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POPULAE SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

CONDUCTED BY E. L. YOUMANS.

VOL. n.

NOVEMBER, 1872, TO APRIL, 1873.

NEW YORK :
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

649 & 551 BROADWAY.
1873.

Entebed, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,

By D. APPLETON & CO.,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at 'Washington.

A di'S

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

NOVEMBER, 1872.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.

By HERBERT SPENCER.
V. Objective Difficulties {continued).

ANOTHER common cause of very serious perversion of evidence
is the unconscious confounding of observation with inference.
Everywhere, a fertile source of error is the putting down as something
perceived what is really a conclusion drawn from something perceived ;
and this is a more than usually fertile source of error in Sociology.
Here is an instance :

A few years ago Dr. Stark published the results of comparisons
he had made between the rates of mortality among the married and
among the celibate ; showing, as it seemed, the greater healthfulness
of married life. Some criticisms made upon his argument did not
seriously shake it ; and he has been since referred to as having con-
clusively proved the alleged relation. More recently I have seen
quoted from the Medical Press and Circular the following summary
of results supposed to tell the same tale :

" M. Bertillon has made a communication on this subject (the Influence of
Marriage) to the Brussels Academy of Medicine, which has been published in
the Revue Scientiftque. From 25 to 30 years of age the mortality per 1,000 in
France amounts to 6.2 in married men, 10.2 in bachelors, and 21.8 in widows.
In Brussels the mortality of married women is 9 per 1,000, girls the same, and
widows as high as 16.9. In Belgium, from 7 per 1,000 among married men, the
number rises to 8.5 in bachelors and 24.6 in widows. The proportion is the
same in Holland. From 8.2 in married men, it rises to 11.7 in bachelors, and
16.9 in widowers, or 12.8 among married women, 8.5 in spinsters, and 13.8 in
widows. The result of all the calculations is that from 25 to 30 years of age
the mortality per 1,000 is 4 in married men, 10.4 in bachelors, and 22 in widow-
ers. This beneficial influence of marriage is manifested at all ages, being always
more strongly marked in men than in women."

VOL. II. 1

2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I will not dwell on the fallacy of the above conclusions as referring to
the relative mortality of widows a fallacy sufficiently obvious to any
one who thinks awhile. I will confine myself to the less-conspicuous
fallacy in the comparison between the mortalities of married and celi-
bate, fallen into by M. Bertillon as well as Dr. Stark. Clearly as their
figures seem to furnish proof of some direct causal relation between
marriage and longevity, they really furnish no proof whatever. There
may be such a relation; but the evidence assigned forms no warrant
for inferring it.

We have but to consider a little the circumstances which in many
cases determine marriage, and those which in other cases prevent
marriage, to see that the connection which the figures apparently imply
is not the real connection. Where attachments exist, what most fre-
quently decides the question for or against marriage ? The possession
of adequate means. While some are so reckless as to marry without
means, yet it is undeniable that in very many instances marriage is
delayed by the man, or forbidden by the parents, or not assented to
by the woman, until there is reasonable evidence of ability to meet the
responsibilities. Of those men whose marriages depend on getting
the needful income, which are the most likely to get the needful in-
come ? Those who are best, physically and mentally the strong, the
intellectually capable, the morally well-balanced. Often bodily vigor
achieves a success-, and therefore a revenue, which bodily weakness,
unable to bear the stress of competition, cannot achieve. Often supe-
rior intelligence brings promotion and increase of salary, while stupid-
ity lags behind in ill-paid posts. Often caution, self-control, and a
far-seeing sacrifice of present to future, secure remunerative offices that
are never given to the impulsive or the reckless. But, what are the
effects of bodily vigor, of intelligence, of prudence, on longevity, when
compared with the effects of feebleness, of stupidity, of deficient self-
control? Obviously the first further the maintenance of life, and the
second tend toward premature death. That is, the qualities which, on
the average of cases, give a man an advantage in getting the means of
marrying, are the qualities which make him likely to be a long liver j
and conversely.

There is even a more direct relation of the same general nature.
In all creatures of high type, it is only when individual growth and
development are nearly complete that the production of new indi-
viduals becomes possible ; and the power of producing and bringing
up new individuals is measured by the amount of vital power in excess
of that needful for self-maintenance. The reproductive instincts, and
all their accompanying emotions, become dominant when the demands
for individual evolution are diminishing, and there is arising a surplus
of energy which makes possible the rearing of offspring as well as the
preservation of self; and, speaking generally, these instincts and emo-
tions are strong in proportion as this surplus vital energy is great.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 3

But to have a large surplus of vital energy implies a good organization,
which is on the average of cases likely to last long. So that, in fact,
the superiority of physique which is accompanied by strength of the
instincts and emotions causing marriage is a superiority of physique
also conducive to longevity.

One further influence tells in the same direction. Marriage is not
altogether determined by the desires of men ; it is determined in part
by the preferences of women. Other things equal, women are attracted
toward men of power physical, emotional, intellectual ; and obviously
their freedom of choice leads them in many cases to refuse inferior
samples of men; especially the malformed, the diseased, and those
who are ill-developecl, physically and mentally. So that, in so far as
marriage is determined by female selection, the average result on men
is that, while the best easily get wives, a certain proportion of the worst
are left without wives. This influence, therefore, joins in bringing into
the ranks of married men those most likely to be long-lived, and keep-
ing in bachelorhood those least likely to be long-lived.

In three ways, then, does that superiority of organization which
conduces to long life also conduce to marriage. It is normally ac-
companied by a predominance of the instincts and emotions prompting
marriage ; there goes along with, it that power which can secure the
means of making marriage practicable ; and it increases the probability
of success in courtship. The figures given afford no proof that mar-
riage and longevity are cause and consequence ; but they simply verify
the inference which might be drawn a priori, that marriage and lon-
gevity are concomitant results of the same cause.

This striking instance of the way in which inference may be mis-
taken for fact, will sufficiently serve as a warning against another of
the dangers that await us in dealing with sociological data. Statistics
having shown that married men live longer than single men, it seems
an irresistible implication that married life is healthier than single life.
And yet we see that the implication is not at all irresistible : though
such a connection may exist, it is not demonstrated by the evidence
assigned. Judge, then, how difficult it must be, among those social
phenomena where the dependencies are more entangled, to distinguish
between the seeming relations and the real relations.

Once more, we are ever liable to be led away by superficial, trivial
facts, from those deep-seated and really important facts which they
indicate. Always the small details of social life, the interesting events,
the curious things which serve for gossip, will, if we allow them, hide
from us the vital connections and the vital actions underneath. Every
social phenomenon results from an immense aggregate of general and
special causes ; and we may either take the phenomenon itself as in-
trinsically momentous, or, along with other phenomena, may take it as
indicating some inconspicuous truth of real significance. Let us con-
trast the two courses.

4. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Some months ago a correspondent of the Times, writing from Cal-
cutta, said :

" The Calcutta University examinations of any year would supply curious
material for reflection on the value of our educational systems. The prose
test in the entrance examination this year includes 'Ivanhoe.' Here are a few
of the answers which I have picked up. The spelling is bad, but that I have
not cared to give :

"Question: 'Dapper man?' (Answer 1.) 'Man of superfluous 'knowl-
edge.' (A. 2.) 'Mad.' (Q.) ' Democrat? '' (A. 1.) 'Petticoat Government.'
(A. 2.) 'Witchcraft.' (A. 3.) ' Half turning of the horse.' (Q.) 'Babylonish
jargon?' (A. 1.) 'A vessel made at Babylon.' (A. 2.) 'A kind of drink
made at Jerusalem.' (A. 3.) 'A kind of coat worn by Babylonians.' (Q.) 'Lay
brother?' (A. 1.) 'A bishop.' (A. 2.) ' A step-brother.' (A. 3.) ' A scholar
of the same godfather.' (Q.) 'Sumpter-mule? ' (A.) 'A stubborn Jew.' (Q.)
' Bilious-looking fellow ? ' (A. 1.) ' A man of strict character.' (A. 2.) 'A
person having a nose like the bill of an eagle.' (Q.) ' Cloister ? ' (A.) 'A kind
of shell.' (Q.) 'Tavern politicians? ' (A. 1.) ' Politicians in charge of the
alehouse.' (A. 2.) ' Mere vulgars.' (A. 3.) ' Managers of the priestly
church.' (Q.) 'A pair of cast-off galligaskins ? ' (A.) ' Two gallons of wine.' "

The fact here drawn attention to as significant is, that these Hin-
doo youths, during their matriculation examination, betrayed so much
ignorance of the meanings of words and expressions contained in an
English work they had read. And the intended implication appears
to be that they were proved unfit to begin their college careers. If,
now, instead of accepting that which is presented to us, we look a
little below it, that which may strike us as more noteworthy is the
amazing folly of an examiner who proposes to test the fitness of
youths for commencing their higher education, by seeing how much
they know of the technical terms, cant-phrases, slang, and even extinct
slang, talked by the people of another nation. Instead of the unfitness
of the boys, which is pointed out to us, we may see rather the unfit-
ness of those concerned in educating them.

If, again, not dwelling on the particular fact underlying the one
offered to our notice, we consider it along with others of the same
class, our attention is arrested by the general fact that examiners, and
more especially those appointed under recent systems of administra-
tion, habitually put questions of which a large proportion are utterly
inappropriate. As I learn from his son, one of our judges not long
since found himself unable to answer an examination-paper that had
been put before law-students. A well-known Greek scholar, editor of
a Greek play, who was appointed examiner, found that the examina-
tion-paper set by his predecessor was too difficult for him. Mr.
Froude, in his inaugural address at St. Andrews, describing a paper
set by an examiner in English history, said, " I could myself have
answered two questions out of a dozen. And I learn from Mr. G. H.
Lewes that he could not give replies to the questions on English
literature which the Civil Service examiners had put to his son. Join-

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 5

inf which testimonies with kindred ones coming- from students arid
professors on all sides, we find the really noteworthy thing to be that
examiners are concerned not so much to set questions fit for students
as to set questions which make manifest their own extensive learning.
Especially if they are young, and have reputations to make or to
justify, they seize the occasion for displaying their erudition, regard-
less of the interests of those they examine.

If we look through this more significant and general fact for the
still deeper fact it grows out of, there rises before us the question
Who examines the examiners ? How happens it that men, com-
petent in their special knowledge but so incompetent in their general
judgment, should occupy the places they do ? This prevailing fault-
iness of the examiners shows conclusively that the administration is
faulty at its centre. Somewhere or other, the power of ultimate
decision is exercised by those who are unfit to exercise it. If the
examiners of the examiners were set to fill up an examination-paper
which had for its subject the right conduct of examinations, and the
proper qualifications for examiners, there would come out very unsatis-
factory answers.

Having seen through the small details and the wider facts down
to these deeper facts, we may, on contemplating them, perceive that
these, too, are not the deepest or most significant. It becomes clear
that those having supreme authority suppose, as men in general do,
that the sole essential thing for a teacher or examiner is complete
knowledge of that which he has to teach, or respecting which he has
to examine. Whereas a coessential thing is a knowledge of Psy-
chology; and especially that part of Psychology which deals with the
evolution of the faculties. Unless, either by special study or by daily
observation and quick insight, he has gained an approximately-true
conception of how minds perceive, and reflect, and generalize, and by
what processes their ideas grow from concrete to abstract, and from
simple to complex, no one is competent to give lessons that will
effectually teach, or to ask questions which will effectually measure the
efficiency of teaching. Further, it becomes manifest that, in common
with the public at large, those in authority assume that the goodness
of education is to be tested by the quantity of knowledge acquired.
Whereas it is to be much more truly tested by the capacity for using
knowledge by the extent to which the knowledge gained has been
turned into faculty, so as to be available both for the purposes of life
and for the purposes of independent investigation. Though there is a
growing consciousness that a mass of unorganized information is, after
all, of but small value, and that there is more value in less informa-
tion well organized, yet the noteworthy truth is that this consciousness
has not got itself officially embodied ; and that our educational ad-
ministration is working, and will long continue to work, in pursuance
of a crude and outworn belief.

6 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE M ON TEL Y.

As here, then, so in other eases meeting us in the present and all
through the past, we have to contend with the difficulty that the
greater part of the evidence supplied to us, as of chief interest and im-
portance, is really of value only for what it -indicates. We have to re-
sist the temptation to dwell in those trivialities which make up nine-
tenths of our records and histories ; and which are worthy of attention
solely because of the things they indirectly imply or the things tacitly
asserted along with them.

Beyond those vitiations of evidence due to random observations, to
the subjective states of the observers, to their enthusiasms, or prepos-
sessions, or self-interests beyond those that arise from the general
tendency to set down as a fact observed what is really an inference
from an observation, and also those that arise from the general ten-
dency to omit the dissection by which small surface results are traced
to large interior causes there come those vitiations of evidence con-
sequent on its distribution in Space. Of whatever class, political,
moral, religious, commercial, etc., may be the phenomena we have to
consider, a society presents them in so diffused and multitudinous a
way, and under such various relations to us, that the conceptions we
can frame are at best extremely inadequate.

Consider how impossible it is truly to conceive so relatively simple
a thing as the territory which a society covers. Even by the aid of
maps, geographical and geological, slowly elaborated by multitudes of
surveyors even by the aid of descriptions of towns, counties, moun-
tainous and rural districts even by the aid of such personal observa-
tions as we have made here and there in journeys during life ; we can
reach nothing approaching to a true idea of the actual varied surface
arable, grass-covered, wooded ; fiat, undulating, rocky ; drained by
rills, brooks, and slow rivers ; sprinkled with cottages, farms, villas,
cities. Imagination simply rambles hither and thither, and fails utterly
to frame an adequate thought of the whole. How, then, shall we frame
an adequate thought of a diffused moral feeling, of an intellectual
state, of a commercial activity, pervading this territory ; unaided by
maps, and aided only by the careless statements of careless observers?
Respecting most of the phenomena, considered as displayed by a whole
nation, only the dimmest apprehensions are possible ; and how untrust-
worthy they are, is shown by every parliamentary debate, by every
day's newspapers, and by every evening's conversations ; which sev-
erally disclose quite conflicting estimates.

See how various are the statements made respecting any nation in
its character and actions by each traveller visiting it. There is a
story, apt if not true, of a Frenchman who, having been three weeks
here, proposed to write a book on England ; who, after three months,
found that he was not quite ready ; and who, after three years, con-
cluded that he knew nothing about it. And every one, who looks

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 7

back and compares his early impressions respecting states of things in
his own society with the impressions he now has, will see how erroneous
were the beliefs once so decided, and how probable it is that even his
revised beliefs are but very partially true. On remembering how
wrong he was in his preconceptions of the people and the life in some
unvisited part of the kingdom on remembering how different, from
those he had imagined, were the characters he actually found in certain
alien classes and along with certain alien creeds he will see how
greatly this wide diffusion of social facts impedes true appreciation of
them.

Moreover, there are illusions consequent on what we may call moral
perspective, which we do not habitually correct in thought, as we
correct in perception the illusions of physical perspective. A small
object close to, occupies a larger visual area than a mountain afar off;
but here our well-organized experiences enable us instantly to rectify
a false inference suggested by the subtended angles. ISTo such prompt
rectification for the perspective is made in sociological observations.
A small event next door, producing a larger impression than a great
event in another country, is over-estimated. Conclusions, prematurely
drawn from social experiences daily occurring around us, are difficult
to displace by clear proofs that elsewhere wider social experiences
point to quite opposite conclusions.

A further great difficulty to which we are thus introduced is, that
the comparisons of experiences, by which alone we can finally establish
relations of cause and effect among social phenomena, can rarely be
made between cases in all respects fit for comparison. Every society
differs specifically, if not generically, from every other. Hence it is a
peculiarity of the Social Science that parallels drawn between different
societies do not afford grounds for decided conclusions will not, for
instance, show us with certainty what is an essential phenomenon in
a given society and what is a non-essential one. Biology deals with
numerous individuals of a species, and with many species of a genus,
and by comparing them can see what traits are specifically constant
and what generically constant ; and the like holds more or less with
the other concrete sciences. But comparisons between societies, among
which we may almost say that each individual is a species by itself,
y eld much less definite results : the necessary characters are not thus
readily distinguishable from the accidental characters.

So that, even supposing we have perfectly valid data for our socio-
logical generalizations, there still lies before us the difficulty that
these data are, in many cases, so multitudinous and diffused that we
cannot adequately consolidate them into true conceptions ; the addi-
tional difficulty, that the moral perspective under which they are pre-
sented can scarcely ever be so allowed for as to secure true ideas of
proportions; and the further difficulty, that comparisons of our vague
and incorrect conceptions concerning oue society with our kindred

8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

conceptions concerning another society, have always to be taken with
the qualification that the comparisons are only partially justifiable,
because the compared things are only partially alike in their other
traits.

An objective difficulty, even greater still, which the Social Science
presents, arises from the distribution of its facts in Time. Those who
look on a society as either supernaturally created or created by Acts
of Parliament, and who consequently consider successive stages of its
existence as having no necessary dependence on one another, will not
be deterred from drawing political conclusions from passing facts, by
a consciousness of the slow genesis of social phenomena. But those
who have risen to the belief that societies are gradually evolved in
structure and function, as in growth, will be made to hesitate ou con-
templating the long unfolding through which early causes work out
late results.

Even true appreciation of the successive facts which an individual
life presents, is very generally hindered by inability to grasp the long-
drawn processes by which ultimate effects are produced ; as we may
see in the foolish mother who, yielding to her perverse child, gains the
immediate benefit of peace, and cannot be made to realize the evil of
chronic dissension which her policy will hereafter bring about. And
in the life of a nation, which, if of high type, lasts at least a hundred
individual lives, correct estimation of results is still more hindered by
this immense duration of the processes through which antecedents
bring their consequents. In. judging of political good and evil, the
average legislator thinks much after the manner of the mother dealing
with the spoiled child : if a course is productive of immediate benefit,
that is considered sufficient justification. Quite recently an inquiry
has been made into the results of an administration which had been in
action some five years only, with the tacit assumption that, supposing
the results were proved good, the administration would be justified.

And yet to those who look into the records of the past not to revel
in narratives of battles or to gloat over court-scandals, but to find how
institutions and laws have arisen and how they have worked, there is
no truth more obvious than that generation after generation must pass
before you can see what is the outcome of an action that has been set
up. Take the example furnished us by our Poor-Laws. When vil-
leinage had passed away and serfs had no longer to be maintained by
their owners when, in the absence of any one to control and take care
of serfs, there arose an increasing class of mendicants and " sturdy
rogues, preferring robbery to labor " when, in Richard the Second's
time, authority over such was given to justices and sheriffs, out of
which there presently grew the binding of servants, laborers, and
beggars, to their respective localities when, to meet the case of
beggars, " impotent to serve," the people of the districts in which thev

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. g

were found were made in some measure responsible for them (so, re-
introducing in a more general form the feudal arrangement of attach-
ment to the soil, and reciprocal claim on the soil) it was not suspected
that the foundations were laid for a system which would, in after-times,
bring about a demoralization threatening general ruin. When, in
subsequent centuries, to meet the evils of again-increasing vagrancy
which punishment failed to repress, these measures, reenacted with
modifications, ended in making the people of each parish chargeable
with the maintenance of their poor, while it reestablished the severest
penalties on vagabondage, even to death without benefit of clergy,, no
one ever anticipated that, while the penal elements of this legislation
would by-and-by become so mollified as to have little practical effect
in checking idleness, the accompanying arrangements would eventually
take such forms as immensely to encourage idleness. Neither legisla-
tors nor others foresaw that in 230 years the poor's-rate, having grown
to seven millions, would become a public spoil of which we read that

" The ignorant believed it an inexhaustible fund which belonged to them.
To obtain their share the brutal bullied the administrators, the profligate ex-
hibited their bastards which must be fed, the idle folded their arms and waited
till they got it ; ignorant boys and girls married upon it ; poachers, thieves, and
prostitutes, extorted it by intimidation ; country justices lavished it for popular-
ity, and guardians for convenience. . . . Better men sank down among the
worse ; the rate-paying cottager, after a vain struggle, went to the pay-table to
seek relief; the modest girl might starve while her bolder neighbor received
Is. M. per week for every illegitimate child."

As sequences of the law of Elizabeth, no one imagined that, in rural
districts, farmers, becoming chief administrators, would pay part of
their men's wages out of the rates (so taxing the rest of the rate-
payers for the cultivation of their fields) ; and that this abnormal
relation of master and man would entail bad cultivation. No one
imagined that, to escape poor's-rates, landlords would avoid building
cottages, and would even clear cottages away ; so causing overcrowd-
ing, with consequent evils, bodily and mental. No one imagined that
workhouses, so called, would become places for idling in ; and places
where married couples, habitually residing, displayed their " elective
affinities" time after time. 1 Yet these, and detrimental results which
it would take pages to enumerate, culminating in that general result
most detrimental of all helping the worthless to multiply at the ex-
pense of the worthy finally came out of these measures taken ages
ago merely to mitigate certain immediate evils.

Is it not obvious, then, that only in the course of those long periods

i In one case, " out of thirty married couples, there was not one man then living
with his own wife, and some of them had exchanged wives two or three times since their
entrance." This, along with various kindred illustrations, will be found in tracts on the
Poor-Law, by a late uncle of mine, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, of Hinton Charterhouse,
who was chairman of the Bath Union during its first six years.

io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

required to mould national characters and habits and sentiments, will
the truly important results of a public policy show themselves ? Let
us consider the question a little further.

In a society living, growing, changing, every new factor becomes
a permanent force ; modifying more or less the direction of movement
determined by the aggregate of forces. Never simple and direct, but,
by the cooperation of so many causes, made irregular, involved, and
always rhythmical, the course of social change can never be judged of
in its general direction by inspecting any small portion of it. Each
action will inevitably be followed, after a while, by some direct or
indirect reaction, and this again by a re-reaction ; and, until the suc-
cessive effects have shown themselves, it is impossible to say how the
total motion will be modified. You must compare positions at great
distances from one another in time, before you can perceive rightly
where things are tending. Even so simple a thing as a curve of single
curvature cannot have its nature determined unless there is a con-
siderable length of it. See here these four points close together. The
curve passing through them may be a circle, an ellipse, a parabola, an
hyperbola ; or it may be a catenarian, a cycloid, a spiral. Let the
points be farther apart, and it becomes possible to form some opinion
of the nature of the curve it is obviously not a circle. Let them be
more remote still, and it may be seen that it is neither an ellipse nor
a parabola. And, when the distances are relatively great, the mathe-
matician can say with certainity what curve alone will pass through
them all. Surely, then, in such complex and slowly-evolving move-
ments as those of a nation's life, all the smaller and greater rhythms
of which fall within certain general directions, it is impossible that
such general directions can be traced by looking at stages that are
close together it is impossible that the effect wrought on any general,
direction, by some additional force, can be truly computed from obser-
vations extending over but a few years, or but a few generations.

For, in the case of these most-involved of all movements, there is
the difficulty, paralleled in no other movements (being only approached
in those of individual evolution), that each new factor, besides affecting
in an immediate way the course of a movement, affects it also in a
remote way by changing the amounts and directions of all other
factors. A fresh influence brought into play on a society not only
affects its members directly in their acts, but also indirectly in their
characters. Continuing to work on their characters generation after
generation, and modifying by inheritance the feelings which they bring
into social life at large, this influence alters the intensities and bearings
of all other influences throughout the society. By slowly initiating
modifications of Nature, it brings into play forces of many kinds, in-
calculable in their strengths and tendencies, that act without regard
to the original influence, and may produce quite opposite effects.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. n

Fully to exhibit this objective difficulty, and to show more clearly
still how important it is to take as our data for sociological conclu-
sions, not the brief sequences, but the sequences that extend over
centuries or are traceable throughout civilization, let us draw a lesson
from a trait which all regulative agencies in all nations have displayed.

The original meaning of human sacrifices, which is otherwise tol-
erably clear, becomes quite clear on finding that where cannibalism is
still rampant, and where the largest consumers of human flesh are the
chiefs, these chiefs, undergoing apotheosis when they die, are believed
thereafter to feed on the souls of the departed the souls being regarded
as duplicates equally material with the bodies they belong to. And,
should any doubt remain, it must be dissipated by the accounts we
have of the ancient Mexicans, whose priests, when war had not lately
furnished a victim, complained to the king that the god was hungry ;
and who, when a victim was sacrificed, offered his heart to the idol
(bathing its lips with his blood, and even putting portions of the heart
into its mouth), and then cooked and ate the rest of the body them-
selves. Here the fact of significance to which attention is drawn, and
which various civilizations show us, is that the sacrificing of prisoners
or others, once a general usage among cannibal ancestry, continues as
an ecclesiastical usage long after having died out in the ordinary life
of a society. Two facts, closely allied with this fact, have like general
implications. Cutting implements of stone remain in use for sacrificial
purposes when implements of bronze, and even of iron, are used for all
other purposes. Further, the primitive method of obtaining fire, by the
friction of pieces of wood, survives in religious ceremonies ages after
its abandonment in the household ; and even now, among the Hindoos,
the flame for the altar is kindled by the " fire-drill." These are strik-
ing instances of the pertinacity with which the oldest part of the regu-
lative organization maintains its original traits in the teeth of influences
that modify things around it.

The like holds in respect of the language, spoken and written, which
it employs. Among the Egyptians the most ancient form of hiero-
glyphics was retained for sacred records, when more developed forms
were adopted for other purposes. The continued use of Hebrew for
religious services among the Jews, and the continued use of Latin for
the Roman Catholic service, show us how strong this tendency is,
apart from the particular creed. Among ourselves, too, a less domi-
nant ecclesiasticism exhibits a kindred trait. The English of the Bible
is of an older style than the English of the date at which the transla-
tion was made ; and in the church service various words retain obso-
lete meanings, and others are pronounced in obsolete ways. Even the
typography, with its illuminated letters of the rubric, shows traces of
the same tendency ; while Puseyites and ritualists, aiming to reenforce
ecclesiasticism, betray a decided leaning toward archaic print, as well
as archaic ornaments. In the sesthetic direction, indeed, their move-

lz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ment has brought hack the most primitive type of sculpture for monu
mental purposes ; as may be seen in Canterbury Cathedral, where, in
two new monuments to ecclesiastics, one being Archbishop Sumner,
the robed figures recline on their backs, with hands joined, after the
manner of the mailed knights on early tombs presenting complete
symmetry of attitude, which is a distinctive trait of barbaric art,
as every child's drawing of a man and every idol carved by a savage
shows us.

A conscious as well as an unconscious adhesion to the old in usage
and doctrine is shown. Not only among Roman Catholics, but among
many Protestants, to ascertain what the Fathers said, is to ascertain
what should be believed. In the pending controversy respecting the
Athanasian Creed, we see how much authority attaches to an antique
document. The antagonism between Convocation and the lay mem-
bers of the Church the one as a body wishing to retain the cursing
clauses and the other to exclude them further shows that official
Protestantism adheres to antiquity much more than non-official Prot-
estantism : a contrast equally displayed not long since between the
opinions of the lay part and the clerical part of the Protestant Irish
Church.

Throughout political organizations the like tendency, though less
dominant, is very strong. The gradual establishment of law, by the
consolidation of custom, is the formation of something fixed in the
midst of things that are changing ; and, regarded under its most gen-
eral aspect as the agency which maintains a permanent order, it is in
the very nature of a State-organization to be relatively rigid. The
way in which primitive principles and practices, no longer fully in
force among individuals ruled, survive in the actions of ruling agents,
is curiously illustrated by the long retention between nobles of a right
of feud after it had been disallowed between citizens. Chief vassals,
too, retained this power to secure justice for themselves after smaller
vassals lost it : not only was a right of war with one another recog-
nized, but also a right of defence against the king. And we see that
even now, in the relations between Governments, there persists that
use of force to "remedy injuries, which originally existed between all
individuals. As bearing in the same direction, it is significant that
the right of trial by battle, which was a regulated form of the aborigi-
nal system under which men administered justice in their own cases,
survived among the ruling classes when no longer legal among inferior
classes. Even on behalf of religious communities judicial duels were
fought. Ilere the thing it concerns us to note is, that the system of
fighting in person and fighting by deputy, when no longer otherwise
lawful, remained in force, actually or formally, in various parts of the
regulative organization. Up to the reign of George III., trial by
battle could be claimed as an alternative of trial by jury. Duels con-
tinued till quite recently between members of the ruling classes, and

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 13

especially between officers ; and even now in Continental armies duel-
ling is not only recognized as proper, but is, in some cases, imperative.
And then, showing most curiously how in connection with the oldest
part of the governing organization these oldest usages survive longest,
we have, in the coronation ceremony, a champion in armor uttering by
herald a challenge to all comers on behalf of the monarch.

If, from the agencies by which law is enforced, we pass to legal
forms, language, documents, etc., the like tendency is everywhere con-
spicuous. Parchment is retained for law-deeds, though paper has re-
placed it for other purposes. The form of writing is an old form.
Latin and Norman-French terms are still in use for legal purposes,
though not otherwise in use ; and even old English words, such as
" seize," retain, in Law, meanings which they have lost in current
speech. In the execution of documents, too, the same truth is illus-
trated ; for the seal, which was originally the signature, continues,
though the written signature now practica'ly replaces it nay, we re-
tain a symbol of the symbol, as may be seen in every share-transfer,
where there is a paper-wafer to represent the seal. Even still more
antique usages survive in legal transactions ; as in the form extant in
Scotland of handing over a portion of rock when an estate is sold, which
evidently answers to the ceremony among the ancient nations of send-
ing earth and water as a sign of yielding territory.

From the working of State-departments, too, many kindred illus-
trations might be given. Even under the peremptory requirements
of national safety, the flint-lock for muskets was but tardily replaced
by the percussion-lock ; and it was generations after tbe rifle had been
commonly in use for sporting purposes before it came into more than
sparing use for military purposes. Book-keeping by double entry had
long been permanently established in the mercantile world before it
superseded book-keeping by single entry in Government offices its
adoption dating back only to 1834, when a still more antique sys-
tem of keeping accounts, by notches cut on sticks, was put an end to
by the conflagration that resulted from the burning of the Exchequer
tallies.

The like holds with apparel, in general and in detail. Cocked hats
are yet to be seen on the heads of officers. An extinct form of dress
still holds its ground as the court-dress ; and the sword once habit-
ually worn by gentlemen has become the dress-sword worn only on
State-occasions. Everywhere officialism has its established uniforms,
which may be traced back to old fashions that have disappeared from
ordinary life. Some of these antique articles of costume we see sur-
mounting the heads of judges ; others there are which still hang
round the necks of the clergy ; and others which linger on the legs of
bishops.

Thus, from the use of a flint-knife by the Jews for the religious
ceremony of circumcision, down to the pronunciation of the terminal

H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

syllable of the prseterite in our Church service, down to the oyez shouted
in a law-court to secure attention, down to the retention of epaulets for
officers, and down to the Norman-French words in which the royal as-
sent is given, this persistence is everywhere traceable. And when we
find this persistence manifested throughout all ages in all departments
of the regulative organization when we see it to be the natural ac-
companiment of the function of that organization, which is essentially
restraining when we estimate the future action of the organization in
any case, by observing the general sweep of its curve throughout long
periods of the past we shall see how misleading may be the conclu-
sions drawn from recent facts taken by themselves. Where the regu-
lative organization is anywhere made to undertake additional func-
tions, we shall not form sanguine anticipations on the strength of im-
mediate results of the desired kind ; but we shall suspect that, after
the phase of early activity has passed by, the plasticity of the new
structure will rapidly diminish, the characteristic tendency toward
rigidity will begin to show itself, and in place of a progressive effect
there will come a restrictive effect.

The reader will now understand more clearly the meaning of the
assertion that true conceptions of sociological changes are to be
reached only by contemplating their slow genesis through centuries ;
and that basing inferences on results shown in short periods is as
illusory as would be judging of the Earth's curvature by observing
whether we are walking up or down hill. After recognizing which
truth he will perceive how great is another of the obstacles in the way
of the Social Science.

" But does not all this prove too much ? If it is so difficult to get
sociological evidence that is not vitiated by the subjective states of the
witnesses, by their prejudices, enthusiasms, interests, etc. if, where
there is impartial examination, the conditions of the inquiry are of
themselves so apt to falsify the result if there is so general a prone-
ness to assert as facts observed what were really inferences from ob-
servations, and so great a tendency also to be blinded by exterior trivi-
alities to interior essentials if, even where accurate data are accessible,
their multitudinousness and diffusion in Space make it impracticable
clearly to grasp them as wholes, while their unfolding in Time is so
slow that antecedents and consequents cannot be mentally represented
in their true relations is it not manifestly impossible that a Social
Science can be framed ? "

It must be admitted that the array of objective difficulties thus
brought together is formidable : and were it the aim of the Social
Science to draw quite special and definite conclusions, which must
depend for their truth upon exact data accurately coordinated, it
would obviously have to be abandoned. But there are certain classes
of general facts which remain after all errors in detail, however pro-

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS.

15

duced, have been allowed for. Whatever conflicts there may be
among accounts of events that occurred during the feudal ages, com-
parison of them brings out the incontestable truth that there was
a Feudal System. By implication, chronicles and laws indicate the
traits of this system ; and on putting side by side narratives and
documents written, not to tell us about the Feudal System but for
quite other purposes, we get tolerably clear ideas of these traits in
their essentials ideas made clearer still on collating the evidence
furnished by different contemporary societies. Similarly throughout.
By making due use not so much of that which past and present wit-
nesses intend to tell us, as of that which they tell us by implication, it
is possible to collect data for inductions respecting social structures
and functions in their origin and development : the obstacles which
arise in the disentangling of such data in the case of any particular
society being mostly surmountable by the help of the comparative
method.

Nevertheless, the difficulties that have been enumerated must be
ever present to us. Throughout, we hope to depend on testimony ;
and in every case we have to beware of the many modes in which evi-
dence may be vitiated have to estimate its worth when it has been
discounted in various ways ; and have to take care that our conclu-
sions do not depend upon any particular class of facts gathered from
any particular place or time.

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS.

By Dr. CAEPENTEE, P.E.S., LL.D.

A LECTURE, DELIVERED IK THE HCLME TOWN-HALL, MANCHESTER.

OUR subject to-night links itself in such a very decided manner to
the subject in which we were engaged last week, and the illus-
trations which I shall give you are so satisfactorily explained on the
scientific principle which I endeavored then to expound to you, that I
would spend a very few minutes in just going over some of the points
to which I then particularly directed your attention. My object was
to show you that, between our Mental operations and our Will, there
is something of that kind of relation which exists between a well-
trained horse and his rider; that the Will if rightly exercised in
early infancy in directing and controlling the mental operations ; in
directing the attention to the objects to which the intellect should be
applied ; in controlling and repressing emotional disturbance ; restrain-
ing the feelings when unduly excited, and putting a check upon the
passions that the will in that respect has the same kind of influence

1 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

over the mind, or ought to have, as the rider has upon his horse ; that
the powers and activities of the mind are to a very great degree inde-
pendent of the will; that the mind will go on of itself without any-
more than just the starting of the will, in the same manner as a horse
will go on in the direction that it has been accustomed to go with
merely the smallest impulse given by the voice, or the hand, or the
heel of the rider, and every now and then a very slight check (if it is
a well-trained horse) or guidance from the bridle, or from a touch of
the spur, and will follow exactly the course that the rider desires, but
by its own independent power. And, again, I showed you that as
there are occasions on which a horse is best left to itself, so there are
occasions when the mind is best left to itself, without the direction and
control of the will; in fact, in which the operations of the mind are
really disturbed by being continually checked and. guided and pulled
up by the action of the will, the result being really less satisfactory
than when the mind, previously trained and disciplined in that par-
ticular course of activity, is left to itself. I gave you some curious
illustrations of this from occurrences which have taken place in
Dreaming, or in that form of dreaming which we call Somnambulism :
where a legal opinion had been given, or a mathematical problem had
been resolved, in the state of sleep-waking; that is to say, the mind
being very much in the condition of that of the dreamer, its action
being altogether automatic, going on of itself without any direction
or control from the will but the bodily activity obeying the direction
of the mind. And then I went on to show you that this activity very
often takes place, and works out most important results, even without
our being conscious of any operations going on ; and that some of
these results are the best and most valuable to us in bringing at last
to our consciousness, ideas which we have been vainly searching for
as in the case where we have endeavored to remember something that
we have not at first been able to retrace, and which has flashed into
our minds in a few hours, or it may be a day or two afterward; or,
ao;ain, when we have been directing our minds to the solution of some
problem which we have put aside in a sort of despair, and yet in the
course of a little time that solution has presented itself while our
minds have either been entirely inactive, as in sleep, or have been
directed into some entirely different channel of action.

Now, like the well-trained horse which will go on of itself with the
smallest possible guidance, yet still under the complete domination
of the rider, and will even find its way home when the rider cannot
direct it thither, we find that the human mind sometimes does that
which even a well-trained horse will do that it runs away from the
o-uidance of its directing will. Something startles the horse, some-
thing gives it alarm ; and it makes a sudden bound, and then, perhaps,
sets off at a gallop, and the rider cannot pull it up. This alarm often
spreads contagiously, as it were, from one horse to another, as we

EPIDEMIC DELUSIOXS. 17

lately saw in the " stampede " at Aldershot. Or, again, a horse, even
if well trained, when he gets a new rider, sometimes, as we say, " tries
it on," to see whether the horse or the rider is really the master. I
have heard many horsemen say that that is a very familiar experience.
When yon first go ont with a new horse, it may be to a certain degree
restive ; but if the horse finds that yon keep a tight hand upon him,
and that his master knows well how to keep him under control, a little
struggling may have to be gone through, and the horse from that time
becomes perfectly docile and obedient. But, if, on the other hand,
the horse finds that he is the master, even for a short time, no end
of trouble is given afterward to the rider in acquiring that power
which he desires to possess. Now, that is just the case with our
minds ; we may follow out the parallel very closely indeed. We find
that if our minds once acquire habits habits of thought, habits of
feeling which are independent of the will, which the will has not
kept under adequate regulation, these habits get the better of us ; and
then we find that it is very difficult indeed to recover that power of
self-direction which we have been aiming at, and which the well-
trained and well-disciplined mind will make its highest object. So,
again, we find that there are states in which, from some defect in the
physical condition of the body, or it may be from some great shock
which has affected the mind and weakened for a time the power of the
will, very slight impulses just like the slight things that will make a
horse shy will disturb us unduly ; and we feel that our emotions are
excited in a way that we cannot account for, and we wonder why such
a little thing should worry and vex us in the way that it does. Even
the best of us know, within our own personal experience, that when
we are excessively fatigued in body, or overstrained in mind, our
power of self-control is very much weakened ; so that particular ideas
will take possession of us, and for a time will guide our whole course
of thought, in a manner which our sober judgment makes us feel to be
very undesirable. What, for instance, is more common than for a per-
son to take offence at something that has been said or done by his
most intimate friend, or by some member of his family ; merely be-
cause he has been jaded or overtasked, and has not the power of
bringing to the fair judgment of his common-sense the question
whether tnat offence was really intended, or whether it was a thing he
ought not to take any notice of? He broods over this notion, and
allows it to influence his judgment ; and, if he does not in a day or two
rouse himself and master his feelings by throwing it off, it may give
rise to a permanent estrangement. We are all of us conscious of
states of mind of that kind.

But there are states of mind which lead to very much more serious
disorder, arising from the neglect of that primary discipline and cul-
ture on which I have laid so much stress. We find that ignorance,
and that want of the habit of self-control which very commonly ac-

VOL. II. 2

18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

companies it, predispose very greatly indeed to the violent excitement
of the feelings, and to the possession of the mind by ideas which we
regard as essentially absurd ; and under these states of excitement of
feeling, and the tendency of these dominant ideas to acquire posses-
sion of the intellect, the strangest aberrations take place, not only in
individuals but in communities ; and it is of such that I have especial-
ly to speak to-night. We know perfectly well, in our individual ex-
perience, that these states tend to produce insanity if they are indulged
in, and if the individual does not make an earnest effort to free him-
self from their influence. But, looking back at the history of the
earlier ages, and carrying that survey down to the present time, we
have experience in all ages of great masses of people being seized upon
by these dominant ideas, accompanied with the excitement of some
passion or strong impulse which leads to the most absurd results ; and
it is of these Epidemic Delusions I have to now speak. The word
" epidemic " simply means something that falls upon, as it were, the
great mass of the people a delusion which affects the popular mind.
And I believe that I can best introduce the subject to you by showing
you how, in certain merely physical conditions, mere bodily states,
there is a tendency to the propagation, by what is commonly called
imitation, of very strange actions of the nervous system. I suppose
there is no one of you who does not know what an hysteric fit means,
a kind of fit to which young women are especially subject, but which
affects the male sex also. One reason why young women are particu-
larly subject to it is, that in the female the feelings are more easily
excited, while the male generally has a less mobile nervous system, his
feelings being less easily moved, while he is more influenced by the
intellect. These hysteric fits are generally brought on by something
that strongly affects the feelings. Now, it often happens that a case
of this sort presents itself in a school or nunnery, sometimes in a fac-
tory where a number of young women are collected together; one
being seized with a fit, others will go off in a fit of a very similar kind.
There was an instance a good many years ago in a factory in a country
town in Lancashire, in which a young girl was attacked with a violent
convulsive fit, brought on by alarm, consequent upon "one of her com-
panions, a factory operative, putting a mouse down inside her dress.
The girl had a particular antipathy to mice, and the sudden shock
threw her into a violent fit. Some of the other girls who were near
very soon passed off into a similar fit ; and then there got to be a no-
tion that these fits were produced by some emanations from a bale of
cotton ; and the consequence was that they spread, till scores of the
young women were attacked day after day with these violent fits.
The medical man who was called in saw at once what the state of
things was ; he assured them in the first place that this was all non-
sense about the cotton ; and he brought a remedy, in the second place,
which was a very appropriate one under the circumstance namely,

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 19

an electrical machine ; and lie gave them some good violent shocks,
which would do them no harm, assuring them that this would cure
them. And cure them it did. There was not another attack after-
ward. I remember very well that when I was a student at Bristol,
there was a ward in the hospital to which it was usual to send young
servant-girls; for it was thought undesirable that these girls should be
placed in the ward with women of a much lower class, especially the
lower class of Irishwomen who inhabited one quarter of Bristol, as I
believe there is an Irish quarter in Manchester. These girls were
mostly respectable, well-conducted girls, and it was thought better
that they should be kept together. Now, the result of this was that, if
an hysteric fit took any one of them, the others would follow suit ; and
I remember perfectly well, when I happened to be a resident pupil,
having to go and scold these girls well, threatening them with some
very severe infliction. I forget what was threatened, perhaps it would
be a shower-bath, for any one who went off into one of these fits.
Now, here the cure is effected by a stronger emotion, the emotion of
the dread of we will not call it punishment but of a curative meas-
ure ; and this emotion overcame the tendency to what we commonly
call imitation. It is the suggestion produced by the sight of one, that
brings on the fit in another, where there is the predisposition to it.
Now, I believe that in all these cases there is something wrong in the
general health or in the nervous system ; or the suggestion would not
produce such results. Take the common teething-fits of children.
We there see an exciting cause in the cutting of the teeth ; the press-
ure of the tooth against the gum being the immediate cause of the
production of convulsive action. But it will not do so in the healthy
child. I feel sure that in every case where there is a teething-fit, of
whatever kind, there is always some unhealthy condition of the ner-
vous system sometimes from bad food ; more commonly from bad
air. I have known many instances in which children had fits with
every tooth that they cut, yet when sent into the country they had no
recurrence of the fit. There must have been some predisposition, some
unhealthy condition of the nervous system, to favor the exciting cause,
which, acting upon this predisposition, brings out such very unpleas-
ant results.

There are plenty of stories of this kind that I might relate to you.
For instance, in nunneries it is not at all uncommon, from the secluded
life, and the attention being fixed upon one subject, one particular set
of ideas and feelings the want of a healthy vent, so to speak, for the
mental activity that some particular odd propensity has developed
itself. For instance, in one nunnery abroad, many years ago, one of
the youngest nuns began to mew like a cat ; and all the others, after a
time, did the same. In another nunnery one began to bite, and the
others were all affected with the propensity to bite. In one of these
instances the mania was spreading like wild-fire through Germany, ex-

2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tending from one nunnery to another ; and they were obliged to resort
to some such severe measures as I have mentioned to drive it out. It
was set down in some instances to demoniacal possession, but the devil
was very easily exorcised by some pretty strong threat on the part of
the medical man. The celebrated physician Boerhaave was called in
to a case of that kind in an orphan asylum in Holland, and I think his
remedy was a red-hot iron. He heated the poker in the fire, and said
that the next girl who fell into one of these fits should be burnt in the
arm; this was quite sufficient to stop it. In Scotland at one time
there was a great tendency to breaking out into fits of this kind in the
churches. This was particularly the case in Shetland ; and a very wise
minister there told them that the thing could not be permitted, and
that the next person who gave way in this manner as he was quite
sure they could control themselves if they pleased should be taken
out and ducked in a pond near. There was no necessity at all to put
his threat into execution. Here, you see, the stronger motive is sub-
stituted for the weaker one, and the stronger motive is sufficient to
induce the individual to put a check upon herself. I have said that it
usually happens with the female sex, though sometimes it occurs with
young men who have more or less of the same constitutional tendency.
What is necessary is to induce a stronger motive, which will call forth
the power of self-control which has been previously abandoned.

Now, this tendency, which here shows itself in convulsive move-
ments of the body, will also show itself in what we may call convul-
sive action of the Mind ; that is, in the excitement of violent feelings
and even passions, leading to the most extraordinary manifestations
of different kinds. The early Christians, you know, practised self-
mortification to a very great degree ; and considered that these pen-
ances were so much scored up to the credit side of their account in
heaven ; that, in fact, they were earning a title to future salvation by
self-mortification. Among other means of self-mortification, they
scourged themselves. That was practised by individuals. But in the
middle ages this disposition to self-mortification would attack whole
communities, especially under the dominant idea that the world was
coming to an end. In the middle of the thirteenth century, about 1250,
there was this prevalent idea that the world was coming to an end ;
and whole communities gave themselves up to this self-mortification
by whipping themselves. These Flagellants went about in bands with
banners, and even music, carrying scourges ; and then, at a given sig-
nal, every one would strip off the upper garment (men, women, and
children joined these bands), and proceed to flog themselves very
severely indeed, or to flog each other. This subsided for a time, but
it broke out again during and immediately after that terrible plague
which is known as the " black death," which devastated Europe in the
reign of Edward III., about the year 1340. This black death seems to
have been the Eastern plague in a very severe form, which we have

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 21

not known in this country since the great plague of London in Charles
IL's time, and one or two smaller outbreaks since, hut which has now
entirely left us. The severity of this plague in Europe was so great
that upon a very moderate calculation one in four of the entire popula-
tion was carried off by it ; and in some instances it is said that nine-
tenths of the people died of it. You may imagine, therefore, what a
terrible infliction it was. And you would have supposed that it would
have called forth the better feelings of men and women generally ; but it
did not. One of the worst features, morally, of that terrible affliction,
was the lamentable suspension of all natural feelings which it seemed
to induce. When any member of a family was attacked by this
plague, every one seemed to desert him, or desert her ; the sick were
left, to die alone, or merely under the charge of any persons who
thought that they would be paid for rendering this service ; and the
funerals were carried on merely by these paid hirelings in a manner
most repulsive to the feelings : and yet the very people who so de-
serted their relatives would join the bands of flagellants, who paraded
about from place to place, and even from country to country morti-
fying their flesh in this manner for the purpose of saving their own
soids, and, as they said, also making expiation for the great sins which
had brought down this terrible visitation. This system of flagellation
never gained the same head in this country that it did on the Conti-
nent. A band of about 100 came to London about the middle of the
reign of Edward IIL, in the year 1350. They came in the usual style,
with banners and even instruments of music, and they paraded the
streets of London. At a given signal every one lay down and uncov-
ered the shoulders, excepting the last person, who then flogged every
one till he got to the front, where he lay down; and the person last in
the rear stood up, and in his turn flogged every one in front of him.
Then he went to the front and lay down ; and so it went on until the
whole number had thus been flogged, each by every one of his fellows.
This discipline however, did not approve itself to the good citizens of
London, and it is recorded that the band of flagellants returned without
having made any converts. Whether the skins of the London citizens
were too tender, or whether their good sense prevailed over this reli-
gious enthusiasm, we are not informed ; at any rate, the flagellants went
back very much as they came, and the system never took root in this
country ; yet for many years it was carried on elsewhere. One very
curious instance is given of the manner in which it fastened on the
mind that mothers actually scourged their new-born infants before
they were baptized, believing that in so doing they were making an
offering acceptable to God. Now all this appears to us perfectly ab-
surd. We can scarcely imagine the state of mind that should make
any sober, rational persons suppose that this could be an offering ac-
ceptable to Almighty God ; but it was in accordance with the religious
ideas of the time ; and for a good while even the Church sanctioned

22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and encouraged it, until at last various moral irregularities grew up,
of a kind that made the Pope think it a very undesirable thing, and it
was then put down by ecclesiastical authority ; yet it was still prac-
tised in secret for some time longer, so that it is said that even until
the beginning of the last century there were small bands of flagellants
in Italy, who used to meet for this self-mortification.

That was one form in which a dominant idea took possession of the
mind and led to actions which might be called voluntary, for they
were done under this impression, that such self-mortification was an ac-
ceptable offering. But thei-e were other cases in which the action of the
body seemed to be in a very great degree involuntary, just about as
involuntary as an hysteric fit, and yet in which it was performed
under a very distinct idea ; such was what was called the " Dancing
Mania," which followed upon this great plague. This dancing mania
seemed in the first instance to seize upon persons who had a tendency
to that complaint which we now know as St. Vitus's dance St. Vitus
was, in fact, the patron saint of these dancers. St. Vitus's dance, or
chorea, in the moderate form in which we now know it, is simply this,
that there is a tendency to jerking movements of the body, these move-
ments sometimes going on independently of all voluntary action, and
sometimes accompanying any attempt at voluntary movement ; so that
the body of a person may be entirely at rest until he desires to exe-
cute some ordinary movement, such as lifting his hand to his head to
feed himself, or getting up to walk ; then, when the impulse is given
to execute a voluntary movement, instead of the muscles obeying the
will, the movement is complicated (as it were) with violent jerking ac-
tions, which show that there is quite an independent activity. The
fact is, that stammering is a sort of chorea. We give the name of
chorea to this kind of disturbance of the nervous system, and the action
of stammering is a limited chorea chorea limited to the muscles con-
cerned in speech, when the person cannot regulate the muscles so as to
bring out the words desired ; the very strongest effort of his will can-
not make the muscles obey him, but there is a jerking, irregular action
every time he attempts to pronounce particular syllables. And the
discipline that the stammerer has to undergo in order to cure or alle-
viate his complaint is just the kind of discipline I have spoken of so
frequently the fixing the attention on the object to be gained, and
regularly exercising the nerves and muscles in proceeding from that
which they can do to that which they find a difficulty in doing. That
is an illustration of the simpler form of this want of definite control
over the muscular apparatus, connected with a certain mental excite-
ment ; because every one knows that a stammerer is very much affected
by the condition of his feelings at the time. If, for example, he is at
all excited, or if he apprehends that he shall stammer, that is enough
to produce it. I have known persons who never stammered in ordi-
nary conversation, yet when in company with stammerers they could

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 23

scarcely avoid giving way to it ; and even when the subject of stam-
mering was talked about, when the idea was conveyed to their minds,
they would begin to hesitate and stutter, unless they put a very strong
control upon themselves. It is just in this way, then, only in the most
exaggerated form, that these persons were afflicted with what was
called the dancing mania. They would allow themselves to be pos-
sessed with the idea that they must dance; and this dancing went on,
bands going from town to town, and taking in any who would join them.
Instances are recorded in which they would go on for twenty-four or
thirty-six hours, continually dancing and jumping and exerting them-
selves in the most violent manner, taking no food all this time, until at
last they dropped on the ground almost lifeless ; and in fact several per-
sons, it is said, did die from pure exhaustion, and this just because they
were possessed with the idea that they must dance. They were drawn
in, as it were, by the contagion of example ; and, when once they had
given way to it, they did not seem to know when to stop. This was
kept up by music and by the encouragement and excitement of the
crowd around ; and it spread among classes of persons who (it might
be supposed) would have had more power of self-restraint, and would
not have joined such unseemly exhibitions. The extraordinary capa-
city, as it were, for enduring physical pain, was one of the most curi-
ous parts of this condition. They would frequently ask to be struck
violently ; would sometimes lie down, and beg persons to come and
thump and beat them with great force. They seemed to enjoy this.
In another case that I might mention this was shown still more.
The case was of a similar type, but was connected more distinctly
with the religious idea, and it occurred much more recently. The
case was that known in medical history as the Convulsionnaires of
St.-Mudard. There was a cemetery in Paris in which a great saint
had been interred, and some young women visiting his tomb had been
thrown into a convulsive attack which propagated itself extensively ;
and these convulsionnaires spreading the contagion, as it were, into
different classes of French society, one being seized after another till
the number became very great in all grades. Here, again, one of the
most curious things was the delight they seemed to take in what
would induce in other persons the most violent physical suffering.
There was an organized band of attendants, who went about with
clubs, and violently beat them. This was called the grand secours,
which was administered to those who were subject to these convulsive
attacks. You would suppose that these violent blows with the clubs
would do great mischief to the bodies of these people ; but they only
seemed to allay their suffering.

This, then, is another instance of the mode in which this tendency
to strange actions under the dominance of a particular idea will spread
through a community. Here you have the direct operation of the per-
verted mind upon the body. But there are a great many cases in

24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which the perversion shows itself more in the mental state alone, lead-
ing - to strange aberrations of Mind, and ultimately to very sad results
in the condition of society where these things have spread, but not
leading to any thing like these convulsive paroxysms. I particularly
allude now to the epidemic belief in Witchcraft, which, more or less,
formerly prevailed constantly among the mass of the population, but
every now and then broke out with great vehemence. This belief in
witchcraft comes down to us from very ancient periods ; and at the
present time it is entertained by the lowest and most ignorant of the
population in all parts of the world. We have abundant instances of
it still, I am sorry to say, in our own community. We have poor, ig-
norant servant-girls allowing themselves to be if I may use such a
word " humbugged " by some designing old woman, who persuades
them that she can predict the husbands they are to have, or tell where
some article that they have lost is to be found, and who extracts money
from them merely as a means of obtaining a living in this irregular
way, and I believe at the bottom rather enjoying the cheat. Every
now and then we hear of some brutal young farmer who has pretty
nearly beaten to death a poor old woman, whom he suspected of caus-
ing; a murrain amonsr his cattle. This is what we know to exist among
the least cultivated of the savage nations at the present time, and
always to have existed. But we hope that the progress of rationalism
in our own community will, in time, put an end to this, as it has in the
middle and upper ranks of society during the last century or century
and a half. It is not very long since almost every one believed in the
possession of these occult powers by men and women, but especially
by old women. This belief has prevailed generally in countries which
have been overridden by a gloomy fanaticism in religious matters. I
speak of it simply as a matter of history. There is no question at all that
this prevailed where the Romish Church was most intolerant, espe-
cially in countries where the Inquisition was dominant, and its powers
were exerted in such a manner as to repress free thought and the free
exercise of feeling ; and, again, where strong Calvinism has exercised
an influence of exactly the same kind as in Scotand, a century and a
half ago, and in New England, where there was the same kind of
religious fanaticism. It is in these communities that belief in witch-
craft has been most rife, has extended itself most generally, and has
taken possession of the public mind most strongly ; and the most ter-
rible results have happened. Now, I will only cite one particular in-
stance, that of New England, in the early part of the last century and the
end of the century before. Not very long after the settlement of New
England, there was a terrible outbreak of this belief in witchcraft. It
began in a family, the children of which were out of health ; and cer-
tain persons whom they disliked were accused of having bewitched
them. Against these persons a great deal of evidence that we should
now consider most absurd was brought forward, and they were actually

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 25

executed : and some of them under torture, or under moral torture
for it was not merely physical torture that was applied ; in many cases
it was the distress and moral torture of being so accused, the dread,
even if found not guilty, of being considered outcasts all their lives, or
of being a burden to their friends made confessions which any sober
persons would have considered perfectly ridiculous ; but, under the
dominant idea of the reality of this witchcraft, no one interfered to
point out how utterly repugnant to common-sense these confessions
were, as well as the testimony that was brought forward. And this
spread to such a degree in New England, one person being accused
after another, that, at last, even those who considered themselves God's
chosen people began to feel, " Our turn may come next ; " they then
began to think better of it, and so put an end to these accusations,
even some who were under sentence being allowed to go free ; and to
the great surprise of those who were entirely convinced of the truth of
these accusations, this epidemic subsided, and witchcraft was not
heard of for a long time afterward ; so that the belief has never pre-
vailed in New England from that time to the present, excepting among
the lowest and most ignorant class. In Scotland, these witch-persecu-
tions attained to a most fearful extent during the seventeenth century.
They were introduced into England very much by James I., who came
to England possessed by these ideas, and he communicated them to
others, and there were a good many witch-persecutions during his
reign. After the execution of Charles I., and during the time of the
Commonwealth and the Puritans, there were a good many witch-per-
secutions ; but I think, after that, very little more was heard of them.
And yet the belief in witchcraft lingered for a considerable time
lono-er. It is said that even Dr. Johnson was accustomed to remark
that he did not see that there was any proof of the non-existence of
witches ; that, though their existence could not be proved, he was not
at all satisfied that they did not exist. John Wesley was a most de-
vout believer in witchcraft, and said on one occasion that, if witchcraft
was not to be believed, we could not believe in the Bible. So you see
that this belief had a very extraordinary hold over the public mind. It
was only the most intelligent class, whose minds had been freed from
prejudice by general culture, who were really free from it; and that
cultivation happily permeated downward, as it were; so that now I
should hope there are very few among our intelligent working-class in
our great towns where the general culture is much higher than it is
in the agricultural districts who retain any thing more than the linger-
ing superstition which is to be found even in the very highest cir-
cles as, for instance, not liking to be married on a Friday, or not
liking to sit down thirteen at the dinner-table. These are things
which even those who consider themselves the very aristocracy of in-
tellect will sometimes confess to, laughing at it all the time, but say-
ing, " It goes against the grain, and I would rather not do it." These,

26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I believe, are only lingering superstitions that will probably pass away
in another half century, and we shall hear nothing more of them ; the
fact being that the tendency to these delusions is being gradually
grown out of.

Now, this is the point I would especially dwell upon. To the child-
mind nothing is too strange to be believed. The young child knows
nothing about the Laws of Xature ; it knows no difference between
what is conformable to principles, and what, on the other hand, is so
strange that an educated man cannot believe it. To the child every
new thing that it sees is equally strange; there is none of that power
of discrimination that we acquire in the course of our education the
education given to us, and the education that we give ourselves. We
gradually, in rising to adult years, grow out of this incapacity to dis-
tinguish what is strange from what is normal or ordinary. We grad-
ually come to feel " Well, I can readily believe that, because it fits
in with my general habit of thought ; I do not see any thing strange in
this, although it is a little unusual." But, on the other hand, there
are certain things we feel to be too strange and absurd to be believed ;
and that feeling we come to especially, when we have endeavored to
cultivate our Common-Sense in the manner which I described to you
in my last lecture. The higher our common-sense that is, the gen-
eral resultant of the whole character and discipline of our minds the
more valuable is the direct judgment that we form by the use of it.
And it is the growth of that common-sense, which is the most remark-
able feature in the progress of thought during the last century. The
discoveries of science ; the greater tendency to take rational and sober
views of religion ; the general habit of referring things to principles ;
and a number of influences which I cannot stop particularly to de-
scribe, have so operated on the public mind, that every generation is
raised, I believe, not merely by its own culture, but by the acquired
result of the experience of past ages ; for I believe that every gener-
ation is born, I will not say wiser, but with a greater tendency to wis-
dom. I feel perfectly satisfied of this, that the child of an educated
stock has a much greater power of acquiring knowledge than the child
of an uneducated stock ; that the child that is the descendant of a
race in which high moral ideas have been always kept before the mind,
has a much greater tendency to act uprightly than the child that has
grown up from a breed that has been living in the gutter for genera-
tions past. I do not say that these activities are born with us, but the
tendency to them that is, the aptitude of mind for the acquirement
of knowledge, the facility of learning, the disposition to act upon right
principles I believe is, to a very great degree, hereditary. Of course
we have lamentable examples to the contrary, but I am speaking of
the general average. I am old enough now to look back with some
capacity of observation for forty years, and I can see in the progress of
society a most marked evidence of the higher general intelligence, the

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 27

greater aptitude for looking at things as they are, and for not allowing
strange, absurd notions to take possession of the mind ; while, again,
I can trace, even within the last ten years, in a most remarkable man-
ner, the prevalence of a desire to do right things for the right's sake,
and not merely because they are politic. And I am quite sure that
there is a gradual progress in this respect, which has a most important
influence in checking aberrations of the class of which I have spoken.
Still we see these aberrations, and there is one just now which is
exciting a good deal of attention that which you have heard of un-
der the name of " Spiritualism." Now, I look upon the root of this
spiritualism to lie in that which is a very natural, and in some respects
a wholesome disposition of the kind a desire to connect ourselves in
thought with those whom we have loved and who are gone from us.
Nothing is more admirable, more beautiful, in our nature than this
longing for the continuance of intercourse with those whom we have
loved on earth. It has been felt in all nations and at all times, and
we all of us experience it in regard to those to whom we have been
most especially attached. But this manifestation of it is one which
those who experience this feeling in its greatest purity and its greatest
intensity feel to be absurd and contrary to common-sense that the
spirits of their departed friends should come and rap upon tables and
make chairs dance in the air, and indicate their presence in grotesque
methods of this kind. The most curious part of it is that the spirits
should obey the directions of the persons with whom they profess to
be in communication that when they say, " Rap once if you mean yes,
and raj) twice if you mean no," and so on, they should just follow any
orders they receive as to the mode in which they will telegraph re-
plies to their questions. It seems to me repugnant to one's common-
sense ; but the higher manifestations of these spiritual agencies seem
to me far more repugnant to common-sense ; and that is when persons
profess to be able to set all the laws of Nature at defiance ; when it is
said, for instance, that a human being is lifted bodily up into the air
and carried, it may be, two or three miles, and descends through the
ceiling of a room. One of the recent statements of this kind, you
know, is that a certain very stout and heavy lady was carried a dis-
tance of about two miles from her own house, and dropped plump
down upon the table round which eleven persons were sitting; she
came down through the ceiling, they could not state how, because they
were sitting in the dark, and that darkness has a good deal to do with
most of these manifestations. Now, let us analyze them a little. I
am speaking now of what I will call the genuine phenomena those
which happen to persons who really are honest in their belief. I ex-
clude altogether, and put aside the cases, of which I have seen num-
bers, in which there is the most transparent trickery, and in which the
only wonder is, that any rational persons should allow themselves to
be deceived by it.

28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I have paid a great deal of attention during the last twenty years
to this subject, and I can assure you that I have, in many instances,
known things most absurd in themselves, and most inconsistent with
the facts of the case as seen by myself and other sober-minded wit-
nesses, believed in by persons of very great ability, and, upon all ordi-
nary subjects, of great discrimination. But I account for it by the
previous possession of their minds by this dominant idea the expecta-
tion they have been led to form, either by their own earnest desire for this
kind of communication, or by the sort of contagious influence to which
some minds are especially subject. I say " the earnest desire," for it
is a very curious thing that many of those who are the most devout
spiritualists are persons who have been themselves previously rather
skeptical upon religious matters ; and many have said to me that this
communication is really the only basis of their belief in the unseen
world. Such being the case, I cannot wonder that they cling to it
with very strong and earnest feeling. A lady, not undistinguished in
the literary world, assured me several years ago that she had been
converted by this spiritualism from a state of absolute unbeHef in
religion ; and she assured me, also, that she regarded medical men and
scientific men, who endeavored to explain these phenomena upon ra-
tional principles, and to expose deception, where deception did occur,
as the emissaries of Satan, who so feared that the spread of spiritualism
would destroy his power upon earth, that he put it into the minds of
medical and scientific men to do all that they could to prevent it.
Now that, I assure you, is a fact. That was said to me by a lady of
considerable literary ability, and I believe it represents, though rather
extravagantly, a state of mind which is very prevalent ; the great
spread of the intense materialism of our age tending to weaken, and in
some instances to destroy, that healthful longing which we all have, I
believe, in our innermost nature, for a higher future existence, and
which is to my mind one of the most important foundations of our be-
lief in it. We live too much in the present ; we think too much of the
things of the world as regards our material comfort and enjoyment,
instead of thinking of them as they bear upon our own higher nature.
I believe that this tendency, which I think is especially noticeable in
America or at least it was a few years ago from all that I was able
to learn, had a great deal to do with the spread of this belief in what is
called Spiritualism. The spiritualists assert that in America they are
numbered by millions, and that there are very few people of any kind
of intellectual culture who have not either openly or secretly given in
their adhesion to it. I believe that is a gross exaggeration ; still, there
can be no doubt, from the number of periodicals they maintain, and
the advertisements in them of all kinds of strange things that are done
spirit-drawings made, drawings of deceased friends, and spiritual in-
struction given of various kinds that there must be a very extended
belief in this notion of communication with the unseen world through
these " media."

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 29

I can only assure you for myself that, having, as I have said, de-
voted considerable attention to this subject, I have come to the conclu-
sion most decidedly with, I believe I may say, as little prepossession
as most persons, and with every disposition to seek for truth simply
to allow for our knowledge, or I would rather say for our ignorance, a
very large margin of many things that are beyond our philosophy
with every disposition to accept facts when I could once clearly satisfy
myself that they were facts I have had to come to the conclusion that
whenever I have been permitted to employ such tests as I should em-
ploy in any scientific investigation, there was either intentional decep-
tion on the part of interested persons, or else self-deception on the part
of persons who were very sober-minded and rational upon all ordinary
affairs of life. Of that self-deception I could give you many very curi-
ous illustrations, but the limits of our time will prevent my giving you
more than one or two. On one occasion I was assured that, on the
evening before, a long dining-table had risen up and stood a foot high in
the air, in the house in which I was, and to which I was then admitted
for the purpose of seeing some of these manifestations by persons about
whose good faith there could be no doubt whatever. I was assured by
them " It was a great pity you were not here last night, for, unfor-
tunately, our principal medium is so exhausted by the efforts she put
forth last night that she cannot repeat it." But I was assured, upon
the word of three or four who were present, that this table had stood
a foot high in the air, and remained suspended for some time, without
any hands being near it, or at any rate with nothing supporting it ;
the hands might be over it. But I came to find, from experiments per-
formed in my presence, that they considered it evidence of the table
rising into the air, that it pressed upward against their hands ; that
they did not rest upon their sense of sight ; for I was looking in this
instance at the feet of the table, and I saw that the table upon which
the hands of the performers were placed, and which was rocking about
upon its spreading feet, really never rose into the air at all. It would
tilt to one side or to the other side, but one foot was always resting on
the ground. And when they declared to me that this table had risen
in the air, I said, " I am very sorry to have to contradict you, but I
was looking at the feet of the table all the time, and you were not ;
and I can assert most positively that one of the feet never left the
ground. Will you allow me to ask what is your evidence that the
table rose into the air ? " " Because we felt it pressing upward against
our hands." I assure you that was the answer I received ; their con-
clusion that the table rose in the air being grounded on this, that their
hands being placed upon the table, they felt, or they believed, that
the table was pressing upward against their hands, though I saw all
the time that one foot of the table had never left the ground. Now,
that is what we call a " subjective sensation ; " one of those sensations
which arise in our own minds under the influence of an idea. Take,

3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for instance, the very common case when we sleep in a strange bed,
it may he in an inn that is not very clean, and we begin to be a little
suspicions of what other inhabitants there may be in that bed ; and
then we begin to feel a " creepy, crawly " sensation about us, which
that idea will at once suggest. Now, those are subjective sensations ;
those sensations are produced by the mental idea. And so in this case
I am perfectly satisfied that a very large number of these spiritual
phenomena are simply subjective sensations ; that is, that they are the
result of expectation on the part of the individual. The sensations are
real to them. You know that, when a man has suffered amputation of
his leg, he will tell you at first that he feels his toes, that he feels his limb ;
and, perhaps to the end of his life, every now and then he will have
this feeling of the limb moving, or of a pain in it ; and yet we know
perfectly well that this is simply the result of certain changes in the
nerve, to which, of course, there is nothing answering in the limb that
was removed. These subjective sensations, then, will be felt by the
individuals as realities, and will be presented to others as realities,
when, really, they are simply the creation of their own minds, that
creation arising out of the expectation which they have themselves
formed. These parties believed that the table would rise ; and, when
they felt the pressure against their hands, they fully believed that the
table was rising.

Take the case of Table-turning, which occurred earlier. I dare say
many of you remember that epidemic which preceded the spiritualism ;
in fact, the spiritualism, in some degree, arose out of table-turning.
My friend the chairman (Dr. Noble) and I hunted in couples, a good
many years ago, with a third friend, the late Sir John Forbes, and we
went a great deal into these inquiries ; and I very well remember sitting
at a table with him, I suppose twenty-five years ago, waiting in solemn
expectation for the turning of the table ; and the table wont round.
This was simply the result of one of the party, who was not influenced
by the philosophical skepticism that we had on the subject, having a
strong belief that the phenomenon would occur ; and when he had sat
for some time with his hands pressed down upon the table, an involun-
tary muscular motion, of the kind I mentioned in my last lecture, took
place, which sent the table turning. There was nothing to the Physi-
ologist at all difficult in the understanding of this. Prof. Faraday
was called upon to explain the table-turning, which many persons set
down to electricity ; but he was perfectly satisfied that this was a most
untrue account of it, and that the explanation was (as, in fact, I had
previously myself stated in a lecture at the Royal Institution) that the
movements took place in obedience to ideas. Movements of this class
are what I call " ideo-motor," or reflex actions of the brain ; and the
occurrence of these movements in obedience to the idea entertained is
the explanation of all the phenomena of table-turning. Prof. Faraday
constructed a very simple testing apparatus, merely two boards, one

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS.

3

over the other, and confined by elastic hands, but the upper board
rolling readily upon a couple of pencils or small rollers ; and resting
on the lower board was an index, so arranged that a very small mo-
tion of this upper board would manifest itself in the movement of the
index through a large arc. He went about this investigation in a
thoroughly scientific spirit. He first tied together the boards so that
they could not move one upon the other, the object being to test
whether the mere interposition of the instrument would prevent the
action. He had three or four of these indicators prepared, and he put
them down on the table so fixed that they would not move. He then
put the hands of the table-turners on these ; and it was found, as he
fully expected, that the interposition of this indicator under their hands
did not at all prevent the movement of the table. The hands were
resting on the indicator ; and when their involuntary pressure was ex-
erted, the friction of the hands upon the indicators, and of the indica-
tors upon the table, carried round the table just as it had done before.
Now, if there had been any thing in the construction of the instrument
to prevent it, that would not have happened. Then he loosened the
upper hoard and put the index on, so that the smallest motion of the
hands upon the board would manifest itself, before it would act on the
table, in the movement of the index ; and it was found that when the
parties looked at the index, and watched its indications, they were
pulled up as it were, at the very first involuntary action of their hands,
by the knowledge that they were exerting this power, and the table
then never went round. One of the strangest parts of this popular
delusion was, that even after this complete exposure of it by Faraday,
there were a great many persons, including many who were eminently
sensible and rational in all the ordinary affairs of life, who said : " Oh,
but this has nothing at all to do with it. It is all very well for Prof.
Faraday to talk in this manner, but it has nothing at all to do with it.
We know that we are not exerting any pressure. His explanation
does not at all apply to our case." But then Prof. Faraday's table-
turners were equally satisfied that they did not move the table, until
the infallible index proved that they did. And if any one of these
persons, who know that they did not move the table, were to sit down
in the same manner with those indicators, it would have been at once
shown that they did move the table. Nothing was more curious than
the possession of the minds of sensible men and women by this idea
that the tables went round by an action quite independent of their own
hands ; and not only that, but that really, like the people in the dan-
cing mania, they must follow the table. I have seen sober and sensi-
ble people running round with a table, and with their hands placed on
it, and asserting that they could not help themselves that they were
obliged to go with the table. Now, this is just simply the same kind
of possession by a dominant idea, that possessed the dancing maniacs
of the middle ages.

32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Then the Table-tilting came up. It was found that the table
would tilt in obedience to the directions of some spirit, who was in the
first instance (I speak now of about twenty years ago) always believed
to be an evil spirit. The table-tilting first developed itself in Bath, un-
der the guidance of some clergymen thei*e, who were quite satisfied
that the tiltings of the table were due to the presence of evil spirits.
And one of these clergymen went farther, and said that it was Satan
himself. But it was very curious that the answers obtained by the
rappings and tiltings of the tables always followed the notions of the
persons who put the questions. These clergymen always got these
answers as from evil spirits, or satisfied themselves that they were evil
spirits by the answers they got. But, on the other hand, other per-
sons got answers of a very different kind ; an innocent girl, for instance,
asked the table if it loved her, and the table jumped up and kissed her.
A gentleman who put a question to one of these tables got an extremely
curious answer, which affords a very remarkable illustration of the
principle I was developing to you in the last lecture the unconscious
action of the brain. He had been studying the life of Edward Young,
the poet, or at least had been thinking of writing it ; and the spirit of
Edward Young announced himself one evening, as he was sitting with
his sister-in-law the young lady who asked the table if it loved her.
Edward Young announced himself by the raps, spelling out the words
in accordance with the directions that the table received. He asked,
" Are you Young, the poet ? " " Yes." " The author of the ' Night
Thoughts ? ' " " Yes." " If you are, repeat a line of his poetry." And
the table spelled out, according to the system of telegraphy which had
been agreed upon, this line:

" Man is not formed to question, but adore."

He said, "Is this in the 'Night Thoughts?'" "No." " Where is
it ? " "JO B." He could not tell what this meant. He went home,
bought a copy of Young's works, and found that in the volume con-
taining Young's poems there was a poetical commentary on Job which
ended with that line. He was extremely puzzled at this ; but two or
three weeks afterward he found he had a copy of Young's works in
his own library, and was satisfied from marks on it that he had read
that poem before. I have no doubt whatever that that line had re-
mained in his mind, that is, in the lower stratum of it ; that it had been
entirely forgotten by him, as even the possession of Young's poems
had been forgotten ; but that it had been treasured up as it were in
some dark corner of his memory, and had come up in this manner, ex-
pressing itself in the action of the table, just as it might have come up
in a dream.

These are curious illustrations, then, of the mode in which the
minds of individuals act when there is no cheating at all this action
of what we call the subjective state of the individual dominating these

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 33

movements ; and I believe that that is really the clew to the interpre-
tation of the genuine phenomena. On the other hand, there are a great
many which we are assured of for instance, this descent of a lady
through the ceiling which are self-delusions, pure mental delusions,
resulting from the preconceived idea and the state of expectant atten-
tion in which these individuals are. Here are a dozen persons sitting
round a table in the dark, with the anticipation of some extraordinary
event happening. In another dark seance one young lady thought she
would like to have a live lobster brought in, and presently she began
to feel some uncomfortable sensations, which she attributed to the
presence of this live lobster ; and the fact is recorded that two live lob-
sters were brought in ; that is, they appeared in this dark seance
making their presence known, I suppose, by crawling over the persons
of the sitters. But that is all we know about it that they felt some-
thing they say they were two live lobsters, but what evidence is
there of that ? the seance was a dark one. We are merely told that
the young lady thought of a live lobster ; she said they had received
so many flowers and fruits that she was tired of them, and she thought
of two live lobsters ; and forthwith it was declared that the live lob-
sters were present. I certainly should be much more satisfied with
the narration, if we were told that they had made a supper off these
lobsters after the stance was ended.

Now, it has been my business lately to go rather carefully into the
analysis of several of these cases, and to inquire into the mental con-
dition of some of the individuals who have reported the most remark-
able occurrences. I cannot it would not be fair say all I could say
with regard to that mental condition ; but I can only say this, that it
all fits in perfectly well with the result of my previous studies upon
the subject, viz., that there is nothing too strange to be believed by
those who have once surrendered their judgment to the extent of ac-
cepting as credible things which common-sense tells us are entirely
incredible. One gentleman says he glories in not having that scien-
tific incredulity which should lead him to reject any thing incredible
merely because it seems incredible. I can only say this, that we might
as well go back to the state of childhood at once, the state in which
we are utterly incapable of distinguishing the strange from the true.
That is a low and imperfect condition of mental development ; and all
that we call education tends to produce the habit of mind that shall
enable us to distinguish the true from the false actual facts from the
creations of our imagination. 1 do not say that we ought to reject
every thing that to us, in the first instance, may seem strange. I could
tell you of a number of such things in science within your own expe-
rience. How many things there are in the present day that we are
perfectly familiar with the electric telegraph, for instance which
fifty years ago would have been considered perfectly monstrous and
incredible. But there we have the rationale. Any person who chooses
VOL. 11. 3

34. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to study the facts may at once obtain the definite scientific rationale y
and these things can all be openly produced and experimented upon,
expounded and explained. There is not a single thing we are asked
to believe of this kind, that cannot be publicly exhibited. For instance,
in this town, last week, I saw a stream of molten iron coming out from
a foundery ; I did not see on this occasion but the thing has been
done over and over again that a man has gone and held his naked
hand in such a stream of molten iron, and has done it without the
least injury ; all that is required being, to have his hand moist, and if
his hand is dry he has merely to dip it in water, and he may hold his
hand for a certain time in that stream of molten iron without receiving
any injury whatever. This was exhibited publicly at a meeting of the
British Association at Ipswich many years ago, at the foundery of
Messrs. Ransome, the well-known agricultural implement makers. It
is one of the miracles of science, so to speak ; they are perfectly credi-
ble to scientific men, because they know the principle upon which it
happens, and that principle is familiar to you all that if you throw a
drop of water upon hot iron, the water retains its spherical form, and
does not spread upon it and wet it. Vapor is brought to that con-
dition by intense heat, that it forms a sort of film, or atmosphere, be-
tween the hand and the hot iron, and for a time that atmosphere is not
too hot to be perfectly bearable. There are a number of these mira-
cles of science, then, which we believe, however incredible at first
sight they may appear, because they can all be brought to the test of
experience, and can be at any time reproduced under the necessary
conditions. Houdin, the conjurer, in his very interesting autobiog-
raphy a little book I would really recommend to any of you who are
interested in the study of the workings of the mind, and it may be
had for two shillings Houdin tells you that he himself tried this ex-
periment after a good deal of persuasion ; and he says that the sensa-
tion of immersing his hand in this molten metal was like handling
liquid velvet. These things, I say, can be exhibited openly above-
board ; but these Spiritual phenomena will only come just when cer-
tain favorable conditions are present conditions of this kind, that
there is to be no scrutiny no careful examination by skeptics ; that
there is to be every disposition to believe, and no manifestation of any
incredulity, but the most ready reception of what we are told. I was
asked some years ago to go into an investigation of the Davenport
Brothers ; but then I was told that the whole thing was to be done in
the dark, and that I was to join hands and form part of a circle ; and
I responded to the invitation by saying that in all scientific inquiries I
considered the hands and the eyes essential instruments of investiga-
tion, and that I could not enter into any inquiry, and give whatever
name I possess in science to the result of it, in which I was not allowed
freely to use my hands and my eyes. And, wherever I have gone to
any of these Spiritual manifestations, and have been bound over not

EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 35

to interfere, I have seen things which, I feel perfectly certain, I could
have explained if I had only heen allowed to look under the table, for
instance, or to place my leg in contact with the leg of the medium.
And it has been publicly stated within the last month, that the very
medium whom I suspected strongly of cheating on an occasion of this
kind, was detected in the very acts which I suspected, but which I was
not allowed to examine. I cannot, then, go further into this inquiry at
the present time, but I can only ask you to receive my assurance as
that of a scientific man, who has for a long course of years been ac-
customed to investigate the curious class of actions to which I have
alluded, and which disguise themselves under different names. A
great number of the very things now clone, by persons professing to
call themselves Spiritualists, were done thirty years ago, or professed
to be done, by those who call themselves " Mesmerists ; " thus the lift-
ing of the whole body in the air was a thing that was asserted as pos-
sible by mesmerists, as is now done by Mr. Home and his followers.
These things, I say, crop up now and then, sometimes in one form,
sometimes in another; audit is the same general tendency to credu-
lity, to the abnegation of one's common-sense, that marks itself in
every one of these epidemics.

Thus, then, we come back to the principle from which we started
that the great object of all education should be to give to the mind
that rational direction which shall enable it to form an intelligent and
definite judgment upon subjects of this kind, without having to go
into any question of formal reasoning upon them. Thus, for example,
is it more probable that Mr. Home floated out of one window and in
at another, or that Lord Lindsay should have allowed himself to be
deceived as to a matter which he admits only occurred by moonlight f
That is the question for common-sense. I believe, as I stated just now,
that the tendency to the higher culture of the present age will mani-
fest itself in the improvement of the next generation, as well as of our
own ; and it is in that hope that I have been ericouraged on this and
other occasions to do what I could for the promotion of that desire for
self-culture, of which I see so many hopeful manifestations at the
present day. When once a good basis is laid by primary education, I
do not see what limit there need be to I will not say the learning of
future generations but to their icisdom, for wisdom and learning are
two very different things. I have known some people of the greatest
learning, who had the least amount of wisdom of any persons who
have come in my way. Learning, and the use that is made of it, are
two very different things. It is the effort to acquire a distinct and
definite knowledge of any subject that is worth learning, which has
its ultimate effect, as I have said, upon the race, as well as upon the
individual.

But there are great differences, as to their effects upon the mind,
among different subjects of study; and I have long been of opir

3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ion that those studies afford the best discipline, in which the mind is
brought into contact with outward realities a view which has late-
ly been put forth with new force by my friend Canon Kingsley. You
know that Canon Kingsley has acquired great reputation as an his-
torian. He held the Professorship of History at the University of
Cambridge for many years, and, in fact, has only recently withdrawn
from it. Canon Kingsley also early acquired a considerable amount
of scientific culture, and he has always been particularly fond of Natu-
ral History. Now, he lately said to the working-men of Bristol that
he strongly recommended them to cultivate Science, rather than
study History; having himself almost withdrawn from the study of
history, for this reason, that he found it more and more difficult to
satisfy himself about the truth of any past event ; while, on the other
hand, in the study of science, he felt that we were always approaching
nearer to the truth. A few days ago I was looking through a maga-
zine article on the old and disputed question of Mary Queen of Scots,
which crops up every now and then. She is once more put upon her
trial. Was Mary Queen of Scots a vicious or a virtuous woman ?
The question will be variously answered by her enemies and by her
advocates ; and I believe it will crop up to the day of doom, without
ever being settled. Now, on the other hand, as we study scientific
truth, we gain a certain point, and may feel satisfied we are right up
to that point, though there may be something beyond; while the ele-
vation we have gained enables us to look higher still. It is like
ascending a mountain ; the nearer we get to the top, the clearer and
more extensive is the view. I think this is a far better discipline to
the mind than that of digging down into the dark depths of the past,
in the search for that which we cannot hope ever thoroughly to bring
to light. It so happened that only a fortnight ago I had the oppor-
tunity of asking another of our great historians, Mr. Froude, what he
thought of Canon Kingsley's remark. He said, "I entirely agree with
it ; " and, in some further conversation I had with him on the subject,
I was very much struck with finding how thoroughly his own mind
had been led, by the very important and profound researches he has
made into our history, to the same conclusion the difficulty of arriv-
ing at absolute truth upon any historical subject. Now, we do hope
and believe that there is absolute truth in Science, which, if not at
present in our possession, is within our reach ; and that, the nearer we
are able to approach to it, the clearer will be our habitual perception
of the difference between the real and the unreal, the firmer will be
our grasp of all the questions that rise in the ordinary course of our
lives, and the sounder will be the judgment we form as to great politi-
cal events and great social changes. Especially will this gain be ap-
parent in our power of resisting the contagious influence of " Mental
Epidemics."

THE PRACTICAL MAN AS AN OBSTRUCTIVE. 37
THE PEACTICAL MAN AS AN OBSTEUCTIYE. 1

By F. J. BKAMWELL, C. E.

IN" prosperous times those engaged in manufactures are too busy-
earning and saving money to attend to a reorganization of their
plant ; in had times they are too dispirited and too little inclined to
spend the money, that in better times they have saved, in replacing old
and wasteful appliances by new and economical ones, and one feels
that there is a very considerable amount of seeming justification for
their conduct in both instances, and that it requires a really compre-
hensive and large intelligence and a belief in the future, possessed by
only a few out of the bulk of mankind, to cause the manufacturer to
pursue that which would be the true policy, as well for his own in-
terests as for those of the community. But there is a further and a
perpetual bugbear in the way of such improvements, and that bugbear
is the so-called " practical man," and he was in my mind when, in
previous parts of this address, I have hinted at the existence of an
obstacle to the adoption of improvement.

I do not wish the section for one moment to suppose that I, brought
up as an apprentice in a workshop, and who all my life have practised
my profession, intend to say one word against the truly practical man.
On the contrary, he is the man of all others that I admire, and by
whom I would wish persons to be guided, because the truly practical
man is one who knows the reason of that which he practises, who can
give an account of the faith that is in him, and who, while he possesses
the readiness of mind and the dexterity which arise from long-con-
tinued and daily intercourse with the subject of his profession, possesses
also that necessary amount of theoretical and scientific knowledge
which would justify him in pursuing any process he adopts, which in
many cases enable him to devise new processes, or which, at all events,
if he be not of an inventive quality of mind, will enable him to appre-
ciate and value the new processes devised by others. This is the truly
practical man, about whom I have nothing to ' say except that which
is most laudatory. But the practical man as commonly understood
means a man who knows the practice of his trade, and knows nothing
else concerning it; the man whose wisdom consists in standing by,
seeing but not investigating the new discoveries which are taking place
around him ; in decrying those discoveries ; in applying to those who
invent improvements, even the very greatest, the epithet of " schemes ; "
and then, when he finds that beyond all dispute some new matter is
good and has come into general practice, taking to it grumblingly, but
still taking to it, because if he do not he could not compete with his

1 Extract from the opening address of the chairman of the Mechanical Section of the
British Association, at Brighton.

3 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

co-manufacturers, the aim and object of such a man being to insure
that he should never make a mistake by embarking his capital or his
time in that which has not been proved by men of large hearts and
large intelligence. It is such a practical man as this who delays all
improvement. For years he delayed the development in England of
the utilization of the waste gases of blast-furnaces, and he has done it
so successfully that, as I have already had occasion to remark, this
utilization is by no means universal in this kingdom. It was such
men as these who kept back surface condensation for twenty years. It
is such a man as this who, when semaphores were invented, would have
said, "Don't suggest such a mode to me of transmitting messages; I
am a practical man, sir, and I believe that the way to transmit a mes-
sage is to write it on paper, deliver it to a messenger, and put him on
horseback." In the next generation his successor would be a believer
in semaphores, and when the electrical telegraphist came to him and
said, " Do you know that I can transmit movement by invisible elec-
trical power through a wire, however long, and it seems to me that if
one were to make a code out of this movement I could speak to you at
Portsmouth at one end of the wire while I was in London at the other,"
what would have been the answer of the practical man ? " Sir, I don't
believe in transmitting messages by an invisible agency ; I am a prac-
tical man, and I believe in semaphores, which I can see working." In
like manner when the Siemens' regenerative gas-furnace was introduced,
what said the practical man ? " Turn your coals into gas and burn
the gas, and then talk of regeneration ! I don't know what you mean
by regeneration, except in a spiritual sense. I am a practical man, and
if I want heat out of coals I put coals on to a fire and burn them ; "
and for fifteen years the practical man has been the bar to this most
enormous improvement in metallurgical operations. The practical man
is beginning slowly to yield with respect to these furnaces, because he
finds, as I have already said, that men of greater intelligence have now
in sufficiently large numbers adopted the invention to make a formi-
dable competition with persons who stolidly refuse to be improved.
The same practical man for years stood in the way of the development
of Bessemer steel. Now he has been compelled to become a convert.
I will not weary you by citing more instances ; but one knows, and
one's experience teaches one that this is the conduct of the so-called
practical man ; and his conduct arises not only from the cause which I
have given (his ignorance of the principles of his profession), but from
another one which I have had occasion to allude to when speaking
upon a different subject, and that is, you offend his pride when you
come to him and say, " Adopt such a plan ; it is an improvement on
the process you carry on." His instinct revolts at the notion that you,
a stranger, very likely his junior, and very probably, if the improve-
ment be an original and radical one, a person not even connected with
the trade to which that improvement relates, should dare to assert that

THE PRACTICAL MAN AS AN OBSTRUCTIVE. 39

you can inform him of something connected with his business that he
did not know. It may he said that employers and the heads of manu-
factories are, as a rule, in these days, educated gentlemen, and that
therefore it is wrong to impute to them the narrow-mindedness of the
practical man. I agree that in numerous instances this would he
wrong ; but the fact is that, in many cases I think I may say in most
cases the head of the establishment, the moneyed man, the man who,
by his commercial ability (that most necessary element in all estab-
lishments), keeps the concern going by finding lucrative orders, is not
intimately acquainted with the practice of the business carried on by
his firm ; he relies upon some manager or foreman, who, too commonly,
is not the real, but the so-called practical man. It is such men as
those who simply practise that which they have seen, without know-
ing why they practise it. To them the title of practical man has most
improperly been attributed, and it is on the advice of such men that
the true heads of the firm too commonly regulate their conduct as to
the management of their business, and as to the necessary changes to
be made in the way of improvement.

As I have said, the practical man derides those who bring forward
new inventions, and calls them schemers. No doubt, whatever they
do scheme and well it is for the country that there are men who do
so it also may be true that the majority of schemes prove abortive ;
but it must be recollected that the whole progress of art and manufac-
ture has depended and will depend upon successful discoveries which,
in their inception, were and will be schemes just as much as were those
discoveries that have been and will be unfruitful ; but the successful
discoveries, because they are successful, are taken out of the category
of schemes when years of untiring application on the part of the invent-
ors have, so to speak, thrust them down the throat of the unwilling
practical man. Take the instance of Mr. Bessemer, who was beset for
years by difficulties of detail in his great scheme of improvement in the
manufacture of steel. As long as he was so beset the practical men
chorused, " He is a schemer ; he is one of the schemers ; it is a
scheme." Supposing that these practical difficulties had beaten Mr.
Bessemer, and that they had not been overcome to this day ? The
practical man would have derided him still as a schemer, although the
theory and groundwork of his invention would have been as true un-
der these circumstances as it now is. Fortunately for the world, and
happily for him, he was able to overcome these most vexatious hin-
drances and make his invention that which it is. No one now dares
apply the term " schemer " to Mr. Bessemer, or " scheme " to his in-
vention, but it is as true now that he is a " schemer " and his inven-
tion a " scheme " as it would have been had he failed up to the present
to conquer the minor difficulties. It is a species of profanation to sug-
gest, but I must suggest it, for it is true, that Watt, Stephenson, Fara-
day, and almost every other name among the honored dead to whose

4 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

inventive genius we owe the development that has taken place within
the last century in all the luxuries, the comforts, even the bare neces-
sities of our daily existence, would, in their day, and while struggling
for success, have been spoken of as schemers, even in respect of those
very inventions of which we are now enjoying the fruits. But I feel
I need not labor this point further at a meeting of the Mechanical Sec-
tion of the British Association, an association established for the ad-
vancement of science. I know I shall be accused of decrying the prac-
tical man and of upholding the " schemers." I say most emphatically
that I do not decry the practical man ; I plead guilty to the charge of
decrying the miscalled practical man, and I glory in my guilt, while I
readily accept that which I consider the. praise of upholding "schem-
ers," and I do so for this simple reason, that, if there were no schemers,
there would be no improvement. I think it becomes a scientific body
like the British Association to laud the generous effort of the unsuc-
cessful inventor, rather than to encourage the cold selfisnness of the
man who stands by and sees others endeavor to raise the structure of
improvement without lending a hand to help, and even sneers at the
builders, but, when the structure is fully raised and solidly established,
claims to come in to inhabit, and, being in, probably essays, cuckoo-
like, to oust the builders and to take possession for his own benefit.

DEVELOPMENT EN" DEESS.

By GEOEGE H. DAE WIN.

THE development of dress presents' a strong analogy to that of
organisms, as explained by the modern theories of evolution ; and
in this article I propose to illustrate some of the features which they
have in common. We shall see that the truth expressed by the prov-
erb, " Natura non facit saltum," is applicable in the one case as in the
other; the law of progress holds good in dress, and forms blend into
one another with almost complete continuity. In both cases a form
yields to a succeeding form, which is better adapted to the then sur-
rounding conditions ; thus, when it ceased to be requisite that men in
active life should be ready to ride at any moment, and when riding
had for some time ceased to be the ordinary method of travelling,
knee-breeches and boots yielded to trousers. The " Ulster coat," now
so much in vogue, is evidently largely fostered by railway-travelling,
and could hardly have flourished in the last century, when men either
rode or travelled in coaches, where there was no spare room for any
very bulky garment.

A new invention bears a kind of analogy to a new variation in

DEVELOPMENT IN DRESS. 41

animals ; there are many such inventions, and many such variations ;
those that are not really beneficial die away, and those that are really
good become incorporated by " natural selection," as a new item in
our system. I may illustrate this by pointing out how macintosh-
coats and crush-hats have become somewhat important items in our
dress.

Then, again, the degree of advancement in the scale of dress may
be pretty accurately estimated by the extent to which various " organs "
are specialized. For example, about sixty years ago, our present
evening-dress was the ordinary dress for gentlemen; top-boots, always
worn by old-fashioned " John Bull " in Punch's cartoons, are now re-
served for the hunting field ; and that the red coat was formerly only
a best coat, appears from the following observations of a " Lawyer of
the Middle Temple," in No. 129 of the Spectator: "Here (in Corn-
wall) we fancied ourselves in Charles II.'s reign the people having
made little variations in their dress since that time. The smartest of
the country squires appear still in the Monmouth cock ; and when they
go a-wooing (whether they have any post in the militia or not) they
put on a red coat." *

But besides the general adaptation of dress above referred to, there
is another influence which has perhaps a still more important bearing
on the development of dress, and that is fashion. The love of novelty,
and the extraordinary tendency which men have to exaggerate any
peculiarity, for the time being considered a mark of good station in
life, or handsome in itself, give rise, I suppose, to fashion. This influ-
ence bears no distant analogy to the "sexual selection," on which so
much stress has recently been laid in the " Descent of Man." Both
in animals and dress, remnants of former stages of development sur-
vive to a later age, and thus preserve a tattered record of the history
of their evolution.

These remnants may be observed in two different stages or forms :
1. Some parts of the dress have been fostered and exaggerated by
the selection of fashion, and are then retained and crystallized, as it
were, as part of our dress, notwithstanding that their use is entirely
gone (e. g., the embroidered pocket-flaps in a court uniform, now sewn
fast to the coat). 2. Parts originally useful have ceased to be of any
service, and have been handed down in an atrophied condition.

The first class of cases have their analogue in the peacock's tail, as
explained by sexual selection ; and the second in the wing of the
apteryx, as explained by the effects of disuse.

Of the second kind of remnant Mr. Tylor gives very good instances
when he says : a " The ridiculous little tails of the German postilion's
coat show of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd
rudiments ; but the English clergyman's bands no longer convey their

1 See p. 356 of Fairholt's " Costume in England," London, 1846.
4 " Primitive Culture," vol. i., p. 16, London, 1871.

+2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

history to the eye, and look unaccountable enough till one has seen the
intermediate stages through which they came down from the more
serviceable wide collars, such as Milton wears in his portraits, and
which gave their name to the ' band-box' they used to be kept in."
These collars are, curiously enough, worn to this day by the choristers
of Jesus College, Cambridge.

According to such ideas as these, it becomes interesting to try to
discover the marks of descent in our dresses, and in making this at-
tempt many things apparently meaningless may be shown to be full
of meaning.

Women's dress retains a general similarity from age to age, togeth-
er with a great instability in details, and therefore does not afford so
much subject for remark as does men's dress. I propose, therefore, to
confine myself almost entirely to the latter, and to begin at the top of
the body, and to work downward through the principal articles of
clothing.

Hats. Hats were originally made of some soft material, probably
of cloth or leather, and, in order to make them fit the head, a cord was
fastened round them, so as to form a sort of contraction. This is
illustrated on p. 524 of Fairholt's " Costume in England," in the
figure of the head of an Anglo-Saxon woman, wearing a hood bound
on with a head-band ; and on p. 530 are figures of several hats worn
during the fourteenth century, which were bound to the head by rolls
of cloth ; and all the early hats seem provided with some sort of band.
We may trace the remnants of this cord or band in the present hat-
band. A similar survival may be observed .in the strings of the
Scotch-cap, and even in the mitre of the bishop. 1

It is probable that the hat-band would long ago have disappeared
had it not been made use of for the purpose of hiding the seam join-
ing the crown to the brim. If this explanation of the retention of the
hat-band is the true one, we have here a part originally of use for one
purpose applied to a new one, and so changing its function ; a case
which has an analogy to that of the development of the swimming-
bladders of fishes, used to give them lightness in the water, into the
lungs of mammals and birds, used as the furnace for supporting ani-
mal heat.

The duties of the hat-band have been taken in modern hats by two
running strings fastened to the lining, and these again have in their
turn become obsolete, for they are now generally represented by a
small piece of string, by means of which it is no longer possible to
make the hat fit the head more closely.

The ancestor from which our present chimney-pot hat takes most

of its characteristics is the broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat, with an

immense plume falling down on to the shoulder, which was worn during

the reign of Charles II. 1 At the end of the seventeenth, and during

1 For the origin of this curious head-dress, see Fairholt, p. 564. 2 Ibid., p. 540.

DEVELOPMENT IN DRESS. 43

the eighteenth century, this hat was varied by the omission of the
plume, and by giving of the brim various " cocks." That these " cocks "
were formerly merely temporary is shown by Hogarth's picture of
Hudibras beating Sidrophel and his man Whacum, where there is a
hat, the brim of which is buttoned up in front to the crown with three
buttons. This would be a hat of the seventeenth century. After-
ward, during the eighteenth century, the brim was beut up in two or
three places, and, notwithstanding that these " cocks " became perma-
nent, yet the hats still retained the marks of their origin in the button
and strap on the right side. The cockade, I imagine, took its name
from its being a badge worn on one of the " cocks."

The modern cocked-hat, apparently of such an anomalous shape,
proves, on examination, to be merely a hat of the shape above referred
to ; it appears further that the right side was bent up at an earlier
date than the left, for the hat is not symmetrical, and the " cock " on
the right side forms a straight crease in the (quondam) brim, and that
on the left is bent rather over the crown, thus making the right side
of the hat rather straighter than the left. The hat-band here remains
in the shape of two gold tassels, which are just visible within the two
points of the cocked-hat.

A bishop's hat shows the transition from the three-cocked hat to
our present chimney-pot ; and because sixty years ago beaver-fur was
the fashionable material for hats, we must now needs wear a silken
imitation, which could deceive no one into thinking it fur, and which
is bad to resist the effects of weather. Even in a lady's bonnet the
elements of brim, crown, and hat-band, may be traced.

The " busby " of our hussars affords a curious instance of survival.
It would now appear to be merely a fancy head-dress, but on inspec-
tion it proves not to be so. The hussar was originally a Hungarian
soldier, and he brought his hat with him to our country. I found the
clew to the meaning of the hat in a picture of a Hungarian peasant.
He wore a red nightcap, something like that worn by our brewers'
men, or by a Sicilian peasant, but the cap was edged with so broad a
band of fur that it made in fact a low "busby." And now in our
hussars the fur has grown enormously, and the bag has dwindled into
a flapping ornament, which may be detached at pleasure. Lastly, in the
new "busby" of the Royal Engineers the bag has vanished, although
the top of the cap (which is made of cloth and not of fur) is still blue,
as was the bag formerly ; the top cannot, however, be seen, except
from a bird's-eye point of view.

It appears that all cockades and plumes are worn on the left side
of the hat, and this may, I think, be explained by the fact that a large
plume, such as that worn in the time of Charles II., or that of the
modern Italian Bersaglieri, would impede the free use of the sword ;
and this same explanation would also serve to show how it was that
the right side of the hat was the first to receive a " cock." A London

14 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

servant would be little inclined to think that he wears his cockade on
the left side to give his sword-arm full liberty.

Coats. Every one must have noticed the nick in the folded collar
of the coat and of the waistcoat ; this is of course made to allow for
the buttoning round the neck, but it is in the condition of a rudi-
mentary organ, for the nick would probably not come into the right
place, and in the waistcoat at least there are usually neither the requi-
site buttons nor button-holes.

" The modern gentleman's coat may be said to take its origin from
the vest, or long outer garment, worn toward the end of the reign of
Charles II." ! This vest seems to have had no gathering at the waist,
and to have been buttoned all down the front, and in shape rather like
a loose bag ; to facilitate riding it was furnished with a slit behind,
which could be buttoned up at pleasure ; the button-holes were em-
broidered, and, in order to secure similarity of embroidery on each side
of the slit, the buttons were sewn on to a strip of lace matching the
corresponding button-hole on the other side. These buttons and but-
ton-holes left their marks in the coats of a century later in the form of
gold lacing on either side of the slit of the tails.

