years' course, including
veterinary, is a pure agricultural institution. Fourteen students
received diplomas in agriculture in March, 1897.
[Footnote 26: Dr. Voelker, in his Report on Improvement of Indian
Agriculture, made to the English Board of Agriculture in 1893,
said: "At the best, the Indian _raiyat_, or cultivator, is quite
as good as, and in some respects the superior of, the average
British farmer. It is wonderful, too, how much is known of
rotation, the system of mixed crops, and of fallowing. Certain it
is that I, at least, have never seen a more perfect picture of
careful cultivation, combined with hard labor, perseverance, and
fertility of resource, than I have seen at many of the halting
places. Such are the gardens of Máhim, the fields of Nadiad, the
center of the garden of Gujarat, in Bombay."]
Several colleges have agricultural departments, notably the Poona
College of Science in the Bombay presidency; the Baroda College; the
Maharajah's College and the Shimoga College, Mysore; the Central
College, and the Sanskrit College of Bangalore. All of these are
affiliated with the University of Bombay, and present pupils for
examination in agriculture for the degree of B. Sc. A.
In many of the English high schools of India are found agricultural
classes which give both science teaching and field practice. These
schools are at Nagpur, Nasik, Sholapur, Ahmednagar, Ahmedabad, Dhulia,
Kolapur, Surat, Belgaum, and Nadiad. The stimulus to study in these
schools is the hope of obtaining a diploma in agriculture, which would
result in employment in the Government service.
In Lucknow is a celebrated veterinary school whose graduates have been
greatly sought after. One at Bombay has become still more celebrated.
In 1897 sixty-nine students were in attendance. Graduates easily found
employment with native rajahs, and on the island of Ceylon, and at
Mozambique. Another Government veterinary school recently established
at Belgatchia, Calcutta presidency, has done good work.
The forestry school at Dehra Dun, in the Northwest Provinces, has
attained a great reputation. About seventy students attend, and the
Government charges the cost of the school, 33,000 rupees, to the
districts which send up pupils for study. India, under the British
rule, will soon come into line with educated agriculturists.
In Burmah and in Assam steps have been taken to introduce science
lessons into Government, or grant-in-aid, elementary schools by the
preparation of "readers," as in India, but no secondary or superior
schools in agriculture exist in these countries. So far as we know,
the same is true of Siam and the Malayan Archipelago and of the
Philippines.
Australia, as a federation of states, is late in its development, but
some of its states are surprisingly advanced. New Zealand has its
superior university, combining the three colleges at Auckland,
Lincoln, and Otago. Its syllabus provides for searching examinations
in agriculture to obtain the degree of B. Sc., either of these
colleges having previously granted the diploma of agriculture to
successful students. Each of these colleges has ample grants of land,
but only one--the Canterbury College at Lincoln--has yet presented
agricultural candidates. Forty-four graduates have received diplomas
previous to 1895. Instruction in elementary schools seems not yet to
have included agriculture.
In Queensland the Queensland Agricultural College was opened at Gatton
in 1897.
In South Australia is an agricultural college at Roseworthy and
another at Adelaide which has graduated several recipients of the
diploma.
In Victoria there exists a college at Dookia and another at Longerong.
There is also a school of horticulture at Richmond.
To New South Wales belongs the banner for furnishing the greatest
opportunities for agricultural education. Its university at Sydney
grants a degree of B. Sc. to students from the colleges of St. Paul,
St. John, St. Andrew, the Woman's College, and the Sydney Grammar
School. At Sydney also is the splendid Technical College, handsomely
endowed, having an agricultural department. The superior of all other
schools is the Hawksbury Agricultural College and Experimental Farm at
Richmond, established in 1891, richly endowed with land (three
thousand acres), and organized on the most approved modern models.
Science teaching is not carried so high as the university standard,
but all manner of practical work must be performed by each student.
Homeward bound, we reach Cape Colony, South Africa. Here, in 1887, the
Government inaugurated a scheme for aiding farm schools in which
elementary agriculture was taught. In 1894, out of 352 schools aided
by the Government, 202 were classed as "farmhouse schools." In higher
education there may be found (1898) the School of Agriculture and
Viticulture at Stellenbosch, and a second one at Sunset East. As both
of these schools are young, statistics concerning them are not yet
available.
Last of England's colonies we notice the Dominion of Canada on our
northern frontier. No evident progress has been made in introducing
agricultural science teaching in the primary schools of the entire
Dominion. The first step taken in the direction of agricultural
education was for the enlightenment of farmers. In 1886 Parliament
authorized the establishment of a system of experiment farms, one in
each province in Canada, viz.: one at Ottawa (to serve both Quebec and
Ontario), and one each at Nappan, in Nova Scotia; at Brandon,
Manitoba; at Indian Head, Assiniboia; at Agassiz, British Columbia;
and at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. To give these stations
greater efficiency, the Government encouraged the formation of
farmers' institutes in every electoral district for the hearing of
lectures from experts which it provided, and for discussion or
business. To each regularly organized institute of fifty members a
grant of £10 is annually made.
In Nova Scotia five primary and secondary schools are reported as
giving agricultural instruction to two hundred pupils. Some of these
schools have farms or gardens. The Provincial School of Agriculture at
Truro is making a good beginning. In its last class three students
were granted teachers' diplomas, seven received farmers' diplomas, and
eighteen took farmers' certificates. Three hundred and fifty students
have pursued its course of studies. There is also a horticultural
school at Annapolis Valley.
Another horticultural school exists at Wolfville, Nova Scotia, under
the control of a committee of the Fruit-Growers' Association. Students
take a thorough course of two years' duration. The Legislatures of New
Brunswick and of Prince Edward Island grant bonuses of fifty dollars
to each young man of their provinces who will take a course at this
school.
Fine creamery plants are found at various points, and several
provinces sustain each a "traveling dairy," which systematically
visits accessible centers and gives demonstration lectures to farmers'
families.
The crowning agricultural educational institution for the entire
Dominion is the college at Guelph, Ontario. It combines instruction in
veterinary science, horticulture, bee and poultry keeping, dairying,
and the experimental farm. The course continues for three years. Two
years confers the "associate diploma," and three years' study, with
successful examination in the syllabus of the Toronto University,
secures the degree of B. Sc. A. Success attends all these educational
efforts and marks this colonial empire as among the ranks representing
true progress.
Mexico and the countries of South America next claim our notice. In
the first-named country, as early as the year 1850 provision was made
at the old college of San Gregorio for instruction in agriculture in
five different courses. But in 1854 the Government came into
possession of the disused convent of San Jacinto, Agosta. Here a
national school was organized, combining the two departments of
agriculture and veterinary science. It was opened February 22, 1854,
and designated the National School of Agriculture and Veterinary
Science. Its courses of study are up to the best standards. Three
years are necessary to complete the agricultural course and receive
the title of Superintendent of Rural Estates, and four years' study
must be given to secure that of Ingeniero Agronomo. The course was
readjusted in 1893. During the five years past 169 graduates have
received the former and 68 the latter degrees. The management consists
of 48 persons, whose salaries annually cost the Government 96,424
Mexican dollars. Ample grounds and buildings are provided to make this
institution a matter for national pride.
Besides this college, a farm school exists in one of the federal
districts, costing annually $17,564, and another at the colony of
Porfirio Diaz, costing the state $14,708. Mexico is also moving to
introduce agriculture as a subject for primary instruction in public
schools.
In Uruguay exist fine schools for teaching agriculture and viticulture
which are of recent organization. At Montevideo the Government has
created a Department of Live Stock and Agriculture, subject to the
Home Ministry. The budget of 1897 provides for organizing and
sustaining agricultural schools and experiment farms to the extent of
$28,222, with an additional allowance of $90,000 for experiments on
farms, installation of plants, furniture, instruments, etc.
Chili is coming to the front in her educational efforts. In the city
of Concepción exists a Practical School of Agriculture. Others are
found at Santiago, at Talca, San Fernando, Elqui, and Salamanca. The
school at Santiago receives an annual subvention of $40,000, and that
at Concepción the sum of $23,000. Attached to the latter are agronomic
stations for soil analysis and oversight of irrigation systems of the
state. The Sociedad Nacional de Agricultur at Santiago receives an
annual grant of $20,000, which it distributes at agricultural shows
and for the support of the zoölogical garden. At Quintan Normal is
also an Institute Agricola of high grade for agricultural engineers
and agronomics, or for furnishing a simple certificate in agriculture.
Other countries of South America possess education facilities, but we
are not supplied with details concerning them.
Our closing glance must be directed to the far Orient. Japan, the
newest of kingdoms, has a model brace of institutions for superior
education in agriculture. When Japan awoke to the new ideas, to which
for ages she was oblivious, her keenest statesmen grasped the thought
that her agricultural people needed new light and intellectual
quickening along the lines which so vitally affected their daily
subsistence. She took the United States into her confidence. She
imported for a season our Commissioner of Agriculture (General
Capron), in 1871-'72, as "Adviser to the Colonial Office at Hokaido,"
who, after visiting Japan, advised the Government to organize at once
an agricultural college at Sapporo, and still another at Tokio. This
advice was cordially received and speedily adopted. American scholars
of the highest wisdom and experience were imported to inaugurate the
work. The college was inaugurated by Colonel W. S. Clark, LL. D.,
President of Amherst Agricultural College, in August, 1876, with
twenty-four students. Its new location was Sapporo, and its new name
was the Sapporo Agricultural College. The Government dealt liberally
in grants of land, but these ample acres have since been mostly
confiscated, leaving only sufficient for educational purposes. Few can
estimate the wonderful uplift which has come to Japan through this
efficient school. In 1893 it had sent out from its agricultural
course 123 graduates; from the engineering, 4; military, 42; and from
the practical department, 114.
In 1874 an agricultural department was added to the Imperial
University at Tokio, the original location of the Sapporo College. An
exhaustive syllabus in the Department of Agriculture provides
examination for many profound students of this science, and admits
them to the highest university degree. Four courses are open in the
university--viz., agriculture, agricultural chemistry, forestry, and
veterinary medicine. In 1895 there were 261 students of agriculture in
the university.
From this extended though by no means exhaustive review of the status
of scientific instruction in agriculture throughout the world, it is
evident that all the progressive nations have caught the inspiration
which attaches to this branch of education, and are swinging into line
in their efforts to adopt it. Old ideals are rapidly giving place to
the new. Educators are forced to admit that mental culture is as
possible under the study of science as by the protracted study of
languages and literature; that such study aids vastly more than the
latter in the training which prepares men for the active duties of
life; and that if the development of husbandry as a pursuit does not
keep pace on an intelligent basis with every other technical pursuit,
national greatness and permanence will never be achieved.
EASTERN OYSTER CULTURE IN OREGON.
BY F. L. WASHBURN, A. M.,
STATE BIOLOGIST AND PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON.
During the past two years the United States Fish Commission, with
characteristic enterprise, has been carrying on experiments in the
propagation of Eastern oysters in the bays of the Oregon coast. Work
of a similar nature is now being undertaken in the State of
Washington.
[Illustration: "OYSTER CITY," YAQUINA BAY, OREGON.]
As the result of an application through official sources, re-enforced
possibly by the results of a biological survey made by this department
during the preceding summer, twenty-two barrels of Eastern oysters
were, on November 7, 1896, deposited on a portion of Oysterville Flat,
so called, in Yaquina Bay, Oregon, seven miles and a half from the
ocean. The oystermen of that section have agreed to abstain from
tonging for native oysters upon the portion of the flat thus reserved
until sufficient time has elapsed to justify an opinion as to the
result of the experiment. These introduced oysters were of two
varieties--the long, slender East Rivers and the more oval,
fan-shaped, and ribbed Princess Bays. Their journey of twelve days
across the continent, in sugar barrels, from New York to San Francisco
and thence to Oregon without water did not cause the mortality one
might expect, for in strewing them over the bed from the scows of the
oystermen very few dead individuals were observed--certainly not one
half of one per cent.
[Illustration: AN EXPERIMENTAL SPAWNING FLOAT.]
This alien oyster has much to contend with here. It was realized that
the cold and salt water rushing in from the Pacific--colder and salter
by far than in their Atlantic home at the same time--if it did not
entirely prevent spawning would at least make the survival of the
young embryos a matter of doubt; yet it was hoped that perhaps, after
a number of years, the oysters might become acclimated, as it were,
and their spawn, inheriting their parents' acquired hardiness, we
might present to the people of the State a new form of Oregon product
in the shape of Eastern oysters hatched and grown in the waters of
this bay. Notwithstanding the fecundity of this oyster, a female
producing in the vicinity of sixty million eggs at a spawning, it must
be remembered that even under the most favorable conditions in its own
home, where the water has in summer a fairly constant temperature of
over 70° F. and a salinity of 1.012 on an average, but a very small
proportion of this multitude survive. How much more unlikely is its
survival in the waters of Yaquina Bay, Oregon, where the writer has
seen the water change from a temperature of 70° F. and a saltness of
1.012 to a temperature of 55° and a salinity of 1.022 within six
hours! It was to save the young embryos from exposure to these and
kindred dangers that I, as a volunteer employee of the United States
Fish Commission during the summers of 1897 and 1898, among other
things resorted to the artificial fertilization of the eggs in a
temporary laboratory, carrying the delicate embryos to the swimming
stage and dumping them by thousands into the bay. Given some clean
crocks, a microscope, dissecting instruments, tumblers, rubber tubing,
thermometers, and instruments to test the saltness of the water, and
innumerable embryos can be cared for without much trouble. The
process, as practiced by Brooks, Ryder, Nelson, and others in America,
is too well known to need repeating here. Its efficacy is well
established, and, in spite of the incredulity of the oystermen, who
wished to see the oysters spawn "spontaneous," as they expressed it,
an incredulity amounting almost to opposition, the writer has
persevered in this work for two seasons and intends to continue it the
coming summer.
[Illustration: 1, native oyster spat on clam shell; 2, same on inside
of oyster shell; 3, 4, 5, native spat (_Ostrea lurida_) on Eastern
oyster shells; 6, showing size and appearance of native spat one or
two months old.]
The native oyster of this Northwest coast (_Ostrea lurida_), smaller
and by many preferred to its Eastern congener, while it is far less
fruitful in its spawning than the latter, retains its young within the
parent shell until long after they have passed the tender stages, when
they leave the mantle cavity of the parent to swim for themselves.
This oyster could rightly be called viviparous, while the Eastern
oyster is oviparous. On account of its nurse-acting proclivities this
West-coast oyster has an immense advantage here over the introduced
species. The latter's eggs have to run the following gantlet: (1) Not
meeting with a fertilizing cell and perishing in consequence; (2)
sinking, before or after fertilization, in the fatal mud; (3) being
eaten by small fish and other minute animals; (4) being killed by
sudden changes in the temperature and density of the water. Artificial
fertilization and the rearing of the embryos in the laboratory largely
eliminate these dangers. We have adopted other methods to insure
success. A few of the oysters were removed from the Government plant
and deposited two miles farther up the bay, nine miles and a half from
the ocean, where it was thought the water was warmer, less salt, and
less variable than on Oysterville Flat. Some, during the breeding
season, were placed on spawning floats and anchored near the shore,
where the shallow water is thoroughly warmed by the sun. It was in one
of these floats that the oystermen had an opportunity to see the
oysters spawn "spontaneous," for the water therein, reaching 70° F.,
became milk-white with spawn or milt within an hour after the oysters
had been taken from the plant. This was really our first proof that
the introduced oyster would spawn here. Some were placed in sloughs
adjoining the bay, with the hope that favorable conditions would be
met with there. Others were placed in artificially constructed salt
ponds somewhat after the style used by the French.
[Illustration: EASTERN OYSTERS IN OREGON. The lower row shows size
when planted in 1896; the upper row represents their appearance in
1898.]
What has been the outcome? The oysters, particularly the Princess Bay
variety, have grown enormously and are in excellent condition. Until
this spring no Eastern spat or young Eastern oysters had been
discovered; this, of course, is the crucial point in the experiment;
we know they will spawn, but will the spawn develop? Recently, much to
our encouragement, a few young oysters, apparently of last summer's
spawning, have been found and forwarded to Washington, proof positive
that the oyster will propagate here, but not certain evidence of the
practical outcome of the experiment. It is too early to predict
results as yet; two years more are really required to tell the story.
For thirty years Eastern oysters have been shipped to San Francisco by
enterprising firms of that city, planted there in the bay until a
large size is attained, and then sold at an immense profit. These
firms have always claimed that the Eastern oyster did not reproduce
there. As far as can be ascertained from a reliable source, the
shipments in recent years have rather increased than diminished, this
fact being used as an argument to support the above statement. It is
nevertheless a known fact that much Eastern spat and many adult
oysters undoubtedly hatched there have been found by members of the
United States Fish Commission and others. Moreover, with increasing
trade one would naturally expect more shipments, even though the
introduced oyster did propagate to some extent.
_Ostrea lurida_, the toothsome little native oyster which years ago
was so abundant at Yaquina Bay, affording support to many families,
has decreased in numbers to such an alarming extent that unless some
radical measures are soon taken to prevent, the native oyster industry
of this locality will be a thing of the past. This decrease in the
size and numbers appears to be due to several causes. In the first
place, there has been a very persistent tonging on a somewhat limited
area. This might have been counterbalanced by proper precautions to
insure a future supply, but, with characteristic lack of foresight,
such precautions have been neglected, and the beds have been culled
year after year, until the comparatively few oysters now marketed from
Yaquina Bay are of very questionable size. Each oysterman has two
acres of flats for private use. Three natural beds in the bay afford
sources of supply for these private beds. The larger oysters tonged on
the natural beds are marketed, and the smaller specimens spread on
the private ground referred to. Beyond strewing clean shells on these
private beds, no provision is made to collect the swimming embryos
during the spawning season, and multitudes must be carried away and
lost. The writer has urged upon the oystermen the need of collectors
of brush or tile, by the use of which the oysters which they have
acquired may be largely increased in numbers, and will endeavor to
demonstrate, by the use of tile collectors, that hundreds of young
spat may be saved and raised to marketable age. Our native oyster
structurally and physiologically resembles the European oyster
(_Ostrea edulis_), and, like it, could be propagated in artificial
oyster ponds. The practicability of such work on the West American
coast depends, of course, on the market price of the resulting product
as compared with the outlay required for labor.
MALAY FOLKLORE.
BY R. CLYDE FORD.
The Malay is an Oriental, and, of course, possesses a goodly number of
superstitions and old wives' fables, but he does not hug them to his
soul like some of the other peoples of the East--the Chinaman, for
instance, who lives only by favor of gods, ghosts, goblins, and
devils. The Malay lives in spite of spirits, good or bad, and tries to
be a model Mohammedan at the same time. With bold assurance and
positiveness, he puts his trust in Allah; but, after all, this does
not keep him from cherishing, on the sly, a knowledge of a few
uncanny, hair-raising beliefs any more than to be a devout churchman
with us removes one from the occult influences of stolen dishcloths,
overturned saltcellars, and the phases of the moon.
The Malay man's _aberglaube_--his superstition--is undoubtedly of
ancient origin. For five hundred years or more he has said his prayers
five times a day in response to the muezzin's cry of _Allah ho akbar_,
and his religion has penetrated the very life of his race and spread
to the most distant confines of the archipelago, but it has never been
able to remove entirely the heritage of that past when he was governed
by Sanskrit gods or by deities of his own. Whatever he may have
believed then and since changed, these fragments and relics of
goblindom and superstition go back to that time, and so link on to all
the weird love that prevailed in the ancient world. Another evidence
of the primitiveness of Malay folklore may be seen in the fact that
the inhabitants of the jungles and _padangs_ and the aboriginal
dwellers of mountains and dense forests cherish much more heathen
notions and greater elaborations of everyday superstitions than the
more enlightened and modernized Malays of towns and _campongs_. In the
East, as in the West, the man who lives close to Nature "holds
communion with her visible forms," and likewise finds out, or thinks
he does, a good deal about her invisible shapes.
