Project Gutenberg's Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899, by Various
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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899
Volume LV
Author: Various
Editor: William Jay Youmans
Release Date: March 11, 2014 [EBook #45115]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, JUNE 1899 ***
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Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LV
MAY TO OCTOBER, 1899
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
[Illustration: THOMAS EGLESTON.]
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
JUNE, 1899.
NEW METHOD OF ESTIMATING THE AGE OF NIAGARA FALLS.
BY G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.
Both the interest and the importance of the subject make it worth
while to follow out every clew that may lead to the approximate
determination of the age of Niagara Falls. During this past season, in
connection with some work done for the New York Central Railroad upon
their branch line which runs along the eastern face of the gorge from
Bloody Run to Lewiston, I fortunately came into possession of data
from which an estimate of the age of the falls can be made entirely
independent of those which have heretofore been current. The bearing
and importance of the new data can best be seen after a brief _résumé_
of the efforts heretofore made to solve this important problem.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Looking north from below the Whirlpool,
showing the electric road at the bottom of the east side of the gorge,
and the steam road descending the face about halfway to the top.]
In 1841 Sir Charles Lyell and the late Prof. James Hall visited the
falls together; but, having no means of determining the rate of
recession, except from the indefinite reports of residents and guides,
they could place no great confidence in the "guess," made by Sir
Charles Lyell, that it could not be more than one foot a year. As the
length of the gorge from Lewiston up is about seven miles, the time
required for its erosion at this rate would be thirty-five thousand
years. The great authority and popularity of Lyell led the general
public to put more confidence in this estimate than the distinguished
authors themselves did. Mr. Bakewell, another eminent English
geologist, at about the same time estimated the rate of the recession
as threefold greater than Lyell and Hall had done, which would reduce
the time to about eleven thousand years.
But, to prepare the way for a more definite settlement of the
question, the New York Geological Survey, under Professor Hall's
direction, had a careful trigonometric survey of the Horseshoe Fall
made in 1842, erecting monuments at the points at which their angles
were taken, so that, after a sufficient lapse of time, the actual rate
of recession could be more accurately determined. In 1886 Mr.
Woodward, of the United States Geological Survey, made a new survey,
and found that the actual amount of recession in the center of the
Horseshoe Fall had proceeded at an average rate of about five feet per
annum. The subject was thoroughly discussed by Drs. Pohlman and
Gilbert, at the Buffalo meeting of the American Association in 1886,
when it was proved, to the satisfaction of every one, that, if the
supply of water had been constant throughout its history, the whole
work of eroding the gorge from Lewiston to the Falls would have been
accomplished, at the present rate of recession, in about seven
thousand years.
But the question was immediately raised, Has the supply of water in
Niagara River been constant? It was my privilege, in the autumn of
1892 (see Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, vol. iv, pp.
421-427), to bring forth the first positive evidence that the water
pouring over Niagara had for a time been diverted, having been turned
through Lake Nipissing down the valley of the Mattawa into the Ottawa
River, following nearly the line of Champlain's old trail and of the
present Canadian Pacific Railroad. The correctness of this inference
has been abundantly confirmed by subsequent investigations of Mr. F.
B. Taylor and Dr. Robert Bell.[A] The occasion of this diversion of
the drainage of the Great Lakes from the Niagara through the Ottawa
Valley was the well-known northerly subsidence of the land in Canada
at the close of the Glacial period. When the ice melted off from the
lower part of the Ottawa Valley the land stood five hundred feet lower
than it does now, but the extent of this subsidence diminished both to
the south and the west, making it difficult to estimate just how great
it was at the Nipissing outlet. A subsidence of one hundred feet at
that point, however, would now divert the waters into the Ottawa
River. That it actually was so diverted is shown both by converging
high-level shore lines at the head of the Mattawa Valley and by the
immense delta deposits at its junction with the Ottawa, to which
attention was first called in my paper referred to above.
[Footnote A: See article by Mr. Taylor on The Scoured Bowlders of the
Mattawa Valley, in the American Journal of Science, March, 1897, pp.
208-218.]
The indeterminate question which remained was, At what rate did this
postglacial elevation of land which has brought it up to its present
level proceed? Dr. Gilbert, Professor Spencer, and Mr. Taylor have
brought forth a variety of facts which, according to their
interpretation, show that this rate of elevation was so slow that from
twenty thousand to thirty thousand years was required to restore to
the Niagara River its present volume of water. Their arguments are
based upon the varying width and depth of the Niagara gorge, proving,
as they think, the presence of a smaller amount of water during the
erosion of some portions. Dr. Gilbert has also brought forward some
facts concerning the extent of supposed erosion produced by the
diverted waters of Niagara when passing over an intermediate outlet
between Lake Simcoe and Lake Nipissing. But the difficulty of
obtaining any safe basis for calculation upon these speculative
considerations has increased the desire to find a means of calculation
which should be independent of the indeterminate problems involved.
That I think I have found, and so have made a beginning in obtaining
desired results. _The new evidence lies in the extent of the
enlargement of the mouth of the Niagara gorge at Lewiston since the
recession of the falls began._
It is evident that the oldest part of the Niagara gorge is at its
mouth, at Lewiston, where the escarpment suddenly breaks down to the
level of Lake Ontario. The walls of the gorge rise here to a height of
three hundred and forty feet above the level of the river. It is clear
that from the moment the recession of the falls began at Lewiston the
walls of the gorge on either side have been subject to the action of
constant disintegrating agencies, tending to enlarge the mouth and
make it V-shaped. What I did last summer was to measure the exact
amount of this enlargement, and to obtain an approximate estimate of
the rate at which it is going on.[B] As this enlargement proceeds
wholly through the action of atmospheric agencies, the conditions are
constant, and it is hoped that sufficiently definite results have been
obtained to set some limits to the speculations which have been made
upon more indefinite grounds.
[Footnote B: For opportunity to do this work I am indebted to the
interest of President S. R. Callaway, of the New York Central
Railroad. The measurements were made by Mr. George S. Tibbits,
engineer of the western division. The photographs were taken by Mr. C.
F. Dutton, of Cleveland.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--View looking east across the gorge near the
mouth, showing the railroads and the outcrops of Clinton and Niagara
limestones above the steam road.]
The face on the east side of the gorge presents a series of alternate
layers of hard and soft rocks, of which certain portions are very
susceptible to the disintegrating agencies of the atmosphere. The
summit consists of from twenty to thirty feet of compact Niagara
limestone, which is underlaid by about seventy feet of Niagara shale;
which in turn rests upon a compact stratum of Clinton limestone about
twenty feet thick, which again is underlaid by a shaly deposit of
seventy feet, resting upon a compact stratum of Medina sandstone
twenty feet thick, below which a softer sandstone, that crumbles
somewhat readily, extends to the level of the river.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Looking up the gorge from near Lewiston,
showing on the left the exposed situation of the eastern face of the
gorge at the extreme angle, where the measurements were made.]
The present width of the river at the mouth of the gorge is seven
hundred and seventy feet. It is scarcely possible that the original
width of the gorge was here any less than this, for in the narrowest
places above, even where the Niagara limestone is much thicker than at
Lewiston, it is nowhere much less than six hundred feet in width. Nor
is it probable that the river has to any considerable extent enlarged
its channel at the mouth of the gorge at the water level. On the
contrary, it is more probable that the mouth has been somewhat
contracted, for the large masses of Niagara and Clinton limestone and
Medina sandstone which have fallen down as the shales were undermined
have accumulated at the base as a talus, which the present current of
the river is too feeble to remove. This talus of great blocks of hard
stone has effectually riprapped the banks, and really encroached to
some extent upon the original channel.
We may therefore assume with confidence that the enlargement, under
subaërial agencies, of the mouth of the gorge at the top of the
escarpment has been no greater than the distance from the present
water's edge to the present line of the escarpment at the summit of
the Niagara limestone. This we found to be three hundred and
eighty-eight feet--that is, the upper stratum of hard rock on the east
side of the gorge had retreated that distance, through the action of
atmospheric agencies, since the formation of the gorge first began.
The accompanying photogravures and diagram will present the facts at a
glance. The total work of enlargement on the east side of the gorge
has been the removal of an inverted triangular section of the rock
strata three hundred and forty feet high and three hundred and
eighty-eight feet base, which would be the same as a rectangular
section of one hundred and ninety-four feet base. From this one can
readily see that if the average erosion has been at the rate of one
quarter of an inch per annum, the whole amount would have fallen down
in less than ten thousand years; while if the time is lengthened, as
some would have it, to forty thousand years, the rate would be reduced
to one sixteenth of an inch per year.
Fortunately, the construction of the railroad along the face of the
eastern wall of the gorge affords opportunity to study the rate of
erosion during a definite period of time. The accompanying
photogravures will illustrate to the eye facts which it is hard to
make impressive by words alone. The course of the road is diagonally
down the face of the gorge from its summit for a distance of about two
miles, descending in that space about two hundred feet to the outcrop
of hard quartzose Medina sandstone. The lower mile of this exposure
presents the typical situation for making an estimate of the rate at
which the face is crumbling away.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Nearer view of the upper portion of the face
near the mouth, showing the exposure of the situation at that point.]
Beginning at what used to be known as the "Hermit's Cave," near the
Catholic College grounds, where the Niagara shale is well exposed, and
extending to the outer limit of the gorge, the height of the face
above the railroad averages one hundred and fifty feet. Now, the
crumbling away of the superincumbent cliffs gives continual trouble to
the road. Three watchmen are constantly employed along this distance
to remove the _débris_ which falls down, and to give warning if more
comes down than they can remove before trains are due. The seventy
feet of Niagara shale, and the equal thickness of shaly Medina rock
which underlies the Clinton limestone, are constantly falling off,
even in fair weather, as any one can experience by walking along the
bank; while after storms, and especially in the spring, when the frost
is coming out, the disintegration proceeds at a much more rapid rate.
Sometimes two or three days are required by the whole force of section
hands to throw over the bank the result of a single fall of material.
At a rate of one quarter of an inch of waste each year the amount of
_débris_ accumulating for removal on the track along this distance
would be only six hundred and ten cubic yards per annum--that is, if
six hundred and ten cubic yards of material falls down from one mile
of the face of the wall where it is a hundred and fifty feet high, the
whole amount of enlargement of the mouth of the gorge would be
accomplished in less than ten thousand years. Exact accounts have not
been kept by the railroad; but even a hasty examination of the face of
the wall makes it sure that the actual amount removed has been greatly
in excess of six hundred yards annually. This estimate is based partly
on the impression of the railroad officials as to the cost of removal,
and partly on the impressions of the watchmen who spend their time in
keeping guard and in the work of removing it.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Showing extent of erosion at base of the
Niagara shale since 1854. (See description in the text.)]
But that is not all. The accompanying photogravures indicate an actual
amount of removal over a part of the area enormously in excess of the
rate supposed. Fig. 5 shows a portion of the precipice, a hundred feet
high, where the road first comes down to the level of the Clinton
limestone, and where, consequently, the whole thickness of the Niagara
shale is accessible to examination. Fortunately, Patrick MacNamara,
the watchman at this station, was a workman on the road at the time of
its construction in 1854, and has been connected with the road ever
since, having been at his present post for twelve years. We have
therefore his distinct remembrance, as well as the appearance of the
bank, to inform us where the face of the original excavation then was.
In the picture he is standing at the original face, while the other
figure is nearly at the back of the space which has been left empty by
the crumbling away of the shale. The horizontal distance is fully
twenty feet, and the rocks overhang to that amount for the whole
distance exposed in the photograph. All this amount of shale has
fallen down in forty-four years, making a rate many times larger than
the highest we have taken as the basis of our estimate. Of course,
this rate for the crumbling away of the Niagara shale on its fresh
exposure is much in excess of the average rate for a long period of
time; but it is clear that the rate of erosion at the base of the
Niagara limestone at the mouth of the gorge can never have been
sufficiently slow to reduce the total average much below the assumed
rate of a quarter of an inch a year.
To impress the truth of this statement it is only necessary to follow
the progress, in imagination, of the crumbling process which has
brought the side of the gorge to its present condition. At first the
face of the gorge was perpendicular, the plunging water making the
gorge as wide at the bottom as at the top. At successive stages the
strata of shale on the side would crumble away, as is shown in our
photograph, and undermine the strata of hard rock. The large fragments
would fall to the bottom, and, being too large to be carried away by
the current, would form the talus to which we have already referred,
which would grow in height with every successive century. The actual
progress of the enlargement would thus be periodic, and not capable of
measurement by decades; but after centuries the progress would be
clearly marked, and especially whenever there was a falling away of
the lower stratum of compact Medina sandstone, which is about
two hundred feet below the top, would a new cycle of rapid
disintegrations in the superincumbent strata follow.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Section, drawn to equal vertical and
horizontal scale, showing enlargement of Niagara gorge on the east
side at its mouth at Lewiston: 1, Niagara limestone, 20 to 30 feet; 2,
Niagara shale, 70 feet; 3, Clinton limestone, 20 to 30 feet; 4,
Clinton and Medina shale, 70 feet; 5, Quartzose Medina sandstone, 20
to 30 feet; 6, softer Medina sandstone, 120 feet above water level.]
An important point to be noticed, and which is evident from two of the
reproduced photographs (Figs. 3 and 4), is that the talus has never
reached up so high as to check the disintegration at the mouth of the
gorge of the Niagara shale and limestone which form the upper one
hundred feet of the face, and which exhibit the maximum amount of
enlargement which has taken place. The thickness of the Niagara
limestone is here so small that it has not been so important an
element in forming the talus as it has been farther up the stream,
where it is two or three times as thick. Now, while our original
supposition was that one quarter of an inch annually was eroded from
the upper two hundred feet, this would involve the erosion of a half
inch per annum over the top of the gorge to bring the calculation
within the limit of ten thousand years. It certainly is difficult for
one who examines the facts upon the ground to believe that the
crumbling away of this exposed Niagara shale could have been at any
less rate than that; so that the estimate of about ten thousand years
for the date of that stage of the Glacial period in which Niagara
River first began its work of erosion at Lewiston (an estimate which
is supported by a great variety of facts independent of those relating
to the Niagara gorge) is strongly confirmed by this new line of
evidence.
So far as I can see, the only question of serious doubt that can be
raised respecting this calculation will arise from the possible
supposition that, when the eastern drainage over the Niagara channel
began, the land stood at such a relatively lower level as would reduce
the height of the fall to about half that of the present escarpment at
that point; when it might be supposed that a protecting talus had
accumulated which would interrupt the lateral erosion for the
indefinite period when the drainage was being drawn around by way of
the recently opened Lake Nipissing and Mattawa outlet. Then, upon the
resumption of the present line of drainage, with the land standing at
nearly its present level, the talus may have been undercut, and so
fallen down to leave the upper strata exposed as at present. But there
does not seem to be sufficient warrant for such a supposition to make
it necessary seriously to entertain it, while the objections to it are
significant and serious. First, the present narrowness of the river at
the water level is such that it does not give much opportunity for
enlargement after the first formation of the gorge; secondly, the
Niagara limestone at the mouth of the gorge is so thin (stated by Hall
to be twenty feet thick) that it would not form a protecting talus,
even at half its present height.
* * * * *
P. S.--Since the above was written there has been reported in the
papers an immense fall of rock from the east side of the gorge, near
the head of the Whirlpool rapids. The estimate made of the amount is
one hundred thousand tons. If that estimate is correct, it is a very
impressive illustration of how the average fall of material from the
side of the gorge is occasionally increased by a single instance. In
making our calculations above, the total amount of material annually
falling off from the portion of the side of the gorge under
consideration amounted only to 1,237 tons, while the amount of
material was 611 cubic yards. But the 100,000 tons which came off in a
single slide a few weeks ago would be equal to twenty inches in
thickness from the whole face of the cliff, where our estimate was
only a quarter of an inch.
N. B.--In the diagram (Fig. 6) extend the Niagara shale (2) up to
occupy lower two layers of (1), thus making Niagara limestone (1) half
as thick as now.
* * * * *
A piece of skin which the authors maintained to be of great
antiquity and to have belonged to the extinct mylodon or ground
sloth, found in a cave in Patagonia, was recently exhibited to
the London Zoölogical Society by Mr. A. Smith Woodward and Dr. F.
P. Moreno.
ABUSE OF PUBLIC CHARITY.
BY BIRD S. COLER,
COMPTROLLER OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
Ten per cent of all the human beings who die in New York city are
buried in Potter's Field at public expense; but the records of
organized charity, official and semiofficial, show that less than one
per cent of the living are paupers or dependent persons. There are two
explanations of the difference between the number of living poor and
penniless dead. The chief one is that abuse of public charity has
grown to such proportions that the city has become the Mecca of the
chronic idlers and tramps of the entire country. It is easier for an
industrious and shrewd professional beggar to live in luxury in New
York than to exist in any other city in the world. No magic wand of
ancient fable was ever more potent to unlock the gates of castle or
prison than the name of charity is to open a way to the public
treasury. The liberal and well-nigh indiscriminate giving of the money
of the taxpayers for the relief of sickness and poverty has been
commanded by law, sanctioned by custom, and approved by public opinion
until the possibility of checking or reforming the abuse grows more
and more remote as the burden increases and the evil results multiply.
The city of New York gives annually to public charity more than
$5,000,000, and contributes indirectly $2,000,000 more. Of the money
raised by taxation for city purposes proper (State taxes, interest,
and county expenses eliminated), almost twelve per cent is properly
chargeable to relief of poverty and sickness. Of this expenditure more
than $3,000,000 is paid to private institutions and societies over
which the city authorities have no control or supervision. The
payments are made in compliance with the provisions of acts of the
State Legislature. The only provision in these laws that enables the
city officers to protect the treasury from fraud is a clause under
which the comptroller is permitted to verify the bills of the
institutions for the care of committed persons. There is a
constitutional safeguard against outright swindling of the city, in
the requirement that charitable institutions shall be inspected and
their bills approved by the State Board of Charities, but the system
is open to many abuses where the public officers are powerless.
The present comptroller of the city has found that a number of alleged
charitable institutions and societies receiving money from the city
apply nearly all their funds to the payment of salaries of officers
and employees, while their relief work is very limited and of doubtful
character. Other societies, he found upon investigation, really
encourage professional beggars without in any case relieving deserving
poor. A few cases were so flagrant in their abuse of public charity
that the further payment of city money to the societies was refused.
In one case he found that a society which claimed a board of directors
and numerous officers was really managed by one person, who in one
year had received $1,500 from the city and $70 from all other sources,
and had expended $1,300 of the amount for salaries and $40 for the
relief of the destitute.
The Department of Public Charities, for the maintenance of which the
sum of $1,941,215 is appropriated for the year 1899, is controlled
entirely by the city. The balance of the $5,000,000 appropriated
annually for the same general purpose is divided among more than two
hundred societies and institutions managed by corporations or private
individuals. In theory none of these private institutions is supported
by the city, the municipality merely paying to them a fixed sum, which
is supposed to be supplemented by private donations. In reality nine
tenths of them could not exist six months without the money they
receive from the public treasury. Very few of these semipublic
charities have an income from all other sources equal to the
appropriation from the city.
The city pays for the support of a child in a private institution the
sum of $110 a year, and the average allowance for the maintenance of
an adult is $150. The percentage of children among the dependent
persons is almost three to one, so the $5,000,000 public charity fund
would feed and clothe more than forty thousand persons each year if
applied directly to that purpose. In the distribution of this great
sum of public money, however, fully $2,000,000 of the amount is
absorbed in the payment of salaries and expenses, and therein exists
an abuse of public charity so great that the present comptroller of
the city some months ago appealed to the Legislature for relief in the
form of legislation which would enable the local authorities to stop
payments to many societies. There are numerous small institutions,
some of them having the indorsement and moral support of leading
citizens, that spend from sixty to eighty per cent of all the money
they receive in the payment of salaries, and in one case discovered by
the comptroller the expenses absorbed ninety-four per cent of the
total income of the society!
There is no evidence that any of these societies are deliberately
dishonest in their dealings with the city and the public. They are as
a rule conducted by men and women whose motives are good, but who have
no experience or practical knowledge to fit them for the management of
a charitable institution. They are easily imposed upon by professional
beggars, and in most cases fail in their well-meant efforts to reach
and relieve the deserving who are in actual need. Most of the small
organizations that waste public money in misdirected charity are
controlled by women of eminent respectability, but with no knowledge
whatever of the details of the work they have undertaken. The result
in many cases has been that they employ enough help to absorb the bulk
of the money received without realizing that they are doing more harm
than good.
The city does not spend its own money cheaply. Of the appropriation of
$1,941,215 for the support of the Department of Charities for the
current year the sum of $529,626 is allowed for the payment of
salaries of commissioners and employees. No private business could
long endure if conducted on such a basis. Some of the institutions
where hundreds of homeless waifs from the streets are cared
for--institutions semipublic in character, managed by men of more than
local reputation as experts in such work, societies founded by men and
women whose lives have been devoted to doing good--show by their
annual reports that more than half their income is paid out in
salaries. One institution that received $30,000 from the city in 1898
and $20,000 from all other sources, reported a salary account of
$31,000. Another, receiving $100,000 from the city and $120,000 in
donations, had a salary account of $115,000. For every five persons
supported by public charity there are three persons employed on salary
in the work of relief. Of every five dollars paid out by the city
treasury to relieve the sick and destitute, two dollars is absorbed by
the salary and expense accounts.
The theory of the law under which city money is paid to private
charitable institutions is that they relieve the municipal authorities
of the care of a certain number of persons who would otherwise become
public charges to be maintained in the hospitals, asylums, or homes
owned by the city. It is also a popular theory that young children who
have become a public charge will receive better care and training in a
home controlled by a private society than they would in a public
institution. Appropriations and legislation are also obtained by
private organizations on the representation that for every dollar paid
to them by the city or State an equal amount will be contributed by
founders and subscribers. This representation is not always true, and
in many cases it happens that when a society begins to receive money
from the city private contributions fall off. When the city
authorities first took up the question of caring for homeless and
destitute persons and found that they had to deal with a grave
problem, some of the private charitable institutions were already in
existence and came forward with offers to share the burden. At that
time it was considered a good business arrangement for the city to use
private societies in the work of relief. This plan, it was expected,
would save the city considerable money, because the officers of the
societies would contribute their services, and the cost of applying
public charity to necessary relief would in that way be reduced to a
minimum. That expectation has not been realized. With the rapid
increase of necessity and demand for public relief the expenses of
administration of the societies have increased out of all proportion
to the work accomplished. In the beginning the city authorities
shirked a public duty, and by giving city money to private persons who
were willing to relieve them of a burden they invited the creation of
new societies and a steadily increasing demand for more funds.
Of the two hundred and twenty charitable societies that receive money
from the city more than one hundred have been organized during the
past ten years. The records of the finance department and the annual
reports of these new organizations show that many of them have
received from the city sixty to ninety per cent of all the funds they
have handled, and that almost the same percentage of their total
income was charged to expenses, the chief item of expense in every
case being the payment of salaries to officers. Year after year the
promoters and officers of these small organizations appear before the
city authorities when the annual budget is to be passed, and,
attempting to excuse the poor showing they make, say, in pleading for
a larger appropriation, "We hope to do better next year." The most
liberal-minded defender of indiscriminate public charity would find it
difficult to excuse the existence of some of these societies.
There are scores of small organizations helping to spend public money
that are unknown to the general public. In fact, some of them are
never heard of except when their officers appear before the Board of
Estimate once a year to ask for more money. There is a society,
organized for the purpose of supplying clothing to shipwrecked
sailors, which for several years obtained a small appropriation from
the city. When the officers requested an increase of the amount
allowed, the city authorities asked for some particulars of the work
done. The report submitted in reply showed that the society had
received, in addition to the money obtained from the city, several
donations of second-hand clothing and one box of wristlets (knit bands
to be worn on the wrists); had sent to a sailor shipwrecked on the
coast of Oregon a suit of underwear, a pair of hose, and a rubber
coat; to a crew wrecked on the reefs of Florida some shoes and oilskin
caps. There was no report of relief or clothing supplied to a sailor
or any other person in the city or State of New York, but there was a
charge for salaries that almost balanced the amount received from the
city treasury.
Another of the minor institutions is a society that is engaged in an
original method of charitable work. The agents of this society, or the
members themselves, go out into the slums of the city on Sunday
mornings and gather in a number of tramps. The homeless wanderers are
assembled in a room hired for the purpose and supplied with a warm
breakfast, after which they are compelled to listen to a sermon and a
lecture. They are then allowed to depart and live as best they can
until the following Sunday. For a number of years this society has
received a small appropriation from the city on the ground that it is
a useful public charity. To all of these small societies, no matter
what may be their alleged field of charitable work, city money is
appropriated without specific knowledge of the exact purpose to which
it is applied. By legislation or petition, backed by the influence of
prominent citizens, scores of these petty organizations, some of them
merely a fad or whim of an idle man or woman, have been placed on the
list of semipublic charities to be aided at the expense of the
taxpayers, and there they remain year after year without so much as a
serious inquiry as to their merits or the work they accomplish. The
city authorities who grant the appropriations do not and can not know
how the money they give to such societies is to be expended, because
they have no legal authority to investigate the conduct of such
institutions. The city officers, therefore, are not to blame. The
fault seems to rest primarily upon that condition of public opinion
that is cheerfully tolerant of any fraud committed in the name of
charity, and secondly upon the members of the Legislature who vote
without question or investigation for all legislation asked for by any
benevolent person or society.
To the large charitable and correctional institutions of established
reputation, to which children or pauper adults are committed by the
local authorities, city money is appropriated on a business basis. A
fixed sum is paid for the support of each committed person, and the
taxpayers may know what they are getting for their money. While the
city authorities can not regulate the expenses or salaries in these
institutions, they know that the city is paying for a specific service
and that the work is performed. That it might be done better or more
cheaply need not concern them. But to the institutions and societies
that do not undertake to support dependent persons, but engage in
indiscriminate charitable work, the giving of city money is as
doubtful a method of relieving the deserving poor as throwing coin in
the streets.
The appropriation of city money made for 1899 direct to two hundred
and fifteen charitable and correctional institutions and societies
amounts to $1,784,846. The appropriations from the excise funds to
institutions that support pauper children and adults will slightly
exceed $1,000,000. The county of New York pays to State and private
charitable institutions for the same period the sum of $118,682; Kings
County, $82,669; and Richmond County, $4,845; all of which comes out
of the general treasury. The money received for licenses for theaters,
concert and music halls, amounting to $50,000 a year, is divided among
eighty-two private societies and institutions. This makes an aggregate
of $3,000,000 paid out of the city treasury annually and expended
under the direction of private organizations. With the exception of
less than $100,000 it is all appropriated under the provisions of
special acts of the Legislature, or sections of the city charter, and
the city officers have no control whatever over the methods of
expenditure or the work undertaken by the societies that receive the
money. Under such a system the possibilities for abuse of public
charity are well-nigh unlimited.
These direct appropriations of money do not represent all of the
city's contribution to the cause of charity. The property of all the
charitable institutions and societies is exempt from taxation and from
assessments for public improvements. The tax commissioners report that
the assessed value of the property of such organizations is
$70,781,990. At the present rate of taxation this means a loss to the
city of more than $1,400,000 a year. The assessments upon the same
property for public improvements exceed $100,000 a year, which is paid
by the city. These exemptions materially affect the tax rate as well
as the bonded indebtedness and annual interest charges of the city, so
that the yearly contribution of the taxpayers of New York to charity
is nearly if not quite $7,000,000, or about fifteen per cent of the
direct expenses of the city government.
Some figures from the budget for 1899 will show the relative cost of
caring for the poor. The city will pay for public education
$13,040,052; for police, $11,797,596; for the fire department,
$4,443,664; for the health department, $1,110,538; for lighting,
$2,000,000; for water, $1,450,817; for cleaning the streets,
$4,575,800; for parks, $1,729,235; for paving and repaving streets,
$2,520,099; and for charity direct and indirect, $7,000,000.
The chief abuses of the present system of public charity are the
extravagant expenditures for salaries and the steady and rapid
increase of pauperism due to the misdirected efforts of the
inexperienced persons who control so many of the smaller societies
that receive city money.
One of the oldest and most important charitable organizations in the
city is the Children's Aid Society. The report of the treasurer for
1898 shows the following expenditures:
Industrial schools--
Salaries of superintendent and teachers $106,265.71
Rent of schoolrooms 5,119.26
Books and school supplies 5,178.54
Provisions 8,509.70
Clothing and special relief 5,512.56
Fuel, gas, repairs, etc. 20,497.88
---------
Sick Children's Mission $655.48
Children's Summer Home 9,405.37
Health Home 8,307.45
Farm for Boys--Summer Charities 2,719.59
Brace Memorial Lodging House 12,914.13
Elizabeth Home for Girls 10,366.33
Tompkins Square Lodging House 7,546.38
West Side Lodging House 9,079.26
East Side Lodging House 1,848.06
Forty fourth Street Lodging House 7,948.56
Fogg Lodging House 1,942.26
Brace Farm School 12,150.64
Reading rooms 402.96
Medical examinations 312.00
Salaries, executive officers 8,659.92
Immigration, fares, food, clothing, etc. 30,162.69
Reinvestment, bonds sold 29,902.50
Amount due treasurer, November 1, 1898 435.71
Printing, stationery, car fares, and incidental expenses 3,551.85
--------
$309,394.79
This shows a total salary account of $114,925.63, or about
thirty-seven per cent of the expenditure. The society received from
the city $100,764, and from general subscriptions and donations
$119,768. The balance of the income was derived from legacies,
endowments, special trust funds, and sale of bonds.
One of the private institutions in the city for the instruction of
deaf-mutes receives city, State, and county pupils under the
provisions of special acts of the Legislature. The report of the
treasurer for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1898, shows the
following receipts:
Balance on hand, October 1, 1897 $2,885.03
New York State 44,216.74
New York County 27,179.54
Kings County 12,697.05
Queens County 1,217.19
Westchester County 1,060.94
Various other counties 2,727.02
Paying pupils 791.75
Donations 11,754.46
All other sources 613.89
--------
$105,143.61
The expenditures for the same period were $102,570.64, of which
$33,613.56 was for salaries and wages. This is a private institution
exempt from city or State control, subject to no governmental
supervision except examination by the State Board of Charities, yet
ninety per cent of its income is public money, and almost one third of
the cost of maintenance is charged to salaries and wages. These two
cases are mentioned not in criticism of the work or methods of the
institutions, but as representing a fair average of the salary account
of all the larger private charitable societies. They also fairly
represent the two extremes in the source of their income, one
receiving ninety per cent of public money, the other a little more
than thirty per cent.
Recent investigations conducted by the city comptroller and
supplemented by the agents of the State Board of Charities disclose
abuses in the expenditure of public money by certain small societies
so flagrant that the appropriations for the current year have been
withheld. In these cases the salary account was always the chief
expenditure, but it was also discovered that whatever relief got
beyond the headquarters of the societies went to professional beggars,
who had no difficulty in deceiving the persons in charge. It was found
that persons in good health had lived comfortably for months, perhaps
for years, on public charity dispensed through private organizations.
These professional beggars would obtain food at one place, clothing at
another, coal at a third, small sums of money from all three perhaps,
then reverse the order of application or appeal to newer organizations
if detection threatened. Relief was extended in many instances with
little or no effort on the part of the societies to ascertain the
merits of a case or the honesty of an applicant.
One small society was found to have expended practically all of the
money received from the city in the payment of the living expenses of
the person who had the entire management of the organization. The
charitable work of a year consisted in the distribution of a small
quantity of cast-off clothing and a few bushels of potatoes. The
reports of the society contained the names of directors who had never
served and knew nothing of the true condition of the organization.
They had merely consented that their names might be used as a
guarantee of reliability and to aid in the work of soliciting
contributions.
One case has been found where a mother and daughter lived comfortably
by selling coal given to them by charitable societies. One private
institution, now abolished, boarded committed children and received
two dollars a week from the city for each child. The children were fed
on fish and potatoes at a cost of forty-four cents each per week.
After these facts were discovered the city authorities could not
remove the children until the Board of Health condemned and closed the
building under the provisions of the sanitary code. The minor abuses
in the way of aiding undeserving persons extend to nearly all the
private societies that receive city money. Those that exercise care
and have been long established are often deceived by professional
beggars.
After his investigation of the subject the city comptroller
established in his office a bureau of examination for the purpose of
placing a check on the many small societies that indulge in
indiscriminate charity at the expense of the city, but he soon found
that he was powerless to correct all abuses. The present condition can
not be corrected and public charity placed upon a practical basis and
limited to the real necessities of the deserving poor until the city
government begins to deal with each society and institution upon its
merits. Changes and reforms to the present system will come in time,
but progress will be slow because charity is a valid excuse at the bar
of public opinion for the reckless expenditure of city money, and for
that reason it appeals strongly to the average politician and
lawmaker. Charity will cover with a mantle of commendation a multitude
of abuses and crave pardon for gross frauds. It is the pastime of the
rich and their gratuity to the poor. The magic of the word seems to
move a Legislature and open the treasure vaults of city and State.
ALASKA AND THE KLONDIKE.
A JOURNEY TO THE NEW ELDORADO.
BY ANGELO HEILPRIN,
PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AT THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF
PHILADELPHIA, FELLOW OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.
II.--SAN FRANCISCO OF THE NORTH.
[Illustration: DAWSON AND KLONDIKE CITY (SOUTH DAWSON) IN SEPTEMBER,
1898.]
A first impression of Dawson, in August, 1898, could not be other than
one calculated to bring up comparisons with strange and foreign lands.
As we saw it, approaching from the water side, it persistently
suggested the banks of the Yang-tse-kiang, or of some other Chinese
river, on which a densely apportioned population had settled.
Hundreds--one is almost tempted to say thousands--of boats were lined
up against the river front, and so packed in rows back of one another
that exit from the inner line was made possible only by a passive
accommodation from the outside. There were steam craft, house-boats,
scows, and a variety of minor bottoms, ranging from the hay-packed
raft to the graceful Peterboro canoe. Many had canvas spread over
them, giving house quarter to those who preferred the economy of an
owned estate to the high-priced cabins of log huts and hotels, and
the purity of the open air to what was at least considered to be the
polluted atmosphere of the stable city. It would be far from the truth
to assume that this floating population was composed exclusively of
men, women, and children; there were dogs galore, abundant by both
presence and voice, horses and mules, and an occasional goat betrayed
itself munching among hay-packs and the usual combination of simple
and hard things which make up goat food. One canvas bore the tempting
inscription "Hot and Cold River Baths," several carried legends of
variously designated laundries, and a few even invited to "Board and
Lodging, Cheap." Of course, the word cheap had here a special
etymologic significance, and bore little relation to the same form of
word which is current in lexicons.
[Illustration: SOME MUD IN THE MAIN STREET--FIRST AVENUE.]
The first favorable impression of dry land in Dawson was tempered by a
knowledge that even here were many moist spots. The mud lay in great
pools along the main street--First Avenue or Front Street--but hardly
in sufficient depth to make walking dangerous. Dogs and goats could
alone drown in it. It is true that an occasional wading burro or even
a mule would find a dangerously low level, but I am not aware that any
in this condition had added to a list of serious casualties. No
mention is made in this connection of cats, for, in truth, only two
specimens of the feline family had up to this time reached
Dawson--one, a blue-ribboned kitten, which was endearingly received as
the mascot of the Yukon Mining Exchange.
[Illustration: THE MAIN STREET IN A SPRING FRESHET.]
The Dawsonites are not entirely oblivious to the discomforts of mud,
for an effort is being made to block it out with sawdust, of which the
three or four sawmills in the town furnish a goodly supply. In some
parts a rough corduroy has been attempted, but the price of lumber,
two hundred dollars per thousand linear feet, renders this form of
construction too expensive for general use, especially in a community
all of whose members, female as well as male, are prepared to stem the
tide with high-top boots. About one half the street length shows the
pretense of wooden sidewalks, but no one has yet recognized a special
responsibility for repairs, or seemingly considered that a continuous
walk requires a continuous support. Walking is a succession of ups and
downs; boards are missing here, other are smashed elsewhere, and the
whole walk gives the impression of having been in existence for
centuries rather than for the period of a short twelvemonth.
It was not difficult to determine what, perhaps, the majority of the
sixteen thousand inhabitants of Dawson were doing at the time of our
arrival. They were simply loitering, and the streets were packed with
humanity. This was not strange, either, for it must have been
difficult to resist the enjoyment of that open sunshine, that soft,
warm atmosphere which is the delight of the summer climate of the far
North. Never had I experienced anything comparable, and others who had
traveled much agreed with my experience. On my way to the hotel, the
"Fair View," which had been strongly recommended for its _cuisine_ and
the circumstance that it was "brand" new in its appointments--having
only come into existence a few days before--I caught a good general
glimpse of the town, the dominant features of which were registered
in the two sides of the main thoroughfare along the river front. A
nearly continuous row of one-story, or at the utmost two-story, frame
shacks or booths, many of them still in canvas form, and most of them
supported over the river's bank by pile proppings, built up the river
side of this First Avenue. All manner of articles, both serviceable
and unserviceable, for the Klondike business were displayed, mostly
in cramped quarters. The variety of things that had in so brief a
period found their way to this region was truly astonishing, and one
marveled at the mental ingenuity which spirited some of these articles
to a _champ de vente_. Surely nothing but "manifest destiny" could
have placed a mammoth's molar on sale for a hundred dollars, when it
was thought that a period of starvation was reigning in the town. And
yet almost alongside of it were posters announcing that four loaves of
bread could be purchased for one dollar--in another place "six loves"
for the same price--and that "half an ounce" of gold dust, the
equivalent of eight dollars, would gain admission to the best seat
witnessing a boxing and wrestling contest.
In addition to the booths doing a regular merchandise business, there
were those whose masters ministered to a specialty--druggists and
doctors, photographers, auctioneers, and brokers of one kind or
another. "Bartlett Bros., Packers" served the inner core of the gold
regions by means of long trains of pack-mules, but they were not the
only ones to whom the _cargador_ was an officer militant. Dog teams
there were as well as mule teams, and the majesty of the law was
hardly considered invaded when the former effected a junction with man
in the capacity of common carriers. One of the most interesting sights
was to me the large number of letters awaiting ownership which were
tacked up to the fronts and sides of different buildings, in the most
public way petitioning for rapid delivery. My first letter in Dawson
was obtained by stripping it from a door-jamb, but it was three weeks
before my attention had been directed to it by a friendly discoverer.
To obtain anything from the post office was a most exhaustive process,
and usually required a long wait, sometimes of a day, or even of two
days, before entry could be obtained into the small room where the
sorting, distribution, and dispensation of mail matter were being
effected. Even when finally issued, this matter was usually of several
weeks' antiquity of arrival, the sorting of tons of substance being
much beyond the capacity of the few official hands that were engaged
in the work.
[Illustration: DOG-TEAM EXPRESS--DAWSON.]