In about the year 1700, it began to be the fashion to gather in the
vest or coat at the waist, and it seems that this was first done by two
buttons near the hips being buttoned to loops rather nearer to the
edge of the coat, and situated at about the level of the waist. Our
soldiers much in the same manner now make a waist in their loose
overcoats, by buttoning a short strap to two buttons, placed a consid-
erable distance apart on the back.

This old fashion is illustrated in a figure dressed in the costume of
1696, in an old illustration of the " Tale of the Tub," and also in the
figure of a dandy smelling a nosegay, in Hogarth's picture, entitled
"Here Justice triumphs in his Easy-Chair," etc., as well as elesewhere.
Engravings of this transition period of dress are, however, somewhat
rare, and it is naturally not common to be able to get a good view of
the part of the coat under the arms. This habit of gathering in the
waist will, I think, explain how it was that, although the buttons and
button-holes were retained down the front edges, the coat came to be
worn somewhat open in front.

The coat naturally fell in a number of plaits or folds below these
hip-buttons ; but in most of Hogarth's pictures, although the buttons
and plaits remain, yet the creases above the buttons disappear, and
seams appear to run from the buttons up under the arms. It may be
worth mentioning that in all such matters of detail Hogarth's accuracy
is notorious, and that therefore his engravings are most valuable for
the study of the dress of the period. At the end of the seventeenth,
and at the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, coats seem very com-
monly to have been furnished with slits running from the edge of the

1 Fairholt, p. 479.

DEVELOPMENT IN DRESS. 45

Blurt, up under the arms, and these' were made to button up, in a man-
ner similar in all respects to the slit of the tails. The sword was
usually worn under the coat, and the sword-hilt came through the slit
on the left side. Later on these slits appear to have been sewed up,
and the buttons and button-holes died away, with the exception of two
or three buttons just at the tops of the slits ; thus in coats of about
the year 1705, it is not uncommon to see several buttons clustered
about the tops of all three slits. The buttons at the top of the centre
slit entirely disappeared, but the two buttons now on the backs of our
coats trace their pedigree up to those on the hips. Thus it is not im-
probable that, although our present buttons represent those used for
making the waist, as above explained, yet that they in part represent
the buttons for fastening up these side-slits.

The folds which we now wear below the buttons on the back are the
descendants of the falling plaits, notwithstanding that they appear as
though they were made for, and that they are in fact commonly used
as, the recesses for the tail-pockets ; but that this was not their original
object is proved by the fact that during the last century the pockets
were either vertical or horizontal, placed a little in front of the two
hip-buttons (which have since moved round toward the back), and
had highly-embroidered flaps, buttons, and button-holes. The hori-
zontal pockets may now be traced in the pocket-flaps of court-dress
before alluded to ; and the vertical pocket is represented by some
curious braiding and a row of buttons, which may be observed on the
tails of the tunics of the Foot-Guards. The details of the manner in
which this last rudiment became reduced to its present shape may be
traced in books of uniforms, and one of the stages may now be fre-
quently seen in the livery of servants, in the form of a row of three or
fonr buttons running down near the edge of the tail, sewn on to a scal-
loped patch of cloth (the pocket-flap), which is itself sewed to the coat.

In the last century, when the coats had large flapping skirts, it be-
came the custom (as may be seen in Hogarth's pictures) to button
back the two corners of the coat, and also to button forward the inner
corners, so as to separate the tails for convenience in riding. 1 This
custom left its traces in the uniform of our soldiers down to the in-
troduction of the modern tunic, and such traces may still be seen in
some uniforms, for example, those of a lord-lieutenant and of the
French gensdarmerie. In the uniforms of which I speak, the coats
have swallow-tails, and these are broadly edged with a light-colored
border, tapering upward and getting broader downward ; at the bot-
tom of the tail, below where the borders join (at which joining there
is usually a button), there is a small triangle of the same color as the
coat with its apex at this button. This curious appearance is explained
thus : the two corners, one of which is buttoned forward and the

1 It seems to have been in actual use in 1760, although not in 1794. See Cannon's
" Hist. Rec. of British Army" (Loudon, 1837), the Second Dragoon Guards

4.6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

other backward, could not be buttoned actually to the edge of the
coat, but had to be fastened a little inland as it were ; and thus part
of the coat was visible at the bottom of the tail: the light-colored
border, although sewn to the coat, evidently now represents the lining,
which was shown by the corners being turned back.

It was not until the reign of George III. that coats were cut back
at the waist, as are our present evening-coats ; but since, before that
fashion was introduced, the coats had become swallow-tailed in the
manner explained, it seems likely that this form of coat was suggested
by the previous fashion. And, indeed, stages of development of a
somewhat intermediate character may be observed in old engravings.
In the uniforms of the last century the coats were double-breasted, but
were generally worn open, with the flaps thrown back and buttoned
to rows of buttons on the coat. These flaps, of course, showed the
lining of the coat, and were of the same color as the tails ; the but-
ton-holes were usually embroidered, and thus the whole of the front
of the coat became richly laced. Toward the end of the century the
coats were made tight, and were fastened together in front by hooks,
but the vestiges of the flaps remained in a double line of buttons, and
in the front of the coat being of a different color from that of the rest,
and being richly laced. A uniform of this nature is still retained in
some foreign armies. This seems also to explain the use of the term
" facings " as applied to the collar and cuffs of a uniform, since, as we
shall see hereafter, they would be of the same color as these flaps.
It may also explain the habit of braiding the front of a coat, as is
done in our hussar and other regiments.

In a " History of Male Fashions," published in the London Chronicle
in 1762, we find that "surtouts have now four laps on each side, which
are called ' dog's ears ; ' when these pieces are unbuttoned, they flap
backward and forward, like so many supernumerary patches just
tacked on at one end, and the wearer seems to have been playing at
backswords till his coat was cut to pieces. . . . Very spruce smarts
have no buttons nor holes upon the breast of these their surtouts,
save what are upon the ears, and their garments only wrap over their
bodies like a morning-gown." These dog's ears may now be seen in a
very meaningless state on the breasts of the patrol-jackets of our
officers, and this is confirmed by the fact that their jackets are not
buttoned, but fastened by hooks.

In early times, when coats were of silk or velvet, and enormously
expensive, it was no doubt customary to turn up the cuffs, so as not to
soil the coat, and thus the custom of having the cuffs turned back
came in. During the latter part of the seventeenth and during the
eighteenth century, the cuffs were very widely turned back, and the
sleeves consequently very short, and this led to dandies wearing large
lace cuffs to their shirts.

The pictures of Hogarth and of others show that the coat-cuffs

DEVELOPMENT IN DRESS. 47

were buttoned back to a row of buttons running round the wrist.
These buttons still exist in the sleeves of a Queen's Counsel, although
the cuffs are sewed back and the button-holes only exist in the form
of pieces of braid. This habit explains why our soldiers now have
their cuffs of different colors from that of their coats ; the color of
the linings was probably determined for each regiment by the colonel
for the time being, since he formerly supplied the clothing ; and we
know that the color of the facings was by no means fixed until re-
cently. The shape of the cuff has been recently altered in the line
regiments, so that all the original meaning is gone.

In order to allow of turning back with ease, the sleeve was gen-
erally split on the outer side, and this split could be fastened together
with a line of buttons and embroidered holes. In Hogarth's pictures
some two or three of these buttons may be commonly seen above the
reversed cuff; and notwithstanding that at first the buttons were out
of sight (as they ought to be) in the reversed part of the cuff, yet after
the turning back had become quite a fixed habit, and when sleeves
were made ti^ht ao-ain, it seems to have been usual to have the button
for the cuff sewed on to the proper inside, that is to say, the real out-
side of the sleeve.

The early stage may be seen in Hogarth's picture of the " Guards
marching to Finchley," and the present rudiment is excellently illus-
trated in the cuffs of the same regiments now. The curious buttons
and o-old lace on the cuffs and collars of the tunics of the Life-Guards
have the like explanation, but this is hardly intelligible without ref-
erence to a book of uniforms, as for example Cannon's "History of the
Second Dragoon Guards."

The collar of a coat would in ordinary weather be turned down
and the lining shown; hence the collar has commonly a different
color from that of the coat, and in uniforms the same color as have
the cuffs, which form, with the collars, the so-called " facings." A pict-
ure of Lucien Bonaparte in Lacroix's work on Costume shows a collar
so immense that were it turned up it would be as high as the top of
his head. This drawing indicates that even the very broad stand-up
collars worn in uniforms in the early part of this century, and of a
different color from that of the coat, were merely survivals of an
older form of turn-down collar. In these days, notwithstanding that
the same difference in color indicates that the collar was originally
turned down, yet in all uniforms it is made to stand up.

The pieces of braid or seams which run round the wrist in ordinary
coats are clearly the last remains of the inversion of the cuffs.

Trousers. I will merely observe that we find an intermediate
stage between trousers and breeches in the pantaloon, in which the
knee-buttons of the breeches have walked down to the ankle. I have
seen also a German servant who woi*e a row of buttons running from
the knee to the ankle of his trousers.

4 3 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Boots. One of the most perfect rudiments is presented by top-
boots. These boots were originally meant to come above the knee;
and, as may be observed in old pictures, it became customary to turn
the upper part down, so that the lining was visible all round the top.
The lining being of unblacked leather, formed the brown top which is
now worn. The original boot-tag may be observed in the form of a
mere wisp of leather sewn fast to the top, while the real acting tag
is sewn to the inside of the boot. The back of the top is also fastened
up, so that it could not by any ingenuity be turned up again into its
original position.

Again, why do we black and polish our boots? The key is found in
the French czrage, or blacking. We black our boots because brown
leather would, with wet and use, naturally get discolored with dark
patches, and thus boots to look well should be colored black. Now,
shooting-boots are usually greased, and that it was formerly custom-
ary to treat ordinary boots in the same manner is shown by the follow-
ing verse in the ballad of " Argentile and Curan : "

"He borrowed on the working daies
His holy russets oft,
And of the bacon's fat to make
His startops black and soft."

Start ops were a kind of rustic high shoes. Fairholt in his work
states that "the oldest kind of blacking for boots and shoes appears
to have been a thick, viscid, oily substance." But for neat boots a
cleaner substance than grease would be required, and thus wax would
be thought of; and that this was the case is shown by the French word
cirer, which means indifferently to " wax " or to " polish boots. "
Boots are of cour-e polished because wax takes so good a polish.
Lastly, patent-leather is an imitation of common blacking.

I have now gone through the principal articles of men's clothing,
and have shown how numerous and curious are the rudiments or " sur-
vivals," as Mr. Tylor calls them ; a more thorough search proves the
existence of many more. For instance, the various gowns worn at the
universities and elsewhere, afford examples. These gowns were, as
late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, simply upper garments, 1 but
have survived into this age as mere badges. Their chief peculiarities
consist in the sleeves, and it is curious that nearly all of such pecul-
iarities point to various devices by which the wearing of the sleeves
has been eluded or rendered less burdensome. Thus the plaits and
buttons in a barrister's gown, and the slit in front of the sleeve of the
B. A.'s gown, are for this purpose. In an M. A.'s gown the sleeves ex-
tend below the knees, but there is a hole in the side through which the
arm is passed ; the end of the sleeve is sewed up, but there is a kind
of scallop at the lower part, which represents the narrowing for the

1 See figures, pp. 254, 311, Fairholt.

DEVELOPMENT IX DRESS. 49

wrist. A barrister's gown has a small hood sewed to the left shoulder,
which would hardly go on to the head of an infant, even if it could be
opened out into a hood-shape.

It is not, however, in our dress alone that these survivals exist ;
they are to be found in all the things of our every-day life. For in-
stance, any one who has experienced a drive on a road so bad that
leaning back in the carnage is impossible, will understand the full
benefit to be derived from arm-slings such as are placed in first-class
railway-carriages, and will agree that in such carriages they are mere
survivals. The rounded tracery on the outsides of railway-carriages
shows the remnants of the idea that a coach was the proper pattern on
which to build them; and the word "guard" is derived from the man
who sat behind the coach and defended the passengers and mails with
his blunderbuss.

In the early trains (1838-'39) of the Birmingham Kailway there
were special "mail" carriages, which were made very narrow, and to
hold only four in each compartment (two and two), so as to be like the
coach they had just superseded.

The words dele, stet, used in correcting proof-sheets, the words sed
vide or s. v., ubi sup., ibid., loc. cit., used in foot-notes, the sign " &,"
which is merely a corruption of the word et, the word finis, until re-
cently placed, at the ends of books, are all doubtless survivals from
the day when all books were in Latin. The mark A used in writing
for interpolations appears to be the remains of an arrow pointing to
the sentence to be included. The royal " broad-arrow" mark is a sur-
vival of the head of " a barbed javelin, carried by sergeants-at-arms
in the king's presence as early as Richard the First's time." 1 Then,
again, we probably mount horses from the left side lest our swords
should impede us. The small saddle on the surcingle of a horse, the
seams in the backs of cloth-bound books, and those at the backs of
gloves, are rudiments but to give a catalogue of such things would
be almost endless. I have said enough, however, to show that by re-
membering that there is nihil sine causa, the observation of even
common things of every-day life may be made less trivial than it
might, at first sight appear.

It seems a general rule that on solemn or ceremonial occasions men
retain archaic forms ; thus it is that court-dress is a survival of the
every-day dress of the last century ; that uniforms in general are
richer in rudiments than common dress ; that a carriage with a pos-
tilion is de rigueur at a wedding; and that (as mentioned by Sir John
Lubbock) the priests of a savage nation, acquainted with the use of
metals, still use a stone knife for their sacrifices just as Anglican
priests still prefer candles to gas.

The details given in this article, although merely curious, and per-
haps insignificant in themselves, show that the study of dress from an

1 Fairholt, p. 580.

VOL. II,

5 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

evolutional stand-point serves as yet one further illustration of the al-
most infinite ramifications to which natural selection and its associated
doctrines of development may be applied. Macmillan's Magazine.

--

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY.

By WILLIAM SPOT TIS WOODE, F. E. S.

THERE are many ways in which men have looked at life, the higher
kind of life, that ideal which each of us forms in his own mind,
' to which we each hope that we are always tending. But all these va-
rious ideas may for the most part be grouped under two heads : the
Ideal of Rest and the Ideal of Work. " Rest, rest ! " said a brave old
German worker, "shall I not have Eternity to rest in? " That repre-
sents one view. " "Work, work ! " said another ; " must I not work now,
that I may the better work in Eternal Life ? " That represents the
other. But, without entering upon the somewhat transcendental ques-
tion of a future life, these ideas and aspirations have a meaning and
reality even in the life which we now live. How do we hope to spend
the leisure which old age may some day bring ? Or, nearer still, when
the day's work is done, and the day itself is not quite spent ; or when
such holiday as may befall each of us comes round, how do we hope to
spend the time? Do we long for mere rest, for that

" land
In which it seemed always afternoon ? "

Do we desire to sit us

"down upon the yellow sand
Between the sun and moon upon the shore,"

and sing with the lotus-eaters :

" All things have rest ; why should we toil alone,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm,
Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings.
There is no joy but calm ? "

Or do we rather with Ulysses say :

" How dull to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
"Were all too little, and of one to me
Too little remains ; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things ; and vile it were
For some [few] suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star
Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought."

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. S i

To which of these two ideals I myself lean has perhaps already be-
trayed itself; and that being so, I shall venture to consider your pres-
ence here a pi-oof that, for this evening at least, you side with me,
and that you are willing to spend an hour of your leisure in an intel-
lectual effort to see a little deeper into those phenomena which Nature
in this place and at this season displays with such profusion and
splendor.'

But at the outset I must warn you that we are met by a difficulty,
for the surmounting of which you must rely upon yourselves rather
than upon me. It is this : the phenomena to which I propose to draw
your attention, although taking place nearly every day, and all day
long, and in almost every direction, are veiled from our eyes ; and it is
only by the use of special appliances to aid our eyes that they can be
made visible. It will be my business to supply these appliances, and,
reproducing on such scale as may be possible within these four walls
the optical processes which are going on in the sea and sky outside, to
exhibit the hidden phenomena of which I am speaking. But it must
be your part to transport yourselves mentally from the mechanism of
the lecture-room to the operations of Nature, and by a " scientific use
of the imagination " (to adopt what has now become a household word
at these meetings) to connect the one with the other.

Now the main point in question is this : that light, when subjected
to the very ordinary processes of reflection from smooth surfaces, such
as a window, a mahogany table, or the sea itself, or when scattered to
us from the deep clear sky, undergoes in many cases some very pe-
culiar changes, the character and causes of which we have come here
to investigate. The principal appliance which will be used to detect
the existence of such changes, as well as to examine their nature, con-
sists of this piece of Iceland sj>ar, called from the man who first con-
structed a compound block of the kind a Nicol's prism, and this plate
of quartz or rock crystal ; both of which, as you will observe when
the light passes through them, are clear, transparent, and colorless,
and both of which transmit the direct light from the electric lamp with
equal facility, however they may be turned round about the beam of
light as an axis.

If, however, instead of allowing the beam to fall directly upon the
Nicol, we first cause it to be reflected from this plate of glass, we shall
find that the process of reflection has put the light into a new condi-
tion. The light is no longer indifferent to the rotation of the Nicol ;
in one position of the Nicol the light passes as before, but as the in-
strument is turned round the light gradually fades, and when it is
turned through a right angle the light is extinguished. Beyond this
position the light reappears, and the same changes of fading and re-
vival are observed in the light for every right angle through which
the instrument is turned.

But these phenomena are susceptible of a very beautiful modifica-

52 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion by the interposition of this plate of quartz between the reflecting
surface and the Nicol. The changes in the light are no longer mere
alterations of brightness, but exhibit a succession of colors resem-
bling in their main features those of the rainbow or spectrum.

The peculiar condition to which light must be brought in order
that these phenomena may be produced is called polarization ; and, al-
though an explanation of its nature must be reserved until later, I beg
you to notice that it is effected in this instance by reflection from a
plate of glass. A similar effect is produced if light be reflected from
many other substances, such as the leaves of trees, particularly ivy,
mahogany furniture, windows, shutters, and often roofs of houses, oil-
paintings, etc., and last, but not least, the surface of water. In each
of these cases the alternations of light and darkness are most strongly
marked, and the colors (if a quartz plate be used) are most vivid, or,
in technical language, the polarization is most complete, when the light
is reflected from each substance at a particular angle. In proportion
as the inclination of the light deviates from this angle the colors be-
come fainter, until, when it deviates very greatly, all trace of polariza-
tion at last disappears. Without occupying the time necessary to
shift our apparatus so as to exhibit this with the glass plate, we may
alter the reflecting surface from glass to water, and, by projecting on
the screen the beautiful phenomena of liquid waves, make visible the
different degrees of polarization produced at the variously-inclined
portions of the surfaces of those waves. A tea-tray will serve as well
as any thing else to form our little sea, and a periodic tap at one corner
will cause ripple enough for our present purpose. The waves now ap-
pear bright on the screen, and, although brighter in some parts than
in others, they are nowhere entirely dark. But on turning round the
Nicol the contrast of light and darkness becomes much stronger than
before. Here and there the light is absolutely extinguished ; in these
parts the polarization is complete, in others incomplete in various de-
grees. And if the quartz plate be again introduced we have the beau-
tiful phenomena of iris-colored rings playing over the surface of our
miniature sea.

Now, that which you see here produced by our lamp and tea-tray,
you may see any day under the bright sky of this southern coast.
By using an apparatus such as we have here, or a simpler one which
I will immediately describe, you may bring out for yourselves these
phenomena of color, and thereby detect the profusion of polarization
which Nature sheds around us. But, before describing it, there is one
peculiar feature of all these experiments which must be noticed
namely, that the same results would be produced if we changed the
positions of the lamp and the screen. The light which is now polar-
ized by the glass or the water, and examined by the Nicol, might
equally well be polarized by the Nicol and examined by the glass or
the water. And, therefore, if we find that any contrivance will serve

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. 53

for the one piu'pose, we may conclude that it will serve equally well
for the other.

And now a word about that simpler apparatus. When light falls
upon a transparent substance, part is reflected, part transmitted. If,
therefore, the reflected part is polarized (and you have already seen
that this is sometimes the case), it is not surprising that the transmit-
ted part should be so also. And further, if the polarization by a single
reflection or transmission is incomplete, it will become more and more
complete by a repetition of the processes. This being so, if we take
a pile of glass plates say half a dozen, more or less, the thinner the
better and hold them obliquely before our eye at an angle of about
30 (say one-third of a right angle) to the direction in which we are
looking, we shall have all that is necessary to detect the presence of
polarization ; and if, further, we hold a piece of talc or mica, such as
is commonly used as a cover to the globes of gas-burners, beyond the
pile of plates, color will be produced in the same general manner as
with the quartz, although with some essential difference in detail.

Suppose that we now turn our attention from the sea to the sky,
and that on a clear, bright day we sweep the heavens with our appara-
tus, or polariscope, as it is called, we shall find traces of polarization
colors brought out in a great many directions. But if we observe
more closely we shall find that the most marked effects are produced
in directions at right angles to that of the sun, when, in fact, we are
looking across the direction of the solar beams. Thus 5 if the sun
were just rising in the east or setting in the west, the line of most
vivid effect would lie on a circle traced over the heavens from north to
south. If the sun were in the zenith, or immediately overhead, the
most vivid effects would be found round the horizon ; while at inter-
mediate hours the circle would shift round at the same rate as the
clock, so as always to retain its direction at right angles to that of the
sun.

Now, what is it that can produce this effect or what even pro-
duces the light from all parts of a clear sky? The firmament is not a
solid sphere or canopy, as was once supposed ; it is clear, pure space,
with no contents, save a few miles of the atmosphere of our earth,
and beyond that the impalpable fluid or ether, as it is called, which is
supposed to pervade all space, and to transmit light from the further
limits of the stellar universe. But, apart from this ether, which is
certainly inoperative to produce the sky appearance as we see it, a
very simple experiment will suffice to show that a diffusion, or, as it
has been better called, a scattering of light, is due to the presence of
small particles in the air. If a beam from the electric lamp, or from
the sun if we had it, be allowed to pass the room, its track becomes
visible, as is well known by its reflection from the motes or floating
bodies, in fact by the dust in the air. But if we clear the air of dust,
as I now do by burning it with a spirit-lamp placed underneath, the

S4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

beam disappears from the parts so cleared, and the space becomes
dark. If, therefore, the air were absolutely pure and devoid of matter
foreign to it, the azure of the sky would be no longer seen, and the
heavens would appear black ; the illumination of objects would be
strong and glaring on the one side, and on the other their shadows
would be deep, and unrelieved by the diffused light to which we are
accustomed.

Now, setting aside the dust, of which we may hope that there is
but little on the downs behind your town, or out to sea in front, there
are always minute particles of water floating in the atmosphere.
These vary in size from the great rain-drops which fall to earth on a
sultry day, through the intermediate forms of mist and of fine, fleecy
cloud, to the absolutely invisible minuteness of pure aqueous vapor
which is present in the brightest of skies. It is these particles which
scatter the solar rays, and suffuse the heavens with light. And it is a
curious fact, established by Prof. Tyndall while operating with minute
traces of gaseous vapors (which I can only notice in passing, because
it belongs only in part to our present subject), that while coarse par-
ticles scatter rays of every color equally in other words, scatter
white light finer particles scatter fewer rays from the red end of the
spectrum, while the finest scatter only those from the blue end. And,
in accordance with this law, clouds are white, clear sky is blue.

But besides this fact, viz., that light scattered laterally from fine
particles is blue, the same philosopher perceived that light so scattered
is polarized ; and by that observation he again connected the celestial
phenomena described above with laboratory experiments.

By a slight modification of his experiment, due to Prof. Stokes, I
hope to make this visible to the audience. It will probably be in your
recollection that when polarized light passed through a Nicol, its
intensity is unaltered when the Nicol is in one position, but it is de-
stroyed when it is in another at right angles to the first. I now pass
the beam from the electric lamp through a tube of water containing a
few drops of mastic dissolved in alcohol. The mixture so formed holds
fine particles of mastic in a state of suspension ; these scatter the light
laterally, so as to be visible, I hope, to the entire audience. And if we
were to examine with a Nicol this scattered light, we should find the
phenomena of polarization. But, better still, we can cause the light
to pass through the Nicol before being scattered, and produce the
same effect, not only upon the particular part to which our eye is
directed, but upon the whole body of scattered light. As the Nicol is
turned, the light seen laterally begins to fade ; and when the instru-
ment has been turned through a right angle, the only parts remaining
visible are those which are reflected from the larger impurities floating
in the water independently of the mastic. An effect still more beauti-
ful, and at the same time more instructive, can be produced by inter-
posing, as was done in the case of reflection, a plate of quartz between

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. 55

the Nicol and the medium which causes polarization. The whole beam
is now suffused with color, the tint of which changes, as did the tints
on the waves, while the Nicol is turned round. And not only so, but
while the Nicol remains at rest, the tints are to be seen scattered in a
regular and definite order in different directions about the sides of the
beam. This may be shown by reflecting from a looking-glass a side
of the beam not visible directly, and by comparing the tint seen by
reflection with that seen direct. But this radial distribution of colors
may also be shown in a more striking manner, by putting together
two half-plates of quartz of the kinds which have the property of dis-
tributing the colors in opposite orders, and by observing the result
along the line of junction. The compound plate here used is known
by the name of a biquartz, and affords one of the most delicate tests
of the presence of polarized light. In this case, when the Nicol is
turned round, the colors of the two halves follow one another in op-
posite orders ; and as each series is completed twice in a revolution of
the Nicol, the halves of the quartz will be of the same color four times
in a revolution twice of one color and twice of its complementary.

The colors which w r e have here seen are those which would be
observed, as before remarked, upon examining a clear sky in a position
at right angles to that of the sun : and the exact tint visible will de-
pend upon the position in which we hold the Nicol, as well as upon
that of the sun. Suppose, therefore, we direct our apparatus to that
part of the sky which is all day long at right angles to the sun, that
is, to the region about the north-pole of the heavens (accurately to the
north-pole at the vernal and autumnal equinox) ; then, if on the one
hand w r e turn the Nicol round, say in a direction opposite to that of
the sun's motion, the colors will change in a definite order; if, on the
other, we hold it fixed, and allow the sun to move round, the colors
will change in a similar manner. And thus, in the latter case, we
might conclude the position of the sun, or, in other words, the time of
day, by the colors so shown. This is the principle of Sir Charles
Wheatstone's polar clock ; one of the few practical applications which
this branch of polarization has yet found. The action of such a clock
may be thus roughly shown : There is now projected upon the screen
a dial-plate, in which the hours are arranged in their usual order, but
are crowded together into half their usual space, viz., twelve hours
occupy half instead of the entire circle. The inner part of the disk is
covered with a plate of selenite (mica would serve the purpose equally
well), which is capable of revolving about its centre, and which, as
you see, in a particular position shows color more strongly than in
any other. An hour-hand is roughly drawn upon the plate. The
apparatus here used is furnished with two Nicol's prisms, the hinder
one of which imitates the polarizing effect of the sun, while that in
front is the instrument with which we should examine the north-pole
of the sky. The whole is now so arranged that when the plate shows

5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

brightest color the hand points to XII., say noon. As the back Nicol
is turned round, say as the sun begins to sink, the color fades ; and
when the plate is turned so as to restore the color, the hand points to
I. Similarly, as the back Nicol is turned gradually farther, represent-
ing the passage of the sun westward during the afternoon, the position
of the plate giving the strongest color, as indicated by the hand, cor-
responds to the successive hours of the dial ; and when the Nicol has
been turned through 90, that is, when the sun has reached the horizon,
the hand has moved from XII. to VI. In this way, as its inventor has
remarked, a dial may be constructed which will work equally well in
sunshine or in shade, or even when the sun itself is overcast, provided
only that there be a patch of clear sky to the north.

Up to this point we have reproduced in an experimental fashion
the general every-day phenomena, both celestial and terrestrial, which
give rise to polarization ; and we have given such general account of
them as will serve to connect them together, and to show that they
all belong to one system of laws affecting the nature of light. I
should, however, regret, and I feel confident that you would share in
that regret, if we were to leave the subject with its surface as it were
merely scratched, and without any attempt to penetrate deeper into
its substance. With your permission, therefore, we will devote such
time as you may be still willing to grant me to a few elementary ex-
periments in polarization, which, while certainly not less beautiful than
those which you have already seen, will, perhaps, better illustrate the
nature of the processes w T hich we are now trying to investigate.

Polarized light, as indicated at the outset, is distinguished from
common light by the presence of certain peculiarities not ordinarily
found, and these peculiarities are to be detected only by means of
special instruments. Light which has been reflected or transmitted
at particular angles from various substances, light wdiich has been
scattered by small particles, is found to be in this peculiar condition.
So likewise is light which has passed through this transparent piece
of Iceland spar, or Nicol's prism, as it is called. Yet the light which
has so passed through, and which is now projected on the screen, is to
the unaided eye in no way different from the same light before its
passage. Nevertheless, if we examine or analyze it by means of a
second Nicol, we shall find the peculiarity of its condition revealed.
For if either of the Nicols be turned gradually round (and remember
that they are both transparent, colorless blocks of crystal) the light
gradually fades until, when it has been turned through a right angle,
the light is absolutely extinguished. On turning the Nicol farther the
light revives, and afterward again fades, in such a manner that in a
complete revolution the light is twice at its brightest, and twice is
extinguished. Now, light is due to extremely small and rapid vibra-
tions of a very subtle medium, which is snpposed to pervade all space.
The fact that vibrations (i. e., motions to and fro) in one direction can

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. 57

produce waves advancing in another will be familiar to all of you who
have watched the movement of a cork floating on the sea. You will
have noticed that the cork has simply moved up and down, or nearly
60, while the waves have passed, as it were, under it, along the surface
of the water.

Now, in order to make clearer to our minds how this wave-motion
is produced, I will throw the electric light upon a machine devised for
the purpose. You now see a horizontal row of knobs. As the slider
is pushed in, the knobs at one end begin to rise in succession until each
has in turn attained its greatest elevation. Immediately after reach-
ing its highest position it begins to descend; so that the knobs first
rise and then fall in regular succession, and continue to rise and fall
in the same manner so lonsr as the motion is continued. Each of the
knobs, beginning from number one, is thus successively at the highest
position, while at the same moment those immediately before and be-
hind it are at lower positions. And as the knob which is at the highest
position represents what we call the crest of the wave, the crest will
pass successively along all the knobs, beginning from the first. Thus
the waves are transmitted along the line, While the vibrations take
place across it. If the line of knobs represent the direction of a ray,
their motions will represent the vibrations and waves to which the
light is supposed to be due. In ordinary light these vibrations may
take place in any directions perpendicular to the ray ; and the effect
of the crystal of which the Nicol is made, is to restrict these vibrations
to a particular direction. In the arrangement now before you the first
Nicol causes the vibrations to be altogether horizontal. When the
second Nicol is placed similarly to the first, it will obviously have no
further effect upon the light ; but if it be turned through an angle, it
will transmit only vibrations inclined to the horizontal at that angle ;
that is, only such part of the original horizontal vibrations as can be
brought into the inclined direction ; in other words, it will transmit
only part of the light. And as the inclination is increased the part of
the light transmitted will diminish, until, when the second Nicol is in
a position to transmit only vertical vibrations (i. e., when it has turned
through a right angle), the light will vanish. Such is an explanation
of this fundamental experiment in polarization on the principle of what
is called the Wave Theory of Light ; and I have ventured to give it in
some detail, because it is the key to all others, and forms a starting-
point for any who may desire to go further in the subject ; and it is a
remarkable feature in this Wave Theory of Light that the results of
many other experimental combinations, to some of which we will now
proceed, might be predicted upon the principles already laid down.

If a plate of crystal, such as selenite, be placed between the two
Nicols, and turned round in its own plane, it will be found that in
certain positions at right angles to one another no effect is produced.
These may be called neutral positions. In all other positions the field

58 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is tinted with color, which is most brilliant when the plate has been
turned through half a right angle from a neutral position. If one of
the Nicols be turned, the selenite remaining still, the color will fade
and entirely vanish when the Nicol has turned through half a right
angle. After this position the complementary color will begin to
appear, and will be brightest when the Nicol has completed a right
ano-le.

The oolors so produced depend upon the thickness of the plate ;
thus, if we take a plate of selenite merely split and not ground to a
uniform thickness, we shall have a variety of tints indicating the thick-
ness of each particular part ; or we may, by a careful arrangement of
suitable thicknesses, produce a colored pattern of delicacy and variety
dependent only upon the skill with which the pieces have been worked.

A plate of the same crystal worked into a concave form is interest-
ing as showing not only that the colors are dependent upon the thick-
ness, but also that when, with an increasing or diminishing thickness
of crystal, they have run through their cycle, they begin again ; in
other words, that the phenomenon is periodic. The field is then
covered with a series of concentric rings, each of which is tinted with
colors in a regular order.

In all these instances it is clear, from the experiments themselves,
as well as from other experiments which form no part of our present
subject, that the modifications which light undergoes are due to the
internal structure of the crystals used. And it becomes a question of
interest whether it be not possible, by some mechanical process, per-
formed upon a non-cystalline substance, such as glass, so far to imitate
a crystalline structure as to reproduce some of the optical results
already shown. For this purpose let us take a bar of glass. On inter-
posing it in its natural state between the Nicols when crossed, we find
that no effect is produced in the dark field upon the screen. If, how-
ever, I merely press it as though with the intention of bending or
breaking it, there will be at once brought about a condition of strain
capable of affecting the vibrations of the ray falling upon it, to such a
degree that some of them will find their way through the screen. And
this result may be explained on precisely the same mechanical princi-
ples as in the case of the crystal. The effect may be heightened by
placing the piece of glass in a vice, and screwing it up so as to bend
or compress it to a greater degree than w r as possible by the hand alone.
"When this is done the direction and even the relative amount of
torsion or compression of the different parts will be noted down as it
were by the forms and hues of the figures thrown upon the screen.

The same kind of effect is shown by a piece of glass unevenly
heated; but better still by glass which has been rapidly and unevenly
cooled unannealed glass, as it is called. In the pieces now before
you, the outside, having become first cooled and solidified, has formed
a rigid framework, to which all the interior has been obliged to con-

SUNLIGHT, SEA, AND SKY. 59

form. The interior parts have consequently undergone strains and
pressures in different directions and in different degrees, in accordance
with which each part has become the subject of a definite internal
molecular arrangement ; and these, by each in its own way, modifying
the light which they transmit, give rise to the figures now before you.

I will conclude this series of experiments by one which, although
not so beautiful or striking as those which you have already seen, is
still interesting as bringing the subject home to us, and as the only
application of polarization to commercial life which has yet been made.
You will recollect the brilliant sequence of color shown by a quartz
plate when submitted to polarized light. Well, the effects produced
by that quartz plate are also produced by not only some other crystals,
but, what is very remarkable, also by many of their solutions, e. g., by
that of sugar. Into this tube I have put a solution of sugar ; when it
is placed before the lamp, polarization colors are shown on the screen,
while the liquid itself remains colorless. If the solution be strength-
ened by the addition of more sugar, the tints vary; and, by accurate
observation of the colors for different positions of the Nicol, the
strength of the solution may be determined. An instrument con-
structed with proper means of registering these phenomena with ac-
curacy is called a saccharometer.

These experiments may be multiplied almost indefinitely, and many
a long winter evening might be spent in following polarization into
other branches of science upon which it has something to Say. For
example, on examining a variety of vegetable and animal tissues, slices
of wood, fronds of fern, scales of fish, hair, horn, mother-of-pearl, etc.,
with'a suitable polariscope, we should find that they exhibit, internally,
definite structural characters, capable of affecting the light, which they
transmit in the same general way as do crystals. Or again, if we were
to apply the principles established in an early part of this lecture to
the conditions of sky, aspect, and time of day under which the pho-
tographer notices that he can obtain the most perfect image in his pict-
ure, we should find that they correspond with those which will furnish
him with daylight in the most perfectly polarized condition.

Once more, among the many and curious phenomena which are
visible during a solar eclipse, there is one which has longer than any
other refused to lift its veil to the solicitations of science. I mean that
halo of light, or corona as it is called, which extends beyond the dark
disk of the moon, beyond those red flames of burning gas which the
researches of Lockyer, of Janssen, and of others, have brought almost
home to us, far away for millions of miles into distant regions of space.
It was preeminently to investigate this phenomenon that the last
Eclipse Expedition, furnished with funds by her Majesty's Govern-
ment at the instance of this British Association, was sent out. And
upon this investigation all the powers of the twin instruments of mod-
ern times, the spectroscope and the polariscope, were turned. The

60 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

spectroscope could tell us the nature of the substances to the combus-
tion of which the light is due, and even the conditions of temperature
and of pressure under which the combustion is taking place ; but it
could not disentangle those parts of the phenomenon which are due to
direct, from those which are due to reflected or to scattered light. It
was for the polariscope to tell us whether the corona is a terrestrial
effect a mere glare, in fact, from our own atmosphere or a true solar
phenomenon ; and in the latter issue, whether any of it is due to direct
rays from incandescent matter, or all of it to rays originating in such
incandescent matter below, but scattered laterally from gases which
have cooled in the upper regions surrounding the sun. This question
has not even yet received a definitive answer. But the brief account
given within the last few days by Mr. Lockyer, in anticipation of his
more complete digest of the voluminous reports from the various
branches of the Expedition, seems to justify us in the conclusion that
the corona is substantially a solar phenomenon due not to direct but
to reflected or scattered rays.

The principle upon which the polariscope enables us to make these
refined distinctions in such far-off phenomena is, after all, very simple.
If the corona were due wholly to the effect of our atmosphere on such
light as reaches us during a total eclipse of the sun, the whole of that
light would be similarly affected, because it comes very nearly from
the same part of the heavens. In other words, its polarization would
be uniform, and the corona, when examined by a Nicol and quartz,
would appear of a uniform color. But if the phenomenon were wholly
due to the sun and its surroundings, the light would be affected, if at
all, differently in different directions drawn outward (like spokes or
radii of a wheel) from the sun as a centre. In other words, its polari-
zation would be arranged spokewise, or, to use the technical term,
radially; and the corona, when examined as before, would vary in
color on different sides of the sun.

I have already drawn largely, perhaps too largely, upon your
patience. But it will not have been without purpose that, besides
witnessing the exhibition of a few experiments, you should have seen,
at least in outline, what manner of thing a scientific investigation is.
"Well, whatever it is (and I will not weary you with a dry statement
of its processes), the foundation of it must always be laid in careful,
accurate, and intelligent observation of facts. And it is a considera-
tion which may well stir the hearts of us outsiders of science, especially
on an occasion when we come face to face with some of the greatest
philosophers of our time, that any one of us, by practising his eye and
riveting his attention, may contribute some natural fact, some fragment
of knowledge, to the common stock. And surely has not this a particu-
lar significance and importance to us, at a period when, by shortening
the hours of labor, more leisure, as we may hope, will be at the com-
mand of many? It will, I take it, be our own fault if we spend that

SMOKELESS GUNPOWDER. 61

leisure in walking through dry places seeking rest ; for, to those who
have the eyes to see and the spirit to discern, the world is neither dry
nor barren ; but rather, it is like the mountain as it appeared to the
servant of the prophet when his eyes were opened, full of beauty and
wonder, of mystery and power full of hosts from all nations, striving
manfully onward to promised lands of knowledge and of truth, and
waging ceaseless warfare against ignorance and prejudice, and the
long train of evils which are consequent upon them. And if, as the
eventide of life draws on, our eye wax dim, and our step grow weary,
so that we can no longer follow, we may still lay us down to rest in
some unknown spot, in the full confidence that others will not be want-
ing to fill our places and gain fresh ground, though we may not live
to see it. Nature.

SMOKELESS GTTXPOWDER.

IT is very often the case that one bird falls to the right barrel, and
" the rest unhurt " go on their way, rejoicing no doubt at having
escaped a deadly volley from the left barrel. There is, however, a
reason for their having got off scot-free, well known to all sportsmen ;
i. e., the smoke from the first barrel obscured the birds from the sports-
man's second aim, until they were out of range. Science, however,
has discovered a panacea for this oft-recurring disappointment, in
Schultze's wood-powder, a smokeless explosive which we wish to in-
troduce to those of our readers who are not already conversant with
its merits. Of course, every one knows our " dear, dirty old friend,"
Black Gunpowder ; the acquaintance of which we made in early youth,
turning it into a "devil "to frighten our grandmother ; but we have
cut our " dear, dirty old friend," and our gun is now loaded with
Schultze's wood-powder instead. " How is this ? " you inquire. " Why
abandon an explosive with which Colonel Hawker, and the never-to-be-
forgotten Maxwell of 'Wild Sports of the West' celebrity, killed so
many head of game ? " To this we reply, Schultze's wood-powder was
not invented in their day, or they would have used it, and for these
reasons :

For seven hundred years and more, even granting the invention to
have been Roger Bacon's, the dull-black mixture of sulphur, nitre, and
charcoal it is only a mixture, not a chemical compound has had the
monopoly of guns, large and small. It has answered every purpose
moderately well, perhaps more than moderately. Nevertheless, from
time to time the desire has arisen to evolve out of chemical stores some
new compound, mechanical or chemical, that should do better duty.
Somewhat extraordinary, indeed, the case seems that, amid all the
improvements of guns and gunnery, all the advancement of chemistry

62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and mechanism, the gaseous motor for gun-projectiles should be com-
posed as at first. The explanation is difficult. Gunpowder occupies
a sort of half-way ground between things innocent and things danger-
ous; a medium quality favoring its many applications. Exploding
readily enough for all convenient needs, it never spontaneously ex-
plodes a great point in its favor. Then its power of water-absorption
not being very great, it stores tolerably well. But, more than any thing
else, gunpowder has held its long and almost exclusive sway over gnns
and gunners owing to the two following circumstances : it can be
made of any desired percentage composition, and it may be corned or
grained to any degree of coarseness or fineness. As employed for dif-
ferent purposes, it is necessary that gunpowder should have various
strengths. To a considerable extent the strength of gunpowder, by
varying the relative amount of its components, can be modified ; but
the great adjustive resource consists in increasing or lessening the di-
mension of its grains.

Having taken account of certain special good qualities of gun-
powder, we now come to certain of its bad qualities. Safe it indeed is
in the sense of not igniting spontaneously; but it deteriorates by keep-
ing, the more especially if in a moist atmosphere. If gunpowder be
thoroughly wetted, then may it be considered wholly spoilt. In burn-
ing, gunpowder evolves much heat, much smoke ; it also dejwsits much
foulness. On the debtor side of gunpowder must be reckoned, also, the
danger attendant on manufacture. It would be a great advantage if
possible to devise a gunpowder that should acquire its usefully-danger-
ous qualities with the very last manufacturing touch, whereby in every
incipient stage it might be stored without possibility of risk.

It will have been gathered, then, that gunpowder, ordinary black
gunpowder, though it has seen some service and done some hard duty
in its time, is not so perfect as to fulfil all requisitions desired ; where-
fore from time to time experiments have been directed to the manufac-
ture of a substitute.

The only substitute yet invented which has met with favorable no-
tice from practical sportsmen is Schultze's wood-powder, which, from
its being granulated, and consequently permeated by air, can never
generate fire of itself. This explosive, invented by Captain Schultze,
a Prussian officer, was originally manufactured at Potsdam, near Berlin,
and the factory catching fire in 1868, instead of exploding ruining the
neighborhood, and leaving many widows and orphans, like the recent
gun-cotton explosion at Stowmarket burned quietly to the ground. A
company of English gentlemen, fond of field-sports, foreseeing the ad-
vantages to be derived from its introduction into England, purchased
a site for its production in the New Forest, and thither we must carry
our readers on " a visit to the Schultze Gunpowder manufactory," at
Iiedbridge near Southampton.

Here and there, at intervals wide apart, are various buildings of

SMOKELESS GUNPOWDER. 63

light structure, from one of which rises a tall chimney, instrumental in
raising steam to drive a 10-horse-power sawing-machine, which rapidly
creates the " wood-powder " to be turned into use for the gun by the
following process:

The grains, being collected in a mass, are subjected to a treatment
of chemical washing, whereby calcareous and various other impurities
are separated, leaving hardly any thing behind save pure woody
matter, cellulose or lignine. The next operation has for its end the
conversion of these cellulose grains into a sort of incipient xyloidine,
or gxin-cotton material, by digestion with a mixture of sulphuric and
nitric acids. Practically it is found that absolutely perfected xyloidine
(of which ordinary gun-cotton is the purest type) not only decomposes
spontaneously by time, the chief products of combustion being gum
and oxalic acid, but it is, moreover, liable to combustion of a sort that
may be practically called spontaneous, so slight and so uncontrollable
are the causes sufficing to bring it about. Cellulose or woody matter,
otherwise termed lignine, partially converted to xyloidine is, the in-
ventor affirms, subject to neither of those contingencies. Our readers
will understand that, inasmuch as the wood used as a constituent of
the Schultze gunpowder is not charred, its original hydrogen is left,
and by-and-by, at the time of firing, will be necessarily utilized
toward the gaseous propulsive resultant. Next, washed with carbon-
ate-of-soda solution and dried, an important circumstance is now recog-
nizable.

The grains, brought to the condition just described, are stored away
in bulk, not necessarily to be endowed with final explosive energy
until the time of package, transport, and consignment. Only one treat-
ment has to be carried out, and it is very simple. The ligneous grains
have to be charged with a certain definite percentage of some nitrate,
which is done by steeping them in the nitrate solution and drying.
Ordinarily a solution of nitrate of potash (common saltpetre) is em-
ployed ; but, in elaborating certain varieties of white powder, nitrate
of baryta is preferred.

Having traced the new powder to its final stage, we may contem-
plate it under the light of two distinct scrutinies theoretical and prac-
tical. Review of the chemical agencies involved, or that may be
evolved, suggests the reaction, especially under prolonged moisture, of
the sulphur and nitre of ordinary powder, whereby sulphide of potas-
sium should result. Practice is confirmatory : under the condition in-
dicated sulphide of potassium, more or less, does result, and propor-
tionate to the extent of decomposition is the powder deteriorated. In-
asmuch as the Schultze gunpowder is wholly devoid of sulphur, so is
the particular decomposition adverted to impossible ; and theory, at
least, fails to suggest any other decomposition as probable or even pos-
sible.

All the buildings requisite for manufacturing this explosive are cheap

64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MOXTIILY.

and flimsy, so that if it did catch fire no loss would ensue. The " plant
of machinery " is of small cost in comparison with that used for mak-
ing black gunpowder, and Schultze's wood-powder is sold at a price
commensurate with its cheap production. An explosive is often " better
known than liked," such as gun-cotton ; but Schultze's wood-powder
requires only " to be known to be liked," as a trial of it, lately made
for the satisfaction of its readers by the conductors of the Land and
Water journal, recently showed. Indeed, it was proved to give more
penetration than gunpowder, and it costs less. There is also no smoke,
and consequently the second barrel can always be used at once, in-
stead of waiting for the smoke to clear away, as when using black
powder. Belgravia.

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BKAIN.

By CLAUDE BEENAED,

PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE.
TRANSLATED FEOM THE EEVTJE DES DEUX MOXDES, BY A. E. MACDONOTJGH, ESQ.

THE first task of physiology was to localize the functions of life in
the various organs of the body which serve as their instruments.
Thus digestion was assigned to the stomach, circulation to the heart,
respiration to the lungs ; thus, too, the seat of intelligence and thought
was placed in the brain. Still, with regard to the latter organ, a
reservation was thought proper, excluding the idea that the metaphysi-
cal expression of the intellectual and moral powers was the manifesta-
tion, simply and merely, of the cerebral function. Descartes, who is
to be classed among the promoters of modern physiology, because he
thoroughly understood that the explanation of vital phenomena must
depend on the general laws of physics and of mechanism, expressed
himself very plainly on this matter. Adopting Galen's ideas on the
formation of " animal spirits " in the brain, he assigns them the task
of distribution by means of the nerves throughout the animated ma-
chine, so as to carry to each of the parts the impulse needed for its
special activity. Yet, above and apart from this physiological function
of the brain, Descartes admits the soul, which gives man the faculty of
thinking : it was supposed to have its seat in the pineal gland, and to
direct those " animal spirits " which issue from and are subject to it.

Descartes's opinions as to the function of the brain would not bear
the slightest examination by modern physiology ; his explanations,
founded on imperfect anatomical knowledge, produced nothing but
hypotheses marked by the coarsest mechanical conceptions. Yet they

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN 65

have an historic value for us, in the proof that this great philosopher
recognized two things in the brain : first, a physiological mechanism ;
and then, above and beyond that, the thinking faculty of the soul.
These ideas are nearly the same with those that afterward prevailed
among many philosophers and some naturalists ; the brain, in which
the most important functions of the nervous system are performed,
was for them not the real organ of thought, but simply the substratum
of intelligence. Indeed, the objection was often enough expressed,
that the brain forms a physiological exception to all the other organs
of the body, in that it is the seat of metaphysical manifestations, which
the physiologist has no concern with. It was perceived how digestion,
respiration, movement, etc., could be referred to the phenomena of
mechanism, of physics, and chemistry ; but it was not allowed that
thought, intelligence, and will, could be subjected to like explanation.
There is, it was said, a chasm between the organ and the function,
because the question is about metaphysical phenomena, and not at
all about physico-chemical mechanism. De Blainville, in his lectures
on zoology, laid great stress on the distinction between the organ and
the substratum. "In the organ," he said, "there is a visible and
necessary connection between anatomical structure and function ; in
the heart, the organ of circulation, the form and arrangement of valves
and orifices account perfectly for the circulation of the blood. In the
substratum, nothing like this is observable ; the brain is the substratum
of thought ; thought has its seat in the brain, but it cannot be inferred
from the brain's anatomy." Such considerations served as a founda-
tion for the belief that, in cases of insanity, the reason might be affected
essentially, as it was termed ; that is, without the existence of any
lesion in the substance of the brain. Even the converse was asserted,
and cases are cited in physiological treatises of the unimpaired mani-
festation of intelligence in persons with softened or indurated brains.
The progress of modern science has destroyed all such doctrines; yet
it must be admitted that those physiologists who have drawn from the
most delicate recent researches into the structure of the brain the con-
clusion that thought must be localized in a particular substance, or in
nerve-cells of a determinate form and order, have equally failed to
solve the problem, since they have done nothing more, in reality, than
to oppose materialistic theories to other spiritualistic theories.

From what has been said, I shall draw the only conclusion which
legitimately results ; namely, that the mechanism of thought is unknown
to us a conclusion with which every one will probably agree. None
the less the fundamental question I have suggested exists ; for what
concerns us is to know whether our present ignorance on this subject
is a relative ignorance which will vanish with the progress of science,
or an absolute ignorance in the sense of its relating to a vital problem
which must forever remain beyond the ken of physiology. For myself,
I reject the latter opinion, because I deny that scientific truth can thus

VOL. II. 5

66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be divided into fractions. How, indeed, can one understand that it is
permitted to the physiologist to succeed in explaining the phenomena
that occur in all the organs of the body, except a pai-t of those that
occur in the brain ? Such distinctions cannot exist amoniy vital
phenomena. Unquestionably they present very different degrees of
complexity, but they are all alike in being either soluble or insoluble
by our examination; and the brain, marvellous as those metaphysical
manifestations that take place in it appear to us, cannot form an ex-
ception among the other bodily organs.

II.

From a physiological point of view, those metaphysical phenomena
of thought, consciousness, and intelligence, which serve for the various
manifestations of the human soul, are nothing but ordinary vital
phenomena, and can result from nothing but the action of the organ
that expresses them. We shall show that, in fact, the physiology of
the brain, like that of all the other bodily organs, is deduced from
anatomical observations, from experiments conducted physiologically,
and from the teachings of pathological anatomy.

In its anatomical development the brain follows the general law;
that is, it increases in volume whenever the functions which it controls
increase in energy. In the graduated orders of animals we find the
brain gain in development in proportion to the greater manifestation
of intelligence ; and in man, with whom the phenomena of mind have
reached their highest expression, the cerebral organ presents the
largest volume. The intelligence of the various animals can be read-
ily inferred from the shape of the brain, and the number of creases or
folds that extend its surface. But not only does the outward appear-
ance of the brain change with the modification of its functions ; it
presents in its inner structure also a complexity that increases with
the variety and intensity of the mental manifestations. As regards
the texture of the brain, we are long past the days of Buffon, who con-
sidered the brains, as he contemptuously called them, a mucous sub-
stance of no importance. The advance of general anatomy and of
histology has taught us that the cerebral organ possesses a texture
more delicate as well as more complex than that of any other nerve-
arrangement. The anatomical elements that make it up are nerve-
elements in the shape of tubes and of cells variously joined and inter-
laced. These elements are alike in all animals as to their physiological
properties and histologic character ; they differ as to their number,
net-work, and connection, in a word their arrangement, which in the
brain of various species presents a disposition peculiar to each. In
this the brain again follows a general law, for in all organs the ana-
tomical element has fixed characteristics by which it may be known ;
the completeness of the organ consists chiefly in the arrangement of
these elements, which presents in every animal species its own peculiar

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 6j

form. Every organ is in fact, then, an instrument whose constituent
elements remain identical, while their grouping grows more and more
involved in the same degree as the function itself displays more variety
and complexity.

Reflecting, now, on the organic and physico-chemical conditions
required fur the support of life and the discharge of its functions, we
find that they are the same in the brain as in all the other organs.
The blood acts on the anatomical elements of all the tissues by supply-
ing- their indispensable conditions of nutrition, temperature, and humid-
ity. When a diminished supply of blood flows to any organ, its
activity of function declines, and the organ rests; but if the blood is
quite cut off, the elementary properties of the tissue slowly change,
while at the same time its function perishes. It is precisely the same
as to the brain's anatomical elements : as soon as the blood ceases to
flow to it, its nerve-properties are affected, as well as its function,
which gradually disappears, if the blood remains wholly withheld. A
simple modification of the temperature of the blood, in its pressure,
is enough to produce grave disturbances in the sensibility, the power
of motion, or the will.

All the bodily organs present alternate states of rest and of activity
in which the phenomena of circulation differ essentially. Numerous
observations, made upon the most different structures, place these facts
beyond doubt. When, for instance, we examine the alimentary canal
of a fasting: animal, we find the mucous membrane that lines the inner
face of the stomach and intestines, pale and but little supplied with
blood; during digestion, on the contrary, we learn that the same
membrane is highly colored, and swollen with the blood which flows
energetically into it. These two phases of circulation, in a state of
rest and a state of activity, have been brought under direct investiga-
tion in the stomach of a living man. All physiologists recollect the
story of a young Canadian accidentally wounded by a leaden musket-
ball which struck him almost point-blank on the left side. The ab-
dominal cavity was laid open by an immense contused wound, and the
stomach, extensively perforated, allowed the food which he had last
taken, to escape. The patient was attended by Dr. Beaumont, a sur-
geon of the United States Army ; he recovered, but retained a fistulous
wound, opening with a circumference of about an inch and a half
through which different substances could be introduced, and the action
of the stomach easily examined. Dr. Beaumont, anxious to study this
remarkable case, employed the young man as a servant, after the com-
plete restoration of his health and particularly of his digestive powers.
He was able to keep him in his service for seven years, during which
he made a great number of observations of the highest interest to phys-
iology. On looking into the interior of the stomach while empty of
food, the lining membrane could be plainly seen, lying in uneven folds,
with its surface of a pale rose-color, motionless, and lubricated by noth-

68 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

ing whatever but mucus. As soon as articles of food made their way
iuto the stomach, and touched the mucous membrane, its circulation
grew rapid and its color lively, while peristaltic movements became evi-
dent. The mucous papillae then poured out their gastric juice, a clear and
transparent fluid, designed to dissolve the food. On wiping away the
mucus that covered the villous membrane, with a sponge or fine cloth,
the gastric juice was soon seen reappearing and gathering in little
drops that ran along the walls of the stomach like perspiration on the
face. What we have just seen as to the mucous membrane is known
to occur alike throughout the intestine, and in all the glandular organs
connected with the digestive apparatus. The salivary glands and the
pancreas, in the intervals of the act of digestion, present a pale and
bloodless tissue, the secretions of which are wholly suspended. During
the period of digestion, on the contrary, these same glands are swollen
with blood, as if inflamed and erectile, while their vessels pour out the
secreted fluids abundantly.

Two orders of circulation, then, must be .recognized in the organs :
one, the general circulation, known since Harvey's day ; and the other,
local circulation, only discovered and studied in recent times. In the
phenomena of general circulation the blood may be said to do nothing
more than traverse the parts, to pass from the arteries into the veins ; in
the phenomena of local, which is the true functional circulation, the
blood penetrates all the folds of the organ, and gathers closely about its
anatomical elements, to arouse and excite their special mode of activity.
The nervous system, sensitive in its action through the vessels, gov-
erns all those phenomena of local circulation which attend organic ac-
tivity ; thus, the saliva flows copiously when a sapid substance makes
an impression on the nerves of the mucous membrane of the mouth,
and the gastric juice forms under the influence of contract between
food and the sensitive surface of the stomach. But, for this mechani-
cal excitement of the peripheral nerves of sensation, influencing the
organ by reflex action, a purely psychic or cerebral excitement can be
substituted. A simple experiment proves this : If a horse is taken
while fasting, and the excretory duct of the parotid gland upon the
side of the jaw is exposed and divided, nothing flows from it ; the
gland is at rest. If, now, oats are shown to the animal, or, still better,
if, without any thing being shown, a movement is made which leads
him to think he is about to have food given him, immediately a con-
tinuous flow of saliva issues from the duct of the parotid, and at the
same time the tissue of the gland is injected, and becomes the seat of
a more active circulation. Dr. Beaumont remarked similar phenomena
in his Canadian. The idea of savory food not only solicited a secretion
from the salivary glands, but provoked, besides, an immediate flow of
blood to the mucous membrane of the stomach.

What we have just said as to the local or functional circulations,
applies not only to those secreting organs in which there takes place

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 69

the separation of a liquid, to the formation of which the blood must
more or less give its aid ; it rather expresses a phenomenon generally
remarked in all the organs, whatever the nature of their function may-
be. The muscular system, which produces nothing but mechanical
work, is in this regard like the glands, which act chemically. At the
instant of muscular action the blood circulates with greater activity,
which relaxes when the organ begins to rest. The peripheral nervous
system, the spinal marrow, and the brain, which serve to manifest the
phenomena of innervation and intelligence, are equally subject to this
law, as we are about to see.

The relations existing between the phenomena of circulation in the
brain and the functional activity of that organ have long remained
obscure, owing to mistaken ideas of the conditions of sleep, which is
rightly considered the state of rest of the cerebral organ. The ancients
suppose! that sleep resulted from compression exerted on the brain by
the blood when its circulation declined. They imagined that this press-
ure was chiefly exerted at the back part of the head, at the point
where the veined folds of the dura mater unite in a common confluent,
which is still called the torcular or compress of Herophilus, from the
name of the anatomist who first described it. These conjectural ex-
planations have been handed down to us ; and it is only of late years
that experiment has succeeded in proving their falsity. In fact, it has
been shown by direct experiment that, during sleep, the brain, instead
of being congested, is on the contrary pale and bloodless ; while in a
state of wakefulness the circulation, becoming more active, provokes a
flow of blood proportioned to the intensity of cerebral activity. In this
respect natural sleep and the anaesthetic sleep of chloroform are alike ;
in both cases, the brain, sunk into rest or inactivity, presents the same
paleness and relative bloodlessness.

The experiment is made in this manner : A part of the bony cover-
ing of an animal's skull is carefully removed, and the brain laid bare
so as to study the circulation at the surface of this organ. Then chloro-
form is administered to produce insensibility. In the first exciting stage
of the action of the chloroform, the brain is observed to grow con-
gested and to lap over at the edges ; but as soon as the stage of anaes-
thetic sleep is reached, the substance of the brain sinks in and grows
paler, presenting a languid movement of capillary circulation, which
lasts as long as the state of sleep or cerebral rest continues. For the
study of the brain in natural sleep a circular trepan is made on a dog's
head, and the piece of bone removed is replaced by a watch-glass care-
fully adjusted to the exact opening, so as to prevent the irritating
action of the air. The animals subjected to the operation survive it;
and observations on their brain through this sort of window, while
awake and when asleep, prove that when the dog is asleep the brain is
always paler, and that a fresh afflux of blood is regularly noticed on
his awaking, when the functions of the brain resume their activity.

7 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Facts analogous to those observed in animals have been studied
directly in the human brain. Upon a person injured by a frightful
railroad accident the effect of a considerable loss of brain-substance
was examined. The brain was visible over a surface of three by six inch-
es. The patient suffered frequent and severe attacks of epilepsy and
coma, during which the brain invariably expanded. Sleep succeeded
these attacks, and the cerebral hernia gradually subsided. When the
patient awoke, the brain again projected and rose to the level of the
surface of the external, bony table. In the case of another person in-
jured in consequence of a fracture of the skull, the cerebral circulation
was studied during the administration of anaesthetics. With the first
inhalations, the surface of the brain became branchy and filled with
blood ; the flow of blood and throbbing of the brain increased, and
then, at the instant of sleep, its surface subsided by degrees below the
opening, while at the same time growing relatively pale and blood-
less.

Briefly, then, the brain is governed by the common law that con-
trols blood-circulation in all the organs. By virtue of this law, when
the organs are at rest and their action suspended, the circulation in
them grows languid ; and it increases, on the contrary, as soon as activ-
ity is resumed. The brain, I repeat, is no exception to this general law,
as had been supposed, for it is now demonstrated that the state of
sleep coincides not with congestion, but, on the contrary, with blood-
lessness of the brain.

If we seek now to understand the relations that may exist between
great activity of blood-circulation and the functional condition of the
organs, we shall readily see that this increased flow of the sanguineous
fluid corresponds with greater intensity in the chemical alterations
going on within the tissues, as also with an exaltation in the phenomena
connected with heat which are their necessary and immediate conse-
quence. The production of heat in living beings is a fact established
from remote antiquity ; but the ancients had erroneous ideas as to the
origin of heat : they attributed it to an innate organic power that had
its seat in the heart, that ardent centre of ebullition for the blood
and the passions. At a later date the lungs were regarded as a sort
of furnace to which the mass of the blood repaired successively to gain
the heat which circulation was bidden to distribute throughout the
body. The advance of modern physiology has proved that all these
absolute consignments of vital conditions to special jx>ints are chimeras.
The sources of animal warmth exist everywhere, and in no region
exclusively. It is only through the harmonious functional play of the
various organs that the temperature is kept nearly constant in man
and the warm-blooded animals. There are, in truth, as many heat-pro-
ducing centres as there are special organs and tissues, and we are
obliged always to connect evolving heat with functional labor of the
organs. When a iruscle contracts, when a mucous surface or a gland

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 7 i

secretes, production of heat invariably takes place at the same time
with increased activity in the phenomena of local circulation.

Is the case the same with the nervous system and the brain?
Modern experiments forbid us to doubt it. Whenever the spinal
marrow and the nerves exhibit sensibility or movement, whenever an
intellectual effort takes place in the brain, a corresponding quantity
of heat is evolved in it. We must, then, regard heat in the animal
economy as a resultant of the organic labor of all the parts of the
body ; but at the same time it becomes also the principle of activity
for each of these parts. This correlation is, above all, indispensable for
the brain and the nervous system, which hold all the other vital actions
under their control. Experiments have demonstrated that the tissue
of the brain exhibits a higher temperature than any other organ of the
body. In man and the warm-blooded animals the brain itself produces
the heat required for the manifestation of the peculiarities of its tissue.
If this were not so, it would infallibly grow cooler, and we should at
once see all the functions of the brain become torpid, and intelligence
and will perish. This does, in fact, occur in cold-blooded animals, in
which the function of heat-production is not energetic enough to sus-
tain the organism in resistance to external causes of refrigeration.

III.

With respect to the organic or physico-chemical conditions of its
activity, the brain, then, presents nothing exceptional. If we *:rn to
experiments made upon it by physiologists, we shall find that they
have succeeded in analyzing cerebral phenomena in the same way as
those of all the other organs. The experimental process usually em-
ployed to determine the functions of organs consists in removing them
or in destroying them either gradually or suddenly, so as to determine
the uses of the organ according to the special disturbances thus caused
in vital phenomena. This method of the removal or destruction of
organs, which forms a sort of brutal vivisection, has been applied on
a great scale to the study of the whole nervous system. Thus, aftei a
nerve is cut, when the parts to which it had been distributed lose their
sensibility, we conclude from this that it is one of the nerves of sensa-
tion ; if it is motion that ceases, we infer thence that we are dealing
with one of the nerves of motion. The same method has been applied
in examining the functions of the different parts of the encephalic organ,
and, though the complexity of the parts has occasioned novel difficulties
of execution, the method has yielded results that are not to be con-
tested. Every one has long known that, without the brain, intelligence
is not possible, but experiment has discovered exactly the part that
is played by each portion of the organ. It teaches us that conscious-
ness, or intelligence properly so called, resides in the cerebral lobes,
while the lower portions of the brain contain nervous centres destined

72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for organic functions of a lower kind. This is not the place to describe
the special functions of these different sorts of nervous centres which
are superposed and in a manner ranged along quite into the spinal
marrow; it is enough to say that we owe the knowledge of them to
that method of vivisection by organic removal which is adopted in a
general way in all physiological inquiries. Here the brain behaves in
exactly the same way as all the other bodily organs, in this sense,
that every lesion of its substance produces characteristic disturbances
in its functions, which always correspond with the mutilation effected.

By means of the cerebral lesions he produces, the physiologist does
not stop at the creation of local paralysis, which suspends the action
of the will on certain organic instruments ; he is able also, by merely
disturbing the equilibrium of cerebral action, to produce a suspension
of freedom in voluntary motion. Thus, by injuring the peduncles of
the cerebellum, and different points of the brak, the experimenter can
make an animal move as he chooses, to right or left, forward or back-
ward, or can make it turn, sometimes by leaps, sometimes by rotary
movement on the axis of its body. The will of the animal persists,
but power to guide its motions is gone. In spite of its efforts of
will, it moves necessarily in the direction determined by the organic
lesion. Pathologists have remarked numerous similar instances in
man. Lesions of the peduncles of the cerebellum create rotary move-
ments in men as in animals. Some patients could walk only straight
onward. In one case, cruel in its irony, a brave veteran general could
only move backward. Therefore the will, which proceeds from the
brain, does not take effect on our organs of locomotion themselves ; it
impresses itself on secondary nervous centres, which need to be kept
harmoniously balanced by a perfect physiological equilibrium.

There is another and more delicate experimental method, which
consists in introducing into the blood various poisonous substances
intended to exert their action upon the anatomical elements of the
organs, while these are left undisturbed and kept uninjured. Aided
by this method, we can extinguish separately the properties of certain
nervous and cerebral elements, in the same way that we can also sever
the other organic elements, whether muscular or sanguine. Anaes-
thetics, for instance, destroy consciousness and depress sensibility,
while they leave the power of movement untouched. Curare, on the
other hand, destroys the power of movement, and leaves sensibility
and will unimpaired; poisons affecting the heart, suspend muscular
contractility, and the oxide of carbon destroys the oxidizing properties
of the blood- globules, without at all affecting the properties of the
nerve-elements. As we see, by this method of investigation or ele-
mentary analysis of organic properties, the brain and those phenomena
that have their seat in it may also be affected in the same manner as
all the other functional instruments of the body.

There is yet a third method of experimenting, which may be called

ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 73

that of experiment by reproduction. This method, to some extent,
combines physiological analysis and synthesis, and enables us to estab-
lish by evidence and counter-evidence those relations which unite the
organ with the function in cerebral manifestations. When the brain
of the inferior animals is removed, the function of the organ is neces-
sarily suppressed; but the persistence of life in these beings allows the
brain to grow again, and, in proportion as the organ reproduces itself,
we observe its functions reappear. The like experiment succeeds in
the same way with superior animals, such as birds, in whom intelli-
gence is much more developed. For instance, when the cerebral lobes
of a pigeon have been removed, the animal at once loses its senses,
and the power of seeking its food. Yet if the animal is artificially
fed, it can survive, because its functions of nutrition continue unim-
paired so long as their special nervous centres are left unharmed.
Little by little the brain renews itself with its particular anatomical
elements, and in the degree in which this restoration takes place we
observe the animal's use of its senses, and its instincts and intelligence
return. Here, I repeat with emphasis, the experiment is complete :
there has been as it were both analysis and synthesis of the vital func-
tion, because the successive destruction of the different parts of the
brain has successively extinguished its different functional manifesta-
tions, and because the successive reproduction of the same parts has
caused the same manifestations to reappear. It is hardly necessary
to add that the same thing happens as to all the other parts of the
body which are susceptible of reproduction.

Diseases, which are at bottom nothing but vital perturbations caused
by Nature instead of being produced by the hand of the physiologist,
affect the brain according to the usual laws of pathology ; that is to say,
by occasioning functional troubles which always correspond to the na-
ture and seat of the injury. In a word, the brain has its pathological
anatomy exactly as all the organs of the economy have, and the pa-
thology of the brain has its special series of symptoms, just as the
other oro-ans have theirs. In mental alienation we observe the most
remarkable disturbances of the reason, furnishing in their study a rich
mine for' the researches of the physiologist and the philosopher ; but
the various forms of lunacy or madness are nothing more than disturb-
ances of the normal function of the brain, and these alterations of func-
tion in the cerebral organ, as in all the rest, are combined with inva-
riable anatomical alterations. If, under many circumstances, these are
not yet understood, the blame must be laid wholly on the imperfection
of our means of investigation. Besides, do we not find that certain
poisons, such as opium and curare, paralyze the nerves and the brain,
without being able to discover any visible alteration in the nerve-sub-
stance ? Yet we are sure that such alterations exist ; for, to admit the
contrary, would be to admit an effect without a cause. "When the poi-
son has ceased to act, we find the mental disturbances disappear, and

74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the normal condition return. It is the same when pathological injuries
are healed ; the trouble in the intelligence ceases, and reason comes
back. Pathology here, too, furnishes us with a kind of functional
analysis and synthesis, just as may be observed in experiments of re-
production. Disease, in a word, suppresses the function more or less
entirely, by changing more or less completely the texture of the organ,
and the cure restores the function by reestablishing the normal organic
condition.

If the manifestations of the brain's functions were the earliest to
attract the attention of philosophers, they will assuredly be the last to
receive explanation from physiologists. We believe that the progress
of modern science allows us now to approach the subject of the phys-
iology of the brain ; but, before beginning the study of the cerebral
functions, we must clearly understand our point of departure. In this
essay, we have attempted to state only one term of the problem, and
to show how untenable is the opinion that the brain forms an excep-
tion in the organism, and is the substratum of intelligence instead of
being its instrument. This idea is not merely an obsolete conception,
but an unscientific one, injurious to the progress of physiology and
psychology. Indeed, what sense is there in the notion that any appa-
ratus of Nature, whether in its lifeless or its living domain, can be the
seat of a phenomenon without being its instrument ? Preconceived
ideas clearly have a great influence in discussing the functions of the
brain, and a solution is combated by arguments used for the sake of
their tendency. Some refuse to allow that the brain can be the organ
of intelligence, from fear of being involved by that admission in mate-
rialistic doctrines ; while others eagerly and arbitrarily lodge intelli-
gence in a round or fusiform nerve-cell, for fear of being charged with
spiritualism. For ourselves, we are not concerned about such fears.
Physiology tells us that, except in the difference and the greater com-
plexity of the phenomena, the brain is the organ of intelligence in ex-
actly the same way that the heart is the organ of circulation, and the
larynx that of the voice. We discover everywhere a necessary bond
between the organs and their functions ; it is a general principle, from
which no organ of the body can escape. Physiology should copy the
example of more advanced sciences, and free itself from the fetters
of philosophy that would impede its progress ; its mission is to seek
truth calmly and confidently, its object to establish it beyond doubt
or change, without any alarm as to the form under which it may make
its ajjpearance.

ON METEORIC STONES. 75

ON METEORIC STONES. 1

By PROFESSOR N. S. MASKELYNE, M. A., F. E. S.

THE substantial unity of the celestial objects distinguished in
common language by the names shooting or falling stars, fire-
balls, and meteorites, and further, the coincidence in many important
respects of these with comets, and possibly with the zodiacal light,
were suggestions made by Humboldt in the " Cosmos," which have
received much confirmation from the subsequent advance of science.

The greater apparent velocity with which the ordinary meteors
traverse the atmosphere as compared with that with which the less
frequent larger bodies are seen to move, the marked periodicity that
attends the recurrence of the former in several, and especially in two,
notable cases of meteor-showers, offer an apparent contrast between
these classes of meteors ; it is not, however, in all probability, a real
contrast, for the one class passes into the other by every gradation in
the magnitude of the mass or masses of which the meteor consists, and
consequently in the grandeur of the phenomena which accompany its
advent. If of the material composing the ordinary falling star we
have never yet been able to recognize any vestiges as reaching the
earth, of the meteorite, on the other hand, the mineral collections of
Europe contain numerous carefully-collected specimens, which are the
fragments that have escaped the fiery ordeal of the transit through
our earth's atmosphere, and in these we recognize masses composed
either of iron (siderites), or of stones (aerolites), or of a mixture of
the two (siderolites). The phenomena associated with such falls of
meteoric matter have been described in very similar language by
those who have witnessed them in various parts of the world, and
these accounts, whether coming from European observers or from
Hindoo herdsmen (of which some were read by the lecturer), concur
generally in the approach of the meteorite as a fiery mass, emanating
from a cloud when seen by day and exploding often with successive
detonations that are heard over a great extent of country, even in
certain cases at points more than 60 miles distant, but finally reaching
the earth with a velocity little higher than what might be due to the
motion of a falling body. Externally these meteoric masses are gen-
erally hot when they fall; sometimes, however, they are not so; the
discrepancies in the accounts being explained by one authenticated
case in which the mass was internally intensely cold, though at first
hot externally. The fallen meteorite is invariably coated with an
incrustation, sometimes shining as an enamel, generally black, but
occasionally colorless where the aerolite is free from ferrous silicates ;
and this incrustation is seen to have been formed in the atmosphere,

1 Read before the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

7 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

since it is found coating surfaces of fragments that have been severed
by the explosions in the air.

Aerolites frequently fall simultaneously in large numbers, many
thousands of them being in such cases spread over a surface of the
country some miles in extent ; and such showers of stones seem to have
entered the atmosphere as a group, though their numbers must sub-
sequently have been greatly increased by the division accompanying
their detonation.

The explanation of the incrustation and of the cloud left by the
meteorite, or out of which it seems to emerge, is found in the trans-
formation into heat of the energy actuating a body that enters our
atmosphere with a motion of 12 to 40 miles a second. The velocity
of the body is almost instantaneously arrested by the atmospheric
resistance, and in a very few seconds the mass becomes, comparatively
speaking, stationary. Its surface must, as a consequence, be imme-
diately fused, and the melted matter would be flung off from it into
the surrounding air, fresh surfaces continually affording new fused
material to form the cloud of, so to say, siliceous spray that lingers
along and around the path of the meteorite.

When the mass is small and in the case of meteoric showers and
ordinary falling stars it cannot exceed a few ounces, and may often
be but a few grains the whole material is thus consumed, and must
ultimately fall as an unperceived, because widely-scattered, dust. The
meteorite is the residue that survives this wastinsr action where the
magnitude of the mass is more considerable. The cause of the violent
and often successive explosions is probably to be sought in the expan-
sion of the outer portions of the mass, while the interior retains the
contracted volume due to the intense cold of space with which the
meteorite enters the atmosphere.

From time to time these contending conditions of volume may, as
in a Prince Rupert's drop, produce explosion, the heated shell in the
case of the meteorite flying off in fragments from the internally cold
inner core, which if sufficient velocity remain to the mass will undergo
a recurrence of the same conditions of surface fusion and explosion.
The loudness of the detonation is also probably enhanced by the
simultaneous collapse of the air on the vacuum that would follow the
rapidly-moving mass.

The pitted surface characteristic of meteorites probably bears
witness to a similar effect of unequal dilatation operating more espe-
cially in the freshly-broken surfaces of the mass, small fragments
splintering off in this way from the cold and brittle stone under the
sudden influence of intense heat.

A remark made by Humboldt, that light and meteorites are the
only sources of our knowledge regarding the universe external to our
world, points to the true ground for our interest in the waifs and strays
of extra-telluric matter that thus fall upon our globe.

OX METEORIC STOXES. 77

In physical as well as in chemical characters aerolites resemble at
the first aspect some terrestrial volcanic rocks.

The minerals of which they are composed are nearly entirely
crystalline, as is evinced by the colors in polarized light of such as are
transparent. These minerals are usually aggregated with slight cohe-
sion, and they present in by far the greatest number of cases a peculiar
spherular or " chondritic " structure.

In these the spherules are composed of similar minerals to those
which enclose them, and even contain metallic iron sometimes in
microscopically fine grains disseminated through them.

A section of an aerolite was exhibited by the microscope in which
some of the spherules had been broken before being cemented by the
surrounding mass, and in another fissures were seen which had been
filled with a fused material after one side of the fissure had slidden
along the other ; facts pointing to events in the history of the meteorite
subsequent to its first formation.

The chemical composition and the mineral constitution of aerolites
were illustrated by tables showing the elements met with in these
bodies, and the minerals in which they were distributed. The former
comprised about one-third of the known elements ; among them
magnesium, iron, silicon, oxygen, and sulphur, were conspicuous ; cal-
cium, aluminium, nickel, carbon, and phosphorus, coming next in im-
portance, the basic elements of most importance by their amount being
the same as those which are found by spectroscopic analysis to be
present in the sun and in those stars which have been the best ex-
amined.

The minerals most frequent in aerolites besides nickeliferous iron
or troilite (iron monosulphide) and graphite, are bronzite (a ferriferous
enstatite) and olivine, both of the latter being essentially magnesium
silicates. Augite and anorthite also occur (more particularly in the
eukritic aerolites of Rose) and some minerals unknown in terrestrial
mineralogy have also been met with ; such are the different varieties
of Schreibersite (phosphides of iron and nickel) ; calcium sulphide,
asmanite (a form of silica crystallizing in the orthorhombic system and
having the specific gravity of fused quartz), and a cubic mineral with
the composition of labradorite. The crystalline form of bronzite was
first determined from the crystals in a meteorite, and was found to
confirm the conclusion Descloizeaux had arrived at as regards its
system from observations on the distribution of the optic axes in the
terrestrial bronzite and enstatite.

The question as to whence the meteorites come is one that we are
not yet in a position to answer with certainty. The various hypotheses
which suppose for them an origin in lunar volcanoes, or in our atmos-
phere, or again in a destroyed telluric satellite, or that would treat
them as fragments of an original planet of which the asteroids are
parts, or as masses ejected from the sun; all these hypotheses seem to

7 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be more or less precluded by the known velocities, the retrograde
motion so frequently characterizing meteors and meteoi'ites, or else by
the chemical conditions that, for instance, are involved in the passage
of the meteorite through the sun's chromosphere. Whether meteorites
move or do not move in circumsolar orbits is at present impossible to
say ; because, while with our incomplete knowledge we cannot to-day
attach the character of periodicity to any known class of meteorites,
we are not justified in founding any conclusion on a negative result
with so limited a foundation.

But even if all or some of them may have been, on their encounter-
ing the earth, members temporarily or permanently of the solar system,
we may with considerable probability consider them as having origi-
nally entered our system from the interstellar spaces beyond it. Such
at least must be our conclusion if we are to admit the unity of the
whole class of phenomena of meteorites and falling stars. For, since
the orbits of the two best-known meteoric streams, those namely of
August and November, have been identified with the orbits of two
comets, and since in regard to one of these (that of November) Lever-
rier has shown, with great probability, that as a meteoric cloud it
entered and became a member of our system only some 1,700 years
ago in consequence of the attraction of Uranus, while the August
meteoric ring only differs in this respect from it, that it had at a much
more remote period found an elliptic orbit round the sun : we are con-
strained on the assumption with which we started to recognize also in
a meteorite a visitor from the regions of remote space. And so far as
it goes, the observation by Secchi that the November falling stars
exhibit the magnesium lines is in harmony with this view.

It may, however, further be said that the tendency of scientific
conviction is in the direction of recognizing the collection toward and
concentration in definite centres, of the matter of the universe, as a
cosmical law, rather than the opposite supposition of such centres being
the sources whence matter is dispersed into space. In the meteorites
that fall on our earth (certainly in considerable numbers) we have to
acknowledge the evidence of a vast and perpetual movement of space,
about which we can only reason as part of a great feature in the
universe which we have every ground for not supposing to be confined
within the limits of the solar system.

That this matter, whether intercepted or not by the planets and
the sun, should to an ever-increasing amount become entangled in the
web of solar and planetary attraction, and that the same operation
should be collecting round other stars and in distant systems such
moving " clouds " of star-dust as have been treated by Schiaparelli,
Leverrier, and other astronomers, or individual masses of wandering
stone or iron, is a necessary deduction from the view that we have
assumed regarding the tendency of cosmical matter to collect toward
centres. But in order to trace the previous stages of the history of

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 79

any meteorite, and, in particular, to determine the conditions under
which its present constitution as a rock took its origin, we have only
for our guide the actual record written on the meteoric mass itself;
and it is in this direction that the mineralogist is now working.

But the progress is necessarily a gradual one. We may indeed
assert that the meteorites we know have, probably all of them, been
originally formed under conditions from which the presence of water
or of free oxygen to the amount requisite to oxidize entirely the ele-
ments present were excluded ; for this is proved by the nature of the
minerals constituting the meteorites, and by the way in which the
metallic iron is distributed through them.

And one suggestive and significant fact remains to be alluded to ;
the presence, namely, in some few meteorites of combinations of hydro-
gen and carbon, which if met with in a terrestrial mineral would with
little hesitation be assigned to an organic origin. A few grains were
exhibited to the audience of such a body, crystallized from ether,
which solvent had extracted it to the amount of about 0.25 per cent,
from six ounces of the Cold Bokkveldt meteorite.

Similar substances have been extracted by Wohler, Roscoe, and
other chemists, from this and other meteorites. It was, however, ob-
served, as pointing to the probability of the comparatively porous
meteoric stone having in this case taken up the hydrocarbon as a sub-
stance extraneous to it (possibly when in the state of a vapor), that
ether extracted it entirely from the solid lumps of the meteorite ; pul-
verization not in any way adding to the amount obtained, or facilitating
in any appreciable degree the separation of the substance.

---

SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

By PROFESSOR TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S.

THE editor of the Contemporary Review is liberal enough to grant
me space for a few brief reflections on a subject, a former reference
to which in these pages has, I believe, brought down upon him and me
a considerable amount of animadversion.

It may be interesting to some if I glance at a few cases illustrative
of the history of the human mind in relation to this and kindred sub-
jects. In the fourth century the belief in Antipodes was deemed un-
scriptural and heretical. The pious Lactantius was as angry with the
people who held this notion as my censors are with me, and quite as un-
sparing in his denunciations of their " Monstrosities." Lactantius was
irritated because, in his mind, by education and habit, cosmogony and
religion were indissolubly associated, and therefore simultaneously dis-
turbed. In the early part of the seventeenth century the notion that

80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the earth was fixed, and that the sun and stars revolved round it daily,
was interwoven in a similar manner with religious feeling, the separa-
tion then attempted by Galileo arousing animosity and kindling per-
secution. Men still living can remember the indignation excited by
the first revelations of geology, regarding the age of the earth, the
association between chronology and religion being for the time indis-
soluble. In our day, however, the best-informed clergymen are pre-
pared to admit that our views of the Universe, and its Author, are not
impaired, but improved, by the abandonment of the Mosaic account
of the Creation. Look, finally, at the excitement caused by the pub-
lication of the " Origin of Species," and compare it with the calm attend-
ant on the appearance of the far more outspoken, and, from the old
point of view, more impious " Descent of Man."

Thus religion survives after the removal of what had been long
considered essential to it. In our day the Antipodes are accepted, the
fixity of the earth is given up, the period of Creation and the reputed
age of the world are alike dissipated, Evolution is looked upon without
terror, and other changes have occurred in the same direction too
numerous to be dwelt upon here. In fact, from the earliest times to
the present, religion has been undergoing a process of purification,
freeing itself slowly and painfully from the physical errors which the
busy and uninformed intellect mingled with the aspiration of the soul,
and which ignorance sought to perpetuate. Some of us think a final
act of purification remains to be performed, while others oppose this
notion with the confidence and the warmth of ancient times. The
bone of contention at present is the physical value of prayer. It is
not my wish to excite surprise, much less to draw forth protest by the
employment of this phrase. I would simply ask any intelligent person
to look the problem honestly and steadily in the face, and then to say
whether, in the estimation of the great body of those who sincerely
resort to it, prayer does not, at all events upon special occasions,
invoke a Power which checks and augments the descent of rain, wdiicb
changes the force and direction of winds, which affects the growth of
corn, and the health of men and cattle a Power, in short, which,
when appealed to under pressing circumstances, produces the precise
effects caused by physical energy in the ordinary course of things.
To any person who deals sincerely with the subject, and refuses to
blur his moral vision by intellectual subtleties, this; I think, will
appear a true statement of the case.

It is under this aspect alone that the scientific student, so far as
I represent him, has any wish to meddle with player. Forced upon
his attention as a form of physical energy, or as the equivalent of such
energy, he claims the right of subjecting it to those methods of ex-
amination from which all our present knowledge of the physical uni-
verse is derived. And, if his researches lead him to a conclusion adverse
to its claims if his inquiries rivet him still closer to the philosophy

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 8i

enfolded in the words, " He maketh his sun to sbine on the evil and
on the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and upon the unjust "
he contends only for the displacement of prayer, not for its extinction.
He simply says, physical Nature is not its legitimate domain.

This conclusion, moreover, must be based on pure physical evidence,
and not on any inherent unreasonableness in the act of prayer. The
theory that the system of Nature is under the control of a Being who
changes phenomena in compliance with the prayers of men, is, in my
opinion, a perfectly legitimate one. It may of course be rendered
futile by being associated with conceptions which contradict it, but
such conceptions form no necessary part of the theory. It is a matter
of experience that an earthly father, who is at the same time both
wise and tender, listens to the requests of his children, and, if they
do not ask amiss, takes pleasure in granting their requests. We know
also that this compliance extends to the alteration, within certain
limits, of the current of events on earth. With this suggestion offered
by our experience, it is no departure from scientific method to place
behind natural phenomena a universal Father, who, in answer to the
prayers of His children, alters the currents of those phenomena. Thus
far Theology and Science go hand in hand. The conception of an
ether, for example, trembling with the waves of light, is suggested
by the ordinary phenomena of wave-motion in water and in air ; and
in like manner the conception of personal volition in Nature is sug-
gested by the ordinary action of man upon earth. I therefore urge no
impossibilities, though you constantly charge me with doing so. I do
not even urge inconsistency, but, on the contrary, frankly admit that
you have as good a right to place your conception at the root of
phenomena as I have to place mine.

But, without verification, a theoretic conception is a mere figment
of the intellect, and I am sorry to find us parting company at this
point. The region of theory, both in science and theology, lies behind
the world of the senses, but the verification of theory occurs in the
sensible world. To check the theory we have simply to compare the
deductions from it with the facts of observation. If the deductions be
in accordance with the facts, we accept the theory : if in opposition,
the theory is given up. A single experiment is frequently devised by
which the theory must stand or fall. Of this character was the deter-
mination of the velocity of light in liquids as a crucial test of the
Emission Theory. Accoiding to Newton, light travelled faster in
water than in air ; according to an experiment suggested by Arago,
and executed by Fizeau and Foucault, it travelled faster in air than
in water. The experiment was conclusive against Newton's theory.

But while science cheerfully submits to this ordeal, it seems im-
possible to devise a mode of verification of their theory which does
not arouse resentment in theological minds. Is it that, while the
pleasure of the scientific man culminates in the demonstrated harmony

VOL. II. 6

82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

between theory and fact, the highest pleasure of the religious man has
been already tasted in the very act of praying, prior to verification,
any further effort in this direction being a mere disturbance of his
peace? Or is it that we have before us a residue of that mysticism
of the middle ages which has been so admirably described by Whewell
that " practice of referring things and events not to clear and distinct
notions, not to general rules capable of direct verification, but to
notions vague, distant, and vast, which we cannot bring into contact
with facts; as when we connect natural events with moral and historic
causes. . . . Thus," he continues, "the character of mysticism is that
it refers particulars, not to generalizations, homogeneous and immedi-
ate, but to such as are heterogeneous and remote ; to which we must
add that the process of this reference is not a calm act of the intellect,
but is accompanied with a glow of enthusiastic feeling."

Every feature hex - e depicted, and some more questionable ones,
have shown themselves of late ; most conspicuously, I regret to say,
in the " leaders " of a weekly journal of considerable influence, and one,
on many grounds, entitled to the respect of thoughtful men. In the
correspondence, however, published by the same journal, are to be
found two or three letters well calculated to correct the temporary
fiightiness of the journal itself.

It is not my habit of mind to think otherwise than solemnly of
the feeling which prompts prayer. It is .a potency which I should
like to see guided, not extinguished, devoted to practicable objects
instead of wasted upon air. In some form or other, not yet evident,
it may, as alleged, be necessary to man's highest culture. Certain it
is that, while I rank many persons who employ it low in the scale of
being, natural foolishness, bigotry, and intolerance, being in their case
intensified by the notion that they have access to the ear of God, I
regard others who employ it as forming part of the very cream of the
earth. The faith that simply adds to the folly and ferocity of the one,
is turned to enduring sweetness, holiness, abounding charity, and self-
sacrifice, by the other. Christianity, in fact, varies with the nature
upon which it falls. Often unreasonable, if not contemptible, in its
purer forms prayer hints at disciplines which few of us can neglect
without moral loss. But no good can come of giving it a delusive
value by claiming for it a power in physical Nature. It may strengthen
the heart to meet life's losses, and thus indirectly promote physical
well-being, as the digging of JEsop's orchard brought a treasure of
fertility greater than the treasure sought. Such indirect issues we all
admit ; but it would be simply dishonest to affirm that it is such issues
that are always in view. Here, for the present, I must end. I ask no
space to reply to those railers who make such free use of the terms
insolence, outrage, profanity, and blasphemy. They obviously lack
the sobriety of mind necessary to give accuracy to their statements, or
to render their charges worthy of serious refutation. Advance Sheets.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 83

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

THE appearance of the long-promised work of Dr. Bastian on the
" Beginnings of Life " l will be welcomed by the students of
natural history as an important step forward in the progress of an
old and interesting controversy. Whether all the life of the earth came
from some primordial spark in the dim beginning, that has spread
in multitudinous diversity through earth, sea, and air ; or whether all
forms of living things sprang into perfect existence after their dis-
tinctive kinds by a supernatural fiat ; or whether the origination of liv-
ing things is still within the compass of natural operations, are ques-
tions equally fascinating to pursue and difficult to determine. But the
radical problem of the origin of life is now accepted as legitimate in
the field of science, and much of the world's ablest talent is profoundly
occupied with its investigation. "We propose to give a brief account
of Di\ Bastian's contribution to the inquiry, or rather to point out his
line of research, referring those who are interested in the subject to
his able work, which is now accessible to American readers.

The doctrine that certain forms of living things originate directly
in the operations of Nature, without the agency of parentage, is an
ancient speculation. _ Three centuries before the Christian era, Aris-
totle believed in the spontaneous origination of eels and other fish out
of the slimy mud of rivers and marshes; also, that certain insects
took origin from the vernal dew on plants ; and that lice were sponta-
neously engendered in the flesh of animals. He believed also that
animals might proceed from vegetables that the caterpillars of cer-
tain butterflies, for instance, were actually the products of the plants
upon which they fed. To the authority of Aristotle, which was des-
potic in the schools for nearly two thousand years, was added in this
case the influence of poetry by which the Aristotlean science was pop-
ularized. Ovid, who is reputed to have been forty-three years old at
the Christian era, sung of spontaneous generation as follows Dryden
being responsible for the English :

" The rest of animals from teeming earth
Produced, in various forms received their hirth.
The native moisture, in its close retreat
Digested by the sun's ethereal heat
As in a kindly womb, began to breed,
Then swelled and quickened by the vital seed ;
And some in less, and some in longer space,
Were ripened into form and took a several face.

1 " The Beginnings of Life ; being some Account of the Nature, Modes of Origin, and
Transformations of Lower Organisms." By H. Charlton Bastian, M. A., II. D., F. R. S.
In two volumes, pp. 1200 ; with numerous Illustrations.

84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Thus when the Nile from Pharian fields is fled,
And seeks, with ebbing tide, his ancient bed,
The fat manure with heavenly fire is warmed,
And crusted creatures, as in wombs, are formed ;
These, when they turn the glebe, the peasants find;
Some rude, and yet unfinished in their kind.
Short of their limbs, a lame, imperfect birth ;
One half alive, and one of lifeless earth."

Crude ideas of this kind prevailed universally until the seventeenth
century. The celebrated physiologist, Dr. William Harvey, the dis-
coverer of the circulation of the blood, has the credit of first propound-
ing the modern view expressed in the maxim " Omne vivum ex vivo,"
which being interpreted signifies, " No life without antecedent life."
He maintained that all living beings proceed from eggs ; but exactly
what he meant by " eggs," that is, whether they were always derived
from parental organisms, or might originate in some other way, is con-
sidered uncertain.

The first distinct announcement of the doctrine that all living matter
has sprung from preexisting living matter, was made by Francesco
Redi, an Italian physician, who published his views just two hundred
and four years ago. His position is thus stated by Prof. Huxley :
" Here are dead animals, or pieces of meat ; I expose them to the
air in hot weather, and in a few days they swarm with maggots.
You tell me that these are generated in the dead flesh ; but, if I put
similar bodies, while quite fresh, into ajar, and tie some fine gauze over
the top of the jar, not a maggot makes its appearance, while the dead
substances, nevertheless, putrefy just in the same way as before. It is
obvious, therefore, that the maggots are not generated by the corrup-
tion of the meat, and that the cause of their formation must be a some-
thing which is kept away by gauze. But gauze will not keep away
aeriform bodies or fluids. This something must, therefore, exist in the
form of solid particles too big to get through the gauze. Nor is one
left long in doubt what these solid particles are ; for the blow-flies, at-
tracted by the odor of the meat, swarm round the vessel, and urged by
a powerful but in this case misleading instinct, lay eggs out of which
maggots are immediately hatched upon the gauze. The conclusion,
therefore, is unavoidable : the maggots are not generated by the meat,
but the eggs which give rise to them are brought through the air by
the flies."

These experiments were unanswerable ; but the doctrine of sponta-
neous generation had been too long and firmly believed, to be surren-
dered merely because of the demonstrated falsity of its grounds. It
was held to have the sanction of the Bible, which affirmed that bees
were generated from the carcass of a dead lion : Dr. Redi was there-
fore called upon to defend himself against the charge of impugning
Scripture authority.

SP ONTANEO US GENERA TION.

85

The views of Redi prevailed for a century, and the hypothesis of
spontaneous generation had become completely discredited. But
meantime the microscope had been improved, and a new world of life
revealed. When animal or vegetable substances are infused for a time
in water, swarms of creatures are produced in it, called infusorial ani-
malcuhe, and which are so small that they can only be seen with a pow-
erful magnifier. This was a new aspect of the production of life,
and favored the view of its spontaneous origin. In the middle of the
eighteenth century, an Englishman named Needham took the ground
that, although putrefying meat may not engender insects, it may yet
give rise to animalculce. " If," said JSTeedham, " these animalcuke come

Fig. 1.

Q O 9
>> or 9

A

Q

V

-V

.0, "

W\

K <V%*

Some op the Most Common Primordial Forms op Life. ( x 800.)
A. Plastide-particles ; B. Bacteria ; C. Torula ; D. Vibriones ; E. Spirilla ; F. Leptothrix.

from germs, these germs must exist, either in the infused substance,
the water, or the adjacent air. All germs are killed by heat ; if, there-
fore, I boil the infusion, seal it up, and then heat the whole vessel, I
shall destroy the germs." He did this ; but, after waiting for a time,
the anirnalculse still appeared in the closed vessel. The experiment
seemed conclusive in favor of spontaneous generation, or life without
germs ; but, again, a learned Italian appeared and attacked the hypothe-
sis. Spallanzani repeated Needham's experiments with more vigilant
precautions. He closed the tubes more effectually, and exposed them
to a greater heat, after which the anirnalculse failed to appear. The
real issue in the case was thus fairly reached, and the question became
one of the existence of atmospheric germs, and of their power of resist-
ing heat. The results of Spallanzani were generally held conclusive
against the hypothesis of spontaneous generation ; but, toward the
middle of the present century, the question was again opened, and
it has been assiduously investigated and hotly discussed by men of
science for the last forty years. We cannot even mention the numer-
ous contributions to it that have been made by eminent scientists, but

86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

must refer the reader to Dr. Bastian's work, where the history of re-
cent investigations upon the subject is given in detail.

The growth of new distinctions and more precise ideas in science re-
quires the use of new terms to mark them, while, at the same time, old
terms have to be discarded, as conveying erroneous ideas. The term
" spontaneous generation," although so long applied to the subject, that
it will be apt to continue in popular use, has lost its place in biological
science, as it is too indefinite, and conveys a false idea. Those who
hold that life originates directly from non-living matter do not con-
sider that its production in this way is any more truly "spontaneous"
than its usual production from parental germs. Several words have
been introduced by different writers to define their ideas, which it is
desirable here to explain.

Biogenesis is the term applied by Prof. Huxley to the derivation
of life from previously-existing life ; and Abiogenesis to the produc-
tion of'life from non-living matter. The latter term, therefore, corre-
sponds to what is commonly meant by " spontaneous generation."

LTomogenesis, or Homogeny, are terms that have been long applied
to the production of like from like ; that is, the common case in which
the living parent gives rise to offspring which pass through the same
changes as itself.

Heterogenesis, or Heterogeny, is the name applied to processes by
which living things arise from the matter of preexisting organisms,
belonging to a totally different species. It has, however, had different
meanings, and its use has created some obscurity, but it is customary
to apply it to the so-called cases of " spontaneous generation ; " and
those who hold this doctrine are therefore known as Ileterogenists.

Panspermy is the name given to the doctrine of diffused atmos-
pheric germs, as the sources of infusorial life, and those who hold to
this view are called Panspermists. " Spontaneous generation," so
called, or the production of living creatures without parentage, may
take place in two ways : either from preexisting living matter (hetero-
genesis), or from not-living matter. This production of living forms
from inorganic materials is termed by Dr. Bastian Archebiosis, which
literally means " beginning to live."

It was in the course of some investigations upon the microscopical
characters of the blood of persons suffering from acute diseases that
Dr. Bastian's attention was first drawn to the question of the origin
of life. He soon became interested in it as an independent scientific
problem, and pursued the inquiry experimentally for three years, the
results being recorded in the present work. In Part I. he aims to
show that the now commonly-accepted doctrine of the Correlation of
Forces favors the independent origin of living matter. In this part,
also, he has an elaborate chapter showing that the cell cannot be re-
garded as the ultimate organic unit. In Part II., under the head of
Archebiosis, he takes up the real issue of the spontaneous generation

SP ONTANE US GENERA TION.

87

of new matter endowed with living properties. The question is tlms
stated : " It must be considered to turn almost wholly upon the possi-
bility of the de novo origin of bacteria ; since, if such a mode of ori-
gin can be proved for them, it must also be conceded for other allied
fungoid and algoid units. Evidence, which is of the most convincing
character when looked at from all sides, now shows that bacteria are
hilled by a temperature of 140 Fahr. Yet similar organisms will con-
stantly appear and rapidly multiply within closed flasks containing
organic fluids, although the flasks and their contents have -been pre-
viously exposed for some time to a temperature of 212 Fahr."

As it will be impossible in this article to give the details of Dr.
Bastian's experiments, we will try to convey to our readers some no-
tion of these living organisms, which it is now claimed can be pro-
duced when all germs are destroyed. When a fluid containing an or-
ganic substance in solution is left to itself for a time, which may be
variable in different circumstances, the infusion gradually becomes
turbid, and there forms upon its surface a thin, semi-translucent scum,

Fig. 2.

Representation op Haeckel's Group Monera. ( x 800.) The Common Amceba.

a. Minute Specks of Protoplasm from Fine Surface Mud of Fresh-water Ponds ; b. Protomoeba Primitiva,
two Individuals resulting from a Recent Fission ; o. Vampyrella Pendula ; d. Amoeba Porreta, a Form
of Protomcoba.

or pellicle, that soon thickens into a membrane. If the fluid be ob-
served by a microscope of the highest power, when it first begins to
grow clouded, it will be found swarming with multitudes of moving
specks or spherical particles (Fig. 1, A),varying from 2 \ Q to 1 q 00 q
of an inch in diameter. These specks have been variously named.

39

They have been called " monads," or " mycrozimes," or " micrococci,
and are termed by Dr. Bastian piastre particles. They are regarded
by him as the primordial particles of living matter, and as giving ori-
gin to organisms of a higher grade.

Among these are the infusorial objects known as bacteria (Fig. 1, B).
These are minute, rod-like, jointed bodies, varying in size according to

38 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

circumstances, but pretty uniform in the same solution. They are in
length from -j-g^g-g- to ao * 06 of an inch, and in thickness from -gu-jj-g-Tr to
4iro~o o" f an inch. The rods are formed of a series of granules placed
end to end, and their appearance has been likened to a number of fine
needles embedded in a thin film of glue. They often present a joint
or line in the middle, dividing them into two equal parts. " Their
movements are frequently of a more or less rapid, oscillating, or irregu-
larly rotating character; though at other times they maybe seen dart-
ing from place to place, either directly or in curves of various descrip-
tions. All gradations exist, in fact, between movements which suffice
at once to stamp them as living things, and mere slow oscillations, the
presence of which alone may make us doubtful as to whether we have
to do with living or dead organisms."