The Malay has on his list of uncanny things the names of several
spirits. Disease is everywhere a great dread of men, and often looked
upon as an infliction of the supernatural powers. There are several
spirits of sickness recognized among the Malays, but they reserve
their greatest horror for the influences of the _Hantu Katumbohan_, or
spirit of smallpox. But other spirits abound; there are some that
inhabit the sources of streams, and many that dwell in forests. Mines,
too, have their patron goblins, which are propitiated by the miners.
The sea-going Malay, also, whose vision has been clarified by bitter
salt spray, knows and frequently sees the spirits that inhabit certain
parts of the ocean.
The _Hantu Pemburo_, or phantom hunter, is a spirit the Malays take
special account of; in general, he seems to resemble the _wilde Jäger_
of German folklore. Long ago, so the story has it, there lived a
certain man and his wife in Katapang, in Sumatra. One day the wife
fell sick, and, thinking the flesh of a mouse-deer might strengthen
her, she asked her husband to kill one for her. He went forth on the
hunt, but was unsuccessful and soon returned. His wife now became very
angry, and told him to try again--in fact, not to return till he could
come home with the coveted game. The man swore a mighty oath, called
his dogs, took his weapons, and set out into the forest. He wandered
and wandered, and always in vain. The days ran into months, the months
became years, and still no mouse-deer. At last, despairing of finding
the animal on earth, he ordered his dogs to bay the stars, and they
sprang away through the sky, and he followed. As he walked with
upturned gaze, a leaf fell into his mouth and took root there.
At home things were not going well. His son, born after his departure,
when he became a lad, was often taunted by the other children of the
_campong_, and twitted of the fact that his father was a wandering
ghost. After hearing the truth from his mother, the boy went out into
the forest to meet the huntsman. Far from the haunts of men, in the
depths of the forest, they met and conversed. The boy told of his
wrongs, and the father vowed to avenge them, and ever since that time,
say the Malays, he has afflicted mankind. At night he courses through
the wood and sky with a noisy, yelping pack, and woe to the man who
sees him! On the peninsula the people mutter this charm to ward off
his evil influence:
"I know thy history,
O man of Katapang!
Therefore return thou
To thy jungle of Mohang,
And do not bring sickness upon me."
The Malay is a firm believer in the efficacy of charms. He wears
amulets, places written words of magic in houses, and sports a tiger's
claw as a preventive of disease. If he is specially primitive and
backwoodsy, when he enters a forest he says: "Go to the right, all my
enemies and assailants! May you not look upon me; let me walk alone!"
To allay a storm he says: "The elephants collect, they wallow across
the sea; go to the right, go to the left, I break the tempest." When
about to begin an elephant hunt, according to Thompson, he uses this
charm: "The elephant trumpets, he wallows across the lake. The pot
boils, the pan boils across the point. Go to the left, go to the
right, spirit of grandfather (the elephant); I loose the fingers upon
the bowstring."
The Malay believes in witches and witchcraft. There is the bottle imp,
the _Polong_, which feeds on its owner's blood till the time comes for
it to take possession of an enemy. Then there is a horrid thing, the
_Penangalan_, which possesses women. Frequently it leaves its rightful
abode to fly away at night to feed on blood, taking the form of the
head and intestines of the person it inhabited, in which shape it
wanders around.
Such beliefs may perhaps have their origin in metempsychosis, which in
other ways has some foothold among the common people. For instance,
elephants and tigers are believed sometimes to be human souls in
disguise, and so the Malay addresses them as "grandfather" to allay
their wrath and avoid direct reference to them. Crocodiles also are
often regarded as sacred, and special charms are used in fishing for
them. One such, given by Maxwell, is as follows: "O Dangsari, lotus
flower, receive what I send thee. If thou receivest it not, may thy
eyes be torn out!"
The domestic animals also figure in Malay folklore. Dogs are unlucky
and regarded with suspicion, for they would like to lick their
master's bones. Cats, on the other hand, are lucky, and show a
fondness for their owners.
Owls are regarded as birds of ill omen, and their hooting forebodes
death.
Days are lucky and unlucky. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are
fortunate birthdays, and a dream on a Thursday night will come true.
To dream of a dog or a flood is unlucky. To stumble when starting on a
journey is a bad sign, and before setting out on a pilgrimage to Mecca
certain formulas are muttered and signs followed.
The Malay hates to tear down a house, and so the old one is left
standing when a new one is built. The ladder of a house must be built
just so, or disaster comes to the owner or builder; and to knock one's
head on the lintel is regarded as unfavorable. One rises quickly from
a meal; otherwise, if he is single, he may be regarded with disfavor
by his prospective father-in-law.
As one travels over the archipelago he finds that superstitions vary,
and what may be regarded by the Malays of the peninsula as
particularly ominous may have no meaning at all with the Malays of the
south or east. The Dyaks of Borneo are probably the most uncivilized
of all the Malay tribes, for Mohammedanism has taken but little hold
upon them, and their natural paganism remains as yet unshaken. Of
their folklore we know but little. It awaits the conquest of the West,
like the island itself.
ELECTRICITY FROM THALES TO FARADAY.
BY ERNEST A. LESUEUR.
It is so common a notion nowadays that electricity had its birth and
rise in the nineteenth century that it gives one a strange mental
sensation to contemplate the fact that all the myriads of commercial
applications that have of late years been developed in this field
might have been made by the Chinese or the ancient Egyptians, so far
as the potentiality of Nature for developing electrical phenomena is
concerned. The writer used to know a delightful old gentleman in
Vermont who once referred, as to a well-known fact, to Edison's having
invented electricity. It is astonishing how closely his state of mind
typifies that of a great many people.
In the form of the lightning, the aurora, and the shock of the
electric eel or torpedo, electrical manifestations have been known
ever since man commenced to observe those phenomena, but the fossil
resin amber was the substance which eventually gave its name to the
now tremendous agency. This material was observed, many centuries
before our era, to possess the property of attracting light bodies to
itself when rubbed with wool, and, being called [Greek: êlektron]
(electron) by the Greeks, transmitted its name to the property or
force which it thus brought into evidence. The fact is mentioned as
early as 600 B. C., by Thales of Miletus, although he does not
transmit to us the name of the original observer of the phenomenon.
Homely as was the experiment, it marked a beginning in electrical
research.
Not that scientific investigations in that or any line were pushed
very assiduously in those days, for there is a great gap between the
discovery of the property above alluded to and the acquisition of any
more solid knowledge pertaining to electricity. The phenomenon was at
that time set down in the list of natural facts, and no attempt
appears to have been made to connect it with others. The inquiring
spirit of the present age can hardly be brought into more striking
relief than by a comparison of the, at present, almost daily advances
in scientific knowledge with the fact that twenty-two hundred years
elapsed between the discovery of the above-mentioned power of amber by
the ancients and the later one that a very large number of other
substances, such as diamonds, vitrefactions of all kinds, sulphur,
common resin, etc., possess the same property. A few other scattered
facts were, however, also noted by the ancients: fire is said to have
streamed from the head of Servius Tullius at the age of seven, and
Virgil asserts that flame was emitted by the hair of Ascanius.
In examining, now, the history of the rise of electrical science we
find, as just mentioned, the vast gap of over two millenniums between
the discovery of the attracting power of rubbed amber and the mere
extension of man's knowledge so as to include other substances. The
philosophers Boyle and Otto von Guericke, who were active during the
latter half of the seventeenth century, added a mass of new data in
this line. Boyle, moreover, discovered the equivalence of action and
reaction between the attracting and the attracted body, and that the
rubbed amber or other "electric" retained its attractive powers for a
certain period after excitation had ceased.
Otto von Guericke made a vast step forward by constructing the first
electrical machine, in a crude form, truly, but which proved of the
utmost service in adding to our knowledge of the properties of
electricity. His machine was constructed very simply of a globe of
sulphur mounted on a spindle, which could be rotated by means of a
crank; the operator applied friction with the hand, his body receiving
a positive charge, while the surface of the sulphur acquired a
negative. The fact of the two electrifications being separated at the
surface of the sulphur was not, however, known at the time; the only
charge that Guericke observed being that appearing on the sulphur. The
reason for this was that the latter, being a nonconductor, any
electricity generated upon it was compelled to stay there, for a
certain time at least, and consequently accumulated so as to be
observable; whereas the opposite electrification flowing into the
operator's hand continuously escaped to earth without giving any sign
of its presence. Had the operator stood upon an insulating support,
the electrification would have accumulated on his body as well as upon
the sulphur. Guericke made the discovery that a light body, having
been once attracted to an electrified surface, was almost immediately
repelled from it, and could not be again attracted without having its
imparted electrification removed by contact with an uncharged surface.
Sir Isaac Newton, about 1675, made an interesting application of a
principle allied to this. He used a hollow, drum-shaped contrivance
with glass ends and a very short axis, into which he put a number of
fragments of paper. On briskly rubbing the outside of the glass with a
piece of silk the paper was caused to "leap from one part of the glass
to another and twirl about in the air." This was repeated in 1676
before the Royal Society, to the great edification of that learned
body.
Newton made a considerable improvement in the electrical machine of
Guericke by the substitution of a hollow globe of glass for Guericke's
sulphur one. What is chiefly interesting about the improvement is the
fact that Guericke's sulphur globe, of comparative weight and
cumbrousness, was made by casting melted sulphur into a glass globe
and then breaking off the glass. Guericke observed in the dark a
peculiar luminosity of conducting surfaces when well charged by means
of his machine; he compared it to the phosphorescent light observed
when lump sugar is broken in the dark. It was what is now known as the
brush-discharge effect.
In 1705 Francis Hawksbee discovered the peculiar phenomenon which he
termed the mercurial phosphorus. It was produced by causing a stream
of well-dried mercury to fall through an exhausted glass receiver. The
friction of the particles of mercury against the jet piece and the
glass caused an electrification which evinced itself in a
phosphorescent glow. The receiver, indeed, had not to be by any means
thoroughly exhausted, the phenomenon occurring at an air pressure up
to about fourteen inches of the barometer.
The crackling noise and the spark accompanying electrical discharge
suggested about this time the analogy of those miniature disturbances
to thunder and lightning, but the identity of the two was not fully
established until later.
Up to this time the fact that certain substances were capable of
conducting electricity was not known, but in 1729 Stephen Gray, F. R.
S., an enthusiastic investigator, made the discovery, and at the same
time the cognate one that a large class of materials are
nonconductors. The only source of electricity which was at the
disposal of experimenters up to this time was the electrical machine,
improved, as described, by Newton, which furnished intermittent
currents (discharges) of infinitesimal quantity, as we should say now,
but of extremely high pressure. This fact of the enormous pressure
resulted in the electricity's forcing its way through very imperfect
conductors, so as to cause our investigators to rank many of these
latter with the metals. Thus Gray concluded that pack thread was a
good conductor because it did not oppose sufficient resistance to
prevent the flow of his high pressure (or, as we should now say, high
voltage or tension) electricity. He tried wire as well, but did not
realize it was a better conductor than the thread, although its
conductivity was actually in the millions of times as great. In
collaboration with his friend Wheeler he conveyed electrical
discharges a distance of eight hundred and eighty-six feet, through
presumably air-dry pack thread--an achievement which would almost be
notable at the present time. He insulated the line by hanging it from
loops of silk thread.
Gray hoped "that there may be found out a way to collect a greater
quantity of electric fire, and consequently to increase the force of
that power, which, _si licet magnis componere parva_, seems to be of
the same nature with thunder and lightning."
About this time Desaguliers discovered that those materials which,
upon being rubbed, develop electrical charges, are all nonconductors,
and that, conversely, nonelectrics are conductors. The terms electrics
and nonelectrics were applied to bodies respectively capable and
incapable of excitation; the words idioelectrics and anelectrics were
also used in respectively equivalent senses.
In France, Dufay discovered that the conductivity of pack thread was
greatly improved by the presence of moisture, and he succeeded in
conveying a discharge a distance of almost thirteen hundred feet. He
suspended himself by silken cords and had himself electrified, and
then observed that he could give a shock accompanied by a spark to any
person standing on the ground.
He also established the fact of the two opposite kinds of
electrification, and gave them the names of vitreous and resinous,
from the fact that the former was developed by the excitation of glass
and vitreous substances generally, and the latter from that of amber
and resins. He observed that the distinguishing characteristic of the
two was the fact that opposite charges attracted each other, while
similar ones exerted mutual repulsion. Dufay and Gray died within
three years of each other, both at the age of forty, Gray having added
to the results already mentioned the discovery of the conducting
powers of certain liquids and of the human body.
Experimental research now began to spread into Germany and the
Netherlands. The electrical machine was greatly improved by Professor
Boze, of Wittenberg, and Professor Winkler, of Leipsic, who
respectively added the prime conductor and the silk rubber to that
important piece of apparatus. A Scotch Benedictine monk of
Erfurt--Professor Gordon--substituted a glass cylinder for the sphere,
and thereby brought the instrument in its essentials practically to
the form in which it exists to-day. The improvement enabled the
production of very large sparks, which were caused to produce the
inflammation of various combustibles. Gordon went so far as to ignite
alcohol by means of a jet of electrified water.
We now come to an epoch-making discovery--that of the condenser, or,
in its conventional laboratory form, the Leyden jar. Professor
Muschenbroeck, of the University of Leyden, was struck with the idea
that it would be a good plan to try to prevent the dissipation of the
electric charge by inclosing the conductor containing it in an
insulating envelope. He therefore took a glass jar, partly filled it
with water, and electrified the latter. His assistant, who was holding
the bottle, accidentally touched the wire which made connection with
the water, and received on the instant a shock much more violent than
any that the electrical machine was capable of giving. This led to the
discovery that as the charge of vitreous electricity had accumulated
in the water, a corresponding charge of the opposite kind had gathered
upon the outside of the glass and been "bound" there, as it is called,
by the attraction exercised upon it by the charge on the inside. It
had been enabled to get upon the glass by the fact of the assistant's
hand having covered part of the surface of the latter, and, since he
stood upon the ground, the electricity had quietly flowed from the
latter up through his body to the outside surface of the glass.
The apparatus was quickly perfected by coating both the inside and
outside of a jar with tin foil, applying the charge by means of a wire
or chain to the inside coating and allowing the outer one to stand
upon the earth or upon a conducting substance in electrical contact
with the latter. The exaltation of spirit with which the discovery was
hailed by the _savants_ appears to have been extraordinary--one
student who took a discharge through his body being reported to state
that he would not have missed the experience for a fabulous
consideration, and that he would not repeat it if it were to save his
life. In reality the advance was enormous; it gave a means for
literally bottling up electricity in quantities previously unthought
of. The prime conductor of an electrical machine could not retain any
considerable quantity of electricity for the reason that, a certain
small intensity of electrification having been reached, the addition
operated to upset the balance, so to speak, and the electricity
escaped by a sudden (disruptive) discharge, or spark, or by the brush
discharge already alluded to. With the Leyden jar, however, as fast as
electricity was supplied to the inside coating it became "bound" there
by the charge of opposite sign accumulating on the outside, and the
limit of capacity of the jar was simply one of strength of the glass:
if too much electricity was supplied, the stress of mutual attraction
between the two charges relieved itself by destroying the jar.
Although Professor Muschenbroeck discovered the principle in the
manner above referred to, it appears extremely probable that two other
investigators, working independently, also did the same. One Cuneus
and a monk named Kleist each claimed the honor of original invention
of the condenser.
About 1747 the first gun was fired by electricity; this was
accomplished by Sir William Watson, who also succeeded in kindling
alcohol and gas by means of a drop of cold water and even with ice.
The same experimenter reversed the ordinary procedure of causing the
electric influence to pass from an electrified body to the one to be
experimented upon, the latter being unelectrified, by electrifying the
latter, and then producing the desired effect by approaching it to an
unelectrified one.
A party of the Royal Society with Watson as chief operator instituted
a series of researches on a grand scale to determine, if possible, the
velocity of the electric discharge, and arrived at a number of
conclusions which, however, were of a decidedly negative nature. The
most important of these were as follows: That they could not observe
any interval between the instant of applying the discharge to one end
of the line and its reception at the other; that the destructive
effects of discharge are greater through bad conductors than through
good ones; that conduction is equally powerful whether occurring
through earth or water.
Just previous to this there had been some brilliant experiments
carried on in France, and the discharge had been conveyed through
twelve thousand feet of circuit, including the acre basin of the
Tuileries, but they had not been performed as systematically, or with
the definite objects in view, as had the English experiments.
The following year the Royal Society continued its researches on a
larger scale than previously, using 12,276 feet of wire, and found
that even through that length the velocity was practically
instantaneous.
Watson urged as a theory that electrical disturbances were caused by
influx or efflux of a single electric fluid from the state of normal
electrification, thus differing from Dufay in his opinion as to the
existence of two fluids. He was led to this belief by observing that
he obtained a larger spark between two oppositely electrified bodies
than from either to the earth.
From this time on there appears upon the scene a host of workers in
this field, one of the most prominent being the distinguished
American, Benjamin Franklin. Somewhat previous to his remarkable work,
or about 1750, Boze made certain discoveries in the matter of the
surface tension of conducting liquids being diminished by
electrification, and Mowbray and Nollet ascertained that the
vegetation of flowers and of vegetating seeds was hastened by
electrifying them.
Franklin (born 1706, died 1790) made the important discovery of the
active discharge of electricity from an electrified body by points as
well as the converse of it--i. e., that electricity was rapidly
abstracted from a charged atmosphere by points. This enabled him to
increase the efficiency of the electrical machine by adding a
comb-shaped series of points to the collector of the prime conductor.
Up to this time, although the identity of lightning with electricity
had long been suspected, it had not been at all established, and to
Franklin may be said to belong the honor of doing so, although in
this, as in the case of the invention of the Leyden jar, there appears
to have been successful contemporaneous research elsewhere. Before
performing his great experiment Franklin published a book strongly
supporting the belief in the identity of the two. Once having
conceived the idea of drawing electricity from the upper atmosphere,
he unfortunately lost some time through waiting for the completion of
the spire of a certain church in Philadelphia, from the top of which
he hoped to be able to collect electricity by means of a wire, but
finally hit upon the device which now fills much the same place in
connection with his memory that the classical cherry tree does with
Washington's--the lightning-collecting kite. This apparatus was very
simply constructed, and had a pointed wire projecting a short distance
above the framework. It was controlled, and electrical connection
made, by an ordinary string which terminated in a short length of silk
ribbon to protect the person from possible injury, and to give
electricity a chance to accumulate in the system, by insulating the
"line." At the end of the string proper Franklin fastened a metallic
key. In company with his son he flew the kite during a thunderstorm
which occurred in June, 1752; for some time no electric disturbance
approached the neighborhood, and he was on the point of abandoning the
experiment when he observed what he had been waiting for--the outer
fibers of the string standing out from the latter by repulsive
force--and, applying his knuckle to the key, he drew a spark.
Subsequently, when the rain soaked the string and caused it to conduct
much better, there was a fine supply of electricity, and Franklin
charged a Leyden jar from the key, thus achieving the actual storage
of "lightning."
He continued his investigations in atmospheric electricity, and
discovered that the electrification of the clouds (or of the upper
atmosphere) was sometimes positive and sometimes negative. The
invention of the lightning rod is due to him.
Franklin sided with Watson in his belief in the single nature of the
electric fluid.