By far the most imposing side of the street was that which faced the
river. Here, at least, were real buildings. The stately depots of the
Alaska Commercial and North America Trading and Transportation
Companies, with their outer casing of corrugated iron, would have done
credit to a town of larger capacity than Dawson, and in regions much
more accessible to civilization than the Northwest Territory. Farther
on, the signs of a number of well-built saloons--"The Dominion," "The
Pioneer," etc.--attract attention, not by the supposition that they
are alone in the business, since they are supported by probably not
less than two or three score others of their kind, but by their
specially distinctive interiors; one of these is embellished inside by
a series of four mural decorations in oil or distemper, representing a
range of subject from Morro Castle, Havana, to a "Moonlight on the
Yukon," for which a resident artist "of promise," whose work was done
in an open lot, received the handsome compensation of eight hundred
dollars. They were befitting the place which they graced.
[Illustration: JUNCTION OF THE KLONDIKE WITH THE YUKON.]
A more intimate acquaintance with these saloons made it plain that
they were patronized both for the drinks which were sold over the bar
for fifty cents or more and for the gaming tables which in open
evidence betrayed a surpassingly strong interest in faro, _rouge et
noir_, and roulette. Crowds were watching the fortunes of the play at
every turn. From the front entrance quite to the rear some of the more
favored halls were packed, but with an element that seemed little
disposed to disturbance of any kind. While the drinking of spirituous
liquors is very largely indulged in, I believe that during all my stay
in Dawson only three cases of obtrusive drunkenness were brought to my
attention; and of riotism my experience was wholly negative. Life and
property are considered safe even in the most doubtful establishments,
and it is not uncommon for a man to pass hours in a crowded dance hall
with virtually all his possessions, possibly a few hundred dollars, or
it may be thousands, carried in the form of gold dust in his trousers
pockets. Two main factors are involved in this condition of security
or in the feeling that it exists. The first of these is, perhaps, a
wholesome dread of the Canadian Mounted Police, whose efficiency in
the direction of controlling order is conceded by every one; and the
second, the circumstance that the inhabitants of Dawson and of the
adjoining Klondike region are not, as is so largely supposed, a mere
assortment of rough prospectors, intent upon doing anything for the
sake of acquiring gold, but a fair representation of good and
indifferent elements borrowed from all professions and stations of
life, and not from one country alone, but from nearly all parts of the
civilized globe. During my brief stay I stumbled upon "counts,"
"sirs," military and naval officers, scientists, lawyers, newspaper
men, promoters, and others of broad and liberal standing; and if some
of these were undistinguishable in external garb from their brethren
in mustard-colored mackinaws whose sole resource was digging for gold,
their polished and intellectual method was evidence enough that
civilization was present in good quantity along the upper Yukon. The
fact that there are three weekly newspapers published in Dawson--the
Nugget, Midnight Sun, and Dawson Miner, the first two selling for
fifty cents a copy and the last for twenty-five cents--can hardly be
considered to prove this condition, although favoring it; for, though
the substance and especially the typography of the journals are quite
good, the demand for reading matter is such that almost anything could
realize a subscription list. The long-belated New York journals seem
to command a steady sale on the news stands, where one also sees
displayed the small and (in our country) gratuitously distributed
scenic book of the transcontinental railways put up for fifty cents.
The Argosy, Strand, Munsey's, and Cosmopolitan were the ruling
magazines during my visit, and each of these could be had for
seventy-five cents a number.
Regretfully must it be said that the female portion of the population
does not sustain the male either in character or diversity. I tried
in various ways to ascertain the number of women who represented the
community, but failed to obtain a satisfactory accounting. A large
proportion of those who are in evidence, and perhaps even by far the
greater number, belong to the "red" aristocracy, or at least to that
side where steady principles are treated with little consideration and
respect. I use the word aristocracy advisedly, for it is a notorious
fact that an amount of deference is paid to these creatures of shame
which is not given to the virtuous or self-respecting woman; and that
they themselves, recognizing their standing, are apt to look down upon
the rest of their kin, and to even question their proper privileges. A
large part of the broadly capacious Second Avenue, together with
equally conspicuous sections of the town elsewhere, is given up to the
public display of the inmates of neatly constructed log cabins bearing
such devices as "Saratoga," "Bon-Ton," "The Lucky Cigar Store," "Green
Tree," etc. The number of open houses is probably less than in most
mining camps, and far below what it is in some places. In deference to
a demand tax of fifty dollars, levied on each member of the profession
to pay part costs of two fire engines which had been brought to the
town, there was a response of only sixty-nine, and this was considered
a sufficiently close representation not to press the matter any
further.
A community of this kind must necessarily have its dance halls and
places of amusement. The latter consisted at the time of my arrival of
four "theatres" or "opera houses"--the "Combination," "Monte Carlo,"
"Mascot," and "Pavilion," two of which suspended or closed up before
the "season" had fairly opened. Ordinarily, the price of a drink at
the bar of entrance paid for admission to the performance with seat,
and many will agree with me in believing that the admission was fully
paid. The acting need not be worse at any theater, and the singing
could hardly be surpassed in its eccentricities; yet the performances
appeared to satisfy a general demand, as ordinarily the houses were
packed to their full capacity evening after evening. Needless is it to
say that the performances are not intended for women in good standing,
and few such are ever present, unless heavily screened behind the
curtains of the "boxes." The plays are all of a low order, but the
worst is not much worse than some of the plays that are tolerated in
all their nastiness in some of our own legitimate theaters. It is
singular and interesting as showing the influence of necessity that a
sacred Sunday concert in aid of the fire department was successfully
carried through in the capacious halls of one of the most notorious
dancing resorts.
There are now two banks in Dawson--the Bank of British North America
and the Canadian Bank of Commerce. In the early days of August the
first of these was still housed in a tent, and before the end of the
month a stately wooden structure with flagstaff, and with commodious
quarters for the representing officers and accountants, gave dignity
to the institution, while it lent style to the corner upon which it
was erected. Adjoining it now is the architecturally most imposing but
by no means largest building in Dawson--the three-storied,
bow-windowed log cabin of Alexander McDonald, the recognized "King of
the Klondike"--intended primarily as an office building. It is a truly
fine expression of the art of log-cabin building. In many ways one of
the most interesting buildings, if such it can be called, was the air
space, with canvas top, which adjoined one of the theaters and was
used by Signor Gandolfo for a fruit store. There was no architectural
quality to commend this space; nor, indeed, was there anything else in
its favor, except that it was in the right place and brought both
lessor and lessee fortunes. For the privileges of this space of five
feet width the occupant paid the handsome rental of one hundred and
twenty dollars a month, or twenty-four dollars per single foot of
frontage; his profits were, however, such as to justify this payment,
and before leaving he confided to me his plan of renting one half of
the establishment. Conceive of the character of a store five feet
wide, the opposite sides of which are devoted to quite distinct
interests! Other sites rent for very little less, and the singular
part of it is that much of the rental goes to the pockets of certain
assumed owners, whose actual rights are largely in the nature of a
"grab" or of squatter sovereignty alone.
[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF THE "SUSIE" FROM "DOWN THE RIVER."]
Dawson extends up the river for about two miles, virtually coalescing
with and taking in what has been euphoniously called Lousetown and
also Klondike City. These more southerly parts carry with them certain
characteristics which are either wanting in the main city or are there
but feebly represented. The closely packed tents remind one of an army
gathering or of the furniture of some religious camp meeting; walking
between them might almost be considered to be a branch of navigation.
Inscriptions on the canvas tell us of certain "brothers from St.
Louis" being occupants here, and of "the Jolly Four from----"
occupants elsewhere. Representatives of the press, physicians, and
attorneys all have their inscriptions. But the most interesting
constructions, picturesque as much as they are instructive, are the
elevated platform _caches_, diminutive log cabins, which on high
stilts store a multitude of articles in safe keeping and beyond reach
of the army of hungry dogs which are everywhere prowling about and
carousing upon all manner of odds and ends. Their appearance,
especially where they are placed among trees and bushes, is such that
the observer can hardly resist the feeling that he is traveling in a
region of primitive pile-dwellings--it may be the interior of New
Guinea or the forest tract of one of the Guianas.
Dawson, which now owns the right to celebrate its third anniversary,
is destined before long to assume a modern garb. It already has its
electric plant, and before many months have passed electric
illumination will lift the burden of the dark winter night. It is
believed, too, that an electric railroad for freight and passenger
service will be constructed in the course of the present year into the
heart of the adjoining gold region. The tiresome accounts of bad
trails will then be a thing of the past. In its business aspects
Dawson does not materially differ from the majority of the boom towns
of the United States, though of course it has its peculiarities. In
the period of little more than a year it has gathered to itself,
besides the usual class of merchants, representatives of a number of
professions, such as doctors, lawyers, chemists, and assayers, most of
whom, especially of the first two classes, appeared to be doing at
least fairly well. Mine brokers, or simply venders of claims, are
numerous, but their service does not in most cases sustain confidence;
the display of posters announcing "bonanzas" in mining properties may
be effective at times, but ordinarily the investor turns either to the
Mining Exchange, a reasonably well-conducted private enterprise, or to
claim-holders on the ground. The auction of claims at the Exchange was
always largely attended at the times of my visits, and the bidding was
frequently very spirited. The allowance of a time limit of ten days in
which to make an examination of properties purchased and of the titles
thereto before payment, beyond a forfeit of ten per cent, was exacted,
naturally inspired confidence in the method of the transaction, and
there is no question that a considerable number of good properties
were parted over the boards here, and with eminent satisfaction to the
purchasers.
The practice of medicine is necessarily governed by the laws which are
in effect in the Dominion of Canada, and it requires the possession on
the part of the practitioner of a diploma properly accredited from
some recognized college of medicine in Canada. Graduation with diploma
from the best medical schools in the United States is not considered
to meet the requirement--nor, for that matter, is the diploma of any
but a British school. This restriction also applies in the case of
professional trained nurses. A number of cases closely bordering on
litigation, and at one time even threatening to bring about
international complications, have arisen in connection with practice
violating this law; but despite the overwhelmingly large number of
foreigners who are resident in the region, and who, it was thought by
some, had the right to consult practitioners of their own nationality
or choice, there is now a peaceful submission to the reading of the
statute. The exaction is in no way intended to legislate against
foreigners, but is simply a provision of the Dominion laws, similar to
that which requires a "Dominion surveyor" who intends doing official
survey work in British Columbia to be properly accredited with a
special paper of that section of Canada (as distinguished from the
Northwest Territory, etc.). Like the physicians, all surveyors giving
out work under their names must be officially licensed from the
Dominion, although those not thus certificated are permitted to do
office or field work for others who are.
A field of labor that has already been entered upon by women is
stenography and typewriting. There has been considerable demand for
this kind of work, and there will continue to be much more, but it
may be doubted if profits arising from it will ever equal what has
been attained in millinery and the sale of fancy dress goods. One of
the earliest milliners to come out of Dawson told me at Bennett that
she had disposed of a hat which brought her two hundred and eighty
dollars (in April, 1898), and its only ornamentation was two black
ostrich feathers! Such prices are to-day a thing away in the past, but
fur capes or circulars are still marketable for three hundred dollars
and upward.
Toward a more intimate acquaintance with the methods and lines of
business now followed in Dawson we subjoin a facsimile of portions of
the advertising page of the Yukon Midnight Sun, bearing date of
September 3, 1898.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF PART OF YUKON MIDNIGHT SUN, SEPTEMBER 3,
1898.]
THE NEGRO QUESTION.
BY J. L. M. CURRY, LL.D.,
GENERAL AGENT OF THE PEABODY EDUCATION FUND AND OF THE JOHN F. SLATER
EDUCATION FUND; LATE MINISTER TO SPAIN.
The negro question is not of recent origin. The Iliad of our woes
began in 1620, when negroes were first brought to the colony of
Virginia and sold as slaves. Slavery antedates history. The traffic of
Europeans in negroes existed a half century before the discovery of
America. The very year in which Charles V sailed with a powerful
expedition against Tunis to check the piracies of the Barbary states,
and to emancipate enslaved Christians in Africa, he gave an open legal
sanction to the African slave trade. When independence was declared in
1776 all the colonies held slaves. Slavery, said the late Senator
Ingalls, disappeared from the Northern States "by the operation of
social, economic, and natural laws," and "the North did not finally
determine to destroy this system until convinced that its continuance
threatened not only their industrial independence but their political
importance." In course of years "the peculiar institution" assumed a
sectional character. The war between the States precipitated a crisis.
President Lincoln began then the work of emancipation. "As
commander-in-chief of the army and navy in time of war, I suppose I
have the right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy....
I view the measure [the Proclamation] as a practical war measure
according to the advantages or disadvantages it will offer to the
suppression of the rebellion." Senator Ingalls's testimony is as
follows: "It may be admitted that the emancipation of the slaves was
not contemplated by any considerable portion of the American people
when the war for the Union began, and it was not brought to pass until
the fortunes of war became desperate, and was then justified and
defended upon the plea of military necessity." The Southern States
ratified the amendments to the Constitution under penalty of otherwise
remaining out of the Union and in political and military vassalage.
The abolition of slavery has the assent of all sane men. Apart from
ethical considerations, the subjection of the will, thought, or labor
of a mature human being to the whim, caprice, or legal right of
another is a gross political and economical blunder, unwise and
indefensible. After emancipation came citizenship and enfranchisement
of the freedmen, and the punitive measures of reconstruction, which
were the outcome of hatred, revenge, desire for party ascendency, and
which no good man can now approve. No conquering nation ever inflicted
on a conquered people more cruel injustice than the disfranchisement
of the most capable citizens and the enfranchisement of liberated
slaves. Certain great civil rights are the necessary and proper
consequences of freedom. Suffrage is not a natural right, nor a legal,
political, or general result of freedom or citizenship. The large
majority of citizens do not and can not vote.
The liberation of millions of slaves was the most gigantic and, in
itself, one of the most beneficent acts of this century. Nothing is
comparable to it as a triumph of the inalienable rights of man.
Humanity and justice demanded emancipation. Re-enslavement no one
proposes or desires. All would rejoice in the prosperity and progress
of the Afro-American, but with freedom came citizenship and suffrage,
and these revolutionized our Government. Elements undreamed of were
introduced as constituents. When the Constitution and the resulting
Union were formed, such a citizenship with franchise was not proposed,
and if proposed would not have been listened to for a moment. The most
infatuated negrophilist would not stultify himself by asserting that
the Union of States would or could have been consummated with the
present incongruous, heterogeneous citizenship.
From these and other facts has been evolved what has been called the
negro problem. In the discussion, it is best to eliminate all
extraneous considerations, all issues which, as the lawyers say, are
"_dehors_ the record." Government is a very practical business. The
end is the securing and preserving the peace, safety, and well-being
of the State. Civil government has no mission of general philanthropy.
This problem, while of terrific importance in the South, where the
black population is persistently congestive, is not, in its
ramifications or direct effects, local or sectional. It affects every
community and every section. It is of paramount national importance,
complex, and involving social, moral, and political considerations.
Its gravity can not be exaggerated. It compels the attention and
demands all the resources of patriots, philanthropists, statesmen. It
thrusts itself, uninvited and unwelcomed, into religious and social
assemblies and legislative councils. It is pervasive, continuing,
vital. It is better to look it full in the face and give it
dispassionate thought.
It need scarcely be said that in this discussion no hostile reference
is made to individuals. Some negroes are men of intelligence,
integrity, patriotism, and stand on a plane with our best citizens in
virtues and mental qualifications.[C] The gist of this contention is
not based on special exceptions, but on the race in the aggregate.
[Footnote C: Such an extraordinary man as Booker T. Washington is an
honor to any country and worthy of unlimited confidence and regard.]
We find in the South the presence of two distinct peoples, with
irreconcilable racial characteristics and diverse historical
antecedents. The Caucasian and the negro are not simply unlike, but
they are contrasted, and are as far apart as any other two races of
human beings. They are unassimilable and immiscible without rapid
degeneracy. Ethnologically they are nearly polar opposites. With the
Caucasian progress has been upward. Whatever is great in art,
invention, literature, science, civilization, religion, has
characterized him. In his native land the negro has made little or no
advancement for nearly four thousand years. Surrounded by and in
contact with a higher civilization, he has not invented a machine, nor
painted a picture, nor written a book, nor organized a stable
government, nor constructed a code of laws. He has not suppressed the
slave trade, which, according to recent testimony, was never more
flourishing. He has no monuments nor recorded history. For thousands
of years there lies behind the race one dreary, unrelieved, monotonous
chapter of ignorance, nakedness, superstition, savagery. All efforts
to reclaim, civilize, Christianize, have been disastrous failures,
except what has been accomplished in this direction in the United
States.
It need not be disguised, for it is the ever-present, indisputable
fact, that while there are alleviations of the unpleasantness, the
relations between the negroes and their co-citizens of the Caucasian
race are strained and unsatisfactory. The friction, the prejudice, the
cleavage, is not between Teutonic and Latin on the one side and
Semitic on the other, nor between Saxon and Celt; it lies deeper,
yields less readily to palliatives and remedies, and seems a matter of
adjustment for the remotest future. It may help to understand the
situation if we analyze its causes.
The great revolution suddenly transformed the customs, traditions, and
conditions of the two races. Ownership gave way to freedom; compulsory
and wage-unrewarded labor to absolute control of person; inequality,
inferiority, subjection, to equality in the eye of the law; restrained
locomotion to license of movement; kindness, interest in life, wealth,
and physical welfare, to suspicion, distress, alienation. With
property in man, regulated and enforced by laws in the interest of the
master, labor was organized, directed by intelligent control to the
development of agricultural resources and to the building up of a
society which for refinement of manners, hospitality, and
administrative capacity, has elicited praise from disinterested
travelers and investigators. The negro, whatever he may have attained
from the discipline of slavery, was not cultivated in intelligence, in
manual skill, in forethought, power of initiative, in thrift, and the
comforts and graces of home life. When freed, many were deluded by
deceptive promises. They construed freedom to mean a division of
property. Release from bondage led to intemperance and extravagance.
Accustomed to control, unaccustomed to self-reliance, having others
to think, plan, buy, and sell for them, to supply wants, to watch over
them from the cradle to the coffin, many, when left to themselves,
reverted to primitive habits, and became idle and worthless. Slavery
had cursed the South with ignorant, unskilled, uninventive labor.
Freedom did not change its character. The war, liberation of slaves,
the sudden extinguishment of millions of property, bankrupted the
South. Subsistence, recovery of means of living, rehabilitation,
reorganization of those agencies, which are, with intelligent work,
the chief means of the wealth of civilized peoples, became the first
duty after hostilities ceased. This demanded steady, persistent
industry, the change of former methods of agriculture, subdivision of
farms, diversification of pursuits, opening of academies and colleges,
and establishment of public schools for free and universal education.
The contrast between the wealth and prosperity of the North and South
presents an appalling picture. Naturally, the Southern people were in
despair, and too often they vented their dissatisfaction, their rage,
upon the irresponsible and unoffending negro.
Slavery _per se_ is not conducive to self-restraint of the enslaved,
to high ethical standards, and the best types of human life. When the
interest and authority of owners were removed and former religious
instruction was crippled or withdrawn, the negroes fell rapidly from
what had been attained in slavery to a state of immorality, and, in
some cases, to original fetichism. Some remained immovable in their
former faith, but many, especially of the younger generation, of both
sexes, gave proof of what degeneracy can accomplish in a quarter of a
century. It is very common for them to divorce religion and piety.
Artificial excitement, passionate emotion, was substituted for a faith
which should be the product of a knowledge of and deep reverence for
the Word of God. The danger of doing harm, or injustice, restrains my
pen from disclosing a mass of disgusting material which could only
shock sensibilities and stagger credulity. It is, besides, very easy
to magnify our own virtues and others' vices. It is a prevalent mode
of religiousness to repent of other people's sins, and to get
superfluous merit by showing how others fall short of our attainments.
Lowell said, "Everybody has a mission (with a capital M) to attend to
everybody else's business," and "to make his own whim the law, and his
own range the horizon of the universe." We have all read of the
philanthropic Mrs. Jelliby neglecting home and children to sweeten the
lot of the unregenerate natives of Borrioboola Gha. Still, testimony,
to satisfy the most skeptical, could be adduced _ad nauseam_, from men
and women doing educational and missionary work among the colored
people, to show the deplorable depths into which multitudes have
sunk.
Under the Reconstruction Acts there was a deliberate, predetermined
attempt and purpose to put the freedmen in control of the Southern
States. The late slaves were enfranchised; the best class of white men
were disfranchised. The law presumes that a man or a State intends the
logical consequence of acts done. In South Carolina, Mississippi, and
Louisiana a majority of the voters, under the coerced policy, were
negroes. In other States they were so numerous that a combination with
a small fraction of white voters would give the ascendency. In
Virginia, a coalition between non-taxpaying white people and negroes,
under skilled and bold leadership, accomplished partial repudiation of
the State debt. Superadd to this undisguised Federal intent the hungry
adventurers who, as governors, judges, marshals, district attorneys,
etc., flocked like vultures around the carcass, the horde of persons
whose object was to pilfer and plunder, who played upon the ignorance,
the superstitions, and gratitude of the negro and made the credulous
victims believe that their former masters were not to be trusted in
elections, and you have a picture which imagination fails to realize.
The negroes, neither by apprenticeship, nor political education, not
intellectual culture, were prepared for the boon, and their
unscrupulous friends organized them into secret societies and inflamed
hopes and expectations of wealth and dominancy. Casper Hauser
transferred from a dungeon to a throne would be a fit illustration of
this defiance of all the teachings of the past. Suffrage was a wrong
to the nation, to the States, to the white and black races, and
especially to the negro. Negro suffrage is a farce, a burlesque on
elections, and only evil. The negroes generally vote as puppets, as
machines, and have not the remotest conception of the character or
effect of the act they are ignorantly performing, or of the issues
involved in the contest, or of the functions or duties of the officers
voted for. Huxley says, "Voting power as a means of giving effect to
opinion is more likely to prove a curse than a blessing to the voter,
unless that opinion is the result of a sound judgment operating upon
sound knowledge." This premature investiture of the negro with
suffrage reciprocally provoked alienation, bitterness, strife, and a
resolute purpose on the part of the white people not to submit to the
misrule and tyranny of ignorance and pauperism, but to resort to all
necessary methods to defeat such a result.
It is needless to recapitulate the facts of many thousand years in
order to raise the inference of racial difference between the
Caucasian and the negro. The immigration to our country is the proof
of antagonism of races. The foreigner stays away from the South; so in
a large degree does the Northern man. Notwithstanding the unsurpassed
climate, the rivers and gulf and mountains, the fertile soil, the
varied products, the hospitable welcome, the territory occupied by the
negro is persistently avoided. By the census of 1880 the proportion of
foreign-born in all the former slave States was 3.5 per cent; in the
Northern States about twenty per cent; in eight Southern States, where
the negroes abound, there was in 1880 only one and a third per cent
who were of foreign birth. Mr. Lincoln, in 1858, in accounting for the
repulsion, said: "There is a physical difference between the two races
which will probably forbid their living together upon the footing of
perfect equality.... I am not, or ever have been, in favor of making
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office,
nor of intermarrying with white people." Absorption, assimilation, is
not to be dreamed of. The negro is no nearer common fellowship,
equality of association, than he was in 1865. Reconstruction measures,
constitutional amendments, sword and bayonet, ecclesiastical
anathemas, fulminations of press and pulpit, all power of church and
state and public opinion, have not altered, can not alter, what seems
ineradicable. Race antagonism reaches deeper than political
affiliation. If every negro at the South were to vote the Democratic
ticket in every subsequent election, the race division would remain
the same.
Can these differences be effaced, alienations be healed, and
overshadowing perils be averted? What concerns the patriot is to find
a solution for this gigantic and appalling problem. The statesman has
not yet arisen, disposed to grapple with the problem, or capable of
suggesting a feasible and efficacious remedy. With the least hardship
to the negro, proper recognition of his rights as a man, due regard to
the just ends of our Government, and the purposes of its founders,
some scheme, if possible, wise, adequate, and comprehensive, should be
devised. Whatever hitherto has been suggested has been met with
opposition and is justly liable to criticism. The most obvious remedy,
and which has been tried with some success, is to uplift the race by
means of public schools and proper religious instruction. All honor to
the schools that train the youth into self-respecting manhood and
womanhood! All honor for the efforts that are making to correct the
debasement of slavery, to unite faith and practice, to infuse
religious life with an ethical Christianity, and to form a moral basis
for life and character! The crimes of both races in the South, pushed
within the last few years to most brutal atrocities, show that there
can be no safety for free institutions, no guarding against savage
degradation, if either race be kept in crass ignorance. Both must
suffer. It would be some relief from ballot-box evils and perils if
the examples of New England and of Louisiana, Mississippi, and South
Carolina were followed by all the States. As "universal suffrage has
no anchorage except in the people's intelligence," Massachusetts
requires of voters a prepayment of taxes, and voting and
office-holding are limited to those who can read the Constitution in
the English language and write their names. What has been done by
States, denominations, and individuals through schools is not
discouraging to larger and better efforts, but is a stimulus to and an
assurance of excellent results. The plantation system of the South,
when land was in the hands of a few territorial magnates, was of very
doubtful utility. A bold peasantry is a country's pride, and a small
farmer should take the place of the large landed proprietor. If the
negroes should acquire and hold more real estate, they would be of
more value as citizens, and would have increased interest in the
stability of laws, enforcing of contracts, and the preservation of
State honor. An enlargement of the number of those who have a solid
stake in the well-being of the country would be adding to the ranks of
natural supporters of law and honor, and strengthening the true
foundations on which the stability of a republican government must
rest.
The congestion of the negroes aggravates the difficulties and dangers
of the problem. The area of the States holding slaves in 1860 was
901,740 square miles, and of the Northern States, excluding Alaska,
2,123,860 square miles. By the census of 1890, the total population of
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West
Virginia, was 37.3 per cent of negroes and 62.7 per cent of whites;
or, including Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, 30.7 per
cent of negroes and 69.3 per cent of whites. The African citizens are
localized within a narrow area. A French statesman said, "Cross the
Pyrenees and Africa begins." Cross Mason and Dixon's line, or the Ohio
and Potomac Rivers, and in a truer sense Africa begins, for south of
that line the negroes are massed. It has been nearly forty years since
slavery existed, for no one born since 1860 was ever practically a
slave, and yet freedom has not diffused the seven million and a half
of Africans. Despite all the traditions of bondage, all the
misrepresentations of modern literature, all the exaggerated accounts
of intimidation and cruelty, the South remains the home of the negro.
When he is told that equality, friendship, political sympathy, and
good wages may be secured by passing an invisible geographical line,
he persistently refuses to be seduced across. Senator Windom, of
Minnesota, advocated a plan for distributing by assisted emigration,
but nothing came of it. Senator Edmunds, in discussing the Chinese
question, said: "The people of Massachusetts would not be hungry for
an eruption of a million of the inhabitants of Africa, ... because
they believe, either by instinct or education, that it is not good for
the two races to be brought into that kind of contact in that
place.... The fundamental idea of a prosperous republic must be a
homogeneity of its people."
Colonization as a remedy has had many strong advocates. As early as
1800 the Assembly of Virginia, in secret session, instructed the
Governor to correspond with the President with the object of procuring
a colony to which the negroes could be sent. Jefferson began the
correspondence. The Legislature resumed the question, and expressed
its preference for "Africa or any of the Spanish or Portuguese
settlements in South America" as the place "to which free negroes or
mulattoes, and such negroes or mulattoes as may be emancipated," might
be sent or choose to remove. In 1805 the members of Congress were
instructed to endeavor to procure suitable territory in Louisiana. In
1811, being asked his opinion as to a settlement on the coast of
Africa, Jefferson replied that "nothing is more to be wished than that
the United States would themselves undertake to make such an
establishment on the coast of Africa." In 1813 the Legislature openly
and almost unanimously adopted, for the third time, resolutions
similar to those of 1800. The same year the Colonization Society was
formed, out of which grew the Republic of Liberia. President Lincoln,
in his first annual message, December, 1861, referring to the two
classes of liberated persons that might be thrown upon Congress for
their disposal, recommended "that in any event steps be taken for
colonizing both classes at some place or places in a climate congenial
to them. It might be well to consider, too, whether the free colored
people already in the United States could not be included in such
colonization." Congress responded by voting one hundred thousand
dollars for the voluntary emigration of freedmen from the District of
Columbia to Haiti or Liberia, and later, in July, 1862, gave five
hundred thousand dollars for the colonization of negroes in some
tropical country beyond the limits of the United States. Mr. Lincoln
continued to favor the policy of removal to another country, and five
days after signing the above act he read to his Cabinet a proposed
order for "the colonization of negroes in some tropical country."
Burdened with this great question, amid the exigencies of the mighty
war, he continued to push the matter, and had Secretary Seward send a
circular letter to England, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark, with
regard to colonizing the negroes in some of their tropical
possessions. Offers came from the Danish West Indies, Dutch Surinam,
British Guiana, Honduras, Haiti, New Granada, and Ecuador. Mr. Lincoln
considered the offers from New Granada and an island off Haiti, and
even sent a colony to the latter. Again, in his annual message in
1862, he argued for colonization, and asked for an appropriation,
but, under the passions of the terrible conflict then raging, the
Congress, instead of heeding the request, repealed the former act
appropriating five hundred thousand dollars.
The Indians, against their will, were transported, by coercive
measures, to allotted lands beyond the Mississippi, but that was
before the modern discovery that the United States should grant
"fraternity and assistance to all people" under other than republican
governments, and that universal suffrage was the infallible expedient
for civilizing semibarbarous peoples. President Harrison, in his
letter of acceptance, writing on another subject, says, "We are
already under a duty to defend our civilization by excluding alien
races whose ultimate assimilation with our people is neither possible
nor desirable."
Remedies, strong and adequate and feasible, may not be found readily,
but there are gentler and quieter agencies which may be used by both
races to mutual advantage. The white people, in accepting the
legitimate consequences of defeat, in vigorous efforts to restore
antebellum prosperity, in establishing schools, in reconstructing
shattered society, have done nobly, but they are not without sin.
Laws, general and wise and impartial, on the statute-book need for
their enforcement a sustaining public opinion, but this has not always
been forthcoming. Lawless and violent proceedings, always unnecessary
and demoralizing, sometimes as brutal as the crimes which excited
horror; harsh and unjust contracts; interferences in elections; false
registration and counting of votes, and other acts which the plea of
self-preservation did not justify, have evinced the harshness and
injustice of dominant power, and have not tended to soften prejudices
or make the situation more tolerable. Each race is fortunately
improving in intercourse and in dealings with the other, and time and
sober judgment are, in a sensible degree, removing causes of
alienation which are not inherent and incurable.
* * * * *
"What a blessing," said President Sir John Lubbock, at the late
meeting of the International Congress of Zoölogists, "it would be
for mankind if we could stop the enormous expenditure on engines
for the destruction of life and property, and spend the tenth,
the hundredth, even the thousandth part on scientific progress!
Few people seem to realize how much science has done for man, and
still fewer how much more it would still do if permitted. More
students would doubtless have devoted themselves to science if it
were not so systematically neglected in our schools; if men and
boys were not given the impression that the field of discovery is
well-nigh exhausted. We, gentlemen, know how far that is from
being the case. Much of the land surface of the globe is still
unexplored; the ocean is almost unknown; our collections contain
thousands of species waiting to be described; the life-histories
of many of our commonest species remain to be investigated, or
have only recently been discovered."
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS AND AMERICAN CAPITAL.
BY J. RUSSELL SMITH.
That the Philippine Islands are of value as a place for investment is
an unexplained generalization that is now being used to tempt business
men. The object of this article is to discuss this generalization. The
idea that the Philippine Islands are of importance to us, as a new
field for our industrial developments, depends upon two assumptions:
First, that we need to go beyond the bounds of the United States;
second, that the Philippines offer the best available field for the
satisfaction of that need.
As to the first assumption, the occasion and origin of the demand for
the retention of the Philippines furnish presumptive evidence that it
represents no real economic want of the American people. No one ever
thought of it until we heard the boom of Dewey's guns at Manila. The
demands that then arose for Eastern territory were the natural result
of a just pride in the amazing triumph of our navy. Before the battle
of Manila a suggestion that we should take the Philippines and RECEIVE
$20,000,000 as a bonus we would have deemed preposterous. Before that
battle, one idea was uppermost in the minds of the American
people--namely, the development of the American continent. And yet,
along with the enthusiasm over the accomplishments of our army and
navy, the idea has crept into some minds that we are in need of more
land to develop, and that we must find it in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Examination of the internal condition of the United States does not
seem to indicate such need. Our exports are an index to our condition.
In 1872 we exported merchandise to the value of $522,000,000; in 1898
the amount had swelled to $1,230,000,000, an increase of two hundred
and thirty-five per cent. No European nation has shown such progress.
Despite their colonial empires, their armies and navies, their
chartered companies, their spheres of influence, and all their
elaborate paraphernalia, we are competing with them in their own
markets. We have pursued a policy the opposite of theirs and are
outstripping them in the race for a share of the world's trade. It is
not compatible with industrial wisdom to change and adopt the policy
of our less successful rivals just as the success of our own policy is
being fully demonstrated.
A nation's commercial supremacy rests upon the same principles as a
business man's leadership in his trade--namely, superiority of
production. It does not require a citation of evidence to say that the
producers of Europe are staggering under the burden of their armies
and navies. While they are thus handicapped, we have nothing to fear
unless we inflict upon ourselves a similar burden. We have succeeded
by attending to our own industries, by developing our natural
resources, by producing things that the people of other nations must
have. That development is but begun. Even England, the ruler of the
greatest colonial empire the world has ever known, the greatest
manufacturing nation, the mistress of the seas, stands with almost
stationary exports. The United States, the nation with a small navy,
the nation that never really had a colony, the so-called isolated
nation, has come by rapid strides to the point where she is the
leading exporter of the world.
There is no reason why the progress of the United States should be
checked. England has demonstrated the fact that the nation that has
the iron and coal is the commercial mistress of the world. The United
States is continuing, and will continue the demonstration. England has
but 900 square miles of much-used coal lands, and she gets her iron
ore from Spain. We have over 200,000 square miles[D] of untouched coal
lands; an almost continuous bed of iron ore, reaching from Lake
Ontario to Alabama.[E] Beside this great ore bed is the Appalachian
coal field, with coal mines in every State between New York and
Alabama. There are mountains of iron ore in Missouri and Michigan. By
the special lines of lake steamers the iron ore of Lake Superior is
taken to Chicago and Cleveland, and thence carried by rail to
Pittsburg. There the eastern coal completes the conditions for the
most economical production of iron and steel. That gives the United
States the basis for our export trade in iron, steel, and machinery.
We are capturing the iron markets of the world, and, judging by our
supplies, can hold them for ages. As our iron and coal are the basis
of all manufacturing industry, continued attention to them will give
us the control of the world's trade.
[Footnote D: The last United States census puts our coal lands at
something more than 225,000 square miles.]
[Footnote E: "This deposit occurs as far north as the southern shores
of Lake Ontario, and thence extends in an almost continuous manner
through Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee to central
Alabama."--_N. S. Shaler's The United States of America, vol. i, p.
432._]
There are many other lines of our internal development that are yet
barely begun. Irrigation is an example of this. The report of John W.
Noble, Secretary of the Interior for 1891, said, "One hundred and
twenty million acres that are now desert may be redeemed by irrigation
so as to produce the cereals, fruits, and garden products possible in
the climate where the lands are located." That is an area nearly twice
as large as the Philippine Islands, and it is open to the American
settler, while there is an indication that the Philippines may be
inaccessible on account of their climate. Moreover, they are four
times as densely populated as is the United States; and while we deem
the Chinese so undesirable that we exclude him from our shores, all
authorities agree that his race is superior to that of the Malays,
Tagals, and Negritos who inhabit the Philippines.
The irrigable area is much larger than the States of New York,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Massachusetts combined. Those States at
the present time are supporting a population of over seventeen
millions, and many authorities claim that they will in the future
support at least fifty millions. The regions of scanty rainfall that
can be irrigated are fairly crusted with potash and other soluble
mineral ingredients that nourish plant life, and give to the valleys
already irrigated their astonishing fertility. This enables the
farmers to support themselves on such small areas that the life is
almost a communal one. The irrigated West can sustain a population as
great as that sustained on an equal area in the East, or even
greater.[F] For years that dry climate has been a health restorer to
the sojourner there. This is not claimed for the Philippine Islands.
The building up of this Western empire with its canals and irrigating
ditches, its railroads and cities, will absorb a vast amount of
capital, and it is a natural and easy line of development for us. Mr.
Irwin has said, "To capital seeking investment in a large way,
irrigation enterprises in the West offer a most solid, lucrative, and
tempting field."[G] Secretary Noble has said, "No one can now compute
the money value that will concentrate in these reservoirs and canals
and ditches, carrying water to the fields of the husbandman, and upon
which the people must depend for their prosperity."[H]
[Footnote F: If we accept the reclaimable area given above as
approximately correct, and apply a system of irrigation, it can be
cultivated, "and made the happy home of an industrious people more
than equaling in number the inhabitants of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland."--_J. N. Irwin, in Forum, vol. i, p. 742._]
[Footnote G: Forum, vol. xii, p. 750.]
[Footnote H: Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1891.]
Five centuries ago large parts of eastern and western England were
impenetrable morasses. These have entirely disappeared before the
skill of the engineer.
N. S. Shaler says, "The total area of the inundated lands of the
United States probably exceeds 115,000 square miles, counting only
those flooded areas which are at present unsuited by their excessive
humidity for agricultural use, but which may be won to the service by
engineering devices such as have been applied in the regions occupied
by older civilizations."[I] This is more than 73,000,000 acres of
drainable swamps and marshes. Lands more easy of access have, in the
past, so occupied our attention that these lowlands have thus far been
almost entirely neglected. They are located along our northern,
eastern, and southern borders in close proximity to water
transportation and to the large cities of the seaboard. They can be
drained, as were the swamps of England. Their fertility will make this
profitable, and they will support a large population.
[Footnote I: The United States of America, vol. i, p. 382.]
The public highways of the United States are, on the whole, in
anything but a desirable condition, and their improvement is a good
investment for the commonwealth. We have railroads to build, harbors
to deepen, and canals to dig. The United States is young yet, and
tremendous tasks await her labor and capital.
In this country, so full of promise for the future, we are still using
borrowed foreign capital. In The Forum for February, 1895, Mr. Alfred
S. Lauterbach said, "That the people of the United States require
European capital for the full development of the great resources of
our country there can be no doubt." The same author made a "very
conservative estimate," and said that we owed to Europe annually:
"For dividends and interest upon American securities
still held abroad, minimum $75,000,000
"For profits of foreign corporations doing business here,
and of non-residents, derived from real estate,
investments, partnership profits, etc., about 75,000,000
------------
$150,000,000"
That is to say, we were paying a five-per-cent interest on
$3,000,000,000 of foreign money.
As to the second assumption: It is claimed by some that we should have
the Philippines because they will furnish us the tropical products
that we are using in ever-increasing quantities. Two things are
revealed in the examination of our needs of tropic products and a
comparison of the Philippines with the American tropics: 1. That the
Philippines are at a great disadvantage in location. 2. That America
is of sufficient area and natural wealth to meet all our needs, and
more.