Along with the plastide-particles and the bacteria, there appears
one of the lowest and simplest of organic bodies the Torula, or yeast-
plant (Fig. 1, C). The torula is a simple cell, possessing a cell-wall
formed of a thin, homogeneous membrane, and containing a soft forma-
tive layer composed of protoplasm. These cells are about ^oVo f
an inch and smaller, and multiply by budding or gemmation, being
usually seen in chains, or clustered groups. Vibriones (Fig. 1, D) are
described as jointed bodies, composed of long, rod-like segments, bent
at various angles, which exhibit certain slow movements either as
mere bending of the body, or else an actual undulating progression.
In size they may vary from that of the largest bacteria, up to a body
j-J 7 of an inch in length, by l7 ^ 00 in breadth, though there is no defi-
nite limit to their dimensions. The Spirilla (Fig. 1, E) are less common
organic forms, characterized by the most active movements, and in
which the body is thread-like, though twisted into the form of a helix,
or spiral. Leptothrix (Fig. 1 F) is a name applied to certain filamen-
tous objects that are generally motionless, and often not much thicker
than vibriones. They may be either straight or undulating in outline,
and perfectly plain, or marked by minute segmentations, after the
fashion of the larger fungous filaments, into which it is said they some-
times develop.

Within a few years past, attention has been called by Prof. Haeckel
to certain of the lowest forms of organic life, which he considers inter-
mediate between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and by which
they are connected. These he calls the Protista, meaning, first of all,
primordial. This primordial organic kingdom, Haeckel divides into
ten groups, the lowest of which he names the Monera, which includes
certain minute jelly-specks termed protomceba and protogenes. Prof.
Haeckel says : " I have called these forms of life standing at the lowest
grade of organization monera. Their whole body, in a fully-developed
and freely-moving condition, consists of an entirely homogeneous and
structureless substance, a living particle of albumen capable of nourish-
ment and reproduction. These simplest and most imperfect of all

SP ONTANEO US GENERA TION.

89

organisms are, in many respects, of the highest interest. For the
albumen-like, organic matter meets us here as the material substratum
of all life-phenomena, apparently not only under the simplest form as
yet actually observed, but also under the simplest form which can
well be imagined. Simpler and more incomplete organisms than the
monera cannot be conceived. . . . Indeed, the whole body of the
monera, however strange this may sound, represents nothing more
than a single, thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen, in a firmly
adhesive condition. The external form is quite irregular, continually
changing, globularly contracted when at rest. Our sharpest discrimina-
tion can detect no trace of an internal structure, or of a formation from
dissimilar parts. As the homogeneous, albuminous mass of the body
of the moner does not even exhibit a differentiation into an inner
nucleus and an outer plasma, and as, moreover, the whole body con-
sists of a homogeneous plasma or protoplasma, the organic matter here
does not even reach the importance of the simplest cell. It remains in
the lowest imaginable grade of organic individuality." Prof. Haeckel
afterward says : " The monera are indeed protista. They are neither
animals nor plants. They are organisms of the most primitive kind ;
among which the distinction between animals and plants does not
exist."

Fig. 3.
S e

Transformations of Chlorophyll Corpuscles, (x 600.)

a, Pale, unaltered Chlorophyll Corpuscles of Nitella ; 6, Others lying side by side with former, but larger,
of a darker green, and slightly granular; c, Decolorization advancing a few granules still green;
d, Similar corpuscles after the protrusion of motionless rays, and formation of a vacuole ; e. Similar
corpuscles completely decolorized and converted into sluggish specimens of Actinophrys ; /, First stage
in transformation of Actinophrys. some of which are converted into Amoebae (g), and others into Monads
(Ji) with two flagella ; j, Enchelys-like organisms, probably derived from further development of some
Monads and Amuebae.

The common amoeba is described as a microscopic animal at the
very bottom of the scale of living things. It is a minute, shapeless,
structureless mass of semi-fluid jelly or protoplasm, without organs of
any kind, but it has the marvellous power of extemporizing organs as
it requires them. Thus, if it wishes to move, it shoots out a part of
its body as a temporary foot, and retracts it when no longer wanted.

9 o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

If it desires to seize any thing, it protrudes an arm for the purpose;
and, when it has in this way got possession of the needed nutriment,
becoming all stomachy it wraps itself round its food, and absorbs or
digests it.

Dr. Carpenter describes it as " changing itself into a greater variety
of forms than the fabled Proteus, laying hold of its food without mem-
bers, swallowing it without a mouth, digesting it without a stomach,
appropriating its nutritious material without absorbent vessels or a
circulating system, moving from place to place without muscles, feel-
ing (if it has any power to do so) without nerves, multiplying itself
without eggs, and not only this, but, in many instances, forming shelly
coverings of a symmetry and complexity not surpassed by those of any
testaceous animal."

Fig. 4.

T^ Co o . <-s_ o t> :

Modes of Origin and Development of Ciliated Inffsoeia. (x600.)

a, Transforming Buglena. with red 'eye-speck" still visible; &, A similar body, having many of its chlo-
rophyll corpuscles still green, fringed with almost motionless cilia ; c, A completely decolorized sphere
derived from a transformed Eugiena. provided with a few partly-motionless cilia; d and e, More ad-
vanced forms of a similar embryo developing into a Dileptus (?) ; /, Vorticella. soon after its emergence
from a cyst of Eugiena origin, which subsequently develops into a striated variety (g); h, A large Chlo-
rocoecus-vesicle, whose contents gradually undergo decolorization ( j). and at last becomes converted
into an annualized mass (k). which gradually shapes itself into the form of an Oxytricha (I). This
after a time ruptures its cyst and soon takes on the characteristics shown at m ; n, A form of Ploesco-
nia derived from an embryo produced within other, apparently similar, Chlorococcus-vesieles.

The experiments of Dr. Bastian force upon him the conclusion that
the several organisms here considered, bacteria, torula, vibriones,
fungus-filaments, protomoeba, and monads, are products of the direct
development of new-born specks of living matter. His experiments
seem to have been conducted with extreme precautions. He hermet-
ically closed the narrow necks of his flasks during violent ebullition,
thus producing an almost perfect vacuum above the infusion. After

SP OCTANE US GENERA TIOX.

9 1

this he subjected the flasks to a heat of from 212 Fahr. to over 400
Fahr. After being left a few days under favorable situations, and then
examined, they were found to contain the living creatures we have
described. The only remaining question is, Could these organisms or
their o-erms survive this degree of heat ? The alternative to which the
opponents of spontaneous generation seem to be driven, by these in-
vestigations, is thus pointedly stated by Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace,
in a late review of Dr. Bastian's book, in Nature. He says : " The only
way of escaping from the resnlts of such a series of experiments as
that here recorded is by asserting that, although the organisms which
are produced in the flasks are killed by a temperature much below that

Fig. 5.

c m

c-.li'

a r

W-s^-.i^j^ 1

TRANSFORMATION OF A MASS OP ChLOROCOCCTTS CORPUSCLES INTO THE SO-CAT.LED "WdJTER-EQG" OP

Hydatina senta. ( x 250.)

a, Ovoid mass of bright-green Chloroooccus Corpuscles, about ^ in Ion? diameter : b. Such a mass after
its transformation into a brown granular body, without distinct bounding wall (should have been
intermediate in tint between a and o) ; c, A similar body at a later stage, when a limiting envelop has
made its appearance, upon which villous outgrowths had been produced; d. Later stage, constituting
the so-called 'winter-egg" of Hydatina ; e, Ilydatina senta which is produced from such a body
almost adult.

to which the flasks have been subjected, the germs from which they
have been produced are not so killed. We are asked, therefore, to
accept as facts three pure suppositions : first, that such excessively
minute and simple organisms as bacteria, whose only mode of multi-
plication is by fission or gemmation, have germs which possess differ-
ent physical properties from themselves ; secondly, that these germs,
as well as many others, are omnipresent in the atmosphere; and,
thirdly, that they are not injured by an exposure for four hours to
vapor heated to over 300 Fahr. ; and, finally, we are to accept all

92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

these suppositions as facts in order to avoid admitting that species of
living protoplasm are originated de novo in some fluids just as specks
of crystalline matter originate in other fluids, and although some
organisms can be seen to make their appearance in fluids independently
of all preexisting visible germs, just as crystals do."

In Part III., Dr. Bastian takes up the processes of heterogenesis,
whereby the matter of already existing living units gives birth to
other living things, wholly different from themselves, and having no
tendency to revert to the parental type. The transformations and
developments represented in Figs. 3, 4, and 5, will mainly interest
those familiar with the objects delineated, but they are of a very
remarkable character. It is alleged that the cells of conferva give
rise to euglena, a beautiful green organism which abounds in stagnant
water, while this undergoes still further transformation into amceba,
and ciliated infusoria. And still more surprising, if possible, is the
transformation of the minute algoid chlorococcus into the large, com-
plex, and well-known rotifer, Hydatina senta (Fig. 5).

As Dr. Bastian remarks : " The fact that animals with such distinct
and specific organs should arise in this definite manner, from the re-
productive products of the plant, will doubtless seem to many to flavor
more of fable than of fact." This is undoubtedly true. Dr. Bas-
tian's views contravene general experience. The derivation of organ-
isms from preexisting germs is the actual method which we know that
Nature employs in all grades from the top to the bottom of the scale
of life. We know, moreover, that infusorial germs do exist, and float
about, in the atmosphere. Besides, all our past knowledge of life
implies the slow operation of the forces of evolution. As for the
appearance of infusorial organisms in liquids, which a few hours before
did not contain them, they must be explained in accordance with
known modes of action, until some other method is demonstrated.
To this, Dr. Bastian replies 1. That science now admits that, at some
period in the earth's history, the lower forms of life have arisen by the
operation of natural causes. 2. That all the considerations bearing
upon the case favor the view that such organisms may be produced
now, and that it is little else than absurd to suppose that " the simplest
and most structureless amoeba of the present day can boast a line of
ancestors stretching back to such far-remote periods that in comparison
with them the primeval men were but as things of yesterday ; " and
3. That the de novo origin of living matter, and the transformation
of low vegetable organisms into infusoria and animalcula are facts that
must now be considered as experimentally established. The whole
question will therefore turn on the future testing of these remarkable
processes. The subject cannot be allowed to rest here ; and, if Dr.
Bastian's experiments shall be verified, the publication of his work will
constitute an epoch in the progress of biological science. It may be
remarked that the " Beginnings of Life " is written in a popular and

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 93

intelligible style, but, as it was composed while the doctor was absorbed
in his investigations, it is somewhat defective in classification and
condensation. This is to be regretted, yet it is quite a secondary
matter. Mr. Wallace deprecates its literary defects, but cordially
concedes its scientific importance. He says : " It is so full of curious
and novel facts and experiments, it contains so much excellent reason-
ing and acute criticism, and it opens up such new and astounding views
of the nature and origin of life, that one feels it ought to and might
have ranked with such standard works as the ' Origin of Species ' and
the ' Principles of Biology,' if equal care had been bestowed upon it
as a literary composition."

<

AIMS AND INSTRUMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 1

By Professor W. KINGDOM CLIFFOED,

OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
I.

IT may have occurred (and very naturally, too, to such as have had
the curiostity to read the title of this lecture) that it must neces-
sarily be a very dry and difficult subject ; interesting to very few, intel-
ligible to still fewer, and, above all, utterly incapable of adequate treat-
ment within the limits of a discourse like this. It is quite true that a
complete setting forth of my subject would require a comprehensive
treatise on logic, with incidental discussion of the main questions of
metaphysics ; that it would deal with ideas demanding close study for
their apprehension, and investigations requiring a peculiar taste to
relish them. It is not my intention now to present you with such a
treatise.

The British Association, like the world in general, contains three
classes of persons. In the first place, it contains scientific thinkers ;
that is to say, persons whose thoughts have very frequently the char-
acters which I shall presently describe. Secondly, it contains persons
who are engaged in work upon what are called scientific subjects, but
who in general do not, and are not expected to, think about these sub-
jects in a scientific manner. Lastly, it contains persons who suppose
that their Avork and their thoughts are unscientific, but who would
like to know something about the business of the other two classes
aforesaid. Now, to any one who, belonging to one of these classes,
considers either of the other two, it will be apparent that there is a
certain gulf between him and them ; that he does not quite understand
them, nor they him ; and that an opportunity for sympathy and com-

1 A Lecture delivered before the members of the British Association, at Brighton,
August 19, 1872.

94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

radesliip is lost through this want of understanding. It is this gulf
that I desire to bridge over, to the best of ray power. That the scien-
tific thinker may consider his business in relation to the great life of
mankind ; that the noble army of practical workers may recognize
their fellowship with the outer world, and the spirit which must guide
both ; that this so-called outer world may see in the work of science
only the putting in evidence of all that is excellent in its own work ;
may feel that the kingdom of science is within it : these are the objects
of the present discourse. And they compel me to choose such por-
tions of my vast subject as shall be intelligible to all, while they ought
at least to command an interest universal, personal, and profound.

In the first place, then, what is meant by scientific thought ? You
may have heard some of it expressed in the various sections this morn-
ing. You have probably also heard expressed in the same places a
great deal of unscientific thought ; notwithstanding that it was about
mechanical esergy, or about hydrocarbons, or about eocene depos-
its, or about malacopterygii. For scientific thought does not mean
thought about scientific subjects with long names. There are no sci-
entific subjects. The subject of science is the human universe ; that
is to say, every thing that is, or has been, or may be, related to man.
Let us, then, taking several topics in succession, endeavor to make
out in what cases thought about them is scientific, and in what cases
not.

Ancient astronomers observed that the relative motions of the sun
and moon recurred all over again in the same order about every nine-
teen years. They were thus enabled to predict the time at which
eclipses would take place. A calculator at one of our observatories
can do a great deal more this. Like them, he makes use of past expe-
rience to predict the future ; but he knows of a great number of other
cycles besides that one of the nineteen years, and takes account of all
of them ; and he can tell about the solar eclipse of six years hence ex-
actly where it will be visible, and how much of the sun's surface will
be covered at each place, and, to a second, at what time of day it will
begin and finish there. This prediction involves technical skill of the
highest order ; but it does not involve scientific thought, as any as-
tronomer will tell you.

By such calculations the places of the planet Uranus at different
times of the year have been predicted and set down. The predictions
were not fulfilled. Then arose Adams, and from these errors in the
prediction he calculated the place of an entirely new planet, that had
never yet been suspected ; and you all know how the new planet was
actually found in that place. Now, this prediction does involve scien-
tific thought, as any one who has studied it will tell you.

Here, then, are two cases of thought about the same subject, both
predicting events by the application of previous experience, yet we
sav one is technical and the other scientific.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 95

Now, let us take an example from the building of bridges and roofs.
When an opening is to be spanned over by a material construction,
which must bear a certain weight without bending enough to injure
itself, there are two forms in which this construction can be made, the
arch and the chain. Every part of an arch is compressed or pushed by
the other parts ; every part of a chain is in a state of tension, or is
pulled by the other parts. In many cases these forms are united. A
girder consists of two main pieces or booms, of which the upper one
acts as an arch and is compressed, while the lower one acts as a chain
and is pulled ; and this is true even when both the pieces are quite
straight. They are enabled to act in this way by being tied together,
or braced, as it is called, by cross-pieces, which you must often have
seen. Now, suppose that any good, practical engineer makes a bridge
or roof upon some approved pattern which has been made before. He
designs the size and shape of it to suit the opening which has to be
spanned ; selects his material according to the locality ; assigns the
strength which must be given to the several parts of the structure ac-
cording to the load which it will have to bear. There is a great deal
of thought in the making of this design, whose success is predicted by
the application of previous experience ; it requires technical skill of a
very high order; but it is not scientific thought. On the other'
hand, Mr. Fleeming Jenkin ' designs a roof consisting of two arches
braced together, instead of an arch and a chain braced together ; and,
although this form is quite different from any known structure, yet be-
fore it is built he assigns with accuracy the amount of material that
must be put into every part of the structure in order to make it bear
the required load, and this prediction may be trusted with perfect
security. What is the natural comment on this ? Why, that Mr.
Fleeming Jenkin is a scientific engineer.

Now, it seems to me that the difference between scientific and
merely technical thought, not only in these, but in all other instances
which I have considered, is just this : Both of them make use of expe-
rience to direct human action ; but while technical thought or skill en-
ables a man to deal with the same circumstances that he has met with
before, scientific thought enables him to deal with different circum-
stances that he has never met with before. But how can experience
of one thing enable us to deal with another quite different thing ? To
answer this question we shall have to consider more closely the nature
of scientific thought.

Let us take another example. You know that if you make a dot
on a piece of paper, and then hold a piece of Iceland spar over it, you
will see not one dot but two. A mineralogist, by measuring the an-
gles of a crystal, can tell you whether or no it possesses this property
without looking through it. He requires no scientific thought to do
that. But Sir William Rowan Hamilton, the late Astronomer-Royal

1 " On Braced Arches and Suspension Bridges." Edinburgh, Neill, 1870.

96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

i

of Ireland, knowing these facts and also the explanation of them which
Fresnel had given, thought about the subject, and he predicted that,
by looking through certain crystals in a particular direction,' we should
see not two dots, but a continuous circle. Mr. Lloyd made the experi-
ment, and saw the circle a result which had never been even sus-
pected. This has always been considered one of most signal instances
of scientific thought in the domain of physics. It is most distinctly an
application of experience, gained under certain circumstances, to entirely
different circumstances.

Now, suppose that, the night before coming down to Brighton, you
had dreamed of a railway accident, caused by the engine getting
frightened at a flock of sheep, and jumping suddenly back over all the
carriages ; the result of which was that your head was unfortunately
cut off, so that you had to put it in your hat-box, and take it back
home to be mended. There are, I fear, many persons, even at this day,
who would tell you that, after such a dream, it was unwise to travel
by railway to Brighton. This is a proposal that you should take expe-
rience gained while you are asleep, when you have no common-sense
experience about a phantom-railway and apply it to guide you when
you are awake, and have common-sense, in your dealings with a real
railway. And yet this proposal is not dictated by scientific thought.

Now, let us take the great example of biology. I pass over the
process of classification, which itself requires a great deal of scientific
thought, in particular when a naturalist, who has studied and mono-
graphed a fauna or a flora rather than a family, is able at once to pick
out the distinguishing characters required for the subdivision of an
order quite new to him. Suppose that we possess all this minute and
comprehensive knowledge of plants and animals and intermediate or-
ganisms, their affinities and differences, their structures and functions
a vast body of experience, collected by incalculable labor and devo-
tion. Then comes Mr. Herbert Spencer; he takes that experience of
life which is not human, which is apparently stationary, going on in
exactly the same way from year to year, and he applies that to tell us
how to deal with the changing characters of human nature and human
society. How is it that experience of this sort, vast as it is, can guide
us in a matter so different from itself? How does scientific thought,
applied to the development of a kangaroo-foetus, or the movement of
the sap in exogens, make prediction possible for the first time in that
most important of all sciences, the relations of man with man ?

In the dark or unscientific ages men had another way of applying
experience to altered circumstances. They believed, for example, that
the plant called jew's-ear, which does bear a certain resemblance to
the human ear, was a useful cure for diseases of that organ. This doc-
trine of " signatures," as it was called, exercised an enormous influence
on the medicine of the time. I need hardly tell you that it is hope-
lessly unscientific ; yet it agrees with those other examples that we have

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 97

been considering in this particular : that it applies experience about
the shape of a plant which is one circumstance connected with it to
dealings with its medicinal properties, which are other and different
circumstances. Again, suppose that you had been frightened by a
thunder-storm on land, or your heart had failed you in a storm at sea ;
if any one then told you that, in consequence of this, you should al-
ways cultivate an unpleasant sensation in the pit of your stomach, till
you took delight in it that you should regulate your sane and sober
life by the sensations of a moment of unreasoning terror ; this advice
would not be an example of scientific thought. Yet it would be an
application of past experience to new and different circumstances.

But you will already have observed what is the additional clause
that we must add to our definition in order to describe scientific
thought, and that only. The step between experience about animals
and dealings with changing humanity is the law of evolution. The
step from errors in the calculated places of Uranus to the existence of
Neptune is the law of gravitation. The step from the observed behav-
ior of crystals to conical refraction is made up of laws of light and
geometry. The step from old bridges to new ones is the laws of elas-
ticity and the strength of materials.

The step, then, from past experience to new circumstances must be
made in accordance with an observed uniformity in the order of events.
This uniformity has held good in the past in certain places ; if it should
also hold good in the future, and in other places, then, being combined
with our experience of the past, it enables us to predict the future, and
to know what is going on elsewhere, so that we are able to regulate our
conduct in accordance with this knowledge.

The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to
new circumstances : the instrument is an observed uniformity in the
course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information
transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have
not seen from things that we have seen ; and the evidence for the truth
of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds
good beyond our experience. I now want to consider this uniformity
a little more closely, to show how the character of scientific thought
and the force of its inferences depend upon the character of the uniform-
ity of Nature. I cannot, of course, tell you all that is known of this
character without writing an encyclopaedia, but I shall confine myself
to two points of it, about which, it seems to me, that just now there is
something to be said. I want to find out what we mean when we say
that the uniformity of Nature is exact ; and what we mean when we
say that it is reasonable.

When a student is first introduced to those sciences which have

come under the dominion of mathematics, a new and wonderful aspect

of Nature bursts upon his view. He has been accustomed to regard

things as essentially more or less vague. All the facts that he has

VOL. 11. 7

98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hitherto known have been expressed qualitatively, with a little allow-
ance for error on either side. Things which are let go fall to the
ground. A very observant man may know also that they fall faster
as they go along. But our student is shown that, after falling for one
second in a vacuum, a body ia going at the rate of thirty-two feet per
second ; that after falling for two seconds it is going twice as fast ;
after going two and a half seconds, two and a half times as fast. If
he makes the experiment, and finds a single inch per second too much
or too little in the rate, one of two things must have happened: either
the law of falling bodies has been wrongly stated, or the experiment is
not accurate there is some mistake. He finds reason to think that
the latter is always the case : the more carefully he goes to work, the
more of the error turns out to belong to the experiment. Again, he
may know that water consists of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen,
combined ; but he now learns that two pints of steam at a temperature
of 150 centigrade will always make two pints of hydrogen and one
pint of oxygen at the same temperature, all of them being pressed as
much as the atmosphere is pressed. If he makes the experiment and
gets rather more or less than a pint of oxygen, is the law disproved ?
No ; the steam was impure, or there was some mistake. Myriads of
analyses attest the law of combining volumes ; the more carefully they
are made, the more nearly they coincide with it. The aspects of the
faces of a crystal are connected together by a geometrical law, by
which, four of them being given, the rest can be found. The place of
a planet at a given time is calculated by the law of gravitation ; if it is
half a second wrong, the fault is in the instrument, the observer, the
clock, or the law ; now, the more observations are made, the more of
this fault is brought home to the instrument, the observer, and the
clock. It is no wonder, then, that our student, contemplating these
and many like instances, should be led to say : " I have been short-
sighted ; but I have now put on the spectacles of science which Nature
had prepared for my eyes ; I see that things have definite outlines, that
the world is ruled by exact and rigid mathematical laws ; nai ov, deoc,
yewfierpetc." It is our business to consider whether he is right in so
concluding. Is the uniformity of Nature absolutely exact, or only
more exact than our experiments ?

At this point we have to make a very important distinction. There
are two ways in which a law may be inaccurate. The first way is
exemplified by that law of Galileo which I mentioned just now : that
a body falling in vacuo acquires equal increase in velocity in equal
times. No matter how many feet per second it is going, after an
interval of a second it will be going thirty-two more feet per second.
"We now know that this rate of increase is not exactly the same at
different heights, that it depends upon the distance of the body from
the centre of the earth ; so that the law is only approximate; instead
of the increase of velocity being exactly equal in equal times, it itself

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 9g

increases very slowly as the body falls. We know also that this varia-
tion of the law from the truth is too small to be perceived by direct
observation on the change of velocity. But suppose we have invented
means for observing this, and have verified that the increase of velocity
is inversely as the squared distance from the earth's centre. Still the
law is not accurate ; for the earth does not attract accurately toward
her centre, and the direction of attraction is continually varying with
the motion of the sea; the body will not even fall in a straight line.
The sun and the planets, too, especially the moon, will produce devia-
tions ; yet the sum of all these errors will escape our new process of
observation, by being a great deal smaller than the necessary errors
of that observation. But when these again have been allowed for,
there is still the influence of the stars. In this case, however, we only
give up one exact law for another. It may still be held that if the
effect of every particle of matter in the universe on the falling body
were calculated according to the law of gravitation, the body would
move exactly as this calculation required. And if it were objected
that the body must be slightly magnetic or diamagnetic, while there
are magnets not an infinite way off; that a very minute repulsion,
even at sensible distances, accompanies the attraction ; it might be
replied that these phenomena are themselves subject to exact laws,
and that, when all the laws have been taken into account, the actual
motion will exactly correspond with the calculated motion.

I suppose there is hardly a physical student (unless he has specially
considered the matter) who would not at once assent to the statement
I have just made; that, if we knew all about it, Nature would be
found universally subject to exact numerical laws. But let us just
consider for another moment what this means.

The word " exact " has a practical and a theoretical meaning.
When a grocer weighs you out a certain quantity of sugar very care-
fully, and says it is exactly a pound, he means that the difference be-
tween the mass of the sugar and that of the pound-weight he enqrioys
is too small to be detected by his scales. If a chemist had made a
special investigation, wishing to be as accurate as he could, and told
you this was exactly a pound of sugar, he would mean that the mass
of the sugar differed from that of a certain standard piece of platinum
by a quantity too small to be detected by his means of weighing,
which are a thousandfold more accurate than the grocer's. But what
would a mathematician mean, if he made the same statement? He
would mean this. Suppose the mass of the standard pound to be
represented by a length, say a foot, measured on a certain line ; so
that half a pound would be represented by six inches, and so on. And
let the difference between the mass of the sugar and that of the stand-
ard pound be drawn upon the same line to the same scale. Then, if
that difference were magnified an infinite number of times, it would
still be invisible. This is the theoretical meaning of exactness ; the

ioo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

practical meaning is only very close approximation ; how close, depends
upon the circumstances. The knowledge, then, of an exact law in the
theoretical sense would be equivalent to an infinite observation. I do
not say that such knowledge is impossible to man ; but I do say that
it would be absolutely different in kind from any knowledge that we
possess at present.

I shall be told, no doubt, that we do possess a great deal of knowl-
edge of this kind, in the form of geometry and mechanics ; and that it
is just the example of these sciences that has led men to look for exact-
ness in other quarters. If this had been said to me in the last century,
I should not have known what to reply. But it happens that about
the beginning of the present century the foundations of geometry were
criticised independently by two mathematicians, Lobatschewsky 1 and
the immortal Gauss ; a whose results have been extended and general-
ized more recently by Riemann 3 and Helmholtz. 4 And the conclusion
to which these investigations lead is that although the assumptions
which were very properly made by the ancient geometers are practi-
cally exact that is to say, more exact than experiment can be for
such finite things as we have to deal with, and such portions of space
as we can reach ; yet the truth of them for very much larger things,
or very much smaller things, or parts of space which are at present
beyond our reach, is a matter to be decided by experiment, when its
powers are considerably increased. I want to make as clear as possible
the real state of this question at present, because it is often supposed
to be a question of words or metaphysics, whereas it is a very distinct
and simple question of fact. I am supposed to know, then, that the
three angles of a rectilinear triangle are exactly equal to two right
angles. Now, suppose that three points are taken in space, distant
from one another as far as the sun is from a Centauri, and that the
shortest distances between these points are drawn so as to form a
triangle. And suppose the angles of this triangle to be very accurately
measured and added together ; this can at present be done so accurately
that the error shall certainly be less than one minute, less therefore
than the five-thousandth part of a right angle. Then I do not know
that this sum would differ at all from two right angles ; but also I do
not know that the difference would be less than ten degrees, or the
ninth part of a right angle. 6 And I have reasons for not knowing.

This example is exceedingly important as showing the connection

1 " Geomdrische Untermchungen zur Theorie der Parallell'mien" Berlin, 1840. Trans-
lated by Houel, Gauthier-Villars, 1866.

2 Letter to Schumacher, November 28, 1846 (refers to 1792).

3 " Ueber die HypotJiesen welche der Oeometrie zu Grunde liegev," Gottingen AbhandL,
1866-67. Translated by Houel in Annali di Matematica, Milan, vol. lit.

4 " The Axioms of Geometry," Academy, vol. i., p. 128 (a popular exposition).

6 Assuming that parallax observations prove the deviation less than half a second for
a triangle whose vertex is at the star and base a diameter of the earth's orbit.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT, 101

between exactness and universality. It is found that the deviation, if
it exists, must he nearly proportional to the area of the triangle. So
that the error in the case of a triangle whose sides are a mile long
would be obtained by dividing that in the case I have just been con-
sidering by four hundred quadrillions ; the result must be a quantity
inconceivably small, which no experiment could detect. But between
this inconceivably small error and no error at all, there is fixed an
enormous gulf the gulf between practical and theoretical exactness,
and what is even more important, the gulf between what is practically
universal and what is theoretically universal. I say that a law is
practically universal which is more exact than experiment for all cases
that might be got at by such experiment as we have. We assume
this kind of universality, and we find that it pays us to assume it.
But a law would be theoretically universal if it were true of all cases
whatever; and this is what we do not know of any law at all.

I said there were two ways in which a law might be inexact.
There is a law of gases which asserts that when you compress a perfect
gas the pressure of the gas increases exactly in the proportion in which
the volume diminishes. Exactly; that is to say, the law is more accu-
rate than the experiment, and experiments are corrected by means of
the law. But it so happens that this law has been explained; we
know precisely what it is that happens when a gas is compressed.
We know that a gas consists of a vast number of separate molecules,
rushing about in all directions with all manner of velocities, but so that
the mean velocity of the molecules of air in this room, for example, is
about twenty miles a minute. The pressure of the gas on any surface
with which it is in contact is nothing more than the impact of these
small particles upon it. On any surface large enough to be seen there
are millions of these impacts in a second. If the space in which the gas
is confined be diminished, the average rate at which the impacts take
place will be increased in the same proportion ; and, because of the
enormous number of them, the actual rate is always exceedingly close
to the average. But the law is one of statistics ; its accuracy depends
on the enormous numbers involved ; and so, from the nature of the case,
its exactness cannot be theoretical or absolute.

Nearly all the laws of gases have received these statistical expla-
nations; electric and magnetic attraction and repulsion have been
treated in a similar manner ; and an hypothesis of this sort has been
suggested even for the law of gravity. On the other hand, the man-
ner in which the molecules of a gas interfere with each other proves
that they repel one another inversely as the fifth power of the dis-
tance; so that we here find, at the basis of a statistical explanation, a
law which has the form of theoretical exactness. Which of these
forms is to win ? It seems to me, again, that we do not know, and that
the recognition of our ignorance is the surest way to get rid of it.

The world, in general, has made just the remark that I have attrib-

102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

uted to a fresh student of the applied sciences. As the discoveries of
Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Dalton, Cavendish, Gauss, displayed ever-
new phenomena following mathematical laws, the theoretical exact-
ness of the physical universe was taken for granted. Now, when peo-
ple are hopelessly ignorant of a thing, they quarrel about the source
of their knowledge. Accordingly, many maintained that we know
these exact laws by intuition. These said always one true thing, that
we did not know them from experience. Others said that they were
really given in the facts, and adopted ingenious ways of hiding the
gulf between the two. Others, again, deduced from transcendental
considerations sometimes the laws themselves, and sometimes what,
through imperfect information, they supposed to be the laws. But
more serious consequences arose when these conceptions derived from
physics were carried over into the field of Biology. Sharp lines of
division were made between kingdoms, and classes, and orders ; an
animal was described as a miracle to the vegetable world ; specific
differences, which are practically permanent within the range of his-
tory, were regarded as permanent through all time ; a sharp line was
drawn between organic and inorganic matter. Further investigation,
however, has shown that accuracy had been prematurely attributed to
the science, and has filled up all the gulfs and gaps that hasty observers
had invented. The animal and vegetable kingdoms have a debatable
ground between them, occupied by beings that have the characters of
both, and yet belong distinctly to neither. Classes and orders shade
into one another all along their common boundary. Specific differ-
ences turn out to be the work of time. The line dividing organic
matter from inorganic, if drawn to-day, must be moved to-morrow to
another place ; and the chemist will tell you that the distinction has
now no place in his science except in a technical sense for the con-
venience of studying carbon compounds by themselves. In geology
the same tendency gave birth. to the doctrine of distinct periods,
marked out by the character of the strata deposited in them all over
the sea ; a doctrine than which, perhaps, no ancient cosmogony has
been further from the truth, or done more harm to the progress of
science. Refuted many years ago by Mr. Herbert Spencer, 1 it has
now fairly yielded to an attack from all sides at once, and may be left
in peace.

When, then, we say that the uniformity which we observe in the
course of events is exact and universal, we mean no more than this :
that we are able to state general rules which are far more exact than
direct experiment, and which apply to all cases that we are at present
likely to come across. It is important to notice, however, the effect
of such exactness as we observe upon the nature of inference. When
a telegram arrived stating that Dr. Livingstone had been found by Mr.
Stanley, what was the process by which you inferred the finding of
1 "Illogical Geology," in Essays, voL i. Originally published in 1859.

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

103

Dr. Livingstone from the appearance of the telegram ? You assumed
over and over again the existence of uniformity in Nature. That the
newspapers had behaved as they generally do in regard to telegraphic
messages ; that the clerks had followed the known laws of the action
of clerks ; that electricity had behaved in the cable exactly as it be-
haves in the laboratory ; that the actions of Mr. Stanley were related
to his motives by the same uniformities that affect the actions of other
men ; that Dr. Livingstone's handwriting conformed to the curious
rule by which an ordinary man's handwriting may be recognized as
having persistent characteristics even at different periods of his life.
But you had a right to be much more sure about some of these in-
ferences than about others. The law of electricity was known with
practical exactness, and the conclusions derived from it were the
surest things of all the law about the handwriting, belonging to a
portion of physiology which is unconnected with consciousness, was
known with less, but still with considerable accuracy. But the laws
of human action in which consciousness is concerned are still so far
from being completely analyzed and reduced to an exact form, that
the inferences which you made by their help were felt to have only a
provisional force. It is possible that by-andby, when psychology has
made enormous advances and become an exact science, we may be able
to give to testimony the sort of weight which we give to the infer-
ences of physical science. It will then be possible to conceive a case
which will show how completely the whole process of inference
depends on our assumption of uniformity. Suppose that testimony,
having reached the ideal force I have imagined, were to assert that a
certain river runs up-hill? You could infer nothing at all. The arm
of inference would be paralyzed, and the sword of truth broken in its
grasp ; and reason could only sit down and wait until recovery re-
stored her limb, and further experience gave her new weapons. Ad'
vance Sheets from Macmillan.

-++-

SKETCH OF PEOFESSOE TYNDALL.

THE Tyndall or Tyndale family emerged into history about the
same time as the American Continent. The first of whom we
hear was William Tyndale, a contemporary of Columbus, and who was
just of age when this country was discovered. It was the epoch of
intellectual awakening in Europe, and the impulse was felt equally in
geographical exploration and in religious reform. Tyndale took to
the latter, and translated the Bible into English for the people. But
he found worse navigation on the theological sea than Columbus en-

to4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

countered on the Atlantic, and was burned at the stake for his opinions
in 1536.

About the middle of the seventeenth century some of the offshoots
of the martyr's family emigrated from Gloucestershire, England, to
Ireland, on the eastern or Saxon fringe of which some of their descend-
ants are still scattered. Among these was John Tyndall, the Pro-
fessor's father, who, although unknown to the public, was a man of
unusual intellectual power and force of character. The Tyndall blood
seems to have been rather fiery, as Prof. Tyndall's father had a " dif-
ference " with his grandfather, which cost him the inheritance that
he would have otherwise received as the eldest son. He was there-
fore left to struggle without means, and learned a trade, but sub-
sequently took a position on the police force of Ireland. But, being
denied the usual facilities of education, he taught himself upon various
subjects, and especially he became an able student of history. Prof.
Tyndall's father inherited from his ancestors a taste for religious con-
troversy, and threw himself zealously as an anti-Romanist into the
Protestant and Catholic warfare. The fathers of the English Church,
Chillingworth, Tillotson, Faber, Poole, Jeremy Taylor, and a host of
others, were at his finger's ends. Young Tyndall's early intellectual
discipline consisted almost wholly of exercises in theological contro-
versy, on the doctrines of infallibility, purgatory, transubstantiation,
and invocation of the saints. The boy knew the Bible almost by
heart, and, with reference to this knowledge, his father used to call
him Stillingfieet. But he had also an early interest in natural things,
and his father flattered this tendency by calling him Newton, and by
teaching him lines concerning the great natural philosopher, before he
was seven years old, that are still remembered. The father of Prof.
Tyndall was not only intellectually gifted, but he was a man of cour-
age, independence, mental delicacy, and scrupulous honor. By the
silent influence of his character, by example as well as by precept, he
inspired the intellect of his boy, and taught him to love a life of manly
independence. He died in May, 1847, quoting to his son the words of
Wolsey to Cromwell " Be just and fear nothing."

The subject of our present sketch was born in the village of Leigh-
lin Bridge, Ireland, in 1820, and his earliest education was received at
a school in that neighborhood. Through the influence of one of his
teachers, he acquired an early taste for geometry. In 18.39 he quitted
school and joined the Irish Ordnance Survey. He acquired a practical
knowledge of every branch of it, becoming in turn a draughtsman, a
computer, a surveyor, and trigonometrical observer. In subsequent
years he turned this experience to admirable account in ids investiga-
tions of alpine glaciers. In 1841 an incident occurred which, although
apparently trivial, had a powerful effect upon the young man's career.
One of the officials, who had become interested in Tyndall's work,
asked him one day how his leisure hours were employed. The answer

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 105

not being satisfactory, he rejoined, " You have five hours a day at
your disposal, and this time ought to be devoted to systematic study.
Had I, when at your age, had a friend to advise me, as I now advise
you, instead of being in a subordinate position, I might have been at
the head of the Survey." Next morning Tyndall was at his books be-
fore five o'clock, and for twelve years never swerved from the pratice.

In 1844, seeing no definite prospect before him, Mr. Tyndall re-
solved to go to America, whither, in the early part of the present cen-
tury, some members of his father's family had emigrated, and who now
reside in Philadelphia. 1 This was, however, opposed by his friends, and,
an opening occurring, he entered upon the vocation of a railroad en-
gineer. To five years upon the Ordnance Survey succeeded three
years of railway experience. But, this proving unpromising, and ani-
mated by a strong desire to augment his knowledge, Mr. Tyndall re-
signed his position, and accepted an appointment in Queenswood Col-
lege, Hampshire a new institution devoted partly to a junior school
and partly to the preliminary technical education of agriculturists and
engineers. Prof. Tyndall here developed a remarkable capacity as a
teacher. Although totally inexperienced in this field, such was his
magnetic influence over the students, that he was invariably called
upon to compose their disturbances, which he did by moral influences
and pure force of character. It was his experience in this institution
that gave him the groundwork of his masterly address on education
before the Royal Institution. 2

In 1848, in company with his friend Frankland (now Prof. Frank-
land, of the Royal School of Chemistry), Tyndall quitted England,
and, attracted by the fame of Prof. Bunsen, repaired to the University
of Marburg, in Hesse-Cassel. Prof. Tyndall had the free use of the
laboratory and cabinets of this institution, with the instructions of
Bunsen, Gerling, Knoblauch, and Stegman. His first scientific paper
was a mathematical essay on screw-surfaces, which formed the subject
of his inaugural dissertation when he took his degree. But the investi-
gation which first made him known to the scientific world was " On the
Magne-optic Properties of Crystals, and the Relation of Magnetism
and Diamagnetism to Molecular Arrangement." This investigation
was executed in connection with Prof. Knoblauch, and was published
in the Philosophical Magazine for 1850.

In 1851 Mr. Tyndall went to Berlin, and continued his researches
in the laboratory of Prof. Magnus. He soon, however, returned to
London, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1852. He
was invited to give a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institu-
tion, which he delivered February 14, 1853, and was so successful that

1 One of these is Hector Tyndale, who distinguished himself as an officer in the late
war. At Antietam he fought as major, and for his gallant behavior was subsequently
made brigadier-general.

* See "Culture demanded by Modern Life." D. Appleton & Co.

io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he was at once offered a position in that establishment. His election
to the appointment which he now holds, ol' Professor of Natural Phi-
losophy at the Royal Institution, was unanimously made in June, 1853.
The first three years of his residence in London he devcted to an ex-
haustive investigation of diamagnetism, the results of which were pub-
lished in various memoirs that have since been collected in a volume.

Prof. Tyndall was first attracted to the Alps in 1849, for the sole
object of healthful recreation and exercise. But he could not be long
in the presence of the grand physical phenomena there displayed with-
out becoming interested in the scientific questions they present. Ac-
cordingly, for more than twenty years, the Alps have served the double
purpose to Prof. Tyndall of physical and mental reinvigoration, after
being run down by his London work ; and, at the same time, they have
furnished him with a series of the most interesting scientific problems.
In company with his friends Prof, Huxley and Prof. Hirst (an old and
favorite pupil of Tyndall's, and to whom he dedicated his " Hours of
Exercise in the Alps"), and often alone, usually in summer, but some-
times in winter,' he has climbed the mountains and explored the Gla-
ciers, to clear up the various questions that have arisen, arid extend
our knowledge of the subject. The description of his adventures and
the results of his researches were embodied in his volume on " The
Glaciers of the Alps," but which is now out of print. The reader will,
however, find the records of adventure, and the results of study in the
mountains, embodied in the " Hours of Exercise," published last year,
and in a neat little volume on the "Forms of Water," now just
issued from the press.

As we remarked last month, Prof. Tyndall's proclivity is for philo-
sophic physics, and all his various lines of research, since he began in
the Marburg laboratory, twenty-four years ago, have converged upon
the great question of the molecular constitution of matter. The differ-
ent forces of Nature, and the several divisions of physics, can only be
brought into scientific harmony as they are harmonized in Nature, by
arriving at some clear understanding of the common constitution of
matter and how it is related to the action of forces. Prof. Tyndall has
been a profound student of the correlation of these forces, and of the
mechanism of that material substratum through which they are mani-
fested. Taking up matter in its free or vaporous condition, his chief
problem has been to explore or to sound it by the action of the radiant
forces. In his work on " Heat as a Mode of Motion," published in
1863, he develops that modern view of the nature of heat which in-
volves a molecular conception of the bodies displaying it. The results
of his original researches into the relations of radiant heat to gases and
vapors are there summarized, and his full memoirs upon these investi-
gations have just been published in a companion volume to the work
on diamagnetism. His interesting little volume on "Sound," although
not designed as a statement of original work, takes up the subject of

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 107

acoustics from the same general point of view, and deals with atmos-
pheric wave-motion in connection with the properties and constitution
of the various forms of matter. The researches on the formation of
clouds in tubes filled with various gases and vapors under the influence
of the electric beam, and the resulting inquiry into the subject of atmos-
pheric dust, were but parts of the same comprehensive investigation
into molecular conditions and transformations.

Prof. Tyndall has won his scientific reputation as an explorer in the
field of experimental physics, but he has also a commanding position as
a philosophic thinker. The questions that can be resolved by experiment
lead on to questions that can be resolved only by reason. Philosophy
is old and easy, and the human mind has overflowed with it from the
beginning ; but philosophy grounded in the knowledge and method of
science is as yet. rare, though it is nevertheless a glorious reality.
If scientific thinking is the result of an apprenticeship of centuries in
the management of the intellect, and if the mind's scientific action is
its most perfect action, then must scientific men, as the world goes on,
be more and more trusted in their opinions. Such is undoubtedly
the present tendency. This is shown generally in the increasing rec-
ognition of the scientific school of philosophy, and it is specially exem-
plified, in the present case, by the interest that is taken in whatever
Prof. Tyndall has to say to the public, and whatever the subject on
which, he speaks. This high scientific position gives acknowledged
weight and force to his views. But Prof. TyndalPs philosophic cast
of mind not only attracts him to the deeper questions of the time, but
his courageous temper leads him to deal with them candidly and fear-
lessly. First of all, a devotee of science and a lover of truth, he gives
to these his sole allegiance. An independent and intrepid inquirer,
tolerant of honest error, but contemptuous of that timid and calculat-
ing spirit which would protect men's prejudices from the light of
investigation, he is without fear in the free and manly expressions
of his opinions. That these should often contravene prevailing beliefs
is inevitable. A Protestant by hereditary instinct and in his blood,
and long drilled in the severities of scientific logic, it is impossible
that he should not find much in current opinion to excite continued
and trenchant protest.

Allied with this cherished freedom of thought and utterance, there
is in Prof. TyndalPs character an intense love of justice, and a passion
for fair dealing that is quite chivalric. This temper has been displayed
on various occasions, but in none more conspicuously than in his generous
defence of the German physicist, Mayer, whose scientific claims he con-
sidered to be depreciated by English scientists. Mayer's had been a
hard fate. An undoubted pioneer in establishing the important doc-
trine of the correlation of forces, working out its several lines of proof
with marvellous sagacity and an amount of exhausting labor that re-
sulted in mental derangement, and with little sympathetic recognition

io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the part of his own countrymen, Prof. Tyndall was indignant that
Englishmen, who pride themselves upon fair play, should detract one
iota from the just fame of the unfortunate foreigner. The man was
unknown to him, but the rights of the discoverer and the honor of
science were involved, and against the attacks of Professors Thomson,
Tait, and others, Prof. Tyndall made a defence so effectual that the
claims of the German philosopher will hardly be brought in question
again.

Of Prof. Tyndall as an author, it is hardly necessary to speak, as
his various works have been widely circulated, and the reading public
is familiar with them. Yet his genius as a wx*iter is so marked that it
cannot be omitted even in the briefest sketch of his character. Among
scientific writers he stands almost alone in the poetic vividness, force,
and finish of his style. His descriptions and narrations are enriched
by a bold and striking pictorial imagery, which presents the subject
with almost the perspective and " coloring of reality." No man better
understands the high office of imagination in science, or can more
effectively employ it to fascinate and illuminate the minds of others.
Of an ardent and poetic temperament, and at home among the
grandeurs of natural phenomena, there is often an inspiration in his
words that rouses and thrills our highest feelings.

Prof. Tyndall is now among us, to speak upon science in several
of the chief cities of the country, and it is therefore as a lecturer that
the public will be chiefly interested in him. We quote an excellent
account of his characteristics as a public teacher from the October
Galaxy :

" Prof. Tyndall's manner as a lecturer is in a remarkable degree individual
and unique. He never reads, but holds bis audience by the power of lucid and
forcible extemporaneous statement. He is not what would be called a fluent or
even speaker, who keeps up a continuous strain of agreeable utterance. He is
not an elegant declaimer, whose measured cadences are accompanied by
graceful and appropriate gestures. He is irregular and sometimes hesitating in
speecb, and unstudied in gestures and movements. His babit of speaking ha9
been formed in connection with bis babit of experimenting, and this latter is so
essential a feature of bis platform exercises that it greatly influences bis manner
of public address. Clearness, force, vividness of description, felicity of illustra-
tion, and the eloquence inspired by grand conceptions are the striking features
of his style. Of a poetic and imaginative temperament, but with these traits
under thorough discipline, he gives vivacity and attractiveness to accurate and
solid exposition. Prof. Tyndall is a thoroughly-trained and well-poised enthu-
siast in science. He is intensely in earnest, and is always as much interested
in the subject and the proceedings as the audience he carries with him. He is
a remarkable example of self-forgetfulness upon the platform, being always
absorbed in his subject. Strongly sympathetic with his audience, he seems
animated by but one purpose : to make them understand the question before
them, to make them see it and feel it as he sees and feels it. As an original
and skilful experimenter Prof. Tyndall is unrivalled. Fertile and ingenious in
contrivances for bringing out his points, the effects are always telling and im-

SKETCH OF PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 109

pressive. Yet the experiments are never the main things; they are always
subordinate to the idea with which he is dealing helps to its presentation.
He is never eclipsed by his own pyrotechny, but holds the attention of his
listeners closely to the question under examination. Prof. Tyndall is remark-
able for the combination of two traits which are but rarely united in a
single individual. He is an original explorer of scientific truth, and a skilful
and effective public teacher. Holding the truths of science to be divine, he is
impelled to dedicate his life to their discovery ; but holding them also to be a
means of salvation to man, he is impelled also to the duty of their public inter-
pretation. The Royal Institution, in which he is professor, is admirably con-
stituted for the attainment of this twofold end ; providing equally for carrying
out systematic original researches and for expounding their results to the select
audiences that gather in its lecture-room. Sir Humphry Davy first gave it a
world-wide reputation in both these departments; he was a fertile discoverer
and an eloquent lecturer. Dr. Faraday succeeded him, and probably surpassed
him in 'both of these accomplishments. The mantle of Faraday has fallen upon
Tyndall, and the fame of the establishment has not suffered from the change."

Prof. Tyndall has long desired to visit the United States, to see his
many friends, and to observe the aspects of American life; while mul-
titudes in this country have reciprocated the desire, that they might
have the opportunity of listening to his lectures. Yielding to their
numerous appeals, he has prepared a course of six lectures, and
"brought with him a large amount of new and delicate apparatus, for
illustrating them. The lectures will embrace the phenomena and
laws of light : reflection, refraction, analysis, synthesis, the doctrine
of colors, and the extension of radiant action in both directions, be-
yond the light-giving rays into the region of invisible action. Then
will follow the principles of spectrum analysis, the polarization of
b>ht, the phenomena of crystallization, the action of crystals upon
light, the chromatic phenomena of polarized light, and the parallel
phenomena of light and radiant heat. These lectures will be a source
of rare intellectual enjoyment to those who will have the good fortune
to listen to them, and of which our citizens will not be slow to avail
themselves.

We give, in the present number of the Monthly, the best likeness
we have ever seen of Prof. Tyndall. He is a man of medium stature,
lithe-built, highly vitalized, alert and noiseless in his movements ; a
ready and effective talker, but an excellent listener, and his manners
are genial and attractive. He is socially strong, a man of the world,
as well as a philosopher, and at home in all relations. But, with all
his passion for experiment, he has not yet made the experiment of
matrimony.

110

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

TILE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION.

THE editor of Scribner's Magazine,
in a leading article in the October
number, attempts to bring The Popu-
lar Science Monthly into reproach for
its obnoxious opinions. There is a cer-
tain doctrine lately much talked about
that is known to be odious among a
great number of magazine-buying peo-
ple. It is charged (on what authority
is not stated) that the editor of The
Popular Science Monthly is an irre-
pressible partisan of this doctrine, and
that, having made certain specious
promises to its readers to furnish them
with good, sound, scientific reading, he
has betrayed their confidence by set-
ting his pages ablaze with expositions
of this doctrine, that so many people
are known to regard with detestation.
The little game here undertaken is old,
and has been often played with suc-
cess; but, with the growth of intelli-
gence and liberality, it is getting dis-
reputable, and our neighbor is welcome
to all he can make by it. It is cus-
tomary in such cases not to be very
scrupulous about the means resorted
to for effecting the object, and the
present instance is no exception to the
custom. The editor commences by try-
ing to be ironical about the claims of
science in culture, and quotes from
our prospectus the remark that it is
" of the highest concern that thought
should be brought into the exactest
harmony with things." "We are still
of opinion that the neglect of this re-
quirement is the fundamental defect
of education, and we venture to inti-
mate to our critic that this is exactly
" what's the matter with him." His
statements not only fail to harmonize
with the things he is talking about,
but they grossly misrepresent them.

After quoting some sentences from our
prospectus, the editor says :

" It is therefore painful to find that, when
we pass from the well-taken prospectus to
the actual monthly, the strict inductive in-
quiry fades softly away, as in a dissolving
view, and in its place blazes out one of the
most high-flown of human speculations.
The strong bias of the editor as an evolu-
tionist cannot be repressed, and the attempt
is made to educate the public mind-into the
phraseology and methods of what is at best
a speculation, under the name of science 1
If this were called the Youmans, or Evolu-
tion Monthly, the mischief would be cir-
cumscribed ; but, as the doctrine of Evolu-
tion, with its offspring, Darwinism, is noth-
ing more yet than a provisional hypothesis,
based on a priori reasonings, and not on
any valid induction of facts, the attempt to
clothe it in the imperial garb of science, and
set it for an arbiter of all beliefs, is greatly
to be deprecated in the interest of true cul-
ture."

The statement here made, tnat
under editorial bias our pages have
been set ablaze with evolution spec-
ulations in violation of prospective
pledges, is simply not true. "We prom-
ised our readers to represent the pres-
ent state of thought on the leading
questions that are agitating the scien-
tific world. The doctrine of evolu-
tion, as everybody knows, is one of
these questions, and had we avoided
it we should have broken our prom-
ise, and broken faith with our read-
ers. Nor has the subject received the
excessive attention that is charged.
Our first volume, just completed, con-
tains about a hundred main or lead-
ing articles, and of these but three deal
with the subject of Evolution or Dar-
winism, and one of them is an attack
upon its fundamental principle. Of
the articles contributed by the editor,
not one has been devoted to the object
alleged "that of educating the pop-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

in

nlar mind into the phraseology and
methods of this speculation." Nor is
there a single article in the whole
volume that gives any explanation of
either the phraseology or the methods
of the doctrine of Evolution. A few
references to it there have been, as in
the addresses of Dr. Carpenter and
Prof. Gray, before eminent scientific
bodies, and as occurs in the able arti-
cle of Prof. Clifford in the present
number; but these references are in-
cidental and unavoidable: they result
from the prominence of the question
in the scientific world, and its conse-
quent recognition in current scientific
literature. And yet it pleases the edi-
tor of Scribner's to tell his readers that
under an uncontrolled personal bias our
pages are so fired with this mischievous
doctrine that the name of the Monthly
ought to be changed to prevent its evil
influence.

It now remains to consider the
more serious imputation, that our pages
have been perverted to the diffusion
of spurious science. According to the
editor of Scrihier^s, the doctrine of
evolution is not a result of true sci-
ence not an induction from facts, but
a "high-flown," "a priori" "specula-
tion." And here, again, we have to
note that this writer is not very par-
ticular to make his thought harmonize
with the things he is talking about.
His statement is as wrong as he could
get it just 180 from the truth; and,
if the ignorance he evinces be any
measure of the general ignorance, we
cannot too quickly begin the neglected
work of " educating the popular mind "
into the rudiments of the subject. "We
purpose now to show that the Hypoth-
esis of Evolution is not an a priori
speculation, but a true scientific in-
duction ; and not only so, but it is the
antagonist and successor of a priori
speculations which had been in vogue
for many centuries before the inductive
method arose.

"What is the fundamental concep-

tion of the doctrine of Evolution ? It is
" that the universe and all that it con-
tains did not come into existence in the
condition that we now know it, nor in
any thing like that condition." It im-
plies that the heavens as they appear
above us, the earth as it exists beneath
us, the hosts of living creatures that oc-
cupy it, and humanity as we now know
it, " are merely the final terms in an im-
mense series of changes, which have
been brought about in the course of
immeasurable time." It affirms vast
changes in past periods ; that these
changes have been according to a meth-
od, and that this method has been of the
nature of an unfolding. The essential
changes of evolution have been compre-
hensively formulated as from the simple
to the complex, from the homogeneous
to the heterogeneous, from the general
to the special. Is this an a priori spec-
ulation, that is, an idea formed before
observation and experience of the facts
to which it applies; or is it a scientific
induction, that is, an idea formed after
the facts are known, and based upon
them ?

As regards the stellar and planetary
universe, its origin from an all-diffused
nebulous mist was taught by Kant a
century ago. This view was subse-
quently elaborated by Laplace the
mathemetician, and Herschel the as-
tronomer, into the Nebular Hypothesis,
which was the outcome of the whole
body of known astronomical facts. This
hypothesis affirmed the progressive
condensation and differentiation of the
nebulous mass through successive
stages to more and more concrete and
specialized groups, systems, and orbs.
That the solar system was gradually
formed in the way the nebular hypoth-
esis implies, and that its facts can be
explained by that hypothesis and no
other, is now the general belief of
astronomers. Consisting of more than
one hundred and fifty bodies, revolv-
ing and circulating according to one
grand method, it has been pointed ont

112

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

by Prof. Leconte that there are no
less than three hundred and seveuty
facts concerning the distribution, form,
and motions, of the sun and planets,
which are the simple consequences of
the nebular hypothesis, and can be ac-
counted for in no other way. The
nebular hypothesis is the doctrine of
to-day, in its application to tbe most
perfect of the sciences, and it is nothing
less or other than an hypothesis of as-
tronomic evolution. Are we to be told
that it is but an a 'priori speculation?
On the contrary, has it not replaced an
a priori cosmogony that swayed the
human mind for thousands of years be-
fore the solar system was discovered?

As regards the earth, it has been
studied by the method of science for
more than a century, and the result is,
a vast mass of facts and inductions
which make up our knowledge of geol-
ogy. All these go to establish one
proposition, viz., that our planet is not
what it was millions of years ago, but
has undergone a series of developing
changes resulting in the present order
of things. Our eminent geologist, Prof.
Dana, in his manual, says : " This law of
specialization the general being before
the special is the law of all develop-
ment. The egg is at first a simple unit,
and, gradually, part after part of the
new structure is evolved, that which is
most fundamental appearing earliest,
until the being is complete in all its
outer and minor details. The principle
is exhibited in the physical history of
the globe which was first a featureless
globe of fire, then had its oceans and
dry land, in course of time received
mountains and rivers, and finally all
those diversities of surface which now
characterize it. Again, the climates
began with universal tropics; and at
last the diversities of the present day."
Is this to be accounted a high-flown
a priori speculation, or a vast and valid
induction from a hundred years' study
of the facts of Nature ? Let it be re-
membered that, according to the high-

est authorities, inductive geology was
put back two centuries by the en-
slavement of the human mind to an
old a priori speculation in regard to
the age of the world.

The study of the course of life upon
the earth shows that it conforms to the
same great plan. The life of the globe
a few millions of years ago was a very
different thing from what it is now.
Different races of plants and animals
have appeared and disappeared in slow
succession, and their remains are found
entombed in successive rock-forma-
tions. The facts are a part of geology,
and have been arrived at by the same
processes of observation and induction
that have revealed the order and his-
tory of the stratified systems. The
course of life upon the earth has con-
formed to a method, and that method
is universally described as a progress
and a development. It shows an ad-
vance from the simpler to the more
complex, from the general to the
special, from the lower to the higher;
in short, it is an evolution in the strict-
est sense. There was, first, a period
of no life the azoic age ; then ap-
peared the lower forms of life, vegeta-
ble and animal ; then higher and higher
kinds, until man, the highest of all, ap-
peared last. The progress evinces con-
tinuity, harmony, and gradation. As
remarked by Mr. Dana, "the begin-
ning of an age will be in the midst of a
preceding age; and the marks of the
future coming out to view are to be
regarded as prophetic of that future.
The age of mammals was foreshadowed
by the appearance of mammals long
before in the course of the reptilian
age, and the age of reptiles was prophe-
sied in types that lived in the earlier
Carboniferous age." The lower forms
that perish do not reappear, and, as Mr.
Wallace observes, " no group or species
has come into existence twice," but
" every species has come into existence
coincident, both in space and time, with
a preexisting, closely-allied species."

EDITOR'S TABLE.

"3

That the great advancing movement of
life has been a divergence, an opening
out, or an evolution, is incontestable,
and is admitted by the highest biologi-
cal authorities. It is proved by the
fact tbat, if we go back a million of
years or so, there is an obvious con-
vergence of types, or the different kinds
of animals will have to be represented
as nearer together in cbaracters, and,
as we recede still farther into the past,
tbe approximation becomes still closer.
Prof. Owen says be has "never omit-
ted a proper opportunity for impress-
ing tbe results of observations show-
ing tbe more generalized structures of
extinct, as compared with tbe more
specialized form of recent animals."
Prof. Agassiz takes a similar position,
insisting strongly that " The more
ancient animals resemble the embry-
onic forms of existing species." Mr.
Wallace says : " As we go back into
past time and meet with the fossil re-
mains of more and more ancient races
of extinct animals we find that many
of them actually are intermediate be-
tween distinct groups of existing ani-
mals." Prof. Cope remarks: "That
the existing state of the geological rec-
ord of organic types should be regarded
as any thing but a fragment is, from
our stand-point, quite preposterous.
And more, it may be assumed with
safety, that when completed, it will
furnish us with a series of regular suc-
cessions, with but slight and regular
interruptions, if any, from the species
which represented the simplest begin-
nings of life at the dawn of creation, to
those which have displayed complica-
tion and power in a later or in the
present period. For the labors of the
paleontologist are daily bringing to
light structures intermediate between
those never before so connected, thus
creating lines of succession where be-
fore were only interruptions." Is the
great conclusion of an unfolding method
in the order of life which is based upon
a vast body of biological facts, and

VOL. II. 8

supported by the powerful analogies of
an unfolding order in other parts of
nature, to be characterized as a high-
flown a priori speculation ? or is it a
result of strict inductive inquiry, which
replaces an a priori hypothesis of life
that prevailed for ages before science
had entered upon its study?

Again, humanity is not now what
it was in ages long past. That man's
existence upon earth dates back to a
far profounder antiquity than has for-
merly been believed, is a clear induc-
tion from an extensive array of facts.
Be the time longer or shorter, an im-
mense series of changes has taken place
in the history of the race. A few
thousand years ago Europe was bar-
barous, and its inhabitants warred and
worked with implements of stone.
Society was rude, low, homogeneous,
and undeveloped. Its movement has
been a slow unfolding into diversity
and specialty. There has been an in-
crease of human capabilities, a rise in
intelligence, an advance of morals, a
growing capacity of social cooperation,
a multiplication of arts and industries,
augmented power over Nature, an
emergence of institutions, and in short
an evolution of civilization. This is a
broad induction, from the facts of his-
tory, from the facts of prehistoric
archaeology, and from the facts of an-
thropology, and it is fast taking the
place of the old a priori speculation
that the course of humanity has been a
degeneracy, and which was firmly be-
lieved until science reversed the method
of studying the subject.

Sir Charles Lyell, it will hardly be
denied, is one of the most learned and
able of living geologists. His pains-
taking conscientiousness as an observer
and his judicial caution and calmness
as an inductive reasoner are beyond
question. For fifty years he has studied
the subject of life in connection with
the past changes of the globe, and has
embodied his conclusions in his various
geological works. In the earlier of

u 4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

these works, which passed through
many editions, he accepted the old tra-
ditional view of the origin of life. But,
as his studies enlarged, that view broke
down so completely that he has for-
mally abandoned it. In the tenth edition
of his " Principles of Geology," pub-
lished in 1867, and in the eleventh
edition of the same work now just
issued, he has adopted the theory of
evolution in its application to the phe-
nomena of terrestrial life. The presi-
dents of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, Grove,
Hooker, Huxley, and (Jarpenter, in
their inaugural addresses, and Prof.
Gray in his late address as president
of the American Scientific Associa-
tion, have proclaimed their adherence
to the doctrine of evolution. Prof.
Cope, one of the most able and ac-
complished of American zoologists,
affirms that the truth of the develop-
ment hypothesis is held "to be infi-
nitely probable by a majority of the
exponents of the natural sciences, and
is held as absolutely demonstrated by
another portion." It has been widely
accepted by the younger naturalists of
this country, more generally by those
of England, and still more extensively
by those of Germany, as a guiding prin-
ciple in the work of investigation. An
intelligent German naturalist said to
Prof. Giekie, of the Edinburgh Uni-
versity : "You are still discussing in
England whether or not the theory of
Darwin can be true. We have got a
long way beyond that here. His the-
ory is now our common starting-
point."

Facts like these will have weight
with thoughtful persons, but the editor
of Scribbler's sees through the illusion.
All these masters of science and work-
ing-students of Nature have been lured
from the path of true induction by the
ignis fatuus of a high-flown a priori
speculation.

We have shown the separate estab-
lishment of a principle of evolution

by independent workers in different
branches of science. On the broad
basis of the facts and inductions that
have been reached by three centuries
of investigation in the several domains
of natural phenomena, rests the hypo-
thesis of universal evolution. The co-
ordination of these diverse and alien
orders of facts, and the synthesis of in-
ductions, by which the grand generali-
zation was arrived at, we owe to the
genius of Herbert Spencer. With a
knowledge of modern science that John
Stuart Mill has pronounced " encyclo-
pedic," with a grasp of method and a
capacity of organization which, on the
authority of the Saturday Review, has
not been equalled in England since
Newton, and with the power of a
"giant mind," as Dr. McCosh declares,
to wield and shape his extensive scien-
tific materials, Mr. Spencer has worked
out the principle of universal evolution
by the rigid logic of inductive science.
In each division of his exposition the
first step has been to marshal the facts ;
to sift and methodize the data. The
next step has been to generalize the
facts, or to establish the inductions
warranted by the data. Finally he
verifies these inductions by showing
that they follow from previously estab-
lished principles, and harmonize with
them. The conditions by which all
science has been created are thus
strictly complied with. The concep-
tion of all nature, as in a slow process
of movement to a higher state of an
ever-advancing and ever-perfecting
order of a universe in evolution, is no
fantastic speculation brought down to
us by tradition from the dreaming
childhood of the race, but it is a defi-
nite verifiable principle educed from a
more comprehensive range of facts than
any other generalization ever attempted
the outgrowth of the ripest knowl-
edge, and which is coercing the assent
of the most disciplined intellects of the
world. The principle in question is no
barren formula to be classed with the

EDITOR'S TABLE.

"5

empty a priori speculations which have
figured so largely in the past career of
the human mind. It is the result of
the steady concentration of the intellect
of man fur hundreds of years upon the
realities that surround us, and is the
profoundest answer yet given to man's
questionings of the mystery of being.
It is the latest interpretation of the on-
goings of the world, and brings with
it the possibility of a new and more
stable philosophy of things than we
have yet known a philosophy not
spun from mystical a priori fancies, but
constructed from the valid truths of
science, and anchored in the depths of
demonstrated knowledge.

An able writer in the Quarterly .Re-
view (London) for July, in discussing
the modern school of thought and Her-
bert Spencer's relation to it, says :
" The two deepest scientific principles
now known of all those relating to ma-
terial things are, the law of gravitation
and the law of evolution." The prin-
ciple is here recognized as more than a
hypothesis and more even than a
theory, it is a law in the same sense
that gravitation is a law. The proof
of evolution indeed is very far from be-
ing so complete as that of gravitation.
But its claims as an established law
are not therefore invalidated, for the
accepted truths of science by no means
rest upon equal amounts of evidence.
From the newness of the systematic
investigation of the principle, from the
imperfection of knowledge in many
spheres of its application, and from the
stupendous reach of its operation, it is
impossible that there should not be
many deficiencies in its proof. It has
its outstanding and unresolved diffi-
culties which it may take long to clear
up. Truths grow they are examples
of evolution. All great generaliza-
tions have been arrived at gradually;
never at once by complete demonstra-
tion. There are first long foreshadow-
ing preludes in which a principle is dis-
cerned as emerging into increasing dis-

tinctness. It is then accepted on
grounds of probability, and preponder-
ating proofs, and as an advance on pre-
vious beliefs. If a theory becomes in-
creasingly consonant with facts, and
steadily makes way against inexorable
criticism, though it has grave difficul-
ties, it will be accepted, and these diffi-
culties will be left to the future. It was
so with the law of gravitation. " The
Newtonian theory was beset by palpa-
ble contradictions in its results till
many years after Newton's death, yet
all sound philosophers embraced it. The
motion of the apsides of the moon's
orbit was with singular honesty con-
fessed by Newton to be, in fact, nearly
twice as great as calculation from
theory made it ; and this contradiction
remained an outstanding, palpable ob-
jection, yet without occasioning any
misgiving as to the general truth of
gravitation, until the error was ex-
plained and the calculation rectified by
Clairault."

And so it is in other branches of
science. The undulating theory of
light is accepted by all physicists, but
still has its difficulties. The theory of
heat is not without its anomalies. The
chemical theory of respiration is gener-
ally adopted, but there are facts that
still oppose it. It is claimed by none,
that the evidence of the law of evolu-
tion is complete, but it is a growing con-
viction of those who know the subject
best, that the evidence in its favor pre-
ponderates overwhelmingly. Nor is it
dependent upon any of its special in-
terpretations. Darwin may be in er-
ror, Huxley may be wrong, Mivart may
be wide of the mark, Haeckel may be
mistaken, Cope may misjudge, and
Spencer be at fault ; but, in common
with a large and increasing body of
scientific men, they are all agreed as
to one thing, that evolution is a great
and established fact a wide and valid
induction from the observed order of
Nature, the complete elucidation of
which is the grand scientific task of the

n6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

future. It is in this sense that we hold
to the doctrine of evolution.

In our prospectus we referred to
the increasing number of those who
desire to know whither inquiry is tend-
ing, what old ideas are perishing, and
what new ones are rising into accept-
ance ; and we said that our periodical
was commenced with the intention of
meeting the wants of these more per-
fectly than any other. The editor of
Scribner^s refers to this as a "magnifi-
cent promise," and dilates upon the
transcendent editorial attributes re-
quired to realize it. To this we reply,
"Not if the specimen of Scribnerian sci-
ence we have here considered is to be
taken as the standard." And if we may
be permitted to imitate the bad exam-
ple of Scribner's editor, and meddle for
a moment with what is none of our
business, we should say that he had
better stick to his fiction and his verse-
making, and not deviate into that for-
eign field where nothing is to be gained
by cajoling public ignorance or cater-
ing to public prejudice, and where " the
supreme concern is, to bring thought
into the exactest harmony with things."

LITERARY NOTICES.

Spectrum Analysis in its Application to
Terrestrial Substances, and the Phys-
ical Constitution of the Heavenly

- Bodies. By Dr. H. Schellen. D. Apple-
ton & Co., 1872.

The following able notice of Dr. Schel-
len's book is abridged from an article in Na-
ture : It is not difficult to deliver interest-
ing lectures or to write an instructive book
on spectrum analysis. The rapid succession
of brilliant discoveries in this new branch of
science, the amount of fundamental facts
added by it to human knowledge, especially
in the field of the cosmical world, assure the
lecturer or writer, appealing to the intelli-
gent but not scientific public, of useful and
legitimate success. But what is not so easy
to do is, to interest at the same time the^ws
du monde and scientific men, by offering a
selection of the most recent discoveries in

a bright and literary form attractive to the
former, and yet keeping for the latter the
appearance of precision, and exactness of
the numerical results. All these conditions
are very happily filled in " Sehellen's Spec-
trum Analysis," edited by Mr. W. Huggins
from the second German edition.

The first part, introductory, is occupied
by a description of the artificial sources of
high degrees of heat and light, of which the
study is so intimately connected with the
chemical and astronomical phenomena em-
braced in the field of spectrum analysis ;
various apparatus, for instance, the gas-
burner, the magnesium lamp, the Drummond
lime-light, the electric spark of the induc-
tion coil, the Geissler's tube, and the electric
light produced by voltaic batteries, are de-
scribed, and_ the practical adjustments are
briefly but sufficiently referred to for a good
understanding of the subject.

The second part is devoted to an ele-
mentary abstract of the geometrical and
mechanical properties of light. The fun-
damental analogy between light and sound
is developed, in order to explain to a reader
unlearned in optics how the color of a ray
is the corresponding element of the pitch of
a musical sound, and how it is possible to
define a colored ray by the time of its lumi-
nous vibrations. The description of refrac-
tion phenomena, especially the paths of
rays through a prism, leads naturally to the
separating process of the different colors on
which spectrum analysis is founded.

A considerable number of chapters is
devoted to the construction of the simple
and compound spectroscope. The chief
points of this construction, especially the
contrivances for the simultaneous compari-
son of two spectra, the determination of the
position of lines in the spectrum, are care-
fully described. Afterward a practical ac-
count of the methods for exhibiting spectra
of terrestrial substances, for instance, me-
tallic salts volatilized in a gas-burner, etc.,
will certainly interest chemists.

An interesting chapter contains the
theoretical and experimental explanation of
the reversal of the spectra of gaseous sub-
stances. This phenomenon, studied inde-
pendently by Foucault and Angstrom, and
definitely generalized by Kirchhoff, is per-
haps the chief point of the history of spec-

LITERARY NOTICES.

117

*rum analysis, and certainly the beginning
of its utilization as a powerful method of
investigation.

The third part of the book, the most im-
portant in extent and results, is devoted to
the application of the spectrum analysis to
the heavenly bodies.

The sunlight, according to its bright-
ness and to the peculiarities of its spectrum,
is the best and easiest example to study.
The dark lines in infinite number which it
shows, called " Frauenhofer lines," from the
discoverer, deserve special attention ; there-
fore the author has illustrated the descrip-
tion of the sun-spectrum with two sets of
maps. The first is a reduction of Kirchhoff ' s
maps engraved on wood, representing in
several tints the lines from A to G ; the
second series is a reduction to about half
size of the admirable normal solar spectrum
of Angstrom, in which the Frauenhofer lines
from a to Hi H 2 are coordinated according
to their wave-lengths. The accuracy of
these lithographic plates is really wonderful ;
they will have the great merit of introduc-
ing among physicists and astronomers the
wave-length scale for the designation of
lines instead of KirchhofFs scale, which is
an arbitrary one ; and in any case they will
facilitate the transformation of the data
from one to another. I must add that
Angstrom's maps have been introduced into
the present edition by the English editor,
and that such an addition is certainly one of
the greatest attractions of this book for
scientific men.

A good abstract of KirchhofFs and
Angstrom's memoirs on the coincidence of
the dark solar lines with the bright lines of
metallic vapors leads to the hypothetical
constitution of the sun ; this problem is so
difficult, that it is necessary to leave to ev-
ery one the responsibility of his own ideas
on this subject.

The remaining part of the book is en-
tirely devoted to the most delicate applica-
tions of spectrum analysis to astronomy. A
preliminary description of the sun-spots,
faculse, and other peculiarities of the sur-
face of the sun, of the prominences round
the disk, and so on, is given before the
spectroscopic process for analyzing these
appearances is introduced, and enables the
reader to understand very well the diffi-

culties of the problem and the interest of
its solution. I must mention especially the
interesting account of the three total solar
eclipses of 1868, 1869 and 1870. A large
series of drawings and photographic fac-
similes give the best idea of the phenomena,
and show the improvements due to pho-
tography and spectroscopy ; the relatively
great extent devoted to this account is justi-
fied by the importance of the subject ; the
spectrum analysis of the prominences is in
fact one of the most considerable results ob-
tained for a long time in the science of cos-
mogony.

The spectroscope, as it is known, is able
to give an exact measurement of the
proper velocity of the luminous bodies. A
German physicist, Doppler, deserves to be
mentioned as the first who called the atten-
tion of astronomers to this subject, though
a good number of his assertions may be in-
correct. After him, Fizeau, a French phys-
icist, to whom we are indebted for the first
determinations of the velocity of light on
the surface of the earth, showed the errors
of Doppler in a little paper not very well
known, published in 1849, and calculated
the apparent change of refrangibility which
would be produced by the proper mo-
tion of some heavenly bodies ; but no direct
experiment was made before the complete
application of spectrum analysis to the
sidereal phenomena. In this way Schellen's
book gives a good abstract of the works of
Huggins and SecchL In these researches the
velocity of rotation of the sun was to be
tested as a verification of the general law of
the phenomenon. I ought to say that the
rather discordant results want a theoretical
analysis, because the problem seems to me,
in the case of the sun, more complicated
than it appears at first sight. However, the
influence of the velocity of the gas streams,
especially of hydrogen, which constitute the
greater part of the prominences, is unques-
tionably verified by Lockyer's observations.
In the same way Huggins has proved and
determined the proper motion of Sirius by
the apparent change of refrangibility of the
Fline.

The remaining part of the book is devoted
to stellar and meteoric spectrum analysis.
It is impossible to give a superficial notice
of the beautiful researches of Huggins and

n8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Secchi, researches which are always going
on ; the reader will find with interest va-
rious important results of these studies for
instance, the existence in many stars of a
^ood number of terrestrial substances hy-
drogen, nitrogen, magnesium, sodium, etc.

One of the most interesting facts is the
observation of the temporary star which ap-
peared in May, 1866; the great brightness
of the star was due, as indicated by the
spectroscope, to an immense mass of incan-
descent hydrogen.

At the end of the work the author gives
some very important observations of Hug-
gins and others on the spectrum of nebulas ;
the chief result is the possibility, with the
aid of the spectroscope, of distinguishing by
the composition of their light the true neb-
ulas from the clusters of stars.

Finally, a description of the spectrum
of the aurora borealis, the identification of
its bright lines with some bright lines of
the solar corona, a description of various
meteors, lightnings and their spectra, show
into what difficult objects this new branch
of science has pushed its investigations.

On the whole, this book must be con-
sidered as a good type of a " popular
work ; " it deserves the attention of the
public, and the esteem of scientific men ;
and, finally, it recommends itself by a gra-
cious side. It was translated into English
by two ladies, who have had the double
merit of giving a proof of their good scien-
tific taste, and of showing an example of
the help which their sex is able to afford to
science.

Life in Nature. Man and his Dwell-
ing-Place. By James Hinton. New
York : D. Appleton & Co.

These works are unique in the scientific
literature of the present time, and, although
treating of different topics, are so charac-
terized by a common spirit and method,
that they may properly be considered to-
gether. Their author is a London surgeon
in busy practice, but who has not permitted
the pressure of professional duties to pre-
vent him from giving close attention to the
grave questions by which the mind of the
age is agitated. Nor is Mr. Hinton a mere
amateur who recreates with philosophy ; he
is a pioneer investigator in the field of sci-

ence, and has occupied himself much with
those new and large dynamical questions,
and their various applications, with which
scientific philosophers have been so intently
engaged during the last quarter of a cen-
tury. His inquiry into the physical condi-
tions of vegetable growth, showing that it
is governed by definite and traceable forces,
and takes place in the direction of least re-
sistance, like all mechanical effects, forms
an important contribution to biological sci-
ence, and was arrived at independently by
Mr. Hinton and Herbert Spencer. Yet the
author of these works has not dedicated
himself to any line of special research (al-
though from the fertility of his ideas, and
the acuteness and originality of his views,
he might, undoubtedly, have done so with
eminent success) ; but, having mastered the
more vital and comprehensive principles of
modern research, he takes them as the
starting-point for still larger views. Sci-
ence, indeed, in its ordinary acceptation, is
not to him an end. Though deeply imbued
with its spirit, and equipped with its latest
results, he is not satisfied to rest in this
sphere of ideas : it is as leading to some-
thing beyond, or as furnishing a basis for
something higher, that they have to him
their principal value. As Bacon holds sci-
ence subordinate to the ends of utility, and
the practical service of humanity, Mr. Hin-
ton would make it subordinate to the un-
folding of man's spiritual nature. He prizes
science chiefly for its religious uses, or as
an interpretation of the divine order of the
world. Maintaining the fundamental har-
mony of all truth, and that religion repre-
sents a verity of the universe as much as
astronomy, he has taken it as his task to
elucidate the harmonies that must prevail
among the different aspects of truth in or-
der that religious faith may be grounded in
scientific principles. The results of science,
and the knowledge we have of man and the
external world, are the author's postulates ;
and from these he aims to pass, by un-
broken logic, to the spiritual order of be-
ing. Holding Nature to be a sphere divine-
ly designed for man's highest development,
he admits no breaks in the order, and in-
sists that the former must be understood
before the latter can be determined. Sci-
ence, therefore, according to Mr. Hinton, is

LITERARY NOTICES.

119

the foundation and prerequisite of man's
true spiritual unfolding.

It has been made a criticism of Mr.
Hinton's books, that their arguments are
not fully sustained ; or that, while their first
portions are clear and cogent, the latter
parts are indefinite and less conclusive.
But this criticism, attributes to defect in
discussion that which is due to the nature
of the subject-matter, for the ideas succes-
sively dealt with are so different as almost
to appear contrasted. In the sphere of
physical Nature, there are a definiteness, a
quantitative sharpness, and a kind of tan-
gibleness in the truths established, which
disappear as we pass into the domain of
moral and religious conceptions. This con-
trast of the phenomena in the two spheres,
which are precisely conceived in the one
case and not in the other, has been made
the ground for denying that there can be
any true science in the higher realm of
man's moral and spiritual activity. But
the objection is not valid ; for, wherever
there is an orderly and coherent body of
truths, though they cannot be formulated
with exactness, there is the legitimate basis
of science. It may be long before the rec-
onciliation and unification of unlike ideas
and diverse systems of opinion will be com-
pletely accomplished ; but it is no longer
regarded as impossible, and every able at-
tempt to realize it brings us a step nearer
to the final and desirable residt. Much is
said, in these times, of the conflict of sci-
ence and faith, and many maintain that
they are invincibly hostile and must be per-
manently alienated. Mr. Hinton holds that
this is an error due to the incompleteness
and imperfection of present knowledge which
the advance of thought is certain to correct,
and all who read his works must confess
that they are able and original contribu-
tions to this end.

" Life in Nature," aside from the higher
purpose for which it was written, is one of
the most charming studies in biology that
our language affords. It abounds in inter-
esting facts illustrating the beautiful laws
of vital phenomena, and stated with unri-
valled clearness, and is marked by keen
and original insight into the old obscurities
of the subject. The first chapter treats of
"Function, and how we act;" the second

of " Nutrition, and why we grow." The
subsequent chapters take up the " Vital
Force and Laws of Form," the " Univer-
sality of Life," " The Living World," " The
Phenomenal and True," the "Organic and
the Inorganic," and " Nature and Man." The
volume is neatly illustrated, and we recom-
mend it to all who care either for the strict
science of the subject, or for the larger ques-
tions to which it leads.

" Man and his Dwelling - Place " was
written fifteen years ago, has been recast,
condensed, and. made to embody the au-
thor's maturer views. Its perusal should
follow that of " Life in Nature," as it deals
with a higher range of questions, and is of a
more speculative and metaphysical quality.

Mr. Hinton writes in a lucid, attractive,
and eloquent style, and his books contain
many passages of remarkable impressive-
ness and beauty. In the felicity of his de-
lineations he often reminds one of Ruskin ;
but, unlike the great Rhapsodist of art, he
is never run away with by his rhetoric.
The intensity of his convictions and the
earnestness of his feelings give warmth and
force to his language, which is still chast-
ened and restrained by the discipline of
refined scholarship.

BOOKS EECEIVED.
Intermembral Homologies. The Correspon-
dence of the Anterior and Posterior
Limbs of Vertebrates. By Burt G.
Wilder, S.B., M. D. Boston, 1871.

Apparatus for Electric Measurement, with
Rules and Directions for its Practical ap-
plication. By L. Bradley. Jersey City,
1872.

Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting of
the Free Religious Association. Held
in Boston, May 30 and 31, 1872.

Papers relating to the Transit of Venus in
1874, prepared under the Direction of
the Commission authorized by Congress,
and published by Authority of the Hon.
Secretary of the Navy. Washington,
1872.

A Classified Catalogue of the Birds of Cana-
da, including every Species known to
visit the Several Provinces which now
form the Dominion of Canada. By Alex-
ander Milton Ross. Toronto, 1872.

120

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A Classified Catalogue of the Lepidoptera of
Canada. By Alexander Milton Ross.
Toronto, 1872.

Report submitted to the Trustees of Cornell
University in behalf of a Majority of the
Committee on Mr. Sage's Proposal to en-
dow a College for Women. By Andrew
D. White. Ithaca, 1872.

Report on the Climatology and Epidemics of

Minnesota. By Charles N. Hewit, M. D.

Philadelphia. 1872.
Short-hand and Reporting. A Lecture. By

Charles A. Sumner, with Appendix. San

Francisco, 1872.

MISCELLANY.

The Ground Connection of Lightning-
Rods. It is asserted, by all the later author-
ities on the subject of lightning-rods, that a
proper ground termination of the rod is of
the very first importance to its efficiency as
a protection against accidents by lightning.
The electricity of the cloud will select the
easiest path into the earth, or, as it is tech-
nically stated, follow the line of least resist-
ance ; and it is to furnish a path less resist-
ing than the building itself that the light-
ning-rod is erected. But it is not enough
that the rod have a sufficient conducting
capacity. The current must be able to
leave it, at the place where it terminates in
the ground, as fast as it passes along the
rod, else there is an accumulation, or dam-
ming up as it were, in the rod, which, when
it has attained a certain volume or intensity,
will relieve itself with explosive violence;
and thus the appliance becomes an actual
source of danger to the building, rather
than a means of protection. Mr. David
Brooks, in an able paper on " Lightning
and Lightning-rods," published in the Au-
gust number of the " Journal of the Frank-
lin Institute," says on this point : "I do
not say that a greater proportion of build-
ings having lightning-rods are destroyed or
injured than of those not having them, al-
though those making careful observations
do give that as a result of their statistics.
I shall undertake to show that this difficulty
consists in the defective connection of these
plates with the earth, and also that with a
proper connection with the earth they are

almost, if not an absolute, means of protec-
tion." Says Prof. John Phin, in his admi-
rable brochure on " Lightning-Rods and how
to construct Them : " " Upon the perfection
of the ground termination mainly depends
the value of the lightning-rod. If this be
defective, no other good features can pos-
sibly make up for it. And yet, so little is
it understood, that a careful examination of
a very large number of rods leads us to be-
lieve that fully one-half the lightning-rods
in existence are defective in this respect,
and consequently furnish but an insufficient
protection."

All objects may be said to conduct elec-
tricity, but they vary greatly in their con-
ducting capacity. Copper conducts six
times as well as iron, and iron thousands
of times better than water, and water again
thousands of times better than dry earth.
That is to say, a rod of iron, to have the
same conducting capacity as a rod of cop-
per, would require to be of six times the
sectional area, while, if a rod or column of
water were employed, it would require to be
many thousands of times greater in section-
al area than the iron, and dry earth again
many thousands of times larger than the
column of water. In connecting a rod with
the ground, allowance has to be made for
this difference in conducting capacity, suffi-
cient earth-surface being joined to the rod
to give a conducting capacity approaching
to or equalling that of the rod. Otherwise
the lightning discharge, unable to find a
free passage into the ground, accumulates
until the tension becomes so great that it
bursts from the rod with explosive violence,
taking the track which affords the readiest
means of escape, and often doing serious
damage in its progress.

Accidents of this character are by no
means rare. Mr. Henry Wilde, in a com-
munication to the Mechanic s Magazine,
gives two cases of fire, resulting from the
ignition of the gas by lightning in buildings
where it left the conductor and took to the
gas-pipes. In one instance, the discharge
passed down a wire rope suspended by the
side of a tall chimney, and, leaving the
lower end of the rope, which was some ten
feet from the ground, darted across a space
of sixteen feet to a gas-meter in the cellar
of an adjoining cotton-warehouse, where it

MISCELLANY.

121

fused the lead-pipe connections, and set fire
to the gas. In another instance, that of a
church, provided with a lightning-rod, a
lightning discharge left the rod at a point
in close proximity to the gas-pipes, ignited
the gas in the vestry, and the church was
consumed. In a third case, the discharge
descended a rod on a church-steeple, and,
when within five feet of the ground, left the
conductor, pierced a wall four feet thick,
and disappeared in the gas-pipe under the
floor of the church. Sillimau's " Physics "
gives a similar example, where, in a church
in Xew Haven, the lightning has twice pene-
trated a twenty-inch brick wall at a point
opposite a gas-pipe twenty feet above the
earth, although the conductor, of three-
quarter-inch iron, was well mounted, but its
connection with the earth was less perfect
than that of the gas-pipe.

It being established that the light-
ning will take the easiest track into the
ground, it follows, from what occurred in
each of the above cases, that the least-
obstructed path was by way of the gas-
pipes, with their extended ground con-
nections. In the first example, although
there was a lightning-rod on the chimney,
the lightning took to the rope, and, instead
of leaving it at the lower end for the rod,
which was near by, found an easier passage
through the air to the gas-pipes of the
cotton-factory, which differed from the rod
in having an extensive ground contact.
The same was true in the other cases the
gas-pipes furnishing a readier path to the
ground than the rods themselves. On ac-
count of the great surface contact with the
ground, which gas and water pipes present,
it has been recommended that lightning-rods
be connected with these, as affording an ex-
cellent means for the escape of the electric
discharge. At first glance, this might seem
a dangerous expedient so far as gas-mains
are concerned, the accidents above men-
tioned pointing to the danger of setting fire
to the gas. This accident arose from the use
of lead-pipe in making the connections with
the meter. Had the gas-pipe throughout
been of iron or brass, nothing of the kind
could have occurred. Unmixed with atmos-
pheric air, gas will not burn, and it was only
through the melting of the lead-connections
by the lightning that the gas was liberated

and then ignited. Brass or iron pipes would
have carried off the discharge without be-
coming fused, no gas would have been liber-
ated, and no fire could have occurred. Com-
menting upon these accidents, Mr. Wilde
says : " In my experiments on the electri-
cal condition of the terrestrial globe, I have
already directed attention to the powerful
influence which lines of metal, extended in
contact with moist ground, exercise in pro-
moting the discharge of electric currents of
comparatively low tension into the earth's
substance, and also that the amount of the
discharge from an electro-motor into the
earth increases conjointly with the tension
of the current and the length of the con-
ductor extended in contact with the earth.
It is not, therefore, surprising that atmos-
pheric electricity, of a tension sufficient to
strike through a stratum of air several hun-
dred yards thick, should find an easier path
to the earth by leaping from a lightning-
conductor through a few feet of air or stone
to a great system of gas or water mains,
extending in large towns for miles, than by
the short line of metal extended in the
ground which forms the usual termination
of a lightning-conductor."

But in the country no such system of
gas and water pipes is at hand the con-
nection of the rod with the earth must
therefore be made in some other way. On
this point Mr. Brooks remarks : " Unless a
hundred square feet of metal can be laid
in the bed of a spring or body of water, I
believe the building is safer without the
lightning-rod." The advice generally given
is to bury the lower end of the rod in char-
coal or coke. Prof. Phiu says, use coke,
not charcoal ; and, " whether iron or copper
is employed, it will be well to sprinkle the
coke copiously with a strong solution of
washing-soda, for the purpose of neutraliz-
ing any acids that might corrode the metal.
If a trench ten feet long be sunk to the
depth of permanent moisture, and filled to
a depth of twelve inches with coke, it will
be ready to receive the end of the rod, and
will furnish a path for all the electricity
that will ever tend to escape from the
clouds to the earth."

Fonl Air. The condition of the air com-
monly breathed in the workshop and school-

122

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

room is fairly indicated by the following
statistics, the result of a large number of
observations made by Mr. Richard Weaver
in the schools and manufactories of Lei-
cester, England : As carbonic-acid gas is
usually the chief impurity in rebreathed air,
being produced in large quantities by both
breathing and combustion, Mr. Weaver
takes it as the measure of aerial contami-
nation, the amount present under ordinary
circumstances enabling us to judge of the
degree of vitiation caused by the other prod-
ucts of respiration and combustion. Set-
ting out with the established fact that free
or what is commonly called pure air con-
tains, for every thousand parts, very nearly
four-tenths of one part of carbonic acid, Mr.
Weaver found in the air of a room where
six persons worked at boot and shoe finish-
ing, each person having 51 cubic feet of
space, that the proportion of carbonic acid
was 5.28 parts per thousand, or more than
thirteen times as much as Nature, when let
alone, allows. In another instance, where
the air-space to each of fourteen individ-
uals was 186 cubic feet, with fourteen
gas-lights burning, the amount of carbonic
acid, to a thousand parts of air, was 5.32.
In a class-room of one of the national
schools, and the science class-room at that,
seventeen pupils, each with 200 cubic feet
of space, were breathing an atmosphere
containing 2.41 parts per thousand of car-
bonic acid, or six times as much as the air
contains in exposed situations. In no case
examined was the proportion of carbonic
acid as low as one part in a thousand of
air ; the average in fifteen places being 3.14
per thousand, or nearly eight times as much
as in pure air. It is hardly necessary to
add that the provisions for ventilation,
where any thing of the kind was attempted,
were of the most imperfect character. But
what may be effected by ventilation was
strikingly shown in the instance of a
boy's day-room in one of the national
schools, where there were one hundred
pupils, each with 236 cubic feet of air-
space. The ventilators were placed in the
roof, and, though very far from perfect,
the air in the room contained only 1.16
parts of carbonic acid to the thousand,
the lowest proportion observed in any of the
fifteen cases examined. Mr. Weaver states

that the atmosphere in several of the rooms
was very offensive, and in every case a
pleasurable sense of relief was experienced
on entering the outer air. Large space,
without ventilation, he considers of little
avail, as it has no advantage over a small
room except that the air is a little longer in
attaining the same degree of contamination.

Careless Disinfection. In cleansing and
disinfecting rooms that have been occu-
pied by persons sick with contagious dis-
eases, mere exposure to disenfecting va-
pors is not enough to thoroughly rid the
apartment of danger to future inmates. The
floors and wood-work require thorough
scouring with some disinfecting fluid, and
the walls and ceiling should also be careful-
ly cleaned. If the walls are covered with
paper, nothing short of its removal will be
effectual, as it unquestionably has the
power of absorbing and retaining contagious
matters, that are not reached by the ordi-
nary processes of disinfection. And its re-
moval is all the more necessary where sev-
eral thicknesses are plastered on the wall,
for then the deeper layers are quite beyond
any possibility of being cleansed ; and, apart
from the danger of contagion, the presence
of paste in such quantities, as several thick-
nesses of paper involve, liable in warm
weather to ferment and decompose, and at
all times furnishing a nest for hosts of vermin,
is certainly most objectionable. That wall-
paper does actually furnish lodgment for con-
tagion, and the paste with which it is stuck
on food for vermin, is proved by the following
cases reported in the Lancet: The work-
men engaged in stripping the paper from
the walls of a house in Manchester, that had
previously been occupied by persons ill with
fever, nearly all came down with the same
fever, although previous to their visit the
house had been disinfected with chlorine
and carbolic acid. In the Knightsbridge
barracks, where numerous layers of paper
and paste had been allowed to accumulate,
the walls when examined were found to be
literally swarming with maggots, that were
leading a most flourishing existence while
subsisting on the paste between the several
thicknesses of paper. The practice of fresh-
ening the walls of rooms by covering up, in-
stead of removing the filth, has become ex-

MISCELLANY.

123

tremely common, hundreds of houses in this
city being yearly rejuvenated in this way,
to the serious injury, no doubt, of their sub-
sequent inmates.

Trees and Rain. A correspondent writes
thus to the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical
Club : " The influence of trees upon rain and
the general moisture of the atmosphere, which
has been much discussed of late, receives a
strong illustration from the island of Santa
Cruz, West Indies. A friend who spent the
months of February, March, and April last,
upon this island, informs me that, when he
was there twenty years ago, the island was a
garden of freshness, beauty, and fertility.
Woods covered the hills, trees were every-
where abundant, and rains were profuse and
frequent. The memory of its loveliness
called him there at the beginning of the
present year, when, to his astonishment, he
found about one-third of the island, which
is about twenty-five miles long, an utter
desert. The forests and trees generally had
been cut away, rainfalls had ceased, and a
process of desiccation, beginning at one end
of the land, had advanced gradually and ir-
resistibly upon the island, until for seven
miles it is dried and desolate as the sea-
shore. Houses and beautiful plantations
have been abondoned, and the people watch
the advance of desolation, unable to arrest
it, but knowing almost to a certainty the
time when their own habitations, their
gardens, and fresh fields, will become a part
of the waste. The whole island seems
doomed to become a desert. The inhabi-
tants believe, and my friend confirms their
opinion, that this sad result is due to the
destruction of the trees upon the island some
years ago."

Poisonous Paper-Hangings. In his val-
uable paper " On the Evil Effects of the Use
of Arsenic in Certain Green Colors," pub-
lished in the third annual report of the Mas-
sachusetts State Board of Health, Dr. Frank
W. Draper gives the following, among other
startling cases of arsenical poisoning from
green-colored paper-hangings :

In 1862, a case of fatal poisoning under
the conditions in question occurred in the
suburbs of London, the victim being a child.
The cause of death was made the subject of

an investigation before a coroner's jury. In
the course of the evidence, it transpired that
the deceased was the last of four children
who had died within a period of two
months, under exposure to the poison con-
tained in the paper-hangings of the room
they habitually occupied. They had all been
attacked in the same manner, the prominent
symptoms being referred to the throat. The
color was loosely applied, having no glazing.
It was very deliquescent ; at 50 it was
quite damp, and the stain came off on the
hand like paint. Three grains of arsenic
were found in a square foot of the paper.
The symptoms were attributed by the sur-
geon in attendance, Mr. Orton, and by Dr.
Letheby, who made the post-mortem chemi-
cal examination, to arsenical poisoning.

But greens are not the only colors which
contain arsenic, nor wall-paper the only
fabric colored with arsenical pigments. A
correspondent of the Chemical News, who
is in a position to know, states that the
French use the following-named pigments,
containing arsenic, in calico-printing, and
that they are equally suitable, and doubtless
used, in the color of paper-hangings : LigM
scarlet pigment contained alumina, arseni-
ous oxide, and aurine ; scarlet ponceau
contained carbonate cf lime in addition to
above ingredients ; dark green, a prepara-
tion of aniline green and arsenious oxide ;
steam chocolate, and catechu pigment, both
contained arsenious oxide. Halhvachs ha3
demonstrated the presence of arsenic in red,
as well as in green-colored wall paper.

Volcanic Dnst. The dust discharged at
the last eruption of Vesuvius, though very
heavy, was carried in one direction to a dis-
tance of twenty-five miles, where it fell in
quantities sufficient to cause great annoy-
ance to the inhabitants. It consisted of
aggregations of crystallized quartz, dotted
over with the magnetic oxide of iron. The
grains were very uniform in size, and would
pass through a wire gauze the apertures of
which measured the sixteen thousandth of
a square inch. By boiling in hydrochloric
acid, the whole of the iron can be removed,
and nothing but crystals of fine white quartz
remain. Its composition is the same as that
of the iron-sand which is found in the soil
in some parts of the country round Yesu-

124

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vius, and which is the product of former
eruptions; the latter, however, cor tains a
larger relative proportion of iron, and the
grains show a water-worn appearance under
the microscope. Neither of the Vesuvian
specimens contains titanium, which is found
in the magnetic iron-sand of New Zealand,
which has most likely been ejected from the
great volcano of Mount Egmont.

Transfusion of 151 (tod. Dr. Aveling re-
ports in the Lancet a case where life was
saved by the transfusion of blood, by what
is known as the " immediate " method. The
patient was a lady dying from hiemorrhage.
Her pulse had become imperceptible both
at the wrist and in the temporal arteries ; the
heart's action was very feeble, and steadily
growing more so ; she was insensible, with
dilated pupils that refused to contract on
the approach of a light; the extremities were
cold, and the lips and face blanched. Blood
was pumped, by means of a suitable ap-
paratus, directly from a vein in the arm of a
man, into a vein of the lady's arm, without
exposure to the air, and in a duly-regulated
stream. Some eight ounces of blood were
thus transfused. As the operation pro-
ceeded, the pulse at the wrist became per-
ceptible, the lips less blanched, and warmth
returned to the hands. In a few hours con-
sciousness returned, the patient took nourish-
ment, and afterward fully recovered.

Habits of the Opossum. We gather from
the American Naturalist, for September, the
following interesting particulars concerning
the habits of the opossum : The animal is
widely distributed in the United States. It
dwells in hollow logs, stumps, and in holes
at the roots of trees, does not burrow, but
takes possession of holes that it finds ready
made. Into these it will carry leaves using
its tail for the purpose and provide itself
with a comfortable bed, when bad weather
threatens. It does not hibernate, but hunts
its food at all seasons, is slow of foo^, and
not very wild. It will eat bacon, dry beef,
carrion, any kind of fowl, rabbits, any sort
of small game, almost all the insects, and
fruits of every variety, being especially fond
of muskmelons ; and is eaten in turn by
many people, the flesh being considered de-

licious. This has a flavor resembling that
of the flesh of the young hog, but is sweeter
and less gross. Negroes and others are ex-
ceedingly fond of it ; dogs, however, hold a
very different opinion, and will sooner starve
than consume it. The animal is habitually
incautious, and when attacked seems to pos-
sess little power of resistance ; literally suf-
fering itself to be eaten alive by the turkey-
buzzards, while it lies on its side and pro-
tests against the proceeding by a succession
of grunts. Exceedingly tenacious of life, it
will survive a vigorous crunching by the
dogs, when it seems as though every bone
in its body had been cracked. Although
sometimes found concealed under the floors
of houses and out-buildings, it refuses to be
domesticated, and is believed to dwell but a
short time in any one place.

Dr. Carpenter against Materialism. Dr.

Carpenter, having been charged with at-
tacking the philosophy of Profs. Huxley
and Tyndall in his late address, replies, in
a letter to tbe London Echo, as follows :

"Nothing was further from my inten-
tion than either to give a theological turn
to my address, or to make any attack upon
the philosophy of my two valued friends,
whom I believe to be, in regard to most, if
not all, of the philosophical questions I
have treated, at one with me.