As intimated above, atmospheric electricity appears to have been
collected independently about the same time in Europe, and certain
very daring and dangerous experiments were performed there. One sad
occurrence, as a result, was the death of Professor Richman, in St.
Petersburg, in 1753. Richman, in company with a friend, Sokolow, was
taking observations on an electroscope connected with an iron rod
which terminated in the apartment and extended in the other direction
above the roof of the building. During the progress of their
experiments a violent peal of thunder was heard in the neighborhood,
and Richman bent to examine the instrument. In doing so he approached
his head to within a foot of the end of the rod, and Sokolow saw a
ball of fire "about the size of a man's fist" shoot from it to
Richman's head with a terrific report. The stroke was, of course,
immediately fatal, and what we now know as the return shock stupefied
and benumbed Sokolow. The unfortunate event served as a warning to
other daring experimenters.
Canton, another prominent worker in this field, discovered that the
so-called vitreous electricity was not necessarily always developed by
the friction of glass, as had hitherto been believed to be invariably
the case. By applying different rubbers to glass he obtained either
positive or negative at pleasure. This at once disposed of the idea
that one kind of electricity resided in certain bodies and its
opposite in others. Canton also made the interesting discovery that
glass, amber, rock crystal, etc., when taken out of mercury, were all
electrified positively. He was thus enabled to make the improvement in
the electrical machine of coating its rubber with an amalgam rich in
mercury, which greatly enhanced its powers.
Among the numerous names now coming into prominence must be mentioned
those of Beccaria, Symmer, Delaval, Wilson, Kinnersley, Wilcke, and
Priestley.
The first named, Father Beccaria, was a celebrated Italian physicist
who did most valuable work in connection with atmospheric electricity,
and who published several classical works on that and allied subjects.
Among these may be mentioned his _Lettre del Elettricità_, 1758, and
_Experimenta_, 1772. He ascertained that water is not by any means a
good conductor, as it had previously been supposed to be, and, by
using pure water, he caused the electric spark to become visible in
it, a phenomenon capable of occurring only through media almost
nonconducting. In these experiments he used thick glass tubes with
wires led through the opposite ends, the latter being sealed, and the
tubes filled with water. These were invariably shattered by the
passage of the spark on account of the accompanying elevation of
temperature, which caused expansion. He also established the facts
that the atmosphere adjacent to an electrified body acquires
electrification of the same sign by abstracting electricity from the
body, and that the air then parts with its electricity very slowly. He
advanced the theory that there is a mutual repulsion between the
particles of the electric fluid and those of air, and that a temporary
vacuum is formed at the moment of the passage of a disruptive
discharge or spark.
Robert Symmer, in 1759, described some most entertaining experiments,
making use of the opposite electrifications of superposed stockings of
different materials or merely of different colors (the dye matters in
the latter case causing differentiation). If, in a dry atmosphere, a
silk stocking be drawn over the leg and a woolen one pulled over it,
the two will be found, upon being removed, to be very powerfully
electrified in opposite senses. If the four stockings of two such
pairs be used and then suspended together, they will indulge in
remarkable antics due to each of the silk stockings trying to attract
both of the woolen ones, and _vice versa_, and, on the other hand,
each of each kind repelling the other. The amount of electrical
attraction and repulsion produced in this simple way in a dry
atmosphere is remarkable. The experiment may also be performed with
all silk stockings, one pair white and the other black.
Symmer advanced the theory of two fluids coexisting in all matter (not
independently of each other, as had been previously supposed), which
by mutual counteractions produced all electrical phenomena. His
conception was that a body, positively electrified, did not exist in
that condition because of the possession of a charge of a positive (as
distinct from a negative) electric fluid which it had not held before,
and did not hold in a normal state; nor that it possessed a greater
share of a single electric fluid than it did in an unelectrified
condition, as had been believed by Franklin and Watson, and by Dufay
respectively; but that such a body contained both positive
and negative electricities which, when the body behaved as
"unelectrified," entirely counteracted each other, but which, on the
other hand, caused a positive or negative charge to be evinced should
either positive or negative electricity respectively preponderate.
Æpinus was the author of another notable theory, of which we must omit
further mention for want of space.
Disjointed observations connected with animal electricity had been
accumulating for many centuries. The first chronicled note that refers
to the subject dates back to 676 A. D. Whether or not entirely by
chance, the Arabians named the electric eel, or torpedo, in a way that
impresses us now as singularly felicitous, _raad_ (the lightning).
Toward the end of the last century Redi discovered that the shock was
sometimes conveyed through the line and rod to the fisherman, and
Kampfer compared the effects to those of electrical discharges. It
does not appear, however, that the resemblance was actually believed
to be more than accidental until Bancroft urged, in the last ten years
of the eighteenth century, the view which was shortly proved.
Investigation since has shown that several other aquatic animals
possess this astonishing manifestation of vitality, notably the
_Gymnotus electricus_ (Surinam eel), the _Trichiurus electricus_, and
the _Tetraodon electricus_. Humboldt gives an account of wonderful
battles in South America between gymnoti and wild horses. In fact, the
most expeditious method, if not the most humane one, of capturing
these alarming creatures appears to be to drive horses into the pond
inhabited by them, and to allow the eels to exhaust their strength by
repeated electric discharges before endeavoring to bring them to land
by other means.
Cavendish was one of the most noted experimental investigators in the
electrical field during the latter third of the eighteenth century.
His work was remarkably accurate, considering the lack of a proper
equipment for taking observations incident to operations in those
days. He computed the relative conductivities of iron and water as
four hundred million to unity, and found that the addition of but one
part of common salt to one hundred of water increased the conductivity
of the latter a hundredfold. A twenty-six-per-cent solution of salt he
found to possess only seven and one quarter times the conductivity of
the extremely weak one mentioned. He also established the law that the
capacity of condensers (of which the previously mentioned Leyden jar
is an example) varies directly as the active area, and inversely as
the distance separating the conducting surfaces. It was reserved for
later investigators to make the grand discoveries which relate to
electrochemical dissociation, but Cavendish succeeded in accurately
determining the ratio of combination of the elements of water in a
method which superficially suggests the inverse of electrolytic
decomposition--i. e., by inducing the combination of hydrogen and
oxygen by the electric spark in the instrument known as the
eudiometer.
Hard on the heels of this work came news of Galvani's remarkable
discovery (1790) of the fact that freshly amputated frogs' legs, on
being touched along the lines of the muscles by dissimilar metals,
were powerfully agitated. We can only speak of this discovery as the
stumbling on to an isolated fact, for it was reserved for Volta to
establish the generalization that a current is produced in the
conductor joining dissimilar metals when the latter are both in
contact with a suitable electrolyte (or liquid capable both of
conducting electricity and of acting on one, and incidentally also
sometimes both, of the metals). Meantime (Du Bois-Reymond observes),
"wherever frogs were to be found, and where two different kinds of
metal could be procured, everybody was anxious to see the mangled
limbs of frogs brought to life in this wonderful way. Physiologists
believed that at last they should realize their visions of a vital
power, and physicians that no cure was impossible."
Volta first discovered merely the fact of electrification by contact.
He wrote to Galvani: "I don't need your frog. Give me two metals and a
moist rag, and I will produce your animal electricity. Your frog is
nothing but a moist conductor, and in this respect it is inferior to
my wet rag!" Nobili, nevertheless, in 1825 proved the existence of
galvanic currents in muscles.
Later on Volta invented the "_couronne des tasses_" (crown of cups),
thus at the same time adopting the general form of cell used, with
modifications, to-day, and producing the higher electromotive force,
or electrical pressure, consequent on the multiplication of the cells
in a series battery.
Just before Volta's celebrated communication to the Royal Society, in
1800, Fabroni, of Florence, in discussing Galvani's phenomenon, went
to the root of the matter by suggesting that the energy of chemical
action was at the bottom of galvanic manifestations, and he was warmly
upheld in this contention by Sir Humphry Davy, who, upon the
publication of Volta's discoveries, constructed a most elaborate
battery with which (apparently about 1806) he produced the arc light
between carbon pencils.
In the year referred to, Davy published the results of a series of
experiments of enormous significance, among other things of the
isolation of the alkali metals, sodium and potassium, whose existence
had hitherto not been dreamed of. The simple electrolytic
decomposition of water had been accomplished by Nicolson and Carlisle
in the last year of the eighteenth century. Sir W. S. Harris says: "A
series of new substances was speedily discovered, the existence of
which had never before been imagined. Oxygen, chlorine, and acids were
all dragged, as it were, to the positive pole, while metals,
inflammable bodies, alkalies, and earths became determined to the
negative pole of the battery. When wires connected with each extremity
of the new battery were tipped with prepared and well-pointed
charcoal, and the points brought near each other, then a most intense
and pure evolution of light followed, which on separating the points
extended to a gorgeous arc." It was at first supposed that the
galvanic or voltaic electricity was distinct from the so-called
"frictional" or "ordinary" electricity.
A distinguished contemporary of Cavendish was Coulomb, the value of
whose work in developing certain exceedingly important mathematical
laws with regard to action at a distance, surface densities, and rates
of charge dissipation can hardly be overestimated. His name was given
to the torsion balance which, since his day, has been the standard
instrument for measuring electric and magnetic attractions and
repulsions. The importance of his work has since been recognized by
the perpetuation of his name in connection with the unit of quantity
of electricity, as that of Volta has been honored by its use,
abbreviated (volt), to designate the unit of electrical tension or
pressure.
Certain highly instructive and interesting data were accumulated about
this time by Volta, Laplace, Saussure, and the renowned chemist
Lavoisier, in connection with the subject of electrification produced
when evaporation, and the liberation of gases and vapors in general
from any cause, occurs. The liquid, solid, or mixture liberating the
gas was contained in a metallic dish and the resultant electrification
of the latter examined qualitatively. Volta's observations led him to
conclude that the electrification was always negative, but Saussure
demonstrated finally that its sign was dependent on the material of
the dish. These experimenters covered, between them all, a somewhat
extensive field, examining, among other things, the electrification
resulting from the ebullition of various liquids, from the ordinary
combustion of fuel, and from the decomposition of acids by metals to
liberate hydrogen.
About the end of the first decade of the century Poisson attacked the
phenomena of electricity analytically, and succeeded in demonstrating
the right of electrical investigation to rank among the exact
sciences. Of his most important mathematical propositions is one in
which, assuming as a working hypothesis the existence of two mutually
attracting fluids, he deduced formulæ covering the distribution of
these fluids on the surfaces of two conducting spheres, in or out of
contact.
A great deal of work was done during the end of the last century and
the beginning of the present one on what is now known as
pyro-electrification. The Abbé Haüy discovered that fragments of
tourmaline crystal exhibited opposite electrifications on opposite
extremities of their lines of cleavage. It is this crystal also which
has unusually remarkable powers of polarizing light, and which, under
electro-magnetic stress, suffers modifications of the latter
property. Haüy investigated the field with much diligence, and
succeeded in cataloguing a large number of natural crystals by the
side of tourmaline. The subject was amplified later by Sir David
Brewster, who added a series of artificial crystalline salts to the
list of pyro-electrical materials, among them, notably, hydro-potassic
(and sodic) tartrate. The property was found not always to reside on
these substances, but to be developed by heating them. Brewster found
that even powdered tourmaline exhibited opposite electrifications on
the opposite extremities of each tiny particle, causing the latter to
act, so far as attractions and repulsions went, as infinitesimal
magnets.
Our rapid and imperfect survey has now brought us to the threshold of
the great activity in electrical work elicited by the tremendous
discovery, made by Professor Oersted, of Copenhagen, of the existence
of the electro-magnetic field. It happens that two of the most amiable
and estimable individuals that have ever devoted their lives to
scientific research stand out in this connection head and shoulders
above all other investigators--Ampère and Faraday, the latter sixteen
years younger than the former and destined to long survive him.
WINGLESS BIRDS.
BY PHILIPPE GLANGEAUD.
It is often said that there are no rules without exceptions. We
purpose to test the truth of this maxim once more. Fishes are made to
live in water, but some of them pass the greater part of their
existence in mud. Some even perch upon trees, thus competing with
birds, whose kingdom is the air, and which are able, with the aid of
their wings, to plunge into space and travel rapidly over considerable
distances. Yet there are birds, deprived by Nature, which do not
possess the wing characteristic of the feathered tribe, and are
consequently, like the majority of animals, pinned to the soil.
Birds do not all have equal power of flight, which is closely related
to the extent of the development of their wings. There exist all
grades in the spread of wings between that of the condor, which is
four times the length of the body, whereby the bird is able to rise to
the height of nearly twenty-five thousand feet, and the little
winglets of the auk, which are of no use to it. The penguins have
still smaller wings, which are nothing more than short, flattened
stumps, without proper feathers and covered with a fine, hairlike down
which might be taken for scales.
Another group of birds exists, called appropriately _Brevipennes_,
the wings of which are so poorly developed as to be wholly unsuitable
for flight. As an offset and just compensation for this, their long
and robust legs permit them to run with extraordinary speed. For that
reason they have been called running birds, in distinction from other
kinds that constitute the group of flying birds. Among them are some
gigantic birds, and also some that have no visible wings on the
outside of their bodies, and may therefore be properly called
wingless.
The ostrich is a member of this group. With its bare, callous head and
short bill, its long, featherless neck, and its massive body,
supported by long, half-bare legs, ending in two large toes; its very
short wings, formed of soft and flexible feathers; and its
plume-shaped tail, it presents a very special appearance among the
birds.
The nandous, the American representatives of the ostrich, have still
shorter wings, which have no _remigia_ at all, and terminate in a
horny appendage, and they have no tail feathers.
The cassowary and the emu also resemble the ostrich in many points,
but their wings are still more reduced than those of the nandou. They
are only slightly distinct, and can not be seen when the bird holds
them close up to its body. In the _Apteryx_, the name of which, from
the Greek, means without wings, the organs of flight are hardly
apparent, and consist simply of a very short stump bearing a thick and
hooked nail. The _Apteryx_, which is also called _Kiwi_, a native of
New Zealand, is the most singular of living birds. The neck and the
body are continuous, and the moderately sized head is furnished with a
long beak resembling that of the ibis. Having long hairs similar to
the mustaches of cats at its base, it is different from the bills of
all other existing birds in possessing nostrils that open at its upper
point. Although the _Apteryx_ can not fly, it runs very fast, despite
the shortness of its legs, and can defend itself very effectively
against assailants by the aid of its long-nailed and sharp-nailed
feet. The tail is absent like the wings. The very pliant feathers are
extremely curious, of the shape of a lance-head, pendent, loose,
silky, with jagged barbs, and increase in length as they go back from
the neck. The bird is of the size of a fowl, and when in its normal
position stands with its body almost vertical, and carries the
suggestion of a caricature--resembling, we might say, a feathered
sack, with only a long-billed head and the claws projecting, and one
beholding it feels that he is looking at some unfinished creature. It
is a nocturnal bird, of fierce temper, and has become rare in
consequence of the merciless war that is made upon it. Everything is
strange about it, even the single egg it lays, which weighs about a
quarter as much as its body.
Together with the _Apteryx_, there lived in New Zealand a bird that
reached the height of nearly twelve feet--the _Dinornis_. It and the
_Phororhaces_ and the _Brontornis_, which have been recently exhumed
in Patagonia, might be regarded as the giants of birds. This bird was
known to the natives as the _Moa_, and lived in troops like the
ostriches. Its organization was very much like that of the _Apteryx_,
from which it was, however, distinguished by its great size, long
neck, and short beak. It seems to have had the aspect of an ostrich,
with a feathered neck and no wings or tail. The feet of the
_Dinornis_, with their three large toes, were really enormous.
Isolated fragments of its bones suggest very large mammals, rather
than birds. The femur and tibia are larger than those of a bear, the
tibia alone being about four feet long, and the thickness, in the
narrowest part, of the width of a man's hand, while it was more than
seven inches in the thickest part. The sternum, on the other hand, was
small, convex, and longer than broad. The wing could not have been
visible on the outside of the body, for the bones that constitute them
are proportionally smaller than those of the _Apteryx_. There was,
therefore, a maximum reduction of the wing in this bird.
The _Dinornis_ was covered with a rich plumage, and this was doubtless
what led to its destruction, women preferring its plumes to all other
ornaments. The large number of bones which have been discovered in the
alluviums, the caves, and the peat bogs of New Zealand authorize the
thought that the island was once inhabited by a considerable number of
these birds, which were able easily to repel the attacks of other
animals by means of their big feet. But they could stand no chance
against Nature's more terrible destroyer--man--who, when seeking the
gratification of his taste and fancy, does not hesitate to exterminate
whole species. The natives of New Zealand still recall the history of
these singular birds; their extermination seems to have occurred about
the time the island was visited by Captain Cook (1767-1778). Moreover,
some of the bones collected in later years still had animal matter
upon them. Even parts of the windpipe have been discovered, mixed with
charcoal, and evidences of cooking have been found.
A near relative of the _Dinornis_, which the Maoris regard as extinct,
is the _Notornis_, of which only four living specimens have been found
since 1842, the last one having been captured in the latter part of
1898.
The eggs of the _Dinornis_ were very large, having a capacity of about
a gallon and being equivalent to eighty hen's eggs. Still larger eggs
than these, however, are known. In 1851 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
exhibited, in the French Academy of Sciences, eggs of a bird
coming from Madagascar that had a capacity of two gallons. Some
specimens of these eggs may be seen in the galleries of the Paris
Museum, and still larger eggs have been found. The museum in London
has one with a capacity exceeding eleven quarts, or equivalent to two
hundred and twenty hen's eggs, or more than seventy thousand humming
birds' eggs. It was thought at first that the bird which laid these
gigantic eggs was still living, for natives of Madagascar spoke of
having seen a bird of colossal size that could throw down an ox and
make a meal of it. Such, however, were not the ways of the bird called
the _Epiornis_, which had no talons or wings, and fed on vegetable
substances. The description by the celebrated traveler Marco Polo of a
great flying bird of prey, called a roc, has no reference to the
_Epiornis_. M. Grandidier has demonstrated that this bird no longer
exists in Madagascar, and that if man ever knew it the stories with
marvelous details which the savages hand down from generation to
generation make no mention of it. We owe to M. Grandidier, M.
Milne-Edwards, and Major Forsyth what is known of the history of this
large wingless bird, which resembles the _Dinornis_ in several points.
If its size was proportioned to that of its eggs it should have been
twice as large as the _Dinornis_. It was not, however, but constituted
a family represented by very diverse forms and of variable size,
though never much exceeding eleven feet. The head was similar in
appearance to that of the _Dinornis_, but the surface of the forehead
was furrowed with wrinkles and cavities, indicating the presence of a
crest of large feathers. A curious peculiarity was the opening of the
Eustachian tube directly on the exterior. The cervical vertebræ are
very numerous, while the sternum is much reduced. It is a flat bone,
broad but very short, especially in the median part. The wing also has
suffered a great regression, for it comprises only a thin, short rod,
the humerus, and a small osseous mass representing all the other bones
of the wing stuck together. The _Epiornis_ had no wings externally
visible. The bones of the feet were, on the other hand, of
considerable size, and indicate that the bird that possessed them was
larger than the _Dinornis_.
The _Epiornis_, according to M. Milne-Edwards, frequented the borders
of waters, keeping among the reeds along lakes and rivers, for its
bones are found associated with those of turtles, crocodiles, and a
small hippopotamus. It most probably nested in the low plains around
lakes.
Just as the _Apteryx_ among birds, and the bison and the beaver among
mammals, so the _Dinornis_ and the _Epiornis_ have been destroyed as
man has extended his abode and his domination.