As to location: It is a first principle of commerce to get supplies
where they are most accessible. It is about ten thousand miles from
New York to Manila, twelve hundred to Havana, and eighteen hundred to
the continent of South America. Under these conditions the freight
rates must always discriminate in favor of tropic America. The
disadvantage of the Philippines is increased by the fact that the
ships going from San Francisco or Panama to Manila are compelled to
carry their coal three thousand four hundred miles at one
stretch--from Honolulu to Yokohama, the most available route. Then,
again, a large part of our tropic trade, and one that shows promise of
the most growth, is in the green fruits, such as cocoanuts,
pineapples, lemons, oranges, and bananas. Of the last article our
imports have doubled every five years since 1865. On account of
distance it is not practicable to bring any of these fruits from the
Philippines, but there is no limit to the amount of trade that can
grow up on the lines that are now beginning to form between us and our
southern neighbors.
As to the fitness of tropic America to supply our needs: There are
Central America, South America, and the West Indies. An examination of
their area and productiveness shows that there is little to induce
American industry to control any part of the Eastern Hemisphere. Of
the 17,000,000 square miles that make up the Western Continent, the
tropics make up 5,000,000 square miles--an area sufficient to make
more than one hundred States as large as Pennsylvania; an area nearly
fifty times as great as the Philippines. The variety of its
productions is scarcely excelled even by the East Indies. There are
only two important tropic products imported into the United States
that are not already largely produced on this continent. They are
Manila hemp and tea, and it would appear that the reason they come
from the East is because of present labor conditions there. Manila
hemp is a sort of half-wild product that may yet have an introduction
to our rich tropics just as the potato was introduced into Europe, and
many of our crops have been introduced from Europe. Even the tea plant
thrives in the warm regions of America as far north as Tennessee.
Small quantities of tea are now grown in various parts of America,[J]
but the cheap labor of the East has made it unprofitable here. We are
at the present time getting nine tenths of our tea from India, where
Anglo-Saxon care has developed the industry and is fast driving China
out of the tea market of the world.
[Footnote J: United States Report on Commerce and Navigation for
1897.]
There is a difference when it comes to the two great tropic staples of
coffee and sugar. Our imports of these two articles in 1897 were
valued at $180,000,000, while the imports of tea were less than one
twelfth as much. At the present time nearly all the coffee used in the
United States comes from Central and South America, whence also comes
the greater part of the world's supply. The declining price of coffee
indicates that we shall get it under more favorable terms in the
future.
We import about $100,000,000 worth of sugar per annum.[K]
Approximately two fifths of it is beet sugar and comes from the
continent of Europe, and the rest is cane sugar from scattered sources
in the tropics. Only one sixth comes from the Eastern Hemisphere. We
are getting sugar from Europe, not because it is the natural
development of the industry, but because those countries are willing
to give an export bounty on all that is exported. This makes
exportation possible. Meanwhile the American sugar industry is left to
unprogressive and slovenly methods, but it needs only a reasonable
addition of capital and labor to enable it to supply the markets of
the world. An Englishman of much experience in the sugar-growing
colonies of Great Britain says that by the introduction of improved
methods all the sugar that we use in this country could be grown on
one half of the little island of Porto Rico.[L] This would cause heavy
complaint from the sugar-cane region of Louisiana, and from those
sections of our country that are beginning to hope for a future in the
beet-sugar industry. Certainly America can supply herself in this
particular.
[Footnote K: Ibid.]
[Footnote L: W. Allyne Ireland, in an address before the University of
Pennsylvania.]
India rubber is another of our tropic imports that promises to
increase in importance with improvements in our ability to use it.
Nearly the whole supply comes from the American tropics. There it
thrives everywhere. We are importing it from almost all of our sister
republics, and although it responds readily to cultivation and yields
a profitable crop,[M] the main supply is yet taken from the wild trees
of the forests. Like the other products it waits for the capital which
it will well repay.
[Footnote M: See Coffee and India-Rubber Culture in Mexico. By Matias
Romero, late Mexican minister to the United States.]
By a comparison of the average yields per acre of the leading tropic
imports with the amounts of those imports, we shall find the area of
the territories that are in cultivation to meet our present needs.[N]
In 1897 we imported into this country from all sources the crops that
would be yielded by 1,400 square miles of coffee, 30 of bananas, 40 of
cocoa beans, 60 of India rubber, 10 of oranges; a total of 1,540
square miles. Add to that the area that will be needed for our sugar,
and the result does not equal the whole of Porto Rico. The area of
Porto Rico is less than 4,000 square miles. Multiply these crop areas
by ten, to make allowance for crop rotation and for the time taken for
new plantations to come into bearing. The result will be less than
40,000 square miles, a territory not half as great as the area of the
West India islands. They in their turn do not comprise the fiftieth
part of the area of tropic America.
[Footnote N: The average yields of tropic produce were made out with
the assistance of the Cyclopædia Britannica, Coffee and India-Rubber
Culture in Mexico (Romero), and statistics obtained at the
Philadelphia Commercial Museums. The amounts of the imports were taken
from the United States Report on Commerce and Navigation for 1897.]
When the time comes that American industry needs to develop more
lands, there they lie. They are our opportunity. They have an almost
virgin soil, because we have been too busy with our own internal
development to give them needed attention. They need capital, and we
have been borrowing money abroad to meet our needs at home. Their
inhabitants are idle for lack of employment; they will respond to our
capital. The United States is the natural market for the West Indies;
they lie close to our shores, and when the Nicaragua Canal comes they
will be but islands in an American lake--parts of the industrial unit
of Greater America. They can give us the things that are needed to
round out our consumption, and we can do the same for them.
It is illogical and unlike American shrewdness to go seven thousand
miles for tropic lands when an equally valuable, a more valuable, area
is within seven hundred miles of us. The comparison becomes even more
striking when it is remembered that the control of the Philippines
brings to us a burden of problems from which industrial development in
this country is free.
The Government at Washington may spend our millions and establish
government in the Philippines, but will American capital go there?
Will our citizens invest their money seven thousand miles away while
tropic America is so much nearer, and is, moreover, an equally rich
and far more extended field? This does not assume the conquest of
American regions. It is not necessary to have governmental control in
order to profit by the industries of a country. The conditions of
modern industry prove this most conclusively. But for this fact the
progress of the world would have been much less rapid. We have an
example of this in American railroads: they have been largely built by
English capital; the same is also true to a greater or less degree of
many of our other industries. What England has done in North America
without governmental control, we can do in Central and South America
when our industrial condition demands new areas to work over. By the
modernized Monroe doctrine our supremacy in this hemisphere is
assured, and we have the guarantee of a clear field. Our interests are
also furthered by our friendly relations with the American peoples and
by our nearness to them.
The American policy of our forefathers is the one for us, even from
the industrial point of view. America is an industrial unit, an
economic unit, full of undeveloped possibilities that await the hand
of American enterprise. Our resources can abundantly provide for our
material needs. The continent is controlled by the most ingenious of
all the races, and is dominated by the highest political ideals known
to man. What need have we to reach out across seven thousand miles of
ocean to take lands populous with millions of barbarians?
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE WEST INDIES.
BY F. L. OSWALD.
III.--REPTILES AND FISHES.
The present fauna of our planet includes many varieties of mammals and
reptiles, and a few kinds of birds, that are found only on certain
islands--a fact which seemed rather to justify the once universal
belief in the origin of species by separate acts of creation.
A different theory of explanation has, however, been suggested by the
discovery of fossil remains, proving the former existence of closely
allied forms on continents where their battle for existence had to be
fought against beasts of prey and competitors for a limited food
supply.
The supposed products of an island genesis by the fiat of supernatural
agencies, demanding recognition in mental penance and the payment of
tithes, may thus be simply animal Crusoes, favored by the positive or
negative advantages of their surroundings.
The dodo, in its struggle for survival, would have had no chance
against South American tiger-cats. Not one of the twenty-odd species
of Madagascar lemurs could have held its own against the competition
of the African daylight monkeys.
Yet there was a time when night apes and large ground birds seem to
have had things all their own way, the world over, and Central America
may have afforded a chance for existence to several species of
reptiles which at present are found only on the West Indian islands.
The Cuban bush tortoise (_Emys nigra_) is found only in the forests of
Santiago and Puerto Principe, and there only on the south coasts. It
is the most sluggish creature of its genus, and does not seem to have
had enterprise enough to crawl around the sand belt of Cape Maysi and
colonize the jungles of the north side provinces. It is as helpless as
a hedgehog, _minus_ its bristles. The darkeys of the Cuban planters
crack its armor with home-made hammers, and the _tortuga prieta_, or
prieta, as they call it for short, forms a factor of holiday _menus_
as frequently as 'possum pie in southern Georgia.
Swift-flowing rivers bear it away as they would a floating log, and it
is wholly incredible that its ancestors should have crossed the
Caribbean Sea in quest of a more congenial home; but it is possible
enough that its eggs may have been ferried across on one of the
driftwood islands which the Sumasinta River often tears from the coast
swamps of southern Mexico and carries into the current of the Gulf
Stream. The evolution of the South American giant cats was probably
the death warrant of its continental relatives, but in Cuba it had no
four-footed enemies except the _hutia_, or jungle rat, that now and
then destroys its eggs.
An equally favored islander is the grayish-yellow rock lizard,
abounding in the uplands of Cuba and Hayti. The lizard-killing cranes
of Honduras have not found their way to the Antilles, and the
_lagartilla_ still basks in the sun that once smiled upon the
indolence of the naked Lucayans.
The _toco_, or Cuban hornbill, however, devours small reptiles of all
sorts, and the West Indian tree lizards have become almost as nimble
as squirrels. They dodge behind branches and wait to ascertain the
origin of every flitting shadow, but from imminent danger save
themselves by a swift descent, followed by a bold leap into the
thickets of the underbrush. Their courtship is quite as grotesque as
that of the strutting bush pheasants. The males will swing their heads
up and down and puff up their throat-bags till their skin seems on the
point of disruption, while the objects of their rivalry sit blinking,
reluctant to risk an open manifestation of preference. Some gorgeously
beautiful varieties are found in Jamaica: greenish-blue, with a
metallic luster, and rows of bright crimson spots, as if the design of
protective colors had been patterned after the flower shrubs of the
tropics.
[Illustration: IGUANA.]
The word _iguana_ is of Mexican origin, and rarely used in the Spanish
West Indies, but the animal itself is--for culinary purposes, though
the Haytian negroes do not go quite as far as the mongrels of Yucatan,
where iguana farmers fatten the defenseless reptiles with cornmeal, in
wickerwork baskets, that are brought to market as a New England
poultry fancier would fetch in a crateful of spring chickens. But,
prejudice aside, there is no harm in an iguana fricassee; the meat is
white and insipid, but takes the flavor of every spice, and is far
more digestible than such hyperborean delicacies as fried eels and
pork fritters. There are two species--one in eastern Cuba, with spines
all the way down to its tail-tip, and in Hayti a smaller one, with a
smoother tail, but with an exaggerated throat-bag and wattles like a
turkey gobbler.
_Lagartos vastecos_, or "tree alligators," the Cuban creoles call the
scampering forest dwellers, that attain a length of four feet, and can
stampede foreigners by leaping to terra firma with an _aplomb_ that
scatters the dry leaves in all directions. If chased, they will take
to water like frogs. They are first-class swimmers, their throat-bag
serving the purpose of a float, and once in the ripple of the stream
are hard to keep in sight, as they have a trick of keeping their legs
close to the body and navigating by means of their submerged tails.
Like the rainbow hues of the coryphene (miscalled dolphin), the bright
colors of the iguana soon fade after death, and the shriveled
greenish-brown specimens of our taxidermists give no idea of the
appearance of the living animal in the sunlight of its native land.
The _Iguana tuberculata_ (eastern Cuba) is velvet-green above, with
saffron flanks, ringed with blue, black, and brown stripes, and the
pet specimens, basking on the porch of a coffee planter, can challenge
comparison with the paroquets that flutter about the eaves of the
outbuildings like swifts around a martin box.
Cuba has also acclimatized a horned frog, and one species of those
curious half-lizards whose shapes may have suggested the dragon fables
of antiquity. The "basilisk" (_Cyclura carinata_) is only half a yard
long, but can erect its crest and raise its pronged tail in a manner
that will make a dog leap back in affright. It has no goiter-bag, but
the skin of its throat is elastic, and can be made to swell out like
that of the East Indian cobra, while its multiplex spines vibrate
ominously. The little monster is, nevertheless, one of the most
harmless reptiles of the tropics, and subsists on succulent leaves,
with occasional _entremets_ of small grubs and insects. In that case,
however, Nature has rather overdone its efforts at protective
ugliness, and the creoles kill the poor simulator of terrors as the
Mexican rustics would a horned toad.
A plurality of the zoölogical immigrants of the West Indies seem to
have come from Mexico, and it is a suggestive fact that the number of
reptiles steadily decreases from west to east. Cuba, with its western
headland approaching the east coast of Yucatan, thus came in for a
lion's share of lizards, tortoises, and ophidians.
Hayti, though only one fourth smaller, experienced a
seventy-five-per-cent discount, and all natives and travelers agree on
the _curiosum_ that there is _not a single species of serpent_ on the
island of Porto Rico. Trinidad, with an area of only fifteen hundred
square miles, but laved by the giant current of the Orinoco, boasts
twenty-eight species of land serpents, besides several pythons and
swamp vipers. The Trinidad museum of venomous ophidians does not,
however, include the dreaded fer-de-lance, which infests the woods
near Samana Bay on the south coast of San Domingo. The _Bothrops
lanceolatus_ is larger than a rattlesnake, and its bite, though not
always fatal, causes fearful inflammation, but its aggressive
disposition has been greatly exaggerated. Like most venomous serpents,
it is a sluggish brute, relying on its ability to crouch motionless
till its prey comes in range, then get in a snap bite and shrink back
to wait till the virus begins to take effect, and the victim, in its
fever spasms, betrays its helplessness by those eccentricities of
conduct which are apt to be misinterpreted by the dupes of the
"serpent-charm" superstition.
[Illustration: FER-DE-LANCE.]
The fer-de-lance is found also on the islands of Martinique and Santa
Lucia, where the natives counteract its virus with a decoction of
jungle hemlock, and the basis of its grewsome reputation seems to be
the fact that it does not warn the intruders of its haunts, after the
manner of the cobra or the rattlesnake, but flattens its coils and,
with slightly vibrating tail, awaits events. If the unsuspecting
traveler should show no sign of hostile intent he may be allowed to
pass unharmed within two yards of the coiled matador, but a closer
approach is apt to be construed as a challenge, and the _vivoron_,
suddenly rearing its ugly head, may scare the trespasser into some
motion of self-defense--he may lift his foot or brandish his stick in
a menacing manner. If he does he is lost. The lower coils will
expand, bringing the business end, neck and all, a few feet nearer;
the head "points," like a leveled rifle, then darts forward with
electric swiftness, guided by an unerring instinct for the selection
of the least-protected parts of the body.
And the vindictive brute is ready to repeat its bite. For a moment it
rears back, trembling with excitement, and, if felled by a blow of its
victim's stick, will snap away savagely at stumps and stones, or even,
like a wounded panther, at its own body.
A very curious adaptation of means to ends in the modification of the
virus is its swiftly fatal effect on birds. A stricken child, though
half crazed with fear, may run a distance of three miles before
paralysis begins to impede its motions; a squirrel will escape to its
nest in the top of the tree, only to come forth again and topple down
in its delirium; but a bird drops as if he had swallowed a dose of
prussic acid. Serpent virus is specifically a bird poison; in other
words, it acts instantaneously in cases where a few moments' delay
would defeat the purpose of the snap bite. Wounded rodents will not
run very far and can be relied upon to come out of their holes; but a
bitten bird, unless promptly paralyzed, would fly out of sight and
drop in distant thickets, beyond the ken of its destroyer. And of all
bird-killing reptiles the fer-de-lance is the most destructive. The
Spaniards have varied its bill of fare by importing the wherewithal of
an occasional rabbit stew, but during the preceding ages it had to
subsist on poultry, like a popular circuit preacher--the _hutia_ rat
having developed a talent for avoiding its haunts.
The alleged _horror naturalis_ of serpents is perhaps not more
deep-rooted than the aversion to cats; at all events, the West Indians
have overcome it sufficiently to prefer rat-killing snakes to
tabbies. In thousands of rancho cabins a pet serpent of the genus
_coluber_ may be seen gliding noiselessly along the rafters, or slip
through the crack of a floor plank to reach the penetralia of the
basement, where the death shriek of rodents soon after announces the
result of its activity. Aristocratic Creoles relegate it to their
stables, but the tenants of numerous backwood _casuchas_ furnish it a
cotton-stuffed bed box, and reward its services with a weekly dish of
milk. There are several species of large river serpents, and one true
boa, the Cuban _matapollos_, or chicken-killer, that attains a length
of eighteen feet, and has been known to use its supernumerary coils
for the purpose of cracking the ribs of a hound flying to the
assistance of the barnyard rooster.
In addition to the above-mentioned jungle tortoise there are several
land turtles of the genus _chlemmys_, and thousands of chelidonians
are annually caught on Samana Bay, southern Porto Rico, St. Vincent,
the Isle of Pines, and the north coast of Matanzas, Cuba. Those of
Santiago Bay have gradually been exterminated, but a large number of
West Indian fishing waters are practically inexhaustible. A specialist
like Agassiz might haul nondescripts from scores of Haytian coast
rivers, and the angle fishers of the Cuban sierra brooks can hook an
equally interesting reproduction of an Appalachian species.
"Some of our companions had to eke out a haul with crawfish," says the
traveler Esterman, "but our own string of sundries included a puzzle
for naturalists. We had caught some twenty brook trout, absolutely
indistinguishable from the species found in the head waters of the
Tennessee River. Where did they come from? Had they crossed the Gulf
of Mexico and ascended the rapids of half a hundred rivers, or had
Nature copied her own handiwork in such details as the small dark
dots below each red spot, and the occasional breaks in the lines of
the silver-white keel streaks?"
The perch of the forest rivers include several nest-building
varieties, and the sportsmen of Kingston, Jamaica, often amuse
themselves with target practice at a species of rock fish that come
clear out of the water and bask, like coots, on the harbor cliffs.
With every mile farther south the number and variety of the finned
aborigines become more infinite, and the fishermen of the estuary of
San Juan de Porto Rico alone catch pompanos, mullets, cavalli, red
snappers, chiquillos (a kind of sardelles), sea bass, dorados,
skip-jack, angelfish, skate, ray, sheepshead, garfish, torpedo-fish,
devilfish or giant ray, cobia, hogfish, croakers, shark, and
coryphenes.
[Illustration: FLYING FISH (_Exocoetus volitans_); FLYING GURNARD OR
FLYING ROBIN (_Cephalacanthus volitans_). (From Baskett's Story of the
Fishes.)]
The tiger of the sea, the great white shark, occasionally visits the
harbor waters of Cuba, and has been known to seize barefooted peons,
surf-bathing horses in the next neighborhood of Morro Castle, and drag
them under so suddenly that their companions were unable to account
for their disappearance till the foam of the breakers became flecked
with blood.
[Illustration: BUTTERFLY FISH.]
That champion of marine man-eaters is as smooth as a hypocrite, and
hides its double row of horrible fangs under a slippery nose, while
the little butterfly fish tries its best to disguise its helplessness
with a crest of spiny fins. Its length rarely exceeds four inches, and
it can be handled with impunity, but its spines are just rigid enough
to entangle it in tufts of gulf weed, and in company of equally tiny
sea horses and goldfish, it can often be seen in the aquariums of the
Jamaica seaport towns.
[_To be continued._]
A STUDY OF LUIGI LUCCHENI (ASSASSIN OF THE EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA).
BY CESARE LOMBROSO.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--LUIGI LUCCHENI.]
There is not an enlightened person in the world who does not deplore
the anarchist crime committed last summer by Luccheni in Geneva upon
the unfortunate Empress of Austria. With grief is associated the duty
of inquiring what could have been the origin of a misdeed which
besides being cruel had the vice of being absurd, falling as it did
upon a poor woman near the tomb, who was ready to welcome death, and
who had no political influence, by an assassin who had not suffered
any offense from her or from her government, and who further had the
impudence to boast of his crime as if it had been a heroic act.
We begin our inquiry by seeking for an explanation of the act by means
of a study of the person of the murderer in conformity with the rules
of the anthropological school.
Luigi Luccheni is the illegitimate son of a Parmesan servant now
living in America, and her master, who lived in the Parmesan
territory, a priest, unbalanced and intemperate, who sent her when she
was pregnant to Paris to be confined. There she abandoned her newborn
babe to a foundling asylum. The child was sent thence to his native
country and placed, till he was nine years old, with a Parmesan family
named Monici, of whom the father was a shoemaker, very poor and
intemperate, and the mother immoral.
After he was nine years old he was put with a family named Nicasi,
good people, but very poor--peasants, or rather mendicants, so that he
too became a mendicant, wandering with his comrades through the
streets and pilfering till he was thirteen years old. It appears from
what Dr. Guerini, of Parma, writes me that during this time he had
epileptic fits. When twelve years old he went to school, where he
appeared bright but impulsive, and on one occasion in his anger
destroyed the portrait of the king.
From the age of fourteen to that of nineteen he was a servant, and had
two masters, and wandered in Liguria, Switzerland, and Austria, where
he was arrested, sent back to his country, and prohibited from showing
himself in the east. He then entered the military service, where he
conducted himself very well, incurring only light punishments for
assaulting a comrade and for helping a sergeant get out of the
barracks at night. He was so liked by his superiors and comrades that
when, three years afterward, in 1897, he left the army, Captain the
Prince de Vera engaged him as his servant. In this service he
exhibited great affection for children, and, what is strange, he was
so good a monarchist that he was scandalized that at the commemoration
of the deceased Cavolotti, in Naples, the orator was permitted to
praise him as a political man without interruption from the delegate.
One day, irritated because he had been denied some permission, he
abruptly took his leave, declaring that he was not born to be a
servant, and returned to Switzerland to work as a marble polisher. But
even from Switzerland he kept continually imploring his old employer
to take him back, declaring in a letter which revealed symptoms of a
persistent delirium that "he probably would not receive him again
because he did not go to mass"; which indicates substantially that he
had not that repugnance for the anti-anarchical life of a servant
which he manifested previously and afterward.[O]
[Footnote O: It appears that he afterward made the strange request for
an anarchist to be appointed guard of the prison, and was irritated
when it was denied. (See A. Gautier, Le procès Luccheni. Vienna,
1899.)]
Whether all at once or not he became an extreme anarchist. He signed
and composed anarchist hymns. Suspected by his comrades of not being
zealous enough, and also perhaps of being a spy, he decided to strike
a blow against some prince; he chose the empress as his victim
possibly because he had suffered his first annoyance in Austria. He,
who had never killed a fly, had a rude instrument prepared--a file;
practiced for a considerable time, perhaps a month, at striking with
it, and having committed the crime, tried to escape. When stopped by
two citizens he did not resist, and behaved in a very different way
from common criminals, therein exhibiting a tinge of insanity. He, for
example, although he knew French very well, denied it and demanded an
interpreter in the interrogations. He sang and laughed continually,
and was glad that he had dealt his victim a good blow, and that he had
struck deep with the instrument, boasting that he had used a file
instead of a dagger. He was, besides, solicitous of publicity,
declaring to the reporters and the judges that he had done the deed
all alone, that he had left his captain to accomplish his idea, that
he had been an anarchist for thirteen years, etc. In two ungrammatical
and very long letters to the journal _Don Marzio_, in Naples, chosen
evidently because he had seen it at his master's, he declared that he
was not a criminal born, as Lombroso would have it, nor a madman, and
that he had not been incited by misery but by conviction, because, if
all would do as he had done, middle-class society would soon
disappear. He knew that this single assassination would be of no
avail, but he had, nevertheless, committed it for an example.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--EXTRACT FROM A LETTER BY LUCCHENI.]
He wrote to the President of the Swiss Confederation that he would
rather be tried at Lucerne, because the death penalty was in force
there, and repeated the statement to the judges; he wrote to his
master that he was more worthy of him than ever; he replied to the
reporters and the judges who reproached him with having killed a
helpless woman, that as for that, if she had been a child, but a
prince, he would have killed her all the same. At another time he
said, in a wild way: "I killed her because she did not work; whoever
does not work should not eat, and I was not going to work for her"--a
reason which would be as good for the slaughter of several million
persons.
Curious and important is the remark of Luccheni that "Crispi would not
have killed her because he was a thief"; an evident proof of the
complete lack of moral sense in anarchists,[P] who like primitive men
confound the crime with the deed, and regard criminality as a sort of
merit, a seal of fraternity; which demonstrates that the anarchistic
practice, if not its theory, is an equivalence of crimes.
[Footnote P: See my Delitto politico, Part III, and Gli Anarcici,
second edition.]
When asked if he had never committed blood-crimes, he replied that he
had never had anything to do with courts, not even as a witness--which
was found to be true--but "I entertained the idea this time, and acted
upon it."
Luccheni is a man of medium stature, about 1.63 metre, with very
thick, light chestnut hair, stout, with dark-gray, half-closed eyes,
roundish ears, heavy eyebrows, voluminous cheek bones and jaw
prognatic, low forehead, very brachycephalic (cephalic index 88). He
has, therefore, a number of characteristics of degeneration common to
epileptics and insane criminals. On the other hand, his handwriting,
with its minute characters, especially in the writing of past years,
indicates a mild feminine disposition, with little energy of
character. This is especially seen in an autograph of 1896, which was
procured for me by Dr. Guerini, who got it from his patient (see Fig.
2). This characteristic, which was extremely conspicuous in Caserio
when he was near his crime, was also apparent in the assailant of
General Rocha. I have likewise observed it to be very conspicuous in
epileptics and hysterical persons; and it corresponds, according as
they are in their psychical spasm or out of it, with a real double
personality provoked by their disease. In one, as I have shown in
_L'Uomo Delinquente_, they write signatures that cover a whole page in
their larger diameter, while the signature in the normal state is
often smaller than the average (see Fig. 3).
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--MACROGRAPHIC AND MICROGRAPHIC WRITING BY THE
SAME EPILEPTIC.]
The same double personality that is apparent in the writing is
attested in the psychology. We have seen that Luccheni was kind to
children, that he was a good servant, characteristics quite opposed to
the anarchistic nature, and a genial companion; a man who in Africa
was enthusiastically fond of military life; who, a little while
before, when he was in the service of the captain, had expressed
extreme monarchical sentiments; and finally, when he had become an
anarchist, again asked his master to be restored to his service. This
double personality is another of the essential characteristics of
hysteria and epilepsy.
I have recently studied an epileptoid degenerate who has a sound mind,
and, at least in his normal state, is quiet and gentle. But as soon as
he has taken hardly more than ninety grammes of alcohol (96° proof) he
becomes a wild anarchist, with fierce impulses and hallucinations, of
which he has no recollection two hours afterward, or even charges them
to his comrades. In this case a double personality is revealed, the
demonstration of which is completed by alterations of the visual field
and of the touch.
We have, then, in Luccheni a degenerate and probably epileptic person
descended from an alcoholic father. Although he affirms that he is not
insane or a criminal born, he is a little of both, for he is epileptic
and hysterical, so that his denial is already a beginning of a proof
of disease. Luccheni also confirms what I have tried to demonstrate in
my _Delitto politico_--that the most frequent organic cause of similar
morbid impulses of a political character is hystero-epilepsy; for not
only do the declarations of some of his countrymen point to epilepsy,
and the characteristics of degeneration in the skull confirm it, but
his inheritance from an alcoholic father and that impulsiveness and
that double personality, which make him pass from the gentlest of men
to the cruelest, and which is reflected in the macrography alternating
with the micrography of the intervals between the spasms, are
accumulative evidence of it.
I have demonstrated the hysterical and epileptic basis in the
anarchists and regicides Felicot, Monges, and Caserio, and
particularly in a vagabond anarchist, full of cranial anomalies, who
told me, when I questioned him concerning political reforms, "Do not
speak to me of them, for as soon as I begin to think about them I am
taken with a vertigo and fall down"; so that it seems to me possible
to establish a psycho-epileptic equivalent in extreme political
innovators, an equivalent which is further manifest in their vanity,
rising sometimes to megalomania, in their intermittent geniality, and
especially in their great impulsiveness. There was also latent in
Luccheni an indirect disposition to suicide, which I have found in
other political criminals, like Oliva, Nobiling, and Passananti,[Q]
who, having conceived a dislike for the king, made an attempt on his
life; and especially in Henry, who rejected the defense of his
advocate and his mother based on the insanity of his father, remarking
that it was the advocate's business to defend, his to die; and in that
Roumanian who was photographed in a portrait that I have reproduced,
in the act of committing suicide.[R] Luccheni, too, believed he would
be condemned to death, and was much disappointed when he learned that
there was no such penalty in the canton where he committed the crime.
[Footnote Q: See my Delitto politico, 1890.]
[Footnote R: Ibid.]
It may have been morbid vanity that prompted the exclamation he was
heard to make, "I wanted to kill some great person, so as to get my
name in the papers" (Gautier).
But while an organic, individual cause was good for a third in
Luccheni's crime, he was much more influenced by the atmosphere in
which he lived. An illegitimate child, left in one of those nurseries
which are real nests of crime and graver disorders, then consigned to
a very poor and not always moral family of mendicant habits, having
learned nothing except to beg and wander, he found such modes of
subsistence as he could (notice the uncertainty and plurality of his
occupations, indicating lack of assiduity--servant, soldier, marble
polisher, and in the beginning peasant); he found, we might say, as
the most constant condition the infelicity which radiated around him
from every quarter, and, reflecting the worst, urged him to this way
of suicide. We should recollect, too, what Frattini said: "Was it
hunger brought me to this?" and the anarchist whom Hamon speaks of:
"When I began to question the unfortunates of the hospital, it had a
frightful effect on me; I comprehended the need of solidarity and
became an anarchist"; and as another one said to the same Hamon: "I
became an anarchist when I saw my comrades begging for work with their
faces bathed in tears, and was indignant over it." Caserio wept when
he thought of the lot of his Lombard companions in misery. These
criminals by passion, by altruism, are, as Burdeau wrote, veritable
philanthropic assassins. They kill recklessly for the love of men.
Epilepsy and hysteria in Luccheni are explained by his abrupt passage
from one condition to the other, and by the conversion of factional
passion in him into a criminal act. But there are epileptics and
criminals everywhere; yet persons thus disordered in Norway and Sweden
are not transformed into anarchists; nor in Switzerland and England,
whither people resort from all parts of the world, and where, when
anarchy shows itself, it is like a meteor falling to the earth from
the extra-planetary regions--wholly isolated and opposed to the world
around it.
The most important cause of this transformation is the misery that
weighs upon our unfortunate country, evidence of which comes in from
every side even upon those who are not miserable themselves. If even
in the latest days Luccheni had been living comfortably, he could not,
with the excessively morbid altruism that dominated him, have failed
to feel this misery, which is so profound and general in Italy.
Not much erudition is required to demonstrate the immense economical
embarrassment of Italy as contrasted with other countries when it is
known that we pay about five hundred times its value for salt, that
bread is growing dearer every day, and that the amount consumed
diminishes one tenth every year in these lands.
It was, therefore, with justice that Scarfoglio said in explaining the
origin of anarchism, "A good fifth of the population of Italy are
still living in a savage state, dwelling in cabins that the Papuans
would not live in, accommodating themselves to a food which the
Shillooks would refuse, having a vision and an idea of the world not
much more ample than that of the Kaffirs, and running over the land
desiring and seeking servitude."
It may be added that it is because of this condition--that is, of the
defective civilization that results from it--that there is everywhere
a weakened revulsion and diminished horror at blood-crimes, so that
there are now sixty homicides for every one hundred thousand
inhabitants.
We may learn from this what the true remedies should be. The idea of
conquering anarchy by killing anarchists is not valid, because every
epileptic has another ready to take his place, because anarchistic
crimes are to a great extent simply indirect suicides, and because
anarchists think as little of their own lives as of the life of
another. It is rather necessary to change the direction of the disease
by changing the miserable conditions in which it originates.
Not for humanity, therefore, not for exalted social theories, but in
our direct interest, we ought to make a complete change. The
suppression of a dozen anarchists is like killing a thousand microbes
without disinfecting the surroundings that contain milliards of them;
it is that we should look, if we want to be better, to breaking up the
large estates, and ameliorating the conditions of agriculture and
operative industry, and this in the interest of the governing classes.
Typhus, cholera, and plague, it is true, attack chiefly the poor, but
from these the contagion extends also to the rich; and from the
unhealthy habitations in which the rich man permits beggars to crowd
and suffer, the miasm, as if in revenge, is propagated to marble
palaces.
That imbecile idea of some European nations, who, instead of
disinfecting the medium, find it better to put down the doctors who
propose remedies, can not make itself at home except among peoples who
are destined to perish.[S]--_Translated for the Popular Science
Monthly from the Archives di Psichiatria._
[Footnote S: To the charges made against me by M. Gautier (Le procès
Luccheni, 1899) of having formulated a diagnosis without seeing the
patient, which was therefore inexact, and of having described
characteristics of degeneration which did not exist, I answer with the
pages of Forel, certainly the most eminent alienist of our time, who
had him under his eyes during the whole process, and whose diagnosis
differs but little from mine.]
TENDENCIES IN FRENCH LITERATURE.[T]
SUGGESTED BY PROFESSOR DOWDEN'S RECENT BOOK.
BY PELHAM EDGAR, PH. D.
[Footnote T: A History of French Literature. By Edward Dowden, D.
Lit., LL. D., etc. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1897.]
"To present Victor Hugo in a few pages is to carve a colossus on a
cherry stone." Thus Professor Dowden prefaces his ten admirable pages
on the great French poet; and with equal appropriateness we might
assign the phrase as a motto for the whole undertaking. The subject is
too vast to cope with adequately in the limits of a slender volume,
the tendencies too complex; and the appeal from human interest, which
since the days of Sainte-Beuve and Taine has formed such an important
element in scientific criticism, had to be abandoned in favor of
generalized views of literary conditions and tendencies necessarily
abstract or impersonal in character. Yet, despite these evident
restrictions which the requirements of his task imposed upon him,
Professor Dowden has produced a work of extraordinary merit, a
masterpiece indeed in its kind. If we were not assured that everything
which the eminent critic writes is its own sufficient justification,
we might be inclined to question the necessity of the present volume,
in view of the painstaking and conscientious treatise that Mr.
Saintsbury gave to the public some sixteen years ago, and which has
deservedly remained until the present time the most reliable English
text-book upon the subject of French literature. With no desire to
disparage Mr. Saintsbury's scholarly contribution, the present work
does in truth supply a need which the earlier book, in spite of its
abundant merit, failed to satisfy. It is not harsh criticism to state
that Mr. Saintsbury's volume, crammed as it is with a plethora of
dates and titles, is at best a compendium for convenient reference,
and consequently quite unreadable as a book. Professor Dowden, on the
other hand, has conquered the dry-as-dust problem with admirable
skill, and the charm of his diction and the easy sequence of his ideas
lead the reader insensibly on to the close of a delightful volume. Nor
is the book lacking in instructive value of a highly reliable kind,
for, in addition to an intimate knowledge of French criticism,
Professor Dowden is evidently familiar at first hand with all the more
important works of which he treats, and not infrequently proffers
fertile suggestions upon debated questions.
Having avowed, therefore, a genuine admiration of Professor Dowden's
book, will it be thought a graceless task if, with the proverbial
perversity of critics, I endeavor to point out here and there
questions of importance that may seem to have merited more attention
than the author was perhaps able to afford to them within his
restricted space?
The mediæval portion of Professor Dowden's book is valuable not for
its originality, but rather as the reflection of advanced modern
criticism in France. Therefore, in this brief review the mediæval
period may be neglected, and turning to the second book, which deals
with the sixteenth century, the first writer of capital importance
whom we encounter is Clément Marot. The author has justly indicated
the decrepit conditions of poetry in Marot's youth in the degenerate
hands of the Rhétoriqueurs, and also the powerful attraction which the
allegorizing mania exercised on the poet's early work. His later
manner is justly emphasized, and his prowess in the lighter familiar
forms of verse; but it is only by inference that we apprehend the
comparative neglect of his work until the later classical reaction
restored him to favor. Professor Dowden, indeed, throughout his book
has hardly conveyed a proper idea of the reactionary shocks by which
French literature has invariably advanced. Thus the Pléiade, in the
enthusiasm of their rupture with middle-age traditions, were blind to
the Renaissance elements in Marot's work, and seeking as they did to
elevate poetry to nobler themes and a nobler manner, his easy familiar
grace was distasteful to them.
Rabelais, of course, is another "colossus on a cherry stone," and the
purport of his message is epitomized in a few luminous sentences. The
elements of contrast in the man, and his full-blooded joy in living,
which was the sign-manual of the Renaissance upon him, are indicated
as follows: "Below his laughter lay wisdom; below his orgy of
grossness lay a noble ideality; below the extravagances of his
imagination lay the equilibrium of a spirit sane and strong. The life
that was in him was so abounding and exultant that it broke all dikes
and dams; and laughter for him needed no justification, it was a part
of this abounding life. After the mediæval asceticism and the
intellectual bondage of scholasticism, life in Rabelais has its vast
outbreak and explosion; he would be no fragment of humanity, but a
complete man."
Proceeding to the Pléiade, we find its doctrine admirably enunciated,
and one point of literary history is well brought out--namely, that to
the Pléiade, and not to Malherbe alone, belongs the honor of
establishing the bases of classicism in France, the difference chiefly
residing in the fact that the programme of the Pléiade was one of
expansion in matters of language and prosody, whereas it is precisely
in these points that Malherbe and Boileau are concerned with
restrictive refinements. Again Professor Dowden, following perhaps in
the wake of M. Brunetière, characterizes the conditions of the time as
being unfavorable to lyrical expansiveness. "Ronsard's genius was
lyrical and elegiac, but the tendencies of a time when the great
affair was the organization of social life, and as a consequence the
limitation of individual and personal passions, were not favorable to
the development of lyrical poetry." These words are ripe with
suggestiveness, and duly weighed, they afford the true solution of the
oratorical and impersonal character of French literature for two long
centuries, when the social _genres_ in prose and poetry usurped
dominion over the national mind. With our eye then upon the social
conditions in France, the often-quoted words "Malherbe a tué le
lyrisme" mean nothing more than that he struck a prostrate body.