" But I did set myself to combat a mode
of thought on scientific subjects which I
know to be very prevalent among half-
educated scientific men, who have never
studied the constitution and working of
their own minds, and which has been car-
ried out most fully by a certain school of
(so-called) Nature Philosophers in Ger-
many. Of the tenets of this school, a
small work by Dr. Buchner, entitled
'Kraft und Stoff' Force and Matter
which has run through many editions, and
has been translated into French, may be
considered an exponent. The tenets are
(I write from recollection, not having the
book at hand) somewhat as follows :

" 1. That we know, and can know,
nothing of the external save matter, and
the laws of matter.

" 2. That these ' laws ' are fixed, un-
changeable, and self-acting.

" 3. That there is consequently no ne-

MISCELLANY.

12?

eessity for a God, since Nature can do very
well without one.

" 4. That, if there be a God, he is lim-
ited in his action just as man is by the
' laws of matter,' which he can no more
control than man can ; and that he is,
therefore, in his relation to Nature, only a
higher kind of man.

"Now, my object was to show :

"1. That what we call ' laws of Nature '
are simply our own expressions of the or-
derly sequence which we discern in the
phenomena of the universe ; and that, as
all the history of science shows how erro-
neous these have been in the past, so we
have no right to assume our present con-
ceptions of that sequence to be either uni-
versally or necessarily true.

" 2. That these so-called ' laws ' are of
two kinds, one set being mere generaliza-
tions of phenomena, of which Kepler's
1 laws of planetary motion ' or the ' laws of
chemical combination ' are examples, while
another set express the conditions of the
action of a force, of which the existence is,
or may be, made known to us by the direct
and immediate evidence of our own con-
sciousness our cognition of matter being
indirectly formed through the medium of
force.

" 3. That ' laws ' of the first kind (which
we may for convenience term phenomenal)
do not really explain or account for any
thing whatever. Nothing is more common
than to hear scientific men speaking of
such laws as ' governing phenomena,' or of
a phenomenon being ' explained ' when it
is found to be consistent with some one of
such laws ; though the fact is that the law
is a law merely because it is a generalized
expression of a certain group of phenom-
ena ; and to say that any new phenomenon
is 'explained,' by its being shown to be in
conformity to a 'law' is merely to say (as
Prof. Clifford well put in his lecture) that
a thing previously unknown is ' explained '
by showing it to be like something pre-
viously known.

"4. That, on the other hand, every
'law 'of the second kind (which we may
distinguish as dynamical) is based on the
fundamental conception of a force or pow-
er; so that if the existence of such a force
(as that of gravity or electricity) be ad-

mitted, and the conditions of its action can
be accurately stated, then the law which
expresses them may be said to ' govern '
the phenomenon; and any phenomenon,
which can be shown to be necessarily de-
ducible from it, may be said to be ' ex-
plained,' so far as science can explain it.
But the utmost that science can positively
do, as I stated toward the conclusion of
my address, is to demonstrate the unity of
the power of which the phenomena of Na-
ture are the diversified manifestations, and
to trace the continuity of its action through
the vast series of ages that have been occu-
pied in the evolution of the universe.

" 5. I expressed the opinion that science
points to (though at present I should be
far from saying that it demonstrates) the
origination of all power in mind ; and this
is the only point in my whole address
which has any direct theological bearing.
When metaphysicians, shaking off the bug-
bear of materialism, will honestly and cou-
rageously study the phenomena of the
mind of man in their relation to those of
his body, I believe that they will find in
that relation their best arguments for the
presence of infinite mind in universal Na-
ture.

" Now, the only expression I have ever
met with, in our own language, of the phi-
losophy which (as I have said) worships
the order of Nature as itself a God, was ut-
tered by Miss Martineau, in the book on
' Man's Nature and Development,' which
she produced some twenty years ago in
conjunction with Mr. Atkinson. Not hav-
ing the book at hand, I cannot cite any
passage from it ; but I well remember the
general drift of its argument (putting aside
mesmerism, phrenology, etc.) to have been
that, whereas mankind formerly believed
the phenomena of Nature to.be expressions
of the will of a Personal God, modern sci-
ence, by reducing every thing to ' laws,'
had given a sufficient ' explanation ' of
these phenomena, and made it quite un-
necessary for man to seek any further ac-
count of them.

" This is precisely Dr. Buchner's posi-
tion ; and it seems to me a legitimate in-
ference from the very prevalent assumption
(which is sanctioned by the language of
some of our ablest writers) that the so-

126

THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

called laws of Nature 'govern' the phe-
nomena of which they are only generalized
expressions. I have been protesting
against this language for' the last quarter
of a century; and, as I know that Dr.
Buchner's views are extensively held
among the younger thinkers of Germany
and France, and have reasons to fear their
extension to this country, I thought it well
to take the opportunity which has been re-
cently afforded me of calling the attention
both of scientific men and of the general
public to what I consider the true functions
of man as the scientific interpreter of Na-
ture. It was not because I had any thing
to say on this subject that would be new
either to men of science or to theologians,
who have already gone through a like
course of thought with myself, but because
I hoped to lead some to think upon it who
have never so thought before, and to help
others to a clearer view of it than they
might have themselves attained, that I
chose it as the topic of my address. And,
so far as I have the opportunity of judg-
ing, my hope is being fully realized."

Artificial Bntter. At the request of the
victualling department of the French Navy
for some wholesome substitute for butter
that would keep well, Mege Mouriez, after
a long course of experiments, has suc-
ceeded in producing an excellent substitute
for genuine butter, that does not become
rancid with time, and is otherwise highly
recommended. Experiments made with
cows, submitted to a very severe and scanty
diet, led to the discovery that they continue
to give milk, though in greatly diminished
quautity, and that this milk always contains
butter ; whence it was inferred that this
butter was formed from fat contained in the
animal tissues, the fat undergoing conver-
sion into butter through the influence of the
milk-secreting glands. Acting on this hint,
Mouriez's process begins with splitting up
the animal fats. Finely divided fresh beef-
suet is placed in a vessel containing water,
carbonate of potash, and fresh sheep's
stomachs, previously cut up into small frag-
ments. The temperature of the mixture is
then raised to about 112 Fahr., when, under
the joint influence of the pepsin and the
heat, the fat becomes separated from the

cellular tissue. The fatty matter floating on
the top is decanted, and after cooling sub-
mitted to very powerful hydraulic pressure.
The semi-fluid oleo-margarine is thus sepa-
rated from the stearine, and becomes the
basis of the butter to be afterward produced.
One hundred pounds of this oleo-margarine,
along with about twenty-two quarts of milk
and eighteen quarts of water, are poured
into a churn, and to this mixture are added
a small quantity of annatto and about three
ounces of the soluble matter obtained by
soaking for some hours in milk cows'
udders and milk-glands. The mixture is
then churned, and the butter obtained,
after being well washed with cold water
and seasoned, is ready for use. If required
to be kept for a long time, it is melted by a
gentle heat in order to eliminate all the
water.

Ventilation and Warming. In a lecture
on ventilation, lately delivered before the
Franklin Institute, Mr. L. W. Leeds, after
detailing the abominations he encountered
in his examination of the ventilating arrange-
ments of the Treasury Building at Wash-
ington, gives the following practical direc-
tions concerning provisions for ventilation
and warming in the construction of build-
ings. First, never have long underground
fresh -air ducts. Second, never allow a
sewer, soil-pipe, foul-air flue, or smoke-flue,
to come near the fresh-air supply-flue, for
fear of some connection being made between
them by carelessness or accident. Third,
never heat a building exclusively by currents
of warm air. Fourth, always put the heat-
ing flues on the outside walls instead of on
the inside walls. Fifth, endeavor strenuously
to avoid the fresh-air chamber becoming a
common receptacle for all the rubbish of a
filthy cellar.

Sardines. Mr. N. S. Dodge has given a
very complete and interesting account of
the " Natural History and Preparation of
Sardines " in Hearth and Home, from which
we gather the following : In natural history
the sardine is the young of the pilchard, a
fish resembling the herring in size, but
thicker. They get the name of sardines,
from having been formerly found in great
quantities off the coast of Sardinia. They

MISCELLANY.

127

make their appearance about the coast of
the Armorican Peninsula early in spring,
and succeed each other in countless shoals
throughout the summer months. These
shoals are marvellous for their size and the
number of fish they contain. Each one
takes the shape of a huge fish, bulging out
toward the middle and tapering toward
either end. The shoals vary from ten to
thirty yards in width and from fifty yards to
half a mile in length. The fish are some-
times so closely packed that numbers are
constantly being shoved out of water. They
are caught with nets, much in the same way
as herrings, only the nets are provided with
much smaller meshes. Although nets are
employed, bait is also used. This bait is
called rogue ; and is imported in barrels
from Norway.

In catching the fish, several boats go to-
gether, a man standing in the bow of each
to give notice of the approach of a shoal.
Upon the cry of " Voila I " the boats make
for the head of the shoal, the nets are cast,
and bait is thrown overboard. The fish in
their eager pursuit after the bait get en-
tangled in the net, when a second net is
thrown out and the first one hauled in.
When a boat is loaded, the fish are taken
ashore and immediately sold. The process
of preserving is as follows : As soon as the
sardines are landed the greatest activity is
necessary to get them " sain et saw/*," since
exposure to the air depreciates their fresh-
ness and much handling impairs their flavor.
First, the fish are thoroughly washed and
scraped, so as to free them from every im-
purity. They are then sprinkled with fine
salt which crystallizes upon the surface and
is almost immediately removed. Heads and
gills are then taken off, a new washing
undergone, and the fish laid to dry in the
sunshine, on frames of wire or green withes.
After drying they are thrown into caldrons
of boiling olive-oil and cooked for two
hours, when, after a second drying, they are
transferred to the tables to be packed.
Here women only do the work. To put the
fish nicely in their places, to smother them
with boiling oil, to fit the lid of the tin box,
turn a jet of hot steam on the joints, and
toss it hermetically sealed to the inspector,
is but the work of a moment. Perhaps the
one essential element in the curing of sar-

dines is perfect olive-oil. If it be not en-
tirely tasteless, it destroys what the Sar-
dinians call the "wama/o," the delicate,
volatile flavor of the fish.

Sprats, shiners, roach, herrings, dace, and
carp, when young, and with their heads off,
have sufficient resemblance to sardines to
pass for the genuine article. They are put
up at various places on the southwestern
coast of Prance, and are largely exported,
probably comprising three-quarters of all
that are sold in the United States under the
name of sardines. When well cured, pre-
served in good oil, and hermetically sealed,
these small fry are savory and palatable,
but they lack the delicate volatile flavor of
the real fish.

Ancient Engineering Among the Chinese.

The most remarkable evidence of the
mechanical science and skill of the Chinese
so far back as 1,600 years ago is to be found
in their suspended bridges, the invention of
which is assigned to the Han dynasty. Ac-
cording to the concurrent testimony of all
their historical and geographical writers,
Sangleang, the commander of the army under
Baou-tsoo, the first of the Hans, undertook
and completed the formation of the roads
through the mountainous province of Shense,
to the west of the capital. Hitherto its lofty
hills and deep valleys had rendered the com-
munication difficult and circuitous. With a
body of one hundred thousand laborers he
cut passages over the mountains, throwing
the removed soil into valleys, and, where
this was not sufficient to raise the road to
the required height, he constructed bridges
which rested on pillars or abutments. In
another place he conceived and accom-
plished the daring project of suspending a
bridge from one mountain to another across a
deep chasm. These bridges, which were called
by the Chinese writers, very appropriately,
flying bridges, and represented to be nu-
merous at the present day, are sometimes so
high that they cannot be traversed without
alarm. One still existing in Shense stretches
four hundred feet from mountain to moun-
tain, over a chasm of five hundred feet.
Most of these flying bridges are so wide that
four horsemen can ride on them abreast, and
balustrades are placed on each side to pro-
tect travellers. It is by no means improba-

128

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

blc (as M. Panthier suggests), as the mis-
sionaries to China made known the fact
more than a century ago that the Chinese
had suspended bridges, that the ideas may
have been taken thence for similar con-
struction by European engineers.

NOTES.

The Spectator, in its notice of M. Tou-
chet's work, " The Universe," says : " Man
generally flatters himself that his anatomy
is about the highest effort of Divine skill ;
yet that of the insect is far more compli-
cated. No portion of our organism can
compare with the proboscis of the common
fly. Man can boast 270 muscles. Lyonet,
who spent his whole life in watching a
single species of caterpillar, discovered in
it 4,000. The common fly has 8,000 eyes,
and certain butterflies 25,000. M. Touchet
treats it as an established fact that so fine
are the sensory organs of ants that they
converse by means of their antenna?. Con-
sequently the strength and activity of in-
sects far surpass ours in proportion. In
the whole field of natural science there is
nothing more astounding than the number
of times a fly can flap its wings in a second ;
it must in that point of time vibrate its
wings five or six hundred times. But in
rapid flight we are required to believe that
3,600 is a moderate estimate."

The following, according to Prof. Pal-
mieri, are the signs of an approaching erup-
tion of Vesuvius : When the crater tills up
and the vapor from it diminishes in quanti-
ty ; when the vapor from the crater yields
a* heavy deposit of iron or sodium; when
the water sinks in some of the springs of
the neighborhood. The phenomena more
nearly preceding an eruption are, the oc-
currence of earthquakes, increasing in in-
tensity and frequency for some days before-
hand ; also the irregularity of the diurnal
variations of the magnetic needle. One of
the remarkable attendants of an eruption
is the frequence of lightning flashes ac-
companying the condensation of vapor of
water from the crater ; just as in an ordi-
nary thunder-storm lightning occurs at the
time the vapor is condensing, as is proved
by the rain that follows.

Prof. Muir has been investigating the
effects of various saline solutions on lead
by suspending pieces of bright lead of
of known area, each in a solution of known
composition, for a given time, and then
estimating the amount of lead dissolved, by
Wanklyn and Chapman's color-test. He
finds the greatest solvent power exerted by
solutions of the nitrates, ammonium nitrate
being especially active. The carbonates,

as was before known, have the greatest
protecting power, and next to them come
the sulphates ; so that, when either of these
are present, even if the water contain a
considerable proportion of nitrates, the
solvent action on the lead is very slight.

It is well known that all alloys contain-
ing copper, even in minute proportions, are
readily acted on by acids, which makes them
dangerous when used for household utensils.
M. Helouis has proposed an alloy, under the
name of platinum bronze, which is entirely
inoxidizable. It is a nickel alloy, prepared
from nickel made thoroughly pure by various
processes and maceration in concentrated
nitric acid. The proportions employed are
nickel 100, tin 10, and platinum 1 the two
latter metals being added to the fused nickel
in the proportion of 4 of tin to 1 of plat-
inum, and the remaining six parts of tin
added subsequently. For bells and sono-
rous articles the proportions are slightly va-
ried, viz., nickel 100, tin 20, silver 2, and
platinum 1.

M. Kenault has lately brought to the
attention of the Paris Academy of Sciences
a simple and effective method for reproduc-
ing drawings. The drawing is first made
with sticky ink on highly-glazed paper, and
afterward dusted with bronze - powder.
Sheets of sensitized paper are then pressed
upon the former, when the lines of the draw-
ings are reproduced upon the paper by the
chemical action which takes place between
its sensitive surface and the metal. Impres-
sions may be taken at any time, by soften-
ing the ink on the original with vapor of
alcohol, and then redustiug with the bronze-
powder.

Sulphuric acid, according to Dr. L. de
Martin, when added to the sweet juice of
the grape {must) in the proportion of from
fifteen to forty-five grains of the concentrated
acid to twenty-two gallons of must, exerts a
favorable influence on the process of fer-
mentation. The process is hastened and
rendered more complete, and a better and
more beautiful color is given to the wine.
Analysis shows no more sulphuric acid in
this wine than in samples not so treated.
When the must is alkaline, as it sometimes
is, the process of fermentation produces
lactic acid instead of alcohol ; hence the
utility of sulphuric acid, which sets up the
alcoholic fermentation of the sugar.

Dr. Virchow has been experimenting
with reference to the influence of coal-gas
on vegetation, when diffused through the
soil. He finds, after a long series of care-
fully-conducted researches, that coal-gas is
an active poison to vegetation, trees, shrubs
and ornamental plants, being killed by it
when it is allowed to permeate the soil
about their roots.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

DECEMBER, 1872.

B

THE EAKLY DISCIPLINE OF MANKIND. 1

Bt WALTER BAGEHOT, Esq.

Y far the greatest advantage is that on which I observed before
that to which I drew all the attention I was able by making
the first of these essays an essay on the Preliminary Age. The first
thing to acquire is, if I may so express it, the legal fibre ; a polity
first what sort of polity is immaterial ; a law first what kind of law
is secondary ; a person or set of persons to pay deference to though
who he is, or they are, by comparison scarcely signifies.

" There is," it has been said, " hardly any exaggerating the differ-
ence between civilized and uncivilized men ; it is greater than the dif-
ference between a tame and a wild animal," because man can improve
more. But the difference at first was gained in much the same way.
The taming of animals, as it now goes on among savage nations, and
as travellers who have seen it describe it, is a kind of selection. The
most wild are killed when food is wanted, and the most tame and easy
to manage kept, because they are more agreeable to human indolence,
and so the keeper likes them best. Captain Galton, who has often
seen strange scenes of savage and of animal life, had better describe
the process : " The irreclaimably wild members of every flock would
escape and be utterly lost ; the wilder of those that remained would
assuredly be selected for slaughter whenever it was necessary that one
of the flock should be killed. The tamest cattle those which seldom
ran away, that kept the flocks together, and those which led them
homeward would be preserved alive longer than any of the others.
It is, therefore, these that chiefly become the parents of stock and be-
queath their domestic aptitudes to the future herd. I have constantly

1 From advance-sheets of " Physics and Politics," forming vol. ii. of " The Interna-
tional Scientific Series." The present article is a portion of Mr. Bagehot's chapter on
"The Use of Conflict."

VOL. II. 9

i 3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

witnessed this process of selection among the pastoral savages of
South Africa. I believe it to be a very important one on account of
its rigor and its regularity. It must have existed from the earliest
times, and have been in continuous operation, generation after genera-
tion, down to the present day." '

Man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest ; he
was obliged to be his own domesticator ; he had to tame himself.
And the way in which it happened was, that the most obedient, the
tamest tribes are, at the first stage in the real struggle of life, the
strongest and the conquerors. All are very wild then ; the animal
vigor, the savage virtue of the race has died out in none, and all have
enough of it. But what makes one tribe one incipient tribe, one bit
of a tribe to differ from another is their relative faculty of coherence.
The slightest symptom of legal development, the least indication of a
military bond, is then enough to turn the scale. The compact tribes
win, and the compact tribes are the tamest. Civilization begins, be-
cause the beginning of civilization is a military advantage.

Probably if we had historic records of the ante-historic ages
if some superhuman power had set down the thoughts and actions
of men ages before they could set them down for themselves we
should know that this first step in civilization was the hardest step.
But, when we come to history as it is, we are more struck with the dif-
ficulty of the next step. All the absolutely incoherent men all the
" Cyclopes " have been cleared away long before there was an au-
thentic account of them. And the least coherent only remain in the
" protected " parts of the world, as we may call them. Ordinary civ-
ilization begins near the Mediterranean Sea ; the best, doubtless, of
the ante-historic civilizations were not far off. From this centre the
conquering swarm for such it is has grown and grown ; has widened
its subject territories steadily, though not equably, age by age. But
geography long defied it. An Atlantic Ocean, a Pacific Ocean, an
Australian Ocean, an unapproachable interior Africa, an inaccessible
and undesirable hill India, were beyond its range. In such remote
places there was no real competition, and on them inferior, half-com-
bined men continued to exist. But in the regions of rivalry the re-
gions where the better man pressed upon the worse man such half-
made associations could not last. They died out, and history did not
begin till after they were gone. The great difficulty which history
records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step.
What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but
getting out of a fixed law ; not of cementing (as upon a former occa-
sion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of cus-
tom ; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking
through it, and reaching something better.

This is the precise case with the whole family of arrested civiliza-

1 " Ethnological Society's Transactions," vol. Hi., p. 137.

THE EARLY DISCIPLINE OF MANKIND. 131

tions. A large part, a very large part, of the world seems to be ready-
to advance to something good to have prepared all the means to ad-
vance to something good and then to have stopped, and not advanced.
India, Japan, China, almost every sort of Oriental civilization, though
differing in nearly all other things, are in this alike. They look as if
they had paused when there was no reason for pausing when a mere
observer from without would say they were likely not to pause.

The reason is, that only those nations can progress which preserve
and use the fundamental peculiarity which was given by Nature to
man's organism as to all other organisms. By a law of which we
know no reason, but which is among the first by which Providence
guides and governs the world, there is a tendency in descendants to
be like their progenitors, and yet a tendency also in descendants to
differ from their progenitors. The work of Nature in making genera-
tions is a patchwork part resemblance, part contrast. In certain re-
spects each born generation is not like the last born; and in certain
other respects it is like the last. But the peculiarity of arrested civ-
ilization is to kill out varieties at birth almost ; that is, in early child-
hood, and before they can develop. The fixed custom which public
opinion alone tolerates is imposed on all minds, whether it suits them
or not. In that case the community feel that this custom is the only
shelter from bare tyranny, and the only security for what they value.
Most Oriental communities live on land which in theory is the prop-
erty of a despotic sovereign, and neither they nor their families could
have the elements of decent existence unless they held the land upon
some sort of fixed terms. Land in that state of society is (for all but
a petty skilled minority) a necessary of life, and, all the unincreasable
land being occupied, a man who is turned out of his holding is turned
out of this world, and must die. And our notion of written leases is
as out of place in a world without writing and without reading as a
House of Commons among Andaman-Islanders. Only one check, one
sole shield for life and good, is then possible usage. And it is but
too plain how in such places and periods men cling to customs because
customs alone stand between them and starvation.

A still more powerful cause cooperated, if a cause more powerful
can be imagined. Dryden had a dream of an early age, " when wild
in woods the noble savage ran ; " but " when lone in woods the cring-
ing savage crept " wovdd have been more like all we know of that
early, bare, painful period. Not only had they no comfort, no conven-
ience, not the very beginnings of an epicurean life, but their mind
within was as painful to them as the world without. It was full of
fear. So far as the vestiges inform us, they were afraid of every thing ;
they were afraid of animals, of certain attacks by near tribes, and of
possible inroads from far tribes. But, above all things, they were
frightened of " the world ; " the spectacle of Nature filled them with
awe and dread. They fancied there were powers behind it which must

i 3 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

be pleased, soothed, flattered, and this very often in a number of hide-
ous ways. We have too many such religions, even among races of great
cultivation. Men change their religions more slowly than they change
any thing else ; and accordingly we have religions " of the ages " (it
is Mr. Jowett who so calls them) of the " ages before morality; " of
ages of which the civil life, the common maxims, and all the secular
thoughts, have long been dead. "Every reader of the classics," said
Dr. Johnson, " finds their mythology tedious." In that old world,
which is so like our modern world in so many things, so much more
like than many far more recent, or some that live beside us, there is a
part in which we seem to have no kindred, which we stare at, of which
we cannot think how it could be credible, or how it came to be thought
of. This is the archaic part of that very world which we look at as
so ancient; an " antiquity" which descended to them, hardly altered,
perhaps, from times long antecedent, which were as unintelligible to
them as to us, or more so. How this terrible religion for such it was
in all living detail, though we make, and the ancients then made, an
artistic use of the more attractive bits of it weighed on man, the
great poem of Lucretius, the most of a nineteenth-century poem of any
in antiquity, brings before us with a feeling so vivid as to be almost a
feeling of our own. Yet the classical religion is a mild and tender
specimen of the preserved religions. To get at the worst, you should
look where the destroying competition has been least at America,
where sectional civilization was rare, and a pervading coercive civiliza-
tion did not exist; at such religions as those of the Aztecs.

At first sight it seems impossible to imagine what conceivable func-
tion such awful religions can perform in the economy of the world.
And no one can fully explain them. But one use they assuredly had :
they fixed the yoke of custom thoroughly on mankind. They were
the prime agents of the era. They put upon a fixed law a sanction so
fearful that no one could dream of not conforming to it.

No one will ever comprehend the arrested civilizations unless he
sees the strict dilemma of early society. Either men had no law at
all, and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging together, or they had
to obtain a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. Those who
surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those that lay in their
way who did not. And then they themselves were caught in their
own yoke. The customary discipline, which could only be imposed on
any early men by terrible sanctions, continued with those sanctions,
and killed out of the whole society the propensities to variation which
are the principle of progress.

Experience shows how incredibly difficult it is to get men really to
encourage the principle of originality. They will admit it in theory,
but in practice the old error the error which arrested a hundred civil-
izations returns again. Men are too fond of their own life, too cred-
ulous of the completeness of their own ideas, too angry at the pain of

THE EARLY DISCIPLINE OF MANKIND. 133

new thoughts, to be able to bear easily with a changing existence ; or
else, having new ideas, they want to enforce them on mankind to
make them heard, and admitted, and obeyed before, in simple compe-
tition with other ideas, they would ever be so naturally. At this very
moment there are the most rigid Comtists teaching that we ought to
be governed by a hierarchy a combination of savants orthodox in
science. Yet who can doubt that Comte would have been hanged by
his own hierarchy ; that his essor materiel, which was, in fact, troubled
by the " theologians and metaphysicians " of the Polytechnic School,
would have been more impeded by the government he wanted to
make ? And then the secular Comtists, Mr. Harrison and Mr. Beesly,
who want to " Frenchify the English institutions " that is, to intro-
duce here an imitation of the Napoleonic system, a dictatorship found-
ed on the proletariat who can doubt that, if both these clever writers
had been real Frenchmen, they would have been irascible anti-Bona-
partists, and have been sent to Cayenne long ere now ? The wish of
these writers is very natural. They want to " organize society," to
erect a despot who will do what they like, and work out their ideas ;
but any despot will do what he himself likes, and will root out new
ideas ninety-nine times for once that he introduces them.

Again, side by side with these Comtists, and warring with them
at least, with one of them is Mr. Arnold, whose poems we know by
heart, and who has, as much as any living Englishman, the genuine
literary impulse ; and yet, even he wants to put a yoke upon us and,
worse than a political yoke, an academic yoke, a yoke upon our minds
and our styles. He, too, asks us to imitate France.

Asylums of commonplace, as Beranger hints, academies must ever
be. But that sentence is too harsh ; the true one is, the academies are
asylums of the ideas and the tastes of the last age. " By the time," I
have heard a most eminent man of science observe, " by the time a
man of science attains eminence on any subject, he becomes a nuisance
upon it, because he is sure to retain errors which were in vogue when
he was young, but which the new race have refuted." These are the
sort of ideas which find their home in academies, and out of their dig:-
nified windows pooh-pooh new things.

I may seem to have wandered far from early society, but I have
not wandered. The true scientific method is to explain the past by
the present what we do not see by what we see. We can only com-
prehend why so many nations have not varied, when we see how hate-
ful variation is ; how everybody turns against it ; how not only the
conservatives of specidation try to root it out, but the very innovators
invent most rigid machines for crushing the " monstrosities and anom-
alies," the new forms, out of which, by competition and trial, the best
is to be selected for the future. The point I am bringing out is sim-
ple : one most important prerequisite of a prevailing nation is that
it should have passed out of the first stage of civilization into the sec-

i 3 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ond stage out of the stage where permanence is most wanted, into
that where variability is most wanted ; and you cannot comprehend
why progress is so slow, till you see how hard the most obstinate ten-
dencies of human nature make that step to mankind.

Of course the nation we are supposing must keep the virtues of its
first stage as it passes into the after-stage, else it will he trodden out ;
it will have lost the savage virtues in getting the beginning of the
civilized virtues; and the savage virtues which tend to war are the
daily bread of human nature. Carlyle said, in his graphic way, " The
ultimate question between every two human beings is, ' Can I kill
thee, or canst thou kill me ? ' " History is strewn with the wrecks of
nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a
great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for
destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for
it. But these nations have come out of the " preeconomic stage " too
soon ; they have been put to learn while yet only too apt to unlearn.
Such cases do not vitiate, they confirm, the principle that a nation
which has just gained variability, without losing legality, has a singu-
lar likelihood to be a prevalent nation.

No nation admits of an abstract definition ; all nations are beino-s
of many qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly illus-
trates any one principle ; every cause is intertwined and surrounded
with a hundred others. The best history is but like the art of Rem-
brandt : it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those
which were best and greatest ; it leaves all the rest in shadow and un-
seen. To make a single nation illustrate a principle, you must exag-
gerate much and you must omit much. But, not forgetting this
caution, did not Rome the prevalent nation in the ancient world
gain her predominance by the principle on which I have dwelt ? In
the thick crust of her legality there was hidden a little seed of adap-
tiveness. Even in her law itself no one can fail to see that, binding
as was the habit of obedience, coercive as use and wont at first seem,
a hidden impulse of extrication did manage, in some queer way, to
change the substance while conforming to the accidents to do what
was wanted for the new time, while seeming to do only what was
directed by the old time. And the moral of their whole history is the
same : each Roman generation, so far as we know, differs a little and
in the best times often but a very little from its predecessors. And,
therefore, the history is so continuous as it goes, though its two ends
are so unlike. The history of many nations is like the stage of the
English drama : one scene is succeeded on a sudden by a scene quite
different a cottage by a palace, and a windmill by a fortress. But
the history of Rome changes as a good diorama changes : while you
look, you hardly see it alter; each moment is hardly different from
the last moment ; yet at the close the metamorphosis is complete, and
scarcely any thing is as it began. Just so in the history of the great

THE EARLY DISCIPLINE OF MANKIND. 135

prevailing city : you begin with a town and you end with an empire,
and this by unmarked stages. So shrouded, so shielded, in the coarse
fibre of other qualities, was the delicate principle of progress, that it
never failed, and it was never broken.

One standing instance, no doubt, shows that the union of progres-
siveness and legality does not secure supremacy in war. The Jewish
nation has its type of progress in the prophets, side by side with its
type of permanence in the law and Levites, more distinct than any
other ancient people. Nowhere in common history do we see the two
forces both so necessary, and both so dangerous so apart, and so
intense : Judea changed in inward thought, just as Rome changed in
exterior power. Each change was continuous, gradual, and good.
In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military ad-
vantage ; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish
advantage never did so ; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand
analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them ; from
that have issued endless consequences. But I cannot deal with such
matters here, nor are they to my purpose. As respects this essay,
Judea is an example of combined variability and legality not investing
itself in warlike power, and so perishing at last, but bequeathing,
nevertheless, a legacy of the combination in imperishable mental
effects.

It may be objected that this principle is like saying that men walk
when they do walk, and sit when they do sit. The problem is, Why
do men progress ? And the answer suggested seems to be, that they
progress when they have a certain sufficient amount of variability in
their nature. This seems to be the old style of explanation by occult
qualities. It seems like saying that opium sends men to sleep because
it has a soporific virtue, and bread feeds because it has an alimentary
quality. But the explanation is not so absurd. It says : " The begin-
ning of civilization is marked by an intense legality ; that legality is
the very condition of its existence, the bond which ties it together;
but that legality that tendency to impose a settled customary yoke
upon all men and all actions if it goes on, kills out the variability
implanted by Nature, and makes different men and different ages fac-
similes of other men and other ages, as we see them so often. Progress
is only possible in those happy cases where the force of legality has
gone far enough to bind the nation together, but not far enough to
kill out all varieties and destroy Nature's perpetual tendency to
change." The point of the solution is not the invention of an imagi-
nary agency, but an assignment of comparative magnitude to two
known agencies.

136 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS.

By Kev. S. LOCKWOOD, Ph. D.

SAILORS from South America occasionally, among other pets, hring
a small animal, which, because of its long nose, they invariably
tall an Ant-eater. Thus was a little stranger introduced to our care a
few years ago. A glance was enough to see that it was no ant-eater
at all, but a pretty female Coati-Mondi. Gallant Jack Tar, her master
on ship, unconscious of the incongruity, had made a namesake of her
and called her Jack. Science had already named her Nasua, and in a
matter-of-fact way, for the word interpreted just means Nosie. The
animal was about the size of a cat, with a thick, coarse fur, of a
brownish hue on the back and sides, and underneath shades from yel-
low to orange. The long tail was ornamented by a series of black
and yellowish-brown rings. Her nasal prominence reminded me of a
queer Spaniard, once employed in the government service to detect
spurious coin. His "counterfeit detector" was a sensitive proboscis.
By sticking this organ into the glittering heaps he literally " nosed "
out the bad from the good. To that man his nose was the instrument
of his profession ; and to Nasna her nose was equally important. It
even prompted a nick-name and a juvenile pun " Nosie's nose knows
too much ! " Inappeasably inquisitive, she was incessantly intruding
that organ into every thing. Having made no allowance for an extra-
tropical temperature, this little South American made a failure in an
attempt to lift with her nose the lid of a pot in the cook's domain.
The next attempt, a successful one, was on the knife-box, whose closely-
fitting lid was pried open, and every article inspected, in happy igno-
rance of the proverb about edged tools. It was enough that any
thing was hollow to excite her curiosity, which was of a thoroughly
simian type. The dinner-bell was turned over ; but, unable to detach
the clapper and chain, it was soon abandoned in disgust. A round
sleigh-bell received more persevering attention. Unable to cret her
nose or paws into the little hole at the side, the clatter within set her
wild with excitement, and evoked a desperate attack on the little an-
noyance with her teeth. She then gave it up as a bootless job. A
bottle of hartshorn was next made the subject of investigation. We
had purposely loosened the cork, and promised ourselves a " nice sell "
and we got it not Nosie. She was not in the least disconcerted by
the drug. In fact, she had a strong nose for such things. A man
gave her his tobacco-box. Resting it on the floor between her two
paws, which possessed uncommon flexibility, she turned it over and
over, round and round, exercising alternately her nose, claws, and
teeth upon it with great energy, but to no avail. It seemed that the
smell of its contents infatuated her, as she showed no disposition to

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS.

37

stop. The man opened the box for her. She was in rapture. In went
the nose, also both front paws. Very soon that wonderfully mobile
organ had separated every fibre, so that the mass seemed trebly in-
creased. The same man let her have his dirty pipe, when her velvety
nose was instantly squeezed into the rank nicotian bowl.

It would be wrong to infer that Nasua's prying propensity never
got her into trouble. In the following instance, speaking metaphori-
cally, she put her foot into it : The old cat had just finished her nap,
and was stretching herself, an operation which means that she stood
with her four feet close together, the limbs elongated, the back rounded
up like that of a camel, the head erect and drawn back, and the mouth
widely

yawning

Such a sight Nosie had never seen, hence it must

Fig. 1.

Coati-Mondi (Nasua fusca) A native of South America. The full-jrrown animal is about the size of the
domestic cat. Compare its bear-like step with Fig. 4.

be looked into. So in a trice, erect, and resting flatly on her hind-
feet like a little bear, she put her arms round Tabbie's neck, and, reek-
ing with nicotine, down went that inquisitive nose into the depths of
the feline fauces. This unwarrantable intrusion was met by a recep-
tion more feeling than felicitous, judging from the haste in which
Nasua withdrew to a corner of the room to ruminate on the untoward
incident. Her method of relieving the injured member was itself origi-
nal. She placed it between her paws, holding it tightly, then jerked
it through them, giving a violent sneeze every time it came out. That

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

sneezing was genuine, because it was involuntary. Both hartshorn
and nicotine had signally failed to get up any thing respectable in
that line; but that cat-nip, pure and simple, did the business finely.

Quite pretty was the pattern of the animal's ears they were so
clean, trim, soft, and small. Though rather pert, they had an air about
them that was really amiable, and such as the canine fancier would
pronounce elegant. She was not averse to a little fondling, and I well
remember the first time she climbed wpon my lap. Those pretty ears
suddenly quivered. The ticking of my watch had excited her. Down
goes that uhiquitous utilitarian organ into the watch-pocket. Failing
with the nose, she makes a desperate effort with that and both fore-
feet all at once. Still unable to evict that case of mystery, she thrusts
her nose down by its side, and for several minutes, with simian quaint-
ness, listens to the ticking of mortal Time.

Fro. 2.

Coati-Monfli n^een. (Ori^innl ) Compare the snout with those of the three pachyderms, Figs. &. 6, and
i. It aarees functionally, and. in the main, structurally, with that of the Swine Fig. <i, and with that
of the Peccarv. Fig. 5. ' The Peccary snout, too. approaches it in flexibility. Rut the Tapir. Fig-. 1,
surpasses it in this particular. In the cut, which is excessively foreshortened, the sleeping animal is
using its tail as a cushion for the head.

On the above occasion Coati was allowed the liberty often taken
by the little dog, of going to sleep on my lap, while I gave myself up
to the enjoyment of my book. Her nap finished, I did not notice
when she left my lap. Soon a noise was heard like the tearing of pa-
per. The wonderful little beast had abstracted my pocket-diary, and
in violation of all propriety was making heavy extracts in a litter-ary
way. Those keen incisors were scissoring away a full leaf at a time !
She had even filched a five-dollar note out of the pouch of the book,
and, by way of change, had converted it into fractional currency.

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS. 139

In the same manner, though not to the same extent, the nose of the
Nasua, like the same organ of the elephant, projects far beyond the
mouth. At our first acquaintance with the animal, we were anxious
to see if it could drink out of a deep, narrow vessel. So a mug, con-
taining about a gill of milk, was set before her. She instantly turned
up the proboscis toward her forehead, and, in the easiest way imagina-
ble, lapped the vessel dry. The organ was not even wet. The sight,
though comical, was really pretty. It was the only time that I had
ever seen the turning up of the nose at one's friends so deftly and
gracefully done. And she could turn the same organ in a contrary
way quite as easily. The first time she confronted a mirror, startled
at beholding her own counterfeit presentment, instantly her counte-
nance fell very low indeed ; for her nose bent downward, and act-
ually curved under the chin. Of course the word chin is not here
anatomically correct. Her proboscis now looked like that of a tapir
in repose. This singular grimace, with its squeaky little grunts, pre-
sented a very funny manifestation of surprise.

Fig. 3.

Raccoon (Proeyon lotor). A near allv of the Coati-Mondi, having the same plantigrade, or bear-like step,
and certain other resemblances of for .n and habit. The tail is too short in the cut, which is due to
the foreshortening.

Sometimes for an airing the animal was tied by a long tether to a
flower-stand on the lawn. It should have been mentioned that she
was literally omnivorous. She would catch a mouse and eat it all up.
The heads of poultry given her in the kitchen would be eaten raven-
ously. The same is true of sweetmeats, which she occasionally got by
stealth. She would drink every thing, not even stopping at brandy.
She had nearly all the appetencies of the domestic swine ; and the end
of her proboscis was essentially a swine's snout. I now beheld the
use of this singularly-tipped organ. And an interesting sight it was
to see that little thing plough up the greensward with the tip of her
nose and so easily. Here appeared the veritable swinish acuteness
of scent for insects and worms, and the swinish facility for rooting in
the ground. With surprising rapidity furrow after furrow was made,
of about the width of a man's thumb. "Whenever a worm or insect
was discovered, as when drinking, the nose was curved up, so that the
mouth could extract the object from the furrow.

140

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The tail of Nasua is quite suggestive of the raccoon ; but Nasua's
tail is a much handsomer affair longer, and with rings more numerous
and of gayer colors. With admirable intelligence, our pet put this
beautiful appendage to a remarkable use. She was tethered by a
string to a chair, and an egg was put on the floor at a tantalizing dis-
tance. She could just touch it with a paw, and that touch caused the
coveted prize to roll out of reach. She then turned her hind-feet tow-
ard it, pulling hard so as to stretch her neck ; still even with a hind-
foot she could not touch it. The logic of events was now, " Get it if
you can ! " All this Nasua well understood, for she turned tail on the
subject altogether not, however, as did Reynard on the grapes, but
strategically. She gathered herself up, and looked at the coveted ob-
ject with speculative eyes. Then she swung herself round again, pull-
ing hard on the tether by the neck. She then curved the tip of the
tail so as to make a little hook. Now she grasps the base of the tail

Fig. 4.

Brown Bear (TTrsns aretes). This cnt shows the plantigrade step, in which the entire sole of the foot is
put down at once. The same step characterizes the Coati-Mondi and Raccoon. In the Bear this
characteristic finds its highest expression.

with one paw, as with a hand, thus stiffening and steadying the organ.
She next slowly and cautiously rolled the egg, by the curved tip of the
tail, through a section of a circle, until it was brought within reach of
one of the front-feet. The egg now seized, sitting on her hind-feet,
like a bear, she cracks it, extracts the contents, and neither spills a

THE C0AT1-M0NDI AND ITS COUSINS. 141

drop on the floor, nor so much as soils that wonderful nose ; for, among
her many gifts, is her soft and extensile tongue. This caudal expedi-
ent is sometimes found with the American show-monkey, when a bit
of gingerbread is put by the roguish boys at an inconvenient distance ;
but, as, in such instance, the tail is prehensile, is in fact the monkey's
fifth hand, such feat is no great shakes after all, but is quite in keeping
with what the organ is cut out for. It is, at most, but little more than
that instinct which structural or functional capacity might evolve.
But, in Nasua's case, it is animal contrivance, pure and simple. There
is, too, a latent fact which peeps out here : for this bending of the
caudal tip looks to the faculty possessed by its cousin, the Kinkajou,
the extremity of whose tail has a prehensile or grasping faculty of
high perfection.

Fig. 5.

TThiie-Itpped Peccary (Dicotyles labiatus). Snout hog-like, but flexible.

She showed considerable attachment her preference being the
ladies. She would often, when tied up in the kitchen, sit for many
minutes, her little black eyes looking wistfully at the door through
which the mistress of the house had passed, and all this time crying
pitifully. It was a plaintive cry, in the minor key, and yet a little
funny, for it greatly resembled the chirping of a cricket, though not
quite so shrill, and the intervals between the notes were a little longer.
This tiny cry required for every note a muscular exertion, extending
far down the sides of the body, which led to the suggestion that " the
plaint came from the depths of the heart."

Though at times somewhat irascible, this little animal was very
playful with those who could understand and humor her ways. And
her method in play was a good deal like that of a dog. She would
take my fingers into her mouth, and make believe to bite, and would
roll on her back in manifest glee. It required at first some courage to
take part in her gambols. On one occasion, thinking that she gave me
too hard a nip with her teeth, I returned her a smart slap in the face.
This experience was novel and startling, and caused her to open her
mouth and chatter as a terrified monkey does. On one occasion she
so far forgot herself as to bite me quite severely. It was but one snap

142

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the mouth a more spurt of temper. I gave her such punishment
as I considered judicious. For a while she kept up a snapping at me,
accompanied by a monkey-like chattering of rage and fear. At last
she laid down her head in submission. I then stroked and patted her.
It was now all made up, and we were friends again. On this subject

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of punishment I soon learned an important fact. You might slap
and shake this little thing quite severely, when her will was crossed,
or a slight fit of temper was upon her, without subduing her. She
had, however, a wholesome dread of the rod. A twig not thicker
than a straw was sufficient. A blow from this, although it scarcely
ruffled the fur, would reduce her to instant and complete submis-
sion. The exhibitor of wild animals understands the virtue of his
little whip.

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS.

l 43

The attachment of this interesting animal to her new home was in-
tense. I frequently caused her to be taken to the commons and set at
liberty among the trees. Considering that the coati is a thoroughly
arboreal animal, and such its agility that it descends trees head first,
one would suppose that this would awaken the dormant natural hab-
its ; but she would invariably hasten home by the shortest route pos-
sible ; and, if, on her return, she found the door closed, would sit on
the steps and cry.

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One morning, at an early hour, ccati was missed from the kitchen.
A search was set up. The ringing voice of our little boy was heard,
with the occasional word, " Jack." And so it was Jack was in bed
with the little three-year-old, and they were having a high time to-
gether. This trick she played whenever opportunity allowed. Often,

i 4 4

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

at an early hour before the child was awake, have we found Jack self-
ensconced in the arms of his little master. Of course, prudence dic-
tated that this should not be permitted ; but Jack would steal up-
stairs so noiselessly that the thing was often done before we had time
to suspect.

Fig. 8.

Asiatic Ekphant (Elephas Indicus). Here the snout (proboscis) has attained the perfection of flexibility

and prehensility.

A word is necessary as to the peculiar temerity of this animal.
From two points it was liable to give way to extreme impulsiveness
the excitement of opposition, or of inquisitiveness. If any thing at-
tacked her, whatever the object or the odds might be, she would face
the assailant, and close in with her shrill little squeaks of rage, and in
a wild sort of dash. If one slapped her, whatever might be her ter-
ror, she would rush upon and snap at the hand. The dog-like saga-
city of running under the table or chair was not her way. Hers was
the peccary instinct of running upon danger. No monkey could be a
more importunate or impertinent teaser than was our coati; but Jocko
shows sagacity with his jokes for he always adroitly leaps aside of
consequences. I have watched our pet tease the cat with imperturba-
ble persistency, until Tabbie, unable to tolerate matters any longer, has
struck her sharp claws into that soft proboscis, then moved away, leav-

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSIN'S.

141,

ing her persecutor dazed with astonishment. Then, in a moment, for-
getting all, she would turn her attention to the setter-dog, and, despite
his growls and menacing teeth, would keep up a systematic worrying,
catching at his tail, nipping at his legs, and even poking her nose into

Fig. 9.

Ring-tailed Lemur (Lemur eatta). The Lemurs constitute the lowest family of the Monkeys. A little
animal of South America, known as the Kinkajou. is, in external aspect and general habit, very like
the Lemurs, and yet is placed by systematists close to, and in the same family with, the Coati-Mondi.
to whom its plantigrade feet show its near relationship. But this first-cousin of Coati-Mondi is also
not unlike the Sapajous, or hijar monkeys, for it has a head like them, and also their accomplish-
ment of a long prehensile taiL (See Fig-. 10.) Coati-Mondi has Lemurine traits also.

his ears. At length, the poor brute, fairly goaded into mge, seized her
like a rat, and, but for my prompt interference, that would have been
the last display of Nasua's rashness. One morning she got into the
as we were at breakfast. She took possession of mad-

TOL. II. 10

dining-room

146

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

am's lap. Her first act was to poke her nose at the coffee-urn. This
evoked a squeak of pain. It was supposed that she had had enough.
Not quite. Her next essay was on a cup of hot coffee, with a similar
result. She now smelt the contents of the sugar-bowl. This discovery
so excited that "sweet will" of hers that instant removal became im-
perative. Later in the day she tried to capture a wasp. She struck
it down, and held it a second under her foot. This was met by an ap-
peal addressed solely to her understanding, of so pointed a nature as
made her chatter with distress. Disabled in one wing, the insect could
not fly away. Although still smarting from the wounded foot, the
moral of the lesson is only half learned. Coati cannot give "little
yellow-jacket " up. So she tries the wasp again this time with her
nose. Alas, that sting ! Miss Nasua now finds that other little folks,
besides herself, can utilize their tails ; for, in px*oof of this, she receives

Fig. 10.

is

*-,'

5 X2ft ;#;// ,

2^

T7te Sai (Cebus capucinus). One of the South American Papajous. The tail prehensile, but probably
not more so than that of the Kinkajou, the close ally of Coati-Mondi.

not merely a duplicated, but an intensified experience, such as exacts
a staccato out gush of agony, of truly simian expression. We can re-
call but one lesson which she took sincerely to heart. The old cow
was quietly ruminating near the house. With her usual temerity, for
she was always ready to " go it blind," Coati made an attempt to climb
one of Cushie's legs. The cow raised her foot to shake the annoyance
off, and in setting it down she put her hoof on Nasua's tail, and there
standing, gravely ruminating, held her fast to the ground. Her rapid,
chattering cry brought one of the ladies to her rescue. The tail was
very badly hurt. Ever after, between Coati and Cushie, a respectful
distance was maintained.

We now call attention to one of the most interesting facts in
modern zoology. Agassiz pointed out, with much precision, the ex-

THE COATI-MONDI AND ITS COUSINS. 147

istence in certain animals, both fossil and recent, of two sets of traits
one proper to, and marking their peculiar individuality as members
of an order, tribe, or family ; and the other set, although found in
them, yet destined to a fuller unfolding in animals yet to be created,
and to mark their peculiarities. In a word, the species in question
was regarded as looking forward to or foreshadowing, in these seem-
ingly eccentric traits, the characteristics of tribes yet to come. As,
for example, take the ancient Ganoids, or fishes, covered with shining,
bony scales, as the word signifies. Their common representative,
now, is the sturgeon, which, though a fish, has structural and physio-
logical points that belong to the reptiles. Regarding these curious
traits as put together in one individual, and in a sense to be yet sepa-
rated from it, and specialized in other and higher animals, Agassiz in-
vented, felicitously, as we think, a term to express these facts, namely,
" synthetic type." Dana prefers the phrase " comprehensive type,"
and Guyot uses the term " undivided type."

The study of this almost grotesque little animal has proved singu-
larly suggestive of certain points of structure and habit, usually re-
garded as peculiarities of other animals. In Nasua are found features
whicli elsewhere are sufficiently dominant to warrant generic distinc-
tion as the architect can specify certain points in the Composite order
which are derived from several other orders. To designate the parts
that make up this strange unity in our subject may not be easy. The
botanist is, at times, perplexed in his effort to formulate the specific
distinctions of a simple plant. Let him take an oak, for example and
it may be that the analysis is unsatisfactory ; yet the specific concep-
tion of the tree, taken from its contour and entirety, may, for all that,
be quite trustworthy. To the writer, the Nasua, viewed as a whole in
the matter of structure, form, and habit, has appeared to be a syn-
thetic, or comprehensive type not, perhaps, a composite, as made up
of what had been before, but possibly typical of what was to come.
Limited strictly to anatomical analysis, the typical range would be
narrowed; but, studied in the above more exhaustive method, the diag-
nosis must, we think, be highly significant. It may appear a super-
ficial resemblance that is presented in the ornamentation of the respec-
tive tails of the coati and the raccoon. But these animals have also
anatomical parallels of structure. Both have a similar dental arrange-
ment, and both have plantigrade limbs. Here, again, the coati, with
the coon, becomes cousin to the bear, for all three have that structure
which compels that setting down at once the entire great sole of the
foot, and that walking thereon, which the books denominate planti-
grade. The three, also, have similarly-shaped heads, similar small
eyes, small, trim ears, and peculiar claws, which are, all and several,
known as ursine traits. They have also not unlike appetencies
of food. They are plantigrade carnivora, and have in common a
striking habit which removes them from the pure or digitigrade car-

i 4 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nivora, namely, that of raising their food with the paws toward the
mouth, and bowing the head to meet it half-way. The coati and rac-
coon will tear the food into fragments, and sticking into it the claws,
like an improvised fork, will thus convey it to the mouth. Who ever
saw a dog or cat raise its food from the ground, except by its mouth ?
Our Nasua, then, has elements of ursine structure, aspect, and habit.

But this little animal has also something of the appetency, struct-
ure, and habit of the swine. Look only at the cut of Nasua asleep,
and mark the resemblance of the end of its proboscis to the snout of
the hog. The engraving is from a photograph, and gives an admi-
rable foreshortening of the organ. We have shown that in function it
is identical ; for the animal roots precisely as a hog. Here it looks tow-
ard the swine through the peccary, that hog-like animal of its own
country. We have also noticed that, in a common recklessness, they
the coati and the peccary bear a psychic similitude. Both have a
habit of wildly confronting danger, and both have been known to
overcome great perils, and to repulse superior enemies, by actual te-
merity real sauciness, or sheer effrontery of dash.

And there is that remarkable proboscis, which actually supplies
the generic name an organ so mobile, and so effective, and so facile
of disposition and adjustment. Herein, through the tapir, appears an
elephantine expression point of relationship.

Then come those traits so simian that inappeasable inquisitive-
ness, and that capacity for quasi-human expedients, and that monkey
vice of incessant teasing, and that monkey chattering, expressing terror
or distress. It is true that here we seem to stand entirely on meta-
physical ground, as we cannot demonstrate any anatomical points of
structure related to these traits. And we admit that, in these matters,
we have no right to demand conviction unless from logic so formu-
lated. Still the traits are there; and we feel that these traits, physi-
oo-nomical and psychic, cannot stand unrelated to some important
physiological data, which may perhaps place Nasua a little below
the Lemurs in rank, through which inchoate monkeys it may look
toward the Cebidce, to its distant relatives, the South American Sapa-
}ous. And what striking resemblances to these well-known monkeys
are noticeable in the Kinkajou, first cousin of the Coati-Mondi.

We close with a great truth which this little creature unfolds, of
surpassing interest. As a synthetic type, this little being is very
ancient, even on the geological record. Its lineage goes high up the
stream of animal life. The first coati-mondi told off certain points of
the treat zoological plan yet to be unfolded. It typified the raccoon
yet to come, and the peccary, and the swine, and the bear, the tapir,
and the elephant ; and, as a faint, yet expressive signification, it told,
on its psychic side, at least, of the monkey, as the crown of the dumb
creation. And by the same record we read the superior antiquity of
the so-called New World to the Old: for the ancestors of Nasua were

WEATHER PROPHECIES. i 49

pursuing their prey in the American woods ere Asia and Europe had
risen from their baptism under the sea.

And not zoological only, but may we not read, in this " compre-
hensive type," a geological prophecy also, that, in the far-off future,
our continent shall again sink into the transforming waters, when His
behest cometh, who maketh all things new ?

WEATHER PROPHECIES.

THE science of the weather may be said to have sprung up within
the last half century, and we must not therefore wonder that, until
very recently, meteorological science has rather been concerned with
the weather as it has been, than in prophesying what kind of weather
may be expected. Indeed, this is almost the case at the present day ;
for, were it not for the telegraph, storm-signals would be of little avail.
Much was gained when, from the conclusions drawn from a large num-
ber of observations, a storm could be telegraphed from any place as
coming, instead of as happened. This stage of the science is perhaps
as far as can be usually attained in the present day ; in some future
time, from the careful study of the laws, it may be possible to predict,
with average certainty, the state of the weather from day to day, or
even for several days to come. It remains to be seen how far this
power has been attained ; and it may not be uninteresting to notice, in
passing, the very unstable ground upon which weather predictions
were founded before meteorology included this second division.

Whether we take as type the old dame's faith in the gambols of
her cat, the high flight of some birds and the low flight of others, the
" camel " in the clouds, or the chirruping of grasshoppers, we have
much the same arbitrary system, or, rather, want of system, although
these signs may not be without some definite cause, more or less
remotely connected with coming changes in the weather. In many
country places it is common to hear it remarked that " the rain will
soon clear up, for the birds are singing ; " the coming change is per-
haps already sensible to their more delicate organization. There is
also the appearance of the clouds ; and to this indication even the
lamented Sir John Herschel attached somewhat of a reliance, in that
" anvil-shaped clouds " portended a gale of wind. But, as a rule, the
moon may be considered to hold the first place of influence upon
weather predictions. Halos round the moon are the phenomena most
commonly observed, and are readily explained by the laws of the re-
flection of light from the particles of aqueous vapor suspended in the
atmosphere. When these halos are colored, we may infer the presence
of watery particles in the higher regions of the atmosphere; when the

, b o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

halos are white, we may conclude that the particles are frozen, and ex-
pect cold weather. Crossed halos, mock moons, or highly-developed
phenomena, indicate larger crystals of ice, and probably frost, hail,
snow, or heavy rain, after three or four days, according to the season
of the year. Similarly the laws of reflection of light indicate that
the cause of a deep-purple morning or evening sky is the large
amount of moisture present in the atmosphere. Another effect of the
moon, when at the full, is to clear the sky of cloud, traceable, says Sir
John Ilerschel, to a distinct physical cause, the warmth radiated from
its highly-heated surface ; though, why the effect should not continue
for several nights after the full, remains, in the opinion of the same
accurate observer, problematic. Other lunar prognostics, founded on
arbitrary rules, as to the time of the day or night at which the changes
or quarterings take place, are worse than useless, for they are calcu-
lated to mislead, and are generally included in almanacs or note-books
intended for sale only, being in some cases attributed to an eminent
meteorologist or astronomer Sir W. Herschel or others.

It is of course far from our purpose to enter here into a disquisition
on the theory of the trade and anti-trade winds, and their barometri-
cal indications subjects that can be usefully discussed only in a trea-
tise on meteorology : we limit ourselves to the present position of
weather prognostics, although it must be admitted that any advance
yet made or likely to be made in prognosticating the weather arises
from the study of such recurrent phenomena, the investigation being
much aided by the highly-developed character of the laws of the ex-
pansion of gases, upon which laws the theory of the wind is founded.
Thus we know that a rise in the barometer, together with a fall in tem-
perature, as shown by the thermometer, indicates the approach of a
cold, northerly current of air ; while a fall of the mercury in the ba-
rometer, with a rise of that in the thermometer, indicates that a south-
erly or warm air-current is on its way. Northerly currents may in-
clude winds from the northwest and northeast, as well as from the
north ; similarly, southerly currents may include winds from the south,
southeast, or southwest. When the barometer rises while a northeast
wind is blowing, with prevalent hail, rain, or snow, there may be no
change. Of barometrical indications alone, it is generally known that
a rapid rise portends changeable weather; a slow rise, the contrary ;
a rapid fall, heavy wind, rain, and snow ; while a fluctuating height of
the column of mercury indicates unsteady weather. With a heavy gale
of wind in the east or southeast, changing south, the barometrical col-
umn may fall until the wind shifts its quarter. Upon such observa-
tions did Admiral Fitzroy base his code of instructions, now to be
found by the side of every barometer, his forecasts depending on the
indications of the barometer and thermometer, with observations as to
the direction and force of the wind with regard to time and place, and
its previous course taken altogether. These indications are thus not

WEATHER PROPHECIES. i 5 i

aosolute, but relative to the preceding state of the weather. But also
these indications are valid for only a short interval before the actual
advent of the storm ; and in some instances, as in the Hyperborean
storm of the 2d and 3d of October, 1860, the interval is too short for any
advantage to be taken of the notice. The particulars of this storm,
which present in true character the difficulties which the meteorolo-
gist must encounter, are too interesting to be omitted, and we shortly
recount them from the complete and admirably-conducted investiga-
tion published by Prof. C. Piazzi Smyth, in the " Annals of Scottish
Meteorology for 1856 to 1871." The term Hyperborean has been em-
ployed to prevent confusion with tropical hurricanes ; it has also been
called, from its essential locality, the Edinburgh storm. We have to
consider only the practical lessons to be deduced from the observations
of this storm ; the account of the actual observations must be read
from the before-mentioned report of Prof. Piazzi Smyth. First, then,
the barometric notice was insufficient and too local to be of service,
while the storm was too quick in its movements. St. Hilda is the
most westerly station; and, even if the storm could have been tele-
graphed thence, the message would have allowed only two hours for
preparation, and would have arrived while the eastern men were sound
asleep. If a message could have been sent from Iceland the day pre-
vious to the arrival of the storm, many wrecks would have been pre-
vented. So that we see the present system of meteorology necessitates
not only diligent but earnest watching of the signals that should be
afforded by a net-work of cables and overland wires, for it is by a series
of connected observations, extended over a large area, that the useful-
ness of this branch of meteorology is alone likely to be advanced.

But, it may be asked, what definitive knowledge can be gained,
say not of storms, but of average weather for some future period ?
Here we must again refer to Prof. Piazzi Smyth's report on the rock-
thermometers at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, and to the Pro-
ceedings of our own Royal Society for the 2d of March, 1870, in which
predictions of the weather during the winters of 1871-'72 are attempted.
The rock-thermometers have by their readings shown some well-
marked supra-annual cycles, the relation of which to the sun-spot cy-
cles will be known to our readers. And on this point it may be stated
that the Radcliffe astronomer announces, in his report for 1871, that
the mean azimuthal direction of the wind at Oxford, rigorously com-
puted from automatic records during the last eight years, varies year
by year through a range of 58 on the whole, between maximum and
minimum of visible sun-spots, the tendency of the wind to a westward
direction increasing with the number of spots, and with such west
wind, it is to be presumed, the amount of rain also. " The most strik-
ing and positive feature of the whole series of observations," continues
Prof. Piazzi Smyth, " is the great heat-wave which occurs every eleven
years and a fraction, and nearly coincidently with the beginning of

152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the increase of each sun-spot cycle of the same eleven-year duration.
The last observed occurrences of such heat-wave, which is very short-
lived, and of a totally different shape from the sun-spot curve, were in
1834.8,1846.4, 1857.8, and 1868.8; whence, allowing for the greater
uncertainty of the earlier observation, we may expect the next occur-
rence of the phenomenon in or about 1880.0. The next largest feature
is the extreme cold close on either side of the great heat-wave : this
phenomenon is not quite so certain as the heat-wave, partly on account
of the excessive depth and duration, of the particular cold-wave which
followed the hot season of 1834.8. That exceedingly cold period, last-
ing as it did through the several successive years 1836, 1837, and
1838, was, however, apparently a rare consequence of an eleven-year
minimum, occurring simultaneously with the minimum of a much lon-
ger cycle of some forty or more years, and which has not returned
within itself since our observations began. Depending, therefore,
chiefly on our later observed eleven-year periods, or from 1846.4 to
1857.8, and from the latter up to 1868.8, we may perhaps be justified
in concluding that the minimum temperature of the present cold-wave
was reached in 1871.1; and the next similar cold-wave will occur in
1878.8." Between the dates of these two cold-waves there are located,
according to all the cycles observed, even including that earlier one
otherwise exceptional, three moderate and nearly equidistant heat-
waves, with their two intervening and very moderate cold-waves, but
their characters are quite unimportant. With regard to all the waves,
it may be just to state that there has been in observation more uni-
formity, and will be therefore in prediction more certainty, for their
dates than for their intensities.

We have thus very briefly surveyed the position of meteorology,
and little remains to be said beyond that the results are highly in
favor of the hopes of physicists to render meteorology an exact science.
Quarterly Journal of Science.

-

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT.

HARTMANN'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON DUMONT, BY A. R. MACDONOUGH, ESQ.

I.

FN an age like ours, when philosophical criticism, applied to all ideas,
J- has dissipated most of the fictitious charms lent to existence by the
imagination of mankind when the advance of science leads us more
and more to look on the world as it is when, no longer able to find
consolation in creeds and myths, we grow more closely and constantly

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 153

familiar with inflexible reality, there is no reason for surprise if, in the
moment of reaction from the illusions of the past, certain spirits, un-
able to keep the golden mean, permit themselves to be led captive by
exaggerations of quite another kind, and, taking the leap over realism,
fall into a pessimism which shows things to them, no longer such as
they are, with the impress of facts, hard and brutal enough already,
upon them, but even more sad and evil than the reality. But we may
well think it strange that such exaggerations, heavy discouragements
as they are to humanity, should win their growth and start into theories
in the very country of Leibnitz, and of systematic optimism the coun-
try seemingly destined, by the political events of our times, to lead all
others in giving brightness and cheer to all judgments of the aspect
of the world.

There has arisen in Germany a philosophic school built on the be-
lief that, in existence taken as a whole, evil prevails over good a
school that sighs for the annihilation of being as the sole relief from
its miseries. It is one of Cousin's most just remarks that the path ot
German metaphysics, opened by Kant, must find its logical issue in
nihilism. Indeed, the romantic writers, relying on Schelling's half-
mystical system, did not hesitate to preach a sort of quietist indolence
as the highest aim given to man to reach. Thus Schlegel, with other
critics of the same school, was led to envy for man " the divine idle-
ness and happy life of plants and flowers ; " and, in his famous work
" On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians " (Heidelberg, 1808), to
admire the calm and passionless life of Oriental ascetics. Homer,
whom romanticism had already sacrificed to Ossian, saw himself ere
long dethroned by Buddha. The political events of this lower world
had no power to shake souls permeated by so lazy a wisdom. Yet it
was the hour of storms raging everywhere the hour for the crash
and downfall of the old Germanic edifice, when Austria and Prussia
trembled for their threatened successive overthrow under the blows of
Napoleon ; but all this mattered little to those mystic spirits who per-
sisted in living in an ideal world, careless of French bayonets, or the
embargo, or the Confederation of the Rhine. They averted their looks,
especially from those low creatures who struggle on the earth's surface
to win their bread, and proclaimed that the perfection of the science
of life is to do nothing. It is true these fine theories were put forth in
a highly-emphatic style, which provoked Richter's raillery, and gave a
flat contradiction to the quietist doctrines they upheld.

In 1819, Schopenhauer's great work appeared, "The World re-
garded as a Manifestation and a Will." Though this philosopher was
an independent thinker, disconnected with any school, he too had
yielded to the influence of Eastern studies. " I have been fortunate
enough," he said, " to be initiated into the Vedas, access to which was
opened to me by the Upanishad's, a great enlargement of my mental
vision, for I believe this age is destined to receive from Sanscrit litera-

54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ture as strong an impulse as the sixteenth century owed to the revival
of the Greeks." Foucher de Careil, who had occasion to visit Schopen-
hauer, relates that " he had imported at great expense a Buddha, and
showed it to his visitors with mischievous pride. He had no patience
with English missionaries who undertake to convert their elders in re-
ligion." According to Schopenhauer, there is nothing but wretched-
ness in the world ; evil alone is positive ; pleasure is a mere negation
of pain, and thus has no reality. As to happiness, it is an empty word
progress, a sheer Utopia ; history, nothing more than the long-drawn-
out torment of humanity's nightmare. What is life ? A fabric that
is not worth what it costs an endless hunt in which, sometimes pur-
suing, sometimes pursued, men fight over the fragments of their slain
victims a war of all against all, helium omnium contra omnes death
discounted, Parmenides called it and, to sum up all, a sort of natural
history of misery, that may be thus rendered in brief: " To wish with-
out a motive; always to suffer; always to strive; and then to die,
and so over and over again ' in srecula sreculorum,' till the crust of
our planet scales away into little bits." What are the practical conse-
quences of such teaching ? That the mere fact of being born is a mis-
fortune, and that to give life to a new being is a bad action. Hence,
this strange analysis of modesty : " See these two beings whose
glances seek each other. Why that mystery they shroud themselves in ?
Why their timid and shamefaced air ? Because they are two traitors,
who fly to the darkness to perpetuate in another all those tortures and
sorrows that would reach a speedy end but for their treachery. And
there will always be such criminals, who will ogle and caress after the
same fashion, to perpetuate life, to live again in another being." And
what is the moral principle of the system? Pity; nothing else than
pity. The ascending series of living beings ends with man, because a
being superior to man, and more intelligent, would not consent to live
and keep up this wretched comedy a single day. The aim of philoso-
phy is to enlighten man as to his deplorable condition to inspire him
with longing to be annihilated, and never again to live after death,
under any form whatever, and to unfold to him at length the means
of gaining this annihilation. Remark that in all these teachings there
is not a trace of sportiveness, none of the ironic sallies of the humorist,
the inspiration of a misanthropic fit ; temperament has nothing to do
in producing them. We are brought face to face with a profoundly
and learnedly elaborated system, one that criticism must treat with
all gravity. Is this the dawn of a Western Buddhism ? Are the
European offshoots of the Aryan race, like their brothers of the East,
about to aspire to the supreme Nirvana, and petrify themselves in as-
ceticism ?

It is a fact that Schopenhauer did not remain an isolated phenome-
non. The pessimist doctrine gathered a school, and we might name
its distinguished disciples the Frauenstadts, the Gwiners, the Ashers.

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 155

The book before us is one full of vigorous discussion, first published in
1869, repeated in the fourth edition already, which has made a power-
ful impression in Germany, and would assuredly have been heard of in
France if the deplorable events of later years had not distracted atten-
tion from speculative studies. The book we speak of is the " Philoso-
phy of the Unconscious," by Edward de Hartmann.

Though Hartmann adopts a very different system of metaphysics
from Schopenhauer's, he admits having borrowed from that philosopher
the point of departure of his system ; his moral views are similar, if
not identical ; he has the same fellow-feeling with Eastern philosophies,
the same pessimist color in his view of the world and of existence in
general. Besides, Hartmann announces himself as a disciple of Schel-
ling, and thus links himself with the romantic school. Just as he has
a strongly-marked leaning toward eclecticism, and fancies he can rec-
oncile the two systems of Hegel and of Schopenhauer, so too he attempts
to fuse together optimism and pessimism : but it is for the sake of
maintaining that even in the best of possible worlds, which naturally
is our own, evil still prevails immeasurably over good. For him, as
for Plato, for the old religions, existence is a fall. The human race,
like all beings in the universe, is the prey of many miseries while tasting
but few joys, and the advance of philosophy consists in gaining an ever-
clearer conviction of this sad truth. Meanwhile, man is deluded by
instincts that make him cling to life, and urge him to cares for its
preservation and reproduction. These instincts are a divine blessing,
since they were necessary to keep life going, to make civilization pos-
sible, to give man time for climbing toward philosophic intelligence,
and in a word to invest triumphant science with the power to unseal
his eyes to the wretchedness of his state : man at the outset must needs
be sustained by the delusive love of life, that he might some clay win
the power of willing, not merely his own non-existence, which Schopen
hauer contented himself with, but the non-existence of the whole race
too, and even, if we clearly take in Hartmann's doctrine, the annihilation
of all real being. When sufficiently enlightened, man will acknowledge
the vanity of his desires, and let himself die of disgust. If high intel-
lects, great poets, thinkers of genius, are for the most part melancholy,
it is because they draw nearer to the truth than the ignorant crowd,
ruled wholly by its instincts. The discovery that life is unendurable
is pregnant perhaps with awful catastrophes for the future ; the masses
will grow more and more restive in their misery ; formerly they felt
little of it except when their stomachs grumbled, but the older the
world gets, the more threateningly the spectre of pauperism rises. The
social question of our time rests, in the last analysis, only on the
stronger sense of their sufferings that has seized the working-classes,
although their situation is a golden one compared with what it was two
centuries ago, when the social question had no existence. And yet the
rich are even more to be pitied than the poor, the educated classes

156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

more than the ignorant, for the same reason that fools are generally
happier than people of sense, and the savage happier than the civilized
races. Happiness, in fact, is in an inverse ratio to the quantity of ex-
istence, and the more developed, the less coarse, a man's nervous sys-
tem is, the more he suffers ; now, the progress of humauity, wealth,
culture of mind, multiply man's needs and refine his nervous sensibility.
Wretchedness grows, then, with the consciousness of wretchedness.
But, thanks to the sovereign wisdom of the unconscious principle that
rules the universe, the world will at last arrive, through social cata-
clysms and by force of that very conviction of its misery, at annihila-
tion, which will be the term of all its woes.

Hartmann seems, therefore, to concede the position to those who
argue that religions and creeds in general are all that has made human
life endurable and civilization possible. There will be more minds
ready to accept his testimony in favor of the usefulness of illusions
than there will be to adopt that Utopia of annihilation which in his
view must take their place in the future. Three grand illusions have
in turn sustained humanity, up to this day: The first, the illusion of
childhood and the ancient world, consisted in the dream that happiness
might be actually attained by the individual, and during the present
life. The second illusion, which replaced this, was the fancy that the in-
dividual will attain happiness after his death, in a life transcending the
present. The last is the grand modern illusion, that of progress, which
teaches that happiness, as it cannot be the individual's aim, either in
this life or in another, must be sought for the species in the future of
humanity, in the evolution of the world. To all these illusions suc-
ceeds the deception of humanity's old age, reaching the term of its de-
velopment of consciousness, and recognizing at last that happiness is
nothing else than the absence of pain, and can only be realized by the
annihilation of being.

Hartmann takes care to warn his readers that they deceive them-
selves if they look for consolation and hope in philosophy. For such
objects, books of religion exist. But philosophy pursues truth exclu-
sively, careless whether its acquirement sustains or contradicts the
sentiments inspired by the illusions of instinct. Philosophy is hard,
cold, insensible as stone. Floating in the ether of pure thought, it
gravitates toward the icy knowledge of existence, its causes, and its
nature. And if man fails in the moral strength to endure the over-
whelming results of his thought, if his heart yields to the spasm of
despair, if he gives himself up to desolation, what will philosophy do ?
Will it revive his courage ? No ! it will merely note down these facts
of despair and desolation as a precious contribution to its materials for
physiological observation. And when, on the other hand, meditation
upon the truth fills stronger souls with sacred indignation and noble
rage, a repressed wrath against this empty masquerade of existence
or if that wrath breaks into bursts of Mephistophelian humor, or pours

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. i 57

its disdainful pity, mingled with irony, upon the unfortunates cheated
with the shows of happiness as upon those who yield to despair when,
at last, the soul, bracing its strength to fight this fatality, discerns a
plain escape and issue from this hell these again are but facts which
philosophy, still calm and impassive, verifies and records, and its work
is done.

We readily admit that there is a grandeur in these ideas of hu-
manity and philosophy. But the critic's duty is, to ascertain whether
they are correct, and do not merely create still a new illusion to add
to those the world has hitherto been cradled in one equally empty
with the rest, and only perhaps differing from them by the disadvan-
tage of being far less cheerful and helpful to humanity. As it relates
to the world's progress, all these systems may be reduced to two
classes : on the one side, those which hold up the universe as tending
toward a designed aim, and guided by an intelligent principle toward
a providential end, such as the realization of happiness for the indi-
vidual, or a certain perfection of humanity, or, still more generally,
some kind of cosmic condition: on the other side must be placed all
those systems according to which the world is not moving toward a
foreseen and chosen end, and is ruled only by the force of things, in-
telligence itself, wherever it is manifested, being nothing more than a
resultant and a particular phenomenon. According to these latter sys-
tems, if humanity and our world were to come to an end, these results
would only flow from the necessary relations between the facts of the
universe; and these systems, if they are pantheistic ones, can find a
very clear exj:>ression for their doctrine in the formula that the occur-
rences of the universe have as their principle not a divine will, but
merely the eternal nature of God.

Hartmann, who belongs, at several points, to the traditioned spir-
itualistic philosophy, displays a strong attachment to the idea of an
intelligence presiding over the destiny of the world. Although a
pantheist, he continually reasons as a mere deist, a contradiction which
seems to us to be the source of most of his errors. His God, who is
supremely wise, omniscient, and prescient, but who is not omnipotent,
for he had not the power to prevent the production of this evil world,
ought a priori to govern every thing toward the best end. Now, this
end cannot be individual happiness, for the individual dies, and Hart-
mann does not admit the survival of personality. It cannot be the
perfection of the race, for humanity is doomed to perish whenever the
burnt-out sun shall cease to furnish its conditions of existence. Must
the end proposed by Providence be sought for in the destiny of our
world itself? But modern science teaches us that the world also is
doomed to inevitable destruction. Thus, from the necessity of reject-
ing all these positive ends, nothing remained but to seek the solution
of the problem in a purely negative end, and this is what Hartmann,
following Schopenhauer, has undertaken. The best possible end for

158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the world is its annihilation, and it is toward this term of all evils that
the supreme intelligence is leading us.

To establish the truth of this doctrine, Hartmann has elaborated
his theory of the unconscious. Is it science? or is it really nothing
else than a metaphysical romance ? It is this that we propose in the
next part to investigate.

HOW THE FEELINGS AFFECT THE HAIE.

By DANIEL H. TUKE, M. D.

THE influence of grief or fright in blanching the hair has been
generally recognized.

" For deadly fear can Time outgo,

And blanch at once the hair." Maemion.

It has been a popular rather than a physiological belief that this
can occur "in a single night." No one doubts that the hair may turn
gray, gradually, from moral causes, and this is sufficient proof of the
mind's influence upon the nutrition of the hair. I have known alter-
nations in the color of the hair (brown and gray) corresponding to
alternations of sanity and insanity. Some entertain doubts as to sud-
den blanching of the hair, but I do not believe them well founded, and
can vouch for the truth of the following interesting; cases

"Thomas W., about twenty years of age, the son of a milkman, was tall,
fleshy, good looking, slightly bronzed, hair intensely black, stiff, wiry, and rather
inclined to curl. His general appearance was that of a healthy and well-formed
man, used to light work, but much exposure in the open air. In the year 18
one of his thoughtless companions told him (what was not true) that a girl in
the town was going before the magistrate on the morrow to swear him father
of her child. Poor W. was dumfounded. The announcement had given his
whole frame a severe shock; the gall of bitterness had entered his heart, and
the mind was under the baneful influence of its power. He hastened home, and
sought relief in his bedroom. Sleep was denied him, for his brain was on fire.
He saw nothing but disgrace coming from every angle of the room. Such was
the mental agitation produced by a silly trick. Early morning brought no re-
lief ; he looked careworn, distressed, and his hair was changed from its natural
tint to that of a light ' iron-gray color.' This, to him, was a great mystery. In
the course of the following day the stupid trick was explained, but the ill effects
of it lasted for a long period. Nearly twenty years after, although his health
was fair, the mental powers retained signs of the severe shock they had re-
ceived; his hair was perfectly gray, and a medical friend of mine who met him
received the impression that he would carry the marks of this folly to his
grave.

" I know of a captain of a vessel, under forty years of age, who suffered ship-
wreck twice. On the first occasion (in which he lost all hope) his hair quickly
turned gray; and on the second, some considerable time afterward, his hair be-

HOW THE FEELINGS AFFECT THE HAIR. 159

came still further blanched. He resolved never to go to sea again, and kept
his resolution.

" A lady, travelling in France subsequently to the Franco-Prussian War,
heard of a considerable number of cases of hair blanching (more or less marked)
in consequence of fright."

Dr. Laycock, in speaking of pigmentation of the hair, asks whether
grayness and baldness are due to loss of tone of the hair-bulbs solely,
or are ultimately associated with trophic nervous debility of certain
unknown nerve-centres. He points out that the regional sympathy
which characterizes trophesies is well marked, and that, as regards
baldness, it extends from two points, the forehead and the vertex,
ending at a line which, "carried round the head, would touch the oc-
cipital ridge posteriorly, and the eyebrows anteriorly." So with the
beard, etc. In connection with a succeeding remark, that the eyebrows
are a clinical region in brow-ague, herpes, and leprosy, the case already
referred to, of a woman who suffered in the night from a severe attack
of tic, and found in the morning that the inner half of one eyebrow
and the corresponding portion of the eyelashes were perfectly white,
may be mentioned. Laycock points out the fact that the hair over the
lower jaw is almost always gray earlier than that over the upper jaw,
and that tufts on the chin generally turn white first. {Op. cit.,
May 13.)

" Mr. Paget, in his ' Lectures on Nutrition,' has recorded the case of a lady
with dark-brown hair, subject to nervous headache, who always finds, the
morning afterward, patches of her hair white, as if powdered with starch. In
a few days it regains its color. Dr. Wilks says he has on more than one occa-
sion had a lady visit him with jet-black hair, and on the morrow, when seen in
bed, it had changed to gray. Bichat, opposing the skepticism of Haller, as-
serted that he had known at least five or six examples in which the hair lost
its color in less than a week ; and that one of his acquaintance became almost
entirely blanched in a single night, on receiving some distressing news. There
is no reason to call in question the statement that Marie Antoinette's hair
rapidly turned gray in her agony. We have it on the authority of Montesquieu
himself that his own hair became gray during the night, in consequence of re-
ceiving news of his son which greatly distressed him. Dr. Laudois, of Griefs-
walde, reported not long ago a case in 'Virchow's Archives,' in which the
hair rapidly turned white. But I have not any particulars at hand beyond the
fact that, on carefully examining the hair, he found that there was ' an accumu-
lation of air-globules in the fibrous substances of the hair.' Erasmus Wilson
read a paper at the Royal Society in 1867 on a case of much interest, a resume
of which I subjoin in a note." '

1 Every hair of the head was colored alternately brown and white from end to end.
The white segments were about half the length of the brown, the two together measuring
about one-third of a line. Mr. Wilson suggested the possibility of the brown portion
representing the day-growth of the hair, and the white portion the night-growth, and this
opinion was corroborated by the remarks of Dr. Sharpey and others of the Fellows who
took part in the discussion. Under the microscope, the colors of the hair were reversed,
the brown became light and transparent, the white opaque and dark ; and it was further

160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The falling off of the hair is too frequent a result of anxiety, or
other depressing emotion, to escape common observation. A case re-
ported in the Lancet, of May 4, 18G7, forms an excellent illustration :

" A man of nervous temperament began business as a draper in 1859. At
that time he was twenty-seven years of age, in good health, though not very
robust, unmarried, and had the usual quautity of (dark) hair, whiskers, and
beard. For two years he was in a state of perpetual worry and anxiety of
mind., and his diet was very irregular. Then his hair began to come oft', lie
declares that it literally fell off", so that when he raised his head from his pillow-
in the morning, the hair left on the pillow formed a kind of cast of that part of
his head which rested on it. In a month's time he had not a single visible hair
on any part of his body no eyebrows, no eyelashes; even the short hairs of
his arms and legs had gone ; but on the scalp there could be seen, in a good
light, patches of very fine, short down. This was in 1861. Medical treatment
proved of no avail, and he was finally advised to do nothing. So long as his
anxiety continued, the hair refused to grow, but by the latter part of 1805 his
business became established, and, coincidently, his hair reappeared ; and when
Mr. Churton, of Erith, reported the case, he had a moderately good quantity
of hair on the head, very slight whiskers, rather better eyebrows, and the eye-
lashes pretty good."

The influence of painful emotions in causing gray or white hair and
alopecia has been sufficiently illustrated, and it would have been inter-
esting to adduce a reverse series showing the opposite effects of joy.
But it is a very different thing to restore to its healthy habit the func-
tion of a tissue whose pigment has been removed by slow mal-nutri-
tion, or by sudden shock. I may adduce such a circumstance as the
following, however, to show that hair, which has turned gray in the
natural course of life, may, by the stimulus of specially-favorable
events, become dark and plentiful again :

" An old man (aged seventy-five), a thorough out-and-out radical even the
cancelli of his bones were so impregnated with a thorough disgust of the Govern-
ment of George IV. that he threw up a lucrative situation in one of the royal
yards, and compelled his youngest son to follow his example insisted that his
wife, also aged (about seventy), toothless for years, and her hair as white as the
snow on Mont Blanc, should accompany them to the land where God's creatures
were permitted to inhale the pure, old, invigorating atmosphere of freedom.

obvious that the opacity of the white portion was due to a vast accumulation of air-
globules, packed closely together in the fibrous structure of the hair, as well as in the
medulla. There was no absence of pigment, but the accumulation of air-globules veiled
the normal color and structure. Mr. Wilson observed that, as the alteration in structure
which gave rise to the altered color evidently arose in a very short period, probably less
than a day, the occurrence of a similar change throughout the eutire length of the shaft
would explain those remarkable instances, of which so many are on record, of sudden
blanching of the hair ; and he ventured to suggest that, during the prevalence of a violent
nervous shock, the normal fluids of the hair might be drawn inward toward the body,
in unison with the generally contracted and collapsed state of the surface, and that the
vacuities left by this process of exhaustion might be suddenly filled with atmospheric
air. Lancet, April 20, 1867.

COTTON FIBRES AND FABRICS. 161

About six or seven years after their departure, a friend living in New York gave
an excellent account of their proceedings. Not only could the old man puff away

in glorious style, and the son do well as a portrait-painter, but old Mrs.

had cut a new set of teeth, and her poll was covered with a full crop of dark-
brown hair ! "
Journal of Mental Science.

4

COTTON FIBRES AND FABRICS.

By Dk. SACC,

PROFESSOR IN THE ACADEMY OF NEUFCHATEL. 1

COTTON owes its kingship quite as much to the tenacity with
which its fibres adhere to one another, as to their length or fine-
ness ; and were it not that the fibre produced by the bombax, or silk-
cotton tree, is too smooth, cotton would find in it a powerful rival.
Cotton-wool is the downy bed in which the seeds of the cotton-plant
are enveloped, and is the product of hot countries. It has several
varieties, that cultivated in Algeria and in Southern Europe seldom
attaining a height of over twelve inches, while at the equator the plant
grows as high as an apple-tree, and bears a fruit twice as large as that
of the Algerian species. The cotton grown in the East Indies is of
very inferior quality, its fibre being short and hard ; yet it was largely
used in manufacture, during the war in the United States. Chinese
cotton is yellow, and hence the peculiar color of the fabric called
nankeen.

The cotton-plant is probably a native of Africa, and Livingstone
found it in the interior of that country along the banks of all the rivers.
The ancient Egyptians doubtless imported from Abyssinia their cotton
cloths for mummy-wrappings and for the garments of priests and nobles,
and from them the Jews inherited the employment of that texture
for the robes of their priests : for, where the Bible makes mention of/me
linen, we must read cotton, as flax does not grow in hot climates.
From Africa cotton-culture passed into Persia and Georgia ; then into
India, and from India into China. In the latter empire all the clothing
of the poorer classes is of cotton, of extremely firm texture. Indeed, so
strong is the cotton cloth manufactured by the Chinese, that it is im-
possible for a man to tear a piece of it across ; and the people of China
and India refuse to buy European cotton manufactures, calling them
mere spiders' webs.

If the true aim of prudent industry be to produce good fabrics at

1 Translated and abridged from the Annates du Genie Civil. Dr. Sacc is the grand-
Bon of Dupaaquier, who introduced into Switzerland the English process of printing
calico. The author is responsible for his own political economy.

VOL. II. 11

1 6a THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

the lowest price, then the cotton manufacture is a failure. Instead of
even studying to improve the fabric, manufacturers have, ever since
the manufacture of carding and spinning machines, thought only of
the problem of cheapness. The fabrics they produce are of the worst
quality, and quickly wear out ; and it may be doubted if there can be
found in all Europe, to-day, a single piece of such cotton cloth as used
to be manufactured twenty years ago, which gave many times as much
wear as the present textures.

The United States annually produce 4,000,000 bales of cotton for
the European market, or 1,200,000,000 of pounds, which sells at an
average price of one franc per pound. Europe thus pays to the United
States 1,200,000,000 of francs every year, simply for cotton, and the
1,200,000,000 pounds of cotton is spun by 50,000,000 of spinning-jen-
nies and wove by 625,000 looms. In, the process of manufacture there
is a waste of 25 per cent. ; hence 1,200,000,000 pounds of raw material
give only 900,000,000 pounds of manufactured cotton goods, worth
two and one-half francs per pound, being a total of about 2,250,000,000
francs. The process of manufacturing, therefore, does not even double
the value of the raw material.

If, now, we estimate the number of workmen engaged in the cotton
manufacture from beginning to end, on the basis of six workmen to
every 160 spinning-jennies, we shall have 1,875,000 hands so employed.
Add to this the number of those employed in raising the cotton-crop,
and the crews of the ships which bring it to Europe, and it will be no
exaggeration if we estimate the number of employes at 3,000,000, and
the amount of capital at 3,000,000,000 francs. No other industry
can compare with this for magnitude, and the epithet King Cotton is
well deserved. If we do not take care, this industry will prove the
ruin of Europe, whence it annually drains 1,200,000,000 francs, without
making any return. Cotton alone is answerable for the ever-increasing
wealth of the United States, and the relative misery of European coun-
tries. It is full time to put an end to this state of affairs, by compel-
ling the manufacturers hereafter to produce only firm and durable tex-
tures. But, inasmuch as the state can scarcely interfere in such ques-
tions, it remains for individuals to apply the remedy. It is in the
power of the consumer to apply this remedy, as he alone is accountable
for the present painful crisis of the cotton-manufacturing industries of
Europe.

We have grown so accustomed to cheap cotton fabrics, that, when
prices are advanced, we turn to linen, hempen, or woollen textures, and
then the manufacturer is forced to adulterate his products, the con-
sumer shutting his eyes to all defects, provided the article is cheap. It
will scarcely be believed, and yet it is the simple truth, that, whereas
ten years ago the piece of cotton weighed eight pounds, it now weighs
but six, or even less, and thus is 25 per cent, less strong than it used
to be. But, further, instead of employing good United States cotton,

COTTON FIBRES AND FABRICS. 163

which is high-priced, the manufacturers make large use now of the
wretched cottons of India, which are cheap, but which make a weak
texture, mere cobweb. An appearance of firmness is given to these
worthless fabrics by a liberal use of sizing, which deceives the eye ;
but, apply a little lye-water, and the material will be found to be mere
lint.

The evil consequences flowing from the false principles which
govern the manufacture of cotton are enormous, and it is time to apply
a remedy. If Europe goes on thus, ever giving, and receiving from the
United States nothing in return, our material prosperity will soon be
at an end. The ladies of Austria would appear to stand alone in justly
appreciating this danger, and have resolved to eschew cotton fabrics,
and use linen in place of muslin. Let Europe follow their example ;
let muslin be banished from our households, and the immediate result
will be, that Europe will stand at the head of civilized nations.

As it is at present carried on, the cotton industry is the oppro-
brium of humanity and the curse of Europe. Why is it that this
manufacture has come to be regarded as a prime necessity of the civil-
ized world ? Simply because fashion has backed it, and preached it
up : and fashion i* a puwer before which we all bow in submission.

"When Indian tapestries and those admirable Mosul textures were
first imported into Europe, there arose a universal demand for them,
nor could all the looms of the East furnish the supply required. In
time the raw material was brought hither, and we spun and wove it by
hand ; we printed and dyed it. At first no evil consequences flowed
from the new industry, because cotton goods, being yet too costly to be
used by the poor, were bought only by the rich, who found them really
cheap, on account of their great durability. It was only at the begin-
ning of the present century that we first experienced the evils of which
we here speak. Then it was that the invention of machinery for the
manufacture of the raw material enabled cotton to drive all other tex-
tile fabrics out of the market, and forced on Europe the most deplora-
ble of economies.

But our eyes are at last opened to see the calamities which threaten
us, and there is now very little danger that this industry will expand
any further. It has owed its past prosperity to frauds of the most
consummate nature, and now it is undergoing a crisis which cannot
fail to turn to the advantage of other textures, and from which it is not
likely to recover. We have reason to rejoice at the fall of King
Cotton ; and now let us keep for Europe all its own resources, by pur-
chasing only fabrics of hemp and flax, wool and silk, instead of muslin ;
thus shall we give a mighty impetus to home agriculture and home in-
dustry.

For certain purposes, however, cotton cloth is indispensable ; thus
printed fabrics will ever be of cotton, for no other textile fibre takes
colors so well. This is due to the fact that cotton-fibre is flat, while

164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that of flax and hemp is cylindrical ; then, too, cotton is more readily
bleached than hemp or flax. The manufacture of calico came, as the
name implies, from India ; and the first printed textures thence brought
to Europe were very coarsely printed, with figures in black, red, or blue,
the colors being dull, but very fast. Imitation calico was first manufac-
tured at Bordeaux, and from that city the industry passed over into
Switzerland and Germany, with the Protestants who were driven from
France by the dragonnades of Louis XIV. It quickly attained excep-
tional importance at Neufchatel and at Miihlhausen, which then be-
longed to Switzerland ; but it is in Alsace that it has made most prog-
ress, and taken the lead of all other industries.

Chaptal, the famous Minister of Commerce under Napoleon I., said
that the manufacture of calico is the most difficult of industries, for it
requires most capital, most patience, the longest training, and the
largest amount of good sense and intelligence. Chaptal was in the
right ; for all the great manufacturers of cotton-prints take rank
among men of note. I need only cite a few names. In Switzerland
we have our Dupasquiers, Bovets, and Verdans ; France has her
Haussmanns, Schlumbergers, Koechlins, and Dolfus ; and this roll is
sufficient to show the justice of Chaptal's assertion. Every year, every
day, has witnessed some new improvement in the manufacture of calico ;
the dull colors of former times have been superseded by a series of
novel shades, and coarse patterns have given way before artistic de-
signs which may well compare with the finest designs on paper.

The fixation of colors was the result of chance, aided more or less
by the manufacturer's experience, which was not unfrequently non-
plussed by a change of the atmosphere, or by a variation in the quality
of the drugs employed. In such a state of things, which threatened
to ruin the manufacture, recourse was had to science, and the dyers
became chemists and physicists. But then the charm was broken :
there was no more chance, no more tentative ; the fabrication of
printed tissues was now a science, and soon, in addition to liquid dyes,
we had our dye-stuffs in the shape of vapor, which yield brilliant tints
indeed, but not very stable. Finally, besides cotton fabrics, we began
to print textures of silk and of wool, or of mixed wool, silk, and cot-
ton, which have given rise to an entirely new class of tissues called
chalys or bareges, when they contain wool and silk, and cotton Avarp
when they are comprised of cotton and wool.

In order to form some idea of the cotton industry, let us go back
to the gathering-in of the crop. The cotton-wool, when it starts from
the pod, contains three times its own weight in large oily seeds.
These are separated from the cotton by means of machines which are
in fact cards, and which seize the cotton, suffering the seeds to drop
out. During this process the seeds will be more or less crushed, and
give out an oil, which is absorbed by the cotton. If, now, there flows
in a current of hot air, the cotton takes fire. This is the cause of the

COTTON FIBRES AND FABRICS. 165

fires which so frequently break out in cotton-factories, always originat-
ing in the rooms where the raw material is set to dry. The minute
quantity of oil contained in raw cotton is also the reason of its turn-
ing yellow in store, though it was white when gathered in. The fabric
has, therefore, to be lixiviated and bleached before being printed.
The process of bleaching begins by washing the cotton in lime-water,
after which the fabric is passed through a weak acid solution, in order
to remove the lime, which else would burn the tissue. It is then thor-
oughly washed, treated anew with soda, then with a soap of colo-
phony, and finally passed through water.

The cloth is then free from oily matter, but not yet bleached, and
it must yet pass through a solution of chloride of lime, and then
through another solution of hydrochloric acid. These last two opera-
tions take but a moment, and they constitute the very crisis of the
process ; for, if the solutions be too strong, the tissues are burnt, and
considerably weakened, a thing of very frequent occurrence. For-
merly, the cloth used to be bleached in the sun ; but this tedious and
costly process, where the present one requires only a few days, took
up weeks, and yet did not bleach the fabric so thoroughly.

Next the white cloth is sent to the printer, who gives it the fig-
ures desired. At first plates of wood with the figures in relief were
employed in the printing ; this was the infancy of the art. Later,
plates of copper were used, having the figures cut into their surface;
this was a step in advance. Finally the English, whose industrial ge-
nius is most fruitful of useful applications, originated the idea of print-
ing with copper cylinders, beneath which the cloth would pass, receiv-
ing impressions ad infinitum.

Dupasquier introduced from England into the Continent this beau-
tiful invention, which is even yet in process of improvement. From
that moment printed cottons grew ever cheaper, although the printing
was executed far better than formerly ; and the fall in prices became
simply enormous when machinery took the place of human hands.
Then calico came into universal use, without, however, superseding tex-
tures of hemp and flax, which were still employed for table and body
linen ; it was only at a later day, and when prices were still further
reduced, that the less opulent classes began to wear muslin instead of
linen. This example was soon followed by the wealthy classes, who
little suspected the snare that they were walking into, nor understood
that, in substituting cotton for flax and hemp, they were selling out to
America one of our most abundant sources of wealth, and of agricul-
tural and industrial prosperity.

Such was the state of the textile market in Europe, when the Uni-
ted States war broke out ; a war brought about by Palmerston, who
wished England to receive the 1,200,000,000 francs annually paid
by Europe for cotton. "We know too well how far he was successful
in his hateful design; for, ever since that time the East Indies share

166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with the United States in the privilege of carrying off our millions,
under the pretext of selling us cotton. Never was there a more per-
fect act of piracy ; never was piracy better organized than this, or
more kindly received, to our shame be it said.

As now the price of cotton was increased, muslin was rejected, and
fabrics of hemp and flax used instead; for the latter textures could be
had for the same price as cotton goods, while they were of far better
quality. Then it was that certain ingenious swindlers conceived the
idea of weaving the threads wider apart, so as to yield an increase of
25 per cent, of cloth, with the same amount of cotton ; and, to conceal
this base fraud, recourse was had to a paste of starch, soap, and pipe-
clay, stopping up thus the interstices, and giving the article the ap-
pearance of a first-class fabric.

This abominable invention once introduced, cotton fabrics fell to
their former price, and found a market. During the ten years which
have passed away since public credulity was first duped in this way,
every one has to his cost learned of the trick. Hence I suppose I am
addressing an audience already convinced ; and I repeat again my ad-
vice, Buy only linen.

Textures intended for printing were deteriorated in the same pro-
portion, and hence it became very difficult to print or to wash them,
and they had to be heavily starched in order to find purchasers, so
flimsy were they. But people soon quit using them, and bought mixed
textures of wool and cotton, or wool and linen, which came into fash-
ion, and which gave such satisfaction that they will not again be laid
aside.

"We now come to speak of the lighter tissues the finest grades of
muslin, jaconets, and organdies.

All these tissues are very costly, because they require cotton of the
best quality, and it is upon these that the manufacturer of printed
goods displays all his artistic skill all the magic of design. He stops
at nothing, for these brilliant artistic effects give him a reputation, and
serve as a letter of introduction for his products. I have seen as many
as thirty-five different colors, or shades of color, in the large bouquets
printed on certain fabrics. But, like natural flowers, these printed
flowers quickly fade.

Only the very costliest of textures are now printed by hand that
process being so tedious and so difficult that but few workmen are
qualified to perform it. The printing, therefore, is usually done by
means of a roller of copper or brass. This roller has the figures cut
into its surface either directly by the burin, or by an acid ; or, as is
more usual, it gets the required impress from the molette. Engraving
with the burin being very costly, it is employed only in the manufac-
ture of the very choicest fabrics. Engraving with acid is done as fol-
lows : The roller is first coated with asphaltum, and on this is counter-
drawn with the burin the figure required. The burin may be worked

PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO. 167

by hand, or may be guided by means of a pantograph. The figure
having been thus traced on the roller, the latter is plunged into a bath
of nitric acid, which cuts into the metal at all points where the asphalt
coating has been displaced. Finally, the asphalt is washed off with
essence of turpentine.

But the figures are usually produced on the roller by means of the
molette. This is a small cylinder of steel, into the surface of which
the engraver first cuts the design. This cylinder then gives to another
an impress in relief; and, finally, from this latter a concave impress is
taken on the large copper roller of the printing-press. It is plain that
as many rollers will be required as there are colors to print ; and, ow-
ing to the difficulty of preventing the colors running into one another,
not more than four are commonly employed black, red, rose, and
violet ; or black, brown, red, and cashew. In twelve hours, 100 to
120 pieces, of 50 yards each, may be printed in one color, though not
more than 60 to 80 could be printed in four.

The capital employed in the manufacture of printed goods of mixed
fibre is enormous, and yields a large return. This manufacture gives
also good remuneration to the operatives, and there is every reason
why it should be as zealously fostered as the manufacture and employ-
ment of muslins and calicoes are to be discouraged, as tending to
draw off to America all the wealth of Europe.

-+*+-

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO.

Br W. E. A. AXON, M. E. S. L.

IN" speaking of the physiological position of tobacco, we have to deal
with the action of the essential principles of that plant upon the
human system. The peculiar effects of tobacco are due to the action
of the essential oil of tobacco in the case of chewing and snuffing,
and to that combined with the empyreumatic oil in smoking. Nico-
tine, as this essential principle is called, is so deadly an alkaloid, that
the amount of it contained in one cigar, if extracted and administered
in a pure state, would suffice to kill two men. According to the experi-
ments of "Vohl and Eulenberg, the nicotine is decomposed, in the pro-
cess of smoking, into pyridine, picoline, and other poisonous alkaloids,
which can also be obtained in varying quantities by the destructive dis-
tillation of other vegetable substances.

Nicotine, as for convenience we may continue to call the poisonous
principles of tobacco, can enter the body through various channels by
the stomach, by the lungs, by subcutaneous injection, and by the skin
itself. But, in whatever manner it enters the human system, its effects
are, in the main, uniform.

The most immediately noticeable symptom following smoking is the

1 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

undue acceleration of the laboring forces of the heart. Under the stim-
ulus of tobacco the heart beats more quickly, as is evidenced by the
rising pulse. We have not the mass of detailed evidence as to this fact
which exists in relation to alcohol, but the experiments made by Dr.
Edward Smith, and related to the British Association in 1864, are full
of interest. " The experiments were made at 10 p. m., when the rate
of pulsation naturally declines (as he had proved by hourly experi-
ments published in his work on the ' Cyclical Changes of the Human
System'), and at least four hours after any fluid or solid food had been
taken. They were made in the sitting posture, after it had been main-
tained fifteen minutes, and with the most absolute quietude of body
and mind ; and thus all influences were eliminated but those due to the
tobacco. The rate of the pulsation was taken every minute for a period
beginning two or three minutes before the smoking began, and continu-
ing during twenty minutes, or until the pipe was exhausted.
The following are the chief results obtained :

Experiment 1.
Pulsation before smoking was 74-J per minute.
Smoking 6 minutes 79, 77, 80, 78, 78, 77 per minute=78.1 average.
Smoking 7 minutes 83, 87, 88, 94, 98, 102, 102 per minute = 93.4

average.
Smoking 8 minutes 105, 105, 104, 105, 105, 107, 107, 110 per minute

= 106 average.
After smoking 11 minutes 112, 103, 107, 101, 101, 100, 100, 100, 100,
98, and 91.
There was thus a maximum increase of 37^ pulsations per minute.

Experiment 2.
(Smoking through camphor julep in a hookah.)
Pulsation before smoking, 79 per minute.
Smoking 6 minutes 81, 81, 81, 83, 82, 82 per minute = 81.6 average.
Smoking 17 minutes 85, 89, 89, 93, 96, 90, 94, 94, 93, 92, 95, 95, 95
96, 94, 97, 93 = 93.
The maximum increase was 17-J pulsations per minute.