When we regard the fauna of Madagascar and of New Zealand we are
struck by the great resemblance between them, from the points of view
of their recent and ancient vertebrate fauna. These resemblances
suggest the past existence of relations between these two lands now
separated by a wide expanse of sea, and this agrees with geological
observations.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La
Nature._
SKETCH OF FREDERICK C. SELOUS.
The description of Selous, in Men and Women of the Time, as "explorer,
naturalist, and sportsman," is suggestive of the manner in which his
career has been developed and his fame has grown. Beginning his active
life as a mere hunter of big game in the wilds of South Africa, and
known at first only as a sportsman, he has become recognized as one of
the leading, most intelligent, and most efficient explorers of his
time, and is accepted as the most eminent authority respecting what
relates to the large and important region of Mashonaland.
FREDERICK COURTENAY SELOUS was born in London, the son of a father of
Huguenot extraction and of a mother who, descended from the Bruces of
Clackmannan, could count Robert Bruce among her ancestors, and was
also related to Bruce, the Abyssinian traveler. He was taught at Bruce
Castle, Tottenham, and then went to school at Rugby, where he
distinguished himself by his activity, which was displayed in his high
spirits and love of violent mischief and by his personal courage to
such an extent that his schoolfellows wittily nicknamed him "Zealous."
Leaving Rugby when sixteen or seventeen years old, he spent two years
in Switzerland and Germany, studying at Neufchâtel and Wiesbaden. His
hardy activity seems to have been as marked in Germany as at Rugby,
for it is recorded of him that he attracted some notice in the papers
by jumping into the Rhine in winter after a wild duck which he had
shot. He was not dressed for a swim, and, his great coat and top boots
becoming filled with water, he had much difficulty in getting to shore
with his game. His determination to achieve a career in South Africa
by hunting and collecting specimens was apparently reached while he
was still a youth, and at nineteen years of age he sailed from
England, to land at Algoa Bay in 1871. Hunting was his object, as is
substantially confessed in the title of his first book, A Hunter's
Wanderings in Africa. The book won instant recognition as a story of
sport and a hunter's prowess, and was regarded in that light by the
critics and the general public. The Royal Geographical Society,
however, perceived other qualities in the story he had to tell, and
gave him successively honorable mention, the Cuthbert Peake grant,
and, in 1883, the Founder's Gold Medal, the highest honor it had to
bestow.
Among the earliest testimonials paid by this society to the value, as
yet not generally appreciated, of Selous's work was that given by Lord
Aberdare, president, in his anniversary address, delivered in May,
1881, to the services rendered to geography in the regions west of
Lake Nyassa by Mr. Selous, who had "hitherto been known as a mighty
hunter of large game.... This gentleman, we learn, in 1878 penetrated
for one hundred and fifty miles the unknown country north of the
Zambezi, in the direction of Lake Bangweolo. He has since crossed in
various directions the Matabele country south of the Zambezi,
discovering two new rivers and defining the course of others which had
previously been laid down from vague information." Selous's Notes on
the Chobi, it appears, had already been published by the Geographical
Society.
Mr. Selous has spent most of his time since he began his African
wanderings in 1871, except for occasional visits to England, in
traveling and hunting over that part of the African continent with
which his name as an explorer is associated. In 1877 he and some
companions penetrated into Matabeleland to hunt elephants. Relating
the story of his wanderings in an address to the Royal Geographical
Society in 1893, he described his experiences with fever and ague, the
attacks of which began in Griqualand in 1872, but came on only when he
halted anywhere a few days. North of the Zambezi he made several
journeys among the Balongas, and spent a wretched rainy season, almost
without equipment, on the Manica table-land, of the luxuriant
vegetation of which, with sweet-smelling flowers after the rains, he
gave a glowing description in his address. Interesting observations
were made on some of the northern rivers. The curious phenomena of the
steady rise of the waters of the Chobi and Machabi--an outlet of the
Okavango--was observed from the first week in June till the last week
in September, when the flood began to recede.
From 1882 the journeys acquired additional geographical importance,
and Mr. Selous proceeded to rectify the maps of Mashonaland made by
earlier travelers, taking constant compass bearings, sketching the
courses of rivers, and fixing the positions of tributaries. The value
of this work was made manifest in a magnificent large scale map of the
country.
This map, which was published in 1895, was intended, first and
chiefly, to illustrate the work done by Mr. Selous while in the
service of the South African Company; and, secondly, to embody, as far
as possible, the knowledge possessed of the entire region extending
from Fort Salisbury to the northward as far as the Zambezi, and to the
eastward as far as the lower Pungwe. Mr. Selous's manuscript
originals, deposited in the map room of the Royal Geographical
Society, comprise a compass survey, showing the routes during a year's
employment in the service of the British South African Company,
September 1, 1890, to September, 1891, on a scale of 1:255,000; a
sketch map, showing the route of the Manika Mission from Fort Charter
to Umtassa's and thence to the camp near Mount Wedza, and also the
routes taken by Mr. Selous from the camp near Mount Wedza to Makoni's,
Mangwendi's, Maranka's, and back to Makoni's, on a scale of 1:255,000;
a sketch of routes from Umtali to Mapanda (Pungwe) and back, in 1891,
on the same scale; a sketch of Mashonaland, showing tribal boundaries,
on the same scale; a rough survey map of the countries ruled over by
the Makorikori chiefs, for which a mineral concession had been granted
to the Selous Exploration Syndicate, on a scale of 1:210,000; and
about thirty sheets of manuscript maps and rounds of angles, utilized
in the compilation of the first four maps of this list.
Although Mr. Selous did not determine latitudes or longitudes, his
long-distance compass bearings enabled him to lay down a network of
triangles connecting Fort Salisbury with Masikesi. These triangles
included Fort Charter, Sengedza, and Mavanka's in the south, Mount
Mtemwa in the north, and Mount Dombo in the east; and it turns out
that the distance between Fort Salisbury and Masikesi, as resulting
from this triangulation, differs to the extent of only about a mile
from that obtained by careful astronomical observations made at the
two terminal points. The greater part of Mr. Selous's compass bearings
were taken during the rainy season, when the air was very clear and
landmarks could be seen at great distances. Mr Selous's determinations
of altitude were not so accurate, and those obtained with the aneroid
were characterized by himself as "of little value."
During all of his twenty years' wanderings Mr. Selous represented in
his address to the Royal Geographical Society, with the exception of a
treacherous night attack made upon his camp by the Mashuku-Sumbwe, led
by a few hostile Marotse, in 1888, he had never had any serious
trouble with the natives. He had gone among many tribes who had never
previously seen a white man, and was always in their power, as he
seldom had more than from five to ten native servants, none of whom
were ever armed. Mr. Selous's pioneer work began in 1889, when he
conducted a gold-prospecting company through eastern Mashonaland. The
journey took the party to the Portuguese settlements on the Zambezi,
where those people were found to have a full appreciation of the
richness of the gold region.
The British South Africa Company, or "Chartered Company," as it is
sometimes called, was incorporated about the same time (October,
1889), with power to occupy and possess the large domains that
constitute what is now called Rhodesia. The return of Mr. Selous to
the Cape of Good Hope with the report of what he had observed had the
effect of determining the company to speed its operations so as to
anticipate the Portuguese. Mr. Selous entered the service of the
company, and, although he was not yet an explorer in the scientific
sense, the accurate memory of his early wanderings over the region
enabled him to guide successfully the pioneer expedition that took
possession of Mashonaland.
One of the sensational incidents of this campaign was the refusal of
Lobengula to allow the pioneer force to use the road that led through
Buluwayo, his capital, the only existing wagon road from the British
frontier to the Mashonaland plateau. A new road was cut, under the
guidance and superintendence of Mr. Selous, through four hundred and
sixty miles of wilderness, the whole work being accomplished in two
months and a half.
Among the chiefs who submitted to the British occupation after the
seizure of Gonvola was Moloko, ruler of the country north of Manica,
who made a treaty with Mr. Selous. After two years spent in various
operations for opening up the country and securing treaties with the
native chiefs, Mr. Selous returned to England in December, 1892, and
put the narrative of his adventures to press, but was called back in
August, 1893, returning at very short notice, on account of the
threatening attitude of the Matabele chief Lobengula and the
consequent risk of interruption in the development of the country. The
tribes had risen against the assumption of the company to claim as a
territorial cession what they had regarded as simply a grant of mining
and exploiting privileges. Mr. Selous engaged actively in the
campaign, in which he is credited with having fought with great
gallantry by the side of the colonists, and was wounded while
protecting some negroes who had been surprised by the enemy.
Returning again to Mashonaland, he reached there in time to witness a
second outbreak of the natives, vexed by the triple plague of locusts,
rinderpest, and the stringent regulations of the Chartered Company's
government with respect to cattle. His own cattle were stolen, and he
headed a company of volunteers that went out to check the insurgents
and protect the people who were still on their farms.
The fruits, in acquisition to geographical knowledge, of Mr. Selous's
adventures and explorations are to be found, mingled with much about
sporting and exciting incident, in his books: A Hunter's Wanderings in
South Africa, already mentioned; Travel and Adventure in Southeast
Africa (1893); Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia (1896); and in lectures
to the Geographical Society and periodical contributions concerning
Mashonaland.
These books abound in observations on natural history, often
constituting real contributions of new facts or new demonstrations to
the science, usually occurring incidentally in the narrative of
adventure, but sometimes given in more formal shape. The author avows
that his conclusions respecting animals are drawn from personal
experience of the beasts, and are not influenced in any way by the
stories of old hunters, Dutch or native. Among these notices are
original observations on the giraffe and its habits, notes on
buffaloes and their disposition, and remarks on variations in the
types of South African lions. Of this animal, while some authors would
make three species, the author believes there is only one. "As out of
fifty male lion skins," he says, "scarcely two will be found exactly
alike in the color and length of the mane, I think it would be as
reasonable to suppose there are twenty species as three." So in Notes
upon South African Rhinoceroses, a paper read before the Zoölogical
Society of London in June, 1881, and reprinted in this volume, Mr.
Selous gives his reasons for affirming that there are only two species
of rhinoceros in South or in all Africa--the square-mouthed or white
_Rhinoceros simus_ and the prehensile-lipped or black _Rhinoceros
bicornis_--while the supposed _Rhinoceros keitloa_, or blue rhinoceros
of the Boers, is merely a variety of the _bicornis_, the distinction
between the two being based only on differences in the relative length
of the horns. Another paper from the Proceedings of the Zoölogical
Society, reprinted here, is Notes on the South Central African
Antelopes, embodying again only the results of the author's own
observations. In this paper twenty-two species are described by their
scientific, native, Dutch, and English names, and their
characteristics, habits, appearance, and distinctions are indicated.
In the preface to his Travel and Adventure in Southeast Africa Mr.
Selous tells how he had determined, in 1881, upon visiting the ostrich
farm of his friend Frank Mandy, to settle down in Africa for a quiet
life. Then he went home and spent a few months in England. Visiting
the Natural History Department of the British Museum, he was shown by
Dr. Gunther and his associate how old and dilapidated some of the
specimens were, and how many noble forms were not represented at all.
He took note of what he ought to get should he visit the interior of
Africa again. Next we find him in South Africa, not quiet on a farm as
he had intended to be, but in the wilderness, where he spent six years
(1882-'87) engaged principally in collecting specimens "of the
magnificent fauna which once abounded throughout the land," but many
forms of which were now becoming scarce and some were verging on
extinction. He shot and preserved a great many fine specimens of the
larger antelopes, some of which may be seen in the New Natural History
Museum at South Kensington, while others are in the collection of the
South African Museum at Cape Town. Besides the stories of specimen
hunting and adventures with the lions that are always to be found
where game is abundant, the volume contains much matter of more
general interest, such as notes of personal experiences among the
Boers; accounts of two expeditions sent against the Batauweni by
Lobengula; the devastations committed by the Matabele in Mashonaland;
valuable notes on the Bushmen or Masarwas; accounts of journeys beyond
the Zambezi to the countries of the Machukulumbwi and Barotsi tribes;
and a review of the past history and present condition of Mashonaland.
We find here also a notice of the caves of Sinola, with a subterranean
lake in the principal cave having water marked by a deep-blue color
like that of the blue grotto of Capri, an account of which was
published by Mr. Selous in the Proceedings of the Geographical Society
of London for May, 1888. An account of Mr. Selous's Twenty Years in
Zambezia was published in the Geographical Journal in 1893.
Mr. Selous has done more than any other man to bring Mashonaland into
notice, and is credited, together with Cecil Rhodes, with having
contributed most to the creation of Rhodesia. The first comprehensive
account of Mashonaland was given by him in the Fortnightly Review for
May, 1889, when he described the country as a land of perennial
streams in which thirst is an unknown quantity; with its high plateau,
standing at an elevation of from four thousand to forty-six hundred
feet and forming a very important watershed, endowed with a network of
important streams, the springs supplying which, welling out from the
highest parts of the downs, were capable of being applied to the
irrigation of an enormous area, and having a salubrious climate, the
continuous southwest wind giving cool breezes in summer and cold ones
in winter. The high plateaus were further of much ethnological
interest, in that they gave shelter to the very few remnants of the
peaceful Mashonas who had escaped extermination at the hands of the
Matabele.
Editor's Table.
_SCIENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC MIND._
The address delivered by Prof. Michael Foster, as president this year
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, was not as
long or elaborate as such addresses are wont to be, but it contained
many thoughts of great value. After sketching the vast advances in
scientific knowledge made within the present century, he observed,
with great truth, that "the very story of the past which tells of the
triumphs of science puts away all thoughts of vainglory." Why? In the
first place, because no one can study the history of science without
being made to feel how very near, in many cases, the men of the past
came to anticipating some of the most famous discoveries and
generalizations of later years. Translate the language of an earlier
age into modern terms, and you often find that you have expressed the
most advanced scientific doctrine of to-day. In the second place, if
we find a certain lack of definiteness and truth to fact in the ideas
of the past, how can we be at all sure how _our_ ideas will look when
confronted with the fuller knowledge which doubtless our successors
will possess? Lastly, "there is written clearly on each page of the
history of science the lesson that no scientific truth is born anew,
coming by itself and of itself. Each new truth is always the offspring
of something which has gone before, becoming in turn the parent of
something coming after." However great the work of a man of science
may be, "it is not wholly his own; it is in part the outcome of the
work of men who have gone before." In this respect Professor Foster
sees a striking difference between the man of science and the poet. We
always know whence the former came, but the latter is almost as devoid
of visible ancestry as Melchizedek. When the man of science dies the
results which he achieved remain, and his work is taken up where he
left it off; whereas the poet, strictly speaking, has no continuators.
The Homeridæ do not represent Homer, nor do Dryden and Congreve take
the place of Shakespeare.
The story of natural knowledge or science, we are reminded, is a story
of continued progress. "There is in it not so much as a hint of
falling back--not even of standing still." The enemies of science
sometimes seek to turn against it the fact that each age revises the
conclusions of the preceding one. They ask, What dependence can be
placed upon opinions or theories that are thus subject to change? The
answer is that the science of each age is the nearest approximation
which that age can make to the truth, and upon some points represents
the truth with a great approach to finality of interpretation. The law
of gravitation, for example, as formulated by Newton, lies at the
foundation of the physics of to-day. The circulation of the blood was
discovered once for all by Harvey. The true theory of the solar system
was given once for all by Kepler. It is the glory of science that
whatever of imperfection may lurk in a scientific theory is sure to be
brought to light and corrected by subsequent observation and analysis.
The learned professor dwelt briefly but forcibly upon the qualities of
the scientific mind. In the first place, the scientific mind must
"vibrate in unison with that of which it is in search." It is in
search of truth, and it must therefore vibrate in unison with truth.
The follower of science must have a truthfulness beyond that of the
ordinary man, who does not set a great price upon exactness in his
observations or conclusions, and readily confounds things which,
superficially similar, are fundamentally different. Nature resents
even the most trifling inexactness, and the careless student will find
that the further he carries his inquiries the further he goes astray.
The scientific mind must also be alert. The indications and hints
which Nature gives are sometimes very slight, and only one who is
watchful in the extreme and attentive to the smallest things will
catch them. Then the problems which Nature sets are often complicated,
and call for a high degree of courage and perseverance. An inquiry
which seemed easy at first will suddenly become overcast by what seems
the most hopeless obscurity, and the scientific worker, unless he
possesses the necessary moral as well as intellectual qualities, will
fail in his quest. Considering the characteristics which the pursuit
of science tends to develop in its votaries, and considering that
scientific method is now and has been for many years past a
wonderfully devised system for carrying on research, Professor Foster
is surprised that the progress of science is not even more rapid than
it is. He fears that perhaps Science does not get the best minds
enrolled in her service, and rather hints that our institutions of
education are responsible for turning aside many who might lend great
aid in the advancement of real knowledge to less profitable pursuits.
In words of almost precisely similar import to some that we used in
these columns not very long ago, he observes that "that teaching is
one-sided, and therefore misleading, which deals with the doings of
man only and is silent about the works of Nature, in the sight of
which he and his doings shrink almost to nothing." The whole address
is stamped with the high thoughtfulness which so eminently
distinguishes its author, and deserves to be carefully pondered by all
who would understand the character and mission of science and the
intellectual needs of the present age.
_THE LATE WILLIAM H. APPLETON._
As many of our readers will have learned through the daily press, Mr.
William H. Appleton, long the head of the well-known publishing house
of D. Appleton and Company, passed away at his home in Riverdale on
the Hudson, October 19, 1899, having reached the advanced age of
eighty-five years. As one of the founders of this magazine, who from
the start was in close sympathy with its aims, kept up an active
interest in its management, and was ever ready to aid its conductors
with advice and encouragement, it is fitting that a few memorial words
should be spoken of him in these columns.
The career of Mr. Appleton was a marked one in many respects. Entering
the book business of his father, Mr. Daniel Appleton, at an unusually
early age, he soon developed such an aptitude for affairs that at
twenty-one he went abroad for the purpose of making the acquaintance
of the leading foreign publishers and paving the way for closer
relations with them in the importation and sale of their books in this
country. Three years later, or at the age of twenty-four, his father
made him a partner in the business, which had previously been extended
so as to include the publication as well as the sale of books, and had
now so increased in volume as to compel removal to more commodious
quarters. Ten years of growth and uninterrupted prosperity followed,
when Mr. Daniel Appleton, in 1848, retired from the now
well-established firm, William H. Appleton, at the age of thirty-four,
becoming its head, with his brothers John A. and Daniel Sidney as
partners. In co-operation with these and other brothers who afterward
entered the business, Mr. Appleton guided the operations of the firm
for a period of nearly fifty years, successfully piloting it through
several financial crises and carrying it to a foremost place among the
publishing houses of America.
Besides the routine of an extensive publishing business, the history
of the house during this time includes a number of large undertakings
involving the expenditure of vast sums of money, and years of labor by
many workers, and attended with risks that only the most far-seeing
business sagacity could justify. We may presume that the several
members of the firm shared a common faith in the success of these
great enterprises, but it is fair to infer that as the head of the
house William H. Appleton took a leading part in their origin and
execution. One of these ventures was the publication of the American
Cyclopædia, which in its present revised form represents an outlay of
over a million dollars and some ten years of time. Another
undertaking, and the one that we wish more particularly to speak of
here, was the extension of the business in the line of popular
scientific publications.
Scientific circles in this country have never realized the debt they
owe to D. Appleton and Company, and especially to William H. Appleton,
in this regard. It is no exaggeration to say that the advance of
science in the United States was hastened by more than a quarter of a
century by the enlightened and courageous policy which led the firm to
add this class of books to their lists at the time they did.