Before turning from the sixteenth century it should perhaps be
observed that in discussing the comedy of that period the author might
have amplified his statement of Italian influences by at least a
reference to the _Commedia dell' Arte_ which we find established in
France in 1576, with its traditional repertory of stock characters,
whose antiquity ascends to the venerable times of the early Latin
farces, and whose survival the work of Molière, nay, even of
Beaumarchais, will adequately attest. The last great figure that
greets us in the sixteenth century is Montaigne, and we feel a sense
of disappointed curiosity when he is relentlessly dismissed at the end
of the five pages to which he is entitled here. This singularly modern
doubter still smiles inscrutably at us through the misty centuries
that flow between us, and we would prefer to loiter with him by the
way rather than pass him with a curt nod of recognition. But Montaigne
is more important in the history of thought than in the history of
literature, so, crossing the threshold of the sixteenth century, we
meet the great lawgiver Malherbe, a Moses who really entered the
promised land. Professor Dowden is eminently just and appreciative in
his judgment of this pedantic and unsympathetic figure, estimating his
merits and impartially noting his defects without presuming in his
character as literary historian to stamp them as such. Malherbe
undeniably eliminated personality from poetry. Shall we regard this as
a defect? A century's masterpieces of objective art survive to say us
nay, and if the critic's personal sympathies sway him to the side of
lyric eloquence, the historian of literature observing without
prejudice judges without rancor. "The processes of Malherbe's art were
essentially oratorical; the lyrical cry is seldom audible in his
verse; it is the poetry of eloquence thrown into studied stanzas. But
the greater poetry of the seventeenth century in France, its odes, its
satires, its epistles, its noble dramatic scenes, and much of its
prose literature, are of the nature of oratory; and for the progress
of such poetry, and even of such prose, Malherbe prepared a highway."
And now in the wake of Malherbe so thick do the great names throng
that I must perforce touch swiftly only on what seems to demand
amplification rather than dwell at length, as it would be much less
difficult to do, on the many admirable views the book contains. And
first as regards the literary significance of René Descartes.
Professor Dowden places himself in accord with the customary views of
criticism in assigning to Descartes a preponderating influence on the
literary art of his century. "The spirit of Descartes's work was in
harmony with that of his time, and reacted upon literature. He sought
for general truths by the light of reason; he made clearness a
criterion of truth; he proclaimed man a spirit; he asserted the
freedom of the will. The art of the classical period sought also for
general truths, and subordinated imagination to reason. It turned away
from ingenuities, obscurities, mysteries; it was essentially
spiritualist; it represented the crises and heroic victories of the
will." This sounds reasonable, and is indeed in large measure in
accordance with the actual conditions observable in the seventeenth
century. Yet there is no doubt that the literature of Louis XIV is
more intimately penetrated by the ascetic spirit of Jansenism as
conveyed in the famous doctrines of Port-Royal, and it is to
Jansenism, and emphatically not to Cartesianism, that the literature
of the seventeenth century owes that aspect of grandeur and moral
serenity which characterizes it. To quote Brunetière: "Pendant plus de
cinquante ans, la conscience française, si l'on peut ainsi dire,
incarnée dans le jansénisme, et rendue par lui à elle-même, a fait
contre la frivolité naturelle de la race le plus grand effort qu'elle
eut fait depuis les premiers temps de la réforme ou du calvinisme."
Indeed, the tenaciously religious Jansenist spirit of the "grand
siècle" would have been universal were it not that Molière and La
Fontaine were apathetically indifferent, nay, sometimes actively
hostile, to the general enthusiasm.
Let us, however, examine in all brevity the fundamental doctrines of
Cartesianism. The terms are familiar enough. The identity of being and
of thought. The objectivity of science. The all-powerfulness of
reason. Progress to infinity. Optimism at all times. We can not fail
to observe the significance of these categories, and how they contain
the germs of almost every great subject debated by the leviathians of
the eighteenth century. Yet the nation struggled long before it had
strength to shake the incubus of Jansenism from its back, and the
stimulating work of Bayle had to be supported by events of actual
political significance before the stringent and constraining dogmas of
catholicism relaxed their grasp on thought and conduct. The revocation
of the Edict of Nantes, the Quietistic movement with its unseemly
attendant episcopal quarrels, and finally the actual persecution of
the Jansenists, all pointed inevitably in one direction, and
stimulating the anti-religious sentiment and opening the flood gates
to immorality, induced a potent reaction of Cartesianism in the
fundamental theories of the eighteenth century.
In his treatment of Corneille, Professor Dowden "opens his hands only
sufficiently to let out a portion of the truth he holds," but what he
says is admirable to a degree. Of his diction he writes: "His mastery
in verse of a masculine eloquence is unsurpassed; his dialogue of
rapid statement and swift reply is like a combat with Roman short
swords; in memorable single lines he explodes, as it were, a vast
charge of latent energy, and effects a clearance for the progress of
his action." This is well said, but hardly indicates how Corneille
soared so often in the region of Spanish bombast, or crept among the
insipid flowers of Italian preciosity; defects from which Racine's
severer Greek taste held him free.
It is refreshing when we come to Boileau to find an English mind
impartial enough to do justice to the much-abused "lawgiver of
Parnassus." Criticism has for so long deplored his narrowness that we
relish an encomium on his good sense. But beyond this there is an
opinion which the general reader would be reluctant to admit, but
which Professor Dowden has had the courage and the discernment to
enforce, when he writes as follows: "But for Paris itself, its various
aspects, its life, its types, its manners, he had the eye and the
precise rendering of a realist in art; his faithful objective touch is
like that of a Dutch painter." Let the incredulous merely turn to the
satires to appreciate the scope and truth of the remark. It is
difficult to imagine that a more brilliant and effective account of
Boileau's work and influence could be presented within so limited a
space; yet might not the author have added that whereas Malherbe is
the representative of the aristocratic element in literature, Boileau
is the first great incarnation in modern times of the bourgeois
spirit?
With regard to La Fontaine it need only be observed that Professor
Dowden recognizes what French critics with repeated insistence
emphasize, the cunning harmonies of his verse.
Much space is of right devoted to Molière, who with La Fontaine has
ever been a stumbling-block to English criticism. Professor Dowden
voices our national feeling in refusing to consider him as a poet,
preferring to emphasize his profound and healthy philosophy of life.
_Tartufe_ he considers to be an attack on religious hypocrisy merely.
Is not the interpretation perhaps correct which regards it as an
attack on the intolerance and Puritanism of all religion, even the
most sincere?
Once again, in dealing with Racine, the author shows that subtle
discernment in which his criticism abounds. He penetrates to the heart
of the secret reason for the cabals that harassed Racine in the later
years of his dramatic activity, and which doubtless had their
influence in enforcing his retirement. Have we ever sufficiently
realized that Boileau, Molière, and Racine were waging constant war
against a rebirth of the _précieux_ spirit which threatened not only
society with ridiculousness but literature with ruin? Such, indeed,
was the case, and in the eyes of the super-refined coterie that
grouped itself round the Duchesse de Bouillon, Boileau and his
fellow-workers were innovators of a dangerous and revolutionary order.
Does not this idea carry us far from our preconceived notions of the
narrow conservatism that dominated the leaders of classical thought?
Referring to the disastrous check of Racine's _Phèdre_, the author
writes: "It is commonly said that Racine wrote in the conventional and
courtly taste of his own day. In reality his presentation of tragic
passions in their terror and their truth shocked the aristocratic
proprieties which were the mode. He was an innovator, and his audacity
at once conquered and repelled." The point of view may seem extreme to
us, and this vaunted realism may show pale and weakly when contrasted
with the grossness of much of the realism that prevails at the present
day, or with the graphic directness of the best examples of the type.
But the words ring true if we are willing to accept the refined
psychological realism of Racine as equally worthy to the title with
the physiological naturalism of our more scientific age. Our whole
conception of Racine's art falls into line with this view, and his
constant solicitude for an easy and natural intrigue in the structure
of his tragedies may be brought home to the same healthy impulse of
his mind. Was it not Faguet who maintained that so natural indeed were
the processes of his plots that a happy ending would have alone been
needed to make any of his tragedies, with some added modicum of wit,
in all essential features a comedy that Molière might have penned? Mr.
Saintsbury, on the other hand, in dealing with Racine is seemingly
swayed by some innate prejudice, or he could hardly have denied the
poet a high moral character, merely granting him the possession of
great shrewdness and discernment. True passion, he remarks, was not
popular with the crowd, but "love-making, on the contrary, would draw,
and love-making accordingly is the staple of all his plays." It is
against this view, and against Mr. Saintsbury's further opinion that
the tragedy of Racine is at the furthest remove from an imitation of
Nature, that Professor Dowden makes a strong and timely protest.
While applauding, however, the value of such novel opinions in English
criticism at least, we may suspect that in his desire to clinch his
arguments the author may have driven the nail too ruthlessly home. And
so it would appear when we seek in vain for any statement which
contains the shadow of a justification for the existence of that
powerful _précieux_ spirit against which the greater classicists
rebelled. We are too inclined to take Molière's word for it that they
were solely ridiculous, forgetting the explicit reserve of his
preface--"aussi les véritables précieuses auraient tort de se piquer
lorsqu'on joue les ridicules qui les imitent mal." So let us then give
the _Précieuses_ credit for what they did confer to the advantage of
letters amid so much folly, and, weighing the matter carefully, their
gift to literature amounts to this: First, amid much linguistic and
metaphorical pedantry they were free from the equally damaging and
ridiculous pedantry of a labored erudition which pervaded the
literature of the day. In the second place, whether we regard it as an
advantage or the contrary, their influence made directly _against_ the
licentiousness of the _esprit gaulois_, and _for_ politeness and
decency in expression; and as a third count in their favor can we
doubt that straining as they did to express the _nuances_ of sentiment
and gallantry, they were instrumental in stimulating that ardor of
mental analysis which is of all things the distinguishing mark of the
century? A word finally might have been said with a view to
elucidating the inherent divergence of the _précieux_ spirit from our
own Euphuism, from the Marinism of Italy, or the Gongorism of Spain; a
divergence due certainly to the fact that the _précieuses_ allied
themselves to, and accordingly strengthened, that spirit of social
coherence so characteristic of the life and letters of the time in
France, whereas the influences of similar movements abroad were more
transitory, inasmuch as in some degree more isolated and tentative.
The chapter devoted to the seventeenth century closes with a critical
review of the series of great preachers and theologians who have left
their mark more or less upon the development of thought, while their
literary significance can be comparatively slighted in a history of
this kind; and the chapter which discusses the transition to the
eighteenth century broaches questions of such large issue that an
exhaustive treatment of them was not to be expected. Such are the
memorable quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, and the
_philosophe_ idea of perfectibility and human progress. The chapter
closes with an account of the great protagonist and pioneer in the
warfare against Christianity, the patient, plodding, dangerous Pierre
Bayle. So effectually was his teaching absorbed by Voltaire and the
encyclopedists that he is read no longer; but low as his flame has
sunk, he remains one of the beacons lighting us over the lurid
threshold of the century of strife.
We are in safe hands when it is Professor Dowden who guides us on the
highways and bypaths of the eighteenth century, but by very reason of
his accurate knowledge of the ground whereon he treads we are
disappointed when he fails to point out to us some special feature of
the landscape. Beauties we could hardly hope to meet with on our
journey. There was not sap enough in that arid soil to nourish
flowers, or send a flush of living green over hill and valley. The
most serious omission is to have left entirely out of account the
exceedingly interesting reactionary influences that leaped back and
forth across the Channel when Marivaux's romances were devoured in
England, and Richardson's _Pamela_ was in every French pocket large
enough to hold it. It is in itself still an open question which of
these two authors exerted the initial influence on the other, although
eighteenth-century criticism invariably held that in _Marianne_
Richardson found his inspiration.
A great deal of interest attaches to an explanation of the causes of
Le Sage's decline in popularity, and this question likewise Professor
Dowden has not adequately presented. Le Sage saw the imperative need
of mediating between the stilted heroic romances _à la Scudéry_ and
the grotesque travesties of Scarron and Furetière. Inspired by the
picaroon romances of Spain, he produced, amid much inferior work, _Gil
Blas_, a masterpiece in its kind. The plot is loose-jointed, the
composition _nil_, but the book teems with such verve and vigor that
it still pulses with an abounding life when Marivaux and Richardson
slumber on our shelves. Yet we must admit that the characters are
vagabonds, and the sentiment not without coarseness. Love when not
slighted is ridiculed, and metaphysical analysis and moral
disquisitions are both refreshingly absent from the book. Hence Le
Sage's claims on our consideration as the progenitor of naturalism in
romance, but on this account also the reactionary wave against which
he had to buffet in his declining years. Marivaux, on the other hand,
saw the need of mediating between the stilted heroics of Scudéry and
what he deemed the ignoble realism of Le Sage. In this resolve he
elevated the characters to _bourgeois_ rank, and abandoning the empty
love rhetoric of the old romances, he brought the acuteness of an
analytic mind to bear on the exploitation of the tender passion; and a
conscientious though desultory effort is made to study subtle phases
of character in the light of surrounding circumstances. Despite the
artificial _précieuse_ qualities of his style, and the unfinished
condition of his novels, Marivaux enjoyed an extraordinary popularity
in his day. The same problem repeats itself on a larger scale when we
transfer our attention to Richardson, whose works, translated and
popularized by Prévost, were read with the greatest avidity in France.
Were not these such influences as Professor Dowden's profound
knowledge of English literature would have qualified him to illustrate
with more precision than has yet been brought to bear upon them; and
was it not in point of fact almost imperative for him to deal
seriously with such an important theme in the international literary
history of nations?
The pages which Professor Dowden devotes to Voltaire, although
brilliant, are not sufficiently suggestive of the extraordinary
influence which that most celebrated of writers exercised. It was in
no uncritical spirit that Mr. Morley wrote: "The existence, character,
and career of this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a
new and prodigious era. The peculiarities of his individual genius
changed the mind and spiritual conformation of France, and in a less
degree of the whole of the West, with as far-spreading and invincible
an effect as if the work had been wholly done, as it was actually
aided, by the sweep of deep-lying collective forces. A new type of
belief, and of its shadow, disbelief, was stamped by the impression of
his character and work into the intelligence and feeling of his own
and modern times." Nor will Villemain be accused of rapt enthusiasm
when he writes, "C'est le plus puissant renovateur des esprits depuis
Luther, et l'homme qui a mis le plus en commun les idées de l'Europe
par sa gloire, sa longue vie, son merveilleux esprit et son
universelle clarté." The strangest fact to contemplate with regard to
this unrivaled popularity, this astonishing range of influence, is
that it truly constitutes an apotheosis of superficiality. And this in
no disparaging spirit of Carlylese disdain for clear ideas around
which hang no mists of oracular obscurity, but rather by way of
tribute to a heart that beat responsively to human suffering, to a
mind keenly sensible of human wrongs. Voltaire rejected the subtleties
of metaphysical thought, was indeed incapable of attaining to the
heights of speculative contemplation; he was only preternaturally
sensitive to the moral defects of this imperfect world, and determined
to bend all his efforts to the alleviation of injustice and of crime.
As a further concession to his superficiality as a thinker we may
frankly admit his incapacity to originate new ideas. His mind indeed
was extraordinarily receptive, his intellectual curiosity unlimited,
and hostile critics have availed themselves of this very receptivity
as a medium of attack upon his originality. They are free to pursue
him on that score, but it does not appreciably detract from his
greatness in the eyes of posterity to recognize that Bayle before him
had preached the doctrine of toleration; that Montesquieu had
advocated the abolition of torture and of slavery, and the sanctity of
social institutions, or that Boileau forsooth had upheld the dignity
of classical formulas in matters literary. It is rather in the
mobility of his mind and in the impressionability of his temperament
that we should seek for an explanation of a philosophical disturbance
in his ideas. It is not an actual mental confusion that I refer to,
for his diction is never more limpid than in the expression of his
easy personal beliefs; but a certain intellectual inconsistency in his
habits of thought makes it impossible for us to hold him down to any
definite set of opinions which we can regard as a genuine confession
of faith. And this is a vital characteristic of skeptical minds of his
stamp, swiftly receptive, and as open as the day to each new
intellectual impulse as it arises. Thus we must attribute to his
capacity for mental development, as well as to the narrowness of his
philosophical range, the many contradictions which his writings
exhibit in such matters of intellectual belief as are wont to give a
permanent bias of thought to minds less volatile and alert. Are we to
regard him as an optimist or a pessimist? a believer in immortality or
devotee of annihilation? a fatalist or spiritualist in history? an
advocate of free will or determinism? We can not say, and M. Faguet
has amused himself with supporting each of these opinions in turn upon
its appropriate text, whose clearness is beyond dispute.
If there was one set of opinions to which Voltaire may be said to have
somewhat consistently adhered I may instance his vague and insipid
deism, which relegated to God the rôle of an absentee landlord in this
poor world which he created and governs by absolute law, but in whose
affairs he only intervenes when the death rent is to be collected. He
infers a creative God from the argument of the clockmaker and the
clock, but takes extreme pleasure in showing how sadly the poor
machine is out of order. His idea of the social utility of an avenging
and rewarding God must of course be regarded as a freak of
intellectual caprice, and yet his timid political instincts made him
regard the terrorizing influence of the doctrine of hell with some
complacency as a restraining force upon the unthinking masses. The
story is well known of the atheistic conversation between D'Alembert
and Condorcet at Voltaire's table, who summarily dismissed the
servants from the room with the remark: "Maintenant, messieurs, vous
pouvez continuer. Je craignais seulement d'être égorgé cette nuit."
The _Dictionnaire philosophique_ confirms the flippant utilitarian
point of view, which we must beware of regarding as a personal
conviction. "I insist particularly on the immortality of the soul,
because there is nothing to which I hold more than the idea of hell.
We have to do with a host of rogues who have never thought; a crowd of
petty people, brutes and drunkards and thieves. Preach to them if you
will that there is no hell and that the soul is mortal. As for me I
will cry in their ears that they are damned if they rob me." It is
needless to add that convictions of this eminently practical nature
did not seriously hamper Voltaire in his anti-religious crusade.
To every branch of letters Voltaire brought the same splendid
qualities of mind, and need I add the same defective qualities of
conscience and carelessness of the truth when his personal glory or
his material advancement were concerned? The sordid pages of his life
would weary us in the turning, yet his native generosity and sympathy
incline us to charity; and it is wonderful how his never-failing wit
can temper his vindictiveness for us, now that the sting has lost its
living poison.
I have referred to Professor Dowden's unsatisfactory treatment of the
international reactions which characterize the literary history of the
eighteenth century. There is another omission which I have remarked in
the book on a reperusal of the pages devoted to Rousseau and the
encyclopedists. It might have been easily within the scope of a
literary story of even moderate dimensions to have more explicitly
accounted for the crumbling of the old classical ideal, to have shown
that the once impregnable citadel of classical art was rotten at the
base, and that those who still defended the imaginary stronghold were
themselves the unconscious agents of its destruction. With reference
to the irreligious influences of Cartesianism and the philosophical
system of Bayle I shall say no more, save that the evident loss in
prestige of the traditional religious faith, combined as it was with
the rapid decentralization of the sovereign power in the state, must
perforce make impossible the survival of literature on the old
national basis. Again, in point of pure art a decline was inevitable
in connection with the revival of Cartesianism among writers of the
stamp of Fontenelle; for their prestige was synchronous with the
triumph of the modern party in the famous quarrel; and no student of
the _Art Poétique_ will fail to appreciate the æsthetical significance
of an abandonment of classical standards of taste as an unimpeachable
canon of art. Defending as Boileau did the supreme value of reason and
good sense, what justification could he have found for poetry unless
he had proved to the satisfaction of his generation that poetry better
than any other mode of expression could render permanent the
promptings of the diviner reason, as witness the eternal monuments of
ancient art in the domain of poetry? The triumph of the moderns then
turned men's faces in other directions, and whether literary art
should henceforward advance or decline, it must at least strike root
in a newer soil.
The inroads of sensibility into French literature, as exemplified in
Marivaux and Prévost in the thirties, followed swiftly by the rank and
file, also wrought havoc in the old classical method, though this fact
may not without further reflection be conceded. But in the broad realm
of psychological observation, where classic art had reigned supreme,
the influx of a certain morbid sensibility strangely warped the mental
vision of the observer. Diderot, a veritable sinner himself in this
respect, admits as much in an unguarded moment: "L'homme sensible est
trop abandonné à la merci de son diaphragme ... pour être un profond
observateur et conséquemment un sublime imitateur de la nature." Every
one knows Voltaire's naïve statement which bears condemnatory evidence
to the bluntness of his psychology. "La nature est partout la même."
And is it not, we ask, this enigmatical typical man, out of space and
out of time, for whom the chimerical theories of universal
perfectibility were soon to be woven?
It is incontestably true, then, that the character of human
observation undergoes a sensible alteration in the course of the
century, and that whereas the individual man had been heretofore
studied inasmuch as he was in himself of typical value, henceforward
not man the individual will be the object of study, but the
observation of human relations will usurp the field, and psychological
analysis will yield to social investigation.
I would add a word or two by way of conclusion to illustrate how the
encyclopedists in their propaganda, aided in part by the coincident
influence of Rousseau, established ideals of thought and conduct which
were in the most violent contrast to the ideals cherished in the
preceding century. Of course, we readily understand that the
encyclopedists threw to the four corners of heaven the outworn respect
of religious and political tradition. Furthermore, we may ask
ourselves what it is which in a sense makes Molière and La Fontaine
isolated in their century; and the answer will not be far to seek when
we realize that these two alone of all their fellows urged the
suspected authority of instinct as a sufficient guide for conduct. Yet
how far were not even these bolder spirits from the natural man of
Rousseau or of Diderot?
The views of the two centuries concerning the authority of reason seem
at first sight to coincide, yet, while bearing Boileau in mind, we can
confidently assert that the doctrine of the sovereignty of reason was
not established as a principle of thought until the culminating years
of the eighteenth century. Pascal's "taisez-vous raison imbécile"
indicates how attempered and attenuated by spiritual faith were the
dictates of pure reason in his day, and the reason of Boileau, as I
have already observed, was strongly tinged with æstheticism. I need
not, with reference to eighteenth-century reason worship, go further
than to refer the curious of enlightenment on the subject to the
masterly works of Morley on the period in question, in which it is
precisely this unflinching devotion to reason or unreason (if the sage
of Chelsea will have it thus) which stimulates his calm and logical
temperament to positive enthusiasm.
A last element of contrast between the centuries is of interest in
connection with the habitual mode of thought which Godwin and his
political disciple Shelley borrowed from eighteenth-century French
sources with reference to the true relations subsisting between laws
and morals. The seventeenth-century mind held tenaciously enough to
the theory that it is the _moeurs_ of a nation that inspire the laws,
but the encyclopedists were inspired in their undying hope of
amelioration and human progress to perfectibility by the contrary
theory that men, after all, are only bad because the laws have made
them so.
It may be conceded, then, that these broad relations of literary
movements one with the other, the conflict of converging tendencies,
and the more evident causes of the growth and decay of powerful
manifestations of a nation's thought, are of quite sufficient moment
to have merited fuller treatment at the hands of the eminent critic
who has in all other respects fulfilled his task so admirably, that
having regard to the necessary conditions of the subject, it would be
above criticism if anything could be.
THE BOTANY OF SHAKESPEARE.
BY THOMAS H. MACBRIDE.
The universality of Shakespeare is the common remark of critics. Other
great men have been versatile; Shakespeare alone is universal. He
alone of all great men seems to have been able to follow his own
advice, "to hold as it were the mirror up to Nature." On the clear
surface of his thought, as on a deep Alpine lake, the whole shore lies
reflected--not alone the clouds, the sky, the woods, the castles, the
rocks, the mountain path by which the shepherd strolls; not alone the
broad highway by which may march the king in splendor the peasant with
his wain; but even the humbler objects by the still water's edge, the
trodden grass, the fluttering sedge, the broken reed, the tiniest
flower, all things, all Nature in action or repose finds counterpart
within the glassy depths.
Hence it is that no man, at least no English-speaking man, reads
Shakespeare wrong. Everybody understands him. Here is a sort of
Anglo-Saxon Bible in which, so far as the world goes, every soul finds
himself, with all his hopes, his doubts, his whims, depicted. We are
therefore not surprised that everybody claims a share in Shakespeare;
rather claims the poet as his own. The Protestant is sure that
Shakespeare despised the hierarchy; the Romanist is quite as certain
that he loved the Church. There exists an essay to prove him a
Presbyterian; another to show that the great dramatist was a
Universalist. A volume has been written to prove the man a soldier;
another that he was a lawyer, a printer, a fisherman, a freemason; and
here are five or six articles to show that Shakespeare was a
gardener.[U]
[Footnote U: In preparation of this article the author has consulted
chiefly the following: John Gerarde, The Herball or General Historie
of Plants, 1597; Shakspere, Edward Dowden, 1872; William Shakespeare,
Works, Globe edition, 1867; Natural History of Shakespeare, Bessie
Mayou, 1877; Shakespeare's England, William Winter, 1894; The Plant
lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare, H. F. Ellacombe, 1896; The
Gardener's Chronicle, sundry pamphlets, and shorter articles.]
All this simply means that the poet had a marvelous faculty for close
observing; that his vision was accurate, his instinct wonderfully
true. It may be therefore worth our while to study for a little this
remarkable man from the standpoint of a naturalist, to see how he who
so vividly paints a passion can paint a flower; how the man who limns
a character, till beyond the photograph it starts to actuality, will
catch the essential feature of some natural truth.
We shall nowhere lack for material. The plays are full of references
to plants and flowers of every sort. England in Shakespeare's day, as
now, was a land of bloom, and the poet but reflects the loveliness of
beauty and color spread about him. But he does something more. He is
not content with flashes of color and breathings of odor, he goes into
detail and gives us the individual plant unmistakably. In his
description he shows an exactitude, a discriminating perception that,
had it been turned to Nature's problems seriously at all, must at once
have transformed the science of his age. But Shakespeare was not a man
of science; he was a poet. In his views of Nature he resembles the
great poets of the world, notably Goethe; and, like Goethe, he not
infrequently outruns the science of his time, uses his imagination,
divining things invisible. Moreover, Shakespeare's plants are living
things; they form a garden, not a herbarium. They stand before us in
multitudes, so that it is difficult for the present purpose to know
what to select. We must be content with a few specimen forms brought
out in quotations no more extensive than seems necessary to the
argument. Of course, there are many plants to-day discussed of which
Shakespeare never heard. He does not speak of many sorts of fungi, of
slime molds, microbes; he knew nothing about these. The microscope had
hardly been invented, and the unseen world was as yet largely
personified. And yet Shakespeare has not failed to note the visible
signs of some of our microscopic forms. Critics have wasted their time
and the patience of mankind in an effort to identify Hebona, the
"leperous distilment" poured into the porches of the royal ear. Almost
profitless are such discussions. Yet we may note that we have here to
do with an effect; the means of producing it need not be too closely
questioned. Before the rush of action, the weird setting, the voice of
an apparition, the excited audience cares not what the mysterious vial
may contain--ebony, henbane, yew, or whether it were entirely empty.
What is called for is a speedy and mysterious taking off. Had the
scene been laid in Italy, the effect had been reached by the fateful
prick of a jeweled pin, some ring upon a Borgian finger whose pressure
was the paralysis of death. But the king died of no such curari. Note
the symptoms (Hamlet, i, 5, 64-73):
"The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine;
And a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body."
These are the symptoms of blood-poisoning, vividly portrayed; of some
contagion, communicable by infection. In foul old London Shakespeare
had doubtless seen endemic, zymotic diseases of every description, and
drew his picture from the life. Royal blood is notoriously unsound,
royal habit leaves the porches of royal ears especially exposed. On
our supposition the vial need not have contained very much, not even
ebony. The dramatist had plenty of mystery ready to his hand, and the
Hebona is perhaps intentionally ambiguous. Bacterial diseases were of
old called plagues; they fell from heaven. Listen to King Lear:
"Now, all the plagues that in the pendulous air
Hang fated o'er men's faults, light on my daughters!"
Or Caliban:
"All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
By inch-meal a disease!"
Or they were attributed, as already intimated, to unseen personal
agencies:
"This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and
walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints
the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and
hurts the poor creature of earth."
I quote this latter rather also to show the accuracy and compass of
Shakespeare's vision. How many people, not farmers, have seen wheat
whitened by the blight! And that is exactly the description, white not
"to the harvest," but whiter still to sterility and death.
But leaving aside all microscopic forms which may or may not be
incidentally touched upon everywhere, we may turn our attention next
to cryptogamic plants which are positively defined. The sudden
springing of mushrooms, for instance, especially at night, so unreal
and yet realities withal, made their creation a suitable trick for
Prospero:
"You demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew."
The "green sour ringlets on the fields whereof the ewe not bites" are
"fairy rings." The same thing appears in the speech of Dame Quickly:
"And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring;
The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see."
Fungi, toadstools, mushrooms, and so forth, are fructifications only;
the vegetative part of the plants permeates the soil, feeds on its
organic matter, and spreads almost equally, we may assume, in all
directions from the point of starting. When now this vegetative growth
has accumulated energy to form fruit, the sporocarps or mushrooms rise
all around at the limits of activity; hence, in a circle.
The fungi cut a small figure in Shakespeare--i. e., considering their
numbers and almost omnipresence. But we must remember that they were
at that time studied by few, their significance and interest little
suspected. They formed part of the realm of the world unseen; they
came and went at the instance of powers unknown, mostly personified,
imaginary, a misty population, the thought of which kept for long ages
the childhood of our race in terror. Shakespeare saw the forms of
unstudied plants, everything visible to the naked eye, and really
omitted very little. He speaks of mosses--the lichens were included
with them--chiefly as indicative of age in the object in which they
rest:
"Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age
And high top bald with dry antiquity."
Then again he simply touches them, but in such a way as to reveal his
full appreciation of their beauty, as in Cymbeline, iv, 2. For the
decoration of Imogen's grave the ruddock would bring flowers--
"... bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse."
The "furred moss" to "winter-ground thy corse" is exquisite.
Ferns, though so much larger, so handsome, and in our day so
all-attractive, failed generally to impress our fathers.
Butler, writing in 1670, has this to say:
"They spring like fern, that infant weed,
Equivocally without a seed,
And have no possible foundation
But merely in th' imagination."
Now, as far as Shakespeare was concerned, ferns answered his purpose
without seed just as well as with such visible means of perpetuity.
His only reference is I Henry, iv, where Gadshill says:
"We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible";
and Chamberlain replies:
"Nay, by my faith, I think you are more belonging to the
Night than to fern-seed for your walking invisible."
In this connection Ellacombe suggests the doctrine of signatures. The
God of Nature had written for us his human children prescriptions all
over the leafy world. The remedy indicated by its form its own
application. Thus a heart-shaped leaf was good medicine for cardiac
troubles, a lung-like leaf was good for consumption, a lungwort in
fact, and so a liverwort, a spleenwort, and the like. Gerarde, and, in
fact, all the old medical writers throughout the centuries, are full
of this. Now, what more natural than that a plant which could thus
perpetuate itself age after age by means invisible should be able to
confer the much-sought gift of invisibility, the power to disappear
and reappear at pleasure? Many people so believed. Shakespeare appears
to have been skeptical.
Turn we now to the flowering plants: the amount of material at our
disposal, as already indicated, is immense. Shakespeare was evidently
a great lover of flowers simply as such. His pages from first to last
are ornate with color, almost redolent of roses, lilies, eglantine,
with every conceivable metaphor and trope--"the bud of love," the
"nettle of danger," the "flower of safety." Their lovely shapes are
ever before him; he is spellbound with their beauty. "England itself
is a sea-walled garden." Grammatical forms may vanish, if only the
flower may live. Compare Cymbeline, ii, 3:
"Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that _lies_."
The image of the morning flowers, the fiery steeds that drink them
dry, shall fascinate us so that we forget the grammar. It will not do
to say lie; the word must rhyme with "arise," and further on with
"eyes":
"And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty is,
My lady sweet arise."
For the Queen of the Fairies he spreads this sort of a couch:
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight," etc.
Such cases reveal the impress, the healthy, happy impress which Nature
could exercise on this the foremost man of all the world, the harmony
between Nature and Nature's child. All the plants in the last
quotation are wild flowers, except the musk-roses, and these are so
common in England as to be almost wild. The eglantine was the
sweetbrier, said to be wild in all the southern part of the island and
popular in the literature of all recorded centuries. Gerarde describes
as follows: "The leaves are glittering, of beautiful green color, of
smell most pleasant.... The fruit when it is ripe maketh most pleasant
meats, and banqueting dishes, as tarts and such like, the making
whereof I commit to the cunning cook, and teeth to eat them in the
rich man's mouth."
The sweetness of the leaf of the eglantine is referred to by
Shakespeare in another passage which I venture to quote now for
another purpose, to show the accuracy of his description as applied to
simple flowers. The lines are from the scene quoted before. Arviragus
and Guiderius would bury the swooning Imogen. They think her dead
(Cymbeline, iv, 2):
"I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out-sweetened not thy breath."
Primroses when pale are the palest of all withering plants. The
flowers change color with maturity, especially after fertilization.
The paleness of the primrose is the pallor of decay. But the azure
harebell--behold it waving on its slender stipe beneath the shade of
some great rock--who can look into its delicate cerulean cup again and
not bethink him of the blue-veined eyelid sleep that falls upon our
human flowers!
The same accuracy of detail is evinced in many other places. Take, for
instance, Shakespeare's description of the violet all the way through.
It moves him chiefly by its odor (King John, iv, 2):
"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, to add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
Nevertheless, we have violets dim, and violets blue, and purple
violets, and more particularly "blue-veined" violets, as if the poet
looked with a lens into the very throat of the flower which Frenchmen
call a thought. "And there is pansies--that's for thoughts." His
description of the elm is equally exact (Midsummer-Night's Dream, iv,
1, 47-49):
"So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm."
There is nothing better than that, as you may prove by examining the
twigs of even some of our American species; the cork elm, for
instance. The hawthorn, the cedar, and the pine and the oak
especially, are most naturally treated. These are Shakespeare's
familiar trees. The cedar of Shakespeare is the cedar of Lebanon,
commonly planted throughout Europe since the time of the Crusades.
Shakespeare had probably seen specimens in England. He uses it as the
type of all that is great and fine. One author thinks he copies
Ezekiel, chapter xxxi. The pine was beside him all the while. He knew
the secret of the pine knot, and well describes it (Troilus and
Cressida, i, 3):
"... checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest reared,
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Deflect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth."
Any one who has ever examined the case, or even one who has handled
knotty lumber, has seen the wood fiber run around the persistent base
of some dead limb, and can appreciate these lines.
All these quotations show that Shakespeare used his own eyes and used
them well. He saw the real distinctions of things, the hoariness on
the willow leaf. He found character in the oak as in the king, and
beauty in both. In many of his notices of natural objects, however,
the poet is not the original observer. He often uses current opinions,
fancies, dreams, for these also were the realities in his day, quite
as much sometimes as oaks and forests. There is concerning plants a
sort of orthodox mythology, and thousands of years have sometimes
contributed to the reputation born by a single species. A curious
illustration is found in what Shakespeare has to say about the
mandrake (Antony and Cleopatra, i, 5):
"Give me to drink mandragora.
Why, madam?
That I might sleep out this great gap of time."
Othello, iii, 3:
"Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."
Juliet, reflecting on her proposed entombment in the dark grave of the
Capulets, exclaims (Romeo and Juliet, iv, 3):
"Alack, alack! is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrake's torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:
Or, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environèd with all these hideous fears?"
The mandrake _Atropa officinalis_ belongs to the _Solanaceæ_, and,
like others of the family, has narcotic properties. This was doubtless
known to Shakespeare, as in the passage cited he compares the mandrake
with the poppy. The groaning and shrieking are, of course, the purest
superstition. The root of the mandrake was supposed to resemble the
human form. The favorite habitat assigned to the plant was the foot of
the gallows, and men believed that in some way the bodies of criminals
were reproduced in the growing plant; their very pains and cries
renewed, especially for him who profanely dared to pull the mandrake
from the earth. The curious may consult Gerarde.
These ideas, it is needless to say, are very old; Pliny refers to
them, and, if I recollect well, Vergil has his hero pull up some plant
amid the strangest of sights and sounds. With these old myths are tied
up, perchance, the mandrakes of King James's version. Nay, the
superstition still survives; look at the woodcut in Webster's
Unabridged, and you will discover that the artist who set out to
illustrate the word mandrake for that somewhat venerable authority was
by no means able to free himself from the ancient spell. Credulity is
evermore a factor in the compound called human nature. Men love to be
fooled, or to find some support for belief in manifest absurdity.
There is nothing so silly but has its advocates among men who ought to
know better.
A year or two since, a man brought from Ohio to the University of Iowa
an innocent five-parted, digitate, black fungus. It was treasured in
alcohol. Why? Because of its origin. An honest mechanic meeting with
accident lost his fingers under the surgeon's knife. The amputated
members were neglected, but presently discovered and duly buried in
the garden. The following spring from the "identical spot" uprose a
swarthy hand, black without, white within. The hand was a perfect
_main-de-gloire_ for that sensation-loving community. The matter was
discussed in newspapers. A long and careful account of the wonder was
prepared, put in print and circulated among the friends of the
deceased--fingers! "What fools we mortals be!" For sheer superstition
and crass stupidity who may say that the nineteenth century may not
yet discount the days of the virgin Queen?
But I said at the outset that Shakespeare had in some instances
anticipated modern scientific teaching. To illustrate this in its most
striking instance, I am compelled to offer a somewhat long quotation
(Winter's Tale, iv, 4, 76-106):
"POLIXENES. Shepherdess,
A fair one are you, well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
PERDITA. Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season
Are our carnation and streaked gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.
POLIXENES. Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
PERDITA. For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
POLIXENES. Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.
PERDITA. So it is.
POLIXENES. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards."
Here we have brought out very distinctly the effect of
cross-fertilization in flowers, the result of grafting and the
development of varieties. Better than that, we have here the
recognition of that tendency in organisms to vary that lies at the
very root of the development of species. Natural selection, survival
of the fittest, were impossible were it not true that "Nature is made
better by no mean but Nature makes that mean"; or, as it is more
broadly stated a few lines further on, "This is an art which does mend
Nature, change it rather, but the art itself is Nature." I consider
these very remarkable statements when we reflect on the time in which
they were written. Darwin, in 1860, does but unfold the thought. The
selection which Shakespeare notes as practiced by gardeners, and a
similar selection seen in the world of domestic animals, gave Darwin
his cue of natural selection. The beauty of Darwin's thesis lies in
the fact that the process is natural, and such is Shakespeare's
dictum. Later on, lines 112-128, Perdita brings out another remarkable
observation that has only lately been confirmed by the conclusions of
science:
"... Now my fairest friend,
I would I had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day; and yours; and yours;
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing: O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's wagon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength--a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds;
The flower-de-luce being one!"
Primroses are dimorphic--i. e., on the same species we find flowers of
different sorts. These are complete, but in any particular flower the
essential organs fail of adaptation to each other--the style in one
too long, in another too short, to receive pollen from the stamens of
its own flower. For fertilization such flowers are absolutely
dependent upon the assistance brought by insect visitors. Perdita's
primrose is _Primula veris_, the early primrose, "that takes the
winds of March with beauty," and dies ere it beholds "bright Phoebus
in his strength," and it is precisely this species that forms the
basis of one of Darwin's earliest and most fruitful studies in the
cross-fertilization of flowers. The styles in one form of the early
primrose are three times as long as in the other, the stigmas differ,
and the coadaptation of the parts of the different flowers extends
even to the grains of pollen. Such flowers in the absence of insects
are entirely unproductive. Insects are rare so early in the year, and
accordingly many of the primroses die, as Perdita says, "unmarried."
Of course, it is not pretended that Shakespeare knew anything of this;
but that he should have discovered the fact that the early primrose
bears little or no seed, and that he should have been impressed by the
truth that this is due to lack of fertilization, is wonderful. This
circumstance might well lead to the suspicion that the poet was a
gardener.