Experiment 3.
(Smoking an empty pipe.)
Pulsation before smoking, 78 pulsations per minute.
Smoking 11 minutes 76, 78, 77, 76, 79, 79, 80, 80, 79, 78, and 79.

There was no increase in the rate of pulsations from the effort of
smoking, or from its interference with the respiration.

Experiment 4.
(To ascertain if, after smoking 6 minutes, during which the effect is
very small, and then ceasing smoking, any increase in the effect
would follow.)

PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO. 169

Pulsation before smoking, 75 pulsations per minute.
Smoking 6 minutes 76, 75, 79, 79, 76, 78.
Smoking 1 minute 82. Cease smoking.
Smoking 10 minutes 81, 88, 83, 82, 84, 83, 83, 80, 82.

The rate of pulsations was maintained, but was not materially in-
creased.

Experiment 5.

(To prove if the rapidity of smoking causes a variation in increase ofj

pulsation.)

a. Greater volume of smoke.
Pulsation before smoking, 70^ per minute.

Smoking 6 minutes 68, 70, 71, 70, 72, 74 = 70.8 average.
Smoking 6 minutes 76, 77, 86, 89, 91, 94 = 85.5 average.
Smoking 4 minutes 98, 05, 96, 95 = 96.0 average.

The maximum effect was thus 27^ pulsations per minute.

b. Smoking faster.

Pulsation of the last minute in the previous part of this experiment,
viz., 95 per minute smoking 3 minutes, 94, 49, 96.

c. The pipe recharged.
Smoking 5 minutes 87, 93, 96, 96, 96.

There was, therefore, a large effect upon the pulsation, but probably
not more than would have occurred with ordinary smoking.

Numerous other experiments were made with tobaccos of different
reputed strengths and upon different persons, and the author gave
minute directions as to the proper method of making such inquiries. "

The heart, then, during the act of smoking, was doing extra work ;
in some of the experiments this additional labor amounting to more
than 50 per cent.

The effect upon the heart is not caused by direct action upon that
organ, but by paralyzing the minute vessels which form the bat-
teries of the nervous system. Thus paralyzed, they can no longer offer
effectual resistance, and the heart, freed from their control, increases
the rapidity of its strokes, expanding the vessels, with an apparent ac-
cession, but real waste of force.

Its effect in lowering the animal temperature is very striking.
"When the walls of the blood-vessels are distended with that fluid, the
increase in volume decreases the rapidity of the circulation and aug-
ments the local warmth. When the walls partially collapse, the cir-
culation becomes quicker, but the heat diminishes. The heat, in fact,
is transformed into motion.

The action of nicotine upon the iris is well known, yet, while some
consider it to produce dilatation, others affirm its effect to be contrac-
tion. The iris is composed of two orders of muscular tissue. The
circular fibres influenced by the motor oculi, and the radiating fibres
obeying the great sympathetic, perform the two functions of the iris,

70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dilatation and contraction. The stimulation of the third pair of nerves
causes a contraction of the pupil ; a larger dose of nicotine destroys
its susceptibility and dilatation follows, the upper lid falls, strabismus
ensues, the eyeball becomes fixed in short, the motor power of the eye
is paralyzed. M. Blatin considers that the muscular fibre of the eye is
not at all affected by the poison.

Blatin proposes to divide tobacco-poisoning into two classes, acute
and chronic. The first is the result of a large or unaccustomed dose ;
the second, the accumulative consequences of doses, perhaps small, but
continually repeated.

The unpleasant experiences of the first pipe will enable most
smokers to understand the nature of this acute poisoning. Children
have even been made ill by sucking at pipes, empty, but already
coated with tobacco-juice. Sometimes a very slight dose exercises a
fatal effect upon systems in which tolerance has not been established.
Thus a youth of fourteen, having smoked fifteen cents' worth of to-
bacco as a remedy for toothache, fell down senseless and died the
same evening. 1 Blatin also tells us of a medical student, aged twenty-
two, who, after smoking a single pipe, fell into a frightful state the
heart became nearly motionless, the chest constricted, his breathing
was extremely painful, the limbs contracted, the pupils insensible to
light, one dilated, the other contracted. These symptoms gradually
lessened, but did not disappear until four days after. 2

But it is chronic nicotism which has the greatest interest for us.
The poisonous effects of tobacco in larger doses are too evident for
denial, and need scarcely be insisted upon. Far more important is it
to learn whether tobacco, in the quantities daily consumed by its ha-
bitual users, has a permanently injurious effect upon the human system.

It is often only after a number of years that nicotic symptoms ap-
pear, as though the poison acted by a process of accumulation, until
the system was charged to satiety. And thus any thing which dis-
turbs the equilibrium of the functions, and so diminishes the elimina-
tion of the poison, may give rise to morbid phenomena.

There is a theory not unknown, even among medical men. that
the toxic influences of tobacco are only transitory, and that all the
poison is ultimately expelled from the system. But it is certain, from
an experiment of M. Morin, 3 that the nicotine can be detected in the
tissues of the lungs and liver after death.

M. Blatin regards the various local affections as trifling, when
compared with the gradual saturation of the system with nicotine,
which, accumulating in the tissues, waits for the opportunity, varying,
according to individual habits and constitution, of declaring its poi-
sonous nature.

The trembling, which is one of the usual symptoms of acute, is

' Druhen, p. 44. * Blatin, p. 76.

3 Year Book of Medicine (New Sydenham Society), 1861, p. 447, and Blatin, p. 93.

PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO. 171

also a common result of chronic, nicotism. A very distinguished
Parisian physician had hands which shook so much that he could not
write. Whenever he remained without tobacco for any length of
time, these tremblings disappeared. Another case mentioned by
Blatin is noteworthy. A man of forty-five years consulted him re-
specting violent and numerous attacks of vertigo. When he felt
one of them approaching, he was obliged to lie down wherever he
might be, in order to avoid falling. In the country, where he had
plenty of exercise, they were less frequent than in the town, where his
occupation was sedentary. Cessation from tobacco and a tonic regi-
men quickly restored him.

A physician of fifty-two was afflicted with similar disagreeable
symptom's, and was also cured by abstinence. Habit had become so
strong that he could not resist at times the temptation to slight indul-
gence. Finding that these returns to tobacco were immediately fol-
lowed by his old painful attacks, he renounced it forever.

The circulatory system presents in chronic nicotism similar symp-
toms to those found in acute poisoning. The most noticeable of these
is the intermittent pulse, of which many cases have been collected by
Decaisne and others.

Decaisne speaks of narcotism of the heart, but Blatin does not
consider the action to be directly upon that organ, but considers the
effects described to result from an irregular relaxation of the ganglia
of the great sympathetic nerve.

When a person suffering from intermittent pulse was carefully ex-
amined, Blatin found the stoppage in the heart's beat followed a series
of apparently normal movements. The systole and diastole succeeded
in due regularity, and nothing in the play of the central organ indi-
cated trouble, when the heart suddenly stopped in diastole, sometimes
for the space of three arterial pulsations. When it awakens from this
syncope its action is abnormally quick, as if it wished to make up for
the lost time, and force the mass of blood across the organs at one
stroke. But, with force insufficient for this purpose, it is exhausted in
fruitless efforts, hesitates, wavers, acquires fresh power, commences
again, now violent, now feeble, and fulfils very imperfectly the duties
which it should perform. Gradually it calms ; a foreign element seems
to appease the tumult, the heart again becomes regular. The expla-
nation appears to be that the irritation of the sympathetic nerve stops
short the movements of the heart, and thus causes the intermittence ;
then the susceptibility of the nerve is lessened or paralyzed, and the
cardiac functions are left to the sole direction of the auto-motor gan-
glia ; hence the disordered beats, which decrease as the nervous force
coming afresh from the pneumogastric moderates and regularizes it.

From intermittent pulse to angina pectoris the distance is not far.
That tobacco may produce all the usual symptoms of that painful dis-
ease has been abundantly shown by Beau. To the cases which he has

i 7 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cited may be added an epidemic of this nature noted by M. Gelineau.
with which a great part of the crew of the Embuscade were struck.
The patients were all great smokers. It is worthy of notice that this
disease is much more common among men than women.

Difficulty of breathing approaching asthma has also been recorded.
Blatin gives a case of a young officer whose asthma could be attrib-
uted to no other cause, and who was cured by a simple abstinence and
tonic medicines. 1

Tobacco, acting upon the cardiac and pulmonary branches of the
pneumogastric, is not likely to leave untouched its gastric termina-
tions. In an animal under the influence of small doses of nicotine the
gastric juice is secreted with increased rapidity, and the action of the
walls of the stomach is more noticeable. With strong doses or long-
continued usage this secretion is very considerably diminished, and
the peristaltic motion enfeebled. That is to say, the tobacco acts
upon the pneumogastric, excites it in small, and paralyzes it in large,
doses. The smoker takes his after-dinner pipe or cigar to aid diges-
tion. Undoubtedly, it excites the par vagum, increases the gastric
secretion, and accelerates the peristaltic motion. Undoubtedly, also,
this daily stimulation enfeebles the nerve, and digestion becomes more
difficult. The swing back from the excitement causes a reaction,
which only an increase in the doses can overcome. The nerve is par-
tially paralyzed. The appetite fails, nutrition is impeded, dyspepsia
reigns conqueror.

A military man of thirty-seven years fell into a consumption with-
out any other affection antecedent or concomitant than distaste for
food, and salivation. Dr. Roques, after various essays, learned that
he was a great user of tobacco, which had led to a sort of chronic
fluxion of the salivary glands, and an almost total cessation of the di-
gestive functions, and consequently caused the feeble and consump-
tive state into which he had fallen. Gradual diminution and ultimate
abandonment of tobacco led to a cure in about three months. 2

The influence of tobacco upon vision is well known. One of the
symptoms produced in acute nicotism is blindness, and chronic nico-
tism gives rise to similar affections. Thus Mackenzie found that pa-
tients afflicted with amaurosis were mostly lovers of tobacco in some
form. Sichel found cases of complete amaurosis, which, incurable by
other means, were easily conquered by cessation from the weed.
Hutchinson found, out of thirty-seven patients, twenty-three were in-
veterate smokers. The observations of Wordsworth and others have
so clearly established the fact that the continued excitement of the
optic nerve by tobacco sometimes produces amaurosis, that it is now
generally cited in text-books as one of the causes of that disease.

We have completed our brief examination of the physiological ac-

1 Blatin, p. 159, from l'Abcille M6d., t. Hi., 1846.

* Ibid., p. 265, from Memoire de Med., et de Chir. Prat., t. v.

PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF TOBACCO. 173

tion of tobacco, but in concluding it may be well to point to some
portions of the evidence which are especially noteworthy. '

The fact that tobacco reduces the animal temperature is an impor-
tant one. It shows the fallacy of those who smoke to keep the cold
out, and proves conclusively that tobacco is neither a generator nor
conserver of vital heat, but, on the contrary, a wasteful destroyer
of it.

The influence of tobacco, in liberating the heart from those re-
straints which regulate its healthy action, naturally leads to the con-
clusion that in frequent doses that organ must, sooner or later, undergo
a structural transformation. Although when thus excited it has less
pressure to overcome than when in a normal condition, yet the extra
exertion cannot but be evil in its results, since it causes an irregularity
in the supply of blood, and thus degrades tissue.

Tobacco belongs to the class of narcotic and exciting substances,
and has no food-value. Stimulation means abstracted, not added,
force. It involves the narcotic paralysis of a portion of the functions,
the activity of which is essential to healthy life.

It will be said that tobacco soothes and cheers the weary toiler,
and solaces the overworked brain. Such may be its momentary ef-
fects, but the sequela? cannot be ignored. All such expedients are fal-
lacious. When a certain amount of brain-work or hand-work has
been performed, Nature must have space in which to recuperate, and
all devices for escaping from this necessity will fail. It is bad policy
to set the house on fire to warm our hands by the blaze. Let it, then,
be clearly understood that the temporary excitement produced by to-
bacco is gained by the destruction of vital force, and that it contains
absolutely nothing which can be of use to the tissues of the body.

Tobacco adds no potential strength to the human frame. It may
spur a weary brain or feeble arm to undue exertion for a short time,
but its work is destructive, not constructive. It cannot add one mole-
cule to the plasm out of which our bodies are daily built up. On the
contrary, it exerts upon it a most deleterious influence. It does not
supply, but diminishes, vital force.

It has been denied that tobacco leads to organic disease, but the
evidence is very strong the other way, and it would be very remark-
able if continued functional derangement did not ultimately lead to
chronic derangement of the organs ; that it causes functional disturb-
ance no one dreams of denying ; indeed, it has been remarked that no
habitual smoker can be truly said to have a day's perfect health. Ab-
stract from the Quarterly Journal of Science.

i 7 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

AIMS AND INSTRUMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT.

By Professor W. KINGDON CLIFFOED,

OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
II.

I WANT, in the next place, to consider what we mean when we say
that the uniformity which we have observed in the course of
events is reasonable as well as exact.

No doubt the first form of this idea was suggested by the marvel-
lous adaptation of certain natural structures to special functions. The
first impression of those who studied comparative anatomy was, that
every part of the animal frame was fitted with extraordinary com-
pleteness for the work that it had to do. I say extraordinary, because
at the time the most familiar examples of this adaptation were manu-
factures produced by human ingenuity ; and the completeness and mi-
nuteness of natural adaptations were seen to be far in advance of
these. The mechanism of limbs and joints was seen to be adapted,
far better than any existing iron-work, to those motions and combina-
tions of motion which were most useful to the particular organism.
The beautiful and complicated apparatus of sensation caught up indi-
cations from the surrounding medium, sorted them, analyzed them,
and transmitted the results to the brain in a manner with which, at
the time I am speaking of, no artificial contrivance could compete.
Hence the belief grew among physiologists that every structure which
they found must have its function and subserve some useful purpose ;
a belief which was not without its foundation in fact, and which cer-
tainly (as Dr. Whewell remarks) has done admirable service in pro-
moting the growth of physiology. Like all beliefs, found successful
in one subject, it was carried over into another, of which a notable ex-
ample is given in the speculations of Count Rumford about the phys-
ical properties of water, to which the President has already called
your attention. Pure water attains its greatest density at a tempera-
ture of about 39^ Fahr. ; it expands and becomes lighter whether it
is cooled or heated, so as to alter that temperature. Hence it was
concluded that water in this state must be at the bottom of the sea,
and that by such means the sea was kept from freezing all through ;
as it was supposed must happen if the greatest density had been that
of ice. Here, then, was a substance whose properties were eminently
adapted to secure an end essential to the maintenance of life upon the
earth. In short, men came to the conclusion that the order of Nature
was reasonable in the sense that every thing was adapted to some
good end.

Further consideration, however, has led men out of that conclusion
in two different ways : First, it was seen that the facts of the case

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 175

had been wrongly stated. Cases were found of wonderfully compli-
cated structures that served no purpose at all; like the teeth of that
whale of which you heard in Section D the other day, or of the Du-
gong, which has a horny palate covering them all up and used instead
of them ; like the eyes of the unborn mole, that are never used,
though perfect as those of a mouse until the skull-opening closes up,
cutting them off from the brain, when they dry up and become inca-
pable of use ; like the outsides of your own ears, which are absolutely
of no use to you. And when human contrivances were more advanced
it became clear that the natural adaptations were subject to criticism.
The eye, regarded as an optical instrument of human manufacture,
was thus described by Helmholtz the physiologist who learned phys-
ics for the sake of his physiology, and mathematics for the sake of hi"
physics, and is now in the first rank of all three. He said, " If an op-
tician sent me that as an instrument, I should send it back to him with
grave reproaches for the carelessness of his work, and demand the re-
turn of my money."

The extensions of the doctrine into physics were found to be still
more at fault. That remarkable property of pure water, which was
to have kept the sea from freezing, does not belong to salt-water, of
which the sea itself is composed. It was found, in fact, that the idea
of a reasonable adaptation of means to ends, useful as it had been in
its proper sphere, could yet not be called universal, or applied to the
order of Nature as a whole.

Secondly, this idea has given way because it has been superseded
by a higher and more general idea of what is reasonable, which has
the advantage of being applicable to a large portion of physical phe-
nomena besides. Both the adaptation and the non-adaptation which
occur in organic structures have been explained. The scientific thought
of Dr. Darwin, of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and of Mr. Wallace, has de-
scribed that hitherto unknown process of adaptation as consisting of
perfectly well-known and familiar processes. There are two kinds of
these: the direct processes, in which the physical changes required to
produce a structure are worked out by the very actions for which that
structure becomes adapted as the backbone or notocord has been
modified from generation to generation, by the bendings which it
has undergone ; and the indirect processes, included under the head
of Natural Selection the reproduction of children slightly different
from their parents, and the survival of those which are best fitted to
hold their own in the struggle for existence. Naturalists might give
you some idea of the rate at which we are getting explanations of the
evolution of all parts of animals and plants the growth of the skele-
ton, the nervous system and its mind, of leaf and flower. But what,
then, do w r e mean by explanation f

We were considering just now an explanation of a law of gases
the law according to which pressure increases in the same proportion

i 7 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in which volume diminishes. The explanation consisted in supposing
that a gas is made up of a vast number of minute particles always
flying about and striking against one another, and then showing that
the rate of impact of such a crowd of particles on the sides of the
vessel containing them would vary exactly as the pressure is found to
vary. Suppose the vessel to have parallel sides, and that there is only
one particle rushing backward and forward between them ; then it is
clear that if we bring the sides together to half the distance, the par-
ticle will hit each of them twice as often, or the pressure will be
doubled. Now, it turns out that this would be just as true for millions
of particles as for one, and when they are flying in all directions
instead of only in one direction and its opposite; provided only
that they interfere with each other's motion. Observe, now : it is a
perfectly well-known and familiar thing that a body should strike
against an opposing surface and bound off again ; and it is a mere
every-day occurrence that what has only half so far to go should be
back in half the time; but that pressure should be strictly propor-
tional to density is a comparatively strange, unfamiliar phenomenon.
The explanation describes the unknown and unfamiliar as being made
up of the known and the familiar ; and this, it seems to me, is the true
meaning of explanation. 1

Here is another instance : If small pieces of camphor are dropped
into water, they will begin to spin round and swim about in a most
marvellous way. Mr. Tomlinson gave, I believe, the explanation of
this. We must observe, to begin with, that every liquid has a skin
which holds it ; you can see that to be true in the case of a drop, which
looks as if it were held in a bag. But the tension of this skin is
greater in some liquids than in others ; and it is greater in camphor-
and-water than in pure water. When the camphor is dropped into
water, it begins to dissolve and get surrounded with camphor-and-
water instead of water. If the fragment of camphor were exactly
symmetrical, nothing more would happen; the tension would be
greater in its immediate neighborhood, but no motion would follow.
The camphor, however, is irregular in shape ; it dissolves more on one
side than the other ; and consequently gets pulled about, because the
tension of the skin is greater where the camphor is most dissolved.
Now, it is probable that this is not nearly so satisfactory an explana-
tion to you as it was to me when I was first told of it ; and for this
reason : By that time I was already perfectly familiar with the no-
tion of a skin upon the surface of liquids, and I had been taught by
means of it to work out problems in capillarity. The explanation was
therefore a description of the unknown phenomenon which I did not

1 This view differs from those of Mr. J. S. Mill and Mr. Herbert Spencer, in requiring
every explanation to contain an addition to our knowledge about the thing explained.
Both those writers regard subsumption under a general law as a species of explanation.
See also Ferrier's " Kemains," vol. ii., p. 436.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. \ 77

know how to deal with as made up of known phenomena which I did
know how to deal with. But to many of you possibly the liquid skin
may seem quite as strange and unaccountable as the motion of cam-
phor on water.

And this brings me to consider the source of the pleasure we de-
rive from an explanation. By known and familiar I mean that which
we know how to deal with, either by action in the ordinary sense, or
by active thought. When, therefore, that which we do not know how
to deal with is described as made up of things that we do know how
to deal with, we have that sense of increased power which is the basis
of all higher pleasures. Of course, we may afterward by association
come to take pleasure in explanation for its own sake. Are we, then,
to say that the observed order of events is reasonable, in the sense
that all of it admits of explanation ? That a process may be capable
of explanation, it must break up into simpler constituents which are
already familiar to us. Now, first, the process may itself be simple,
and not break up ; secondly, it may break up into elements which are
as unfamiliar and impracticable as the original process.

It is an explanation of the moon's motion to say that she is a fall-
ing body, only she is going so fast and is so far off that she falls quite
round to the other side of the earth, instead of hitting it ; and so goes
on forever. But it is no explanation to say that a body falls because
of gravitation. That means that the motion of the body may be re-
solved into a motion of every one of its particles toward every one of
the particles of the earth, with an acceleration inversely as the square
of the distance between them. But this attraction of two particles
must always, I think, be less familiar than the original falling body,
however early the children of the future begin to read their Newton.
Can the attraction itself be explained ? Le Sage said that there is an
everlasting hail of innumerable small ether-particles from all sides, and
that the two material particles shield each other from this, and so get
pushed together. This is an explanation ; it may or may not be a
true one. The attraction may be an ultimate simple fact ; or it may
be made up of simpler facts utterly unlike any thing that we know at
present ; and in either of these cases there is no explanation. We
have no right to conclude, then, that the order of events is always-
capable of being explained.

There is yet another way in which it is said that Nature is reason^
able ; namely, inasmuch as every effect has a cause. What do we
mean by this ?

In asking this question w r e have entered upon an appalling task.
The word represented by " cause " has sixty-four meanings in Plato,
and forty-eight in Aristotle. These were men who liked to know as
near as might be what they meant ; but how many meanings it has
had, in the writings of the myriads of people who have not tried to
know what they meant by it, will, I hope, never be counted. It would

VOL. II 12

178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not only be the height of presumption in me to attempt to fix the
meaning of a word which has been used by so grave authority in so
many and various senses ; but it would seem a thankless task to do
that once more which has been done so often at sundry times and in
divers manners before. And yet without this we cannot determine
what we mean by saying that the order of Nature is reasonable. I
shall evade the difficulty by telling you Mr. Grote's opinion. 1 You
come to a scarecrow and ask, " "What is the cause of this ? " You find
that a man made it to frighten the birds. You go away and say to
yourself: "Every thing resembles this scarecrow. Every thing has a
purpose." And from that day the word " cause " means for you what
Aristotle meant by " final cause." Or you go into a hair-dresser's
shop, and wonder what turns the wheel to which the rotatory brush is
attached. On investigating other parts of the premises, you find a
man working away at a handle. Then you go away and say : " Every
thing is like that wheel. If I investigated enough I should always
find a man at a handle." And the man at the handle, or whatever
corresponds to him, is henceforth known to you as " cause."

And so generally. When you have made out any sequence of
events to your entire satisfaction, so that you know all about it, the
laws involved being so familiar that you seem to see how the begin-
ning must have been followed by the end, then you apply that as a
simile to all other events whatever, and your idea of cause is deter-
mined by it. Only when a case arises, as it always must, to which
the simile will not apply, you do not confess to yourself that it was
only a simile and need not apply to every thing, but you say, " The
cause of that event is a mystery which must remain forever unknown
to me." On equally just grouuds, the nervous system of my umbrella
is a mystery which must remain forever unknown to me. My um-
brella has no nervous system ; and the event to which your simile did
not apply has no cause in your sense of the word. When we say, then,
that every effect has a cause, we mean that every event is connected
with something in a way that might make somebody call that the
cause of it. But I, at least, have never yet seen any single meaning
of the word that could be fairly applied to the tchole order of Nature.

From this remark I cannot even except an attempt recently made
by Mr. Bain to give the word a universal meaning, though I desire to
speak of that attempt with the greatest respect. Mr. Bain a wishes to
make the word " cause " hang on in some way to what we call the law
of energy ; but, though I speak with great diffidence, I do think a care-
ful consideration will show that the introduction of this word "cause"
can only bring confusion into a matter which is distinct and clear
enough to those who have taken the trouble to understand what
energy means. It would be impossible to explain that this evening ;
Ibut I may mention that "energy" is a technical term out of mathe

1 Flato, vol. ii. (Phscdon). s '' Inductive Logic," chap. iv.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. i 79

matieal physics, which requires of most men a good deal of careful
study to understand it accurately.

Let us pass on to consider, with all the reverence which it demands,
another opinion, held by great numbers of the philosophers who have
lived in the brightening ages of Europe : the opinion that, at the basis
of the natural order, there is something which we can know to be un-
reasonable, to evade the processes of human thought. The opinion is
set forth first by Kant, so far as I know, in the form of his famous
doctrine of the antinomies or contradictions, a later form \ of which I
will endeavor to explain to you. It is said, then, that space must
either be infinite or have a boundary. Now, you cannot conceive
infinite space ; and you cannot conceive that there should be any end
to it. Here, then, are two things, one of which must be true, while
each of them is inconceivable; so that our thoughts about space
are hedged in, as it were, by a contradiction. Again, it is said that
matter must either be infinitely divisible, or must consist of small
particles incapable of further division. Now, you cannot conceive a
piece of matter, divided into an infinite number of parts, while, on the
other hand, you cannot conceive a piece of matter, however small,
which absolutely cannot be divided into two pieces ; for, however great
the forces are which join the parts of it together, you can imagine
stronger forces able to tear it in pieces. Here, again, there are two
statements, one of which must be true, while each of them is sepa-
rately inconceivable ; so that our thoughts about matter also are
hedged in by a contradiction. There are several other cases of the
same thing, but I have selected these two as instructive examples.
And the conclusion to which philosophers were led by the contempla-
tion of them was, that on every side, when we approach the limits of
existence, a contradiction must stare us in the face. The doctrine has
been developed and extended by the great successors of Kant ; and
this unreasonable, or unknowable, which is also called the absolute
and the unconditioned, has been set forth in various ways as that
which we know to be the true basis of all things. As I said be-
fore, I approach this doctrine with all the reverence which should be
felt for that which has guided the thoughts of so many of the wisest
of mankind. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to show that, in these
cases of supposed contradiction, there is always something which we
do not know now, but of which we cannot be sure that we shall
be ignorant next year. The doctrine is an attempt to found a
positive statement upon this ignorance, which can hardly be re-
garded as justifiable. Spinoza said, " A free man thinks of nothing
so little as of death;" it seems to me we may parallel this max-
im in the case of thought, and say, "A wise man only remem-
bers his ignorance in order to destroy it." A boundary is that

1 That of Mr. Herbert Spencer, " First Principles." I believe Kant himself would
have admitted that the antinomies do not exist for the empiricist.

80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which divides two adjacent portions of space. The question, then,
" Has space (in general) a boundary ? " involves a contradiction in
terms, and is, therefore, unmeaning. But the question, "Does space
contain a finite number of cubic miles, or an infinite number ? " is a
perfectly intelligible and reasonable question which remains to be
answered by experiment. 1 The surface of the sea would still contain
a finite number of square miles, if there were no land to bound it.
Whether or no the space in which we live is of this nature remains to
be seen. If its extent is finite, we may quite possibly be able to assign
that extent next year ; if, on the other hand, it has no end, it is true that
the knowledge of that fact would be quite different from any knowledge
we at present possess, but we have no right to say that such knowledge
is impossible. Either the question will be settled once for all, or the
extent of space will be shown to be greater than a quantity which will
increase from year to year with the improvement of our sources- of
knowledge. Either alternative is perfectly conceivable, and there is
no contradiction. Observe especially that the supposed contradiction
arises from the assumption of theoretical exactness in the laws of
geometry. Now, the other case that I mentioned has a very similar
origin. The idea of a piece of matter the parts of which are held
together by forces, and are capable* of being torn asunder by greater
forces, is entirely derived from the large pieces of matter which we
have to deal with. "We do not know whether this idea applies in any
sense to the molecules of gases even ; still less can we apply it to the
atoms of which they are composed. The word " force " is used of two
phenomena : the pressure, which when two bodies are in contact con-
nects the motion of each with the position of the other ; and attraction
or repulsion ; that is to say, a change of velocity in one body depending
on the position of some other body which is not in contact with it. We
do not know that there is any thing corresponding to either of these
phenomena in the case of a molecule. A meaning can, however, be
given to the question of the divisibility of matter in this way. We may
ask if there is any piece of matter so small that its properties as matter
depend upon its remaining all in one piece. This question is reason-
able ; but we cannot answer it at present, though we are not at all sure
that we shall be equally ignorant next year. If there is no such piece
of matter, no such limit to the division which shall leave it matter, the
knowledge of that fact would be different from any of our present
knowledge ; but we have no right to say that it is impossible. If, on
the other hand, there is a limit, it is quite possible that we may have
measured it by the time the Association meets at Bradford. Again,
when we are told that the infinite extent of space, for example, is some-
thing that we cannot conceive at present, we may reply that this is
only natural, since our experience has never yet supplied us with the

1 The very important distinction between unboundedncss and infinite extent is made by
Riemann, Joe. cit.

AIMS, ETC., OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 181

means of conceiving such things. But, then, we cannot be sure that
the facts will not make us learn to conceive them ; in which case they
will cease to be inconceivable. In fact, the putting of limits to human
conception must always involve the assumption that our previous ex-
perience is universally valid in a theoretical sense ; an assumption
which we have already seen reason to reject. Now, you will see that
our consideration of this opinion has led us to the true sense of the as-
sertion that the order of Nature is reasonable. If you will allow me
to define a reasonable question as one which is asked in terms of ideas
justified by previous experience, without itself contradicting that ex-
perience, then we may say, as the result of our investigation, that to
every reasonable question there is an intelligible answer, which either
we or posterity may know.

We have, then, come somehow to the following conclusions : By
cientific thought we mean the application of past experience to new
circumstances, by means of an observed order of events. By saying
that this order of events is exact, we mean that it is exact enough to
correct experiments by, but we do not mean that it is theoretically or
absolutely exact, because we do not know. The process of inference
we found to be in itself an assumption of uniformity, and that, as the
known exactness of the uniformity became greater, the stringency of
the inference increased. By saying that the order of events is reasona-
ble, we do not mean that every thing has a purpose, or that every thing
can be explained, or that every thing has a cause ; for neither of these
is true. But we mean that to every reasonable question there is an in-
telligible answer, which either we or posterity may know by the exer-
cise of scientific thought.

For I especially wish you not to go away with the idea that the
exercise of scientific thought is properly confined to the subjects from
which my illustrations have been chiefly drawn to-night. When the
Roman jurists applied their experience of Roman citizens to dealings
between citizens and aliens, showing by the difference of their actions
that they regarded the cicumstances as essentially different, they laid
the foundations of that great structure which has guided the social
progress of Europe. That procedure was an instance of strictly
scientific thought. When a poet finds that he has to move a strange
new world which his predecessors have not moved ; when, nevertheless,
he catches fire from their flashes, arms from their armory, sustentation
from their footprints, the procedure by which he applies old experi-
ence to new circumstances is nothing greater or less than scientific
thought. When the moralist, studying the conditions of society and
the ideas of right and wrong: which have come down to us from a time
when war was the normal condition of man and success in war the
only chance of survival, evolves from them the conditions and ideas
which must accompany a time of peace, when the comradeship of
equals is the condition of national success the process by which he

i8a THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

does this is scientific thought and nothing else. Remember, then, that
it is the guide of action ; that the truth which it arrives at is not that
which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we
may act upon without fear ; and you cannot fail to see that scientific
thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but
human progress itself. And for this reason the question what its
characters are, of which I have so inadequately endeavored to give
you some glimpse, is the question of all questions for the human race.
Advance- sheets from Macmillan.

-+++-

INTRODUCTION TO "THE GREAT PROBLEM." 1

By HOWAED CROSBY, D.D., LL.D.,

CHANCELLOR OP THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK.

THE royal Psalmist said, " The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament showeth his handy work." The modern
Huxleys respond : " The heavens declare nothing at all, and the firma-
ment is ultimately but eternal protoplasm." In this happy and hope-
ful response the materialists are as much traitors to science as enemies
to religion. They ignore all the facts of mind. This whole depart-
ment of cognitions is neglected in arranging their premises. The very
first canon of science is thus violated, which demands that all facts be
collated as data. Then, a second fallacy of which they are guilty is,
leaving scientific proof and leaping, by the imagination, to the conclu-
sion that life is merely matter. They find an ultimate matter (only
ultimate, however, owing to the limited power of the microscope), and
straightway say, " This is life" although it is known to exist without
life, and has not a single characteristic of life in it. By such unscien-
tific methods these scientific men, whose names are now so famous,
have imposed upon the unlearned and credulous, and made men lose
their faith in the eternal truths of God. Darwinism is another form
of the same infidelity, working its evil by the same unscientific meth-
ods. Darwin leaps to his conclusions against every axiom of science,
and Darwinism is, instead of science, mere theory. Science and Re-
ligion are at one. They both come from God and lead to God. "The
heavens declare the glory of God," and " the statutes of the Lord are
right, rejoicing the heart," are accordant strings of the same harp.
We need sensible and learned men to come forward and show the

1 " The Great Problem : The Higher Ministry of Nature viewed in the Light of Modern
Science ; and as an Aid to Advanced Christian Philosophy." By John R. Leifchild, A.
M., Author of " Our Coal-Fields and our Coal- Pits," " Cornwall ; its Mines and Miners,"
etc., etc., with an Introduction by Howard Crosby, D. D., LL. D., Chancellor of the Uni-
versity of New York. 543 pages. G. P. Putnam & Sons.

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 183

world what fools these pseudo-scientists are, and thus break the spell,
which is as groundless as the Cock-lane Ghost, but which holds so
many all-agape at their fantastic tricks.

Mr. Leii'child's book is popular, and yet sound and thoughtful.
Its style is terse and clear. He represents the materialists and pan-
theists (the extremes are one) with fairness, and exposes the core of
their absurdities, showing the higher ministry of Nature in declaring
the glory of God, vindicating the equal authority of our intuitions
and our senses, and the separateness, yet intimate connection, of mind
and matter. It is a book that should find its way to every parlor,
where the materialistic poison has been scattered, to straighten and
strengthen the weak knees, and give color to the pallid cheek, letting
the light uj)on the frightful spectre, and showing it to be but a man
of straw. It is high time that this buffoonery in the name of science
were played out. Scientific and religious men must join to put out
the intruder, with a brand upon his back. To hold serious talk with
him is only to set him up in his assumption. Mr. Leifchild's book ex-
poses hirn to the world, pulls off the lion's skin, and turns the public
fear into laughter. Let the voice of Truth be heard through a thou-
sand such books, and the cant of materialism shrink into silence.

---*-

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART.

By COKNELIUS BLACK, M. D. Lond., M. K. C. P.

IF the question were asked, " Which side of the heart is the more
frequently affected by disease ? " the answer, in perhaps nine cases
out of ten, would be, the left. This answer would not, however, em-
brace the whole truth. It would be true of the aggregate of cases of
cardiac disease without reference to age ; but it would be untrue if the
occurrence of cardiac disease were referred to the later periods of life.
If a man lives to the age of forty years without having suffered from
cardiac disease, and, if after that period the heart becomes affected,
the mischief will, as a rule, be found to exist on the right side. If, on
the contrary, cardiac disease should occur before that age, the disease
will, almost invariably, be found to exist on the left side. Hence, it
follows that the right side of the heart is the seat of cardiac disease
occurring after middle age the left side of the heart the seat of car-
diac disease occurring before middle age.

As in time, so it is with respect to the nature of the diseases which
affect the right and left sides of the heart respectively. Those of the
right side are the result of tissue-degeneration, or of mere mechanical
influences ; those of the left side are almost invariably the product of

i8 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

inflammation. The former are diseases which tend to widen the val-
vular apertures, and to dilate the right side of the heart ; the latter
are diseases which tend to contract the valvular apertures, and to in-
crease the size and bulk of the left side of the heart.

Disease of the right side of the heart is essentially passive and
secondary in its character ; disease of the left side of the heart is es-
sentially active and primary in its character. I speak now of disease
when it occurs, not when it has existed for some time. Active inflam-
mation of the left chambers of the heart arises ; it progresses to a cer-
tain extent ; treatment subdues it ; the patient recovers ; but a certain
amount of damage is left behind. Years pass on ; the patient during
this time appears none the worse for his previous illness ; but at length
pulmonary symptoms suddenly manifest themselves, and then it is that
the physician discovers that the left side of the heart is permanently
damaged, and that the present condition of the lungs is traceable to
this cause.

In this instance the mischief in the heart inducing: this condition of
the lungs is not, strictly speaking, active. The first step of the cardiac
disease was active ; but the second step was chronic. Bit by bit in-
crement by increment after the patient's apparent recovery from the
primary attack, is the valvular lesion left by such attack added to, not
perhaps constantly, but intermittingly, until at length the aggregate
increments of addition so hamper, oppress, obstruct, and distort the
mitral, or the mitral and aortic valves, that secondary consequences
begin to follow.

Why are the affections of the two sides of the heart essentially dif-
ferent in their nature ? Why do those of the left side of the heart
point to an inflammatory origin ; those of the right side of the heart,
with but few exceptions, to a non-inflammatory origin ? There must
be some cause for this difference. What is it ? The reason is found
in the difference which exists between the constitution of the blood
which reaches the left side of the heart from the lungs, and that which
reaches the right side of the heart from the general system. The
blood reaching the left side of the heart from the lungs has been
replenished with all the elements necessary for the growth of the tis-
sues ; it has been purified, renovated, and vivified by its oxygenation
in the lungs, and it is thus rendered in the highest degree stimulating
to the left heart. The blood reaching the right side of the heart from
the general system has been deprived, by the requirements of growth,
of the chief portion of its nutrient materials ; it has been fouled by the
debris of tissue-waste ; it has been further poisoned by its impregna-
tion with carbonic-acid gas : it is therefore a depressant, rather than a
healthy excitant, to the right heart. True, it brings with it to the
chambers of the right heart the products of the digestion of food ; but
what are they, either as nutrients or excitants, when they reach that
point ? They are no more than inert, unusable, passive elements. Not

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 185

until they have passed to the lungs, and have there received the vivi-
fying influence of oxygen, can they enter into the real composition of
the blood, and thus become active, exciting, disposable constituents
of it.

" Like begets like " in very many instances. This axiom is true in
relation to diseases of the heart. The rich, stimulating blood of the
left ventricle urges, feeds, and actively supports any disease which
may arise at that point ; while the poor, impoverished, fouled, tainted,
and attenuated blood which flows through the cavities of the right
heart favors disease of a correspondingly low and degenerate char-
acter.

So long as the body is rapidly built up and as rapidly pulled down,
disease of the left heart maintains an active character ; but when the
balance between nutrition and waste is destroyed when nutrition be-
comes less active, while waste remains the same, or is more active than
before disease of the left heart loses more and more of its active char-
acter, and approximates more and more in its nature to disease of the
right heart. In many this change begins at the age of forty ; in others,
not until five or ten years after that period. Thenceforward the ten-
dency to inflammatory disease of the left heart declines the tendency
to degeneration increases. "With the gradual declination of the one
tendency and the gradual increase of the other, a period is at length
reached when active inflammatory disease ceases, as a rule, to affect
the left heart. At this juncture the left and right sides of the heart,
hitherto dissimilar in their tendencies, are in this respect almost as
one. The active tendency of early life has given place to the passive
tendency of advancing years inflammation to degeneration.

Acute rheumatism a fruitful cause of cardiac disease in the earlier
periods of life is seldom seen beyond the age of fifty. I have, how-
ever, attended a case of acute articular rheumatism at the age of sev-
enty-five ; but such an instance was an exception to the rule. After
fifty, acute rheumatism gives place to a form of rheumatism which
slowly produces rigidity of the coats of the blood-vessels, hardens and
contracts the tendons, thickens and renders stiff and rigid the liga-
ments of the joints, hardens and lessens the articular cartilages.

Thus, then, according to a law of Nature, the ultima linea of life
ends in degeneration.

Apart from the influence of this law, can any accidental, casual, or
avoidable circumstance 'favor this immutable tendency to degeneration,
speaking more particularly in reference to the heart ? Yes ; many cir-
cumstances are daily, hourly, momentarily doing this. Thousands
annually perish from heart-disease, whose lives might and would have
been prolonged had but proper attention been given to the simple
laws of Nature. These laws demand attention to the three great vital
functions the action of the brain and nervous system, respiration, and
circulation.

:86 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE' MONTELY.

None of these functions must be overworked, as none of them must
fall short of their proper duty. Healthy, regular, daily action is their
law of life. If the brain and nervous system are overworked, vitality
is lowered, the resisting power of the body is diminished, disease is
easily produced. If *he brain and nervous system are underworked,
the generation of nervous power is low and deficient, the vitality of
the tissues becomes low in proportion, and disease is easily excited.
Overwork exhausts, ruins, kills the body, just as the continued gen-
eration of the galvanic current exhausts the acid and wears out the
zinc plate. The weakest point of the body has to bear the result of
this violation of Nature's laws. If the heart is that point, disease falls
upon it, and death before the legitimate term of man's existence is the
consequence.

To keep the body in perfect health it must be duly oxygenated.
There must be free and ample interchange between the blood in the
lungs and the air entering the pulmonary cells. The life-stream must
be purified by its elimination of carbonic acid ; it must be vivified by
the absorption of oxygen. The fulfilment of these conditions demands
a full, free, and constant admission of pure air into the lungs. This full,
free, and constant admission of pure air cannot be obtained in badly-
ventilated houses, crowded buildings, schools as at present constructed,
theatres, manufactories, pits, underground railways, and the like.

When the body has reached that age at which natural decay or
degeneration has begun, the absence of pure air hastens and increases
the degenerative tendency. Where the heart is more prone than other
organs to disease, the want of pure air falls with powerful effect upon
the tissues of the right heart. Their nutrition is defective by reason
of the impurity of the blood with which they are fed, their vital force
is lowered, their muscular fibre loses its tonicity, degeneration and de-
bility take the place of active nutrition and power. If in this condi-
tion any stress is thrown upon the heart by hurried walking, by lifting,
climbing, violent declamation, passional expression, singing, laughing,
or by any unusual exercise of the voice, the tricuspid valve gives way,
it henceforth fails to close its aperture, and the results of a back-flood-
ing of blood upon the venous system of the body begin to follow. If
none of these exciting causes occur, the continued breathing of impure
air is followed by constantly-progressing degeneration of the tissues
of the valves and muscular structure of the right heart ; they become
soft and feeble, their atoms shrink ; the segments of the> tricuspid are
at length unable to meet in their attempt to close their aperture; a
small chink or slit is left between them ; through this the blood finds
its way into the auricle above at every contraction of the heart ; and
soon regurgitation is followed by the secondary consequences produced
in the general system congestion of the liver, stomach, spleen, kid-
neys, bowels by haemorrhoids, general dropsy, and occasionally by
cerebral mischief.

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 187

I hold that the breathing of impure air is a fruitful source of disease
of the right heart occurring after middle age. How many people igno-
rantly favor its occurrence by confining themselves to closely-shut,
non-ventilated, hot, stifling rooms, in which the carbonic acid has ac-
cumulated to 2 or 3 per cent, of the air they respire 1 How many are
thus destroyed by being compelled, through the exigencies of life, to
pass the greater part of their time in pits and manufactories where
ventilation is defective, ok in which the air respired is poisoned by nox-
ious fumes and offensive emanations from the materials undergoing the
process of manufacture ! How many are falling victims to the poison-
ous influence upon the heart of the atmosphere of an underground rail-
way ! What do these facts suggest ? How are these evil results to
be prevented ? The simple answer is Let the rooms in which you
live be effectually ventilated by an incoming current of air filtered
from all adventitious impurities, and so divided that no draught shall
be felt ; and by an outgoing current which shall remove from the
apartments the carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, sulphurous-acid gas, sul-
phuretted hydrogen, and other noxious compounds, as rapidly as they
are generated. Apply the same principle to public buildings, theatres,
schools, manufactories, pits, and to all places in which people are ac-
customed to congregate.

As to underground railways, the best plan is to avoid them.
True, the time passed in their polluted atmosphere is usually very
short ; but it is, nevertheless, sufficiently long to paralyze occasionally
the heart's action, and always, by its pollution of the blood and by its
direct effect upon the nervous system, to favor degeneration of the
structures of the heart.

It often occurs to a medical man to visit a patient for the first time,
and to find him suffering from a dilated right heart. He may for some
short time have been sensible of a change in his breathing on walking
rather quickly, or in mounting the stairs, or he may never have felt, or
at least recognized, any such sensations. His attention was first ar-
rested by observing that his feet and ankles were swollen, especially
at night on going to bed. This sign it is which gives him the first
alarm, and which causes him to seek the aid of his physician. An ex-
amination of his case detects a dilated right heart, with incompetency
of the tricuspid valve. How has this condition of the heart been
brought about ? There is no history of previous cardiac disease ;
there has been no illness ushering in the present condition of things ;
there has never been, nor is there now, any affection of the lungs, and
yet the right heart has suffered a lesion fatal to life ! The answer is,
that every such case has passed the age of forty, that the tissues of the
right heart have entered upon the period of degeneration, and that
this degeneration has, with very few exceptions, been hastened by the
breathing of an impure air, either during the pursuit of the ordinary
occupations of life, or in the patient's own dwelling.

188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

When the degeneration of the right heart has progressed to a cer-
tain extent, incompetency of the tricuspid valve follows either with or
without the aid of an exciting cause. Hence it is easy to understand
why dilatation of the right heart and tricuspid incompetency are often
found to exist apart from any previous history of cardiac disease.

The third great vital function which influences the degenerative
tendency of the heart is that of the circulation of the blood. To pre-
serve the health of the tissues, the blood mtist not only be pure and
rich in the materials of growth, but it must flow with a certain speed
through all the blood-vessels. If the speed with which the blood
moves is on the side of either plus or minus of the standard of health,
disease will shortly arise. If it is on the side of plus, active disease
of the heart, where that organ is the one to suffer, will follow. If on
the side of minus, tissue degeneration will ensue. Active disease will
be the consequence before middle age ; degeneration after that period.

These facts teach that all violent and long-continued efforts of the
body should be avoided. They hurry the heart's action to an inordi-
nate degree, they cause it to throw the blood with great force into the
extreme vessels, and, as there is almost always one organ of the body
weaker than the others, the vessels of this organ become distended,
and, remaining distended, the organ itself becomes diseased. Run-
ning, rowing, lifting, jumping, wrestling, severe horse-exercise, cricket,
football, are fruitful causes of heart-disease. Those which require the
breath to be suspended during their accomplishment are more fruitful
causes in this respect than those which require no such suspension of
the breathing. Rowing, lifting heavy weights, wrestling, and jump-
ing, do this ; and, of these, rowing is the most powerful for evil. At
every effort made with the hands and feet, the muscles are strained to
their utmost ; the chest is violently fixed ; no air is admitted into the
lungs ; blood is thrown by the goaded heart with great force into the
pulmonary vessels ; they become distended ; they at length cannot
find space for more blood ; the onward current is now driven back
upon the right heart ; its cavities and the blood-vessels of its walls
become in like manner distended ; the foundation of disease is laid.
Hypertrophy, haemoptysis, inflammatory affections of the heart and
lungs, are the consequences in the young ; valvular incompetency, rup-
ture of the valves or of the muscular fibres of the heart, pulmonary
apoplexy, and cerebral haemorrhage, are too frequently the immediate
consequences in those of more mature years.

If the flow of blood is minus the standard of health, the heart's
walls are imperfectly nourished, by reason of a deficient supply of food
within a given time ; the blood itself, receiving less aeration, is, in con-
sequence, more impure ; degeneration of the heart's walls is thus in-
duced, if it does not already exist hastened, if it is present.

I propose now to consider the influence of an increasng quantity of

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 189

carbonic acid in the air respired upon the contractility of the muscular
fibres of the heart.

I take for my example the newly-hatched trout. During the win-
ters of 1869-'70 and 1870-'71, I hatched some thousands of this fish,
many of which I daily submitted to microscopical examination. The
result of my investigations, in reference to the action of the "heart and
to the influence upon it of a decreasing quantity of oxygen and an in-
creasing quantity of carbonic acid in the water in which the fish was
confined, shows

That, on placing the fish in a glass trough containing a quantity of
water, the heart is seen, under the microscope, to be affected in the
following manner:

In the first few moments of examination the venous blood, collected
by the veins from the head, back, and yelk-bag (the first two of which
unite to form a bulbous vessel into which the third opens), is seen to
be projected with considerable force and rapidity into the upper (au-
ricle) of the two cavities of which the heart is composed, and thence
as instantaneously into the lower (ventricle) cavity, which contracts
with equal rapidity, and forces the blood into the branchial artery,
which conveys it to the gills. The projection of the blood into the
auricle, its passage into the ventricle, and its expulsion therefrom, are
but the work of an instant. As the blood enters the auricle, both it
and the ventricle seem to anticipate the charge of blood ; but espe-
cially is this the case with the ventricle. Before the blood well touches
the valve which guards the entrance from auricle to ventricle, the lat-
ter is observed to shorten its longitudinal diameter, to visibly meet,
as it were, the coming charge of blood from the auricle, and to force
it instantly into the branchial artery. There is no delay whatever of
the blood in the auricle or ventricle. It is shot in a straight line from
the vena cava through the auricle and the auriculo- ventricular valve,
caught by the contracting ventricle, and deflected and forced, without
a moment's delay, into the branchial artery.

From these observations it was evident that the contraction of the
heart was not excited by the distention of its cavities, but that it was
induced by the mere impingement of the blood upon its lining mem-
brane. In contracting, the ventricle was seen to roll about one-third
upon its axis, by which a portion of that part of it which was pre-
viously out of sight was brought into view. As soon as it had deliv-
ered its blood into the branchial artery, it relaxed, and increased again
its longitudinal diameter, recoiling from systole with an energy and a
rapidity equal to those of its contraction.

In three or four minutes the heart is observed to contract both less
quickly and less energetically. A very short time after this the blood
can be seen gently pouring into the auricle, and thence into the ven-
tricle, which latter now allows itself to be about one-fourth filled be-
fore it contracts. It now expels its blood, and again dilates ; but its

1 9 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dilatation, like its contraction, is not so instantaneous as it was when
first observed under the miscroscope. In a short time longer the sen-
sibility of the heart is greatly diminished, for the blood is seen to be
accumulating in both the auricle and ventricle, but especially in the
former, from both of which cavities it is now only partly expelled by
the contraction of the heart.

At length, just before death, the blood is seen to flow from tue
auricle into the ventricle, thence into the branchial artery and along
it, the heart being passive during this time, and only now and then
at long intervals manifesting a very slight and partial contraction.
During the whole of this time the blood is coagulating more and more
in the auricle and ventricle, but especially in the former ; and, when
at length the heart has ceased to beat, the auricle and the vena cava
opening into it are fully distended, while the ventricle is only partly
distended with black-red blood. In the last moments of life, after the
heart has ceased to beat, the branchial artery is seen to be pushing
forward its slender current of blood, and to become at length quite
empty and transparent.

Here, then, as the oxygen dissolved in the water in which the fish
is confined becomes exhausted, and as the carbonic acid increases, the
sensibility and contractility of the heart are diminished, and at length
entirely destroyed. The negation of oxygen, and the increase of car-
bonic acid, have culminated in the death of the fish.

Precisely the same effect is produced upon the human heart by an
accumulation of carbonic acid in the air respired.

In the ordinary condition of the atmosphere, in which carbonic
acid does not exceed one part in a thousand parts of that medium, its
effects upon the heart are inappreciable. When, however, the car-
bonic acid has accumulated to the extent of 1 per cent, of the ah
respired, it begins to produce a slight feeling of faintness, and some
degree of uneasiness across the brow. At 2 per cent, the heart's ac-
tion is quickened, the sense of faintness is greater, there is slight gid-
diness, with heaviness and constriction of the head, together with
nausea. At 3 per cent, all these symptoms are increased. There are
vertigo, fluttering of the heart, nausea and sickness, followed by an
overwhelming sense of muscular prostration. At this moment the
contractions of the heart become very feeble, the skin relaxes, and is
bedewed with a cool, clammy perspiration. These symptoms deepen
with the increasing quantity of carbonic acid in the air respired until
the utmost limit of toleration is reached, beyend which life can no
longer be maintained. At this stage lethargy supervenes ; and, at the
moment of its occurrence, the heart begins to beat less frequently
and much less powerfully than before. This condition is the parallel
of that observed in the young trout, when the blood begins to accu-
mulate and to coagulate in the auricle and ventricle, and when the
heart's sensibility and contractility are reduced in the greatest degree.

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 191

From these effects it is certain tbat confinement to an atmosphere
impregnated with carbonic acid, even to the extent of one per cent,
only, quickly deranges the function of the heart, and ultimately dete-
riorates the tissues themselves of that organ.

The greater the percentage of carbonic acid in the air respired,
the more quickly and the more profoundly are these effects produced.
The constant breathing of air containing one per cent, only of car-
bonic acid proves fatal to life ; but, if it is respired for a short time
only, functional disturbance alone is then and there produced. It is,
however, certain that in this functional disturbance lie the germs of
organic mischief, and that frequent repetition of the cause will un-
doubtedly end in organic disease. Hence the impure atmosphere of the
bedrooms of the poor, and, indeed, of many of the middle class, proves
a sharp spur to the degenerative tendency manifested by the heart, and
especially by the right side of the heart, after the age of forty. Such
bedrooms are generally small in their superficial area, low-pitched,
and often lighted by a diminutive window, which at night is kept
constantly closed; and having a door which opens to the interior of
the house, but which is also closed during the occupation of the rooms.
Nay, to prevent the slightest admission of fresh air, the crevices of
both window and door are most carefully stopped ; and, to render the
matter still worse, a fire is not unfrequently kept burning during the
winter nights.

What must be the effect produced upon the air of such rooms un-
der the conditions named ? I take, for example, an average-sized bed-
room in the cottages of the poor say, a room twelve feet long, ten
feet wide, and eight feet high. This gives a cubical space of 960 feet,
which is not more than half the cubical space allowed each patient in
our best-arranged hospitals. In this room, with its diminutive win-
dow and door constantly closed, three, four, and frequently a greater
number of persons pass the night of eight or ten hours' duration.
No provision has been made for the admission of fresh air none for
the escape of the carbonic acid exhaled during respiration. What lit-
tle provision did exist in the crevices formed by the badly-fitting door
and window has been carefully abrogated by sand-bags, rolls of rags,
and stuffing of every description. Thus the air of the room becomes
poisoned with carbonic acid, and in this condition it is breathed and
rebreathed, to the manifest injury of the heart.

A simple calculation will enable us, if not to determine with ex-
actitude, at least to approximate to the amount of carbonic acid ex-
haled by each sleeper, and consequently to the degree of vitiation
which the air of the apartment undergoes. I fix the number of respi-
rations at its minimum 14 per minute ; the quantity of air exhaled at
each expiration at 20 cubic inches ; the quantity of carbonic acid con-
tained in the expired air at 4 per cent. ; and the duration of the night
at 8 hours. Hence, 14x20x8x60=134,400 cubic inches, or 77.77

i 9 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cubic feet, of air expired by each sleeper during the night of eight
hours. This expired air contains 4 per cent, of carbonic acid.
..100: 7 7. 7 7 :: 4 = 3.11 cubic feet of carbonic acid exhaled by each sleeper
during the night. Suppose the number of sleepers occupying the bed-
room to be four, this will give 3.11 x 4 = 12.44 cubic feet as the quan-
tity of carbonic acid which is exhaled by the four sleepers during the
eight hours of night. The room itself contains 960 cubic feet of air,
and through this 12.44 cubic feet of carbonic acid would have been
diffused by the termination of the night. It therefore follows that, if
no fresh air entered the room, and if in consequence the carbonic acid
had no means of escape, the air of the apartment would, at the end of
the eight hours of night, contain 1.29 per cent, of this gas: a quantity
sufficient to produce serious results.

This statement, however, does not represent all the facts of the
case. It must be remembered that the oxygen contained in the air of
the room would be constantly undergoing reduction by respiration
during the night. If the quantity thus consumed were determined
from the quantity of carbonic acid exhaled, allowing for the fact that
15 per cent, more oxygen is taken into the blood than is contained in
the carbonic acid of the air expired, it will be found that from one-
third to one-half of the oxygen originally contained in the air of tbe
room would have been consumed by the end of the night. This re-
duction in the quantity of oxygen, and the great increase of carbonic
acid, would affect the body in two ways : firstly, by a deficiency of
oxygen ; and, secondly, by an excess of carbonic acid, in the air re-
spired. Hence the reduction of the one and the increase of the other
would render the air far more injurious than if only one of these
changes in its constitution had taken place.

The actual result is not, however, in strict accordance with this
calculation, because fresh air, although in limited quantity, does find
its way into the room, and carbonic acid does, to a limited extent, find
its way out. These, therefore, would modify the constitution of the
air of the room at the close of night ; but they would still leave it
with an excess of carbonic acid injurious to life.

It is found that when air moderately impregnated with carbonic
acid is inspired it greatly impedes the exhalation of more from the
lungs ; and that the greatest quantity of carbonic acid which exists in
prebreathed air never exceeds 10 per cent. It is much to be feared
that to this degree of vitiation the air of the bedrooms of the poor
and of others not unfrequently rises by the too prevalent system of
excluding fresh air, and by the frequent absence of provision for the
escape of that which has already passed through the lungs.

Can it then be a matter of surprise that death from diseased heart
should so often occur during the night ?

In thousands of instances of cardiac disease life is thus sacrificed,
where, had but proper ventilation of the bedrooms been observed, the

FOUL AIR AND DISEASE OF THE HEART. 193

subjects of such disease might, despite the cardiac mischief, have con-
tinued to live for an indefinite time.

It has frequently been my duty, during a practice of nearly thirty
years in the midst of a large community prone by the habits and par-
ticular avocations of the people to heart-disease, to investigate cases
of " found dead " in bed, and I have often been compelled to refer the
immediate cause of death to the effect of carbonic acid liberated by
respiration and confined to the apartment, in destroying the sensibil-
ity and contractility of the heart, rather than to the direct influence
of the diseased heart itself.

I remember that on one occasion I was summoned to a case which
had occurred in a bedroom fifteen feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight
feet high. In this room, with the door and window closed, no fewer
than twenty persons slept night after night ! Can any one doubt that
the air of such a room would be charged to excess with carbonic acid
exhaled by respiration? Those who perished in this manner were be-
yond the age of forty ; and, in every instance examined, the right side
of the heart was either primarily affected by tissue-degeneration, or
by disease consecutive to mischief in the left side of the heart and
lungs.

Often indeed in the dwellings of the middle and higher classes of
society the provisions for ventilating both their bedrooms and their
day-rooms are miserably inadequate to preserve health. The conse-
quence is, that cai'diac disease is promoted to an inconceivable extent.
There is no other disease in ichich the demand for cold, fresh air is so
urgently pressed by the patient as in cardiac disease. There is none in
which a constant supply of pure air is more needed none in which it
is more grateful to the patient, or in which it has a more immediately
beneficial effect. At all times and seasons in the depth of winter by
day and by night a patient suffering from a paroxysm of cardiac
asthma will hurry to the open door or window, and there, with his
body hanging half out, will remain, with scarcely any vestments upon
him, breathing the cold air until the paroxysm has ceased. Ought not
this urgent, this powerful supplication of Nature to teach us the impor-
tance of ventilation, and of a full supply of fresh air in the treatment
of heart-disease?

I hesitate not to say that free ventilation the free admission of
pure air into the apartment by day and by night is one of the most
important remedial measures which can be adopted in the treatment of
this disease.

Where this means is defective, but where, nevertheless, the vitia-
tion of the air of the bedroom does not exceed 1 per cent, of carbonic
acid, a sensible effect is produced upon those who have slept within its
influence. They complain, on leaving their bed, of weakness ; their
limbs tremble ; they feel somewhat giddy, and their head feels heavy,
or it aches. The least effort disturbs the heart's action, which is some-

TOL. II. 13

i 9 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

what quick and feeble ; their countenance is pale ; the lips are not un-
frequently somewhat "blue ; and the tongue is covered with a thin,
whitish, and somewhat slimy fur. The appetite is in abeyance ; there
is a feeling of nausea ; and the first evacuation is generally dark in
color.

What is the pathological condition of such patients at this mo-
ment? Simply this: The blood contains an excess of carbonic acid,
which, circulating with the blood through every organ, disturbs the
natural action of every organ, blunting its sensibility, vitiating its par-
ticular function, and interfering with those molecular changes which
constitute healthy nutrition.

A person thus affected does not usually die. The body, removed
to a pure atmosphere, begins at once to excrete the carbonic acid by
the lungs, the liver, the skin, the kidneys, and the bowels, and in the
course of a few. hours the more visible manifestations of its baneful
effects have passed away. It, however, often happens that a sense of
weariness and muscular debility is felt for days afterward. Night,
too, frequently places such subjects in the same condition as before.
The same bedroom is occupied ; the same inadequate means of ventila-
tion continue ; the same accumulation of carbonic acid takes place ;
and the same effects upon the bodily organs are repeated. Blood
charged with an excess of carbonic acid again pervades every tissue of
the heart, diminishing its vitality, lowering its sensibility, and assimi-
lating its nutrition to that of the reptilian heart. But the low char-
acter of the nutrition of the reptilian heart does not accord with the
comparatively quick circulation, rapid nutrition, vital power, and
energy of action required by the human heart. The one cannot be sub-
stituted for the other. In man the change results in disease where
disease does not exist aggravates disease where it is already present.
Lancet.

*

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING.

By J. STAEL PATTERSON, Esq.

FRUIT has become a necessary of life a great variety of fruit
indeed, and a great deal of it ; and this will become more and
more the case with the increase of intelligence and thrift. The great
abundance of most kinds of fruit for the last two or three years may
cause us to feel a security, which is not well grounded, with regard to
the conditions of climate necessary to the unfailing production of fruit.
Only within a few years past have there been seasons w T hen the fruit-
crop was very light, and not at all adequate to the demand. One of
the causes of this is the capriciousness of the seasons, and this capri

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING. 195

1

ciousness, I believe, is becoming constantly greater as the country-
grows older.

An inquiry, then, of much scientific interest, and of great material
importance, has reference to what may be the cause of this increasing
uncertainty of the fruit crop. In the early settlement of the country,
it was easy to grow peaches, even in localities where growing peaches
now seldom gladden the eye. In Ohio between the parallels of 40 and
41, for example, peach-buds were seldom injured by winter or spring
frosts, and the crop was abundant almost every year when the country
was " new." For the last twenty-five years peaches miss oftener than
they hit, and in many parts this has told so fearfully against the enter-
prise of production that scarcely a peach-tree is now to be seen.

The clearing of the country had made this change. The continued
clearing of the country will increase the mischief still more. The grow-
ing of peaches and of most other fruits will be driven, as indeed it
already has been, to special localities and special soils. It is now for
such localities to look out m time and preserve as far as possible the
favorable conditions they now have, and if possible to increase them.

More especial reference is here had to that part of our country
which lies north of the fortieth parallel, where most of the fruit-locali-
ties are to be found in the vicinity of considerable bodies of water.

The water absorbs heat during the summer, which it slowly gives
off on the approach of cold weather, warming the atmosphere in its
vicinity, and preventing the occurrence of early frosts in the fall along
the shore-border from five to ten miles wide. This gives the wood
and buds a chance to mature thoroughly, so that they will endure a
harder freeze in the winter than wood and buds which were sudden-
ly stopped in the course of maturing by an early frost in the fall.
In the spring the waters warm more slowly than the land, and the
atmosphere thus chilled along this same shore-belt keeps back vege-
tation and fruit-buds so as greatly to lessen the danger from late
frosts ; and what may seem to be a contradiction, but is nevertheless
true, spring frosts are usually lighter within than they are outside this
shore-belt.

These several advantages from the proximity of a considerable
body of water are well understood. There is another, however, that
may be of some value. During the heated term of summer there is
always a cool breeze from the water which modifies the temperature of
the hottest part of the day along this otherwise favored border of shore-
land, and may act beneficially in various w T ays : first, by promoting
a more active circulation of air among the leaves and young branches,
thereby favoring the healthy action of the organic surfaces hence,
greater immunity from blight and mildew in this region ; secondly, by
affording protection against the injuiy to which growing fruit is liable
from excessive heat ; thirdly, by maintaining a greater uniformity of
heat between night and day. The experiments of Koppen have shown

19.6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that change of temperature alone is deleterious to vegetable growth ;
and we may, perhaps, justly infer that uniformity of temperature,
when it lies at or near that degree which is most favorable to healthy
vegetable activity, is a desirable point in a fruit-growing climate for
the even, early, and better maturing of fruit. 1

The influence of forests on rainfall is still an unsettled question.
It is a very general impression that forests, in some way, promote the
fall of rain when it would not occur if the same region was bare of
trees. A great array of authorities may be quoted in favor of this
view. It is believed that Spain, parts of France, Switzerland, and the
Tyrol, Northern Africa, Persia and Palestine, Egypt and India, the
islands Malta and Mauritius, the Cape Verd Islands, and most of the
West Indies, have either been turned into deserts or greatly injured
by the destruction of their forests, and the blight and droughts which
have followed. It is alleged, too, that the planting of forests has in
some instances, as in Scotland, Egypt, and St. Helena, caused a more
abundant rainfall. But these alleged results, though supported by
great names in science, are disputed. Forests may affect rainfall for
any thing positively known, but the evidence that they do so is not
such as science can accept." But, however this may be, they have
doubtless much to do with the benefit which vegetation receives from
the rain that does fall.

In a country quite destitute of timber the surface would dry off
much more quickly, in consequence of the free sweep afforded to the
winds. The water from rains would also pass over the surface more
freely into the brooks, and be thus lost to vegetation. The spongy
surface of the forest absorbs a larger proportion of rain than the open
fields, and thus retains it in the soil as a source from which the neigh-

1 Both De Vries and Sachs ascertained that every kind of plant has its special degree
of temperature at which it makes most growth in a given time ; but, while Koppen rec-
ognized this, his investigations have made an addition to our knowledge of the subject,
hi3 point being that the plant grows more when kgpt at a uniform temperature than if it
had varied between extremes of which this temperature is the mean, thus showing that
variation of temperature acts as a check on growth.

According to Karsten, great and sudden changes injure the health and hardiness of
plants; while De Vries comes to a directly opposite conclusion. This, however, does
not affect Koppen's result, which has reference to rapidity of growth. Moreover, even if
great daily variation of temperature should not affect the health of plants, it might,
nevertheless, be not wholly harmless to the tenderer fruits.

The preceding paragraphs have been suggested by the kinship between forests and
lakes in their influence on climate and fruit-growing.

8 Since writing the above, we have happened to fall upon several statements in favor
of the influence of forests on rainfall, some of them from respectable scientific sources,
Proctor, Bryant, Colver, etc. I learn, however, that Prof. Henry, of the Smithsonian
Institution, has recently reported that observations for the last twenty years in this coun-
try show no appreciable influence of forests on the amount of rainfall. This should
carry much more weight with it than the mere fashion of opinion about forests causing
rain.

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING. xg7

boring streams receive a continual supply, while its evaporation from
the surface and its transpiration through the leaves of the trees afford
moisture to the atmosphere.

The moisture thus imparted to the atmosphere mitigates the sever-
ity of a drought in various ways: First, by lessening evaporation
from the surface, as this is accelerated by a dry atmosphere, and re-
tarded by a moist one ; secondly, by affording to the soil a greater pro-
portion of moisture for condensation, when the surface cools at night.
Thirdly, by affording moisture for direct absorption by the leaves.
This is a disputed point among men of science ; but the late researches
of Cailletet promise a reconciliation of the conflicting views, as usual,
by showing that both were wrong and both right. He found that,
when a plant was abundantly supplied with moisture in the soil, the
leaves never absorb ; but that they do absorb whenever the soil is de-
ficient in moisture, and the leaves begin to droop.

Hence, there might be evidence of drought in a country without
forests, while there were no such evidences in a country sufficiently
guarded by forests, though the amount of rain had been the same in
both.

These considerations are not altogether without value in regard to
fruit-growing. It is true that grapes do best in rather a dry climate ;
but most kinds of fruit require considerable moisture, especially at
the time of transplanting, and also when the fruit is maturing. In af-
fording some mitigation of the extreme effects of dry weather, forests
may be regarded as having a beneficial influence on the growing of
most fruits.

Of far greater concern to the fruit-interests of any locality is the
influence of woodland on temperature. On this subject there is quite
a general unanimity of opinion. Certain forms of the evidence are so
familiar that the conviction produced is general. Every one, who has
travelled through woodlands and open fields during cold weather, has
readily perceived how much warmer was the atmosphere of the wood
than that of the field. It is said that engineers on our railroads find
that it requires less fuel to keep up steam in passing through a long
stretch of woodland (Marsh). But the warming influence of the
forest has been subjected to more rigid tests than these. Boussin-
gault proved that, within several parallels of the equator on either
side, the temperature of cleared land is about two degrees higher than
that which is covered with forest. But we are more directly con-
cerned with results in our temperate climate.

The researches of Becquerel, Krutsch, and Berger, had appeared to
prove, first, that a wooded region would have a cooler summer and a
warmer winter than a region almost destitute of woods ; and, secondly,
that during the daytime the temperature of the atmosphere in the for-
est would always be lower, and during the night always higher, than
in the open field ; the difference between the diurnal maximum and

198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

minimum of the forest being less than that of the field ; in other words,
the diurnal temperature is more uniform.

But this is a matter involving sueh complicated and varying con-
ditions, that absolute propositions are. open to question, however true
they may be with proper qualifications. Rivoli has very recently
done much to make our knowledge of this subject definite. His ob-
servations were carefully made, under circumstances which eliminated,
as much as possible, all disturbing conditions ; there being no body
of water near, the country level, and the wind having a fair sweep in
all directions. We will state the results of his investigations as briefly
as possible.

Influence of Forests on Winter Temperature. 1xl the winter-time,
the simplest relations of the forest to temperature prevail. During
this season of the year, when the wind passes into the north and be-
comes colder, the forest warms it ; when it passes into the south and
becomes warmer, the forest cools it. During winter the forest plays
the role of a bad conductor, and acts as an equalizer of temperature.

Influence of Forests on Summer Temperature. In summer the
case is not so simple, owing to evaporation from the surface, tran-
spiration through the leaves, and radiation from them. At this season
of the year the atmosphere in the forest is usually warmer during the
nights and colder during the day than in the open field. The night is
warmer in consequence of the obstruction which the mass of foliage
presents to radiation from the surface beneath it ; the day is cooler in
consequence of the transpiration of vapor from the leaves, and the
obstruction interposed between the surface and the direct rays of the
sun. In the summer, as well as in the winter, the forest usually acts
as an equalizer of the temperature of the atmosphere.

While, however, this is usually the case, there are exceptions.
During nights when it is calm, radiation from the leaves of the trees
may cool particles of air, which, descending toward the surface, form
just before daybreak a stratum of the atmosphere below, which is
colder than if the region had been destitute of trees. It is within the
experience of most cultivators of the soil that frosts sometimes strike
hardest near a wood.

To the fact that under certain circumstances a forest may cause
frost in the fields near by, we may add the qualification that this can
only occur in the case of white frosts, and that whenever there is mo-
tion of the atmosphere, and the wind a cold one, the influence of the
forest is always protective. An orchard sheltered by a wood may
escape unhurt, while another in the same neighborhood not so protect-
ed may suffer the loss of its entire crop. This is believed to be not a
very uncommon occurrence in the case of peaches.

If the fruit-growing interest of the country were to state its ac-
count with the forest, we should suppose it to be something like the
following :

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING. i 99

The Count against Forests. 1. Unfavorable to the free circula-
tion of the atmosphere in summer-time ; in this respect the influence
of the forest is directly the opposite to that of an adjacent body of
water. 2. Imparting moisture to the atmosphere, whereby, under
certain conditions of the weather, the heat may become too great for
the good of growing fruit. 3. Causing an occasional late frost in the
spring. 4. Affording a harbor for birds and birds'-nests. This is no
small consideration in some localities, where birds have to be slausrh-
tered by the ten thousand to save certain kinds of fruit, as cherries,
blackberries, and Delaware grapes. I speak advisedly, being well
aware of the sentimentalism against which I offend. Some kinds of
birds are, of course, only innocent and useful. I make no charge
against them (nor against the forest which protects them). Let them
live and sing ! But, that birds which prey so remorselessly on fruits
destroy insects enough to pay for the fruit they waste and consume, is
very improbable, and we let the count stand against the trees and
bushes that shelter them.

The Count in favor of Forests. 1. Usually equalizing the tem-
perature between night and day during the summer-season uniformi-
ty of temperature being a condition which is favorable to vegetable
development. 2. Equalizing the effects of rainfall by storing up the
waters to be given off gradually to the streams and the atmosphere,
thus favoring the development of most kinds of fruit. 3. Imparting
moisture to the atmosphere by transpiration through the leaves, and
thus profiting the fields in various ways during a drought. This moist-
ure may also contribute to the warmth of the atmosphere when
warmth is beneficial. 4. Intercepting the sweep of the winds, and
thereby lessening the mechanical injury to plants and trees, and
weakening the cooperation for mischief of wind and cold. As a screen
for protection against the wind, trees are not without appreciation,
and it is generally understood that, even if they imparted no warmth
to a cold wind passing through them, the mechanical resistance they
afford prevents it from taking the warmth so readily out of vines,
trees, and the soil. 5. Cooling the warm winds of winter and spring,
thereby keeping back vegetation out of the way of late spring frosts.
6. Warming the cold winds in winter. The last three on the list be-
ing by far the most important ; and by their cooperation they might
very easily, and often do, make the difference, at a critical time, of a
crop or no crop, as this often depends on a degree or two of tempera-
ture.

It will be readily perceived that all the better influences of wooded
lands are of very much the same character as the influence of a body
of water. It is when these two classes of conditions meet in the same
locality that general fruit-growing has its best chances of success.

What proportion of woodland should remain in the interest of
protection for agricultural and horticultural purposes, might be difficult

zoo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to ascertain. Different localities would no doubt require a different
proportion. Rentzsch (quoted by Marsh) estimates that for the interior
of Germany about 23 per cent., and along the coast 20 per cent., is
necessary for the needed protection. The case hardly admits of such
precision ; more would no doubt be better, and in a dry climate like
ours, more than anywhere else.

So rapidly is the destruction of timber going on in this country
that many localities originally covered with forest have not so great
a proportion as this remaining, and other localities are in a fair way
soon to be in the same condition. This is becoming, or at least should
become, a real cause of apprehension to those who have the welfare
of the farming interest, and especially of the fruit-growing interest, at
heart. This continuous destruction of timber must eventually result
in injury to the market value of lands in certain neighborhoods, espe-
cially lands for fruit-growing purposes.

The remnants of forests in the States have another enemy as inex-
orable and remorseless as the woodman's axe. Many forest-trees, like
the wild Indian, do not seem to flourish in the midst of civilization.
They first show signs of decay at the top. This takes place after the
underbrush has been cleared away and the surface has lost that perfect
mulch of decayed leaves which belongs to native forests. The trees
are now liable to suffer from extremes of drought as never before.
This change is equal to a change of habitat, and the consequence to
some varieties of trees is loss of health and vitality.

According to the experiments of Prof. Pfaff made on an oak-tree,
the amount of moisture lost by transpiration during the summer-
season was more than eight times the quantity of rainfall on the same
area for the same time. Dr. Hahn, who thinks this estimate quite too
high, says, nevertheless, that " Herr Pfaff 's results show us what an
enormous quantity of water is required by isolated trees in a com-
paratively dry and free (bewegten) atmosphere, and how much they
need the protection which they afford to each other in their combined
capacity as a forest." Whenever the balance and integrity of the
original forest is broken, the supply of water during droughts not
being equal to the demand of trees now suffering the double disadvan-
tage of needing more moisture and less of it available than before,
death begins in the topmost branches, that part of the tree which is
most exposed to the conditions of active transpiration and farthest
removed from the source of moisture.

What should we do about this blight ? Save the timber by using
it before it is injured, and plant enough to make up for the loss.

For the application of the facts as now ascertained, let us take the
southern shore of Lake Erie, which is a good fruit-region lying mid-
way between the Eastern and Western cities, and affording to both part
of their supply of fruit. Fruit does not do so well here now as it did
in the early settlement of the country. Cut off the timber which still

FORESTS AND FRUIT-GROWING. 201

remains, and the injury to fruit-growing would be still greater ; and so
far as this result would have an effect, it would be to depreciate the
market value of land. What this region especially needs is a protec-
tion of woodland against the cold westerly and southwesterly winds
to cooperate with the benign influence of the lake in other regards.
The more forest to the south of this belt of shore-land the better. The
more frequently blocks and belts of woodland intervene throughout
its entire extent for immediate local shelter and a general screen against
westerly winds, the better for the farming and fruit growing interests
of this region.

But, so long as it pays an immediate profit to cut down the forest,
it will be done. It is not within the province of legislation to stop it.
There is no hope from voluntary concert of action. A certain per-
centage of timbered lands might be exempted from taxation ; but this
innovation, though talked of, is slow in coming about. 1 To a certain
extent tree-destruction should be offset by tree-planting. The planter
might not receive his profits so quickly as the destroyer, but never-
theless, wherever timber is likely soon to bcome scarce, and that is
almost everywhere, profits would be sure to accrue from direct sales
as well as from the value thus added to the land generally and,
besides the profits in dollars and cents, that accruing from the con-
sciousness of having done a beneficent action.

There are a great many purposes for which timber, and timber only
can be used ; and for these purposes it should be religiously conserved.
I once heard a gentleman say, " I don't worship my timber ; " he sac-
rificed it to gain, in a perfectly legitimate manner it is true. Still the
writer must say that he has a sincere respect for the " worship of
timber ; " it is not a bad kind of religion, so far as it goes.

Immense quantities of timber are slaughtered every year for fuel,
and this, too, in a country where there is more coal than anywhere else
in the world. There is but one way to stop this branch of the destroy-
ing process, and that is by increasing railroad facilities so as to make
our coal-fields accessible to every part of the country. Cheap coal
will save the timber. When no longer consumed in the millions of
household fires in city and country, or in furnaces for the driving
power of locomotives and mills, great will be the saving of timber for
the necessary purposes for which timber must be used, and for the
protection of our cultivated fields and gardens.

The burning of Chicago must make an immediate draft on timbered
lands for certain purposes of building for which timber is still largely
used. But this great fire, in proving the absolute necessity of building
cities of brick, stone, and iron, will operate eventually to the saving of
timber and the longer continuance of the protection which our northern

1 Only Missouri, Nebraska, and Illinois, have legislative enactments to encourage the
planting of timber. New York, Massachusetts, and California, do something in the same
direction through their agricultural societies.

202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

forests afford against northern winds to the great agricultural districts
which lie to the south of them.

And here I cannot but refer to a most short-sighted policy which
our Government has been pursuing in giving a factitious value to
lumber made from our own timber, by a so-called protective tax on
.foreign lumber. While this has operated directly against the building
interests of our own people, it, at the same time, has led to the more
rapid destruction of our own forests ; and, in thus giving protection to
the capital employed in lumbering, it is removing the protection which
our forests afford to the American agriculturist, thus damaging the
people at large in a twofold manner. This must be the case just so
far as the forests belonging to the United States afford greater protec-
tion to our cultivated fields than is afforded by the forests of Canada.
We do not realize the benign influence which our forests to the west
and east of the great lakes exercise upon the climate and agricul-
ture of the country. Imagine them all removed ; the cold winds from
the northwest and northeast, having unobstructed sweep, would reach
us with greater force, and, passing over a bleak and treeless region,
they would come to us absolutely colder. Our Government, by its
protective policy, has been doing something to bring about this un-
desirable result. It is high time that a wiser policy should prevail,
and that the Government should protect by taking its hands off. 1 (It
is gratifying to record that, since the above was written, the duty on
lumber has been greatly reduced.)

There is no need of attributing more to forests than is their due.
There are storms against which they afford no protection avalanches
of cold which rush down upon the country, killing fruit-buds, and even
vines, shrubs, and trees. But these are exceptional. It is in the case
of somewhat milder cold-storms that forests save, when without them
there would be ruin. The great fact of the increasing uncertainty of
fruit and agricultural crops with the continued clearing of the country,
is a fact so patent, and of import so significant, that it alone is sufficient
to prove the great value of forests for protection, and to put us on
guard against their wanton destruction.

1 According to an estimate in the Report of the Department of Agriculture for 1870,
all the pine-timber in the region between the Mississippi on the west and Lakes Superior
and Michigan on the north and east, will, at the present rate of consumption, disappear
within the next twelve years, while the hard wood will last only about twelve years longer.
Lumbermen do not take all, but what they leave is consumed by the fires which generally
follow. About 330,000 acres are denuded annually in this region. This is only a part,
perhaps, about half the annual consumption of timber in the northwestern section of our
country. To compensate for this loss only about 150,000 acres are annually planted in
timber throughout the entire West.

This destruction of timber is general. Even fruit-localities are not spared, as the
writer has had abundant opportunity to witness, where the demand for railroad ties at
high prices has created almost a furor for coining money out of the great oaks, regardless
of consequences to climate and culture.

The alarm about the destruction of timber in this country is only too well founded.

A NEW THEORY OF VOLCANOES. 203

A NEW THEORY OF VOLCANOES.

THERE are few subjects less satisfactorily treated in scientific
treatises than that which Humboldt calls the Reaction of the
Earth's Interior. We find, not merely in the configuration of the
earth's crust, but in actual and very remarkable phenomena, evidence
of subterranean forces of great activity, and the problems suggested
seem in no sense impracticable, yet no theory of the earth's volcanic
energy has yet gained general acceptance. While the astronomer
tells us of the constitution of orbs millions of times farther away than
our own sun, the geologist has hitherto been unable to g'ive an account
of the forces which agitate the crust of the orb on which we live.

A theory has just been put forward respecting volcanic energy,
however, by the eminent seismologist Mallet, which promises not
merely to take the place of all others, but to gain a degree of accept-
ance which has not been accorded to any theory previously enunciated.
It is, in principle, exceedingly simple, though many of the details (into
which we do not propose to enter) involve questions of considerable
difficulty.

Let us, in the first place, consider briefly the various explanations
which had been already advanced. There was first the chemical
theory of volcanic energy, the favorite theory of Sir Humphry Davy.
It is possible to produce on a small scale nearly all the phenomena due
to subterranean activity, by simply bringing together certain sub-
stances, and leaving them to undergo the chemical changes due to
their association. As a familiar instance of explosive action thus oc-
casioned, we need only mention the results experienced when any one,
unfamiliar with the methods of treating lime, endeavors over-hastily
to "slake" or "slack" it with water. Indeed, one of the strong
points of the chemical theory consisted in the circumstance that vol-
canoes only occur where water can reach the subterranean regions
or as Mallet expresses it, that " without water there is no volcano."
But the theory is disposed of by the fact, now generally admitted, that
the chemical energies of ou'r earth's materials were almost wholly ex-
hausted before the surface was consolidated.

Another inviting theory is that according to which the earth is re-
garded as a mere shell of solid matter surrounding a molten nucleus.
There is every reason to believe that the whole interior of the earth
is in a state of intense heat ; and if the increase of heat with depth
(as shown in our mines) is supposed to continue uniformly, we find
that at very moderate depths a degree of heat must prevail sufficient
to liquefy any known solids under ordinary conditions. But the con-
ditions under which matter exists a few miles only below the surface
of the earth are not ordinary ; the pressure enormously exceeds any

204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which our physicists can obtain experimentally. The ordinary dis
tinction between solids and liquids cannot exist at that enormous
pressure ; a mass of cold steel could be as plastic as any of the glu-
tinous liquids, while the structural change which a solid undergoes in
the process of liquefying could not take place under such pressure
even at an enormously high temperature. It is now generally admit-
ted that, if the earth really has a molten nucleus, the solid crust must,
nevertheless, be far too thick to be in any way disturbed by changes
affecting the liquid matter beneath.

Yet another theory has found advocates. The mathematician
Hopkins, whose analysis of the molten-nucleus theory was mainly ef-
fective in rendering that theory untenable, suggested that there may
be isolated subterranean lakes of fiery matter, and that these may be
the true seat of volcanic energy. But such lakes could not maintain
their heat for ages, if surrounded (as the theory requires) by cooler
solid matter, especially as the theory also requiros that water should
have access to them. It will be observed also that none of the theo-
ries just described affords any direct account of those various features
of the earth's surface mountain-ranges, table-lands, volcanic regions,
and so on which are undoubtedly due to the action of subterranean
forces. The theory advanced by Mr. Mallet is open to none of these
objections. It seems, indeed, competent to explain all the facts which
have hitherto appeared most perplexing.

It is recognized by physicists that our earth is gradually parting
with its heat. As it cools it contracts. Now, if this process of con-
traction took place uniformly, no subterranean action would result.
But, if the interior contracts more quickly than the crust, the latter
must in some way or other force its way down to the retreating nu-
cleus. Mr. Mallet shows that the hotter internal portion must contract
faster than the relatively cool crust ; and then he shows that the
shrinkage of the crust is competent to occasion all the known phe-
nomena of volcanic action. In the distant ages when the earth was
still fashioning, the shrinkage produced the irregularities of level
which we recognize in the elevation of the land and the depression of
the ocean-bed. Then came the period when, as the crust shrank, it
formed corrugations ; in other words, when the foldings and elevations
of the somewhat thickened crust gave rise to the mountain-ranges of
the earth. Lastly, as the globe gradually lost its extremely high tem-
perature, the continuance of the same process of shrinkage led no
longer to the formation of ridges and table-lands, but to local crush-
ing down and dislocation. This process is still going on, and Mr.
Mallet not only recognizes here the origin of earthquakes, and of the
changes of level now in progress, but the true cause of volcanic heat.
The modern theory of heat as a form of motion here comes into play.
As the solid crust closes in upon the shrinking nucleus, the work ex-
pended in crushing down and dislocating the parts of the crust is

A NEW THEORY OF VOLCANOES. 205

transformed into heat, by which, at the places where the process goes
on with greatest energy, "the material of the rock so crushed and of
that adjacent to it are heated even to fusion. The access of water to
such points determines volcanic eruption."

Now, all this is not mere theorizing. Mr. Mallet does not come
befoi - e the scientific world with an ingenious speculation, which may
or may not be confirmed by observation and experiment. He has
measured and weighed the forces of which he speaks. He is able to
tell precisely what proportion of the actual energy which must be de-
veloped as the earth contracts is necessary for the production of ob-
served volcanic phenomena. It is probable that nine-tenths of those
who have read these lines would be disposed to think that the con-
traction of the earth must be far too slow to produce effects so stu-
pendous as those which we recognize in the volcano and the earth-
quake. But Mr. Mallet is able to show, by calculations which cannot
be disputed, that less than one-fourth of the heat at present annually
lost by the earth is sufficient to account for the total annual volcanic
action, according to the best data at present in our possession.

This would clearly not be the place to follow out Mr. Mallet's ad-
mirable theory into all its details. We must content ourselves with
pointing out how excellently it accouuts for certain peculiarities of the
earth's surface-configuration. Few that have studied carefully-drawn
charts of the chief mountain-ranges can have failed to notice that the
arrangement of these ranges does not accord with the idea of upheaval
through the action of internal forces. But it will be at once recog-
nized that the aspect of the mountain-ranges accords exactly with
what would be expected to result from such a process of contraction
as Mr. Mallet has indicated. The shrivelled skin of an apple affords
no inapt representation of the corrugated surface of our earth,. and,
according to the new theory, the shrivelling of such a skin is precisely
analogous to the processes at work upon the earth when mountain-
ranges were being formed. Again, there are few students of geology
who have not found a source of perplexity in the foldings and over-
lappings of strata in mountainous regions. No forces of upheaval
seem competent to produce this arrangement. But by the new theory
this feature of the earth's surface is at once explained ; indeed, no
other arrangement could be looked for.

It is worthy of notice that Mr. Mallet's theory of volcanic energy
is completely opposed to ordinary ideas respecting earthquakes and
volcanoes. We have been accustomed vaguely to regard these phe-
nomena as due to the eruptive outbursting power of the earth's inte-
rior; we shall now have to consider them as due to the subsidence
and shrinkage of the earth's exterior. Mountains have not been up-
heaved, but valleys have sunk down. And in another respect the new
theory tends to modify views which have been generally entertained
in recent times. Our most eminent geologists have taught that the

206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

earth's internal forces may be as active now as in the epochs when the
mountain-ranges were formed. But Mr. Mallet's theory tends to show
that the volcanic energy of the earth is a declining force. Its chief
action had already been exerted when mountains began to be formed ;
what remains now is but the minutest fraction of the volcanic energy
of the mountain-forming era; and each year, as the earth parts with
more and more of its internal heat, the sources of her subterranean
energy are more and more exhausted. The thought once entertained
by astronomers, that the earth might explode like a bomb, her scattered
fragments producing a ring of bodies resembling the zone of asteriods,
seems further than ever from probability ; if ever there was any dan-
ger of such a catastrophe, the danger has long since passed away.
Spectator.

GREAT FIRES AND RAIN-STORMS.

BY JOHN TROWBRIDGE,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHTSICS 1ST HARVARD COLLEGE.

THE belief that great fires are followed invariably by rain-storms is
wide-spread, and the great fires of the present year in America,
it is claimed, afford no exception to the law. The attitude of scientific
men in regard to so-called popular fallacies and superstitions is not,
in general, a praiseworthy one. A belief needs often only to be wide-
spread among the people at large to be denounced. Science is but an-
other word for truth, and even popular traditions deserve to be ex-
amined with care. The difficulties, however, in the way of an investiga-
tion of the effects of fires in producing rain-storms are manifold. Our
knowledge of the science of meteorology is, at the best, very imper-
fect ; and we have no series of observations from which we can draw
trustworthy conclusions. A careful search into the narratives of great
fires and into the accounts of great naval and land fights gives nothing
which a scientific man would accept for a moment. One who is ready
and determined to believe, it is true, will find in history many curious
and apparent corroborations of the truth of his belief. Thus in Pepys's
" Diary" there is a quaint and circumstantial account of the great fire in
London. In speaking of the progress of the fire, he says : " So as we
were forced to begin to pack up our own goods, and prepare for their re-
moval; and did by moonshine {it being brave dry and moonshine and
icarm weather) carry much of my goods into the garden ; " and in another
place : " But Lord ! what a sad sight it was by moonlight to see the
whole city almost on fire that you might see it plain at Woolwich, as
if you were by it." In still another place, in speaking of the poor suf-
ferers made homeless by the fire : "A great blessing it is to them that
it is fair weather for them to keep abroad night and day." He thus

GREAT FIRES AND RAIN-STORMS. 207

concludes : " Sunday. So to my office, there to write clown my
journall, and take leave of my brother, whom I send back this after-
noon, though raining ; which it hath not done a good icJvile before."

After reading this, we turn to the account of the burning of Moscow.
But this occurred in September, and the equinoctial gales were blowing
fiercely at the time. If we look into the history of land and sea fights,
we find many striking and apparent confirmations of the truth of the
popular belief. Froude concludes his description of the fight at Flores,
1591, as follows: "Nor did the matter end without a sequel awful as
itself." Sea-battles have been often followed by storms, and without
a miracle ; but with a miracle, as the Spaniards and the English
alike believed, or without one, as we moderns would prefer believing.
"There ensued on this action a tempest so terrible as was never seen
or heard the like before." The human mind is undoubtedly prone to
connect great calamities together, and to believe that the one follow-
ing depended in some mysterious way upon the one preceding.

We turn now to the great fire at Chicago. It was telegraphed to
London, England, that " this fire was chiefly checked on the third or
fourth day by the heavy and continuous down-pour of rain, which, it is
conjectured, was partly due to the great atmospheric disturbances
which such an extensive fire would cause, especially when we are told
that the season just previous to the outbreak of the fire had been par-
ticularly dry." In an article published in the " Journal of the Franklin
Institute," July, 1872, by Prof. I. A. Lapham, assistant to the Chief-
Signal Officer II. S. A., entitled "The Great Fires of 1871 in the North-
west," we find the following in regard to the burning of Chicago :
" During all this time twenty-four hours of continuous conflagration
upon the largest scale no rain was seen to fall, nor did any rain fall
until four o'clock the next morning ; and this was not a very consider-
able ' down-pour,' but only a gentle rain, that extended over a large dis-
trict of country, differing in no respect from the usual rains. The
quantity, as reported by meteorological observers at various points,
was only a few hundredths of an inch. It was not until four days
afterward that any thing like a heavy rain occurred. It is therefore
quite certain that this case cannot be referred to as an example of the
production of rain by a great fire. Must we therefore conclude," says
Prof. Lapham, "that fires do not produce rain, and that Prof. Espy was
mistaken in his theory on that subject ? By consulting his reports
(Fourth Report, 1857, p. 29), it will be found that he only claimed that
fires would produce rain under favorable circumstances of high dew-
point, and a calm atmosphere. Both of these important conditions
were wanting at Chicago, where the air was almost entirely destitute
of moisture, and the wind was blowing a gale. To produce rain, the
air must ascend until it becomes cool enough to condense the moisture,
which then falls in the form of rain. But here the heated air could
not ascend very far, being forced off in nearly an horizontal direction

208 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by the great power of the wind. The case therefore neither confirms nor
disproves the Espian theory, and we may still believe the well-authen-
ticated cases where, under favorable circumstances of very moist air
and absence of wind, rain has been produced by large fires." Prof.
Lapham also remarks, " The telegraph-wires indicated no unusual dis-
turbance of the electrical condition of the atmosphere." Upon reading
this last remark, the question occurs to us, Can there not be a change
in the electrical state of the atmosphere which, although too small to
manifest itself upon telegraph-wires, may occasion storms ?

Some experiments made by the writer in the physical laboratory of
Harvard College, on the influence of flames upon the electrical state of
the air, may throw some light upon this subject. Two pieces of ap-
paratus were used, one of them " the new quadrant electrometer " of
Sir William Thomson, and the other a " water-dropper," also an in-
vention of that distinguished philosopher. The electrometer is a Aery
complicated piece of apparatus. Let me describe it in as clear a man-
ner as possible. I do not know that I shall succeed in conveying to the
uninitiated any idea of that instrument, for it has many parts. I shall
endeavor merely to explain its principles roughly. Conceive of a light
aluminum needle, suspended by two single cocoon threads in the centre
of a glass jar, which is filled to nearly one-sixth of its capacity with
strong sulphuric acid. A very fine platinum thread drops from the
aluminum needle and dips in the acid. Let us see what we have now.
An aluminum needle suspended in mid-air by two filaments of silk
very near each other, and so fine that they can hardly be perceived by
the naked eye. Further, this needle has an extremely fine metallic
wire running down from it and terminating in a little weight, also of
the metal platinum, which is immersed in the sulphuric acid. Thus we
see that the needle is very free to swing in a horizontal plane, and it
will be readily perceived that, if there were but one filament of silk
supporting it, it might swing round a complete circumference, or in-
deed make many revolutions under the influence of a strong repellant
or attractive force ; the two filaments by their torsion allow the needle
to swing only to a certain distance, and compel it to return to its
original position when the force is removed. One can readily conceive
of this by suspending a bar in an horizontal position by two vertical
ropes, and then endeavoring to turn it in an horizontal plane.

Let us now charge the aluminum needle with positive electricity.
To do this, we shall conduct into the sulphuric acid by means of a
metallic wire a slight positive charge, and the acid, being a good con-
ductor, will convey this charge by the extremely fine metallic wire to
the aluminum needle suspended above the acid in mid-air. Now, if
we present a substance charged with negative electricity to the needle,
it will, as is well known, be speedily attracted ; and if the substance
presented has a positive charge it will be repelled : the unlike charges
attracting and the like repelling each other. Thus, we see that we

GREAT FIRES AND RAIN-STORMS. 209

have a very delicate test for the character of the electricity in the body
which we bring into the neighborhood of the needle. But, the needle
being only about two inches in length, slight movements in it can
hardly be detected. How is this to be remedied*? We are going to
deal with delicate impulses, and it is necessary to have some means of
observing them. Standing at this window, through which the sun
sti*eams brightly, with a little mirror, we can, as any school-boy knows,
throw the image of the sun in almost any direction that we. please.
Now it rests upon the brick wall across the street, a hundred feet or
more distant from us. Let us turn the glass slightly : see how small a
movement suffices to make the sun's imao-e on the wall dart over at least
twenty feet ! Why can we not attach a little mirror, which shall not
weigh more than a feather, just above our needle, and let it reflect, in-
stead of the sun, a little point of light from a kerosene-lamp upon yonder
wall which is four feet from it ? We have done so. We allow the light
of the lamp to stream through a small opening in a screen of blackened
paper, and to fall upon the mirror. Upon presenting this metallic
plate, which has been charged with positive electricity, the spot of light
darts along the scale pasted on the wall ; it has gone over nearly six
inches of the scale, while the motion of the needle and the mirror was
hardly perceptible. We have now an extremely delicate test for the
presence of electricity so delicate that even the small charge ever
present in our bodies is sufficient when we approach the instrument
to make the spot of light dart to and fro. It is only necessary now to
have some convenient means of presenting the body to be examined
to the needle ; for it will be seen that all movements of the air in its
neighborhood must be avoided. To accomplish this end, we surround
the needle with four plates of brass, which are carefully separated from
the needle. They are in the form of sectors of a circle and lie in an
horizontal plane, the suspension fibres of the needle going through a
round hole in the centre of the circle of which the sectors form a part.
These sectors are separated from each other at first ; the opposite pairs
can, however, be connected at will. It is not necessary to dwell upon
their peculiar construction : their object is to prevent the charge, led
to them by these copper wires, running to any part of the room, and
thereby to influence the needle. It will be seen that this instrument,,
of which we have explained only the principal features, is wonderfully
delicate, and far superior to the old electrometers which showed elec-
trical attraction and repulsion by the divergence of two suspended
gold leaves.

It remains now to describe the " water-dropper." This consists
merely of a tin vessel carefully insulated at the base, with a long glass
tube projecting from an orifice near the bottom. The water runs
through this tube and issues in a fine stream from its end, breaking
into drops about fourteen inches below it. A collecting-plate connected
with one of the brass plates which we have described in the electrom-

TOL. II. 14

zio THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eter stands under this stream of water. Now the drops of water in
their fall upon the plate remove by their impact the charge which the
plate has by itself for all bodies have a greater or less electrical con-
dition, and the piaffe then takes the electrical condition of the air in
which it is immersed.

Let us place our water-dropper on the window-sill with its tube
projecting into the open air ; and, having placed the collecting-plate
so that the drops of water may strike upon it, let us notice our little
spot of light. It is a clear day in early summer; there are no clouds
to be seen, save a rift away on the horizon in the west. The spot
of light moves gradually over the scale, indicating that there is a slight
positive charge of electricity in the atmosphere. Now it is stationary,
and we are about to record the reading of the scale, when the spot
of light gives a quick jump and then returns to nearly its original posi-
tion. Perhaps some movement of ours has deranged the instrument.
We look at it carefully, and return to our position of observation.
A low rumble, as if of distant thunder, is heard. We do not mind this
at first ; presently the spot of light darts again along the scale, and
again returns to its original position. We stand in silence, waiting
for further developments. Now, we hear again a rumble, and a low
muttering, as if of thunder in the west. Can this movement of the
spot of light have any connection with the distant lightning ? At
least five minutes must have elapsed between the time of the move-
ment of the spot of light and the moment when the thunder was heard.
Again the spot moves, again follows a low peal of thunder ; again and
again the same phenomenon is observed. There can be no doubt of
it: the electrical discharges of the approaching storm, yet miles away,
are registered by this little instrument in our laboratory. Now the
storm approaches nearer. We hear the wind in the trees ; a few drops
fall upon the tinned roof; the lightning darts hither and thither, and
the spot of light leaps responsively to it.

Such, then, is the delicacy of our instrument. By allowing the spot
of light to fall upon sensitive paper, which moves along by clock-work,
we shall have all of its motions recorded by photography. This
registration has been accomplished by Sir William Thomson, to whom
we owe so many beautiful electrical instruments. It would be well
if our Signal Service should make contemporaneous observations in
different parts of the country by means of these instruments. Such
observations could not fail to throw light upon the connection of
electrical storms with rain-storms, and extend our knowledge of
meteorology.

Let us now, having proved our instruments, approach the question
<of the influence of flames upon the electrical state of the atmosphere.
Our observations must be made in the laboratory, and are necessarily
of a somewhat general character from the nature of the subject. It is
a cold, clear day in early winter, with the wind blowing freshly from

GREAT FIRES AND RAIN-STORMS. 211

the northwest. "We know by various indications that the air is highly
electrified. The wind blows too freshly to place our water-dropper
out-of-doors ; accordingly, it is placed upon a table in the laboratory,
and we notice the indication of the instrument. The air is indeed
highly charged the spot of light is thrown to a greater distance upon
the scale than we have often noticed. Let us record the reading ; it is
as much as the positive pole of twelve Daniell cells gives. Now,
lighting our Bunsen gas-burner, and placing it near our water-dropper,
let us observe the spot of light ; it does not change its position mate-
rially at first.

Now, after the lapse of a few minutes, it falls to a lower position
upon the scale, now it goes down to zero. Now it mounts again, but
in a contrary direction to its first indication, showing a slight nega-
tive charge in the air, which before was strongly charged positively.
Can this be due to the presence of the flame ? And, if it is due to the
flame, are not great fires capable of influencing the electrical state of
the atmosphere, to a greater or less extent ? Such are the questions
which force themselves upon us. We must, in the first place, examine
our flame. Soldering a platinum wire to the copper connecting wire,
and dispensing with the water-dropper, we examine the outer and
inner cone of the flame. At all points in the luminous portion of the
flame an indication of negative electricity is obtained ; at all points in
the immediate neighborhood of the flame, but exterior to it, there are
signs of a positive charge in the heated air. The inner cone of partly-
consumed gas is neutral, or slightly negative.