Everything apparently was against it--nothing in its favor. Our
scientific literature consisted mainly of a few text-books having only
a limited sale. Science itself was an affair of laboratories and bug
collectors, the one to be shunned and the other commiserated. The few
utterances of scientific men having a bearing on the great questions
of the right interpretation of Nature, man's relations to his fellows
and to the world at large, social betterment, etc., that here and
there arrested public attention were received with contemptuous sneers
or scouted as the rankest infidelity. Few who are not past middle life
will find it possible now to realize that this was the general
attitude toward science forty years ago, but we have only to refer the
reader to the writings of the time for abundant confirmation of our
statements.
It was such conditions as these that the firm was called upon to face
when considering the question of entering this new field of
publication. All ordinary business instincts were against it. Scarcely
a publisher either here or abroad would even listen to the proposal to
risk his capital in such an enterprise. Nevertheless, Mr. Appleton,
lending an appreciative ear to the arguments of the former editor of
this journal and displaying his usual foresight, finally decided in
favor of the project, which afterward resulted in the introduction of
the works of Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Bain, Romanes, and
other distinguished writers to American readers. A further step in the
same direction, taken later, was the publication of the International
Scientific Series, now numbering some eighty volumes. The scheme as
originated and shaped by Professor Youmans was heartily seconded by
Mr. Appleton, as was also the plan of the Popular Science Monthly.
A distinctive feature of the arrangements for the issue of all these
foreign books, and one which redounds in no small degree to the credit
of the firm, was the voluntary agreement, in the absence of an
international copyright law, to pay their authors the usual royalties,
making no distinction between them and authors at home. Mr. Appleton
had been a lifelong advocate of international copyright, founding his
contention on the simple justice of recognizing the property rights of
the author, no matter where he lived. Although to adopt such a course
was to expose themselves to the possibility of heavy loss through the
issue of reprints by irresponsible parties, a thing which actually
happened in the case of a good many of the volumes, the principle was
faithfully adhered to, thus anticipating by many years the central
provision of our present law.
The storm of denunciation raised abroad by the appearance of the
earlier installments of these writings might well have deterred the
boldest from repeating the experiment of giving them currency in
America. But in spite of solemn warnings that dire consequences would
be visited on the publisher who ventured to issue them here, the books
continued to appear, while the predicted evils never came to pass.
It must not be inferred from the foregoing, however, that Mr. Appleton
was either unmindful or wanting in respect for the opposition which
his course aroused. Much of this had its origin in the religious
convictions of the community, not a little of the criticism, be it
said, emanating directly from the Church or its leading
representatives. But, being a strong churchman himself, actively
furthering the work of the Church with his private means and personal
co-operation, in full sympathy with its purposes, and rejoicing in its
beneficent influence, he was the last one who would wantonly outrage
the sacred beliefs of his fellow-men. Yet, gifted with a
large-mindedness that is at least unusual in the walks of business, he
was enabled to see that the onward march of natural knowledge which
had so often before excited alarm among men of narrow views could have
nothing in it that was inconsistent with a truly religious life;
while, on the other hand, to promote its advance and diffusion was to
contribute by so much to the highest human welfare.
The wisdom of Mr. Appleton's course has been fully justified by the
event. As we look over the last half of the century, which has been so
fruitful in discovery and has witnessed the development of so many
agencies for the amelioration of human ills and so manifold an
increase in man's power for right living, we can see at the various
stages of this evolution how large a part the broadening of thought
fostered by these authors and the new aims and methods in inquiry
suggested by them have contributed to the advance. It could not, in
short, have been made so rapidly or effectively without the stimulus
they gave. For what has been done in this line in this country we
think--when we reflect that it was he who had the courage to bring the
works of those thinkers here, and who made them accessible to students
and the reading public, who constituted the agency through which the
new thoughts and aims were spread--a very important part in the
achievement may fairly be ascribed to Mr. William H. Appleton.
Scientific Literature.
Owing to the increasing demands upon our space, authors and publishers
are notified that hereafter the department of Scientific Literature,
with the exception of Publications Received, will be discontinued.
SPECIAL BOOKS.
The busy pen of Mr. _John Fiske_ has produced another book marked by
the qualities which the public has learned to associate with all his
work--lucidity of expression, felicity of illustration, a large
command of the conventional elements of literary composition, and a
philosophy which, while very free and lightsome in its steps and
paces, always has the luck to fetch up within easy hailing distance of
a moderate orthodoxy. Mr. Fiske undertakes to conduct us on an
excursion _Through Nature to God_,[27] somewhat as Cook, of
international fame, might undertake to see us safe from New York to
the Holy Land. Of the two, we think Cook makes the surer thing of it;
yet no one can deny that Mr. Fiske has done his best to trace the
itinerary and encourage his excursionists to believe that they will
"get there."
[Footnote 27: Through Nature to God. By John Fiske. Boston and New
York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.]
We may as well candidly confess that we have not much faith in the
method followed in the work before us. The intention is to show that
an analysis of Nature and of Nature's ways yields God; in other words,
that we have only to carry out the processes of thought which an
examination of the external world and of human history sets in motion
in order to find God at the end of the argument. Thus, by searching,
contrary to what Scripture has generally been held to imply, we find
out both that God is and to some extent what he is. We prefer the
older view. The world's greatest Teacher said simply, "God is a
spirit." He did not say that this was a conclusion to which many lines
of argument led. He did not hint at any kind of argument, but assumed
the affirmation of God by the human consciousness. We venture to say
that if Mr. Fiske's method were successful and we could argue
ourselves into a belief in God, the result would be disastrous; for
the God of argument, or even of analogy, is not the God of the human
soul or conscience. We should have one conclusion more of science, but
we should lose that for which no conclusion of science could make
amends--our sense of the infinite and the possibility of faith.
Mr. Fiske discusses, in the early chapters of his book, The Mystery of
Evil. He takes the familiar ground that evil is the necessary
correlative, and in a manner the necessary condition, of good. We are
placed in a universe that abounds in evil in order that by conquering
it we may raise ourselves to a moral level otherwise impossible. On
one page the author goes so far as to say that God, and not the devil,
"is the creator of evil," but elsewhere he relaxes his boldness and
speaks of evil being "permitted." One feels like asking, If good and
evil are equally made by God, then which is which? When we speak of
electricity as positive and negative we do not ascribe any superiority
to one over the other. Nor do we say that centrifugal is a more
commendable form of force than centripetal, or _vice versa_. "For
strong and resolute men and women," we are told, "an Eden would be but
a fool's paradise." This is not complimentary to our first parents in
their primitive condition of innocence, and it puts the curse
pronounced upon them in a somewhat equivocal light. There is also
quite a rehabilitation of the "serpent," who, it seems, knew quite
well what he was talking about and gave excellent advice. We wonder
whether Mr. Fiske is really of opinion that it helps us to solve any
of the practical problems of life to be told that without evil there
could not be good. Men have known for centuries that it is good to
fight evil, though what evil is essentially they have often been in
doubt. Upon the latter point Mr. Fiske does not in the least attempt
to enlighten us; and yet it should be rather a more hopeful enterprise
to attempt to show us what is specifically evil and ought therefore to
be resisted, than to vindicate evil in general as the indispensable
condition of good, and something, therefore, which God was justified
in making.
The second division of the book deals with The Cosmic Roots of Love
and Self-Sacrifice. We can not see that these roots are traced further
back than the mother's affection for her offspring. Mother's love is
doubtless an old story in the world by now, and perhaps as good a
story as earth has to tell; but it seems to us that the "cosmic"
character of it is not very apparent. We may believe that it was
destined to come in the fullness of time, but this can be said equally
of all that exists. "I think it can be shown," says Mr. Fiske, "that
the principles of morality have their roots in the deepest foundations
of the universe; that the cosmic process is ethical in the profoundest
sense; that, in that far-off morning of the world when the stars sang
together and the sons of God shouted for joy, the beauty of
self-sacrifice and disinterested love formed the chief burden of the
mighty theme." All we can say in regard to this is that Mr. Fiske has
_not_ shown it. He has shown just what we all knew before--that love
exists in the world, that it antagonizes selfishness, and that human
beings are endowed with a moral and religious sense--but he has not
made it plain that the meaning of the universe is to be found in these
(as we regard them) higher developments. He has himself acknowledged
that, on a broad view of the world-wide struggle for life, there are
no moral elements to be seen.
Religion, as we hold, is its own justification. There is more of
religion in one verse of the Psalms than in all the Theodicies that
ever were written. "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so
panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the
living God." Here is the whole essence of the matter--the affirmation
of the human heart that there is something or some one beyond and
above the mesh of circumstance and fact in which our lives are
involved; something or some one who authenticates all that is good,
and everlastingly condemns what is evil; something or some one to
which or to whom the soul gravitates as to nothing else in the
universe. When this affirmation is strong, religious life is strong;
when it is weak, religious life is weak; should it cease entirely,
then religion is dead. The book Mr. Fiske has given us is interesting
from first to last--all his books are interesting--but it does not
increase our knowledge, nor does it add to our knowledge faith.
GENERAL NOTICES.
The author of _Extemporaneous Oratory for Professional and Amateur
Speakers_[28] is himself one of the most effective orators, especially
in debate, of the time. He has embodied in this book the results of
ripened thought and successful experience gained in a field in which
he is a master, for the instruction and help of those who would follow
what he regards as the greatest of all arts, including the elements of
all--music in the intonations of the voice, and painting and sculpture
in the life, attitudes, and expression of the speaker. It is an art,
too, which has wielded a more general and important influence than any
other, which is almost universal in its appeals, and which any one may
at any time find useful, when it will be of great advantage to him to
possess the ability "to speak distinctly to the purpose, gracefully,
with genuine fire." Extemporaneous oratory concerns the delivery, in
form and language suggested by the occasion, "of ideas previously
conceived and adopted with more or less fullness and precision,
together with such thoughts and feelings as may arise and obtain
utterance." It has many advantages over other methods of oratory, all
tending to give the speaker greater power over his audience, and
particularly in the fact that the extemporizer is at all times ready
to expound, defend, illustrate, and enforce his opinions. The
extemporaneous speaker must have a full and fluent command of
language, and a full store of facts which he may at any time have to
bring to bear upon the subject of his address and in the vindication
of his opinions. The first place of importance is given to facts of
natural science, which are of increasing utility. "To the educated and
uneducated alike, natural science is now the most interesting of
themes." Next come the facts of history and biography, those of the
special branches bearing on the speaker's theme and purpose, and the
great general conceptions included in the thoughts of the learned; and
he must have settled opinions. At the basis of Dr. Buckley's treatment
of this art and of his advice to those who would perfect themselves in
it is the principle that extemporization is evolution after
involution. This advice, in which the various phases of the subject
are commented upon under a great variety of aspects, concerns the
general preparation for the address, the acquisition of effective
command of language, the exercise and training of the voice, the
intellectual and physical elements that enter into oratory, its
accessories, and the factor of the audience--all plainly and
practically presented, with a facility of style that makes the reading
of the book a pleasure.
[Footnote 28: Extemporaneous Oratory for Professional and Amateur
Speakers. By James M. Buckley. New York: Eaton & Mains. Pp. 480.
Price, $1.50.]
Readers of the Popular Science Monthly have already had an opportunity
of perusing some of the narrative and observations which Professor
_Heilprin_ has embodied in his _Alaska and the Klondike_.[29] In it he
has attempted to portray that remarkable region in its true aspects.
Professor Heilprin is well able to do so, for he is a keen observer
and looks with a scientific eye, and his literary style is free and
graphic. He made a summer journey to the region last year (1898),
between the end of July and the middle of October, with the object of
being "able to determine between fact and fancy, and to obtain a
personal knowledge of the region and its varied conditions." What he
saw and heard is here presented. While by no means pretending to that
degree of accuracy and of proper insight which can only come with more
protracted and intimate knowledge, the author believes that he has
given a careful and unprejudiced account. Persons whose ideas of the
regions about Dawson are associated with visions of arctic severity
and sterility may be a little surprised at reading of one's looking
from the heights about the town northwestward "over a most lovely
stretch of river, with hillsides closely besetting it, and with a
vegetation of most striking brilliancy and vigor," and of the eye
turned southward, losing, in consequence of the different
configuration of the ground, "all but the beautiful verdant slopes
which still mark out the valley"; of the beholder being able for hours
at a time to sit watching the beauty of the landscape; and of the
difficulty of recommending to one endowed with a proper appreciation
for the works of quiet Nature "a more enjoyable exercise than to take
in a bit of this wonderful land of the North, and with it a mellow
sunshine that is not to be found elsewhere." These pretty landscape
pictures of the arctic summer are followed by accounts of society at
the Klondike as the author found it, of the trail, steamboat travel,
and the routes to the region; a description of the placers, their
occurrence, and the methods of mining; observations on the physical
history and geology of the gold fields; and a summary of the laws
regulating mining. In the summary of his geological discussion the
author expresses the opinion that it seems probable that "the Klondike
gold region is merely a fractional part of a discontinuously
continuous auriferous tract that extends in a westerly course into the
heart of Alaska, and southward into British Columbia."
[Footnote 29: Alaska and the Klondike. A Journey to the New
Eldorado. With Hints to the Traveler and Observations on the
Physical History and Geology of the Gold Regions, the Conditions
and Methods of working the Klondike Placers, and the Laws
governing and regulating Mining in the Northwest Territory of
Canada. By Angelo Heilprin. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp.
315. Price, $1.75.]
_Mr. Bullen's Idylls of the Sea_[30] comprises three groups of essays,
each group being marked by distinct characteristics. The sketches in
the first group, the designation of which gives the name to the book,
answer approximately well to Mr. Strachey's estimation of the whole as
"some of the most vivid things ever written about the sea," such as
only a man who really knows the sea in all its humors, and "has heard
all those multitudinous voices that echo along the waste spaces of the
deep," could write. There is something weird about them, and they have
the air of mystery and superstitious awe with which, according to
tradition, the sailor regards the imperfectly understood features of
the sea. They are short stories of curious or striking incidents of
sea life. The essays of the second group are real natural-history
sketches--accounts of some oceanic birds, the kraken, sharks, the
devilfish, etc., by a man who is well and scientifically acquainted
with them. The third group includes longer sketches of sea-farers'
life, rather more actual ones than those of the first group, and
papers having a critical bearing on the present conditions of British
seamanship.
[Footnote 30: Idylls of the Sea. By Frank T. Bullen. With an
Introduction by J. St. Loe Strachey. New York: D. Appleton and
Company. Price, $1.25.]
The constant advance in the knowledge of dietetics makes it desirable
that its results should be put in an accessible form, and this is
particularly the case in regard to food for those in ill health, to
whom it may be the means of restoring the normal condition. In her
book on _Diet in Illness and Convalescence_[31] the author has
endeavored to present the substance of Diet for the Sick, now out of
print, together with recent thought on the subject, especially in the
treatment of typhoid and malarial fevers, which we owe in such variety
to the present war. An outline is given for suitable food in the more
common forms of disease, suggestions for serving meals tastefully to
an invalid, and numerous recipes for beverages, soups, dishes of
meats, vegetables, and desserts. Some of these are taken from English
and French treatises; others are contributions of American cooks, and
include many novel and excellent ideas. From the preparation of
koumiss and May wine to the manipulation of Dixie biscuit there is no
want of explicitness, and one is tempted to covet the state of
convalescence in which he could fare upon such attractive compounds as
rose, violet, or amethyst jelly. A word of caution is inserted now and
then. We are told "a fritter of any kind should never be mentioned in
an invalid's book." Macaroni croquettes and soufflé of shad roe are,
however, admissible. The beginning of the volume is devoted by the
author to a brief consideration of the constituents of food and
processes of digestion, with directions for the use of the pancreatic
ferments. There are unfortunately many disputed points concerning a
fit dietary in illness; not only idiosyncrasies of constitution but
incomplete knowledge of physiological chemistry still render the
problem difficult. New foods are constantly introduced which
subsequent experiment proves to be harmful. The last dictum, we
believe, in regard to saccharin is that it is not wholly innocuous, so
that it might be as well for the diabetic patient to learn to do
without sweets in the beginning, while as for the digestive ferments,
they are at the least hazardous concoctions. We can not be too wary of
artificial substitutes and laboratory products which claim the virtues
of organic material or living protoplasm.
[Footnote 31: Diet in Illness and Convalescence. By Alice
Worthington Winthrop. New York: Harper & Brothers. Pp. 286.]
The reason for the being of _John Munro's The Story of the British
Race_[32] is briefly indicated in the preface as to be found in the
fact that the current ideas on the subject are derived from the views
of historians representing the doctrines of an earlier and less
critical generation, while the fact is overlooked that the new science
of anthropology, using careful observations and exact methods, has put
the real nature of the British people in a light in which it was never
seen so clearly before. The result is that the old ideas on the
subject have been greatly modified. Mr. Munro believes that his little
book is the first attempt to bring these important results and views
of modern anthropologists before the general public in familiar
language, whereby the oversights of historians and teachers may be
redeemed. An important error to be controverted, in the author's view,
lies in the fine-drawn distinctions and sharply defined demarcations
that have been made between Celts and Saxons. It is inferred from
anthropology that the population of the British Isles is a mixture of
all the races of western Europe, in which the Teutonic and
Mediterranean elements--"the aborigines of Europe"--predominate, while
"the intrusive Celtic race from Asia," still represented by the
Bretons, passed into the British Isles in comparatively small numbers.
Scotland is perhaps more Teutonic and less Mediterranean than England,
Wales, or Ireland. Wales is the least Teutonic and the most
Mediterranean, if not Celtic, of the three. England has more of the
Dutch and Low Country elements than of the Scandinavian, with
apparently not far short of an equal share of the Mediterranean and
Teutonic elements. Ireland is perhaps as Teutonic as England, though
the better fusion of the elements may disguise the fact. The author
thinks that the first chapters of English history will have to be
written over again by the light of anthropology.
[Footnote 32: The Story of the British Race. (Library of Useful
Stories.) By John Munro. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp.
228. Price, 40 cents.]
The _Eighteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological
Survey_[33] mentions, as an important change in the field work that
made necessary by the legislation providing for the establishment of
levels and permanent monuments and bench marks, of which 10,840 miles
of levels were run and 1,820 bench marks were established. The
topographic surveys to date covered an aggregate area of 759,525
square miles, of which 240,000 square miles were on a scale of four
miles to the inch. The topographic work has progressed very
satisfactorily under the present organization of the survey,
including, in the year covered by the report, surveys in the Indian
Territory and of the northern part of the boundary line between Idaho
and Montana--the first work of the kind assigned to the Geological
Survey--and the beginning of the survey of the forest reserves. The
work on the educational series of rocks has been completed. It
includes two hundred and fifty larger and smaller sets, which will be
distributed to institutions where geology is taught. In his general
report the director mentions the work of more than thirty geological
parties in all parts of the United States, of six paleontological
parties, hydrographic and topographic surveys by States, and the work
of the division of mineral resources, the full account of which will
constitute Part V of the report. The theoretic and other papers in
Part II relate to the Triassic Formation of Connecticut (W. M.
Davis), Geology of the Edwards Plateau, etc., Texas (R. T. Hill and J.
W. Vaughan), North American Tertiary Horizons (W. H. Dall), Glaciers
of Mount Rainier (I. C. Russell) and Rocks of Mount Rainier (G. O.
Smith), The Franklin White Limestone of New Jersey (J. E. Wolfe and A.