We must not forget to notice, too, in this connection, that
carnations--i. e., pinks--are remarkable for the great number of their
varieties. We have, if I may so say, pinks of every color, from
crimson to white, even brown it is said. This was true in
Shakespeare's time, if one may trust Gerarde again; he says, "A great
and large volume would not suffice to write of every one at large
considering how infinite they are, and how every year the climate and
country bringeth forth new sorts and such as have not heretofore been
written of."
Another passage in which the poet has instinctively hit upon a
scientific truth is found in Sonnet IV, the last ten lines. The beauty
of the passage as a whole is so remarkable that the delicate touches
in particular lines are apt to be overlooked:
"For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass.
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor remembrance what it was:
But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,
Lose but their show; their substance still lives sweet."
No botanist can read the line "A liquid prisoner pent in walls of
glass" and not recognize the exact portrayal of the living vegetable
cell. The living protoplasm is a liquid prisoner sure enough, hemmed
in by walls transparent. There could be no more striking image. And
when in herb and tree, in every living plant, the summer's work is
ended and hideous winter falls, the new cells, summer's distillation
left, do in all perennials actually survive, lest of the effect of
beauty, beauty be bereft. There is no more marvelous picture in all
the vegetal world than that of a great tree with all its myriad cells,
in summer so filled with the rush of life's activity and change that
we might hear its music, in autumn sinking to quiescence, and the
winter's silent chill where liquid prisoners sleep 'neath walls of
glass. The poet did not understand it; he simply prophesied better
than he knew. He makes us think of Goethe, of Lucretius. These men
made happy guesses. Lucretius especially surprises us by his views of
the constitution of matter--unverified, so far as we can know. Goethe
lived in the age of science and went on laboriously to verify his
surmises. The only natural science which Shakespeare knew was
gardening--if that may be called a science. His Sonnets are supposed
to have been written about 1590, and the first scientific glimpse of
the "prisoner pent in walls of glass" came about 1670, through the
lenses of Nehemiah Grew, a Puritan physicist and botanist.
I am aware that it is said by some that in a critique like this we are
apt to read much into the writings of our author. The quotations I
have submitted show, it seems to me, that this is unnecessary in the
present case at least. The words are generally unequivocal. Of course,
the language is poetical, metaphoric, but the metaphor has reference
to something else; the description is not the metaphor. But, in fact,
ought we to expect in Shakespeare very exact or complete description?
His whole art lies in the power of suggestion. The deep impressions a
man of genius makes upon our minds lie often, if not always, in what
he does not say. A word or two and the vision rises, whether in Nature
or in life, a passion or a landscape. Take the broken phrases of
Ophelia depicting her broken heart, her "no more but so"; or the
picture of the winter woods in Sonnet LXXIII:
"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves or none or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."
Does any one pretend that we are reading into the lines when we
appreciate the marvelous sorrow of the one picture or the exquisite
truthfulness and splendor of the other?
Shakespeare's natural eye was clear indeed, but none the less he seems
to have seen everything with the eye of his mind. Faraday so saw the
world of force, Newton of mathematical law, and Tyndall's scientific
use of the imagination lies in the same direction.
And so the man of science and the poet have much in common. Both use
the natural world, and the imagination is for each an instrument of
effort. The poet's generalization is a splendid vision in a world
ideal, suggested, no doubt, by what is actual and liable here and
there to coincide with truth; the generalization of the scientific man
is likewise a vision, but it rests upon the actual, upon the
ascertained fact at the greatest number of points possible, and
disappoints us only that it is not everywhere coincident. The poet
dreams of Atlantis, the lost continents, the islands of the blest, and
builds us pictures that vanish with his song; the man of science too
beholds the continents rise; scene after scene he likewise makes to
pass across our startled vision; but his are history, his tapestries
are wrought in the loom of time.
The poet writes the book of Genesis, with the herbs bringing forth
fruit after their kind; the man of science figures fossil leaves and
cones and fruit. Only at the last do poetry and science possibly again
agree:
"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself--
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind!"
And when the man of science gathers all his data, and collates fact
with fact, and builds the superstructure of his vision, with him, too,
all things fade and vanish in the infinity of the future.
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL EXPOSITIONS--THEIR PURPOSES AND BENEFITS.
BY MARCUS BENJAMIN, PH. D.
Industrial expositions are a natural development of the fairs of the
middle ages. The latter are believed to have originated in the
religious gatherings which afforded an opportunity for the sale of
wares to large numbers of people. Such fairs still persist in northern
Europe, and the best known of them is probably that held three times a
year in Leipsic, to which, it is said, "some twenty-five or thirty
thousand foreign merchants" are still attracted each year.
In course of time international exhibitions at which specimens of the
arts and industries of the great nations of the world were contrasted
came into vogue. These began with the International Exhibition held in
London in 1851, and of them three have been held in the United States,
as follows: The first in New York, in 1853; the second in
Philadelphia, in 1876; and the third in Chicago, in 1893. The great
magnitude of such expositions has led in recent years to their
specialization or subdivision into expositions at which only a
specialty was presented. Notable among such have been the following,
which were for the most part international: Of articles connected
with the leather industry, held in Berlin, in 1877; of all kinds of
paper and pasteboard, held in Berlin, in 1878; of fisheries, held in
Berlin, in 1880; of electricity, held in Paris, in 1881; of geography,
held in Venice, in 1881; of cotton, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1881;
of early data in American history, held in Madrid, in 1881; of
fisheries, held in London, in 1883; of historical matters pertaining
to Columbus and the discovery of America, held in Madrid, in 1892; and
of hygiene, including chemical, pharmaceutical, and sanitary objects,
held in Naples, in 1894.
Similarly there has been a development in the United States from local
fairs, such as those of the various mechanics' institutes, typical of
which is the one held annually since 1828 in New York city under the
auspices of the American Institute, into interstate expositions. Of
these, since 1880, the following have been held: Cincinnati Industrial
Exposition, Cincinnati, Ohio, September 30 to October 4, 1883;
Southern Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky, August 16 to October 25,
1883; World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, New
Orleans, Louisiana, December 16, 1883, to June 30, 1884; Central
Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States, Cincinnati, Ohio,
July 4 to October 7, 1888; California Midwinter Fair, San Francisco,
California, January 1 to July 4, 1894; Cotton States and Industrial
Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia, September 18 to December 31, 1895;
Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville, Tennessee, May 1 to
October 31, 1897; and Trans-Mississippi International Exposition,
Omaha, Nebraska, June 1 to November 1, 1898.
Of the foregoing, the more important were those held in New Orleans,
in 1884; in San Francisco, in 1894; in Atlanta, in 1895; in Nashville,
in 1897, and in Omaha, in 1898; especially so from the fact that all
of these received recognition by the Government; and, with the
exception of that held in San Francisco, liberal appropriations were
made for their support by Congress. Moreover, at each of them,
excepting again that held in San Francisco, a special Government
building was erected in which the national Government made exhibits of
the workings of the several executive departments, together with the
Smithsonian Institution and its dependencies and the Fish Commission.
The first named, that of New Orleans, was held as a celebration of the
centenary of the cotton industry in the United States. The first
record of cotton as a factor in the foreign trade of this country
appeared in the shipment in 1784 of six bags, amounting to about one
bale, from Charleston, South Carolina. Audubon Park was the site on
which the buildings were erected.
The exposition held in San Francisco, in 1894, had for its purpose
the affording of an opportunity to foreign exhibitors at the World's
Fair to further display their goods in the United States, and in
consequence a great number of exhibits were shipped direct from
Chicago to the Pacific coast. The exposition was located in Golden
Gate Park.
The Atlanta Exposition had its inception in a belief that the
agricultural, mineral, and manufacturing resources of the South were
not adequately represented in Chicago in 1893. It was believed that a
better exhibit of the products of the Southland would tend to foster
greater trade relations between that section of our country and other
parts of the United States, as well as with foreign countries,
especially those to the south, such as Mexico. The Cotton States
Exposition was held in Piedmont Park.
The exposition in Nashville was designed primarily to celebrate the
one hundredth anniversary of the admission of Tennessee into the
Federal Union. Recognizing the commercial and educational advantages
to be derived from such a demonstration, it was deemed wise to
characterize the celebration as an exhibit of "the matchless resources
of Tennessee, and at the same time to lead to their greater
development." The old West Side Park was chosen as the site of the
"Centennial City."
The exposition held last year in Omaha had for its purposes to do for
the Trans-Mississippi States what the more local exhibitions had done
for Atlanta and Nashville. It was claimed that it would for the "first
time fully illustrate the wealth-producing power and the extent of
productive industries of the Greater West," and it did. The exposition
grounds were included within what was called the Kountze tract and the
old fair grounds.
Each of these expositions has been projected for distinct commercial
reasons. They have had for their immediate purposes the presentation
of the products of the region in which they were located to their
neighbors, to the nation, and to the world. In this sense they have
been simply the offspring of the fairs of the middle ages, differing
from them only in that the feature of sale has been largely
eliminated. That they have been successful in accomplishing the
results desired is beyond doubt; indeed, the expositions in Nashville
and Omaha were even financial successes. But they have done more than
this; they have accomplished a world of good in the way of education.
Let us consider some of these benefits. Beginning with the grounds,
these have been given over to the charge of some competent landscape
architect under whose skillful supervision the desert has been made to
blossom like a rose. The sand hills of San Francisco became the
beautiful "Palm City," which since the close of the exposition has
become one of the most attractive spots in the Golden Gate Park. At
Nashville the landscape effects were claimed by many to excel in
beauty those of the World's Fair in Chicago. "Evergreens, vines, and
shrubs are everywhere, and three lakes break this vista of green," was
the opinion of one visitor. Besides the general architectural effect
of the buildings, which can not but impress those who are so fortunate
as to visit these expositions, there is a special value in the
reproductions of historical buildings. At Atlanta the Massachusetts
Building was a representation of the Craigie House, the headquarters
of Washington when in Cambridge at the beginning of the Revolution,
and later the home of the poet Longfellow. It was a fortunate
inspiration of the late Dr. G. Brown Goode that led to its
presentation by the State of Massachusetts to the local Society of the
Daughters of the American Revolution. The architectural feature of the
Nashville Exposition was the replica of the Athenian Parthenon in all
its artistic beauty. Every detail was true to the original in design
and coloring. It was the chief glory of the centennial, and as it was
a permanent structure it will long remain to the "Athens of the South"
a memorial of its exposition. Of less conspicuous interest were the
reproductions of the Rialto of Venice and the Alamo of San Antonio.
The only architectural feature of historic character announced for
Omaha was that "the Arkansas Building will be a reproduction of the
mansion of General Albert Pike in 1843." The long oval waterway around
which the buildings were grouped afforded, however, excellent
opportunity for studying the architecture of the buildings,
which, it was claimed with much justice, approached those of the
never-to-be-forgotten "White City" in their beauty of design.
From the exterior to the interior is a natural method of progression.
Let us therefore pass to a brief consideration of the educational
features that are to be derived from an examination, no matter how
cursory, of the displays that are to be seen within the buildings.
First of all, and indeed frequently the most important, is the exhibit
made by the national Government. In the special building devoted to
that purpose are shown the exhibits of the several executive
departments, including also that of the Smithsonian Institution and
its dependencies, and the Fish Commission. As a result of the years of
accumulated experience there has been in each of the expositions
previously mentioned, except that in San Francisco, a distinct
improvement in the installation of the exhibits in the Government
Building, until it was recognized in Atlanta that the display was
superior to that in Chicago, and in Nashville "the best exhibit ever
made" was the verdict of those who had seen the successive expositions
previous to that in Omaha. Therefore the telling of a story by means
of objects in the best manner possible is the result sought for and
attained most perfectly by those who installed the Government
exhibits.
It is, of course, understood that the purpose of the Government
exhibit is to familiarize the public with the methods of carrying on
the functions of the different departments. Thus, in the post-office
exhibit there is shown the entire sequence of postage stamps, both of
the United States and foreign countries, the various kinds of mail
bags, figures of the mail carriers in their different uniforms, and
finally models or pictures of the methods of transportation. The
Treasury Department shows the working of the mint by the striking of
commemorative medals, while a full series of the existing medals and
coins of the country are displayed in cases on the wall. The functions
of the Department of the Interior are shown by exhibits of a series of
models of some important invention, as, for instance, a sequence
showing the development of the sewing machine. In this way--for of
course the blanks and other documents are shown--the working of the
Patent Office is demonstrated; while the Geological Survey, also of
the Department of the Interior, presents a series of minerals, showing
the economical wealth of the country, together with its maps and
reports, results of work accomplished. Everything can not be shown,
but a most excellent idea of what each department does can be had from
a study of the exhibits of the Government.
Next in importance to the Government Building is the one devoted to
commerce, and here are usually to be found the weak points of our
American expositions. In lieu of a series of exhibits showing the
progress in a given industry or trade, we find too frequently a
collection of nondescript articles without much if any relationship to
each other. This is due primarily to a lack of proper organization in
soliciting exhibits, and also because the awards or medals of the
jurors are so often of no relative value. The second condition is an
outcome of the first. To be more specific, in Nashville there were no
exhibits from any one of the larger and well-known silver firms, and
yet American silverware has a recognized status as one of the most
successful of our American art industries. Cut glassware is another
branch in which our artisans or art workmen have achieved splendid
results, and still there were no exhibits from art glassmakers in
Nashville. Certain varieties of art pottery and art glassware, such as
the Rookwood pottery and the Tiffany glass, are seldom seen at these
smaller expositions. In consequence the juror makes an award to the
best article of its kind on exhibition, which may be but a third-rate
article compared with others; still it is the best shown in the
exposition, and therefore worthy of recognition. Another unfortunate
feature must be mentioned at this point. It is the decorative
feature. At the last World's Fair held in Paris there was a colossal
figure of George Washington in chocolate exhibited by an American
manufacturer of that article. While it might be considered as a
laudable attempt to make known to the French nation the features of
the "Father of his Country," and from that point of view worthy of
recognition, still it was no evidence of the superiority of the
chocolate, and therefore could not be considered in connection with
the giving of an award. This condition of affairs prevails at every
exposition, and too frequently an exhibit of a meritorious article is
made in such a modest manner that its claims are overshadowed by the
pretentious display of something quite inferior.
Two conditions thus present themselves--namely, the lack of proper
exhibits and the improper presentation of certain exhibits. The first
condition may be overcome by a more perfect canvass of the industries
of the country. In nearly every one of these there is a national
organization, and it should be the duty of that body to consider the
matter. By the appointment of committees and working among the
representatives of the industry, either a good exhibit from the
leading firms could be secured, or else a collective exhibit of the
best from many firms could be obtained. Typical of the last named was
the exhibit made by the potters of the country at the World's Fair in
Chicago. By the adoption of such a method of displaying the products
of manufacturers the possibility of the second condition would be
entirely eliminated.
After all, the value of these expositions is chiefly educational, and
surely no more perfect way of educating the visitor or sightseer could
be found than by placing before him a historical series of products,
beginning with the one made first in point of time, continuing with
better specimens, showing the improvements that have resulted from
increased experience and knowledge, and culminating with the finest
product now made. The contrast between the first and the last would be
indeed most striking.
It must not be thought from the foregoing remarks that these
interstate expositions have been lacking in the presentation of the
products of their own home industries. Far from it. In San Francisco,
in Atlanta, in Nashville, and in Omaha the local manufacturers did
themselves great credit by the admirable way in which their goods were
shown, but it was just in this particular feature that the weak point
indicated previously made itself most conspicuous. A local silversmith
could hardly be expected to compete with the more famous manufacturers
in the same line in larger cities, and yet in the absence of an
exhibit by the better known firm an award would naturally be given to
the smaller manufacturer, thus creating a false impression to the
world at large.
It must not be assumed that the educational value of the exhibits in
the Commerce Building is without commendation. Next to making a thing,
the seeing of it is most important, and surely no one can pass along
the aisles of any exposition without noticing much that is new or
unusual, no matter what his previous experience may have been. It is
in this connection that the foreign section is frequently most
instructive. Warm furs from Russia and the north, rich fabrics and
strange metal ware from the Orient, rare porcelains from Copenhagen,
and brilliant glassware from Bohemia and Hungary, tell the story with
striking vividness of the special products of the Old-World nations.
As has been shown, the finished products of manufacturers are those
that are housed in the building devoted to commerce and manufacturing,
but the raw materials require a building or two for themselves. That
in which the products of the earth are exhibited is usually designated
the "Minerals and Forestry Building." This requires but brief mention,
and has its chief interest for the expert. Geological specimens,
including paleontological and lithological exhibits, show the age and
character of the soil, while the rocks further indicate the
possibilities of the territory, for they show the geological horizon.
In natural order are shown the minerals of the country. At Atlanta and
Nashville the richness of the mineral wealth of the Southern States
was fully demonstrated. Not only ores such as those of iron and
manganese, but the combustible minerals, as coal, lignite, and
petroleum, were exhibited. More striking, perhaps, are the great
numbers of economic minerals that these expositions show. The
materials--phosphate rock, sulphur, and nitrates--used in making
artificial fertilizers; the marbles; the pigment-yielding minerals,
including ochres, umber, and barite; the clays, with their products of
earthenware and pottery, bricks, and tiles; and even mineral waters
are among the different minerals to be seen. It is from such exhibits
that something of an idea is obtained of the enormous wealth that is
contained in the earth, waiting only to be excavated and fashioned
into articles of beauty and utility. While such exhibits are
frequently to be seen in museums, still the average mind is more
impressed by the casual examination of these things in expositions,
and one's pride of home increased by the rich stores of mineral wealth
attractively installed. It is customary also to show models of the
machinery used in mining, and even books, maps, and drawings are not
uncommonly seen.
A similar arrangement is followed in regard to the forest products.
Logs and sections of trees, as well as samples of wood and timber of
all kinds, are shown. Then come the finished products--boards,
shingle, and moldings--and finally the manufactured articles, such as
pails, tubs, and then furniture. Barks, as for tanning or dyeing,
seeds and gums, and the wood pulp for paper are on exhibition. Among
the miscellaneous products deserving mention are fibers, as used in
basket-making or cane work.
Forestry as a science is made the basis of a series of exhibits. These
include timber culture, tools used, and methods employed in planting
and caring for trees. And finally lumbering as a science finds a place
in the scheme followed in this department. This includes the tools
used in lumbering and the methods employed, as well as exhibits
illustrating the tan-bark industry, the turpentine industry, and the
charcoal industry. So it happens that there is much that can be
learned by the student who will devote a little time to the analysis
of the exhibits in the building devoted to the products of the mines
and the forest.
A visit to the Agricultural Building reveals to the interested
observer those products of the soil that are for the most part the
result of cultivation, and so we find exhibits of cereals--wheat,
oats, barley, and the like--and then their immediate products: bread,
pastes such as macaroni, and starches. The sugar-yielding plants,
together with honey and the manufactured product, as candy and other
confections, come next in order. The root crops, such as potatoes or
beets, and the vegetables, are of much importance. Preserved meats and
food preparations, dairy products, spices, tea, and tobacco are among
the articles on exhibition. Then come the plants yielding fibers, as
cotton and the like; but we hasten on to make mention of the exhibits
of implements used in agriculture and its special subdivisions, such
as horticulture, viticulture, floriculture, and arboriculture. Who
will gainsay the fact that the farmer can not do otherwise than learn
much from a visit to the home of the products of the soil? It it also
customary to include a live-stock exhibition during some period of the
exposition.
Mention has been made of the building devoted to the finished products
of manufactures and of the buildings in which the crude materials are
displayed. Besides these there are usually several buildings devoted
to the exhibition of the means by which the original substances,
whether from the mine, forest, or farm, are made up into the
commercial product for the merchant. One of these is called the
"Transportation Building," and in it we find the various means by
which the raw materials are conveyed to the factory. From the lower
forms of transportation of which man is the motive power, such as the
wheelbarrow, upward through the various forms of vehicles of which the
power comes from horses and other animals, until as the topmost member
of the series is shown the magnificently equipped train of railway
cars, provided with all the conveniences that modern luxury can
devise. If the visitor is not content with land locomotion, more than
likely he can find an exhibit in which transportation on water is
possible, as by means of a naphtha or steam launch.
Machinery is the active means by which the immediate transposition of
the crude material into the finished article is accomplished. And in a
building where the ceaseless belt moves with the rapidly revolving
pulley may be seen the many forms of machinery which the active brain
of the ingenious mechanic has devised to cheapen labor and increase
production. The change of the cotton fiber into cloth, or the passage
of the silken thread into the finished handkerchief; the revolving
cylinder on which the virgin sheet of white paper becomes the printed
purveyor of news; or the many and varied appliances by which the piece
of leather is fashioned into a covering for the foot; or again the
means by which the strip of steel is made into a pin or needle, are
among the interesting things that may be seen in Machinery Hall.
Conspicuous among the many interesting wonders of science that were
shown at the Centennial, in 1876, were the few, insignificant, blue,
flickering, and unstable lights that ushered into existence a new era
in the history of electricity. In Atlanta, in Nashville, and in Omaha
a building was necessary to hold the appliances and products of the
latest of our sciences. Telephones no longer impress us by their
newness, and the appliances of electricity to heating and lighting are
now household necessities. To those who treasured the memory of the
beauty of the lighted Court of Honor at the White City in Chicago
there was given a greater joy when the entire grounds of the beautiful
Centennial City in Nashville were illuminated with more than seventeen
thousand incandescent lamps. Daylight had faded into darkness only to
emerge into an electric day of brilliancy unsurpassed. Thus was told
the story of the progress of the science which as a result of the
studies of Franklin, Henry, Morse, and Graham Bell may well be
regarded as the American science.
A parting word must be given to the amusement features. How the
Streets of Cairo, now so hackneyed, linger in one's memory! The
Enchanted Swing was one of the novel features of the Midwinter Fair in
San Francisco, and of weird interest was the Night and Morning in
Nashville. The Mexican and Japanese villages were excellent features
in Atlanta, and so was the Chinese village in Nashville, although the
"Old Plantation" was more popular. Panoramas such as that of the
Battle of Gettysburg, or pyrotechnic spectacular shows such as The
Storming of Wei-Hai-Wei, are of value. The musical features must not
be forgotten, even if popular fancy leans toward Dixie, for the
occasional "Gems from the Operas" help to leaven the mass. At
Nashville the military drills by the national and State troops were
of considerable interest, and much had been hoped for in Omaha in this
respect, but the war prevented.
In this analysis, incomplete, it is true, of these American interstate
expositions something has been shown of their design and more of their
benefits. They have had for their purpose the exhibition of the
materials, processes, and products of manufacture, but their ultimate
benefit has been that of education. To the thoughtful an opportunity
has been afforded of following the crude material through the
processes of manufacture until the finished product has been
exhibited. The variety of crude materials was shown him, the different
processes were contrasted, and finally the completed article was
exhibited which possessed this merit or that advantage according to
the process followed. For the mere pleasure-seeker there were the
delights of attractive surroundings, the beauty of the exhibits, and
the delights of music or other entertainments. Indeed, all the
influences are for good.
Let it then be the effort of every one, whether official, exhibitor,
or visitor, to use his influence to improve and elevate these
expositions so that only the most desirable localities shall be chosen
in which to hold them, and let the selection of exhibits be made so as
to include the most worthy; for then, and only then, will the visitor
derive the greatest benefit.
And so from time to time and in various places we shall have these
interstate expositions, which will show to the world the advancement
made in the development of the resources of our great country.
BOOKWORMS IN FACT AND FANCY.
BY WILLARD AUSTEN.
"What is a bookworm? Tell me if you can;
I merely mean the insect, not the man--
A reptile whom a wit like Hood might dub
A grub that grubs in Grub Street for its grub."
ROBERT ROCKLIFF.
So much mystery has gathered around the term bookworm, so much imagery
has been employed in depicting the appearance and devastations of this
mythical creature, that many have been prepared to accept almost
anything, no matter how fabulous, that might be said about this
unknown enemy of literature. Reaction against these weird and
fantastical accounts is indicated by the question, not infrequently
asked, "Are there such things as bookworms?" Few are aware that in
this creature we encounter another case of masquerading, that these
"destroyers of the Muses" are common enough pests playing other rôles
than those in which they are familiarly known. Some of them are met
with daily in the house and elsewhere, and arouse no unusual interest,
while the world goes on wondering what a bookworm is like.
Insects injurious to books and bindings are not a new subject. The
Greeks and Romans observed and wrote about them, but notwithstanding,
their knowledge of zoölogy, comparatively speaking, was so meager,
they do not seem to have felt any of the mystery or wonderment about
these creatures which we have felt. The terms _blatta_, _tinea_,
_silphe_, are frequently met with in the works of classical writers,
and, while we can not be sure of the particular species they intended
to allude to by these terms, we do in many instances know from the
context that the creatures known to them had like characteristics with
those known to us, and that they were given to literary depredations
as are their descendants.
The earliest allusion to a book-destroying worm which has come down to
us from classical lore was rescued from oblivion by the lad Salmasius
in 1606, when he discovered the manuscripts of the anthology of
Cephalas in the library of the Counts Palatine at Heidelberg. Among
the fragments in this collection is one attributed to Evenus, the
sophist-poet of Paros, who wrote about 450 B. C., in which the "foul
destroyer" is thus berated:
"O worst enemy of the Muses, devourer of the pages of books,
Foul destroyer that lurkest in a hole, ever feeding on what thou
hadst stolen from learning,
Tell me, black-colored bookworm, why dost thou lie in ambush to
injure the sacred decrees while fashioning thy envious image?"
Aristotle, in his History of Animals, mentioned the "little
scorpionlike creature found in books"; a characterization which
obtains to-day for the little creature which Leunis calls the
"_Bücherscorpion_." Horace addresses his finished book, to which he
imputes an unbecoming haste to be displayed on the booksellers'
stalls, thus: "When thumbed by the hands of the vulgar, you begin to
grow dirty, then you will in silence feed the groveling bookworm."
Ovid, in his exile at Tomi, likens the "external remorse of its cares"
which his heart feels to the gnawing of the _tinea_.
Considering the fact that Pliny is said to have comprised in his
Natural History all the knowledge of the natural sciences then known,
it is a little surprising that he had not more to say regarding book
insects. Here and there in his writings, however, he speaks of worms
in connection with books and papers in the same casual way as other
classical writers, causing you to feel that he was conversant with
their destructive tendencies. The epigrammatist Martial in the first
century, and Lucian in the second, both use the term bookworm;
Martial, in much the same way as did Horace, warning his book of the
fate awaiting it; Lucian, in his well-known dialogue, The Dream; or,
The Cock, as a symbol of the condition to which miserly man may
descend.
Sufficient has been said to show the attitude of the ancients toward
these little pests, that had no more regard for their precious
thoughts than for the utterances of modern "statesmen," whose speeches
are "read by title and ordered printed."
Crossing the cloistered period of the ages called dark, when books
were so few and so constantly used by the jolly monks that these
little creatures must have had a difficult time getting a living
unobserved, we come down to the sixteenth century, by which time books
had begun to multiply and worms to propagate. In the last quarter of
this century we find Pierre Petit, who is numbered among the
celebrated pleiade of Latin verse writers along with Rapin,
Commire, and others, addressing these "impudent creatures" in a
thirty-four-line Latin poem titled In Blattam.
A curious and interesting characterization of some species of book
insects has come to us in the writings of Christian Mentzel, the
German naturalist and philologist, who lived in the seventeenth
century. When one reads that he heard the bookworm crow like a cock,
and said, "I knew not whether some local fowl was clamoring or whether
there was but a beating in my ears," one can not help wondering if
there was not something defective in his ear drums; but further on he
says, "I perceived, in the paper whereon I was writing, a little
insect that ceased not to carol like very chanticleer, until taking a
magnifying glass I assiduously observed him." From this one concludes
that if the fault were not with his hearing, by which some well-known
sounds made by book insects seemed to him like the crowing of a cock,
an altogether different cock from the kind we know must have lived in
his day.
The earliest observations on the subject possessing any scientific
value were made by Robert Hooke in his Micrographia, published in
London in 1665. In many respects this work was a curious medley of
facts and fancy. The registers of the Royal Society, of which he was a
member, testify to the eagerness with which Hooke hurried from one
inquiry to another with "brilliant but inconclusive results." Among
the many objects which engaged his attention was an insect which he
described in a chapter entitled Of the Small Silver-colour'd Bookworm.
His description shows it to have been the "fishtail," by naturalists
called _Lepisma_, well known as one of the pests that not infrequently
is found in the library as well as other parts of the house.
Many interesting instances of the discovery of bookworms are found in
the literature on the subject, showing the keen interest felt in the
search for specimens of the "destroyer," many of them revealing the
fact that some unique and curious creature which stands alone in its
taste for literary food was sought. Mr. Blades reported in 1858 that
he found specimens in some black-letter fragments at the Bodleian
Library, that were recognized by the librarian, Dr. Bandinel, who
crushed them with his thumb, saying, as he wiped his thumb nail on his
coat sleeve, "O yes, they have black heads sometimes." The librarian
of Hereford Cathedral, the Rev. F. S. Havergal, contributes his
observations, covering a period of eighteen years, during which time
he reports that he found two distinct species. From his description,
however, it appears that he failed to recognize that the two were the
larva and imago of the same species. Many cases of the finding of
bookworms reported in England and America are not accompanied with
sufficient data to determine just what they were. These contribute to
the general impression that many have sought but few have found what
were thought to be "genuine bookworms," while on every hand are those
creatures which under the right conditions become book destroyers.
Research among the literature concerning library pests reveals the
fact that no less than eleven different groups have members that are
directly or indirectly accused of injuring books and bindings. The
number of species in each group ranges from one to eleven, making a
total of over thirty different species. In addition to these there are
others against which the evidence is at best only circumstantial. It
is not necessary to say that none of these bear any resemblance in any
period of their existence to worms, and that the term bookworms is a
misnomer. The word has become so firmly fixed in literature, both in
its figurative and literal sense, that its misuse will no doubt
continue.
The larger number of these are included in the class _Hexapoda_, or
insects. Two species belong to the class _Arachnida_, which embraces
the scorpions, spiders, mites, etc. One of these, _Chelifer
cancroides_, known as the "book scorpion," although not a true
scorpion, belongs to the order _Pseudoscorpiones_, and is probably
what Aristotle had in mind when speaking of the "little scorpionlike
insects found in books." The other species is known as _Cheyletus
eruditus_, of the order _Acarina_, or "cheese mites." These two are
known to be carnivorous in their habits, and there is some question as
to whether they haunt books for the purpose of feeding on them or on
other creatures to be found there.
Of those in the class _Hexapoda_, which comprises all the other known
book pests, there can be no question as regards their destructiveness.
Many are known about the house by the name of the article they are
most frequently found in, and unless driven by a lack of those things
more to their liking, they do not invade the literary sanctum. Some
are so cosmopolitan in their tastes that they seem to take whatever is
most convenient, whether it be books or boots, pepper or poison.
As has been said, the earliest observation of value was made by Hooke
on _Lepisma_, commonly known as "fish moth" or "silver fish," from its
resemblance, in shape and coating, to a fish; also as "bristle tail,"
from its caudal appendages. They are found in closets, cupboards, and
clothes baskets. Opinions have differed as to its destructiveness to
books, but the weight of evidence is against the insect. It seeks the
paste and sizing used about books, and this leads it to attack
bindings and labels. There is a theory that paste made from pure
starch is not to their liking, but this is not substantiated by
observation.
Termites or "white ants," another misnomer, since they are not true
ants, are also well-known ravagers whose deeds of destruction assume a
serious aspect, especially in the tropics. "Humboldt," according to
Shimer, "informs us that in all equinoctial America, where the white
ants abound, it is infinitely rare to find papers or books that go
back fifty or sixty years." Their destruction to timber has been the
cause of serious accidents, at one time so weakening the supports of a
dwelling that a whole dinner party was precipitated from the third
floor to the basement. These pests belong to the order _Isoptera_. The
American species is known as _Termes flavipes_, and several
well-authenticated cases of their having done serious injury to books
and bindings in this country are recorded. As the chief sustenance of
these insects seems to be dead wood, it may be that the increased use
of wood in paper will make modern books, which bookworms are said to
scorn, more tempting than ever to them.
By opening quickly some old book which has lain long unused, one may
see tiny pale creatures with knowing black eyes scurrying across the
pages. These insects are known as "book lice," or by the Germans as
"_Staublaus_" (dust louse). Entomologists have given them the
high-sounding name _Atropos divinatoria_. They belong to the family
_Psocidæ_, of the order _Corrodentia_. Some writers, beginning with
William Derham, in 1701, are of the opinion that this delicate little
creature makes a noise like unto that of the coleopterous insect
called "death-watch." These little fellows are said to have stout jaws
with which they do damage to books, dried plants, etc., "nibbling away
the leaves and covers of the former."
Of all the insects that injure books perhaps the best known are the
cockroaches, scientifically called _Blattidæ_, of which there are five
species whose bookish habits are unquestioned. Many instances of
serious damage done by them to the bindings of books are on record,
the most important, perhaps, being that of the Natural History Museum
Reports, at Albany, where Mr. J. A. Lintner found a hundred volumes or
more so badly damaged by roaches that they could not be moved without
coming to pieces. The United States Senate Reports, bound in cloth and
leather, some fresh and new, have been badly damaged at Washington, in
the efforts of these pests to get at the paste with which the covers
were fastened to the volumes. The species known to commit these
depredations are the "Croton bug" (_Blatta germanica_), smaller than
the others, but considered by some writers as the worst pests of the
family; a little larger species, called _Periplaneta orientalis_; and
a large species, known as _Periplaneta americana_, or _Kakerlac_.
Against two other species, _Blatta australasiæ_ and _Blatta gigantea_,
there is not so much evidence.
Among the moths, or millers, order _Lepidoptera_, are found several
species which injure books, the best known being the _Aglossa
pinguinalis_, commonly called "grease moth." The larva of this species
is at first a pale, flesh-colored grub, but as it matures it becomes
quite black. It injures bindings by constructing long "silken tubes,"
in which it remains until full fed. Sometimes they spin a web between
the volumes, "gnawing small portions of the paper with which to form
their cocoons." This species belongs to the family _Pyralididæ_. Of
the family _Oecophoridæ_ two species are known to injure books:
_Acompsia pseudospretella_, and an undetermined species of
_Depressaria_. Under the name _Oecophora_, William Blades describes
the ravages of the former on two leaves of a "Caxton," and accompanies
his remarks with a photographic illustration of the damaged leaves,
from which it is at once seen how irregular is the gnawing of this
species. The newspaper account of the finding of bookworms in the
Lenox Library not long ago classed the larvæ found with this species.
The largest number of book-destroying insects are found among the
beetles, of the order _Coleoptera_. To this group belong the "book
borers." The species thus far considered have been more or less
dilettantes in literature. The beetles, however, seem possessed with a
true spirit of investigation, and when they undertake a piece of work
in a serious fashion they go to the bottom of it, sticking close to
the line laid down. This characteristic distinguishes these insects
from all others, and makes it comparatively easy to determine when
they have been at work in a worm-eaten volume. No less than sixteen
different species of this order have been either detected in this
work, or such strong circumstantial evidence has been found against
them, that there is little doubt as to their guilt. Some insects seem
to destroy books for the sheer want of something better to do; some do
so in seeking the paste and sizing used in and about the books;
others because the leather bindings are desirable material in which
to undergo transformation; and, again, others haunt book shelves and
books in search of prey in the form of living creatures. But among the
beetles are found tiny little grubs that seem to have a genuine intent
to destroy; that set out deliberately to wreak vengeance on man's
record of his thoughts, deeds, and discoveries, and, as if knowing the
means which man uses to destroy, have sought to imitate him in the
effects produced. As a result we find books filled with small, round,
shotlike holes strongly suggesting the results which might follow from
the use of the family Bible by the restless boy as a target for his
first shotgun.
The book-destroying beetles are all grouped under three families:
_Dermestidæ_, _Scolytidæ_, and _Ptinidæ_. The _Dermestidæ_ include the
"flower beetles" and the well-known "carpet bug." The species of which
there can be no doubt as to its disposition to pierce book bindings is
_Anthrenus varius_, which Glover says "is a very pretty insect when
examined under a magnifying glass, being beautifully marbled or
variegated with black and gray." Another member of this family,
against which there is less evidence, is _Dermestes chinensis_, so
named by Dr. L'Herminier, of Guadeloupe, who reported a loss of nearly
four hundred volumes from its ravages. Erichson believes this to have
been the well-known _Anobium paniceum_. _Dermestes lardarius_ and
_Attagenus pellio_ are others of this family mentioned in the same
category.
The family _Ptinidæ_ includes two groups, _Anobium_ and _Ptinus_, the
first being generally known as the "death-watch," from the peculiar
sound, like the tick of a watch, which is produced by striking against
a hard substance with their tiny jaws. Superstitious persons have long
considered this noise an omen of death, hence the name. Instead of an
ill omen, this noise proves itself to be a love-call between the
sexes, and may be imitated accurately enough to elicit a response. One
of the best known of these beetles is called _Sitodrepa panicea_,
generally known in Europe as _Anobium paniceum_. It is a cosmopolitan
feeder, having a reputation in several different fields of activity,
commercial and scientific as well as literary. To druggists it is
known as "the worm," and their stock of ginger, rhubarb, Cayenne
pepper, nux vomica, and belladonna root all appear to be equally to
its liking, tin foil being no formidable barrier to its persistent
search. Leather dealers have suffered from the destruction wrought by
this little fellow to such an extent that whole cases of boots and
shoes, carriage trimmings, etc., have been ruined. To this species
belongs the insect found a few years ago at work in a volume of
Dante's Divine Comedy, which had been sent to Cornell University
library from Florence. The larvæ are about three to four millimetres
in length, of a dirty-white color, head tinged with brown, and black
mouth parts, with the abdomen strongly curved. The adult is a small,
cylindrical, brown beetle from two to three millimetres in length,
with head bent down and wing covers marked with fine punctate striæ.
Professor Poey made extensive observations of an insect in Cuba which
had destroyed about four thousand volumes. He called it _Anobium
bibliothecarum_, and Schwartz thinks the injury reported by Herminier
from Guadeloupe should be attributed to the same species. _Anobium
striatum_ and _pertinax_ have long been known to injure books by their
"gnawing and burrowing," not only in and through the bindings, but
also entirely through the volumes. _Nicobium hirtum_, a native of
southern Europe, where its larvæ have been found doing like injury, is
only locally abundant, and for this reason has never been considered a
serious library pest. Schwartz says, "In one way or another the insect
has found its way to North America, but has always been regarded as a
great rarity with us."
The _Ptinus_ group embraces _Ptinus fur_, _Ptinus mollis_, _Ptinus
brunneus_, and _Ptilinus pectinicornis_, called by Leunis
"_Bücherbohrer_." According to Butler, a peculiarity of this
genius--that of dissimilarity of shape between the sexes--is well
illustrated by the _P. fur_, the male being almost cylindrical, the
female inflated or rounded at the sides; so much variation that they
might be taken for two different insects. _Ptinus brunneus_, although
similar to _P. fur_, is distinguished from it by being wholly of a
light-brown color and destitute of whitish bands on the wing covers.