The flame, therefore, is negative, and it tends by its presence to
reduce the positive charge of electricity which generally characterizes
the air of fine weather to zero, or to change it to a feebly negative-
charge. We learn from various writers upon meteorology that the
normal electricity of the atmosphere is positive. Herschel in his
work on Meteorology says, p. 125 : " Out of 10,500 observations made
at the Kew Observatory in 1845-47, 10,176 showed positive, and only
364 negative electricity the latter being almost always accompanied
with heavy rain." Sir William Thomson, in the proceedings of the
Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, March, 1862, relates
some experiments which tend to show that clearing-up weather is
preceded, and in many cases foretold, by a change in the atmosphere
from a negative to a positive charge of electricity.

We can, therefore, conclude with some probability of truth that
great fires, by changing the electrical state of the atmosphere, have an
influence upon the production of rain. The state of our knowledge,
however, in regard to the part that electricity plays in atmospheric
changes, is very meagre. The question of the truth of the popular
belief that great fires are followed by rain still remains unanswered ;
and we can only hope that we have thrown a little more light upon it
by our research.

212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S TOPICS.

THAT the expectation of pleasure and profit from the course of
lectures which Prof. Tyndall has prepared for delivery in this
country is not likely to he disappointed, will apj:>ear from the follow-
ing careful analysis of his theme, Light and Heat, as he has arranged
it for six nights :

He hegins in a prefatory way, and dwells upon the introduction of
the experimental method into Science speaks of the ardor of inves-
tigators and of their rewards. He seeks to show that most of them
wrought for the sake of knowledge, and with no practical end in view,
though their discoveries travelled to the most astonishing practical ap-
plications. After dwelling on the importance of original inquiry, he
takes up the real subject of the lectures. The instruments are ex-
plained, and the principles upon which they depend. He points out
the proximate cause and action of the electric light which is to he used
in the illustrations. The laws of reflection are demonstrated, and one
or two striking practical applications adduced. Then he goes on to
refraction. These elementary subjects are really touched upon in or-
der to enable him, in a subsequent lecture, to reveal the workings of
Newton's mind when he theorized upon the subject of light. Refrac-
tion is followed by an inquiry into the constitution of light, its analysis
and synthesis. This occupies the first lecture.

In the second lecture the demonstrated constitution of light is ap-
plied to the doctrine of colors. He goes very thoroughly and plainly
into this matter, making perfectly evident the causes on which ordinary
colors depend ; winding up by the experimental proof that yellow and
blue light, when mixed together, produce ichite and not green. Hav-
ing exhausted the ordinary spectrum, he describes the difference be-
tween the emissions from solids and their vapors. Metallic vapors are
produced and shown with their characteristic colors. Their light is
then analyzed, and it is shown to be distinctive of the substance from
which it comes. Spectrum analysis is dwelt upon, and copiously illus-
trated.

In his third lecture, Tyndall deals with solar light, dwelling upon
the distinction between the bright lines of the metallic vapors, and the
dark lines of Frauenhofer. The reciprocity of radiation and absorption
is demonstrated, and it is shown experimentally that an incandescent
vapor absorbs the light which it emits. This leads up to the theory
of the physical constitution of the sun. Then he goes on to show the
extension of the spectrum beyond its visible range, performing with
quartz prisms and lenses Stokes's experiments on Fluorescence, and the
rendering visible of invisible rays. Then the other side of the spec-
trum is handled ; its extension as heat beyond the limits of light is

PROFESSOR TTNDALVS TOPICS. 213

demonstrated. Numerous experiments on the total heating power of
the rays from the electric light are made ; fusion and combustion "be-
ing thus effected. Here he hopes to perform the famous Florentine
experiment of the ignition of a diamond in oxygen, using, however, a
purely terrestrial source of radiant heat. He also hopes to produce
combustion by rays concentrated by a lens of ice. The heat-rays are
then filtered from the light-rays, and it is shown that all the foregoing
effects are produced by rays totally beyond the range of vision ; fu-
sion, combustion, and explosion, being produced at foci perfectly dark,
and, as far as the air is concerned, pei-fectly cold. It is also proved
that these dark rays perform the work of evaporation in the tropical
ocean, and the work of fusion upon the Alpine ice and snows. The
rays, moreover, are shown to be competent to raise platinum to a white
heat, so that by its intervention you may extract from the dark rays
all the colors of the spectrum. This brings him to the end of the third
lecture.

In the fourth lecture he shows the irresistible tendency of the hu-
man mind to seek for governing principles which rule facts and correct
them, rendering them, so to say, organic. He dwells upon the exercise
of the theorizing faculty, taking Newton as an example. He tries to
show how naturally his optical theory grew out of his previous knowl-
edge. The doctrine of colors is now extended by the introduction of
the colors of thin plates, of striated surfaces, etc., and he unravels the
subtle additions which Newton made in his theory, in order to fit it to
these new facts. The theory of emission is then contrasted with the
theory of undulation. The latter is rendered familiar to the mind by
preliminary considerations regarding water-waves, and by experiments
regarding sound. He dwells upon the labors of Thomas Young, and
the effect of Brougham's attacks in the Edinburgh Review. This will
be his most difficult lecture, but he has wrought hard to make it clear,
and it is essential to the comprehension of the subsequent ones.

In the fifth lecture Tyndall enters upon the phenomenon of crystal-
lization, and seeks to give an intelligible explanation of crystalline
architecture. The process of crystallization is experimentally illus-
trated. This is done with a view to the action of crystals upon light.
In the first experiments he deals with crystals solely with reference to
the polarization of light. This is explained and illustrated by numer-
ous experiments. Double refraction and the state of the two halves
of the divided beam are dwelt upon. Then come the chromatic phe-
nomena of polarized light. Basing himself upon the principles ex-
plained in the fourth lecture, he hopes to make these effects compre-
hensible by all intelligent persons. The effects of mechanical strains
and pressures in producing a quasi crystalline structure are exhibited.
Then the similar phenomena of unannealed glass. He hopes to show
these effects in a very splendid fashion. They will more than fill the
fifth lecture.

2 H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The sixth lecture is devoted to the further illustration of the action
of crystals upon light ; uniaxal and biaxal crystals, circular polariza-
tion, and the chromatic effects produced by rock-crystals ; the confer-
ring of double refractory power by sonorous vibrations ; and the mag-
netization of light. Although the syllabus is short, it covers a good
deal.

We have sketched the course of six lectures. The materials
touched upon are ample to fill the six to overflowing, allowing an hour
and a half for each lecture. A seventh very striking lecture might be
given, he says, on the identity of light and heat every experiment
made in the optical lecture being shown capable of repetition with pure
lightless radiant heat, the thermo-electric pile and galvanometer be-
ing substituted for the eye. He has made an arrangement for the pro-
jection of the galvometer-dial upon a screen, which renders it visible
to any number of people.

As he worked at the subject, the desire grew upon him to do it
more and more thoroughly, and to spare no expense as regards appa-
ratus. He has accordingly purchased between three and four hundred
pounds sterling worth of new instruments ; and has gone oyer all the
experiments, so as to render every thing sure, and in a manner worthy
of the subject and of the occasion. United States Railroad and Min-
ing Register.

' THE COCOA-NUT PALM, AND ITS USES.

By C. E. LOW.

C" CASTING along Ceylon and the Malabar littoral, the voyager
will notice the tall palm-trees, which appear as if growing in
the sea, and will learn, on inquiry, that they are of the variety Cocos
nucifera, or the loving cocoa-nut tree.

Though the sight of these never-ending groves may at length pall
upon the eye of the traveller, yet he will do wisely if at eventide, while
the ship is becalmed, he should take the "jolly" boat and land on the
silent beach. In a few minutes he will stand in a " grove of palms,"
and must be of a somewhat stolid temperament if he does not feel
something like a new sensation, as he looks aloft and listens to the
rustle of the first breath of the sea-breeze, as it gently waves the grace-
ful fronds or leaves overhead. Those who have been in the East will,
as they read these lines, recall the sound, and with it, perhaps, may be
brought to mind many pleasant days and the faces of old friends who
sleep beneath the southern cross. Those who have not strolled under
the welcome shade afforded by the fern-like canopy, will remember
Thomson's lines :

THE COCOA-NUT PALM, AND ITS USES. 215

" Sheltered amid the orchards of the sun,
Where high palmettos lift their graceful shade,
Give me to drain the cocoa's milky howl,
And from the palm to drain its freshing wine.''

There are many varieties of the palm. Among them the Caryota
urens is the most ornamental, with its long, pendulous clusters of dark-
red, succulent, acrid berries. The pith of this tree yields a species of
sago, and the sap is commonly employed in the Deccan as yeast for
raising or fomenting bread. There is also the travellers' palm, or
crab-tree, from which a watery juice is extracted, and which, crowning
the summits of hills, forms a picturesque object on the landscape, with
its broad, fan-shaped leaves. The date-trees of India and Ceylon
neither possess the loftiness nor the beauty of foliage of those growing
in such luxuriance on the banks of the Shatt-al-Arab, in Mesopotamia,
and indeed seldom bear fruit. The areca-palm, which is cultivated in
most parts of India, and is indigenous on the Malabar coast, furnishes
the " betel-nut," which, mixed with " paun," forms a composition which
the Hindoos are in the constant habit of chewing.

There are five well-marked varieties of the cocoa-nut. 1 The Tembili,
of which there are different descriptions, is a very well-formed, hand-
some nut, of oval form and bright-orange tint. The Buddhist priests
of Southern India and Ceylon generally contrive to keep a store of the
choicest kinds of the Tembili in their temples as offerings to the passer-
by, who is expected to make a return. The Nawasi is slightly heart-
shaped, of lighter color than the preceding, and bears an edible husk.
On stripping off the outer rind, the inner skin turns to a pale-red color,
and is fit for use. There is a third variety of nut, somewhat small and
round, and in color much resembling the Tembili. Then there is the
common cocoa-nut, so well known to every urchin ; and, lastly, we have
the double (Zadoicea Seychellorum), which, as its name implies, is a
product of the Seychelles, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean.

In old times the most marvellous medicinal virtues were attributed
to nuts of this description, and they were considered unfailing antidotes
to all kinds of poison. As their origin was veiled in obscurity those
obtained being either caught-up fioatings at sea or on the coasts of
the Maldive Islands, where they were thrown up by the tides and
currents the most extravagant sums were asked and obtained for
them. Thus it is recorded that the Emperor Rudolph II. offered 4,000
florins for one which chanced to be for sale, but, the bidding being
considered insufficient, the precious nut passed into other hands. It
is even said that a merchant-ship, with her freight and stores complete,
has been bartered in exchange for one.

The natives believed that the trees producing these nuts grew at
the bottom of the sea, and were enchanted palms, which vanished the
instant the adventurous diver attempted to reach them. Death was
1 " The Cocoa-nut Palm," by W. B. Lord, R. A.

216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

awarded to any one who, having found one of these nuts on the shore,
failed to make it over to his sovereign. The kernel was the part sup-
posed to possess miraculous medicinal qualities, and with it were mixed
such anomalous ingredients as pounded antlers of deer, ebony-raspings,
and red-coral dust.

At the present day, when these cocoa-nuts are exported from the
Seychelles Islands, cups made from the shells are mounted by the
wealthy natives of India with gold and precious stones ; the religious
mendicants of Ceylon also set a high value on the shells, and use them
as alms-boxes to attract the contributions of the faithful.

The palm bearing the common cocoa-nut attains, in situations
favorable to its growth, a height of from 60 to 80 feet, but rarely
exceeds a diameter, at the base, of from one to two feet. The rough-
ness of the bark is caused by the progressive falling off of the fronds,
as the tree shoots upward. But this roughness and the crookedness
of the tree (for a straight palm is rare indeed) are compensated by
the beauty of the foliage of the crown. " Here," says Mr. Lord, " the
graceful, fern-like leaves may be seen in every stage of development
the lower tiers drooping, those above spreading out feather-like, while
the centre stands up plume-like in all its beauty." The nuts grow in
clusters, and the number on one tree varies from 40 to 200 in different
stages of development. The " spathes," which are thrown up among
the young leaves of the cocoa-palm, and on which grow the blossoms,
are often nearly four feet in length and six inches in circumference. In
favorable seasons these spathes or plumes of flowers are shot forth
every four or five weeks, and as the blossoms drop off the young nuts
are formed, affording a store of food and drink all the year round.
When the sap of the palm is sought for the manufacture of toddy, or
some other products, the young fronds, together with the flower-spathe,
are bound together with ligatures, in order to prevent the development
of the blossoms ; a puncture is then made at the foot of the spathe with
a toddy-knife, and numerous taps administered to the part adjoining
the cut, with the handle, to set the sap flowing ; a chatty, or earthen
pot, is then suspended in a suitable position to receive the cool, sweet
juice of the tree.

To ascend the lofty palm various methods are employed, and often
has the writer watched the agile natives swarming up with rapidity
by inserting the great-toe into a series of notches cut into the bark.
Another method is by casting a band round both tree and toddy-
drawer, who then plants the soles of the feet against the trunk, and
literally walks up, " hand over fist." They also traverse the space
between the top of the trees on coir-ropes, thrown across from one to
the other. Early in the morning, before the sun is up, the toddy-
drawer with monkey-like agility ascends the tree, lowers down his
well-filled pot, which is received by a companion, who replaces it by
an empty one. From one to three Quarts is the general result of one

THE COCOA-NUT PALM, AND ITS USES. 217

night's drawing ; but the trees thus treated become 1 barren, and yield
no fruit. Immediately after collection the toddy is sweet and deli-
ciously cool, but in the course of a few hours this is changed for an
agreeable acidity. It forms a refreshing drink in this state, but in
twenty-four hours becomes quite sour. Toddy, when fermented, is
made into arrack, a liquor which, being cheap and fiery, is greatly
consumed by the poorer class of Europeans at Bombay, and is the bane
of our soldiers and sailors in the presidency town.

Vinegar is made by allowing the toddy to stand for about a month
in earthen jars fitted with covers. The liquid is then carefully strained,
and replaced in the jars, in which is thrown a little red pepper, a small
piece of the fruit of the gamboge-tree, and a pod of the horseradish,
which in the East attains the dimensions of a tree. In about five
weeks vinegar of a most excellent quality is the result. Not only
spirits and vinegar are made from the juice, but the material known
as jaffery, or native sugar, is produced before fermentation by boiling
the sap to a syrup with quicklime, when it is roughly crystallized.
Large quantities of this are exported, and used for sweetmeats, in the
manufacture of which in great variety the natives of India are con-
summate adepts.

The cocoa-nut is consumed in a greater variety of ways than even
the sap, and not a portion of it, or of the palm on which it grows, is
without its special use. Besides the refreshing drink extracted from
the young undeveloped nut, which is also made into a dye, the pulp
inside the soft crust is considered a delicacy, and is used in the prepara-
tion of various dishes. The kernel, when ripe, is also treated in a
variety of ways for food, and forms an important ingredient of curry.
Cocoa-nut oil is also extracted from the ripe fruit by the natives with
their primitive contrivances, in which bullocks are the motive power.
When under European manipulation, iron machinery driven by steam
expresses about 2^ gallons from 100 nuts. Besides its more practical
and prosaic virtues of supplying food and clothing, the poets of the
East have from time immemorial assigned as one of the attributes of
the cocoa-nut palm-tree that it "loves to "hear the sound of footsteps
and pleasant voices."

In moderately favorable situations, says a writer, this species of
the palm commences bearing fruit at from ten to thirteen years of age,
and remains at full maturity for between sixty and eighty years, pro-
ducing, on an average, about 100 nuts annually. The tree then begins
to deteriorate and fall off in its yield, continuing in this declining con-
dition for about twenty years, when it ceases bearing altogether, and
dies. It is curious that while in this moribund state the famous " por-
cupine-wood " of commerce is obtained from its trunk ; so that even
in death the cocoa-nut palm is man's faithful friend, and ministers to
his wants.

Many are the uses to which the tree is put while in maturity. The

218 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thatch covering the houses is made with the prepared mid-rihs of its
leaves, and secured with cord twisted from the cocoa-fibre, from which
also nets and fishing-lines are made. The plaited strips of the leaf
supply material for baskets in which the freshly-gathered nuts are
stored. Cocoa-cloth is . an article of manufacture. Torches are made
by twisting together a sufficient number of dry leaflets, the end of the
mid-rib serving as the handle ; from these leaflets, when split, mats are
woven. As to the fibrous husk of the nut known as coir, its utility is
without limit. Besides floor-cloths and mats, which are generally
employed in this country for offices, and from their strength of texture
are unrivalled, the coir is manufactured into rope, and is extensively
used on board ship ; and in the " country " trading-ships of India it
entirely supersedes manila and hemp, as being equally strong and
durable, and infinitely cheaper.

Pipes, bottles, and drinking-vessels for native use, oftentimes
polished and handsomely- mounted, are made of cocoa-nuts, from which
the white meat is extracted, without injuring the shell, by pouring out
the milk, filling it with salt, and burying it in the hot sand until the
kernel is decomposed, when it is removed from one of the three holes
in the " monkey's " face. Thus countless are the benefits conferred on
man by the palm, forming, as it does, one of the most useful of all the
gifts of Providence. The South-Sea Islanders, we are informed by
those who have been among them, make books out of the leaf-strips
similar to the papyrus of the ancient Egyptians. Canoes are built of
the pliable planks, which, when grooved and bored, are stitched to-
gether with coir-twine, are propelled by cocoa-wood paddles, masted
with a slender young palm, and rigged with coir-cordage, which car-
ries a mat-sail ; thus, ready for sea, freighted with a cargo of nuts, oil,
lamp-black, vinegar, sugar, and arrack (all the produce of the palm),
and finally stored with nut-food for the voyage, the sole remaining
requisite to make a successful commercial venture, but one that man
cannot command, is a propitious breeze. Food Journal.

HUMANITY AND INSANITY.

FROM THE FRENCH OF MAXIME DU CAMP.

IN studying the history of insanity, we are surprised to find that
the same mild treatment now universally adopted was very clearly
prescribed by the chief professors of medical science in the beginning
of our era. Thus, Aretaeus the Cappadocian recommends the use only
of the supplest cords, to restrain violent maniacs, " for," says he, " to
resort to any cruel measures of restraint will increase rather than
allay the over-excitement." Galen was the first to maintain that all

HUMANITY AND INSANITY

219

disorders of the mental faculties are produced by a lesion of the or-
gans of thought, which are situate in the brain. Yet we are not to
imagine that in Galen's day the art of healing was faultless ; indeed,
so far is this from being the case, that we find his contemporaries
making large use of philters, charms, and magical formulae. In the
seventh century Paulus of iEgina reasserted the principles maintained
by Galen and by Areta3us ; but with him the line of rational medical
tradition comes to a close, and henceforth, for centuries, it would seem
as if the doctors shared in the disorder which they assumed to cure.
The madman was now no longer regarded as a sick patient, nor even
as a human being. He was treated as a wild-beast half brute, half
demon ; soon his disorder was called " satanic possession," and he him-
self burned at the stake.

The middle ages were a period of upheaval, when every thing was
swallowed up in the bottomless abyss of scholasticism and demon-
ology, and medicine became a routine of superstitious practices. 1
Such and such a plant was considered beneficial, if gathered at the
new moon; but deadly poison, if at the moon's wane. Science, art,
and literature, went down in the storm, and wars, battles, pestilence,
and famine, were the order of the day. As God was invoked in vain,
men turned to Satan. The belief in the devil was universal, and the
world became a hell. Now both science and experience show tl at
the prevailing notions of a given period are very rapidly taken up by
the insane, and by them distorted into grotesque shapes, with a uni-
formity resembling the symptoms of epidemic disorders. This phe-
nomenon is of daily occurrence. Thus, accordingly as France is ruled
by a king, an emperor, or a president, those insane persons who im-
agine themselves to be somebody, claim the rank of president, emper-
or, or king, as the case may be. Just now, respectable women patients
at the Salpetriere, Ste.-Anne, Vaucluse, and Ville-FJvard asylums sol-
emnly assure the physicians in charge that they are p&troleuses /
while men of unquestionable patriotism will tell you that they guided
the Prussians up the heights of Sedan. The phenomenon therefore
of diabolic possession in the middle ages is perfectly natural. The
calamities attendant on continual wars had so enervated the people,
that they were fit subjects for all manner of mental disorder ; and
this, taking form from the prevailing ideas of the times, found expres-
sion in demoniacal possession.

1 Borden, who lived in the seventeenth century, and was a man of keen intelligence,
tells us of a monk he knew, who practised bloodletting to an unlimited extent. After
three bleedings, he would add a fourth, for the reason that there are four seasons, four
quarters of the globe, and four cardinal points. After the fourth he took a fifth, because
there are five fingers on the hand. To the fifth he would add a sixth, for did not God
create the world in six days ? But the number must be made seven, there being seven
days in the week, and seven sages of Greece. An eighth bleeding had to follow, eight
being a round number ; and a niuth, because numero Deus impare gaudet God loves odd
numbers.

zzo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

During the middle ages the devil was everywhere ubique dwrnon.
There was one religious sect whose adepts were ever spitting, hawking,
and blowing the nose, with a view to expel the devils they had swal-
lowed. A trace of this still remains in some localities, where one who
sneezes is saluted with " God bless you ! " Such beliefs were universal.
Thus a certain prior of a convent had around him constantly a guard
of two hundred men, who hewed the air with their swords, so as to
cut to pieces the demons who were assailing him. Demons were even
cited to appear before ecclesiastical tribunals. A curious and a pitiful
epoch, when the possessed and their exorcists were madmen alike !

This view of insanity was favored by the philosophical, or rather
the theological ideas of the time. According to these, man was of a
twofold nature. On the one hand was the flesh, mere matter ; on the
other, the soul, a direct emanation from Deity, passing through this
vale of tears, on its way to the ineffable glory of heaven. The body
is but the soul's dwelling-place a temple or a den, accordingly as its
invisible inhabitant is the servant of God or of Satan. Therefore,
when the soul is diseased, the treatment must regard the soul alone,
which is governed by laws of its own, and is merely in juxtaposition
with the body for a moment. No doubt the ideal of purity thus held
up was sublime ; yet the result of it was the upsetting of the body's
equilibrium ; and this reacted on the mind. But this theory led to
still more serious consequences ; for it was admitted into science, and
checked the progress of the medical art. When in 1828 Broussais
attacked it, he was accused of blasphemy, and of " sapping the foun-
dations " of society. Now, however, we know that the faculties of
the mind are not independent of the conditions of the body. Take a
slight dose of sulphate of quinine, and you lose, for the time being,
the faculty of recollection; swallow a little hashish, and you are
transiently insane.

In 1453 Edelin, a priest and doctor of the Sorbonne, preached
against the cruelty of putting to death poor creatures who were the
dupes of their own diseased imaginations. On being cited to defend
himself before a tribunal, he became suddenly insane, and was im-
mured for life, that is, shut up between four walls, without food, drink,
or light. In the sixteenth century Europe literally blazed with the
fires lighted to punish witches and sorcerers, who were simply mad-
men. Luther had a visit from the devil. Pico della Mirandola tells
of Savonarola's visions, and Melanchthon holds converse with spirits.
Even Ambroise Pare, the Hippocrates of modern times, believed in
possession, in compacts with the devil, and the like. The same is to
be said of Fernel, famous for his calculation of the earth's dimensions,
and of Bodin, the great jurisconsult. These great men, with all their
sagacity, with all their learning, would seem never to have heard of
the monk Bacon's dictum : " We cannot determine by speculation or by
imagination what Nature will do, or what endure ; all that must be

HUMANITY AND INSANITY. 221

made out by experiment." When illustrious savants like these were
firm believers in deinonism, it need not cause us any surprise to see eight
hundred sorcerers burnt at the stake within sixteen years in Lorraine
alone, or five hundred at Geneva in three months.

The first effective blow was aimed at this superstition by Wier, a
physician of Cleves, who was the true founder of mental pathology.
Knowing well the temper of his time, he moved with extreme cau-
tion. He classes demons in sundry categories, and reckons their num-
ber by millions. Having thus given an exhibition of his orthodoxy,
he next throws all the blame on the devil. It is he, and not the witch
or the sorcerer, that is to be punished. As possession is simply a form
of disease, the possessed should rather be treated medically than
burned at the stake. Wier brings facts to show that the phenomena
of possession are all explainable without supposing any diabolic inter-
ference. His was the period of the invention of printing, of the dis-
covery of America, of the Protestant Reformation the age of Galileo
and of Kepler. It might have been supposed that the sixteenth cen-
tury would have seen the end of demonism in Europe. But no ; the
princesses of the house of Medici brought in their train to France a
horde of astrologers, necromancers, disciples of Locusta, fortune-tell-
ers, etc. Three famous cases of possession marked the beginning of
the seventeenth century : that at Labourd in 1609 ; that of the Ursu-
lines at Aix in 1611 ; and of the Ursulines at Loudun, from 1632 to
1639.

The phenomenon of insensibility to pain is one of not very rare
occurrence. This insensibility may be confined to a single member, or
some particular locality, or it may extend to the whole body. During
the middle ages all sorcerers were supposed to bear the mark of the
devil, viz., the spot touched by the fiend when taking possession of
his subject. This spot was insensible to pain, and was discovered by
prodding the unfortunate culprit with a long needle, here and there, all
over the body until it was found.

So general was the prevalence, among the inmates of convents, of
a peculiar form of hysteria, that it got the name of possession des
nonnains {ixonnain, nun). Its pathology is clear: melancholia at-
tended by hallucinations, illusions of the sense of touch, and an irre-
sistible desire of suicide. Take the remarkable case of the nuns of
Saint-Louis de Louviers (1642), which engaged the attention of the
Parliament of Rouen. The principal heroine of this sad history was
Madeline Bavent, who, on being shut up in a dungeon, spent four
hours in endeavoring to put an end to her life, by driving a large nail
into her bowels, and turning it round and round. She was clearly the
subject of hystero-melancholia, but her judges decided that she was
possessed of a devil. But at length the belief in demonism was forced
to give way before the gradual advance of science, and in 1672 Col-
bert induced Louis XIY. to sign the famous ordinance forbidding the

222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Parliament any longer to prosecute sorcerers. But this was not until
over twenty thousand individuals had perished at the stake simply for
having been insane.

> Thus ended what we may call the thaumaturgic era of insanity,
and now follows the era of repression. There were as yet no hospi-
tals to receive the insane, who were confined in convents or in prisons,
according to the violence of their disorder. They were fettered, beat-
en, suffered to wallow in straw, exhibited to sight-seers, to gratify idle
curiosity, or to afford amusement. This treatment was far from being
such as medical science requires ; but, still, it at least was a great im-
provement on the stake, and was less calculated than the exorcisms of
the previous period to over-excite the patient. A last effort was made
by the clergy and the Parliaments in 1713 to recover the powers of
which they had been deprived by the ordinance of Louis XIV., but
they were unsuccessful ; and, consequently, when the Jansenist miracles
and diableries became the talk of Paris, the government was content
with simple measures of police repression. Finally, in 1768, the Par-
liaments declared that possession is a disease. Cagliostro was afforded
every facility for summoning up the devil and putting h'im en rapport
with the Cardinal Rohan ; and Mesmer might now assemble at his
famous banquet all the nervous subjects in Paris, without any hin-
drance on the part of king, clergy, or police.

Science meanwhile was not idle. While justice was growing more
lenient toward the insane, the study of the principles to be applied in
the treatment of insanity engaged the earnest attention of all the great
physicians of Switzerland, England, Holland, Germany, Italy, and
France, and the various phenomena of -mental pathology were carefully
described by Plater, Willis, Boerhaave, Fleming, Fracassini, Morgagni,
Boissier de Sauvages, Lieutard, Lorry, and others. As regards the
question of treatment, however, these learned writers nearly all fell
into error, because they started out with false premises. In their time
the famous theory of hurnorism held undivided sway, and according
to this all disease came from the humors, the blood, lymph, bile, etc. ;
and a person was diseased to a greater or less degree, according to
the higher or lower degree of crudity or of coction in which his
humors were found. Hence there were two universal remedies,
which were expected to answer every malady : purging and blood-
letting. Violent insanity had its seat in the blood ; melancholy
madness, in the bile ; exalted mania, in the spleen. Baglivi, who
died in 1707, introduced into medicine the doctrine of solidism,
which attributes the cause of disease to the solid parts of the body.
Baglivi's writings were translated into French by Pinel, who was him-
self a reformer in the best sense of that word, and who introduced the
mild treatment of the insane in modern times. In 1791 he published
his "Medico-philosophical Treatise on Insanity," and 1792 was ap-
pointed physician-in-chief of the Bicetre Asylum.

HUMANITY AND INSANITY. 223

We can imagine what Bicetre must have been when Pinel took
charge a jail, house of correction, penitentiary, and hospital, all in one ;
and its inmates assassins, debauchees, sick patients, paupers, idiots
lived in fearful promiscuousness ; it was, in fact, a moral cess-pool. The
insane, as being no better than wild-beasts, were kept separate, shut up in
pens six feet square, to which light and air were admitted only through
a small opening in the door. There was a bed of loose straw, renewed
every month. The patient had a chain around the waist, besides be-
ing manacled and fettered. He received neither care nor medical
treatment, but was left to exhaust himself in his paroxysms, affording
amusement to curious visitors, who nocked to witness the strange
antics of the madmen. Pinel had the invaluable assistance, in carry-
ing out his reforms, of a humble hospital attendant, who had himself
by practical experience arrived at Pinel's own conclusions years before.
" When the insane patients become too violent, what do you do ? "
asked Pinel. " I take off their chains, they then become quiet." Pinel
ordered the irons to be struck off f all the patients. Among them was
an old soldier of the guards, a man of herculean strength, and a violent
lunatic. The physician had his irons taken off, and then bade him re-
move the chains off all the other patients. The old soldier's gratitude
was such that he remained for the rest of his life attached to the
personal service of Pinel. As Colbert, in persuading Louis XIV. to
publish his famous ordinance, had brought. the thaumaturgic ' era to a
clese, so Pinel put an end to the era of repression. After a protracted
contest, victory declared in favor of common-sense and humanity.
Esquirol followed after Pinel, and showed that the physician who would
treat mental disorders, must study the various symptoms ; and this
he can do only by daily contact with the insane. Ferrus discovered
the importance of giving to the insane employment of some kind, as a
means of restoring them to a healthy condition of mind. While thus,
in France, science was engaged in establishing the moraj bases of the
disease, Roller was founding a model establishment in Germany, on
the principle of surrounding the patient with all those influences which .
could bring his thoughts back into their normal courses. His long ex-
perience went to show the advantage of employing opium and its de-
rivatives in the treatment of mental disorders. These are the founders
of the science of Mental Alienation : others have developed their prem-
ises and added to their teachings, but to Pinel, Esquirol, Ferrus, and
Roller, the human race owes a debt of everlasting gratitude for having
first opened the way. Abridged from the Revue des Deux Mondes.

1 Thaumaturgic, working miracles, exciting wonder.

224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

DRIFTING OF THE STARS.

By kichaed a. pkoctor, b. a.,

HON. SECRETARY OF THE EOTAL ASTKONOMICAL SOCIETY.

FROM time to time, during the last three years, I have brought
before the readers of this magazine the various arguments and
considerations on which I have based certain new views respecting the
constitution of the sidereal universe. In so doing I have had occasion
to deal chiefly with facts already known, though not hitherto viewed
in that particular light in which I sought to place them. Indeed, it is
an essential part of my general argument that much that is contained
in observations already made has been escaping us. In the eagerness
of astronomers to ascertain new facts, they have been neglecting the
interpretation of facts already ascertained.

But I have long felt that it would greatly tend to advance the new
views which I have advocated, if some process of research, pursued by
one of those astronomers of our day who possess the requisite means
and leisure for prolonged inquiries, should confirm in a clear and deci-
sive way some definite point of my new theories. Thus, if new obser-
vational evidence should be found in favor of my theory that the nebu-
las are not external to our galaxy, or if new evidence should be ob-.
tained to show that the stars are aggregated in certain regions within
our system and segregated from others ; or, again, if my theory of
star-drift should be confirmed by new and striking evidence, I felt that
a greater measure of confidence in my analysis of former evidence
would thenceforward be accorded. I had no occasion, indeed, to com-
plain of cavil or opposition ; in fact, a degree of attention had been
given to the new opinions I advocated which was certainly much
greater than I had looked for. But there must always be such an
inertia in the general weight of opinion in favor of accepted views,
that only a steady reiteration of reasoning during a long period, or else
some striking and impressive discovery, can cause the weight of opin-
ion to tend in the contrary direction.

I cannot but regard myself as most fortunate in finding the first
confirmation of my views (1) coming from one of the most eminent
astronomers and physicists of the day, (2) bearing upon one of the
most definite and positive of my vaticinations, and (3) relating to one
of the most interesting subjects in the whole range of recent astro-
nomical research.

It will be in the remembrance of many readers of this magazine
that, nearly four years ago, Dr. Huggins succeeded in showing that
the bright star Sirius is travelling at an enormously rapid rate away
from us. In other words, besides that rapid thwart-motion which is
shifting the place of this star upon the heavens, the star has a rapid

DRIFTING OF THE STARS. 225

motion of recession. In the paper called " Are there any Fixed Stars ? "
in the Popular Science Review for October, 1868, the nature of the
means by which this discovery was effected was fully described and
explained. It may be permitted to me to mention, also, that while Dr.
Huggins's researches were still unannounced (or rather incomplete) I
was so far fortunate as to indicate the possibility of employing the
very method of research which Dr. Huggins was then engaged (un-
known to me) in applying to Sirius. I propose here briefly to describe
and explain the method, referring the reader, who desires fuller infor-
mation on these preliminary points, to the paper of October, 1868, men-
tioned above. I am the more desirous of doing this, because I find
the principle of the method not readily grasped, and that I conceive
the explanation I am about to offer may remove certain difficulties not
uncommonly experienced.

Conceive that a person, standing on the edge of a steadily-flowing
stream, throws corks into it at regular intervals say one cork per
second. These would float down the stream, remaining always sepa-
rated by a constant distance. Thus, if the stream were flowing three
feet per second, the corks would be a yard apart (supposing, for con-
venience of illustration, that each cork was thrown with exactly the
same force and in exactly the same direction). Now, if a person a
mile or so down the stream saw these corks thus floating past, he
could infer that they had been thrown in at regular intervals ; and,
moreover, if he knew the rate of the stream, and that the corks were
thrown in by a person standing at the river's edge, he would know
that the interval between the throwing of successive corks was one
second. But, vice versa, if he knew the rate of the stream, and that
the corks were thrown in at intervals of one second, he could infer that
the person throwing them was standing still. For let us consider
what would happen, if the cork-thrower sauntered up-stream or down-
stream while throwing corks at intervals of one second. Suppose he
moved up-stream at the rate of a foot per second ; then, when he has
thrown one cork, he moves a foot up-stream before he throws the
next ; and the first cork has floated three feet down-stream ; hence the
second cork falls four feet behind the first. Thus the common distance
between the corks is now four feet instead of three feet. Next, sup-
pose he saunters down-stream at the rate of a foot per second ; then,
when he has thrown one cork, he moves a foot down-stream before he
throws the next ; and the first cork has floated three feet down-stream ;
hence the second cork falls only two feet behind the first. Thus the
common distance between the corks is now two feet instead of three
feet. It is clear, then, that the person standing a mile or so down-
stream, if he knows that the stream is flowing three feet per second,
and that his friend up-stream is throwing one cork in per second, can
be quite sure that his friend is standing still if the corks come past
with a common interval of three feet between them. Moreover, he

VOL. II. 15

226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

can be equally sure that his friend is sauntering up-stream, if the corks
come past with a common interval exceeding three feet; and that he
is sauntering down-stream, if the common interval is less than three
feet. And, if, by some process of measuring, he can find out exactly
how much greater or how much less than three feet the interval is, he
can tell exactly how fast his friend is sauntering up-stream or down-
stream. It would not matter how far down-stream the observer might
be, so long as the stream's rate of flow remained unchanged ; nor, in-
deed, would it matter, even though the stream flowed at a different
rate past the observer than past the cork-thrower, so long as neither
of these two rates was liable to alteration.

Now, we may compare the emission of light-waves by a luminous
object to the throwing of corks in our illustrative case. The rate of
flow for light-waves is indeed infinitely faster than that of any river,
being no less than 185,000 miles per second. The successive light-
waves are set in motion at infinitely shorter time-intervals, since for ex-
treme red light there are no less than 458,000,000,000,000 undulations
per second, and for extreme violet no less than 727,000,000,000,000 ;
but these specific differences do not affect the exactness of the illus-
tration. It is obvious that all that is necessary to make the par-
allel complete is that the flow of light-waves shall reach the observer
at a constant rate (which is the actual case), and that he shall know,
in the case of any particular and distinguishable kind of light, what
is the rate at which the wave-action is successively excited, and be
able to compare with this known rate the rate at which they succes-
sively reach him. If they come in quicker succession than from a lu-
minous body at rest, he will know that the source of light is approach-
ing, as certainly as our observer down-stream would know that his
friend was sauntering toward him if the corks came two feet apart in-
stead of three feet. If, on the contrary, the light-waves of a particu-
lar kind come in slower succession than from a body at rest, the ob-
server will know that the source of light is receding, precisely as the
river-side observer would know that his friend was travelling away
from him if the corks came past him four feet apart instead of three.

Now, the stellar spectroscopist can distinguish, among the light-
waves of varied length which reach him, those which have a particular
normal length. He analyzes star-light with his spectroscope, and gets
from it a rainbow-tinted streak crossed by dark lines. These dark
lines belong to definite parts of the spectrum ; that is, to such and
such parts of its red, or orange, or yellow, or green, or blue, or indigo,
or violet portion. Thus they correspond to light having a particular
wave-length. And many of these lines in stellar spectra are identifi-
able with the lines due to known elements. For instance, in the spec-
trum of Sirius there are four strong dark lines corresponding to the
known bright lines of the spectrum of hydrogen. Thus the wave-
length corresponding to any one of these dark lines is perfectly well

DRIFTING OF THE STARS. 227

known to the spectroscopist from what he has already learned by ex-
amining the bright lines of hydrogen. Now, if Sirius were receding
very rapidly, the wave-length corresponding to one of these lines
would be lengthened ; it would correspond, in fact, to a part of the
spectrum nearer the red end, or the region of longer light-waves, and
thus the dark line would be shifted toward the red end of the spec-
trum ; whereas, on the contrary, if Sirius were very rapidly approach-
ing, the dark line would be shifted toward the violet end of the spec-
trum. All that would be necessary would be that the rate of approach
or recession should bear an appreciable proportion to the rate at which
light travels, or 185,000 miles per second. For, reverting to our cork-
thrower, it is clear that, if he travelled up-stream or down-sti'eam at a
rate exceedingly minute compared with the stream's rate of flow, it
would be impossible for the observer down-stream to be aware of the
cork-thrower's motion in either direction, unless, indeed, he had some
very exact means of measuring the interval between the successive
corks.

Now, the spectrum of a star can be made longer or shorter, accord-
ing to the disjDersive power employed. The longer it is, the fainter its
light will be ; but, so long as the dark lines can be seen, the longer
the spectrum is, the greater is the shift due to steller recession or ap-
proach ; and, therefore, the more readily may such recession or ap-
proach be detected. But, with the instrument used by Dr. Huggins
four years ago, it was hopeless, save in the case of the brilliant Sirius
(giving more than five times as much light as any other star visible in
our northern heavens), to look for any displacement due to a lower
rate of recession than some hundred miles per second (little more than
the two-thousandth part of the velocity of light). What was to be
done, then, was to provide a much more powerful telescope, so that
the stellar spectra would bear a considerably greater degree of disper-
sion. With admirable promptitude, the Royal Society devoted a large
sum of money to the construction of such an instrument, to be lent to
Dr. Huggins for the prosecution of his researches into stellar motions
of approach and recession. This telescope, with an aperture of fif-
teen inches, and a light-gathering power somewhat exceeding that
usual with that aperture, was accordingly completed, and provided
with the necessary spectroscopic appliances. Many months have not
passed since all the arrangements were complete.

In the mean time, I had arrived at certain inferences respecting the
proper motion of the stars, on which Dr. Huggins's researches by the
new method seemed likely to throw an important light.

More than three years ago, I had expressed my conviction that,
whenever the recorded proper motions of the stars were subject to a
careful examination, they would confirm the theory I had enunciated,
that the stars are arranged in definite aggregations of various forms
star-groups, star-streams, star-reticulations, star-nodules, and so on.

228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Making leisure, in the summer of 1869, for entering upon such an ex-
amination, I was led to several results, which not only confirmed the
above-mentioned theory, hut suggested relations which I had not hith-
erto thought of. Some of these resvdts are discussed in the article
called " Are there any Fixed Stars ? " already referred to ; others are
presented in an article called " Star-drift," in the Student for Octo-
ber, 1870. The special results on which Dr. Huggins's recent discov-
eries throw light, were first publicly announced in a paper read before
the Royal Society, on January 20, 1870.

I had constructed a chart in which the proper motions of about
1,200 stars were pictured. To each star a minute arrow was affixed,
the length of the arrow indicating the rate at which the star is moving
on the celestial vault, while the direction in which the arrow pointed
shows the direction of the star's apparent motion. This being done, it
was possible to study the proper motions much more agreeably and
satisfactorily than when they were simply presented in catalogues.
And certain features, hitherto unrecognized, at once became apparent.
Among these was the peculiarity which I have denominated " Star-
drift ; " the fact, namely, that certain groups of stars are travelling in
a common direction. 1 This was indicated, in certain cases, in too sig-
nificant a manner to be regarded as due merely to chance distribution
in these stellar motions ; and I was able to select certain instances in
which I asserted that the drift was unmistakable and real.

Among these instances was one of a very remarkable kind. The
"seven stars" of Ursa Major the Septentriones of the ancients are
known to all. For convenience of reference, let us suppose these seven
divided as when the group is compared to a wagon and horses. Thus,
there are four wagon-wheels and three horses. Now, if we take the
wagon-wheels in sequence round their quadrilateral (beginning with
one of the pair farthest from the horses), so as to finish with the one
which lies nearest to the horses, these are named by astronomers, in
that order, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, of the Great Bear. Thus,
Alpha and Beta are the well-known pointers (Alpha nearest the pole),
and Delta is the faintest star of the Septentrion set. The three horses
are called in order Epsilon, Zeta, and Eta ; Ejisilon being nearest to
Delta. Now, when the proper motions of these seven stars had been
mapped, I found that, whereas Alpha and Eta are now moving much
as they woidd if the sun's motion were alone in question, the other five
are all moving at one and the same rate (on the star-sphere, that is) in
almost the exactly opposite direction. Moreover, a small star close by

1 I include this among " features hitherto unrecognized," though Michell had already
noted the fact that the stars are arranged into systems. " We may conclude," he said,
" that the stars are really collected together in clusters in some places, where they form a
kind of systems ; while in others there are few or none of them, to whatever cause this
may be owing, whether to their mutual gravitation or to some other law or appointment
of the Creator."

DRIFTING OF THE STARS. 229

Zeta (the middle horse), a star known to the Arabian astronomers as
the " Test," because to see this star was held a proof of good eyesight,
is moving in the same direction and at the same rate as Zeta and the
rest of this set. And besides this star (which has also been called
Jack by the middle horse), Zeta has a telescopic companion which also
accompanies him in his motion on the celestial sphere.

After a careful consideration of these circumstances, and an analy-
sis of the probabilities in favor of and against the theory that the con-
currence of apparent motion was merely accidental, I came to the
conclusion that the five large stars and the two smaller ones form a
true drifting set. I found, on a moderate computation, that the odds
were upward of half a million to one against the concurrence being ac-
cidental ; and, since I had recognized other instances of concurrence
not less striking, I felt that it was morally certain that these stars be-
long to one star-family.

The reader will perhaps not be surprised to learn, however, that
before publishing this conclusion I submitted it (in July, 1869) to one
who was, of all men, the best able to pronounce upon its significance
the late Sir John Herschel. I have the letter (dated August 1,
1869), which he sent in reply, before me as I write. The part relating
to my discovery runs as follows : " The considerations you adduce
relative to the proper motions of the stars are exceedingly curious and
interesting. Of late years catalogues have gone into much detail, and
w r ith such accuracy that these motions are of course much better known
to us than some twenty or thirty years ago. The community of proper
motion over large regions (of which you give a picture in Gemini and
Cancer) is most remarkable, and the coincidence of proper motion in
Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta Ursae Majoris, most striking.
Your promised paper on this subject cannot fail to be highly inter-
esting." 1

In a letter written on May 11, 1870, and referring not to another
letter of mine, but to my " Other "Worlds," Sir John Herschel remarked,
"The cases of star-drift such as that in Ursa Major are very striking,
and richly merit further careful examination."

My first public expression of opinion respecting the star-drift in
Ursa Major was conveyed in the following terms : " If these five stars
indeed form a system (and I can see no other reasonable explanation

1 He proceeds as follows (the passage is removed from the main text, as relating to a
different branch of the subject): "I cannot say that I am at all surprised at its being
found that the average proper motions of stars of small magnitudes are not less than those
of large, considering (as I have always done) that the range of individual magnitude (i. e.,
lustre) must be so enormous that multitudes of very minute stars may in fact be our very
near neighbors." Compare my paper on " The Sun's Journey through Space," above re-
ferred to, which paper also deals with the point touched on in the next sentence of Sir John
Herschel's letter : " Your remark on the conclusion I have been led to draw, relative to
the small effect of the correction due to the sun's proper motion, will require to be very
carefully considered, and I shall of course give it every attention."

230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of so singular a community of motion), the mind is lost in contemplat-
ing the immensity of the periods which the revolutions of the compo-
nents of the system must occupy. Madler had already assigned to the
revolution of Alcor around Mizar (Zeta Ursse) a period of more than
7,000 years. But, if these-stars, which appear so close to the naked eye,
have a period of such length, what must be the cyclic periods of stars
which cover a range of several degrees upon the heavens?" (From
Zeta to Beta is a distance on the heavens of about 19.) "The pecu-
liarities of the apparent proper motions of the stars," I added, " lend a
new interest to the researches which Dr. Huggins is preparing to make
into the stellar proper motions of recess and approach."

But a few months later, in a lecture delivered at the Royal Institu-
tion, I pointed out more definitely what result I expected from Dr. Hug-
gins's researches. " Before long," I said, " it is likely that the theory
of star-drift will be subjected to a crucial test, since spectroscopic
analysis afibrds the means of determining the stellar motions of recess
and approach. The task is a very difficult one, but astronomers have
full confidence that in the able hands of Dr. Huggins it will be suc-
cessfully accomplished. I await the result with full confidence that it
will confirm my views."

It will be manifest that if the five large stars in Ursa are really
travelling in the same direction, then, when Dr. Huggins applied the
new method of research, he would find that, so far as motion in the
line of sight was concerned, these stars were either all receding or all
approaching at the same rate, or else that they were all alike in show-
ing no signs of any motion, either of recess 01 approach.

But in the mean time there was another kind of evidence which the
spectroscope might give, and on which I formed some expectations.
If these stars form a single system, it seemed likely that they would all
be found to be constituted alike in other words, that their spectra
would be similar. Not, indeed, that associated stars always display
such similarity. Indeed, the primary star of a binary system not un-
frequently exhibits a spectrum unlike that of the small companion.
But the five large stars in Ursa, being obviously primary members of
the scheme they form, might be expected to resemble each other in
general constitution. Moreover, since the stars not included in the set
viz., Alpha and Eta might be regarded as probably very much
nearer or very much farther away, it was to be expected (though not
so confidently) that these two stars would have spectra unlike the
spectrum common (on the supposition) to the five stars.

Now, Secchi announced that the stars of the Great Bear, with the
exception of Alpha, have spectra belonging to the same type as the
spectrum of the bright stars Sirius, Vega, Altair, Regulus, and Rigel.
This result was in very pleasing accordance with the anticipations I
had formed, except that I should rather have expected to find that the
star Eta had a spectrum unlike that of the remaining five stars of the

DRIFTING OF THE STARS. 231

Septentriones. Moreover, as the stars belonging to this particular
type are certainly in many cases, and probably in all, very large orbs '
(referring here to real magnitude, not to apparent brilliancy), the in-
ference seemed fairly deducible that the drifting five stars are not
nearer than Alpha, and therefore (since we have seen that it is unlikely
that all the Septentriones lie at nearly the same distance) the inference
would be that the drifting stars lie much farther away than the rest.

It remained, however, that the crucial test of motion-measurement
should be applied.

In the middle of May last I received a letter from Dr. Huggins an-
nouncing that the five are all receding from the earth. In all, the hy-
drogen line called F is " strong and broad." In the spectrum of Alpha
the line F is "not very strong " (so faint, indeed, Dr. Huggins afterward
informed me, that he preferred to determine the star's motion by one
of the lines due to magnesium in the star's atmosphere). He found
that Alpha is approaching. As to Eta, Dr. Huggins remarked that
the line at F is " not so strong or so broad " as in the spectrum of
" the five." He was uncertain as to the direction of motion, and men-
tioned that " the star was to be observed again." He subsequently
found that this star is receding. But, whereas all the five are receding
at the enormous rate of thirty miles per second, Eta's recession was
so much smaller that, as we have seen, Dr. Huggins was unable to
satisfy himself at a single observation that the star was receding at alL

It will be seen that my anticipations were more than fulfilled.
The community of recessional motion was accompanied by evidence
which might very well have been wanting viz., by the discovery that
neither Eta nor Alpha shared in the motion. Moreover, the physical
association between the five stars was yet further evidenced by the
close resemblance found to exist between the spectra of the five stars.
Dr. Huggins remarked in his letter : " My expectation had nothing to
do with the above results. At the moment, I thought Alpha was in-
cluded in the group, and was therefore a little disappointed when I
found Beta going the opposite way."

We have at length, then, evidence, which admits of no question
so obviously conclusive is it to show not only that star-drift is a re-
ality, but that subordinate systems exist within the sidereal system.
We moreover recognize an unquestionable instance of a characteristic
peculiarity of structure in a certain part of the heavens. For, though
star-drift exists elsewhere, yet every instance of star-drift is quite dis-
tinct in character the drift in Cancer unlike that in Ursa, and both
these drifts unlike the drifts in Taurus, and equally unlike the drift in
Aries or Leo. Much more, indeed, is contained in the fact now placed

1 Sirius demonstrably gives out much more light than our sun, and according to the
best determinations of his distance he must (if his surface is of equal intrinsic lustre)
be from 2,000 to 8,000 times larger than the sun. Vega, Altair, and Rigel, are also cer-
tainly larger and may be very much larger than our sun.

23 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

beyond question, than appears on the surface. Rightly understood, it
exhibits the sidereal system itself as a scheme utterly unlike what has
hitherto been imagined. The vastness of extent, the variety of struct-
ure, the complexity of detail, and the amazing vitality, on which I
have long insisted, are all implied in that single and, as it were, local
feature which I had set as a crucial test of my theories. I cannot
but feel a strong hope, then, that those researches which my theories
suggest, and which I have advocated during the last few years, will
now be undertaken by willing observers. The system of star-gauging,
which the Herschels did little more than illustrate (as Sir W. Herschel
himself admitted), should be applied with telescopes of different power
to the whole heavens, 1 not to a few telescopic fields. Processes of
charting, and especially of equal surface charting, should be multi-
plied. Fresh determinations of proper motions should be systemati-
cally undertaken. All the evidence, in fine, which we have, should be
carefully examined, and no efforts should be spared by which new evi-
dence may be acquired. Only when this has been done will the true
nature of the galaxy be adequately recognized, its true vastness
gauged, its variety and complexity understood, its vitality rendered
manifest. To obtain, indeed, an absolutely just estimate of these mat-
ters, may not be in man's power to compass ; but he can hope to ob-
tain a true relative interpretation of the mysteries of the stellar sys-
tem. If any astronomer be disposed to question the utility or value
of such researches, let him remember that Sir W. Herschel, the great-
est of all astronomers, set "a knowledge of the constitution of the
heavens" as "the ultimate object of his observations." Popular Sci-
ence Review.

-+++-

HOW WAS HERCULANEUM DESTROYED?

By M. BEULE, of the French Institute.

TRANSLATED FROM THE REVUE DES DEUX SONDES.

HISTORY points out marked differences between Herculaneum
and Pompeii. The first, settled by the Greeks, was devoted to
intellectual culture and refined leisure ; the latter, of Oscan origin,
concerned itself solely about commerce ; one was inhabited by Ro-
mans of fortune, and loaded with favors ; the other endured the hos-
tility of Rome, and often incurred her chastisement. There is reason
to believe that Herculaneum gave a model for many details of civili-
zation to Pompeii, and we may safely assert that Pompeii taught Her-
culaneum nothing. Besides, the earthquake which was so fatal to

1 This is a work in which telescopes of every order of power would be useful. The
observations, also, would be very easily made and would tell amazingly.

HOW WAS HERCULANEUM DESTROYED? 233

Pompeii in the year 63, under Nero, did ITerculaneum no injury ; so
that there a part of the buildings anterior to the empire, and houses
of earlier style, which implies purer taste, must have been preserved.
This conclusion is strengthened at the present day by the beauty of
those objects collected at Herculaneum, and will be settled beyond
question whenever the city itself shall be restored to light.

What was the fate of Herculaneum during the eruption of A. d.
79 ? What special phenomena were displayed on that side of Vesu-
vius ? What causes buried a nourishing city in an instant out of sight
of the inhabited world ? It has been proved that Pompeii suffered an
interment so incomplete that after a few days its inhabitants could
recognize their dwellings, could encamp above and clear them out ;
Herculaneum, on the contrary, was buried so deep that the next day
it was impossible to trace a vestige of it. The ready answer to all
these questions usually is : " Lava worked all the ruin. Herculaneum
was swallowed up under eighty feet of lava. If works of art, bronzes
and pictures have been miraculously preserved, it was due to the im-
penetrable shield of lava, yielding only to a cutting tool, that pro-
tected them from the ravages of time." The explanation is tempt-
ing. Fancy pictures waves of fire rolling upon the city, rising like
the tidal swell, surging in through doors and windows, sweeping around
and moulding every thing, then slowly cooling, and preserving for
posterity treasures that labor must unveil, repaid by their recovery
in unharmed beauty.

This is really the opinion that all Europe holds, and even at Na-
ples almost all visitors of Herculaneum declare that they hav' 5 '-" ^ed
the lava with their own hands ; and, in books written on the^^M^vian
cities, more than one traveller affirms as positively that the difficulty
of cutting the lava presents the chief obstacle to the disinterment of
Herculaneum. How can one venture to meet such convictions by as-
serting that watei-, not fire, overwhelmed Herculaneum ; that it was
not a torrent of glowing lava, but a flood of mud and wet ashes that
filled the city ? How uproot a prepossession so deep that the works of
geologists and savants have failed to shake it ? Dufrenoy proved that
water alone swept over Herculaneum heaps of scoria and pumice
crumbled from La Somma ; Dyer, Overbeck, Ernst Breton, and others,
have affirmed in various languages, to no purpose, that nothing but
ashes, wet to paste and hardened by pressure, covered over Hercu-
laneum : no one heeded them, and the blame continues to be thrown
on the lava, which makes excavation so costly and laborious.

But every one knows the nature and effects of lava. Lava is an in-
candescent mass, of so high temperature as to absorb and melt all fu-
sible bodies ; forced out from the fissures of the crater by irresistible
expansive power, this mass rolls on in a fiery river, burning up every
thing in its path ; cooling slowly, it grows as hard as porphyry or ada-
mant. Now, I appeal to the recollection of all who have ascended

234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Vesuvius during those lava-flows that succeed an eruption, and con-
tinue for weeks or months even. What haj)pens to-day, if studied
with a little good sense and reflection, can enlighten us on what must
have hapjiened eighteen centuries ago. For instance, we have seen
how slow lava-currents, remote from the vent of escape and cooled by-
contact with the ground and air, flowing around country-houses, level
and consume them, with a sudden flaming up of roofs and floors. How
could the stuccoes and the marble statues of Herculaneum remain un-
harmed, in their original color, free from crack or splinter, if they had
been enveloped in lava ? We have seen metals by mere contact melt
and vanish in that viscous paste, which glows like fused iron or glass
gushing from a furnace. How, then, do we find in Herculaneum articles
of silver, bronze statues, leaden vases, with their shapes, their relief,
their ornaments and polish uninjured ? The bronzes of Herculaneum
are even better preserved than those of Pompeii, being distinguished
by their freshness of surface, their lustre, and dark and even tone,
while the Pompeian bronzes have been attacked by sulphurous fumes,
and eaten on the surface, and have taken on an agreeable ultra-marine
blue tint, like that of sulphate of copper.

Other facts of the same kind are quite as puzzling. The guides
amuse strangers with an experiment ; breaking off a bit of lava with an
iron-pointed stick, they let it cool on the ground, and stamp a penny
on it, to get an impression of the coin. If the trial is made too quickly,
the copper melts, and the coin, instead of leaving its image, disappears
and mingles with the rest of the lava. How, then, do we find at Her-
cula ,-, ~.rn so many ancient silver or copper coins, not merely un-
desL-^-i, but not even changed, by those waves of lava which attain
a concentrated heat beyond all measurement ? We know,4oo, that the
ancients used colors with a mineral base in decorating their buildings ;
they will stand dampness from the earth, but the touch of fire changes
their nature ; the partial fires that have left traces in Pompeii have in
some places altered the blue to gray, and the red to yellow, and Nea-
politan artists in our time well understand the very simple method of
producing what is called burnt-yellow, by exposing minium to the
action of fire. How, then, do the houses uncovered at Herculaneum
present such exquisite colors ? How is it that the ultra-marine blue
and the vermilion-red, covering whole walls, keep a freshness and
smoothness that contact with a burning substance must necessarily
have destroyed ? Then, too, on Vesuvius I have seen trees just
touched by the lava-flow take fire like matches, throw out a blazing jet,
and fall at once, as if struck with lightning. Why have the beams and
floors and sills of Herculaneum, instead of crumbling into ashes, slowly
decayed in their places in the bosom of the earth, leaving no holes nor
fractures ? Why are they found blackened like oak-timbers that have
been sunk in the mud for ages, like the piers of bridges and the piles
of old docks at Carthage, and the wood brought down by the Jordan

HOW WAS HERCULANEUM DESTROYED? 235

and thrown out by the Dead Sea, saturated in it with chloride of
sodium? How is it that every thing proves their decomposition to
come only from the effects of time ? How has the wood kept its character
and color in those parts pierced by spikes and nails, in other words,
protected from dampness by iron rust ? How do we find manuscripts
written on the soft fibres of papyrus-reed, when lava must infallibly
have consumed them, and dispersed their ashes like those of a sheet of
paper thrown on burning coals ? Why has this kind lava, in like
manner, respected fruits, nuts, almonds, linen, silk, lamp-wicks found in
hundreds, and so many very combustible articles which have merely
turned black, when they usually vanish, without the least trace, in the
feeblest flame ?

This refutation by absurdity might be urged with multiplied argu-
ments. Indeed, very slight reflection suffices to show that fire could
not have played any part in the destruction of Herculaneum, and that
if lava, the most terrible destroying agent next to lightning, had made
its way into the city, we should scarcely recognize a few blackened
stones, smashed bricks, and calcined marbles. But, to say all in a
word, I state that on a late tour I examined the ground of Herculane-
um, in the parts made accessible by excavation, with particular care.
I could not find a square inch of lava ! Every thing is ashes, nothing
but ashes, and these ashes have been hardened by three agents wa-
ter, pressure, and time. It> is exactly this hardness, which is not to be
conceived of as very great, that has deceived visitors, particularly in
the underground galleries dug out in exploring the theatre. The de-
scent is by stairways damp with exudations from the streets of Por-
tici ; overhead is heard the rolling of vehicles ; we pass through tun-
nels polished with rubbing ; we see on the smoky arches the smudge of
torches, collecting for centuries ; we shudder at the appalling gloom,
and seem buried in the bowels of the earth. In a word, the passage
impresses the imagination as strange and awful, and we reassure our-
selves perforce with the thought that these galleries are hewn in lava,
and beyond danger of caving in ; but a scratch of the nail on this
supposed lava betrays the fact that it is friable and yielding, being-
only hardened ashes. In one of these tunnels, which are pretty regu-
larly cut out, the guides show the print of a human face. We wonder
at the unchanging solidity of a substance which once so finely moulded
the objects it surrounded. Still, if you try to cut with a knife, not
into the impression itself, but into the parts next it, you are amazed to
find that nothing is easier, and that it is all mere solidified ashes.

One street of Herculaneum, in the outskirts, on the side nearest the
sea, has been regularly excavated, and several houses cleared out
that called the house of the skeleton, the house of Argus, some shops,
a slave-prison, and others all is in the open air, and one can walk as
in the streets of Pompeii. The space thus disentombed is from 3,000
to 4,000 square yards, a large-enough area for observations of the

236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kind we are pursuing. Now no fragments of lava, not a vestige of
it, are to be found there, nor any trace of injury caused by lava. On
the contrary, on examining the perpendicular surfaces surrounding
this four-sided space, every thing is ashes ; 30 or 36 feet deep of
ashes ; only at the upper part a few bits of coal are seen, ejections
from the volcano, layers corresponding with the modern eruptions, and
separated by layers of vegetable earth which have had time to be de-
posited between the several eruptions. Look at the fragments of stuff
dug out of one of those caveras examine them you will still find
nothing in them but ashes, bi'oken up by the pick as readily as clay or
pumice.

But it may be asked, How could ashes which are light as dust, and
with no coherence, gain hardness enough to take durable impressions,
to form supporting arches, and to bear so delusive a look of solidity as
to be taken for lava ? The ready answer is found in the example of
Pompeii, and the casts found in the cellars of Diomed's house ; but
similar and even more striking cases may help us to understand such
power of adhesion. In the valleys of Monte Cavo there are ledges of
peperino, formed by the filling up of volcanic ashes mingled with wa-
ter. This compost grew so dense that the Romans used it for building-
material. The Catacombs of Rome, which are nothing else than a vol-
canic tufa, that is, sand and pulverized fragments, compressed by time
and their own weight, are in like manner friable, easy to cut, easier to
rub down, and yet galleries are dug in them, arches, ceilings, stairways,
numberless tombs, and as many as five stories of excavations, beneath
each other ! Nor must it be forgotten that pumice, which furnishes
so excellent a water-lime, was taken originally from Pozzuola, near
Vesuvius, and is nothing more than a ferruginous clay, once subjected
to high volcanic temperature, and ejected in a shower of ashes. I re-
call, too, the great altar at Olympia, described by the traveller Pausa-
nias, which was formed entirely from the ashes of the victims sacrificed
to Jupiter. After every sacrifice the priests moistened the ashes with
water from the Alpheus, smeared the altar with them, and so enlarged
it gradually until, during ten centuries, the structure gained 125 feet in
circuit, and 22 in height. Indeed, any one who has seen water flung
into a fireplace may judge of the toughness of ashes when mixed with
liquids ; much more must the volcanic ashes of the Roman Carnpagna,
of Naples and Santorin be suited for making cements.

For the rest, should this explanation only half satisfy the reader,
there are the facts, and not to be denied. I defy any careful observer,
examining the parts of Herculaneum hitherto brought to light, to dis-
cover any thing else in them than ashes. It may be that, on the surface
of the existing soil of Portici, which has been raised at least 60 feet,
marks of lava-flows are traceable which belong to modern eruptions,
especially toward Resina. Neither can I affirm that, in some unex-
plored quarter of Herculaneum, the presence of lava may not some day

HOW WAS HERCTJLANETJM DESTROYED? 237

be ascertained ; but, as the present question is only about what we know,
that is, the parts of the city which are visible, or examined already, I
repeat that not the hundredth part of a square yard of lava can be found
at Herculaneum, and that ashes are the only thing there is there.

The problem to be solved is, how so huge a mass of ashes was ever
piled up above the unfortunate city, and, since water played so fearful
a part in the catastrophe, whence that enormous quantity of water
came. It is clear, in the first place, that these ashes were thrown out
by the volcano. Judging from the character of the region, and from
the vents formed at the mouth of the crater, the pumice-stones were
all hurled toward Pompeii and Stabise, while the ashes drifted toward
Herculaneum. Perhaps some allowance must be made for the wind
which separated these substances, and the convulsions which ejected
them irregularly. Then we must recollect that every very violent
eruption is attended by steam produced by the sudden contact of fire
with underground sheets of water. The origin of these sheets of water
and the effect of their sudden gush into the furnace of eruption have
been already explained. These vapors, exceeding the power of calcu-
lation in their volume and expansive force, condense at once on contact
with the atmosphere ; they cool, and fall again in torrents of rain. If
M. Fougire could demonstrate that in 1865, during an eruption by no
means extraordinary, there fell on the mountain, in 24 hours, 22,000
cubic metres of water, the number must be multiplied by five, or even
by ten, to represent that explosion of Vesuvius, A. D. 79, whose fury
has never been equalled. Without adopting the hypothesis of mud-
discharges from the crater, or citing the example of the volcanoes in
Java, which eject mire instead of water-spouts, we may affirm that such
volumes of water, mingling with the ashes and pulverized substances
thrown out by other vents, suddenly produced a liquid compost, either
in the air or on the ground they fell upon. The Neapolitans are fa-
miliar with a phenomenon of this sort, occurring more than once, though
under limited conditions. They call it " muddy lava," and their use
of the substantive would be correct if they always added the adjective,
in saying that Herculaneum was buried under lava. Herculaneum, in
fact, was buried by muddy lava, or, in simpler terms, by torrents of mud.

Moreover, these sudden rains, or, rather, deluges, pouring down from
the sky at each outburst of steam, swept along all the ashes that had
fallen on the slopes of the mountain, and carried them down upon the
plain ; an ash-avalanche rolled over Herculaneum. At the same time,
the rivers, which ran to the right and left of the city, ceased to flow
down to the sea. It has been explained how the coast was elevated,
and Pliny's ships kept off, by sudden new shoals preventing access to
the port of Resina. The effect of this lifting was to raise the mouths
of the two rivers, and throw back their waters on the city, and this
overflow added its share of mud, ashes, and vegetable matter. JSTor
must we omit the canals filled up, the sewers choked, the aqueducts

238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

shattered by the eai'thquake, and pouring their contents into the valley.
By degrees, as the mud settled in the streets, the courts, rooms, and
dwellings, the level of the water rose, new deposits gathered ; the ashes
falling in dense masses from the sky, grew saturated, and increased
the rising heaps. Thus, in a few days, perhaps a few hours, a flourish-
ing city was swallowed up, under an average thickness of sixty feet of
mud. Those of the inhabitants who did not take flight at once, were
drowned. In vain they climbed to the upper stories, then to the ter-
races and roofs they perished at last, leaving the impressions of their
bodies in the fluid ashes.

When the waters had drained away, nothing was to be seen but a
grayish hillock, seamed on the surface by the streamlets which had
been the last to dry up. Nothing rose above the surface, neither tem-
ple-fagades, nor theatre-walls, nor tops of the loftiest buildings. Un-
der a shell which would harden and thicken every day, Herculaneum
was buried far otherwise than Pompeii had been. It was not fifteen
feet of pumice stones that filled the ground floors and first stories
of the houses up to the windows ; it was 70 or 80 feet of compact
matter that hid even the site of the city. The inhabitants who es-
caped must afterward have returned, as the Pompeians did ; but, less
fortunate, they could not revisit their homes, buried beneath their
reach in unknown depths, without a trace to indicate them. Signs of
excavation are thought to have been detected outside the city, above
the rich villa in which the moderns have recovered 1,756 rolls of pa-
pyrus, but the owners did not dig deep enough, and their attempt
was fruitless, as is proved by the art treasures discovered a century
ago, which they would not have failed to carry away. It is likely that
the chief impediment to digging, next to the depth, was the moisture
of an alluvial deposit, in which any work soon became impossible.

But after sixteen centuries the moisture had evaporated, and the
muddy lava at this day is compact and resistant enough to permit ex-
cavations in all directions throughout it. The surface has been re-
stored to cultivation and covered with houses ; Portici and Resina are
populous and flourishing towns. New eruptions wrapped Hercula-
neum in a thicker pall, and it seemed forever blotted out from the
world, until, in 1684, a baker, in digging a well, came upon ancient
ruins those of the theatre and brought the buried city again to light.

-*-

SKETCH OF GENERAL SIR EDWARD SABINE.

WE furnish our readers this month with an excellent likeness
of the venerable President of the Royal Society, England,
who will have a permanent and distinguished place in the history
of science through his researches on terrestrial magnetism, of which
he may be regarded as the pioneer explorer. He is of Irish ex-

^'.mwSSWSW^^^^v^S^N'

GENERAL SIR EDWARD SABINE.

President of the Royal Society.

SKETCH OF GENERAL SIR EDWARD SABINE. 239

traction, though descended from an ancient Italian family, and was
born in October, 1788. He entered the army, and became second-
lieutenant at the age of fifteen, captain at twenty-five, colonel at
sixty-three, major-general in 1859, at the age of seventy-one, and
was created Knight-Commander of the Order of the Bath, in 1869,
at the age of eighty-one. During the war with the United States he
took part in the campaign of 1814, on the Niagara frontier, when he
commanded the batteries at the siege of Fort Erie. He first became
known to the public by the part which he took in the Arctic Explora-
tions in 1818-'19. He here made a series of magnetic observations of
great value, an account of which was published in two papers, which
he communicated to the Royal Society on his return. These and other
papers, printed in the Philosophical Transactions, demonstrated several
new and important facts relative to the variations of the magnetic
needle, and it was the results of the observations in these northern
voyages which gave the first great impulse to the systematic study of
the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism. The strong desire of con-
tinuing the investigation of this and other branches of experimental
physics, prompted him to undertake a series of voyages to places be-
tween the equator and the north-pole, making at each point observa-
tions on the length of the seconds-pendulum, and on the dip and inten-
sity of the magnetic needle. The fruits of these labors were of high
importance, and were published, along with other information, in 1825,
and from this period his history is that of a studious investigator into
the laws of and phenomena of Nature. In 1827 he was chosen secre-
tary of the Royal Society, which office he filled until 1830. In 1836
he communicated to the British Association at Bristol his observations
on the declination and intensity of the magnetic force in Scotland, and
to the same Association he delivered at Liverpool a report on the
variations of magnetic intensity at different parts of the earth's sur-
face. His labors have led to the discovery of the laws of " magnetic
storms," of the connection between certain magnetic phenomena and
the changes of the solar spots (already referred to), and of the mag-
netic action of the sun and moon on the earth. General Sabine de-
serves almost the sole credit of extending the body of known facts in
magnetic science, by the establishment of magnetic observatories in
all parts of the world, and the collation of the enormous mass of facts
thus acquired. He has contributed, to various scientific societies, nu-
merous papers which display great powers of research. He edited
Mrs. Sabine's translation of Humboldt's " Cosmos," published in
1849-'58.

Colonel Sabine was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1818,
and President of the British Association for the Advancement of Sci-
ence, at its Belfast meeting, in 1852. He succeeded Sir Benjamin
Brodie, as President of the Royal Society, in 1861, and continues to
discharge the duties of this office, at the advanced age of eighty-four.

240

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SOCIOLOGICAL SCIENCE II? ITS LATER
STATEMENTS.

THAT man, as an individual, exem-
plifies the action of law in the vari-
ous parts of his nature, and is hence the
subject of science, everybody now un-
derstands : but that men collectively, or
in social relations, are governed by nat-
ural laws which are capable of scien-
tific investigation, is only beginning
to be seen and admitted. If there
are natural laws which determine the
social state, it is certainly of the
highest importance that they should
be known. Legislation, philanthropy,
and all projects of social amelioration
and reform, must be but futile and
quackish expedients, so long as men
are ignorant of the natural forces, and
orderly method, by which human so-
ciety has been originated and is regu-
lated. Social phenomena have their
laws like all other phenomena, and it
is the sole business of science to eluci-
date and declare them. Science has
no schemes to propose, no reforms
to carry out. Whether society is bad
or good, rude or cultivated, getting
better or getting worse, developing or
perishing, it is all the same: science
simply takes note of the facts, and
draws from them the general principles
to which social changes conform, and
the systematic statement of which con-
stitutes true social science.

It is from this point of view that
the subject has been approached by
Herbert Spencer, who is now acknowl-
edged to be the foremost living exposi-
tor of pure scientific sociology. Some
confusion has arisen in the public mind
in regard to the various works bearing
upon this subject which he has under-
taken, and for the benefit of those in-
terested we propose to explain his

method of dealing with it, as this may
prove instructive in relation to the
character of the inquiry itself.

Mr. Spencer was attracted to social
studies in his youth. His first publica-
tion was a pamphlet on the proper
sphere and functions of political govern-
ment, and his first book was a treatise
on society, known as " Social Statics."
It was a work of great originality and
power of statement, and its fundamen-
tal idea was that of his present philo-
sophical system, the idea of evolution ;
but it was only imperfectly worked out,
and the effect upon Mr. Spencer's mind
of preparing the volume was to con-
vince him that the whole question of
the natural laws of society would have
to be taken up in a more thorough and
comprehensive way, before the require-
ments of science could be satisfied. As
society is made up of men, its deepest
laws must be derived from the natures
of men. The first thing to be done,
therefore, was to inquire what there is
in the constitution of human nature
which must be known, before social ef-
fects can be understood. Man's nature
is twofold, vital and psychical ; and all
social phenomena are phenomena of
life and thought, which determine hu-
man actions. The laws of life give
rise to the science of Biology; the laws
of thought and feeling, which depend
upon life, give rise to the science of
Psychology ; and a knowledge of these
subjects forms the indispensable basis
of Sociology. So clear and close is
this dependence, and so comprehensive
and complex the investigation, that
Mr. Spencer soon saw he must give his
life to it, if it was to be adequately
done. He accordingly laid out his plan
of work in 1859, and commenced its
execution in 1860, allowing twenty

EDITOR'S TABLE.

241

years for its completion. His first vol-
ume was preliminary, and contained an
exposition of his method, under the title
of " First Principles." Then followed
two volumes of the "Principles of
Biology," which was succeeded by two
volumes of the " Principles of Psychol-
ogy." This work is just finished, and
takes him half through his undertaking.
He has now before him the subject of
Sociology, which he proposes to treat
in three volumes of the " Principles of
Sociology," to be commenced this win-
ter. His Philosophical Series will be
completed by two additional volumes
of the "Principles of Morality," as de-
duced from the whole system of facts
and principles established in the pre-
ceding works.

At this stage of his enterprise, Mr.
Spencer encounters certain difficulties
which have to be met by what we may
call side-undertakings works which
have an important bearing upon the
subject of Sociology, but are not prop-
erly parts of his philosophical system.
The articles that are appearing in The
Popular Science Monthly, and which,
when completed, will form a volume of
the International Scientific Series, are
designed to explain the nature, scope,
and claims of Social Science. Such are
the general doubt and misapprehension
regarding this subject, that Mr. Spen-
cer was induced to pause for a little at
this stage of his labors, and present
some considerations of the method and
subject-matter of Sociology which are
greatly needed by the public, and
which do not properly fall within the
course of his regular exposition. It is
important to make this explanation, as
the papers we have published have
been supposed, by some, to be a part
of his long-expected " Principles of So-
ciology."

Another of the difficulties of his un-
dertaking was foreseen by Mr. Spencer
several years ago, and has led to a
separate work, which, though indis-
pensable to the main plan, is neverthe-
vol. 11. 16

less of independent value, and of great
public importance. As the scientific
character of his philosophy is funda-
mentally inductive, the first work in
each department is the collection of
data on which inductions are to rest.
The data of Biology are accessible in
treatises on Natural History, where they
can be obtained in a digested and au-
thentic form, while any defects may be
supplied by special investigations. The
data of Psychology are also available in
scientific works upon that subject, and
the conditions for extending and veri-
fying them can be commanded any-
where. But, as respects its data, Soci-
ology is very different from these sci-
ences. Dealing with the phenomena
manifested by diverse races and com-
munities of men ; dealing with the de-
velopment of society, which is a prob-
lem of history ; dealing with those
facts of the social state which illus-
trate its natural laws ; and dealing,
moreover, by a scientific method, with
a great subject which has hitherto
been regarded as not amenable to that
method, the difficulty of gathering the
indispensable and pertinent facts for
such an inquiry was formidable. His-
tory has occupied itself with quite
other things than the record of such
facts. Travellers fill their pages with
chaffy gossip and egotistical narrative,,
and give but little attention to the
social facts which it is most desirable-
to know. Their observations are care-
less, and their statements loose and
often untrustworthy. Nobody has
taken pains to collect and sift from
the vast mass of historical rubbish and
the bulky litter of travellers the few
and scattered statements which throw-
light upon the laws of social life. Be-
fore there can be a science of Sociology
presenting the generalizations of sociaL
phenomena, there must first be an ac-
cumulation and a classification of its-
data. "What these are it is important
to understand, and, in a remarkable
passage of a review article published

242

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by Mr. Spencer in 1859/ he thus states
them :

That which constitutes History, proper-
ly so called, is in great part omitted from
works on the subject. Only of late years
have historiaus commenced giving us, in
any considerable quantity, the truly valu-
able information. As in past ages the king
was every thing and the people nothing,
so, in past histories, the doings of the king
fill the entire picture, to which the national
life forms but an obscure background. "While
only now, when the welfare of nations rath-
er than of rulers is becoming the dominant
idea, are historians beginning to occupy
themselves with the' phenomena of social
progress. The thing it really concerns us
to know is, the natural history of society.
"We want all facts which belp us to under-
stand how a nation has grown and organ-
ized itself. Among these, let us of course
have an account of its government ; with as
little as may be of gossip about the men
who officered it, and as much as possible
about the structure, principles, methods,
prejudices, corruptions, etc., which it ex-
hibited : and let this account include not
only the nature and actions of the central
government, but also those of local govern-
ments, down to their minutest ramifications.
Let us of course also have a parallel descrip-
tion of the ecclesiastical government its
organization, its conduct, its power, its rela-
tions to the State ; and, accompanying this,
the ceremonial, creed, and religious ideas
-not only those nominally believed, but those
really believed and acted upon. Let us at
the same time be informed of the control
exercised by class over class, as displayed in
social observances in titles, salutations,
and forms of address. Let us know, too,
what were all the other customs which regu-
lated the popular life out-of-doors and in-
doors, including those concerning the rela-
tions of the sexes, and the relations of
parents to children. The superstitions, also,
from the more important myths down to the
charms in common use,- should be indicated.
Next should come a delineation of the indus-
trial system: showing to what extent the
division of labor was carried ; bow trades
were regulated, whether by caste, guilds, or
otherwise; what was the connection be-
tween employers and employed ; what were
the agencies for distributing commodities ;
what were the means of communication;
what was the circulating medium. Aecom-

i"What Knowledge is most worth" (West-
minster Review).

pariying all which should be given an ac-
count of the industrial arts technically con-
sidered : stating the processes in use, and
the quality of the products. ' Further, the
intellectual condition of the nation in its
various grades should be depicted ; not only
with respect to the kind and amount of ed-
ucation, but with respect to the progress
made in science, and the prevailing manner
of thinking. The degree of {Esthetic cul-
ture, as displayed in architecture, sculpture,
punting, dress, music, poetry, and fiction,
should be described. Nor should there be
omitted a sketch of the daily lives of the
people their food, their homes, and their
amusements. And, lastly, to connect the
whole, should be exhibited the morals,
theoretical and practical, of all classes, as
indicated in their laws, habits, proverbs,
deeds. These facts, given with as muck
brevity as consists with clearness and ac-
curacy, should be so grouped and arranged
that they may be comprehended in their en-
semble, and contemplated as mutually-de-
pendent parts of one great whole. The aim
should be so to present them that men may
readily trace the consensus subsisting among
them, witb the view of learning what social
phenomena coexist with what others. And
then the corresponding delineations of suc-
ceeding ages should be so managed as to
show how each belief, institution, custom,
and arrangement, was modified, and how
the consensus of preceding structures and
functions was developed into the consensus
of succeeding ones. Such alone is the kind
of information, respecting past times, which
can be of service to the citizen for the reg-
ulation of his conduct. The only history
that is of practical value is, what may be
called Descriptive Sociology. And the
highest office which the historian can dis-
charge is that of so narrating the lives of
nations as to furnisb materials for a Com-
parative Sociology, and for the subsequent
determination of the ultimate laws to which
social phenomena conform.

In this statement of the missing ele-
ments of history, Mr. Spencer has out-
lined just that body of facts which are
indispensable as the foundation of a
valid social philosophy; and he fore-
saw that, before any such philosophy
can be constructed, these facts must be
systematically and exhaustively sup-
plied. The labor of their careful col-
lection could not fail to be enormous,
and its expense, together with their

EDITOR'S TABLE.

2 43

publication, heavy; yet it was essential
to the completeness of his system and of
immense importance to the progress of
knowledge, and Mr. Spencer did not
for a moment hesitate to undertake it.
lie first devised a system of tables suit-
ed to present the whole scheme of so-
cial facts, displayed by any community,
in such a manner that these facts can be
compared with each other at a glance,
while the social elements of different
communities can also be brought into
comparison with the greatest facility.
These Sociological Tables are marvels
of analytic skill, simplicity, and com-
prehensiveness ; and the command they
give over the results of investigation
is commensurate with the greatness of
the subject t# which they apply.

Having fixed upon a method of pres-
entation, Mr. Spencer divided the com-
munities of mankind into three great
groups : the existing savage races of
Asia, Africa, and America ; the exist-
ing civilized races of "Western Europe ;
and the extinct civilizations of Egypt,
Palestine, Greece, Eome, and Peru.
Five years ago he engaged an able
scholar a graduate of the University
of Edinburgh to devote himself to the
study of the savage races, and gather
from all the most reliable sources the
facts relating to their social state. The
Tables are then gradually filled in, and
each one becomes a summary, we might
almost say a map, of the social condi-
tion of the community to which it is
devoted. The first volume of the So-
ciological Tables will embrace descrip-
tions of some seventy or eighty of the
principal savage tribes, and will be ac-
companied by an octavo volume of ex-
tracts from the authorities consulted,
and on which the summary of the Ta-
bles rests. This portion of the under-
taking is now nearly completed. An-
other able scholar also an Edinburgh
graduate has been for some years en-
gaged upon the existing civilizations,
the results of which will be published
in a second volume of Tables and the

second accompanying volume of au-
thorities, and this work is also well ad-
vanced. A German historical student
has also taken up the extinct civiliza-
tions, and will prepare the third volume
upon this division of the subject. We
shall thus have the full realization of
what Mr. Spencer pointed out many
years ago, in the above-quoted extract,
as a great desideratum, and which will
create the new and important science
of Descriptive Sociology. It is hardly
necessary to say that such a work will
stand upon its own merits, and have a
general usefulness that will no way de-
pend upon Mr. Spencer's philosophical
doctrines.

A CORRECTICX.

Mr. Editor. In one of the late num-
bers of your periodical, I observe that
you say, in casually alluding to my Chi-
cago Address, that I treat the doctrine
which classes mental and physical forces
in the same category as being "hereti-
cal." There is but one sense in which
the word "heretical" can be properly
understood, or even understood at all
and that is, the sense of opposition to
the prevailing religious belief. Under-
standing the word in this sense, there
can be no difference of opinion what-
ever, among any of the parties to this
discussion, as to the " heresy " involved
in the doctrine in question. The doc-
trine is as much heretical in your view,
and in Mr. Herbert Spencer's, as it is in
mine.

But, the inference which the reader
is left necessarily to draw from your
remark is, that I attempted to contro-
vert the doctrine, on the ground that it
is heretical a thing which I did not do
at all. I did not even, if I remember
aright, take the trouble to remark that
the doctrine is an heretical doctrine, that
being a thing so obvious that it may be
allowed to "go without saying." My
actual argument was that, in assuming
the equivalency and convertibility of
mental and physical forces, we are una-

P44

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

voidably led to conclusions which con-
tradict (not religious dogmas, of which
I said not a word, but) well-established
principles of Physics themselves.

Your reference to my Address was
so casual and slight, that it may hardly
seem sufficient to justify this seriousness
of remonstrance, but, slight as it was,
it placed me wholly wrong before the
readers of the Monthly, the greater
number of whom have probably not
seen my Address.

I am, very respectfully,

F. A. P. Barnard.

Columbia College, October 9, 1872.

LITERARY NOTICES.

A Handbook of Chemical Technology, by
Eudolf Wagner, Ph. D., Professor of
Chemical Technology at the University
of Wurtzburg. Translated and edited
from the eighth German edition, with
Extensive Additions, by Wm. Crook.es,
F. E. S.

Technology is the term now generally
applied to the applications of the principles
of science to the arts of industry. The
earth in its matter and its forces is a treas-
ury of material for the service of humanity.
These materials furnish the aliment by
which our bodies are daily nourished, the
textures with which we are clad, the build-
ings that shelter us, and the innumerable
objects of use and pleasure that minister to
the service of civilized man. The transfor-
mations of matter constitute the great busi-
ness of mankind in all stages of its develop-
ment. In the lowest stage they are few in
number, crude and imperfect in form, and
wasteful both of material and of power
applied. Nothing is understood, and blind
groping leads to scanty and uncertain re-
sults. For every particle of matter is bound
in the meshes of inexorable law, and the
sole condition on which refractory Nature
can be conquered and put to use, is that of
knowledge. Science creates this knowledge,
and thus becomes the guide of industry.
The office of science in directing the opera-
tions of labor is now the great fact of civil-
ization, and it is daily becoming of more
importance to all classes of the community.

Processes are daily becoming more expedi-
tious and more perfect ; the uses of things
are more extended ; new objects of value
are created ; waste-products are utilized ;
and the economy of effort in production
vastly augmented. There is still great de-
ficiency of scientific knowledge on the part
of artisans ; but large manufacturing estab-
lishments have their scientific directors and
advisers, while the movement for extended
technical education is participated in by all
the leading nations of the world.

Technology, though always grounded in
science and starting from it, is not in itself
a science like astronomy or mechanics, that
is, a body of inductive truths applying to
specific divisions of natural phenomena,
nor is it mainly concerned with true scientific
work which is the elucidation of the laws
of phenomena. It begin* where science
leaves off, or rather at the highest point
which it has attained, and turns scientific
results to practical account. Nevertheless,
technology is by no means passive in the
research after new truths. Its office being
to carry out, or to verify, on a comprehen-
sive scale, the results of pure scientific in-
vestigation, it cannot fail to react power-
fully upon the work of original investiga-
tion. It is constantly putting questions,
wanting further explanations, and demand-
ing more light ; and by thus forcing tangi-
ble problems upon the scientist, under press-
ure of great interests involved, it both
stimulates research and furnishes the ex-
perimenter with what he most wants a
definite subject to be worked out. The
peril of the technologist of falling into rou-
tine, and following blind rules, is thus con-
stantly checked and more or less counter-
acted by the influence of his own diffi-
culties, and the need of frequent appeal to
those whose business it is to explain them.

The raw materials of Nature, which re-
quire transformation before they can be
available for human use, take two routes to
this destination. They either go by the
mechanical way, or by the path of chemis-
try, and so we have two kinds of technology
mechanical and chemical. Mechanical
technology deals with the outward changes
of natural products, or alterations of form
only, as, for example, the joiner and carpen-
ter working in wood ; the making of iron

LITERARY NOTICES.

245

rails, slieath-metal, and wire ; the casting
of iron, zinc, and alloys of copper, into
various objects ; the spinning and weaving
of various fibres, flax, cotton, jute, to be-
come materials of greater value ; also the
manufacturing of paper from rags, of horn
into combs, and of bristles into brushes
all these operations belong to this section.

Chemical technology, on the other hand,
as Dr. Wagner observes, "deals with the
operations by which the raw material is not
only changed in its form, but especially as
regards its nature ; such, for instance, is
the case with the extraction of metals from
their ores ; the conversion of lead into
white-lead and sugar of lead (acetate of
lead) ; the conversion of sulphate of baryta
into chloride of barium and baryta white
(permanent or Chinese white) ; the conver-
sion of cryolite into sulphate of alumina,
alum, and soda ; the conversion of rock-
salt into sulphate and carbonate of soda ;
the conversion of carnollite and kainite into
chloride and bromide of potassium, sulphate
and carbonate of potassa ; the conversion
of copper into verdigris and sulphate of
copper ; the manufacture of paraffin, and
paraffin or crystal oils from peat, Boghead
coal, and lignite ; the preparation of kelp
and iodine from sea-weeds ; the manufac-
ture of stearine-candles (stearic acid prop-
erly) and soap from oils and fats ; the prep-
aration of sugar and alcohol from starch
the conversion of alcohol into vinegar ; the
brewing of beer from barley and hops ; the
manufacture of pig-iron into malleable iron
(puddling process), and the conversion of
malleable iron into steel ; the production
of gas, coke, and tar from coals ; the ex-
traction from the tar of such substances as
benzol, carbolic acid, aniline, anthracen,
asphalte, naphthaline ; the preparation of
tar-colors, as rosaniline, aniline blue, Man-
chester yellow, Magdala red, alizarine,
iodine green, picric acid, etc."

These illustrations of the scope and
character of chemical technology give also
an idea of the quality and range of Dr.
Wagner's book. For twenty years he
has held an eminent position in Germany
as an authority upon technology, and his
voluminous annual reports upon the sub-
ject have been the standards of reference
in regard to its progress. The first edition

of the present hand-book was published in
1850; and the eighth edition, which ap-
peared last year, is now translated, and is
the first that appears in English. The vol-
ume is a compact cyclopaedia of the most
recent and accurate knowledge on a wide
range of practical subjects, and will be of
great value to the industrial and manufac-
turing interests of the country.

The Great Problem : The Higher Ministry
of Nature viewed in the Light of Modern
Science and as an Aid to Advanced Chris-
tian Philosophy. By John R. Leifchild,
A. M., author of " Our Coal-Fields and
our Coal-Pits," " Cornwall : Its Mines
and Miners," etc., etc. With an introduc-
tion by Howard Crosby, D. D., LL. D.,
Chancellor of the University of New
York. 543 pages. George P. Putnam &
Sons.

Mr. Leifchild's book, entitled "The
Higher Ministry of Nature," has been re-
published by the Putnams, who have appro-
priately prefixed to it the title " The Great
Problem." The general aim of the author,
who is a semi-preacher and semi-geologist
of London, is to show that the higher teach-
ings of Nature confirm true religious faith
instead of subverting it ; but he feels it in-
cumbent upon him to go into all the contro-
verted questions of the time in theology,
metaphysics, and science, and is equally
ready in the treatment of theism, pantheism,
the unknowable, Spinozism, Darwinism, evo-
lution, morals, the correlation of forces,
protoplasm, and other knotty matters too
numerous to mention.

The American volume comes well com-
mended to the public. A gentleman high
in the honors of scholarship, and the re-
sponsibilities of education, and who presides
over our metropolitan university, has pre-
pared a compact and telling introduction to
Mr. Leifchild's volume, in which he assures
us that it is a work that strips off disguises
and goes to the core of things. His decisive
views are put in a narrow compass, so that
we are happily enabled to give them com-
plete to the readers of the Monthly. If any
should happen to think that the volume
lacks point and incisiveness, they will find
this quality eminently supplied in the
chancellor's brief prologue. When, how-
ever, he calls for a thousand such books, we

l\d

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

think he underestimates the potency of a
smaller number, for certainly, before a score
had made their appearance, " The Modern
Huxleys," whose skins are so ruthlessly
stripped off, would call upon their eternal
protoplasmic firmament to fall upon them
and hide them forever from the calamities
to come.

The author of the performance before us
is of a most conservative temper, and re-
frains from altering even by a hair's-breadth
any of the questions he has undertaken to
discuss. All the conflicts, confusions, and
obscurities of the subject, are faithfully re-
flected in his pages. For the alleged strip-
ping off of disguises and plucking out the
core of things, we have sought in vain, our
impression being that this is exactly what
the author has avoided. The assiduity with
which he leaves things as he finds them is
remarkable, and this trait gives a special
value to his treatment of the subject. What
is denounced by many people, Mr. Leifchild
denounces, and what is indorsed by many
other people, Mr. Leifchild indorses, and, if
it happen to be the same thing, that is none
of his business. Mr. Lyell's views of spe-
cies are quoted, and then it is naively
stated that Mr. Lyell has abandoned them
with Mr. Lyell be all the responsibility.
His book may therefore be taken as hav-
ing some value in indicating the various
drifts of public opinion. Mr. Herbert
Spencer is freely denounced by certain
parties as the prince of materialists and
the arch-enemy of all religion, because he
is the leading exponent of the doctrine of
evolution, and Mr. Leifchild joins in the
condemnation, and quotes President Porter,
of Yale, exultingly as the great " Spencer-
crusher." But there are others who main-
tain that the doctrine of evolution is not
necessarily atheistic, or materialistic, or
destructive of religion, and with these also
Mr. Leifchild is in equal accord. Lest the
readers of Chancellor Crosby's introduction
should be puzzled at this statement, and
perhaps a little skeptical about it, we quote
the following passages from " The Great
Problem :"

" The earnest and increased study of Na-
ture in our day leads us to much broader
views of Divine action than have been for-
merly entertained ; and to these views

natural science conducts ns without really
leading us away from the -beity. Just as we
now discover more and more geographically,
so we discern more and more theologically.
The earth is far larger to us than to Herodo-
tus ; Columbus was a far better geographer
than the Grecian ; but the discovery of
America did not annul the existence of Eng-
land or Spain. The discovery of new stars
does not extinguish the old stars, does not
darken one beam of their light. In like
manner, the discovery of Natural and Sexual
Selection, or rather the application of them,
does not limit the action of the Creator"
(p. 256). " The unity of Evolution, as com-
prehended by the Cosmos, is aptly described
by Mr. Spencer, who shows the higher gen-
eralization of our knowledge concerning
Evolution to be so far as we know the con-
stitution of the world one unceasing and
all-perfecting system, advancing everywhere
and in all. After elaborately working out
his own theory, Mr. Spencer suggestively
intimates that the laws of Evolution, con-
templated as holding true of each order of
existence separately, hold true when we con-
template the several orders of existences as
forming together one natural whole. While
we think of Evolution as divided into Astro-
nomic, Biologic, Psychologic, Sociolcgic,
etc., it may seem to a certain extent a coin-
cidence that the same law of metamorphosis
holds throughout all its divisions. But
when we recognize these divisions as mere
conventional groupings made to facilitate
the arrangement and acquisition of knowl-
edge when we regard the different exist-
ences with which they deal as component
parts of one Cosmos we see at once that
there are not several kinds of Evolution hav-
ing certain traits in common, but one Evolu-
tion going on everywhere after the same
manner. While any whole is evolving, there
is always going on an Evolution of the parts
into which it divides itself. This holds truo
of the totality of things as made up of parts
within parts, from the greatest down to the
smallest. We know that, while a physically
cohering aggregate like the human body is
getting larger, and taking on its general
shape, each of its organs is doing the same ;
that, while each organ is growing and becom-
ing unlike others, there is going on a differ-
entiation and integration of its component
tissues and vessels ; and that even the com-
ponents of these components are severally
increasing and passing into more definitely
heterogeneous structures. But we have not
duly remarked that, setting out with the
human body as a minute part, and ascending

LITERARY NOTICES.

247

from it to the greater parts, this simultaneity
of transformation is equally manifest ; that,
while each individual is developing, the
society of which he is an insignificant unit
is developing too ; that, while the aggregate
mass forming a society is becoming more
definitely heterogeneous, so likewise is that
total aggregate, the Earth, of which the soci-
ety is an inappreciable portion ; that, while
the Earth, which in bulk is not a millionth
of the solar system, progresses toward its
concentrated and complex structure, the solar
system similarly progresses ; and that even
its transforations are but those of a scarcely
appreciable portion of our sidereal system,
which has at the same time been going
through parallel changes" (p. 260). "The
more I can understand of the manner of
Evolution, the more am I impressed with its
unity of purpose, even in full view of its
multiplicity of parts, and manifoldness of
stages. From increase of such knowledge
I rise into higher perceptions. I see rhythm
in every motion on the earth, rhythm there-
fore in combined motions, a wonderful
rhythm pervading the Cosmos" (p. 259).
" What can we say of Evolution ? if we treat
it reverently, and not atheistically, we can
only say that it presupposes an evolver, and
that such an evolver must be Divine " (p.
257). " The manner of his unfolding is the
true and limited province of physical in-
quiry ; yet a noble province it is, rich in
results, fair with flowers by the wayside,
and abundant in promise for future ages.
Men are observers of natural development ;
whether or not included in it ; they watch
its progress in other existences with deep
interest. Every advance in it is fitted to
impress the beholder with admiration, and
to direct him not only to the advance itself,
but to convert him from a mere interpreter
of stage after stage into an obedient ser-
vant and reverent worshipper of the grand
Evolver."

The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons,
and Ornaments, of Great Britain, by
John Evans, F. S. A., Honorary Secre-
tary of the Geological and Numismatic
Societies of London, etc., etc.

The author of this work is the highest
authority in England perhaps the highest
in the world upon the subject of which it
treats. A gentleman of extensive means
and a laborious student, he has taken up
that "great division of Prehistoric Archce-
ology which deals with the vestiges of man
in the age of stone, and in the present vol-

ume we have the matured and comprehen-
sive results of his inquiries. He has con-
centrated his main attention upon England,
and given an exhaustive presentation of the
evidence that has now been gathered, re-
garding the primitive state of the inhabi-
tants of that island, when their implements
of war and peace were chiefly constructed
of flint. The volume is a valuable contribu-
tion to the obscure but interesting question
of the antiquity of man, and the primeval
conditions of his life. Mr. Evans is not a
partisan, or a propagandist of any extreme
views upon this subject, but deals with it
simply as a scientific question, to be eluci-
dated by the painstaking accumulation of
the relics of antiquity w T hich yet remain, and
which are becoming more varied and abun-
dant with increasing search and observation.
He ha3 figured in his pages about 800 ob-
jects arrow-heads, daggers, knives, axes,
hammers, adzes, picks, chisels, gouges,
drills, scrapers, whetstones, stone-vessels,
buttons, rings, necklaces, bracelets, and
various other things stating their locality
and under what circumstances they were
found. Great care has been taken with the
illustrations, Mr. Evans having spared no
expense in procuring the best artistic talent
in order to secure the highest accuracy of
representation. The book is valuable for the
fidelity of its preparation, both in a scientific
and artistic point of view, and, as it contains
most of the information at present available
with regard to the class of antiquities of
which it treats, it will at once take eminent
rank among treatises upon this branch of
the natural history of man.

A Manual of Microscopic Mounting,
with Notes on the Collection and
Examination of Objects. By John
II. Martin. Philadelphia : Lindsay &
Blakiston, 1872.

The necessity of the microscope to the
naturalist and physician, and its wide em-
ployment as a means of recreation and
study by the non-professional, have created
a demand for something that shall serve as
a guide in the delicate operations connected
with its use. So far as the management of
the instrument itself is concerned, this has
been supplied in various treatises ; but, with
the exception of incidental directions, wide-

248

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

ly scattered, and therefore not readily ac-
cessible, we do not remember to have seen
any thing recent that would help the stu-
dent in the preparation and mounting of
specimens. Yet this is by far the most dif-
ficult part of microscopic work, and, after
the management of the instrument has been
learned, the beginner not unfrequently
breaks down, or becomes sorely discour-
aged in his attempts to prepare and mount
his objects. But, if he fails to master this
department, all opportunity for original re-
search is precluded, and he is compelled to
rely on the use of purchased slides, which,
often got up merely " to sell," are not al-
ways to be depended on. His need is a set
of clear and explicit directions in regard to
all the important details of this part of the
work, and this the book before us appears
well designed to fill.

Beginning with the illustrated descrip-
tions of all the necessary apparatus, and
minute directions for its use, there follow
very complete explanations of the various
methods of mounting, with careful direc-
tions how to proceed in each; and after
this the manner of preparing specimens for
the purpose of mounting is very fully treat-
ed. How to collect, label, and temporarily
preserve all sorts of objects intended for
mounting is next considered ; and then we
come to the seventh and last chapter, which
gives instructions how to proceed in the
examination of organic and inorganic sub-
stances, with test3 for adulterations a
branch of microscopic work of much prac-
tical importance.

The book closes with an appendix, con-
taining some seventy-five receipts for prep-
arations useful to the microscopist, and a
short explanation of how to convert and
correct microscopic measurements. It is
also provided with a good index.

Thoughts for the Times. Sermons by the
Rev. H. R. Haweis, M. A., Incumbent
of St. James's, Westmoreland Street,
Marylebone, London, Author of " Music
and Morals," etc.

We have read Mr. Haweis's " Thoughts
for the Times " with much interest, and be-
lieve it is destined to' make a deep and
wholesome impression upon many minds.
Books of sermons are getting to be very dif-
ferent things from what they were formerly,

and this is one of the improved kind a
book of broad, liberal, and decisive views,
applied to practical questions. It is a work
of the type of " Robertson's Sermons," fresh
and breezy with the stir of living thought,
strong in criticism, and thoroughly hospi-
table to modern ideas. Mr. Haweis does
justice to those whom sermonizers general-
ly delight to denounce, and in his search for
truth he does not neglect its latest forms.
Instead of sounding the alarm-bell, and pro-
claiming the peril of religion at every step in
the onward course of Science, he*denies the
antagonism, and is in no dread that faith will
be destroyed by any discoveries that can
be made concerning the order of Nature.
While the whole book is pervaded by inde-
pendent thought, and by a devotional and
reverent spirit, the sermons upon the " Idea
of God " and the' " Law of Progress " are
especially significant and instructive.