H. Brooks), the Geology of San Clemente Island (W. S. T. Smith),
Geology of the Cape Cod District (N. H. Shaler), and Recent Earth
Movement in the Great Lakes Region (G. K. Gilbert). Part III contains
papers on the gold districts of Alaska, by G. F. Becker, J. E. Spurr,
and H. B. Goodrich; Coal Fields of Puget Sound (B. Willis), the Judith
Mountains of Montana (W. H. Weed and L. V. Pirsson), Certain Mining
Districts in Idaho (W. Lindgren and F. H. Knowlton), and the Mining
Districts of the Telluride Quadrangle, Colorado (C. W. Purington). The
four papers in Part IV are a Report of Progress of Stream Measurements
during 1896, by A. P. Davis; the Water Resources of Indiana and Ohio,
by Frank Leverett; New Developments in Well-boring in South Dakota, by
N. H. Darton; and Water Storage and the Construction of Dams, by J. D.
Schuyler.
[Footnote 33: Eighteenth Annual Report of the United States
Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior, 1896-'97.
Charles D. Walcott, Director. In Five Parts. Director's Report,
including Triangulation and Spirit Leveling. Pp. 450, with 4
plates. Part II; Papers chiefly of a Theoretic Nature. Pp. 653,
with 105 plates. Part III; Economic Geology. Pp. 861, with 118
plates. Part IV; Hydrography. Pp. 756, with 102 plates.]
The purpose of _Belle S. Cragin's Our Insect Friends and Foes_[34] is
illustrated from a passage in the author's own life, cited in the
preface: "In my younger days, when Nature study was unknown in schools
and my problems had to be solved by my own investigations or remain
unsolved, I used to long for somebody to write a book that would tell
me the things I wished to know, or show me how to find them out for
myself; and that is what I have tried to do for you." The beginning of
the book is a chapter on the collection, preservation, and care of
insects for specimens, giving explicit directions for collecting them
perfect, for putting them to death, for mounting and placing them in
the cabinet, and for protecting them against vermin, dust, and mold,
with descriptions of the instruments, cases, etc., that are used. In
the descriptions of insects no attempt is made to mention any except
the commonest species, and not all of those. The habitat, in most
cases, is included in the description. As a rule, most of the species
are those found in the States east of the Rocky Mountains and north of
the Gulf States. Scientific names are attached to the illustrations
and a list of popular names, with their scientific equivalents. The
descriptions are brief and well adapted to the purpose indicated in
the quotation with which our notice begins.
[Footnote 34: Our Insect Friends and Foes. How to Collect,
Preserve, and Study them. By Belle S. Cragin. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 377. Price, $1.75.]
In presenting a revision of their _Plane and Solid Geometry_[35]
Messrs. _Beman_ and _Smith_ express their belief as being, that amid
all the schemes for breaking away from the formal proofs of Euclid and
Legendre and leading the student to independent discovery, the best
results are secured by setting forth a minimum of formal proofs as
models, and a maximum of unsolved or unproved propositions as
exercises. They likewise share in the belief that such of the notions
of modern geometry as materially simplify the ancient should find
place in our elementary text-books. Accordingly, they have introduced
various ideas, such as those of one-to-one correspondence,
anti-parallels, negative magnitudes, general figures, prismatic space,
similarity of point systems, etc., which are of real use in the early
study of the science. In general, whatever is found to be usable in
elementary work has been inserted where it will prove of most value.
[Footnote 35: New Plane and Solid Geometry. By W. W. Beman and D.
E. Smith. Boston: Ginn & Co. Pp. 382.]
The plan of the investigation undertaken by Mr. _Walter Smith_ in his
_Methods of Knowledge_[36] is, first, to give a definition of
knowledge. The methods are then considered by which men have thought
it possible to attain knowledge of the self on the one hand, and the
not-self on the other. The common view of philosophers and men of
science that truth is given in general concepts, or universals, or
categories, is taken up, and the special form of the doctrine given in
empiricism is considered and found to be a doctrine wanting in all its
forms. Yet it is pointed out that the concept has its uses in the
mental economy. The method is then expounded of knowing the not-self
as being gained by sympathetic imitation. It is then determined
wherein self-knowledge consists, and the bearing of this theory on the
philosophical problem and on certain practical questions is indicated.
[Footnote 36: Methods of Knowledge. An Essay in Epistemology. New
York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 340. Price, $1.25.]
In _The Philosophy of Memory and Other Essays_[37] Dr. _D. T. Smith_
develops a theory of mental action, the basis of which is the setting
up in the cells of the gray matter of the brain, and possibly of the
spinal cord, of orderly grouping of waves or vibrations among certain
atoms or molecules by whatever may affect any of the senses; that
these undulations are realized first as sensations, and then group
themselves so as to form perceptions, ideas, emotions, etc. They rise
in succession into the scope of consciousness. After a time the effect
of these vibrations in consciousness is weakened, without perhaps
utterly passing away, and retains the possibility of being re-enforced
by kindred vibrations in harmony with it. This is memory.
[Footnote 37: The Philosophy of Memory and Other Essays. By D. T.
Smith. Louisville, Ky.: John P. Morton & Co. Pp. 203.]
In _The Psychology of Reasoning_[38] M. _Alfred Binet_ makes reasoning
a process of the formation of mental images. He finds no decided
difference between perception--the cognizance of sensations and
assignment of them to their source--and logical reasoning. "The two
operations are both reasonings, transitions from the known to the
unknown"; "the two extremes of a long series of phenomena." A premise
is "a judgment, an association of images," and a conclusion that
follows from the premises is "an association of images produced by
other associations." The theory of three images--the two premises and
the conclusion--"is applicable to reasonings of every kind, and
therefore constitutes a general theory of reasoning.... If it be
recollected that images are fragments, residues of former sensations;
that they spring from the place where former sensations have been
received, in the sensory centers of the cerebral surface layers, it
will be understood that the purpose of these images in grouping
themselves in reasonings, according to the laws of their affinity, is
to replace the absent sensations. Such is therefore the function of
reasoning; it enlarges the sphere of our sensibility, and extends it
to all objects which our senses can not know directly. Thus
understood, reasoning is a _supplementary sense_, which has the
advantage of being free from those strict conditions of time and
space--the two enemies of human knowledge." In memory, "the suggested
image is projected and localized in the panorama of the past, of which
it appears to be a fragment." Imagination is "a faculty of creating
assemblages of images which do not correspond to any external
reality."
[Footnote 38: The Psychology of Reasoning. Based on Experimental
Researches in Hypnotism. By Alfred Binet. Chicago: The Open Court
Publishing Company. Pp. 191.]
The idea of preparing _Who's Who in America_[39] was suggested by the
success of the English book, Who's Who? now in its fifty-second year,
and the work has been prepared on similar lines. Its purpose is to
supply information concerning living American men and women who have
achieved distinction, who hold recognized public positions, and who
have contributed so as to have it talked about to the growth,
development, knowledge, and civilization of the country. Eight
thousand six hundred and two such persons are represented in this
book, including, _ex-officio_, all members of the Fifty-sixth
Congress, Governors of States and Territories now in office, United
States, State, and territorial judges of courts of high jurisdiction,
persons of other prominent official classification, national
academicians, members of the National Academy of Sciences, heads of
the larger universities and colleges, and a few others chosen on
similar arbitrary lines. Special effort has been made to include all
living American authors of books of more than ephemeral value. The
data for the book have been obtained from first hands, except in a
very few cases, where the modesty of the subjects made it necessary
to supply the material from other sources, when the articles were
submitted to the subjects for revision.
[Footnote 39: Who's Who in America. A Biographical Dictionary of
Living Men and Women in the United States, 1899-1900. Edited by
John W. Leonard. Chicago: A. N. Marquis & Co. Pp. 822.]
In _The Dawn of Reason_[40] Dr. _Weir_ has provided a most interesting
book for the unscientific reader as well as for the comparative
psychologist. He traces the gradual unfolding of conscious mind in
animal life from the actinophryans which discriminates between the
grains of starch and sand, and the Stentor which changes its position
to catch a ripened spore, to the higher forms that decorate their
homes, exhibit parental affection, exercise mathematical faculty, and
extricate themselves from unforeseen dangers. As the field of
observation of the senses of touch, taste, and smell has been so
thoroughly worked by Lubbock and other naturalists, special attention
is paid by the author to the senses of sight and hearing, in regard to
which he furnishes new and valuable data. In addition to these he
claims to establish the fact that tinctumutations and "homing" are
auxiliary senses--not instincts. He located the center of color
changing in the frog exactly below the optic, and by artificial
stimulation produced the alteration in tint, and by excision, or
treatment with atropine, destroyed the chromatophoric function. By
experimentation upon snails he found the center of the sense of
locality at the base of the cephalic ganglion, and, removing it,
rendered them unable to return to their homes. Many anecdotes are
given showing that the lower orders of animal life exercise conscious
determination, and that among those with more complex nervous systems
there is a mind akin to that of man. Not only do animals remember
friends, strangers, and events, but they love, hate, and fear. They
evince æsthetic feeling also when the spider ornaments its web with
logwood flakes, the dog howls in harmonic accord with the church bell,
and salamanders assemble at the sound of a piccolo. Still higher
psychical attributes are those of animals that show parental affection
or ability to count, like the mason wasp, which provides invariably
five spiders for the male larva and eight for the female; or the
harvester ants that plant their grain, weed and winnow it. Examples
are cited of the capacity of the elephant to form abstract ideas and
of the dog to indulge in brown studies. The author scouts at the
theory that "specialized instinct," or "intelligent accident," prompts
actions in animals which in man would be ascribed to reason.
"Instinct," he writes, "is the bugbear of psychologists," and
thereupon he differentiates sharply the two sadly confused functions.
[Footnote 40: The Dawn of Reason. By James Weir, Jr., M. D. New
York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 234. Price, $1.25.]
In the thesis entitled _A Step Forward_, _F. Theodor Kruger_ proposes,
as a measure of possible social reform, placing the medical and legal
professions wholly under the direct control of the civil authorities,
to be exercised through duly constituted boards or departments of the
several communities.
In his study of _Centralized Administration of Liquor Laws in the
American Commonwealths_ (Columbia University Studies in History,
Economics, and Public Law) _Clement M. L. Sites_ finds that widely
variant policies are followed by the several States in the regulation
of the liquor traffic, all based upon the broad powers of taxation and
police. While we hear much of characteristic plans of regulation,
little is said about characteristic systems of administration. This is
because the liquor laws are administered incoherently. There is no
consensus, even within the Commonwealth, in standards of
administration. Each community practically determines for itself how
the law shall be enforced, and we have all degrees of enforcement,
from rigid severity to none. The various plans of regulation are
classified by the author according to the dominant aspect in which
they regard the liquor traffic. It has been treated as an open
traffic, subject simply to taxation and reasonable safeguards; as a
necessary but dangerous business, to be limited to approved persons
and places and surrounded by special safeguards; as a criminal
enterprise, to be suppressed, like highway robbery; and as a subject
of legal monopoly. It is the purpose of Mr. Sites's essay to follow
the developments of centralized administration that have taken place
in recent years in each of these spheres, and in that of the
institution and maintenance of judicial proceedings. The phases of
current development that seem to merit special note are the
substitution of the liquor-tax system for the license system, the
extension and elaboration of local option, the contingent central
control of city police administration, and the recognition of the
general province of administration. The author's study shows that
these developments accord in general with the laws of evolution, each
representing some special aspect of the differentiation. In
considering the "dispensary" plan, illustrated in South Carolina, a
significant contribution to current thought is remarked in the
approval it gives to the use of liquors as a beverage, while their
abuse is disapproved in an equally marked degree, a distinction being
attempted here, with correspondingly different methods of treatment
between those who can be trusted with liquors and those who can not.
_The Report of the United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries_
for the year ending June 30, 1898, represents that the operations of
the division of fish culture were in some respects more important
during that than in any preceding year. This was owing in part to the
natural growth of the work, and in part to greater efficiency in
dealing with the various questions and problems that came up for
consideration. The propagation and distribution of food fishes
exceeded by about forty per cent the work accomplished in any other
twelve months. The steady increase in the catch of shad is cited as
being conclusive evidence of the value of artificial propagation. The
constant decline in the lobster fishery accentuates the necessity for
increased work in that line. The efforts to acclimatize food fishes in
waters to which they are not indigenous have been continued. The
special papers published in connection with the report relate to
mackerel investigations, the alewife fisheries, the oyster beds of
Louisiana, the shad fisheries of the Atlantic coast, reports of fishes
obtained in sea explorations, a list of publications, and a report of
the exhibit at the Tennessee Centennial.
_The Tenth Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission on the
Statistics of Railways in the United States_ covers the year ending
June 30, 1897. The year is characterized as having been for the
transportation industry one "of deferred expectations." While the
years from 1890 to 1893 each closed with increased gross earnings as
compared with the preceding year, 1893-'94 was disastrous, showing a
large decrease; no recovery took place in 1894-'95, but an increase
took place in 1895-'96. A downward turn came again in the year of the
present report, with no revival till the last month of the twelve. The
total increase in mileage for the year of the report was only 1,651.84
miles, the smallest increase and the smallest percentage of increase
noted in any year since 1890. "In many States," says the report,
"railway construction seems to have been practically abandoned.
Especially is this noticeable in the more populous districts of the
country--a result which is not entirely due to the general commercial
depression, but to the marvelous increase in electric railways for
suburban and short-distance traffic. The influence of electric
construction upon steam transportation is noted in certain of the
reports of State railway commissions for the current year." These are
only two of the numerous interesting facts presented in the report.
_Small Accumulators, how Made and Used_, is the first of a series of
popular scientific handbooks for students and engineers. The
particular subject has been selected for beginning the series under
the suggestion of a large number of requests for advice which the
author, _Percival Marshall_, had received in his capacity as editor of
the Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician. The work is intended to be
an elementary handbook--"a practical and trustworthy guide"--for
amateurs and students. The theory of the accumulator is explained,
directions are given for making them, types of small accumulators are
illustrated, the charging and use of accumulators are explained, and
the applications are shown. Useful receipts and a glossary of
technical terms are given. (The book is published by Spon &
Chamberlain, New York. Price, 50 cents.)
In his _Better World Philosophy--a Sociological Synthesis_ (Chicago:
the Ward Waugh Company), _J. Howard Moore_ utters a protest against
the egoism or selfishness of our day, and suggests an ideal scheme.
The problem of life is defined as being the relation of each
individual to the rest of the universe, and is peculiarized by the
existence of the social problem involving relations of individuals to
each other different from those sustained to the impersonal universe.
There are in the nature of living beings the egoistic element, which
impels action in behalf of self, and the altruistic element, which
prompts or prevents movement out of consideration to others. At
present the egoistic element predominates, with results that make a
picture far from bright. In the social ideal the strong should
supplement the weak as they would like to be supplemented if they were
weak; individuals not unequal but diverse may mutualize their efforts
to the advantage of all; and each individual should perform in the
social economy that function for which he is best fitted, and should
receive in return "a graceful equity in the means for satisfying his
desires."
Among the books announced for issue soon by Henry Holt & Co. are _The
Book of Vertebrate Zoölogy_, by Prof. _J. S. Kingsley_, author of The
Elements of Comparative Zoölogy, published by the same house, which
can be used as a companion to McMurrich's Invertebrate Zoölogy;
_Elementary Studies in Chemistry_, by Prof. _Joseph Torrey_, of
Harvard, which, while it is characterized by the emphasis laid upon
quantitative laboratory work in general chemistry, will be a
comprehensive text-book on the whole subject; and _Moulds, Mildews,
and Mushrooms_, a guide to the systematic study of the fungi and
_Mycetozoa_ and their literature, by Prof. _Lucien Underwood_, of
Columbia University.
Miss Cornelia E. Horsford, being interested in the question of the
origin of certain ancient ruins situated on the Charles River, Mass.,
and elsewhere in America, which were discovered by the late Prof. E.
N. Horsford and were believed by him to be relics of the settlements
formed by the Norsemen in the tenth century, commissioned Mr.
Thorstein Erlingsson to examine for comparison certain ancient
dwellings in Iceland, in the summer of 1895. The inquiries assigned to
him related to the method of construction of the long houses, square
buildings, hillside cots with pavements, mounds, things and doom
rings, irrigation and drainage, ditches, river dams, hithes and ship
docks, or _nauts_, grave-hills, and forts. The results of the study
are given, with illustrations, in a small book, _Ruins of the Saga
Times_, by _Thorstein Erlingsson_. (Published by David Nutt, London.)
Mr. Erlingsson's report is supplemented by an outline of already
ascertained knowledge regarding early Scandinavian home building,
derived from previous excavations and investigations furnished by F.
T. Norris and Jön Stefánsson, and a summary in French by M. E. D.
Grand.
_The Quarterly Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain and Ireland_ was issued during the thirty-seven years from the
beginning of 1871 in the form styled demi-octavo. The small pages of
this size entailed some inconveniences, especially when ample plates
and tables were needed for illustration. With the double number
(August and November, 1898) a new series was begun, in the form styled
imperial octavo, with a page considerably larger than in the old form
and corresponding in size with the important publications of some of
the continental societies of Europe. This number contains the
proceedings of seven meetings of the society and important
anthropological articles, some of them on American subjects. Among
them is a criticism, by Prof. W. Z. Ripley, on Deniker's
Classification of the Races of Europe.
In _How to Swim_ (Putnams, $1) Captain _Davis Dalton_, Chief Inspector
of the United States Volunteer Life-Saving Corps, gives a practical
treatise upon the art of natation, together with instruction as to the
best methods of saving persons imperiled in the water and of
resuscitating persons apparently drowned. The treatise covers every
branch of the art, and abounds in cautions in connection with nearly
every topic, against the mistakes that may arise from timidity or the
carelessness of over-confidence. The author holds that swimming is an
art to be acquired and learned like other athletic arts, although it
depends upon natural principles. The best movements for taking
advantages of the physical laws involved in it have been studied by
competent men, and a brief and clear presentation of them is attempted
here. First, we have the lessons for the beginner, who must, before
all things, "have confidence." The different strokes are described in
detail and illustrated; the different modes of swimming and the
postures, swimming in clothes, taking off clothes in the water, diving
and swimming under water, swimming in waves, and other features are
explained; and, finally, the life-saving directions are given, and
public education in swimming is insisted upon.
_The Southern Magazine_ is a new monthly, published at Manassas, Va.,
by the Southern Publishing Company, of which we have the third number,
that for August. It has a definite flavor of the old South, for which
we find no fault with, for there was much about the old South which
ought to be preserved, and no little that was too precious to be lost.
Among the matters of special interest in this number are the Sketch of
Sidney Lanier, by Ellen Manderson, with selections from his writings;
The Last Meeting of the Confederate Cabinet (held, by a curious
coincidence, at Abbeville, S. C., where secession was started), by
Walter L. Miller; an account of the University of Virginia, by John S.
Patten, which appears to be the first of a series on Southern
Educational Institutions; and an article on South Carolina in Letters,
by Colonel J. P. Thomas.
The fifth yearly number of _L'Année Psychologique_ of MM. _Alfred
Binet_, _H. Beaunis_, and _Th. Ribot_ is a volume of 902 pages, of
which 591 pages are included in the first part, devoted to Original
Memoirs and General Reviews. The papers are nineteen in number, on
such subjects as muscular fatigue, the foreshortening of objects
rising from the horizon, stereognostic perception and stereoagnosy,
suggestibility, applications of the calculation of probabilities to
psychology, colored audition, mental labor and nutritive changes,
measure of mental fatigue, sensations of smell, phonographs and the
study of the vowels, cephalometry, pedology, volume of the arm and
muscular force, chronophotographic and other apparatus, and muscular
sense; and the authors are MM. Van Biervliet, of Ghent; Blum, of
Nîmes; Bourdon, of Rennes; Claparède, of Geneva; Clavière, Delage,
Demeny, Druault, Mlle. Joteyko, MM. Larguier, Manouvrier, Marage;
Marbe, of Würzburg; Obersteiner, of Vienna; Tscherning and
Zwaardemaker, of Utrecht. M. V. Henri's paper on Muscular Sense would
make a volume by itself. The second part--Analyses--consists of
reviews of psychological publications entered under ten headings. The
Bibliography contains 2,558 titles, and the index of authors fills
upward of seventeen double-columned pages. (Paris: Scheicher Frères.)