Some writers speak of this species as the "book beetle," while
_Sitodrepa_ is spoken of as the "spice beetle." Dr. Henry Shimer makes
the following statement regarding their method of boring: "They
usually operate in leather-bound or half-bound volumes by boring
galleries along in the leather.... They usually bore along quite under
the surface of the leather, cutting it almost through; occasionally a
small round hole penetrates through the leather to the outer surface."
One of the most famous cases on record of insects boring through books
is that reported by M. Peignot, in which he states that twenty-seven
folio volumes were pierced through in so straight a line that a cord
might be passed through them and all the volumes raised by means of
it. Different writers give the credit of this feat to different
members of this group, so that the most that can be said is that it
was the work of some member of the _Ptinidæ_.
In the family _Scolytidæ_ only one species belongs to the book
ravagers. It is known as _Hypothemus eruditus_, and was described by
Westwood in 1836 as "pitchy black, the head of the same color,
entirely concealed from above by the front thorax." It is very minute
in size, being about one twentieth of an inch in length. So far as
its depredations have been observed it confines its work to the
bindings of books, making furrows in all directions much as it does in
the sap wood of dead trees. The strong resemblance of its burrowing to
the gouging done by an engraver's chisel has given to this family the
name of "engraver beetles."
A review of the different families of insects whose habits under
favorable conditions lead them to infest books and bindings will show
them to be more or less well defined according to their feeding
habits. The book scorpions and mite, _Cheyletus eruditus_, which, as
we have seen, do not come under the head of insects, are primarily
carnivorous, and their presence in books may be due to the fact that
they find there animal as well as vegetable food. This is certainly
true of the book scorpion, which feeds on mites, book lice, and other
small insects. The "fish moths" or "silver fish," the "book lice," and
the "cockroaches" can have no other reason for infesting books than
their liking for farinaceous substances such as are used in and about
the bindings and labels of books. For this reason the damage done by
them is largely confined to the exterior or interior of the bindings,
and only so much of the book itself is injured as comes in their way
in their search for food. The "white ants" feed principally on wood,
and in and about books there is more or less wood fiber which would be
to the liking of these voracious feeders. The moths and beetles are
the burrowers and borers. They seek retired places in which to lay
their eggs where the larvæ will be surrounded with food for their
growth. The moths and some of the beetles are more given to burrowing
in the bindings, keeping close to the outer surface for the purpose,
it is thought, of making it easy for the imago to emerge after the
change is completed; while others bore straight tunnels often from
cover to cover.
A natural conclusion for one who has gone over the literature of
book-injuring pests to reach is that the many persons that have been
industriously looking for the bookworm, as well as those that have
reported the finding of isolated specimens, some dead, some alive,
have had in mind the one creature which bored holes in books. The
frequent use of the terms "genuine bookworm," "the real bookworm,"
etc., reveals the fact that the users of these phrases approached the
subject with a preconceived idea of the kind of creature they should
find to account for the ravages only too apparent on scores of volumes
which pass through the hands of booksellers and book keepers. To many
the boring beetles are the only creatures which are rightfully called
bookworms, and in their search other book pests have not been taken
into account.
HYDROPHOBIA IN BAJA CALIFORNIA.
BY DANE COOLIDGE.
When, in 1884, Pasteur discovered the true nature and cure of
hydrophobia, he dispelled the accumulated superstition of centuries
regarding this mysterious and dreaded disease. But in some countries
where hydrophobia exists his cure is not yet known, and the old
superstitions remain. While collecting mammals near San José del Cabo,
in the cape region of Lower California, two summers ago, I found the
country people very fearful of wild animals, especially of skunks and
coyotes. My Mexican boy, whom I had sent on an errand, remained
perched half the afternoon in a thorny mesquite tree because he had
seen a coyote and was afraid it was _rabioso_. But they fear the
skunks most of all because of their habit of approaching men in the
night while they sleep, and biting them on the toe or ear, or any
exposed part. In defense, unusual precautions are taken to exclude
them. The windows of the houses are barred with iron, and the doors
are made in halves, horizontally, so that the lower part may be closed
to keep out animals and snakes without interfering with free
ventilation. The common people, who live in brush houses, blockade
their doorways at night, and rely on their cur dogs to attack any
animal which may come near.
Notwithstanding all this evidence, and innumerable ghastly stories, I
remained a month in the country, at the rancho of Francis Pazik, a
very intelligent and well-educated Bohemian, without seeing any rabid
animals. Then, one evening just at sundown, a crowd of men came up the
path, leading one of Pazik's mules and dragging the carcass of a
skunk. They said that it had come out into the open field where the
mule was picketed and bitten it on the hind foot. All of them insisted
that it was rabid, and cited its extreme emaciation as a proof. The
young man who dragged it showed me his great toe, half burned off with
blue vitriol, and told me that a skunk had bitten him there two months
before, and the doctors had burned it. These native "doctors" are
uneducated men who live on the superstition of the people. In the case
of hydrophobia their methods are characteristic. There are in the cane
fields little insect-eating animals called shrews which, in that
country, give off a scent so like that of a skunk that Pazik has
hunted them out with his dogs in the night by mistake. The "doctors"
pay as much as two dollars apiece for shrews on urgent occasions, and,
mixing their bodies with herbs and roots, form a concoction which they
claim will ward off hydrophobia. Besides this, they also bleed the
patient and cauterize the wound.
According to the Mexicans, there are two kinds of rabies: that
affecting the head and that affecting the stomach. When animals have
_rabia_ in the head they become stupid and move about slowly, biting
at everything they see or touch. They are not violent, and become very
thin. But when they have rabies in the stomach it gives them great
pain, and they bark and howl and race about frantically, chasing other
animals and tearing them. Mr. Cipriano Fisher, of Santa Catarina, told
me of his experience with a coyote which had rabies in the stomach. He
was hunting deer at Cape San Lucas, and had killed two. Carrying the
smaller one and his gun to camp, he returned unarmed, except for the
knife which every one wears in that region, to bring in the other. As
he went down a deep cañon he heard a coyote ahead, howling in the
peculiar way which he knew to be characteristic of the _rabioso_. All
the hunters claim they can recognize the howling of a rabid coyote,
and they say that no other animal will answer it or go near it. The
howling approached rapidly. Knowing that he could not escape by
running back uphill, nor kill it with his knife without being bitten,
he stepped quickly into the brush and cut a long green club. As he
turned back into the open place he saw the coyote down the cañon,
leaping up and snapping at the air. When the coyote saw him it broke
into a furious run up the trail, and when, as he says, about thirty
feet away, made a flying leap at his face. He jumped to one side,
struck the rabid animal in the back of the head as it passed, and
killed it with the one blow.
Skunks are particularly dangerous to persons who sleep out at night.
J. Ellis McLellan, a field collector of the United States Department
of Agriculture, whom I met at San José del Cabo, told me of an
unpleasant experience he had with a skunk while coming down from La
Paz. On account of the heat he had ridden in the night as far as Agua
Caliente, where he stopped near a ranch house to sleep till morning.
Although the night was warm, he covered his head with a _serape_ for
protection from insects and wandering animals. Early in the morning he
was awakened by a twitching at his blanket and, raising the _serape_,
saw a skunk biting and jerking at it. Realizing the gravity of the
situation, he reached for his heavy knife, and then, suddenly throwing
aside the _serape_, he leaned forward and put his whole force into one
blow. As he ducked under the blanket again, for protection, the dogs
from the house rushed out in a body and pounced upon the dying skunk,
which they worried on top of McLellan until the ranch people beat them
off. When skunks bite at men's toes and ears, or at blankets in this
way, it is taken as an indication that they are rabid.
Shortly after this I saw a young man at Miraflores who had just been
seized with hydrophobia. Two months before he had been bitten on the
great toe by a skunk as he lay asleep in his house at Agua Caliente,
but had shown no symptoms of the disease until that day, when he
suddenly began to bite at the door jamb in the store at Miraflores.
They put him into the brick jail, where he soon became very violent.
When I went down to the jail the next morning I found a group of
Mexicans about the huge wooden door, which was chained fast and tied
with _riatas_ in addition. From the inside there came a succession of
thumps and blood-curdling groans and strangles. I peered in through
the barred window, and saw the unfortunate man lying on his back in a
corner, spasmodically kicking out his legs from his chest and rolling
his dilated eyes. Suddenly he leaped to his feet and, grasping the
iron bars, shook the great door violently, chained and tied as it was.
Then he seemed to leap against the walls, and at last fell down,
groaning. He soon became rational again, and began to talk through a
crack in the door to an old man whom I took to be his father. He asked
for water, but they would not give him any, and while he was pleading
for a knife or pistol another spasm seized him.
Presently the judge came over with two policemen. They said they were
going to take the _rabioso_ out and tie him to a tree, because he was
getting the jail too dirty, and might not die for a week. As soon as
the spasm passed, and the man lay weak and moaning, the burly
policemen loosed the _riatas_, and, stepping in quickly, seized him
from behind. He protested pathetically against going into the hot
sunshine, but they pushed him out and started toward the corral to tie
him up. But when the fierce sun struck him he was racked by horrible
convulsions. He kicked and struggled, bit at his shoulders, and blew
spittle into the air when he threw his head back. The policemen
breathed hard, and the old man, his father, hugged himself in agony as
he walked behind. There was a desperate struggle, then, with a final
paroxysm, the _rabioso_ suddenly collapsed and hung limp in their
arms. At first they thought that he was dead, but when he showed signs
of life they carried him to the corral and tied him to a tree before
he became conscious. Two days later he died.
Pasteur himself does not undertake to cure patients who have been
seized with spasms; but the judge told me that, fifteen years before,
an Italian doctor had come through their country making marvelous
cures. When he arrived at Miraflores there was a _rabioso_ in the jail
who was so badly afflicted and so long-lived that the judge had
ordered him to be shot. When the Italian doctor heard this, however,
he asked permission to try an experiment on the man. This being
granted, he had the patient lassoed, dragged to the river, and held
under water until he was apparently drowned. After the _rabioso_ was
full of water, the doctor rolled him on a barrel and resuscitated
him; then he gave him some medicine which cured him. Cipriano Fisher
told me that he had cured a valuable bulldog of rabies by this same
method, using the bitter juice of the _pitahaya_, a species of cactus,
for medicine. This crude means of alleged cure is unique, and seems
based on the theory that the antipathy of rabid animals to water,
implied in the name hydrophobia, is the cause of their death, and
partial drowning, therefore, a cure.
Rabies is extremely prevalent at times in certain districts of the
Cape region. McLellan says it does not occur north of the tropic of
Cancer--that is, of La Paz and Todos Santos--and it is hardly known in
the thickly populated district about San José del Cabo, but at Cape
San Lucas, and especially also along the base of the mountains near
Miraflores and Agua Caliente, where it is very hot and dry, rabid
animals are greatly to be feared. While collecting in these mountains
I passed several good ranches which had been deserted because, as my
guide said, stock could not be raised there successfully on account of
the _rabia_.
This man had worked as a _ranchero_ or stock herder for two years on
one of these ranches, and had been obliged at one time to kill eleven
cattle and seven sheep and goats in two weeks on account of their
having rabies. It was part of his duty to follow up rabid coyotes,
foxes, skunks, and wild cats when he saw them or heard their peculiar
cry, and shoot them before they bit the stock. But he assured me very
gravely that he preferred to work in the valley for less wages rather
than have charge of Chollalito rancho; and when we camped there for a
night he slept on top of the pack boxes, with his bare feet wrapped in
blankets and a _serape_ over his head, and reverently pulled out the
blessed rag he wore around his neck, in order to more surely protect
himself against the rabid skunks and coyotes. There is, however, very
little danger in traveling through this interesting country. Cases of
hydrophobia are comparatively rare, and some scientists who have
collected in Baja California have even denied its existence there. But
with the traveler, as with the native, there remains the vague,
constant, but unrealized expectation of seeing some raging coyote come
tearing through the cactus, or of having his toe bitten in the middle
of the night as he sprawls in the heat and darkness.
* * * * *
PROFESSOR WELLDON, in the British Association, expressed his
sense of the intellectual insolence of those who presume to say,
notwithstanding our ignorance of animal characters, that because
a characteristic seems to us minute and without importance, it is
therefore without importance to the animal. Until we know the
function of the animal throughout, and can picture its
physiological processes thoroughly, we have no right to say, _a
priori_, that this or that feature is of no use.
THE SENSE OF COLOR.
BY M. ANDRÉ BRACCHI.
When the different rays of the solar spectrum strike the eye
separately they each produce a particular characteristic and
subjective impression, which is called color. Ingenious theories have
been set forth by physiologists, like Young, Helmholtz, Hering, and
others, to explain the perception of colors by our eye, but the
problem still awaits solution, and is not likely to be explained from
that side, because it is rather psychical. The laws regulating the
perception of colors are not physiological; we perceive only
relations. We know that the sense of color may be modified
independently of that of light and of space. Two phases may be
distinguished in its evolution. Every light, whether chromatic or not,
produces a simple luminous impression on the retina--a simple
excitation of the optic nerve, without being analyzed by it. In the
second phase the brain, the psychic center of color, intervenes. There
may obviously be considerable differences between persons in the
interpretation of what we call colors, and we may judge that there is
an education of this psychical center, and that it is an important
matter.
Different as the ways of interpreting a sensation of color may be,
there are still some fundamental ideas in the matter which painters,
for example, do not all observe. Some, like the impressionists,
exaggerate them, and others neglect them. Which of these are wrong?
and which right? are questions we are not concerned with, our purpose
being to show that many of the phenomena of color, shade, sources of
light, etc., escape a large proportion of persons unless they are
attentive observers. If we visit the exhibitions of the impressionists
we shall be entertained at the criticisms we hear over the canvases of
such painters as Renoir and Monet; youths who have just come out of
the drawing school declaring that their master never taught them to
put blue on a face, and that in Nature all shadows are gray or black,
and none red or violet; and we should astonish a great many people if
we should say that a white robe should never be painted in a portrait
picture with white lead alone. "All skies are blue, all trees are
green, all pantaloons are red," said a celebrated painter who was
trying to show how the habit of seeing a colored object in a certain
way prevented one from perceiving the different colors that might be
applied to it. We recollect the trouble of a brave youth who, having
sat for his portrait to a celebrated painter, was distracted at
perceiving green in the reflections of the hair of his likeness. Yet
there are in Nature shadows that are blue and reflections that are
green, and if we do not see them habitually it is because we do not
give sufficient attention to them.
A common division of the spectrum is into warm and cold colors. The
warm colors are red, yellow, orange, and yellow-green; the cold colors
are violet, blue, green, and blue-green. This is not an arbitrary
division, but answers to a fact of experience which passes from our
physical to our moral impressions, and may cause in us feelings of
comfort or uneasiness, joy, sadness, or moral depression. Some persons
are influenced by the gray-colored sky, others are gay when the day is
bright. It is a current expression that the color of the southern
landscape is warm. Goethe said that blue caused him to feel cold.
The terms warm and cold are technical expressions in the arts. A color
tone is cooled by putting blue in it, and warmed by adding red or
yellow. "This practice is not arbitrary," says M. F. Bracquemond in
his book on Design and Color; "it copies the colored aspects which
natural light imposes on all imitation that seeks to realize the
colored and factitious light of painting. To reach this, art observes
the order according to which the natural lights distribute their
various colored elements, and classes luminous aspects--a process
which it has always observed--into the two categories of warm and
cold. Hence, so far as examples come to us, this contrast is easy to
verify; at the Louvre, for example, in works from Pompeii, and in
those of all the masters." Preyer relies upon this division of colors
into warm and cold for a comparison of chromatic sensations with
thermic, and for supposing that the color sense is developed from the
sense of temperature. Chromatic sensitiveness to this author is only a
special case of thermic sensitiveness limited to the retina. Darwin's
ideas were evidently the same; the whole human body was a sort of
retina capable of improvement; we may, it is true, suppose with Lord
Kelvin that "there is absolute continuity between the perception of
heat by the retina of the eye and its perception by means of the
tissues and nerves."
A very elementary experiment will easily enable us to recognize these
different qualities of colors. Set a lighted candle on a table near a
window; there are then two sources of light--the daylight, blue and
cold, and the light of the candle, orange-red and warm. Cast a shadow
on the white paper by holding a pencil straight up. The shadows cast
by the candle will be blue to a degree that no one can mistake it, a
greenish blue. Placing the pencil between the window and the candle
and looking at the shadows, we have, first, the blue shadow of the
candle, and then the shadow projected by the cold daylight. The color
of the last, though perhaps less evident than the other, is an
orange-yellow, of rich, warm tone.
From this little experiment we may conclude that a warm light provokes
a cold shadow, a cold light a warm shadow, and that the color of the
shadow is complementary to that of the light. In the experiment,
daylight was the source of the cold light. Let us now take a third
source of light, warmer than that of the candle, the flame produced by
burning alcohol and salt--a very warm, deep orange light, which makes
the light of the candle seem cold and its blue shadows appear yellow,
while its own shadows are blue.
We recently observed a very striking example of these warm and cold
appearances of light; it was at the theater: a beam of red light shone
brightly upon an actor, whose shadow was absolutely green. Some of the
people around us were astonished at the phenomenon, which they could
perceive very plainly. Phenomena of this kind are produced every
instant in a nature illuminated by the sun; nearly all the shadows are
colored in hues which we can distinguish with a little attention where
the unpracticed eye sees nothing but gray. Thus in a mountainous
country, exposed to the warm light of the sun, the mountains in the
horizon appear blue through the haze; then, as evening draws on, the
sun appears a deeper orange, more reddish, while the sky seems green
by contrast, and the red rays of the sun falling on the mountains turn
them violet, in those beautiful tints which give so much glory to
those countries of large shadows and bright lights.
However intense the light of day may be, it is therefore always
colored, and gives those colored shadows which painters do not always
observe. The painter, in fact, should make an analysis of the complex
light around him, and should repeat the result in synthesis on his
canvas. Upon hardly any other condition can he represent the
transparency of the atmosphere, or the luminosity of a subject or a
landscape. These colored shadows are not, therefore, false colors, as
often seems to be believed, or optical illusions; they are really
existent, but our eyes are hardly ever practiced enough to discern
them; we are deficient in education of the color sense. This education
is not hard to attain. There are persons who have special aptitudes
and are consequently remarkable colorists, just as some persons have
an admirably organized ear for music; but, besides these, it is
possible for all persons endowed with the faculty of observing and
capable of attention to acquire with considerable rapidity the faculty
of discerning colors, where they at present hardly see anything but
confused gray masses. (The epithet gray, we may observe, is used as
applied to many things the color of which is not susceptible of exact
determination.) Such attentive observation of colors is, however,
attended with some danger to painters. Every person prefers some one
color, is influenced by a particular shade. When we examine the works
of the painters we see that there are many differences in the way of
seeing. Some see blue, red, green; others see clear, others obscure.
In the analysis of a complex color it happens that there is sometimes
an auto-suggestion. Where there is a hardly defined violet, the
painter will exaggerate it on his canvas, and will be obliged, in
order to keep up the right tone, to increase the intensity of the
colors next to it. Hence arises a common error with painters, who
start with a true principle, but are not able to apply it properly,
and give their picture a tonic violet, green, or yellow, beyond all
reason.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue
Scientifique._
SKETCH OF THOMAS EGLESTON.
BY PROF. DANIEL S. MARTIN.
As a general rule, the work of the scientist is not of a kind to
attract conspicuous notice from the public, especially in great
cities, filled and thrilled with commercial and political activity;
and so it comes to pass that men of rare attainments and untiring
energy, in the highest walks of life and thought, may spend their
whole life-time in such an environment, and be scarcely known outside
of a limited circle of kindred minds. They may confer lasting benefits
on the community, render important services to the whole country, and
be widely known and honored in other lands, and yet receive but little
general recognition in the place of their abode.
Such a man, in such a community, is Prof. THOMAS EGLESTON, of the city
of New York. He has been too busy and too modest to seek prominence in
the public eye, and his scientific work has been of a kind that does
not lend itself readily to popular lectures or startling
announcements; but as a mineralogist, a metallurgist, and a mining
engineer, and as the planner and founder of the great School of Mines
of Columbia University, he has made a deep and permanent impress on
the history of science in the United States.
Professor Egleston is of New England stock, his ancestors having been
among the first settlers of Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1635. Thence
they came by a toilsome and perilous journey to Connecticut, and
founded Windsor, which was thenceforward their home, and whence his
father came to New York. The removal to Connecticut arose from a
desire for greater freedom of life and worship than they found in
Massachusetts; and Professor Egleston has been deeply interested in
studying the little-known records of this movement, and the influence
which it exerted, as an almost unwritten chapter in American history.
He proposes to publish these researches, together with much other
material relating to our colonial history, in which he is an
enthusiastic student.
He was born in New York, on December 9, 1832. As a boy he took
considerable interest in certain aspects of science, and at the age of
thirteen had gathered a collection of minerals and rocks. He attended
Yale College, and in the later years of his course took special
elective work in chemistry. After graduating there in 1854, he was for
a time an assistant to Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr. Subsequently he
went abroad, partly for his health, and was advised to spend some time
in Paris. With no special professional purpose, but from a general
desire to improve his time, he began attending lectures on geology and
chemistry at the Jardin des Plantes, under D'Orbigny (a brother of the
eminent writer) and Hilgard, and he worked with much energy in the
laboratories of those departments at the Jardin. He thus attracted the
attention of some of the faculty of the École des Mines, who offered
him larger facilities in that institution, which he at once accepted.
After much very interesting study in the paleontological laboratory
there, he decided to go regularly through the entire course, and
accomplished that purpose with notable success and honor, graduating
in 1860. He had worked as an assistant in every laboratory of the
school, and in the summers had traveled through much of France,
becoming familiar with its geology, mineral resources, mining works
and processes, and gaining a mastery at first hand of all branches of
those subjects. Those years were to him full of interest and
enjoyment; friendships were formed that have enriched his whole life;
and in it all the man was being remarkably prepared for the work of
developing those forms of science and of industrial progress in our
own country. Professor Egleston has always retained a strong feeling
of attachment toward the École des Mines, which has likewise been
warmly reciprocated. He has shown his interest by two gifts to the
institution, of five thousand dollars each.
Returning hither in 1861, just as the war cloud was darkening over
the land, he received almost immediately an appointment at
Washington, to take charge of the mineralogical collections and
laboratory of the Smithsonian Institution. After two years there he
conceived the purpose that determined his whole career, and has so
greatly influenced both American science and American mineral
development--that of a school of mines at New York.
At that time there were, indeed, in this country schools of science,
well organized and well equipped--the Sheffield School at Yale, the
Lawrence Foundation at Harvard, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
at Troy, and others. But their scope was rather general in character,
and there was no institution planned and arranged with distinct
reference to mining and metallurgy as its main subjects. Mr. Egleston,
as he was then known, saw and felt this lack, and planned to supply
it.
There is not space here to detail the circumstances under which he was
led to prepare, in 1863, the Plan for a School of Mines in New York;
but the modest little outline then drawn up and printed has been
exceedingly rich in results. It was taken up with interest by certain
leading trustees of Columbia College, as it was then called,
especially by the late George T. Strong. The president, the late Dr.
Charles King, and a majority of the board, favored the experiment, for
so it was regarded, and arrangements were finally made to begin it in
the autumn of the next year, in limited quarters in the old college
building on Forty-ninth Street, and with provision for but a small
number of students--not over twenty. Part of the instruction was to be
given by members of the existing college faculty; and three new
professors were appointed to special chairs for the school, to be
compensated wholly by fees therefrom. These were, Professor Egleston,
mineralogy and metallurgy; Prof. Francis Vinton, mining engineering;
and Dr. C. F. Chandler, chemistry.
Meanwhile, in June, 1864, President King was succeeded by the late Dr.
Barnard, whose strong interest in science made him a warm supporter of
the school. Already some prominent people were impressed with the
value of such a movement, and disposed to aid it. A fine collection of
minerals was purchased and presented by Mr. Strong, and another was
given by Mr. Gouverneur Kemble.
On the opening day, November 15, 1864, the number of applicants was
far beyond expectation and provision; the school was found to respond
to a need and a demand that had not been suspected; it was a success
from the first. In a year or two it had become an institution of
recognized importance; ample quarters were provided for it in a large
building, formerly a manufactory, on the Fourth Avenue side of the
college block, and important additions were made to its corps of
instructors--particularly the eminent geologist, Dr. J. S. Newberry,
of Cleveland, Ohio, whose noble geological collection was deposited
and used in the School of Mines, and whose breadth and power and
personal magnetism so profoundly influenced scientific interest and
progress in the city of New York for more than twenty years.
Such was the beginning of the school; its career has been one of
unbroken growth and increasing influence. After some ten years it was
found needful to take down the plain old transformed factory and erect
a new building on its site, with larger space and improved facilities.
Fifteen years later Columbia College was removed to its new site on
the Morningside Heights, where now the School of Mines is installed in
stately fireproof structures, wherein its great accumulated treasures
of collections, apparatus, models, and varied appliances of
instruction are safely and permanently housed.
The influence of this school upon science in New York city has been
incalculable. Only those who have lived in touch with the scientific
life of the metropolis during the period since the close of the civil
war can appreciate the change that has taken place in public feeling
regarding science, or can recognize how largely that change is due to
the existence of such an institution, and to the presence of such a
body of strong and able professors, in constant and active
co-operation in the interest of science. The school attracted notice
from the first, abroad as well as throughout this country. In 1871,
seven years from its opening, a writer in the North American Review
characterized it as "already more scientific than Freiberg, more
practical than Paris," and emphasized its influence both upon science
and upon mining interests in the United States, pointing out that the
literature pertaining to mines and their working had been very limited
in the English language, and that the instruction in the school had to
be chiefly given by lectures; but that these courses would gradually
develop into a literature.
These suggestions have been fully justified by the results of the last
quarter century. The vast development of our mineral resources has
been largely under the direction of graduates of this school. Hundreds
of them are to-day in important positions of scientific trust, not
only throughout our own country but in South and Central America,
Australia, China, Japan, and even Europe itself. The lectures of the
professors, and the articles constantly published in the School of
Mines Quarterly, have indeed given us a literature of the subject in
English. The local influence in the city has been great, upon
scientific education in secondary schools, and upon general public
sentiment; while in Columbia University the experiment has become one
of its finest departments and an element of its greatest strength.
Rarely is it given to a man to see in his life-time so great a result
from the plans and the labors of his earlier years.
Of the many forms of scientific activity which have engaged Professor
Egleston during his busy life, only the briefest mention can be made.
He was one of the founders of the American Institute of Mining
Engineers, was thrice its vice-president, and was chosen president in
1886; and he has published over one hundred articles in its
Transactions. He was one of the founders of the American Metrological
Society, and of the societies of Mechanical Engineers and of
Electrical Engineers, and a member of the society of Civil Engineers
and of the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain. In the New York
Academy of Sciences he was active for many years, and held the
vice-presidency from 1869 to 1881. In 1866 Professor Egleston was
associated with the Agricultural and Geological Survey of the Union
Pacific Railroad; in 1868 was appointed a United States Commissioner
to examine the fortifications of the coast; and in 1873 was one of the
jurors for the International Exposition at Vienna. From Princeton and
Trinity Colleges he received, in 1874, the degrees of Ph. D. and LL.
D., respectively, and from the Government of France the rank of a
Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1890, and the exceptional rank of
"Officier" in 1895.
His papers, published either separately or in the proceedings of the
several engineering societies above mentioned, the Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences, the School of Mines Quarterly, etc., cover a
wide range of subjects connected with mineralogy, metallurgy, and
mining operations. In mineralogy he was especially devoted to
crystallography, and his noble private collection was gathered and
arranged with relation to that department. Besides his strictly
metallurgical articles and treatises, he has dealt with such topics as
rails, in relation to accidents; furnaces and their construction;
fire-brick and refractory substances; slags and their utilization,
etc.; the decay of building stones, in connection with the Obelisk;
technical education, manual training, and improvement in the
conditions of workingmen in mining and metallurgical occupations.
His chief published works are The Metallurgy of Gold, Silver, and
Mercury in the United States, two large volumes, 1887 and 1890, and
his Lectures on Mineralogy, to which may be added his Tables for the
Determination of Minerals, Metallurgical Tables on Fuels, Iron, and
Steel, diagrams and comparisons of crystals and crystal notation,
tables of production of many of the metals, report on the Union
Pacific Railroad survey of 1868, and many others.
Within the past two years Professor Egleston has withdrawn from active
work in the School of Mines, and bears now the title of Professor
Emeritus; his health has been a good deal impaired, and his work has
passed largely into the charge of younger men who have grown up under
his direction as students and assistants. During the last winter he
has presented to the school his entire scientific library and his
private collection of minerals above referred to, some six thousand
specimens. These, in addition to the great mineralogical treasures
already possessed by the institution, all gathered and arranged under
his supervision, will make the School of Mines collection certainly
one of the finest in the country.
Although devoted to his own special branches, Professor Egleston had
given a striking example of broad interest in other departments of
science in his labor of love in connection with the monument to the
memory of the great ornithologist Audubon. The present writer was
closely associated with him in this work, and can testify to his
energy, enthusiasm, and perseverance therein. The later years of
Audubon's life had been spent on Manhattan Island, in a modest but
beautiful suburban home on the Hudson, above Harlem, known as Audubon
Park. He died in 1851, and was buried in a family vault in Trinity
Cemetery, then far out of town, now lying between One hundred and
Fifty-third and One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Streets, Amsterdam Avenue,
and the Hudson. The spot was remote and almost unknown, and with the
death and removal of most of the family, it had fallen into neglect.
When One Hundred and Fifty-third Street was to be opened through to
the river, the vault, which was close to the street line, was in
danger of injury; and then Professor Egleston took up the matter and
proposed to the trustees of the cemetery that if they would grant
another plot in a better location, he would endeavor to have a
handsome monument erected by national subscription. The trustees
responded warmly, and Professor Egleston undertook the work. Before
going abroad in 1887 he broached the subject to the writer, and
suggested that he present it during the meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, which was to be held
during that summer in New York. The writer gladly responded to the
plan, and in August of that year laid the facts before a general
meeting of the association. Much interest was expressed, but no action
was taken, as had been hoped. At the first regular meeting of the New
York Academy of Sciences, in October, the writer again presented the
subject, with better result; and a committee was appointed by the
academy, consisting of Professor Egleston as chairman, Dr. N. L.
Britton, and the writer. On the return of the former from Europe the
work was taken up in earnest; and under the indefatigable efforts of
the chairman and of the secretary, Dr. Britton, although with many
delays and discouragements, it was carried to a triumphant success.
Before the end of the year (1887) the committee had held numerous
meetings, prepared and issued a circular, and engaged the co-operation
of several other organizations with the Academy of Sciences, including
the American Ornithologists' Union, the Agassiz Association, and the
Audubon Society (for the protection of our native birds). A design was
proposed by the academy's committee, and adopted by the joint
committee of the several societies; this design originated with
Professor Egleston, and was a striking combination of the religious,
scientific, and artistic elements appropriate to the purpose. The
scheme was that of a Runic cross, the only form of that Christian
symbol which can properly bear ornamental devices, according to the
canons of artists and architects, and this was to be covered with
reliefs of the birds, quadrupeds, and flowers that Audubon so loved
and studied, and that have given him his fame as the artist-naturalist
of America. The general design being approved, the selection and
arrangement of the animals and birds was given to a subcommittee of
specialists, consisting of Dr. J. A. Allen, Mr. G. B. Sennett, and Dr.
N. L. Britton, whose duty was to secure accurate representation and
artistic grouping of the forms.
In all these combined aspects this monument is doubtless unique. As it
stands to-day over the grave of him whom it commemorates--graceful,
dignified, and altogether peculiar--it is an honor to our city, as
well as a fitting tribute to the memory of Audubon, the Nature-lover,
the artist, and the Christian believer. For this beautiful thought, so
nobly carried out, both American science and the city of New York are
indebted to Thomas Egleston.
The progress of the effort was slow; it was not until 1891 that
sufficient subscriptions were secured, and not until the spring of
1893 that all was ready for the formal ceremonies. During all this
time Professor Egleston and Dr. Britton were untiring in their
endeavors and unfaltering in their purpose to succeed. On April 26,
1893, the monument was dedicated with suitable exercises, of great
interest, at Trinity Cemetery, and a memorial address upon the life
and work of Audubon was delivered by Mr. Daniel G. Elliott, F. R. S.
E., of the Ornithologists' Union, at a public meeting at the American
Museum of Natural History.
Professor Egleston has also laid the citizens of New York under
enduring obligation to him in another and even more important matter,
the preservation of one of the most valuable of our smaller parks from
the clutches of the speculator and spoiler. It is known to but few of
the residents of the city that a series of determined attempts was
made, some years ago, to destroy and obliterate Washington Square, in
the same way in which the St. John's Park outrage was perpetrated ten
years before. The method pursued in that case was by interested
parties buying up property around the park and "colonizing" the houses
with tenants who would either favor or consent to the vandal
obliteration of that beautiful spot of rest and shade for the erection
thereon of the Hudson River Railroad freight depot. St. John's Park,
however, was the property partly of a corporation, partly of
individuals, and the job was comparatively easy. Washington Square
belonged to the city; but the same process was begun by a great
real-estate magnate, and was going on toward a similar result, when
the death of the arch-conspirator checked the scheme for a time. A
little later, however, it was revived, under the notorious Tweed
_régime_, and would have succeeded but for the keen insight and
vigorous action of a few public-spirited citizens, led by Professor
Egleston. Washington Square had been dug over and torn up, under the
pretext of remodeling and "improvement," and the unsightly mounds and
piles of earth were left for many months, not only to offend the eye,
but to generate malaria. The ground had been originally a Potter's
Field, and the opening and upturning of the soil, frequently unhealthy
in its effect, was markedly so in that case. The south side of the
square had been "worked" already, in the first attempt, and had
largely lost its population of old residents; but the north side was
still occupied by a select class of old New-Yorkers. Now, however,
between the desolate aspect of the park and the malaria that began to
be felt, an exodus of the owners on the north side was imminent. Then
began to be hinted some schemes for which all this was preparatory. A
great militia armory was to be erected on the western end, and other
projects vaguely loomed up, involving the ruin of the park as such. A
bill to legalize these schemes was quietly introduced at Albany, and
had been brought nearly to its passage, by "influences" no less potent
for their careful concealment. Professor Egleston and a few other
gentlemen of the vicinity were anxious about these rumors, but could
get no information. Inquiries from city officials were met with
positive denial of any such intentions, and it was only within a few
days of the time set for the passage of the bill that they succeeded
in discovering its real meaning.
At this late juncture the "Public Parks Protective Association" was
quietly and quickly organized by a small body of public-spirited men,
of whom the late John Jay was president and Professor Egleston
secretary. This association set itself to work most earnestly to
reveal the danger, to arouse public sentiment and public protest, and
to make these felt in the Capitol at Albany. Circulars and petitions
were prepared and widely disseminated, at the cost of great labor,
within the brief time left ere the bill should come up for passage.
The New York Academy of Sciences, speaking in the interest of public
health, passed strong resolutions of remonstrance; and various other
bodies took similar action, including the Academy of Medicine.
The result was that legislators were aroused, some to the real
character of measures that they had not fully understood, and others
to the existence of a public sentiment upon which they had not
counted, and the bill failed to pass. Nor was this all: a resolution
was adopted, prepared by the association, guaranteeing the ground
occupied by the square to be kept "forever" as a park for purposes of
public health and recreation.
That Washington Square remains to-day, an oasis of beauty in the
desert of brick and stone, and a breathing place in that densely built
portion of the great city, is due principally to the watchfulness and
energy of Professor Egleston. He it was who saved that park to the
people of New York, and a debt of lasting gratitude therefore is owing
him from them. This is an unwritten episode in the history of our
city, and the present writer, who knew something of the facts at the
time, is gratified to be able to put them on record now. But let us
not fail to note the lesson that they convey. "Eternal vigilance is
the price" of all that is valuable in a community like ours, where the
demands of business greed and the devices of political schemers and
"bosses" may at any time unite again, as in the past, for acts of
profitable vandalism, and dismiss as "sentimental" all considerations
of beauty, health, or historical association. The sanitary importance
of our smaller parks is now better understood; and the city is buying
property for such purposes at heavy cost, in localities where fifty
years ago parks could have been laid out at little expense, and
maintained at a vast saving of human health and life. Such articles,
also, as that of Dr. Stephen Smith, in the February number of this
monthly, are educating the intelligent community as to the sanitary
value of vegetation in cities. But nothing is safe or sacred where the
evil trinity of the boss, the speculator, and the "soulless"
corporation may combine their forces; and the call is for ceaseless
watchfulness.
Professor Egleston has been all his life in active association with
the religious and benevolent work of the Episcopal Church. He became
president of the Bible and Common Prayer-Book Society in 1871; was
vice-president of the Protestant Episcopal City Mission Society from
1870 to 1897; a trustee of the General Theological Seminary, and a
member of the corporation of Trinity Church from 1878. In connection
with the last-named body some of his relations have an interest wider
than his own denomination, and may fittingly be mentioned in a sketch
relating chiefly to his scientific career. Two points may here be
noted: the schools among the poorer classes maintained by the Trinity
corporation; and the unique jeweled chalice in memory of his wife,
presented by him to Trinity Church.
Aided and controlled more or less by Trinity corporation, though in
different parts of the city and in connection with different Episcopal
churches, are now eight schools, with about one thousand pupils. In
these are taught careful and scientific methods of training along
modern lines, of eye and hand development, hygiene, economy, and
thrift, to children and youth of the neediest classes. Already for
years much interested in these schools, Professor Egleston has, since
his withdrawal from professional activity, given much of his time to
their advancement, and has found intense gratification in observing
the results of this training among a class of children that, from
their general environment, would grow up to be a burden or a menace to
the city. The intelligent culture of hand and eye, the mental
quickening and moral uplifting, the capacity and purpose of honorable
self-support, and the protection from moral and social perils, that
are imparted and secured through the agency of these schools, are to
him a constant source of enthusiasm.
The jeweled chalice above referred to is of scientific interest from
the great variety and rarity of the gems with which it is set. During
years of travel to and from many parts of Europe, Professor Egleston
had remarkable opportunities, in his visits to mining regions and his
intercourse with mineralogists, to obtain fine and choice specimens of
gems; these he had mounted in elegant forms as presents to his wife,
Mrs. Augusta McVickar Egleston. Her death, in 1895, was a very great
blow to her husband, as their married life had been extremely happy;
and the only satisfactory use to which this beautiful treasure of
jewelry could be put seemed to him to be in the services of divine
worship in the church. It is not possible in brief compass, without a
figure, to describe the arrangement of these jewels on the base, stem,
and cup of the golden chalice; but it must suffice to say that there
are one hundred and eighty stones set in, with embossed work, on a cup
and pedestal nine inches high and half that width. The species and
varieties number fifteen, many of them in rare shades of color; among
them are the ruby-colored Siriam garnets, green "demantoid" garnets of
the Ural ("Uralian emerald"), Ceylonese moonstones, colored diamonds,
sapphires, both yellow and green (Oriental topaz and emerald),
rubellites, red zircon, moldavite (the rare green obsidian of
Moravia), green tourmaline, chrysoberyl, the rich purple amethysts of
the Urals, etc. Considered either mineralogically or as a work of art,
this chalice is almost unique; while the conception and designing,
which are wholly of Professor Egleston's own, reveal the same union of
artistic and scientific qualities that was shown in the Audubon
monument above mentioned, joined with a religious and a personal
sentiment almost too sacred to dwell upon in a sketch like the
present.