A Compendious Manual of Qualitative
Chemical Analysis, by Charles W.
Eliot and Frank H. Storer. Revised,
with the Cooperation of the Authors, by
Wm. Ripley Nichols. New York ; D.
Van Nostrand, Publisher, 18Y2.

No field of literature has been more
cultivated, and yet with so little apparent
success, as that of elementary text-books,
and particularly is this the case in the de-
partment -of science and technics. Every
new effort in this direction is therefore fully
deserving of all the encouragement which
can conscientiously be extended to it. And
we are sure that the little book on Qualita-
tive Chemical Analysis by Messrs. Eliot and
Storer deserves as full a measure of recom-
mendation as the success of its first edition
implies. It is a book especially adapted to
the necessities of the beginner in this branch
of chemical technics, and will leave him, if
not inclined to pursue the subject into the
higher details of analytical practice, with
sufficient knowledge of the subject for the
man of culture, or, if so inclined, will fit nira
to erect the edifice of his chemical educa-
tion on a firm foundation of elementary
knowledge.

The Gardener's Monthly. The ama-
teur in need of practical directions as to
the laying out and tending of a garden, and
the choice of plants, shrubs, etc., cannot do

MISCELLANY.

249

better than to subscribe for this exceeding-
ly valuable little monthly. He will there
always find, in the "Monthly Hints," just
the information he is likely to want, coming
precisely in season for him; while in the
department of "Communications" he will
have detailed in brief the experience of
some of the most successful amateur and
professional gardeners in the country. A
glance at the headings of the various de-
partments of this magazine will perhaps best
show the ground it is intended to cover.
Besides the two already mentioned, we have
the following: Editorial, Scraps and Que-
ries, Book Notices, New and Rare Plants,
Fruits, etc., Foreign Correspondence, Hor-
ticultural Notes. Mr. Thomas Meehan is
the editor ; and, this said, there is no need
of further commendation of the magazine.
$2.00 per annum. Philadelphia : Published
by Charles H. Marot, 814 Chestnut Street.

The Bee -Keeper's Magazine (H. A.
King & Co., 14 Murray street, N. Y)., the
initial number of which is out, presents a
very creditable appearance, and will no
doubt be favorably received by the special
public to which it is addressed. It has a
very interesting table of contents, and a
handsome chrorao frontispiece, "A Group
of Honey Plants."

BOOKS EEOEIVED.

Annual Report of the Director of the
Meteorological Observatory, Central Park,
New York, 1871.

Reports on the Observations of Encke's
Comet during its Return in 1 87 1 . By Asaph
Hall and William Harkness. Washington :
Government Printing-Office, 1872.

The Health and Wealth of the City of
Wheeling, etc. By James E. Reeves, M. D.
Baltimore, 1871.

MISCELLANY.

Facts relating to Niagara. We have
received a letter stating that the article
on Niagara Falls, which was published in
the September Mon'thly, contains various
inacuracies, the following being the most
important. The author of the article
states that a barrier fifteen feet high,
6tretching across the plateau at the head

of the rapids, would throw the water back
on Lake Erie. Our correspondent objects
that this barrier would have five feet of
water flowing over it. The critic further
states that the writer of the article blunders
about the source of Gill Creek, in such a
way as to require its waters to rise 350 feet
before they could discharge into Niagara
River ; and, finally, the author of the arti-
cle affirms that the falls, in cutting their
way southward, have lost 35 feet in height
each mile, which, in 6 miles, the distance
to Lewiston, would amount to 227 feet,
while our correspondent affirms that this
loss of height is but 99 feet.

The Monas Prodigiosa. In our common
household experience we may often observe
the sudden appearance of a phenomenon,
which, as is remarked by a writer in the
Danziger Zeilung, is of great interest, both
from the historical and the scientific point
of view. The writer says that housewives
in Dantzic must have noticed blood-red
spots making their appearance on farina-
ceous articles of food, when laid aside for a
little while. This phenomenon has been
often observed in that city lately, and is at-
tributable to the presence in the food of a
microscopic animalcule in the low : est stage
of organic development, and consisting of a
single mucous sac; though the botanist
would perhaps class it among plants. It is
probable that house-flies transfer from place
to place these animalcules, which adhere to
their feet, and thus occasion in provisions
those apparent spots of blood which cause
housewives so much annoyance. These
animalcules acted an important and tragic
part in the history of the middle ages, pro-
ducing the phenomenon of bleeding hosti
which repeatedly gave the signal for fearful
persecutions of the Jews. It will be le
membered that in those ages of fanaticism
the Jews were often accused of stabbing
the consecrated Host, and causing it to
bleed, and on this charge over 300 Jews
were at one time put to death in Basle, dur-
ing the fourteenth century. Bolsena, a
town in the late Pontifical States, was once
the scene of a great miracle, produced by
these animalcules. Down to the present
day they exhibit at Bolsena, as a famous
relic, the robe worn by a certain priest who,

250

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

in the act of consecrating the eucharistic
elements, entertained a doubt as to tran-
substantiation, when suddenly he perceived
on his alb (white robe) drops of Wood,
which had previously been concealed by the
plaits of the garment. He hastened to hide
the stain, but in the excited state of his im-
agination only saw the appearances of bleed-
ing hosts multiplying. This wonderful oc-
currence (as it was then esteemed) gave
occasion to the establishment of the festival
of Corpus Christi by Pope Urban IV., and
is the subject of Raffaelle's beautiful Mira-
colo di Bolsena, which he painted in the year
1512. The well-known savant, Ehrenberg
of Berlin, was the first to attempt an expla-
nation of the occurrence, by assigning nat-
ural causes for it. A Berlinese lady, having
shown to him some potatoes boiled in their
skins, and then laid aside for the space of
one day, with a deep-red color appearing
where the skins had burst, he discovered
the existence, at the broken places, of a
microscopic animalcule zobs to -g oVrrth of a
line in diameter, which he recognized as the
cause of the phenomenon. In memory of
the marvels wrought by the creature in
past times, he gave it the name of Monas
prodigiosa the miraculous monad.

" The City of the Future." There is a
tendency among the more comfortable
classes to make cities merely places to work
in, but to abandon them for the country as
soon as business is over for the day. l^r.
0. B. Bunce, in Appletons' Journal, op-
poses this movement, and claims for city-
life superiority over country-life, in almost
every respect. He proposes to utilize the
pure air above our heads, by erecting build-
ings of many stories, with steam-elevators
and every modern convenience. This would
bring the entire population within easy
reach of the theatre, lecture- and concert-
hall, art-gallery, museum, etc. In short,
the writer makes out a strong case for the
city, as regards intellectual life. Then
come physical health and comfort. It is
an error to suppose that the city is less
salubrious than the country ; a walk up
Broadway is sufficient to prove this. Dys-
pepsia, rheumatism, and diseases arising
from damp houses and undrained lands, are
more common in the country. The city,

too, is not subject to the plague of mosqui-
toes. The writer would have city people
employ all the resources of science, to
evolve from their surroundings all the
health and comfort, all the enjoyment and
intellectual life, which the town can afford.

An Aged Carp. The following remark-
able story concerning the age of a carp re-
cently killed at Chantilly, while fighting
with a pike, is told by the Paris Gaidois:
" It was the oldest carp in the world, being
475 years of age, and belonged to M.

C , the proprietor of a fine property at

Chantilly. It was an historical carp, a carp
which was born at the Comto de Cosse's, in
the time of Francois I. ; it had passed
through various fortunes, having had no
less than thirty-two masters. M. G pur-
chased it a year since for 1,300 francs. The
name of the carp was Gabrielle, and it meas-
ured nearly 29J inches round, and S85 inch-
es in length."

The Potato - Disease. According to
recent statements in the English papers, one
of the most serious of the multiplied ills
from which England is now suffering is the
almost total failure of this year's potato-
crop, due to the attack of a parisitic fungus
peculiar to plants belonging to the same
natural order as the potato. This affection,
which is known as the pofato-disease, or
more commonly nisi, was first observed in
Germany in 1842, where it assumed a serious
character. In 1844 it broke out in Canada,
and did a great amount of damage. In the
following year it was first noticed in Eng-
land, and in 1S46 prevailed all over Europe,
but was most destructive in Ireland, where
it gave rise to the celebrated Irish famine.
The mycelium of this fungus eats into and
completely destroys the tissue of the leaf
and stem, and, when once its ravages have
commenced, there is little hope of arresting
them. From the leaves and stem the dis-
ease frequently extends to the tubers, where
it sometimes lies dormant for months, so
that, after being stored, apparently sound
in autumn, they become affected in the fol-
lowing spring. When the disease appears
in the growing plant, brown spots are first
seen on the margins of the leaves, corru-
gating them as they spread. Yery rapid

MISCELLANY

2U

extension of 'the disease, and decay of the
leaves and stalks, often ensue. Botrytis
infestam is the name applied to the fungus,
and it is on the under surface of the leaf
that it is generally found ; it abounds also
in the diseased tubers, which, when cut, pro-
duce an abundant crop from the fresh sur-
face, and it sometimes vegetates even from
the natural skins. The resting spores of the
fungus may lie dormant through the winter,
germinating the next season; and hence,
though the eyes of a diseased tuber appear
healthy, to plant them would be the certain
means of spreading the disease. The same
fungus has been found in the berries of the
tomato when diseased, and on the leaves of
other plants of the natural order Solanacece,
but never on any plant not of that order.

The influences which favor the devel-
opment of Botrytis are not well understood.
It is most prevalent, however, in cloudy,
moist summers, and all authorities agree
that it makes its first decided appearance
during thundery weather. The exceptional
amount of electrical disturbance which ex-
tended over almost the whole of England,
during July last, appears to have been most
unfavorable to the potato-crop, but in a
portion of the county of Devon, where
thunder-storms are remarkably rare, the
potatoes are said to be comparatively free
from the disease. The most destructive out-
breaks of the blight have been observed to
recur at intervals of about twelve years. In
1S46, as before mentioned, the disease was
general in Europe, and in some places, as in
Ireland, it swept away the entire crop. From
1859 to 1861 it again did a great amount of
damage; and now, in 1872, it is more de-
structive than at anytime since 1846. The
London Times states that the loss to the
country from the destruction of the pres-
ent crop will exceed twenty millions ster-
ling, and very pertinently asks : " What
are we doing, or what have we done, to
obviate the recurrence of a disease which is
always impending? Probably all we can
remember is, that there is always a talk of
the potato-rot, and that some years it has
been worse than others. We can only say
that this is a disgraceful confession. There
is no matter in which science could interfere
with more advantage ; and we seem to have
all the conditions of the subject under con-

trol." Nature, hi an article upon the sub-
ject, admits the force of these remarks, and,
pointing out the reasons why neither indi-
viduals nor societies should be expected to
undertake the work, urges that the govern-
ment appoint a commission to investigate
the origin, course and remedies for the po-
tato-disease.

" Little objection can be anticipated to
the course we advocate, on the ground of
the money value at stake in the question.
We are at the present time spending a large
sum of money and employing the highest
talent in the country in the settlement of a
claim for a few millions ; to save the country
several times as much per annum cannot be
objected to as a matter unworthy the atten-
tion of our rulers. And yet, because the
one infliction will fall upon us in the form of
an additional twopence to our income-tax
for a single year, the other in the form of a
much heavier addition to our butchers' and
greengrocers' bills for .many years in suc-
cession, we are content in the latter case to
grumble and bear it, without making any
serious efforts to relieve ourselves from it.
Science is often charged with being 'un-
practical ; ' indeed, in the minds of perhaps
the majority of people, there is a kind of
hazy feeling of a necessary antagonism be-
tween what is scientific and what is prac-
tical. It is time for science to redeem her-
self from this imputation, and no better op-
portunity could be found than in discover-
ing a remedy for the potato-disease."

Action of Plaster on Soils. Though gen-
erally employed by farmers as a fertilizer,
the action of plaster (gypsum) on the soil is
not well understood. It has been shown,
however, by actual experiment, that plaster
is capable of absorbing ammonia from the
air, and also from decomposing animal and
vegetable matter, holding it in the form of
sulphide of ammonium. This, again, may
be changed into carbonate of ammonia, by
absorption of carbonic acid from the air.
These changes occur when gypsum is
brought in contact with moisture and vege-
table matter. Whatever other purpose it
may serve, this must be regarded as the
most important, as by it plants are supplied
with food of the highest value.

From this fact it may be inferred that

252

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plaster must prove highly serviceable to
moist, mossy hills, and also to meadows
that are not too wet. The north side of a
hill is sometimes greatly benefited by plaster,
when upon a southern exposure it produces
no perceptible effect. It may be used with
confidence on pastures and fields which are
strong enough, and moist enough, to sup-
port deciduous trees. A hill-side, where
moss will grow so as to crowd out good
grasses, is, usually, promptly benefited by
plaster, white-clover quickly following its
application.

Facts about Glass. Common greenish
glass is found to change color under the in-
fluence of the sun's light, becoming first
yellow, then rose-colored, and finally violet.
And even the purest white glass is found
sometimes to undergo the same changes.
Thus M. E. Siegwart, from whose mono-
graph on " Glass Manufacture," we gather
these items, found the abductor tube of a
chlorohydric gas apparatus deeply tinged
with violet at the parts exposed to sunlight.
When fused anew, the original color returns
to the glass. It is commonly supposed that
glass is not corroded by the atmosphere,
nor even by strong acids. But this is an
error ; for Siegwart found, on actual experi-
ment, that the exposed surface of glass
combines with the constituents of the air.
If glass is suffered to cool very gradually,
it undergoes a transformation which is in
most cases visible to the eye. At first
there appear specks, which soon dot the
entire surface. The glass now becomes
cloudy ; and finally changes into an opaque
body like porcelain, and called Reaumur
porcelain. This devitrification is the most
remarkable phenomenon in the manufacture
of glass, and explains several of the faults
found in that material.

War and Insanity. It was supposed
that the disasters attending the late war
had had the effect of increasing the num-
ber of insane persons in France, but statis-
tics, so far from confirming this conclusion,
show rather that the number of insane pa-
tients was smaller during the year ending
July 1, 1871, than during the preceding
year. Dr. Lunier, who has studied this
subject, shows that in 1869 '70 there were

admitted into the asylums 11,165 patients;
whereas for the year of the war and the
insurrection the number was 10,243. Of
these 10,243 patients, 1,322 became insane
by reason of the calamities produced by the
war. During the first half of the year af-
ter the war, 400 patients were admitted
who had lost their reason from the same
cause. The sum total, therefore, of such
cases is between 1,700 and 1,800 ; and the
asylums now contain 3,000 less patients
than in 1869.

Parliamentary Ventilation. After spend-
ing immense sums of money, and trying
numerous methods, the ventilation of the
English houses of Parliament is still exceed-
ingly imperfect. The system now in op-
eration is one of exhaustion, or in other
words one of suction, the air within the
building being sucked out, and, to supply
its place, the surrounding external air is
sucked in, no matter how impure or how
unfit for breathing purposes it may be.
This plan is condemned by a writer in the
Journal of the Society of Arts on the follow-
ing grounds : Exhaustion creates a partial
tendency to a vacuum, when, to maintain the
atmospheric equilibrium, the surrounding
air rushes in from every quarter. Impure
sources are thus as likely to be drawn upon
as any other, and the air introduced is
scarcely an improvement on that with-
drawn. The tendency to a vacuum also fa-
vors the occurrence of draughts. Every
chink about a door or window, and every
crack in the wood-work, becomes an open-
ing for the admission of cold damp air in
the shape of a sensible current. A sys-
tem of suction also perceptibly affects the
acoustic properties of rooms to which it is
applied. The reason for this is that, when-
ever there is a partial vacuum, in the same
ratio as that has been reached, has the
power of the air to transmit pulsations of
sound been impaired.

Preparations for observing the Transit
of Venus. The French are making active
preparations for observing the approaching
transit of Venus, the Assembly having
voted $20,000 for the construction of in-
struments, with the promise of $40,000
more during the coming year. Nine sta-

MISCELLANY.

2 53

tions have been selected for observation,
at four of which the entrance and exit
of the planet will be visible, while at
the other five but one of the two inci-
dents can be observed. French savants are
now corresponding with the astronomers of
England, Germany, Russia, and this coun-
try, with a view to parcelling out the sta-
tions to the different observers in such a
way that all shall be favorably located, and
all the useful points of the earth's surface
available for these important observations
occupied. After use in 1874, the French
apparatus will be carefully preserved for
observing the transit of 1882, which is fol-
lowed by a period of one hundred and
twenty years, in which no transit occurs.

The Boring-Organ of Pholadcs. It is

well known that certain molluscous ani-
mals have the power of boring their way
into solid substances, making the hole thus
excavated their future home. The teredo
or ship-worm, for example, honeycombs the
densest timber, others excavate in clay or
chalk, and pholas perforates the hardest
rocks. With what part of the animal the
work is accomplished has long been a mat-
ter of dispute, some zoologists regarding
the rough, rasp-like shell as the perforating
organ, while others believe that the work
is done by the foot. In a paper on the
subject, read at the recent meeting of the
British Association, Mr. John Robertson
adopts, the former view, maintaining that
the perforations are made by the rotating
movements which the creature is capable
of imparting to its shell. In the discussion
which followed, Mr. Bryson, a close observ-
er of the habits of pholas, was quoted to
the effect that the boring is accomplished
by the foot, which, charged with siliceous
particles, acts like the leaden wheel of the
lapidary. Mr. Gwynn Jeffreys also regards
the foot, in all the boring Conchifera, as
the instrument of perforation. Several facts
were cited in support of this. In Teredo
navalis, as was long ago shown by Sellius,
the foot is the only organ of perforation,
and the posterior extremity of the shell has
a large excavation into which this organ
is received. Pholadidea in the young state
excavates by means of the foot, but after-
ward the aperture becomes closed by ge-

latinous matter, when no further excavation
takes place. In pholas, also, no part of the
shell can act at the bottom of the excava-
tion, the foot alone being capable of use in
that position.

The Polaris Expedition. Captain C. F.

Hall writes, under date August 24,18*71, from
Tossak, North Greenland, that all goes well
with his vessel, the Polaris. The captain
has abundant supplies, and is well provided
with Esquimaux dogs, reindeer-furs, seal-
skins, etc. Hans Christian, well known to
readers of Kane's narrative, accompanies the
Polaris Expedition, together with his family
of wife and three children. Various charts
and notes of Baron von Otter, commander
of the Swedish Expedition, and of other
scientific men, are in the possession of Cap-
tain Hall, and have led him to abandon the
Jones Sound route ; to cross Melville Bay
to Cape Dudley Diggs ; and thence make
for Smith's Sound, with a view to reach
Kennedy Channel.

Disastrous Volcanic Eruption. A very
violent eruption of the volcano of Merapi,
in Java, took place on the 15th of April.
The event was totally unexpected, and the
loss of life and property was great, many
villages being destroyed. In some places
the ashes fell for three days, and it became
so dark that lamps had to be lit. About
200 dead bodies had at last accounts been
found on one side of the volcano.

f h finical Products of Encalyptns. Euca-
lyptus is the name of a genus of trees con-
taining many species, mostly natives of Aus-
tralia, where the tree is very abundant. Sev-
eral species yield a copious resinous secre-
tion, and are therefore known as gum trees.
Some of these attain a great size, it is said,
exceeding in height the giant red-woods of
California. The bodies are slender and with-
out branches, except near the top, where the
branchlets droop like those of the weeping-
willow. The leaves are entire, of a leathery
texture, and, instead of being placed with
one surface toward the ground and another
toward the sky, hang with their edges in
these positions, so that the two surfaces of
the leaf are equally exposed to the light.
The trees are of very rapid growth, and fur-

2 54

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

nish a timber that when green is soft and
easily worked, and that when dry becomes
very hard. Eucalyptus has been introduced
with success both into Europe and Califor-
nia, and the valuable character of the tree
is becoming more and more appreciated as
its properties are better known. Ramel first
brought it into Europe in 1856, and it has
since flourished in the southern portion
of the continent. As far north as Paris,
however, it does not thrive, the winters
proving too cold for it. Owing to the great
absorbent power of its roots and leaves,
and the fact that the latter yield a strong
aromatic odor, the tree is regarded as pe-
culiarly suitable for marshy and unhealthy
districts. The leaves contain a notable
quantity of a volatile aromatic oil, and afford,
both in the fresh and dry state, a very fluid
essence, which is slightly colored, and gives
off an aromatic odor that reminds one of
camphor.

The following preparations are at pres-
ent manufactured from Eucalyptus :

1. The essence already spoken of, which
is administered in doses of a few grms. in the
form of globules.

2. Leaf-powder, which contains all the
active principles of the plant (essence, tan-
nin, bitter principle), and which is pre-
scribed in doses of 4, 8, 12, and even 16 grms.
daily.

3. The infusion and decoction of the
leaves. With half a leaf (about 1 grm.) it
is possible to aromatize three or four cups,
affording a good substitute for tea. This is
employed as a stimulating drink. For topical
applications, 8 grms. in decoction, in a litre
of water, forms a liquor well charged with
the principles indicated.

4. Water distilled from the leaves, which
may be advantageously used with stimulat-
ing drinks.

5. Aqueous extract, alcoholic extract,
employed as febrifuges.

6. Tincture or alcoholate.

7. A liquor, which is similar to the
liquor of mastic, and a wine, which is a tonic
and febrifuge.

8. Cigars and cigarettes.

Dr. Gimbert has studied on himself the
effects of essence of Eucalyptus when taken
into the system. He took various doses of
from 10 to 20 drops, and found it had a

soothing effect. It diminishes tie vascular
tension, and the sense of comfort arising
from it induces sleep. A very strong dose
produces temporary excitement, headache,
and slight fatigue.

New Method for disintegrating Wheat.

An inventor of Bristol, England, has con-
trived a mill for reducing wheat to flour,
which is said to do the work much more
rapidly than millstones, and at the same
time yields a vastly superior product.
The arrangement consists of iron cages
containing revolving radii, driven at the
rate of four hundred revolutions a min-
ute, which almost instantaneously reduces
the wheat to powder. At Edinbnrgh two
such mills have been running for more than
a year. Each one does the work of twenty-
seven pair of ordinary millstones, with a
saving of five and a half per cent, in favor
of the new mill. The bread made from the
flour which this mill turns out is pronounced
remarkable for its lightness and good keep-
ing qualities.

Instinct at Fanlt in a Dnmming-Bird.

Says a correspondent in the Bulletin of the
Tony Botanical Club : " I was reminded
the other day of the story told by Pliny,
of the painter Zeuxis, who represented a
bunch of grapes so naturally that the birds
flew at the picture to eat the fruit. My
friend Mrs. P. W. told us that a gentle-
man, the Rev. Mr. P., was sitting on the
piazza of her house with his feet encased in
a pair of worked slippers, adorned with
some highly-colored flowers, and that she
saw a humming-bird repeatedly peck at the
flowers, in the vain attempt to find in them
his accustomed nourishment. This curious
fact seems to indicate that the attraction
in such cases is not due to the odor of the
flowers, but simply to their bright color ;
and that the Greek story is not so im-
probable, after all"

White Partridge-Berries. Of this berry,
sometimes called Squaw-berry, and which
is normally a brilliant scarlet, a good many
white ones were found this autumn at
Canaan, Conn. The white berries grew on
separate vines, ripened like the red ones,
but were much larger.

NOTES.

255

Aa Aroiy of Caterpillars. A writer in
the Gardener's Monthly gives some interest-
ing particulars concerning the habits of the
caterpillars, which last spring visited the
region about Memphis in such unheard-of
numbers. They were so numerous, that
several trains of cars coming into the city
were stopped on each of the two roads, the
masses covering the rails for hundreds of
yards in a body, compelling the brakemen
to get down and sweep them off before the
driving-wheels could get sufficient hold to
pass over the obstruction. They lived on
the young leaves of both forest and fruit
trees the oak, quince, apple, and plum,
being their favorite food. "Whole orchards
were denuded of foliage, and great lanes of
bare trees marked their track through the
forests. They are characterized by one
remarkable peculiarity. Unless prowling
through thick grass, or when about half
grown, descending by the long web which
each spins, from a tall rough forest-tree,
they are always arranged in military style ;
. and travel, also, in long, straight lines, sev-
eral abreast.

lasect-Life ia a Coal-Minc. A coal-pit
in England having become infested with
large-winged insects, which caused the
workmen considerable annoyance, by flit-
ting around their lamps and often ex-
tinguishing them, a search was made to
discover the source from which they came.
The wooden props supporting the workings
were found to be pierced in several places,
as though by gimlets, and in the holes were
found a number of moth-like insects. The
wood had come from abroad, and had been
in the pit some four years before the insects
began to make their appearance.

Au Fapatcntable Pavemeat. A writer
in the Journal of the Society of Arts advo-
cates the adoption of a kind of wooden
pavement for the .streets of London, which
in point of wear he believes to be superior
to all other varieties of wooden pavement,
and with the additional advantage that it
cannot be made the subject of a patent.
He says : " Xow, the only wood pavement
fit to stand London traffic, and entailin"-
the smallest cost, could not be patented by
the most astute lawyer. Instead of fashion-

ing the blocks into patent dice, hexagons,
polygons, or dove-tailed complications in
any form, we have only to slice barked trees
of any size or quality into cylindrical slices
about thirteen inches in thickness, and put
the largest size down first into a good
rammed foundation, and then the smaller
sizes, until the remaining interstices may be
filled up with what may be called pegs, the
proper ramming of which will render the
whole one solid mass of timber, while the
economy of wood is so great that not a
chip will be wasted. The surface will pre-
sent end-grain only, and with the different
sorts and sizes will afford a much better
foothold than granite blocks."

Gold la Sea-Water. In a series of re-
searches on the composition of sea-water, a
chemist named Sonstadt has been able to
make out the presence of gold as one of its
constituents. It appears to be completely
dissolved, and is held in solution by the
action of iodate of calcium, which, as shown
by the same chemist, sea-water also con-
tains. He demonstrates the presence of
gold by three separate and entirely different
methods, and estimates the proportion to be
less than one grain per ton of water.

NOTES.

Non-inflammable Fabrics. Cotton or
linen goods may be rendered non-inflamma-
ble by being dipped in a solution of equal
parts of acetate of lime and chloride of cal-
cium dissolved in twice their weight of wa-
ter.

Taper Lamp-Shades. Dr. Minis men-
tions two cases in Jena and one in Frank-
fort where persons using green glazed paper
lamp-shades were poisoned by the arsenic
of the coloring matter. The heat of the
lamp volatilized the arsenic, and rendered
the small quantity present very dangerous.

Progress of Chemistry. One by one
the organic products are being copied in the
laboratory. The last triumph in this direc-
tion which has come to our notice is the
production of glycerine by Friedel and Silva.
If the vapor of fusel-oil be passed through
a red-hot tube, propylen is formed, which
readily combines with chlorine, and from
this chloride of propylen glycerine is pro-
duced by a process in which no glycerine is
employed. As glycerine is the base of all
true fats, this is an important step in the
direction of oil-making.

256

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

An officer connected with the Geological
Survey of Ireland, Mr. Hull, states the net
available tonnage of coal in that country as
182,280,000 tons. Of this amount, Antrim
has 16,000 tons ; Tyrone, 32,900,000;
Queens, Kilkenny, and Carlow, 77,580,000 ;
Tipperary, 25,000,000 ; Clare, Limerick, and
Cork, 20,000,000. Connaught has 10,800-
000.

According to J. Ballynski, if the motion
of a leaden bullet were all converted into
heat, it would amount to three times as much
as would be sufficient to melt the quantity
of lead found to be melted by actual experi-
ment. This he explains as having been ex-
pended in denting the iron plates of the
target. By using a hard stone target, he
was able to completely melt the bullets
fired against it.

An improvement ha* been made in the
process for extracting sugar from the beet by
maceration, by adding lime to the liquor and
precipitating the lime by a current of car-
bonic-acid gas. This has the effect of rap-
idly purifying the liquor and of displacing
the remaining air, which would otherwise
promote fermentation.

Mr. Wideman states that, by the contact
of ozone for twenty minutes with whiskey,
the fusel-oil was removed, and the whiskey
mellowed as much as if it had been kept for
ten years. Further, by adding to whiskey
of proof strength seven times its weight, of"
water, the introduction of ozone speedily
transformed the mixture into marketable
vinegar. In Russia good brandy is said to
be made from mosses and lichens.

Paper from Wood. A letter from Berlin,
in the Elberfeld Gazette, represents Prince
Bismarck in a new light that of a paper-
maker. The paper-manufactory established
by the Imperial Chancellor on his estate at
Varzin has proved so successful, says the wri-
ter, that it is impossible to meet the large or-
ders which come from England. This paper
is made of chips of fir that, at least, is the
chief element.

An instance of supposed mimicry in in-
sects is given in Science Gossip. The car-
pet-moth hides in some obscure place during
the day, holding the upper wings outspread.
When it thus rests on a greenish or obscure
ground, it might easily pass for a smaller
whitish moth. Is it by mere accident that
the upper rather than the lower wings of
the insect are spread out, or have we here a
provision made to guard against the assaults
of its enemies ?

The French are making preparations
for meteorological observations at elevated
points. An observatory is now in course of
construction at the summit of Puy-de-Dome,

which will be connected by a telegraphic
wire with another in a pavilion of the faculty
at Clermont. The difference in height be-
tween the two is about 3,800 feet, and, by
means of the telegraphic wire, the difference
of meteorological conditions between the
plain and the upper regions of the atmos-
phere can be shown at any moment.

The opium-poppy in Bengal is suffering
serious damage from a fungoid growth
which develops itself on the leaves. Sul-
phur is suggested as a remedy, it having
proved useful in a similar disease which at-
tacks the vine.

Timber-Planting in Hall County, Ne-
braska, has become quite popular. It is
predicted that within twenty years the
" Great American Desert " will be far
better timbered than the Eastern States.

Hops in England. Says the Mark Lane
Express, 65,600 acres are devoted to the cul-
ture of hops in England, and the area is grad-
ually increasing. Kent, the largest hop-
growing county, had 32,000 acres in this
crop last season, the early grounds averag-
ing 1,400 to 1,600 pounds per acre ; Sussex,
next in importance, 14,500 acres, averaging
1,800 to 2,200 pounds per acre. Surrey is
noted for a choice quality of hops of bright
color and superior aroma.

A correspondent calls attention to a
discrepancy of statement occurring in the
article entitled " Coal as a Reservoir of
Power," published in No. 6 of The Popular
Science Monthly. It is there affirmed that
a pound of coal in burning yields an energy
equal to the power of lifting 10,808,000
pounds one foot ; and this is followed by
the statement that a cubic yard of coal,
2,240 pounds, possesses a reserve of energy
equal to lifting 1,729,200 pounds one foot
high : 2,240 pounds (an English ton) would
of course yield 2,240 times as much energy
as one pound, and consequently would raise
10,808,000 tons one foot high.

The extraction of sulphur and the man-
ufacture of sulphuric acid from iron pyrites
were first successfully accomplished on the
large scale, under the stress of a tyrannical
proceeding on the part of the King of the
Two Sicilies. At the time, the island of
Sicily was the principal source of the sulphur
consumed in Europe, and the trade in the
article brought an immense revenue to the
government. A corrupt administration and
a bankrupt treasury led the king to grant
a monopoly of the business to a single firm
in France, he expecting thereby to secure a
large increase of funds. His action had ex-
actly the opposite effect. The price of sul-
phur was doubled, its extraction from py-
rites followed, and the sulphur mines of
Sicily have since been of comparatively little
consequence.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JANUARY, 1873.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.

By HERBERT SPENCER.
VI. Subjective Difficulties Intellectual.

IF you watch the management of a child by a mother of small ca-
pacity, you may be struck by the inability she betrays to imagine
the child's thoughts and feelings. Full of energy which he must ex-
pend in some way, and eager to see every thing, her little boy is every
moment provoking her by his restlessness. The occasion is perhaps a
railway journey. Now he strives to look out of the window; and
now, when forbidden to do that, climbs on the seats, or meddles with
the small luggage. " Sit still," " Get down, I tell you," " Why can't
you be quiet ? " are the commands and expostulations she utters from
minute to minute partly, no doubt, to prevent the discomfort of fel-
low-passengers. But, as you will see at other times, when no such
motive comes into play, she endeavors to repress these childish activi-
ties mainly out of regard for what she- thinks propriety, and does it
without any adequate recognition of the penalties she inflicts. Though
she herself lived through this phase of extreme curiosity this early
time Avhen almost every object passed has the charm of novelty, and
when the overflowing energies generate a painful irritation if pent up ;
yet now she cannot believe how keen is the desire for seeing which she
balks, and how difficult is the maintenance of that quietude on which
she insists. Conceiving her child's consciousness in terms of her own
consciousness, and feeling how easy it is to sit still and not look out of
the window, she ascribes his behavior to mere perversity.

I recall this and kindred experiences to the reader's mind, for the-
purpose of exemplifying a necessity and a difficulty. The necessity is
that, in dealing with other beings and interpreting their actions, we
are obliged to represent their thoughts and feelings in terms of our

VOL. II. 17

258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

own. The difficulty is that, in so representing them, we can never he
more than partially right, and are frequently very wrong. The con-
ception which any one frames of another's mind, is inevitably more or
less after the pattern of his own mind is automorphic ; and in propor-
tion as the mind of which he has to frame a conception differs from his
own, his automorphic interpretation is likely to be wide of the truth.

That measuring other person's actions by the standards our own
thoughts and feelings furnish, often causes misconstruction, is indeed
a truth familiar even to the vulgar. But while anions: members of the
same society, having natures nearly akin, it is seen that automorphic
explanations are often erroneous, it is not seen with due clearness how
much more erroneous such explanations commonly are, when the ac-
tions are those of men of another race, to whom the kinship in nature
is comparatively remote. We do, indeed, perceive this, if the interpre-
tations are not our own ; and if both the interpreters and the inter-
preted are distant in thought and nature from ourselves. When, as in
early English literature, we find Greek history conceived in terms of
feudal institutions, and the heroes of antiquity spoken of as princes,
knights, and squires, it becomes clear to us that the ideas concerning
ancient civilization must have been utterly wrong. When we find
Virgil adopted by Dante as his guide, and named elsewhere as one
among the prophets who visited the cradle of Christ when an illus-
trated psalter gives scenes from the life of Christ in which there re-
peatedly figures a castle with a portcullis when even the Crucifixion
is described by Langland in the language of chivalry, so that the man
who pierced Christ's side with a spear is considered as a knight who
disgraced his knighthood 1 when we read of the Crusaders calling
themselves " vassals of Christ ; " we need no further proof that by car-
rying their own sentiments, and ideas, and habits, to the interpreta-
tion of social arrangements and transactions among the Jews, our
ancestors were led into absurd misconceptions. But we do not recog-
nize the fact that in virtue of the same tendency we are ever framing
conceptions which, if not so grotesquely untrue, are yet very wide of
the truth. How difficult it is to imagine mental states remote from
our own so correctly that we can understand how they issue in indi-
vidual actions, and consequently in social actions, an instance will
make manifest.

The feeling of vague wonder with which he received his first lessons
in the Greek mythology, will most likely be dimly remembered by
every reader. If not in words, still in an inarticulate way, there passed
through him the thought that belief in such stories was unaccount-
able. When, afterward, he read in books of travels details of the
amazing superstitions of this or that race of savages, there was joined
with a sense of the absurdity of such superstitions, more or less of
astonishment at their acceptance by any human beings, however

1 Warton's "History of English Poetry," vol. ii., p. 57, cote.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 259

ignorant or stupid. That the people of a neighboring tribe had de-
scended from ducks, that rain resulted when certain deities began to
spit upon the earth, that the island lived upon had been pulled up
from the bottom of the ocean by one of their gods, whose hook got
fast when he was fishing these and countless beliefs equally laugh-
able seem to him to imply an irrationality near to insanity. He inter-
prets them automorphically carrying with him not simply his own
faculties developed to a stage of complexity considerably beyond that
reached by the faculties of the savage, but also the modes of thinking
in which he was brought up, and the stock of information he has ac-
quired. Usually it never occurs to him to do otherwise. Even if he
attempts to look at things from the savage's point of view, he most
likely fails entirely ; and, if he succeeds at all, it is but very partially.
Yet only by seeing things as the savage sees them can his ideas be un-
derstood, his behavior accounted for, and the resulting social phe-
nomena explained. These seemingly-strange superstitions are quite
natural quite rational, in a certain sense, in their respective times and
places. The laws of intellectual action are the same for civilized and
uncivilized. The difference is in complexity of faculty and amount of
knowledge accumulated and generalized. Given reflective powers de-
veloped only to that lower degree in which they are possessed by the
aboriginal man given his small stock of ideas, collected in a narrow
area of space, and not added to by records extending through time
given his impulsive nature incapable of patient inquiry ; and these
seemingly-monstrous beliefs of his become in reality the most feasible
explanations he can find of surrounding things. Yet even after seeing
that this must be so, it is not easy to think, from the savage's point of
view, clearly enough to follow the effects of his ideas on his acts,
through all the relations of life, social and other.

A parallel difficulty stands in the way of rightly conceiving char-
acter remote from our own, so as to see how it issues in conduct. We
may best recognize our inability in this respect by observing the con-
verse inability of other races to understand our characters, and the
acts they prompt.

" "Wonderful are the works of Allah ! Behold ! That Frank is trudging about,
when he can, if he pleases, sit still!" '

In like manner Captain Speke tells us :

" If I walked up and down the same place to stretch my legs, they " (Somali)
" formed councils of war on my motives, considering I must have some secret de-
signs upon their country, or I would not do it, as no man in his senses could be
guilty of working his legs unnecessarily." 2

But while by instances like these we are shown that our characters
are in a large measure incomprehensible by races remote in nature

1 Burton's " Scinde," vol. ii., p. 13.

2 Speke's " Journal of Discovery of Source of the Nile," p. 85.

*6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from ourselves, the correlative fact that their sentiments and motives
cannot be rightly conceived by us, is one perpetually overlooked in
our sociological interpretations. Feeling, for instance, how natural it
is to take an easier course in place of a more laborious course, and to
adopt new methods that are proved to be better methods, we are
somewhat puzzled on finding the Chinese stick to their dim paper-
lamps, though they admire our bright argand-lamps, which they do
not use if given to them ; or on finding that the Hindoos prefer their
rough primitive tools after seeing that our greatly-improved tools do
more work with less eflbrt. And, on descending to races yet more
remote in civilization, we still oftener discover ourselves wrong when
we suppose that under given conditions they will act as we should act.
Here, then, is a subjective difficulty of a serious kind. Properly to
understand any fact in social evolution, we have to see it as resulting
from the joint actions of individuals having certain natures. We can-
not so understand it without understanding their natures ; and this,
even by care and effort, we are able to do but very imperfectly. Our
interpretations must be in a greater or less degree automorphic ; and
yet automorphism perpetually misleads us.

One would hardly suppose, a priori, that untruthfulness would
habitually coexist with credulity. Rather our inference might be,
that, in virtue of the tendency above enlarged upon, people most given
to make false statements must be people most inclined to suspect state-
ments made by others. Yet somewhat anomalously, as it seems, ha-
bitual veracity very generally goes with inclination to doubt evidence ;
and extreme untrustworthiness of assertion often has, for its concomi-
tant, readiness to accept the greatest improbabilities on the slenderest
testimony. If you compare savage with civilized, or compare the suc-
cessive stages of civilization, you find untruthfulness and credulity de-
creasing together ; until you reach the modern man of science, who is
at once exact in his statements and critical respecting the evidence on
which facts are alleged. The converse relation to that which we see
in the man of science is even now very startlingly presented in the
East, where greediness in swallowing fictions goes along with superflu-
ous telling of falsehoods. An Egyptian prides himself in a clever lie,
uttered even without motive ; and a dyer will even ascribe the failure
in fixing one of his colors to the not having been successful in a decep-
tion. Yet so great is the readiness to believe improbabilities that Mr.
St. John, in his " Two Years' Residence in a Levantine Family," nar-
rates how, when the " Arabian Nights' Entertainments " was being
read aloud, and when he hinted that the stories must not be accepted
as true, there arose a strong protest against such skepticism the ques-
tion being asked, " Why should a man sit down and write so many

lies ? " '

1 See pp. 79 and 127.

i

TEE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 261

I point out this union of seemingly-inconsistent traits, not because
of the direct bearing it has on the argument, but for the sake of its in-
direct bearing. For I have here to dwell awhile on the misleading effects
of certain mental tendencies which similarly appear very unlikely to
coexist, and which yet do habitually coexist. I refer to the belief
which, even while I write, I find repeated in the leading journal, that
"the deeper a student of history goes, the more does he find man the
same in all time ; " and to the quite opposite belief embodied in current
politics, that human nature may be readily altered. These two beliefs,
which ought to cancel one another but do not, originate two classes of
errors in sociological speculation ; and nothing like correct conclusions
in Sociology can be drawn until they have been rejected, and replaced
by a belief which reconciles them the belief that human nature is in-
definitely modifiable, but that no modification of it can be brought
about rapidly. We will glance at the errors to which each of these
beliefs leads.

While it was held that the stars are fixed and that the hills are ever-
lasting, there was a certain congruity in the notion that man contin-
ues unchanged from age to age ; but now when we know that all
stars are in motion, and that there are no such things as everlasting
hills now that we find all things throughout the Universe to be in a
ceaseless flux, it is time for this crude conception of human nature to
disappear out of our social conceptions ; or rather it is time that its
disappearance should be followed by that of the many narrow notions
respecting the past and the future of society, which have grown out
of it, and which linger notwithstanding the loss of their root. For,
avowedly by some and tacitly by others, it continues to be thought
that the human heart is as " desperately wicked " as it ever was, and
that the state of society hereafter will be very much like the state of
society now. If, when the evidence has been piled mass upon mass,
there comes a reluctant admission that aboriginal man, of troglodyte
or kindred habits, differed somewhat from man as he was during feudal
times, and that the customs and sentiments and beliefs he had in feudal
times imply a character appreciably unlike that which he has now
if, joined with this, there is a recognition of the truth that along with
these changes in man there have gone still more conspicuous changes
in society ; there is, nevertheless, an ignoring of the implication that
hereafter man and society will continue to change, until they have
diverged as widely from their existing types as their existing types
have diverged from those of the earliest recorded ages. It is true that
among the more cultured, the probability, or even the certainty, that
such transformations will go on, may be granted ; but the granting is
but nominal, the admission does not become a factor in the conclusions
drawn. The first discussion on a political or social topic reveals the
tacit assumption that in times to come society will have a structure
substantially like its existing structure. If, for instance, the question

262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of domestic service is raised, it mostly happens that its bearings are
considered wholly in reference to those social arrangements which exist
around us ; only a few proceed on the supposition that these arrange-
ments are probably but transitory. It is so throughout. Be the sub-
jects industrial organization, or class-relations, or rule by fashion, the
belief which practically, moulds the conclusions, if not the belief theo-
retically professed, is, that, whatever changes they may undergo, our
institutions will not cease to be recognizably the same. Even those
who have, as they think, deliberately freed themselves from this per-
verting tendency even M. Comte and his disciples, believing in an
entire transformation of society, nevertheless betray an incomplete
emancipation ; for the ideal society believed in by them, is one under
regulation by a hierarchy essentially akin to hierarchies such as man-
kind have known. So that everywhere, more or less, sociological
thinking is impeded by the difficulty of constantly bearing in mind
that the social states toward which mankind are being carried are
probably as little conceivable by us as our present state was conceiv-
able by a Norse pirate and his followers.

Note, now, the contrary difficulty, which appears to be surmount-
able by scarcely any of our parties, political and philanthropic, from
the highest to the lowest the difficulty of understanding that human
nature, though indefinitely modifiable, can be modified but very
slowly ; and that all laws and institutions and appliances, which count
on getting from it within a short time much better results than pres-
ent ones, will inevitably fail. If we glance over the programmes of
societies, and sects, and schools of all kinds, from Rousseau's disciples
in the French Convention down to the members of the United King-
dom Alliance, from the adherents of the Ultramontane propaganda
down to the enthusiastic advocates of an education exclusively secu-
lar, we find in them one common trait. They are all pervaded by the
conviction, now definitely expressed and now taken as a self-evident
truth, that there needs but this kind of instruction or that kind of
discipline, this mode of repression or that system of culture, to bring
society into a very much better state. Here we read that " it is neces-
sary completely to refashion the people whom one wishes to make
free : " the implication being that a refashioning is practicable.
There it is taken as self-evident that, when you have taught children
what they ought to do to be good citizens, they will become good
citizens. Elsewhere it is held to be a truth beyond question that, if
by law temptations to drink are removed from men, they will not only
cease to drink, but thereafter cease to commit crimes. And yet the
delusiveness of all such hopes is obvious enough to any one not blind-
ed by an hypothesis, or carried away by an enthusiasm. The fact,
often pointed out to Temperance-fanatics, that some of the soberest
nations in Europe yield a proportion of crime higher than our own,
might suffice to show them that England would not be suddenly

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 263

moralized if they carried their proposed restrictions into effect. The
superstition that good behavior is to be forthwith produced by lessons
learned out of school-books, which was long ago statistically disproved, 1
would, but for preconceptions, be utterly dissipated by observing to
what a slight extent knowledge affects conduct by observing that
the dishonesty implied in the adulterations of tradesmen and manufac-
turers, in fraudulent bankruptcies, in bubble-companies, in " cooking "
of railway accounts and financial prospectuses, differs only in form,
and not in amount, from the dishonesty of the uneducated on observ-
ing how amazingly little the teachings given to medical students affect
their lives, and how even the most experienced medical men have their
prudence scarcely at all increased by their information. Similarly,
the Utopian ideas which come out afresh along with every new politi-
cal scheme, from the " paper-constitutions " of the Abbe Sieyes down
to the just-published programme of M. Louis Blanc, and from agita-
tions for vote-by-ballot up to those who have a republic for their aim,
might, but for this tacit belief we are contemplating, be extinguished
by the facts perpetually and startlingly thrust on our attention.
Again and again for three generations has France been showing to
the world how impossible it is essentially to change the type of a social
structure by any rearrangement wrought out through a revolution.
However great the transformation may for a time seem, the original
thing reappears in disguise. Out of the nominally-free government
set up, a new despotism arises, different from the old by having a new
shibboleth and new men to utter it; but identical with the old in the
determination to put down opposition, and in the means used to this
end. Liberty, when obtained, is forthwith surrendered to an avowed
autocrat ; or, as we have seen within this year, it is allowed to lapse
into the hands of one who claims the reality of autocracy without its
title. Nay, the change is, in fact, even less ; for the regulative organi-
zation which ramifies throughout French society continues unaltered
by these changes at the governmental centre. The bureaucratic sys-
tem persists equally under Imperialist, Constitutional, and Republican
arrangements. As the Due d'Audriffret-Pasquier pointed out, " Em-
pires fall, Ministers pass away, but Bureaux remain." The aggregate
of forces and tendencies embodied, not only in the structural arrange-
ments holding the nation together, but in the ideas and sentiments of
its units, is so powerful that the excision of a part, even though it be
the governmental centre, is quickly followed by the substitution of a
like part. It needs but to recall the truth exemplified some chapters
back, that the properties of the aggregate are determined by the prop-
erties of the units, to see at once that, so long as the characters of citizens
remain substantially unchanged, there can be no substantial change in
the political organization which has slowly been evolved by them.

1 " Summary of the Moral Statistics of England and Wales." By Joseph Fletcher, ,
Esq., one of her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools.

264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This double difficulty of thought, with the double set of delusions
fallen into by those who do not surmount it, is, indeed, naturally asso-
ciated with the once-universal, and still-general, belief that societies
arise by manufacture, instead of arising, as they do, by evolution.
Recognize the truth that aggregates of men, like other aggregates,
grow, and acquire their structural characters through a process of
modification upon modification, and there are excluded.these antitheti-
cal errors that man remains the same and that man is readily alter-
able ; and along with exclusion of these errors comes admission of the
inference that the changes which have brought social arrangements to
a form so different from past forms will in future carry them on to
forms as different from those now existing. Once become habituated
to the thought of a continuous unfolding of the whole and of each
part, and these misleading ideas disappear. Take a word and observe
how, while changing, it gives origin in course of time to a family of
words, each changing member of which similarly has progeny ; take a
custom, as that of giving eggs at Easter, which has now developed
in Paris into the fashion of making expensive presents of every
imaginable kind enclosed in imitation-eggs, becoming at length large
enough to contain a brougham, and which entails so great a tax that
people go abroad to evade it ; take a law, once quite simple and made
to meet a special case, and see how it eventually, by successive addi-
tions and changes, grows up into a complex group of laws, as, out of
two statutes of William the Conqueror came our whole system of stat-
utes regulating land-tenure ; 1 take a social appliance, like the press,
and see how from the news-letter, originally private and written, and
then assuming the shape of a printed fly-leaf to a written private let-
ter, there has, little by little, evolved this vast assemblage of journals
and periodicals, daily, weekly, general, and local, that have, individu-
ally and as an aggregate, grown in size while growing in heterogeneity
do this, and do the like with all other established institutions, agen-
cies, products, and there will come naturally the conviction that now,
too, there are various germs of things which will in the future develop
in ways no one imagines and take shares in profound transformations
of society amd of its members transformations that are hopeless as
immediate results, but certain as ultimate results.

Try to fit a hand with five fingers into a glove with four. Your
difficulty aptly parallels the difficulty of putting a complex conception
into a mind not having an adequately complex faculty. In proportion
as the several terms and relations which make up a thought become
numerous and varied, there must be brought into play numerous and
varied parts of the intellectual structure, before the thought can be
comprehended ; and, if some of these parts are wanting, only fragments
of the thought, and not the thought as a whole, can be taken in. Con-

1 Reeves, "History of English Law," vol. i., pp. 34-36 (second edition).

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 265

eider an instance. What is meant by the ratio of A to B may be ex-
plained to a boy, by drawing a short line A and a long line B, telling
him that A is said to bear a small ratio to B; and then, after lengthen-
ing the line A, telling him that A is now said to bear a larger ratio to
B. But suppose I have to explain what is meant by saying that the
ratio of A to B is equal to the ratio of C to D. This conception is
much more complex : instead of two different quantities and one rela-
tion, there are four different quantities and three relations. To under-
stand the proposition, the boy has to think of A and B and their dif-
ference, and, without losing his intellectual grasp of these, he has to
think of C and D and their difference, and, without losing his intellect-
ual grasp of these, he has to think of the two differences as each hav-
ing a like relation to its pair of quantities. Thus the number of terms
and relations to be kept before the mind is such as to imply the co-
operation of many more agents of thought, any of which being absent,
the proposition cannot be understood : the boy must be older before he
will understand it, and, if uncultured, will probably never understand
it at all. Pass now to a conception of still greater complexity say
that the ratio of A to B varies as the ratio of C to D. Far more
numerous things have now to be represented in consciousness with ap-
proximate simultaneity. A and B have to be thought of as not constant
in their lengths, but as one or both of them changing in their lengths,
so that their difference is indefinitely variable. Similarly with C and
D. And then the variability of the ratio in each case being duly con-
ceived in terms of lines that lengthen and shorten, the thing to be un-
derstood is, that whatever difference any change brings about between
A and B, the relation it bears to one or other of them is always like
that which the difference simultaneously arising between O and D
bears to one or other of them. The greater multiplicity of ideas re-
quired for mentally framing this proposition evidently puts it further
beyond the reach of faculties not developed by appropriate culture, or
not capable of being so developed. And as the type of proposition
becomes still more involved, as it does when two such groups of depend-
ent variables are compared and conclusions drawn, it begins to require
a grasp that is easy only to the disciplined mathematician.

One who does not possess that complexity of faculty which, as we
here see, is requisite for the grasping of a complex conception, may, in
cases like these, become conscious of his incapacity ; not from perceiving
what it is that he lacks, but from perceiving that, by another person,
results can be achieved which he cannot achieve. But, where no such
thing as the verifying of exact predictions comes in to prove to one of
inferior faculty that his faculty is inferior, he is usually unaware of the
inferiority. To imagine a higher mode of consciousness is in some de-
gree to have it ; sc that, until he has it in some degree, he cannot really
conceive of its existence. An illustration or two will make this
clear.

266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Take a child on your knee, and, turning over with him some engrav-
ings of landscapes, note what he observes. " I see a man in a boat,"
says he, pointing. "Look at the cows coming down the hill." "And
see, there is a little boy playing with a dog." These and other such
remarks, mostly about the living objects in each view, are all you get
from him. Never by any chance does he utter a word respecting the
scene as a whole. There is an absolute unconsciousness of any thing
to be observed, or to be pleased with, in the combination of wood and
water and mountain. And, while the child is entirely without this
complex aesthetic consciousness, you see that he has not the remotest
idea that such a consciousness exists in others, but is wanting in him-
self. Take, now, a case in which a kindred defect is betrayed by an
adult. You have, perhaps, in the course of your life, had some musi-
cal culture, and can recall the stages through which you have passed.
In early days a symphony was a mystery, and you were somewhat
puzzled to find others applauding it. An unfolding of musical faculty,
that went on slowly through succeeding years, brought some apprecia-
tion, and now these complex musical combinations, which once gave
you little or no pleasure, give you more pleasure than any others.
Remembering all this, you begin to suspect that your indifference to
certain still more involved musical combinations may arise from inca-
pacity in you, and not from defects in them. See, on the other hand,
what happens with one who has undergone no such series of changes
say, an old naval officer, whose life at sea kept him out of the way
of concerts and operas. You hear him occasionally confess, or rather
boast, how much he enjoys the bagpipes. While the last cadences of
a sonata, which a young lady has just played, are still in your ears, he
goes up to her and asks whether she can play " Polly, put the kettle
on," or " Johnny comes marching home." And then, when concerts
are talked about at table, he seizes the occasion for expressing his dis-
like of classical music, and scarcely conceals his contempt for those
who go to hear it. On contemplating his mental state, you see that,
along with absence of the faculty for grasping complex musical combi-
nations, there goes no consciousness of the absence there is no suspi-
cion that such complex combinations exist, and that other persons
have faculties for appreciating them.

And now for the application of this general truth to our subject.
The conceptions with which sociological science is concerned are
complex beyond all others. In the absence of faculty having a cor-
responding complexity, they cannot be grasped. Here, however, as in
other cases, the absence of an adequately complex faculty is not ac-
companied by any consciousness of incapacity. Rather do we find
that, in proportion to the deficiency in the required kind of mental
grasp, there is an extreme confidence of judgment on sociological ques-
tions, and a ridicule of those who, after long discipline, begin to per-
ceive what there is to be understood, and how difficult is the right un-

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 267

derstanding of it. A simple illustration of this will prepare the way
for more involved illustrations.

A few months ago, the Times gave us an account of the last
achievement in automatic printing the "Walter Press," by which its
own immense edition is thrown off in a few hours every morning.
Suppose a reader of the description, adequately familiar with mechan-
ical details, follows what he reads step by step with full comprehen-
sion perhaps making his ideas more definite by going to see the
apparatus at work and questioning the attendants ? Now he goes
away considering he understands all about it. Possibly, under its
aspect as a feat in mechanical engineering, he does so. Possibly also,
under its biographical aspect, as implying in Mr. Walter and those
who cooperated with him certain traits, moral and intellectual, he
does so. But under its sociological aspect he has no notion of its
meaning, and does not even suspect that it has a sociological aspect.
Yet, if he begins to look into the genesis of the thing, he will find that
he is but on the threshold of the full explanation. On asking not what
is its proximate but what is its remote origin, he finds, in the first
place, that this automatic printing-machine is lineally descended from
other automatic printing-machines, which have undergone successive
developments each presupposing others that went before : without
cylinder printing-machines long previously used and improved, there
would have been no " Walter Press." He inquires a step further, and
discovers that this last improvement became possible only by the
help of papier-mdche stereotyping, which, first employed for making
flat plates, afforded the possibility of making cylindrical plates. And
tracing this back, he finds that plaster-of-paris stereotyping came
before it, and that there was another process before that. Again he
learns that this highest form of automatic printing, like the many
less-developed forms preceding it, depended for its practicability on
the introduction of rollers for distributing ink, instead of the hand-
implements used by " printer' s-devils " fifty years ago which rollers,
again, could never have been made fit for their present purposes,
without the discovery of that curious elastic compound out of which
they are cast. And then, on tracing the more remote antecedents,
he finds an ancestry of hand printing-presses, which, through genera-
tions, had been successively improved. Now, perhaps, he thinks he
understands the apparatus, considered as a sociological fact. Far
from it. Its multitudinous parts, which will work together only when
highly finished and exactly adjusted, came from machine-shops,
where there are varieties of complicated, highly-finished engines for
turning cylinders, cutting out wheels, planing bars, and so forth ; and
on the preexistence of these the existence of this printing-machine
depended. If he inquires into the history of these complex automatic
tools, he finds they have severally been, in the slow course of mechan-
ical progress, brought to their present perfection by the help of

z68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

preceding complex automatic tools of various kind, that cooperated
to make their component parts each larger, or more accurate, lathe
or planing-machine having been made possible by preexisting lathes
and planing-machines, inferior in size or exactness. And so if he
traces back the whole contents of the machine-shop, with its many-
different instruments, he comes in course of time to the blacksmith's
hammer and anvil, and even, eventually, to still ruder appliances.
The explanation is now completed, he thinks. Not at all. No such
process as that which the " Walter Press " shows us was possible
until there had been invented, and slowly perfected, a paper-machine
capable of making miles of paper without break. Thus there is the
genesis of the paper-machine involved, and that of the multitudinous
appliances and devices that preceded it, and are at present implied
by it. Have we now got to the end of the matter? No ; we have just
glanced at one group of the antecedents. All this development of
mechanical appliances this growth of the iron-manufacture, this
extensive use of machinery made from iron, this production of so
many machines for making machines has had for one of its causes
the abundance of the raw materials, coal and iron; has had for
another of its causes the insular position which has favored peace
and the increase of industrial activity. There have been moral causes
at work too. Without that readiness to sacrifice present ease to
future benefit, which is implied by enterprise, there would not only
have never arisen the machine in qixestion, but there would never
have arisen the multitudinous improved instruments and processes
that have made it possible. And, beyond the moral traits which
enterprise presupposes, there are those presupposed by efficient
cooperation. Without mechanical engineers who fulfilled their con-
tracts tolerably well, by executing work accurately, neither this
machine itself nor the machines that made it could have been pro-
duced; and, without artisans having considerable conscientiousness,
no master could insure accurate work. Try to get such products out
of an inferior race, and you will find defective character an insuper-
able obstacle. So, too, will you find defective intelligence an insuper-
able obstacle. The skilled artisan is not an accidental product, either
morally or intellectually. The intelligence needed for making a new
thing is not everywhere to be found ; nor is there everywhere to be
found the accuracy of perception and nicety of execution without
which no complex machine can be so made that it will act. Exact-
ness of finish in machines has developed pari passu with exactness of
perception in artisans. Inspect some mechanical appliance made a
century ago, and you may see that, even had all other requisite con-
ditions been fulfilled, want of the requisite skill in workmen would
have been a fatal obstacle to the production of an engine requiring so
many delicate adjustments. So that there are implied in this mechan-
ical achievement, not only our slowly-generated industrial state, with

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 269

its innumerable products and processes, but also the slowly-moulded
moral and intellectual natures of masters and workmen. Has nothing:
now been forgotten ? Yes, we have left out a whole division of all-
iinportant social phenomena those which we group as the progress
of knowledge. Along with the many other developments that have
been necessary antecedents to this machine, there has been the develop-
ment of Science. The growing and improving arts of all kinds have
been helped up, step after step, by those generalized experiences, be-
coming ever wider, more complete, more exact, which make up what
we call Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, etc. Without a consider-
ably developed Geometry, there could never have been the machines
for making machines ; still less this machine that has proceeded from
them. Without a developed Physics, there would have been no steam-
engine to move these various automatic appliances, primary and sec-
ondary ; nor would the many implied metallurgic processes have been
brought to the needful perfection. And, in the absence of a developed
Chemistry, many of the requirements, direct and indirect, could not
have been adequately fulfilled. So that, in fact, this organization of
knowledge which began with civilization had to reach something like
its present stage, before such a machine could come into existence,
supposing all other prerequisites to be satisfied. Surely we have
now got to the end of the history. Not quite ; there yet remains an
essential factor. No one goes on year after year spending thou-
sands of pounds, and much time, and persevering through disappoint-
ment and anxiety, without a strong motive : the " Walter Press " was
not a mere tour deforce. Why, then, was it produced ? To meet an
immense demand with great promptness to print, with one machine,
16,000 copies per hour. Whence arises this demand ? From an exten-
sive reading public, brought in the course of generations to have a
keen morning-appetite for news of all kinds merchants who need to
know the latest prices at home and the latest telegrams from abroad ;
politicians who must learn the result of last night's division, be informed
of the latest diplomatic move, and read the speeches at a meeting ;
sporting-men who look for the odds and the result of yesterday's race ;
ladies who want to see the births, marriages, and deaths. And, on
asking the origin of these many desires to be satisfied, they prove to
be concomitants of our social state in general its trading, political,
philanthropic, and other activities ; for, in societies where these are not
dominant, the demand for news of various kinds rises to no such inten-
sity. See, then, how enormously involved is the genesis of this ma-
chine, as a sociological phenomenon. A whole encyclopaedia of
mechanical inventions some dating from the earliest times go to
the explanation of it. Thousands of years of discipline, by which the
impulsive, improvident nature of the savage has been evolved into a
comparatively self-controlling nature, capable of sacrificing present
ease to future good, are presupposed. There is presupposed the

270 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

equally long discipline by which the inventive faculty, almost wholly
absent in the savage, has been evolved, and by which accuracy, not
even conceived by the savage, has been cultivated. And there is
further presupposed the slow political and social progress, at once
cause and consequence of these other changes, that has brought us
to a state in which such a machine finds a function to fulfil.

The complexity of a sociological fact, and the difficulty of adequate-
ly grasping it, will now perhaps be more apparent. For as in this
case there has been a genesis, so has there been in every other case,
be it of institution, arrangement, custom, belief, etc. ; but while in
this case the genesis is comparatively easy to trace, because of the
comparatively concrete character of process and product, it is in other
cases difficult to trace, because the factors are mostly not of a sensible
kind. And yet only when the genesis has been traced only when the
various antecedents of all orders have been observed in their coopera-
tion, generation after generation, through past social states is there
reached that interpretation of a fact which makes it a part of sociologi-
cal science, properly understood. If, for instance, the true meaning of
such phenomena as those presented by trade-combinations is to be seen,
it is needful to go back to those remote old English periods when anal-
ogous causes produced analogous results. As Brentano points out :

" The workmen formed their Trade-Unions against the aggressions of the
then rising manufacturing lords, as in earlier times the old freemen formed their
Frith-Gilds against the tyranny of mediosval magnates, and the free handicrafts-
men their Craft-Gilds against the aggressions of the Old-burghers." l

Then, having studied the successive forms of such organizations in re-
lation to the successive industrial states, there have to be observed the
ways in which they are severally related to other phenomena of their
respective times the political institutions, the class distinctions, the
family arrangements, the modes of distribution and degrees of inter-
course between localities, the amounts of knowledge, the religious be-
liefs, the morals, the sentiments, the customs, the ideas. Considered
as parts of a nation, having structures that form parts of its structure
and actions that modify and are modified by its actions, these trade-
societies can have their full meanings perceived only when they are
studied in their serial genesis through many centuries, and their
changes considered in relation to simultaneous changes throughout the
social organism. And even then there remains the deeper inquiry
How does it happen that in nations of certain types no analogous insti-
tutions exist, and that in nations of other types the analogous institu-
tions have taken forms more or less different ?

That phenomena so involved cannot be seen as they truly are, even
by the highest intelligence at present existing, is tolerably manifest.
And it is manifest also that a Science of Society is likely for a long

1 Brentano's "Introduction to Early English Guilds," p. cxiv.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 271

time hence to be recognized by but few ; since not only is there in
most cases an absence of faculty complex enough to grasp its complex
phenomena, but there is mostly an absolute unconsciousness that there
are any such complex phenomena to be grasped.

To the want of a due complexity of coneeptive faculty, there has to
be added, as a further difficulty, the want of due plasticity of concep-
tive faculty. The general ideas of nearly all men have been framed
out of experiences gathered within comparatively narrow areas ; and
general ideas so framed are far too rigid readily to admit the multitu-
dinous and varied combinations of facts which Sociology presents.
The child of Puritanic parents, brought up in the belief that Sabbath-
breaking brings after it all kinds of transgressions, and having had
pointed out, in the village or small town that formed his world, vari-
ous instances of this connection, is somewhat perplexed in after-years,
when acquaintance with more of his countrymen has shown him exem-
plary lives joined with non-observance of the Sunday. When he adds
to his experiences by Continental travel, and finds that the best people
of foreign societies disregard injunctions which he once thought essen-
tial to right conduct, he still further widens his originally small and
stiff conception. Now, the process thus exemplified, in a single belief
of a comparatively superficial kind, has to be gone through with nu-
merous beliefs of deeper kinds, before there can be reached the flexibili-
ty of thought required for dealing properly with sociological phenom-
ena. Not in one direction, but in nearly all directions, we have to
learn that those connections of social facts which we commonly regard
as natural, and even necessary, are not at all necessary, and often have
no particular naturalness. On contemplating past social states, we are
continually reminded that many arrangements, and practices, and con-
victions, that seem matters of course, are very modern ; and we are
continually forgetting that many things we now regard as impossible
were quite possible a few centuries ago. Still more, on studying soci-
eties alien in race as well as in stage of civilization, we perpetually
meet with things not only contrary to every thing we should have
thought probable, but even such as we should have scarcely hit upon
in trying to conceive the most unlikely and even impossible things.

Take in illustration the varieties of domestic relations. That mo-
nogamy is not the only kind of marriage, we are, indeed, early taught
by our Bible-lessons. But though the conception of polygamy is thus
made somewhat familiar, it does not occur to us that polyandry is also
a possible arrangement ; and we are surprised on first learning that it
not only exists, but was once extremely general. When we contem-
plate these marital institutions unlike our own, we cannot at first
imagine that they can be practised with a sense of propriety like that
with which we practise ours. Yet Livingstone narrates that, in a tribe
bordering one of the Central African lakes, the women were quite dis-

z 72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gusted on hearing that in England a man has only one wife. This is
a feeling by no means peculiar to them.

" An intelligent Kandyan chief, with whom Mr. Baily visited these Ved-
dahs, was perfectly scandalized at the utter barbarism of living with only one
wife, and never parting until separated by death. 'It was,' he said, 'just like
the wanderoos' (monkeys)." '

Again, one would suppose that, as a matter of course, monogamy,
polygamy, and polyandry, in its several varieties, exhausted the pos-
sible forms of marriage. An utterly unexpected form is furnished us
by one of the African tribes. Marriage, among them, is for so many
days in the week commonly for four days in the week, which is said
to be " the custom in the best families : " the wife during the oif days
being regarded as an independent woman who may do what she
pleases. We are little surprised, too, on reading that, by some of the
hill-tribes of India, unfaithfulness on the part of the husband is held
to be a grave offence, but unfaithfulness on the part of the wife a triv-
ial one. We assume, as self-evident, that good usage of a wife by a
husband implies, among other things, absence of violence ; and hence
it seems scarcely imaginable that in some places the opposite criterion
holds. Yet it does so among the Tartars.

" A nursemaid of mine left me to be married, and some short time after she
went to the Natchalniok of the place to make a complaint against her husband.
He inquired into the matter, when she coolly told him her husband did not love
her. lie 5sked her how she knew he did not love her; 'Because,' she replied,
' he never whipped me.' " 2

A statement which might be rejected as incredible, were it not for
the analogous fact that, among the South African races, a white mas-
ter who does not thrash his men is ridiculed and reproached by them
as not worthy to be called a master. Among domestic customs, again,
who, if he had been set to imagine all possible anomalies, would have
hit upon that which is found among the Basques, and has existed
among other races the custom that on the birth of a child the hus-
band goes to bed and receives the congratulations of friends, while his
wife returns to her household work? Or who>, among the results of
having a son born, would dream of that which occurs among some
Polynesian races, where the father is forthwith dispossessed of his
property, and becomes simply a guardian of it on behalf of the in-
fant ? The varieties of filial relations and of accompanying senti-
ments continually show us things equally strange, and at first sight
equally unaccountable. It seems hardly credible that it should any-
where be thought a duty on the part of children to bury their parents
alive. Yet it is so thought among the Fijians ; of whom we read also
that the parents thus put out of the way, go to their graves with smiling

1 Lubbock's " Prehistoric Times," p. 344 (first edition).

8 Mrs. Atkinson's "Recollections of Tartar Steppes," p. 220.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 273

faces. Scarcely less incredible does it seem that a man's affection
should be regarded as more fitly shown toward the children of others
than toward his own children. Yet the Hill-tribes of India supply an
example :

"Among the Nairs every man looks upon the children of his sisters as his
heirs. ' And he would he considered as an unnatural monster were he to show
such signs of grief at the death of a child which ... lie might suppose to he
his own, as he did at the death of a child of his sister.' " '

"The philoprogenitiveness of philosophical Europe is a strange idea, as well
as term, to the JSTair of Malabar, who learns with his earliest mind that his uncle
is a nearer relation to him than his father, and consequently loves his nephew
much more than his son." a

When, in the domestic relations, we meet with such varieties of
law, of custom, of sentiment, of belief, thus indicated by a few exam-
ples which might be indefinitely multiplied, it may be imagined how
multitudinous are the seeming incongruities presented among the so-
cial relations at large. To be made conscious of these, however, it is
not needful to study uncivilized tribes, or alien races partially civil-
ized. If we look back to the earlier stages of European societies, we
find abundant proofs that social phenomena do not necessarily hang
together in those ways which our daily experiences show us. Reli-
gious conceptions may be taken in illustration.

The grossness of these among civilized nations, as they at present
exist, might, indeed, prepare us for their still greater grossness during
old times. When, close to Boulogne, one passes a crucifix, at the
foot of which lies a mouldering heap of crosses, made of two bits of
lath nailed together, deposited by passers-by in the expectation of
Divine favor to be so gained, one cannot but have a sense of strange-
ness on glancing at the adjacent railway, and on calling to mind the
achievements of the French in science. Still more one may marvel on
finding, as in Spain, a bull-fight got up in the interests of the Church
the proceeds being devoted to a " Holy House of Mercy ! " And
yet, great as seem the incongruities between religious beliefs and social
states now displayed, more astonishing incongruities are disclosed on
going far back. Consider the conceptions implied by sundry mystery-
plays ; and remember that they were outgrowths from a theory of the>
Divine government, which men were afterward burnt for rejecting;
Payments of wages to actors are entered thus

" Imprimis, to God, ij*
Item, to Cayphas, iij"- iiij d

Item, to one of the knights, ij 9-

Item, to the devyll and to Judas, xviij d-

1 Quoted in McLennan's "Primitive Marriage," p. 187.
8 Burton's " History of Sindh," p. 244.
VOL. II. 18

274 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

"We have frequently such entries as: "Item, payd for the spret (spirit) of
God's cote, ij"'' We learn from these entries that God's coat was of leather,
painted and gilt, and that he had a wig of false hair, also gilt." 1

"Even the Virgin's conception is made a subject for ribaldry; and in the
Coventry collection we have a mystery, or play, on the subject of her pretended
trial. It opens with the appearance of the somnour, who reads a long list of
offences that appear in his book ; then come two ' detractors ' who repeat cer-
tain scandalous stories relating to Joseph and Mary, upon the strength of which
they are summoned to appear before the ecclesiastical court. They are accord-
ingly put upon their trial, and we have a broad picture of the proceedings in
such a case," etc. 8

Again, on looking into the illuminated missals of old times, there
is revealed to us a mode of conceiving Christian doctrine which it is
difficult to imagine as current in a civilized or even semi-civilized so-
ciety: instance the ideas invplied by a highly-finished figure of Christ,
from whose wounded side a stream of wafers spouts on to a salver
held by a priest. Or take a devotional book of later date a printed
psalter, profusely illustrated with woodcuts representing incidents in
the life of Christ. Page after page exhibits ways in which his sacri-
fice is utilized after a perfectly material manner. Here are shown
vines growing out of his wounds, and the grapes these vines bear are
being devoured by bishops and abbesses. Here the cross is fixed on a
large barrel, into which his blood falls in torrents, and out of which
there issue jets on to groups of ecclesiastics. And here, his body
being represented in a horizontal position, there rise, from the wounds
in his hands and feet, fountains of blood, which priests and nuns are
collecting in buckets and jars. Nay, even more astonishing is the
mental state implied by one of the woodcuts, which tries to aid the
devotional reader in conceiving the Trinity, by representing three per-
sons standing in one pair of boots! 3 Quite in harmony with these
astoundingly-gross conceptions are the conceptions implied in the pop-
ular literature. The theological ideas that grew up in times w r hen
Papal authority was supreme, and before the sale of indulgences had
been protested against, may be judged from a story contained in the
Folk-lore collected by the Brothers Grimm, called " The Tailor in
Heaven." Here is an abridged translation :

" God, having one day gone out with the saints and the apostles for a walk,
left Peter at the door of heaven with strict orders to admit no one. Soon after
a tailor came and pleaded to be let in. But Peter said that God had forbidden
anyone to be admitted; besides, the tailor was a bad character, and 'cab-
baged ' the cloth he used. The tailor said the pieces he had taken were small,
and had fallen into his basket ; and he was willing to make himself useful he
would carry the babies, and wash or mend the clothes. Peter at last let hiin in,
but made him sit down in a corner, behind the door. Taking advantage of

1 Wright's "Essays on Archaeology," vol. ii., pp. 175, 176. 2 ii., 184.

3 But four copies of this psalter are known to exist. The copy from which I made
this description is contained in the splendid collection of Mr. Henry Iluth.

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 275

Peter's going outside for a minute or two, the tailor left his seat and looked
about him. He soon came to a place where there were many stools, and a chair
of massive gold and a golden footstool, which were God's. Climbing up on
the chair, he could see all that was happening on the earth ; and he saw an old
woman, who was washing clothes in a stream, making away with some of the
linen. In his anger, he took up the footstool and threw it at her. As he could
not get it back, he thought it best to return to his place behind the door, where
he sat down, putting on an air of innocence. God now reentered, without ob-
serving the tailor. Finding his footstool gone, he asked Peter what had become
of it had he let any one in? The apostle at first evaded the question, but con-
fessed that he had let in one only, however, a poor limping tailor. The tailor
was then called, and asked what he had done with the footstool. When he had
told, God said to him : ' you knave, if I judged like you, how long do you
think you would have escaped? Long ago I should not have had a chair or
even a poker left in the place, but should have hurled every thing at the sin-
ners.' . . . ." '

These examples, out of multitudes that might be given, show the
wide limits of variation within which social phenomena range. When
we bear in mind that, along with theological ideas that now seem little
above those of savages, there went (in England) a political constitu-
tion having outlines like the present, an established body of laws, a
regular taxation, an emancipated working-class, an industrial system
of considerable complexity, with the general intelligence and mutual
trust implied by social cooperations so extensive and involved, we see
that there are possibilities of combination far more numerous than we
are apt to suppose. There is proved to us the need for greatly enlar-
ging those stock-notions which are so firmly established in us by daily
observations of surrounding; arrangements and occurrences.

"We might, indeed, even if limited to the evidence which our own
society at the present time supplies, greatly increase the plasticity of
our conceptions, did we contemplate the facts as they really are.
Could we nationally, as well as individually, " see ourselves as others
see us," we might find at home seeming contradictions, sufficient to
show us that what we think necessarily-connected traits are by no
means necessarilv connected. We might learn from our own institu-
tions, and books, and journals, and debates, that while there are cer-
tain constant relations among social phenomena, they are not the
relations commonly supposed to be constant ; and that, when from
some conspicuous characteristic we infer certain other characteristics,
we may be quite wrong. To aid ourselves in perceiving this, let us,
varying a somewhat trite mode of representation, consider what might
be said of us by an independent observer, living in the far future
supposing his statements translated into our cumbrous language.

" Though the diagrams used for teaching make every child aware
thac many thousands of years ago the earth's orbit began to recede

1 " Kinder- und-Hausmarchen," by William and James Grimm, larger edition (1870),
pp. 140-142.

276 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from its limit of greatest eccentricity ; and though all are familiar
with the consequent fact that the glacial epoch, which lias so long
made a large part of the northern hemisphere uninhabitable, has passed
its climax ; yet it is not universally known that, in some regions, the
retreat of glaciers has lately made accessible tracks long covered.
Amid moraines and under vast accumulations of detritus, have been
found here ruins, there semi-fossilized skeletons, and in some places,
even records, which, by a marvellous concurrence of favorable condi-
tions, have been so preserved that parts of them remain legible. Just
as our automatic quarrying-engines occasionally turn up fossil cephalo-
pods, so Httle injured that drawings of them are made with the sepia
taken from their own ink-bags ; so here, by a happy chance, there have
come down to us, from a long-extinct race of men, those actual secre-
tions of their daily life, which furnish coloring-matter for a picture of
them. By great perseverance our explorers have discovered the key
to their imperfectly-developed language ; and in course of years have
been able to put together facts yielding us faint ideas of the strange
peoples who lived there during the last preglacial period.

" A report just issued refers to a time called by these peoples the
middle of the nineteenth century of their era ; and it concerns a nation
of considerable interest to us the English. Though until now no
traces of this ancient nation were known to exist, yet there survived
the names of certain great men it produced one a poet whose range
of imagination and depth of insight are said to have exceeded those of
all who went before him ; the other, a man of science, of whom, pro-
found as we may suppose in many other respects, we know definitely
this, that to all nations then living, and that have since lived, he
taught how the Universe is balanced. What kind of people the Eng-
lish were, and what kind of civilization they had, have thus always
been questions exciting curiosity. The facts disclosed by this report
are scarcely of the kind anticipated. Search was first made for traces
of these great men, who, it was supposed, would be conspicuously com-
memorated. Little was found, however. It did, indeed, appear that
the last of them, who revealed to mankind the constitution of the heav-
ens, had received a name of honor like that which they gave to a suc-
cessful trader who presented an address to their monarch ; and besides
a tree planted in his memory, a small statue to their great poet had
been put up in one of their temples, where, however, it was almost lost
among the many and large monuments to their fighting chiefs. Not
that commemorative structures of magnitude were never erected by
the English. Our explorers discovered traces of a gigantic one, in
which, apparently, persons of distinction and deputies from all nations
were made to take part in honoring some being man he can scarcely
have been. For it is difficult to conceive that any man could have had
a worth transcendent enough to draw from them such extreme hom-
age, when they thought so little of those by whom their name as a race

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 277

has been saved from oblivion. Their distribution of monumental hon-
ors was, indeed, in all respects remarkable. To a physician named
Jenner, who, by a mode of mitigating the ravages of a horrible disease,
was said to have rescued many thousands from death, they erected a
memorial statue in one of their chief public places. After some years,
however, repenting them of giving to this statue so conspicuous a po-
sition, they banished it to a far corner of one of their suburban gar-
dens, frequented chiefly by children and nursemaids ; and, in its place,
they erected a statue to a great leader of their fighters one Napier,
who had helped them to conquer and keep down certain weaker races.
The reporter does not tell us whether this last had been instrumental
in destroying as many lives as the first had saved ; but he remarks :
' I could not but wonder at this strange substitution among a people
who professed a religion of peace.' Not, however, that this was an
exceptional act, out of harmony with their usual acts : quite the con-
trary. The records show that, to keep up the remembrance of a great
victory gained over a neighboring nation, they held for many years an
annual banquet, much in the spirit of the commemorative scalp-dances
of still more barbarous peoples ; and there was never wanting a priest
to ask on the banquet a blessing from one they named the God of
love. In some respects, indeed, their code of conduct seemed not to
have advanced beyond, but to have gone back from, the code of a still
more ancient people from whom their creed was derived. One of the
laws of this ancient people was, ' an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth ; 'but sundry laws of the English, especially those concerning acts
that interfered with some so-ealled sports of their ruling classes, in-
flicted penalties which imply that their principle had become ' a leg
for an eye, and an arm for a tooth.' The relations of their creed to the
creed of this ancient people are indeed difficult to understand. They
had at one time cruelly persecuted this ancient people Jews they
were called because that particular modification of the Jewish reli-
gion, which they, the English, nominally adopted, was one which the
Jews would not adopt. And yet, marvellous to relate, while they tor-
tured the Jews for not agreeing with them, they substantially agreed
with the Jews. Not only, as above instanced, in the law of retaliation
did they outdo the Jews, instead of obeying the quite opposite princi-
ple of the teacher they worshipped as divine, but they obeyed the
Jewish law, and disobeyed this divine teacher in other ways as in the
rigid observance of every seventh day, which he had deliberately dis-
countenanced. Though they were angry with those who did not nom-
inally believe in Christianity (which was the name of their religion),
yet they ridiculed those who really believed in it ; for some few people
among them, nicknamed Quakers, who aimed to carry out Christian
precepts instead of Jewish precepts, they made butts for their jokes.
Nay, more ; their substantial adhesion to the creed they professedly
repudiated was clearly demonstrated by this, that in each of their tcm-

278 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pies they fixed up in some conspicuous place the ten commandments of
the Jewish religion, while they rarely fixed up the two Christian com-
mandments which were to replace them. ' And yet,' says the reporter,
after dilating on these strange facts, ' though the English were greatly
given to missionary enterprises of all kinds, and though I sought dili-
gently among the records of these, I could find no trace of a society
for converting the English people from Judaism to Christianity.' This
mention of their missionary enterprises introduces other remarkable
anomalies. Being anxious to get adherents to this creed which they
adopted in name, but not in fact, they sent out men to various parts of
the world to propagate it one part, among others, being that subju-
gated territory above named. There the English missionaries taught
the gentle precepts of their faith ; and there the officers employed by
their government exemplified these precepts one of the exemplifica-
tions being that, to put down a riotous sect, they took fifty out of
sixty-six who had surrendered, and, without any trial, blew them from
the guns, as they called it tied them to the mouths of cannon,
and shattered their bodies to pieces. And then, curiously enough,
having thus taught and thus exemplified their religion, they expressed
great surprise at the fact that the only converts their missionaries
could obtain among these people were hypocrites and men of charac-
ters so bad that no one would employ them.

" Nevertheless, these semi-civilized English had their good points.
Odd as must have been the delusion which made them send out mis-
sionaries to inferior races, who were always ill used by their sailors
and settlers, and eventually extirpated by them, yet, on finding that
they spent annually a million of their money in missionary and allied
enterprises, we cannot but see some generosity of motive in them.
They country was dotted over with hospitals and almshouses, and in-
stitutions for taking care of the diseased and indigent ; and their
towns were overrun with philanthropic societies, which, without say-
ing any thing about the wisdom of their policy, clearly implied good
feeling. They expended in the legal relief of their poor as much as,
and at one time more than, a tenth of the revenue raised for all
national purposes. One of their remarkable deeds was that, to get rid
of a barbarous institution of those times, called slavery, under which,
in their colonies, certain men held complete possession of others, their
goods, their bodies, and practically even their lives, they paid down
twenty millions of their money. And not less striking was the fact
that, during a war between two neighboring nations, they contributed
large sums, and sent out many men and women, to help in taking care
of the wounded and assisting the ruined.

" The facts brought to light by these explorations are thus ex-
tremely instructive. Now that, after tens of thousands of years of
discipline, the lives of men in society have become so harmonious
now that character and conditions have little by little grow r n into ad-

THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 279

justment, we are apt to suppose that congruity of institutions, con-
duct, sentiments, and beliefs, is necessary. "We think it almost im-
possible that, in the same society, there should be daily practised
principles of quite opposite kinds ; and it seems to us scarcely credible
that men should have, or profess to have, beliefs with which their acts
are absolutely irreconcilable. Only that extremely rare disorder, in-
sanity, could explain the conduct of one who, knowing that fire burns,
nevertheless thrusts his hand into the flame ; and to insanity also we
should ascribe the behavior of one who, professing to think a certain
course morally right, pursued the opposite course. Yet the revela-
tions yielded by these ancient remains show us that societies could
hold together notwithstanding: what we should think a chaos of con-
duct and of opinion. Nay, more, they show us that it was possible for
men to profess one thing and do another, without betraying a con-
sciousness of inconsistency. One piece of evidence is curiously to the
point. Among their multitudinous agencies for beneficent purposes,
the English had a 'Naval and Military Bible Society' a society for
distributing copies of their sacred book among their professional
fighters on sea and land ; and this society was subscribed to, and
chiefly managed by, leaders among these fighters. It is, indeed, sug-
gested by the reporter, that for these classes of men they had an ex-
purgated edition of their sacred book, from which the injunctions to
'return good for evil,' and 'to turn the cheek to the smiter,' were
omitted. It may have been so ; but, if not, we have a remarkable in-
stance of the extent to which conviction and conduct may be diamet-
rically opposed, without any apparent perception that they are op-
posed. We habitually assume that the distinctive trait of humanity
is rationality, and that rationality involves consistency ; yet here we
find an extinct race (unquestionably human, and regarding itself as
rational) in which the inconsistency of conduct and professed belief
was as great as can well be imagined. Thus we are warned against
supposing that what now seems to us so natural was always natural.
We have our eyes opened to an error which has been getting con-
firmed among us for these thousands of years, that social phenomena
and the phenomena of human nature necessarily hang together in the
ways we see around us."

Before summing up what has been said under the title of "Sub-
jective Difficulties Intellectual," I may remai'k that this group of
difficulties is separated from the group of objective difficulties, dealt
with in the last chapter, rather for the sake of convenience than
because the division can be strictly maintained. In contemplating
difficulties of interpretation phenomena being on the one side and in-
telligence on the other we may, as we please, ascribe failure either to
the inadequacy of the intelligence or to the involved nature of the
phenomena. * The difficulty is subjective or objective according to our

2 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

point of view. But the difficulties above set forth arise in so direct
a way from conspicuous defects of human intelligence, that they may
be, more appropriately than the preceding ones, classed as subjective.
So regarding them, then, we have to beware, in the first place, of
this tendency to automorphic interpretation ; or rather, having no
alternative but to conceive the natures of other men in terms such as
our own feelings and ideas furnish, we have to beware of the errors
likely hence to arise discounting our conclusions as well as we can.
Further, Ave must be on our guard against the two opposite prevailing
errors respecting Man, and against the sociological errors arising from
them : we have to get rid of the two beliefs that human nature is un-
changeable, and that it is easily changed ; and we have, instead, to
become familiar with the conception of a human nature that is changed
in the slow succession of generations by social discipline. Another
obstacle not to be completely surmounted by any, and to be partially
surmounted by but few, is that resulting from the want of intellectual
faculty complex enough to grasp the extremely complex phenomena
which Sociology deals with. There can be no complete conception of
a sociological fact, considered as a component of Social Science, unless
there are present to thought all its essential factors ; and the power
of keeping them in mind with due clearness, as well as in their proper
proportions and combinations, has yet to be reached. Then beyond
this difficulty, only to be in a measure overcome, there is the further
difficulty, not, however, by any means so great, of enlarging the con-
ceptive capacity, so that it may admit the widely divergent and ex-
tremely various combinations of social phenomena. That rigidity of
conception produced in us by experiences of our own social life, in our
own time, has to be exchanged for a plasticity that can receive with
ease, and accept as natural, the countless different combinations of
social phenomena utterly unlike, and sometimes exactly opposite to,
those we are familiar with. Without such a plasticity there can be
no proper understanding of coexisting social states allied to our own,
still less of past social states, or social states of alien civilized races
and races in early stages of development.

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS.

By ALFRED W. BENNETT, M. A., B. So., F. L. S.

THAT there are no "hard and fast lines" in Nature is a truth
which is more and more forcing itself upon the minds of men
of science. The older naturalists delighted to circumscribe their own
special domains within sharply-marked boundaries, which no trespass-
ers were allowed to pass. We have long given up the attempt thus

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 2S1

accurately to map out the kingdom of Nature. Her varied produc-
tions are connected with one another by innumerable links and cross-
links ; and our systems of classification, even the most " natural," are
but an imperfect human contrivance for bringing together those forms
which present the most evident marks of resemblance or affinity.
While the truth of this law is most familiar in the case of those
smaller subdivisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms classes,
orders, and genera which are connected with one another by innu-
merable intermediate forms, it is none the less certain in the line of
demarcation which separates these two great kingdoms themselves
from one another. In attempting to draw up a definition which shall
serve accurately and infallibly to distinguish between the Animal and
Vegetable Kingdoms, we find ourselves compelled to abandon one
supposed crucial test after another, and to content ourselves at last
with framing, as in the case of the lower subdivisions, an assemblage
of characters, by the tout-ensemble of which we must decide whether
our organism is an animal or a plant. So great is the uncertainty as
to the actual boundary-line, that large groups of lowly organisms,
such as those known as Diatoms and Desmidea?, have been regarded
by experienced authorities as belonging to each kingdom ; and one of
the ablest of living naturalists, Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, has proposed
the division of the material universe not into three but into four king-
doms animals, plants, protista, and minerals, the new kingdom of
Protista including the most lowly-organized forms of what are gener-
ally considered animals and plants, from the Flagellate Infusoria to
the Fungi, distinguished by the absence of sexes, and the mode of re-
production by gemmation or fission alone. The soundness of this new
classification is not, however, admitted by the best remaining authori-
ties in England or Germany.

One of the most obvious distinctions between the Animal and
Vegetable Kingdoms consists in the possession by the former of a
power of voluntary motion of either the whole or a part of the body,
dependent on the presence of a distinct nervous system, which is ab-
sent in the latter ; a distinction obvious enough when contrasting any
of the higher forms of the two kingdoms, but which, like all other in-
dividual characters, fails when pressed to too rigid a test. There are
animals, so regarded by the best naturalists, and possessing other
characters which compel us to refer them to this class, whose power
of motion is confined to the " contractility " common to all protoplas-
mic substance, and which are absolutely devoid of a nervous system ;
and there are plants, unquestionable plants, which possess powers of
spontaneous motion strictly compai'able to those exhibited by the
lower animals. It may be interesting to collect together a few illus-
trations of this last-named fact, some of which appear to the writer
scarcely explicable by the application of any of those laws which
govern inert unorganized matter.

232

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The movements to which reference is here made belong in most
cases to a part rather than to the whole of a plant ; in some cases,
however, we find the whole organism endowed with spontaneous motion
of a very remarkable character. An instance of this occurs in the case
of the regular undulating motion, exceedingly similar to that of some
of the lower animals, characteristic of a class of Algae hence called
Oseillatoriae. The mode of reproduction of the Algae, the lowest class
of th.3 vegetable kingdom, to which the sea-weeds and the fresh-water
confervae belong, is often obscure, and in some cases different distinct
processes exist in the same species. In certain fresh-water Algae, repro-
duction takes place by the formation of "Zoospores" (Fig. 1), which
are the results of the separation and isolation of the protoplasmic con-
tents of certain special cells. According to the observations of M.
Thuret, who has paid great attention to this subject, these zoospores,
which are of extreme minuteness, are ovoid in form, and are furnished,
either over their whole circumference or toward one extremity, with
very fine cilia, varying from two to a large number. As soon as these
minute bodies free themselves from the cell in which they are enclosed,
the cilia begin to vibrate with great rapidity, the vibration being ac-
companied by a movement of rotation of the bodies themselves on
their axis, occasioned apparently by rapid and spontaneous contrac-
tions ; the result being a quick motion of the body through the water
undistinguishable, in fact, from that of some of the lower forms of

Fig. 2.

Fig 1.

M&,

animal life continuing for a period varying from half an hour to
several hours, at the expiration of which they settle down, reassume
the characters of ordinary vegetable cells, lose their cilia, and give
rise, by cell-division, to new individuals resembling the parent-plant.
Those zoospores which are furnished with cilia at one extremity only,
direct that extremity, which is destitute of chlorophyll or green color-
ing-matter, toward the light. Closely resembling these zoospores are
the "spermatozoa" of the higher orders of cryptogamic plants, ferns,
equisetums, and mosses. These bodies (Fig. 2) are produced in the an-
theridia or male organs, again by a modification of the protoplasmic
cell-contents; they are filiform bodies of various forms, mostly pre-
senting one or more spiral curves, and furnished with vibratile cilia.
When released from the parent-cells, they move about with great ac-

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 283

tivity until they come into contact with the opening of the archego-
nium or female organ, which they enter, and thus fructify the germ of
the new plant. Pringsheim describes the process by which the sper-
matozoa enter the archegonium as a very peculiar twisting motion, due
to the action of the mucus or protoplasm of the germ-cell. He has
seen a large number of spermatozoa enter a single cell, forming a kind
of chain.

In describing these curious bodies, of the connection of which with
the vegetable kingdom there is no room for doubt, one is irresistibly
reminded of these lowly forms of animal life known as Amoeba and
Gromia, consisting apparently of shapeless masses of protoplasm pos-
sessing indeed far more restricted powers of locomotion than the zoo-
spores and spermatozoa, their faculties in this respect being confined to
the protrusion and retractation of arms or pseudopodia, by means of
which a slow movement is effected. If the possession of consciousness
and of a voluntary control over the movements of the body belongs to
the animal kingdom even to its lowest forms, it is difficult to frame any
cogent reason for denying these faculties to the vegetable organisms
which we have been considering. A very interesting problem also
presents itself for solution in the almost perfect identity of constitution
between these lowest forms of animals and the protoplasmic elements
in the constitution of more highly-organized forms. If the Amcebce
and Gromice are admitted to be distinct individual animals, the same
line of reasoning would almost compel us to admit to the same rank
the white corpuscles of the blood of mammalia, which present almost
the same characters and possess the same power of protrusion and re-
tractation of a portion of their substance.

The instances above cited illustrate the faculty of spontaneous mo-
tion possessed by detached portions of protoplasm endowed with the
power of forming themselves into new individuals. This phenomenon
appears, however, to be but a form of the property possessed by all
protoplasm, of constant motion in some form or other. The circulation
of the protoplasmic mucous fluid within the cells of plants is one of
the most beautiful phenomena of vegetable life revealed by the micro-
scope, and one of which the explanations at present offered appear
quite inadequate. A favorite object for exhibiting this circulation or
rotation is formed by the jointed hairs which cover the stamens of the
Virginian spider-wort {Trades cant ia Virginica). The movement is
rendered visible by the presence, in the otherwise colorless fluid, of
minute opaque granules of chlorophyll or other coloring-matter; and
is observable with great ease in the semi-transparent tissue of certain
water-plants, as Ghara, or the Valisneria commonly grown in fresh-
water aquariums. It consists of a slow movement of the protoplasmic
fluid up one side of the cell, across the ends, and down the other side ;
not perpendicularly, but in an oblique or spiral course. The subject
has been carefully investigated by three French physiologists, M3I.

2 84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prillieux, Roze, and Brogniart, who find that the rotation is directly-
influenced, in a remarkable manner, by the presence of light. M. Pril-
lieux kept a moss in the dark for several days, when the cells pre-
sented the appearance of a green net-work, between the meshes of
which was a clear, transparent ground. All the grains of chlorophyll
were applied to the walls which separate the cells from one another ;
there were none on the upper or under walls which form the surfaces
of the leaf. Under the influence of light, the grains, together with the
thin mucous plasma in which they are embedded, change their posi-
tion from the lateral to the superficial walls, this change taking place,
under favorable circumstances, in about a quarter of an hour. On at-
taining their new position, the grains do not remain absolutely immov-
able, but continually approach and recede from one another; and, if
again darkened, they leave their new position, and return to the lateral
walls. Artificial light produces the same effect as daylight.

Analogous to the circulation of the protoplasm, within the cell, is
that of the sap or nutritive fluid through the whole plant, passing
through the permeable walls of the cells. This circulation of the sap,
by which fluid is conveyed equally to all parts of the plant, apparently
in opposition to the laws of gravity, is no doubt explicable, to a cer-
tain extent, by the application of known physical laws, of which the
most important are capillary attraction, osmose, or the law by which a
less dense fluid passes through a permeable diaphragm to mingle with
a denser fluid, and the upward-pumping force, to supply the partial
vacuum occasioned by the evaporation of water from the leaves. Al-
lowing, however, full scope to all these physical forces, there would
seem to be a residuum of energy, still unaccounted for, connected with
the vitality of the plant itself. In particular, the selective power of
plants, in absorbing from the soil a larger portion of those ingredients
which are required for the formation, or healthy life, of their tissues, is
an absolutely unexplained phenomenon. A familiar instance of this is
furnished by the difference in the amount of silica absorbed by corn-
crops and by leguminous plants, amounting, in the former case, to 2.5
per cent., in the latter, to 0.3 per cent., of the dry foliage. Indeed, if
any two plants are grown together, side by side, in the same soil, the
constitution of the ash, i. e., of the solid ingredients derived from the
soil, will be remarkably different ; while, in the same plant, in the same
soil, the constitution is constant. It was pointed out, by the Duke of
Argyll, when criticising Darwin's " Origin of Species," how unavoid-
able it seems, in describing the phenomena of Nature, to use language
involving the idea of contrivance and design. In the same manner, it
seems impossible to describe the process of vegetative life without
appearing to attribute to the plant some conscious power of its own.
A striking instance of this, as well as of the liability to consider a
mere statement of an obscure law in other terms as an explanation of
that law, occurs in an admirable treatise on the growth of plants

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 285

Johnson's " How Crops Grow." ' " The cereals are able to dispose of
eilica by giving it a place in the cuticular cells; the leguminous crops,
on the other hand, cannot remove it from their juices ; the latter remain
saturated, and thus further diffusion of silica from without becomes
impossible except as room is made by a new growth. It is in this way
that we have a rational and adequate explanation of the selective
power of the plant." The " rational and adequate explanation " seems
to me, on the contrary, to be merely a restatement of this selective
power of the tissues in other terms. Because the tissues want the sil-
ica, is no explanation of how they get it.

The curious and interesting movements of climbing plants have
been investigated by Palm, Mohl, and Asa Gray, and form the subject
of one of the most charming of Mr. Darwin's works. It is well known
that climbing plants, such as the hop, honeysuckle, or major convolvu-
lus, always twine round the stem or other object which supports them
in one direction, that is, always either from right to left or from left to
right ; but few, probably, have reflected, and fewer still attempted to
observe, by what process the end of the growing shoot contrives to
change its position from one side to the other of the stem. If the ex-
tremity of a living stem, say of convolvulus, growing perfectly free,
and in a normal position, is observed, it is seen to hang over from its
support in a horizontal direction ; and this horizontal portion is found,
if observed at intervals of some hours, to point in different directions.
The end of the growing shoot has, in fact, the property of revolving in
a large circle, round the support, always, with the same species, in the.
same direction, either with the sun or opposed to the sun. The rate
of revolution varies with different plants, and with the same plant at
different periods of its growth ; it is much quicker in warmer than in
cooler weather. With the hop, Darwin found it to vary from two and
a half hours to nine hours. The object of the climbing power of plants
is no doubt to reach the light, and to expose a large surface of leaves
to its action and to that of the free air ; but the mode by which this
power of motion is gained is by no means clear. The late eminent
physiologist Mohl supposed that it was caused by a dull kind of irrita-
bility in the stem, which caused it to bend toward the support when in
contact with it. Mr. Darwin has, however, carefully tested this theory
experimentally, and always with negative results. He rubbed many
shoots, much harder than was necessary to excite movement in any
tendril, or in any foot-stalk, of a leaf-climber, but without result. This
view seems also entirely negatived by the fact that not only do the
stems of climbing plants revolve when they are not in contact with
any support, but even more freely, under such circumstances, than

1 "How Crops Grow:" A Treatise on the Chemical Compositions, Structure, and
Life, of the Plant, for Agricultural Students. By S. W. Johnson. Revised and adapted
for English Use, by A. H. Church and W. T. T. Dyer. London: MacmMan & Co., 1869
pp. 345.

236

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

when climbing. When a climbing plant first springs from the ground,
the extremity of the shoot performs slow gyrations in the air, as if, as
Darwin expresses it, it were searching for a support. I do not here
discuss the question whether this habit may be the result of a tendency
transmitted and enhanced through thousands of generations ; the move-
ment itself is, in the individual plant, entirely " spontaneous," in every
sense of the term ; that is, is not the necessary result of known physi-
cal laws acting upon the individual. Darwin's paper, " On the Move-
ments and Habits of Climbing Plants," published in the Journal of the
Linnoean Society, contains a number of the most interesting observa-
tions on this class of plants ; and the language employed is everywhere
suggestive of some hidden, sentient controlling power in the plant it-
self.

Fis. 3.

The same purpose as that served by a climbing stem is answered in
other plants, as the vine, Virginian creeper, and passion-flower, by ten-
drils ; and the phenomena of spontaneous motion in tendrils are, if
possible, still more curious. Some tendrils display the same power of
rotatory motion possessed by the extremities of the shoots of climbing
plants ; others do not revolve, but are sensitive, bending to the touch.
The curling movement, consequent on a single touch, continues to in-
crease for a considerable time, then ceases ; after a few hours the ten-
dril uncurls itself, and is again ready for action. A tendril will thus
J show a tendency to curl round any object with which it comes into
contact, with the singular exception that it will seldom twine itself
round another tendril of the same plant. It is also very curious that,

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS.