Valuable papers on Comparative Tests of Bituminous Steam Coals, by
John W. Hill; the Artificial Preservation of Railroad Ties by the Use
of Zinc Chloride, by W. W. Curtis; and the Theory of Concrete, by G.
W. Rafter, are given in the _Proceedings of the American Society of
Civil Engineers_ (vol. xxv, No. 4, April, 1899), together with
discussions respecting street grades and cross-sections in asphalt and
cement and to loads and maximum stress on members of a bridge truss;
also biographical sketches of D. L. Barnes and W. R. Michie.
A valuable addition to D. Appleton and Company's International
Education Series, and a sprightly book in itself withal, is _Montaigne
on the Education of Children_, a volume of selections bearing on the
subject from the writings of the quaint old Frenchman, translated and
annotated by L. E. Rector. The significance of Montaigne, as the
editor of the series observes in his preface to the volume, lies
chiefly in his protest against pedantry, and the translator finds
Montaigne's modernity shown in his attempt to degrade men learning
from the first place, and to lay the emphasis on fitness for practical
life, ability to use one's judgment, and morality and virtue. While
Montaigne had limitations and defects in his educational views, such
as are pointed out by Dr. Harris, he still appears to have been far in
advance of his own time, and in some respects of the present time as
well. The solution of the human problem, success in dealing with
one's self and his fellows, was his ideal. The translator shows how
Locke and Rousseau, and, of course, all educational writers who have
built upon these, drew from him. The subjects of the selections given
here are the Education of Children, Pedantry, the Affection of
Fathers, Liars, Physiognomy, Anger, the Art of Conversation, Idleness,
Experience, and History.
An essay on _The Object of the Labor Movement_, by _Johann Jacoby_,
translated by Florence Kelley, and published by the International
Publishing Company, advocates co-operation, demands that the employer
recognize the laborer whom he employs as a being fully his own equal
and treat him accordingly, and claims of the State an especial
consideration of the working class as an act of reparative justice.
The _Transactions of the First and Second Regular Meetings of the
Wyoming State Medical Society_, May 13 and November 1, 1898, shows
that that body is vigorous and active, and that the doctors of Wyoming
are interested in maintaining the dignity and reputation of their
profession. It is represented that fully fifty per cent of the regular
physicians of the State have already been enrolled as members of the
society.
Mr. _Frederick H. Gelman's Elements of Blowpipe Analysis_ (New York:
The Macmillan Company; 60 cents) is intended to serve the twofold
purpose of giving the student a general outline of the analysis and of
introducing him to the methods of determinative mineralogy. Every
effort has been made to simplify the account. The first chapter is
devoted to Apparatus and Details, and the second to the General
Outline of Blowpipe Analysis. Then the general reactions for the
detection of the metallic elements in simple compounds are described,
the behavior of some of the principal ores before the blowpipe, and
comparative tables.
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
Abbot, A. C., M. D. The Hygiene of Transmissible Diseases, their
Causation, Modes of Dissemination, and Methods of Prevention.
Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. Pp. 311. $2 net.
Allin, Arthur. Extra-Organic Evolution and Education. Pp. 8.
Baker, Charles Whiting. Monopolies and the People. Third edition,
revised and enlarged. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 368.
Baker, M. N. Potable Water and Methods of Detecting Impurities. New
York: D. Van Nostrand Company. Pp. 97. 50 cents.
Baskett, James Newton. The Story of the Fishes. New York: D. Appleton
and Company. (Appletons' Home-Reading Books.) Pp. 297.
Borodine, N., Editor. Revue Internationale de Pêche et de
Pisciculture. (International Review of Fisheries and Fish-Culture.)
No. 1. August, 1899. (Three times a year.) St. Petersburg, Russia.
Published by the Russian Imperial Society of Fisheries and
Fish-Culture. (In English, German, and French.) Pp. 37, with
supplement of one folded page. Annual subscription, four francs.
Bulletin, Le, Médical de Quebec. Volume I, No. 1. September, 1899.
Published under the direction of the Medical Society of Quebec.
Monthly. Pp. 56. $2 a year.
Burgess, O. O., M. D. Consciousness, Being, Immortality; Divine
Healing and Christian Science. San Francisco. Pp. 20.
Christian Science Publishing Society, Boston. Legal Aspects of
Christian Science. Decisions of Courts, Opinions of Lawyers, etc. Pp.
83.
Conn, H. W. The Story of the Living Machine. New York: D. Appleton and
Company. (Library of Useful Stories.) Pp. 191. 40 cents.
De Morgan, Augustus. Elementary Illustrations of the Differential and
Integral Calculus. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company. Pp.
144. $1.
Descartes, René. Discourse on Method; or the Method of Rightly
Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Translated,
etc., by John Veitch. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company.
(Religion of Science Library.) Pp. 87. 25 cents.
Flynt, Josiah. Tramping with Tramps. Studies and Sketches of Vagabond
Life. With Prefatory Note by Hon. Andrew D. White. New York: The
Century Company. Pp. 396. $1.50.
Giles, William A., Chairman of the Legislative Committee of the Civic
Federation (Chicago). Papers on Reform Legislation, Corrupt Practices
Acts, and Pawnbroking in Different Countries. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley
& Sons Company. Pp. 35.
Griffith, G. W. The Influence of the Earth upon the Field of a Bar
Magnet. Pp. 4.
Harrington, Mark W. About the Weather. New York: D. Appleton and
Company. (Appletons' Home-Reading Books.) Pp. 246.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. Contemporaries. Boston and New York:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 379. $2.
Holland, Frederick May. Liberty in the Nineteenth Century. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 257.
Korscheldt, Dr. E., and Helder, Dr. K. Text-Book of the Embryology of
the Invertebrates. Translated by Matilda Bernard, and edited, with
Additional Notes, by Martin F. Woodward. Vol. II. Pp. 369. Vol. III.
Pp. 441. $3.25.
Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration. Report of the
Fifth Annual Meeting, 1889. Pp. 142.
Lo Blanco, Dr. Salvatore. The Methods employed at the Naples
Zoölogical Station for the Preservation of Marine Animals. Translated
by E. O. Hovey. United States National Museum. Pp. 42.
Newman, George. Bacteria, especially as they are related to the
Economy of Nature, to Industrial Processes, and to the Public Health.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 348.
Newton, Alfred, Gadow, Hans, and others. A Dictionary of Birds. New
York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 1088. $5.
Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. Press Bulletin No. 199. Plums. A
Comparison of Varieties. Pp. 2.
Oliver, Charles A. Description of an Adjustable Bracket for the Reid
Ophthalmometer. Pp. 3; A Case of Foreign Body in the Optic Nerve. Pp.
3; A Case of Reflex Irritation. Pp. 5; A Case of Fibroma of the
Eyelid. P. 1, with plate; A New Method for the Plantation of Glass
Balls into the Optical Cavity. Pp. 30.
Putnam, F. W. Address as Retiring President of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Columbus Meeting, 1899.
Pp. 17.
Ribot, Th. The Evolution of General Ideas. Chicago: The Open Court
Publishing Company. Pp. 231. $1.25.
Russell, Charles T. The At-one-ment between God and Man. ("Millennial
Dawn." Vol. V.) Allegheny, Pa.: Watch-Tower Bible and Tract Society.
Pp. 507.
Stuver, E., M. D. The Importance of a Knowledge of the Phylogenetic
Development of the Child in the Prevention of Children's Diseases. Pp.
11.
Thompson, Ernest Seton. The Trail of the Sandhill Stag. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 93. $1.50.
United States Department of Agriculture. Farmers' Bulletins. No. 70.
The Principal Insect Enemies of the Grape. By C. L. Marlatt. Pp. 23;
No. 80. The Peach-Twig Borer. By. C. L. Marlatt. Pp. 15: No. 99. Three
Insect Enemies of Shade Trees. By L. O. Howard. Pp. 30;--Division of
Entomology. No. 37. The Use of Hydrocyanic-Acid Gas for Fumigating
Greenhouses and Small Frames. Pp. 10; No. 38. The Squash-Vine Borer.
Pp. 6; No. 39. The Common Squash Bug. Pp. 5.
United States Fish Commission. Check-List of the Fishes of Florida. By
B. W. Evermann and W. C. Kendall. Pp. 68.
Upsala, University of (Sweden). Bulletin of the Geological
Institution. Hj. Sjögren, Editor. Vol. IV, Part I, No. 7. 1898. Pp.
131, with four plates.
Weed, Clarence Moores, Editor. The Insect World. A Reading Book of
Entomology. New York: D. Appleton and Company. (Appletons'
Home-Reading Books.) Pp. 207. 60 cents.
Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. Bulletin No. 4. On
the Building and Ornamental Stones of Wisconsin. By Ernest R. Buckley.
Pp. 544.
Wisla. A Geographical and Ethnographical Publication (in Polish). Vol.
XIII, Nos. 1 to 5. Warsaw, Poland. Pp. 320.
Wright, Mabel Osgood. Wabenor the Magician. New York: The Macmillan
Company. Pp. 346.
Fragments of Science.
=The Dread of the Jew.=[41]--The Dreyfus affair and the furious
passions that it has awakened have their ultimate foundation in dread
and hatred of the Jews. There is a Jewish question, more or less
acute, in every continental country, and we are told by pessimists
that before long we shall have an anti-Jewish movement in the East End
of London. These facts naturally suggest an inquiry into the causes of
the dread and hate which the Jews inspire, and the asking once again
whether there are any good grounds for regarding the Hebrew race as a
menace to the Christian world. The main fact about the Jews on the
Continent which emerges from a study of the present situation is that
for some reason or other they inspire terror. That this terror is as
absurd and as unreasonable as is the terror caused respectively by
Jesuits and Freemasons, we ourselves do not doubt for a moment, but
that does not alter the fact that the sense of terror exists. It is
hardly too much to say that the majority of people on the Continent
honestly believe that unless the Jews are in some way or other curbed,
controlled, and kept down, something very dreadful will happen. In
Russia the vast Slavonic population and its leaders believe that
unless the Jews are impounded in the Polish Pale they will swamp the
true Russian, and utterly ruin and destroy the Russian nationality and
the Russian ideal. In Austria it is believed that if the Jews are
allowed to go on as they are going on they will get everything into
their hands--the land of the peasants, the sources of public
information and the press, and the nerves by which trade and commerce
are moved. In Germany it is much the same story, and there the Jews
are believed, unless stopped in time, to be about to monopolize the
universities. In France it is thought that the Jews, if not put down
with the strong hand, will capture the whole administration, as well
as "strangle commerce by their octopus grip." The Jews are called a
"parasitic race," whatever that may mean. It is said that the Jew
never becomes an agriculturist, that he is a usurer and a bloodsucker,
that he is a gross materialist, and that he has no ideals beyond the
precious metals; and that they habitually act together to further
their own racial interests and to injure those communities which have
been foolish enough to trust them. To take the charge of want of
patriotism first. How is it substantiated? We can not say that we have
ever seen any real evidence of want of patriotism in the Jews. Look at
the case of France at present. There is something extremely pathetic
in the way in which the French Jews cling to their nationality in
spite of all the hatred they inspire. The truth is, the Jew is a sort
of expert in patriotism. Did not the Maccabees teach the world one of
its first lessons in patriotism? Depend upon it, if the Jew is only
allowed to be a patriot he will not fail here. The charge, indeed, is
like that so often made in Russia against the Jews. They are accused
of not tilling the soil, their accusers ignoring the fact that no Jew
is allowed to buy, or to lease, or to occupy land, and is, in fact,
excluded by law from acting as a farmer. Take next the charge of
"aloofness." Probably this charge is well founded, but what can be
expected of a people so newly freed from the Ghetto? If you treat a
race for centuries as lepers, and visit its members with dire
penalties, if they do not keep "aloof" they are likely to remain for
some time disinclined to free intercourse. The third charge is, in
reality, that the Jews of the world, having obtained control of
cosmopolitan finance, act together in the interests of their race, and
inflict grievous injuries upon the nations. But what proof is there of
this? Curiously enough, Mr. Arnold White--though in other ways he
seems to encourage this charge--accuses the great Jewish financiers of
not doing this very thing. He tells us that after the Russians had
driven the Jews into the Pale they wanted to raise a loan. One would
have expected the great Jewish loanmongers to have absolutely refused
to help the enemy of the race. Instead they basely, as we think, found
Russia the money she wanted. But though this was a base act, it
certainly is not consistent with the charge that the Jews control the
international money market for tribal ends. We believe, in fact, that
this whole charge is a pure delusion. The great financiers, whether
Jew or Gentile, look for a profit, and not to deep and mysterious
racial aspirations. The charge that the Jews are steeped in
materialism, and so are a demoralizing element in the community, is
equally unfair and absurd. Many Jews may be fond of pomp of a vulgar
kind, and may affect what we confess personally to finding very
disagreeable forms of Asiatic luxury; but these are externals. In
essentials and as a race the Jews are no more materialistic than their
neighbors. And can we say that they are a demoralizing element when it
is universally confessed that the Jews are among the best fathers,
sons, and husbands in the world?
[Footnote 41: From an article in the London Spectator.]
=Death of Professor Bunsen.=--With the death of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen,
at Heidelberg, August 16th, the world loses a student whose name is
inseparably connected with nearly all the chemical work that has been
done in the last fifty years, for it is safe to say that hardly a
discovery has been made or experiment performed to the success of
which some process, property, or instrument discovered, invented, or
suggested by Bunsen, and usually named after him, has not contributed.
A sketch of this illustrious chemist, with a portrait, and an
enumeration of his principal works, each of which might be
characterized as a milestone in the advance of the science, was
published in the Popular Science Monthly for August, 1881 (vol. xix,
page 550). One of the principal events in his life since that sketch
was published was his election, in 1883, as one of the eight foreign
associates of the French Academy of Sciences--the highest honor that
that institution is competent to confer. Besides Bunsen's personal
interest in the work and success of his students, one of his most
salient traits, as described by a careful and appreciative biographer
in the New York Evening Post, was his absentmindedness concerning what
he had himself accomplished. He was afflicted with an "incipient
aphasia," which made it impossible for him to talk about them. "He
could not answer verbal questions, whether oral or written. He could
not have passed a decent examination in his own discoveries. Let the
question come in the shape of an emergency in a chemical operation,
and a wealth of knowledge would be poured out, but let it be put in
words and he could not answer it." He is said to have answered a
student once, who asked him about some substance, that he knew nothing
about it--"You will have to look up the literature." The student
looked up the literature, and found that it consisted of a single
article, and that by Bunsen! Professor Bunsen prized what would
stimulate him to effort, enjoyed life, was fond of travel and
interested in everything human, and was a good novel reader.
=The Unprofitableness of Strikes.=--The cost of a large strike is
impressively illustrated in some of the results of the great colliery
dispute of 1898 in South Wales, as they are set forth in the British
Board of Trade returns and the reports of the consular service. In
direct financial loss, the company suffered to the extent of $100,000,
and the men of $300,000 in wages, besides the demoralization from
being so long out of work. To a certain extent, other districts gained
what the South Wales mines lost by the diversion of trade to them, but
that simply aggravated the evil in the mines, for some of this
diverted trade will stay where it went. It is sometimes said, indeed,
that strikes have only a temporary effect on business, from which it
will recover in time. This is true, however, as is suggested in
Industries and Iron, only when the locality affected has a virtual
monopoly of the trade, while in the competition of the nations
instances of that kind are growing rarer. England especially has many
rivals in these days, eager to take advantage of every opportunity to
profit by its mistakes or misfortunes, and which, when they get their
hands on a good thing, are not apt to let go. Notwithstanding some
strikes at home, the coal trade in the United States derived benefits
from the British strike by sending to markets which the Welsh mines
should have supplied; Germany sent coal to Sweden, and Belgium
increased its shipments to the Canary Islands. Other countries are
induced, by conditions making the usual sources of supply inconvenient
to them, to a more active development of their own resources, as
Austria-Hungary, Spain, and France were in the present case. So it is
more than doubtful whether the present strike paid.
=The Scientific Spirit.=--The study of science, especially of an
experimental science, said Prof. R. H. Chittenden in an informal talk
to students of the Sheffield Scientific School, is peculiarly adapted
for developing the power of independent thought, and of training one
in drawing logical conclusions from experimental data. In the
laboratory is afforded an opportunity for making observations, but if
real benefit is to be derived from the experimental work there must be
a full realization of the necessity of careful thought in drawing
deductions from the results observed. Broad generalizations built on a
slender foundation of fact frequently topple to the ground, and
sometimes carry destruction with them, all because of a lack of that
critical spirit which prompts a careful and thorough consideration of
all the premises. The man who has acquired the habit of careful
thought, of reasoning out each step in a process, of weighing
carefully each reaction involved, of seeking in his own mind the
reason for this or that phenomenon, who looks at both sides of a
question, and carefully considers all the facts available, will build
much more surely and firmly than he who by specious arguments
constructs a glittering hypothesis, only to see it fade away. Hasty
reasoning, insufficient data, obscure facts, are the bane of modern
science. The true scientific spirit prompts to thorough inquiry; it
will have nothing to do with hasty generalizations that may glitter
but do not convince; it puts a restraining hand on all immature
conclusions, and demands, above all else, careful, thorough
observation. It shuns all shams. Good, honest work is the only
passport to the domain of science.
=Constitution of the Funafuti Atoll.=--In the boring of the coral
atoll of Funafuti, Professor David, of the University of Sydney,
reached a depth of 697 feet, and a subsequent boring was made down to
about 1,000 feet. The core obtained by the David party was sent to
England and placed in the hands of Professor Judd for investigation.
The general statement is made respecting it that the material brought
up presents much the same character throughout, and so far is regarded
as supporting Darwin's theory. There are no layers of chalky ooze,
such as Murray's hypothesis might have made possible, and no trace of
volcanic material has been found. The later boring beyond 700 feet
passed through a hard limestone containing many well-preserved corals.
In a boring of the bed of the lagoon down to 144 feet, after passing
through 101 feet of water, the first 80 feet below were found to
consist of the calcareous alga Halimeda mixed with shells, and the
remaining 64 feet of the same material mixed with gravel.
=Metallic Calcium.=--Metallic calcium, as prepared by Professor
Moissan from solution in liquid sodium, separates in hexagonal
crystals which have a specific gravity of 1.85 and melt at 760° _in
vacuo_. On solidifying, the metal is somewhat brittle, is less
malleable than potassium and sodium, and shows a crystalline fracture.
When free from nitride it is silver-white in color, and has a
brilliant surface. Heated to redness in a current of hydrogen, a
crystalline hydride, CaH_{2}, is formed. When pure, calcium is not
acted upon at ordinary temperatures by chlorine, though at 100° C. the
action is decided. But if the metal contains nitride, chlorine attacks
it at the ordinary temperature. At 300° C. calcium ignites and burns
brilliantly in oxygen. Gently warmed in air, it burns with brilliant
scintillations. It combines with sulphur, with incandescence, at 400°
C. At a red heat it unites actively with lampblack, giving a carbide,
CaC_{2}. It gives some brittle alloys with magnesium, zinc, and
nickel. The alloy with tin slowly decomposes water. A crystalline
amalgam is formed with mercury, which may be distilled in hydrogen at
400° C., but which forms nitride when heated in nitrogen. Heated to
redness with potassium or sodium chloride, calcium sets the metal
free. Water acts on calcium only very slowly, with the evolution of
hydrogen. In liquefied ammonia at -40° C. calcium ammonia is formed--a
reddish-brown solid.