In all these aspects of his life and work, as we said at the
beginning, Professor Egleston has been little known to the general
public; but among scientific and engineering circles he has been
highly honored. In these pages he may become more widely known, and
the people of the metropolis and of the country at large may learn
something of the manner of man that has lived and labored so honorably
among them, and has done so much for science and his fellow-men.
Editor's Table.
_SCIENCE AND THE IDEAL._
We have had frequent occasion in these columns to refer to the tirades
against science indulged in by writers who, because they can not quite
make ends meet in their philosophy of the universe, strangely allow
themselves to think that _science_ must be at fault. At one moment it
is M. Brunetière, at another Tolstoi, at another it is a Harvard
professor or a Western school superintendent; but no very long time
elapses before we find somebody in very unnecessary trouble, as it
seems to us, over the shortcomings of science. The last sufferer to
whom our attention has been drawn is Dr. John Beattie Crozier, the
author of two able works--Civilization and Progress, and History of
Intellectual Development--who has lately written a history of his own
intellectual development under the title of My Inner Life. This writer
describes the effect upon his mind of a study of Mr. Spencer's
Principles of Psychology. "Then it was," he says, "that the ideal
within me, struck to the heart, shriveled and collapsed." This sad
result was due to the discovery, forced on him by a study of the work
in question, that all our mental experiences have equally a material
basis, and that from a material point of view or, as we may say, seen
from below, one thought or feeling is as much justified as any other.
Previously he had considered that "such higher faculties as
veneration, benevolence, conscientiousness, and the like, were quite
distinct in essential nature from low ones, like revenge, lust,
vanity, cowardice, and deceit"; but now "all this was changed, and all
the faculties alike, the high and the low, the noble and the base, the
heroic and the self-indulgent, lay on a dead level of moral and
spiritual equality ... all alike being but vibrations, vibrations,
vibrations, nothing more." Consequently, "the dethroned Ideal fell
prone and headlong like a false and usurping spirit; and my mind,
bereaved of that which had been its life, settled into a deep and
what, for a year or two, threatened to be a permanent intellectual
gloom."
It is a great pity that at this critical moment a very simple
consideration did not occur to this troubled spirit. When we read the
Sermon on the Mount we read "words, words, words"; when we read some
horrible piece of profanity or indecency it is again "words, words,
words"; when we read the demonstration of a proposition in Euclid it
is "words, words, words"; and, again, when we take up Tennyson's In
Memoriam we find that its whole tissue is "words, words, words." But
would it tend in the least to lessen one's reverence for the Sermon on
the Mount to be reminded that it was constructed out of the same
verbal elements as the piece of profanity? or would it diminish our
admiration for In Memoriam to be told that it was constructed of words
just like the dullest piece of prose? If not, then why should one be
so terribly disconcerted and depressed to find that all our mental
life finds its basis in vibrations? Or why should the inference be
drawn that, because the basis is one, all that reposes on it must also
be one in character and meaning? Is our delight in the lily or the
rose impaired by the reflection that it springs from the same soil
that produces noisome weeds; or do we gaze on the humming bird with
less admiration because it flies in the same atmosphere as the bat?
Why should "vibrations" not be the condition of existence of one
mental phenomenon as well as of another? Surely the very fact that Dr.
Crozier classes all the feelings he mentions as mental affections
should prepare him to believe that they have a common basis. But how
feelings shall be classified and ranked _after they have taken form_
is a question precisely similar to the question how the various
combinations of words should be classified and ranked. In the latter
case words are the basis of them all, but we say: "This is an epic
poem; this is a moral essay; this is an immoral novel; this is a silly
joke; this is a market report." Are these distinctions illusory
because words are the basis and substance of all these various forms
of composition? Does the poem lose anything of its beauty, or the
essay anything of its ethical value, because each was not composed of
elements altogether peculiar to itself? The solid globe itself was
once a diffused nebula, but we do not on that account find a less
varied beauty in flower and tree, in hillside and running brook and
grandly flowing river.
In his sad condition of mental disarray our author betook himself, he
says, to the counsels of Thomas Carlyle. That sage, when he heard that
his visitor had been reading Spencer, made some uncomplimentary
remarks about the latter which we hardly think the visitor was
justified in repeating. Apart from this, Carlyle told him in effect
that, as he was in the world, he had just to make the best of it, and
that in time he would find work that he could do with benefit to
himself and others. Finally, our author made what he calls a discovery
and offers as a contribution to modern philosophy--namely, that in the
mind of man there is a "scale," according to which thoughts and
feelings are appraised. Some are high up on the scale and some are low
down. He found that there is that _in_ the mind which is not _of_ the
mind, and which sits in judgment on all the contents of the
mind--something which smiles on every right action and frowns on every
wrong one, and yet which he does not care to speak of as conscience.
Here was the antidote he required to the "pure and undiluted
materialism" which had so paralyzed his moral being in the Principles
of Psychology; and, having obtained it, he has been living happily, as
we gather, ever since.
We have tried to do justice to the originality of Dr. Crozier's
conception, but really with indifferent success. That there is a scale
by which we are all accustomed to measure the varying values of our
thoughts, feelings, and actions hardly needs to be stated; and that
there is substantial agreement between men on the same plane of
civilization as to the relative values of different mental products is
also unquestionably true. What our author has not shown is how this
conflicts with the strict scientific position taken in the Principles
of Psychology. He does not tell us that he has repudiated the
teachings of that work; indeed, he gives us distinctly to understand
that, so far as it affirms the dependence of thought upon physical
organization, he adheres to it still. If so, he has only built upon it
a superstructure which it was always open to him to build; so, why he
should find fault with the foundation it is not easy to see. Science
goes as far as she can see her way to go in setting forth the
relations between the mind of man and the environing universe. It
studies also the human mind in its historical manifestations, and
tries to unfold the laws of human conduct. It confines itself to facts
which are believed to admit of verification and to inferences which
have been tested by experience. This is the contribution of Science
to the theory of human life. But because Science stops here she does
not lay any veto on thought, desire, or hope. She lays a foundation;
it is for us to build thereon "gold, silver, precious stones, wood,
hay, stubble," each of us according to our own impulse and upon our
own responsibility. The fire of experience will "try every man's work
of what sort it is." But not only may we build, we must build; no one
can live upon another man's philosophy. We may adopt this creed or
that, but it means nothing to us till we have worked it over in our
own mind and made it our own--with modifications.
There is nothing whatever in science that conflicts with the ideal.
Strictly speaking, science brings us to the threshold of the ideal,
and leaves us there. "These are the facts of life," it says; "such has
been the course of human history. The human race has risen from humble
origins to its present commanding position in the world; and to-day
the standards of human conduct and the conditions of human happiness
are very different from what they were in the distant past. Social
ties have multiplied and strengthened. Domestic affections have grown
in depth and tenderness, and individual happiness is now bound up to a
very large extent in the happiness of other individuals. The cruel
superstitions of the past have given way in many minds to a reverent
regard for a power which is felt to rule in the universe. Of such a
power Science can not render any exact account; but before all the
ultimate questions of existence Science is dumb; nor can it attempt to
reconcile the antinomies which assert themselves in all phenomena. It
is for you, the individual, entering upon life, to make your choice of
the course you shall hold and the principles by which you shall be
governed. The senses are the guides to immediate pleasure, but the
experience of the ages has settled with considerable approach to
certainty the conditions on which enduring happiness is to be won.
"'Choose well; your choice is
Brief and yet endless.'"
To the man who insists on being knocked down with a club before he
will yield to persuasion there is nothing in such a mode of address
that will be convincing. This is a case in which, as Pascal says,
"there is enough light for those who desire to see, and enough
obscurity for those who want a pretext for not seeing.... Perfect
clearness might help the understanding, but it would injure the will."
There is, therefore, room on the scientific foundation for the
idealism of Dr. Crozier, and for many other forms of idealism. It is
for each one of us to construct his own ideal, and, having constructed
it, to live by it. "If any man's work abide he shall receive a
reward."
_RACIAL GEOGRAPHY._
The interesting papers contributed to this magazine by Prof. William
Z. Ripley, which, we are glad to say, will soon be published in a more
permanent form, indicate very clearly the remarkable progress that has
been made of late years in the scientific study of human origins.
Formerly legend and tradition were the only sources of light upon
prehistoric times; and the sagacious Thucydides dismissed all
speculation respecting those ages with the curt remark that he did not
think the people who lived then amounted to much, any way. No doubt he
was nearer right in this opinion than were those who peopled antiquity
with demigods and heroes; still there was much of interest to be
gleaned respecting the prehistoric past if only right methods of
research had been used. This was too much to expect in his day; and,
indeed, it is only in very recent times that the study of human
origins has been placed upon anything like an adequate scientific
basis. A reference to Mr. Ripley's work will show how numerous are the
lines of investigation now pursued. Language, which at one time was
considered an all-important test of origin, has fallen from its high
position; and theories which, on the strength of linguistic evidence,
were very widely entertained, have lost their authority. Particularly
has this been the case with the so-called "Aryan" theory. It was
simple and beautiful and interesting, but as observations accumulated
it became more and more untenable, until finally it had to be
discarded.
The problems which the anthropologist and ethnologist attack are
indeed of the highest degree of complexity. If our predecessors went
astray therein, we ourselves are only feeling our way very cautiously
and somewhat uncertainly. We have not yet reached an era of victorious
generalizations. Professor Ripley well indicates the difficulties of
the research. Things will go well for a considerable time along
certain lines of observation until the facts come to be gleaned in
some special field, and then the result will perhaps be just the
opposite of what theory required. In a brachycephalic region, for
example, where craniological and other tests call for a population of
short stature, the stature will reveal itself as much above the
average. In a region where, looking at race characteristics as
elsewhere established, the tendency, say, to suicide should be
particularly low, it is found by statistics to be particularly high.
The ethnologist finds his path strewn with endless difficulties of
this nature, and yet he is not discouraged. The truth lies somewhere,
and he knows that a vigorous and courageous sifting of the facts will
be sure to bring it to light, if not to-day, to-morrow. We gather from
Professor Ripley's pages a strong impression of the confident patience
with which the true man of science attacks his problems; he is sure
that his _methods_ are right, and that in the end they must triumph.
The interesting points of view which the study of racial geography
presents are numberless. This is particularly shown in Professor
Ripley's chapter on Modern Social Problems. In this chapter the writer
acknowledges, as he does elsewhere, that theories of race and of
heredity have sometimes been pushed too far. He demands a due
recognition of the influence of environment, and cites cases where
environment will explain divergences from what are recognized as race
characteristics or tendencies. An example of this is afforded by the
case of Brittany, in connection with separateness of home life. The
population of Brittany belongs to a race that is particularly prone to
such separateness, and yet in Brittany there is an unusual
intermingling of families under one roof. We can not enter into the
explanation here, but Professor Ripley shows how the physical
geography of the country may account for the variation from type. In
the same chapter the writer shows very interestingly how the Celtic
parts of France manifest almost invariably conservative tendencies:
how they shun divorce, afford a very low rate of suicide, and, in the
matter of crime, tend rather to deeds of violence than to acts of
dishonesty. The general impression which the intelligent reader will
gather from the whole work is that "racial geography" has all the
interest of a rapidly growing science; but that, while much has been
accomplished, much more remains to be done. The lines of research are
many, and we may reasonably hope that before long the combined labors
of anthropologist, ethnologist, and sociologist will give us a
coherent body of knowledge and theory which shall not only illuminate
the past but be of the very highest value for the comprehension of the
problems of our own day.
Scientific Literature.
SPECIAL BOOKS.
In a study of what constitutes the foundations of zoölogy we know of
no one better equipped to discuss the various problems than Professor
Brooks.[V] As an original investigator in many groups of invertebrate
zoölogy, as a student of animal life in temperate and tropical seas,
as a special teacher of embryology and zoölogy for a quarter of a
century, and, above all, as a profound student of the philosophical
literature of the subject, his equipment is thorough and complete. A
fair review of this work would be difficult without voluminous
quotations from its pages.
[Footnote V: The Foundations of Zoölogy. A Course of Lectures
delivered at Columbia University on the Principles of Science as
illustrated by Zoölogy. By William Keith Brooks, Ph. D., LL. D.,
Professor of Zoölogy at Johns Hopkins University. Pp. 339. The
Macmillan Company.]
The reader will find here the soundest, healthiest acceptance of the
Darwinian theory of natural selection. He penetrates the mists and
fogs of philosophical vagaries and follows the dictum of Tyndall, who,
in presenting the essentials of a discussion, says, "Not with the
vagueness belonging to the emotions, but with the definiteness
belonging to the understanding" we are to study these matters. It is
fact, fact, fact. The honest "I do not know" inspires the reader with
a confidence that obscure points are not to be juggled with. He
insists that the principles of science are physical, that a mechanical
interpretation of Nature is reasonable and just. Referring to Huxley,
he remarks that faith and hope are good things, no doubt, and (quoting
from Huxley) "expectation is permissible when belief is not," but
experience teaches that expectation or faith of a master is very apt
to become belief in the mind of the student," and (again from Huxley)
"Science warns us that the assertion which outstrips evidence is not
only a blunder but a crime."
In the chapter of Nature and Nurture he brings many potent facts and
arguments against the idea of the transmission of acquired traits.
Without copious extracts it is impossible to do justice to this
masterly presentation of the subject. The chapter abounds in
aphorisms, as indeed do other portions of the work; and these alone,
if serially collated with their contexts, would make a valuable little
handbook for the student of biology. His chapter on Lamarck is equally
strong, and the fallacies of Lamarckianisms have never been so clearly
shown. "The contrast between what we may call the solicitude of Nature
to secure the production of new beings, and the ruthlessness with
which they are sacrificed after they have come into existence, is a
stumbling-block to the Lamarckian, and the crowning glory of natural
selection in that it solves this great enigma of Nature by showing
that it is itself an adaptation and a means to an end, for the
sacrifice of individuals is the means for perfecting the adjustments
of living things to the world around them and for thus increasing the
sum of life." "Whole books have been written on the marvelous fitness
of the structure, the instincts, and the habits of the worker of the
honeybee for its life of active industry--a life in which the male has
no share, and from which the female is cut off by her seclusion in the
depths of the hive, and by her devotion to her own peculiar duties.
While the queen and the drones are well fitted for their own parts in
the social organization of the hive, these duties are quite simple,
and very different from the duties of the workers; and as these latter
do not normally have descendants, and as they never under any
circumstances have female descendants, all the workers are the
descendants of queens and not of workers.
"Their wonderful and admirable fitness for their own most necessary
part in the economy of the hive must, therefore, be inherited from
parents who have never been exposed to those conditions to which the
workers are adapted; and this adaptation can not be due to the
inheritance of the effect of these conditions, nor can we believe that
they are inherited from some remote time, when the workers were
perfect females or when the queens were also workers; for the sterile
workers of allied species differ among themselves, thus proving that
they have undergone modification since they became sterile.
"Here we have a most complicated and perfect adjustment of marvelous
efficacy to external conditions which are of such a character as to
prove that the inheritance of the effect of these conditions has had
no part in the production of the adaptation."
His views of bird migration, based on the matter of ovulation and not
on food supply, are extremely interesting. He says: "As their eggs are
very large and heavy, a high birth rate is incompatible with flight,
and the preservation of each species imperatively demands that every
egg shall be cared for with increasing solicitude; for while in other
animals increased danger to eggs or young may be met and compensated
by an increase in the birth rate, the birth rate of birds can not be
much increased without a corresponding restriction of the power of
flight. Every one knows how quickly birds may be exterminated by the
destruction of their eggs or young, and the low birth rate of all
birds of powerful flight is a sufficient reason for migration, for at
the same time that their fitness for flight limits the birth rate, it
permits them to seek nesting places beyond the reach of their
enemies."
His critical estimate of Huxley is tersely presented. He says: "His
evolution is not a system of philosophy, but part of the system of
science. It deals with history--with the phenomenal world--and not
with the question what may or may not lie behind it.
"The cultivation of natural science in this historical field and the
discovery that the present order of living things, including
conscious, thinking, ethical man, has followed after an older and
simpler state of Nature, is not 'philosophy' but science. It involves
no more belief in the teachings of any system of philosophy than does
the knowledge that we are the children of our parents and the parents
of our children; but it is what Huxley means by 'evolution.'"
Dr. Brooks credits Galton with employing simple terms to express new
and abstruse truths, and we trust those who are continually wrestling
with the dead languages to pick out new and distracting words to
express their conceptions will profit by Galton's method.
The lecture on Natural Selection and the antiquity of life is replete
with original and pregnant suggestions based upon the results of his
own profound investigations on pelagic life. Here again only ample
quotations from his pages would convey an adequate idea of their value
and importance. In his chapter on Louis Agassiz and George Berkeley he
gives this just tribute to Agassiz:
"The writer was a man of transcendent genius for scientific discovery,
with intense earnestness and enthusiasm for the pursuit of truth, and
rare eloquence and literary skill. If any man was devoted to the cause
of truth and determined to accept it, whatever it might prove to be,
that man was Agassiz; for while his impulses were notably devout and
reverential, he proved, on many occasions, that he was fearless and
independent in the search for truth. It is no disparagement to
Buckland and Bell and Chalmers and the other authors of the
Bridgewater Treatises to assert that Agassiz far surpassed them all in
acquaintance with the methods which lead to success in the
interpretation of Nature, and in ability to treat the problems of
natural theology from the standpoint of the zoölogist."
He dedicates his book to Bishop Berkeley, and throughout the lectures
his references indicate a thorough acquaintance with the writings of
this eminent scholar.
Paley's old watch comes in for renewed consideration, and one wonders
if the mainspring of this device will ever be broken. His apt
references to classical authors indicate wide and judicious reading.
The book is overburdened with thought and clear, concise reasoning,
and his final advice should be followed when he urges his readers to
do double duty by reading the book again.
* * * * *
In the April number (1898) of this magazine we had occasion to review
the first two volumes of this work.[W] A perusal of the third volume
does not permit us to modify the expressions and criticisms there
made. We then said the work is "a compact storehouse of facts, a
veritable ethnological museum, and this feature alone renders the book
indispensable to American students." The author "shows no evidence of
ever having seen the magnificent series of volumes issued by the
United States Bureau of Ethnology." "The author in several instances
confounds Japan and China." "His treatment of the African races is by
far the most exhaustive." These extracts will apply most particularly
to the present volume. The negro races of the interior of Africa and
those of West Africa, as well as the cultured races of that continent,
are exhaustively treated. In that portion treating of the history of
the civilization of eastern Asia the Japanese and Chinese are
considered together and many mistakes in generalization follow as a
result of this confounding. Long before we get to this portion of the
work an illustration is given of Japanese agricultural instruments, in
which only one plow of the many types in Japan is presented, and this
is evidently taken from a model. Not only has he confounded the
Japanese with the Chinese, but the southern Malays are brought in when
he speaks of the Malay and Japanese love of the cockfight--a practice
which is unknown in Japan. He refers to the Japanese latrine as being
built over running water, whereas the record of this custom is found
only in an ancient Japanese classic of the seventh century. He is in
error in stating that the stage is essentially the same in China and
Japan. His description of the music of Japan applies to China only.
The statements that pearls play a large part in the ornaments of the
Japanese, that the fireproof buildings are of stone, that the
Japanese tobacco is moistened with opium, that the Japanese street
dress is full of color, are all erroneous. His description of the sash
worn by men is the description of the woman's sash. He says "the
Japanese currency before the change to dollars and cents was like that
of the Chinese." Had he consulted Snowden's description of ancient and
modern coins, etc., he would have found this correct statement in
regard to Japanese coins: "In their shape, composition, and relation
to each other they present some striking features which set them apart
from every other system of coinage in the world."
[Footnote W: The History of Mankind. By Prof. Friedrich Ratzal. The
Macmillan Company. Vol. III, pp. 599.]
The illustrations are badly distributed. Through pages of description
of the Japanese and Koreans, in which little is said about the
Koreans, are scattered illustrations of the inhabitants of Yeso--the
Ainu. The illustration of Japanese table furniture depicts only
utensils for smoking and wine-drinking, and some of these are
erroneously labeled, as are those of certain Chinese utensils.
We trust that the Asiatic portion of this valuable work will be
written over again, and in doing it the author will realize that he is
dealing with four or five hundred million people widely separated in
language, modes of writing, customs, and manners; that he will
consider the Ainu, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thibetan, and
Indo-Chinese with the same thoroughness that he has given to the
separate groups of the African continent; that he will draw his
information from modern sources and collections properly labeled and
up to date.
Even with the defects pointed out the work will prove of great value
to the American student, as it brings before him the richness of the
ethnological museums of Europe.
GENERAL NOTICES.
_The Development of English Thought_[X] is "an attempt to present a
theory of history through concrete illustrations." The book does not
deal with the facts of history--a knowledge of these is assumed--it
throws into relief certain salient features of each epoch which were
instrumental in forwarding the social consciousness. It may, indeed,
be called a philosophy of economics. It has a theory to propound:
Survival is determined and progress created by a struggle for the
goods for which men strive, or the means by which they may avert evil.
These goods change, together with the environment dependent on them.
Hence arise new activities; the race is modified, new modes of thought
come forward, and finally the characteristics of the civilization are
reconstructed. These changes are subject to a definite law of
evolution, repeated in each new environment. England has been chosen
for this economic interpretation of history; because of its insular
position, its development has been more normal and indigenous, less
subject to foreign influences since the Reformation, than any
continental country. An explanation of the psychological theory
underlying the book serves as general introduction. The antecedents of
English thought are found among the early Germans, and the Early
Church. The fifteenth century, with its inventions and discoveries,
revolutionized men's ways of living and thinking. Then the Calvinists
and Puritans imposed their standards of good and evil. These are
followed by the great English thinkers: Locke, who marks the beginning
of Deism in England; Mandeville, Hume, and Smith, developing the
economic side; Whitefield and Wesley leading the religious revival.
Later on, Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill formulated the Economic
Philosophy, whereas Darwin, the first of the biologists, imposed
biologic habits of thought on economic inquiry. The concluding
chapter, while cautious in the discussion of current problems,
attempts, assisted by the lessons of the past, to indicate the
probable future movement of thought, springing out of present economic
conditions.
[Footnote X: The Development of English Thought. A Study in the
Economic Interpretation of History. By Simon N. Patten, Ph. D. New
York: The Macmillan Company. 1899. $3.]
Mr. _Wilbur S. Jackman_ has sought in preparing his manual of _Nature
Study for Grammar Grades_,[Y] to propose a few of such problems
arising in a thoughtful study of Nature as are within the
comprehension of grammar-school pupils, and to offer suggestions
designed to lead to their solution. Directions may perhaps be given by
the teacher--that is, by some teachers, but very few--but even if he
knows how, it is hardly possible for him to make them as systematic to
so large an extent as would be required by a school of inquiring
pupils; and such a plan as the author offers may be accepted as a
valuable help. Take, for instance, the first lesson on the mutual
relations of plants and insects--as to plants. The student is told
what equipment to take, what places to visit; is reminded of seven
kinds of evidence in the shape of galls, stings, eaten leaves, etc.,
to be considered; and is given a list of queries to be recollected in
studying the phenomena, in their general aspect, as to the benefit or
injury received by the plant from insects, the attractions it offers,
and the defenses it possesses, with "number work" relating to the
extent of the depredations, and methods of representing the results of
the study in picture. The book contains forty-five such lessons on
different aspects of Nature.
[Footnote Y: Nature Study for Grammar Grades. A Manual for the
Guidance of Pupils below the High School in the Study of Nature. By
Wilbur S. Jackman. Danville, Ill.: The Illinois Printing Company. Pp.
407.]
In the preparation of his book on _Fertilizers_[Z] it has been the aim
of Mr. _Voorhees_ to point out the underlying principles and to
discuss, in the light of our present knowledge of the subject, some of
the important problems connected with the use of fertilizing
materials. While the author recognizes the lack of definite knowledge
on many vital points, he considers it desirable, when the
investigations of the experiment stations are becoming so important
and they are so well prepared to study the fundamental principles of
plant nutrition, for the practical man to have a clear understanding
of what is now known. The book treats of the natural fertility of the
soil and the sources of the loss of the elements of fertility, the
functions of manure and fertilizers and the need of artificial ones,
the different classes of fertilizers, the chemical analysis of them,
and the methods of using them with their special application to
various crops.
[Footnote Z: Fertilizers. The Source, Character, and Composition of
Natural, Home-made, and Manufactured Fertilizers; and Suggestions as
to their Use for Different Crops and Conditions. By Edward B.
Voorhees. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 335. Price, $1.]
We have received, with only a short interval between them, the first
volume of a third edition and the fourth or last volume of the second
edition of _Alfred H. Allen's Commercial Organic Analysis_.[AA] The
former volume is first to reach us. It is a high testimony to the
value of the work in itself that the publication of a rival issue of
the edition of 1885 had been begun by another house, although its age,
as suggested by the date, would indicate that it had much need of
revision. During the thirteen years since the publication of this
edition later research has thrown new light on many features of the
science and processes, and has corrected many of the old conceptions,
and the author's views on some points have changed in the light of the
more recent results, so that the preparation of a new edition had
become necessary. Mr. Allen has found it now impossible for him to
undertake the continuous labor which would be imposed by such a task,
and the work of revision has been undertaken by Henry Leffmann, of
Philadelphia. For this new edition Mr. Allen has furnished material
on the subjects of the Kjeldahl process, proteids of wheat flour,
vinegar, brewing sugars, malt substitutes, hop substitutes, and
secondary constituents in spirits. Information has been added by the
American reviser, partly from suggestions by Mr. Allen on the subjects
of specific gravity, formaldehyde, vinegar, methyl, alcohol, acetone,
fusel oil, argol, starch, glucose, invert sugar, lactose, and wine,
and brief notes on other topics. Processes of the American Association
of Official Agricultural Chemists have been reprinted. The revision of
Vol. II is well in hand, and will be much more extensive than that of
Vol I.
[Footnote AA: Commercial Organic Analysis. A Treatise on the
Properties, Proximate Analytical Examination, and Mode of Assaying the
Various Organic Chemicals and Products employed in the Arts,
Manufactures, and Medicine. By Alfred H. Allen. Third edition.
Illustrated. With Revisions and Appendix by the author and Henry
Leffmann. Vol. I. Introduction. Alcohols, Neutral Alcoholic
Derivatives, Sugars, Starch and its Isomers, Vegetable Acids, etc.
Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Sons & Co. Pp. 557. Price, $4.50.
The same work. Second edition. Revised and enlarged. Proteids and
Albuminous Principles, Proteids or Albuminoids. Same publishers. Pp.
584. Price, $4.50.]
On the other hand, the revision of the second edition has extended
over fourteen years, and is only just completed with the fourth
volume, which appears a few weeks later than the volume noticed above.
The earlier volumes have been long out of print, and are destined, of
course, to be supplanted by those of the new revision. The present
fourth volume, being newer and of the present date, will serve as the
latest till the last volume of the new revision is reached; and,
besides, the author hopes to publish an appendix to each volume,
containing the more important of the later results. The meaning of the
term Commercial Analysis has been somewhat extended, and matter has
been included that in closest strictness does not belong under it, it
being thought better, the author says, to include all facts possessing
an analytical or practical interest to him, in the belief that what he
finds useful himself will be of value to others.
In _The Porto Rico of To-day_[AB] a traveler's view of that
interesting island and its people is presented by Mr. _A. G.
Robinson_, who went there and remained during August, September, and
October, 1898, as correspondent of the New York Evening Post. While
the book can not be regarded, as it does not profess and is not
intended to be, as a source of geographical or statistical
information, it admirably fulfills the design of the author to present
a picture of the people and of the country as he saw them; and it is a
very living picture too. He looked with a sharp eye, and has recorded
what he saw in graphic style. In the author's story of his early days
of the island we are made acquainted with the various names it has
had, of which Porto Rico, or Puerto Rico, is only the latest. The
oldest of the European names appears to have been Buriquién, in some
one of the dozen or more spellings it has had, one of them being Bo.
It has also been called La Isla de Carib, San Juan Bautista, etc.
After the account of the author's first general impressions and
experiences he describes the city of Ponce, his visit to a coffee
district, a number of typical towns and villages, the journey from
Ponce to San Juan, the highways, railways--of which there are one
hundred and forty-three miles in operation and one hundred and
seventy-five miles under construction--and a fairly effective
telegraph system, views of the industrial possibilities and commerce
of the island, with some experiences of military campaigning.
[Footnote AB: The Porto Rico of To-day. Pen Pictures of the People and
the Country. By Albert Gardner Robinson. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. Pp. 240, with maps. Price, $1.50.]
The publication of the revision which Mr. _Herbert Spencer_ is making
of his Synthetic Philosophy in order to incorporate in it as far as
may be the results of more recent advances begins with the first
volume of _The Principles of Biology_.[AC] The advance during the last
generation, Mr. Spencer thinks, has been more rapid in the direction
of this science than any other, and though the hope of bringing a work
on biology at large up to date could not be rationally entertained at
the author's age and under the existing conditions of his physical
strength, a similar service to a work on the principles of the science
did not seem impossible. Numerous additions have been needful. What
was originally said about vital changes of matter is supplemented by a
chapter on Metabolism. A chapter is added on The Dynamic Element in
Life. The insertion of some pages on Structure fills a gap in
preceding editions. The revelations of the microscope on cell life and
multiplication are set forth. A supplementary chapter on Genesis,
Heredity, and Variation gives the results of further evidence and
further thought in that line, qualifying and developing certain views
enunciated in the first edition. Various modern ideas are considered
under the title Recent Criticisms and Hypotheses. The chapter on The
Arguments from Embryology has been largely rewritten. Smaller
additions appear in the form of new sections incorporated in
pre-existing chapters. The assistance needed in the work of revision
has been given by Prof. W. H. Perkin in Organic Chemistry and its
derived subjects; Prof. A. G. Tansley in Plant Morphology and
Physiology; Prof. E. W. MacBride and Mr. J. T. Cunningham in Animal
Morphology; and Mr. W. B. Hardy in Animal Physiology. In all sections
not marked as new the author desires it to be understood that the
essential ideas set forth are the same as they were in the original
edition of 1864.
[Footnote AC: The Principles of Biology. By Herbert Spencer. In Two
Volumes. Vol. I. Revised and enlarged edition. New York: D. Appleton
and Company. Pp. 706. Price, $2.]
Prof. _Silas W. Holman_ attempts the presentation, in _Matter, Energy,
Force, and Work_,[AD] of some of the fundamental ideas and definitions
of physics in a plain and logical manner. His purpose is not to set
forth the experimental side of the subject or to describe phenomena or
laws. He rather assumes a slight knowledge of these, and proceeds to
develop the concept and definitions. The author regards a clearer
thinking on these subjects as of special importance to engineers and
members of the other technical professions, because correct views upon
them have become essential in those professions through the progress
of the applications of science to the industrial arts. These
applications are likewise of considerable interest to the untechnical
members of the community. Professor Holman has composed his book with
the principle of presenting the subject of physics in logical
sequence, and has divided it into two parts, the first of which
contains the matter immediately proper to the subject, with
discussions of substance or matter, motion; energy and its forms;
force; kinetic energy, force-measurements, work, potential energy, and
matter again, as distinguished from substance. The second part
comprises summaries of the chief theories of the nature of matter,
force, and energy, including the kinetic theory of gases, Le Sage's
theory of gravitation, the vortex-atom theory, and a discussion of the
nature of energy and matter, with observations on chemical energy and
the ether.
[Footnote AD: Matter, Energy, Force, and Work. A Plain Presentation of
Fundamental Physical Concepts, and of the Vortex-Atom and other
Theories. By Silas W. Holman. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp.
257. Price, $2.50.]
The _Short Course in Music_, prepared for use in schools where a
complete course is not thought necessary, by _F. H. Ripley_ and
_Thomas Tappen_, is embraced in two books, of which we notice the
second (American Book Company). Familiar songs are made the basis of
instruction, some of those which appear as melodies in Book One being
repeated here in full score. All other material has been prepared
especially for this book. The music and directions are adapted equally
for unchanged and changed voices. Voice training and the elements of
phrasing and expression are furnished in a group of _solfeggios_ at
the close of the book. Theory is given in condensed form, but one
that, it is claimed, embraces all the essential elements of vocal
music.
Mr. _J. E. Marr_ has prepared his exposition of _The Principles of
Stratigraphical Geology_ (Cambridge University Press; The Macmillan
Company, New York, $1.60), under the belief that an idea of the
subject can be obtained most satisfactorily if a large number of the
details connected with the study of the stratified rocks are omitted.
He has accordingly given very brief accounts of the strata of the
different systems, paying more attention to the bearings of the facts
than to their enumeration. The history of the earth is presented as a
connected one, in which one period is linked on to the next, every
event that occurs introducing a new complication into the conditions,
which are consequently never quite the same--the changes showing an
advance from the simple to the more complex. The study proves that an
enormous period elapsed subsequent to the formation of the earth and
previous to the deposition of the stratified rocks, of which we have
only the slightest, if any, knowledge. The stratigraphical geologist
has to establish the order of succession of the strata for the
chronology, and to ascertain as far as he can the conditions existing
during the deposition of the several strata or groups of strata. After
an account of the growth and progress of stratigraphical geology, the
nature of the stratified rocks and the law of superposition are
discussed; the test of included organisms and the methods of
classification are explained, the evidences of conditions under which
strata were formed, and other theoretical points are considered, and
the several geological systems or periods are enumerated under the
English nomenclature. Finally, the various estimates of geological
time and the bases on which they are made are reviewed.
The American Book Company publishes as a part of the Eclectic System
of Industrial Drawing an excellent manual of the _Elements of
Perspective_, by _Christine Gordon Sullivan_, of the Cincinnati public
schools. It consists of explicit directions and rules on the general
principles of the art, with applications in Isometric Projection and
Oblique Perspective, given in concise form and simple, clear language,
amply illustrated, and supplemented by problems, in solving which the
rules are made practical.
A convenient manual on _Gas and Petroleum Engines_ has been prepared
by _A. G. Elliott_ from the French of _Henry de Graffigny_ for
Whittaker's Electro-Mechanical Series, in recognition of the interest
that has been awakened in the application of such engines to supply
the place now occupied by horses in drawing vehicles. One chapter
deals exclusively with the theory of the gas engines. Other topics
treated of are the history of the gas engine, the description of
existing gas engines, carbureted air engines, petroleum engines,
gas-generating plants, engines for use with poor gases, and the
maintenance of gas and oil engines. (The Macmillan Company, 75 cents.)
_Laboratory Exercises in Anatomy and Physiology_ (New York: Henry Holt
& Co., 60 cents) have been prepared by _James Edward Peabody_ for
practical application. The precept is emphasized that the pupil should
be led to see that most of the materials required for observation and
experiment are furnished by the organs and tissues of his own body.
Directions which have been found in the author's experience necessary
to guide the pupil in his observations and experiments are given at
the beginning of each topic. The questions following them contemplate
the student's seeking the facts from the material itself, and he is
expected to be trained to distinguish observed results from the
inferences that may be drawn from them. Some home study is
contemplated, the results to be afterward reported in class. The book
consists almost entirely of directions for experiments, and is
interlined with blank sheets for recording observations.
_Geographical Nature Studies_ (American Book Company) is intended by
the author, _Frank Owen Payne_, to assist the teacher, and by pointing
out the relations, often unrecognized, between familiar phenomena and
home geography to guide the study of the class to definite and
practical ends. The lessons are intended to fit the comprehension of
the youngest pupils, to promote the cultivation of habits of accurate
observation, and to stimulate a desire for more knowledge and broader
views of the world. They lead directly up to the point where the more
formal study of geography from a text-book begins. The lessons may be
used as reading exercises and for topical recitations, and exercises
are introduced which may assist the cultivation of the power of
correct verbal expression in the statement of facts. The exercises
concern weather, animals, physical phenomena, and objects about us,
and are very various.
Impressions of Medusæ have been observed on the Jurassic lithographic
limestones of Solenhofen, and some "problematic fossils" on the Lower
Cambrian rocks of Sweden have been regarded as derived from Medusæ.
Certain nodules, bearing what looked like flattened-out
starfishes--"star-cobbles" they were called--have been found among the
fossils of the Coosa Valley, Alabama. Director _Charles D. Walcott_,
of the United States Geological Survey, concluded that these also
represented Medusæ, and began an investigation of them which involved
a comparison with the Swedish and Bavarian specimens, and was at last
enlarged so as to embrace all fossil Medusæ. His work is now
published as a separate memoir, _Fossil Medusæ_, as one of the
Monographs of the United States Geological Survey (Vol. XXX). The
Middle Cambrian Medusæ are first described, and then, in order, the
Lower Cambrian of the United States and of Sweden and Bohemia and the
Jurassic of Bavaria. The text is illustrated by forty-seven excellent
plates.
A new edition, revised and with additions, of the _Mechanics_ and
_Heat_ of _Edward L. Nichols_ and _W. S. Francis_ is published by the
Macmillan Company ($1.50). The book is the first volume of the
Elements of Physics of the authors, which is complete in three
volumes. We find in it no explanation of the nature and extent of the
revisions and additions.
The publication of such a book as _Catering for Two_--Comfort and
Economy for small Households (G. P. Putnam's Sons, $1.25)--has been
suggested to _Alice L. James_ by the difficulty of reducing the
average rules of the cook-book to meet the wants of a family of two or
three. The work embodies the results of sixteen years' experience in
labor and study, and the author hopes that with it the way may be made
easier for others whose bills of fare may be made for two. The
directions are claimed to be throughout exact and reliable, and the
dishes to be nourishing, appetizing, and inexpensive. The author's
plan is to take a bill of fare with a comfortable variety of dishes,
and direct explicitly how each is to be prepared.
The manual on _Testing Milk and its Products_, prepared for dairy
students, creamery and cheese factory operators, food chemists, and
dairy farmers, by _E. H. Farrington_ and _F. W. Noll_, has reached a
fourth edition, the first three editions having been exhausted in
about a year. The present edition has been thoroughly revised, and
such additions have been made to it as have been necessary to bring it
up to date. It has been adopted as a text-book or reference-book in
the dairy schools of twelve States of the Union and in a number of
schools in Canada. (Published by the Mendota Book Company, Madison,
Wis. $1.)
_The Silver Cross, or the Carpenter of Nazareth_ (International
Publishing Company, New York), is a short story selected and
translated from The Mysteries of the People of Eugène Sue, and
published for the sake of the illustrations it is supposed to afford
of the tyranny of the ruling class and the oppression of the working
people and the poor and their suffering thereby which prevailed in the
grand days of the Roman Empire, as well as always before, and is
assumed to have continued down to the present. It is the story of the
life and sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth, told in the thrilling style
of the great French novelist.