:S 7

with some exceedingly sensitive plants, the falling of drops of rain on
the tendril will produce no effect whatever. The mode in which a
tendril of a Bignonia catches hold of a support is thus described by-
Darwin : " The main petiole is sensitive to contact with any object ;
even a small loop of thread after two days caused one to bend up-
ward. The whole tendrils are likewise sensitive to contact. Hence,
when a shoot grows through branched twigs, its revolving movement
soon brings the tendril into contact with some twig, and then all three

Fig. 4.

' toes ' bend (or sometimes one alone), and, after several hours, seize
fast hold of the twig, exactly like a bird when perched." The Virgin-
ian creeper has another mode of attaching itself to a wall or other solid
support, by the formation, at the extremities of the branches of the ten-
dril, of little disks or cushions, very similar to the disks on the foot of
the house-fly, by which it is enabled to attach itself to our windows,
and to walk along the ceiling. These disks secrete a glutinous fluid,
which attaches the tendril to the support with such strength that it is
often impossible to detach it without destroying the tendril, or even
removing a portion of the wall itself. As soon as the attachment is
accomplished, the tendril gradually thickens, and contracts spirally, as
shown in Figs. 3 and 4. This spiral contraction, indeed, is always the
result of the tendril meeting with a support ; and, if no support is
found, the tendril soon shrinks and withers away. Some tendrils ex-
hibit a most remarkable power of selection, which, to use Mr. Darwin's
words, " -would, in an animal, be called instinct." The tendrils of a
species of Bignonia slowly travelled over the surface of a piece of
wood, and, when the apex of one of them came to a hole or fissure, it
inserted itself; the same tendril would frequently withdraw from one

288

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hole and insert its point into a second one. Mr. Darwin has seen a ten-
dril keep its point, in one instance, for twenty hours, and, in another
instance, for thirty-six hours, in a minute hole, and then withdraw it.
After the record of this fact on such unexceptional evidence, we are the
more prepared to credit the statement of Mr. Anderson-Henry, that a
climber will, in running up a wall, carefully avoid contact with anoth-
er climber which it dislikes ; and even the account by M. Paul Levy, 1
that the lianes of tropical forests have an affinity for certain trees, tow-
ard which they direct their growth, and not toward those nearest
to them ; carefully drawing themselves away when they encounter one
of the objectionable trees.

We may conclude our account of climbing plants with the follow-
ing remarks by Mr. Darwin : " It has often been vaguely asserted that
plants are distinguished from animals by not having the power of
movement. It should rather be said that plants acquire and display
this power only when it is of some advantage to them, but that this
is of comparatively rare occurrence, as they are affixed to the ground,
and food is brought to them by the wind and rain. We see how high
in the scale of organization a plant may rise, when we look at one of
the more perfect tendril-bearers. It first places its tendrils ready for
action, as a polypus places its tentacula. If the tendril be displaced,
it is acted on by the force of gravity, and rights itself. It is acted on

Fig. 5.

by the light, and bends toward or from it, or disregards it, whichever
may be most advantageous. During several days the tendrils or in-
ternodes, or both, spontaneously revolve with a steady motion. The
tendril strikes some object, and quickly curls round, and firmly grasps

1 Bulletin de la Societe Botanique da France. Translated in the Gardener's Chroni-
c/p, March 19, 1870.

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 289

it. In the course of some hours it contracts into a spire, dragging up
the stem, and forming an excellent spring. All movements now cease.
By growth, the tissues become wonderfully strong and durable. The
tendril has done its work, and done it in an admirable manner."

The phenomenon known as Sensitiveness is of by no means un-
common occurrence in the vegetable kingdom. It consists of a sudden
movement of the leaf, a portion of the flower, or the whole plant, on
contact with, or even on the approach of, a foreign body. One of the
most familiar examples is that of the Sensitive-plant {Mimosa pudica
and sensitiva), Figs. 5 and 6, in which three distinct movements are

Fig. 6.

observable when the leaf is touched by the hand or the warm breath.
First, the numerous leaflets close in pairs, bringing their upper faces
together, and also inclining forward ; then the four branches of the
leaf-stalk, which were outspread like the rays of a fan, approach each
other; at the same time the main leaf-stalk turns downward, bending
at its joint with the stem. The explanation offered in one of our best
botanical text-books, of this phenomenon, is. as follows: "There is a
swelling at the base of the petiole, the cells of which constitute, as it
were, two springs acting in contrary directions, so that, if the one from
any cause be paralyzed, the other pushes the leaf in the direction of
least resistance. These springs, if they be so called, are set in action
by the rush of fluid creating a turbid state of the one set of cells and
an empty state of the other. What circumstances regulate the turges-
cence are only imperfectly known." It will be obvious that, even if
this is correct as a statement of facts, it offers no real explanation of
the phenomenon ; for it is quite as difficult to understand how the mere
approach of the hand, which gives rise to a sensitiveness commencing,
it will be remarked, at the extremity of the leaf, will account for a
" turgescence " of the springs at the base of the leaf, which then causes
the movement. It should be observed also that we are unaware of any
use which these movements are to the plant. Similar sensitiveness

VOL. II. 19

290

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

occurs in the leaves of some other leguminous plants, in several species
of Oxalls, etc. M. Bert has observed that the sensitiveness is de-
stroyed by the continual application of chloroform, and also by placing
the plant constantly in the dark or in green light.

Similar movements to that of the Sensitive-plant, but occurring
spontaneously, may be observed in other plants. Thus in the Des-
modlum gyrans or " Telegraph-plant," sometimes grown in our hot-
houses, belonging to the same order, Leguminosa?, the leaf consists of
three leaflets, a large central, and two smaller side ones. The motion
is especially observable in the small side-leaflets, which on a warm
summer's clay may be seen to rise and fall by a succession of jerking
movements ; now stopping for some time, then moving briskly, always
resting for a while in some part of their course, and starting again
without apparent cause, " seemingly of their own will," as Prof. Asa
Gray remarks. The movement is not simply up and down, but the
end of the moving leaflet sweeps more or less of a circuit. It is not
set in motion by a touch, but begins, goes on, and stops, of itself.

An exceedingly remarkable instance of sensitiveness occurs in the
case of the " Venus's Fly-trap " of North Carolina (Dionwa mitscipula),

Fig. 7.

represented in Fig. 7. The mid-rib of each leaf serves as a kind of
hino-e. When the inside of the blade of the leaf, or the fine bristles
which grow on its surface, are touched by any foreign substance, the
hinge suddenly closes, and if the intruding substance be a fly or other
small object, it is immediately imprisoned as represented in the figure,
the teeth on the margin of the leaf closing firmly upon one another
like a steel trap, the sides of the trap then flatten down and press firmly

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 291

upon the victim, and it now requires a very considerable force to open
the trap. If nothing is caught, the trap presently reopens of itself, and
is ready for another attempt. With regard to the object of this
strange proceeding, there can be no doubt that the insect is retained
until the softer parts of the body are completely dissolved in the thick
mucous fluid which is exuded by the leaves ; and Prof. Asa Gray
considers that the evidence is nearly complete that the animal matter
is actually absorbed in the leaf itself. It is even stated that pieces of
raw beef are digested by the leaf in the same manner ! Seeing, how-
ever, that it is now generally admitted by physiologists that even pure,
water is not absorbed through the pores of leaves, which serve only
for the exhalation of vapor, this explanation is very hard of belief.
The " pitchers " of the Nepenthes, or pitcher-plant, act also as fly-traps,
large numbers of insects being enticed into them by the fluid they
secrete, and ai*e then unable to extricate themselves.

The sensitiveness of the leaves of plants is but an excessive devel-
opment of the phenomenon known as the Sleep of Plants. In the case
of the Sensitive-plant the position assumed by the leaf and leaflets in
the night is the same as that which they assume when disturbed in the
daytime ; and with many other plants, such as the clover and the
Robinia or " acacia " tree, the change in the position of the leaflets,
morning and evening, is a familiar fact. The Sleep of Plants extends
also to the flowers, many plants opening their flowers only at particu-
lar times of the day. Thus the major convolvulus of the gardens and
the goat's-beard open at sunrise and always close by about noon, the
evening primrose opens only in the evening, and many others last for*
but a single day. So regular is the time of opening and closing of .
some flowers, that Linnreus drew up a list, which he termed a " floral
clock." The singular part of the affair is, that with many flowers the
time of opening and closing is determined, not by the degree of light,
or by the temperature or humidity of the atmosphere, but absolutely
by the hour of the day. The giant water-lily of the Amazons, the
Victoria rer/ia, opens, for the first time, about 6 p.m., and closes in a
few hours, then opens again at 6 p. m. the next day, remaining open
until the afternoon, when it closes and sinks below the water. Other
plants, again, open their flowers only in the bright sunshine, as the
beautiful yellow centaury (or Chlora perfoliata) the sundew {Drosera
rotund if olia), etc. In the latter plant, belonging to the same natural
order as the Venus's Fly-trap, and possessing a slight irritability of
the leaves, Mr. Worthington Smith has noticed also a strong sensitive-
ness in the petals, the flowers closing suddenly when touched.

Irritability or sensitiveness, similar to that of the leaves of the Sen-
sitive-plant, is not uncommon in the flower. An instance has been
alluded to in the petals of the sundew ; it occurs also in the lip of the
corolla of several of the orchis tribe. It is, however, more common in
the proper organs of reproduction, as the style of Stylidium, the sta-

292

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mens of the berberry, etc., and is then directly connected with the pro-
cess of fertilization of the ovule. In JStylidium, an Australian genus,
the style and filaments are adherent into a column, which hangs over
on one side of the flower. When touched, it rises up and springs over
to the opposite side, at the same time opening its anthers and scatter-
ing the pollen. The stamens of the various species of Herberts and Maho-
nia, to the former of which our common berberry belongs, exhibit this
irritability to a remarkable degree. If touched with a pin or other
object at the base of the inside face of the filament, the stamen will
spring violently forward from its place within the petal, so as to bring

Fig. 8.

the anther into contact with the stigma, as shown in Fig. 8, and will
after a time slowly resume its original position. At first sight it may
s'eem as if this contrivance were intended to insure the fertilization of
the pistil from the pollen of its own flower. In reality, however, the
reverse is the case ; the excitation takes place in Nature when an insect
entering the flower, for the sake of the honey in the glands at the base
of the pistil, touches the inside of one of the stamens. The pollen is
thus thrown on to the head or body of the insect, which carries it away
to the next flower it visits, and leaves some of it on the stigma, and
thus cross-fertilization instead of self-fertilization is secured. Similar
motion of the stamens toward the pistil, but spontaneous, takes place
in the case of the London Pride, and other species of Saxifraga.

Elasticity is, indeed, a common property of organized tissue, though
it is not often developed to so evident an extent. In the " touch-me-
not," or Impatiens, we have a familiar instance in the seed-vessel,
which, if touched when nearly ripe, suddenly coils back, throwing the
seeds to a considerable distance. The "squirting cucumber" (Mo-
mordica elateriuni) marks the period of ripeness by the fruit separat-
ing from its stalk, and expelling the seeds and juice with great violence.
Mr. Thomas Meehan described a remarkable instance of elasticity at a
recent meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences ot Philadelphia.
The seeds or, as would appear from his description, more correctly
the embryos of the seeds of the American " witch-hazel " (Hamame-

SPONTANEOUS MOVEMENTS IN PLANTS. 293

lis Yirginicci) are thrown out with such force as to strike people vio-
lently in the face who pass through the woods. Collecting a number
of the capsules, and laying them on the floor, he found the seeds or em-
bryos were thrown out generally to the distance of four or six feet, and
in one instance as much as twelve feet.

Many of the instances of spontaneous motion or irritability we have
now recorded may doubtless be explained by the application of known
physical laws. With others this is not so easy ; and it is but reason-
ing in a circle to say that, because the organisms which manifest them
belong to the vegetable kingdom, therefore the phenomena cannot be
the result of a sentient force acting upon, and independent of, matter.
Darwin has described how certain movements of the tendrils of climb-
ing plants would be termed instinctive if they were observed in ani-
mals. The rapid rotatory motion of the zoospores of the lower Algae
is absolutely undistinguishable from that of certain undoubted lowly
organized forms of animal life. It is very difficult to distinguish be-
tween the movement of a shoot of a climber performing its circles in
the air in search of a support, and that of the tentacula of a coral-
polyp in search of food. The mode in which the Venus's Fly-trap
seizes and encages its prey is very like that adopted by a sea-anemone.
Every fresh addition to our knowledge seems to confirm us in the view
that it is unwise to dogmatize by laying down too rigid generalities,
and absolutely to deny certain functions to whole classes of animated
beings because we do not find them exhibited in the forms most famil-
iar to us. I do not w T ish distinctly to claim for plants the actual pos-
session of a voluntary or sentient faculty. But I do wish to point out
that facts do not support us in asserting that a clear line of demarca-
tion separates the animal from the vegetable kingdom ; the power of
voluntary motion belonging to the one and not to the other. Taking
all the facts we have described into consideration, the statement seems
justified which has been made by one of our most experienced natural-
ists, Prof. "Wyville Thomson : " There are certain phenomena, even
among the higher plants, which it is very difficult to explain with-
out admitting some low form of a general harmonizing and regulat-
ing function, comparable to such an obscure manifestation of reflex
nervous action as we have in sponges and in other animals in which a
distinct nervous system is absent." Popular Science Review.

29+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

LIGHT AND LIFE.

By FERNAND PAPILLON.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY A. R. MACDONOUdH, ESQ.

THE organized being that we observe on the surface of the globe
does not subsist solely by the nourishment absorbed, sometimes
in the form of aliment, sometimes in that of atmospheric air ; it needs
besides, heat, electricity, and light, which are like a secret and life-
giving spring for 'the world. Its organs are subject to the twofold in-
fluence of an inner medium, represented by the humors moistening its
tissues, and of an outer medium, composed of all those subtle and fluid
agents with which space is filled. This close interdependence of beings
and of the media in which they are immersed, too plain to have quite es-
caped notice, yet too complex for analysis by science in its infancy, has
been brought in our day under piercing and methodical investigation,
yielding results of remarkable interest. Light especially takes a part
in this combination deserving deep study. Whether organic existence
in its simplest expression jaid its lowest degree be considered, or
whether we regard it in its highest functions, the influence of light upon
it strikes us in the most strange and unlooked-for relations. Lovely
forms and vivid colors, the hidden harmonies of life as well as itS
dazzling brightness and bloom, alike claim mysterious connection with
that golden mist diffused by the sun over the world.

From this point of view, modern science finds reason in the simple
worship paid by primitive man. It helps us to understand the divine
honors given to the star of day among the earliest civilized nations,
and the pathetic terror those child-like races suffered when, at evening,
they saw the crimson globe, that was the source for them of all power
and all splendor, slowly disappear in the horizon. That pious idolatry,
far from being a mere utterance of gratitude for the wealth of fertility
scattered by the sun over earth, was a homage, too, to the comforting
source of brightness and joy, revealing the natural affinity between
man and light. The Vedas, the Orphic hymns, and other remains of
the earliest religions, are full of this feeling, which appears again in
many poets and philosophers of antiquity, Lucretius and Pliny among
others. Dante, invoking so often "the divine and piercing. light,"
crowns his poem by a hymn which more than any thing else is a sym-
bolic description of the supreme brightness. On the other hand,
laborers, gardeners, physicians, unite in bearing witness to the bene-
ficial effects of light. Naturalists and philosophers, too, in all ages,
impressed with the power of the sun, have described its manifold effects.
Alexander Humboldt, following Goethe and Lavoisier, often notices its
its various influences. Yet it was not until the middle of the eighteenth

LIGHT AND LIFE. 295

century that so rich a subject of study began to attract serious experi-
mental research ; and such are the difficulties of this grand and complex
problem, that its solution is only partly revealed, in spite of a long
series of attempts. Great deficiencies remain to be supplied, and many
vaguely-known points to be cleared up, nor has an efibrt even been
made as yet to systematize all the groups of results gained. The latter
task we propose to attempt here, with the purpose of showing by a
remarkable instance the manner of evolving knowledge through the
power of the experimental method, the sequent, cumulative, and mu-
tually-supporting character of w r ell-conducted experiments, and their
endless wealth of instruction ; in a w r ord, the process adopted by emi-
nent men in the great art of wresting her secrets from living Nature.

I.

Plants gain their nourishment by the absorption through their
roots of certain substances from the soil, and by the decomposition,
through their green portions, of a particular gas contained in the atmos-
phere carbonic-acid gas. They decompose this gas into carbon,
which they assimilate, and oxygen, which they reject. Now, this phe-
nomenon, which is the vegetable's mode of respiration, can only be
accomplished with the assistance of solar light.

Charles Bonnet, of Geneva, who began his career by experimenting
on plants, and left this attractive subject, to devote himself to philoso-
phy, only in consequence of a serious affection of his sight, was the first
to detect this joint work, about the middle of the eighteenth century.
He remarked that vegetables grow vertically, and tend toward the
sun, in whatever position the seed may have been planted in the earth.
He proved the generality of the fact that, in dark places, plants always
turn toward the point whence light comes. He discovered, too, that
plants immersed in w T ater release bubbles of gas under the influence
of sunlight. In 1771, Priestley, in England, tried another experiment.
He let a candle burn in a confined space till the light went out, that
is until the contained air grew unfit for combustion. Then he placed
the green parts of a fresh plant in the enclosure, and at the end of ten
days the air had become sufficiently purified to permit the relighting;
of the candle. Thus he proved that plants replace gas made impura
by combustion with a combustible gas ; but he also observed that at
certain times the reverse phenomenon seems to result. Ten years
later, the Dutch physician, Ingenhousz, succeeded in explaining thia
apparent contradiction. " I had but just begun these experiments,'*
says that skilful naturalist, " when a most interesting scene revealed
itself to my eyes : I observed that not only do plants have the power
of clearing impure air in six days or longer, as Priestley's experiments
seem to point out, but that they discharge this important duty in a
few hours, and in the most thorough way ; that this singular operation
is not due at all to vegetation, but to the effect of sunlight ; that it does

296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not begin until the sun has been some time above the horizon ; that it
ceases entirely during the darkness of night ; that plants shaded by
high buildings or by other plants do not complete this function, that
is, they do not purify the air but that, on the contrary, they exhale an
injurious atmosphere, and really shed poison into the air about us ; that
the production of pure air begins to diminish with the decline of day,
and ceases completely at sunset ; that all plants corrupt the surround-
ing air during the night, and that not all portions of the plant take
part in the purification of the air, but only the leaves and green
branches."

How do this transformation of impure air into pure air under the
influence of sunlight, and the reverse process during darkness, take
place ? Senebier, the countryman and friend of Bonnet, gives us the
answer. Applying to the problem the late discoveries of Lavoisier, he
showed that the impure air absorbed and decomposed in the daytime
by plants is nothing more than the carbonic acid thrown off by a burn-
ing candle or a breathing animal, and that the pure air which results
from this decomposition is oxygen. He proved besides that the gas
released by vegetables during the night is also carbonic acid, and
consequently that the respiration of plants in the night-time is the
reverse of that in the daytime. He also demonstrated that heat can-
not supply the place of light in these processes. Thus the nature of
the phenomenon was explained, but it remained to be learned what
relation exists between the volume of carbonic acid absorbed and that
of the oxygen released. Another Genevese, Theodore de Saussure,
proved that the quantity of oxygen released is less than that of car-
bonic acid absorbed, and at the same time that a pai*t of the oxygen
retained by the plant is replaced by nitrogen thrown off; and supposed
that this nitrogen was furnished by the substance of the plant itself.
This function of the green portions of vegetables is, moreover, performed
with great rapidity and energy. Boussingault, who has made some
remarkable experiments on this subject, filled a vessel of water with
vine-leaves, placed it in the sun, and sent a current of carbonic acid
through it ; on its passing out, he collected nothing but pure oxygen.
It is calculated that a leaf of nenuphar gives out in this way during
the summer more than 66 gallons of oxygen.

In 1848 Cloez and Gratiolet contributed new facts. They showed
that aquatic plants follow the same course during the day as others,
but that at night they are at rest, and give rise to no release of car-
bonic acid. They proved the powerful, instantaneous action of solar
light on vegetable respiration. If a few leaves of potamogeton or of
nay as are put into a gauge full of water saturated with carbonic acid,
as soon as the apparatus is placed in the sun, an immense number of
light bubbles, of almost pure oxygen, are seen to detach themselves
from the surface of the leaves. The shadow of a slight cloud, crossing
the sky, suffices to check their disengagement at once, followed by

LIGHT AND LIFE. 297

sudden activity after it has passed. By intercepting the solar "beam
with a screen, the alternations of quickness and slowness in the pro-
duction of gas-bubbles may be very plainly seen, according as the
plant receives the rays or not. Water-plants show other interesting
peculiarities. Diffused light has no power to excite the production of
carbonic acid, unless the phenomenon has been first called forth by
direct sunlight. Still further, the solar influence having once been ap-
plied, the evolution of carbonic acid continues even in darkness. The
vegetable keeps up at night its mode of breathing by day. The living
force of solar light, therefore, can be fixed and stored away in living
plants, as Van Tieghem, the discoverer of this curious property, very
well remarks, to act afterward in complete darkness, and exhaust it-
self by slow degrees, through transformation into equivalent chemical
energy. It appears to lodge itself in phosphorescent sulphur, to reap-
pear under the form of less intense radiations ; it hoards itself up in
paper, starch, and porcelain, to come forth anew, after a greater or less
lapse of time, through its action on the salts of silver. The peculiarity
residing in these green cells of vegetables, then, is not an isolated one :
it is a special instance of the general property, inherent in many bod-
ies, of retaining, within their mass, in some unknown form, a part of
the vibrations that fall upon them, and of preserving them through
transformation, to be afterward emitted, either in the state of luminous
radiations, or in the condition of chemical or mechanical energy. The
great principle of the transformation of forces thus holds good in the
vegetable kingdom. And we end with the remark that these facts of
persistent activity, called out by an initial excitement, lend support to
the idea that living forces hold a close connection with the molecular
structure of bodies, and may even be the determinate expression of
that structure. "We cannot conceive manifold energy in a mathemati-
cal and irreducible atom ; but in a molecule, made up of a certain num-
ber of atoms, we can fancy dynamic figures of a very complex order.

We have thus far regarded only the action of white light, the effect
of the totality of rays sent us by the sun ; but this light is not simple.
It is composed of a great number of radiations, of distinct colors and
properties. When white light is decomposed by the prism, we obtain
seven groups of visible rays, of unequal refractive power, violet, indi-
go, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. The spectrum or ribbon of
colors thus obtained widens and spreads out by invisible radiations.
Beyond the red, there exist radiations of dark heat, or calorific. rays,
and, outside of the violet, radiations which are called chemical or ultra-
violet rays. The first affect the thermometer, the last occasion ener-
getic reactions in chemical compounds. What is their influence upon
vegetation ? Does solar light act by its colored rays, its heat-rays, or
its chemical rays ?

The question has been subjected to many important experiments,
and is, perhaps, not yet determined. Daubeny, in 1836, was the first

298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to watch the respiration of plants in colored glasses, and he found that
the volume of oxygen released is always less in the colored rays than
in white light. The orange rays appeared to him most energetic ; the
blue rays coming next. A few years later, Gardner, in Virginia, ex-
posed young, feeble plants, from two to three inches long, to the differ-
ent rays of the spectrum, and observed that they regained a green col-
or with a maximum rapidity under the action of the yellow rays and
those nearest them. In one of his experiments, green color was pro-
duced, under the yellow rays, in three hours and a half, under orange
rays in four hours and a half, and under the blue, only after eighteen
hours. Thus it is seen that the highest force of solar action corre-
sponds neither with the maximum of heat, which is placed at the ex-
tremity of the red, nor with the maximum of chemical intensity, situ-
ated in the violet, at the other edge of the spectrum. Those radiations
which are most active, from a chemical point of view, are the ones
which have the least influence over the phenomena of vegetable life.

Mr. Draper, at present a professor in the New York University,
and the author of a very remarkable history of the intellectual devel-
opment of Europe, undertook new and more accurate experiments
about the same time. He placed blades of grass in tubes filled with
water which was charged with carbonic gas, and exposed these tubes,
near each other, to the different rays of the solar spectrum. Then
measuring the quantity of oxygen gas disengaged in each one of these
little vessels, he proved that the largest production of gas occurred in
the tubes exposed to the yellow and green light; the next, in the
orange and red rays. In 1848, Cloez and Gratiolet discovered the sin-
gular fact that the action of light on vegetation is more powerful when
it passes through roughened glass than when transmitted through
transparent glass. Julius Sachs, more lately, conceived the idea of
measuring the degree of intensity of light-action, upon aquatic plants,
by counting the number of gas-bubbles released by a cutting of a
branch exposed to the sun in water charged with carbonic acid. He
thus observed that the bubbles thrown off under the influence of orantre
light are very little less numerous than under white light, while the
branch put under blue light throws out about twenty times less. These
experiments are decisive. Neither the chemical nor the calorific rays
of the solar beam act on plants. The luminous rays only, and chiefly
the yellow and the orange, have that property. To these clearly-set-
tled results, Cailletet added a new fact, that green light acts on vege-
tation in the same way as darkness. He assigns this reason for the
feebleness of vegetation bathed in green light under the shade of large
trees. It is true, this discovery of Cailletet has been warmly ques-
tioned recently, but it has found defenders too, Bert among others
and we shall find soon that it harmonizes with the whole system of the
actions of light in the two kingdoms of life.

A year ago, science had gone thus far, when a very distinguished

LIGHT AND LIFE. 299

botanist, Prillieux, published the result of a course of experiments
made with an entirely different purpose, and taking up the study of
the action of light from a new point of view. Resting on the twofold
consideration that the distinctly-colored rays are not equally luminous,
and that those of the greatest illuminating power are also those which
act with most energy on plants, Prillieux undertook to examine what
influence will be exercised on plants by rays different in color, but
known to be equal in intensity, and whether this influence differs in
the case of different colors, or is the same, provided they do not vary
in illuminating power. The long and conscientious researches of this
experimenter led him to the conclusion, that rays of different colors
act with equal force on the green parts of plants, and produce an equal
release of gas, when they have the like luminous intensity. He holds
that all luminous rays effect the reduction of carbonic acid by vege-
tables in proportion to their illuminating power, whatever their refran-
gibility may be. If the yellow and orange rays are more active in
this respect, it is because their luminous glare is much greater than
that of the extreme rays.

The luminous rays also promote the production of green tissue, the
green matter of all vegetables. Gardeners blanch certain plants by
raising them in the dark. They thus obtain plants of a pale yellow,
spindling, without strength or crispness. They are attacked by a true
chlorosis, and waste away, as if sprung from barren sand. The sun
also aids the transpiration of plants, and the constant renewal of
healthy moisture in their tissues. On failure of the evaporation of
moisture, the plant tends to grow dropsical, and its leaves fall, from
weakness of the stem.

This love of plants for light, which is one of the most imperious
needs of their existence, displays itself also in other interesting phe-
nomena, which show that solar rays are, in very truth, the fertilizer
that produces color. The corolla of vegetable species growing at great
heights on mountains has livelier colors than that of species that spring
in low spots. The sun's rays, in fact, pass more easily through the
clear atmosphere that bathes high summits. The hue of certain flow-
ers even varies according to the altitude. Thus the corolla of the An-
tliyllis vulneraria shades down from white to pale red and vivid pur-
ple. In general, the vegetation of open, well-lighted places is richer in
color and development than that of regions not accessible to the sun.
Some flowers originally white afterward deepen in color by the direct
action of light. Thus Cheiranthus cameleo has a flower at first whitish,
afterwai'd yellow, and, at last, a violet-red. The Hibiscus mutabilis
bears a flower which opens at morning with a white hue, and grows
red during the day. The flower-buds of the Agapanthus umbellatus
are white when they begin to unclose, and afterward take on a blue
tint. If, at the moment of leaving its spathe, the flower is wrapped in
black paper, intercepting the light, it remains white, but regains its

3 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

color in the sun. The tints of fruits in the same way develop under
the healthy action of daylight, and the rule extends to those principles
of every nature which give taste and odor to the different parts of the
the plant.

Flowers, fruits, and leaves, then, are elaborated by the help of
luminous vibrations. Their tissue holds the sun's rays. Those
charming colors, those fragrant perfumes, and delicious flavors, all the
innocent pleasures the vegetable kingdom yields us, owe their creation
to light. The subtle working of these wonderful operations eludes us,
as does that which guides the fleeting diffusion and thousand-fold re-
fractions displayed by the imposing spectacle of the dawn ; but is it
nothing to gain a glimpse of those primal laws, and to possess even a
twilight ray upon these magnificent phenomena ?

II.

Light exerts a mechanical influence on vegetables. The sleep of
flowers, the bending of their stems, the nutation of heliotropic plants,
the inter-cellular movements of chlorophyll, offer proofs of an ex-
tremely delicate sensitiveness of certain plants in this respect. Pliny
mentions the plant called the sunflower, which always looks toward
the sun, and steadily follows its motion. He notices, too, that the
lupin always follows the sun in its daily movement, and points out the
hour for laborers. Tessier, at the end of the last century, took up the
study of these phenomena, and inferred in a general way that the
stems of plants always turn toward the light, and bend over, if neces-
sary, to receive it. He noted, too, that leaves tend to turn toward the
side whence daylight comes. Payer made more exact experiments.
He tried them with young stems of common garden cresses grown on
damp cotton in the dark. These stems have the property of curving
and turning quickly when placed in a room lighted only from one side
or iu a box receiving light on one wall only. The upper part of the
stem curves first, the lower part remaining straight. By a second
movement the top erects and the bottom bends over, so that the plant,
though leaning, becomes almost rectilinear again. "When put in a
room receiving light from two windows, the following results are no-
ticed : If the openings are on the same side admitting light equally,
the stem bends in the direction of the middle of the angle formed by
these two beams ; if one of the two windows admits more light than
the other, the stem leans toward it ; if the windows are opposite each
other, the stem stands erect, when light comes equally from both sides,
and, if it does not, turns toward the stronger rays. Payer discovered,
moreover, that the part of the irradiating light most active in its
effects corresponds in this case to the violet and the blue. The red,
orange, yellow, and green rays, do not seem to produce any movement
in plants. Gardner carried the investigation still further. He sowed
turnips, and let them develop in the dark to two or three inches in

LIGHT AND LIFE. 301

length. Then he threw the solar spectrum by a prism on this little
field. The plants inclined toward a common axis. Those exposed to
the red, orange, yellow, and green rays, leaned toward the deep blue,
while the part lighted by violet bent in the opposite direction. Thus
the crop took the appearance of a wheat-field bowing under two con-
trary winds. The turnips placed in the violet-blue region looked
toward the prism. Gardner thus determined, as Payer had done, that
the most refrangible rays are those which effect the bending of the
young stems. He proved also that the plants grow erect again in the
dark.

These experiments, repeated and varied in many ways by Du-
trochet and Guillemin, uniformly gave like results, but the phenome-
non itself still remains almost unexplained. This remark also applies
to the very singular facts of the twisting of running plants. The
stems of these plants, in twining about their supports, usually curl from
the left to the right. Others follow the contrary course, and some
twist indifferently in either way. Charles Darwin inferred, from his
investigation, that light has an effect on this phenomenon. If twining
plants are put in a room near a window, the tip of their stalk takes
longer to complete the half circuit during which it turns toward the
darker part of the room than that which is described nearer the win-
dow. Thus one of them, having gone through a whole turn in five
hours and twenty minutes, the half circle toward the window em-
ployed a little less than an hour, while the other was not traversed in
less than four hours and a half. Duchartre placed some China yams in
full vegetation in a garden, and others in a completely dark cellar.
The stems of the plants uniformly lost in the dark the power of twist-
ing around their supporting sticks. Those exposed to the sun presented
one portion twisting, but when put in the cellar they shot out straight
stems. Yet some twining plants are known that seem to be indepen-
dent of light in twisting.

The sleep of plants, in connection with light particularly, is still less
understood. The flowers and leaves of certain vegetables droop and
wither at fixed hours. The corolla closes, and after quiet inaction the
plant again expands. In others, the corolla drops and dies without
closing. In others still, as the convolvulus, the closing of the flower
occurs only once, and its sleep marks its death. Linnaeus noted the
hours of opening and shutting in certain plants, and thus arranged
what has been called Flora's clock ; but the relations of these closings,
with the intensity of light have not yet been scientifically determined.

The green coloring of vegetable leaves and stems is due to a spe-
cial substance called chlorophyll, which forms microscopic granula-
tions contained in the cells which make up these stems and leaves.
These grains are more or less numerous in every cell, and it is their
number as well as intensity of color that determines the tint of the
plant's tissues. Sometimes they are closely pressed together, covering;

3 02 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the whole inner surface of the cell ; sometimes the quantity is smaller,
and they are separate. Now, it has lately been discovered that in
the latter case, under the influence of light, the green corpuscles we
speak of undergo very singular changes of position. Some twelve
years ago, Boehm noticed for the first time that in certain unctuous
plants the grains of chlorophyll gather at one point of the wall of the
cells under the action of the sun. He remarked that the phenomenon
does not take place in the dark, nor in the red rays. The flat sheet
made up of a single layer of cells, without epidermis, which composes
the leaves of mosses, seemed to Famintzin the most suitable for this
delicate kind of observations. He followed the movements, that take
place in these sheets, by microscopic study. During the day the green
coloring-grains are scattered about the upper and lower parts of the
leal-cells. At night, on the contrary, they accumulate toward the
lateral walls. The blue rays affect them like white light; the yellow
and the red ones keep the chlorophyll in the position it takes at night.
The order of activity in the rays seems, then, to differ in this case from
that in the phenomena of respiration. The researches of Borodine and
Prillieux proved that these movements of coloring-corpuscles within
the cells occur in almost all cryptogamous plants, and in a certain
number of phanerogamous ones. The lately-published experiments of
Roze show that in mosses the grains of chlorophyll are connected by
very slender threads of plasma, and may suggest the idea that these
threads are the cause of the changes of position just described. Per-
haps there is some real relation between them; but it must not be for-
gotten that these movements of the plasmatic matter inside the cell
take place by day and night, and that light has no marked effect on
them. The green particles, on the contrary, creep over the walls of
the cell, and move toward the lightest part as zoospores and some in-
fusoria do.

Biot relates that in 1807, while at Formentera, employed in the
work of extending the meridional arc, he devoted his leisure hours to
the analysis of the gas contained in the swimming-bladder of fishes
living at different depths in the sea. The oxygen required for these
analyses was furnished him by the leaves of the cactus opuntia, which
he exposed in water to sunlight, under hand-glasses, ingeniously apply-
ing the discovery of Ingenhousz and Senebier. It occurred to him one
day to expose these leaves, in a dark place, to the illumination thrown
by lamps placed in the focus of three large reflectors, used for night-
signals in the great triangulation. He threw the light from three of
these reflectors on the cactus-leaves. The eye, placed in this concen-
tration of light, must have been struck blind, Biot says. The experi-
ment, kept up for an hour, did not cause the release of a single gas-
bubble. The glass was then taken into the diffused light outside tho
hut. The sun was not shining, but the evolution of gas took place at
once with great rapidity. Biot is a little surprised at the result and

LIGHT AND LIFE.

33

concludes that artificial light is impotent to do what solar light can.
The labors of Prillieux and other contemporary botanists have proved
that all light acts on the respiration of plants, provided only it is not
too powerful. In Biot's case artificial light had no effect, because it
it was far too intense.

III.

Lavoisier somewhere says : " Organization, voluntary movement,
life, exist only at the surface of the earth, in places exposed to light.
One might say that the fable of Pi'ometheus's torch was the expression
of a philosophic truth that the ancients had not overlooked. Without
light, Nature was without life ; she was inanimate and dead. A be-
nevolent God, bringing light, diffused over the earth's surface organi-
zation, feeling, and thought." These words are essentially true. All
organic activity was very clearly at first borrowed from the sun, and if
the earth has since stored away and made its own a quantity of energy,
that sometimes suffices to produce of itself that which originally pro-
ceeded from solar stimulus, it must not be forgotten that those living
forces, of startling and complex aspects, sometimes our pitiless ene-
mies, often our docile servants, have descended, and are still descend-
ing upon our planet, from the inexhaustible sun. The study of animal
life shows us by striking instances the physiological efficacy of light,
and the immaterial chain, it may be called, which links existences with
the fiery and abounding heart of the known universe.

In plants, as we have seen, respiration at night is the reverse of
that by day. There are infusoria which behave, under the influence
of light, exactly like the green portions of plants. These microscopic
animalcula are developed in fine weather in stagnant water, and in
breathing produce oxygen at the expense of the carbonic acid con-
tained in the liquid. Morren saw that the oxygenation of the water
occasioned by these little beings varied very perceptibly in the course
of twenty-four hours. It is at the minimum at sunrise, and reaches
its maximum toward four in the afternoon. If the sky is overcast, or
the animalcula disappear, the phenomenon is suspended. Tbis is only
an exception. Animals breathe at night in the same way as in the
daytime, only less energetically. Day and night they burn carbon
within their tissues, and form carbonic acid, only the activity of the
phenomenon is much greater in light than in darkness.

Light quickens vital movements in animals, especially the act of
nutrition, and darkness checks them. This fact, long known and ap-
plied in practical agriculture, is expressly noted by Columella. He
recommends the process of fattening fowls by rearing them in small
dark cages. The laborer, to fatten his cattle, shuts them up in stables
lighted by small low windows. In the half-light of these prisons the
work of disassimilation goes on slowly, and the nutritive substances,
instead of. being consumed in the circulating fluid, more readily accu-

304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. . .

mulate in the organs. In the same way, for the sake of developing
enormous fat livers in geese, they are put into dark cellars, kept en-
tirely quiet, and crammed with meal.

Animals waste away as plants do. The absence of light sometimes
makes them lose vigor, sometimes entirely changes them, and modifies
their organization in the way least favorable to the full exercise of
their vital powers. Those that live in caverns are like plants growing
in cellars. In certain underground lakes of Lower Carniola we find
very singular reptiles resembling salamanders, called proteans. They
are nearly white, and have only the rudiments of eyes. If exposed to
light they seem to suffer, and their skin takes a color. It is very likely
that these beings have not always lived in the darkness to which they
are now confined, and that the prolonged absence of light has de-
stroyed the color of their skins and their visual organs. Beings thus
deprived of day are exposed to all the weaknesses and ill effects of
chlorosis and impoverishment of the blood. They grow puffy, like
the colorless mushroom, unconscious of the healthy contact of lumin-
ous radiance.

William Edwards, to whom science owes so many researches into
the action of natural agents, studied, about 1820, the influence exer-
cised by light on the development of animals. He placed frogs'-
eggs in two vessels filled with water, one of which was transparent,
and the other made impermeable to light, by a covering of black pa-
per. The eggs exposed to light developed regularly ; those in the
dark vessel yielded nothing but rudiments of embryos. Then he put
tadpoles in large vessels, some transparent, others shielded from the
light. The tadpoles that were shone upon, soon underwent the change
into the adult form, while the others either continued in the tadpole
condition, or passed into the state of perfect frogs with great diffi-
culty. Thirty years later, Moleschott performed some hundreds of
experiments in examining how light modifies the quantity of carbonic
acid thrown off in respiration. Operating on frogs, he found that the
volume of gas exhaled by daylight exceeds by one-fourth the volume
thrown off in darkness. He established, in a general way, that the
production of carbonic acid increases in proportion to the intensity of
light. Tims, with an intensity represented by 3.27, he obtained 1 of
carbonic acid, and, with an intensity of 7.38, he obtained 1.18. The
same physiologist thinks that in batrachians the intensity of light is
communicated partly by the skin, partly by the eyes.

Jules Beclard made more thorough researches. Common flies'-
eggs, taken from the same group, and placed at the same time under
differently-colored glasses, all produce worms. But if the worms,
hatched under the different glasses, are compared at the end of four or
five days, perceptible differences may be seen among them. Those
most developed correspond with the violet and blue ray ; those hatched
under the green ray are far less advanced; while the red, yellow, and

LIGHT AND LIFE. 305

white rays exert an intermediate action. A long series of experiments
on birds satisfied Beclard that the quantity of carbonic acid thrown
out in breathing, during a given time, is not sensibly modified by the
different colors of the glasses the animals are placed under. It is the
same with small mammifers, such as mice ; but it is to be observed in
this case that the skin is covered either w T ith hair or feathers, and the
light does not strike the surface. The same plrysiologist examined
also the influence of the different-colored rays of the spectrum on
frogs. Under the green ray, the same weight of frogs produces in the
same period of time a greater quantity of carbonic acid than under
the red ray. The difference maybe a half greater; it is usually a
third or a fourth greater; but if the skin is afterward taken off the
frogs, and they are replaced under the same conditions, the result al-
ters. The amount of carbonic acid thrown out by the flayed frogs is
greater in red than in green light. A few experiments tried by Be-
clard on the exhalation of the vapor of water by the skin show that in
the dark, temperature and weight being alike, frogs lose by evapora-
tion a half or a third less moisture than under white light. In the
violet ray the quantity of moisture lost by the animal is perceptibly
the same as in white lisrht.

Light acts directly on the iris of almost all animals, and thus pro-
duces contraction of the pupil, while heat produces the reverse phe-
nomena. This stimulus is observed in eyes that have been separated
for some time from the body, as Brown-Sequard has shown.

Bert lately took up some very curious experiments on the prefer-
ence of animals for differently-colored rays. He took some of those
almost microscopic Crustacea, common enough in our fresh waters, the
daphne-fleas, remarkable for their eager way of hurrying toward light.
A number of these insects were put into a glass vessel, well darkened,
and a spectrum of the ray then thrown into it. The daphnes were
dispersed about the dark vessel. As soon as the spectrum-colors ap-
peared, they began to move, and gathered in the course of the lumi-
nous track, but, when a screen was interposed, they scattered agaiiu.
At first all the colors of the spectrum attracted them, but it was soon
noticed that they hurried much more toward the yellow and gree%
and even moved away a little if these rays were quickly replaced by
the violet. In the yellow, green, and orange parts of the spectrum
there was a thronging and remarkable attraction. A pretty large
number of these little beings were remarked in the red, too, a certain
number in the blue, and some, fewer in proportion to the distance, in
the most refrangible portions of the violet and ultra-violet. For these
insects, as for ourselves, the most luminous part of the spectrum was
also the most agreeable. They behaved in it as a man would do who,
if he wished to read in a spectrum thrown about him, would approach
the yellow and avoid the violet. This proves, in the first place, that
these insects see all the luminous rays that we see ourselves. Do they
vol. n. 20

3 o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

perceive the clilorific and chemic rays, that is to say, the ultra-red and
ultra-violet ones, which do not affect our retina ? Bert's experiments
enable us to answer that they do not. That physiologist is even led
to assert that, with regard to light and the different rays, all animals
experience the same impi*essions that man does.

Let us now look at the influence of light upon the color of the skin
in animals, noticing first the being which presents the strangest pecu-
liarities in this respect, the chameleon. This animal, indeed, experi-
ences very frequent modifications of color in the course of the same
day. From Aristotle, who attributed these changes to a swelling of
the skin, and Theophrastus, who assigned fear as their cause, to Wal-
lisnieri, who supposes them to result from the movement of humors
toward the surface of the animal's body, the most different opinions
have been expressed on this subject. Milne-Edwards, thirty years
ago, explained them by the successive inequalities in the proportions
of the two substances, one yellowish and the other violet, which color
the skin of the reptile, inequalities due to the changes in volume of the
very flattened cells that contain these substances. Bruck, renewing
these researches, proves that the chameleon's colors follow from the
manifold dispersion of solar light in the colored cells, that is to say,
from the production of the same phenomenon remarked in soap-bubbles
and all very thin plates. Its colors, then, come from the play of sun-
light among the yellow and violet substances distributed very curiously
under its wrinkled skin. It passes from orange to yellow, from green
to blue, through a series of wavering and rainbow-like shades, deter-
mined by the state of the light's radiation. Darkness blanches it,
twilight gives it the most delicate marbled tints, the sun turns it dark.
A part of the skin bruised or rubbed remains black, without growing
white in the dark. Bruck satisfied himself, moreover, that temperature
does not affect these phenomena.

All animals having fur or feathers are darker and more highly
colored on the back than on the belly, and their colors are more intense
in summer than in winter. Night-butterflies never have the vivid
tints of those that fly by day, and among the latter those of spring
have clearer, brighter shades than the autumn ones. The gold-and-
azure dust that adorns them harmonizes with the tones of colors in
surrounding Nature. Night-birds, in the same way, have dark plu-
mage, and the downiness of their coverings contrasts with the stiffness
of those that fly by day. Shells secluded under rocks wear pale
shades, compared with those that drink in the light. We have spoken
above of cave-animals. What a distinction between those of cold
regions and those of equatorial countries ! The coloring of birds,
mammals, and reptiles, peopling the vast forests or dwelling on the
banks of the great rivers in the torrid zone, is dazzling in its splendor.
At the north we find gray tints, dead and of little variety, usually close
-upon white, by reason of the almost constant reflection from snow.

LIGHT AND LIFE. 307

Not only the color of organized beings, but their shape too, is
linked with the action of light, or rather of climate. The flora of the
globe gain increasing perfection as we go from the poles toward the
equator. The nearer these beings approach the highest degree of heat
and light, the more lavishly are richness, splendor, and beauty, be-
stowed on them. The energy and glory of life, perfect forms as well
as brilliant arraying, are the distinguishing mark of the various and
manifold races in tropical regions, giving this privileged world its
characteristic aspect. A pure emanation from the sun, Nature here
lives wild and splendid, gazing unshrinkingly, like the Alpine eagle, on
the eternal and sublime source which inundates it with heat and glow.
Look, now, at the regions of the pole ! A few dwarfish shrubs, a few
stunted and herbaceous plants, compose all its flora. Its animals have
a pale covering and downy feathers ; its insects, sombre tints. All
around them are the utmost limits of life ice invades every thing, the
sea alone still breeds a few acalephs, some zoophytes, and other low
rudimentary organizations. The sun comes aslant and seldom. At
the equator he darts his fires, and gives himself without stint to the
happy Eden of his predilection.

IV.

It remains to note the relations of light to that being most sensitive
to its influence, and best able to express its effects, man himself. The
new-born child seeks the day by instinct, and turns to the side whence
light comes, and, if this spontaneous movement of the infant's eyes is
thwarted, strabismus may be the consequence.

Of all our organs the eye is the one that light especially affects.
Through the eyes come all direct notions of the outer world, and all
impressions of an aesthetic kind. Now, the excitability of the retina
shows variations of every kind. Prisoners confined in dark cells have
been known to acquire the power of seeing distinctly in them, while
their eyes also become sensitive to the slightest changes in the inten-
sity of light. In 1766 Lavoisier, in studying certain questions upon
the lighting of Paris, which had been given for competition by the
Academy of Sciences, found after several attempts that his sight wanted
the necessary sensitiveness for observing the relative intensities of the
different flames he wished to compare. He had a room hung with
black, and shut himself up in it for six weeks in utter darkness. At
the end of that time his sensitiveness of sight was such that he could
distinguish the faintest differences. It is very dangerous, too, to pass
suddenly from a dark place into a strong flood of light. The tyrant
Dionysius had a building made with bright, whitewashed walls, and
would order wretches, after long seclusion from light, to be suddenly
brought into it. The contrast struck them blind. Xenophon relates
that many Greek soldiers lost their sight from reflections off the snow
in crossing the mountains of Armenia. All travellers who have visited

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the polar regions have often seen like results produced by the glare
of the snow. When the impression of light on the eye is sudden and
overpowering, the retina suffers most. If it is less powerful, but longer
continued, the humors of the eye are affected. The phenomenon called
sunstroke results from the action of light, and not, as is often supposed,
from excessively high temperature. It sometimes occurs in the mod-
erately warm season of spring ; or a very intense artificial light, and
particularly the electric light, may occasion it. The violet and ultra
violet parts of the sunbeam seem to be the cause of this action, for
screens of uranium glass, that absorb these portions, protect the eyes
of experimenters occupied in studying the electric light. This dis-
order is a true inflammation.

The action of light on the human skin is manifest. It browns and
tans the teguments, by calling out the production of the coloring-
matters they contain. The parts of the body usually bare, as the skin
of the face and hands, are darker than others. In the same region,
country-people are more tanned than town residents. In latitudes not
far apart, the inhabitants of the same country vary in complexion in
a measure perceptibly related to the intensity of solar light. In Eu-
rope three varieties of color in the skin are distinctly marked : olive-
brown, with black hair, beard, and eyes ; chestnut, with tawny beard
and bluish eyes ; blond, with fair, light beard and sky-blue eyes.
White skins show more readily alterations occasioned by light and
heat ; but, though less striking, facts of variation in color are observa-
ble in others. The Scytho-Arabic race has but half its representatives
in Europe and Central Asia, while the remainder passes down to the
Indian Ocean, continuing to show the gradual rising heat of climate
by deepening brown complexions. The Himalayan Hindoos are al-
most white ; those of the Deccan, of Coromandel, Malabar, and Ceylon,
are darker than some negro tribes. The Arabs, olive and almost fair
in Armenia and Syria, are deep brown in Yemen and Muscat. The
Egyptians, as we go from the mouths of the Nile up-stream toward its
source, present an ascending chromatic scale, from white to black, and
the same is true of the Tuariks on the southern side of Mount Atlas, who
are only light-olive, while their brethren in the interior of Africa are
black. The ancient monuments of Egypt show us a fact equally signi-
ficant. The men are always depicted of a reddish brown ; they lived
in the open air, wdiile the women, kept shut up, have a pale-yellow
complexion. Barrow asserts that the Mantchoo Tartars have grown
whiter during their abode in China. Iiemusat, Pallas, and Gutzlaff,
speak of the Chinese women as remarkable for a European fairness.
The Jewesses of Cairo or Syria, always hidden under veils or in their
houses, have a pallid, dead color. In the yellow races of the Sumatra
Sound and the Maldives, the women, always covered up, are pale like
wax. We know, too, that the Esquimaux bleach during their long
winter. These phenomena, no doubt, are the results of several infiu

LIGHT AND LIFE. 305

ences acting at once, and light does not play the sole part in them.
Heat and other conditions of the medium probably have a share in
these operations of color. Still, the peculiar and powerful effect of
luminous radiation as a part of them is beyond dispute.

The whole system of organic functions shares in the benefits of
light. Darkness seems to favor the preponderance of the lymphatic
system, a susceptibility to catarrh in the mucous membranes, flaccidity
of the soft parts, swellings and distortions of the bony system, etc.
Miners and workmen employed in ill-lighted shops are exposed to all
these causes of physiological suffering. We may notice, with regard
to this, that certain rays of the solar beam affect animals like darkness ;
among others, the orange light, which, according to Bert, hurts the de-
velopment of batrachians. Now, if this light is injurious to animals,
it is not so to plants, as we have seen. In exchange, green light,
which is hurtful to vegetables, is extremely favorable to animals.
There is a kind of opposition and balance, then, as respects luminous
affinities, between the two great kingdoms of life. White light, as
Dubrianfant says, seems to split up under the influence of living be-
ings into two complementary groups, a green group and an orange
group, which exhibit in Nature antagonistic properties. It is quite cer-
tain that green light is a very lively and healthful stimulant for our
functions, and that, for that reason, spring is the favored and enchanted
season.

The-correspondence between perfection of forms and heightening of
luminous intensity proves true in the human race as in others. Es-
thetics, agreeing with ethnography, demonstrate that light tends to de-
velop the different parts of the body in true and harmonious propor-
tion. Humboldt, that nice observer, says, speaking of the Chaymas :
" The men and women have very muscular bodies, but plump, with
rounded forms. It is needless to add that I have never seen a single
one with any natural deformity. I will say the same of so many thou-
sands of Caribs, Muycas, Mexican and Peruvian Indians, whom we
have observed during five years. These bodily deformities and mis-
growths are extremely rare in certain races of men, especially among
people who have a deep-colored skin." No doubt there is great diffi-
culty in conceiving how light can model can exert a plastic power.
Yet, reflecting on its tonic effect on the outer tegument, and its gen-
eral influence over the functions, we may assign it the part of distribut-
ing the vital movement orderly and harmoniously throughout the
whole of the organs. Men who live naked are in a perpetual bath of
light. None of the parts of their bodies are withdrawn from the vivi-
fying action of solar radiation. Thence follows an equilibrium which
secures regularity in function and development.

It is commonly said that an ordained causality rules the operations
of matter, and that free spontaneity is the privilege of those of spirit.
It might well be said on this subject that, in many cases, the causes

3 ic THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

acting in matter elude us, and, not less often, the causes which act in
spirit overpower us ; but it is not our task to elucidate that terrible
antithesis of law, when the genius of Kant failed in it. We would
only ask it to be observed how great an influence light has on the sys-
tem of the intellectual functions. The soul finds in it the least deceiv-
ing of the consolations it seeks for the eternal sadness of our destiny
the bitter melancholy of life. Thought, fettered and dumb in a dark
place, springs into freedom and spirit at evening, in a room brilliant
with light. We cannot shun the sad moods caused by gloomy and
rainy weather, nor resist the impulse of joy given by the spectacle of
a brilliant day. Here we must confess our slavery yet a slavery to
be welcomed, that yields only delights. And why should we not join
in the chorus of all animate and inanimate things, which, at the touch
of light, quiver, and thrill, and betray in a thousand languages the
magical, rapturous stimulus of that contact ? By instinct, and spon-
taneously, we seek it everywhere, always happiest when it is found.
In some sort, it suffices us. And what a part it plays, what a charm it
gives, in works of poetry and art !

This is not the place to unfold that attractive and hardly-opened
chapter of aesthetics to demonstrate the relation between the atmos-
phere and art, by interrogating the climates of the globe and the great
masters of all ages, not following a system of empirical analogies and
far-fetched suggestions, Ixit led by strict physiology and rigid optic
laws. A charming picture would unfold in tracing the countless and
changeful aspects of the sky, and all the caprices of light and air in
their influence over the moral and physical nature of painters, poets,
and musicians. The ever-varying face of the sun, the fires of dawn
and sunset, the opalescent play of air, the shimmer of twilight, the
blue, green, shifting hues and iridescent gleams of sea or mountain
all these things find a destined answer in the inmost and unconscious
ongrowings of life, as in the soul of one who looks understandingly at
Nature's works. In it they reveal and transform themselves by sub-
tlest thrills tender and creative. He who shall detect these shall
link, range, and embrace them in their wonderfully complex unity
will render a great service to science and to art. He will not make
the artist an automaton, nor prove man the copy of a plant, drawing
all its virtues from the soil it springs in, but he will lay his hand upon
the mechanism, as yet scarcely guessed, moving a whole system of
mighty combinations of energy. Revue des Deux Mondes.

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 311

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.

FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON DTJMONT.
II.

HARTMANN adopts the following words as the title of his prin-
cipal work: "Speculative results according to the inductive
method of the natural sciences." If we were to trust to these words,
we might suppose that the author's system takes an essentially scien-
tific form, and relies exclusively on the observation and analysis of
facts. But the reading of a very few chapters soon leaves quite an
opposite impression. Although Hartmann gives proof of abundant
acquisitions in physics and physiology, he puts himself completely at
odds with the naturalist school, and, soaring away at once, launches
into the metaphysical regions haunted by Schelling and Schlegel. He
begins, it is true, by setting forth quite a number of facts belonging
to the domain of the natural sciences, but he follows with the imme-
diate declaration that such facts can only be explained by a cause of
the supernatural order. Now, to take any fact whatever, and en-
deavor to show that it is not a result of physical conditions, but has
its cause in a spiritual principle, intelligent and distinct from its real-
ity, may not, we suppose, be necessarily false, but we certainly cannot
recognize, in such a procedure, " the inductive method of the natural
sciences."

The principle of final causes is the starting-point of the system. In
vain Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, have successively combated it ; in
vain Darwin has given it its death-blow, by the proof that every thing
heretofore conceived as a final cause in the organic world might be
hypothetically, if not by demonstration, explained as a result; in
Hartmann's teaching, the idea of finality once more takes a place per-
Iiaps as high as in that of ancient philosophic systems. He says, the
causes of a fact are necessarily either material or spiritual there is
no middle way ; therefore, when material circumstances fail to explain
a fact sufficiently, we must resort to the admission of a spiritual cause.
Now, when the mind acts, there is always a will joined with an idea,
a force tending to the realization of an end conceived ; in a word, there
is always a final cause. Therefore, to prove the existence of a provi-
dential principle, it is enough to show that certain facts cannot possi-
bly be reduced to material conditions.

This doctrine may be thus stated : Whatever we have not yet suc-
ceeded in grasping by observation is of a spiritual nature, or, what-
ever in the production of a fact has hitherto eluded our experimental
research, must be a priori a principle like the human intellect. Is not

3 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

this simply going back to that old anthropomorphism of primitive phi
losophy, according to which imagination was childishly led to con-
ceive, behind any phenomenon inexplicable by ignorance, a will, a
force, like that we are conscious of within ourselves ? This illusion
has gradually lost ground, for two reasons : first, because the sphere
of the unknown has gone on diminishing, as the conquests of science
have continually revealed new natural explanations of phenomena ; and,
next, because we are brought more and more nearly to the conviction
that the human intellect, the will, instead of being principles of a
transcendent order, are themselves only results of material conditions.
We can maintain such a doctrine, and yet repel the charge of material-
ism ; for matter, in our view, is far from being a principle ; we regard
it only as a fact which is capable of being analyzed in its turn, and of
being reduced to yet simpler elements, to forces, which are not in
themselves substances, but merely phenomena.

One of the most characteristic traits of the spiritualist tempera-
ment is this that in the explanation of facts it always prefers meta-
physical hypotheses to purely physical ones ; that it clings to the
former as long as it is possible to do so without too violent a contra-
diction of irresistible truths ; that it never yields to such truths, ex-
cept in the last extremity, nor ever until they have been established
by proofs beyond refutation. This is the mental bent of which we
find the signs in Hartmann's theories. There are, in fact, a certain num-
ber of phenomena, of which the physical and physiological sciences
have succeeded in giving probable explanations, without going beyond
their own domain; but these explanations are as yet in the state of
conjectures, or at least have not been verified by experiences so deci-
sive as to compel the most hardened metaphysicians to accept them.
Instead of these solutions, Hartmann, in conformity so far with spirit-
ualistic traditions, prefers to hold to the hypothesis of an intelligent
principle, yet an unconscious one. Let us examine the principal facts
of this kind in order.

Hartmann contends that any voluntary movement must be impos-
sible, without an idea of the extremity of the nerve that serves to
produce it ; and, as this idea does not exist in consciousness, it must
exist, as he holds, in an unconscious intelligence, of which my con-
scious intelligence is doubtless only a mode, a manifestation. I will
to move my arm, and it moves. How can that effect be produced,
Hartmann asks, without the knowledge of the intermediate organs,
which must be set at work to effect the intended act ? How otherwise
.can we explain the action of the will on some one particular muscle,
rather than on some other one? We may well be astonished to find
;such a theory held by a philosopher who admits that acts of the con-
scious will are phenomena of the brain. Is it not a more natural and
.probable sequence to suppose an organic adaptation between the cere-
bral phenomenon and the modification of the motor nerve? But, it

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 313

is objected, What has the power to establish such adaptation, except
an intelligent being ? We shall reply, that all those phenomena which
are usually simultaneous in the organism have the power of suggest-
ing each other, that is to say, of acting reciprocally as causes. They
do in the end compose a circle, which vibrates throughout, whichever
one of its links it may be that receives the impulse. Every gesture,
every external movement of the body, is naturally followed by its per-
ception, and consequently by its idea ; by dint of being contempora-
neous with the organic facts which determine the production of motion,
the idea forms in connection with them habits of adaptation, the result
of which is to give it the property of exciting them. Thus, the move-
ment was at first involuntary, and theretofore it was the movement
which stirred its idea in the intellect, through the intermediate means
of perception ; afterward the movement became voluntary, and it may
be was caused, in its turn, by the cerebral phenomenon of its idea,
which had had time to contract habits of coexistence, and of sugges-
tion with the intermediate modifications of the nerves and the muscles.
Such habits may even show themselves, so far as they are hereditarily
reproduced and continued, as if they were innate with the individual.

It is the same with regard to those reflex movements which Hart-
mann also refers to an unconscious will and intelligence. He defines
a reflex movement as " that which takes place when the excitement of
a nerve of motion is transmitted to a nervous centre, which transmits
it on to another nerve of motion, that produces in the last place a
muscular contraction." This definition is evidently too broad, and
would equally embrace all those movements that result from cerebral
action ; for the brain is also a nervous centre, which only transforms
movements that come from outside of it, so as to transmit them to
motor nerves. Physiologists usually confine the description of " re-
flex " to those movements as to which the series of facts intermediate
between the external excitement received and the final act does not
pass through the me, or the thinking brain. 1 Now, among these move-
ments, certain distinctions must be established. In a great number of
them the most prejudiced mind could not discover any sign of finality,
and therefore as to those there cannot even be any question of apply-
ing an hypothesis of an intelligence, whether conscious or unconscious ;
when, for instance, some one tickles me, and I laugh, I cannot recog-
nize any thing between these two facts of laughing and of tickling,
beyond an accidental and mechanical coincidence. Other reflex move-
ments are very easily explained upon the hypothesis of natural selec-
tion ; such, for instance, is the action of the spinal marrow on the

1 In the strictest meaning of the term, a reflex phenomenon is a movement called
forth in one part of the body by an excitement proceeding from that part, and acting
intermediately through a new centre, oti r than the brain, properly called, and conse-
quently without the intervention of the will. (Vclpian, Lectures onihe General and Com-
parative Pliyx'wloc/ii of the Nervous System.)

3 i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

muscles of the blood-vessels ; such are the movements of the respira-
tory organs, etc. Again, there are a great number of cases in which
the adaptation between the excitement and the act must have been
originally regulated by conscious intelligence; but, the habit once
acquired, the concurrence of intelligence has become useless. The
player on a musical instrument needs at first to combine, by an act of
his will, the movements of the fingers with the visual perception of
the notes ; but, after a sort of organic coexistence between these facts
is established by repetition and practice, the one may become directly
the cause of the other, without the concurrence of the power that
regulated their adaptation; the movements of the hand then follow
the impressions on the sight mechanically, while the intellect may be
occupied with something quite different. Thus a machine, once con-
structed and regulated, has no need of the intelligent workman, who
adjusted its cogs and wheels, to keep it going. If we pinch a frog
after its brain is removed, it makes motions as though to repel the
hand that hurts it ; it is a reflex action resulting from habits contracted
under the cerebral influence, and strongly enough established to sur-
vive the removal of the intellectual organs. After this we do not deny
that a certain degree of intelligence may exist in other nervous cen-
tres besides the brain ; we grant that they may have a peculiar con-
sciousness of their modifications and their movements. But we go no
further, and we refuse to follow Hartmann, as soon as his hypotheses
needlessly take on a metaphysical or supernatural character.

Still less shall we follow him when, throwing himself into theories
which remind us of those of Stahl, he insists that the organization of
living bodies can be formed no otherwise than by the action of an in-
telligent but unconscious principle ; that, in diseases, a regulating in-
telligence, a vis medicatrix natures, presides over the restoration of
the functions to their normal state ; that the reproduction of organs
observed in some animals is caused by the unconscious idea of the
usefulness of such organs, for the preservation of the individual ; that
in every part of the living being there resides an unconscious idea of
the type of the species, which directs the reproduction of the organ
removed, the reparation of tissues, etc. These facts, all having rela-
tion to the study of forms, types, or species, are exactly those which
Darwin's theory best succeeds, as we think, in explaining. Hartmann,
however, does not altogether reject the ideas of the great English nat-
uralist; but he limits their application considerably, and interprets
them in a manner quite contrary to their author's. He admits natural
selection, indeed, in the struggle for existence; but this selection is
not, in his view, a primordial fact, resulting from the force of things ;
he calls it simply one of the means that unconscious intelligence would
employ in arriving at its ends. Besides, selection would be insufficient
still, according to Hartmann, to account for the organic forms of the
species, for what he calls the morphological facts, and ought to be ap-

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT.

315

plied to physiological facts exclusively. This distinction is opposed
to the tendencies of contemporaneous science, whose analyses reduce
all morphological facts to physiological facts. Selection, Hartmann
says, explains the progress in perfection of an already existing type,
within its own degree of organization ; but it cannot explain the pas-
sage from an inferior degree of organization to a superior one, a pas-
sage which always consists in an augmentation of the morphological
type ; and he gives, as a reason for his argument, that there is no more
vitality in one morphological type than in another, and that selection
is applicable only to facts that increase the vitality of the organism.
All the degrees of organization possessing equal vitality, it is only,
Hartmann insists, within the limits of a particular degree that different
species or varieties are distinguished by more or less important advan-
tages in the struggle for existence : if Darwinism were true of all sjie-
cies without restriction, there could only subsist one single morpholo-
gical type in each locality, and, in the millions of years that the vital
competition has lasted, all the inferior classes of animals and plants
must have been extinguished by the superior classes ; there are, in a
word, a great number of facts which form part of the plan of the
world, and yet are of no service in giving more vitality; such facts, in
order to keep themselves in existence, need some other support than
that of natural selection and the struggle for life.

We understand how many minds feel a certain repugnance in ac-
cepting the daring views of Darwin, so contrary to old associations of
ideas. It is as yet nothing more than an hypothetic induction, which is
waiting for its experimental verification. But it is no less true that
this is the most probable of all the theories hitherto put forth upon
the forms of life, and in default of that palpable and decisive demon-
stration that time only can furnish, we shall at least maintain that this
opinion deserves to be preferred to all those still far more hypothetic
doctrines which cannot dispense with a supernatural principle.

No doubt Darwinism does not succeed in explaining every thing.
It has never assumed to account for the existence of forces, for the
origin of those movements which are the source, and as it were the
substance of life ; it takes into view only their direction and the pro-
cedure of their organization. Putting aside the mysterious problem
of being, it takes cognizance only of the methods of being. Is this
saying that selection is only one of the means employed by a superior
intelligence to govern the other forces of the world toward its ends ?
Nothing permits us to suppose that, for, on the contrary, the peculiar-
ity of selection, in all the cases to which it applies, is to explain order
without calling in the aid of intelligence, and as a necessary resultant
of the reciprocal action of forces.

We think, with Hartmann, that Darwinism can explain only those
facts that relate to the vitality of beings. But what fact is there in
living Nature which can be regarded as indifferent from the point of

3 iO THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

view of the struggle for life ? Can one imagine, in the recesses of an
organ, a single cell, a single element, which is not fighting for exist-
ence ? If there could be one, then there would exist in reality some-
thing else than forces encountering forces, and that is a consequence
which Hartmann himself could not admit, recognizing, as he does,
nothing but forces in the atoms of matter, and explaining, as he does,
reality and consciousness by the opposition of contending forces. We
shall find him, farther on, maintaining that, when two contrary but
equal forces meet, they annul and annihilate each other, and all reality
vanishes ; and yet the same author, arguing against Darwin, supposes
a reality which is not the result of the encounter and strife of forces.
For Hartmann, more than any other reasoner, the sphere of selection
onght to be coextensive with that of reality, and whenever conflict
and selection cease, by reason of the equilibrium of forces, there should
be nothing but annihilation. But contradiction, we all know, is the
hereditary vice of metaphysics.

In proof that certain facts have no concern with the struggle for
life, Hartmann mentions beauty, and especially the beauty of plauts,
which it would be difficult to explain by selection. Here we find our-
selves face to face with German aesthetics, with its mystical theories,
and its metaphysical entities. For ourselves, regarding beauty not as
a real fact, but simply as a relation between things and our faculties,
we do not feel this difficulty. We admit that selection has nothing to
do with the matter, because beauty is neither an act, nor an organ,
nor a function : it is simply a mode in us of feeling outward objects ;
it is a sentiment inspired by things which answer to our habits of
thought, and correspond with our associations of ideae. There is not, in
Nature, any fact which is beautiful only ; whatever is beautiful is at the
same time an object, and the forces that produce it, produce it, so far as
it is an object, and not so far as it is beautiful. We are not speaking of
art, in which selection again comes up ; and, in fact, if there is no nat-
ural selection as to beauty, there may be, in very many cases, artificial
or intelligent selection : among animals, and especially as regards
man, we know that beauty exerts a certain influence on choice in sex-
ual passion. As to the plant, which cannot choose, we have to take
account of natural selection by man, whose culture promotes the pres-
eiwation of the species most agreeable to the eye ; we may even admit
a certain selection by insects, which assist the transfer of the pollen,
and are perhaps not wholly insensible to size among flowers, to their
brilliancy of color, etc.

Can an argument against Darwinism be founded on the equality
of vitality among different species ? When selection has induced a
very considerable difference between two varieties, developing in two
more or less opposite directions, it often occurs that these two varie-
ties or species no longer have the same conditions of existence, and
cease to compete with each other. The farther apart the types grow,

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 317

the more there may exist between them that equality of vitality which
is merely the negation of competition. This explains why we oftener
remark equal vitality between different species than between varieties
of the same species. Certain species even suggest each other, and
have mutual need each of the other for their existence. If, for in-
stance, the quantity of vegetables, or of certain animal species which
we require for our nourishment, were to decrease, it would necessarily
follow that population would diminish proportionately ; but that dim-
inution would allow the other species to resume their former develop-
ment ; therefore the equilibrium is maintained of necessity.

As to the possibility of morphological alterations, by the accumu-
lation of individual modifications, Hartmann himself admits that Dar-
win has cited more than one instance of it, and a marked one in the
skeleton of pigeons : he objects, it is true, that there was some aid
from art in these different cases. Very true ! but that proves that
analogous changes are at least possible through natural selection.
Hartmann adds, that a pair of teeth, or vertebrae, or fingers, more or less,
or a vertebra shaped in such or such a way, are exactly the marks by
which zoologists oftenest distinguish species, and yet he says such
marks are of no importance in the struggle for life. This seems to us
an oversight ; for they are precisely those scarcely appreciable modifi-
cations which have the greatest importance from the point of view of
selection and competition.

Darwin and Hartmann stand at the opposite poles of modern
thought. To Darwin belongs the most fertile idea of the age, an idea
which upsets all the ancient ways of conceiving the world, and in-
cludes the first natural explanation yet given of order, of organization,
and of intelligence itself. Hartmann, on the contrary, takes us back
to the ancient labyrinths of teleology; between two explanations, one
natural and the other supernatural, we have always found him, thus
far, pronouncing for the latter. We detect a new instance of this pre-
dilection in his way of regarding instinct. Darwinism explains it ad-
mirably as an hereditary habit resulting from natural selection ; a habit
can only become formed and inveterate on condition of its aiming at
a result useful for the preservation of the individual and the species ;
that which is not useful cannot become habitual, or at least not heredi-
tary. Vices can be only individual accidents, or else the race is tend-
ing toward extinction ; all that flows from the force of things, and
there is no call for the supposition that the utility of fact grown into
habit must have been foreseen, and willed by a supernatural being.
But Hartmann prefers to define instinct as "the conscious will (choice)
of a means in view of an end unconsciously willed ; " and this he does
to raise a necessity for the supposition of an intelligent principle, dis-
tinct from conscious intelligence, in the bosom of which he may lodge
the seat of these unconscious volitions.

Hartmann's love of the supernatural goes so far as to make him

3 i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

accept, with the fullest faith, a certain number of extraordinary facts
which stand much in need of confirmation, such as the facts of second
sight and of artificial somnambulism. He admits the truth of dreams,
visions, and presentiments ; he cites cases of warnings given by mys-
terious revelations of coming dangers, of the death of one absent, or
of other occurrences taking place at a distance, as in the well-known
story of Swedenborg. Nothing is wanting but spiritism and turning
tables. It is clear that such facts would justify and even compel the
hypothesis of a supernatural principle. If the existence of a superior
intelligence in the world can be demonstrated by physical proofs (we
are not now speaking of metaphysical proofs), it is not by the spec-
tacle of order and regularity which indicate, on the contrary, the ab-
sence of any disturbing or interposing force, but really by abnormal
and contradictory facts ; in a word, by miracles. Only, it is necessary
that the authenticity of such facts should be above all question.

As to what concerns thought itself, we share Hartmann's views on
almost all the points of psychological analysis, and only when his
transcendental explanations begin do we feel obliged to part company
with him. Thus we think, as he does, that the Xdoes not make the
greater part of its ideas, that its ideas come to it without its volition,
and without its consciousness of the causes producing them. But
what must be concluded from this, except that intelligence in general
is a resultant and not a principle, and that it is simply, as Taine and
the t later English psychologists have so well shown, the series, the
grouping, the ensemble, of a multitude of phenomena, the greater part of
which have their cause outside of the me. Hartmann sets out on quite
a different path, and supposes behind my consciousness another intelli-
gence, which elaborates these ideas for me, and imparts them to me
ready made ; and in support of this theory he invokes the mysticism for
which he betrays sympathies that recall the romantic school ; he in-
vokes the inspiration of genius, which he holds to be only the revela-
tion ofluminous thoughts to certain privileged natures. But is genius
any other thing than the combination of those cerebral conditions
which permit new relations of ideas to manifest themselves in an in-
telligence, under the mere stimulus of life, of the organic functions,
and of the perceptions ?

"We remark the production, in history, of a great number of facts
which are independent of human volitions. Men set an end before
them, and yet the result is quite different from the one they had fore-
seen and willed. How could it be otherwise, since individual volitions
are but elements in the midst of an immense complexity, and all the
elements are thwarting, checking, neutralizing each other ? More-
over, the struggles for existence and selection explain historic progress
as clearly as they do physiological development. But Hartmann pre-
fers, in this instance, as in others, to resort to a metaphysical principle,
and imitates Joseph de Maistre, in calling for the interposition of a

A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 31c,

providential action, which guides humanity toward an end, sometimes
even in spite of human efforts.

At the same time that Hartmann endeavors to prove, by the facts
we have just spoken of, the existence of " a psychical principle main-
taining itself above matter," he fancies that he has evolved from these
same facts the idea of what he calls " the unconsciousness," the idea
of an intelligence which has no consciousness of itself, of unconscious
manifestations (Vorstellungen), of unconscious volitions. We declare
that we have not succeeded in comprehending this idea it even seems
to us self-contradictory. What is an idea or a volition without the
consciousness of that idea or that volition? Can the idea be any
thing else than ono form of consciousness, as the volition is another
form of it ? Hai'tmann is able to cite facts of intelligence which are
outside of the consciousness of the me, but without being able to prove
that these facts must be unconscious, absolutely and in themselves.
Who can even prove to us that the Zis the totality of the conscious
phenomena of the brain ? The /is nothing more than a series of facts,
and may there not be alongside of this series a multitude of facts
which become real, without being attached to it by any bond of con-
tinuity ? For instance, personal character is made up of a great num-
ber of conditions, which, without any consciousness on the part of the
I, modify the direction of its volitions : these facts only make them-
selves known to us by their influence on the acts and the morals of the
individual. But does it follow, from their being unconscious relatively
to the me, that they are unconscious in themselves ? Hartmann's own
doctrines, on the contrary, would lead us to allow that the other ner-
vous centres, the spinal marrow, the ganglia, etc., are endowed with
their own consciousness ; that there is a special consciousness in each
cell of a plant or animal, perhaps even in every material atom ; in a
word, that consciousness coincides everywhere with reality, uncon-
sciousness being outside of real facts. But what is to be concluded
from this, except that none of the real facts, which Hartmann has set
forth with so many details, offer us the idea of the unconscious ?
And then what foundation is there for this definition, that " the uncon-
scious is the cause of all those facts, in an organic and conscious indi-
vidual, which lead us to the supposition of a psychical and unconscious
cause ? " We will even say that Hartmann seems to us to have suc-
ceeded better in widening the sphere of consciousness, than in found-
ing a philosophy of the unconscious.

If we put ourselves the question, What is the real motive that de-
termined him to attribute unconsciousness, rather than consciousness,
to the supreme intelligence, to God? we find only an a priori reason,
drawn from the idea that evil rules the world : " If, at the time of the
creation of the world, there was in God any thing like consciousness,
the existence of the world would be an inexcusable cruelty, and the
development of the world a useless absurdity." Hartmann finds him-

3 2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

self driven to suppose God unconscious, to escape supposing him
wicked. "This 'consideration," he says, "is decisive against the ad-
mission of consciousness in God." But stay ! if God has not the
consciousness of what there is evil in the world, Hartmann argues, on
the other hand, that he has the idea of it (the Vorstellung). Does
not this idea suffice, as well as consciousness could (in our view they
are exactly the same thing), to pledge the Divine responsibility?

EVOLUTION AND THE SPECTEOSCOPE.

By F. "W. CLAEKE.

MEN of science may be divided into two great classes thinkers
and observers. And, although both classes are often represented
in one individual, the distinction between them is practically valid.
For, in classifying mankind, no sharp boundaries can be drawn. The
observer, on the one hand, contents himself with merely ascertaining
facts, and rarely deduces more than the simplest and most obvious
conclusions from them. He is in some measure an intellectual miser,
who accumulates, but never uses. It is the thinker, however, who
gives shape to science. His generalizations make true science possible.
To him, a discovery amounts to something more than its mere self,
and is valuable, like a choice seed, largely for what it may become.
He ranges facts into series, gives each series its proper place in a
science, clusters the sciences into groups, and, studying these groups
with reference to each other, and to the grand problems with which
thought is always busied, seeks to arrive at higher conceptions of the
universe, and of the essential unity of all material things. At the
present day this method of comparison has led to the announcement
of the philosophy of evolution ; a philosophy Avhich places the physical
world in a clearer light, and classifies a greater number of facts, than
any other scheme that human earnestness and ingenuity ever devised.
Surely it is worth while for us to study all great discoveries with ref-
erence to their bearings upon this philosophy.

Probably none of the many remarkable discoveries of the nine-
teenth century are more important or more striking than those
achieved by means of the spectroscope. It is now less than fifteen
years since this famous instrument was devised, and already it ranks
in importance side by side with the telescope and the microscope.
New fields of research have been opened, which, widening ever since,
show as yet no signs of approaching limits. Chemical analysis has
been simplified, many optical researches facilitated, and four new
metals discovered. Our knowledge of the sun and stars has in some

EVOLUTION AND THE SPECTROSCOPE. 321

respects been more than doubled. Problems which were deemed in-
soluble, have been settled with the greatest ease. The magnitude of
the discoveries already made leads us to expect still greater revelations
in the future. Let us see what the spectroscope has to say for the
philosophy of evolution.

Among the doctrines held by evolutionists, the all but proved
Nebular Hypothesis occupies a very prominent position. Originating
with Kant more than a century ago, and afterward furnished with
secure foundations by Laplace, it has since striven for complete ac-
ceptance with ever-varying strength. According to this hypothesis,
our solar system began existence as a nebulous cloud of incandescent
vapor, which, rotating about a centre, and cooling as it revolved, cast
off rings of matter that gathered into globes and became planets, while
the central portion, undergoing less change, formed the sun. A vast
weight of physical and mathematical evidence supported this theory,
and the. nebulae seen in different parts of the heavens lent to it the
confirmation of analogy. From the first, the hypothesis was strong.

But soon doubts began to arise. Larger and more powerful tele-
scopes were constructed, and many nebulas were resolved into clusters
of stars. Astronomers began- to hope that all these bodies might be
similarly resolved, and the nebular hypothesis lost a little ground.
But the spectroscope came apparently to the rescue. In the skilful
hands of Mr. Hoggins, the narrow slit was made to receive the light
of several unresolved nebulas, and nebula after nebula gave up its
secret to the observer. Some yielded spectra, consisting of from one
to four bright lines, while others gave continuous bands of feeble light.
The former class told the story. Spectra like theirs could belong only
to the light emitted by incandescent gas, and therefore of such material,
true nebulous vapor, these distant bodies consisted. But even more
was revealed. The bright lines were characteristic of two well-known
substances, nitrogen being the more distinct of the two, and hydrogen
the less clearly visible. No other elements could be detected, nor
could any good reason be found for supposing others to be present.
But the main fact of the existence of genuine nebulas was fairly de-
monstrated, and the nebular hypothesis received a great accession of
strength. To-day it almost commands acceptance, although it is
capable of being made much stronger. Even the evidence which
analogy might offer in its favor is far from complete. We must look
to the spectroscope for its completion.

In this connection a great variety of interesting questions suggest
themselves. We assume that our planet originated from a gaseous
cloud by a slow process of condensation and cooling, and point to the
visible nebulas to confirm our views. Now, in evolving a solar system
from a nebula, a long series of changes would necessarily occur. We
see the extremes of such a line of development, and also a few of the
intermediate links. And we are at once led to ask whether we can

VOL. II. 21

322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hope to find existing to-day, among the heavenly bodies, examples of
all the stages of evolution through which matter must pass in forming
solid globes from shapeless clouds of incandescent vapor. The task
will be a difficult one, but not hopeless. We have much material to
begin upon, and can safely look to the spectroscope to furnish us with
an abundance in the future. If the work can be done, the nebular
hypothesis will become so well grounded that we are scarcely able
to conceive of any possible arguments which could afterward dis-
turb it.

In beginning upon such an inquiry, we must start with a considera-
tion of the nebulae themselves. And, at the outset, their varieties of
form, and the visible changes which they undergo, offer strong sugges-
tions of processes of evolution actually going on. The spiral nebulae
hint of rotary motion, and some annular forms speak to us of rings of
vapor from which planets are yet to grow. In the double nebulas we
see future pairs of suns, companion stars ; and in every true nebula are
signs of condensation in the brighter portions. The nuclei which are
so common may be the germs of central luminaries, around which sys-
tems like our own are yet to revolve. But all these observations are
due to the telescope. We have to consider what the spectroscope has
done.

Now, as regards spectroscopic work, the nebulae may be divided
into three classes : First, those which give spectra consisting only of
bright lines. Secondly, nebulae whose spectra are continuous. And,
in the third place, the nebulae described by Lieutenant Herschel,
which are apparently intermediate between the other two classes, and
furnish spectra of bright lines upon a continuous background.

The nebulae of the first class I have partly described. They consist
mainly, if not wholly, of two common gases, nitrogen and hydrogen.
But gases give somewhat different spectra under different circum-
stances of temperature and pressure ; and the spectrum of a nebula in-
dicates that the gases of which it is composed are in a highly-rare-
fied condition, and at a temperature considerably lower than that of
our sun ! Of this we are tolerably sure, though perhaps not abso-
lutely certain.

The nebulae whose spectra are continuous speak to us with less cer-
tainty. Lord Oxmantown has shown that the resolved nebulae those
which are known to be mere star-clusters give this kind of spectrum,
as do also most of those which appear to be resolvable. Accordingly,
it is reasonably infei-red that all the nebulae of this class probably be-
long to the resolvable order ; but here is where a slight doubt may
arise : gases, under great pressure and at a high temperature, give con-
tinuous spectra ; possibly, then, some of these nebulae may consist of
gases under just such conditions. Here is a problem yet to be solved.
The third class of nebulae may, perhaps, strengthen this latter view.
Their spectra are intermediate between those of the other classes. It

EVOLUTION AND THE SPECTROSCOPE. 323

may be that a more careful study will show them to be gaseous, with
their spectral lines in a state of transition to the full continuous spec-
trum; but this is little more than bare conjecture at present ; for the
published descriptions of these' nebulae are too incomplete to admit of
very satisfactory discussion.

This consideration of nebular spectra plunges us at once into a sea
of difficulties. We say that the sun and planets were formed by con-
densation and cooling from incandescent vapors, and hail the nebulae
as confirming this opinion. But could a sun be evoked, by cooling,
from a body less hot than itself? Moreover, the sun is known to con-
tain at least sixteen elements and probably many more. Were these
developed from a nebula containing only nitrogen and hydrogen ? Or
did the original nebulae differ in constitution ? All those which the
spectroscope has analyzed are chemically alike. We know nothing of
any whose constitution differs in this respect from theirs; and, there-
fore, if we point to them as confirmatory of the nebular hypothesis, we
are compelled to ask this portentous question : Did our planet, with
all its chemical complexity, arise, by a slow process of evolution, from
a glowing cloud of but two familiar gases ? Upon our answer to this
question depends largely the value of our spectroscopic confirmation
of the great hypothesis. The safety of the hypothesis itself is not in-
volved ; merely that of this one argument in its favor. We can easily
conceive of more complex nebulae, which could give rise to systems
like ours, although we know nothing of them. And, if we interpret the
spectra of some nebulae of the second class as due to gases at very high
temperature and pressure, the difficulty regarding the heat of our sun
will be easily gotten over.

Let us consider the question suggested, as to the possible evolution
of complex from simple matter. It is easy to speak out boldly, in an
ex-cathedra manner, and say that an affirmative answer to such a ques-
tion would be absurd; but dogmatism of this sort is, in the highest
sense, unphilosophical and foolish. We do not know but that the
evolution of one element from another may be possible, under circum-
stances over which we have as yet no mastery ; indeed, such a view
would have many points of probability about it. Although unsup-
ported, it is quite strongly suggested by evidence. The demonstrated
unity of force leads us, by analogy, to expect a similar unity of mat-
ter ; and the many strange and hitherto unexplained relations between
the different elements tend to encourage our expectations. These ele-
ments, which seem to-day so diverse in character, may be, after all, one
in essence. This idea is philosophically strong, but waits for experi-
mental evidence to support it. At present, it can neither be discarded
as false, nor accepted as true. But what an addition the proof of such
a doctrine would bring to the philosophy of evolution !

Now, although questions like these cannot be settled by any evi-
dence which we are likely to obtain for many years to come, specula-

324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion upou them is not altogether unprofitable. The time spent in con-
jectures and surmises is not wholly wasted ; for it is impossible to fol-
low up any of the lines of thought thus opened, without reaching some
valuable suggestions, which may pave the way to new discoveries.
New truth, in one direction or another, is sure to be reached in the
long-run. So, then, we may proceed to theorize in the most barefaced
manner, without entirely quitting the legitimate domain of science.

It is plain that the nebular hypothesis would be doubled in impor-
tance, and our views of the universe greatly expanded, if it could be
shown that an evolution of complex from simple forms of matter ac-
companied the development of planets from the nebulae. Evolution
could look for no grander triumph. For the evidence to support such
a theory, we must depend mainly upon the spectroscope. Let us con-
tinue upon our task of finding the intermediate links between the two
extremes of planetary growth, and see whether, as we ascend in the
line of change, an increased chemical complexity can be observed.
Upon this theory, the planets should contain more elements than the
sun ; the sun more than some of the less advanced among the fixed
stars ; and these, in turn, should be more highly organized than the
nebula?. But we must not fail to remember that we are merely speculat-
ing, and that the spectroscope, in telling us of the presence of certain
substances, does not give us accurate information with regard to the
absence of others. In this investigation, we can look to the spectro-
scope only for hints, not certainties. Difficulties will abound in our
path, and, in a paper of this length, we cannot stop to scrutinize them
closely. We must bridge many chasms with guesses.

The evidence concerning the constitution of the fixed stars has
been furnished chiefly by Secchi and Huggins. The former observer,
favored by Italian skies, has done, perhaps, the major portion of the
work, and has given us a classification of these bodies. According to
Secchi, the stars may be divided into four classes, as follows :

In the first class, which is by far the largest, we find most of the
white stars, Sirius, Altair, Vega, Iiegulus, and Rigel, being especially
prominent. These give spectra characterized by the intense develop-
ment of the four hydrogen lines, which stand out with great distinct-
ness upon a background of the seven primary colors. Lines belonging
to some of the metals, particularly to sodium, magnesium, and iron,
are also visible, but are exceedingly faint in comparison with those of
hydrogen. The distinctness of this element, as compared with the
faintness of the metallic lines, is characteristic of the stars of this type.
The absence of bands, indicating an absorptive atmosphere, is also
noteworthy.

In the second class of stars we find our sun, Arcturus, Aldebaran,
Capella, Pollux, Procyon, and many others. Here we have spectra in
which the lines of the metals are apparently more numerous, and cer-
tainly more distinct, the hydrogen being less conspicuous. In Aide-

EVOLUTION AND THE SPECTROSCOPE. 325

baran, Mr. Huggins detected sodium, magnesium, calcium, iron, bis-
muth, antimony, tellurium, mercury, and hydrogen.

The third class, in which are some stars of a red color, is compara-
tively small in numbers. Alpha Orionis or Betelgeux, Alpha Herculis,
Beta Pegasi, Mira beti, and Antares, are good examples of this type.
Their spectra, as a rule, resemble the spectrum of a solar spot, and
sometimes contain bright lines. Hydrogen is still present, but so diffi-
cult to detect that, at first, it was supposed to be wanting in the spec-
trum of Betelgeux. But, in a state of combination, as aqueous vapor,
it has been found in the stars of this order, and, most notably, in An-
tares. In the spectrum of Betelgeux, Mr. Huggins observed lines be-
longing to magnesium, sodium, iron, calcium, and bismuth.

The stars of the fourth type are very inconspicuous, but give quite
peculiar spectra, consisting chiefly of three bright bands, separated by
dark spaces. Such a spectrum suggests that of carbon, but really tells
us nothing, as yet, of the constitution of these stars. We must, there-
fore, leave them out of account in our speculations. It would be easy
to theorize about them, only the theories would find no place in our
argument.

Now, taking the spectra of stars of the first, second, and third
classes as a basis for our speculations, we have quite decent evidence
of a gradual increase in chemical complexity. And, if we bring the
nebula? into line, we can devise a very neat progressive series of devel-
opment up to the solid planet. Beginning with a nebula consisting
mainly of nitrogen and hydrogen at low temperature and pressure, we
can easily conceive of several ways by which it might gain great acces-
sions of heat, and give a bright, continuous spectrum. A collision
with meteoric or cometary matter would account for such an increase
of temperature. But, given a nebula which is sufficiently hot, and
from which a sun might be evolved by cooling, what shape will our
speculations assume ? This intensely-heated body undergoes a certain
condensation, rings are thrown off from it, and a nucleus appears,
which soon becomes a star or sun of the first type. Hydrogen still
predominates in its constitution, but metals begin to show themselves,
though very faintly. But the cooling continues, and gradually the
hydrogen lines become fainter, the metallic lines stronger, a larger
number of substances are detected, and we have a sun of the second
class. By another slow transition, chemical action, as we recognize it,
begins to set in. The hydrogen lines disappear ; aqueous vapor is
formed ; spots, like those of the sun, which are probably centres of
chemical activity, become more and more abundant, and the star enters
the third order. As the spots accumulate, the istar becomes more de-
cidedly a "variable," and, after violent and prolonged convulsions of
its surface, solidity is reached, the emission of light ceases, and a plan-
et is formed. Some volcanic heat, however, yet remains ; but this
slowly dies away, the volcanoes become extinct, and, at the end of the

326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

line of change, we have a body like our moon, dead and steiile. And
here our speculations end. What next ensues, no one can say. We
are seeking the past history of our planet, not looking into its future.

Now, a paper of this sort should always contain a summary of the
steps by which its conclusions have been reached. Beginning with the
nebular hypothesis, as it is commonly understood, we saw that it was
philosophically strong, was supported by much evidence, and opposed
by none. Bringing the spectroscope to bear upon it, we found that
true nebula? undoubtedly exist, and that there is tolerably good proof
of different degrees of complexity among the fixed stars. Notwith-
standing these differences, however, we know that the universe is built
throughout of essentially the same materials. In order to bring unity
out of this diversity in the constitutions of the heavenly bodies, we ar-
ranged a series of development, from nebula to planet. This made it
apparent that an evolution of matter from lower to higher stages
might have accompanied the formation of planets and suns ; an idea
which was suggested also by physical analogies, and which had decided
elements of philosophical strength. And thus we gave to the nebu-
lar hypothesis the somewhat novel form which it has received in our
speculations. Without our additions, it could derive no real support
from the spectroscopic evidence adduced in its behalf. The known
nebulse are simple, our systems of suns complex. By assuming the
evolution of matter, these difficulties cease to exist, and we have a co-
herent hypothesis, in which the evidence offered by the spectroscope is
used to good advantage. To be sure, although it is in harmony with
many observed facts, it is open to many objections. And yet we can
admit its probability, to a certain extent, without giving it the adhe-
rence of actual belief. Such theorizing is profitable, partly because it
aids us in making out the limits of our present knowledge, suggests to
us new paths of investigation, and, by uniting masses of different ideas,
helps the mind to handle more easily the facts and conceptions with
which it has to deal.

But, when one is fairly started on a line of thoughts, it is hard to
come to an end. Problem after problem, theory after theory, law after
law, crowd forward for inspection. If we assume one hypothesis to be
true, a hundred others rush in upon the mind, and demand considera-
tion. From every one of these a host of interesting conclusions can be
drawn, each suggesting another, until the brain grows weary of ac-
tion. The present case is no exception to the rule. Objections must
be answered, consequences foreseen, demonstrations sought. In an
article of this scope few points can receive due attention. Let it then
suffice, in closing, to say that science has done so much in the past that
we can justly expect almost any achievement in the future. And per-
haps, in days yet to come, an evolution of matter may be experimen-
tally be brought about, and our speculations of to-day proved to be not
altogether foolish.

DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

BE. LIVINGSTONE. 327

DE. LIVINGSTONE.

By L. J. PEOCTER.

DAVID LIVINGSTONE was born at Glasgow early in the present
century. His grandfather was originally the occupier of a small
farm in Ulva, one of the Hebrides, but, owing to the requirements of a
large family, found himself obliged to quit his island home to seek
employment at the Blantyre cotton works on the Clyde, above Glas-
gow. Livingstone's father and uncles having been fairly educated,
easily obtained situations as clerks at the factory, though the former
appears to have relinquished his employment with the pen, and to have
occupied himself during the later years of his life in keeping a shop as
a tea dealer in Glasgow. He died a member of the Independents in
1856, but brought up his children in connection with the old Kirk of
Scotland.

At ten years of age, David Livingstone was put to work as a
" piecer" at the Blantyre factory. Even at this early date his charac-
ter was remarkable for a gravity, and steady, plodding earnestness.
Reading took the place of ordinary amusements ; and, after a hard
day's work, the boy would often sit at his studies so far into the night
as to call for his mother's peremptory interference. To economize
time, he accustomed himself while at work to place an open book on a
portion of the spinning jenny, and catch sentence after sentence as he
passed backward and forward in front of it, quite undisturbed by the
noise of the machinery. An evening-school was made to help in his
education, and it may well be supposed no leisure time was wasted.
"While still a youth, the truths of religion took a deep hold of his
mind ; and under the feeling thus produced, " in the glow of love," as
he says, " which Christianity inspires, I soon resolved to devote myself
to the alleviation of human misery." " Turning this idea over in my
mind," he adds, " I felt that to be the pioneer of Christianity in China
might lead to the material benefit of some portions of that immense
empire; and therefore set myself to obtain a medical education, in order
to be qualified for that enterprise." Being promoted at nineteen to
higher work in the factory, the increased wages he received enabled
him, by working during the greater part of the year, to support him-
self at Glasgow while attending the medical, Greek, and divinity
classes, which were held in the winter. By the advice of friends, he
was induced, though reluctantly, to offer himself for the service of the
London Missionary Society, and was accepted. His admission as a
"Licentiate of Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons" completed his
preparatory labors. Just at the time, however, the opium war broke
out in China, and this presented an obstacle so great as to render it

328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

advisable that he should abandon his original design, and look else-
where for a sphere of enterprise. It was soon offered. Mr. Moffat,
another of the London Society's missionaries, was laboring successfully
in Southern Africa among the tribe of the Bechuana. Livingstone
heard of this ; and, as both the scene and the work were attractive, he
resolved to join him.

Accordingly in 1S40, with the full approval of his Society, he left
England for Kuruman, Mr. Moffat's station. There he spent the first
three years. In 1843 he moved to Mabotsa, gome three hundred miles
to the northeast, where, in the effort to help his Bakatta/>ro^s, the
memorable encounter with the lion occurred, which so nearly proved
fatal to him. In 1844 he married the veteran missionary's daughter.
Having made a friend of Sechele, chief of the Bakwains, he ultimately
removed to his country, and built a station with his own hands, near a
small stream called the Kolobeng.

Some years pass in hard and successful work, and then Livingstone
renounces his life as a stationary teacher ; and, though never entirely
relinquishing his missionary chai*acter, assumes that of an explorer, by
which he is best known. The change came about in this way :

To the southeast of Kolobeng lay the Kashan Mountains, to which
a number of Dutch Boers, fugitives from English law, had migrated,
and formed a small republic. Having appropriated their territory,
they had compelled the natives themselves to live, if not in absolute
slavery, yet under a system of unpaid labor very closely allied to it.
Livingstone, with his missionary views, was of course looked upon as
an interloper, and hated in a corresponding degree. To add to the
grievance of the settlement at Kolobeng, his subsequent discovery of
Lake Ngami had encouraged traders to advance from the south, who,
by giving the natives ideas about commercial matters they never had
before, tended to raise disaffection toward themselves. The result was
a determination on the part of the Boers to make a raid on the Bak-
wains, which a report that the latter were well armed with guns and
cannon (an amusing myth about a black pot of Livingstone's) alone
prevented. They then tried to get the governor at the Cape, Sir G-.
Cathcart, to interfere, and negotiations which followed ended in a
treaty far more favorable to the natives than to themselves. In spite
of this, however, an attack was made by the Boers on Sechele and the
Bakwains in 1852, in which Livingstone's house was burnt down, and
all his property destroyed, while he was absent on a journey to the
Cape.

This opposition was very provoking to Livingstone ; and the deter-
mination to carry out his plans for bettering the condition of the
natives set him at work forthwith to open up the country northward.
In company with two English gentlemen, Mr. Oswell and Major Var-
don, the great Kalahari Desert was crossed, and Lake Ngami dis-
covered, in August, 1849. Livingstone's opinion of this country de-

DR. LIVINGSTONE.

3 2 9

serves notice : " Not only the natives," he says, " but Europeans whose
constitutions have been impaired by an Indian climate, find the tract
of country indicated " the southern borders of the Kalahari " both
healthy and restorative .... Cases have been known in which pa-
tients have come from the coasts with complaints closely resembling,
if they were not actually those of consumption ; and they have re-
covered by the influence of the climate alone."

A subsequent journey in the same direction brought him to the
town of Sebituane, chief of the Makololo, from whom he met with a
most cordial reception. Unfortunately, the chief fell sick and died
shortly after his arrival; but the promise of assistance made before
this occurred w r as confirmed by his successor, a daughter, Ma-Mochi-
sane. In order to confer with her on the matter, Livingstone made a
journey to Shesheke, where she lived, 130 miles to the northeast, in
company with Mr. Oswell. It w r as on this journey that they dis-
covered the Zambesi, toward the end of June, 1851, even then, the
dry season of the year, a magnificent stream 300 or 400 yards broad.
In defence of his claim to the discovery, Dr. Livingstone says : " The
Portuguese maps all represent the Zambesi as rising far to the east of
where we now were ; and, if ever any thing like a chain of trading-
stations (as is asserted) had existed across the country between the
latitudes 12 and 18 south, this magnificent portion of the river must
have been known before." The discovery was indeed important ; and,
impelled not only by the prospects it presented, but by the remem-
brance of his difficulties at Kolobeng, Livingstone decided to explore
the river thoroughly, and meanwhile send his family home to England.

The journey undertaken with this view commenced in the early
part of June, 1852, and "extended from Capetown, at the southern
extremity of the continent, to St. Paul de Loando, the capital of Angola
on the west coast, and thence across south Central Africa in an oblique
direction to Quelimane in Eastern Africa." Besides geographical
research, Livingstone tells us that his object was to find if he could
" a healthy district that might prove a centre of civilization, and open
up the interior by a path to either the east or west coast."

Glancing rapidly along his route, we are to see our traveller first
at Kuruman, where the panic in the country on account of the attack
on Kolobeng delayed him. Then at Linyanti, capital of the Makololo,
where Sekeletu now reigned in place of his sister Ma-Mochisane, show-
ing himself, like his predecessors, favorable to Livingstone. Then
with a large body of Makololo, provided by the chief, on December
27, 1853, at the confluence of the two streams Leeba and Leeambye,
where we pause.

The Leeambye also called the Kabompo and Zambesi is a large
river 300 yards wide, flowing from the eastward, while the Leeba, 250
yards wide, comes from the N. N. "W. The junction of the two forms
Livingstone's Zambesi, lat. 14 10' 52" S., long. 23" 35' 40" E. Lake

330 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dilolo, a small body of water, reached February 20, 1854, is the source
of the Lceba. It was only on his return that Livingstone ascertained
this. But the courses taken by the different streams he crossed struck
him; and the observations he made on his journey back impressing
him with the conviction that the Dilolo country was the water-shed of
the streams running east and west, led him to confirm the theory of
Sir R. Murchison, of which he had not heard at the time, that the form
of the interior of the South African Continent is that of an elevated,
saucer-shaped plateau. In other words, that the country is gi-adually
depressed toward its centre, sloping from an inner environing moun-
tain-ridge toward which the land rises from the coast. The western
ridge was crossed at a spot called Tala Mungongo, lat. 9 42' 31" S.,
and, by carefully noticing the course of the various streams flowing
thence to the centre, and forming his judgment from what Arab trad-
ers had told him subsequently confirmed by his own observation
that the rivers set inland from a similar ridge on the eastern side of
the continent, the conclusion forced itself on Livingstone's mind, that
these river systems, uniting at last, pass out to the north and south in
two main drains ; the northern finding its way to the Atlantic as the
Congo on the west coast, and the southern to the Indian Ocean as the
Zambesi on the east. The configuration of the oountry alluded to will
account for the course of the Leeba from the lake being about S. E.,
while the Leeambye joins it flowing west