=Prosperity and Enterprise in Mexico.=--The increasing prosperity of
Mexico is one of the striking features of current history. In four
years the imports of the country increased from $30,000,000 in 1894 to
upward of $45,000,000 in 1898, the average for five years having been
$40,000,000. The chief sellers to Mexicans are the United States,
Great Britain, France, and Germany, and the keenness of the
competition for trade is shown in the fluctuations in the relative
shares of it of the several countries. Spain has a small share of
trade, which is growing. Industrial enterprises are being developed
throughout the country with energy, enterprise, and success. Cotton
and linen factories have been established, attention is given to the
erection of woolen mills, and a noticeable activity prevails in mining
industries. Under all these influences the railroads are prospering
too.
=A Question of Economy.=--A paper, "Shall we grow the Sugar that we
consume?" by Freeman Stewart, called out by an article by ex-Secretary
Wilson, besides matter bearing directly on the question, embodies
observations on general political principles. Thus, it seems necessary
to observe "that the idea that republicanism requires our public
officials to act as mere weathercocks for the transient waves of
popular clamor and excitement is also a deplorable delusion, which, if
persistently carried into effect, will soon utterly destroy
republicanism. As free institutions depend on the recognition of
correct principles by the people, it is primarily necessary that
correct principles should be constantly impressed upon the attention
of the people. The great need of the nation to-day is wise
leadership--unselfish men, who appreciate the necessity of being
governed by immutable divinely appointed principles, to act as
leaders, to keep the minds of the people centered in the right
direction." Coming to the main subject of the essay, we have, as to
the expediency of taxing ourselves to have sugar made here: "If the
farmer's profits must come from the consumers of sugar as a bounty or
tax, and not from the inherent profitableness of the business, then
the farmer's profits are the consumer's loss. The business is
inherently unprofitable, and no farmer, or any one else, has a right,
'inherent' or otherwise, to carry on an unprofitable business, except
at his own expense.... It may be assumed that the farmers who are
growing the sugar are now growing crops which, if not as profitable as
they desire, are at least sufficiently so to keep them from being
burdensome to the rest of the nation. And how can the prosperity of
the nation be increased by having these same farmers engage in a new
business which will require them to draw on the productive capacity of
the rest of the people to the extent of many millions of dollars
annually, in order to keep their heads above water?"
=Bacteria of the Dairy.=--An investigation of the relation of acid
fermentation to the flavor and aroma of butter, made by C. H. Eckles
at the Iowa College Experiment Station, has given the results that the
flavor is produced by the bacterial fermentations which have taken
place in the milk and cream. The kind of flavor depends upon the class
of bacteria causing the fermentation. The ripening of a good quality
of acid cream is mostly a development of acid bacteria. Four species
of acid-producing bacteria, tested in ripening pasteurized cream, were
found to give the butter the typical flavor and aroma. Of the species
tried, the most common milk-souring organism (_Bacterium lactarii_)
was found to give the most satisfactory results in ripening cream.
Cream ripened with common bacteria found in hay dust (_Bacillus
subtilis_) gives a very undesirable flavor to butter. The superior
flavor of summer butter is due to the greater number of bacteria of
the acid class found in milk during that season.
=For Outdoor Improvement.=--The American Park and Outdoor Association
has taken up and aims to nationalize the important work of the
improvement of outdoors. Not that it expects to improve upon Nature,
but it hopes to be able to neutralize or remedy the devastation and
disfigurement which man has wrought upon her face. At the third annual
meeting of the association, held in Detroit in July, 1899, preliminary
steps were taken toward offering prizes for the improvement of grounds
about manufactories and homes--both front and back lots--and
especially about the homes of artisans. A standing committee was
instituted to consider the best way of checking abuses of public
advertising. A paper read by Mr. F. Law Olmstead, on the Relation of
Reservoirs to Public Parks, concerned such construction of reservoirs
and the surrounding them with suitable settings as would bring them
into closer harmony with the park landscape and make them more a part
of it. Another paper, by Mr. R. J. Coryell, of the Detroit parks,
might be described as an effort to show how a similar service may be
performed for the parks and the people--in other words, how to make
the people at home in the parks. Its points were illustrated by citing
what had been done in Detroit. Respecting means of preventing
depredations, Mr. C. C. Lancey told of good results accomplished in
Rochester, N. Y., by the distribution of circulars of information on
the subject; and Mr. F. L. Olmstead, Jr., of the interest taken by the
children in the school gardens in Cambridge, Mass.
=Where Physical Investigation Fails.=--From the discussion of the
physical method, with its descriptive laws and applications and
hypotheses, Prof. J. H. Poynting was led, in his address at the
British Association, to the consideration of the limitation of its
range. It was developed in the study of matter which we describe as
non-living, and with non-living matter it has sufficed for the
particular purposes of the physicist. Of course, only a little corner
of the universe has been explored, but in the study of non-living
matter we have come to no impassable gulfs, no chasms across which we
can not throw bridges of hypothesis. Does the method equally suffice
when it is applied to living matter? Can we give a purely physical
account of such matter? Do we make any attempt to apply the physical
method to describe and explain those motions of matter which on the
psychical view we term voluntary? In practice the strictest physicist
abandons the physical view, and replaces it by the psychical. He
admits the study of purpose as well as the study of motion, and has to
confess that here the physical method of prediction fails.
=Honors to Sullivant and Lesquereux.=--"Sullivant day," August 22d,
was devoted in the American Association to the commemoration of the
lives and works of William S. Sullivant and C. Leo Lesquereux,
botanists, the former distinguished for his studies in the mosses and
the latter for his researches in paleobotany, both of whom lived and
did the work by which they became famous in Columbus, Ohio. Sullivant
was born and passed the whole of his life in Columbus. Lesquereux, a
Swiss by birth, lived in Columbus during many of his most fruitful
years, and worked alongside of Sullivant. A considerable number of
objects associated with the two botanists were on exhibition--rare
botanical specimens, charts and pictures connected with their labors,
and complete sets of their published works--and excellent and highly
prized portraits of them were shown. The families of both were
represented by the presence of daughters and granddaughters, among
whom was Miss Arhart, a granddaughter of Lesquereux, who was
associated with him in part of his work, and made most of the drawings
for his later books. Prof. C. R. Barnes presided over the exercises.
Prof. W. A. Kellerman read a tribute to Sullivant from Dr. Gray's
supplement to the Icones. Mrs. Britton gave a short review of the
species named from Sullivant (including twelve North American mosses).
Professor Barnes read a tribute to Lesquereux, taken from the
Botanical Gazette. Remarks were made and papers read on the Progress
in the study of the Hepatica, by Prof. L. M. Underwood; the Moss Flora
of Alabama, by Dr. Charles Mohr (read by Professor Earle); the History
of the Study of the Mosses, by Mrs. Britton; the Classification of
Certain Mosses, by A. J. Grout; the Study of Lichen Distribution in
the Mississippi Valley, by Bruce Fink; and Botanical Teaching in the
Secondary Schools, by W. C. Stevens and Ida Clendenin. Among the
exhibits, those of twelve species of hepaticæ from California, by
Prof. F. E. Lloyd; forty-five photographs of American students and
collectors made famous by their work in mosses, by Mrs. Britton and
Professor Underwood; and six species of mosses discovered and
collected originally by Sullivant and Lesquereux near Columbus,
deserve special mention.
=Rate of Evolutionary Variation in the Past.=--Mr. Adam Sedgwick,
speaking, in his address at the British Association, of variation,
selection, and heredity, having raised the question whether the
variability of organisms has ever been different from what it is now,
answered it in the affirmative, because it would be absurd to suppose
that organisms would remain constant in this respect while they have
undergone alteration in all their other properties. According to the
Darwinian theory of evolution, one of the most important factors in
determining the modification of organisms has been natural selection.
It acts by preserving certain favorable variations, and allowing
others less favorable to be killed off in the struggle for existence.
It will thus come about that certain variations will be gradually
eliminated, while the variations of the selected organisms will
themselves be submitted to selection, and certain of these will in
their turn be eliminated. In this way a group of organisms becomes
more and more closely adapted to the surroundings. It would thus
appear that the result of continued selection is to diminish the
variability of a species. Hence, as selection has been going on all
the while, variation must have been much greater in past times than it
is now. Following out this train of reasoning, we are driven to the
conclusion that one of the most important results of the evolutionary
change has been the gradual increase and perfection of heredity as a
function of organisms and a gradual elimination of variability. This
view, if it can be established, is of the utmost importance to our
theoretical conception of evolution, because it enables us to bring
our requirements as to time within the limits granted by the
physicists.
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
Of the archæology of Block Island, Arthur Hollick found in his
explorations that around the shores of Great Salt Pond and on the sand
dunes that border the western shores of the island evidences of former
occupation by the Indians are numerous. Kitchen middens are exposed in
several street cuttings, implements are often found scattered over the
surface of the ground in certain localities, and skeletons have been
unearthed from time to time. In many places the kitchen midden
accumulations were so obvious that it was impossible to ignore them
entirely. They were found to consist of the customary collection of
oyster and other shells, bones, pottery fragments, fire-cracked
stones, charcoal, finished implements, rejects, flakes, chips, etc.
The finished implements found were two axes, of a plagioclase igneous
rock, and three arrow points, all of quartzite. In the sand dunes were
many old fireplaces, mostly buried by the sand which has drifted over
them. They could generally be located by the richness of the turf on
the surface immediately above. Mixed with the accumulations in these
places were the bones and teeth of animals. The island promises a good
reward for archæological investigation.
In a form of disease known as peckiness in the cypress and pin-rot in
the _librocedrus_, described by Hermann von Schrenk in a thesis
presented to Washington University, the wood is destroyed in localized
areas, which are surrounded by apparently sound wood. The cell walls
are changed into compounds, which diffuse through the walls and fill
the cells surrounding the decayed center, and these have been called
humus compounds. In both trees a fungus mycelium occurs, with strongly
marked characteristics, which flourishes within the diseased centers,
and grows between them without affecting the intervening wood. This
wood can be utilized for many purposes even when much rotted, and in
neither case does the mycelium grow after the tree has once been cut
down. The two trees thus diseased, both representatives of a race of
trees the majority of which are extinct, are closely related
genetically, although growing in different parts of the country. The
two forms of decay differ but slightly, and not more than might be
expected in two woods of different character.
Mr. J. C. Arthur, of the Purdue University Agricultural Experiment
Station, a few years ago picked up a small white flower (_Cerastium
arvense oblongifolium_) growing unobtrusively among the grass and low
weeds of the roadside. It was a little more attractive than its
relative which is called the field chickweed, and the author suggests
the name of starry grasswort for it. Under cultivation it spread out
over the ground in a close mat of foliage in a manner characteristic
of many members of the pink family, to which it belongs; and now for
six weeks in April and May it is a mass of "dazzling whiteness,
softened with the pale green of stems and leaves," while "all winter
long the prostrate stems remain alive to their very tips, and the
leaves maintain a summerlike appearance," without the indurated,
polished look so usually associated with evergreen foliage. This is
one roadside flower taken up, perhaps casually, for cultivation and
improvement. There are others--no one knows how many--that will
doubtless likewise reward the pains taken with them; and this inspires
Mr. Arthur to suggest to others that they keep a lookout for plants
that may become desirable garden varieties and try them. "It is
evident that showiness in the wild state is not the most important
criterion by which to gauge the future culture value of a plant. One
needs to have many factors in mind to meet with success, and it is
hoped that the study of the starry grasswort will be suggestive in
this line. The byways and fields undoubtedly hold many incipiently
valuable decorative plants which await the discoverer, as truly as do
those of the unexplored regions of Asia and Africa."
An experiment has been tried in New York during the past summer in the
way of "vacation schools" for teaching housekeeping and domestic
economy. Instruction was given daily in these arts in the public
schoolrooms in Front and Oliver Streets and in Hester Street. At Front
and Oliver Streets girls were taught to air, clean, and take care of a
bedroom; to set table, clean, and take care of a living room; kitchen
cleanliness; laundry work--one week being devoted to each course, and
talks were given on furnishing a flat, the care of a cellar, and the
importance of air and sunlight to health. The children were also
taught daily to cook appetizing dishes and serve them. At Hester
Street more time was given to the cooking lessons, instruction was
given on the feeding of babies, and a class in nursing was taught;
among other things, emergency bandaging, caring for helpless patients,
and the hygiene of the sick-room.
Mr. A. P. Coleman, during some geological work last summer on the
north shore of Lake Superior, about Heron Bay, discovered a new
mineral, which he has named _Heronite_, and which he describes at
length in the Journal of Geology for July-August. It is a dike rock,
consisting essentially of analcite, orthoclase, plagioclase, and
ægyrite, the analcite having the character of a base, in which the
other minerals form radiating groups of crystals. The analcite clearly
represents the magma left after the crystallization of the imbedded
minerals, and it is evident that it can be formed only from a magma
highly charged with water, and therefore under pressure.
From the examination of a number of nearly pure hydrocarbons obtained
from American petroleum by Young, it appears that the same classes of
hydrocarbons, paraffins, polymethylene compounds of naphthenes and
aromatic hydrocarbons are present in these and in Russian and Galician
petroleums; but that Russian petroleum contains a relatively larger
amount of naphthalenes and, in all probability, of aromatic
hydrocarbons, than Galician, and Galician a larger amount of the same
hydrocarbons than American petroleum.
NOTES.
An old contributor, Dr. A. F. A. King, of Washington, D. C., writes us
calling attention to the interesting fact that we printed an article
of his as far back as September, 1883, suggesting the mosquito theory
of malaria, and giving a number of observations which seemed strongly
to support this view.
Experiments made by F. H. Hall and W. P. Wheeler, at the New York
Agricultural Experiment Station, regarding the best food for "chicks,
pullets, cockerels, and ducklings," seem to indicate conclusively that
part of the protein must be drawn from animal sources if we are to get
the best results. Rations in which from forty to fifty per cent of the
protein was supplied by animal food produced more rapid growth and at
less cost of production.
Messrs. A. Stutzer and Hartlieb, of Breslau, have detected bacteria in
Portland cements, which provoke the liberation of the nitrogen from
nitrogenous compounds in water, and the formation of nitrous and
nitric acids that act upon the lime in the cement and promote its
disintegration.
According to Industries and Iron, the tides are now utilized for
generating power at Pont-l'Abbé, Finisterre, France, during fourteen
hours per day. At flood tide the water flows through a canal two miles
and a half inland into a pond in the rear of the power house, and
returns to the sea at ebb tide. The total fall is seven feet and a
half, and eighty-horse power is generated by means of turbines. Means
have been considered for applying this method of generating power to
various industries.
A proposal for an International Physical Congress has been accepted by
the authorities of the Paris Exposition of 1900, and the congress will
be held from the 6th to the 12th of August, under the auspices of the
French Government. It immediately precedes the International
Electrical Congress. So far as has yet been determined, the subjects
of the addresses and reports will be classified under the headings of
the definition and fixing certain units (of pressure, scale of
hardness, quantity of heat, etc.), the Bibliography of Physics, and
National Laboratories. The final programme is, however, still to be
settled. The subscription for membership is twenty francs, or four
dollars. The foreign secretary of the congress is M. Charles Edouard
Guillaume, Pavillon de Breteuil, Sevres (Seine et Oise), Paris.
In a book called Literary Munich Portraits, with brief biographical
sketches by Paul Heyse, are given of twenty-five of the most prominent
literary men of that brilliant capital. Only two authors not Germans
are included. One of them is our contributor, E. P. Evans. The other
is the Norwegian novelist Björnson. Heyse leaves himself out, although
he is the greatest literary character of them all.
Some recent experiments, conducted jointly by the Kew Observatory
Committee and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at
Sèvres, were made to compare the platinum thermometer of Professor
Callendar, which measures temperature by the varying resistance of a
platinum wire, and the older mercury and gas thermometers. It was
found that below 100° C. the differences between the observed values
on the nitrogen scale and those deduced from the platinum thermometer
are exceedingly small, and that even at the highest temperature (590°)
the differences only amount to a few tenths of a degree.
The American Chemical Society has gained 232 members during the past
year, making the present number 1,540. The report of the committee on
the analysis of coal, submitted to the recent meeting of the society
at Columbus, Ohio, embodied detailed instructions in regard to the
best methods of analyzing coke, and outlined a plan for securing
uniformity in such analysis by chemists throughout the land. This
report was adopted.
At the recent annual meeting of the American Society for the Promotion
of Agricultural Science Prof. W. J. Beal reported concerning the
germination of seeds, after long keeping, that experiments had been
tried with various seeds five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years old,
from which it appeared that seeds of a large number of important
plants would germinate after fifteen years, but the number sprouting
after twenty years was small.
A paper was read by Dr. L. O. Howard, at the recent meeting of the
American Society of Entomologists, recording the success which has
been obtained by the fig-raisers of California in fertilizing the
Smyrna variety of figs by the aid of the blastophaga which issues from
the Capri figs covered with their pollen. A generation of the
blastophaga has been developed at Fresno by which many Smyrna figs
have been satisfactorily fertilized, and there is considerable
probability that the insect has at last established itself on
California soil.
The five hundredth anniversary of the birth of Gutenberg, associated
with the invention of printing, is to be celebrated at Mayence, June
24, 1900. It is hoped that the foundation of a Gutenberg Museum may be
a result of this movement. An exhibition illustrating the art and
progress of printing is also expected to be held.
The conclusion is drawn by the Italian, Signor Albini, from
investigations on the nutritive value of whole-meal bread, that it is
inferior to that of ordinary white bread, and that a further
disadvantage comes from the excessive quantity of indigestible matter,
formed of the harder parts of the pericarp of the grain, which it
contains.
We have to add to our obituary list of men known in science the names
of Edward Orton, LL. D., Professor of Geology in Ohio State
University, late State Geologist of Ohio, and late President of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Columbus,
Ohio, October 16th, in his seventy-first year, of whom we shall
shortly give a more extended sketch, with portrait; Grant Allen,
writer of several scientific books and articles, and a contributor to
the Popular Science Monthly; Prof. Theodore Elbert, German geologist,
aged forty-two years; Dr. Max Barth, Director of the Agricultural
Station of Rufach, Alsace, aged forty-four years; M. Paul Janet,
member of the Paris Academy of Moral Science, and formerly professor
at the Sorbonne; Edward Case, English engineer, well known for his
method of groining to prevent the sea from encroaching on the coast,
September 22d; Hamilton Y. Castner, whose name is associated with the
establishment of processes for the electrolytic production of alkali
and bleaching powder from common salt, and for the extraction of
aluminum; Dr. Oscar Baumann, of Vienna, African explorer, author of a
map of the Congo, geographical articles, and books relating to his
explorations; and Dr. J. W. Hicks, Bishop of Bloemfontein, formerly
demonstrator in chemistry in the University of Cambridge, and author
of a text-book on inorganic chemistry.
Transcriber's Notes:
In this e-text, the following symbols have been used:
- Words surrounded by _ are italicized.
- Words surrounded by = are bold.
- Symbol _{2} means the number 2 is a subscript.
- Symbol [+] means a plus sign in a circle
- Symbol [++] means two plus signs in a circle
- Symbol ++ means two plus signs attached together
Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent
spellings have been kept.
Captions added to captionless illustrations and some illustrations
were relocated to correspond to their references in the text.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Appletons' Popular Science Monthly,
December 1899, by Various
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