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins and Reports. Delaware
College; No. 44. Sorghum in 1898. By Charles L. Penny. Pp.
16.--Michigan State Agricultural College. Special, No. 11. Frozen
Trees and their Treatment. Pp. 4; Nos. 166 and 167. Dairy Matters. By
C. D. Smith and G. H. True. Pp. 30; No. 168. Michigan Fruit List. By
L. H. Taft. Pp. 16; Michigan Bulletin of Vital Statistics, February
and March, 1899. Pp. 20 each.--New Hampshire College: No. 58. The Cost
of raising Calves. By Fred W. Morse. Pp. 12; No. 59. Tenth Annual
Report. By Charles S. Murkland. Pp. 56; No. 60. Green Corn under
Glass. By F. William Rane. Pp. 60; No. 61. The Inspection of
Fertilizers in 1898. Pp. 12; No. 62. Forcing Pole Beans under Glass.
By F. William Rane. Pp. 8.--New Jersey: Report of the Botanical
Department for 1898. By Byron D. Halsted. Pp. 84; No. 135. The
Poisonous Plants of New Jersey. By Byron D. Halsted. Pp. 28.--New
York: No. 150. Two Small Fruit Pests. By F. H. Hall and V. H. Lowe.
Pp. 5.--Ohio: No. 99. Sugar Beet Investigations in 1898. By A. D.
Selby; United States Department of Agriculture. Some Insects Injurious
to Garden and Orchard Crops. By F. H. Chittenden. Pp. 99; North Dakota
Weather and Crop Service for December, 1898. By W. L. Moon and B. H.
Bronson. Pp. 8.
American Economic Association. The Federal Census. Critical Essays by
Members of the Association. Pp. 516. Paper. $1.
American Public Health Association. The Bertillon Classification of
Causes of Death. Lansing, Mich. Pp. 40.
Badenoch, L. N. True Tales of the Insects. London: Chapman & Hall. Pp.
255.
Barber, Edwin Atlee. Anglo-American Pottery. (Old English China, with
American Views.) Indianapolis, Ind.: Press of the Clay-worker. Pp.
170. $1.50.
Bauer, L. A. The Physical Decomposition of the Earth's Magnetic Field,
No. 1. Pp. 20. Is the Principal Source of the Secular Variation of the
Earth's Magnetism within or without the Earth's Crust? Pp. 6.
Bridges and Framed Structures. An Illustrated Monthly Magazine. Vol.
I, No. 1. April, 1899. Chicago: The D. P. Rauck Publishing Company.
Pp. 92. 30 cents.
Campbell, W. W. The Elements of Practical Astronomy. New York: The
Macmillan Company. Pp. 264. $2.
Fairchild, H. L. Glacial Waters in the Finger-Lake Region of New York.
Pp. 36. Glacial Lakes, Newberry, Warren, and Dana, in Central New
York. Pp. 14.
Fiske, John. Through Nature to God. Boston and New York: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. Pp. 194. $1.
Greinger, S., M. D. A Case of Abnormally High Temperature subsequent
to Attack of Tertian Ague. Pp. 5.
Hague, Arnold. Presidential Address to the Geological Society of
Washington, 1898. Abstracts of Minutes, etc. Pp. 48.
Hollick, Arthur. Notes on Block Island. Pp. 20, with plates. The
Relations between Forestry and Geology in New Jersey. Parts I and II.
Pp. 24. Additions to the Palæobotany of the Cretaceous Formation on
Staten Island. No. II. Pp. 12, with plates.
Hunter, S. J. Alfalfa, Grasshoppers, Bees: Their Relationship.
University of Kansas. Pp. 152.
Jackman, Wilbur S. Nature Study for Grammar Grades. New York: The
Macmillan Company. Pp. 407. $1.
Jenks, Josephine, Translator. Friedrich Froebel's Education by
Development. New York: D. Appleton and Company. International
Education Series. Pp. 347.
Kemp, James Furman. Preliminary Report of the Geology of Essex County,
New York. Pp. 24. Geology of the Lake Placid Region. Pp. 20, with map.
Marot, Helen. A Handbook of Labor Literature. Philadelphia: Free
Library of Economics and Political Science. Pp. 96. $1.
Mason, Otis Tufton. Aboriginal American Zoötechny. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 37.
New England Anti-Vivisection Society Monthly. Vol. IV, No. 4. April,
1899. Pp. 20. Boston. 10 cents. $1 a year.
Pennwitt, W. C. Memorial to the United States Senate concerning a
National University. Pp. 16.
Peck, F. W., Commissioner General. The United States at the Paris
Exposition in 1900. Pp. 11. Internationale Exposition Universelle,
Paris, 1900. Regulations, Classification. Chicago. Pp. 110.
Roosa, D. B. St. John, M. D. Defective Eyesight. The Principle of its
Relief by Glasses. New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 193. $1.
Russell, Frank. Explorations in the Far North. University of Iowa. Pp.
190.
Sargent, Frederick Leroy. Corn Plants. Their Uses and Ways of Life.
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 106.
Smith, D. T., M. D. The Philosophy of Money, and other Essays.
Louisville, Ky.: John P. Morton & Co. Pp. 203. $1.25.
Smith, Edgar F. (authorized translator). Victor von Richter's Organic
Chemistry, or Chemistry of the Carbon Compounds. Edited by Prof. R.
Anschütz. Third American from the eighth German edition. Philadelphia:
P. Blakiston & Co. Vol. I. The Aliphatic Series. Pp. 625. $3.
Smithsonian Institution (U. S. National Museum). Cook, O. F. The
Diplopod Family Striariidæ. Pp. 8, with plates. African Diplopoda of
the Family Gomphodesmidæ. Pp. 64, with plates.
Swift, Morrison I. Anti-Imperialism. Los Angeles, Cal.: Public
Ownership Review. Pp. 64.
United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries. Report to June 30,
1898. Washington. Pp. 350.
Woodman, J. Edmund. Studies in the Gold-bearing Slates of Nova Scotia.
Boston Society of Natural History. Pp. 42, with 3 plates.
Fragments of Science.
=The New Zealand Experiment in Woman Suffrage.=--The right of suffrage
was given to all the women of New Zealand in 1893 without any
concerted action or aggressive demonstrations on their part by the
free, almost unsolicited, vote of the men. The general election took
place in November of the same year, and is described in the Saturday
Review as having been a warm contest, with several questions on which
public opinion was sharply divided; but "on the whole, the women took
matters wonderfully coolly. They flocked in thousands to the public
meetings, where, by common consent, the front seats were given up to
them." Contrary to expectation, they displayed little emotion, and
even had to be "coached" to make a pretense of enthusiasm. "Polling
day was awaited with dread by the electioneering agents and returning
officers, with doubt by veteran politicians, and with pleasurable
excitement by the women." They all voted, and "what did it all lead
to?" "It left things very much as they were.... Gradually but
irresistibly the conviction forced itself upon the New Zealand mind
that the women knowing little and caring as little about political
details, had voted almost always with the men of their family and
class. Sharing to the full the prejudices, hopes, and interests of
their fathers, brothers, husbands, and lovers, they had cheerfully
doubled the voting power of these. Where, as in the case of
schoolmistresses and factory girls, they had some special bond of
union other than domestic they had voted very much as schoolmasters
and male trade-unionists had voted.... With one accord colonists
ceased to be afraid of what the suffrage might do, and began instead
to complain of it for not doing more. Only here and there careful
observers note that groups of women are studying politics, and foresee
that, as years go by, these will supply a new and intelligent force
with distinct and logically reasoned aims of its own."
=The Metric System= (a Letter to the London Times).--SIR: I see that
on Wednesday next, the 22d inst., the President of the Board of Trade
is to receive a deputation from the Decimal Associations and others to
urge on the Government, not merely the adoption of the decimal system
of notation, but the compulsory application within two years of the
metric system of weights and measures in its entirety. I have been
hoping to see a letter in the Times from some person of importance
calling attention to this deputation. I fervently trusted I should
notice one from your correspondent, Mr. Herbert Spencer, who, a year
or so back, contributed a series of thoroughly well-thought-out and
logical articles, exposing the fallacy of the metric system; but if
any such letter has appeared I have, unfortunately, missed it. I
believe this agitation to be largely due to scientific professors who
have been brought up on foreign books, and have found it too much
trouble to convert foreign measurements into English; further, due to
the promptings of a number of foreign merchants, forming (happily, or
unhappily) now so large a portion of our traders-men who, also, do not
wish to take the trouble of converting foreign weights and measures
into English. As regards the suggestion, made time after time, that
the metric system is one giving the greatest simplicity to
calculations, I say unhesitatingly, from very considerable experience,
that it is one absolutely subversive of mental arithmetic, and I
appeal to anybody who has ever had the misfortune to wait at the
_guichet_ of a French railway station while the clerk inside has been
calculating the total amount to be paid for two first-class and one
second-class from "A" to "B" with a piece of chalk, or pencil and
paper, to compare the speed and the certainty of this process with the
answer that he would get at Euston, or at any such station in Great
Britain, and say which system shows by results the advantages in point
of time and in accuracy. The French themselves, as has been pointed
out on more than one occasion, find the metric system too irksome, and
they evade it. According to the metric system, one of its great merits
is that you can state every required quantity by multiples or
submultiples of ten--metre, 1; decimetre, 0.1; centimetre, 0.01;
millimetre, 0.001. But no Frenchman thinks of expressing himself in
this way. Instead of 0.01, he says cm. 1. For a millimetre, he says
mm. 1. When he comes to large weights, does he not commonly abjure the
1,000 kilos and write one tonne? When he comes to domestic weights the
kilogramme is found too large; the half of this, the practical
equivalent of the pound, is wanted. He ought to write 500 grammes. He
does not. He abjures his decimals, and writes one half kilo. But I
feel I must not take up your space by multiplying instances, so well
known to many who have studied the subject, of the unbearable burden
of the decimal _plus_ metrical system compulsorily carried out. I well
know the value of decimals, and the indispensable need of their use in
many circumstances; but I object to being compelled to use them when
they are not needed and are in the way. I find it easier to state
seven eighths, and to deal with it mentally, than to put it into the
form of .875. I do not wish to be restricted by law in the use of my
tools. What would be thought of the law which compelled a shipwright
on all occasions to use a chisel, and never to employ the adze. I,
with, I believe, every upholder of English weights and measures, and
of the use of fractions, am quite willing that the metric system
should be made legal in its entirety throughout Great Britain; but we
are not willing that the useful weights and measures which we can
employ with so great facility and accuracy should be made illegal.
Let the two exist together, and experience will prove which is the one
preferred by the community. I am, sir, your obedient servant,
FREDERICK BRAMWELL.
5 GREAT GEORGE STREET, WESTMINSTER, S. W.,
_March 18, 1899_.
P. S.--Very probably the old stalking-horses will be trotted out on
Wednesday, and the President of the Board of Trade will be told of the
confusion created by the existence of mere local weights and measures.
I believe that if those who cite these anomalies were asked to give
instances at various dates it would be found that these local weights
and measures were dying out. In any event they are illegal, and are
not obligatory upon anybody. Every man can claim to deal according to
the standards of length, of weights, and of capacity. Most certainly
the introduction of the metric system would largely add to the use of
illegal weights and measures, not only locally, but generally. If the
inquiry were made in France, even no farther off than Boulogne, it
would be found that, in the markets there, dealings are frequently
carried out on a local system unconnected with the metric.--F. B.
=Variations in African Religious Ideas.=--Miss Kingsley observes, in
her West African Studies, that when you are traveling from district to
district you can not fail to be struck by the difference in character
of the native religions you are studying, and that no wandering
student of the subject in western Africa can avoid recognizing the
existence of at least four distinct forms of development of the fetich
idea. They have every one of them the same underlying idea, and yet
they differ. "And I believe," Miss Kingsley says, "much of the
confusion which is supposed to exist in African religious ideas is a
confusion only existing in the minds of cabinet ethnologists from a
want of recognition of the fact of the existence of these schools. For
example, suppose you take a few facts from Ellis and a few from
Bastian and mix, and call the mixture West African religion. You do
much the same sort of thing as if you took bits from Mr. Spurgeon's
works and from those of some eminent Jesuit and of a sound Greek
churchman and mixed them, and labeled it European religion. The bits
would be all right by themselves, but the mixture would be a quaint
affair." Of the four main schools of fetich predicated by Miss
Kingsley, the Tshi and Ewe school (Ellis's school) is mainly concerned
with the preservation of life; the Calabar school with attempting to
enable the soul successfully to pass through death; the Mpongwe school
with the attainment of material prosperity; and the school of Nkissi
with the worship of the mystery of the power of evil.
=A Natural History Society as a School.=--Among the agencies employed
by the Boston Society of Natural History for making itself a vehicle
of instruction to the public has been the employment of an educated
man and teacher as guide to the museum, who should also give lectures
there. The salary of this officer has heretofore been provided by the
bounty of Miss Harriet E. Freeman, but she has been obliged to
discontinue her contribution, and the curator is now seeking other
means of maintaining a suitably qualified assistant. The "guide," Mr.
A. W. Grabau, delivered a course of lectures in April and May, 1897,
on "The Surface of the Earth: Its Rocks, Soil, and Scenery," in which
special attention was given to the scenery in New England; and,
whenever it was practicable, excursions were made to localities which
could be used as illustrations. A similar course, delivered in 1896,
resulted in the formation during the summer of the same year of a
class of thirty persons, summer residents of Kennebunkport, Maine, who
were under Mr. Grabau's daily instruction for two weeks. The awakening
of interest in local scenery further led to his giving lectures in
Belmont and Arlington, and he thereby became instrumental in a
movement intended to preserve the local frontal bowlder moraine on
Arlington Heights--a valuable geological movement. A course of
lectures on the Animals of the Shores of New England was given by Mr.
Grabau to a class of from forty to seventy-five persons, in the
Teachers' School of Science, with excursions on Wednesday and Saturday
afternoons. In a similar fall course attention was given specially to
the study of animals in their various habitats. A course by Mr.
Grabau on the use of the microscope and the preparation of specimens
was followed by ten days' laboratory work in Limekilns Bay, Maine. One
of the results of a winter course on zoölogy, to a class of twenty
teachers, was the formation of the Hale House Natural History Club, in
connection with which field meetings are held, classes for children
are formed, and papers upon elementary subjects are read and
discussed. Other courses of lectures are mentioned in the report of
the curator of the society--the field lessons in geology, by Professor
Barton, with a winter course in historical geology; the course of Dr.
R. W. Greenleaf, on the elementary structure and function of the parts
of flowering plants; the course of the curator (Alpheus Hyatt), on
elementary zoölogy; and the lectures on geography, by Prof. W. M.
Davis.
=Glacier Water.=--An analysis of two samples of water from the
Illecilliwaet Glacier, in British Columbia, was recently made by F. T.
Shutt and A. T. Charron. The water was collected a few feet from the
glacier's irregular face, about a mile and a half from the glacier
station on the Canadian Pacific Railway. The following is abstracted
from an account in the Chemical News:
----------------------------------+-----------+-----------
| No. 1. | No. 2.
+-----------+-----------
| Parts per million.
----------------------------------+-----------+-----------
Free ammonia | 0.018 | 0.018
Albuminoid ammonia | 0.027 | 0.037
Nitrogen as nitrates and nitrites | 0.0246 | 0.0442
Oxygen absorbed in fifteen minutes| 0.0396 | 0.0672
Oxygen absorbed in four hours | 0.1056 | 0.1744
Chlorine | 0.10 | 0.10
Total solids at 105° C. | 30.8 | 12.0
Solids after ignition | 30.8 | 8.0
Loss on ignition | None. | 4.0
Phosphates | None. | None.
----------------------------------+-----------+-----------
The authors go on to say: "From the above data we may unhesitatingly
conclude that the glacier water is one of great organic purity. The
samples are not identical, due no doubt to the fact that they were
collected twelve days apart, and probably from different parts of the
foot of the glacier. Both analyses, however, show that, judged by the
standards used in the diagnosis of ordinary potable waters, it is a
water possessing a high degree of purity, and one perfectly wholesome
and eminently suited for drinking and household purposes. As received,
both samples were quite murky, almost milky, in appearance. On
allowing them to stand, perfect subsidence took place, leaving the
supernatant water colorless and brilliant. A microscopic examination
of the sediment showed it to consist of very fine rock matter, chiefly
fragments of quartzite.
=Protection of Plants and Birds in France and Italy.=--Organized
efforts for the protection of native plants and birds from further
destruction are multiplying in Europe. Botanical stations for Alpine
plants have been established at several places in France and
Switzerland, and now Italy has come into line with the association
_Pro Mortibus_, which, founded in July, 1897, has already more than
five hundred adherents. Italy is probably the country where work of
this kind is most needed, for nowhere else is the destruction,
particularly of birds, so systematically, persistently, and
industriously carried on. _Pro Mortibus_ will also interest itself in
the preservation and replantation of the forests. Among other efforts
looking in a similar direction, M. J. Corcelli tells in _La Nature_ of
the establishment of shelters in connection with the schools in Saxony
where birds are fed in the winter, and of lessons given to the
children inculcating regard for them. A great deal has been
accomplished in France without much noise in rewooding the devastated
slopes of the mountains and erecting efficient safeguards against
ravage by torrents--largely by restraining the torrents at their
sources; and the Alpine forests of the country, M. Corcelli says, "are
again rising from their ashes." Reserves of Alpine plants have been
established by the Belfort section of the French Alpine Club on the
_Ballon_ of Alsace; the central section is creating an extensive
botanical garden in the Vosges, to serve as a place of refuge and
propagation and multiplication of species threatened with extinction.
The city of Annecy, in Savoy, has recently voted the money required
for establishing a similar garden on the verdant ridges of the Semnoz.
Two local societies in Italy are engaged in a similar work, one of
which has established the garden museum Chamousia on the slopes of the
Saint Bernard, where plants from the Pyrenees and the Himalaya are
also collected. Switzerland is not behind either of these countries in
this work.
=Tortoise Shell.=--The following interesting account of the
tortoise-shell industry is taken from Nature: The tortoise shell of
commerce is obtained from the horny superficial plates overlying the
bony case of the great majority of tortoises and turtles. Turtles
differ from tortoises in the heart-shaped form of the upper half of
the shell, and the conversion of the limbs into paddles adapted for
swimming. The upper part of the shell carries a median row of five
large superficial horny plates, flanked on either side by a row of
four or five still larger flat plates; these thirteen or fifteen large
plates affording some of the most valuable commercial tortoise shell
in the particular species whose shell is in most demand. On the front
and hind edges of the upper bony shell and the portion connecting the
latter with the plastron, or lower shell, are a series of smaller
horny plates, generally twenty-four in number, which are sharply bent
in the middle and are known in the trade as "hoof." The under surface
of the shell of a turtle carries six pairs of large, more or less
flat, horny plates, for which the trade term, derived from their
uniform color, is "yellow belly." In value they sometimes exceed all
but the very finest of the large upper plates, generally known simply
as "shell." Of the host of land and fresh-water tortoises, most of
which are of comparatively small size, the horny plates (which, by the
way, are altogether wanting in the so-called soft tortoises of
tropical rivers), on account of their thinness and opacity, are now of
no commercial value, at least in England. Moreover, it is by no means
all species of marine turtles which yield commercial tortoise shell.
Of these marine turtles, exclusive of the great leathery turtle, there
are three well-marked and perfectly distinct types, severally
represented by the green or edible turtle, the hawksbill, and the
loggerhead. The hawksbill furnishes the most valuable shell. The
largest and best plates, which are in the middle of the back, are
about a quarter of an inch thick in the center, and measure about
thirteen by eight inches, their weight being from about half a pound
each to as much as one pound. The length of the carapace (the upper
shell) in the hawksbill is about forty-two inches. It is found in all
tropical and subtropical seas. From a dead turtle the plates of
tortoise shell can be readily detached by beating. The highest price
realized during 1898 in the London market was about 112_s._ 6_d._
(about $28) a pound for the very best selected shell. It is stated
that 76,760 pounds of hawksbill shell were sold in London in 1898. The
shell is very readily workable, being made partially plastic by
immersion in hot water.
=Poison in Wild Cherry Leaves.=--Instances having been brought to the
notice of the directory of the New Hampshire College Agricultural
Experiment Station of cattle presumably fatally poisoned by prussic
acid from eating wild cherry leaves, the subject has been investigated
by Fred W. Morse and Charles D. Howard. Five species of wild cherry
grow in New Hampshire, of which the red cherry and the horse plum are
not regarded as dangerous, and the dwarf cherry has not been examined,
but is strongly suspected. The wild black cherry is the most noxious
species, and the chokecherry is not far behind it. The poisonous
principle in these cherries is hydrocyanic or prussic acid, which,
however, does not exist in the leaves as such, but is derived from the
amygdalin they contain. The popular opinion that only the wilted
leaves are specially dangerous is not borne out. The authors found
both wilted and fresh leaves poisonous, and the dried leaves worthy to
be regarded with suspicion. Vigorous, succulent leaves from young
shoots, which are the ones most likely to be eaten by cattle, are far
more poisonous than the leaves from a mature tree or stunted shrub.
The largest amounts of prussic acid were derived from leaves wilted in
bright sunlight to about seventy-five per cent their original weight,
or till they began to appear slightly limp and lose their gloss.
Leaves wilted in the dark were much less dangerous.
=Dr. Brinton's Contributions to American Linguistics.=--At the
suggestion of the late James Constantine Pilling, Dr. D. G. Brinton
has prepared an analytical survey of his contributions in the field of
American linguistics, which have now extended over forty years. The
list includes seventy-one titles of books and papers, of which sixteen
are classed as general articles and works. The first four of these are
occupied with the inquiry whether the native American languages, as a
group, have peculiar morphological traits that justify their
classification as one of the great divisions of human speech. Dr.
Brinton finds a feature--incorporation--which, under the form
polysynthesis, is present in a marked degree in nearly all of them.
Another paper shows that the various alleged affiliations between
American and Asiatic tongues are wholly unfounded, and another pleads
for more attention to American languages. A volume of nearly four
hundred pages--The American Race--was the first attempt at a
systematic classification of all the tribes of North, Central, and
South America on the basis of language. It defines seventy-nine
linguistic stocks in North America and sixty-one in South America,
pertaining to nearly sixteen hundred tribes. Other volumes in the list
include writings, preferably on secular subjects, by natives in their
own languages. One contains a list of native American authors, and
notices some of their works. Another vindicates the claim of native
American poetry to recognition. These works were followed by the
Library of Aboriginal American Literature, of which eight considerable
volumes were published, each containing a work wholly of native
inspiration, in a native tongue, with a translation, notes, etc.
Fourteen other publications relate to North American languages north
of Mexico, thirty-two to Mexican and Central American languages, and
ten to South American and Antillean languages. Many of these articles
were collected in 1890 and published in a volume entitled Essays of an
Americanist. It was arranged in four parts, relating respectively to
Ethnology and Archæology, Mythology and Folklore, Graphic Systems and
Literature, and Linguistics. The value of Dr. Brinton's labors will be
realized by all persons who know how rapidly things purely native
American are passing away.
=Metallic Alloys of Rich Colors.=--A remarkable alloy of gold
seventy-eight parts and aluminum twenty-two parts, discovered by
Messrs. Roberts-Austen and Hunt, has a characteristic purple color
which can not be imitated; for if the designated proportions of the
constituents are varied from, the base is entirely changed. The
compound lacks somewhat in the qualities of resistance and
malleability. The color is abnormal in that it partakes of none of the
color features of its constituents, as is the case in most
combinations of metals. Thus, the colors of copper alloyed with zinc
or tin pass gradually from red to white, according to the proportions
of the constituent metals. In the union of two metals of white or
bluish-white color, like zinc, tin, silver, and aluminum, the color of
the alloys is not perceptibly different from that of the
components--that is, it continues white. The purple of the gold
aluminum alloy is not, however, the only exception to this rule.
Aluminum gives highly colored compounds with several other metals,
even when the second metal is clearly white. In the experiments of
Charles Marcot, of Geneva, in alloying aluminum with platinum,
palladium, nickel, and cobalt, combination took place abruptly at red
heat, with the development of an intense temperature and a partial
combination of the aluminum; and when platinum is the second metal, an
explosion is liable to occur. An alloy of seventy-two parts of
platinum and twenty-eight of aluminum had a bright golden or yellow
color, which varied under slight changes in the proportions of the
elements to violet green or coppery red. The alloy is hard and brittle
and of crystalline structure. The yellow form is stable, while the
other forms decompose in a short time. An alloy of seventy-two parts
palladium and twenty-eight aluminum is of fine coppery rose color,
crystalline texture, hard and brittle, and suffers no change with
time. An alloy of from seventy-five to eighty parts cobalt and twenty
to twenty-five aluminum is straw-yellow, inclining to brown; when just
formed it is externally hard and scratches glass, but is easily broken
with a hammer, and falls to a powder in a few days. An alloy of
eighty-two parts nickel and eighteen aluminum has a pronounced
straw-yellow color, is as hard as tempered steel, and resists the blow
of a hammer. The fracture, close-grained, is that of steel or bell
metal. It is susceptible of a fine polish, is stable, and keeps its
color. Though interesting on account of their colors, these alloys,
except that of nickel, are not suitable for any use.
=The Chemistry of Sausages.=--The _Lancet_ is authority for the
following: "The composition of the sausage is not only complex, but it
is often obscure. It is supposed to be a compound of minced beef and
pork. Abroad, however, the sausage is compounded of a much wider range
of substances. These include brains, liver, and horseflesh.
Occasionally they do not contain meat at all, but only bread tinged
with red oxide of iron and mixed with a varying proportion of fat.
Horseflesh is rich in glycogen, and this fact enables its presence in
sausage meat to be detected with some amount of certainty. The test,
which depends on a color reaction, with iodine has recently been more
carefully studied and with more satisfactory results, so that the
presence of five per cent of horseflesh can be detected. At present
there is no legal provision for a standard in regard to the
composition of sausages, but clearly there ought to be. Limitations
should be laid down as to the amount of bread used, as to the actual
proportion of meat substances present, and as to the coloring matters
added to give an attractive appearance of fresh meat. Sausages are
extremely liable to undergo decomposition and become poisonous, owing
to the elaboration of toxic substances during the putrefactive
process. Bad or rancid fat is very liable to alter the character of a
sausage for the worse. Thus in some instances the use of rancid lard
has rendered the sausage after a time quite phosphorescent, an
appearance which indicates, of course, an undesirable change. The
smoked sausage is a much safer article of diet than the unsmoked,
since the curing process preserves the meat substance against
decomposition by reason of the empyreumatic bodies present in the wood
smoke which is used for this purpose."
=Photographing Papuan Children.=--Many savages dislike to have their
pictures taken, some being restrained by motives of superstition; but
in New Guinea Professor Semon found being photographed a great joke
for all the boys and girls. He had much trouble in isolating a single
individual, so as not to get thirty or forty persons into his picture
instead of the one he wished to immortalize. "Wishing," he says, "to
portray one young girl of uncommonly good looks, I separated her from
the rest, gave her a favorable position, and adjusted the lens,
surrounded all the while by a crowd of people behind and beside me,
the children cheering, the women most ardently attentive, the men
benevolently smiling. Evidently my subject was proud of the
distinction she enjoyed and the attention vouchsafed her. Quite
suddenly, however, this simple savage, untaught as she was and
innocent of the laws of reticence and prudishness, became convulsed
with shame, covered her eyes with her hands, and valiantly resisted
every attempt to make her stand forward as before. At the same time I
noticed that the hue of her features changed, the brown of her face
becoming darker and deeper than before, a phenomenon easily explained
by the fact of the blood rising into her head. Had she been a brown
girl we would have said that she blushed. At all events, the
physiological process was the same as that which forces us to blush."
At another time, when the author had got two little girls into
position to be photographed, their mothers came up and forbade his
taking them that day, but promised to present them on the morrow. On
the next day "both the little angels were solemnly brought to meet us
nearly smothered in ornaments, their hair decorated with feathers and
combs, their ears with tortoise-shell pieces, their little throats
surrounded by plates of mother-of-pearl and chains of dingo teeth,
legs and arms hung with rings and shells, teeth, and all sorts of
network.... Here, again, one may see that mothers are made of the
same stuff all over the world, Papuan mammas being equal to any of our
peasant women or fine ladies in the point of vanity as far as concerns
their children."
=Meat Extracts.=--An interesting account of the history and
preparation of meat extracts was recently given as a lecture before
the Society of Arts (English) by Charles R. Valentine. The idea of
concentrating the body of an ox into a thimbleful of elixir seems to
have been a very old one. Until the work of Justus von Liebig, about
fifty years ago, however, little progress of practical value was made
toward this end. Liebig macerated finely divided beef in cold water,
or in water not above 150° F. The water dissolved from sixteen to
twenty-four per cent of the weight of the dry flesh. This infusion was
heated, the albumen and red coloring matter of the blood coagulated,
and was separated as a flocculent precipitate. The remaining solution
has the aromatic taste and all the properties of soup made by boiling
the flesh. The infusion was then evaporated at a gentle heat. The
residue amounted to about twelve or thirteen per cent of the original
(dry) flesh. This is in rough outline the process of meat-extract
making. This extract is simply an evaporated beef tea, containing the
extractive matters of beef, and in virtue of these possesses medicinal
and dietetic properties of value. But it is in no sense a substitute
for beef, as the latter's most important food constituent--albumen--it
does not contain.
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
It appears from tables of Some Statistics of Engineering Education,
compiled by President M. E. Wadsworth, of the Michigan College of
Mines, that such education has been, in the United States, on the
whole a thing of comparatively recent date, the oldest school, the
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, having been established in 1824; the
next, the Lawrence and Sheffield Schools, in 1846 and 1847; and the
Columbia School in 1863. Civil engineering has led in this country,
and has had various periods of advance, as in 1887-'88, and
depression, as in 1896-'97. Mechanical engineering progressed till
1886-'87, when the number of students fell off, and the same happened
with electrical engineering, "which further suffers a natural reaction
from having been greatly overdone." As a rule, most of the schools in
the United States seem to run to specialties, one or two of the
courses being usually more conspicuous than the others.
The importance of some arrangement by which vessels may be informed of
each other's approach in fog and darkness has given rise to many
devices; the only one, however, which has as yet proved practical is
the fog-horn or siren, and this has many disadvantages. Several fatal
collisions at sea during the past year have given rise to renewed
interest in the subject, and a number of new methods have been
suggested. M. Branley, a French physicist, in a note presented to the
French Academy suggests that each vessel be provided with a number of
extremely sensitive magnetic receivers, or coherers, and a powerful
magnetic transmitter. Periodical signals being made with the
transmitter, corresponding impressions would be made upon the
receivers of approaching vessels. The principal difficulty with this
scheme lies in the fact that the receivers of a vessel will be
affected by its own transmitter. There are several methods by which
this difficulty may be overcome, however. Different signals may be
employed, or the interval between signals may be regularly varied. M.
Branley calls attention to the influence of a metallic envelope
surrounding a coherer, and shows that when the coherer is thus
completely surrounded it is unaffected by the influence of a
transmitter. By thus inclosing the receiver on a ship at the instant
of the operation of the transmitter of the same vessel, the above
difficulty might be avoided.
While we can not collect roses from our gardens in January and maple
blossoms from the woods in February, yet, as Prof. W. J. Beal shows in
a bulletin of the Michigan Agricultural College Experiment Station,
our trees and shrubs in their winter garb furnish excellent lessons
for the profitable employment of pupils during many weeks at that
season in true botanical study. "Let each member of a class be
provided with a branch, a foot or two long, from a sugar maple, and
then spend some ten to twenty minutes or more quietly looking at the
buds and the bark, with its scars and specks, and then tell what he
has discovered, venturing to explain the object or meaning of some of
the things he has seen. In a similar manner let each look over a
branch of beech and then point out the difference between the two
kinds." Opening buds of trees may be obtained at any time during the
winter by placing the lower end of the stem in water for a week or two
while in the schoolroom.
Eivind Astrup, in his book With Peary near the Pole, gives admiring
pictures of the natural innocence of the uncontaminated Eskimos of
northern Greenland, where are communities in which "money is unknown,
and love of one's neighbor is a fundamental rule of action; where
theft is not practiced." All things are held in common, and falsehoods
are told only to spare the feelings of the listener. Among the
instances of the native kindliness of these people is one where a dog
had eaten up a reindeer coat, yet was only remonstrated with by its
owner. When the author suggested that a hungry dog should be punished
for stealing a piece of blubber, the owner said that it was himself
who deserved the thrashing for not having obtained sufficient food for
the dog.
The operations of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History
during 1897 and 1898 were almost wholly connected with the work of the
State Entomologist or with that of the Biological Station. The former
work related to various insects injurious to crops. The operations of
the Biological Station were carried on with more reference to
completing a formal report upon the fishes of Illinois. The work is
conducted with a view to the acquisition of correct ideas of the
relative abundance and local distribution of species, their haunts,
habits, regular migrations, and irregular movements, their building
times and places, rate of growth, food, diseases, and enemies--and, in
short, the whole economy of each kind represented at the station and
of the whole assemblage taken together as a community group. Extensive
studies of aquatic entomology were made, and a paper on ephemerids and
dragon flies is nearly ready for the press. No part of the work of the
station, however, attracts more attention among scientific men, or is
likely to lead to more interesting and important results, than the
plankton work, or the systematic study of the minute forms of plant
and animal life suspended in the water. Water analyses have been
extensively made in connection with these studies, which, combined
with the continuous biological work, will, when generalized, furnish a
substantial and authoritative body of knowledge of the conditions of
the waters of the middle Illinois previous to the opening of the
Chicago drainage canal, useful for comparison with the results of
similar studies made after that event. A summer school was conducted,
with fifteen pupils, in 1898, and publications were issued.
NOTES.
The Pasteur monument was dedicated at Lille, France, the city in which
the subject of the memorial performed his earlier more important
researches, April 9th. The ceremony was witnessed by a large assembly,
which included many eminent scientific men of France and foreign
countries, among whom men engaged in similar researches to Pasteur's
were especially represented. The monument, the fruit of a public
subscription, represents Pasteur standing on the summit of a column of
Soignies stone, holding in his right hand an experimental flask. At
the foot of the column a woman presents her child, which has been
bitten by a mad dog, for treatment. To the left is a group
representing inoculation--a woman, personifying science, injecting
serum into a child she holds on her knees. Three bas-reliefs represent
respectively Dr. Roux inoculating a sheep for anthrax, Pasteur
studying fermentation, and the first antirabic inoculation of the
young Joseph Meister, who is held by his mother, wearing the
broad-flapped Alsatian bonnet. The statue is in light bronze, and with
the gilded bas-reliefs harmonizes well with the gray of the stone.
Addresses were made by M. Armand Gautier and M. Duclaux, who said that
the improved laboratories now enjoyed by scientific institutions in
Paris were largely due to Pasteur's efforts.
The minor planet recently discovered by Witt, remarkable as having an
orbit that comes within that of Mars, and provisionally known as DQ,
has been named Eros. An examination by Professor Pickering and Mrs.
Fleming of the Harvard photographs has revealed traces of this body on
twelve plates taken in 1893 and 1894, and on four plates of 1896. By
the aid of these plates it has been possible to determine its elements
with greater accuracy than would otherwise be possible. Its mean
distance from the sun is 1.45810, its shortest distance 1.13334, and
its greatest distance 1.78286 that of the earth; the eccentricity of
its orbit is 0.222729, and its period is 643.10 days. Its synodical
period is such that it has three oppositions in seven years. The next
opposition will be in the last months of 1900, and will be a
moderately favorable one for observation.
The courses in pure science of the New York University include
undergraduate, graduate, and summer courses in mathematics, physics,
chemistry, geology, and biology, with laboratory privileges and
provision for special students and independent work in chemistry. The
university last year was attended by 1,717 students in its three
faculties and six schools, and 720 non-matriculant students and
auditors. A new feature this year is the inauguration of the Charles
F. Deems lectureship of philosophy, under an endowment of $15,000 by
the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, with Prof. James
Iverach, D. D., of the Free Church College, Aberdeen, Scotland, as the
first lecturer. A feature of the university organization is the
institution of a woman's advisory committee co-operating with the
council. A woman's law class is supported by the Woman's Legal
Education Society, the purpose of which is to make business women and
women in private life acquainted with existing law.
The new Science Building of the City Library, Springfield, Mass.,
recently completed, is being inaugurated by a Geographical and
Geological Exhibition. It includes the best and latest maps, models,
globes, charts, relief maps, and photographs, special attention being
paid to the most effective modes of teaching. One of the most
attractive features of the exhibition is the work from the Springfield
public schools.
An ingenious method for thawing out frozen water pipes has been used
by Prof. R. W. Wood, of the University of Wisconsin. It consists
simply of passing a current of electricity through the pipe. In one
case it is said that one hundred and fifty feet of frozen pipe was
thawed out in eighteen minutes. The ordinary street current was used,
the voltage being reduced to about fifty.
In a summary of inspectors' reports of the Hartford Steam Boiler
Inspection and Insurance Company for 1898 it is stated that of 78,349
boilers, inspected both internally and externally, during the year,
there were 11,727 dangerous defects discovered and 603 entire boilers
were declared unsafe for further use.
The recent death list of men known in science includes the names of
Charles Naudin, an eminent French botanist, Dean of the Botanical
Section of the Academy of Sciences and author of a book on Hybrids in
the Vegetable Kingdom, at Antibes, France, March 19th, aged
eighty-four years; Dr. G. W. Leitner, an eminent Orientalist and
linguist, Lecturer on Oriental Language at King's College, London,
Principal of Lahne College, and Registrar of Punjaub University, where
he introduced the use of their own language and literature in teaching
Indian students, founder of the Anglo-Indian Institute at Woking,
England, and author of works in Education, the Races of Turkey, The
Races and Languages of Dardistan, Græco-Buddhist Discoveries, and
other Oriental subjects, at Bonn, March 24th, in his sixty-ninth year;
Dr. Angelo Knorr, Docent in the Veterinary School of Munich, February
22d; Elizabeth Brown, astronomical observer and author of papers on
solar phenomena, at Cirencester, England, March 6th; Dr. Wilhelm von
Müller, Professor General Chemistry in the Institute of Technology,
Munich; Dr. Friedrich von Lühmann, mathematician, at Straslund,
Prussia; Dr. Charles Fortuun, mineralogist, in London; Alfred
Feuilleaubois, author of researches on Fungi, at Fontainebleau,
France; Dr. Heinrich Kiefert, a geographer and cartographer whose fame
was world-wide, whose maps and atlases are everywhere recognized as
authorities, at Berlin, April 21st, aged seventy years; and Prof.
Sophus Lie, of the University of Christiania, an eminent
mathematician, February 18th, in his fifty-seventh year.
Transcriber's Notes:
Words surrounded by _ are italicized.
Words surrounded by = are bold.
Obvious printer's errors have been repaired, other inconsistent
spellings have been kept, including inconsistent use of hyphen (e.g.
"tortoise-shell" and "tortoise shell"), and proper names (e.g.
"Shakspere" and "Shakespeare").
Some illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in
the text.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Appletons' Popular Science Monthly,
June 1899, by Various
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